by Nick Stead
I’d no idea how close I’d got to the exit, but it seemed my fears weren’t unfounded after all when I felt something brush against my arm. A sinister laugh sounded in the blackness, seemingly all around us as if the darkness itself had been given a voice, rather than coming from any one direction. I would have reminded myself that shadows laughing was impossible and the voice had to belong to someone stood in the room with us, but again I thought back to the barghest and the way it could dissolve into a kind of black mist and then reform into the shape of the black dog. Who was to say we weren’t facing another creature made of something as insubstantial as shadows, and yet perfectly capable of harming those of us made from flesh and blood? And yet if our adversary was a being from somewhere other than the earthly plane, what hope did we stand of beating it? The only reason I’d survived the barghest had been because Selina actually wanted me alive, despite my fears she was another enemy when we first met; if she’d wanted me dead I knew for certain the shadow beast would have killed me. When it had attacked Leon and we’d done our best to fight it off, neither of us had managed to deal it any damage. If it had any weaknesses we certainly hadn’t found them, which didn’t bode well for this new threat.
I couldn’t help the warning snarl that escaped my throat, animal instinct responding to the perceived danger with a threat of my own. I barely felt the pain as my eyes turned amber and my teeth and nails grew, instinctively making myself as fierce as possible without fully transforming. Whatever was in the blackness of the chamber with us seemed to find that amusing, another laugh echoing around us, which only made me growl more. If I’d been in wolf form my hackles would have been raised, my stance defensive, but still I could see nothing to indicate the presence of any apparition.
A scream came from behind us, this new enemy presumably making some kind of physical contact with Hannah as it had with me, and in my imagination I could see it playing with us like a cat with a mouse. But there was no smell of fresh blood from any open wounds so at least it hadn’t attacked, yet.
Something bumped into my leg and I turned blindly in the darkness, lashing out and snapping at thin air even though my jaws were still human. Both fangs and claws passed through nothingness which only heightened my rage, straining to break free of its fetters like the great wolf Fenrir from Norse mythology. I wanted nothing more than to sink my teeth into this new enemy and tear it apart limb from limb, and my anger roared defiantly from within that it would not be denied. But if I couldn’t even sense our tormentor then how was I supposed to fight back? I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the blackness but I was reluctant to unleash my rage too soon, knowing that working myself into a frenzy would only be a waste of my valuable energy when all I could do was strike out blindly with no real hope of actually hitting anything.
A sudden flash of light appeared at the back of the room, briefly dying long enough for the blackness to come rushing back in, only to return moments later. It wasn’t so much a beam as it was a small sphere, just bright enough to illuminate the fear etched on Hannah’s face but too weak to reach so far as where I still stood with my fangs bared. And yet the shadows around her parted before it, creating a ray of hope in that chamber that had already started to fill with despair. And was it my imagination or had I just seen a patch of darkness fleeing from the edge of that light?
“You had that on you all this time and you only now think to use it?” I growled at the human girl, my gratitude for the torch eclipsed by the anger blazing so strongly at the centre of my very being.
“I forgot I had it,” she replied sheepishly.
My rage would not be so easily satisfied and I was about to snarl something else when Zee appeared by my side, moving with that silent grace all vampires seemed to be gifted with.
“Control yourself, wolf. Now is not the time,” he said. “We need to make the most of the light while we have it.”
He had a point but I was still itching for a fight, my rage almost free. I turned my attention back to the shadows, half hoping whatever was lurking in them would appear and give me the battle I craved, despite my fears of it being an unbeatable foe.
Trusting me to remember the need for caution and rein in my anger, the vampire made his way to the door at the other end of the chamber. Hannah followed him, her eyes darting nervously around the room as she went. She gripped the little torch so tightly her knuckles strained white just beneath the skin, looking like they would pop out at any moment. But the little pool of light it offered seemed to bring her some comfort as she held onto it: her last lifeline in that sea of darkness where unseen predators swam.
Even with that little patch of brightness, the room remained devoid of any other signs of life or unlife, or whatever term applied to the creature in the shadows. If I’d truly seen the glowing eyes I’d thought were there out of the corner of my own, they weren’t there now, nor could I see any movement to indicate the presence of an apparition. The strength of my glare must have been alight with the anger burning inside, but it wasn’t enough to penetrate the blackness around the weak light from Hannah’s torch even with my supernaturally enhanced night vision, try as I might to burn it away and force the darkness to reveal its secrets. Like the human I kept my eyes on the blackness around us as I followed the two of them to look for a way to open the door and escape, but there was no room for fear in my heart.
There was no more laughter as we crossed the chamber and nothing else brushed against us. I guessed the light was keeping the creature at bay since it had been delighting in tormenting us just moments ago, right up until Hannah had found her torch. We reached the door, finding a button to open it much quicker than we had in any of the other rooms with the help of the little light source we’d been granted. In the darkness it might have been more of a challenge to feel blindly for, especially if we were being attacked whilst trying to find our way out, and a sense of satisfaction crept over me that this was at least one area of the dungeon that hadn’t gone as the Slayers had planned. Something was bothering me as we stepped out into another passage though.
