by Eve Langlais
Copyright © 2018/19, Eve Langlais
Cover Dreams2Media © 2018
Produced in Canada
Published by Eve Langlais ~ www.EveLanglais.com
eBook ISBN: 978 177 384 070 3
Print ISBN: 978 177 384 071 0
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction and the characters, events and dialogue found within the story are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, either living or deceased, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to digital copying, file sharing, audio recording, email, photocopying, and printing without permission in writing from the author.
Introduction
He never wanted to become a beast. But the only way to stay a man requires the taming touch of a woman.
Marcus escaped the doctors who thought it was okay to experiment on him. Totally expected to savor freedom far, far away from the evil wrought by the Chimaeram Clinic.
Instead, he finds himself inexplicably drawn back to the place that made him a monster.
And what do monsters do best but terrorize humans?
When he kidnaps Jayda, he has no thought other than to make a certain doctor pay. However, taking an alluring woman to his lair means having her close. Hearing her. Smelling her…
Remembering what it means to be a man.
Wanting to be her lover.
Is she his salvation, or his downfall? Because there is only one punishment for a project gone rogue…
Prologue
The animal crept closer, slinking low to the ground below. The dappled fur helped it blend with its surroundings. A lone wolf strayed from its pack. Prominent ribs showed its hunger. A predator who had started creeping much too close, sneaking from the woods at night for the more civilized areas, seeking easy prey.
And it would find it. Stupid two-legged things walked around without a care in the world. If the wolf attacked one, the rest would panic.
Best to handle the situation before shit happened.
The perch in the tree didn’t prove very comfortable. The branch was barely wide enough to hold an adult body and not snap under the weight. Still, it provided the element of surprise.
The wolf never once looked up. It kept creeping, body slunk low to the ground as it aimed for the bunny placed in a makeshift pen. The tiny bundle of life no longer waggled its pink nose. It froze into a furry statue with long ears.
A wolf didn’t hunt by movement alone. Its nostrils flared, inhaling the scent then following it. How sweet it smelled.
Yummy, yummy in the tummy.
The allure proved all too easy to comprehend. The tempting fast flutter of a heart. The slow, measured hot huffs of breath. The wide eyes staring, the animal too scared to even blink.
Yet there was something even more tempting than a delicious-tasting bunny, and that was the adrenaline of dominating a wolf. There was danger in hunting it. Thrill in the possibility of injury. And the most exciting rush of all, fighting to live—and winning.
The wolf passed underneath the branch, and it took but a simple lean to the left to fall out of the tree and land on the beast. It yelped then growled as its stiff hackles were gripped in two fists. Hitting the ground hard, it took a moment to recover. The wolf squirmed and snapped, slavering teeth coming close to flesh.
Grabbing the muzzle and shutting it took a bit of straining. Legs locked around the body kept it from twisting. It took a firm arm around its neck before the struggles eased.
The body went limp. Then perfectly still. Only then was the wolf released, to be slung over a shoulder and brought back as a prize.
It would make a great rug.
Chapter One
“He’s back again,” Adrian—more commonly known as Dr. Chimera—announced pointing to the video paused on the screen. Daylight poured into his office, the wide windows on the top floor providing a spectacular view of the mountains. Or so he recalled. It had been a while since he’d taken the time to admire anything.
Dr. Aloysius Cerberus—known as the boss’s hellhound behind his back—frowned. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Quite.” Adrian knew all of his patients. His projects. Part of his curse was to never forget.
And I shouldn’t forget those that I used to get where I am today.
“But why?” Aloysius pondered aloud. “It makes no sense. Marcus escaped. We lost him. Why put himself within reach?”
Damned if Adrian knew. Yet there was no denying the image on screen. That face. The long, tangled hair notwithstanding, there was no mistaking the green glow in those eyes. “The last time his tracker sent out a signal he was a hundred miles from here.” And then they’d lost him.
The projects that escaped the Chimaeram Clinic kept finding ways to bypass the implanted chips. It made locating them when they fled the clinic’s care a challenge. Good thing they kept coming back.
“Could he want us to catch him?” Aloysius mused aloud. The man was looking trim these days. His ebony skin smoother than before, the gray along his temples less pronounced. Someone was self-testing with success thus far.
But Adrian had to wonder how the doctor dealt with the side effects. Because there would be some. All of the remedies came with a price.
More like a curse. A thirst for things forbidden.
“Could be he’s hungry and having a hard time scavenging for food,” Adrian offered. “Winter is coming. Perhaps a part of him remembers being warm and fed while living here.”
“Possible.” Aloysius rubbed his chin. “That would indicate he’s retained some of his memories, which is interesting.”
Very interesting because usually those who escaped turned feral, losing their humanity and giving in to baser instinct. Some days Adrian wanted to join them. Staying human was a constant battle, and the blackouts were becoming a problem.
