The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  I dropped what was left of my opponent and glanced across at my allies. Selina was doing surprisingly well to say she was the weakest of our group, swiping at her enemies with the bear’s spiritual claws. The blows were not as deadly without any physical claws of her own, but with the boost she’d been granted to her strength, she was still capable of smashing crystallised flesh and bone. In those few seconds I was able to watch, she beat back one of the zombies on two legs, a visible dent in its chest where muscle and ribs had caved beneath the force of the impact, and sent it into the path of Zee’s blade. He swung at its torso and cleaved it in two, its upper body sliding off its lower as it began to lurch forwards again. Then he stomped on its head, crushing its skull beneath his boot.

  The zombie’s lower body struggled to get back to its feet. Its torso pulled itself upright, its arms grasping for Zee’s legs. There was a whole horde of body parts crawling and wriggling in the snow at his feet. He must have cut down several of our enemies already and yet still they kept on coming. How the Slayers had brought them out here was anyone’s guess. I supposed they could have been flown in or ferried across on a ship, or maybe they’d been raised on solid ground and ordered to swim across the ocean. It didn’t really matter. They didn’t give me time to be curious about it for long.

  Gwyn succeeded in bringing the female zombie to her knees. His smaller jaws didn’t carry the same crushing power as mine, but he’d kept on dancing round her and attacking her ankles whenever she gave him an opening, until finally her legs stepped forward and left her feet behind.

  Another zombie lunged at me, shifting my attention away from my friends again. This one only had one arm. I kicked it backwards into more of the reanimated corpses and they fell to the ice.

  Deciding I had time to heal my damaged arm and shoulder, I let the transformation take hold and carry me closer to full wolf form. The throbbing of torn flesh finally receded as tendons and ligaments fused back together, but it came at the cost of losing the joint’s range of mobility as it became lupine. I reversed the changes as soon as I felt everything heal.

  It was while I was shifting that the sound of the big creature started up again. I’d almost forgotten about it with so many human corpses to deal with. Whatever it was, it was charging towards us, but the zombies were coming for me again and my attention remained on them.

  “Nick!” Zee yelled. “With Selina!”

  “Bit busy,” I growled, grabbing the one-armed zombie by the throat, the severed hands of the two I’d already defeated still hanging from my limb like weird growths. I held my opponent at arm’s length while I pulled a second in range of my jaws. Its skull shattered between my teeth in one bite.

  Fingers clawed at my face, searching for my eyes. I felt the sting of flesh splitting where they scratched my skin, and I raised my head from the stump of its neck to bite through its arms.

  The push against my left arm came to an abrupt stop and there was a sudden weight hanging down. I turned to find the one-armed zombie had been reduced to a head and shoulders, the rest of its body lying in pieces which Zee now stood over.

  “Go help Selina,” he urged, striding forward to hack at the next zombie advancing our way.

  I dropped what was left of the corpse and looked round for the witch. Only then did I realise why Zee had been so insistent I go to her aid. The largest of our enemy’s puppets was about to enter the fray, and Selina was bounding forward to meet it.

  The reanimated remains of the female polar bear I’d killed charged into view. No decay had set in, the Arctic temperatures preserving her flesh, and no scavengers had fed on her remains, yet there was no mistaking her for one of the living. Blood coated her fur and the back of her neck gaped open, a grisly pit of torn muscle and frozen blood. But that was nothing compared to her head. Without the vertebrae I’d ripped out to connect it to the rest of her spine, she had nothing to hold it up with, so it bounced limply against her forelegs as she ran. And of all the horrific sights I’d seen in my two years as a werewolf, that ranked among the most grotesque. It was just so creepy and unnatural. Nothing should have been capable of running around like that.

  Yet for all the damage I’d dealt the bear in our previous encounter, the bulk of her muscular body was made no less impressive. Selina looked small and frail in comparison. I cursed her recklessness and dropped to all fours, sprinting to catch her up.

  The zombie bear barrelled into Selina before I could reach her. I don’t know what the witch had thought would happen, if she’d even been thinking at all, but without the physical weight of a bear she was never going to be able to withstand clashing with her opponent head on. She was thrown backwards, though to her credit, she sprang straight up. As far as I could tell, she’d suffered no more than a few bruises, thanks to the bear’s inability to use that fearsome set of teeth dangling uselessly between her forelegs. Otherwise it could have been much worse.

  I half expected Varin to materialise by Selina’s side, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the shapeshift was interfering with the connection she had to her familiar spirit, or maybe he was fighting his own battles in the spirit realm. I didn’t know, but either way the witch was on her own.

