That was all I consciously thought
I remember everything perfectly, but I still have to wrap my mind around the fact that those are my memories. A part of me insists that it was them being surprised, while it’s dawning to my other part that I had never used my full potential during sparring. The only explanation for the latter was that – despite my hatred and disgust – I didn’t want to severely hurt Dan.
But I wanted to hurt the beasts that almost got him. And I was fast, incredibly fast. Reminding me attacking them is like watching a movie with me in the lead role as a female Flash. They were faster than humanly usual, too, but I just pressed the slow motion button on them.
I hit the first one full frontal, tearing my claws up from his stomach to his collar bone with my left and ended him with a swift slash along his throat, showering in the blood that squirted out of his body. I ducked and tackled him while his clawed hands pressed against his lethal wound, and prodded the beast behind him with his body. Using the momentum I turned around my own axis, smashing my right underarm against the throat of the opponent that circled around my first victim. I could hear myself crushing his windpipe. The second, now recovered from being bulldozed by his comrade, lunged for my spine, but never succeeded as Dan literally had my back and cracked that beast’s vertebrae with a well-placed kick.
Turning around to look at him, I knew that I was radiating excitement, smiling widely. I was fueled by power. He just stared at me as if I had just stepped down from heaven. I just loved that expression.
Swiftly grabbing his face, I pressed my mouth on his, not caring at all that my skin was splattered with blood. After a moment of shock, he responded eagerly, kissing me feverishly and the world stood still.
This was when I knew that I would never be able to live without it. I would never be able to be human again. Even if we one day would be able to reproduce enough anti-virus to reverse the genetic engineering, I would never take it. And at that moment I knew that Daniel would never ask me to.
It was the horn of the van that made us snap out of it and just stare at each other for a second. The noise of the gate shutting closed was what made us run. Just a second later, we heard more beasts approaching.
Thinking back, that meant they knew that we would come back, and they somehow had known that this mansion would be our next target. Because, if not, it meant that they had way more beasts than I imagined, and more than just that one compound where they had imprisoned me.
Racing to the gate, I reached it way before Daniel, but I didn’t jump. I had to make sure that he would make it, so I offered him a step up, which he took to get on top of the gate that I knew from its humming was electrified. But he ignored it, offering me a hand to pull me up forcefully, so I could somersault across it. He landed next to me huffing. That’s when I saw the deep flesh wound at his hip, which worsened due to his heavy landing. I grabbed his arm and placed it around my neck assisting him as we ran towards the open van with Jay lying unconscious in the loading area. He hadn’t woken up.
We jumped in and Dan slumped down next to Jay and slapped his hand against the metal behind him, telling Austin to go, while I got the door and looked back. From all the figures that were charging us, I could identify Nina easily. Recognizing her stung deeply.
What I would give to have the chance of getting her, too. Looking at the two cages my guys built, I imagined Nina sitting in the second. As Austin drove us off I knew that this wouldn’t happen. Quickly, I turned and grabbed Jay’s earpiece and the electronics attached to it and tossed it out of the van, before I closed the door shut.
With that, we had twenty minutes to find a tracking device beneath Jay’s skin. Because that was the time we needed to drive all around the city without going into the direction where we eventually would head to.
I had a metal detector while Dan had a scanner and we both tried to move across Jay’s body as calmly as possible, so that we wouldn’t miss it. After fifteen minutes, we still hadn’t found it.
“There has to be one,” I grumbled. “They would never let assets this expensive out of their grounds without a tracker!”
I was annoyed, but that was only because I’d rather continue fighting beasts than calmly search a body I was so familiar with for a foreign object.
“Did you check the teeth?” Dan asked, and I looked at him as if he was speaking alien.
“No, why would they put a tracker somewhere where it could be so easily removed?” I responded.
“Move,” he huffed, but I obeyed, watching him.
He grabbed my metal detector and started moving it beneath Jay’s jaw and then across his upper jaw, but there was no sound.
“Open his mouth,” I told Dan, and he did. “Put it inside.”
For a brief moment, Daniel looked at me in disbelief, but then followed my instruction. The moment the scanner was put inside Jay’s mouth, it started beeping.
“Motherfucker,” I exhaled. “They put it in his palate.”
In fact, it was a little microchip they had implanted beneath the skin that covered Jay’s palate. The idea was quite genius, because it was too small to be detected by ordinary scanners. I used a scalpel, to cut the flesh and peeled the chip out, to throw it out of the van.
And then, we raced home.
Day 66
I don’t know how to start.
We got back in the middle of the night. And before that we dosed Jay one more time, because he started stirring. I guess I should have known that the enhanced regeneration rate that saved Dan’s life would also cause Jay’s body to assimilate the tranquilizer faster. But I couldn’t think.
Because. Because, there I was, sitting in a van, with the two men in my life I cared about. It wasn’t that simple, but yet I could narrow it down to exactly that. And I couldn’t think. I couldn’t think because I was overwhelmed with emotion.
There he was, lying at my feet, slumbering. After thinking he was dead, after believing that I lost him, after getting him back just to learn that he didn’t know who I was. He was there, lying at my feet.
