Chapter 110 - Alpha Strike

  The pack hit me like a furry freight train.

  Three werewolves struck simultaneously from different angles. One came at me high, one low, and another from the side. I caught the high one with a straight punch that sent it tumbling backward, but the other two made contact. Claws raked across my chest and legs. Teeth snapped at my throat, my arms, anywhere they could reach.

  My Natural Armor held, mostly anyway. The tier five and six werewolves couldn't bite through my magically enhanced skin, their fangs scraping uselessly across my flesh. But that didn't make me immune to their attacks. The force behind each blow was tremendous, each strike like being hit with sledgehammers. The impacts sent shockwaves through my body, rattling my bones and driving the air from my lungs.

  I grabbed the werewolf at my legs and hurled it sideways into two others. They went down in a tangle of limbs and snarls. Another one leaped onto my back, its weight driving me to one knee. I reached back, grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, and flung it over my shoulder toward the wall. It crashed into the stone with a satisfying thud.

  But there were too many of them. For every one I threw off, two more took its place. They were coordinating their attacks, working together to overwhelm me through sheer numbers. Claws hooked into my clothes, tearing at the already shredded fabric. Jaws clamped down on my arms, my shoulders, my legs. The pressure was immense, even if they couldn't break through.

  A particularly vicious hit to my ribs made me gasp. I backhanded the offending werewolf away, but another immediately darted in from my blind spot, claws raking across my back. I spun, trying to keep them all in view, but there were just too many.

  This wasn't working. Fighting them on the ground put me at a severe disadvantage.

  I activated Flight and shot straight up into the air, leaving the pack snarling and snapping below me. Several of them leaped after me, but I was already fifteen feet up and climbing. From this height, I could see the entire battlefield. The werewolves on the ground were regrouping, circling beneath me like sharks. Behind them, more of their pack was still approaching the wall from other directions.

  The defenders on the wall were doing their best. Arrows and makeshift projectiles rained down on the werewolves, and I saw a few flashes of magic, Fire Bolts and Ice Bolts from the handful of mages Harvard had. They were taking a toll, but it was slow going. The werewolves healed too fast to be taken down easily

  Time to thin the herd.

  I raised my hand and cast Lightning Bolt directly into the densest cluster of werewolves below me. The purple energy crackled through the air and slammed into the pack with devastating force. Four werewolves went down, their bodies convulsing from the electrical shock. The ones nearest to them scattered, giving me a moment of breathing room.

  But that moment of casting had cost me mana I couldn't easily replace. I didn’t have enough mana to take them all down with spells, so I needed to be smart about how I managed this battle. They were going to get past me. That much was obvious. Even doing everything I could to hold them off, there was a limit to how much I could accomplish out there by myself.

  I needed to keep enough reserves in the tank to support the defenders once those walls were breached, and I also had to do everything I could to whittle down the enemy numbers before they broke through. It wasn’t going to be a simple balancing act.

  A werewolf near the back of the pack, one I'd hit with my Lightning Bolt, was struggling to stand. Its movements were sluggish, its body still recovering from the shock. That made it a perfect target. I aimed my hand at it and cast Drain Life.

  The black beam lanced out, connecting with the werewolf. I felt its life force flow into me, a rush of vitality that washed away the aches and bruises from the beating I'd just taken. The werewolf collapsed completely, unconscious or dead. I couldn't tell which it was, from this distance, and frankly, I didn't have time to check.

  The healing energy reinvigorated me, but it also made me feel…wrong. That was a person down there. Sure, he was cursed, transformed into a monster, but there was still a person underneath all that fur and rage. And I'd just Drained them to heal myself. At the end of the day, I didn’t want to hurt these things. I wanted to find a way to heal them, to restore them to who they’d been. It sounded like all we had to do was get Marion’s Cleanse spell high enough tier, and she might be able to remove the curse even from the transformed werewolves.

  If we could manage that, we could save them all. But for the moment, there was no time to dwell on it. The pack was regrouping below me, preparing to push past me to attack the wall again.

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  I descended again, this time landing on the wall itself instead of in front of it. I needed to be more strategic, use the wall as a force multiplier. The defenders made room for me. They looked scared, but hopeful, too. I needed to help inspire more of the latter and push away the former.

  "Keep hitting them with everything you've got!" I shouted to them. "Don't let up!"

  Three werewolves charged the wall section where I stood. They leaped, claws extended, trying to scale the twelve-foot barrier. I met the first one with a flying kick that sent it crashing back to the ground. The second one I caught by the throat and slammed into the wall face, then dropped it on the other side. The third made it to the top of the wall, but I grabbed its leg as it tried to clamber over the side, lifted it up, and used the creature like a club to sweep two more attackers off the wall.

