Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Right. “You know what? I’ll play. You let me out of here, and I’ll give you a taste of what it’s like to be Wolfen. I’ll lock you in an underground lab for a few years, pump you full of poisons and chemicals. I’ll cut on you, and measure the time it takes for you to heal. I’ll burn and flay the skin from your body, and record you regenerating. I’ll drown you, again and again, to see if you can breathe under water yet. And when you feel like you have nothing left to lose, I’ll rile you up with cow prods and pit you against your best friend, so you can fight it out, Darwin-style. Only the strongest will be allowed to survive. How does that sound?”

  “Are you expecting me to be shocked?”

  He was, actually.

  “I’ve read the files,” she said. “I am intimately familiar with the minutiae of the Delta-Omega den studies, and you know what? I. Don’t. Care.”

  Liar.

  “Fact of the matter is, right now, you’ve made the top of the food chain—”

  “Yes, I have,” he drawled. “Best not go forgetting it.” End justifies the means? He could play that, too.

  “Trust me, I won’t.” A pause. “Actually, that’s why I’m here.”

  Aiden’s ear twitched at the subtle change in her voice. Not quite an untruth. More like she’d just now decided something, switched tactics.

  “You’re not like other Wolfen I’ve seen. You seem more…”

  “Charming, witty, and handsome?”

  “Capable of higher thought.”

  Aiden snarled at that. “If you’re trying to flatter me, insulting my kind is probably not the way to go.”

  She huffed. “I’m not… Augh! Can we just agree that intelligence varies across any species, and move on? I’m trying to make a point here.”

  Someone shouted outside. Several sets of heavily booted feet stomped around the wide, metal perimeter. Aiden supposed the converts had made an unwelcome move.

  Desiree pushed to her feet and came up to his door. Her voice was right next to the metal when she said, “This place won’t last much longer.”

  “Nope.”

  “I can get the keys to your cell and let you out before it implodes.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Someone barked an order out on the wall, and a few seconds later, an explosion shook the ground. Converts went mad, screaming in mindless fury.

  “I can show you the safe way out,” Desiree said quickly, “but you have to take me with you.”

  Aiden snorted. “Forget it.”

  “But—”

  “Even if I needed your help—which I don’t—you’re not offering me any added benefit. Not only would I walk out of here unarmed and unprovisioned, you expect me to take along a dependent who can’t fend for herself? Sorry, sweetheart, you’re on your own. And good fucking luck.”

  Gunfire outside. Wasting ammo, but hell, it might work for a little while. Until the converts regrouped and attacked, en masse. Now that they had confirmation and knew exactly where their prey was hiding, they’d be back. Strategy might not be their strong suit, but they did learn, slowly.

  Desiree was right. This place would go kablooey very soon.

  But not tonight.

  Already the screams were moving off; the converts were retreating to lick their wounds—and if that stunning show of cognition and self-preservation didn’t scare the shit out of the folks around here, Aiden didn’t hold much hope for their survival.

  “You know you’re not just a hostage here, right?” Desiree said, reminding him she hadn’t slunk off yet. “You don’t honestly believe one of the original scientists involved in the project would let an opportunity like this pass him by, do you?”

  “Yeah, I figured he’ll want to have his fun. There’s nothing he could do that I can’t take.”

  “The thing is, Alpha, an asset like you is worth a whole hell of a lot to someone like Klaus. You think he’ll torture you for the fun of it? Nah. He’ll find other ways to use you. It’s what he does. No asset around here goes underutilized.”

  “Bring it on.” He wasn’t scared. Anything Klaus might think up, Aiden had already felt, many times over.

  “I would urge you to reconsider.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “Not for yourself, mind you. It’s pretty clear you have the strength, smarts, and stamina to take a lot of abuse; you’d have to, to have survived this long out there.”

  “My ego thanks you for that lovely stroke.”

  “But there are over fifty Wolfen females in Haven. And you.” She paused to let that sink in. “One, lone viable male.” Another pause. “Do you see where I’m heading with this?”

