The Beast Inside

by M E Wolf

  “Personally I do not understand why I am still alive even if it is within the space between worlds. Probably what they have told you is that the dots that they put on you are for slave, hunter and assassin. Let me guess they handled the slave and hunter, but neglected to speak of or train you in assassin.

  “Yeah, that kind of thing is really out of their jurisdiction. It takes someone or something like you or I to train someone to be an assassin. Not everyone can do this type of thing and all that do have to be called to this plane.

  “Time and space have no real meaning for me, thus I can be anywhere in the universe or universes.

  “Now for some lessons on being an assassin. It is all about being not seen. Kind of hard when we are wolves over ten feet high at the shoulder. The beauty of us doing the assassination though is that everyone will look at it as though animals did the crime and not bipedal type beings.

  “From time to time I will pop in and teach you something new. The more you become the wolf the stronger the wolf will get. Must eat people though as their blood activates you. I tried to get away from the blood use, but I just could not.

  “The best way to learn how to do the assassin bit is to observe and accompany me on assassinations. I have a few contracts across the universe and you will accompany me.

  “Just have to give you a warning that it is very exhilarating and is not suppose to be done as male and female. We are animals in this form and things could happen. Before we embark on this journey you must agree that whatever happens between us you won’t think that I violated you.

  “Two wolves becoming excited from a case and that would be all. It is my duty to warn you that it would be carnal, and not really anything to do with whether you like me, or I like you.

  “Whatever happens to you as a wolf, sometimes will happen to you physically but losing virginity as a wolf won’t make you lose virginity as a humanoid.

  “Well most likely it won’t as I am male and not female so don’t really know if what I say be true or not. Let us travel together and work on a few of my contracts.”

  He stopped talking and we walked along each other, and then we were somewhere else. I am not sure what world we were on, but he urged me to enter the building and jump in the elevator. It was raining so our muddy paws made a mess of the place.

  A bunch of wolves go into the building, and a contract we go to do. We go up to the twenty first floor and wait for the door to open. He heads left so I follow him and he slows down long enough for me to catch up behind him.

  I looked up to the number on the door, it was two one zero zero. The wolf training me told me to go in and kill only the woman inside. With my right front paw I ripped the door off the hinges and threw it over my shoulder to have it smash against the wall behind me.

  This alerted the occupants to the now open doorway. The woman was my only target, but there was a six foot tall man that would give me trouble. Right now they were afraid and the man peed himself so I took the opportunity and leapt onto the woman. I tore into her with my teeth and shredded her, tasting bits of her flesh.

  The man got the strength to go and get a gun and shoot at me. I was not to kill him and ran out of the room. Bullets ripped through my flesh, bullets where am I? Why bullets, arrows I would understand, but a gun and bullets. The information was there for me and I knew what bullets were and they hurt.

  My blood trailed all the way to the elevator and we both went down to the first floor. Red paw prints tracked from the targets room to the elevator and from the elevator through the front broken window and stopped at the middle of the road where I and my mentor just up and vanished to another target.

  This was a house in the Victorian style and we were at the front porch. Blood still dripped from my body from various places, but I was told to go in and kill the three young men that would be watching the television. I don’t even know what a television is and was also told not to use the door but the window.

  What window to use? I see it to the left of the door, it will be a great leap and charge through the window but I get a run going and leap up the twenty feet, and crash through the window. Glass and wood are shattered everywhere inside the room. I bite down on the first guy and take his head. Biting down the fluids in his head drip down my jaw line and mat my fur.

  Fear from the other two is so strong that that is all that I smell in the room. One has a double barreled shotgun that is unloaded into my face if you can consider a wolf having a face. Standing up like a werewolf although I was just a wolf and not sure where the humanoid wolf was coming from I flung the gunman at the wall. He partially went through it so I thought that he had been killed, but I will have to check on him later.

  The last one was behind the couch, after ripping the couch in half and throwing both sides to the left, and right I bit into his chest. I went and ate the other guy that was inside the wall. As I was leaving the room out through the window I noticed that blood was everywhere and my blood was dripping on the floor from my various gunshot wounds. My blood was trailed all the way outside, and onto the road. I should have felt weak but I did not feel weak at all.

  He showed me how to open a gland up in my throat. A bubble came out and it got bigger and bigger until it was big enough for us to leap through it. This was the way to travel to other worlds as a wolf and carry out contracts. The contract was felt in our blood and we were given them from some unknown source. If you did not do the contracts that you were given you might not get any more contracts.

  My mentor told me that some assassins are killed for not doing the contracts, but it does not matter when you do the contract as the timing is correct with each kill or assassination. Two contracts were done and more were to come. I had to do four more contracts with my mentor in tow making sure that I did the contracts to the letter. He assured me that each contract was on a different world.