  She stood tall and roared a challenge to her rival. The zombie bear reared up and gave an answering roar, through jaws now resting against her chest. I could see the ghostly form of the bear spirit around Selina again, like a spectral shadow of the animal’s mortal remains. Since her spirit had shifted into the same animal she now faced, it would have been standing at the same height as her opponent. They would have looked like twins or mirror images of each other, if the bear’s mortal remains had been whole. But with the damage I’d dealt, it was Selina’s spirit which had the appearance of the beautiful, majestic predator the bear had been in life, while the zombie looked every bit the product of the necromancer’s black magic reanimating it. She looked like a thing of evil, an animal twisted and corrupted by the darkness of the necromancy itself. Seeing her on two legs only made the effect worse. It gave a clear view of the crater in her chest and the void where her heart and part of her lungs should have been. What was left would probably have been flapping about loosely if it hadn’t been for the wintry conditions. As it was, they’d frozen in place, which was perhaps only marginally less gruesome.

  The bear fell back to all fours and charged Selina again. Selina had the sense to dodge that time, slashing at the bear’s hindquarters as the undead animal passed her. But this was no human zombie. The bones were far thicker than those of the human corpses and even with her boost in strength, it wasn’t enough to do any significant harm to this opponent. Her blow did no visible damage.

  The bear reared up again now they were close enough to wrestle. Selina’s spirit mirrored the zombie. She dodged another blow and struck the bear once more, this time across the abdomen. And again she did no damage.

  I’d almost reached them when the bear landed another blow. Her huge paw connected with Selina’s skull and I could only watch in horror as the witch fell. But I didn’t slow. I was within striking distance and I leapt for the zombie before she could finish Selina off.

  The bear turned, that horribly limp head swinging with the movement and locking eyes on my own. She struck me mid-leap and sent me crashing backwards. Winded, it took me a moment to pull myself up. I feared it would be to find Selina’s head cracked wide open and oozing brains, but the scent of fresh blood was only faint. It looked like the bear was now fixated on me.

  She charged again. I had no idea how I was going to stop her this time. Killing her had been hard enough. Did I really stand a chance of ripping her into small enough pieces to negate any kind of threat, like we had with the human zombies? If I’d had a sword I could probably have done it without too much trouble. But with only my teeth and claws it would be a challenge.

  I dodged, glancing at Selina as the bear ran past. A jolt went through me. She was utterly still.

  I tried to listen for breathing but I couldn�
��t detect any above the sounds of battle. Where the hell was Lady Sarah? She was taking her time killing the enemy necromancer, and time was a luxury we didn’t have. This battle needed to end, fast. Or we may well all end up falling to the zombies.

  The bear turned and charged again. I dodged a second time. It was then I heard the drone of the helicopter, no longer distant but loud and growing nearer. The sound had been present all along of course, I’d just not noticed it until then. Lady Sarah hadn’t taken it down yet, so where was she?

  Dead flesh smacked into the back of my newly healed shoulder. Vicious claws raked the tissue in a wave of hot crimson, gouging five deep trenches into muscle and bone. But it was the force of it that was most deadly, sending me crashing to the ground, just like Selina. I’d let myself become distracted a moment too long – a potentially fatal mistake.

  I hit the floor face down and rolled to the side, ignoring the stinging protest from my shredded flesh, sharp and immediate. Another huge paw slashed the bloodied snow where I’d fallen. The bear turned before I could rise back onto my feet and stepped over me, her limp head hanging directly over mine. I watched her jaws open with the instinct to bite down, but there was no way she was going to end this with her teeth and we both knew it. She raised her paw for a third strike.

  I’d already started pulling myself backwards when her paw came crashing down. There was no room to roll again and I was never going to regain my feet in time. I gritted my teeth and braced myself for the impact, knowing I was probably about to be disembowelled and there was nothing I could do to avoid it.

  The devastating blow never came. There was a flash of steel and the bear’s limb fell away from her body. She turned to deal with this new threat, but the severed limb started to crawl towards my head and I had a sudden vision of those claws stabbing into my skull.

  I scrabbled backwards and rose up to find Zee had run to my rescue, our opponent now focused solely on him. Her limb seemed to have fixated on me as its target, but it was fairly slow moving and seemed like the least of our worries for the time being. So I ignored it, taking advantage of the distraction Zee had created to check on Selina. I was relieved to see the rise and fall of her chest, which I’d missed in the heat of the action. She was unconscious, but still alive.

  Sounds of more movement over the snow and ice brought my attention back to the battle. I looked up and was dismayed to see a number of the human zombies rushing in for another attack, most crawling, though a few were still able to run. Gwyn bounded towards us just ahead of the enemy pack. The bear was no match for Zee but when the human corpses hit us again, we were going to be in danger of being overrun. And worse, the helicopter was close enough I could see it now. No doubt the humans would be armed with guns, and we’d soon be dodging bullets as well as dead teeth and hands.

  That wasn’t all. My eyes were drawn to the movement of a running figure across the ice. Faster than a zombie, it kept pace with the helicopter overhead. I had a good idea of who it must be and felt my heart sink. There was only one reason I could think of for Lady Sarah running directly below the helicopter like that.

  “Zee!” I roared.

  He didn’t seem to hear me, too lost in the thrill of battle. His sword cut through both the bear’s hind legs. She struggled to drag herself after him with her remaining front limb, but her body wasn’t going to be mobile for much longer. Her severed limbs were another story. They continued to wriggle through the snow with their master’s will, the foreleg I’d escaped now making its way towards Selina.

