Dark Wrath (4 page)

Tamping her fear
with an effort, she pondered that change curiously.

A horrific
thought occurred to her after a while.  She thrust it aside, but it kept
returning, stronger each time until the certainty finally settled over her.

Either she was
pregnant, or they were hoping for it and they were afraid the Formula might
damage the embryo.

She couldn’t rest
after that, couldn’t put it out of her mind.  She kept trying to tell
herself that it just wasn’t possible.  A hybrid between the two species
would never develop to maturity.

But the moment
the word hybrid entered her mind she knew without any doubt whatsoever that
that was just the sort of possibility that would fire their imaginations.

Whether it was
possible to achieve their ends or not, they were going to try.

With her.

What could she
do, she wondered a little wildly?

Nothing, her mind
answered.  As long as she was confined to her quarters she had no chance
at all of getting away from them.  She might not have a chance anyway, but
she certainly didn’t if she could change that much.

The only chance
that she could see at all was to convince them she’d had a change of heart and
was willing to cooperate.  She doubted they would be fooled, but she had
to try.

The next time the
door opened and a guard shoved food inside, she remained where she was, seated
on her bed and trying to appear perfectly calm.  They were watching
her.  She knew that.

When she’d eaten,
she tried to rest, knowing she needed to do everything she could to keep her
wits about her.  She dozed fitfully despite her resolve.  They came
again, as she had known they would, to take her to the beast.

She tensed, but
she managed an outward calm.  “I don’t need that,” she said, allowing her
gaze to flicker to the syringe Freda was holding.

Freda’s brows
rose.  “I suppose you think you’re going to convince me you’ve accepted
the situation?”

Erin
shrugged.  “I can’t do anything else, can I?  I just don’t like the
drugs. Besides, it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

Freda laughed humorlessly. 
“Considering all the caterwauling I’ve been listening to it would be a lot more
accurate to say you’re enjoying yourself immensely.”

Erin reddened,
but held onto her temper.  “I guess I like it rough and raunchy. 
That isn’t the point, though, is it?  I’ve been getting the sperm samples
for you.  I just don’t want to be drugged.”

Freda’s eyes
narrowed speculatively.  Erin could see her mind working.  It went
against the grain with the bitch to do anything anybody might want.  Now
she was thinking Erin was enjoying it way too much.  The problem was, she
needed the samples and no one had been able to get them but her. 
Otherwise, Erin was sure saying she was starting to enjoy it would have been
enough to nip the little experiment in the bud right then and there.

“Maybe we’ll try
something a little different this time,” Freda murmured thoughtfully.

Erin cringed
inside, wondering what sort of ‘something different’ Freda had in mind, knowing
it wasn’t going to be anything she would like.

“Take her,” she
ordered the guards.

It took every
ounce of will power Erin could muster to watch them stride across the room to
drag her off of her bed without cringing, without putting up any resistance at
all.  When they had her on her feet, they turned and looked at Freda
expectantly.  Smiling a secretive smile, Freda turned and led the way from
the room.

Surprise
flickered through Erin as they passed the beast’s cage.

Freda opened the
door of the observation room.  Erin was escorted inside.  “Since
she’s decided to join us, I’m going to let her observe this time.  Strap
her to the chair there.”

Confused and
alarmed, Erin tensed as they pushed her into the chair and strapped her wrists
to the arms with a roll of tape they found in the supplies cabinet.

“You two can wait
outside the beast’s cage.  I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Erin knew the
moment she met Freda’s satisfied smile what was going through the woman’s head.

She thought Erin
was going to be jealous!

She almost
laughed at the notion, realizing Freda was so eat up with it herself she was
attributing her own emotions to Erin.

Revulsion
replaced her amusement when Freda touched a button and a screen lit up, showing
the interior of the Jesse’s cage.

He was hanging
from his arms, Erin saw in horror, suspended a good foot from the floor.

How long had the
fucking bitch been torturing him like that?

Leaning toward
the console, Freda grasped a lever.  The pulley holding the beast began to
unwind the chain.  His feet settled on the floor and then his arms dropped
to his sides.  He groaned.  Erin flinched at the sound, knowing he
must be in excruciating pain to give that much away.

