by Nick Stead
That moment of stillness seemed to last for so much longer than the mere seconds it truly was, a fresh wave of adrenalin flooding my system in preparation for the fight to come. I thought I might manage one more transformation without collapsing into a weak, starved heap, but I’d never be able to take it far enough in time to gain the greater strength and speed I’d need to take on so many of the ghouls at once. In human form I knew I didn’t stand a chance, even with Zeerin fighting beside me. Maybe if we’d both been rested and well-fed we might have been able to take them, but the ghouls were also supernaturally fast and strong and they had the advantage of numbers. Our only hope was to flee once again – we’d have to run back to the other door we’d originally passed by and just pray there was a way to close it from the other side and lock the ghouls out.
I just about had chance to process all that when the pack of ravenous undead charged us. Luckily Zeerin seemed to have come to the same conclusion I had because he turned and scooped Hannah up in his arms, then started to run. I was only a split second behind, pushing my body to its limits as I desperately tried to keep pace with the vampire and stay ahead of the ghouls.
We raced back through the tunnel, the ghouls hot on our heels. One of them pulled ahead of the rest of the pack and bit into my calf in mindless determination to feed on warm flesh. I roared with pain but somehow managed to keep my balance and shake the creature off with a powerful jerk of my leg, pushing myself onwards before any others could latch on. The ghoul rolled off but the rest of the pack weren’t far behind.
The door we’d taken to be a side passage or chamber was just up ahead when another of the ravenous undead pounced, sending me crashing to the stony floor. We rolled over the uneven surface, my body feeling bruised and battered from the impact and my bare skin tearing off in places from the friction of my prone form sliding over it at such high speed, until I came to a stop laid on my back. Numerous cuts and grazes stung as nerves reacted with oxygen but adrenalin helped keep the pain at bay. I was more concerned with the supernatural predator that had decided I was prey, clawed hands digging into my flesh as it fought to keep hold of me and bite down with those skeletal jaws.
It was at that moment I discovered the coloured water I’d drunk had been poisoned and it had just been slower than expected to take effect, the discomfort the message on the wall had referred to making itself known in a wave of molten fury. Sweat rolled across my skin, my blood boiling as if I was on the verge of changing again. My muscles started to ache and my vision blurred. And all the while the ghoul continued its struggle to make a meal of my human body, becoming more frenzied in response to the rising weakness of my flesh beneath the poison’s onslaught.
I fought to keep its head at arm’s length with one hand as best I could, while I used the rest of my body to try and push it off completely. But I couldn’t bring my legs up far enough to kick it off so I used my other hand to rip into its chest in a wave of cold, dark blood which splattered across my fevered skin. The strike elicited a scream from my attacker and caused the creature to roll off. Hungry as the ghouls were, they must still have had some sense of self-preservation, unlike the mindless zombies we’d faced who were bound to the will of the necromancer that raised them. The creature knew I was trying to get at its heart and it retreated before I had the chance, though I knew it would come for me again as soon as the rest of the pack were within range to join the attack. And that moment was only a minute away, maybe less.
Zeerin had skidded to a stop beside the lever while I’d been busy wrestling with the ghoul, and he’d already pulled it. The panel had just risen high enough for us to squeeze under, the vampire pushing Hannah through and then diving after her, leaving me to scramble behind them on all fours. I felt more clawed hands latch onto my legs and I dug my own clawed hands into the stone, trying to keep them from pulling me back through.
There came a cry of frustration when the vampire found we’d seemingly come to another dead end, the passage on the other side of the door ending abruptly just a few metres away. We were going to have to fight the pack of ghouls after all but at least we had one thing in our favour – the tunnel was too narrow for the pack to attack as one big group, which meant we were only facing waves of three or four at most. Sword in hand, he turned back to face the frenzied creatures, slicing through the head of the ghoul still trying to drag me backwards into the midst of the hungry pack with a single blow.
“Can you keep them busy for a few minutes?” I grunted, trembling on hands and knees.
Zeerin nodded and stepped forward with a fierce grin, the light of battle in his eyes as his bloodlust rose and the fight called him. Fleeing might have seemed like our best chance at survival but this was where our hearts truly lay, in the savage joy of combat.
Hannah had the sense to stay back, the vampire’s spell the only thing keeping her terror at bay and preventing any rising panic which might have caused her to get in our way. But I felt her wide eyes on me as I called on the transformation, knowing it was my only hope to counteract whatever poison I’d been given and lend me the strength to defeat the enemy undead. Though with my core temperature already burning so high, for the first time in a long while I didn’t relish giving in to the change then. My body was already on fire – with the added heat of the change, I felt like my flesh might go up in flames. And yet, staying in human form wasn’t an option, so I resigned myself to the added discomfort I was about to endure and let the transformation take hold, my rage rising with it.
