Hybrid

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  The hunger hadn’t returned which surprised me. I’d been content with a normal sized meal at lunch. Yet I still wanted to hunt. I felt like a caged animal, stuck inside that room.

  “Haven’t you got coursework to do, Nick?” Ms Brooks asked me, breaking through my thoughts.

  “Yeah, I should probably do some but I really can’t be bothered today,” I said.

  “That’s not the right attitude, Nick,” she told me, sternness creeping into her voice while Becci sniggered.

  I shrugged and went back to staring out of the window.

  Evening came. I sat watching TV with my family, but I was restless again, even more so than I had been through the previous night. I kept shifting position on the sofa until I felt the need to stand and pace.

  “What’s got into you?” Amy asked, giving me a look that said she thought I was a weirdo.

  I paused and glanced at her but didn’t answer, resuming my pacing.

  “Nick, will you stop pacing?” Dad snapped. “You’ll wear the floorboards out! Be still.”

  “I’m not a dog, I don’t have to obey you,” I snarled. An anger sparked inside, both from human and wolf.

  “Don’t talk to me like that! I’m your father,” he bellowed. “Go to your room! Now!”

  “I’ve had enough of you anyway,” I spat, and turned my back on him. I left him fuming and began to climb the stairs when the first wave of pain crashed against me, a faint slither of moonlight filtering through from one of the bedrooms. I faltered halfway up and fell to my knees, gripping the banister to keep from falling all the way down. It wasn’t quite as bad as the first time, but it was still agony as my whole body began to shift shape. I wanted to curl up into a ball and wait for it to pass, except that it didn’t work like that. I remember this transformation clearer than the first, though I’m not sure why. When the fur began to sprout from my skin, I knew I had to reach the safety of my room before the pain reached the point where it was too intense to move.

  I gritted my teeth against that internal agony and began to crawl up the steps like I had so many times before, but that time I wasn’t pretending to be a monster. Limbs were shifting before my eyes. My fingers were shortening, sucked back into my hand, pads forming and fusing them together, while the nails lengthened and became claws. It was a painful process that felt like my bones were being ground together, melting away until they reached the right length. And I hadn’t even set eyes upon the moon yet.

  My thumbs lost their dexterity, becoming dew claws, and the bones in my hand elongated until each dew claw was too high up to be of any real use. Similar changes were already beginning in my feet. True wolves have no dew claw on their rear legs, however, so my little toes, being the least developed, were fast disappearing, and each foot needed to lengthen significantly to allow me to stand on all fours.

  It took all my physical and mental strength to keep myself moving upwards. Though in reality it was a short distance, the staircase seemed to stretch ahead of me, so far that it might lead to the very stars and the moon that caused the agony.

  Nearing the top, another wave of pain racked my body and I had to dig my claws into the floor to keep from sliding back down. Deep scars were gouged into the woodwork, but I had other things to worry about. Movement was aggravating the pain, and I knew I had to reach the sanctuary of my room soon. Just two more stairs and then across the landing and I’d be there, just had to push myself a little harder…

  My claws still digging into the wood, I used them to heave myself up to the top where I paused, panting from the effort. My tongue hung out like a great fat worm over teeth that were fast becoming fangs. My gums throbbed where new teeth were growing at the back, while pain shot through the teeth already in place as they elongated, the ends becoming thinner and thinner until they came to a point. The canines were the most unpleasant, and they grew to the point where they pressed painfully against my gums, no longer fitting comfortably inside my mostly human mouth. It seemed the changes were random, for I was sure it hadn’t happened in that order before.

  I crawled towards my room and collapsed inside, painfully twisting round to shut the door. My clothes suddenly felt too tight and I struggled out of them as best I could before they ripped apart like the previous month. My t-shirt came off fairly easily but without opposable thumbs it was impossible to undo the fly on my jeans. Somehow I painfully managed to wriggle out of them but I knew I was going to have to get into the habit of stripping off before the change started in future. If I’d left it just a few minutes longer I didn’t think they’d have come off in one piece. My underwear I was less worried about since I had plenty of socks and boxer shorts, and I doubted anyone would notice another pair had gone missing.

  I lay sprawled out on the floor as the other changes took place, bathed in the moon’s light. It felt more comfortable to stretch out my limbs while the bones continued to elongate or shorten as necessary, but I wanted to curl up again when the pain intensified in my gut. It always seemed to start there, and it didn’t seem possible that it could increase any more, but it had. My blood boiled and my muscles rippled, but it was nothing compared to whatever was happening inside my stomach. I think I read somewhere wolves have a shorter gut so as to be able to digest raw meat. Maybe that explained the feeling that my intestines had been twisted and tied into knots, and the way they slithered like snakes beneath my skin. The greater amount of acid necessary for killing the bacteria in raw meat was probably the reason behind my stomach seemingly being turned inside out. That’s what it felt like anyway. I’d been lying on my stomach, but I had to roll over onto my back. Despite the pain, I sensed I was growing more powerful. I could feel it coursing through my veins, all the more potent with the anger Dad had caused.

