Dark Wolf (Shadow Pack Book 1) (15 page)

One of the newcomers spoke up. “What the hell is that stench, David? It’s pissing off our little friend here.” He indicated the giant bear that huffed and shuffled from foot to foot, appearing increasingly agitated.

“We can’t let you go outside to wait for us, Frank. We need you to give us cover, and we might need you to help carry our people.” David indicated the doors and released Katie from his arms. “Let’s go.” He signaled for two of the Weres to stand watch. He did not suggest that Katie stay behind, a command Katie would not have followed anyway. He might actually get her someday. For now, David would have to settle for following her blindly into whatever she was getting herself into.
What the hell, it might be fun
.

What lay down the hallway was not fun, however. David and his companions grew more and more furious as they surveyed the home of Dr. Williams’s test subjects. Their wolf sight revealed holding cells akin to oversized dog pens lining the whitewashed concrete block walls, reinforced with wrist-thick steel bars. The floors sloped away to a drain so the cells could be hosed down. Food and water troughs lined the back walls of the cells along with a small, steel, gated door that could be opened electronically and led to the exercise yard. The first few pens were empty, but the last three had occupants. An exhausted looking woman with a small boy occupied one cell, lying motionless in a pile of straw, dressed in plain smocks. They were all were-people, their eyes glazed and listless. The prisoners did not seem to notice the newest arrivals in Hell. Two were-men in their human forms occupied the other two cells, one asleep, the other caught in surprise dipping his hands into the water trough. He gave a half-hearted snarl at the intruders and tried to Change, only managing to glow blue for a moment before falling back onto the filthy floor. They were all too weak to make the Change.

“How have they controlled Weres this long in this environment?” Katie asked, her words hushed and controlled, her fear lost under the anger that bubbled inside of her. The cruelest punishment for a werewolf was confinement in any form. It looked like a dog pound. She felt the Change coming and stared at the bare skin of her arm as it glowed blue but went no farther. She had not practiced the Change enough over the years, and now she was paying for it. Katie had started the evening feeling that she could take on the world, and now she probably couldn’t even take on a were-chicken.
Hmm.
Is there such a thing as a were-chicken?

David answered her question by indicating the glass-fronted cabinets that lined the walls on either side of the doors they had entered. An array of guns, syringes, and what looked like…“Are those cattle prods? And I had no idea, wandering around on my little plantation when I was home from school trying to get my mother to talk to me. God.” Katie was disgusted with everyone, including herself.

The great grizzly took one look at the contents of the cabinets and gave out a roar that shook all the captives to life. The woman ran to the bars and promptly broke down weeping. “Please, dear God, please take my son out of this place. Help us, please!” she sobbed, wrapping her dirt-encrusted hands around the bars of her cell. The man in the next cell, who Katie assumed was the woman’s husband, reached out his hands to her. One of the Were soldiers was digging for something in his gear to open the gates, but the were-grizzly trotted past him and hooked his hubcap sized paws in the gate of the woman’s cell. A gentle growl that clearly said “stand back” issued from the bear’s huge, toothy mouth, and he gave a mighty heave. The gate that had resisted the strength of a werewolf had no chance against the easy-going restaurant owner. It peeled open, and the woman shakily approached it with the limp form of her child in her arms.

Katie was anxiously hovering over David and a Were that was the medic of the group while they attended to the family when another of the Were team entered the room.

“This entire place is wired with explosives from one end of the island to the other. And other than this building, the only other people on this island have Bad Guy smell all over them. I feel confident that blowing this place to Kingdom Come would be a public service. By the way, we’re about to have company. And it doesn’t smell human. But it doesn’t smell like a normal Were, either. It’s like the scent of a diseased Were but not.” As the largest were-soldier spoke, his voice became angrier as he took in the victims and then the wall of disciplinary devices nearby.

“Oh my God, he did it,” Katie said and bent to look at her hands and concentrated with every fiber of her being. They began to glow blue again, and she finally made the Change, bursting out of her lab coat as she grew into her were-woman form.
“And there have been no rites! They will truly be monsters!”

“He did what?”
David’s voice came into her head easily, as if they had been a part of each other for an eternity…and maybe they had, she reflected.

