Shadow of a Doubt Page 22
We all moved to look at the front of the door, and watched as Locke grabbed a skull where a door handle would be, and turned. There was no show of lights or even a hiss as the bone door opened. As it did, the Huntsville prison came into view. There were no fences, so I assumed we were already on the inside of the perimeter.
“Fuck, that’s cool,” I said softly in admiration. Locke beamed with pride as he stepped through first.
“Joey,” Depweg said in a commanding voice as he began taking off his clothes. Without a word, Joey began removing his own clothing until they both stood naked in front of the door. Then they fell to their hands and feet and began the change. Bones popped as their faces grew outward and knees bent backward. Tendons elongated while fur sprouted over their entire bodies. Their human teeth grew into pointed fangs as their eyes shifted to a bright yellow with black slits. Within moments, a five-hundred-pound, dark brown wolf who stood eight feet long from his nose to the base of his tail shook his fur as if it were wet. A smaller black wolf with a white patch on his eye stood next to him. Joey was around three hundred and fifty pounds and two feet shorter than his alpha, Depweg, but still terrifying to look at.
They leaped through the door and I took my cue to shift. Baleius put one hand on the wheel, and I looked at him in the control center of my mind and said, Have fun. Baleius smiled in return, and I felt my own change take over.
I stepped through the portal and then turned to see where we had come through. The bone door was gone, leaving behind a field of grass that led up to razor wire fence.
“Neat,” I said to myself as I turned to catch up with the others. Locke had made it to the wall and had pulled out his wand. The runes down its length began glowing a faint green, and he waved it in a circle at the wall. The stone began to crumble like sand, leaving a hole big enough for us to walk through.
“Remember, I sap their souls, John drains their blood, and you two get the meat,” Locke said. Depweg chuffed once and then I nodded in agreement. “This is the TDCJ housing unit, which is where death row inmates are held.” That was good enough for Depweg’s and my moral code to be satisfied.
Locke stepped through the hole that led to a hallway lined with cells. He lowered his head and began chanting before lifting his wand to the lights above him. There was a bolt of green electricity that jumped from his wand to the nearest light. Sparks shot out from the fixture before the lights on either side of that one followed suit a millisecond later. Within a few seconds, the entire housing unit was powerless.
“That’ll buy us some time. Also takes care of the cameras,” Locke said before approaching the first cell. He waved his wand, and the lock popped open. I slid the door out of the way as Locke entered to face a very confused older man dressed in a white jumpsuit. Without preamble, he waved his wand at the man and whispered, “Anima furantur.” The prisoner, who had backed up against the wall, looked like he was being electrocuted as his muscles tensed up and a pained groan slipped from his mouth. A white mist started flowing from the man’s eyes before pouring down his face and out toward Locke’s extended wand. As the mist reached the halfway point, it began to darken from a bright white to a dull gray and finally a sharp purple before being sucked into the wand.
“Okay, John,” Locke said as the mist began to trickle from the prisoner’s eyes.
I stepped forward and held my hand up, palm forward. With sharp focus, I latched onto the frantically flowing blood of the victim—who had probably committed unspeakable crimes against his fellow men—and began siphoning it through his mouth and nose. I pulled the blood from the thin flesh of his esophagus and lungs, sending a torrent of crimson flowing through the air to disappear into my palm. It was completely unnecessary, but I wanted to look cool after what Locke had just done.
“Whoa,” I heard Locke say from behind. I hid a smile as the last drops of life flowed into my being. The prisoner dropped to the floor, as pale white as his jumpsuit. I noticed with unease that his eyes were a glassy white after having his soul sucked out. I closed my eyes in drunken euphoria as the prisoner’s life energy became mine, filling my body. But I needed more, much more, to recover what I had used with the plasma attack.
I opened my eyes and turned to see Locke had already moved on to the next cell. Locke said the soul-stealing phrase again, and there was a gasp from his victim as I stepped out of the way of Depweg and Joey. Their mouths began salivating as they licked their maws while approaching their meal.
As I entered the adjoining cell where a dark-skinned prisoner’s mist was already starting to falter, I heard the sound of flesh being torn from bone coming from where I had just been. A shudder crept up my spine. I definitely preferred my method of eating.
The prisoner began slumping as his soul left his body, and I moved in to stab his liver with a blooddagger. It required less mental effort to siphon my dinner this way, plus it was faster. The hairs on my skin stood on end as the last of the delicious blood entered my body.
We repeated the process down the entire line, drawing confused shouts from the cells lining the opposite wall. It was pitch black inside, so the inmates couldn’t see what was going on, but they could hear the cries of surprise as Locke latched onto their souls.
“Don’t worry, your turn is coming,” I warned to the remaining dinner plates with my best creepy voice. They began yelling while Locke started on the other side. Though they had no idea what was happening, they knew it wasn’t good.
In short order, we had cleared the now silent hall. Only our footsteps and the clack of the werewolves’ claws on the tile floor made a sound.
