by Stead, Nick
I dragged her back towards the barns by her ankle, where I was free to ravage her flesh without being disturbed.
Blood welled up as my fangs raked her skin, crimson rivulets becoming gushing streams and spraying fountains. Exposed muscle glistened in the moonlight, and the chalky white of bone peered through some of the deeper wounds.
I soon tore my way to the rich organs that provided the greatest sustenance. She died screaming alongside the carcass of her husband, and surrounded by pieces of the animals that had been her life, before I’d snatched it so cruelly from her in my bloody jaws. The last of my hunger faded with a final crunch of bone and a large, meaty mouthful, and all went quiet.
With the hunger and bloodlust satisfied, I felt regret creeping into my heart. If it hadn’t been for the curse and the human in me I would never have killed so many, instead taking only what I needed to survive. But it was too late to take back the blood I’d spilled.
A fresh wave of hatred surged through me. I spent the remainder of the night curled up in the driest of the four barns, wishing I could be free of my own humanity as well as the taint their wretched kind had brought on the land. Eventually I drifted off to sleep.
My dreams were troubled but I didn’t wake until sunrise. The transformation took hold, and the sun’s brightness revealed me for the monster I truly was.
The wolf fought to remain in control out of hatred, but the sunlight called me back and I overpowered him before I’d even returned to human form. The scent of the massacres I’d committed was overpowering. Perhaps that was the reason the transformation came to a halt for the first time on a morning after a full moon. My body settled into the hybrid wolf-man once again.
I could have allowed the change to resume until I was fully human. But I found I didn’t want to. The smell of so much death gave new life to the bloodlust. I wanted to take yet more lives.
Jealousy for my lupine half gripped me as I took in the scene of his moon-crazed slaughter. There was blood everywhere, bright and lurid in the morning light.
Animal limbs and entrails lay scattered around in each of the barns, a bloody jigsaw that even an expert in biology would have had trouble piecing back together. But there was little left of the two human corpses, which the wolf had clearly gorged himself upon. It seemed I’d made an utter ruin of the two lives I’d taken that night, not even leaving the legacy of the petting zoo for their loved ones to continue on in their name.
And the horror I’d visited on the family was not quite over. The sound of a car approaching reached my ears, new victims driving unwittingly to their doom. With a wolfish smile, I retreated inside the darkest of the barns and waited for the humans to come to me.
Lady Sarah would not have approved. The thought only made me all the more eager for the kill. I would indulge my bloodlust again that morning, and there was nothing she could do to stop me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Out of Control
The car parked up in front of the old farmhouse and I heard a family of three climb out. They couldn’t see the damage I’d caused to the barns and the front door to the house was closed – it had been the back door my two victims had run out of in the night. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction to waft the smell of carnage to their weak human noses. They weren’t yet aware that anything was amiss.
“Mummy?” The little boy’s voice carried across the grounds, full of excitement and innocence. “Can I go see the animals please, Mummy?”
“Go on then, while we unpack,” his mother answered him. She’d barely finished her sentence before her son set off running towards the barns, the pitter-patter of little feet sounding loud and clear in my lupine ears.
“Not for too long, Elliot!” his father called after him. “Your Aunt Sally and Uncle Jack will want to see you too!”
A low growl drew the little boy to me. He slowed as he came to the barns, trying to decide where the noise had come from. I heard him approaching the one I hid in. Too young to realise something was very wrong, he probably thought his aunt and uncle had added a new dog to their menagerie. Moments later he was rushing into the gore splattered interior, his nose wrinkling as if to fend off the foul stench assaulting it. The child came to an abrupt stop as he locked gazes with a severed sheep head.
“Timmy?” he said. Tears filled his eyes and his lip quivered.
I gave another growl. He looked up from the carnage and froze at the sight of me. The briefest of moments passed while he stared with the same shock I’d raised in his aunt and uncle the previous night. Then the screaming started.
“Elliot?” His mother’s voice was a mixture of worry and uncertainty.
I ignored the adults. The boy’s screams were high and shrill to my sensitive ears, but I didn’t have to endure them for long. Lunging forward, I wrapped my jaws around his throat and cut the noise off with a single crushing bite.
Footsteps thundered towards me as his parents rushed over, but I’d silenced the screams before they could pinpoint his location. Not that it would have made any difference. They were already too late.
I released my grip on the boy and he fell to the floor. His eyes were still wide and staring as I watched the life drain from them. There was something fascinating about those two little orbs, so full of energy and excitement only moments ago, bright as blue summer skies. Death came like a sinister mist, dulling the spark in them until there was only emptiness.
“Elliot!” his mother called again. The footsteps split up as his parents frantically checked each of the barns for their little boy. I gave another lupine smile. The bloodlust was pushing for the hunt, but I wasn’t ready to completely give myself over to it just yet. So I remained in the gloom, waiting again.
It was the mother who was the first to come upon the scene of any parent’s worst nightmare. Overcome with grief, she fell to her knees beside the small body lying in its pool of blood and body parts, and cradled the empty shell of her beloved son.
