“I’ve already taken everything I could,” the doctor said, holding up a portable hard drive.
“Good, then let’s go,” I said, stuffing the shotguns I’d found and ammunition into my backpack as Shandra packed the vials away in foam to keep them safe in her pack. Neither woman argued, and we hurried back up the steel stairs and out of that awful building.
Dee and I drew in deep lungfuls of fresh air when we stepped outside, and even Shandra gasped in relief. Now that I knew what to look for, I could see signs the monster had ventured out of the building, either for food or to explore. I noticed heavy four-toed footprints on the overgrown lawn and claw marks high up trees, like it was a bear marking its territory.
“Shandra thinks it came from that facility we found in Idaho,” I said, without having to explain what “it” was.
“Hmm,” Dee said with a frown and a nod of agreement. “We will find out who did that to the mother and child. They will know the edge of my blade—” The silver-haired Alpha glanced up to where the hilt of her sword normally hung and frowned. “First, I need a new sword.”
We didn’t speak much on the march back to the airport. It took longer than I would have liked because we had to keep to a pace that Shandra could match. I was relentless as I pressed Shandra onward, not that the woman complained, but I could sense how exhausted she was.
Dee stayed quiet the entire walk back, and I knew she was struggling to come to terms with how she’d reacted. My own shameful reaction when I’d first encountered that thing was still with me, but I took a lot of comfort knowing I’d overcome it and Dee didn’t have that peace.
I could no longer sense the beast within me. The competing desire and will was simply gone, as if it had never been, and I found I missed it. The reassurance I’d felt that something greater than myself was helping and guiding my path was gone. The strength and primal motivations were still there, the beast and I were just in alignment, our wills synced, or so I guessed.
If Donatella hadn’t been in the midst of her own personal crisis, I would have discussed it with her. Instead, I spent the fourteen hours of hard hiking parsing through all that had happened in the compound. The trip had been a risk, but one I’d felt was necessary so I could understand more about what they were trying to do when they’d created the first Alphas.
In that sense, it had been a failure. We didn’t know any more about their purpose, other than the pablum of “build a better world,” that had been scrawled at the head of a few documents in bracketed quotes as if it was their mission statement.
I glanced at Shandra’s backpack where the vials resided, each carefully sitting in a cocoon of Bubble Wrap and taped within a Styrofoam container. My brain sparkled with possibilities when I thought about what lay within there. What had started out as a rescue mission, hoping to break Alpha Command’s back, was now the most vital mission in the world, for we carried a cure to the poison that had mutated so many and turned so many men into unfeeling monsters who leapt from one pleasure to the next.
“We need to get in contact with your friends as soon as we get back to the plane,” I said to Dee when we entered the valley.
I knew we were within a couple miles of the airport. I needed something to take my thoughts off whether Ava and Madge were safe. Suddenly my decision to go to the compound felt utterly stupid as I really considered what could have happened to us, or what I might have been lost on the side quest.
Chapter 15
To my annoyance, Dee ignored my statement that we had to get ahold of her friends. The young woman didn’t look up, merely grunted an affirmative, her feet plodding on beneath her without pause. I glanced over at Dr. Gupta, and she met my frown of worry with one of her own.
“Now that we have hope—” I began, but Dee cut me off with a harsh laugh, more a bark than an actual laugh.
“Ha! Cure, right. Cure for whom? You saw what’s become of the world… Can you imagine waking someone from that nightmare, to see what they’ve become? Is there even anyone left to save?”
“There is a chance,” I said. “Perhaps it’s too small to make a difference in our fight against Matthew and his Cabal, but it’s something. We need to know if anyone in your friend’s network has lab experience. Shandra will be able to tell them what’s necessary. We need to get more of antidote manufactured if we can, and as fast as possible.”
