The Lycanthrope Tails. Chapter 19.
The Lycanthrope Tails
Chapter 19
By Roofles dah Badger
It was late at night when Dakota stirred. He didn't wake up from a sound or smell. In his gut he knew something was wrong. Things had been too quiet. Far too quiet as he sat up and looked around.
Jared was here with him. Frostbite was lying next to his human. That bugged him. This was his and Jared spot. He ignored it for now as he let go of his mate and stood up slowly on all fours, standing over his beloved.
Things had been too quiet for them for too long. That was when he noticed, Sveil was missing.
"Odd." He said aloud and yet no sound came out. It startled the wolf.
Before he collect himself his foot stepped in something wet, sticky and the smell of iron met his nose. It was blood.
Dakota jumped back, wide eyed as he looked down at the bloody, mutilated corpse of his love. Large gashed were along his arms and legs. He was bleeding profusely, laying in a pool of his own blood.
Dakota moved over slowly, nosing down at him. "J-Jared?" He whimpered trying to contain the pain inside. He actually spoke then, looking at this sight.
"Why?" Jared spoke in a cracked voice.
Dakota was confused. Was there a threat here? Who had done this? Who!
"Why did you do this to me?" Jared gasped, turning to face him. Half his face was missing, his cheek hanging by only a few threads of skin.
Dakota took a step back. "No. No, it's not possible. I would never!" He wanted to shout, yet he cowered back. Away and afraid as Jared rose like a limp corpse from the ground, pointing his arm at him.
"You did this!" The corpse howled as the windows shattered in the cabin and torrents of blood gushed inside from every angle, covering the floor in it's crimson hew.
"Monster!" Voices shouted around Dakota. "Demon! Beast! Kill it! Kill it!" The voices grew louder as hands reached out from within the lake of blood towards the wolf. Grabbing at his fur and legs and trying to drag him down into it's depths with them.
All those he had killed. Slaughtered. Devoured and stolen the lives of. Haunting him.
And Dakota twitched. His eyes going red. "No." He gasped aloud. "Not again." His jaw clenched tightly as he began to shake. His very body convulsing as his muscle ripped from within, only to regrow larger than it had been before. His hide peeled away from his shoulders as he howled in pain as the transformation ripped apart both his body and mind alike.
"I will not be left alone again." Dakota shouted as he swiped one monstrous sized had over the lake of blood. "You will not take him from me!" He shouted, howling now as he crushed every one of these grapping hands of the dead under his massive paws.
The living room was growing ever smaller as he increased in size. Growing faster and faster, larger than he had before and breaking the very walls around him. Nothing could contain his rage. His hatred. Nothing and no one could....
"The webs we weave." Marionette smiled staring into her Magic Mirror. Black threads were connected between her fingers as she manipulated the scene before her. "Get lost in your nightmare. Let your own mind devour you."
The crow outside the window jumped from one branch to the next, still staring inside with far too many red eyes on the sleeping bodies inside. Focusing its sight only on them.
There was another crow now. And another. A whole murder of crows had surrounded the small cabin in the woods. All staring inside with their three bloody red eyes.
"Traitor!" The other wolves shouted at Frostbite as the silver fur wolf paced between them. "Hate. Loser. Weak. Bastard child!" They continued.
Frostbite shook off their insults like snow from his pelt. "This is all they can do?" Frostbite thought as he looked around himself in the cabin.
Dead wolves had circled him, staring at him with blank eyes. Some of their pelts were falling off their very skulls, others were missing legs or tails. Broken bodies of his old pack lay around him. All their milky white eyes stared at the traitor that had sold them out for a moments respite of peace from the torture.
"My nightmares are far worse than this." Frostbite stepped on one of the corpses, crushing it to dust under his paw.
"Traitor!" Another shouted out. Frostbite lazily looked over to see Jared now pointing at him. "You killed me."
"Nope." Frostbite just told the illusion before him; or rather, the nightmare. The wolf even yawned, bored with these cheap tricks. "This isn't a dream eater." The wolf mused aloud as he got back up and began to look around for any clues. He couldn't smell anything other than the dead around him. "Smart, fooling my senses like this."
Frostbite thought it over. "If I'm here... then the others might be too." And he lifted his head, listening for the sound of anyone else over the dead still accusing him. Their voices and accusations fell on deaf ears. Not falling for this trick, it held little control over him as he moved towards one of the walls of the cabin.
