The Beast Within (25 page)

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Aaron was in mud. Thick, deep, sticky mud. No. It was more active than mud. Something sought to keep him down, subdued. He knew this, though, had felt it before. In his head he flattened his ears and growled. The thing holding him growled back. He caught a scent in the air, a scent he desperately wanted to believe to be true. He bared his teeth, set his growl to a lower pitch and advanced. He pushed the thing to the recesses of his consciousness, made it relinquish its hold on him. He slid free of its confines and opened his eyes to the harsh fluorescents buzzing overhead.

“Welcome back.” Matthew leaned forward in his chair. His surfer boy hair was as rumpled as his dress shirt and slacks. Dark rings edged his brilliant eyes.

“Hi,” was all Aaron could muster past the onslaught of distractions that slammed into him. His mouth was parched. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth when he closed it. Sand seemed to have collected under his lids. His skin was intensely itchy. Worst of all, he had to pee.

He lifted a hand to assuage at least one issue, the horrific itch, but was brought up short by a thick band wrapped around his wrist that tightened painfully with the movement. A quick survey showed similar bands looped his entire body. Mystic restraints.

“So it was me making all that noise?” he asked.

“Yes. You must be thirsty,” Matthew said.

“And I have to pee,” he added. This was familiar territory, Matthew watching over him, serving him, while Carlos just made the friendly appearances to check on him. If he had had any sense he would have instead dated Matthew…

“Tony?” He forgot himself and tried to bolt upright. The restraints jerked him back down, tightened. “Tony?”

“He’s there, right beside you,” Matthew said and pointed to the other side of the room.

Tony’s bed had been pushed against the far wall. He lay there, unconscious. His right arm was swathed in a thick bandage. An IV drip hung beside him. A milky substance funneled through the tube running to his arm. A clear wall surrounded his bed. It shimmered gently in the light.

“One of Robert’s creations,” Matthew explained.

“Like a Sigurddessen Sphere,” he rasped. It was becoming difficult to swallow. “To keep me out.”

“You wouldn’t have harmed him. You only wanted to get to him. They understood that, eventually.” Matthew gestured to the door. “I’ll get you some ice. You can go ahead and relieve yourself. You have a catheter in.”

Matthew pushed a buzzer beside the closed door. Another buzz answered and he loped out of the room. Aaron caught sight of military boots and a lowered rifle in the hall before the door swung shut. Too tired to dwell on the fact he was surrounded by armed guards, Aaron took care of a more basic problem. Unburdened by the worst of his nagging discomforts he turned to his partner. A tinge of pink showed through the white gauze covering the bite he had delivered once the new thing had moved in. It had saved him, no doubt, but for what? When he came to would Tony be as unhinged as he had been after Cerberus’ bite? Was his own craziness due to watching his entire office be slaughtered, or was it part of the hellhound’s gift? Clearly, Cerberus had been out of his mind for quite some time. Did mental instability come as part of the package? Across the room Tony’s perfect chest rose and fell, his face a placid mask of beauty. Aaron decided he didn’t care. Just as Carlos and Matthew had helped him regain his sanity, he would help Tony.

Matthew returned with the ice. He only allowed Aaron a few pieces, but they cooled his hot throat and unglued his tongue.

“Where’s Carlos?” he asked. He couldn’t smell the alpha on Matthew, but pointing out such things was considered rude among the weres.

“He had to return to California.” Matthew set the cup on the rolling tray beside the bed and reclined in the chair, ankle propped on his knee. “The rest of the pack was grieving and…antsy. They needed to go home, bury their dead, grieve and resume a normal life.”

Aaron regarded the beta. There was a new hardness etched on the kind face, an edge that hinted at something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Matthew patiently bore his inspection.

“Are you two all right?” he finally asked. Directness was something Matthew appreciated.

“I don’t know, really.” Matthew planted his foot on the floor and leaned forward. “We’ve drifted apart and together many times. Things may have finally changed.”

“I know about change.” Aaron smiled.

“You do,” Matthew agreed. “I hate to leave you like this, so suddenly after you’ve awakened, but my own life has been on hold for quite a while, and there are things that need to be done.”

