The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned Read online

  Copyright

  A TWISTED FATE PUBLISHING BOOK

  First published 2020 by Twisted Fate Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 Nick Stead

  The right of Nick Stead to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and scenarios are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Twisted Fate Publishing Ltd

  115A Armitage Road

  Milnsbridge

  Huddersfield

  HD3 4JR

  United Kingdom

  www.twistedfatepublishing.com

  Dedications

  This one is for my loyal fans who’ve been waiting so long for its release. Thanks for all your patience, and for your continued support of my work. Without you I’d probably have given up by now!

  The usual thanks also go to my friends and family, and especially to my beta readers, Tom (aka White), Mark (aka Pige), Clare and Owen.

  And finally, thanks to my partners in crime at Twisted Fate Publishing, Chris and Gareth. Without you both I don’t think there’d have been so many Hybrid releases this year so thank you for all the work and support you guys have given to bring the series back to life!

  Nick

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Journey Begins

  CHAPTER TWO

  At the Reaper’s Mercy

  CHAPTER THREE

  Operation

  CHAPTER FOUR

  New Ally or Another False Friend?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hard Choices

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rival in the Darkness

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  House of the Dead

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Ghoulish Warning

  CHAPTER NINE

  Slayer Hunting

  CHAPTER TEN

  Man’s Fury

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Slow and Painful End

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Demon’s Parish

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  His Master’s Voice

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Plan B

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Give Me Your Pain

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  An Offering It Can’t Turn Down

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Enemy of My Enemy

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Damned

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Wolf in Slayers’ Clothing

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Best Laid Plans…

  CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE

  Fight and Flight

  CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO

  The First Steps Towards Redemption?

  CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE

  Budding Friendship

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR

  The Pack Reunited

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE

  Elder vs Ancient

  CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX

  Exiled

  CHAPTER TWENTY–SEVEN

  The Coming Storm

  CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT

  The Storm Breaks

  CHAPTER TWENTY–NINE

  Nature’s Fury

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Under Attack

  CHAPTER THIRTY–ONE

  Shipwrecked

  CHAPTER THIRTY–TWO

  A Bear’s Heart

  CHAPTER THIRTY–THREE

  Arctic Bleakness

  CHAPTER THIRTY–FOUR

  Rising Spirits

  CHAPTER THIRTY–FIVE

  The Final Hurdle

  CHAPTER THIRTY–SIX

  Sinking

  CHAPTER THIRTY–SEVEN

  Preserving the Timeline

  CHAPTER THIRTY–EIGHT

  Journey’s End

  EPILOGUE

  Dear Readers

  About the Author

  Also By Twisted Fate Publishing

  PROLOGUE

  A new day dawns. Sunlight spills into the cave we now call home, parting the night’s shroud to reveal the remnants of my latest kills upon my skin. Each fleck of gore has long since dried into a dark crust, no longer glistening with the life I’ve taken but dulled with death. And what a glorious death.

  Bloody bones litter the floor of our shelter. A skull grins at a joke perhaps only the Reaper can understand, one eye still intact and staring blindly through the milky white film of her mortal end. I meet her gaze without remorse. She was prey, nothing more. Just like the old man who followed her, and whoever is fated to cross paths with me next. And like you were when first we met.

  But you are so much more than that now. You alone were there for me in this latest hour of need, and you chose to stay by my side even after I tore the life from your body. Maybe it is my story that binds us, or maybe it is the darkness that brought each of us here to this place. I don’t really care either way. I’m just glad I no longer have to suffer on my own.

  I asked you for your patience when the third part of my tale came to a close. Patience while I took the time to indulge my dark desires, to feed both my lupine hunger for raw flesh and my human lust for blood. Patience while I rested and patience while we work towards the answers you undoubtedly have. But now I sense I have kept you waiting long enough.

  Very well. I promised answers and you shall have them. Perhaps not for every question to have arisen during the story so far, and you will have to wait until the story catches up with the present to find out how it is I come to be out here, utterly alone but for you and in exile once more. But all I learnt during the next part of my story I will share with you now.

  My tale began with the awakening of my lupine half in the year 2003. You have heard of my struggles to adapt to the curse first in my human life, and then in some of the remotest areas Britain has to offer as I sought to embrace life as a werewolf. In the third part of my tale you heard of how my old friend, David, imprisoned me in a kind of real life roleplaying game he’d built and designed specifically to torment me as revenge for killing the girl he loved. My sister was also imprisoned in that fantasy style dungeon and we left off just after I’d taken her back home to Doncaster, in the year 2005.