  Breathing soon became painful. Each breath was shallow and quick as if I were dying from a hole in my lungs, and I didn’t want to think about what might be happening to them. My heart felt as if it were being squeezed while it sought to beat and pump the blood around my body. Sweat trickled down my changing form as I writhed on the floor, levering myself up on my elbows when my back caught on fire, some kind of change happening to the spine, only to fall back and then rise up onto my shoulder blades as a tail grew out from the end. I wanted to scream for it to end, scream for death to come and take me, save me from the pain. But my vocal cords had changed and I was unable to make any sounds other than those of an animal: grunts of pain, snarls, growls, yelps.

  My face stretched outwards until it formed a snout. My skull felt like it was splitting down the middle as the anatomy changed. My ears migrated upwards. The optic nerves behind my eyes changed so that my night vision improved, though I could still see in colour, unlike true wolves. The whole of my head was being rewired like a computer, being transformed into a completely new machine, one programmed to hunt and kill.

  More wolf than human, I rolled back over onto my stomach where it had become more comfortable, and risked standing on all fours while the final changes took place. If I thought the world was alien before, it was nothing compared to what it was then. But I didn’t have much time to explore that world, with its even louder sounds and greater scents, for the wolf had been waiting all month for the chance to hunt, and now its time was come and it would wait no longer. Like a dormant volcano it erupted into my consciousness, its thoughts flooding my brain, as alien as the world around. How could it be a part of me? And yet it was. It pushed me aside and I was drowned in its dominating mind until I lost sight of the surface of our consciousness. Forced down into our collective sub consciousness all went black. There I lay in wait, dead to the world, waiting for the sun to bring me back to the living.

  I stood in the room, waiting for the final changes to completely finish, scenting the air and pricking my ears for a hint of prey. The hunger was already taking hold again. There were three humans in the building with me, each one an easy meal. No, Lady Sarah had opened my eyes to reality. I had to be more careful when hunting. Their screams woul
d be heard in neighbouring houses, and I would soon become the hunted.

  But I could find no way out that night – there was no opening in the glass wall for me to jump through as there had been before and, if I shattered the glass, the noise would bring humans, and probably the Slayers too.

  I paced the length of the room, looking for a way out. I stood up on my back paws, resting my front paws on the windowsill for a better view of the glass standing between myself and freedom, trying to find why there was no opening this time where there had been before.

  Finding no reason why the opening was not there, I was about to look elsewhere for an escape route to freedom and the endless hunting grounds the town offered, but then I noticed a handle which had been pushed up last time when it was open. To my delight I discovered that, if I nudged it up with my snout and pushed against the glass, it swung outward. Wasting no more time, I leapt out into the night.

  An hour later I had been prowling through my territory looking for suitable prey but I had so far found none. The streets were deserted, with not even a cat in sight. There was human life to be found for those who knew where to look, however (and I had learnt much in the past month from the human, gently probing its mind so as not to arouse suspicion, for I knew it didn’t trust me). But even without that knowledge all I needed was to follow my nose.

  Thanks to the human I knew the route to the town centre well, and once I was there it didn’t take me long to find my prey, gathered in large herds flocking to their nightclubs and bars. Once I was inside the buildings would become slaughterhouses; I would massacre them and feast on their flesh until morning light. Or I would if it wasn’t for the fear of the Slayers. But not only that, the sound blaring out from the buildings repelled me. A battering ram against my ear drums, it was strong enough to rip through them and deafen me. It hurt my sensitive ears and confused my brain. And in my confusion I snarled and snapped at thin air, as if I could silence the sound somehow, until fear had me running from the pain. And so I ran back to the quiet streets I had already explored. Away from the noise, I came to my senses and realised I was back where I’d started: no prey to hunt and growing ever more ravenous.

  Hunger and desperation drove me to scavenge from a bin outside one of the nearby houses from which I could smell rotting flesh. I would have preferred fresh meat, and I craved human blood for it was part of the curse, setting me apart from true wolves. But it was either that or go hungry.

  I knocked over the bin, spilling its contents, and found a half eaten roast chicken which I wolfed down, pardon the pun. But the rest was just scraps that could not even be considered a small snack, and not wanting to stay in one place for too long, coupled with the knowledge that the other bins would most likely be the same, I was driven away from the town towards the farmer's fields.

  I wandered the fields until I came upon a large herd of sheep. They had not scented me as yet and I remained downwind of them, selecting which one to take. Sadly there were no tender lambs at that time of year, but I picked out the youngest in the herd and stalked towards her.

  As I advanced closer the sheep scented me and bleated in panic, and I heard a sheep dog bark from a kennel not far off near the farmer's house. It wouldn’t save them.

  Before they knew what was happening I had lunged at my chosen victim and had crushed her neck in my strong jaws, her blood leaking into my mouth and dripping to the floor.

  I quickly dragged the sheep to the edge of the fields, back near where they became streets, and ripped open her soft underbelly.

