by Stead, Nick
Copyright
A TWISTED FATE PUBLISHING BOOK
First Published in 2016 by Wild Wolf Publishing
Revised edition published 2020 by Twisted Fate Publishing
Copyright © 2016 Nick Stead
Copyright © 2020 Nick Stead
The right of Nick Stead to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and scenarios are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Second print
Twisted Fate Publishing Ltd
115A Armitage Road
Milnsbridge
Huddersfield
HD3 4JR
United Kingdom
www.twistedfatepublishing.com
Dedications
As always, for my amazing family for their continued support and belief in me, especially my Mum, my sister Amanda, and my Auntie Debbie for always being there for me at local events.
And for my friends for all their support, with special thanks to my beta readers Hannah, Clare and Charlie for the great feedback to help make Hunted the best read possible. Special thanks also goes to Lauren and Francine for their help with the Hunted trailer and especially Tom (aka White) for not only driving all the way up from Wales to let me chase him across the moors, but also acting as chauffeur for the day and dealing with numerous aches and pains from filming.
I would also like to thank my fellow writers and friends at Huddersfield Author’s Circle and Write Club once again for their support and feedback, and helping me to continue to grow as a writer. More thanks goes to Owen for reading through these second editions – I’m sure I owe him several beers by now!
And finally, thanks to the other two founding fathers at Twisted Fate Publishing, Chris who has been the driving force behind the company and Gareth – thank you for also reading these second editions and for your continued hard work on the cover design to get things just right. I know I owe you beer too!
Nick
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
A Harsh Reality
CHAPTER TWO
New Challenges
CHAPTER THREE
Lost in the Rage
CHAPTER FOUR
Out of Control
CHAPTER FIVE
Looking for a Fight
CHAPTER SIX
Burnt Out
CHAPTER SEVEN
Growing Emptiness
CHAPTER EIGHT
Return to the Lunar Madness
CHAPTER NINE
A New Threat
CHAPTER TEN
Dead Inside
CHAPTER ELEVEN
More Confusion
CHAPTER TWELVE
Last Orders
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Anger Rekindled
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stoking the Flames
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Chained Fury
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Wolf in Human’s Clothing
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Blood Festival
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cheating Death
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Danger in the Shadows
CHAPTER TWENTY
New Purpose
CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE
A Taste of Heaven
CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO
Quest to Prove My Innocence
CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE
Enemies Abound
CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR
Into Enemy Territory
CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE
The Last Stand?
CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX
Death Sentence
CHAPTER TWENTY–SEVEN
Beneath the Mask of Sanity
CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT
Hunted: Part One
CHAPTER TWENTY–NINE
Demonic Intervention
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hunted: Part Two
EPILOGUE
Dear Readers
VENGEANCE (Sample)
About the Author
Also By Twisted Fate Publishing
THE CROWMAN (Sample)
PROLOGUE
Light creeps across the woodland floor as a new day dawns, painting a grisly scene on the bed of autumn leaves – your final resting place. Blood seems so bright in the early morning sun, ruined flesh glistening red.
Your limbs lay sprawled, one arm bitten off at the elbow. Ripped flesh hangs from the bloody stump like gruesome rags. Bare bone shines with crimson streaks where chunks of meat have been ripped away, and your torso is completely torn open. There is nothing but an empty cavity now, what organs remain lying strewn around and half-eaten. And then there’s that bloodied mask that was once your face.
Brains surround the punctured skull in a ghastly halo, gaping holes all that remain of your eyes. Flies fill the sockets. They buzz around pale skin and crawl inside your ears and nose, feeding and laying their eggs in every nook and cranny. You have been reduced to nothing but meat.
Somewhere nearby, a chilling howl sounds from a bloodied muzzle, turning to a human cry of anguish. You might have been dragged through the black veil of death, but it seems there is more for you than darkness after all. Your presence lingers on in this earthly plane, still aware of the world yet powerless to do anything to shape it.
Those loathsome six-legged scavengers take flight as fear overrides hunger. Birds singing to the early morning fall silent, and rodents seek refuge in the undergrowth. They know better than to linger in the presence of the unnatural beast invading their habitat. Instincts save them where thoughts failed you.
And here I stand over your mortal remains, covered in your blood. Underneath the filth, my skin remains as flawless and unmarred as the day I was born, despite everything my body’s been through over the years. But for all the healing capabilities of my curse, I still carry the scars, invisible to the naked eye, yet they mark me nevertheless. And just as scarred flesh from old physical wounds can still throb years later, so too do I feel the ache of these mental wounds, all the more potent whenever I must walk alone. So why take your life when my heart yearns for companionship? I began my tale out of the need to share the burden of this pain I carry, the weight of all the deaths which still hangs over me, even now. Killing you only added to my burden, undoing any relief I might have found in the telling.
