Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

  Key in the lock.

  No, no, no! Don’t open! Not yet!

  But it did.

  “Move it!” Arik snapped, making her jump. He swung his head left and right, looking for threats, finger curled tight around the trigger of a semi-automatic.

  Fear rooted Desiree to the spot. That metal door had been the only thing keeping her safe. Now that it was open, she was exposed. The damage was done, but even so, Desiree turned her head away, squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would somehow make her safe again. If she just stayed still enough, quiet enough, they wouldn’t scent her.

  Arik swore and dragged her out by force.

  Desiree screamed.

  “Shh!” He whirled, trained his gun on the tunnel entrance, shoving her behind him, then turned the other way, yanking her to the side. He wrapped an arm around her waist, leaning her against his side, and said, “Let’s go.”

  With every footfall, Desiree’s prosthesis cut deeper into her thigh. She wasn’t as tall as Arik; couldn’t keep up. He half-dragged, half-carried her through the tunnels, breathing hard, but he didn’t let her go.

  They were leaving the din of destruction behind, but Desiree’s fear curled tightly around her heart, making it difficult to breathe, let alone keep moving.

  “We can’t outrun them,” she said.

  “The hell we can’t,” Arik returned stubbornly. “Don’t have to, anyway. Just have to outrun everyone else.”

  The tunnel and its trail of torches ended at the edge of a sharp, three-foot drop into the main cavern chamber. Arik lowered her down, then followed, checking to make sure there was no one behind them. Satisfied the tunnel was clear, he stopped to catch his breath, propping Desiree against the wall while he dug a flashlight out of his pack. It was so old, the edges were rusted, but when he clicked it on, a steady beam of light illuminated the chamber ten feet ahead. The cave was as wide as all of Haven, but the ceiling was barely eight feet high, with massive shoots of rock and stalagmites turning it into a deadly maze.

  “Which way to the cars?” he asked, swinging the flashlight left and right for a path that wasn’t there.

  “I don’t know,” she said. With the forest of stalagmites obstructing their view, they could wander around for hours before they found an exit. Assuming there weren’t more converts coming to meet them halfway in.

  “You said you’ve been there!”

  “Yeah, from the top,” she replied. “I’ve never actually used the tunnels.”

  Arik gaped.

  Desiree moaned. “We are so dead—”

  “Shh!” Arik brought his weapon up and motioned for her to move away.

  Somewhere to their left and deep inside the pitch-black cave, a convert emitted a creaking groan. No animal on Earth could make such a sound—unnatural, eerie, and in the enclosure of an underground cave, paralyzing.

  Desiree slapped a hand over her mouth, hardly daring to breathe. Eyes wide, she tried desperately to see through the darkness, but the sound echoed, making it impossible to pinpoint. A series of clicks and clucks answered, moving closer. Then came a whoop-whoop and a snuffling snarl, and Arik backed into Desiree, herding her in the other direction. He almost bowled her over when she didn’t move fast enough.

  It went against every survival instinct Desiree possessed to face away from him and a serious threat, but with her knee the consistency of gelatin, she forced herself to move, using the stalagmites for support to somehow keep going. She had no other choice but to trust Arik to keep her safe.

  All the while, converts moved through the labyrinth, sounding off to one another, each with a distinct voice and language. Desiree struggled to keep her breathing soft, even while her body fought her on every step. Communication meant intelligence. Converts weren’t supposed to be capable of it.

  Gathering around Haven could have been pure instinct; mindless beasts drawn to the scent of possible prey. Group attacks could have been triggered by outer stimuli that several of them responded to, riling up the rest. But this was no fluke.

  This felt like the rearguard ensuring no one escaped the slaughter. They were loud, because their hearing was poor, but they would have scented her and Arik from a distance. Like rats in a maze, they followed a trail to a certain treat at the end, but unlike baser creatures, they spread out, taking several different paths.

  Not just communication, then. Strategy. Cooperation. Planning and forethought.

