Chapter Twelve
The sheer beauty of her combat was inspired. It almost looked choreographed, and if he hadn’t been able to smell the fear, the sweat and blood in the air around her and her companions, he might have believed it was exactly that. But as the seconds and minutes ticked by, he realized the reason it appeared so well-timed and precise was because Angela Clemens and her team were so well practiced at this point, they were able to tell what their enemy was going to do before they did it.
It was a simple matter to meet someone’s movements half-way if you knew ahead of time what those movements were going to be. And the dance continued.
There were more than two-dozen wardens spread throughout several acres of the redwood forest that night, their ranks filled by warriors from six different clans. They’d broken into teams of around eight to ten. Anyone and everyone who’d been available had apparently answered this call. Something had gone awry in the Unseelie Realm…. He could sense the shift. He knew there was an unbalance now. Part of that other world had leaked into this one.
He knew the warden detectors could sense it as well. He watched them “feeling” what was nearby, and wondered how many different creatures they could detect. The only thing he was certain of was that they wouldn’t detect him.
He was old. He was powerful. And he’d taken special precautions to remain physically and mentally anonymous in the fray of the battle around him. He’d come here to watch her. It was his sole purpose.
She was a warrior in every sense of the word. And she was going to be his.
*****
“Get down!” Angel gave the warning a split second before pulling the trigger, having no choice but to shoot when she had. The bullet exploded from her barrel and sped through the night with careful aim, thank goodness, because the young warden she was trying to save was a hair too slow in responding. Caleb was unable to duck before the enemy behind him attacked.
She was a good shot. Her bullet hit its mark and Caleb’s face was spared.
But Angel had never before come up against anything like what she was facing that night. She’d been lucky so far in her warden career. In all fifteen years, she’d only had to fight two Terrors. Both had left her scarred, and neither had done what this one was doing. She didn’t even know if her bullets would do any good against it. If she ever got to it.
She was too busy fighting off all of its help at the moment. The Terror was called the Terror for a reason. Its enigmatic form and function left wardens baffled and unprepared because they never knew what monster it was going to ultimately inhabit.
And this Terror took the cake. The moment Caleb had sensed it was near, Angel had ordered her team to move in. Every warden was protected with the usual mind shields to keep the Terror from leveraging their fears. The team wasted no time hemming it in with anti-transportation magic, then prepped their weapons. But when they reached the center of the area where Caleb was positive the Terror was located, it was to find it empty.
It took only seconds for the entire attack plan to be skewed. Some people lowered their weapons to look around in confusion. Others had sudden, uncertain feelings. A few wardens began bellowing in absolute, rampaging fear.
The Terror had made it past their mental protections. Angel barely recognized this was the case and had no time to further process it, much less wonder how it was possible before her people were being attacked from all sides. This Terror had not only made it past their wards, it had people working for it. What Angel blithely called “minions.”
All hell broke loose in the forest that night. Angel spent more time disarming fellow wardens and knocking them senseless to protect them than she did fighting off the werewolves the Terror was controlling. Werewolves were a favored victim for rogues since they were incredibly fast and strong, and wardens were less willing to kill them. Werewolves were rare, and most wardens knew one or two personally. They were the good guys. No one wanted to see them go extinct.
It made Angel’s job exponentially more difficult.
Getting to the Terror itself would have brought the entire fiasco to an end, but that was where things became terribly tricky. This monster had possessed the body of an insanely powerful creature, the clurican. The host was tricky, manipulative, composed of pure magic, and as it had decided to prove that night, it could not only vanish into thin air at will, it could delve into the minds of humans and animals far more easily than the Terror inhabiting it. No magic could keep its mind control at bay.
The clurican was rather like an evil version of a leprechaun, though no one was stupid enough to say this out loud – because apparently the clurican could hear you talk about it anywhere in the realms, and they hated leprechauns. Contrary to myth, neither was short nor particularly fond of shamrocks or the color green, though one leprechaun Angel knew personally ran a bar called “Lucky’s” and flaunted both because he felt it was funny.
The clurican always wore black from head to toe, and that same black was reflected in his eyes. Come to think of it, Angel had never come across a female clurican, just like she’d never come across a female Terror, though both did supposedly exist. A clurican’s main love was thievery. Anything beautiful was coveted by their kind. Unfortunately, the clurican they were facing off with in the forest that night was only interested in stealing one thing: lives.
Angel watched the werewolf she’d shot flash back into human form with the bullet’s impact. She was lucky. The wolves in battle that night were proving too fast for wardens to take aim. When a shooter had to move that fast to meet their enemy, they relied more on their ability to keep the gun from kicking too much in their hands than actual aiming. But aiming definitely helped.
Fortunately this one had been coming head-on for Caleb, so it was distracted when she’d shot it. A normal bullet would not have harmed such a beast. In fact, emptying an entire load into a werewolf sometimes failed to stop them. To make matters worse, they healed with alarming speed, usually within seconds.
But these bullets were special of course, ironically warded with anti-magic. When they hit their mark, the werewolf would be trapped without its supernatural power for a short period of time and would remain human until the spell wore off. It evened the odds a little.
Caleb nodded his thanks to her a split second before he turned and engaged the now-human but still strong werewolf in hand-to-hand combat.
Angel’s attention was pulled from them almost at once by a low growl to her left. She instantly dropped into a roll to avoid the lunging attack of a wolf who flew right over her, then jumped back to her feet to continue running.
She never wasted bullets. And yet, her current clip was almost out. There were just too many moving targets. She’d managed to send five back into human form, but eight rounds had missed their marks, and from the sound of things around her, other wardens were faring just as badly. All they could do was wear their body armor and continue to shoot their rounds at a high angle to ensure they didn’t accidentally hit one another in the mayhem and destruction of the night around them.
Angel decided to change clips right now, even with the two shots remaining. As she ran, she reached inside her jacket pocket, pulled out one of two spare clips, and discarded the current clip with a press of the magazine release button. She let it drop; there was no time to do anything but run and reload. She felt the beast behind her, felt its hot breath bearing down on her, and spun and dropped to her knees just as it attacked a second time.
The sound of her gun firing filled the night. It was met by similar retorts around the circumference of the area. And the fight dragged on.
It was the better part of an hour from start to finish before the wardens in the forest that night managed to contain the immediate danger from the prison break. The prison for rogue supernaturals had been breached where it rested in the Unseelie Kingdom, and that created a potential problem for future escapes. But the Unseelie King and the Goblin King both made appearances at the end, and talk of moving the prison’s location to some place more secure – the Goblin Kingdom – ensued.
Angel knew the job wasn’t completely over. More escapees, not to mention the boss at the head of this escape, were in other territories and would need to be brought in. But by and large – she felt better. By the time she was back at her apartment and hitting her shower, she felt like she’d actually accomplished something.
It made her feel like she was important. Like she was worth something.
And as her head hit the pillow, those thoughts accompanied her into the short period of sleep her job afforded.
Somewhere nearby, a powerful gaze looked on, and a powerful mind listened. As the subject of its study drifted off to a fitful sleep, wicked sharp fangs exposed themselves in a secret smile. You have no idea just how important you are, Angel. Nor how much you’re worth….