Werewolves of the Other London

by Amy Cross

  I stare at him, shocked that he'd even consider such a choice. "You'd still be a prisoner up there," I say. "You wouldn't be free."

  "No-one's free," he says. "At least this way there'd be no humans about. And if the humans did come and try to take the estate... I swear, I'd make them pay."

  "You're not a killer," I say.

  "I'm a werewolf," he replies. "Of course I'm a killer. And so are you. It's in our blood."

  "And what if I won't come with you?" I say. "What if I refuse to hide myself away on this estate, waiting for humans to come and kill me?"

  He stares at me, and then he sighs. "I have to go," he says. "If the humans attack the estate, I have to be there. I can't let any more of my friends die. And if the humans don't attack, then it's a good life up there." He reaches out a hand to touch my shoulder. "And I'll protect you up there -"

  "And I'll protect you," I say.

  "I'll make sure nothing happens to you," he says. "To us." He leans forward and kisses me on the cheek, then he keeps his face close to mine. "We can't run forever," he says. "At least if we go to the estate, we have a chance. A good chance."

  I feel his breath on my face. The truth is, going to this estate sounds like the best option. But... the idea of separating myself from humans for the rest of my life is daunting. To be honest, I still feel human in some ways. I tried to deny it, but now I'm back in my human form, I feel my human nature is stronger than ever. Is this how it's always going to be? I thought a werewolf could combine those two sides, to create a single self. But my human and werewolf sides seem to be two totally different, totally irreconcilable parts of me. And I'm not sure I'm ready to abandon my human side just yet.

  "I'll come with you," I say, even though I'm not sure if it's the right decision.

  Duncan smiles. "You won't regret it," he says.

  I pause, remembering what I saw when Duncan was mourning Garvey. If I'm going to go to the estate with him, it means I'm making a commitment. Like marriage. And if I'm doing that, I need to know the truth. "What happened when you buried Garvey?" I ask, trying to sound like I'm only casually interested.

  "Nothing," he says. "I just..." His voice trails off. "It's done. I had to do it alone. You understand, right?"

  I nod. "I thought I heard you howling," I say.

  "Probably."

  "But it didn't sound quite like you," I continue, trying to prompt him to tell me more. "It sounded like you, but different."

  "I was just upset," he says. "Garvey was a good friend. A good wolf. A good person. He shouldn't have died, not like that, not ever. I'll miss him. But he's dead now. There's nothing more we can do for him."

  I open my mouth to say more, but I decide not to press things anymore. We sit by the candle for a little longer, and Duncan seems lost in thought. I can't help glancing at him from time to time, and wondering what I really saw. What is Duncan, really? And what am I? Is there more to being a werewolf than I realized? Is there a third form that I can take, and what is it?

  We sit there for more than an hour, neither of us speaking. Finally, we settle down to sleep. We look into one another's eyes as the light of the candle dims. Still, we don't speak, but slowly our hands touch one another's bodies. We kiss, and I feel that I've made the right decision by option to go to Scotland, to live on the estate. Tomorrow we'll set off on the long journey north, avoiding humans wherever possible and finally reaching our new home, our new life. We need to sleep, but before we do, we continue to kiss, and eventually we make love as the candle burns out.

  Darla

  The window is open.

  I creep slowly through the yard. There are voices inside, and there's the sound of a crying baby. This is a house full of humans, a house where they feel safe. On the outskirts of Edinburgh, they live in these little terraced houses and they think they're safe. They think there's nothing that can hurt them, that the cruelty and horror of the world will stay away from them. Funny, that's what I thought once, too. When I was a child, I thought no-one would ever, could ever, even try to harm me.

  Then things changed.

  Tonight, things are going to change for this family.

