Wicked Creatures

by Jessica Meigs

  “Clearly, if she’s that bad, we need to deal with her,” Scott said. “How do we do that? How do we kill the bitch?”

  “You don’t,” Ashton answered. “Or rather, you can’t. None of us can. I doubt we’re anywhere near strong enough to take her on.”

  “So, what, we just sit here with a threat hanging over our heads and nothing we can do about it?” Riley asked.

  “Essentially,” Ashton admitted.

  “There is one thing we can do something about,” Zachariah spoke up. “The werewolf.” Scott groaned softly and dropped his head into his free hand. “No, not you,” he reprimanded. “The werewolf that bit you. We need to deal with him before he goes to chomping on other innocent people. Was there only the one?”

  “That I saw,” Scott said. “But it was strong.”

  Ashton and Zachariah looked at each other, as if they were conferring silently, then Zachariah said, “Might be an Alpha.”

  The shudder that ran through Ashton was visible even to Scott. “Aw fuck,” Ashton grumbled. “Don’t tell me that. The last time we dealt with one of those, it didn’t turn out well for either of us.”

  “Well, last time, we didn’t have Scott and Riley,” Zachariah said. He went to Scott, crouching in front of him and staring at him in silence, like he was trying to read something written on his bones. He leaned closer to Scott, so close he had to rest his hands on his knees to keep from overbalancing and face planting into Scott’s lap. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Probably not one he’d want to ever see. He stared back at Zachariah, wondering what the other man was seeing in his examination. Then he felt his eyes do something weird. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn that the shape of his eyes changed, just for a moment, and his vision sharpened enough that he could see every line in Zachariah’s face, every eyelash, every strand of his dark hair. Then he blinked, hard, and his vision unfocused before returning to normal.

  Zachariah sat back, a look of surprise on his face, and Scott resisted the urge to blow out a breath of relief at the reduced level of scrutiny. “Last time, we didn’t have an Alpha werewolf on our side,” he added, his voice quiet in the hush of the room.

  “He’s a what?” Ashton exclaimed.

  “Scott’s an Alpha,” Zachariah clarified.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can sense it. And because Alphas are the only werewolves that can change forms at any time, regardless of the phases of the moon,” he said. “And Scott’s eyes just changed.”

  “It’s not like I did it voluntarily,” Scott mumbled.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Zachariah replied. “Eventually, you’ll be able to.”

  “I don’t want to!” he snapped, his temper getting the better of him. “I don’t want this! I never wanted any of this! I just wanted to stay home and be left alone.” A stab of pain tore through his gut as he said this, but he bit back any sound that might have escaped and tugged his hand from Riley’s. He suddenly wanted her away from him, far, far away. Everything he knew about werewolves came from the legends and stories he’d read about them, and he had a terrible feeling that that sensation in his gut presaged something bad, something straight out of those legends he’d read so much of.

  He must have sucked in a breath a bit harshly, though—either that, or Riley could read him like an open book, because she said, “Scott, are you okay?”

  He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose, slowly, trying to steady himself. “I hurt,” he confessed.

  Zachariah and Ashton were instantly on the alert. “How?” Ashton demanded.

  “Inside.”

  There was a moment of silence in the room. Then Zachariah spoke, his voice tight. “Get up,” he said. “Riley, move.”

  “What?” she said.

  Scott, understanding what Zachariah was getting at, pushed the woman away from him and, at the same time, scooted further away. “Get away from me, Riley,” he said. Then he looked at the others in the room and added, “You should all get away from me. Get out of here before something bad happens.” When Riley showed no sign of moving, he looked at Zachariah, eyes wide, and begged, “Take her out of here. Please.”

  Zachariah nodded and grabbed Riley’s arm, pulling her to her feet and steering her to the door, ignoring the protests she let loose. Ashton wasn’t far behind; he squeezed Scott’s shoulder as he passed, a comforting gesture that Scott, surprisingly, appreciated.

