THE COUGAR'S BABY - 20

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - - - - D A N I E L L A

For a moment, Dani didn’t believe what she was seeing. It was a moment that lasted too fucking long.

It was Squad Nine that was making its way through the darkened corridors of Isabela, the first team in. Squad Six was moving in from the southern entrance and a few of the smaller teams were covering the exits in case anyone tried to break loose or grab a truck and plow through any of their people outside. Everything seemed quiet, too quiet, until the shaky voice of the comms guy in Squad Nine, Jarley, came over the line.

That alone made Dani frown. He was not the kind of guy to get frazzled, especially in a situation that seemed dull at best.

“There’s something down here. I can smell it,” he said, his voice low.

“What do you mean you can smell it? Shifters?”

“Yes… no. I’m not sure,” he spoke, getting a few confirmative nods from his squad.

They’d split into two, one moving ahead in the corridor and the others keeping back. By now, Dani would have expected a violent firefight to break out considering the commotion Shaun had caused outside, but there was nothing of the sort. Glancing at the feeds of other teams, she found the same kind of eerie quiet everywhere else, with only Shaun’s feed showing the littering of dead bodies around the tower, the same people he’d mowed down before he’d unpacked.

“Stay sharp,” Dani said, but her words might as well have not been spoken.

Squad Nine was moving down a stairwell toward the cellars, the area which had shown most promise in regard to finding whatever the Silk Slayers were hiding, other than the expansive warehouses Squad Six were to check out. They never made it to the bottom of the staircase though.

It went from complete silence to heartwrenching screams and a hail of gunfire in a second flat as several shadows appeared on the feeds of the men in front. They were shooting blindly and several of the comm units were blown, the screams permeating Dani’s brain as she watched Jarley’s screen turn crimson as sharp teeth ripped into him.

“What’s going on?” Dani called, but there was no answer.

Within a few moments, the entirety of Squad Nine was limp on the ground, only the occasional groan marking a survivor somewhere. The feed of the medic of the team, Dalen, was still broadcasting while the others had gone black. It was then that Dani got her first look at the beasts.

Two massive beings, twice the size of any grizzlies she had ever seen, stood on their hind legs, their maws painted with blood. They were distinctly lupine, like wolves brought to their hind legs, but exaggerated to ridiculous proportions of strength and power. Wide, gruesome shoulders, the ripple of taut muscles under skin and fur that was tight against them, slim hips and claws that looked like they could rip through solid metal—they were real nightmare fodder. Both were almost completely black, their golden eyes tinted with red, and they looked more like something out of a horror movie than reality.

Dani stared in slack-jawed horror. She reached out to Kylie but he was already looking at the feed, the same kind of disbelief muddling his expression. And then the beasts took off at a dead run, going so fast they were no more than a blur as they sped up the stairs, caring little who or what they stepped on as they dove into action. They were going straight for the warehouses and the exits.

“All squads, notice. Large force coming your way. Extremely dangerous, destroy at will,” she called into the comms, finding her voice entirely shaken.

“What the hell are those things?” Kylie queried, his face pale.

“I don’t know,” Dani admitted dully. “But I don’t think we wanted to find them.”

She was about to take Dalen’s feed off the main screen to make room for members of the force that was still functional when movement caught her eye. Her heart stuttered and her throat constricted as she recognized the face staring straight into the eye of the camera, a pleased smile on his lips.

Soyo…

He raised his gun and took aim at the camera, shooting it and Dalen right in the chest. His heart rate flatlined.

“Call command, tell them we’re calling this off,” Dani growled at Kylie, who burst into action as if stung by a needle, shaken from his unwelcome horror.

“All teams, be advised, Birds are down, I repeat, all Birds are down,” Dani spoke into the comms, watching Squad Six’s feeds with an ever-increasing sense of dread.

It was at that very moment that she caught sight of the two large beasts coming into view on Jordan’s camera that the feeds suddenly went dead, static buzzing in both the video and the audio feed.

“Teams, report in!” Dani barked into the headset, dread twisting her guts. “Kylie, anything?” she asked, the young man tossing the phone to the side, the loud bit of static buzzing through the speaker telling her that it wasn’t only their equipment on the teams that was being tampered with.

“Nothing. I think they’re jamming all frequencies,” Kylie hissed, his cheeks growing red where they had before been pasty and colorless.

“Shit,” she repeated, the word becoming far too comfortable on her lips lately. “We need to get them out. They don’t know what was coming for them,” she said hurriedly, glancing at the readouts of the vitals that luckily enough were still transmitting.

In Squad Nine, she could see that there were a few men alive, barely, but their heart rates were still ticking in laboriously enough. That meant that there was still a chance. Her mind raced and she checked the armaments in the car, trying to figure out if they’d be of any help. But those damn things had walked through bullets like it was nothing. The teams would be thoroughly fucked when they met them. The best option was to get everyone out as soon as possible.

“We need to get them out,” Dani voiced, already getting up from the chair and heading toward the door. “Kylie, you need to get the lookout teams out, our people. I’ll go for Squad Six. Maybe we can drag Squad Nine out too before those fuckers hit us.”

“But they were already in the warehouse, those… things. What the fuck were they?” Kylie asked, but he was up on his feet too now, shaky but still.

