Page 33 of Her Eternal Mate

“We have to run away right now. They’ve been torturing me for the past hour. I’m in no shape to fight,” Vince said and then fell to his knees.

Seeing him like that, all beaten up, bruised purple, and bleeding from places, drew me into such a berserk rage that I shifted immediately and advanced all by myself at the mutated soldiers who were closing in on the clearing.

Their bodies had contorted and morphed into giant, bulbous, grotesquely red growths that were utterly disproportionate. One arm was longer than the other, while one leg was short and stumpy. Their eyes were bulging out of their sockets. Their hands had shifted into a pathetic imitation of wolf claws. I could see from afar that their teeth had turned vampiric, all pointed and jutting out of their mouths.

I counted twenty of them all around the clearing, just like Vince had warned. I shot a look back and saw Alexis taking Vincent out of the clearing just before the soldiers—or whatever they were now—formed a circle around the clearing.

Now that their bodies had morphed and distorted out of proportion, none of their armor was properly fitting their bodies anymore, leaving undefended critical areas that could be used to my advantage. Their necks were completely bare, and so were their arms and torso.

As they advanced around me, forming a closed circle, I perceived that they could no longer speak. They were merely grunting, howling, jeering, and screaming as they thrashed their arms and stomped their feet.

For a brief moment, I felt pity for them. Once upon a time, these were men. Men who had parents, relatives, probably wives and partners, and now they had been warped by Blair into these hideous creatures. There was no return from this state.

Killing them would be a mercy.

Get Vincent out of here while I deal with them,I called out to Alexis.

Are you sure you can deal with them alone?She asked.

Yes, I’ve got this.

These mutated soldiers were no longer wielding guns or batons. Their high-tech armor was deactivated. But I was still careful. If they had been altered and disfigured to such an extent, it must have affected their brute strength.

The soldiers all howled and pounced upon me at the same time, momentarily taxing me with indecision, but then, at the last moment, I jumped higher than all of them and perched upon a tree branch, staring below at the small horde that had assembled at the base of the tree.

Above, the full moon shone, its lunar presence strengthening my resolve and bringing out my power.

As I jumped down from the tree, I calculated my moves with precision. There were five mutated soldiers right in front of me. I broke my fall by falling on top of them. I crushed one with my sheer weight, killing him instantly. One of them tried to get away from under me. I bit down on his head and tugged it free from the rest of his body, sending blood spraying everywhere.

I could only imagine what the sight of a blood-soaked, red-eyed, spectral wolf would do to an opponent. But these were not ordinary opponents. Their minds had been erased by the mutagens that had been injected into them. They knew no fear. Senseless, they all attacked me as a horde.

I charged into them headfirst, bludgeoning them with my swift body, making them all fall as I raced through them and to the other side of the clearing, where their weapon stash was lying: machine guns, rifles, shotguns, grenades.

As I’d already overused grenades recently, and as these mutated soldiers were scattered all over the place, I had to resort to using another weapon if I wanted to eradicate them as quickly as possible.

I shifted back into my human form and grabbed hold of one of the machine guns lying in the weapon stash. I aimed it in front of me, where eighteen frenzied mutated soldiers were stampeding towards me, their mouths foaming, their eyes bloodshot and lifeless.

I pulled the trigger and braced myself for the massive recoil of this machine gun while holding it straight ahead of me. The bullets pierced the skins of the approaching soldiers, sending blood, guts, limbs, and viscera flying in every direction.

It was hardly a fair match, what with their senses being dissolved by chemicals and their armors compromised as a result of their distorted figures. By the time my magazine ended, there were no more soldiers left standing.

I threw the machine gun down and picked up a shotgun from the stash. One by one, I walked over to the bodies of the mutated soldiers and shot each of them in the head just to make sure that they were really dead.

And there I stood in the aftermath, one lone wolf amidst a pile of corpses. I threw the shotgun on the ground and looked wearily around me. This was the second time these soldiers had kidnapped an innocent person. The second time that I had come across one of their remote bases in the forest.

I decided that it was about time that I stopped playing on the defensive. There would be no more of these bases, no more of these soldiers anymore. I’d do whatever it takes.

As I crossed the clearing and came to the path that Vince and Alexis had taken, I saw them standing way up ahead, looking at something that I could not see from afar.

“Alexis! Vincent! Are you guys all right?” I asked.

“Will. You have to come and see this,” Alexis called back.

I braced myself for another disaster lying in wait ahead. But when I reached them both, I saw something that completely baffled me.

“Did either of you do this?” I asked, inspecting the dead body.

“We didn’t do anything,” Vincent panted.

---