“Well have you done it?” she asked.
“No, but that isn’t the point.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t reply. The lesson was just about to start and she left for her own classroom, glancing back at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. She knew something wasn’t right.
When I got home later that day I opened the fridge to find it packed full of beer for some football match Dad was watching.
“Hey Mum, can I have some beer?” I asked.
“Please,” Dad said automatically. If it hadn’t been for the football match he would probably have said more, but as it was he hadn’t really been paying attention.
“Not on a school night, Nick,” Mum told me.
“Aw, come on Mum, just one?”
She shook her head. “When you’re eighteen you can have as much as you want but until then it’s the odd one for a special occasion, you know that. Anyway, you don’t need any beer, you just have to look at the stuff and it sends you giddy.”
“Someone told me you sing better after a few beers,” I said.
“No, what really happens is you think you’re singing better but really you sound worse. It’s like when you’re drunk and you’re looking in the mirror and think you’re really good looking,” Mum answered.
“I think that every time I look in the mirror anyway,” I replied, while Mum rolled her eyes and Amy looked at me as if I was insane. To her I would never be anything other than a geek.
Mum was proved right though. Later on we were sat watching TV and I was giddy for no reason. Something made me laugh just as I took a swig of juice and I was forced to spit it back out again. Amy looked disgusted. That was nothing, when I calmed down again I drank the rest of the juice, spit an’ all.
“Err, you dirty gyppo,” Amy said, looking even more disgusted.
“It adds to the flavour,” I replied and laughed.
It couldn’t last though. Happiness and laughter are alien concepts to the damned.
That night I was hungry as ever and eager to hunt. I landed on the street outside to the sound of some sort of animal fleeing, but I soon found that it was a cat and hardly worth the effort of chasing. Such small prey was barely a snack for a predator as large as me.
However, I soon began to wonder if I would regret that decision before the night was over; I could neither smell nor hear any other creature in the town. Early winter had come upon the land, bringing harsh, cold winds, and rain that chilled to the bone, though it had yet to become snow. Fewer and fewer humans were out on a night, and there were none in the quieter areas of the town where I preferred to hunt; where I felt safer and could easily detect anyone approaching; where I could flee long before they reached me in case they were Slayers. The first night after my awakening had taught me to be much warier. I might hold humans and their slaves in contempt, but I could not deny the threat they posed and I had to learn to respect them for that, and accept the possibility that they could outsmart me if I let the contempt blind me.
Four hours of hunger passed. I was forced to move towards the centre of the town again, the only place where humans never failed to be. The problem was, they were all hidden away in the buildings filled with the loud noise they called music. I was learning more about the human world and I knew that if I waited long enough the drunks would come staggering out, some thrown out by the bouncers, some to cleanse themselves of the alcohol poisoning their bodies, the rest forced to go home when it closed, and then they would be mine for the taking. Yet the hunger wouldn’t wait.
There was no one outside at that time of night, or at least no one I could take without being seen. It was too early for the drunks to appear and too late to try and pick one off on their way to these places. Resignedly, I started to search the bins again, this time outside a fast food restaurant, when I heard human voices. And they were heading towards me! I thanked fate for the meal being brought my way while I lay in the shadows, waiting. From listening to their conversation I learnt that it was the birthday of one of the girls in the group and they were going to the night club to celebrate. I detected five of them but I only needed to take one. Sometimes I had eaten more, but I only really needed one to make the hunger bearable.
Now I needed to find a way to isolate one of them and make the kill without being seen by the others. The question was: how could I possibly do it without revealing myself to them? If any witnessed it I would have to kill them too, and the more deaths, the greater the likelihood of discovery by the Slayers. I could think of no way to lure one of them away and was growing desperate. However, fate remained in my favour that night and I had no need to take chances; as they were approaching the nightclub one of the girls had forgotten something. Consequently she left the safety of the group, promising to be back in about fifteen minutes.
Seeing she was taking a different route back – probably shorter – down an alley, I slunk ahead of her and waited until we were out of sight of the others, checking that there was no one about. Satisfied it was as safe as it could ever be in such dark times, I emerged from the shadows and pounced on her. She was too shocked to scream at first and by then it was too late – she could scream no more.
I had begun to feast on my meal when I sensed another female human nearby, but in the grip of the bloodlust I became more reckless. Nothing mattered then except the warm flesh on the ground at my feet. The world around me ceased to exist until there was only the flesh that nourished me, and the hunger. Nothing else mattered.
And so I ignored her. I continued to feed, her footsteps coming closer and still I ignored them. At this point my muzzle was deep in a hole in the belly of my victim, drawing out the organs as I had always done, since the first night I had been released from my prison deep within the human’s consciousness to hunt under the full moon. So lost in my meal, and the pleasure the fresh meat and offal brought, I did not notice the girl to whom the footsteps belonged walking down the alley towards me, until it was too late.
She had not seen me yet – both myself and the carcass were hidden in shadows – but that was about to change. I only became aware of her when I rose from the hole I had made, the organs devoured, to attack another part of the corpse and rip through the soft flesh. And then it was, when my muzzle emerged from the hole, her sweet scent tore through the blood red veil in my mind, and in that instant we saw each other.
