by Stead, Nick
HUNTED
Book 2 of the Hybrid series
Nick Stead
A Wild Wolf Publication
Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2016
Copyright © 2016 Nick Stead
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.
First print
All Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
E-BOOK EDITION
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As always, for my amazing family for their continued support and belief in me, especially my Mum, my sister Amanda, and my Auntie Debbie for always being there for me at local events.
And for my friends for all their support, with special thanks to my beta readers Hannah, Clare and Charlie for the great feedback to help make Hunted the best read possible. Special thanks also goes to Lauren and Francine for their help with the Hunted trailer and especially Tom (aka White) for not only driving all the way up from Wales to let me chase him in wolf form across the moors, but also acting as chauffer for the day and dealing with numerous aches and pains from filming.
I would also like to thank my fellow writers and friends at Huddersfield Author’s Circle once again for their support and feedback, and helping me to continue to grow as a writer.
And a big thanks to the team at Wild Wolf for all their hard work in putting my work out there for fans to enjoy.
Nick
Prologue
Light creeps across the woodland floor as a new day dawns, painting a grisly scene amidst the natural beauty of the bed of autumn leaves – your final resting place. Blood seems so bright in the early morning sun, ruined flesh glistening wetly. Flies crawl across pale skin, feeding and laying their eggs in every suitable crevice available to them. The insects venture inside your ears and your mouth, and those gaping holes of blood and gore where once your eyes resided, before fangs obliterated them.
Reduced to no more than this lump of mutilated flesh and bone, no one will recognise you for who you were, not by sight alone. Your limbs lay sprawled, one arm bitten off at the elbow, ripped tendons, ligaments and flesh hanging from the bloody stump like gruesome rags. Chalky white bone, streaked with red, lies bare in places where chunks of meat have been ripped away, and your torso is completely torn open, leaving nothing but an empty cavity, many of your vital organs gone, others strewn around and half eaten. And around that bloodied mask that was once your face, brains lie like a ghastly halo, where they oozed out from the puncture marks in your skull.
Somewhere nearby a chilling howl sounds from a bloodied muzzle, turning to a human cry of anguish. You might have been dragged through the black veil of death, but it seems there is more for you than darkness on the other side after all. Your presence lingers on in this earthly plane, still aware of the world but powerless to do anything to help shape it.
Those loathsome scavengers feasting on the decay suddenly buzz away, fear overriding hunger. Birds singing to the early morning fall silent, and rodents seek refuge in the undergrowth. They know better than to linger in the presence of the unnatural beast invading their habitat, instincts saving them where thoughts failed you.
And here I stand over your mortal remains, your blood staining my bare flesh. Underneath the blood and dirt my skin remains as flawless and unmarred as the day I was born, despite everything my body’s been through over the years. And yet for all the healing capabilities of my curse, I still carry the scars, invisible to the naked eye but they mark me nevertheless. And just as scarred flesh from old physical wounds can still throb years later, so too do I feel the ache of these mental wounds, all the more potent whenever I must walk alone. So why take your life when my heart yearns so greatly for companionship? I began my tale out of the need to share the burden of this pain I carry, the weight of all the deaths surrounding me that still hangs over me even now. Killing you only added to the weight of my burden, undoing any relief I might have found in the telling.
I could blame the hunger of course, or the call of the moon robbing me of my senses. But to do so would be a lie. In truth I’m no more than a killer, a monster born of humanity but also driven by a wolf’s hunger for raw flesh. Most people don’t know what it is to truly dwell in the darkness, but that has been my reality for some time now. The darkness at the heart of the human side to my nature has ruled me for so long, I don’t think I could pull myself back out, even if I was willing to try. And to drag others into the darkness has become all I know. So it was back then, early in my lycanthropy, and so it is now.
Did you pity me when you first heard how my life was ripped from me by this curse, I wonder? Did you feel sorry for this poor, wretched creature, condemned to prey on those around him, before I crushed that pity, along with all your other thoughts and feelings, your very life. And does it now bring you pleasure to hear of my suffering? I’ve proven myself to be the monster beyond a doubt now, after all. Perhaps I’ve earned your hatred. That is, if there is anything left of you to hate. Are you truly still with me now, or am I merely imagining this presence I sense? No matter. I promised to continue my tale after the full moon, so continue it I shall. If it brings you some form of enjoyment to hear of my pain then it’s the least I can do in return for the life I stole from you to fuel my own cursed existence. And if you are no more than another product of my guilty conscience, perhaps voicing some more of the pain I carry will bring some relief again, no matter how temporary. You may not really be here this time, there may be no one listening, but I want to continue.
Very well then. We began in the year 2003, on my final day as a human, though I struggled through my last year of high school in an attempt to carry on in the remnants of my life before the curse. Now we go back to where I left off in 2004, just after I’d chosen to leave the human world behind, when a new struggle was only just beginning.
