by Stead, Nick
The hunger renewed its assault on my belly but I fought the urge to go prowling towards the nearest town. There wasn’t much in the way of prey to be had in the woods – no deer for a proper meal nor any humans out walking their dogs. I hunted for what I could, but birds and rabbits would only ever take the edge off. It was going to be a long day.
I awoke to the discomfort of water droplets pelting my fur, with a fury that felt almost divine. The heavens had opened up and the bushes I’d settled down in offered limited shelter against the elements, leaving the wind and the rain free to batter my body.
Night had not yet fallen but the grey skies made it hard to judge exactly how much of the day was left. I growled my displeasure and debated whether to give up on sleep and resume my journey, or wait for the cover of darkness when there’d be less people about. If I was as close to the area of coast where my friends waited as I believed myself to be, then it was probably wiser to proceed with caution now. The last thing we wanted was the Slayers coming after us in force as we tried to make our escape. And worse than that, if they were given the chance to track us across the ocean, it might all be for nought. The whole point of fleeing the country was to go into hiding. If our enemies were given the chance to follow we’d be no better off, still hunted at every turn and never allowed to know the peace my dream had promised before all this craziness with Will. So it made sense to wait.
But there was another reason I wanted to hang on before charging off again. Gwyn had said not to wait for him, and yet I found myself doing exactly that. As far as I knew, he could still move around in daylight, unlike the vampires. It would just mean surrendering himself to a flesh and blood form for as long as the sun was up, unless he was able to make any of the journey underground.
I had no idea how he intended to find me but I had faith that he would. Fate had brought the five of us together, and I was beginning to think our destinies were bound to each other now. Gwyn would return, and we’d re-join the others and continue on as pack. I was certain of it.
Since sleep wasn’t happening, I took the time to hunt for a few more morsels, though the hunger would not be tamed that day. I continued to resist the urge to gorge myself on all the human world had to offer, instead trying to focus on Gwyn, as though I could summon him to me with the sheer force of my will. Obviously that wasn’t an actual power I possessed, but I kept him in my thoughts nevertheless as I paced between the trees, growing increasingly irritable with each passing hour.
Night came and the rain eased off, but still Gwyn had not appeared. I began to doubt my conviction he would keep his promise, wondering if he’d been caught again and taken back to his glass cage surrounded by light. Or perhaps he’d changed his mind about sticking with me. From what little I knew of him, he was a trickster spirit of sorts. He lived for mischief and fed on the energy of mortals, eliciting the emotions he desired to satisfy his needs. Had he found a new haunt to settle in since we’d been forced to split up? Maybe he’d even spent the day in such a place, and had simply lost track of time. He’d said himself how the passing of a few minutes wasn’t even the blink of an eye to a creature as ancient as he. Maybe he’d not deliberately intended to go back on his word. Maybe he just hadn’t realised a whole day had gone by already.
In the end it didn’t really matter why Gwyn hadn’t come back. What mattered was that I couldn’t stay in the woods any longer. The Slayers were no doubt scouring any areas I’d last been seen in, and I needed to get moving if I didn’t want to spend another night running for my life. I’d waited as long as I could.
Finding my way to the coast was easy. Finding my way to the exact stretch of coastline where my friends waited proved much more difficult. I soon came to realise I’d veered a fair way off course, covering about the same number of miles which had stood between me and my intended destination, but in the wrong direction. It turned out I’d not crossed the Welsh border but had instead drifted too far south. The coast I’d ended up on had to be in the southwest of England, or the street signs I passed would surely be in Welsh as well as English. It seemed I was on the wrong side of the Bristol Channel, and to reach my friends I was either going to have to swim across or double back and retrace my steps over land. I chose the latter, even if it did mean travelling for longer. The ocean was bound to be freezing and if I went off course again, it could be catastrophic.
I followed the coast back up north, the beaches quiet and free of tourists during the twilight hours. Eventually I came to a large motorway bridge built over the water I refused to swim across, and it was all too tempting to make my way up and onto it, and run into Wales that way. Only the threat of the Slayers kept me from doing just that. If they’d seen me in the southwest of England, then the longer they went on believing I was in that area the better. I needed to avoid being seen heading into Wales if I could.
So I continued going the long way round. But there was one temptation it was becoming harder to ignore.
For every urban area I was forced to pass through, my hunger seemed to increase a little further, and my craving for human flesh rose with it. I fought it for as long as I could, knowing full well if I hunted in one of the little coastal villages it was likely to bring the Slayers back on my trail. But there was a voice in my head whispering seductive truths and sweet promises, one which my reason couldn’t quite beat into submission, try as it might. And when my path took me further inland, towards another city, the last of my will crumbled. I was hungry and there was prey aplenty. The need for fresh meat was too powerful to ignore.
