The Wereling 3: Resurrection

by Stephen Cole

  A dim memory shone through his clouded consciousness – this was important. This was why he had come. He remembered Adam Blood, and tried to zero in on his scent.

  Nothing. Hopefully that meant Blood had got well away; he wouldn’t stand a chance with the lupines on his own.

  It was up to Tom.

  He tore at the enclosure fence with his teeth until he had ripped a hole there large enough to push through. Then he was out in the zoo concourse, racing in the direction of the wolf cry. The heavy moon was nearly full and it lit the night like a dull lantern, lending him strength; he exulted in the power that coursed through his body. As he ran he breathed in the exotic scents of the beasts and birds around him, their food and fear, their muck.

  Another howl sounded, much closer now, and Tom quickened his pace. Then something leaped out from the foliage lining the path, smashed into his side and knocked the breath from his body. Tom rolled over, righted himself – in time to see another ’wolf, slighter than the one he’d fled from but just as savage, bearing down on him. Its fangs gleamed in the yellow moonlight.

  Tom kicked up his hind legs under his assailant and twisted his body around, propelling the attacking lupine through the air. It went tumbling over Tom’s head and landed awkwardly on its back. Tom leaped to his feet before the other ’wolf could recover and pressed a paw down hard against its throat. The ’wolf struggled and writhed, but Tom kept up the chokehold. Finally, gasping for air, its muzzle flecked with thick white saliva, the creature closed its eyes and lay still.

  Only now did Tom remove the pressure. The ’wolf did not stir, but began to breathe again in shallow gasps. They had been well matched in the fight; both about the same size and musculature. Both similar colourings, for that matter …

  Reckless with victory, Tom had a wild idea. He rubbed his body against that of the unconscious ’wolf, hoping to gain a little of its scent before it could revert to its human form. As an urgent howl went up from beyond the trees, he chased off in the direction of the sound.

  A truck stood in the grounds, its engine idling. Three lupines clustered around the rear doors that hung open like metal jaws. Inside, Tom realised, were the two white wolves. Their fear and confusion made a thick reek in the air – luckily for him.

  As Tom approached, the other ’wolves jumped on board. They paid Tom no heed as he followed them into the cold, smelly maw of the van. One of the white wolves whined. The other snapped at its abductors, the fur on its back bristling. Both were cuffed roughly around the chops by a barrel-chested lupine; Tom realised that this was the ’wolf he and Blood had faced in the outhouse, and prayed nothing of his human scent now remained.

  He heard the van doors slam. Then the engine roared and the vehicle jerked away.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the end, Kate and Sunday found it remarkably easy to gain access to the grounds of Brook Mansion. Once they’d scraped their way over the fence, they stealthily made their way towards the dark, impressive shadow of the hotel building.

  Suddenly, a security floodlight snapped on with stadium intensity. They threw themselves down to the freezing damp lawn.

  ‘Stay still,’ Kate hissed. ‘Cats and owls and critters must set these things off all the time.’

  There was no sign of anyone coming to investigate, and after a few minutes the floodlight switched back off.

  By staying low, they kept clear of its sensors. Soon they were pressed up against the stonework of the hotel itself.

  ‘Are you sure it won’t be alarmed?’ Sunday whispered.

  ‘Like I said, I really doubt it,’ Kate replied.

  ‘And no one came looking when we triggered the floodlights,’ murmured Sunday. She sighed softly. ‘So, should we break a window?’

  ‘Let’s give it a try,’ Kate agreed. ‘And just hope that not everywhere is double glazed!’

  After a good deal of nervous thumping with the flashlight, Kate neatly cracked in two a pane of glass beside the main doors. Working together, and with some careful manoeuvring, she and Sunday got the pieces cleanly free.

  ‘After you,’ suggested Sunday.

  Kate wriggled through into the softly carpeted reception area. ‘No alarms,’ she reported. ‘It’s as quiet as the grave.’

  ‘Nice,’ murmured Sunday, coming through after her. She flicked on the flashlight, but its light was failing; the hotel’s opulence revealed only in vague yellow pools.

