Hunted (Hybrid Book 2)

by Nick Stead

  Though the term concrete jungle was often applied to the built up world humanity lived in, a part of me liked exploring this new place I’d found myself in. There was a certain sense of history to the old town, despite all the modern developments. It wasn’t joy as such since that gaping chasm still remained where once my emotions had been, but I guess you could say I found it interesting, if nothing else. It wasn’t that I’d ever had any particular passion for history or anything, I just liked the atmosphere to the place that was lacking from newer settlements, and those that had changed so much over the years as to be barely recognisable to what they once were, so modernised they might be mistaken for being completely new.

  At first the streets were quiet and mostly deserted, only the occasional early riser passing me by. They didn’t even spare me a sideways glance and like a ghost I roamed through housing estates, working my way to the centre. However, the town soon started to come to life as various businesses opened their doors to customers, and for the first time in months I found myself in a throng of people. The lupine part of me hungered for them, but it was the fast food and other eating places dotted around that made my mouth water. As much as my lycanthropy caused me to crave raw meat, it seemed some part of me still desired the cooked food I’d been accustomed to as a human.

  Other scents permeated the air, overpowering and alien to me after the months spent in the natural world, even though they’d once been so great a part of everyday life as to be barely noticeable. There was a certain novelty to it all after months of solitude and I spent most of the day trying to immerse myself in that world and blend in with the crowd. I allowed myself to step inside some of the more interesting shops, where I wouldn’t appear out of place. Looking round them meant I could escape the cold and it helped pass the time.

  I checked out a few of the latest DVDs and games, careful to keep my head down so the security cameras didn’t capture a clear image of my face. But it didn’t really help the depression that was creeping back in, knowing I would most likely never get to watch or play them. I kept to wandering between the three bookstores after that unhappy thought, killing time by reading different sections of the same book in each store, moving on after each chapter so as not to overstay my welcome or invite awkward questions. Luckily it seemed to be a weekend, as no one challenged my presence like they might have done on a school day.

  When Luke appeared again, I wasn’t even surprised to see him by that point. Whatever it was that allowed him to just happen to be in the same places I turned up in, I felt sure I’d find out eventually. Until then he at least made for better company than the vampires.

  “Hey bro,” he said. “There’s something surreal about seeing you in here.”

  “I wasn’t always a monster, remember. I used to have a normal human life, like everyone else.”

  “Yeah, but knowing who you really are and after seeing you at your wildest, I never expected to see you clothed and browsing bookstores,” he laughed.

  “Even monsters get bored,” I shrugged.

  “I see you had good taste in your human life. I’ve always been a big horror fan as well.”

  “Yeah, I never thought my life would turn into a horror story though. You know, if you keep hanging round me you could end up dead or worse yourself. The Slayers will quite happily go through humans to kill me and there’s the vampires – if they come for me, they may well decide to execute you as well if they see us together and I can’t protect you from them.”

  “I understand the risks, don’t worry man. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You better not, you crazy bastard. I’ve got too many questions for you now so no disappearing on me without answering them, okay?”

  “Deal,” he said, grinning.

  I bid him goodbye and ventured away from the town as it was growing dark, hungry again and knowing I should find somewhere to rest, if only for a few hours. I caught a rabbit which was enough to keep me going if I kept the number of transformations to a minimum. For the time being I had no real need to change to wolf form again so I remained human, returning to the farmland with the stream cutting through it where I’d hidden the blanket in a shallow hole with a large rock to cover it. I undressed and changed the clothes for the blanket so as to keep the garments as clean as possible. What I would do when they started to smell I hadn’t thought of, but I would worry about that later.

  I also briefly wondered what I’d do during the next full moon, as I had no intention of returning to Lady Sarah. Ulfarr’s argument for my guilt might be circumstantial evidence at best, but even I had to admit I was the most likely suspect. There was every chance I had indeed killed the three vampires during a lapse in my self-control, and the fact there’d been no further murders while I’d been locked up for the last full moon suggested it wasn’t the work of some supernatural serial killer, or another surviving werewolf the vampires didn’t know about. After the way I’d been treated I really didn’t care if I’d killed any of them, or if I killed any more of them next month, but if Ulfarr was keeping a closer eye on me as he’d said he would, then they surely would execute me the moment I attacked any more of their kind. I pushed that thought away as well, hoping a solution would present itself when the need arose.

  That night I rested in a patch of woodland, behind a fallen tree. It wasn’t much in the way of shelter but the thick trunk went some way to keeping the wind off me. I was able to doze for a few hours, waking again early morning while it was still dark. Another rabbit served as breakfast, then it was back to the stream to wash and dress, and find another town to spend the day in.

  A few days later the novelty had already begun to wear off. As I sheltered in one of the bookstores, I was aware of the staff talking amongst themselves in low voices and I overheard one of them say “There’s that boy again. He’s been coming in here all week, hanging around when he should be at home or in school. Something’s not right about him.”

  “Yeah, it does seem weird,” her colleague replied. “We better keep a close eye on him; wouldn’t surprise me to find him shoplifting.”

