by Stead, Nick
Before long, we came to a treeline marking another patch of woodland, visible as a wall of blackness appearing more solid than the veil of shadows covering the open countryside. It was dense enough that barely any moonlight filtered through the canopy, autumn not yet advanced to the point where the branches became bare. Only then did we slow, the vampires growing cautious as we neared our destination.
Flocks of sheep could still be heard sounding the alarm in the distance but otherwise the night was quiet, the natural wildlife cowering in their dens. Lady Sarah seemed satisfied that the shelter she had in mind was free of danger. She was the first to step between the trees.
Zee wasn’t far behind, his fangs bared and his hand on the hilt of the cutlass at his hip. Selina went next. That left me to bring up the rear.
Ears pricked and nose to the wind, I hesitated a moment, not yet satisfied the woods were as peaceful as they’d first appeared. There were no scents or sounds to suggest anything awaited within, but I’d been caught unawares too often to simply trust what my senses were telling me. Danger could be lurking downwind, supernaturally silent and cloaked in shadows even our superior eyesight struggled to penetrate.
Seconds trickled by as I stood there straining my senses, yet the night remained unwilling to give up its secrets, even to its supernatural children. The land was still, its creatures quiet. Only the soft footsteps of my companions carried to me from between the trees, and then the moment passed and I crossed that dark threshold into the woods.
Lady Sarah led us to the ruins of an old abbey, much like the one my parents used to take me and Amy to when we were younger, except less complete. It was little more than the skeleton of a once grand building, but there still stood a section with a small, windowless chamber.
“Not perfect, but it will serve our purpose for the day,” Lady Sarah said.
“Isn’t it a tourist attraction?” I asked.
“No, few humans come here as I am sure you can sense for yourself. I believe the land is private and the ruins deemed too unsafe for visitors.”
I sniffed the air again, then lowered my nose to the ground. She was right; the only recent human trail I could detect was already several days old. Yet still I struggled with the nagging feeling that we were not alone.
Selina seemed to guess my concerns from Lady Sarah’s side of the conversation. “I’ll summon Varin back when sunrise forces us to rest. He’ll scare off any prying eyes, short of the Slayers themselves.”
“It’s as good a place as any,” Zee said. I got the impression he was about to say something else, but the noise of a zip beat him to it, as out of place in the natural world as the four of us.
As one, the heads of we three predators twisted towards the sound. Selina was slower to react, her body still only human, despite the power she’d gained through witchcraft.
“What was that?” a voice hissed, followed by the zip again.
“What was what?” a second voice replied, groggy with sleep. They both sounded to be male and fairly young, like late teens or early twenties.
“I thought I heard something,” the first voice said, tinged with fear and uncertainty.
The wind was blowing in the wrong direction to catch their scents, but I had a good idea of who they were from their voices alone. I could just imagine the two young men camping out here for a dare, the first one’s eyes snapping open as some primal instinct was tripped by our presence. That gut feeling of coming danger must have driven him to unzip their tent and peer outside, searching the shadows for anything amiss.
“It’s probably just a fox or a badger. Go back to sleep,” the second voice mumbled. I imagined he was still laid in his sleeping bag, eyes closed and nodding back off.
“No, it sounded a lot bigger and I could have sworn I heard voices. Maybe it was a mistake coming here without telling anyone. What if there’s some psycho running round the woods or one of those big cats people keep sighting?”
“For fuck’s sake! If there is something out there you’re only going to attract its attention. We’ll pack up and go tomorrow if you don’t have the balls for this.”
I could hear the pounding of the first one’s heart, my mouth watering in anticipation of the rich fluid it pumped round his body and the succulent flesh just begging for my fangs to set it free. Even after all the carnage of the dungeon we’d been imprisoned in, my need to kill was as strong as ever, summoned back into being by the full moon just beyond the woodland canopy. Fresh hunger reverberated through my stomach and into my brain, turning my thoughts to the human prey which called to my predatory instincts in a way even the terrified livestock hadn’t. And I knew the vampires felt it too, their need for blood just as strong.
“We should not,” Lady Sarah whispered, her voice thick with lust.
“No,” Zee agreed. “But you heard what they said – no one knows they’re out here. By the time anyone comes looking we will be long gone.”
I growled my agreement and the two men’s fates were sealed.
We left Selina by the ruins, slinking together through the darkness like the pack I still longed for and circling round to the tent, pitched in a clearing touched by the light of the full moon. The face I’d expected to see peering out had withdrawn back into the deceptive safety of those four flimsy walls. But that didn’t matter. We closed in on the humans’ makeshift den and tore our way through before they even had a chance to sense the predators at their door.
Fabric ripped beneath tooth and claw, and two terrified faces turned towards us. It happened too fast for them to do much more than wriggle free of their sleeping bags. Then Lady Sarah was lunging for the nearest one, latching onto his throat and drinking deeply from his jugular. Zee wasn’t far behind, sinking his fangs into the man’s wrist. That left me free to savage the other.
I gave a hungry snarl and grabbed hold of a leg, shredding flesh and crunching through bone. Blood spurted from torn arteries, bathing our bodies and painting the inside of the tent, black in the moonlight. The warmth of it only added to my excitement and I shook my head with greater ferocity, drunk on the rich flavour coating my tongue.
A kick to my muzzle with his good leg persuaded me to drop his damaged limb. This boy was nothing more to me than another meal to fill the hole his presence had opened in my belly. There was nothing personal about the kill, nor was I ruled by that same darkness I’d let myself sink into for so long. I had no need to make him suffer as I had so many before him. So I rose from his leg and lunged at his neck, ending his life with a quick, merciful bite to his throat. His spinal column broke with the force of the attack, his body growing still and his screams of fear and pain cut off mid-cry.