  ‘Typical,’ Kate sighed. ‘Let’s get exploring before the light gives up all together … try to find an office or something.’

  There was nothing unusual on the ground floor, so they stole up the stairs to the first floor. Soon they stood in a grand-looking corridor, studded with dark oak doorways. The nearest door stood ajar, and Kate peered inside with the flashlight. It was a bedroom, with an en-suite bathroom, furnished expensively and stylishly in neutral colours. They tried the next few doors and found similar rooms.

  ‘Should we steal some towels and call it a night?’ quipped Sunday.

  ‘There has to be something useful here,’ Kate retorted.

  After a cursory inspection of several more bedrooms – and what was presumably a conference room with chairs lined up in neat rows before a kind of lectern – they found an elegant stairway at the end of the corridor, leading to the second floor above.

  Kate cautiously led the way. But as they reached the landing, she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The flashlight bulb was barely glowing by now. She shook it disconsolately. ‘Pretty soon we’re going to be completely in the dark.’

  ‘Let’s take a chance,’ said Sunday. She found a light switch and flicked it on. A few moments later, the fluorescents set into the ceiling hummed into life, illuminating another hallway – but this time with just one heavy-looking oak door leading off it.

  ‘The penthouse,’ Kate declared.

  Sunday pressed her ear to the door, her pretty face creased in concentration. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘We’d have seen lights on if anyone was at home,’ Kate reasoned. She pushed the useless flashlight into her jeans pocket and gripped the door handle. ‘But get ready to run like hell if I’m wrong.’

  She pushed the heavy door open.

  It was dark inside, and a wave of humid warmth hit them – the temperature was far higher in this room. But nothing stirred in the darkness.

  She groped inside for a light switch. Her fingers rustled against something and she almost cried out, before realising it was some kind of plant. Reaching higher, her hand closed at last on a thick cord, and she pulled downwards.

  Dim lights flickered on in the high ceiling, revealing a long, incongruous room. The plant she’d brushed against was part of a broad strip of exotic flora that stretched right around the room’s perimeter, covering the windows and framing three doors set into the far wall. A twisting narrow path led through a forest of bizarre items that filled the floor space: sinister sculptures in random places – with chairs positioned right up close, facing them; a fountain gushing over marble spheres, the cool gurgle of its water deliciously inviting in the stifling heat; to its side, a ball pool – like the kind at kids’ activity centres. Odd, alien mobiles hung down from the ceiling on invisible wires, windchimes gently clinked together in the draft from the doorway.

  ‘Takapa went for a different look up here, then,’ Kate said wryly, staring around in amazement. She found herself thinking the chairs were placed far too close to each statue to allow a full visual appreciation. Then she realised that the chairs seemed to be positioned so that someone might sit and touch the sculptures. Everything in this room was about touch and sound.

  With a sinking feeling, Kate realised she’d been wrong to assume that the place must be empty because the lights were off. She turned to Sunday. ‘Whoever’s staying up here must be blind.’

  ‘Blind,’ echoed Sunday softly.

  Suddenly, Kate realised the girl wa
s trembling. ‘What’s wrong?’ she hissed.

  ‘The old guy,’ Sunday whispered, her blue eyes wide and frightened. ‘The one who did that weird magic stuff to me at the warehouse. He was blind! He was … ’ With a look of horror, Sunday pointed across the room.

  Kate turned to look. A dark figure was stepping out arthritically from behind a statue. It was an old man, his eyes yellowed and clearly sightless. There was something old-fashioned about him: the loose cut of the dark suit that covered his portly frame; the small collar of his white shirt and tight knot in his tie; the fedora hat on his head. He looked like he’d just walked all the way from the 1940s. ‘Is that him?’ she hissed.

  ‘No.’ Sunday shook her head. ‘But like him.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Kate demanded, unable to keep a waver from her voice.

  ‘More to the point, young lady, who are you?’ came an ancient, foreign-sounding voice behind her, dusty and scratchy with age.

