She gulped a panicked breath, and her spirit shot through the atmosphere back to where she sat on the quartz slab at the center of the stone circle on a desert mesa. The witches’ guttural chanting slowly subsided, and they looked at her with clear, bright eyes.
“What did you see, sister?”
Cassie slid from the cold stone table and looked up at the sky. Her jumps into the fourth dimension had become increasingly intense and real in the last few weeks. Her thoughts drifted to Rafe and what he might be doing at this moment.
Her gaze glided down to the three witches who surrounded her. They had become her close, dear friends in the time she’d lived with them. She’d come to trust them with her life.
She’d learned to jump into the fourth dimension almost effortlessly when at peace. But her ability to draw the massive power she’d used against Pyramid Corp. soldiers several months before still eluded her.
“I was in the Anu mother ship. It is in orbit around the moon. It seems they are doing some kind of genetic experiments with flora and fauna. And by fauna, I mean intelligent, sentient beings. They had a massive chamber full of hybridization experiments. That was all I could understand.”
“Any idea why?” asked Circe, stepping forward to take Cassie’s cold hand. Circe’s long white fingers emanated warmth, chasing out the numb chill that had settled into Cassie’s flesh while she’d been out of her body.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t understand why. It is beyond my comprehension. They must think of other species as we think of animals. That is all I can guess. But why hybridize with them? It all seems so gruesome, like something out of a Nazi concentration camp.”
“Come rest, sister. You did well tonight.” Circe led Cassie back to the witches’ cave, where she built up the fire while Cassie lay down on her fur-covered cot.
Cassie thought about how humanity treated animals and shivered. How was it any different from what the Anu did?
Feeling guilty even for sleeping under fur blankets, she searched her mind. There had to be a reason. Animals, while their lives had value, could not reason; they could not self-reflect. An animal could suffer, but it could not place value on suffering or lack of suffering. It could not ask the questions she currently asked.
Her muddled thoughts made her feel slightly better as she drifted to sleep under a layer of animal pelts. Dreams came, violent and angry: the creatures from the Anu ship had been set free, and they marched into her cave where she slept, all seeking a pound of flesh for her sins.
She woke with a gasp as the fire popped. Her temples pounded, and sweat dripped between her breasts. Circe looked down at her from the long counter at the back of the cave where the witches mixed their potions.
The scent of mesquite and sage filled the cave and mixed with the fresh, sweet smell of prickly pear fruit roasting on the fire.
“Drink this,” Circe said, handing Cassie a glass of murky water.
“What is it?”
“Just drink.”
Cassie sniffed. It smelled revolting. She gagged while she drank it, but moments later the pounding in her head passed away. She took a relieved breath and slipped from her bed to kneel by the flames.
Hecate handed her a roasted prickly pear fruit, still hot from the fire. Cassie popped the round red fruit between her hands and then into her mouth. Honey-sweet juice slid across her tongue and down her throat. She smiled. The witches were happy to live on the desert bounty of wild fruits and vegetables with only the occasional rabbit or small boar.
It was so different from living with the ravenous, carnivorous wolves. The moment the wolves had to go without meat, they lost their minds. The pack’s behavior had been a large part of the reason she’d left. Besides the fact that they hated her for being Rafe’s mate, they could be annoyingly juvenile in their politics. This time away from Rafe would give them all time to put things into perspective.
Cassie still had so much to learn about her skills and talents. Even after three weeks with the witches, she still didn’t know how to draw energy effectively. The time she’d used it to blast Pyramid Corp. seemed to be a fluke. No matter how adept she was at jumping into the fourth dimension, she needed the energy blast to defeat the Anu.
Rafe would be here in a week, and they would reassess their plans when he arrived. Unfortunately, she didn’t feel ready to use the information she’d retrieved while in the fourth dimension over a month ago—information detailing exactly how to liberate a dome in L.A. The Anu kept a multitude of children there to use in their genetic engineering programs. Some of the girls in that dome were already pregnant with hybrid babies.