  There was absolutely no way for anyone to solve the case that would be created from the murders that I did. They were murders and not just a self defense situation. Something stirred within me each and every time that I completed a contract. More of my blood was spilled and left at the scene of my crimes. Never staying long enough to see whether there was a witness or not I would never know what kind of data would be collected.

  For some strange feeling I felt that someone ultimately was watching, but I knew not where they were watching from. They knew me, but I knew not of them. What type of creature could watch a creature like me, and know what they are seeing? It is truly a galactic age where nowhere within the space of the universe or universes was untouchable.

  It makes me wonder if they could see the one that was with me and I don’t think anyone could see him. A great man once was he and more so the enigma now as he is ancient beyond the telling of any old story. Brave wolf he remains and now that my training is done I must do my first contract. My contract is a young man in a mansion and I am to make it look like an accident. I am not really sure how that will work as a wolf, but I will have to see.

  Blood is still leaking from my previous wounds and I walk around the house and see the natural gas intake. One swipe with my paw and I break it open exposing the natural gas, another swipe and bang. Blackness is all I see and I pass out from the pain of the explosion. Consciousness is what I end up losing. Pain and blackness take me to oblivion and back. She is sent out of the wolf and back to herself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

  “Alexandra is that you? Something terrible happened in the tribe. I was away and came back to find no one left alive and the scavenger beetles were having a feast upon the corpses of the tribesmen and women.

  “The savage beast could not be found either. You were somewhere I don’t know for quite some time as I am a descendant of someone you don’t know, the calamity happened not too long ago though and you have been asleep for about two months since I found you.

  “It was strange to find blood on your teeth and some of my tribesmen’s flesh was embedded in your clothes. I am frightened
and that is why I have put shackles on your feet and a rope around your neck.

  “Now that you are finally awake I do need answers and I need you to pay for what you have done to my tribe. My name is Jantes, I was an acolyte, but I am the shaman now that there is no one else.”

  Alexandra looked at the one member of the L’art’o tribe left and felt disgusted by his pertinence,

  “You are an idiot, and I think that you know that. Maybe time has gone by enough that you and your tribe had time to erase what had happened over three hundred years ago, but I still remember.

  “Is it not quaint that you know my name, but not the details of my incarceration here? Seriously it has been over three hundred years, enough time for your people to make up a bunch of things.

  “Who really cares if I ate your people? Are you not cannibals, and you eat people?” She was clearly upset about this, and if she was not shackled and tied up she would have done something to this creature named Jantes.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

  A while later she freed herself from her bonds, and looked around to find that the forest was on fire. She did not know what was happening and could only think of being free from the inferno that was raining down upon the land. Beastly growls could be heard and all that she could think about was her nightmare of the larger than life creature that chased her for years and years.

  Something was out there and it was getting closer to her. It was following her movements and she could only hear it moving towards her. Fear coursed through her veins as hot breath touched her neck and her blood pressure and heart rate rose. Her heart pounded in her ears and her feet faltered spilling her onto the ground face first. The beyond huge beast stooped down to grab her in its talons.

  She was its prey, its meal. It was very hungry and had devoured all that it could on this planet. The nature of itself would soon devour the essence of the planet, but it felt more attuned to this being because it could get a better feeding than from the planet. Grow it would with this meal, more than others of its race.

  As she scrambled backwards from it in a crablike walk Alexandra remembered something buried deep within the recesses of her mind and was gone. The beast howled when it realized that she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

  Alexandra awoke with a splitting headache, and looked around. She was not sure where she was, but she at least knew that she was where she intended to be. At the edge of the lake that had those lilies, the ones that her diet consisted of when she was here last. The air smelt sweet and she savoured the soothing scent.

  The aroma lightened her headache and at least it had made her feel a little bit better. She was in her red robes that were still smoldering from her encounter with the beast that was hunting her, which now had a few mud and grass stains in various locations from when she had sprawled onto the ground as she entered this world.

  Her short sword was sheathed on her left hip, her dagger on her right hip and her pack was on her back with one talon lodged in the center of it from the beast. The tears in her pack would have to be mended. Nothing was on her feet. Alexandra could hear the clang of metal upon metal somewhere out there and was not sure of which direction it was coming from, a sound that sent shivers up her spine.

  No matter how noisy she was in this forested area, she would not be heard over the clanging metallic sounds that seemed to be everywhere. It could not be told where it was coming from because she could hear it in any direction that she would travel. She was a novice when it came to the tactics of war and she was even worse at the strategy of war and did not know the first thing about fighting when it came to mass battles of this scale, but she did have the Dochani instinct.

