by Stead, Nick
The handle turned and I went through to find a girl tied to a chair, her head bowed in despair as if she’d given up hope of being rescued. Aughtie stood beside her, sharpening some kind of tool. It reminded me of one of the medieval torture devices we’d studied in History, and when I looked back at the girl I realised that was exactly what it was. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and I could see her bare arms were covered in cuts and bruises. It looked like somebody had been beating the shit out of her, and now they were going to try a more creative method to punish her flesh.
I moved further into the room, unsure what to do. I didn’t know who the girl was but I couldn’t just let Aughtie hurt her for no reason. Maybe she was a criminal, but no prison I knew of allowed this kind of thing to go on, at least not in the UK. And what would Aughtie be doing in a prison anyway? No, that’s not what this was. The girl could be innocent.
She didn’t even look up when Aughtie started walking towards her, and I couldn’t take it any longer.
“No!” I yelled.
At first I didn’t think they could hear me. Aughtie certainly couldn’t, and neither could the guards outside, but the girl finally looked up, a mixture of pleading and hope in the blue eyes staring at me through a curtain of bushy hair.
“Lizzy?” I whispered, unable to believe it.
Then flames swallowed up her face and the dream changed, and that’s when it really became a nightmare. Lizzy was reaching to me through flames. Then we were on a battlefield. No, I was on a battlefield. Lizzy had vanished. Zombies surrounded me, along with other things I had no name for. I tried to make sense of the sudden change of environment, looking around to see the zombies were locked in battle with a group of humans – Slayers I presumed.
Aughtie pushed her way through the fighting, sword in hand. Her eyes locked on mine, then she was just suddenly there, in front of me, raising her sword. The next thing I knew, my upper body was on fire and time seemed to have slowed down, though it was never real to begin with. My gaze dropped to my chest, staring at the blade sticking out of it with a mixture of shock and horror.
I fell to my knees, hands clutching at the cold metal in vain as I tried to pull it out. There was blood everywhere, and Aughtie’s cruel laugh was ringing in my ears as I opened my mouth to speak, but only more blood came out. The dream world turned black, my life draining away…
I woke clutching my chest. The dream had been so real it was as if I could feel actual pain where the sword had pierced my heart. And Lizzy, I felt sure she was real. My memory turned to the night Lady Sarah had explained the nature of dreams, and I knew what it meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
The Beast Breaks Loose
“Lizzy’s alive,” I said.
“What?” Lady Sarah asked, distracted. I’d found her feeding in a dark alley, her fangs buried deep in the throat of a boy not much older than I was back then. She’d looked to be enjoying it more than the boy, her face full of pleasure and hunger and something else inhuman, while the boy had clearly been terrified. But she’d done something to him, so that he couldn’t scream. Even as he lay bleeding to death he couldn’t scream.
“Lizzy’s alive,” I repeated.
“You are certain?”
“Yeah, and I have to save her. She’d do the same for me.”
“No. If the Slayers have kept her alive, it is a trap. Wait until we have gathered the others, then we will go for her.”
“What if it isn’t a trap? She might not have that long.”
“She does not know about our world?”
I shook my head.
“Then she has no valuable information to give them, thus there is no other reason for them to have captured her in the first place. You will be killed if you go alone.”
I opened my mouth to argue but she held up a hand and I let her continue. “You are no good to her dead. Give me a few more days to contact the others, then we will take those that wish to fight and there will be enough of us to rescue your friend.”
I still wasn’t convinced. Patience had never been my strong suit and there was no way I was going to wait around for the Slayers to kill Lizzy. But I didn’t tell the vampire that.
“Lady Sarah, there’s something else. Lizzy’s not the only one they took.” I told her about Vince’s grim fate. The boy started to convulse, virtually unnoticed by the two of us.
“No, it cannot be,” she whispered, her eyes staring at something only she could see. “He cannot be gone.”
“Are you okay?” I knew it was a stupid question but I didn’t know what else to say.
