“What could come back? What did this to you?” I pressed. I had to know.
“Hard to remember, all confused,” she muttered. I struggled to make sense of what she said next, for she muttered incoherently between the details, and even the details themselves were not that clear. “Something in the shadows, chased me, big amber eyes, cold, so cold, merciless. And its jaws, a mouthful of teeth chasing me, blood everywhere, not my blood, then it had hold of my leg and there was more blood. Mine.”
“But what was it?”
She shuddered and struggled to answer me, but finally managed to gasp “I only saw it clearly once in the moonlight, the wolf. That’s what it was. A wolf.”
I was stunned. There was only one wolf left in our town. And she'd been attacked by this wolf that was not really a wolf at all. A werewolf. Me! I was sickened. Guilt and horror washed away the hatred and I couldn’t look at her anymore. All this time I’d believed the wolf had been killing animals, and for all I knew it had fed on humans every time. Fiona might be the first, or she might be one of many. Either way it didn’t make it any better. And the pieces of flesh caught between my teeth, her flesh! My stomach heaved and it was all I could do to fight it for her sake.
"Nick, promise me you'll kill the wolf if you see it and not let your love for them get in the way," she said with her dying breath.
But before I could give her any sort of reply her eyes rolled up into her skull so that only the whites showed, she twitched more violently while I screamed her name, and then the eyes came back down, empty, lifeless. Dead. She was gone and I was alone once more, horrified at what I had done, but the anger and the hate were coming back, and everything would be different now.
I roared like the monster I was. The wolf had killed one of my best friends, and though I refused to accept it was part of me, I shared the blame for Fiona’s death. I wanted to see it die, and in my head I hunted it, wanting to confront it and to kill it, and then I would be human again, and at least no one else would get hurt.
It evaded me for a while and I sat there by my fallen friend, raging and cursing. Any who might have seen me would have considered me mad, but few ever came that way. There were none to witness my insanity.
I pursued the wolf to the darkest depths of my mind and there I confronted it, oblivious to the world around me.
Before I could attack, the wolf turned and stared at me calmly. It snarled and then did something that took me completely by surprise. It spoke in English!
"You wish to kill me and yet I have committed no crimes. I am innocent like any other wolf and deserve no more to die than they do. Yet you would save their lives and you wish to take mine. What gives you the right?" it challenged.
“You killed my friend,” I roared at it. How dare it reason with me? In my anger I was the monster and it was almost human, but no, that wasn’t right!
“I killed to eat like any other wolf. Besides, you share the blame and we both know it. We are one and the same. I am part of you.”
“No! You’re not me. I’m human!” I screamed. “I would never have done that to her!”
“But you did,” it said, so calmly that I hated it even more. “You are no more human than I am wolf. The sooner you accept that, the easier life will be.”
“Life? You call this life?” I said bitterly. “And even if you are part of me, it doesn’t matter. You made me become a killer. You caused me to lose my soul!"
"Every wolf must kill to eat, like any other predator. I did no more than hunt and feed as nature intended. Besides, there are too many humans on the Earth. I am helping to keep their numbers down. Call it pest control if you will. As for your soul, can you be so sure you ever had one? You humans believe we animals, who are of flesh and blood as yourselves; who share a high percentage of DNA with you; who are living creatures just like you; you believe we do not have souls and yet you do. What makes you so special? What makes you believe that you are a greater species and that we are all lesser species below you, to do with as you please? You abuse us. You capture us and slaughter us for 'fun' and deny us of our rights. What gives you the right? What makes you so different?" it argued.
"You cannot speak or think," I snarled. “Besides, you could have eaten animals.”
"I am speaking now, am I not? And what of my mind? You think there are only instincts there but we are bound together and you can see into it, and hear what runs through it. What then, are these that run through it, if not thoughts?" it said.
"You’re different. You’re a monster. You just told me we share the same blood, that you are partly human as I am partly wolf. Were it not for that you would be the same as other wolves and instincts would be all you had," I argued back.
"And how can you be so sure? The first time I was awoken within you I remember hearing your thoughts, though they meant little to me then as I had not learnt any words, but you were surprised, I think, at how intelligent I was. Back then I was wolf and wolf only, or as near a wolf as I could ever be. But you are right: I am different in that I hunger for human flesh, unlike true wolves. It is part of the curse. I could not feed on animals alone; the curse would not let me. We are both alone in this world. You will never be truly human again and I can never be truly wolf. You think you are the only one of us two to have suffered but you are wrong. I suffer too, and maybe death is our only comfort but we can only die together, we both know that. Even if you defeated me now I would be called back every full moon, or if I defeated you no doubt the vampire would call you back. Let us avoid a pointless fight for it will resolve nothing," it reasoned.
I remained silent but my rage and anger were even greater than before.
"You would still condemn me to death despite the fact I am a part of you," the wolf sighed.
