The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  I had to climb to the second floor to find it. Dhaer looked to be slaughtering all the people I’d not had chance to get to, ripping apart more ribcages with nothing but the force of its will, and butchering anyone close to it with its bare hands. It grew still as I approached. If it had been human I would have said it stiffened, but it was too different to get an accurate reading on its body language or its mood. It wasn’t happy to see me again though, of that I was sure.

  “Was I not clear on what would happen if you came for me a second time?” the demon hissed, without turning round. It had another victim in its hands, the woman writhing in its grasp and screaming for help that would not come. But she’d been granted a few moments of respite now that its focus had shifted to me.

  “Forgive me, Dhaer,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as I could. I came to a stop behind him and knelt on one knee, head bowed in a submissive gesture. “I never meant to intrude on your hunt, and I never wanted to hunt you. Yesterday was all Will’s idea. He blackmailed me into going along with his plan, only to betray me after we failed to kill you. I think his master ordered it. Now I’ve got him and a load of his Slayer friends out for my blood, and I summoned you here not to fight you again but to ask for your help.”

  “And what made you think I would help you? The affairs of the undead are no concern of mine, nor the war with the Slayers, nor Jaken’s plan. If He ordered your death, it is between you and Him.”

  “I hoped if I offered you the people of this town you might join me in fighting Will and his army of Slayers. But if not then how about this. They’re called Demon Slayers for a reason. It’s only a matter of time before they come hunting you, so why not crush as many of them as you can before they can rally the force they need to take you down?”

  The demon was silent, still facing away from me and holding its prey. I couldn’t tell if it was buying my story or not.

  “Remember, it was Will’s master who sent us out here to begin with, before turning on me as well. Don’t you want a chance to thwart Jaken’s plans in revenge for that? Will’s tried to kill me twice since yesterday. Once in the night and again just before I came here. If I hadn’t woken before he could blow my brains out I’d be dead already, but I got lucky and moved just in time. That’s why he called in the Slayers to help finish the job, ’cause he knew I’d be ready for him and he wanted to be sure I wouldn’t get away again. I barely escaped the trap they set and if you hadn’t answered my call when you did, I’d probably have far worse than a cut on my arm by now.”

  The demon finally deigned to turn round then, dropping its victim as it did so. She started to crawl away, whimpering in terror. Dhaer didn’t even seem to notice. I kept my head down.

  “Why not keep running?” it said, its eyes fixed solely on me.

  “What?” I asked, thrown by its question.

  “You escaped your enemies a second time and yet you stayed in this place and sought me out in the hope I would help you defeat them. Why not keep running and avoid another fight altogether?”

  I wasn’t able to completely hide the surprise on my face at that, though how much of it showed on my lupine features I couldn’t tell. My eyes were probably a little too wide, my jaws parted. But I managed to resist raising my head and gawping stupidly at Dhaer while I tried to find an answer to its question. I kept staring at the floor instead, mind racing.

  “If I run, they’ll only pursue me. This can only end one way – either I die or Will does.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps Will put you up to this. It matters not.”

  I did look up at that. “You won’t help?”

  “It is not my fight. When the Slayers come for me, I can always retreat to Hell, as we did once before. Until then I will enjoy tormenting the living souls up here on Earth. But you can deliver Will a message for me.”

  The sound of the Slayers advancing on the hospital was suddenly loud in my ears. I’d been too focused on the demon to take much notice of them, but there was no ignoring the oncoming threat then.

  “Wait!” I cried, intending to point out that a fight was upon us whether Dhaer wanted it or not. But I was too late. My ribs burst out of my chest as if they’d been given a life of their own, skin and muscle exploding around them as if a bomb had gone off in there, baring my lungs and heart for the world to see. The pain was no worse than any of the other torments I’d endured over the last two years but it still had me roaring in protest.

  “Now go,” Dhaer hissed.

  “Wait,” I repeated, struggling to speak through the agony I was in. “The Slayers are here; don’t you hear them?”

  “Then you had best go face them.” It turned away again. Clearly I was dismissed.

  I swore and was about to transform to repair the damage, wondering what the hell my next move was. For Will’s plan to work we needed the demon and the Slayers to fight. If it killed our enemies as easily as it had just broken my body, we were back to square one, trying to beat it with the limited powers Jaken channelled through Will, and what little I had to bring to such a battle. Or the Slayers might simply bomb the hospital and maybe that would be enough to kill the demon, but then that still left the two of us in a fight with the odds against us. Or I might be the first target and then they’d battle it out with the demon, and it wouldn’t matter who won because I’d be dead. We really needed Dhaer outside and focused on killing our enemies if we were going to have a chance at killing it and then beating what was left of their force.

  “No healing!” the demon roared, sounding its unearthly cry again. I don’t know how it knew that’s what I was going to do, but I was back to cowering before the power of its roar, stripped of my ability to do anything other than shake and whimper.

  When the effects wore off, I had no choice but to struggle to my feet and make my way outside, leaving a trail of blood with every step. I took the lift down to the ground floor and stumbled outside. Will had been hiding behind the cover of one of the cars still parked there, watching and waiting. He took one look at me and began to curse.