She drew in a deep breath and her face became its usual impassive mask, though I sensed the news had affected her more deeply than she was letting on. Maybe she’d even cry for him when I left. I didn’t know how close they’d been, but on some level she was deeply shaken by his passing. “I will be all right. Is there anything else I need to know?”
I hesitated. I’d planned to tell her about the rest of the dream, but after the way she’d taken the news about Vince, I didn’t want to give her any more shocks for the night. Still, she needed to know. “Lizzy’s alive, but that’s not all. Even if I wait until we are ready for battle, if I save her, it means I’ll die.”
That’s what the dream meant. But it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t leave Lizzy to the Slayers. I wouldn’t let them do to her what they’d done to Vince. I’d tried to protect her from being dragged into this mess and I’d failed. But unlike me she could still get out. I was in it now until I died. She was human and hopefully still ignorant of our existence; if she got out now, she had a life to go back to. I couldn’t stay in the human world any longer. Her life was worth more than mine in the circumstances.
“Nothing is certain,” Lady Sarah said. “Many will die in the coming battle. I hope you are not one of them.”
With that comforting statement, she spared the boy a final glance and was gone. He died seconds later. I didn’t know how much blood she needed to survive, but either she preferred to take it from the living and this victim was no longer of any interest, or she was already satisfied. Or perhaps she hadn’t gone in search of more prey at all, perhaps she’d gone to contact other vampires, or maybe even to mourn Vince. After nearly a year she was still a mystery.
With a sigh, I took to wandering again, grateful the storm had passed at least. I hadn’t really expected help from the vampire but I’d had to do something. After the nightmare, I couldn’t sleep. Lizzy needed me. So I’d gone to find Lady Sarah, knowing I had to tell her about Vince as well as the dream, and received neither comfort nor knowledge for my troubles. I’d been hoping she might have given me something to go on, like where they might be holding Lizzy. Maybe she didn’t know either.
I had one last hope of finding them. Aughtie had been in the dream. It had been so realistic I didn’t think that was a coincidence and that could mean only one thing – she was a Slayer.
That revelation came as a shock but it made sense; it was why the wolf had been so scared in that first English lesson if it already knew, and why she’d been the hunter in that one nightmare that had triggered the change. I just hadn’t thought they’d be anyone I’d know. In my imagination they’d always been shadows in the darkness with no names or faces, as if they were the monsters, not us. But if I was going to help Lizzy, I didn’t have time for shock.
I went to the same deserted part of town I’d used before and changed to wolf form. Then I ran back to the school, not caring who saw me. If the Slayers found me first I’d force them to take me to my friend. I didn’t think they’d shoot on sight. They’d passed up too many chances to kill me, which could only mean they wanted me alive for something.
When I reached the school and broke into the English classroom, I touched the wolf part of my mind, feeling the instincts in there and using them to help pick up Aughtie’s scent. It took a while, since I’d never tried anything like this before, but I found it easy enough in the classroom.
It was a n
erve-racking experience. Every moment spent in the room made me uneasy and I had the troubling sensation of being watched. Such was the strength of Aughtie’s presence that it could still be felt there, even when she was miles away.
I lost the trail in the corridor outside and couldn’t pick it up again. Nor was there was any hint of her in the car park or on the field, and it was only then I remembered she drove to work. And there was no way I could track her car.
So what now? I sank to my haunches, trying to come up with a new idea of how to find her. A twig snapped. My ear swivelled of its own accord, my head beginning to turn, when something smashed against my skull. The world turned black.
With a groan, I opened my eyes to find my vision blurred. The floor was hard and cold beneath my naked body, and it felt like metal. I tried to pull myself up, but pain lanced through my skull, accompanied by a wave of nausea in my stomach. Moving was out of the question for the time being, it seemed.
The smell of humans filled my nostrils and, with the wolf’s help, I was able to pick out the scents of five males, each holding a piece of metal which could only be a gun. Someone had placed guards around me, more than I’d seen with Lizzy in the dream. Either the vision hadn’t been accurate or they were afraid of me. I was willing to bet on the latter, and I supposed I couldn’t blame them if they’d seen firsthand all the damage I’d caused. It would make escaping that much more difficult though.
