4: Jack - In The Pack Read online

  And about the same time someone hit the inject button on my collar. I dropped like I’d been cold-cocked.

  My intended victim stuck his nose in my face and asked, “How’s that feel, Jack?”

  Actually, it didn’t feel too bad. Some type of muscle relaxant. I think they dosed me with an elephant’s portion. I wanted to laugh. Instead, I managed a smile and a “Fuck you,” before passing out.

  So, enough of the arboretum?

  Not hardly. I woke up a short time later, still in crinos. But this time, my hunger was gnawing at my belly. I rolled over, onto my knees, and lifted my heavy head.

  My unbelievably heavy head. Again, I looked at the boulder, saw my shadow. Got a new understanding of bigheaded jock, that’s for damn sure. No wonder it pounded from the inside. A stretch like that--had to hurt something. I could feel my blood drumming through the nerve endings. I think it was a side effect of the medication.

  Again, my friend was there. “Let me show you how to hunt, Jack.”

  “I know how to get a meal,” I growled. “Where’s room service?”

  Chapter Four

  “We want you to exercise your instincts, Jack. Nothing’s taboo here. It’s a safe environment. You could really enjoy it.”

  “I’d really enjoy room service.”

  “Come on. Go with it.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You live in hotels.”

  He was right. I hadn’t gone home in years. “Yeah. And I get room service there.”

  I know what they were trying to do. Get me to hunt. Make me into a murderer. I could feel it. And I was fighting it.

  “They aren’t going to feed you. You’ve got to take what you want.”

  “Get away from me, you mangy dog.”

  Of course, that made him laugh. Truth be told, I’d called him that more than once. Told him I thought all lawyers were mangy mutts.

  “I mean it.” I shook my head, tried to clear it. It didn’t help the pounding, but fixed my vision--which had been a little out of skew. I narrowed my gaze on him and said, “Tell them to stop with the drugs.” Reaching up, I pulled at the collar.

  “Uh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Yeah, well, you aren’t me, are you?” I pulled again, and got a good zap. Yeah, they electrocuted me. It dropped me.

  Fucking taser bullshit. I convulsed a bit.

  “Told you.”

  I wrapped my arms around my chest, held myself, looking up at him, swearing through chattering teeth, “I swear to God, if they don’t kill me, I’ll rip your throat out.”

  Hood’s voice came over the intercom. “Now, that’s what we wanted to hear.”

  My friend looked up, “Funny, Hood.” To me, he said, “He’s the one you should really go after.”

  “Why?”

  “It was all his little brainchild.”

  At the moment, I didn’t really care. My muscles were spasming all over my body. Intense pain. I knew that the collar zap was worse than a regular taser, probably calibrated for the crinos changes in musculature. I just tried to get my shit together. Tried to tune out Butthead.

  He was patient, though, which I’m guessing is a trait you learn when you’re spending hours in law school, going over boring legal cases from the archives, trying to commit all that shit to memory. One of his best traits when I’d looked into hiring a lawyer, his dog-with-a-bone attitude, now seemed to be the most annoying thing I could see in him. No finer traits at that moment.

  Not to be outdone on the bone issue, I said, “Nah. It’s you I’m coming after. Him, I can respect.”

  I saw the fear in his eyes. He knew I was serious. If I ever got to killing, he’d be at the top of my list.

  So, at this point, I was beyond the disbelief phase. I was beginning to accept this new life, and calculate what it would take to get these people to release me. I figured that making friends with Hood was a first step.

  And the comment about respect had given me a good reminder to dog behavior...pack behavior, to be more specific. I knew it was all a pecking order, and that respect figured into it all real heavily.

  I rolled to my hands and knees again and asked, “Where the fuck are the females?”

  That made both men laugh.

  “It’s good that your libido’s kicking in.” It was Hood’s voice. “We wouldn’t want anything to rot off from misuse. Thought I was going to have to dose you with another shake.”

  Shrugging and stretching through my muscles, relaxing each portion that I could, I eased my neck--and all the way back to my tail. When I realized I had one of those, I did a double-take. I was not pleased with that at all. Reaching back, I grabbed a hold of it, let it slip through my hands, muttering, “I hate this already.”

  Hood laughed. “You won’t. You’ll come to appreciate your heightened senses.”

  Ah, I thought, so that explains the deafening noises, the smells, my aching eyes. I looked around, over my head, wondered where the camera was. I guessed there was more than one.

