by Nick Stead
“We can’t take that chance, and even if it’s long dead that’s not to say there aren’t other dangers lurking in these tunnels or whatever the hell they are,” I said, turning back to the looming darkness ahead and resuming the slow and steady creeping pace along it I’d been making before the vampire had attacked. “If the Slayers brought us both here, who knows what other creatures they might have hidden away? And there’s always the chance we might cross paths with the Slayers themselves. I know they’re only mortal, but if there’s enough of them they could easily overpower us while we’re weakened.”
“Agreed,” he answered, falling into step beside me. “You speak a lot of sense for one so young. No wonder you managed to unite a force of us to do battle.”
“See, I’m more than just a mindless beast.”
“Don’t push it, wolf. If you so much as snarl at me, I won’t hesitate to run you through,” he replied with a fierce, fanged grin, patting the hilt of his cutlass as he spoke.
I tried to keep my temper in check as I answered “Understood.”
We fell silent for a while, my anger straining against its chains, struggling to seize control and lash out at yet another vampire who dared treat me like some lowly dog to order around and put down if I got out of hand. Fortunately, my anger no longer ruled me unless I allowed it to. I was under no illusion as to how it would end if I went for round two with this vampire, since even in his weakened state he was still more powerful than I was. Besides, we were both too wary of the creature we were sensing to give voice to any thoughts or questions either of us might have had.
The passage remained devoid of any new enemies. After a while the vampire spoke up again, asking “Are you thirsty, wolf?”
“How did you know that?”
“Your lips look drier than a beached whale. Here,” he replied, handing me a hipflask.
“What’s in it?”
“Rum.”
“Thanks but I think I’ll wait for water. Alcohol’s only going to make me thirstier.”
“In the short term it’s better than nothing, trust me. Just take a sip to wet your mouth.”
I shrugged and did as he suggested, the spirit burning as it went down but it did provide some relief for my dry throat, however temporary.
“Thanks,” I said again, handing the hipflask back to him. “I didn’t think you’d care about my wellbeing.”
“If we’re going to work together for the time being, there’s no need for you to suffer.”
“But I thought you hated werewolves like most other vampires out there, especially after Ulfarr accused me of the murders.”
“I don’t hold with unnecessary torture. If you are indeed the kind of rabid beast that would turn on his allies then I will gladly execute you myself when the time comes, but I will make it quicker than perhaps you deserve. And besides, if we’re going to make it out of here together we need to be in relatively good shape. There’s no sense to deprive your body of its needs when we may have to fight our way out.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so we fell silent again until eventually, after what seemed an age, we came to a large chamber. Unlike the one I’d started in with the concealed door to freedom, this one was open at both ends. The floor was earthen which seemed suspicious with it all being stone so far, other than the room lined with spikes I’d glimpsed, but otherwise there seemed to be nothing of interest inside.
“What do your instincts tell you, wolf?”
“I still can’t pick out any new scents under this powerful stench. Maybe the Slayers designed things this way, so we’d be blind so to speak? I can’t hear anything either, other than us two.”
“That would be my guess as well. This reeks of a trap.”
He drew his sword and advanced into the chamber. I was tempted to change to my hybrid wolf man form so I could heal my hand and take advantage of my lupine might, but I knew better than to drain any more of my energy when I might not be able to replenish it for some time. Leon had given me some combat training before I’d discovered he was really a murderer and yet another false friend, and I would just have to hope it was enough to see me through whatever dangers lay ahead.
“Be alert for anything behind us,” he said in a low voice. “I found a secret door which led to this tunnel where you were creeping just ahead of me. There might be enemies lurking behind these walls, just waiting for the right moment to ambush us.”
“So that’s how you were able to sneak up on me. I wondered how you’d got past without me sensing anything. Is it just me, or does this feel like some real life version of Dungeons and Dragons?”
“It does seem like a dungeon but I’ve seen no dragons here, if they really exist.”