Freda pressed a
button and Erin heard him let off a faint hiss as the needle broke the
skin.  As she watched, his eyes became clouded, glazed.  They were
glittering with roiling emotions when he lifted his head and looked directly at
the camera. Rage was clearly one of them, but she saw desire, too, and knew
Freda had given him an injection of the Formula even before she noticed his
body reacting to the drug.  Freda hit the button again.  After
studying him for several moments, she hit it a third time.

“Are you mad!”
Erin exclaimed, unable to contain herself any longer.  “You’ll kill him
with that.”

Freda folded her
arms over her chest, studying Erin.  “He’s become more and more
resistant.  He fights it every time.”

Erin had had time
to regret the outburst.  “What you mean is he resists you,” she said
tauntingly.

Freda slapped her
across the cheek so hard it jerked her head sideways.  Erin was so stunned
by the sudden attack, disbelief shielded her from the pain.  She merely
turned her head to stare at the woman, realizing Freda really wasn’t entirely
sane.

Very
deliberately, Freda hit the injection button again.  “Watch and learn,”
she said cheerfully as she hit the button to release the door lock.

The door of the
observation room had already closed behind Freda before Erin gathered her wits
enough to realize she’d been given the only opportunity she was likely to get
to flee.

Her head was
pounding from the blow.  It pounded worse as she bent over and began
working at the bindings with her teeth.  Fortunately for her, they hadn’t
been prepared for the order to bind her to the chair.  They hadn’t had
cuffs and the chair certainly hadn’t been equipped with manacles.  The
tape they’d used was hard to rip, but she thought she had a possibility of
tearing it loose.

It was tough, for
all that, and wound around her wrists several times.  She tore several
small pieces off and spat them out before she managed to get a rip going. 
She’d broken a sweat from wrestling with the stuff by the time she managed to
get one wrist free.

Pausing to catch
her breath, she glanced at the screen worriedly, wondering how long Freda would
be occupied with her pet.

The scene froze
her.  Jesse was fighting the manacles.  Blood dripped from beneath
the cuffs, ran along his arms, dripped onto the floor.  Freda, just beyond
his reach, had stripped naked.  From the camera angle, she couldn’t really
see what Freda was doing, but she could see the movement of the woman’s
arm.  Either she was masturbating, or she was stroking his cock.

Erin suspected
the latter.  Unexpectedly, anger surged through her.

Trying to shake
it off, Erin focused on the other binding.  It was no easier to tear with
her fingers, though.  Bending finally, she gnawed at the tape as she had
the first until she’d started a tear.  When she caught it with her fingers
the next time, she managed to tug it free.

Rubbing her
burning wrists, she leapt to her feet, mentally reviewing the layout of the
facility.

The corridor
beyond the room led up to the next level.  From there, she would have to
traverse another corridor before she reached the closest exit.

She glanced at
the screen again.

She was never
afterwards entirely certain what thoughts went through her mind as she turned
to the console.  Partly, she supposed she considered a distraction
necessary.  She knew part of it was the certainty that as long as they
held the beast they would hold her and that she would be his to use until he,
or they, decided to move on to something else.  Empathy for his suffering
certainly figured into it.  Hatred for Freda did, too, and beyond
that--she just plain didn’t like the bitch fondling him.

She hit the
release on the manacles before she had time to reconsider, slamming her hand
down on the door lock release at almost the same instant.

A shockwave went
through her as she saw the creature shift before her eyes from man-like to the
horrific beast she’d seen before in the tapes they’d made of his capture. 
She wasn’t certain whether she screamed, or Freda screamed, or perhaps both of
them as the nightmare creature emerged from man’s flesh.

The beast seemed
to have nothing on his mind but escape, however.  He thrust Freda aside as
if she was no more than a cardboard figure and raced toward the door. 
Screaming in rage, Freda scrambled to her feet and launched herself at the
beast, locking her arms around one of the beast’s arms even as he yanked the
door open.

Male screams
combined with Freda’s as the guards outside encountered the beast.  Almost
instantaneously, gun shots erupted in stereo, coming from the microphone and
filtering through the door at the same time.

The ice freezing
Erin to the spot left her abruptly.  She surged toward the door of the
observation room, intent only on escape herself.  As she erupted into the
hall, she heard a sickening gurgle.  It drew her gaze inexorably. 
Horrified, she watched as the guard slid to the floor.

