The Beast Returns

  The Beast Book Two

  Aleister Davidson

  Edited by

  Kim Vick

  Black Mantis Press LLC

  Copyright © 2018 by Aleister Davidson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Thank You for Reading!

  About the Author

  Also by Aleister Davidson

  Mailing List

  1

  Thomas awoke in severe pain. His head was dizzy, his vision blurry, his mind numb. It took several minutes for his vision to return to normal, and for his brain to process the fact that he’d been stabbed, fallen out, and had apparently gone through surgery.

  It was several more minutes before he realized why he’d been stabbed. He tried to jump up out of his hospital bed but found his body unable to move more than a few inches. It caused his abdomen to erupt into a terrible, fiery pain. Thomas fell back to the bed exhausted, realizing he was handcuffed to the bed frame.

  So, I’m still alive, and I’m still a prisoner. Only a matter of days until the full moon. Hell, it might even be tonight. Thomas’s thoughts came uneasily. His head was still swimming in an ocean of anesthesia and pain medication. He focussed as hard as he could to try to think of a way out of the hospital. In the post-op recovery ward, there were no windows, no curtains to see through. No way of telling whether it was day or night.

  A nurse came by after some time and noticed he was awake. She gave him a shot of some sort of pain medication through his IV. It was easy for him to drift away for a while, but he didn’t find the strength to ask the nurse if it were day or night. A shame, he thought. Such a pretty nurse. Doesn’t even know what will happen to her if I turn.

  It was disheartening to Thomas to realize that even if he told her what he was, even if he told her the truth, that she would never believe him. What kind of person believed in werewolves? Surely not nurses. Doctors probably didn’t either. And cops—they didn’t believe him at all. Otherwise, they would have never arrested him. As it was, he was pretty sure that the whole town thought he was a madman. A sick psychopath who murdered several people and blamed it on werewolves. Nothing could be farther from the truth, yet Thomas knew that is exactly how people would see him. Small towns…they’re all the same.

  It was hours before he gathered the strength to sit up. And when he did Thomas noticed two cops were sitting outside the recovery ward, one on either side of the door. Both in uniform, sipping coffee from styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts cups, one with donut crumbs on his shirt collar and in his mustache. It would not be easy to escape.

  Another hour went by. Other than a couple of restroom breaks, there were two cops continually guarding him. And then he was hit with a wracking pain inside him, a hot iron thrust into him, no…burning from the inside out. Thomas screamed out in agony. The nurse ran to his bedside, screaming in horror as she arrived.

  She screamed out in terror and started to run out of the room in a frenzied state of panic. The cops ran in and smacked right into her, nearly knocking all three of them down.

  “He’s not human!” she cried. “His eyes! Look at his eyes.” The nurse began to cry and ran out of the ward, down the hallway and to the elevator.

  “What’s she talking about?” officer Clinton asked his partner, Toropovski.

  “I don’t know, she’s hysterical. But that scream wasn’t hers. Let’s check these patients out, somebody needs help. Go get a doctor, and I’ll find out who it was. Hell, maybe it was our guy,” Toropovski replied. His recent promotion to sergeant had given him seniority in the situation. Only a couple of weeks before and he wouldn’t have been able to issue orders to Clinton.

  “No problem Sarge,” Clinton said as he went to find a doctor.

  Toropovski started with the patients closest to the door. Two beds on either side of the room. Everyone in them was still anesthetized, sleeping soundly. He got to Thomas’s bed, drew back the curtain and saw a sight the likes of which he had never seen, nor ever would again.

  Thomas was silent, though obviously in terrible pain. His back was arched so that his chest came up a foot from the bed. He gripped the bed frame so hard that Toropovski thought that he would break his own hands. Sweat poured from every pore in Thomas’s body, and he was convulsing.

  “Shit, he’s having a seizure,” Toropovski said aloud, to himself. “You gotta stay with us kid. You need to go to trial,” he said to Thomas.

  Just as he finished speaking, he became alarmed that Thomas’s eyes were definitely not normal, as the nurse had said. He looked like some sort of possessed demon. A fiend from hell itself. Yellow eyes, each with a blood-red iris and a pupil that seemed to stare straight through the officer’s soul. And behind the eyes, there was nothing but pure savagery. Unadulterated, raw, powerful savagery.

  The officer reached for his gun, fumbling with the holster. “Goddamn nurse wasn’t kidding!”

  In moments the sweat all over the young man ceased, and a thick, shaggy fur began to rapidly grow from his every pore. The sound of bones cracking and popping filled the room as Thomas’s limbs contorted into the legs of a predatory animal. His jaw distended and his canine teeth became sharp, while his ears pointed into those of a wolf.

  The officer knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, exactly what he was witnessing. He knew that he had just seen a werewolf transform. Toropovski loved the old wolf-man movies from the fifties. He’d seen his share of Lon Cheney flicks. But when it was happening right in front of his eyes, it was surreal. It was an unfathomable strangeness that he could not wrap his brain around. His jaw went slack, and he stepped backward, stumbling over his own feet and falling to the ground.

