The Hybrid Series | Book 2 | Hunted

by Stead, Nick

  But the people of this town were still bound by their routines. If I stayed on the streets it wouldn’t be long before someone sighted me, and word would soon reach the Slayers. I didn’t want to be caught unawares so I retreated to the countryside in search of somewhere to rest. My hunt would have to wait.

  I returned to the town under cover of darkness. My claws clacked across the concrete as I padded along the streets, pausing every few minutes to scent the air and listen for any signs of life. But it was almost as quiet as it had been that morning.

  A door opened somewhere nearby and someone stepped out. I sniffed the air again. A man about to walk his dog, maybe two streets away. I growled with frustration. It was doubtful he was a Slayer.

  Voices carried and I cocked an ear in their direction. Two women laughing and joking, on their way to the pub. They didn’t sound like Slayers either.

  My anger was reaching boiling point. If it hadn’t been for Lady Sarah, I could have taken any one of these people. There was no hint of gunpowder to suggest they were carrying firearms and they lacked that alertness of their surroundings that would have marked them as hunters. Where were the Slayers when I needed them? Their absence was infuriating.

  More footsteps came from somewhere behind. I slipped into an alleyway and loped through to the other side. The foosteps followed. My heart quickened as I slunk behind a wall, lying in wait for the fool brave enough to come after me alone. Had I found one of our enemies at last? They continued in my direction and I felt a surge of excitement. The hunt was over.

  It took all my willpower not to charge the human. My muscles felt like coiled springs, filled with tension and pent up energy waiting for release. Drool escaped my mouth and hung from my jaws in thick strings, and my lungs burned with the howl I couldn’t sound. This was it. The key to freedom, as long as I didn’t give myself away.

  The footsteps were coming closer when the wind changed direction and my heart sank. She passed my hiding place in an ignorant daze, too lost in the beat of pop music leaking from her earphones. Not a Slayer after all and she’d not been following me – it had been nothing more than coincidence we’d gone the same way. I was going to have to keep looking.

  The town remained utterly devoid of any Slayer activity for the rest of the night. That should have signalled to me that something was wrong and that perhaps the wisest course would’ve been to abort this reckless mission I’d committed myself to. But my need for bloodshed didn’t want to listen to caution. The longer the Slayers hid from me like cowards, the more set I became on finding the force they had in the area and engaging them in combat.

  Two more nights went by. I decided it was time to change tack. If I couldn’t find any Slayers to follow to their base, I’d just have to find the building myself.

  I remained in human form that night, already feeling the rising hunger from shifting forms so often without being able to eat my fill each time. My lack of clothes didn’t bother me – it was unlikely I’d need to venture into the town itself, or at least not into any of the populated parts. The place I was looking for was bound to be in another derelict area or hidden in the rural outskirts, though I could rule out the fields where I’d been spending my days. There’d been no evidence of any humans nearby whilst I’d rested there.

  Most of the night was spent wandering the land around the town. Dawn wasn’t far off when I finally came upon a large building that looked like it might have been a factory once. They weren’t manufacturing anything in there anymore though. There were no machines assembling products or workmen in high-vis jackets. No, as I crept closer to the gate I could see guards wandering the perimeter, but not much else. And they were armed with guns so it was probably safe to assume they were Slayers. It looked like I’d found their base at last.

  I wanted nothing more than to charge in and fight the guards right there and then, but my senses told me there were only a handful of them on site. If I waited one more day there would likely be a greater number of humans come nightfall – enough to fill the bloodbath I was craving. So I forced myself to retreat to the fields I’d been living in, impatient for the day to pass. Just one more day. Then I would turn the old factory into an abattoir and feed to my heart’s content.

  The light was fading, at long last. I looked up at the stars and felt the wolf stirring. The moon would be rising as full again soon, and Lady Sarah’s hold on me was going to break. I would be free at last.

  My heart sang with the prospect. I felt more alive than I had in weeks as I returned my attention to the earth I would wet with the blood of my enemies. Patience had never been one of my strengths. I wanted to indulge my dark desires and I couldn’t wait till after the wolf got to have his fun. My plan remained the same.

  With a roar, I burst into a run. The land rushed by as I sprinted all the way to the old factory, slowing only when I was within sight of it. There was a row of trees separating the industrial site from the surrounding countryside, and I darted behind them, making use of the cover while I embraced the transformation fighting to take hold.

  Fur erupted on my skin and my skull stretched out, my ears slithering up the sides of my head and my spine extending out into a tail. But I stopped it at that halfway point between boy and wolf again. This was a night for embracing my monstrous side.

  The air tasted sweeter through my lupine muzzle, my heart beating stronger as the bloodlust rose. I turned my fiery gaze on the Slayers’ base and stepped out from behind the trees, exposed and yet unafraid. Their bullets wouldn’t stop me. They were too susceptible to panic, too flawed and inexperienced. I felt invincible.

  My keen senses detected no guards patrolling the perimeter this time. I was too drunk on the lunar rush to care. What did it matter whether they’d bothered to guard the building? They were all going to die anyway. If they wanted to make it easier for me I wasn’t complaining. It was their oversight, not mine.