  I told you of how I came to realise leaving my hometown had not been enough. My family still weren’t safe for as long as I remained here in Britain, and so the decision was made to leave the country.

  The fourth part of my tale begins on that very same night I left my mum and sister behind for a second time. I was still wounded after being shot during the escape from the dungeon. The first steps towards a fresh start were hard ones, and there were only greater challenges ahead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Journey Begins

  Pain, white hot and pulsing through my ruined flesh and bone, excruciating in its intensity. I limped on my three good legs as best I could, a far cry from the mighty beast who had terrorised the British countryside on similar nights of the full moon such as this. But the leaf Selina had used to bandage my ruined foreleg had come loose and the wound was still pumping out fresh blood. My strength was leaving me, the last of my reserves all but gone. I was close to collapsing again.

  “Come on, Nick,” Zee said, turning to look at me. “We can’t stop yet.”

  I shifted my gaze to Lady Sarah,
relying on her to translate while I was trapped in wolf form and limited to speaking the wolven tongue. “I can’t keep this up for much longer. Can we not hitch another lift to somewhere safe to shelter from the sun?”

  Lady Sarah shook her head. “You should know by now the kind of country we will have to cross to reach an area far enough from humanity. We are better off on foot, even with your wound.”

  “Dawn’s still a way off,” I growled. “If you expect me to carry on like this, one of you is going to have to do something to stop the bleeding.”

  “Here.” Zee tore a strip of material from his shirt and handed it over. “For the sake of a few more hours, we’re as well bandaging him again.”

  Lady Sarah tended to my wound this time, wrapping the scrap of fabric so tightly round my leg that it made me yelp and snarl, the pressure aggravating the pain. I could barely feel my paw when she’d finished. But at least I wouldn’t have to endure the discomfort for too long. Dawn would release me from my lupine shape, healing the damage in the process. That next transformation couldn’t come soon enough.

  She took a moment to admire her handiwork. “That should hold until sunrise. Now we must go on, before the Slayers find us.”

  “Do you even know where we’re going?” I growled.

  “I have a place in mind, yes. We will rest there for the day, then we head for the coast.”

  “Aye,” Zee said, his lips twisting into a grin. There was a glint in his eye and his fangs were visible. It was the same fierce excitement he’d shown on the edge of battle. “Tomorrow night we go southwest, all the way to the Pembrokeshire coastline and then across to Canada.”

  “Oh great, colder climates.”

  Lady Sarah didn’t bother to translate my less than enthusiastic response. Geography had never been my strongest subject but from what little I knew of the world, I supposed it made sense. Canada ought to be both large and wild enough for the four of us to hide in, plus it still had a wild wolf population and plenty of prey to support even my unnatural appetite. And I supposed Wales was as good a place to sail from as any. I trusted the pirate had picked that coastline because it offered an easier escape from the country than simply running for the nearest shores.

  Selina was quiet, her eyes scanning the darkness with less confidence than the vampires. Did she feel vulnerable without the tools of her craft? A shiver ran through her. The prospect of colder climates must have been even less thrilling than it was for me.

  “Sarah’s right, we should keep moving,” she said.

  I gave another growl and forced my good legs back into action, and together we resumed our flight from Doncaster to whichever temporary haven Lady Sarah had in mind this time.

  The urban area Mum and Amy now called home soon gave way to the kind of rural haunts I’d had to grow used to since leaving the human world behind. I didn’t have much time to dwell on all I’d just left a second time, the physical pain of my fractured bone helping to keep the emotional heartache at bay. Besides, I’d already reached the conclusion I couldn’t go back; not after everything I’d done. There was no sense in torturing myself with more thoughts of what might have been. So I stayed focused on the journey ahead and clung to the hope of the salvation I felt awaited in far off lands, be it Canada or some other country we ended up in. There was a life for me amongst natural wolves, I was sure of it, while only death lay with humanity. And I’d had enough of death already.

  Terror spread through the livestock we passed like a disease, jumping from host to host and infecting entire herds with a panic that ran deeper than the usual fear of prey before predator. They fled to the far end of their fields as we prowled by, and the night air filled with their bleats. I imagined they were pleas for mercy. It didn’t matter to them that I was currently lame and weakened from loss of blood; they only knew the threat of the wolf and the two other unnatural predators in their midst, and instinct told them to run as far from us as possible. But they were safe that night.

