Chapter 3 - Vampire

Drake walked for a long time after he left Elijah Bishop’s apartment. He didn’t have anywhere to go and even though he would’ve been welcome there, he couldn’t bring himself to stay. They would’ve kept hassling him to join their knighthood or whatever and that wasn’t something he wanted to endure. He was thankful they saved his and Gerard’s life, but he wanted nothing else to do with them or with their mission to protect humanity. Humanity, as far as he was concerned, could go screw itself.

He’d meant what he said. Humans didn’t deserve to be saved. He’d seen too many of them commit the worst kinds of acts. He’d seen people get killed or maimed for stupid reasons. The world was full of nothing but cruel men with brutal personalities that went way beyond sadistic.

And they were everywhere.

The monster he’d fought earlier was terrifying, but it was nothing compared to the monsters living in his nightmares. They were worse. They were men, women, and even children. They were driven by insane ideals and they didn’t care who got in their way. They were all too willing to kill and destroy in the name of greed, power, secrets, or religion.

He was sick of it.

All of it.

He let his mind wander as he walked and when he looked up again, he wasn’t surprised to find himself outside East Lycaon Hospital. He went inside, actually glad that his clothes weren’t old, smelly, dirty, or full of holes and rips like they usually were. He would’ve been swarmed by nurses or security or both if he still looked like a grungy homeless dude.

He went up to the front desk where an older nurse was working. She looked really busy, so Drake waited patiently for her to notice him. It took her a few minutes, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t pressed for time. He didn’t have a job to get to in the morning. He didn’t have anything going on at all. One of the perks to being jobless, he guessed.

“Can I help you?” the nurse finally asked. She gave Drake a critical, appraising look.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine. Gerard Thompkins. He was brought in a few hours ago,” Drake answered. He kept his voice even and friendly.

The woman turned away from him and looked at her computer screen. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

“And what is your relationship to the patient?” the nurse questioned.

“He’s a friend,” Drake answered.

“Well, your friend just got out of surgery and is currently in ICU. I’m afraid visiting hours are currently over. You can come back tomorrow. Visiting hours start at 8:45 in the morning. Come back then,” the nurse replied in bored, clinical tones.

Drake leaned in closer to the woman.

“If you could make an exception to that rule, I would really appreciate it. You see, he saved my life when I was in Afghanistan. He doesn’t have anyone else to look after him anymore and I wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone. It’s the least I could do for him.” Drake made his voice even more pleasant and soothing.

“That’s against hospital policy,” the nurse replied.

Drake felt his hope drain away. He wasn’t entirely lying. Gerard didn’t have any family. He was completely alone. Drake was the only person that really cared about the old man and he wanted to make sure that a friendly face was there for him. As far as he knew, however, Gerard had never stepped foot outside the US let alone been to Afghanistan.

“But I suppose we can make an exception in this case. His room is on the third floor, number 356. I’ll make sure to tell them you’re coming up, hon. Ok?” The nurse smiled back at him. “Go on.”

“Thank you very much,” Drake told her.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Drop in, say hello, make sure he’s doing fine and then you’ll have to leave.”

“Of course.” Drake gave the nurse a smile again. Then he turned and walked toward the elevators.

He pressed the button and waited for a few seconds before it dinged and opened for him. He went inside and hit the button for the third floor. The shining steel walls showed him a reflection he barely recognized anymore. He looked most of the way toward normal now.

Except for the burn scars creeping up the side of his neck.

He closed his eyes and breathed for a few minutes, trying to keep the nightmares of his past from gaining force again. It was always the same thing. He always found himself inside the Humvee as it drove over the IED. Then the explosion happened, and everything was enveloped in noise, heat, and pain.

So much pain.

Out of everyone in that Humvee he’d been the only survivor and that was by sheer luck.

Or a curse, he thought to himself. What kind of life did he have now? A life full of failures. A life full of debilitating nightmares that ruined every aspect of his life.

A life without...

Even now, three years later, he still couldn’t bring himself to say her name, even if it was only in his mind. He pushed those thoughts out of his head. They led down a road he was trying so hard to stay off of.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened up again. He walked into the hall and saw a sign for the ICU attached to the wall. It pointed left so Drake went that way. A few moments later, he was in front of a pair of double doors separating him from the ICU. A few feet behind him was a waiting room. There were some people sitting on the chairs in there.

One was asleep but the rest were awake, so he made sure to move quietly enough so they didn’t notice him. He pressed the button on the wall next to the doors. A second later, there was a buzzing noise and then a click. He grabbed the handle and opened the door quietly. He went through and walked over to the desk where two nurses stood waiting for him.

“Thank you for doing this,” he told them, holding out his hand. “I’m Drake Harper here to see Gerard Thompkins.”

“Of course,” one of the nurses said. “He’s in that room over there. You only have about five minutes before you have to leave.”

Drake nodded and thanked them again before he went into the room. There was a single chair next to the bed while numerous monitors kept track of his friend’s vitals. Gerard was on the bed, his skin ashen. He was sleeping but it was fitful and restless. He kept tossing around and mumbling. Drake heard him say something about monsters. Then he heard the word help several times.

“Gerard,” Drake said. He reached out and gently shook the older man.

Gerard’s eyes fluttered and then opened up wide. They were frantic and full of terror. He looked around with the desperation of a cornered animal until his eyes met Drake’s. Only then did he relax.

“D-Drake,” Gerard whispered hoarsely, his breathing ragged.

The look of terror on his face slowly faded away. His breathing returned to normal. He swallowed hard and grimaced in pain from his aching throat. He tried to raise a hand weakly off the bed for a cup of water sitting on the tray next to him, but he didn’t have the strength. Drake took the cup and gently held it up to Gerard’s mouth. The old man drank slowly, but deeply. When he was finished with the water, he looked at Drake, his face still full of pain and fear.

“What h-happened?” he asked.

“A couple of punks jumped you. They got some good hits in before I scared them off,” Drake said. A memory of the beast hit him unprepared and he shuddered before he could stop it.

“How you feeling?” he asked, trying to keep his mind off the memories that kept plaguing him, including the new ones of the creature. “I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

“Feel like...sh-shit,” Gerard replied and then he laughed roughly. “Y-you beat th-them down?”

“Yeah, you can say that,” Drake told him. He could still remember the sound of the creature’s neck snapping after he threw it into the wall.

A slight tapping sound came from the door. Drake looked back and saw a nurse staring at him and waving her hand in a “hurry up” gesture. Drake turned back to Gerard and grabbed hold of the old man’s wrinkled hand. He looked him in the eyes.

“Get rested. I’ll find a way to get your bill taken care of,” Drake told him. “Don’t worry, I got your back.”

“Don’t put th-that on yourself...man,” Gerard said. He swallowed thickly and Drake passed him the water again. He took a long drink before he handed it back. “I’ll figure s-something...”

He stopped suddenly as a wave of pain gripped him. His face contorted and his eyes squeezed shut. After a second or two, it passed and he could breathe steadily again.

“I’ll figure suh-something out.”

“Focus on getting better,” Drake told him.

A more urgent knock pounded on the door.

“I’ll stop by tomorrow to see how you’re doing,” Drake assured him. “Bye, old man.”

Gerard laughed weakly again before he drifted off to sleep. Drake got up and walked out of the room. He put his hands in his pockets and walked down the hall of the ICU unit. Thoughts came and went but he didn’t want any part of them. He was too tired to let them haunt him anyway.

He walked past the nurses’ station and thanked them again on his way out. Then he went down to the elevator and walked quietly out the front doors with his head down.

He was surprised to find himself thinking about Jenna Bishop a lot. It was actually a nice change of pace from all the horror and death he usually found lurking inside his brain. She was beautiful and apparently not the rich, spoiled, party-girl socialite she tried so hard to make herself out to be. She was a lot more than that. She was selfless and courageous. She put her life at risk for others even though it was dangerous. She protected them from a terrifying world that no one should ever have to see. He remembered how easy it was for her to jump in and put herself between him and the monster. He remembered how flawlessly she took its head off; like it was something she did every day. It was almost enough to make him rethink her offer just so he could get closer to her.

Almost anyway.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and continued walking while trying his best to ignore everyone around him. Faintly, he could hear the ghosts of his past again. He heard distant screaming. He heard the sounds of coughing explosions like faraway fireworks. He shook his head firmly, as if that would do anything to get rid of the phantom noises. He really should know better by now. The nightmares and the phantom sounds wouldn’t go away. They would never leave him alone.

He blew out a frustrated breath, suddenly wanting to slam a hand into the side if his head out of pure spite. He stared at the sky and forced his mind to shut out the vague sounds. He pushed them out one by one and kept walking.

Very few people were out on the streets. He heard sounds of traffic and random noise pollution. Now that he managed to quiet what was going on in his head, he realized that he actually felt pretty good. In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time. The rejuvenating effects of a hot shower and clean clothes certainly worked wonders. The flashes of memories from Afghanistan had stopped for the moment and even the pain of losing his wife, Lucy, had dimmed. He felt...relief.

People talk about ghosts a lot, but he thought the worst kind of ghost was the one that lived inside your mind. The ghost of memory. It felt good to not have it haunting him, even if it was only for a little bit.

He continued his walk until it led him to a large cemetery. He knew his way through, even though it was pitch black. His feet took him there like they had a mind of their own. A minute or two later, he was standing in front of a large, ornate tombstone bearing a beautiful angel on top. Next to it was a simpler marker with the name Michael T. Porter on it. He ignored Michael’s tombstone and focused on the one with the angel. He looked at the name and could almost feel a chunk of his heart shattering.

Lucy Penelope Harper Loving wife and daughter 1978 – 2010

“Hi babe,” he said, his voice hoarse. He could feel his throat getting thicker as he tried to hold back his sobs. “I’m sorry. It’s been too long since I’ve come to see you.”

He reached out and pulled a bouquet of dead flowers from a metal, conical vase. He put in a fresh batch, mostly a mix of marigolds, roses, and morning glories that he’d pulled out of someone’s garden on his way to the cemetery. He wished he could get her something more beautiful, but he didn’t have the money.

