The Beast Within (20 page)

Aaron stood shakily. He was no fan of Six Rivers, but that death… He suppressed a shudder. He turned to find Tony watching him, the smile gone from his face. He gathered his emotions and gave his partner a nod.

“Thank you. Nice work.”

Tony’s expression remained grim. Sometimes, even to an Acqxterm agent who dealt in death, the theory of a weapon was more pleasant than the reality.

The wolves in the treeline howled their rage, reminding Aaron it was not a victory, but merely a reprieve. As if to punctuate this thought, a column of flame erupted just in front of the trees. For a moment Aaron caught sight of a vast nothing in its center, then the dark form of Cerberus filled it. Aaron growled. Cerberus pivoted one head toward his cowering tribe, one toward Aaron and with a snort of utter disdain, turned the last on a spot directly in front of him. The energy field around Kapre began to waver.

“He’s pulling down the shield,” one agent shouted.

“Op-tech is working against any counter spells this demon might conjure,” Braven replied, her voice bounding off the energy surrounding them. “Stand your ground.”

But as the disruption grew, a burst of nervous gunfire lit the darkness.

“Hold your fire,” Braven barked.

Another agent pulled the gun from the hands of a shaky young man at his right. Probably his first real altercation. The man hung his head and Aaron felt pity for him.

“I’m sorry,” the agent said. “I’m…”

“Agent, remove yourself from the field, please,” Braven directed.

As the rest of the team watched the shamed agent head with bowed shoulders to the building, Tony approached the perimeter.

“Cerberus isn’t moving,” Aaron said.

“I guess bullets don’t matter enough to a hellhound to make him want to duck.”

“It’s not just that. He’s not moving, but he’s doing something.”

“What?”

“Look at the sigils from your periphery.” Aaron pointed at the Thurisaz marks closest to them. Their brilliance flickered slightly, like an LED string light. “You see that?”

Tony nodded.

“I think he’s siphoning off their power.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He turned to Tony. “What happened inside?”

“Braven was not in a mood to listen to anything. You really chapped her ass.”

“Me?” he snorted.

“Well, your alleged actions did, at any rate. Same thing at this point.”

“And Ellison?”

“Well…” Tony shrugged against his outraged glare. “His story didn’t make complete sense to her, but she wasn’t open to alternative theories just yet. She ordered him to stay inside.”

“Under lock and key?” The pieces began to fall together in his head. A thread of panic began to wind its way around his heart.

“No. Just inside.” Tony caught his expression. “Why? What do you think is going on?”

“That.” Aaron pointed once again. The light of the Thurisaz sigils funnelled away from their source, streamed toward Cerberus in glowing ribbons. Cerberus traced directions with all three of his heads. The streams wove together, knitting around and around, spiraling in front of the hound and stretching out toward Kapre. A quick flash of light showed the outline of a tunnel, then the air filled with the stench of hellfire. Cerberus inclined one giant head at the wolves hiding behind him. They leaped into the portal, their demon lord close on their heels. A moment later the gate collapsed, leaving only a pile of stinking, smoldering ash.

“Ellison’s opened a back door for them. The rest of the agents haven’t returned from investigating where we dumped the van, have they?”

Tony shook his head.

“Then there are no field agents inside except for happy trigger-finger over there?” His voice was rising in frustration.

“None.”

“So, there’s a big building filled with only non-field rated night shift personnel?” Aaron practically screamed the question.

At the sound of his raised voice, his now thoroughly befuddled co-workers trained their rifles on him.

“You tell them,” he said to Tony. He raised his hands in the air and tried to look harmless.

“It’s Ellison,” Tony shouted. “He’s made a door that circumvents our barrier. Only someone on the inside could do that.”

Braven looked from Tony to Aaron as she gauged her options.

“You have to believe me,” Aaron pushed. “Ellison is the one who summoned Cerberus for Six Rivers. Brandon Wilkes told me they recruited Ellison after he accrued a large debt in their casinos. Brandon slaughtered his competitors for alpha and then had Ellison open the portal to bring Cerberus here so he could transform Brandon and his loyalists into super shifters.”

“And Brandon Wilkes can corroborate this?”

“Brandon Wilkes is dead.” Aaron swallowed hard, knowing the next words would either save his hide, or skewer it. “I killed him.”

Director Braven studied him a moment longer. “Very well. It seems our office personnel are in a grave situation. Those of you Trinity weres who are well enough to fight come with us. The rest of you stay put, try to rest and maintain vigilance.”

