The Beast Within (22 page)

Aaron inspected the doorway. Where did Cerberus want him to go, and why? Wasn’t he just a mistake? A whim? Why would his creator suddenly want his company? He looked down at Tony, lying limp and in need of medical assistance and decided he did not care.

“Get off of him and I’ll go.”

Cerberus moved away, kicking Tony aside with contempt.

I’m going to kill you
, was all Aaron could think as he stared at the loathsome demon. Aloud he said, “I’m going to trigger a device on his phone to summon medical help.” He inched forward, but Cerberus made no move to intervene. He knelt beside Tony. His partner’s breathing was shallow. Cerberus’ talons had raked clean through the tactical vest. Blood seeped from the wounds beneath.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispered as he pulled Tony’s phone from his pocket. He made a show of pressing the lock screen key, then hitting the local weather application. He put the phone back into Tony’s pocket and palmed the other device resting there. “I’ve hit your alert app. Braven will know you’re in here.” He looked around at the bodies. Braven already knew Tony was in here. She had left this room to advance with the rest of the remaining agents and overtake the fleeing Six Rivers weres. He could only hope that the reinforcements Robert claimed had arrived would allow her to shortly send a medic or two back upstairs for the survivors she had been forced to leave behind. Aaron leaned in and gave Tony a kiss on the temple.

“I have to go. But, you’ll be okay.” He palmed the disruptor, thankful it was not much larger than a USB jump drive. “
We’ll
be okay. I promise.”

Tony’s hand twitched against the floor as if to intercept him, but Aaron pulled back. He turned to face Cerberus.

“We go together. No tricks.”

The demon nodded.

Aaron turned to his maker. Standing hip to flank, they stepped into the gate.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Mind of a Demon

Instead of the riotous dark, Aaron stepped through the portal and into a small clearing surrounded by a moon-washed forest. Crickets and frogs loudly celebrated the sultry night. Cerberus, at his side, chuffed with pleasure and dropped to roll in the grass. With blackened magma legs jutting into the air the beast writhed against the ground, scorching a patch the size of a VW Bug.

“Why are we here?” Aaron asked.

The demon ignored him.

Aaron left Cerberus to his rolling and made his way into the forest. The undergrowth rustled. He caught flashes of silver tails darting between the trees, heard the sound of padded feet against the forest floor. Lupine cries echoed through the trees. The sound coursed such intense pleasure through his body that he forgot everything for a moment. Like water flowing into a glass his body shifted. In an instant his four paws were against the soft earth, his nose low enough to the ground to not only smell the layers of pine needles and browned leaves, but the layers of ancient deadfall underneath. It was a rich, complex, joyous scent. He threw back his head and howled. Several wolfish voices returned his cry.

He bent down and mouthed the disruptor that had fallen from his fingers as he transformed. He poked it gently between his cheek and gum with his tongue, then headed toward a bright patch in the woods.

“I thought you would like it here.” The blackened being that was Cerberus in humanoid form caught up with him, matching his lope with a long bipedal stride. The three heads turned this way and that, taking in the scenery with satisfaction.

Aaron didn’t trust the words coming out of the three sets of lava-cracked lips, didn’t trust the happy-wolf-playground facade Cerberus seemed intent on making him believe. It was all a little too forced, especially with the hellhound standing next to him in a form as close to human as he could attain.

“You must stay here, out of harm’s way,” the demon said. “My first daughter will now keep you company in the way that man of yours did.”

If Aaron could have laughed in wolf form he would have. Not only was Cerberus intent on murdering all of his friends and setting himself up as a god among wolves, he was apparently a raging homophobe, to boot.

Cerberus gestured for Aaron to follow him. Aaron looked back and gauged the distance to the treeline. He could sprint that far, no problem. But Cerberus was bigger, older and more demonic than he. He had to make sure whatever he tried would take Cerberus well out of commission before he tried to escape. He decided to follow the demon for a while. Not only was his curiosity piqued, but the longer he delayed the hellhound in this place, the greater the hope for Kapre, Trinity and Tony.