  “We’ll all be downstairs,” Ashton told him before following the others out of the room. “Good luck.”

  The door had barely shut behind them before Scott sagged forward, slumping to the hardwood floor as pain ripped through him, pain so excruciating that it overpowered all his senses. He groaned softly and curled into a fetal position, wrapping his arms around his torso and closing his eyes as the pain took him.

  Henry felt strung out as he slumped down into his desk chair, his hands shaking, his stomach twisting into knots. He’d been out of the meeting with the Committee for a grand total of an hour, and he still couldn’t seem to calm himself down.

  Meeting with the Committee was stressful, no matter which way one cut it. It wasn’t every day that the Committee called a meeting; it was, after all, comprised of some of the busiest people in the country. And when one was summoned to said meeting with the express purpose of giving a deposition, and sitting across the table was the fucking Vice President of the United States…well, it was no wonder his nerves had decided to be less than steady.

  The door to his office eased open, and he glanced up enough to determine it was Vanessa creeping inside. Then he tilted forward and rested his head against the edge of his desk.

  “Are you okay?” Vanessa asked, her voice and step both tentative. Henry hated that she felt the need to be anything resembling cautious around him; he hated even more that he couldn’t seem to dredge up enough energy to lift his head from his desk, not to mention soothe her worry. “Did the…did the Committee meeting go badly?”

  “Have you ever noticed how we capitalize everything around here?” Henry mumbled. “It’s like some poor bastard who helped think this place up was paid by how many times he pressed the shift key.”

  “Henry, honey, you’re not making much sense,” Vanessa replied. She stopped in front of his desk, almost directly across from him; he could just see the tip of her navy blue heel under the leading edge of his desk. “What happened in the meeting?”

  He forced his head off his desk and looked up at his secretary and frequent lover. She stared at him with visible concern in her eyes, her forehead creased; a lock of her dark, curly hair had escaped the clip on her head and was hanging loosely alongside her cheek. She looked like she wanted to reach across the desk and soothe him. He owed her an explanation. He knew that, but he also knew that the moment he opened his mouth and gave it to her, the dynamic between them ran the risk of changing. He sighed heavily and grumbled, “They made me director.”

  “And this…isn’t a cause for celebration?” Vanessa asked cautiously. She circled around the desk and sat on the edge by his elbow. “I thought becoming director so you could protect Scott and his friends from the top was the goal here.”

  “It was. It is,” Henry corrected. He shifted in his chair and looped his arm around her waist, trying to pull her closer without moving any further. “But it appears they’ve changed the parameters of the job.”

  “How so?” Vanessa asked.

  He sighed again, finally finding the energy to lift his head to look her in the face. Her forehead was deeply creased with concern as she tried to stew through how the Committee had changed his job so that he was despondent over being promoted rather than elated like she’d obviously expected. He couldn’t find it in him to tell her outright; instead, he fumbled for and found a brown envelope on his desk, passing it to her wordlessly.

  There was a crinkle of paper as she removed the single sheet from the envelope, unfolded it, and smoothed it out against her knee before beginning to read. Sh
e mumbled snippets of it out loud to herself. “…hereby promote you to the position of Director…all the benefits accompanying…discharge you of all prior duties…Committee hereby issues an order for you to eliminate any and all current threats to the Agency, including and especially those threats that risk the Agency’s exposure to the general public. This includes…” She trailed off, and the paper fluttered as her hand shook. “This includes eliminating the following threats to the Agency’s existence.”

  Henry rocked back in his chair and rattled off the alphabetical list that was burned on his retinas. “Brandon Hall, Scott Hunter, Zachariah Lawrence, Ashton Miller, and Riley Walker.” He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to enjoy the feel of Vanessa’s hand sliding comfortingly through his hair. “Brandon I have no problems eliminating, especially if he continues to be a problem. But Scott and the others…”

  Vanessa yanked her hand from his hair. “That’s enough,” she warned. “We shouldn’t be discussing this here, not where others can potentially hear.”

