Chapter 32: Will

Chapter 32: Will

The gunfire, by its sheer volume, made me worried for Alexis’s safety, but so far, in the course of the battles that we had fought in this building tonight, she had more than held her own. Besides, these were regular bullets. They could never pierce past the thick coat of a werewolf’s body. Granted, they could injure gravely, but they were nowhere near as lethal as what Blair held in his hands.

The whole rooftop had turned into a labyrinth of smoke, lasers, bullets, and soldiers. My keen sense of direction allowed me to traverse it and make my way past squadrons, avoiding their fire, ducking past the barriers they had put up, and leaping over the traps they had set on the floor. I only had one goal. Find Blair and destroy the Wolf’s Bane.

Overhead, the moon shone brightly, now free of the clouds that had surrounded it earlier tonight. As I looked at the moon, I felt my body grow, my blood getting warmer, and my power increasing tenfold. There was a reason why wolves were fabled to be so treacherous on a full moon’s night. The longer I stayed out in the light of the moon, the more aggressive I became, till a time came that I was no longer avoiding the soldiers swarming through the rooftop maze but striking them as they came in my path. A slash here, a bite there, and a tackle every so often. Once or twice, a ricocheting bullet hit me in the shoulder, but instead of piercing past my skin, it merely grazed and went off in a different trajectory. I wondered as adrenaline took hold of my faculties if this newfound strength was due to the potion Vincent had gotten for me.

Now that the smoke was gradually clearing, the layout of the roof became more apparent, lending me a clear sight of where Blair stood. The roof had several levels. I had to strain my neck to be able to see Blair on the rim of the helipad. But there was no sight of any chopper there. Every glance I got of Blair made me more enraged, and I took out this rage on the hapless soldiers who were foolish enough to come my way.

At the same time, I felt like I was losing a little bit of control, relishing in doling out violence and torture on the soldiers, clawing deeper than I needed to claw, biting harder than was warranted. These were not some war-hardened soldiers. They had not seen real battles. They were private mercenaries trained merely in the theoretical practice sessions held in abandoned military complexes. They did not know war as intimately as I did. These soldiers were unaware of the fact that when you got knocked down in battle, you didn’t stay down but got back up and fought till your dying breath. And this was my advantage. It allowed me to barge through, slam past, and plummet into the ranks of soldiers in the maze. They did not know that I was not trapped in here with them. They were trapped in here with me.

In the background, sounds of flashbangs, bullets hitting metal, and the orders of inexperienced captains rang in an otherwise quiet night. As if they knew what hell was being unleashed on the roof, the clouds had moved away, lending the moon a clear sight into the action and madness.

There was no more smoke now, and I had already ascended two levels. There were fewer soldiers here, and most of them had seen what I had done to their comrades below. They were playing defensively, hiding behind cover, trying to cock their rifles to get a proper aim at the rapidly moving werewolf. In the midst of this, I managed to catch glimpses of Alexis below. To my surprise, she was doing remarkably well, leaving a pile of bodies in her wake. A more thorough glance at the bodies reaffirmed to me that she was not killing them, just knocking them unconscious as she had already been doing. And suddenly, she wasn’t there anymore. I sought her in shadow and sight but could not see where she had disappeared. It was a few seconds later that I realized what she was doing.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? When a soldier had a lot of opponents to fend off, they turned to the techniques of stealth. That’s what Alexis was doing, by the looks of it.

The soldiers were on the lookout for a wolf. Most of them didn’t know what I looked like in my human form. This presented an opportunity for me to go the way of stealth as well. Behind the cover of a large electrical unit, I shifted back and snuck out the side. While still behind cover, I saw that the soldiers were aiming at my last seen location, not where I currently was.

Instead of confronting any of the soldiers, I swerved across the roof, avoiding all of them, and came to the stairs leading up to the third level of the roof. There were no soldiers stationed at the stairs. Once on the third level, I could see the helipad clearly. Blair stood there, and not too far behind him, Ralph sat, tending to his wounds. But Blair did not look like how I had last seen him.

He was wearing armor. There were gauntlets on his hands with pistons attached to them. As I looked from behind the cover, Blair put on a sturdy helmet. From what I could see from this far off, his armor was different from the one the soldiers were wearing. This was custom-made, tailored specifically to fight a strong foe. Did he mean to engage me in battle yet again?

It dawned on me why there weren’t any soldiers awaiting me on this sublevel. Instead of soldiers, vampires emerged from behind shadows. Their numbers were more than all the guards combined, and they stood in ranks, fangs bared, claws unfurled, slit-like red eyes.

