Chapter 34: Will

Chapter 34: Will

Those pistons packed a punch. Although Alexis and I had managed to take them off, Blair was still very brawny with his gloved fists. It did not take me long to deduce that someone like Blair, who was normally so scrawny, was only able to channel this much power because he had imbued himself with some chemicals, possibly a serum of his own creation, to grant him strength. He was, after all, an occultist’s son and a renowned pharmacist in his own right.

As we grappled with each other, our strengths an even match, to my surprise, Alexis called on me to be careful. At first, I thought she wanted me to exercise caution as Ralph and Maurice had re-emerged along with more soldiers carrying batons and tazers. But then it became clear. She had warned me that without the gauntlets holding his hands back, Blair could now use his hands to inject Wolf’s Bane into me.

I wouldn’t let that happen as long as I had my resolve. Despite his unnatural strength, I overpowered him in our tussle and threw him on the ground. What startled me was when Blair hit the ground, the floor below him cracked under the weight of the armor. He was a juggernaut in this Herculean armor, his weight almost close to mine. My blows were merely superficial against this armor. I could not understand what it was made out of. Was it some sort of plastic, some metal, or an alloy? How was it so heavy yet flexible enough to allow Blair such dexterity?

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Alexis singlehandedly taking on the swarm of soldiers rushing towards her with their weapons. Having seen her in action multiple times throughout the night, I did not worry about whether she could hold her own against that many soldiers. I knew that she could.

It was Maurice and Ralph that I was concerned about. So far, they had been witnessing my fight with Blair from the sidelines, unquestionably a little apprehensive about joining in, given their present condition. But the longer my fight with Blair went on, the less hesitant they became, slowly coming closer to the makeshift arena where my foe and I wrestled.

I saw Blair fidgeting with some buttons on the panel of his armor. This was followed by the sound of electrical humming coming from the suit. He stomped his feet on the ground and broke into a sprint toward me. There was no room for me to swerve to avoid this oncoming armored man. He collided with me, gripped me by my shoulders, and lifted me in the air. For a brief moment, it seemed that he’d bring me down on his knee and break my back, but that seemed like a faint possibility. His suit, armored, electrified, mechanically enhanced, and powerful though it was, had its limits. Under the weight of my wolf form, it buckled, causing Blair to fall with me on top of him.

It was then that Maurice and Ralph finally stopped standing by and joined the fight. Maurice shifted once again, now completely healed from the moonlight and the downtime, and pounced on me, pinning me down as Blair delivered punch after punch to my face. Then, Ralph descended upon me, looking more bat-like than ever, and kicked me in the side.

I did not stay down for long. I wedged my claws into Maurice’s body and cast him away, watching as blood trailed along his falling trajectory. Then I kicked Ralph back with my hindquarters and watched with satisfaction as he struggled to stay standing. Blair, no longer punching my face, stood against me, trying to subdue me with the enhanced force coming from his armor. However, the more he pushed, the more firmly my feet planted in the ground, providing me the support I needed to leap in the air, taking Blair with me. He unleashed a flurry of punches on my chest, driving the air from my lungs.

Unable to take this barrage any longer, I finally bit down on his helmet and threw it off his head, revealing his rancid face contorted in rage, strain, and confusion.

“Why won’t you give up?” he growled as he landed one more punch against me, but it was too late for him. Our airborne trajectory had completed its course, leaving me standing on top of him and him hanging at the edge of the roof.

In light of the carnage I had dealt with tonight, restraint was out of the question. This was the end of Blair, as I saw it. He might be armored and enhanced, but there was no suit or armor nor any chemical that would save him from this high a fall.

I stomped on his hand that was holding onto the ledge and watched him fall off the roof into the fog below, screaming as he flailed his arms in the air. I did not stick around for the satisfaction of watching him die. There were still two more foes left to deal with.

When I turned around, it was to the sight of Alexis standing victoriously over the bodies of the defeated soldiers. She had since turned her attention to Ralph and was circling him viciously.

What chance do they stand now that their mastermind is defeated? I called out to her.

Alexis attacked Ralph as I took on Maurice simultaneously, all four of us engaging in our last battle on this rooftop.

The trouble with Maurice was that the same moonlight that granted me strength also granted him the same strength, turning him into a formidable foe. The wounds I had inflicted on him earlier tonight had been healed, and after he’d had such a long rest, he was in better shape than I was. There had to be a way to end this fight without engaging him for too long. I needed to think quickly and do something that would render him incapable of fighting.

