Hybridization Chapter 166 – Chocolaty, Nougaty ClusterF*

Chapter 166 – Chocolaty, Nougaty ClusterF***

“Just get your ass over here now. My bet is that there is about to be a hell of a problem and we could use a few good officers on standby… Of course it involves Rosk. When doesn’t it involve him these days.” - Chief Henry while calling his fellow lycan deputies.

“Are you sure we are in the right place?” Robert Leeds asked the strike leader who was sitting in the passenger seat of the minivan they had rented. They were currently parked on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The target was so far into the countryside that not even street signs were easily visible, if they were posted at all.

He was just surprised they had made it, due to their GPS having issues upon getting close. They eventually managed to zero in on it thanks to the detection equipnt and the two magical beings that said they felt a ward sowhere nearby. From what they could tell from paper maps, they were still so ways off from the house and only at the very edge of the property line.

“For the tenth ti, Rob, yes, I am sure.” Adam assured him. “If you are so nervous about this, then why did you even volunteer?”

“Because I bloody well didn’t volunteer.” Robert said, getting looks from the other mbers of the strike team in the van. “I was told to be here in case there was intel or magic to handle.”

One of the team mbers in the van snorted. “That’s awfully reassuring.”

“Shut up, Evans.” Adam pointed a warning finger at the black clad figure who only had his eyes exposed. “Robert, while I appreciate your… honesty, there is nothing that is going to change. Besides, we brought those two angels to handle anything dangerous.”

“Yeah, and where are they now?” Robert pressed, his nerves still getting the better of him.

Adam sighed and sat back in his seat. “Like I said before. They are going to break the wards that are around the property and let us know when it is safe to cross.” He pointed out the window just as he spoke. “Look, there they are now.”

Robert peered over his shoulder but couldn’t see anything in the darkness that surrounded them. He fumbled with his night vision monocular and flipped it down in ti to see the two angels walking past their van and returning to the SUV behind them.

“The ward has been breached.” A voice ca over the radio. It was almost completely flat and monotone, showing no emotion or inflection. “While it is not completely broken, it is not a defensive ward and only seems to be for obfuscation.”

“Understood.” Adam said back into the radio. “All teams dismount and push into the wood line.”

The van door popped open, and Robert was practically shoved out the door since he was closest. He stumbled and barely managed to avoid soone stepping on him before regaining his footing. His world had descended into a narrow field of green and he was barely sure which way was up, let alone what was under his feet.

“Never used night vision before?” Adam asked after he had exited much more gracefully from the passenger door.

“No, I damn well haven’t.” Robert snipped.

“Ha, better learn fast. Just set your focal range low and… no this one.” Adam began to give so advice but noticed that Robert was adjusting the wrong part of his monocular. “There you go. Now just make sure to stay in line with us and follow my cat-eyes.”

“Cat eyes?”

Adam turned around and tapped the two small but brightly glowing patches on the back of his helt. “These. Just try to follow them and I’ll do my best to pick easy trails to the objective.”

Robert followed along as the team moved from where the cars were parked to where the two angels had been doing sothing. As he approached, he saw 2 posts stuck into the ground, their caps glowing brightly in his night vision despite not emitting visible light.

“Have we tested it yet?” Adam asked as they approached a group of n waiting next to the posts.

“Yes sir. We sent a runner back for the command wire set. Looks like so sort of interference from the warding.” One of the masked n replied. “He is hooking it up to the command vehicle and will bring our end over on his return.”

“Great, good initiative.” Adam said. “Everyone else ready? Final gear check. Team leaders report status.”

That set off a flurry of nearly silent activity as the assembled group split into their respective teams. That unfortunately ant that the command team also gathered. Robert shivered as the two angles approached and stood only a few feet away.

One was of a female shape, or at least the proportions. Her face still had the unusual features of their kind, and her body was only slightly more curvy than the male next to her. The main difference, besides what appeared to be small breasts, was the height difference.

The male was tall, broad shouldered and seemingly well-muscled. It was hard for Robert to make any definite opinions since both of them were only seen in loose or baggy clothes when not wearing their tactical gear. Both of them carried the standard equipnt like everyone else but with the addition of swords belted to their hips.

“We are ready.” The female, Enser, said. “Komat and I shall handle any paranormal threats.” Her tone was blunt and once again lacked any inflection.

