by Nick Stead
The two men surveyed the surrounding countryside, trying to find any movement in the shadows. But Leon had already slipped unnoticed into the building as planned, and there was nothing for them to see.
“We should check it out, just in case,” the second man said, turning his attention back to the immediate vicinity round the broken camera. It seemed he was bright enough to realise whoever threw the stone had created a blind spot round the generator, and that if it wasn’t a random act of vandalism, they needed to investigate inside. “You look in there, and I’ll have a look round out here, see if I can see any sign of the bastard behind this.”
As he spoke, he pointed at the building housing their power supply to the other man, and then he pulled out a torch he kept in a holder fixed to his belt and flicked it on. They split up and I watched tensely as the man tasked with checking inside the building stepped through the door. Then the lights went off, which could only mean Leon had cut the power as planned.
I felt sure then that the Slayers would put two and two together and they’d swarm out of the building like ants from an anthill, sealing the vampire’s fate. But all was quiet, until minutes later the guard stepped back out, Leon just behind him, and he stood waiting for his comrade to return with a dazed expression on his face. The vampire motioned for me to join him, and I padded over as quietly as I could. It seemed the first part of his plan had worked.
As we crept towards the entrance, I heard the man searching the vicinity for the rock thrower run back over to his ally.
“What happened?” he asked. “Why’s the power down?”
“I dunno, there was no one in there when I checked. Must be some technical fault or something. We’ll have to get Jeff to look at it.”
“Seems an all-mighty coincidence it goes down just after some bugger breaks the camera. I don’t like this, mate. Something’s not right here.”
“Well check in there yourself then but I’m telling you, it was empty when I looked.”
I lost track of the conversation after that but the man’s suspicions made me uneasy.
Once we reached the entrance to their base, Leon placed both guards on the door under his spell, before they had chance to react.
“Relax. All is quiet out here. We’re just two of your members checking in before we go out on patrol, but if anyone asks, you don’t remember seeing anyone enter.”
The men had no choice but to obey, their minds too weak to resist the hypnotic power of the vampire. And so we walked right in, unchallenged, to enemy territory.
Like with the base I’d briefly been imprisoned in, the Slayers had used some form of soundproofing, though this method didn’t seem to be as effective as whatever they’d used in the other one. It might be enough to muffle the screams of any undead captives to human ears, but to our supernaturally enhanced hearing it was still possible to pick things up from the rooms around us. We could also clearly hear when humans were approaching.
Leon’s plan was simple: we would systematically work our way through the building, killing any Slayers we found and hiding the bodies to help delay the alarm being raised for as long as possible. I had my doubts as to how long we could wander round unchallenged, but the vampire seemed confident we could take out enough of them before we were discovered to give us a fighting chance when facing the rest en masse. And it was too late to turn back, giving me no choice but to continue going along with his plan and praying it would work.
Stalking through the enemy base, my nerves were as taut as ever. I felt my senses were more attuned to my surroundings than they’d ever been without the wolf taking control, my ears pricked to the slightest of sounds, my nose working overtime to try and make sense of the myriad of scents passing through my nostrils. If we’d been out in the open my eyes would have been constantly scanning the shadows for danger, but sight was of little use in the corridors with so many corners for our foes to lurk around.
The immediate area round the entrance seemed quiet, but it wasn’t long before we began to detect signs of life. We came to a stop by the room in which we could sense a human presence, keeping out of sight of the window set in the door. There were three of them in there, and they seemed to be arguing about something. I could hear the rustle of papers as if one of them was searching for something, and the glow of a torch was visible on the other side of the glass.
“Come on mate, we’re not supposed to still be here. We have our orders,” said one of them.
“Fuck our orders! I’m not a soldier – I signed on for revenge against these bastards and I’m bloody well going to get that revenge.”
“Mike’s right, fuck all this pissing about waiting for these monsters to come to us. Pass me that map; I say we head straight for where they were last seen and deal with them ourselves.”
“I don’t know guys, they came up with this plan for a reason,” the first voice answered his friends, or comrades, or whatever they were to each other. “Think how many of us have died trying to kill that beast already. Do you really think the three of us can succeed where so many others have failed, in greater numbers?”
“The werewolf slaughtered my wife and kids last year and he still runs free. I won’t stand by any longer and let him tear more families apart,” the second man retorted, his voice shaking with emotion.
I felt a pang of guilt alongside the unease that had been ruling me since agreeing to Leon’s plan. The vampire looked at me and motioned to stay out of their line of sight, my hybrid form instantly recognisable as a monster. He seemed well aware of the impact those words would have on me and he didn’t want my emotions making me careless.
A part of me wanted to rush in there and let the humans face me, so at least this guy, Mike, could die trying to avenge his loved ones. I couldn’t undo the horrific acts I’d committed but I could at least offer him a chance at the vengeance he craved. But for once I listened to reason, my survival instincts particularly strong that night while my body was flooded with adrenalin, and I let Leon handle it.
