Chapter 25.1 – Meeting a dangerous pack – part 2
Adrian Gordon grinned, but the moment his lips curled, Nick moved. Surprised, Adrian looked at Nick’s hand that was squeezing his neck and increasing the grip with each second. Balls of light appeared in front of his eyes as Adrian was falling unconscious from a lack of oxygen. Nick let him go, and Adrian fell to the floor. A knee to his nose sent blood all over when Nick grabbed his head and knee-kicked him.
Nick lifted him by pulling his hair and looked around as he spoke. “Do any of you want to annoy me, or is this enough? As for you, Mister Adrian, I will let you keep this pack of yours because I don’t want any City Werewolves near me. Those are lower than dogs, too much bark but no bite. I just want to know how you change at will, and I want you and your pack to help get ten or twenty Hunters’ heads as retribution for the friends you lost today. When that is settled, I will go away and you can continue playing packs with these stray dogs you gathered. Do we have a deal, Mister Adrian? Or do I need to break your fucking neck?”
“We… have a deal…”
Nick let him go, and Adrian blinked to focus his sight. He then faced Nick, who was still clenching his fists and tried to calm him down, saying, “There was no need for all that. We are all friends here. We are indeed untrained, as you said, but that was only because we were born into peaceful families and didn’t know anything about Werewolves besides us. I only gathered this group after I started to work as a reporter, and I used the television channel’s resources to find more like me. For every rumour of howls, noises at night, or deaths caused by an animal, I went there in search of the cause. It took me a while, but I found them, and they agreed to help me deal with our enemies so that we were all safe and we didn’t need to fear them.”
Nick kept on staring, and he then asked, “And why, since I entered, did I smell blood coming from the kitchen? Whom did you kill, a Hunter?”
“No, it was a homeless guy we found in an alley. No one will miss him. Sometimes we need to eat Humans to get in touch with our beast side. That, along with our acceptance of our Werewolf and desire to become one, is what sets the transformation in motion. We all like the freedom our change grants us and we don’t even mind if we woke up in the morning with a dead body near us. I bet you always feared the change, but the moment you stop fearing and you want to become one, you just need to hold on to that desire and gather all the anger you have piled up inside you, all the pain the Hunters caused you, and you will change without the need of a full moon.”
Nick frowned and felt his stomach twisting as if he was about to throw up at the mere mention of eating Human flesh. Then he looked around and saw the others nodding, confirming Adrian’s words. Nick thought for a moment while crossing his arms. It made sense. Accepting the change was something he never did because he feared the pain and did not know what he would do, but that changed ever since Aniya woke him up and he could control his Werewolf body.
He undressed and put his clothes and shoes in a pile near the nearest wall. The women that were on one side of the room glanced at him, admiring his shape, truly a warrior’s body. Even the men seemed impressed while Adrian was looking at him and trying to stop the bleeding in his nose, wondering what he wanted to do.
Nick closed his eyes and concentrated. He remembered his parents fighting the Hunters while his mother was shouting for him to run away. He remembered the pain of the change when he was already conscious and in full control, and he tried to focus on Aniya’s smile, saying that he had a pack to protect.
Anger piled up in him. He felt so much anger that he was almost ready to explode. He opened his eyes and saw Adrian Gordon staring at him, his eyes wide open, as if he was in a panic. Nick looked at his hands and watched as claws appeared, ripping the tips of his fingers. An itch begging to be scratched ran along his entire body as if the inside of his body was trying to break free. When he heard the first bone crack, Nick closed his eyes again and thought about Aniya’s lips, about her smile and eyes, staring at him, full of love and passion.
Nick’s bones stopped cracking, and the itch on his body disappeared. Slowly, the claws were vanishing into dust, and the flesh and fingernails were growing again.
He then opened his eyes and made a slight smile, disguising his success as a failed attempt, and said, “It seems I need to practise more. I have a lot of anger to use, but apparently, I need to embrace my beast before I can fully change. I never thought about doing this, but it seems to work.”
Adrian gulped and almost shouted, “Are you nuts? Why did you try to change here? If you succeed, you would kill all of us!”
“You said your friends here could also change at will, so I kind of guessed that if I changed, they could change as well and at least restrain me until I changed back. I probably am not a good fighter as a Werewolf, considering I pass out during the change and I can’t remember what I did, so it was pretty safe to test this now instead of when we were about to fight Hunters.”
