by Stead, Nick
I tossed both gun and severed hand aside and stepped back. This was Lady Sarah’s fight.
Vince recovered with a snarl of fury and the two vampires circled each other. I had to admire Lady Sarah’s self-control – if it were me, I’d have rushed him for what he’d just said and all that he’d done, but she held back, waiting for him to make the first move. He played right into her hands, charging and bringing his remaining hand up to strike. But she was faster than him, more powerful. The fight was over in seconds. She stood strong, grabbing his arm with one hand and punching the other through his chest. Her fist came out the other side with the heart clutched between it.
“Now, Vince, remind me how you kill a vampire again?” I said. “Oh yeah, that’s right – take out the heart and cut off the head.”
Vince looked down at his chest with more shock. Then he grinned, still very much alive, even after Lady Sarah withdrew her arm, as impossible as that was from what I knew of our world. She squeezed, blood running down as she crushed the organ into a pulp. Vince made no move to stop her. The gun flew from his severed hand and back into the one still attached to his body, and he took aim a second time.
Calm and confident as ever, Lady Sarah knocked it from his hand before he could squeeze the trigger. Vince’s eyes followed it as it tumbled to the ground at my feet, and this time I threw it as hard as I could, deep into the woods.
It was all over for Vince now. Lady Sarah’s fist connected with his face and he fell to the ground, helpless as she hit him again and again, his face caving in beneath the sheer power of it.
She could have finished him off quick and almost painlessly if she’d crushed the skull in one go, but her hurt demanded his suffering. I understood – it would be the same when I went up against Aughtie.
Shards of bone stabbed into his brain, the soft tissue beginning to ooze out from the force of the impact, parts of it already crushed and deformed. When there was nothing left of his face to punch, she tore out what was left and shredded it.
Vince ceased struggling as soon as his brain was removed from his body. For good measure, she pulled his head clean off his shoulders, or what was left of it, and then he was truly dead. There could be no way for him to come back again. He was gone, and I can honestly say I never missed him, though I think his betrayal left its scars on Lady Sarah. For my own part, I hadn’t known him long enough to be too upset once the initial anger had subsided, but Lady Sarah had known him for centuries. What she was feeling in that moment I wasn’t sure. Her neutral mask was back in place.
With Vince dead, that left Aughtie, and she was mine. I spared Lady Sarah one last glance, our eyes meeting just long enough to share the slightest of nods. Then I resumed the hunt, leaving her to mourn, or whatever it was she needed to do.
My eyes scanned the battlefield as I made my way across, killing any Slayers who got in my way. But I couldn’t see Aughtie anywhere. Wait, was that a flash of mousy coloured hair? I struggled to get a clearer view through the mass of bodies, too focused on my target to notice I’d wandered near one of the spellcasters – a woman this time.
Like the man who’d destroyed the vampire earlier, she broke off repelling the wraiths the moment she saw me coming. It seemed witchcraft relied on incantations as a focus for the magic and if I was right, I knew I had to prevent her from chanting anything else.
In hindsight, shifting back to human had probably been a stupid idea. She’d have no trouble starting a spell long before I could take on my hybrid form again, and there was no way I was reaching her without the added speed. Maybe if I could keep her talking, one of my allies might notice I was in trouble?
“So, it seems you witches and warlocks lack any kind of honour, since there’s a few of you here. Was it that easy for you to betray our world?”
She didn’t rise to my bait. A new chant rolled across her tongue, my legs only managing a step before they froze in place, paralysed by some invisible force. The air around me grew warm and my flesh began to burn, but I was powerless to even scream. Of all the pain I’d endured over the last year, in many ways that was the most intense. Skin melted away, the heat stripping my flesh with its barbed tongue. In its wake it left a stinging sensation, sharp and immediate as nerves reacted with the air.
The damage crept deeper and the pain changed, evolving into an entirely different sensation, one of a deep ache and steady throbbing. It pulsed rhythmically like a second heartbeat, as if the pain had a life of its own.