His human appearance allowed him to enter without being immediately gunned down, and by the time the humans in the room realised something was amiss it was already too late for them. The vampire dealt each a swift death, breaking their necks before they had chance to draw a weapon or warn their allies.
The threat dealt with, Leon beckoned me inside. It was an ordinary looking office room which could have been in any building. There was a map laid on the desk in there which I imagined they’d been looking at while they debated the wisdom of going out hunting for us.
“Help me hide these bodies. That storage cupboard should take one of them and we can probably get away with another under the desk. You deal with these two and I’ll take this third next door while there’s no one else about on this corridor.”
I did as he’d instructed, my heart hammering against my ribs. There was something else about the conversation that bothered me and I felt an even greater alertness to my surroundings. When I opened the cabinet and a stack of papers fell from the top shelf, I winced at the noise and paused to listen for the thunder of footsteps rushing towards me. But all remained quiet in the immediate vicinity so I stuffed the body inside and shut it quickly. Only the upper half was shelved so there was just about room for the cadaver.
Once I’d dragged the second corpse under the desk where it was less noticeable, I re-joined Leon out in the corridor, doubt still nagging at me.
“I don’t like this, man. The plan those three were talking about, it can’t be owt good for us. Don’t you think we should turn back while we still can? There’s got to be some other way we can deal with the problem of them finding your mansion. We can slip back out while it’s so quiet and come up with a better idea.”
“We might not get another chance and I won’t abandon my home unless I really have to. We can do this.”
So we continued on. I kept expecting trouble but most of the corridors were empty, as were most of the rooms. That only added to my uneasiness: it almost seemed too quiet.
We did find one of them rushing down an adjoining corridor to the one we were on, and unwittingly headed in our direction. She saw us before we could move in for the kill and had time to run back the way she’d come, skidding to a stop in front of two secure looking doors. There she fumbled with the locks, throwing the doors open to reveal one of their weapons arsenals. But Leon was on her before she had time to grab anything useful, though he didn’t make the kill this time.
The locker was packed so full of weaponry that her body wouldn’t have fit inside, and without venturing into any of the rooms in this part of the building, we couldn’t know for sure whether they’d be similar to the office type rooms we’d been in or not. There might not be anywhere close enough to hide the body, so instead the vampire used his hypnotic powers to keep her calm and docile, and to convince her nothing was amiss, like he had with the guards outside. He had to do this a few more times as we moved through the building, but those we were forced to leave alive we would come back for on the way out.
This Slayer base of operations seemed to serve a similar purpose to the one I’d been imprisoned in, however, we didn’t come across any rooms containing cages, and certainly none specifically built to hold undead. Yet there was evidence of scientists performing similar ghoulish experiments to the ones I’d witnessed before – there was no mistaking the scent of blood emanating from under some of the doors we passed, and some of the rooms contained operating tables and surgical tools, and more body parts preserved in jars filled with some clear fluid. But we only came across one living test subject. Or unliving, or whatever the correct term is for an undead.
We both heard the sound of laboured breathing coming from the other side of the door and we ventured inside to investigate, but when my eyes fell on the room’s only occupant I froze with shock.
A female vampire lay strapped to an operating table, weakened from starvation so she couldn’t break free. Her chest had been opened up like her skin was merely a jacket that had been unfastened, the bloody flaps turned back and hanging down her sides. Her breast tissue had been removed and on one side her muscle had been cut away to reveal her lung and part of her heart, while on the other side the muscle had been left intact. Sections of skin had also been shaved off her limbs, baring more of her muscles, though for what purpose I couldn’t even begin to guess at. In the darkness everything looked black instead of the lurid red the scientists would see under the bright lights of their makeshift operating theatre.
The vampire was fully conscious, and through her dry throat she struggled to form her croaked plea. “Help me.”
Such cruel experiments had unnerved me the first time I’d seen them, but in the primal state I’d fallen into they’d failed to horrify me, and what memories I had of them just didn’t have the same impact as actually being there. But this time I was fully aware of the atrocities the scientists were committing. Seeing my fellow undead trapped in so agonising a state, unable to die unless the Slayers granted her the mercy of destroying her heart or her brain, spoke to both my rage and whatever empathy I had left. Even after the anger I’d felt at the vampires for the way they’d treated me over the murders, I didn’t want to see one of them made to suffer such a pain filled existence indefinitely.
“We have to save her,” I growled, fumbling with her restraints in my monstrous hands.
Leon shook his head. “There’s no time.”
The pain was plain to see in her eyes, and the anguish at Leon’s words as she again struggled to voice her plea. “Help me.”
“Then we should at least end her suffering,” I said, grabbing one of the surgical instruments laid out on a nearby table. But Leon caught my arm before I could deliver the killing blow.
“No, Nick. We can’t risk alerting the Slayers to our presence here so soon. If they discover her and raise the alarm, it gives them time to mount a defence and we lose the advantage of surprise. We need to catch them unawares if you want to escape here with your life. We’ll try and come back for her afterwards.”
