Chapter 7
It was only eight hundred meters between them and the target below. Augustine planted himself, sitting cross-legged in the dirt, the Lance resting on his shoulder.
Diana had asked him to give her a count. The wolves didn’t react well to sudden loud noises.
“Fire.”
He squeezed the trigger.
The Lance spat the warhead with a crack. The small missile rocketed toward the compound, its fire trail lighting up the night. The little artificial star fell in the middle of the construct huddle and exploded.
BOOM!
A plume of dark smoke erupted.
The tops of the towers split, and twin turrets rose up, turning.
“Fire.”
He squeezed the trigger. The left turret vanished in an explosion of fire and smoke.
“Fire.”
The right turret disintegrated.
He set the Lance to the side and rolled to his feet, sweeping it back up. Sliding it into the locker and jumping into the Yukon’s passenger seat took barely a second. Diana took off, the Yukon speeding down the mountain road, its lights off.
Behind them, a high-voltage searchlight swept the hillside. Woodward’s automated systems searching for them.
Diana took a turn at hair-raising speed. He was almost sure the SUV’s tires left the ground. The road was pitch-black. He couldn’t see shit. Augustine gripped the handle on the door.
The SUV rolled over something.
“Lights,” he squeezed out.
“No need. Trust me.”
The Yukon went airborne and landed with a clang. He saw Woodward’s estate looming in front of them, the two mangled turrets smoking on top of the towers.
Diana stood on the gas. The Yukon surged forward like a runaway battering ram.
The metal gate flashed before them. He didn’t even have a chance to brace for impact.
The SUV plowed into the gate. Metal screeched, and then they were through, speeding down the driveway.
A massive shape charged at them through the trees—a triceratops construct, illuminated by eerie blue magic from within.
Ahead, stainless-steel pillars emerged from the pavement, rising. Defensive bollards blocking access to the house.
Diana threw the wheel to the left.
The car turned, sliding into a skid. For a terrifying moment, they hurtled sideways, straight at the bollard barrier, so fast that his life had no chance to flash before his eyes.
The SUV screeched to a halt two feet from the pillars.
Diana shoved her door open. He jumped out from his side, carrying a duffel in his left hand and a cluster of Helios flash bombs in his right. They ran between the bollards and dashed to the front door. Behind them a tortured metal groan announced a construct smashing into the Yukon.
Augustine spun around. The pack of velociraptors was charging toward them at full speed, four of them, the magic powering them blazing brighter. Behind them, the mangled T-Rex struggled forward, dragging itself across the ground as pieces of its body slowly floated back toward it.
Augustine pulled the pins from the flash bombs, hurled them at the SUV, and sprinted to the door. Diana flew ahead of him.
The night turned white, illuminating the stairs, the double doors, and the armored shutters descending over the windows. The Helios explosions would burn for three seconds, their intense bursts of light designed to damage retinas and image sensors.
One. He snapped his magic like a whip, anchoring it to the two lupine shapes running back, toward the mangled front gate turning the wolves into Diana and his doppelgangers.
Two. He wrapped his power around himself and Diana, willing them to melt into the night.
Three. He bounded up the stairs to the front doors, pulling at the zipper on the duffel. Diana was already there.
Augustine chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Two of the velociraptors had veered back, chasing after illusions of their doppelgangers. The triceratops had followed. The T-Rex was halfway up, and the two remaining velociraptors were sixty feet away.
He pulled his Angstadt Arms MDP-9 out, unfolding the stock in a fluid motion, and thrust it at her.
Diana ignored it. “The door, Augustine.”
He extracted the party crasher strip from the duffel, peeled the breacher tape off, and stuck it to the door.
The first construct leaped at Diana. She stepped out of the way and hacked at it with her tactical blade.
Augustine slid the detonator into the strip.
Diana became a whirlwind of controlled savagery. Pieces from the two constructs rained onto the ground.
He spun around, lunged at her, and knocked her off the stairs to the side. They landed on the pavers, and he pressed the remote firing switch.
Another explosion tore through the night.
Augustine rolled to his feet. The T-Rex bore down on them, twenty feet away and closing. Diana leaped to the top of the stairs. Augustine sprinted after her. They shot through the smoking doorway just as the T-Rex’s metal teeth scissored the air behind them.