Chapter One – A Harsh Reality
Blood pooled at my feet, seeping into the soil, the last remnants of life from my latest kill. He fell to the ground and another human took his place. The sounds of battle filled the night, gunfire ringing in my ears, the heavy thud of sword through bone, and the wet, tearing sounds of flesh being ripped apart.
Corpses littered the battlefield, some rising as zombies, others never to rise again. Zombies – they were everywhere. Moving through the battle in a cascade of maggots, each in various stages of decay. The new dead walked almost like humans. The older ones limped, their muscles stiff and almost useless. Some were reduced to skeletons, Lady Sarah’s power the only thing binding the bones together. Some had died in the last world war, their legs long since blown off. They dragged themselves along with their hands. Some groaned. Others were silent, their vocal cords rotted away years ago. Few of them were whole, but they didn’t need much to kill. One of them even had a head missing, but it seemed to be doing well enough without it. They pulled their victims apart. Some of them tore through flesh and bone with their teeth. And they were literally unstoppable. Bullets tore holes in them, blades hacked them to pieces, and still they carried on their relentless attacks. Most of them didn’t even bleed. The freshly dead did, but there was no clotting, no healing, not like the living. Of all the undead, they were the closest to being truly dead.
Another human came at me with a sword. Clawed hands shredded his skin and blood poured, my fur soaked with it. Then a zombie crawled towards me, dragging its useless legs behind it because the nerves had been torn out at the base of the spine. A short leng
th of intestine trailed behind it, the rest having been cut away after it had served its purpose as rope to bind her. It was a woman once, barely recognisable now. The face was a bloody mask, nose broken, ears missing, eyes long gone, save for the remnants of jelly like substance clinging to her cheeks. The flesh around the jaws had been completely torn off, giving her a permanent skeletal grin. There wasn’t an inch of her body that had been left untouched.
Other zombies lurched towards me. I suddenly found myself surrounded. But something was wrong, we were supposed to be on the same side. The zombie of the tortured woman latched onto my leg and bit down hard enough to draw blood. A scream tore from my throat as a second zombie sunk its teeth into my shoulder. I tried to fight them off but it was no use, they were too strong for me. I tore at the zombie on my shoulder with human hands, trying to pry its jaws off me. But that wasn’t right either, I didn’t remember transforming back to human…
A werewolf loomed over me, blood on its jaws and death in its eyes. I was no longer one of the undead, just a human again, body frail with mortality. The zombies ripped me apart in seconds. Like piranhas, they stripped me to the bone. A last dying scream tore from my throat, death drawing nearer. And then came the sound of real enemies somewhere on the edge of consciousness, beyond the nightmare, and I fought my way back to the waking world.
Lady Sarah was already alert beside me, her senses focussed on the group of Slayers creeping towards us. They were stealthy for humans but for all their training and technology, it was no match for our supernatural sight, hearing and smell. It had been only three nights since the battle in my hometown, in which we’d defeated the force there. I hadn’t expected them to send more so quickly, or for them to find us so soon after leaving the area, but no matter how they’d located us, the fact remained we had become the hunted.
Of all the deaths I’d caused in that fight, only one weighed on my conscience. For the blood ties and the bonds of family are difficult to break, and on some level I supposed I had loved my Dad, though such emotions had been hard to find in my heart towards the end, once my rage had broken free and the anger had consumed me. To say I grieved for him would not be entirely accurate but in the aftermath of the battle, once my rage had subsided, there were the stirrings of guilt such as I had not felt in months. What troubled my conscience the most was the thought of the destruction I had wrought on the lives of my Mum and my sister, Amy. In losing both me and my father that night their world had surely been left in ruins, by my own hand. It pained me to think of the heartbreak I must have caused them, whenever I was given the chance to dwell on it.
I rose beside the vampire, stiff and aching from sleeping on the hard floor. She relied on me to watch over her during the daylight hours when she was at her most vulnerable, and I had been allowed a few hours of rest while she watched over me in return. But sleep had not been easy since the curse of my lycanthropy had awoken nightly horrors to plague me every time I closed my eyes, and sleeping rough had only added to my problems with insomnia. I was not adjusting well to the new way of life somewhere between the world of man and nature, neither of which we could ever belong to. Nothing had been the same since I’d been bitten roughly a year ago, and day by day I’d slowly lost my humanity until I knew I could live among humans no more. The battle had brought with it the final realisation that I had to leave my old life behind and move on, or risk hurting my remaining loved ones. But that was proving to be more of a challenge than I’d expected, as it had been all I’d known prior to this new, harsh lifestyle I’d suddenly found myself in. After years of living in the world of modern human comforts, it was something of a shock to the system to be without all that which most people take for granted.
