The Beast In Us (The Beast And Me Book 3) Read online

  My head hurts.

  Day 140

  Reading so many words written by Jay, and him pouring out his feelings like that, is strange. It really is, especially when I don’t remember him as very talkative. And I’m not even talking about all the time...only the time he was human and not a beast. It’s hard to read, because I can relate to how he felt.

  ...and I’m not even mad as he found out that White had written in my diary. It’s not really surprising, and he already sort of violated me in so many ways – apart from one – that this trespassing does not bother me at all. I don’t really care.

  Somehow I’m grateful for being able to read about so many emotions, because I don’t feel very emotional. I still feel this strange chill inside of me. Apart from when I am touching the scars, which I try not to. Knowing that Jay has such a flaming fury inside of him, it feels...exciting. I am the sick and disgusting one now, aren’t I? But I want his rage. I want to feel that blaze inside of him, inside of me.

  Does that make any sense? Does it make sense that I still don’t want to remember most of what has happened? That I am scared of the memories? That I only want to read what Jay has put down in his diary?

  Maybe it’s because it has been so long for me since I felt needed. And I have never felt needed as desperately as Jay obviously does. I’m not mad at my parents. I probably should be furious at them for moving me around between them, giving me the feeling of not being wanted, of being a pain. But I don’t care anymore. They think I am dead anyway. Maybe they are even relieved? That thought doesn’t bother me at all, either.

  XXX

  Being alone in this room reminds me of the times before. I feel the loneliness and despair again, this need to connect to someone...anyone. Although Val is checking on me several times a day, it’s not the same, and I think she knows that. She’s like Peter. Not the real deal, only a substitute. There is only one living being that can make me feel alive again, and that’s Jay, or Ten. I don’t care about the name. All I know is that I need him. I need him to be close to me, to hold me, to make me feel safe, to make me feel important, to make me feel like me.

  It’s hard imagining that we once knew each other. The further I try to look back in my memory, the harder it gets. And what he writes in his diary, about us knowing each other from when we were little...I can’t remember. And somehow it feels off. It’s probably just me, but a part of me doubts that it’s me he’s remembering. Then again, I might have been too little to really remember. Maybe I’m just afraid of actually being that person he remembers, that little child that was dependent on him.

  It’s a kind of pressure being that special person that made him want to be a healer, a protector, a hero. He sure as hell is my hero, as twisted as it sounds. After all, he did sort of rape me. I remember it. I know he wasn’t in control over his body, that it was the beast in him that took over and took me, claimed me. I feel sick feeling good about it. I know a part of me enjoyed it, being the center of this barbaric attention. Who wouldn’t want to be the center of attention, or be the reason for someone losing his mind? But none of this really matters, because this time it’s me losing my mind. There is this gaping hole inside of me needing to be filled. It’s as if my heart is missing. ...No, not my heart, my soul. And I know exactly where it is, waiting to connect with my body.

  Yet there is Valerie Winters, telling me that it’s better for me to be separated from him. The only way to be with him again is for her to declare that I’m fit to be returned to the program, which means testing, probing, and experimenting on me. And there is no guarantee that White will send me to Jay straight away. He’s expecting me to be different, for me to be at his mercy again. I don’t know if I can handle that. But that is the crux about the whole ordeal. If I want Jay, I have to be able to face White. And I am not even calling the shots. It’s Val, and she doesn’t want to surrender me to White...for whatever reason.

  I’m incapable of listening to her long explanations. I know she doesn’t want to torture me. I know she has her reasons for keeping me in this room. But I feel as if I am slowly going insane.

  Just like Jay’s explanations. It is all too much, all those words, his written ones, and her spoken ones. They feel as if they are invading my mind, flooding it and drowning my own. I just can’t read or listen to them any longer. All I long for is silence. Silence for my ears, and silence for my mind. Because my memories slowly return to me just like the flood after a fall tide. And that’s already too much to bear.

  Feeling dead inside, empty...I almost wish I was back to that feeling. At least I was calm and cold, not burning up as if my emotions were nothing more than a fever.

  Day 141

  I can see it in her eyes. I don’t even need my instincts, my gut feeling, to know that something’s wrong with me.

  Val chooses her words with care, which makes her sound almost retarded when she talks to me. I think her flooding me with information is her method to avoid saying something of importance. But she can’t fool me anymore. Although it seems as if she is aware of my difficulty of following her flood of emotions, I somehow have learned to pick out those few words of value.

  A part of me welcomes this distraction now, because I fear the realization that is slowly dawning on me. It’s not that I don’t know that she’s a good person. That is something I simply know. No, it’s not about that. Although Jay told me in his diary that she’s a part of this whole disgusting project, I truly know that her intentions were good. I know that now she just wants to right her wrongdoings, even though she never aligned herself with White’s beliefs.

  She wants me under her care because I am out of White’s reach as long as she has authority over me. And although I appreciate what she is doing, I don’t want it.

  I’ve gone cold turkey, and my drug is Jay.