  I climbed the gate and dropped down into the premises to find a row of shutters along the wall nearest to me. One of them was open. I stalked closer, the smell of prey thick in my nostrils as I stepped inside.

  A rush of air and a metallic clang sounded from behind me. I turned to find the modified shutter had slammed into place, and only then did I realise my mistake. They’d known I was in the area all along, and they’d been preparing for my arrival. I’d walked right into their trap.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Burnt Out

  Hostile eyes squinted down iron sights. Their faces were set in grim determination – around thirty of them. These fools knew they were going to die for their cause, yet they’d chosen to sacrifice themselves in the belief they had the numbers to take me with them. And they may well have been right.

  I was given chance to take stock of how badly outnumbered I was, eyeing the men through a feral snarl. Yet there was no room for fear in my heart. I pictured myself as some mighty warrior about to single-handedly take down my enemies, hailed a hero by my fellow undead. The glimpse I was given of my surroundings only strengthened that belief. There was no question of what the base was used for. Dummies and cardboard cut-outs in the likeness of monsters lined the walls, and punching bags hung from the ceiling. It was a place for training new recruits.

  There was nothing new or inexperienced about these Slayers though. They seemed to be waiting for me to make the first move so I obliged, challenging them with a roar of fury and charging forwards as they opened fire.

  I can’t explain what happened next. I can’t explain how I survived against so many of them and their guns. No matter how good a shot or how many times each Slayer fired at me, somehow none of them could find their mark. It was as if I had a guardian angel watching over me, and yet no angel would have had a hand in such bloody slaughter as took place that night.

  Through the spray of bullets I ran, into what should have been certain death. But without that killing shot through my heart or brain I proved unstoppable, barely feeling the pain of what wounds I did sustain. Once more my
reality narrowed down to the beating of my enemies’ hearts and the blood waiting to be spilled from each fleshy container. And how satisfying it was to spill that blood with tooth and claw, after being made to wait an entire month.

  I fell on my first victim, sinking fangs into her throat and crushing the windpipe. Her eyes were wide as she gasped for breath, her mouth opening and closing with the words she couldn’t speak. I lunged for another, slamming into him and sending him flying into the wall where his head cracked against one of the targets. A smear of blood appeared around the cardboard fangs as he slid to the floor, unconscious. I turned and lashed out at a third victim, but he was already diving out of range. My claws raked the punching bag beside us, splitting the leather. Rags spilled from the slits and fell to the floor. I roared again. The man’s entrails followed a moment later.

  Guns began to click empty. The Slayers nearest me drew their swords, whilst those on the other side of the room reloaded. One woman was especially quick to unsheathe her blade, and she brought it down in an arc that should have cleaved my skull in two. But I sensed the movement and turned, catching her sword arm in my hand and ripping it from the socket with a wet sucking noise. She fell to her knees with a scream and clutched at her shoulder.

  I tossed the severed limb at the nearest man. He recoiled in horror and it bought me the moment I needed to dispatch the other two stabbing at my chest, reducing their throats to red fountains in a vicious swipe. Then I was on him.

  He recovered and swung for my head. I ducked with ease and he fell to the floor, killed by a stray bullet.

  Movement to my right drew my attention. One of the women had lost her nerve, running for a door at the other end of the room. I pounced on her and bit into her lower back, her flesh ripping beneath my teeth and revealing a section of her spinal column. The bloodlust was taking over and I forgot all about the danger of my surrounding enemies then.

  I worried the bone like a dog at play, shaking my head from side to side while the woman spasmed beneath me. She was utterly helpless as I grew more frenzied, her screams lost in the chaos of more gunfire. Her bones could only take so much. They snapped and came free in my jaws, and she grew still.

  I felt like a god to hold their lives in my hands, and to crush that life so easily in my great jaws until it faded into nothingness. What hope did these mere mortals have against the might of a god? Their guns had failed them, their blades too slow in their human hands. Men liked to think they had conquered the Earth, their technology making them untouchable to the beasts they’d once been prey to. But without that technology they were weak. And for all their intelligence, it wouldn’t save them from the great predator in their midst.

  More of the humans lost their nerve, but I was sure to leave none alive. I ran down each of the cowards, pouncing on them and dealing out more brutal deaths.

  Shrill screams took the place of explosive gunfire. They rang through the night like prayers, empowering my god-like state and fuelling my savagery. Then there was just one human left.

  He made it as far as his car outside before I was on him, digging my claws into the flesh of his back and tearing out another length of spine. Part of the ribcage came away with this one. It almost looked like an alien creature, the broken ribs like legs splayed out on either side. I might have found some dark amusement in that, had it not been for the hunger taking over.

  I lowered my snout to the gaping hole I’d made and began to feed, only for the clouds to part overhead. A ray of moonlight fell on my blood splattered body, and the transformation resumed. The wolf’s time had come.

