The Dead Wolves: An Ashwood Novel (Cursed and Damned Book 1)

by Lee Dignam

  She managed to flip the other vampire onto his back. He swung a fist at her and clocked her on the side of the head, but she didn’t feel the sting of the blow. Instead she looked at him, bore her fangs, and hissed into his face. When his fist came toward her a second time, carefully aimed so as to bring it crashing against the same spot it had just hit, she was ready to roll out of the way of the attack and free herself from his grip.

  She sprang to her feet, moving now like liquid—smooth and graceful. Her mind snapped back to her, bringing the roar of the rain to the front of her mind. The vampire she had been fighting was starting to get up, and across from him, she could see two more unidentified shapes moving through the curtain of falling rain. More vampires, she thought.

  “Pixi!” she yelled, “We’ve gotta go!”

  “You go,” Pixi said, “I’ve got this son of a bitch.”

  Cyanide hesitated only for an instant, long enough to watch the incoming shapes morph into men with faces and sharp fangs protruding out of their mouths. She turned tail and ran, hopping across the hood of a car, dashing into a nearby alley, and leaping for the fire escape. In seconds, she was climbing the metal stairs, hitting them hard, pushing her undead body to move as fast as it could move, but her pursuers were near; she could hear them beneath her, hot on her heels.

  When she made it to the roof of the four-story building, she didn’t pause to take in the surroundings, or look for a weapon or a place to hide. She wanted to get away from these guys, because if they caught her, then they’d catch Neo. Maybe they wouldn’t kill her if they caught her, not right away, but once Neo had turned to ash, what use would she be to anyone? She would be next, but not before they made her watch him die first.

  She took the edge of the building in her stride and leapt into the rainy sky, reaching for the much higher ledge and catching it. By the time she pulled herself up, she could see the other three men racing across the rooftop to catch her. Cyanide didn’t wait. She continued to run, ducking beneath low-hanging cables and weaving around ventilation ports, until she reached the next ledge, which she took without thinking, hurling herself across the gap and landing in a shoulder-roll like a trained professional. But the other vampires refused to give up, and before she was moving again, she spotted one of them taking the leap between buildings.

  Cyanide threw herself to the right, dodging the flying vampire’s clawed hands, and began to run as soon as she was back on her feet. When she reached the edge of the roof, she saw there was no gap between buildings; in fact, there were no more buildings at all, only a sharp drop into a pit of iron spikes—the foundation of a building being constructed immediately adjacent to the one she was standing on.

  There was a clearing in the spikes—a way out of this mess on foot—but it was almost a hundred yards away from the edge of the building. She wouldn’t be able to get that far on a single jump, but the vampires were closing in; all three of them were on the roof, now, and blocking the other exits. She would have to go through any one of them if she wanted to flee in another direction.

  “Fuck it,” she said under her breath, and she took a few steps away from the ledge, toward the center of the rooftop. She put her head down and started on her run toward the edge of the rooftop, but she wasn’t the only one running; all three of them were going for her.

  She reached the ledge, placed her right foot on it, pushed all of her undead strength into the jump, and leapt toward that clearing, toward freedom. If there was even a chance she would make it, she had to go for it. But as she fell, she watched the naked metal rods swell up to meet her, and knew the distance was just too great. She covered her eyes to shield her face as best she could. The other vampires laughed from the rooftop, and she caught herself hoping she wouldn’t be conscious when they came to retrieve her mangled body from the spikes; she didn’t think she could bear the humiliation.

  She waited for the pain to hit, but it never came. Instead, she became aware of a cold, vibrating sensation overcoming her body as it painlessly came apart. Her eyes had stopped working, but she could hear much better than she ever could, and through the sound was able to get a picture of her surroundings. She saw the buildings, the street, the cars, and also the flapping of little winged creatures. Not just one or two, but hundreds. They were bats. She had transformed into a swarm of bats, and each and every one of them strangely felt like they were a part of her; every individual bat was as connected to her consciousness as any one of her limbs.

  Cyanide turned her attention to the rooftop where the vampires stood, realizing instantly that she wasn’t looking at them from a vantage below the roof’s ledge, but above. She was flying. A huge, black cloud of squealing, squeaking bats circled the roof. Some of them hovered, while others came down on the screaming vampire, nipping and biting at his flesh, each inflicting a pinprick of pain equivalent to what her sharpened nails had done a moment ago.

  She turned the swarm at another one of the vampires, and they crashed upon him like a black wave. He swatted and flailed against the swarm, and when he caught a bat and tore its head off with his teeth, Cyanide felt it—a kind of ephemeral pain, like pain felt in a dream. But the bats overwhelmed him, and soon he was running too, shrieking into the sleet until his form became one with it, and he was gone.

  At first, she thought she was controlling the bats, but when the swarm began to fly away from the rooftop, she knew that they were controlling her. As she flew, she noticed Pixi staring up at her from the ground, in awe of what she was seeing. An instant later she fled the scene, and while the vampire she had been fighting gave chase, she knew he wouldn’t catch Pixi. She was too fast, too light on her feet for him, and too accustomed to the urban jungle.

