An anti-virus would be the miracle I wasn’t hoping to ask for. It could make it all go away if could save all of them including Meghan and myself. We could all leave this nightmare behind and return to the lives that moved out of reach for us the second we said ‘yes’ to Dr. Clay Severin.
“I have the feeling that she wants to make amends,” Meghan tried to explain why she trusted Valerie.
“Suddenly everyone wants to make amends,” I couldn’t stop the words from escaping my mouth and shook my head.
“Who?” Meghan asked scooting a bit closer to me.
“Peter,” I answered honestly and couldn’t help but watch her react to his name.
“I guess Val talked to him, after all, they had a thing. At least that’s what she said. Maybe someone finally reached him and found the switch for his common sense.” Meghan said, and her explanation made sense to me, too.
Still, I said nothing. Can we really trust them?
My mind couldn’t think. I was too worn out and too tired and whatever I did, it only seemed to make it worse.
“I guess we should try to sleep,” Meghan suggested, and I agreed.
She slid beneath the sheets first, and I followed her, pressing her tiny and cold body against my own, and fell asleep instantly.
Day 160
The next morning, even before the sun could find her way into the cage, the unlocking of the soon to be bathroom door woke me. I was out of bed too fast to wake Meghan, and I instantly sneaked towards the noise.
Peter was standing in the open doorway, not entering the room. At least he was smart not to enter what I now considered as my private territory. To my surprise, he did not only hold the folder with my next assignment but a big bag that smelled of fresh laundry and me.
With a few strides I reached him, who didn’t retreat but tensed when I approached him that quickly and without making a sound. But I just didn’t want to wake Meghan.
“You’re moving in with her,” Peter mouthed, and I nodded, trying to hold back any sense of joy.
Within these walls, all happiness came with a huge cost, and I would soon learn how much I would have to pay for this. I took the back and brought it into the room where she was still sleeping soundly and very deep, which was odd. It had to be the change she was going through. As I stepped back towards her and gave her a kiss on her temple, she was considerately warmer than the day before. Or maybe that was all me.
I put the bag where she instantly would see it, so that she knew I would be coming back, and that I would stay. Then I quickly got myself dressed and met Peter outside who handed me the folder with my next targets. Yes, that’s right, several this time. After checking the file, I got myself ready just like every time. Shower, clothing, gear.
Even though Peter told me that I could take one of my primary team with me, I didn’t trust them enough to be professional with their new beast skills.
I know how tempting it is just to let the beast out and bathe in its savagery, but that doesn’t get the job done properly. Maybe they want just to test me with that amount of assignments. They must have enough money for a private army when they can maintain a facility like this with so many employees.
But I will always play it safe. They can’t force me to rush things. And now, now that Valerie things she can create an anti-virus I do have all the time in the world. I can be the one that murders people. I will pay my dues eventually. But I can keep everyone else’s hands clean.
Day 161
It was an overnight thing, but it was sometime in the late evening I returned ‘home’. But I didn’t get into bed next to Meghan before I hadn’t a shower and gotten all the stench of blood and death out of my body.
This time, I couldn’t make it clean. Not because the situation made it impossible but because it was requested. A change of plans shortly before I reached my destination.
Didn’t I say happiness always has his price? And that was it. They wanted it to be brutal. They wanted to police, or whoever investigated these dead to be puzzled and scared. This murder is meant to be a warning. That was evident to me. It would be declared an animal attack, but who knew about this beast project would know the truth.
It was a family. Father, mother, and their sons, grown-up, but still an entire family. I couldn’t help but wonder how they were involved with Severin’s employers if they were connected to them at all. Thinking about the why was almost as bad as remembering the how.
I waited for them in the middle of the forlorn country road, counting on the driver’s instinct to avoid hitting the obstacle on the road. They weren’t lucky and hit a tree that would kill maybe two of them. Dad was good a driver. However, the instinct to check on the crazy person who stands in the middle of the street at dusk is an insanity that lies within the most humans, and so they delivered themselves to me one by one. I killed them swiftly and mauled their body afterward, so that my employers would be satisfied. That is, all the men.
Mom waited in the car, while dad went first and then one brother after another came checking, but mom didn’t. Maybe she was scared, maybe she didn’t worry at all, but she didn’t get out of the car to see why her husband and sons were taking so long.
I couldn’t make my feet move to the car where she was sitting shotgun. I could smell her fear increase with every minute I waited, and with every minute I hoped for her to get out of the car and onto the street. But she didn’t. The last thing I wanted was for her to die in fear. Her family sure hadn’t. I had done my best to make it quick. But she was ruining it.
I had to think of my mom when I waited for her to move. How sad she must feel having lost all three children to a war on the other side of the world. How much she was suffering.
I knew I couldn’t let that woman live, so why she made me think of my mother made no sense. Her call for her husband and her sons when she finally got out of the car struck me to the core because mixed into her worry was fear.
I waited. She made a few steps. I could hear her heart race in her chest and it pained me. Again, she called out.
“It’s okay, mom!” I shouted back, not knowing why.