"Yeah, if I could!" I roared and charged at the wolf, pouncing on it, trying to wrestle it to the ground though it fought back despite its words. And as we each fought for dominance it was possible my body shifted between forms when one of us gained control for a short time. Though whether or not it actually did so I cannot say, for of everything outside my mind I was unaware, including my own body and anything physical which happened to it. I could have been shot by a Slayer and I wouldn’t have felt the pain.
I don't know how long the fight lasted inside my mind but the wolf and I were easily matched and finally we lay exhausted on the landscapes of my imagination, panting and bloody.
Then before I could do anything the wolf retaliated in a way far worse than anything I could do to it. It thrust its memories upon me and I was suddenly seeing the world through its eyes and hearing its thoughts, and reliving all the events since it was first awoken when I became a werewolf.
Chapter Eleven
Horrors Relived
The earliest memory, of first feeling the hunger inside that could never be satisfied. I had not eaten all day and I was ravenous. The first sight, that of the moon, my only master, and first sounds; I leapt through the open window, just managing to catch a back leg on the sill and knock several ornaments off, though none of them smashed. And more importantly to me, my first scents... I growled irritably, finding no scents of interest – or at least none that were fresh. There were only old scents left by animals, humans, and fumes from their great, roaring machines that constantly chased each other through the day. I started to walk down the street, enslaved by my own hunger, the need for food greater than any other.
The search for a victim, and finding the prey. Padding along the pavement, a fresh scent carried to me on the breeze, accompanied by the sound of human footsteps. A woman walked by on the other side of the road and glanced at me, but mistaking me for a large stray dog she carried on. Her sweet scent carried to me by a faint breeze, blocking out all the others.
I felt all of the wolf's emotions and feelings; the thrill of the chase, the pleasure brought by the sweet smell of her fear and the sound of her hammering heart. And the hunger, always the hunger. The bloodlust as I ripped into her and the aggression it
brought on, making me savage her, again and again, until she was unrecognisable. The sweet taste of her flesh.
The search for my pack but to no avail. I sent up another howl into the night to inform my pack of my whereabouts, and stood listening for their rallying howl, calling for me to return to them. But only silence greeted my ears. The confusion.
The fight for territory and satisfaction at defeating the challenger. The bloodlust once more.
The excitement when my howl was finally answered. I paused every now and then and continued to howl for my pack. The night was almost spent when finally I received a reply. But I did not recognise the howl as one of my pack member's, who I would instinctively know by scent and sound, even though we had never met before – the werewolf who had awoken me had passed that vital knowledge on, though I knew not how. Cocking my ears in that direction I determined it was a lone wolf, female, containing all the confidence that went with a high rank, an alpha I decided, but fairly young, at least physically. Her voice did not betray her mental age, which could be centuries for one of our kind. The howl was brief and soon ended, and filled with excitement I howled again, straining my ears in desperation for a reply.
The memory changed and I saw how the Slayers had surrounded me, and how Lady Sarah had come to my rescue. The wolf respected her. This memory was brief and less detailed, and lost in the horror of the others.
It faded and a new memory began, much like the first. I felt the hunger dominating all my other feelings again. But there was something new this time, and I felt the wolf's mind, not just following instinct as in the first memory, but thinking like a human, calculating, looking for a way out of the room. I could find no way out this time – there was no opening in the glass wall for me to jump through as there had been before and, if I shattered the glass, the noise would bring humans, and probably the Slayers too.
I paced the length of the room, looking for a way out. I stood up on my back paws, resting my front paws on the windowsill for a better view of the glass standing between myself and freedom, trying to find why there was no opening this time where there had been before.
It had worked out for itself how to open my window! Fear gripped me. Fear at the wolf’s intelligence.
The memory moved on and I was soon hunting again and tasting the flesh of a sheep.
But, though it seemed strange since reason said the sheep should have filled my stomach, I was still hungry and I desired human flesh this time.
As the memory moved on again, there was a fresh trail of a male human youth of the age of seventeen. It seemed in the memory that he was suddenly before me, and then he was on the ground, screaming, but I quickly slaughtered him by crushing his head, forever silencing him. His brains oozed out onto the street while I hungrily lapped them up.
There were more memories like that, memories of blood and death and hunger, but it also showed me the times in between the full moon, when it lurked just on the edge of my consciousness, waiting for its chance to break free. It had been quietly observing the human world it had found itself in and listening to my thoughts, probing my mind, and learning from it. It had learnt to understand our language, even if it couldn’t speak it itself while in its own form. It had learnt many things, and it was all the more deadly for it.
And then... Another memory came, the final one in the wolf's onslaught, much more powerful than the others, overpowering in fact, so that I did not know whether I was human or wolf, and it became the present, more so than the others had, and I became the wolf. If I had thought the others seemed real I was wrong, they were like dreams compared to this, or like watching events through the wolf's eyes, but this was like living it.
Four hours of hunger passed. I was forced to move towards the centre of the town again, the only place where humans never failed to be.
