by Nick Stead
The vampire had just made it out of sight when the huge black dog gave a powerful jerk of its head and succeeded in shaking me loose. It sprang up to give chase, but I pounced on its back and fought to restrain it a second time. The beast twisted round and grabbed my arm in its jaw, then tossed me away with enough force to send me crashing head first into the side of the witch’s cottage. I felt a sharp pain in my skull as it connected with the stone wall, then I slumped to the ground, dazed and unable to rise in time to prevent the barghest from bounding after its prey. Leon was on his own now, and all I could do was hope I’d given him enough of a head start to escape back to his mansion.
I was sat leaning against the side of the cottage for long enough that I vaguely wondered if I had a concussion. Pain blazed through my head, like someone was hammering a nine-inch nail through my skull, driving it deeper and deeper into my brain. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a sense of the need to move, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to work out why that was so important.
Precious minutes ticked by as I struggled to grab hold of the thoughts that were eluding me, until everything crashed back into place with sudden clarity. I needed to get away before the witch came home, in case she no longer needed me alive or now had orders to hand me over to the Slayers, and I had to help Leon. The barghest was no doubt already gaining on him, if it hadn’t caught up to him already, and he was powerless to stop it. I couldn’t lose the one being I felt close to, the only one left in my cursed life I truly considered a friend. Even if I was able to clear my name and I forgave Lady Sarah for her part in the torment Ulfarr had put me through, I didn’t think she’d ever open up enough for me to grow close to her as I had to Leon. And so many of the vampires were still prejudiced enough against werewolves that true friendship would be a rarity among them. No, in all likelihood Leon was all I’d got.
At first, moving was so agonising that it felt like my brain had been liquefied and even the smallest movement would cause it to spill through my ears. But somehow I managed to pick myself up, driven by the thought that I had to save my friend. And just as I got to my feet, there came the sound of a gunshot and a sharp pain in my side. The bullet had only grazed me, but if I’d stayed slumped against the wall a minute longer, I knew I would probably be bleeding out from another mortal wound. Much as I wanted to run after Leon and the barghest, I was forced to turn my attention to the new threat.
The same grizzled old Slayer that had almost claimed my life once already strode confidently towards me, raising his gun to squeeze off a second shot. I leapt to the side before the bullet could find its mark, growling “You again.”
The man responded with a third shot aimed at my chest, but I was able to dive out of harm’s way once more.
“Who are you?” I snarled.
He regarded me with those cold eyes but remained silent. I was thinking about trying to force some answers out of him when a fourth shot rang through the night, from somewhere behind me. The bullet narrowly missed my head, leaving a burning hole in my right ear, and I roared with a mixture of pain and fury.
My bloodlust rose with the pain as rage and adrenalin coursed through my body, but the wind changed direction and carried the scent of more humans creeping towards me. I really wanted to kill the two Slayers who dared attack me, but it seemed they were trying to spring another trap. And there was still the threat of Selina returning to her home, her witchcraft far more deadly than the guns I was currently facing. Much as I hated to have to flee yet again, I knew it was my best option. So I turned to the second Slayer who’d fired and quickly weighed him up. He was younger than the other man who seemed so set on ending my life, and I knew from experience he was likely to be ruled by the same panic that had gripped so many of his dead comrades if I charged at him.
Aware of the older Slayer taking aim again behind me, I made my move, rushing towards the younger human with a roar of fury. He panicked as expected, firing off more shots without taking aim first. A hail of bullets sliced through the air, but only one thudded into my thigh, leaving another hole of searing pain in my flesh. Then I was on him, and I ripped out his throat with one powerful bite, leaving him gurgling as he lay dying. Much as I wanted to give in to my bloodlust and slaughter them all, I knew I needed to keep moving. Perhaps Lady Sarah’s training had done some good after all, since I’d been able to resist the urge to kill for once.
I made it out of range of their guns, pausing briefly to transform fully back to wolf form so I could heal my wounds and cover the ground more quickly to the mansion. I also needed the wolf to guide me back again, and he gladly rose up, not trusting me to get us back safely.
I started running in the direction of the vampire’s mansion, but after a few miles I sensed more humans, forcing me to veer off course and find a slightly longer route back. This happened a number of times, and it was already dawn before I reached the cover of the woods surrounding the mansion.
I passed through the treeline and started towards the clearing, but I became aware of more Slayers waiting for me. There was no time to question how they seemed to know where to find me; they’d obviously put some planning into the latest trap they were trying to spring and I had to assume fighting wasn’t an option. If there were enough of them and they were heavily armed, I knew it was a fight I couldn’t win.
I slowed and slunk through the gloom, hoping I might be able to slip past them, only to find my path blocked by a Slayer who’d been waiting downwind of me.
“Over here!” he yelled, opening fire.
I darted away, desperately searching for an opening so I could return to the safety of the vampire’s lair, but the Slayers seemed to have me surrounded. Bullets flew from several directions, but somehow I managed to avoid getting hit. Not that it would save me for long – they were closing in, and if I couldn’t run through their ranks I was going to have to fight my way out.