“Thank you, Enser and Komat.” Adam replied while checking his radio connection after stepping through the opening between the posts. “Your service is appreciated. How much trouble can you handle?”

Komat stepped forward. “We are of third advancent. There is no mortal threat to us.”

“Rrriiight. That’s, uh, helpful. I guess.” Adam answered before turning to the other teams who had co through the opening. “First squad, take us out at a slow pace. Handrail the road and stay about a hundred ters in, we will adjust as needed for terrain, but it runs pretty much due north. Second and third squads follow after. Command will be between first and second. Make sure to stay within fifty ters so you are under cover of the obscuration array.”

Robert swallowed past the lump in his throat and moved to follow after Adam, hoping that he wouldn’t be needed in the slightest. He thought about praying but after another glance at the angels, he thought better of it. Maybe if he just kept his head down…

*****

“SShhit. Where did that co from?” Marc Durand ducked at the sound of a very large rifle being fired then began looking around. The follow up shot made him flinch again and he looked up, trying to see out of the rental van they were using to scout the area and find their target. He noticed the few people on the street either started running away or join in with the attack.

“Don’t know but they put that guy on his ass in the store… wait, they are shooting at the store, but it is shielded?” The driver said while twisting the key and starting the van. The engine briefly drowned out the sound of sporadic gunfire as they started moving.

“I think our target is in there.” Marc said while grabbing his helt off the floor between the seats and putting it on. He flipped down the night vision goggles imdiately and began scanning for… shit, that is a lot of people. He thought, as he could now see the people moving beyond the streetlights.

Marc looked back to his team in the van, everyone wearing sterile uniforms and face masks, nobody wanted to advertise whey worked for a foreign governnt. After getting a thumbs up from the team leader, he then clicked the button on his radio. “All teams, we are going to push to the other side of those buildings and try to take the shooters out. Team four, try to get up high and find the snipers.”

“Lead, this is Three. Any magic?” replied the leader of team three as the vans began driving to loop around to the back side of the buildings the attackers were using.

“Unknown, keep your talismans ready just in case.” Marc replied. He hadn’t seen any spells flying but that didn’t an much. While he saw the shimr of a barrier, he didn’t know if that was the only magic being used or if that was the limit of how far the owner of that shop was willing to go.

The vans ca to a rapid, screech free, halt and the teams piled out. They spread along the back of the row of buildings while Marc took his place behind them and the control van pulled up with the support team. All in, there were thirty French nationals taking part in the operation and he hoped that there would be thirty of them leaving when the night was done.

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice on his radio. “Contact.” Then a suppressed gunshot from the alley to his left where team four began climbing a roof access ladder that had been pulled down.

Marc was just about to move up to support them when there was a massive flash of light that blanked out his night vision. “Fuck” he swore and flipped the goggles up to see what was essentially a cloud of…white… light?

It was like a car’s high beams hitting a thick fog bank but brighter and lingering longer. It was only after several seconds that it began to fade while all his teams reported their night vision being blanked out. Then they all put them back down as the light vanished and left them in complete darkness. That darkness was short lived as there was a much smaller flash of purple before the night returned in full.

That night was then filled with a cacophony of noises from bestial roars to the sporadic gunfire they had been hearing before being mixed with human screams. That was about the ti a machine gun began firing… and just didn’t stop.

*****

Mateo stared in disbelief as the people in the store dragged a still living Kurt deeper inside before the lights went out. “Did you miss?” He nearly scread into the radio. He ducked back into the alley across the street to try and think.

“NO, I hit him.” Ca the reply of the sniper, a man Mateo had only just t that day.

“Fuck!” Mateo cursed before clicking the button for the radio again. “Everyone shoot, see if you can…” his words were drowned out by the sporadic gunfire as the entire cabal converged on the store. A few bystanders had taken off running at the first shots, deciding that anywhere else was better than that street.

Mateo wanted to swear and rage but couldn’t do more than try to control the uncoordinated clusterfuck. His boss wasn’t any help, having secluded himself with those… weirdos.

The people he had been told to pick up and drive in with were so of the strangest he had ever t. Besides Mr. X, that is. All of them were n and completely bald, not even having facial hair or eyebrows.

