White Winter (The Black Year Series Book 2) (35 page)

“Charlie copies.”

Jonas’ team looked at each other. Jim shook his head and chuckled.

“Let’s get moving,” Frank said, waving toward the windows on the right side of the courtyard.

Jonas stood to the side as Billy broke the glass with the butt of his carbine, then reached in and unfastened the latch. Billy opened the window and started to climb through.

Bam!

The top of the window shattered and Billy fell on his back, clutching his chest and covering his face as broken glass rained on him. Kieran ran toward the window.

“Kieran, no!” Jonas shouted. Kieran skidded in the snow. “Frag out!” Jonas said, pulling the pin on a grenade and throwing it through the opening. There were shouts from inside.

“Billy, you all right?” Jim said, dragging him to the side by the harness.

“Go fuck yourself,” Billy said, then groaned. His armor must have stopped the shotgun blast, give or take some cuts and bruising.

Whump!
The grenade went off.

Jonas looked at Kieran and nodded. “Go!”

Kieran squeezed through the window. Jonas climbed in after him, hoping the others would follow. The room was about the size of his old living room, in the Upper East Side. Two rows of desks and computers had been knocked over by the blast. Three people were dead. One werewolf looked like Kieran had worked him over, black blood still congealing around several deep gashes in his massive frame. A body near the door was missing an arm and leg below the knee.
Guess he tried to throw it back,
Jonas thought. He heard screams and gunfire. He ran to the next room.

A sharp
snap
over his shoulder and a puff of plaster dust told him he’d just been missed. He hit the ground and crawled back the way he’d come. Carlyle and Thompson grabbed his harness by the shoulders and pulled him into the room just as more rounds punched through the plaster walls and cheap, pine doors.

“Rook, this is Bravo we’re-” Frank hit the ground as several deep booms sounded and fist sized holes appeared in the west wall. “Shit! We’re within reach of the objective but are pinned down, unknown number of hostiles.”

“I thought it was tangos!” Jonas said, firing into the hallway.

“Damien said hostiles!” Billy answered, pulling the pin on a grenade. The spoon flew off with a
ping.
“And Frank has a huge man-crush on him!”

“I do not!” Frank shouted.

Billy grinned and popped the grenade through one of the holes in the wall. “Frag out!”

Everyone got down.

Whump!
Dust rained from the ceiling.

“Rook to Bravo, how bad is it?” Grady said.

“I’m in the prone! how bad do you think it is?” Frank answered.

“Black Queen moving in support. Stay alive,” Alice said.

Three werewolves burst into the room.

Frank rolled onto his side and unloaded his pistol into the first one. The .45-caliber alloyed rounds knocked the werewolf into the wall and turned its face to hamburger.

Thompson was halfway up and managed to get two shotgun blasts in before the second beast took him down, scratching and biting. He tried to fight it off. It bit his arm. “You son of a bitch!” Thompson shouted.

Then Billy was on the werewolf’s back, yelling and stabbing as all three of them fell in a heap.

The third creature, a towering black and gray female, bowled Jonas over and knocked Jim into Carlyle. Jonas raised his carbine; she grabbed it and ripped it upward, dragging him up to his tiptoes, face to face. She opened her jaws wide; Jonas let go of the carbine, snapped the fingers of both hands, and channeled heat into her face like he was dual-wielding aerosol-can flamethrowers.

The werewolf screamed and dropped him as her head caught fire. Frank, Jim, and Carlyle put round after round into her, then Alice knocked her way through the wall and cut the werewolf from shoulder to hip with one cut of her sword. Blood geysered. Anima ran along the blade, and her shield brightened.

She twitched her head to the right, then said, “Chief, feed me the directions you were giving Bravo on my private channel.” Jonas could barely make out her eyes behind her visor.

“Round count!” Frank snapped.

“Three mags!” Jim and Billy said.

“I’ve got five,” Jonas answered.

“I’m out!” Carlyle

“Twelve shells left,” Thompson answered. He looked at his bloody left forearm. “Fuck!”