“I saw something pretty weird tonight. I still can’t believe it.” He paused for a second, trying to arrange his thoughts. “This…thing…or monster, I guess…tried to kill Gerard. You remember Gerard? He’s the guy that kind of took me in after things…,” he stopped talking, feeling ashamed of himself. A brief memory flashed through his mind of him attacking his old boss. The asshole that had laid him off. “…went bad.”

He spent some time in jail for that, but his sentence had been more lenient than he’d dare hope for. Now, he couldn’t get a job and had no place to live.

He had nothing. He had no one.

He’d gotten the news of Lucy’s death when he’d been on tour in Afghanistan. He spent the next couple of days racing against the clock in an effort to get home for the funeral. He almost wished he hadn’t. It was too much for him. All that pity and the crying faces. People’s eyes were the worst thing though. Seeing everyone looking at him. Staring at him with such…empathy!

How could they know what he was going through!? How could they know his pain!?

His downward spiral really started with Lucy’s death and it hasn’t ended since.

“These people helped me save him. Now they want me to join up. Can you believe that?” he asked. “They want me to help protect humanity from these nightmare monster things. After everything I’ve seen humanity do? No thank you.”

He felt that familiar rage well up inside him at the idea of protecting people again. He slammed an angry fist against Lucy’s tombstone and then he did it again and again. His hand buzzed with pain as his eyes burned with tears.

“They can all go to hell.”

A slight noise caught his attention. He almost missed it. It was a very faint crunching sound, like someone stepping on dry grass. He stilled his racing thoughts and calmed his body, reaching out with his hearing and focusing on that one sense.

There.

And there.

He caught the sound two more times, but in opposite directions.

There was more than one of them.

He got up slowly. He let the instincts he’d honed as a soldier take over as he looked around him. He didn’t see anything at first. The cemetery seemed empty, except for himself, but he knew someone was out there. He backed up, putting Lucy’s tombstone behind him and prepared himself.

The crunching sounds came again, only quicker this time. Faintly, he could see darker shadows flitting between grave markers. He thought he caught a glimpse of sickly, yellow eyes.

“Come on, already. I don’t have all night,” he said.

As if on cue, two figures melted out of the shadows and approached. His mind would’ve seized up with terror at seeing the creatures if he hadn’t fought one a few hours ago. They were pale and almost hairless, with overdeveloped jaws and overlong arms that dragged on the ground.

“Yousss,” one of them wheezed, its voice whispery and high-pitched. It sniffed deeply through its monkey-like nose. “Yess. Youss are the one. Yousss will be oursss. Retribution for our mother’sss death!”

A part of him still wanted to dismiss them. That part wanted to throw away what he was seeing and blame it all on some PTSD inspired hallucination. But he wasn’t fooling himself now. They were real and the danger was very real.

“I got a lot of pent up anger. You fucks seem like a good outlet for it,” he taunted them. He kept his body loose and fluid as he waited for them to attack.

They didn’t waste much time.

They came at him at the same time and with unnerving speed. His heart started racing uncomfortably (the way it did whenever he was fighting or in the middle of a combat zone) and adrenaline surged through him. He ducked under one clawed attack. His arm snaked out and grabbed onto the thing’s wrist. He wrenched on it with brute strength, twisting it unnaturally until it snapped. The creature howled in pain, but Drake wasn’t finished with it. Still holding onto its broken arm, he used it to swipe its claws across the face of the second one, who was trying to come at him from the side. That one screeched hideously, the sound loud and extremely painful. It felt like something was flaying at Drake’s eardrums. He wavered drunkenly and stumbled slightly.

The sound died out as the creature bent forward with its hands covering its tattered face. Yellow ichor slipped through its bony fingers and splattered against the dead grass.

Drake slammed a fist into the face of the monster he still held by the wrist. He felt its nose crunch. It yelped in pain and then fell to the ground. Drake turned his attention back to the one with the cut-up face. He went up to it and grabbed its head. He wrenched it down, bringing his knee smashing into its flat nose as hard as he could. He felt something crunch and give way in its skull right before the blow sent it spinning to the ground.

The wendigo with the broken arm tried to tackle him, but Drake stopped it cold, his feet digging into the ground. He brought his elbow crashing down on it. It held on tenaciously, but several more blows brought it smashing face first into the ground. It let out a pitiful moaning sound. Without hesitation, he jumped on it, keeping its deadly claws pinned to the ground with his knees while he pummeled the thing into oblivion with his fists. A couple of seconds later, his hands were covered in the thing’s slimy yellow blood. He got up and kicked it in the ribs for good measure.

Drake took a deep breath and turned just in time to block a swipe from the creature with the slashed-up face. The monster left itself completely open and Drake let loose with a massive kick to its chest. It flew back and landed with a thud, its back arching up in pain. Then it rolled onto its side and vomited into the ground. The smell was indescribably foul.

Drake breathed heavily as the creatures lay there, twitching mostly. He waited a second, to make sure they weren’t going to get back up, before he turned and walked away. He stopped after only a few feet with a feeling of intense dread creeping through him. He was hearing something new now. A series of odd popping noises.

He looked at the one still lying on the grass with a smashed in head and was shocked to see that its injuries were healing themselves. He looked to the other one and felt a wave of sick fear wash over him. Its injuries were quickly disappearing too. Drake knew one thing for sure…he was grossly outmatched. They would literally throw themselves at him without care because they could heal from whatever he did to them. Their best offense was to let him waste all of his time and energy on beating the living shit out of them until he was too tired to put up any more of a fight.

He needed a new plan and quickly thought one up.

Run.

Definitely the smart thing to do. But he knew they were fast. He had to do something that would give him enough time to get away.

Answer: Beat the living shit out of them some more. They would have to waste time healing and he could use that to get away.

So, he spent the next ten minutes doing everything he could to deliver what should’ve been life-threatening abuse and crippling injuries. They were strong and fast, but he was better skilled at fighting. They relied heavily on their natural weapons (their claws and fangs) while he improvised. That included using their claws against them some more, a few good-sized rocks he stumbled across, and even one of the conical vases next to the graves.

That last one had been remarkably effective.

The creatures were twitching on the ground. Already he could hear the popping noises again. Without any more thought, he turned and fled.

And smashed right into easily the biggest monster he’d come across that night.

He stumbled back and fell onto his ass. He looked up with wide eyes at an eight-foot, mind-numbing, terror. It looked like the smaller ones he’d already come across only much, much bigger. It leaned toward him, its gorilla-like nostrils flaring as its yellow eyes flashed coldly at him. Its maw was filled with fangs dripping a clear, viscous liquid. Its huge fingers ended with sharp talon-like claws (also dripping clear liquid) that were midnight black. They dug into the dirt and grass fitfully, pulling up clods of the stuff as it regarded the puny human in front of it.

Its huge head swung to the lesser monsters.

“This iss the one?” it questioned.

The other two were slowly getting to their feet now. Their injuries were gone. They were nodding their heads in quick, jerky motions.

The big one turned back to Drake.

“Youss are the one that killed my mate.” Its voice was so deep it nearly shook the ground around Drake.

He was suddenly very, very afraid. More than that, he was flat out terrified.

“It iss,” the smaller two wailed. “It iss, father.”

“Quiet!” the monster bellowed.

Drake howled with pain as the noise slammed into him like a wall. Tombstones around him even cracked and chipped as the soundwave bashed into them.

The giant monster leaned in closer to Drake.

“I will makess your death painful, humanss,” it said.

Drake wanted to whimper and cry, but he held firm. If this abomination was going to kill him, he wasn’t going to let it get the added satisfaction of seeing him break down into a sniveling, terrified four-year old.

The monsters’ jaws all opened up at the same time. High-pitched wails filled the air and hit Drake with the force of a charging bull. He covered his ears with his hands, but it was no use. The sound was a drill, forcing its way inside. Soon, he could feel blood wetting his palms. The noise increased and while Drake did everything he could not to black out, eventually there was no stopping it. The world around him disappeared under a veil of darkness.

As he sank into oblivion, he knew one thing for sure.

He was going to die.

Deanna hid behind a wide tree and just observed. She made sure to stay upwind of the group in front of her. She saw them from the wavering light of a small bonfire. They were clustered in several small groups. Maybe two or three people to a group. Rough guttural noises came from them as they chomped and chewed four humans apart. Their faces were smeared with blood and gore. Each one had eyes that were glazed over, as if they were high on some really potent drug. She watched as one male, bigger than the rest, pulled the arm completely off the person he was devouring and lay into it like it was a prime rib. A female tried to get in and get some meat for herself, but the bigger male roared loudly, sending the female cowering back. As if to reinforce the command, he backhanded her so strongly that she was sent tumbling backwards into a rickety picnic table. The thing broke like it was held together with gum and luck and collapsed on her. She could hear the pitiful girl whimpering and crying in pain.

Deanna could smell the blood and it was driving her crazy with need. She wanted to run in there and devour what was left of the humans, but she forcibly shoved that need aside.

She was on a mission.

She was there for power.

It was her price to Bendis and a very calculated risk. The goddess was temperamental to say the least and prone to incredibly violent mood swings, but Deanna knew that Kendra was much stronger than an ordinary alpha and the only chance she had was to claim that same power for herself and gain her own pack. As bloodthirsty a pack as Bendis could find. Judging by what she was seeing, Bendis didn’t disappoint.

She kept her distance and waited for her opportunity. She knew she wasn’t strong enough to take on the whole pack, but she also knew the blood hunger’s biggest weakness. It would only take a few moments for the blood’s intoxicating effects to turn into a deep and pervasive lethargy.

Deanna could feel the anticipation building inside her. She could already feel the power of an alpha coursing through her veins. She could already see the deaths of her enemies piled at her feet.

Starting with Kendra Henner.

The werewolf pack finished gluttoning themselves on their prey. Deanna watched as the lethargy started to take hold. Several of them were laughing drunkenly. Others were stumbling around and swaying on their feet. One of them tipped over and face-planted into the grass and dirt. He started snoring loudly as the others howled with laughter. Ten minutes later and the rest of the pack were strewn all over the ground in various stages of sleep.