“So how come you just happened to find your torch when we most needed it?” I asked Hannah in a calmer tone, my anger slowly receding in the absence of bloodshed to feed it.
She shrugged. “I was feeling around in my pockets for the good luck charm Mum gave me and instead I found that. It must’ve still been in this jacket from when I went camping a few weeks back.”
I understood her need for the charm; she’d been looking for some comfort in the darkness from the one link she had back to her family. I could believe that she had forgotten the torch was in there like she’d originally said, and that it had been coincidence she’d just happened upon it when we needed it the most. What troubled me was why it had been in there in the first place. If the Slayers wanted us moving blindly through parts of the dungeon in complete blackness, why would they allow her to keep it? Unless they hadn’t bothered to search her before locking her in with us but that seemed too careless on their part when they’d clearly put so much planning into this game they wanted to torment us with.
“We have more pressing matters,” Zee said, stood by the door we’d just come through. “If we leave this chamber open what’s to stop the creature inside from following us?”
The lights were still off. Assuming I’d been right to guess it was Hannah’s torch keeping the thing at bay, it could creep along in the darkness behind us, waiting for the opportunity to strike. And if the battery failed us there’d be nothing else to stop it attacking, unless the Slayers chose to turn the lights back on. I doubted they’d be so generous when we’d just cheated them of the suffering they’d had planned for us in the chamber, but I could see no buttons on the other side of the door to seal off the room again.
“It doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice,” I replied. “Unless either of you can find something I’m missing, there doesn’t seem to be anything on this side to lock that creature back in. We’ll just have to pray the t
orch lasts till the lights come back on. They have to turn them on eventually, right? I mean, there’s more things waiting for us before we reach the end of the dungeon and we can’t be expected to face them all in darkness.”
“And how long do these types of torch usually last?”
“I don’t think this battery has been in long,” Hannah answered him. “We should be good for a few hours.”
“Plenty of time,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”
I should have known better than to tempt fate. We hadn’t made it far along the passage before disaster struck, though in the end it wouldn’t be the battery failing that threatened to be our undoing.
“What was that?” Hannah shrieked, casting the torchlight downwards around her feet. Even with the vampire’s hold over her, she was barely keeping it together, his spell the only thing keeping her from completely giving in to blind panic.
“What?” I asked.
“I felt something, like back in that room.”
I looked at Zee.
“I sense nothing,” he said.
“Me either. Surely that thing can’t have got ahead of us when we’ve had the torch on this whole time.”
There was nothing to see in the pool of light so reluctantly Hannah raised it again and took a few more tentative steps forward, but something else made her jump and she dropped the torch. Our protective sphere of light blinked out of existence the moment her finger left the catch to operate it, the blackness rushing back in and swallowing us up before the little keychain had even hit the floor. And the instant our protection was gone, I was sure I could feel the thing from the chamber gliding through the darkness, a shark moving in for the kill.
With the aid of my heightened senses and predatory instincts, I was at least able to track roughly where the torch had fallen from the sound of it hitting the stone, meaning we wouldn’t have to spend as much time blindly groping for it as a group of humans might. Zee possessed similar skills, but he must have sensed me diving in the direction of where the torch had landed because he left me to find it, instead drawing his cutlass ready for the attack that was sure to come at any moment, for all the good his blade would do him in the blackness. Our only hope was to turn the torch back on, and to that end I searched around the area where I’d heard it fall. But in my haste to locate it I managed to knock it with human clumsiness, the keychain rolling off to one side and costing us precious seconds while I chased it across the stone with only the sound of it skittering along to guide me.
The creature still made no sound to give away its presence and I detected no new scents, but deep in my gut I knew it was closing in. Spurred on by that growing sense of dread, my hand was a striking snake as I lunged for the torch, my fingers closing tight around the cheap plastic as if it were a living prey animal that might escape again. The catch to light it up bulged against my skin, my finger pushing it forward so that the little bulb illuminated once more. Again I imagined I could see the shadows fleeing from the sphere of light that expanded out as far as the torch could manage, but there was no distinctive shape to it.
My prize gripped firmly in my hand, I rose with that liquid grace animals possess and turned to see Zee with his back to me and still in a fighting stance, though the attack we were expecting still didn’t seem to have come. I held the torch out in front of me like it was some magical amulet to ward off evil in a fantasy story, trying not to think about what would happen if it went out again and we were plunged back into darkness. We’d cheated the unseen creature of its game twice already; I doubted it would waste much time if it was given a third chance to strike.
Only when the light touched him did the vampire abandon his position between us and the chamber where we’d first encountered the creature, though he remained tense and kept his sword drawn. By unspoken consent we continued our advance along the corridor, Hannah following close behind. I sensed she wanted to hold her light again but I was reluctant to relinquish it to her clumsiness, and after she’d felt a taste of my anger first-hand she didn’t dare ask. She was already jumpy and terrified of whatever was lurking in the darkness as it was, without having to brave the fires of my rage as well.
