by Nick Stead
I was so crazed I didn’t notice I’d left the lead bully alive. The scent of so much blood and death masked any scents of life, and I resumed my struggle to break free while he tried to lie still, somehow having realised in my fury I was drawn to movement more than anything. Only when the first light of dawn spilled into the warehouse and I was forced back to human form once more did I finally cease my struggles, the pain of the transformation causing me to temporarily forget the chains.
I wasn’t really aware of it at the time but the boy watched me with wide eyes, one of the few humans ever to witness me transform and live to tell the tale, though for how long was now in the hands of my human half. I retreated into our subconscious but having been given the opportunity to eat more that night and thus be free of the weakness and exhaustion that had plagued my human self over the last two days, my rage remained. It blazed across our mind and fed the dark hunger for violence and murder born of the human in me, and despite being forced back to human form my other half was as feral as ever.
A part of me was glad to feel the darker side of my human nature, the rage that was tied to that violent part of me preferable to the emptiness and feelings of misery. But the chains the vampires had placed me in still held me back and prevented me from satisfying my bloodlust, which I wanted to make the most of again while it lasted. Knelt in a pool of gore, I let out a bestial roar of fury, the threat of the Slayers forgotten in my desire to visit the nearest human settlement and commit more massacres. If only I hadn’t been restrained I could have slaughtered to my heart’s content. Since I couldn’t have that I made do with the leftovers of the wolf’s kills for the time being, enjoying the rich organs and tender meat almost as much as my lupine half. Movement out of the corner of my eye distracted me from my bloody meal and I finally became aware of the one victim to have been left alive.
“You,” I snarled, and lunged at him with bloodied hands.
The boy had evidently decided it was time to make his move while I was busy feeding, but he was too slow. I was able to catch him by the ankle much as my lupine self had done in his jaws, sending him crashing to the ground once more and dragging him back into the bloody pool of his friend’s remains, where I pinned him down on his front.
“Please don’t kill me; I won’t tell anyone, I swear!” he pleaded, sobbing and pathetic.
“Do you know just how many I’ve killed? No? Well I’m not sure I know either. Let’s just say there’s been lots of them, including some I once considered friends and even my own blood. So tell me, what reason could I possibly have not to kill a bully like you? Someone who reminds me so much of the bastards that made my human life Hell. Why should I spare you?”
“I don’t want to die, please.”
“But everyone has to die eventually. I still see no reason why I should let you go.”
He didn’t have much to say in response to that. I was growing bored with him and the pleading was doing nothing to help keep the rage burning, so I whispered in his ear “I could make good on my threat from last month now. But I won’t ’cause I don’t really want to touch your balls, even to rip them off. I will kill you though, and it will be painful, I promise you that.”
His screams rang out as I ripped his shirt apart and bit into the muscle of his lower back with teeth that had lengthened into fangs once again, piercing the flesh and trapping it in my jaws. I deliberately pulled backwards at a more leisurely pace so that the stringy flesh was slower to tear away from the bone it clung to, drawing out his suffering. As I took another bite, I remembered a programme I’d seen once on cannibalism and how some expert had said it was the ultimate taboo and the one that fills humans with the most dread and disgust. I hoped the bully was horrified to find himself being eaten alive by a monster that currently looked like a fellow human in form.
I didn’t want to do too much damage round his spine and kill him too quickly, so after a third bite I forced him to roll over onto his back.
“My dad will find you, you freak,” the boy yelled in panic while he’d been offered a temporary reprieve from the agony, resorting to the one last defence that had no doubt saved him from a beating in the past whenever he’d been prey to bigger bullies than himself. “He’ll get his mates to help him kill you slowly, so you better let me go!”
“Then I’ll kill your dad as well.”
But it was what I needed from him, the rage latching onto the word freak. The old anger that had built up over the years at the bullies I’d once been powerless to stop fired up. And the rage had no time for slow, painful deaths. It wanted violence and it drove me to greater brutality as I committed this latest bloody murder, and gave me what I needed to revel in it.
I gave voice to that renewed rage in another bestial roar and lashed out with a clawed hand, raking the flesh from the top of one shoulder, right down to his hip on the opposite side of his body. The boy screamed again and returned to pleading with me, but when I rose from him it wasn’t to grant the bully mercy.
Shaking and crying, he curled into the foetal position as I stood over him, his hands pressed to the gashes across his torso in a futile attempt to stop both the pain and the blood flow. There was something extremely gratifying about seeing him in the same position he’d no doubt had many of his playground victims in as he and his mates beat them. So I proceeded to smash his fragile mortal body with my fists, shattering bones and splitting skin. I’m not sure at what point he died but eventually my rage burnt itself out again and I fell to my knees by his corpse, weariness creeping in.
“Did I really deserve that, just for being a mouthy little git?”
I looked up to see the dead bully stood over me and his own broken body.
“Yes, for all the pain you’ve no doubt caused your classmates,” I growled.
“And what about the pain you’ve caused my family?” he asked me. “Don’t you care about that?”
“Mortals die and their loved ones move on. Their wounds will heal.”
“And what about your wounds, son?” Dad said, appearing beside my victim.
