by Nick Stead
Uncertainty nagged at me as I trudged across the seemingly endless plains, Selina’s words reverberating inside my skull as if they’d become trapped in there. Who wouldn’t want to believe they were destined for great things, and had I not wanted to be famous while I was still a part of the human world? Yet I found that I no longer had any desire for fame. I still felt dead inside and I knew the limelight would bring me no pleasure. And with greatness there would no doubt come responsibilities, which was the last thing I wanted. Better to endure in the shadows and remain the mere beast the vampires believed me to be than become a figurehead and take the weight of everyone’s needs on my shoulders. I could barely cope with my own troubles, let alone those of others. Whatever destiny Selina had seen for me, I didn’t want it.
My thoughts turned to my latest brush with Death. I felt emptier than ever and not for the first time I couldn’t help but think how it would have been better if my wretched existence had been allowed to come to an end. This was the second time I should have died. First the curse had brought me back and now witchcraft had pulled me from Death’s clutches. If the grim reaper of my nightmares was real, there was no wonder he felt cheated, though it wasn’t like I’d had a say in the matter either time. Somehow I couldn’t find any kind of gratitude towards Selina for saving my life, and when my path took me back towards civilisation and I found myself prowling through another village, it was little surprise I felt drawn to the local graveyard, outside a church.
I gazed at the tombstones as if transfixed by them, a part of me wishing I could join the dead and finally know peace. But I knew myself well enough by then to know I couldn’t simply let go of my grip on life, and if Death was truly coming for me, he would have to take me by force. As much as I hated my meaningless existence, I couldn’t just give up. Still, there was a sense of peace to the graveyard that kept me there for some time, even though it was another place I didn’t belong. I only stirred from my dark musings when the rain started to fall. Only then did I turn my attention to the church.
The grey stone walls loomed cold and uninviting in the gloom, yet I found myself approaching this unwelcoming structure as the light drizzle quickly became a heavy downpour. The wooden door swung open for me, even though I could see no one inside. It wasn’t much warmer within the old building but at least it provided shelter from the elements, and I hoped I might find sanctuary there till the rainstorm passed. You might wonder how it’s possible for a place of worship to provide sanctuary for a monster such as me, but even though Lady Sarah had once said I was one of the eternally damned like the vampires, I had no trouble walking over holy ground. No invisible force repelled me, no divine power caused me to burst into flames. Maybe it was another sign God didn’t care for humanity, or maybe there was some hope for me yet.
The pews were far from comfortable but I sat down anyway to rest my legs, warily scanning my surroundings for any hint of danger. I tensed as the one other being in the place strode towards me, the vicar of this parish I’d been drawn to. I’d not noticed him when I first entered, too focussed on the desire for shelter.
“Are you lost, child?” he asked, taking a seat beside me. There was a kindness to him that I had not encountered in mankind for some time and I felt myself relaxing in his gentle presence. He made no comment on my strange appearance, probably assuming I was a homeless orphan or a runaway. He didn’t seem to recognise the dried blood on my skin for what it truly was, and I doubted he would ever have guessed I was naked beneath the blanket I hugged around me.
“I think I must be; I’m no Christian,” I replied, giving him only a brief glance before fixing my eyes on a large wooden carving of Jesus nailed to a crucifix.
“God finds us at the most unexpected of times,” he told me. “Perhaps He brought you here to show you the way through your troubles, or so that we might guide you down a lighter path.”
“I never used to believe in God but I have had cause to question certain beliefs recently. I’ve done terrible things, Father.”
“The Bible teaches us God is merciful and forgiving of even the most heinous of sins, if the soul is truly remorseful and seeks redemption. You are young,” he said, smiling. “And I doubt your sins can be so terrible as to place your soul beyond salvation.”
