Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (26 page)

“Why would I let something like you out of your cage?” he asked changing tactics. Perhaps drawing out the wolf would settle the man’s brain in a way that telling him and showing him couldn’t seem to make him understand. Nick’s words angered him, but it wasn’t enough.

Using his left hand, Nick pried the hunter’s hand from his arm painfully. Other than breaking his bones, the voran knew the hold was nearly impossible to break out of and the pain should add to his anger.

“Let me go, you bastard!” the hunter spat on his lineage causing Nick to smirk at him.

“No, what are you going to do about it? You’re nothing but an animal even if you weren’t bitten by a werewolf. You deserve to be in a cage,” Nick said continuing to egg the man on as he maintained the hold on his hand.

Sweat beaded on the hunter’s brow and Nick just waited for the change to occur. It wasn’t far if he had to guess, though he had never incited a change from a new werewolf. It was almost like an instinct inside of him.

Snarling, the hunter reached out for him with his free hand. Nick intercepted with his faster reflexes and twisted the second arm before pulling the man’s face into the bars. The snarling turned from a human’s incoherence to a wolf and the hands began to ripple beneath the flesh. He shoved the changing werewolf back hard against the far side of the cage continuing to egg him on rapping on the bars.

“Come on, you animal, come and get me!” he enticed the werewolf whose skin was already beginning to turn to black fur. The hunter lunged and his teeth snapped like a wolf’s before clashing with the bars.

Nick slapped the cage as clothing tore and the animal within neared completion. “You are an animal in a cage,” he stated with a smile on his face that he didn’t truly feel. The wolf lunged for him with its muzzle and Nick’s hand slapped down through the bars onto the top of his head. A flash of light as his aura blade struck the wolf drove the hunter to the ground in a daze.

“Damn,” was the only word Charlotte could muster in surprise.

Crying from the far corner, let him know the fear Raina must be feeling.

“Sorry, Raina, he was starting to turn already. In his state of mind, I didn’t want him to attack you instead.” Turning to look at Charlotte, Nick asked, “Do you normally keep two people in the cage at the same time? He might wake up and attack her before coming to his senses.”

Charlotte shook her head pointing to the far wall with chains and collars. “We could chain one of them to the wall, but since he’s become a wolf already the cage might be safer for him.”

Opening the cage with a key, Nick motioned for the ranger to come to him. She looked paralyzed with fear as she sat in the corner.

Crouching to enter, Nick placed his hand on her shoulder and said, “Come on. You don’t want to sit inside here anyway.”

The touch seemed to calm her slightly and the woman responded to his urging even as her eyes looked at the wolf in worry. Soon clear of the bars, he locked them again. Raina looked at the stairs longingly, but unlike the hunter, she was a ranger and her job was to keep people safe from wild animals.

“Will I turn into that?” she asked quietly.

Nick pulled a chair beside the wall below the chain and then the table. He answered the woman as he led her to the seat urging her to sit with little effort. “Some have control. We’ll see if he comes to his senses now. Charlotte and the others can help you through the change and if you follow their guidance you can feel normal most of the time from what I understand. The full moon forces the change and losing control of your emotions like your friend there.”

“He wasn’t a friend. My boss hired them to hunt the wolves. They were afraid that a pack so large might get into the city and hurt people,” she said sounding like she was still in shock. “There were fewer wolves last month, but they still brought in Jack and Bill. They were supposed to capture them humanely and we would take them to a habitat or have them shipped to safer country, but they decided to try and kill them instead.

“When I heard the gun shots, I yelled at them to stop, but by then the pack was all over us. Jack was up in a tree and they leaped up to the branches making him fall. They knocked Bill and me down. I was sure that I was dead. I was scratched and bitten, but they didn’t finish me off. Then there were people screaming and the wolves were gone.”

He asked Charlotte to go get some food and water for Raina to help settle the woman. Watching the girl go up the stairs only wearing her shorts and shirt, Nick wondered how he had become some sort of werewolf expert.

Chapter 15- Mastering the Wolf

Walking up the stairs barefoot, Charlotte felt a little nostalgic. It hadn’t been that long ago that the werewolf called this home. Since she was a werewolf and felt warm no matter the weather it seemed, the leggy brunette tended to wear shorts inside year round. Long sleeve shirts were a thing of her past, when she had been human. Like most women that meant shaving her legs year round and she kept her arms smooth as well. She hated the hair that would remind her of the thing that she could become if her control faltered.

Most werewolves lost control in the beginning like the hunter, though perhaps his mania was a little beyond the norm. Charlotte, on the other hand, had seen her brother turn into a monster and kill her parents. If the woman had been much slower, or perhaps enough of her brother had remained to somehow spare her life when he couldn’t stop for the others; she would have joined the dead on his first change. Seeing her parents’ dead faces in the morning as her brother returned naked save for the blood covering him from head to toe, the woman had vowed to never lose control like that.

The moon had overridden her mind and Charlotte had paced inside the cage alone for her first full moon while the pack had roamed the woods in Kentucky. Her brother had run with the pack and Kate too. It was their second moon and the other woman had gone through her own time in the cage the previous month.

Now she had to watch as another victim of the wolves sat in a cage or chained to a wall. While it made her sick to her stomach, the caring part of her wanted to help those in pain get through it as easily as possible; but they were becoming werewolves and there was no easy way through that.

“When did your eyes become blue?” Eric asked as she entered the hall from the stairs. The larger man looked at the slim woman and she felt small before him. He had always been able to intimidate her to a point, but she had left and grown stronger with Nick and her brother.

Eyes narrowed angrily as she replied, “Last night some time.” She paused a moment and Eric waited feeling that there was more to be said. “Why did you tell him you knew what would happen if we waited for the full moon? You told him it would fix everything and I thought I was going to die!”

