Caleb wasn’t aware he’d closed the distance between himself and the creatures until he found one of his hands wrapped around a squirming muscular neck, his fist coming down over and over to pummel it until something gave. He felt the smaller bones in his hand cracking, a minor inconvenience of pain far away in the background, barely a nuisance.
He wasn’t sure when he lost his grip on the thing’s neck, but the next thing he knew, he was holding its leg instead and smashing the creature onto the rough stone floor again and again. Another one of the creatures leaped on his back, slashing and hacking at him, but he ignored the pain to continue trying to kill the one in his hands.
Shouting somewhere nearby distracted him for a moment, though he wasn’t sure which of his teammates was warning that there were more creatures coming at them from behind, slipping out of those smaller holes in the walls he’d seen earlier. The intensity of gunfire increased, and some part of his mind knew his friends were in trouble.
The distraction allowed the creature in his hand to get away, its blood making it too hard to hold. Caleb’s inner omega didn’t care. He simply growled and reached up to grab the one still on his back. With a roar that echoed through the tunnels, Caleb got a grip on the thing’s head and bashed it against the wall. When it stopped resisting and went still in his arms, he reached for the next closest one he could find—the one slashing at Colonel Vinson, who was doing everything he could to fend it off.
Everything was a blur, like it always was when his omega took over. He attacked, smashing, punching, clawing, even biting. He had no idea if he was killing the creatures. Something inside him suggested he wasn’t, but he kept at it anyway. At some point, his other teammates arrived, his fellow werewolves fighting to protect those without any supernatural abilities. Math wasn’t something he was capable of at the moment, but part of him knew there weren’t as many soldiers fighting now as there should be.
When he found his hands empty of a target for his uncontrolled aggression, Caleb turned to see one of the creatures racing away down the tunnel. Like a predator chasing fleeing prey, his inner wolf forced him to follow. Jake and the others yelled at him to stop, but that wasn’t really a possibility.
The creature ran—he chased.
Caleb had no idea how far he went, but the rational part of his mind—the part that was merely along for the ride—noticed that the floor of the tunnel had angled upward, heading for the surface. Was the creature trying to escape out of the tunnels? His inner omega growled in delight, knowing the thing would never get away on open ground.
He caught up with the creature as it disappeared into one of the smaller side holes, slowed somewhat by the object it was attempting to take into the hole with it. Caleb grabbed the bulky thing and dragged it back, only realizing it was the remains of one of the soldiers when he saw the camo material and shreds of tactical gear.
The creature fought him for the prize, its lips peeling back to show bloodstained fangs. That image, along with the ravaged body, jarred him enough to finally comprehend what he was seeing, even through the omega mist shrouding his mind.
The creatures wereeatingthe soldier’s bodies. It’s why they’d come back so many hours after the initial attack. To recover the meal left behind.
Caleb wasn’t sure how long he stood there, his hands clenching hard on the remains of the soldier, but at some point, the creature finally gave up and left. Then Forrest was there at his side, softly saying words that were probably meant to be calming. It wasn’t necessary, though. His inner omega had finally let go and given up the control it had usurped from him.
After telling him that all of their people were okay, Forrest led him away from the body on the floor of the tunnel. Caleb assumed they were going back to the weapons vault, so he was a little surprised when they headed the other direction, ultimately ending up outside, in a tree-shrouded area that was well outside the air base perimeter. Breathing the fresh air went a long way to clearing his mind. He replayed the previous few minutes, hoping he hadn’t hurt any of their own people. He didn’t remember doing that, but then again, it wasn’t like he’d know.
Jake, Jestina, Colonel Vinson, and one of his soldiers were standing in a loose circle about ten or fifteen feet from where the tunnel opened up on the surface. There were all looking intently at the ground. All four looked up as Caleb and Forrest joined them, the colonel and his soldier staring at Caleb like they were waiting for him to attack. He couldn’t blame them. They’d seen him lose control—anyone would be scared of him after that. There was also the blood on his arms and shirt from all the slashes he’d gotten from those creatures.
