Destiny of the Last Wolf

by Amy Cross

  I'm injured, somehow. I stumble but I manage to keep running, and when I glance at the injury I see a red patch of blood forming. Realizing I've been shot, I run as hard as I can but I can hear the vehicle catching up to me. With no options left, I make a sharp left and head down a side road, but up ahead a couple more soldiers appear. I've already reached them, though, before they can raise their guns to fire, and to my surprise I find that I'm able to leap right over them.

  When I land, I find I can run even faster. I can no longer hear anyone chasing me, all that I'm focusing on is the fact that I can run and run and run. The adrenalin builds and builds, and I feel it coursing through my body. Soon I'm on the outskirts of town, running so fast it's impossible to believe it' still me, and I'm not even tired. But eventually I decide to slow down and I come to a halt in a small ditch by the side of the road, and that's when I realize..

  I'm not standing up normally.

  I'm on all fours.

  Panting, I look down at my hands, but all I see are two large gray paws.

  "You have to tell me what you're remembering," Stuart says.

  "I really don't," I reply, backing away from him. The idea that I could have just attacked Stuart, even killed him, fills me with terror. A minute ago, I had some kind of memory loss; now I'm starting to think that there's something dark buried deep inside my soul, something that's fighting to come out.

  "Well I'm not going anywhere," he says, reaching out to grab me again.

  I seize him by the collar and throw him into the wall, and something takes over my body as I snarl at him. I can see the terror in his eyes, and I can hear my voice is... different, like an animal's growl. I let go of him and step back.

  "It's you," he says, his face ashen. "You're the werewolf."

  I turn and run. Racing across the road, I'm almost hit by a car that has to swerve to miss me. I don't even look back as I hear the car crunch into something. I just keep running and running and running, filled with a rush of adrenalin that seems like it's never going to end. Just when it seems like I could keep running forever, I run into the park and collide with Duncan. He grabs me by the arms and holds me steady.

  "You're remembering," he says, his dark eyes gazing into mine with a kind of authority that I've never seen before. It's like he has old, wise eyes.

  "Did I kill Hazel?" I ask, starting to cry. "Did I kill all those people?"

  "No," Duncan says firmly.

  "She was my best friend," I sob, trying to break free from his firm grip.

  "No, she wasn't," he replies. "You've only known her for a month. Everything before that is false. You've had fake memories put into your mind. We both have. I'm guessing that someone wanted to bury our real memories, to stop us remembering something."

  "Jess!" shouts a voice in the distance.

  I turn to see Stuart at the other end of the street, running towards us. "Fuck," I say, tears streaming down my face. "He was right. I'm a werewolf, aren't I?"

  "Actually," Duncan says, letting go of my arms, "I think we both are."

  Stuart is out of breath as he reaches us. "I know everything," he says, leaning against a tree for a moment as he tries to recover from the physical exertion. "I know what you. You're both wolves. You're killers."

  "Calm down," Duncan says. "We might be wolves. Might be. But killers?"

  "You think it's just a coincidence?" Stuart says. "Two werewolves turn up, a full moon arrives, and people start getting ripped up by a wolf-like creature?"

  "I -" Duncan starts to say, but suddenly he seems distracted by something.

  "What is it?" I ask.

  "Sssh!" he says. "Oh... Oh, that's brilliant. That's absolutely, mind-bogglingly brilliant!" He turns to me and smiles. "I'm a god-damned fucking genius!" he shouts, raising his right hand. "High five!"

  I stare at him.

  "High five!" he shouts again.

  I shake my head.

  He lowers the hand. "Spoilsport," he says, turning to Stuart. His nose twitching, Duncan steps forward. "You smell of blood," he says. "Lots and lots of blood. Old blood, new blood. Blood blood blood." He walks around Stuart, circling him like a... well, like a wolf. "Jess and I aren't the only ones with secrets here, are we, Stuart?"

  Stuart stares at me. "I'm like you," he says eventually. "I'm one of you."

