by Nick Stead
“It was Ulfarr’s duty to warn the rest of our kind and our allies that there appears to be a killer among us, and if the culprit is caught alive it will fall to him to carry out the execution. So you must not give him a reason to convict you because no matter how little evidence, if there is something to suggest your guilt it will be enough to satisfy the others, especially with the prejudice most vampires still bear towards your kind. And that’s all Ulfarr needs to carry out your execution, which would bring him no greater pleasure, of that I’m certain.”
“Great,” I said again. “There’s one other thing I don’t understand though. If an Elder vampire like Ulfarr is so powerful and commands so much respect not just among your kind but also the ghouls, why doesn’t he lead us into battle against the Slayers? Why did it fall to me in the battle we fought back home?”
“Ah, if you think I am overly cautious, it is as nothing compared to the wariness of the Elders in the face of modern technology. Even a vampire so old and powerful as Ulfarr would perish in the blast from the bombs mankind have developed, so they will not risk open warfare for fear of leading us all to our deaths. And even the Elders remain vulnerable through the daylight hours. No matter how many victories Ulfarr could bring us, there will always be more Slayers, and though they prefer the sport of hunting and killing us through the night, they will track down our daylight refuges if necessary. As arrogant as men can be, they are not entirely stupid. They will take advantage of our vulnerability if any of us are powerful enough to pose too great a threat for them to face in the hours of darkness.”
“So that’s it then, we’re just going to hide in the shadows until we fade away into myth and legend?”
“What more can we do?” Lady Sarah asked, suddenly sounding tired. She didn’t want another argument, knowing it would get us nowhere. And without the anger driving me, I didn’t have any real reason to argue either, so I let it go. It had been a long night and I soon slipped into more troubled sleep.
Chapter Ten – Dead Inside
I was back in the familiar darkness of my bedroom, the early morning light just beginning to bleed through my curtains and chase away some of the shadows. But I still felt cold, even curled up in my old bunk bed beneath my thick winter duvet, and there was none of the comfort my surroundings should have brought me.
My bedroom door creaked open and I heard footsteps approaching. With my heightened senses I knew they didn’t belong to Mum or Amy, and I pulled the covers over my head. Of all the family members I wished I could see again, he was the last one I wanted to talk to. Yet face him it seemed I must, his voice sounding exactly as I remembered it when he spoke, albeit without any of the anger it had so often held.
“You can’t hide behind the rage forever, son,” he said. “Sooner or later you have to face what you’ve done.”
“No!” I snarled, throwing back the covers to glare at my Dad. “Why should I feel bad for killing you when all you ever did was make us miserable?”
Mum and Amy walked in to stand beside him, their eyes still full of grief.
“How can you think we’re better off without you both?” Mum asked me. “You tore our family apart, Nick. Do you really think you can ever make peace with that?”
“We will always be a part of you, son,” Dad said. “I will always be a part of you. You can’t keep running from that – sooner or later you have to face what you’ve done.”
“No!” I roared, my eyes snapping open as reality crashed back over me. But try as I might to be angry, it still wasn’t there. And that was exactly the problem – it seemed I had no more rage to hide behind. Without it my thoughts turned increasingly to all that pain and grief I must have caused my family, and I was growing more and more homesick. Depression was filling the emptiness inside, the emotion I least wanted to feel, but without my bloodlust to offer me a way back out I was becoming trapped in that dark pit. Despair weighed me down, crushing in the knowledge that I couldn’t go back, no matter how I longed to do something for my family, to help ease their pain, and no matter how great I desired to return to my old life. I could never go back.
“You murdered me, son,” came my Dad’s voice. “Even if you could go back, how can you ever make that alright?”
I looked around in the early morning light but I couldn’t see him. I was coming to the conclusion that my brain was my own worst enemy. It seemed my mind was especially good at tormenting me with the things I just wanted to forget, and since I no longer felt any horror for the victims I’d so brutally murdered, it had turned to twisting the knife in the one wound that could still cause me pain. My family were my weakness and my mind wouldn’t let me move on, no matter how I tried. I couldn’t help but beat myself up over the things I’d done, even though I knew it was pointless. I couldn’t change the past. I couldn’t bring my Dad back, even if I really wanted to. And did I want to take it back? I’d been so sure we’d be better off without him, but my treacherous mind kept showing me images of Mum and Amy, broken by the sudden loss of both me and Dad. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. All I knew was that my family must be suffering, and it was because of me.
Lady Sarah was quick to notice this latest deterioration in my mental state when she rose at nightfall, but she didn’t have the patience for my self-pity.
“You’re still mourning for your old life and it’s doing you no good! How will you ever find peace if you don’t move on? That life is over; you must accept who you are now and adapt to this new life you’ve been given. It doesn’t have to be a curse if you look for the positive, instead of focussing on the negative all the time.”
