It was morning, and I knew what to do. I could feel where to go inside my brain. It was like a white-hot knife bearing down into my skull. If I moved, it moved. I could feel it… It was her, Charlotte Gunderson. I saw the place inside my mind, and I felt the push from the cloaked being directing me there.
My old, human mind tried and failed to understand. My primal side accepted it and pushed me forward. Deep in the recesses of my subconscious, where the old me lingered, I tried to process how it was happening. Ultimately, I just started moving.
I wanted to stay there with Autumn, Carter, and Eleanor. I wanted to spend the day with them again, but I couldn't. That wasn't even an option anymore. I had a force inside of me that was literally pushing my mind to where I needed to go. All I had to do was start walking. It was like every cell in my body was moving towards the kill.
I had forced myself to lie still after the visions. I had to wait until morning so I could leave without raising suspicion. It went against every instinct I had, but the need to maintain my cover was strong. If I just left in the middle of the night, they'd start asking questions that I wouldn't have honest answers for.
I noticed two things at almost the same time: a faint hint of sunlight crept through the blinds, and Autumn slowly moved from beneath our covers and silently stalked out of the guest end of their house. She had slipped out, back to the main side of the house, before her parents woke up. I was glad she did, because I couldn't have left as quickly as I needed to if she were still beside me. Plus, her family might not like the fact that we were sleeping in the same bed under their roof.
I got my clothes back on and tried to sneak out of the house. The sun had already begun glimmering over the treeline. The world was coming back to life. As I made my way out into the living room, I saw Carter on the couch with a cup of coffee in his hands; the steam visibly rising up to his face as he lightly read through a black bound bestiary.
"Morning. You're up early," Carter said, surprised. He looked like he had already been up for a while. He was fully dressed.
I hoped he hadn't seen Autumn coming back from where I was staying at such an early time.
"Yeah, I couldn't sleep anymore…," I said, still processing the images I saw of the mass killing.
"You sound like me," he said.
"I think I'm actually going to head out. I figure I should go back to my place, clean up, and get a new change of clothes," I lied as I made my way to the front door, never slowing from my mission. "Can you tell Autumn and Eleanor that I'll try to be back later?"
"Yeah, I'll let them know," he could see the fast pace in my movements. He stood quickly to see me out of the house. "Well, I'm glad you came last night, and we're glad you could stay with us. If you ever need to crash here again, our home is your home."
I couldn't take the time to really think about what that meant to me. I kept moving, "Thanks, Carter, I'll remember that."
"Is everything okay?" he noticed the haste.
"I forgot that I had some shit I needed to do this morning, so I'm actually kind of in a hurry. I'll be back later, though." I hoped he wouldn't question my story.
"Okay," he barely got out before I stepped out of one of the front doors. "Be safe."
"Will do," I said just as I shut the door.
I slowed myself, only jogging over to the motorcycle since I could feel Carter's eyes watching me through the front windows. I hopped on and cranked the engine until it roared to life. I took off a little too fast, peeling out of their driveway and back to the seclusion my darker side required for what came next. I needed to change. I needed to ditch the bike and proceed on foot.
It didn't take long before I was already in the dark caverns below the city. I had to stay underground as much as possible since it was early morning and broad daylight. I had on my old jacket and hood up to conceal my face when moving like this. A few times, I had to leave the tunnels beneath the ground and cross the surface to get around natural obstacles and massive foundations that stabbed deep into the earth. I remained unseen, but the hood was always a way to keep eyes off my face if I did slip up.
The timing of it all wasn't ideal, but it was doable. I never had a single doubt about what I was doing or walking into. I was on the hunt.
I didn't need directions. I could feel where she was. The force that sent me the vision pushed me to where I needed to go, and I still had the white-hot pain in my mind as a compass. I ripped through the jagged tunnels, never stopping as I made turns, scaled sheer rock, or dropped into other parts of the subterranean voids. I could feel the pressure in my ears as I descended beneath the city. I stayed in human form for mobility. I didn't need to get hung up because of my size. I needed speed. That was my primary concern.
