by Nick Stead
I was granted long enough to discover just how dire my situation was, David no doubt enjoying watching another moment of me suffering a torment of his design. Then the moment passed, and the dead attacked.
Chapter Twenty Four – Mortal Danger
Bone clacked against the stony floor as skeletal feet ran across it, charging towards me with blades held high. And there I stood, naked and without any of the natural weapons of my wolf form to pit against them, lacking even the boost in strength I could usually rely on as part of my lycanthropy. Hand to hand combat would do me little good against the sheer number of armed enemies I was facing, especially when they couldn’t be stopped as easily as mortal foes. I knew I stood little chance of leaving the chamber alive, unless David allowed me to walk out of there so he could prolong my suffering a little longer.
Another surge of adrenalin pumped through my system as the first few skeletons were upon me, blades flashing in the dim light as they hacked and stabbed. Somehow I managed to dodge their swords, diving to the floor before any could find their mark. It was from down there that I noticed another sword had apparently been left for me to take up and wield against my foes, so I guessed David still didn’t want me to die just yet. And though I still hated playing into his twisted fantasies, there wasn’t much else I could do but grab the weapon and make use of it to deflect the worst of the blows, if nothing else.
I rolled away with sword in hand before any of the skeletons could cut my prone form, sparks flying as cold steel struck the stone where I’d just been. Springing back to my feet, I brought the blade up to block another attack, though it was much slower than it should have been partly due to the effects of the injection I’d been given and partly because the balance of the blade felt a little off. I couldn’t parry all the blows coming my way though, given the sheer number of enemies I faced, and blood was soon trickling down my offhand arm where a sword nicked it, the cut stinging with a fierce intensity, seemingly much worse than usual. The damage should have been a lot worse but I guessed the skeletons were being made to pull their blows so I didn’t die too quickly. But even if the aim wasn’t to kill me in that room, I wasn’t going to be allowed an easy escape.
Another cut opened up across the top of my thigh as I battled on, all the while trying to work out how exactly I was meant to get out of this one. Maybe I just had to hold on long enough for the doors to open up again? Or maybe the door the skeletons had come from did lead somewhere, but running in there would be risky – I could end up trapped and when I was facing opponents I had no way of stopping, it would be the death of me unless David called them off. At least in the open I could keep moving and so I did my best to keep ducking and dodging as many of the attacks coming my way as I could. It wasn’t easy with my back against the wall, especially when the skeletons had me surrounded and I couldn’t even move to the sides, but I knew my best hope was to keep evading as many of the blows as I could. I couldn’t avoid them all though and more cuts began to open up on my limbs and my torso.
As the minutes wore on with no sign of being offered a reprieve, I began to think that chamber was to be my tomb and that I would soon become no more than another one of the necromancer’s dead minions, enslaved to his will for as long as it suited him. Or her. I had no idea who was controlling the dead but I felt certain it wasn’t David. Nothing supernatural had ever happened around him before I’d become a werewolf so I doubted he’d suddenly found any supernatural power since, and surely he wouldn’t have had need of the Slayers’ resources to have his revenge if he did wield that kind of power. I vaguely wondered how necromancy worked, whether I’d hear a voice in my head compelling me to do what he or she wanted or whether it would be more subtle, whether I’d even know my thoughts were being shaped at all, my actions guided. Maybe I’d be lucky enough to be spared the fate of becoming an undead slave if what was left of my soul escaped the mortal coil. For Lady Sarah had already explained that not every dead body was capable of becoming a zombie and it was only those whose souls were tied to the earthly plane that could be bound to their flesh in the necromantic mockery of life. Given that particular limitation, you might think it unlikely that every dead body we’d encountered in that place had successfully been reanimated. But no doubt the necromancer had already handpicked the corpses for use in the dungeon, the Slayers only bringing in those they knew that would rise from the grave when their master called. And the blood sacrifice required to raise them must have been offered before we were brought in as well.
Just as it seemed all was lost, stone exploded outwards from the lower passageway. A figure stepped through the dust and a wave of skeletons from the back of the force attacking me peeled away to deal with this newcomer. I barely had chance to register it was Lady Sarah, alive and seemingly unscathed despite what my eyes had told me when I’d last seen her through the window between the passageways, and there she was, come to my rescue once again.
The vampire’s eyes glowed blue, her fangs bared in a feral snarl, and the ten or so skeletons charging towards her went the same way as the stone panel, bursting into dust. Each and every one of them shattered into fragments so small, even the enemy necromancer’s power wasn’t enough to keep them going. Only their swords remained, which clattered to the ground. I was beginning to think that by ‘changed’ she’d meant she was more powerful, but such power always comes with a price. That unnatural light in her eyes faded and she swayed, grabbing the wall to steady herself.
More skeletons peeled away to charge the vampire and despite the weariness attempting to drag Lady Sarah down, she fought it and stood strong once more, the glow returning to those shards of ice glaring out of her skull. But a hand appeared on her shoulder, her sister stepping through the doorway and, to my relief, Varin appearing beside them with Amy still alive and sat on his back.