  "No you're not," Duncan says. "You'd like to be, but you're not. What's wrong, Stuart, is normal human life too boring for you? Don't you like being ordinary?"

  "I'm a werewolf," he says. "I can't help it. When there's a full moon, I have to kill." There are tears running down his face.

  "Wrong," Duncan says. "You're an ordinary human with werewolf fantasies. You really, really want to be like us, but you're not. You've got this urge to kill, a passion to hurt and torture and murder people, and you try to dress it up and make it respectable by pretending you're a werewolf."

  "No!" Stuart shouts, turning to him and making a kind of gurgling noise.

  "Is that you're growl?" Duncan asks. "Is that you being a werewolf?"

  Stuart throws himself at Duncan, knocking him to the ground and holding him down. Looking up at me and snarling, Stuart seems completely lost in his own little world. I step back, realizing he's completely insane. He believes he's a wolf right now, but he's not: he's just an insane man with delusions and hallucinations.

  "Time to stop, Stuart," Duncan says, throwing him off with ease.

  Stuart falls to the ground, and gets up on all fours, snarling and growling at us. He really thinks he's a wolf, but he's not, and he looks ridiculous and terrifying at the same time.

  "The delusion's deep," Duncan says. "It goes to the core of his personality. He's absolutely convinced that he's a werewolf."

  "He killed Hazel?" I ask, feeling a kind of rage flowing through my body.

  "He killed all those girls," Duncan replies. "He ripped them apart with his bare hands. Even an ordinary human can rip someone's flesh apart if they're filled with enough anger."

  "We're not ordinary humans, are we?" I ask, turning to him.

  "No," he says. "We're ordinary werewolves."

  Suddenly there's a snarl and Stuart throws himself at me, knocking me to the ground. He bites my face, pulls a chunk of flesh from my cheek, and I feel him trying to rip at the wound with his bare hands. Seconds later, Duncan pulls him away from me.

  "You're not giving me any choice, Stuart," he says.

  Stuart snarls and growls at him.

  "I'm sorry," Duncan says, dropping Stuart to the ground. "Jess, you might want to look away."

  But I don't look away. I watch, my eyes wide open, as Duncan's body twists and contorts right in front of me, finally changing to become a wolf. He snarls at Stuart and then throws himself at him, knocking him down and ripping his throat out with one quick bite. Blood erupting from the wound, Stuart vainly tries to fight Duncan off, but it's clearly too late and after a few moments he falls still.

  I turn and run. I don't know where I'm going, but I have to get away from this madness. I just watched a man, a man I made love to, turn into a wolf and rip another man to death. Heading through the trees, I clutch the gaping wound on my face, feeling hot blood fall down onto my chin, and finally I come to a halt by a tree. Already, the bleeding is stopping and it's as if the wound is healing. Moments later, Duncan - back in his human form - catches up to me.

  "Do you remember yet?" he asks.

  "Keep away from me," I say.

  "Remember!" he insists, stepping close to me. "Remember what happened to us!"

  I close my eyes, trying to block him out, but instead I find more memories flooding back to me. This time, there are so many of them, I can hardly separate them from one another. But slowly I find myself remembering not just individual events, but also who I am. Everything comes back to me, and finally I find myself standing there, facing Duncan, and... I'm still not sure exactly what's been happening...

  "What..." I say, but I still can't quite piece it all together.
<
br />   "Like I said," Duncan replies, smiling, "I'm a genius. I found the perfect way for us to hide. I wiped our memories and gave us these very ordinary lives, but I made sure we were close enough that we'd find each other again."

  "Why?" I ask. I remember everything now, even the moment that Duncan kissed me, put a hand to my face and wiped my mind, replacing real memories with a fake past.

  "I need to find a way for us to hide from Thomas Lumic while I came up with a plan," he says. "The subconscious mind is a powerful thing, but my personality was getting in the way so I had to find a way to let myself work on a plan without having to run at the same time. So I shut down my personality and became someone else for a month. All the while, at the back of my mind, my subconscious was working on a plan. A brilliant plan, one that gives us a chance to defeat Lumic permanently."

