Object of My Affection by Tracey H. Kitts Read Free Book Online Page A

voice. “They were raving mad. They hadn’t had the slightest idea that something was wrong with them until they started to turn.... Some committed suicide.”
    “Why was he let go for so long?” I asked.
    “Because we could never quite get our hands on the bastard.” He sighed. “So this time, they called in two units.
    One was Barak and his partner, the other was Alfred and me.
    When we got there, Alfred and George, that was Marco’s partner, went to the front. Since they both wanted to go in guns blazing, we figured the front door would be the best place for that.”
    He sat back down at the table and stared into space for a minute or two.
    “Daddy?”
    “Yeah?” he answered absently.
    “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
    “It’s alright,” he said. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve thought about any of this.”
    After another minute he continued, “So, we heard them bust in the front and we knocked down the back door. Neither one of us was prepared for what this guy had in his kitchen.
    One of the women he’d turned was on a leash attached to the floor with a silver chain. See, we also didn’t know that he was an alpha male and because of this was able to force those weaker than him to maintain their animal forms.”
    “That’s horrible. So, she was in wolf form chained to the kitchen floor?”
    “She had been forced to hold a form somewhere in between. So, when we broke into the kitchen, there was a shewolf chained to the floor that was not only frightened and angry, but she had been starved for weeks.”
    I was afraid to ask what happened. Part of me wanted to know, but I almost told him to stop.
    “Once Alfred and George were halfway through the house, a stray bullet hit the chain and she lunged at us. Marco had been standing slightly in front of me and she just happened to take him down first. George came running in and stabbed her in the back several times before she let go, but the damage was done. Marco’s chest was torn to shreds and the flesh hung back from one of his forearms.”
    “What happened to George?”
    “She turned on him next ... and tore his throat out. Alfred was out of bullets and I was pinned beneath Barak. Marco had a blade in his right boot, the kind that extended from beneath the toes when you hit the heel.” He looked stricken and kept running his fingers absently through his hair.
    “When she was done with George and turned back for us, he stabbed her underneath the chin. He held his injured arm to his chest, got to his feet, and with his good arm took the silver machete from his belt.”
    I knew what was coming next, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to stop talking. It was sort of like driving by a car accident. You don’t really want to see something terrible, but you can’t stop yourself from looking.
    “I got to my feet, but couldn’t seem to go further. I can’t say how long Alfred and I stood there while he chopped that werewolf to pieces ... screaming.... It was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. He sounded like his soul had been violated. It was terrible.”
    Hearing about Marco’s attack upset me much worse than I’d thought it would. It was similar to my own, except in my case, my father had chopped up the werewolf. I was torn between crying and throwing up.
    “What happened? What did you do?”
    My dad seemed to come out of a fog as he answered, “Alfred and George had killed the one we were sent for on their way to us.”
    “What about Marco?”
    “Well, after he was ... done we just looked at each other for a while. I think if Alfred had had any bullets left, he’d have shot him, but I just couldn’t. I know that’s what I was supposed to do, but part of me kept saying, that could have been you .”
    He looked back up and said, “Lilith, that could have been me, and it nearly was my daughter ... I let him go. I watched while he walked out and Alfred looked for a bullet.”
    My dad had