  That son of a whore Klaus had known it. He had to have, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed an escape plan.

  A loud screech made Arik curse under his breath. He shouldered his weapon, and steered her sideways toward the cave wall, urging her to move faster. More noises, this time rising in agitation as if they argued with each other.

  Desiree tried to look back, but Arik wouldn’t let her. “Keep moving,” he whispered. They edged along the outside of the maze, circling counter-clockwise. Arik kept the flashlight pointed down at Desiree’s feet so she could see where she was stepping. Through the shadows, a draft of cooler air ruffled her hair. Another offshoot tunnel. Desiree headed right for it.

  The converts sounded farther behind now, so she risked a glance back. The faint glow of the main tunnel’s torches seemed impossibly far away. A shadow jumped up to higher ground, stood to its full, bone-thin height, and stretched, screaming into the cave. Three others sounded off, then scrambled into the lit tunnel after their leader.

  “The scent trail must have confused them,” she whispered. That tunnel had been guarded day and night. The converts might have smelled humans in the cave, but they’d tracked them to the tunnel where the scent was strongest, rather than deeper into the maze.

  “There is a God,” Arik replied as the monsters lumbered off toward Haven. “Come on. I’m not waiting around for more.”

  Neither was she. With the path clear of obstructions, Arik took the lead, Desiree holding onto his backpack for support. Her prosthesis wasn’t strapped properly. She’d belted it up higher in the cell, and the socket wasn’t aligned the way it should be. It squeezed her flesh, making her eyes sting with tears.

  She bit them back, clenched her jaw, and kept going. No other choice. It was either that, or lie down and offer herself up as a banquet. But as determined as she was, Desiree had no stamina to speak of, and her body began to slow down on its own.

  “Come on,” Arik said. “It can’t be far now. Just hold on a little longer. You can do it.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Evil never dies, right? Heartless bitch like you, you’ll outlive us all.”

  “Yeah, funny how that’s not a compliment,” she bit out through gritted teeth.

  Arik stopped to let her rest a while. “Wasn’t meant to be. I don’t need you flattered. I need you pissed the fuck off.” He caught her face in his hands, and forced her to look at him. “I need you to fight, Dez, or we’re both dead. Got it?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  The tunnel stretched on for miles, and as long as they had light, Desiree was able to power on. Then the flashlight failed, leaving them in pitch-black darkness.

  Arik slapped the archaic piece of shit into flickering life, but then it went dark and he couldn’t get it working again.

  “Still feeling optimistic?” she asked, breathing steadily through her nose to stave off a wave of nausea.

  Arik blindly grabbed along her shoulder to her hand and curled her fingers around the strap of his pack. “Hold onto me,” he said.

  Step by slow step, they edged their way forward. Desiree lost track of time. There was no way this was Klaus’ tunnel. Klaus would have wanted a clear path of retreat; something he could walk with his eyes closed. This was anything but—the floor was uneven, the walls sometimes so wide she felt like they were in another cave, other times so narrow, Arik had to take off his pack to squeeze through.

  And then it happened.

  Arik hit a wall.

  Or rather, a mountain of caved-in debris. One minute, they were o
n solid ground, and the next, rubble gave way beneath their feet, sloping up until Arik hit his head on the ceiling.

  He swore.

  “So much for evil never dies, huh?”

  Arik maneuvered her back down, positioned her shoulder to the wall, and said, “Don’t move.”

  Desiree heard the rubble shift in a small landslide, followed by a lot of grunts and curses as Arik tried to move the bigger rocks. He huffed and groaned, and then a boulder shifted loose.

  Desiree’s heart leapt. “What was that?”

  “Fuck yeah!” Arik cheered. “Woo!” He set back into it, wrestling rocks free of the pile.

  Desiree’s heart beat just a little stronger, and she felt her way closer, needing to do something to help. She dug her fingers into the rubble and shoved it down, out of Arik’s way, digging down through rubble sharp enough to cut skin, but she didn’t care.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Arik chanted. “We are getting out of he-ere. I am not gonna die today—fuck that!” More grunts. He was making a serious dent in the barricade.

