Hybrid (Book 2): Hunted

by Stead, Nick

  After two more nights of unsuccessful hunting, I decided it was time to change tack. If I couldn’t find any Slayers to follow to the place I had in mind to turn into the next abattoir, I’d just have to find it 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. I didn’t think I’d need to venture into the town itself, or at least not into any of the populated parts. The building 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 as there’d been no evidence of any humans nearby whilst I’d rested there.

  It took most of the night but I finally found a large building that looked like it might have once been used as a factory. It was isolated enough from the nearby town to make it a likely candidate for the place I was searching for, and as I watched from the shadows I saw two humans guarding the perimeter. They were both armed with guns, so it was probably safe to assume they were Slayers.

  I wanted nothing more than to charge in and fight the two guards right there and then, but reluctantly I drew back. If I waited one more day and returned at nightfall there would likely be more of them for me to slaughter, and it was another bloodbath I was craving. So I forced myself to retreat back to the fields on the other side of the town which had proven safe enough for the days I’d spent in the area, though I didn’t even attempt to sleep. The moon would also rise as full that next night, and with the promise of bloodshed so close at hand, I could only pace restlessly, impatient for the day to pass and night to fall once more.

  With dusk approaching, I wasted no time in slinking back to the old factory building. I wanted to indulge my bloodlust before the full moon appeared and gave my wolfish half the power to take over, and I was as eager as ever for a kill after being forced to wait by Lady Sarah’s hypnotic spell. But her hold over me was about to be broken, and once I’d whet my appetite on the Slayers my lupine half would be free to turn his insatiable hunger on the town, and there would be no one to stop me.

  Once the building was in sight, I paused to give in to the transformation fighting to take hold, though I only let it go to the halfway point between boy and wolf again. Then, when I had the hybrid form I was beginning to favour more than either full human or full wolf, I boldly walked out of the shadows and stalked over to the old factory. There was no evidence of any guards that night which again should have raised alarm bells, but I was too drunk on the feeling of power brought on by the lunar cycle. So it was that I stepped so recklessly inside the Slayers’ base, as if I was truly unstoppable and had nothing to fear from their mortal weapons. But they had 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

  This base I’d found was much smaller than the one I’d briefly been imprisoned in a couple of months ago, and judging from a quick glimpse of my surroundings they seemed to be using the space for training new recruits. But there was nothing new or inexperienced about the thirty or so humans surrounding me, their faces set with expressions of grim determination. They thought they had the numbers to kill me but they knew some of them would die, even if they succeeded.

  Already overcome with rage, 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. I eyed the men opposite me, baring my fangs in a feral snarl. 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 into the first spray of bullets. Yet in opening fire they had unwittingly sealed their doom.

  I can’t explain how it is I’m still alive to tell you this tale now. I can’t explain how I survived walking into that place and facing 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 my 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 to lose myself in this savage joy once again.

  As I tore the first of my victims apart, 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 a clawed hand and ripping it from the socket with a wet sucking noise. She fell to her knees, screaming and clutching at her shoulder as if to stem the pain and the blood flow. I tossed the severed limb aside and turned to the next of my victims, reducing his throat to a red fountain in a vicious swipe.

  One woman lost her nerve and began to flee, but I pounced on her before she could escape the building and bit into her lower back, flesh ripping beneath my teeth until I’d exposed a section of her spine. And like a dog at play, I worried the bone, shaking my head from side to side while she spasmed uncontrollably beneath me. She was utterly helpless to defend herself as I grew more frenzied, until the bone 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. I felt invincible as I tore my way through flesh and bone, ripping life after life from their frail bodies in a fierce display of my feral power.

  More of the humans lost their nerve once I’d killed enough of them to even the odds and they too tried to flee, but I was sure to leave none alive. I ran down each of the cowards, pouncing on them and dealing out more brutal deaths. The shrill screams of my victims rang through the night, prayers which only empowered my god-like state and fuelled this primal joy born of killing and savagery. Even if there’d been room in my heart for mercy, I was too far lost in my bloodlust to spare any of them.

  The last of them made it as far as his car before I was on him, digging my claws into the flesh of his back. He screamed in agony as I tore out another length of spine, this time bringing part of the ribcage away with it. The bloody bone looked almost like an alien creature in the darkness, the broken ribs like legs splayed out either side. I might have found some dark amusement in that but my prey wasn’t yet dead, so I tossed the bone aside and lowered my snout to the gaping wound in his back. Hunger took over and I began to feed, only for the light of the full moon to touch me for the first time that night, forcing the transformation to resume. 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 pinned beneath my paws and savaged him until his carcass was nothing more than a mess of ragged flesh and shattered bones, unrecognisable as human. I have no clear memory of what happened after that, so lost as I was in the red haze clouding my mind. 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 free and wild 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. But 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 for the month, panting heavily until my eyelids locked into place and a deep sleep claimed me.

  I awoke to find my body had shifted back to human form. I didn’t know how long I’d lain there but my eyes still felt heavy and it was an effort to force them open. There was someone stood over me and as I began to come round I realised it was Lady Sarah.

  “You came back,” I said tiredly, feeling weak and drained in the absence of the fury that had powered me for so many days. I couldn’t even feel any anger burning deep down in the dark pit of my being, but I was too tired to worry that it might have 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.”

  “But why?”

  “I realise you are struggling to adapt so I will give you another chance. And besides, where else am I going to find a pet werewolf? You’re a rare breed these days.”

  I stared at her for a moment and then started to laugh. There was no real humour to it but I laughed anyway. To hear Lady Sarah making a joke had been the last thing I’d expected, even if it was a bad one, and I suddenly felt a connection to her that hadn’t been there before.

