The Keeper of Wolves

Chapter 5

They thundered down the stairs like a pack of rampaging bison and broke off at random intervals. With several hundred immortal marshaled now splitting up and falling upon the hapless men and women who hadn't vacated in time, as well as the severely irritated immortals newly-freed from captivity, the remaining humans stood no chance. Kosazana held back, preferring to open doors and guide those too weak to fight to safety. Up on ground level, a large receiving party had stayed behind, the better to safely escort the wounded back to a base. Once or twice, Kosazana had to help someone walk, or heal them with spells her parents had taught her: but much to her great relief, very few of the imprisoned immortals seemed in terrible shape.

The first level was compromised of the benevolent creatures: fae and shapeshifters and drow. They were easy. The second level held a mix of the above, as well as some younger witches, middle-aged vampires, and older werewolves. The third level held Elders, witches and wolves and vampires and shifters and fae and druids and nymphs. These were angry, bitter, and frequently exploded out of their cells shrieking for vengeance. It was all Kosazana could do to stand aside and watch, horrified and transfixed, as they voraciously hunted down and fell upon the humans that had previously controlled them. Those were difficult, and even more gut-wrenching to watch.

The fourth and fifth levels held increasingly-old, increasingly angry immortals, all of whom were unleashed without a second thought. The raiding party had made quite a ruckus to announce themselves, and if they hadn't done such a good job, the previously-released creatures certainly had. Word had spread like wildfire, and Kosazana and her group had learned quickly that, once the creatures still held captive got wind of their impending release, it was best to merely slide out of the way and let them find their way to revenge, and then the surface, on their own.

The sixth and final level was one that set Kosazana's heart pounding in her chest as soon as she saw it. There was a single door behind an extensive control panel, a bench behind that that could accommodate six people easily. The door itself looked like a nuclear bomb door: it was recessed several inches into the wall, and had to be several more inches thick. The entirety of the room was reinforced similarly, with grates in the ground instead of actual flooring. Swallowing hard, finding her task all the more trying with the lump in her throat, Kosazana gratefully glanced back at the sound of footsteps and then moved aside to admit Tyr, Isabelle, Alanna, and several others.

"This has to be it," Tyr muttered under his breath, approaching the control panel and surveying the various buttons, levers, switches, and keys. "Can't be anybody else."

"Let me see," Alanna asked quietly, stepping up next to him.

"Wait," Isabelle advised. "We need a few more witches to try to disarm all of this. One wrong switch and we kill him."

"Why don't we fish out one of the pesky little humans who had a hand in this?" Tyr suggested, an ugly sneer on his lips as he turned back around. Kosazana had never seen him look so gleefully anticipatory of the proposed terrorization of a human. "They're easy to get things out of."

"How could we trust anything they said or did, though?" Isabelle argued. "There have been several who have been vocal about it, even if most have not: they will take their information to their graves, however quickly or painfully they come. If they're prepared to die for this information, they don't have anything to lose by lying to us, or killing him."

"What if we bypassed it entirely."

All conversing parties stopped and turned to stare at Kosazana. Suddenly self-conscious, a bit surprised at the abrupt shift in attention, she managed to speak without stuttering despite her hesitancy as she elaborated, "don't bother with trying to crack the codes. Just go at the door with whatever we've got."