The Hybrid Series | Book 1 | Hybrid

by Stead, Nick

  I liked this answer even less. The odds didn’t look good.

  “Tell me about the other races.”

  She shook her head. “Not now. I have to feed, and Vincent is out there somewhere. He has much to learn, even after all the centuries he has seen. Time has yet to bring him wisdom. Somebody has to look out for him.”

  I knew better than to argue, leaving her to hunt and thinking over what she’d said. We were both right in a way. The war had found me the first night I became a werewolf, but in some ways it had yet to find me. Lady Sarah had made it her fight when the Slayers first attacked, and since then they had not so much as threatened me. But surely that could not last. The day had to be coming when they would make their next move. And then, for me at least, the war would really begin.

  Over the next week, whenever the anger possessed me I went out and killed. The third time, I found I liked it.

  Dad drove me into another rage that night, and my murderous desires took over once more. I hadn’t been letting it drain away since I’d last spoken with Lady Sarah. No, I took to the streets and let it feed my bestial nature, allowing it to mix with the wolf’s unnatural hunger and my newfound thirst for blood.

  I found a man waiting at a bus stop, a lighter briefly illuminating his face as he raised it to the cigarette between his lips. The anger flared up. In the darkness, he even looked a little like the bastard, with a bit of imagination.

  My lips curled into a smile, and it wasn’t friendly. Now there would be blood.

  Nails turned to claws and canines lengthened, both top and bottom. I’d strangled my first two victims and felt nothing, except for the feeling of the anger retreating, satiated, waiting to be called on again like the wolf in some ways, and very different from it in others. But this kill would be different. The moon was almost full, and I hungered.

  I felt my eyes burning and the shadows fled before them. It took more imagination to see Dad standing ahead of me now. I willed myself to believe it was him, and it fuelled the anger, the wolf rising with it. But I didn’t grant my lupine side control.

  Hostile eyes watched me drawing nearer. Foolish human. He didn’t realise the danger he was in until I was within striking distance, and by then it was already too late. My claws were swiping at his face, the skin splitting around them and opening into deep fleshy valleys containing rivers of blood.

  He was knocked to the ground by the force of it and I fell on him like the animal I was, burying fangs deep in his neck. All it took was one single, powerful thrust of my head and in a spray of blood my teeth came free, taking the flesh with them and ending his life. Gurgling noises came from the grisly crater left behind, the hole so deep you could see a section of his spine at the back. Then the blood was filling the place of muscle and cartilage, and the extent of the damage was no longer visible.

  I rose with a howl of triumph, the monster finally free. Not the wolf. No, this was the darkness at the heart of mankind, the monster that lurks in all of us. It enjoyed slaughtering for the sake of bloodshed, its appetite purely the hunger for the kill, not for meat. The wolf had always killed to feed and to survive. The monster killed for the hell of it. I killed for the hell of it. I had become the monster. I had fallen into the void made of man’s own evil, a place that had never known the light.

  The wolf didn’t like it. I was wasting life, the thing that is most precious to the universe. It didn’t like watching things die for no reason, and part of it had no desire to even share a body with the human in us, while the other part fought to change and feast on the flesh, the smell of the blood like a drug. It wouldn’t be long before I would welcome the change, but the desire to kill had been satisfied for one night.

  I licked the blood off my teeth, enjoying the taste. Then I wandered off, leaving the man dying in the road.

  Minutes later his bus came. A crunch and a splatter of blood meant the driver hadn’t seen him in time to stop. He was dead anyway, and now there was nothing to tie the body to me. I glanced back to see him flattened against the tarmac. The corpse was just another roadkill now, only this one was bigger than the others and there was no fur or feathers, just a mess of blood and flesh. His face had been pressed into the pavement, impossible to ID without DNA. And then I was gone, leaving humans to clean up my mess.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Prom Date with Death

  While the death toll continued to rise, the time had also come to sit my exams. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. I didn’t belong there, and yet there I was.

  It didn’t take an examiner’s marks to know I hadn’t done well. My mind had not been on my work all year and I only remembered scraps of the knowledge our teachers had tried to impress upon us – maybe enough to scrape passes, but probably not. I would have said I did worst in the year, if it weren’t for the guy across the room who fell asleep in his Geography exam before he could answer a single question. It was good to know I wouldn’t have the lowest marks in the school (at least not in that subject), even if it didn’t matter anymore. I don’t know why I cared; it just meant something to that last part of my old self that had enjoyed the leaving assembly.

  We put our pens down and closed our exam papers for the final time – Maths, that day. It felt like a long wait for the row I was sat on to be dismissed, then I was back to enjoying my freedom.

  My classmates crowded round outside, friendship groups coming together to chat about the test and share gossip. I could see David making his way through the throng, but when he saw me looking he quickened his pace and hurried through the gates. Was he avoiding me?

  “Nick!”

  I turned to find Lizzy. “Hey. Do you know what’s up with David? I’ve just seen him rushing off without even saying hi.”

  “He’s still struggling over, you know…” Her eyes glistened with fresh tears for our dead friend.

