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By the time the fractured trio finally made it into the woodland, dawn had well and truly broken.
As normal, Jacques padded ahead, nose to the floor, trying to pick up a scent.
“Can you turn at will?” Katana said, glancing down at Ashley.
“Not technically speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we have some control. Gregory keyed the virus into the human emotions though. With werewolves, the virus breaks through and turns when they give in to lust.”
“Lust?”
Ashley nodded. “Yes. You do know what lust is?”
Katana shot him a withering glance. “Yes, Ashley. My question was more of a how does it work type of thing.”
“Ok. Here’s how it worked with me. I have a real weakness for sour cherries—you know, the fizzy flavoured sweets?”
Katana nodded.
“Gregory bought a bag of them and told me they were mine. Then he left them outside my cage, just out of reach. For three days that damn orange bag sat an inch away from my fingertips. There were times when I was drooling, you know. I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
Katana giggled, imagining the scenario in her mind.
“He gave me the bag on the fourth day but warned me if I ate one, that would be the end of me. I craved after those damn sweets for another two days before I finally gave in. As soon as I decided I was having a sweet, that was it—I turned. I’d given in to my lust mentally and that’s what allowed the virus to break through. It was my weakness.”
“So it’s ok whilst you’re fighting it then? It’s just when you give in?”
“Yes. It’s always there, lingering beneath the surface, just waiting to force its way through.”
Katana giggled. “Like the Hulk?”
Ashley looked up at her, confused. “What?”
“His secret for controlling his alter ego is he’s always angry, despite the loss of control of his emotions being the trigger. So your secret is the same? That you’re always...wanting something? Always lusting?”
Ashley looked straight ahead, seeming to ponder over her question. “I guess it is, yes.”
“So what happens when you stop lusting instead of giving in?”
“I turn.”
“So either way you’re screwed then really?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” he said, chuckling.
Realising she had a first-class opportunity to interview a werewolf here, Katana carried on probing. “What does it feel like? When you turn? Do you know what you’re doing or is it a blind rage that you forget when you wake?”
Ashley pursed his lips, then laughed. “You know when you have a really big spot? It’s not quite ready to burst but it damn well hurts in the meantime?”
Giggling, Katana nodded.
“It feels like that. It’s like a deep, burning ache that runs right through your body and into your bones. When you turn, it’s like you’re a spectator in your own body. You can hear things and see things, but you have absolutely no control over anything. It’s like you’re watching your body being used as a puppet. It’s quite traumatic because the overwhelming sensation of being powerless and helpless is just...I can’t describe it. I think a lot of people play the amnesia card because the brain either does genuinely block it out, or they just don’t want to think about it.”
“What does it feel like when you wake up?”
“You have that horrible, stomach full of dread feeling like when you wake from a nightmare. More often than not, you’re covered in blood, sweat, and gasping for breath.”
Katana shivered, suddenly realising that the werewolves she’d been slaying were people—actual human beings trapped inside an uncontrollable beast.
“When did you last turn?”
“When I was in the lab, so don’t worry, I think you’re safe.” Ashley laughed.
Katana fixed him a blank stare. “You only came out of the lab a few days ago.”
“When you’re turning twenty times a day, a few days is a long time.”
“Twenty times a day?”
Ashley nodded. “Gregory was desperate to find a way to make us die.”
Katana fell silent. She couldn’t believe the depths of the depravity her family, her own flesh and blood, were inflicting on other people. This wasn’t right. None of this was. Something needed sorting, and soon.
But first, there was the small problem of eleven other immortal hybrid werewolves running rife, infecting any human they came across with the werewolf virus.
“But how was he making you turn so much? Surely, if anything, you were lusting after being free?”
“Oh yes,” he said, nodding. “But that’s nothing a little injection won’t fix.” He lifted the sleeve of his t-shirt, showing off his ripped muscles to Katana. His entire upper arm was pepper-marked with dots—needle injection sites. “My left side is just as bad.”
Katana gasped. “My goodness. You look like...” her cheeks flushed pink as she said her next words “...a junkie that’s been hitting up.”
“Thanks.” Ashley laughed. “I’m sure the feelings they get from their injections are much more desirable than what we got from these.”
Katana gave him a smile tinged with sadness. “I’m so sorry you had to live through that. How were the others? Like, what were they like as people?”
Ashley shrugged his shoulders. “Some were ok. Some not so much. Just like regular people, I guess.”
“Did they all have supernatural foundations—like you being a witch?”
He shook his head. “No. Some were regular people. He wanted to see the difference between regular humans and how it affected them, and then of course us supernaturals and how it affected us. That werewolf you killed? That’s the human version of me.”
“What other basics were used? Apart from the human and the witch DNA?”
“They were it. I did hear him talk about trialling shifter DNA but as far as I know, that’s for a different experiment.”
“So there’s six of you witch based phoenixes and six human based phoenixes?”
Ashley nodded. “But each of us is slightly different. The other witch-based phoenixes like me are a little...peculiar. One in particular. I think our magick affected us all in different ways when we turned.”
“How so?”
“Well, this one guy, his name was Stefan Lear, he harboured such a deep thirst for the macabre, spilling blood, killing—it literally drove him mad. He didn’t care how many times a day Gregory stuck him with a needle, all he wanted was to rip things apart. He very nearly got a hold of Gregory one day. Shame the slimy bastard had a taser in his pocket.”
“But isn’t that the basics of a werewolf anyway? To want to rip things apart?”
“To a degree, yes. But this was like on a whole new level. Think of crimes of passion as being what drives a werewolf—the heat of the moment, the loss of control—it’s just a rampage of unbridled emotions. Then, think of a serial killer. Someone to the depths of Bundy or Dahmer. They cause just as much carnage but it’s all that more chilling because it’s been planned. They worked stuff out before they did it.”
“And that’s what this guy, Stefan, did?”
Ashley nodded. “I can guarantee you he won’t be running wild through the streets biting anyone he comes across. He’ll be sat alone somewhere, in the quiet, working out the best strategy for the maximum effect.”
A shiver ran down Katana’s spine, so violent she noticeably shivered in the saddle. “That’s disturbing. Were there any others like him?”
Ashley looked up at her, hesitated for the briefest of seconds, and then nodded.
“Do you know who it is we’re hunting up here?”
“Yes. It’s him—Stefan”
Goosebumps raised all over Katana’s body. “Are you telling me that the psycho who plots and plans is still out here and probably watching us right now?”
“Yeah...when I rugby-tackled you earlier, it was because I’d seen him just behind Jacques. I thought he was going to make his move.”
“So you dove at me and gave me concussion?”
Ashley laughed. “Hey, I was trying to save your life.”
Katana laughed. “I guess you can be forgiven for that.”
Katana’s phone pinged, breaking the conversation. Knowing that would be Erica’s meddling linking her with the latest cases, she pulled her phone from her pocket.
With her heart in her mouth, she opened her phone screen and clicked on the red cape app icon for her family’s business system. A black background supported an outline of Europe in bright blue. Hundreds of little dots spanned across the map; green for assigned cases, red for new cases, and white for recently solved.
Usually, at any one point in time, there would be no more than a hundred dots across the great expanse, all roughly even in their coloured dots.
This time, there were over one hundred red dots—and that was just in England.