Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Will

“What would you do if you knew where Blair was hiding?” Alexis asked. After two and a half days of lazing around the cottage, making love, eating heartily, swimming in the lake, and kayaking in the river, it was finally time for us to go back to reality. We were driving back to Fiddler’s Green in my Jeep, and now that our vacation was over, we were both allowed to discuss Blair. We’d made a pact earlier not to discuss anything like that during our trip to the cottage.

“If I knew where Blair was hiding, I’d wait till he’d play his hand. I know for certain that he’s got a hand to play. It’s not like he’s been doing these experiments for no reason. There’s something else. Something bigger. He wouldn’t just mutate his soldiers. He’s trying to change them just like his father tried. There’s a sickness that runs in that family. A sickness that sees no reason and cannot be tamed,” I said. “But why do you ask?”

“No particular reason,” Alexis said, looking out the window and averting her gaze. “I was just thinking out loud.”

“If you have something to tell me, now would be the time,” I said, trying to coax the truth out of her.

“I don’t have anything to share right now. I was with you the entire time. I was just hoping that we’d get a lead or something like that,” Alexis said, with a slight stern undertone in her voice that I’d learned was a signal to leave the topic alone. It looked like reality was catching up to us faster than we’d anticipated.

We drove for another half an hour quietly. I kept my eyes on the road, and Alexis looked out the window. Nothing eventful happened while we were still in Vermont. When we crossed state lines and headed into Fiddler’s Green territory, that’s when something bizarre happened.

It was still early in the morning when we left the cottage, giving it five stars on the Airbnb app and making sure that we’d made the place spotless for the next visitors. And now, on this Monday morning, it was barely nine o’clock when I saw a series of shadows running alongside us in the forest. I recognized them immediately.

They were werewolves.

“What’s our pack doing out at this time of the day?” I asked Alexis.

“Will. Drive faster. Those are not werewolves of our pack!” Alexis said alarmingly. “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

“We’re not stopping?” I asked. It sounded like the better option to stop and fight the werewolves if they meant to attack us. It was certainly better than leading them back to Fiddler’s Green.

“We’re not stopping. I’ve counted nine of them. You think we can take on nine werewolves by ourselves?”

“Lexie, we’ve taken on hordes of vampires. Killed so many super soldiers. Fighting nine werewolves is not a challenge,” I said, still driving at high speed. The werewolves had not given up the chase. They were now running closer to the road. Alexis was right. There were nine of them.

“But we’ve never really fought against werewolves,” Alexis said.

She had a fair point.

But it turned out that all our discussion was useless, for in that next second, all the werewolves suddenly jumped on the road. Five of them rammed the Jeep from one side while the other four rammed it from the other side, causing me to lose control of the wheel. The Jeep spun around and came to a halt at the side of the road. If it had gone to the side a foot more, it would have toppled over into the forest.

I got out and immediately shifted, realizing it was too late to run from them. Alexis came out and shifted behind me.

As I leaped into the air to get the upper hand on the wolves, so did they all, and instead of me jumping on top of them, we clashed into the air. My claws dug into their fur, their claws sank into my skin, and we all fell to the ground, our bodies entangled. I had just taken on four wolves by myself, leaving Alexis to fend for herself against the other five.

There was something very different about these wolves that I had never seen in any of my pack members. I had never seen it in myself, either. These were feral wolves, their eyes blazing red, froth foaming from their mouths, and their claws drenched in blood.

I got up and immediately tackled the werewolves who were standing around me, sending them flying everywhere. They were werewolves, for sure, but I was the only one among them who had unlocked the wolf within. I was bigger than them, stronger than them, and could take on all of them. I could not say the same for Alexis, who, I noticed, was having a hard time keeping up with the five werewolves who were attacking her.

I rushed to her side, biting down the head of one of the werewolves around her. He whimpered and receded from the fight, tending to his wounds. The other four werewolves retreated and waited for the entire pack to regroup. We stood there on the precipice of the forest, just a few feet from the road, me and Alexis on one side and the nine werewolves on the other side.

They’re too damn powerful! It’s like they’re feral or something, Alexis said.

Don’t worry. We’ve got this, I consoled her.

I rushed at the werewolves, baring my teeth and stretching my claws, hoping to tackle them and slit their throats, bite off their heads, but just as I reached them, something strange—something that I’d never thought would happen—happened.

