by Stead, Nick
Where not so long ago there’d been horror at the agonising sensation of my body becoming monstrous, I now embraced the painful feeling of my face stretching out into a muzzle, teeth blunt and pathetic growing into natural weapons to rip and tear the flesh from my enemies. The sound of the approaching Slayers was suddenly sharper as my ears became pointed and slithered up to the top of my head, as did their scent to my superior canine nose. The smell of the smoke was almost unbearable and somewhere within my mind I felt the wolf’s instinctive response to flee. But my rage was stronger than the animal fear the fire invoked in the lupine half of my mind, and as ever my bloodlust rose with it, bringing the overwhelming need to hunt and kill. My hunger also intensified and with an excited howl I bounded forward to meet the Slayers in battle once more, running on all fours despite my body remaining mostly humanoid. As well as my lupine head, my spine had also elongated to form a tail and my hands were now clawed, and I’d let my fur burst forth from my skin, forming my pelt which resembled that of a natural timber wolf. But that was as far as I took the change for the coming battle. There was as much fun to be had in fighting in this hybrid form as there was when fully wolf, and it meant I could swipe with my clawed hands like a cat as well as savaging with my fangs.
The Slayers were quick to react once I leapt into view, opening fire in an attempt to stop me before I could get close enough to kill any of them. Two came dangerously close to hitting their mark, one bullet nicking my ear and the other thudding into my chest, just missing my heart. The pain was enough to rival that of the transformation, my ear stinging and gushing blood, my chest throbbing. I let it fuel the rage and kept going, not even slowing when another bullet passed clean through my left bicep or when a fourth grazed my right shoulder blade. Then I was on the first of the humans and all he could do was scream as his gun clicked empty, my fangs ripping his throat out in a spray of blood and gore. I left him dying and turned to face a woman just as she was about to shoot through my skull. At point blank range I would never have stood a chance if she’d succeeded in squeezing off the shot. But I was too fast for her, ducking so quickly she couldn’t track my movement with the gun and grabbing her leg with my bloodied muzzle.
Fresh blood oozed out as my jaws clamped down, staining my fangs and matting my fur. I lost myself in the bloodlust, the world reduced to a red haze that centred round the frantically beating heart of my prey and the blood pumping from her ruined calf where I savaged the flesh with wild abandon. I was only vaguely aware of more bullets flying through the darkness as I pulled the woman’s leg out from under her, causing her to fall heavily on her back. With a whimper she tried to pull herself backwards and away from my bestial fury but I was on her once more, digging my claws into her chest and ripping it open, greedily burying my snout into the feast I’d unlocked within.
The heart was the choicest of the organs I’d laid bare, and it brought a sense of primal ecstasy to feel it beating between my fangs, my tongue bathed in her blood, so rich and juicy. With a jerk of my head I ripped it free of its tubes, more blood splattering my body and the earth around us, and gushing into the cavity I’d created in the woman’s chest. I felt a dark pleasure as the organ grew still in my mouth, another life ended, and gulped my prize down. My hunger wanted more flesh but the bloodlust overrode it, causing me to rise from my latest victim and take another. It was only then I realised Lady Sarah had entered the fray, which was probably the only reason I was still alive. I’d been so intent on my kill, the other Slayers could’ve easily put a bullet in my brain while I tore into her soft flesh. But the vampire had kept them busy, the gunfire aimed in her direction while I’d been so lost in my bloodlust to take any notice.
I ripped a second woman apart while Lady Sarah kept the rest engaged, rising again to see one of the Slayers stood apart from the rest. He was older than most of their recruits I’d come across, grizzled and scarred like a soldier who’d seen too much of battle, his eyes the cold grey of winter skies. It seemed he too believed in ‘tactical retreat’, but there was no sense of panic like most other Slayers I’d encountered in the past when I’d driven them to flee. He merely backed away slowly, keeping his gun trained on me but saving his bullets. I snarled and took a step forward, meaning to end his life as brutally as the other three I’d killed, but Lady Sarah had just dispatched the last of her opponents and she grabbed my arm to pull me back.
