Kane Gilmour - Ragnarok

His growing affection was mutual.

Of course, all the affection in the world did diddly-squat for him right now.

He growled in frustration until his voice was hoarse. Then he heard a scraping noise on the other side of the pit. Something sliding.

Sonovabitch, what now?

He pressed the button on the little LED flashlight and the scene was suddenly as bright as day in the blue-white light. The grayish-white skins of the piled-high genetically engineered dire wolf pups were everywhere. He saw nothing that might have caused sound. Nothing A small mound of dire wolf corpses shifted to his left. Then they stopped.

Then the same pile moved again.

Something was moving under the dead monster babies.

Rook played the light around the confined space and the pile of dead shifted again. He stopped breathing and moved a hand over the light to dim it, but not extinguish it entirely. He wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t capable of it. He was filled with so much seething rage at his confinement that fear didn’t exist. The presence of something living in the pit with him filled him with a desire to fight it. He was a hunter now and whatever it was that shared this pit with him, it was his prey.

Slowly, Rook moved his legs under him so he could pounce if necessary. The shifting of the mound stopped. He waited, still holding his breath. When it emerged, it happened so fast that Rook fell backward, startled.

A few of the crushed baby dire wolf bodies launched a foot into the air as a furry gray snout erupted from the pile. The creature’s head was rounded but with a short elongated snout. Its eyes were beady black specks in its fur, and its nose was a black lump at the front of its head. When it opened its mouth and Rook saw the teeth, he knew without a doubt what it was. He had seen plenty of them in the woods around Fenris Kystby.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf? Course, you’re bigger and badder than most.

Rook let the light hit the creature fully as it struggled out of the vertical tunnel it had dug through the corpses. The wolf was huge. At least six foot long, with a wet matted coat that was dark in front and gradated to white by the time it reached the hindquarters. Rook had never seen a wolf like this.

The creature had elongated, white-furred legs and no tail. Its front half looked normal, but its back half had powerful muscles that looked almost human. The rear paws weren’t paws, but feet. With talons.

Damn, Rook thought. That batshit Fossen left a half-wolf, half-dire wolf abortion down here to die. Looks like death didn’t take.

Then he realized he was the one who’d been left to die. There was no way Fossen didn’t know about this beauty. Rook stayed perfectly still, wondering if the creature would attack or not.

Then it opened its huge jaws like a cat yawning-large enough to swallow most of Rook’s face. And the thing snarled at him.

Right, that’s it for you, Benji.

The hybrid lowered itself, its muscles tensing, preparing to spring. But Rook surprised it. He lunged across the the pit and slammed his body into the startled creature.

The pair crashed against the brick wall. Rook ignored the jarring impact and mashed his head down on the thing’s snout as it dug its two-inch-long fangs into his shoulder, which wasn’t the best move in hindsight since he helped push the wolf’s top canines deeper in the meat of his shoulder. He shouted in pain, but so did the wolf. It released his shoulder, snarling and snapping at Rook’s face.

Rook growled, too, as he pummeled the side of its head with his meaty fist, aiming for the soft temple behind the eyes. A hard enough strike should knock the thing out. But it squirmed and flailed, slipping from his grasp.

The creature leapt away and barked at him, then leapt at his throat. Rook tucked his chin and fell back into the soft mound of Fossen’s failed experiments, pulling his legs up and kicking the flying wolf up and over him, smashing it into the far wall of the pit.

Rook, still desperately clutching the LED light in his left hand, spun around on the mound to see the beast hit. He was shocked to see the creature violently twist its body in mid air like a cat and land with its hind legs on the wall. The claws dug in, and the thing stayed attached to wall as if he had tossed a spaghetti noodle up to see if it would stick. The strange creature’s front legs hung away from the wall. They looked like normal wolf paws, unable to find purchase on the wall. The wolf craned its head up and opened its mouth, showing its teeth. Rook was certain the bastard was smiling at him.

It shot off the wall and rammed his stomach, slamming him back into the wall, where he hit his head yet again.

“That’s it!” He shouted. “Time for a fuckin’ lupine barbeque.” He doused and pocketed the LED light. He wouldn’t need it in these close confines, and he needed his left hand free.

Darkness engulfed the pit.

But not all his senses were blind.

The creature smelled horribly, and Rook guessed that he did too. He could hear it breathing and it could probably hear him. They would have no problems fighting each other in the dark.

Rook rolled as the beast snapped at him again, just clipping his forearm with its long muzzle, drawing a line of blood down his arm. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the warm drip. Rook snatched out and grabbed the hybrid by the middle of both of its front legs, and rolled. His arms swung hard and the beast went with them. He slapped the entire creature’s body hard against the wall of the pit. While it was stunned, he wrapped his arms around the thing’s thin front legs and applied sudden, sharp pressure.

He winced at the sound of breaking bones, but the monster’s pain-filled howl drowned out the noise. Feeling merciful now that the creature sounded like any other wounded dog, Rook moved a hand to the creature’s neck and then moved his other hand up to join it. The wolf resisted, snapping at him, but it was a half effort. The pain from its broken limbs sapped its fight.

With a violent crack, Rook twisted the head 180? around, and the body slumped in his hands. He dropped the hybrid creature and fished out his LED from his pocket, admiring his handiwork.

“Who’s afraid of the big bad Rook?” he grumbled and then felt glad no one had been around to hear that particular gem.

“Now where the hell did you come from?” He moved over to the side of the pit where the thing had clawed its way free from the tiny dire wolf corpses and he found a tunnel.

Rook thought about it for a second. He rationalized that if the creature had gotten into the pit’s bottom, there must be an exit out somewhere. It couldn’t have just lived down here. There wasn’t enough for it to eat. The thing’s fur was wet too, so the tunnel must lead to water. He tried to remember any lakes or ponds in the area around the lab, but nothing came to him. Then again, it had been pretty cold for a while, and any nearby lakes must have frozen over.

I’m gonna get halfway down the friggin’ tunnel and another one of those things is gonna try to eat my head.

“What the hell,” Rook said and then moved over to the hole. He pushed some of the carcasses out of his way so he could slide down the tunnel head first. About a foot under the bodies, the tunnel made an S turn, and he had to struggle, grunt and squeeze to make the turns. He kept the LED illuminated ahead of him and saw that after the S turn, the tunnel widened out and moved upward at a slanting slope. The walls and ceiling were dark damp soil, but the floor was rough with yellow, grainy sand. As his legs came out of the S turn, Rook found he could actually get up to his hands and knees and crawl. It was better than wriggling like a worm.

The tunnel continued to slope upward, but the temperature dropped the further away from the pit he moved. Rook guessed he had gone about three hundred yards when the tunnel widened out to the inside of a large stick structure. Rook quickly recognized it as an abandoned beaver lodge in the rough shape of a dome. The ceiling was still low, but the room was large enough for maybe four adults to lie down side by side. It reminded him of a camping tent.