I couldn’t help the grim thoughts circling my head as we walked, wondering if there was more than just the thing from the chamber in the passage with us. Would it have risked batting at the mice it was hunting when they carried the one thing it seemed to fear – the light from the torch? Maybe it had been quick enough to dart forward and swipe at Hannah’s legs while they were in shadow, and then back into the safety of the darkness when she shone the light downwards. But we had made it through the rest of the room and out of the door without any further physical contact, as if it had deemed us too much trouble for it to bother with once we’d got the torchlight in our hands. So why should that have changed once we were in the corridor? And yet, there had been nothing to see in the small pool of light when we’d turned it on the floor, nor had there been any new scents or sounds to indicate the presence of more enemies. Unless there was more than one kind of apparition and this new one didn’t fear the light. After all, the barghest I’d faced hadn’t been restricted to the shadows.
Such thoughts were of little help and only added to the sense of dread already hanging over us, but my mind seemed to be stuck on a pessimistic setting, no matter how hard I tried to be positive. I was sure we were about to be attacked at any moment. If there were multiple apparitions they might even work together to take out our light source. I became convinced that was what was happening and gripped the torch tighter, straining my eyes to try and see the things hiding in the shadows in the hope they wouldn’t take us unawares when they chose their moment to strike. I don’t know if similar thoughts were troubling Zee but he had also drawn a pistol, for all the good it would likely do against any type of shadow creature that was hunting us, barghest or otherwise. The last thing either of us expected was for light to suddenly come flooding back into the dungeon, revealing a bend up ahead. The passage was still seemingly devoid of any other creatures beyond the three of us as far as we could see, but if the Slayers had chosen that moment to turn the lights back on I felt certain the reason for it couldn’t be anything good, and my uneasiness only increased. And sure enough a sudden new scent came to me from round the corner, just strong enough for me to pick it out under the thick, constant smog of fear the dungeon was wreathed in.
“Another human up ahead,” I growled, my hunger rising again.
“I sense him,” the vampire replied. “It seems odd they would pit us against one lone Slayer though.”
I glanced at Hannah before answering him. “It could be another trap. One meal seemingly gift wrapped for us was suspicious enough, but two? There’s no way they’d just give us two free meals. It’s hard to tell with this overwhelming stink in here but I don’t think this guy is armed, so he’s not a soldier sent to torment and ultimately overpower us like those others we fought seemed to be. And unless we’ve reached another dead end, why would they send someone else to knock us out again and move us to another part of the dungeon?”
“But why risk the lives of innocents, if he’s like the girl and not associated with the Slayers?”
“I can’t make sense of their twisted reasoning. They’re supposed to care about wiping us out to save lives,” I said. “Whatever his part in all this, it looks like he’s coming to us.”
“Aye, that he is,” Zee answered after a pause, listening to the approaching footsteps for himself. “Be ready.”
“Always,” I snarled, my anger raising its head with bloodthirsty eagerness like a dog sensing its master serving food.
The man’s shadow stretched ahead of him, appearing round the corner before he came into view and distorting his true height. It might have made him look more impressive if we hadn’t just been beset by something that seemed to be the darkness itself, but after that unseen shadow threat a mere mortal paled in comparison. And if he was another innocent caught up in a world he was igno
rant of like Hannah, we probably had little to fear from him. The Slayers might plan to use the humans against us in some way but the humans themselves might as well have been cannon fodder.
Even though I knew I couldn’t risk ripping into that warm flesh for fear it might have been tainted in some way just as I’d suspected of Hannah, my mouth watered and the hunger urged me to pounce on my unsuspecting prey. But then the human finally stepped round the corner and Zee holstered his gun again to grip my shoulder, as if he thought I would lose control that time, though he still had his sword drawn.
“Wait!” he urged me. “He’s one of us.”
“What?” I growled, confused. “But his scent is human. I’d know if there was something supernatural about him.”
“I can’t explain it; all I know is he’s one of us and he’s much older than he appears.”
“Like most of you vampires?”
“Yes, but he’s not a vampire.”
“So what is he?”
Zee shook his head. “You know from recent experiences there are times when we undead must come together to deal with matters that affect us all. I have been to my fair share of gatherings open to all the different races of undead, as well as a few that concerned vampires only, and I have seen this being at more than one of them. He has not aged since the first time I set eyes on him so he is one of us, but beyond that I can’t tell you who he is or what powers he might have.”
“Well at least he’s an ally I guess,” I said, somewhat disappointed I still wasn’t going to get the fight my anger craved.
The man gave no indication he could hear us talking about him as he walked over, though if he was truly undead then he may well have the same supernaturally enhanced hearing as vampires and werewolves, in which case he’d probably heard every word. He didn’t look like much of a predator, his build similar to the scrawny body of my human form, though he stood slightly taller than me. But I knew full well by then that bulging muscles meant nothing in the supernatural world. He could be much stronger than he looked, or he might have greater powers at his disposal than physical strength.