As well as missing the comfort of my bed, I found myself longing for a shower more than my teenage, human self would ever have anticipated. There had been no time to wash since the battle and my body was covered in dried blood and filth, as well as my own grease and sweat. And while I had become accustomed to living with hunger when I’d been captured and starved by the Slayers, it was already becoming a constant sensation which only added to my discomfort. Lady Sarah had promised to teach me how to survive in the shadows, and the first lesson had been to hunt only small prey which would attract less attention, or to scavenge when possible. But this meant I’d not been permitted to eat my fill since before the battle and such small morsels as rabbits and birds could only ever take the edge off the hunger. I needed far more meat to satiate it and as I turned my attention to the Slayers, I watched them ravenously. I also felt a sense of hatred, still blaming them in part for bringing my human life to an end, and I let it awaken my anger, constantly smouldering within the darkest recesses of my very being. A growl rumbled deep in my throat and I bared my teeth as I readied myself to fight.
“No, Nick,” Lady Sarah whispered.
“Why? There’s only a handful of them,” I said.
“No, we must choose our fights carefully if we are to win this war.”
I ignored her and let the transformation take hold, wanting to revel in the destructive power of my lupine body once more. I hungered but it was no longer the mere craving for human flesh that drove me. No, I thirsted for blood and hungered for death, for slaughter. I had developed a need to kill, born of the rage and bloodlust awoken by the curse, all the more potent for the waxing moon overhead which would soon reach its fullest. In fighting the Slayers I could indulge my dark desires, but it was more than that. I embraced my rage because it kept the guilt and the pain at bay, and I felt I needed to lose myself in the bloodlust to avoid falling back into the dark pit of despair and depression I’d been in for the winter months following my friend Fiona’s death.
“Foolish boy!” Lady Sarah hissed. “Do you not recognise the spellcaster from three nights past? It is a fight we cannot win.”
“Don’t treat me like some mortal kid anymore,” I snarled, but suddenly my skin felt as if it was burning with the memory of the witch I’d faced in battle who had nearly ended my life, if Lady Sarah hadn’t been there to save me. Much as I hated to admit it, she was right. The spellcasters could easily have been the end of the army we’d gathered for that fight, and between their power and the guns we would face from the mortal Slayers, the two of us alone couldn’t hope to defeat them.
“There is no shame in tactical retreat,” she said in a gentler tone in an attempt to soothe me, aware that arguing could cost us our lives.
“Tactical retreat,” I snorted. “Call it what you want, it’s still running.”
But I let my anger burn back down to the embers deep within, though I didn’t reverse the few changes that had already begun, intending to take the transformation all the way to my faster wolf form.
“There’s no time,” Lady Sarah said. “We have to go, now!”
I had no choice but to run with the vampire in human form, unable to keep the transformation up whilst moving. It was too painful and too awkward to run on shifting flesh and bone.
Even in human form, I was still faster than any mortal, though I would have had no hope of keeping pace with the vampire if she’d run at full sprint. She let me set the pace and ran effortlessly beside me, graceful and agile as only we paranormal predators could be. Within minutes we had covered enough of a distance to be safely out of range of the group of would-be hunters – the mortals and their guns at any rate. I still had much to learn about the supernatural world I’d been dragged into and I could only guess at the rules of witchcraft. Were there any limitations on spells over a distance? If it was as easy as chanting an incantation to strike down enemies from anywhere on the planet then they would have surely killed us already, so I had to assume there was some kind of a range on witchcraft as well, but what that range was perhaps only the witches and warlocks themselves knew. From the look of determination on Lady Sarah’s face, it seemed she didn’t plan on stopping until we’d put a few hundred miles between us and the spellcaster, so I had to assume the warlock’s power was stil
l a threat over quite some distance. It seemed we would need to spend the remainder of the night on the run, if we were to rest safely through the daylight hours.
“Wait,” I growled, coming to a stop and scenting the air. “Don’t you smell that?”
“Fire,” the vampire hissed.
“Over there,” I pointed. The unmistakable scent of smoke was thick and unpleasant to my sensitive nose, and as we watched, the faint glow of flames could be seen creeping through the darkness. “Coincidence?”
“We can’t take that chance. If it is the work of witchcraft it could be our undoing. Come, this way.”
“Wait,” I repeated. “There’s another group of Slayers closing in. It’s a trap; they want us to keep running so they can catch us between the fire and their guns.”
“Then we must keep going towards the flames and hope we can outrun the blaze before it spreads too far round.”
“Fuck that, we need to fight our way out!”
“If we stand and fight we will die,” she argued.
“And since when has running into a trap ever been a good idea? If we keep going they’ll kill us. If we fight we have a chance to escape, and at least if we do die we can take some of them down with us. What are you so afraid of?”
“I fear nothing,” she hissed. “But I have not survived all these centuries by being reckless.”
“Fine, you keep running,” I snarled. “I’m staying to face them.”
Without waiting for any further response from the vampire, I let my anger rise once more, my blood boiling as it coursed through my veins. There was a savage joy as the feral power of my lupine nature surged through my body, all vestiges of the human weaknesses falling prey to the might of the predatory wolfish features taking hold. But there was no time to take it all the way to wolf form, so I chose to fight in the hybrid form I’d first been trapped in by mistake one cold December night, but had since grown to enjoy.
