Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1) (23 page)

My heart ground to a halt. I had seen the beast before. I had trembled as it stood over me and marveled at his familiar eyes as they bore down on me. But I didn’t know it was Abram then. I couldn’t look and see all the cues I had missed before.

Now, with it literally lying inches from my naked body, I could see how much of the beast
was
Abram. It wasn’t something that took him over and made him an imprisoned bystander in his own body. It was
him
.

The creature’s long arms were covered in thick black fur, but they were also corded in the same muscle Abram’s had been. The creature’s face, while pulled into an elongated snout, still retained some of Abram’s more striking features.

Even his chest, that chest I longed to lay my head against while drifting to sleep against the drumming of his beating heart, was recognizable behind the alterations.

It was like looking at a model after her first trip to Europe. He was the same, but somehow very different.

“Charisse, get away from it!” Dalton’s gun was pointed straight at Abram, as were the guns of the officers who flanked him.

His sudden voice pulled me from my reverie, and I grabbed a nearby throw blanket to cover myself. Sure, I’d done some nude art modeling in college, but that didn’t mean the entire N.H.P.D. needed to see my charms.

“I have a shot!” said the officer to Dalton’s left.

“No!” Dalton
yelled. “Stand down. Nobody discharges anything until that woman gets to safety.”

That woman.

Was he angry with me? Was that why he called me that instead of my name? He certainly had the right to be. Though I hadn’t meant to, I had strung him along. I kept him in the—what do they call that baseball thing?—the bullpen. And all the while I pretended to be confused about my feelings. But that was never the case. Since the first moment I laid eyes on Abram, since he literally swept me off my feet, I knew, deep down, there was no one else for me.

I had lied to Dalton as much as I’d been lying to myself.

So maybe this was Dalton finally realizing that I wronged him. Or maybe it was just him reacting to seeing my boss transform into a giant wolf-monster.

Either way.

“Char, move away,” he said, his teeth clenched. His gun was still fixed on Abram’s head, and I wondered how in control my lover was at this very moment. The last thing anybody needed was for him to go all ‘disgruntled werewolf’ on the New Haven Police Department. None of us could explain that.

“You don’t understand,” I said as quietly as I could manage. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

But could I be sure of that? The beast huffed beside me, hot breath and moisture pushing against my neck. Its muscles tensed beneath me, and fighting the urge to dart to the other side of the room for my clothes, I tried to remind myself that this was Abram.

He would never hurt me. Even in this form. He had proven as much. He fought that other beast off tooth and nail when it wanted to make a Supplicant energy drink out of me, and he would do it now.

Except, in this particular moment, I wasn’t the one who was in danger.

Would bullets hurt Abram in his beast form? Would anything? There was so much I still didn’t know, and there was no way of denying (to myself or anyone else) that I was in this. All the way. So I hung onto the things I did know. Abram was a good man. Beast or not, I was safe with him. Dalton was a good man, too. He would listen to reason. I just had to make sure he saw it.

“I promise you he’s not going to hurt me,” I repeated. Clutching the throw blanket tighter around my body, I ran my free hand along the length of Abram’s forearm.

It was strange, but not completely unpleasant. In fact, it was surprising how right it felt.

A low growl escaped Abram’s mouth. I thought about pulling my hand away, but there was no need. Abram would not hurt me. I knew that as well as I knew my own name.

“Get away from that thing, Char,” Dalton said, his hands and voice steady.

He was less of a boy now, less of the snot-nosed kid that used to tag along behind Lulu and me. There wasn’t even a shadow of the easygoing guy I had once flirted with. This was Dalton the detective—Dalton the grown man who was exceedingly good at his job.

Unfortunately, at this particular moment, his job very likely entailed firing live ammo at my boyfriend.

“Don’t shoot him, Dalton,” I said, standing my ground, shifting my body further in front of Abram’s body.

The growl Abram was producing grew louder, and Dalton began to inch toward me.

“If you’re not going to move, then I’m going to move you,” he said quietly.

