Torment (Primal Progeny Book 1) (35 page)

In the darkness of the alley the others had lowered themselves to the ground and shed their clothing. Though it was fairly cool their bodies glistened with sweat and steam rose from them as they began to writhe and squirm. Eve’s head snapped back and her wide eyes caught the lights of the city as her bones began to break and shift. She saw Mason glancing towards them and a sound of anger escaped her. It was something akin to a snarl. But the shifting of her muscles and bones created an awful clacking sound, which ended with a sickening gooey pop as her mouth split open to allow her muzzle to slide forward.

Hunter grabbed the shoulder of the other man and swung him round to face the city streets, hissing at him. ‘Stop. They don’t need to be watched.’

Mason nodded awkwardly, he didn’t feel right about the situation at all, and his eyes were becoming wild. Being in such close proximity to others transforming and being under so much stress threatened to force a transformation in him.

Hunter shook him roughly. ‘Snap the fuck out of it! You’re staying this way, with us. Remember?’

Mason nodded more slowly, swallowing loudly as he tried to calm himself and cease the will to change.

Hunter kept his hand on the other mans shoulder for a while, his fingers gripping tightly in an effort to anchor him to his human form. After a while he visibly calmed and Hunter slowly releases his grip. In the meantime Finnlay fell about and laughed and joked, trying to diffuse the obvious tension in case they were being watched. When he was certain of Mason’s demeanor, Hunter finally looked away and took up laughing along with Finnlay. Slapping his thighs and telling more terrible jokes along with the younger pack member. Then all of a sudden a cold, wet nose nudged its way into the open palm of his hand.

He looked down to see the familiar form of Eve’s wolf stood beside him, steam rising in curling tendrils from her thick pelt and her tongue lolling. She was bigger than he remembered her being, which was a good thing as far as he was concerned. Behind her, two more wolves emerged from the darkness. Their eyes shone brightly in the city gloom, as the lights of a thousand iridescent bulbs were reflected from them. The wolf to her left was the great, dirty blonde, hulking form of Tobias. To her right slunk forward an unfamiliar wolf, who Hunter would not have recognized as Matthew had he not known better. His lupine form was a rich brownish grey with red hints; nothing like his shockingly redheaded human counterpart.

Tobias padded up to Mason’s side and nudged him hard in the direction he wished him to go. Mason complied without questioning and they walked off in silence. Matthew looked up at Finnlay with deep brown, soul-searching eyes and made a small grumble deep in his throat. Finnlay nodded gravely and walked away with his pack-mate in hot pursuit, both discreetly following the wolf’s sensitive nose.

Hunter looked down at Eve, expecting to see some kind of anger or worry or hesitation, but instead was surprised to find that she was moving off without him. He jogged to catch up with her and resisted the urge to touch her pelt to see what it felt like to his human hands. Had he touched her before in lupine form? He couldn’t remember, he thought he had but knew it could have been wishful thinking on his part. After all, she was a beta and he was a nobody. A rogue.

Shaking away his trail of thought he followed her a pace behind her front limbs, conscious of the fact they might be being observed. If he gave her too much space he risked being called up on having a dog off the lead. Considering the illegality of wolf types in the UK that would slow them down considerably. Tobias’ enthusiastic reasoning behind his plausible lie wouldn’t save them from busybodies. She allowed him to remain close to her without the snapping that she would have normally offered out if having her personal space invaded. There were more pressing matters at hand.

They wove through the streets in silence, Eve’s nostrils flaring and her tail hanging low as she moved. They were drawing closer; they could both clearly smell him. Audra’s scent was getting stronger too, and there was another, more worrying aspect to the olfactory picture that was being painted… There was another woman, and the cloying scent of fear.

Eve broke into a sudden trot and Hunter jogged behind her, luckily the streets were quiet and they encountered nobody. They had no time to waste explaining themselves away. Varulv was preparing for another murder.

Chapter 37

In the dank darkness inside the rotten old house, Varulv smiled broadly to himself. He lent back against the rotting old door of the bedroom and gazed lustfully at his next conquest. His eyes shone with delight as he basked in the aftermath of sex with Audra, and the delicious moments before his fun with the girl.

It had been a very long time since he had his way with a compliant partner, and that coupled with the thought of an heir had driven his wicked desires to new heights. Sex had added spice to the activities that were to follow, drawing up his lusts more completely.

He looked across the room at the woman he had readied for himself and his smile grew. Ignoring the dank sensation of the rotting wooden door against his naked back, he drank in the sight of her for a moment. She was exactly as he had left her. Her hands and arms were tied behind her back and her legs tied up in such a way that they were spread wide enough to allow him access to whatever he desired. Her slender body was still on her side on top of the mattress, her long bleached hair hanging over her face. Her sides moved slowly as she breathed deeply, still totally under the control of the drugs he had administered. He noticed that the blood on her face had dried, and he could see the beginnings of a bruise forming over her sternum. He remembered the rattle of the chain as he had struck her there with it, and wished that she would have time to form more bruises before she passed. He enjoyed contusions, the way they grew and changed and spread always fascinating to him no matter how many he administered.