“And how long did it take you to move on?” I growled, trying once again to rekindle my anger, despite the message in my dream. I’d happily lose myself in it to escape the guilt of what I’d done to my family. “Oh that’s right, you didn’t till you had to for your own survival; you told me the night we first met! You got to carry on as if everything was normal, till your immortality became too noticeable. So forgive me if I don’t jump to take your advice. You don’t understand what I’m going through and your sympathy is as dead as your humanity!”
“You do not have the same luxury I did,” she snapped. “And do not assume it was any easier for me, just because the threat of the Slayers was less. It was equally as hard for me to relinquish my humanity as it is for you, even if I was able to cling to it for longer. I am trying to help you adjust to this life as quickly as possible without making the same mistakes I did. But if you don’t want my help then fine. Go and get yourself killed by the Slayers or Ulfarr.”
“No,” I replied, defeated. The depression only weighed on me all the heavier when my rage didn’t even stir within. “I know I’m not ready yet and I know you’re only trying to help. I’ll try to concentrate.”
With the vampires looking for even the smallest excuse to blame me, she was growing more determined to carry on in her attempts to teach me greater control over myself.
“Then come, you still have much to learn if we are to ensure your survival should we ever become separated,” she said.
I was already growing weary of her lessons but it seemed I didn’t have much option, so I trudged after her.
“It's about time you learnt to tread lightly,” she observed. “You might be able to rely on the wolf to guide your paws when hunting, but you need to be equally light on your feet as a human.”
I knew she was right but I was too stubborn to admit it. I had always had heavy feet as a human – the traitor Vince had said as much the second time I met him, making a joke out of it. I also knew what was coming next, and I knew once again she was right, but I was also too stubborn to act on her advice. Especially when she was asking me to embrace the very thing that had ultimately brought about the destruction of the life I found myself missing more and more as time went on.
And just as I knew she would, she said “Of course, this would no longer be a problem if you'd just allow your mind to become whole again. All those skills e
ach half instinctively possesses, or has learned over the years, would be at your disposal. With your combined skills you could become a far more successful predator, better than either half of you will ever be alone.”
So I was forced to spend each night with her, breaking off only to feed. I was starting to hate it. The daylight hours offered little respite, the weather growing colder as time wore on, making it increasingly hard to sleep. The nights taxed both my body and mind and I was becoming exhausted, but there was no peace to be had when I laid my head down to rest on the cold, hard ground, far removed from the human comforts I used to know. It was yet another reminder that the simple pleasures most people take for granted would forever be denied to me. Just when I thought I had come to terms with the fact I was no longer human, I found myself longing to be amongst them once more.
How long had it been now? It was hard to say. The nights all bled into each other until it became just one continuous period of darkness with the occasional bit of daylight thrown in. It had been some time since we left my hometown but not that long, I knew that much. There’d only been four full moons so it couldn’t have been more than four months. And already I missed my old way of life. Surprisingly it was the little things I often missed the most. Obviously I missed my family and my mates, as evidenced by the torment I faced both awake and asleep, but I also found myself longing for a good book to read, or my video games, or more often than not my music, which wasn’t mainstream enough for me to have heard from human buildings in the distance or the occasional passing cars on quiet country roads, before we’d been driven to our present surroundings.
I even missed the seemingly mundane aspects of my old human life, like transport. Unless I’d been itching to get back to my games either on the internet or the PlayStation, I usually wouldn’t have minded an hour or so travelling in the car, watching the world rushing by and allowing my imagination to run wild. Or maybe it was just my aching paws that missed it. My stamina might be greater than any mortal creature, but even a werewolf has his limits.
Winter began to extend its frosty claws over the land. Whichever part of Britain we’d ended up in, it had to be high above sea level, and the weather’s icy bite came so much stronger as a result. I was getting less and less sleep as the temperature continued to drop and conditions worsened, not only uncomfortable on the hard floor now, but cold and miserable without any shelter to protect from the elements, even when curled up in wolf form, and often hungry with the lack of prey to feed on in the area. I knew I was tired but the cold was keeping me wide awake, and I took to wandering the moorland in that halfway state between boy and wolf, hoping the simple act of moving would help bring some warmth back to my numb body.
God how I missed my old life. It had begun to seem increasingly like no more than a dream as my current reality grew ever harder, as if it had never been and there was only the miserable existence which I’d found myself trapped in. What I wouldn't have given to see my family and my mates again, to hang out with them and enjoy human pleasures. Would I have given it up so freely if I'd truly realised the harsh nature of the world I'd chosen to embrace? No, had I known the reality of life outside of the human world I wouldn’t have so readily left it all behind. I’d thought I was embracing the new world to which I now belonged, but it seemed there was no real place for the undead, no world of their own. Just as we were forever trapped between the realm of the living and the dead, so were we caught between the worlds of humanity and nature. Once our humanity was gone we could never truly be a part of their world again, yet neither did we belong to the natural world. It seemed we were doomed to forever be the outsiders looking in, living in places such as this, on the fringes of the human world but never quite a part of the natural one either.
Gales began to roll across the country. The wind ruffled my fur, seeking to drive the icy cold of winter past my thick coat and through to my very bones. When it failed there came a stronger blast, assaulting me with such force that it became a struggle to breathe. Now that winter was fast advancing I was forced to spend as much time in a more lupine state as possible just to stay warm, and even with a body designed to withstand such harsh weather I was still miserable.
