by Jan McDonald
Beckett nodded.
“I'll get over it. What are you doing here? I thought you'd be back home in Romania by now.”
Darius shook his head, “Na, there's nothing there for me. Here on the other hand, here I think I could be useful.”
Beckett grinned at him. “Still fancy yourself as a slayer? Maybe I'd better watch out.”
“If there's one thing I learned the hard way, it’s the difference between a vampire movie and reality.”
Beckett ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, this is reality. And it sucks. No pun intended. So, what do you think is here for you?”
“Lane has agreed to let me stay on. See the bigger picture. I want to help, Beckett. That’s all.”
Beckett nodded at him and turned away, unwilling for Darius to see the distress clearly displayed on his face. Further conversation was interrupted as Lane opened the door to the donor suite. She quickly picked up on Beckett’s mood.
“Is there a problem?”
Darius shook his head. “No. No problem, eh Beckett?”
Beckett turned to Lane and tried to smile but didn’t succeed. “No problem.”
“Good. Come with me.”
She turned and walked away from him her luxuriant long chestnut hair swinging as she moved. He hesitated before following her, watching her with different eyes. Another time, another place, maybe he and she? But this was now and he couldn’t afford to blur the lines. Besides, two vampires in love were as explosive as nitro in a barrel of dynamite. He sighed, feeling the weakness taking over his body, feeling the blood lust rising, feeling his heartbeat slowing to an imperceptible tick. He knew he needed to feed.
“Okay, Legs,” he whispered, calling her by the affectionate name he had given her ten years previously, an acknowledgment of her long slender legs that simply added to her elegance. “You win this one.”
CHAPTER THREE: SURRENDERING TO SLAUGHTER
Jude Mason was becoming restless; he had slept fitfully since returning to his farmhouse at the foot of the Black Mountains where he ran his business. Now he was wide awake, filled with dark energy and he was hungry. Ravenous.
He pulled open his refrigerator, peered inside, and then slammed the door on it. He did the same with every one of his cupboards.
An overwhelming thirst raged through him and he felt as if he was on fire. He tore at his shirt and ripped it from his body in an effort to quell the burning. Sweat was running down his back and there was something lodged in the centre of his chest that almost seemed like a scream waiting to be released. He fought it.
He felt it rising again and swallowed hard on it, forcing it back into the depths. Military training kicked in, discipline was everything. He could beat this urge to scream.
But it was still there, growing in intensity until he felt that it would choke him. It felt like he’d swallowed a melon, whole.
He had found himself in terrible situations whilst a member of the elite SAS and had never felt rising panic, always disciplined, always cool. This was something else. Beyond control.
And that was the crux of the matter; he felt way out of control. Not knowing what to do next, not knowing how to stop the rising tide of panic and dread that was fostering the bloodcurdling scream that he knew would soon break free.
He was in pain then too, his jaw felt as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer and intense agony filled his mouth, originating in the roots of his teeth. Teeth that all of a sudden seemed too big and too many for his mouth.
God in Heaven, they were actually moving.
Something was happening to his eyesight as well, his distance vision becoming blurred and indistinct.
Searing pain in his hands joined the frenzy then and he watched in horror as his fingernails grew while he struggled to make sense of it. Neatly clipped nails became long black talons and hair was sprouting up his fingers, over the backs of his hands and up his arms.
It was a long time since he’d prayed and he fought to find the words in the dense fog that only moments earlier had been his sharp mind.
And he knew he’d lost the fight.
He threw back his head and opened his mouth, his mouth that was too full of razor sharp teeth, releasing the scream that wasn’t a scream.
The howl seemed to emanate from his very soul and it echoed and reverberated around the room, coming back at him, feeding on itself until he couldn’t breathe.
It was over then, the pain, the sweating, the panic.
And the howling.
And what had been Jude Mason had become something else. He had become wolf and he needed to hunt.
He left the door swinging on its hinges and he was gone. Loping across the fields towards the rough heathered landscape dotted with white blobs, woolly white blobs that would become his prey and his food, he felt a surge of animal strength and energy that he had never known before. And a hunger for flesh, raw flesh.
His nostrils were twitching and he was sniffing the air; the scent of his prey was everywhere. The sheep scattered as he approached them but he ran now with wolf speed and deadly accuracy.
He brought the nearest one to him down with a single leap and in seconds he had ripped out its throat and his black claws were tearing at its flesh. His face was buried deep into the blood soaked carcass. Feeding in a frenzy of savagery and ravenous hunger, surrendering to the slaughter.
Temporarily sated he lifted his head from the gory mess. Cool raindrops were falling onto his bloody face, washing and cleansing. He drew a deep breath and howled into the lowering sky.
Somewhere deep in the darkness of his consciousness a light came on.
He stopped breathing and sat back on his haunches, looking around him and then down at the savaged sheep. And the howl became a pitiful whimper.
He was on his feet and running, he didn’t know to where and he didn’t care. He just had to run. And run.
He realised that he was on the top of Pen-Y-Fan, the tallest peak in the Brecon Beacons. It was a popular climb for walkers and climbers alike, but he had ascended the peak through the rough terrain and not on the path that spiralled its way to the summit, following the tough route that he took with his trainees.