He mused for a brief moment as to what to do to her and suddenly an idea struck him. He had very much enjoyed his time with the girl in the barn, and it would not be so awful to re-create the scene.

Crossing the room with purpose he grabbed the drugged woman off the bed. Holding her easily around the waist in one arm he cuffed her face when she made a small sound of protest. She was too deeply under the influence to be able to resist him, but she could easily make noise enough to draw attention to them. Luckily for him she could not scream or cry out at the strike to her cheek thanks to the gag.

He carried her across the room and awkwardly out of the door, catching her knees on the frame as he forced his way out into the hallway. He jogged down the stairs almost gleefully, feeling the chill air on his naked body as he turned into the downstairs hallway. He opened a door that was tucked neatly below the staircase, and tugged on the light cord, which hung just inside the darkness of the cellar stairwell. Placing his feet carefully on the rotting stairs he swung the door closed behind him and picked his way slowly down the staircase. In his arms Holly sighed past the gag in her mouth as the drugs began to wear away in her system. He glanced down at her but was reassured that she would not yet struggle by the heavy scent of sleep emanating from her.

The cellar itself was very dark despite the lighting system he had rigged up on his arrival. The whole thing ran off a small portable generator he had managed to steal, and consisted of a string of low wattage bulbs hung around one edge of the room. He didn’t need as much light as a human man to see what he was doing, and he found it kept his prey at a suitable fear level if their vision was restricted.

In the centre of the room a short metal pole with two heavy-duty clasps hanging from it loomed in the darkness. Varulv made a beeline for it and lowered his victim to the floor. He secured her bound wrists to the top clasp, and after making sure her legs were spread enough to support her weight he secured the bottom clamp to the binds around her ankles. This left her kneeling on the cold floor, legs splayed wide open as her head lolled against her chest. She sagged forward into the bonds and groggily managed to right herself, though she could not lift her chin from her chest. Varulv reached down and grabbed her chin, lifting her heavy head and roughly removing her blindfold. He deliberated removing her gag as she screwed up her face, a tiny moan escaping past the object in her mouth. He decided it would be more enjoyable if he could really hear her screams, and tugged off the blindfold that covered her mouth, and then the gag beneath it. Her mouth moved as her unconscious mind tried to process what was happening, but she made no sound. He dropped the gag and blindfolds to the floor next to her and smirked.

Varulv stepped back and looked at her for a moment, enjoying the sight of her bound and helpless at his mercy. That thought bought a toothy smile to his cruel lips. Mercy? The thought itself was laughable. There was no hope for her, she was little more than a plaything. She looked wonderful though, just what he had wanted out of his next toy. She had that trashy, broken look about her that only an addict human could. Varulv’s kind tended not to suffer from addiction. The shape shifter metabolism processes things very quickly, so that drugs have to be in near lethal doses to have any kind of effect. As such, the fact that she was substance dependent seemed somehow more exotic to him, and made her more of a peculiarity. He had been contemplating taking another prostitute for quite some time and was pleased to have found one so easily. Besides which, her appearance was not exactly unbecoming. Her bleached hair and thin figure, coupled with her younger age all added to his enjoyment of simply watching her for a moment.

As he loomed over her in the dim light he grew steadily more and more hungry for blood. His eyes roamed her defenseless body and blood began to rush to his groin. It was a much slower process in the wake of sex with Audra, but that did not matter. He did not need sex for satisfaction; his sadistic tendencies were more than satisfied with the infliction of pain. In fact, over time sex had become his secondary desire, it was much more about the killing for him as he aged. Of course the act of harming another did lead to lust and he always concluded his playing sessions with carnal conclusions… But they were not the sole reason for his murderous desires, simply a by-product. Blood was what he really wanted, blood and flesh.

As he looked down at her she began to slowly come around. At first her face twitched a little around the lips and eyes as she frowned and attempted to look up. Then her fingers began to twitch and flex. Varulv took this as his cue to retreat. With a wicked smile on his face he backed slowly into the shadows; waiting and watching as her senses slowly trickled back to her through the drug induced haze.

Holly groaned loudly, the bruising on her chest causing her pain as she tried to take a deep inhale of air. She gasped at the sensation and her pretty face screwed into a wince. What happened? Her memory was not serving her well and she could remember nothing. Slowly her mind gifted her snippets of information, had she come here with a man? A man and a woman? She thought so… But it wasn’t clear. She could not remember what he looked like, or his name, or where she was…

Varulv chuckled, a sound that echoed around the room eerily. Holly tried to snap up her head to look in the direction of the sound, but she failed. Her head lolled to the side, and she struggled for what seemed like an age to right it again. By the time her chin was rested back on her chest the sound has dispersed, and it was as though it had never been heard.

‘H’ She tried to form a word, but her mouth was dry and her vocal chords were stiff somehow. ‘H… huh…’ She tried again. ‘Hello?’ She finally managed to croak, her voice scraping at her throat like shards of glass.