  I’m not even exaggerating. I can feel it in my veins. This painful retrieving of strength, breath, and life force as I am waiting for him to stand behind this window again. I don’t know how, or why, but I know that I can sense him when he is near. And it hurts when he’s not. The pain is as if an incredibly sharp knife is cutting through your flesh and sinews and nerves right down to your bones, severing it all, all that makes you vulnerable and human, from the very thing you are without them.

  It’s this silent truth, hiding within the shadows, you get to catch a glimpse of it just enough to make you doubt everything. God, I know what they did, but I can’t accept it, can’t acknowledge it.

  It’s Val who taught me to never give in to the easiest solution. So, I pretend, I act as if nothing has changed, as if I am just about to realize how far my thoughts reach. But I know that she is hiding everything from me. I know that she’s keeping me separate from Jay.

  She pretends that it’s to keep me safe, but I don’t care. I need to feel him against my skin, on my flesh and bones, weighing down on me, needing me like air. That’s all my mind is circling around: him, needing me.

  XXX

  I know I was meant to be his salvation, but he was mine, too. In all this chaos, in this hell of darkness, he was the one person without a hidden agenda. Him needing me, lusting for me, pining over me – as insane as it sounds – it was what was keeping me sane.

  And now, it’s gone.

  Although writing down all of my thought as they come has helped me, it was never the true reason why I didn’t lose it. It was him. It was Jay.

  I don’t remember him from when I was a child, not really. It’s all buried in my early memories, bound to come back one day probably, but that’s not what created this connection between us. For Jay it might be of grave importance, but to me it’s not.

  I know White. I know he found out both our addresses, which showed we lived close to each other, that he then checked all the details and connected the dots.

  I know that he knew Jay would be hesitating when he saw pictures of me, that he would recognize me. I can imagine that he planted pictures of my childhood among the footing he showed Jay. W
hite planted me, White chose me to be picked by Jay, because he doesn’t leave anything to chance. Dr. Clay Severin chose me to save Jay. He just didn’t realize that his half-brother would fall in love with me, too. Or did he? I can’t really rule that out, either.

  Poor, stupid, dumb, and naïve Peter, you played me for a fool, but you are the true fool. It all makes sense. You didn’t fall in love with me, but with the idea of being with me. With the idea of me being able to love you.

  Knowing that Peter is White’s half-brother...it all makes so much sense now. I still can’t believe that he actually injected himself with the same virus Jay and his comrades got.

  My head still hurts after reading all of this. Why would someone do something like that, if not to cause of despair and pain?

  Why does Peter need his brother’s love or approval that much? What went wrong between them? Or between them, and whatever parent they share?

  I shouldn’t care. I will probably never figure out the true reason why Peter treats himself so poorly, just to make his own brother notice him. But I can relate, too much, and I think that’s the reason why I fell for his charade in the first place. However, I have already given up on my parents, or anyone else for that matter. I was about to settle with the knowledge that no one ever would need me, want me, pine over me, and then White’s henchmen took me and introduced me to Jay.

  After being neglected for so long, being needed on such a feral, basic level...I think that’s why I was not really afraid, because I couldn’t care less about being killed, as long there was at least one living being that needed me that much, so much that it lost even more control over itself.

  Day 142

  I know Val can’t relate. No one can relate to what I am feeling. There is a hole in my center, as if a part of me is gone, although I am complete. I don’t want to go there with my thoughts, and that’s definitely the reason why they do that on their own. Don’t think about a red elephant. What are you thinking about? A red elephant.

  I tell myself that I feel like this because I miss Jay. And it’s true. But there is more, although I can’t really know, because I didn’t know before they put me in a coma. But it already happened once, and I ignored it. Now I can’t.

  XXX

  Nothing helps anymore. Not reading through Jay’s diary. Not going in circles with my thoughts and my writing. So I did what I had to do. I talked to Valerie.

  I don’t know why I am so calm about it; maybe because this emptiness is now filled with something else. Pressure, tension, and slumbering anger...like a power source I didn’t know I had. And it is slowly charging.

  And yes: I was pregnant...was.

  They put me to sleep in order to preserve its life.

  I didn’t ask if it was a boy or girl, because it’s dead.

  My body rejected it, as it had done the time before; when I had such a painful period. It was more than that. It had been me losing a...I can’t even say baby. It sounds too weird to me...too real for me.

  I’m not crying, I’m not sad, I’m not mourning. I’m just back to being cold. Apart from that place inside of me that is slowly heating up, stirring, but not yet awake. Val hasn’t told me, but I know it anyway. This slowly searching fire that is working free of its’ confinement inside of me. I have read about it. Jay wrote about it. He wrote about the anger, the fury, that biblical wrath inside of him, which explodes into rage, blood, and chaos. I think I feel it, too. I might be wrong about it, because what he described in his diary, what I feel right now, doesn’t feel the same. But I can feel it growing stronger, stirring inside of me.

  Val hasn’t told me, but I believe that I’m not entirely human anymore. And it makes sense. Why else should Jay worry? Why else would he tell me about how he was changed and what it did to him, how he felt. I was never in this paralyzing darkness that he described. But it doesn’t mean that I simply don’t remember. Maybe Dr. Valerie Winters made sure that my coma knocked me out cold. So that I wouldn’t feel the pain all the others went through.

