by Justin Sloan
“At ease,” he said, with a growl. “But stop playing around, you should be training.”
“I gave them the afternoon off,” a voice said from the top of the stairs.
Danny looked up to see Aldrick, his hands on the railing, looking down with a proud, fatherly smile.
“Off?” Gregor asked, incredulously.
“They brought in a large batch today,” Aldrick replied. “Shall we show our guest what we’ve been up to?”
Gregor smiled wickedly at Danny, and motioned for him to go ahead.
“It really is good to have you back,” Aldrick said, wrapping his arm around Danny, who stiffened noticeably at the act. “You leave me again, your body will return without a head, though. Make no mistake about that.”
Danny was amazed at the ferocity that could come through the man’s voice while that smile remained plastered on his face.
“I got it,” Danny said. “Loyal through and through.”
Gregor grunted from behind, but they ignored him.
“Perfect,” Aldrick said. “You’ll want to catch up then.”
He opened the double doors behind him that led them down a long passage, and then up a flight of stairs.
The attic was a large room with several skylights to let in the moonlight. But what made this attic different from others were the large cages imprisoning men and women, boys and girls.
“What is this?” Danny asked, already fearing the answer.
“You know as well as any of us,” Aldrick said, his eyes penetrating Danny, “that we have to feed. Why go out and hunt them one by one, when we can have a whole supply right here.”
This was disgusting. Danny made eye contact with a scared teenage boy,
“You remember your first victim?” Aldrick asked. “You never forget the taste on your tongue, the beating of their heart as you tore into their flesh. That memory stays with you forever. It defines you.”
Aldrick motioned for the boy to be brought forward. He grabbed him by the hair and tilted back his head. Sharp, werewolf teeth grew in Aldrick’s mouth and his voice deepened. “Had it been anyone other than my wife, I may have turned out so different.”
He bit into the boy, and only then did Danny notice other splotches of blood in the room. The boy nearly fell, whimpering, too terrified to call out in pain, and Aldrick motioned for Danny to join.
“It’s wrong….” Danny said.
“Feast,” Aldrick said, pausing long enough for the blood to seep down the boy’s shoulder. “They are the unworthy. If they aren’t part of our army in one way, they can be part in another.”
A thunder rose in Danny. That poor boy’s eyes wouldn’t stop staring, pleading, and with a shout of rage, Danny charged Aldrick.
But the other men were on Danny in an instant, tackling him to the floor. He struggled, but they threw him onto his back and rained down blows.
When he was nearly unconscious, they dragged him back out through the main area, past the onlookers, and outside, where they opened the cellar door and tossed him in. His head smacked against a hard floor, and when he had recovered, the men had joined him and were shackling him to a wall. A scream sounded from somewhere above, and Danny knew it was the boy.
A howl broke the silence that followed, and then more howls until the house was echoing with them. The men stood there, staring at Danny, eyes shining yellow.
And then a door opened and in walked Gregor and Aldrick. The latter was wiping his mouth, but he hadn’t bothered to change clothes—they were splattered with fresh blood.
“You’re sick!” Danny shouted.
“We’re animals,” Aldrick said. “And it seems that you’ve forgotten that little fact. You fancy yourself a human, but I have news for you—you never truly were one of them. In your heart, you’ve always been one of us.”
“You… disgust me.”
A flash of anger lit Aldrick’s eyes. “Disgust? We are the next evolution, Danny. Beautiful creatures, put here by the heavens to do God’s justice. But there is a price we must pay, us chosen few.... For our own Garden of Eden, we must eat of the forbidden fruit.”
He motioned, and Gregor punched Danny hard across the jaw, enough to disorient him as the man took a needle and put it in Danny’s leg.
“You already gave me the iodine,” Danny said, his voice barely a whisper. What did any of it matter—what could he do against all of this?
“You will never betray me again,” Aldrick said. “This has the original formula, with extra steroids and more. When we’re done with you—”
“NEVER!” Danny shouted, feeling the adrenaline kick in from the shot. But it was more than that, something pulling at him, tearing at his insides until no clarity of thought remained. Anger pulled at him, and every instinct of the werewolf within threatened to surface.
Aldrick just nodded. Again, Gregor attacked him, this time with a punch to the gut and an elbow to the temple. Danny would’ve collapsed, if not for the shackles.
The anger flared, and he pushed himself up, trying to attack, pulling at the shackles until they dug into his skin and blood dripped to the floor. He fell back, panting, wild eyes taking in the others. Why had he been attacking them? He couldn’t recall. All he could think about was a yearning for blood.
“You will remember this day, Danny,” Aldrick said. “It is the day you are reborn, for today you have seen the light.”
Chapter 17: The Hostage
The Amtrak train pulled out of the station with a slight jerk, but soon settled into a smooth ride.
Katherine was especially happy to be off her feet and able to finally just sit back and relax. Trees disappeared while the distant hills seemed to follow them.
A jolt caused her to bump into Triston. Instead of pulling away, she leaned into him and took his hand in hers. Neither said a word, but he nuzzled against her, the two watching the fog creep over far-off hills.
