Wrath and Emeralds - Chapter 10a

[draconica-nova.livejournal.com]

Title: Wrath and Emeralds – 10a/12
Chapter Rating: Hard R
Overall Rating: R
Warning(s): Violence and swearing.
Summary: This could be the end...

Author's Notes: I am going to be evil and split this chapter in two because I like how this bit ended. Hee hee heeeee...

~~~


“You’re a sick son of bitch,” Ryan murmured angrily but Hunter simply snorted in amusement and stood back to admire his handiwork.

Ryan sat shirtless and shivering on one of the hard-backed wooden chairs from the dining room. His hands were tied together with the phone wire all too tightly around the back whilst his ankles had been secured to the chair’s solid legs, restricting movement entirely. Ryan was hunched, avoiding looking his captor in the eyes. The drapes were all drawn in the living room, choking the midday sun with forced darkness.

“And now, I wait,” Hunter smiled, fingers tapping rhythmically against the butt of the shotgun over his shoulder. “There’s no rush.”

Ryan raised his head and snarled. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Hunter stood professionally, hands clasped behind his back in the way a respectable gentleman would stand, or maybe a soldier standing to attention. “I’m going to save your life.” Silently, he walked over to one of the windows and peeked through the curtains – it was a lovely day outside. “I learnt a long time ago that, in order to kill a wolf, you don’t need a silver bullet or some feeble antidote.” With one hand, he reached up and stroked the shotgun as if he were petting a purring cat. “Just a shot to the heart. That’s all it takes.”

Ryan shuddered involuntarily at the thought, but tried to remain a level head. For the moment at least. “Why don’t you just go ahead and fucking kill me now, you coward?”

The young man let out a burst of laughter. “I don’t kill people. That would be far too easy. No… I’ll wait for it to come out.” He leaned in, staring intensely. “I know you’re in there… Come out and say hello.”

Impulsively, Ryan spat disgustedly into Hunter’s face, narrowly missing the man’s eye and causing him to flinch. “Go to hell,” he scowled.

Hunter wiped the saliva off with the back of his hand and stood up, over powering. Casually, he brought the shotgun from around his shoulder and held it in his hands. “I’ve got all day, though I’m afraid you don’t have that guarantee. Now change.”

“Where’s Colin?” snapped Ryan, voice soft in the realisation. “What have you done with him?”

“I said, change. Change into the monster you are.” His fingers tightened around the firearm.

With a sharp inhale, Ryan began to twitch as Hunter’s words tried to take hold of him with no success. He grimaced against the impulses, and barely had time to react before Hunter growled angrily and brought the butt of the gun hard across his face.

“Where are you, monster?” Another blow, this time cutting the skin of his temple. “Change!”

Ryan sniffled against the pain, flinching and hunching forward once more. At first he sounded distressed, sobbing, but then the sobbing slowly turned into… laughter. His head rose, adorned with an angry cut to his forehead and an expressive grin as he chuckled knowingly.

“I’m not scared anymore,” he explained to Hunter’s confused look. “You can give me all the hell you want, but I know how this works. You won’t break me.” A drop of blood began to inch its way down the side his face, spawning from where he’d been struck.

Hunter looked incensed but kept his voice quiet. “We’ll see about that,” he challenged.

“Now, tell me where Colin is!” demanded Ryan. “If you’ve hurt him, I swear to God…”

The young man said nothing and walked away toward the fireplace. Sitting on the mantelpiece and adorning the wall above were various photographs in neat little frames. Most of them were of Colin and family, especially Luke captured in the important stages of life – first day at school, birthdays, that kind of thing. And then there was one of Colin and Ryan together in their early days. Hunter couldn’t tell the exact date, but he knew it was an old memory by the difference in hairstyles. For a start, Colin actually had some hair. Clearly, these two had known each other for a very long time. Perhaps not possessing the bond of father and son, but a strong bond all the same.

Hunter smiled at the idea. “It wasn’t pretty,” he teased. “I can still hear the screaming.”

“I don’t believe you.” Ryan replied, straining his wrists against the tightly wound wire – if anything had happened to Colin, he would know. He’d just feel it. “You’re bluffing.”