I could blame the hunger of course, or the call of the moon robbing me of my senses. But to do so would be a lie. In truth, I’m no more than a killer, a monster born of humanity, but also driven by a wolf’s hunger for raw flesh.
Most people don’t know what it is to truly dwell in the darkness. That has been my reality for some time now. The darkness at the heart of my human side has ruled me for so long, I don’t think I could pull myself back out, even if I were willing to try. And to drag others into the darkness has become all I know. So it was back then, early in my lycanthropy, and so it is now.
Did you pity me when you first heard how my life was ripped from me by this curse, I wonder? Did you feel sorry for this poor, wretched creature, condemned to prey on those around him, before I crushed that pity, along with all your other thoughts and feelings – your very life? And does it now bring you pleasure to hear of my
suffering? I’ve proven myself to be the monster beyond a doubt, after all. Perhaps I’ve earned your hatred. That is, if there is anything left of you to hate. Are you truly still with me, or am I merely imagining this presence I sense? No matter. I promised to continue my tale after the full moon, so continue it I shall. If it brings you any enjoyment to hear of my suffering then it’s the least I can do. And if you are no more than another product of my guilty conscience, perhaps voicing more of this pain will bring some relief again. You may not really be here this time, there may be no one listening, but I want to continue.
Very well then. We began in the year 2003, with my final day as a human and the struggle through my last year of high school. Now we go back to where I left off in 2004, after I’d chosen to leave the human world behind, when a new struggle was only just beginning.
CHAPTER ONE
A Harsh Reality
Blood pooled at my feet and seeped into the soil, the last remnants of life from my latest kill. He fell to the ground and another human took his place. The sounds of battle filled the night: the crack of gunfire, the heavy thud of sword through bone, and the wet, tearing sounds of flesh being ripped apart.
Corpses littered the battlefield, some rising as zombies, others never to rise again. Zombies – they were everywhere. Moving through the battle in a cascade of maggots, each in various stages of decay. The new dead walked almost like humans. The older ones limped, their muscles stiff and almost useless. Some were reduced to skeletons, Lady Sarah’s power the only thing binding the bones together. Some had died in the last world war, their legs long since blown off. They dragged themselves along with their hands. Some groaned. Others were silent, their vocal cords rotted away years ago. Few of them were whole, but they didn’t need much to kill. One of them was even missing its head, but it seemed to be doing well enough without it.
They pulled their victims apart. Some of them ripped through flesh and bone with their teeth. And they were literally unstoppable. Bullets tore holes in them, blades hacked them to pieces, and still they carried on their relentless attacks. Most of them didn’t even bleed. The freshly dead did, but there was no clotting, no healing, not like the living. Of all the undead, they were the closest to being truly dead.
Another human came at me with a sword. Clawed hands shredded his skin and blood poured, my fur soaked with it. Then a zombie crawled towards me, dragging its useless legs because the nerves had been torn out at the base of the spine. A short length of intestine trailed behind it, the rest having been cut away after it had served its purpose as rope to bind her. It was a woman once, barely recognisable now.
Empty sockets gazed upwards. Her nose twisted at a crooked angle, swollen and bloody, and her ears were long gone. The lower half of her face was missing. Teeth grinned, skull-like and macabre. There wasn’t an inch of her body that had been left untouched.
Other zombies lurched towards me and I found myself surrounded. But something was wrong, we were supposed to be on the same side.
The zombie of the tortured woman latched onto my leg and bit down hard enough to draw blood. A scream tore from my throat as a second zombie sunk its teeth into my shoulder. I tried to fight them off but it was no use, they were too strong for me. My human hands tore at the second zombie, trying to pry its jaws off my flesh. But that wasn’t right either, I didn’t remember transforming back to human…
A werewolf loomed over me, blood on its jaws and death in its eyes. I was no longer one of the undead, just a human again, body frail with mortality. The zombies ripped me apart in seconds. Like piranhas, they stripped me to the bone. A last dying scream escaped my mouth, the end drawing nearer. And then came the sound of real enemies somewhere on the edge of consciousness, beyond the nightmare, and I fought my way back to the waking world.
Lady Sarah was already alert beside me. Predatory brown eyes stared straight ahead, her body still as a snake waiting to strike. They were stealthy for humans, but for all the Slayers’ training and technology, it was no match for our supernatural senses.