The route replicated the famous Fan Dance of the Special Forces, which determined the fitness and navigational skills of the candidates. It was a route that covered twenty four kilometres over the rough terrain of the Brecon Beacons carrying heavy Bergen backpacks and rifles. Jude’s trainees would ascend Pen-Y-Fan and then descend on the opposite side, and then reverse the route. Trainees that made it proved physical and mental strength and if they passed Jude’s pre-selection training they invariably made the real thing. His trainees were allowed four hours to complete the course; Jude, the wolf, had made the summit in less than ten minutes.
He had raged through undergrowth and forestry and his jeans were ripped and bloody. He was thirsty and sniffed the air, the wolf in search of water, the man knowing that at the foot of the high peak was Upper Neuadd Resevoir. Beast and man arrived at the knowledge simultaneously. Wolf via his sense of smell and man from a memory that was buried somewhere in his clouded mind.
He knelt at the edge of the reservoir, back on his haunches, leaning forwards, head down and began lapping, his dreadlocks dipping into the cool crystal water. He drank until the burning fire inside began to subside.
When he stopped lapping at the water, his reflection was set in front of him and the myopic eyes of the wolf were beginning to find human focus again. His reflection came back at him like a bullet and made him recoil.
He looked down onto his muscular chest, glistening with sweat, water and blood. He held his hands in front of him and stared down at hands that had become his once more with neatly clipped nails, hairless but caked in drying blood. His fingers found his cheeks and apart form the usual stubble the layers of course hair had vanished.
His jaw ached as if he’d been chewing on leather for a fortnight.
He was up and running again. Running towards hi
s den.
Once inside the farmhouse, he slammed the door and rammed the bolt home, panting and shivering. He grabbed his cell phone from the table and in a blind haze he punched a message. He threw the phone back onto the table and his eyes immediately fell onto his gun in the corner and he allowed his head to fall onto his chest in defeat. It was the obvious solution.
His hands were shaking and although he didn’t realise it, he was crying softly. He took a deep breath and sat in the oak rocking chair by the side of the range.
During his service in the SAS he had taken human life on more than one occasion, but there had always seemed to be a rationale behind it. Terrorist cells, hostage situations, and some events that would never see the outside of a Top Secret classification. Now he was the threat. If he moved a few dusty files around in his brain, he knew what he had become and what he was now capable of without restraint. It had to end. Before he took an innocent life.
No sense in putting it off. Close range would be messy but he couldn’t help that. One pull on the trigger and it would be over.
The barrel of the shotgun was long and he employed a long carving fork to reach down and push on the trigger, even so, it was awkward. The traditional barrel to the temple was out of the question.
He turned the gun around and rested the stock against the flagstone floor, barrel facing him. He leaned forwards, resting his chin over the end of the barrel. Closing his eyes he sent a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, swallowed hard, and pushed the fork firmly back on the trigger.
Nothing happened. No explosion, no scattering of bone and brain. Nothing.
He opened his eyes and stared at the gun as if it would answer him. Then he began to laugh, a crazy, hysterical laugh that was made of broken glass.
He hadn’t taken the safety catch off.
Well, if that was meant to be a sign, he wasn’t having any of it. He knocked the safety catch off and repositioned himself. Closing his eyes again he dispensed with the prayer and pushed down hard on the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He threw the gun sideways, rage and frustration boiling inside him. The cartridge had misfired. The Law of Sod in overdrive.
“Shit!”
He began pacing the flagstones, sweating again and a tell tale prickle in his jaw.
It wasn’t fate it was a cock up. He wrenched the bolt open on his door and made for one of his several outbuildings where his equipment was kept. At the back of the brick shed he pulled out a tin chest and flung the lid open. He had found it in his cellar when he renovated the place. It contained a set of manacles on a chain, and other medieval looking bits and pieces that had been left by the previous owner. Sicko he’d thought at the time. But now he was glad of them.
He grabbed some huge nails and a sledgehammer. If he couldn’t kill himself he’d bloody well make sure he wasn’t going to harm anyone. Back inside he hammered home several wooden bars and rammed home the heavy bolt.
Down in his cellar he hammered the chain into the back wall, threw aside the sledge and snapped the first manacle around his wrist. It was tight and awkward but he managed to get his other wrist inside the other manacle and banging it against the wall he heard it lock. There was no key.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE HUNGER
Lane had her back to Beckett as he closed the door. He scanned the room in less than a heartbeat, immediately drawn to the mahogany coffee table set between two leather armchairs on which stood two silver goblets filled almost to the top with fresh warm blood. He frowned. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it had been something more clinical.
Lane read him and smiled. “The treatment room is for emergencies, Handsome. You really want to feed in there?”
Thoughts flew through his head in a millisecond. Understanding came immediately. This was to be how he would survive until a cure could be found. No clinical transfusions. No distance. His nostrils twitched as the scent of the newly donated blood connected with receptors and neurons. The blood lust broke the barrier between Beckett and his new DNA and he lunged towards the goblet of blood, the musculature behind his canine teeth throbbed and pushed his fangs into place ready to pierce flesh. Everything swam before his eyes in a red haze.
