~Chapter Thirty-One: A Fight to Remember~
My fingers itch to grab the metal handle of the building's glass lobby door, but I refrain for now. Despite being able to see into the lobby, the lobby is very large and not everything is in view from where we are. It would also look extremely suspicious if someone saw me scanning the room through the doors. Which is why there is already a scout inside – a Were, since their noses are far better than any demon's or Mer's – to make sure there is not an ambush lying in wait. I gave him two minutes to get in and out, and those two minutes are almost up. If he is not out in the next ten seconds, our team will rush the lobby and secure the area with force, if necessary.
If necessary, ha! Of course it's going to be necessary.
This might be a witch-operated building, but a few humans were discovered on the business's registry. We want to avoid harming or revealing ourselves to those humans, if they are innocent of what goes on here. If they know about this whole operation, though, then we will be less inclined to go easy on them.
I am just about to open the door and motion my team – all of whom are waiting in a circular clump behind me and to my left, perfectly out of view of the doors – forward, when I spot our scout calmly walking into view. Since he is not running from anything, I take a step back from the door so it does not hit me when he opens it, waiting for him to come out to us. It takes a few seconds, but at least he appears no worse for wear when he exits the building.
Without prompting, he reports his findings as soon as he is out of sight of anyone that might look out the doors. "The lady at the front desk is human. The security guard in front of the elevators is not; he smelled like a bear, but either didn't notice me or didn't care, 'cause I was only talking to the lady. They're the only two in the lobby, but there were cameras and, even if they don't give us away, the bear can signal others with his radio before we can reach him."
While I was not foolish enough to believe they would not have cameras, it is still a problem. The whole point of an ambush is to have the element of surprise, and it is hard to keep that element if the enemy knows exactly how many attackers there are before we even get past the first defence. However, that is not going to stop us now.
"Once we're inside, the cameras are low priority. There might be a panic button under the front desk, which is why Delta will use his magic to knock the lady off her feet," I order, relying on our codenames, as Hellions are trained to do in the field. Names like Zagawainon and Fharkimar are too much of a mouthful and hard to remember when fighting to stay alive. The wolves may all have simpler names, but they are not exempt from this rule; they just get a different set of code names – Shepard, Dane, Timber, Red, etc.
Once I get a nod from Delta, the red-haired wind demon, I continue, "Kilo and November, you need to subdue the bear before he sounds the alarm. Anyone watching the cameras will see us coming, but I'm hoping that we'll already be on the stairs by the time they sound the alarm. Elevators are off-limits, in case someone shuts them down while we're inside."
The two brown-haired earth demons accept their roles with nods. I catch Nero's eye – he is near the back of our not-so-little group – and offer him a small smile before finishing up. "Stay in formation. No matter what happens, demons and Dolphin on the outside, wolves on the inside until it is safe for shifting," I remind them, resisting the urge to smirk at Nero's code name, which he is not so fond of. 'Dolphin' is a pretty good one, though, and he should be happy that he was not given the name that would fit well with my 'Romeo'. He should be glad, too, since my first code name was 'Chatter-box'.
Without further hesitation, I reach over and pull the door open, and with a flick of my wrist, I signal the team in. They rush around me to get into the door. As they go, I glance at the big but mostly unoccupied street that we are in clear view of. However, people still glance our way out of curiosity, though they do not look for more than a few seconds, knowing that something is up, but not wanting to be the one to call the police about it. And it's not like we're carrying guns, just a bunch of old-fashioned swords. If the movies are anything to go by, humans do not want to mess with ninjas, and we look very similar with all our dark clothing and not-modern gear. Due to our werewolf guests, my Hellion teammates were willing to forgo their usual white uniforms in favor of something made better for stealth, and I wasn't even given the option of having my uniform back, since I am technically working for Koa, not Sidr.
Before I even enter the building, following the last wolf in, the woman behind the desk is stuck to her chair away from her desk and the guard in front of the elevators is out cold. I read their files and Vepkoadur vouched for all of my team, which is the highest praise one can get from the old captain, but I am still surprised by their efficiency. However, there is no time for congratulations, as everyone falls into formation – an arrow-like formation with the two earth demons taking point and the wolves gathered between the demon outline.
Nero is on the other side of the arrow outline from me, near the middle, with a sword at his hip, yet to be drawn. Across from him is the only water demon, who also has a sword, should there be nothing for him to use his magic on. I am near at the end of my side, two swords strapped to my back and ready to help, but saving my magic until later. The metal container of pills is in one of the pockets of my black cargo pants, within reach should I need them, but Koa's warning about not using them for five hours unless absolutely necessary has kept me from boosting my already-large collection of magic.
