The Beast Within (6 page)

Aaron struggled against his bonds. The restraints tightened until his fingers grew purple. From outside came another crash, followed by a human yell. The grating rumble became a torrent, sounding like a garbage disposal gnawing away at a ceaseless supply of waste. Tony’s placations turned to shouted threats, useless ones, apparently, as the sounds of destruction grew more violent. Tony’s voice faded away as he either fought or fled his attacker. Wood splintered. Glass shattered. Tony’s pained shout cut through the building like a knife.

Aaron’s composure fell away at the sound. His bones shifted, popped and slid into their new positions. Hair sprouted along his body. He knelt against the floor, bowing his head and keeping his back straight, aiding the shift as Carlos had taught. Even with his mind eager for the change, his muscles primed to accept the transition, it was agony. Aaron’s face elongated. Tissue crackled under his thickening skin. His sinuses stretched. His clothes tore from his body as his muscles changed and bulged. Sulfur and the scent of Tony’s fear filled his nose. His thumbs faded under the shaggy black fur of his foot.

Fully shifted, he pulled against the restraint, but it had already adapted to his changed physiology. On his first clan-approved outing he had accidentally peed on an electric fence. The agony of that was nothing compared to the frantic bolts of power shooting into his forelegs. The struggle outside was growing sporadic. He could hear Tony’s heart racing, could feel the fatigue in his limbs. The wolf in him knew when a kill was certain, and it recognized it now. Tony was prey.

Aaron pulled against the restraints. The cuffs cut into his thick fur, then into his skin, all the while shooting volts into his body. He snarled and bore down, pulling with all of his enhanced strength as his muscles twitched involuntarily with the ceaseless shocks. The tiles around the pipe cracked. A chunk of porcelain flew into the air. Aaron pulled harder. The pipe inched upwards, buckling the floor, splintering grout. Tony had grown quiet. His heart was slowing. His breathing rasped and sputtered, then halted. Aaron gave one last massive heave and the pipe clattered free. He crashed into the floor.

Tony’s breathing resumed in a coughing fit that echoed like a windstorm in Aaron’s perked ears.

A shadow darkened the glass door.

Aaron had earned Qi’s attention.

With front paws still bound together, Aaron sat back onto his powerful haunches, propelled out of the shoes still clinging to his back paws and leaped through the glass.

Chapter Seven

Dogs Like You

Glass clung to his fur and stabbed at his muzzle as Aaron sailed through the opening he had made. Qi, flat-faced, nearly as black as Aaron’s pitch fur and as big as a pair of NFL linebackers, was not prepared to meet a werewolf. The demon shouted in utter astonishment and backpedalled. Teeth bared, Aaron flung his monstrous lupine bulk into Qi. He drove the demon to the ground. His bound front paws slipped on the wood floor, but he caught himself by burying his teeth in Qi’s neck. The whites of Qi’s eyes shined wide with panic, but the demon made no sound. Aaron kept the pressure tight on Qi’s neck, agonizing, terrifying, but not deadly. Not yet. Foul blood trickled onto his tongue. Aaron searched the room for Tony. His partner was sitting on the floor like a rag doll that had been dumped by a fickle child. A deep purple bruise ringed his neck where Qi had choked him. His breath wheezed past the injured windpipe. Aaron whined for him. Tony shook his head as if to clear it, then looked dazedly at Aaron. His jaw dropped as Aaron regarded him with yellow wolf eyes.

“Oh, shit.”

If Aaron could have smiled, he would have. Instead he looked down at the demon, then back at Tony. He whined and perked his ears questioningly.

“Let him up,” Tony said.

Aaron snarled a warning at the dangerous hulk sprawled under him.

“It’s okay,” Tony replied. “We’ve got this. Let him up.”

Aaron quickly released Qi. He leaped back from the rising demon. His bound paws caused him to land awkwardly at Tony’s feet. He curled around in front of his partner, shoulders brushing Tony’s hips, and faced the demon, snarling loudly.

“Looks like you tell me who ordered that broom from you, or you become puppy chow,” Tony said. He placed his hand on Aaron’s head, ran his fingers through the coarse fur until they contacted skin.

Aaron thrilled at the touch. To Qi, he offered a growl that rumbled deep in his throat and nearly vibrated the floor.

Qi glanced from Tony to Aaron, clearly assessing the threat.

Aaron raised his hackles. The demon in front of him was not a true predator. He could sense it. For all of his brawn, Qi didn’t have much in the way of real power. He was a metal smith with a single specific magical ability, nothing more. When faced with equal strength, werewolf strength, he would back down. Aaron put on his best menacing predator expression.

