Hybrid (Book 2): Hunted

by Stead, Nick

  Blood oozed from the numerous wounds I’d sustained and I could feel my strength draining, but I wasn’t given the chance to heal the damage. Bloody fur hung loosely from my thigh and nerves sparked as they reacted with the oxygen, stinging so badly it became painful to walk on. My rage could only keep me going for so long. Then a gap opened up in the seemingly endless sea of humans and there was Leon, faring little better than myself, despite his greater speed and strength. And as I looked over at him, I saw one of the Slayers splash his face with a bottle of some fluid, causing him to scream and raise a hand to his eyes. There came the unmistakeable stench of burning flesh as if he’d been doused with acid, and I realised it must have been holy water.

  The vampire blindly swung his sword but it seemed the hallowed liquid had melted his eyes, and as I was distracted by the sight of the human nearest him raising his gun to finish off my friend, another knife found its way between my ribs. I roared with renewed rage but I had no interest in killing the enemies attacking me then. Leon was about to die unless I could reach him, and everything else around me might as well have ceased to exist.

  Time seemed to slow as I bounded towards my friend, fighting my way through the humans trying to stop me. I slipped twice in the ever growing pool of blood, and yet somehow I managed to stay on my feet and reach my target before he could finish aiming and pull the trigger. He was too focussed on the vampire to realise I’d pounced until I crashed into him. I smashed his head against the floor like a water melon, spraying a grisly halo of blood and brains around what little remained of his skull. But more Slayers were taking aim at Leon, and there was no way I could take them all out in time. My friend was about to die, and there was nothing I could do.

  Chapter Twenty Six – Death Sentence

  Light flooded the room, whatever damage had been done to the generator obviously having been fixed. In a detached sort of way I was more aware of my surroundings, taking in the bloodbath we’d created with a vague hint of pride. Even though Death must be close again for both me and Leon, it seemed we’d taken down a respectable number of Slayers between us before our inevitable end.

  In the spreading pool of blood on the floor, corpses lay with their throats in bloody tatters. Severed limbs twitched as if the will of those they’d belonged to still drove them to attempt to fight the monsters in their midst. Some of the humans had been slashed across their abdomens, and guts had spilled out, intestines coiled like great snakes amidst the gore, along with other organs. Then there was the mess of brains I’d created from the smashed skull of the corpse I was still crouched over, as well as from the man whose skull I’d crushed between my fangs.

  I squinted against the glare overhead, my eyes still adjusting to the sudden brightness, and as I rose from the body of my latest victim I thought I could see the shadowy outline of the grim reaper stalking over to claim me at last. But it seemed the Slayers could see him too, the heads of those about to finish Leon off snapping round to take in this new intruder. And as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I realised the dark figure wasn’t the robed skeleton wielding a scythe that I’d imagined, but Ulfarr, and he was leading a force of more vampires, including Lady Sarah. The cavalry had arrived, though part of me suspected that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  The Elder vampire strode towards us, cutting down any humans stupid enough to get in his way with a ferocity that rivalled my own, while those behind him rushed at the Slayers to engage them in combat. In that moment Ulfarr was the most impressive figure in the room, and in the primal joy of hacking and slashing his enemies to pieces, he seemed to become almost one with the werewolf pelt he wore, as if he’d transformed into one of the very beasts he hated so. He could have used his powers to deliver quick, clean deaths to his enemies, but instead he chose to wield his sword, the blade carving through flesh and bone as easily as it sliced through the air around us. Limbs flew and heads rolled, the Elder vampire fighting with a savagery I’d yet to see in any others of his kind. One by one the humans began to fall, the odds now against them. Without the advantage of numbers they were weak, too slow to stand a chance of defeating our supernatural might.