  “Zee!” I tried again. “This isn’t working. We need to get out of here, now!”

  Not so long ago it would have pained me to run. I’d have been all for standing our ground and fighting to the bitter end. But my bloodlust hadn’t taken over, maybe because the dead bodies just wouldn’t satisfy it when they refused to die again, and my reason and survival instincts won out. We weren’t going to win this battle. Our options were run and evade death for a little longer, or die out there on the frozen sea.

  “And go where?” he said, bringing his cutlass down on the bear’s remaining limb. His gaze swept the battlefield, taking in the horde of human zombies closing in for a second attack. “Our plan will work. We just have to hold here a while longer.”

  “I think it’s already failed,” I answered, shaking my head and pointing. “Look over there. The helicopter’s going to be on us in minutes, and look who’s coming with it. You definitely need to get out of here.”

  “Abandon my crew? Never,” he hissed, but his eyes followed the direction of my clawed finger. He cursed when he recognised the blur that had to be Lady Sarah.

  “Yeah,” I growled, assuming he’d come to the same conclusion I had.

  I guessed I should probably have expected it from the moment we realised we were dealing with a necromancer on the Slayers’ payroll. Lady Sarah had talked about her gifts with necromancy like it was a rarity among vampires, and it was clearly not something Selina was skilled in from the way she’d discussed it with her sister. So how many humans could there really be with such powers? And to take control of not just dead bodies but the undead as well was rarer still, which meant the enemy we faced could only be the woman the Slayers had referred to as Lauren Hughes. But the last we’d seen of her had been back on British soil. I’d just assumed this was someone else up until that point, someone the Slayers had in the area to bring to the fight the moment they’d learnt of our location.

  How they’d found us was something else to worry about, but not until we escaped this mess. If we did. Once the battle was over, I’d probably sink back into despair that the dream of the life I’d had could only ever be a dream; that in reality there was no escaping our enemies for any more than nights at a time. But those were problems for later. My adrenaline was up and I had no time for despair or fear. Surviving the night was all that mattered at present.

  “I won’t leave you all to die,” Zee said, his face set with stubborn loyalty.

  “If you stay here, they’ll only take control of you too. Maybe we should split up. One of us can take Selina till she comes around, and we find each other when we’ve lost them.”

  “What about Lady Sarah? We’d be leaving her at their mercy.”

  “We’ll just have to hope they keep her alive and that we can free her like we did in the dungeon, as soon as we get the opportunity.”

  He shook his head. “No. I would rather take my chances with the necromancer than leave any of you in the hands of our enemies. I suppose it’s up to me now to bring them down. You and Gwyn will have to keep the zombies at bay until then.”

  The zombies were almost upon us again. Gwyn skidded to a stop beside me and took up a defensive position, his hackles raised and his teeth bared in a fierce growl. Zee started toward the helicopter, not charging blindly through our enemies like I expected but striding with a confidence I wished I felt, hacking apart zombies on either side of him as he went. Most were on the ground reaching up for him as he passed, his blade slicing through arms and the occasional raised head. I guessed he was gathering all the telekinetic power he could muster as he advanced on the true enemy.

  Letting Zee go felt like a mistake, but what else could we do? Selina was still out for the count and Gwyn couldn’t make any argument while he was in his fox form. There didn’t seem to be anything else I could say to change the pirate’s mind. So instead I walked over to the bear’s foreleg which had almost reached Selina, and bent to grab the limb. It writhed between my fingers, its paw moving back and forth in a slashing motion but its claws unable to reach their target.

  I considered the limb for a moment. Biting off each claw would be easy enough but then there’d be five small weapons wriggling through the snow, which was probably worse than one big one. So I threw the leg as far away as I could manage, then did the same to the bear’s other three limbs. In the time it would take for them to crawl back to us the battle was likely to be over, one way or another. Either the Slayers would
be dead by then, or we would be.

  “Gwyn, come over here,” I growled, feeling the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. Selina’s life was now in our hands.

  He glanced round and did as I asked. I figured we were better standing over her unconscious body than a few feet away, where it would be possible for one of the zombies to creep around us and drag her through the veil.

  The helicopter was almost upon us. Zee came to a stop just short of Lady Sarah, though she didn’t slow. She’d be on him in seconds.

  He made no dramatic gestures to accompany his telekinesis as I’d seen Ulfarr do, but I could see evidence of the power he was using in the way the helicopter started to buck, as if being buffeted by heavy turbulence. At first it seemed to be working, but then the chopper straightened, clearly back in control. Zee turned and locked me with a gaze full of the same fury I’d seen in his eyes the last time Lauren had taken control of him, when we’d been forced to fight in the dungeon. My heart sank further still. It was exactly what I’d feared would happen.

  The zombies hadn’t attacked yet. They surrounded us, forming a large circle to prevent our escape. And yet running seemed like our only hope if we didn’t want to end up killing our friends. It had been hard enough freeing them of Lauren’s control in the dungeon – a controlled environment. In the midst of real battle, it would be all but impossible.