Focussing on the closest human blocking my path to the mansion, I rushed forward. Another destructive spray of bullets tore holes in the surrounding trees, and I yelped as another one found its mark, this time in one of my forelegs. But I didn’t stop, limping on my three good legs and pushing myself onwards. My target was a woman this time and her eyes widened as she realised, too late, I was coming for her. Screaming, she fell to my fangs, her blood leaking into the soil, summoning the bugs lurking in that dank darkness, waiting to feed on decay. They would soon emerge to feast on the death.
I didn’t have the luxury of stopping to eat, however, and I managed a final burst of speed. To my dismay, I found the gates to the mansion were closed this time, and with the wound in my front leg, I knew I’d never make it over the wall to the grounds. There was nowhere left to run, and with a sense of finality I turned to face my pursuers. I couldn’t kill them all before one of their bullets found its mark in my heart or my brain, but that didn’t mean I was about to just give up. A cornered animal has nothing left to lose and will fight all the more fiercely for survival, and I was no different.
The humans advanced cautiously, weapons raised. But just as they were emerging from the woodland, I heard the crackle of one of their walkie-talkies. I didn’t follow what was said, but for reasons I couldn’t fathom they began to retreat.
Suspecting some kind of ploy to put me off-guard, I waited for several long minutes in a defensive stance, ready to take down as many of them as I could before the inevitable killing shot. Only once I heard them crashing through the woods back in the direction of human civilisation did I relax, limbs trembling with fatigue. I’d used up a lot of energy that night and this latest bullet wound continued to sap my strength. But I couldn’t rest yet. I knew I had to find the strength for one more transformation to heal the damage to my leg, and to climb over the wall. I wanted nothing more than to collapse and give in to the exhaustion, but instead I willed my body to revert to its human form, letting the human half of me take over once more.
Chapter Twenty Four – Into Enemy Territory
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�Wait, they chased you right through to the clearing?” Leon asked with a sense of urgency. I’d filled him in on the night’s events as soon as he’d risen, once darkness had fallen again that evening.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I tried to sneak past them but they had me surrounded, and the wolf thought the only way to escape was to fight his way through to the sanctuary of the mansion.”
“You realise what this means? Now a group of them know the location of this place, the witch’s spell will no longer repel them. They’ll be able to find their way back and what’s more, they can lead as many of their comrades here as they see fit. It’s only a matter of time before a force of them come for us.”
“I’m sorry mate,” I started to apologise, but he held a hand up and I fell quiet.
“The damage is done now. I think it’s time we put your training into practice.”
I grinned. “What do you have in mind?”
“The group that ambushed you here are likely part of the force in this area. I doubt any will have come back here during the day, though they may well have shared the location with others. Just knowing the mansion is here isn’t enough to pass the witchcraft that repels intruders, but if the woods are suddenly crawling with Slayers, it’s only a matter of time before more of them are able to follow one of us back. We can’t risk leaving any alive, so our best bet is to take out their base. We need to move quickly though, before they have chance to make a move against us.”
“How big is the nearest base?”
“From what you’ve told me about the one you took out in your hometown, I’d guess this one’s a similar size.”
“So there’s going to be dozens of Slayers and there’s just the two of us against them. Isn’t that a bit suicidal?”
“Oh come on, after the things you’ve done in fits of rage, now you’re stopping to worry about the odds? It is a risky move I admit, but if we can catch them unawares we’ll have the advantage. I’m sure we can slaughter most of them while they scramble around for their precious guns.”
He was right that I’d made more reckless acts in the past, yet this time my gut was telling me it was a bad idea. Perhaps because of my latest brush with Death, my sense of caution had been heightened. Or maybe it was the wolf’s strong survival instinct invading my thoughts. But I couldn’t say no when I’d been the one to lead the humans to the mansion, so reluctantly I agreed to go along with his plan.
“Good,” he said, with the same gleam in his eye I’d seen when sparring. “Something bothers me though. The Slayers were waiting for you in the woods, like they somehow knew where you were going to be. It’s as if they’ve been tracking you.”
“I’ve wondered that, but the last man I tried to question about it bit off his own tongue to avoid giving up any of their secrets.”
“Hmm,” he responded, and then after a moment’s pause he instructed “Take your shirt off.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“Humour me.”
I did as he said, but the vampire started to trace a hand along my back and I automatically started to pull away. “Hey man, I appreciate your companionship an’ all but I’m not –”
Before I could finish, he pinched the skin around my left shoulder blade and I felt the sharp pain of a knife piercing my flesh.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snarled, but he placed a firm hand on my shoulder to keep me in place.
“Hold still.”
Despite my higher pain threshold, I couldn’t keep myself from tensing up, even though I tried to relax and trust that whatever the vampire was doing, it was for my own good. Blood trickled down my skin as the knife slid through my flesh. Leon seemed to be carving a hole in my back, and then I felt his fingers dig into the wound and I snarled again. He pulled something out as he withdrew them, and showed it to me.