Once the human was dead I ate my fill of his flesh and raided the treasure trove of viscera stashed in his abdomen, then the vampires drained the rest of his blood. It was over in moments, our hungers sated for another night.
The sky was already beginning to lighten when we emerged from the mess of tattered fabric and ruined flesh, and the vampires were quick to retreat to their chosen shelter for the day. I stayed behind. The hunger would only rise anew with my body’s demands to replenish the energy it took for my flesh to shift from the likeness of one species to another. I’d pick what meat was left from the bones of our victims once I’d changed back. Drained of their blood, the corpses would be less palatable now the vampires had fed on them. But it was better than spending the day feeling famished.
Sunlight swept across the land, a bright beam lancing down into the clearing and calling to my human shape. I readied myself for the usual pain of shifting flesh and bone, welcoming the return to my human form if only for the chance to repair my ruined leg. Except it never came.
See Nick’s other books here:
http://Author.to/nickstead
About the Author
A lifelong fan of supernatural horror and fantasy, Nick spends his days prowling the darker side of fiction, often to the scream of heavy metal guitars and the purrs of his feline c
ompanions.
Fate set him on the path of the writer at the tender age of 15. The journey has been much longer and harder than his teenage self ever anticipated, but 17 years later he is still forging ahead.
Nick is best known for his Hybrid series. He has also had short stories published in various anthologies, and will soon be releasing his first non-Hybrid novel based on the true story of the Pendle witches.
For more information about Nick, Hybrid, and other works visit: www.nick-stead.co.uk. Don’t forget to sign up to his newsletter to keep up to date with upcoming releases and signing events, and receive a free short story, exclusive to the mailing list.
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Also By Twisted Fate Publishing
CHRONICLES OF THE FALLEN
By Gareth Clegg
Vol 1: The Crowman
Vol 2: Babylon
Vol 3: Revelations
——————————
THE HYBRID SERIES
By Nick Stead
Book 1 - Hybrid
Book 2 - Hunted
Book 3 - Vengeance
Book 3.5 - Ascension (Lady Sarah Novella) - coming 2020
Book 4 - Damned - coming 2020
IF YOU ENJOYED VENGEANCE
Look out for
THE CROWMAN
The Crowman is the first novella in a Weird West / Supernatural Western Horror series from Amazon best selling author Gareth Clegg.
Available from Amazon
http://ViewBook.at/crowman
THE CROWMAN (Sample)
Chronicles of the Fallen Vol One
The sun squeezed the sweat from my tanned skin as relentless waves of heat burned across the barren rocky wasteland. I adjusted my wide-brimmed hat, keeping the glare from my eyes, and cursed the long duster draping from my shoulders. I’d be glad of it once the merciless red orb dropped and the temperatures plummeted, but for now, it was a hindrance. I struggled on through the badlands, near ready to collapse.
A rocky outcrop provided a sliver of shade, and I sat, thankful for the relief from the intense burning sun. My canteen was dry, but I squeezed out a few tiny drops that had been hiding somewhere inside. One of them missed my mouth, splashing into my eye. “Damn it.”
With a heavy sigh, I battled on, planting one foot before the other. It couldn’t be much further now, could it? A loud caw brought me back to my senses, and I sought the origin of the sound.
A single crow picked at the remains of a tribal warrior, his face painted black from the mouth down. The body carried fresh claw marks from something large, bloody streams running across his chest and dripping into the dark sand. The bird didn’t notice my approach and continued pecking the last juicy remnants of his eye. Fleshy strings pulled taut, until the surrounding muscle tore free, then was greedily devoured.
It chugged the tasty morsel down before turning its dead eyes on me, the throaty caw a warning to keep away from its meal. With a blink, its semi-opaque eyelid slid from left to right, and it spread its wings with a mighty flap, taking to the sky. After circling three times, it headed south.
Glancing back to the corpse, there was just an area of discoloured sand resembling the shape of a body. I shielded my eyes, gazing up to track the crow, but that had gone too. “Shit, I need to get out of this sun.”
Everything shifted, and I was speeding through the air as the arid terrain passed far below. In the distance, a mass of dark birds circled over a small town. As I approached, they swirled, forming a black cyclone before plummeting to the ground, coalescing into a human form.
The last thing I recalled was the shadowy figure walking towards a two-storey building where faded writing proclaimed the dilapidated place as ‘The Lucky Dollar Saloon’. As it passed beneath the battered sign, hanging at an odd angle from rusted nails, it turned, staring right at me.
I woke with a start, dripping with sweat. A lightning storm raged outside, and my heart thundered in my chest, pumping ice through my veins. I rolled over, placing my feet onto the packed earth of the bunkhouse floor. That was the fifth occurrence of the same dream on consecutive nights. Shit like that didn’t happen without reason in my experience.
So, next stop Providence, and The Lucky Dollar.
—————
The Crowman is available on Amazon now
along with the rest of Gareth’s books.
http://Author.to/garethclegg
—————
REVIEWS FOR THE CROWMAN
“Weird West at Its Best”
“I’ve read quite a few books on Kindle, this is the first one that I put everything aside to finish”
“What really drew me into this story was the characters. In addition to the primary male lead, who was AWESOME, we have a female character who holds her own…and, her part of the story”
“A great novella that leaves you wanting more”
“I could not put this book down, brilliant.”
“Spellbinding”
“Mystic Wild West”
“Western with a supernatural twist”
“A fun twist on a western/ gunslinger story. Short but sweet, worth a read”
