Like Cats and... Wolves? The Werepigeon Apocalypse [FREE and COMPLETED]

Chapter 28

Nick was glad Adira decided to scare the dogs away rather than kill all of them. He liked animals and these poor canines didn’t exactly choose to be here, guarding an evil laboratory of an insane pigeon. The whole group cautiously moved towards the building Julia pointed out as Ralo’s main place of operation.

The slight wind brought a scent of more birds in their human forms. Adira looked around to see where it was coming from but before she could point out the exact origin, there was a familiar puffing sound. Darts whizzed through the air and Adira leaped forward, trying to avoid them. A gray and black body jumped to her side, letting out an angry meow as one of the darts that would have surely hit the wolf ended up plunged into the cat’s leg.

“Fatim!” Nick cried out but, of course, nobody could hear him. Adira sprinted away, hiding behind the nearest corner, cautiously peeking out. The cats followed her, Fatim didn’t seem harmed in any way which confirmed Nick’s suspicion. The darts were filled with wolfsbane. The birds knew there was a werewolf fighting alongside the cats and they prepared themselves.

That could prove a bit problematic. If even one of those things hit them, Adira would be useless for the rest of the fight. The cats seemed to realize that as well, forming a circle around the wolf, apparently ready to protect her with their own bodies. Nick knew the wolfsbane wasn’t toxic to them but it still couldn't have been a very pleasurable experience. Fatim kept scratching the spot where the dart hit her, her leg twitching from time to time. Adira whined and lowered her head to lick the spot, nuzzling the cat's soft fur.

Jumping up, Fatim pushed her away and jerked her head towards one of the buildings. “She’s right. We can’t stay out in the open. We need to make a run for it.” The door didn’t seem so far and, as Julia promised, the green light on the console next to it indicated it was unlocked. “Can you make it?”

“Like I have a choice,” Adira growled, imagining ripping the throat out of every single one of those assholes with the tranquilizer guns.

Fatim’s head nudged the wolf’s leg again, urging her to hurry. Adira took a deep breath and bolted forward, avoiding the first round of the darts by suddenly jumping off to the side. She was almost at the door when someone got a lucky shot that grazed her leg. Fortunately, the dart didn’t go into her flesh, just left a long shallow scratch, but the wolfsbane in it started burning like hell, making her stumble.

She tried to roll away but was still a too big target to miss. Even so, not one of the darts hit her as the night’s air filled with pained and furious cat screeches. Emmet’s cat had at least eight of those bloody things in his side when he nearly collapsed, trying to avoid another volley. “Adira, you need to move!” Nick yelled at her.

She was in pain but growled and got up, limping on the three paws towards the door. Nick didn’t exactly know what to do but he tried to help her, reaching over to the part of her mind that was suffering and grabbing all the pain he could manage, taking it away from her, shielding the wolf from the worst part of it. It allowed Adira to reach the door safely, barging through it, finally getting out of the field of vision of the shooters outside.

Some of the cats followed. Fatim, with a couple of darts still sticking out of her body. Emmet’s cat who barely managed to crawl inside, lying on the floor and squealing softly. Others he didn’t recognize. A lot of them found a safe cover outside. At least Nick hoped they did. “s**t,” he mumbled, wanting nothing more than to shift and help Emmet and the others. But time was against them, they needed to find Zoe fast.

Ralo must have known they were coming and he was no doubt going to use the girl as a living shield to make his escape. Julia promised that she and her friends would do their best to stop him but Nick had his doubts about that. She looked too frightened. Plus, she kept suggesting that not even Adira could take out Ralo on her own. Which was absolutely ridiculous. Bird or human or some weirdass dinosaur mutant, a single creature couldn’t possibly hope to defeat an Alpha wolf in one on one combat.

After making sure Emmet and others who couldn’t move anymore were safely tucked away in a storage room where hopefully nobody would find them, Adira sprinted through the hallway into the underground levels. Several cats followed her, Fatim being one of them of course. Nick didn’t expect anything else. Even if Kate was on the brink of death, she would tell the grim reaper to f**k off and go back to fight. And to keep other cats away from Nick.

The lights weren’t flickering and there was no mold on the walls, yet the place gave off the eerie haunted asylum vibe. Perhaps it was the weird moans coming from somewhere in the front. Not the good kind of moans.

The hallway where Ralo kept Zoe was supposed to be lined by locked doors, keeping his failed experiments hidden. The doors were there alright, but every single one of them was opened. Two confused men waddled through the corridor, whispering and screaming random words. They weren’t even reacting to each other, seemingly blind to the world around them.

Hard thumping noise made Adira peek into the first door on her left. It was a cell, with nothing but a bed and a small sink and toilet in the corner. A woman was standing there, chuckling quietly before smashing her head straight into the wall. Judging by the amount of blood covering her face it was not the first time.