Deanna slid soundlessly from her hiding spot and strutted across the ground with a smile. She slid her hand behind her back and carefully pulled out a silver dagger. She made sure the blade didn’t touch her bare skin. She made her way to where the alpha lounged, his eyes drooping. Two werewolf girls laid across him like fashion accessories.

Deanna bent down and smiled at him.

“Piers, Piers. Such the glutton,” Deanna said, using the name Bendis had supplied her with. Her voice was full of satisfaction and barely contained anticipation.

The alpha looked at her lazily, his eyes telling Deanna he knew exactly why she was there. He tried to get up, but he was still locked in the haze of the blood hunger. He only managed to lift an arm weakly.

“You bitch,” he slurred angrily.

Deanna laughed mercilessly.

“Ah, truer words have not been spoken,” she replied. She got up and walked behind him. He tried to follow her movements, but he couldn’t muster the strength. “You have something I need very deeply.”

“Don’t do this,” he said. He sounded like a man that spent the night binge drinking.

Deanna reached out a hand and caressed his cheek. She leaned in closer and sucked gently on his ear. Then, without hesitation, she grabbed a fistful of his hair, jerked his head back, and slashed his throat with her silver blade. His skin sizzled and the noxious smell of burning flesh filled the air. The rest of his pack all jerked awake, their eyes locked on the scene. They didn’t move. Didn’t even say a word. They only watched with avid intensity.

Piers made choking noises as blood gurgled out of his mouth. His hands grew claws that dug uselessly at the ground. His eyes widened as he felt his life slipping further and further away.

Deanna slid a finger through the blood gushing out of Piers’ opened throat and brought it to her mouth. She licked it, her eyes fluttering with pleasure. She looked down at him. He was still clinging to life. The wound across his throat tried to heal but the silver from the blade made it harder to close up. The regeneration process wouldn’t take full hold for twenty or more minutes.

Deanna would’ve been happy to wait and watch the man die slowly, but unfortunately, she was hampered by time. She stared at the blade. It was still wet with blood. She smiled to herself and then plunged it into Piers’ heart. She felt a little thrill run through her as the blade slid into him. His eyes widened and his final breath came out as a choked gasp.

And as simple as that, Deanna had what she came for.

The wolves of her new pack all watched her closely. They stayed that way for a long time. Deanna, for the most part, ignored them. She sat on the ground a few paces from the dead, former alpha.

She knew it took a while for the power to transfer to her, but her patience was quickly running out. She was about to lose all her control when the blood still soaking her hands started to smoke. Long white tendrils curled into the air. The next instant, her entire body felt like it was engulfed in fire. She bit down on a scream of pain. She couldn’t show any weakness during this part. The moment she did, the pack would slaughter her.

She sat there calmly as every nerve ending lit up at once and yammered at her with pain. The blood started to coalesce and run together. It crawled over her flesh like a living thing before it burrowed into her skin and flowed into her veins. They glowed bright red as the blood of the alpha raced through them. It suddenly stopped moving and gathered at her palm, swirling around until it formed the three spiraled symbol that marked her as an alpha.

At the same time the mark was forming, she felt an overwhelming torrent of power surge through her. She let out a breath of pleasure and closed her eyes. The surge ended abruptly, leaving her gasping slightly. She opened her eyes and saw the pack, her pack, staring back at her. The blood haze they had all been under was clearly gone yet not one of them made a move against her. They just seemed to be waiting.

“Well, now that we have that nasty bit of business out of the way, how about some fun?” she asked.

Drake looked up blearily as he came to. His head swam sickeningly, and his throat was bone dry. He coughed harshly before taking a deep, shuddering breath and looked around. His vision was blurry, and he couldn’t make out much in the way of details but from what he could see, he was in a large, mostly empty room of some kind. It was cold and dank and smelled like freshly dug earth. There were no windows that he could see, and the only source of light came from a dim lantern hanging from a thick root on the far side of the room.

His eyes adjusted more and more to the weak lighting and he realized the earthy smell made sense. Looking around, he saw that he was in some kind of underground den beneath a massive tree. Which meant he was probably in the forested regions ringing the city. It was impossible to tell exactly how deep in the woods he was and if he managed to get away, he was probably going to end up getting captured again. Or die from exposure trying to find a way out.

One or the other.

He was strangely at peace with his imminent death. He wasn’t suicidal by any means, but he was flat out exhausted. Exhausted with living. Maybe death wasn’t such a bad idea. At least then he would see Lucy again.

Thinking about her brought up all the pain of his memories. The memories of being with her and the sense of happiness he had. The talks they’d shared. The nights too. The pain of losing her burned inside him, like she died all over again. He had to work hard not to let the depression and sadness in with them. They said time heals all wounds but the death of the only woman he truly loved still made his heart feel like it had been shredded to bits.

His eyes finally cleared, and he took in his surroundings again. There were tree roots everywhere. They hung from the ceiling in thick, ropy tendrils. The smell of earth and dirt was heavy in the air but now he caught the scents of rotting meat and blood. Off in a corner was the source of the disgusting smell.

Bones.

Some of them still had flesh attached and were covered with blood. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that the bones were clearly human.

Drake choked back his bile when he saw them and tried to ignore the increasingly overwhelming smell of death in the air. He struggled to move but found himself unable to. He wasn’t sure why that was until he remembered the first monster’s attack on Gerard. It had slashed him and a minute later, he dropped to the ground, unable to move. These monsters must have poison on their claws that can paralyze their victims. They must’ve used it on him to make sure he couldn’t escape. He tried again to move and sure enough, nothing happened.

Too bad those assholes left my sense of smell intact, he thought to himself.

He tried to find a way to get out of his current situation, but nothing came to mind. Not with him being paralyzed anyway. He wondered when the poison would wear off, but he figured it would be right around the too-late-too-do-a-damn-bit-of-good marker. From what he knew of the monsters so far, they were smart, organized enough to track him down and surprise attack him, and cautious enough to come at him in a group of three instead of just one. He didn’t think they would be stupid enough to leave him alone if they thought he could get away.

He tried twitching his hands or feet but the only reward he got was a very minor jerk in his left leg that could just as easily have been a trick of his imagination. He let out a resigned breath and just waited. He didn’t want to go out by being eaten alive but at least with the paralytic effects of the poison there would be no pain. It could be worse. The minutes ticked by and the creatures still didn’t show up.

Did it make him crazy that he was actually getting impatient? That he was getting annoyed they were keeping him waiting?

“Come on!” he shouted to the empty air. “Let’s move this along! I don’t have all fucking day!”

His dry throat made screaming his head off a bad idea. He started coughing harshly. He tried to swallow whatever spit he had in his mouth to ease the pain but there wasn’t enough to do any good. He attempted to move again and was surprised to find that he could actually jerk his arms and legs a lot more. The paralysis was slowly fading from his system.

Unfortunately, however, being able to move also let him finally feel the cold iron of thick manacles attached to both his arms and legs. He gathered some of his strength and lifted his head so he could actually see them. He held his head up for two, maybe three, seconds before dropping it back down.

What he saw wasn’t pretty.

The manacles were thick and heavy and looked impossible to break. The chains were solid and unyielding. The monsters certainly knew what they were doing. Drake suddenly understood why they were leaving him alone. He remembered what the big one said. He remembered its promise to him. The knowledge didn’t terrify him though. Instead, he did the only thing he could think of.

He laughed.

He laughed long and hard and it was filled with an insanity that would have freaked Ted Bundy out. For some reason he found his situation terrifyingly hilarious.

They never intended to finish him off as long as the poison was still in his system. They wanted him to feel every bit of agony they could inflict on him.

They wanted him to suffer.

Drake had been chained in the underground den for what felt like days. Hell, for all he knew, years could have gone by. He had no sense of time. It just melted together like a Salvador Dali painting.

At least, he thought to himself, my suffering will be over soon.

The last of the poison’s effects were wearing off which meant the monsters were going to come for him and end him. He was scared out of his mind but that didn’t erase the weird sense of peace he still felt.

For the last hour or two or however long it was, he was envisioning being with Lucy again. He could see her, touch her, and even smell her. His heart burned for her, even now.

A noise at the entrance of the den made him look up. His head rolled bonelessly on his neck. His stomach felt hollow and empty from hunger and his throat was now raw from lack of water. The three wendigos crawled into the den, their movements spider-like. Their yellow eyes were locked on him and their claws dragged along the ground. In the middle was the gigantic wendigo. His monstrous face was contorted into a look of amusement and eagerness.

“It’s time humanss,” it said as a tendril of saliva fell from the corner of his mouth. “This willss be enjoyable.”

It chortled as if he just told a funny joke.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Drake said, his voice barely above a whisper. He would’ve put up more of a fight, but he didn’t have the strength. The lack of food and water had taken its toll on him. The monsters had been smart enough to weaken him, especially since he’d already helped take one of them out.

“Just get it done, asshat,” Drake said, waving his hand lazily through the air.

The big wendigo charged forward, his knuckles dragging along the dirt and rock. When it got to within a couple inches of Drake, it leaned in and roared loudly into his face.

“You will notss mock me!” he screamed.

The noise was shatteringly loud and to make matters worse, its breath smelled like a mix between a garbage dump and a slaughterhouse.

The piercing, primal scream invaded Drake’s entire head and seemed to bounce off his skull. He could feel blood coming out of his ears and felt it running from both nostrils. He bit down on the pain, his jaw muscles standing out in stark relief as he worked to keep his screams from flying out.

The other two wendigos crept closer and closer. The smell of blood drew them in like moths to a flame. They salivated disgustingly. Pools of drool were practically forming at their gnarled feet.

“Th-that all yo-you g-got,” Drake wheezed. “Sc-screaming like a little b-bitch?”

He tried to top it off with a mocking laugh but it made his head feel like it was going to pop like a balloon. Papa Wendigo stared at him while the two little ones stopped within inches of Drake’s outstretched legs.

“Enough,” it declared. “Youss have slain my mate and for that we will make your death long, humanss. I will take my vengeancess an inch at a time.”

The wendigo reached behind him and pulled out a long, curved knife.

“Knowss this, humanss,” it said, its eyes glinting. “There will be no reprieve from ourss venom. There shall be no escape from the painss.”