I heard how she let out a breath in relief and I didn’t allow her enough time to realize that the voice, which had answered, didn’t belong to her son. Using my full speed, I reached her and broke her neck. She collapsed in my arms, and for a split second, the grey-haired woman looked like my own mother. My heart stopped. I blinked. And the woman in my arms had a stranger’s face again.
I knew I had to tear her body to shreds, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I was sitting on the street, holding a stranger in my arms and trembled like a leaf in a storm. It took me almost twenty minutes to get up and do my job.
After that, I ran back to the chopper that had brought me. And, I cried all the way back. I didn’t fucking care the glances the pilot and his guard gave me as they saw me and they knew if they didn’t want to end up like the people on that country road they better didn’t make a sound.
When I finally could slide beneath the sheets next to Meghan, I was completely done. All I wanted was to hold her close and suck in her scent, which seemed to make all the horrors go away. And I wanted to sleep beside her for all eternity and never wake up.
Day 162
So, here I am, on day 162, writing it all down. It doesn’t make me feel better, not enough at least. What does is having Meghan close to me, to watch her waking up, to see her smile when she sees my face, to watch her stretch and make those sweet sounds. It makes me forget where we are and who we are, at least for a few seconds.
After that, reality crashes down on me like a landslide, and I don’t know how I am supposed to go on. It’s all for her and she can never know. It’s for her and for all the lives I have ruined, for which I am responsible now. Price, Torres, Wheeler, and all the others.
Meghan told that I had a nightmare. She didn’t ask me what it was about, or if I wanted to talk about it. And I wouldn’t know where to start and what to say. I don’t wa
nt to tell her about the assignments. She would know that it’s killing me. She knows me so well, which makes lying to her even worse.
I told her I’m fine, and I’m not sure if she’s buying it, but her plate seems full, too. However, she’s not distant as I am. All she does is hug me, cuddle up to me, plant kisses on my face, and that makes me forget everything for the moments she touches me. I love it as much as I hate it. Because when reality returns it hurts more, every time. But I can’t tell her that. All I hope for is that Valerie’s anti-virus will help, that she will manage to create it as quickly as possible so that we can get out of this hellhole.
She’s working on that, too. I don’t know how she does it, but her mind is a miracle of its own. I’m not sure if it’s the beast in her, or if she always was this brilliant. I recall that she already was smart as a kid, but now she simply amazed me. After all she’s been through… it almost seems that the worse it gets, the more positive she can think.
I don’t know what she is doing the whole day, and I am not sure if I want to know. I assume that she has similar tasks to myself because the only two beasts I am not allowed to see are Torres and Wheeler, which might mean that she takes care of them. Torres, I can understand, but Wheeler? Not so much. What I’ve heard he has gone down the deep end, which is why I don’t want to have her close to him at all. But it’s not my decision to make, and that worries me.
I find myself waiting for her today, and I don’t like it. She’s away longer than me, and she only has two beasts taking care of… and maybe Severin, possibly Winters. I hate that I don’t know what is happening to her, what she is doing. I know I can’t control her surroundings and her everyday life – I certainly don’t want to control her – but it drives me insane not knowing what is happening to her. It’s not like I don’t trust her – she’s the only one I trust – I just don’t trust the rest of them. I used to trust Daniel Wheeler along with Nina Torres with my life, but now…
And then there is the fact that things about Meghan have changed, things I can’t really put my finger on. She used to save me, bring me back to humanity, give me a reason to live and hold on, but now… remembering how Severin looked at her, it makes me sick, knowing what I have to do just to be allowed to be close to her; I can’t imagine what she might be forced to do…
Day 169
It’s been a week, and so many things have changed and are changing, most things I can’t write about for different reasons. I am still in awe of Meghan, of the things she comes up with, of the hope she has and the belief in all the people and beasts that are part of her plan.
I know we agreed on not writing anything down. We can’t risk it, but my mind is in chaos. I just need a few lines to get myself back in order.
Listening to Meghan talking all rational about what is going to happen… I can’t repeat myself often enough about how in awe I am of her, but I’m also afraid of her. She doesn’t know what it’s like to kill people or even to hurt people. It’s one thing to talk about it and a completely different thing to actually do it. I fear that she’s not aware of how huge the difference can be.
She and I can’t talk plans when we are together, which is why she had this brilliant idea of using people who aren’t monitored as we are. Like Valerie and Peter. I don’t trust either of them but Meghan does, and I can’t help but believe in her trust, even though a part of me screams at me at the top of my lungs that it’s a mistake. I want to believe her; I want to believe their need to make amends… but I have lost the ability to trust anyone, apart from Meghan and the only other person in this compound; 19, Sondra Price. I know it’s not right to call her a person but I trust her entirely, just as she trusts me. I visit all the frozen beasts every day, hoping to bring them back from the state they are in, just as Meghan did it for me.
