by Stead, Nick
Zee shot me a disciplinary look. “Gwyn, stay with us. Is there some way your body can heal itself?”
Gwyn’s eyelids were fluttering and he seemed to be losing awareness of his surroundings. Zee had to repeat the question twice more before Gwyn managed to answer him, though he was barely audible over Lady Sarah’s unrelenting cry.
“Kill the lights,” he mumbled. “Let me return to darkness, then my body will reform good as new when I come back to the light.”
Zee looked doubtful. He didn’t seem to know whether Gwyn was fully delirious and talking nonsense, so I said “That spirit thing in the dark with Hannah – turns out that was Gwyn. The light seems to make him weak and stuck in human form.”
“So we need darkness or he’s going to bleed out, but we also need light for him to become human again?”
I shrugged. “I guess. But what’s to stop him fucking off and leaving us if we let him return to his spirit form? How do we know he’ll come back to the light and donate more blood to finish healing Lady Sarah?”
“It sounds like we don’t have much choice, if Selina really is otherwise occupied. I didn’t get as far as checking on her or Amy when I went on ahead, so I can’t confirm if he’s telling the truth. And besides, if we only break a few of these torches but leave the lights either end of the tunnel, where’s he going to go? He wouldn’t get far before one of us recaptured him.”
“I suppose,” I growled. I didn’t bother to hide my reluctance, or my distrust.
“As you said, Nick, we can’t leave Lady Sarah in this state. It’s worth a try, and if he somehow does find a way to escape and deserts us, then we’re no worse off than we are right now.”
“I still think we should just let her finish draining him.” But I stalked over to the nearest light and raised my fist to smash it.
“No, not that one,” Zee said. “If we need the lights to keep him human, we need them to be around Lady Sarah or we’ll have to move her to a new patch of light, and then we risk losing control of her again. I can’t even begin to guess what state her mind is in right now.”
He had a point. I stalked back over to Gwyn and picked him up, then made my way further along the passage. The Welsh undead had lost his battle to stay conscious, which I deemed a blessing. I didn’t know how much more of his humour I could take.
As before, the lights were dim enough that I only needed to smash one on either side of us to send the shadows rushing in. The outline of the skinny Welsh man melted away and the weight left my arms. I looked for his spirit form but the weak lights didn’t stretch far enough to give me a glimpse of what shape his true self took. There was only the sense of something moving in the shadows – a patch of blackness more complete than the surrounding darkness he moved in – but whether it was still humanoid or resembled something else, I couldn’t tell.
“Much better.” Gwyn chuckled, sounding almost drunk on the rush of power he must have felt after losing so much blood.
“You can enjoy it later,” I growled. “We still have to heal Lady Sarah.”
No response was forthcoming and I began to fear our ‘ally’ was going to let us down. I still couldn’t work out why he’d let me fall into the room of spikes without giving me any warning, or how it was that he knew so much about the dungeon in the first place. And worst of all, I was powerless to do anything while he remained in his spirit form. I couldn’t drag him back into the light, nor could I create more light to force him back into his human body. A string of curses passed between my jaws. We should never have gone along with his wishes. Lady Sarah could have drained him like I’d wanted, then there’d have been no opportunity for him to betray us. It might not have been enough to completely heal her, but it would have been better than nothing, and maybe I could have spared the rest her body needed to fully recover.
“You need to work on your trust issues, Nick,” came a voice from behind me.
I jumped and turned to find him on the very edge of the pool of light where Lady Sarah continued to voice her agony, and Zee still struggled to hold her down. He was naked and human once more, his body completely healthy and his wrist showing no signs of the cut I’d opened up with my claw, or the bite mark from Lady Sarah’s fangs. There wasn’t even any dried blood to evidence there had ever been a wound, as there would have been on my own body after healing.
“Well don’t just stand there gawping you dork, pass me my clothes and let’s get this over with.”
I did as he said, too surprised to find he was still helping us to think of anything to say. My feelings obviously weren’t lost on him though.
“You really need to work on your trust issues, bro.”
I growled but didn’t deign to answer, leaving Gwyn to dress and stalking back over to the vampires. Lady Sarah’s eyes didn’t even focus on the potential fresh meal she should have recognised me as, and I saw nothing of the being I’d kept on trying to get to know in those blue orbs. Then a terrible thought took shape in my head.
“Wait, weren’t her eyes brown before?” I asked Zee. “How do we know this is even her we’re healing? What if she’s already gone and all we’re doing is strengthening a new vessel for the necromancer’s will?”
“We can’t know for sure if she’s still under the necromancer’s power or not. It could be the necromancy causing the change of eye colour, or it could be something else. I’m sorry I don’t have any definitive answers – even in all my centuries on this Earth, and all the things I’ve experienced myself and witnessed in others, this is as new to me as it is to you.”
“Great. So we just continue to feed her and hope for the best?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
“No,” I growled, and turned back to Gwyn. He’d just finished dressing and was making his way over to us, grinning as if we were on some kind of lad’s night out.
“Looks like I’m back on the menu. Shall we?” he said, offering me his arm.