As if he’d heard
her, or sensed her presence, the beast’s head whipped in her direction. 
For several painful heartbeats, their gazes met.  Abruptly, he whirled
away from her and charged down the corridor in the opposite direction. 
Cautiously, Erin ran after him.  The bodies of both guards and Freda
blocked the corridor.  Freda had a stunned look on her face.  A hole
centered in her belly.

One of the guards
had shot her.

There was blood
everywhere.  Erin slipped and fell in it as she struggled over the
bodies.  Nausea washed over her when she looked down at the blood all over
her.  She fought it.  Scrambling to her feet, she fled, nearly
slipping and falling again from the blood coating her shoes.

In front of her,
she heard more gunfire, more screams as the beast fought his way toward
freedom.  She found herself muttering under her breath.  “Let him
go!  Let him go!”

Fully expecting
to fall over his body each time she encountered more bodies, she looked for him
among the dead.  He could not be unscathed.  Terrorized as the guards
were, they were too close to miss.

She saw the blood
trail and knew it must be him. From out of nowhere a wall of pain and distress
filled her.  She didn’t want him dead and yet she couldn’t shake the fear
that she’d signed his death warrant by releasing him.  However powerful he
was, he was never going to survive the bullets they’d put in him.

By the time she
reached the exit, he’d cleared a path for her.  Beyond the door were two
more bodies.  In the distance, she heard gunfire as the guards gave
chase.  After only a slight hesitation to determine which direction he had
taken, Erin whirled in the opposite direction and ran for all she was worth.

She made it all
the way to the beach before they caught up with her.  When she felt the
sting, she thought at first that a bee had stung her.  The world began to
spin even as she looked down at the dart protruding from her leg, however, and
she felt a sense of anger and defeat wash over her even as she began to fall
into darkness.

One year
later.

T
here
were no notable landmarks.  The island looked no different than a dozen
other semi-tropical islands, and yet Erin knew the moment she beached her boat
and scanned the dense forest that edged the sandy water front that she had
found the place at last.

Tension coiled
inside of her immediately.  After glancing uneasily up and down the beach,
she dragged the boat higher, gritting her teeth and fighting the weight as it
left the water completely and she didn’t have buoyancy to help her move
it.  Her hands were red and chafed from tugging at the rope by the time
she’d managed to drag the thing into the trough of a dune and covered it with the fronds
she found lying on the ground to help to conceal it.

Very likely they
already knew she was here, but if they hadn’t detected her there was no sense
in making it easy for them.

Moving along just
inside the tree line, she followed the white strip of sand until she found what
she’d been looking for, a narrow trail leading deeply into the heart of the
island.  It was deceptively ‘natural.’  If one looked closely, they
could detect the hand of man in the regularity of the trail, the arrow straight
path it took.

It was unkempt
for all that, and doubt flickered through her.

Pushing it aside,
she followed the trail cautiously, her gaze constantly flickering to the woods
on either side of the trail in search of any movement.  She wasn’t
particularly comforted when she saw no guards.  By the time she reached
the facility, she knew it had been abandoned.

The urge hit her
like a slap in the face to simply crumple to the ground and weep.  She had
been so certain that she would find him if only she could find the facility
again.  She hadn’t been able to think of anything else since she had
finally managed to escape.  It was devastating to discover she had searched
so long and she’d been wrong.

He had to be
here.  He had to!  She didn’t know where else to look.

Wiping the tears
from her cheeks, she moved cautiously toward the door, half fearing, half
hoping, that the sense of abandonment was as false as the natural trail--that
she would find they were lying in wait for her.

She didn’t care
if they did capture her again if she could be with him. She needed to touch
him, to hold him and assure herself that he was alive, that they hadn’t harmed
him.

The door opened easily,
giving the lie to her hope.  She stepped inside anyway, began to trot down
the corridor when she found only her own footsteps echoing back at her. 
Mindless in her desperate quest, she searched the facility from top to bottom,
refusing to accept that it was deserted, trying to convince herself that she
would find him every time she opened another door and found only another empty
room.

Despair crushed
the air from her lungs when she realized that there was nowhere else to look,
that she had searched every single lab and office and store room.  He
wasn’t here.

Too miserable
even to think of any other possibilities, she trudged out of the facility
again.  The blank camera eye that stared down at her as she stepped
outside again seemed almost like a slap in the face.  She glared at it,
feeling fury surge through her.  “Where is he, damn you!” she screamed.

Her voice echoed
through the trees, but no answer followed it.