  Something dark and very dangerous gathered like cold shadows in his chest. Whatever good mood Desiree had inspired earlier now wilted, as a deadly, feral creature awakened inside him. It comprehended, but didn’t think. It looked, but didn’t see. It heard, but didn’t listen. For all the potential locked within the tight loops of his DNA, for all that he’d seen the same potential unleashed time and again by others, Aiden himself had never wolfed out like Bryce. Not once. Not in the entire span of his existence.

  He felt it now, just beneath his skin, like claws itching to be let loose.

  “You may be at the top of the food chain,” the witch said, “but trust me, you’re not invincible. Klaus has several ways to make difficult subjects cooperate. It’s sort of been his life’s work after the fall.”

  Aiden’s mouth pulled away from teeth that had grown into fangs, and his fingernails dug into the stone beneath him until three popped right off of his fingers. In their place, claws grew black and sharp.

  Blissfully oblivious to the beast she’d just unleashed, Desiree used her crutch to stand. “Think about it,” she said, offhand, as cheering rose up outside. The converts had left, and the night was safe for humans once again. She was free to leave.

  Aiden hated how easily she could walk away from him.

  “The next time someone comes down here, I can assure you the conversation will be much less pleasant.”

  19: Sinna

  I am back in San Francisco, staring down the pitch-black elevator shaft with thirty converts sniffing around the main door. My heart is racing, my palms are sweaty. I can’t catch my breath. It’s a week ago, all over again, the people with whom I’ve spent the last three years are calling for me to hurry up, to get down there.

  But the face staring at me from the darkness isn’t the stalwart, practical soldier, Nate. It’s Gerry. The only mother I ever knew.

  The one I killed.

  She smiles, holds her hand out for me to take. She is so calm, steady as a rock, patiently waiting for me to make the move; to trust her and step down into a pit worse than death, more terrifying than any hell nuns used to teach about back in the day.

  She waits for me, and I can’t move.

  The damned door is open.

  Close it! Run!

  I can’t.

  The converts group closer, chuffing in my direction, weaving their heads as if they can’t see me, but they can smell me just fine. I don’t look at them, but somehow I still know. One makes a face, sticks his tongue out so far, its forked tip hangs well below the edge of his chin. Another sucks in a sharp breath, not sniffing for prey, but savoring the aroma of a waiting meal. A third, female, lowers down to all fours. She tries to crawl between the males, but they won’t let her. So she takes to the walls, climbing them with the ease of a demonic spider.

  I am frozen, staring at Gerry’s smiling face.

  Close the door! Run! Please, Gerry, live!

  I want to scream, but I can’t even open my mouth. There’s only one direction my body will allow me to go, and it’s not into that dark shaft. Tears blur my vision. I blink them away, but more come, blinding me to the danger.

  They’re coming closer. Gerry must see them now—why isn’t she moving? Why does she keep staring at me? I hate the calm acceptance in her eyes. I wan
t to slap that serenity off of her face. It makes me feel like it’s my fault.

  It is.

  Was.

  And it will be again.

  Because there are monsters sniffing at my heels.

  A run of slimy, disgusting saliva drops onto my shoulder and burns like acid through my shirt. I slowly tilt my head up. There’s the female, hanging upside down, her warped nose so close to mine, her rancid breath stings my forehead. Her eyes are black holes in her skull—endless, bottomless pits of ravening insanity—and they’re mesmerizing. I can’t look away.

  In my head, I scream. I feel my body shaking on the inside, but my skin is like granite, encasing me in a prison of my own making.

  It’s a dream. Wake up!

  “It’s time, Sinna,” Gerry says, and suddenly she’s standing right in front of me. She smiles with infinite kindness, glowing from within with a sort of angelic grace. Before my eyes, she begins to change. Always on the shorter side, she now grows to my height, becoming transparent as she does so. Her hand reaches out to cup my cheek as her hair stretches longer, curlier, to mirror mine. I feel myself becoming lighter, losing substance as if she’s drawing it out of me and into herself.