I rolled my eyes. Why couldn’t I have been imprisoned with Leon? He might have been insane, but at least he’d kept with the times instead of being stuck in the era he’d lived in as a human. I didn’t bother trying to explain to the vampire I was trapped with, instead asking “How long have you been in here?”
“Hours? Nights? In this place of eternal dark, it is hard to tell,” he replied. “The endless night would be welcome if only there were prey down here with us. It feels like years with no blood to quench my thirst.”
“I woke up in a room in pitch blackness and had to feel for a way out; broke my hand trying to find it. Is that where you were, before you found your way through to that same tunnel?”
“There were torches in the room I was taken to, and I didn’t have to search for an exit. The door opened to another tunnel which appeared to be a dead end, until I found the secret door through to this one. There was also another of those seeing things that men use like the one you pointed out back there, the devices that run on that power, ah what’s the word humans use now? Electricity? They were watching me as I tried to find a way out.”
“Wow, you really haven’t kept up with the times,” I said, inwardly troubled. Again I was worried by the fact the Slayers had left me in darkness, especially when they’d gone to the bother of giving him a source of light in the room he’d been taken to. Though I couldn’t decide if it meant they were more interested in me or this vampire. But I also felt a surge of hope at the vampire’s story; if the Slayers had imprisoned him in a chamber concealed behind a hidden door then it meant Lady Sarah and Selina might also have been taken alive, and they could be nearby. “And you just happened to find the way out as I escaped from my prison and was making my way along the passage? How long did it take you to find it?”
“Hours perhaps; down here it is hard to say.”
“Don’t you find it odd that suddenly it opens for you at just the right moment for you to ambush me? It’s almost like the Slayers wanted you to find me there and attack. But why? Why make us fight each other when they could have just killed us themselves when they first captured us. If it’s all some new, elaborate kind of test I can’t work out what the point is for them. I’m the last werewolf so it’s not like they need to know more about werewolf behaviour. And even if they hope to learn more about vampires, why bother bringing me into this?”
“If our fates are now in the hands of the Slayers, we should tread even more carefully. Escape will be harder with them watching our every move and nudging events in the direction they choose.”
“There’s probably not much point being quiet then. If they are controlling everything and they have something down here more powerful than the two of us, we’re probably going to encounter it at a time of their choosing, no matter what we do.”
“We should still be cautious. Now is not the time for idle chatter if that is what you are thinking.”
“At least tell me your name.”
“Captain Zeerin Lorund.”
That seemed to confirm my suspicions about his human background. And even though the golden age of piracy was long gone, maybe he’d kept to a life at sea as a vampire, which would explain why he was especially ignorant of modern developments.
We’d almost made it to the e
nd of the room without incident and I was about to press him for more information. But then I felt the ground shift beneath my feet seconds before something exploded outwards and bony fingers grabbed my ankle, just as the doors either side of the chamber began to slide shut. It seemed we’d been right to suspect a trap and assuming we were right about the level of control the Slayers had over the place, if they intended us to die here there was probably nothing we could do about it. All we could hope for was to die well, battered and hungry as we were.
Chapter Three – Blood Debt
I looked down to find the rotting fingers of a zombie gripping me. If they were only now coming to life then that must mean the Slayers had a necromancer working for them, and short of breaking through to wherever that necromancer was or finding a flamethrower lying around, we had no way of stopping them as they mindlessly obeyed their master’s will. At least this explained the smell of death in the place, and given how strong it was I guessed the dungeon would soon be crawling with walking corpses. There had to be hundreds of them to create such a stench.
Before I could break free of the dead man’s grasp, the zombie’s other hand burst from the soil and took hold, a powerful tug robbing me of my balance and sending me crashing to the ground. I fell heavily, instinctively spreading my hands out before me to take the impact and causing more damage to my broken hand. A scream of agony tore from my throat as nerves were set alight through the injured appendage. With the adrenalin coursing through my system the pain had been no more than a dull background ache, but suddenly it became immediate and intense, throbbing to new heights and searing white hot. And the pain was all my rage needed to break free. Reduced to my most primal state in the face of such agony, I was stripped of the control I’d only recently gained, the anger erupting from the depths of my being in a molten tidal wave which flooded through me. My blood boiled in response, fur sprouting across every inch of my body to form a pelt which bore the same markings as natural timber wolves. There was no longer any room for rational thought in my head. Reduced to a thing of wild fury, my need to preserve my energy was forgotten.
