The ghouls stood out among the vampires, since they looked like rotting corpses, too skeletal to ever be mistaken for a vampire. Their skin was greying and stretched tight across the bones beneath, their faces little more than skulls, noses missing. Ribs were obvious beneath their chests and their nails were more like claws, making it easier to rip apart the flesh of their victims. Some of them were covered in tattered remains of the clothes they had been buried in. The wraiths looked similar, except they were like ghouls made of something as insubstantial as mist.
“How many of you have been hunted by the Slayers?” I roared. I was never much good at speeches, and I didn’t have time for pleasantries. Nobody answered me but at least I had their attention. Silence had fallen, and every face was turned towards me, the vampires regarding me with disdain, the ghouls with interest, and the wraiths with indifference. The wraiths at least would fight for revenge with nothing to lose, for only the wraiths were beyond further harm. They were deader than any of them. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be stopped, just that stopping them didn’t involve harming them like it would for those of us with corporeal bodies.
“How many have suffered at their hands? I look out at you now and I see a dying race! Look at me. I may be the last of my kind. The Slayers know who I am. They’ve already captured me once and I am lucky to be alive. We have become the hunted, the night no longer ours. Our time is running out. Do you want to spend it cowering in the shadows? Or will you fight? Yes, we are outnumbered, but humans die far easier than we do. And if we are going to die anyway, what do we have to lose? At least this way we have a chance of survival, and if not at least it is better than waiting for the slow process of extinction.”
“This is madness,” one vampire shouted. Others agreed with him. “Many of us have survived for centuries, even with the threat of the Slayers. We still have our lives, our eternity! Would you have us cast them away like so much worthless junk? Are they nothing to you? Well I for one will not throw that away to save one doomed werewolf.”
All the vampires were shouting at me then, and even a few of the ghouls, and looking out at their angry faces I couldn’t help feeling it was hopeless. Nothing I could say was going to convince them. Still, I had to try.
“Life,” I laughed, the shouts dying down to angry muttering. “You call this life? What life is this for us, we who are the greatest predators ever to walk this earth? Mankind used to fear us! What life is this, living in fear of them, they who should be no more than prey! Were it not for the technology they hide behind they would be no match for us. Are we so afraid of them we won’t even fight to take back what’s rightfully ours? Will we not make a stand like the great predators we are, instead of running and falling into extinction?”
“You’re talking about a fight we cannot win,” argued another vampire. “Better to stay in the shadows and continue to elude our hunters, than throw away what years remain to us in one rash move.”
“Tell them what you witnessed after they captured you,” Lady Sarah said to me with a quiet urgency, aware it wasn’t going well.
She wanted me to shock them with what I’d seen, so I searched my memories of the experiments I had happened upon after I’d broken free of the cage I’d been kept in. Most of those memories were vague, but one came to me, sharper and more graphic than anything else from the night I’d escaped. If this didn’t convince them to fight then nothing would.
“You think you can survive much longer?” I tried again. “You think you will live out the rest of your years in freedom? When the Slayers took me they starved me to the point of madness, almost to the point of no return. But I escaped and I destroyed their base. And while I searched for the way out, I saw enough to know I was one of the lucky ones. Did any of you know they’ve been capturing us alive so they can experiment on us? A vampire lay on an operating table, his chest sliced open, his heart and lungs visible. A young boy, possibly the only other living werewolf besides myself until I freed him from his suffering, had been sliced up in a similar way, but they’d sewn a rotting wolf’s head to his neck. Maggots were eating the rotting head, and as I watched they spread to living flesh. They were eating him alive, and the Slayers had scientists making notes, testing how much he could endure. They were testing things on him, things I have no name for, trying to find the best way to kill us, the best methods of torture. Will you stand by and let this happen? If we do nothing, you could face the same fate. If we are truly doomed, is it not better to die fighting than spend the last of our days, maybe even years, as playthings of the Slayers?”
Finally I had their interest. It seemed I had succeeded in shocking them. Some of the vampires still looked scornful, but most of them seemed more willing to listen.
“Well spoken, Nick,” said a familiar voice, one I knew I’d heard before but couldn’t quite place. It sounded familiar yet different to how I remembered it. Where had I heard that voice before? “But you know there is another option. All you offer is death. I can offer you more, all of you. You can still have eternity, if you are willing to make a few changes, to embrace the new world and let go of the past. The world of men is changing as technology takes over, and we must change with it. I offer you a third choice, one which guarantees your survival.”
A dark figure walked towards us from the direction of the woods. The shadows stretched outwards from the trees, but they didn’t quite reach our gathering. Closer to the woods the world was black, but it was more a darker shade of grey where we were, the moonlight softening the blackness. He had been shouting to be heard above the others, until silence fell. The last was a low hiss, yet it carried to us on the still night air, as he emerged from the blackness. “Join with us!”
Lady Sarah gasped. I gawped stupidly at him, taking several minutes to recover enough to find my voice. “They killed you! I buried your body. How can you be alive? No one could survive what they did to you.”
