Fallen (18 page)

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Although, I
have been a mouse. So, I suppose sizing up shouldn’t be any more
difficult to perform.”

Another quake shook the room, sending the
crystal chandeliers above rocking back and forth. I took hold of
the power while gazing steadfastly at the huge bear, contemplating
its form and willing myself to become a living version. The
tingling gooseflesh sensation I had always felt turned now to a
dull ache in the pit of my stomach. Still, despite the increased
difficulty, I kept pushing for the transformation.

The high stained glass windows around the
dining hall imploded. Each gave way to a Breed warrior on his way
through. Beside me, Charlotte shot into the air, taking the form of
a large raven. I had not realized that she possessed the ability to
transform into animals.

I concentrated even more on my own
transformation as the sounds of battle erupted in the room.
Charlotte soared high toward the distant ceiling, coming down again
upon one of the emerging vampires in her human form with long
fighting knives drawn. She dropped upon his back like a rider in
the saddle, lopping off his head with one stroke of her left
knife.

Meanwhile, other Breed warriors were en
route to me where I stood rigid, staring at Oliver’s prize trophy
in the room. I could suddenly feel their heat, sense the movement
of air at their approach, and hear their nearly silent steps and
the fevered grinding of teeth bared to drain the blood from my
veins.

With the sudden voracity of a dam breaking
forth, the form of the great Kodiak bear burst out of me. I roared
wildly as the sensation overtook me. Turning on my pursuers, I
found several leaping back from their attack with surprised faces.
Another I slapped away with a giant paw, streaking his face and
chest with jagged claw marks.

Breed warriors came back into the fight with
the bear, hammering me, knocking me back with strength I hadn’t
realized they possessed. Still, I fought against them, killing
several. Others remained elusive, too quick for my heavy movements.
Charlotte flew back into the fray in her raven form, becoming human
again with blades slicing through her opponents.

Realizing they were matched against more
than they had assumed, the vampires began to use their own swords
and weapons as well. Charlotte fended off some, retreated, drove
back into them and evaded again. Strike and run was clearly her
strategy, and after surviving for all of sixty seconds I couldn’t
blame her.

Vampires leaped at me. I batted them away,
wounding some, angering others. Swords were leveled on me, and I
knew that I wouldn’t survive long in this guise. The first stab
came at my back. I whirled upon my attacker, throwing him off. More
moved in from the other side.

Charlotte was too busy being chased all over
the room to come to my aid. I considered other forms, though I was
unsure if I could pull off the transformation so quickly with these
vampires trying to kill me. A fly was small but too fragile, a bird
the same. The bear had size, but wasn’t as quick. A lion or other
great cat wasn’t powerful enough against swords and this many well
trained killers. My hope was failing. My prayers were unspoken but
many. Our ship appeared to be sinking fast and Charlotte and I had
no way of escape left to us.

Then the billowing fire within the stone
hearth changed color to blue then purple then green as a portal
opened up within. Large creatures that I assumed must be wolves
came leaping into the room from the fire. More than a dozen sprang
into the battle from the portal, taking on the vampires as quickly
as they found them.

My earlier speculation, though, had been
incorrect. These wolves were standing on their hind legs, having
sinewy muscles like a human, dark skin and the heads of wolves. All
over they were covered with varying amounts and shades of fur.
Werewolves had come to our aid, and I knew enough of the stories
told about them to know that they and vampires were mortal
enemies.

I gained hope again as the tide seemed to
turn somewhat. The vampires were forced to divide their efforts in
order to fight the werewolves. I retained my bear form, taking the
Kodiak on the rampage. Now, I was attacking, swiping with meaty
paws, knocking vampires aside as I tried to get to Charlotte.

Oliver walked through the flames then,
carrying his wolf’s head cane before him like a baton. A vampire
leaped toward him, choosing a human target over the others in the
room. Oliver swung the cane toward him, sending a lightning bolt
from the wolf’s head into his enemy. The Breed warrior’s chest
became a smoking crater the size of my head. He didn’t get up.

