Chapter Twenty-two

 

“What do you think he means by ‘collateral you can’t deny’?” one of the news crew asked Alex when they were left alone that night.

“I don’t think I want to know,” Alex replied. He tried to find a comfortable position lying on the floor of his cage, but the pain in his stomach made it impossible.

“Are you okay?” the mother of the little girl he had rescued asked.

“I’ll be better when I get you guys out of here,” Alex said, keeping his answer vague on purpose. The amount of blood that puddled on the floor around him bothered him more than he wanted to let on. If he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t be around to save them.

“Keep pressure on it,” another woman said. At Alex’s questioning look, she explained, “I’m a nurse from the hospital. You need to keep pressure on it to slow the blood flow. If you can slow it enough, the wound can try to clot.”

“Thanks,” Alex replied, touched that she cared enough to give advice. He put a hand on the bandage and pushed. The pressure hurt enough that he had to grit his teeth to keep any sound from escaping at the pain.

“What if the collateral is like he said, enough to keep you doing what he wants?” a man from the group asked in a tight voice filled with fear.

Alex forced himself to sit up and meet their gazes. He read on several faces that the same fear occupied their thoughts. It pained him to see it.

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“But what if you have to?” the man pressed.

Alex let out a slow breath. He realized the red light from the camera was on and the cameraman was recording the conversation. He searched for a way to reassure them. “You know I’m the Demon of Greyton, right?” he asked.

A few of them nodded. Alex tipped his head to the side. “Do you know why I saved those girls from the gangs?”

“You like to fight?” someone guessed.

A few of the others gave small laughs in return as though they needed to do something to stay sane.

Alex smiled. “I do like to fight.” A few more smiles answered his. “But that’s not it.” His smile faltered. “Drogan’s father, the General, killed a friend of mine. We were really close.” He reached up his free hand and rubbed his eyes. “He shot her before I could save her. I tried to do everything I could, but it wasn’t enough.”

“And you could save those girls,” an older man said gently.

Alex nodded without looking at them. “I could make a difference. If at least one girl was saved from fear and pain, perhaps Kalia would know that I tried. Maybe their living would make her death mean something.”

“You helped so many of them,” the mother of the child said. “I’m sure she would be proud of you.”

“I hope so,” Alex replied. He looked up at them. “If it comes down to my life or yours, you have my word that I would rather die than let you do so for Drogan’s cause.”

Silence filled the room. It was broken by the mother’s voice a few minutes later. “How old are you, Alex?”

Alex looked at her, curious as to why she was asking. “Seventeen.”

“Drogan said he killed your parents.”

Alex nodded. “When I was eight.”

The mother gave him a warm smile. “They would be proud of you.”

He refused to let his emotions surface at her words. He knew Drogan might be watching on cameras, and refused to give the Extremists any satisfaction.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Jenkins threw open the door. “No more talking!” he yelled.

Alex settled slowly onto his back. The position hurt too much, forcing him onto his side. He kept pressure on the wound, unable to sleep for fear that his hand would fall away and he would bleed to death without regaining consciousness.

Drogan and Jenkins walked back into the room a few hours later. “We’ve had a development,” Drogan said.

Alex stood up gingerly, worried about what the Extremist’s tone implied.

Jenkin’s phone rang and he answered it. “Cassie is here,” the man reported to Drogan.

Alex’s legs felt weak. He reached for the bars to steady himself, and remembered at the last moment that they were coated in liquid silver. His stomach hurt. He wanted more than anything to curl up in a corner and forget all that was happening. Instead, he stared at the door, terrified that the footsteps he heard on the stairs would bring his sister into the living nightmare he experienced.

Instead, Siale stepped into view with half a dozen of Drogan’s guards around her.

“She was running outside the Academy walls,” a guard answered at Drogan’s questioning. “We picked her off without a problem.”

“Good work.” Drogan grabbed Siale’s arm and led her to the cage. She looked tired and her face was pale, but she locked eyes with Alex and held his gaze. “Now do you see why you’ll comply with my plan?” Drogan asked with cruel glee on his face. “Jaze wouldn’t save his mother by killing the werewolves, but I have a feeling you’ll kill humans to rescue your twin sister.”

Alex couldn’t speak. He glanced back and found the news team and humans watching them. Several of the humans had expressions of defeat as if they knew Drogan had the upper hand. The cameraman who recorded what was happening had tears in his eyes. Alex wondered if he had a wife and children back in Greyton.

Jenkins’ cellphone rang again. He answered, and after a moment, he lowered the phone.

“We have a problem.”

“Not now,” Drogan replied with irritation. “I’m in the middle of forced manslaughter.”

“There’s a problem with the northern factory,” Jenkins said.

The muscle beside Drogan’s right eye twitched. “What problem?”

“The mutants have gotten out. They’ve overrun the top floor. Krade has the place on lockdown.”

Drogan’s jaw clenched and for a moment it looked as though he would shoot Jenkins. Instead, he motioned for a guard to unlock Alex’s cage. When Alex stepped forward, six guns aimed at his head. He stopped and Siale was thrown into the cage. Drogan held out his hand for Jenkins’ cellphone.

