by Nick Stead
“Gentlemen, m’lady,” he addressed us, mischief flashing across his blue eyes.
“Friend,” Zee nodded to him. “I’ve seen you around before but I’m not sure I ever caught your name?”
“Gwyn,” the man replied.
“Isn’t that a girl’s name?” I asked.
“That would be Gwen, you dork. Gwyn – it’s Welsh for white.”
I supposed the name suited him with his pale skin and white, shoulder length hair. Designer stubble adorned his jaw, giving him a roguish look, and there was a good humoured nature about his features that I had to assume was to make him seem deceptively harmless, to lure in unwitting prey. His use of a modern slang word surprised me, coming from a being who was at least as old as Zee and given the old fashioned greeting he’d just used. But I guessed it made sense he’d spend time among humans when even I couldn’t detect anything different about him with my keen lupine senses. His clothes were also a modern shirt and jeans, though they looked grimy as if they hadn’t been washed in some time.
“So you’re Welsh?”
“Yep, but I lost the accent after a few hundred years of moving around.”
“Erm, guys?” Hannah interrupted. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”
“Ah, the human speaks sense. And who might this charming young woman be?”
“Hannah.”
“Nice to meet you, Hannah,” Gwyn said as we started walking again. “I already know of Zeerin the vampirate and who hasn’t heard of the infamous new werewolf in the undead scene? It’s pretty obvious why the Slayers would want you two, but what the hell is a human doing caught up in all this?”
“She doesn’t seem to know anything,” Zee answered for her. “We might ask you the same – how did you come to be here?”
“Oh it’s a long story, I wouldn’t bore you with it.”
“Try us,” I growled, wary of the stranger. I didn’t like that he could trick my senses so completely into seeing him as human. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Did your parents never teach you patience is a virtue?”
My anger reared up, the chains of self-control the only thing keeping it from ripping through my ability to reason until I became a beast of rage as I had so many times before. I roared and pinned the strange Welsh man up against the wall, my eyes searing amber like two flames blazing in my skull. A mortal might have quailed beneath the heat of my furious gaze but Gwyn’s good natured countenance never even flickered. He remained calm and passive, not even a hint of anger flashing across his features in the dim light of the fake torch by the side of his head, and still no sign of whatever undead power he possessed.
“Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t just kill you now,” I snarled.
“Well in case you hadn’t noticed, we are surrounded by enemies.”
“Leave him be, Nick. He could prove useful while we’re trapped down here.”
“Useful, by talking our enemies to death?”
“You don’t survive for centuries in our world by being weak,” Zee answered. “Things are rarely what they seem.”
“Huh, at least one of you has some sense.”
I snarled louder, the transformation on the verge of taking hold.
“Nick,” Zee said more forcefully, grabbing my shoulder.
Knowing the vampire would only pull me away before I could hurt our newfound ally, I forced the anger back down and released Gwyn, stepping away and contenting myself with the thought that he wasn’t likely to last long if the two of us were left alone. My anger still simmered in its dark pit and even with the greater self-control I’d gained from allowing my mind to become whole, I was pretty certain I was still capable of completely losing myself to the rage, if I was pushed far enough. We’d only been with the Welsh man for a handful of minutes and he was already irritating me. If I had to suffer his presence for several hours till we either found a way out of the dungeon or met our demise then there was a good chance he would push me over the edge, back into the blazing inferno that had ruled me for so long after I’d first left my hometown.
I turned my gaze on the shadows ahead while nursing those dark thoughts, hopeful for another fight to keep me going in the meantime. With the lighting restored for the time being I didn’t really expect the apparition to reappear, but there could be other enemies lying in wait as we continued on towards the chamber holding Lady Sarah. I doubted the Slayers would make it easy for us to reach her, so there were sure to be more challenges along the way.
Some of my suspicions must have shown because Zee said “At least tell us if you saw anything up ahead before you found us.”
“Nothing much, just a few corpses lying around,” Gwyn replied.
“Corpses?” I growled, glancing at the vampire.
“What’s the matter; surely the big bad wolf isn’t afraid of the dead?”
“They have a necromancer,” Zee answered.
“Oh good, zombies. Just when I was worrying things wouldn’t get any more interesting.”
“Maybe you should go first then,” I said.
“Afraid I wouldn’t be much help in a fight at the minute, Nick. When it comes to quick wit and puzzle solving I’m your guy, but I’m too weak to fight right now.”
“Then you’ll make good cannon fodder.”
“We’ll take the lead,” Zee interjected. “You and the human follow behind us. Come on, Nick.”
Heat and pain surged through my flesh as I gave myself over to the transformation, skin itching from the fur that sprouted along my body and bones aching where they stretched outwards to become lupine. I stopped it halfway again, revelling in the combined power of human and wolf that came with my hybrid form. At least it looked like I was going to get the bloodshed I craved, even if it was the less satisfactory cold, rotten blood of the dead, and I was counting on the chance to feed again and replace the energy spent on shifting between forms since I’d last eaten. I was too eager for the coming fight to argue with Zee, though I still liked the idea of letting Gwyn take the lead – maybe it would actually shut him up if the dead rose and attacked him.