  Cyanide continued floating through the dark, night sky, feeling the wind caress her body in an altogether alien way. For how long, she couldn’t say. A minute? An hour? Wherever she was now, she could smell the ocean, and when she searched for the city, she saw all of the city’s lights had merged into blurry clumps of color.

  She had no idea where she was going, and no way of stopping now.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Night chased the sun across the horizon, and Cyanide awoke with a start. She didn’t know how it had happened, or when exactly it was her body had succeeded in reverting to its original shape. She was only aware of the screaming, white-hot pain coursing through her body. Clutching her stomach, she rolled over on the stony ground and threw up black, cold blood. This helped bring the hurt to a manageable level, but left a horrible, bitter taste in her mouth. When she was done, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and sat upright.

  A dark, echoing cavern had gathered around her, hugging her tightly on all sides. Water droplets fell from the ceiling, a cool, briny breeze pushed through an opening, and somewhere in the dark, bats squeaked and rustled their wings. Though the darkness was near-absolute, Cyanide had little trouble seeing exactly where she was and locating the way out.

  She rose to her feet and patted herself down, surprised to find she was still wearing the same clothes Pixi had given her last night, even if they were a little ripped and torn in places. Her purse, however, was gone—and with it, her phone. Must have left it in Pixi’s car.

  Careful not to step too loudly, she walked along the cave wall toward the smell of brine and the ocean. She could hear the press of waves upon a shore, now, and the pull of the tide, but no sounds of the city. No sirens, no people, no helicopters circling overhead, or jet aircraft flying low on their descent into Ashwood International Airport. Out here, there wasn’t a single man-made sound to be heard, and it was starting to make Cyanide nervous.

  She emerged out of the mouth of the cave to an eyeful of the ocean, bathing in silvery, full-moon light. The sky was almost cloudless out here. From where she stood, the city lights themselves were visible enough, if only as an orange glow along a dark, rocky mass of land.

  “How far did I go?” she asked, though there was no one around to listen.


  All she wanted to do was get home. Get home and let Pixi, Neo, and Daniel know she was okay. They were probably wondering where she was, or worse, out looking for her. They would never find her, not while she was all the way out here, but every second they spent trying to find her presented another possibility for Neo—and anyone who happened to be with him—to come under attack.

  Cyanide turned around and scanned her surroundings, hoping to find a road leading away from where she was. If she could hit the road, she could hitchhike, or run, all the way to Ashwood and probably make it before sunrise. It didn’t look that far. But dread soon wormed its way into her stomach. This cave wasn’t near a road, it wasn’t even attached to land.

  She was standing on an island, if it could even be called that.

  It was more like a thumb sticking out of a dark, endless pool. Rocks jutted out of the sea, surrounding the mouth of the cave, with water lapping up against them. She walked around, hoping to find a hint of something man-made—a dock, a pier, a jetty, anything at all—but found only more rocks and water. Ship lights dotted the black carpet unrolled at her feet, each one of them distant and lonely.

  She turned to the cave again and picked her way along the rocky ground toward its mouth, convinced that she had not come here by accident. The bats had brought her here. She hadn’t surrendered herself to them as much as they had taken control of her. It was just as Neo had said—instinct. Only, what instinct could have brought her to this place?

  Cyanide had never set foot out of Ashwood, nor had she ever been on the ocean. It wasn’t that she was the kind of girl to prefer having dry land beneath her feet; no phobias prevented her from stepping into the water if she wanted to. Land was just her home. So why in the hell had the bats brought her here?

  The answer, she thought, was in that cave, and so she went, carefully stepping one foot in front of the other, descending deeper into the darkness until she was sure she was below sea level. The thought that the tide might rise and bury her here crossed her mind, but hadn’t she slept the day away in this cave? If the tide was going to swallow her, it would have already.

  The cavernous walls became tighter and more constricting the deeper she went, turning the air warmer and more humid. Had she needed to breathe, she may have succumbed to claustrophobia by now and bolted for the surface where the air was cool and fresh and there was at least some light by which to see.

  But Cyanide didn’t need light, nor air, so she pressed on, going deeper and deeper, trailing the palms of her hands along the wet walls, feeling the rocky grooves beneath them. A faint memory carried on the back of that sensation—not one that manifested any images or sounds, but a muscle memory.

  The cave closed around her further until she was pushing herself through a gap that was only shoulder width across. There were bats down there. She could hear them squeaking as she had before, only this time they were louder and more restless. In the end, she did have to turn her body sideways to keep pushing through the opening, and when the narrow gap spat her out it was into a chamber large enough for her to stretch her arms out without touching a wall.

  She scanned the area, but it was too dark for her to see anything. Cyanide moved along the cavern, walking blindly until she kicked something metallic. She dropped to the floor and felt around for it, clasping her hand on something cylindrical. Carefully, she felt around the object until her fingers painted a picture in her mind; it was a flashlight. And when she found the button and clicked it on, the flashlight came to life, illuminating the interior of the cavern. It was roughly the size of her living room, barely large enough for someone to live in.

  And someone had been living in here.