Every additional day Cassie took to prepare herself, another group of unconscious girls would be taken to the rape chamber, where they would be implanted with alien seed. Just the thought disgusted her so much she couldn’t eat any more without feeling sick. She stood over the fire, her hands trembling.
“What is it, sister?” Vesta asked from near the fire, where she was piling a load of sticks.
“It’s time for me to run the gauntlet.”
Chapter 48
Cassie stood on the sunbaked pavement of Phoenix, Arizona, staring at the shimmering mirage ahead on the highway. Her guns were holstered under her arms, and her sword hung over her hip, their weight comforting against her hot and sweaty skin. She’d asked for a stress test, and she was about to get one.
She knew zombies crawled the underbelly of Phoenix, and the witches could attack her with magic at any moment. As soon as she stepped off the overpass and into the city, the gauntlet would begin.
Wiping her brow, she took stock of her surroundings. The witches had dropped her off on a four-lane highway with a view of downtown in the distance. The summer heat had already crept into the high nineties at ten in the morning, and Cassie’s mouth felt dry. There would be no fountains, no air-conditioned shops. Life in desert cities had become intolerable for the living. The undead, on the other hand…
She gripped the hilt of her sword and began her march toward downtown. Before she’d left the car, she’d tied a bandanna around her head and slathered her skin in aloe. She wore long khaki pants, a sleeveless T-shirt, and boots.
In her backpack, she had two bottles of water and a small meal. To survive this, she would have to use all her abilities to their full capacity. Her witch companions were to show her no mercy.
The silent shops loomed above her, their bleached faces marred by broken windows and blasted walls. Cassie marched on, bringing the tall buildings of downtown closer with each step.
The heat had already begun to take its toll. Humans weren’t meant to endure those kinds of temperatures. Every instinct told her to hide in the shade, away from the violent sun that inched ever higher in the unblinking sky.
Pressing against her instincts, she made the several-mile walk into the downtown and found shelter in the bottom of one of the tall buildings that had not been bombed. Inside, glass was strewn across the floor, and nature had already begun to reclaim the space.
Rats skittered near a nest in the dark corner of the lobby. Cassie cringed, not thrilled about sharing the space with them. Still, she needed to rest and have a drink before moving on. She found a rusted metal bench and sat, taking a swig of water from her bottle.
Rat claws scraped against a peeling wall. Paint and dust formed a cloud of particles above a mass of cloth and debris where the sounds originated. Scrape. Squeak. The creature screeched with agonized ferocity as the sound of crunching bones echoed through the room.
Cassie stood, drawing her guns, and aimed them at the rat’s nest. Her skin crawled, and she shivered as blood trickled from under the mass of garbage. The mass moved, and she stepped backward toward the heat of daylight beyond the broken glass. Her feet crunched on the debris as her mind reached out to sense what was under the pile of garbage.
The pile moved again, and a screeching form burst from within. The furry little monster landed before her with its black back arched and it
s hair spiking. Damn feral cat. Cassie relaxed her shoulders, and the cat scampered off into the darkness.
She hadn’t sensed its presence. Her fear and surprise had already defeated her. She stamped her foot and turned toward the door. Her gaze met that of a six-foot-tall monstrosity missing one arm and one eye. It stood only a few yards away, near a large concrete planter in the courtyard.
It limped directly toward her. Where there was one zombie, there were usually dozens. She made an almost inaudible growl low in her throat and ran after the cat. That thing had to know a way through this place.
As she ran, she could hear the zombie limping toward her, pulling its gimpy leg behind it. She searched her mind, trying to find the place inside her where she could channel energy as a weapon. Her heart raced, and the connection lay just beyond her grasp.
In the darkness at the back of the lobby, Cassie searched the open doors for another exit. She kept running into offices, conference halls, and bathrooms. Finally she found the stairs. Up or down? She searched the building with her mind. A vague sense of its layout scrolled behind her eyes. Upstairs she would find another exit to the outside.
