Vargr Read online

  VARGR

  BEAST HORDE

  BOOK ONE

  Cari Silverwood

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  Find the next two books in the BEAST HORDE Trilogy on Amazon

  RUTGER Beast Horde, Book 2

  CYN Beast Horde, Book 3

  PREYFINDERS: THE TRILOGY BOXSET

  THE DARK MONSTER FANTASY BOOKS: PREY, STEEL, BLADE

  RULED

  CONDEMNED

  THE STEAMWORK CHRONICLES BOXSET

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About Cari Silverwood

  Also by Cari Silverwood

  COPYRIGHT

  Chapter 1

  Something wormed between her legs, probed slickly at her, and she awakened from a pleasant dream that may have been going on forever. She couldn’t quite remember. An awareness of tragedy and loss faded in and out, yet another sign that her brain wasn’t sure what was going on.

  What century was this? Twenty-first. Where was she? Top floor of Fuck-the-world City, the slang term for the sprawl of multi-story buildings that plagued the entire surface of Earth. Though who she was eluded her.

  Knowledge simply existed again where before there’d been drudgery and fog.

  And behold, there was history and vague frothy memories teasing her at the edges, and past memories as clear as if seen through a camera, and more knowledge erupted within her like a volcano on steroids, and it gave birth to fear.

  “Fuck!” she burbled, grabbing at the other slippery tentacle thing pushing into her mouth, stretching her lips. As she tugged at it, spit bubbled past her lips. She’d bitten it accidentally. Slimy bitter thing. Father had told her to swear sparingly. She’d never listened, and here, squirming in her hands, was a damn good reason for cursing. Overwhelming panic loomed, tearing at her with sharp nonsense.

  Calm yourself!

  She inhaled, exhaled. Fear remained but practicality and survival mode kicked in – also taught by Father.

  Concentrate on what you can fix. That instruction had stuck.

  Wildly she looked around. This thing is big!

  Before her was a grinning mouth with triangular teeth and blinding-white eyes the size of saucers, but there was floor underfoot. She was standing and upright. Nearby, past the maze of writhing tentacles, was a man. He had a sheathed knife strapped to his leg, and a submachine gun of an unknown type hung from his shoulder. Beyond him she glimpsed other white monsters and pinioned and tentacle-probed humans, as well as a few hung upside down above open maws of scythe-like teeth. Dozens of people. They waited slack-faced, and on the other side of their alien masters were piles of steaming bones. For a second she had to concentrate so as not to gag.

  Dead people. All around her, and living ones lining up to be consumed.

  One moment, Cyn had been moaning in the arms of her lover, and in the next she was entwined in this waving spaghetti mix of pale, fat tentacles with a flailing shroud of white overhead. A monster had her.

  Ghoul Lord, her memory coughed up. Cyn! I’m Cyn.

  Finally. Thank you, asshole memory.

  Her heart pitter-patted, telling her to do something. Anything!

  The sun was above, glowing through the pale leathery shroud. Did this Ghoul Lord monster plan to eat her too? Or fuck her first?

  Despite her quiet shrieks and pleas, her repeated noes, and the plucking of her hands, the probing continued. She could feel how wet she was below. Really, before this… she’d been having the best erotic dream.

  “Excuses, excuses,” she muttered, having wrestled the mouth tentacle a small distance away.

  Hard pressure sucked at her pussy, threatening to drag her down into a pleasurable dreamland, again. Threatening worse. She writhed, whimpered, sure she was a fraction of pressure away from blood being drained through those delicate tissues.

  Intolerable. The blood inside her was hers and hers alone.

  She knew how to reject asshole suitors who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  But first she had to get loose.

  Energy thrummed and rose in her muscles. New, vibrant energy.

  The question as to why she was here, why the monsters, and why the guard existed, could wait. With a strength that surprised her, Cyn tore away both tentacles then dove to the side through a clear space. The sun blasted into her eyes. She stalked toward the guard. He tried to drag his gun from its slung position, only to suffer her fist to his throat and a knee to the groin.

  Her fist hurt, but she smiled at the pain that said she was alive. The knife was easiest to steal, so she pulled it from the leg sheath as he groaned and slumped.

  To knife or not to knife him? It seemed callous and murderous. Hesitating stupidly, she poised her hand, ready to strike.

  She was no murderer.

  This philosophical question was answered as he again fumbled to aim the gun at her, red-faced and straightening from his crouch. The barrel of the gun swung upward. In one precise metal arc, she slit his throat. His blood spilled in a pretty spray, and she regretted the waste as it watered the surrounds and his hands where they clutched his neck, and the green grass beneath.

  Grass? Was this one of the top-floor recreational parks?

  More questions that could wait.

  Bloody knife in hand, Cyn whipped around to check her original enemy, backing at the same time to avoid the monster’s grasp.

  A tentacle slithered out in mid-air, spearing for her, hissing as it slid past the other wormy appendages. Squinting at the glare, she severed the two-arms-thick tube with a swipe of blade, all the while marveling at her prowess with the weapon.