Exposed muscle, wet and glistening, began to appear in patches, my body being reduced to a useless lump of meat. I tried to fight the force holding me in place, tried to push my body to transform and heal the damage, but the spell was too strong. Had my dream vision been wrong? Perhaps I wasn’t destined to die with a sword piercing my heart after all.
I’d given up hope of surviving the cruel magic when the pressure lifted and I fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably from the agony I was in. My eyes rolled towards the witch to see a giant vampire bat on top of her, its jaws clamped around her throat. Blood trickled from the puncture wounds in her neck, and she died before she ever had the chance to chant anything new.
The bat looked over to me and as I watched, shadows shifted with an unearthly speed and grace, reforming into Lady Sarah. It was over in a matter of seconds, and I was given only a brief glimpse of her naked form before she’d retrieved her black dress and stood before me looking the same as ever, concern etched onto her beautiful face.
I let my own transformation begin in order to repair the damage, but I reversed the changes as soon as my body was fully healed. I still needed a clear head to find Aughtie, determined to repay her for the torture she’d put both me and Lizzy through.
“That’s the second time you’ve saved me,” I said. “Thanks.”
She nodded and turned away, still battling the emotions Vince’s betrayal had awoken in her. I was just glad she’d been able to put aside those emotions long enough to take note of the danger I was in and to act quickly enough to save me, before the witch’s spell could finish me off. I assumed she’d taken her bat form so she could swoop across the battlefield to reach me in time and take the witch unawares, which was more than any of my other supposed allies had done. Maybe they’d just not noticed I’d been at the witch’s mercy in the confusion of battle, or maybe they’d not wanted to risk their own necks to save mine. If I’d had time to dwell on that I might have begun to feel lost and alone once more, or perhaps it would simply be something else to feed my rage. But we hadn’t won the battle yet and I was forced to turn my attention back to the fighting.
I felled three more Slayers foolish enough to get in my way, and then suddenly she was there before me.
Aughtie dispatched a ghoul as I watched, a madness in her eyes not unlike the rage that burned in my own. Each of us was bent on taking revenge upon the other. She no doubt wanted to make me hurt for the pain I’d caused and the damage I’d done to her base, and perhaps for the lycanthropy that had taken hold of her beloved nephew, even though he’d been turned long before I had.
“Now you’re mine,” she snarled.
Her sword cut towards me in a high arc intended to cleave my head in two. I dodged the blow and grabbed a sword of my own, though it felt long and clumsy in my hand. I really wanted to transform again. Now I’d found her, there was no more need to keep a clear head and I could give in to my rage and my bloodlust. But once again I knew I would never have time to change whilst being attacked, and a part of me knew I’d been foolish not to return to the wolf-man form while I’d had the chance.
I was just about fast enough to dance around Aughtie and avoid her silver coated blade, but that’s about all I managed. She was careful not to leave herself open to attack, and though the bestial side to me had no need for the tools of man, in human form it seemed necessary. So I parried Aughtie’s blows as best I could but I was no swordsman. It didn’t take her long to disarm me, laughing with contempt at how easy an adversary I was
. She stabbed forward just as another Slayer stumbled into me, and I failed to dodge.
Time seemed to slow as my upper body caught fire, my gaze dropping to my chest and staring at the blade sticking out of it with a mixture of shock and horror. I fell to my knees, hands clutching at the cold metal in vain as I tried to pull it out. Fresh blood oozed across my skin, and Aughtie’s cruel laugh was ringing in my ears as I opened my mouth to speak, but only more blood came out.
Breathing was difficult. I sensed Death was closing in again, and I knew there would be no Lady Sarah to rescue me this time. The mud, stained with the blood of both friend and foe, would be my final resting place, where I would be forgotten in the midst of the battle.
But something was wrong. The sword had been driven through my chest and out the other side, and yet I could still feel my heartbeat. Luck was on my side once more. The blade must have missed piercing my heart by mere inches. It had gone through a lung and cracked a rib, but I would survive. I looked back up at Aughtie’s gleeful face, the battle around her forgotten in her eagerness to see me die. And my mouth twisted into a dark smile.
