Hybrid

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  Another staircase and I came to a trapdoor in the ceiling. If I’d been human I’d have needed a ladder to reach it, but in my current form that wasn’t a problem. I gently laid Lizzy on the cold floor. She stirred and her eyelids fluttered, but she had yet to completely regain consciousness. Maybe she was vaguely aware of what was going on, maybe not. I didn’t think she’d remember any of this later on.

  I jumped up towards the trapdoor and dug my claws in the ceiling. Then I was able to pull myself up and push the trapdoor open with my feet. I swung back down and held Lizzy in one hand, using the other to pull myself up towards freedom. I hung below the exit while I lifted Lizzy up to safety, and then clambered out after her. The hunger came back again and I was starting to feel weak from the loss of blood, once the anger and the adrenalin had worn off. I used the last of my strength to take Lizzy to a hospital, where I lay her just outside the entrance. Keeping to the shadows, I knocked on the windows until someone came out to investigate. It didn’t take long and Lizzy was rushed inside. Once I knew she was safe, I crawled away, pushing my body to the last of its limits. Somehow I reached the graveyard, and I thanked God Lady Sarah was home, before I collapsed, exhausted.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Betrayal

  I floated between sleep and the waking world in some kind of dream state, feeling at peace for the first time in months, safe in the knowledge that Lizzy would soon be back among her family and the Slayers had been forced to flee. I couldn’t remember where I was but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the need to sleep. Or at least not until someone forced my jaws wide enough to pour blood down my throat.

  I was brought back to reality with a sudden jolt, almost choking on the blood. The full force of the hunger hit me and I greedily latched onto a chunk of meat offered to me by Lady Sarah, despite the fact I was still spluttering from the warm fluid at the back of my throat.

  It didn’t take long for me to devour the still warm flesh. Lady Sarah waited until I finished and then said uncertainly “Nick?”

  She looked into my mismatched eyes and I could feel her concern. I remembered her warning not to stay in wolf form too long. She must have thought the wolf was taking over.

  “Nick, you have to transform back to human form, can you do that? You need to heal your wounds.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m still in here. The wolf hasn’t won yet,” I growled, and did as she said, though it took some effort. The hunger was still there and I could feel the wolf fighting to take the transformation the other way, to hunt. In the end I won, and within minutes I was human again. Even my eye had changed back to its normal colour. Bullets and the two blades still stuck in my shoulder and back thudded to the floor.

  “What’s happened to you?” she asked.

  I gave her a quick run through of my stay with the Slayers, as much of it as I could remember.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” she told me when I’d finished. “You’re even luckier to have kept your sanity. Most undead would not have survived the torture of starvation with their minds in tact.”

  “Lucky, that’s one word for it. So how long was I gone?”

  “Just over a week; nine days to be exact.”

  Nine days! It had taken only nine days for my mind to reach near breaking point. It had felt like longer. Nine days. How was I going to explain being missing for so long to the human world, and most of all to my family? Out loud I said “So, now the Slayers have been forced to flee their main base in this area, we should strike. Did you get in touch with any others?”

  She nodded, her voice dead when she replied, devoid of emotion. “In Vincent’s absence I contacted others. There are wraiths who will fight with us, those who seek revenge on the Slayers. I only know of one psychic, and she was out of town when I sought her, but I convinced a number of ghouls to join our cause though I warn you they are impossible to control. I cannot guarantee their support. They are an animalistic race, driven by a base desire for flesh, both of the living and the dead. Once lost in their bloodlust they will attack anything, and they could just as easily turn on us.”

  “So they’re like zombies in a way, only they’re not raised and bound by a necromancer’s will. Awesome.”

  “In the circumstances I believe the risk is worth it, as you yourself pointed out. We will still be outnumbered as it is. As for other vampires, they were considerably harder to persuade. Most will not hear of meeting the Slayers in open battle, deeming it suicide. I convinced a handful to at least hear us out, and we can only hope they are persuaded to fight once they learn of the horrors you have witnessed. Of the slaughtering I knew, but not of the experiments you described. I am certain many would find it preferable to die in battle than meet that particular fate.”

  “And what about the zombies, will you raise them?”

  “I will try, but I cannot promise you what the result will be. They present just as big a risk as the ghouls,” she warned me.

  “If there are too few of us we’ll die anyway. What do we have to lose?” I replied, trying to sound confident. In truth I was uneasy knowing the chaotic force we were gathering could just as easily destroy itself as the army of humans we were supposed to be making a stand against. But even with all our supernatural powers, the humans would have the advantage through sheer numbers, especially if the Slayers had chance to call on their forces from the closest base to the one I’d destroyed. That was a possibility that couldn’t be discounted, though I hoped we would be facing them in a weakened state after the damage I had wrought on the compound they had briefly kept me in. We had to assume we’d be facing hundreds of Slayers, so we needed every undead creature still walking the earth to join the fight, no matter how great a danger we posed to each other as much as to our enemies.

  “I will do what I can.”

  “Okay, so where do we meet and when?”