  The only question I cannot answer for myself is: did they inject me to save it? Or – and this thought is even more terrifying – was I infected by Jay? He wrote about the injection being a virus, a virus that changes DNA. How could they rule out whether the virus was still alive or dormant in his blood, and that I wouldn’t be infected? Or did they simply take the chance?

  As well as I know White, it was the latter. He has no respect for human beings, for no one else but himself. And maybe not even that. His mission is all that counts. I can tell that much. Whatever he sees as his mission, he’s the kind of man that subjects everything to his cause. He has no remorse, because he thinks he is doing something important, something right. It makes sense. He thinks he’s a pioneer, a hero, a trailblazer.

  That’s how I am going to get him. But first I need to get Valerie Winters to tell me everything. Most importantly, why I am still here, when the reason why I’m here no longer exists, and I’ve become a beast myself.

  Her telling me that I’m safer with her is circling in my head like vultures over a dead body. The only logical explanation for me is that she really wants to help, that she’s not one of White’s blind drones, that she has a conscience.

  Val was so careful when she told me about my miscarriage. She was so observant, carefully analyzing my reactions to what she said to me. Not telling me how old it was, how far along I had been. The details do not matter. What’s gone is gone.

  I still don’t cry, still no burning water in my eyes. I’m neither proud nor relieved that I don’t feel anything about the information that I was pregnant, and my body chose to reject whatever grew inside me...twice.

  I’m too young to have kids. I don’t feel up to it, but that’s not the reason I don’t seem to care about two dead offspring. I’m not sad. What life would they have had if they had been born here?

  So, I guess that silently, unconsciously, I am relieved and grateful that whatever grew inside me never came out alive. My body rejecting them was the best thing that could have happened to both of them, them...my children.

  If I hadn’t already had the motivation to kill White, I definitely do now more than ever.

  XXX

  I expected it to be far from easy getting Val to tell me the complete truth. It’s kind of ironic that she was able to tell me about my two miscarriages, but not about what is really having an impact on me now. Not that it isn’t gnawing at my heart, knowing that I could have brought two living beings into this world, but the time for thinking about that isn’t now. I need confirmation. I need to know that all the advice in Jay’s books, the messages on how to handle that slumbering wildfire inside himself, was for a reason.

  It’s not that I can’t feel and sense that something is off with me. It just might be all in my head because of the coma, because of everything that has happened to me, because of all these memories crashing down on me like a tsunami. I need to hear it. I need to hear Valerie say that I am the monster White tried to convince me Jay was.

  But I wasn’t prepared to actually hear it.

  “You are right,” Valerie answered with one brief nod, her shoulders were slumping and her chin sinking to her chest, not being able to look at me, as if it was her fault.

  It took just a second to gather herself, straighten up, and meet my glare. I did my best to appear untouched and unfazed about the words that had just confirmed what I believed to be my ultimate nightmare.

  “I haven’t told Severin,” Valerie continued, her eyes locking with mine, showing nothing but ultimate determination. “He still thinks that I’m trying to save the life inside of you that we already lost a week after I managed to get you under my care and protection.”

  She paused, giving me an opportunity to say something, but I stayed silent, just looking at her, waiting for her to continue, while I tried to stomach that I had been infected with the virus that had changed Jay into Ten.

  “All I wanted was to get you away from him and away from the unspea
kable task he had charged you with,” Valerie added, as she realized that I wouldn’t say anything. “When your initial bloodwork came back after you lost Ten B, I realized what had happened.”

  I fought against the instinctive reflex to gag when I heard how she had named my second miscarriage. Although I was always aware that White hadn’t given me to Jay just to tame him, but also to get a chance to procreate a beast, hearing confirmation about his plans was stomach-churning.

  Val saw my reaction and paused, bringing her glance back to searching the floor for god knows what wisdom in the white tiling.

  “Ever since, I have been working on a cure.”

  These nine words petrified me. For the first time in a long time I felt electricity jolt through my nervous system.

  “A cure?” I repeated, not really knowing if it was just that or a rhetorical question, inviting her to continue to speak.

  “I didn’t only keep you in a coma to make sure that you weren’t suffering from the change, but also because I needed to get samples during your transformation in order to find a way to create an anti-virus.” Valerie explained. “I’m not a virologist, but I have picked up enough from the laboratories to monitor how your body reacted to the virus.” She took a deep breath and locked onto my eyes again. “You might not be the first woman to be infected with that virus, but you are the first human to go through an indirect infection. The virus had already adapted to Ten before it was transferred to your body, which makes you absolutely unique. Severin already has tried several attempts of secondary infection but...all of the subjects died or didn’t transform. You are the first.”

  “Why’s that?” I heard myself ask.

  “I believe that your body tried to save the fetus, and that Ten’s virus and your body were working together in this attempt. I have never seen a human body accepting a virus. It was always a battle, with one winner in the end.” Valerie reached out to touch my hand, and I could feel her touch in every fiber of my body. “You’re different. It’s as if your body and the virus made a truce, a full symbiosis. If Severin ever learned of that, who knows what he would do to you?”