  But then something shifted wrong, and with a rumble of rock and dust, the wall collapsed inward. Arik cursed, jumped out of the way, and slammed into Desiree, driving her to the ground.

  She shrieked, raised her arms to shield her head, but the shower of rocks assaulted her from all sides like a barrage of low velocity bullets. The smaller ones scraped against her face and neck, the bigger ones buried her legs, pinning her in place.

  When the cloud of dust had settled enough for her to take a breath, Desiree opened her eyes and saw light. A gap had opened close to the ceiling, barely big enough to fit a hand through, but on the other side was the surface.

  Arik groaned, dug himself out from under the debris, then came to help Desiree. His pack was nearby, relatively unharmed, but the weapon was gone, buried out of sight. They didn’t bother looking for it. Arik, more careful now, widened the opening enough for him to slip through, then helped her up and out.

  Desiree had never been so happy to see the clear blue sky above her head. She laughed with pure joy and relief, heedless of who or what might hear her. When she looked back at Arik, though, his face was grave. “What is it?” she asked.

  He reached forward and brushed her cheek. His hand came away stained red. “You’re bleeding.”

  38: Aiden

  Once, years ago, I asked Bryce what it felt like to wolf out the way he did. I watched his eyes turn bleak and haunted. Without words, he told me there is no way to describe it; you have to feel it for yourself to understand.

  I see now. I get it.

  I give in to the savage part of me screaming for blood, and with that capitulation, I relegate my consciousness to a dark control room inside my mind, effectively disconnecting from my body.

  I see as if there are monitors in front of me, flipping through channels. I see the mouth of the tunnel. Click. I’m out in the open, a duotone world of crimson and gray. Click. I see the very first rays of sunshine light the sky with shades of yellow and pink, and pan down to the melee in front of me.

  My ears feel stuffed. I hear as if I’m listening to recordings through earphones. My own breath is louder than the outside world. My head pounds with the beat of my heart like a steady bass punctuating the music of slaughter.

  My body moves, no longer under my conscious command. It’s a machine, and I am nothing more than the code giving it a purpose, someplace to be, a specific task to do. How it gets there, and what it does along the way, is no longer up to me.

  Before me is a chaos of writhing bodies, snapping fangs, and spraying blood. In my mind’s eye, a decision tree forms. Three prerogatives: Klaus, females, the child. I’m held immobile by the impossibility of that choice. The beast I have become flares its nostrils, sucks air deep into its lungs, and leaves it to me to sort the scents.

  Blood. Fire. The stomach-turning stench of converts. And undercutting all of it, like the softest hint of a familiar fragrance, Wolfen. The beast strains its ears for their cries. There are none. It does not understand this anomaly, but the pain it brings is enough to make the beast raise a hand-shaped paw and rake its claws across its own chest, wailing a howl to the sky.

  The flow of time bucks. From an unnatural pause, it springs forward much faster to catch up, and the beast moves, driven by instinct to rend things. Converts rush forward, jaws unhinged to open their mouths impossibly wide. As fast as they are, the beast is faster. It tears through the monsters with its teeth and claws, its grief lending formidable strength.

  With a swipe of its claw, two converts fall. It catches a third by the throat, squeezing until the flesh turns to pulp in its hand. A band of them bear it to the ground, but it throws them off, tearing limbs and spilling bowels. They don’t die. The beast doesn’t care. All it wants is to take down as many as it can get its hands on.

  I shout commands, I scream its name; the beast ignores me, cutting a swath across the horde with a single-minded determination that terrifies me. There’s no stopping it. It doesn’t care for wounds—its skin heals in an instant. It doesn’t care for the dying—fodder for converts, a distraction it can use to sneak up on them.

  Humans scream and wail; the rattle of gunfire tapers off as they run out of bullets.

  Six more converts down in an instant, and the others are beginning to take notice. They screech to each other in warning, but most are too preoccupied with their feasts to care.