  Kate spun around to find another old man tottering out from the thick foliage that lined the wall behind her. He was taller and thinner, but dressed in the same style as his companion. His eyes were white and cloudy, flicking about uselessly in shrivelled sockets.

  Sunday cried out and backed away, and Kate instinctively did the same. Stupid, she realised. The old man moved across to block their exit.

  ‘What is this place?’ Kate demanded.

  ‘Why, it is our current abode,’ said the portly man behind her. He too had a hard-edged accent, German perhaps, and his voice crackled like dead leaves. ‘Takapa has taken good care to make us feel at home.’ He gestured around him.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Sunday whispered. ‘They’re evil!’

  ‘Come now, children,’ said the withered figure blocking the exit, his unseeing eyes rolling in his head. He took a step towards them, fingers fumbling with the knot of his tie as he pulled it loose. ‘We are just old men! Nothing more, eh, Anton?’

  ‘Certainly, Friedrich,’ agreed his companion jovially. ‘That is all!’

  Kate and Sunday backed away from the sinister Friedrich, who tugged feebly at his collar buttons, as if only now aware of the heat.

  Kate spun around to find Anton had already shed his jacket and tie, and now revealed a hairless, sunken chest as he stripped off his shirt. Kate stared in revulsion, knowing she and Sunday would soon be caught between these two old crazies.

  ‘Well, Anton, it would seem that Takapa is truly pleased with our work,’ wheezed Friedrich as he shrugged off his starched shirt.

  ‘And with Liebermann’s progress,’ agreed Anton.

  ‘How agreeable it is to be fed again so soon.’ Friedrich moved aside a chair blocking his way. ‘I find that appetite is one of the few things that does not diminish with age.’

  ‘Stay back!’ Kate shouted. She’d been such a fool. She’d thought that Takapa had no security here – wrong. He had these two freaks minding the store. And while they seemed elderly and frail, Kate wasn’t going to leap to any more false conclusions. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and held it like a miniature club. ‘I’m warning you, stay back!’

  But a low animal growl had begun to build. Kate turned to find that Anton had stooped over, and was stretching out his arms. His old bones twisted and snapped, rustling and cracking like ancient twigs. Coarse, wiry grey hair began to push its way out through the flaccid skin. His jaw elongated and snapped open and shut, pink gums dripping blood as decaying yellow teeth pushed through.

  A snapping of jaws from the doorway made Kate turn again, to find Friedrich in the last throes of his metamorphosis. His lupine form was grey and rangy, ribs poking razor sharp through his lustreless fur, hind legs so skinny the ’wolf simply shuffled out of the smart black pants of the old-fashioned suit. Then it leaped for the cord that worked the lights, grabbed it in its jaws and yanked hard, shearing clean through the cable.

  The room was plunged into darkness. Now they were all blind together.

  Kate hurled the torch in the direction of the ’wolf at the exit, and heard it thud harmlessly into the foliage. She grabbed hold of Sunday’s hand, tried to lead her away – but almost immediately she stumbled into a chair, and fell to the floor.

  A scuffling of claws on carpet came from somewhere nearby.

  Kate scrambled up and allowed Sunday to drag her in a different direction – then Sunday cracked her head on something and stumbled to a halt.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Kate whispered. ‘They may be blind but they know where everything is in here – and we’re just blundering around in the dark. We don’t stand a chance!’

  ‘They could finish us off any time,’ Sunday whispered back. She gripped Kate’s arm in the darkness. ‘What are they waiting for?’

  ‘They’re playing with us,’ Kate breathed. ‘I don’t imagine they have many visitors to snack on.’

  As she spoke, her leg brushed against something, scaring her half to death – until she realised it was inanimate. Touching it, she discovered it was the ball pool. She’d had no idea they’d been herded so far across the penthouse.

  A low, threatening growl started up, not far away. Kate threw one of the small plastic balls into the darkness. It bounced off something hard with a clatter, one of the statues maybe. The growl stopped – the room fell entirely silent. Kate prayed the noise had confused the old ’wolves, made them think she and Sunday were actually the other side of the room.