Two werewolves fighting each other under the light of the moon was a recipe for disaster—it would be akin to an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. With that in mind, I immediately shifted back into my human form and rolled out of the way as Maurice vaulted at me. In the middle of my role, I grabbed onto one of the electric tazers that had belonged to the soldiers. When I got up, Maurice’s back was turned to me. The moment he turned back, I plunged the tazer deep into his neck and pulled the trigger, zapping him with electricity. Maurice’s entire body shook as he yelped loudly, foam frothing at his mouth. I did not stop tazing him. Instead, I pushed the tazer deeper into his neck, burning his fur and directing volts of electricity directly on his skin.

He howled in pain one last time before falling limply on the floor. There, he shifted back into his human form, dressed in blood-soaked and tattered clothes. For good measure, I tazered him again, and this time, his wilted body flopped as pure blue wattage surged through him.

He had his chance. I had spared him earlier tonight. His demise was his own fault, not mine. If it’d come to providing an explanation to Vincent or Fred, I would lay out the entire night’s events in tedious detail and let them know what Maurice had done and how every single action he had taken tonight had warranted him his fate. Even now, as I had downed him, I had shown restraint. It was against the rules of honor to commit needless carnage against a fellow werewolf. Maurice might have forgotten the creed, but I had not. Even in death, he deserved dignity. I kicked away his limp body and turned my attention to the fight unfolding before my eyes.

Alexis was giving Ralph a tough time, bludgeoning him with her paws every time he got close. She slashed at his neck and sent him swerving in my direction. I impulsively brought up my fist as Ralph fell towards me, ramming my punch straight into his face. He groaned loudly and then fell face-first on the floor. I watched him for a full minute for any signs of life, but when he did not move after the minute was over, I became certain that both he and Maurice had been indeed vanquished.

Was this it? Had I really gotten rid of Ralph, Maurice, and Blair in one night? Was their reign of terror over? It had been the toughest night I had to bear in the longest time. Apart from the long nights of my imprisonment during which I had to bear the torture, the only other tough night that I could remember was the day before our ship came to America.

It had been a long storm the night before, and all of my pack members onboard had given up any hope of survival. Ariana and Fred were huddled in a corner, weeping as the storm swept our ship from one wave to the other, crashing it into the rocks off the coast of New York. I was on deck, holding on for dear life as waves the size of tsunamis thrashed against the boat, praying to all the gods that ever existed to grant us a safe passage through this storm.

When the night ended eventually, so did the storm, and with daylight, we were greeted by the sight of Lady Liberty holding aloft the torch in her hand. After more than a month of traveling and bearing so many storms in the midst, we emerged from our voyage starved, tired, drenched…free. Afterward, we sailed north after replenishing our supplies from New York and came to Fiddler’s Green. An age had passed that night, yet I still remembered it. I was certain that I would remember tonight just as fiercely.

“It’s done,” Alexis gasped behind me.

I stood at the precipice of the roof, looking idly at the sea, reminiscing about that fateful night more than seventy years ago when I had finished my voyage from Germany to America. When Alexis called my name, it brought me back to the present.

Back to the sight of the dead soldiers and the unmoving bodies of Maurice and Ralph. As for Blair, I was certain the fall had killed him and, with it, surely the only existing version of Wolf’s Bane.

“I cannot believe it,” I said, approaching Alexis. The side of her face was bloodied, but it did not look nor smell like her blood. I placed my hands on her cheeks and brought her face closer to mine, not minding the blood covering her face, not minding the soot and sweat covering mine.

All I wanted to do was to kiss her to commemorate our success. From tonight onwards, things would be better. The pack would help us in rebuilding this town. We’d drive out the leaderless vampires, destroy this tower, and hold a new election for a new mayor, an honest mayor.

I kissed Alexis, and it was for the first time in my life that I was kissing my mate with absolutely no worries clouding my mind. I could sense that she could feel the lightness and the weightlessness of my kiss, for she wrapped her arms passionately around my body and pulled me closer to her as she plucked my lips and sucked on them deeply.

“Will?”

I gasped.

All of a sudden, I felt agony like I had never felt before. It felt like boiling water coursing through my veins. Blood dripped from my eyes as my throat became hoarse, and the air went out of my lungs. My heart palpitated excruciatingly, driving the anguish deeper.

“Will!” Alexis yelled.

I didn’t understand. As the light went from my eyes, as my personal darkness blended in with the darkness of the night, I could not understand what had just happened. I lost control of my body and fell, and the last thing I saw before my vision was robbed of me was Blair standing behind me, grinning macabrely, holding the emptied syringe of Wolf’s Bane in his hands.

It burned.

This was unfathomable pain beyond what I could bear, and it burned.