Hybrid

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  All around me the dirt writhed as the dead pulled themselves to the surface, more than I had dared hope for after what Lady Sarah had told me about the souls of the dead. My worst nightmares had come true, for there stood all my victims, their dead eyes glaring at me with hatred, bound only by the dark magic which had brought them back from the grave, the only thing preventing them dragging me down into the eternal darkness into which I had sent them. I looked at Lady Sarah nervously. Vengeance is a powerful thing. She controlled them but for how long?

  She ordered them into battle and they had no choice but to obey. We returned with the dead to find the tides had been turned and the Slayers were winning. Casualties from both sides littered the ground, but we had been outnumbered to begin with and the most deadly of our enemies, those capable of witchcraft, were still among the living. Our force was reduced to six vampires and around half of the ghouls. The rest were dead or dying. They’d taken down a respectable number of humans with them but it wasn’t enough. Dozens of the Slayers still remained and there were enough of them to protect their spellcasters, who were once more focussed on keeping the wraiths at bay. However, as we drew closer to the fallen Lady Sarah’s necromancy was powerful enough to raise many of the dead humans and add them to our ranks, but not the vampires and the ghouls who would never rise again.

  The zombies moved towards the Slayers in a cascade of maggots, each in various stages of decay. The new dead walked almost like humans. The older ones limped, their muscles stiff and almost useless. Some were reduced to skeletons, Lady Sarah’s power the only thing binding the bones together. Some had died in the last world war, their legs long since blown off. They dragged themselves along with their hands. Some groaned. Others were silent, their vocal cords rotted away years ago. Few of them were whole, but they didn’t need much to kill. One of them even had a head missing, but it seemed to be doing well enough without it. They pulled their victims apart with inhuman strength. Some of them tore through flesh and bone with their teeth. And they were virtually unstoppable, much like the wraiths without the interference of witchcraft. Lady Sarah later told me the only way to stop zombies was to either kill the necromancer that raised them, assuming they were still bound to that necromancer, or vaporise them.

  Faced with this new horror, the Slayers were starting to panic. One weapon they lacked was fire, and even if witchcraft was capable of producing flames, it seemed the spellcasters were too focussed on maintaining the incantations to repel the wraiths to be able to perform any other magic. Without flamethrowers or any supernatural power to defeat the reanimated corpses, the best they could do was to hack them to bits, until they were left in too many pieces to do any harm. Then a Slayer came at me with his sword and I was forced to take my eyes off the zombies to join the fight at last.

  The human swung at my head, so slow, so clumsy. I dodged it with ease and drove a hand into his gut. I pulled out his entrails and left him dying on the floor. The bloodlust was taking over again. A man had just succeeded in knocking one of the vampires to the ground and was about to blow his brains out. I killed him before he even had chance to turn and rose to face another one…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Death

  I killed a Slayer who charged at me and felled another one in my way. The boy I had been would have loved to have taken up one of the blades of the fallen but my bestial nature had no need for tools. My own teeth and claws were the only weapons I needed and I slashed and bit my enemies, tearing flesh and breaking bones as I raged through the battle.

  But it was Aughtie's blood I really wanted. I knew she would be there somewhere, and occasionally I picked up her scent, before I lost it again in the overpowering smell of blood and death. I was losing control of the wolf. The bloodlust was upon us and it was taking over. A man ran at me and I pounced on him without even thinking. He wasn’t a Slayer: he had no weapons and he was dressed differently to the rest of them. No, he was just the one unfortunate bystander we encountered that night who had got caught up in something he didn’t belong in. I could even see his car on the distant road. He’d stopped for a break on the way to wherever he was going, and I could only assume the sound of the fighting had drawn him to the battlefield to investigate what was going on. I’d like to think that it wasn’t until after I killed him that I realised I knew him, but I know to tell you that would be a lie. In truth the human’s rage merged with the bloodlust of the wolf and we savaged him. And God help me I enjoyed it.