  “There is a place on the outskirts of this town where fields meet woodlands, do you know it?”

  Images flashed before my mind of Fiona dying in a pool of her own blood. I nodded. “I know it.”

  “Then we will meet there. It’s just on the border between territories, thus it was the only place I could get the vampires to agree to come to,” she said. “We agreed on three nights from now.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but she held a hand up before I could say anything and told me “It was the best I could do. And if we can persuade them to help let us hope we catch the Slayers unprepared and still recovering from their losses. Then we will hunt them down, until we have cleansed this town of their evil.”

  I nodded reluctantly, though I couldn’t help feeling by then it would be too late. My gut told me we had to strike sooner if we were to catch the Slayers off guard and weakened. Still, what could they do in three days? Their base lay in ruins, their numbers down. They needed time to recover and three days wouldn’t really make that much difference, would it? I hoped not.

  Lady Sarah looked up at the sky.

  “Dawn is coming,” she said. “Will you be strong enough to walk back to your home alone?”

  “Yeah, I’ll manage thanks.”

  I took my leave, mind racing with lies to tell my family, each more unbelievable than the next, desperate to find an excuse that would explain why I’d been missing for nine days. In the end I decided to tell them I’d been sleeping at a mate’s house, but I hadn’t told them because I was mad at Dad. It wasn’t the best story I could have come up with, but in the circumstances it would have to do.

  As it turned out they were too relieved to have me back to notice I was lying. They were ready to accept anything I told them, just as long as I was okay and unharmed. When I hadn’t been in touch they’d started to fear the worst, and Amy had been worrying about all the bad things that could have happened to me, from being eaten by the ‘rogue wolf’ to being abducted by a psychopathic murderer. I tried not to laugh. She hadn’t even dreamt of anything that came close to the truth. It was just another crazy chapter in the
insane reality I’d found myself in.

  As for Lizzy, the hospital had called her family shortly after they’d found her. I don’t know what she’d told them, but I hoped she didn’t try the truth. Her version of events wouldn’t be as insane as mine since she didn’t know about the undead, but there was a chance she’d remember the beast I’d been stood over her. If she described a werewolf to them she’d find herself in the same mental hospital I’d been taken to. And then there was the dream. So far it had been true. The room where she had been held had been just as I’d seen it in my dream. That’s why it had been vaguely familiar to me when I came upon it in the compound. And if the first part had been true, there was a good chance I was going to die in three night’s time. I had three nights left on this Earth, and I intended to make the most of them. I had to try and talk to Lizzy before then and settle things with her. I wanted to make sure she would be okay after I was gone. And I’d make an effort not to argue with Dad. I didn’t know if my family could survive losing me a second time. The least I could do was leave them with happy memories of our final days together. In a way I supposed I was lucky; most people don’t know when they’re going to die. Mum had lost her dad just after they’d had a big argument, and she’d always regretted never being given the chance to say sorry. At least I knew when it was coming, and I had chance to make ends meet. In that respect I felt I was luckier than most.

  Night wrapped itself around the world, tight as a snake, slowly squeezing out the light. The darkness was so thick you could choke on it. Shadows pressed against the eyeballs, sight becoming useless. But there was movement in the blackness.

  Tarmac cut its way through the countryside, a long forgotten road, rarely used and deserted. Out there the darkness was complete. There were no streetlights to give the illusion of lasting daylight, only the light of the moon, and the faint light of the stars overhead, hidden by clouds on this night. A faint breeze stirred the grass, ghosts whispering in the wind, before it died, leaving the surrounding area still and dead around it, save for a pair of field mice that had dared to make their home there, as nature slowly reclaimed it.

  The mice crept through the grass, searching for food, when one of them froze, ears pricked, listening to a new sound in the distance, one that didn’t belong there. Sound rolled out over the grassland, and the mice fled.

  The roar of an engine and the glare of headlights disturbed the night. A lorry sliced through the darkness like a blade through flesh. The driver stared out at the road ahead with grim determination, wanting only to deliver his cargo and go home. It had been a long day, but it wasn’t a bad job. He could be worse off. They paid him well, and the actual cargo itself didn’t bother him. He had no conscience, the very reason why he was so valuable to them, him and the other men in this business. He knew what he was carrying, even if he didn’t know why. He didn’t ask questions.

  But the cargo in that dread lorry would have made any sane person sick with horror. Tiny carcasses lined the inside of the vehicle, too many to count. The corpses of newborn babies, eyes glassy and lifeless as a doll’s, all that remained of each new life stolen before it could truly begin. And somewhere in the stinking heap there was one survivor, by some miracle. It was too weak to cry, barely strong enough to move, but some instinct drove it to crawl its way slowly to the top. It should have been crushed by the press of bodies around it, suffocated by the stench of the rotting shells. The lorry stunk of death, old and new, each carcass in different stages of decay. Tiny limbs, fragile in life, more so in death, snapped off, until it became impossible to tell who they had belonged to. It didn’t mean anything to the survivor, too young to understand what was going on around it. It continued to claw its way to the top, until it was too weak to go on and finally it died, its very existence lost to the rest of the world.

