by Stead, Nick
“Yeah, I never thought my life would turn into a horror story though. You know, if you keep hanging round me you could end up dead or worse yourself. The Slayers will quite happily go through humans to kill me and there’s the vampires – if we’re together, they may well decide to execute you too.”
“I understand the risks, don’t worry, man. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You better not, you crazy bastard. I’ve got too many questions for you now so no disappearing on me without answering them, okay?”
“Deal,” he said, grinning.
I bid him goodbye and ventured away from the town just as it was growing dark. Hunger gnawed at my belly again and I knew I should find somewhere to rest, if only for a few hours.
I caught a rabbit. It was enough to keep me going if I kept the number of transformations to a minimum. For the time being I had no real need to change to wolf form again, so I remained human, returning to the farmland with the stream cutting through it.
There was a shallow hole I’d hidden the blanket in. A large rock marked the spot, and I shifted it to swap the clothes for the blanket, undressing to keep the garments as clean as possible. What I would do when they started to smell I hadn’t thought of, but I would worry about that later.
I also briefly wondered what I’d do during the next full moon. Ulfarr’s argument for my guilt might be circumstantial evidence at best, but even I had to admit I was the most likely suspect. There was every chance I had killed the three vampires during a lapse in my self-control, and the fact there’d been no further murders while I’d been locked up suggested it wasn’t the work of some supernatural serial killer, or another surviving werewolf the vampires didn’t know about. After the way I’d been treated I really didn’t care if I’d killed any of them, or if I killed any more of them next month. But if Ulfarr was keeping a closer eye on me as he’d said he would, then they surely would execute me the moment I attacked any more of their kind. I pushed that thought away as well, hoping a solution would present itself when the need arose.
That night I rested in a patch of woodland, behind a fallen tree. It wasn’t much in the way of shelter but the thick trunk went some way to keeping the wind off me. I was able to doze for a few hours, waking again early morning while it was still dark. Another rabbit served as breakfast, then it was back to the stream to wash and dress, and find another town to spend the day in.
A few days later, the novelty had already begun to wear off. As I sheltered in one of the bookstores, I was aware of the staff talking amongst themselves in low voices and I overheard one of them say “There’s that boy again. He’s been coming in here all week, hanging around when he should be at home or in school. Something’s not right about him.”
“Yeah, it does seem weird,” her colleague replied. “We better keep a close eye on him; wouldn’t surprise me to find him shoplifting.”
So I abandoned the book I was reading and retreated back out onto the streets, suddenly noticing how the humans were giving me a fairly wide berth and casting me suspicious glances. I wasn’t sure whether that was because, unable to wash the clothes or give my skin a proper wash in soapy water, I had indeed begun to smell, or the fact that people thought I should be in school and knew something was amiss, just like the staff in the shop. Or maybe people simply sensed deep down that I was different from them. Whatever the reason, I was back to feeling like the outsider.
Maybe I’d never passed as human during this brief return to their world, and I just hadn’t wanted to see it until then. I didn’t know, but the more I was made to feel apart from them, the greater the depression that began to envelop me, every bit as bad as the emptiness I’d been existing in over the last few months.
Even Luke’s company couldn’t ease it that day.
“You could just kill them all,” he said.
“How come you’re so okay with killing? Most people would call that insanity.”
“Don’t worry about me. But you’re hurting and they’re only making things worse, right? Teach them a lesson. It’s not like you haven’t done it before, so what’s stopping you?”
I shook my head. “Not this time.”
I didn’t immediately return to the natural world, but the longer I lingered in the town, the more paranoid I grew. People seemed to be staring and I saw several whispering to each other, too quietly for even my acute sense of hearing to catch what they were saying. It put me on edge. How many of them were Slayers? My eyes darted from face to face, searching for any potential threats.
Loneliness washed over me, surrounded by people though I was. I knew I could kill any one of them and feel nothing, not even bat an eyelid. After all, what was one more lost soul in the endless sea I’d created? So many ripped from their bodies long before their time. Did it really matter if I took a few more? Yet I looked around and realised I didn’t want to kill them anymore, not even the potential enemies. I no longer wanted to be this dead thing surrounding himself with more death. I just wanted to live again. You see, there’s a big difference between living and existing, and I can barely remember now the last time I felt truly alive.
I might have been born a killer, but there is also a huge difference between a killer and a murderer. I used to despise human hunters, yet in indulging in mindless slaughter had I not allowed myself to become as bad as them? By embracing the darkness, maybe I’d sealed my own fate, setting myself apart from most of the law abiding citizens as surely as if I’d walked among them as a wolf. Maybe they could sense I’d given in to it and feared me like other animals did, even if they weren’t consciously aware of that instinct that screamed predator.