  As I reach the window, I realize that the voices are in another room. I stand up on my rear legs and look inside. It's a brightly-lit, comfortable-looking room, nicely decorated and with a friendly atmosphere. There's laughter coming from a nearby room. This family seems happy, and affluent, and innocent. And in the corner of the room there's a crib, and from the crib there's the sound of gurgling. A moment ago, the child was crying, but now it seems to be at peace. Perhaps it has sensed that I'm here. Or am I giving the child too much credit? Perhaps it's simply a dumb little creature. After all, if it were smart, would it grow up to become a human?

  I leap up onto the edge of the window, pause for a moment to make sure that there's no-one coming, and then I jump down into the room. When was the last time I was in a normal human house? So long ago that I can't remember, that's for sure. Perhaps never; perhaps I just imagined places like this but was never actually inside one. It's so hard to recall things from the past. I'm living in the present now. Only the present. The past is history, it's old news, and the future is just a dream. There's only right here, right now, to worry about.

  I step toward the crib. I can smell the baby now, and I stand up on my rear legs and put my front paws on the crib's side. It's a big, wide crib, so I jump in and find myself standing directly on top of the baby. Looking up at me with wide blue eyes, the baby falls silent. It has probably never seen a wolf before, certainly not up close. It's probably used to simply having its parents come to its crib, and they probably just lean in and make stupid noises.

  We've all been there, baby.

  We all had parents once.

  It doesn't last. Eventually you have to go out into the world on your own, to stand on your own two - or in some cases four - legs and see what you can do. Many people fail, and end up living long, dull lives that hurt and ache. But some people succeed, and it's the chance to be one of the few success stories that drives most people to keep pushing, to keep striving, to keep believing.

  We can't keep our parents around forever.

  "Jesus Christ!" shouts a voice. I look up. A woman has entered the room, and she's standing staring at me, shock and horror on her face. "Lance!" she screams. "LANCE!"

  This wasn't the plan. I was going to kill the adults, to slaughter them, but... Panicking, I reach down and pick up the baby in my jaws, then I turn and leap out of the crib and then straight out the window.

  "FUCK!" I hear a man's voice shout behind me, but I don't look back. With the crying baby in my jaws, I run across the dark yard and over the fence, and then I run along the alley and keep going for a couple of miles until I'm in a small wooded area. Finally I feel safe, as if the danger of humans suddenly attacking me is diminished. For now, at least.

  I put the baby down.

  It's still crying.

  I stare at it, trying to understand it. Was I like this, once? Before I was a werewolf, when I was fully human, was I a crying little ball of flesh like this creature? How, then, did I get from that to become what I am now? It seems like such a long journey, and my innocence was lost along the way. Sometimes I feel so tired. If only this child would stop crying.

  I should kill the infant. Right now. I should rip it apart. If it were an adult, I'd have killed it by now. But there's a part of me that thinks it would be wrong to kill a child. After all, this little creature hasn't yet grown to become a hateful, murderous human. There's no hope for it, of course, and it will inevitably become such a vile creature. But to kill it now, to slaughter it so young, would be wrong. I wouldn't be able to live with myself, to hold my head up high. It would make me as bad as the humans who came to kill werewolf children all those years ago.

  I close my eyes for a moment, and I see it all happening again: the fires and smoke; the blood everywhere; the lights on the ground and in the sky. There were soldiers shouting, a
nd there were tanks and flares and guns. And screams. The two noises that I remember most clearly are the screams and the sound of machinery grinding forwards. Separated from my parents, I ran through the dark chaos. Even though I was young, I knew that any second I could be cut down and killed. Somehow, though, I made it through, and I ran. I knew that if I stopped for ever a moment, if I dared to look back, I would be caught. So I just ran, and I didn't stop until my body collapsed under me. In many ways, I haven't stopped running since.

  Strange.

  That was so long ago.

  I'm suddenly brought back to reality by the sound of the baby gurgling.

  It looks up at me.

