A Dark Night - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Vileb’s scent was easy to focus; no one else in this establishment had such a poignant stench to me.  Something that I learned over the years, it was much easier for me to track him than it was anything else.  It could have been based off of our time together, but nonetheless he wasn’t escaping my grasp now.  I’m pretty sure Lyv was losing her mind, riding a giant wolf like a horse throughout corridors of steel and chrome.

I stopped at the end of a long hall, pausing to sniff the air.  “What is it girl?” Lyv questioned, a hint of sarcasm in her tone.  I did a short hop in place to jolt her.

“I smell fresh blood….” I whispered, beginning to stalk down the hall.  My ears swiveled with every short sound, a faint dripping catching my attention from the third door on the right.  Someone had been wounded; I could only hope that Vileb wasn’t the one who had done the damages.  I crouched down to let Lyv off my back, which she quickly complied hopping off her boots making that hideous click again.  I groaned, almost barely, before I heard a growling not of my own.  “Damnit…” I whispered, caught short by something tackling me from the door.

Lyv was quick to run, I now caught in a tussle with who-knows-what.  The beast had pinned me to the floor quickly, and my current state was very unable to knock back the gnashing fangs at my throat.  Snarling at the first gash, I quickly threw the figure off me and forced myself into the common werewolf form.  Immediately, I dashed towards where the figure lie attempting to regain its composure when I thrust myself to tackle it headfirst.

For my luck, the sheer force knocked it off guard, and that’s when I could notice the wounds in its form.  Fang marks ravaged the body of this thing, and it surely wasn’t Vileb.  It had a faint scent of him, and soon I learned the worst.  Something swiftly had come behind me, grasped both of my wrists as I snarled and howled.  With two adversaries, this would have been a more difficult task.  Whomever had a hold on me, they knew a bit about my fighting style.

The beast that had attacked me was now clearly in view.  It used to be human, the obvious facial features and lack of either fangs nor fur made it easy to decipher.  The muscle mass was somewhat rotting yet still regenerating save for the scars of the fang marks.  I could smell Vileb’s blood splashed across this beast; that is what lead me to it so quickly.

The beast rose to face me again, snarling, drooling, a gnarled hand about to swipe down upon me; except a bullet shot it straight through the shoulder.  It whimpered and looked past me, as I struggled with the restraining party.  I forced every muscle in my legs to buckle, feeling every inch of me begin to collapse, before I snapped back, thrusting the figure over my shoulders.  He lost his grip and toppled into the beast.  I then saw Vileb, eyes bloodshot, body caked in blood and sweat.  He stared at me with a certain bloodlust I had only seen in him once before.

“Either come at me, or calm the fuck down,” I stated, my voice somewhat a mix between my own and that of a vocoder.  Vileb’s eyes quickly shifted from me then to behind me, I spun my head around to see Lyv with a gun in her hands.  “Shit…” I whispered, soon feeling a wisp of air fly past me.  No sooner had she shot again, this time it hit the center of the beast’s head, where it slowly toppled into the corner and laid still. 

I rushed after Vileb, one of Lyv’s stray bullets catching my shoulder.  She was quick to unload at Vileb, yet at his heightened peak of bloodlust, he could easily dodge a human’s skill.  Groaning I slunk to the ground and thrust forward, propelling myself after Vileb as promptly as I could.  A single scratch caught Lyv’s ankle, the further sight of blood making Vileb howl and claw at the ground to get to her.  I immediately sat on him, glaring up at Lyv who seemed to have let this episode scare her into a statuette.

Pinning his arms and legs, Vileb began to relax, my muzzle on the back of his neck reminding him I would snap at him the moment he got rowdy again.  “If you wouldn’t mind, maybe leash him again?”  Lyv immediately obliged, waving the laser-restraint wand at him.  He groaned and writhed, but I could feel his fight dying away.  As I stood up, I began to shift back, a mild snort crossing my nostrils as my jumpsuit was mildly tattered but not shredded away.

Vileb slowly scooted across the floor, pushing himself against the wall and began to cry like a baby.  I was stunned at first, then crouched down to hold his head.  Lyv all the while kept both the wand and the gun pointed at the two of us.  I laid an arm across his shoulders, gingerly brushing my fingers through loose strands of his hair, he seemed to be coming to, incoherent mumbles beginning to resemble words.

“Sorry,” Vileb whispered, laying his head upon my shoulder.  Tears streamed down his face and lay amongst splotches of blood riddled across his cheeks.  “I…” he began to huff, his breath short and stuttered, “I don’t know what happened…”

I nodded and continue to pet him.  Lyv fell to her knees and looked as if she was about to started screaming.  A gasp of air left her lips but then silence.  I soon could hear the rush of footsteps darting down towards us.  Several HARM agents lined up around the mouth of the hallway, automatic weaponry pointed at both Vileb and me.

A single man came up the middle of them and crouched down next to Lyv.  His uniform was very similar to hers, yet it lacked a bit of the shine.  It still was distinctive that he was a high ranking member of HARM.  He laid a hand on Lyv’s shoulder and she snapped up and regained composure almost instantaneously.

“Get these two back to the main hall, gather their belongings, set them up for briefing.”  The men with the guns dropped their weapons and saluted to Lyv at once.  The other officer came to her side.  “Next time we want to try this experiment, Revelle, we do it my way.”  She spun around to face the officer.

Revelle was a black haired man, his hair tied in a tight ponytail notched from the top of his head and hanging to the mid of it.  He stood about six feet even and had a scar running from his hairline, across his left cheek, and down to his jaw.  There was something oddly familiar about him, but all the while it could’ve just been the fact that, despite his haircut, he looked like every other soldier in this complex.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, with a quick salute, moving over to help me and Vileb to our feet.  It was weird, but something about him made me uneasy; fearful even.  This man instilled a deep sorrow in my heart that I thought I had pushed away.

As Vileb began to stand, I kept my arm around him.  Fear of him having another outbreak bothered me, but I took a solemn moment to peer over my shoulder back to the beast in the corner.  This was the first time I had a chance to fully examine it. 

It was human, like I saw before, but now that the raging had finishing and it had drawn its last breath it seemed to have reduced swelling.  Something had caused it to grow and attack.  I could only fear that this wasn’t the last time that we would come across these beasts.  Unfortunately, without more than another glance, another soldier rushed up and brushed us past, forcing us down the hallway; another quickly began to gather the body of the beast.  They ran a tight ship here, that was for sure.  I, however, began to think there was something Lyv wasn’t telling us.  That beast was the beginning of it.