  Thomas sat up, nearly fully transformed. The handcuff on his wrist simply shattered as his limb thickened with unnatural rapidity. In a split second he was on top of officer Toropovski. Slathering, growling, salivating jaws at the cop’s throat. Thomas found that he was like a back seat driver in his own experience. Unable to control what he was doing, completely taken over by the beast he’d become. Still, there was part of him that was aware. He was sure that when it was over, he would remember every moment.

  Toropovski screamed a cry that shook heaven and earth as razor-like fangs tore into his throat. It was stifled by his blood as he choked on it. The cop, still in disbelief, was unable to understand that his life flowed out of his neck, onto the floor. He failed to realize that he was being disemboweled and devoured alive. As his heart beat its last breath, officer Toropovski thought his last thought. There’s no such thing as werewolves.

  2

  Thomas, in his new wolf body, crashed out the second story window of Saint Joesph Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky with officer Toropovski’s small intestine still in his teeth. He hit the ground below, a nice little lawn next to the parking lot, and took off like a rocket across Harrodsburg road. His corded muscles sending him flying over the yards of many of the residents of the Gardenside neighborhood, Thomas was not used to such speed. Not used to having such power.

  He sniffed the air and smelled the sweet scent of fear. Fear and hot blood. He couldn’t resist. He came upon a man, intoxicated as any man had ever been, getting out of his car and fiddling with his keys. Thomas watched from across the lawn, from within a thicket of trees behind an elementary school. The man was short, stocky, and had a pronounced limp. He was staggering from too much whiskey. As the man got to his front door, he dropped his keys, then bent over to pick them up.

  Before the man could stand back upright, Thomas had cleared the entirety of the man’s large front yard and tore into his shoulder with massive fangs, ripping. And into his throat with savage claws, slashing. A spray of blood covered the man’s door, a pool gathered on his porch. Thomas dragged the body back into the trees and devoured a few bites, savoring the warm, salty meat, before moving on through the neighborhood.

  By that time there was a lot of commotion. Red and blue lights and whirling, annoying noises filled the air as patrol cars scurried like angry ants looking for the murderer of officer Toropovski. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Thomas knew that was what was happening, though his body did not notice. How strange he found it to be controlled by some other force, to be at the whims of a predatory beast, to be at its mercy. He liked being hunted by werewolves more than he liked being one, which was not at all. For Thomas, his worst nightmare had come true.

  He realized that he’d have to live with the murders of two people, for the rest of his life. Though he was powerless to stop himself as his wolf-mind plotted to commit a third killing. Inside his new skin, Thomas wept. He cried out, he screamed inside. Wanting nothing more than to be out, to be free again, to be himself. Thomas hated himself for what he’d done, but nothing could ever have prepared him for what he had yet to do.

  Creeping past the houses with all the lights on Thomas came across the last house, at the end of a cul de sac. It was dark, no lights on. He crept behind the house, into the backyard. There was nobody, nothing going on, just a calm place to relax. Thomas curled up beneath a tree and waited. For what, he did not know. The taste of blood was keen on his tongue but stronger in his mind. Thomas was in shock at what he’d become. A beast.

  No. The Beast.

  And then his keen canine ears heard the sound of a small heartbeat. The sound of a young child’s footsteps. Thomas sprang up, bounded through the yard, through a hedge, into the neighbors' yard. And there, playing alone, with a soccer ball, was a young boy. Probably a first grader. Maybe a little older. Nonetheless, Thomas was reminded of the first time he saw a werewolf. And of what it had done to his friends; especially little Matty Epperson.

  The boy didn’t have time to scream. Thomas leaped over to him, bit his throat out, and bounded back into the neighbor’s yard. He tore into the tender young meat and devoured as much of the boy as he could. Then Thomas curled up under the tree again, licked his chops and took an after meal nap.

  3

  Thomas awoke sometime later. He was no longer in his wolf form. He’d returned to his normal self. Just a naked young man, lying on the cold ground, getting bit by bugs. And then he saw the nightmarish sight of the young boy’s body lying behind the garbage cans, of the house he had slept behind. He tasted blood in his mouth but was shocked to see that after he awoke, all of his wounds (from getting shanked in jail) had healed. It was miraculous. He wondered if that is why the wolf had killed so many; including the little boy. Did eating them somehow heal him?

  Thomas felt so terrible about what he’d done as a werewolf that he puked. He wretched and wretched, until he got nervous that he’d aroused suspicion. It was then that he got up the nerve to break into the house. He figured that the owners were not home, probably on vacation. He wasn’t wrong.

  Thomas went into the bathroom and found some mouthwash to cleanse his palate. He then found a teenage boy’s bedroom and found some clothes that fit him. Some jeans, Converse Chuck Taylor’s, and a Nirvana t-shirt. He found a green hooded sweatshirt, a few more shirts and pants, and a backpack to put them in.