  I ripped open his stomach, blood blossoming over his white shirt, and spilled out the entrails while he screamed and thrashed beneath me. He kicked out with one leg and I grabbed it in my jaws and ripped it off. It came clean out of the socket with a wet sucking noise, as if his body was trying to suck it back in. His arms flailed weakly against me. I ignored them. I dropped the leg and took hold of his head in my jaws. Teeth sliced into flesh. I shredded his face until it was nothing but bloody tatters. Then a zombie lurched forward and pulled him away from me.

  “No!” I roared. I fought to drag him back, but his body could not withstand the pull of two creatures with supernatural strength. The other leg came free of its socket, as did the arms. What was left of his mouth formed a scream that was quickly cut off by death itself. And then he was dead, and the zombie ate what was left. I looked at what had been my Dad and in that instant felt no grief, only the anger. I’d killed him just like I’d sworn to and in my anger I felt he’d deserved it. All he’d ever done was make my life a misery, and I felt I wouldn’t miss him.

  Leaving the zombie to its meal, I went back to join the fray. I’d regained control for the time being. I needed to keep a clear head just long enough to find Aughtie, so I transformed back to human. I looked up, the change complete, and went in search of the hated woman. But someone else found me first.

  Vince reappeared from the shadows, fangs bared, holding a gun. He had the same bat-like face as when we first met.

  “Why, Vince?” I said, controlling the anger long enough to get some answers.

  “Why?” he spat. “I never asked to be this way! The vampire created Lady Sarah out of love. I was a mistake. I lay dying in his arms as the bastard drained me of my blood, my fucking life. I wasn’t ready to die so I stabbed him in the chest with a dagger I’d stolen earlier that day. And his cursed blood made me into this! At first I decided death would be better, but the thing that kept me alive was the need for revenge. I wanted to kill the bastard for what he’d done to me, and I didn’t care how many others I killed along the way. I hate us all! Centuries I’ve searched for him with no luck. Then Aughtie found me, and made me an offer. She hates us as much as I do. I joined them and I helped her kill and torture others. I enjoyed it. I helped her invent new methods of torture. I helped her find more effective ways to kill us. And it was I who brought your kind to an end. That fang on my pendent was from my first kill. And it was I who was hunting the werewolf that night he bit you. I didn’t realise my mistake until later, but thanks to Lady Sarah I was able to correct it. I delivered you to Aughtie in the end.”

  “Why didn’t you set a trap for me sooner when you knew it was me all along?” I growled.

  He shrugged. “You’re just the right age to want to fight the Slayers. I knew you were the one as soon as I laid eyes on you at Halloween. We have been waiting for you for years; the one who would bring the last of our kind out of hiding and lead them into destruction. Once you had served your purpose, then we set the trap. The first one was never meant for you. Originally we intended it to be a threat, to scare you into taking action. And then a girl who I knew was a friend of yours happened to be nearby. You were taking too long. I had to push you further so we took your friend. Aughtie wanted to take you from the start, but I told her to let me bring you to her in my own time. You needed time to accept what you were before you would fight. And I enjoyed the control I had over you. I could have killed you anytime I wanted and you never knew it. And perhaps you reminded me of myself in the early da
ys of becoming a vampire.”

  “I am not like you,” I growled defiantly.

  I vaguely wondered why they’d felt the need to capture and question me at all, rather than just kill me. Surely he’d learnt all he could from Lady Sarah before faking his own death, so what other information had they possibly thought I could give them? But the one thing that was becoming clear about the Slayers was their blind hatred for the monsters that preyed on them. For many it seemed joining the cause was personal, and they agreed to become a part of the Slayers to seek vengeance for lost loved ones taken from them by members of the undead. Most of them were so driven by hatred, they didn’t need a reason to inflict as slow and painful a death as possible. Hunting and killing us wasn’t enough, so they’d built compounds like the one I’d been captured in to satisfy their own monstrous needs. Aughtie hadn’t really been interested in any information I might have had about the army Lady Sarah had been gathering, she’d just wanted to torture me for her own dark pleasure.

  Vince ignored my protestation and carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And imagine my disappointment when you escaped from the compound. Still, now I have you.”

  He was about to attack when Lady Sarah appeared.

  “How could you?” she asked, bitter tears in her eyes.

  He snarled but didn’t answer this time.

  I stepped back. This was Lady Sarah’s fight.

