Worlds Apart

Chapter 6

A harsh buzzing fills the air around me. It fills my ears, making my brain vibrate against my skull. I search out the cause, wobbling with my hazy vision blurring at the edges. I throw a hand out to catch myself against a tree to stop me from tumbling to the ground.

The buzzing intensifies, whirring my mind into a pit of darkness.

My body reacts, battling against my mind as adrenaline fires me into fighting mode. With fangs and claws ready, I force my wide eyes back to the forest and search out the demon hijacking my mind.

But it's not just one demon. It's thousands.

Thousands, maybe even millions, of bugs swarm me. They crowd my face faster than I can swat them away, banging against my skin.

I find my feet and run through the cloud, searching for a way out, but it only gets thicker, turning my real life black.

There's no fighting this.

Not alone.

Not without Elizabeth and George beside me.

But my fight never leaves me. I attack what I can, running as fast as I can to escape.

And eventually, the darkness starts to fade, but the buzzing changes. Deepens. A vibration runs through the earth below me, through the air around me.

I stare up as the bugs merge, creating one single bug bigger than my flat.

Ridiculously, my soaring adrenaline makes me believe I can fight a single entity, and I leap, landing on the front of the large black fly floating through the trees. I sink my teeth into the closest bit of flesh, but they barely break the surface of the thick skin.

None of my attacks seem to be doing anything, so I jump from the demon and try the next thing on the list of things I've seen Elizabeth and George do to destroy these things.

Finding something I can cling onto, I wrap my hand around a spindly wing and swing the giant bug into a tree. It disperses back into the millions of tiny bugs, but there, right in the centre of the cloud, is the core. A single, head-sized fly with multiple eyes watching my every move.

Before it can protect itself again, I reach out and pull the demon towards me as I sink my fangs into the softer flesh and tear. It falls apart in my hands and shrinks to nothing, leaving me panting.

The bloody cough comes, but I don't have time for that when, right on cue, the black nosed wolf barrels through the trees stopping directly in front of me. Holding my breath, I stare eye to eye with the creature that's trying to kill me. The creature that finally has me alone. With a swish of its tail, I catch the white streak.

I'm frustrated. I'm hungry. George and Elizabeth never returned, and I've been reduced to starving myself until I can't take it anymore. Until I no longer care for the well-being of the animals I hurt.

My only saving grace is Hamish.

True to his word, he's found me every time I leave the flat. He follows me around the high street as I shop, using Gwendolyn's credit card. He comes to my flat, where we hang out. And we just talk. We talk all night, learning and laughing. He looks at me with a gentle touch in his serene blue eyes as if he knows everything I'm not telling him.

But unlike George and Elizabeth, Hamish has made me feel normal. Human. And I know that’s what I crave more than anything.

So what I need to do now is feed before he finds me again, not get eaten by a werewolf.

Still full of adrenaline and stamina and hunger, before I even let the wolf make the first attack, I leap.

It dodges my advance and releases a low, warning growl as I turn.