“Private transaction,” the demon relented.

“I’d guess all of your transactions are under the table,” Tony replied. “Try giving us something a little more specific.”

“Dumbass humans, always getting in where you don’t belong,” Qi muttered. When Aaron growled again, he changed his tone. “All I know is someone came to me wearing a glamour. It was a male, I’m pretty sure. Human, from the smell of him.” The nostril slits on his face flared. “Pushy. Wanted a rushed job. I gave him one. Double price. He paid half up front, welched on the second.” Qi smiled around a mouthful of rotten teeth. “Bet those bristles cut real deep in the floor, didn’t they? Left all sorts of telltale marks.”

“They did, at that,” Tony agreed. “You made him a shoddy broom on purpose?”

“I get insulted, I get distracted.” Qi gave a shrug. “My work suffers.”

“You made sure those bristles dug into the concrete. You wanted us to find you?”

“Me? No. Not particularly.” Qi gave another shrug. “Just the one who hired me. I figured he deserved a run in with you assholes after walking off without paying me in full. But, instead of finding him, you geniuses found me… How did you find me, by the way? I’m hard to track, you know. Only former clients can call my ‘number’.” He jabbed a meaty fist at the splintered bathroom door and the candles flickering beyond.

“We received a tip.”

“An informant? Demon, no doubt.” Qi’s featureless face crumpled in disgust. A moment later, he shook off his irritation. “Oh, well. I’ll just change my word of power,
again
.”

“How would you like it if we did what you wanted and caught this guy? Maybe insulted him the way he insulted you?”

“Go on.”

“We catch this guy, make him confess. Hold him in a cell for who knows how long. Could even become a termination job. You’d like that, big guy?”

Qi grinned.

“We get this human, we get our rocks off, you get your rocks off. Everyone is happy. And we don’t come looking for you ever again. You can keep making your hellfire brooms with no interference from Kapre Security, Maryland. You have free rein to conduct your business as you please while we turn a blind eye. C’mon, Qi, it’s the cherry on the proverbial shake.”

“Cake,” Qi corrected.

“Demons now know clichés?”

“I make it my business to sound hospitable to my potential clients. Being familiar with human lingo helps me fit in.”

“You must do a lot of your work over the phone,” Tony remarked as he surveyed the massive, midnight-hued demon. “Anyway, I don’t like cake. I like shakes. Now, how about your buyer? Any specifics you can remember?”

“I give you information, then it gets out that my reputation for being closed-mouth goes down the drain. That’s not good for business. Killing you here and now, well, that might be a better way of putting a stopper in this leaking jar.”

Aaron stepped forward, snarling. His mouth watered for the taste of blood.

“Easy, now,” Tony said, keeping his hand entwined in Aaron’s scruff. “My friend is getting anxious for answers. Look, we only need a hint, a push in the right direction. That’s all.”

“Like I said, he had on a glamour. Couldn’t see past it. But, he was talking a lot about dogs.”

“Dogs?” Tony tightened his fist in Aaron’s fur.

“Not just any dogs.” Qi fixed Aaron with a grin. “Dogs like you.”

Aaron perked his ears.

“You don’t know?” Qi let out a booming laugh. “You don’t know!”

“Cut the shit, Qi,” Tony said. His fingers were so tightly laced in Aaron’s hair it hurt.

“I’ll give you the one bit of information that’ll get you going, plus ease the curiosity of your pointy-eared friend, here. And then I’ll be on my way, undisturbed. Is that a deal?”

“Deal.”

“You’re not just any oversized wolf, my panting friend.” Qi leaned in close. “Oh, no. There are lots of different doggies out there, and your bite came from pretty high on the supernatural food chain.”

A whine escaped Aaron’s throat before he could squelch it. The sound brought the smile back to Qi’s face.

“You’re welcome.” Qi gave a small, mocking bow, then disappeared.

Chapter Eight

Mixed Messages

Qi’s departure left behind a stench of burning sulfur. Tony immediately removed his hand from Aaron’s scruff. Aaron looked up at him, but Tony avoided his gaze. A moment later the Thurisaz sigil appeared, glowing softly in the exact spot the demon had been standing. Qi’s appearance at—and assumed intended compliance to—human command was listed on the exhaustingly long list of official bad ideas noted in the British Anglo-Demonic Pact.

