Mother of Wolves: A dark suspenseful paranormal shifter origin novella (The Dark Creatures Saga) Read online

  Mother of Wolves

  A Dark Creatures Tale

  Ella Stone

  The Dark Creatures Series

  Coming Soon

  Prequel Novellas

  Son of a Vampire

  Man and Wolf

  Call of the Grimoire

  Main Series (Out Aug 2021)

  Dark Creatures

  Dark Destiny

  Dark Deception

  Dark Redemption

  Dark Reckoning

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  Copyright © 2020 by Ella Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First published 2021

  By

  Darkerside Publishing

  Edited by Carol Worwood

  Cover design by Miblart

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Dear reader

  Dark Creatures

  About the Author

  Even now. Even after all these years, I refuse to believe I’m the only one left.

  1

  Bavaria, 1756

  EVE

  “Let go of me! Get your hands off me now! Where are you taking me? What do you want?”

  This wasn’t the first time I had screamed at them in protest and, once again, my questions were met with silence. Whoever it was that had taken me, they didn’t say a word. They hadn’t the whole journey here. Not when they stole me from my house and shoved me into the back of a covered wagon at the dead of night. Not when I shrieked, as it bumped across stones and gravel, sending me flying back and forth. And not now, after a full day of travelling. I had spent the journey slipping in and out of consciousness, trying to think of a reason for my abduction.

  The horses had jerked to a halt, sending me tumbling forwards. It wasn’t the first time they had stopped since they’d taken me and I was expecting us to carry straight on. But, as I steadied myself for the next lurch, the cover was flung off.

  “Why am I here? What do you want?” I edged back, but a hand reached in and dragged me along the stinking floorboards. Boards soaked with my own urine.

  “Why are you doing this?” I screamed, as splinters pierced my skin. I tried fighting, with everything I had left, but I was nothing to them. A rag doll. Less—a rag. The way they yanked my body out and flung me down, I could have been an empty sack. Pain shot through my knees, but I didn’t have time to care. I had barely landed on the ground, when I was hauled back up and a rope was twisted around my wrists. ‘Where are we?’ I sobbed, finally taking in the blackness that surrounded me.

  My eyes straining in the darkness, I tried to work out where I could be. Silhouettes of trees rose from the ground, narrow, pointed and higher than any that grew near my home. The scent of pine was strong. But there was no hint of sea air. No gulls cawing. I was a long way from anywhere I knew, that much was obvious, but where? Where could a day’s travelling take me? How many miles? For all I knew, we weren’t even in the same country any more. The horses had gone at pace; I had the bruises to prove that. I steeled myself against the waves of fear roiling through me.

  “This way.”

  Those were the first words spoken to me, as I was pushed forwards into the night. That was when I saw it, looming between the trees. There was no light coming from inside. No warmth. A castle of the dead, was my immediate thought, although why those particular words came to mind I can’t say. It turned out to be true, though. In so many ways.

  A dungeon. Of course they led me to a dungeon. That I was prepared for. What I wasn’t expecting was the size of it. Or what else was awaiting me there. Stepping into the dimly lit space, the air rushed from my lungs. The smell of damp walls and unwashed humanity was ripe in the air. Eyes stared up at me, pleading. Tens of people cowering in the shadows, each locked in their own personal cage. In the centre of the room was a long, wooden table. A butcher’s block, came to mind. Somewhere to carve up meat and bones. And, beneath it, bolted deep into the ground, large metal hoops. My blood ran cold. Whatever this place was, it was not somewhere I wanted to be.

  “Eat,” I was told, as I was pushed into one of the empty cages and the door was slammed shut and padlocked behind me.

  Sure enough, there was a large plate of food waiting for me on the stone floor. What it lacked in appearance, it certainly made up for in quantity. I shoved the first handful into my mouth. Cold and greasy, the fat on the meat had congealed, and the bread had hardened, but it was food. And I needed it, more than I had realised. Only as I used the back of my hand to wipe the dripping juices off my face, did I realise that dozens of pairs of eyes were still staring at me.

  “Don’t eat all of it,” a woman said. She was crouching in the cage next to mine, her face pressed up against the bars. ‘Leave some out for the rats.’

  “Is there something in it?” A sudden wave of nausea struck me. I gagged. “Poison? Have they poisoned me?”

  She shook her head. “No. They want us healthy. They only choose healthy ones.”

  “For what?”

  My question was met with silence. Given that I’d come from a house with five younger siblings, this was something I used to long for. But not now. The silence that night caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand upright and a cold shiver to run down my spine.