A beaten swath of vegetation snaked through the trees. A distant rosy glow illuminated the rudimentary path. Cerberus led him toward the light. Aaron’s mind turned to Carlos’ story of Cerberus’ origin. Had it been true? Did Cerberus make the first werewolves? Was this place the past, or simply a pastiche of what he imagined their collective history to be? Cerberus seemed riveted by the illumination, his expression one of expectancy and trepidation. Whatever it was that lay just beyond the last few feet of trees was something the demon feared. And that meant it was something Aaron could use against him.

The trees broke at a small clearing. A large bonfire dominated the abandoned space.

“I left her here.” The note of sadness was not lost in the roughness of Cerberus’ multiple voices. “She was to take care of you.”

Aaron glanced at the hellhound, then back at the fire. While the flames stretched high into the air, there was something odd about them. Like a short movie clip set on repeat, the light flickered at the exact same rate, the tongues of flame stretched only so high before sinking down to reach up again. He touched his nose to the grass and sniffed. No human scent. No werewolf scent. Only the cleanest, most pure forest odors he had ever known. There was no woman.

As if sensing his thoughts Cerberus whirled on him. “She was here. She was to take care of you. Where did she go?”

Aaron tilted his head, questioning.

“Where?” Cerberus’ three heads shouted. The nearest boughs shook with the force of the roar.

Cerberus wanted Aaron to shift, to enter into a pointless argument with him. Aaron, however, had no desire to do such a thing. He remained in wolf form and regarded Cerberus with polite interest. This infuriated the demon who began crashing around the empty campsite, uprooting bushes and kicking large rocks, screaming a name Aaron couldn’t understand.

Whether from an eternity of roaming the mind-dulling void, or from his very nature, Cerberus was not a sane demon. In an instant the pieces fell into place. Cerberus wanted an army of werewolves not only to follow him, but to love and share time with. There had never been a woman who offered to share her fire, only Cerberus’ desperate need for companionship that made him maul his first progeny and turn her into the first werewolf. But instead of climbing into the vortex with him she went off and made her own race, her own family. Weres grew in number while Cerberus roamed the nothing, craving the companionship he had been denied. He must have spent ages dreaming of the time he would bring the werewolves back to him. When Six Rivers became weakened by the untimely death of its alpha, and poor, deluded Brandon called him back from the void, Cerberus struck. He infiltrated the pack, made grand promises, gave Brandon the tools to bring his clan to his feet. When they began exterminating the only people who could stop them, Cerberus had stumbled across Aaron—the one person since his first progeny able to accept his bite, to shift into something close to what he was—and took his shot. And now, it seemed, Cerberus wanted to seal Aaron up in his saccharine version of Werewolf Past so they could be buddies.

Screw that.
If the bastard liked his little fire so much, he could go back to it.

Cerberus, still raging, wheeled around toward Aaron. Aaron sidestepped as if readying to bolt. Cerberus headed him off, putting himself exactly where Aaron wanted him. Aaron sprang. He used the massive force of his back legs to push into the demon. He caught Cerberus off guard. Cerberus flew back. His body crashed into the fire. The demon howled with laughter as the patches of magma on his skin absorbed the heat, changed from orange to blue, to white. The black patches crackled and peeled from Cerberus’ skin. He snarled at Aaron and sank into the flames. Three lupine heads emerged a moment later, snapping and growling, dripping white-hot lava from their jowls. Suddenly, his idea didn’t seem such a smart one.

Aaron raised his hackles and planted his feet, ready for the fiery impact. Cerberus dropped his hips and lunged. Behind him, the flames stretched out, forming a pair of long, delicate arms that wrapped around Cerberus and pulled him back. The demon snarled and turned to snap at the thing holding him. The tongues of fire formed the shape of a woman, who gazed down at the demon with reproach and sadness. All of the fight drained from Cerberus as he looked into those eyes.

Aaron did not bother to question who or what she was—ancient fact or twisted figment—but turned and sprinted for the woods. He let his canine legs carry him toward the portal. All around him the illusion of Cerberus’ history was dissolving. Shadows deepened and elongated, swallowing both tree and sky. The void was creeping into Cerberus’ sanctuary. The lupine cries around him turned to snarls as the invisible wolves succumbed to the encroaching dark. Aaron pushed himself faster. The void was eating away the ground at his feet. He stumbled ahead, concentrating on the portal. It flashed ahead of him. Twenty feet. The ground slipped away beneath his right heel. Ten feet. The treeline to the right of him disappeared into the shadows. Five. He pushed his front paws away from the ground and let the shift take him. The earth fell away and he leaped forward, hands outstretched as if the door had an actual jamb to cling to. He skidded across the slick grass and into the void.