The quickest to react, I snarled instinctively, ears flattened against my skull. My lips curled back so that my blood stained teeth were bared, defending my kill. I was an impressive sight in the dark alley, terrible to behold. I was a demon in the darkness, seemingly much larger than any mortal wolf. She did what any mortal would have done, except maybe for the Slayers. She turned and ran. The bloodlust clouded my judgement. I wanted to go back to my meal, but the bloodlust also wanted fresh blood, fresher meat, since the corpse at my feet was already beginning to lose its warmth, though it would not be entirely cold for hours yet. Besides, some part of my mind was insisting that she could not be allowed to live. And the age old instinct in all canines to chase running creatures was trying to make itself heard in the confused knot of thoughts. I could not ignore it. I obeyed. I gave chase...
An hour later I stood in a small, shallow stream, allowing the icy cold water, numbing, yet refreshing, to wash over my paws and rinse away the blood from my claws. And I drank the clean, clear, pure water that I might quench my thirst and cleanse my bloodied muzzle. The blood mixed with the water: a dark red streak snaked down the stream. I licked the blood away that had splattered all over my body, congealing and thickening on my matted fur. There was something about that night that made me feel the need to cleanse myself of the last remnants of the lives I had taken, as if it were impure, staining my soul. But these were human thoughts. The human was beginning to affect me, and I didn’t like it.
I stared down at my reflection in the water, looking into the amber eyes that stared back at me. What was I? Not human. Not wolf. A hybrid of the two. A monster? That was what humans beli
eved. But did monsters have a conscience? A killer yes, yet I only took life so that I may survive, one of the oldest laws of nature, to which all living creatures are bound, predator and prey. And what sort of a predator feels… what? Remorse? No, it wasn’t remorse. The human may have felt remorse when it killed the rabbit, but not I. What then? I didn’t understand this. But I felt something after the kill, and if these feelings grew they would get in the way. What sort of a predator feels for the victims it feeds on? Whatever I was, be it monster or some poor confused creature that was never meant to be, I was flawed and it made me weak. These were the human’s problems affecting me, and it had to learn to accept its fate. Our survival depended upon it.
Once the blood was washed from my fur and my mouth I splashed back through the water, my pads gripping the smooth pebbles on the stream’s bed as surely as any human footwear. I ran back up the bank, leaving paw prints in the mud. From there I began to make my way back home. The hunt that night had led me to the outskirts of the town into the surrounding countryside, and I had travelled to the nearest patch of woodland, where the stream ran through, to be alone with my confused thoughts. I had plenty of time left before dawn so I prowled back at a leisurely pace, though I still remained cautious, sticking to the shadows.
I liked the woodland better than the town. I felt at home there. It was my natural habitat and at that time of year it had already begun to die towards the end of autumn and the onset of winter, only to be reborn again in the spring. The dead belonged there.
An owl hunting overhead saw me coming and darted away. Bats avoided me. Rodents fled before me. I even inspired fear in the ants and other insects; they suddenly emerged from beneath the leaves and surged across the forest floor, appearing in front of, and around, my paws, and swarming away from them. I ruled the night. None dared challenge me, except for man. But there, in the natural world, I was the top predator and the world was my territory, the ideal situation for any creature. So why did I feel so alone?
I paused to howl, confident the Slayers would not be able to pinpoint my location until I had moved on and the trail had gone cold. I sent my howl up into the night like a prayer, as if it could reach the very stars. It was a mournful sound that meant little to other creatures. Only my brethren would have truly understood, and they were all gone. The vampires would have understood the words behind it, gifted as they were with wolves, but not its meaning. They were too old to remember these feelings, and they were naturally solitary. Like all wolves, I wanted the security a pack could bring, yet it was more still than that. The human was beginning to feel alone, realising it was no longer like the others that surrounded it, and the loneliness was beginning to affect me.
Of sadness the howl told, and loneliness, and the longing for a pack. Of eternity, and confusion and isolation, a creature separate from every other living thing, born of two races but belonging to neither one nor the other. An unnatural creature, cursed and wretched, one of the damned. Was it to Satan I truly belonged? Lady Sarah had said not to the human, I had been listening, but she did not know the origins of her own kind, so how sure could any of us be that the story of Lycaon was the true origins of my kindred? We knew only the myths and legends that had survived through the generations in both the living and the undead. Were we Satan’s children after all? Outcasts from Hell, thrown out perhaps when we refused to obey him, and in our place the demons were created. It was as good an explanation as any. Whatever we were, wherever we came from, we were not God’s creation. Born of evil, our souls were stained, our blood tainted, and we were damned.
