High Moor 2: Moonstruck (18 page)

Connie lashed out with a vicious back−handed blow that shattered Olivia’s nose. Her eyes streamed and she took a step backwards in pain and shock. That second of hesitation was all Connie needed. She stepped forward and grabbed Olivia by the throat, then, impossibly, lifted her off the ground.

“Ah, told ye that wasn’t very smart. Now ye’r gonna have tae pay.”

Olivia didn’t see the punch coming, and cried out in surprise when Connie’s fist slammed into her stomach. A warm, wet wave of liquid soaked through her trousers, and she realised in horror that her waters had broken. Connie pulled Olivia close, so that they were face to face. Her breath stank of blood and there was something wrong with her eyes. When she’d spoken to her in the hotel lobby, Connie Hamilton’s eyes had been brown. Now they gleamed a feral yellow. These were not the eyes of a human being. The woman’s face began to shift and warp. Teeth elongated into fangs and thick russet hair sprouted from her pores. Then the hair receded and those terrible teeth sank back into Connie’s gums. “Ah, ye almost made me lose ma temper. Pull that shit again and I’ll do a caesarean on ye with ma teeth. I think it’s time for our wee chat. Ye can start with the names of those coppers that were with ye at the hotel, and the name of that fat, balding tosser.”

Connie’s grip tightened around Olivia’s throat and she kicked out at empty air. Her vision began to fade and she realised that she was about to pass out. Connie’s mouth curled into a snarl. “Ah’ll not be asking ye again. Give me their fucking names.”

Olivia knew that she’d run out of options. She was going to die here, and unless she gave this monstrous woman the information she wanted, then she was going to die right here, right now. Her only chance was to buy more time in the hope that an opportunity for escape would present itself. She barely managed to choke out the words. “Okay…I’ll tell you what you want, just please don’t hurt my baby.”

Connie lowered her to the floor and released her grip. Olivia fell to her knees, sucking air into her lungs. “Ah’m waiting.”

“Alright. The boss is called Phil Fletcher. The others were Rick Grey, Mark Briggs and Paul Patterson. Now, please, I’ve given you what you want. Let me go. I need to get to a hospital.”

Connie smiled. “Ah, see ah knew ye could be co−operative, given the right incentive.”

Olivia crawled back, away from her assailant, towards the bedroom. Connie followed, a smile still on her face. “Where do ye think yer going? Wanna see yer hubby one last time? If it makes ye feel any better, he stayed faithful. I would’a fucked him first, but the soppy twat didn’t wanna know.” She sniffed. “His loss.”

Olivia reached the bedroom door and flung herself inside, slamming the door behind her. She reached up and grabbed the large wooden wardrobe in the corner of the room, using the last of her strength to tip it over. The wardrobe crashed to the ground, wedging itself between the door and bed. Connie pounded against the door, snarling in fury. Olivia stepped around the remains of her husband, to the telephone by the side of the bed. She picked it up and almost cried out with relief when she got a dial tone.

The wooden door began to splinter as Olivia dialled 999. She held the phone in one hand, while she picked up a heavy brass lamp from the side of the bed with the other.

The phone rang and an operator answered on the first ring. “Hello, emergency, which service do you require?”

“Police and ambulance. Please, hurry. My…my husband is dead and I’m being attacked.”

One of the wooden panels of the door split open and Connie’s arms tore at the wood, making the hole larger. As she poked her head through the shattered door, Olivia swung the lamp at her, smashing the heavy brass base into her skull. Connie’s forehead collapsed under the blow, leaving a spray of blood and bone fragments across the white paint of the doorframe. She slumped back, out of sight.

The operator spoke again. “Ma’am, are you still there? I need you to give me your telephone number and the address that you are calling from. Help is on the way.”

Olivia blurted out the details, then held the phone between her shoulder and cheek as she grasped the lamp in a two−handed grip, never taking her eyes from the ruined door.

“Ma’am, can you tell me what’s happening?”

“A…a woman. Connie. Connie Hamilton. She broke into my house and murdered my husband, then attacked me. I’m pregnant and she punched me in the stomach and my waters broke and now she’s outside and I don’t know if I killed her or not. She’s not human.”