  She flipped the knife, moved to catch it so the handle smacked into her palm, but fumbled, crazily, and dropped it. Shit! Her weapon!

  Even so, the knife had sliced easily through a throat and this monster flesh as if they were butter. White, icky butter.

  Back off, Kraken-boy.

  Was it a male?

  A guttural, dark chuckle filled her mind, not her ears. And then… the image of a handsome man flickered and stuttered into view, again, with the tentacles fading. Fading…

  Her lover.

  Which was when she somehow tracked back along the path of that illusion, her thoughts following with detective-like determination all the way to its origins. Grim with revenge, she latched onto the alien mind at the other end and twisted it, with extreme prejudice.

  The shriek it let forth was painful, scratching across her thoughts like a whole bunch of mad fingernails. A headache exploded between her temples. She’d harmed it, for sure.

  “Ack!”

  Knife discarded but with the severed tentacle still clutched, she turned and bolted.

  This piece of Ghoul Lord might be worth keeping.

  Cyn kept hold of the sample of monster until she abruptly found she’d run clear out of floor, had skidded past the edge of the b
uilding’s top floor, and was flailing her arms as she fell into a chasm. Twirling, the piece of tentacle fell faster. Wrecked building scrolled past her going up, while she went down.

  Twisting her body, she reached out and snagged a piece of building, and was wrenched to a shoulder-searing halt, her stomach slamming into something below that made her cough. She swung there, by one hand, cursing yet again.

  She might still fall and die.

  Still, this did seem a better ending spot than being fucked by myriad tentacles and turned into dinner.

  Cyn swung her left arm up, groped among the dust and grit, and found another bit of building to hold onto. Give her a second, and she’d drag herself up. All would’ve been well if not for the blue bolt that sizzled past her ear. Below, something exploded then shrapnel cracked and thudded as it hit whatever lay in its path.

  Above, against the bright sunlight, a head appeared, and a weapon was waved. She walked sideways with her hands, legs dangling, trying to spoil their aim.

  Another bolt scorched past.

  The guard’s friends were firing at her. She’d fallen... Five stories?

  Swinging on her hands, unsure where to go, she looked about. Her eyes seemed wedged open.

  From the other side of the chasm and three more stories deep, a hulking male stared up at her—a human who was likely not in league with monsters, though his eyes had an eerie blueness. This chasm was only a large hole, but it spanned at least seventy yards. Might as well have been forever. She couldn’t get to him, nor he to her. Not without circumnavigating the hole, and there were the walls of old rooms, debris, and piles of mess to navigate.

  She should climb up and get out of sight. Bunching her muscles, she readied herself, took a breath, held it, and lunged on the exhale. Her arms flexed at the elbows as she strained and attempted a pull-up her gym trainer would’ve been proud of.

  Just… a… little more.

  Whatever her left hand was holding snapped, and she was left swinging wildly, her right hand sliding in the dust to the very edge, her knuckles aching.

  She was going to fall. Her fingers buckled, hurting, with her whole bodyweight suspended on those five little parts of her. Cyn grunted, desperate to keep her hold. With fingernails, she dug at the ungiving hardness and felt them snap and wear away.

  “No! Please, no!” She sobbed a plea to whatever might rule the heavens, not that she believed anymore… She had stopped when the aliens came.

  Then she fell.

  Catching any more building was impossible, for below her each story had crumbled away into the gloom. The distant ground hurtled closer, down there where dust and shadows mingled and faded the details into a roiling cloud, except where a few fractured support columns breached through the mist like the pillars of a destroyed jetty above a gray sea.

  This was going to hurt.

  “Oh fuck.”

  Someone swooped in and caught her with a thump of his flesh on hers, flying toward the opposite side while the guards above redoubled their efforts to bring her down. To bring both of them down.

  Her and this winged man with the blue eyes. She’d seen what he was, and his wings were a little impossible to miss. As was his exceptionally broad and muscular chest, his strong arms, the thickness of his neck, the way the cords of neck muscle stood out… begging her to bite. God he was magnificent. She was lusting after her rescuer, and for all she knew, he wanted to eat her too.

  Hopefully he would. Her mouth curled up at the corner at the same time as her palm cradled her abdomen.

  Ouch.

  The building was approaching at speed and her hair was whipping past, but something more remarkable caught her attention—a shard of metal sticking up from her belly, with blood pooling around it on her skin.

  “No… clothes?” Those words had taken some doing, to say them. Had her throat forgotten how to talk? The connection between mind and tongue seemed rusty. Which aggravated her fear. How long had she been up there, one of the tidbits waiting to be snacked on?

  Frowning, she cupped her hand around what seemed a piece of rebar that must’ve been blown loose from some concrete in the previous battles.

  Battles, were there battles? She recalled something. Noises. Screams. Gunshots. The horde…

  “Yeah, you are a tad naked.” Her man-rescuer chuckled.

