Lycanthropic (Book 4): Moon Rise [The Age of the Werewolf]

by Morris, Steve

  ‘To feed, and to drain their blood,’ said Liz.

  Behind her, she heard the sound of Drake being sick.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Burnham, Buckinghamshire, waxing moon

  The woman appeared from out of a gap in the fence. Griffin dodged back, away from the roadside, but it was too late. He had been spotted. He wondered which way to go, but there were few options. The road was fenced on both sides, and there was no way he could climb in his state. His only choice was whether to try and run, or to stay and face the stranger.

  He had been dreading something like this for days. Now that he was drawing close to Stoke Park, it was impossible to avoid built-up areas. There was barely any countryside around here, just towns that merged into other towns, villages that had been swallowed by housing developments, every last available space filled by a retail park or a DIY superstore. This had never been his favourite part of the world, and now it was full of danger.

  The woman didn’t look particularly threatening at first glance. She was young, and travelling alone. By rights, she ought to have been afraid of him. He wondered how he must look to her. A bearded, grizzly veteran, clickety-clacking along on his homemade crutches, his appearance in no way improved by spending weeks alone in the wilds, muttering to himself and to people no longer with him.

  Yet something about her terrified him. Was it the way she walked, so much at ease, her gait loose, like a tiger patrolling its territory? Or was it the cold look in her eyes, like a shark closing in on its prey?

  Either way, she scared him to the marrow, and he knew without a shred of doubt that she was a werewolf. He turned on his one good heel, and began to head off down the road in the opposite direction.

  After his days of crossing rural England, he had mastered the art of walking with crutches. At the start of his journey, any energetic movement had rubbed his arms raw and left his muscles aching, but now that he had built up some hard skin, and his strength had returned, he could move at a pace, perhaps even faster than normal walking.

  Click-clack, click-clack. He powered himself along the tarmac as quickly as he could.

  After a minute he risked a glance over his shoulder.

  Shark Eyes was closer. Neither running, nor even seeming to exert herself, she loped easily in his direction, gaining on him steadily. She met his gaze with a cold smile.

  He had seen that look before, back in the quarantine hospital in London, when he had been tasked with holding the captured werewolves in isolation. He had seen a hundred of those dead stares and sinister smiles.

  He leaned heavily on his crutches to power himself forward, and felt the support vanish from under him. With a loud crack, the crutch beneath his right arm split and he toppled forward, headlong into the road.

  With no way to break his fall he struck the tarmac with a slap, scraping his right shoulder and arm against the rough surface.

  ‘Aargh!’ He gritted his teeth against the sudden pain and rolled over onto his back. He considered trying to struggle back to his feet, but with a broken crutch he would not get far. Instead he lay there helpless as Shark Eyes closed on him, unhurried.

  Her smile grew broader as she reached him, revealing a row of pearly white teeth. But it didn’t spread as far as her eyes. ‘Well, hello.’ She spoke with a London accent. Standard Estuary English. ‘Do you need a helping hand there?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m good.’

  Her eyes thinned. ‘So, what, are you just going to lie there?’

  ‘What would you prefer?’

  ‘I was hoping for a chase. You know, a little excitement before dinner.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps you should find someone with two working legs.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. You don’t look so tasty.’ She turned to go. ‘Except … now that we’re both here …’

  His options had pretty much run to zero. He couldn’t run, or even walk. Hell, he couldn’t even get up. He lifted the only weapon he had available, his crutch. Bracing himself, he swung it sharply in her direction.

  She ducked away and caught it with one hand.

  He tried to pull it back, but she twisted it from his grip and tossed it to one side. The smile was back on her face. ‘That’s more like it. You know what? My appetite just came back.’

  There was nothing more he could do to defend himself.

  She fell on him, making him squeal like a pig when his leg took her weight. ‘Oh, that hurts, does it?’ she asked. ‘Let me give you some more.’

