by Jade Alters
“But...?” she said when I hesitated.
“No buts,” he said. “There was no way out.”
She laughed, nervously and said, “But you're here, now.”
“Sort of,” I said.
“I don't understand.”
“We were all supposed to die that night,” Titan said in his deep, gravelly voice. Courtney's eyes widened at his words, but she waited.
“We were as good as dead when our Lt went for help. There was no way he'd be able to bring help back in time. Marshall's throat was slit. Will was stabbed in the chest and shot in the back. Titan was stabbed multiple times after he was shot three times. Clay was shot in the head...ask him to show you the scar, it's still there. I was shot in the neck. We should have all died, and we would have, if not for Lt.
Courtney looked like she was overwhelmed already and I knew that dragging the story out only made it sound more dramatic and less believable...but it wasn't an easy story to tell.
I finally just said,
“Our Lt. Made a deal with the devil to save our lives. But we're different. We're not quite human and we never will be again.”
Part II
Courtney
With arms folded over my chest and eyes narrowed on Clay's face I said, “Okay, it's bad enough to be kept in the dark, but to make up such an outrageous lie to...what? See how stupid I am? How gullible? What is wrong with all of you?”
“It's not a lie,” Titan said, “Though we all wish it was most of the time.”
“So I'm just supposed to take your word for it? You're...not human? What does that even mean?”
Clay looked at the others again, one at a time. As he did, each of them nodded. It gave me the creeps the way they communicated that way...but it still didn't prove their outrageous claim that they weren't human. Curiously I watched as Clay bent down and began to remove his shoes. I thought that was odd, but when he started taking off his clothes as well, I gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Proving what we're telling you is true.”
“And you have to get naked for that?”
“I don't have any other clothes. If I do this with these on, I'll be naked for the duration. You can turn your back if you have an aversion to seeing a naked man,” he said, still removing his clothes. Part of me wanted to run away, and another part of me, the part that had been lusting after him since he first stepped into my tent, wanted to stand my ground and take in the show. I looked around at the other men. They were all still fully clothed, which was good...but that didn't mean they weren't headed toward something weird here. “If you turn your back,” he said, finishing taking off his undershirt. “You'll miss it.” I knew the lust in my eyes was probably apparent as I looked at his chest. He looked like he had been carved out of stone. Every ripple was perfect. My mouth was completely dry and my palms were sweaty. His hands were on his pants and in an effort to curb my own embarrassment I said,
“What if I blink?” Will cracked up, loudly and even Manny chuckled. Clay rolled his pretty eyes and said,
“Trust me, you wouldn't miss “IT.” It's the transformation you'll miss.” He pushed down his pants, leaving him only in a pair of black boxer briefs. The outline of “It” was impressive...and he wasn't even aroused...or was he? This was all so weird. “Ready?”
“That's as far as you're going?” I asked with a wicked little smile. I was half-kidding, at least I thought I was. I knew I should be more afraid. I was surrounded by men twice...maybe even three times my size and one of them was stripping down naked as he told me some strange and completely unbelievable tale. Instead I was joking and feeling the flutter of desire, deep down in the center of my core. Maybe all this heat had finally gotten to me, but Clay rose to the challenge...quite literally. He pushed down his briefs and stepped out of them. His cock was about half hard, but as soon as my eyes landed on it, it hardened significantly and even looked like it might be throbbing. I knew the other men's eyes were on me and I suddenly felt ashamed of myself.
“Okay, I'm impressed. Fun's over now...” I stopped in mid-sentence as he dropped down to his hands and knees.
What the hell was he doing?
As he knelt there in the sand, naked and gloriously so, his skin began to ripple. It was reminiscent of the way the sand there in the desert rippled in the wind. Suddenly I was completely immobilized with either fascination or fear...I wasn't sure which yet. His body began to stretch, and bend and contort in ways that bodies shouldn't. It was beautiful and horrible, all at the same time. His face looked like he was in pain and the sound of his stretching popping bones and joints belied that was probably true.
My heart was slamming into my chest as I watched his head shape itself into something with a snout and hair begin to sprout from places on his body that had formerly been smooth with skin. His ears and teeth elongated, and in the end, when things seemed to be finished shifting and moving, the largest and most beautiful gray wolf that I had ever seen, stood before me. The wolf looked directly at my face and his green eyes locked into mine and they glowed with an amber hue. My mind was screaming things at me that I couldn't process...or didn't want to. Clay had just transformed into a wolf in front of me.
But my brain knew that to be impossible. The wolf took a step toward me. My instincts were to run, but I knew that huge wolf could stop me in one short leap. I kept my eyes on his as he got closer. At last he was so close that I could smell his fur and if I'd not been so afraid, I could have touched him.
My breaths were ragged and I could feel the sweat rolling off of me in every direction. Finally, I was able to force my head to turn to the right. Manny was watching me in anticipation of my reaction. I locked eyes with him and in a whisper I asked, “All of you?”
He nodded.
“I feel dizzy. I need to sit down.”