The vampire looked at me and laughed, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognised his voice sooner. “Ah, so young and foolish, how could you ever think you could lead us into another battle against the Slayers? You are still a child. None of us can stand against them. No mate, they did not kill me. The vampire you buried had just died after we’d tortured him, and it was my idea to put the pendant on the corpse, knowing you would assume it was me. You’re still too human to ever survive this war, even now. If only you’d embraced your lupine side you’d have known it wasn’t me. And that little mistake almost cost you your life.”
“You,” I said, understanding dawning. I’d let myself forget what Aughtie had said about a contact since I’d escaped, but her words came back to me as I fought to make sense of what was happening. “It was you who told her what I was.”
“Yes, me. I betrayed you to her. It was I who set up the little trap with the mist. An old power of mine, controlling the weather. We didn’t expect to capture your friend instead, but it worked just as well. I brought the storm that night when you discovered the corpse and I caused the bulbs to blow in the outside lights. And now I have brought the Slayers to your little gathering. Join us, or die. There is no escape.”
I looked out into the darkness of the woods and saw more figures moving towards us. “Don’t listen to him! The Slayers want us dead. If you join them they will only betray you! Now is the time to fight, your lives depend on it.”
That brought the crowd out of their confusion. They hadn’t really been following the last few minutes, but they knew Vince for what he was then, a traitor, and they were looking at him with disgust. He knew they were never going to join him and hissed “Fools!” before melting back into the shadows, though I knew we hadn’t seen the last of him that night.
The Slayers were drawing closer. A gunshot sounded and a bullet thudded into a vampire’s shoulder. She hissed, baring fangs, and ran at the humans with unearthly speed. The other vampires and the wraiths followed, until the two armies clashed. Ours was considerably smaller, if it could even be called an army.
It seemed Aughtie had managed to bring in reinforcements from other parts of Yorkshire, as there had to be over a hundred of them. The ghouls joined the fray at the first spill of blood, where they ripped apart the wounded and fed. We were stronger than the Slayers – they were only mortal after all – but they had greater numbers and guns. If they didn’t panic all they had to do was shoot our hearts or heads and we were dead before we had a chance to get to them. Bullets wouldn’t stop the wraiths, but somehow I didn’t think they were enough to win the battle. Could they even harm the living? As Lady Sarah and I watched the battle unfold, not yet joining the fight ourselves, I soon had my answer.
Even wounded, that first vampire had proven too fast for the Slayers to land a killing shot. Flashes of gunfire lit the darkness as the humans tried to fell the undead charging at them, but we were simply too fast. There were a few sprays of blood as a handful of bullets hit a vampire or a ghoul, but they were merely painful rather than deadly and only served to heighten the bloodlust of our army. Guns clicked empty and the Slayers dropped them and drew their blades, knowing they would never have time to reload before the life was ripped from their vulnerable mortal bodies. Armed for battle, these humans carried not only knives in their belts but also swords.
Some bullets tore through the wraiths but it seemed no mortal weapon could harm them. The first bullet to pass through a ghostly skull caused the form of the wraith’s head to briefly explode into shapeless mist, but seconds later that mist gathered itself back into its form of an ethereal skull. Bullet and blade alike passed right through without even slowing them. And once those tormented spirits reached the humans they felt had wronged them, it was over for their victims. Ghostly skeletal hands reached into the chests of their enemies, three squeezing the life out of their victims, the other two ripping the beating organs out in a spray of gore.
I was about to ask if the wraiths were seemingly unstoppable, why not let them do all the killing for us, but then a sword cut through one of the wraith’s outstretched hands, temporarily preventing it from killing its victim. A man produced a book from an internal pocket in his jacket and began to intone some kind of incantation, causing the wraith to utter a terrible shriek born of centuries of pain and torment. As if the pain had suddenly become too much for the vengeful spirit to bear, it withdrew with its ghostly skull in its skeletal hands, floating backwards across the battlefield. Thus repelled, the wraith was rendered useless. There were a handful of other Slayers working on repelling the remaining four wraiths, and I had to wonder if I was witnessing a few of the last witches and warlocks left in the modern world. I felt a wave of despair as I watched them choosing to use their powers to serve the Slayers, no doubt in exchange for their own lives, just as Vince had done. I just hoped these were the only humans with supernatural powers in their service which Aughtie had summoned for the battle. If not, if there were groups of them in each area throughout the country, or even the world, and we faced witchcraft as well as human technology, then it seemed ultimately we really were doomed.
The vampires also realised the threat the spellcasters presented. Most of our army fought with our bare hands but three of the vampires had swords of their own. Judging from their skill with a blade they were from a time before guns, when cold steel was all they had to rely on as humans. One of those vampires I recognised as the first who had spoken out against facing the Slayers in open battle, and he cut his way through to the man who’d repelled the first wraith. The warlock, if that’s what he truly was, had no choice but to abandon his chanting and turn his attention to the vampire advancing towards him. As soon as his spell was broken the wraith was able to rejoin the battle. I would later learn wraiths could be banished from the mortal realm, but it was not an option in the heat of battle so repelling them was the best counter available to the Slayers that night.