As little interest as I’d had in religion in my human life, I couldn’t help but want the vicar’s words to be true. If God did truly exist He’d never listened or helped me before, but I had a sudden need to believe divine intervention was possible to free me from my curse. I just wanted to return home and enjoy the human life I’d been forced to leave behind, the life I’d lost to my lycanthropy and the war with the Slayers. I wanted it so badly that I raised my eyes to meet the kindly gaze of this so called man of God and asked him “Can you truly offer me salvation?”
Something in my eyes must have repelled him, for he drew away from me then. The warmth drained from his countenance until he grew as cold as the old stone building and he said simply “I see only darkness.”
“But you said even the worst men can be saved. Isn’t there anything you can do for me?”
“There is nothing to save. You should leave now.”
The storm still carried on its relentless attack outside, the wind driving the rain in a battering assault on the land. I thought about killing the vicar. Gruesome images played in my mind as I imagined my claws raking bloody furrows in his throat, blood splattering the wall and dripping down the crucifix hung there. And in my mind, the carving stared accusingly at me through a mask of blood. But despite that mental accusatory glare, part of me wanted to act on those dark impulses, and to say something like “Then if you can’t guide me back to the light, let me drag you into the darkness.”
Luke reappeared, bearing the same wounds I’d apparently dealt the human whose face this apparition had taken.
“Do it,” he urged me once again.
There was no supernatural vampiric power to hold me back, nor any of the hallucinations conjured by my newly awoken conscience. No visions of close friends or family appeared with more words of wisdom. It would be so easy to claim this man’s life, to take him as my latest victim. Yet something held me back. Though my inner darkness wanted more bloodshed, my rage remained a dormant volcano and my bloodlust was equally as quiet.
“Maybe it’s what you need to bring them back. Think how good it felt when we massacred the town and how good it will be to embrace that again.”
But I ignored him this time. Until the two erupted and flooded my consciousness anew, there would be no pleasure in killing. If I indulged in more mindless slaughter it would only leave me feeling all the emptier for the lack of the savage joy I’d come to crave in such bloody violence. The last thing I wanted was to leave the shelter of the church and venture back into the rain, but I found that preferable to waiting in the dark pit of emptiness and despair for the storm to pass.
I felt the vicar’s eyes on me as I walked back down the aisle, and I wondered if he sensed the wolf threatening his flock. Would he report me to the authorities? It didn’t really matter. I would need to feed again soon but I had the strength to put enough miles between myself and the village before I was forced to stop for the day. Even if the Slayers picked up my trail, I was confident I could lose them again.
Reluctantly I stepped back out into the downpour, squinting my eyes to protect them from the icy drops of water being blown in my direction. It seemed brighter than when I’d first entered the church and I guessed the sun had now risen, but the early morning light was grey and dreary.
Once again I looked on at the rows of tombstones, wondering how many had been sent to be buried here in early graves by monsters like me. I thought I could hear the anguished screams of the dead as they writhed in torment, their rest disturbed by my very presence. Even though it was no more than my own treacherous imagination troubling me, I felt just as unwelcome as I had inside the church. The graveyard no longer felt peaceful but instead it became the embodiment of my
own despair in such dismal light, no rays of hope breaking through from the dark clouds overhead.
Shadows lingered, and between the torrents of rain I caught a glimpse of a dark form with glowing red eyes. The witch’s familiar. Despite letting me leave, she’d still had the creature follow me, and I felt a brief glimmer of anger. She truly believed in this great destiny she’d seen for me, and though I’d told her I’d make my own fate, it felt like I was being steered in the direction others wanted me to go in. Did I not have a say in which path my own life would take? It seemed not, since she’d already interfered by keeping Death at bay long enough for me to heal a wound that would otherwise have killed me. But I hadn’t asked her to interfere. As terrible as the loneliness had become over the last couple of months, I wished she would leave me to my lonely existence, her and the vampires. I wanted a friend, but I needed someone I could trust, and I didn’t want anyone meddling with my life.