Matthew looked to Carlos. The leader nodded at his beta, and made a gesture with his muzzle. The healthy wolves jerked their heads in acknowledgment and fell into rank and file behind snow-white Matthew, their new, hopefully temporary, alpha. With a curt wave from the director, the entire mass began the invasion of their home office.

“Agent Harper, come along,” Braven called.

“Yes, ma’am.” Tony gave him a helpless look. “I’m sorry, Aaron. I have to go. I won’t do any good sitting out here with you. People will die while I’m trying to make a point.”

Aaron simply stared. There was no time for arguments, but some naïve part of him had been certain Tony would fight for him, fight for his reinstatement as an agent so they could go into battle together. The hurt, the stupid, childish hurt, thrummed through him.

“I’m on your side,” Tony said. “I just have to help the people in there. Civilians, unrated agents. They need me. I’m sorry. I really am.” He lifted his shoulders in a sorrowful gesture and turned to join the others in formation.

“Director,” Aaron called. He spread his hands helplessly, pleading to the last person who could save him from this exile. “Don’t do this. Don’t cut me off.”

“I’m sorry Mr Marvell,” the director answered before she entered the door. “I have no idea whom to trust, anymore.”

“Trust me,” he shouted. When the director didn’t respond he yelled again. “Trust
m—
” The imposing steel doors slammed shut, cutting him off.

“Braven!” With a howl of frustration Aaron launched his fists at the crimson field, as if to pound it to the ground. The energy shot into his arms and he was blown back fifteen feet. He crashed onto his back. He lay there, looking up at the stars, fighting back tears of frustration and anger.

“That was utterly useless,” Carlos’ tired voice carried to him.

Aaron sat up. His alpha had shifted during his temper tantrum. Carlos held a shirt against the slowed bleeding at his throat and stepped through the barrier. Aaron scrambled to his feet and ran to meet him. His former alpha’s legs shook with the effort of walking, but he held himself upright.

“If you are finished your grandstanding I have an idea on how to get us inside.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Inheritance

“Us?” Aaron scoffed. “Absolutely not.” He paused, considering Carlos’ words. A fresh wave of hope filled him. “What’s your plan? There’s no way you’re coming along in your condition, but what is it?”

“We’ll see about the rest, later,” Carlos said with a tired smile. “First, we need to know if you can get inside.”

“You have something specific in mind?” His curiosity was growing by the second.

“Tell me how portals work.” Carlos moved to the edge of the clearing and leaned against a tree. Even by the orange glow of the Thurisaz sigils Aaron could see how pale his former lover was, how much blood loss he had suffered. It wasn’t a mortal injury, but it would take some time for Carlos to recover.

“Portals appear either when a free being capable of traveling inter-dimensionally opens one, or when a limited being is summoned.”

“And can those doors be operated by anyone else?”

“Some demons of higher order and very skilled mages.”

“But otherwise the door must be opened and closed by the one who generated it?”

“Yes.” Aaron looked away, distracted by a burst of gunfire in the Kapre building. “Is there a point to this, and if so will you get to it? My friends are dying in there.”

“As are mine,” Carlos reminded him. “Did Ellison make the portal, or simply make it possible for the portal to form?”

“Cerberus can make his own doorways, so I’m guessing the latter.”

“That’s what I thought. You, then, can open the door into Kapre.”

“What?” Aaron scoffed. “There’s no way. I’ve never—”

“You are the direct descendant of Cerberus. You hold his power inside you. His blood is in yours.”

“Yeah? So? His blood is in Six Rivers, too.” He caught Carlos’ upshot eyebrow. “Maybe? Maybe not. He could have enhanced them bloodlessly. Probably did, since they’re not like me, or like Brandon was. Not yet. Even so, I can’t open a portal just because I have some of Cerberus’ blood in my body. Magic can’t be tricked.”

“Can’t it?” Carlos asked. “Blood and tissue, diseases and plagues. All that Matthew said is true. While there is a magical element to our existence, it is also physical. In our bodies. Our bones. Our
blood.”

“Okay, fine.” Aaron scrubbed a hand through his hair. More distant gunfire peppered the night, disturbed the creatures milling under the boughs at his back. “I may have his blood inside me, but that doesn’t mean I can open portals. There has been no evidence of that even as a remote possibility. You would think if I had that inclination it would have shown itself at some point during my freak-outs when I was shifting uncontrollably.”

