Hybrid

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  Chapter Eighteen

  Baptised In Blood

  Panic taking over, I knelt beside her, both hating and pitying her in that moment. Hating her for putting us both through this, which could only end in death, pitying because she probably didn’t even know what was happening to her, it had come so soon.

  “I think my waters have broken,” she gasped through the pain.

  I did not reply, but decided to stay by her side until it was done, and then I would kill it, the thing we had created. She would not be able to stop me, I would be too strong. I only hoped I had strength enough to do what I had to. Then I would get her to a hospital and leave her in peace.

  Screaming in pain, hours went by as she fought to give a monster entry into this world. She pleaded with me to take her to a hospital. Nothing I said could calm her, and she even tried to crawl away for help before the pain became too much. She didn’t get far but it worked to our advantage, as she was better hidden in the shadows. It was a miracle no one had heard her screams and come to investigate. If anyone else came down the alley it didn’t matter how well we were hidden. They’d hear her panting, screaming, straining to bring this baby into the world. But somehow we managed to get through those hard few hours without being disturbed. I held her hand, ignoring the pain when she squeezed as hard as she could in response to her own agony, and stroked her face, forgetting my hate. And then, long after nightfall, as the contractions were growing shorter the blood began to flow, blossoming out onto the pavement, soaking into the dirt. Was there meant to be this much blood?

  And finally, followed by the blood, came our offspring. Not one but three, each more hideous than the last. But something was wrong, the girl was still screaming in pain even though they’d been born, the placenta with them, and more blood was flowing out. She was growing weaker by the second, I could almost feel her life draining from her, could hear her heart beat slowing, weakening. And then she gave a final shudder and lay still.

  I turned back to look at the three scraps of life she had died giving birth to, thinking that her death had been in vain. I stared at the tiny, ugly creatures lying in the pool of blood, sickened by them; two boys and one girl. One of the boys and the girl appeared to be almost human, though I knew they were not, and they were smaller than babies born at the end of a normal nine month pregnancy. But the third one, the other boy, he was far from human. It appeared to be a normal wolf pup, blind and deaf and naked, completely defenceless against the cruel world, crying out for its mother. The other two were fairly quiet, limbs waving helplessly in the air, covered in their mother’s blood. I turned away in horror, knowing what they would become if left alive. I couldn’t bring myself to kill them after all, but I knew they would not survive alone. Leaving them to their fate would be slightly easier on my conscience, and I was convinced there was no way they could survive with their mother dead and the streets devoid of human life.

  So I left the scenes of death behind me and headed for home, though the horror was fading already. I didn’t feel much else after that, as if the guilt that had stained my conscience the past few months had finally been lifted. There was a vague sense of relief that at least that horror was over. The monsters would die alongside their mother; they would not grow to be killers. Other than that there was nothing and I wondered if I was becoming even more of a monster than the three I had just condemned to death.

  What became of the bodies I don’t know. It was probably in the news, unless the Slayers had hushed it up, but even then I didn’t pay attention to the media. My prints were on the body but the police never questioned me. That was strange, since they probably already had me down as a suspect for Mel’s disappearance – probably had my family down as the leading suspects, even though they couldn’t find evidence against any one of us – though I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

  Tensions were growing at home. Dad hadn’t been pleased when I’d come home so late the night my children were born.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing staying out so late? Do you know how worried your mum and I have been? That’s it young man, you’re grounded!”

  “You don’t know the half of it! Why can’t you leave me alone?” I had yelled back at him, suddenly feeling tired, more so than I had ever felt before. I was not in the mood for his temper tantrums, just because something was bothering him. It was a different excuse every bad year of his cycle; work, stress, boredom. Those were the usual ones.

  “Don’t you take that tone with me, son! What’s wrong with you anyway? You’re always going out on your own for no reason while we’re left to slave around in here! It’s time you started to help round the house. If you don’t buck your ideas up soon I’ll…”

  I didn’t give him chance to finish.

  “You’ll what?” I shouted. “You’ll what, Dad? You couldn’t make my life any worse than it is already!”

  He mouthed at me wordlessly, but I’d heard enough. I ran off up to the sanctuary of my room and went straight to bed, fuming. Ironic that he used to complain about how much time I spent inside on the computer or the Playstation, and now he was complaining I spent too much time outside!

  And it only went downhill from there. We were now in May. Dad was finding more excuses to shout at me than ever. His favourite one was spending too much time on the computer. He’d even restricted me to an hour a day! That really pissed me off. I didn’t spend half as much time as I used to since becoming a werewolf, mostly because computer games just weren’t as fun anymore after everything I’d seen and done, but just recently they were helping to take my mind off everything. I didn’t know what I’d do without them, and one hour a day was hardly enough. Then one day Mum stood up for me, unable to watch me suffer any longer, and I was more grateful than she ever knew.

  “Why do you always have to take the kid’s side, Emma?” he asked angrily.