  Thomas didn’t think it wise to stay around and shower. He went to the kitchen, found a few cans of soup and some Vienna sausages and took those. He remembered to take a can opener and then he heard the sound of a woman shrieking in terror in the backyard. The boy’s mother had found him.

  Thomas was a bolt of lightning out the front door, running faster than he’d ever run in his life. At least in human form. He didn’t stop until he was far out of the neighborhood. There was still a strong police presence, and it was about to get stronger with the boy’s mother discovering him.

  Thomas decided to just play it cool and try to hide out in the open. He walked down Broadway toward downtown. With his hoodie and his backpack, Thomas looked like a college student. He was thankful that the University of Kentucky was so close. Once he got among thousands of people his age, he could easily blend in. He just had a little over a mile to walk.

  Thomas decided to take the main road, figuring he’d look like he had nothing to hide. As long as he kept his hood up and his head down, he should be able to walk straight to campus. If he tried to take cut-throughs, neighborhood backstreets, or the tracks, Thomas figured he’d get picked up. They’d be looking for people trying to be evasive. Hiding out in the open was something that his uncle had taught Thomas at a young age. His uncle who was the leader of a pack of werewolves. His uncle who had him shanked in jail. Thomas’s blood boiled at the thought of the man who had helped raise him.

  And just like that, as if it were the very universe itself speaking to him, Thomas heard his uncle’s voice.

  “Thomas,” the voice said. “Hey kid, over here.”

  Thomas looked ahead and saw nobody, then looked at the street beside him and indeed his uncle was there. The hood had made it hard to see his peripherals, but John had been driving along Broadway in the far right lane at a snail’s pace. He matched Thomas’s speed on foot.

  “Get in, kid. I didn’t want to blow the horn. But now that I’ve got your attention, get the hell in! We gotta talk, kid!” John plead with Thomas, sincerity strong in his voice. “We need to get you off the street, now!”

  Thomas, despite all his better judgment, did precisely as his uncle instructed. He got in the beat up, rusty-old, nineteen-sixties, orange Volkswagon bug. He threw his backpack in the back seat, buckled his seatbelt, and began to sob.

  “Why did you have me stabbed uncle? I thought I was dead,” Thomas broke into full, streaming tears.

  “Because, kid…” John took a dramatic pause, then turned and winked at Thomas and cleared his throat. “It was the only way I could think of to save you.”

  4

  They drove out of town, and a long way through the country before either of them spoke again. Thomas was in shock at what John had said. Figuring it to be the truth, especially given the healing power of the transformation process, Thomas decided to forgive his uncle. He didn’t feel like holding a grudge anyway, and John genuinely seemed to want to help him.

  When they had driven for several hours and pulled into the entrance to a small farm, John looked over at his nephew reassuringly and said, “I’m here for you Thomas. I know it is hard to get used to. Very hard to get used to. But you still have me, and honestly, you still have your granny. Yeah, she knows. But most important of all…you have a pack now. That’s why I brought you here. To introduce you to them.”

  Thomas was shocked. The farm seemed like a veritable paradise. The driveway was a quarter-mile long, and there were cows in the fields grazing. Even a few horses. Thomas wondered if they were for food. Then he wondered what good it would do to put a bunch of savage werewolves together.

  As if reading his mind, John said, “I’ll teach you…no, we’ll teach you…how to control it. How to shift when you want to. How to control yourself when you do. How to be in charge, as you, when you change. I know it sounds crazy, but it can be done. We all do it. And we all look out for each other.”

  “Was Candice your student too, Uncle?” Thomas was curious, though wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds by asking.

  “She was. Yes. But only briefly. I was unable to show her what she needed to know in time. Anything else?” John seemed more than a little annoyed, though resolved to be honest. Thomas could tell that about his uncle.

  “Are you the one that turned her?” Thomas couldn’t believe he’d asked, but the words just seemed to slip out, uncontrollably.

  “No,” John ended the conversation with his terse response.

  They pulled to the end of the driveway and parked beside a medium-sized, single-story ranch house. The front door was wide open, and the aroma of a home cooked meal wafted outside. Thomas’s stomach rumbled. It had been weeks since he’d had anything to eat other than jail food. Or people.

  They got out of the car, and both stretched their legs. The ride had been long and cramped. John led the way into the house. There were rocking chairs on the front porch, making it quite a quaint little scene. Thomas was flabbergasted that a werewolf commune existed. But at that moment he found it to be the greatest thing in the world.

  A woman in her late forties came to greet Thomas as he went through the door into the house. She was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, had her salt and pepper hair pulled back into a tight bun, and had only halfway dried her hands from doing dishes when she hugged Thomas deeply. She hugged him as if she’d known him his whole life. Perhaps she had. He wondered who she was, but she decided to answer his question before he could ask it.

  “I’m Tilda. Everyone here calls me Tilly,” she said, her voice warm with affection. “I haven’t seen you since before you could walk. Not since your parents…” the woman trailed off, she looked away, and Thomas got the feeling that she had gone somewhere else in her head.

 

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