The familiar feeling of savage joy rose up with the anger as my jaws elongated into a muzzle full of razor sharp fangs designed for ripping and tearing. Bone bulged beneath my skin as it stretched outwards, as if this was my true nature struggling to break free of the human prison it had been caged in. Flesh rolled across it, muscles strengthening to give me a greater bite. Other parts of my skeleton lengthened and shortened, a tail growing from the base of my spine, and the bones in my hand slid back into position and fused together, leaving no evidence of the fracture. As had become my wont, I only let the change go halfway to my hybrid form, allowing me to take advantage of the strengths of both human and wolf.
Rage and adrenalin served as a temporary substitute for the energy my body craved to fuel the change and I felt only the surge of bestial might as my body shifted into a more powerful form. There was no weariness when I rose up on my hind legs – only the hunger blazing brighter within, feeding the fury and the bloodlust until my mind was no more than a machine programmed for violence and death. In this state I’d massacred countless victims over the last year, cutting down crowds with tooth and claw so that the streets ran red with blood.
The zombie still had hold of me. It had heaved itself upwards through the soil while I shifted, and was just breaking free of the surface when the transformation completed. I pulled my legs free, my fury giving me a far greater strength than the reanimated corpse possessed, and spun round to face my opponent.
The body was in the early stages of decay, almost whole and recognisable as the man he’d once been. But the red veil of the bloodlust was clouding my vision and all I saw in that moment was a slab of fresh meat full of blood to be spilled, a victim to be brutally slaughtered like so many more before him. Even with the necromancer’s will driving it, the zombie never stood a chance against my rage. I leapt on my prey and sank my fangs into the cold dead flesh, clamping down so fiercely that bone crunched beneath my jaws. The head was all but severed when I released it, hanging loosely by one last scrap of flesh that had escaped the initial mauling. Yet the zombie still fought back, its hands reaching for my throat to squeeze the life from my cursed body.
My neck was semi-lupine and too thick for the walking corpse to wrap its hands around. I ignored those groping fingers and tore into the zombie’s ribcage, ripping the heart free and gulping it down. The organ was cold and slippery, and it didn’t beat like the hearts I’d torn from living prey. But the corpse was fresh enough to make it palatable and I swallowed down a few more mouthfuls as I continued to rip through the body. Still the zombie struggled to obey its master’s will and end my life, even though there wasn’t enough left of it to get back up and fight by the time I rose from my ‘kill’ and turned to face more of them.
Beside me Captain Zeerin made an impressive figure, hacking the zombies to pieces with his cutlass. His pistols were relics from a bygone era and paled in comparison to modern day firearms, meaning he’d save them for a last resort in a fight. Given his vampiric powers, I doubted they’d been fired often since he became one of the undead, but if the dread presence we’d both sensed did make an appearance then the added firepower might help.
Severed limbs soon littered the ground around the vampire, but they still moved with mindless determination like the rest of what was left of the bodies. We could rip and cut them into a million pieces and still those bits of flesh would move with the necromancer’s power until the flow of dark magic was severed and the dead became truly dead once more. But at least the zombies were less of a threat in pieces than they were whole.
It seemed like an endless supply of reanimated corpses was climbing up from the shallow graves they’d been buried in. I charged the three which had been shambling towards me while I’d been focussed on my first victim and leapt on one, plunging a clawed arm into its chest and ripping out bone and guts in a bloody spray, the gore splattering my body lacking all the warmth of living tissue. This one had also been a fairly fresh corpse but there wasn’t time to feed on any more of the dead flesh. Instead I focussed on doing enough damage to prevent it getting back up, until I was forced to deal with the other two.
