Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) (17 page)

“Braden,” she cried out. Why had he left her? If he had been here none of this would have been happening. They would all be sorry once Braden found out what had happened to her, but by then it would be too late for her.

She felt something vital inside of her begin to rend and pain seared her like a hot poker, taking her breath away. She kicked out with her free leg but it did no good. They had her where they wanted her and they were going to eat her. Just as fear began to overwhelm her she heard some scuffling noises from the direction of the compound. Were the humans going to try and come to help her? They would be slaughtered if the wolves got a hold of them.

She looked up through a haze of pain, recognizing that the wolf at her leg was eating something, but refusing to make the connection that it was her leg. She looked past the creatures and the others who were about to pounce on her midsection once it was busted open like a piñata by the two thugs holding her down. Her eyes widened and if she had felt fear before, it was now terror.

She smelled him more than saw him. It was Saul. He was running away from the compound, away from the safety of the lights, and towards her. No! Saul was the last person she wanted to risk his neck for her, not after all he’d already done.

“Get back!” she screamed as she flipped her leg over, catching the wolf at her leg off guard and breaking his nose so badly that he had to drop her and clutch his face.

The wolf that had been pulling her arm while the other pulled at her leg to try and split her in two went flying back like a sling shot when the leg man released her. She landed on top of him and easily snapped his neck like a twig. Saul’s appearance suddenly gave her the control that she had been lacking.

“Here,” Saul shouted as he flung a gun in her direction. He began to blast a path clear to her and she picked the gun up where it had landed. She had to hop as she stood since… not much leg to speak of. She took aim and fired at a wolf that was making its way towards Saul.

Without her other leg, the blast knocked her to the ground. She cursed as she dropped the heavy gun to the packed dirt. She pulled more knives and counted out the steps of the routine she had set to the wonderful classic ‘Donkey Butt’ back in high school. Soon she was hitting her marks with deadly accuracy.

Her knives were as effective as Saul’s guns as he made his way to her and put his back up against hers. She leaned back on him grateful for the support. When there were only a few of them left the wolves began to hightail it back through the desert, comprehending suddenly that they would not be having her for a midnight snack after all. Someone stepped out of the shadows and both Saul and Miranda took aim. The man put his hands up in surrender.

“Please. Don’t shoot me. I simply bare a message for you.”

The man was deceptively slender and tall. The way he moved spoke of the strength that lay beneath his laid back exterior. He was not really noteworthy other than his height. He had a receding hair line and unnaturally bright brown eyes. His teeth were a stained shade of Yellow and his trench coat was black. His skin was yellowed as if he smoked and his skin looked sort of leathery. He looked like a man that might be sitting out front of a section eight block house having a drink after a long day’s work. 

“Who are you and what do you want?” Saul barked.

The man sniffed the air as if he smelled something tasty as he looked at Saul. “Human. Weakling. If I had it my way you would be nothing more than a tasty little morsel between my teeth at this very moment. But this ain’t my show. So. For now. We play this game. You let me sample your blood, I leave you both alone. We lick our wounds, and go on to fight another day.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” Saul demanded again.

The man tsked. “My sweet. You must focus. I am giving you the game rules. You let me sample your blood, nothing happens to you, to that compound full of humans back there. I am a day walker and I could stroll right past those stupid lights of yours.”

Miranda heard Saul suck in his breath behind her. “Take me. I’m what you’re here for right, to eat me so you can be stronger.”

The man rolled his eyes and looked at her. “You are still too human. You let your emotions rule you. I can tell you that I was only letting the wolves test you. No. We have other things planned for you that don’t involve dying… at least not right away.”

“What the hell do you want?” Saul demanded again.

The balding man in front of them suddenly became hideous to look at as his face and nothing else became like the creatures. He looked ready to come forward and rip Saul’s head off. She braced herself. Blood stopped dripping from her leg so suddenly that she had to look down quickly. Thank God it had begun to heal some without her having to focus on the healing. The loss of blood was making her weak. She looked back up ready to defend Saul with her dying breath.

The creature stopped and looked over his shoulder as if someone were speaking to him. He stood, straightened his coat, and almost instantly his face returned to normal. Watching his face change was like watching a ripple in a pond it was so smooth. He cleared his throat.

“I want a taste of your blood. I am not going to kill you, I just need to see-”

“No. He’ll turn into one of you if you bite him,” she snapped ending the stupid argument.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” was his off handed reply.

Saul’s eyes narrowed and he looked to be considering. “Saul. Come on. What are the chances you’d turn hunter? It is a trick. They are trying to bring you to their side. I need you to have my back right now,” she pleaded.

The man produced a little gadget from his pocket and tsked as he shook his head. “You should have taken my offer. Now, we are going to have to do things the hard way. Until we meet again. Happy trails.”

The man turned to begin walking away and Saul took aim. Just when he would have pulled the trigger the man depressed a button that appeared in his outstretched arm. The building behind them exploded with a deafening roar. They were both lifted off their feet as the shock wave rocked the desert. It took a moment for the ringing to clear from Miranda’s ears as she turned over on her back and looked up at the stars.

She felt something wet trickle form her ear and she reached up to see what it was. Her fingers came away sticky with blood. Her head had landed on a very jagged rock and she could nearly feel it dip inside her skull. If she hadn’t been in hunter mode she would be dead right now. Still. She was wounded. Bad. If she didn’t do something about it she was going to loose consciousness.

