Werewolf Apocalypse: Rise of the Lycans

The Clash

The glass windows imploded from the screams and sent a thousand razor-sharp crystal shards across the marble boardroom as a massive, silver-furred body slammed through the glass fifty stories up. The creature crashed onto the long conference table, wooden mahogany splintering into kindling beneath eight hundred pounds of raw, dense muscle. I looked away to avoid glass shards getting in my eyes.

"Cover!" Cassian barked without the velvet edge of the voice he earlier talked in.

The three tactical guards fired instantly, sending blue tracer rounds that lighted up the darkened suite in rapid and deafening quick succession, towards the beast. Steel and silver slugs ripped into the beast’s chest, but the wolf didn't fall. It let out a guttural roar that rattled the teeth in my jaw, and swept its massive arm across the floor, picking and launching a two-hundred-pound marble pedestal directly into two of the guards, but for their swift maneuver, they'd have been crushed against the back wall.

If I stayed here, I risked dying and even worse, losing Clara. There was no life without her. In the chaotic crossfire, the power cut completely, dropping the boardroom into pitch darkness. It was saved only by the flickering red emergency lights lining the floorboards and the orange firelight reflecting from the dying city outside.

That was our only chance of escape. With adrenaline surging through my system and drowning out the lingering numbness of the paralytic, I slammed my weight backward, driving the heavy steel legs of my chair into the floor, tilting it over until the wooden armrest shattered against the marble. The nylon straps slacked just enough and gave me just enough room to yank my left wrist free, then I reached over to snap the buckle holding my right arm.

"Clara!" I rasped, dropping to my knees and scrambling over to her chair.

Her eyes were wide and glowed of that faint, dangerous amber in the dim red emergency light, like it had before. I could tell it was coming again.

"Leo..." she choked out in pure terror, her hands trembling as I slapped the quick-release catch on her chest harness. "The sound... they're everywhere..."

"Stay low!" I growled, grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the chair just as a heavy silver blade whistled through the air where her head had been a second prior, embedding four inches deep into the leather headrest.

I turned to see Cassian without his suit coat, his pale face was illuminated by the red strobe lights and his eyes were pure crimson now, with his upper lip pulled back to reveal slender, needle-sharp fangs.

"You aren't leaving this tower, Vance," Cassian hissed. His voice echoed from three places at once as he moved with sickening, blurred speed. "Your blood belongs to the Synod!"

I didn't have a gun or a silver weapon, and I thought our death was near. But as he launched himself towards me, and his cold, chalk-white hand reached for my neck, my bare right palm which was still raw and blistered from touching Clara's bite, seemed to react on instinct. The faint, sun-like sigil seared into my skin flared with a sudden, blinding heat.

It didn't reach out to block, it struck forward, slamming my open, burning right palm directly into the center of Cassian's chest.

A sharp, electric CRACK tore through the room and Cassian let out a high-pitched, screeching gasp as the glowing sigil branded itself through his silk shirt. The heat hit him like a thousand punch and a mini explosion and threw the vampire lord fifteen feet backward across the slick floor, crashing hard into the remaining glass partition. He clutched his chest and looked down at the white smoke pouring from his skin where my palm had touched him. His crimson eyes wide with genuine horror.

"The Sun-Crest..." he gasped, coughing up dark, viscous blood. "It burns..."

"Let's go!" I screamed, grabbing Clara’s arm and dragging her toward the broken double doors leading to the executive hallway.

The hallway was a slaughterhouse as two more subterranean wolves who had found their way in were tearing through the Synod’s tactical security force. Silver casings littered the carpet, and flickering emergency strobes casted terrifying, disjointed shadows of long jaws and tearing limbs against the walls. Alarm sirens blared, and a mechanical voice repeating over and over: CRITICAL CONTAINMENT BREACH. EVACUATE ALL LEVELS.

"The service stairs!" Clara gasped and pointed down a side corridor. Her grip on my hand was surprisingly tight—almost painfully tight. I could feel her fingernails digging into my skin as her fever spiked again. "Leo, hurry... I can't... I can't hold it back much longer!"

We sprinted down the side hallway, bursting through the heavy steel door of the service stairwell.

The air inside the shaft was thick with dust and the heavy stench of wet fur. From deep down in the darkness fifty floors below, a chorus of wild, echoing howls vibrated up the concrete walls. The subterranean horde was climbing the tower.

"We go down," I said, as I looked at the dark concrete steps ahead. "And we don't stop for anything."

We took the concrete stairs three at a time, descending into a dark vertical tunnel that vibrated like a engine room.

Fifty floors up, the alarms were a distant whine, but down below, the sound was terrifying, it was a chorus of heavy footfalls and claws scratching against stone, rushing up toward us like a rising tide.

"Leo," Clara panted, her arm wrapped around my neck as I took most of her weight. "They're coming up... from the bottom."

"Then we cut off on a middle floor," I gritted out. "Find an emergency skybridge or a fire ladder."

Her skin felt like a hot iron pressing against my neck, but I didn't care. The unnatural sweat was coming back, and so was the unnatural tremor. The fever was cooking her from the inside out, burning away her human endurance.