He studied the panicked forms of hybrids scurrying through the hamlet, spreading out to all sides of the village in a vain attempt at forming a secure defensive barrier. The crossbreeds gathering at his end of the village stood close together, stretching a line from houses and into the field, their bodies already deforming as they transformed into their grotesque half-werewolf half-vampire amalgamations.
Inhaling a deep breath, Isaac looked along the front line of his gathered army, at the handlers pulling on the reins of demented wolves. The animals were frantic.
He glanced quickly to the heavens, and felt that the time had come.
“Release the dogs.” Isaac smiled; he’d always wanted to say that.
The handlers leaned forward and unclipped the leashes, wolves snapping their jaws in impatience fervor. Once free the animals turned and sprinted at the hamlet, racing across the vibrant grass in a perfect line of attack.
Isaac loved those animals; they served the pack well.
He took one step forward from the gathering and raised his hands. “Take no prisoners!”
An exhale of breath and he relinquished himself to the change. Gone were the days when he doubled over in pain; for the past eight hundred years he’d welcomed each transformation and enjoyed the sensation of dominance and power that surged through his body. Isaac, six-feet-four when in human form, morphed into an immense creature almost ten foot in height; bones snapped and reformed with an ageless fluidity, blood pumping into muscles to engorge his body. Incisors powered from his gums, talons raking the air. A thick pelt flushed his body, and a mane of gray fur formed a line from the top of his head to his tailbone.
His hearing filled with the growl of transforming lycanthropes in the crowd behind him, vampires cheering and hissing in preparation for the fight to come.
Isaac’s roar of satisfaction echoed off the surrounding mountains, signaling the start of battle.
Sprinting after the attacking wolves, Isaac led the warriors into combat.
* * *
From the cover of trees alongside the main highway, Anton watched the gray figures of Eurasian Wolves sprinting over green pastures bordering the village. Those creatures were lethal. In the early years of the war, before mankind spread itself into the wilderness of many countries, Anton had fought against Canis lupus in addition to fully transformed werewolves. Those horrific memories remained in his mind, the clashes against monster and animal some of the hardest battles he’d ever fought.
He thanked the Elders that, for today at least, he was fighting alongside the wolves and not against them.
Not only were they deadly in close combat, but the wolves were cunning in addition. In terrified panic the hybrids had formed a line of soldiers at the end of the green pasture, their backs guarded by the cabins and hotels of Alpbach. Running at full pelt the wolves could decipher weaknesses in the hybrid’s first line of defense; about twenty yards from contact the wolves, spread out across the field, bunched together in groups and slammed into the crossbreed’s weakest sections.
Most of the hybrids had no time to react; the defensive line breeched. The wolves snagged by waiting hybrids fought fiercely, the animals that broke through rushed deeper into the village to battle with their foe.
The snarls of attacking wolves and the screams of panicked and injured hybrids echoed with the roar of charging lycanthropes and stampeding vampires as the surrounding armies belonging to both pack and coven broke ranks to follow after the wolves’ primary assault.
Unsheathing his sword and running across the blacktop, Anton’s fangs surged from his gums and he hissed in defiance as he sprinted towards the village.
The sloping ground didn’t slow him, vampiric agility holding his stamina at a high level. It seemed somewhat surreal to be rushing into battle and having transformed werewolves running with him, not against him. For a brief moment he wondered if this could indeed be the end of their great conflict and the start of a lasting peace between the two species. It would be hard to conceal his anger and hatred for all the years of war against werewolves but if the coven desired it then he would relent and work for peace.
He had one more battle to fight however; one more afternoon of extreme violence to survive.
The bravest hybrids at the front line broke ranks to meet the charge head-on.
Anton swung his saber, disemboweling one hybrid before decapitating another.
He rushed further into the village, wielding his sword and screaming his hatred of the hybrid bloodline.
* * *
Four hybrids cowered in the hotel’s upstairs bedroom; two adults and a couple of juveniles. Trace located them easily by the smell of fear drifting through the gap between door and frame. The hotel walls reverberated with combat being played out throughout the building; the feral growl of werewolves and the sibilant hiss of vampires merging with the cries and screams of defending hybrids.
The crossbreeds in the room weren’t shouting defiantly however. They huddled in the corner sobbing like babies.
Trace wasted little time. Leaping across a double bed he wrestled the male hybrid to the floor in one movement and tore its head from shoulders in one bite. The elder female lunged at him in a vain attempt at defending her man. Claws gouged into his back but all that achieved was to enrage him further. Trace straightened, towering over her by at least three feet and swung his right arm with power and effectiveness. The blow tore the female’s head from her neck and bright arterial blood spouted in a fountain.
The younger female, undecided it seemed, didn’t run as Trace tore into her, perhaps too frightened to move, paralyzed by acute fear.
Catching the juvenile male before it could leap from the balcony Trace tore out its throat with his bare hands and tossed the dying hybrid over the banister.
Alpbach spread before him: a scene of carnage and death.
