Sword of the Beast - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The next morning, a lone figure in a form-hugging green t-shirt and khaki shorts worked her way up the mountain trail, a backpack on her back. The hike was not a hard one and the fog-shrouded forest offered little for the eye, and Alex found herself slipping into memories of the previous night and feeling a familiar warm sensation building between her thighs.

After the twins had dried her the three of them had fallen into the bed in a tangle of limbs, and the rest of the night had passed in a carnal frenzy. Alex recalled repaying the twins for their earlier ministrations, licking the pussy of one sister until he was at the brink of climax, them switching to the other and doing the same. Only when both sisters were reduced to tugging her head back and forth by the hair while moaning half-incoherent pleas and curses did she relent, plunging her fingers into both holes to bring them to simultaneous shrieking orgasms. Then it was her turn to scream as he kneeled on the bed, one sister's fist thrusting into her pussy as the other's fingers sank deep into her asshole. After that Alex and the sisters fell on each other, groping and sucking, thrusting and grinding, licking and biting indiscriminately until the night became a blur of fevered skin and juices and moans and wails. Alex finally fell back, exhausted, but the sisters refused to relent. Alex's last conscious memory was of a tongue thrust in her pussy, lapping her cum as a set of lips and teeth endlessly worked her clit as darkness fell at last.

She had been vaguely disappointed to wake up alone. The twins had somehow managed to leave in the night without waking her. Maybe Dragos can wait one more day for his sword, she thought to herself. Or maybe I could come back afterwards. It'll give me time to pack. There are some toys in Cayne Manor's closets that have been gathering dust since I hosted my old boarding school reunion. For that matter, there are a lot of thing there gathering dust. The old place has always been understaffed. It might be good to have a pair of chambermaids around... Smythe had been the butler and general caretaker there since her grandfather's day. He was faultlessly loyal, utterly competent and as utterly proper in his own life as he was willing to pretend not to see his new lady's own...improprieties. The only other staff left was Tom the groundskeeper. He was more than competent at his job, but was also easy on the eyes and more than willing to enthusiastically undertake certain extra duties when his lady felt the need. I can't fault his performance, not at all, Alex thought with a smile. But he is only one man, and he only has so much to give. A few more warm bodies to take the burden couldn't hurt...

It was mid-morning, but the fog that had greeted her when she left the inn had not burned off as she expected. In fact, it seemed to be growing thicker as she climbed the mountain, coiling through the bare lower branches of the pine trees beside the trail. The silence had grown profound, making the growling that came from behind her all the more startling.

She turned to see a wolf, large, grey, standing behind her with teeth bared. Alex began to back away slowly, her left hand out in a placating gesture while her right reached for her gun, when the wolf sprang without warning. Her gun spoke once, twice, the sound oddly muffled in the fog, and the wolf fell to the forest floor.

She holstered her gun, slightly shaken. The wolf looked fit, well fed, and healthy. There was no reason for it to attack a human. What's going on here?

She was walking away up the path, still on edge, when she heard a faint rustling behind her. She spun, drawing her guns, but there was nothing there. The wolf corpse had vanished into the thickening fog. She hastily glanced around, but saw nothing, heard nothing. "It's never simple, is it?" she murmured to herself as she turned back up the path, her idle fantasies replaced by a wary alertness.

The path narrowed as it approached the castle, which sat perched on a ridge on the side of the mountain. The gates were missing and wooden roofs of the towers had fallen in, but the dark grey stonework on the walls and in the small courtyard beyond were in fairly good shape. Very good shape, in fact. As she walked through the gate, she could see some of the windows facing the courtyard still had shutters; rotten and hanging loosely, but still there. Some bushes had pushed through the flagstones, but not anywhere near the centuries' worth of overgrowth she had expected from the history Dragos had provided. She began to wonder if the place had been abandoned as long as she had been told when her thoughts were interrupted by a snarl behind her. Her nerves already on edge, she spun, drew, and fired without a thought.

But the thing struck down by her bullets was not another wolf. It was a strange combination of wolf and man, well over six feet tall, covered in dark grey fur. Its rear legs were bent like a dog's, and its front paws ended in something like a long, distended hand, each finger tipped with an inch-long claw. The head and face were wolven, but the snout was shorter, blunter, with teeth that jutted much further than any real wolf. It was quite noticeably male.

She began to cautiously edge closer to the corpse when she saw that its chest was still rising and falling. She stopped as the creature heaved itself upright, stood, and raised its head in a bone-chilling howl. She was already backpedaling through the gate when it sprang.