  “You know what I’d appreciate?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Room service.”

  Again, Hood laughed. “I’ll be sending that right in.”

  My lawyer made an unbecoming sound. Hood told him to come to his office. I haven’t seen him since. Guess he’d done his part.

  A few minutes later, I got a big surprise. Several females entered the habitat. Where the door was, I had no idea. The lawyer had gone behind foliage to one side of the waterfall, and the females came from another direction altogether. Before they got close, I went with the urge to mark my territory.

  Yeah, I know. Too much information.

  But, I think you’ll find that this whole ordeal will feel like that to you. Complacency will be shot to hell. Those noises in the dark, that feeling of being watched, maybe stalked, won’t seem so crazy.

  I’m telling you...wake up. I did.

  They circled me more than once. Then they broke up, disappeared and came back in from different directions. Enter the surreal world again. I couldn’t keep my eyes on the whole...pack.

  But I could smell them all. Individual scents. It was a game in olfactory and auditory recognition.

  Just made me hungry...for sex.

  I think they were all in heat.

  They panted. I drooled.

  My eyes rolled toward the birds, wondering if by chance the substance that had been added to that shake had been vialed into my collar. I was pretty sure I was going to need it.

  Did I explain that these females were not in wolf form? They may have come in lupus, but in and out of their maneuvers, they went through various changes. I heard several moans--and a few pops and painful snaps--I saw crinos females, though, when they finally slipped into the clearing around the lake.

  But they weren’t all alike, that’s for damn sure. Some were hairier, bigger. Others prettier, more graceful. I noticed, perhaps because my brain was working on more than one level, that their ears were much bigger than Giselle’s had been.

  Ah, I smiled, words from Little Red Riding Hood came to mind. The better to hear you with, my dear. Now I got it.

  And when they all smiled in return and I saw their glinting fangs, I remembered the other part. The better to eat you with, my dear.

  Of course, that made me remember Giselle, and the eating she’d taught me, shared with me. My cock rose up and I spread my arms, joking, “Who’s first?”

  You could say they pounced me.

  Before I knew it, they were all over me. I was taken down, and they were sniffing, licking me--all over. From my wrists to my ankles. Sucking all my appendages. Each finger, each clawed toe. And one leaned over my head, upside down, and slid her tongue in my mouth. Then she mimicked with a ‘Hoover maneuver’ on my tongue what the bitch at my crotch was doing to my, um, manhood.

  Holy fucking schmoly!

  From the chest worship, tongues in my ears, down to the face between my legs, licking my balls,
I was absolutely laid out. Like ants, they crawled over me, readjusted, traded positions. And I had to wonder, had I died and gone to heaven? Or were these the succubi of the devil’s own?

  Nah, I concluded, they were angels of mercy. Liberators of the sexual tension that had strung my nerves and tightened every muscle in my body. Freedom fighters who worked nonstop to set the insatiable lust within me free of its bondage.

  More than one of them sucked me dry, dehydrated me to the point where I passed out, then revived me. I don’t know if my ability to perform was because of the enhanced DNA flushing through me, or an injected Viagra and testosterone stimulant. At the time, I didn’t really care. I was dragged into the world of darkness that garou live in all the time.

  The minute was all I lived for. From one minute to the next. One woman to the other. I don’t know when they began shifting. Perhaps it was upon my shift back to human?

  Because of the medication, it was remarkably painless. I didn’t know the night had passed, that the moon had disappeared in the outside world. In the arboretum, the moon was still up, illuminating my lovers with fascinating slivers of light that undulated over them, through breeze-wafting limbs of real trees that groaned, like us, as the simulated winds picked up, carried scents back and forth--drove me wild.

  I can say that, for me, there is truth to the consideration that the bitten change with the phases of the moon. But our heightened urges, they stay with us, drive us through our days, make it hard to contain ourselves. And during the initial meta-changes, libido and hormones, hungers and lusts--they don’t phase out with the moon. At least, for me they didn’t. But I can’t be sure what was drug-induced and what was not. I’m thinking that ‘they’ may have pushed me with their narcotics. It doesn’t really matter. I went with it. I don’t know when I decided to give in completely.

  But I did. I had my hand on every ass, squeezed every breast, had my tongue down every throat--and up every cunt. My cock was in every hole, too. Some more than once. I couldn’t keep track, so I made sure they were all satisfied. Doubly satisfied.

