Destiny of the Last Wolf Page 19

  "What about to humanity in general?" I ask. "He's got Duncan's body now. He must have a plan."

  "Lumic cannot control the body of a werewolf for long. Its power will eat him away. How long has he possessed this body?"

  "A week," I say.

  "He will be in an advanced state of decay by now. Perhaps he is strong enough to hold it together a little longer, but that body will be no use to him in the long run."

  "But he -"

  "Do not focus on Lumic," the Ancient Wolf says, sounding a little tired of me. "You must put aside your foolishness and learn to see what is really happening. Thomas Lumic is a distraction."

  "What about Duncan?" I ask. "He has a new body, but he's so young. How long will it take him to grow back to how he was?"

  "These things happen in their own time," the Ancient Wolf says. "He will grow when he is ready to grow, and not a moment sooner."

  "And then he'll be his old self again?" I ask.

  "Sadly, yes," he replies, sighing. "I am quite certain of it. Duncan has caused me much displeasure over the years. He has always been rebellious, and he has rarely shown respect for his elders. But I must credit him with certain successes. He has saved the lives of many of our brothers and sisters, and for that we will be forever in his debt. If I have one wish for him now, it's that his more childish side might be tempered by a new maturity, though..." He coughs hard, as if he's ill, before continuing, "though I feel Duncan will never fully accept the path of others."

  "I can't just leave Lumic alive," I say. "He's dangerous."

  "Lumic is just the emissary of an oncoming storm," the Ancient Wolf says. "By the time the darkness arrives, Lumic will have been long forgotten. At the time of the final darkness, nobody will even remember Lumic's name."

  "What do you mean when you speak of the darkness?" I ask.

  The Ancient Wolf pauses. "Have you heard others speak of it?"

  "Duncan mentioned it," I say. "He doesn't seem to remember much, but he believes some kind of darkness is going to fall. Lumic said something similar."

  "They are both correct," the Ancient Wolf says. "Darkness is coming, and it will fall. There is nothing that can be done to stop it. Believe me, I have tried. I have consulted texts, trying to see if there is anything that can be used to prevent the darkness for sweeping across the land. There is not."

  "But what is it?" I ask. "When will it come?"

  "It is a force of ancient evil," he says, "and it has already started to arrive." He coughs again, this time bringing up a kind of bloody slime from the back of his throat. He spits it out onto the ground before continuing. "I alone have seen the darkness before. I have looked into its heart and I know its nature. This is why I understand that there is nothing that we can do to stop it. When it has passed, there will be little left to mourn."

  "So you're just going to sit here and wait for it to happen?" I ask.

  "It has already happened," he replies. "It is inevitable. Lumic might wish to encourage it to arrive faster, but I fear he is a fool who does not understand true power."

  "I have to stop him," I say. For some reason, the Ancient Wolf seems uninterested in Lumic, as if he doesn't see him as a threat. "He's got Duncan's body!" I say again, trying to get him to realize that there's a real danger here. "I came here today because I want you to tell me how to stop him, and how to help Duncan!"

  "I cannot tell you that," he replies. "Such things are of no importance, and I have no ability to focus on trivialities. As you can see, I am dying."

  "You have to help me," I say, "before it's too late."

  "It is already too late," he says, slowly raising his left arm and pulling down the sleeve of his gown. "It is already far too late."

  I step back as I see that parts of his arm seem to have been consumed by some kind of dark energy. It's as if a black hole has opened up in his body and is slowly pulling the rest of him into its dark center. I've never seen anything like it: it's hideous and terrifying, like death incarnate, but at the same time it's also strangely beautiful.

  "Darkness has already started to fall upon me," he says. "It is leaking through into my bones, absorbing me like a cancer. It has been many years since it first appeared inside me, and it grows slowly but steadily. I can feel myself becoming weaker and weaker as more of my body falls into its void. And I am not the only one. It spreads across the universe and one day it will devour us all."

  "What is it?" I ask.

  "It is nothingness," he continues. "It is the darkness that has always existed at the center of creation, since before everything began. We were fools to think we could keep it away forever. It will consume us all again, and take us back to the point before we even existed. Look closer and you'll see the dark eye of collapsed reality, growing within my bones. Sometimes, I even hear it calling to me."

