Page 57 of The Red Room

I grab Alek by the throat, wrapping my long, clawed fingers around his neck and lift him off his feet. Squeezing withall of my strength, the small man before me continues stabbing, his thrusts losing luster. I stare into his eyes, and his hair wafts back from the hot breath leaving my protruding snout.

There it is. The fear he should’ve felt the moment he crossed me. The regret for choosing the wrong fucking brother. For helping Viktor take the one thing keeping me human. Now, I am what they should’ve dreaded most.I am the monster.

Alek screams despite my hand collapsing his vocal cords, crushing his windpipe with ease. A thick crack echoes across the club, followed by two knives clattering on the dance floor. A blood-curdling cry tapers off in an instant. His arms fall limp, and his head shifts to the side unnaturally. But I’m not done with him yet. Using my razor-sharp teeth, I bite down on his face, letting flesh and bone crunch between them, ripping off chunks and pieces by the mouthful. Blood sprays from the gaping hole left in his head and oozes down my lips, coating the long brown fur of my neck.

I hate the fucking taste of strays,the voice says with annoyance, but I ignore it and toss what’s left of Alek to the side. Red fills the floor, pooling around the mangled man who dared to stand against me. The rest of the pack stare in horror, most of which are too frightened to even move. They fold themselves to the wall, and when I step forward, they all shrink to half their respective sizes. It’s too late though. I don’t even need the wolf’s permission to know what I will do to every single one of them.

One. Two. Three vicious swipes of my claws cut open throats. Stomachs. Entire torsos until their entrails decorate the Völk floors with more blood and organs imaginable. Red mists in the air like the fog machines on our busiest nights and casts an odd crimson glow above the savagery I watch in unsettling enjoyment. Copper is all we can smell, the wolf and I. All we can taste. And as each hint of blood hits our tongue and careens down our long nasal cavity, there’s a hunger for more. The lasttwo men scream for help, one banging on the red room doors while the other bolts for the bar.

“Nikolai,” the man pleads, peering back at me while pounding on the doors for sanctuary. His thin face is etched with terror. “I didn’t know what they were doing! I didn’t—”

Heshouldbe afraid. Heshouldcower to the hell I intend to inflict on each one of them. There’s no stopping it now. It’s too late.I am their fucking end.

I bite down on the better part of his thick neck, taking cartilage and part of his spine with it. His head loses all strength and drops to his chest. Gurgles and chokes silence his pleas, and as his body slumps downward, doubling over into himself, the noise stops altogether besides the obnoxious dripping of his fluids leaking to the ground at my feet.

One more, the voice commands, willing my animalistic limbs forward in slow, lurching steps. I don’t fight it, nor do I give this thing control over my—over our legs. It doesn’t feel like we are two separate halves at odds with each other anymore. No, this is different. It’s like we are one, controlling the same destructive body for a single purpose. I’ve never felt this kind of control before. Never during a full moon where this beast takes over completely. I am conscious. I am aware. And now …I am pure fucking wrath.

There’s one erratic heartbeat left, even while resting his back against the opposite end of the bar, we can hear how the blood pumps from his heart to each artery. The way his shallow breaths stifle as if he is holding a hand over his mouth to conceal himself. It doesn’t work. The wolf and I can almost see him just from the sound beating wickedly in our ears.Thump, thump.Another slow step forward.Thump, thump.A growl escapes us, this one in terrible warning. We know where he is.Thump, thump.We know what he’s done.Thump, thump.And now, he knows that he’s not getting out of this club alive.

We reach over the bar, piercing our long claws under his chin and rip the traitor up by his jaw. He doesn’t scream. No, I don’t think he can if he tries. Not when our nails dig through the tongue and through the roof of his mouth. He flails helplessly, legs kicking in agony. More blood coats our red soaked fur, adding to the others the wolf and I collected so far. Small hints of each of these traitors drips down our arms and outstretched legs, gathering along the now messy floors. When his body stops jerking like a distressed fish, we let him go, enjoying the way his crumpled body lands at our feet with a sickening thud.

You aren’t as useless as I thought, the wolf says in my head with a stern huff.

Völk falls silent, minus the occasional drop of blood bouncing off the marble flooring. There’s nothing now. Not even a heartbeat in the room I tried so fucking hard to keep her away from. The room where certain screams I’ll never get out of my head rang at its peak. It didn’t matter if they were tainted. Irredeemable, some might say. Who was I to be judge, jury, and harvester of the worst in Los Angeles? The one gathering humans for a pack that should’ve been euthanized decades ago. Heat lifts off each of my limbs, melting the hair on my forearms, neck, and chest. Pain radiates down my spine as my wolf-like body shifts uncomfortably. My face, no longer a menacing snout, shrinks back to the same one I see in the mirror every morning. My ravenous claws return to human hands as I hold them out to the sides, inspecting the dried blood across each fingernail. I’m … me again. Human.

For the time being, the wolf says with irritation.But if you chain us up again, I won’tbother keeping us alive next time.I block out the wolf, my eyes set on the door as red as the blood filling the Völk dance floor.

Bursting inward, the heavy scent of death hangs in the air, mixing with the metal shackles drilled in the walls we useto keep our captives compliant. They would be forced to drink enough of the sedative for an easy transport, but we couldn’t take any chances on them escaping. The chains, the same ones I use in my loft, adorn each wall in sets of three. I am ashamed to admit I’ve seen every set filled since I opened the doors to the club. Didn’t matter how monstrous these people were, it still made coming in this room a hellish endeavor.

The outline of two feet come into view as I stagger around the corner, exhaustion setting in from my unexpected transformation.It can’t be her, I continue forward, fighting the nausea sloshing in my stomach.Don’t let it be her.The morning after a full moon is usually met with throbbing headaches and the inability to move. This, however, is far worse. There’s no stopping me now, though. I will fucking crawl if need be.Struggling to stay upright, I use the walls for leverage and push myself to the heart of the red room.

Courtney.Her face is remarkably clear while the rest of her is unrecognizable. Skin a pale, bloodless white. The sting of tears fill my eyes as I glance at each wall, searching every corner for a sign of life. For my little wolf. There’s nothing. No one else. The room, despite the friend Natalia will never get back, is vacant, and unbearably still.

Something glints off the dim lights. Something resting against Courtney’s blood pooling at the center of the red room. It’s metal. Difficult to look at, but I know what it is in an instant. The woven chain meets a small, moonlike shape at the center. There’s only one metal strong enough to bring on this kind of unease to the bottom of my gut. The one thing the cursed can hardly peer at.

Silver.

I lift the necklace, ignoring how my skin sizzles at the touch. Courtney’s blood trickles down the crescent moon dangling in front of me. He’s taken her.Viktor has takenher.Alek wasn’t bluffing. Intense heat travels up my cracking knuckles to my neck, scalding my limbs until an inferno settles in each. Viktor didn’t wantherto make a point. He wants to make me suffer in the most horrible way imaginable. She’s the last sacrifice. The final addition to the hunt my pack has waited years for.The blood moon.When the wolves inside each of us are at their most bloodthirsty. The lunar-shift my father used to murder Ida despite how many times I begged for her to live. These scars marring my body are nothing else but a reminder of how I failed her. How I failed Dimitri.

Now, Viktor seeks to do the same. Give me another set of scars I won’t come back from. Losing her … losing the one person anchoring me to this world instead of wanting to rip its heart out, is gone. And as I hold the necklace I placed at her doorstep, my flesh screaming to let it go, I howl.

I howl into the blood-stained halls of the red room.

To be continued in