  I was jolted into the waking world, the gruesome images still playing in my mind. And the worst thing was I knew it was all true. Out there somewhere, at that very moment, there could be a lorry like the one in my dream. Or maybe there were too few of us left for that, maybe I really was the last of the wolf descendants, though I didn’t want to believe I was truly alone. There certainly weren’t any survivors once they were thrown into the lorry, all those potential new werewolves exterminated long before the curse could take hold.

  It occurred to me my family ought to carry wolf blood in their veins too, on one side or the other. My wolf blood had to come from somewhere. But the wolf had never attempted to bite them so I had to assume for whatever reason they didn’t have a high enough percent of wolf DNA. Not that I wanted to bring them into this cursed life.

  It was still dark, and I still had one night left before the battle that would supposedly result in my death. I didn’t feel much like sleeping after the nightmare. I still needed to talk with Lizzy, though I doubted the hospital would allow visitors at that time of night, but I decided to try. It was better than returning to the nightmares.

  So, half an hour later I stood outside the hospital, wondering how to find Lizzy and how I was going to get into her room without being stopped by anyone. Finally I decided to just slip in and see what happened. If they threw me out I’d come back later that day, no big deal. More than anything I just needed something to do to keep me awake.

  All I had to do was follow her scent, with the help of the lupine half of my brain, and slip inside her room when no one was looking. Luck was on my side, since I managed to avoid all the doctors and nurses floating about. At one point I’d been distracted by a car crash victim and the overwhelming smell of blood, but I’d made it and I was glad to see Lizzy was looking a little better already for the medical attention.

  She had been asleep when I first found her. I’d tried shaking her gently, for all the good it did. At first I’d panicked, wondering if they’d drugged her to help her sleep, until she finally opened her eyes and looked at me, confusion plain on her face as she fought to wake herself.

  “Nick?” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard about what happened so I came to check you were okay,” I said, careful not to let slip I’d been there too. I was hoping she wouldn’t remember much of it.

  “I’m fine.” She smiled, but it slowly turned to a frown.

  “So, what do you remember?” I asked. “What did you tell them?”

  “I came to warn you about those people following you. They knocked me unconscious then when I woke up I was tied to a chair and they were asking me all these questions. They hit me when I wouldn’t answer them. Aughtie was there. And they kept asking me about you.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have got mixed up in this; it was me they were after.”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” she said.

  “I can’t. Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.”

  “These people kidnapped me Nick. I want to know why.”

  “I can’t tell you that,” I insisted.

  “Are you going to the police?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “They kidnapped me. We have to go to the police, Nick. They could have killed me!”

  “We can’t go to the police. Some of them are involved in this. They won’t help us.”

  “I don’t understand you anymore, Nick. And I don’t know what shit you’ve got yourself into, but I wish you’d tell me. You know you can talk to me. I’m here for you. And I need to understand. I need to know why those people took me. If you won’t tell me I’ll look for answers elsewhere, but either way I need to know.”

  “No, the less you know the safer you’ll be. Please, just forget about it. For me, for whatever remains of our friendship, just forget it,” I pleaded.

  “I can’t.”

  She wouldn’t say anything else after that unless I told her the truth. She hadn’t mentioned any monsters at least. I was hoping she didn’t remember that much. I hated to leave her like this when it might be the last time I ever saw her, but what more could I do? I couldn�
�t tell her anything else in case it put her in more danger, and she ignored me when I tried talking to her about other things. I had no choice. I just hoped she’d forgive me after I was gone and that she wouldn’t regret leaving it like this for the rest of her life. At least she would be okay. I was pretty sure once I was gone the Slayers would leave her alone since she’d be no further use to them, and I convinced myself she would never find any answers without me. She’d be okay.

  The next day passed quickly. I spent most of it with my family, trying not to think about the fate that awaited me that night. I tried to make things work with Dad but I ended up just avoiding him so we didn’t argue. It was the best I could do when he was being so unreasonable. He was going away that night anyway, to work in some other part of the country for a few days, and he went early evening.

  When darkness fell I left the house as soon as I could. I found somewhere safe to transform and headed towards the meeting place, carrying my clothes in my jaws. I ran most of the way, late as I was.

  There were more than I had expected waiting for me. Lady Sarah took me to one side before I could do anything else, and waited for me to transform back and dress. I needed to feed but it would have to wait. The starvation the Slayers had put me through seemed to have strengthened me. I wasn’t weak like I had been the first time I’d undergone two transformations without feeding in between, though it had sapped some of my strength.

  “They are growing restless,” she said. “I have tried addressing them but they would not listen to what I had to say. If we are going to convince them it has to be now.”

  I nodded and turned to face the crowd, made up of roughly ten vampires, twenty ghouls, and five wraiths. I had to shout to be heard above them. From the looks on the faces of the vampires it seemed each one was voicing their doubts. The ghouls were just looking forward to flesh, and the few ghostly figures I could see shimmering in the moonlight, who had to be wraiths, were ready for revenge.