  I stare at him, not sure whether it would be wise to go nearer.

  "You cannot be infected," he says. "It moves where it wants to move. You are safe for now. It will come to your body when it wishes to do so, whether or not you have been anywhere near its pull." He smiles. "Some of the others believe it to be a disease. They keep away from me, in case they catch it. They are fools."

  "You make it sound like it's alive," I say, still being as cautious as possible.

  "Perhaps it is," he replies. "For a weak little human, you are surprisingly perceptive."

  I step closer and look at his arm. Running along part of his arm, there's a perfectly black gap that seems to be slowly eating up the rest of his body. Staring into the dark center of the gap, it's clear that this is something deadly. "How long do you have left?" I ask.

  "The process is slow," the Ancient Wolf says, "but it will accelerate." He reaches up and opens the front of his robe, and I see that the same black light is consuming parts of his chest. His ribs hang over the gap, some of the bone broken away, and I can see his heart beating perilously close to the edge. "It takes what it wants," he says. "There is no defense, no way to stop it. It will return the world to a state of nothingness."

  "Things that are pulled in," I say, "what happens to them?"

  "They no longer exist," he continues. "They are obliterated completely, at a sub-atomic level."

  "We have to fight it," I say.

  "We cannot," he replies, and then he opens his mouth wide to reveal more of the black light at the back of his throat. "Do you see now?" he says after a moment. "It will do the same to you. It is in my mind, ripping holes in my thoughts and memories. It is hard enough to think already. Soon, I will fall silent as this chaos takes over completely. I am the first, but there will be many more."

  "We have to warn people," I reply.

  "There is no point," he says. "There is nothing that can be done. Everyone knows it is coming, even if they refuse to acknowledge it. Darkness will fall, and when the final light is absorbed, the balance will be restored. This is one of the most fundamental functions of the universe. Entropy cannot be held back."

  "So you're saying we're all going to be destroyed by this darkness?" I say. "All of us. Werewolves. Humans. Every living thing in the world?"

  "Every living thing in the universe," the Ancient Wolf replies. He seems so calm about it, but maybe that's got something to do with the darkness that seems to be taking over his body. "I have seen this time coming, and now it is almost here. Within the next few years, the darkness will start to become more obvious. Even the humans will notice it eventually, though they will undoubtedly deny it at first, the way they deny everything. But none of us can do anything. When darkness falls, there will be no escape."

  I take a deep breath. "I don't accept that," I say.

  "What you accept is irrelevant," he replies, and then he gasps and I watch as one of his ribs snaps loose and falls into the black hole in his chest. Within seconds, the bone is gone. "It is the end of all things," the Ancient Wolf says after a moment, catching his breath. "It is the decline and fall of reality. What comes next, none of us will ever know. Perhaps
this is the cycle of all life."

  "How long?" I ask. "When will all of this happen?"

  "It is impossible to say," he replies. "Perhaps a year. Perhaps two. Perhaps a little longer. But it will come. Darkness will fall from the sky and there will be nowhere to hide."

  "I don't plan to hide," I say. "I plan to stop it."

  "You can't," he says, his eyes flickering with pain. "It is foolish to try."

  I smile. "Clearly you've never met me," I say, secretly kind of proud of myself for sounding like a bad-ass. The truth is, I haven't got a clue what to do about this 'darkness'. I thought Thomas Lumic was bad news, but now it looks like he's just the tip of the iceberg. "I'll find a way to stop this," I say. "Maybe I won't do it in time to save you, but I'll find a way. First, I have to stop Lumic. I'll do that too. I hope you live long enough to see that I'll stop this darkness from taking over, but if you don't... Trust me. I'll do it."

  The Ancient Wolf stares at me for a moment, and I realize his eyes are starting to glaze over. Just as I'm about to ask him if he's okay, his entire face starts to crumple inwards as the darkness sucks him further and further into its void. Seconds later, there's nothing left of his head except a space of darkness.