About fifteen minutes below the city was all it took, and then I was out of the caverns. I crawled through a storm drain and was back in the world above. I stood about a hundred yards away from a large house. It looked like a house you saw in movies or very, very rich neighborhoods. Whoever paid for it must have spent a fortune. They were hiding in plain sight. At the top of society. There were other houses around, but this one sat apart from the rest. It was nestled in a stand of trees that backed up to the property.
I could feel my urges pushing me to bust in. I wanted to let the monster rip out and tear through any and every one of the witches inside. That's what they were… witches.
That word… the identity was new to me, but it was the truth. I didn't need to be told. The vision told me exactly what they were. I kept getting flashes of Charlotte as she paced through the twisting bodies on the floor, blood painting the soles of her bare feet. This only fueled the fire that drove me now. I wanted to kill.
I stalked the perimeter, glancing through the towering walls of windows from a safe vantage point. I couldn't reveal myself until I was ready. I couldn't let any of them escape. Yet, I saw no one. I wondered how, since the house was basically made of glass. I couldn't see them.
I found a door that was unlocked at the back of the house. It led to a stairwell to the second level of windows that faced the trees. I guess witches didn't need to lock doors. They probably had few things to fear. I stepped in, but I didn't unleash it. I just got ready. Let my urges surface. I needed the kill more than breath itself. The searing pain in my head subsided, but was replaced with a powerful thud in my chest. I could almost feel her presence tied in with this new heartbeat. Was it mine… or hers? Was it the monsters? I could feel the heart beating in every single inch of my body, even in my mind, where the white-hot pain had been. The deeper I went into the house, the louder it got.
I pushed through a door on the second floor of the stairwell. I came into a long hall stretched with hardwood floors. All of the lights were off except the one at the far end of the passageway. Someone was standing down there near a broad set of wooden doors. A woman. She glanced my way but saw nothing in the shadows. She stepped through the door, seemingly unalerted or scared of my presence. I could feel that it was where I needed to go. I continued down the hall slowly. The pressure of my other side built and expanded beneath the surface. All it needed was the command to break free and kill. I pulled open one of the doors and stepped into the room. There were no windows in this room. It was cut off from view, unlike the rest of the modern house. This room had secrets, and it was supposed to stay that way. Once inside, I realized it was the room from my vision.
Men lay motionless in pools of blood. Nude women lay all around them, licking blood from each other's bodies while having sex in the sea of red. There were nine of them. They were all covered in crimson stain, writhing together in pleasure. They looked young, like the late twenties or early thirties. They looked healthy from afar, but all shared the same twisted face upon closer examination. It was… evil. It was corruption.
No one noticed me. They were too drunk from whatever was happening in that room. I saw quickly that I was too late to do anything about the men they lured in and butchered. But I would make sure they never did it again.
It was only seconds that I stood there before one of them looked up and noticed the large, out-of-place figure. Once they saw me, watching from behind my dark hood, they knew I didn't belong. The women all looked at me with angry, distorted faces. They hissed between their teeth like cats. It was unnatural. One of them, a blonde, was cursing me from the ground. She lay between two dead men, screaming at me in a language that I didn't recognize. They didn't know who was intruding on their coven, but they didn't waste any time dealing with me.
One of them leaped from a body and flew towards me from across the room. She rushed through the air like a ghost before she appeared in front of me, ready to strike with a wickedly curved blade that appeared out of thin air. Her eyes were wild and confident.
I let out a mighty roar as I ripped my now protruding talons through her face. My swipe caught her as she hung in the air, immediately changing her trajectory and sending her slamming into a wall. She clattered around on the floor as she held what was left of her face, screaming.
Everything else happened in a rush. The change tore through me, and before I knew it, I towered over the witches. Unstoppable. A force that only wanted one thing. I attacked, I shattered bones, ripped bodies, and slashed the life out of all nine of them. I killed everything in that room. I showed no mercy, no regret, and no hesitation. It was loud, hot, and wet. Blood washed over me as I ripped through one person and then went to the next. The sea of blood began to rise as more life flowed onto the floor. Limbs, heads, and all manner of jaggedly separated body parts were thrown wildly around the room. It was a massacre. The bloodlust saturated my mind more than it ever had. The heartbeat grew in power, the sound consuming my senses. I couldn't hear anything else in that room… just the powerful never never-ending beat of this new force inside of me. My skin felt hot and electrified as I slew the last of them. But I wasn't done yet.
