by Stead, Nick
“Be quiet,” Zeerin commanded, and she instantly fell silent.
We resumed walking, until we came to what appeared to be a side passage or chamber. It was closed off but there was clearly another panel set in the wall, with a lever that presumably operated the mechanism to open it.
Zeerin looked at me. “What do you think, should we investigate inside?”
“I don’t know. I guess the Slayers want us to go in there, or why make this one easy to open? But whether that’s because it’s another trap or just part of the level, who knows? We haven’t encountered any enemies in this level yet, other than that creature, so I’d expect there to be another fight coming up. There could be something lurking behind there.”
“Then we leave it for now. We can always come back,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s probably the safest option.”
We reached another door at the end of the tunnel. This one was also closed and had a lever to operate the sliding panel. I assumed that meant one door led to the next part of the level and one was a trap of some description, but there didn’t seem to be any clues as to which we were supposed to go through. All we could do was try one of them and hope it was the right choice.
Zeerin pulled the lever and the door ground its way upwards. There came the wet, tearing sounds of flesh being ripped apart and the cracking of bone, and I caught a glimpse of movement. My heart sank. It looked like we’d made the wrong decision.
Zeerin must have come to the same conclusion. He drew his cutlass and took up a fighting stance, while Hannah stood back, wide eyed as she picked up on the apparent danger from our reactions.
Musty air drifted through the doorway and the smell of death grew stronger. More undead lurked within.
The panel slid to the top and my eyes took in a pack of skeletal bodies, snarling and tussling over scraps of rotting flesh. I got the feeling they’d been starved and then thrown the meagre offerings to drive them into a frenzy, and in such a state even Zeerin’s cold, dead flesh might seem appetising. Mine and Hannah’s living bodies were certainly fair game, and with hunger ruling them I doubted they could be reasoned with. Allies or no, in that moment I was under no illusion as to what status I currently held in their eyes: I was nothing more than prey.
As one, the pack of ghouls ceased their squabbles and turned their skull-like faces towards us. Time seemed to freeze. They could have been grotesque statues, with their greying skin stretched tight over bony frames. Each held that stillness of a predator waiting to strike, fixing us with an intense stare that burned with hunger. If they’d still had noses, I would have expected to see them twitching. But there was only the empty nasal cavity where the cartilage should have been.
That moment of stillness seemed to last for so much longer than the mere seconds it truly was, a fresh wave of adrenaline flooding my system in preparation for the fight to come. I thought I might manage one more transformation without collapsing into a weak, starved heap. But I’d never be able to take it far enough in time to gain the greater strength and speed I’d need to take on so many of the ghouls at once. In human form I knew I didn’t stand a chance, even with Zeerin fighting beside me. Maybe if we’d both been rested and well-fed we might have been able to take them, but the ghouls were also supernaturally fast and strong and they had the advantage of numbers.
I just about had chance to process all that when the pack of ravenous undead burst into life.
Zeerin turned and scooped Hannah up in his arms, breaking into a run. “Back to the other door!”
I was only a split second behind him, pushing my body to its limits. But I couldn’t keep pace with the vampire. He was pulling ahead and the ghouls were closing in.
Teeth bit into my calf. I roared with the pain of it but somehow managed to keep my balance and shake the creature off with one, powerful jerk of my leg. Blood ran down, warm and sticky. I ignored the throbbing and pushed myself onwards. The rest of the pack weren’t far behind.
The other door was just up ahead when another of the ravenous undead pounced. We hit the stony floor and rolled across the uneven surface, my skin tearing from the friction and my flesh bruising. I came to a stop on my back, feeling the sting of new cuts and grazes. But adrenaline helped keep the worst of it at bay. My attention shifted to the skeletal jaws about to close around my neck, and my arm shot up to push them back, my nails lengthening into claws.
Something was wrong. A wave of heat rolled through my body and sweat trickled down my skin, my blood boiling as though I were on the verge of changing again. An ache started in my muscles and my vision was blurring. The coloured water. It must have been tainted with some kind of slow acting poison. What else could it be?