I snarled at the shadowy canine, expecting it to respond to my challenge, but to my surprise it vanished. One minute it was stood amongst the tombstones and the next its shadowy form collapsed into a kind of black mist, before fading away, seemingly to nothingness. Whatever the thing was, it seemed it wasn’t of the mortal realm and I suspected it had returned to wherever it came from, until its mistress called it back to our world once again. But I made my way over to the grave it had been stood by to check if it had truly gone, and as I drew closer I could see something lying in the mud where the dog had been.
There was a corpse lying between the graves, and I wondered if it was another offering from Selina to help me regain my strength. But when I crouched over it to investigate I found a bloody mess of shredded flesh and shattered bones much like one of my own kills, the heart ripped out from the open ribcage, and four gashes across the woman’s face and through her lips which revealed her to have been something more than human. Some of her teeth were visible in the gouges running over her mouth, including one of the upper canines, lengthened into a fang. A vampire fang. And this definitely wasn’t my work this time, since I’d had no blackouts that night. But why had the black dog been stood over the body? Then it hit me. Ulfarr had been right to assume this was the work of a supernatural beast. Selina must be the real killer, and she was using her familiar to frame me. Maybe that was why she’d saved me, as a convenient way to cover up her own murders. Was she in league with the Slayers after all? It could be another grand scheme they’d cooked up to try and quicken our seemingly inevitable destruction, perhaps because they wanted to avoid another big battle which would cost more lives. Maybe they were hoping we’d turn on each other and make ourselves easier targets.
The why didn’t really matter. I’d been given proof of my innocence. If I could clear my name, maybe there was some hope for me after all. I could try to mend my alliance with the vampires and perhaps forge the new friendship I so badly needed, if not with Lady Sarah who had always been too distant before then maybe with one of the others. I just had to find a way to prove my innocence to them, which would be easier said than done.
Chapter Twenty – New Purpose
I spent the day back in the remoteness of the moors, where I could rest in relative safety after hunting more rabbits and eating enough to keep my strength up. Once night fell, I attempted to retrace my steps back to the area Lady Sarah had chosen for us before I’d gone off on my own. I had no way of knowing if the vampire had kept to the same stretch of moorland since I’d gone, but it seemed the best place to start looking. If she had moved on I’d have to hope the wolf could track her, and that he would be willing to co-operate with me since it was in the interests of our self-preservation.
Trying to find the exact area I’d last been in with the vampire proved a challenge. I had no idea how far we’d travelled since leaving my hometown, or whereabouts in the country we’d been when I’d gone off on my own, or where that was in relation to my current position. Using nature or the stars as a guide was not a skill I’d been taught, and consequently it meant I was lost without the aid of any human signs or landmarks.
The wolf seemed to have an inbuilt sense of direction, but I had no idea how to use it. And after the brief merging of our minds, he was even more reluctant to have anything to do with the human half of me, which meant I had only my human instincts at my disposal. As tired as I’d become of Lady Sarah’s insistence that I needed to allow my two identities to merge and become one again, I knew this was one situation where it would have been a big advantage. In the end it was only down to luck that I found the vampire and it took a few nights of aimless wandering. I was trying to find a familiar looking area that might indicate I was heading in the right direction, when I came across Lady Sarah feeding on the blood of a large stag.
“You should not have come,” she said, looking up from her meal.
“You found the latest victim already then.”
“Yes, another body was discovered, mutilated like the others. Your cries of rage and anguish carried across the moors and now Ulfarr has thrown your sanity into question.”
“Of course he has,” I growled. “I didn’t black out this time though, and I think I know who the killer is. I met a witch with a huge black dog for a familiar, and it was stood over the corpse of a female vampire.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said sadly.
“How can you say that? Of course it matters!”
“Do you have any proof?”
I didn’t answer, but I felt my anger stirring deep inside. It felt like not even Lady Sarah believed me, and it was enough to awaken my rage once more.