Not bothering to try to stand, Aaron rode out the slide. He focused his mind on Kapre, on Tony. Like a beacon Tony’s presence shined out to him, called him back home. The disruptor—much larger in his human mouth than in his lupine muzzle—threatened to choke him. He dug it out with two muddy fingers and clutched it like a toy. The portal opened on the other end. He saw Tony there, propped against the wall, a familiar figure hunched over him.

Rage boiled through Aaron as he careened out of the portal and toppled across the blood-slicked tiles. He rolled to the side and flung the disruptor into the open gateway. For a moment he thought he saw a flash of fur and fang, but then a wash of brilliant light obscured his vision. He stood and staggered back. An iron like darkness slid across the deeper black, shuttering off the depths of the void like a slammed door. The portal’s flames snuffed completely. Instead of ash, a pool of liquid metal dripped to the floor, sizzling as it hit the cool tiles. Aaron felt his features shift to their half wolf form. He let his fangs extend, his claws sharpen, his skin blacken. He turned and faced the man who now cowered in front of his partner with a look of extreme terror etched across his despicable face. A low growl accompanied the name that scraped between his clenched jaws.

“Ellison.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Cleaning House

“I di…du…didn’t…” Ellison stammered. Alcohol fumes rolled off him in a caustic wave. “Ar, man, you gotta believe me.”

“Believe you?” The words came out grinding and low, a motor churning through a plant-choked swamp. “You screwed me over, killed our co-workers and helped turn me into
this.
You followed me here and brought Cerberus and Six Rivers with you, and started all over again, all while framing me.” His sharpened vision took in Ellison’s trembling limbs, then Tony’s still form. “Get the fuck away from him.”

Ellison scrabbled away, babbling incoherently.

Aaron knelt beside Tony. He placed his hands on Tony’s skin. It was feverishly hot, even beneath Aaron’s hellhound touch. Tony’s eyelids fluttered, but remained closed. His wounds gently oozed blood. He was clotting, but not fast enough to mark a transformation. Aaron’s jaw clenched. He turned back to Ellison and let the dark thing’s constant fury resurge, drowning his more complex emotions.

“Did you ever think of going to Director Stellart and telling him you were being blackmailed by Six Rivers, you pathetic halfwit?” he asked Ellison. “That would have stopped all of this. Why didn’t you?”

“I thought about it.” Tears formed in Ellison’s eyes. “I did. Did you think I wanted him, all of them, to die? I didn’t. I did the spell and then realized what it probably meant for us, having all of the werewolf clans united under a power-hungry demon.”

Aaron reached behind Tony’s still form for the fallen rifle. Ellison saw him grab it and began talking faster, the tears flowing freely.

“Please, Ar, please. I didn’t mean any of it.” Ellison wrung his hands like a fretful old lady. “I thought about telling Stellart, but it would have ended my career and I know it was wrong, I know, but I was selfish and stupid and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The dark thing snorted in disgust. Aaron let the sound escape from his own lips. “You are selfish and stupid. And you are finished.”

Aaron raised the rifle. The dark thing howled in protest. It wanted blood in its mouth. Aaron couldn’t think of anything more disagreeable than having the taste of Ellison in his throat. A bullet to the head would be much more satisfying. He raised the weapon. Ellison, despite his years of agent training, did nothing to save himself. He sat on the floor, crying and stinking of alcohol, and pissed himself.

The room shuddered as if from an enormous impact. Aaron staggered as the floor swayed. He caught himself on a desk. He looked at the doors, expecting to see the smoke of a detonated charge, a swarm of agents. The doors remained intact. His stomach dropped, and he turned to the next likely source.

The flames of the portal had begun to rekindle. The air above it wavered like heat from a desert road. Another tremor shook the floor. This time, the space above the flames shuddered.