“I should call that in before Braven sends a team out here,” Tony said. He bent down and unfastened the restraints, then stood and moved away. “Why don’t you change? There are clothes in the bedroom closet. Take whatever you want.” He gestured up the stairs, fished his phone out of his pocket and gave Aaron his back.

Aaron watched him dial the switchboard number and give his access code. Would Tony include him in his call-in? Would he report that he had a werewolf for a partner? Aaron decided he didn’t want to hear. He trudged up the steps, Tony’s voice fading only slightly due to his excellent hearing. Once he’d changed, however, his human ears wouldn’t be able to pick up the sounds of his partner turning him over to Braven.

Aaron wasn’t looking forward to shifting back into human form. As a wolf he was still dimly aware of his alter ego’s concerns, but the wolf mind had little time for trivialities like feelings of disappointment, betrayal, humiliation. The man part of Aaron, though, would keenly know each of those feelings, and would undoubtedly wish to wallow in one or more of them. The dark thing, spurred by the terror of Qi’s insinuation that he was no ordinary werewolf, urged him not to bother with any of it a moment longer. It told him to run off into the night, find the deepest, most secluded patch of woods and happily hunt rabbits until he died. Aaron had to admit it sounded nice, except the shift couldn’t last forever. He was human first, wolf second. So to human he would always revert, no matter how much he fought, how much control he exerted. At some point his body would force itself back into its natural state, then he would be a naked man squatting in the woods with a dead rabbit hanging from his mouth.

As if this last thought flipped a switch in his head, his bones began to grind. A whine escaped from his tightly clamped muzzle. His chest heaved with repressed panting. The thick hair covering his body retracted. His skin stretched with the extension of his skeleton. Tendons groaned under the pressure of his shifting structure. His face raged with agony as his muzzle pulled back into his sinuses. His eye sockets shifted, the pressure stuffing up his diminishing nose. He kept his focus away from the standing mirror in the corner of the open loft bedroom. He had once made the mistake of catching a reflected glimpse of this current stage of his transformation. Patchy, with clumps of fur hanging from his body, bent at the waist with half human, half canine appendages, face a wreck of a hodgepodge, fangs overlying human lips. It was a sight he never wished to see again.

The final sinews popped into place. Aaron collapsed onto his side. The return shift always took more out of him. He laid there for a few minutes, marveling at his fingers and the precise control they had—so different from the ungainly paws—and ignored the warning sirens wailing in his mind. If Tony had called Kapre, if an acqxterm team was on their way, there was little he could do about it. The bulk of his supernatural power lasted only as long as the shift, and burned up much of his regular human energy to boot. It was one of those secrets Carlos had warned him the general public could never hear of. They had to think werewolves’ strength persisted at all times. If word got out that werewolves suffered a weak period after shifting, then the humans hunting them would alter their attack strategies, much to the detriment of the weres.

And so the nagging human thoughts resume.
Aaron pried himself off the floor.

“Normalcy wins every time, mi hombre guapo.”
Carlos’ voice joined his own thoughts.

Giving in, he staggered over to the European closets lining half of the far wall. He pulled open the doors of the first cabinets and grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of track pants, both of which hung neatly on hangars. Despite his gloomy mood, he chuckled. He had never seen anyone hang sweats before. It was downright strange. He glanced down at the long single row of drawers at the base of the cabinets. Could a man have so many pairs of underwear and socks that he needed every drawer? It was too tempting a question not to look.

With a quick glance at the open railing and stairs, Aaron squatted and pulled open the first drawer. Socks. He moved to the next. Instead of the expectant underwear, he discovered a pile of porn DVDs, each of them showing beautiful men being pleasured by heavily muscled gods. Cocks in asses. Cocks in mouths. Cum on lips and tongues. Ropes and handcuffs dominated the covers. It turned his thoughts to earlier, and despite the negative situation, the memory of the restraints buzzing against his wrists sent a thrill through him. Before Carlos, he had been content to simply find a nice guy who had his own job and apartment, could tolerate his frequent sudden and mysterious career-related travel and was content to throw a weekly quick fuck and maybe a blow job into the equation. After his transformation, life had been exciting enough. Restraints were for keeping mad weres like him from killing people. Using them for anything else had never entered his mind. Even now he found it difficult separating the notion of sexual bondage from hostile prisoner status. But looking down at the images on the movie covers he felt a stirring of curiosity, the same excitement he had felt earlier with Tony, titillation at the confident certainty of purpose and pleasure the covers conveyed. While he wasn’t keen on being hogtied anytime soon, he wondered what it would be like to tie up Tony and do to him some of the things the photos suggested. The notion made him hard.