Hybrid

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  Form was nearly over by the time Kerri had been dealt with, and I realised I didn’t know what lesson I had first so I quickly studied my timetable, to find it was Maths. So when the bell went, signalling the end of form and the beginning of the first lesson, I walked out of the room with Becci and picked up the macabre conversation from where we’d left it. While most classrooms were on the ground level, all the Maths rooms were on the same corridor up a flight of steps, and the IT rooms were just above them.

  “Well Becci, you can fuck me when I’m dead, I don’t care. If I’m lucky I might even be able to feel it in the afterlife.”

  “Nick, I wouldn’t want to touch you dead or alive,” she told me.

  “You keep telling yourself that Becci, you know you want me really. I mean come on, a fit guy like me, I’m just irresistible. Every girl in the school wants me really, and just wait till I’m famous, they’ll be fighting amongst themselves to be with me! Every girl in the world will want a piece of the action, and I’ll be all too happy to share. And for every girl who doesn’t get a chance in this life, you can guarantee it’ll be in her will that the coffin has to be left with me so her corpse can receive my personal attention.”

  The girl who’d been sat in front of us in the form room must have overheard again because she decided to interrupt. “Do you have to be so sick? Why can’t you have normal relationships like normal people?”

  “’Cause I ain’t normal. Anyway, love is over-rated. I don’t do relationships, everyone knows that. All love causes is pain and sadness, it’s a useless emotion. From what I’ve seen, relationships are a waste of time. Just get ’em to bed and move on, saves a lot of pain and heartbreak. That’s all relationships are good for. A relationship with a corpse, now that’s my ideal relationship. All the sex you want without the arguments, and you don’t have to sacrifice things for your lover, you can have everything your way. Isn’t that anybody’s ideal relationship if they were being honest?”

  “You’re insane,” she said, a look of sheer disbelief on her face. “Love is real. It can make you stronger, give you something to live for. It isn’t useless, it can do a lot for the soul. You’ll see someday.”

  “Ha, yeah right. I’ll stick to the shagging side if it’s all the same to you, whether they’re dead or alive.”

  “I have to agree with Nick on that one, sex is the best part of it,” Becci said. If everything she’d told us was true, she was talking from years of experience.

  At that point we had just climbed the stairs and were entering the Maths corridor. It was time to go our separate ways. I was in the fourth classroom along, while Becci and the other girl were in the fifth.

  The day dragged after that. I wouldn’t bore you with the details even if I could remember them, though it was the start of the year which probably meant we were just going through what we’d be studying in the months to come. I switched off while teachers droned on, everything I learnt back then long forgotten. It didn’t help my concentration that I could hear what every other teacher was saying on that corridor with my new enhanced senses, and even worse was the sense of smell. We weren’t meant to eat during lessons but that didn’t stop most of us, and the hunger soon returned, the smell of various different snacks calling to it until it built in power and I could focus on little else. French was the best lesson I had that day. It was one of the few lessons I had with Lizzy, and talking to her distracted me from the hunger.

  “Hi Nick,” she said as she walked into the classroom with Fiona and took her place at the desk behind me, Fiona taking the seat next to me. “I wasn’t going to come in today but I thought I better do just to check you were still alive.”

  The three of us burst out laughing at that, before Lizzy grew serious again.

  “Seriously though, you’re okay after the other night aren’t you? I can’t believe the others ran off and left you like that.” She shot an angry look at Fiona who stared fixedly at the table, avoiding our gaze, and I realised that’s what Becci had been hiding. If my memories were clearer I might have said something, but as it was I decided to let it go. Besides, I was still very aware of the potential consequences of letting my emotions rule me, and I couldn’t afford to give the anger I’d felt that morning any cause to resurface.

  “Yeah I’m fine thanks, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. They were just flesh wounds, that’s all,” I lied.

  “Good,” she said. “I can be angry at you now then.”

  “Why, what have I done now?” I asked indignantly.

  “You could have text to let me know you were okay you dick, you had me worrying all day when you didn’t show up yesterday!” she said. “I tried ringing but your phone was off and I couldn’t get through to your house phone.”

  “Ah, sorry about that. I just needed a good sleep afterwards so I was in bed most of the day. Never even thought to turn it on,” I replied.

  “You’re clueless sometimes, you know that?” she said but left it at that. Mostly she was just glad I was okay.

  Talk turned to a website we all played on. It was a virtual pet site, where you created your own pets and then you could battle with them, amongst other things. There was also a chat room and you could create your own guild, which was kind of like having your own website within the website. You could do whatever you wanted with the front page of your guild if you had the technical know how, and other players could join and talk on the message boards. We used our guild for roleplaying mainly.

  We were interrupted by our new teacher’s attempt to start the lesson. Usually we would have had the same teacher throughout our GCSEs but Mr Andrews had left at the end of Year Ten.

  “Fine morning class,” she began in a thick French accent. “My name is Miss Dubois and I am taking your French this year. Today let’s talk about, er how you say, hobbies from the summer. Did anyone do anything nice they are wanting to share with the class?”