  Behind the wall, more defenders rushed forward with spears, jabbing through gaps in the bars at any werewolf that tried to climb. It was chaos. Snarls, screams, and the clash of weapons against claws filled the air. Blood and fur flew. The stench of sweat and fear was overwhelming.

  I’d done all I could on the wall, clearing the attackers there, so I jumped forward again, landing in the middle of a group of five werewolves. They surrounded me immediately, and we engaged in brutal close-quarters combat. I pulled my punches, trying to knock them unconscious rather than kill them. A solid hit to the jaw here, a throw that slammed them into the ground there. Subdue, don't kill. That was the goal.

  But it wasn't working. These things healed too fast. A werewolf I'd knocked out cold thirty seconds ago was already stirring, groaning as it tried to get back up. One whose jaw I’d broken was already mostly healed, the bone knitting back together before my eyes.

  How was I supposed to stop them without killing them?

  I didn't have an answer. And the brutal truth was, I might not have a choice. These weren't just vanilla humans anymore. They were lethal weapons, coordinated and intelligent, trying to kill or turn everyone in Harvard Yard. If I didn't stop them permanently, people would die. Innocent people. People like Maggie and Emmy.

  But I'd never killed a human being before. Sure, I'd killed plenty of monsters. Taking down things like spiders, goblins, and fungus creatures felt okay, because those were clearly monsters. These were people, though. Transformed, cursed people, yes. But they were still people, who might be saved if we could just figure out how to cure them.

  Could I live with myself if I killed them? Could I live with myself if I didn't, and others died because of my hesitation?

  A werewolf lunged at me, and I responded on instinct, hitting it hard enough to send it flying into a pile of rubble. It didn't get back up. Was it unconscious? Dead? I didn't know, and I didn't have time to check because two more were already rushing me.

  Above me, I heard the twang of bowstrings and the crackle of magic. The defenders continued doing their part, whittling down the werewolf numbers, but there were still too many of them, and they kept coming.

  I was locked in combat with two of the beasts when I noticed something change. The werewolves that had been pressing the attack suddenly backed away. For a moment I thought we’d given them more trouble than they were willing to handle, and they were withdrawing, but no such luck.

  They weren’t retreating, just making space. They broke apart, creating a path through their ranks. I straightened up, breathing hard, watching warily. What were they doing?

  Then I saw it.

  A massive shape emerged from the shadows behind the pack. It walked on two legs with a hunched, powerful gait. Everything about its form and the way it moved screamed of barely-contained violence. As it drew closer, passing through the ranks of lesser werewolves, I could make out more details.

  It was huge. Eight feet tall at least, with shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway. Its fur was a stunning golden color with pale highlights that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Each of the creature’s muscles were clearly defined beneath its fur. Its claws were easily six inches long, and its teeth were like daggers.

  But it was the eyes that really caught my attention. They glowed with a sharp intellect. None of these werewolves were mindless beasts, but this one was something special. Everything about its eyes told me this thing was death walking, a mixture of pure predatory instinct, savage power, with a mind capable of understanding complex tactics.

  I checked its rank. Tier eight. It was just one tier below me. That meant the odds were good that this one could bite through my Natural Armor. For the first time since I’d run into these monsters, cold sweat broke out down my back. The others were smaller threats, but this one? This one could kill me. Or worse, turn me, maybe make me like them. I imagined the horror of having all my power turned against my friends. I couldn’t let that happen.

  This had to be the pack leader. Beat him, and the rest might just flee. Lose to him, though, and we lost everything.

  The other werewolves parted before him like subjects before a king. They each lowered their heads submissively as their leader passed. He moved with absolute confidence, each step deliberate, until it stood maybe twenty feet away from me.

  We stared at each other across the cleared ground. Behind me, the defenders on the wall had gone silent, watching the battle play out. Even the other werewolves had stopped their assault, waiting in their lines.

  The monster’s lips pulled back, revealing that terrifying maw. And then, impossibly, it spoke. The voice was guttural, each word clearly difficult to form around those inhuman jaws. But the words were unmistakable, spoken with dark amusement.

  "You make the pack stronger, once you join us."

  My blood ran cold. It could talk. It was intelligent enough to communicate, to plan, to lead. And it thought it could turn me into one of them.

  "That's not going to happen," I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

  The alpha's laugh was a horrible sound, somewhere between a human chuckle and a wolf's growl. “All say that. At first."

  Then it charged.

  The alpha moved with speed that should have been impossible for something that size. One moment it was twenty feet away, the next it was on me, those massive claws reaching for my throat. I barely got my arms up in time to block, and the impact of its charge sent me skidding backward across the broken pavement.

  This was going to be a hell of a fight.