“Oliver!” I shouted.

He considered me a half second before
realizing that the bear was actually the boy he had left with
Charlotte.

“Behind you!” he shouted back.

I turned, warning off an approaching vampire
with a sword in his hand. After swiping several times at him, he
moved away. Charlotte beheaded him on a near pass while he wasn’t
looking. Surveying the scene now, the odds seemed a great deal more
in our favor. But I couldn’t help wondering why Mr. Black himself
had not come to this party.

“Shall I go in, my lord?” Sinister
asked.

Black stood upon the factory roof, watching
the large manor house where Breed warriors had moments ago charged
through the windows into battle. Now that the building’s magical
wards had been dissolved, the house appeared as it was rather than
as the condemned tenement it had worn as a disguise. Though
disproportionate in many ways, the house was elegant in its design.
However, it was clearly not human in origin as expressed by its odd
angles and weird embellishments. Part of the upper floor was also
on fire which gave Black an idea.

“No,” he said finally. “That won’t be
necessary.”

Black raised his hands toward the house.
Flames leaped up from the wood. Almost instantly, the entire
structure became an inferno.

Sinister stepped forward then felt the press
of his master’s power upon him, halting his advance. “The Breed, my
lord,” he said urgently. “My brothers are—”

“Expendable,” Black said.

Just as the fight began to turn in our
favor, flames erupted everywhere around us. The walls were burning
altogether in a moment. Fiery debris began to rain down upon all of
the combatants in the room. The warfare quickly dissolved as every
person sought a way of escape from the furnace we now found
ourselves in.

The vampires immediately withdrew to the
windows where they had entered the house, but they were repelled by
unseen barriers at every attempt at escape.

“To me!” Oliver called.

The remaining werewolves, as well as
Charlotte and me in human form again, immediately gathered to him.
He turned and led us all into the raging fire within the hearth
where multicolored flames licked at the stone but did us no harm.
One by one, we each took our turn passing through the portal.

I paused with Charlotte just on the house
side of it. We watched as her Breed kind stood together, having no
way of escape. They huddled together resolutely as the structure
collapsed, engulfing them in fire just as we passed through to
safety.

Black stood with his hands outstretched
toward the manor house, watching it collapse upon everyone inside.
Once the structure had begun to burn in earnest, a powerful
shockwave of his power was all that had been needed to send it
crashing down. The mountain of rubble burned even more fervently
than before.

Sinister stood behind his master, his eyes
wide with horror, contemplating the loss of his Breed warriors,
many of whom had been lifelong friends. He swallowed against the
gathering lump in his throat, staring at his master’s back with
hatred burning in his chest. For a brief moment, he considered the
repercussions of attacking the fallen angel before him.

Black straightened knowingly. “You might
consider it, but you’ll never do it,” he said menacingly. He turned
toward Sinister. “You belong to me.”

Sinister held his ground, but the press of
Black’s power upon him was becoming almost overwhelming. He knew
with certainty that he had no hope of defeating a fallen angel. It
was impossible. How could he fight the man when he wasn’t even
alive in the mortal sense?

“
Forgive
me, my lord,” Sinister said,
dropping his eyes.

“The word does not exist in my vocabulary,”
Black retorted. “However, you are a useful servant to me. I will
allow you to live on in that capacity for now.”

Sinister felt like biting his tongue, but
the words came anyway. “Thank you, my lord.”

Black grinned and then disappeared in
flame.

Alone upon the factory roof, Sinister
continued to watch the remains of the house burn. He felt
helpless—a feeling he had not truly experienced before. A half hour
later, his self loathing exhausted, he rose into the predawn sky on
raven’s wings.