  I lean closer and snarl, baring my teeth, but this doesn't help at all. The baby just cries harder and louder. It wants its parents. It wants to go home. I turn and look back at the lights of the city. Somewhere, those parents are panicking, running around in shock to try to find their baby. They're probably screaming at police that a wolf stole their child. People will start looking for the baby. I turn back to the child. It just won't stop crying. But it will have to, one day. It will have to dry its eyes, wipe the tears from its face and find a way to survive. We all have to do that eventually. It's one of the few things that humans and werewolves have in common. This child will have to learn that, and it will have to stop crying sooner rather than later. I lean in closer and bare my teeth.

  Jess

  Having walked and run for five days in a row, Duncan and I finally pass the Scottish border early one morning and head down past Glasgow. We're just a day away from the estate now, from the place where all the werewolves are to be found. It's the only place where Duncan feels safe, even if at the same time he knows that dark shadows are closing in from all directions. During the entire journey, he's spoken very little, and we've just stayed in our wolf forms, making our progress as fast as possible. There'll be time to talk later.

  Needing food, we skirt the edge of Glasgow and feed from a few bins left out on industrial estates. Humans waste so much food, either because they're full or because they believe it's too old to eat. We could feast off what we find in these bins for a week, but there's no time, so we simply fill ourselves as best we can and then move on. It's strange to be here, among human buildings again, having spent so much time out in the wild recently. I almost miss it, as if -

  No. I have to stop thinking like that. I'm not human anymore. I'm a wolf, and I have to think more like a wolf. The human world is the world that I'm running away from, the world that has tried to kill me several times, the world of people like Vigrous Grinde and Franklin Blaum and Frank Marshall, people who became monsters. Duncan's right. We need to keep away from humans from now on.

  "Oi!" shouts a voice. Duncan and I turn to see a man running toward us, loading a shotgun. "Fuck off!" he shouts, then he slots the shotgun together, raises it and fires at us.

  Ducking out of the way, we both run. Another shot rings out and I hear the pellets ricochet off a nearby wall. But soon Duncan and I are well clear of the shooter, and we take a moment to rest behind a wall.

  "Fucking wolves," a male voice says nearby.

  "Where were they?" a woman replies.

  "Down by the bins," the man says. "Fucking nasty creatures."

  Duncan looks at me. I can see the anger in his eyes, but also the sadness.

  "Do you think it's the one that took that baby?" the woman asks.

  "No," says the man. "They don't travel that far, do they?"

  Duncan and I hurry away. We can take on any human in normal circumstances, but guns are a different matter. Guns allow us to be picked off from a distance, giving us no warning and no chance to defend ourselves or to fight back. Guns are one of the ways that humans get an unnatural advantage.

  Eventually Duncan and I get far enough away from the edges of the city, and we can finally relax. Duncan shifts into his human form, and I do the same.

  "What baby?" he says immediately.

  I don't know what to say, so I just keep quiet. He seems troubled and worn down.

  We walk a little further and come to a main road, and eventually we reach a petrol station. Duncan pulls some coins from his pocket and goes inside.

  Spotting a payphone nearby, I wander over. I have a few coins of my own, so I step inside, put the money into the slot, and dial an old, familiar number. I wait for someone to answer.

  "Hello?" a man says, picking up.

  I want to say "Hi Dad", or "It's me", or "I'm alive" or maybe "I'm sorry." Or even to ask about David. But I don't say anything. I just keep the line open, thinking about how the other end of this connection is in that hallway at my family's house.

  "Is anyone there?" my father says.

  I open my mouth to say something, but there's nothing to say. There's nothing I can say or do to put things right.

  "Listen," my father says, suddenly sounding deadly serious. "I've had enough of these prank calls. If you don't stop, I'll call the police. I'm not going to be terrorized in my own house. Now fuck off!" He slams the phone down.

  I hang up and turn see Duncan leaning against a wall, reading the newspaper that he just bought. Looking at him, I can't help but realize: this is my family now. Duncan, and his family, they're all I've got and all I'll ever have. I've crossed a line, I've gone beyond the point of no return. My old family is out of the picture, and all I can do is hope that my new family will be able to help me.

