The Hybrid Series | Book 3 | Vengeance

by Stead, Nick

  Gwyn’s words were for me but his eyes never once left the dozen or so men blocking our path. I’d been so lost in my memories that I’d failed to notice enemies getting into place ahead of us, and I assumed Gwyn didn’t have the same enhanced senses to forewarn him of the threat we’d been unwittingly heading towards.

  David must have ordered a number of his men to enter the dungeon and slow us, to ensure Amy died before we could reach Selina. But the men themselves were nothing special as far as I could see, each standing resolutely in the face of the grim fate they’d been sent to meet. Their guns were trained on us, held steady despite the liquid fear I could smell on them, pouring out as cold sweat. Hearts thundered in frail mortal chests, just begging for me to set them free and feed my rage with their pain, my bloodlust with their deaths, and my hunger with their warm flesh. They had to know of the brutal end that was coming, just as it had to their comrades in the section of the base I’d broken into with Zee. I’d faced much worse odds and emerged victorious before; I saw no reason why it should be any different this time.

  I did find it strange that each of the Slayers had a torch on the end of his gun. If David planned to cut the lights and set that apparition loose to harry and slow us once more, then why bother sending the men in at all?

  My inner darkness was still demanding retribution. I really wanted to charge into the Slayers and rend flesh from bone, until their blood decorated the passage and each breathed their last. But I was forced to accept that there might be more at work here than a mere force of mortal men. And Gwyn was right, it wasn’t just my life I’d be risking if we engaged them. Amy’s life hung in the balance, faint as it now was. We needed to keep moving and I needed to survive for her sake.

  “So what would you have us do?” I growled. “We have to get past them somehow, unless you know another way that will take us to Selina.”

  “Smash those lights just behind us,” he said in a low whisper, too quiet for the mortal men to hear.

  “What?”

  “Just trust me, fluffy. Smash the lights.”

  I couldn’t see how that would help us when the Slayers had the torches on their weapons to see by, plus there were more flame effect bulbs further along the tunnel, beyond our enemies. Even if I broke the lights I didn’t have to fight my way through to reach, we wouldn’t be in pitch blackness like before. And the problem was, I didn’t trust him. If he was working with David then this could all be part of some grand scheme to further punish me for Fiona’s death. It would even explain why the Slayers had torches attached to their weapons. But what else could I do? If engaging our enemies wasn’t an option and there was no other way forward (as far as I could see, and it wasn’t like I had the time to search for an alternative route), it seemed I would have to go along with whatever Gwyn had planned and just hope he was sincere in his apparent efforts to help me.

  Resigned to placing my trust in the man I still had so many suspicions about, I laid Amy down behind us, along the left side of the passage where I hoped she’d be out of harm’s way. Then I did as he’d bid, feeling very exposed with my back turned to our foes. They’d already focused their aim on me at the first sign of movement, and I felt their collective gaze following me while I ran back down the corridor to the nearest set of lights.

  There came shouts from behind when the men realised what I was doing, and a hail of bullets pelted through the shadows. I moved too quickly for any to find their mark. Nerves sparked as a handful of them grazed various parts of my body, but they passed otherwise harmlessly into the walls, embedding themselves in the stone. I kept my thoughts on Amy to prevent giving in to the temptation of letting my anger take over, made all the stronger for the pain. If whatever Gwyn hoped to accomplish by taking out the lights failed, then I would unleash the full force of my rage and bloodlust on the men, and possibly my supposed ally as well. But I had to at least try things his way first.

  The lights were dim enough that the shadows stretched around us the instant I broke the first bulb, and darkness washed over us when I broke the second. Two faint ‘flames’ remained further down the passage where we’d come from, so weak that they might as well have been distant stars, their light unable to touch us at any distance. The Slayers stood by the nearest bulbs ahead, but we were just outside of that small pool of flickering light, probably no more than shapes moving in the shadows to them then, had it not been for the torches on their weapons.

  As one, the men turned their attention back to where Gwyn had been standing, refocusing their lights on him. But there was just a pile of clothes there now. A hearty, jovial chuckling permeated the air around us, and I could just make out something moving in the darkness. Then I understood. The apparition had been with us all along, trapped in the weakness of human flesh by the light. And now he was free.

  The men’s fear only grew, made all the more potent by the presence of the nightmare creature waiting for us at the end of the dungeon. I could almost taste the terror on the air. Their hearts pounded faster, calling to my predatory nature and summoning me to the hunt. I felt myself drowning in blood, my self-control sinking beneath it as primal instincts flooded my brain. Reality crumbled away, until there was nothing left except for my hunger, and the prey in front of me.

  The rush of their blood through their veins and their frantically pumping hearts filled my ears. It was all I could hear, the scent of Amy’s blood all I could smell. Blood: the wine that accompanied a predator’s banquet. A feast awaited me, and all I had to do was lunge forward and seize it with my great jaws, as I had so many times before. It was in my nature, and ultimately my nature would always win. The leopard can’t change its spots, the wolf can’t be one of the sheep, and hunger cannot be denied. The hunt called and I found myself powerless to resist.

