Chapter 33: Alexis

Chapter 33: Alexis

If riling Blair had been Will’s intention, he had done an excellent job. The smoldering top level of the roof with flames roiling out of the debris was a clear indicator of it. As far as thinking on the fly went, that was pure brilliance.

The blast had been immense, loud, hot, and destructive. It missed us at the last moment when Will threw us off the roof. The rocket hit the top level of the roof, causing it to implode and devour all the soldiers standing atop it. No, they were not dead. Even from this far off, while my head was still dazed and my vision came and went in spasms, and my hearing was just a loud ringing in both ears, I could see and hear the soldiers struggling to get out from under the wreckage of the roof.

The helipad was still there, although now it was pretty tilted and swaying in the air dangerously. The three men who had been standing on top of it were nowhere to be seen.

Will was lying on the floor beside me, his face covered in soot and ash, his body looking like a pale ghost. A dust-covered ghost. I coughed out some rubble that had lodged itself in my mouth while we fell and began regaining my bearings. Neither of us was hurt, thankfully. The fall and the radius of the blast had thrown us quite far off, all the way back to the first section of the roof. After all that gauntlet traversing, we were back to square one.

Well, not quite square one. For starters, there were far fewer soldiers and reinforcements than before, and what remained of them were thoroughly confused in the wake of that explosion. The top of the tower had caught on fire, creating a mirage-like scene with flames in the periphery of the resplendent moon.

As Will and I got to our feet, so did the soldiers who had taken the brunt of the explosion. Disconcertedly, they began picking up their rifles, adjusting their armor, and spreading out throughout the area.

I could not let our moment of surprise go to waste.

“Will, over here,” I whispered as I guided us both behind a series of air conditioner units. “That was fucking brilliant.”

“It was one of my finer moments; I’ll give you that,” Will said. “But where are Blair, Ralph, and Maurice? They couldn’t have died, could they?”

“They’re not dead, trust me,” I said. “If they’d died, the soldiers would have disbanded. But they’re still standing, still regrouping. They’re somewhere behind all the wreckage.”

“We’re still on for divide and conquer?” Will asked.

“Oh, for sure. Better than before. None of them know where we are now. This puts the odds in our favor.”

“Let the light of the full moon strengthen you. Let us hunt,” Will said and promptly shifted.

Encouraged by him, I shifted alongside him. The thrill of fighting side by side with Will was a feeling unlike any other. It exhilarated me, knowing that Will was fighting beside me, had my back, and would protect me just as he had done so many times.

We parted ways, him heading to the right while I diverted to the left. The rooftop was covered in smoke and soot, and unlike the smoke that had earlier been issued from the smoke grenades, this smoke was thicker, more pungent, and stung the skin. It wasn’t about to go anywhere anytime soon, either.

Did his father really say something like that, or was that purely improvisational? I couldn’t help but ask.

Purely improvisational. In truth, he had something about how he would come to haunt me later in some way. I assumed that he meant his son would come for me. He never said anything about Blair’s mother. I was just trying to rile him.

That was clever of Will. Full marks for ingenuity.

As I headed back into that mazelike arena, I came across soldiers who were completely discombobulated and had no idea where either of us had went. I snuck behind one of them and wrung his neck with my jaws. He fell limply to the ground. Another one came into my line of sight as he was treading carefully, holding his rifle up at arm’s length. I pounced on top of him, never giving him a chance to even scream. My claws pierced his jugular. As blood gushed from his neck, I watched him writhe until he writhed no more.

A group of four soldiers moved steadily in a formation, facing each direction. What they did not realize was that they were so close to the edge of the roof. I waited for the opportune movement before dashing across the roof and throwing them all off in one fell swoop. They screamed as they fell, but their screams only added to the overall atmosphere of disconcertment rather than providing any other soldier any whereabouts of me or Will.

This stealthy approach continued for another half an hour, during which I came across Will several times, finding him disposing of soldiers’ corpses off the edge of the roof, assassinating some unsuspecting soldiers from behind, and creeping around corners to avoid larger groups. It seemed we had both taken some unspoken pledge to set aside our concern for killing these soldiers and go utterly berserk on them. This was the point of no return, and as such, it warranted wantonness. There was no other way. It was kill or be killed.

In another half an hour, I had singlehandedly eliminated around forty more soldiers, picking them one by one, and sneakily killing them. I wondered how the soldiers felt before their lives were taken from them. All they got to see was a shadow emerge from smoke and darkness and seize their life force.

I was that shadow. Strengthened by the moon, emboldened by the presence of my fated mate, I had now become my enemies’ worst nightmare—an unseen opponent, a ruthless killing machine.

