Lycanthropic (Book 2): Wolf Moon (The Rise of the Werewolves) Read online

  Wolf Moon

  Lycanthropic

  Book 2

  Steve Morris

  This novel is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places, names or events is purely coincidental.

  Steve Morris asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Published by Landmark Media, a division of Landmark Internet Ltd.

  Copyright © 2018 by Steve Morris.

  All rights reserved.

  stevemorrisbooks.com

  Acknowledgements: Huge thanks are due to Margarita Morris, James Pailly and Josie Morris for their valuable comments and help in proof-reading this book.

  Table of contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Chapter One

  King’s College Hospital, Lambeth, South London, New Year’s Day

  Police Constable Liz Bailey slowly blinked her eyelids open. Blinding yellow light burned her eyes and she screwed them quickly shut again. Darkness was better. She was somewhere warm and soft, and her head felt fuzzy like she was inside a cocoon.

  A cocoon. That’s what she needed now. A warm, dark, safe corner that she could curl into and hide. Too much had happened, and she just wanted it to stop. The world began to fade as she drifted back into the tender arms of sleep.

  ‘Are you awake?’ asked a soothing voice, rich and smooth as honey.

  The voice might have been real, or just a dream. Liz ignored it, sinking back into the softness that enfolded her.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  She didn’t know whether hours had passed since she’d first heard the voice, or just the beat of a heart. The voice was gentle but insistent and impossible to ignore. She forced her eyelids open a crack. The bright light still burned, but not as painfully as before.

  A nurse was leaning over her, a concerned look on her face, a well-worn caring look. ‘You’ve been in a deep sleep since you arrived in the Emergency Department,’ said the nurse. ‘We administered stimulants, but you didn’t respond. We were wondering if you were ever going to wake up.’ Her mouth turned up at the corners in a faint smile, deep dimples hollowing her caramel-coloured cheeks.

  ‘I know you,’ murmured Liz. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before.’ Was it in a dream? She couldn’t remember. She remembered nothing.

  The nurse smiled again. ‘It was here,’ she said. ‘In the hospital. My name is Chanita. I treated your colleague, PC David Morgan.’

  Chanita. Liz’s lips moved soundlessly. David Morgan. Strange names. Names from long ago, a lifetime ago. ‘He’s dead,’ said Liz. ‘Dave Morgan is dead. The wolf bit him. I saw it myself.’ Had that really happened, or was it part of the dream? She hoped it was a dream, but a coldness in her heart told her that it was true. ‘So tired,’ she muttered. ‘Light hurts.’

  The nurse frowned at that. ‘Let me take a look at your eyes.’

  ‘Need to sleep,’ said Liz. She felt her eyes closing again, lead weights pulling them shut, the warm darkness dragging her back into wonderful oblivion.

  A hand shook her arm gently. ‘Open your eyes for me,’ said the nurse.

  It took a colossal effort to force them open. A light shone into them and she snapped them shut again. ‘Too bright.’

  ‘You have acute photo sensitivity,’ announced Chanita. ‘And your eyes are dilated with a pronounced yellow tint. Do you have any idea what that means?’

  Liz shook her head. She had no idea what anything meant.

  ‘Have you been bitten?’ demanded the nurse. ‘By a wolf? Did it bite you?’

  A wolf. An image presented itself to her, a huge black beast, its yellow eyes glowing in the dark like searchlights, its teeth bared, tongue dripping with drool. A memory, not a dream. A memory from last night. Had the wolf bitten her? No. She had thought it would, but it had sniffed at her and walked on by. Then it had run. Run at the others.

  She snapped her eyes wide open, ignoring the painful stab of the lights. ‘The others! My colleague, Dean, the children he was protecting? What happened to them?’

  ‘They’re all okay,’ said Chanita calmly. ‘They were brought in at the same time as you. Your colleague is being treated for a head wound. The teenagers have minor injuries.’

  Liz allowed her eyes to drift closed again. They were safe. She was safe.

  ‘We’re going to keep you in for observation for a few days,’ continued Chanita. ‘One of the doctors will be round to see you later
, but at the moment we’re very short of staff. A lot of casualties were brought in during the night after the riots and the wolf attacks.’

  Liz curled up in the bed. Riots. That’s right. She had been in the middle of the rioting. She remembered the petrol bomb, the injured people, the looters. She had done her best to help them. She had done something terrible too. But what? The answer was just out of reach, and for now she wanted to keep it that way. It would come to her, in its own time, when she was strong enough to deal with it. Now was the time for sleep.

