Beast Within Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d been looking at while he
ate to face him. “I need you to watch this.”
    With a click, she started a video on her laptop.
    Dylan watched himself writhing with pain he almost felt
again. He watched as frame by frame he turned into a jaguarondi with a dart in
its chest. Then the pictures tracked the jaguarondi on her bed as it changed
until the last of the pictures showed him sleeping on Hildy’s bed.
    “Interesting pictures. Nice morphing software you have on
your computer. It almost looks like I changed into the wildcat and back.”
    “You did,” she said.
    “Yeah, sure. You’re good, lady. Thanks for the meal. Now can
you drive me someplace?”
    “You did. Wait just a minute.” Haley left the room and
returned with a mirror before Dylan did more than put his plates and bowls in
the dishwasher.
    “Thank you for clearing the table.”
    Her pleasure at the little bit he did had to be gratitude
enough because her voice held a bit of northern exposure.
    “Look in the mirror.” She demanded, yet took his hand,
reminding him of his sisters when they needed comfort.
    She handed him the small mirror.
    “Yeah, so what am I looking for?”
    When he saw his face, he jerked the mirror closer and drew
his lips away from his teeth.
    “That’s right.” This time her voice held the coldness of a
woman pissed off because her word had been doubted. Still, she let him cling to
her hand as though to a lifeline. “I’ve been watching you eat. As soon as you
cut the steak, your teeth sharpened to those of a predatory cat.”

Chapter Three
     
    Not only did he have pointed teeth, but long, black, stiff
hairs sprouted from his carefully shaved cheeks. Even his cheeks didn’t look
right. They hung slightly over his mouth and his nostrils flared on a flat nose
between the hanging cheeks.
    “Look at your ears.”
    Because Hildy—Haley, not Hildy, Dylan reminded
himself—sounded like a dispassionate scientist observing a interesting
phenomenon, Dylan manage to control his panic. He tightened his fingers around
hers, needing the connection to humanity.
    He moved the mirror to see one ear. It no longer lay flat
against his head but rode higher, nearly to the top of his skull, and turned
forward with the top of it in a sharp peak caught in his hair. When he touched
the ear’s peak, he touched stiff tufts of hair instead of his skin.
    He checked the other ear. The peak on it showed, but it
turned more toward his head and almost sat where ears were supposed to be.
    “You’re changing back.”
    Dylan used Hildy’s calmness to anchor his own. He watched
the fangs and pointed teeth in his mouth shrink and become the round and smooth
shapes of the omnivore instead of a carnivore.
    The flat nose, whiskers and dewlaps morphed back into his
own familiar nose and clean-shaven cheeks. His mouth and face stung and
tickled, then quit. His ears shaped back into their normal shells. He ran his
tongue over his teeth reassuring himself everything was back to normal.
    “Are you okay?” She placed her hand on his now smooth cheek.
    “What the fuck do you think?” Dylan jerked from her touch
and slammed the mirror on the table. The mirror shattered into dozens of
glittering shards that flew across the table and to the floor. “What the hell
happened to me?”
    “How do I know?” Hildy yelled back while she brushed shards
of glass from her t-shirt with hands Dylan saw tremble. The sane part of Dylan
didn’t want to contemplate the consequences if one of those shards had hit
Haley’s face instead of her shirt and skirt. Her shrieking voice shook
slightly, “I picked up a jaguarondi and ended up with a naked man in the same
cage. A naked man who changed back into a jaguarondi in front of me. You’re
damn lucky I just used my tranq gun instead of my rifle.”
    Dylan stood up abruptly, knocking the chair backward. A
piece of glass from the shattered mirror crunched under his foot. He stamped
his shoe on it and ground it to dust. “I