"Fascinating." He thought placing a paw up on it. "It would be too hard to create such a dream for each and every one of us. So, they placed walls between one another?" Frostbite stopped at that. He really rather not end up in Dakota's nightmare, already seeming to know what it'd be.
A dead muzzle snapped around his hind leg. He looked down at his bloody leg. "It's not real." He just told the corpse and it vanished in a mound of black sand. "None of you are." He said. It wasn't just his voice it was like lucid dream. Able to know that it was just that, a dream. "Been fighting my demons for far too long to be fooled by this child's trick."
And Frostbite leapt through the wall. His muzzle opening wide and, with a howl, shattered the worlds around them.
He landed hard in the same cabin, now on the other side of the room. Everything here was inky black. His steps didn't make a sound. "A vacuum?" He thought to himself, looking around. He knocked a lamp over and it crashed to the floor without making a noise. "Jared always hated silence..." Frostbite nodded.
Whoever was responsible for this seemed to know them well. No, Frostbite concluded. Their own dreams were turning on them. Using the minds own weakness and fragility against itself.
"Reality," he mused even if his voice didn't make a sound. "Is far worse." And he closed his eyes. Taking a seat right where he was.
Recall, he told himself. The feel of it. The coldness of the North. The empty Tundra, the howling wind and running in the snow. Feel it under my paws, blowing in my face, covering my hide and hiding me away from all prying eyes. Vanish into that cold world.
And it began to snow as Frostbite brought his own dream into Jared's nightmare.
"I miss the snow." Frostbite had told Jared long ago. "It was part of who I am. My very clan thrived during the blizzards up North. It was our domain, our territory."
"Territory, there's that word again." Jared frowned during one of his many lessons. "It means far more than just a plot of land, huh?"
"It isn't just ownership of land. It is far more than that. It is our safe heaven, our home. Where we belong." Frostbite tried to explain in human words. It wasn't something humans could understand. It was something wolf feels inside.
"Will you be returning then? To the North?" Jared had asked back then.
Frostbite smiled now in this vacant void. He hadn't answered him back then. "There would be no point going back there, alone." Frostbite opened his eyes and brought his domain into this place.
A cold mist covered the ground and began to blow throughout the apartment as the snow continued to fall around the wolf. He stood up and took a step, the ground freezing beneath his feet. And howled. Howled into the silent void before him. Lifting his muzzle high as he continued in the silence.
This world, this dream would not break so easy. And Frostbite didn't relent even as there was a shout from the bathroom, a snarl and the sound of breaking glass.
One of the black threads between Marionette's fingers had snapped when Frostbite broke the wall of his dream, leaping into the other. And now the strands were beginning to grow cold, frost sprouting like tiny flowers on the strands. The magic mirror she was using to see was becoming foggy as if something was breathing on the glass, from the other side.
Hanging from the strings was a crooked puppet and she brought it up into the rest, having to use her ace card so soon.
The stress from capturing all three was beginning to take it's toll on the sorceress. She couldn't keep up with the struggle. Containing Dakota was taking most of her focus as it was. The beast was relentless, thrashing around and breaking apart the cabin he was trapped in like a cage. She kept having to use his own dream to reform and reconstruct it. Each time he would break it down again.
Now there was this, anomaly. She had never dealt with this before. A dreamer that could affect the very world outside. The mirror was too fogged up to see anything in its reflection.
"No!" She shouted now, losing control as another strand broke. Dakota busted from his cage, roaring in a blood thirsty rage as he held his dead beloved with one hand. "You won't have him!" She shouted at the monster that chilled her blood to the bone. "It's too late!"
With both hands she crushed the threads together and with all her might she forced the enchantment onto the weakest member of the group, Jared. Shoving him into an abyss of his own making and closing the door.
And the floor boards beneath him vanished and he fell. Fell into an inky well of black as she laughed almost hysterical now. Her hair was a mess as she breathed heavily, nearly keeled over on herself. It took everything she had left, even with the enchanted mirror and Ariadne's thread.
Marionette laughed, wiping the hair out of her face. "Oops." She thought aloud as she opened her hands. The thread was still there but the crooked puppet, was gone.
Jared fell into the inky black well. Maybe for minutes. Possibly for hours. Yet, it was only second until he hit the ground. Pin and needles stabbed into his arms and legs and he gasped loudly, trying to cry out in pain. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. It was just a shock to his system, like falling in a dream.