However, there was no one outside at that time of night, or at least no one I could take without being seen. It was too early for the drunks to appear and too late to try and pick one off on their way to these places. Resignedly, I started to search the bins again, this time outside a fast food restaurant, when I heard human voices. And they were heading towards me! I thanked fate for the meal being brought my way while I lay in the shadows, waiting. From listening to their conversation I learnt that it was the birthday of one of the girls in the group and they were going to the night club to celebrate. I detected five of them but I only needed to take one. Sometimes I had eaten more, but I only really needed one to make the hunger bearable. The knowledge of this angered me, but it was lost in the memory.
Now I needed to find a way to isolate one of them and make the kill without being seen by the others. The question was: how could I possibly do it without revealing myself to them? If any witnessed it I would have to kill them too, and the more deaths, the greater the likelihood of discovery by the Slayers. I could think of no way to lure one of them away and was growing desperate. However, fate remained in my favour that night and I had no need to take chances; as they were approaching the nightclub one of the girls had forgotten something. Consequently she left the safety of the group, promising to be back in about fifteen minutes.
Seeing she was taking a different route back – probably shorter – down an alley, I slunk ahead of her and waited until we were out of sight of the others, checking that there was no one about. Satisfied it was as safe as it could ever be in such dark times, I emerged from the shadows and pounced on her. She was too shocked to scream at first and by then it was too late – she could scream no more.
I had begun to feast on my meal when I sensed another female human nearby, but in the grip of the bloodlust I became more reckless. Nothing mattered then except the warm flesh on the ground at my feet. The world around me ceased to exist until there was only the flesh that nourished me, and the hunger. Nothing else mattered.
And so I ignored her. I continued to feed, her footsteps coming closer and still I ignored them. At this point my muzzle was deep in a hole in the belly of my victim, drawing out the organs as I had always done, since the first night I had been released from my prison deep within the human’s consciousness to hunt under the full moon. So lost in my meal, and the pleasure the fresh meat and offal brought, I did not notice the girl to whom the footsteps belonged walking down the alley towards me, until it was too late.
She had not seen me yet – both myself and the carcass were hidden in shadows – but that was about to change. I only became aware of her when I rose from the hole I had made, the organs devoured, to attack another part of the corpse and rip through the soft flesh. And then it was, when my muzzle emerged from the hole, her sweet scent tore through the blood red veil in my mind, and in that instant we saw each other.
The quickest to react, I snarled instinctively, ears flattened against my skull. My lips curled back so that my blood stained teeth were bared, defending my kill. I was an impressive sight in the dark alley, terrible to behold. I was a demon in the darkness, seemingly much larger than any mortal wolf. She did what any mortal would have done, except maybe for the Slayers. She turned and ran. The bloodlust clouded my judgement. I wanted to go back to my meal, but the bloodlust also wanted fresh blood, fresher meat, since the corpse at my feet was already beginning to lose its warmth, though it would not be entirely cold for hours yet. Besides, some part of my mind was insisting that she could not be allowed to live. And the age old instinct in all canines to chase running creatures was trying to make itself heard in the confused knot of thoughts. I could not ignore it. I obeyed. I gave chase...
I forced the human towards the outskirts of the town where it was more isolated, and pursued her into the fields, where I began to close in for the kill.
I ran forward until I drew level with her and grabbed hold of her leg with my jaws, pulling her down to the ground. This time I wanted to play. I let go of the leg which was already leaking blood, and waited for her to rise.
Minutes passed but she made no move to get up. She just lay there whimpering, so I grabbed hold
of the leg again and reared up, tossing my head back. Her body was thrown up with me, and as gravity took hold and I fell back down onto all fours, with a jerk of my head I slammed her back down onto the hard, cold soil. I didn’t put too much force behind it, however, not wanting to end it too quickly. I had not broken any of her bones; merely bruised and winded her. The movement had caused my teeth to rip right through her leg, down to the bone, spewing out more blood.
This time she rose and limped off, crying and screaming in terror.
Silently, I followed behind her until she collapsed again. The game was over: she had not the strength to continue. I sniffed at the leg, but it was the organs I really wanted, so I moved up to her stomach.
Weakly she tried to kick me, but I dodged easily and tore at some of the flesh from just above her waist, though I did not yet dig deep enough with my teeth to the organs beneath. I didn’t bother to kill her first. She’d die soon enough and she didn’t have the strength to fight back or run away.
I had only taken a couple of mouthfuls of flesh when I heard gunshot from somewhere within the town. They weren’t shooting at me but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t taking any chances. If they picked up my trail I’d be shot down, and I wasn’t ready to die yet. I abandoned the meal and ran for the cover of the woodland that I could smell nearby.
And so, an hour later I stood in a small, shallow stream, allowing the icy cold water, numbing, yet refreshing, to wash over my paws and rinse away the blood from my claws. And I drank the clean, clear, pure water that I might quench my thirst and cleanse my bloodied muzzle. The blood mixed with the water: a dark red streak snaked down the stream. I licked the blood away that had splattered all over my body, congealing and thickening on my matted fur. There was something about that night that made me feel the need to cleanse myself of the last remnants of the lives I had taken, as if it were impure, staining my soul. But these were human thoughts. The human was beginning to affect me, and I didn’t like it.
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