  As she talked she wrote her name on the board and underneath she made a heading ‘My Summar’, to a chorus of sniggers at her bad English. We began chatting amongst ourselves again as if our teacher hadn’t arrived to the lesson yet.

  “I dunno if I’ll make it on tonight,” I said to Lizzy and Fiona, not bothering to keep my voice down. “Dad’s going through another of his bad years and you know how he is with me being on the computer ‘too much’.”

  “What do you mean another of his bad years?” Fiona asked. She hadn’t been round to my house as often as Lizzy and didn’t know my family very well.

  “Every couple of years he just gets angry for no reason,” I explained. “It lasts for about a year, and then he’s back to his other self who can be a good laugh when he wants to, like fucking Jekyll and Hyde or something. That’s okay while it lasts, but then we have to suffer another year of his mood swings. It’s like this constant cycle with him.”

  “Your Dad’s always been nice to me when I’ve been round,” Lizzy said, as if she thought I was exaggerating.

  “Of course he is, you’re not family,” I replied bitterly. “He puts on the friendly act for the rest of the world, but he takes it out on me and Mum when it’s just us. Not his precious Amy though, she can’t do owt wrong.”

  I thought gloomily of the bad atmosphere waiting for me back home, after school. Even if I returned to find him in a good mood, it never lasted long during a bad year. He was unpredictable, like a mad dog, his mood changing in the blink of an eye. Mum had often said to him he needed anger management and he’d even agreed with her, but he’d never been.

  “That sucks, Nick,” Fiona said.

  “It’s okay, I know I’m a huge disappointment to him. I don’t give a damn anymore. In a few years I’ll be free of him anyway.”

  That was my one comforting thought whenever things were bad at home, but sometimes that day seemed an eternity away. I often thought about just running away from it all, but I couldn’t leave Mum and Amy behind. They needed me. We needed each other whenever Dad was going through another bad year, e
ven Amy, despite the fact she was very rarely a target for Dad’s anger.

  We were interrupted again by Miss Dubois, whose voice had been drowned out in the classroom chatter. The lights flicked on and off and silence was restored as we all looked round to see what she was doing.

  “Merci,” she said and resumed the lesson, but moments later we had begun talking again.

  She returned to the light switch but of course, while it might have worked to restore order among primary school children, it had no further effect on a room full of teenagers.

  “I will have more quiet!” she shouted in an attempt to assert some authority. Someone threw a paper aeroplane which hit her forehead and fell to the ground. She was fuming but she didn’t have the presence of some teachers in the school, and no amount of shouting was going to control our class.

  Most French lessons would be like that over the year, but I wasn’t complaining. It became a chance to talk to Lizzy and Fiona for fifty minutes, which felt like a nice break to the tedium of the school day.

  Lunch break came and went. Fortunately, Mum was in her office when I went to see her, and she gave me some money without question. Then it was back to being bored out of my mind in the afternoon’s lessons.

  When the bell finally rang at the end of the day, most of the energy that had filled me that morning had died. The feeling of being so alive was long gone. Whatever I had done the previous night, it had finally begun to take its toll, and twenty four hours without sleep had left me exhausted. I wearily stumbled back towards home and collapsed onto my bed when I was back in the safety of my room, listening to my parents rowing about something else. I couldn’t stay there long, much as I wanted to. The hunger was already growing to the point of becoming overpowering again, and I knew I had to stay awake long enough to eat.

  Having changed out of my uniform, I only ventured downstairs when the argument died down and I heard the sound of the door slamming and a car starting up outside. I was glad to find Dad had gone to the gym, meaning we could eat dinner in peace.

  “Ah, I’m glad you’ve come down Nick, I need to talk to you about dinner. We’ve got chicken in breadcrumbs, spaghetti bolognaise, or that chicken in red wine sauce you like,” Mum said.

  I shrugged tiredly. “Whatever’s easiest for you, I’m not bothered.”

  “Are you okay, love? You look tired, early to bed tonight.”

  Normally I’d have argued against an early night, but I was too tired even for that. “Yeah, I’m fine, just tired like you said. Didn’t sleep last night.”

  “How did you cope without your glasses today?” she asked.

  “Fine. I think my eyes are getting better again, I could read everything on the board no problem.”

  “I still think you should see the optician.”

  I just grunted at that.

  “Okay, well you can have the chicken in breadcrumbs because that cooks at the same temperature as ours. What do you want with it?”

  “Whatever.”

  “How about a jacket potato and peas, is that okay for you?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. Two pieces of chicken please.”

  I sat and read more of the horror story Kerri had run off with earlier that morning while I waited for dinner to cook. Half an hour later it was ready and I ate in silence. Not long after I’d finished eating I went back to bed and welcomed the sleep as soon as it enveloped me.