She took a moment to go inside herself. She healed the head injury first. After that she turned to other places. She was bleeding internally where the wolves had begun to tear her. She took a deep breath and focused. She entered her muscle tissue and forced the muscles in her abs to reconnect with each other and her diaphragm to fall back into place. While she journeyed inside her womb something caught her attention. Something faint, small, tiny… foreign. What was it? What was it doing in there? She didn’t know what it was but she knew that it didn’t belong there… only it did.

Was it part of what made her a hunter? Was it some of the poison left over from when the wolf had bitten her and infected her blood stream? No. It didn’t feel evil. It didn’t smell dead or diseased. Just as she was about to pin down the intruder, she felt herself being drawn back out and into the darkness. She was still on her back.

The wolves were gone and she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. It took a moment for her to clear her head some. She took a few deep breathes and the thick smoke rolled over her making her cough some. She heard someone else coughing off to her left and she began to crawl that way, using her arms as her useless legs drug behind her. She reached Saul who was sitting up looking at the blaze with a stunned expression.

“How… our sensors had to go off if they approached the building,” he said slightly dazed.

“Did you see the way that guy’s face changed? What if he made himself look like someone that works for you?”

He shook his head and took a deep breath. He coughed again as he did so. “They would still have the scent, the DNA of a creature. Plus, an assistant mentor would never… I mean we are trained not to…”

“Well the evidence says they accomplished it some way. Plus. If they stole an assistant mentor’s identity, the assistant mentor probably didn’t let them take it voluntarily,” she said as she placed a hand on his shoulder. She did her best to console him but it looked as if his whole world had just been shaken to its core.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

There had been lots of people in that building, people who were probably like family to him. It seemed that he had been working for the agency a long time. It was ironic that he hadn’t experienced the pain, the total loss of a life, of those he helped until just now.

“My cousin Hector-” He started and stopped. Tears filled his eyes. She gave him a little time as she watched the blaze. It seemed like it had been a half an hour when she finally spoke up.

“Saul. We have to call someone.”

He shook his head. “Dios Mio. My cousin… my friends… Sabrina… Sabrina.”

He was crying, his shoulders shaking. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. He didn’t hug her back, just sort of let his arms hang at his sides while he cried with his head down. She released him and pulled herself into a sitting position beside him after a while. She looked him in the face. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“We have to call someone,” she said again softly, her heart broken for him. Why had they done this and how?

Wiping his face he finally stood up and pulled out his cell. He dialed a number. He made a face as he hung up without having an answer. He began to pace as he dialed another number and again looked confused as he disconnected. He dialed two more numbers with similar results. Finally he connected with someone.

“Ira. I tried to reach the British home office but-”

He stopped his pacing as he listened to what was being said in loud tones on the other line. “All of them?”

“What?” Miranda asked.

“Are you sure? How?” It sounded like the man on the other end of the line began to curse as Saul held the phone away from his ear. “I can’t do anything to help you. The base here is gone… everyone’s gone. I’ll be in touch.”

Saul hung up the phone and the look of sheer devastation outdid the lost expression he’d worn before. He closed his eyes and shook his head, then to her amazement he opened them again with a look of determination the likes of which she had never seen before. He looked more like an army general than the easy laid back Saul of a few hours before.

“What happened?” she asked.

He bent down and scooped her up into his arms as he began moving towards the ruined building. “It’s a good thing you were so wild and went after them when you did. If you had not come out here I would not have come after you and I would be dead,” he said in an odd detached way.

“Saul. Please tell me what’s happening?”

He handed her his phone. “Get online and check the news clips.”

She opened the phone as he skirted around the blaze to the parking lot. There were sirens moving swiftly towards the blaze. She hit the application on the touch screen that would allow her to watch the news and almost instantly scenes of various explosions around the world came into view. She listened in horror as the news caster spoke of massive destruction.

“Again, the reports coming in from several major cities around the globe confirm that at least eight major military test facilities have been rocked by explosions, killing, at last count, at least two hundred military personnel. Wait… this just in, there has been another military test sight hit by an explosion right here on U.S. soil. We will keep this news feed live as we continue to receive updates on today’s tragic events. We return to Sue Walton who is near the sight in India, where attempts are still under way to try and control the blaze and rescue personnel trapped within the building.”

The screen flashed to a scene similar to the one they faced, only in the daylight. Miranda noticed that there were no victims being hauled from the building. There were no witnesses standing around watching the building burn. All the facilities had been isolated in the middle of nowhere and there was no hope that anyone could have survived the blasts. Two hundred people…

They finally came to a car that looked to still be in tact. Most of the others had been blown every which way, tires popping, wind shields shattered, or locked without hope of entry. This one was a grey Saturn that looked like it had time warped straight out of nineteen ninety one. The door was open and Saul dumped her in the passenger seat.

“Listen to me okay. I am going to have to be in charge of this mess until I can figure out how many other Assistant Mentors there are left and if the day walkers hit our IT building. If the website is still up I can curb a lot of panic right up front, if not I am going to have to start a chain of phone calls to the other hunters. The story is we were on our way to work and we pulled up just as the building exploded. Nothing more, nothing less. If anyone tries to press you for more, show them this,” he handed her an official looking card from his wallet.

“What is this?”

“It’s a clearance card. You are authorized a certain military level that prevents officials from being able to press you for more information. You would have received yours with your information pack when you completed your training. For now, stay in the car. This will have to be our post until Braden retrieves you, can you understand?”