She ran to the second story. In the long hallway, a door moved in the wind that blew through broken windows. Scraping followed her up the stairs from the first floor. She only had a few seconds before the zombies would be here. One bite from them and she would be infected with a deadly poison.
At the end of the hall, she found the exit where the escape ladder should be. When she pushed the handle, the door remained closed. She pushed again as the zombies made it to the opposite end of the hallway. Nothing.
Drawing her gun, she shot at the lock. Shouldn’t an emergency door be unlocked? Her mind blazed. She pushed the door again. Zombies were just ten feet away, reaching out with sickening fingers to grab her, gnashing blackened teeth. Their green skin peeled disgustingly from their bones.
One final shove, and the door swung free. Cassie flew through with the momentum of her push but fell forward down the metal stairs. Tumbling down, she reached the bottom step, which remained a good ten feet off the ground. The zombies tumbled after her. She jumped.
Willing herself to land gently, her body held itself almost weightless in the air for a split second before gravity claimed her again and forced her to the earth.
She rolled into the fall and escaped it with only a few scrapes and dull pain in her hip and shoulder. She staggered forward as the zombies fell unceremoniously to the ground. The sickening sound of their breaking bodies sent chills down her spine.
She broke into a dead run. She should have fought them. She should have found the power within to blast them all to bits with the force of universal energy, but she couldn’t find it. Her guns would only do so much, and she didn’t want to waste bullets. So she ran.
Five blocks away from the zombie hive, she slowed to a jog. Her lungs rasping, the heat of the sun grilled her like a steak on a barbecue.
Chapter 49
“Run!” Rafe screamed. A direct hit from an Anu missile collapsed half the fallout shelter. He’d believed them invulnerable there. He’d believed they would never be found. He’d been wrong.
He and a few survivors ran down the tunnel to the elevator. Dust swirled over them, filling their lungs and choking them. He covered his face with his shirt as they made it to the elevator.
They got inside, and he pulled the lever to bring them to the top, into the daylight and fresh air. Nothing happened. The ground shook around them.
“We’ve got to climb.” He recognized the two wolves by his side. Selina. Clark. No one else. They’d all been sleeping in the bunkroom when it collapsed on them. Part of him wanted to run back and search the rubble for survivors. The walls shook and creaked. The shelter would cave in at any moment.
Cassie. He had to get back to Cassie. He’d made a promise. “Come on!” he yelled, motioning for them to follow him around the elevator. On the wall, a series of iron bars had been screwed into the rock face. He started up, letting his shirt fall from his face. The dust made it almost unbearable to breathe. He held his breath and took gulps of air through his T-shirt when he took quick breaks between rungs.
Selina and Clark followed him. Clark hacked and coughed the entire way up, but Selina had tied a bandanna around her nose and mouth. “Cover your face when you breathe!” he shouted back to Clark, but the boy couldn’t hear him over the banging of collapsing rock.
A horrifying groan of metal structural beams bending and breaking reverberated up the shaft. Rafe climbed with greater intensity. He could see daylight above him. “Shift when you get out! We’ll make for the underbrush!” He could only pray they heard him.
A few feet left to climb. Dust whirled around the opening and heat streamed down the shaft. At the top, he peeked over, trying to get a position on the Anu ship. This wasn’t one of their large transport ships. This was a small craft, the size of a fighter jet, lithe and agile and able to maneuver in ways the US Air Force could only have dreamed about.
They couldn’t wait for the ship to leave. The next hit would collapse the shaft. “Now!” Rafe yelled, jumping from the tunnel and shifting midair. His clothes tore, and he hit the ground running. He could hear Selina behind him. He tilted his head back slightly to check. Clark had stumbled in human form and shifted too slowly.
The craft shot a laser into the shaft. The blowback pitched Clark into the air. He tried to recover, shifting with the momentum, falling hard on his front legs, which buckled. Selina sped past into the underbrush while Rafe slowed just enough to allow Clark to catch up. Clark favored his front right paw, but he could still run.