When the four of them had t up with Mateo, they had exchanged all of a dozen words before climbing in his rental car. After that it was nearly complete silence as they drove for hours on end until they rendezvoused with the others. It had been like driving a car full of cadavers.

He shivered at the thought. “At least I got to use the carpool lane.” He muttered.

“What’s that?” Alexis asked as she fumbled with a wand and her pistol, unable to decide which hand should hold which.

“Nothing. Let’s go, maybe we can circle around and block off the side alley.” He pulled a wand with a particularly nasty enchantnt on it. It only had a few charges, but he hoped the ‘Lacerations of Purgatory’ lived up to its hype.

They hurried along the street, trying to stay out of the line of fire from the more amateur mbers of the cabal. Mateo noticed that the building was now shimring with every impact. It seed to have so sort of shielding over it, and he wanted to pause to try and figure it out bef-.

White. The world went white. Thankfully it also went quiet as everyone seed to suddenly have the sense to stop shooting when they couldn’t see. “Blasted fucking AAAGggh.” He tried to shield his eyes, but it was too late and could still see the after images inside his eyelids. Then he heard what sounded like a suppressed rifle fire a couple bursts.

“Shit!” Alexis swore along with him and grabbed his sleeve to steady herself, dropping her pistol in the process. “I CAN’T SEE.”

“Fucking DUH!” Mateo shook her off, just as the blinding white faded. He looked up, blinking furiously to clear his eyes. He thought he could vaguely see movent through the ghostly after images and dove to the ground out of an abundance of caution.

He thought he saw another light. So purple flash that reminded him of the month of April for so reason. Still, he didn’t stand upright and began crawling to get behind a nearby concrete planter.

“Mateo! Wher-HUgaaa AAAA-“ Alexis began to ask sothing but was interrupted by the rapid spray of machinegun fire and zip-snap of nearby bullets. Her scream of pain was silenced a mont later and Mateo felt her body land on his legs as he had crawled past.

“GEroff” Mateo cried and kicked at her limp body. He finally managed to roll the corpse off him and resu his crawl to cover.

The planter was agonizingly close, and he was almost there when he heard a screeching roar followed by a trumpeting bugle. He looked over just in ti to see another cabal mber get scooped up in the antlers of a spectral beast as it gored him and tossed him over its back.

All around him, strange, spectral creatures were swarming the streets and stampeding over cabal mbers. They seed to be coming from a shimring purple portal that was hovering in the middle of the air just outside the door to the storefront.

“Oh, fuck this.” Mateo quit crawling on his belly and got up to all fours. He bear-crawled all the way to the nearest alley next to a second-hand electronic store and ducked behind the corner.

He turned his head at the sound of running boots and saw two strangers in black and grey tactical gear coming his way and pointing a rifle at him.

“On the ground!” one of them shouted in a decidedly French accent.

Instead, Mateo raised his wand and triggered it. There was a brief flash of light from both of the masked n, but it vanished nearly imdiately. The n scread and dropped their rifles as uniforms opened in a line from hip to shoulder and a bloody slash appeared on both of them. The strangers then dropped to the ground and writhed as the wounds began bleeding profusely.

“Huh, guess it is pretty good.” He said while looking at the wand. He could barely hear himself speak over the endless roar of that damned machinegun.

His attention was once again grabbed by movent in the street, but it wasn’t from the sa direction as the strangers had co from. Instead, it was to Mr. X and his… posse, walking like it was a high-noon showdown in a spaghetti western.

Mateo really had no other words for it as the five of them walked down the road like they owned it. Unsurprisingly the machinegun focused on them, peppering them with bullets which were all intercepted by an oil-slick looking barrier.

The machinegun stopped then and he risked poking his head out after another spectral beast rushed past, toward X and his friends but bounced off the sa barrier. He then saw a man standing there. A man he recognized from all their pictures. A man that suddenly began shifting into a werewolf. Then he grew and grew and grew.

“HHHooooolllyy fffuuck.” Mateo stamred and began backing away until he felt sothing and spun around with his wand ready. Well, he spun, but his hand stayed where it was for a brief mont until it fell to the ground, severed at the wrist. He wanted to scream but he was to shocked by what had just happened, and he stared dumbly at his stump before looking up.