She dodged to the left as it flew past her through the gate. She heard its claws skidding on the flagstones of the courtyard as it tried to turn, while she ran full-speed toward an intact but open double door that appeared in front of her. She sprinted through the open side of the door and threw her weight against it. The rusty hinges screeched but moved, and the door slammed shut. She rammed the bolt home just as the werewolf slammed into the door at full speed. The bolt bent and the door creaked ominously, but both held. Outside, the werewolf howled, and Alex could hear more howls, forming a chorus outside. It wasn't alone.

Inside, shafts of sunlight speared through the broken slats in the shutters on the high windows to illuminate a high-ceilinged room, no doubt the castle's old feasting hall. OK, time to give silly superstition a try, Alex thought as she reached into her pack for the magazines she had carefully loaded this morning with the box of silver bullets she had ordered in Prague. As she slammed the first two home she looked up at a sound, to see a wolf's head poke through the broken slats at the bottom of one of the windows. She fired, and the wolf-man fell back with a yelp, just as the door to the hall shattered and a snarling werewolf crashed through.

Alex fired, the sound thundering in the closed space, and saw it fall. Two more took its place, and she turned and ran. She reached the door on the far end of the hall before she turned once again, firing at the monstrosities as they bore down on her. They, too, fell and did not rise. Behind them, Alex could see a half-dozen more of the creatures, but they were hanging back warily, growling and snapping. That and her own breathing were the only sounds in the hall as she backed toward the rear door, her guns trained on the pack of monsters in front of her. She had almost reached the door when the shattering of the shutters on one of the great windows broke the silence. A werewolf flew at her though the window, teeth and fangs bared as she spun and fired. She ducked as its limp body flew past her, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the others were charging now, too many to take out before they reached her. She spun and ran through the door, slamming it shut behind her. It, too had a bolt, and she slammed it home.

That won't last for long, she thought as she ran down the corridor behind it, deeper into the castle. She was somehow unsurprised to see it was fitfully lit by torches mounted on the walls. At the far end she could see a narrow spiral staircase, leading up and down. I could go up, she thought, hole up in one of the towers and hope my ammo lasts, or try and scale down the walls and get off the mountain. Don't like my chances either way. Or I could go down. Dragos said there was a hidden passage in the caves leading out to the mountainside. But he also said the castle was abandoned, and werewolves were a myth. She paused for a moment at the stairs. The treasure is down. She went down.

She cut off further speculation as she heard howls above her. A familiar, sexual thrill ran down her spine. She was pursued, in peril, and tumbling toward the unknown. She may have not made the smart choice, but she now knew she had made the right choice. For her, danger would always be the right choice.

As she came to the bottom of the stairs she leapt through an archway into the middle of a clearly natural cavern. She could hear movement on the stairs behind her as she turned, went down on one knee, and aimed her guns at the narrow archway.

She didn't have long to wait before the first wolven shape burst out of the opening and into the sights of her guns. The gunfire echoed deafeningly in the chamber as it fell and another leaped heedlessly over the corpse. That one fell too, and the one after that, and the one after that before her guns clicked empty. She reloaded hastily, her elevated breathing drawing the strong stench of cordite through her nostrils, but no more came, and she holstered her guns as she slowly began to back away from the stairs deeper into the cave. Two clips left, the thought. How many more can there be?

A short ways away the cave dropped off into a chasm, spanned by a narrow, railing-less stone bridge. Alex's flashlight couldn't find the bottom. Beyond the bridge was another broad cavern. Passages branched out in several directions, but Alex's eye was drawn to an arch at the far end of the chamber, one clearly not carved by nature. She cautiously crept through.

Inside flickering braziers and torches threw shadows across a roughly circular, high-ceilinged chamber. The walls had been smoothed and covered with crude paintings in a flat, medieval style. In the flickering light, the wolf-creatures in them almost seemed to move as they tore men to pieces and raped and devoured women. Cracked and gnawed bones littered the floor, with broken human skulls scattered through the remains. An x-shaped rack made of some dark wood stood near the center, elevated a few feet from the floor on a tilted stand. At the bottom of the x worn-looking but thick leather cuffs were anchored to the wood with short chains, while on the top the cuffs were attached to chains than ran through holes in the wood to a winch in the rear. She touched the smooth wood. A rack, she thought. And tilted at this angle, a woman chained here would be wide open for... She turned away to look at the worn wooden table next to the rack to see it was piled with irons, pinchers, and other implements of torture. Again she turned away, only for her eyes to rest on a painting on the wall of a woman stretched naked on that very rack, screaming as wolf-monsters took glowing red pinchers to her flesh.