I closed my eyes tiredly, hoping they’d go away. But my mind was never going to let me off that easily, so I answered “It’s too late for me. The curse is going to keep on making me kill so why shouldn’t I embrace that? I’m tired of fighting. And even if I choose to let go of the anger, I’m sure my lycanthropy would find some way to resurrect it eventually.”
“Do you really think that anger is just the curse? My blood runs through your veins, whether you like it or not, and my anger is also a part of you.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I snarled. “If I’d stayed human I could have been happy.”
“But you are more human now than ever,” came a third voice, another face I’d never wanted to see again. Aughtie appeared, giving rise to a growl deep in my throat. “This darkness that drives you to kill, that is part of your humanity. If you truly want to be human again, you should continue to embrace it. Murder is what sets us apart from all other living things.”
Murder, is that what it means to be human? Or was my brain simply trying to justify all the horrific acts I’d committed? I didn’t know what I was trying to tell myself but I felt too drained to play my own mind games. “Just fuck off and let me sleep.”
“I’ll still be here, son,” Dad said as I closed my eyes. “Awake or asleep, you can’t escape me. We’re bound by blood. Killing me hasn’t freed you from that.”
I tried to ignore him and let sleep take me, though it didn’t come any easier now I was lying on a floor that was no longer merely cold and hard but also slick and sticky with blood. The scent of the death and carnage filled my nostrils, which would only call to the nightmares when I finally nodded off. But at least there were no more voices troubling me while I lay there, and eventually I drifted off.
I awoke to find night had already fallen. The vampires hadn’t yet returned but I felt certain I would have to face them again that night, and I was surprised to find that thought had alr
eady summoned my anger back into being, even though I hadn’t been consciously aware of it.
What meat was left on the three carcasses was cold and stiff, but I forced myself to eat and keep my strength up while I waited for my captors to come back. I didn’t have to wait long before Ulfarr appeared in the doorway, stalking towards me as if he meant to kill me that very night, Lady Sarah following just behind him. I crouched in the pool of gore, my anger smouldering in the depths of what had once been my soul. I didn’t raise my head to look at them until they came to a stop in front of me.
“Was there another murder?” I growled.
“Unsurprisingly, no there was not. Mark my words wolf, I will find such undeniable proof of your guilt that no one could possibly find any further reasons for me not to have your filthy head for the deaths of our brethren. And you will be revealed for what you are; nothing but a wild beast in need of putting down. Even now you crouch before me naked and bloody, every bit as savage as you were under the full moon. The Slayers did us a service by wiping out your kind, and it shall be my pleasure to finally rid the earth of you once and for all!”
“Not if I end you first,” I snarled. “You should kill me now because if you don't, I swear one day I'll hunt you down while your corpse lies dormant and all the power you wield by night is out of your reach, and I will rip your rotten flesh from your bones like the beast you believe me to be.”
“Don't tempt me, dog.”
He dismissed me once again by turning his back, gave a nod to Lady Sarah and disappeared into the night, undaunted by my angry eyes following him until he was out of sight. I turned my glare on Lady Sarah but before I could do anything she placed me under her spell, my mind instantly calming. How could I be angry at a creature so beautiful as she? I was released from my chains and I obediently fell into step behind her as she led me back to the moors.
Once she deemed it safe, she released me from her hypnotic power, knowing I had no hope of tracking the Elder vampire if I’d been stupid enough to do so. The rage immediately spilled back into every fibre of my being.
“I am sorry for all this Nick, but I had no choice,” Lady Sarah said, before I had chance to say anything.
“Really? Ulfarr might be so powerful he can control all beings around him but he didn’t hold your tongue last month when he humiliated me in front of all the others. You had a choice to speak out on my behalf, so why didn’t you? Or this full moon you could’ve at least tried to persuade Ulfarr to allow me peace while I was imprisoned, even if the chains were deemed necessary. Either one of you had the power to calm me but instead you let him trigger my rage. You chose to standby and let him torment me!”
“There is more at work here than you could know,” she replied, her emotions impossible for me to read.
“Know what, I don’t want to know,” I growled. “You’re not my friend and you’re becoming even less of an ally. I don’t know why you’ve helped me at all or what’s suddenly changed, but I’m done with you.”
“You are free to do as you wish, of course, but I would beg you to reconsider. Whatever your feelings towards me, you must realise you are still not ready to survive on your own.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
I stormed off, cursing every last one of them. I’d had no reason to hate the vampires before I’d met the Elder, but after the way he kept treating me and the way it felt Lady Sarah had betrayed me, not to mention everything with the traitor Vince the previous year, I hated them then. I was done with vampire kind, sick of being treated as something beneath them, as if I was a lesser creature. Not all vampires were more powerful than me, and yet even the lower ones would receive better treatment than I had, or so it seemed. If I had truly been responsible for the three deaths I’d been accused of I was glad. Given the attitude of those I’d met, every last one of them deserved it, and I was not going to mourn for the loss of any more.
