The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  Dhaer stabbed again with its tail and this time it would have pierced Will’s heart, if his master hadn’t used another blast of demonic power to beat the nightmare creature back. But the blow wasn’t much more effective than a punch would have been. Dhaer was knocked back a few steps but it kept its feet, and it retaliated with another telekinetic attack of its own. Again demon Will raised his hand to form a shield, but that altered face was beginning to show the strain. His teeth gritted with the effort, his face twisted into a snarl. I noticed then he bore another wound on the right side of his face, but it was only the one claw mark, running over his eye and down to the bottom of his nose. His right cheek was intact.

  “Give it up, Jaken. Your human’s body isn’t strong enough to channel such power. He will be torn apart long before you can do any real damage to my flesh.”

  I wish I could tell you I’d heroically charged in by this point, but that would be a lie. And after everything we’ve shared since we first met, I feel I owe you more than that. The truth is, I was so affected by Dhaer’s power that day that I stayed rooted to the spot, still fighting the instinct to run. Whether it’s because I’d gone into the fight with so many doubts or whether it was the fact I hadn’t wanted to be in that fight at all I don’t know. I only know I was frozen in place by the icy terror I’d been plunged into, and I would have been all but defenceless if Dhaer had turned its attention on me.

  It wasn’t until I heard His voice in my head that I regained the ability to move. The one Dhaer had called Jaken, Will’s master and my saviour when it had suited Him.

  “Don’t just stand there, you fool,” He growled in my mind, slicing through the terror with the same efficiency as His blade would have sliced through my flesh. “Attack it from behind while it’s focused on me.”

  There was something about His voice, something so utterly commanding it couldn’t be defied, whether I wanted to obey or not. It had a greater effect on me than the fear of Dhaer’s presence and suddenly I was back, still treading that sea of dread but no longer drowning in it. I just needed to pick my moment to make my move.

  Dhaer followed through with another physical attack, lunging for demon Will in an attempt to crush his life with its hands, but he dodged a second time. Dhaer had its back to me as it prepared to strike again, and I finally charged in, bounding forward on all fours and leaping at the creature. No one had ever explained to me how to kill a demon exactly (with the exception of Will’s vague answer about the need for total annihilation of both body and spirit), but as long as it had a corporeal body, I decided there was a good chance destroying or removing its head would work. So I leapt for its back with the intent of wrapping my fangs around its skeletal neck and worrying the flesh, until rotten skin frayed and bone snapped. But the terror demon hadn’t completely forgotten me after all.

  I was still in mid-air when it sounded its terrible roar – all that hate and pain given voice in a form earthly creatures could understand, and yet it was somehow so wrong on a fundamental level that it went far beyond mortal comprehension. But the wordless cry seemed to carry the message ‘know my pain’ in a way which felt like it bypassed the ears and went straight through to the soul. A message that was all too clear in a way which was simply terrifying.

  The actual noise of its roar probably didn’t go on for that long, but this time it seemed to reverberate in my skull for ages afterwards. My mind plunged back beneath the sea of dread and I was reduced to a pitiful prey animal once again, just like in the dungeon.

  I twisted in fright and collided with the creature sideways instead of head on, crashing clumsily against the thing. It was too strong to be knocked off its feet and my body simply bounced off. Dhaer barely even stumbled.

  I landed on all fours, collapsing into a bundle of quivering fur, my hands clasped over my ears as I whimpered in terror. The thing could have turned and finished me off then and I would have been helpless to do anything about it. But its attention was still solely on demon Will.

  The possessed human remained immune to its fear inducing powers and swung his fiery blade at the same leg he’d hit before. Dhaer dodged this time, the sword slicing through nothing but air.

  Jaken’s voice growled through my mind again. There wasn’t the same sense of agony to His existence as the other demon but there was rage, and disgust at what He probably deemed to be cowardice. His fury felt like it ran far deeper than that of Dhaer, though I fancied the two creatures shared an equal level of loathing for all things, and a desire to see them burn in the fires of their realm. It was probably part of what made them demonic to begin with.

  “Stop snivelling like a cowering dog. Get up and fight!”

  The words were no louder than the echoes of Dhaer’s roar, but again they cut through the power the other demon had over me. It was a voice which demanded unquestioning obedience, and despite the involuntary shivers racking my body and the pounding of my heart, I picked myself up as instructed.

  My instincts were still insisting I should run but it was almost like I was possessed myself then. A will that didn’t quite seem to be my own drove me to attack once more, even as the dread rose a little higher and the terror squeezed a little tighter. The strain on my heart was immense and I felt sure it would explode at any moment, yet I followed Jaken’s orders anyway, without really knowing why.

  Dhaer and demon Will continued their deadly dance, hacking and slashing and calling on unseen forces to batter each other with the power of their minds. I lunged for the nightmare creature’s injured leg and succeeded in biting down on the gaping wound there. The skin had parted around Will’s blade and there was some kind of blood leaking from the cut, but the fluid was as dark and rotten as the thing’s necrotic membrane, and I could see no damage from the Hellfire. There was a notch in its bone though.