No reply was forthcoming, and after a while of sitting exposed in tense silence, she tried again to lift her head. Again she failed, though she managed more than she had on the previous attempt. When her head lolled forward she frowned, an expression born of pain and frustration. Her legs were stiff and sore, and all she knew was that she could not move them to ease the discomfort.

Varulv watched her shuffle her feet in an attempt to gain some kind of comfort, and smiled to himself wickedly. Silently he removed the tie from his hair and let it fall in an icy blonde curtain around his shoulders.  He had found from practice that this disconcerted them more for some reason. He suspected because it seemed more primal to them in an age where nearly all men wore their hair short and cropped. He let the tie fall to the floor and took a step forward into the half-light. His feet moved without a sound and he simply stopped and stood in silence. He emerged from the shadows directly in front of his victim, and knew it was only a matter of time before she would notice his presence.

It took longer than a minute for Holly to realize that she had company stood before her.  Her vision was blurred and she was treading the line between consciousness and oblivion shakily. Though her mind was clearing, the process was slow and her body refused to respond to her desire to move. She desperately wanted to open her eyes fully, and lift her head to see where she was. Eventually her eyes managed to focus and she looked up from under the mess of her hair. The sight of the man stood on the far side of the room startled her and a strangled sound of surprise escaped her lips. This amused Varulv greatly and he stared blankly at her, giving no indication of what he was thinking of doing to her.

Holly tried desperately to lift her head, her body shaking with exertion and sweat beginning to form on her brow. Eventually she managed to force her head up, her vision swam and she was overcome with nausea. She gagged but managed not to vomit, though the heaving of her sides forced her to drop her head back to her chest.

‘I – can – I can see you.’ She panted. 

Varulv laughed, his passive expression cracking into a wicked, menacing smile. ‘Because I have allowed you to.’ He stated flatly.

‘What… Do you want… With me?’ She breathed heavily, her lungs seemed empty of oxygen, and she could not seem to suck enough in to be able to breathe properly. Panic was beginning to set in and the first sign was her breath being snatched away.

‘Well telling you would ruin all the fun.’ Varulv chuckled ‘Perhaps I should leave you alone for a while, this all seems to have come as a terrible shock to you?’

‘What?’ She managed to choke out, as in her peripheral vision she saw him step back and melt into the shadows. ‘NO!’ She cried out, her vocal chords just managing a shout. ‘Is this part of a game?’

‘It is’ He purred out of the darkness.

‘It’s … It’s extra for kinky shit…’ She trailed off, her tone was uncertain and she reeked of fear.

‘Oh but I won’t be paying you.’ He flatly informed her, silently stalking around the edge of the room until he was behind her in the dark.

‘Well your lady then.’ Her voice cracked, it was all coming slowly back to her… The woman prone in his arms. What the fuck had she gotten herself into?!

Varulv silently stalked out of the shadows, having moved across the room to exit directly behind his victim. He crossed the room so quietly she had no chance of knowing what was about to happen. Standing behind her he bent slowly forward, listening to the ragged beat of her heart and her rapid breathing with a smile set on his face. Lashing out suddenly he grabbed the back of her neck with one powerful hand and squeezed. She bucked under his grip and tried to turn but could not do so. He lifted her up slowly, the muscles in his arm tensing and bulging as she struggled against him. The cuffs on her wrists held her low to the ground and soon he had moved her so that she was staring up at his face. Her neck bent awkwardly backwards, and her bonds dug painfully into her skin as her back arched over the metal pole she was attached to.

Varulv’s hair hung over her face as he bent lower to hiss at her ‘I think you misunderstand me.’

Holly’s eyes widened and she tried to squirm free but he gripped her harder, his nails digging into the sensitive flesh of her neck.

‘What do you think you’re going to achieve?’ He snarled, his handsome face contorting into a hideous visage of rage.

‘Help me!’ She croaked, then shouted at the top of her lungs ‘HELP ME!!’

Varulv laughed in her face, spittle landing on her make-up caked cheeks. ‘I think.’ He said deliberately and very slowly. ‘You misunderstand me.’

That was when she let out her first scream, a high-pitched sound that rang in his sensitive ears and echoed around the rotten building. Varulv pulled her down sharply onto the metal post beneath her, ramming it hard into the centre of her back. She yelped in pain and sagged sideways, rocking forward and whimpering.

By the time she had righted herself Varulv had disappeared back into the shadows. He watched her with amusement as she whimpered and groaned at the pain in her back. He could smell her pain and fear so strongly that they extinguished all else from his mind.

He waited until she had calmed down from the initial blow before moving again, this time circling round to her left side. He shot out of the shadows, and had hit her and retreated so fast that she saw nothing but a blur. He had slapped her face hard with the back of his hand, causing her head to bounce to the side as she cried out in pain and surprise. He returned to the shadowy border of the basement and smiled as tears began to run down her cheeks. He wanted to savor this one; the last had been too rushed.