  “Ah, of course. So how did you do?”

  She brightened. “Really well, I think. There were just two questions I was really stuck on but everything else was no problem. How about you?”

  “Not great, but it’ll be right.”

  “Did you even bother to revise?”

  “Now why would I do that when I could be gaming or watching movies?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well it’s your future.”

  Becci and Ava appeared, and talk turned to the prom, only a week away.

  “Who are you taking, Nick?” Ava asked.

  “I’m not going.”

  Becci looked shocked. “What?”

  “I don’t know why you’re looking so surprised. Come on, guys, me at a prom, really? I’ve got no girl to take, the music will be crap, and even if they did play something half decent, we all know I can’t dance anyway. What is there for me at the prom, really?”

  “There’s us,” Lizzy said.

  I almost felt bad then. But the school had picked the night of the full moon to hold it, so I couldn’t go even if I wanted to. No matter how disappointed any of them might be, there was nothing I could do to change the timing.

  The night of the prom, I left the house long before dusk and found somewhere safe to transform, plus a hiding place for my clothes until I was ready to retrieve them at dawn. Since I’d decided I wanted to be part of the war, I’d been doing some thinking. Every time I changed in my room, there was a chance someone could see. And whether any potential witnesses were one of the Slayers or not, it wouldn’t be long before the Slayers found out, one way or another. My curtains weren’t great at blocking out the light, and you could probably see my dark shape through them, if I remembered to draw them at all. And even if I couldn’t be seen through the window, someone was bound to see me leaping out in wolf form eventually. So that night I left before the change could take hold, telling my parents I was sleeping over at a friend’s.

  I had enough time to reach the woods near where I’d killed Fiona before the moon rose. The familiar pain stabbed through my gut but I didn’t fight it anymore. I hadn’t done since
April. In fact, now the monster had awoken and the anger had taken over, I embraced it.

  There were no humans in the woods and I had no desire to hunt animals. The anger that lived in the human part of me wanted to taste human flesh, and it had grown stronger than the instinct to feed. Even if that meant suffering for the best part of the night, only human prey would satisfy. That left me with two choices: either head back to the town and hunt there, or go through the woods. I knew there were houses on the other side, and a larger building, some sort of hotel. Loud music carried through the trees, disturbing nature’s peace – the prom.

  Since the anger had taken hold, the human had allowed me closer to the surface than before, and I had been listening to its friends. A large gathering of human youths would present the perfect hunting ground, even if I didn’t understand why it was so important to them. I don’t think the human part of me did either. I could feel its confusion over why girls went to such great lengths for one night, why they had to have the best dress and why it had to be different to everyone else’s, and so ridiculously expensive. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was the hunger, the need to kill, both physically and mentally, and the desire for warm flesh between my jaws. I was going to the prom after all. And if only they knew, I could have won the award for the best entrance.

  Limousines filled the car park. A yellow taxi, like the ones they have in America, dropped off four girls. One couple even arrived in a tractor, and a boy named John Smith brought a case of beer by the same brand name. I could hear it all as I ran towards the feast that awaited.

  I didn’t fear the Slayers in that moment. The need to kill was too great, and I doubted they would be near the prom anyway. They probably didn’t expect any of us to be foolish enough to feed somewhere so crowded.

  The woods thinned as I neared the edge. Light beat back the night, pooling on the area of road by the entrance to the venue. It was a posh hotel, probably with its own ballroom, and its grounds were huge.

  At least half the humans were outside. I could pick out voices a part of me recognised. Adam, the boy from Science the human didn’t like. Lizzy, David, Becci and Ava, all its friends. Those who used to bully it before they learnt to fear us. And any one of them was mine for the taking. I would feed well that night.

  Like the shadow of death, I slunk along the border between woods and tarmac, weaving in and out of the trees until I’d gone a way past the hotel’s entrance. I crossed the road once confident I was out of sight and circled round to the back of the building.

  A wall bordered the grounds. I crouched behind it, waiting for my moment and enjoying the sounds and scents carrying to me on the light summer breeze. Most powerful was the scent of all those bodies sweating in the heat, and beneath that the smell of burning flesh from a pig being roasted, and the sickly smell of sauce. Why did humans always have to spoil a good piece of meat? The sauce took away the taste of flesh. Roasting it was bad enough, but whatever sickly sauces and flavourings they added to it was sacrilege. The scent of the cooked meat didn’t excite me at all, not like the live prey surrounding it.

  But the humans were drawn to it. I waited until I could hear them crowding round to make my move, then I leapt with all the strength I had. The wall would have been too high for a mortal wolf to cross, but I cleared it with that single jump and landed on the other side with a roar, more like a big cat than a wolf. That was the human, voicing its anger. It had fought with its father again that day.

  Chaos ensued. Screams sounded above the music and the prey started to run, all in different directions. A girl tripped and fell on a dress that had no doubt cost her hundreds of pounds, and now her life. She cried out to her boyfriend, but I was on her before he could react.