Lost in sorrow
and her rambling thoughts, Erin had no real idea of how long she stood in the
same spot, simply staring blindly at her surroundings.  Slowly, though,
she became aware that the sun had set, that evening was closing in and as it
did, the jungle around her had begun to come alive with the whispering
movements of its denizens.

She wasn’t going
to make it back to the mainland before it was full dark.  A wise person
would have found a place to settle for the night, she knew, since she was
risking getting lost in one of the bayous.

She found she
didn’t care.  The only thing that she cared about beyond finding him was
getting as far away from the facility, and her memories, as possible.

The hair on her
back crept even as she headed for the trail again.  She dismissed
it.  The facility itself was enough to give her the creeps after everything
that had happened there.  The feeling didn’t abate with distance,
though.  It became more pronounced.  She realized after a time that
she’d been vaguely aware of other sounds around her, furtive movements in the
underbrush.

A short distance
away, she heard the abrupt baying of a canine.  Goosebumps ran up her arms
and down her back as she heard the sound picked up by another throat, and then
another.

A pack of wild
dogs, or wolves.  The former was more likely, but she couldn’t rule out
the possibility of the latter, not when they’d captured Jesse in the bayous
that surrounded the landward side of the island.

It was stupid to
run in either case.  She couldn’t outrun them if they were already on her
trail and running only stirred their hunter instincts.

She broke into a
run anyway, hoping she was near enough to the end of the trail to make it to
the beach and her boat.  The sound of something heavy landing beside her
registered a split second before something slammed into her and drove her into
the ground, landing on top of her.

Too stunned by
the impact to move or scream, or even think, Erin didn’t even move when the
weight lifted slightly away from her.  In the dimness, a face loomed above
hers.  She jerked all over, though, when he leaned close and dragged in a
deep breath.

“It’s her,” he
said to someone nearby.

The brush
rustled.  “Where you goin’ in such a hurry,
chère
?”

She recognized
the heavy Cajun accent.  She didn’t recognize either voice.  “I heard
dogs,” she managed to say, still breathless with both fear and exertion.

The man still
holding her uttered a bark of a laugh.  “Weren’t no dawgs,
chère. I
think
you know dat.  It’s why you run so fast, no?”

“Look, I’m sorry
if I was trespassing.  Just let me go.  I’ll leave.”

“It’s a little
late for sorry,
chère. 
Dare’s somebody got a bone ta pick wid
you.”  Rising, he hauled her to her feet.  “Be a good little gal now,
you hear?  He won’t be happy if we have ta get rough.”

Despite the
threat, she fought for all she was worth as soon as she was on her feet. 
She caught them off guard, managing to slip free for a handful of moments
before she was tackled again.  That time they bound her wrists before they
hauled her up.  She screamed, partly from frustration and partly with the
forlorn hope that someone might hear her and come to help.

“Scream all you
like.  Dey ain’t nobody ta hear ya out here but the brethren,
chère.”

She knew he was
probably right and the fear broke through the cocoon of shock that had
surrounded her.  The failing light concealed them in deepening shadows,
but she didn’t need more light to know what they were.  She would have
known even if the one holding her had not mentioned the brethren.

There was an air
about them that told its own tale.

She was in the
company of wolves.

* * * *

The soft, sucking
sound of mud and the faint splash and gurgle of water around the poles vied
with the croak of frogs, the chirp of crickets and night birds, and the
croaking, thankfully distant, bellows of alligators as the boat they were in
moved smoothly through the bayous.

Erin jerked as
yet another blood sucking insect latched onto her, wishing she had her hands
free so that she could beat the swarming mosquitoes back.

She had heard
others, but she had not seen more than the two werewolves that had captured
her.  They had walked her all the way across the island to the landward
side.  When she’d finally collapsed from weariness, hoping to at least
slow them down so that she could have time to come up with a possibility of
escape, the one behind her had simply picked her up and tossed her over his
shoulder as if she’d weighed no more than a feather.

Unfortunately,
she weighed considerably more and her own weight was sheer agony, especially
since they picked up the pace when she was no longer slowing them down, loping
along the pitch black paths as if it were broad daylight.  They hadn’t
been moving long before she’d been begging them to let her walk on her own
again.

They ignored
her.  She blacked out when she was finally set on her feet and the blood
ceased to pound in her brain.  When she came around, she was already in
the boat.  The one that had been carrying her moved to the front and
picked up a pole while the other one shoved the boat into the water, waded out
and climbed in.