There was no point in trying out stealth with these many vampires lying in wait. They would sense me within minutes.

I walked out from behind cover, one lone alpha against dozens of Ralph’s reinforcements.

“Come on then!” I yelled as they saw me. They fell upon me like bats, screeching, hissing, and clawing. For a brief moment, my entire body was covered with vampires bent on draining my blood, intent upon rending my skin. The next moment, I shifted, throwing vampires every which way in the air. Now that I knew that Blair intended to draw this out and fight me, I was in a much better mentality to fight these vampires. Throughout the night, I had lost count of the soldiers, guards, and vampires I had battled, but this battle, by far, was the most strenuous. Just as the night granted werewolves powers, it did so for vampires too. The lack of the sun made them bolder, turned their actions quicker, and made their bodies lither.

I could feel a few deep cuts within my fur as vampires latched themselves to my body with their claws. Some of them tried to bite me as I fought them, but I never let that happen. The cuts hurt initially, causing me to retract from the fight, but within moments they healed and allowed me to step back into the fray unhindered.

A vampire soared from above and attempted to strike my face. I bit down on his throat and dragged his body below, causing blood to spurt from his neck. This made the other vampires livid, causing them to become more frenzied in their attack.

I was outnumbered but not overpowered by any means. I took out my claws at full length and slashed lethally, intending to kill. Viscera and guts tore out from the torsos of the vampires standing in front of me as my slash carved their bodies open. Seeing this, the others recoiled. Making use of the way I had cleared for myself, I clamped my jaw shut around the face of the nearest vampire and tore it completely off. Two enterprising bloodsuckers decided to strike me from behind, which I dodged by rolling on my back and crushing them under my weight. Another vampire got trampled under my feet as I lunged at the remaining horde.

As many of them as there were, I had thinned out their numbers quickly. Now, the ones left standing were barely more than ten. As I collided with them in a fierce tackle, I skinned one alive with my sharp claws, decapitated another by tearing off his neck, and crushed two more under the full weight of my body. Out of nowhere, one of the surviving vampires wedged a stake into my snout.

Maddening pain took hold of my senses, paralyzing me momentarily as I struggled to take out the stake lodged in my mouth. Foolish creatures, the stakes don’t work on werewolves! I thought as I snatched it with my claws and slid it out.

During the time I needed to heal, I backstepped and took a gander at the level below, watching out for signs of Alexis.

I could use some help here; I sent her a message.

Close your eyes and duck your head behind your paws, she responded.

As the vampires ganged up on me, I obeyed Alexis’s instructions and protected my face. A distinct sound of hollow metal clanging on the floor rang in my ear, followed soon after by the loud bang of a flashbang. Upon looking up, I saw the vampires wincing, groaning, and holding their faces in their hands.

Prey, I thought, ripe for the taking.

I lifted my body on my hind legs and drew out my claws as I raced forward across the roof. As I passed each vampire, my claws tore through their bodies in a swift motion. When I had ended my charge, I turned around to see the results of my carnage.

A second ago, they were standing there, reeling from the effects of the flashbang, and a second later, they were all sprawled on the floor, writhing, dying, and bleeding.

Had I been unjust? Weren’t all of these vampires, soldiers, and their masters assembled here to do anything other than kill me? This was nothing more than self-defense.

Here I stood, upon the threshold of the final level. I crouched low as I climbed the stairs. My paws bloodied the steps as I made my way up. My body reeked of vampires. Above the final level, there was only the helipad.

From this topmost point, the whole of Fiddler’s Green looked like a miniature town, the kind they showed in museums. That tiny patch of lightwork to the left was Grimm Abode. The sea and its many waves resembled an abstract painting stretching into eternity. The moon looked like a bauble that kids hung on Christmas trees. The air was thin here.

I expected Ralph, Blair, and Maurice to stand there in wait for me at the topmost point on the roof, but they were not there. From my vantage point, I sighted Alexis, who had been following my steps. She was still two stories below, but her way was clear.

But mine wasn’t.

Would this deluge never end?

More soldiers flanked me on this roof from all sides than had ever appeared anywhere below. I stood against them, one werewolf against an endless barrage of soldiers.

I shifted back, knowing that there was no way I was going to take on so many soldiers all by myself.

“You know what, Blair?” I called out.

“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you over the sound of you dying,” Blair called back. But it worked. He was no longer hiding. He came down from the helipad, armored like a gladiator, and walked past the soldiers till he came face to face with me.