The werewolves all fell to the floor, convulsing, writhing, their mouths dripping with foam. I had never seen any werewolf do that before in my life. Seeing those wolves in pain made me feel sorry for them even though they had just attacked us and had meant to kill us. No one should go through the pain they went through.

Their snouts were bleeding, and their eyes were leaking black ooze. As they continued to convulse, they began shifting into their human forms. All of them were wearing their soldier uniforms. They were all Blair’s super-soldiers.

I shifted back too and tried to get near to them in hopes that someone would speak up and tell me what had happened. But before I could do that, they all shook one last time and died almost simultaneously, their bodies turning blue, their eyes sliding up their sockets, the foam and blood on their mouths drying up.

“What in the holy fuck just happened?” Alexis said, holding her head in her hands.

“The inevitable,” I said, looking sadly at Alexis. Seeing those soldiers die made me feel sorry for the lives that they had lived, the lives that led up to such gruesome deaths. And it was in some part my fault. If I hadn’t been caught by Edward Beckett, he never would have gotten my blood to use for his experiments. If he hadn’t done that, his son would never have tried to use his father’s research to make human-werewolf hybrids like these.

“It’s Blair’s doing,” I said, pointing at the dead bodies. “Remember how I was talking about Blair building up to something big? Well, that’s it. Now we know. He’s been meaning to make an army of werewolves who’d respond to his every command. And so far, he’s been failing at every step. It drives me crazy to think that someone like him would go to such extreme lengths to ensure his deranged father’s legacy!”

“How do you know that it’s your blood Blair used?” Alexis asked.

“What other explanation is there? Edward kept vials and vials of my blood in his laboratory. Surely, when Blair got his hands on his father’s estate, he must have gotten all my blood samples. That’s how he made the serum to change these soldiers,” I said. “But Edward’s research was a dead-end. No human can morph into a werewolf with that blood magic that Edward was trying to do and what Blair is trying to do.”

“We should have killed him when we had the chance,” Alexis said.

As much as I wanted to deny it, she was right. If we had killed him that night when we had breached his tower, none of this would have happened. But that night, it was fated that we failed.

“We have to go back to the commune and warn everyone!” I said. “They have to know that these soldiers can turn into werewolves at any time.”

“Let’s go then,” Alexis said.

We rushed back to my Jeep and drove as fast as we could back to Fiddler’s Green. Alexis kept her eye out to see if any more werewolves were lurking in the area. I kept my eyes on the road while thinking about the repercussions of Blair’s actions.

This was a loose cannon that he had created. It would hurt not only everyone in Fiddler’s Green, the Grimm pack, but Blair too. Surely he could see that, or had his madness gotten the better of him, rendering him blind to the consequences of his crazy actions?

“Hey, at least they’re dying on their own,” Alexis said. “We didn’t have to fight them for long.”

“They were suffering. They were my enemies, sure, but they were suffering in so much pain that it was inhumane.”

As we drove across Fiddler’s Green, we noticed that there was no sign that the feral werewolves had been in town. After another fifteen minutes of silent driving, we were back at the commune.

Vince was waiting for us at the gate.

“Will! There’s something I have to show you!” Vince exclaimed.

“If it is what I think it is, we already know,” Alexis said.

“You guys were attacked by werewolves?” Vince asked, his eyes widening with horror.

“Yes, but before we could fight them properly, they died on their own,” I said. “Now show me what you’ve got.”

Vince led us to the stables. Inside, there were six corpses of brutalized super-soldiers, their faces covered in blood, their fingers torn, and their skins turned blue.

“These werewolves leaped over the barbed wire and tried to attack us,” Vince said. “We shifted to fight them, but before we could do that, they just died and shifted back into their human forms.”

“Fucking Blair!” I yelled, kicking an empty bucket, sending it flying into the air. “That’s it. I’m going to find that son of a bitch and put a stop to his whole operation.”

“What do you want the pack to do in the meantime?” Vince asked.

“Divide and conquer. Find out wherever these fucking werewolves are and round them up. If they die on their own, that’s well and good. If not, kill them and bury their bodies. But leave these six corpses here. I have something in mind for them,” I said.

“Will.” Alexis tugged at my sleeve and pulled me aside, leading me out of the stables. “First of all, you need to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down right now!” I said, noticing that my anger was starting to resurface. “This is madness.”

“Yes, it is, but I have something to share with you,” Alexis said, taking a deep breath.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you know where Blair is? If so, you have to tell me right now.”