The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  I paused by the first of the labs and peered through the small pane of glass set in the door. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness.

  “Pass me the torch a sec, please,” I said. Zee obliged and I shone it through the window.

  A vampire lay motionless inside, male or female I couldn’t tell. They’d stripped the creature of its skin, exposing muscle and sinew glittering darkly with its coating of natural fluids. The surgeon’s scalpel had gone deeper still into the abdomen, cutting away the muscle there to reveal all the internal organs. Most of those looked intact, save the heart which had a knife embedded in it. I felt like I was looking at a real life version of the kind of scientific plastic models used in schools. But I could see nothing of the scientists who’d done this to the vampire, nor could I detect any of the soldiers waiting to ambush us within. So we moved on.

  The next room held a ghoul, now also dead. Another blade pierced its heart, and this creature was in more pieces than the first victim. Some of those pieces had already been bottled in containers filled with preservative liquid, including most of its organs, the eyes and a severed hand. It was a mad scientist’s lab straight out of a horror movie, and I could think of few fates worse than ending up on one of those tables. The knife through the heart must truly have come as a blessing.

  My gaze lingered on those body parts floating in their fluid, wondering if the cells still lived on after the curse of undeath was broken. It was impossible to tell with a ghoul, considering the advanced state of decay that made up their transformation from human corpse to monster. The hand in particular was so skeletal I wondered what use the Slayers could possibly have for it. Surely it was too far gone to provide any useful samples. And did it just move? I fell back with a cry of alarm, unprepared for what I thought I’d seen.

  “What is it?” Zee asked, voice full of the same unease I was now filled with.

  “Take a look,” I said, passing the torch back to him.

  “I see nothing new in here. This looks exactly like what you’ve described seeing before.”

  “Take a closer look at the hand. Is it moving?”

  He frowned. “Not that I can see, and such a thing should not be possible now the ghoul is in a state of true death.”

  “I could have sworn one of the fingers twitched from side to side, like it was gesturing ‘no, go back’ or something.”

  “A trick of the light perhaps?” Lady Sarah said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I answered, still unnerved.

  There were also rooms like the one I’d been imprisoned in during my brief stay at the base near my hometown. These were purposefully built to hold undead and we could see several of them had been occupied when we’d first attacked, but the Slayers had dealt with the prisoners in the same way as their lab rats. They all bore wounds to their hearts or brains, ensuring they would never rise again.

  Most disturbing of all were the rooms clearly dedicated to developing new technologies to kill our races. The Slayers were showing signs of preparing for all-out war. It looked like our situation could be worse than I think any of us had imagined, and that brought a chill to my heart even the rage couldn’t burn away. If our enemies were considering coming out of the shadows and hitting hard, there was every possibility I wouldn’t survive for the span of a human lifetime, never mind the chance at eternity my lycanthropy promised. Our future was looking bleak.

  We continued our hunt for the surviving Slayers but the base remained as dead as the unfortunate captives. I was starting to suspect they had another way out, one which went directly to the outside world without having to go back through the upper floor. Their scientists could well have begun evacuating the moment we launched our attack, but what that meant for us I didn’t know. I only knew the soldiers still had to be down here somewhere. They’d been unwilling to pursue us through the countryside as we’d wanted and leave the base undefended. I doubted they’d just abandon it now.

  Other areas we passed through were clearly used for more training. There were targets for shooting practice as well as signs of other rooms used for teaching hand-to-hand combat. It seemed I’d been right in my guesses about the importance of this base.

  We’d been through most of the building when we came upon another canteen. There was a strong smell of human cooking but that wasn’t what set my nose quivering and my mouth watering.

  “In here,” I growled in triumph.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Zee answered, looking doubtful.

  “Nor I,” Lady Sarah said.

  “There’s at least one of them in there, I can smell him,” I snarled. And it was him. His scent was coming so strongly from the other side of the doors that he had to be in there somewhere, probably cowering and praying we wouldn’t find him. I hoped someone had told him what I did to the first of the three to avenge the dog. I hoped he was sitting there shitting himself while his terrified brain played images of what I was probably going to do to him. But above all, I hoped we would not be disturbed till I was through with him. If time allowed, I intended to make his suffering last far longer than the first of the monstrous trio. They’d left the poor dog in a state of such pain and terror, and I wanted him to endure the same level of torment for at least a handful of hours after I was through with him. Days would be even better.

  “Just one on his own? That doesn’t seem right,” Zee said. But it was too late. My sense of unease had been swept away by dark desire, and I was already charging into the room.

  There was a black shape lying on the floor towards the back, but otherwise the room seemed empty of anything untoward. It had the usual furniture you’d expect in a canteen – tables and chairs for people to sit and eat and counters where the food would be served. Yet there was no evidence of any humans hiding there. The room was quiet, the shadows still. Confused, I drew closer to the thing on the floor. It was the source of the man’s scent in that room, I realised, and growled with frustration when I found it was no more than his jacket. Where was he?

