Omega's Run (7 page)

Why the rush, you old buzzard?
I thought to myself.

“Sir, yes sir,” I uttered again. You didn’t defy Mathias Young to his face and get away with it unscathed. There were a lot of rumors where the old man was concerned, the thing was, I knew they weren’t just tales. Mathias Young was the definition of ruthless.

If he were feeling generous, you’d live… minus a few parts, but you’d live. Rarely, if ever, was Mathias Young generous. I’d been one of his prize foot soldiers. My brother had been too before he’d become a prized pain in the ass. That had eventually lost James the pinky and ring finger of his left hand. Mathias had taken them a year or two before James had died… That was when I’d started to nurture a dislike, if not a downright hatred for the old bastard.

James hadn’t questioned Mathias’ orders again. He’d done what he was told. Ever since the night Mathias had maimed him, James had looked at me different. With a glint of something undefinable. I was sure some kind of threat had been made against me, but James would never speak on it. I couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the tactic. Had our roles been reversed, had it been I who had been threatened with James’ well-being? I would have folded like cheap origami.

Mathias looked me up and down, a calculating glint in his eyes before nodding once, as if to himself and grating out: “Dismissed.”

I snapped to attention, saluted and made to go past him when he caught my sleeve.
Jesus for a man his age he’s unnaturally fast.
I looked him eye to eye from inches away and kept my stoic mask in place.

“Do as I ask, Ava,” Mathias said to me but it was what he said
without
words, what he said with his intense gaze that got my attention and sent a tingle of fear down my spine. His eyes held a weighted ‘or else’ as well as a myriad of other unspoken horrors in their steely depths.

“Of course,” I murmured and nodded. Mathias forced a smile and leaned forward, placing a kiss on the crown of my head.

“I miss him too, Child,” he lied, but it was too late to placate me. He’d pushed too hard. I bowed my head so he wouldn’t see my rage. I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see the fire in them and I did my level best to nod solemnly.

That one little white lie sealed the deal for me. Utterly. Completely.
Fuck him
. Fuck Mathias Young and his bullshit wild goose chase in New Hampshire. I was suddenly like one of the things we hunted. I was on the scent. Mathias was hiding something and I was going to find out what it was.

“Go on, now,” he said and released my sleeve. I nodded and attempted to look sufficiently cowed, before slipping out of the control room and up the dimly lit hallway to the knight’s quarters.

For a quasi-military organization, we didn’t have barracks precisely. The underground rooms were small, but comfortable. Simple. No more than cells, really, that locked from the inside rather than the outside. The underground facility was old, very old, but had undergone a series of retrofits throughout the intervening years to make it both more habitable as well as more functional to our cause. Hence, what had once been cells to hold prisoners for interrogation, had been refashioned into quarters for the men and women dedicated to eradicating these demon spawned creatures.

This far underground, there were no windows or really any ability to tell what time of day it was. We relied on artificial lighting to keep us up on what was arcing across the sky up top. That was why the halls were so dimly lit now. It was deepest night, almost edging on towards dawn and I was feeling it, even this far removed from the sky. The lighted strips along the floors and ceilings would begin to lighten with the press of real dawn outside. I felt it in the form of a slight burning at the backs of my eyes. In the way of a bone deep weary that settled over my shoulders like an old cloak.

Mathias was a tough bastard that expected the rest of us to be just as tough, but at the end of the day, we were all simply human. In need of food, in need of rest, or we would make mistakes and making a mistake, out there, with
them
… often a mistake made under those circumstances was the last mistake any number of us could or would ever make.

I wasn’t about to lose any of my team to some stupid, half assed mistake that was made because one of us was tired when we’d had the opportunity to rest. So when I slipped into the rec room to find the majority of my team lounging and awaiting the next set of orders or dismissal to their bunks, there wasn’t any real decision to be made.

“Rest up, get a full eight hours, then gear up.” I ground my teeth and willingly defied Mathias Young, “We leave tomorrow afternoon. Mathias wants us to check out reports of a feral rogue in New Hampshire.”