“He made his serum. He was so sure of himself when he woke me earlier that I would mate with him soon because he would be one of us.
That
is the newest weapon he’s selling… Werewolf serum! What if it has already gotten onto the market?”

For the first time that Katie could remember, Frank spoke in his bear form. It was difficult to do, and the strain showed on his face, which shifted from man to bear in the flash of an eye. “If they have Changed anyone without the rites…they must be killed. Their souls are not safe. Demons will enter.”

David’s wolf features gave very little away, but the short, harsh order he gave his men told her everything. He addressed the prisoners first. “Can you walk?” They all managed to nod wearily. “You four take them to the patrol boat and take them out of here. We’ll take the Zodiacs after we are done with whatever those idiots have created.”

The four were-soldiers and the shaky prisoners left through the back door as the other five Weres, David, Katie, and Frank in grizzly form made their way stealthily toward the front of the building. Lightning and thunder had finally produced icy sheets of rain as they crept to a window in the front office to survey the dead lawn in front of the building, leaving Frank huffing in the hallway. A streak of silver lightning lit up the lawn. Four of the largest were-men Katie had ever seen stood in the rain, bared to the elements. Their eyes glowed with an unearthly red light, and they were unnaturally massive creatures, dwarfing David and his men. At their appearance at the window, the monster Weres broke into a run toward them, and a challenge in the form of a bone-splitting roar hit the island’s invaders where they stood.

“What do you think’s wrong with them?”
David asked his scout.

“They smell like dying animals. They may think they are all-powerful, but something weird is up with their body chemistry. I don’t think the Change is agreeing with them. They won’t live long,”
the big Were named Bruce replied as he adjusted the ceramic plates in his bulletproof vest and checked his ammunition.

“Well, let’s not give them an easy target.”
David turned toward the hall where Frank waited impatiently and called out in an urgent whisper, “Frank, we have four big bad Weres waiting for us outside, and I’d like a different door to leave through. We need to keep them busy so our refugees can get away, then we will light this place up.” His clawed hand reached for Katie.
“I know you won’t leave, but please, stay behind me or Frank. I’m wearing Kevlar that I don’t have the time to put on you, and Frank is just a mountain. Honestly, if I get the chance, I will let you kick Ambrose’s ass, but let me at least be there to hold him down for you, sweetheart.”

Katie let a soft growl be her reply. She put some bravado into the words she slid through his mind as they stood on the edge of a battlefield.
“I’ll stay down as long as I can. You are starting to please me, Mr. Finn. I might even be interested in closely examining each and every one of the sheepskin rugs that are doubtlessly scattered in front of every fireplace in that monster house of yours. Naked.”

“It’s a date. Right after I get finished paddling that fine behind of yours for leaving like you did.”

“Promises, promises.”

David carefully took aim at the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows of the office and let loose several bursts from his M4 carbine, the gun toy-like in appearance clutched in the great paw fingers of his were-self. The bullets shattered the glass seconds before the full force of the great grizzly hit, running through like a freight train, the rest of the defenders scattering out behind him. David took her smaller wolf hand into his and pulled her along behind him. The storm was a full-fledged gale now, the wind blowing brush, bracken, and leaves in every direction along with stinging pellets of rain. The terrible roll of thunder and blaze of lightning intensified the nightmare. Flashes of fire from the trees told them the pseudo-weres had human backup. Two of the were-soldiers disappeared into the brush to their left, moving faster than Katie could track. Screams of agony rose from the woods. Two shots had hit Frank immediately in the bulk of his body, but they seemed to be like mosquito bites to the enraged bear-man, who made a beeline for the two Weres on Ambrose’s flank. Frank rose up on his hind legs to his full twelve feet in height to engage in a struggle of titanic proportions with the two eight feet tall enemies, who waited for him eagerly.

The other two manufactured lycanthropes blurred as they ran toward David, his two remaining men, and Katie. With a warning glance, he pushed her behind him and ran forward. He coolly let off one burst of bullets after another, as did all of his men, all hitting their mark but not slowing the bio-weres down in the slightest.