His eyes went wide as a demon of pure shadow erged from the side of the building. It was shorter than him with two thick horns pointing up and glowing blue eyes as the only distinguishing characteristics. That was all he could see as all its features were covered in the sa roiling shadow. In its hand was a gleaming sword, still dripping blood from where it had intercepted his hand.

“Tsk-tsk. Naughty boy. You shouldn’t have such dangerous things.” The shadow rasped. The demon flicked the sword point up and lunged, driving it toward his throat.

Mateo scread.

He didn’t scream for long.

*****

“I have to say, I am impressed, Lady Jade.” Henry said as he leaned against the hood of his truck. “The way you have built the bunker and the car port makes a lot of sense.”

Jade smiled. “I sense a but…”

Henry sighed and sucked his teeth for a mont. “Tsk. It’s just… I have a family. One that has certain tastes and I’m nearly certain that those tastes don’t involve living underground with a couple dozen werewolves that are all single.”

“HAAaha. Chief Henry, many of them have ford pairs already. I wouldn’t say they are all single, much less have only those proclivities in mind.” Jade laughed. “But to the main concern of housing, I think there is a reasonable solution.”

“And what would that ‘reasonable’ solution be?” He questioned what this woman thought of as reasonable after seeing the militant structure to The Den.

“We just ask our sire to allow us to build traditional housing above ground.” Jade said with a smirk that looked hauntingly wolfish in the glow from the porch lights. “You will notice that the drive extends toward that first field over there?”

Henry looked at the open field behind the barn. It was barely visible now but he had gotten a good look during his tour earlier in the day. “And how much room do you expect to use for housing?”

Jade humd in her throat for a mont. “Hmm. I would say we could build thirty or so houses in a small, exclusive subdivision. That would allow the rest of the property to remain open and untad. Our sire did recently acquire additional land after all.”

“And the compensation for living on this land and in having a house here?”

“Oh, nothing to onerous. We don’t expect everyone to work for the Order, but It would be expected of you to tithe to the pack.” Jade answered and summoned a pamphlet from her ring, making Henry flinch before he took it.

Jade continued to explain as Henry skimd the trifold docunt. “Our goal here isn’t to be separate from society but to be integrated. I wish to return us to our roots. Part of those roots is to live within our communities and establish a mutually beneficial relationship with them. You being the Sheriff will only help that.”

“Jade, I am the chief of police for Traverse City, not the Sheriff.” He was getting tired of correcting her.

Once more the cunning smile appeared on Jades lips as she handed him a print out. “Not yet you aren’t, but the position is open and I personally think you would be the perfect candidate to be elected this fall. Also, you will probably be asked to take the position as interim Sheriff since I put the bug in the ear of the county commissioner.”

Henry was about to ask what the hell she was on about after seeing the application forms that she handed him but a wolf ca running out of the barn. He was holding a cell phone in his hand and sprinting for all he was worth.

“Lady Jade!” He called to ger their attention before sliding to a stop before them. “There has been and attack! Penny is on the line.” he handed her the phone.

“Jade here.” She said as she placed it to her ear and listened. “Who? Ok. Any idea where? Orders?”

Henry was only hearing half the conversation but the expression on the woman’s face turned from smiling and friendly to wrath incarnate in an instant. Even her tone changed to sothing like that of barely suppressed rage. She hung up the phone a mont later and turned to the man who had run up.

“Matthew, alert everyone that we have an impending attack on the property. Everyone up here in gear.” The wolf nodded once and took off for the barn while she turned to Henry. “My apologies, it seems our sire’s enemies have co calling. Would you like to help, leave or stay?”

Henry took only a mont to decide. “I will leave. I think there is going to be a shit storm coming and I need to get my trusted officers on standby now.”

Jade flashed him a radiant smile before her casual clothes were suddenly replaced by uniform and rifle. Also holstered at her belt was a strange looking rod of so kind but he didn’t have ti to evaluate it before she turned and spoke over her shoulder.

“We appreciate the assistance.” She then paused and turned to face him. She reached out a suddenly glowing hand and grabbed his. “Blessed are those who hold back the dark.”

Then she was gone, running for the barn and leaving Henry dumbfoundedly staring at his hand as the glow slowly faded. “Welp, in for a penny, in for a pound.” He muttered and climbed into his truck. If he was lucky, he might be able to get his para officers on the phone before he hit the edge of the city.