The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  I growled. “Easy for you to say; it’s not your neck on the line.”

  Will didn’t react, his face still matter-of-fact. “If you look to be in danger I’ll even the odds, but the summoning will go smoother if you can handle the sacrificing part on your own.”

  A thought occurred to me. “If you’re wanting to use the Slayers against Dhaer, why don’t we just go straight to wherever they’re holding Gwyn and combine freeing him with summoning the demon? Would that not save us a load of time and risk, instead of fighting two separate battles?”

  “If all goes well, there won’t be a battle to free Gwyn. Attacking this town means the Slayers have to come to us, and I can have the ritual well underway before they do that. If we go to our enemies they’ll be better prepared, and it would only make the summoning harder.”

  I sighed. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

  Will nodded. “Once you feel Dhaer’s presence, forget the humans and make your way back here. It should take the bait, then we can attack while it’s distracted.”

  I glanced around but still couldn’t see anything special about our surroundings. There was a pub that looked to have been closed down a good while ago, its windows and doors all boarded shut and the sign missing from its bracket. That was about all there was to see.

  “And don’t kill all of them,” Will added. “It’s the pain and suffering that will attract Dhaer back to us.”

  “Okay.”

  He took his leave, walking off in the direction of the town centre. I supposed I should transform and head for the nearest crowd to massacre, but I felt far too exposed on the backstreet, despite the quiet. If a Slayer happened upon me mid-transformation I’d be vulnerable, and I had no desire to make myself such an easy target. Somewhere with places to hide while I shifted would be safer, so I started walking in the same direction Will had gone, still fully human and fully clothed.

  I wandered up and down a few streets before I found anywhere suitable. A large multi-storey carpark nestled between various shops and other businesses felt like a safe bet. I might even be able to take my first victim there. My stomach was rumbling again and I could think of little else on my way into the structure’s gloom.

  The carpark was all but deserted. There were plenty of cars, but no humans as far as I could tell. My stomach gave another angry growl. I ignored it, reminding myself of the need to transform out of sight. Then I could gorge myself to my heart’s content.

  I was about to take the lift to one of the upper levels when I heard footsteps approaching the pedestrian entrance. Ducking behind a van, I watched as the doors swung open and a dark-haired woman stepped through. Tired eyes glanced around the carpark, then she started making her way through the vehicles. I followed, moving as quietly as I could manage in trainers and keeping low to the ground.

  She seemed to be heading for a car at the other end of the ground level. Her pink work clothes were some kind of nursing uniform, but it didn’t look like NHS – might have been from a private care home or something like that. A gothic handbag hung from her left arm, out of place with the rest of her outfit. It had the kind of skull design I would have approved of once, her tastes probably similar to the boy I used to be. Maybe in another life we could have shared a friendship born of our love of the horror genre. In another life, where I was still human. But that wasn’t this one, and a predator doesn’t choose his prey based on personality and likes and dislikes. And to my carnivorous hunger, she could only ever be prey.

  There was still no one else around and the hunger was taking over, my patience for the next kill all but spent. My body was pushing for the transformation, my mouth slavering with the need for meat. I fought it this time. Will said we needed the humans to suffer, so suffer they would.

  I circled round, stepping into the woman’s view as she neared the last few rows of cars. A flicker went through the light directly above me, almost as though on cue. It died a moment later, casting me in shadow. If the woman was superstitious she might have assumed that was my doing, but of course you know better. And yet the timing was so perfect, it would have been easy to believe it was more than mere coincidence.

  “Can I help you?” the woman called out, her voice tinged with unease. I vaguely wondered if she’d have been so quick to sense something was amiss if the light had stayed on. Maybe not, given I was still stuck in the body of a fifteen year old.

  I didn’t answer and was rewarded with the first taste of her fear. It didn’t matter that my human form was still that of a scrawny teenager. In the darkness I looked as menacing as any grown man.