Sweat was pouring from my skin then, my body in danger of becoming dehydrated again. The fur that sprouted was soon sodden with it. I thought I was going to melt into a pool of molten blood and tissue, Hannah surely feeling the heat coming off me from where she stood, unable to tear her eyes away from the terrifying spectacle few would ever see outside of nightmares or horror movies. But my flesh held, shifting as normal until the human weaknesses fell prey to my lupine might. As always, it was smoother and quicker for me willing it to happen, despite the effects of the poison, though it still took a few minutes to take it halfway to my hybrid form. I tried to focus beyond the discomfort and the threat of the ghouls as best I could while those precious minutes ticked by, trying to let the change happen as fast as possible and trusting the vampire to keep the ghouls off of me while I shifted. He’d planted himself in the now open doorway, hacking and slashing at the horde of ghouls surging towards us and doing his best to keep any from creeping past.
My body wolfish enough to purge the poison from its system and gain the advantages of both forms for the coming fight once again, I bounded forward to take my place beside Zeerin. Several ghouls already lay dead at his feet, the stench of their rotten blood adding to the foul odour of the dungeon and causing the human girl to gag behind us. I focussed my senses on the rival predators foolish enough to think I could ever be viable prey, a new confidence rising on the tidal wave of fury coursing through my veins.
A new opponent bounded forward but I was ready for it this time, grabbing the skeletal frame in my hands and biting down on its head with my powerful jaws, ending its unnatural existence in a spray of blood and gore as its skull caved in from the force of it and brains exploded outwards. I dropped the corpse and slashed at another ghoul, opening up deep gashes across its throat. It would’ve been a fatal wound to a mortal foe but against an undead it was never going to be that easy: my adversary took the blow as if I’d done no more than scratch the surface of its rotting skin, lunging forward and clamping its jaws round my right arm. Another ghoul latched onto my leg and I roared in pain as they tore chunks from my limbs, my own blood flowing freely from the wounds and mixing with the spreading pool of gore from our fallen enemies. I tore the frenzied undead from my limbs, smashing their heads into the stone walls with another explosion of rotting brains and blood, while Zeerin cleaved through the heads of two more of the creatures charging at him.
There must have been dozens of ghouls locked in the chamber because no matter
how many we felled, more just kept on pouring towards us. For each one that went down, there was another already leaping over the body and throwing itself into the combat, giving us no time to rest. I was beginning to tire, rage and adrenalin only able to carry me so far without being allowed to feed and take a break from all the physical exertion I was having to put my body through. Blood and sweat trickled down the skin beneath my pelt, my limbs starting to feel heavy and unresponsive to my brain’s commands. A deep ache pulsed through my body, my muscles begging for a reprieve from the constant fighting. And still the ghouls kept on coming.
Their lifeless corpses piled up in the doorway, gradually forcing us backwards. The undead climbed the pile with ease and leapt from the top, the first few cut down in mid-air by the vampire’s blade. Then one of them dived at me. I ducked, the skeletal body flying harmlessly over my head, but when I twisted round to deal with it I found the ghoul had carried on going and was intent on ripping into the human it truly desired.
With a roar, I bounded forward and pounced on the creature, pinning it down while I sank my fangs into its back and ripped out its heart. But there was nothing appetising about the cold dead organ which didn’t even beat with the life I would’ve torn from a living victim, and I dropped it in disgust. I looked up to find Hannah gaping at me, her mouth open in a silent scream but Zeerin’s power still keeping her fear from taking over. If I’d been just a fraction slower, bits of her would probably be lying amongst the other corpses already. I couldn’t even explain why I’d rushed to her rescue when she was a stranger to me, a human who would have been no more than prey in any other instance. It wasn’t that I wanted the kill for myself since I was still suspicious of the Slayers’ motives for locking her in with us. Maybe somewhere in my subconscious I considered the possibility there might be another room that demanded a sacrifice, where we could spill her blood instead of having to give more of our own. If that was it I wasn’t conscious of the thought at the time, merely reacting on instinct when I saw the ghoul about to attack her.
Finally the last of the skeletal creatures died to Zeerin’s cutlass and the pile of stinking bodies was still. The vampire took a rag out from one of the pockets in his coat and cleaned the worst of the gore from his blade, his eyes meeting mine as if to ask what now?
“So you really are a werewolf,” Hannah said, sounding shaken.
“Yes,” I growled.
“And you’re really a vampire?” she asked Zeerin, who nodded in response. She took a minute to process that, her eyes falling on the dead ghoul whose heart I’d torn out. “So what were those things?”
“Ghouls,” I answered, changing the subject before she could ask anything else. “We should go back to the room they were all locked in and see if there’s some hidden door.”
“Wouldn’t those monsters have found a way out if there was one?” Hannah questioned.
“They are not particularly intelligent, especially when driven into a craze from hunger,” Zeerin replied. “It’s worth searching the room, I suppose.”
“Well this seems to be a dead end, unless there’s something we’re missing here,” I said. “But if there was another hidden door you’d think we’d have triggered it during the fight.”
“Unless the Slayers were overriding the controls because they didn’t want us to find it during the fight,” Zeerin answered.