Oliver’s portal through the fireplace,
within his once luxurious but now charred dining hall, had
delivered us into a land of darkness and fog, a realm inhabited by
werewolves. Seeing that the werewolves had fought with Oliver had
immediately set my mind at ease about them. After all, I was
beginning to get used to strange creatures, especially since I was
mostly convinced that I was somehow one of them.

However, as soon as the fiery portal closed
behind us, at least a dozen werewolves encircled Charlotte and me.
Her fighting knives remained out defensively, her eyes keen to the
threat around us. I naturally assumed that the problem must lie
with me.

“You did not mention the
vampire
,”
one of the larger werewolves said.

I could tell by the way he said
vampire
that he disapproved a great deal of the Breed.

“She’s with us,” Oliver said, moving between
two of the werewolves to join us within the circle. “Is there a
problem, gentlemen?”

Hearing Oliver call these huge hairy
creatures
gentlemen
almost made me want to laugh. However, I
was too busy at the moment trying to figure out what animal I might
transform into if this situation turned ugly. I was actually
favoring the Kodiak again when the werewolf leading the others
spoke again.

“She will not be allowed within our city,”
he said.

“Lycean, would disagree,” Oliver countered.
“Knowing that I have the ear of your king, Kron, I would suggest
dropping this ridiculous bigotry before I take issue with it. We’re
all on the same side here.”

Kron appeared to consider his position for a
moment before standing down. His face morphed into that of a
man’s—the wolf quickly reabsorbed. The others with him in the
circle did likewise. Their skin remained somewhat dark like people
who might live in Egypt, but the fangs and fur and claws no longer
appeared.

My attention darted between Oliver’s cool
collectedness, Charlotte stowing her knives away, and Kron’s
sneering as he dropped the matter and turned to lead us toward a
castle in the distance partially obscured by the omnipresent fog.
As we approached, flanked on either side by the werewolves, I
noticed that this gothic edifice before us was no mere castle. A
wall of immense size, stretching as far as I could see, was
attached to the great building. We were on our way into the city
Kron had referred to—a city that must be full of werewolves just
like these.

“Stay close to me,” Oliver said to us both.
“Lycean has been my friend for a long time, but he does not
tolerate the company of strangers easily.”

“He’s the king of the werewolves?”

The men around us all looked at me with
contempt, turning away slowly as though I was being dismissed as
some young idiot.

Lycans
, I heard in my thoughts. This
was Oliver’s voice speaking into my mind.

I turned to him. He gave me a knowing grin.
The voice continued.

Telepathy, Brody,
he said.
The
werewolves prefer to be called Lycans, and Lycean is their
king.

How are you doing that?
I asked.

You’re doing it now as well,
he
said.

Indeed, he was right. My thoughts were
transmitting to him. I could see it in his eyes. Charlotte remained
outside our exchange, though her coy expression indicated some
understanding of what we might be doing.

I was interested in continuing our unique
communication, but the wall loomed high before us. As we approached
a massive set of iron doors, they began to part. The grinding of
metal and wood testified to the great mechanisms working to allow
us into the city of the Lycans.

“Welcome to Wolf’s Bane,” Oliver said, as we
passed through.

Within the city, a great many people passed
here and there, giving us a cursory examination as they went on
their way. Many paid special attention to Charlotte, probably
because she was the most obvious threat. Our Lycan entourage barked
orders to those who took too much interest, and the way quickly
cleared so that we could enter the castle directly.

On our way in, more guards wearing their
werewolf forms stood to bar the way of interlopers. They let us
pass with the exchange of a password delivered in a series of
growls, clicks and barks that made no sense to me whatsoever.
Beyond the large wooden doors, the castle lit up inside.

Torches and lamps were found upon all of the
walls and laid out upon the tables. The light was ample but not
overdone. A Lycan warrior could still pounce upon you from the
shadows. Charlotte may have had the same idea. She gave these areas
of shadow special attention along our way. Cages bearing long
forgotten skeletal prisoners were the only thing missing from this
gothic horror show. It was exactly what I might have expected to
find in a town of werewolves.