  Henry sighed, knowing she was right but finding it difficult to care at the moment. But despite his lack of caring, he’d never do that to her—put her in a position where her loyalties could be questioned in the slightest. Someone like him could argue his case, could defend against virtually any serious accusation and stand at least a fighting chance against the more serious ones. Someone like Vanessa, an overly proficient secretary who knew entirely too much information about the Agency, more than what her position accorded her? No way would she be able to protect herself against anything the Committee threw at her. And Henry would give his very life to keep that from happening to her.

  “You’re right,” he acknowledged, nodding as he slowly dragged himself from his chair to stand on exhausted, unsteady feet. “We should go home, maybe get some sleep.”

  Vanessa smiled, a genuine one that made the outer corners of her eyes crinkle slightly, and she too rose from her braced position against his desk, smoothing both of her hands down his chest like she was straightening his tie and the lapels of his suit jacket. “Yes, we definitely do need some rest,” she agreed. “The new director needs sleep if he’s going to work on strategy in the morning.”

  “You’re assuming we’re going to sleep,” Henry remarked, only half joking. Indeed, he had absolutely no intention of getting sleep once he and Vanessa made it to his house, and judging by the slightly mischievous twinkle in her eye, his long-time lover knew exactly what he was driving at. “This is probably my last night as an independent, freely thinking man, and damn it, I’m going to enjoy myself a little before the Committee decides to put my head on a metaphorical spike.”

  “Or, knowing the Committee, a literal one,” Vanessa quipped almost cheerfully. She slipped her ridiculously thin smartphone out of a narrow pocket on her skirt and added, “Get your things together. I’ll request us an Uber.” She strode out of the room, tapping on her phone’s screen with one thumb, and as she exited, Henry just barely caught sight of her sliding a folded piece of paper into her skirt pocket.

  What the hell? he thought, his eyes darting over his desk, searching for a clue as to what Vanessa had just stolen from his office. It took long minutes to figure it out, too many minutes, minutes during which he realized he couldn’t hear Vanessa in the outer office anymore.

  His orders. She had stolen his orders from the Committee, the same orders that instructed him to kill Scott and everyone helping him.

  Henry rushed into the empty outer office and then into the hallway. Looking around frantically, he searched for the long-legged woman with the dark, curly hair that fell to the middle of her back. But no one in his line of sight remotely resembled that description.

  Vanessa Ioannides was gone. And she’d taken the Committee’s orders with her.

  “Oh God, Vanessa, what the hell are you doing?”

  Listening to Scott as he turned into a werewolf was one of the worst things Riley had ever had the misfortune to hear, she reflected as she sat on the floor outside Marie’s apartment, her knees pulled to her chest and her heart in her throat. He’d done what he could to muffle the sounds—that much she could tell; it sounded like he was chewing on a pillow or something—but whatever he’d done, it wasn’t enough. She could still clearly hear his muffled screams of pain, the awful sounds on bones cracking and breaking. She didn’t know how he could stand it.

  Maybe he isn’t standing it, she mentally corrected.

  It was when his screaming started to become interspersed with animalistic growls that she started to talk, her voice pitched just loud enough to be heard through the door. She had to do something besides just sit there; being helpless, not being able to go charging in there to stop what was hurting Scott—because what was hurting him was himself—was going to drive her insane. So she did what she always did in times of helpless stress: she turned to using her mouth to babble about the most inane shit she could think of, usually the first thing that popped into her brain.

  “When I was eleven years old, my mom left me for a week. I was used to her leaving. She did it all the time. I guess you could say I ended up being a pretty self-sufficient kid. Always cooking my own dinners, doing my homework, cleaning up our apartment, all that mess.”

  She paused, listening for any changes in the sounds coming from the apartment. When she didn’t hear any, she continued with her story, though she was sure Scott wasn’t even comprehending what she was saying.