“You don’t have to open new portal,
mi hombre
. You only have to open the one that is still there.”

Aaron looked from Carlos to the pile of ash on the ground a few yards away. He recalled the pulling sensation he had felt inside the warehouse on his first day, the same sensation he had felt when Qi had arrived. He had been drawn to the portals, as if they called to him.

Ridiculous.
He snorted, then paced, hands on his hips. How could he open a mystical door? He’d had no training other than having read a few nonspecific descriptions in heavily redacted textbooks ten years before. Only mages were allowed to mess with that stuff, and for good reason. Terrible things had happened when laymen tried to open portals—dismemberment, soul-splicing, flaying, not to mention the unholy litany of beasts waiting on the other side to seize the opportunity to waltz through an unguarded open door.

More gunfire.

Screams muffled by distance and the thick concrete walls of Kapre.

Ghostly suffering howls.

He couldn’t do it.

Could he?

“It’s the only way.” Carlos stayed slumped against the tree, back curved like one of those plant hooks Aaron’s grandmother used to skewer her porch columns with.

“How do I do it?” Aaron asked.

“I am afraid this is where my skill set drops me off.” Carlos smiled apologetically. “I am nearly one hundred and the alpha of a werewolf pack. I have no experience in magic, and as of the past fifty years, no experience in much of anything other than telling my wolves what they should and should not do.”

He was on his own. Aaron searched the courtyard as if the answer to his problem lay somewhere amongst the manicured grass and terrace pavers. He searched his mind for any information that would help him complete his task. Summoning spells, with their complicated symbols, sacrifices and elaborate chants were out. Despite studying them for years he had no idea where to begin. That left natural magic, the kind Carlos so sincerely believed rested inside him. But how to access it?

He focused his thoughts on the pile of ash and thought,
Open
.

The scorched mound of hellfire sat benignly. The Thurisaz sigils carried on emitting their steady glow.

“I want to open a door,” he announced to the courtyard.

Nothing.

“Think about it,” Carlos said from the side. “
Want
to get in there.”

“I do,” he replied with irritation.

Carlos humphed but said nothing else.

His sensitive hearing could only pick up the loudest sounds through the thick walls of Kapre, a unified volley of shots, or a particularly loud sound of agony. It was the latter that carried to his ears just then, a prolonged, tortured series of high-pitched screams. Aaron’s body went cold. The vocalization was exactly the noise he had made when the werewolves and Cerberus were tearing into him. And the voice—his body grew rigid with terror—was Tony’s.

His doubt and frustration evaporated in the presence of his need to get to Tony. The panic of it scrabbled up his chest and filled his throat, emerged as a single, earth-shaking howl of his partner’s name. Another were’s howl rose up in response.
Matthew
. He was trying to help. But even if he took out the attacking weres, Matthew couldn’t beat Cerberus.

“Please,” Carlos whispered.

Aaron didn’t need to be begged. He screamed again, this time throwing into the sound the desire to tear down the walls brick by brick if necessary to get to Tony. Immediately he was thankful for his nudity. An intense wave of heat consumed him. His skin was fiery, his blood burbled with the inferno raging inside him. He let the power overtake him. His face and hands shifted to partial lupine form. His eyes bulged, as hot as a pair of boiled eggs plucked from the water. His skin turned black.

He howled.

The hellfire ash responded.

Tendrils of glowing dust lifted into the air. It swirled in front of him, tracing the outline of its previous form. It was a slow, infuriating process. But as his urgent irritation grew, the door took on a more defined shape, until finally the embers haloed a deep nothingness. Aaron did not delay, but stepped inside.

A profound emptiness enveloped him. Blind, and with cotton-filled ears, he stumbled forward. His internal compass spun. He staggered in the pitch, if one could actually stagger against a floor that didn’t exist. His heart pounded in fear. He was lost in the in-between. He had leaped in unthinking, and would now wander the void forever. With great effort he pushed back a wave of hysteria. Tony. Tony needed him. He had to get to Tony. The darkness did not abate, but rather pressed in, squeezing him as tightly as his panic. He felt a gentle, but certain, nudge and he allowed it to sweep him forward. Just as he moved, he felt a hand blindly clutch at his buttock. He reached back, familiar with that grip. The wounded alpha should not have come, but abandoning him to the vortex was unthinkable. He would have to bring Carlos through.