  She was faster than Vince, more powerful. The fight was over in seconds. She punched a hand through his chest. Her fist came out the other side with the heart clutched between it.

  “Now Vince, remind me how you kill a vampire again?” I said while I watched. “Oh yeah that’s right, take out the heart and cut off the head.”

  Vince looked down at his chest, surprise plain on his face as if he hadn’t expected her to really do it. Then he grinned, still very much alive, even after Lady Sarah withdrew her arm, as impossible as that was from what I knew of our world. She crushed his heart until it was nothing but a bloody mess. Vince watched but made no move to stop her. He aimed the gun at her head, but she knocked it from his hand before he could fire and it landed somewhere near my feet. Vince’s eyes followed it, and I tossed it away into the woods before he could make a grab for it, while Lady Sarah proceeded to take out his brain. She could have done it quick and relatively painless if she’d crushed the skull in one go, but she wanted to make him suffer. I understood; it would be the same when I went up against Aughtie.

  What happened next was a blur. Lady Sarah’s fist connected with Vince’s face and he fell to the ground. She bent over him and hit him until blood seeped from his eyes, nose and mouth. She kept hitting him until his face literally caved in. Shards of bone stuck into the brain. It began to ooze out from the force of the impact, and parts of it were already crushed. When there was nothing left of his face to punch, she tore out the brain and shredded it. Vince ceased struggling as soon as his brain was removed from his body. For good measure she pulled his head clean off his shoulders, or what was left of it, and then he was truly dead. There could be no way for him to come back again. He was gone, and I can honestly say we never missed him, though I think his betrayal left its scars on Lady Sarah. For my own part, I hadn’t known him long enough to be too upset once the initial anger had subsided, but Lady Sarah had known him for centuries. What she was feeling in that moment I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t read her.

  With Vince dead, that left Aughtie, and she was mine. I left Lady Sarah to her feelings, whatever they were, and continued my search.

  I walked back into the battle, killing a couple more Slayers who got in my way, but grew wary as I neared one of the spellcasters. This one was a witch, and like the man who’d destroyed the vampire earlier she immediately broke off chanting the incantation repelling the wraiths to face me. It seemed witchcraft relied on incantations and, with that in mind, I knew I had to prevent her from chanting anything else.

  Aware that I would never have time to transform again before she could start a spell, and that the bloodlust would most likely overpower me if I did, I tried taunting her first. Slower and less powerful in human form, I felt my chances were slim of reaching her in time to forcefully keep her from speaking the words of any spells, so I had to hope I could keep her distracted until another option presented itself.

  “So, it seems you witches and warlocks lack any kind of honour, since there’s a few of you here. Was it that easy for you to betray the supernatural world you were a part of?”

  She didn’t rise to my bait, beginning a new spell before I could do anything else to stop her. I tried to lunge at her the moment the chanting began, but I only managed a step before I found myself paralyzed by some invisible force. The air around me grew warm and my flesh began to burn, but I was powerless to even scream. Of all the pain I’d endured over the last year, in many ways that was the most intense. Skin melted away, the heat stripping my flesh with its barbed tongue. In its wake it left a stinging pain, sharp and immediate as nerves reacted with the air. The damage crept deeper and the pain changed, evolving into an entirely different sensation, one of a deep ache and steady throbbing, pulsing rhythmically like a second heartbeat, as if the pain had a life of its own.

  Exposed muscle, wet and glistening, began to appear in patches, my body quickly being reduced to a useless lump of meat. I tried to fight the force holding me in place, tried to push my body to transform and heal the damage, but the spell was too strong. I was beginning to think I wasn’t destined to die with a sword piercing my heart after all, until suddenly the pressure lifted and I fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably from the pain. I rolled my eyes towards the witch to see a giant vampire bat on top of her, its jaws clamped around her throat. The witch had not had time to chant anything else that might have saved her, and she died within minutes. The bat looked over to me and as I watched shadows gracefully seemed to shift as it took on the form of Lady Sarah. It was much quicker than my own transformation, taking only seconds, and I was given only a brief glimpse of her naked form before she’d retrieved her black dress and stood before me looking the same as ever, concern etched onto her beautiful face.