Roaring angrily I turned to her, but her own anger had awoken and much as I hated to admit it, I was no match for a vampire. For all the power the curse granted me, it was still not the equal of the vampiric power Lady Sarah wielded.
“Control yourself!” she hissed. “The other group are catching up. If we give the warlock chance to reel off an incantation we’re both doomed. Let him go.”
I roared again but did as I was told, turning my attention back to the body that lay at my feet and crouching back over my kill. There was still plenty of meat to be had, and as I wolfed down a couple more mouthfuls, the bloodlust and the rage began to drain back into the abyss where once my soul had been, before the curse had robbed me of it. My anger and my need to kill seemed to be all that were left to me, poor replacements though they were, and it was only when I embraced them did I feel truly alive.
“Nick, there is no time! Take your full wolf form now, before they draw any closer, but hurry. We must make haste before the warlock has chance to ensnare either of us in a spell.”
Feeding seemed like a much more valuable use of the time we had, but without my rage to fuel me I became aware of the pain from the bullet wounds I’d sustained when I’d initially charged into battle. I’d been bleeding heavily and I suddenly felt the weakness brought on by loss of blood. Hungry as I was, the transformation would heal the damage and it would allow us to cover more ground once I’d recovered my strength and could run swifter as a full wolf. Feeding would have to wait.
As I let the change take hold once more, I felt my strength returning as the wounds closed, the bullet that had lodged in my chest being forced out by the newly formed flesh. It fell to the ground with a metallic clatter, no more than a small lump of bloodied metal, yet if it had hit me just another inch to the left and successfully passed through my heart it would have been the end of me. Maybe I was growing too reckless, but that thought brought me no shame – indulging the bloodlust had felt too good.
The initial feeling of strength faded as the transformation completed, only to be replaced by a wave of weariness and renewed hunger. I wrestled with my instincts, the scent of all the fresh meat almost overpowering, but it was only the vampire’s presence that kept me in check. I knew she intended to teach me greater self-control over the coming months, as soon as we succeeded in losing the Slayers for any considerable length of time, but until then I had to struggle with the hunger and the bloodlust as best I could. Had I been on my own I would probably have given into it once more, but as it was I didn’t want to anger Lady Sarah any further, knowing I needed her if I wanted to survive, annoying though she could be.
Beside me the vampire also took her own wolf form, although the transformation was so very different from my own. Where my kind are cursed and the change is a brutal, painful affair, Lady Sarah (and presumably other vampires who possessed the same ability) made it graceful, like shadows melding together. It was too quick for a mortal eye to follow – one form simply merged into the other, and in the blink of an eye a beautiful she wolf stood before me, holding the old fashioned black dress in her jaws which was the only thing I’d ever seen her wear. My transformation was always smoother when I willed it, rather than being forced into one form or the other by the rise and fall of the full moon, but it was still awkward when compared with the shapeshift Lady Sarah could perform. And then minutes later we slunk away, moving more swiftly and silently than any natural predator. I ignored the hunger and the weariness as best I could, pushing my lupine body to its limits in a bid to put as much distance between ourselves and the group of Slayers as we could in th
e time left before dawn.
Chapter Two – New Challenges
Around two hours before daybreak, we began to search for somewhere to shelter through the day. We’d reached a city sprawl, the heart of which lay nearby. The fields had given way to endless rows of houses and buildings, and we’d been forced to skulk in the shadows, moving much slower than I knew Lady Sarah would have liked.
At the speeds we could move we made hard targets to hit. If we’d have kept running flat out we could potentially have passed through the urban area unharmed, even if we had crossed paths with any more Slayers. But if we were to find somewhere safe to spend the daylight hours we would have to slow eventually, and the last thing we wanted was to alert any Slayers in this new area to our presence, having only just lost the group we’d been running from. So proceeding slowly and cautiously was the safer option in our current surroundings, as painful as it may be.
