by Nick Stead
So I tossed my sword aside, the blade clattering against the stone with an awful finality, as if I’d just signed my own death warrant. I kept my gaze on the vampire’s wild eyes, waiting for him to take advantage of the fact I no longer had a length of metal to protect me and strike at my vulnerable body. There was every chance he could go for a killing blow to my head or my heart if I was at all wrong about the control the Slayers had over him, and it took all my willpower to keep still and wait for the right moment.
I didn’t have to wait long before Zee made his move. He stabbed forward, sword piercing through the air until it hit the slight resistance my flesh had to offer it. My instincts screamed at me to move but I forced myself to keep still and allow the tip to slide between that wall of muscle holding my guts in place, the blade plunging through my abdomen until the tip went right through to the other side. I could feel it emerge from my lower back and couldn’t help but roar with discomfort, blood frothing up with my cry and spilling from between my fangs. It would have been a mortal wound to a human. The pain alone would have crippled most men, excruciating even to me, though it took a few moments for it to set in. But I didn’t have the luxury of submitting to that internal agony and allowing it to carry me on its violent ride to Death’s waiting arms.
With an effort of will, I held my position as the vampire stepped forward and impaled me on his sword, waiting until he was within reach of my natural weapons. Only then did I retaliate with a slash of claws across his throat, leaving tracks of gore where my nails drove through. The pirate fell back, the shock of the unexpected, extensive damage I’d dealt him seeming to temporarily override the control he was under. More blood burst forth from ruined vessels, a red waterfall cascading down, soaking his clothes and adding to the gore on the ground around us. He held his hand to the torn flesh in a very human gesture, even though past experience must have taught him it would make for an ineffective dam against such a forceful torrent.
With my opponent disabled for the time being, I finally gave in to the agony of my own ruined body and collapsed to my knees. The sword was still embedded in my flesh and I knew I had no option but to pull it back out and change fully to either one form or the other to repair such severe damage as the blade had caused. I also knew removing it was going to cause a similar level of discomfort as I’d experienced when it went in, some part of me just wanting to fall to my side and lay there while the pain ran its course. But only death would come of that, my lycanthropy incapable of saving me if it was prevented from bringing about the rapid healing needed for me to survive. I had to find the strength to remove the foreign object and let the transformation take hold.
The metal felt cold beneath my furred hands as I grabbed at what little of the weapon poked out from my abdomen, gripping it as firmly as I could manage and forcing myself to pull backwards. Damaged nerves already throbbing incessantly exploded into fresh pain as the blade slid free and my own blood gushed from both the entry and exit wound, flowing freely without anything to plug the holes. Dizziness crashed over me again, the room blurring as I fought to hold on to consciousness. But it didn’t take any conscious thought to start the one thing that could save me, and punctured organs and torn flesh were soon knitting back together. I had just enough of a weak grip on reality to guide my shifting flesh back towards my human form, feeling that was more useful than becoming a full wolf for the time being. No bones were damaged so I didn’t need to become fully lupine to heal, the cell regeneration my body would undergo to finish reverting to human form sufficient enough to repair the damage.
Somehow I managed to stay conscious, feeling my strength returning as the pain from being stabbed receded into what felt like the more tolerable pain of the transformation. My vision cleared once more and I could see the vampire was also on his knees, surely feeling the need for the one thing that would save him by then. If David truly wanted Zee to die by my hand then whatever they had controlling him must have been preventing him from feeding, but I was counting on the power of the hunger to break through their hold on him, though I knew that in itself was risky. It would have to be my blood that fed him again but the vampire may well end up in no state of mind to control himself and pull away before he went too far and drained me dry, which would cause the damage to my brain needed to end my unnatural life.
That said, Zee still wouldn’t be truly dead from being completely bled out, as I’d realised before when he’d been on the verge of falling into a corpse-like state. But he would enter a kind of death for as long as it took for fresh blood to pass through his lips and resurrect him once more. Either my plan would work and the hunger from being bled out would become so powerful that it’d break the spell he was under and drive him to feed before that happened, or the spell would hold and he’d be reduced to a corpse. If it was the latter I could revive him by dripping my blood over his mouth until it brought him back, but there was every chance he’d still be controlled by David, putting us back to square one. And if things didn’t go as hoped I knew I would have no option but to leave his prone corpse-like body lying helplessly in the chamber and go on without him. That may well be as good as having actually killed him myself since there’d be nothing to stop our captors entering the chamber to drive a stake through his heart, but reviving him only to have to enter another fight was pointless. I’d just have to hope David would be in no rush to have him staked and come back for him once I’d slaughtered every last Slayer in that place. And if it turned out that still wasn’t enough to break the control over him, then maybe nothing would. Unless Selina could find some means through her witchcraft to free him, assuming she survived that long.
The last of my lupine might shrank back into my weaker human form as the change completed, my body free of pain and no trace left of the mortal wound I’d just been dealt. I didn’t really remember dropping the blade after I’d pulled it out but it lay on the floor beside me, and I found I’d fallen forward so I was on my hands and knees, though I didn’t remember that either. Morbid fascination kept my eyes locked on the wounded vampire so that I didn’t immediately rise to my feet as I might otherwise have done, but instead stayed on all fours and watched the changes his body was going through.