“They had a vehicle waiting for them,” Jes said, studying the heavy tread impressions in the soft ground. “A large truck, based on the tire and axle width.”
Caleb stood there trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone had apparentlyhiredthose vicious creatures to help steal a large number of nuclear weapons right out from under the control of the U.S. military—literally. The things had been so insanely aggressive, it was difficult to comprehend they could be trusted to handle a theft like that. Unless there had been humans working with them.
He wasn’t sure which of those was more terrifying.
Chapter 2
Caleb leaned back in his chair in one of the meeting rooms of the Akar International Hotel in Ankara, propping the sole of his boot on the edge of the table and sipping his coffee while flipping through the half-dozen English-language newspapers scattered across the conference table. He was waiting for the other members of the team to arrive for this morning’s intel briefing, where the STAT analysts would hopefully have something to tell them concerning who’d stolen the nukes and where they might be.
The well-healed scars on his arms reminded him of those creatures he’d fought last night. They’d packed one hell of a punch, so the fact that he was still in one piece—albeit with a few extra seams—was something he could live with.
He normally didn’t read newspapers—actually, he couldn’t frigging stand the things—but he’d been curious to see if anything had slipped out about the missing nukes. Something this big should have gotten out by now. So far, though, a full twenty-four hours after climbing out of those damn tunnels, they’d yet to hear a single peep from the media.
Caleb wondered how that was possible, considering all the Turkish nationals who worked on the air base. Between the nighttime alarm, the number of dead and missing American soldiers, and the STAT team coming out covered in blood, it made sense one of them would have leaked something by now. One more thing Colonel Vinson apparently excelled at was keeping secrets.
They’d left the air base for the capital city of Ankara shortly after coming out of the tunnels, hanging around only long enough to review the video and audio files the command post had from the time of the theft. It had been difficult listening to the replay of the massacre, especially after everyone on the STAT team had lived through the same horrible experience. And knowing that many of those soldiers had been dragged away to be eaten was going to leave all of them with nightmares for years to come.
Caleb was flipping through the back pages of the last paper when he heard voices in the hallway outside the small meeting room. A moment later, the door opened, and his teammates walked in along with a new STAT agent named Genevieve Porter. Tall with long, blond hair, she had a huge binder in one arm and reading glasses perched on the end of her petite nose. She barely looked a day over twenty to Caleb, but she must have known her stuff if she’d been assigned to the team.
Forrest seemed surprised Caleb was already there waiting.
“I’d didn’t expect to see you here,” his dark-haired teammate said as he sat down on the other side of the table beside Misty. “I thought you hated these briefings.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Caleb shrugged. “Jet lag, you know?”
He saw Jake, Harley, and Sawyer glance at him out of the corners of their eyes, expressions clearly dubious. Probably because jet lag wasn’t something werewolves ever had to deal with. But at least they didn’t say anything. Because he didn’t want anyone making a big deal out of it.
Truthfully, he hadn’t slept well in weeks. He couldn’t pin down exactly when the problem had started, but he knew it was around the time of their mission in France several weeks ago, when they’d stopped a terrorist named Yegor Shevchenko from scattering radioactive fallout over half of Europe. He hadn’t said anything to his teammates, but part of him was worried he’d gotten poisoned or something during the raid on that nuclear power plant near Calais. One of the reactors in the place had come damn close to going into total meltdown, so there’d been a lot of radiation in the air. It hadn’t seemed to bother Harley and Sawyer, who’d been right on top of the thing. But then again, they were both alphas, so maybe they were immune to that kind of thing while, as an omega, he wasn’t. Considering all the ways in which he felt different from the alphas, he wouldn’t be surprised. He’d definitely gotten the short end of the stick when it came to the werewolf stuff.
While Misty established a secure laptop connection with STAT headquarters, Genevieve helped Forrest set up the scramblers that would douse the room in high-frequency noise, making it impossible for anyone to electronically eavesdrop on their conversation. Unfortunately, a by-product of the scramblers was a constant whining sound that was irritating as hell for the werewolves, but that was just something they had to live with.
