With the sound of Claude’s agonising shrieks, and Thaddeus’s booming howls in her ears, Winnie failed to hear Michelle racing up behind her. It wasn’t until the vampire had leapt onto her back that Winnie realised that Michelle had been charging after her. Winnie spun around as Michelle dug her claws into her shoulders. Winnie screamed out in pain. The vampire’s claws felt like ten burning daggers slicing into her flesh.
“Get the fuck off me, bitch!” Winnie screamed, bucking like a donkey, desperate to throw Michelle free.
But the vampire’s grip was unbreakable. Winnie threw herself backwards, crushing Michelle beneath her. The vampire shrieked, withdrawing her claws from Winnie as she tried to free herself from beneath. The pain of the claws being withdrawn from her flesh was just as painful as them going in, and a blinding bolt of pain shot through her shoulders and into Winnie’s brain. In agony, she rolled off Michelle onto her hands and knees, and tried to get to her feet. The vampire had only been momentarily stunned, and pouncing to her feet, she kicked out at Winnie and sent her sprawling into the ground. Winnie’s chin struck a rock jutting out of the grass, and a jet of blood burst from the gash it had made in her face. With the air now full of the sweet smell of blood, Michelle ran her tongue over her raw-looking lips and threw herself at Winnie.
She rolled over just in time to see the vampire’s fangs come rushing out of the darkness at her. Winnie threw her hands in front of her face, and she felt Michelle’s fangs sink into her forearm. The pain, like before was excruciating, and Winnie thought she might just puke. With bile burning in the back of her throat, Winnie screamed in pain as she pulled her arm free of Michelle’s jaws. Blood sprayed into the air, covering Winnie’s face with her own blood. With her arm spurting a constant stream of thick, black blood, she tried to beat off Michelle, who lunged at her over and over again.
Screaming, she tried to fight the vampire off, but Winnie knew it was only a matter of seconds before she became too consumed with pain to fight on. Then, with Michelle’s hideous face swimming before her, Winnie thought she saw a flash of red cloth go racing past. If Michelle hadn’t seen it, she must have felt something, as she momentarily looked in the direction that the red streak had gone. With the vampire’s head turned away, Winnie seized the moment and drove both sets of her fingernails into the creature’s eyes. Michelle’s eyeballs felt soft and wet beneath Winnie’s fingernails. Knowing that this was her last chance, she drove her fingers as far and as deep as she could into the vampire’s eyes. One of them squirted onto Michelle’s cheek in a thick, gloopy white-coloured mess. It felt hot as it ran over the back of Winnie’s hand and down the length of her wrist.
Twisting her back like a corkscrew, the vampire screeched in agony as Winnie pulled her fingernails from her eye sockets. “I’m blind!” she screamed. “I’m fucking blind!”
“And I’m bleeding!” Winnie roared back scrambling to her feet. Holding her arm tightly to her chest, to try and slow the blood gushing from the rips in her flesh, she watched Michelle stagger blindly about.
“I’m blind!” she screamed again, her long, blue hair blowing in the wind.
“No, you’re dead,” somebody howled from the darkness.
Before Winnie truly knew what was happening, Thaddeus had bounded like a giant hound from the dark. With one fleeting swipe of his claw, Michelle’s head was spinning away through the air. Her torso stood where it was, twitched, and then toppled over. Thaddeus glanced at Winnie. His shirt had been torn free, and bloody streaks covered his chest. His arms looked taut, and he flexed his claws open and closed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he snarled at Winnie.
She looked back at him and nodded.
“Then do it, Winnie,” he barked at her. “Run! Run! Run! And never look back!”
Looking at him one last time, dripping with blood in the moonlight, Winnie turned and ran.
Chapter Thirty-Two
With the vampire’s blood hot beneath his long fingernails, Thaddeus stood and looked at his burning house in the distance. It had been consumed by flames and it burnt like a torch on the horizon. Clouds of black smoke billowed up into the night sky. He knew whether it burnt to the ground or not, he would never be able to return there. His life in Cornwall was over. His life was over. He waited, drenched by moonlight. He wanted Nate to find him. He wanted it to be over at last.
Then, silhouetted by the red of the flames in the distance, he saw Nate coming across the fields towards him. With his claws hanging low by his sides, he breathed deeply and waited for the inevitable. He couldn’t kill himself. Winnie, just like Frances, hadn’t been able to do so either, but for the same reasons, he couldn’t be sure. That didn’t matter now. He watched Nate approach him, each step slow and deliberate, as if he were savouring every moment.