“If he’s got some sense of his past, then I doubt he wants to return as a patient.” Adrian spun his chair to look out his window, staring at the forest as if he could see the escaped patient at its edge.
“Could be he is cognizant enough to realize he needs help.”
“From us?” Adrian couldn’t help but snort. “After what we did, I doubt he’s coming back for more treatments.” The people he helped didn’t always appreciate it.
Maybe you should have asked permission first. He had in a few cases. But in the interest of secrecy, he’d not been entirely truthful with what they were agreeing to.
I misled them. No wonder they hated him. He hated himself.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Aloysius argued. “Marcus was broken when we found him.” A man in a coma about to be sold by his mother for parts. They saved Marcus at the eleventh hour and fixed him, only to break him again.
“And now he’s bitter,” Adrian reminded, because Marcus, like many patients before him who’d arrived at the clinic broken and desperate, turned on those who gave them a second chance at life. Reviled the science that saved them.
Surely a few side effects were worth the price?
Is it? Adrian tucked his trembling hand by his side.
“You think he’s after revenge?” Aloysius said, his lips a grim line.
“Can you think of a more plausible reason?” Everyone needed a reason to get up in the morning. “Given the danger he poses, I’ll send out a memo to halt all outdoor walks by the staff.”
“Forbid them and they’ll start bitching,” Aloysius retorted. “Better if you tell them we’ve got a wild animal situation.”
“Been having a lot of those lately.” Adrian recalled their fa
ces, too. Especially those of the dead. A reminder of the failures piling up at his feet. Never mind the many successes; it was those he lost that haunted him most.
“Has he strayed from the woods yet?” Aloysius asked, snaring the mouse off his desk to play the video in slow motion, slide by slide.
“No, but if he does, the guards will shoot.” They didn’t have a choice. The guards weren’t about to sacrifice themselves trying to capture an experiment gone wrong.
The projects that escaped had a tendency of going quite feral. Only a few managed to retain their sanity. Some days, Adrian wasn’t sure he was one of them.
“Are you having them use tranqs or bullets?”
“Bullets. We can’t afford to lose more staff.” Already there were questions. Whispers among the staff as they noticed their numbers diminishing.
“Are we sure he’s feral?” Moving from the paused video to the sideboard, Aloysius poured himself a drink, well acquainted with the decanters kept in Adrian’s office.
“Yes, I’m sure. Did you see him?” Adrian had studied the videos of his returned project over and over. Unkept, crouched, his every movement animal-like. The problem with splicing a beast’s genes with humans? Sometimes the beast took over.
What do you mean sometimes, boyo? his inner voice taunted.
Aloysius waved a hand. “Doesn’t mean Marcus is irredeemable. I dare any man living off the land to not appear as if related to Bigfoot.”
“You’re talking as if you think we should catch him.” Not everyone deserved redemption.
But Aloysius wanted the failed project back. “We should at least make an attempt.”
“And if we fail? He’s a menace to the staff.”
“No worse than Luke was,” Aloysius shot back. “And yet you kept him around.”
“Luke is a special case.” One of the first broken soldiers Adrian had taken under his splicing wing. The man who’d endured it all. The one who made Adrian believe that perhaps he might pull through. If only he could convince the voices in his head before they acted.
“Could be Marcus is special, too. Don’t we at least owe it to him to try?”
They owed Marcus many things. “What are you proposing? Send a force to flush him out?”
Aloysius shook his head. “The forest is his hunting ground.” Every time they sent a group of people in, not as many came back out. “We need to draw him out.”
“How? By putting out a plated steak dinner?”
“Maybe. We just need the right bait.”
“Bait? You mean dangle someone in front of him. What part of ‘we’re short on staff’ did you not grasp the first time?” Adrian’s tone turned slightly testy. The joys of being in charge and yet feeling as if everything around him spun out of control.
“I wasn’t talking about using the staff. The nurses we’ve got might be made of stern stuff, but they’re not equipped to deal with Marcus.”
“So who then? A guard? Because you know they’re not going to try and talk to Marcus. Not after what happened when he escaped.” The one way to unite people against others was to spill the blood of their comrades.
“You know who I want to call.”
Adrian’s lips compressed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Is this about the wolf pelt again?” Aloysius rolled his eyes.
“Stretching it in my shower to cure it was not cool.” Not to mention he had a moment where he might have squeaked when he saw the eyes starting at him when he went to pee in the middle of the night.
“I promise no fur rugs this time. Just a capture.”
While the doctor was intent on making this a nonlethal maneuver, Adrian had his doubts, which was why he had a squad ready to go, their tranquilizer guns replaced with bullets.
Because maybe sometimes it was kinder to put the monster out of its misery.
Chapter Two
The discomfort of many leaves streaming rainfall onto him in a steady deluge was ignored in favor of stealth. He didn’t shift one bit as he watched from the woods, biding his time, doing his best to not forget. Trying to remember why he spied.