  Chanita said something else to her, but it was too quiet to hear, coming from too far away. The nurse spoke again, but Liz let the distant voice wash over her. The darkness was calling her, and couldn’t be refused.

  She continued to drift in and out of sleep. How many times, and for how long, she had no way of knowing. Other nurses came to her bedside, and a doctor too. They questioned her, but she couldn’t remember what they asked, or how she answered. All that mattered was sleep.

  At first the sleep was sweet and healing. Her battered body craved the relief it brought her aching bones. Her exhausted mind uncurled into its soothing embrace. Then the dreams began.

  Fire, darkness, screams – a vision of Hell. Yellow eyes, bright in the night. The stuff of nightmare. Yet this was no nightmare, this was memory. A giant wolf, panting hot breath in the frigid air. An explosion. Police officers wreathed in flames. The fighting in the alleyway. It was coming back to her, the memories unfolding one by one like blood red roses.

  What had she done? The horror of the memory flooded over her in a wave. The moon shining on her skin, its silver rays filling her with superhuman energy. And then the violence. She had attacked those vigilantes with her bare hands. Drawn dark red lines in their flesh with her fingers. Smacked them to the ground like flies. Left them for dead.

  The moon had changed her. It had made her a monster, yellow-eyed like the wolves. And Chanita knew.

  Liz sat up in bed, suddenly alert. The bright hospital lights half blinded her, but she narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth and hauled her legs over the edge of the bed. It was like dragging huge weights up a hill. An IV drip tethered her, feeding liquid into the back of her hand, but she pulled the tube out and dropped onto the floor. Her legs sagged and she had to grip the metal frame of the bed to stop herself falling. She held it for a moment, regaining her balance, and used it to drag herself forward. She had to get out of the hospital before Chanita returned.

  A privacy curtain hung around her bed. She drew it aside and peeked out at the hospital ward. It was bedlam. Every bed was full, and nurses and doctors hurried around tending to patients. No one took any notice of her. She looked around for Chanita and saw the nurse attending to a patient down the far end of the ward. Liz lurched off in the opposite direction.

  She reached the ward exit and stumbled down the staircase. A woman at the bottom of the stairs frowned at her, staring at her eyes, but Liz pushed past, following the signs to the main exit. Everywhere people hurried. Patients, doctors, visitors, nurses and support staff. The bright lights overhead burned down relentlessly and every limb felt dead with exhaustion. She sat down on a plastic bench in the corridor to rest for a moment, before coming to her senses.

  Chanita knows.

  As soon as Liz was discovered missing, they would come for her. They would catch her. And what would they do when they caught a monster? An image of villagers wielding pitchforks and flaming torches sprang into her mind. She lurched back to her feet, forcing the exhaustion aside, ignoring the pain in her eyes. The corridor twisted and turned, intersecting with other corridors like a maze, until eventually she pushed out and found herself in the open air. To her surprise, it was still dark, still the early hours of the morning. She must have been in the hospital for only a few hours, unless days had somehow passed.

  She looked around and stumbled over to a black taxi. The driver had the window wound down and she placed her hands firmly on the metal door to steady herself.

  ‘Where to, love?’ asked the driver.

  ‘What day is it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Eh? You what?’

  ‘What day is it?’ she asked again.

  ‘New Year’s Day,’ said the man cheerfully. ‘Blimey, you must have had a big night.’

  New Year’s Day. Only a few hours had passed since the rioting. Since she had become a monster.

  ‘So where to, then?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Brixton Hill,’ she told him, climbing into the back of the cab. Her home wasn’t far from the hospital. Just a short journey and she would be safe again.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the driver, peering at her in his rear-view mirror as he pulled into the early morning traffic. ‘You look like you’ve been in a battle.’

  Chapter Two

  Department of Genetics, Imperial College, Kensington, London, New Year’s Day

  Leanna Lloyd watched from her rooftop vantage as the last pale glimmer of moon dipped behind the London skyline. Dawn was slowly breaking across the city, the sun turning the eastern sky from grey to pink. She roared one last time before the change took her in its cold embrace. From wolf back to human this time.