I felt my strength fading. The ghoul’s teeth were drawing closer to my skin again, its frenzied jaws snapping at the meal it craved. I fought to keep its head at arm’s length while I used the rest of my body to try and push it off. It was no use. I couldn’t bring my legs up far enough to kick it away.
The passage was spinning and my stomach felt like it was turning into a pit of bile. I gave up on trying to throw the ghoul off and summoned the last of my strength to rip into its chest. Cold, dark blood splattered across my fevered skin, and the ghoul screamed.
Hungry as the ghouls were, they must still have had some sense of self-preservation. The creature knew I was trying to get at its heart and it rolled off before I had the chance, retreating a few steps and eyeing me with hatred. I’d only bought myself a temporary reprieve. As soon as the rest of the pack caught up, it was going to come for me again, and that moment was only a dozen seconds away, maybe less.
I became aware of more stone grinding. Zeerin must have pulled the lever while I’d been busy wrestling with the ghoul, and the panel had just risen high enough for us to squeeze under.
I watched his blurry form push Hannah through the gap, then dive after her. But I couldn’t seem to find the strength to follow. It was an effort just to roll onto my front, and I struggled to get to my hands and knees.
Clawed hands latched onto my legs. That spurred me into action, fighting the effects of the poison long enough to scramble to the doorway. The ghoul tried to drag me back and I had to dig my own claws into the stone, my muscles trembling.
A cry of frustration rang out. We’d come to another dead end, the passage on the other side of the door no more than a few metres long. Zeerin turned, his face grim. We were going to have to fight the pack of ghouls after all. But at least we had one thing in our favour – the tunnel was too narrow for them to attack as one big group, which meant we were only facing waves of three or four at most.
Sword in hand, Zeerin strode back to the doorway. He brought the cutlass down on the head of the ghoul still trying to drag me backwards, slicing through with a single blow. Blood and brains sprayed across the stone and its hands went limp, its grip slackening. I all but collapsed then.
“Can you keep them busy for a few minutes?” I grunted.
Zeerin nodded and stepped forward with a fierce grin, the light of battle in his eyes. Fleeing might have seemed like our best chance at survival but this was where our hearts truly lay, in the savage joy of combat.
Hannah had the sense to stay back, Zeerin’s spell the only thing keeping her terror at bay. But I felt her wide eyes on me as I called on the transformation, knowing it was my only hope to counteract whatever poison I’d been given and lend me the strength to defeat the enemy undead. Though with my core temperature already burning so high, for the first time in a long while I didn’t relish giving in to the change then. My body was already on fire – with the added heat of shifting, I felt like my flesh might go up in flames. And yet, staying in human form wasn’t an option. Not if I wanted to survive the encounter.
Sweat poured from my skin, my body in danger of becoming dehydrated again. The fur that sprouted was soon sodden with it. I thought I was going to melt into a pool of molten blood and tissue, Hannah surely feeling the heat coming off me from where s
he stood. I could feel her eyes on me, taking in the terrifying spectacle few would ever see outside of nightmares or horror movies. A gasp escaped her lips as my skull stretched outwards, but she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away.
Zeerin was a comforting presence beside me. He’d planted himself in the now open doorway, hacking and slashing at the horde of rival undead, and doing his best to keep any from creeping past. I tried to concentrate on the change, willing it to go as fast as possible. The discomfort was growing worse than ever and I grew more certain I was reaching melting point. But my flesh held, shifting as normal until the human weaknesses fell prey to my lupine might.
My vision cleared and fresh strength surged through my body, the poison purged from my system. I bounded forward to take my place beside Zeerin. Several ghouls already lay dead at his feet, the stench of their rotten blood adding to the dungeon’s foul odour and causing Hannah to gag behind us. I focused my senses on the rival predators foolish enough to think I could ever be viable prey, a new confidence rising, and my rage along with it.
