Changeling (25 page)

Marcus looked up and met Ella’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. The look they shared suggested that neither of them believed it was going to be that easy to get rid of Jurgen and dissolve
the pack.

Ella swung the steering wheel round and they cleared the last of the trees, pulling out on to the top of the slope that swung round the lake and down to the series of cabins on the far side. She
slowed down a fraction, taking in the view below them as she always did. Her heart filled with the same feelings of excitement and eager anticipation that it had when Jurgen had first brought her
here on this same road. Then something caught her eye; something down by her own cabin, and she stepped on the brake, bringing the car to a complete halt as she peered down at the scene.

She shook her head, as if doing so might shake loose the images that were being relayed to it from her eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ she said softly.

‘What?’ Frank said, his head turning in the direction of her voice. ‘What is it, Ella?’

Marcus had come off his seat and was leaning between the two of them. He looked out, following the direction of Ella’s eyes, seeking out whatever it was that had caused her to freeze in
this way. ‘What can you . . . ?’ he began, but then he too saw it, and the words caught in his mouth.

The huge black werewolf lifted its bloody face from the dead body on the ground. Gore hung from the sides of its jaws and it turned its head very slowly to look back at the car that its acute
hearing had alerted it to. Its pink tongue flickered out from between massive jaws, cleaning the mess of blood and flesh that surrounded its mouth. To Ella it appeared that the huge wolf-creature
was grinning at them. Then it swung its head away to take in the wooden structure that was Ella’s cabin. Turning its huge and powerful frame, it approached Trey’s hiding place.

‘Who is that on the floor?’ Marcus asked.

‘I think it’s Luke,’ Ella said in a hollow voice.

‘Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?’ Frank shouted out. The desperation in his voice brought Ella round and she quickly regained her senses. She released the
handbrake and pushed her foot hard down on the accelerator, sending a cloud of dust and stones flying into the air behind them as the car lurched forward down the hill.

‘It’s Jurgen,’ Ella shouted over the roar of the engine. ‘He’s Changed. He’s killed Luke. I think that Trey must be down there somewhere.’

‘Hurry,’ Frank said, as he looped the silver chain over his head. ‘Get us down there as fast as this heap of junk can go.’

Trey looked out of the window, holding his breath as he waited for the huge nether-creature to reappear. The Wolfan had already killed the poor guy with the damaged ankle, Trey
was sure of that. To see if his fears were confirmed, he craned his neck again, pressing his face against the glass windowpane, trying to see out beyond the field of vision offered by the
window.

Trey had not witnessed the attack, but he’d heard it. The young man’s screams echoed around the grassy bowl that the lake sat in, a high piercing screech that was suddenly cut short.
For Trey, the silence that followed was even worse than those terrible cries.

The Big Bad Wolf was coming, Trey had little doubt of that. And
he
was the piggy in the house made out of sticks. He shuddered, trying not to think about how that had turned out for the
poor little porker.

He looked at the security bolts on the door, knowing that they would not withstand an attack from the nether-creature outside. Even if they could, there were the windows to consider – the
Wolfan would think nothing of hurling itself through the glass to get at its prey. He was trapped. Dead if he ventured outside the door, dead if he stayed put. Neither option was very
appealing.

He looked about him for a weapon that he might try to use to fend off the huge beast, but nothing looked even remotely fit for the purpose. The knives in the kitchen block, even the largest
ones, all seemed tiny and insignificant when he thought of using them to defend himself against the creature. His options were extremely limited: beheading, drowning or fire were the only three
sure-fire methods of dispatching a werewolf, and Trey couldn’t imagine a single way of employing any one of them without first being torn to pieces. A small whimper escaped him, and he turned
back towards the window, pressing his face against the glass again and peering as far to his left as he could, in the hope that he might be able to catch sight of the nether-creature. His breath,
coming fast as his lungs worked overtime to fuel his panicking heart, misted up the pane, and he had to go up on tiptoe to find a clear spot on the glass to look out from.