Rafe picked up speed and Clark followed as quickly as he could. They bounded for the brush as the Anu craft shot at their hind paws. Sliding down a gravel incline, Rafe scrabbled for purchase but found none until he hit the rocky ground at the bottom.
Clark, always clumsy, slid down backward, his injured paw held against his chest. When they made it to the bottom, Rafe sniffed Clark’s paw, licked his ear, and bolted further into the underbrush. Selina had found a small cave in the side of the hill they’d just slid down. They packed inside, pressing hard against each other, barely enough room for them all. They shifted back to human form to fit better. “Are you okay, Clark?”
“I think it’s my wrist.”
Rafe felt the bones of the young man’s wrist. Everything felt intact. “It’s probably a sprain. You’ll make it worse traveling on it. We’ll rest here until we know they are gone. Then we’ll double back and see if any of the cars were spared.”
They sat inside the cave, hot and thirsty, waiting for night to fall and for the Anu ship to leave. They could hear it blasting behind them…then silence. Rafe sat very still, listening. The sight of it silently hovering in the air made his heart jump. Even though he was a mutant werewolf, alien technology could still surprise him.
The craft hung over their stretch of desert for what felt like a century. Suddenly, it zoomed off into the horizon in a split second. Rafe relaxed and waited for several long moments for the thing to pop back. It didn’t.
“Okay, guys. Let’s see if we still have any cars.” They hunched out of the tiny cave. “Clark, you can ride on my back.” Rafe shifted, and the young man hopped onto his back. Rafe and Selina trotted around the gravelly hill and up a sturdier embankment to circle back to where the cars should have been.
Clark slid from Rafe’s back, holding his hand to his narrow chest. Rafe and Selina shifted to stand next to him. Their four SUVs had been bombed to smithereens. All that remained were hunks of twisted metal and debris. Selina put her hand on her hip and squinted, frowning. Sweat glistened on her dusky brown skin and around the hairline of her long dreadlocks.
Rafe glanced at her and back at the ruin of what had once been their home. It had become his pack’s grave. He wanted to scream and cry out, fall to his knees, and curse the heavens. But he had to remain strong for the two who still depended on him. He had to make
it back to Cassie. She would be expecting him soon.
Clark held his wrist as a tear trickled down his cheek. Rafe patted Clark’s back. He felt exactly the same. Deep inside, Rafe cried a tortured, lonely wail. Now was not the time for howling. The ship might come back at any moment. They had to get clear of this place and make a concrete plan to get to Cassie.
They quickly searched the wreckage for useful items. They found a wool blanket with only a small hole and a canteen lying under a tailpipe. Rafe shifted, and Selina helped Clark carry their few items.
This time, Rafe padded into the underbrush more carefully. They couldn’t trust the roads this close to the shelter. The party would be conspicuous enough with a young man riding a massive gray wolf. They trotted through the brush toward the river several miles away. Rafe hoped they could find an abandoned car along the road, siphon some gas, and be to Cassie by tomorrow night.
He made plans in his head as they crossed the miles of desert. He thought about where to look for vehicles and briefly lingered on thoughts of what he’d do with Cassie when he saw her. With images of Cassie’s body in his mind, the Anu craft broke through the clouds above them.
Chapter 50
Cassie ducked into a cool spot of shade and took a gulp of water from her bottle. Her heart slowly calmed to a reasonable rate, and she put the bottle away. Sweat trickled down her temples, and her bandanna was already soaked. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on her center. She tried to remember what she had done the time she’d blasted the Pyramid Corporation soldiers.
No matter how she tried these last few weeks, she couldn’t grasp the missing piece of the puzzle. Part of her knew she was trying too hard. When she’d pulled the energy the first time, she hadn’t thought about it at all. She’d just felt it. It had all fallen into place, and it all made sense. Too bad she couldn’t make sense of it anymore.