  “I don’t at all. I agree with you. He shouldn’t spend too much time on the computer; it’s not good for him. But I’m sure longer than an hour a day won’t harm if he has a break in between each session,” Mum said, her own temper having finally snapped. “You go about things the wrong way, John. He’s just lost his friend. He needs our help to get through this. You shouldn’t be so hard on him all the time; it will only turn him against you and make him more rebellious.”

  “That was half a year ago! I don’t have to listen to this Emma. He’ll do as he’s told, and he should be grateful he’s allowed on it at all, the way he’s acting.”

  The bastard wouldn’t leave me alone from then on. Everything I did was wrong in his eyes, one way or another. He hated the way I spoke, the way I dressed, the way I ate. He hated it when I used slang, snapping at me to “Speak properly!” every two minutes. If they took me out for a meal I was never dressed up enough for him. He always wanted me to wear my smart shirt and trousers we’d bought for someone’s wedding, even though he went in jeans and a t-shirt. I ended up looking overdressed. And when I ate, I’d developed a tendency to rip into meat with my hands and teeth rather than using a knife and fork, and he usually ended up sending me to my room because I wasn’t civilised enough. He even shouted at me once for singing! I could tell you countless incidents about the arguments we had, most of them petty. Now I look back at it, it all seems so pathetic and childish, but that’s what he was like. Some of the arguments sound stupid now though they weren’t at the time.

  The horror and the guilt were gone, even after I killed again that month. For a short time I felt nothing at all. I was more of an empty shell than ever. Then the arguments started and rekindled feelings that had lain dormant. Admittedly the anger and the hate were nothing new, but in the past few months every emotion I’d felt had been directed at the wolf. Now old feelings were awakened, feelings toward the bastard who dared call himself my father. Somewhere around the start of May the anger stirred whenever he was being completely unreasonable. Then it reared its ugly head every time he shouted at me. By the end of May it had begun
to claw its way out of the dark pit of despair it had briefly been trapped in.

  One day I sat reading while Mum cooked dinner. My grandparents on Dad’s side had come over to see us, and Dad decided reading while we had guests was rude, despite the fact Amy was on the Net and he was reading Teletext. I’d already sat with them for a bit, what more did he want? So I told him I’d talk to them again when I finished the page.

  “That’s not good enough, Nick. You’ll do as you’re told. Put the book down.”

  “Yeah, when I’ve reached the end of the page,” I replied stubbornly.

  “Put it down now and go see your grandparents.” Most people’s eyes narrow when they’re angry, yet his dark eyes always seemed wider with it. The look on his face was close to madness. Eyes wide, nostrils flared, temples throbbing, he would have been right at home in the mental hospital I’d been sent to. The hatred I felt for him whenever he did that face was more than words can describe.

  “Are you deaf or are you stupid? I said when I’ve finished the fucking page.” He didn’t take that too well.

  “That’s it, go to your room and you’ll do without any tea tonight!”

  I turned my back on him and walked away. I wasn’t afraid of him. Even if I’d been human, I was too angry to be afraid. But that time I felt he’d gone too far. He’d forbid me to play on the computer or any kind of console games whenever we had guests, but he couldn’t expect me to just sit there while they talked about grown up stuff for hours on end. I was damn sure he wouldn’t have done so when he was my age. He was probably out playing with his mates, and wasn’t that worse? At least I was still in the house with them. So I went up to my room, letting the anger take over, stomping up the stairs as loud as I could. I slammed the door behind me and glared at my bookshelf in a rage. There was a photo album on one of the shelves. I grabbed it and looked through the pictures. Every time I came to one of him I ripped it up. It helped vent the anger.

  It was almost free, that anger. It had reached the top of the pit and had found the final barrier it had to overcome before it ruled me. My self control had grown weaker since that day in April. After everything I’d done, what did it matter if I killed more? There was no going back now. I felt distanced from the pain. When I looked in the mirror cold, dead eyes stared back at me, almost completely emotionless except when anger flared up in them. The eyes of a killer. There was no point fighting it. I’d lost. I was more of a monster now than I had been when I killed Fiona. The only thing that remained for me was the anger, and once it was free I knew I would be unstoppable. The last of my self control was in place for my family’s sake, because the last remnants of that fear that had ruled me for the past few months said that if I gave in to the anger, the beast within, I might not care who I killed. And the bastard wasn’t helping matters. I was sick of the way he treated us, sick of his stupid rules, which half the time didn’t even apply to him. I challenged him every time he gave me a bollocking and in turn that made him angry. So far we’d avoided a physical confrontation, but the rage was building between us and it was only a matter of time before it exploded.

  Chapter Nineteen

  School’s Out

  Meanwhile, everyone else in the normal, human world I used to belong to had exams to prepare for. I should have been revising along with the rest of them, but doing exams no longer seemed right. I was beginning to realise it was only a matter of time before I was forced to leave humanity behind me, and I wasn’t going to waste my time revising. Even if I’d still been human, I would probably have settled for some last minute revision and that would have been it. We were about to go on study leave, and I would have found better things to do with all that free time than hours of revision each day.