Her eyes drifted over to a newspaper left on the seat opposite them. Without knowing any of the backstory, she knew what the headline was about—three bodies found in the mountains. Mutilated. That had been her with the truckers, she was sure of it. It was already making the news. Luckily, they’d be out searching for some sort of beast, not a petite woman.
But farther down the paper she saw more reports, similar and not far off.
“The others grow bold,” she muttered.
“Others?” Triston asked.
“Another pack,” she whispered with a glance around to make certain they couldn’t be overheard. “The others from the group we split with when I was younger, most likely.”
“Are you ready to confront this? If it comes to that?”
“As I said, I’m sick of being chased. I’m sick of being hunted. I don’t know what awaits us, but I’m willing to find out.”
Tristan nodded and pulled her close with a kiss to her forehead. She leaned into him, her head on his shoulder, and found her eyes closing.
A jolt of the train pulled her from her sleep.
“That was quick,” she said, assuming they’d arrived.
“We can’t be there yet,” Triston said, standing to look out the window. “Just a stop, looks like…. Cops, and—DAMNIT!
Katherine sat up to have a look, then threw herself back on the seat. Five cops were showing a station employee their papers and introducing a man in a brown coat with a bandage on his cheek—Hunter.
She wasn’t waiting here to find out how he was able to walk around in broad daylight as a vampire. Or use his tracking ability. The way she figured it, sure, vampires weren’t supposed to walk around in the day, but werewolves weren’t supposed to change any time other than the full moon, and look at her. So instead of pondering these questions, she motioned for Triston to follow.
In a second she was in the aisle of the train, staying low so the cops outside wouldn’t see her. Between cars was a bathroom door, which she pulled open to look for a way out. Triston caught up to her then and she spun on him, voice rising in panic.
“We have to get off this train.”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of him,” Triston said.
“Not of him, but of the cops. Of them somehow finding out what I am, of the government forever hunting me.”
“Trust me, that’s not a worry.” Triston looked behind him and nodded. “Don’t your powers only work at night?”
“Ah, yes. But that means there’s more reason to be afraid right now.”
He led her around the bathroom area to a small side door barely noticeable between the two train cars. They ducked through it and out onto the opposite side of the tracks.
“Hey, stop!” someone was yelling, but the two were already climbing across another parked train, and soon they were being jostled about by a large crowd of passengers as a third train let out. The flow led them to a stairway that took them under ground and then presumably under the main entrance.
Triston held out a hand to slow them. “Like everything’s fine.”
“We have to... we have to keep moving.”
“Slow, calm.” He nodded to the people around them, and she got it. Fit in, the cops wouldn’t know what they’re looking for. But two people running? That was another story.
They continued walking now, following the surge of people. It was surprisingly bright down here in the underground passage, which made it even easier to see the narrowed eyes and glimmering pistol of Hunter.
“Back,” Katherine said, trying to turn in the crowd, but it was too late.
Now others had seen the pistol in Hunter’s hand, and they screamed as they tried to run. The effect was panic—a stampede of chaos.
Even among the crowd, Hunter took the shot. More screams as the wall beside Katherine’s head blasted open, sending white plaster into the air. Triston was already moving. He dove and took out Hunter’s legs, while Katherine charged behind him. Hunter whacked Triston on the head with his pistol and pulled back for a second strike, when Katherine kicked the pistol out of his hand. She snatched it off the floor and spun to throw her arm around Hunter’s throat as she held the pistol to his temple.
“Hunt this, you son-of-a-bitch,” she said as she pulled him back and toward the exit.
The cops appeared at the other end, where the crowd was finally clearing out, but froze at the sight of Katherine and Triston with their hostage.
Their first move was to find a taxi. Their second was to throw the taxi driver out and speed off. Triston took the wheel and Katherine continued to hold Hunter at gunpoint in the rear. She glanced behind them to see the cops scrambling out of the train station and into their cars.
“I will release your soul,” Hunter said, seething with rage, “if it’s the last—”
Katherine slammed him across the face with the pistol, pulling a line of blood on his lip.
They nearly fell as Triston swerved onto a side street.
“You have it all wrong!” Triston said. “She’s not like the others.”
“Justify it however you want,” Hunter said. “But you’ve befriended a Lycan, a werewolf!”
“And you’re so much better?” Katherine asked, spittle flying. “You think I haven’t noticed what you’ve become? This obsession has turned you into every bit the monster than I am!”
He hung his head at that. “Yes, for years I searched for power, any way I could to be able to put you and your kind down. It came in the form of sacrifice, and even more so to enable me to walk out in daylight. And then, I learned to control it. Harness the power. Sure, I suffer for my convictions, but the point doesn’t change… a werewolf cannot be controlled, and you are a werewolf.”
“We’re working on that werewolf part,” Triston said.
“As am I.” Hunter turned to Katherine with a knowing glare. “Did he ever tell you how he killed my mother?”
Triston swerved again as flashing lights of police cars reflected around them.
“Who?” Triston asked. “What’s he talking about?”
“My uncle... Aldrick.” Katherine glared at Hunter, waiting.