“The f**k is this place?” The wolf hesitated, growling quietly. The madmen in the hallway didn’t seem to care that there was a huge predator standing just a few steps away from them.

“Failed experiments,” Nick whispered, trying to fight off a shiver. “They must have gone crazy from whatever s**t Ralo used on them.”

A furious roar sounded from the opposite cell and something big barreled into Adira’s side. She quickly shook off the surprise, jumping aside and swiftly turning towards the attacker. It was a girl, or at least used to be. Whatever Ralo injected her with, it changed her physically as well as mentally. The skin on her neck was covered in thick, dark green scales, with occasional small feathers popping up from between them. Her face was twisted by an oddly shaped beak with teeth sticking out of it at completely random angles. She looked absolutely horrifying and the screech that left her deformed mouth made the blood freeze in Adira’s veins.

A flare of sharp pain helped her quickly snap out of it. The girl had talons, bigass, sharp talons on her gnarly scaled fingers, and she tried to dig them into Adira’s side. “By the Goddess!” The wolf jumped away and almost stumbled into another creature, a big, bulky man that had some bony growths coming out of his arms and shoulders. “What is that sick f**k doing to his people?”

“Experimenting on them.” It certainly explained why Julia was so frightened. “Hurry, Adira! Zoe was supposed to be in one of those cells!” If all the doors were opened and these things roamed the hallway…

Kate partially shifted back into her human form, still covered in fur and angrily swiping her tail from side to side. But she could stand up on her hind legs and use her arms to grab the girl and snap her neck before sliding back on the ground as a cat. Nick had to admire her, staying in control of a partial shift like that was not an easy task.

Adira pounced on the bulky man, tackling him to the ground, and jumped on his chest with the full force of her front paws. The man’s ribcage gave out with a loud crack, caved in, and crushed his heart. “I’m not biting into that,” the wolf smirked in disgust, sprinting along the cells. Most were empty but there were one or two people with totally blank expressions, staring into empty space.

Zoe’s scent was all over one of the cells but the girl was nowhere in sight. There was a fresh whiff of her smell coming from the stairs up and Adira glanced back at Fatim. Kate’s cat nodded, she must have smelled it as well.

The animals quickly sprinted up several flights of stairs until they got onto the roof of the building. It didn’t take long, it was one of the smaller ones, just about three stories high. The mutated creatures swarmed the group as soon as they emerged from the door. Some of them were barely even humanoid in shape anymore, their bodies disfigured, their limbs twisted and deformed. Most had scales covering a portion of their skin, and a varying amount of feathers.

They moaned and grunted and squealed, not sounding like humans or birds or anything out of this world at all. No, the horrifying cacophony of noises they were letting out sounded like screaming of souls being eternally tortured in hell. Nick was almost grateful when Adira tore through the mass of their bodies and silenced several of them forever.

The creatures didn’t seem to have enough brain capacity for some smarter tactics, they just kept throwing themselves at Adira and the cats until there wasn’t anyone left standing. Still, they were formidable opponents, and before their suffering was finally over, their bloody rampage left two of the cats lying dead on the roof, the lifeless bodies shimmering as they slowly reverted to their human forms. Fortunately, Kate wasn’t one of them. Nick truly had no idea what kind of c*****e would Adira leave behind if their mate died here tonight.

“Well, would you look at that?” The calm voice was coming from behind the corner and Adira quickly moved to see who was talking, immediately freezing on the spot. The man was tall and surprisingly normal-looking, especially after the freak show they had to fight off to get there. He was balancing at the very edge of the roof, holding Zoe’s arm, ready to throw her off. The girl seemed a bit disoriented, squinting and blinking constantly as if she had trouble focusing her vision, but otherwise looked unharmed.

Adira growled and made one step forward but before her paw even touched the ground, the man let out a tsking sound and forced Zoe to lean over the edge of the building and hang above the concrete on the ground level, with only his hand keeping her from falling. “Look at that,” the man repeated. “Hundreds of years of this conflict and the cats finally admitted that they were hopeless and decided to change their tactics. And they… went to a pet shelter and rescued a stray dog?” He chuckled, clearly amused by what he considered to be a hilarious joke.

Why the hell did everybody hate werewolves so much? The dog comparison wasn’t even funny anymore, just silly and annoying.

The downside of Adira’s deadly form was that Nick couldn’t talk. There were dozens of questions burning on his tongue, and he knew someone should try to talk to this guy, who was no doubt the great Ralo himself. But the group couldn’t afford to lose Adira now, not when it wasn’t certain whether there weren’t more of the mutated freaks waiting around to attack them.