It took even longer for him to get up, to look around this place. "The hell am I?" He asked aloud. His voice echoed in the empty black well. Jared looked up and couldn't see anything. Yet, somehow, he knew he could see even without light.
This place just had nothing to offer. There was nothing in this place save for the floor beneath him.
"Hello?" He called out, cupping a hand over the side of his mouth to amplify it the best he could. His voice echoed around him. No one replied.
Or at least no one, but himself.
"Boy." A growl sounded and he didn't need to turn around to know that a brown fur wolf was there.
"You again." Jared clenched his fists tightly.
"Let me in and I'll get us out." It offered its sweet deal with a silver tongue. They both knew the price he'd have to pay for such a thing.
"I rather die." Jared just said turning around to face him.
The wolf flinched at that as if physically slapped, it's legs bending down a bit with a lowered head. "Foolish boy!" It growled viciously, not taking a step forward. It knew very well he meant it too. Unlike the wolf, Jared survival instinct didn't dominant everything else about it. And it couldn't understand that, it's very mind unable to comprehend that death was somehow better than losing one's freedom.
It haunted him, plagued his nights. Testing and toying with him. Bringing out each and every one of his darkest secrets to try and break him. To slip in between the cracks and devour him from within.
It blamed the other two wolves. If they had just let Jared go on a rampage that first night he would have a stronger hold over the boy. It would be able to have finished the job by now. Now, the wolf could only sit there and watch as something else, something worse joined them.
It twisted and moved with legs far too long, like a spider crawling on the ground, it came into view. A crooked man with a crooked smile. A nightmare that made the boogieman seem like Santa Claus.
Jared took a step back, even towards the wolf. It gave a wolfish smile at that. He'd have to back down now. He'd have to relent, give in and beg for his help.
And the wolf wouldn't give it, not at first. He'd let the boy be beaten to a bloody pulp before he accepted. Make him suffer more than he already had for this long-awaited delay.
Jared stood his ground, facing the crooked nightmare. "If I die. You die." Jared said once more. "I will never accept your offer, ever. I will make sure that I never taste human flesh. Until the very end I will continue to fight you." Jared didn't look back now, as the wolf stood in his shadow. "And you will lose."
"And you will die." The wolf snarled now.
"So?" Jared asked. "Why are you so afraid of death?"
The wolf eye twitched at that as the crooked man slowly rose higher, taller than any human on twiggy legs.
"Afraid you'll have to face your sins maybe?" Jared laughed though, a soft sound. There was pity in his voice. "Or are you afraid of this?" He motioned around them. At the empty blackness. "Afraid of the nothing?"
Jared didn't mock him or tease. It was a brutally honest question. One, that was full of pity. Pity for the monster standing in his shadow. Pity for the beast that would devour him the second he let his guard down.
"Stupid child." It spoke as the crooked man attacked. It's elongated, clawed hand shooting out for him.
Jared caught the claws, between his own fingers. His hand, his arm was gone and where it had been was now a wolfs. Those claws stretched between the wolf's fingers, aiming for his face.
"You think this is for the best?" The wolf asked in a low voice, it's front left leg was gone. The very one Jared had used to defend himself.
Jared easily snapped the things wrist, it didn't even flinch from the break. The human had to jump back as the other arm struck with lightning quick speed.
Jared's legs were gone and where they had been, were those of a wolf.
He landed several steps back, looking up at the monster with amber eyes.
"You have no idea what I have done for you." The wolf continued to speak. It's eyes were gone, it's hind legs missing as Jared jumped forward for a counter attack.
With his other hand, Jared struck out. Swiping at the thing's twisted torso. It dodged in a way he didn't think was physically possible, twisting around the attack and bending over in a way a spine was never made to go. It brought both arms around him and with that monstrous speed attacked. Time and time again with its clawed hands, each finger shooting out like deadly needles. Stretching to the point it hit the ground, then instantly retreating, rearming and shooting out once more.
Jared could feel it once more. He listened. He could hear the things twisted bones moving in it's joints. Feel the ground beneath him and listen with his senses to dodge each one of those deadly fingers. Weaving between each one and slashing out once more.
He tore open the puppets chest, the straw ripping between his nails. It shrieked at that. An inhuman sound like nails against a chalkboard, pulling back away.
"You think I'm a monster? A fiend? A beast?" The wolf, with only a head, spoke where it had been. "The things I've been holding back, things you couldn't bear to face. Demons inside that would gladly eat you alive."