And next to me, slipping into sleep, although he tried so desperately to stay awake, was Daniel. The guy I had despised so much and had learned to… learn to what exactly? To love?
When I think back now I know I have him to thank for not losing my mind. It was he who had kept me on the edge and distracted, who taught me to be a beast.
I felt torn, then, in the back of the van, as I feel now. I needed to cuddle up to Dan and I couldn’t withstand the urge even though I knew what it would make me feel, and what it would do to him. Nonetheless, he wrapped his arms around me nonetheless. Even though he knew that I probably wouldn’t end up being his.
He woke me up when we had arrived home, and carried Jay into the cage that had been built for him. I couldn’t look at it, couldn’t watch Daniel chain him to the wall by his wrists and neck. It reminded me too much of how I first met him in the compound. For me, it was so unbelievably cruel. To put him right back to where he had started. But then again, he couldn’t remember.
X X X
I had showered off the blood I had drawn before I had gone to bed, which probably was the only reason why I had slept so well. It had been the sleep of the dead.
Now, being wide awake, knowing that downstairs, close to Daniel’s bed, is Jay, chained and caged, I cannot will myself to go there, even though I am starving. So, I went to Austin, who has become even more paranoid than me. Entering his office, I made him flinch so severely that he toppled his coffee mug off his desk, which I barely managed to save. By the look on his face, he had stayed up all night and worked.
“I have all cameras online, now,” he told me. “All I could get. Highway and security. Doesn’t seem as if they have been able to track us, but I just needed to be sure.”
“Maybe we should change venues?” I suggested.
I felt so terribly bad for Austin, and as I was standing there, watching him torture his keyboards – as in several – typing hi
mself into a frenzy, I realized which situation he was in. Val had brought him into this, and now she was dead. His goal had been to unveil the board, to get papers and news channels to report about this facility, about these people who experimented on soldiers, like the Third Reich. And now, now he was stuck with these experiments, not being able to return to a normal life.
I realized at that moment that I knew absolutely nothing about him, and he barely knew me, and yet, he had to stick with me. I think he knows Daniel even less. What if he thought we would kill him if he didn’t cooperate? Despite him having all the information about the offshore bank account that financed our project.
“Yes, that might be a good idea, I’ll get to searching a new one,” Austin nodded hastily. “And have it prepared.”
“You should get some sleep,” I told him after placing my hand on his shoulder, which made him flinch again. “Don’t forget you have two beasts to protect you, okay?”
Austin seemed to calm down a little and then he turned in his chair and looked up at me, really looked at me, and I could feel his body relax a bit.
“We are not just tolerating you, Austin, you are part of our pack,” I explained to him, realizing the truth of my own words as I spoke them; so I gently squeezed his shoulder. “You might not be a beast, but you are one of us. You helped us escape, that’s not something I take you for granted, okay? Get some rest.”
Hearing my words I could watch the tension leave his body and him look even more tired than before. I felt bad for ignoring him. He had experienced more than enough, too. Even though he might never know what I lived through, his experience was the worst possible for him. He had no idea that there was even more darkness waiting for him, if he would ever be so unlucky as I had been. The least I could do was give him some comfort and make sure that it didn’t get worse for him.
“You don’t have to worry about Jay,” I told him. “Just ignore that he is there. He’s not your problem, okay?”
Austin nodded and looked up to me with big, bulging eyes. To me, he appeared like a helpless little boy, who had lost his parents. And I knew it was my duty to take care of him and protect him. Realization hit me hard that right now he was the only human in this imminent fight, the only vulnerable person, unable to protect himself from us.
As Austin got to his feet, his stance was so wobbly that I instinctively reached out to assist him. I could read in his face how embarrassed he was about that, but I stayed quiet and helped him to his bed. He instantly collapsed onto the sheets as soon as I got him there.
Responsibility is not a choice. Not for me. I can’t run away from it, or my pack will get hurt. I guess I really know now what it means to be an alpha. I can’t ignore what is downstairs. I want Jay back, I want him in my pack, so I have to face him.
X X X
The first thing I thought of, as I was going down the stairs, is that it would be wise not to make Jay realize that he was important to me. This wasn’t the same situation as all those months ago. He was in control, now. At least that was what seemed to be obvious. When I ignored him and went straight for the kitchen to make myself a huge bowl of cereal and poured myself some milk with a shot of coffee, I couldn’t deny the irony of this situation. Not only was I his captor, but he was Daniel’s, in a way.
I took my time to eat and drink, making sure that my back was always turned towards him. Not because I didn’t want to look at him, but to imply that I didn’t care, which, of course, was absolutely wrong.
Armed with my second mug of coffee and another one for Daniel, I eventually walked over to where he was watching Jay, still not looking in the direction of the cage. Instead, I handed Dan his coffee, who said “Thanks,” and then turned to face him.
I had been right. Jay wasn’t Jay, he was Ten, standing there warped into his beast form, glaring at his guard, and now, me. Fate has very dark sense of humor.