Titan and Will were suddenly at my side. They helped me to the rocks behind me and my legs were shaking so hard that had they not lowered me gently, I would have fallen and probably knocked myself out. The entire time my eyes were on the wolf...or Clay...or whatever it was. I was beginning to regret demanding the truth. What was I supposed to do with this truth? Last night sleep had almost eluded me altogether thanks to the sounds of the howls. Yet tonight I'd be expected to sleep alongside the four of them...knowing what they were just underneath the surface. I put my head down in my hands and seconds later saw the leather canteen that Will was holding out to me. I closed my eyes and took a long drink and that was all the time it took for Clay to return to his human form...once again, gloriously naked. This time however my fear overrode my libido. Sex with a werewolf might just take “love bite” to a whole other level where I didn't want to go. That was the last thought I had before my mind finally had enough and shut down. The darkness consumed me, sucking me down into its warm abyss. It was almost a shame they didn't let me stay there...at least in there, nothing wore fur and went bump in the night.
Courtney
“Maybe we should throw cold water on her.”
“She just fainted. She'll wake up, eventually.”
“You think it was the wolf or the impressive...”
“Shut up, Will.”
Laughing, “Well, she did say she was impressed. It's a good thing I didn't show her mine.”
“Shut up Will!” More laughter, and voices colliding in my head at the same time. Then suddenly the memories...Clay changing into a wolf, right before my eyes. He didn't just tell me some crazy story that I was supposed to believe. He showed me what he was...what he could do.
“Seriously, how long are we going to let her sleep?” That was Manny, of course, always in a hurry. “We need to get back on our way.”
“Why? What are we in a hurry for?” Titan, in his calm voice.
“Because...” He hesitated like he didn't know either, and then all at once he said, “Because, I want a fucking real meal, okay? And a cup of coffee. Doesn't anyone else want a fucking cup of coffee?”
I pulled open my eyes a
nd found myself flat on my back, on top of a sleeping bag, with all four men staring down at me.
“I do,” I said, looking into Manny's chocolate eyes. “A double espresso would be nice.” Strangely, I didn't have to force the smile. Maybe I had lost my mind a little bit in the past 24 hours.
They all smiled too, even Manny. I kept my eyes locked into his for a second and I felt something pass between us. Clay was the one that broke the spell. ‘
“You okay?” I moved my eyes to his beautiful green ones...and then I had a vision of what he looked like before he changed, when he was stripped of that uniform and for just a second, he was neither soldier, nor wolf. He was pure man. A shudder ripped across every nerve ending in my body.
“Courtney?” The concern in his eyes deepened and I suddenly felt ashamed of myself again.
“I'm okay,” I said, trying to sit up. As I did, I was assaulted by a wave of nausea.
“Easy,” Clay said, sliding a hand underneath me. “Back up Bozo's and give her some air.”
The other three men backed up. The air was still thick and stifling. Clay helped me to a sitting position and the leather canteen was pressed to my lips.
“Drink,” he said, softly.
I did as I was told. When I finished Clay said, “I'm sorry I shocked you. I've never transformed for a human before but I can imagine how terrifying it must have been.”
It was terrifying, I thought, but more so because I was not just frightened, I was also turned on. It wasn't the wolf that did that though, thank God...it was the man. But still, this wasn't the time, or the place.
I had to pull myself together.
“Shit, it was terrifying the first time I saw you transform,” Will said, “And I'd already done it myself a few times.” Clay chuckled and I smiled at Will. I was thankful for his light-hardheartedness. It allowed me a few seconds to pull myself together.
I wiped the sweat off my face with the back of my hand and in a shaky voice I asked the question that was gnawing at me the most.
“Why? Why did he do this to you? Why would he turn you into...” I didn't want to say, “animals” but that was exactly it, wasn't it?
“Animals?” Manny finished for me, and whatever passed between them a few seconds before was gone. His brown eyes were smoldering once again.
“He did it to save us,” Titan said, drawing my attention in his direction. “We had been through so much together, we were like a family and the lieutenant was more like our father than our commander. He was devastated when he found us near death. He was privy to an experimental research facility that was operating in these mountains. He went there and he begged them to help us.” Titan's voice faded away as he said, “He sacrificed himself for us.” Before I said anything else Clay picked up Titan's story.
“It was the only way for him to save us. We were too far away from anywhere that a chopper could have landed to pick us up. If he'd called in troops to come in and treat us and carry us out, we never would have made it. So he had two choices, let us die...or let them change us.”
“How?” I asked. “How did they make you...?” I was having a hard time saying it, and the men looked like they had just as hard of a time remembering it. Will had lost his smile. Manny's dark features were smoldering once more. Clay's green eyes looked so sad that he physically ached to reach out to him...it was Titan again who in a soft, slightly shaky voice said, “They injected us with DNA from their “test subjects.” Making a distasteful face he said, “The lab...the research facility was put in place here, supposedly to study the wolves that were indigenous to this area. There had been some strange sightings and reports and some of the army personnel stationed near here had gone missing. So the government built this facility that we refer to as “The tower.” It's in a remote area at the very top of the mountain and it's gated...like a prison, with razor wire on top, an electrified fence and some really obnoxious alarms. It was highly classified and only a handful of people in the world even know that it's there. Our Lieutenant knew it was there, and he knew what kind of work they were doing. He left us, dying, and on the verge of death himself, he went there to beg for help.”