I wanted to bound forward to the promise of the new skirmish, but I forced myself to keep to the vampire’s side. We moved at a quicker pace than we had when approaching the various other traps the Slayers had set for us, knowing that they would probably have their necromancer resurrect the corpses at a specific moment. Creeping along with caution probably wouldn’t help us much. We could have tried to run through the cadavers and reach the next chamber before they became zombies, but if the Slayers wanted to make us fight again then they’d only keep us locked out of the next section of the level and force the combat on us anyway. So we advanced at a steady pace, not rushing into the combat like I would probably have done if I’d been on my own, but not bothering to move slow and stealthily either.
We rounded the corner to find there were more than just a ‘few’ corpses as Gwyn had suggested. Bodies lined the walls like grisly statues, some lying in piles of rotting body parts, others propped up so that they could almost have been sleeping, if it weren’t for the strips of ragged flesh hanging loosely from ruined faces and shredded torsos. Strangely, one of the fresher looking corpses was missing its clothes, completely naked unlike the others. There were dozens of them as there had been in the first chamber we’d come to, more than enough to overwhelm us if that was the necromancer’s will.
I might have said something to Gwyn about the number of cadavers but my anger was close enough to the surface to turn to wordless rage, and he’d only irritate me further if I goaded him into more of his annoying sarcasm. And he was quiet behind us, which was probably for the best. The last thing we needed was to be turning on each other when we were likely to be attacked at any minute.
I prowled through the narrow walkway the Slayers had left between the corpses, keeping my senses focussed on them. Some were fresh enough to make my mouth water and it took all my willpower to keep moving with the h
unger demanding fresh meat, my stomach growling loud enough it seemed that alone would wake the dead. Twice I came to a stop, convinced I’d seen movement among the bodies. But our decaying audience remained still and lifeless as we passed through them, though I was sure it was only a matter of time before they were reanimated.
About halfway along the passage our fears were finally realised. Well, perhaps fears wasn’t the right word, except maybe in Hannah’s case. I was falling too far into the darkness of my bloodlust and rage to fear the sheer number of enemies we’d face if every single one of the cadavers was raised as a zombie. Zee might have been more concerned about the threat they posed, but I doubted he was truly afraid. As for Gwyn, I had no idea what he might be feeling. He had a heartbeat like the human he appeared to be, and it was slow and steady compared to the rapid thundering of Hannah’s heartrate. I vaguely wondered how vulnerable he really was. He’d claimed to be too weak to fight but did the zombies pose any real threat to him? I couldn’t even begin to guess what type of undead he was so I had no idea. He certainly wasn’t a zombie or ghoul himself and he was no vampire, nor a werewolf, which left ghosts and wraiths, or some other type of undead I had yet to learn about. But from what I’d seen of wraiths they were like a ghostly, incorporeal type of ghoul. And unless ghosts were completely different in reality to the way they were portrayed in stories, then he couldn’t be a ghost either since they were also incorporeal. So what was he?
A sigh passed through the bodies and they began to stir, driving all thoughts from my mind but those of ripping through that dead flesh of our adversaries until they lay in enough pieces to render them virtually harmless. But as much as my heart yearned for the coming battle, I would have to wait just a little longer. Zee had enough sense to realise we couldn’t make a stand in the middle of the passage, where they’d quickly surround us, and he somehow kept us moving. It was easy to see why he’d been made captain of his pirate crew, an air of command about him that even I found myself obeying.
“Keep going!” he urged us. “We don’t stop till we’ve made it all the way to the end of this tunnel, then we fight.”
Rotting fingers reached for our ankles as we ran through them, trying to drag us down to a bloody end. But we managed to stay on our feet, even Hannah, and the end of the passage loomed ahead before the first of the zombies had pulled itself up. To our dismay it appeared to be another dead end, though there had to be at least one hidden door through which Gwyn had come from, somewhere along the passage. Whether it was at this end remained to be seen, but at least we had the narrowness of the passage to our advantage again, channelling our enemies in waves of three and helping negate some of their advantage of numbers.
“You two, get behind us and look for a way out,” Zee barked at Hannah and Gwyn. Then it was time to engage the walking corpses lurching towards us.
Chapter Nine – Death’s Angels
The zombies were no match for the might of a werewolf or a vampire, ruined bodies falling to the ground where they continued their struggle to obey the necromancer’s commands and end our lives. If there had been just a few of them as Gwyn had suggested they wouldn’t have posed much of a threat, but in such numbers and driven by that mindless determination of creatures completely enslaved to their master’s will, they were a force to be reckoned with. And unless the Slayers chose to offer us a way out again like they had when we’d faced the reanimated corpses before, we were doomed.
Zee’s sword was an intricate blur of deadly steel, slicing through flesh and bone with such speed and precision that the first few zombies were quickly reduced to a grisly jigsaw of twitching, bloody pieces. My teeth and claws might have been somewhat slower but I was equally as ruthless, ripping and tearing the walking corpses into as many pieces as I had time for. Blood and gore splattered our bodies and splashed across the stone around us, cold and stinking of decay. And yet, for all our supernatural speed and strength, it still wasn’t enough to keep up with so many enemies who could only be truly stopped by severing the flow of dark magic acting as a surrogate life force.