  But then the growl started up again; animal footsteps padded nearer.

  Kate closed her eyes. It hadn’t worked. She grabbed another ball and threw it in the direction of the growl.

  It bounced off something just in front of her.

  The growl became a roar and a slimy snout pushed into Kate’s hand. Jagged teeth grazed her fingers as she recoiled in horror.

  Sunday screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The ’wolf skittered back a few paces, yelping and whining.

  ‘They’re sensitive to sound,’ Kate realised. ‘Sunday, keep screaming!’

  Kate couldn’t see Sunday but she could sure hear her oblige. As the ear-piercing shriek went on, Kate gathered up more balls from the pool in her arms.

  ‘Hold out the hem of your sweater,’ she hissed. Sunday did so with both hands, making a pouch into which Kate dumped the balls. ‘Now, stay close behind me and let’s holler like a pair of banshees!’

  Using the position of the pool to get her bearings, Kate worked out where the exit must be. She tossed balls in front of her one at a time – if they hit nothing she moved forward. If they bounced back she threw another to the left or right to work out which way was clear.

  Finally, she reached out and screamed for joy this time, as her hand tightened on the door handle.

  She swung the door open. As the light from outside spilled in, Kate had a nightmare glimpse of both ’wolves crouched close behind Sunday, scuttling forwards, their ears pressed down flat against their misshapen heads. Then Sunday was out of the room too and Kate slammed the door shut.

  ‘Out of here,’ Kate snapped, her voice reedy and hoarse from screaming. ‘Now.’

  Sunday bolted down the stairs without another word, the last few plastic balls falling from her sweater and clattering around after her.

  Kate followed, never once looking back.

  g

  Tom kept apart from the other lupines in the corner of the careening truck. Luckily, all had kept their grotesque ’wolf forms, perhaps because the white wolves were uncaged, and so needed to be intimidated into submission. If they transformed back to their human shapes, Tom knew he would be expected to follow suit – and what then?

  After an interminable, uncomfortable journey the truck came to a sudden halt. Metal gates squealed and rattled as they were opened, and the truck lurched forwards again. Soon after, Tom heard a thick, electrical whine and a resounding clang – he guessed a heavy door had come down behind them.

  As the truck engine turned off, Tom recognised the chemical tang in the air
, and also a damp, fusty smell – they must be at the back of United Laboratories.

  The truck’s doors were opened by two men, and Tom found they were parked in some kind of loading area. The men carried thick leather muzzles, and two metal crates waited behind them. The white wolves snapped and barked at the humans, but were silenced by an impressive roar from one of the lupines.

  As the men fitted the wolves with muzzles, Tom jumped down from the van and skulked off into the thick shadows of the loading area. The other lupines followed him out, their work apparently done, and padded towards a doorway in one of the concrete walls. Tom decided to follow them.

  It was some kind of changing room, a wide, echoing space lined with benches and lockers. Tom hovered outside, hearing bestial whimpers as the ’wolf-strength bled away from lupine bones, reverting back into human marrow. Having regained their human forms, the men were laughing about the guards they’d attacked, imagining the next day’s papers putting the attacks down to escaped zoo animals, still on the loose …

  Once dressed, they sauntered out of the changing rooms, and Tom forced himself to change back. He shivered as he waited for the inevitable, sickening snap of his spine as it twisted back into shape, biting his lip as his pelvis cracked back into an upright position. His skin itched madly as the thick covering of hairs burrowed back under his skin.

  Feeling weak and fatigued, he crept into the room and searched through lockers, helping himself to the first clothes he found that were his size – easy-fit blue jeans, a black track top and sneakers. Opening the door at the other end of the changing rooms, he realised his gamble had paid off. He’d made it inside Takapa’s headquarters without attracting attention. At the back of his mind, the knowledge needled that the guy he’d impersonated could show up any time now and raise the alarm, but he forced himself to stay calm.