Though it hadn’t been a conscious decision, I found myself at the same rocky crevice where I’d hidden the stolen clothes I’d gathered in the nights leading up to the full moon. If there was no world for me among the undead, other than as the outsider on vampire society (such as it was), no place for me in nature and none of my own kind left to seek out, where else could I go but back to the world of man? Even if I couldn’t live among them, they at least had no supernatural power to subdue me with, and I was suddenly confident I could continue to elude the Slayers, even if I’d be hiding in plain sight. It wasn’t like I was planning to go back to my hometown, where they could use my friends from my old life and my family against me. And still I dared to hope being back among humanity would go some way towards easing the loneliness and filling the empty void once I fell back into it, as I had to assume I would, the rage likely to burn out again before the night was through.
Chapter Sixteen – A Wolf in Human’s Clothing
After washing the thickest of the filth from my skin, I set out in the opposite direction to the warehouse, determined to put as many miles between the vampire’s preferred meeting place and myself as possible. I also wanted to be as far from Lady Sarah as I could get before weariness took over and I was forced to stop to rest.
I wandered towards lower ground in wolf form, leaving the barrenness of the moors for farmland which eventually gave way to man-made landscapes of concrete and tarmac. As tempting as it was to find a local hotel or bed and breakfast and steal enough to spend the night in the comfort of a warm, human bed, I hadn’t quite grown reckless enough to disregard everything Lady Sarah had impressed upon me in the last few months together. I found shelter in an old shed on a property that was for sale. Whoever had lived there previously had already moved on and though it was still fairly risky, sleeping in an area surrounded by humans, I felt it was as good a place as any to spend the early hours of the morning.
Compared to the harshness of the moorland and the discomfort of my makeshift cage during the full moon, the shed might as well have been a five star hotel. I’d carried the clothes and blanket in my jaws and I was able to curl up in relative comfort and warmth, quick to fall asleep.
Shards of daylight penetrated the dusty, cobweb lined glass, uncomfortably bright against my eyes. I growled and tried to doze back off, but the sound of human footsteps made me instantly alert.
“I’m telling you, there’s some kind of wild beast in there,” a woman’s voice said. “I came to unlock the property ready for a viewing this afternoon and when I stepped out into the garden for a smoke, I could hear growling coming from that shed.”
“Probably just some stray dog. We’ll take a look,” a man assured her. “You did the right thing calling us – can’t be too careful after all that nasty business with the rogue wolf running loose in Yorkshire last year.”
I tensed, ready for a fight. The man could have just been some kind of wildlife official sent to investigate the call the estate agent must have made, but at worst he was a Slayer who knew full well any report of a wild beast could be something more. And if he was a Slayer he’d no doubt come prepared for the possibility of finding the supernatural, werewolf or otherwise, which meant I needed to be equally prepared.
The shed door was opened cautiously and I made a split second decision to kill them both before either could call for help. But first I had the sense to quickly push the clothes and the blanket under some of the junk left by the previous owners, in the hopes they’d be protected from the worst of the blood I was about to spill.
As the man peered round the door I lunged, grabbing him by the throat and silencing the scream before he had chance to form it. He fell to the floor, clutching at the torn flesh flapping about in ragged strips as air passed through it, panicking as he gasped for breath, his brain quickly becoming starved of oxygen. Even as he fell I was on the woman, ripping the life from her in a similar fashion. Blood and gore sprayed the inside of the shed but I felt nothing this time as I killed them, and I didn’t immediately cause any further damage to their dying bodies.
&
nbsp; I checked the pile of clothes lying towards the back of the shed and was able to rescue them before any blood soaked through. Luckily I’d shoved them under an industrial quality plastic bag which had protected them from the worst of the arterial spray. My skin was another matter and I was going to have to find another pond or lake to wash in before I could pass for human, so with that in mind I decided to gorge myself while I had the chance, ensuring I had plenty of energy to support the transformation back to human later.
I made sure to push the clothes just outside, hoping no one was watching, and then fed as quickly as I could. It was messier than usual because I was rushing, trying to chew off bigger chunks than I could manage and dribbling chunks of flesh and blood everywhere as a result. I was able to finish without being disturbed and did my best to lick the worst of the blood and gore from my lips and my fangs, hoping I could bundle the clothes in my jaws so the blanket would protect them from becoming covered in suspicious looking stains.
There was no evidence either of the humans had been Slayers but I knew I would be better leaving the area and moving on to another town or city, since it would only be a matter of time before the bodies were found. I’d find somewhere to wash along the way and dress, then I could return to the human world for a time, as I was suddenly so desperate to do.
I was forced to remain in wolf form until nightfall, when I was able to wash under the cover of darkness in a stream, ribbons of blood twisting and dancing out from my filthy body, contaminating the otherwise pure water. I was right in the middle of more farmland, the stream cutting through the surrounding countryside and rushing on towards the coast. During the day I would surely have been seen and driven off or worse, but hidden in the shadows I was relatively safe, and the main cause for me to hurry my bath was the bite of the cold.
Once I’d dressed I headed back towards civilisation, but it was dawn before I took to wandering the streets of my latest chosen haunt. Once there I started out simply taking in the sights and sounds, as if I was a traveller from some strange lands experiencing British culture for the first time.