It had only been three nights since the battle in my hometown. I hadn’t expected them to send more so quickly after our victory, or for them to find us so soon after leaving the area. But how they’d located us didn’t really matter. It didn’t change the fact we had become the hunted.
Of all the deaths I’d caused in that fight, only one weighed on my conscience. For the blood ties and the bonds of family are difficult to break, and on some level I supposed I had loved my dad, though such emotions had been hard to find in my heart towards the end, once my rage had broken free and consumed me. To say I grieved for him would not be entirely accurate but in the aftermath of the battle, when my rage had subsided, there were the stirrings of guilt such as I had not felt in months.
What troubled my conscience the most was the thought of the destruction I had wrought on the lives of Mum and Amy. In losing both me and Dad that night their world had surely been left in ruins, by my own hand. It pained me to think of the heartbreak I must have caused them, whenever I was given the chance to dwell on it.
I rose beside the vampire, stiff and aching from sleeping on the hard floor. She relied on me to watch over her during the daylight hours, and I had been allowed a few hours of rest while she watched over me in return. But sleep had not been easy since the curse had given rise to nightmares, and sleeping rough had only added to my problems with insomnia. I was not adjusting well to the new way of life, caught somewhere between the worlds of man and nature, but belonging to neither.
Nothing had been the same since becoming a werewolf roughly a year ago. Day by day I’d lost a little more of my humanity, until I knew I could live among humans no more. The battle had brought with it the final realisation that I had to leave my old life behind and move on, or risk hurting my remaining loved ones. That was proving to be more of a challenge than I’d expected. It had been all I’d known prior to this new, harsh lifestyle I’d suddenly found myself in. And after years of living in the world of modern comforts, it was something of a shock to the system to be without all that which most people take for granted.
As well as missing my bed, I found myself longing for a shower more than my teenage, human self would ever have anticipated. There had been no time to wash since the battle and my body was covered in dried blood and filth, as well as my own grease and sweat. And while I had become accustomed to living with hunger when I’d been captured and starved by the Slayers, it was already becoming a constant sensation which only added to my discomfort.
Lady Sarah had promised to teach me how to survive in the shadows, and the first lesson had been to hunt only small prey which would attract less attention, or to scavenge when possible. I’d not been permitted to eat my fill since before the battle. Such small morsels as rabbits and birds could only ever take the edge off the hunger – I needed far more meat to satiate my unnatural appetite.
The Slayers had my full attention now, stomach growling as I locked eyes on them. Then there was the hatred. I still blamed them, in part, for bringing my human life to an end, and I let it awaken my anger, constantly smouldering within the darkest recesses of my very being. A growl rumbled deep in my throat and my lips pulled back to bare bloodied teeth, ready for a fight.
“No, Nick,” Lady Sarah whispered.
“Why? There’s only a handful of them.”
“No, we must choose our fights carefully if we are to win this war.”
I ignored her and let the transformation take hold, wanting to revel in the destructive power of my lupine body once more. I hungered but it was no longer the mere craving for human flesh that drove me. No, I thirsted for blood and hungered for death, for slaughter. I had developed a need to kill, born of the rage and bloodlust awoken by the curse, all the more potent for the waxing moon. In fighting the Slayers I could indulge my dark desires, but it was more than that. I embraced my rage because it kept the guilt and the pain at bay, and I felt the need to lose myself in the bloodlust to avoid
falling back into the pit of despair I’d been in the previous winter.
“Foolish boy!” Lady Sarah hissed. “Do you not recognise the spellcaster from three nights past? It is a fight we cannot win.”
“Don’t treat me like I’m some mortal kid anymore,” I snarled, but suddenly my skin felt as if it were burning all over again. The memory of the witch I’d faced flashed through my mind – she who had nearly ended my life, if Lady Sarah hadn’t been there to save me. Much as I hated to admit it, the vampire was right. The spellcasters could easily have been the end of the army we’d gathered for that fight, and between their power and the guns we would face from the mortal Slayers, the two of us alone couldn’t hope to defeat them.
“There is no shame in tactical retreat,” she said in a gentler tone, her face taking on a rare hint of kindness, her eyes almost warm.
“Tactical retreat,” I snorted. “Call it what you want, it’s still running.”
But I let my anger burn back down to the embers deep within, though I didn’t reverse the few changes that had already begun, intending to take the transformation all the way to my faster wolf form.
“There is no time,” Lady Sarah said. “We have to go, now!”
She took off, leaving me no choice but to sprint after her in my current shape. I couldn’t keep the change up whilst moving – it was too awkward to run on shifting flesh and bone.