“Ma’am, you need to calm down. Can you get yourself to a safe place?”

“No, I locked myself in the bedroom, but she’s broken through the door. I….”

Connie’s ruined face appeared in the doorway. As Olivia watched, the terrible wound began to heal. Shattered bone crunched back into place, while torn flesh re−knitted. Connie’s mouth curled up into a snarl. “What did ah tell ye would happen if ye pulled that shite again?”

The blood−soaked woman dropped down, out of sight. A loud ripping sound came from the corridor, as if someone were slowly cracking their knuckles while tearing paper. After a couple of seconds the sound stopped. What replaced it was so much worse. A thick, savage snarl, filled with hatred and fury rang out. Olivia backed away from the door. “No. No, oh God, please, SOMEONE HELP ME!”

The door exploded in a shower of razor sharp splinters, and something from Olivia’s worst nightmares landed on the entrail−covered bed. The creature looked like a wolf on steroids. Corded muscles flowed like liquid beneath layers of thick, red fur. The monster’s ears lay flat against its head and the long, tapered snout wrinkled up into a snarl, to reveal rows of razor sharp fangs. Terrible clawed feet, each toe ending in a black, curved talon, dug into what remained of her husband. It snarled at her, and Olivia knew that it was over. She lashed out with the lamp, throwing every last shred of her strength and desperation into the blow. Connie simply ducked, allowing the lamp to pass over her head. Then the creature leapt.

The impact slammed Olivia back against the far wall, and knocking the breath out of her. She struggled to move, to breathe. “Please…” was all that she managed to choke out before Connie’s head darted forward. The monster’s jaws sank deep into her stomach, then ripped outwards in a single movement. The pain was unimaginable, but it was nothing compared to the anguish Olivia felt as she saw a tiny arm protruding from the werewolf’s jaws. The monster bit down, spraying blood from the sides of its mouth, then swallowed.

The terrible emptiness that Olivia felt then eclipsed even the pain. She was hollow. The new life within her torn away and devoured. She couldn’t protect it. She couldn’t protect any of them. Then Connie darted forward and clamped her jaws around Olivia’s throat, and she found, in that last second of her life, that she was grateful for the release.

***

13th December 2008
.
Catcleugh Reservoir, Northumberland. 10.24.

The twenty minute drive that Marie had promised turned into an hour and a half of sheer misery for John. His tired muscles cramped up in the confined space, and the fibres from the carpet stuck to his clotting wounds, so that every time he adjusted his position he tore them open once more. The boot, without the benefit of the car’s heater, was freezing cold. His shivering body rubbed itself raw against the coarse man−made fabric. Every bump or imperfection in the road seemed to be magnified. Eventually he allowed the steady thrum of the tires on asphalt to lull him into a half waking state. He could hear the car’s radio, but couldn’t make out any of the details. There didn’t seem to be any music, only the low murmur of voices. Marie had not spoken a word since they’d left High Moor.

After what seemed like an eternity, the car slowed and turned off the smooth road onto something that felt like a gravel track, complete with some particularly deep pot−holes that compounded his misery. More than once the jolt was so severe that his head banged against the metal boot lid. Eventually, the vehicle came to a halt and Marie opened the boot. She passed him a t−shirt, a pair of jogging bottoms and a pair of trainers. “Sorry about that, John, but we needed to put a lot of miles between High Moor and ourselves, and I couldn’t risk having you visible in case we got pulled over.”

John tried to sit up, wincing as another crusted scab ripped away from his skin, and pulled the t−shirt over his head. “I thought you said it was only going to be twenty minutes.”

Marie gave John a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I might have been lying about that. “

He pulled on the jogging pants and climbed out from the car boot. “I figured that much out on my own. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“Catcleugh Reservoir, near the Scottish border. It’s isolated enough that we shouldn’t be disturbed, and I need some fresh water to clean your wounds up. It’s not like we could just take you into a public toilet in the state you’re in.”

The reservoir certainly was isolated. The area surrounding the vast expanse of water was mostly scrub grassland, with snow−capped pine forests lining the hills in the distance. A steady torrent of water gushed from the sluiceway far beneath them, feeding a stream that meandered through the snow−covered valley floor. The air was bitterly cold, but fresh and invigorating when compared to the stale, blood and body odour stink of the car boot.