The big stone structure held his gaze, the color of it pale and accenting the big straight-edged rectangles that glinted. Those are windows. A way to see inside the building, an unnatural cave that housed the prey.
All around the lair, meat sacks roamed. They guarded those inside the building, their appearance and manner familiar somehow. Their fluting call among each other almost understood.
I used to be one of them. One of what? He couldn’t say. Another thing forgotten. The holes in his mind kept widening.
I am…The name eluded him for a moment. Who he was, a thing of the past. An almost forgotten memory. The answer struggled to rise to the surface of his mind.
I am Marcus.
But at the same time, he wasn’t. Marcus used to live among the meat sacks. Slept in a bed. Wore clothes.
Then something happened. Something that he remembered only as raw pain, the kind that brought a low, rumbling moan to his lips. Quickly followed by anger.
So. Much. Rage.
It quickened his breath. His nails dug into the ground, gripping him in place lest he go charging across the open field. He’d seen what happened to animals that dared cross that…expanse. The sharp crack was heard after the creatures hit the ground dead.
Marcus dropped into a low crouch as he heard a strange whirring noise. A sharp glance overhead showed the giant metal bird in the sky. Its blades spun, its belly full of meat sacks.
Across the field, on a massive smooth surface, there were more of the prey awaiting the arrival of the giant bird. One of them wore a white coat.
A doctor with ebony skin and a friendly smile.
A liar.
The bird—no, that’s a helicopter—landed in the distance. Every day, sometimes twice a day, it arrived, disgorging new passengers, carrying away others. Guarded by the meat sacks in black who carried guns.
Marcus remembered guns.
Bad things.
Stay away.
Far, far away.
If they’re so dangerous, then why am I here? The thought quickly turned to, I need to hide. Hide before the men with guns spotted him.
About to leave the edge of the forest, he paused and inhaled deep as the wind carried so many lovely scents. That of the crisp air, haunted by the coming winter, the acrid burn of fuel, and then the even fainter scent of the meat sacks. One of them more intriguing than others.
It caught his attention, and he turned back to look and noticed the last passenger to exit the helicopter. He blinked at what he saw. Then smiled.
Smiled wide as he saw the doctor hugging a dark-skinned woman. And even when the embrace was done, he kept his arm around her.
Who is she?
Someone important.
Someone the man in the white coat loved.
Marcus didn’t have anyone to love. He had nothing.
Because of that meat sack. I want to kill. However, the doctor was too well guarded for Marcus to get close and he never strayed anywhere near the woods.
No one came to walk under the shadowy boughs anymore. Not even a crunchy guard.
And Marcus would know. He’d been watching for a while, perched still as could be by the forest’s edge. Hours every day, leaving only to sleep in his den at night, pulled back to this place he hated.
Needing something…
He stared as the doctor eschewed the noisy things that moved quickly to walk with the female. He still had his arm around her. Stopped and gestured often, his expression clear and full of joy. Hers more reserved. Even this far he could see it, the smoothness of her features, the fullness of her lips. The juiciness of the rest of her.
She would make a tasty treat, only she disappeared inside, and not long after, darkness fell. He returned to his lair, his mind whirling more than it had in ages. Thinking. Planning.
The dawn after the helicopter landed, Marcus returned to the edge
of the forest to watch. People strayed from the building, lighting tiny white sticks that smoked, moving in groups around a worn dirt track.
None of them proved interesting. He waited. The day passed with him only leaving his post to attend his needs.
The sun began to wane, and he started losing focus. Why sit here? What did he wait for?
He was ready to leave and hunt for his evening meal when she emerged. Immediately, he took notice.
Her clothing clung like a second skin to her body. Her dark hair was bound back, leaving her features clear. The white string dangling from her ear went to a box clipped to her waist. Even from a distance, he could hear the discordant jangle.
She paused to talk to a guard, the man in black pointing to the sky then the building.
The bad, bad clinic. His memories had become sharper since he’d started watching. The focus kept him alert.
The meat sack didn’t convince her to return inside. Why should she fear? The sun might be setting, but it still lit the sky. She had time before dark. Bu not long before the hunters came out to hunt the night.
Marcus stood still and watched, memorized every line of her body as she circled around the track, jogging slowly past him. Never once glancing at the woods.
The second time she passed, he swore he got a hint of her scent. A tease that brought saliva to his dry mouth.
The third time, her gaze finally flicked in his direction. It felt as if she stared right at him, yet she didn’t slow her pace and swept on past.
The fourth time, with the guard yelling it was time to go inside as the sun dipped below the horizon, he knew he had to act. Marcus would never get a better chance.
With twilight making it harder to clearly discern, Marcus stood and staggered out of the woods, just far enough to be seen. He let out a sharp cry and then fell against a tree.
In plain sight.
She might not have heard him, but the woman saw him and came jogging across the strip of grass. Yanked the buds from her ears. Her eyes wide with concern. Her features younger than expected. The skin so very smooth.