I slit his wrist a second time and he lowered it back to Lady Sarah’s mouth. She was slower to react than she had been before, even though her body must have been craving more of the blood it needed to restore itself to its former glory. I took that as a bad sign and tried to think how we would deal with her if she truly was still under the necromancer’s control. My mind was frustratingly blank. I could think of no other way besides the power of the hunger, and even though that had worked with Zee, it clearly hadn’t had the same effect on Lady Sarah, or she’d have regained her own free will already. So unless Selina could do something with her witchcraft, that left us with killing the necromancer. It seemed the only way to be completely one hundred percent sure in my eyes. Killing him (or her) had to break the spell Lady Sarah was under, just as I’d been told it would with zombies.
Unfortunately, we had to reach said necromancer first. What would we do with Lady Sarah in the meantime? If she was being compelled to attack, she wasn’t likely to sit idly by while we fought our way through the rest of the dungeon and hunted down her new master. No, she’d keep on attacking until we were forced to kill her, just as Zee had been compelled to do right up until the point where I’d broken the necromancer’s hold over him.
Maybe we could find a way to lock her in one of the chambers? I dismissed the idea almost instantly. Not with David in control over the entire place. We couldn’t really rely on a chamber to hold her when he could set her loose to wreak more havoc with the flip of a switch. So what to do?
Lady Sarah latched onto Gwyn’s wrist, and her vampiric healing resumed. More muscle flowed across the slab of raw meat that was currently her body, and she began to regain the shape of her human form.
Her chest swelled beneath her dress until it was most definitely feminine again, her torso no longer appearing sunken but healthy and shapely underneath her clothes. Subcutaneous fat formed over the red like a growth of sickly coloured mould. Pale skin rolled across moments later, restoring her unnatural beauty. The horror of the holy water was nothing but a nightmare, cha
sed away by the divine dream of unholy perfection.
She tore herself away from Gwyn’s veins, her blue eyes no longer dull and unfocused but transformed into shards of ice. Piercing cold fixed on Zee with an intensity that I imagined rivalled the heat of my own amber rage. But where my bestial fury came from the warmth at the centre of life, hers was the iciness of death.
I’d often thought that the flames of my anger could leap across to the vampire and ignite her own blazing inferno. If that had been true before, now it seemed she had passed further into the cold of the grave, all warmth of the life she had once known left behind. As undead we existed somewhere between life and death, but where I would always lurk just on the edge of life, almost a part of it but not quite, she had crossed further into the void. She stalked the very edge of death now.
Lady Sarah had died once to become a vampire, but I wondered if we’d just witnessed a second death and rebirth of sorts. The holy water had almost put an end to her unnatural existence, almost making a true corpse of her forevermore. Almost, but not quite. And against all the odds, here she was not restored to her former glory, but somehow greater and more terrible than she had been, as though she’d been melted down and forged into something stronger. At least, that’s what I liked to think had happened.
“You will release me,” she commanded, her voice inhuman and full of that power from beyond the grave.
Zee seemed unsure of the situation and I couldn’t blame him. The fact she’d pulled herself away from Gwyn rather than having to be forced away again was surely a good sign, but how could we be certain? What if it was merely the necromancer toying with us?
It seemed to me the only way we could test whether she was really herself was to question her about things the Slayers couldn’t possibly know. Then it occurred to me that if Lady Sarah was in there but still under the necromancer’s control, her puppeteer probably had the power to compel her to answer for him. But if the vampire we’d known was really gone and it was her master speaking through this new vessel he’d acquired, then he shouldn’t have the same knowledge Lady Sarah would have, so it could at least confirm the worst for us.
I was about to voice those thoughts to Zee when Lady Sarah thundered again “You will release me!”
She didn’t wait to give him a choice in the matter, throwing him off and rising to her newly formed feet. Zee recovered much quicker than a mortal and lunged at her in an attempt to pin her back down. But in a movement too quick for me to follow, she batted him away, sending him back down to the ground.
She turned those two shards of ice on me and it seemed my fears were confirmed. Just like when Zee had been forced to fight me, it looked like Lady Sarah was now being compelled to focus solely on me. Whatever power was currently running through her, it eclipsed even Zee’s vampiric strength, so what chance did I have? And Gwyn would be no help. I was vaguely aware he’d already retreated to the patch of darkness that offered him a safe haven from the weakness of his human flesh. If he ran back into the fight he’d be trapped in his useless human form again, and unless I could manage to break all the lights and free him to attack as a spirit, then there was nothing he could do. I didn’t even entertain the thought of tricking Lady Sarah to step within reach of the darkness: she was simply too fast for me to lead anywhere near and too smart to make the same mistake a human adversary might have been manipulated into.
I stood as strong and proud as I could manage and readied myself to die. At least I had tried to save her and I hoped that would be enough to ensure Selina did everything she could to save Amy. But then Lady Sarah surprised me by turning her icy glare on the nearest camera and baring her fangs in a hiss. She did it with such cold fury, I half expected the camera to freeze over.