And yet, how much could the curse really be blamed for? Of all the atrocities I’d committed, when I’d murdered out of rage or massacred simply to try and feel something, how much of that was born of my curse, and how much was purely that inner darkness that existed at the heart of humanity? How many of those killings had been the work of my darker side, which would have been there independent of the curse? Without the curse maybe that darkness would never have been unleashed, but once it had its first taste of blood, I was quick to fall into it. And how much could I blame on humanity itself? My rage was tied to my lycanthropy, but it had been made all the more potent over the years for the way I’d been treated at the hands of my playground tormentors. Not to mention the anger my dad had fed me, bullying in his own way during his fits of anger. And maybe some of that anger had been passed on from him through blood, as his hallucination had suggested.
How much of that rage had humanity created, or at least shaped? Maybe if they’d treated me better I wouldn’t have been so quick to indulge the dark desire to kill on so many occasions. But human darkness and cruelty will always be quick to spread, even to those that think of themselves as the purest of souls, where it will fester and breed and infect others. How many of my crimes could I blame on them for sculpting me in their own image? Even my lupine half was afflicted by the human darkness to some extent, the bloodlust stemming from our humanity.
Another voice brought me out of my dark musings, making me jump.
“Did you even stop to think what fate you forced those poor souls into? Oblivion, Purgatory, Hell? Which is worse, do you think?”
Lizzy had reappeared. I growled as if to make her go away but she only continued to torment me, like an echo of the conscience I’d assumed dead.
“Your two latest victims; they were innocent and yet you chose to kill them instead of running. How might they be suffering now because of you?”
“I didn’t know they were innocent though, did I?” I argued. Luke eyed me with concern, but he kept quiet. He must have realised I wasn’t talking to him, and he had the sense not to interfere.
“You knew it was a possibility. How many more must die because of the darkness you continue to allow to rule you?”
“And what would you have me do, huh?”
It came out as another growl and I turned to glare at her, only to find she was
gone. More of the townspeople were staring and I was forced to leave. I found an alley in a quieter part of the town and ripped off the stolen clothes, all desire to appear human and walk among them gone. The transformation to wolf form came quicker and more smoothly than during a full moon, and I slunk off back into the wilderness without even saying bye to Luke, alone once more and unsure what to do.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Blood Festival
The loneliness weighed yet heavier upon my heart with the renewed realisation that I was as far from human as I’d ever been, while the winter grew harsher. I was growing delirious in the unforgiving conditions, my mind made more fragile by the physical hardships I continued to force my body through. The sensible thing would have been to seek out shelter now that there was no Lady Sarah to insist we remain exposed on the moors. But instead I stayed shivering under my blanket in wolf form (having retrieved it after leaving the town), cold despite my fur coat and the extra man-made layer.
Lizzy began to appear more frequently. The apparition only fed the loneliness and left me feeling worse.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said to her one night.
“I could be for all you know, thanks to you.”
“No, you’re not her ghost. Not the flesh and blood you, I meant my conscience. That’s what you are, right? But you’re supposed to be dead.”
“Perhaps your emotions are not as dead as you let yourself believe. You buried them to cope with all the deaths you caused, the atrocities you committed, and continue to commit. But you’re not so damaged as to be left with nothing at all.”
“What does it matter; happiness is out of reach now. Completely empty or depressed: both are equally as bad. The only thing worth feeling is the anger which keeps me going, but I just can’t hold onto it whenever it does temporarily spark back to life.”
My voice had turned bitter, my eyes looking out at the frozen wasteland. It was like a physical manifestation of my own heart. I turned back to the hallucination. “You were one of my closest friends, Lizzy. I wish you were really here now, even if you’d hate me for the monster I’ve become. I wish I could go back home. My heart aches for everything I left behind, for all of you who I left behind. What’s the point in feeling, unless I were to go back to you all?”
“But you know you can’t go back. I almost died once because of you.” There was no emotion in the imaginary voice – it was merely a statement, one of the many hard truths that had led me to make the decision to leave my old life behind in the first place.
The hallucination changed, taking on the appearance of Lizzy that night I’d found her in the local base the Slayers had imprisoned us in, bloody and beaten. She held up her left hand where the little finger had been cut off, the one wound the Slayers had inflicted which was truly irreparable damage. The other wounds she’d suffered had no doubt scarred, and it pained me to think about the mental scars she might also have been left with, invisible but just as severe.
“No, the Slayers did that to you. I did try to keep you out of all the madness the werewolf passed on when he bit me.”
“Yet you still blame yourself.” Her face hardened into an accusatory look. “You know it was you who did this to me. If you were to return to us now, do you truly think we would welcome you back with open arms? Maybe if you’d told me the truth when I asked you what was going on we could have avoided this, instead of keeping me in the dark of my ignorance where I was easier prey. Do you think I’ve forgiven you for just leaving without at least explaining to me who Aughtie really was or why her people did this to me?”
“How could I tell you the truth? Even if I transformed to make you believe me you’d have soon realised I was the ‘rogue wolf’ that killed Fiona and the others. How would that have helped?”
My conscience did not deign to answer. Lizzy had vanished, leaving behind a dull ache for the life the curse and the Slayers had torn me from, one even the winter couldn’t numb.