As a group, we rush the staircase, tense in anticipation for an attack that could come from anywhere. Our goal is upstairs, but we will definitely need to head downstairs at some point to free any prisoners kept down there. When I motion them to, everyone stops moving.
I listen for any movement on the staircase above or below us, but all I can hear is the soft puffs of breathing from my team. With a jerk of my hand, I signal everyone up. This might be a safe zone for the wolves to shift, but it is too narrow for them to properly fight as wolves if it comes down to it, so it would be better to keep them human for now.
Everyone rushes up the stairs, forming a file of two to three people in each row heading up. At the speed we move, it is only a matter of a handful of minutes before we reach the top floor, which is up ten flights of stairs. Though, the alarm started blaring after we reached the second floor. A little slower on the uptake than expected, but perhaps the person watching the monitors was not as diligent as we planned on them being.
The alarm must have set off some sort of lockdown, though, as we end up having to kick the stairwell door open. It takes a little longer than I would have liked, but there is no helping it and we are soon flooding into the hallway before returning to our formation. The hallway is empty and wide, making it easy for all of us to fit.
Though, since it will likely not remain empty for long, I look at the wolves. "Shift in the stairwell," I order, pointing the wolves back at the door we just broke down. At my nod, two demons break off to guard the wolves while they are at their most vulnerable, as anything could be coming up those stairs after us now that the alarm has warned everyone of our presence in their base.
The sound of swords being drawn brings my attention away from the wolves and towards the pair of witches that appeared out in the hall. I narrow my eyes at their glowing wands, ignoring the concerned glance Nero shoots me. "Take them out," I quietly instruct, wanting this to be over before any more witches have time to gather. The sooner we reach our goal, the better.
- - - - - - -
Stepping over an unconscious – or maybe he is dead – witch, I look around for Nero. While I kept him in my sights during the entire fight, which involved more than just the two witches, he dropped off my radar the second I became distracted by an accidental nudge on the hip from one of the wolves during the last minute of the fight. Thankfully, I spot Nero crouching beside an injured demon before I get the chance to start panicking now that the battle is over and we have won.
Relieved, I allow myself to take in the damage dealt to the team, which is a lot. However, the witches, who were oddly weaker than I remember them being, are in far worse condition than any of us. We do have one dead on our side, the wind demon, Delta. While his death will be mourned, now is not the time. This mission needs to be completed now, before anything else can happen.
As I am approaching the scorched double doors at the far end of the hall, Nero and a fellow fire demon fall into step behind me. Feeling more confident than I would without them at my back, I push open the doors and enter the well-lit room without hesitation. Behind a large wooden desk, a woman is leaning back comfortably in her chair, watching us without any fear or concern. "If you're here for information, you might as well just kill me because I'm not giving you anything," she says, and I cannot tell if it is false bravado or not.
"We have ways of making you talk," I assure her, though we are actually not here to gather the information ourselves. It is not our job to extract the knowledge; that will be left up to a different team. We are just here for the fight and capture of the witch in charge of the base.
She suddenly leans forward, no longer at ease, making all three of us tense in anticipation of an attack. However, she merely purses her lip and furrows her brow as she stares fixatedly at me. I cautiously stop my approach about five feet from the desk, not sure what she is doing. To my surprise, though, she seems to come to some kind of realization that ruins her worry-free mask.
"I know you," she declares, but there is a questioning tone to it.
"You do," I reply vaguely, because we have met before. We met the day she sentenced me to the prison, only a few minutes after I arrived here. I did not even get to spend an hour in one of the cells downstairs – the ones that Heather's report explained in detail – as they sent me off immediately, not wanting to give anyone the chance to rescue me, or for me to rescue myself.
For a moment, I thought she merely did not recognize me, but what she says next explains her confusion. "He said he killed you."
Beside me, Nero stiffens, but I keep my body language as relaxed as I can, hiding my flinch by running my hand through my hair. "Well, whoever he is needs to stop telling people that I'm dead, because I'm not," I inform her, feigning disinterest in the topic despite how desperately I want to ask who she is talking about, though I have a pretty good idea.
Aiken never gave away who he was talking to, taking his secrets to the darkest prison pit in the Pacific kingdom. This means that we never found out who tried to kill me or who the mystery intruder was allied with. The intruder is still very much at large, as we know next to nothing about him. However, if we know that he is for sure working with the witches, and maybe even get a name, tracking him down will be far easier.
"It's impossible, though," she murmurs, seemingly talking to herself now. "He wouldn't lie to us, and he definitely couldn't be wrong."
