Changeling

by Steve Feasey

  He wanted to hit something. In his anger and frustration he fell to his knees and pounded the earth, ramming his fists into it time after time, beating it into submission. The news had confirmed all of his worst fears, everything about himself that he had feared might be true: that he might never be able to fully control the powers that he had inherited from his parents, that he might somehow tip over the edge and do something truly horrific that would make him no better than Caliban and the other nether-creatures which sided with him. And if he did that, what was left for him? To leave the human world forever and live in the Netherworld with the other creatures. Creatures like him? If his father – who Lucien had described as having complete control over his powers – was capable of attacking his mother in that way, what hope was there for Trey?

  He climbed to his feet again and walked on as if in his sleep; his feet on autopilot as they carried him up the grassy slope. His uncle’s revelations had made it clear that his lycanthropy was capable of rearing its savage head at any point, and that even the amulet – whose powers he had come to trust and rely upon – might not be capable of controlling it. He stopped, screwing his eyes up as another terrible vision formed in his mind’s eye – a hellish image that caused him to utter a small whimper of despair. The picture was similar to the one he had just had of his mother, except this time it was Alexa on the ground, her throat a ruined mess of long, blood-red ribbons that trailed out on to the grass beside her, and it was Trey, not his father, who stood over her with the taste of her blood in his mouth.

  The tears flowed freely now and he stumbled on. He’d entered the woods at the top of the slope and the temperature was much lower here, the cold air eddying around his face like an invisible spectre. Through the trees off to his left he could just make out the sun as it began its final journey towards the horizon, surrendering the last of its light. Soon its cousin would take its place in the night sky, and it would be a full, unadulterated moon that looked down on the earth tonight.

  Trey’s breath hung momentarily in the air before him, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders, lost in thought.

  He wished he had never come here. It had seemed so important to him when he had first found out about his uncle’s existence. He’d blamed Lucien for keeping secrets from him, and had rushed out here to seek out the only living member of his family, hoping to find somebody who could help him to cope with everything that had happened to him. It had not occurred to him that there might be secrets he’d be better off not knowing. Lucien had, as always, simply had Trey’s welfare in mind; he knew what Frank was like; knew what he was capable of. He’d tried to shield Trey from this, tried to warn him without insulting or abusing the teenager’s uncle. But Trey had ignored him and come anyway.

  Trey snorted at his foolishness. He’d come thousands of miles around the world to find his family without seeing that he’d already found it. Tom and Alexa and Lucien had taken him in and given him everything that he could possibly have wanted and needed. They’d made sure that he’d been able to cope with his lycanthrope powers and learned to control the impulses that came with them. They’d taken him into their home and made him a member of the family. And yet Trey had spurned all of it, leaving them to come out here.

  And now, with everything that he had just found out, he realized that he could never go back to that life now. He couldn’t return to London. Could not go back to Lucien and Alexa and Tom – to the people who really cared for him – because he could not, and would not, put them in the danger that his mother had unwittingly been in when she had been with his father. They were too precious to him. They were his family, not a hate-filled old drunk who derived some kind of sick pleasure out of tormenting him.

  He felt beneath his shirt for the amulet that hung around his neck. Up until now he had felt safe with it on; safe from the madness that the moon brought about in his kind. But he had been fooled. It was not some panacea that protected him from the beast within. If anything, it was more dangerous than giving in to his true self, because while he wore it, he was fooling himself that he was not dangerous to be around; that he was in control. He reached into his shirt and grabbed the amulet, lifting it up and pulling the long chain that it hung from over his head. He looked down at the small silver fist, drew back his arm, and threw the chain deep into the woods where it fell somewhere in among the deepening shadows.

  He turned back towards the house, steeling himself to face his uncle, when a twig snapped somewhere behind him. He spun round, looking in the direction of the sound, scanning the gloom for any sign of what might have made the noise.

  Ella moved out from behind a tree. She took a step in his direction, an enigmatic look on her face.

  ‘Trey,’ she said, nodding in his direction.

  A puzzled expression flashed across her features, and she took her eyes off him for a second, cutting them in the direction in which he had just hurled the neck chain. He followed her look, wondering if she had seen him discard it, and realized that he didn’t care.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you out here on your own; it’s not long until moonrise.’ She cast her eyes towards the sky, but it was impossible to make out the heavens through the overhead canopy.

  ‘I could say the same thing about you, Ella. Shouldn’t you be back in your cabin with the other members of the pack?’ He spat the last word out, a sudden feeling of anger coming over him at the thought of the group that had re-banded on his uncle’s land – as if they were somehow to blame for the horrifying news that had been revealed to him that afternoon.

  Ella’s smile didn’t falter. ‘There’s no need for me to go anywhere, Trey; the pack’s right here.’

  She turned her head slightly and the remaining members of the LG78 emerged from the shadows of the woods. They walked up to stand beside her, peering at him with interest. Trey looked about him at the other members of the group. They were all male of course, the werewolf curse being passed from father to son, but he was surprised by how young many of them seemed to be; they were all older than him, sure, but not by very much. There were only six of them, and he guessed that the average age of the group must be about eighteen or nineteen. He frowned to himself. He didn’t know why, but he’d expected them to be older. Lucien had told him Caliban had hunted down and killed most of the werewolves, and yet here was living proof that he had not been as successful in this venture as Lucien had believed.