Hunter returned to stand before his prisoner, slinging the shotgun back over his shoulder. Wistfully, he reached out and stroked Ryan’s sweat-messed hair who tilted his head away and snarled at the intrusion to his personal space. “I only wish I were.”

Ryan’s eye twitched as he saw the man’s face remain deadly serious with brief signs of amusement flickering in his eyes. Suddenly, he was struck one more time, by more of a slap than a punch. He grunted against the pain, the hatred but especially the desire to let the virus loose on this maniac.

From his pocket, Hunter slowly pulled a sharp silver knife and held it before Ryan’s face. The manner in which he did so was unthreatening because he wasn’t intending to harm Ryan with it - he just wanted to show off his disturbing handiwork. Smeared onto the blade was dark red blood, already drying and encrusting stubbornly while some drops still glistened in the light streaming through the drapes.

Pressing it under Ryan’s nose, Hunter watched on as his plan began to unfold in just the way he wanted. “I hope you can smell this, monster – it’s the blood of your master.”

A heightened sense of smell was one of the many dire side effects the virus brought about and was right now flaring like crazy, against all his wishes. As soon as the beast inside him could sense it, so could Ryan.

It was Colin’s blood.

The tingling of approaching feral ferocity was suddenly more dominating than it had ever been before, tearing through him like an angry, unstoppable wild fire. Ryan screamed hoarsely to the ceiling as his back jerked and the muscles in his arms began to bulge. Under the pressure, the phone wire snapped from around each of his ankles and soon from around his bound wrists as Hunter watched on in triumph.

“Fuck you… fuck you!” In a surge of energy, Ryan grabbed the wooden chair he’d been tied to and threw it against the wall, narrowly missing his kidnapper by a fair few feet before he collapsed to the carpet on all fours, grunting and growling as the fur began to spawn up his arms…

A flurry of furious pounds on the front door broke the atmosphere entirely, and Hunter was infuriated to hear just who was on the other side of it.

“Hunter!” Colin bellowed, “You let us in, right now!”

Hunter turned back to Ryan, who had heard the voice also, and tightened his lips together in annoyance. “Looks like the canary’s out of his cage.”

Ryan tried to call for his friend but his strained whisper was entirely drowned out when Hunter lifted up his shotgun to the front door, aimed and then let out a ringing blast unflinchingly. The power was enough to take a chunk out of the foundations, scattering wood and concrete onto the floor. That was just a warning shot, and no one would be so fortunate next time.

“Run for your life!” he laughed, looking back in time to see Ryan's legs tear the seams of his jeans and his snout begin to form painfully, complete with razor sharp teeth.

“Hunt, unlock this door. That’s an order!”

Bryce was with him it seemed and by the sounds of it, he’d brought along some agents from the Facility to help out – one of them must’ve found Colin and freed him, damn it all.

Colin wanted to break his way through that infernal door and get to Ryan before anything terrible happened. All through the drive to the house he’d had visions of what would happen if he arrived too late – Ryan would be on the floor, bleeding to death with his mouth hanging open, waiting for someone to breathe life into him. He couldn’t let it all end like that, let such a journey end in tragedy and a vendetta that would leave a bitter taste on his tongue.

Inside, the beast howled in twisted greeting, just as Hunter raised his shotgun to the exposed chest in waiting, wanting it to make the first move in order for a more satisfying kill. At the same time, Bryce had ordered the two agents to knock the door down while Colin just wanted this all to stop.

The sound of rhythmic thumping confused the wolf at first, but as soon as he laid his bright emerald eyes upon the wicked face of Hunter, his mood turned from bewildered to enraged - he recognised immediately the threat this man posed and still truly believed that Colin was dead because of him.

In that instant, a number of shattering events occurred. Firstly, the wolf roared, shuddering the walls and crouched, ready to pounce with all the ferociousness of a predator. Then, the door finally broke open, flying off its hinges as Colin and two agents collapsed inside. Hunter found his moment, just as the beast sprang towards him with teeth bared and squeezed the shotgun’s trigger at the same time as Colin arrived with a shout of fury to lay his hands on the muzzle of the firearm in an attempt to alter the shot, but it was already too late.

The echo of gunfire had swallowed the room.

To be continued...