  A child’s cry turns the beast’s head left.

  Click.

  Seven humans are by the wall, fighting converts, while three more try to climb up to safety. The child is among them—a little girl with brown skin and long black hair, her clothes stained with blood, her eyes wide with fear. She’s frozen, clutching a doll as she watches her protectors die around her; doesn’t move, even when the woman above pulls on her shirt. She’s too far up to reach the girl unaided; she needs her to reach up, but the girl is oblivious.

  The beast knows the child. It recognizes the sound of her voice, the scent of happiness and innocence now overlaid with fear. It remembers the kindness of a loaf of bread.

  With a roar, it charges the group, tossing gray skeletons aside by their spines. Five out of the seven humans are already dead. The last two don’t stand a chance. By the time the beast reaches them, they’re quartered, torn apart, and shared among the monsters.

  The beast fights through converts with a viciousness even they understand. They don’t engage it anymore, backing away at its approach. It aches to tear into them, but the first prerogative must be met.

  The girl stares up at the beast, her thin body quivering so hard the beast can see it, feel the vibrations against its skin. I slow its approach so as not to frighten her, and for a moment, the beast brings me front and center, and I am there. Heedless of the horde at my back, ignoring the human woman who screams for the child, I watch her as I step up close. I want to tell her it’ll all be okay, that I’ll keep her safe, but my control doesn’t extend as far as talking.

  Suddenly, her eyes grow wider, and she gasps. The beast takes me over in a rush, spinning around to slap its paw over the face of a charging convert. Its claws dig in, squeezing harder, harder, until the convert’s skin gives way and tears off in the beast’s paw. The monster wails, clawing blindly for the enemy. With a vicious kick, the beast takes it down.

  When it’s done, it retreats again, leaving me to stare at the sheath of bloody gray skin in my claw. I tilt my head at it, turn to face the girl. When I lower my arm, the skin flops to the ground at her feet.

  “Casey,” the woman on the wall screams. “Give me your hand, now!”

  I drag my gaze away from the girl to snarl at her.

  The woman stares at me, looks to the child, weighing her options. With her lips pressed together in a tight line, she scrambles up the wall alone, leaving the child to fend for herself.

  I hold my hand out to the girl, belatedly recalling the thick, black claws that tip my fingers and the sticky blood coat
ing my skin.

  She doesn’t take it.

  Instead, she sniffles a sob, clutches her doll tighter, and raises her free arm to be picked up.

  The beast is silenced.

  ~

  Aiden lowered to one knee so she could tuck herself against him, one arm around his neck, face turned into his shoulder to hide. She did it without hesitation, displaying a level of trust that staggered him.

  He stumbled getting back to his feet. The adrenaline rush was fading, his body changing back as if the shift required a certain amount of battery power and he’d just run out. It left him weak, disoriented, somewhere along Haven’s perimeter with at least sixty converts standing between him and the way he’d come.

  Now what?

  Some of the converts he’d taken down had started to get back up. He couldn’t fight through them a second time. Not with a passenger. Aiden looked up to where the woman had fled on top of the wall, and judged the distance surmountable. “Hold on tight, baby girl.” Aiden bent his knees and jumped up onto the roof of a small shack. From there, another leap would take them to the top of the wall. The distance didn’t bother him. The height proved to be the bigger challenge. With as much of a running start as the shack’s roof allowed, Aiden launched and caught the edge of the wall, pulling his knees up to shield Casey from the impact.

  He climbed up and braced himself, before looking down on the other side. The silver chains moored in the concrete wall hung empty. Not a single Wolfen female anywhere, but the blood spatters and smears told him there’d be no point in looking for them.

  It hit him so hard, for a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t think about anything else besides the promise he’d made: Be strong for me just a little longer. You’re not alone anymore. I’ll get you out of here, I swear.

  He’d failed. Heart aching, Aiden pushed to his feet. “You still with me, kid?” he asked, voice unsteady. His knees threatened to buckle, but he forced himself to walk.