The thunderous boom of an explosion rocked through the hallway, and I clapped my hands to my ears in an effort to prevent my eardrums from bursting again. I’d learned the hard way how long it took to regrow fully functioning eardrums and was in no hurry to repeat the process.
“Sounds like that fire has spread,” Finn commented, rather unnecessarily.
“No shit,” I remarked, rolling my eyes and continuing in the direction we’d been heading already. Our infiltration of the top-secret military base was nowhere even close to subtle, and none of us really gave two shits. These humans with their guns and grenades were no match for us.
As if they’d heard my thoughts, a fresh wave of camo-clad soldiers came rushing around the next corner and opened fire on us with their fully automatic machine guns. Their bullets dropped uselessly to the ground as I threw up a shield of magic that essentially sucked the energy from them and halted their flight as surely as if someone had just pressed pause.
River wasted no time, leaping forward to lay waste to these men who were doing nothing more than their damn jobs. That frustrating piece of my humanity which clung to my mind was sickened by the death and destruction we were inflicting on the world, but darkness consumed the lion’s share of my consciousness… and the darkness wanted blood.
“Shit, he’s effective,” Finn murmured as we stood back and let River tear those poor men limb from limb until there was nothing left but a bloody pile of meat. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Arching a brow at him as I picked my way past the remains of our latest challengers, I snorted. “I’d hope that message was already pretty clear in your mind.”
“No shit,” he said, repeating my sentiments from moments ago, and stepped up to force open the next cell door we reached.
Inside, a young girl sat on the edge of her cot, wrists bound in iron cuffs which linked to the wall on chains too short to be humane. She had nowhere near enough length to stand up, and if she lay down, it would be with her wrists in the air. Yet another reminder of why I shouldn’t feel guilt for all the deaths we’d brought to this establishment.
“Reminds you a bit of Blood Moon, no?” Finn remarked, and I grunted my agreement. It reminded me far too much of Blood Moon Labs, where a mad scientist had been working on creating her own supernaturals under the guise of fixing the world.
“Alright, kid, do you speak English?” I crouched in front of the girl and broke her cuffs off with a droplet of blood magic and a touch of super-strength. She gave me a terrified nod, not meeting my eyes and letting her hair cover her face.
I let out a long sigh, not in the mood for another crier. “Okay, here’s how it is. You’re here either because you were one of Doctor Florsheim’s experiments or you’re a natural born supernatural who had the misfortune of getting caught. Which is it? Answer quickly; I don’t have time for fucking around.”
“N-natural,” she whimpered, flinching when I moved my hand to sweep my hair behind my shoulder. “Ursoc.”
“Ursoc?” I repeated, frowning in confusion. “Never mind.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m giving you a choice here, kid. A war is coming, and I need people to fight with me. You’re either in and you can leave here free today, or you’re out and I kill you. What’s it to be?”
This made the girl look up at me in shock, and my heart clenched. She was no more than eleven or twelve, poor kid.
“I can leave?” she repeated, and I gave a curt nod.
“I don’t need you tagging along. When I require your services, you’ll know.”
Her brow arched in a sassy sort of way that I had to respect. “What’s to stop me from leaving and ignoring your war?”
I gave her a tight smile. “Magic, hon. If you agree, you’ll be bound to obey my call. What’s it to be? Quickly now, I came here with a mission and didn’t anticipate all of you captives along the way.”
The girl pursed her lips, giving me a look that betrayed far more confidence than her trembling frame had first suggested. “That depends. Are you the good guys or the bad ones?”
I had to admire her moxie. “The good ones. Or… as good as it gets in this war.”
“Prove it,” she insisted. “Free my brother first; he’s in the cell next door.”
“We don’t really have time for games,” Finn snapped from behind me, but something about this kid had me curious.
Turning to give Finn a black-eyed glare, I nodded to the door. “Get the boy; bring him in here.”
The demon hesitated only a moment before grudgingly doing as I commanded. He lacked a little finesse, kicking down the steel-reinforced door and then tearing the kids chains from the wall—all of which we could hear, but within moments he returned hauling a boy by the scruff of his neck.
“Well?” I turned back to the girl, and she gave me a hasty nod.