I had enough sense to keep to the outskirts of the city, roaming between housing estates rather than venturing into the centre. The hour was late but there was still prey to be found, whether it was the clubbers returning home to their beds or workers with jobs which required them to work such ungodly hours, some just finishing a shift and others about to start one. Or more Slayers out on patrol. I’d avoid them if I could but there were bound to be a few wandering the streets, and I was going to have to keep my wits about me if I didn’t want to be taken unawares.
There was the sound of a car driving slowly along the next street over. I prowled between two houses and leapt over the fence separating the properties from the ones behind them, stalking along the alley and coming to a stop at its mouth. The dim light from the streetlamps couldn’t reach the darkness of the buildings either side of me, and I was able to watch as the car went past, unseen by the driver or his two passengers in the back.
It began to rain again and the wind picked up. I was somewhat sheltered as I looked out at my intended victims, the raindrops thick and heavy in the glow of the headlights passing by. The passengers were both female and clearly fell into the club going category, the car bearing a company name and number on its doors, marking it as a taxi. They were pretty girls, just out of school from the looks of things. I could hear them talking to the driver but they weren’t making much sense, slurring their words beyond almost all recognition.
The taxi parked up under a broken streetlight, outside an empty property. Neither of the girls had dressed suitably for the time of year and they were shivering in their skimpy outfits the instant they left the warmth of the car. One of them literally fell out of her door, laughing as she lay there in the road. The driver went to help her. She’d grazed her hands and knees, the smell of blood calling to me from across the street and summoning fresh drool.
The howling of the wind took on a harrowing quality then, as though it were the voice of God crying for his children. It could have been for all I knew. If I’d had more time to talk with Jaken, I might have asked Him whether there was a god or gods and why they tolerated the existence of monsters, and allowed us to prey on their creations. None of the undead I’d spoken with had ever talked of any divine beings, other than the reference to Zeus in the story of Lycaon Lady Sarah had shared with me. She’d also told me we were of the eternally damned. Perhaps that meant we were denied the true secrets of the heavens, granted only some vag
ue sense of an afterlife which wasn’t Hell.
I had no way of knowing if the wind and the rain were merely the products of nature or something more, but the onset of the storm was certainly timely, if nothing else. The three humans were oblivious to the apparent warning they’d been given, and the tragedy about to befall them. They had no idea their fates were sealed. The girls were too caught up in giddy drunkenness to see the danger they were in, until it was too late. But I was not the only monster on the street that night.
I saw the flash of metal seconds before the driver stabbed it into his first victim – the girl who’d fallen. She still had an arm around his shoulders, a look of shock on her face as she slipped back down to the tarmac. The man was not her knight in shining armour after all. He was fashioned of the same darkness as I am, though he was no kindred spirit in my eyes. In that instant before I attacked, I decided he would be the one to feed my darker hungers for blood and death, as well as the ache in my belly.
The attack was clumsy and spoke of inexperience. This was not the carefully calculated stabbing of a professional killer, the girl still alive as he rose to face his second victim, blood frothing up from her punctured lung. The second girl seemed to sober at the sight of her friend bleeding out on the road. She screamed and started to run, but the driver caught her and dragged her back towards the car. He pinned her there and pulled at her skirt with one hand, working it down her legs while she screamed and begged for help. The other hand gripped a bloody knife, the blade tracing the skin of her torso only lightly at first so as not to cut it, but he drew blood as he slid it down towards her waistline. I knew where this was going.
Bloody fingers fumbled with the button of his jeans, his eyes filled with lust. There was a hunger of his own in that gaze. A hunger he would soon fill, if no one intervened.
But I did intervene. I chose to stop him getting any further, bounding through the wind and the rain like some dark god come to answer the girl’s prayers with all the fury of the wild. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the terrible thought of my sister being in that situation. After all, I could have just scavenged his first kill, dragging her body back into the alley while he was busy with his second victim, unseen and unchallenged. There was no need to get involved or shed any more blood. But I found I couldn’t just stand by and watch the girl being abused before she was sent into the same abyss as her friend. Besides, where would have been the fun in that?
My fellow monster never saw me coming, too focused on the girl he was about to rape. He believed himself a predator but in the passing of a moment he became prey, and by the time his shocked brain had chance to process that fact we were already on the ground. My fangs were ripping into his belly and it was his screams that filled the night.
The knife had leapt from his hand and skittered out of reach before we’d even hit the tarmac, leaving him utterly defenceless as I ate him alive. I wasn’t really aware of what the girl did during the attack. When I raised my snout again, with his liver half hanging out of my jaws as I chewed and worked it round my mouth, she was desperately trying to unlock the front door of a house on the other end of the street and failing miserably. Her fingers were shaking so badly she couldn’t seem to get the key to slide into the lock, and she dropped it a moment later.
She turned to look at me and froze when she met my gaze. I made no move to attack and as the seconds dragged on, she found the courage to kneel down and retrieve it, though her eyes never left mine, her fingers feeling blindly for the small lump of metal. When she rose, she had another go at the door whilst still holding my gaze. I heard the lock click a moment later, yet she didn’t go straight in.