  She sat up, kneeling on his wound. He almost bit off his own tongue with the pain.

  ‘This is fun,’ said his persecutor. ‘I could literally do this all day.’

  A deafening shot rang out. A pistol, at short range. Blood from the woman lashed his face. A second shot followed and she dropped forward like a stone. Her body lay heavy on his chest, her mouth now fixed in a smile like a rictus.

  With an effort he pushed her off.

  Another woman stood over him now, a pistol in her outstretched arm, shaking slightly. This woman was older, and was no stranger to him. And yet …

  He wished he had some water to splash over himself, to wake himself up. Was this just another dream? Had the fever seized him once again? He felt her hand grasp his, and knew that she was real. ‘You are the very last person I expected to meet,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘But not, I trust, the last person you ever hoped to meet?’

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  ‘You’re pretty handy with a gun, these days,’ said Griffin to the Prime Minister after she had helped him to sit up, and retrieved his one unbroken crutch for him to lean on.

  She nodded. ‘It’s never too late to learn a new skill. Lifelong education has long been one of my passions. But I have to admit that I’m no expert. I don’t even know how many bullets I have left.’

  ‘Let me take a look.’

  Her gun was a Glock 17 semi-automatic, the British Army’s standard issue side-arm. She seemed slightly reluctant to hand it over to him.

  ‘I promise I’ll return it,’ he said.

  She gave it to him and he checked the magazine. ‘Just one round left. The magazine capacity is seventeen rounds when fully loaded. How many have you used?’

  ‘I prefer not to say.’

  He understood her meaning perfectly well. He had been lucky to meet only the one werewolf on his journey. ‘Well, we have to do what it takes to make it through the day.’ He handed the weapon back to her.

  She sat on the road beside him. ‘What happened to you, Colonel? Tell me everything you know. I have received no word from anyone in almost two months.’

  Two months. Had it been no longer than that? Since he’d stopped counting the days, time seemed to have stretched out endlessly. It had been the same as a boy during the school holidays. Six weeks of summer had felt like a lifetime back then. Now that the pressures of modern living had been swept away so dramatically, time had unwound again, slowing from a frenetic gallop to a leisurely trot.

  ‘My helicopter went down in the blasts over London, and I crash-landed in the Surrey hills. I was the only survivor. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to since then.’ He indicated the body of the woman who had tried to kill him and eat him for dinner. ‘I don’t count her.’

  ‘I’ve met others on my journey,’ said the PM, ‘but none of them were friendly.’

  So that explained the lack of ammunition in the Glock. He marvelled at her ability to pick it up and use it without training. The two shots she had fired to rescue him had both found their target. And using a gun to take a life was not for the faint-hearted. But she had always been resolute and determined. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked.

  ‘London. The Pindar bunker.’

  He gaped at her. ‘Seriously? I saw the explosions hit the city. There must have been half a dozen warheads.’

  ‘Nine. Nine warheads in total.’

  ‘Surely no
one could have survived an attack on that scale? I saw the fires spread out and engulf the city, and that was just in the first few seconds after the blast.’

  The PM’s voice grew quiet. ‘London has been almost entirely destroyed by the blasts and the fire, and then by flooding. Only a few buildings are left standing. But a few people survived. Perhaps they were underground when the warheads exploded. Of course, the Pindar bunker was designed expressly to endure a nuclear attack.’

  A silence fell over them, and seemed to grow louder.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, ‘was it you who gave the order?’

  She stared at him coldly. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘No. But it’s the obvious question.’

  ‘The obvious question, Colonel, is who gave the order? And the answer is General Ney. His intention was to wipe the country clean of werewolves once and for all.’

  ‘The country?’

  ‘London wasn’t the only target. All of the major cities were destroyed in the attack.’

  ‘My God.’

  It was hard to process the new information. He had not truly allowed his mind to linger over the number of people who must have died. To think that the devastation had been unleashed right across the country was simply unimaginable. The Colonel was a warrior and a medic and had seen death and carnage on a horrific scale. Yet everything he had witnessed during time of war was nothing compared with this.