  Barely any flesh surrounded the skeleton. My fangs ground against bone, tougher than any I’d wrapped my jaws around before. And the taste. The unpleasant tang of rotting tissue was nothing new, but this was something else entirely. It was a taste that slithered over my tongue and coated the buds with an unwholesome flavour, unlike anything I’d experienced before. I almost let go of the leg on reflex, but Jaken’s command wouldn’t allow it. So I held on, pulling the creature off balance and allowing demon Will to land another blow.

  This time demon Will struck Dhaer’s tail, slicing clean through. The severed tip fell to the ground, one less weapon for the creature to use against us, and the thing roared again. It couldn’t break Jaken’s hold over me, His will keeping me on my feet.

  I continued to savage Dhaer’s leg. And somewhere in that mess of fear and blind obedience my brain had melted into, there was the realisation the tables were turning in our favour. We might actually have a chance at defeating this dread thing after all!

  Dhaer roared again. “I will not leave this realm!”

  Its bleeding tail whipped round, knocking demon Will to the ground. I released its leg and readied myself to make another leap for its neck, but I never had the chance to pounce. Another blast of telekinetic energy drove me back, and the next thing I knew I was also lying on the ground, feeling the throb of fresh bruises and the sting of broken skin.

  From where I lay, I could see Dhaer standing over Will. The human’s face had reverted back to its original features, the wounds across his left jawbones and right eye closing up without a trace. His master must have left him, or maybe Dhaer had been able to push Jaken out of his body while he was down. And without his master possessing him, Will was just Will again. He was a skilled fighter and a strong and fearless man, but that’s all he was. A man, wholly reliant on man-made weapons to win his battles, and with no supernatural powers to call on. Or so I assumed. Ed had never said whether Will gained anything from his deal other than long life, but if he did have powers of his own, I’d yet to see any evidence of them.

  “I gave you a chance to leave and you chose to fight,” Dhaer said. “Mercy is not within a demon’s nature, but I woul
d rather avoid Jaken’s wrath. So I will spare you this one time. Perhaps then He will do me the same courtesy and leave me to tormenting these mortals without any further interference.”

  Will didn’t answer. Then the demon turned to me.

  “You gave me my freedom, but if you came here thinking that would save you then you are gravely mistaken. That debt is paid.”

  I whimpered and tugged at my ears, back to drowning in the terror of the demon’s presence. Words were beyond me.

  “However,” Dhaer continued, “I sense you are also bound to Hell, and thus I will grant you one last chance as well. Walk away and we have no further quarrel. But should you come hunting me a second time, I will not hesitate to take both your lives, no matter the consequences. You have been warned.”

  With that, the creature stretched its wings and leapt into the air, rising on the smoke from the destruction it had caused until it shrank to an indistinct shadow high above us. I was still lying on my back. Only when it passed out of sight did I find the strength to rise.

  My heart began to settle into a much healthier rhythm, my body relaxing. But some part of me knew it wasn’t over. We’d failed when failure wasn’t an option. There would be a round two against this foe, and the next time we would either succeed, or die trying.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Plan B

  Will was also back on his feet, his eyes pointed upwards in the direction the demon had gone. I could see his pupils were back to their usual round shape, and the irises looked to be human grey again. The only slight difference now was the bloodshot tinge creeping into the white sclera, and there was something of a haggard look to the surrounding features, as if the possession had taken its toll and left him weakened as a result. Maybe that was the real reason why his master’s spirit had retreated back into its own body. Maybe his human flesh had reached its limits, and it hadn’t been able to play host to the demon any longer.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now it will likely seek hunting grounds far from here,” Will said, tearing his gaze away from the sky to look at me. His sword was back in its sheath and he’d retrieved his rifle, the gun now cradled in his arms. “It’s intelligent enough to have realised we pose a bigger threat than it first believed, especially after we succeeded in wounding it.”

  “What’s our next move then?”

  “We can’t follow it, so we lure it back to us.”

  “If it’s so intelligent, won’t it recognise a trap and steer clear?”

  “Not if we use a summoning ritual and an offering it can’t turn down. We pick our battleground, then we summon it there and finish it off.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to do that in the first place?”

  “No. This was always Plan B.”

  I waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t.

  “And what kind of offering are we talking about? Human sacrifice?”

  “Multiple sacrifices. Dhaer’s hold on the mortal plane has grown strong. It will take dozens to summon it to us. Maybe even hundreds.”

  “No,” I growled. “Either find some other way or we’re done. I want no part in this.”

  “You might change your mind when the killing starts and your blood is up. I know all about your love of carnage. You enjoy a good massacre as much as the next monster.”

  “No,” I growled again. “I won’t be that monster anymore. Find some other way to kill the demon or find a new partner. My murdering days are over – I kill only for survival now.”

  His lips twitched into a smirk. “Try telling that to the Slayer you just tortured in revenge for the cruelty done to the dog.”

