Chapter 12
Vincent hit the wall near the entrance and used me as a cushion. My shoulder knocked into the hard concrete and I glared at him. He ignored my look of love and opened the door to slide us inside. Once safely inside the very unsafe building he dropped me and we looked around the place. We stood in a long, white hallway that was intersected by numerous perpendicular passages and dotted with countless doorways. It was a rat maze of white with our reward at the end being Tim's body. Voices floated down all the halls and the place was a beehive of activity. High-heels and boots clacked along the tiled floors and
Vincent slunk along the hall with his black coat blending in like a brown thumb at a Garden Party. I slunk along with him until we came to the first hall where he peeked around the corner to the front of the building. The new hall led to the lobby where we could just see the front desk with a bunch of people in police uniforms. One of them looked very familiar, and I paled when I recognized Officer Sutton. That guy hadn't lied about bringing me down to the Third Precinct, but he deceived me about everything else.
I didn't have much time to wallow in my grumblings before Vincent grabbed my hand and yanked me in the opposite direction. The building stretched into the distance, but the structure was cut in half by a large dividing wall. Our hall stopped there, and turned off to the left and right, but not forward. The right passage took us to a dead end, and the left led to the center of the building. For all the busyness in the bustling building the halls we walked down were surprisingly empty.
The plain white halls gave me a headache and I was already disoriented. Then again, I got lost in walk-in closets. "Any idea where they keep the bodies?" I whispered to Vincent.
"No, but I don't believe think we'll-" Vincent yanked me down the right hall, pulled me against him and clapped his cold hand over my mouth.
I was getting real tired of him doing that to me, but at least it was for a good reason. The shor, suited man from before strode up the hall behind us and took a left. He didn't look in our direction or he would have noticed us standing around the corner and in the open. The little man walked twenty yards and took a rightt to disappear out of sight. Vincent released me and hurried after the stranger, and I hurried after him.
I misjudged my speed, probably because some ass didn't teach me how to control this newfound superpower, so when Vincent reached the corner I reached him just a split second later. We collided and fell onto the floor in a mass of legs, arms and, in my case, teeth. Vincent tried to roughly push me off and I bit his arm. He growled and smoothly slid out from beneath my flailing body. Somehow through all that madness nobody noticed us snooping around. I started to get the feeling that maybe this successful sneaking was a little too good to be true.
Vincent's pursed lips and narrow eyes told me something was up in his mind. I hated to do it, but I needed to find out what was going on in those rusted gears of his thoughts. "You get a bad feeling about this?" I whispered. He turned to me with a glare that silenced any more questions.
We heard a noise like a door latch, and both Vincent and I glanced down the hallway. The passage led into the other half of the building, and thirty yards down I noticed an open door on the left. Vincent hurried toward it and I followed behind him. We paused at the entrance and Vincent peeked his head inside. Vincent grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.
It turned out to be a coroner's office complete with silver-covered metal furniture and a door opposite the entrance that led to freezer in the back. Vincent led us to the rear room where we found metal drawers placed in a large wall. On the front of the square drawers were plates with words written on them. I shuddered and rubbed my arms to stay warm against the chill of the room.
Vincent stepped forward and his eyes swept over the plates. He started from the right and reached the middle when he froze at a drawer that stood waist-high. I stepped up beside him, and read the name plate. "Timothy Hamilton." The color drained from my face, and I looked to Vincent. "You really think it's him?"
"Only one way to answer that question," he commented.
We stepped to either side of the plate and Vincent pulled the drawer open. It slid out and revealed a frosted, semi-transparent bag that held something with the outline of a body. Vincent pulled down the zipper at the top and the bag split open to show a corpse of a man. It was Tim. I covered my mouth and turned away. I felt light-hearted and the world spun around me.
My back hit the freezer wall and I shuddered. "Oh my god. . ." I murmured. Vincent unzipped the rest of the bag and drew Tim's naked body out of the freezer drawer. "We're really taking him with us?" I choked out.
"Unless you have the ability to transport him to another place," Vincent countered.
"Then at least find a sheet for him," I protested. His frozen parts were distracting me.
