Dark Wrath Read online

  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 fal
l into darkness.

  Chapter Four

  One year later.

  There 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.