My own lust could quite happily have fed on her, the blood trickling down her abdomen making her all the more appealing as a second victim. It would have been so easy to make that second kill and enjoy the feel of yet another heart growing still between my jaws. But I’d sworn to myself I was done with pointless slaughter. It was bad enough I’d had to slaughter so many to summon Dhaer to us just two days past. I didn’t want to keep killing for any reason other than survival. I was better than that now. The kill I’d made and the corpse of his victim would provide all the sustenance my body required. There was no need to kill her as well.
We looked at each other a moment longer, then I nodded to her to let her know she was safe. Such a human gesture probably looked odd on my lupine body, but I figured there was a good chance she’d put it down to the alcohol playing tricks. And when she could think clearly enough to call the police, she’d probably make me out to be a large dog. I hoped. If not, the Slayers would come investigating, and if they picked up my trail again, I’d just have to deal with it when it happened. I probably had some time before they sent anyone over though, so I stayed to eat my fill.
The girl disappeared inside, no less terrified for my attempt to communicate. She saw me for the monster I was, and one small act of kindness was not going to undo all the terrible atrocities I’d committed over the last two years. Maybe saving her had been about more than my beliefs in the sanctity of life and the promise I’d made myself. Maybe the insight I’d been granted into my eternal damnation had given me a desire to seek redemption, and this entire scenario had been an attempt to take the first step down that path, out of the darkness and back towards the light. Yet it was going to take a lot more than the life of one girl to rebalance the scales, assuming redemption was even possible by then.
It was hard for me to just stand back and accept my fate as Hell’s new pet, but I was going to have to come to terms with it eventually. I was going to have to face up to that grim truth, because there may well be no escaping it. Such attempts at redemption could well be too little too late.
“So you do have a heart,” a voice said from behind.
My hackles rose. I’d not heard anyone approaching, and to be caught as unawares as my victim filled me with unease. The voice seemed familiar but I struggled to place it through the alarm, and it wasn’t until I turned to look at him that I realised I did know its owner. It was Gwyn.
The knocker looked at the mess I’d made of the driver and shook his head. “Nick. Nicholas. You fucked up.”
I didn’t know if his ability to shapeshift into a fox granted him the same understanding of the wolven tongue as Lady Sarah, so I just growled a wordless growl.
“Why can’t werewolves ever do things subtle? Always with the howling and the gutting and the trails of blood...” He threw his arms up for comic effect. It was made all the more comical by the fact he’d not had chance to find new clothes yet. “Who has to clean all this up? The daft idiot who decided to take care of him, that’s who.”
I growled again and looked pointedly at the bloodied knife.
“Yup, I see that the human spilt the first blood. I realise you decided to play the hero for a change. And a fine time you picked for it, too.”
Footsteps could be heard running towards us. One of my ears swivelled in the direction of the potential threat, my other still facing forward, listening to Gwyn.
“Yup, that would be the Slayers, drawn by all the screaming. You should have kept to hunting in the countryside, away from the human world and the Slayers and all their freaking guns. So now we have two choices. We run and hope we lose them before getting anywhere near Selina and the vampires. Or we disguise this as another type of kill and hope they blame it on ghouls instead. If we move quickly we should be able to cover our tracks, and still slip away before they get here.”
“How?” I tilted my head in what I hoped was the wolf equivalent of a quizzical look.
“I can hack away the areas of flesh where you can see your wolfish bite marks and make a few of my own, so it looks more like the work of ghouls. This will only work if we destroy all the evidence though. That includes the girl.”
“No,” I snarled, taking up a defensive stance.
“She’s a liability,” he said, a darkness sliding into his eyes I’d seen only once before, when we’d been questionin
g whether he was really one of us. “Who knows what she might tell our enemies? Better to kill her and keep her from saying anything than take the risk.”
“She’s drunk and traumatised by the attack. She probably doesn’t have a clear memory of any of it to give to the Slayers, and any parts about me she does remember she’ll likely keep quiet for fear of being ridiculed. She’s no threat.” I don’t know if he was understanding my growls or if my body language made it clear enough, but he gave in after that.
“Have it your way,” he sighed, raising his hands in defeat. “But I reserve the right to say I told you so when the Slayers catch up with us.”
“They won’t,” I said, confident we had enough of a head start to lose them before the hunt had even truly begun. I could only detect three of them, and then there’d be the time it’d take them to call the nearest base and request back-up, and for that back-up to be sent out. We’d be long gone by then.
If Gwyn understood that, he didn’t respond to it. He walked over to the same patch of darkness I’d used as cover, entering the alleyway as a harmless looking human, and coming back out as a white-haired fox just seconds later. I didn’t know how fast his animal form was compared to mine, but he had to be faster on four legs than two. Hopefully it was going to be a much quicker journey with him than it had been with Selina in tow.
He started down the street, turning back after a few paces to look at me, his own head tilted to one side. I got the impression he was asking if I was coming, though he didn’t wait to see what the answer was, turning away again and starting to run.