  ‘So who’s in charge now?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. Not me. But I mean to find out, and to start putting things back into some semblance of order. A firm hand is needed now. Whoever has taken over from me isn’t doing their job. As far as I can tell, the government has simply collapsed.’

  He knew what was coming next. ‘Count me out, Prime Minister,’ he said to her. ‘My days of saving the world are done. There’s only one person I’m interested in saving, and you’re not going to talk me out of going to her right now.’

  She accepted his protest without comment.

  ‘You’re not going to try and talk me into coming with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Where are you headed?’

  ‘The western evacuation centre at Stoke Park. With any luck I should get there either tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘It isn’t far out of my way,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk with you. It looks like you could use my help.’

  ‘No. Thank you. You go and do what you need to do. I’ll be okay on my own. I’ve made it this far without help.’

  ‘Is that right, Colonel Griffin?’

  ‘Apart from just now,’ he added sheepishly, ‘when you saved my life, that is.’

  She stared at him, her sharp eyes boring into his. It was the same look she had given him when he’d been summoned into her office at Number Ten, Downing Street, expecting to hear of his court martial. ‘Colonel Griffin, I am coming with you, whether you like it or not, and that is final. Just because I’m not prime minister anymore, it doesn’t mean I can’t still tell everyone what to do.’

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Somerset Levels, Somerset, full moon

  It was the twenty-eighth day of April, and Chris watched in bewilderment as snow began to fall from the sky. It had been warm and sunny just a few minutes earlier, but now heavy white flakes gusted toward him as he staggered over the rough grass, his wrists burning where the rope cut into them.

  He had been counting the days since Josh had tied him up and accused him of being a werewolf. Three days and three nights, each one spent in complete agony. He doubted that his arms would ever work properly again. He could no longer feel his fingers. Perhaps they would have to be amputated, along with Seth’s foot.

  His old friend was being carried along on his stretcher by Ryan and Rose, even though Josh and his friends were much bigger and stronger than Rose. But the newcomers had stopped doing any work. Each evening they sent Ryan and Rose out looking for food, then took most of it for themselves. Chris and Seth were being used as hostages, to make sure that Rose and Ryan didn’t just try to run away.

  Seth had been reduced to a state of almost permanent gibbering, crying about his ankle every time they bumped his stretcher, cringing and wailing if Brittany even went near him. Sometimes she would walk alongside him, whispering to him, in order to torment him.

  ‘I might never be able to walk again,’ he told Chris one night. ‘My ankle might never heal.’

  But Chris had no words of comfort to offer him. ‘This is all totally your fault,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll choose your friends with more care in future.’

  ‘I will,’ said Seth. ‘I’ve learned my lesson.’

  ‘And what have you learned, exactly?’

  Seth gazed up at him helplessly. ‘Um, don’t trust the bad guys? Don’t trust strangers? Don’t trust people you tell me not to trust?’

  Chris shook his head sadly to each reply. Seth had still not learned his lesson. ‘Don’t trust anyone,’ he said. ‘It’s what I’ve been saying to you since the beginning.’

  At least today was the last day they would have to endure this agony. Tonight the full moon would rise, nobody would turn into a wolf, and Josh would be forced to admit that he had been wrong all along. Perhaps then, they would finally be allowed to turn north and continue on the road to Hereford.

  But not if it snowed. If clouds covered the full moon, blocking out the moonlight, this hell might go on for another month. Chris lifted his chin to look up at the sky. The white snow fell against his face, but to his surprise its touch was warm. It was blossom, he realized, not snow at all. White blossom from the hedges, blowing in the wind. Spring was in full swing, and everything was growing.

  They were trudging across the low-lying fields of the Somerset Levels. The fields here were muddy and bordered by drainage ditches. The area was a wetland, once nothing more than a vast swamp. It had been drained in medieval times, but was still liable to flooding. Chris’ feet were thoroughly soaked from squelching through the marshy mud all day.

