Chapter 4
12 Hours 30 Minutes until Dawn
Author's Note: WARNING! This chapter is where the horror starts and contains character death and blood. Discretion is advised for any of those of a nervous disposition or who have recently lost someone.
Tom and Shannon sat on the sofa, trying to focus on the movie they were supposedly watching. Darkness was falling and Shannon had just texted Rhydian to call him back to the house. Suddenly, the front door burst open as Rhydian ran inside. He was clearly fighting the black veins that threatened to start the transformation.
"Is it time?" Shannon asked.
"I should have another half an hour, but this is different." Rhydian growled. "I can feel this bloodlust that's just impossible to stop. I think I might have to go in early and wait it out."
"Okay, well we've put your dinner in the cellar as well as the other wolf snacks, so if you want to go in now then we can lock you in." Shannon got up and kept her calm exterior, but she was terrified. This wouldn't be the Rhydian they knew tonight. "Come on, Tom. Bring the padlock." Tom ran and grabbed the padlock from the kitchen table. He joined them just as Shannon shut the door and turned the key.
"See you in the morning, mate." Tom called through the door as he padlocked the latch.
Over at the Smiths' house, Maddy and her family trooped down into the den as usual. They stood in a triangle, waiting for the moon to do its work.
"For the record, I'm still not happy with what you did to Rhydian." Maddy growled.
"Maddy, we can't argue about this now." Emma said. "If we're angry when we transform, we might hurt one another. I don't want that for us."
"Fine, but we'll have a very long discussion about it in the morning." Maddy's tone suggested that this wasn't open to negotiation. Normally, Emma would have clamped down on her dictating to them, but she knew Maddy had every right to be angry. She decided to let this one slide. As they watched, the black veins spread down their arms and up their necks. Their fangs started to appear with twice the usual force of their transformations to the point that Maddy felt like her teeth were going to shatter. She looked up at her parents to see that their eyes had changed. But they weren't burning their usual gold. Maddy looked into her parents' eyes and saw blood red orbs of fiery death. She ran to the mirror that was in the corner. Her own irises had also turned a similar shade of blood red, yet a bit darker and even more horrific.
"What's happening?" she called over frantically.
"I've no idea, cub." Emma said. "Beyond this point, it's all new territory to me."
"God, I'm scared." Maddy admitted.
"Yeah, so are we." Dan shrugged. "There's not much we can do about the full moon though. We'll just have to take this as it comes." Maddy was just about to protest, but then she felt her jaw elongate. Her skeletal structure reformed as fur covered her body. Within seconds, three red-eyed wolves stood where the Smiths once did.
At that very moment, Tom and Shannon heard the first howl coming from the wine cellar. They knew Rhydian had transformed and that there was no way they could open the door until morning. Just then, a text came through from Tom's mum.
'Tom, stay exactly where you are tonight. I don't care if you're at home or at Shannon's, just stay there.' Tom and Shannon exchanged a glance. Clearly something was wrong.
Over at the hospital, Tom's mum was rushed off her feet. She'd only just finished delivering a child when someone buzzed her.
"Doctor Okanawe? You're needed down in Trauma. We've had someone brought in urgently."
"How urgent is it?" she'd asked.
"You could say it's pretty urgent. Someone was in the village when they were absolutely savaged." Doctor Okanawe had made it as fast as she could. When she got down there, she was shocked beyond belief. She'd never seen so much blood pouring out of so many wounds on one person before. Immediately, she'd flown into action.
"Okay, I need a haemostat dressing ASAP, someone get an IV line in somewhere that's stable enough to take it and we seriously need to close up that throat wound so he can breathe properly!"
"Who even is this?" one of the other doctors asked. Just then, a nurse caught sight of the man's shredded arm when she tried to put the IV in and promptly had to grab a plastic bucket from under the bed to be sick into.
"His wallet ID says that he's Bernie from Bernie's Café. I remember taking my kids there for burgers!" someone else said.
"Bernie, I need you to listen very carefully." Doctor Okanawe told him. "I need to know what happened. All the detail you can."
"I just locked the shop up for the night." Bernie's words were an effort because of one doctor holding a dressing over his throat wound and Doctor Okanawe trying to keep him stable and trying to keep his chest cavity from filling up.
"Who did this to you?" she asked.
"Not who… What…" Bernie was struggling to breathe. "Red eyes… fur… wolf…" Just then, there was a slow, droning beep from off to the side. The heart monitor was flat-lining.
"Crap, this is not good!" Doctor Okanawe turned to the doctor holding the IV in place. "I need one shot of adrenaline! Get the defibrillators!"
"Defibrillators won't help!" another doctor called over. "I count ten broken ribs! We can't shock him with that much damage!"
"Adrenaline's out of the question!" a nurse reported. "Most of the injection sites are compromised and we can't roll him over to inject into any rear sites because of his ribs." Without a pause, Doctor Okanawe threw the bedsheet over Bernie's face.
"Well, that's it then. Time of death: 21:55 PM." One of the doctors swore and kicked a bedside table over. "Do I need to sedate you?" Okanawe snapped.
"Sorry, that won't happen again." Now that the brief anger fuelled adrenaline rush had worn off, the man looked utterly defeated.
"And as for you, nurse…" Okanawe rounded on the nurse who'd thrown up.
"I'm sorry, that was unprofessional." The nurse looked like she wanted the ground to open her up and swallow her.
"The same thing happened to me when I was a rookie." Doctor Okanawe told her. "In truth, he'd lost too much blood anyway. I don't have too much of a problem for now, but for god's sake sort it out for next time! I have a book on how to deal with it if you need it." Just then, a thought occurred to her. Whatever did this might still be out there. Quickly, she pulled out her phone and texted Tom.