  "And me?" I ask, feeling angry that he'd put me through all of this. "Why did you have to wipe my memory too?"

  "I thought that if we were ordinary humans for a while, it'd make it harder for Lumic to track us down." He smiles. "It's okay, Jess," he says. "I've got a plan now. It's a hell of a plan. Quite brilliant, in fact. Everything's working perfectly so far. All we have to do is implement it."

  "So Hazel wasn't real?" I say, shocked.

  "She was real," Duncan says. "I just made you believe you and her had been friends for a lot longer, and I made her believe the same thing."

  "You used her," I say, "and you used me. Like we were toys. You just reached into our minds and did whatever you wanted. Without permission. Without asking."

  "It was necessary," he says. "I needed time to think. I wiped my own mind too, remember. My conscious mind, anyway. My subconscious mind was working away, coming up with a plan. And it looks like I timed everything pretty much perfectly."

  "And Stuart?" I ask. "Did you make him crazy too?"

  He shakes his head. "I knew about Stuart, and I deliberately placed us close to him so that he'd eventually start talking to you. I needed him to prompt you, to start reminding you of who you really are. I know I shouldn't say so myself, but I think it was a rather brilliant plan."

  I take a deep breath. "It's over, Duncan," I say. "I can't let you do this to me."

  "I was protecting you," he says.

  "You messed with my mind!" I shout back at him. "You literally reached in and changed my memories, and I'm supposed to just accept that?"

  "I'm sorry," he continues, "but it really was the only way."

  "No," I say, turning and walking away.

  "You have to help me stop Lumic!" he says, hurrying after me. "I can't do it without you!"

  "And then what?" I ask, not turning to him. "Am I supposed to just stay with you because you're so cool and funny? You're not, you know. You think you're so brilliant, but you're not. You're an awful person. You treat people like they're all inferior to you. You're a monster."

  He pauses, clearly shocked by what I'm saying. "Help me stop Lumic," he says, "and then we'll go our separate ways." He waits for me to answer. "You don't really have a choice. If you go off without me, Lumic's just going to track you down. You're safer staying with me for a little while longer."

  "Fine," I say, "but there's nothing between us. No feelings. No emotions. You can't just fuck me when you're bored. This is a business relationship, to get us out of this mess that you created. And when it's over, it's over. All of it. Do you understand?"

  He nods. For a moment, I feel like he might actually be a little sad. "Just business," he says.

  Without saying another word, we both start walking across the path. I'd give anything to be able to just turn and run away from Duncan and never see him again. I'm sick and tired of his manipulation and his constant refusal to really care about anything. At the same time, I'm part of this whole Thomas Lumic situation and I need to help Duncan deal with it, but then I'm out of here.

  There's no way I can ever trust Duncan again.

  Part Three

  Lovers Beware

  Jess

  London. No matter where Duncan and I go, we always seem to end up back in London eventually. There's something about the city that seems to draw both of us here. I first came to London after I'd run away from home. I was convinced I could live on the streets for a while and eventually make it big, but I found myself trapped in a world full of violent killers and monsters. I still come back, though, despite the fact that these days my fantasies are mostly focused on living a simple life in the wilderness, far from the city. I seem to be bouncing between two extremes: embracing the natural world, and then throwing myself into the chaos of London. And now here we are again: Duncan and I, in our wolf forms, running across London Bridge.

  The city feels particularly alive tonight. Even though it's a week night, people are falling into and out of pubs and clubs. It's close to midnight, and there's still lots of traffic and there are drunk people having fun in the streets. Despite my desire to go and live in the wilderness, coming to London feels a little like a homecoming. I wish I didn't feel at home here, but I do. There was a time when I wanted to come to London and make it big, and I guess those old dreams are still in the back of my mind. The irony is, I could instantly become the most famous person in the whole city if I just showed up on TV and did my whole werewolf routine. I'd never actually go so public, of course, but the thought is enticing.