Kate was the one who shifted, her naked, slender body covered in blood smudges towering on the roof without the slightest sign of shame. Adira growled again, not really thrilled by the fact that the sick f**k could eye their naked mate at that moment, but there really wasn’t any other option. “Let the girl go, Ralo.” Despite the circumstances, Kate's voice sounded calm and firm, no traces of nervosity.

“Or what, kitty?” Ralo’s face twisted into an evil smirk. “You’re going to hiss at me?” He mockingly meowed at her, his hand mimicking a scratching motion. What a d**k.

“No, I’m going to kill you.”

He laughed, it was that kind of diabolical, mad scientist laugh you would hear in a horror movie. The white lab coat he was wearing only amplified that impression. “As if you could even touch me, kitty.” He sighed and shook his head. “So pathetic. I let you come here because I wanted to see what you’ve got. But if this is the best you can come up with… Truly pitiful. At least you’ve done a good job getting rid of my lab rats, they were a bit annoying, all that moaning and screaming. Ugh. Disgusting.”

Kate didn’t let any emotions show on her face but Nick could still feel a slight echo of her disgust through their mate bond. “It’s over Ralo. My people have taken care of most of your birds around the facility, even of those pricks with wolfsbane darts. You are the last one around, the rest have fled. You’ve lost.”

“Have I?” He didn’t seem surprised or worried at all. “See, I was basking in the glory of my success and I haven’t even noticed this magnificent victory you think you have won here.” His voice was ironic and he let out a creepy chuckle. “The thing is, kitten, I don’t need this place anymore. I have what I needed right here,” he tapped on his pocket, “the serum to create my army. We will see each other again, don’t worry. I might even let you live, you seem like something I’d like to taste.” The lascivious look he gave her while licking his lips almost made Adira pounce on the asshole. “I’ll take the kid along, I’m sure she will be able to provide me with some entertainment as well.”

Nick frowned. If he had a physical heart right now, it would be beating like a drum. What was that guy talking about? He was crazy, yes, but not that crazy to not realize he was surrounded with no way out. Yet, he still acted as confident as if he was the one winning the whole time. He could shift, maybe in time before they would get to him. But he would lose whatever it was in his pocket, as it looked like some sort of a large case. There was no way a pigeon could carry it. Let alone plan on bringing Zoe along.

Kate’s thoughts must have followed the same tracks because she stood there, clearly unsure what to say. Ralo chuckled again and shook his head. “Truly pathetic. I will make the world so much better when I’m in charge of it.” He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side, as if stretching before a workout.

Zoe still looked mostly unaware of what was happening, no doubt he gave her some sort of drugs to stop her from fighting him. Her eyes, however, found Adira and she gave the wolf a sleepy smile, frowning when she turned to the man holding her arm. “Kate?” she mumbled, seeing her aunt standing just a few steps from Ralo.

“Say goodbye to your auntie, child,” Ralo smirked, still wiggling and squirming, “next time you will see her, she will be in chains, begging me to kill her.”

The girl blinked in confusion. “You’re mean.” The man ignored her, turning back to Kate, opening his mouth to no doubt amaze them with another deep wisdom hidden in his words. A grave mistake, because Zoe suddenly reached for one of the pens he kept in the chest pocket of his lab coat and shoved it right into his eye.

Ralo let out a furious scream and, fortunately, roughly shoved Zoe onto the roof instead of pushing her off. Kate leaped forward to grab the girl and pull her away but got thrown back by… something.

Ralo shifted. But not into a bird. Nick wasn’t entirely sure what the thing in front of them was but it was most definitely not a pigeon.

His body still looked mostly humanoid in shape, even though his feet grew long, sharp talons, clicking against the ground as he moved. There were similar bony growths on his arms as on one of the men they had seen earlier, but Ralo’s were longer and connected by a thick, scaly membrane, creating two huge wings, easily fifteen feet in diameter when he spread them out. He still had hands, the forearms sticking out from the middle of those wings, and even with talons on his fingers, he easily grabbed the remains of the torn lab coat with the box still in the pocket.

His face was the creepiest part of him. The eye socket where Zoe hit him remained empty, and the other one got bigger to accommodate a huge, pitch-black eyeball. His mouth was replaced by a long beak full of pointy teeth and he clasped it shut inches away from Kate’s body before using his enormous scaly wing to shove her away.

“What in the name of the goddess is that THING?!” Adira cried out in panic.

“I think it’s some sort of a pterodactyl hybrid.” As if it mattered. The creature flapped its wings, ready to take off, its hind legs grabbing Zoe’s arms, making her scream out in pain as the talons cut through her skin. “Get him!”

