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 believed. 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.
All of a sudden I was violently brought back to something vaguely resembling reality. I became dimly aware of the outside world again. But the memories seemed to have burned into my mind and I lay on the ground beside the corpse that had, just hours ago, been Fiona; innocent, young and full of life. She’d been so excited about her dance tournament, and with a guilty pang I thought about how I’d stolen the opportunity from her. She might have won a trophy or a medal and it would have made her so happy, and her family so proud, and I had taken it all away in just hours. I could forgive her for leaving me, Lizzy and Becci the night I’d been bitten. She’d just been frightened after all. Despite that particular incident I knew she’d cared about me, and this was how I’d repaid her. She would never have the chance to compete in her tournament, or to wear her beautiful prom dress she’d already picked out as she made her entrance on the arm of her boyfriend, the guy she believed was the one. She’d had so much ahead of her to look forward to, and now she would never enjoy any of it.
The images circled my mind like birds of prey, and one would suddenly swoop down, making me relive that particular horror again. Open or closed, for several hours all I could see before my eyes were the victims I had slaughtered.
And just as it seemed the torment would never stop, I was finally allowed a moment's respite and became fully aware of the world around me once more. I knew my family would probably be looking for me by then, wanting to know where I was and when I would be coming home. I forced myself to stand, preparing myself for the long walk home. I was unable to look at Fiona and turned away from her, muttering "Forgive me..."
Not that she heard. She was beyond hearing now. Did I leave her there? If I left her, her family, who no doubt already considered her missing, would have to face the anguish of not knowing what had become of her, for who knew how long it would be before someone looked out there? I doubted anyone would happen upon her, and the police would not do anything until forty eight hours passed since she was first reported missing. Yet if I was discovered with the body the police would want to question me, which I couldn’t bear right then, and the Slayers might put two and two together, for surely they would recognise a werewolf’s victim. Not that it seemed like a bad thing at that moment. If the Slayers found me they’d end it, and countless lives would be saved, though I doubted my soul would be spared. And then came the thought: oh God, would I take at least three victims every month for all eternity? Death seemed my only option, but I decided I didn’t want to meet my end at the hands of the Slayers.
I stumbled away from her body in a state of shock. I began walking without taking note of where I was going and somehow found my way back to the town centre. My feet were automatically set on the path home but as I walked I heard someone calling my name, and so I paused and turned to find it was Lizzy.
“So what’s wrong?” she asked me, walking over and sitting on a bench, motioning for me to do the same. I wasn’t sure I could face her after everything I had just learned, but I had little choice so I joined her. If I’d just walked off she’d have only followed me. I had to say something before she would leave me in peace.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to hide the flutter of panic. It was clear she’d already had her suspicions after the few uncharacteristic bouts of aggression she’d witnessed, but did she actually know something? She couldn’t find out my dark secret. For one thing the knowledge could put her in danger.
“Nick, you’ve been my best friend for the last four years. I know something’s not right. So what’s wrong? You know you can tell me. I’m here for you anytime, whatever it is.”
“Are you? Would you be here for me if you knew the truth? I don’t think you would. I don’t think anyone would.”
“Of course I am. I’ll always be here for you, no matter what.”
I smiled sadly at that. The wolf only saw the darker, brutal nature of mankind but here Lizzy was proving there was more to them than that. I wanted to believe she would find it in her heart to forgive me for what I had done to our friend, maybe even pity me and try to help me find a way to control the curse. Maybe we could look for a cure. But I knew that could never happen. Even if I could tell her, she would no doubt run from me in horror and fear, and never once look back.
“I’m not the guy you think I am,” I told her.
“What, you mean you’re really a girl? Are you saying you’re one of these transgendered people we’ve heard about? Because if you are that doesn’t change anything, you’re still the same person I’ve known since Year Seven.”
I laughed despite myself, though it was hollow and filled with little humour. “Hell no, there’s no confusion over my gender. No, I mean I’m not the guy you think you know. There’s this other side to me that you would not like. I wish I could tell you about what’s really going on but I just can’t. I value our friendship and it means a lot to me that you’ve always been there for me when I’ve needed you. But you can’t help me right now and talking about it will just make things worse. So leave it please.”
She was worried for me – it was plain to see even without any supernatural abilities. But she did as I asked and we sat in silence for a few minutes until I told her I needed to be alone. She left me to it but kept glancing back as she walked away, still worried that things were obviously not right. Clearly I needed to make a better show of hiding it, but I was so lost in the horror and the shock of the wolf’s memories, not to mention the building depression and the despair at the sheer hopelessness of my fate, that acting like my normal, happy self seemed impossible.
