The Plot Thickens
Garrett and the others made their way to a small gas station a few miles down the road and met up with John Lightfoot. The Bonegnawers had already heard of Lightfoot through stories by Garrett and they were happy to have him on board.
It didn't take long at all for everyone's luck to change.
Garrett left to use the bathroom just as a nondescript gray van drove slowly past the gas station. It lingered for a moment before turning down a side road. Everyone was suspicious.
Not being one to back down to a challenge, John decided to determine the nature of the van.
It didn't take him too long to chase it down the street. It stopped at a stop sign and he gingerly made his way to the driver's side door, raking crinos claws all the way up the side.
The man in the driver's seat regarded him as he approached the window without a hint of fear or intimidation.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the man said from behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
John, naturally, did anything but comply. With a smile on his face, he walked down the length of the van again, raking claws against the paint a second time. The man in the driver's seat threw the van in park and got out. He appeared to be at least eight inches taller than John, who was more than six feet already.
Garrett came out of the bathroom just in time to see the confrontation. Shit. John was almost a block down the road, so the only way to step in quickly was to use the bike. So he hopped on and gunned the gas.
As he sped down the road, the back doors of the van flew open and two men jumped out, wielding handguns. Garrett reached down, pulled the Desert Eagle from his waistband and attempted to get a shot off as he sped toward two people who had just started shooting at him.
It probably wasn't the brightest thing he ever did.
He felt the recoil of the massive handgun and knew without the shadow of a doubt that he had made a grave mistake. He realized what he was shooting at just before his finger squeezed the trigger to the point of no return. He saw two welder's tanks in the back of the van, just before a .50 caliber bullet turned them into something scary.
Steering a motorcycle one-handed is a crap shoot at best. Combine it with the recoil of a hand cannon, two incoming bullets and hell's fireworks show, and it's a recipe for complete and utter disaster. He felt the rear tire lose traction as the whole bike started to tip over. Time became slow and crystalline, freezing everything around him with perfect clarity. But this awareness couldn't save him any more than it really saves anyone else. It's just the brain's sudden reaction when it realizes it is probably about to go into shock.
He briefly watched a piece of scrap metal go hurtling past his face just before his body instinctively tensed. His shape-shifter abilities thankfully put him into sokto form before things started getting painful. He hit the pavement, moving somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty miles-an-hour. The bike thankfully had crash bars installed, so letting go of it let the 700 pound piece of machinery go sliding away down the road at a slightly faster speed. Garrett could feel first his clothes, and then his skin grind away to nothing against the unforgiving asphalt. A split second later, one of his feet caught unwelcome traction and sent him flailing through the air like a ragdoll.
Hefelt one leg snap in four or five places as he hit the ground and rolled continuously.
More than 100 feet and fourty broken bones later, his broken body lay in a bloody heap at the feet of one amazingly unscathed John Lightfoot, who was the only one who could claim such luck. Everyone else even close to the van was either dead or severely incapacitated.
Garrett tried to move and found that he couldn't. He was able to make a brief grimace of pain before all was darkness.
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Garrett opened his eyes and found himself in the bathtub of his hotel room … or at least he hoped it was his hotel room. He tried to move and found everything to be functioning reasonably. Yeah, some days it definitely pays to be a shifter.
He pulled aside the shower curtain that separated the tub from the rest of the bathroom and found he was not alone. A girl with short red hair who didn't like much older than twenty, sat perched upon the sink with a laptop computer in her lap. She sat motionless, fingers hovering just over the keys, eyes locked on him. She smiled.
"I was wondering when you were going to finally wake up," she said as her fingers resumed typing. "It took me four and a half days … guess you heal a little faster than I do."
Garrett sat up. His mind was still feeling fuzzy from being unconscious for so long. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the girl again. She was pretty, in an unconventional way. It was her large, bright blue eyes that drew most of the attention. He knew those eyes.
She let herself be distracted from the computer again. "Everybody else is out hunting. They'll be back before long."
He stood up to get a better look at what she was doing. He peeked over her shoulder and saw three blinking lights on a map. It wasn't until then that he noticed the earpiece and microphone she wore.
He laughed in spite of himself. "When Casper told me you were their tech girl, he wasn't kidding." Then he grew serious. "So what exactly happened to you?"
She took a deep breath, exhaled, and spoke. "I was taken prisoner and tortured for amusement. They left me alive, just barely because they didn't think there was anyone left to find me."
"Who were they?"
She shuddered slightly. "There were the broken cross guys of course," she said as her face darkened, "and one bad motherfucking Tzimisce vampire. There is one tidbit of information I was able to put together that you might find interesting though."
He raised an eyebrow. "And what might that be?"
"The people who destroyed my pack are also responsible for the rash of kidnappings across the city."
He felt his rage build within him at the mention of the kidnappings. He no longer felt tired, he no longer felt injured. He felt anger and that was all.
"Do you have communication with the rest of our people?" he asked. She nodded.
"Call them back here."
The rest of the crew arrived shortly thereafter. They filled in Garrett on the past three days' events. They had gotten two more anonymous messages at the door and the information had netted them a few broken crosses. They were no longer among the living. Other than that, they weren't very far from where they had started.
It was almost midnight. What little he did know about the disappearances was that they all occurred in the middle of the night. He consolidated everyone into one group minus Blue Eyes and they moved out into residential neighborhoods, searching, waiting.
They were almost ready to pack it in and go back to the hotel when a non-descript gray van slowly rolled down the street. They watched as it came to a stop on the street and parked. Three men got out of the vehicle. Two stayed by the vehicle while one approached the house. They watched and waited.
The man entered the home as if the door was unlocked and entered the house. Minutes later, he reappeared, carrying what looked like a rolled up carpet.
Garrett gave the signal to move.
The car emptied as the unlikely pack of shifters descended upon the van.
John was the first to make it to the group. The man carrying the carpet roll dropped it as the crinos puma attacked him. The man ducked John's blow without much effort. Roaring, John took another swipe. This time, the man dodged the attack and moved in close.
"You talk too much," he said as he grabbed John by the muzzle and in one grotesque action, moved it over to the side of his face. John leapt backwards, clutching and clawing at his face and throat, unable to breathe. The Tzimisce's vicissitude had closed off John's windpipe when he contorted his face.
Garrett moved in as John flew back, hitting the vampire and knocking him backwards. Snifter and Jiggly easily tore apart the two henchmen by the van and moved up beside Garrett.
The vampire looked at the four shifters in front of him and backed up a few steps. He smiled at them, waved and melted into the ground. Garrett shifted down and checked on John, who had given himself a tracheotomy in order to breathe. The only problem was that it kept healing, so he had to repeat the job several times. His muzzle had slowly started to drift over to the right part of his face, but it still looked quite bizarre.
Garrett unrolled the carpet. An unconscious teenage girl rolled out onto the ground, to no one's surprise.
They were about to return her to the house when a sound from behind them caught their attention. They turned around to see the Tzimisce by the van. He was standing beside the gas tank, which had a rag hanging from it.
"You're actions here tonight are of little consequence," he said. "I would suggest that you mind your own business."
He produced a Zippo lighter and lit the rag aflame before disappearing into the earth again. They had little time to react before the van exploded in a huge ball of fire. No one was seriously injured, but sirens could be heard in the distance closing in fast.
They ran.