Werewolf Apocalypse: Rise of the Lycans

The Curse's Connection

Hurry!" I whispered frantically, grabbing Clara’s hand in the pitch-black crawlspace and pulling her deeper into the concrete utility shaft. "Tell me everything you see, don't leave out any details."

Behind us, a deafening, wet CRUNCH echoed through the sluice grate, followed by the metallic screech of tearing steel armor. Alpha Vane had finished off the Crimson Synod squad in seconds.

Clara stumbled beside me on her hands and knees, trying to keep up with the vision and run. Her breath came in uneven, shallow gasps as her fingers stayed pressed tightly against the freezing scar on her neck. "He's... he's standing over the vampire squad leader's body," she whispered, her voice trembling with a strange, hollow echo. "He's huge, Leo. Through his eyes, everything looks washed in blood-red and silver. He can smell our blood from your shoulder and my neck cutting right through the sewer stink and he's not going to stop coming for us."

"Which way is he turning?" I asked, keeping my voice low as we scrambled around a sharp ninety-degree bend in the narrow maintenance pipe.

"Left," Clara gasped suddenly, wincing as if a needle had jabbed her temple. "He's sending three scouts down the main aqueduct drain, and he's coming straight toward the sluice gate himself!"

I knew I had powers, but I didn't know what chance I stood against him. We can't outrun him in a straight line.

I pressed my palm against the damp concrete wall, feeling the faint, lingering vibration of the Sun-Crest humming beneath my blistered skin. Every time I used it, the heat felt sharper. It was less like a sudden accident and more like a muscle I was finally learning to flex.

"Stay glued to my back," I told her, pushing forward faster until the cramped crawlspace opened into a rusted, vertical service junction. Above us, a corroded iron ladder led up toward a heavy, sealed steel bulkhead door marked with faded transit authority stencils: Sub-Level 4 — Central Station Access.

"He just ripped the sluice grate off the wall!" Clara cried out, dropping to one knee as a wave of psychic pressure slammed through their link, making blood trickle from her left nostril. "He's inside the pipe, Leo! He's crawling after us! He... he's thirty yards back!"

I lunged up the rusted ladder two rungs at a time, reaching back to haul Clara up beside me and my wounded left shoulder screamed in protest, hot blood soaking through the makeshift bandage she'd tied. But I ignored it.

I slammed my fist against the heavy steel bulkhead overhead. It was locked. The electronic keypad beside it was dead, its wires had been fried from the citywide blackout.

Beneath our boots, the entire concrete shaft vibrated with a low, guttural growl that rattled my teeth. I looked and saw a pair of glowing violet eyes flaring in the pitch-black tunnel twenty feet below as it caught the pale reflection of wet concrete. It was followed by Alpha Vane’s massive, clawed shoulders scraping against the narrow walls as he forced his way upward.

"Leo!" Clara shouted, bracing her boots against the ladder rungs beneath me.

I tried to release the powers of the Sun-Crest, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. I knew I could, I just needed the right frame of mind and motivation.

"Focus!" I murmured to my terrified self. I closed my eyes for half a second, shutting out the roaring snarl rising from the dark. I didn't think about the monsters, or the Synod, or the burning city above. I focused entirely on the woman clinging to the ladder below me, on the steady beat of her human heart that I'd fought like hell to bring back and the calming thoughts sent a heat surge down my right arm, concentrating into the center of my blistered palm. Instead of letting it explode wildly like before, I pressed my hand flat against the heavy steel deadbolt housing and pushed.

A concentrated blade of blinding, golden-white fire lanced out of my Sun-Crest and sliced straight through three inches of solid hardened steel like hot butter with a SHING-HISS. Molten slag dripped past my forearm as the deadbolt gave way with a sharp metallic CLANG. I had never been more thankful of this power I knew nothing about.

Normally, shoving the heavy bulkhead door open would have been impossible for a human like me, but with the power of the Sun-Crest on my good shoulder, I did it and dragged Clara up through the hatch before slamming the steel lid down just as massive black claws tore through the ladder rungs inches beneath her boots. I could hear the beast roar as the force of the closing door pushed it down.

We rolled across dusty tile floor, gasping for air in the dim, flickering emergency light of an abandoned subway maintenance bay. We were finally outside! Not necessarily in the open, but above ground and away from that blood thirsty monster.

Before I could even push myself up onto my knees, the heavy CLICK-CLACK of a shotgun being racked echoed across the tiled platform.

Thirty terrifying, hollow-eyed human survivors emerged from behind overturned vending machines and stacked supply crates, armed with sharpened rebar spears, crowbars, and rusted pipes. Stepping out in front of them was a broad-shouldered middle-aged man in a battered tactical vest, aiming a double-barreled shotgun straight down at us.

His cold eyes flicked from the fading golden glow on my palm straight to the pale, crescent-shaped bite scar on Clara’s throat.

"Well, well," the burly looking man said with a flat voice that was devoid of mercy as his finger tightened on the trigger. "A street rat with a party trick—and a girl with a fresh wolf bite. Put the bitten one down right now, kid, or I throw you both back down that hatch to the hounds."