Chapter Fifteen – Carter

 

Lucy’s hands went up as she backed slowly away, the color completely draining from her face as each slow, measured step took her farther and farther away from the advancing shifters.

And, yes, they were shifters. Definitely shifters.

“Back, back, back,” growled the woman as she advanced first, her pistols raised like a trained combat fighter. Unlike Winters, Hitter One’s English wasn’t seasoned with any accent. East coast, maybe? West? It was hard to tell. Definitely American, though. She was stacked like a bodybuilder, too. Not nearly as big as I was, but I could tell she hit the gym on the regular. Enough so that I’d have to be worried about her in close combat.

I locked eyes on my sidearm, all the way across the room on the nightstand next to the bed, as the other shifter, a small, wiry-looking man with a receding hairline and bald spot in back, advanced into the room behind his female partner. They both maneuvered with that perfect firing walk that kept your barrel steady and lined up, and the smell preceded them, filling the room with its oily, disgusting texture.

I’d smelled their cheap cologne from the moment they’d gotten off the elevator, even while I’d been trying to find a bit of solitude to process my feelings about Lucy in the bathroom. Even as the water had splashed over my face, the waft of artificial fragrances had tickled at my senses like an unwanted, filthy feather, wrinkling my nose and nearly making me sneeze.

Then, as they’d knocked on the door, I had caught a whiff below that.

Rat.

Too bad I’d been unable to stop Lucy in time from letting them inside. That might have bought us a few seconds, at least enough for me to get my sidearm. Or, at the very least, to get Lucy out of the line of fire.

Because that was what was most important right now. Not my fear of silver, or of their being able to take me down with a bullet to the heart. But, instead, making sure Lucy got out of here in one piece. For her, it didn’t matter if the bullet was made of silver, or jacketed with plain old steel. It would kill her just the same.

Particularly if I didn’t move fast enough.

Hitter Two still had his gun pointing into space somewhere between the two of us as he swept the room, his brow furrowed as he gripped his big, suppressed pistol.

Now was my chance! “Lucy!” I barked as I rushed forward. “Get down!” I roared at the nearest attacker, the small, wiry rat shifter, roaring as I moved like lightning across the room.

Close quarters combat isn’t like in the movies. It’s fast, it’s painful, and it always carries a risk. For a shifter like me, it wasn’t as dangerous as for a human, because of my supernatural ability to quickly heal. But, under most circumstances, hand-to-hand combat could end up with you in traction, in a coma, or worse.

But right now, there was a vicious flip side to that coin. I couldn’t make it any more dangerous for my opponents, either.

Hitter Two’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he brought the barrel to bear on me, backing up on his left foot.

I kept moving, jigging to the right a little.

He tracked me with the barrel, with his eyes as dark as pitch, and fired two shots. The sound was like thunder in a bottle, booming and resounding through the air despite the suppressor on the barrel, and the bullets whizzed by me like angry bees before slapping into the hotel room’s drywall behind me.

I just hoped there weren’t any civilians right there on the other side.

I grabbed hold of the gun, my big hand closing over the top of the slide as I twisted the gun to the right, trying to lock his right index finger inside the trigger guard and snap it.

He cursed in pain as he stepped in towards me, tried to counter my greater size and leverage. He reached up with his left hand, his fingers curled into a makeshift claw, and went for my eyes.

Twisting to the side, I tightened my chin down against my neck, and shook loose of his searching fingers as I continued to bend the pistol.

“Carter!” shouted Hitter One as Hitter Two kicked at the side of my knee. “Freeze!”

My knee gave out with the surprising force of the kick, and I wobbled a little even as the man’s finger snapped like a twig.

“I said, freeze!” the woman screamed again as her partner roared in pain.

My breath roaring in my ears, my heart beating like a heavy metal drum solo, I yanked the gun back from Hitter Two, my vision a tunnel as he fell away to the side. Pistol in hand, finger on the trigger, I drew a bead on the female assailant’s center of mass.

There was only one problem, though. Lucy was standing between me and where my bullet was about to be headed. “Drop it, Carter,” the woman sneered through thin lips, her razor-like eyebrows narrowed as she adjusted her grip on the pistol she had pressed against Lucy’s temple. “Now.”