  Trey’s eyes drifted down to the ugly scar on Ella’s forearm, and he wondered which of the group had attacked her, turning her into the thing that she now was: a Bitten.

  The largest male stepped forward. He was tall and muscular-looking beneath the thick jumper that he wore, and a neatly kept short beard adorned his chin, black like the hair on his head that was tied back in a ponytail. He exuded an aura of power and confidence, and Trey instantly knew that this must be the pack leader, the Alpha, Jurgen.

  There was something about the man that made Trey immediately feel uncomfortable and he had to force himself to stand his ground as the larger man stepped in to inspect him.

  ‘So you’re the new boy?’ Jurgen said. His accent was similar to Ella’s, and again, Trey was minded to think that it was Scandinavian in origin.

  ‘That depends on what you mean by new boy,’ Trey answered. An uncomfortable burning sensation rose in his stomach and he began to sweat despite the cold air that surrounded him.

  Jurgen looked back at him, his expression impossible to read. The irises of his eyes were very dark and seemed to merge with his pupils, which were fully dilated in the low light of the woods. The smile on his face was anything but friendly. ‘Isn’t it time for all good little Wolfan boys to be locked up? Didn’t your uncle tell you that it’s dangerous for you to be wandering around outside on the night of the full moon?’ Some of the members of the pack sniggered at this, and Trey cut his eyes towards them, trying to work out what the pecking order was within the rest of the group.

  ‘The same coul
d be said for you,’ Trey said in a voice that he hoped sounded a lot braver than he felt. ‘Surely it’s time for you guys to crawl back to your own cages.’

  Jurgen took another step closer, forcing himself deeper inside Trey’s personal space. The big man looked down at the teenager, the cruel smile on his face widening. ‘You’re assuming that we are good,’ he said in a low voice. If he was trying to unsettle Trey, he was doing a good job.

  ‘But then again,’ he continued, ‘I have made the same assumption about you. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you don’t want to be locked up in a metal pen all night. Maybe, like us, you think that is wrong.’

  Trey shook his head. ‘No, that’s not it at all.’

  Jurgen glanced back at the others before returning his attention to Trey. ‘Then what are you doing out here?’

  ‘I was just on my way back.’ Trey took two backwards steps, keeping his eyes on the pack. He didn’t want to turn his back on them. In particular he did not want to turn his back on the Alpha, Jurgen. There was something about him that Trey found particularly unnerving, like a dog that you think might just take it into its head to bite as soon as you look away. But he had little choice if he was going to make it back to the house. The uncomfortable feelings in his chest and stomach were getting worse. A knife of pain shot through him, and he let out a small gasp. Looking at the rest of the group he could see that they too were in discomfort, some of them grimacing and hunching their shoulders. Only Jurgen stood rock-like, still glaring at the youngster.

  Unable to stand it any longer, Trey turned on his heel and began to walk away. Knowing that he had little time left, he lengthened his stride into a jog, and then a run as he hurried in the direction of the house.

  He was almost halfway between the woods and the house when the volcano in the pit of his stomach erupted. He cried out, clutching his hand to his abdomen, trying to force his legs to keep going. His skin began to feel incredibly hot, and the uncomfortable pulling sensation had begun deep inside his bones so that within no more than a few more strides he was moaning in pain each time his feet made contact with the ground. He forced himself onward, gritting his teeth against the pain that was growing to an unbearable level.

  He’d cleared the long grass of the slope and was now on the flat ground that led up to the house. He couldn’t run any longer – he stumbled on the uneven ground, losing his footing and falling head first. The pain was in every part of him, and whilst he had experienced the agony of the Change before, he had always had the amulet, so it had been mercifully short. This, however, was like a long, slow, exquisite torture; unrelenting in the agony that piled in on top of itself by the second. A terrible animal-like mewling sound came from somewhere deep inside him, a cross between a whimper and a scream. He tried to stand, almost getting to his feet when another grenade of pain exploded, dropping him to his knees again. He was aware of a high-pitched tinnitus sound in his ears. His body was shaking all over, huge tremors that caused his arms to fly out from his sides. Red-hot nails had been jammed into every square inch of his flesh and it suddenly occurred to him that the tinnitus that he had imagined was in fact his own screams. He looked towards the house that was no more than twenty metres away, knowing that he would not make it back there now. He raised a hand as if he could grab the house and pull it towards him and saw that his hand had begun to change – the fingers shortening and appearing to retract into a palm that was already thickening and swelling into a paw. Hairs formed across his burning skin and Trey sank to the floor, hoping that something – anything – would put a stop to the agony that he was experiencing.

  The Change happened there on the ground in front of his uncle’s house. The last of the human was driven out of the teenager’s body, and Trey let out one last high-pitched scream as he transformed into the huge Wolfan beast. His final animalistic wail was answered by the howls of the pack from the woods as they celebrated the joining of their newest member.

  After that, there was nothing but blackness for Trey Laporte.