I was beginning to feel the battle would go in our favour. In that initial charge we’d already killed around thirty of the Slayers, while they’d only felled the female vampire who’d already been shot, and a handful of the ghouls. That first vampire to die had been weakened just enough by her wound for her movements to slow and present the Slayers with a chance to finish her. She’d also wielded a blade and had been locked in combat with a human, but slowed as she was she couldn’t cut him down as quickly as she could have done if she’d had chance to heal. While she was focussed on parrying his blows, another of the Slayers who’d had chance to reload his gun got a clear line of fire and was able to put a bullet through her brain. A couple of the ghouls had also been shot and a few heads had been severed by the swords of our enemies. Perhaps we didn’t need to risk raising any zombies after all. I readied myself to join the fray, about to rip free of my clothes and embrace the full power of my lupine side, but Lady Sarah placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Do not be so quick to count on our victory,” she said.
And as I watched with dismay the vampire facing the first of the spellcasters raised his sword to strike with all the fury and inhuman speed of their kind, but the warlock had quickly begun to chant a new incantation, one of his hands outstretched with the palm face up. Suddenly the blade fell from the vampire’s hand and he sank to his knees in agony, clutching at his head. Blood leaked from the orifices in his skull; crimson rivulets flowed out from his ears, his nostrils, his eyes and his mouth. Before any could go to his aid, the warlock finished his chant and closed his outstretched hand into a fist, and as he did so the vampire’s head exploded. Gore splattered against the warlock and a few of his fellow Slayers, as well as two nearby ghouls, while the headless corpse fell to the ground. The ghouls lost control to their hunger and bloodlust and attacked the corpse in a feeding frenzy, ripping and tearing with their bony claws and teeth. So intent on their meal as they were, they became easy targets for the Slayers to pick off. Their corpses fell on top of the vampire’s, a woman placing a bullet in each of their frenzied brains.
“Damn it, all that combined supernatural power and it’s still not enough,” I growled. “We have to raise the dead or lose.”
“I fear you are right but I know not if I have the strength to raise the whole cemetery, especially as I have yet to feed tonight,” Lady Sarah replied. “And not every corpse is capable of becoming a zombie. It depends what happened to the soul. Some face oblivion, though we do not know why. Most move on to whatever the afterlife holds for them, but some vengeful spirits become wraiths, while others are trapped on the Earth, some able to manifest as ghosts, some too weak to do that. It is they who reanimate their own bodies for as long as the spell binds them to their earthly remains, although I have heard stories that some are drawn back from the afterlife if the call is powerful enough. I will do what I can but I fear we will not have the numbers we need.”
“I should help the others while we wait for you to bring reinforcements,” I said.
Again she held me back and I growled irritably at her. The smell of blood was calling to my own hunger.
“Come, I need you with me.”
There was no time for questions so I reluctantly joined her as we slipped away from the battle and ran towards the graveyard she called home. I had trouble keeping up with her in my human form and was again ready to rip off my clothes to transform, but as if she read my thoughts she slowed and bid me to wait.
The streets were deserted of human life. I wondered if the Slayers had managed to impose some kind of curfew to keep innocent bystanders away, no doubt using the threat of the rogue wolf as an excuse. Or perhaps people subconsciously sensed the danger of so many predators nearby and were hiding behind locked doors of their own accord. It meant we had to feed on a large stray dog but it did help replenish our strength, even if it wasn’t our desired prey. The flesh was dry and chewy once Lady Sarah drained the animal of most of its blood, but I forced it down, even though it was far from palatable. I needed the energy for the fight still ahead of me, and to support at least one more transformation.
We entered the graveyard toge
ther and Lady Sarah explained why my presence was required.
“Necromancy demands a blood offering. It must be human blood, which is where you come in. My own blood is too far from human, but yours is closer than mine in your human form. It should be sufficient.”
I had little choice but to trust her to slit my wrist with her nail and lick the wound, the same coagulant bats have in their saliva preventing it from healing. When the blood started to drip down into the soil she began to speak the words of some long forgotten language that would awaken the dead. Once she fell silent she spoke again in English.
“Now you may transform and let the wound heal.”
So I finally ripped off my clothes and let the transformation take hold, but I only took it halfway, becoming the wolf man again. The wound closed on my wrist as I changed, and as my senses grew sharper I became aware of something happening in the graves.
A pair of eyes snapped open in the darkness beneath my feet. The darkness - all consuming and smothering in its intensity, pressing against the eyeballs until they must surely pop. Hands clawed at the coffin lid. Panic took hold. Lungs gasped for what little oxygen existed there. Panic turned to fear. The need to get out, the urgent need to breathe, it was overpowering. Hands continued to claw at the coffin lid, desperate, strengthened by that fear. They succeeded in breaking open the lid but dirt fell in, burying them. They did not give up the fight to be free, legs kicking in panic, whole body thrashing urgently, lungs burning for oxygen.
On the surface I could see the earth moving over one of the graves. Suddenly a hand broke free of the dirt and reached upwards, as if trying to grasp the sky. Seconds later another hand reached the surface, and then a head. The corpse pulled itself out of its grave and stood, inhaling the oxygen in some echo of life, as if mocking life itself.
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