Frank gave his carbine and two magazines to Thompson, then tossed two magazines to Carlyle. “Jonas, give a mag to Jim and Billy each,” he said.

Jonas dug at his pouches to pull them out.

Billy passed two pistol magazines to Frank, since they had the same sidearm.

The building had gotten quiet.

“Follow me and stay close,” Alice said. She held her sword two-handed, one on the grip and one on the blade, and jogged down the hallway. Jonas followed. The others fell in behind them.

There were bodies all over the hallway - humans, werewolves in wolf or human form, and scattered ash. At first, Jonas saw bullet and shrapnel wounds. Farther in, claw marks, ragged bites, and dismemberment. They’d been put through plaster walls, knocked over desks… there were over a dozen. Kieran had gone on a rampage.

He ran to keep up with his mother, careful of his footing. Her armor clanked like steel pots banging together. She didn’t slow when an Order assault team came the opposite way, she sprinted straight at them. Their point man shot his pistol at her around his metal police shield. The bullets sparked off her ward in flashes of gold and she closed the distance.

Her armored boot crashed into the shield. It dipped. She smashed the pommel of her sword into his face, cracking his eye socket. He fell to the side, and she used the short grip to drag the blade across his throat.

She moved both her hands to the hilt and brought the sword arcing down into the next man’s shoulder, cutting through his clavicle and several ribs. He fell, dead. She stepped forward, levering the three-foot-long sword free as a human emptied an AK-47 clip into her. Her shield faded but didn’t fail. He was reloading when she snapped the sword upward, cutting his leg off mid-thigh. He dropped. She stomped on his throat, then lunged, one handed, and stabbed the last member of the team through the face. She grabbed the blade with her free hand and yanked it free, letting him fall, and his fleeing life force recharged her shield. Then she was moving again. She’d hardly slowed.

They rounded the corner, and the hallway opened into a three-way intersection. Two vampires ran in from the passage on the left. Alice popped the sword up to her right shoulder then snapped it across horizontally. In a panic, one vampire actually shifted
toward
the blade. It cut through his head at eye level without slowing, turning him to ash, and jammed in the side of the second vampire’s face.

The vampire screamed. It was high-pitched, frantic, and wet sounding. Alice let go of the hilt, grabbed the blade with both hands, and twisted her body, throwing the vampire across the room. The vampire tripped over a body, fell, and raised her hands as Alice brought the sword down like a sledgehammer and the cross guard went through the top of the vampire’s head. She burned up. Alice flipped the blade in her hands and held it by the hilt again.

“Jesus, mom…” Jonas said.

Her head snapped toward him. “Jonas Black! I did
not
raise you to-”

A grenade rolled to her feet and exploded. It tossed her against the wall. Her sword clattered on the floor between them. Jonas felt burning metal slice through his cheek and rip through his leg. He dropped to a knee.

Alice pushed herself to her hands and knees, then straightened. A round skimmed off her shield, then the golden lines flashed and popped like a soap bubble.
Pop. Pang.
Two holes appeared in her left spaulder, and she rocked back against the wall. She shifted away; rounds slammed into the wall where she’d been.

“Sword!” she shouted at Jonas. He blinked, his head ringing, and picked it up the ground in front of him. It was surprisingly light - lighter than his carbine. He tossed it like a javelin, hilt first, and she caught it mid-spin before charging down the opposite hallway, blood running down her arm.

Jim stood him up and leaned him against the wall. Pain shot up Jonas’ leg.

“You okay, kid?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” Jonas said, holding his thigh. The blood was already burning up, cauterizing the wound, but it wasn’t bearing weight well.

Carlyle put a few rounds down the left corridor and Thompson dashed across, taking cover in the hallway Alice had run down. Order troopers fired back, punching holes in the far wall and filling the air with plaster dust.

Billy joined Thompson on the other side, popped out and shot. “I see Kieran!” he said, ducking back.