My mention of Matthew's name was a mistake, because the hint of fire that I’d awoken in Dee was snuffed out and her eyes fell back to her feet. Though Shandra and I planned aloud what might be possible, the gorgeous young woman didn’t rouse from her morose silence. I wanted to stop and help Dee work through her issues, but my feet wouldn’t stop until I knew Ava and Madge were safe and she seemed to want to be left in silence.
When I saw the air traffic control tower reach up above the treetops ahead, a rush of adrenaline swept through me and I was fairly vibrating with the desire to sprint ahead. I couldn’t leave either woman alone. We finally stepped out of the tree line on the opposite side of the tarmac as the hangar, and I felt my anxiety spike when I saw a small group of mutants outside the hangar door.
Fearing the worst, I raced ahead, feeling Dr. Gupta and Dee take off after me, but I quickly left them in the dust as my longer and enervated legs propelled me forward. When I saw the heavy steel doors to the hangar were still intact and the mutants dumbly milling about outside, I breathed a great sigh of relief and slowed to a jog, letting the women catch up.
Dee was at my side two seconds later, dark circles ringing her eyes but as alert and ready as ever. The mutants spotted us when we were a few hundred yards away and with screams and roars started charging.
“Fucking hell,” I swore. Slinging the shotgun from my shoulder, I started dropping them one by one. Dee’s twin blasts accompanied my shots as she moved away from me, both of us circling our enemies.
Before when I’d killed these things, it hadn’t felt like I was killing people, more like rabid animals. But now that I knew there was a cure for them, my heart ached with every corpse that dropped. Even though they were disfigured and caked in refuse and none would surely survive being changed back into men, a small part of me felt it was unnecessary slaughter.
Careful not to cross lines of fire, Dee and I circled the pack and dropped them all, leaving two curving trails of corpses that led back to the hangar. When the last body fell, I raced over to the doors and pried them open, relief making my eyes well up when I saw the plane sitting in the dark, safe and sound.
When the ladder fell down, Ava threw herself out of the plane and into my arms, Madge running down behind her to throw herself into me. The second I held both, I sagged in relief, nearly falling down as my knees buckled. Exhaustion swept in, and I had an odd moment where the world split into two, then the beast within was back and purring in contentment to have my pride around me once more.
“We were so worried about you three,” Ava said, pulling back, her expression falling when she felt the bandages beneath my shirt. “What happened to you? Did you guys encounter trouble?”
“Let’s head inside,” I said, “and we’ll tell you all about it. What have you two been up to while we were gone?”
The pair shared tight grins with one another, and I breathed in the aroma of sex as I stepped into the cabin, finding the mattress pressed between seats covered in pillows and strewn blankets with Brianna lying in the center, her dark hair in disarray and a thin sheet covering her nakedness. It was only then that I noticed Ava and Madelyn were wearing long tank tops that did little to hide their nakedness beneath.
“We wanted to make sure Brianna felt welcome,” Ava said, blushing an even darker shade of red when I raised an eyebrow at her. “Tell us everything that happened!”
“One second,” I said, motioning Dee up. Ava and Madge frowned at the younger woman’s morose expression, but kept their concerns to themselves as I sent her to the cockpit to contact her friends.
“Tell them I want to meet if th
ey find someone who can do the work,” I said as Dee slipped off with a nod of affirmation.
It was only then that I let Ava pull off my shirt and check out my wounds as Shandra and I related what had happened to us. I relayed everything in dry terms, but Shandra had a flair for the dramatic, describing our flight down to the basement as if it were a horror movie, every dark shadow holding another horror.
When I told them about the monster, Ava and Brianna snickered at the description I gave, but their amusement faded when I told them about the fear and how it had frozen us in place. Madelyn seemed the most interested in the videos and wished she could have been there for it. I could tell she was thinking of her first husband, and I reached out and gripped her hand, earning a smile of gratitude as she snuggled in closer to my side.
“So, these vials you found…” Ava said, turning to Dr. Gupta. “They can really cure the Balphas, or mutants?”