  I took advantage of the distraction to charge the humans nearest me, before they could regain their wits and deliver Leon a killing blow while he was still vulnerable. In a flash of claws, two fell back clutching ruined throats. I grabbed the outstretched arm of a third and ripped it clean out of its socket, tossing it aside and leaving the woman to stumble away in shock as I pounced on a fourth. I was aware that Ulfarr had reached us which meant it was all over for the humans. And while he killed them in a similarly brutal fashion, that gave me the time to focus on healing my injuries, using the regenerative power of the transformation but without the need to actually take it all the way to either my human or wolf form. I’d long since learnt how to heal myself without having to undergo a full change, and it was only the severest of wounds that required a full transformation to heal. Then I gave in to the hunger, tearing chunks of meat from the body at my feet and gulping them down ravenously.

  Finally the room was still and quiet around me, every last human turned into a part of the bloody mosaic of carnage we’d created. One of the vampires had guided Leon to feed, and with the fresh blood in his system his own healing powers began to kick in.

  His face had become a hideous mess of melted flesh, the liquid creating bloody rivulets as it ran down, eating right through to the bone of his skull in places. Two gaping craters were all that remained of his eyes, and his nose was all but gone. Part of his lips were missing, revealing the grinning jaw bones beneath. But as I watched, the ruined flesh began to reform. A jelly like substance filled the empty eye sockets until it became two eyeballs, and eyelids re-grew around them. It seemed the vampire’s vision had been fully restored, his new eyes sweeping across the room to take in the carnage, before fixing on Ulfarr.

  Cartilage swelled up to form a new nose, skin stretching across it, and new flesh covered his skull, until the same face I’d grown to know so well looked across at the Elder, as flawless as ever. But the Elder vampire’s eyes were fixed on me. The anger blazing in them was plain to see, and I felt the strong impulse to flee coming from my lupine half. I might have been spared the death I was facing at the hands of the Slayers, but I was far from safe yet.

  “You fools!” Ulfarr spat. “What did you really hope to accomplish here? We have survived the last century by keeping to the shadows, only killing to feed or in self-defence. But you had to go and poke the wasp’s nest and stir them into a frenzy. Now humanity will surely be more diligent in their quest to wipe us out.”

  He motioned to two vampires and they came forward to seize me. Instinctively I started to struggle, but they each held one of my arms in a vice like grip, the strength I could feel from them suggesting they were both centuries old. And at the first hint of resistance from me, Ulfarr once again used his powers to force me back into human form. It was just as excruciating as it had been the previous time, and I couldn’t help but roar in agony until my vocal cords became fully human and it turned to a scream. I slumped between my two captors, shaking from the pain and reluctantly accepting that I had no hope of breaking free through brute strength.

  “As for you, wolf,” Ulfarr continued. “You are found guilty of the murder of six vampires, the penalty for which is death.”

  “It wasn’t him, Ulfarr,” Leon said. “And as for the Slayers, they will come for us anyway – it is only a matter of time. You may have lost your nerve, but some of us would rather die fighting than cowering like whipped dogs.”

  “You will be quiet! You have no authority here, Leon; you are not an Elder. I am this close to charging you along with the wolf. Do not test me.”

  Leon could do no more than watch as I was led away, and I couldn’t even see Lady Sarah amongst the other vampires. It looked like I was to die at the hands of my former allies, and there was no one left to save me.

  I was taken to the same abandoned
warehouse the vampires had imprisoned me in before, and once again they chained me in there. Ulfarr let the two vampires who’d apprehended me fasten the shackles around my wrists and the iron collar around my neck, but he stayed to oversee my incarceration. Once he was satisfied I was secure enough in my makeshift cage, he turned to go, but I called out to him.

  “If you want me dead, why not just let the Slayers do it for you?”

  “And risk either of you being taken alive by our enemies?” he replied, facing me once more. “Who knows what information they could extract to use against us. Leon especially knows too much.”

  “So why not just kill me now, instead of going to all this trouble to keep me here?”

  “Because I promised my people justice, and they are entitled to seeing that justice carried out.”

