"So, you take the credit if we succeed, shoulder none of the blame if we fail, and risk nothing either way," Simon spat.

"I knew I was right in thinking you were quite bright, even after what happened to your House," Fumiko smiled ruefully, "Now go, and Simon… good luck."

And now here they were, several hours later, walking through muck and filth and God knows what, trying to find an underground way into Dukart Tower.

"At least we don't have to worry about alligators down here," Marco said.

"No, alligators are in the much classier and cleaner New York sewers," Noemi spat sarcastically as she stepped around a family of rats. "I could have driven us all in a van, it would have been better than this shit."

"Yes, you could have," Simon answered.

"And yet, here we are, down here in this crap, walking. Taking forever and a day to do something that should have taken us less than an hour," Noemi said.

"Will you quit your bickering, Noemi," Sofia said. "News flash, none of us want to be here. It's what we have to do, so instead of complaining, just shut up and keep moving."

By some miracle Valentina, with the aid of her architectural skills, found their way to the sewer access to Dukart Tower. They climbed up through a manhole cover and looked around the underground garage.

Simon could smell that something wasn't quite right.

"Is that gunpower?" Sophia asked.

Simon looked around them. He couldn't see anything or anyone but he smelled it too and nodded, "Someone's been here recently and… shit! Time to go!"

Marco nodded and bolted off to his right to find the nearest and fastest way up the tower. The remaining six members of the group rushed after him and ran up the stairway. They closed the door and broke the handle, making a make shift lock behind them. The scent they had all picked up on was that of werewolves. If they were caught by werewolves they were as good as dead, especially with only the few handguns that they carried more for protection from humans than for anything else. If werewolves were here, something much bigger was going on and Simon was sure that they were here for the same reason's he was. And he would be twice damned and suffer a true death before he allowed some flea bitten half animals to rob him of his vengeance. He bolted up the stairway taking six steps at a time.

He had cleared the bottom few floors in moments. The gifts of House Ghatti gave him and his companions the gifts of speed, silent moving, and the ability to jump to super human heights. And those skills took him straight up into a collapsed stairway that looked like it had caved in on itself.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Simon stood starring at the rubble of the closed off stairway above him.

"Was this to keep people below, or to keep people from retreating from above?" Lorenzo asked as he studied the impenetrable wall of rubble in front of them.

"I don't know and right now, I don't care," Simon said. "Valentina, if this was intentional, how did they do this without bringing the whole tower down and how do we use that to continue going up?" Simon asked.

Valentina thought for a few moments, "They would have to leave all the load bearing struts of the tower alone, this would include elevator shafts."

"So, we can use the elevators to get past this?" Silvia asked.

"From my educated guess, based on nothing, yes," replied Valentina.

"Then we need to find an elevator shaft," Simon said as he turned around and went out the nearest door to what looked like the fourth floor. Kenneth must be brash or really worried to want to set off demotion charges in his own tower. And if the wolves were this high up the tower already, they would need to hurry, otherwise Kenneth might be dead by the time they even got close.

* * * * *

Brian growled in annoyance as the group of werewolves in front of him barreled through the wall. He fired continuously catching a few of the stragglers. But killing a few werewolves this high up, on the thirtieth floor wasn't good enough for Kenneth. He was specially trained and enhanced for fighting werewolves. Kenneth had done something to him and his team, Rachel, Tyler, and John stood with him, weapons firing till the hole in the wall had been covered by what looked to be the boardroom table. He never liked that table anyway and put a couple rounds through it.

He darted back along the hallway and took up another firing position and started shooting blinding through the boardroom wall with a mounted mini gun. His team spread out and put rounds through the plaster of the walls, ripping the place to tatters as they fired.

Brian let the mini gun run out of rounds before he stepped out from behind it and walked into the room through the wall that had been shot to oblivion.

The room was empty with another three massive holes in the wall leading back out to the hallway. Brian wanted to scream in frustration but smiled instead. Calling over his shoulder he said, "We can stand up now and talk face to face, don't you think?"

A human male voice answered him, "I know how you do you're talking vampire. I'd rather just kill you and be done with it."

"Is that Alexiares?" Brian asked. "Oh wait, no, my apologies, it couldn't be. Kenneth killed Alexiares under that mountain you animals called home for so many years." Brian laughed at his little joke and was joined with a chuckle from Raychel, and John. Tyler, on the other hand was moving silently around the outside of the board room, trying to get into a flanking position around where he heard the werewolves to be.

"But honestly, who am I speaking to, if you don't mind me asking your name, sir?" Brian asked.

"My name doesn't really matter, but if you must know, it's William, William Setford."

William Setford, something about that name pinged itself in Brian's mind. Something a few years old…

"Not the same William Setford that we chased out of some valley north of here? The same William that led us on a merry chase through most of California?" Brian hadn't ever really thought that they would ever meet. That Shape shifter shouldn't have eluded them the way he had. They never discovered anything about William having any special traits. And yet he had escaped them. At the time Brian had felt a small amount of respect for the kids resilience and resourcefulness.

"So, you're the asshole that chased me out of my home? Or at least one of the ones? I should kill you just for that, but I know that someone like you would only stand up to a fight if you have ten to one odds against the person you're squaring off against," William retorted.

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