  Dozens of Slayers were running round the building, securing the perimeter. The helicopters were back to provide aerial support but I couldn’t see anyone on the roofs this time. We probably had less than a minute before they opened fire, and yet there didn’t seem to be the usual urgency to the situation I should have been feeling. Somehow it all seemed so far away, reality shrinking to the agony of my flesh and the strain my heart was under.

  I fell to my knees in the carpark, lightheaded and growing weaker by the second. Loss of blood was probably causing me to hallucinate because I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t surrounded by Slayers but the souls of all those I’d condemned to death that day. There was Tish, still missing her face and much of the flesh from her legs, eyes wide and staring out of her grisly skull as she staggered around aimlessly. The eviscerated man wandered in a different direction, his internal organs continuing to dangle from the hole I’d opened up in his abdomen. He also leaked blood from the many bullet wounds he’d taken whilst I’d used him as a shield.

  Dozens of my victims meandered around me, lost souls with no drive or purpose. I looked around at the damage I’d caused them and came the closest to feeling remorse since allowing my inner darkness to take over. So many wasted lives, and if we failed at killing Dhaer a second time it had all been for nothing.

  I knelt there with my gaping chest wound, on the verge of passing out. My lungs barely inflated, my breathing shallow and rapid, coming out in pants through my partially open jaws. My heart stampeded between them, galloping to the pace of the pale horse on whose back surely sat the Reaper, riding in to claim my soul and deliver it to Hell. I was dimly aware of the transformation kicking in again but I would still be vulnerable to the Slayers’ bullets until it completed. It seemed to me I was among those lost souls I’d doomed because I’d all but joined them. Death was coming for me once more, and there really was no escape this time. My mortal end was here.

  Somewhere in t
hat distant reality I heard a gunshot, and fresh pain surged through my chest. The last of my strength failed me and I could no longer keep myself upright. I fell the rest of the way to the ground and lay in a growing pool of my own blood, my heart slowing again, each beat becoming feebler and less effective than the last. My vision was dimming and the agony of my wounds had faded into nothing more than background noise. The blackness was closing in and my will to fight was all but gone. All that was left was to shut my eyes and surrender myself to it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Damned

  I felt myself rise up. There was a similar sensation of floating to the one I’d experienced before, except this time I wasn’t in the blackness of the void.

  My vision cleared again and I was back in the hospital carpark. The lost souls were gone, which strengthened my belief they’d only ever existed in my oxygenated blood starved brain. The Slayers around me remained. They seemed like the least of my worries now, and I spared them little more than a glance.

  I had the sensation of my paw-like feet being back on solid ground, my body in a standing position and the pain completely gone. There was no trickle of blood oozing out with each strained pump of my failing heart, despite the fact I didn’t appear to have transformed to heal the damage. In fact, I had no heartbeat at all.

  Confused, I looked down at the patch of ground I’d been lying on seconds ago, and a shock ran through me. For my body had not moved. It lay there with a terrible stillness, all signs of life gone. The exposed lungs were not swelling with fresh air, and the heart did not contract in an effort to pump more blood. There probably wasn’t enough of the fluid left in my body. It looked like it had all drained out onto the tarmac, taking my life with it.

  I could see no evidence of my body shifting either. And yet that couldn’t be right. If I were truly dead I was sure my flesh would have returned to its original human shape, so why was it stuck in that halfway point between boy and wolf?

  Movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. I looked back up at the Slayers and was given another shock.

  The lost souls might have been gone, but the humans around me made for equally gruesome spectres, now I was looking closer at them. Each one was covered in a series of cuts, some no more than scratches, others deep wounds running right down to the bone. Yet they showed no signs of the pain they should be feeling from such terrible injuries, and they didn’t look to be bleeding.

  Fresh confusion settled over me. Was this a new hallucination to replace the previous one? But how was that possible if I’d become a ghost? It didn’t seem likely a ghost would suffer the same distortions of reality the living were prone to. Not when the consciousness was no longer tied to a brain vulnerable to such things.

  I turned towards the movement I’d glimpsed, expecting to see one of the wounded humans striding over to fire a second bullet into my skull. Instead I saw Will. And Hell’s servant was the most shocking of all.

  Red muscle glistened in the sunlight, completely flayed of its skin. His eyes were still very much alive in their bloody sockets, cold and grey as ever, and yet there was no way his body could have survived such horrific torments. Not with the gash running through his flesh.

  He bore just one cut similar to those of the others, but this went deeper than to the bone. It passed through the centre of his chest, through the bones of his sternum, cleaving them in two, and deep into his heart. A wound that should have proved fatal, and yet he seemed to be no worse off for it.

  It took me a moment to realise his rifle had been pointing at my body, my mind too busy trying to make sense of what my eyes were showing me. But once that had sunk in, I began to wonder if he’d just delivered another killing shot, finishing what he’d started that day on the moors. But why? Why would he or his master want me dead one moment, pretend to be my allies the next, only to turn on me at the last? I couldn’t make any sense of it.

