22. FOOLHARDY (1948)
"I might feel responsible for him, but I won't die for him!" Jonathan exclaimed as I moved to follow Danny.
I looked back at him with utter contempt. "You just lectured me and now you won't help?" I was incredulous.
"Vampires do not survive for over half a millennia by chasing down Children of the Moon, no matter the reason. And do not shift any of your remorse upon me. It is your fault that he is here. When he dies, it will be on your shoulders." His expression went from guilt to anger, and then settled on indignity.
"Very well, coward. Run to the lakes. Hide from the monster. Leave your offspring to die. Your son. For you are his sire. I will be responsible for him from now on." I turned away from Jonathan. I could no longer look at him. He disgusted me more than Alistair ever had.
I left him on the banks of the river, and trailed Danny's scent. We had no time for preparation now, to gather silver and find a way to use it, to form a plan of attack. I supposed we would have to rely on the fact that we would be two against one as our ally. And hopefully, if I caught up to Danny in time, the element of surprise.
I moved at full speed after him. My legs were longer than his, though I was not stronger than him. I was confident I could close the gap. He only had a head start of a minute, possibly two. We had fifty miles until we reached the trail where the wolf had changed to human. Still worried, I tried to increase my speed, to no avail.
Danny was waiting for me where the wolf trail ended, and the human that it had become went west.
"What the hell were you thinking!" I roared as soon as I reached him.
"That Jonathan didn't want me ter go, and that yeh agreed wit' 'im. I weren't going ter miss this, Garrett. It's been thirty years fer me as well." His face had no fear, only confidence. "Have yeh got a plan?"
"Not really. The moon is out, so he'll be a wolf now. I say we follow the human trail and hope we smell the wolf. Once we do, we'll track it as best we can, and hope that it won't expect us to pursue it." Barely a plan at all.
"Good enough fer me," Danny replied, and he followed me after the almost cold scent of the human werewolf.
The scent was weak, and the human had not gone far. An abandoned barn only a few miles from where the scent began. The smell lingered there, covered the hay in its strange, both animal and human way, as if the human had simply come to this place and stayed.
And then the scent of the wolf, of the Child of the Moon, outside of the barn, growing with each step, until it smelled the same as when we had first tracked it. The smell was not revolting, but I had little desire to taste the beast either. I wondered how the beast reacted to our scent. I doubted it found us appealing. But, according to Jonathan, the beast desired to kill us. So perhaps not as bad as this.
The beast continued west as it had in its human form. It was only when we saw the dim lights of the city that I even guessed where it was going.
"Headed to Warsaw, it looks like," I said to Danny as we ran.
"Should've asked Jonathan if it enjoyed ther humans, I suppose. Guess we know."
The lights were closer and closer, and then, abruptly, the beast had turned, still ten miles from the outskirts of the city.
"Why do yeh suppose he did that?" Danny asked, as we turned south and followed the trail. I had no answer for him. We were in the deepest part of the night now, but the full moon was above us, unhindered by the clouds that had allowed us to enter the town earlier. Everything glowed white, and I slowed our pursuit.
"This beast is either very stupid or very smart," I said, no longer pursuing, but simply walking after the trail. A vampire walk, far faster than a human's, but still a walk.
"What do yer mean?"
"I think that it knows that we are following, and it wants us to find it. Either it is confident in its abilities, or it has underestimated us. We would have the advantage in the city. Out here, the wolf can move freely." I was very wary now. I felt strongly that this beast was smart, and that it knew how a vampire might attack it.
We followed the scent to a stand of trees, no more than a few square miles total. The beast had entered the trees.
"There is something wrong here," I observed, and crouched close to the ground, inhaling its scent.
"It don't make a lick o' sense fer 'im to go in ther." Good, Danny had caught on.
"No, it doesn't." I thought hard. What did it want? What did it expect? How could we surprise it? I was sure now that it knew we were following.
"I think it means to separate us," I finally said, after I had stared at the trees for a few minutes. "It wants us to circle the woods on both sides so that it can hunt us down individually. It knows that there are two of us." Smart. Very smart. I would have done exactly that before I'd talked to Jonathan, sent Danny west while I went east, circled the woods before moving in. The beast understood how to create a trap that was a centuries old battle tactic. Very impressive. I underestimated its intelligence at every turn. Perhaps I should stop thinking of it as a beast.
"We circle the woods to find where it came out. Together." I nodded at Danny as I stood from my crouch, hoping that my face was more confident than my mind.
We circled the woods, me near the treeline while Danny ranged further away, in case the beast, the werewolf, had somehow masked its scent for a time. We circumnavigated the woods, but found nothing. We returned to where we had started.
"I ain't got anything else," Danny said.
But something was different. The trail to the woods was stronger, when it should have been weaker.
"It waited for us. It left the way it came," I surmised. But why? Did it want to escape us? Was it laying a trap for us?
I turned toward the old trail, now new, and warily moved to return from whence we'd come. "Stay behind me, and keep your eyes open. I think it has set some sort of trap," I warned as I followed the trail.