“After tonight, everyone’s going to know that it took you an army to take me down,” I said. “Once this night ends, people will find out how big of a coward you are, hiding behind your hired guns and your shiny armor,” I said.

“If this is you begging, then you’re doing a horrible job of it,” Blair said. His voice came back garbled from behind the mask. It made his voice mechanical. The visor of his helmet was made of reflective glass, making it impossible for me to look into his eyes. The grooves of the armor accentuated muscles that weren’t really there, creating a faux image of someone strong and resilient. I knew the man under the armor all too well. He was gaunt, self-doubting, and contemptuous.

“Your soldiers and Ralph’s vampires haven’t been able to stop me thus far. What makes you think I will let you escape with the Wolf’s Bane on your helicopter?” I asked.

Ralph began cackling from behind, joined by Maurice. Somehow, Maurice had made it to the roof. He looked disheveled, but since he was a werewolf, he had healed quite quickly. Blair laughed the loudest.

“What makes you think there’s a helicopter? Do you think we’re going to escape? And miss the show? In case it didn’t make it through your thick skull, allow me to put it into terms that you’ll understand. The helicopter was a ruse meant to drive you up here. You’re stranded here, Mr. Wilhelm Grimm, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, and there’s nowhere for you to go,” Blair said.

Now it was my turn to laugh. I threw my head back and let a howl escape me. “If there’s no chopper, then you’re just as trapped here with me as I am with you. What makes you think I’m going to let you go free? I already defeated so many of your men. These are merely a handful more.”

“Talk is cheap,” Blair said, turning his back to me. “Talk to me when you’ve made it through the last step of the gauntlet. But know this, hell awaits you in the end.”

With that, Blair, Ralph, and Maurice headed back to the helipad. Now that I knew that there was no helicopter incoming, their standing at the top of the helipad seemed kind of pointless.

Behind me, Alexis ascended the stairs and came to my side, the two of us standing side by side in our human forms. She slid her hand next to mine and held it firmly.

“Oh, would you look at that? Star-crossed lovers, fated mates, other sappy shit…cry me a river,” Blair said from the top of the helipad. “You two are the trespassers, the perpetrators. You’re the ones in the wrong.”

“Takes a conceited asshole to talk about who is in the wrong and who is not,” Alexis said. “You kidnapped me first. Ralph had my parents killed. Maurice has been corrupting this town for decades. Don’t put this on us. You’re the ones who have been making life a living hell for everyone. No one stood up to you until now.”

“Neither of you has what it takes to kill any of us,” Maurice said. Impressively, his wounds all looked healed, but his state was still disheveled from all the torn and bloodied clothes. “If you possessed what it took to kill us, you would have done it already instead of this verbal jousting. But we’re men of means, men who understand how the world works, and to us, you’re nothing more than vermin that need to be wiped out.”

While they were talking, I was busy counting guns and soldiers. Ninety soldiers wielding ninety rifles. The odds were not in our favor.

Do you have any more of those grenades? I asked Alexis.

I don’t, but I don’t think that grenades are going to work here. I count upwards of eighty soldiers, she said.

Ninety, to be exact, I said.

If there’s no way ahead, there’s always a way behind. I reckon we’ve taken down more than a hundred soldiers and vampires combined in the past hour or so. On my count, we’re going to fall back down and make use of the roof’s mazelike structure to our advantage, she said.

Divide and conquer?

That’s right.

“Hey, Blair!” I called from across the roof. “You never got to hear your father’s last words, did you? Of course, you didn’t. I killed him. I had the privilege. Do you want to know what your father said before I took his heart out?”

“You son of a fucking bitch,” Blair said. I had hit him in the jugular. He took off his helmet, revealing a scorned face underneath. Scowling eyes, lips contorted with anger, and cheeks swelled red. “You dare talk of my father?”

“Talk of him? I killed him. You take a man’s life; the least you can do is carry it with you. Don’t talk to me about not possessing what it takes to take someone’s life. I killed your father, but only after he told me your mother was a two-bit streetwalker!” Of course, his father had not said anything of the sort, but Blair did not know, and I was counting on his ignorance and his unresolved emotions to drive him into a rage. If there was one thing I knew, it was the destructive power of rage. It was impossible to control yourself when you were angry.

And just as I had wanted, Blair did something that I was counting on, something so devoid of rationality that everyone present on the roof was startled.

“Fuck you, Wilhelm Grimm!” Blair yelled as he lifted a rocket launcher from behind and hoisted it over his shoulder. Just as he pulled the trigger and released the rocket, I grabbed Alexis and threw ourselves off the topmost level of the roof.