Beast Within (Loup-Garou Series Book 3)

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  Logan counted the doors until he found the right one. “There’s a kitchen around here somewhere with a door leading to the outside.”

  He tested the third door on the left. It opened into a debriefing room full of maps, and he let out one of the strings of curses that he had wanted to let loose for a while now. Perhaps he was thinking of another corridor, or he had counted wrong.

  He closed the door, but when they stepped back into the hall, they were met by some of the hunters from the training hall. Shots were fired, and Logan pulled Katey across the hall into another room, hoping somehow it would be the kitchen.

  By the time they had barricaded themselves inside, breaking the handle off the door, he had realized this was far from a kitchen. Tables and counters all over the room were covered in computers and other lab equipment with papers, charts, beakers, and burners. Everything in the room was just as the scientists left it when the alarm sounded. They probably evacuated at the first sign of trouble.

  Katey grabbed Logan by the sleeve and pulled him away from the door to duck behind a counter and out of sight from the only entrance or exit out of the lab. Hiding wasn’t going to save them.

  Logan pulled out the pistol from the holster at his hip and Katey yanked on his arm. “Logan, don’t!” she cried, her face ashen and hands trembling.

  His hands were shaking too. What were the odds those hunters had wolfsbane? It was a long path to clear, and there were at least a dozen hunters coming down that hall. Even if his shots found their targets, he had a limited number of bullets, and he was certain not to find anything to use in the lab.

  He tossed the gun aside and reached into his jeans still damp with blood from the gash in his side. His fist clamped around the vial so she wouldn’t see it.

  Logan looked to Katey, her eyes damp and pleading. As if it were the last time, Logan held her close and kissed her lips. His passion was unrequited. Katey knew he was about to pull a suicidal move, but she had done the same for him too many times. He had to repay the favor, even if it meant he wouldn’t come back from the change.

  “Whatever happens, I love you,” he whispered as hunters came to the door.

  Katey shook her head, loose strands of hair whipping around her cheeks. “I can’t lose you, please!”

  “If I don’t, we’ll all be lost.”

  Even if he died or disappeared into obscurity, even if he could never become a proper loup-garou or be the perfect mate, he had to keep Katey safe. She was their future and their only hope. If he died here tonight, it would not have been in vain.

  He moved away from her, tugged the stopper off the vial and consumed the potion. Before he could drop the glass bottle to the floor, he felt it take hold in a violent storm of agony he couldn’t force back.

  The wolf roared and surged forward to claim the body he had been keeping alive for over a century without remuneration and Logan was thrown back into a dark unconsciousness with no hint he would ever return.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  At first, Katey thought it was nothing short of a miracle, but when she saw the tiny glass bottle shattered on the tile, she knew there was nothing miraculous about what was happening to Logan.

  Logan gripped his head between his hands, his body bent over with the pain. He didn’t scream as she expected but expelled sharp breaths through his clenched teeth. A guttural growl rumbled from his chest, and he staggered sideways until he collided with the edge of a table.

  Katey went to him and stripped off his jacket and shirt, knowing he would need it later. Against the fear that ached in her chest, Katey looked into her fiancé’s face. Pinched by the overflowing anguish, he didn’t look like himself at all.

  Golden eyes glared at her, lips curled back to expose the teeth that grew sharp and deadly.

  Love drove her to cup her hands around his jaws and whisper, “Logan, everything’s going to be okay.”

  There was no way of truly knowing if what she told Logan was the truth. Even if he did change, that wouldn’t guarantee an escape. The door to the lab shuddered, and Katey heard the voices of the hunters just outside. She jumped when they pounded on the door.

  Logan roared and doubled over as his body began to morph. His skin blackened with dense fur and bones popped out of place. Katey’s quivering fingers found their way to his pants and unfastened them before he could rip the material.

  That was as far as she had gotten before Logan lashed out at Katey and sent her flying across two rows of computer desks. She crashed through the monitors and chemistry equipment, bits of glass slicing into her skin and cutting her clothes.

  By the time she rolled to the floor, the cuts had healed, but the sharp pain in her ribs told her Logan had broken something. She laid still for a moment, watching Logan from the other side of the room as her heart pounded against her splintered ribs.

  Logan fell to his knees. The barrage of hunters ramming against the door was nothing more than background noise. Katey had never seen Logan change before, but she knew this wasn’t the same. When the others shifted, there was pain, but also an element of coordination between the human and the wolf that emerged.

  With Logan, it was the complete opposite. They warred with one another, wrestling between the forms like neither could make up their minds about what they wanted to be. There was no harmony, no accord between them.

  Katey wondered if this was how it always had been since he first changed over a century ago, or if this was an effect of the poison he took that stunk of magic.

  The change was complete, and Logan arose onto his limbs as the enormous black loup-garou she remembered from Alaska. This wolf was different and void of any semblance of human understanding. The beast moved and grunted like an animal, but the loup-garou Katey had met at least had the grace of motion that told her there was an intelligent mind behind the wolfish exterior.

  She flattened herself against the ground, feeling the coolness of the floor on her cheek and palms. Steadying her breath was too much to ask, but if she could just lay quiet, Logan wouldn’t find her.