Without another word, Papa Wendigo took the knife and sliced into the meat of Drake’s upper left thigh. He cut out a piece of flesh about an inch big, give or take, and brought it to his lips. Drake jerked, and a grunt of pain escaped him despite his best efforts. His lips were a tight, pale line on his face and his eyes were squeezed shut. He opened them a few seconds later and was treated to the sight of the monster gobbling the piece of his leg down like it was a Christmas ham. Blood stained its teeth and lower jaws, but its eyes were closed in a moment of pure ecstasy. When it opened them again, it looked at Drake.

“Where iss your courage nowss, humanss?” it asked before laughing cruelly.

The smaller wendigos started whining and whimpering. Both of their monkey nostrils flared as blood welled up in Drake’s wound.

“Patience, childrenss. There is plentyss for all of us,” it said.

Then the knife came down and carved another chunk out of Drake. And then again. Papa Wendigo took up the bits of flesh and flung them at its children, who immediately devoured them.

Bit-O-Drake, now in fun size, he thought to himself hysterically.

He found the thought insanely funny, even though he knew he was going to die. Even though his legs hurt really badly. The knife came down again but this time it took a piece of his right arm.

“Father, we hunger,” one of the little ones said. Its voice was raspy and sounded like death. “A finger. A finger for usss.”

The knife came down twice more.

Drake hissed, sucked in a breath, and gritted his teeth. His body jerked as pain battered against his defenses. Everything inside him wanted to scream and yell his head off but he wasn’t going to let it out.

Never.

He looked down at his hand and saw that it was missing two digits, his pinky and his ring finger. He had to watch as the three monsters took turns cutting him and taking chunks of him off as painfully as they could. He had to watch as they took his flesh and ate it. It went on like that endlessly and along the way his mind just seemed to shut down. He fought on for as long as possible before he couldn’t take it anymore. The pain finally broke him.

As one of the wendigos sliced most of his cheek off and slurped it down greedily, Drake screamed as loud as he could. Then his head swam uncomfortably. He started getting lightheaded, like his head was floating off his body. The world grew dim and distant. The agonizing pain felt so far away now, like it was happening to someone else. He knew he was dying but he was okay with that. After so many years, he thought he was finally going to know peace.

Then darkness overwhelmed him.

As Drake was being tortured, Deanna was making her escape from the cafeteria as fast as she could, stopping only to steal clothes from someone’s empty apartment. She didn’t think it was fast enough though. She kept looking behind her as she raced through alleys shrouded in heavy, midday shadows. Her heart pounded with exertion and fear. Images of her battle with Kendra fluttered through her mind. It made her body shiver with remembered pain even though all her injuries were healed.

She had been so sure she would prevail. She’d been sure she would see Kendra dying and bleeding to death at her feet. The knights, Conor, and even her sister, Deirdre, would have been nothing but lifeless corpses too. But Kendra was too strong and to make matters worse, that trait was starting to filter down to the rest of her pack. By all accounts Conor and Deirdre should’ve been nothing but barely recognizable piles of blood, flesh, and gore. And yet they defeated her pack. They defeated her. Again. They were gaining Kendra’s strength and all of them would only get stronger the longer she reigned as alpha.

Deanna was so lost in her thoughts and misery that she didn’t notice when the urban landscape around her suddenly blurred and merged with the trees of a thick forest. Pretty soon, even the buildings vanished. She was even so focused on escaping that she missed the tree looming in front of her.

She smacked headfirst into it. There was a bright flash of pain before she stumbled back and fell onto the ground.

She got groggily to her feet. Blood dripped from a cut to her forehead before she felt the familiar itch of it healing. She put a hand to her head and looked around, confused and wondering how she had gone from the city to these woods. She also sensed the presence of one or more persons very close to her.

“Who’s there?” she asked. She was afraid but she kept it out of her voice. She was used to being the thing that was feared, not the other way around. “Come out!”

Her fear was growing with each second.

“My Lady Bendis?” she tried. She knew Bendis had the power to transport her to this place. Her fear spiked harder at that thought and she suddenly hoped it wasn’t the goddess. Deanna knew that her continued failures were stacking up and Bendis’ already limited patience was growing even thinner.

“I promise you, My Lady,” she began, “if you give me another chance, I will not fail you again.”

She looked around, her head darting in every direction. The only thing she saw were trees and more trees. No one was there. Then she heard a noise behind her and she whirled around quickly. Two figures stepped out from behind a large tree. Deanna recognized them immediately and her blood turned to ice. Suddenly, she wished it were Bendis that had brought her there. Anyone but the two in front of her.

“Deanna Shade,” one of them said. He was a man in his early thirties sporting artfully mussed brown hair and a goatee. His grey eyes stared hard at her. They were piercing and full of raw hatred. “I suppose it would be a pleasure madame if you had not conspired to murder my son.”

The other one looked a few years older. His hair was a mix of dirty blonde and grey strands. His face was lined with wrinkles but was still youthful and full of life. His faded blue eyes, however, told a different story. They looked ancient, as if they had seen entire worlds come and go. He was staring at Deanna as well, but he looked more amused than anything else. It reminded Deanna of a cat playing with a mouse before killing it. He leaned on a gnarled walking stick etched with dozens of swirling patterns and Druidic symbols with a half-smile plastered on his face.

“Come on, dude. We gonna do this or are we just gonna keep messing with her? I mean, I get it’s more fun, but we got shit to do.” He looked over at the younger man, who was staring back with a look of disgust on his face.

“Must you insist on using this generation’s rather crude mannerisms of speech? I am a nobleman after all, not a dude.” His nose wrinkled on the last word as if he smelled something especially nasty.

“I’m a fan of how direct people are now.” The older man laughed heartily.

Deanna watched the two men bicker, thinking it was a perfect time to make a break for it. Without a second thought, she ran as fast as she could, even shifting into her wolf to get more speed.

She heard the older man’s laugh suddenly get even louder.

She glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Old One, if you would be so kind?” the younger one asked, his voice accented with cultured, British tones.

The Old One blinked once and every tree in a twenty-foot diameter reached out with their branches. They pierced Deanna in several places and yanked her into the air. She could feel the branches leaching away her power and her wolf form was ripped away, leaving her fully human and wearing the remnants of her ripped and tattered clothes. Then the Old One blinked again and the branches started swinging up and down, bashing her into the unforgiving ground each time. He blinked again and the branches stopped and stretched taut, holding her there.

She groaned in pain. Her side hurt like hell. It throbbed and burned steadily. At a guess, she figured she’d broken at least three ribs and that was just the worst of her injuries. She sported several cuts and gashes to her face and several bruises along the rest of her body. Her fear was heavy and potent.

“Well, I guess you have me,” she said, keeping her voice tightly controlled so her fear didn’t come through, not that it mattered. They knew she was scared. “Now what shall we do? And please, gentlemen, use your imaginations. It could be fun.”

“I can promise you, it will not be fun nor will it be pleasurable,” the younger one began. “Do not mistake my intentions.” He walked closer to her and stared into her eyes. “You will die. And it will be painful.”

Deanna could feel her sense of panic rushing forward as both men just stared at her.

“It wasn’t me,” she stammered. Her impending death caused her resolve to shatter. She was struggling against the branches that held her but the more she fought, the tighter they got. She could feel them grinding into her flesh. Blood oozed out and dripped onto the ground. “I was only doing what I was told.”

“Not sure how that makes a difference,” the Old One said. “As far as I’m concerned, you held the knife that killed his son. And I’ve known that boy since he was a baby. Merle was a true, good person.”

There was an actual touch of anger to the Old One’s voice now. He blinked again and the branches sprouted thorns a few inches tall. Some of them poked out of her skin, making her look like a demented porcupine.

“It wasn’t me!” Deanna was nearly screaming now.

She tried to shift into her wolf again, but the branches started to glow a muted green. A wavering in the air, like a heat wave, suddenly appeared around Deanna. Whatever it was, it was preventing her from changing.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, her heart pounding.

“That depends on the answers you give. If they are satisfactory, your death will be less painful. Do not give me what I seek and by the time I am finished with you, death will be a mercy,” the younger one said, his voice cultured and controlled yet still deadly serious. He looked up at Deanna as she hung from the branches. “Shall we begin, Madame?”

“Ask and I will tell you whatever you want to know,” she replied, defeated.

“Where is Merrick?”

Deanna looked at the man for a second, confused.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

The man’s lower face suddenly elongated into the muzzle and fangs of a wolf. It was just the wolf’s muzzle that he changed. The rest of his face was strangely human. With a loud howl, his head jerked forward and his fangs bit down on the left side of Deanna’s stomach.

She let out a piercing shriek. Her body seized uncontrollably, her arms flailing around and digging the branches even further into her wrists. The wound in her side was the worst pain she’d ever experienced in her life. It throbbed, burned, felt like ice, pulsated, and hundreds of other, subtler, sensations. They all assaulted her at the same time and the worst part was that the pain was spreading. She looked down at the wound and saw dark red traceries spreading from it.

“I believe the nature of our agreement was for you to answer my questions. Fail to do so and there shall be consequences.” The younger man stepped back. His face returned to normal as Deanna screamed in agonizing pain. “You strike me as an intelligent woman. I imagine you’ve heard what happens to a wolf that takes my bite. One that is not of my blood, that is.”

She screamed as another wave of pain slammed into her. The dark red traceries were spreading further now and most of her left side was consumed. They were even creeping up the side of her neck.

“Let us try again. Where is Merrick? And do hurry. The toxin is extremely unforgiving. You have roughly five minutes before it completely overtakes your system. I believe you know what happens then, correct?”

Deanna nodded her head, shakily.

“I d-don’t know,” she said, her voice a rough whisper. “P-please. I don’t know.”

“Tell me!” the man yelled.

Deanna flinched. Her eyes were fluttering wildly and were rolling up into the back of her head. The man turned to the Old One and nodded his head slightly. The Old One raised an open hand and then clenched it into a fist. His eyes flashed bright white for a second before returning to their normal shade of blue.

Deanna’s screams suddenly grew louder. Her right eye went from white to blood red in less than two seconds.

“S-stop! Please! I d-don’t know where he is!” She was crying openly now.

“Release the toxin. Let her know some measure of peace before we begin again,” the man said.