  Alexandra remembered the peace she had when she first came to this world, but could not remember how she managed to get here for the second time in her life. It would take time for her to figure out how to use her Dochani abilities here even if it was just a matter of instinct. Since she had no formal training in her Dochani abilities except for what her true father was trying to teach her, which meant that she would be here for a very long time.

  To her the source that allowed her access to her powers was different here than on the Dochani planet and more fragile. Using this new source without knowing the scope of what she could do here could be fatal. This put a damper on things, at least slightly. Whatever it was making the noise, it meant that she would have to choose which side to be on and she did not know anyone on this planet and did not really want to take a side in a war that she did not understand.

  Dead bodies were weaved throughout the forest like a carpet as she walked up the side of what seemed to be a mountain or at least she thought they were dead. She had never seen so many dead people before. The ones without heads were obviously dead and it was the same with the ones with weapons sticking out of their bodies, but the ones that barely had marks on them at all were hard to tell whether they were alive or dead.

  On their armour were different emblems of kingdoms that she did not know. Some had a white fist on a buckler or some other variation of a fist some place on their armour. Others had a horse or an eagle or any other animal in many different places on their armour. Most did not have any emblem at all, which probably meant that they were mercenaries for hire.

  A different sound was heard in the forest as she was walking up the hill. It was the sound of branches breaking. At first she thought that it might be a large bird being shot from a tree or maybe even arrows thumping into the wood of the trees above. After all she was not far from the ridge-line of the forest where she would end up walking into the middle of a days old battle. When Alexandra had realized what it was, it was too late.

  Too late to even dodge it, something crashed into her feet toppling her. Entangled with whatever it was that ran into her she rolled down the hill and would have kept going into the lake if it were not for the dead body that stopped her and whatever it was that toppled her. She tried to get up, but the pain in her leg shot up into her brain and she lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

  SilverFox wished that he had paid attention to his father and the others that had been training him in the arts of war. He was barely proficient with a wooden sword and until a few days ago he had not used a real sword. Now he had a broad sword buckled at his right side. It was a pain being a left-handed fighter when all the others in the compound mainly wielded their weapons in their right hands and a few wielded them in both.

  His broad sword had a blade nearly three feet long and the hilt was two and a half hand widths long. Preferring to wield the broad sword in one hand gave him a bit of a disadvantage when two handed wielding was necessary. For this reason his father had sent him with a team of six men to bring back reinforcements from the garrison far into the forest. Only he survived the ambush of the enemy long enough for someone to get to the garrison.

  It was an obvious ploy of the enemy to stop them from getting more troops into the hills of Begundy long enough to surround his father’s troops. SilverFox was unlike his father in the way he thought and carried himself. His father was a great tactician, war fueled him and gave him energy. Men loved to follow him into battle knowing that they would all be inspired by his greatness. It was thought that no one would fail as long as they could see him in battle.

  He fought like a lion on the fields of Antola, a plain well used to the violence of the animals outweighing any kind of violence capable by man’s arrogance. A lion after all is what a warrior strives to emulate, even though most warrior’s have no chance to be even close to the prowess of the lion. In emulating a lion, one hopes to spread fear among their enemies. He was more of an intellectual man whom at times was deemed as “The Scholar”.

  SilverFox wrote books and studied ancient texts. As a master of many languages he could decipher enemy communications and translate them into text that everyone could understand, well mostly everyone. For this very reason his father had raised him to Lieutenant and allowed him to command units of scou
ting parties. Intelligence and information gathering was his task in this war.

  The information that he carried now was so valuable to their success that he had two commands of elite forces with him to make sure he got to his father unharmed, while two army units made preparations to join his father’s unit as reinforcements. The structure of the army of The Grand Reach, the kingdom that was ruled by his father, was different than most armies.

  His father’s rule was more like a high ruler above many other rulers. In war, which happened to be right now, his father’s power was almost the equivalent of that of a king but probably more like an emperor. The relationship of his father to the people had its benefits, but being the youngest son of many there was not much left in benefits to him. His genius mind was his greatest asset, but being one of the most intelligent had its drawbacks.

  One of those drawbacks was that he had to remember formations of the enemy’s army, their command structure, tactics and how it related to their own army. All of this of course had to be relayed back to his father in detail, which would have to be relayed again and again to other units of their army with instructions from his father for each unique unit.

  In most cases your military decisions were based on whatever the enemy was doing as you had to beat them at the game of war. SilverFox also had to know where all of the army’s units were and who was commanding them. This brings us back to the memorizing of the army structure of the army of The Grand Reach. An army unit consisted of two elite commands, one archery unit, two cavalry units, four footman units, two medical units and a command unit. An elite command consisted of a unit of heavy lancers and a unit of horse archers.