The scent of the beast was heavy, very recent, as if it had paced the trail, covered its own scent over and over, until new and old were nearly the same. And then, a mile from the forest, the trail went cold, only the old scent remaining. And I finally knew the plan. It was a trap. But the trap was not in front of us.
The Child of the Moon leapt silently through the air, faster than anything I'd ever seen, nearly invisible to vampire eyes. I was turning towards Danny, back towards the small woods where it had waited, as it leapt, and it was upon him before I could react.
It could leap nearly a mile. An excellent trap.
The beast made no noise as it pounced, and its claws dug into Danny's chest before I'd managed even two steps toward them.
My steps became a leap as it sunk its teeth into Danny's neck, and I heard a shredding noise, both the same and different as the noise of vampire teeth on vampire skin.
The beast was horrible. It was as Danny had described. No hair, just a naked and deformed body, human flesh, stretched and distorted over the skeleton of a strange dog. It was thin and yet muscular at once, for all of the exposed flesh was muscle and tendons. The face of it was like nothing I had ever seen, as if it was a human whose jaw had grown too large, whose whole face contorted, the flesh stretched over elongated bone. The only hair on the beast was on it head, a long mane of brown hair, and between its legs, black instead of brown. Its torso was too long, more than half the length of its body. The only area where the flesh was not stretched along bone or muscle was at the chest, where the skin was not fully extended over bone.
Danny screamed, but the beast turned that scream into a more horrible gurgling sound as it ripped the flesh from his neck.
My teeth connected with its shoulder, ripping flesh from its body, as I threw everything I had the monster. I could only hope that the force of my tackle could drive it away from Danny.
The beast released him and struck me, its claws dug into the flesh of my shoulder as it tossed me away. I tasted its flesh in my mouth, its blood. The taste was disgusting. I spat and turned toward it, only to find that the beast was upon me.
Its teeth sank into my stomach, and I did the only thing that I could. I sank my own teeth into its neck. And both monsters roared in pain, but refused to let go. Its teeth did not dig deeper into my stomach, and I clutched my arms around it, gripping hard with my teeth, filling it with venom.
And then everything changed. The beast released its bite, though I still clutched its neck. And then something hit the beast, hard, and our bodies jerked from each other, our deadly embrace broken.
"Run!" a voice exclaimed, and I was pulled to my feet. Someone was dragging me, and then I found my legs and I was running, too, though I could not look away. The shape of the beast was changing. It seemed to shrink, its muscles becoming softer, its face growing smaller. Its body jerked and heaved, the structure of its bones changing. I stopped, awestruck, and someone was dragging me away, but I could not divert my eyes. The beast was no longer thin and muscular. As it shrank in some places, it grew in others, and it became increasingly more human in front of my eyes.
Whoever carried me let me fall, and I was no longer looking at the beast. Instead, I saw the first rays of the sun over the horizon.
I looked back, and caught a final glimpse of it before it disappeared. I was shocked by what I saw.
XXX
Jonathan and I approached Danny's body, fearing what we would see. But his face was as it always was. Innocent. Except it no longer held his happy grin.
"Daniel, I am so sorry," Jonathan whispered.
Jonathan had not fled, but he had waited until dawn to intervene. And Danny had died. I wanted very much to blame Jonathan. But the fault was mine. Yet another I had destroyed. I had killed too many vampires in my life. Too many humans as well. And those I had not killed, I drove away. Nothing good could ever come of being near me.
"Garr..," Danny rasped, and I was by his side.
"Nnnnn…worth…it…"
We lit him on fire as soon as we could. His neck could not heal from the bite of the wolf. My own shoulder and gut would never heal either. Less than I deserved, to wear the scars of my human life on my vampire body. All I deserved was death. Yet death kept eluding me.
Jonathan insisted on lighting the pyre himself. I would never know whether the hunt was worth it for Danny or not. Jonathan refused to speak to me, and left as soon as the flames engulfed Danny's body. His course was southwesterly, though I knew not where. Myself, I went west, to Warsaw.
The beast was a human woman now. And her scent led me west. I had twenty five days to wait while she was in human form, until the werewolf returned.
Hopefully, it would kill me.
Author's Note #1: If the few people who are actually reading this have noticed some similarities to other media, you aren't wrong. The last five chapters have referenced everything from Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers to Wolverine from the X-Men comics, and, of course, Lost, as well as a whole lot of dialogue from Jaws and an entire chapter based on the Angel episode "Damage", which was actually the basis for almost the entirety of this story, or at least the idea that started it, thus the chapter title. I also borrowed some of that chapter from the James Bond book and movie Casino Royale. I bring my love of all of these stories to my own fanfiction, and borrow from them because they are so good.
Author's Note #2: This story has become increasingly more violent as it's gone along. Although I do not find written violence to be particularly disturbing, and don't think that the language or sexual content of the text has surpassed the level of someone between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, if anyone who is actually reading this story feels that it has become inappropriate, then I will be happy to change the rating to "M" instead of "T+".