“Oh God, Elliot, please no, come back to me, come back to Mummy,” she sobbed hysterically, rocking back and forth.
I watched her with cold eyes, as utterly devoid of empathy as the corpse she held in her arms, no matter how disturbing others might have found the sight of her grief, or how moving the depth of her love for her child. They would be reunited in death soon enough.
The boy’s father heard his wife’s anguished cries and hurried over, already fearing the worst after seeing the evidence of a wild animal attack on the farm. He must have found the bodies of the aunt and uncle they’d brought their little boy to see – he’d armed himself with Jack’s gun.
The father squeezed his wife’s shoulder. He glanced over to the back of the barn and our eyes met.
Grief turned to rage. It burned through the tears, mirroring my own fury. Here I was, the monster who had taken their little boy from them, his blood still wet on my jaws. It was all the man’s darkness required to seize him with the need for revenge.
He must have felt so righteous as he raised the rifle and sighted down the barrel, ready to kill me with so simple an action as the squeeze of a trigger. A life for a life, and could I really blame him for wanting that kind of justice? Yet in the grip of my own anger I saw only another human with a gun, intent on slaying any beast that posed a threat to human life which they so arrogantly considered more sacred than the life of any other creature. I responded with a challenging roar, and charged towards him.
Still distraught over the loss of her son, the mother hadn’t noticed what was going on around her. A thundering shot rang out and she jumped, her eyes wide as she glanced about the barn. She screamed when she saw me leaping for her husband and scrambled to her feet, Elliot’s corpse still secure in her arms. Then she fled, leaving her husband to face me alone.
The rifle proved to be as little use for this man as it had been for Jack during the night. He was far from a master marksman and his aim was not true, though he did land a lucky shot in my shoulder. If I’d been a mortal creatur
e he might have succeeded in bringing me down, but without the skill required to put a bullet in my heart or brain he would never even be allowed the comfort of vengeance. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realise the rifle wouldn’t stop me until it was too late.
I crashed into the man and threw him to the stone floor. Stringy flesh ripped beneath my fangs like wet rags, peeling from the ribcage in a spray of blood. Bones snapped like twigs and organs came free of the tubes chaining them in place, his torso reduced to a hollow cavity. I’d dissected my prey in a matter of minutes.
The sound of a car door came as I rose from my kill, and I snarled with a fresh wave of fury. On foot I’d have run the woman down easily. By car was another matter. If she’d given up on her husband and had enough wits left about her to drive away, she may well succeed in escaping the same fate that had befallen the rest of her family.
I burst from the barn and bounded towards the vehicle to find the woman laying the body of her son across the backseat. She took such care, you might have thought he was asleep. Either she was unable to face the reality that her little boy was really gone or she didn’t want me to feed on the body. Whatever her reason, she was determined not to leave him.
The woman just managed to climb into the car before I closed in, desperately rifling through her handbag in search of the key. I threw myself at the door and metal dented, the window smashing in a shower of glass. Screaming, she scrambled across to the passenger side and fumbled with the door handle. I leant through the broken window and swiped for her, but my claws passed through empty air. She’d got the door open just in time and climbed back out, her sights now set on the house.
I drew back and leapt onto the roof, then jumped down onto the other side of the car, landing in front of her. Unlike my lupine half, I wasn’t interested in the thrill of the chase, only the savage ecstasy of the kill, and the feel of frail mortal bodies ripping and tearing in my hands and jaws. So I grabbed the woman by her throat with a feral snarl. She wriggled in my grasp but the mere strength of a human was no match for me. There would be no escaping now.
I threw her body onto the car bonnet, denting more of the metal shell and breaking her bones with the impact. She was too damaged to make another run for it. I released my grip, only to plunge my clawed hands into the soft flesh of her belly, ripping open a hole to bury my snout in and eat her alive like I had with her husband.
The woman died screaming as I drew out her guts. Intestines hung like a string of sausages between my teeth, but there were more appetising organs to be had, so I dropped them and went in search of tastier viscera. Her liver came out next. I bit it in two, one piece sliding down my gullet and the other falling to the ground, where it quivered like a slippery lump of jelly.
I ripped my way through her torso, as much to feed the bloodlust as my hunger for flesh, until only a bloody mess remained of what had once been a human being. Only when the bloodlust was satisfied and my mind cleared of the red haze did I rise from my meal, suddenly aware of the amount of noise we’d made.
We were in what humans would call the middle of nowhere, but I knew I should still check no one had heard all the screaming and gunshots and come to investigate. So I abandoned my kills to search the premises.
All was quiet. No cars disturbed the peace of the countryside, no voices calling out to ask if everything was okay. I was alone, with only the dead for company.
My stomach gave another rumble and I returned to my freshest kills, eating my fill of what was left. Then I slunk back into a barn to rest while I had the chance, making the most of the relatively warm shelter. I knew I should probably try to find Lady Sarah, but it would be riskier to run around in daylight when there was more chance of me being seen and hunted by the Slayers. Better to wait till nightfall. Besides, she would already be hiding somewhere from both the sun and humanity, which would make finding her all the harder.
