Jaxx slammed another clip into her gun and rolled across the floor to draw fire away from her partner, coming up on her knees, firing up toward the loft. As he dragged his leaden body toward the entrance, Radcliff caught a glimpse of a man falling. Satisfaction was instant. Jaxx was an expert marksperson. What she shot at went down. Even if they died here, they took at least one of the enemy with them. Something made him turn his head just as the bullets struck Jaxx, taking her small body and flinging it backward several feet across the warehouse. She fell like a rag doll onto the floor, a dark stain spreading out around her.
Furious, enraged, Barry tried to bring his gun up, but his arm refused to respond. The only thing he could do was crawl forward or crawl back. He crawled back, dragging his body across the distance to hers. She was just lying there. She turned her head slightly to look at him.
“Don’t, Jaxx. Don’t you do this to me.”
“Get out of here.”
“I mean it, damn it. Don’t you do this.” He was desperate to reach her, motivate her to move. She had to move. Had to get out with him.
“I’m tired, Barry. I’ve been tired for a very long time. Someone else can save everybody now.” She murmured the words so softly, he almost didn’t hear them.
“Jaxx!” Barry tried to gather her in his arms, but his arms wouldn’t work.
To his left, the small door suddenly slammed shut, trapping them inside. And Benton was right; there were enough chemicals in there to blow them all over the city. He waited, expecting death at any moment.
He heard screams then, horrible, gut-wrenching screams of fear. He saw bodies falling through the smoke and the glow of flames. He saw things that couldn’t be. A wolf, huge and savage, leaping at a fleeing man, powerful jaws boring through the chest to get at the heart. The wolf seemed to be everywhere, bringing down man after man, ripping through tissue and flesh, cracking bones with its jaws. Barry saw that same wolf contort, shift shape so that it was a huge owl with talons and a beak that dove at another man, plucking the eyes right out of the head. It was an unbelievable nightmare of blood and death and retribution.
Barry had no idea he had such violence inside him to envision such terrible images. He knew that at least two bullets had hit him; he could feel the blood trickling down his face as well as his arm. Obviously he was hallucinating. That was why he didn’t attempt to shoot when the wolf finally made its way to their corner of the warehouse. He watched it approach, admiring the way it moved, its muscles rippling, the way it leaped so easily over anything in its path. It came straight to him, drawn no doubt by the smell of blood, or, Barry thought, his own vivid imagination running wild.
The wolf looked at him a long time, looked into his eyes. The eyes of the wolf were very strange, almost completely black. Intelligent eyes but empty of any emotion. Barry felt no threat but more as if the wolf were staring into his very soul, perhaps judging him. He lay still, feeling only a willingness to do whatever the creature wanted him to do. He felt sleepy, his eyelids far too heavy to keep up. As he was drifting off, he could have sworn the wolf contorted once more and began to take the shape of a man.
Jaxon Montgomery woke to the sound of a heart beating. It was beating fast and hard, frightened and loud. She felt automatically for her gun. She was never without a weapon, yet she found nothing under her pillow or beside her body. The heart pounded even harder, and she tasted the coppery flavor of fear in her mouth. Dragging in a lungful of air, she forced herself to open her eyes. She could only stare in astonishment at the room she was in. It was no hospital, and certainly not the bedroom in her tiny apartment. This room was beautiful. The walls were a soft mauve, so light it was impossible to tell if the color was really there or merely her imagination. The carpet was thick and a deeper mauve, picking up the colors in the stained glass high up on three walls. The pattern was soothing and intricate. It gave Jaxx the illusion of being safe, something she knew was impossible. Just to make certain she was really awake, she dug her fingernails into her palms.