I struggled to make out what was said from the other end of the chamber over the clash of swords as I continued to defend myself, but whatever the serum I’d been given had done to block my full lycanthropic powers, it seemed it couldn’t take away my supernaturally enhanced senses. My hearing was still acute enough that I just managed to catch Selina’s words.
“Wait! Don’t use up all your strength, there’s too many to destroy them all. Can’t you take control of them?”
“That’s not how necromancy works and you know it, sister,” Lady Sarah hissed, shaking herself free of Selina’s grasp.
“Not normally, but if your powers have grown then it might be possible.”
“Even if it were, it would drain me as surely as crushing them all telekinetically will. At least we know this way will definitely work,” the vampire retorted.
“Then why not use that force to break the panel sealing off the other passageway where the rest of our allies are? We don’t need to stop the dead, merely slow them long enough for Nick to get away so we can escape to a safer part of the dungeon. Gwyn might be able to point us in the right direction.”
“As you wish.”
The skeletal warriors were almost upon them when Lady Sarah unleashed that invisible force a third time, blasting the other panel as Selina had suggested. It seemed to take less effort just to use her power on that single target for she showed no signs of weakness that time, fearlessly striding forward to meet her foes once the door had been shattered. One of the fallen blades leapt into her hand and she engaged the necromancer’s pawns in combat, the sword a blur as she cleaved through bone in a deadly dance, evading her opponent’s strikes with much more ease than I ever could, even if it hadn’t been for the debilitating serum in my veins.
Zee rushed through the door and out onto the same raised platform I’d come in on, sword already drawn. He jumped straight down and charged into the battle, cutting down his foes just as easily as Lady Sarah. I had a glimpse of Gwyn entering the chamber as well but I soon lost sight of him again.
Selina stayed back with her familiar and Amy. There was little she could do without the proper tools of her craft, as ha
ndy as it would have been right then. For even though the vampires were a formidable force, they couldn’t keep the skeletons down indefinitely. Short of turning them to ash or dust, there was no way of stopping them for as long as the necromancer’s power bound the bones together in their pseudo-life. We could hack them to bits all day long but as with the zombies, the bones would keep moving in an attempt to kill us until they were ordered otherwise.
But the sudden appearance of my allies was enough to relieve the pressure I’d been under when the full skeletal regiment had been focussed entirely on me, and it gave me just enough of an edge to start to press them back. Lady Sarah kept those at the rear busy while Zee fought his way through to me, and before long I found myself facing more even odds with only three of the skeletons still actively attacking me. I finally had the chance to retaliate instead of being purely defensive and I sliced through the bony sword arm of one adversary, temporarily disarming him (or her – it was hard to tell what gender they’d been in life with nothing but bones left in death). I kicked back another of them and turned to deal with the third, but I’d grown too cocky. The skeleton thrust forward and I was too slow to block, fresh pain lancing through torn flesh as cold steel slid into my side. I felt the blade withdraw and instantly dropped my own weapon, pressing my hands to the wound before I lost any more blood. I’d already sustained a number of cuts and I knew I was in danger of passing out from blood loss again if much more of it leaked out.
I was truly at the mercy of my enemies but I felt certain it wasn’t quite over yet and that David would spare me once again, only so I could endure the final torment he had in store, though my theory wasn’t to be put to the test just then as Zee stepped up behind the skeleton whose blade was wet with my blood. The dead warrior seemed to sense he was there, or perhaps it was merely given orders to fight the vampire instead, but either way it turned to fight him, giving me time to recover.
Instinctively I reached for that power that granted me the ability to physically change from one form to another, relying on the cell regeneration to repair the various wounds I’d taken in this latest fight. But instead of the tissue fusing seamlessly back together as I’d become so accustomed to, the bloody trenches in my flesh remained, continuing to leak my body’s most valuable fluid. I’d grown so reliant on that power that it hadn’t occurred to me I wouldn’t be able to heal the damage when I’d first discovered the Slayers had found a way to stop me transforming, or perhaps I had known deep down which was why my cuts were stinging with a greater urgency than usual, and I just hadn’t wanted to accept it till then. I cursed myself for not being more careful, knowing full well I was only going to grow weaker still if I kept bleeding.
“Time to transform, Nick! I’ll keep this one busy,” Zee called to me.
“Can’t,” I grunted. My side felt like it was on fire, though luckily the blade only seemed to have made a gash in my flesh and not in any of my vital organs. I really would have been in trouble if it had pierced my liver or something.
“What do you mean you can’t?” he asked, confused.
“That needle,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Whatever was in it did something. I already tried shifting but nothing’s happening.”
“Selina!” he yelled. “Do something to stop this wolf bleeding now, or he’s going to pass out!”
The witch looked to be just as confused as Zee had been by my first response but she came running, successfully evading the few skeletons who were still whole and the bits of bone crawling across the floor as she went. I realised she probably hadn’t heard any of what I’d said to Zee with her human ears.
“Why does he not just transform to heal the damage?” she asked once she reached us.
“Can’t,” I said again. I managed to repeat what I’d just explained to the vampire pirate, despite the throbbing wound in my side.