  Gorging on food, after more than a day with nothing, left me very suddenly bloated and uncomfortable. I left the rest of the meal on the floor, hoping the vermin would find it more appetising than I had. I stood up trying to take in as much as I could about my surroundings. At best guess, there must have been fifty people down there, male and female of all ages. Where they had come from was anyone’s guess. There were no children though. That was one blessing, at least.

  “What do they want with us?” I asked. I directed this mainly to the woman, although my eyes wandered around the room, indicating I would be happy for anyone to answer. “Where are we and who are these people?”

  Having received no answers on my journey here, I wasn’t expecting anything now, but one of the men, from a cage on the other side of the table, spoke.

  “To start with, they aren’t people,” he replied.

  “They aren’t people? Then what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  While I didn’t know what I would be facing that first night, I could see that the monsters who had taken me had the rest of the prisoners terrified. Just this exchange had caused several of the men to start whimpering and one of the women was sobbing.

  “And you don’t know what they want?”

  “We don’t. But whatever it is, it’s not working yet.”

  ‘How do you know?”

  “You’ll see,” he said again.

  And I did. The very next day.

  The cicadas had just begun their evening chorus, when the door to the dungeon banged opened and three figures appeared. The whimpering immediately started up again, along with various bouts of coughing and wheezing, none of which ha
d been evident until that moment. I remained half hidden in the shadow of my cage for, as much as I didn’t want to be seen—singled out for whatever came next—curiosity dictated that I at least looked. This is yet another regret on my list of many. For, from that moment onwards, my whole world was turned upside down. After all that I have seen, all that I have been through, it is that first time, that first show that still haunts my dreams, that causes me to wake in the night, howling in terror.

  It’s impossible to say how I knew that two of those men weren’t human. They walked like men, spoke like men. But their bodies, their auras—if that is even the right term for it—were unlike anything I had ever encountered. Their very presence seemed to suck every bit of warmth, every bit of goodness or humanity from the very air around them. Their movements were silent and graceful, yet strong and proud at the same time. Dark angels came to mind, and I was not completely wrong.

  The third man was different. Despite the pallor of his skin, there was just the hint of colour to his cheeks and a thick, scraggly beard reached down his neck. A human. Another captive, perhaps. He was certainly not treated with any respect.

  “Set yourself up,” he was ordered. We shall fetch you the test subjects. You’d better hope one of these works. You are running out of chances.”

  Test subjects. The expression sounded wrong in this context, but I knew immediately what he meant—humans. Us.

  The man placed a large case on the table and opened it. From inside, he withdrew a smaller box which, once again, he opened. Something glinted. Metal. Brass perhaps although, while the material was familiar, the item itself was unlike anything I’d seen before. He then took thick chains from a drawer in the table and secured them to the metal hoops on the ground. Restraints. That much was obvious.

  While he made his preparations, the creatures—or vampires as I would later learn they were—walked across to us. One headed straight for me.

  My pulse raced, as I clung to the bars at the back of my cage. I didn’t care who they were, they would have to drag me out if they wanted me. I promised myself I wasn’t going to go without a struggle. This wouldn’t be the way I died. Not here. Not without the light of the sun on my face. As he approached, the creature locked eyes with me and sneered.

  “Don’t worry. You’re safe for today. We like to give people the chance to settle in first.” Bypassing me, he headed to the cage next door, to the girl who had told me not to eat everything the night before.

  Her screams were enough to shake the very foundations of the castle.

  “Please, no! Please! I’m sick! Please! I don’t want to die like this. Please, no!”

  She continued to writhe and squirm, as manacles were clamped around her feet and wrists. As little as it matters now, I was impressed by the resistance that she showed that night, fighting to her last breath against the hands that held her. But it was not a vampire who killed her. Or, at least, not directly.

  A man from another cage was chained in place next to her. The other captives had seen this all before and knew what was coming. As they turned away, weeping and praying, I continued to watch. For me, this was the first time and some part of me needed to know what happened next. I needed to see for myself.

  From out of his case, the human retrieved a long piece of tubing—sheep’s gut.

  “I need this to go all the way into your stomach,” he said, grabbing the girl by the jaw and wrenching it open. He shoved the end of the tube into her mouth. “It will be much easier for you if you do not struggle.”

  Despite his words, she continued to fight and kick, so much so that one of the vampires clamped its hands onto her shoulders and held her still.

  “We can do this the easy way or I can have some fun,” he said.

  “Just a moment longer,” the physician—as it seems he was known—commented. The tubing disappeared down her throat. She gagged and squirmed, but there was no stopping him. No one could resist when a vampire had hold of you. “Nearly there. Nearly there.”