  “This isn’t about justice. You want to make a spectacle of my execution. You want everyone to watch as you put an end to werewolf kind.”

  He made no reply, offering only a cold smile from beneath the lupine head of what could well have been one of my ancestors, before he swept away to wherever his daylight refuge might be. The door to my prison swung shut with an awful finality, as if it had already become my tomb. The vampires had gone to the trouble of cleaning up the mess I’d made when I’d last been chained in the building, but there still came the scent of old blood and death which did nothing to help my troubled mind.

  At first the rage surged up and I embraced it gladly, though it still wasn’t enough for me to break free. I was angered by the fact the vampires were so ruled by their prejudice towards werewolves that they’d been so quick to sentence me to death, when the Slayers were a far greater threat than I could ever have been, if I had proved to be the real killer. I was angry that my allies had been so quick to turn on me, especially Lady Sarah, when we needed to stick together if we were ever going to have any hope of survival at a time when the Slayers seemed to be making increasingly determined efforts to wipe us out. And most of all, I was furious that they were going to kill me and call it justice when I wasn’t even the killer.

  “How can you say this isn’t justice?” came a voice just behind me. It was a child’s voice, and yet the words felt more adult.

  I turned to find one of my victims from the playground massacre. At first she appeared like a normal, healthy little girl, but then blood blossomed over the dress she was wearing, a loop of intestine slipping through a gash which opened up in the material and her flesh underneath. I quickly turned away, my head in my hands as if that was all it would take to keep the horrors of my guilty conscience contained within my skull. But more hallucinations of my victims appeared around me, torn flesh flapping as they moved to confront me. The little boy from that same day in the playground whose head I’d bitten off came forward, holding his head in front of his torso like the decapitated ghosts of horror films.

  “You might not have killed the vampires, but you’re still guilty of murder,” the severed head said. “Do you even remember how many of us you slaughtered in cold blood? And what meaning did our deaths have, when you came to realise your existence was equally as meaningless? All the massacres you committed this past year, and they were nothing to do with hunger or survival. Why should you go unpunished for the futures you denied us, the lives you cruelly ripped from our mortal bodies?”

  “What do you want from me?” I snarled, raising my head to look at the faces of so many of those I’d sent to an early grave. “My death won’t bring you back, and it won’t bring peace to your living relatives since they’ll never know the truth of the monster that killed you, or what became of him. We don’t execute human murderers in this country, so why should I pay with my life?”

  My conscience didn’t answer and the grisly hallucinations vanished. I turned my thoughts to how I might escape this new predicament I’d found myself in, but as before I could find nothing left lying around on the floor to use as a lock pick on my shackles. There was only the bowl of fresh water and a bucket like I’d been provided with the first time I’d been held there, so I was left praying that maybe Leon might find a way to help me. With nothing better to do, I clung to the hope he’d find a way to rescue me that night, until exhaustion claimed me and I fell through the portal of horrors, into the waiting nightmares.

  I awoke to find I did indeed have a visitor, but the last vampire I’d been expecting to see was Lady Sarah.

  “What do you want?” I growled.

  “I came to check you were as comfortable as possible,” she replied, seeming saddened by the recent turn of events.

  “What do you care? You haven’t bothered to help me at all since Ulfarr last locked me in here, so why bother making an effort now when I’ll be dead soon anyway?”

  “I did not wish for it to play out this way, but there are things you do not understand.”

  “If you really care, go tell Ulfarr about the witch who’s really behind the killings, like I told you before.”

  She shook her head sadly. “He will not be swayed without any evidence. I’m sorry, Nick. Truly I am. But there is nothing more I can do for you.”

  “Fuck off then,” I snarled. “You haven’t been there for me when I needed you most, and I don’t want you here now.”

  So she took her leave, turning to look back at me in the doorway but saying nothing. Then she bowed her head and stalked out into the night, the door closing behind her. I caught the scent of two more vampires outside, guards no doubt, which meant if I were to escape, it would have to be during the day somehow.