  Before we left, we had a leaving assembly. We sat with our forms while Mrs Redgewell and some other teachers high up in the hierarchy system made some pretty boring speeches, talking about our future, wishing us luck in the exams, and droning on about how proud they were of our year group and how much they’d miss us. To the monster I had become, it was all bull. Although some part of me, some part of my old self that I had thought dead, was enjoying himself immensely. He was about to be released from school forever and he wanted to celebrate. He was just waiting for the doors to open to freedom.

  After the speeches they played some music and they let us wander round the hall to spend time with friends we may never see again after the exams. Each form had chosen their own song to be played in the assembly. Not one of them had chosen the perfect song for the occasion; Alice Cooper’s legendary School’s Out. That would have been my choice but no one listened to me, so instead I was subjected to all kinds of rubbish. I let that last part of my old self rule me for the rest of the day, and he decided to sing his own lyrics to our form’s choice.

  “I won’t survive,” I sang. “I won’t survive. I’m gonna slit my wrist tonight, I’m no longer alive. I’ve got no more life to live, I’ve got all my blood to give. And I won’t survive. I won’t survive.”

  I was sat with Becci through that song. Becci thought it was funny, while the girl next to her gave me a look of disgust. I think she might have suggested it, thinking it was fitting somehow. I guess in a way it was because everybody has their own problems to deal with in high school. I just had more problems than most. But I still thought School’s Out would have been better.

  After the song Becci went off to find Ava. I went to find Lizzy, but I was soon distracted by the table of food at the back of the hall, the highlight of the entire event for me. I’d been able to ignore the enticing scent of the selection of cakes and biscuits for the most part, until I went too close and it was overpowering. Lizzy would have to wait.

  I was busy eating when she found me. Most people were in tears by that point, something I struggled to understand. They couldn’t possibly enjoy school, could they? I was suddenly pulled into a hug by my closest school friend. Still eating a biscuit over her shoulder, I patted her back uncertainly, while she sobbed over mine, tears running down her cheeks. I supposed they were all mourning the end of an era, the end of a life that had been all they’d known for the last five years. That life had long since been taken from me by the wolf, but for them it was only just ending, and perhaps some were caught up in the emotion of its end, coupled with the uncertainty of what the future held. Whatever the reason, it was a human experience I couldn’t share in and I felt out of place once more.

  Finally the doors opened and we were free to go when we were ready. I was the first out. I walked through the gates singing the chorus to School’s Out at the top of my voice, to a chorus of more tears. On the other side of the gates I turned and gave school the finger. Then I turned away from the hated building that had brought me much misery and boredom over the years and never once looked back. Well, except for when we had to go in for exams. Being a werewolf didn’t get me out of sitting them, even if I wasn’t going to bother to try and pass. While I was still living in the human world it was better to avoid the trouble of not turning up.

  Minutes later I sat in my room blasting out my music. I was home alone; Mum had to carry on working at the school until they broke up, and then she had to do an extra ten days at some point over the summer holiday, while Dad was in Leeds for the day. I raided the fridge and took a couple of bottles of beer. I really wanted to get drunk, but it would only make things worse with Dad. Part of me wanted an excuse to fight him, yet if I did there was no guarantee I could cling to the last of my self control, and all three of them might end up dead. I couldn’t let that happen. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure it was possible for me to get drunk even if I wanted to. My body had changed in ways even I didn’t understand. For all I knew my liver had become so efficient at cleansing my body of poisons, all the alcohol would be driven out before it could take effect.

  I spent the rest of the day on the internet and the Playstation, knowing full well it was probably my last day of normality. Soon I would be forced to give up humanity completely.
It had already begun. Once the anger was free and I embraced the beast – not the wolf but the darkness in all of us – I really would be a monster. That anger had driven me to kill a rabbit and beat Jamie to a pulp. There was no telling what it would do if I fully embraced it. I only knew that it would make me no better than the wolf itself, and then there would be no going back.

  Chapter Twenty

  Darkness Eternal

  Dad came home that evening in a rage. He noticed the missing beers and went ballistic. He said I should have asked him permission since they were his; he’d bought them with his money. I pointed out that actually they were Mum’s because she’d bought them with her money. He didn’t take too kindly to that. He was always shouting at me for answering back. I think it angered him more than anything else I could do. But I couldn’t help it: it was in my nature to argue. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when he was being unreasonable. Needless to say, he sent me to my room where I sat with Alice, trying to calm myself. I blasted out my music again, playing the ones about necrophilia and other such morbid subjects, knowing how he really hated that. They didn’t bother me anymore, like they had at the height of my depression. I didn’t even have to deal with any mental images of my victim’s corpses being defiled.

  Mum called me down about an hour later. Dad hadn’t wanted to end the punishment so soon but Mum stood by me and he backed down, fuming on the sofa in the dining room while he watched golf. Sending me to my room wasn’t much of a punishment anyway, since my Playstation was in there, and all my books and my music.

  Later that night I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on to make a coffee for Mum. Amy never had to do anything around the house, and I would normally have complained, but I owed Mum for sticking up for me.