  For a brief moment I was standing over my prey, spattering her face with the drool from my mouth and seeing her as her boyfriend saw her. I didn’t need the human to know she was considered beautiful among others, with her blonde hair framing a face which could have been sculpted by a god. It was hard to believe it was the mere creation of random genes thrown together from her parents.

  The skin was smooth and pale, the lips round and full, the nose small and straight – everything in proportion. Green eyes like emeralds looked up at me, filled with terror. If she’d had fangs she could have passed for a vampire. No living creature should have been that perfect. Then she screamed and tried to crawl backwards, and the moment was gone.

  I lunged, biting down and losing myself to the bloodlust the moment I felt that delicious liquid wash across my tongue. The face went first, my fangs gouging deep lines in the heavenly sculpture. If I wasn’t ruled by the hunger it would have seemed an act against God. Or at least to the human it would have, not so long ago. To me, she was just another animal trapped inside nature’s vicious cycle, her life forfeit so I might continue my own. That didn’t mean her life was not sacred. I understood that better than any human. I didn’t kill so freely as the other side of me, at least not on my own. But the human was with me that night, and we were closer to becoming one again than we had been since I first heard the call of the moon. Only then, when I was truly awake, did we begin to separate, to become two beings living in one body. The male vampire had hinted that we needed to become one again if we were to survive eternity. And he was right. But I didn’t like it. I wanted no part in the pointless slaughter.

  With her features sufficiently mangled, I began to move further down her body, like a twisted lover giving the kiss of death. A breast found its way into my maw, full of flavour from the fatty tissue it contained. Her flat stomach she must have worked so hard to maintain ripped between my teeth, splitting open in a rush of blood. I swallowed and went back for another bite when something slammed into my side and we rolled away from the dying girl.

  A tangle of limbs, we came to a stop in a struggling heap, and I breathed in the fool’s scent. It was Adam. He was trying to pull away, fear killing the last of his nerve when he realised his act of bravery may have cost him his life. I snapped at him and strained to reach his throat, but we were locked too close together for me to twist my head round for a bite.

  A fist connected with the side of my muzzle. The pain only fed my rage, and I gave an angry growl, redoubling my efforts to rip into my opponent. I was too focused on his throat to notice the finger thrusting towards me until it was too late, and my eye exploded in agony.

  We managed to separate and I fell back, yelping and pawing at my socket. Something wet and sticky was dribbling down the fur there, and half of the world had turned black. Somewhere inside the human screamed and I felt its fear and anger rise up as one. Adam would pay for that.

  Fixing him with my good eye, I saw he’d got to his feet and moved over to the girl I’d mauled. I gave another roar and pounced, my jaws locking on his throat at last. Fangs stabbed through flesh and I ripped out Adam’s apple. He was dead before we hit the ground.

  The girl was also dead. I looked again at her face, so beautiful in life, yet in death there were no distinguishing features to set her apart from the rest of humanity. It was barely recognisable as a face at all, reduced to nothing more than a lump of meat, glistening in the moonlight.

  Her figure had gone the same way. The missing breast made her lopsided, ugly. In life she’d been the envy of the school, worshipped by her fellow students. In death she was nothing – just another carcass in a world filled with corpses. Nobody wanted to be her now.

  Movement from behind made me turn, my attention back on the living. The bloodlust wanted more lives. It went against the traits I shared with true wolves, the hunger wanting only the meat from the two kills I’d made already. But I was a monster and killing was in my nature. The dead would not satisfy.

  People were still running in panic. A girl stared at me in shock. Kerri. She was the next victim, gutted like a fish, and still I hungered. One boy was not running. He stood watching me with a mixture of horror and hatred. I glared at him with my good eye, readying to attack. The human decided
to interfere. No, not this one. David. The name came to me and it meant something. The boy was nothing to me, but the human fought to save him and there were enough potential victims that I gave in. His expression turned to confusion as I moved away.

  My fangs sank into a fourth victim and I forgot him as I ripped open her stomach and grabbed her liver, when I became aware of a shadow looming over me. I looked up to find another familiar face.

  Like David, this one was not running, but she was not held in place by shock. No, she wore her usual expression of contempt, her piercing brown eyes hard and cold as ever. There was no fear in them.

  She’d taken advantage of the chaos I’d created to draw a gun. I don’t know enough of guns to tell you what model it was, I only know that it was some kind of handgun she’d had concealed somewhere on her person. And finally she’d revealed herself as one of the Slayers, as I had known all along.

  Her scent had been on the group who’d attacked me the first night I changed. To me, that made her their leader. Wolves rub their scent on other pack members to mark each other as belonging to the pack. Her scent was on them and her scent alone, and to me that meant they belonged to her. Of course, she wouldn’t have touched them in the way that wolves do to bond, and it wasn’t sexual, but her scent had been there. And it filled me with fear.

  She could have killed me then and I would have been powerless to stop it, just as my victims had been. And she knew it – I could see it in her face. It was there in the smugness about her mouth and those eyes, full of cruelty and hate. She could have put an end to my kind, but she chose not to shoot. I knew then she wanted me alive, though I couldn’t even begin to guess why that might be. And I wasn’t sticking around to find out.