  “She was usually only gone for a day, maybe two. So when she disappeared for a week, well, I got scared. I didn’t know what to do. Mom had never told me what I was supposed to do if she never came back. I didn’t go to school after the third day; I didn’t want to accidentally slip up and say something to a teacher about how my mom had been missing for a few days, because then she’d call CPS, and I didn’t want to be taken away from my mother.

  “So then Mom finally showed up, and she acted like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t been gone for a week. I was so angry with her, but she just dumped this backpack full of toys into my lap and said it was from my father. I carried that thing around for years after that. It was always with me, to the point that my mom started calling me Linus. You know, like the Peanuts character, the one with the blanket? Over the years, the nickname eventually transferred to the backpack, and that was that.” She sighed, thinking of the way the hard current in the Mississippi River had torn the backpack off her back and whisked it away from her before she could even react. “I lost my backpack, you know. When I jumped in the river. The water tore it right off. But you know what? It doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Not when I had you to worry about.”

  Riley paused, closing her eyes and listening for any sounds of distress from the door behind her. When she didn’t hear anything, she slid into a standing position, wavering between opening the door to check on Scott—and potentially putting herself directly in harm’s way—and going downstairs to look for more experienced help. She looked down at her hands, examining the red markings that had trailed from her palms around to the backs of her hands and up to her wrists, and figured that, even though she couldn’t control it, she had more than enough metaphorical firepower to handle a werewolfed-out Scott. She just didn’t know if she had the courage to use said firepower against him. He was Scott, after all, no matter what form he took.

  Squaring her shoulders, Riley grasped the doorknob and turned it, slowly but steadily, and ducked inside, easing the door closed behind her. The room was dimmer than she remembered, but outside, it was pitch black, and they’d only left a lamp on when they’d exited the room earlier. She pressed back against the closed door and scanned the room, searching for Scott.

  She didn’t see him right away; the room was too dim and he was too far in the shadows for that. No, she heard him first: the slow, low whistle of an animal in pain. She knew it wasn’t smart to approach a hurting animal, but it was Scott, and she couldn’t very well leave him alone in here without at least atte
mpting to help him.

  “Scott?” Riley asked, taking a cautious step forward.

  The whimper intensified, and a moment later, a large wolf limped from the shadows. The animal was, in a word, beautiful. Its fur was thick and shiny, the same color as Scott’s hair, and all Riley wanted to do was bury her hands in it. She stayed where she was, though, afraid she’d antagonize the wolf if she made the wrong move. The wolf came forward a few steps, stopping less than two feet away from her, its nostrils flaring as it scented her. Then it whined again and crossed the space between them, pressing against her legs as if it was seeking comfort. She brushed her fingers against the top of its head, surprised by how coarse the fur was, then sank to her knees and unhesitatingly wrapped her arms around the wolf like she would a dog.

  “Oh hell, Scott, I can’t believe this happened to you,” she murmured. She rested her forehead against the ruff of his fur and added, “Damn it, we need to figure this out. I can’t let you stay like this.”

  The wolf—Scott—let out another little whine. He flopped against her, resting his head on her thigh with a chuff of air. She stroked the fur between his ears, trying to decide what to do. Really, she needed to go find Ashton and Zachariah and inform them of Scott’s wolfed-out status. But she didn’t want to leave him alone, especially not at this point. She thought longingly of her cell phone, which was probably sitting somewhere on the bottom of the Mississippi with her backpack; if she still had it, she could have texted one or both of them without any trouble. Since she didn’t have a phone anymore—something that really needed to be rectified—she’d just have to wait until one of them showed up to check on how things were going to tell them about Scott.

  Riley heard a noise outside the building and frowned, looking around before her eyes settled on the windows that faced the street. Scott had heard it, too; he lifted his head from her leg and turned his lupine eyes onto the windows across from them.