The Old One sighed heavily and then made a circling gesture with his index finger. Deanna’s body jerked harshly, and her mouth opened. No sound came out though. The toxin was attaching itself to her brain like a parasite.

“My bad,” the Old One chuckled. “Sometimes I get confused.”

He opened his hand and then held it there for a second. He waved it slightly back and forth. The red traceries immediately started to shrink and fade. Seconds later, even the bite wound began healing.

“Don’t worry, I believe you,” the younger man said. “Let us move onto the subject of my next inquiry. I want to know where Bendis is. And if you feel reluctance or hesitation enter your mind just remember the pain.”

“Look no further,” a voice suddenly rang out.

Both men whipped their heads around and found Bendis smiling at them with a smug look on her flawless face.

“Don’t be so surprised,” she said. Despite her smug demeanor, she looked a little rough around the edges. Her eyes showed a weariness that wasn’t normally there, like she just got finished with a particularly difficult workout. “I can sense when he uses his magic, remember?”

She gestured vaguely at the Old One.

“Yes, well, that would be the point of him using it so brazenly,” the man replied. “You never could resist your baser desires. I figured you would come to me when you realized where I was. You never miss an opportunity for vengeance after all.”

“First you kill my goblins, which weren’t easy to get I hope you know, and now you capture my wolf? If you wanted to see me that desperately, all you had to do was ask.” Bendis walked closer to the two men.

“Quit playing games,” the Old One said. “Where the hell is Merrick, you psychotic bitch?”

“Ah, I see your lust for modern English still continues, Old One,” she said with a look of disgust. “It does not suit you,” she said after a brief pause.

“Answer the question,” the man said.

“You think you can command me?” She laughed loudly, the sound bitter and cruel. “You should know better than anyone, Alrich. I cannot be commanded. I cannot be coerced.” Bendis looked to Deanna with mock sadness. “And you. Your continued failures do nothing but annoy me, Deanna Shade. I should leave you here to rot.” Her face turned cruel and stony. Her eyes were hard and uncaring. She turned back to the two men. “Fortunately, I still have some use for you.”

“Take her and you will know pain, Bendis. You may be immortal, but you are far from invulnerable.” Alrich quickly shifted into a massive wolf of insane proportions. He was just over six feet tall from paw to shoulder blades and easily seven feet long. Two eyes glowed red with hate and rage. Four-inch claws dug into the ground as he prepared to attack.

“Don’t be stupid, Alrich. You cannot stop me. I always get what I want. Just be happy that it is not your destruction but your descendants who I target now. Destroying your family and leaving you to live your immortal existence in prolonged agony is quite...” she paused for a minute as if searching for the right word. “delicious,” she finished.

Alrich’s anger went beyond his ability to control but before he could get near Bendis, a fog rolled through the woods and enveloped everything. As soon as it touched him, every muscle in his body froze. He stood as motionless as a statue but that burning desire to tear the vindictive goddess apart was still simmering through his mind. Eventually, the fog dissipated, and he could move and see again. The world came back into clarity and when it did, he wasn’t surprised to see that both Bendis and Deanna were gone.

The Old One came up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Alrich shifted back into his human form while the Old One handed him his clothes, magically mended after he shredded them shifting.

“She will not stop until the Bane Pack is no more,” Alrich said. “I believe it is time I introduce myself to my granddaughter.”

Drake woke up abruptly, his heart hammering in his chest. He could feel how hard it was working just to keep him alive, which sucked. He’d been hoping it was finally over. But his torture wasn’t done yet it seemed. He could feel every last injury. Every last pain. They clamored and yelled at him and demanded that he do something to fix them. But there was nothing he could do.

He was dying. It was too late.

He didn’t want to, but he felt that he needed to see the extent of the damage. He looked down at himself, the small movement causing a number of wounds on his head and neck to erupt in renewed pain. He hissed in a breath and let it out slowly. He did this several times before the pain subsided somewhat.

Then he looked.

His mind went numb with a mixture of horror and revulsion. The damage was so extensive that he wasn’t sure how he was still breathing. There were long gashes covering most of his body and in some spots there were huge chunks of his flesh missing. He could even see white bone showing against all the blood and gore.

He felt so weak. He could feel his life slowly fading away with each second. He managed to lift his head a little bit. His vision was getting blurry again, so he blinked several times before his eyes cleared.

The dank underground warren smelled like fetid death. He assumed that was his fault. The dirt floor around him was muddy from where his blood had soaked into it. There were furrows in the dirt from where he’d dug in as he fought to control the pain. A few feet in front of him, he found the three wendigos huddled on the floor, snoring loudly.

Guess they had their fill of me, he thought to himself. For now, anyway.

He grimaced as the pain intensified. He held his breath in and let it out in a slow hiss a couple seconds later. When it passed, he started looking around for anything sharp enough to cut his throat with. Or stab himself in the gut. Or the heart. Really, he wasn’t picky so long as he deprived the sick bastards of their plaything. Off to his left, just out of his reach, was a rock with a thin, brutal edge.

“That’ll do,” he wheezed.

He stretched his arm as far as he could, but he could only brush the stone with his fingertips. He bit down on his pain, held his breath, and pushed himself as hard as he could. He gained a little more purchase on the stone. He fumbled with it for a second before he was able to slide it carefully across the ground. It was painfully hard to do, especially with his missing digits. His fingers felt thick and clumsy. He couldn’t feel their tips either, which didn’t help the situation. He supposed it had something to do with all the blood he’d lost.

The seconds ticked away and with each one passing by, he was sure the monsters would wake up and stop him. They weren’t done with their plaything yet.

Not by a long shot.

After what felt like an agonizing eternity, the stone finally got close enough to grab in both of his hands. He picked it up, trying to be quick and yet careful at the same time. He was sure that if he screwed this up, he wasn’t getting a second chance.

The stone wobbled slightly but he steadied his shaking hands with every bit of will power he had left and kept bringing it closer and closer to his neck. The pain in his mauled and ruined body was almost enough to make the task of killing himself impossible but the sheer stubbornness of Drake Mitchell Harper was the stuff of legend. He refused to give up. He refused to let himself go out like those...those...things intended.

He wasn’t giving them the satisfaction.

When he finally had the makeshift blade to his throat, he had to resist the sudden urge to laugh out loud and celebrate his victory. There was a hysterical sense of empowerment at being able to rob the wendigos of their kill. It was so intense that he was sure he’d completely lost his mind.

That’s fine if I did, he thought to himself. That’s okay. Not gonna matter here in a sec. Not gonna matter at all.

He dug the stone into the skin of his neck. There was a sharp pain and blood trickled out slowly.

“See you soon, Luce,” he whispered.

He started sliding the stone across his throat now, going deeper into his neck the farther along he went. The pain was enormous but even so, it was practically lost among the millions of other pains coming from his other wounds.

The wendigos started to move. The big one sniffed as it smelled the fresh blood. It rose its massive head and turned to look at Drake. As soon as it realized what its prey meant to do, it howled its rage.

Drake yelled defiantly as the scream rammed through his ears and into his head.

The other two wendigos lurched awake, growling. A second later and they were coming for him. Drake tried to hurry and finish the job, but the nerves in his hands suddenly went numb. The stone tumbled out of his fingers. He felt hope die inside him and it was a worse torture than anything the wendigos had done. He stared, blank-eyed as the monsters came for him.

And then he watched in complete amazement as all three froze solid.

“Quite an impressive feat,” a voice said. It came from the shadows gathered near the back of the den.

Drake tried to see who was talking but he couldn’t make the person out. The shadows were too thick.

“Whoever is there, just walk away and let me die,” Drake said. His voice was rough and ragged.

“You will not die here, in this filthy place, Drake Harper.” The figure stepped forward where the meager light inside the den touched their face.

Drake saw that the figure was a woman. She looked so soft and beautiful that she had to be some sort of dream. A hallucination.

She couldn’t be real.

Right?

“I am very real,” she said, seeming to pluck the thought right out of his mind.

She walked daintily, picking her steps carefully through a floor littered with old bones and other, even more disgusting things. She drifted past the frozen wendigos, her lips curled in a look of complete disgust. When she got to Drake, she knelt down and looked into his slashed and bloodied face.

“You look quite the mess,” she said. She laid her hand against his left cheek. A chunk of it had been removed, leaving his teeth and gums clearly visible. When she took her hand away, the flesh was whole and undamaged.

Drake could feel the relief from that one simple act. He brought a shaky hand to his cheek and brushed his numb fingertips against it, his expression one of awe and surprise.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The woman took her hand away.

“I have gone by many names over these long years, but you may call me Bendis.” She rose to her feet. “And I have need of you.”

Drake was about to say something more but the brief relief from the healing vanished, replaced with the enormous pain from the rest of his body. His head swirled sickeningly. He turned on his side and vomited a clear, foamy bile onto the floor.

And then he slumped forward, unconscious.

Bendis hefted the broken body of Drake Harper to her shoulder. She didn’t struggle with the man’s dead weight, even though he was quite heavy. She held him easily, as if he weighed no more than a baby. She made sure he was secured and then started walking out. On her way, she passed the wendigos. She stopped and eyed them coldly. She despised the disgusting creatures. Always had. She’d even made it her personal mission to eradicate the species from the earth, but apparently, she had missed a few.

She walked past them, eager to get out of the rancid place. It smelled like a mixture of sewage, blood, and rotting meat. Before she left, she snapped her fingers nonchalantly and the wendigos unfroze. They whirled around and howled at her. The noise was insanely loud but she just stood there with a confident smirk on her face. When they saw that their sonic attack had no effect, they stopped howling at the same time. Then the biggest one sniffed at the air like a dog. His eyes widened in terror and shock.

“The moon goddess,” he shrieked.

“Goodbye,” Bendis said, cheerily.

Her eyes narrowed and all three of the wendigos turned red, and then purple, and finally blue. The next second, yellow ichor was flowing out of their eyes, noses, and ears.

They howled in pain, their hands clamped to their heads. Then, one after the other, they collapsed to the ground in limp heaps, their bodies twitching every few seconds. The ichor flowed out of them and onto the floor for a minute before they finally quit moving.