Behind the rack a pentagram was traced on the floor in red. A golden goblet stood on the simple altar in the center. A glance showed it contained some red liquid, because of course it does. Behind the altar, a great double-bladed, two-handed sword rested in a rack hanging from the wall, gleaming in the torchlight. Damascus steel, from the look of it, Alex thought. And seven feet long. Getting it out is going to be a trick...

She began working the problem out in her mind as she slowly worked her way around the left-hand wall, alert for traps and guards. Dragos has been wrong about one thing, this was no abandoned ruin. Everything was too well maintained. At a glance, she could tell the bones ranged from centuries to a few years old, if that much. She had circled nearly to the front when the sound of footsteps made her spin. It was another werewolf, stooping to enter the chamber door.

This one had darker fur and was even larger than the others, an eight-foot tall nightmare of claws and fangs. Something about it seemed familiar to Laura as she watched it enter the room, slowly circling to one side as Alex circled to the other. It opened its mouth, and Alex was surprised to hear words. "Lady Cayne," the monster growled, and Alex knew.

"Dragos," she stated. With one smooth motion, she drew her pistols and fired, into his chest. He staggered back as the guns thundered and she emptied the last of her clips into him. He fell to one knee as the hammer clicked empty, and Alex watched as she ejected the magazines, waiting for him to fall.

Instead, he rose. He rose, and bellowed out a laugh as Alex watched his wounds close, watched the blood cease to flow, watched him almost casually stride toward her. She stood in shock for a moment as he sprang.

But even as he was in the air she was in motion, dropping the guns and ducking down, reaching for the knife strapped to her boot. She rolled low and extended the knife up as the monster passed, the blade gleaning in the torchlight.

She came out of the roll in a crouch, one leg extended, ready to spring. Dragos landed and spun, much faster than a thing of his size should have been able to. He prepared to spring, but stopped, a puzzled look on his face. One hand reached down to feel his chest, and came away bloody. He looked down, and saw a long, shallow cut leaking blood through his fur. He started at her, and she smirked in acknowledgment. Blood darkened the antique silver dagger she held in front of her.

The tension Dragos had been building for his next spring visibly passed. Instead he circled cautiously, maneuvering to again block the exit to the room as Alex also circled, the opposite goal in mind. Then, suddenly, she was in motion again, springing toward Dragos, again ducking and rolling under the sweeping claws, this time stabbing out into his thigh before diving past him through the open doorway.

His roar of pain and rage followed her as she sprinted down the corridor, echoing back and forth in the caverns until it sounded like an entire pack giving voice. If I can get into the caves, I could play hide-and-seek, maybe find her way to the surface...

Her planning was interrupted by the sight of a dozen more werewolves bounding over the stone bridge. She barely had time to think Stupid! If the bullets didn't kill him...before they were on her. She stabbed out and one fell back, screeching and spurting blood from his chest, but she could feel clawed hands on her arms, her legs, jaws snapping in her face...

"<Enough!>" Dragos' voice boomed through the corridor. The werewolves fell still, nevertheless still pinning Alex to the ground. Dragos stalked up with a noticeable limp and pointed at the trapped woman. "<Alive!>" he shouted.

Alex felt the bodies on her rippling and shifting, changing from monstrous wolves to naked men cloaked in wolfskin robes. Their grip loosened, and she managed to twist around to see a still monstrous Dragos looming over her. Her position was bad, her grip on the dagger was bad, but it might be her only chance. With a heave she threw off her captors and sprung at Dragos, knife raised.

She never got close. A huge, clawed hand intercepted her throat, the impact sending the knife flying from her hand. She kicked and flailed uselessly as he held her at arm's length and slowly squeezed her throat. She was soon gasping for air. Her hands, which had been clawing at his grip, fell limply to her sides and her head fell back. Once her struggles ceased, he gestured to his now-human minions. They rushed to grab her semi-conscious form, save for one, who pointed toward the edge of the chasm.

Dragos walked over to look down at the werewolf Alex had stabbed. He, too, had changed back to human form, but that had done nothing to stop the blood gushing from his chest. He gurgled and feebly reached up toward Dragos. The baron stood staring impassively at the man for a moment before dealing him a vicious kick, sending him rolling over the edge of the cliff into the darkness below. There was no sound of impact.

Dragos wheeled around, his body shifting back to his human form as scooped the knife from the floor and turned to follow the men carrying Alex back to the chamber.

Continued in Chapter 5