Jared dodged again as that hand swiped at his face. It had to be over ten feet by now, on those spindly legs. That mouth opened again on its masked face. Bile seeped out of its mouth like saliva as it clawed at the ground he had been.
Its reach was too long, Jared couldn't get close to attack like this. It kept its vulnerable body far away and using those insanely long limbs to protect itself.
"I wonder." The wolf spoke its last words. Fading away to become part of Jared once more. "Will you be able to stomach what's to come?" And it delighted in the idea of watching this human suffer.
Jared snapped his muzzle around that hand, grabbing it's arm and with all his inhuman strength pulled the puppet monster towards him. It shrieked one last time as his nails sliced it's face into five separate pieces.
That bile sprayed from each cut as it lurched and fell onto it's back, twitching here and there before stopping.
Jared didn't give it a chance to recover, leaping onto its torso and shredding every inch of it in a blind fury.
He was panting heavily by the end of it, moving off the monster as that green fluid ate away everything it touched like acid. Jared keeled over, puking out the stuff that had gotten into his muzzle when he had bitten that arm. His tongue burned; if it wasn't fur his regeneration he might even have lost it.
Wiping his mouth clean, he turned away from the monster knowing it was dead. Then stopped dead in his own tracks.
"Jared?"
"Lucca?" Jared asked. He was in his werewolf form and doubted his friend, his dear childhood friend could recognize him. "It's me! Jared." He tried to explain as the image of his friend back away in fear. "D-don't worry, I'm not about too..."
Even before he could stop he felt it. The thick blood covering his hands as if he had dipped them in buckets of paint. He stared down in pure horror as he stood over the dead corpse of his cherished friend. And he howled in pain. In agony as he collapsed to his knees.
"You killed me." The voice of his friend echoed around him.
"You killed us." Andrea, Lucca's girlfriend and Jared's other friend, chimed in.
"All of us." Tess joined in.
Jared covered his ears with both bloody hands as he knelt there, crying. It all sunk in. Everything the wolf had been holding back hit him like an anvil dropped from above. Every ounce of pain and agony, suffering and despair that he had been suppressing over these months.
It was his fault. They all were dead or gone because of him. It was his fault. He might as well have killed them with his own two hands.
Lucca's corpse turned its head towards him, beginning to accuse him of its death. "You did this."
The nightmare that Frostbite could live with was something Jared couldn't. He didn't want this. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He didn't want any of this.
"Then kill yourself." Andrea spoke from behind.
"Kill yourself." Lucca joined in.
"Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. KILL!" They shouted together at him. All around him, inside his head.
Nothing mattered. He didn't matter. Death was the only way. He couldn't live with this. Live with what he had done.
Then there was a rusty, jagged knife lying at his side and he picked up. Slowly, with shaking hands as he took it with both hands and turned it upwards at his own throat.
"If you don't, I will." A voice spoke behind him. Jared could barely turn his head to see Dakota standing there. The monster in the woods that night. A creature covered in blood, with wide eyes full of blood lust and a muzzle still dripping with the shredded flesh of the wolves that had gotten within reach.
And he could feel his jaws slowly closing around his throat.
"This is how it should have been..." Jared voice was empty and hollow as his eyes went blank. In this place, this empty void. He was left with all of this and nothing more. All alone. Forever alone with his sins.
"Jared." Tess called out. "Hey, Jared!"
With tear stained eyes he looked over to the one spot of light in this whole place. Like there was a lamp turned on overhead, there was a single circle he could see. It was him as a child, his twin sister was sitting next to him. In the backseat of their parents car.
"No." Jared jaw clenched as the tears fell hotly now. "No, please. Not that." And he could only watch as the two carefree kids continued to play in the back of the car.
Tess rolled a ball to him and he tossed it back. She laughed at that, tossing it harder at him. And he picked it up.
"Stop!" He wanted to shout, to call out.
All he could do was watch while his younger self threw the ball too hard, hitting his dad instead. His dad, who was driving. Who looked back to scold them, looking away from the road if only for a split second. Never seeing the other car until it was too late.
Jared closed his eyes, looking away from the scene of the horrific car crash that had broken his femur and had to get a metal bar placed into it.
It was only then that it hurt, the femur he had broken. It ached and burned as if someone had stabbed it with a burning knife.