  "You can't stop us," says a voice from within the nothingness. "You will become like us."

  I step back, stunned at the idea that this nothingness can actually speak. The way the Ancient Wolf talked about it, I thought it was some kind of primordial force, but it's clear he was wrong: the darkness has a voice, and a mind, and it seems to have seen me.

  "You will be next," the darkness says. For a moment, I think I see something in the darkness; some kind of face looks out at me, grinning. I feel my blood chill for a second before the rest of the Ancient Wolf's body collapses into its heart and the darkness fades away. Finally, I'm left standing there, alone in the room.

  I look at my arms. I feel fine, and my skin looks fine, but is it possible that this darkness is inside me now? The Ancient Wolf said it started small, that he hardly noticed it at first. Is there a chance that it's now forming in my bones, and how will I know if I'm now dying? The thought of that darkness burning through my own body is terrifying and makes me wonder if I now only have a limited period of time left before I start losing my mind. I flex my fists a few times; everything feels okay for now. But is the darkness growing somewhere inside me already? In my mind, maybe?

  Hurrying out of the room, I head back outside and find Christian waiting for me. "He's dead, isn't he?" he says immediately. His piercing blue eyes stare at me with a kind of sadness that I don't think I've ever seen before. The Ancient Wolf has been a steadying influence on the werewolves for many years, even when he took regular journeys abroad and was therefore not around. I can't imagine how the inhabitants of the Scottish Estate are going to deal with his death.

  "He just..." I pause, looking back at the doorway.

  "He told me he was waiting to deliver a message," Christian continues, "hanging on to life, fighting the darkness for as long as he could. When you arrived, I realized you must be the one for whom the message was intended. I understood that the end would be close for him."

  "What do you know about this darkness?" I ask.

  "No more than you," he replies. "I've watched it devour the Ancient Wolf, eating him up from the inside. I don't know where it came from, or what it wants, or how to stop it."

  "Did you ever hear it speak?" I ask.

  "Speak?" he says, looking confused.

  "Never mind," I say. "Where's Duncan?" At that moment, there's a terrible scream from nearby.

  "Come with me," Christian says, leading me over to a clearing in the forest. Duncan is on the floor, curled up with a look of pain on his face, as Sam tries to help him. It's as if Duncan's entire body is wracked with a level of pain that he can't control. I've seen Duncan hurt before, but I've never seen him in such agony.

  "What's wrong?" I shout as I race over to where Sam is trying, without much luck, to make Duncan more comfortable.

  "He's been like this for a few minutes," Christian says.

  "He's changing," Sam says, with a look of panic in her eyes.

  I lean down and see that she's right: Duncan already looks a few years older than he looked earlier. He's still not fully grown, but he looks like a young teenager now.

  "Darkness," I say, grabbing Duncan's arms and checking them. "Is there any sign of darkness in his body?"

  "Sign of what?" Sam asks.

  "It's not that," Christian says. "At least, not as far as we can tell. I've seen this before. This is Duncan's body regrowing itself."

  "Duncan!" I say firmly, "can you hear me?"

  He opens his eyes, stares at me for a moment, and then lets out an ear-piercing scream that makes me instinctively move back a little.

  "What's happening to him?" Sam asks.

  "This is how it happens," Christian insists. "He's aging back to the point at which his previous body was destroyed. It will take some time, and it will not be pleasant."

  "We have to help him," Sam says, reaching down to Duncan. He pushes her away. "We can't just leave him in pain like this!" she shouts at me.

  "I have to go back to London and face Lumic," I say.

  "Are you serious?" Sam asks. "We can't move Duncan now!"

  "Did I say you and Duncan were going to come?" I reply. "I'm going alone."

  "I'll come with you," Christian says.

  "No," I say, slightly surprised at the way I'm taking charge. "I need you to stay here and help with Duncan. I can deal with Lumic. After all, I'm not the one he's really interested in, am I?" I look down at Duncan and it's hard to accept the agony that's etched into his face. His body is clearly going through a series of extremely powerful changes. All we can do is hope that he'll eventually be okay.

  "You might need me," Christian says.