  “The lives of those three men are the exception. They deserve everything they get.”

  “As you wish. But if you don’t help me, Gwyn will never again know freedom.”

  “I’ll find him myself if I have to. I’m not slaughtering entire towns and villages anymore, not unless they’re a part of the fight against the Slayers. Get yourself another monster to do your dirty work or better yet, ask your master to come up here and do it Himself. I’m done with all that, you hear me? I won’t do it.”

  His smirk turned to smugness and a taunting lilt crept into his voice. “It could take you weeks to find Gwyn on your own, perhaps even months. Most Slayers you try torturing probably won’t even know the answers you seek. They’ll tell you whatever you want to hear and the days will pass while you run around on some wild goose chase, and with each passing day Gwyn will begin to lose a little more hope. And as the days turn into weeks, he will start to lose more than just hope. You’ve seen what the Slayers do to their undead captives. They will strip him of his dignity, then his flesh, and he will lose piece after piece until there is nothing of his human form left.”

  His words conjured up images of the Welsh spirit laid out on one of those operating tables I’d seen in other bases. Bright lights filled the room to keep him in human form. In my imagination he’d already been cut open to reveal his organs, some of which had been removed and suspended in preservative fluid. And much as I was trying to keep the promise I’d made to my lupine half just before letting our split personalities become one whole mind again, I couldn’t leave Gwyn to his fate for the sake of avoiding more bloodshed.

  “Damn you,” I snarled, glaring at Will.

  “I’m already damned, remember?”

  “Fuck you then.”

  “I knew you’d see sense,” he said, with another slight smirk. My anger reared up but I held it back for the time being, if only for Gwyn’s sake.

  “Let’s just get this over with. Do you even have an area for summoning in mind?”

  Will was quiet for a moment. “We want somewhere near here so we don’t lose too much time travelling. Aside from my master’s wish to deal with this sooner rather than later, we want to strike again while Dhaer is weakened from the last fight. I suggest we move over to the next county and summon it back to one of the towns there.”

  “Aren’t you weakened from this last fight as well? You look like you could do with a rest before going back into battle.”

  “I’ll be fine. By the time we’re ready to perform the ritual, my body will have recovered from the strain of holding my master’s spirit.”

  “Your master. Dhaer called Him Jaken, right?”

  “That’s part of His name, yes. You don’t need to know the other part.”

  “I hate being kept in the dark,” I growled. “But I guess it will do for now.”

  Will shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better that way.”

  I glanced back up at the sky. It was hard to tell with all the smog in the air but it looked to me like it was getting darker. Nightfall couldn’t be far off.

  “We must have been walking all day,” I said. “We ought to rest for the night at least. There’s no sense going for round two with Dhaer when we’re both knackered, or we’ll only get ourselves killed.”

  He sighed. “Okay. But not here. This place belongs to the dead now.”

  I glanced across at the cadavers made to appear like they were watching. There was something eerie about that gruesome audience, but it wasn’t that which made me want to agree with Will. I’d been around enough death to lose any fear the bodies might have once held. Hell, I’d made enough corpses of my own. No, it was the thought the dead don’t always stay dead. And after walking through a similarly macabre crowd only a week or so ago, a crowd which had been reanimated by some necromancer the Slayers had on their payroll, I had no desire to sleep among them. Not when there was no guarantee these wouldn’t also rise and attack us, unlikely though it might be.

  “Where to, then?” I asked. “It’s a fair trek back to the car.”

  “It’ll be a fair trek in any direction. At least we can sleep in the car. It might not be ideal, but we’ll be sheltered for the night and then we can drive the rest of the way in the morning.”

  We were back to walking in silence after that. It didn’t bother me so much on the return jo
urney, my mind too preoccupied on the battle ahead and this latest atrocity I was being asked to commit. It was no worse than anything I’d done in the past and yet I hated the thought of spilling so much blood for such little reason. Maybe you could look at it as I’d be sacrificing a few to save the many, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt more like a return to the mindless killing I’d promised myself I’d give up, the waste of life that went against everything I’d believed in before falling into darkness. And more than that, it felt like the cold-blooded murder Amy had made me promise not to commit in the brief time she’d known the truth about why I’d been missing. Yet for all my reluctance to go ahead with Will’s plan, I couldn’t deny there was also a part of me which felt a thrill at the promise of so much slaughter. My bloodlust was stirring at the mere thought. It wasn’t going to take much more in the way of persuasion for me to give in to it.

  Something else was bothering me while we walked. Dhaer had said something about me being bound to Hell, as if they’d already laid claim to my soul. But I’d not entered into any bargains which involved handing over whatever part I’d not yet destroyed or maybe even damned myself. So what exactly had Dhaer meant?

  Night fell long before we made it back to the car. The vehicle was right where we’d left it, which wasn’t really surprising. The dead had no use for it and there were no living humans left in the area to steal it. But the town we’d started in was no longer completely devoid of other life, or unlife to be more precise.