Unhuman Acts
Unhuman Acts
Candace Blevins
Contents
Connect with Candace
Blurb
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Dear Reader,
Series Connections
Bibliography
Bash Excerpt
About the Author
eXcessica publishing
UNHUMAN ACTS © August 2019 by Candace Blevins
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
Excessica LLC
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Cover design © 2019 Candace Blevins
First Edition August 2019
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Blurb
The final book in the Only Human series...
A life-and-death situation changes everything, and Kirsten has to make fast decisions about how badly she wants to live, and in what form. She’s steadfastly maintained she’s Only Human, but what if she suddenly isn’t?
Unhuman Acts is two books in one, listed as Part One and Part Two.
Note: This is book seven in an urban fantasy series that must be read in order. The series starts with ONLY HUMAN.
Part I
Chapter 1
The four of us took turns playing with the enormous backhoe under the cover of an overcast sky in the dark of night. There’s a lot of satisfaction in moving a pickup truck’s worth of dirt in one go with a joystick. I wasn’t a fan of the noise, at first, but after a while, the tactile feedback combined with the sounds became part of the process.
The week before, we’d had a shipping container delivered to the back side of our land, on a gravel road not many people knew about. This morning, the rented backhoe had been delivered.
I’d levitated the shipping container a mile down the road to a small field. We’d driven the backhoe down the twisty road, and now we were digging a hole. When it was deep enough, I’d get inside the container, levitate it into the hole, and then Cora, Ranger, and Kenny would bury me.
In an emergency, this is where I’d go in the future. A safe spot only the four of us knew about. But I needed to be in it once it was in the hole, or I’d never be able to get back into it.
We were doing this in the middle of the night under heavy cloud cover. The following day, a pre-fab cabin kit would be delivered, and some of the pack would arrive to assemble it. We’d decided we need security outposts, and this would be our first. The land had to be cleared and leveled, so it made sense to bring in heavy equipment to do it. The little cabin wouldn’t be directly over the container, because building on fill isn’t advised, but the berm in front of the cabin wouldn’t have to be explained away.
And no, I didn’t technically have to stay in the container while they filled back in around it, but I wanted to. We’d arranged for it to have enough ventilation to support up to six adults, and I was looking forward to meditating in the dark while I was buried alive.
Cora understood, and Ranger seemed to get it, but Kenny clearly thought I’d lost my mind.
We’d turned a third of it into a jail cell with no doors or locks, because if we ever needed to keep someone prisoner, this would be the ideal place to do it. However, I wouldn’t want to step into the container without knowing where the prisoner was. So, they could either get two-thirds of it, or one-third of it, and either way, I’d come and go into the part they couldn’t get to.
Today, I was in the bigger section, on a portion we’d lined with pool noodles and topped with lightweight industrial flooring. Ranger welded the doors closed, and then I levitated the container and followed Cora’s telepathed instructions to move it through the air and then gently set it down on the level ground inside the hole.
And yeah, I’d levitated a small Bobcat into the hole to do the levelling bit, which is surprisingly more complicated than one might initially think.
I had water and protein bars, because Cora and Ranger had insisted, but I was fine. No light, the hum of the backhoe above, and the earth gradually piling up all around me, dampening the sound above more and more. I heard and felt the earth filling in around me, and I sank deeper and deeper into meditation. My breathing slowed. My mind cleared. It was pitch black whether my eyes were open or closed, but I was good. Nothing could get me here.
I don’t know how much time passed before the pain hit — hot and icy, a punch to the gut of every cell in my body. I gasped air in and my heart took off like a dragster, from zero to a thousand. I felt it through Cora, and sensed her agony somewhere over the top of me.
I’d been down there for hours, I think. The backhoe had long since turned off.
How much of the pain was mine, and how much was Cora’s? It’s possible it was all her pain, but it was so intense, it spilled through our bond and became mine, too. I doubled over in agony and would’ve screamed if I’d been able to draw enough air into my lungs. My heart thundered in a harsh rhythm, and I stepped through the nothingness and put the two of us in a bubble, so whate
ver was draining her energy would stop.
“No!” She practically screamed it, and then lowered her voice to frantically explain, “Randall’s in trouble. Needs me. Take the bubble down!”
I didn’t understand, but I trusted her, so I dissipated the bubble and streamed energy into her.
Mordecai had once told me my energy would be vast — not quite infinite, but approaching it — if I learned to control it. I pulled from everything I had in order to give her all I could, and I felt my cedar tree helping, too. Without my favorite tree, I’d have been on the ground, depleted long before our phones went off telling us to get to safety.
We’d finally come up with a name for the array of storage containers buried under our hill — the castle. Fitting, since it mirrors a castle in another realm. On this night, we didn’t think about that, we merely made our way to the basement and through the tunnels. The energy drain was still there, but not as bad as it’d been earlier, and we went straight to the communication center — our own control room — to contact the Drake Security control room.
Nathan came onto the screen and my heart fell. If he’d taken the reins, things were bad. He gave us a sitrep in as few words as possible.
“The RTMC thwarted people trying to blow up their gun store. Randall’s house exploded. We believe he was home alone, or possibly with a few wolves on the land but not in his house. All his wolves seem to have been awakened. No one knows how he is.”
“He’s alive,” Cora’s voice was thready. “In wolf form, but he’ll be okay. He’s sending energy to the pack members he drew from because he nearly died in the explosion, and he doesn’t want to use the energy to change. He pulled from me, and Kirsten helped me send him enough energy to change again and finish healing, but he hasn’t done it yet. We’re still sending him some, and I think we can maintain this amount for a few hours, to help him supply the weakest of us. If someone goes to check on him, they should let him come to them. You don’t want to fuck with him right now.”