“The powers that be supposedly didn't know what was really going on. They were catching the wolves...the shifters, the humans who could change into wolves. They held them in cages too small for them to change from one form to the other in, and they did experiments on them.”
I couldn't believe it, but I actually felt empathy for the werewolves...or shifters, or whatever they were. Did that mean I believed they existed? I really felt as if I might be losing my mind, but sill said, “They just caught them...and kept them in cages? Like lab rats? That's horrible...”
“Yeah, it was,” Clay agreed. “It is. They treat them like animals...I can vouch for them, at least now, that they're not animals, at least not completely.”
“So when your lieutenant went to these people, they agreed to help you?”
“Yes, but for their own personal gain,” Clay said. “The shifters they captured had become listless, uncooperative. They'd made the mistake of keeping them in the dark for too long. They had become more animal than human. They still had more experiments they wanted to do. They wanted to see if they could control them...use them for warfare. But they had all but beaten the life out of the ones they had...and those people weren't trained for combat anyways, but we were.”
I gasped. “They are using you all to...build an army?”
“We're just the first leg of the experiment,” Clay said, “But yes, if they were to find a way to successfully control us, their plan would be to “recruit” more and more men until they had an army of virtually unstoppable beings.”
“I don't know any of you well, but so far you don't seem like the type that could be controlled by anyone.”
“Our Lieutenant is in a cage, under that tower. We were promised that if we followed orders for two years...did everything they told us to do, he would stay alive and at the end of the two years they'd release him.”
“How long has it been?”
“One year, six months and nine days,” Will said, flatly.
“And the four...”
“Five,” Manny said. “There were five of us. The only way to kill one of us is to separate our heads from our bodies so that we can't heal ourselves. Mitchell was torn apart in that explosion or he would be here too.”
“The five of you,” I said, “What happens to you after the two years?”
“They release us, supposedly. We finally get our honorable discharge,” Titan said.
Clay sighed. “We don't honestly believe they'll ever just release us. We know way too much. We've spent this year and a half following orders, but at the same time trying to come up with a plan to foil theirs. When we found out that they had brought the doctors here to somehow use them as their next experiment, we arranged the escape that went so badly today. They weren't supposed to know that we were involved in any part of it other than getting you and the doctors to safety.”
“But they found out,” I said, thinking aloud. “Obviously. That explosion, the deaths, that was your punishment for disobeying orders?”
“More like a warning I think,” Titan said, softly.
Manny was nodding. “Yeah, they were showing off, letting us know who was in charge. Letting us know what would happen to us all if we dared to disobey their orders again.”
“So what are their orders now?”
“To bring you to the tower,” Manny said.
My mouth was dry as I asked, “So...you're taking me to them?”
“We don't have a choice,” Clay said. My heart slid down into my stomach. I thought these men were protecting me, but actually they were just my escorts...to hell.
Part II
The next 24 hours chaos reigned inside my head. I stopped asking questions. I had heard enough, at least for one day. Instead I walked and tried to sort it all out for myself in my head. First off, I needed to put my guard back up. I had
n't trusted these guys at first, but then I'd convinced myself that I didn't really have a choice. Now, I was back to not trusting them. Were they protecting me...or walking me to my own doom? Who the fuck knew? As far as getting away from them went, I didn't really have that option. I knew nothing about where we were or survival in the wilderness, so I was stuck going wherever they wanted to take me...but maybe along the way I could change their mind about what they did with me when they got there.
The werewolf thing was almost too much for me to process. Now, not only was I sleeping next to four extremely large, strong men...but werewolves as well? My mind still didn't want to believe it. I was trying to figure out how Clay could have caused the illusion that his bones and muscles and joints were stretching and changing and the hair on his body was growing. It should have been too much for my human brain to handle on top of everything else, but once I had calmed down, something about it had put me oddly at peace, the way I was when one of them touched me softly. It was a kind of peace deep inside of me that I didn't know how to explain, even to myself. The fact that it didn't make any sense was what was causing me that anxiety, not the fact that Clay or any of them were wolves.
Then there was my father. They wanted me to believe he had something to do with all of this. The General was not a nice man...but he was not a monster either, was he? If I believed he had somehow taken part in setting me up to be sent there to be used in some horrible experiment, then he would be. But I didn't believe that...did I? I thought back over all the years and his trips home. When they were in public he always put on a happy face. His “little family” as he called them, was his world. Everyone commented on what a good family man he was. But behind closed doors he barely spoke to my mother, unless it was to criticize her...and he never let me forget that I was a constant disappointment. But to send me to my certain death? No way. At least I didn't think so, or I didn't want to think so.