The three remaining guards, that had been holding Brendon, attacked then, rushing at Grange. Grange turned, swinging the broadsword he held in his hands in a wide arc and slicing open the gut of one guard while the other two sunk low to avoid the blade and then jumped back.

The two guards now standing off with Grange were Hunters but Brendon had seen Grange fight angry before and knew the wolf could handle it. Brendon had to find a way to get these chains off of him and Ella so they could help fight their way out as well.

Movement by the door caught Brendon’s attention and he saw the bruised and beaten guard that had run in moments before, pull his black powder revolver, taking aim at Ella.

Brendon stepped in front of her and prepared himself for the pain of the bullet, only to feel shocked when Peter, whom he had forgotten was even in the room, dropped one sledgehammer sized fist onto the top of the guards head, dropping him unconscious to the floor.

Peter shouldered his axe and cross the room quickly to Brendon, who tensed, unsure if he could trust the giant demon.

Peter winked again, causing Brendon to know he was going to have to have a talk with the demon about how often grown men should wink at each other. The oversized man raised his axe high and then brought it down hard on the chains around Brendon’s ankles, breaking them cleanly.

“I’d be happy to do your hands too if you hold them out.” Peter stated with a grin.

The yelling in the compound was getting closer. The occasional gun shot sounded but mostly it was primal screams and clanking swords. Black powder weapons just weren’t very practical in hand to hand combat. They took too long to reload.

“Dammit! Where’d they go!” Grange’s angry voice growled just as Brendon and Ella were freed from their chains. The wrist and ankle bracelets were still attached but they could move freely now.

Brendon looked up to the desk to realize that the councilmen were gone. Grange had killed the Hunters, and judging by the amount of blood splashed across Grange’s black shirt and the puddles of it pooled around the Hunter’s bodies, Grange had killed them quite thoroughly.

“Overkill?” Brendon asked with a quiet chuckle, his arms snaking around Ella and holding her tight.

Grange looked over at Brendon and let out another growl.

“I recognized them. They were with the Hunters that attacked the pack.”

“The council would have slipped through the hidden passage.” Brendon said matter of factly as he pointed toward the banner that hung from the ceiling and stretched to the floor just behind the desk. “And is the pack okay?”

“Fine.” Grange said with a quick nod. “You both okay?”

Brendon looked down at Ella and she looked up at him and nodded.

“Yeah, we’re okay.”

The yelling suddenly grew louder and a mass of bodies came pouring through the council room door.

Guards and Hunters, a lot of them, running for their lives.

The guards saw their dead brothers on the floor and stopped in their tracks. Rage contorted their features and then they attacked.

“Time to go to work.” Brendon muttered. Shock filled him when he heard Ella let out an angry hiss and then leap through the air, jumping from one attacker to the next, ripping out throats and tearing open flesh.

“Can’t let her have all the fun.” Grange growled and Brendon nodded in agreement just before the two men jumped into the bloody fray.

Brendon had never given much thought to killing another Hunter. They were his brothers. They were like him.

No, that wasn’t right. Brendon was different. Changed. He would never again be a sheep blindly following the shepherd.

“Where’s the council?” Blain demanded as he came into the room and took off the head of a demon with the big axe in his hand.

“They went behind the curtain.” Brendon replied, ducking to dodge an axe and swinging his own taking off the legs of the Hunter

“Go after them!” Blain exclaimed. “We can handle this.” Brendon was about to ask if the wolf was sure when a gray wolf covered in red/gold highlights came bursting through the door, blood covering her muzzle. She went up to Grange and flicked her tail in his face before leaping on a mortal guard that was attempting to sneak up on Grange from behind, and quickly dispatching him.

“We’ve got this.” Grange replied, his blue eyes flashing as he watched Dawn leaping in and out of the fray of bodies.

Prisoners were now joining the fight. The hall and doorway were so thick with bodies that Brendon noticed not many were even using weapons any longer. There was no room to wield them. The fight had become savage. Hands, teeth, claws and small knives. The scent of blood, death, panic and rage filled the air.

The prisoners were angry. Brendon had no doubt that Grange’s pack hadn’t had to do much work, the prisoners seemed more than happy to kill the guards and the Hunters for them and Brendon did not blame them.

All that saved him from the same fate from the bloodthirsty prisoners was them seeing him fighting alongside Grange.

“I think the prisoners have this.” Blain said as he stepped back away from the main fighting force and watched. Grange nodded and then he shifted quickly, the glistening black wolf he became somehow even scarier than the blood covered man he had been moments earlier.

He let out a sharp yip and quickly the pack was surrounding him, even Blain had shifted now. Grange tipped his head to Brendon as if saying ‘We’ll follow you’ and Brendon quickly found Ella, who had become a one vampire killing machine in the throng of bodies. He took her arm, grinning when she turned and hissed at him before realizing who he was and smiling again.

“Damn, I always knew that smile would be pretty.” he said roughly as he kissed her blood covered cheek.

Grange yipped impatiently and then Brendon nodded.

“Right, we gotta go find those old bastards.” he said. “If we don’t then they’ll just find a way to put all this back together once we’re gone.”

“Well then let’s go.” Ella replied simply. “I want to go back home. I have improved a lot since you left and I am ready to get started on that future you promised me.”

“God, me too, honey.” Brendon replied, looking deep into those pale green eyes. How strange that they were having a quiet, romantic moment amidst all the blood and death going on around them.

Minutes ago, Brendon had been sure he was seeing her face for the last time, he had been sure he was hearing her voice for the final time and now here she was wrapped in his arms.

Brendon heard one last impatient growl and he turned just in time to see the pack slipping behind the banner that the council had run behind.

