Hammers in the Shadows

Part Two: Hammers in the Night - Chapter Nineteen

I slowly took up the slack on the trigger, not that there really was much and began to squeeze, adjusting my aim as I did so. When the weapon bellowed with a hollow boom I racked it and switched targets without a second thought. While a shotgun wasn't an ideal weapon to use at any great range, I had done what I could to mitigate its lack of accuracy by using slugs in this weapon. The leader's head opened up like some kind of twisted red flower before he collapsed to the ground like a string-cut puppet. I kept the hail of heavy lead going, only missing three times as my targets moved about, trying not to get caught in the hail of heavy lead projectiles. As soon as the slide locked, indicating that I was out of ammunition, I put the weapon down and began heading down the nearest set of stairs down towards where four of our Pride Protectors had already begun to engage Hammers, though to be fair the Hammers were doing surprisingly well.

It was obvious, even for me, that these people had been well trained for basic hand to hand combat however; as well trained as they were I don't think any of them were ready to be attacked by a pair of high dominance cats such as Anna and myself. I moved rapidly and smoothly towards my first opponent while I was still coming down the stairs from the second level to the first level. This one was a wolf and I could almost smell the insanity on her as she moved with brutal, unthinking speed. For some reason I could also sense the wolf in her whimpering at the complete lack of reason that her human half was displaying.

I felt a slight twinge of pity for the sad creature that this Were had become before I put an end to her suffering by drawing my sword across her neck as I continued to move down the stairs after deflecting her attack down and to the right. If this was the shape that these Hammers were in I felt that they would fall easily, though I knew, in my heart that each time I killed somebody I would be causing some degree of pain to my own soul. I'd learned that much in the past eleven years as I'd gotten used to being what I was.

Death may be something that any predator hands out as a matter of course, but it still wasn't something I treated casually as I moved down the stairs dodging another assault and removing another Hammer from the crowd that we faced.

As we reached the ground floor Anna and I found ourselves simply defending the head of the foot of the stairs as our attackers sought to reach us, pressing themselves into a tight mass of fighting, shouting, yelling fur and weapons.

While their eagerness to reach us did little to help us, as it pushed us back up the stairs, it also did little to help them because it mad it so that we only had to fight three to four at once, and there wasn't really any space for finesse or fancy technique as we fought them. It was simply a matter of brute force, powerful, though tightly controlled sweeping blows and rough hacking moves that favoured Anna's own weapon over my longer, straighter weapon.

It was at that point that I heard the thunder of a shotgun over the general cacophony of the fight and I spared a moment to glance up to see Sergey, my UTS-15 in his hands, firing into the mass of Hammers in front of Anna and I, the slugs from the weapon doing frightful damage to that tight packed mass of targets. Though instead of making the press facing us lessen it instead made things worse as the desperate Weres tried to push forwards in a twisted hope that if they could complete their mission before they were killed they would gain some form of respite before the pride descended on them to wreck their terrible vengeance.

I panted with effort as we got down to the last four, the stone stairs which we stood on were slippery with spilled blood and I could see the sad desperation on the faces of the four who remained facing Anna and I.

"Why do you continue?" I panted, "When you know that you can't possibly win here?" I asked parrying a blow from an equally tired looking Amur Leopard though my nose once more detected the slight taint in her scent of somebody who'd gone rogue and left her original Pride long ago.