Nathan nodded. “Good to know. Stay put. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.”
We disconnected, and I looked at Cora. “I’m not staying in here. You’re still weak, and you need to eat, but I need to patrol our land.”
She shook her head. “Ten minutes to eat and hydrate, and you need to pee.”
I sighed. She wasn’t wrong. “Fine. Protein bars and a candy bar. We don’t have time to cook.”
She nodded, and I went to the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later, we made our way to the castle’s little-known back door with enough weapons to fight an army.
The back entrance to our stronghold is so well hidden, even I have trouble finding it from the outside. Cora lifted the composite lid — so no metal detectors could find it — and we levitated out into the woods. She closed it, and we floated fifty yards away before we landed, to make sure we didn’t leave a scent trail back to the entrance.
We circled around and came in behind the house, and with our bond fully open between us, I picked up on what Cora scented.
Honey badger.
I pulled the AK around to make sure it was engaged and ready to fire. The bastard wasn’t going to bite me again.
There’s more than one, Cora told me.
I levitated, and Cora followed me. We couldn’t shoot while floating in midair, but this would keep the honey badgers from rushing us unexpectedly. If Cora could smell them, they could smell us, and the bastards are fast.
Levitating up helps me triangulate, Cora telepathed. Move about twenty yards to your right and prop yourself in that tree. You should be able to shoot from there.
I moved to the tree and sat on a branch, but no way was I going to shoot from above. I’d need to be at ground level and to the side of one of the fuckers to have a chance of taking out a honey badger.
Plus, part of my intensive training with Drake had taught me how to make sure I didn’t accidentally shoot someone on our side. Think of a clock face — the good guys need to stay in a circle between ten and two, with the bad guys at least below the center of the circle, where the clock hands are attached. Depending on where Cora and the honey badgers moved, I’d have to keep on the move, too. Granted, shooting down meant I had less of a chance of shooting Cora if she was levitated, but she’d have to go to the ground to shoot them. Honey badgers have lots of bony shielding and super-thick skin on the top part of their body — it’s one of the reasons they’re so damned hard to kill.
And these were probably giant honey badgers. My shoulder tingled in remembered pain, despite the fact it was fully healed.
Finally, I saw movement, but Cora had moved and I wasn’t sure where she was.
I’m going down to shoot. I told her. Need you to either go up or promise me you aren’t in my line of fire. Can you see me?
I’m off to your left. Have at it but be careful. I’ll watch your back.
That was all I needed, and I floated down and opened fire the second my feet hit the ground and I had my balance. This weapon is capable of firing six hundred rounds per minute, but I’d practiced with it at a little over a hundred rounds per minute, which is nearly two bullets per second. I squeezed and held for around fifteen seconds, let up, planted my feet again, set my shoulders better, and did it again. The magazine held bullets with a decent silver content, which were supposed to keep honey badgers from changing to heal — or at least make the change take longer, so we’d have more time to keep shooting.
I heard the other bastard charging towards me, but I focused on the one in front of me. Cora would handle the one coming at me.
Sure enough, her gun erupted and she hit him from the side, the same as I’d done the one I took down.
I fired another twelve seconds, shifted the weapon’s weight fully into my left hand, and aimed my right hand. I shot my laser while he was in mid-change. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to slice him in two. I walked closer, still firing my laser, cutting him into smaller and smaller pieces. Finally, I bored through the section of body with his heart. They have protection upon protection upon protection in this part of their body, so it wasn’t easy. When I could finally see it, the damned thing was still faintly beating despite the fact he was in a dozen pieces.
I put a flame on the end of my finger and burned his heart. It took a while because of all the blood, and it stank to high heaven, but it worked. He wasn’t coming back.
I’d heard Cora firing almost nonstop behind me. She fired into the bastard's chest until his heart had to be nothing but a memory.
We walked the property and didn’t find anything else. Cora called the Drake control room to tell them we needed a cleaning crew, and found out all hell had broken loose.
Chapter 2
Abbott and Aaron’s homes had exploded. Aaron had taken his family to Faerie at the first sign of trouble, so no one was home, thank goodness. However, no one knew where Abbott was, and neither he nor Spence were answering their phones. There were a lot of bodies, assumed to be his flock, but no one knew for certain.
While we were connected to the Drake control room, another call came in, and Nathan poked his head into view. “TBC is being attacked. Can you get you and Cora onto the roof of the workout club next door? I’ll let them know to expect you.”
The TBC across the interstate from Hamilton place had a workout club beside it, but the one downtown didn’t, so I didn’t bother doublechecking the location. It was just as well I figured it out, because he was gone before we could respond.
I looked to Cora. “How are you on ammo?”
“I’m good, you?” She’d worn about a hundred pounds worth, which is around twenty-five hundred rounds when they’re laced with silver. I’d had a third as much, but I should be good for a little while. I nodded, put my arm around her, and stepped us to the roof of Isaac’s work-out club.
“Staff and customers are barricaded inside,” a young man I didn’t recognize told us over the sounds of gunfire and screaming. A contingent of shape
shifters and vampires were outside with guns, and people from inside were shooting back. “A bomb was inside, but someone smelled the explosives and threw it out the backdoor, toward the woods.”
Which would explain why the trees two hundred yards away were on fire. The little grove area was only about an acre, buffering the residential section from the warehouses and businesses, but it’d probably been the best decision when seconds counted.
“If we start shooting, they’ll shoot back,” Cora said. “We need either more people, or a better game plan.”
I started taking guns and clothes off. It was chilly, but not too bad for the end of September. “I’m going to pop into the middle of them on fire. Get Nathan to call a cease-fire from inside, and tell them not to shoot the crazy woman on fire. I’ll stay less than three seconds, and I’ll burn as many people as I can before I pop back out.”