All this I conveyed in the howl, and up it went into the night, to the moon and the stars. If there was a God He did nothing, whether He was listening or not. He did not even reach out to receive it. The howl died away in my throat and was carried off by the wind before it ever reached its destination. I looked down at the woodland floor in this dead place. The skeletal trees were empty and lifeless around me now the creatures had fled in terror, the last of the autumn leaves rotting away, and I imagined I could feel the heat of the fires of Hell beneath my paws. Had the Devil heard the howl? Did he laugh at this lost, unnatural thing? Lost somewhere along the road to death, never to find its destination unless someone sent it there, but never to return to its beginning, at the end of life. Perhaps I was not undead in the true sense of the word like the vampires, but I was not exactly living either. I was not a natural creature, and to this world I did not belong, yet here I was.
With a sigh, I turned my gaze ahead of me again and made the journey back into the town, back to my home, to my empty room. Back to my family. Were they still my family? I was no longer one of them. What were they to this thing I had become? Prey, and I would kill them without a thought if the human didn’t intervene. But not that night. I had fed well that night and I was content. I curled up in my room and waited for the sun to rise, curled against the cold and the dangers and the pain, and all these alien emotions.
The sun rose and my senses dulled, the pain came and went, and I found myself lying on my bedroom floor. I was restless once again. I needed to walk and clear my head. It seemed the wolf had left its imprint on my mind and my thoughts were confused because of it. It was hard enough to convince myself to walk upright, my brain trying to tell me it was impossible, still convinced my body was designed to be on all fours.
It was a Saturday morning, so there was no school to stop me going out once I’d dressed. I scribbled a quick note for my parents to explain my disappearance, making up some lie about going to meet a friend. I noticed there was no blood on my teeth that morning and my skin was cleaner, which was odd. The hunger was pounding away inside my belly; surely the wolf had felt it too. It must have killed and eaten something. Wait, yes, there were the tell tale pieces of flesh caught between my teeth.
Before I went out I took some meat from the fridge, sliced ham that time, to help ease the hunger, and then I took to the streets.
I didn’t care where I went; I just needed to be on the move. I couldn’t have kept still, not even for one of my favourite movies. There were a few people about and I avoided them where I could. I was soon driven to the more remote areas of the town on the outskirts, where the streets gave way to fields.
I walked aimlessly until my sensitive ears heard the sounds of a girl crying out in pain, somewhere in the fields themselves, out towards the woods.
I ran as fast as I could towards the sounds and as I drew close I heard a human voice, whimpering, and it sounded familiar. As I drew closer my heart stilled at the horrific sight that met my eyes.
A girl lay there twitching in a pool of her own blood, long brown hair covered in dirt, brown eyes filled with pain, her soft, smooth skin turning paler by the minute, and there was little wonder when I saw the extent of her injuries. The blood she lay in was pumping out of her leg which was completely torn open, most of the skin gone. Flaps of what was left hung loosely from the wound, muscles torn apart, the bone exposed. Severed blood vessels spilled out their precious liquid, and she had already lost a lot of it. With a jolt I realised she was dying. And I knew her alright; it grieved me to see her this way.
I’d considered her one of my closest friends in life and immediately hatred ran through me, directed towards the one who had done this, along with the fear that was flooding my body. She was dying and there was nothing I could do about it. I knelt beside her, trying to hide the fear and comfort her as best I could, thinking desperately there must be something I could do to help her. I thought about my mobile phone that was lying uselessly on my desk in my room at home. Could I reach the nearest phone in time to call an ambulance? Even though I knew she was already gone I refused to admit it, denying the fact there was nothing I could do.
“Fiona,” I said gently, my voice shaking slightly. She had been talking to herself, mortally afraid, but I had not caught much of what she was saying. She didn't seem to know what was happening or where she was, but one fact couldn't escape her; she couldn't feel one
of her legs and the realisation of this terrified her, despite her weak grasp on reality. I didn’t even know if she realised I was there beside her, and if she did whether she recognised me. And then I noticed the other wound.
Just above her waist most of the skin had been torn away and the flesh beneath showed red raw. I could clearly see where something had bitten the flesh once or twice, as if it had been eating her alive. Something had attacked her. It wasn’t as bad as the damaged leg, and maybe she’d have been saved if someone had found her sooner, but then I noticed both wounds had already become infected. Pus oozed from them, and the flesh was beginning to turn a horrible dark colour. I felt helpless.
“Fiona,” I said again, more urgently this time. Her eyes rolled up towards my face, and was that a flicker of recognition? Yes, she realised it was me.
“Nick,” she whispered and smiled weakly.
“Fiona, it’s gonna be okay, you just wait here and I’ll go get help, we’ll get you to a hospital,” I told her. I stood up to go for a phone but her hand gripped me with surprising strength for the state she was in.
“No! Don’t leave me here alone,” she pleaded. Her hand slipped back down to the ground as if the effort had drained the last resources of strength left to her. She was starting to panic, and the next thing she said would have been a scream if she had enough life left in her. “My leg. I can’t feel my leg!”
“It’s okay, just broken,” I lied, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away, not wanting her to see. “What happened to you?”
She coughed up a lot of blood and I thought she would die before she could tell me what had attacked her, and then she was trying to scream again. I calmed her, and she looked at me with renewed fear.
“Nick, you have to get away from here! Take me with you; we have to get away! It could come back at any minute. We’re not safe! None of us are safe,” she sobbed.
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