  The memory of Logan nearly ripping out her throat in Alaska was enough to make her hesitant to approach him. That wolf, the one she met, knew her and accepted her. This new beast, born from powers and manipulation past her understanding, didn’t know her and Katey didn’t have an alpha to save her.

  Neither did the hunters.

  The hunters crashed through the door and swarmed into the room. All Katey could see were boots and fur when Logan let out an earth-shattering roar and barreled into the troops.

  She closed her eyes against the carnage that ensued, but she couldn’t block out the stench of blood, serrated flesh, and loose bowels that spilled onto the floor of the lab. Guns fired, and bullet casings clinked as they fell to the floor. Grown men let out screeches, and the beast silenced them open with one swipe of his lethal claws and fangs. Their weapons had no effect on the uncontrollable wrath of the creature.

  Just half a moment of horror and the hunters were dead. Logan plunged out the door and down the hall, where she heard more gunshots and bestial sounds of rage and vengeance.

  With weak limbs, she hoisted herself up with the help of the nearest chair and table. She kept her eyes aloft, avoiding the sight of the corpses and swallowing back the acidic bile that rose in her throat.

  What her eyes did fall on made her skin crawl. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the lab was not just made up of computers and chemistry stations. Through a glass door on the other side of the room, she saw the edge of a metal table with leaves and flowers blooming from a long box sitting on top. The bell-shaped petals were a mix of blue and purple, and if Katey hadn’t suspected what they were, she would have thought them beautiful. There was only one reason a hunter compound would be cultivating plants.

  Slowly, she made her way toward the greenhouse door, stepping over severed limbs and piles of human organs that had gushed out of their bodies during the fight.

  Katey pressed herself against the
glass and found the indoor greenhouse filled with rows upon rows of the poisonous plants growing in their flower boxes. A dripping sprinkler system kept them hydrated while lights above were supposed to replicate sunlight for the future weapons against the loups-garous.

  If Andrew had a chance to find a cure, they wouldn’t need the wolfsbane, but if Logan had his way, the whole compound would be a mound of rubble by morning and Andrew would never have his cure. If these plants and this lab remained, every hunter on earth would have the means to kill their prey more easily than ever before.

  Katey turned away from the glass and tried to think through the din of chaos raging outside the lab. She had to destroy all of this somehow.

  Letting adrenaline carry her legs out of the room, she ran down the corridor. Though she slipped several times on the human blood that coated the floor, she found her way to the other side of the compound, following Logan’s trail of death left behind him.

  There was no method to his killing, no order or reason. Katey caught glimpses of pale skin amongst the dead and knew Logan was not prejudiced in who he slaughtered. She remembered the two children from the training facility and hoped they were far away from this skirmish.

  Through the rancid odor of blood and butchery, Katey found the garage. When the hunters had dragged her to the detention room, she remembered the potent smell of gasoline and car oil when they passed by one specific door.

  She was glad to see the garage empty of corpses, but still full of jeeps and trucks. No one had escaped by that means yet, but if any of the families were to evacuate, they would have taken this route for sure. Logan may be able to outrun a speeding vehicle, but the hunters had a better shot at escape by car than by running in the woods, where Logan would be in his element and unstoppable.

  Katey followed her nose and found several red gas tanks with the long spout at the top. Being so far out from town, the hunters would have stashed up their gasoline for emergencies.

  Without much thought, Katey grabbed two of the tanks and tucked one more under each arm. It might have been too much, but she needed to make sure the wolfsbane would never have a chance to be used against her kind again.

  Katey ran back to the lab, and the sound of mindless destruction started to ebb away. Either Logan was running out of steam, or he was running out of targets.

  She held her breath before she kicked open the glass door and began pouring the flammable gasoline into the flower beds and across the counters that lined the walls. She would burn everything; the flowers, the seeds, even the fertilizer and hazard suits tucked under the counters. By the time she had emptied half of the tanks, she couldn’t even smell the pollen of the wolfsbane and went into the other room to dispose of the rest.

  After dumping the last of the gasoline over the computers and scientist’s workstations in the lab, she searched for a way to light it all up.

  Katey scoured over the countertops under she found a metal striker lying beside a Bunsen Burner. In her sophomore year, she was a whiz at using these contraptions to light burners for her classmates in chemistry.

  She grabbed a bundle of papers saturated in gas, ran to the greenhouse room, and quickly pinched the rods of the striker together, making a bright spark at the head.

  The papers burst into flames, and the gasoline on the floor ignited from the lit bits that fell from her hands. The greenhouse and lab went up in flames, and Katey ducked out of the room just before she was engulfed as well. Only her ankles and hands were singed in the process, but it was worth it to see the blue flowers turn to ash.

  The heat of the flames poured out into the hallways and traveled along the walls and doors of the corridor. Katey bolted down the hall, through the gun range and back into the training facility where a bloodbath awaited her.

  The bodies of men and women were scattered and bleeding, some still groaning from the pain as death took its time to claim them. She sprinted across the training room floor toward the exit where Anton emerged.