My vision began to clear and my eyes took in the bars of what appeared to be a cage built into a larger, dimly lit room. Everything looked to be made of reinforced metal, and I guessed we were in some sort of military style complex, one with good soundproofing, even for my supernaturally enhanced ears. Probably so the public can’t hear the screams, I thought bitterly to myself, knowing who my captors must be. Lizzy could be nearby, for all the good that knowledge did me. I was no use to her while I was stuck in a cage.
It felt like the after effects of the blow to my head were passing and I risked moving again, pulling myself to my feet. The cage turned out to be a small one, only just big enough for me to stand and walk five small paces from wall to wall as a human. Beyond the bars, I could see the guards had their backs to me, and there was also a thick metal slab with chains built into it, fixed to the wall on the left. Some sort of torture device? Or was it used for some kind of experiment? A dark stain covered the floor around it. Blood. It was too old for the wolf to learn anything from the smell, but I guessed it was from another undead, maybe a werewolf or maybe something else. I couldn’t know if the room had been specifically adapted to hold my kind or whether they were all like this, built to hold almost anything.
I didn’t really expect to be able to escape my cage through brute force, but I would have been a fool not to at least test the strength of the bars they’d put me behind. If there was any weakness, maybe I could find a way to work at it without the guards realising, then I’d slip through and kill at least one of them before the bullets started flying. But as soon as my hands touched the metal, a burst of electricity jolted through my body, throwing me back against the wall with a yelp. The room filled with the smell of burning flesh.
Two of the guards looked around and smirked, but the others seemed to be more disciplined. I growled at them and looked at my hands to find the skin had been burnt off, though it was nothing a quick transformation wouldn’t heal. Then I remembered I’d been a wolf when they’d caught me. Had I transformed while I was unconscious? I hadn’t even known that was possible, but I was wishing I’d have stayed in wolf form. Two transformations without feeding in between had left hunger ravaging my innards, so powerful it was nauseating.
Wait, if I’d shifted then why was I feeling the after effects of being knocked out? A pang of fear stabbed through my guts. Was there something wrong with my body’s ability to heal? I concentrated on my throbbing palms and watched the skin roll over them as it hardened into pads, then reversed the changes. So it wasn’t that I couldn’t heal. They must have given me some kind of tranquiliser to keep me out while they brought me in here, I realised.
I wondered why I wasn’t being electrocuted on the metal floor, until I noticed the plastic casing round the base of the bars. So I’d learnt I couldn’t break out that way, something that had obviously been taken into consideration when designing the complex. There were no windows, no other weak points that held any possibilities. It didn’t look like I was going anywhere soon. Damn.
I was contemplating my fate when none other than Aughtie herself walked into the room.
She swaggered over to the cage to taunt me. I watched her with hungry eyes, feeling my tongue slide out with the desire to rip into her flesh. But I couldn’t harm her while I was behind bars and she knew it.
“So we meet again, Nick,” she said.
I met her gaze but said nothing. Nor did I make any attempt to cover up my nakedness. It no longer bothered me like it had when I’d been mostly human.
“I hope the accommodation is to your liking. It’s such a challenge to keep any of your kind captive, but I feel the electric bars are a nice touch – a stroke of brilliance if I do say so myself.”
“Shouldn’t you be out teaching Shakespeare somewhere to someone that cares?” Maybe it wasn’t wise to goad her while I was at her mercy, but I couldn’t help it. She was my English teacher for God’s sakes; she didn’t belong in this world, in this war. But then, neither did I. In many ways I was still just a kid, even though the curse had forced me to mature faster than other teenagers. I hadn’t known what I was asking for when I’d wanted to be one of the monsters. And now I was one for real and all I wanted was my humanity back, though I knew it was too late for that. Even if someone cured me of my curse, I’d already become a killer. There’s no going back when you cross that line.