“A GPS tracker. That’s how they’ve been able to find you so easily and set up the various traps you’ve told me about.”
I gawped at the device. The Slayers must have implanted it the previous year when I’d been imprisoned in a base just like the one we were about to march right into. “I had no idea they’d fitted me with that.”
“It’s a wonder it survived so long, given the number of times they’ve wounded you. We’ll take it with us and find a new home for it along the way – maybe it will help us take them by surprise.”
“Hang on, if I’ve been walking round with that under my skin then how come there’s been times where they’ve left me alone for like weeks on end? Why wouldn’t they just keep attacking constantly till they finally managed to kill me?”
“You’d have to ask them that to know for certain but my best guess would be that they were merely biding their time, rethinking their tactics and waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Plus after a quieter period they might have felt they were more likely to catch you off-guard, giving them better odds when they made their next attack. And their desire to operate in secret from the rest of humanity probably limited them at times as well.”
“Yeah, I guess that all makes sense.”
“Now, we should feed before we set off. Come.”
I had managed to make a kill that morning after I’d transformed back to my human form, and then it had been easy enough to climb over the gate and return to the mansion to rest. But I’d not eaten since then so I followed the vampire out into the woods, where I came across the corpse of the woman my lupine half had killed. As always I wanted to make a fresh kill, but Leon was impatient to head out and he’d already caught and drained the blood from several of the bats flitting between the trees while I took my hybrid form. There was hardly any meat to be had from the tiny carcasses now littering the ground, so I settled for the cold human flesh, forcing down as much as I could stomach to keep my energy levels up for any further transformations I would need to undergo.
The vampire knew where to find the Slayers’ base of operations in the area, and as he led us towards the fight which I couldn’t help thinking of as our last stand, I asked him how he’d escaped the barghest.
“I got lucky,” he admitted. “Thanks to you I was able to limp quite a way from the cottage before the beast caught up with me, but he was on me a third time and I was sure I was going to be the next victim Ulfarr would accuse you of killing. But I guess this witch, Selina, had need of her familiar elsewhere, ’cause suddenly he ran off. I started to make my way back and as I passed closer to civilisation, I could hear humans nearby. I was able to feed quietly in the shadows, without alerting any others to my presence, which allowed me to heal the damage the barghest had done. I had no problems after that. The Slayers you encountered must have moved into position after I’d returned, because I came across no other humans on my journey home.”
We fell quiet as we drew closer to the Slayers’ base, keeping to the shadows while Leon assessed their defences. He was far more experienced at it than me, and he took in security cameras I’d have missed.
It seemed they’d disguised this place as a military base to keep the public away, and the main entrance was covered by two humans dressed in army uniform. Leon assured me they were in fact Slayers, and he decided there was no way we’d slip past them without raising any alarms. If it had been just the humans to worry about we could have handled them, but the cameras were a problem.
We circled round the perimeter but the vampire could see no opportunities to sneak in undetected, without creating one ourselves. He’d already been thinking ahead as if he’d suspected as much, and he outlined his plan to me in a low whisper.
“The only way we can sneak past those cameras without raising any alarms is to cut the power. That building over there houses the generator. Since I’m faster than you, I’ll take out the camera covering that area and run in to sabotage their power supply.”
“How do you know the generator’s in there?” I asked him, a little too loudly.
“Keep your voice down!” he hissed. “From now on we need to be as quiet as possib
le. I’ve studied the layout of this place in the past, and I’ve seen enough to know that building supplies the power to the rest of the base. It always pays to know your enemies.”
“Okay, but if one of their cameras goes down, don’t you think that will raise suspicions?”
“Yes, but I should be able to slip in before they can send any of the guards to investigate. If any enter the building it will be to our advantage – I can hypnotise them into believing nothing is amiss, which should buy us more time. But if anything goes wrong, I need you ready to create a distraction. Whatever you do, don’t show yourself to them. Find an animal to send running in their direction or something, but don’t give them reason to suspect you’re in the area or we stand no chance. This will only succeed if we’re facing a few enemies at a time. The moment the Slayers realise they’re under attack and gather their forces, our chances of making it out alive will drop considerably.”
As plans went it didn’t seem the most well thought out, but I didn’t have any better ideas so I nodded my understanding. Before I could say anything else Leon was off, moving silently to human ears and too fast for their eyes to follow. As long as he kept out of their artificial lights, to them he would be no more than a shadow, and they had no forewarning when the small stone he hurled smashed against the lens of the camera overlooking the generator room.
The sound brought two of the guards running over to investigate, and one of the men found the stone lying on the ground nearby.
“Those idiot kids again?” he asked his comrade, holding the stone up for the other man to see. I could hear them as clearly as if I was stood right next to them.
“Yeah, could be. Little shits; makes you wonder why we bother risking our lives to keep the likes of those low-life scum safe from the undead threat.”