Another ghoul bounded forward but I was ready for my opponent this time, grabbing the skeletal frame in my hands and wrapping my jaws around its head. The skull shattered in a gory explosion, cold and bitter on my tongue. It did nothing for the hunger, and my rage burned stronger still.
I dropped the corpse and slashed at a second ghoul, opening up deep gashes across its throat. My adversary didn’t even slow. It lunged forward and sank its teeth into my right arm, while a third latched onto my leg.
Chunks tore from my limbs, my own blood flowing freely and mixing with the spreading pool of gore from our fallen enemies. I roared and tore the frenzied undead from my limbs, smashing their heads into the walls in another explosion of rotting brains and blood.
Zeerin cleaved through the heads of two more, but there must have been dozens locked in the chamber. For each one we felled, there was another already leaping over the body to take its place, giving us no time to rest. I was beginning to tire, rage and adrenaline only able to carry me so far. Blood and sweat trickled down the skin beneath my pelt, my limbs starting to feel heavy and unresponsive to my brain’s commands. A deep ache pulsed through my body, my muscles begging for a reprieve from the constant fighting. And still the ghouls kept on coming.
Their lifeless corpses piled up in the doorway, gradually forcing us backwards. They climbed the pile with ease and leapt from the top, the first few cut down in mid-air by Zeerin’s blade. Then one of them dived at me. I ducked and the skeletal body flew harmlessly over my head. But when I twisted round, it was to find the ghoul had carried on going. Its sights were set on Hannah now.
With a roar, I bounded forward and pounced, pinning the ghoul down while I sank my fangs into its back and ripped out its heart. The dead organ sat still and unsatisfactory on my tongue. There was none of the beating life I would’ve torn from a living victim, nor the slippery warmth I’d come to enjoy. I growled and dropped it in disgust.
My head rose to find Hannah gaping at me, her mouth open in a silent scream. If I’d been just a fraction slower, bits of her would probably be lying amongst the other corpses. I couldn’t even explain why I’d rushed to her rescue when she was a stranger, a human who would have been no more than prey in any other circumstances. It wasn’t that I wanted the kill for myself – I was still too suspicious of the Slayers’ motives for locking her in with us for that. Maybe somewhere in my subconscious I considered the possibility there might be another room that demanded a sacrifice, where we could spill her blood instead of having to give more of our own. It certainly hadn’t been out of anything like kindness.
The last of the skeletal creatures died to Zeerin’s cutlass and the pile of stinking bodies was still. He took a rag out from one of the pockets in his coat and cleaned the worst of the gore from his blade, his eyes meeting mine as if to ask ‘what now?’
“So you really are a werewolf,” Hannah said, sounding shaken.
“Yes,” I growled.
“And you’re really a vampire?” she asked Zeerin. He nodded. She took a minute to process that, her eyes falling on the dead ghoul whose heart I’d torn out. “So what were those things?”
“Ghouls,” I answered, changing the subject before she could ask anything else. “We should go back to the room they were all locked in and see if there’s some hidden door.”
“Wouldn’t those monsters have found a way out if there was one?” Hannah said.
“They are not particularly intelligent, especially when driven into a craze from hunger.” Zeerin shifted his gaze from her face to mine. “It’s worth searching the room, I suppose.”
“Well this seems to be a dead end, unless there’s something we’re missing here,” I said. “But if there was another hidden door, you’d think we’d have triggered it during the fight.”
“Unless the Slayers were overriding the controls because they didn’t want us to find it during the fight.”
“I guess. I think we should explore the other room first though, now it’s clear of enemies.”
Zeerin nodded and motioned for me to lead the way. I turned to the pile of bodies and began climbing over. Zeerin wasn’t far behind. He paused at the top to give Hannah a hand, her nose wrinkling in disgust.
Once we were over the corpses, it didn’t take long to make our way back to the chamber they’d spilled out from. A trail of blood marked our progress and I was forced to expend more energy on healing my wounds.