I didn’t know if it was the same for all vampires or if it depended on the age of the vampire, or maybe it was even down to the bloodline they came from, but, for Zee at least, it seemed being drained of so much blood wouldn’t just make him a temporary corpse – his body was desiccating before my very eyes, becoming skeletal and very definitely dead in appearance. Lady Sarah had always retained her unnatural beauty in the death-like state I’d seen her in through the day; she did appear somewhat more of a corpse while she slept but a recent one that hadn’t entered any of the later stages of decay. And the unfortunate vampires who’d been murdered by Leon had also looked like any other recently dead body, their flesh ripped apart so that they looked like any other victim of an animal attack, human or otherwise. Maybe their bodies just hadn’t lost enough blood to undergo the same change I was witnessing in Zee, but whatever the reason for such a grotesque transformation, it was certain to haunt my nights for some time after. The fact that I’d already come to consider him a friend just made it all the more horrific.
My hope began to wane as the vampire pirate continued to wither away, what remained of his eyes still appearing wild with no visible change to them as far as I could see, giving no indication the control the Slayers had over him was breaking. It seemed he was beyond help, at least for the time being, and as much as I hated to turn my back on a friend, I felt I had no choice. There was nothing more I could do for him and besides, I still had to find Lady Sarah to ensure Selina did everything in her power to save Amy. And all that murderous rage and dark need for vengeance had not yet abated, urging me to hurry on and complete my current quest, so I could set about tracking the men I so badly wanted to kill and slake my bloodlust which was the path I really wanted to be walking after all David and his minions had done.
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When Zee fell forward onto his own hands as well as his knees, lips pulled back to give him a corpse’s skeletal grin, I lost all hope of my plan to free him working. I got to my feet and turned away, relying on my anger then to keep me going onwards. Without it I would have been torn between leaving him in such a state and carrying on for Amy’s sake, but the flames burning within helped steel my resolve. It wouldn’t do to be looking back when I needed to focus on moving forwards.
I could make out the shape of another sliding door panel but this one didn’t open for me. Either David wouldn’t flip the switch from his control room until I finished off the vampire or I was going to have to search for another hidden mechanism. I hoped it was the latter, otherwise I didn’t know what I’d do. I could try brute force again or search for another way around the dungeon that I might have missed, but neither move was guaranteed to get me anywhere and I’d waste valuable time and energy that way. Killing Zee was not an option though, or so I told myself. If it came right down to it and it was him or Amy, I knew deep down that I would choose my sister. I’d only known the vampire a matter of hours after all, or a couple of days at most, and while I had quickly warmed to him, it was far from the close bond of family. Maybe a few months down the line, if we both survived that long, we might grow close enough for me to consider him a brother, but not enough time had passed to reach that level of friendship yet and I knew I would recover from killing him much quicker than I would from causing the death of my own sister. Still, it might not come to that.
I began to search for another hidden mechanism to open the exit but the minutes stretched by with no luck. Something made me turn back to look at the vampire, or possibly to glance round the chamber for anything else I might have missed, and then my eyes registered a blur of movement seconds before there came the impact of a body colliding with mine, sending us crashing to the floor. Cold, dead flesh crawled on top of me, pinning me down with an unnatural strength that shouldn’t have been possible from such wasted, skeletal limbs, my head held firmly to one side so that my cheek pressed against the coolness of the stone, the uneven surface digging painfully into my skin. Fangs slid into my neck with a sharp stab of pain, unlocking the liquid treasure hiding just beneath the surface and freeing it from its tubular casing. Bleeding Zee dry had worked after all, his hunger finally overpowering the control the Slayers had kept him under. But there was a savagery to the way the vampire fed: I could feel him shaking his head to widen the puncture wounds and make the blood flow quicker, the trickle of crimson from a single bite far too slow to satisfy what must have felt like a desperate need for sustenance, as if he’d been starving for decades. I might have freed him from whatever the Slayers had done to control him, but I realised then that I’d also stripped him of his self-control. And my strength was ebbing on that bloody tide gushing out from my neck, putting me at risk of my own death once more.
“Zee!” I gasped. “Zee, stop!”
The vampire was too far gone to respond. If anything, it felt like he only redoubled his efforts to drain me dry as quickly as possible, my ears filled with the sounds of him gulping down my life force and the pounding of my own heart as it struggled to keep pumping the rapidly depleting volume of fluid needed to keep me alive.
“Zee,” I tried again in desperation. He was too strong for me to break free to begin with, and I was growing weaker as he grew yet more powerful. Trying to reach him was all I had left. “We’re friends, remember. Leave me some of my blood so my body can go on functioning. Come on mate, fight your way back through the hunger, see that I’m not just some human victim to feed on.”