Bendis looked over her handiwork, pleased with herself. Then she exited the underground warren. The cool, night air felt good on her face and when she looked up, she saw the origin of her power, the moon, hanging bright and silvery in the night sky. She could feel its immense power flowing into the world in pulsing waves. She breathed them in and felt power fill her body.

In a whirl of frigid air, Bendis disappeared, still carrying Drake over her shoulder.

Drake drifted soundlessly through an endless nightmare. The scene started out innocently enough. He was walking through the city streets with Lucy by his side. She was so stunning and beautiful that it hurt to look at her. Her long, blonde hair drifted in a slight breeze and her dazzling brown eyes stared at him with so much love it was mesmerizing.

Then he stopped walking abruptly. So much so that Lucy nearly stumbled. She turned and looked up at him, blinking a few times.

“What’s wrong?” Luce asked.

“You’re dead. You can’t be here.” He was getting a sick feeling in his stomach.

Things felt wrong. Wrong on a level he couldn’t quite grasp.

He ignored Lucy, as hard as that was to do, and glanced around. Everything looked and felt normal. It was a sunny summer day. The air smelled rich and alive. The city was bustling with happy people all smiling or laughing.

Everything was perfect.

But at the same time, everything was too perfect.

“Where am I?” he asked. “And who are you? You’re not my wife.”

He pushed himself away from the woman claiming to be Lucy. He was beyond angry. He was pissed.

“Get the hell away from me!”

He turned and started to run away but everything started exploding around him into whirling bricks and clouds of mortar. All the buildings, cars, glass, and even people were dissolving.

What was left of the rapidly disappearing world flew around Drake in a huge cyclone full of vicious, raw power. He stepped back to get some distance from the cyclonic wall of dust and brick and stumbled into Lucy. He jerked away from her like she was infected with a disease.

“What’s happening? What is this place? Answer me!” he yelled. He lunged at her, this woman who was and wasn’t his dead wife, and caught her by the throat. His eyes burned with the need to hurt her. He wanted her to suffer for bringing him to this place and for wearing that face.

“This is the world between worlds, Drake. I brought you here to talk. And to warn you,” the pseudo-Lucy explained, his hand still wrapped around her throat. Despite that fact, she still talked in a normal voice. Her eyes even glittered cheerfully at him, like talking to him was the best experience of her life.

Then she began to change.

Lucy’s features were gradually replaced with those of an older woman. Her long dark hair was stringy and listless with threads of grey in it. Her face became lined with wrinkles and she started looking thin and frail. Her features were gaunt, and the bones seemed to protrude from beneath her skin. She stared at him with a mixture of sympathy and pity. She was wearing a filthy old robe with plain, dingy clothes underneath which made her look like a long-time veteran of a mental institution.

“I know you will be given an opportunity by the one that will claim she is your savior. And I know that despite the certainty of losing who and what you are, you will accept. But I am here to tell you that it is never too late to go back. It is never too late to reclaim yourself.”

Before he could respond, the woman turned to dust right before his eyes. The cyclone walling him off drifted away and he found himself standing in a blank, empty void of pure white. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest from the experience.

He searched for a way out but there was nothing.

No door.

No windows.

There was nothing but...nothingness.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Hello! Where are you? Who are you?”

“So this is where you’ve been hiding. I thought maybe I had waited too long and missed the opportunity to render my very special kind of aid.”

Drake turned around only to find himself face to face with the alluring woman that had come for him in the wendigo den.

“Who are you? Why am I here?” Drake asked. He was getting tired of these strange women just popping up.

“Two reasons, actually. The first of which is the fact that you needed my help and so I rescued you. That simple, really.” The woman smiled at him and it made her exotic beauty intensely more attractive.

“What’s the other reason?” he asked her, cautiously.

She looked at him, her piercing eyes hardening somewhat.

“Because, Drake Harper, son of Mathias and Phoebe, father of none, I am in need of a soldier.”

Helen Henner sat in her chair facing the same window she had faced nearly every day for over two decades. She saw the world in exquisite, beautiful detail and it made her weep.

But it was bittersweet.

She was still very weak. Spending so long with her mind trapped inside a madman had left her body thin and her muscles practically nonexistent. She wasn’t strong enough yet to move or talk.

She could feel events being set in motion and she felt useless in her current condition. She was doing what she could from here, but she was afraid it wouldn’t be enough.

Kendra was in danger.

And so was Jenna.

She had to protect them.

The world between worlds exploded into shards around Drake. The strange woman right along with it. Then everything was shrouded in darkness. He couldn’t see two inches in front of his face.

He was left with so many unanswered questions and so much confusion he didn’t know where to begin. He hoped he was dead and that he was just stuck in some afterlife, limbo hell, but something told him that was a false hope. There was no way he was getting off that easily. Besides, the woman clearly said she’d thought she had missed her opportunity to save him which led him to believe that she did manage to get to him in time.

Light flared bright and painful.

His eyes blurred and watered from its intensity before he was able to adjust to it. When he finally did, he could only see hazy, half-real images and the merest hint of humanesque shapes looming over him.

“Welcome back,” a voice boomed.

The noise was so loud and unwelcome that he tried to move his hands over his ears to block some of it out, but his arms were too weak. Panic started to set in soon after when he became convinced that he never actually escaped the wendigos. He was convinced they still had him, ready to eat the rest of his body before finally killing him.

His heart raced in his chest “His heart is pounding. He will lose all control if you do not do something,” another voice boomed, different from the first.

Everything was so loud. He couldn’t tell anything about the two voices other than the fact that they were different from each other. He couldn’t tell if they were male or female, man or beast, or even wendigo. The not knowing was what incited the panic. It was a primal, instinctual fear of the unknown.

“Healing the massive damage he sustained from the wendigos overtaxed his body. He is disoriented. Give him some time and he will be as good as new,” the other voice replied.

Drake felt the worse he’s ever felt in his life. Every fiber of tissue inside his body ached and throbbed painfully. His head pounded in time to his heart. His throat was dry and felt like he’d spent several hours swallowing chunks of glass. But despite all those things, what he didn’t feel were the hideous, burning pains of the wounds inflicted by the wendigos. In fact, they felt like they were gone.

He reached up with a tentative hand and glided his fingers over the skin of his face. The abuse from the wendigos, he was shocked to realize, had indeed disappeared. He felt his neck and a wash of pure happiness hit him. It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced in years, but it felt really good. He was happy because the burns from the IED explosion were gone too. Erased like they’d never been.

“Where am I?” he asked. He may have been happy, but that didn’t ease his suspicions. His voice came out cold. He barely got the words out of his dry, aching throat and they weren’t very intelligible.

A hand gripped his left forearm. It was soft, delicate, and filled him with a sense of reassurance that he was surprised to find he craved like a drug.

“Be calm. You are among friends. You have no enemies here,” the voice told him. “I just want to help.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

He looked at the vague shape hovering over him, but his vision was still really blurry.

“I am called Bendis, remember?” The figure gripped his arm tighter and that reassurance and sense of tranquility seeped deeper into him. His heart started to slow down a bit and he felt good. Better than he had in a long time. He tried to sit up, but a hand gently pushed him back down.

“Be easy,” the voice said and as he looked up, his eyes finally cleared. The figure above him was a woman, easily one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. There was a surreal, haunting quality to her beauty that he was instantly attracted to. He knew she was a stranger, but there was still something familiar about her.

“I know you. You were in my dream,” he suddenly said.

A surge of panic and fear gripped him as the full memory of the wendigos and what they did to him blossomed in his head. He looked himself over but was relieved to find that he was completely whole and undamaged. Even his missing fingers were magically back. He wiggled them experimentally and breathed a sigh of relief when they responded to his commands.

“Just a nightmare,” he murmured to himself.

The woman smiled sadly at him.

“Unfortunately, it was no dream. You were there and they did torture you I’m afraid. They gorged themselves on your flesh. But take care not to worry because I came for you. I came there and I rescued you and even healed your injuries.” She looked down at him with something like benevolence and a ridiculously high sense of self-importance. “You will be weak for some time. Rest now and I will come back in a few hours’ time with a proposition.”

She started to walk away. A different woman followed after her and he realized that must have been the source of the second voice.

He tried to protest, to make them stay, but they ignored him. He waited for them to come back but they never did and so he was stuck there, unable to move, with nothing but his thoughts for company. He wondered idly what proposition the woman had for him. If she had the ability to completely heal him then he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she had in store for him. He wasn’t stupid. The woman had power. Scary amounts of power. There was so much of it that he practically felt it coming off her in waves.

Drake managed to roll himself over. He was too weak to do much else. He used his momentum to keep going and eventually fell onto a shaggy, soft carpet. He rolled over some more until he was on his back.

His vision had finally cleared, and he could see again. He looked around and saw that he was in a room with simple furnishings. The walls were a deep blue color and several elegant paintings of landscapes decorated them. Across from the bed was a TV. It was sitting on top of a long wooden dresser. He realized he was in some kind of hotel room and from the look of it, a really swanky one.

He took a deep breath and pushed himself up. It took every bit of strength he had and a couple minutes’ worth of effort before he was able to get to his feet. Once he did, his head became so dizzy he almost fell over. He closed his eyes and waited for the feeling to pass. It was hard. It seemed to take forever, and his legs started getting wobbly.

The dizziness finally went away. He walked to the room’s door. He leaned on it for a minute with his ear pressed against it, listening as hard as he could. When he didn’t hear anything, he slowly opened it and walked into the main room. There was a soft, beige couch taking up most of the space. Folded on it in a neat pile were some fresh clothes. He walked over to them, his movements erratic and jerky. It was like his body didn’t remember how to function properly. When he got to the sofa, he let himself plop onto it. He started yanking off his bloodstained and torn clothes, wincing from the dull ache of his muscles. He stood up, with greater ease, and shed his pants.

“You seem stronger now,” a woman said.

Drake turned toward the sound, his body tensed for a fight. His eyes were narrowed with caution.

“Relax. I won’t hurt you.” It was the other woman that he saw. Not the one that had rescued him.

“Who are you?” he asked and not very kindly. “Why am I here?”