A corpse so far gone it was impossible to tell if it had been male or female latched on to my left shoulder. I felt it bite down, like we’d fallen straight into a horror movie. My pelt protected me from the worst of the damage but its teeth still broke through my skin and tore off a small patch of bloody fur. I roared with renewed rage and grabbed the zombie by its head, my claws gouging holes in the skull and giving me an iron grip. The cadaver struggled in my monstrous hand but I threw it to the ground before it could do any more damage, with enough force to cave its head in on impact with the large rock buried in this patch of soil. Rotten blood, bone and brain matter exploded around us, a dark, grisly circle of death and decay. The body struggled to peel itself from the hard surface and rise to renew its assault, but there was no time to do anything more and ensure it would stay down. I was aware of the third zombie about to attack me on my right, forcing me to get back to my feet and fight before it had chance to do any damage.
This one was mostly skeletal and there wasn’t much in the way of flesh and skin for my claws to tear through. I severed its spine with a single swipe of my clawed hand, causing its torso to slide off its lower body. It began to drag its upper body along until I stamped on it, shattering bone until it was too damaged to do much of anything.
“Wolf!” Zeerin shouted.
I cocked an ear in his direction but was too lost in the bloodlust to do anything more. He called out two more times until finally his words cut through the rage as surely as his blade cut through flesh.
“What?” I growled, turning to face him. It was only then that I realised just how many corpses had been buried in the chamber to be raised as zombies: there were dozens of them, and they had us surrounded.
“We can’t keep this up,
” Zeerin said. “Not in our weakened states. We have to find another way out, or they’ll overwhelm us.”
I could see the vampire wasn’t doing so well. It looked like he’d also been bitten and scratched by the zombies, and he was bleeding from several wounds. He needed fresh blood badly to replace what he was losing, or he wouldn’t be able to function for much longer.
I bounded over to help him, replying “I’ll keep them busy then while you try to get us out of here.”
Keeping the zombies focussed on me was easier said than done, and I had to fight to win back some self-control over the bloodlust. I needed the rage to keep me going but I couldn’t allow it to rule me so completely or I’d become too intent on savaging individual targets, leaving the rest of the corpses free to attack the vampire.
At first it seemed like Zeerin’s idea might work. I felled the zombies he’d been engaged with, though I didn’t have chance to do the level of damage needed to keep them down for any length of time. Instead I shadowed the vampire, keeping the zombies nearest us off of him while he worked his way round the chamber, searching for more hidden doors. But even with the rage fuelling me, weariness soon began to creep in, slowing my movements. I sustained more and more injuries as the minutes dragged on, and I began to think we were doomed. Whatever ghoulish scheme the Slayers had planned in bringing us here, it looked like we were going to fall to it.
The zombies were catching up with us as we moved round the room, several of them lunging forwards. It was too much for me to handle on my own now I’d begun to tire and even though I managed to keep them off Zeerin, I couldn’t keep them all from biting into my flesh. My pelt only offered so much protection and several new wounds opened up on my body. Another roar of pain tore from my throat as I wrestled them off of me, but for every one I temporarily cut down another took its place. I was going to be eaten alive if we didn’t escape soon.
More zombies surged forwards and I didn’t have the strength to shake off the ones I was already grappling with and engage this next wave before they reached Zeerin. The vampire turned to make his final stand, drawing his cutlass once more and one of his pistols. I dug deep for the last of my body’s reserves and tore the reanimated corpses off of me just long enough to stagger over to Zeerin, but before I could do anything to help they overpowered him through sheer numbers. His movements had also slowed, the blood loss beginning to tell, and he wasn’t quick enough to cut them all down. Another zombie reduced to just an upper body pulled one of his feet out from under him and the vampire fell, lost to sight beneath the walking corpses. Then I was being dragged down by the zombies attacking me, and it seemed all was lost.