"Everyone makes mistakes," Nero offers, thankfully keeping up the banter instead of getting right to the questions that I – we, most likely – so badly want answered. However, to make it clear what we want would only make her clam up. For now, I am content to let her surprise and confusion control her mouth.
She shakes her head, standing up. It makes all of us stiffen, but she simply walks close enough that she can get a better look at me. "He doesn't, though. At least, not in this," she disagrees, looking me over with a tilt of her head.
Could she be any more cryptic?
"Yeah, well, maybe the guy you hired wasn't as honest as you thought," I reply, crossing my arms to keep my hands from clench in frustration at how slow this is going.
The witch snorts in surprised amusement. "Hired?" She asks, clearly entertained by the notion. However, as soon as the word is out of her mouth, she stiffens and her expression hardens, signalling the end of any information we might get out of her temporarily-loosened tongue. "Well played, but I'm done talking."
"It was worth a try." I shrug and take a couple of steps forward, reaching into one of the pockets of my pants for a pair of magic handcuffs. "Now, do you want your hands in front or behind your back?"
- - - - - - -
The sun is just starting to rise when the vans pull into the hotel's underground parking structure and Vepkoadur is waiting with a party of two other demons, both of whom are unfamiliar to me. One of the two demons directs the vans into specific parking spots, which are all in a row, making me wonder how they managed to keep other guests from parking in them. There do not appear to be any signs or room numbers that would warn people away.
Despite having waited down here for who knows how long, Koa is not patient enough to wait for me to get out of the van, as he comes around to the passenger side – which I am sitting in – and taps on my window. I am tempted to just open the door and see if he is fast enough to dodge or not, but since the other van beside us has started to unload its passengers, I would end up waiting until they finished clearing out anyway. Reluctantly, I roll down the window. "Yes?"
"How'd it go?" He questions, leaning on crossed arms over the door where the glass was. "Did the pill work?"
"Yes, it did. There are now some very large holes in the top floor's interior walls, and many of the doors in the basement prison will need to be replaced if anyone intends to use them again," I reply. It is only thanks to Nero that the building is still standing, as he reminded me of why it is such a bad idea to demolish an entire building in the middle of a populated-
Wait, what did he mean by 'did the pill work'?
"Is there a reason the pill might not work?" I ask, suddenly very wary about what he gave me back on the beach. If he gave me some kind of experimental magic pill...
The captain rubs his eyes before shaking his head. "I haven't had enough coffee yet so that came out wrong," he says by way of explanation. When he realizes that his answer was not good enough for ease my suspicion, he adds, "There was nothing wrong, but General Hetac was a little worried that you might have a funny reaction to it since you weren't trained to handle a magic boost, like the soldiers in the Fae war were."
Before I can say anything in reply, a hand lands on my shoulder and forces me to turn towards the backseat. Nero pulls me in for a quick, possessive kiss that I all but melt into. When he pulls away far too soon for my liking, I reach over to pull him back, but he only offers me a small smile before he climbs out the back of the van to join the gathering demon group.
"Whipped," Koa remarks teasingly, which earns him a flick on the forehead from me. He rears back a little, but does not remove his arms from the door. "Not that it's a bad thing. I think it's adorable."
"If you don't move, I'm going to hit you with the door next," I warn, and immediately follow it up by pulling on the handle to make it open, not waiting to see if he intends to move. Sadly, he does, though he almost ends up stumbling into the other van.
As I climb out, Vepkoadur stares at the many burn holes in my shirt and pants now that he has a better view of them. "Did you set yourself on fire again?"
"Perhaps," I grumble, knowing that it is weird even for fire demons to set oneself on fire. It was purely by accident this time, as I was trying to make an explosion from my hand, but I had more magic than I thought stored up and accidentally blew myself up, too. Thankfully, my pants are still in one piece, though my shirt has seen better days.
To my surprise, Koa does not immediately make a joke about it. Instead, he says, "You might want to put on a new shirt before the meeting."
"Meeting?"
Vepkoadur nods and leads the way out of the small space between the vans. Most of the team – and our prisoner –already left, either to put the witch somewhere she cannot escape or to take care of those who were wounded. "There's a review and strategy meeting in," he pauses to look down at his watch, "two minutes ago. Oh Skuure, no time to change – we're late."
[AN: As you probably noticed, this chapter has been split up into two parts, as it was 7000+ words. The next part will be posted in the next few hours, sometime before midnight in PT (Pacific Time). Hope you are all having a great start to your week! Also, for those wondering, Zagawainon (Zah-gah-way-non) and Fharkimar (Far-kih-mar).]