“I understand.” Although the thought of being left alone in a room with his unconscious lover seemed too much to bear, he smiled. “You’ve done a lot for me, Matthew. Not just this past… How long have I been out?”

“Two weeks.”

“Oh? Oh.” He nodded, trying to process this new information. “So, not just these two weeks, but before, when I was freshly shifted. You helped me find myself.”

“Carlos cared about you, so I cared about you. And then I came to see you for the man you are, and I cared for you in my own way.” Matthew put a hand on his shoulder. “You have changed again. I suspect you know this.”

Aaron nodded.

“You are not Him. You never can be. You never will come close. But you have the potential to be something else entirely. Something incredible.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to Aaron’s forehead, careful not to jostle the restraints. “And you won’t be alone in it. Remember that.” His eyes briefly flicked to Tony’s bed before returning to Aaron’s. “I’ll be sure to tell the staff to do something about those restraints on my way out.”

“Thank you, Matthew.” Aaron looked up into the Nordic were’s perfect features and felt a surge of admiration. “If you ever need me for anything, call.”

“You can be sure.” With a nod, Matthew departed.

Aaron looked past the mystical barrier to his sleeping partner. The movement caused his restraints to tighten. He chuckled, which set the restraints into overdrive. Despite the stabbing needle pain and circulation-terminating pressure, he laughed.

“Alone at last.”

The door buzzed.

“Pleased to find you in such high spirits.” Director Braven sailed into the room. Her left arm was in a cast, and a patch bandage hovered just above her right eyebrow. Bruises littered the frail skin on her unbroken arm. “You are well?”

“Well enough, ma’am.” He shifted to ease the pressure on his back and winced at the restraints.

“I think we’ve had enough of those,” she said to no one in particular. Despite the door being shut the restraints clicked open and retracted a moment later. He was being monitored, of course. Studied. This was Braven’s time to tell him he would be transported to a prison cell to await termination. He set his jaw. Maybe his actions against Cerberus would prod her sense of mercy and somehow move her to spare Tony.

“You have presented us with a very large problem, Agent Marvell.”

“I understand that, ma’am.”

“I know you do.” Braven gave him a nod. “You are a very self-aware man. That being said, you did ruin two whole hospital rooms with your antics.”

“I’m sor—”

“However,” Braven interrupted. “You were not entirely well when you acted as such, and we are somewhat to blame as we ignored you friend Mr Shipley’s advice to place your partner in the room with you.” Braven looked at him as if she had more to say on the subject of Tony and him, but followed another vein, “Do you know what happened while you were out of yourself?”

Out of myself.
That was a new way to put it. Not accurate, but it gave a nice mental image. “I can guess. I became like Him.”

“Similar, yes. But, not as repulsive of form, if that concerns you.”

“It does, a little. What concerns me more is what I did.”

“Did you dream of light?” Braven’s mouth quirked.

“I did.” He thought back to the dreams, the painful light. The yearning for the moon, and Tony.

“You were opening portals in the medical ward.”

Aaron gaped, open-mouthed. He looked down at his freed body, then back at the Director. “I opened potentially dangerous portals where creatures of who knows what power could have crept through and you kept me alive? And you removed my restraints?”

“You would rather I order the guard to put a bullet in your spine?” Braven humphed at his silence. “I thought not. Besides, you did not open doorways to other worlds, only to other places on this floor.”

He recalled the dim sound of Matthew’s frustrated voice, ‘
For God’s sake, just bring his bed in here.’

“I opened portals to Tony’s room?”

“Indeed. Once he was moved in here you stopped trying to get to him and the gateways ceased to be a problem.”

“And now what happens to him?”

“You don’t care what I have to say about you?”

“Not as much, ma’am. No.”

“That is admirable, agent. But, I am afraid we will have to deal with you, first. The medical staff insists they come in and check on you. They are practically screaming in my ear right now. The director turned her head slightly to reveal a small earpiece. “They say I have one minute more before they start their poking and prodding. They will require you to shift, and you will obey. However, you will not, under any circumstances, open a portal. Are we clear?”