  I had just enough willpower left to steer my desires away from Amy’s vulnerable form. My eyes fixed on the men, my fangs bared once again. And I charged them.

  A thrill ran through me to see them scatter in panicked retreat, their nerve failing them at the sight of a large predator running their way. One man turned to fire off a shot as I crossed into the pool of dim light they’d thought to hide behind, just out of reach of the darkness. But it was too rushed to ever stand a chance of finding its mark, even without fear affecting his aim.

  The bulb on my left exploded in a shower of glass, creating a path of shadows around the small patch of light that remained on the right. The way was open for Gwyn to join the chase.

  I only pushed myself harder, not even flinching. Seconds later I was on the nearest of them, sinking fangs into flesh and revelling in the divine taste of fresh, bloody meat. Then the darkness attacked, and the screams began.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Death Takes Her

  My ears pulled back and flattened against the sides of my head as my bloodied muzzle twisted into a snarl, hackles raised. I remained crouched over my meal but my posture became instinctively defensive in the presence of a potentially rival predator of greater strength and might. Time and again I was being forced to accept that there were far more powerful things in the world than werewolves. Even if I had felt more inclined to trust Gwyn, he made me uneasy on a primal level.

  It was impossible to see much of what was happening. The men’s cries rang in my ears, a sound which was the very definition of terror and pain. This was the kind of darkness that extinguished all light; a shadowy killer to snuff out all life. There was no running from it, no hiding. Without a light to drive it back, there was only that final blackness of the void.

  The men still had the lights on the end of their guns, but no matter how hard they tried to fend off Gwyn, it seemed he was always one step ahead of them. I watched him twisting and turning to avoid their torches, striking from the safety of the shadows that granted him such power. If he did turn on me, I didn’t fancy my chances in a fair fight.

  He was just visible as a patch of darkness more complete than the shadows he swam in, descending on the men one by
one and drawing more cries from his prey. I couldn’t see what was happening to the humans but when he withdrew, his victims lay still, blood trickling from mouths frozen in now silent screams. Worst of all were their empty sockets, eyes put out as if to ensure they remained in eternal darkness beyond the grave. Inwardly I shuddered, unable to think of much worse fates.

  Failing to track Gwyn’s every movement, it wasn’t until he chose to step back into the light and return to his human form that I realised it was over. A couple of the bodies twitched in a pretence at life, yet they were all very much dead. But for how long? That depended on the Slayers’ pet necromancer. It wouldn’t do to linger, especially with Amy’s life hanging in the balance.

  In his ethereal form, Gwyn had moved with the true silence flesh and blood creatures lacked. But once he returned to his fleshy prison, there came the sounds of his physical body on the stone, just as there had for the living humans, right up until the moment he’d doused that spark of life and made inanimate objects of them. It was his humming that caught my attention though. I turned to find him doing up his trousers, a seemingly harmless human once more, and only then did I begin to relax. If he’d meant to hurt me he could have kept to the shadows, but since he’d willingly entered back into the light and his weaker, corporeal form, I reasoned that it was unlikely I was in any immediate danger.

  Gwyn grinned at me, a crimson smear at his bare feet. “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

  His sense of humour seemed so at odds with his true nature that I just stared at him. Some part of my mind was probably still trying to make sense of all these recent developments, because suddenly it clicked into place why one of the corpses we’d encountered had been naked. Like the vampires with the ability to shift forms, and as with my own shapeshifting abilities, clothes did not come included. The Slayers had kept him locked in a dark chamber in his spirit form, and with the passage beyond in darkness, he must have swept past us, only for the dull light to return and force him back into his mortal guise. He’d needed clothes for his human body and he’d taken them from that corpse. Or at least, I assumed that was what had happened.

  Gwyn finished dressing and strode forward to pat me on the shoulder. “No sense in brooding, Nick. It gets old after a couple hundred years.”

  A spasm from Amy pulled me back to the dire reality of her situation. Air rattled out of her lungs with a terrible finality, and her body settled into that horrible stillness normally only encountered in the dead.

  “No!” I roared, rushing to her side.

  I sank to my knees beside her, clawed fingers shaking with a fear that was at odds with my monstrous form. My heart thundered so loudly that I struggled to hear anything above the rush of my own blood, making it impossible to detect any signs of life. So I reached for her throat to feel for a pulse.

  Relief flooded through me when I found what I was looking for. Her heart was still beating but it was so faint now, almost gone completely. I imagined she was caught somewhere between living and dying, as I’d often felt since the curse had taken so much from me. And now it threatened to claim the life of my sister. Had I not suffered enough?

  Gwyn padded over to me and I rounded on him, snarling “How much further to the witch?”

  “Easy, mate. Anger won’t save your sister now. We’re almost there, I promise; the room they’re holding her in is just down this passage.”

  “Then lead on,” I growled.

  “It’s just down here,” he repeated. “There’s no more surprises waiting for us, as far as I know.”

  He seemed to be telling the truth. We progressed through the tunnel without any further hold ups, though it felt like it was stretching on forever, the minutes ticking by with no end in sight. Eventually I began to get the impression of a wall looming up ahead, but my heart sank when we drew close enough to see what the shadows had obscured.