'Tom, stay exactly where you are tonight. I don't care if you're at home or at Shannon's, just stay there.'
'What's wrong?'
'We've just had someone brought in after being attacked. We couldn't save him.'
'Was it anyone we know?'
'Do you know Bernie from the café?'
'Oh, god!'
"What's wrong?" Shannon asked, seeing Tom's face.
"Bernie was just brought into Trauma at the hospital." Tom told her. "He was attacked. Mum couldn't save him."
"What?" Shannon couldn't believe it. Tom hugged her close as she burst into tears. Just then, they heard a ferocious snarl come from the cellar.
"Shan, I completely understand, but you need to pull yourself together." Tom told her. "You're agitating Rhydian."
"I loved his burgers." Shannon muttered tearfully.
"To be honest, Shan, I'm more concerned about what did it to him." Tom said as another text arrived. "Apparently he was saying something about wolves."
"You don't think…"
"I'm hoping I'm wrong." Tom suspected he was right though. What if the Smiths had escaped? What if someone captured or shot them? How would Rhydian react? How would they cope?
"Okay, we need to assess this calmly and rationally." Shannon said, composing herself. "The best case scenario is that wolves were his favourite animals and he adopted one through some charity and that's what he was concerned about."
"He hated any type of dog." Tom reminded her. "He always used to get bitten when he was younger. He keeps cats."
"Okay, the second best scenario is that this attack was done by multiple foxes that went insane because of the blood moon and smelled food in his café."
"That's possible." Tom muttered. "But the worst case is that either the Smiths have got loose somehow and one or more of them did this, or that a wild Wolfblood found its way to Stoneybridge."
"To be honest, I think I'd rather it was the wild Wolfblood." Shannon muttered.
"I know, right?" Tom agreed.
"Still, in situations where lives depend on it, we have to automatically assume the worst case scenario and act accordingly." Shannon said.
"How do we 'act accordingly'? We didn't put any contingencies in place for this!" Tom reminded her. "We didn't have time!"
"The best thing I can come up with right now is that we grab shovels from the tool shed at the back." Shannon shrugged. "We go out into the town, I'll keep my laptop with me to monitor Rhydian and then we deck anything that tries to eat us."
"Shannon, we can't just deck Maddy and her family over the head!" Tom protested. As if in agreement, they heard another growl from Rhydian in the cellar.
"Tom, it's for the greater good." Shannon gave him an honest look that told him she really didn't have a better plan.
"Okay, fine; just don't start quoting Hot Fuzz on me." Tom muttered irritably.
"I have a spare coat if you need to wrap up warmer." Shannon said. "It's only actually an old denim jacket, but it's from the era when they knew how to make them. It's really thick, so it should help keep the cold out."
"It's better than nothing." Tom shrugged. "My hoodie is only thin."
"Okay, I'll run and get that for you." Shannon got up and raced upstairs while Tom waited at the bottom. A second later, he saw a blue shape come hurtling out the darkness at him. He shrugged the jacket on just as Shannon came down. Tom noticed she'd swapped her school uniform for a simple yet warm outfit complete with thermal socks and a jacket that looked like it was built for arctic survival.
"That was a quick change." Tom observed.
"Tom, I was not going beast hunting in a skirt." Shannon told him. "To be honest, I hate wearing the thing when we get this close to winter. You've got next to nothing to protect your legs."
"I never really thought about it." Tom shrugged. "I guess I never really had to. Can we go and find this Wolfblood now?"
"Okay, let's get our shoes on and go." Shannon pulled out the drawer from the shoe rack and found both pairs. "Let's just hope we can get there before anyone else dies. Shannon went to grab her laptop, but then had another idea. She pulled her phone from her pocket and started tapping at the screen.
"Now what are you doing?" Tom asked, exasperated.
"Why take a laptop when I have this?" Shannon asked. "Damn, I'm good. Okay, I've linked my phone to the camera in the cellar. I'll be able to monitor Rhydian and look at what I'm doing while keeping an eye on things around me. Plus, it saves me lugging that laptop around. It gets heavy after a while."
"Right. Since Bernie was attacked recently, he'd probably just locked the shop up, right?" Tom decided.
"That sounds reasonable." Shannon nodded. "So we should start at the shop and work towards his house for the crime scene. Once we find it, we'll get a better idea of which Wolfblood did this."
"Okay, but what do we look for?" Tom asked.
"We look for anything that can help us." Shannon shrugged. "We're looking for fur samples, paw prints, anything like that."
"Okay, then once we find that, I'll let you get your nerd on in telling which Wolfblood it was." Tom concluded.
"We'll be back in a bit, Rhydian." Shannon called down the stairs to the cellar. A mournful howl drifted back to them. Shannon checked her phone screen. Sure enough, Rhydian was stood at the side of the door, possibly waiting for them to check on him and open it to make sure he was alright.
"Is he okay?" Tom asked.
"He's fine." Shannon nodded. "He was doing exactly what he warned us about."
"Okay, I'm officially glad he knows himself so well." Tom grinned.
"Let's get moving." Shannon motioned for Tom to follow her out the door. They stepped into the cold night air together. They were unsure what awaited them in the town they once thought they knew so well, but it would probably have fur, fangs, a tendency to attack and kill on-sight and a general air of unpleasantness. Without even realising it had happened, Tom's hand found Shannon's and gripped it tight. Without even bothering to hide her nerves, Shannon gripped his hand in return.
Author's Note: Okay, so here's the next chapter. This is my first upload of 2017 and I'm sorry this chapter wasn't up sooner. With the arrival of Christmas and then preparing for the new year, we've been rushed off our feet a bit. I also wasn't able to work on my stories nearly as much as I'd have liked, but I'm looking at changing that very soon. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a happy 2017. Please feel free to review.