  “Are you lost or something?” she tried again. She had a kindly face and I sensed her nature was perfect for a career in care. But ultimately it was to be her undoing. She should have just run, then maybe she would have had a chance.

  I advanced towards her, silent and intimidating. She immediately started to back away.

  “If you want my money you can have it,” she said, digging in her bag. “Just don’t hurt me, please.”

  “I don’t want your money. It’s your fear I need, and your pain.”

  I kept on stalking towards her and she carried on backing away. She didn’t seem to know what to say to that so I elaborated, enjoying her confusion as she struggled to make sense of the situation, and her rising horror as the pieces slowly began to fall into place.

  “Ah, but I sense I have your fear already.” I breathed deep through my nose, loud enough for her to hear. “I smell it in the sweat beading on your body. I hear it in the quickening of your heart and the shallowness of your breaths. And I see it in your eyes and the paling of your skin, and the trembling of your hand clutching the purse you hold out to me like a lifeline. But money won’t save you.”

  “I have a family,” she answered, making an admirable effort to sound brave. “They’ll realise I’m missing if I don’t get home soon, and they’ll come looking for me.”

  “Good. They can come die with you.”

  “Oh God,” she sobbed, her face the very definition of abject horror.

  I took another step towards her and she took another step back, her purse falling to the floor. It was also in a gothic style, shaped like a coffin decorated with a pentagram and another skull in its centre. Ordinarily she’d no doubt have been devastated to lose it, but she carried on backing away, her hand back in her bag and rummaging for her phone. Unsurprisingly, when she drew out her mobile that had also been given a gothic makeover, encased in a protective outer shell with yet more skulls on. We definitely could have been good friends in another life.

  “Not another step! If you come any closer, I’m calling the police.”

  “You think I fear the police?” I growled, letting my eyes burn with their flames of lycanthropic rage and my teeth lengthen. “No human cell can hold me.”

  “Oh my God,” she repeated, staring into the twin balls of fire blazing in my skull. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  My next step took me back into a pool of artificial light, revealing me for the monster I truly was. Barely a fortnight had gone by since I’d promised my wolf side an end to the meaningless slaughter, and I’d been trying to uphold that. I’d tried so hard to tell myself I was better than that now, better than humanity. But I couldn’t deny the thrill it brought me to see her eyes widen as she beheld a boy’s face twisted by bestial hunger not just for flesh, but for the kill. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t excite me to see her horror rise with the realisation I was not just a monster born of human darkness. No doubt she’d encountered plenty of werewolves bound to the pages of a book or trapped on screen, but she probably never expected to come face to face with one in the real world. And seeing that mixture of disbelief, shock, awe and rising terror was all it took to set the bloodlust free again.

  I let my jawbones stretch back into a lupine muzzle, my fangs more at home in my bestial maw. The woman whimpered at this sight few humans would ever see, terrifying and yet awe inspiring all at once. She took anot
her step back, wanting to run I was sure but unable to tear her eyes from the impossible show I was giving her, one which her mind was probably insisting shouldn’t have existed outside of fiction and legend. Her phone fell from her hand and clattered to the ground, but she made no move to retrieve it.

  Fabric began to tear, clothes becoming more uncomfortable as they clung awkwardly to a body they weren’t designed to fit. The jeans were the worst. They constricted my tail growing out of my spine, and I couldn’t rip them off quick enough, inwardly cursing my foolish need for theatrics. I would have just stripped off to transform, if I hadn’t wanted my prey to think I was human until this moment, this glorious moment when I showed her my true nature, purely for the reaction she was giving me.

  The discomfort didn’t last for long, the clothes tearing easily with my supernatural strength. I’d freed myself of the confines of the fabric before my pelt had reached its full length, and a moment later I had the hybrid body I desired. The transformation ground to a halt.

  “You should have run,” I growled, voicing my earlier thought.

  The woman didn’t need telling twice. She gave another whimper and finally turned her back, sprinting with all the speed her human body had to offer. I wanted to howl, but I felt it wasn’t quite time to announce my presence to the town yet. Not with the hunger beating its fists so strongly within my belly.