To his left Isaac’s troops had easily broken through the first line of defense, the battle extending into fields to the north-east. He couldn’t locate his leader and that concerned him. A cluster of vampires fought tooth and nail with hybrids, the scene to his right giving no indication that the crossbreeds had an upper hand in the skirmish. Trace recognized Markus, the vampire Elder standing tall and dominant as he felled hybrids with repeated swipes of his heavy sword. Ahead, the vampires and werewolves who’d attacked from the tree line near the main highway were making steady progress up the slope and into the heart of town.
Early this morning, when word had come through from Max on the location of the gathered hybrids, Isaac had predicted a massacre. It seemed his prophecy was coming to fruition.
Glancing down from the balcony, Trace fixed his gaze onto the front steps of the old church. A group of defenders had backed towards the building and formed a defensive ring around the steps. A transformed hybrid stood in the doorway and even in its altered state Trace could easily identify one of their main targets: the female commander, Tamara, yelling orders to the protective wall around her.
If the moon hung in the clear sky Trace might have bellowed at that, but instead he roared his anger across the rooftops of Alpbach and hurdled from the balcony.
The drop to solid ground would have severely injured a mortal human, but Trace landed athletically, and without breaking stride, attacked the guarding hybrids.
* * *
The colossal figure of a werewolf charging across the asphalt towards the church’s main entrance attracted Markus’s attention. He sliced the abdomen of a hybrid with his curved saber but ignored the creature as it slumped to the road, his gaze focused on the lycanthrope as it hurtled at top speed into the hybrids gathered in the church doorway.
A group of baying werewolves and sword-wielding vampires followed the lycanthrope’s lead, charging into the throng of defending hybrids.
In his periphery vision he witnessed Ilanna striding down the street, five Eliminators sticking close to her, pursuing a group of hybrids who seemed intent on fleeing the scene. She snapped her whip, a
s if she were corralling cattle.
“Stay safe,” Markus whispered.
He turned from his wife and marched across the open street towards the church.
* * *
Hybrid blood pumped from the carotid artery and flooded Isaac’s mouth. He shook his head in the manner of a vicious dog and tore the crossbreed’s head from its shoulders. Glancing up, he surveyed the carnage before him.
The sounds of battle and the agonized screams of slaughter filled the air around the idyllic mountain village. A summer breeze funneled through the valley, mixing the odors of evisceration and spilled blood into the cloying stench of death. This was street warfare like no other: werewolves grappled with frantic hybrids, both species slashing at each other mercilessly with razor sharp talons; vampires locked in armed combat with crossbreed soldiers in streets that were running red. Some of the bigger, stronger werewolves climbed to the top of Alpbach’s cluster of buildings, scampering over roof tiles to avoid pitched battles raging on the ground and surge deeper into Alpbach’s heart. Dropping from the rooftops, they attacked the rear guard of hybrid defenders, sandwiching beleaguered troops between the swords of vampires and the claws of lycanthropes.
Over all the centuries of feeling disgust at his vampiric enemies, that sensation paled considerably with the abhorrence Isaac held for hybrids. Vampires had an annoyingly self-obsessed opinion of themselves, preened and well-dressed, but he did concede that they were always regimental and organized. His own form and that of other werewolves filled him with pride; brutish with strong jaws and vicious talons. Lycanthropes and vampires had an identity. Gazing at the hybrid corpses reinforced just how disgusting the creatures were: neither vampire nor werewolf but a deformed, inelegant mix of the two.
He welcomed the moment when the last of their kind exhaled its final breath.
Looking ahead Isaac located the church, about two hundred meters up the road. An intense skirmish unfolded on the citadel steps and spilled onto the road outside the holy building. Sunlight glinted off the swinging sabers of battling vampires, the creatures easy to distinguish with their long black attire. Werewolves utilized brute strength to wrestle hybrids to the asphalt, collapsing on their luckless foes to disembowel the squirming creatures and rip them apart.
The conflict wasn’t without loss; a number of stronger, more experienced hybrids managed to overwhelm a few of the vampires involved in the battle, breaking necks with bare hands or using their claws to slice open the pale bloodsuckers. The corpses of some of Isaac’s own troops lay scattered about the village, fur matted with blood spilled from their torn bodies.
Even when locked in his wolfen form Isaac’s brain continued to function with coherency—werewolves are not the mindless killers that mortal man’s folklore portray them to be. He reasoned that the heart of hybrid command would make its last stand in the center of the village, barricaded in the church where it would be easiest to defend. Judging by the amount of hybrids located outside the building it seemed safe to assume his assessment was correct. The leaders had sacrificed troops to the outer edges of town, yet fortified their position.
By the look of the carnage unfolding before the parish church, the hybrid defenders wouldn’t hold out much longer.
Isaac stood from his latest kill, towering over the bleeding cadaver, and stared at the white church. The hybrid commanders were his to kill.
He started out towards the center of town, slashing aside a few hybrids stupid enough to come too close. Around him werewolves and vampires battled ferociously with the half-breeds.
A familiar roar penetrated the cacophony of snarls and agonized screams.
Standing motionless, Isaac glanced to his left at a wooden house bedecked with roses and hanging flowers trailing from balconies. The garden, once decorated with well-maintained flower beds, had become a scene of bloodshed and slaughter. Sava, his trusted right-hand man, stood in the middle of the lawn, turning in circles, slashing with his claws at a horde of persistent hybrids.