  They swooped into a dark gap in the building, going deep enough that no shot could reach them from above. His wings folded down, flapped twice.

  “Who you… angel?” Cyn croaked.

  “Me? Angel, hell no. Maybe your lord and savior?”

  “Lord?” She frowned her annoyance. Those above were called Ghoul Lords, and she surely did not like them. “Savior?” Her brow wrinkled.

  “It’ll do. Lord was worth a try.” He landed with a tap of his boots then made to lower her to her feet, pausing at her gasp of pain. “What’s this?” He turned her to face the light.

  Him, kneeling before her to examine the wound, calloused fingers gently probing around it, that only made him more interesting. His fingers came away red. She winced, but felt a weird glow spread through her from where his fingers rested.

  Demon. That was more likely with those vibrant blue eyes. The irises shone blue where they ringed the pupil. Another monster? Yet she couldn’t stop herself studying his features, the beautiful arch of nose and the curve of his thick hair against that damned bright backdrop of sky.

  “Nasty. That will have to come out.” His mouth was very straight as he leaned back to see her face. “It’s bad. All the way through.”

  “Bad?”

  Her knees began to buckle. Was she dying? That was when the world did one of those shutting down moments. Her last thoughts as he caught her: please don’t let me wake to tentacle face. Or die.

  Chapter 2

  Sitting on an old chair he’d fetched from the back of this room, Vargr watched the woman sleep through the night with her blood-stained thumb in her mouth.

  His scouting was done, so he could return to the tribe. He might have to carry her.

  Nighttime was the best time for travel though that wound might worsen. It’d get worse without treatment too. They had no good medics, and the last biotechie had been killed by a ghoul-guard sniper weeks ago. Without antibiotics, surgery, or that strange ability some biotechies had that promoted healing, she was a goner. Infection was guaranteed.

  There was the Worshipper tribe in the next Quarter over; they might have someone who could help, but they had weird views—for one, that humans had brought the disaster down upon themselves by sinning. They, the beast horde, were destined to carry the banner humans had dropped.

  Exactly what sins they included, he wasn’t sure. He’d done his fair share in the army.

  Just because he volunteered to be a genetic guinea pig, been pumped full of blue shit, it didn’t mean he’d given up on his humanity. Moisture prickled his eyes—both from anger and sadness. Why would you say you weren’t human? It meant everything to him.

  He should see if Boaz wanted him to ask them for that biotechie. It might take days to find them and return. The girl would need a miracle, and she couldn’t be more than in her early twenties. She’d be dead before then.

  Fuck this war… or whatever it was.

  He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face; the rock-hard callouses scraping down his skin felt good. He studied his upturned palms. At least he hadn’t grown claws like some. Tom had ripped his own face once. Only once. The beaster had learned. Same as he’d learned not to sleep on his wings for too long.

  So many questions popped up when he recalled the scene above.

  Boaz would be wanting to interrogate her.

  For starters, how had she gotten away from the Ghoul Lords on the top floor, and from what he’d seen, with a piece of one in her hand? After years of them occupying the top of the world, no one else had escaped. It made him wonder if she was some new tactic from the enemy. What if he was meant to take her back just so she could loca
te his friends, his tribe, and bring down an army of those ass-licker guards?

  Then… she opened her eyes, and he saw the shiny red flecks floating in her irises. Hair as dark as midnight shadows, pillow-soft red lips, or he imagined they were—soft and definitely kissable—and this.

  Novel. He stared.

  His eyes were bright blue, as were those of all of the nanomachine-modified beast horde. From early drone surveillance, the Ghoul Lords had shiny white eyes, as did their adapted human guards.

  Groaning, she sat up on the mattress, letting the superhero-decorated blanket he’d draped over her slide loose. Even watching her sit up made him wince in sympathy. That rod of rebar was sunk straight through her. A small bump at the back showed where it almost pierced her skin.

  He hadn’t dared to extract it.

  Naked. Shit. Looking seemed sacrilegious. Her tits, those rendered him a little dumb in admiration. The shift of them when she made the slightest movement made it difficult to meet her eyes. He had to keep reminding himself to be nice and couth.

  Few women had been chosen for the Experiment by Dr. Nietz. Fewer still remained alive, though there were the plain human females.

  This girl seemed oblivious to the Lure, and this close to the top floor it was damned strong. Humans, generally, had to be hobbled to prevent the Lure pulling them upward to the GLs. Maybe he should tie her down when he slept? It would be wise if the wound didn’t incapacitate her. He didn’t fancy being stabbed because he was in her way. Or losing her.

  He should find her some painkillers. Most medication was past its expiry date but still had some effect. A few made you sicker once expired. Swings and roundabouts.

  “What are you?” he said quietly, not really expecting a proper answer.

  “Cyn. Name…” She worked her mouth, cleared her throat, with a crease appearing on her brow. “Is Cyn.”

  “Are you human?” He smirked. “Though you’d not say if you weren’t human, would you, cutie?”

  “Cyn.” She reiterated firmly. “Not cutie.”