Her glee turned to horror as I pulled the sword out of my flesh and thrust it into the ground. My hands grasped the hilt, leaning against it and waiting for the change to happen.
Severed veins fused together and the blood flow began to stop. Muscle stretched and joined once more, and flesh rolled over to cover the hole, but it was slow – so painfully slow. Eventually the skin stretched across, leaving nothing of the wound that had nearly taken my life, not even a scar.
Aughtie didn’t stay to watch the rest. My eyes fixed on her retreating back as the transformation gained momentum, the other changes coming quicker once the damage had healed. But it didn’t matter how far or how fast she ran – there would be no escape. I was going to have my revenge for Lizzy, and for the boy, her nephew, and everyone else who had suffered at her hands. She was no better than we were. The Slayers claimed to be ridding the world of evil, but they didn’t care who they had to hurt to get to us. Perhaps that made them worse than we were. At least we only killed to eat, to survive, for the most part anyway, but they murdered any of their own kind that got in the way.
Moments later I gave chase, fully lupine and swifter than any human, my paws surer on the earth they bounded over, my senses focused solely on my prey. After the years she’d spent hunting down my kind, it was fitting one of us would now hunt her down. I could hear her tiring already, her footfalls beginning to slow. She looked like she was going to collapse when I slowed to a menacing prowl, enjoying the moment of closing in. But she turned to face me, head held high in an attempt to hide her fear.
I came to a stop and returned to my hybrid form, ignoring the protests coming from my belly. My eyes never once left my enemy, and it was my turn for glee at the sight of that gargoylish face filling with terror. She scanned the trees for the help that must surely come, but there were no white knights riding in to save her from the monster. She was doomed and we both knew it.
With a vengeful roar, I smashed a clawed hand into her cheek, sending her crashing to the ground. Tears of pain glistened in her eyes and she cried out. Lizzy’s injuries and Dad’s death were fresh in my mind as I stood over her, watching her own transformation from a cruel tyrant to a pitiful wretch as she tried to crawl away. I blamed her for both, even though it was my own monstrous hands that had taken Dad’s life. This promised to be my most enjoyable kill yet.
I grabbed the hated woman before she could crawl any further, picking her up and throwing her into a tree. How I managed it without breaking her back I’ll never know, but she hit the ground with a whimper and made another attempt to crawl away. I allowed her to go a few feet, then I kicked her, hard, and rolled her onto her back, placing a clawed foot on her chest and temporarily restraining her.
The image of Lizzy tied to the chair fixed itself in my mind again. I had no rope for Aughtie but I had a good idea on how to improvise, opening up a gash in her belly and plunging my hand in deep. The pleasure her screams brought me was dizzying, my mind in a state of sick euphoria. I wondered if she’d felt the same when she’d tortured her nephew, and all the others, and whether she would survive long enough for me to pay her back for all her sins.
My hand slid out with her intestines gripped between fingers wet with blood and mucous. It probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to bind anyone else with, but the agony of it held her there as I tied her hands and feet.
Aughtie was crying now, and I imagine she lost all sense of time and place in the sheer grip of such overwhelming pain. If people knew what she’d done they’d have called her inhuman – some might even have thanked me for delivering such bloody justice. Yet I knew different. All the evil she’d committed, the horrific acts she’d engaged in – that was very human. For what other animal indulges in torture? And I was half human, which made me capable of becoming every inch the monster she was. It had already begun.
That darkness at the heart of humanity made me dig my hands back into her abdomen. I didn’t do any more real damage, not yet, I just wanted to cause more pain. And judging from her screams, I succeeded.