I settled down amidst the carnage and soon slipped into a light sleep. Not even the nightmares troubled me, and I lay there for the remainder of the daylight hours.
My eyes opened to the sight of a shadowy figure. I growled in alarm, wondering how they’d managed to sneak in without waking me. Then I caught her scent and relaxed. It was only Lady Sarah.
“You are out of control,” she hissed, gesturing to the bloodbath I’d created. I didn’t need my greater night vision to see that she was angry.
It was as if a flame reached out between us then, catching the glowing embers that burned deep inside me and reigniting them with fresh fury. My lips pulled back into a snarl.
“Well what else am I supposed to do with my time? I can’t be human anymore and there’s no wolf packs to run with in this country. So what else is there, other than embracing my true, murderous nature?”
“I had hoped it would not have to come to this,” she said, ignoring my question.
Her hands grabbed my head in a vice-like grip and forced me to look her in the face. I realised what she was doing and started to struggle. “No!”
But it was already too late – my eyes had met hers and the anger suddenly felt to be far away, as if it belonged to someone else. In its place there was only adoration for this beautiful goddess I had the fortune to look upon. When she spoke, her voice sounded to be the kindest and warmest I’d ever heard, and there was no question of whether I would do what she wanted. In that moment, I felt I would do anything to please her.
“No more killing without my permission, except in self-defence. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She let go of my head and released me from her spell. But I was aware of what she’d done and as soon as my mind cleared, the rage crashed back over me.
“You have no right to do this!” I roared.
Her face reverted to the impassiveness I’d grown to expect, all traces of the anger I’d just witnessed hidden as she replied “You left me no choice.”
The show of calmness she now presented angered me even more. I wanted a fight and she wouldn’t even grant me that. She merely walked away, and expected me to follow.
“Killing is all I have left. Don’t do this!” I shouted after her. She carried on walking, without so much as a backwards glance. I roared and lashed out at the walls of the barn, carving deep gashes into the stone. Still the vampire kept going. “I swear I’ll fucking kill you for this! You can’t keep these mental chains on me forever, and when I break free I’m killing you first, Sarah. Do you hear me? I’m coming for you first!”
Not even the disrespect of dropping her medieval title provoked a reaction, and she was suddenly so far ahead that she would soon be out of sight. I considered walking away from her. Would she leave me in peace if I did? No, probably not. She’d said she wouldn’t be responsible for the death of my race, as if she felt honour bound to watch over me. It looked like there was little choice other than to run after her. But I refused to speak to her again that night, contemplating my future in sullen silence. I would find a way to break free of her spell, and I would continue to indulge my bloodlust until the day a human succeeded in killing me. I was determined of it.
We found another abandoned building to shelter in through the day, in another rural area. Childish as it was, I wouldn’t eat any of the dried meat Lady Sarah had offered me in the night. She’d also advised me to return to human form. I’d followed that order only because I didn’t want her to use more hypnosis on me.
My body craved more meat to replenish the energy spent on the transformation. All I could think of was the need to hunt, and to kill.
I prowled the fields outside the empty house Lady Sarah had chosen to hide away in, searching for more prey. My hunt took me to another stretch of woodland, where I found and caught a pheasant, and I gave myself to the bloodlust once more. Yet when I raised the plump, feathery body to my mouth, it was as though an invisible barrier surrounded the bird, preventing my fangs from biting down into the warm flesh. I growled with frustration and tried again. No matter how stro
ng the urge to rip the animal apart or how fiercely I tried to obey that urge, I couldn’t break through the vampire’s spell and end its life.
My jaws began to ache from straining against the mental muzzle and I was just about to admit defeat, when it occurred to me the restraint had been placed on me as a human, not the wolf. With a rush of excitement, I surrendered control to him, thinking if this worked, then perhaps the spell would break, and I’d be just as free to kill once again.
As much as I’d grown to loathe my human half, I co-operated with it since I too shared in the hunger currently assaulting our body. My stomach screamed for food so badly it was almost sickening, and the pheasant I held was too good a snack to resist.
My eyes had turned lupine and my canines had already lengthened into fangs, but my body was otherwise human. Ordinarily I’d have taken the transformation to full wolf, but I knew that would only leave me hungrier still. And now the full moon had passed I wasn’t gripped by the same lunar frenzy which had robbed me of my reason. I wouldn’t waste energy on a mere whim.
The pheasant wriggled in my grasp and I raised it to my jaws. It was no use. The same invisible force prevented me from biting down as it had for the human. I knew fighting it was pointless, so I retreated back into our subconscious, not wanting to remain in control of my body while necessity forced me to stay in human form. I was content to wait for the next full moon, when my time would come again.
The wolf retreated, leaving me clutching the living pheasant I longed to tear into. Rage answered my defeat. Since I was unable to take it out on my prey, I released the terrified animal still writhing in my hands and instead attacked myself, in the grip of a new kind of madness.