He was a tall man, gangly even, but his narrow chin and wide cheekbones betrayed a shifter beneath who could be most useful. Dani bit her lip, trying to force down the bubble of dread that wanted to come up and grip her in its icy grip, keeping her safe and in one place. She couldn’t listen to it now. Not when Shaun was in danger.

You can’t leave Roman without his father, she thought, cringing at all the implications it offered.

She’d been a fool to let this go so far, to allow Shaun to put himself in danger again without even knowing his son. Whatever he had done in his past, she knew that he would never hurt his son. He was a ferocious beast of a man, but all of that would be used to protect his young. It was only her foolishness and fretting that had kept father and son apart, and maybe her and him as well.

I love him.

The thought was sobering.

She jumped down from the back of the van, Kylie hot on her heels.

“We need to shift, we’ll move faster that way. You know everyone’s movement patterns, tell them to get out as fast as possible. We rendezvous at the station. No heroics. I’ll get Squad Six.”

He nodded but the last words were already falling on the fluffy, alert ears of a graceful, long-legged cheetah. He was tall even for the big cat’s standards, with stick-thin legs that looked fragile, but were of course powerful as they were fast. He loped into action as Dani shifted as well, the first steps almost leisurely until he kicked into gear, whizzing down the street like a yellow and black bullet, faster than anything else.

Dani felt a sense of relief as the jaguar was given control, the human pushed into the recesses of her mind. The strong, sure paws of the large feline tested the shifted body with a few prowling steps, making sure no one was around to witness the change, though at this point it scarcely mattered. Then, she too broke into a run, nowhere near as fast as Kylie, but dizzying still.

Isabelacame into sight the moment she rounded the corner and she hid her dappled coat in the shadows of the buildings around it, stalking slower than she would have liked, but with Kylie going so fast, there was a chance that someone would follow them. She was about to cross the street to head for the same hole Shaun and the rest of Squad Six had used when she saw what she’d feared.

Two men running toward the same hole, one with a gun drawn, the other brandishing a knife. They were both tall and under their hoods, Dani could see distinct locks of blond hair that made her think of villains The Firm had happily not heard from in a while.

The Arctics…

It couldn’t be good news if they were around. The Arctics had a history of being involved in chemical and genetics research in conjunction with werewolves. They were the biggest and most dangerous werewolf terrorism group on the planet. Not to mention best funded. She’d heard rumors about them wishing to create some sort of werewolf super troopers, but so far, to The Firm’s knowledge, all of their attempts had been foiled.

But if Dani had to comment, she’d certainly say that the two beasts she’d witnessed had looked a lot like ‘roided up, deformed werewolves.

Her steps were quiet as the night around her and she could hear the men’s breaths in her ears, so keen was her hearing. She skulked behind them, watching them head straight for Shaun’s nest. He was keeping an eye on the building, his sights probably aimed at the warehouse through the top windows, and he was unaware of what was going on behind him.

I can’t let anything happen to him, a stern voice echoed inside of Dani.

She stifled a growl, the large jungle cat soundless and graceful as she slipped through the hole in the fence and padded after them. If luck had been on her side, neither of the men would have seen her coming until it was too late, but one of them glanced over his shoulder the exact moment he began scaling the ladder rungs up to the tower.

He yelped in surprise, training his gun on her, but Dani was already in the air. Her teeth ripped into his arm and she practically tore it off, taking the man down to the ground with her. She landed on top of him, his body large and strong, but hers faster and more deadly. She felt him stutter a breath as her jaws locked around his neck and the satisfying, resounding crack of a spinal column between her jaws marked his quick and mostly painless death.

A shot rang in the air a second later and another body tumbled to the ground inches from Dani, the man brandishing a knife now lying lifeless on the gravel, his blue eyes wide with surprise. Shaun stood straight upon the tower, his assault rifle in his hands and his face a stern mask of efficiency.

“What’s going on?” he called down, already putting together his rifle kit and then slipping down the rungs.

Dani turned back, breathless, wiping blood from her mouth. It tasted disgusting. Werewolves were never all that tasty when they happened to die in one’s maw.

“There’s something wrong. There are two… I don’t know what they are. They look like freaking werewolf super soldiers, huge and unstoppable. They wiped out Squad Nine.”

“I heard the transmission,” Shaun said darkly, discarding the heavy sniper rifle case between the two dead bodies. “What are we doing? And why are you here?”

“All the comms are down. We need to get everyone out. There are still survivors in Squad Nine.”

“We can’t leave them in there,” Shaun said, his eyes turning toward warehouse, cold efficiency sparkling in them now.

“I know. But I don’t know if we can take those things.”“Squad Six can take anything,” Shaun said, steadfast in his resolve. “Come on. Let’s go find Squad Nine,” he said, taking a deep breath.

“Shaun, I—” Dani began, but he wouldn’t let her finish.

“Not now, later. We’ll have time later.”

“We might not,” she growled, though she knew he was right.

There were lives at stake—not only their own—and if they could help, they would have to move now. He seemed to hesitate for a second though, and before either of them fell into the shift, he grabbed her roughly by the shirt, making her gasp as he crushed his lips against hers briefly, but defiantly.

“I will not die. You will not die. We will talk.”

She couldn’t argue with that kind of resolve.