“You’ll shoot him if I move,” I answered.

“You’re damn right I will,” he said through clenched teeth.

I resolved to stay exactly where I was. I would be a human bulletproof vest if necessary. Not because I thought I could stop bullets—nor did I even know if they would harm Abram in this state—but because I knew that Dalton would never take the shot if there was even a chance of hurting me and that, if he did start firing, Abram would never forgive himself for what the beast did in retaliation.

It didn’t matter, though. In an instant, Abram was on his feet, settling into a human-like stance—all fur, teeth, and trepidation. He slunk away from me, his hands warped into razor sharp claws.

Dalton’s pistol followed him, and I realized what he was doing. Abram was moving away in order to keep me safe. All these stupid men were going to get themselves killed to keep me safe. And the funny thing was, in the end, it probably wouldn’t be close to enough. Not with that other beast out there.

“Dalton, don’t you dare!” I yelled. But Abram’s growl got louder, and before I could stop it, shots thundered through the room.

“No!” I screamed, but it was too late. That idiot to Dalton’s left had begun firing. And once he started, he didn’t stop.

Bullets went flying toward Abram. He darted around
and with all the agility one would expect from an animal. But that moron’s gun kept firing. Abram skidded along the walls, and I watched as fresh bullet holes appeared closer and closer to his
body.

Abram sprung toward the idiot just as I heard the click that signified he was out of ammo, and I braced myself to watch Abram tear him in half.

But another gun fired. Dalton’s gun.

And he didn’t miss.

Abram reared back, howling loudly. It was so strong, so sharp, that I thought my ears might bleed.

“Dalton!” I screamed.

Abram swung at him, knocking the gun out of his hand before he could fire again. But instead of attacking Dalton, Abram grabbed his gut, charged out of the way,
and
jumped through the nearby window, shattering the glass.

I ran for the window, still clutching the throw blanket around my body. But by the time I got there, Abram was gone. He had vanished into the woods, save a trail of blood that marked his path.

I spun to find Dalton staring at me, holding his arm and narrowing his eyes.

“Search the house,” he said breathlessly to one of his officers. Turning to the other, he motioned to me. “Get her dressed, and put her in the car.”

***

Dalton had me in the squad car. After getting me out of the house, he had given me a quick look over with his first aid kit, but he hadn’t said so much as a word to me. Now we were on our way back to New Haven, and the silence was killing me.

“Why am I in the backseat?” I asked.

I expected the silent treatment, but apparently all it took was one of us to break the ice.

“Because I’m not sure it’s safe for you to be up here,” he answered, eyes on the road.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked, hands against the cage that separated us.

“You’re acting irrationally. I think you may have been drugged.”

“Drugged?” I asked, my eyebrows scrunched. “Look, you don’t know what’s going on here, Dalton. And if you did—”

“I understand enough, Char. I understand your boss has some weird cabin in the woods. I understand he was holding Ellie Farmer, the first girl who went missing, like some kind of caged animal. And I understand he turned into something that I definitely
don’t
understand.” He swallowed hard. “I also understand he might very well have been raping you, and that whatever he’s been dosing you with has kept you unaware it was going on.”

“He wasn’t raping me!” I screamed, slapping my hands against the cage. “I told you, you don’t understand! It’s very dangerous for me to be out here right now, Dalton! You need to bring me back!”

“Is that what he told you?” Dalton took a right onto Main Street. He slid to a halt in front of Town Hall. The sheer amount of cars here shocked me.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “If you think I’ve been drugged, then shouldn’t you bring me to the damn doctor?”

“Dr. Miller is inside. Everyone is,” Dalton said, stepping out and rounding the car to open my door. “After you disappeared, I convinced the mayor to declare a state of emergency. Everything has been on lockdown.”

“How did you find me?” I asked, as he opened the door and helped me out.

“I pinged your cellphone.”

“But my location services—”

“Were turned off. I know.” He had me by the arm now. It felt strange, as though he had never touched me before, as though no man other than Abram ever had. “I figured he might do something like that. That’s why it took me so long.”