  So I abandoned the book I was reading and retreated back out onto the streets, suddenly noticing how the humans were giving me a fairly wide berth and sometimes casting me suspicious glances. I wasn’t sure whether that was because, unable to wash the clothes or give my skin a proper wash in soapy water, I had indeed begun to smell, or the fact that people thought I should be in school and knew something was amiss, just like the staff in the shop. Or maybe people simply sensed deep down that I was different from them. Whatever the reason, I was back to feeling like the outsider. Maybe I’d never passed as human during this brief return to their world, and I just hadn’t wanted to see it until it reached the point where I was no longer able to deny it. I didn’t know but the more I was made to feel apart from them, the greater the depression that began to envelop me, every bit as bad as the emptiness I’d been existing in over the last few months.

  Even Luke’s company couldn’t ease it that day.

  “You could just kill them all,” he said.

  “How come you’re so okay with killing? Most people would call that insanity.”

  “Don’t worry about me. But you’re hurting and they’re only making things worse, right? Teach them a lesson. It’s not like you haven’t done it before, so what’s stopping you?”

  I shook my head. “Not this time.”

  I didn’t immediately return to the natural world, but the longer I lingered in the town, the more paranoid I grew. People seemed to be staring and I saw several whispering to each other, too quietly for even my acute sense of hearing to catch what they were saying. I started to feel on edge, wondering how many of them could be Slayers, and my eyes constantly darted from face to face, searching for any potential threats.

  Loneliness washed over me, surrounded by people though I was. I knew I could kill any one of them and feel nothing, not even bat an eyelid. After all, what was one more lost soul in the endless sea I'd
created, so many ripped from their bodies long before their time? Yet I looked around and realised I didn't want to kill them anymore, not even the potential enemies. I no longer wanted to be this dead thing surrounding himself with more death. I just wanted to live again, even if I couldn’t truly be part of their world anymore. You see, there’s a big difference between living and existing, and I can barely remember now the last time I felt truly alive.

  I might have been born a killer, but there is also a huge difference between a killer and a murderer. I used to despise human hunters, yet in indulging mindless slaughter had I not allowed myself to become as bad as them? By embracing the darkness maybe I’d sealed my own fate, setting myself apart from most of the law abiding citizens as surely as if I’d walked among them as a wolf. Maybe they could sense I’d given into it and feared me like other animals did, even if they weren’t consciously aware of that instinct that screamed predator.

  And yet, how much could the curse really be blamed for? Of all the atrocities I’d committed, when I’d murdered out of rage or massacred simply to try and feel something, how much of that was born of my curse, and how much was purely that inner darkness that existed at the heart of humanity? How many of those killings had been the work of my darker side, which would have been there independent of the curse? Without the curse maybe that darkness would never have been unleashed, but once it had its first taste of blood, I was quick to fall into it. And how much could I blame on humanity itself? My rage was tied to the curse, but it had been made all the more potent over the years for the way I’d been treated at the hands of my playground tormentors, as well as the anger my own Dad had fed me by bullying me in his own way during his own fits of anger. And maybe some of that anger had been passed on from him through blood, as my brain had suggested through that latest hallucination of him I’d seen in the old warehouse.

  How much of that rage had humanity created, or at least shaped? Maybe if they’d treated me better I wouldn’t have been so quick to indulge the dark desire to kill on so many occasions. But human darkness and cruelty will always be quick to spread, even to those that think of themselves as the purest of souls, where it will fester and breed and infect others. How many of my crimes could I blame on them for sculpting me in their own image? Even my lupine half was afflicted by the human darkness to some extent, the bloodlust stemming from our humanity.

  Another voice brought me out of my dark musings, making me jump.

  “Did you even stop to think what fate you forced those poor souls into? Oblivion, Purgatory, Hell? Which is worse do you think?”

  The hallucination of Lizzy had reappeared. I growled as if to make her go away but she only continued to torment me, like an echo of the conscience I’d assumed dead.

  “Your two latest victims; they were innocent and yet you chose to kill them instead of running. How might they be suffering now because of you?”

  “I didn’t know they were innocent though, did I?” I argued, while Luke gave me a concerned look, but he seemed to know I wasn’t talking to him and didn’t interfere.

  “You knew it was a possibility. How many more must die because of the darkness you continue to allow to rule you?”

  “And what would you have me do, huh?”

  It came out as another growl and I turned to glare at her, only to find she was gone. More of the townspeople were staring now I was acting even stranger and I was forced to leave. I found an alley in a quieter part of the town and ripped off the stolen clothes, all desire to appear human and walk among them suddenly gone. The transformation back to wolf form came quicker and more smoothly than during a full moon, and I slunk off back into the wilderness without even saying bye to Luke, alone once more and unsure what to do.