Much as I was enjoying that sound, there was a risk it would attract more humans and we’d be disturbed before I’d finished. She needed silencing, so I stuck my bloodied claws down her throat and slashed her vocal cords while she gagged on my fingers. Not content to stop there, I ripped out her tongue and threw it to the floor, making her retch even more as the blood gushed down her throat. The more uncomfortable she was before the end the better, but it wouldn’t do to have her choke and escape the rest of the torments I had in mind. So I watched her closely, rolling her onto her side when she looked to be struggling and making sure most of the blood found its way out of her mouth. Her tongue lay beside us. I made sure she had a good view of it as I began to flay parts of her body, knowing full well how intense the stinging would be after the witch’s spell.
My hand found its way back inside her abdomen, feeling for a chunk of flesh and bone containing a large bunch of nerves we’d learnt about in biology a while back. I forget the scientific name for them, but since nerves register pain I guessed it would cause a considerable amount of discomfort for her. Unfortunately that meant she wouldn’t feel her legs anymore (or rather, the torments I’d inflicted on them), but maybe that made her suffering worse.
“You never did smile enough,” I snarled. Those were the only words I spoke through all this. Then I brought my hand up to her face and dug my claw in, drawing a line from the top of her ear, down underneath her cheek bones, and back up to the other ear. I worked away at the flesh for a few minutes, lifting it up and beginning to tear off the skin beneath the line I’d drawn, slow and steady, exposing her bare jawbones and giving her a permanent grin.
Her ears were the next to go, both the outer cartilage and her inner ear drums, then her nose, my fist turning it to a bloody mess and doing permanent damage to her sense of smell. After that I gouged out her eyes, tears of blood flowing down her face as she was plunged into eternal darkness. My anger and bloodlust satiated, I finally cut the makeshift rope and sat back to watch her die.
Miraculously, she was still alive for several minutes after my gruesome work was done, and I watched her drag her broken body away, devoid of all senses save for what was left of touch. Her guts trailed behind, her legs useless. I wished I could make her suffer like that for all eternity, but I came to realise those few minutes would seem like eternity to her, spent in a hell of her own making. It would be time enough to dwell on all the evil that she had committed.
She came to a stop a few feet from where I sat. Her hand reached up towards the night sky, as if seeking help from above, or perhaps to try and reach something that would pull her out of the hell I had sent her into. Then it fell to the ground and I heard her heart beat its last. With a grunt of satisfaction, I turned away and stared into space, utterly spent.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Love
Lost
The last of the screams tore from the throats of dying men and then there was silence. Lady Sarah found me sat between the trees, the mortal remains of Aughtie lying a few feet away. She seemed to have regained control of her emotions, though I doubted she would recover fully for some time, if she ever recovered at all. I didn’t really know enough about their history but it seemed as if she and Vince had been close friends at some point in their long lives, even if they’d drifted apart nearer the end.
“The battle is over,” she said. “They are all dead, except for the spellcasters. After I killed the witch and the Slayers’ defeat seemed certain, the others fled. We lost a few more, and there are casualties, though most wounds will not cause permanent damage once there is a chance to heal. I broke the necromancy spell before I lost control; the zombies are just corpses again.”
“Good,” I said faintly, not really hearing what she was saying. “What happens now?”
“There are still plenty more Slayers in other towns and cities. Those who fought tonight have agreed to go out into the world and attempt to make more of us, as well as meeting with others to try and persuade them to join the fight. We will build a bigger army for the battles to come.”
“You too?” I asked.
“I do not know if I will leave yet. Perhaps I will make more vampires in this town. With the threat of the Slayers gone from this area for the time being, they could develop in safety, and once they are powerful enough they can join the fight. And you?”
What would I do? I hadn’t expected to survive the battle so I hadn’t thought about what came after.
“I can’t go back home,” I said, realising it for the first time. “Life can’t go back to the way it was, no matter how much I want it to. I can’t be among humans, not anymore. And I think Aughtie was smart enough to have sent my identity on to other bases. The police will have my name. They’re probably looking for me if they can tie me to any of the deaths. I can’t stay here. I don’t know where I’ll go, but I can’t stay here.”