  A large grim reaper grinned down at us from the apparent dead end, painted in the kind of gothic style I’d favoured as a human. It could even have been a design taken from one of my many gothic t-shirts I’d thought I’d left behind, with everything else from that past life. But while my teenage human self might have considered such artwork cool, this likeness of Death was far from welcome in the present circumstances. Its presence only stoked the fires of my rage.

  Worse than the image of the Reaper was the object propped up against the wall beside it. The style was old fashioned and looked like it belonged in a Hammer Horror movie, but there was no Hollywood version of Dracula resting inside. No, it stood open and empty, yet its purpose was clear. The size even seemed to have been picked with a specific occupant in mind, as if David had planned for us to make it this far all along, only for Death to prevail at the final hurdle. And to rub more salt in the wound, he’d left the coffin designed for my sister.

  There was nothing to suggest that there was another hidden door in this length of passage, however. The coffin turned out to be fixed against the wall, and I could see no evidence of any doors or anything to either side of it.

  I turned back to the Welsh man with a snarl. “What is this?”

  Gwyn’s eyes lit up with more of that mischievous humour. “What, have you never seen a coffin before?”

  Luckily for him, I didn’t dare place Amy back down on the floor unless I had to, afraid moving her any more than necessary would only cause more damage in her critical condition. But I took a step towards him and moved my bloodied muzzle closer to his face, fangs bared and fury blazing in my eyes.

  “You know, the modern age has these things called breath mints. You might want to invest in some when we get out of here,” Gwyn said. He seemed unfazed by my unspoken threat, though he did back away slightly. But he relented as I continued to invade his personal space, until he was backed up against the wall. “Okay, okay. The witch is just on the other side of that wall, I swear.”

  “And what good is that when it’s a dead end?” I growled.

  “Dead end,” Gwyn laughed. His laugh tailed off when I growled louder and he grew serious again. “Oh come on, you have to admit that was a good pun. Anyway, there is a way to get your sister through to her, but you have to place her in the coffin.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can either waste time raging and trying to force your way through – and it seems like your sister is living on borrowed time already – or you can trust me. But you should know, this is pretty thick stone separating us from the one hope you have left. I don’t think you have any other options here, matey.”

  The fact that he was right only made me more stubborn. But I couldn’t afford to let such feelings rule me when it could very well rob me of my one chance to save Amy. So with great reluctance, I took a step back from him and faced Death once more.

  Morbid thoughts crossed my mind. Selina might be able to ensure my sister lived to see the light of another day, but Amy would still be mortal. The time would still come when the Reaper came for her and she was placed in a coffin for good. Nothing short of undeath could change that.

  I looked down at her pale face, my heart heavy with the knowledge of the inevitable. But I was her big brother. It was my duty to do everything in my power to keep Death at bay, for as long as possible. She deserved a chance at a long and happy life, and I couldn’t be the one who’d taken that away from her. After everything else I’d been through, I wasn’t sure my sanity could take it.

  Full of doubt, I placed Amy inside the wooden box as gently as I could, holding her upright so she stayed inside. Her feet rested on what was the bottom in its vertical position, limp as any corpse. There was a look of such peace in her features. She could have been sleeping, if it hadn’t been for the ugly stain on her top and the lack of colour in her skin.

  At first it didn’t look like anything was going to happen. Then a mechanism sprung to life and hidden restraints shot out from the coffin’s sides, snapping across her limp form to hold her in place.

  I jumped and took an involuntary ste
p backwards, grunting with surprise. The coffin tilted into the wall, revealing there had been a hidden panel there all along. And through the widening crack, I was just able to glimpse a humanoid shape sat hunched within. Was it Selina?

  A flash of light drew my eyes away. Words burst into being right at the very top of the wall, above the picture of Death. There they blazed their ghastly message like Hellfire, sending a stab of cold fear through veins that had just moments before been blazing with their own fires of rage. My core turned to ice. A portent of doom, I could only gape in disbelief.

  For all the strength and power of my lycanthropy, it seemed I was in fact powerless, my fate not even my own. Too late, I was beginning to understand the depths of David’s madness, given shape in this sick game he’d clearly planned so carefully, making certain every decision I made ultimately led to the same torments he’d intended me to suffer. His voice over the tannoy might even have been staged to keep me from guessing the truth any earlier than he’d planned. And here was the message to drive my grim reality home.

  You are already too late. Death takes her.

  I’d just had time to process that when I felt movement beneath my feet, and I tore my gaze away from those words of despair, looking down to see the stone shifting as a hidden trapdoor slid into action. Then the ground opened up beneath me and I fell into darkness.

  For a brief moment, my mind flashed back to the classic cartoons I’d grown up with, and I had the feeling I was a certain unfortunate coyote. But there was no moment of standing in mid-air before my fall and, when I hit the ground, I knew there would be no wolf shaped indent for me to climb out of with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises and an ‘ouch’ sign. The one thing I had going for me was that I was dropping feet first, since I’d gone from standing to falling without any steps in between. And though falling from height hadn’t been part of my training with either Lady Sarah or Leon, common sense dictated that landing on my feet was probably my best bet.