  When the sheep’s gut had all but disappeared, he attached a metal syringe and pushed the plunger down. White foam frothed from her mouth. Gargling, choking sounds, that caused my own stomach to heave, came from her throat. With the plunger all the way home, he pulled the tubing back out and dumped it on the table beside him. A second later and the girl fell limp into the vampire’s arms. He dropped her to the ground, without a second glance.

  The man was spared. Apparently, human lives were slightly more valuable than the way we were treated would suggest. The physician was dragged from the dungeon. The girl lay, lifeless, on the ground.

  “What was her name?” I asked the man who had spoken to me the night before. He was one of the few who continued to look at the body, rather than cover his eyes and whimper. “Had she been here long?”

  “Her name was Joanna. She arrived here a little after me. Ten days ago, perhaps.”

  Silence followed. Ten days. Was that how long I had left? Ten days before I would find myself discarded on the floor, nothing more than carrion?

  “My name is Eve,” I said because, at that moment, having someone know who I was mattered more to me than it had ever done before. “Where are we?”

  “Welcome Eve. I’m Victor. And this place, I suspect, is where we are both going to die.”

  After that, everything became quiet. People arranged their meagre blankets in whatever manner allowed them a small amount of comfort. I hoped that none of them had come from a position of wealth, or I’m not sure how they would cope with the cold for long.

  I was still wearing the same thick, woollen dress I’d had on when they had taken me from my bed. The same one I had been forced to soil during my time in the wagon, although the stink of the dungeon was so rancid, I was almost immune to my own pungent smell now. My thoughts drifted back to my home, where my brothers and sisters would be wondering what had happened to me. Perhaps they’d think I’d had enough of scrimping and scavenging, having my life dictated by the need to fill their mouths, since our father had passed away. How many times had I said it? I wondered. That I was going to leave. That I’d had enough of all their fighting and bickering. The thought caused a twist of sadness in my stomach. The threats I’d made, about leaving them on their own, were always empty. Now I wondered if they knew that.

  I had despised the poverty in which we had lived. I had hated the way we would gulp down our food. The way, when winter came, we would be forced to don all our clothes, just so we didn’t freeze in our sleep. Now, I was grateful for this harsh training. Not that I slept that night.

  No matter what, I couldn’t take my eyes off the girl, Joanna. There was still some colour in her cheeks. She could have been sleeping, were it not for the green-grey tinge to her lips. Was that caused by the serum she had been forced to swallow? I wondered. Or did all dead people go that colour?

  I was pondering how cold her flesh would be to the touch, when the dungeon door opened again. Unlike when the vampires had arrived earlier, it was not done forcefully. Instead, it opened slowly, smoothly, as if not to disturb those who were sleeping.

  The vampire that stepped inside had once been a man. He was taller than the others I had seen so far although, from the way his shoulders hunched forwards, it was as if he was trying to hide the fact. He was simply dressed, in a garment that would have fitted in well among the farmers in our village. As he moved towards Joanna’s body, my heart pounded in my chest.

  “What are you going to do with her?” I demanded.

  His head whipped around to face me, almost before the words had left my mouth. The way his forehead wrinkled, he looked almost frightened. No, not frightened—confused, that was it, confused that I had spoken. In an instant the look was gone, replaced by a narrow-eyed glare.

  “What’s it to you?” he asked. “You didn’t even know her.”

  “I don’t have to have known someone to have compassion for them. She was a human being. As were you, once, I assume.”

  Maybe I
felt a false sense of security in my metal prison. Maybe it was the shock of seeing someone die in front of my very eyes. I don’t know. I have no idea where I got the courage to speak the way I did that night. And, for a heartbeat, I thought my stupidity would be the end of me. In less than a second, he was across the room, hands wrapped tightly around the bars between us.

  Had I any sense, I would have backed away, pushed myself into the farthest corner of the cage, but I couldn’t move. With my heart pounding so hard that my pulse was hammering in my ears, I was rooted to the spot. The air in my lungs froze, as his eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t even swallow. This was it. Then, just as I thought he was going to rip the padlock from the door, he dropped its hands.

  “You have no idea what I was,” he said. A moment later, he had the body of Joanna in his arms. Then they were both gone.

  2

  RHETT

  We were not supposed to talk to the prisoners in the dungeon. None of us were. Food was different, we could play with that as much as we wanted. But the ones in the cages were not there to be eaten. Not that the other vampires stuck to the no-speaking rule, of course. I saw them taunting new arrivals from the wagons, trying to get a rise out of them with every meal they served. Those people down below may have been more important to the Duchess than food, but the others didn’t care. Humans were there for one reason only; our amusement. I tried to stick to the rule of not conversing, not because I believed in it, I just had too many other things going on in my head.