I grabbed another of the zombies and decapitated it with my bare hands, dropping the severed head on the growing pile of body parts at our feet. Eyeballs rolled in its skull, looking up at me from the floor with a hatred that I imagined was pouring through from the necromancer controlling them, while its body kept on coming, until I pulled its limbs off as well. And still its arms continued to crawl across the floor in their quest to end my cursed life.
More of the walking corpses surged forwards and I was forced to turn my attention to them, grabbing one in my jaws while I held another at arm’s length to buy me more time. I sank my fangs into the cadaver’s neck, shaking my head and dealing devastating damage which would have stopped any mortal enemy. The rotting flesh tasted foul on my tongue as I worked at it but I kept going, until eventually another severed head fell to the ground. The force of it sent the now headless corpse careening backwards into the rest of them, but they were packed so tightly into the tunnel that they all stayed standing.
I felt more blood splatter against me just as I was about to disable the enemy I’d been holding off, the weight of its body suddenly hanging off my arm. I turned to find my hand wrapped around what was now just the lower half of a head and a torso, Zee having already taken care of it for me by slicing through its limbs and skull. Only the lower jaw remained, its tongue writhing like a slug doused in salt.
Dropping the mutilated corpse, I faced the next of my challengers and set about dispatching them in a similar fashion so as to render the reanimated body parts as useless as possible, when cold fingers wrapped around my ankle. Severed arms and hands crawling towards us was one thing, or even just fingers, but I soon found that my attacker was mostly whole as teeth sank into my calf, this one missing only its legs and still very capable of dealing significant damage. I roared in pain and tried to shake it off, one of those still standing biting into my arm while I was distracted.
Zee could see I was in trouble and he shouted out to Gwyn and Hannah “Have you found anything yet?”
“Nothing,” Gwyn answered.
“We need to get out of here, now!” I yelled. “We’re not going to hold them off much longer.”
“What about the door you came through, Gwyn? Don’t you remember roughly where it was?”
“It’d mean fighting our way back through.”
A wave of desperation crashed over us as we considered our options. It was doubtful we could get back down the tunnel in one piece if the Slayers didn’t call off the zombies before they tore us apart, but carrying on the fight with our backs up against a wall wasn’t going to end well for us either. We really needed some kind of escape route to open up in the section of the passage we were already backed into.
Despite the agony of teeth pulling away my flesh, I risked turning my attention from the zombies to look out as far as I could see over their heads, scanning the walls for something, anything, that might hint at a way out. We hadn’t been paying much attention to the stone as we passed it, too busy rushing to reach the end of the tunnel before the cadavers rose and attacked, so I hoped there might be something we’d missed. And yes, just up ahead I thought I could see the vague outline of another hidden door. Reaching it would require pushing our way through a dozen or so of the walking corpses but at least that was better than trying to fight through the entire pack, which seemed a pretty hopeless venture.
I ripped the zombie still working at my arm off the limb, freedom from it costing me another chunk of my bicep, and started forward, dragging the reanimated cadaver still latched onto my leg along with me. More zombies grabbed hold of my furry body but I could only deal with so many at once, and I soon felt like I was wading through a sea of teeth as more of them bit down, blood leaking from the wounds and dripping from my pelt in crimson threads. I ignored the pain and kept going, struggling through the throng of reanimated corpses with the same mindless determination they showed in trying to take me
down.
“Nick!” Zee called after me.
“I think I see a door over here,” I shouted back, though I didn’t bother to turn round.
“You’ll never make it alone, you fool!”
I ignored the vampire as well. If I could just reach the door and find a way to open it there was a good chance some of the zombies would follow me through, giving Zee a chance to cut down his assailants and attack the rest from the rear. At least that way any parts we hacked off wouldn’t be immediately at our feet where they could still do some harm, and if there was another passage to run down we might find refuge in another chamber. It seemed our best option so I tuned out the cries of the others and pushed on, trying not to think about what would happen if the door stayed shut, or if it turned out there was no panel set in the stone after all.
Almost to the section of the wall in which I was convinced was our concealed salvation, I felt more decaying hands grasping my arms and legs, pulling me off balance. I didn’t so much step up to the hidden panel as I fell into it, and to my surprise it began to slide straight open, though this one opened from the side rather than upwards like the others we’d found so far. I just had chance to turn in time to see Zee was no longer faring so well, despite his speed and skill with a blade. A severed arm reared up by his leg and struck like some monstrous snake, sinking nails into his calf instead of fangs. The attack caught him off-guard, distracting him long enough for the next wave of zombies to surge forward and grab hold, leeching off his precious blood as teeth tore through his clothing and into his flesh. It looked like the vampire was going down and there was nothing I could do about it, trapped in the stream of walking corpses as I was. Then the panel slid far enough along for me to fall through the doorway, unable to regain my balance in time to keep my feet. I landed heavily on the ground with several of the zombies on top of me, head smashing hard against a section of stone jutting up, smearing it with my blood. Blackness came in an explosion of pain, and I knew no more.