“My name is Deanna Shade and you are here because Bendis saw something in you that she couldn’t pass up. But more on that later. For now, you should eat and recover. You went through a horrible ordeal that would shatter most humans,” the woman said as she walked over to him.

He stood back up, his legs feeling much stronger. His head felt better too, and the dull aches and pains were slowly fading away, leaving him feeling rejuvenated. He watched the woman come to him. She was beautiful with blonde hair and full, red lips that were pulled into a pretty half-smile. Her body moved with a sleek sexiness that reminded him of big cats and her eyes were locked onto his. He caught sight of a spiky tribal tattoo going partway up her neck. When she got to him, she gently put her hands on his chest and pushed him back onto the couch.

“You really shouldn’t be up and about right now. You should be resting,” she whispered, her hands still on his chest.

He hadn’t had time to put the new shirt on and her hand felt really good on his skin. She trailed her fingers lightly over his chest and abs, staring into his eyes the whole time. Drake closed his own as the sensation of her fingers on his skin roiled through his body. Then Lucy’s face came to the forefront of his mind and his hand clamped over Deanna’s tightly. His eyes popped open.

“Why am I here?” he asked again, his voice hard and unrelenting.

Deanna looked at him, pouting slightly. Her eyes flashed with gold light for half a second, so fast that Drake thought he imagined it. But the experience with the wendigos taught him better than that. His guard instantly came up and he scooted away from her.

“What are you?”

“A werewolf, of course. I understand you met a few already.” She got up from the couch and walked a few steps before turning back around to face Drake. Then her eyes glowed bright gold right before her human body exploded outward and was replaced with a huge, blonde-furred wolf.

Drake nearly fell off the couch in his hurry to get away. His mind beat at him with one thought...

Escape.

He got up and tried to race for the room’s door, but he didn’t make it very far. The one calling herself Bendis appeared right in front of him and he nearly collided with her. Her eyes whipped over to Deanna, who had shifted back and stood naked and human.

“Contain yourself,” Bendis snapped. She turned to Drake with a warm smile. “We don’t want to scare our new friend away.”

Drake looked between the two and suddenly wanted to be anywhere but in that room with them. There was no question they were dangerous, and he’d had his fill of monsters. Enough to last a lifetime.

“Thank you...uh...for saving me but I am gonna go now.” He went over to the couch, cautiously staying clear of Deanna, and grabbed the shirt there. He threw it on, put the shoes on next, and walked toward the door. Bendis made no move to stop him. In fact, she looked at him with empathy and understanding.

“Of course you want to leave. I would too if I were in your shoes. But if you walk out that door, know that my offer expires as soon as you step across that threshold.” She took a step to the side to give Drake a clear escape.

Despite his better judgment, Drake hesitated.

“What offer?” he asked. He had already declined Elijah Bishop’s offer, but he found himself wanting to know what hers was. He had a feeling he needed to hear it.

“I offer you something of real value.” She paused, letting the words hang in the air for a moment. “I offer you the truth.”

Drake stared at her, confused. As soon as he heard the word value, he expected money or a job of some sort. Truth hadn’t even been in the ballpark of what he’d been thinking.

“What truth would that be?” He got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Part of him knew where this was going.

“The truth about whom and what killed your beloved wife.”

Drake stopped. He turned around slowly and stared at Bendis.

“What are you talking about?” he said. His body was stiff and rigid. “She was mauled by a rabid dog. Or some kind of animal. That’s what they told me!”

His voice was high and shrill. He stepped closer to her, his nose practically touching hers. Bendis looked at him sadly and took a step back.

“Given what you now know, how probable do you think it is that she died in a simple dog mauling?” she asked. “There are true beasts in this world. Monsters that would shatter your sanity if you gazed upon them for even half a second. Lucy-”

“Don’t you dare say her name,” Drake practically growled.

“Whether you want to accept it or not, the truth is the truth,” Bendis told him. “I cannot bring her back to you, much as I would like to, but I can offer you something else. Something that might bring you a measure of peace.”

Drake simmered in anger, wondering what kind of monster had murdered his wife.

I’ll kill them all, he thought to himself. That single phrase circled around his mind, over and over again. Images of himself slaughtering various terrifying creatures came to his mind.

And he realized in that moment he would do anything to make those images a reality.

“What are you offering me, exactly?” he asked, his voice filled with barely controlled rage.

“I offer a chance at vengeance, of course.”

Drake was lying on a bed in nothing but his boxers wondering if he was doing the right thing. He remembered his dream. He remembered what the woman who had and hadn’t been Lucy told him. This was her warning made real. He might’ve heeded that warning too if Lucy hadn’t been part of the equation. He knew what he was doing wasn’t right, but he didn’t care. He would pay whatever price he had to if it meant finding out what really happened to Lucy. And then he was going to make sure what he did to Lucy’s killer would disgust even the wendigos.

“How long will this take?” he asked nervously.

Bendis didn’t answer him though. She just stood beside the bed, her head slightly bowed and her lips moving at a feverish pace. Her hands were held out in front of her, fingers splayed apart and hooked into claws. It was only the two of them in the darkened room and the only light came from three guttering candles. They cast everything in a warm, orange glow and made shadows dance across the walls.

Drake laid back and stared at the ceiling. His uneasiness with his current situation grew worse with every passing second.

Bendis’ chanting gained more fervor. Her voice rose in pitch and her hands started circling in mystifying patterns. A weird, silver glow started forming around them that slowly spread from her to encompass his entire body. He could feel it sinking into his flesh. It made him so cold he started shivering. It was uncomfortable at first, an inconvenience more than anything else, then the cold deepened all of a sudden and every one of his muscles seized up at once. His lungs felt like they froze inside his chest and he couldn’t breathe. He clawed at the bed sheets and kicked his legs. His eyes widened with fear. He was sure of one thing this time, he really was going to die.

The flickering candles gave way to a new light. It was bright and pure white. It cast strange symbols on the ceiling above him and when he looked down, he could see them on his skin, glowing brightly just beneath the surface. He could even make out some of his veins and arteries.

He moved his head to look at Bendis and tried to tell her to stop, but no words came out of his mouth. He struggled to get away, but his frozen muscles betrayed him.

Unable to breathe or move, Drake felt his heart start to slow down.

It beat and whole seconds would pass before it beat again. Those seconds kept getting longer and longer until finally, it stopped altogether, and Drake Harper was dead.

“When will he wake? Our guest is being obnoxiously dull,” Deanna said from the bedroom’s door. She was leaning against it, bored.

Bendis felt her ire rise and when she looked at Deanna, there was murder in her eyes. She restrained it for the moment, but that restraint wasn’t going to last forever.

“Quiet your insolent tongue before I rip it from your head,” Bendis hissed. “And do not forget your prior disappointments.” She let that hang between them for a second before she went on. “Because I haven’t. Now get the girl. She’s needed.”

Deanna bit her tongue and turned without another word. She walked past the main room and opened a closet door. Inside, bound and gagged was a young girl. Her hair was damp and matted and she wore a bloodstained shirt with a beach scene on it. She only had on one shoe. The other had fallen off in the struggle to grab her.

Deanna reached inside and tried to grab her, but the girl wasn’t giving up without a fight. She lashed out in whatever way she could, but her bindings made it impossible to do any lasting damage. Deanna's patience evaporated and she ended up yanking the girl out by the hair.

“I’ve had a really bad day so if I were you, I would...STOP!” she yelled as she banged the bound girl’s head into the wall.

The girl let out a pained grunt and slumped forward. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head.

“Lovely. Just bloody lovely.” Deanna put her fingers to the girl’s throat, hoping for a pulse. Lucky for her, there was one. “It’s a shame we have to kill you now. I do like your fire. Such a fighter.”

She let out a sigh, grabbed the girl around her waist, and then hefted her onto her shoulder. She walked to the bed where Drake was laying, his body cold and lifeless and his skin pale.

Deanna dumped the body onto the floor at Bendis’ feet.

“At least this next part should be fun,” she said, her eyes locked onto Drake’s still form.

Drake woke with a sudden start, his arms and legs jerking up and then back down in quick, rapid succession. He gasped for air but quickly found he didn’t need it. That was a startling enough revelation, but nothing compared to what he realized next.

His heart wasn’t beating.

He was alive. He was aware of the world around him, but he was dead. He looked around but quickly squinted his eyes against a bright, harsh light. It hurt his head to look at it for more than a few seconds.

“It will take some time for your body to adjust to its new improvements,” a voice said. He recognized it as Bendis’ immediately but it was so loud he had to clamp his hands to his ears.

“What is this? What did you turn me into?” he asked, suddenly afraid.

“I turned you into a weapon, Drake Harper. I turned you into an engine of destruction. It’s what you wanted and so it shall be.” Bendis took his face in her hands, her depthless eyes peering at him with such intensity that it made him uncomfortable.

“The ritual isn’t finished, however. There is another, crucial part.” Her fingers dug into the skin of his face to emphasize her point. “Now listen and tell me what you hear.”

Drake tried but soon found that his ears were being assaulted by so much sensory input that he was having trouble sorting them out. He heard traffic. He heard sirens. He heard the wind brushing against the walls of the hotel. He heard distant TV sets and radios. He even heard the bustling of people down in the lobby.

But one sound overrode all the others and some new instinct he had gravitated toward that more than anything else.

Heartbeats.

There were two of them. They pounded and pulsed. One was strong and full of life while the other was slightly weaker. Drake looked to Bendis, confused. She didn’t have a heartbeat either.

“Yes. You hear them don’t you. They resonate inside you. That’s good. Now focus on your sense of smell. Tell me what scent you are picking up,” Bendis said, her excitement gleaming in her eyes.

Drake looked questioningly at her but did what she said. He breathed in as deeply as he could. A second later, he did so again. He smelled...nothing at all. No scents of any kind. Except for one, that is.

The smell of blood.

As soon as it hit him, his body seemed to react on nothing but pure instinct. His eyes turned into liquid silver. Pain shot through his gums and he could feel his canines lengthen into brutal, savage fangs. His mind was overcome with one simple imperative. To feed. To sink his fangs into his victim’s neck and drink their blood until nothing was left. His eyes darted everywhere, filled with that hunger and need. They locked onto Deanna the minute she walked inside the room and draped over her shoulder was a body. The smell of blood was coming from the body.