The thought of Abram leapt into my mind. He was hurt. He was bleeding. He might die if I didn’t find him. But even if I could manage to get away, I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him. But I had to. I couldn’t just let him die in the woods like an animal.

Even if he was an animal at the moment.

“What are we doing here?” I asked as he pulled me toward Town Hall.

“I told you. We’re in a state of emergency. The mayor’s called a mandatory town meeting to discuss how to deal with the situation.”

“And what situation is that, exactly?” I asked.

He pushed open the double doors, and all uncertainty I had about what he meant washed away like suntan oil at Sports Illustrated beach shoot. The hall was jam-packed. The lights were off, and a movie was playing against the wall.

No, it wasn’t a movie. That was Abram. He was standing there stark naked with his naughty bits blurred out. It was the scene from just a few minutes ago, only I had been cut out, replaced with a huge blur.

“Officer Evans was wearing a vest cam,” Dalton said. “Everything was transmitted to the chief of police. And it’s a good thing. I’m not sure I’d have been able to convince them.”

“I’m going to play this again,” the mayor said from a podium at the end of the room. “But I’ll repeat my initial warning. This subject matter is intense and frightening. It would be best to shield your children’s eyes.”

And with that, Abram morphed into the beast right there on the wall-turned-screen. Gasps, whimpers, oohs, and ahhs filled the room. Someone toward the back shrieked.

Dalton marched toward the stage as the lights turned back on, and the two other police officers came up on either side of me. Their stance made their intentions clear. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Halfway down the aisle, Dalton started speaking, as though whatever he had to say couldn’t wait until he got to the podium.

“We have to keep our wits about us, people,” he said, loud enough for his voice to carry over the chatter of the room. “I know this isn’t a situation any of us ever thought we’d find ourselves in. But the truth is, we’ve all known that something has been plaguing New Haven for quite some time.”

If it wasn’t Abram he had been talking about—if I didn’t know all that I knew—I would probably be swooning right now over his amazing leadership skills and bravery. But that timeline
could never exist again. Life wasn’t that simple.

Dalton settled at the podium, looking particularly comfortable up there. “We’ve felt the unease. We’ve sensed the foreboding. We’ve all held our children a little closer, all locked our doors extra tightly.” He pounded his fist on the podium. “And now we know why.”

Pointing to the light-drenched image of Abram on the pull-down screen, he continued. “This thing—this
monster
—is very real. It’s after our citizens. It’s after our women. How many people does it have to hurt, does it have to kill, before we take action?” He hit the podium again. “There is only one course of action. We have to put an end to this before it goes any further.”

Applause lit up the room, but Dalton continued, shouting over it. “We have to protect our town, protect our citizens, and protect ourselves by whatever means necessary. We have to fight back. We have to kill the beast!”

I stood there in shock as the chants grew louder.

“Kill the beast! Kill the beast!”

It was a living nightmare. New Haven had been whipped into a frenzy, with Dalton at the head. And the object of their misplaced fear and anger was the man I loved.

“Stop,” I muttered as people started to clap and raise their hands in solidarity.

This was like a tsunami—destructive and unstoppable. But I had to try. Because if I didn’t, then either Abram or a hell of a lot of the people demanding his murder were going to wind up dead.

“Stop!” I said louder. But my voice was lost in the sea of screams, in the fog of rage.

If I could just talk to them, if I could just get them to calm down for a second, I was sure I could make them see reason.

They would have to come to terms with magic, and witches, and monsters, and all of that, which hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world for me personally—but I had done it, and they could, too. Heck, if they believed in the beast, most of my hard work had already done for me.

Though I didn’t care for this town, the people in it were generally good. They looked out for each other. They protected their neighbors. This sort of mob mentality wasn’t like them. They had their backs against the wall, though, and the same desire to keep their community safe was pushing them toward this bloody agenda. I had to change the course of this conversation, and to do that, I needed to be up at that podium.