“We’re in,” she replied, giving her brother a look that clearly said, “Keep your mouth shut and trust me.”
I allowed my lips to curve up in a small smile but didn’t bother second-guessing her decision. It was really somewhat preferable to let them live rather than have to kill two innocent-looking kids. Not to say they were innocent, but it was hard not to see a little of myself in this girl.
“Good choice, kid.” Using the ballpoint pen from my pocket, I inked a rune on each of their wrists and watched as it lit up and disappeared. They were bound now as my soldiers in the upcoming war with my bitch of a mother. So help them. “Now get out of here; I have a scientist to hunt and kill.”
“You’re going after Doctor Florsheim?” the boy asked, speaking for the first time in a voice husky from disuse—or screaming. I gave him a tight nod, and his jaw clenched. “I’ll show you the way. He’ll be holed up in his panic room.”
I raised my brows and glanced over to Finn and River. “The good doctor has a panic room,” I commented with a sarcastic tilt to my lips. It was a little amusing that he was smart enough to be afraid of his own work.
“Yeah, he uses it every time one of his experimental soldiers goes wrong. He’s totally convinced they’ll turn on him if they get to him.” The young girl snickered a laugh, giving me an appraising look. “Then again, you three don’t look much like soldiers, so I guess he was wrong.”
“We’re not,” Finn replied in a curt tone, and River’s lips pulled back from his rows of razor-sharp teeth in what could have been either a snarl or a smile.
“Just show us the way, kid, then get the hell out of here,” I suggested, and the two youngsters nodded their agreement.
Crooking a finger at the boy, I beckoned him closer so I could remove his chains before we left the cell. Not that I really cared for stealth—given the path of destruction we had carved through the military base to get this far—but I didn’t need him slowing us down.
The kids set a brisk pace, leading us down the hallway before I called out to them.
“Wait,” I ordered, pausing and glancing at the locked cell doors we were passing. “Do you know who is in any of these?”
“No one, right now,” the boy replied with a shrug. “Seems Doctor Florsheim has been having a harder time catching us supers unawares lately.”
I nodded. It made sense, with all the movement in the magical communities, that supernaturals were getting smarter as well as bolder. Good for them, I guess. “Just tell me if we come across any cells that you know are inhabited. I intend to burn this place to the ground when we are done here, and there is no sense in losing valuable fighters if there are any willing to join my cause.”
“Wow.” The girl muttered under her breath but not quiet enough for me to miss it. “Talk about cold-hearted. You know she would have killed us both?”
Her brother gave her a wide-eyed stare and glanced back at me in fear. I did nothing to try and reassure them. Why should I? She was right; I would have killed them both had they not agreed to my spell. The time for compassion had long since passed.
Thankfully, no more words passed between them as they continued at a jog down the corridor. Stupid kids that they were, they didn’t even hesitate a second before charging around the corner and straight into the sights of a team of juiced-up soldiers waiting for us.
Rolling my eyes, I froze the first barrage of bullets which came flying at us, stopping them just inches short of my newest recruits.
“Mine,” Finn declared, darting past the terror-stricken kids and tearing into the soldiers hand-to-hand. These ones were most certainly part of one of the experiments, as they fought back against the demon with considerably more strength than the previous human ones had managed.
“River, he might need your help,” I murmured to the salivating hellhound as he licked over his rows on rows of fangs.
“We got this,” one of our young companions said. I wasn’t sure which, as they were both halfway shifted into six-foot grizzly bears at the time of speech.
Stroking my hand carefully down the needle-sharp fur of River’s back, I watched curiously as the two bear-kids waded into the fight to assist Finn. They used a mixture of magic and brute strength, and within moments, it was all over.
“Bears, huh? That’s what an Ursoc is?” I asked, watching as the kids shrank back to their human forms then used scraps of torn camo fabric to wipe blood from their faces.
“No,” the girl replied. “I’m Ursoc, he’s Ursol. Far as I know, we’re the last of our kind, and, no, not technically bears. We’re a druid-bear combo. Very old magic and not really known about these days.”
The boy—Ursol—snorted. “Except by that guy who made us into characters from World of Warcraft.”