“I need more,” I said to Locke, who looked at Depweg for confirmation. The large wolf looked up at me with questioning eyes. “I used up almost everything I had, and there’s a lot to replenish.” Depweg continued to stare at me before he looked at Locke and chuffed once.
“John, are you sure everyone past those doors meets your guidelines?”
Damn it. I knew he was going to ask that.
“Look, we are in a maximum-security prison. This isn’t a white-collar crime place, alright? The scum in here did very bad things to wind up at Huntsville. Plus, if I don’t replenish my reserves, I could die. So, in effect, I am saving the world by eating these men.”
“If you say so,” Locke said before he continued, “I’m full, though, so you’re on your own. We’ll be waiting by the portal.”
“Got it. See you soon,” I said as I pulled the locked metal door open with my growing strength. The locking mechanism broke as if made of aluminum foil. Lilith, it felt good to have my preternatural strength flooding back into me.
I made my way down a hall where another door stood, barring my entrance to the main level. I ripped the metal apart with ease as I stepped into the multilevel detention center for the maximum-security inmates.
A couple of the emergency floodlights had popped on, illuminating sections at either end of the long hall and in the dead center. Several inmates stood together in a group, squinting to peer into the darkness at whatever sound they had heard when I tore the door apart. It must have been terrifying from their point of view as the thick metal door was ripped to pieces like a finger through one-ply toilet paper. I let my eyes flash red in the darkness as I stepped into the floodlights, exposing a smile with two surgically sharp canines. I began laughing a low, throaty chortle that grew in cadence and pitch until it was a spine-tingling titter.
“What the fuck, man!” one inmate that was at the front of the pack and had the best view of what was coming called out. This was going to be so much fun!
“El Diablo!” another cried out from the building crowd.
I abruptly ceased my mirthful laughter, and my face went stony before I blurred forward and into the mass of blood bags awaiting their fate.
As I made my way to the dead center, I jumped twenty feet into the air, positioned my palms straight down, and sent out hundreds of bloodtendrils that lodged into the ground like tiny harpoons. The bloodspik
es pierced whatever flesh they came into contact with and began siphoning the crimson goodness into me. From the viewpoint of the inmates standing on the steel platforms that ran along the cells on every level, it must have been like looking down at red Christmas trees, with the inmates as the ornaments and me as the cute angel on top.
I let out a primal scream from the rush of energy that filled my tanks like a silken tidal wave that crashed into every nerve in my body. After a few more seconds, I reached the bottom of the barrel of blood supply and let the tendrils shoot back into me. I landed in the middle of the pale bodies that were slumped over each other like discarded sacks of flour, and took a knee. I trembled with elation and power as I sent the energy back into my reserves, which was fucking hard to do. All I wanted to do was remain kneeling where I was and feel the power course through my veins; but I wasn’t finished yet.
Screams filled the tall room as reality struck home for the prisoners. I giggled at the irony that was applicable to a lot of these prisoners, seeing as how they had probably caused great terror and pain to an innocent victim to have wound up at Huntsville’s maximum-security wing.
As footsteps pounded on the steel platforms, I jumped up one floor and began tearing into my next round of meals. I stood in the middle of the landing, extended my arms to either side, and sent out two-inch-thick spikes through my palms. They flew out until they slammed into the walls on either side of the long hall. A few inmates were pierced, but several more were missed. So, I obliged them and granted them the experience of being consumed by yours truly by sending out row after row of smaller spikes, three feet in all directions of the two bloodpoles. That did the trick. Screams of terror grew into shrieks of agony as plump bodies were pierced in numerous places. Bone had been shattered into pieces where they had attempted to block the bloodspikes from doing what they must. I was confident that every pelvis on the landing had been turned into a fine sand. That was alright with me; let them suffer.
As I finished, I leaped to the other side and repeated the process before making my way up one more level. Within a few minutes, hundreds and hundreds of maximum-security inmates were relieved of their life energy; and I was that much stronger.
“Don’t worry, boys,” I said as I stepped from the platform on the top level and sailed to the ground, my trench coat flapping hard as I fell. “It’s for a good cause.”
I walked toward the hole Locke had made and was stopped by a flashlight and a staccato of panicked cracks from a firearm. Two bullets managed to turn into flat pieces of lead against my chest. My face turned down to watch them peel off and fall to the ground. Fingers probed the new holes in my black shirt.
“Son of a…”
My gaze shot toward the guard, who was fumbling with his spare magazine. I blurred forward, put my hand in front of his face, and whispered, “Sleep,” before he could even register my movements. I sent my will into his body, found his control center, and hit the emergency shutdown that was normally reserved for a skull-smashing accident, like a car wreck or being knocked out by Mike Tyson.
I pulled my consciousness back, and the guard fell like a rag doll to the ground, allowing me to step over him and through the hole to the outside.
My skin felt hot compared to the air outside, and I was pretty sure wisps of steam were billowing off me. At least it felt that way.
With my preternatural eyes, I could see Locke and the weres standing at the position where the door had been. As I approached, Locke held his hand up, stopping me in place.