  I let my own transformation begin in order to repair the damage, but I reversed the changes as soon as my body was fully healed. I still needed a clear head to find Aughtie, determined to repay her for the torture she’d put both me and Lizzy through.

  “That’s the second time you’ve saved me,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She nodded and turned away, still battling the emotions Vince’s betrayal had awoken in her. I was just glad she’d been able to put aside those emotions long enough to take note of the danger I was in and to act quickly enough to save me, before the witch’s spell could finish me off. I assumed she’d taken her bat form so she could swoop across the battlefield to reach me in time and take the witch unawares, which was more than any of my other supposed allies had done. Maybe they’d just not noticed I’d been at the witch’s mercy in the confusion of battle, or maybe they’d not wanted to risk their own necks to save me. If I’d had time to dwell on that I might have begun to feel lost and alone once more, or perhaps it would simply be something else to feed my rage, but we hadn’t won the battle yet and I was forced to turn my attention back to the fighting.

  I felled three more Slayers foolish enough to get in my way, and then suddenly she was there before me.

  Aughtie dispatched a ghoul as I watched, a madness in her eyes not unlike the rage that burned in my own. Each of us was bent on taking revenge upon the other. She no doubt wanted to make me hurt for the pain I’d caused her in the compound and the damage I’d done to her base, and perhaps she also wanted to see me suffer purely because I was a werewolf. A part of her probably wanted to punish me for the lycanthropy that had taken hold of her beloved nephew, even though I was not the one who turned him.

  “Now you’re mine,” she snarled.

  Her gun had long since clicked empty so she swung her sword in a high arc intended t
o cleave my head in two. I dodged the blow and grabbed a sword of my own, though it felt long and clumsy in my hand. I really wanted to transform again. Having found her, there was no more need to keep a clear head and I could give in to my rage and my bloodlust. But once again I knew I would never have time to change whilst being attacked, and a part of me knew I’d been foolish enough not to return to the wolf man form while I’d had the chance. In my human form I was just about fast enough to dance around Aughtie and avoid her silver blade, but I felt it would be hard to close the distance between us to deal any damage. She was careful not to leave herself open to attack, and though the bestial side to me had no need for the tools of man, in human form it seemed necessary. So I parried Aughtie’s blows as best I could but I was no swordsman. It didn’t take her long to disarm me, laughing contemptuously at how easy an adversary I was. She stabbed forward just as another Slayer stumbled behind me, causing enough of a distraction that meant I was too slow to dodge.

  I felt a great pain in my chest and time seemed to slow as I looked down at my body to see the blade submerged in it. Aughtie began to laugh while I fell to my knees, hands clutching at the cold metal in vain, trying to pull it out, my skin slick with fresh blood. I opened my mouth as if to speak, but only more blood came out. Breathing was difficult. I was close to death for the second time that night, only this was the end I’d seen in the dream and I knew there would be no Lady Sarah to rescue me once more. The mud, stained with the blood of both friend and foe, would be my final resting place, where I would be forgotten in the midst of the battle.

  But something was wrong. The sword had been driven through my chest and out the other side, and yet there was still a heartbeat. It seemed luck was on my side as I realised the blade had narrowly missed piercing my heart. It had gone through a lung and cracked a rib but I would survive. I looked back up at Aughtie’s gleeful face, the battle around her forgotten. She was focused entirely on me, wanting to see me die. I watched as the glee turned to horror when I pulled the sword out of my flesh and thrust it into the ground. Then, weak from pain and loss of blood, I leaned against it and waited for the change to happen. Slowly at first, the wound began to heal over. The severed veins fused together and the blood flow began to stop. Muscle stretched and joined once again, and flesh rolled over to cover the hole. Finally the skin stretched across, leaving nothing of the wound that had nearly taken my life, not even a scar. The other changes came more quickly once the damage had healed, but Aughtie was weaponless and didn’t stay to watch, knowing she wouldn’t reach a weapon quick enough to strike me a second time while I was vulnerable, and that once the change completed she would face the same destructive force that had almost been her end in the compound. She had already begun to flee towards the woods as my teeth lengthened, my ears becoming pointed. I watched her go as my eyes turned amber, willing the change to come quicker, wanting it to make me stronger again.