I made it back home without further interruption. Dad was out golfing as usual on a Saturday, but Mum was in. She’d been worried about me, though she didn’t lecture me when she saw the state I was in. I looked worse than Fiona had when I first found her. Mum wanted to take me to a doctor, the last thing I wanted. I grunted something about feeling sick and needing to rest, then I retreated to my room to be alone.
I wasn’t the same after that. I couldn’t eat, the very thought of it sickening, couldn’t sleep, since the nightmares plagued me worse then than ever, and refused to speak to people. I withdrew into my own mind, only to suffer reliving the horrors again. Outwardly I was an empty shell, just a shadow of the laughing, joking boy I had once been, but I was still in there somewhere, just enough of me left to function. My parents gave up on trying to find out what was wrong and let me be. My friends soon did the same when the weekend was over and we were back at school. Maybe Lizzy had talked to them for me. I sat in silence in the classrooms, letting the teacher’s words wash over me, not really listening. My grades were suffering worse than ever. Not that I cared. It all seemed pointless then.
When it was discovered Fiona was missing, they soon forgot about me anyway. Fiona had been a popular girl, and everybody was worried about her, none more than David. And finally when the police found her body, I wasn’t the only one lost in a dark pit of my own grief, sadness and mourning, but unlike the rest of them I had guilt, depression, despair and horror to seal me in, along with anger and hate, with no hope of ever crawling out into the light. I had reached a point f
rom which it seemed there was no return and the only way out was death.
Death. I thought about it often. What I wouldn’t have given for the earth to open up beneath my feet and let me fall into Hell. I didn’t fear Hell, if such a place really existed, and I didn’t fear death itself. I wanted to pay for my sins. Did I have the nerve to end it myself though? I didn’t fear death, and yet I didn’t know whether I could commit that final sin. But to do so was to save countless numbers of lives stretching over eternity. And why should it be a sin anyway? God didn’t care about me. It was my life after all, mine to take and do with as I wished. If I chose to end it no one would stop me. If. That was the thing. I didn’t know if I could. Perhaps if I was pushed far enough over the edge I would, but there was still a faint desire to live somewhere in there. Maybe it lay with the wolf. It had shown me something of its suffering, but did it suffer enough to want death as much as I did?
Time didn’t help either. Gradually the school began to forget. Fiona Young became just another name in the school’s history, and only in those closest to her did she live on. And in my nightmares, which plagued me every time I dared to close my eyes, and that wasn’t often. I spent every waking minute fighting sleep. It left me exhausted, constantly. In fact, time made it worse.
Fiona’s death had been in the paper, and experts had come to the conclusion that she’d been killed by some sort of animal, canine, but they couldn’t determine the species. They were saying the bites looked like the work of a large wolf or a dog. Most people seemed to be in favour of a wolf. Dogs had too good a reputation, whereas people have always hated and feared wolves. The rogue wolf, they were calling it, an escaped animal probably brought up illegally by someone with a taste for exotic pets, rather than a zoo. And then two more deaths were discovered – the wolf’s kills from the two following nights before it was locked away inside again for another month – and the media had got the whole town in a panic, as more bodies were turning up, people who had been missing since September.
The wolf had been clever enough to hide its kills to start off, what had changed? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. Maybe it deemed it pointless, once the first body had been left out in the open to be discovered. For all its intelligence, it hadn’t considered the general public’s reaction, or the reaction of the local government, at the greater number of bodies it left for them to find. For all I knew they were already planning to hunt down this monster and kill it. I’d never paid any attention to the news and I was ignorant of whatever they had promised to do about it. It didn’t matter to me anyway. If they killed me it was for the better, and it would save me having to find the courage to do it myself.
And as we were plunged into the heart of winter in December, I knew time was running out for at least three more people that month, unless I found a way to stop it without ending my own life.
But how did I stop it? I had felt the wolf’s strength. What could possibly contain that brutal force, driven by the primitive need to kill, to feed? My room wouldn’t hold it, but I had to try something. It was either that or ask the vampires for better ideas, but I didn’t know if they would understand. Lady Sarah wouldn’t, I was sure of that, and while Vince chose to live among mortals, he had no problem with killing, of that I was also sure. He had told me to learn from the wolf; I didn’t think he would understand why I wanted to stop it.
Whatever I was going to do, I had to decide on it soon. Time was running out.
Chapter Twelve
Hybrid
The temperature dropped and the land became bitterly cold in the days leading up to the full moon. The sky grew gloomier with the threat of snow showers above, though people weren’t expecting much – snow was rare in our town. But the clouds overhead were dark enough to match my mood and temperatures were already below freezing.
Then the first of the winter snows fell; it drifted down in a gentle flurry from the clouds and landed delicately on the ground, dusting the land. At first that was all it did: powdered the fields at the back of the house and the streets at the front. It did not last long enough, nor was it heavy enough, to do much else. But the next day another snow shower fell, heavier than the first and lasting longer, the flakes swarming down like a plague of icy cold, white insects, and settled to form a pure white blanket.