My crew dragged themselves wearily to their feet. I glanced at Mace who glared back, not that I could really blame him.

“Did I break it?”

“No,” he said, eyes sliding to the side and away from me. I fixed him with my gaze and he shifted uncomfortably as the rest of the team filed out around me.

“Good. You were right, and I’m sorry about that.”

“You get more like the Hangman every day,” he said with a one shouldered shrug and I flinched inwardly at that, though I refused to give any outward appearance.

“Dismissed,” I said simply and he pushed past me and out the door. I closed my eyes and sighed out, softly swearing at the empty room.

I went over and fixed a cup of hot tea in the small kitchenette in the corner. It was just enough to make a drink; the mess hall was down the corridor and to the left in the sprawling complex. I wasn’t really hungry. I wasn’t even really all that thirsty to be honest, right now I needed something for my hands to do while my brother’s nagging doubts and odd behavior played out in my mind.

James had found something out, something that had shaken his faith in the Order. He’d become agitated, withdrawn, then he’d become almost defiant… angry with the Order’s council. Mathias being the head of that council didn’t help. He’d begun to openly question things and finally had begun to openly question the missions that he and his team were being sent on.

It had become increasingly rare for James and me to be teamed together in the last year or so of his life. I had climbed ranks, come into my own, been entrusted with my own team, which seemed to rankle my older brother, who was only older by virtue of nine minutes. The joke between us was that he would always and forever be the one to lead the way. Which had been the case, for the most part until he’d found whatever he’d found.

My brother had become cagey. Dropping hints and whispers, never being forthright, but my loyalty lay with him. Had always lain with him, and even after death would continue to lay with his bones. James and I were the only thing either of us had had the entire time we were growing up and now… now I was alone and it was all because of that son of a bitch Mathias and the brother of the fucking animal we had caged in the lower levels.

I jerked my hand back and dropped the paper cup overflowing with hot water.

“Shit!”

I shook out my hand and gave it a cursory once over. Red and angry, I thought it would be fine, I ran it under cold water from the small sink anyways, the cool water soothing the sting of the scald.

I couldn’t go out like this. I needed some sleep. I needed to regroup.
I needed to know what the fuck was going on.
Why Mathias was so keen on getting me out of the facility and back into the field. While quick turnarounds weren’t unheard of, they certainly weren’t commonplace.

It was customary to give a team a day or two of R and R after a hunt. Especially one as intensive as the one it took to track Remus Reese down. We’d been on his trail for
months.
Why the rush to get us back out there? Let alone for such a low level target?

My team was well beyond checking out rumors. Way past looking into a ‘potential’ rogue somewhere. We didn’t do soft targets like that anymore. Hadn’t in a long time. So why now?

No. Mathias was up to something, and I wanted to know what.

I turned off the water and dried my hands. I didn’t bother cleaning up the hot water seeping across the polished cement floor. It was only water and would take care of its self. Instead, filled with equal amounts purpose and dread, I stalked down the corridor and to my quarters.

My need for sleep hadn’t diminished despite my determination and the plan I’d formulated. I needed rest. I needed a full eight hours of sleep. I would need to be cunning and alert for what I’d decided to do. I would need to stay one step ahead of the master of the game if I were going to go through with it.

‘If,’ there was no if. I was going to and there would be no going back. I needed to know what was going on. I needed to know exactly why my brother was dead and the key to that knowledge lay in the mongrel in the cage downstairs. I needed to know what Mathias wanted from him and the only way to find that out was to defy Mathias and stick around.

I closed my eyes and let myself into my small cell, sending up a little prayer to my brother.

I’ll find out just what the fuck is going on, James. I promise. Just do me a favor? Watch my ass, okay?