  The frenzy I’d felt during the previous full moon was as nothing compared to the rage driven madness upon me that month. I shifted fully into wolf form atop the dying man, then savaged him until his carcass was nothing more than a mess of ragged flesh and shattered bones, unrecognisable as human. My memory grows hazy after that. I know only that I turned my wrath on the nearby town, mauling and killing until the streets ran red with blood.

  Not even the sunrise could stop me – my human half had given itself so completely to the bloodthirsty nature of the curse that I remained in wolf form. For three glorious nights and days I terrorised the human world, running wild and free as I was born to do. If humanity made an attempt to fight back I have no memory of it. But it’s possible I encountered more Slayers in that time, as well as those ignorant of my true nature, believing me to be nothing more than a mortal wolf. Though if there were any would-be heroes, they surely died with the rest of their people.

  Countless victims fell to my rage, until finally the moon’s power began to wane and my bloodlust with it. Exhaustion took its place, crashing over me in an icy wave that left my entire body trembling from fatigue, and flooding my muscles with a deep ache. I collapsed beside the corpse of my last victim, panting heavily until my eyelids locked in place. A deep sleep claimed me.

  I awoke to find my body had shifted back to human form. How long had I been lying here? I didn’t know, but my eyes still felt heavy and it was an effort to open them. The world was blurry. It took a moment for things to come into focus. I realised there was someone standing over me and peered up to find Lady Sarah.

  “You came back.” I couldn’t keep the tiredness from my voice. In the absence of the rage, there was only weakness. I felt drained, as if the moon had taken the last of my energy. There didn’t even seem to be any anger smouldering in its pit, but I was too tired to worry about whether it had already burnt out for another month.

  “Yes, I came back, infuriating though you can be. Now you seem to be in a more reasonable mood, I hope you can see that all I have done has been to help you. My methods might seem harsh but I am only trying to keep you alive.”

  “Why?”

  “I realise you are struggling to adapt so I will give you another chance.” There was a glint in her eye as she added “And besides, where else am I going to find a pet werewolf? You are a rare breed these days.”

  I stared at her for a moment and then started to laugh. It was a hollow echo of the sound I’d once made as a human, but to hear Lady Sarah making a joke had been the last thing I’d expected, even if it was a bad one. I suddenly felt a connection to her that hadn’t been there before.

  “I would like to renew my hold over you now and I would hope you will see the wisdom of it.” Her eyes seemed to be searching mine for permission.

  I grunted and met her gaze willingly. There was no denying the fact she had only ever tried to help me and even I could see that constant bloodshed would lead more waves of Slayers to us. Plus I didn’t have the energy to fight.

  Her command was the same as before, but this time she added “And you are to stay by my side at all times, unless instructed otherwise. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  My mind cleared and my stomach growled. I bit into the remains of the victim I’d collapsed beside, too exhausted to feel anything over the tightening of my mental shackles. Lady Sarah kept watch while I ate, but I was forced to abandon my meal when the wind carried to us the scent of more humans. It seemed the Slayers had found their courage once more. And even if Lady Sarah had been willing to face them, I was in no fit state for another fight. I barely had the energy to run.

  Over the next three weeks, the Slayers continued to harry us almost non-stop, forcing us to flee from place to place. Whenever we were permitted a brief reprieve, Lady Sarah tried to give me more space for fear of re-awakening my rage. She needn’t have worried. I couldn’t feel any hint of my anger, not even when the moon began to wax towards full again. I continued to dream of my next kill and losing myself in the bloodlust, but until I was permitted another fight or to hunt it seemed I would remain dead inside. And there didn’t look to be much chance of any more skirmishes with the Slayers anytime soon. Not with the extra precautions Lady Sarah had taken to keep me out of trouble while she slept during the day.

  In addition to keeping me so close, she had us entering more derelict areas where we could ma
ke the most of old cellars in relative safety from an attack. She felt the risk of entering the human world was outweighed by the benefit of such shelters – namely that the Slayers couldn’t send too large a group in broad daylight without attracting unwanted attention from the public. And after the devastation I’d already caused to their other hunting parties, we thought them less likely to attack in smaller groups. They’d learnt the hard way that they needed numbers if they were to take us down. No doubt they were biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to strike with a larger force.

  In the week leading up to the next full moon, we were fortunate enough to lose the Slayers again for the time being. I had to wonder if they were planning something though. They must know that we’d be forced to return to our rural haunts for the three nights of lunar madness. It could well be the opportunity they were waiting for.

  Regardless, Lady Sarah led me back into the country. She came to a stop beside a barn which looked to have been out of use for some years and stalked inside. I followed.

  “This will do,” she said, looking around and nodding.

  I frowned. It was isolated enough to avoid detection by the locals, though there was a fairly sizeable town closer than I knew the vampire would have liked. A main road ran through its centre and presumably connected its people to neighbouring towns and the nearest cities. But mostly the roadways were made up of a network of narrow country roads, with a small patch of woodland bordering one of those roads. In other words, the location was as good as we could hope for. It was the building itself which filled me with doubt.