Augustine slid across the polished marble of the foyer and spun around. The constructs halted at the doorstep, motionless.
Diana inhaled, sampling the air like one of her wolves. Her eyes glowed, and she raised her sword and ran to the left down the hallway.
God fucking damnit! There she goes again.
He shouldered his weapon and followed.
The scent burned like a red-hot wire glowing and dragging her through the cavernous house. Kitty, mixed with the odor of a human. All of her senses went into overdrive. Nothing existed except the cub and the scumbag who touched her.
A door loomed, blocking her way. She pounded a kick into the wood. It held.
Another.
One more.
Again.
A strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder and she snapped, nearly biting Augustine’s fingers.
“Wrong spot,” he said.
He stepped in front of her, gently pushing her to the side, and leaned back. His foot shot out like a hammer and smashed into the door near the lock. The wood splintered, and he casually kicked the door again, knocking it open.
She pushed past him and dashed into the room. A man stood in the small bedroom, his hands raised. She inhaled, drawing the scents in, and snarled in pure frustration.
Not here.
“Just a vet,” the man said quietly, pronouncing each word carefully. He held himself like he was facing a rabid dog.
A vet? No. A shitstain, an accessory to torture and vivisection, murderer…
“I am just a vet. A doctor. I take care of them…”
She leaped onto him. Her fingers locked around his throat, and she dragged him closer until a mere inch of space separated their faces.
“Where is my cub?”
Sweat drenched his hairline. He went pale, his pupils widening into black pools filled with terror. Fear dripped from him, sticky and viscous.
“She asked you a question.” Augustine’s voice was sharpened ice.
“In the Vault, they’re all in the Vault,” the man croaked.
She dragged him into the hallway by his neck. “Show me!”
The man pointed down the hallway.
“Walk,” she snarled into his ear.
They started down the hallway, walking in step, her hand still locked around his windpipe from the side. One squeeze. That’s all it would take. One delicious, satisfying squeeze.
They hurried through the house, passing doors and hallways, to the back, behind the kitchen where a solid wall bisected the building in half. A metal door with a numerical lock waited in the center.
She hurled him at it. “Open it.”
His shoulder struck the wall. He yelped and turned to Augustine, his eyes shivering with desperation. “If I open it, will you let me go?”
She hissed at him.
Augustine’s hand gently rested on her shoulder. “Priorities. Kitty is all that matters. He can open the door.”
The human part of her, the calmer rational part that realized when she was three years old that she was not a panther but a person, slid into the driver’s seat.
“Fine. I give my word.”
The man keyed a code into the lock with trembling fingers. Metal clanged, something whirred, and the door slid aside.
Augustine pointed his gun at the man. “Run.”
The man turned and sprinted through the house, his feet thudding on the floor. He would not be back. She had seen enough people in blind panic, and that man was running for his life.
She dove through the hole where the door used to be. A warehouse spread before her—concrete floor, concrete walls, shelves filled with lumber and metal, and directly in front of them, a hundred feet away, another doorway filled with electric light.
She almost sprinted to it, but Augustine caught her hand in his. The sudden warmth of his touch was like a burn to her overclocked senses.
“Together,” he said, and it sounded like a plea.
She forced herself to slow to his pace. They ran across the warehouse to the door. He paused before it, checking, his gun raised, and stepped through. She followed.
A rectangular room, a hundred and fifty feet long and three hundred feet wide. Kennels lining the walls. A yellow line painted three feet from the bars with the word SAFE stenciled on the outside of it. And eyes, looking at her from the cages with silent desperation.
A kaleidoscope of scents swirled around her: bear, tiger, fox… So many, so many sparks of life reaching out for connection, some strong, some fading, all terrified. Her magic splayed out, and she felt them all at once. If they had voices that could speak, they would be screaming, “Free us!”
She was lost. Overwhelmed by the intensity of it all.
By the suffering, by the hopelessness. They didn’t comprehend, they only knew they were trapped and they were scared, but the human part of her understood what they could not—why they were here, what would happen to them, and how much it would hurt.