  Chapter Seventeen – Blood Festival

  The loneliness weighed yet heavier upon my heart with the renewed realisation that I was as far from human as I’d ever been, while the winter grew harsher. I was growing delirious in the unforgiving conditions, my mind made more fragile by the physical hardships I continued to force my body through. I should have sought out shelter now that there was no Lady Sarah to insist we remain exposed on the moors, but instead I stayed shivering under my blanket in wolf form (having retrieved it after leaving the town), cold despite my fur coat and the extra man-made layer.

  Lizzy began to appear more frequently, though the apparition only fed the loneliness and allowed it to grow even more.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” I said to her one night.

  “I could be for all you know, thanks to you.”

  “No, you’re not her ghost. Not the flesh and blood you, I meant my conscience. That’s what you are, right? But you’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Perhaps your emotions are not as dead as you let yourself believe. You buried them to cope with all the deaths you caused, the atrocities you committed, and continue to commit. But you’re not so damaged as to be left with nothing at all.”

  “What does it matter; happiness is out of reach now. Completely empty or depressed: both are equally as bad. The only thing worth feeling is the anger which keeps me going, but I just can’t hold onto it whenever it does temporarily spark back to life,” I said bitterly. “You were one of my closest friends, Lizzy. I wish you were really here now, even if you’d hate me for the monster I’ve become. I wish I could go back home. My heart aches for everything I left behind, for all of you who I left behind. What’s the point in feeling unless I were to go back to you all?”

  “But you know you can’t go back. I almost died once because of you,” she answered. There was no emotion in the hallucination’s voice; it was merely a statement, one of the many hard truths that had led me to make the decision to leave my old life behind in the first place. The hallucination changed, taking on the appearance of Lizzy that night when I’d found her deep within the local base the Slayers had imprisoned us in, bloody and beaten. She held up her left hand where the little finger had been cut off, the one wound the Slayers had inflicted which was truly irreparable damage. Maybe if I’d had enough sense to grab the severed digit and make sure the hospital staff would find it along with the rest of her they could have reattached it, but the thought had never occurred to me at the time. The other wounds she’d suffered had no doubt scarred, and it pained me to think about the mental scars she might also have been left with, invisible but just as severe.

  “No, the Slayers did that to you. I did try to keep you out of all the madness the werewolf passed on when he bit me.”

  “Yet you still blame yourself,” she replied. “You know it was you who did this to me. If you were to return to us now, do you truly think we would welcome you back with open arms? Maybe if you’d told me the truth when I asked you what was going on we could have avoided this, instead of keeping me in the dark of my ignorance where I was easier prey. Do you think I’ve forgiven you for just leaving without at least explaining to me who Aughtie really was or why her people did this to me?”

  “How could I tell you the truth? Even if I transformed to make you believe me you’d have soon realised I was the ‘rogue wolf’ that killed Fiona and the others. How would that have helped?”

  My conscience did not deign to answer me. Lizzy had vanished, leaving behind a dull ache for the life the curse and the Slayers had torn me from, like a steady throbbing deep within that empty chasm that had once been my soul, an ache even the winter couldn’t numb.

  Snow came down thick and heavy, the wind driving it against my pitiful body. I hadn’t eaten in days yet I was reluctant to hunt, curling into a tighter ball under what little warmth the blanket had to offer. The hunger would not be denied, however, and eventually it drove me to my feet. Stiffly I rose and began to wander in search of prey, a dark shadow prowling the whitened landscape.

  I used to like snow when I’d been mostly human, but whilst I remained caught out in that frozen world it made me thoroughly miserable. It fell thick and fast, the wind driving it into my face. Flakes caught in my
fur, specks of white against the dark greys and browns of my coat. One flake found its way into my eye, hard enough to make it sting. I squinted, trying to protect them while I searched the bright whiteness for any signs of prey, but the snow made it almost impossible. With my eyes squinted, it was harder to focus on anything but the little flecks of white falling around me. As a wolf my eyes were designed to pick up signs of movement. The snow made it hard to differentiate between the movement of animals and the movement of the snow itself. I was having to rely on scent and sound, neither of which my human self had mastered, sight remaining my primary sense I relied upon. It seemed the only way I would make a kill would be if something came and offered itself to me, which of course was never going to happen.

  I felt so lost and alone, I was losing my will to live. Part of me was ready to just collapse and let the cold steal the last of the warmth from my limbs until it drained my life with its icy fingers. Yet still a part of me fought for survival, and I struggled on. It became clear there was no prey to be had out on the snow covered moors, no life in this barren landscape, this wintry realm of the dead. To the realm of men I knew I must turn once more, despite the unhappy endings in each area I’d visited over the last few months. It was either that or starve.

  Finding my way to the nearest town was easy enough. Whether it was the same place that had become my haunt for a brief time or not, I couldn’t say. The snow hid most landmarks I might have recognised and my current state of mind continued to weaken my grasp on reality. But before long buildings loomed overhead, marking my return to civilisation, and it didn’t matter if this was a new place or somewhere I’d explored before. There was food to be had here to fill the emptiness in my belly, even if there was nothing to be had for the emptiness in my soul. So I padded down the streets in search of my next meal.