Nick’s shouting broke Adira out of her stupor and she leaped forward, trying to get to Ralo before he could fly away. She wasn’t alone. As he was hovering a few feet above the roof now, the cats couldn’t reach him anymore, but there were several pigeons circling around him, distracting the monstrosity, trying to rip the lab coat out of his grip. Julia and her people.

Their attempts were futile, Ralo just waved his giant wing against them, knocking two of them out and chasing the others away. But they provided Adira with enough time to pounce at him, trying to get him back on the ground. Her teeth bore into the scaly membrane of his wing, passing right through. Nick retched from the disgusting taste of Ralo’s tainted blood but Adira didn’t let it distract her, biting into his arm, trying to tear it off or at least break it so he wouldn’t be able to fly away.

Zoe whimpered when her body hit the roof again and she tried to crawl away from the fight. Nick didn’t think there was a creature powerful enough to take on an Alpha wolf. Maybe some of the werebears but certainly not a f*****g pigeon. The problem was that Ralo was no longer a pigeon. And whatever he was, it was tougher than Nick and Adira expected. While the wolf’s teeth could rip a person in half in a split second, Ralo’s bones turned out to be too hard to bite through.

A powerful blow from his wing sent Adira flying back, landing next to Zoe. The cats circled around Ralo, waiting for him to turn away before jumping in, biting and clawing, and quickly retreating into a safe distance. They looked like ants attacking an elephant, there was no way they could do any real damage to that creature. If anything, it felt as if Ralo grew even larger, a bigger portion of his skin was covered by scales and small feathers now. Unhurriedly, he walked over to Zoe. When he bent over to pick her up, Adira jumped at him, ferociously biting and clawing on his body.

They were both coated in blood when he finally managed to shake the wolf off, letting out an inarticulate roar. “I don’t think we hurt him,” Adira was panting, “we just pissed him off. What a tough motherfucker.” Julia was right. Not even an Alpha wolf could defeat this thing. And Ralo was going to have an army of more creatures just like him.

Nick’s grim thoughts were interrupted by a flash of sharp pain and Adira’s tortured squeal. Nick felt her body being moved off the ground and the pain flared. When she finally managed to open her eyes, he realized what happened. The asshole grew a tail, a long, reptilian tail with a couple of big spikes at the end. And he pierced Adira’s stomach with it, using it to lift the wolf up like a pinned butterfly, raising her helpless body right towards his long beak.

Just before Ralo’s teeth could start tearing Adira to shreds, a black and gray cat jumped up on his body, running across the scaly wing, straight towards his head. Fatim swiped against his only remaining eye, barely leaping to the side to avoid his hand. A small bird dove in just in time, its talons leaving long scratches on Ralo’s cheek. The pigeon flapped its wings, skillfully avoiding the monster’s hits, attacking his face whenever he was distracted by the cat.

Ralo roared, flicking his tail and tossing Adira’s body aside like a broken toy. Nick distinctly felt something crack on impact but the pain was already so great it hardly even mattered anymore. Fatim and the bird retreated as well, watching the creature from a safe distance. Ralo clapped his beak and let out a sound hauntingly similar to a chuckle before suddenly spreading his enormous wings and leaping towards Zoe.

The girl rolled to the side, fighting against him when one of his legs grabbed her. More birds flew in and attacked his eye again, wisely deciding that it was his weakest spot. Having his wings busy with deflecting their attacks and keeping himself in the air, Ralo finally decided to ditch the weight slowing him down and let go of the girl. Mid-air, off the roof. Forty feet above the concrete pavement.

A cat might have had a tiny chance to survive such a fall, if it got very lucky. A human had zero chances. And Zoe couldn’t even try to shift because she was still wearing the metal collar. Nick knew all of that, and so did Adira. As the night’s air was pierced by desperate cat screams, the wolf mustered up the last bits of strength she had and jumped up, ignoring the streams of blood running down her sides. She leaped over the side of the building and caught the falling child, hugging her with her paws.

Thanks to the angle Adira was jumping at, they didn’t land on the concrete but rather in a couple of low bushes nearby. Still, Nick felt bones crack and shatter as they rolled on the ground, Adira making sure that Zoe was as shielded as possible. The pain was blinding, making them squeal and scream, way worse than the agony after they got hit with the wolfsbane the first time.

“Can you heal that?” Nick managed to ask, trying to hold on to his sanity as the pain rippled through their broken body.

He could barely even feel Adira’s presence anymore but she did answer. “I will… if you… stay alive.”

Nick was alone, the wolf disappeared from his head as if she never even existed. He knew she was just trying to conserve her energy so she could heal him if by some miracle he wasn’t going to die in the next few hours. Or minutes. That seemed like a more likely option given how badly injured he was.

Stay alive. He kept repeating that to himself as the darkness mercifully engulfed him. But how the f**k was he supposed to achieve that?

***

Next update: Saturday