Page 26 of Under A New Moon

“If we don’t figure out something fast, you’ll be meeting me here forever, because I’m pretty sure housekeeping doesn’t clean up here. I thought the floor smelled like rat piss.”

She immediately began low crawling in the opposite direction, carefully balancing her weight on the joists so as not to collapse the flimsy ceiling; it was painful and slow going, to say the least.

“So, you have a lot of experience with this sort of thing?” she knew he was trying hard to get a handle on the situation.

“Are you kidding? This is my high school prom all over again.”

“Lucky guy. What’d you arrest him for?”

“Unlicensed cunnilingus.”

His laugh was genuine and for a moment she forgot that the stakes had never been higher and their odds of surviving this were… suboptimal.

In mid-chuckle, the ceiling gave out and both of them plummeted through into the room below, but it was at least a different room. The crashed in a heap onto the floor in a pile of asbestos, dust, and rat shit. The room however was not vacant.

A balding, portly fellow had a woman half his age bent over a chair; plowing for all he was worth. They both stared at the fallen couple in amazement, when the woman said, “I didn’t agree to this, and it’ll cost extra.”

“What room is this?” Darla was on her feet and helping Galen up. “You ok?” she asked instinctively.

“Only hurts my pride.”

Darla opened the door just enough to see a number before slamming it again. “We’re on the other side, but they’ve probably already breached and know what we did. No question they’ll circle back. We have to go now!”

With a nod of acceptance, Galen was ready and also brushed past the hooker and her john.

“I mean, not that much extra,” said the gruff prostitute after getting an eyeful of Galen’s ass in his jeans.

Once out the door, they broke hard for the stairs.

Commanding shouts were echoing all about and she heard Galen draw a deep breath through his nostrils.

He can smell them, but I don’t need wolf senses to know we’re about to be in the fight of our lives.

She silently recalled all of her training and experience. Every scrap, melee, and brawl she’d ever been in had led to this moment. Every ounce of martial skill she could muster is what it would take to get out of this alive.

She grabbed the railing of the steps and vaulted over it.

Twenty-One

Galen

When he hit the ground, the impact was too much for his legs and they buckled under him. Galen’s a teen pup, and terribly confused in the dark, and cold of the fateful autumn night. All around, and above he heard the clamoring and frenzied commotion of people grabbing belongings, but he also heard gunfire.

Screams rang out and some other children fell into the cellar with him; clutching at their pajamas and stuffed animals. Since he was older than they were, Galen crawled over to them despite the pain in his legs and wrapped them up in his arms. “It’ll be ok. The pack won’t let us down. My dad will fix this, I promise.”

He wasn’t wrong, because over the blasting of the gunfire they heard a howl pierce the night air, and echo in their ears. The three children, instinctually, raised their voices in a similar yet infantile mockery of it. Not just them though, all throughout the compound, and in the structure above they heard the return howl, as the need to answer the call of their alpha was so strong.

Then there were different screams, gut-wrenching snarling as the gunshots became less and less frequent. The echo’s bones breaking, flesh-tearing and the smell of blood on the air began to make the hair on Galen’s head and neck stand up. Fear was being replaced with bloodlust, and a desire to rend his enemy’s limb from limb.

Ultimately, an adult opened the cellar door, covered in blood that wasn’t his own. He held a hand down to the children. “Come on now. They know where we are and we have to move on, right now. But don’t be afraid you’re safe with your pack.”

Galen snapped back out his memory as he landed on the ground and tumbled with the fall. He and Darla had just jumped a flight and a half of stairs to the concrete below. Desperately trying to lose their pursuers from PEACE. The very organization that Darla worked for; founded by the same people that hunted Galen’s pack when he was young.

“I can’t believeyou work for these sons of bitches.” he nearly spat after cursing to get the foul taste of PEACE out of his mouth. “If you knew half of what I know, you never would have signed up.”

Darla was back on her feet scanning the floors above them for signs of PEACE’s equivalent to SWAT. “Not a great time for this discussion, but there are good people, with the right intentions working at PEACE, and there are a helluva lot of abbies with bad ones.”

She immediately winced at her use of the pejorative.

---