They must have ambushed him, for Sava stood alone struggling to hold off the mass. Isaac glanced around him; grunted an order that support should be offered instantly to his lieutenant, but in the heat of battle none of the surrounding werewolves acknowledged the call, engrossed in fighting their own battles.
Sava slashed the throat from one of his attackers, but as the hybrid fell convulsing to the grass another assaulted the ancient lycanthrope from behind, tearing away chunks of flesh. As he turned to defend that attack, another hybrid rushed from the side and ripped into his abdomen. Sava bled profusely. Another werewolf lay dead in the garden, probably having attempted to aid the superior lycanthrope.
Roaring his anger, Isaac disregarded the battle outside the church and slammed into the ring of hybrids tearing his lieutenant to pieces. With one powerful blow he beheaded the nearest one then raked his claws across the abdomen of another, its intestines spilling out in a torrent.
Fighting his way through the mass, he became aware that he could no longer hear Sava’s enraged bellows. Tossing lacerated hybrids aside, Isaac staggered as his feet slipped in the gore-coated grass, his eyesight falling to the center of the lawn to take in the vision of Sava’s lifeless body. The neck had been torn out, the lieutenant’s wolfen face frozen with a grimace of both anger and pain. Blood, muscle tissue and intestines layered the grass, trailing into a pool from Sava’s rent guts.
A hybrid came for Isaac, the creature smaller than the others and too eager. Isaac gripped its skull with both hands, twisted its neck and yanked its head from its shoulders.
Offering a roar of defiance, he gazed about the small garden, at the hybrids circling him, closing in. The battles in the street in front of the property had moved on, werewolves and vampires chasing their prey through the village.
The chaotic screams of conflict wafted down the road from the church.
Isaac glared at the ring of hybrids and steadied himself for their onslaught.
As one the circle closed and claws slashed Isaac’s skin.
* * *
Scrambling for purchase, claws slipping on smooth roof tiles, Deanna clambered to the church’s apex. The dark slates swallowed the day’s heat and scalded the pads of her feet. She tried her best to ignore the pain and focus on a different route into the building.
Below her, on the street, an intense battle raged outside the church. She’d noticed Trace’s charge into the crowd gathered in front of the church, yet used the opportunity of hybrid distraction to scale the building’s drainpipes and climb to the roof. She hoped her lover would survive the brutal skirmish below.
Surveying the church roof, Deanna figured she could rip away the slates and drop into the ceiling space then work her way into the building from there. It seemed safe to assume the hybrid leaders were now trapped inside and that meant Cain was underneath her.
She noticed the tower, the spire-shaped roof pointing to the heavens. Someone passed by the tower’s window and this seemed the better option for attack. Launching herself from the church roof she grabbed the spire and slammed a clenched fist into the roof tiles. They shattered upon impact. Deanna growled with exertion as she reached into the tower and tore away the roof joists.
A scream of panic emerged from within.
Tearing a hole large enough, she dropped onto the tower’s wooden floor and lunged for the small hybrid standing terrified in the corner. Disappointment that this creature wasn’t Simon Cain became swamped by pleasure as the hybrid’s blood pumped in torrents into her mouth, its soft flesh tearing beneath her jaws.
A desire to feed welled in her but she subdued it for now. Swallowing the lump of meat she’d torn from the crossbreed’s neck, Deanna glanced around the podium. She noted the staircase leading down to the church, and sniffed the air. Her acute lycanthropic nose detected the aroma of blood rising from below and she hoped she wasn’t too late.
Taking charge of her emotions so that she didn’t rush down the stairs into a volatile situation, D
eanna edged down the steps to what she hoped would be her meeting with destiny.
* * *
When the gigantic werewolf bounded across the road towards the church with a horde of lycanthropes and vampires following in its wake, Tamara had stepped back inside the building, slammed the door, and engaged the lock. Now, alone inside the citadel, she listened to the muffled sound of warfare straining through the stained-glass windows.
Fear churned a tornado of bile in her guts. She held her transformed shape yet took no comfort from the power and agility she possessed. Breath left her in gasps of panic as she backed down the aisle towards the altar.
Shafts of sunlight streamed through the windows to paint slabs of luminescence on the deserted pews. The setting could have held a tranquil peace if it weren’t for the screams of agony and the roar of fighting monsters outside the building.
Something slammed into the thick wooden doors and they vibrated on their hinges. A yelp left her and she flinched. The door rattled again, harder this time, causing dust to spiral down from the joints of old masonry on the arched entryway.
It seemed whatever line of defense her soldiers had formed had now been breached and the monsters were trying to smash their way in.
She glanced over her shoulder at the altar. She had no way of knowing, had yet to explore the church, but considered there might be an exit to the rear of the building. Maybe that would provide an avenue for her to slip out unnoticed from the church and disappear into the surrounding forests. That would be desertion, abandonment of her troops to suffer an awful fate, but at that moment all she could think about was self preservation.
The Last Stand -- Blood War Trilogy Book III Page 12