  The vampires had followed me in. I was vaguely aware of them behind me when suddenly light returned to the base, blindingly bright after the darkness. Something small and metallic clattered across the floor towards us, but I was too slow to recognise it as another grenade before the thing exploded. Except this time it didn’t deliver searing pain to my hide. This device was less in the way of man’s fury and more like the fury of a banshee. And it brought us all to our knees.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Slow and Painful End

  A high-pitched sound filled the room, ear-splittingly loud and agonisingly intense. I roared in pain and covered my ears in a futile attempt to protect them, feeling the trickle of fresh blood soaking into my fur. But the deafening screech was delivered at a frequency only our sensitive ears could detect. The Slayers rushed back in without fear of damage to themselves.

  Mercifully the noise lasted only seconds, but that was all our enemies needed. Disoriented, I couldn’t tell where they came from – one moment the canteen was quiet and still, and the next there was the sound of the grenade, closely followed by the ringing in my ears, and then the Slayers were just suddenly there before any of us had chance to recover.

  I looked about in confusion, made worse with another burst of gunfire. But the sound of it seemed oddly far away, and I was slow to pick myself up. Reality felt less tangible somehow and I was struggling to remember why the return of the humans was so bad.

  My slowness to react cost me more wounds to my body and another to my head. A bullet passed clean through my muzzle, only missing my face and the killing shot to my brain by pure chance. The same was true for the bullets in my torso. They landed only millimetres from my heart and lungs, embedding themselves just below my diaphragm. A fraction of a second slower and I would have died that night. But somehow I managed to stagger to my feet and back into the fight, blood gushing from my broken jawbones and the fresh crater in my torso. Both my liver and stomach were full of metal and the transformation had
taken hold purely by instinct.

  I lunged at the nearest human, taking more bullets to my chest as we both went down. The pain helped bring me back to the truth of my surroundings and the threat the humans posed. And my mind cleared enough to realise what needed to be done.

  Bullets fell from holes closing behind them as I beheaded my latest victim, but even the power of the transformation couldn’t keep up with the rate I was taking damage. My speed was returning and I managed to dodge the worst of the next spray, but not without being hit again. More bullets thudded into my flesh, one piercing my thigh and another tearing a hole through my bicep. I didn’t have the luxury of healing all of the damage, the full shift between forms too awkward for me to keep moving until it was complete. So I let my body fix the worst of its wounds, struggling to run while my body was growing closer to being fully lupine but not daring to become a sitting target. The moment the life threatening damage had repaired itself I settled back into my hybrid form, and lunged for another opponent.

  The vampires had been slightly quicker to recover. It was probably thanks to them I wasn’t dead already, yet for all their greater powers, the battle was still going badly. Blood poured from a wound in Zee’s side and one of Lady Sarah’s arms hung limp and useless, bullets shattering the bone until the limb could no longer function. They were going to need to feed again soon to heal themselves.

  I wondered why Selina hadn’t used the same spell as before to heat the metal of the Slayers’ guns, buying us time while they were temporarily disarmed. But no help seemed to be coming from witchcraft. The vampires were doing as much as they could through telekinesis but they couldn’t stop every single bullet from hitting our flesh. Their powers were fading with all the blood pouring from their wounds, yet they daren’t stop to feed until the odds tipped back in our favour. If that didn’t happen soon their strength was going to fail, and I’d be on my own.

  Fleeing wasn’t an option either, our enemies holding their positions and successfully keeping us from the doors we’d come through. It was to be a bitter struggle to the end, either till we fell or we killed the last of our enemies. There was no other way out this time.

  I bounded towards another Slayer, dodging the burst from his weapon and striking the instant he took his finger off the trigger to adjust his aim. One powerful swipe of my arm was all it took to disarm him, the gun torn from his hands by the force of it and clattering to the floor, skidding well out of his reach. I briefly considered going for the gun and turning it against them but dismissed the idea almost the instant it came. It would have been the first time I’d ever fired one and I was as likely to hit one of the vampires as I was a Slayer, if I succeeded in hitting anything at all. So instead I grabbed hold of the man and threw him at one of his fellows. His flailing body crashed into the other Slayer and they went down, temporarily out of action for the few minutes it would take them to pick themselves back up.

  I was about to go for another of our enemies when a man cried “Enough!”

  The gunshots came to an instant stop. I caught that scent again and turned to find my quarry standing in the doorway, mine for the taking if I could just reach him before his allies started shooting once more. If only it had been that simple.

  “Surrender or she dies,” he said, gun pressed to the temple of his hostage. Varin stood snarling beside him, not banished after all but leaving us to help the witch he was bound to. Selina. The Slayer’s hostage was Selina.

  I could almost feel how badly Varin wanted to sink his fangs into the Slayer’s flesh, yet he made no move to attack, intelligent enough to know the human would kill his mistress the instant he tried anything. If any of us so much as twitched a muscle she was dead, every Slayer still standing aiming at her now. We were beaten and we knew it.