Ten wasn’t pulling at the chains as he used to. He stood there, almost leaning back against the wall, not testing his restraints, but watching. His arms were ready at his side as if he was sure that the chains wouldn’t hold him back. There was no recognition in his expression, for neither Daniel, nor me. So, he had no clue how much we knew, but he had seen that one of us was a beast, which meant he had to assume that we knew how to restrain someone like him.
That meant, his demeanor was an act.
I couldn’t help but wonder, if he believed that Dan was natural born beast, that the scientists used our genetics to create him. Or did they brainwash him into thinking that this was his natural state?
Standing next to Daniel in his comfy armchair, I had placed my left hand on its backrest while I held my coffee in my right. I withdrew my attention on purpose and looked at Dan, who sensed my movement and returned my glance. I took a sip and tried to think.
“Did he talk?” I eventually asked and got a head shake for an answer.
“No,” Dan responded, “unless you count snarling and growling as actual communication.”
I suppressed a smile, but he saw it, I knew it by the twinkle of his eyes.
“You should take a look at our techie,” I changed the topic, getting priorities straight, “He needs a ton of sleep. I took him to bed, but before I could help him, he kind-a passed out in his clothes.”
“Gotcha,” Dan got on his feet and went straight for the stairs, not without placing both his mugs on the kitchen table, while I didn’t move an inch.
I stared at the wall in front of me, seeing Ten glaring at me from the corner of my eye, and took another sip from my coffee mug.
Silence is a cruel weapon, it allows you to think, to become entangled in theories that grow and grow, and feed the fear inside of you, until your head feels like it’s going to explode, and your body turns mad.
I let out a strategic sigh, even though I really needed it.
Before I looked at him, I sat down in the chair that Dan had warmed up for me. His scent was all over it, but it didn’t bother me. In fact, I wanted to cloud my own scent, hoping that he would not figure out by himself that I was pregnant. There was the possibility that he could even find out that it was his, as many animals could.
Taking my mug in both of my hands, resting my elbows on my thighs, I looked at the blonde liquid inside of it, reminding myself that I shouldn’t drink too much coffee, and recalled how I missed a really good, strong one. I needed these distractions to keep my cool, to not demand of him to remember me this instant.
And then, I looked up to meet Jay’s – no, Ten’s – glare. His face was so awfully familiar to me. I had looked at it so often, but now it was different. I couldn’t see the pain, the self-loathing, the guilt. It was gone. I looked at a beast that saw an enemy in me. This face didn’t hate me, because it couldn’t remember loving me.
So, we just stared at each other, waiting for the other one to falter. He gave in first.
“So, you’re the one in charge.” It was a statement.
I noticed how well he was able to speak in his beast form now, which meant he had a lot of practice.
“Yes,” I answered, straightened up a little and took a sip of my coffee, calculating each movement carefully.
I didn’t want to come off as overly self-confident, a soldier, calculating, or an imminent threat. I hoped that with the right demeanor on my part, he would start to relax a little and be less defensive.
“You’re not military,” he growled another statement.
“No, I’m not military,” I agreed with him.
I watched his nostrils flare, as he was trying to catch my scent, but it was mixed with Daniel’s, so he couldn’t say for sure that I was a beast, too.
“You’re not scared,” Ten determined, and I could see by the expression in his eyes that he reasoned that this was because I worked together with Daniel for a longer period of time.
“No, I’m not,” I answered.
“Who are you?” He asked, still alerted, still on edge, but now at least he seemed to be interested in
some sort of conversation.
“My name is Meghan,” I introduced myself. “The one who watched you is Daniel, but the people who made you both call him Four.”
“So, it was you, who took him,” Ten narrowed his eyes at me, maybe in an attempt to make me spill my guts.
It was surprisingly easy to stay calm. I would probably have been a little worried if I had been still human, but even then I knew that Daniel would be there should the chains and the cage not help. And for some reason the entire inner turmoil I had felt after losing Jay was gone, because here he was. Even though he couldn’t remember me. He was alive and somehow I was absolutely certain that I would get him back.
“I didn’t take him,” I negated for the first time.
Confusion flashed across Jay’s warped face. I had to remind myself again, that he was Ten now.
“Is that what they told you, Ten?” I asked, adding his code name on purpose.
He stayed silent, but I could see his brain work. I knew this beast face inside out. It didn’t make a difference to me, if he was standing in front of me in his human or beast form; I could read him like a book. Maybe that was the reason why he stayed as he was, or maybe there was an order he still obeyed.
“Why did you come to take me?” I asked him.
“That was my order,” he answered, much to my surprise and I didn’t try to hide that. “To seize any intruder.”
“But I wasn’t intruding,” I responded after a brief pause. “I was in front of the gate, not on the property.”
“I was ordered to seize whoever works together with Four in order to return him to his pack,” Ten watched my face carefully for any expression.
“He is with his pack,” I explained and he obviously was not only surprised, but confused as well.
That meant, the board either didn’t know, or hadn’t told him, that there was another beast out there. I stayed silent and allowed his thoughts, his confusion to spread. The last thing I wanted to say was that Daniel was with me, because Ten could get this all sorts of wrong. It was the truth, in every way, but Dan wasn’t the father of my son, Jay was.
The Beast Is Me (The Beast And Me Book 4) Page 14