Katie stood farther back, anticipating her turn at the hunt. The thought struck her from nowhere that she had been running in her were-woman form, clothed only in the pelt of a Were for the last few hours, and had not been fazed in the slightest. Her boyfriend looked like he had donned the greatest Halloween outfit ever, and she still wanted to kiss him all over. Maybe she was getting the hang of this. But then she saw a monster that had to be Ambrose, still partially clothed in the rags of his ridiculous jodhpurs, and his companion wolf take multiple shots from David’s were-army, but both kept running. A huge strike of lightning revealed the moment the smaller Weres in uniform met with the manufactured Weres.

Was Frank right? Were the rites of a Were birth more than the ceremony she had thought they were? Did demons now possess the bodies of the unclean Weres? Terrified, Katie could see the claws slash at David and his men, the clothes and gear being ripped from their bodies as deep furrows were carved into their flesh. She started forward to the defense of her mate when, to her horror, her claws began to glow blue. The wolf spirit was leaving her again.

On her knees, naked in the frozen sleet, Katie stared at her frozen hands and begged God to Change her one more time. The other manufactured Were had been tackled by one of David’s men. David was on the ground with Ambrose tearing at his throat and the other were-soldier weakly clinging to Ambrose’s back, trying to pull him off. Frank’s roars of fury and pain, out of the line of her sight, made her gut clench, and she once again reached for the spirit as she held on to her fury. The wolf roared to life again, and this time she took the entire Change, turning completely into a female wolf.

She darted forward and ripped her teeth through Ambrose’s leg. His tissue was tough as old leather, but she managed to hamstring him. As he howled in agony, David rolled clear, human again, his arm and neck a bloody mess. The wounded pseudo-were stood and shook off the smaller Were that clung to his back, who had managed to plunge his knife into the tough, newly formed hide once more before getting knocked off.

Ambrose gave a roar and lunged for the spot where David lay, bleeding heavily. Suddenly the huge blonde wolf was standing guard in front of the wounded man, baring her teeth. For a moment in time, Katie calmly waited to kill or die for her mate, and then Ambrose was stopped cold.

A horrible howl had stopped all who fought in the clearing. The three wolves that had accompanied Ambrose fell back from their battles to roll in agony in the thick mud that had been churned up on the lawn. No one could help staring as the mutated creatures began to glow red and then white, their howls of agony shaking the earth and their skin bubbling like boiling water. Then the light flashed and they melted into the earth, leaving a pile of smoldering flesh where each had lain.

The wolf that was Ambrose turned to Katie where she still stood over her mate. Frank was still in bear form, but he was barely crawling toward her, and the others were in a daze, too far away to help. She stood in the rain, waiting. She could sense the evil emanating from his form. Something was in there besides Ambrose the man.

“You are going to melt into goo too, Ambrose. It makes me warm all over to think of your thoughts when you die. Will you think of my father, who you managed to kill? How long did it take to beat him to death? Hours? How about Mom? What did you weigh her body down with when you tossed her into the Atlantic? Did you truly believe I would buy that suicide note? How did you make her write it? Did you threaten me?”

His voice made her feel dirty, unclean when it broke into her mind.
“I did everything for you. I raised you, cared for you, taught you. You could not have survived without me. I was the man who taught you to be a wolf by hunting you. And you were so weak that you did not want your powers.”
He suddenly changed tack.
“I can help him, you know. Your lover is dying, my sweet. I have a doctor here who can help him. I think your young would appreciate having their father around, don’t you think so?”

Her young?

“I can smell his touch on you. I can sense them forming in you, his whelps.”

He crept closer as he spoke, crawling to her. Blood poured from his body. She did not dare look behind her to where David lay. If she thought about their children growing in her or if she saw him dead, she could never do what she was going to have to do right now. One more step and she sprang. Her jaws locked onto his neck, and she ripped with everything she had. He flung her to the side, where she lay stunned on the grass. David began to shoot slugs into the giant Were’s body as it amazingly kept crawling toward her. Then a larger body obscured everything as Frank finally made it to them, and with a gasp of strength, tore into the seemingly inextinguishable body of Hugh Ambrose.