  I allowed the woman a slight head start before giving chase. It wasn’t really a fair competition, but I couldn’t let her get too far ahead or she’d be emerging back out onto the streets screaming werewolf. That was bound to draw in a Slayer or two, and then I’d have to wait a while to eat till I’d dealt with the ensuing chaos. So I only gave her a couple of minutes before dropping to all fours and bounding after her, and a couple of minutes was all it took to close what little distance she’d been able to put between us. It could even have been less.

  My heart was thumping with the savage joy of the hunt, and a part of me was disappointed the chase was over so quickly. But my hunger demanded to be sated and my thirst for blood needed to be quenched. They had waited to feast long enough.

  Grabbing hold of the woman’s leg in my jaws, I pulled her to the ground and dragged her behind more cars, out of view of both the pedestrian entrance/exit and the one for vehicles to drive through. Her screams rang out the entire time, her nails scratching across the concrete like a cat’s, as if she could dig them in and get a good enough purchase to cling to. But they were no claws and they were too soft to make a mark on the hard surface, let alone sink in. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. Nothing was going to keep me from this kill, not even the Slayers.

  Once I was satisfied we were sufficiently hidden from anyone who might blunder in, I came to a stop and released her leg. Blood was already leaking from her puncture wounds, soaking into the material of her trousers and running across the skin beneath. She started crawling the instant I let go but I grabbed her again, using my humanoid hands and arms now, and the opposable thumbs I’d retained. I wanted her lying on her back for this kill, so I forced her to roll over and pinned her down.

  “I have your fear. Now give me your pain.”

  Her screams took on a new urgency. I ignored them and dug one of my claws into her forehead, tracing a red line round her face. More fluid oozed from the deep scratch I’d made, a crimson wave spilling across her pale skin and dripping down to the concrete below. That sea of life would soon leak from its fleshy container into a lake of death, with her corpse rising above it like a volcanic mountain erupting blood. But not until she’d suffered a while first.

  I worked my claws into the outline I’d made and gripped the edge of the skin, then started to peel it away from her skull, inch by inch. Since she liked skulls so much I decided I was going to turn her into a living one. And could there be any torment more excruciating than being flayed alive? All those nerves contained within the skin. All those messages of severe damage fired to the brain in stinging, throbbing intensity as each nerve ripped and died, flesh separating from muscle in one large, unbroken piece. Connective tissue did its best to hold on to its protective membrane, but it was no match for the strength of my pull, tearing away from the skin in agonising protest. The woman’s screams reached a new pitch, boosted by the sheer pain I was inflicting. And I was only just getting started.

  The last of her skin came free, her pretty face no longer warm and friendly as it hung limply in my clawed hand. Without eyes and muscles it looked empty and lifeless, devoid of all the personality which had shone through just moments ago. That personality was still very much alive in what was left on her skull, but without skin her head was nothing more than a lump of raw meat, shining beneath the artificial lights with the blood pumping from broken vessels. Some of that blood was leaking into her hair as it ran down and added to the drops on the floor. Some of it ran into her eyes and mouth, adding discomfort to pain. And some of it ran across my tongue as I lowered my snout to the exposed muscle and lapped at the rich juices oozing out. If there’d been anyone there to see us, they might have mistaken me for a large dog nuzzling his owner at first. But not for long.

  My stomach needed more than just blood and its demands for flesh grew greater still now that my senses were dominated by the presence of prey. I had to fight the urge to wrap my jaws around her head and crunch through muscle, brain and bone, or to rip into fleshier parts of her body and gulp down chunks of meat. That might be the easiest way to satisfy my hunger, but it would also end her life far too quickly. So I resisted those urges and instead gripped her facial muscles as gently as I was able, pulling them free to expose more of the bone. She wasn’t quite left with just a skull when I’d finished, but the end result was close enough. Only it was far more gruesome than the clean skulls depicted on her gothic designs, still covered in blood and patches of tissue in places, and I’d left her eyes, ears and tongue intact. Her lips were gone but her gums remained, and there was still some cartilage around her nasal cavity. Her skin lay to the side of us, tossed aside like the wrapping from a store-bought meal.