“Walk around,” Locke said, moving his hand in a wide arc. I did as he suggested and saw why. The door came into view as I crossed the event horizon. I had almost walked right into it, though I was curious how that would have worked from a physics standpoint.
Locke turned the skull, pulled open the door, and revealed a reinforced metal storage door. We stepped through and Locke closed the door behind him this time. I walked around in a circle again, expecting to see the door slide back into view, but there was none this time.
“Fucking neat!” I exclaimed.
Depweg and Joey began the transformation back into their man-suits. As they did, I admired the quality of the storage facility we were in. We were indoors, but there were no cameras down the hallway like you would expect. It smelled clean inside, like I imagined a sterile environment would. My eyes went to the door in front of us, and I took note of the impressive locks.
As the weres completed their transformation, they stopped to pick up their wolf teeth. Depweg then placed a hand on the scanner next to the door. He brought his eyes to a retinal device, and blue light moved over his face from side to side. The hand terminal turned green and there was a hiss behind the door, followed by the sound of massive gears moving. I took a step back with my hands out in front of me as I mouthed, “Whoa.”
The door swung open like a bank vault, and I noticed it was almost as thick as one, too. On its back side was a spiderweb of metal rods that contracted into itself once unlocked.
“Holy shit,” I said in awe. “You two are something else.”
“We had to step up our game when you left,” Depweg said without a hint of smugness in there. He was simply speaking factually.
“Pretty hard to be me, huh?” I said jovially. The excess of dinner I had just enjoyed had put me into a good mood.
“Maybe we are taking things more seriously than you did,” Locke said, mildly reprimanding me.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I admitted as I followed the very naked Depweg into his massive storage unit. He was about three inches shorter than me but eighty pounds less, at a professional bodybuilder lean one-eighty. Veins ran across his lats and even his massive chest, not to mention the pipelines that ran down his arms starting at the shoulders. I could see the striations in his muscles as he moved.
Locke saw me gawking at my no-homo man crush and I quickly examined the ceiling, nodding appreciatively at the, uh, tiles and, um, lights.
After a few more awkward moments of staring upward, I shifted my gaze to the awesome storage unit in front of me.
It was at least fifty feet deep and twelve feet across, with tables lining both sides. Above the tables were countless guns of varying brands, calibers, and uses. In the center of the back wall was a Barrett .50 caliber rifle with an impressive scope assembly. I could tell at a glance that it had thermal optics as well as night vision. A suppressor stood out for a foot at the end of the already impressively long barrel.
Below that was a table housing huge magazines filled with ammunition tipped with silver.
“How the hell did you guys find this place?” I asked the room.
“I own it,” Locke said. “And the cemetery,” he continued.
“What?”
“Yes. I don’t know why you never thought about it. That’s why I wasn’t afraid to park my car out front.”
“I, uh, don’t know why I never thought about it. Come to think of it, I don’t even know how much wealth I have left since Bitcoin went tits up.”
“I pulled it out for you,” Locke informed me.
“Oh, thank Lilith!” I said, running up to Locke and throwing my hands around his tiny frame. I playfully stroked his hair a few times like a loving mother. I was surprised that he didn’t protest. Then a thought struck. “Hey, wait a minute. You didn’t pull it out for me. You wanted my money for yourself!”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Locke admitted freely. “We thought you were dead. After Da disappeared, I found his meticulously detailed notes on your entire empire and made the necessary adjustments.”
“So, I still have my wealth?” I asked hopefully.
“You are one of the richest men on the planet, John. I’m surprised you never utilized your resources more effectively.”
“Eh, I let Da handle all that.” As I said his name again, I felt a pang of guilt and anxiety tightening my chest. We were here for Da. Locke saw my face change as I thought about our mission, and I turned to regard the walls.
Locke looked down at his comically large vest compared to the rest of the group. Even Joey, who was only five-four, had more than enough girth on his chest, shoulders, and back to secure the armor in place. Depweg approached the much smaller Locke and helped him adjust the vest’s shoulder straps to cover his vitals instead of just his stomach.
I slipped my trench coat back in place and reached under the armor to pull my silver cross out. I let it rest on top of the vest instead of being crushed uncomfortably between my super buff chest and the unyielding body armor.
Locke donned his battle robes while Depweg and Joey began methodically grabbing weapons off the wall. They wrapped thick belts around their waists which dangled leg holsters that they clasped into place around their thighs. Depweg threw me an identical one and I mirrored their movements, though I had to readjust my silver kukri sheath so as not to be impeded.
They pulled Glocks off the wall and slapped in double-stack magazines of .45 caliber ammo before racking the slides. Then they smoothly slid the weapons into their leg holsters before securing the guns with a latch that went over the back of the slide. Depweg underhand tossed a Glock toward me with one hand and a magazine with the other. Monkey saw and monkey did. After my Glock had been secured, Depweg tossed me three magazines that I slid into the mag holder on the side of my belt near my left kidney.