Selina cursed, then took a deep breath to calm herself. “The best I can do right now is to bind your wounds to stop the bleeding. You’re going to have to be very careful from now on till either the drug they gave you wears off or till we get out of here and I have the means to work more spells than I do at the moment.”
I just nodded and let her do what she could for me. She grabbed the sword I’d dropped and used it to help her cut some of the material from the bottom of the legs of her jeans to create more makeshift bandages, careful not to cut herself as she did so. I couldn’t breathe comfortably once she’d tied the material round my abdomen but at least it did keep the pressure on to control the bleeding, better than my bare hands had. Bandages couldn’t do anything for the pain though, which I had no option but to suffer.
As the witch patched me up, Zee finally finished dispatching his opponent, leaving the skeleton in so many pieces that it could no longer pose too much of a threat.
“We’re too vulnerable as a group to keep on fighting now,” Selina said as he strode over to us. “We need to go.”
“Agreed. But go where? Where is Gwyn?”
“I saw him follow you in, Zee, but then lost sight of him. My guess would be in the dark passage the skeletons came out of though,” I answered. “But hang on, what happened to you four in the other passage? How did you escape the fire?”
“Fire?” Selina asked. “What fire?”
“Ah, that’s what we were calling you back for, Nick. There was never any fire – it was some kind of illusion, probably created in the hope you’d go running off into this trap which is exactly what you did.”
“Interesting,” Selina commented. “We had no trouble after that last chamber forced us to split up, until the door into this one sealed shut, locking us out. My sister sensed the undead the necromancer was pitting against you, which is when she blasted her way through.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, unable to help feeling stupid for falling for David’s trap, though I supposed the most important thing was that they were safe and unharmed. Lady Sarah saved me from having to respond, her opponents all lying in pieces by that point as well which she deliberately stepped on as she stalked over to us, crunching as many bones beneath her feet as her path allowed. She’d obviously been too focussed on the fighting to follow any of what had been said, even though her ears would have had no trouble picking up the conversation, because she asked “What’s going on; why are you not transforming to heal your wounds?”
So for the third time I was forced to explain what the injection I’d been given had done to me, finishing with “I don’t know if it’s just a temporary thing or if they’ve found some way to make me human again, but for the moment I’m stuck with this form and all its limitations.”
“That’s impossible,” she answered. “There is no cure for lycanthropy.”
“Well evidently David found a way, either through science or witchcraft. Maybe it’s not really a cure as more of a suppressant but either way, the effect is the same, if only temporarily.”
Varin padded across to us while we were talking, still carrying Amy. They came within earshot in time for Amy to hear the word cure and latch onto it hopefully. “You’re cured? Does this mean you can come home now?”
I hadn’t really had chance to consider what the effect of the serum might mean for me if we managed to survive the dungeon and its effects persisted. If David really had succeeded in finding a way to suppress my curse indefinitely then for all intents and purposes I would be human again, or close enough. I would certainly be mortal since I wouldn’t have the constant regeneration of cell tissue every time I transformed to keep me young and healthy. The Slayers would have no more reason to kill me, though whether they’d risk letting me live if my inner wolf lay suppressed but not truly beaten was debatable. And then there were those out for revenge. There might be some willing to give me a second chance but there would probably still be plenty amongst them who would rather see me dead. If that were the case, going home might still put anyone I cared about in danger.
So what did the future hold for me without my curse? I wou
ldn’t be able to stay around the undead – to most I would no longer be an equal (or at least a rival for vampires like Ulfarr who refused to accept werewolves), my status among them reverting to prey just like any other human. And I would be too weak to defend myself if any did choose to feed on me. I supposed I might be able to live with Selina and maybe even learn the art of witchcraft from her if it was possible for anyone to pick it up without any need for some kind of existing natural ability. At the very least, she and Lady Sarah would be able to protect me from the Slayers and the undead alike. But if I stayed with them I still wouldn’t be part of the human world I’d been longing to return to for the past few months, not truly. I might have more freedom to walk among them than my lycanthropy granted me, but I would still be an outsider looking in for as long as I was entangled in the bitter struggle between the dwindling numbers of undead and the Slayers.
My other option would be to try for a fresh start somewhere far enough away from the area I’d grown up in to keep friends and family safe from any Slayers who might still be hunting me. I could forge a new identity and reclaim my place in human society. It would be tough starting with nothing, not even a roof over my head or a penny to my name, but no worse a challenge than any I’d faced as a werewolf, or so I thought. But did I really want to be human again? I couldn’t deny the human world still held a certain attraction and part of me would always miss certain things about it, yet the prospect of being thrust back into mundane, everyday life no longer seemed all that appealing. I’d wanted to be cured for so long after the curse had taken everything from me and now it looked like my wish may have been granted, I found myself rebelling against the very idea of it. I’d just fully accepted the lupine side of my nature and I’d grown used to my shapeshifting abilities. I found myself feeling the same sense of loss I’d felt in the wake of sacrificing my human life at the thought of having all that permanently stripped away from me, even after everything the curse had made me do.