  The female above me is twitching her head in confusion, sniffing madly in a futile search. Those at my back are inches away now; a solid wall of malevolence I can’t escape. We’re cornered, Gerry and I, but she’s not Gerry anymore.

  She’s becoming a reflection of me.

  Her nose is already mine. Her eyebrows lift up into a different shape, the eyes beneath shifting and growing in her face. Her wrinkled skin smoothes out, lips plumping and reddening. And with each small change, a little more of me disappears.

  I become a ghost. And then, I am even less.

  A clawed hand reaches through me, and I don’t even notice. It falls heavily on Gerry’s shoulder, but I feel it on mine and I jerk in surprise. Claws dig into her skin and I scream in pain, but my reflection only smiles.

  “Be good,” she tells me in my voice, “it’s time to wake up.”

  Powerful hands shake me so hard I fear they’ll tear me apart.

  Wake up! It’s only a dream!

  “I love you,” Gerry whispers from my lips, as monsters tear into her—into me! Her body jerks, bleeds, disintegrates, and I wail in agony, but she merely smiles, holding my gaze as if it’s all an illusion. Nothing but a dream.

  “Wake up, Sinna.”

  Wake up!

  I see my heart get torn out of my chest.

  Then I am gone.

  ~

  Sinna woke screaming, fighting off the monster that had latched onto her, but he was too strong. She flailed and bucked until his voice bled through her panic and snapped her back to reality. “It’s me!” Bryce kept saying. “Shhh, it’s just me.”

  Sinna quieted long enough to remember where she was. Hyperventilating, moments away from passing out, she fought to calm herself so she could think. San Francisco was hundreds of miles away. She was on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. Stars twinkled above, and a crescent moon was shining bright. Despite the lack of sunlight, her vision was near perfect.

  Breathe, she commanded herself, as if she could open her airways through sheer force of will.

  “It was a dream,” Bryce said, softer, now that she’d stopped screaming. He kept petting her face, and it took Sinna a minute to realize he was brushing away her tears. Her dizziness wasn’t from panic; it was because he was rocking her. “You’re safe.”

  She blinked rapidly, unclenched her fingers from Bryce’s arm to wipe her nose. Shaking like a leaf, she tried to disentangle herself from him. At some point, he’d put on that old plaid shirt he’d found in the mule. It was a shade too small, with stitches straining across his shoulders and arms. He’d rolled up the sleeves and looked like a lumberjack, covered in dust and dirt, but she was still uncomfortably aware of the blood it was meant to conceal. He was still covered with it, and despite her attempts to scrub it off, so was Sinna.

  “You were having a bad dream,” Bryce said, as he watched her with unblinking focus. Moonlight caught in his eyes and made them look predatory and curious at the same time.

  Sinna nodded. Her teeth chattered too hard for her to form a coherent sentence.

  He tilted his head, lifting his scarred side up to the light almost subconsciously, then jerked his chin down in a gruff nod and helped her into the mule. The passenger seat adjusted to fit into the bench behind it to make a sort of pallet. With her head positioned toward the front, on account of the grossness all over the rear, Sinna was just small enough to curl up comfortably. But the more she calmed, the more worried she became that someone, or something, had heard her scream. She scanned the area, eyes wide so she wouldn’t miss anything, but not a creature stirred, and she gradually made herself relax a little.

  Rather than return to his own spot, Bryce sat on the ground, his back against the side of the passenger seat. He was whittling some kind of stick; a stack of them already sat next to him.

  “Aren’t you going to sleep?” she asked. Her voice came out reedy, raw, and she winced. She could use a drink of water, but they didn’t have any.

  Bryce shook his head.

  “Okay.”

  It was much too open out here; she couldn’t close her eyes while they were this exposed. “Those Grays back there,” she said into the silent night, “they were different than the ones in the city.”