  Before long, we came to a treeline marking another patch of woodland, visible as a wall of blackness more solid than the veil of shadows covering the open countryside. It was dense enough that barely any moonlight filtered through the canopy, autumn not yet advanced to the point where the branches became bare. Only then did we slow, the vampires growing cautious as we neared our destination.

  Flocks of sheep could still be heard sounding the alarm in the distance but otherwise the night was quiet, the natural wildlife cowering in their dens. Lady Sarah seemed satisfied that the shelter she had in mind was free of danger. She was the first to step between the trees.

  Zee wasn’t far behind, his fangs bared and his hand on the hilt of the cutlass at his hip. Selina went next. That left me to bring up the rear.

  Ears pricked and nose to the wind, I hesitated a moment, not yet satisfied the woods were as peaceful as they’d first appeared. There were no scents or sounds to suggest anything awaited within, but I’d been caught unawares too often to simply trust what my senses were telling me. Danger could be lurking downwind, supernaturally silent and cloaked in shadows even our superior eyesight struggled to penetrate.

  Seconds trickled by as I stood there straining my senses, yet the night remained unwilling to give up its secrets, even to its supernatural children. The land was still, its creatures quiet. Only the soft footsteps of my companions carried to me from between the trees, and then the moment passed and I crossed that dark threshold into the woods.

  Lady Sarah led us to the ruins of an old abbey, much like the one my parents used to take me and Amy to when we were younger, except less complete. It was little more than the skeleton of a once grand building, but there still stood a section with a small, windowless chamber.

  “Not perfect, but it will serve our purpose for the day,” Lady Sarah said.

  “Isn’t it a tourist attraction?” I asked.

  “No, few humans come here as I am sure you can sense for yourself. I believe the land is private and the ruins deemed too unsafe for visitors.”

  I sniffed the air again, then lowered my nose to the ground. She was right; the only recent human trail I could detect was already several days old. Yet still I struggled with the nagging feeling that we were not alone.

  Selina seemed to guess my concerns from Lady Sarah’s side of the conversation. “I’ll summon Varin back when sunrise forces us to rest. He’ll scare off any prying eyes, short of the Slayers themselves.”

  “It’s as good a place as any,” Zee said. I got the impression he was about to say something else, but the noise of a zip beat him to it, as out of place in the natural world as the four of us.

  As one, the heads of we three predators twisted towards the sound. Selina was slower to react, her body still only human, despite the power she’d gained through witchcraft.

  “What was that?” a voice hissed, followed by the zip again.

  “What was what?” a second voice replied, groggy with sleep. They both sounded to be male and fairly young, like late teens or early twenties.

  “I thought I heard something,” the first voice said, tinged with fear and uncertainty.

  The wind was blowing in the wrong direction to catch their scents, but I had a good idea of who they were from their voices alone. I could just imagine the two young men camping out here for a dare, the first one’s eyes snapping open as some primal instinct was tripped by our presence. That gut feeling of coming danger must have driven him to unzip their tent and peer outside, searching the shadows for anything amiss.

  “It’s probably just a fox or a badger. Go back to sleep,” the second voice mumbled. I imagined he was still laid in his sleeping bag, eyes closed and nodding back off.

  “No, it sounded a lot bigger and I could have sworn I heard voices. Maybe it was a mistake coming here without telling anyone. What if there’s some psycho running round the woods or one of those big cats people keep sighting?”

  “For fuck’s sake! If there is something out there you’re only goin
g to attract its attention. We’ll pack up and go tomorrow if you don’t have the balls for this.”

  I could hear the pounding of the first one’s heart, my mouth watering in anticipation of the rich fluid it pumped round his body and the succulent flesh just begging for my fangs to set it free. Even after all the carnage of the dungeon we’d been imprisoned in, my need to kill was as strong as ever, summoned back into being by the full moon just beyond the woodland canopy. Fresh hunger reverberated through my stomach and into my brain, turning my thoughts to the human prey which called to my predatory instincts in a way even the terrified livestock hadn’t. And I knew the vampires felt it too, their need for blood just as strong.

  “We should not,” Lady Sarah whispered, her voice thick with lust.

  “No,” Zee agreed. “But you heard what they said – no one knows they’re out here. By the time anyone comes looking we will be long gone.”

  I growled my agreement and the two men’s fates were sealed.

  We left Selina by the ruins, slinking together through the darkness like the pack I still longed for and circling round to the tent, pitched in a clearing touched by the light of the full moon. The face I’d expected to see peering out had withdrawn into the deceptive safety of those four flimsy walls. But that didn’t matter. We closed in on the humans’ makeshift den and tore our way through before they even had a chance to sense the predators at their door.