This was the closest we’d been to civilisation since leaving my hometown, Lady Sarah insisting we keep to rural areas for the first few nights where we were less likely to encounter Slayers. Or that had been the plan, prior to that night when it seemed they’d been actively hunting us.
As we crept through the streets, the vampire taught me to be careful when choosing where to go whenever the need arose to enter a human settlement, as the nearest might not always be the safest. A small town or village might have less Slayers patrolling the streets, but if we were to visit somewhere too small we could potentially be detected quicker. Larger towns and cities offered more places to hide, as long as we were careful of security cameras. And if we ever needed to pass as human, a city that had a lot of strangers passing through and was large enough that people barely knew their neighbours was the safest place for hiding in plain sight.
Most of her lessons so far had just been common sense, but I would never have thought about these things had I been on my own. In fact if it weren’t for Lady Sarah, I would probably have given in to the desire for human comforts and found a room to stay in, stealing the money and new clothes from the corpses of my victims. I wouldn’t have lasted two minutes without the vampire’s guidance, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
We turned away from the city centre. With our superior senses it was easy to determine where to find the nearest run down area, which should offer numerous choices for shelter. It didn’t take us long to slink over there, at which point Lady Sarah changed back to her human form and dressed, though I remained a wolf for the time being to conserve energy.
We wandered the unfamiliar streets, looking for somewhere safe to rest. The vampire had no coffin of her own and was forced to take refuge wherever she could – anywhere that offered shelter from the sun’s rays. Though she was used to it, having been forced to move around a lot in all her centuries upon this earth, while I was still adjusting.
As predicted, there were many abandoned buildings in this old industrial estate we’d come to. Lady Sarah caught a small stray dog as we walked. She drained it of blood and tossed me the carcass when she was done. Catching it in my jaws, I carried it with me till we found an old shop which the vampire deemed perfect for our needs.
Its windows and doors were boarded up but Lady Sarah ripped the wooden planks away with ease. I thought for a minute I would somehow have to board up the doorway again, but fortunately there was a basement which was likely used for storage back in the day, and the door into it was still intact. There was no way the sun’s light could penetrate down there.
Lady Sarah glanced around and nodded to herself, apparently satisfied.
“This will do,” she said. “You should change back; you’re less likely to lose control in your human form. There should be enough meat on that dog to support another transformation, then you will have to make do till tomorrow night. It’s not safe for you to hunt anything else.”
I didn’t like taking orders but I knew transforming back made sense, especially as spending too much time in wolf form meant risking what little humanity I had left, even if it was a form more suited to this new lifestyle. But I wasn’t going to accept her instruction not to hunt without argument.
“Don’t hunt?” I growled, once I was human again. “What if they set another trap for us tomorrow night – how am I meant to carry on running and fighting if I can’t feed?”
“If they locate us here we will find a way to deal with it when the time comes, but there is no sense advertising our presence and inviting trouble when we may yet go unnoticed.”
Even though I knew her argument made sense, I was far from happy. “And what will you do in two night’s time when the moon turns full? You can’t expect me not to answer its call to hunt.”
“We will find a way to manage the full moon as safely as possible, but until it completely robs you of your control you must fight the hunger. Our survival depends on it.”
Fuming, I sat down on the hard, cold stone floor, wincing at the discomfort of it. The vampire settled down beside me, positioning herself so that no direct sunlight would fall on her if the door opened for any reason during the day, and instantly fell into a deep sleep.
I ate the dog carcass with little enthusiasm, already tired of living off the vampire’s kills, which were far from appetising once she’d drained them of blood. It did little to ease the hunger ravaging my insides, a sensation that was only going to worsen the longer I went without feeding. My mouth and throat were also dry from running for so long without being allowed to stop to drink. The vampire didn’t need any fluid other than blood, but my body was still living and I needed some fresh water to keep everything functional. Thirst plagued me, almost as powerfully as my other urges.