Without any
apparent hesitation about where they were going, they moved along the inner
coastal waterway for a while and then nosed the boat into a shallow thread of
water running through the marshes that was barely wide enough for the
boat.  It widened a short distance in and the boat began to move more
smoothly.

For what seemed
like hours, and probably was, they followed a map in their heads that led them
deeper and deeper into the swamp.  Erin had long since become too tired to
really feel much fear.

It was there
still, but lying beneath layer upon layer of weariness, misery, despair, and
the grief that had ridden her so long she hardly even recognized it any more.

A light somewhere
ahead of them finally penetrated the daze she’d fallen into and Erin strained
to peer though the darkness.  She found that they were moving toward
it.  A roughhewn cypress dock that looked too rickety to stand on emerged
from the gloom.  The tendrils of fog that had begun to creep along the
surface of the water, parted slightly and she caught a glimpse of weathered
boards amongst the trees a short distance from the docks.

She doubted she
would even have seen that much except for the fact that there was a light in
one of the windows of the cabin.  She suspected, even in daylight, the
building merged with its surroundings so completely that it was virtually
invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.

As they poled the
boat toward the dock, a dark figure emerged from the deeper shadows.  The
flickering light from the torches set along the dock limned his figure, the
shadows elongating as he moved toward the end of the dock until he seemed like
a giant as he planted his feet slightly apart and waited.  Despite the
wide legged stance, she might have thought he was completely relaxed except for
the fact that his hands were balled into tight fists.

The side of the
boat butted against one of the poles holding the dock up.  It jolted Erin
out of her abstraction.

The man on the
dock didn’t speak until she’d been lifted out of the boat and deposited on the
dock in front of him.  He crouched before her, studying her face in the
flickering light for several moments.  He lifted a hand, flicking a finger
over the place along her neck where there was a tiny, whitened scar.  “I
knew, eventually, the mark would bring you back to me,
chère.”

A wave of shock
swept over Erin as his voice filtered into her mind.  “Jesse?”

He wrapped his
hands around her waist, lifting her to her feet as he stood, thrusting his
shoulder into her belly and hauling her over the hard ridge like a sack of
potatoes.  It knocked the breath out of her, focusing her attention on
struggling to drag air into her lungs.

“She was alone?”

“
Oui
. 
No others.  She went back ta de place, like you said she would.  She
was callin’ for you so we come ta bring her ta you.  Run like hell when
she seen us, though.  You watch her,
mon ami.
 I guarantee she
be gone you done mind out.  She fast, move like greased lightnin’ when de
mood move her.”

“Many thanks--for
everything,
mes ami
,” Jesse responded.

“You shore you
doan need help wid dat one?” one of the men asked with a laugh.

Jesse swatted her
ass smartly with the palm of his hand.  “But,
oui
,
mon ami
. 
Dis woman an’ me, we go way back, don’ we
chère
?  We been good
friends, very good friends.”

The swat jolted
Erin out of her shocked stupor.  She sucked in a painful bite of air and
let out a huff of anger.  Rearing up abruptly, she wiggled her legs,
trying to free herself from his grip.  He placed a palm in the middle of
her shoulders and shoved her down again.

The two men in
the boat began to laugh.  Waving, they pushed the boat away from the pier
and disappeared into the gloom as Jesse turned and strode purposefully along
the dock, the heels of his boots beating out a threatening tattoo that made
Erin’s belly quiver with dread.

The darkness
closed in around them as Jesse stepped off of the dock and onto soft, mossy
grass.  He continued without any noticeable difficultly in negotiating the
pitch darkness.  His feet struck wood again a few moments layer as he
climbed a shallow set of steps and crossed a wooden porch.

A door creaked
open on rusted hinges.  Erin’s head spun as he turned to close it again,
bolting it.  She caught a glimpse of a surprisingly comfortable living
room and then he crossed the room and opened another door.

She let out a
gasp of fright as he shifted her from his shoulder and she felt herself
falling.  She bit her tongue when she hit the mattress and bounced. 
Before she could recover from the fall, he grabbed her bound wrists and yanked
her arms over her head.  She tried to jerk free, twisting at the waist at
the same time to kick him.  He released his grip on her hands long enough
to shove her flat and straddle her, then pushed her arms above her head again
and secured them to the headboard.