Chapter 9

Remus

It wasn’t enough food. Not by a long shot, but it calmed the ache in my belly by just enough that it curbed the growing hunger that had nothing to do with food. Since then, no one had returned to my cell. No one looked in the window except the guards every fifteen minutes. I knew it was fifteen minutes because one of them was wearing a watch with a second hand and it was quiet enough otherwise that I could keep count by listening to the ticking.

Three hours had passed since she brought the food and left. A dozen checks between now and then… Three long, solid, hours of no contact or interaction with anyone. Of nothing but the inside of my stone room and metal cell to look at. I didn’t mind much though. I liked my solitude. The conditions could’ve been better but I couldn’t complain. I mean I
could
, but what would be the point? Especially when there wasn’t a single person that would give a flying fuck about it. So I sat there, quietly, and considered the series of events that led me to where I was.

I was laying on the floor, in the center of my empty cage, with my eyes closed when I noticed him. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there and the fact that I didn’t notice him come in honestly scared the shit out of me in a way I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. Not once in my unnaturally long life.

“Are you just going to stand there all day, or was there something you actually wanted to talk about?” I asked after another several minutes of silence. “I mean, I know I’m pretty, but I never thought I was your type, Mathias.”

“Your sense of humor was moderately charming, even a touch endearing when we first met, Remus,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “It has long since lost it’s... patina of novelty. I have grown tired of it and would rather speak plainly, if you feel yourself capable of it?”

“I am capable of things that you would find yourself unable to believe, old man,” I growled quietly and finally opened my eyes. I sat up to find him standing calmly, arms clasped behind his back at parade rest, which was per usual for him. It was the same stance he had held the night we first met. When Romulus and I reached out to him to help remove our father as Alpha.

“Such disgust on your face when you look at me,” he said and I snarled at him. “For one that came to me seeking help in murdering his own father...” he shook his head in a mocking display of disappointment.

“You kill our kind with impunity. I would have preferred not to take my father’s life but it was the only way to remove him as Alpha while preserving his dignity… his legacy, at face value anyways.”

“Dignity?” Mathias seemed startled. “You can’t kill a person, even one such as your kind, and leave them with their dignity. Death and dignity don’t go hand in hand.”

“There’s no way to remove an Alpha from position without killing them. And if I challenged him, I would have had to tell the pack about the trouble he was causing. My father was pack Alpha for
centuries
. He was
loved
and
respected
. I wanted him to die with that respect still intact.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t yell, or rage, as much as I dearly wanted to. I had learned enough about Mathias Young that such displays of emotion were only going to make things worse with him. I wondered how his daughter, Chloe, ever survived long enough to eventually bind herself to my little brother. She was a rather emotional creature the last I remembered. But then again, she had been through quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time.

“That makes you better?” he sneered. “That makes you not a beast killing his own family? Because you wanted to preserve his dignity and honor? Some false
legacy
that was purely a flight of fancy?” Mathias scoffed before continuing. “Wouldn’t giving him the chance to face you or your brother in battle be more dignifying than getting strangled in his own home by a hunter that
you
let into the house? Don’t you remember, Dog?
You
contacted
me
.

“You told me that he needed to be removed. You made promises in return for my help, then you failed to deliver. You or your brother were supposed to be the next Alpha of your pack and you were supposed to give me some of the... less reputable members in return.”

“Why?” I demanded. I hadn’t asked before because I hadn’t intended to go through with our part of the agreement. I had no intentions of handing over any of my people to him and the rest of his butchers. “Why would you want some of my kind anyways? Just so you could kill us? I mean, what other possible reason could you have?”

He gave me a long look, steel grey eyes piercing like knives, before he finally spoke again. “My reasons are my own, and you would have been better off if you or Romulus had become Alpha and kept your part of the bargain. If you had simply given me a few here and there, the rest of your
people
would have been spared.” He said the word ‘people’ as if it left a nasty taste in his mouth. “Now I’ll simply have to do what I should have done years ago… when I first discovered that your pack was residing in Washington. I’ll simply have to wipe them all out.
Take
the ones I want instead.”