The woman punched the man high on the chest as she fought tears that she refused to show him or the rest of the pack she had left.

Eric had a sympathetic smile on his lips as he replied, “Well, the full moon did fix it, I guess.

“I told him what I had been told by my father. He once told me that my mother had been in the same position. My father already had a mate in the pack, but she went into heat for him. She fought the bond and grew sicker all the way to the first full moon.

“He had told me that during the full moon her problem had fixed itself.

“I never had reason to not believe him and I’ve always taken my mate when she came to me, so I didn’t know anything more than I told Nick. Besides it was what he wanted to hear at the time, since he wasn’t ready for you.”

Charlotte’s laughter was nearly hysterical as she hit him on the chest again and shook her head at him disbelievingly.

“Your father couldn’t bring himself to tell you the birds and the bees of how he took your mother and I nearly died for it! You are such an idiot, Eric,” the last was said with less heat though she still meant it. “If Nick hadn’t decided to make love to me, I don’t know if I would have lived to see the next full moon or even today. So if anyone ever comes to you with that question again, tell them to just man up and make love to the woman already.”

She slid past him as Eric chuckled at her words. While she didn’t look back, the man straightened knowing that he would have liked to have said those words; but he knew the truth. Not every woman could have her mate and those bonds did kill. Luckily, he could tell that Nicholas did have enough love to share with her. When her life was in the balance, that love came out and he finally bonded with Charlotte in the way nature meant it to be.

The only thing he couldn’t be sure of, at the time, was if the voran could serve as a mate to a werewolf and save her life. The blue eyes were also new to him.

“Hey, Charlotte, looking good in those little shorts,” Ray teased as the brunette entered the kitchen scrounging up food and a glass from the cupboard. “Though not as good as on the television when you stripped for Nick,” he added with a chuckle.

Her eyes narrowed and she jabbed him in his good shoulder warning him, “I am not in the mood, Ray. Bug me again and I’ll jab my finger in the bullet hole instead.”

“Sheesh, you’re testy today. I thought having sex made a girl happier and less grumpy.”

Looking at him in confusion, she asked, “Who said I had sex?”

Covering his mouth with his good hand, the large man looked like he had let a secret out of the bag.

“Did Eric say something about my problem?” she demanded pointing towards his injury threateningly.

“Um...” he started looking like he was unsure whether to deal with the woman’s anger or whoever had mentioned her condition. “Well, when you came back with the others and took Kate, it kind of came up. I mean, everyone wanted to know why Kate was leaving. Vanessa managed to
wrangle the information that she was basically in heat and had it bad for Logan. Then someone, not me, asked about why you had been wearing men’s clothing that day.

“Vanessa guessed that you must be in heat as well and the only other man around you was Nick. Though I thought he already had the
hots for that good looking, blonde, vampire, Nicola.

“Anyway, some of the other girls asked how it would end and Vanessa said the only way she knew how to end it was to have sex with the one she wanted.” Raising his hands defensively, which brought a wince as his wounds made
themselves known painfully, Ray added, “That’s all I know.

“By the way, did I miss something or have your eyes changed color? I could have sworn you had brown eyes.”

Groaning at the ridiculous rumor mill of the pack houses, Charlotte filled the glass with water and clarified for Ray, “What I did or did not do with, Nick, is none of your business. Now get out of my way, so I can bring the new werewolf some food. Once she’s in the pack, you can have someone new to annoy.”

With a tray of food and the glass of water, Charlotte walked out of the kitchen feeling the pack’s eyes on her. Small smiles were barely hidden and she knew that they were at her expense. She had always been the pretty girl in the pack, looked at and ridiculed because she fought what she was unlike the rest of the animals. That she was able to leave and wind up with someone like Nick, who could actually love her, Charlotte felt very lucky.

“So that is going to happen to me?” Raina asked after Charlotte had walked up the stairs. Her eyes were on the black wolf, which hadn’t shifted back to human for some reason that Nick wasn’t aware. He had assumed once unconscious the shift would revert back, but the hunter remained dazed in his cage and in full wolf form.

“Not necessarily the same way. Once you gain control of it, you can shift back and forth at will or just make certain parts like your hands become claws to defend yourself. I’ve seen them control their changes to give power and speed for a fight even.”

Turning her green eyes on him, the woman asked, “If you aren’t a werewolf what are you? You don’t seem worried over being in their house and they seem to know you pretty well.”

“I found them the week after I came to you at the preserve headquarters. They held a girl here that one of their men had become infatuated with and kidnapped from a college in the city.”

Her eyes widened at the admission and he clarified, “That man died soon after, so he is no longer here to worry about. Once he bit her, they kept her in the cage waiting for her to show signs of becoming a wolf like Bill over there, but she never changed. She is like me. We’re still human, but have some powers to fight vampires and werewolves.”

“Vampires too, they’re real?” the woman asked in surprise brushing at her auburn hair with both hands pushing it back before returning to looking at his face. Like a small stone of normalcy, she clung to the man emotionally.

“I’ve known some for over a hundred years now.”

Mouthing the words, Raina shook her head.

“The woman, who found me and knew what I was, called us voran. We are the ones who can stand before monsters and fight to save humanity, though that may be a little melodramatic,” he added with a chuckle. “I suppose that there is a chance that you might be one of us; but, including me, I only know of three.”

“How would I know?” she asked and Nick realized that he shouldn’t have offered the sliver of hope. He closed his eyes feeling for the essence of those around him. The warm patterns of werewolves were all around him, though there were two in the house that were confusing. Raina didn’t quite feel like a werewolf, but it might mean she was simply in transition, the calm before the storm. The second he followed and heard the door at the top of the stairs open before the barefoot, soft sounds of Charlotte’s feet coming down came to his ears.