We found a white cloth close at hand and wrapped the blanket around corpse. Vincent hefted Tim's body over his shoulder, and the corpse lay stiffly against his back. I pushed off the wall and kept my distance from the grisly pair. We turned to the door, and found a new and frightening surprise.
The short, bespectacled guy stood in the doorway with a crooked grin on his face. "Good evening," he greeted us. His voice was soft, smooth, and creepy as hell. The man wasn't at all surprised to see us, and I realized why it'd been so easy to get into this place. So much for God's divine intervention.
Vincent's teeth ground together. "Get out of the way, Field," he ordered the short man.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Vincent. Mr. Ruthven would like to speak with you." He glanced at me and I shuddered when those glassy eyes stared at me. "He especially wishes to meet you, miss."
"Ruthven will have to be disappointed," Vincent argued. He pulled Tim off his shoulder and tossed the corpse at our captor.
Field's eyes widened and he tried to move aside, but the body hit him in the side and they collapsed in a mess of stiff and squirming limbs. The man raised his head from the floor and Vincent knelt and punched him in the face. The man's glasses broke, and by the sounds of it so did his jaw. Field dropped to the floor unconscious, and I stood over them in shock.
"You threw Tim!" I yelled at him.
"It was a necessity," Vincent countered while he picked up Tim.
"How could you just toss him like a heavy popsicle?" I protested.
"With strength, now move," he ordered as he shoved me toward the hall door.
I led the way out into the passage, but we skidded to a halt when we noticed a group of armed guards coming at us from the front of the building. They were dressed the same as the ones from the warehouse, and with them were a half dozen men who wore police uniforms. I saw Officer Sutton among them. He didn't look happy to see me, and I sure wasn't happy to see him. Vincent and I shot down the passage in the opposite direction and came to a four-path crossroad. I opted for the left, and Vincent took the right.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw half the officers take Vincent and the other half follow me. I also noticed those with the police uniforms tore out of their suits as their bodies expanded and fur sprouted from their skin. Their eyes turned that familiar shade of predatory orange and their faces stretched while their mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Pretty soon I was being chased by a pack of werewolves with the men in black right behind them.
Now the formerly-uniformed cops were much faster and a lot more agile. They bounded down the hallway and lunged for me, their pointed, glistening claws sprayed out to tear me to shreds. I yelped and shifted into superhuman overdrive. My feet flew across the linoleum floors and I had the benefit of traction. Their claws clacked against the floor and they wasted a lot of energy using more claw than pad.
More speed didn't mean I left them far behind, or behind at all. The men in black couldn't keep up, but a few of the werewolves reached and dove for me. I decided to steal home base and slid down so they grasped air and sailed over me. They hit the floor a
nd skidded to a stop, or tried to. Their claws tap-danced along the linoleum and the werewolves ended up slammed against the wall directly in front of me.
And that brings me to another problem I had. I was running out of hallway. There was one last intersecting hallway that ran from the front to the back of the building, but I spotted a door on the right past the perpendicular passage with a bright, beautiful sign above it that read Exit. A third problem I found was I had no idea how to put on the breaks with this superhuman speed. I'd always had a couch made of Vincent to stop me, and I didn't think these werewolves would oblige. Then I noticed the knob on the door and with a little bit of skill I snatched the handle and managed to turn it. The door swung open and I pulled myself inside.
I found myself at the bottom of a fire escape stairwell, and to my left was the exit door. I shoved it open, tripped the alarm, heard the door behind me crash open thanks to the werewolves, and to top it all off standing in front of me was one of the perimeter patrol guards with not one but two attack dogs. This just wasn't my night. Things got worse when the patrol guard loosed his dogs and they jumped at me. I stepped back inside and plastered myself against the wall to the side of the exit. The dogs raced past me and collided with the werewolves. That quickly turned into a mess of gnashing teeth and claws.
With both doors blocked I shot up the stairs with several patrol guards close behind. They were too slow to keep up, but the werewolves extracted themselves from their canine brethren and raced after us. I didn't get a chance to take a detour onto another floor and so found myself at the top of the stairs with nowhere to go but through the roof door. I flung myself out into the fresh night air with the werewolves in close pursuit.