It takes patience and kindness. They all react to it, but Sondra is the only one who has a calmness to her that speaks to me. It’s the one thing she can teach me in return. It’s like she knows about the promise I made to her and this has given her peace. I can feel it when I am visiting her, and I can take that with me, even when Meghan is not around, which is a gift.
Day 176
All Meghan and I do is cuddle and sleep. There is not much time for anything else, which is – I guess – a good thing. I wanted to make sure not to get her pregnant again, and our schedules support that, involuntarily. The last thing we need is her getting pregnant; there is just too much going on, and I guess I must thank Severin’s interest in Meghan for that. I don’t like it, but it serves us well, after all, we are working on a very important plan right now.
I wish I could write down more, but I can’t.
Day 188
This is amazing! Sondra shifted! Not entirely but she did. There was a change in how she appeared to me and this is one of the best things I’ve experienced so far. I have talked to Peter about bringing all beasts together, those in control and those without. I am very confident that there will be no trouble because after all, they all know each other.
Apart from that, it will help with Meghan’s ‘idea'.
Day 196
Meghan wasn’t herself today. She was sad and worried when she came ‘home’ later than me, once again. Most of the time she muttered to herself while she was cuddling up to me, and I didn’t dare to ask her what was wrong.
I know for her plans today was an important day. We both agreed on not asking what the other one was doing to not risk the big picture, but her behavior worried me. As far as I knew she was meeting someone ‘outside the box’ as she put it and when I look at her, slumbering deeply, but frowning I can only assume that things didn’t go as planned.
She assured me that there would be an anti-virus, and I want to believe her that there will be one, but why do I have the feeling that Valerie lied to her?
From the little knowledge I have as a pre-med student, developing an anti-virus is hard work, and it takes a lot of time, and then there are still no guarantees that it will work. I know as much that an anti-virus made of her blood and her white blood cells trying to fight the virus that came from me the anti-virus Valerie is developing might only work for her.
It was a beautiful dream as long as I did cling to it.
Let’s be honest; I should be realistic here. There is no guarantee that it will heal any of us. Meghan? Probably. Everyone else? Not so much.
I know that I must keep on acting as if I believe that everything is going to end well, but I must stop lying to myself. I already knew what I had to do the second I laid eyes on Sondra. I must end all of this. I also know that I can’t take away that hope from Meghan. I need her to go on and hope and believe that it will end just as she dreams. I need to know that she will go on, even though she might never forgive me. But I must and will use her plan for my own agenda. I know that Sondra will help me with this.
Day 200
It’s 200 days since Meghan was brought here. And she’s changed so much. I would know. Maybe I don’t know consciously, but I can remember. I remember the first time I saw her. She was a beacon of light in the darkness, and she still is. My Meghan.
I’ve watched her and listened to her making plans. How much she has grown since the first time I saw her. It’s almost as if her gruesome fate has made the most of her. Just as pressure makes a diamond out of coal.
How I wish that all her plans could come to fruition. But I can’t allow her to burden herself with keeping all these beasts contained when it’s my fault.
She still believes that the anti-virus created from her blood can cure us all, but it’s nonsense. It can only cure her because the virus in her blood is an altered one. It came from the one that I was injected with and changed inside of my body. That anti-virus couldn’t heal me or the others. I am sure of that now, but I can’t tell her.
The only person I can confide in is Sondra. I feel as if I am betraying Meghan, but I can’t possibly tell her all of this because I don’t want to break her spirit, her hope.
&nb
sp; Day 222
“Wouldn’t I look good in a uniform?” Meghan asked me, teasingly as I returned to our ‘room’ from the bathroom.
I was only wearing a towel wrapped around my hips, while I was rubbing my hair with another one. When I heard her question, I lowered my hands and looked at her, contemplating.
“Well, I’d say it depends on what kind of uniform,” I mused, joining her game by dropping the towel in my hands onto our bed, which she had just cleaned up, after getting dressed. I just needed this illusion of freedom right now.
“Which one?” she asked, smirking at me.
In moments like those, I forgot about everything and everyone around. I forgot the monitors, I forgot how our room looked like and what it was, I forgot the gruesome circumstances how we had found each other.
“Nurse, definitely,” I nodded and stopped right in front of her, grinning widely, imagining how she would look like and how innocent our life could have been.
“Nurse?” she acted offended. “Not doctor?”
“Hmm… how about a cop?” I leaned in, lowering my mouth to hers, willingly to say whatever would please her.
“Cop?” she repeated skeptically.
“That would be hot,” I continued, enjoying to fall into this fantasy just once. “You could arrest me, and I could resist.”
“Yeah, that would be a mistake,” Meghan nodded and pulled on my towel, leaving me standing in all my naked glory, a wide and wicked grin on her face.
I never loved her more than at this moment.
Before she could give another snarky remark, I already leaned all the way down to her and brushed my lips across hers before I kissed her gently. Meghan responded tenderly almost chastely to my touch. Then, just a moment later I allowed my hands to capture hers and pinned them behind her back. If she hadn’t already been aroused then, she was right this second, and I loved every moment of it.
The BeAst Of Me (The Beast And Me Book 5) Page 7