  "Sam needs you," I say. "Duncan needs you. I don't need you. I... I need to do this alone." As I say the words, I feel as if everything has come full circle. It wasn't so long ago that Duncan was saying the exact same thing to me. I guess Sam and Christian are probably feeling just as pissed off about it as I did when I was in their position. I can't really explain why I have to face Lumic alone, except that somehow I feel stronger at the thought of walking up to him and taking him on like this. "Look after him," I say, glancing down at Duncan one final time as I turn and walk away.

  Jess

  London again, perhaps for the final time. I arrive just after dawn, and people are going about their daily business with no idea of what's going on in my world. Sitting in a cafe at Victoria Station, I look out over the concourse and watch the commuters hurrying this way and that. Imagine if they knew that a werewolf had been killed and then reborn; imagine if they knew that a man like Thomas Lumic had returned to steal the body of another; imagine if they knew that an old werewolf had been consumed by a darkness that now threatens the whole world. Humans have for so long known nothing of these kinds of events, but maybe soon they're going to get a sudden shock; maybe when this darkness falls, humanity and werewolves - and other species too - will be united in pain and fear.

  I sit and stare into my cup of coffee. I'm delaying the journey to confront Lumic, not because I'm scared of him - although I am worried that he might be too strong for me - but because I've decided that first, I have to do something I've been putting off for a long time. You see, as I traveled back down here from the Scottish Estate, it occurred to me that there's really no guarantee I'm going to survive my encounter with Lumic. It's not like I've got a severed tail stashed away to allow me to come back to life, and from what Christian said that wouldn't work for me anyway. As a hybrid, a werewolf created from a human, there are a few werewolf tricks that I don't have. So before I go and potentially face my final moments, I have to be brave and do something I once swore I'd never do.

  Leaving the cafe, I head down the escalators and across the station until I reach the payphones. I pull out the pound coin I've been s
aving for just this occasion. Slotting it into the machine, I dial my parents' number and wait while the phone rings.

  "Hello?" my mother says, picking up after a moment.

  I open my mouth, but no words come out. I've done this so many times: calling home and just listening to their voices.

  "I suppose this is you again, Jessica," my mother says, her voice taking on a harsh, cold tone. "Well, I don't see -"

  "I'm sorry," I say suddenly. The words strike me to the core, and I find myself almost shaking with fear.

  There's silence on the other end of the line for a moment. "I beg your pardon?" my mother says eventually, and I can tell that she, too, is shocked. She never expected me to speak.

  "I said I'm sorry," I reply. "I'm really, really sorry for everything I did."

  My mother clears her throat. "You're sorry?" she says, clearly playing for time while she works out what she really thinks. "Well, it's good that you feel able to finally apologize," she continues, "but if you think that two little words are going to heal the wounds you left for this family -"

  "I don't," I say, my voice wavering a little. I'm determined to hold it together, to not cry until I've put the phone down. I glance at the display on the phone and I see that I've over got forty seconds left before my money runs out. "I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry," I say. "Is Dad there?"

  "Your father is in the bathroom," she replies. "He won't be out for a while."

  "I don't have too much time," I say as the counter gets down to twenty seconds.

  "Oh, no, of course not," my mother says. "Just a quick call, huh? Let me guess, you wanted to ease your conscience? You need to take some -" The money runs out and the line goes dead. I put the phone down and walk away, heading outside and taking a deep breathe, filling my lungs with the dirty air of Buckingham Palace Road. I immediately start coughing, and by the time I've pulled myself together again, I don't feel like I'm going to cry any more.

  "Fuck you," I mutter under my breath. My mother reacted exactly how I guessed she'd react. Maybe if my father had answered the phone, things would have been different, but my mother and my sister are probably never going to forgive me for the mistakes I made. I guess I should just accept that, and move on. Part of me would love to find some way to let them know what I'm doing, and how things have changed for me, but I know that's never going to happen. Most likely, I'll die when I face Lumic and my parents will simply never hear from me again. They'll probably assume I ended up being murdered, or they'll think I became a drug addict or something like that. It'll never occur to them that I got turned into a werewolf and then I fought a madman.