I hated leaving the female vampire to the horrific existence humanity had devised for her, but I knew Leon was right, though I suspected we wouldn’t make it back. Reluctantly I turned away, trying to tune out those terrible words which still haunt me to this day.
“Help me.”
We made it through almost the entire building without incident, though that did nothing to ease my tension. But the reason why we’d encountered so few Slayers on the corridors and in the rooms we’d passed soon became apparent.
Up ahead we could sense the bulk of their forces gathered in what must be a large room. I guessed it was some kind of assembly hall or briefing room, if they operated in such a way. We could hear a man, presumably their leader, addressing them all, and from the way Leon looked at me it seemed he’d anticipated finding them in such a meeting.
“This is it,” he mouthed, drawing his sword and placing a hand on the door.
He didn’t need to elaborate. This was where the real slaughter would begin, and our attack had to be fast and brutal to take down as many of them unaware as possible before they could react and defend themselves. I guessed there were around a hundred humans gathered inside and as formidable opponents as we could be, to attack so many at once was beyond reckless. But Leon gently pushed the door open with the intention of picking off as many from the edges as possible before they realised what was happening, and it was suddenly too late to turn back. All I could do was follow him in and pray he knew what he was doing.
Once inside, the shadowy form of the leader of the Slayers in this area barked a command and the humans turned to face us, weapons raised. Our plan wasn’t going to work out after all. For all our attempts to catch them unawares, and even with the discovery and removal of the tracking chip that had been implanted under my skin, it seemed they’d still been expecting us. Instead of the bloodbath we’d intended to make of the gathered humans, unaware and too slow to arm themselves to take us down while they still had such a great advantage in numbers, we were now facing around a hundred enemies, all armed and prepared for combat. Our chances of surviving this insane mission had just dropped to around zero, and worse than the potential death awaiting us was the threat of being captured alive and subjected to the same horrific torment as the female vampire. Then the Slayers directly in front of us opened fire, and so began the fight that was surely to be our last.
Chapter Twenty Five – The Last Stand?
I dived for the door we’d come through, but in the first few seconds of chaos one of the Slayers had managed to lock it, and I knew I’d never be able to break through before I was cut down by the gunfire. One bullet had already found its way into my flank in those precious few seconds spent trying the door, and with a roar I let the bloodlust rise on a tidal wave of fury, giving myself completely over to it. If this was to be my last stand, I was taking my enemies down with me.
Leon had already entered the fray, dodging the worst of the first spray of bullets and rushing into the gathered humans, cutting down two of them before they had chance to react. At such close quarters they couldn’t all open fire or they risked killing too many of their own, but they were armed with blades as well and the vampire was soon engaged in a deadly dance of cold steel as those around him hacked and slashed with their own knives and swords. With so great an advantage in numbers, it wasn’t long before cuts started to open up on Leon’s limbs and sides, and for every enemy he took down, there was always another to take the place of their fallen ally.
The Slayers nearest the door we’d entered through were still trying to take me down with their guns. I charged through the hail of bullets, taking another wound to my arm. The pain fuelled the rage as I leapt on my first victim, sending him crashing to the ground and taking the woman behind him down with us. I was aware of the Slayers around me aiming their guns at my exposed back, and I sprang away just as they opened fire. Blood pooled on the floor from beneath the two fallen humans, their bodies riddled wit
h enough bullets to seal their doom, while I grabbed hold of another man by his shirt and threw him at his comrades, buying myself some time as they went down like skittles.
A woman to my right rushed forward in an attempt to stab me, but I slashed my claws across her throat, the knife clattering from her grasp as she fell to join the others in death. I twisted to face another woman wielding a blade, catching her arm before she could bury the weapon in my flesh and crushing her bones in my monstrous hand. She screamed in agony and stumbled away once I released her, clutching her ruined limb with her other arm.
Another blade pierced my side, between two of my ribs. It was far from a killing blow and I realised the Slayers were trying to subdue us through sheer force of numbers. I could only take so many wounds before blood loss took its toll, and while I had the energy to heal the damage for the time being, if I was having to constantly use the power of the transformation to regenerate damaged flesh, I’d soon be overcome with exhaustion. And though I didn’t know much about how vampires healed, Leon surely had his limits as well, which meant we could only keep things up for so long before the Slayers overwhelmed us.
I voiced my fury as fresh pain throbbed through my wounded flesh, turning to deal with the man who’d knifed me. Another swipe of my claws ended his life in a spray of blood and gore, but two more Slayers stepped towards me to fill the gap I’d created, wielding swords. I dodged one of their blades and grabbed the man’s leg, pulling it out from under him so that he landed on the growing pile of bodies. But the second sword opened up a gash in my thigh, and before the first Slayer could pick himself up and renew his assault, I circled round the man still standing and lunged at him. We landed on top of the first Slayer and the numerous corpses littering the floor, and I crushed the second man’s skull in my jaws, then snapped at the arm of the other man as he reached for his sword. My fangs bit down with such force that they went clean through the flesh and bone, severing the limb at the elbow. The human screamed as blood pumped out of his stump, no longer a threat, and I rose to take down more of them.