  “Harm her and it will be the last thing you do,” Lady Sarah hissed.

  “Tempting,” the man sneered. “But she is more use to us alive at this moment in time. No trying any of your mind tricks either. We both know the fight’s taken too much out of you to stop all twelve of us from putting a bullet in her.”

  “Well done, you have us at a stalemate,” I growled, realising he must have known I wanted revenge after the dungeon and wouldn’t be able to resist following his scent into this trap. It was my fault we’d got caught in it and that made my anger burn all the stronger. “So what do you want?”

  “This,” he said, moving the gun from Selina’s head to point it at me.

  “Wait!” another male voice commanded. This one I recognised. It was Will.

  “You,” the man said, narrowing his eyes and moving the gun again to aim at Will.

  “Our orders have changed,” Will answered, fearless as ever, despite the gun pointing at him. He held a weapon of his own but it was only a handgun, and he was now dressed like a modern day soldier. “Roth wants them alive.”

  “Yeah, right. Don’t think your treachery has gone unnoticed, Will. We know you turned against us and helped these four escape. If you think you’re going to rescue them a second time, you can think again.”

  “Easy, Josh. That wasn’t me. The vampires had me under their spell. You know how impossible that is to resist.”

  Josh. So now I had a name for the man I was going to kill, as soon as fate allowed.

  “I don’t believe you. Drop the gun and kick it this way, then keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “As you wish, but there’s really no need for this. You can speak to Roth yourself.”

  “And how is it, when she changes her mind about killing them that you just happen to show up in time to save them, eh?”

  Selina caught my eye while the two men were arguing. She gave the faintest of nods, barely moving her head at all. But that was all I needed.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, Selina kicked out with all the strength she could muster, catching Josh on the shin. He cried out and shot his gun on reflex, but his aim was off and the bullet thudded harmlessly into the wall above Will’s head. Then the room descended into chaos once more.

  Selina was able to break free of Josh’s hold on her and dived for the cover of a table. They weren’t bolted down so she was able to push it over and hide behind. Varin lunged for Josh, to my roars of “No! Mine!”

  I ran towards the Slayer as fast as I could, ignoring the complaints of my damaged muscles and the fact I had more guns pointing at me. The vampires had also sprung back into action, slower now for the bullets they’d taken but still fast enough to present harder targets than most mortal creatures. They’d each made another kill before I’d even had chance to get to Josh. But that didn’t matter. The universe had shrunk to a point where it only contained me and my prey, and nothing else was going to matter until he lay bleeding to my fangs. Mine! Not Varin’s. He was mine.

  The barghest had other ideas. Josh just had time to react to the spirit’s attack, throwing up an arm to protect his face from those powerful jaws. He screamed as the bone snapped but it delayed the killing bite. Varin let go of the limb and prepared to lunge again when I reached them.

  “Mine!” I roared a second time and pounced on my quarry, pinning him to the ground and snarling at the other beast, defending my kill.

  Those glowing red eyes regarded me with feelings I couldn’t even begin to guess at. For a moment I thought he would fight me over the prey we both wanted, but he turned away and charged at one of our other enemies, leaving me free to have my revenge. I was going to enjoy this.

  “Now you die,” I growled, taking great pleasure in the look of terror settling over Josh’s face.

  “Will!” the Slayer yelled, voice high with fear. “If you’re still loyal to us, now would be the time to prove it!”

  All pretence at camaraderie drained from Will’s voice, his next words emotionless and matter-of-fact. “Sorry, Josh, you were right all along. My loyalties lie elsewhere.”

  Another gunshot went off somewhere behind me, different to the ones the Slayers in this base had been using b
ut not a handgun either. It seemed Will had been happy to discard his first weapon because he was armed with something better, probably strapped to his back where it had not been immediately noticeable. I heard a body drop, the rounds he was firing apparently big enough to go through the Slayers’ armour. The odds were finally in our favour, and our enemies knew it.

  I grinned down at my prey, made all the more fearsome for the blood staining my fangs. “No one’s coming to save you, Josh. You tortured an innocent animal so now you pay, just like your friend did back in the dungeon.”

  “Oh come on, she was just a dog!” he screamed. That was the worst thing he could have said. My anger fed on his human arrogance – the audacity with which they placed themselves above all other living things.

  “She was better than humanity could ever be,” I snarled, driving my thumbs into his eyes.

  Josh screamed and grabbed my hands, desperately trying to pull them out of his sockets. But it was far too late to save his sight. I slid my claws back out of the grisly craters, savouring the moment of him whimpering and lamenting the loss of his vision.

  “Now I’m going to take your ears,” I told him.

  “No! Mercy, please,” he begged.

  “Mercy? But you’re just a human, beneath an immortal creature like me. What does it matter if I torture you a bit? What does it matter if I kill you? Why is that any different to what you did to the dog?”

  “Please!” he screamed.

  I ignored his pleas and sliced into the cartilage on either side of his head, taking first one, then the other. Bloody tears ran down his cheeks.