Adrian Gordon made a slight smile and said, “At least now you know it works. You just need to have lunch with us and embrace your beast. Next time, you will be able to change.”
“That I will not do. You can have it all, I am going out. I bet there is a restaurant around here. Just the mere thought of eating Human flesh makes me sick.”
While Nick was getting dressed, Adrian explained, “If you don’t eat Human meat, you will never be able to change without a full moon.”
Nick answered while checking the gun he had in the middle of the pile of clothes, “Unlike us, guns work far better against Hunters. If I cannot change, I just shoot them. As long as they die, I don’t care.”
After getting dressed while everyone was looking at him in silence, Nick went out after one last nod to Adrian Gordon.
When his footsteps outside were no longer heard, one man seated on the couch asked, “Alpha, why didn’t you tell him this was just a small portion of our pack?”
Adrian spoke with an angry look on his face. “Because unlike you, I think. He will be a good addition to our pack, but he can’t know how many Werewolves I control before I make him realise that he either obeys me or he dies. None of you is allowed to say a word to him. Let him think my pack is just this. I still need to see if he will do his part of the bargain by making a trap for a group of Hunters. If he succeeds, we may have an excellent opportunity here, and I don’t want any of you morons babbling anything that could make him suspicious of my true intentions, understood? Now go follow him, and be careful. He can’t see you and find out I suspect of him!”
They all nodded in silence, afraid to even face the angry man. Outside, Nick was barefoot, holding his shoes and listening. He walked away slowly so that no one inside could hear him move. When he was already at a safe distance, he put his shoes on and used his phone to contact Aniya, pretending not to notice the man that was following him, hidden behind the corner of a building.
In her limousine, Aniya was seated next to Lisa, and Davis was driving Aniya home, and he was going to spend some time with Lisa before taking her to her parents.
When Aniya heard her phone ringing, she took it from her purse and quickly pressed the screen when she saw who was calling. “Are you alright? I just came from a stupid meeting and found out the Hunters are hearing my calls, as I suspected. What about you?”
Nick’s voice came from the phone, whispering, “Well, I was going to say I am alright and I found out what I was looking for, but now I don’t know if I should tell you over the phone!”
“I told the Hunters High Council I had a Human friend following the Werewolf that escaped, and that you were going to try to find out how he changed during the day.”
Nick made a slight smile. He understood she was asking him to help her out, and he answered in a whisper, “I found him, and he took me to his group because he took me for a Werewolf. I have no idea how he believed when I told him I was one! They were ten, eleven with him, but after I left, I overheard them saying they were more, but I don’t know how many. Aniya, they were going to eat a homeless guy they killed. I could smell the blood coming from the kitchen. I left to find a restaurant because just the thought of eating or seeing someone eating Human flesh disgusted me. Tell Lisa that the guy wanted to go to her house to get revenge for the deaths of his friends, but I dissuaded him for the time being. I told him that Lisa was my friend, and she was helping me find things about the Hunters. He hates them so much that he didn’t even think I could be lying.”
“Ok… But did you find out how he does that? Because if he and his friends can change at will, and if they like to eat Human flesh even when they are Humans, they can’t be allowed to live. I am sorry, but you know what I think about that.”
“I know, and I already have a plan. Your Hunter friends are going to be needed. Some of them might die, but I suppose that’s a small price to pay. In the meantime, I will try to find where the rest of that group is. Get a small team to attack an abandoned house and a bigger team at the back. There will be some Werewolves inside that house and a few outside hiding in the woods. The Hunters will attack that house, and the Werewolves in the woods will surround them. But if a bigger group of Hunters surrounds those Werewolves, things will get nasty for the Werewolves.”
Aniya jolted. “You are talking about a big mess! I have no idea if the Hunters have enough manpower to handle such a thing! Even if the women that work as administratives join the attack!”
“Well, if they can’t, that’s a problem, because if more Werewolves join that crazy guy and he teaches them how to change during the day, soon there will be no Hunters around. And with no one to stop them, they will go after innocent people to eat them. I don’t like Hunters very much, but I like even less, Werewolves that eat people. It’s your call, Aniya. I have a guy following me around, so I can’t take long to return or they will get suspicious.”
“I am not sure what to do… All this is getting a bit out of hand…”