The thought of dying now didn’t matter. He could kill Nate as easily as he had killed the others. What was the point? There would only be others. Word would soon get back to Nicodemus that his daughter was dead, killed by the wolf. Enraged with grief, and feeling betrayed, he would only send more, who would hunt him down. Thaddeus knew that it was over. He couldn’t go on moving from one place to another, living a life where he was constantly looking back over his shoulder, reading mountains of foreign newspapers, trying to work out where his enemies would come from next. That wasn’t a life – that was a living hell. He had tried to trick them and what had he achieved? For his own selfish gain, he had deceived a young girl, he had brought a young girl to his home, placed her in mortal danger and what for? So he could put off the inevitable for another year – another three or four perhaps? They would have caught up with him soon enough, and even if he had managed to trick Winnie into staying with him all that time, they would have killed her, too.
He knew he had felt something for her, however small, but to let those feelings grow and mature would have been another selfish act on his part. She would have exchanged one life of constant running for another. Winnie was free now, not of her own ghosts, but of his.
As Thaddeus watched Nate take his last few steps towards him, and as they stood eye to eye at last, Thaddeus, dropped to his knees and lowered his head.
“If you truly felt anything for Frances, make this quick for me,” Thaddeus said. “As I sat and watched her fade away, we both knew this moment would eventually come. She wouldn’t have wanted me to suffer.” He then reached into the back of his waistband and removed the gun he had earlier tried to get Winnie to kill him with. Looking up into Nate’s dead black eyes, he offered him the gun.
Nate slowly took the gun and turned it over in his hands. “A murderer and coward,” he sneered. “A true Lycanthrope.”
“I’m neither,” Thaddeus whispered to himself more than to his executioner.
Nate heard him all the same, and whipped him across the side of the face with the butt of the gun. Thaddeus howled in pain, as his head rocked to the left.
Throwing the gun into the grass, Nate towered over Thaddeus and said, “I’ve waited three hundred years for this moment. Three hundred years!” he screeched, spit flying from his lips and spraying Thaddeus’s naked chest. “And for every one of those days, I’ve tormented myself – driven myself half-mad - thinking of how when I sink my fangs into your putrid heart, I want to feel it still beating.”
“Whatever you think happened to Frances, I’m not going to spend my last few moments trying to convince you otherwise,” Thaddeus said calmly, “we loved each other more than you’ll ever know.”
“You don’t have the faintest idea what true love is, wolf!” Nate screeched at him. “You’re nothing but an animal. It was I who truly loved Frances.”
Then, slowly lifting his head, Thaddeus looked into Nate’s eyes. “If you truly had loved Frances, you wouldn’t have asked her to stand in the moonlight. You would have set her free.”
With a rage which paled anything he had felt before, Nate raised his claws in the air and brought them slicing down. Thaddeus threw back his head, exposing his neck, waiting for the vampire’s claws to slice open his throat and at last set him free. Thaddeus didn’t know what came first, the warm splatter of blood across his upturned face, or the sound of the gun firing.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Thaddeus opened one eye to see Nate slump face first into the ground. He then opened the other, and saw Winnie standing with the gun wavering in her trembling hands. Blood and lumps of Nate’s brain slid done the length of Thaddeus’s face like giant black tears. He armed them away, unable to take his eyes off Winnie.
“What have you done?” he howled.
“Saved your life,” Winnie breathed, dropping the gun as if it now carried some disease she might catch.
“Why?” he barked. “After everything I have put you through.”
“Because you saved my life,” Winnie whispered, holding her bleeding arm against her chest.
“But you haven’t saved my life, Winnie,” he snarled at her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, unable to figure out why he seemed so angry. Then, looking at the scattered remains of the vampires, she added, “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“They’re dead,” Thaddeus growled. “But there will be others. It won’t take long for Nicodemus to figure out what went on here. Just like Nate, he will come after me to avenge the death of Frances.”
“I’m sorry,” Winnie said, looking back at the house which was now nothing more than just a raging inferno.
“I had set you free. Why did you come back for me?” Thaddeus barked at her.
“Because you said we were friends,” she breathed, looking back at him. “That’s what friends do, isn’t it?”
Thaddeus looked back at her, not knowing what to say or do. With his temper calming, and seeing the blood funnelling from the cut in Winnie’s face and leaking down her arm, he went to her and took her in his arms.