We were able to pass into the room without the door sliding down behind us or any other traps being triggered, but a thorough search of the chamber revealed nothing of interest. We could find no hidden doors, buttons, pressure points or levers that might have operated a nearby door, and the room was empty, save for the scraps of flesh the ghouls had been fighting over before we’d set them free. I ate those, but they did nothing to ease my hunger pangs. If anything, I felt hungrier for them.
Working our way back through the tunnels revealed no further secrets either, no clues as to how to progress to the next level. We ended up back in the chamber where we’d found Hannah, slumping against the wall in defeat. After everything we’d been through, it seemed we faced a long, slow death from starvation after all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Return to the Modern World
Hunger made another assault on my insides. Hannah was beginning to look more and more appetising with each passing moment, and my mouth watered with the longing to rip into her warm flesh. Caution continued to hold me back, but for how long remained to be seen.
Silent tears ran down Hannah’s cheeks as she hugged herself, probably wishing she was back home with her family. She didn’t seem to realise the danger she was in. Or perhaps she was all too aware, and it was Zeerin’s spell keeping her from reacting to that grim realisation. I licked my lips and gazed at her bare flesh. She didn’t even glance at me.
After a while I broke the silence, wanting something to keep our minds off our hungers. “You might as well finish your story, Zeerin.”
“You may call me Zee. Better to die down here as good friends than reluctant allies, eh?” There was a glint in his eyes, and a warmth that seemed to be a rarity among his kind. I nodded my gratitude. The offer of friendship meant more than I think he knew, after all those months spent alone and isolated from both humanity and undead alike.
“I never expected to become a captain,” he continued, picking up his tale from where he’d left off. “It wasn’t like it was my ambition to rise up so high when I turned pirate; I just wanted a better life than the horrors of the slave ship I’d suffered for so long. But I was popular with the crew and I’d picked up a lot of skill in my years as an honest sailor, all of which were qualities that were invaluable on a pirate ship.
“The thing you have to understand about the rank is that it wasn’t like the captains of the Navy or the slave ships, who were generally appointed from the privileged classes of society and ruled with an iron fist. Those of us
who’d started out as sailors wanted freedom from that way of life; we hadn’t risen up against our oppressors simply to trade the shackles of one captain’s rule for another.
“Our captains weren’t given absolute authority. Most of the time they didn’t get the last say in decisions that affected the entire crew, such as where to set sail and whether or not to engage a certain ship – these things we determined through a vote, and we’d go with whatever the majority wanted. Some might say it was the quartermaster who had the real power. His job wasn’t just sharing out the treasure and rations – he was also in charge of work and punishment.
“But there are of course times when a group needs a leader, and whenever we were drawn into battle it was to our captain we would look to. Then we would follow his command without question, trusting him to lead us to victory. The more successful a captain, the longer he held the position, but he could just as easily be voted out if he became unpopular.
“We had a good captain when I first joined the crew and pirate life was everything I’d hoped it’d be. Fate smiled on us wherever we sailed and we didn’t want for much. But I’m sure you know as well as I how fate can be every bit as fickle as the sea, and the day came when our tides would turn. It was such a fleeting moment, in the midst of a fight to claim our latest prize. And yet, that moment would change everything.”
He paused, gazing off and giving his beard an absentminded tug.
“So what happened?” I pressed.
Zee’s eyes slid back to meet my own. “I didn’t even see it myself, but afterwards the captain was bleeding from a nasty wound to his thigh, and it wasn’t long before it became infected. Even after all these years, I can still hear the sound of his screams as the carpenter sawed his leg off, with the same tools used to repair the ship. Some say he went mad with the pain he endured that night, but I think it was the need for revenge that drove him insane. Either way, he was never the same afterwards. The carpenter made him a peg leg and he could fight well enough on it, but he grew bloodthirsty and cruel, and the crew wanted none of it, myself included. We had no interest in spilling innocent blood just to aid him on some dark quest for vengeance.