“If anyone does anything, execute the humans,” the Extremist leader said. He stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Siale hugged Alex tight. He winced at the pressure against his stomach.

“What’s going...” Siale gasped when she stepped back and saw the blood-soaked bandages across Alex’s stomach.

“It’s the least of our concerns right now,” Alex said.

“Not if you’re bleeding to death,” Siale replied. “Let me see.”

Alex put a hand over it. The bandages squished beneath his touch. “I was impaled by a bar coated in liquid silver. There must be enough in the wound to keep it from healing.” He forced his voice to remain steady. “I think this bandage is all that keeps me from bleeding out.”

Siale’s eyes brightened with tears. She helped him to a sitting position on the floor. He put an arm around her shoulders and asked too quietly for the humans’ ears, “What are you doing here and why does he think you’re Cassie?”

She whispered in reply, “There were Extremists in the forest. I knew they were searching for your sister. I didn’t want them to find her. I told Trent was I was up to and he helped me.”

Alex stared at her. “He helped you get captured?”

She gave him a small smile. “I didn’t give him a choice. I told him my plan and said that he could either help me or be an accomplice to my death if I go on by myself.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“You have no idea,” she said. “So I went running through the forest, careful to have him call me Cassie before I left. It didn’t take them long to pick me up.”

“So what’s the plan? They would have checked you for tracking chips before bringing you here.” Alex shook his head. “How can you put yourself in danger like this?”

“Because you’re not going to die at the hands of a crazy lunatic,” she replied.

Alex gave a small smile. “How are you planning to prevent that?”

“Trent got Brock to program the drone to recognize my heat signature.”

That made Alex sit up straighter despite the pain in his stomach. “So they can follow it here!”

Siale nodded. “Security’s tight, so they’re going to make their own entrance.”

“They’re going to bomb this place?”

Siale smiled. “Exactly.”

“And it recognizes your heat signature...”

“So they know what side of the building not to blow up,” she finished.

Alex wanted to pull Siale close and kiss her, remembering only at the last minute that Drogan was no doubt watching them on the cameras and such a display would convince him that Cassie wasn’t Alex’s sister.

“Stop talking,” Jenkins said, walking to the bars. His eyes narrowed and he aimed his gun toward the humans. “Maybe I’ll pick one or two of them off just to keep you in line.”

The humans cowered away from the gun, but were kept from moving very far by the chains.

“Don’t do it, Jenkins,” Alex said, rising to his feet. “Drogan will be angry if you kill the hostages.”

Jenkins smiled. “I’ll say you tried to escape.”

Alex looked around quickly for anything he could use to stop the man from shooting the humans, but there was nothing within reach of the cage.

“Jenkins!” he yelled as the man’s finger tightened on the trigger.

An explosion shook the building, throwing everyone to the floor. Walls cracked and pieces of the ceiling fell. A crack ran near the humans and their chain pulled free. One side of the cage was smashed. Guards ran for the werewolves, but Alex shoved his way through, careful to keep Siale behind him where the guards couldn’t reach her.

“Kill the humans,” Jenkins yelled. “I’ve got the werewolves.”

Guns were lifted. Blue-tinged rage flooded through Alex.

He crossed the floor in a heartbeat. His claws found one guard, then another. He spun and swiped across the gun hand of a third, then buried his fist deep in the man’s stomach. He threw the guard into two others.

“Stop!” Jenkins barked.

Alex glanced back and found the man with a gun pointed directly at Siale. The ground shook beneath his feet from the explosion. Dust filled the air. Every beat of Alex’s heart sounded loud in his ears. He couldn’t reach the man before he shot Siale. Alex had left her alone, vulnerable, like he had promised he never would.

A shot rang out. Jenkins jerked and when he squeezed the trigger and the bullet went wide, missing the werewolf. Siale punched him in the throat, then the stomach. She followed with a backhand across to the man’s jaw that spun him halfway around. Alex was there to meet him. He slashed Jenkin’s throat followed by his stomach. Jenkins took two steps back, then collapsed to the floor.

“Siale,” Alex said, his voice deep and gruff from morphing.

“Protect the humans,” Siale replied. “I’m fine.”

Alex glanced back to see the remaining guards running for the humans. He grabbed a bar from the cage as he ran past. He swung it and took down three guards. Another swipe caught the last two before they could reach the hostages.

The surge of energy had cost Alex. His body morphed back to normal. His mind registered that his hand was burning, and he let the bar fall to the ground. He rubbed his hand on his pants in an attempt to wipe away the liquid silver that coated it.

“Are you okay?” Siale asked.

Alex nodded, seeing the image of Jenkins almost shooting her again in his mind. The sound of a gun falling to the floor caught his attention. He looked over his shoulder to see the mother of the girl he had saved step away from the gun she had dropped.

“You saved Siale,” he said, his thoughts racing as he tried to come to terms with what had happened.

“You saved my daughter,” she replied. “Thank you.”

Something hit against the door. Alex moved so that he was between the door, the humans, and Siale. His hands clenched into fists. A bang sounded and the door blew inward. Jaze stood in the cloud of smoke. Relief filled the dean’s eyes when he saw Alex and Siale.

“Let’s get you guys out of here,” he said.