At school there were snowball fights breaking out all over the field at break and during lunch time, and the unwary were pelted with snowballs in between lessons if they ventured outside. Everyone was making the most of the snow while it lasted and I’d have been enjoying it with everyone else, if it weren’t for the knowledge of what I’d done.
The nights had been growing noticeably longer, something that worried me. It meant that when the time came I would have longer to kill. Would there be more deaths? From the memories the wolf had shown me, it seemed its hunger was insatiable.
But what was on my mind the most was the fact that I had not seen the moon for a couple of weeks due to the cloud cover, and I couldn’t be sure which night it would be full – I could only guess. I’d looked on the Net for lunar calendars, but it seemed they could only guess too; not one of them could agree which night the moon would reach its fullest. It meant it was on my mind constantly, the unanswered question of whether it would be that night, or the one after, or the one after that. And all the while
I was trying to think of a way to stop the wolf, and so far I had come up with none.
Then, the day of the heavy snowfall, it seemed I was to face what I feared the most.
As we approached Christmas, my mood was far from festive. After I finished school one day, I stayed behind to catch up on some homework, not because I was worried about my grades and whether I passed or failed my GCSE’s, but in the hope of forgetting what was still to come that month, and the inevitable bloodshed. When I grew restless I knew what it probably meant and I took my leave.
Dusk wasn’t far off when I walked home in fear of the oncoming darkness, despite the fact it was only four thirty. By the time I reached our drive minutes later, the little light penetrating the clouds was already beginning to fade, while another snow shower began. I looked up at the darkening sky as I came to the front door, wondering if there was a full moon hidden behind those clouds. For the sake of whichever poor soul who was fated to become my prey that month I hoped not, though I knew it had to come some time soon, and what difference did it really make whether it was that night or later in the week? I shivered and went inside.
No sooner had I stepped through the doorway than the pain started. Amy hadn’t been home long either, since she’d been to the corner shop on the way back with her mates. She sat on the stairs sucking a lollypop, watching me. I groaned as pain ravaged my stomach and turned to run upstairs to the safety of my room. I still didn’t know what I was going to do to stop the wolf but it was too late for that now. However, Amy had that taunting smile on her face. She stood up with her arms outstretched, blocking the stairway. She wasn’t going to let me pass until I was begging her for it. I couldn’t believe her timing. She was so bloody annoying when she wanted to be, and already I was sure I could feel things happening and I had to know, had to find out whether it was what I feared it to be.
“Shift,” I grunted through the pain.
“Ask me nicely,” she said in a sing song voice.
“C’mon Amy, move!”
“Ask me nicely,” she repeated.
I didn’t have time for this. Visible changes could start at any moment, and I really didn’t want to transform in front of my family. Not so much because of the fear it would cause, it was more the thought of the wolf gaining consciousness only to find itself confronted with prey, trapped inside the building with them: an easy meal. Amy noticed my growing anxiety and was enjoying it all the more. Was my skin itching or was that my paranoid imagination? I was sure I could feel the crawling sensation that meant only one thing.
“Get out of the way,” I roared and pushed past her. She slipped and fell to the floor
with a sharp crack, where she lay crying. Whether I actually hurt her or not was anyone’s guess. She could turn on the tears whenever it suited her. She was a born actress, a natural drama queen. Maybe the tears were real and I should have felt bad at the thought that I had hurt her, but I was too afraid of the moon, convinced as I was that it was full.
In the safety of my room, I examined the backs of my hands and ripped my shirt open, expecting to see the wolf’s pelt spreading over my skin, muscles rippling beneath it, bones reforming. My hands were normal, my chest bare, the skin stretched across a human framework, and the pain was dying down. Not daring to believe it, I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I was shocked by what I saw.
It was human, but it was barely recognisable as the boy I had been. Human eyes stared out of a gaunt face, almost a living skull. Human, but not my own. The horror had affected me more deeply than I’d thought. The lack of sleep and refusal to eat, coupled with the stress my mind was under, weighed down with every negative emotion known to man, had caused me to rapidly lose weight. That was the first time I’d really looked at myself since Fiona’s death. Looking at my reflection had left me feeling guilty, and I’d avoided it where I could. A trace of something in the eyes unnerved me, a hint of the unearthly hunger both human and wolf shared around the full moon. It was gone, and the eyes stared back at me, full of sadness, pain and despair.
I held that gaze as long as I could, and then finally had to look away. Truly I had died the night I was bitten and but a shadow of myself remained. Still, I had a faint glimmer of hope. I wouldn’t transform that night, I still had time to find a way to restrain the wolf, keep it from killing under the full moon.
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