Snow came down thick and heavy, the wind driving it against my pitiful body. I hadn’t eaten in days yet I was reluctant to hunt, curling into a tighter ball under what little warmth the blanket had to offer. The hunger would not be denied, however. It raged within my empty belly until I was driven to my feet, stiff and aching. I stretched and began to wander in search of prey, a dark shadow prowling the whitened landscape.
I used to like snow when I’d been mostly human, but whilst I remained caught out in that frozen world it made me thoroughly miserable. It fell thick and fast, the wind driving it into my face. Flakes caught in my fur, specks of white against the dark greys and browns of my coat. One flake found its way into my eye, hard enough to make it sting. I squinted, trying to protect them while I searched the bright whiteness for any signs of prey. The snow made it almost impossible. As a wolf, my eyes were designed to pick up signs of movement, but the snow made it hard to differentiate between the movement of animals and the little flecks of white falling around me. I was having to rely on scent and sound, neither of which my human self had completely mastered. Sight remained my primary sense, and it seemed the only way I was going to make a kill in these conditions would be if something came and offered itself to me. And of course that was never going to happen.
I felt so lost and alone, I was losing my will to live. Part of me was ready to just collapse and let the cold steal the last of the warmth from my limbs. Yet still a part of me fought for survival, and I struggled on. It became clear there was no prey to be had out on the snow covered moors, no life in this barren landscape, this wintry realm of the dead. To the realm of men I knew I must turn once more, despite the unhappy endings in each area I’d visited over the last few months. It was either that or starve.
Finding my way to the nearest town was easy enough. Whether it was the same place that had become my haunt for a brief time or not, I couldn’t say. The snow hid most landmarks I might have recognised and my current state of mind continued to weaken my grasp on reality. But before long buildings loomed overhead, marking my return to civilisation, and it didn’t matter if this was a new place or somewhere I’d explored before. There was food to be had here to fill my stomach, even if there was nothing to be had for the emptiness in my soul. So I padded down the streets in search of my next meal.
That pure white snow of the wintry world I’d come from had already been turned to dirty slush on many of the streets, symbolic perhaps of mankind’s polluted stain on the world. After spending so long in the purity of the natural world, or as pure as it could ever be in this modern age, it might seem odd to some that I had been so desperate to return to the smog of man’s domain. And yet it was all I’d ever known and all I’d longed to know again, before my latest attempt to reconnect with humanity had crushed that desire.
Hard though it may be to believe, I had no intention of taking human prey. The curse hungered for human flesh, the wolf stalking restlessly in my subconscious, waiting for a chance to take control and revel in the hunt and the kill. As cautious as my lupine self usually was, hunger was stripping him of rational thought until he was reduced to his most primal state. My poor mental and physical condition was taking its toll on both parts of my identity it seemed, and while he hated me for usually being so careless, our personalities continued to shift, ever changing and swapping traits. Caution ruled me in that moment and I fought the wolf and the curse’s lusts, determined not to succumb to such cravings.
I would have been content to take a stray cat or dog, or even to scavenge what I could from the rubbish bins. But the bins must have been emptied recently for I found no carcasses to pick at, and the streets were just as deserted of animal life as the countryside had been. Most creatures had the sense to shelter from the cold. Only one species braved these conditions, always seeking to defy nature as they went about their hectic lives.
I heard the man long before I saw him. There’d been sounds of a car attempting to battle its way through the snow covered roads, then the slam of a car door as the driver
was forced to abandon his vehicle and continue on foot. I could hear him trudging towards me as I fought my own inner battle. Briefcase in hand, he refused to be beaten by the weather, some urgent business requiring him to brave the blizzard and journey to the office.
It was growing dark by this point and the working day must surely be drawing to a close, yet whatever his business was, it apparently couldn’t wait till the next day. He was so intent on his own battle with the elements that he didn’t notice me watching hungrily, fighting my instincts and the wolf. In the end my hunger won out, as it always did, though I wouldn’t let the wolf or the bloodlust completely take over, wanting only to feed and move on.
The man was unaware of me as I advanced, his head bowed against the cold and the wind howling in his ears. I fell on him like the ravenous beast I was. His precious briefcase was torn from his grasp, the catch flying open as he fell face first in the snow. But the man could do nothing to save his documents or his life.
He screamed as my fangs tore into his muscular shoulders, ripping the meat free of the bone and gulping it down in a spray of warm blood. The man wriggled beneath me, thrashing around in a desperate bid for freedom. My muzzle moved along his arm, cracking bone and leaving the limb hanging by a handful of tendons and ligaments. More warmth splashed across me and I abandoned the meat in search of offal. Ribs crunched between my fangs and I buried my snout in his abdomen as if I could steal the warmth from him, along with his flesh.
Voices and music drifted from the town centre, distracting me from my meal. It sounded like they were holding some kind of festival. The loneliness rushed back in, more powerful than the hunger. I withdrew from the grisly hole and howled as if to tell them I was coming, the sounds of human laughter calling to me as surely as the howling of a pack would call to the wolf.