“Without proof, no one will believe you. If you can find something, I will take it to the other vampires. But until then you should go. Ulfarr will have you stand trial again if he finds you, and I do not believe he will listen to reason this time.”
“Oh come on, don’t you think it’s convenient how, after getting you guys to rally against the Slayers and battle against Aughtie’s forces, suddenly so many of you have turned on me? Don’t you think the Slayers could be behind this? The witch is probably working for them! Sure, some of them might prefer to personally kill me and wipe out werewolves for good but I’m sure there’s plenty of them who’d gladly let others do their dirty work, especially if it means a few of us end up killing each other in the process. What if they feel threatened by me after the battle – you said yourself how we undead need a leader, and it seems I’m the only one who’s managed to get a force onto the battlefield in the last couple of centuries since the Elders are so unwilling to fight. They’ve hunted us on and off since that night but no matter what they’ve thrown at us, so far we’ve escaped. What if they’re desperate to get rid of me and wipe out werewolves for good?”
“It’s plausible, but it’s still only a theory. Ulfarr will not be swayed by anything short of undeniable proof.”
“For fuck’s sake, whether the Slayers intentionally caused it by framing me for the deaths of the vampires or not, the murders have us divided and fighting among ourselves when we should be united against our common enemy. Can’t you make him see sense?”
“Have you not been paying attention these last few months?” she hissed, the flames of my rising anger leaping across to ignite her own once again. “He’s an Elder vampire. No one can ‘make’ him do anything.”
“But don’t you think it’s time we prepared for another battle?”
“Again, they will not listen to your theory without proof. You’re hardly in a position to unite them again when they suspect you of turning on our own.”
“You told me another big battle was coming. Well the battle for my hometown could hardly be called big. If the end truly is inevitable for us why not make a last stand and take down as many of them with us as we can, instead of allowing them to hunt us like animals? I hate running. We're wasting time; we should at least be trying to do something with however long we have left! Maybe we could even find a way to win. But if there really is no hope, at least we'll have died trying
.”
The anger suddenly drained from her and she sounded tired. “And just what do you propose, Nick? How can you hope to win a war against our enemies when you still fight a war with yourself? Whether you want to hear it or not, we are doomed. You should try to find some purpose out of the time we have left.”
“Like what? I had to leave my human life and hobbies behind. I’m a killer, and it seems killing is all that’s left. The fight against the Slayers is the only real purpose I can find.”
That wasn’t quite true since I’d already set my sights on proving my innocence and trying to fix things with the vampires, and as if to drive the point home Lady Sarah said “Focus on clearing your name or it won’t just be the Slayers hunting you. That should be your purpose for the time being.”
“Fine; I should have known this was a waste of time. When you and all the other bloody vampires are ready to listen, I’ll be back.”
She gave me a sad smile but said nothing when I turned to go. I’d expected her to be more willing to aid me, but it seemed she wasn’t even going to help find something concrete to prove my innocence, let alone talk to Ulfarr on my behalf. I felt a mixture of anger and disappointment as I stormed off. If I didn’t even have Lady Sarah on my side, who had been so set on keeping me alive before she’d turned on me to help the Elder imprison me for the full moon, then who else could I turn to? Every time I thought I’d found an ally, they’d all betrayed me in the end. First Vince, now Lady Sarah, and Selina seemed to have helped me only because it was in her own interests, so she could continue to frame me for the murders, whether at the request of the Slayers or for her own twisted reasons. I couldn’t go back to any of the humans I’d been close to, since that would only put them in danger. It seemed I had only one option, one last hope, and I didn’t even know if I could trust him, or if he would also turn out to be false. But he had stood up for me when no other vampires would during the first trial Ulfarr had put me on, and he had helped a second time when I’d massacred that entire town and had been in no frame of mind to clean up my own mess. He was the only potential ally I had left, and with nowhere else to go it seemed I had no option but to place my trust in him. I had to find the mansion he’d invited me to, and pray he would be more willing to hear me out.