“He died in the fire, didn’t you say that?” Triston turned slightly to look at them, a glance at Hunter before returning his eyes to the road. “So why’re you chasing us?”
“I hunt them to stop the suffering,” Hunter said. “To end the world of their curse.”
“But it doesn’t have to be your way.”
Sirens sounded not far off, and again with the red and blue lights.
Hunter was looking at Triston with an almost humored expression. “Surely you don’t believe it can end so simply. This can only ever be temporary, and when you too have lost everything, you’ll beg me to put a silver bullet in her.”
Triston glanced in the rearview mirror, looking between Hunter and the cop cars pursuing them.
“She’s all I have left,” he said, and then swerved into a U-turn and down another street.
Katherine met his eyes briefly in the mirror, wondering what he meant by that. They had grown close, but that close? To be all he had left? Now that she thought about it, with Danny having run off, maybe Triston was all she had left too. She smiled, and he returned the smile.
“So that’s how it is?” Hunter said, noticing. “Very well.”
Before Katherine knew what was happening, he’d slammed the V of his hand into her throat and caught the pistol with his other hand.
Still gagging, she dodged and a bullet shattered the window behind her. Triston swerved hard, pulling a 180 as they exited the alley and landed in a crowded square. A cop car came speeding into the square from the other side, and people were screaming and running for their lives.
Hunter had recovered and was aiming again, but Katherine jumped on top of him and wrestled for the pistol. With one hand she managed to get the door behind him open, then pushed back so she was on the other side. This time when he lifted the pistol to shoot, she was ready—she kicked with all her might and sent Hunter flying out of the car.
She watched him roll along the road. The cop car narrowly avoided him, only to go smashing into the glass display of a cake shop.
A moment to catch her breath and close the door, and then Katherine climbed into the front seat, glad to see them leaving that chaos behind. Neither seemed to breathe for what felt like forever, and then they were on another side road, no one visibly in pursuit.
“I’m all you have left?” Katherine asked when they were sure they’d lost the cops.
He hesitated, then took her hand. “After my family died, instead of following the path of your friend back there, I turned to a different means of justice.” He pulled over, eyes on a parked smart car nearby. “Mauro will explain.”
Chapter 18: The Legend
Triston and Katherine quickly ditched the taxi in favor of a tiny, box-shaped smart car that he had broken into. He’d explained that while the taxi might have looked a lot like all the other taxis out there, in a town like this there weren’t bound to be too many cabs.
“Plus, they probably wrote down the license plate number by now,” he added as they pulled out in their new, windowless smart car.
The wind had a pleasant coolness to it, though if they were to drive onto a freeway she was sure it would grow quite annoying.
His touch surprised her, and it was only when he lifted her hand and kissed it that she realized her other hand was clutching the stone of the necklace Danny had given her all those years ago. She smiled, but felt lost. Running from other werewolves, Hunter, and now the cops? All she wanted was freedom from this curse—to be a normal girl again.
But she’d never really been all that normal, anyway. Even as a little girl, she remembered whispers from her parents, wondering why she didn’t play with the other children more. Junior high had come around, and still she kept her distance, always appreciating a time with her family or a good book, but not getting the appeal of hanging out with these kids who would eventually move on, or she would. Either way, they were what she had termed “flower-petal friends,” or the kind of
friends that blew away with the wind, only leaving behind a lonely, ugly stem of a plant. And now that was even true of Danny, the one person she thought had proven her wrong.
The countryside swept by, long fields of corn and then orchards.
“Where are we?” she asked, seeing a city rise up in front of them. “No way are we there yet.”
“We are,” he said with a warm smile, eyes darting away from the road for a moment. “Mauro comes here to research mostly. The Church likes to be educated.”
“It’s so beautiful here, but so….” They pulled over at a spot where the trees gave way to a path, a large, brown church with tall spires farther down the path. A man and woman passed, holding each other, and shot them an annoyed glance. “….Gloomy,” Katherine said, finishing her thought.
“It’s not usually like this.” Triston got out of the car and looked around, his expression utterly perplexed. Near a canal, not far from the church, a group of punk kids were gathered around a dog, feeding it scraps.
Katherine paused at a railing to look into the canal below. The way the water trickled along was a slice of peace in this crazy world.
“What if I did it?” she asked, almost to herself. “Just threw myself in.”
“Can, uh....” Triston leaned over next to her, probably gauging how deep it was. “Can a werewolf drown? I mean, why the silver bullet if it’s so easy?”
“Should we find out?” She stepped up onto the railing, but Triston pulled her back. She laughed it off as a joke, and was pretty sure it was.
He held her close in an embrace. “Don’t joke like that, not with me.”
She bit her lip and nodded. True, Danny was gone. But now there was this man, more than a friend, for sure…. But could he be trusted? For now, he was her best chance at a normal life, as far as she knew.
He led her over to the church. They entered and, half-way up the stairs, she paused and looked around with awe. This was more of library than a church, from what she expected of churches anyway. Past the dusty bookshelves, a map was spread out on a table. It had points circled on it, and around it were scattered articles about disappearances and deaths.