Still no sign of Blair or the others. This did not deter me from continuing my objective. I had aimed that by the time I was done, the battlefield would be cleared for Will to confront Blair one last time. This was his battle. I would help him as much as I could, but killing Blair, destroying the Wolf’s Bane, and putting an end to this madness once and for all was something that Will was destined to do.

The strong pull of his destiny provoked me to kill more unsuspecting lurkers in my path, allowing Will to advance along the roofs. A couple of times, I even came across some vampires, seemingly injured from the explosion, nauseatingly licking the blood off the corpses of the dead soldiers. In their bloodlust, they never noticed me as I came behind them and slashed their throats, bit down on their necks, and decapitated them.

What’s your body count? I asked Will through our bond. In the wake of the full moon, our bond was at its strongest.

I’ve killed around forty or so. What about you?

I’m a little ahead of you, but that’s irrelevant. It seems that apart from a few stragglers, we’ve gotten all of them.

Now that there was no more need for stealth, I leaped from behind the shadows and maze work and landed on top of the second level of the roof. I tilted my head up and howled at the moon. From across the roof, in a totally different direction, Will emerged and howled in unison.

This was to draw out those few who had remained alive until the end. There were just four or five of them, barely able to hold on to their firearms. This battle, by its sheer length and magnitude, had taken a toll on everyone on both sides. Even as the moon strengthened me, I could feel the strain that this long night had exerted on me. There was such a thing as mental tiredness.

Before Will or I could get the chance to take down the remaining soldiers, gunshots roared from the clearing on the roof. Five gunshots to kill the five remaining soldiers who had been left standing. As their corpses fell limply on the floor, I looked around to see who this unseen ally was.

“Useless, every last one of them,” Blair said, emerging from behind flames, holding a revolver with a smoking barrel. “I guess you get your money’s worth when you pay for subpar mercenaries.

He truly was a madman, having just shot his last few remaining soldiers himself. Why anyone would do that was beyond me.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, you dirty grim dog,” Blair yelled, firing more shots in the sky. “Congratulations on the mess you’ve made of things.”

I understood a little later that the reason he wasn’t able to see me perched on top of the air conditioner unit was that his visor was blocking off his peripheral vision. This lent me an unexpected advantage. I could strike him from above and kill him in one blow. As for Maurice and Ralph, those two were already relatively weakened. They would not pose that much of a problem. I hoped.

While Blair was still talking aloud, I waited till he was directly under me and then dropped from above and wrenched him in my grasp.

“Argh!” Blair yelled as his gauntleted hands grabbed tufts of my fur and dug into my skin. “Not even your she-wolf can save you now, Will.”

He pulled me from behind him with unbridled force and threw me across the clearing. I clanged against the fence and fell with a thud but got back up within a second. Whatever armor he was wearing was mechanically modified to grant him more strength than he possessed.

I did not get a chance to retaliate; Will soared from behind me, roaring as he landed on Blair and thrashed him on the ground.

My heart swelled with happiness that, for once in my life, someone was looking out for me. Not from above, as my parents’ souls did from heaven, but here, with me, in this mortal realm. And he wasn’t just anybody; he was my mate. A reformed man who had gone to great lengths to conquer his demons and cast light into the dark recesses of his mind.

Will’s brutish attacks brought Blair down to his knees, despite all the armor he was wearing. Blair recoiled the pistons in his gauntlets and punched Will in the stomach, causing him to fall on his back.

I couldn’t let that happen on my watch. Before Blair had a chance to attack Will again, I slid across the floor, wrapped my mouth around the gauntlet on his right hand—his dominant hand—and jerked it. The gauntlet came loose, revealing a gloved hand. But I never got a chance to take off the other gauntlet. Blair recoiled it and punched me straight in the face with it, knocking me back.

My head throbbed with pain as dull flashes danced before my eyes. Blood dripped between my eyes where the mechanical, dull, punching piston had hit me. Through the blood and the flashes, I saw Will wrestling with Blair’s other gauntlet, tearing it off his hand.

The punches that Blair landed on Will’s body did not have the same effect as those mechanically enhanced gauntlets. However, seeing Blair’s hands free drove a new fear into me. He could use the Wolf’s Bane on Will now that his hands were not occupied with the machinery we had just torn off.

Be careful! I called out to Will as I watched him tussle with Blair’s armored body. If it had been any other opponent, Will would have torn their body by now, given the strength he was using, but this new, impenetrable armor that Blair wore protected him from all the blows that Will landed on him.

Right as I thought that the battle was in our favor, some soldiers appeared from behind the rubble of the topmost roof, all of them holding tazers and batons. Just as they appeared, so did Maurice and Ralph.

This was it, the last stand. I could feel the finality in my bones.