He shuttered when he caught more of the scent and there was no holding back. There was no way he could. He didn’t want to kill anyone but the need to feed was too strong for him. He shot off the bed so fast he was nothing but a pale blur. In less than a second he had the body wrapped in his arms. It was a girl and she didn’t look a day over twenty-one. His mind was horrified at what he was about to do, but that didn’t stop him from ripping her throat open and drinking her blood.

The whole time while Drake was feeding, Bendis and Deanna watched. There was a sick satisfaction on the moon goddess’s face while Deanna’s concern grew more and more intense.

“Are you sure this plan was wise? Do you not remember what happened with Vlad the Impaler? He turned into a psychopathic killer. Do you not think the same will happen to Drake?” Deanna asked, her eyes locked on the newly made vampire.

The muscles on Drake’s back twitched and moved as he clenched the girl’s body closer to him. Slurping and sucking sounds filled the air.

“You are wrong. Vlad was always a psychopath. Turning him into a vampire did nothing but make it easier for him to murder people,” Bendis replied casually, despite her knowing exactly what kind of monster she was unleashing.

She was unwilling to admit it, but Deanna was right. Vampires were volatile at best and unstoppable monsters at worst. She’d been forced to secretly aid the humans in destroying her first, failed attempt at creating them because they had grown completely out of control and were threatening the very existence of the world.

Vlad had been the first, but their numbers grew as new ones were created from the corpses of his victims. In less than three months, he had created an undead army of vampires. And they had wreaked havoc on Eastern Europe for more than three centuries before they were finally eradicated.

It may have backfired then, but she was sure she had it right now. Drake was special. His humanity was a glowing light and she was positive its strength would help control his vampiric impulses. He was the perfect candidate, for a number of reasons other than his incredible strength of will. One of those reasons was that she’d seen the thread of Drake’s fate align with that of Jenna Bishop. She’d also seen him battle monsters with brutal efficiency, defying creatures more powerful than himself.

Because of those things, she knew she had to have him.

She knew she had to make him hers.

The wendigos grabbing him had been just the thing she needed to introduce herself and start the process of subverting him to her cause. The added knowledge of what happened to his wife was the last weight to finally tip the scales in her favor. Now she had her ultimate weapon.

She had her vampire.

A vampire that would retain enough of his humanity to keep him focused on his desire for revenge and ultimately help progress Bendis’ plans for Kendra and the Bane pack further.

Everything was coming together nicely.

Drake finished with the girl and laid her body down as gently as he could. There was a soft gentleness to his movements that Bendis and Deanna both noticed. Drake saw the wound to her neck, and it hit home that he killed her. That he murdered her and took her life.

He just sank to his knees.

“What have you done to me?” he asked, his voice wavering and filled with despair.

“I made you stronger. I made you deadlier. All tools you will need to get the vengeance you seek. The creature that murdered your wife is strong so you will have to be stronger. He will have others that will stand by him. They will fight for him. You will have to make for yourself an army that is completely loyal to you. One that will die for you. This is what you wanted. This is what I offered you.” She stood over him and reached out a hand.

Drake numbly took it in his own and rose to his feet. He turned to look at the body of the girl.

“Who was she?” he asked.

“Her name is Gwendolyn Wright. She was a page serving the Order of the Defaeco Knights,” Bendis explained. She watched Drake’s eyes widen in shock. “Yes. I know of your meeting with Elijah Bishop and his daughter. I understand your confusion. You think they are, to put it simply, the good guys. Why then have they allied themselves with the very creatures that are responsible for Lucy’s death?”

Drake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Elijah had seemed so trustworthy and honest. He had watched Jenna risk her life for Gerard and himself. He might not know them that well, but he couldn’t believe they would compromise themselves and start fighting on the wrong side. He didn’t want to believe Bendis, but his mind raced back to the fight with the first wendigo. He remembered the monsters that had been fighting alongside Jenna. And then everything clicked.

“The wolves,” he said quietly. He looked at Bendis for confirmation. “The wolves killed Lucy?”

“Not wolves. Wolf.” Bendis moved closer to him and then turned to Deanna. “Leave us and take that with you.” Her head jerked over to Gwen’s body.

Deanna walked over to the body and grabbed it underneath its arms. She glanced at the two of them once and then dragged it out of the room.

Bendis turned back to Drake.

“Let’s show you the truth. I think you’ve earned that much.”

Without warning, Bendis grabbed the sides of his head with both hands. Instantly, he was transported to a different time and a different place. It was a dark parking lot, filthy with old trash. There were several puddles from a recent downpour. His sense of smell had practically been stripped away but he could imagine the place didn’t smell too pleasant. He took a deep breath anyway and did find a couple faint sources of blood here and there.

Bendis stood next to him.

“This is where Lucy dies,” she said, unnecessarily.

Drake pretty much figured that. It didn’t help ease the shock, however, when Lucy strolled across the lot. She was carrying two grocery bags full of food. She had her phone out in front of her with her thumb scrolling across the screen. She wasn’t paying attention when a man in a black shirt and jeans stepped out of a dark building and started following her.

It was too dark for Drake to really see the man’s features, but his enhanced eyesight did pinpoint one thing. The gleam of white fangs in his mouth and fingers tipped with ferocious claws.

He tried to run to Lucy, but his legs wouldn’t move. He tried yelling at her next, but Lucy didn’t hear him. He struggled and fought like a madman to try and get to her, but there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could do but watch, firsthand, as the woman he’d loved was brutally killed.

He turned back to Bendis, his eyes wide and desperate. Liquid silver flowed into them and gave them a wicked, metallic sheen.

“Stop this. I don’t want to see anymore. Take me away from here. Now!” Drake was hysterical. If he still had a heartbeat, it would’ve been pounding erratically.

“I cannot do that. You have to see. You have to bear witness to truly understand the type of monster you are dealing with.”

But Drake refused. He turned away from what was about to happen, ashamed. Bendis, however, didn’t take rejection well. Her face contorted in anger.

“You will do as I say!” she screamed. All semblance of kindness or gentleness was abruptly gone from her voice. It changed in a microsecond from something sweet and pleasant, to something horrible and tortuous.

Drake felt Bendis’ voice spear through his mind and bend it to her will. Without him doing anything, his head swiveled around to where he clearly saw Lucy and the man following her. Even his eyes disobeyed him. He was using every ounce of willpower to shut them, but they refused to budge. He fought to keep control of his head but every time he tried, a deep, numbing pain would rip through it and he had to stop.

“Please, don’t do this. I don’t want to see,” he begged. It didn’t sound like his voice. The words weren’t something he ever really said. He didn’t beg. He didn’t plead. Even when the wendigos were ripping into him, he never once pleaded for his life.

But he begged now.

He pleaded now.

Bendis was relentless, however, and did not release her control over him. Instead her hand gently gripped Drake’s shoulder. He immediately felt her cooling, reassuring presence. It started to spread through his body until he was passive and stood mutely, not protesting anymore.

He had to watch as Lucy’s killer swung his arm out, his claws extended. They sliced into the back of Lucy’s legs, hamstringing her. She cried out in pain and shock as she fell to the puddle-ridden ground, her groceries leaping out of her hands and tumbling everywhere. She screamed for help and tried to crawl away, but she was injured and couldn’t. In seconds, the man attacking Lucy was on top of her, his weight immobilizing her.

Despite how outmatched she was, and despite her evident pain, Lucy didn’t stop fighting. She wriggled her body. She lashed out with nails and fists. She screamed her lungs out.

In the end, however, it was useless.

The man slashed his claws out once more, this time slicing into her exposed neck and slitting her throat from one end to the other. As soon as the blood flowed, the man went into some kind of berserker frenzy. It was like all semblance of humanity suddenly evaporated in him. He lunged down and tore into Lucy’s corpse, biting out huge chunks of meat. It was clear to Drake why the police thought a rabid dog had gotten to her.

It was rabid, he thought to himself. It just wasn’t a dog. It was a werewolf.

The tears in his eyes dried up as anger raged through him again. It was so intense; it even overrode the haze Bendis wrapped him in. He turned to her and Bendis saw the vampire writhing under the skin of Drake’s face as his emotions took control of him. His eyes turned that flat, metallic silver and the canines of his teeth lengthened into wicked fangs.

His eyes were focused solely on the monster that just murdered his wife. He was getting up from the ground now, Lucy’s mangled body between his spread feet. Drake could see his face now. It was smeared with blood and had both human and wolf features mixed in. Drake watched as the wolf features slowly melted off the werewolf, leaving a human face smeared with blood clearly visible. The man was smiling too. It was a broad, lazy grin that looked like the attacker was on a powerful high.

The man’s features were still shrouded in shadows. He was stumbling around the alley, his movements unsteady. He walked over to the nearest wall and leaned against it.

Not once did he look over at the woman he’d just slaughtered.

Not once did he even acknowledge what he did.

The only thing he did was lean against the wall with his head hanging down. A light above him turned the shadows on his face from dark patches to a solid black mask.

Come on, Drake urged.

All the man had to do was look up for a few seconds. Then the light would show Drake everything he needed to see.

He kept waiting for that chance, but the man continued leaning against the wall, breathing heavily. Hope started to dwindle the longer he stood there, watching and waiting for an opportunity.

“This...vision, or whatever it is, won’t do me much good if I can’t see the sick fuck’s face!” Drake practically screamed.

“Patience,” Bendis quietly reproached. Then her head turned very slightly toward the street. “All good things to those who wait.”

Drake followed her line of sight until he could see several people, lit up by the bright neon glow of storefront signs, looking into the lot.

Faintly, Drake was sure, they could see the vague outline of his dead wife.

“Oh my GOD!” one of them yelled, rushing to help Lucy, even though it was already too late.

Drake’s head immediately went back to Lucy’s murderer.

As soon as the werewolf heard the scream, his head jerked up. It was only for a second, two at the most, before he started running, but in that brief amount of time, Drake got everything he needed.

He nearly exploded with blind rage when he saw who murdered his wife.

He knew him. He’d seen the man before. He even remembered his name.

Conor Dewar.