“As if you didn’t love that,” Ursoc snickered, punching her brother in the arm. “Come on, it’s this way.” She smiled brightly to me, an expression only slightly marred by the blood staining her lips.
Starting to feel pretty glad these two accepted my offer to live. They’ll be useful additions when we come up against Bridget.
Finn, River, and I followed them through the slippery mess that was the military’s latest attempt to stop us and paused outside a cell door.
“You’ll want this one,” Ursol advised me in his husky voice, and I nodded to Finn to get the door open. No sense wasting magic when I had a super-strong demon at my beck and call.
The inhabitant of that cell took less convincing, thanks to the kids—who I now realized were twins—reassuring him. Same with the next seven cells they had us stop to open. None of my new recruits chose to hang around any longer than necessary—especially when I warned them I’d be razing the compound when I was done. But a small part of me was grateful we didn’t need to kill any more of the doctor’s captives. It wasn’t their fault they were in there, and my ire was reserved solely for those who weren’t chained up.
I wasn’t altogether sure how long it took us, but eventually the bear-twins reached a solid-looking door at the end of a hallway. Beside the latch there was a high-tech keypad and retinal scanner that made my black heart seize. If Lucy were still here, she’d have it open in seconds… but she wasn’t, and as much as I missed her, I didn’t need her for this task. I had more than enough brute magical strength behind me that no man-made technology could stand in my way.
“This is the panic room?” Finn asked Ursol, and the kid nodded.
“It’s got fingerprint scanners on each key as well as the retinal scanner, and that door is a foot and a half of thick steel,” he elaborated. “I’m pretty good with tech, and he got me to help on some of the coding and shit. I can probably get you in there, but it’ll take an hour or so.”
I gave him a grim smile that was meant to be reassuring but probably just looked psychotic. “Don’t worry about it; I have this one handled. You two should take off now, though. You won’t want to see what happens next.”
The twins hesitated, but something in my black-eyed stare must have convinced them. Seconds later they took off at a run, bare feet slapping against the linoleum floor.
“We have this handled?” Finn murmured, repeating my words. “Not sure about you, scary canary, but even a Prince of Hell can’t break through a door that thick.”
Raising a brow at him, I latched onto what he’d just said. “Prince of Hell, huh? You telling me there is a crown hanging in your bedroom somewhere?”
Finn gave me a half smile back. “No, that would be my big brother. That fucker gets born two whole minutes before me and becomes a Prince, along with getting all the magic associated with the rank. I am not much more than a high-ranking nobleman, I’m afraid.”
I shrugged. “No matter, I have this one handled myself. You might want to step back a bit, though.”
Not waiting to see if he followed my advice or not, I got to work. Shifting just one deadly sharp dragon claw, I sliced a deep gash across the tips of three fingers and used the blood to paint a series of runes onto the blank white wall beside the panic room door. Thanks to my healing, I needed to reopen the cuts five more times before I was finished and could step back to admire my own handy work.
“Why not on the door?” Finn asked from behind me.
“Because doors tend to be more heavily reinforced than the walls on either side,” I replied, pushing him back a couple more steps before delivering the single word in the mage dialect that would activate my spell.
Hardened from all the violence and destruction we’d rained down on our enemies in the past few weeks, neither River nor I flinched as the rune-marked wall exploded like it had been packed full of C-4.
Dimly, I heard yet another siren start up. They’d been going off since the moment we breached the compound and I’d been tuning them out pretty effectively so far.
“See?” I pointed out to Finn as I stepped forward and into the opening my explosive spell had created. “Foot and a half thick steel door, and only steel-reinforced plasterboard walls. Probably some twat in a bureaucratic office was looking to save some dollars; it happens more often than you’d think.”
Finn murmured something under his breath that I didn’t catch, but followed River and I into the room, where we paused and assessed the contents.
“Don’t come any closer!” a pale-faced, bespectacled man screamed as he cowered in the far corner, clutching a 9mm between sweaty-looking hands and pointing the muzzle at us. “I’ll shoot if you come closer!”
For what felt like the first time in a long time, a genuine grin split my lips as I stepped closer. “Take your best shot, Doctor Florsheim. I dare you.”