  17

  A coppery smell of blood filled his head, making his stomach somersault. The biting cold that ate through his skin and into his bones made the teenager clamp his arms around his torso to try and keep in any hint of heat trapped inside him. Trey slowly opened his eyes, scanning his surroundings and hoping to discover where he was and why he was lying on an icy cold floor surrounded by the stink of blood. He was naked and the spasmodic shudders that wracked his body shook the leafy mattress beneath him. He slowly got to his feet, wincing at the aching in his bones and muscles, his body feeling as if he had gone twelve rounds with a pick-up truck. He blew warm breath into cupped hands and clapped them together against the cold, jumping with fright as a large ugly-looking magpie took off from a branch just over his head, cawing at him in protest.

  He looked down at his hands and noted how they were covered in the coppery-brown of dried blood. Frowning, he made a brief mental check to confirm that he was not himself injured. He reached up and touched his head, thinking that this much blood must have come from a scalp wound, and his fingers encountered stiff, matted hair that also seemed to be covered in the stuff.

  But he was sure that he was unhurt.

  Certain now that none of the blood was his own, his stomach contracted again, and this time he gagged, spewing hot vomit on to the floor, where it sat in a steaming puddle. He walked round in a tight little circle, filling his lungs with cold, fresh air and swallowing the bile that rose up to his mouth.

  He looked around again without a clue as to where he was or how he had got here. He hoped that he was still on his uncle’s land, but with no break in the trees for as far as he could see in any direction, there was no way to tell, and a feeling of panic began to creep over him at the prospect of wandering around in these woods on his own. He needed to get warm and acquire some clothing because he was certain that he would die very shortly if he did not.

  He spun round at a sound from behind him, and saw Ella peering at him from behind a large oak tree. He felt his face burning a bright scarlet as he covered his modesty with his hands.

  ‘Ella,’ he said, nodding his head in her direction.

  She nodded back at him, smirking at his embarrassment. ‘It’s cold isn’t it?’ she said, grinning.

  Trey flushed red again. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said, looking around her. ‘The kill is over there and the others are just waking up. I’ve already seen Jurgen; he’s always the first up in the morning after a full moon Change. He’ll get the others together shortly, and then we’ll head off home.’

  Trey frowned at her, casting his eyes behind her at the dense woods. ‘I thought you just said that you didn’t know where we were.’

  ‘And that’s true, but once we’re all together, we can Change again and then follow our own trail back home. It’s either that, or we wander around helplessly in the altogether until we all die of exposure.’ She looked at him, smiling kindly at the consternation on his face. ‘It’s what we always have to do following the night of a forced Change. We might have wandered several miles away from where we started out the night before, and our only hope of getting back is—’

  ‘I couldn’t go through that again,’ Trey said, cutting across her. ‘I’d rather die out here than experience that agony again.’

  Ella stepped out from behind the tree and walked towards him, seemingly unperturbed at her own nakedness. Trey didn’t know where to look. At first he gawped at her as she slowly approached him, taking in the white, goosebumped skin of her body. He swallowed, the action sounding incredibly loud in his own ears, and he could feel the heat burning on his face. Eventually he fixed his eyes on a large clump of earth at his feet. She was close to him now, too close for him not to take in her body as she stood in front of him, and suddenly she leaned forward to give him a friendly bump on the head with her own.

  ‘Come on, silly, it’s not like that was the first time you’ve been through it. You must
have had quite a few full moon Changes at your age?’

  Trey mumbled something under his breath, still not knowing where to look.

  Ella leaned forward and nudged his head again. Trey thought it a strange action – something between a playful bump and a nuzzle. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it isn’t like that when we choose to Change as a pack. The violence of the forced Change during a full moon is pure, unadulterated agony for us all, but it will be nothing like that, I promise. It will be a wonderful experience for you. You’ll never look back, Trey. You are one of us now. You’re part of the pack.’

  Trey considered this. He thought about how he had transformed into his bimorph werewolf state under the controlling influence of the amulet. Then, the change had been mercifully swift; one huge supernova of exquisite agony and then it was over. But the long, all-consuming torture that he had undergone yesterday had scared the hell out of him, and he shuddered when he remembered it. He now understood what his uncle had meant when he’d told Trey how he wished for death as a respite from the agony of the Change during a full moon. He looked up into Ella’s blue eyes and hoped that she was telling the truth. He had little choice. He would either have to agree to transform with the rest of the pack, or be left out here to die of the cold.

  ‘Is this blood?’ he asked, noting how Ella’s face and hands were also smeared with the dried gore.

  She didn’t say anything; she just stood there looking back at him.

  ‘Where did it all come from?’

  To his surprise she smiled back at him. ‘Come with me,’ she said, turning away from him. She walked back in the direction she had come, and Trey was forced to follow.

  They came to a small clearing in the woods where the other members of the pack were now up and about. They nodded in his direction as he entered the area, and Jurgen came up to him, a broad smile on his face. He clapped a hand on Trey’s shoulder, squeezing the boy’s flesh harder than was necessary. ‘Well, well,’ he said in a voice loud enough that the others could hear, ‘our little wolf cub is here at last. We thought that we’d lost you.’