Zee was back on his feet and approaching warily, a shadow sliding into my peripheral vision. Lady Sarah seemed to have forgotten about both of us for the moment, and Zee must have been emboldened by that. I kept my gaze on her in case she snapped, but I instinctively cocked an ear to listen to the other vampire.
“Lady Sarah, are you yourself again?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she answered, turning to him. “Or perhaps not. I am… changed.”
“Changed?” I growled.
“My will is my own, if that is what concerns you both.”
I wanted to glance across at Zee to see his reaction, but my instincts won out, my attention on the potential threat.
Gwyn appeared behind us. “Well, good to know I didn’t almost bleed out for nothing.”
She turned to face him, a questioning look in her eyes. “Your face is familiar, yet I do not believe we have met. You bled for me, why?”
Gwyn shrugged. “These two nerds needed you alive and they weren’t going to give me much say in the matter.”
“Never mind that, what do you mean changed?” I asked her.
“I mean exactly what the word implies. I am not the same as I was before our enemies captured us.”
Her cryptic response set my anger rising again. I found her unwillingness to open up to me as frustrating as ever, and I almost regretted the suffering I’d gone through to save her life.
Both Gwyn and Zee seemed to be aware of my temper flaring up. Gwyn was the nearest and he placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Now is not the time, mate,” he whispered. “Remember Amy.”
Zee shot me a quick warning look, then his eyes met Lady Sarah’s again. “The important thing is you are no longer under their control. Your sister is here, Lady Sarah. She’s just up ahead, with Nick’s human sister. We should go to them, now that you are healed and free of the necromancer’s power.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I hope Selina is well after the Slayers shot her when we were captured. How many nights have passed since then?”
We started back towards Selina and Amy. Zee said “We do not know in this eternal darkness.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me: what is this place?”
“Our lupine friend believes it to be a game of sorts.” He gestured at me.
I nodded and added “I’ve learnt something else since then though, which I hadn’t had chance to tell you, Zee. I think it was designed specifically to punish me, in revenge for one of the humans I killed back home.”
Zee frowned. “To punish you, why?”
“The Slayer running this show is called David and I once called him friend. It’s safe to say our friendship ended the day he found out about my lycanthropy and realised I was the wolf running around the town attacking people, and the one responsible for killing the girl he loved.”
“Ah,” Zee said.
There was a brief pause, then Lady Sarah spoke again, her gaze roaming around the tunnel. “I have never known anything like this before.”
“Points to them for creativity,” Gwyn chimed in. “Look at it this way – at least it makes for a more interesting incarceration than their usual cages and science labs.”
Silence fell. I was still burning with all the unanswered questions I had, but Amy’s life was more important than getting answers from either Lady Sarah or Gwyn, so I refocused on the need to return to Amy’s side. But of course, when I wanted a door to automatically open for us, David wasn’t going to make it that easy.
This next one we came to was different to the others, in that it was clearly visible and had a little barred window set into it, like a prison door. And what I saw through that window made my blood run cold.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dark Truths
Amy lay motionless and pale, no rise and fall of her chest indicating she was still breathing. I strained my ears for signs of life but couldn’t hear anything other than my own pounding heart.
Beside her lay Selina, a bullet hole in her top from where she’d been shot the night we’d been captured. I’d completely forgotten about her gunshot wound when we’d spoken telepathically, too concerned for Amy’s life at the time. As far as I could tell, the bullet had hit her in the abdomen, in a place that hadn’t
proved instantly fatal to her mortal human body. I guessed the Slayers had patched her up so she could play her part in David’s puppet show, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have been able to save herself, let alone Amy. Yet despite the lack of open wounds on her body, she was as deathly still and pale as my sister.
There was no sign of the barghest in there with them and I couldn’t see any immediate threats within, other than the apparent closeness of Death himself.
“Amy!” I roared, even though the rational part of my brain knew she was beyond hearing. I threw myself against the door but it held fast.
“Stand aside,” Lady Sarah commanded.
I was too desperate to reach Amy to react to being ordered around and besides, part of me had considered her to be my alpha for a time. The power of vampires like Lady Sarah deserved respect, if not the vampire themselves. Even Ulfarr had garnered some of my respect for the great power he wielded, despite the way he’d treated me.
Lady Sarah took my place in front of the door. There was a look of concentration on that newly formed, flawless face, her blue eyes glowing with power in a way I’d not seen before. Then the door crumbled into a pile of dust.
She stepped over it with all the confidence and surety of an apex predator, stalking across to her sister and kneeling beside her. Rushing to my own sister, I crouched over Amy and frantically searched for a pulse. I felt my stomach drop when my clawed fingers found nothing, dread turning to shock and disbelief at the situation.
Her skin was so cold beneath my touch, even with the fur covering my body. Yet still my mind refused to accept what my senses were telling it.
“What have you done?” Lady Sarah hissed, rising from Selina’s corpse and fixing those shards of ice on my lupine amber.
“Me? After everything, how can you think this was my doing?”
“Do not deny this was at your request. How could you let her do this?”
“I didn’t let her do anything,” I snarled. “I asked her to save Amy’s life. She said it would be dangerous but that she’d try if I swore to save you in return. I guess whatever she was trying failed…”