We were exposed out there on the moors. There was no shelter from the raging winds, not like humans safe behind their four walls, warm within their homes. It was okay for the vampire, hidden away during the day. In protecting herself from the deadly sunlight she would also be protected from the elements, at least to an extent. Did she even feel the bite of the icy cold wind upon her equally cold skin? She hadn’t sought out any warmer clothes, seemingly content to roam around in the same black dress she’d worn ever since I first met her. Clearly vampires didn’t sweat like mortals, for I hadn’t noticed the dress beginning to smell at all. But I was sure it couldn’t offer even the slightest bit of warmth, which made me wonder if she felt any change in temperature at all.
I, on the other hand, was all too aware of the drop in temperature. Having spent most of my life inside wherever possible, it was something of a shock to my system to suddenly find myself out in such unforgiving conditions. Though common sense told me to keep moving to generate body heat and thus provide a line of defence against the cold, all I wanted to do was curl up into a tight ball and lay there shivering and pathetic.
And finally when I felt I couldn’t go on, an aching throb deep in my calves, pulsing with every step I took, and the cold seeking to drive me back to the ground, I caught the sound in the distance of the human world I longed to know again. I knew if I allowed myself to get close not only did I run the risk of the Slayers finding us once more, but also that of the temptation to walk among them and seek to be closer to that world again becoming too much. Yet after the time I’d already spent in total isolation, I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Like so many of mankind, the human in me longed for that which was to remain firmly out of my grasp, the very things that were denied to me. The more time I’d spent fleeing from place to place, following the instruction of Lady Sarah and struggling to survive, and now suffering in the cold on top of that, the more my heart ached for the human life I had once known, until I'd been so cruelly torn from it by the curse. The closest I could hope for was a solitary walk on the fringes of their society, snatching glimpses of lives similar to my own prior to all this madness.
Lady Sarah probably would have told me I was doing myself no good by spending so much time looking and obsessing over what I could no longer have, had she known, and she would have been right. It was only feeding the depression which had been growing inside me, and I couldn't help but feel doomed to walk this world alone for all eternity. The vampire could never be the companion I sorely needed, and there were none of my own kind left. Humans were too frail with their own mortality, and anyone I allowed myself to grow close to (assuming I wasn't too damaged to feel anything like love or friendship) would only end up dead one way or another. Wasn't that why I'd left everyone I'd once cared about in the first place? I knew all this, but still I mourned everything I'd lost, and allowed my mind to torment me with these feelings of longing.
So I stood on the highest hilltop, looking down into the valley where a small rural village lay before me, somewhat humble and more modest when compared with the urban sprawls I had grown up with. I could tell it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else and one neighbour’s business soon became the business of the entire village. The kind of place where a stranger would be instantly recognised as an outsider, and even instantly mistrusted by some of its inhabitants. The kind of place Lady Sarah would tell me to avoid.
As I watched, a break in the clouds allowed a shaft of bright winter sunlight to touch down upon the valley floor as if the heavens were offering the villagers a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless world. The surrounding countryside and woodland that bordered one side of the village seemed all the gloomier for it.
That the sun’s beam should just happen to illuminate the settlement seemed
symbolic to me, though whether it was a sign I should stay clear, plagued by so many nightmarish memories and shrouded by the darker side to my nature as I currently was, or a sign that here was a source of hope for even a monster such as myself, was debatable. I chose to believe somewhere in that village I would find some comfort of some kind, no matter how small, because I felt I badly needed something to keep me going after everything I’d been through and all the changes in my life that had happened over such a relatively short period, changes I still struggled to adjust to. Lady Sarah definitely wouldn’t be happy with me if she were there to witness my decision, but how much risk could the village really offer? Such a small settlement was unlikely to get much attention from the Slayers, surely. Less inhabitants and a smaller area to patrol suggested to me that they would be few in number. If I were to linger for too long, word would soon reach them of the presence of an outsider and I knew they’d likely be quick to investigate, but I felt certain I could have a quick look round and be long gone before they found me.
And there was another reason I felt compelled to approach that village in that particular moment. With the growing resentment I was currently feeling towards Lady Sarah and her lessons, the fact the village was currently bathed in sunlight and therefore a place vampires couldn’t currently enter seemed like another sign I was meant to go there. Not to mention the fact she would be so against it meant that an echo of the rebellious teenager I once was wanted to go there all the more.
At first I intended only to watch from the cover of the woodland I’d seen. Even though I returned fully to human form, out of that desire to be closer to the world I was once part of, I knew I couldn’t actually enter the village without washing the dried blood from my body and finding some clothes. But then my thoughts turned darker, hunger for both flesh and to feel something once again steering them in a certain direction. That same obsession that had driven me to kill the cow now made me wonder whether human prey was what I needed to restore my bloodlust. And if these were relatively safe hunting grounds, this was surely the place to try.