  But at last their destination came in sight.

  ‘There it is!’ shouted Josh with glee. ‘Glastonbury Tor!’

  The steep-sided hill rose prominently above the flat Levels, looking very much like a man-made structure. Yet Chris knew that it was natural. Tor was the Anglo-Saxon word for island, and the hill had once been surrounded by a vast tidal lake, connected to the mainland only at low tide. The conical hill was topped by a ruined tower, once a church, but the mythology of the Tor stretched back to much earlier times, even older than the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail that Josh and his friends had eagerly discussed, all the way back to pre-Christian Celtic times.

  ‘So,’ said Josh, ‘what do you make of that, Chris?’

  ‘We should make camp at the base of the hill.’

  ‘That,’ said Josh, ‘is quite possibly your worst idea yet, Chris. Why would we want to camp at the bottom, in the middle of all this mud? Obviously we’re going to camp on top of the hill.’

  ‘If you light a fire up there, it will be seen from miles around. We don’t know who’s out there. Anyone might come.’

  ‘Do you hear that, Brittany?’ said Josh scornfully. ‘Smart-arse Chris says not to light a fire on top of the hill.’ He pushed his face close to Chris. ‘This is your big night, Chris. And I promise you, tonight we’re going to party like it’s the end of the world! If anyone wants to join us, they’ll be welcome. So no more kill-joy suggestions from you, okay?’

  Chris trudged on in silence. There was no point talking to these idiots. Instead he watched as the Tor grew larger, until eventually they were at its base and there was nothing to see except its giant mound, rising up from the flats, as if it had been dropped in from on high.

  ‘The only way is up!’ cried Josh. ‘Come on, guys, let’s go.’

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Gatwick Airport, West Sussex, full moon

  When Liz arrived at Jones’ camp, it was obvious that she’d come at a bad time. The Corporal st
ood outside the Welshmen’s tent, his face set in a grim mask, quite unlike his usual jovial self. When she had seen him like this on previous occasions, the situation had always turned bad very quickly. Come to think of it, whenever she encountered Jones it was often in the company of a corpse.

  ‘This is not a good time for you to be here, Liz,’ he told her, a warning in his voice.

  But before she could respond, the Dogman was coming out of the tent. His face was twisted into an angry scowl. ‘You!’ he roared. ‘How dare you show your face around here!’

  ‘Why? What have I done?’ she asked.

  ‘Just go,’ said Jones. ‘Go quickly. I’ll explain later.’

  ‘No!’ shouted the Dogman. ‘Let’s do this now.’

  ‘No, Hughes,’ said Llewelyn to the Dogman. ‘Cool down. We’ll talk to Liz when everyone has chilled a little.’

  ‘Cool down? Chill a little? Don’t talk to me like a fool.’ The Dogman was furious with anger. Liz had never seen him so enraged. Rock was off the lead, and the dog clearly sensed its master’s mood. It thrust its jaws up close to Liz, snarling and barking loudly. Hughes made no attempt to restrain it.

  ‘The Dogman’s right,’ said the third guardsman, Evans. ‘Let’s end this now.’ He hefted his machine gun and aimed the barrel at Liz.

  ‘End what?’ she demanded. ‘What are you talking about? What’s happened?’

  She’d come to see the Welsh Guards in a state of elation, all ready to tell them that she’d found new evidence of the vampire’s murderous spree. She’d hoped to recruit their help in identifying the murderer from among the paras. Now she wondered if she was going to leave with her life.

  The Dogman lurched toward her, his fists bunched. He spoke loudly and deliberately, emphasizing each syllable. ‘What has happened, Constable Bailey, is that our friend and colleague, Griffiths, has just died. From blood poisoning following his gunshot wound, if you want to know the gory details.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ Liz had barely known the guardsman, but she knew how close the Welshmen were.