My grip on consciousness was slipping once again. I was vaguely aware of the vampire’s flesh growing warmer with my stolen blood, his body beginning to feel less bony where it pressed into mine, and still he continued to feed. Again I thought of Amy and how I’d be failing her if I allowed myself to die to a rival, but I wasn’t sure if even the transformation could save me this time. The flesh of my neck couldn’t fully repair itself while the vampire’s fangs still poked through, and the blood would keep on flowing through the damaged blood vessels in those puncture wounds, allowing Zee to simply carry on feeding as if I were some mere human he’d found. I knew I had to try though. It was my one last hope.
Fur sprouted from my skin, poking through as if the pelt of my wolf form lurked just beneath the surface, waiting to be set free. Bones began to change size and shape and organs started to shift. If I’d been fully conscious I might have been worried that there was more than the pain of the transformation in my chest, but I was too light headed to be overly concerned by the slow thumping of my heart and my shallow breaths. I could feel the torn tissue in my neck trying to recover from being ravaged by the vampire and the blood flow did slow somewhat, but it continued to spill from around the vampire’s fangs as I’d known it would. My heart could well have been failing and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Just as it seemed I was doomed to die to the feral shadow that was all that remained of my vampire friend, the weight of his body suddenly lifted from my back and those deadly fangs withdrew from my neck. Had I managed to save him after all? Had the Zeerin I’d come to know and call friend returned from the madness first the Slayers, and then the hunger had forced on him? I couldn’t help feeling it was too late, but at least my death would have some meaning.
Finally the blood flow stopped as my flesh fused back together, sealing my crimson life force firmly within my circulatory system once more. I didn’t immediately feel any strength returning to my limbs, however. They tingled with that pins and needles sensation, numb and heavy as if my body had entered into its own state of desiccation. Even with the rapid healing of the transformation, the thought crossed my sluggish mind that it might already be too late to bring me back from the brink of death.
The vampire pirate stepped into view and I rolled my eyes up to look at him, his face swimming in and out of focus. I was relieved to see that he did indeed seem to have returned to his former self.
“Zee,” I rasped, with the added difficulty of my vocal cords beginning to change.
“I am here,” he answered, kneeling down. His tongue flicked across his fangs, savouring the last few drops of my blood, and there was the shadow of his hunger prowling behind his eyes.
“My sister…”
“What of her?”
“Dying. She’s dying. Have to find Lady Sarah. Take her to Selina. Our deal…”
“Deal? With Selina? Or Lady Sarah?”
“Save Selina’s sister, she saves mine. You have to do it for me.”
“Ah.”
“Promise me.”
“No, friend. I won’t fulfil your end of the bargain for you. You have to do it. Stop talking like you’re on your deathbed and find the strength to go on. You can do it, you have the power to heal this. I believe in you!”
“Not happening quick enough,” I managed.
“Come on, I know the last werewolf isn’t about to let himself die to a vampire drinking his blood. Just think of the satisfaction that would give Ulfarr.”
I growled but wasn’t convinced the change could restore enough of the blood I’d lost in time to lift me up from the edge of the blackness my mind kept threatening to fall into, and out of Death’s reach.
“That’s it, let anger guide you back. For an animal and a landlubber you’re not all that bad company. Don’t leave me alone in here.”
My heart continued its struggle, a wounded animal kicking weakly from within my chest. My head was almost fully lupine and my tail nearing its full length, but still my body hadn’t overcome that weakness from losing so much blood. The vampire’s words gave me something more to hold onto though. The mention of Ulfarr was enough to give my rage something else to feed on and it roared through me in a molten tidal wave, forcing my heart to keep on pumping stronger and faster until the numbness in my limbs gave way to the volcanic rush of fury that set my blood boiling.
Fin
ally my vision cleared and that feeling of power that usually accompanied the change spread through my shifting flesh, my body singing with renewed life. I stopped the transformation before it went fully to wolf form and reversed some of the changes until I was back in my hybrid form. My need to kill was as strong as ever, but I fought to rein in some of that darkness for the time being, aware I couldn’t lose myself to it until Amy was safe. When I rose to my feet, my self-control was as firmly back in place as Zee’s seemed to be, though our hungers snarled at each other from their cages as we locked gazes.
“Thanks,” I growled.
The pirate laughed. “I think I should be thanking you. You could have just killed me, instead of risking everything to save my life. I won’t forget this, Nick. For as long as I sail the seas, my blade is yours.”
He’d already retrieved his cutlass at some point while I’d been struggling to transform and heal, and he placed a hand on the hilt of it as he spoke. I didn’t really know what to say to that, other than to thank him again, which brought forth another laugh.
“Come on, let’s go save your sister.”
“Aye, cap’n!”
“Oh, you fancy joining my crew do you?” he asked, amused.
The panel to the next section of the dungeon finally ground into action before I could reply and we fell silent, turning to face whatever was coming next. All merriment evaporated, replaced by wariness and an alertness to our surroundings that was akin to that of mortal animals. Fresh pangs of hunger resonated within as if my body was reminding me of the cost of what I’d just put it through. I could only hope the worst was over, or exhaustion would soon be dragging me back down. So much for saving my freshly replenished energy.