“I guess. I think we should explore the other room first though, now it’s clear of enemies.”
Climbing over the pile of bodies was easier than trying to move them out of the way in the confines of the tunnel, unpleasant though it was to pull ourselves up over the corpses. Once on the other side of the dead ghouls it didn’t take long to make our way back to the chamber they’d spilled out from. A trail of blood marked our progress and I was forced to expend more energy on healing my wounds.
We were able to pass into the room without the door sliding down behind us or any other traps being triggered, but a thorough search of the chamber revealed nothing of interest. We could find no hidden doors, buttons, pressure points or levers that might have operated a nearby door, and the room was empty save for the scraps of flesh the ghouls had been fighting over before we’d set them free. But working our way back through the tunnels revealed no further secrets either, no clues as to how to progress to the next level. We ended up back in the chamber where we’d found Hannah, slumping against the wall in defeat. After everything we’d been through, it seemed we faced a long, slow death from starvation after all.
Chapter Seven – Return to the Modern World
Hunger ravaged my insides, my body demanding more calories to replace the energy I’d spent on the transformation to fight the ghouls. The human was beginning to look ever more appetising the longer we sat there and my mouth began to water with the longing to rip into her warm flesh, though caution still held me back. But for how long remained to be seen. Once my hunger became strong enough I had no doubt it would override my other instincts, and the same may well hold true for Zeerin. If that happened we would no longer be allies but two rival predators fighting over a kill, reduced to a primal state akin to that which we’d just encountered in the pack of ghouls.
Silent tears ran down Hannah’s cheeks as she hugged herself, probably wishing she was back home with her family. She didn’t seem to realise the danger she was in which would only grow the longer she was trapped in the dungeon with us, or perhaps she was all too aware but the vampire’s hold over her was keeping her from reacting to that grim realisation.
After a while I broke the silence, wanting something to keep our minds off our hungers. “You might as well finish your story, Zeerin.”
“You may call me Zee,” he said. “Better to die down here as good friends than reluctant allies, eh?”
I nodded gratefully, appreciative of the offer of friendship after spending so many months alone and isolated since becoming a werewolf.
“I never expected to become a captain,” he continued, picking up his tale from where he left off before. “It wasn’t like it was my ambition to rise up so high when I turned pirate; I just wanted a better life than the horrors of the slave ship I’d suffered for so long. But I was popular with the crew and I’d picked up a lot of skill in my years as an honest sailor, all of which were qualities that were invaluable on a pirate ship.
“The thing you have to understand about the rank is that it wasn’t like the captains of the Navy or the slave ships, who were generally appointed from the privileged classes of society and who ruled with an iron fist aboard their ships. Those of us who’d started out as sailors serving under such men wanted freedom from that way of life; we hadn’t risen up against our oppressors simply to trade the shackles of one captain’s rule for another. So our captains weren’t given absolute authority and often didn’t get the last say in decisions that affected the entire crew, such as where to set sail and whether or not to engage a certain ship – these things we determined through a vote, and we’d go with whatever the majority wanted. Some might say it was the quartermaster who had the real power, since he was in charge of not just shares of the treasure and rations, but also work and punishment.
“But there are of course times when a group needs a leader to see them through certain hardships, and whenever we were drawn into battle it was to our captain we would look to. Then we would follow his command without question, trusting him to lead us to victory. The more successful a captain, the longer he held the position, but he could just as easily be voted out if he became unpopular.
“We had a good captain when I first joined the crew and pirate life was everything I hoped it’d be. Fate smiled on us wherever we sailed and we didn’t want for much. But I’m sure you know as well as I how fate can be every bit as fickle as the sea, and the day came when our tides would turn. It was such a fleeting moment in combat as we fought to capture another ship and take more plunder, and yet that moment would change everything.
“I didn’t even see it myself but afterwa
rds the captain was bleeding from a nasty wound to his thigh, and it wasn’t long before it became infected. Even after all these years I can still hear the sound of his screams as the carpenter sawed his leg off with the same tools used to repair the ship. Some say he went mad with the pain he endured that night, but I think it was the need for revenge that drove him insane. Either way, he was never the same afterwards. The carpenter made him a peg leg and he could fight well enough on it, but he grew bloodthirsty and cruel, and the crew wanted none of it, myself included. We had no interest in spilling innocent blood just to aid him on some dark quest for vengeance against those he held responsible for the loss of his leg.
“The vote was unanimous to replace the captain and we marooned him on a small island where he could do no more harm. But that meant a new captain had to be voted in.”
“So that was you,” I said.
“Aye, the majority favoured me. I had the skills for it and the charisma to hold the crew together, so with that one vote I suddenly found myself captain of our ship. And I was a good captain. Things were better than they’d ever been as I steered us towards new riches, but power is the ultimate corrupter, and I must confess that I started to let it go to my head.
“I was no longer satisfied with the gold we plundered or the women I surrounded myself with every time we made port. I hungered for more, though what it is I truly sought I don’t think even I could have said back then. But whatever it was, it eluded me.