  Will dropped his rifle and raised his hands.

  “Is it dead?” one of the Slayers asked, eyes still fixed on my body.

  “It’s dead.” Will confirmed. “Forget the wolf now, you have bigger problems. The terror demon is inside. Save your strength and your ammo for that thing, and let me dispose of the wolf’s body.”

  “It?” I growled. There was no reaction from the living. I guessed they couldn’t hear me.

  “It,” came a male voice from behind. “You are no more than a beast to them.”

  I turned to find Will’s master, in the same form I’d seen Him in when He’d saved me from Death’s scythe. He looked like a huge black furred werewolf, His body the same mix of wolf and man as my own, but there was no doubt as to His demonic nature. His bat-like wings made Him all the more impressive, and His face was all the fiercer for the permanent, lopsided snarl through the gashes across His jaws.

  His chest was also torn but unlike Dhaer’s it was not empty. The usual organs were visible inside their bony cage, the tissue apparently healthy and very much alive, and yet it was riddled with maggots.

  He also bore injuries along His knuckles, the skin torn to reveal not just the raw flesh beneath but also bone protruding from the wounds, ending in sharp tips like a second set of claws. My mind flashed back to the sight of Him from behind, in that space between life and death. I thought I’d seen spikes running down the length of His spine but I hadn’t been sure at the time. Now I was certain that’s what my eyes had shown me. I couldn’t see His spine right then, but if He turned I felt sure I would see the bone moulded into vicious points, similar to His knuckles.

  A boa constrictor was coiled around His body, its head resting on one of His shoulders. A tarantula sat on the other. More of His servants, similar to a witch’s familiar perhaps? They had to be some kind of creatures of spirit, but whether they’d once been living animals whose souls He’d claimed, or whether they’d only ever existed as spirits, I had no idea.

  “You wanted answers,” Jaken continued. “This is your chance.”

  I eyed the demon with suspicion. After Will’s reluctance to answer my questions, would Jaken really tell me anything? And even if He did, how would I know He was telling me the truth? I remembered Ed’s insistence demons weren’t to be trusted. Yet if there was even the smallest chance He might shed some light on what was really going on, I had to take it. But where to begin?

  I glanced back down at my body. “Am I dead?”

  “No,” He answered, with a hint of amusement.

  “Then what is this?”

  “I trust you are familiar with the term ‘out of body experience’. That is what this is. It is not permanent, and your spirit will return to your body soon.”

  “How can you be so certain I’ll still have a living body to return to? That’s a lot of blood I’ve lost, and my vital organs don’t look to be doing much.”

  “Because I currently hold your life in my hands. I had Will put a bullet just inches from your heart, in order to create the illusion of death. Now they will focus on Dhaer, instead of putting so many bullets in you that even I would not be able to deny the Reaper his prize.”

  “So you’ve done what, paused my bodily functions?” A chill ran through me, if that’s the right phrase for whatever I was feeling as a spirit. But the power this demon must have to do something like that. It scared me, to think I was at the mercy of such a being. “How is that any easier than letting them fill me with bullets and bringing me back?”

  “You have not suffered a fatal wound as far as the universe is concerned. Not when your lycanthropy would have brought you back from this by now, had I not interfered. Thus the Reaper does not yet have a claim to you and I am free to restore your bodily functions, your life force, when I see fit. If you had been damaged beyond repair, it would be different. True resurrection is far harder to achieve than raising the dead as zombies.”

  “But with all that blood I’m losing, isn’t that handing me over to Death as surely as a bullet to the brain? Not to mention the lack of oxygen getting
to my brain now you’ve stopped my heart and lungs. And if you and Will hadn’t interfered, the Slayers would have killed me. So how is it possible to bring me back from this?”

  “The latter was not a certain outcome. I could have used my powers to prevent their bullets from hitting you, or to kill them all, but then you would lose the advantage they give in the fight against Dhaer. And I still do not wish to interfere so directly. This way causes the least interference, and as long as I have a hold on your life, the damage I am causing is negated. I will restore you to the state you were in before I stopped your heart and lungs, and the transformation will do the rest.”

  “Isn’t that just bending the rules?”

  “Don’t you want to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what does it matter?”

  I couldn’t really argue with that. While we’d been talking, the Slayers had been considering their next move. It was as Will had said – they were prepared to hit with bombs as well as guns. The safest option was to bomb the building while Dhaer was still inside, but somehow that seemed too easy. Surely it wasn’t going to be that simple, or why would Jaken have bothered ordering Will to deal with Dhaer himself, with only my help initially? If blowing it up had been an option all along, why not just let the humans clean up their own mess like I’d wanted?

  I nearly made that my next question to Jaken, but I’d no idea how long we had and there were other things I wanted to ask.

  “What’s wrong with the humans? Why does Will suddenly look like a walking lump of meat?”

  “They did it to themselves. One cut for every sin, as you would call it, carved into their souls for all eternity. The greater the sin, the deeper the cut.”