Emberclaw Protocol

Chapter 2: Tangled in Silver

The emergency lights in the security corridor illuminated the blood in an eerie purple color. Erin wiped the crust of blood from the corner of her mouth, the rusty taste of Cole lingering between her lips. Her phone vibrated in her pants pocket, and Kayden's text message pierced the darkness, "He has a tracker inside him, just like the victim."

As footsteps approached from upstairs, Erin suddenly remembered what Cole had said about the code. The moment she typed in 0928, a thick fog suddenly erupted from the ventilation ducts - it was tear gas mixed with silver powder.

"s**t!" She crashed through the side door and rushed into the storm, only to find it was the dump station in the alley behind the police station. The stench of rot mixed with the scent of cedar as Cole stepped out of the shadow of the container, half submerged in a pool of blood.

"Your birthday is a trap triggering device." He tugged at the shirt that clung to his wound, revealing the metal chip glinting between the texture of his muscles, "When my father implanted this in me three years ago, he didn't say it would kill seven innocent people."

Erin's silver knife was pressed against his heart, "So you're a living murder weapon now?" The tip of the knife picked at the festering flesh, and the code on the chip became visible in the thunderous light - identical to the one extracted from the corpse dissected this morning.

Cole suddenly took her knife-wielding hand and stabbed himself, stopping when the tip was half an inch into his flesh, "Dig it out, or wait for it to detonate." The veins in the corners of his forehead rippled, "This chip has 23 minutes left before it broadcasts my coordinates to all the werewolves in the city."

The storm washed over the two men's interlocked hands, and Erin felt him shiver. When he'd been pounced upon by the one-eyed giant wolf three years ago, the beast had trembled, too-before snapping at his attacker's throat.

"I need liquid nitrogen and a laser scalpel." She pulled off the necklace and wrapped it around Cole's wrist, "Tantalum will jam the signal, but it'll last ten minutes tops."

Cole yanked the necklace off with a backhand and suddenly slung her over his shoulder, "Twelve o'clock, three hundred meters." As he crashed through the fire escape and leapt onto the roof, Erin saw an electronic countdown floating on the back of his neck - 23:17 was pulsing.

The shards of stained windows from the abandoned church looked like a floor full of crystals in the moonlight. Cole kicked open the door to the confessional, and in the dark compartment was what appeared to be a military-grade operating table. As he pressed Erin onto the operating table, the cold light of a silver crossbow suddenly appeared under his white coat.

"The third rib has regeneration crystals." Cole held her hand and adjusted the angle of his crossbow, his breath spraying behind her ear, "Be as steady and accurate as you would dissect a heart."

Erin rolled over and kneed him in the throat, the crossbow pressed against the knot of his throat, "You're teaching me too hard, Mr. Werewolf." She traced her fingertips over the old scar on his palm, "The claw marks are an exact match to the murder weapon in the 2018 serial attacks."

Projections of stained glass cut flecks of light across their faces. Cole suddenly bit off a lock of his own black hair, the strands glowing silver in the moonlight, "Take this, and my people will think you're mine..."

"Mate?" Erin snaps and spits out the word, twisting her hair into a surgical knot, "How about a hostage-taking kidnapper." She suddenly tugged on her hair and pulled him closer, kissing the corner of his oozing mouth at the sound of the alarm, "It's more realistic that way."

Cole's golden pupils contracted violently. Erin tasted the unusual sweetness of his blood, the flavor of thrombin, unique to the Lycans. As she bit through his lower lip, the countdown suddenly buzzed shrilly.

"The chip is under the right collarbone!" Cole ripped open his collar. Erin's laser knife had pierced the skin, and the smell of burning mixed with his suppressed muffled grunts filled the confessional.

The moment the chip was removed, the entire church suddenly shook. Blood oozed from the portraits of the saints on the stained glass, and Cole rolled off the altar with Erin in his tail, three cracks torn out by the wolf's claws in their original position.

"You guys sure are mating." Kayden stood in front of the shattered rose window, silver bullets flipping through his fingertips, "It's time for you to tell me to change my tastes, my dear." He suddenly shot at Cole, "Especially when your new favorite is giving away our location."

Erin whipped out her scalpel to deflect the trajectory, and the bullet grazed the tip of Cole's ear and missed the Madonna. As the crucifix came crashing down, she saw metal tentacles crawling out of Cole's wound - it wasn't a tracker at all, it was some kind of bio-mechanical symbiote.

"Your father is not dead." She slammed the remains of the chip at Kayden, "It's the product of a living lab, and last week's autopsy report showed..."

The wolf howl drowned out the second half of the sentence. Cole suddenly animalized into a giant wolf crashing through the dome, his one eye glowing red in the moonlight. Erin was transfixed-it was the same giant wolf that had held off the truck for her on the interstate three years ago.

Kayden's snort came from behind him, "Now you know why he's always at the crime scene?" He flashed up the screen of his cell phone, the security video showed Cole sneaking into the morgue on the full moon of every month, "Your royal highness is eating the hearts of his victims, in order to suppress the internal..."

Erin's silver crossbow was pressed against his brow, "And you purposely let me discover the cursed inscription in the wedding ring." She tugged at his shirt, the serum capsule embedded in the third button was glowing, "That's why you went after Cole? The immortality serum his father developed?"

A sudden onslaught of wolf claws separated the two. Cole picked up Erin and flung her onto his back, crashing through the stained windows and leaping into the night. Kayden's shouts fragmented in the torrential rain, "Sooner or later he'll rip your throat out!"

Erin crouched on the wolf's back, her fingers sinking deep into the silver fur. Cole's heartbeat shook her palms, the rhythm an exact duplicate of the one that had pressed against her chest during the crash three years ago. When they stopped at the gas station ruins, she noticed that Cole's right eye had begun to bleed-the very side where the one-eyed giant wolf had gone blind in the video.

"There are laboratories in the church cellar." Cole stumbled to his knees as he transformed back into his human form, veins glowing an eerie blue under his bare skin, "My father... He modified my genes..."

Erin's scalpel had slit open the small of his back and removed three ovoid metal capsules. The moment the capsules touched the air, the howls of wolves all over the city suddenly turned into screams of misery.

"Biochemical weapons." She dipped the capsule into the gasoline tank, "You're a walking plague canister."

Cole grabbed her wrist and pressed it to his heart, "Right now you hold six hundred thousand lives." He yanked out the key in his collar, "Or go to the cellar and initiate the self-destruct program."

The neon lights of the gas station suddenly all lit up. Kayden's helicopter hovered overhead, and a sneer came over the loudspeaker, "Honey, choosing the wrong man will make you an accomplice to genocide."

Erin suddenly kissed Cole and shoved the key between his teeth. In his moment of dismay, she rolled over and straddled the motorcycle, holding up the burning capsule, "Tell the Elders that I have their prince!" As the throttle roared, she whispered into Cole's earpiece, "You taught me how to find the regeneration crystals."

Cole lunges for the helicopter at the sound of the explosion, while Erin rushes into the suddenly opened cellar entrance. In the moment of the fall, she sees werewolf embryos floating in the incubation chamber - all with Cole's face.