I resigned myself to a long day filled with discomfort, shivering in the early morning chill which only added to my woes. The cool air was much more noticeable on my bare skin in the absence of the fur which had covered me most of the night, but I didn’t even have the human luxury of clothes to wear in place of my lupine pelt. I hugged my knees and tried not to think of the greater hardship I’d face during the winter months.
I don’t know how long I sat like that in the gloom of the cellar. My eyes roamed round the dusty room, taking in the cobwebs hanging overhead and the cracks in the walls, like cracks in reality. Too little time had passed for boredom to truly set in, but during the daylight hours when I had only my tortured mind for company was when my thoughts strayed to what Mum and Amy must surely be going through. My imagination threatened to conjure up images of them grieving for Dad and praying for me to come home, but such dark musings were of help to no one. I was forced to remind myself I’d left because they were better off without me, and it was better they went through a period of grieving before being allowed to carry on with their mortal lives than to suffer the consequences of being in my cursed presence.
So close to the full moon, my thoughts suddenly became dominated by hunting and killing once I’d pushed my family to the back of my consciousness, especially with the hunger roaring in my stomach. I could feel the waxing power of that ghostly orb as it drove me to stand and pace round the room, and I longed to answer its call. I was aware of the wolf pacing just as restlessly inside my skull, his eagerness just as strong as my own, but as our two personalities brushed against each other, I also felt his wariness to give into his predatory urges and hunt the human prey we craved. His survival instinct was far stronger than mine had ever been, but given the moon’s hold over us and the power of the hunger itself, I knew from experience we would probably have no option but to obey.
As I paced, my gaze settled on one of the many spiders occupying the empty building, no doubt enjoying the peace granted by the lack of human inhabitants, free to explore without fear of meeting a sticky end. I prowled towards the biggest one, the arachnid suddenly springing to life as I drew near and racing towards the crack from whence it first came. But it was no match for my supernatural speed, and with my bare hand I caught it in my fist and squeezed till I felt the small frame crush between my fingers. S
o small a life seemed insignificant in the vastness of our universe, a mere speck amongst bigger souls burning more brightly. Did that make killing such small, primitive life forms right? Maybe not, and its death brought me no pleasure. But that didn’t stop me ending the lives of the other spiders stupid enough not to have fled the instant I’d first entered the cellar with Lady Sarah.
After I ran out of spiders to kill, I licked the remains from my hands and resumed my pacing, tempted to leave the sleeping vampire and go in search of prey. But the moon wasn’t quite full enough to rule me yet, and as much as I longed to lose myself in the savage joy of more bloodshed, I knew venturing out of the temporary shelter was a bad idea. So instead I focussed on finding more creatures to kill in the room which was beginning to feel more and more like a cage, hoping for something more satisfying than spiders.
My senses were sharper than when I’d been mortal, even in human form, and I listened intently for the tell-tale signs of any life nearby. A rush of excitement ran through me when I picked up two faint heartbeats, the bloodlust rising once more. But my excitement soon faded when I realised the prey I’d detected were no more than rats cowering within the walls, terrified of the unnatural predators they sensed in their midst. I still tore at the entrance to their nest until the crack was wide enough to get my hands in and catch one, ignoring the pain from sharp teeth biting into my flesh, but such small prey was really no more than a snack and it was only marginally better than the dried dog meat. The second rat had found another bolt hole and was beyond my reach, so I resumed my pacing, feeling thirstier for the salty blood which had spilled down my throat from the small body.
I started to become on edge as the hours dragged by, feeling like the next encounter with the Slayers was imminent. I half wanted them to attack again so I could indulge my need to slaughter and to feed on their flesh, even if it cost me my life. At least if I went down fighting it would put an end to this new misery I’d found myself in.