Page 78 of Meeting Her Mate

I put my phone to my ear and said, “Maliha. Cut the power.”

“Going dark in 3…2…1,” Maliha said. She had truly outdone herself. She had hacked into the grid and had isolated the section providing power to this town. The moment she finished her countdown, all the lights on the building turned off.

Werewolves saw better in the dark anyway.

Chapter 28: Will

It was under cover of fog and darkness that Alexis and I descended from the building across the Beckett Pharma tower. As we crossed the road, our steps splashed in the puddles of water that had pooled on the road and sidewalks. Above, the dark clouds forebode another torrential bout of rain. The air was still, and the night was quiet except for our faint sounds as we crept up to the tower.

Even though we had robbed it of its electricity and stripped it of its lighting, the tower loomed like a malignant presence, its jet-black length rising in the air, piercing through the thick canopy of clouds. A sliver of lightning tore through the sky, followed by the low roar of thunder.

I put my arm up, barring Alexis from moving any further. She put her arm on my shoulder and turned me around to face her.

“There’s no going back now,” she whispered. “We are doing this.”

It wasn’t that I was hesitant or afraid—quite the opposite. The three men in there stood no chance against Alexis and me. She had evolved into a strong and fierce werewolf, one that I could count on in battle. As for me, the antidote that Vincent had procured for me was still working its magic, providing me with strength, detoxing my body of all the negative effects of the poison that had been running through my veins, and granting me a level of mental clarity that I had never known before. I was able to calculate the probabilities of potential actions and perceive their outcome within milliseconds. My body and mind were as optimal as they could be. If there ever was a time to do something like this, it was now.

“We are,” I said, holding her hands. “I’m just checking in to see if you’re okay.”

“I feel alive like I’ve never felt before. It’s like I’ve been preparing for this moment all my life. A chance to do something good. This is going to be my redemption. And yours. We’re ridding this town of evil,” she said, her voice louder than a whisper this time. She stroked my hair, her other hand resting on my chest, feeling my steadily beating heart.

I wrapped my arms around her, lifted her body, and kissed her on her soft, moist, and warm lips. Alexis kissed me in return, then gave me a light peck on each cheek, making them flush with warmth and color.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “Let us rid Fiddler’s Green of evil.”

Wisps of mist wove like tendrils around us as we walked up to the building. I ducked behind a large fountain and peeked from between the plants in the flowerbed, scanning my surroundings. From the corner of my eye, I could see Alexis looking out from behind the fountain wall.

“Guards at the door,” she said, pointing at the main entrance. The main entrance was already a no-brainer. We were not going to use it unless we wanted to draw the attention of every single guard in the building and give up our entire position right at the beginning.

There was a metal barrier lowered over the garage. The few times I had seen the underground garage, it had been open. It made sense that they closed it with a lowered mesh fence. There were two guards patrolling the garage entrance as well.

Unlike the last time when I had broken into the building to save Alexis, the guards this time around were sturdier, had firearms in their holsters, and were much more agile than the previous guards stationed at the entrances. The previous ones never stood a chance in catching up to me. I wasn’t so sure about these new ones. They resembled soldiers in their gait and their actions. As the power was out, the guards walked with flashlights, casting their beams everywhere they walked. This made it especially easy for us to track where they were going.

“Two at the garage entrance,” I confirmed with Alexis.

“They’re not your average mall walker guards,” Alexis said. “It makes sense that Blair upgraded. But we expected that, didn’t we?”

“We did,” I said. “Follow me.”

As we had discussed, we flanked from each side, making use of the environment around us to conceal ourselves. I went for the guard on the right while Alexis crept up behind the guard on the left. In a perfectly synchronized moment, we both struck the guards on the back of their heads at the same time, knocking them out. Before they could fall, Alexis and I caught them and lowered them noiselessly onto the floor. Once I had confirmed that both of them were indeed passed out from our blows, we dragged them into the garage via the side panel in the fence and dumped their bodies in the entrance booth.

“So far, so good,” Alexis said, panting lightly as she tucked away the legs of the guard she had knocked out and fitted in the booth.

“Onwards and upwards,” I said, crouching against the booth as we carefully examined the layout of the garage in front of us. Ahead was a descending curve leading into the main underground garage. The curve gave way to wide parking with evenly spaced columns holding the entire weight of the building upon them. It always fascinated me how civil engineers and architects managed to raise monolithic structures out of brick and stone, structures capable of holding thousands of tons of weight. Despite that huge achievement in one arena of life, people lacked so disreputably in other arenas.

“Will!” Alexis grabbed me by my arm and yanked me back. In the midst of my musing, I had forgotten that this parking space was festering with guards wandering about with flashlights beaming in every direction. I tucked behind one of those new electric cars, the Tesla, and scoped my surroundings from there.

“There it is,” I pointed at the elevator shaft.

Nodding to acknowledge that she had heard me and had seen what I was showing her, Alexis quickly pointed in turn to something that she had just seen.

“Subbasement staircase.”

This was what we had been searching for. The diagrams, schematics, and blueprints were one thing, but it was another thing entirely to be present in the basement packed with guards, hiding from flashlights, and then sight the sub-basement staircase entrance. Theory vs. practical, as they were.

We crawled from car to car, sometimes ducking down to the point of lying down on our stomachs, as we made our way from the entrance of the basement parking lot to the sub-basement staircase. Midway, the thought occurred to me that it would be far easier to just shift and kill all the guards than to keep up the stealth charade. But I patiently persevered, and as with all things that are the rewards of patience and perseverance, our reward this time around was a clean entrance into the sub-basement staircase without any of the guards getting alerted of our presence.

At that same moment, though, one thing happened that neither of us had expected. The lights came back on.