  Bryce grunted a reply.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Could be they got used to Wolfen pheromones.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  Bryce leveled her with a steady gaze. In the darkness, his eyes looked more gold than brown, burnished with a glowing sheen. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged again, and went back to his whittling. “Worry solves nothing.”

  Sinna worried her dry lips with her teeth, until she nipped too hard and tasted blood.

  Bryce tensed. “Stop that.”

  “You may be okay with those things getting smarter, but I’m not, okay?” The biggest advantage of turning Wolfen was supposed to be that converts wouldn’t want to touch her. If she couldn’t rely on that anymore, then what the hell did it matter what she called herself? Human or Wolfen, it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. “I’m scared,” she admitted.

  “Well stop.”

  He said it so plainly, it surprised a chuckle out of her. “You can’t order something like that.”

  Once again he looked over his shoulder, and raised an eyebrow at her.

  Sinna laughed, and Bryce’s mouth twitched with the promise of a smile before he faced forward again.

  They were silent for a while and Sinna’s eyelids began to droop in weariness. But every time her eyes closed, Gerry smiled at her in the darkness, and Sinna startled awake again. Finally, she huffed and turned onto her side, facing the back of Bryce’s head. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Then stay awake.”

  “That’s not any better.”

  Bryce shrugged.

  Sinna rolled her eyes. She missed Aiden’s easy ramblings. His voice, so laid back and confident, always put her at ease. But thinking of him only reminded Sinna he was shackled in an underground cell in Haven, with that horrible collar around his neck like an animal. Another nightmare.

  Sinna shook her head hard. She needed something to distract her. “Talk to me.”

  “What?”

  “Talk. I need to hear your voice.”

  Bryce’s answering expression of baffled terror was almost comical, but Sinna had momentarily lost her sense of humor.

  “Please,” she said.

  Some of her desperate anxiety must have carried through. After a tense moment of silence, Bryce started talking. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who always wore a red riding hood.” He paused after that gruff introduction as if he expected her to cut in.

  She didn’t.

  Bryce clea
red his throat, shifted into a more comfortable position, and continued. “She was loved in the village and had many friends, including a young boy who always followed her around.”

  Sinna smiled at that, but kept quiet.

  “One day, the girl’s mother packed her a basket and asked her to take it to her grandmother. The old woman was a strange one; she lived deep in the woods and never came to the village. People were afraid of her, and whispered rumors that she was a witch. Usually, the girl and her mother did this together, but that day, the mother had to sell her wares at market and couldn’t go along.

  “The little girl was worried about making the long trip all alone, but she knew she wouldn’t be. The boy who always followed her around would…follow her.” He huffed with annoyance at that, then shook his head. “So she set out and kept her head high, so no one would know she was scared. But the boy could tell anyway, and he took her hand so they could walk together.”

  This was a version she’d never heard before. Sinna touched Bryce’s shoulder and turned her hand palm up for him to take. When he did, she shifted closer, putting her head almost onto his shoulder.

  “But the villagers were right,” he said, softer now. “The old grandmother truly was a witch, and she was very possessive of her little granddaughter; she didn’t take kindly to strangers sniffing around her. When the little girl and her friend arrived at the grandmother’s cottage, the old woman took one look at them and knew things would change. She could look into the future, and what she saw was her granddaughter falling in love with this boy and leaving her to make a life with him.

  “The old witch became enraged. She wrenched them apart, and cursed the boy into a wolf so he could never get near her granddaughter again. If he did, the villagers would shoot him dead.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  Bryce brushed his head against hers in an odd caress. “Yes,” he said.

  “So what happened?”

  “What always happens. The little girl grew up, as did her wolf boy. He kept watching over her all those years, waiting for the chance to set himself free. One day, when the girl went out to visit her grandmother again, he stopped her in the woods, tried to tell her the truth, but she didn’t believe him. Her grandmother’s spell had stolen all of her memories of him. And the old woman had warned her not to talk to wolves, that they were evil tricksters out to devour innocent maidens.