  She wanted to renew her hold over me to keep me from indulging in any more mindless slaughter that might get either of us killed, and I accepted the mental chains without struggling that time. She was right, in the absence of the rage I couldn’t deny that she had only ever tried to help me and even I could see that constantly leaving a trail of bodies in our wake would only lead more waves of Slayers to us. Besides, I didn’t have the energy to fight.

  The vampire kept watch while I ate from the remains of the victim I’d collapsed beside, 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 were back on our trail, 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, even after feeding, but I pushed my body to its limits as we took off into the night once again.

  Over the next three weeks the Slayers continued to harry us almost non-stop, forcing us to flee from place to place each night. Whenever we were permitted a brief reprieve Lady Sarah tried to give me more space for fear of re-awakening my rage, though she needn’t have worried. I couldn’t feel any hint of the anger that had driven me for so many months, 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 so I could feel alive once more, but until I was permitted another fight or to hunt it seemed I would remain dead inside. And there didn’t seem to be much chance of any more skirmishes with the Slayers anytime soon, since Lady Sarah had taken extra precautions to keep me out of trouble while she slept during the day. She’d tightened the hypnotic lead she kept on me so that I was forced to stay close by to her unless instructed otherwise, and she had us entering more derelict areas where we could make the most of old cellars in relative safety from an attack. She felt the risk of entering the human world to find these places 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 knowing that, they were less likely to attack after the devastation I’d already caused to their other hunting parties they’d sent during the day. They’d learnt the hard way that they needed numbers if they were to take us down, which forced them to bide their time until the opportunity to strike with a larger force presented itself.

  In the week leading up to the next full moon we were fortunate enough to seemingly have lost the Slayers again for the time being, though I had to wonder if they were planning something. They had to know that we would be forced to return to our rural haunts where the vampire had more chance of keeping me under control, and that could be exactly the kind of opportunity our enemies were waiting for. Regardless, Lady Sarah led me back out into the country, though there was a fairly sizeable town closer than she 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 twisting through the surrounding countryside, with a small patch of woodland, for want of a better word, bordering one of those roads. It was really too small to be considered a proper wood or forest, and it offered shelter for only the smallest of animals who would usually make their home there, though it seemed deer had passed through the area recently.

  We found a barn which looked to have been out of use for some years, and far enough from any other buildings to avoid detection by the locals. It was virtually empty, save for a length of rope and a few old, seemingly forgotten tools leant against one of the walls, left to rust. The one thing it lacked was shelter from the sun which would soon rise, but Lady Sarah looked around and nodded.

  “This will do,” she said.

  “Really? Where are you going to hide from the sun in here?”

  “In the ground,” she answered. “But if we are to spend the week here I insist on the comfort of a coffin. Can I trust you to bring me one while I hunt? That graveyard we passed on the outskirts of the town ought to be safe enough, if you can slip in and out unseen. Just don’t do anything so stupid as to steal from a funeral home.”

  “I know, I know. It’ll draw too much attention to us,” I growled. “I’ll see what I can find in the graveyard.”

  “Thank you. Then I grant you permission to leave my side to find a coffin. Fresh meat will be waiting for you upon your return.”

  Expecting more of her leftovers, I merely nodded unenthusiastically and slunk away. I made it to the graveyard without incident and checked there was no one around, Slayer or otherwise, before digging up a coffin. Wrenching the lid open, I wrinkled my nose slightly at the smell, the corpse inside in too advanced a state of decay to be considered in any way appetising, even to the wolf. There was little flesh beneath the withered skin, stretched so tightly over the bones that it looked like the skeleton within could burst out at any moment. But as ghoulish as it appeared, it was just a corpse, limp and lifeless as I tipped it out of the coffin and back into the grave, which I filled in again to hide any evidence that it had been tampered with. That done, I hefted the large box up onto my shoulders and struggled back to the barn. The weight of the coffin wasn’t a problem with my supernatural strength, but it was awkward to carry without any help and I had to pause a couple of times to shift my grip on it. I just hoped it was the right size for the vampire after the effort I’d put in to get it back to her.

  As I neared the barn, I heard Lady Sarah talking to someone else in there. I put the coffin down as gently and quietly as I could on the grass outside and sat on top of it, listening curiously.

  “If this happened last full moon, why am I only just hearing about it now?” came Lady Sarah’s voice.

  “You underestimate your evasive skills,” a male voice answered. “It’s not just our enemies who’ve had a hard time finding you.”

  “They’ve been finding us too quickly, so how is it that you took nearly an entire month?” she retorted.

  “It matters not. I am here now and I advise you to return with me.�
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  “I will not leave his side,” she said stubbornly.

  “Do you truly trust the wolf that much?” the male voice asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Lady Sarah answered him.

  There was a pause before the other voice spoke again, as if she’d taken him by surprise and he needed a moment to recover. “Even so, you must know that staying with him could potentially be dangerous for you.”

  “I do not believe he is the one behind this. I will not,” she said with conviction.

  “Whether he is the one responsible or not, you know he could still be found guilty. And if he is indeed ruled guilty we may not be able to protect you. Don’t let the wolf drag you down with him.”

  “I will not leave his side,” she repeated.

  “So you would choose an animal over your own people?” the male voice hissed.

  “I hope it will not come to that. I thank you for coming to warn me and I will consider our next move. But you should go now; we don’t have long before the dawn.”

  “Very well. But you know it is only a matter of time before he summons the two of you and you will have no option but to answer. Do not be a fool and try to run – it will only end badly for the both of you.”

  “I am well aware how this works,” she hissed.

  “Forgive me, I am merely concerned you are letting your fondness for your pet cloud your judgement. Tread carefully, Lady Sarah. Until the next time.”