  Eventually, we switch to our human forms and step out into a busy street. There are bright lights everywhere, shining through the night. Buses roar past. Car horns sound. People shout. We walk along the street, avoiding the drunk people who come slipping out of clubs. Some of them shout out at us, but Duncan completely ignores them and I make sure to just keep pace with Duncan.

  "So you're not talking to me?" I ask eventually, hoping to break the tension.

  "What would you like me to say?" he replies.

  I sigh. I'm the one who should be mad with him, but it's clear that he's sulking about something and - inevitably - he's got the upper hand again. "I'd like you to talk to me," I say. "I'd like to know what we're doing here, and what your plan is, and -"

  "You don't need to know," he says, interrupting me.

  "Don't I?" I ask, starting to feel angry. "Seriously? You don't think I need to know?"

  "No," he says.

  "And why's that?" I ask. It's crazy that he expects me to risk my life but he's not willing to tell me what we're going to do.

  "Because..." he starts to say, before stopping and turning to me as we reach the corner by Charing Cross rail station, "I don't think you should come with me."

  I stare at him for a moment. "What the hell are you talking about?" I ask, starting to get a little annoyed by what feels like needy behavior on his part. I'm so used to Duncan being happy-go-lucky and acting as if nothing really matters, it feels strange - and a little unnerving - to hear him talking about such serious things. At the same time, I can't believe he's seriously suggesting that he doesn't need me. "Of course I'm coming with you," I continue. "What makes you even doubt that?"

  "Because it's for the best," he says. "I've been trying to think of another way, and I can't."

  "Well..." I pause. "You don't have a choice. You can't stop me coming, not after everything that's happened."

  "I need to do this alone," he says.

  "No," I reply firmly, "you really don't. I'm here to help you."

  He sighs. "I know why you're doing this. But you should be mad at me. You should hate me."

  "Why?" I ask, hoping to find out if he understands why I'm angry with him.

  He sighs. "For reaching into your mind and changing your memories like that. It was only temporary, and I did it for a good reason, and I've put everything back to how it was, but... I understand why you're angry, and I'm sorry."

  "You're sorry you did it?" I ask. "Or are you just sorry I got angry?"

  "Both," he replies, "but I need you to get past your anger and see what's really going on here. You've helped me so much, but some things have to be
done in a certain way" He pauses. "Some things are just... traditional."

  "Traditional?" I ask. "Are you joking? I'm not going to just walk away from you because of tradition, I -" I pause, realizing that even though I want to get away from Duncan, he's managed to trick me into arguing that I should stay. "I want to help you stop Lumic," I say, "and then leave",

  "Not possible," he replies. "I need to face Lumic alone. I've got a plan, but it won't work if you're there."

  "You haven't even told me the plan," I say, changing the subject slightly. "You act like you've got a brilliant idea, but you won't explain it to me."

  "I can't explain it to you," he says. "Lumic will try to read your mind if you come, and that'll allow him to find out what I told you. It's better if I leave you in the dark, which is why I really need you to just... go. Leave. Let me do this alone, the way I was always supposed to do it."

  There's part of me that wants to just give up, and let him go, but there's another part of me that thinks it's crazy that he's trying to get rid of me. "I'm not going," I say. "Not yet, at least. Let me come a little bit further with you."

  "You won't change my mind," he says, with a dark tone of voice that worries me. It's as if he thinks there's no chance of defeating Lumic, and he's just trying to save me from the fate that's going to befall him.

  "You can come to the entrance," he says, clearly not entirely happy with the arrangement, "but then you have to let me go on alone. Is that clear?"

  "Would you let me come with you if I was Anna?" I ask.

  He stares at me. "What do you mean?"

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the crumpled photo I found back at Meredith's house in Herne. "Anna," I say, handing it to him. It's an old photo of Duncan with a girl I can only assume is the mysterious Anna. I've been trying to find out who Anna was, but I've had no luck and now it seems like the only choice is to ask him directly.

  "Where did you get this?" he asks, clearly shocked.

  "That's Anna, right?"

  He nods, unable to take his eyes off the picture.