“Where?” Jonas said.

“Other side of this wall!” Billy said pointing.

Jonas peeked out, saw Kieran’s unconscious body, and ducked back.

Rounds hit the corner where Jonas’ head had just been.

“Sorry, kid!” Billy said.

“He’s fine!” Jonas answered.

“Jonas, there’s no way he’s getting up from that!”

Jonas unpinned his last grenade and threw it overhand. “Frag out!” He shifted to Kieran’s side in two quick bounds. His boots crunched on broken glass.

Whump!

Kieran was back in human form and unconscious. He had his back to the wall, his legs and the right side of his body pinned by three dead werewolves. His face was hard to look at; the whole left side of his body was badly burned, showing bone in places, and his left eye socket was an empty, charred mess. The walls were blackened, and the air stank of burned meat and gasoline.

“Get back here, kid!” Frank said.

“Just a second!” Jonas said, pulling the first body loose.

“We have incoming!” Frank shouted.

Jonas poked his head out and a round creased his neck. “Gah!” Another assault team was heading down the hallway. It was bigger, with two shield carriers in front and a dozen gunmen behind them advancing down the wider passage.

“Pin them down, Mr. Mitchell,” Alice said on the radio.

Bravo team opened fire. Jonas put his carbine on burst and fired it around the corner. “Frag out!” Two grenades went sailing past him. The shield carriers planted their shields on the ground and ducked behind them. The Order troops hit the ground, and Jonas ducked back out of the way.

Wha-whump!

Jonas changed magazines, sent the bolt home, and put the empty mag in his drop pouch.

The Order team was firing and yelling. Jonas looked. His mother had closed with them from a side passage. She hacked, shoved, and stabbed the ones shooting at Bravo team. When the shield carriers turned to face her, Jim and Billy put them down with aimed shots. Jonas got the last body off Kieran.

“Let’s go, kid,” Frank said.

“I’m not leaving him.”

“He isn’t breathing and he’s too heaving to carry.”

“Kieran, get up!” Jonas said.

Red lines circled Kieran’s chest like a coil of barbed wire and squeezed. Kieran inhaled and jerked to his feet like a puppet, his empty socket glowing red. “Yes, clan leader.”

Oath magic is the stuff of creation,
Jonas thought.

“Wow, that is creepy,” Frank said.

Kieran gave him a wounded look. Jonas thought it was a wounded look. It was hard to tell without eyebrows. Or skin. He tried to take a step and almost fell. Jonas ducked under Kieran’s arm and helped him walk.

“Are you okay?” Jonas asked.

“Not really,” Kieran said. His voice had a hollow, raspy sound to it. “Too many of them.”

“Try not to get so far ahead next time, big guy,” Jim said, patting Kieran’s shoulder as he moved past. They found Alice at the next intersection. She stabbed downward, finishing the last Order soldier.

“We’re almost there,” she said, and started walking. She sounded winded.

Jonas’ radio crackled. “Helsing, this is Viper flight. Weather’s starting to be a problem.”

“Viper, are you still able to fly?”

“Flying’s not a problem yet, sir, but we can’t shoot what we can’t see.”

“That won’t be a problem, Viper,” Edwards said.

They reached the room with the ward. The locked room. Unlike the office spaces they’d just fought through, this one was behind brick walls and a blue-painted, steel door.

Frank holstered his pistol. “Jim, get the lock. Billy, Carlyle, watch the hallways. We’ll have a few minutes while they figure out their assault team failed. Thompson, get some gauze on that arm.”

Jonas set Kieran down with his back against the wall. Now that he had time to take a closer look, Jonas wasn’t sure how Kieran was talking, or even thinking in words. His eye wasn’t just missing; someone had shot him at point-blank. Hair-thin, red lightning crackled between floating fragments of bone where his left arm should have been severed.

Alice sat opposite them. She flipped her visor up and removed her faceplate, setting it on top of her sword, beside her. “Rook, this is Black Queen. Report.”