Chapter 1 #3
Vampires were exceedingly fast and exceptionally strong.
Their senses were just as heightened as ours.
Different vampires were afforded various powerful abilities, including the charisma to force their human prey to do whatever they wanted, the skill to paralyze their prey, or the terrifying talent of causing them to go insane.
The Venuti were strong, but they were fairly typical as far as vampire powers go.
They could use their potent influence to make their human prey piss their pants in fear or fall in love with them even as they drained their blood.
Their powers of persuasion were unmatched, but luckily that didn’t affect us.
Their guns would though, especially if all of them were loaded with silver bullets. Getting through Venuti security was going to be a fight. In all likelihood, people were going to die from both sides.
My pack included.
“Be mindful of their guns. Do not underestimate them. Be smart. Our mission is to get out of here alive. Not to kill them all. Do you understand me?” I commanded.
I didn’t speak out loud, but the mental link between my pack members and me allowed us to communicate in silence even in the presence of our enemies.
A chorus of “yes, alpha” followed and in concert we branched out around the room. I didn’t see any fully automatic weapons in our enemies’ hands, but I wanted to err on the side of caution, nonetheless.
Slowly, the vampires and my pack circled each other.
The head guard took a step forward and leveled a gun in my direction, but by the time he squeezed the trigger, I’d already moved far out of range of the shot.
I bounded toward him, and he moved the gun to fire directly at me, but I had expected that.
I feinted in one direction and caught him off guard before I closed my teeth around his wrist hard enough to shatter his bones to gristle and dust. The gun clattered down to the floor.
It wouldn’t slow him down for long. I knew that.
The only ways to kill a vampire were sunlight, a stake through the heart, or the separation of their heads from their shoulders. They had several additional weaknesses, but none of those would be particularly useful to me right now.
The vampire faltered and I took advantage, lurching forward and capturing his throat in my teeth. I tasted blood as I bit through his throat, separating his head from his body in the process.
Vampires didn’t have blood flowing through their veins. They didn’t have a beating heart for that, which could only mean one thing. This one had fed recently.
Viciously, I jerked my head away and the vampire’s head fell to the floor. The sickening sound of his cold body slapping against the floor echoed noisily. It took several seconds, but eventually his body began to wither away until the only thing left behind was a stinking dehydrated corpse.
I looked back, trying to see how the rest of my pack was faring. Not all of them had been as successful as I had been.
In despair, I watched as one of the vampires shot a silver bullet right in between Lucas’ eyes. Having been injured by the human woman, his movements were slowed. His massive wolf form collapsed to the floor and slowly shifted back into the shape of a human.
The vampires had killed him, but there was no time for grief.
I looked around the room, only to see a few more of my men falling as they fought against the vampires. Some of my men were tearing through the vampires too, but from my cursory glance we were evenly matched.
“Run. Don’t fight if you can manage it,” I commanded.
I rushed at another vampire, trying to open a path for the rest of my pack to flee through.
I bit down on his wrist and threw him aside into the wall, but the bastard landed like a spider and flew back toward me with wild abandon.
I rolled out of the way just before he landed on me.
He reached for a gun on his belt. I bit his hand clean off.
That would grow back, but it would take a minute or two.
He snarled in response and circled me. I growled right back at him.
In a flurry of motion, I rushed at him, using my massive form to knock him aside once again. A few of my pack members made it to the door and out into the hall, but there were still too many of them left behind me for me to make my way out.
I fought tooth and nail so that as many of them could get out as they could. Toboe’s massive gray form finally bounded to my side, and he grunted as a single silver bullet grazed his right shoulder. He didn’t let it slow him down even though I knew it hurt.
As the alpha, I was the largest and strongest wolf. As my beta, Toboe was my second in command and his size and strength followed suit. We were the only two with a definitive edge over these guards. The silver bullets made even that difference difficult though.
I tore through several vampires before all my remaining men were able to make it out the door. By the time that happened, I’d already lost six of my men. Just as Toboe and I were about to exit the room, something strange happened.
The human woman flew into the midst of the battle just as all of us were about to make a run for it.
I snarled, wanting to jump back in and carry her out myself, but then she pulled a sleek-looking little gun from God knows where.
Impressive. Apparently she’d smuggled that in too.
She leveled the gun at the vampire closest to her and he laughed. She pulled the trigger at almost point-blank range and I watched as a gold bullet burst forth. He let it hit him right between the eyes, fully expecting it to bounce off his forehead.
It didn’t. It pierced right through his unnaturally hard vampire skin.
I saw the wound for a split second before a blinding, extremely powerful white light burst forth from within him.
It was as bright as the sun and the vampire’s head exploded in a violent display of light.
He’d probably fed recently too because an alarming amount of blood and gore splattered all over the place.
The body of the vampire collapsed to the floor, headless and entirely motionless.
He wouldn’t come back from that. She shot another before she burst toward the door and sprinted down the hallway herself.
I watched her go before I bounded out in the hallway to follow my men.
Well, wasn’t that something. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d never even heard of anything that powerful that would take out a vampire. Ever.
And she’d taken out two of them. A human.
I sprinted after her with Toboe at my side.
At first, she raced in the same direction as we did.
Silver bullets peppered the floor as the remaining vampires raced after us, but a lot of them missed, ricocheting off the walls and the floor behind us.
One grazed my ear and I bit back a snarl of agony as it burned away at my flesh, but I didn’t slow down.
I expected her to go the same direction, but when the time came for me to turn into the vault, she kept running past it.
I couldn’t go after her. I had to make sure that my pack made it out alive.
I swerved into the room and pulled back just enough for Toboe to dive through the hole first. I quickly followed suit and tore out into the tunnel with the rest of my men.
“Now, Genzo!” I roared.
I watched as he rushed forward and slammed his paws on top of the platform ignition that he’d set up in the event that we were followed in our hasty retreat out of this place.
The earth rumbled beneath our feet. I sprinted out of the tunnel after my pack, and behind me the world exploded into an elegant display of fire and dust.
There was one more way to kill a vampire. They couldn’t put themselves back together if you blew them to smithereens.
As I ran out of the tunnel to join my remaining pack members, I wasn’t thinking about those I lost. Instead, my mind was embroiled with thoughts of the tiny human woman who had not only injured one of my wolf shifter brethren, she’d also killed two vampires with some kind of exploding light bullets.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why would a human have access to something like that and why would she be held prisoner by the vampires when she could kill them as she pleased?
I wanted to know more. I needed to know more.
She’d gotten away from me today, but I had her scent now. The only thing I had to do now was follow it. I’d find her and she would tell me what I wanted to know.
As much as I wanted to deny it, I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time I broke into the Venuti tower, and it most certainly wouldn’t be the last time I had to deal with the Venuti themselves.
Although…
If I was able to get my hands on that woman’s weapon… that might change things. That could tip the odds in our favor in a major way.
She could run, hide, and fight me all she wanted. I was going to find her, and I was going to get some answers.