It was then that he caught sight of the movement on the ridge up ahead of him. His eyes switched to the road that wound down from that direction, and for one second he thought that he’d
imagined it – his eyes playing tricks on him in this moment of desperation. But then from behind a row of large bushes that grew up alongside the road, the Range Rover emerged. It was
travelling quickly, too quickly to be safe, and Trey guessed that the occupant had seen some of what had happened outside and was coming to help him. It had to be Ella. She’d been to
Frank’s house, talked to him, and had come back here to try and make peace between uncle and nephew. She must have spotted Jurgen-wolf from the ridge and was now racing to Trey’s rescue
– to get him away from the creature and—

Something black ran past the window. Like the shadow from an aeroplane momentarily blocking the sun, it was gone in an instant but the briefest glimpse of it had caused Trey’s heart to jam
into his chest, halting his breath.

Ella wasn’t going to get to him in time.

Trey knew that the Wolfan would be in the cabin any second now. It might choose to come crashing through glass or through wood, but it would get in somehow, and it would kill him as it had
killed the injured teenager outside. He would be defenceless against it.

If only he had the amulet. If only he hadn’t been so reckless in throwing away the power that his father had bestowed upon him. He’d done so in a fit of rage, but unlike Jurgen,
whose anger had turned him into a mindless, bloodthirsty killer, Trey’s moment of anger and frustration had resulted in leaving him as nothing more than a pathetic and defenceless target. How
could he have been so foolish? The amulet’s powers had saved his life on more than one occasion, and Lucien had stressed to him the importance of never removing it. And yet he had simply
discarded it. Thrown that protection away. Did he really think that he would be safe here from Caliban? Indefinitely? No, the vampire would have found him eventually. And even the pack would not
have been able to save the teenager from the vampire lord’s murderous intentions. Trey had signed his own death warrant. A short snort escaped him when he thought how his imminent death would
not be at the hands of the vampire – instead it would be at the hands of a creature much closer to home.

Trey moved to the door, hoping that he might be able to put his weight into it if the Wolfan decided to try to enter that way, and at the same time knowing that it was the quickest way
out
of the cabin should Jurgen choose another means of entry.

He concentrated on the spell that his friend Charles had taught him. It was a spell that allowed Trey to speak directly into the mind of another person. He silently intoned the words of the
incantation, concentrating on a mental picture of Ella at the same time.

Hurry, Ella. I’m in your cabin. Jurgen is going to kill me. I’m by the door and—

The glass in the window at the back of the room exploded and the huge black shadow that poured into the room landed amongst the broken shards. The Wolfan shook its head, sending more glass
slivers skittering across the wooden floor in every direction. Yellow eyes looked up from beneath the creature’s brow and took in the boy with his hand upon the door. A trickle of thick
saliva, tinged pink with blood, hung from one side of its vast jaws, and lips peeled back to reveal rows of deadly teeth.

Trey held his breath. The nether-creature that was Jurgen seemed even bigger than he had remembered it from the woods that morning. Then he too had been Wolfan, and while Jurgen had been the
biggest wolf in the pack, Trey had not been that far behind. But looking at the creature now, the vast blackness of it filling the room, Trey suddenly felt very small – a mouse looking up
into the face of a cat. From outside came the sound of a car skidding to a halt. Trey didn’t hesitate. He turned to the door and threw back the bolts which moments before he’d hoped
would hold it in place. Wrenching the thing open, he ran out of the cabin towards the car.

The glass from the window saved him. Trey had thrown the door open but had not even taken his first step across the threshold when he’d caught the sound of the
werewolf’s claws gouging at the wooden floor as it sought some kind of purchase. The thousands of slippery glass shards denied the pads any sort of grip and the frustrated roar that had
followed Trey out of the door hurt the boy’s ears. He looked up, saw the car, and sprinted towards it. He willed his legs – which suddenly felt as though they were filled with cotton
wool – to move faster. He wasn’t going to make it. The nether-creature at his back would be upon him any second to tear and rip at his flesh. The car was no more than ten metres away
but it might as well have been two hundred.