  Chapter Five

  Nightmares Awaken

  The ground rushed by beneath my feet, twigs snapping and burying themselves in the dirt. My breath steamed out before me and I was panting with the effort, sweat soaking my fur, running over my skin. A thread of drool dangled from my lower jaw and fell to the ground, an explosive vibration for the invertebrates beneath the soil. My prey was just ahead and I was closing the distance between us with every bound. She was beginning to tire: I could hear her heart pounding against her chest, her lungs gasping for air, and no doubt her muscles were burning, in need of oxygen.

  I leapt over a fallen log and swerved between the trees. She veered to the left and I almost skidded trying to follow her, my claws digging into the dirt, making deep grooves as I sought to keep my balance. Fast and agile as I was, wolves are not built for sharp turns.

  She was slowing now and I was almost upon her. I pounced and knocked her to the ground, growling hungrily. Too ravenous to bother killing her first, I ripped the flesh from her back and swallowed greedily, blood spraying my face. When I’d eaten what I could from around the ribs and the spine and the base of the neck, I rolled her over, wishing she’d stop screaming. The shrill sound hurt my sensitive ears.

  She didn’t fight back when I rolled her over, but she covered her face, sobbing and screaming and struggling to suck in air, still in need of oxygen after the chase. I ate everything from inside her belly until she was hollow. I moved upwards to the flesh round her throat. She was still screaming, despite having no lungs or vocal cords left to scream with. Finally I reached her face.

  Her hands were still in the way, so I bit them off and ate them, more blood spraying out, covering us both, and continued to chew the limbs until the arms were all but gone. The bloody stumps waved uselessly at the sides of her head, unable to reach any higher, and I went to rip off her face, but what I saw stopped me. It was pale and covered in blood and dirt, barely recognisable, but still I had seen enough to know who it was. The eyes were wide and staring with horror and shock, the jaws were stretched as far apart as they would go, still sounding that unearthly scream. I backed away in horror, retching, no longer a wolf but human now, my body tainted with her blood, my mouth dry and foul with the mixture of vomit, saliva and more blood. We were both screaming now, and I couldn’t bear to look at her mutilated body. The mutilated body of my sister.

  I awoke screaming and drenched in cold sweat, my bed wet with it. I fought with the covers, fighting to free myself from the last remnants of the nightmare, until Mum came rushing in.

  It took a while before she could calm me, how long I don’t know. I only know that the terrible images refused to go away, the haunting scream still echoing in my head, the taste of blood somehow still in my mouth. Mum rocked me in her arms like she had when I was young and the screams died in my throat. I closed my eyes against the shadows as if they contained more horrors, and forced my mind to think of other things. I never used to have nightmares before I’d been bitten, not even bad dreams. It seemed now I was half wolf the lupine part of my mind was determined to interfere with my dreams, bringing horror to my human mind. It served as a reminder of the transformation I was undergoing, not only physical but mental too. I shivered with the memory of the dream and the thought that nothing would ever be the same again. I would never be the same again.

  Once she was sure I was back in reality, free from the realm of darkness within my mind, containing my own horror and fears, and even my own private Hell, she went back to bed, leaving me alone again. I couldn’t face sleep; I could feel the nightmare lurking on the edge of my subconscious and I didn’t want to go back there. No matter how tired I had been the day before, or how tired I would be at school, I couldn’t go back there. I lay there in the night, feeling alone and afraid, no longer human yet desperate to remain in their world. There was no one I could talk to, except for maybe Lady Sarah, but I’d only met her once and I didn’t trust her enough yet to confide in her too deeply. Besides, she didn’t seem like the right person. From what she’d told me, if it was true, she’d been a vampire for centuries. Would she remember what it was like to be human? She might not understand. She’d probably tell me something like I wasn’t human anymore and I had to let my humanity go. But I still felt human, even though deep down I knew then I was something else. And I had wished for this through most of my childhood. Still, it was only a dream. It didn’t mean anything. I still believed I hadn’t taken another human’s life yet and I certainly had no intention to. I told myself it was only a dream.

  My nightmares fled with the break
of dawn and my fears were forgotten as I got ready for school. Two nights without sleep had left me feeling drained, empty. I was running on automatic, feeling like a zombie. My brain was too tired to work properly, but I’d bullied it into thinking long enough for me to decide to go and visit Lady Sarah again. Though I could not talk to her about the nightmares, there were other things I wanted to know. For one thing, she hadn’t really told me much about the Slayers. I needed to learn more of what I was up against in case I ever came across them. From what she’d said they’d already been hunting me in wolf form, even if I couldn’t remember it myself. I only hoped they didn’t know who I was, for my family’s sake, as well as my own.

  The hunger wasn’t as bad as it had been the morning before and I went without breakfast. I refused to eat cereal but I didn’t want to go to school early again. Dad had left early for work that morning so I wouldn’t have to listen to any more arguments, or be careful what I did and said to keep the peace, if only for Mum’s and Amy’s sakes. Most of the time he worked at home, but occasionally he had to go to other parts of the country. I wasn’t sure exactly what he did, something to do with training people I think. I know the company he used to work for dealt with insurance, but other than that I hadn’t taken enough interest to find out exactly what his job was.