  I was so hungry I stripped her bones completely of their flesh and began to devour the soft organs. I swallowed the kidneys whole. The liver I bit in two. One half slid down my throat while the other fell to the ground, lying there like a lump of jelly before I swallowed that down as well. The stomach I bit into and licked at the contents that oozed out, a green liquid mixture of acid and enzymes and half digested grass.

  I greedily devoured the other organs, then I slipped away before the farmer followed the slight trail of blood I had left and discovered me with the body of one of his sheep. I didn’t want to find myself staring at the wrong end of a gun’s barrel again.

  But I was still hungry and I desired human flesh this time. It would have been easier to return to the field and take another sheep, but I could not risk the farmer finding me, for I would surely be shot. So I took to wandering the streets once more.

  I was lucky to find a fresh trail of a male human youth of the age of seventeen. I followed the trail, drool and blood dripping from my jaws, and was rewarded when I found him walking alone.

  Too hungry to play with him first, I pounced and knocked him to the ground. The human landed heavily on his back, I on top of him. He screamed but I quickly slaughtered him by crushing his head, forever silencing him. His brains oozed out onto the street while I hungrily lapped them up.

  I ate the more appetising parts until the hunger was satisfied, then I buried the carcass in the nearest garden as I had the previous month.

  After that I decided to seek out the vampire who I had found before, as she was my leader. Had she been one of my kind I would have sought her out first so that we could hunt together, but I knew her kind were for the most part solitary, and preferred to hunt alone. And besides, I was strong enough and fast enough to hunt alone too. The human had been searching for her, but though I had learnt much from it over the past month, I didn’t understand every thought running through its half of our mind. A month wasn’t long enough to learn an entire language.

  So it was that I came to the graveyard in which she resided and, like the human, found no trace of her. Not even a scent trail for me to follow.

  The night was still young and I had nowhere to go. Alone but well fed, and content for the moment, I decided to settle down amongst the graves, feeling it was as safe a place as any. I slept there for the rest of the night with an ear cocked and an eye half open, and my nose pointing upwards into the wind, ready to bolt if the Slayers showed up again. The human had always been a light sleeper and I was no different. I would awake at the slightest hint of danger.

  Close to sunrise, I returned to my room where I could transform back to human in safety.

  Over the next two nights I would hunt again and take more human victims. The vampire was nowhere to be found, but I didn’t run into the Slayers either. On the third night, the full moon set for the final time that month and I was reluctantly forced back into the depths of our mind, while the human dominated us again.

  Chapter Seven

  All Hallow’s Eve

  After the full moon the month passed slowly, without event. Mum took me to see the optician, who couldn’t explain why my vision had suddenly corrected itself, though nothing bad came of it. The scratches I had made in the floor had been blamed on next door’s cat, who had somehow got into the house earlier that day. The cat’s timing couldn’t have been better. I’d managed to dispose of my torn socks and boxers again before anyone found them and it raised awkward questions. I had still been unable to find Lady Sarah, but there’d been no other close calls since the beginning of the transformation in Aughtie’s lesson, and finding her didn’t seem so urgent. Halloween was on its way, my favourite night of the year. I used to love the excuse to dress up as monsters and scare people, and in all the excitement Lady Sarah was forgotten.

  Fiona would be trick or treating with one of her friends from the year below us, Jessica, and she invited me along. I’d had other plans, thinking I’d find some way to set up the ultimate scare for anyone who was brave enough to approach our house, but I hadn’t been out trick or treating for a couple of years so I agreed. I already had a costume in mind for the night, though I thought it was a pity I couldn’t control the transformation yet.

  If only I could control it so that I could change far enough to become something half human, half wolf like in the movies, everyone would think it the ultimate Halloween costume. I wouldn’t take it so far that it wouldn’t pass as a c
ostume, just enough to make it effective. However, since I didn’t even know how to become a full wolf at will – which was probably easier because, as I’d found out in Aughtie’s lesson, once the change had begun, it was hard to stop it – or whether it was even possible to do that, I would have to settle for the grim reaper costume I had already chosen. Which was just as well, considering how reckless a part way transformation would be, no matter how far or how little I took it, but at the time it seemed a good idea, if only I’d known how.

  Halloween was a Friday that year, so my parents had said I could be out later than usual, as long as it was a reasonable time and I stayed with Fiona and Jessica. I had the feeling it was going to be a good night.

  The day passed slowly. I had double Graphics periods three and four, which was another lesson I had with Lizzy.

  I took my seat beside her and she wasted no time asking me what I was doing for Halloween that night. I told her about my plans with Fiona and Jessica to which she complained “Well she never invited me!”

  “Oh, that’s odd. You haven’t fallen out over owt have you?” I asked her.

  “Not that I know of,” she replied. “I’m off to a party anyway.”

  “Well maybe that’s why she didn’t invite you if she already knew,” I said.

  “Would’ve been nice for her to ask though,” Lizzy grumbled.

  Silence fell while the register was taken, then our first piece of coursework which we’d handed in a week earlier was given back to us.

  “I got an A*, yay me!” Lizzy said.

  “Nice one!” I looked at my own work as it was handed back to me. “A B? There must be a mistake. I mean look at that, clearly graphical genius!”