  She winced as the fur that clothed her vanished, leaving her pale naked skin exposed to the chill night air. Her sharp teeth retracted into her gums and her claws turned back to manicured nails as the rising sun began to cast a glow over the rooftop where she crouched. She felt the weakening in her limbs as her muscles wasted away and the wolf blood that flowed through her veins turned back to ordinary human blood.

  Not quite ordinary. She would never be truly ordinary again. But in human guise she was only half the woman she knew she could be. The dawn had robbed her of her power. Wolf form was her true nature now, and one night a month would never be enough to satisfy her.

  She cast one last glance at the cold dawn before turning away. Black smoke from the overnight fires still rose into the sky, filling the air with the sharp smell of burning. Leanna smiled grimly to herself. Those fires would burn higher yet. She would turn this city into a funeral pyre before she was done.

  But now she had other needs. She left the open rooftop of the university building and climbed down the stairs to the genetics lab where she had left her clothes before going out to hunt the previous night.

  Her phone was already ringing when she reached the deserted lab and she answered it before dressing. Warg Daddy. She was glad to hear his deep booming voice again.

  ‘Leanna,’ he said. ‘Good. Are you safe?’

  ‘I’m safe. What about the others?’

  ‘All the Brothers are with me. None were harmed.’

  Last night had been the first time for Warg Daddy and the Wolf Brothers to change. The first time was always a risk, but she had been confident that the biker gang could take care of themselves.

  ‘I’ve seen Adam,’ continued Warg Daddy. ‘He’s safe too. But Samuel is dead. He was shot by a police marksman. And James has gone missing. We won’t see him again, the traitor.’

  She winced at the reminder of how James had betrayed her last night. He had sided with humans over his own kind. She had never trusted James, and Samuel had been a fool to bring him home. Samuel had paid a dear price for his folly, but Leanna would shed no tears for him. ‘Tell me again about James,’ she said. ‘Tell me exactly how it happened.’

  The Leader of the Pack began to speak in his deep, rumbling voice. ‘It was after midnight. The Wolf Brothers had gathered to wait for the moon. I was there with Snakebite and the others. We waited together. When the moon came, I felt the change begin.’ A kind of awe crept into his voice as he recounted the experience. ‘At first the moon burned my eyes. It seemed to set my skin on fire. Then the change went deeper, right to my bones. The moon fed me power, it gave me new life. Strength poured into every pore and muscle of my body. Then, when the change was complete, I killed.’

  Leanna nodded eagerly. The intensity of that first change was without compare. Warg Daddy
’s words brought it back sharply. That feeling of unimaginable power, the knowledge that anything was now possible, the undeniable lust for blood.

  ‘And James?’ she asked. ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘It was down a blind alley. After the police started shooting, the Brothers split up and ran. I found some kids sheltering with a police woman in the alleyway. The woman was strange. She smelled of wolf, but she hadn’t changed under the moon. I didn’t know what she was, so I left her, and went to the kids. I killed some of them. Then James came, with Samuel. I knew them immediately, even in wolf form. They were running from the police too.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘James stood in my way. He challenged me for the kids. He told me to leave them. I gave him plenty of warning but he wouldn’t back down. So I fought him. I would have killed him, but Samuel joined him. Then the police came, and the bullets. I ran.’

  ‘Did you see what happened to James and Samuel?’

  ‘No. I just heard shots. Gunfire. But Snakebite saw them. He watched Samuel dying while James looked on. He would have killed James then if he had known. But he didn’t know.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Leanna. ‘It wasn’t Snakebite’s fault.’ She knew where the blame lay. With James, and James alone.

  In savage fury, Leanna had killed when she had first heard the news of James’ betrayal. She had roamed the streets, killing, and killing again. But slaughtering innocents would never purge the black hate that boiled her blood. Only James’s death would quiet that rage. Until then it would burn inside her, a reminder of the betrayal.

  Leanna had learned a hard lesson about trust. She had been too weak with James and Samuel. From now on she would trust no one and tolerate no dissent. Anyone who stood in her way would be crushed. Anyone.

  ‘Leanna?’ Warg Daddy’s voice growled from the phone. ‘Leanna? Are you still there?’

  Leanna stilled her fury and bottled it up inside. It would keep for later. She would not permit a rogue werewolf to derail her plans. She would have her revenge one day. One day soon. ‘I’m still here,’ she said.

  ‘So what next?’ asked Warg Daddy. ‘The Brothers are ready to search for James. We’ll hunt him down and kill him like a rat.’