Lycan Legacy - Paladin: Tales of Luna White - Werewolf Veronica Singer (children's ebooks online txt) 📖

I was suddenly glad Logan was still unconscious.

Manny slid off the bed and faced me. He mouthed a silent ‘I’m sorry’ at me, then tapped his watch again.

“You’re going to have to carry her, Manny,” I said. “I still need my hands free.”

Manny nodded and slung the now-silent Alisha over his shoulder. He gave Mike a grim smile. “At least I got the skinny one.”

I dropped the sound barrier spell and listened. Running footsteps and muffled curses. On the dropped iPad’s screen was a blinking red icon.

“Crap. She sent out an alarm through her iPad. We’re going to have to face the guards.”

I pulled on my gloves and prepared for battle. These bastards probably had silver weapons, but the gloves would protect me somewhat. I brought my wolf side to the fore. My eyes shifted to pure blue, muzzle stretched, fangs extended, and claws sprang through the slits in my gloves. Not a full hybrid shift, just enough to make me many times faster and stronger than human. Stronger and faster, but still able to cast spells.

I listened at the door for three seconds.

A hundred escape plans flashed through my head. Jump through the window and land in the yard? I could survive a four-story fall, but could the others? Mike might, but what about Manny, Logan, and Alisha?

Rappel down with Silkworm? That would work if we weren’t encumbered by the hostages. One slip and both rescuer and hostage would splat on the ground.

It had to be the hallway. I opened the door and looked. Nothing there; the way was clear. I exited the door and turned right, heading toward the stairwell. It was a choke point, but not as bad as the elevator.

I smelled them before turning the corner—three women blocking the hallway. I stepped around the corner and bowled into them, knocking all three to the ground. They scrambled to rise, clumsy in their long dresses, untrained and merely human. Still, they each carried a silver knife and could be dangerous to the others.

The two smaller women were already on their feet, while the portly one was still on her back. I grabbed her dress, neck and crotch, and lifted her like a sack of flour. One spin for momentum, and I threw her at the other two, tumbling them all to the end of the hallway. They ended up in a heap in front of the elevator. Their knives lay on the floor where they had dropped them.

Manny said something in Arabic, and they froze in mid-scramble, staying on the floor.

I snatched up the knives. Silver-coated stingers of hate. I snapped each and cast them behind me.

The hate in their eyes turned to fear. The weapons they had assumed would quickly kill me had been broken like Popsicle sticks. Then their eyes fluttered closed as my nitrogen gas spell rendered them unconscious.

I pulled out a handful of flex-cuffs and bound the women. I didn’t think they would attack us from the rear after what they had seen, but I didn’t want them in any shape to try.

The elevator started moving, bringing something nasty our way. I waited a long five seconds, timing the car so that it was between floors when I slapped the call button and sent a surge of electricity through the wiring.

Smoke erupted from the panel, both the Up and Down buttons flashed erratically, and the elevator stopped moving.

At the stairwell door, I put one ear to the door and, hearing nothing, opened it a crack to sniff.

“Tear gas on the next floor,” I said. “Mask up, Manny.”

“What about you and Mike?” Manny asked as he fumbled one-handed to pull on his mask.

“Nostril inserts, DARPA,” I said as I activated my gas-mask spell. Mike’s spell was on less than a second later.

“And the hostages?”

“The hood will protect Alisha,” I said as I generated a gas-mask bubble for her. “And Logan’s tougher than he looks.”

We descended the stairs single file, me in the lead. Clouds of tear and vomit gas spewed from two canisters sitting midway down the stairs. The gases obscured the third-floor landing, but I heard the heartbeats of five men. With no scents coming through my gas mask, I couldn’t tell what weapons they would be using.

I jumped from halfway down the stairs, landing in the middle of the five. If they were smart, they wouldn’t shoot at each other in this confined space.

With one iron-knuckled punch, I took out three ribs of my closest opponent. Then I jerked his mask off. Before he could choke on the gas, I had broken the elbows and knees of another two. I removed their masks as well, then sent them tumbling down the stairs. They scrambled to get further down, trying to escape the noxious fumes of the heavier-than-air gases flowing down to the next level.

That left two. One was professional, the other cannon fodder. The professional pushed his compatriot in my direction, sacrificing him to buy time, which he used to pull out a silver sword.

I punched through the mask of the closest, breaking the eye shields and his nose. Before he had time to gasp, I threw him over the railing. He plummeted down the open space all the way to the basement level. Before he landed on the concrete, I turned my attention to the sword-wielder.

His straight stab was an inch from my torso when I grabbed the blade with my impervious gloves, stopping it as if he had hit cement.

He tried to pull the sword back, perhaps hoping to slice my hands up. I pulled the sword from his grasp as you would take a knife from a toddler. He bent over, trying to hold on to the sword, and I backhanded him across the face, ripping his mask off.

I had him bent over the rail, ready to push him down to the basement, when my inner wolf surged up in rage.

“You tried to use silver on me!” I growled, in