Lane was across the room even before his new vampire sight could track her. Her arm around him, she guided him to the chair. “Steady Beckett. You will soon learn how to control it. Here let me help you.”
She picked up the goblet nearest to him and held it up for him to drink. Rage and fear and grief welled inside him melding with the intense hunger that had coalesced in the centre of his being. He flung out his arm and dashed the goblet from Lane’s hand onto the floor.
“No! Not now, not ever. Understand?”
He pushed her backwards and was out of the door in a second, past Darius who was still in the reception area waiting for Angel. Out into the night.
Darius was quick off the mark to follow him but a human trying to catch up with a fleeing vampire had no chance of catching him. He returned in minutes, holding up his hands in a gesture of failure. Lane closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Don’t worry. I know where he’ll go.”
“Come on then, I’ll drive you,” he said.
“You’ll need to, I heard him take my car. Hope he drives it better than he drives that heap of his own.”
Darius gave a short laugh. “You know I still expect you guys to fly out of the goddamn window.”
Lane smiled fondly at the young man, “I know we can move pretty quickly but flying is for the movies. We can jump higher than a human and move in the blink of an eye, and yes we can defy gravity for very short periods but flying is strictly for the birds. Come on.”
“His place?”
Lane shook her long mane of hair back from her eyes, “No. I’m afraid we’re in for a climb.”
Darius looked confused. “A climb? It’s dark.”
“Won’t bother Beckett, or me. You’ll need to stick close to me in case you lose your footing.”
“Where in hell are we going?”
“Hell is right. Beckett’s hell anyway. We’re going to climb the Blorenge.” She smiled again at the blank look on Darius’s face. “It’s a small mountain outside of town. Beckett scattered Grace’s ashes up there. It’s where he goes when things get on top of him. It’s where he’ll go tonight.”
They drove from the Sanctuary to the outskirts of Abergavenny in silence and left the car at the last possible place and began walking up the footpath. Lane stopped suddenly and turned abruptly to Darius. “You can either stay here or I’ll give you a lift?”
Darius knew her meaning immediately. Lane would pick him up like a straw doll and be at the top of the mountain with him in her arms in a matter of minutes. He shook his head. “No thanks, I’ll keep my feet on the floor down here. I don’t think you need me anyway. It’s only Beckett.”
Her face was sombre. “It’s Beckett in a rage of burning blood lust, out of control with grief. It’s Beckett lost. I really don’t know how this is going to end, but I know one thing. He needs to feed and soon. Or we’ll lose him forever.”
Darius nodded at her. “You go; I’ll be ready when you get back.”
They understood each other. Beckett had chosen the hard way. As he always would.
This time there would not be the finesse of a syringe or the Sanctuary, this time he would have to feed directly from a vein. From Darius.
Lane put her hand on his shoulder. “I hope Beckett knows how much of a friend you are.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to tell me one thing.”
Lane knew his fears. “There is no danger while I’m here. He won’t take more than he needs. I’ll see to that. And there will be no change in you, except for a small depletion in blood volume. You’re healthy enough to make it back up quickly with plenty of fluids.”
“You’d better get moving then,” he said.
In a heartbeat she was gone, faded into the darkness that his hu
man eyes couldn’t penetrate. In minutes she was already a quarter of the way up.
Lane looked up towards the top of the mountain, using her vampire senses she found him, and her heart ached for him as she felt his torment. Her vampire hearing picked up the sobs and the gut wrenching cry into the night.
Minutes later she was at his side. His hands were in his hair as if to tear it from its roots and the tears were flowing freely down his cheeks. The look in his eyes was that of a condemned man. He searched her face, trying to read her but failing again. “What do you want, Legs? I’m beyond your help this time.”
Lane didn’t give way to the urge to hold him, standing fast a few feet from him and keeping her voice deliberately cold.
“I want to see you do it. That’s what you’ve come here for isn’t it? To end it all. Well, go on then. Jump. I’ll just stand here and watch as your new DNA overrides your injuries. It’ll be more painful than anything you can imagine but that’s what you’re good at isn’t it? Suffering. But then I guess that’s the years of Catholic doctrine trying to get out. Go on, Beckett, do us all a favour, after the injuries use up the last of your energy to heal themselves, you’ll fall into the long sleep and there will be no waking you from it. I’m here as your witness.” She paused. “What are you waiting for? Apart from the shattered bones, ripped flesh and spouting arteries, it’ll be a breeze. The easy way.”
His sobbing had subsided and suddenly all his anger and fear filled him and there was nothing else. He lunged at her and his hands were around her throat and he was squeezing, his thumbs pressing hard against her windpipe. Lane didn’t move, she simply stood locking her eyes into his own crimson veiled orbits.
As quickly as his rage had welled inside him, he felt the last of his energy flutter and fail. He dropped his hands and lowered his head. He turned away from her, his hands covering his face.
“I can’t,” he said in a whisper.
Her arm was around his shoulder then, “Of course you can’t Handsome. You’re Beckett.”