He looked ahead of him, his eyes wide and filled with panic. Ella was already out of the car, as was the other man, Marcus, who’d climbed out of the door at the back of the vehicle.
Despite the all-pervading fear that flooded every part of him, Trey noticed that the front passenger door was also open, but that there was no sign of whoever had occupied that space in the
car.

The world around him seemed to have slowed down to half speed. His breathing and heartbeat were impossibly loud, filling his ears and blocking out everything else. Ella had her hands up at the
sides of her mouth and was screaming something at him but he had no idea what it was. Everything looked too bright, too vivid. The edges of his vision seemed to
fizz
with a golden light, and
he momentarily wondered if he might be having some kind of near-death experience. He could feel the thing at his back now. The Wolfan was almost upon him, and he knew that he would die here and
now, in this place.

Something leaped over the roof of the car from the opposite side and charged.

The huge beast stood at least eight feet tall, and it was covered in a grey and white pelt. It ran – upright and on two legs – straight towards him at full speed, its features a
contorted mask of fury. And even with his mind in the state that it was in, Trey could see that only one of the creature’s eyes was capable of sight – the other inhabited by a dull,
grey, misty orb. But the eye that could see was fixed on Trey’s face, and it shone with such a dark malevolence that the teenager stopped in his tracks, unable to move any further –
certain death now rushed towards him from every direction.

The great snowy-grey werewolf was almost upon him; its half-human, half-wolf hands set into vicious hooks that ended in great barbed claws. Its mouth opened wider with each giant stride the
creature took so that Trey looked into a face that seemed to be composed of nothing but teeth.

‘Get down, Trey!’ Ella bawled at him, and the sound of her voice finally forced its way into his head, wrenching him free of the fear-frozen state he’d been in. He let his legs
buckle beneath him, his body folding to the floor as if some sniper hidden in the forest had shot him.

The two were-creatures met in the space above him, and Trey looked up to see flesh tearing beneath raking talons in the spot that he’d occupied fractions of a second before. The initial
exchange was terrible. The black Wolfan’s teeth found a purchase in the shoulder of the other, and it shook its head viciously, ripping open an ugly wound that fountained an arc of crimson
into the air.

The giant black Wolfan’s momentum drove its opponent back – its four legs generating more power than its upright, bipedal adversary – and the grey lycanthrope was sent crashing
to the floor.

Trey had little doubt that the grey-white lyco was his Uncle Frank, come here to try and rescue him from certain death at Jurgen’s hands. He could see the amulet that he had so carelessly
discarded hanging around the creature’s neck as it defended itself from the Wolfan’s follow-up attack.

Ella’s voice, loud and urgent, brought him back to his senses again, ‘Get up, Trey! Quickly!’

He was on his feet in an instant, up and running towards the car. At the sound of their cries, the Wolfan gave up its advantage over the other nether-creature, turning its back on it and setting
off after the boy again. It had gone no more than three strides when the grey lyco flung itself at it, biting down hard into the Wolfan’s back, and raking long wounds into the animal’s
flanks with its claws. The howl of pain that went up from the giant black Wolfan filled the air, and it turned to defend itself, rearing up on its back legs and throwing its body over to try and
dislodge its assailant.

The nether-creatures sprang apart, circling each other and looking for an opportunity to attack. Both were bleeding from a number of wounds and their tongues lolled from their mouths as they
sought to fuel their bodies with oxygen.

Trey reached the relative safety of the car, and was bundled in through the back door by Marcus who jumped in after him and slammed the door shut. Ella was already in the driver’s seat.
Reaching for the gear stick, she crashed the lever into reverse, at the same time twisting her body round to look out of the rear window.

‘Wait,’ Trey shouted, leaning over the back of the passenger seat to get a look at the two nether-creatures through the windscreen. ‘We can’t leave him here like
this.’

‘Frank told us to go,’ Ella shouted above the high-pitched sound of the engine in reverse. ‘He told us to get you into the car and to go. Not to wait for him. To get away from
this place.’