"Finish it." Lucca said, crawling up his front with a half missing face. His dear friend was bleeding profusely as he wrapped both hands around his neck. "Finish it!" The haunting spirit shouted in his face. "Die for me."
And Jared could feel it, the monstrous teeth slowly closing around his entire body as Dakota had finally decided it was time to devour him too.
No one was coming. No one was going to save him this time. He was truly, alone...
"Hey, Jared!" The scene was replaying itself. One of the most horrible things that had ever happened in his life before this all started.
"Hey. Hey, Jared." Tess smiled. She wasn't young anymore. She looked just as how she had done the last time Jared had seen her. "Hey." She smiled at him as he finally seemed to notice. "I want to go to get some coffee. And donuts!" She laughed now.
"You don't need any. Already piggy enough." Jared recalled saying that morning. She had hit him the next second. And they laughed. They smiled and they...
Jared took the knife and jabbed it up, blindly at Dakota's face. It connected with the wolf's eye, sinking in deeply and spraying blood as it howled. Pulling back and away. With one hand Jared, still as a werewolf, snapped each of Lucca's arms off and forced the corpse away from him.
He stood on shaking legs. "I am all alone..." He thought to himself, gritting his teeth as his nails stretched into claws. "And so is Tess." And he lashed out at the nightmare before him. "I will not leave Tess alone again!"
And he turned around on the monstrous form of the red wolf with a dagger in its eye. "And you!" He pointed at the beast. "You are going to help me. Now." Jared ordered, feeling the rage and hatred building up inside of him. Fueling his strength, his resolve.
These nightmares would haunt him until the day he died, he knew. But he could use that; use that as a cruel reminder of who he was, what he needed to do. And why, why he woke up in the morning.
Jared walked over to the nightmare Dakota, lifting its head up slowly to consider its eye. To look into and see what he himself could one day become. A mindless monster hungry only for blood.
"Dakota." He said to this thing and its ears folded back. This was his own mind after all, he finally realized. No one else would know about who had caused the car crash. Even his own twin sister had forgotten a long time ago. Never once, blaming him for it all. "I'm ready to wake up."
The crows outside the cabin began to convulse, cawing louder and louder into the night before they each began to implode in on themselves. Each one bursting into a pile of black sand as the last sleeping person in that room woke up.
"Jared!" The real Dakota yipped happily, stomping his paws on the ground several times in front of him and then tackling him with a powerful nuzzle to the face.
"Get off him, you idiot." Frostbite snapped, pushing him away. In doing so the silver fur wolf now was standing on all fours over the wolfed-out Jared.
"Hey..." Jared said in a hoarse voice. He closed his eyes, groaning from the painful migraine he had. "I was... looking for you..." He coughed, sitting up a bit as Frostbite sat next to him. "Don't... wander off again." He joked; the other two confused about what he had dreamed about.
"You ok?" Frostbite asked, licking his cheek.
"Alive." He chuckled as Dakota nuzzled under his arm until Jared placed it around his neck and hugged him close.
"I heard you howling." Jared spoke to Frostbite. "It... it sounded amazing."
Frostbite looked away, folding his ears back. "Stupid. If you didn't fall for such a cheap trick."
"Thank you." Jared only said to that. "Who uh... did that?" He asked finally, scratching Dakota's head. The wolf had his whole muzzle in Jared's lap and was trying to scoot himself in closer to the brown fur werewolf. Jared was slowly shifting back to human form; it was just more comfortable for him.
"Not sure." Sveil, the tracker, spoke up finally coming back into the house. "There was... black sand left behind?" He offered trying to see if that made any sense to any of them.
"Just means we're getting closer." Frostbite nodded.
"How did they know?" Jared dared to ask, looking around them.
"Hunters will employ any means to even the playing field against us." Frostbite just explained without explaining. "Even the very things they are, supposedly, trying to fight against. We'll leave before dawn."
Jared rested back at that, unable to get back to sleep thankfully. "Fight fire with fire, huh?"
"Ice always wins." Frostbite just smiled to himself as he rested back down. Jared placed a hand back on his muzzle and the wolf let out a sigh of content. He wasn't sure how the two so easily got back to sleep...
Far away and yet all too close, in a deep cellar Tess was curled up on herself. Her hands clenched around the jagged blade given to her. Bruised and bloody she lay there after another long day of training. She would do anything... whatever it takes, to get revenge against the monsters that took her brother...