Predator Code (Tales from Wildhearth #1)

Chapter 34 - Ring the Bell for Belforra

They stumbled into Rapid's safe house tired, bloodied, and bruised but in one piece.

The journey through the catacombs was still a blur in Jett's mind as she slumped into a sitting position against the wall, panting for breath and looking over the various scrapes and bruises she'd earned in the scuffle with the enforcers. Descending into the darkness, they'd been totally at the mercy of Rapid's sense of direction, but the sharp-minded foxkin steered them with ruthless ease through the network of subterranean tunnels sunk beneath the Gjornharr District. She had no idea where they'd ended up, and the odds of the wolfkin being able to trace them through the labyrinth seemed slim.

Her mind boiled with questions as to who'd built the passages, what for, and how Rapid had stumbled across them in the first place, but they would need to wait. Right now, she was just happy he knew about them. The knowledge had saved all their lives.

The entrance of the safehouse was barely wide enough to fit one body at a time, but once inside, it opened to a broad rectangle of a room with a low arched ceiling. The place smelled of damp stone, mud, and metal.

When the lights sprang on, Jett grimaced, turning her head away and shielding her eyes with one paw. Around her, the others reacted similarly, save for Rapid, who stalked out into the middle of the room, his face twisted with a malignant rage she'd never seen in him before. The blood from the fight had now dried into his fur, streaking him with gory smears of red-like barbaric tattoos.

The room itself resembled a kind of barracks, with a dozen racks of weapons bolted to the walls alongside equipment lockers. Thin, hard-surfaced bunks folded out from the walls, enough for twenty people to sleep in complete discomfort; wires hung from the ceiling, suspending dusty light bulbs to fill the room with a mucky glare.

Getting her breath back, Jett pushed herself upright again with a groan. "Is everybody okay?"

"I'm not sure 'okay' is the word I'd use," Gallant replied tartly. "But I'm alive."

"Nothing that can't be fixed." Karno eased himself into a sitting position on one of the bunks, wincing. Sucking a breath through his teeth, he examined the array of bloody scratches and bite marks that his brawl with the enforcer had left behind.

"Is there a medikit around here?" Jett asked.

Rapid didn't respond but stomped over to one of the lockers and twisted an access code into the old-style combination lock. From within, he pulled free a red satchel and tossed it to Gallant.

"Check everybody over," he grated.

Seeing the look on his face, the deerkin didn't argue, wordlessly taking the kit and moving to examine the members of their little band one by one. Jett looked around and felt a hollowness in her stomach at the pitiful display. Five of them—five ragtag, barely connected individuals—were all that now stood between the wolfkin and the completion of their plan. She sighed, gingerly touching the gashes left in her flank by the enforcer.

After checking Bronco over, Gallant approached her, bandages in hand, and her eyes quickly flickered down to the injury.

"I need to clean that," she said, her voice subdued, a faintly shell-shocked expression glazing over her features. Jett just nodded, her brain occupied elsewhere. She gritted her teeth at the sharp twist of pain that jolted up her side as Gallant daubed the gashes with antiseptic, but even that couldn't pull her away from the single, frightening thought: what now?

The deerkin worked quickly, and soon Jett had a string of fresh, crisp bandages holding her side together, leaving Gallant to look over Karno's crisscrossing patchwork of wounds. Part of her wanted to help, to ask him if he was alright, to hug him tightly in relief that he'd survived his brush with death.