“Teaching is what I do for a living, but this, this is my great purpose in life.”
That statement didn’t inspire me with much confidence. It seemed I was dealing with yet more insanity. She really believed it too, I could hear it in her voice.
She droned on for a bit about serving God, ridding the world of evil, and something about being chosen to be a leader of this great army. I soon lost interest and gave her the same treatment I’d have given any teacher in any situation. I switched off. My blank face was turned towards her as if I were listening, but no one was home. I retreated into my fantasies while her voice washed over me, a few of them involving her screaming in pain. My mind was still reeling slightly at learning the leader of the Slayers in the area was my English teacher. It felt like something out of a B-movie.
When I thought she was going to go on forever I said “Oh please, God doesn’t give a damn, otherwise why would he suffer us to exist in the first place? Okay, so some guy wanted to be a hero and put humans back at the top of the food chain, so he created his own little army to kill us all off and make the world a better place. That’s all down to humanity. God had no part in it, if he even exists. Besides, I didn’t think you believed in God. From the way you go on at school, I thought you worshipped Shakespeare and all those poets you go on about.”
She didn’t seem to know what to say to that, but I’d succeeded in angering her.
“You know nothing of us or our history. If you knew, you would not talk about the first of us with such disrespect. That’s what this generation needs. Respect. Yes.” She whispered that last word, a dreamy look passing over her face. “But enough of this, there will be time for idle talk later. We know you are gathering your own forces for some kind of last stand. Werewolves alone can walk in sunlight and we believe you are the last. So your army needs the cover of darkness. Give me their daylight resting places and we will release you, unharmed.”
I said nothing. I knew I needed to be careful not to reveal how little I knew, or my cage would quickly become my tomb. And even if I had known any more about the army the vampires were supposedly gathering, I wouldn’t have betrayed them.
“How many are there?”
My eyes fixed on a small dint in the wall just above her head, my expression as emotionless as I could make it.
She sighed and I wasn’t sure if it was in frustration or a kind of pleasure. “I didn’t think you’d be too co-operative to begin with. But what if I told you we’ve developed a cure for the curse? Think about it, Nick. You can walk away from all this. They need never know you betrayed them. You can go back to your old human life, safe in a world free of monsters. The undead will not be a threat when we’ve finished with them, at least in this area.”
She was lying, I was sure of it. Still I said nothing.
She sighed once more. “If that’s the way you want it to be then fine, we’ll do this the hard way. I will break you if it comes to it. And one way or the other you will tell me everything, then you can watch as they all die.”
“And afterwards?” I asked, undaunted.
“Let’s just say I’ve got something special in mind,” she whispered so that only I could hear. Raising her voice again, she commanded “No food unless he talks!”
She was about to go but then, with a smile, she added “I’ll visit you again when you’re in a more talkative mood. No food is just the beginning. Think on that.”
I watched her swagger out of the room, noting the way she pressed the palm of her right hand onto a small panel before the door opened. So if I did find a way out of the cage I’d need someone to get me out of the room. Were the guards authorised to open the door or was it restricted to their superiors? Surely they’d have to change over at some point, but would someone escort them through the complex or could they come and go freely? I hoped they’d be able to open the doors, because even if I somehow broke free of the cage, the chances of someone like Aughtie being in the room at the same time were minimal.
I sank to the floor. No food. To a werewolf that was the worst possible torture and Aughtie knew it, especially when I could smell prey just beyond the bars of the cage. I wasn’t sure exactly what effect starvation would have on me, or even whether I could die of starvation or not, but I remembered that one winter night without feeding which had left me as weak as if I’d been starving for months. Granted I’d been eating little at the time, but the wolf had still fed when it was allowed to roam free, other than that one night it had failed to make a kill. For some reason, after these two latest transformations I was much stronger than the last time in winter, but I knew if I didn’t feed soon I wouldn’t have the strength to change and that would make it harder to escape. And even if starvation couldn’t kill me, I knew enough about myself to know it would exact a heavy toll upon my mind, if nothing else.