“Is Tony safe?” he asked. He gripped the director’s bruised wrist. Immediately an alarm went off. Guards banged into the room. “Is he?”

“You have no need to worry, agent. We take care of our own here in Maryland.” Braven gently extracted her arm and waved off the guards. “I understand you will be required to stay an additional night, agent. After that you will report to my new office on the second floor.”

“But…” He looked at Tony, who had remained blissfully unconscious throughout the chaos.

“He needs to recover, Agent Marvell. And you need to let him, not hover over him like a chicken with her eggs.”

He gritted his teeth against his anger. He forced a neutral expression onto his face and replied, “I will see you tomorrow, ma’am.”

Chapter Thirty

Pied Piper

The pen rattled across Aaron’s desk like a garbage truck on an uneven street. The clatter of it landing on the tile resounded through the massive space. Aaron watched it roll a few more inches and wobble into stasis. His little wooden desk sat awkwardly at the mouth of the cavernous hallway, a fly on the tongue of a monstrous toad. So much room down here. So much that had been pushed into dark, cobwebbed corners. So much potential behind so many locked doors. Aaron couldn’t begin to fathom the power that lay just beyond each. They were all like him, in some way or another—damaged, afraid, strong. And they were just a hair’s breadth away from freedom. Only he stood between their confines and a life on the outside. Knowing this should have made him feel a little less alone. A little less scared. But he felt neither.

A week and a half had passed since Braven’s visit. Trinity’s invasion had nearly demolished the building. While repairs were being made the agents had been displaced to other floors. The shooting range floor now housed the bullpen. The director had taken the range master’s tiny office, as the older agent had become one of Trinity’s final victims. Robert had been sent along to help Aaron with his task, his desk and equipment crowded into a reinforced storage unit as punishment for his complicity in aiding Aaron and disobeying a direct order to unlock the bullpen doors.

Through all of the chaos and rebuilding, for nearly four long weeks, Tony remained hospitalized. He had awakened six days before, fully aware of his complicated condition, and immediately asked to be sedated. Aaron had arrived too late to see him awake. Since that time Tony’s range of consciousness had stayed firmly between un- and tripping balls. Still, Aaron went to visit him every day after work, and had spent the entire weekend sitting in the hard chair by his bedside, his hope growing ever dimmer that Tony would forgive him for what he had done to keep him alive.

It was all he wanted, and to help Tony all he wanted to do, but Braven had made it clear he was to be at work no less than fifty hours a week. It was a condition of Kapre’s strict terms for the new Recruitment and Acclimations office—RecAcc for short. Aaron was the lynchpin of this new shift in company dynamics and the hopes of everyone behind the doors his desk now faced rested on him. He sighed and retrieved his pen from the floor. His intercom buzzed.

“You want me to bring out the next one, hoss?” A shuffling of papers followed Robert’s question. “This one’s behind door number twelve on your right. Stan Grislock. Age forty-two. Psychic vampire.” More shuffling. “Not a psychic vampire, like the ones that suck up all your energy, but a vampire who happened to be psychic before he was changed. He’d be handy to have around.”

By handy, Robert meant fun to poke with various implements.

“Give me five minutes, Robert, okay?”

“Sure thing.” The intercom went dead.

Aaron looked down the row of doors. Thirty prisoners. For whatever reasons the higher-ups had kept to themselves, these particular captives had been spared the extermination part of their sentence. They had been sentenced to life in a tiny, windowless, mystically reinforced cell. None of them full-blooded demons, they each suffered from the condition of being ex-human. And Braven, deciding from Aaron’s actions and his impressive physical prowess, had deemed them potentials for rehabilitation. It was Aaron’s duty to interview and analyze them, to find out if their abilities would be an asset to the agency, and if they would be moldable to Kapre’s standards of conduct. He flipped the small silver plaque on the front of his desk to face him. ‘
Special Agent Aaron Marvell’.
In larger print below it said, ‘
Deputy Director, Recruitment and Acclimations’
. The man who would fling open the doors and lure out the monsters with songs of freedom and—relative—normalcy. The Pied Piper of the damned.

“Director Marvell?” The young acqxterm agent who had been mauled during the Kapre attack approached from the elevator bank.