  The next vampire to visit me was the Elder again.

  “Elder Ulfarr,” I said, trying to be respectful despite the rage the vampires had brought back to the surface, though I wasn’t fully ruled by it that night. “You have to believe me, I didn’t kill any of your kind. But I saw who did and I’m telling you, there’s a witch out there with a black dog familiar – a barghest, Leon called it. She’s sending that thing out to kill vampires and make it look like werewolf kills, to frame me. I’m guessing she’s working for the Slayers, getting us to turn on each other when we should be allying together to fight them again.”

  “Is that really the best you can do?” he laughed. “If the Slayers were behind this, why would they still be trying to kill you? Do you not think they would want you alive for as long as possible if the goal was to make us fight amongst ourselves?”

  I realised he had a point. “Well maybe she has some other reason for murdering vampires, but the witch is the real killer. Maybe she needs your hearts to fuel some ritual she has planned!”

  “And maybe you would say anything to save yourself. But I did not come here to listen to such unlikely stories. You are to be executed in two night’s time, to give the vampires who wish to be present the chance to travel here. I thought you would want to know.”

  “So kind of you,” I growled, expecting the Elder vampire’s own anger to rise in response. But he didn’t reply, and soon I was alone again.

  I continued to hope Leon would be able to help me escape, but when he came to visit me the next night it wasn’t to bring me the news I’d been hoping to hear.

  “Took you long enough,” I said, as he walked over to where I was chained. “Please tell me you have a plan to get me out of this mess.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, my friend, there’s nothing I can do. Ulfarr has seen to it that I’m watched until after your execution, and I can no more walk through direct sunlight than they can to free you while they sleep.”

  “Can’t you slip me a key for these shackles so I can break out while the sun’s up, or hypnotise a human to come and free me in your stead?”

  “Not without them realising what I was up to. The two vampires outside were reluctant enough just to let me in here to see you, and if Ulfarr knew I’d come he would no doubt have forbidden me to enter your cell. The best I can do for you is this.”

  He reached into his jacket and took out a freezer bag with fresh meat stuffed inside, which he h
anded over. The Elder’s hospitality hadn’t extended to any scraps of meat this time and I doubted I would be granted the luxury of a last meal. I should have felt more grateful to my friend for thinking of me, but I couldn’t help the bitter disappointment that he hadn’t come to me with some miraculous escape plan to save my life.

  “Time’s up, Leon,” one of the guards shouted.

  “Coming,” he replied, before turning back to me. “It’s not much but it’s the best I can do. I don’t know if Ulfarr has bothered to tell you, but he intends to execute you tomorrow night. Stay strong, young wolf. Don’t let them humiliate you when the time comes.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  I was left alone once more, resigned to my fate and nursing dark thoughts. The universe was a cruel place to give me another taste of the life I’d once known during the time I’d spent with Leon at his mansion, only to snatch it away again. In the months when I would have almost welcomed death I’d been saved from a wound that should have killed me, but now I’d been given a reason to live I was going to die anyway. It was cruel and unfair that after everything I’d been through, my life should end at a time when I’d found some contentment.

  Unsurprisingly, I slept little after that, and by somewhere that was around what I would guess was late afternoon, I gave up on sleep entirely. There was no rest to be had when my mind was so focussed on my own demise, which was only hours away. And I was under no illusion as to the chances of entering the gates of Heaven for a monster such as me. They would surely be closed to me, which meant there could be no rest for me in death. Not unless I was one of the souls destined to fall into oblivion, and given the cruel fate I’d been dealt, I doubted I would be that lucky. And would oblivion really be any better than the eternity of torment I no doubt faced in Hell? I would be at peace if I were to completely cease to exist forever more, yet the thought of never again knowing anything of the world around me, or to never again think or feel, began to fill me with fear. The prospect of eternal suffering was no more welcoming, but if I was truly facing Death this time then I would be dragged into one kind of darkness or another.