He and Ella shared a look and then went running after them.

“Grange! Farris is mine, dammit!”

***

Ella ran alongside Brendon. Her Brendon. He was alive. He was here with her. It seemed a miracle and Ella wasn’t sure how to process such a thing. Miracles were fantasies, dreams, things that had happened to others in stories she had heard but never to her.

She had been so sure that Brendon was going to die. Each time those guards had struck him with the handles of their axes, Ella had felt the pain herself. Each cracking of his bones like a knife straight through her heart.

But Brendon was strong, already his body was healing and while Ella knew his body had to be hurting from the massive about of bruises he was covered in, he didn’t show any of that pain on his face.

She loved him. She loved him with everything that she had. He was her miracle.

His hand reached out and took hers, squeezing it tightly as if he could read her mind as they made their way through the tight winding tunnels.

The pack could be heard ahead of them, their claws echoing off the stone walls and their panting breaths and growls filling the silence.

Ella could smell the council men. They were close and they were scared.

Suddenly screams split the air, so loud in this tight tunnel, they were nearly painful to Ella’s sensitive ears. Growls soon joined the screams and then the scent of blood.

It was clear that Grange’s pack was succumbing to the blood lust that was inside every immortal. A lust to kill. To end the life of those weaker than themselves.

Brendon charged ahead and Ella simply followed. Following him is what she would do from now on. Never again would she let this man from her sight. Whenever she did, bad things seemed to happen to them both.

They rushed past the pack, Ella noticed that the pack was toying with their prey and Ella longed to join them but she knew that Brendon was chasing something else.

The councilman named Farris. Grange and the pack had let him run on. He was the only councilman still running.

Ella saw him then. His run had become more of a shuffling fast walk and she could hear him sobbing. He looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened when he saw she and Brendon closing in.

It had been a mistake for the old man to take his eyes from his path, which was barely lit by torches ever thirty to forty feet. His feet became tangled in themselves and he was sent crashing to the ground, his body sliding across the damp stone.

Ella stood back, allowing her mate to approach their fallen victim. She knew this was Brendon’s kill to make.

“Brendon…” Farris whispered hoarsely, his voice breaking. “Please just let me go…”

“You know I can’t do that, sir.” Brendon replied, his voice different than Ella had ever heard it before. Gone was any gentleness or caring. Gone was that lightheartedness and teasing nature. He sounded cold and callous as he spoke to the stuttering quivering coward on the cold stone floor.

“You can’t kill me Brendon. I am your master.”

Brendon was standing over him now, his legs on either side of Farris’s prone frame lying on the floor. “I have no master. Not anymore.”

“You won’t kill me…” Farris himself sounded as if he knew he was lying. The desperation in his voice and the tears on his wrinkled cheeks giving away his own doubts.

“You created me, Farris. You and men like you. You know what I’m capable of because many times you’ve used my skills to your advantage. I am what you Councilmen always trained me to be.” Brendon paused, a humorless grin passing over his face. “A mindless killing machine. No questions, no thought to whether it’s right or wrong. No wondering if the prey deserves to die. I am a Hunter and this is what I do.”

“Brendon, please… I’m an old man, what threat am I to you? Your wolves have killed the rest of the council and the prisoners are tearing down this compound brick by brick. Just let me go. I won’t live long outside these walls…”

Ella saw the tension in Brendon’s jaw. She saw his grip tighten around the axe he held in his hands. She willed him to kill the man but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he was not going to. For all of Brendon’s tough talk Ella knew him to be a kindhearted man.

Killing a defenseless old man who was lying on the ground at his feet with tears soaking his cheeks just wasn’t something that Brendon would ever do.

Brendon took several steps back and spit at the ground beside Farris with disgust.

“You are a coward. A worthless coward. No better than the evil you send your Hunters out to destroy. You take children and you abuse them, torture them, twist their minds until they are blindly obedient to you and your Council and then you send them out to do your dirty work and make yourselves look pure and good while you keep dungeons full of prisoners, some innocent, some not, and you starve and torture them just for the hell of it. You disgust me. The world will be a better place without you and your council.”

Brendon turned to Ella then.

“Let’s go, honey. This tunnel will lead us out of here if we keep following it. We’ll leave Farris to find his own way out. With any luck his own creations will find and kill him.”

Ella nodded and they began to walk away from Farris. The sound of movement behind them stopped them in their tracks and then a gun cocked. Ella and Brendon turned to see Farris sitting up now with the gun pointed at Brendon’s head.

“That won’t kill me, Farris.” Brendon stated, sounding almost bored and yet happy, as if he had hoped Farris would do this. Ella knew that Farris being armed would give Brendon the excuse his conscience needed to kill the man. Farris laughed, the sound more than a little crazy.

“No, but it will hurt like hell.” Ella smiled when she saw the black figure moving through the shadows behind Farris.

“Not as badly as what is about to happen will hurt you.” she whispered, her voice void of emotion. Farris seemed confused and then he felt the breath on the back of his neck.

He turned to see the monstrous wolf, his black muzzle dripping blood and his eyes flashing golden in the firelight.

He let out a scream that was cut short as Grange lunged and closed his powerful jaws around the old man’s windpipe, sinking his teeth in deeper and deeper and then jerking his head back with a ripping sound that sprayed blood across the narrow passageway.

Grange loped up to Brendon, and Ella would have sworn it sounded as if the giant wolf was laughing as he swatted the Hunter in the face with his tail. Then with a yip Grange took off through the tunnel and the rest of the pack followed him, furry shadows, moving silently down the tunnel toward the exit that the Council had been trying desperately to reach.

“Damn you, Grange!” Brendon called out, his voice echoing off the walls. “I told you Farris was mine!”