Neither of them liked the thought of having to use those restraints on the other. Boris, because it would mean he hadn’t trained Janna well enough. Janna, because she was sure she couldn’t control Boris by herself. However, it was a far better option in both their minds than killing their love.
They decided to split the watch. Any of them would hear, and probably smell, the creature well before it approached anyway. Boris estimated it to be somewhere in the 350 to 400- kilo range, by the depth of its tracks. In theory, either one of them should be able to restrain it. He and Janna decided that when it approached that they would take their Pricolici form and hold down a limb each, preferably getting it on its back, giving Paul easier access to restrain it.
The Beast turned up some time after midnight, but they were not alerted by its almost silent approach. Instead, they smelled the deer blood that clung to its fur. Whatever the creature was, it moved with almost preternatural silence.
However, the tangy smell of fresh blood woke Boris and Paul, even as the watching Janna came to focused attention with the odor wafting into her area. Nodding to each other, Janna and Boris changed to their Pricolici forms. They heard a snuffling sound as the Beast scented them in the air and hurried movement as it turned to run.
It was fast. They were faster.
It had a three to four hundred meter head start, however, and it dashed for the edge of the forest. Boris managed to edge ahead of it and tried to knock the creature to the ground with a swipe of his paws. The beast ducked under his blow and barreled into him taking Boris’ legs out from under him.
Strangely, for a creature that had killed so many of the group that had been researching these caves it seemed more intent on getting away than hurting him. It didn’t start to maul him until after he had grabbed its forepaws. Using its back legs, it tried to tear into Boris’ guts and legs. The wounds weren’t deep enough to even inconvenience him, healing quickly. After its first attempt, Janna had grabbed those legs, and between them, they managed to get it on its back.
Paul was a fair distance behind them at this point, due to the weight of the restraints and the shorter length of his stride. The beast was still struggling as Paul locked the cuffs in place around fore and back legs. He then tightened the four connecting cables to give the creature limited range of movement. They were doing their best to restrict its movements without being cruel.
With the success of their hunt, they carefully carried the beast back to the cave entrance, it’s cries burning into their hearts. Boris wanted to give the cave a full exploration before they went any further.
Now all he had to do was keep the beast alive despite possible vindictive action from the survivors in the camp.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Beast’s Caves, near Archangel, Russia
It had taken two days to calm down the personnel in the camp. Paul spent most of that time keeping an eye on the beast and providing it with food three times a day.
Eventually, Boris had gotten sick of arguments against keeping the Beast. The weapons were now stowed because the creature was at least captured, if not dead as the base survivors wanted. So, when everyone was at a meal in the mess hall, and one of the research group started ranting about how it was too dangerous to keep captured and should just be killed, Boris decided to end the arguments of how dangerous it was by changing in front of everyone.
A Pricolici form was far more frightening than the Beast.
He was only slightly concerned that Bethany Anne might have something to say about that. Janna had gone over all the records he could gather from the group of scientists and the few soldiers left here. All of the former NVG seemed to share a cynicism about governments in general. After Boris had informed them of the nature of Konrad, and the organization they were formerly working for, he offered them a choice.
Work for him to work off the ‘debt’ they owed him for trying to wipe out an entire town or leave. About a dozen had left, after having their fate described to them in grisly detail if any information about the Beast was released
The most likely outcome, of course, was point-blank ridicule.
Everyone would assume they’d been drinking too much or taking drugs. If they did manage to get someone to believe what they were saying, then the best they could hope for would be a bullet to the back of the head once it reached Boris.
So he was revealing his form to people who already agreed to work for him. Strangely enough, after he’d shown them his other shape he could feel that there was less concern about the Beast and, oddly, less fear about him.
The vast majority of those remaining were scientists. That he could take a different form may have made them nervous, but it also made them incredibly curious. Boris was a window to the technologies that the mysterious TQB was making.
Note to self, Boris thought, changing in front of scientists brings its own new and annoying challenges.
The loyalty of the remaining soldiers was solid as a rock.
For them, Boris had done the harder task of capturing the beast rather than killing it. This showed that he was skilled and confident. Next, he insisted on training them in hand-to-hand combat for at least an hour a day.
For the soldiers, how easily Boris, Paul, and Janna threw them around solidified in their minds their rightful place as leaders.
Finally, it had been one of the scientists and not the soldiers that had been advocating killing the beast. The soldiers as a group didn’t really care one way or the other, as long as it couldn’t hurt them. In his alternate form, they saw someone of great strength and power, someone worthy to lead them.
During the days, Boris started organizing a plan to explore and map the caves. There was still something interfering with any attempt to map it with sonar or echolocation technologies. Boris had a gut feeling that there was something far more important than the Beast in that cave. The last time he’d had a gut feeling this strong had been when he had felt his mother was in trouble. His feelings had been accurate, and he had been right to worry.
At least this time the feeling did not have the overtones of doom and death along with it.
The whispers he and Janna kept hearing also concerned him. It wasn’t like they were words, at least not words in any human language. It was almost like hearing constantly running water from a brook.
On the morning of the third day after the capture of the beast, Boris put his foot down. They were going to explore the caves. He would lead one group, Janna another, with two more groups reconnoitering at the same time. Paul would remain to guard the Beast, much to his disappointment and Alecta would compile any maps that their explorations produced.
Without the Beast and the mysterious disappearances, the mapping went fairly well. One group got trapped behind a cave-in that Janna and Paul were forced to clear. After that, the scientists slowly stopped muttering about killing the Beast.
The cave system was enormous, but after a week of mapping, Alecta noticed that there was one interesting feature. A straight arrow hole that seemed to have been bored through from the entrance to deep within the system. After discussing this with the scientists and soldiers, it was agreed to try and explore the tunnel as far as possible.
Boris would lead the group, and they would take supplies for the ten days. If they hadn’t returned by the tenth day, a second group would travel three days, with extra supplies, down the same route. They would stop at that point and make a camp. Sending half the team back for supplies as needed.
It took four days of travel in the caves, staying as close to the curious feature as possible. Sections of it cut through cave roof, then disappeared into walls, leaving unstable sectors, forcing them to circle around it using other caves. As Alecta had pointed out, it could be followed because of the regular nature of the edges it produced. Sometimes the group lost sight of the straight arrow hole punched into the rock.