Marie opened the back doors of the car and removed a large bag, then began walking towards a set of stone steps. She motioned for John to follow and the pair made their way down to the edge of the frigid water.

Marie wasted no time. She removed a first−aid kit from the bag and began washing John’s injuries with water from the reservoir. Thin rivulets of blood flowed from the open wounds and John winced as she poured the cold water onto him.

“Ah, give over you big baby. It’s only water. It’s not going to hurt you.”

“You aren’t the one freezing to death.”

“You think that’s bad, then you probably aren’t going to enjoy the next bit much.”

“What next bit?”

Marie produced a bottle of iodine from the bag, unscrewed the cap, then poured the yellow liquid directly onto the parallel gashes on his chest. John’s cry of pain echoed across the water and, off in the distance, a flock of birds took to the sky, startled by the sudden noise.

“Jesus, fuck! God that hurts.”

“Well, if you can try not to scream the place down while I do it, I need to stitch some of these up. I’ll be as quick as I can, but it’s not going to be pleasant.”

It wasn’t pleasant at all, but John managed to restrain himself to merely hissing through his teeth as the needle plucked at his torn flesh. Eventually, Marie was satisfied that she’d dealt with the worst of the injuries. “OK, there are some fresh clothes in the bag, along with a toothbrush and a razor. Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll be waiting for you, back in the car.”

Ten minutes later, John ascended the stairs. His wounds cried out in pain with every step, and he could feel the stitches tugging at his skin as he moved, but he felt better than he had since waking up that morning. The clean clothes − a heavy woollen shirt, jeans and a ski jacket − made all of the difference. He still felt frozen through to his bones, but the garments kept the wind chill out, and he was slowly beginning to warm up.

Marie sat on the closed boot of the car, drinking hot coffee from a thermos. She smiled as she saw John and poured him a fresh cup. “You took your time. I thought you’d got lost or something.”

John took the cup, savouring the warmth that seeped through the metal into his numb hands. “Thank you. You have no idea how badly I need this.” He took a sip, letting out an involuntary sigh of pleasure as the hot liquid ran down his throat. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We’re heading north. Right up into the arse end of Scotland. I’ve booked a holiday cottage for a few weeks, so we can hide out there until you recover and things quieten down a bit. Then we can work out what our next move is.”

John took another sip of the coffee, “So, is now a good time for you to tell me how the fuck you’re still alive? I saw you gunned down with silver−fucking−bullets. I mean, Jesus, you were almost cut in half. How the hell do you come back from something like that?”

“You have to understand, John, that what I do…what I did… put me in a hell of a lot of danger. Not just from other werewolves, but from hunters like your good old friend, Steven. Those of us on field teams spend years increasing our tolerance to silver, to the point where it barely affects us.” She gave an ironic, bitter chuckle. “At least, that was the theory.”

“And Michael? You’re telling me that he’s still alive?”

Marie nodded. “He’s not only alive. He runs the pack now. He’s the alpha wolf. The big boss dog.”

John frowned. “Then why are the pack chasing us? Can’t you talk to Michael? Get him to help?”

Marie shook her head. “John, it was Michael who ordered your death. By now, he won’t have had any choice but to order mine as well. You have to understand, the pack will stop at nothing to keep the existence of werewolves a secret. If people knew about us, if there was proof, then they would hunt us down and slaughter us. It almost happened once before, back in 1996. They won’t let it happen again.”

John finished the last of his coffee and handed the cup back to Marie. “Honestly, I don’t understand any of this. I mean, I design bloody websites for a living. I’m way out of my depth here.”

Marie put the bag into the boot of the car. “I know. There’s a lot that you need to know before you’ll be able to understand. Come on, we’ve still got a long drive ahead of us.”

John looked at the boot with a pained expression on his face. “I don’t have to go back in there, do I?”

Marie chuckled. “No, I think we can risk you riding up front now. It’s time I told you everything, but be warned, you might not like some of what you’re about to hear.”

Chapter 11