  Leaving the payphone, I head over to Duncan. He's so engrossed in the newspaper, he doesn't even look up as I approach. He reads it for a moment longer, then in desperation he throws it to the ground and walks away. I pick the paper up and follow, looking down at the story. It's about a series of wolf attacks across the country, an 'epidemic' according to the reporter. People attacked and killed in London and other cities, a baby stolen by a wolf in Edinburgh. The general impression is that there's a real panic about an 'invasion' of dangerous wolves across the country, and there are numerous quotes from government figure saying that 'something' must be done about it.

  I flick to the front page and read the story about a recent terrorist attack in London. A bomb exploded in Trafalgar Square, killing more than forty people. Men, woman and children slaughtered. Jesus, I never heard about this, but Duncan and I were so disconnected while we were living in the woods, so it's no surprised that things like this could happen in the 'real' world yet I didn't hear about it. Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is collapsing, as if so many bad things are happening that things are slipping out of control. With all the horror in the human world, it would be kind of refreshing to go and hide away in the wolf world, away from the terrorists and the bombs and the carnage, away from all the worries.

  "It's a trap," Duncan says, not turning around as he walks ahead of me.

  "What is?" I ask, hurrying to catch up with him. We're walking along the side of a motorway, with cars whizzing past.

  He doesn't answer immediately. He's clearly worried. "The terrorist attack," he says eventually. "It's fake. The human government did it on purpose so that they can declare martial law for a few days. That'll give them cover to launch a full strike against the werewolf community. When the dust settles, the government will say that they defeated the terrorists and the werewolves will all be dead."

  "Are you -" I start to say.

  "You saw Garvey," Duncan says. "You saw him die right in front of us. The virus is another part of their plan. They want to make us all sick. They want to make us all die slowly and painfully. There's nothing they won't try. They're determined to kill us all."

  "Sounds like a conspiracy theory," I say.

  He snorts with contempt. "Of course you think that," he says. "You've been brainwashed. You've been conditioned to dismiss that kind of thing."

  "One of us has been brainwashed," I say quietly.

  He turns, anger in his eyes, and he grabs me by the shoulders. For a moment, it's like he's someone else, like there's a rage in him that comes from somewhere I c
an't possibly understand. And for just the briefest of moments, I worry that he might be about to attack me. "They've done it before!" he shouts. "They'll do it again! They are doing it again!" He stares at me for a moment. "This is all part of their plan, don't you see?"

  I'm not sure what to say. He sounds like a raving lunatic, like a conspiracy theorist you'd find lurking on some dodgy website. But he believes it, I can tell from the look in his eyes. I'm not sure whether that makes it more or less scary.

  "They did it before," he says, calming down a little but still holding me by the shoulders. "They killed children. Werewolf children. When the original truce was signed, some werewolf communities refused to move to the Scottish estate. So they were slaughtered. Males, females, children." He falls silent for a moment. "Only a handful escaped, running from the butchers."

  I pause, trying to understand. "How old were you?" I ask eventually.

  "Too young," he says. "Too young to see so much blood." He grabs the newspaper from my hands, looks at it for a moment, and then he throws it to the ground. "There's no way a werewolf would do such a thing to a human child. It's propaganda. That's what this is, just dirty propaganda. No werewolf would ever steal a human child, or kill without reason."

  "But maybe -" I start to say.

  "You don't know anything about it!" he snaps back at me.

  "Fuck you," I say under my breath.

  "What did you say?" he asks.

  I pause. "I said, fuck you," I say, louder. "Fuck you for thinking I don't know anything about..." I search for the right words. "About bad things."

  There's silence between us for a moment. I guess neither of us knows what to say, or how to go on from here. But this is the first time Duncan's ever seemed... cold to me, as if he thinks we're living in different worlds.

  "We're going to Edinburgh," he says suddenly.

  I stare at him for a moment. "What?" I say eventually.

  "We're going to Edinburgh," he repeats. There's a pause. "Which of those words don't you understand? 'We're' means you and me. 'Going' means moving from here to there. 'To' means -"