  His hands and clothes were splattered with blood, and she saw where his shoulder had been shot through, but apart from his harried expression, the vampire looked to be in fine shape. Katey ran into him and hugged his waist, desperate for any comfort in the midst of the massacre and mayhem.

  There was no time for a joyous reunion. Anton guided her into the entry corridor and out of the compound. The smell of fresh air was welcome after her nose had been thoroughly hazed by the scent of death.

  They bolted to the tree line just as a series of explosions erupted behind them. Katey looked over her shoulder and stopped dead in her tracks as she saw the roof of the hunter headquarters cave in. Bright flames reached for the night sky and devoured the compound.

  Katey looked to Anton. “Where’s Logan?”

  He shook his head with a dazed, unblinking stare. “I don’t know. The last I saw of him was near the housing units.”

  “Housing units?” Katey cried. The faces of the boy and little girl flashed in her mind.

  “Where the hunters and their families sleep,” Anton told her. “Come, we can’t stay here.”

  Katey fought against his grip on her arm. “No! I’m not leaving without Logan.”

  In a frenzy, she struggled harder against Anton until her shoulder dislocated and she screeched like a child in the middle of a temper tantrum. The vampire yanked her back and grabbed her by the shoulders to give her a good shake.

  “Katey!” he yelled. “There’s nothing you can do for him. I saw his eyes. Logan wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened, but if you try to find him, he will kill you.”

  Tears streaked down her cheeks. “I know he’s in there!” Katey lied. “What if he’s in the middle of all that? I have to get him out!”

  A few of the surviving vampires came up behind Anton and watched the compound burn. Their faces were cold and impassive, but she could tell by their clothes and blood-streaked skin that they had a battle of their own to deal with.

  Anton’s stare lifted for just a moment and then he turned Katey around to face the flames. From the side, she saw him. Logan, still in his loup-garou form, lopped toward the trees and disappeared into the night.

  She knew Anton was right. There was nothing of Logan in that creature, but Katey still couldn’t stand the sight of him running away. Her mind still couldn’t make sense of why Logan had the potion in the first place. Why did he take it if he knew the change would make him so uncontrollable? More importantly, how could they get him back?

  On the other side of the burning wreckage, she saw another group emerging. There were some hunters left, and she saw Drake among them as they ran into the forest to escape the calamity.

  Anton pulled Katey away and led her deeper into the woods. “We need to get back to the mansion before the survivors know we’re still here.”

  Katey didn’t fight him as he hoisted her on his back and the remainder of the party sped to the north. With her head bent low, Katey squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears cool her flushed skin. The only thing she had to hold onto was the tether she and Logan still shared. As long as she could still feel it in her soul, he was alive, and there was some hope of finding him.

  With the hunters severely crippled and their wolfsbane technology destroyed, the worst of their troubles seemed to be over. All that was left was the verbal lashing from Darren and Michael, and the hunt for her renegade fiancé. That was nothing compared to the hell she had just been through, but why did she still feel dread sit in her stomach like a smoldering silver stone?

  Drake frowned at the wreckage of his home. His father’s remains were in there, along with nearly a hundred fallen comrades and their families. Only a handful stood behind him, their soot-smudged faces turned to the same disaster and watched the roof and walls cave in with resentful gazes.

  The beasts had knocked them down, but he was far from beaten. He was there with his father when they sounded the alarm. Though the pills kept Andrew’s sinful nature from consuming him, the keen senses wer
e there, and Drake’s body went cold when he heard his dad cuss under his breath about vampires in the compound.

  They hadn’t been expecting vampires. Never in a million years would a werewolf hunter have prepared for vampires to rescue a beast. When Andrew explained how Katey’s mother was a vampire, it all made sense. The monsters rallied around her and defended her. Because of that, they might have damned themselves from the beginning. If they had known she had such powerful allies, they wouldn’t have rushed into capture her like they did. They had known vampires were aiding the beasts in Crestucky and Alabama, but they would never have guessed they had followed her to Louisiana too.

  Drake was glad he had refused to join the others in the fight to win back the compound. He might have been killed with the others, and then he wouldn’t have had the chance to meet the wolfish eyes of his enemy in the flesh.

  The black werewolf must have sensed the presence of another beast in the compound, but when it only found Andrew, its rage was unquenchable.

  Drake managed to shoot it with a wolfsbane dart, but the beast didn’t falter. The darts couldn’t penetrate his thick hide and pelt, which was unusual after the countless tests they conducted to make sure their new weapon would work on the werewolves in both of their forms. Silver bullets wouldn’t even slow it down. It was unlike any beast he had ever faced before, and Andrew didn’t have a chance.

  He watched as his father was torn to pieces by the beast, defenseless and too sick to fight back. Drake ran from the room to start evacuations, but there was hardly anyone left to evacuate.

  By the time half of the compound was consumed in flames, he could only round up those who stood with him now. Five hunters, three women, and one gangly teenager who had maybe two weeks’ worth of combat training under his belt. It was hardly a force worthy to go after the beasts, but Drake would make due.

  A child’s scream sliced through his thoughts of revenge. He looked to the housing quarters adjoining the north side of the compound. The flames had already eaten through the top floors, rubble and burning debris weighing down exponentially as it collapsed in on itself.