“It looks that way,” Shandra said, nodding. “I don’t know how it would work, or if there are any we can still save… but CT’s right, we have to try if there’s a chance we can save even one.”
“How did you get free?” Brianna asked, her eyes wide as she clutched the sheet to her chin.
“CT killed it,” Shandra said, her eyes shining with pride as she gazed at me. Oddly, more than a little arousal filled her scent.
I couldn’t get away with that being the whole of it and described my final encounter with the monster as Ava finished replacing the bandages on the last of my wounds. The sting of alcohol felt almost refreshing after the discomfort of running with the bandages rubbing against the injuries. I was just finishing up telling them how the thing had died when Dee pushed open the cockpit door and poked her head in.
“I just spoke with Craig and he agreed to meet tomorrow at noon, just outside of Montreal. On the condition you and I go alone, unarmed.”
“That’s acceptable,” I said, patting Madge’s hand after the older woman hissed in anger at hearing we would be separated again so soon. “What else?” I asked, sensing there was more.
“He wants to send his daughter with us. A spy and…”
“And a tie to CT here when he bonds her,” Ava said, with a knowing look as she folded my shirt and set it aside.
“I believe so,” Dee said, and I couldn’t tell her feelings on the matter behind her expressionless mask.
“We need their help if we’re going to free your family, and again if we’re going to produce more of the antidote,” I said to the young Alpha, meeting those pale-yellow eyes. “If you have another idea, I’m all ears.”
“No,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “This is a good plan. All I care about is getting my mom and sisters free.”
“Then take us to Montreal.”
It wasn’t so simple, of course. We had to open the hangar and back the plane out, as well as properly chart a course that would keep us away from any Alpha strongholds. But two hours later I was pressed back in my seat, Ava resting on my lap with a block of cheese in one hand and the other resting in the hollow of her hip as the g-forces pressed us back and the plane lifted off.
I would have gone up to speak with Donatella, but I could tell I was the last person she wanted to speak with right then. But Shandra slipped out of her seat when we started to level off and went into the cockpit. As I munched on the cheese, my stomach rumbling for meat, I let the comforting warmth of Ava relax my aching muscles.
Ten minutes later, my stepmom bounced on my lap, her energetic cries of pleasure filling the cabin and joining with Madelyn and Brianna as they pressed against one another on the bed. The slender little brunette’s scent might have driven me wild, but I blocked it out, mastering myself as I had in the basement—with ironhard willpower.
Chapter 16
I don’t know what I was expecting of Craig, but a short, pudgy man with a ratty goatee that hung down to his soft breasts wasn’t it. The man stood beside a massive motorhome. The vehicle, all in sleek black and festooned with satellite dishes and antennas, stood on the far side of the landing field from where Dee had stopped the plane.
After making sure Ava and the rest would be safe within the sealed cabin and that no mutant swarms would come down on them while Dee and I left, unarmed, the two of us walked along the long tarmac toward where the short man stood. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards from the plane’s shadow when the silver-haired beauty turned to me with a questioning frown, her scent a swirl of attentiveness for the coming meeting and a burning frustration, with herself I thought.
“How were you able to get over the fear?”
Her question didn’t surprise me. I’d been expecting it from her at some point, just not the first second she had the chance without others to overhear the misery and shame in her voice and expression.
“You want to do this now?” I asked, eyeing the little man ahead and the surrounding buildings and woods with a sharp eye. “We should focus on any threats.”
“Craig isn’t a threat,” Dee said with a half-laugh. “Look at him, he’s about to piss himself. Trying to look brave for Donna.”
“Donna?”
“That’s his wife. She’ll probably stay in there. Terrified of shadows that one.” Dee lost her half-smile as she looked up at me and frowned again.
“I was thinking about this on the flight here,” I said after a deep sigh. “Trying to think about what I did, instead of relying on instinct again. It’s like… Have you ever struggled to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time? Knowing both are true and in opposition at once?”