Lucy looked at me, her whole body tense, like a gazelle that’s just spotted a lion in the grass. Would she fight? Would she take flight? She locked eyes with mine, blinked long and slow as she looked first down, to her attacker’s feet, then up to her attacker’s face.

No way she was going down without a fight.

Gun still raised, I took a deep breath, giving a small, imperceptible nod as I took a short breath and held it.

The human foot has twenty-six bones and thirty-three joints, and Lucy stomped down hard right on the top of Hitter One’s. It was like a bowl of Rice Krispies as most of them broke under the fire inspector’s heel. With an ear-piercing wail, the female hitter threw her aside, her body sagging under the pain as Lucy went sprawling on the floor.

I breathed out and pulled the trigger three times, the unfamiliar pistol jumping in my hand, the sound excruciating in its volume.

The female rat shifter stumbled back, crimson blossoming on the chest of her too-big dress shirt. She reached out with a hand and tried to grasp the edge of the bed, but put her weight on it too soon. Her boots slipped on the carpet, and she went down in a pile as dark blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

I lowered the sidearm and took a step towards her as she coughed wetly, producing more blood that ran down her chin.

“Carter!” Lucy screamed from the floor. “The other one!”

I swung to my right, trying to bring the pistol up, but he was already coming at me.

His giant, hulking rat form slammed into me. Easily the size of a Great Dane, the ball of black fur bowled into me with his full weight, his rat claws and teeth tearing at my flesh as he screeched in my ear.

I stumbled back under the weight, my legs tangling beneath me as the giant furry body scurried up my own, his back claws raking at my stomach. I tumbled onto my back, trying to force him off. With no leverage, though, it was almost impossible. I could wrestle a man. But a rat?

Even my time in the PRB hadn’t prepared me for this!

Pain and heat erupted in my chest and stomach, wherever his claws went, as he knocked the gun from my hands with his bulbous head. Something inside me, too, began to break. My own fight or flight response kicking in, as I tried to deal with this wild creature mauling my face and body.

Lucy screamed again. “Carter! Get him off you!”

“I’m trying!” I yelled. But, I realized, it came out more as a growling roar. A wild, ferocious sound that rattled the windows. My only thought was that I needed to get this thing away from Lucy. That I needed to protect her. Needed to make sure she survived this.

He continued to rake at my body, which was now covered in a thick skin and a heavy matting of fur. I rose onto my hind legs, lifting his now inconsequential weight up to the ceiling with ease.

He writhed in my paws, his giant teeth flashing down at my ursine face.

I’d shifted without even realizing it, and my clothes hung from my bear body in tatters. I shook the rat once, slamming him upwards into the ceiling, growling from deep in my chest as I tried to snap his neck.

He wriggled out of my grip somehow, tearing giant gouges up and down his sides with my claws, as he wrapped himself on my face. His teeth and claws went after my throat, my snout, my eyes.

Roaring again, I stumbled back, trying to shake him loose as I stumbled away from the hotel room’s door, away from Lucy.

“Carter!” Lucy screamed in horror. “No!”

I hit the curtains, and the window beyond, felt the heavy plate glass standing between me and a three-story drop to the parking lot below give way beneath my and the rat shifter’s combined weight.

The rat latched onto my snout with his teeth, tore at my ears with his claws, as the window shattered into a million tiny pieces, a seemingly infinite fractal that spiraled out into nothingness.

“Carter!”

Too late, I realized what was wrong, what Lucy was screaming about. Together, the rat shifter and I tumbled from the hotel window wearing a draping robe of blackout curtains, following the shards of razor sharp glass down into the nothingness of empty air.

Time seemed to stand still as I fell through the sky.

I’d done plenty of airdrops as a soldier, even when I was in the PRB. But nothing quite compared to dropping without a parachute. Or to having a hundred-fifty-pound ball of muscle, claws, and fur attached to your face while you were in the form of a bear.

Finally, I shook the rat shifter off my face and threw him clear of me. And, even as I fell down backwards to the parked cars below, I could hear Lucy’s scream of terror for my safety above the flapping of the curtains, could see the frightened expression in her eyes as she leaned out the broken hotel window and followed my plummeting form.

“Carter!” she screamed again, reaching out like she could somehow catch me up and save me from my fall.

What’s that old saying? It’s not the fall that’ll kill you—it’s the abrupt stop at the end?

Well, I was about to put that adage to the test.