  When she turned the light onto the mattress, the entire room started to move. Bats fell from the ceiling, startled by the light, and encircled her in a great torrent of air and wings. Cyanide covered her face and dropped to her knees to protect herself, but the bats didn’t linger. Instead they pushed through the hole she had squeezed herself through and began their ascent through the throat of the tunnel.

  She stood up, dusted herself off, and using the flashlight to guide her movements, began to look around. Yes, someone had been living here alright. The mattress gave that much away. But there were other things, too. Books, lots of books. Fiction, mostly—classic, heavy books one could get lost in for days. On the mattress was a quilt, which sagged and smelled like the inside of the cave itself. A small end table had been pushed through the narrow opening. Carefully arranged on it were a clock radio with a digital display, a battery powered lantern, and a music box that hadn’t tinkled a tune in years.

  Who did these belong to?

  Among these personal effects was a photograph with curled corners, the yellowed edges and faded image giving away its age. Lifting it for a better look, she handled it gently as she blew the dust off, wiping the last remnants away with the tips of her fingers.

  At first, she thought maybe the lack of light was playing tricks on her mind. The picture showed a well-dressed couple smiling in a room filled with people also wearing suits and gowns. It looked like a party, or the start of one. The woman smiling out from the frame had platinum blonde hair done up in victory rolls, a strapless black gown and elbow-high gloves making her look like a true Hitchcock starlet, and a waterfall of diamonds dripping around her neck. The man attached to her arm looked every bit as high-society as she did in his black tux and bowtie, with his hair parted just so, his jaw cleanly shaven and strong.

  The man she identified immediately as Daniel, but the woman, unless she was going crazy, was Cyanide herself. The tattoos were gone, and this woman radiated more class in her little finger than Cyanide could ever hope to possess, but the chin, the lips, the eyes—it was like looking into a mirror. She could almost hear a piece of her mind, of her sanity, snap as she stared at the image burned into that piece of paper.

  She turned the picture around, and on the back found something written: “Welcome to the night, Daniel – Grace.” The author of the note had also written “1953, Ashwood, Gala Night at the Cinema Royale” on the bottom-right corner.

  Grace? Daniel? 1953? It was enough to make her head spin. She would have dropped the picture if she wasn’t so mortified of it getting damaged. If it really was over 60 years old, then the fact it had survived in such good condition despite existing in the belly of this underwater cavern was nothing short of miraculous. But could it be real?

  This lookalike, Grace, exuded a maturity, a confidence, that made it clear she had power. Welcome to the night, the inscription said. Did this mean Grace had turned Daniel? His appearance was just as he looked now. In fact, he hadn’t changed at all since the night this picture was taken. He still wore suits, held his hair in a similar fashion, and was never far from an expensive item—whether it was a watch, a car, or a diamond necklace he had given as a gift. However, he didn’t quite have the same intensity in his gaze, the commanding presence, that she knew him to have now.

  She looked around the cave as if, somewhere in here, were the answers to her questions, but that was stupid. There was only darkness and rock, and these old items. Cyanide went to turn around, thinking maybe it was time to head back to the city; maybe Daniel would be able to shed some light on the matter. But something caught her eye as she went to turn away, and she stopped where she was, staring at the table itself.

  It was not a table at all. In fact, it was a small chest; the padlock had caught her attention as something out of place. She knelt in front of the chest and examined the lock, for which there was no key. When she was done looking for one, she grasped the lock tightly, placed one hand on the chest, and tried to yank it off, but the lock wouldn’t budge.

  What the hell? she thought, noting how even her supernatural strength couldn’t snap the thing apart. She wanted to bring it back to Ashwood with her, but swimming seemed to be the only way to get back to the city, and that would already be difficult enough without having to drag a locked chest along with her, all the while
trying not to get the picture wet. She would never make it back to Ashwood before sunup under those conditions.

  Cyanide stood and marched toward the narrow gap, squeezing through it with the picture in her hand. There wasn’t another second to waste. The cavern walls nipped at her as she pushed through, but soon she was climbing up the gullet of the cave again, heading toward the night, toward the city.

  The sound of lapping water came gradually as she approached, accompanied by the salty smell of the ocean. When she reached the top, she cast her eyes across the bay, toward the city, and tried to gauge the distance. She hadn’t so much as swam in a pool, as far as she could remember. But as the seconds passed and her mind made the necessary calculations, it became clear to her, even if she could swim as fast as she could run, she would not be able to make it back to the city before the sun came up.

  Fuck.

  She went around the island, looking for another way off it—for a ship close enough for her to swim to, maybe. One full of people she could feed off and manipulate into bringing her back to shore. But there was nothing, only an infinite darkness speckled with distant lights. She tried to concentrate on how she had gotten here, what she had done, and the more she concentrated, the more clearly images of what had happened last night came to her mind.

  She had been in a fight, and she had been chased across a neighborhood. Her body still ached from the engagement, and when she examined the sharp sting in her side, she noticed a deep gash just below the ribs she absolutely couldn’t remember anyone inflicting upon her. The skin had been split, and a little cold blood had oozed out during the day, but now that she was awake, it was starting to heal.