When there were no more beating hearts around me, my senses shifted, allowing a new sound past the thudding. I heard fleeting footsteps racing down an exterior passageway. My inhuman ears traced their movements in my mind. I could feel the beating of their steps in my skin. I knew where and who it was. Charlotte.
I could feel her own heart pulsing as I turned and ripped through the building towards her. It answered a question for me. The powerful beating I felt was not hers. Hers was weak and vulnerable. The one inside me was like an engine of destruction.
I sprang through the door, knocking it off its hinges as my large body collided with the wood. The wooden plank clattered awkwardly down the hall as my form was exposed to the new passageway. She was there in the hall, running. She screamed at the sight behind her, nothing but utter terror in her cry. I hoped she felt exactly like all of her victims did: scared, alone, afraid to die.
I ran like a wild animal through the still, darkened hallway, carving grooves and gouges in the walls with my massive frame. She had almost made it to an exit when I caught her. I grabbed her with my inhuman hand, gripping her so tight I could feel bones cracking inside her torso. I slammed through the metal door on the second-floor exit, shearing it from the frame. I never broke stride as I jumped from the roof access to the ground below, pulling her with me as we tore into the dense group of trees behind the house. The thick trees didn't give me any worries. At the moment, I wasn't actively thinking about seclusion, I was just moving.
I threw her scared, limp body down at the base of a tree. She smacked the protruding roots that crawled away from the trunk. She lifted her forearms in front of her like a shield.
"Please… NO! DON'T KILL ME!" she screamed in initial terror as I bore down on her. Then she spoke quietly. "Whoever sent you… I can give you more… I can do things… I'll do anything you want." Even though she didn't know what I was, she was no stranger to the monsters of this dark world. She thought she could stop the assault. She could save herself if she just gave me something I wanted.
The beating got louder. The pounding of the heartbeat was blasting through my body like constant explosions. It was all I could feel. At that moment, I knew what I was. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to kill, not the monster that I tried to blame it on, but me. I had always been the monster.
I lunged into her as she knelt on the ground beneath me. I smashed into her with concussive force, breaking the few solid bones she had left. I sank my fangs through her neck and plunged my talons through her back and sides as deep as they would go. I crushed her body into mine. I could hear my claws puncture her lungs, all the way through until they reached her heart. The beating in my head rose to new heights. I closed my fists inside of her chest and, with all of my strength, ripped them out. The pounding that had overtaken everything else… surged even louder as I took her life. She was dead.
I dropped the mangled corpse. It was done. As the blood oozed and poured off of me, I looked to the morning sky and let out a forceful breath. I tried to push the rage of the monster out of my mind and clear it from my thoughts. It was done, and I wanted to be human again. The thunderous heartbeat slowed and quieted until it faded from my perception. As the beast faded, and my own form returned, I felt a sense of completion. Even more than that, I felt the pulse of something else.
I could feel the powerful, dark presence around me. The same force that sent me for Charlotte and her witches was there. The same cloaked figure that I remembered from the night the monster came for me… I couldn't see it, but I felt it. It was satisfied. Its order was complete.
I stood still and basked in the power of the mysterious force. I thought I was strong, but this… this was something else. It filled my whole world; it was everywhere, almost suffocating. I still didn't know what or who it was. I didn't know what I was or why I was turned into this monster. Yet, I came to a disturbing realization in those trees. Whatever was there that night, when I was killed, was the one calling the shots. The person… or being, that gave me the name and the vision was in control. Even more strangely, a part of me welcomed it.
I looked around at the carnage before me and remembered the bloody destruction inside the house. I tore flesh from bone, dismembered bodies, and killed ruthlessly. Yet I didn't feel like I was the evil one. I felt like there was some kind of purpose behind what I did. A reason I was unleashed upon them… but I couldn't place it, no matter how hard I thought on it.
The force faded away after a few moments. Back to whatever hidden place it came from. Then, I decided to do the same. Someone was bound to have been on the way after all the destructive crashes. It was time to go.
I sank back into the shadows beneath the city. I walked in silence and darkness as I replayed everything in my head. I tried to understand more of what I had felt. I wanted to know more about what called out to me in the night and gave me the task.