Her face screwed up in confusion and I nodded. “See, it’s hard to explain. Let me try another way. You were guiding me toward what you call ascendancy by focusing on my senses to the exclusion of all else. By harnessing all the primal instincts in us and channeling them to the fore… The thing is, I don’t think ascending is an end, or a destination. It’s the pathway there, but you can’t progress when you’re swimming in that sea of sensation and animalistic thought. You have to wall it all out, force yourself above… if that makes sense at all.”
“No,” Dee said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t at all. But I’ll think on what you say.”
The Alpha girl's scent was still troubled, but it was also thoughtful, and that was better than the crisis of faith from earlier.
Craig was a thoughtful man, and it showed in where he’d chosen to park his RV, directly upwind of where we’d be approaching from. I appreciated the thoughtful gesture as it gave me plenty of time to take in the man’s skittish scent.
I’d rarely had the opportunity since the Change took hold in me to analyze a common man through his pheromones, and the initial reading I got from Craig was “nerd.” The man solidified the image by adjusting the heavy-framed spectacles resting on his pug nose as he spoke into a phone.
“The Alpha shows the same masterful control as Dean and Tom. Extraordinary to find one such as he in the wilds…. Yes, I see Donatella, and no, she looks unharmed, from what I can see, but something is wrong from her posture.”
The man cut off long before we drew near, and I saw Dee’s lips turn down in a frown of annoyance at his words. She’d clearly been focusing on the sounds just as I had, but Craig slipped the phone into a pocket and painted a sickly smile onto his lips as we drew close.
“That is far enough, sir!” he shouted when we were more than fifty feet away, and I snarled in annoyance at the man’s persistent caution.
He flinched back when I continued marching forward but clutched at the phone in his breast pocket with both hands as if it might save him from me. I stopped a few feet away and pinned the man in place with a hard stare, enjoying how he squirmed as his scent grew thorny with anxiety.
“Donatella, it’s so good to see you again,” he said with a brief smile for Dee before shirting his wary gaze back to me. “Are you… well?”
“I’m fine, Craig. Let’s just get this over with.”
The man blinked rapidly and frowned at Dee bu
t didn’t argue with her morose tone.
“It was me who wanted to meet with you,” I said, scanning my eyes over the RV and seeing movement in one of the tinted windows. “I was hoping you’d bring someone who could help us properly test and manufacture the antidote we found.”
“Donna and I have barely been able to establish lines of stable communication between those who survived the bombs and gas.” He adjusted his heavy spectacles and frowned up at me. “You’re asking for the impossible—”
The man cut off and flinched back at my growl of annoyance, but he wasn’t being entirely honest from his scent.
“Craig, CT’s discovery could have a massive impact—”
“And who will protect me in the lab?” asked a white-haired old woman as she stepped down from the RV. She had a frown on her face, but the woman’s pale blue eyes drifted to me and I saw wonder there as they traveled up and down my form. “We had to stay moving to keep away from packs of those Balphas. Can you guarantee I’ll be safe for all the time it will take to do this work?”
There was something odd about the woman’s scent, but I couldn’t place my finger on it.
“And who are you?” I asked.
“I am Dr. Jessica Redding perhaps the only living person who can accomplish what you’re asking for, and I won’t do a damn thing until you can guarantee our safety!”
“Jess,” Dee said, drawing the woman’s gaze. Those pale blue eyes met the younger woman, and I saw her flinch at the compassion she saw in her. “Where are the rest of your coven?”
“Dead,” Jess said, her voice dreadful and scent twisting into such aching pain I thought the woman might collapse, but she remained ramrod straight. “That selfish boy you and your sisters were always sniffing after, killed them for…” Her voice caught with emotion, but she went right on tears gathering and falling down her cheeks. “For daring to oppose his plans.”
New World Alpha: Book Three (A Harem Fantasy) Page 8
