“We should speak somewhere more private,” she said and then she turned around and gestured over her shoulder for us to follow her.
I looked at Kasta, Paula, Eve, Zea, Aasne, Elana, and Juliette. Kasta and Paula shrugged, but the other women wore faces that betrayed their concern.
“Hurry up,” the Jotnar woman called back over her shoulder, and I quickly moved to fall into step behind her.
But I also kept my right hand on my revolver.
The woman’s wolves padded next to her silently, but they stopped simultaneously, and the tattooed Jotnar woman opened a door to our left. She stepped in without even looking back at me, and then I glanced inside to see a set of stairs leading down. I didn’t move to follow her, and the woman turned and then beckoned.
“Let’s go, my future king,” she said, and then her wolves let out short growls before they padded down the stairs.
I looked at Eve, but the vampire shook her head and shrugged. “I cannot detect her thoughts, but if she wanted to fight us, it would have happened already.”
“Agreed,” I said, and then I moved down the stairs after the strange Jotnar woman.
The stairs only went down two flights, and then they turned into a narrow concrete hallway with dim lights flickering overhead.
“Where are we?” I asked after we had walked through the empty hallway for ten seconds behind her. There were no doors along our path, but I could see one at the end of the hallway some fifty meters ahead.
“This is one of the security stations in the castle,” she said. “Past this door is the main level monitoring station.”
“Uhh, won’t there be guards in there?” Zea asked.
“Yes,” the woman replied. “You will kill them, and then we will continue our conversation.”
“Huh?” Zea asked. “Why? Who are you? Why are you helping us?”
“You’ll find out in a few minutes,” the brunette said. “The room is soundproof, so you can use your weapons, but there is another exit door opposite of where we will enter. You should not let them escape, or they will raise the alarm.”
“Why should we trust you?” Aasne growled.
“Because I--” the woman started to reply, but then the far door opened, and four armored warriors stepped into the hallway. They were obviously wearing aegis armor since the smooth metal over their chests, legs, shoulders, and arms were covered by organic looking fur etchings, and their helmets looked like screaming wolf faces.
The four stopped their advance as soon as they saw the woman with the two wolf drones, but our guide kept walking toward them.
The man in front of the group said something in Nordar, and the woman shrugged and then slowly stopped her walk.
“I’m taking them to Uffe,” she said in English as she gestured back to us.
“He did not say he was expecting guests,” the man at the front said in English.
“He told me that he was upset with the sixty-seventh squadron’s failure to destroy the Waymund convoy. These are the survivors.” The tattooed woman gestured back to us, but she didn’t turn her head away from the armored men.
“He did not mention anything like that to me.”
“Why would he?” she laughed. “You are just a guard. You know nothing. Is he in his lower throne room?”
“Layalina, you should watch your tongue,” the man growled as he began to walk toward us. “Our king holds nothing but contempt for you, and the only reason you are still alive is because of the bloo--”
“My tongue needs no watching,” she hissed. “I am supposed to bring them to see him. Is he in the lower throne room?”
“Yes,” the man said, “now, I must be returning to--”
The man never finished his sentence. The metal wolf-drone on Layalina’s left side sprang into the air and closed its massive jaws around his armored throat without even a whisper of a sound while the second robot jumped at the next armored man in line. This man expected the movement, and he got his armored forearm up in the way of the drone’s jaw. The weight of the robot still began to topple him over, and I quickly made my decision.
I sprang past the tattooed woman, pulled my knife out of its sheath, shoulder checked the third guard in line so that he slammed against the hallway wall, and then shoved my blade into the armored face of the last man in the group.
I knew that the aegis armor was made of a unique metal that had “magical” properties, but my knife was made of the same metal and all twenty centimeters of the blade plunged into the fucker’s skull as if the armor was crafted of paper mache.
My victim went down without even a sound, but the third man shouted an alarm as he bounced off the wall, and the man who was having his arm chewed on by the drone screamed.
I spun around to attack the third Jotnar guard, but his shout of alarm cut off and he reached up to his armored throat as if someone was strangling him, I guessed it was Eve’s magic, but my knife was already moving, and my blade tore through his armored neck with a wave of blood.
Both Aasne and Kasta had been standing next to me when we walked down the hallway, but the android had jumped back to avoid getting hurt while the auburn-haired warrior woman had stepped forward. Her long leg twisted out in a front kick that slammed into the second Jotnar guard’s helmet. The blow silenced his panicked screams, but I doubted the blow did much damage to his armor, so I brought my bloody knife back around and plunged it into the spot where his neck became his spine. His body quivered with shock and then went limp half a moment later.
“Nice blade,” the tattooed woman said when I pulled the weapon free of the man’s neck.
“It is,” I said as I flicked the blood clear of the metal and then slid it back into my sheath. “Are you going to explain--”
“There is no camera in this hallway, but they heard the screams and are going to rush through that door at any moment. Or, they are going to run out the other door and alert Uffe,” Layalina said as she pointed to the door. “I don’t want to kill my people, but I want you to do what you came here to do. So have at it. You better hurry.”
“Fine,” I growled as I yanked the rifle off my back. I didn’t know this woman’s motivation, but if she was right about the group of guards in the next room, then I needed to deal with them quickly.
“Twenty-four of them at terminal stations,” Eve said quickly. “They heard the scream, but they don’t realize it is us. Someone is walking toward the door to--”
“You better hurry,” Layalina said, but I was already running toward the door.
And I was shifting into my weretiger form.
The pain of my twisting and expanding muscles made every step agony, but I pushed through my increase in limb size by forcing my changing legs to pump faster. The door opened a few seconds before I reached it, and the guard on the other side didn’t have his aegis up. His mouth opened with surprise, but then my claws tore through his face, broke open his skull, and scooped out his brain with one quick movement.
Then I plowed into the security room as my aegis began to cover my body.
The remaining twenty-three men and women sitting at the security terminals shouted with surprise, and they jumped from their seats as their armor began to flow over their bodies.
My rifle spat blue pulse bullets at the closest guard. His head wasn’t yet covered by his aegis, and his skull exploded like a dropped water balloon. The next guard in line was flung back against her terminal when my bullets hit her, but they didn’t break through her armor until I squeezed harder on the trigger and sent the fifth bullet against her chest. Then the metal exploded inward like a pierced soda can, and her red fuzzy insides sprayed out with a loud hiss.
My third Jotnar target jumped at me and made a move to grab my rifle. I let him grasp it with both of his hands, but then I quickly let the metal drip away from my face, and I clamped my jaws down on his throat. Warm blood exploded from his two carotid arteries and filled my mouth with warm copper taste, but then I twisted my neck away and tore his head off his shoulders.