  It didn’t end there, the orgy. Yes, I recognize the love-fest, lust-fest for what it was. It was the night of my total degradation, my integration into the pack.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t think any more, their heads snapped up. We heard rustling in the bushes. Some of them took off. I tried to sit up, asked, “What? Where did they go?”

  I was pinned down by the others. They whispered, “Shh.” Yes, all of them. But they were still, deadly still, wary, listening.

  Wait. We were in crinos then. You see what they did to me? Warped the whole night. Only bits and pieces...holy shit. I remember why they ran off.

  I heard them make a kill. A cat. It squealed more than once while they took it down. A mountain lion, I think. My memory’s fuzzy.

  And then they howled. And the ones on top of me, leaped off, urged me to follow. At that point, I wasn’t thinking. And if I was, I was only thinking...what the hell? Or...why the hell not?

  Leaping, bounding after them, sniffing ass all the way, I think, making sure my booty didn’t leave me in the dark, I chased them. The place was big, that’s all I can say. I forgot that I was inside, in a habitat, it seemed so real.

  And when we came upon the rest of them, there was nothing unnatural about taking that meal. Some of them were already eating. The scent of fresh blood was in the air. The deed was done. I was starving.

  I know that they chose that particular prey because it’s a natural, if you know what I mean. I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t find fault.

  I can’t look a house cat in the eye now. I want to make it up to all of them. But sometimes, I think about going to China.

  Of course, that’s just my sense of humor. I still prefer room service, cooked food. I’m just trying to give you a full understanding of where they took me, what I had to overcome. They led me into a world where there were no holds barred. But that’s where they made their mistake. They admitted me to their inner circle, thinking that they’d made me one of them--in the same breath that they’d warned me how unstable my position was. And, if anything, I’d gained one sure knowledge. The only place to be in a pack...is at the top.

  The meal was quick, and it was only taken, really, to give us stamina to keep going with the initial party we’d started. At least, that was the way I saw it--the way I insist on remembering back to it. And besides, I’d been told they wouldn’t feed me regular food until I participated.

  Call it the mark of the devil. Call it Revelations. I’m telling you...wake up. The beast is among us.

  And if you’re not careful, the beast will be us.

  So, I found myself in the longest kiss ass event of the year, I think. But what do I know? They could hold those all the time at Lobos. I should remember to ask Hood. Nah. I’m afraid I’d find myself back in there.

  I have a reason for telling you about this. Those women wore me out. They made me, yeah, afraid is the word I’m looking for. Afraid to participate in group sex ever again. I mean, that was hard on me. I was good for shit...for what? Days. Anytime sex puts you out of commission for that long, you need to rethink what you did.

  And believe me, I rethought those hours plenty of times. But I keep coming to the same conclusion; all I need is one good woman.

  This process I went through, call it purification by fire, baptism by immersion. I was so far under that I couldn’t breathe. I sure as hell couldn’t think. And, if nothing else, I’m a man who likes to think through consequences, weigh my choices.

  They took that away from me in there, and put everything on a base level.

  But I got out.

  Oh, not in my time. In theirs. But I bit my tongue, bode my time, played the game, pretended to agree--without capitulating too fast. There were too many watchers, cunning people looking for telltale signs of trickery.

  I was put through many tests, a ton of exercises to measure my responses, my skills, how much wolf nature had taken me over. But I think I said this before, I’m a fast learner. I can adapt. Now, that may be the nature of the wolf. Whatever.

  I set my eye on a goal, and figured out what path I needed to take to get to it. I’m halfway there.

  So, suffice it to say...I survived it all.

  And I found myself sitting with Hood, in civilized clothes, in human form, chatting about the weather. I had worked hard over the space of, I think, months--to convince him that I was ‘with the program’.

  I guess I finally passed the test. Or, at least, was up to a new level.

  Here’s a disconcerting thing...I could go to sleep in one place, and wake up somewhere else--with days passed. They didn’t hide that time loss from me. All I can guess is that they’d done a test on me that they didn’t want me to remember.

  Multiple tests.

  The more they did, the more time I lost, the more I plotted revenge--committed names to memory, listened to conversations around me. I could not believe the depth of their operations. The scope of their reach.

  Hood said, “You know why we did this. Right?”

  “What?” I played stupid for just a second, then smiled. “You mean...made my life a living hell?”