  Creepy music crept up seemingly out of nowhere, soft at first but growing steadily louder and more urgent by the second. Ironically, it finished with a wolf howl, then slithered back whence it came. But I was not quite ruled by the bloodlust yet and the suddenness of this new sound successfully dragged my attention away from my prey. My ear swivelled towards the direction of the noise and I raised my head to scent the air, as best I could through the bloody shroud across my nose.

  The sound started up again. I realised it must be coming from her mobile, still lying where she’d dropped it towards the back of the carpark. Ordinarily it would have been of little concern. Her screams were far louder than the ringtone and it was a wonder they’d not drawn more prey to me yet. But the ringing gave me an idea.

  I rose from my victim, confident she wouldn’t get far before I was ready to attack more of her body. The mobile went quiet again but I’d already pinpointed its location. I stalked over to it and picked it up to find two missed calls from ‘home’ and a text. The display showed a snippet of the message which I couldn’t help glancing at. I caught a glimpse of the woman’s name in that text, a sense of the identity I’d taken when I’d ripped her face off and obliterated all those unique features that had been such a vital part of who she was. It made no difference. She was still going to die.

  I keyed in 999 and pressed the call button, then raised the device to my ear. If anyone had entered the carpark at that point they would probably have laughed at the surreal sight of a werewolf on the phone, but once I was through to the police there was no humour for the operator on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, I’d like to report a, well, I guess it’s not murder yet ’cause she’s still alive,” I said. “But she won’t be for much longer. You could say it was an animal attack though. And I’m the beast you’re looking for. I’m the rogue wolf you’ve been hunting. We’re in the multi-storey on the high street. Come get
me, you bastards.”

  I hung up. The phone call probably wasn’t essential to Will’s plan, but the dark pleasure it gave me made it worth it. If he wanted the Slayers at our party, he was going to get his wish. I just hoped his plan would work, otherwise I’d foolishly signed my own death warrant on nothing but a whim. Damn had it felt good though.

  There was a fresh scream from behind and I turned to find my prey back on her feet and staring at her own reflection in a wing mirror. She didn’t have enough face left to convey exactly what she was feeling, but I was fairly certain it was fresh horror.

  With a hungry growl, I discarded the phone and bounded back over to her, pulling her to the ground once more. She was going into shock now and she barely put up a fight as I lowered my snout to her torso, ripping through her clothes to bare the soft flesh beneath. Great chunks of stomach muscle came free in my jaws and slid down my throat, a welcome sensation after the gaping hunger I’d felt within.

  Viscera glittered darkly in the hole I’d created, a cache of forbidden delights and guilty pleasures. My mouth watered at the sight of such rich morsels, but again I resisted and attacked her legs, spilling more blood with every bite. Deep meaty craters opened up beneath my fangs, some of them descending right down to the bone. She had to be mere minutes away from bleeding out.

  My hunger was far from sated when I rose from her a second time. Her body still had plenty to offer but I didn’t want her to die just yet, feeling the level of suffering I’d inflicted was one of the greatest offerings I could make. So I left her lingering on the edge of death.

  She wouldn’t rise again, not in this life at least. I’d taken too much muscle. Without it, standing was impossible, even if she could find the strength in her to fight the shock and the pain, and the weakness caused by blood loss. She would spend her final moments lying on the hard concrete, terrified and alone. The last sight her lidless eyes would ever see were the cars standing over her like a jeering crowd, taunting with dreams of escape. If only she’d made it back to her car a few minutes earlier, she could have been safely inside and driving away before I could make my move. She’d be on her way home to her family, perhaps looking forward to a quiet night in, cuddling her loved ones on the sofa and watching TV. But once again fate had favoured me over my victim, and so she’d met a cruel end beneath my ravening jaws, like countless others before her.