With my wrists so loose in the chains now where I had worn away the stone, I slowly began to ease by hands free of them. It was difficult, and I had to muster all of my will not to cry out in pain.

This was Jack’s last chance to show some sign – any sign – that he wanted redemption. I didn’t want to kill him, but I would to save the man gaged and bound in the chair before me, and the man I loved.

“If you…” God, it was so difficult to talk now, “…know you are like…your…mother…why don’t you let my…father go?”

Jack sprang from his chair so violently, it toppled over. He stood before me, any look of sadness for what had happened to his sisters gone.

His eyes flashed like a set of brake lights. I had never seen them so ablaze. “No!” he roared, his voice sounding deep and booming. “You will choose!”

He raced back across the room and buried his fist once again into the open wound in my father’s stomach. My father rocked backwards on the chair, his eyes bulging from their sockets like two hardboiled eggs. His tongue hung from the corner of his mouth as he screamed. I looked at Jack, his own face contorted in pain and I knew he truly was lost – lost to all the pain and hatred which he had let take him from that forest.

“I’ll choose!” I tried to say as loud as possible. The flesh around my mouth cracked and fractured, flaky lumps of stone falling into my lap.

“I’ll choose!” I tried to shout again over the agonised screams of my father.

Jack snapped his head round and looked at me. “What did you say?”

“I’ll choose,” I mumbled, slowly dropping my head.

“Who do you choose?” he demanded.

I made a mumbling noise in the back of my throat.

“Speak up!” he snapped.

I mumbled again. I heard a sickening squelch as he pulled his fist from my father’s stomach. Jack came towards me.

“Who do you choose?” he said, sounding excited now.

He leant in close. I slowly raised my head.

With our faces just inches apart, I looked into his eyes and saw the madness, pain, and sheer hate.

He was beyond redemption.

“Who do you…” he started, but that was as far as he got before he was screaming in pain.

Pulling my worn-down hands and wrists from their chains, I forced my hardened body forward in my seat, my rock-hard forehead smashing into the bridge of his nose. I felt no pain as I fell on top of him, sending him sprawling backwards onto the floor. I was like a dead weight as I pressed him flat. With my face resting against his, I could feel the wet, warm blood that gushed from his broken nose. I forced my cracked and dusty tongue over my lips. The tip of if touched his blood. I pushed my face harder against his and he roared in pain beneath me. The tip of my tongue, tasting the blood, soaked it up like a grey coloured sponge. It began to loosen inside my mouth. I wiggled the tip of it from side to side as I licked blood which gushed from his nose. It washed over my tongue, hot and salty. It hit the back of my throat and the burning sensation eased. I swallowed the blood, my stomach somersaulting greedily into life. I flicked my tongue around his nose and mouth where the blood had dribbled. My lips began to soften, as did the skin around my mouth. With the skin rapidly softening, I opened my mouth and sunk my teeth into his neck.

His blood burst into my mouth like an exploding water bomb, as Jack writhed desperately beneath me.

“You fucking bitch!” he screamed, realising how he had been tricked.

I drank from the side of his neck, and with every hot mouthful, my body began to feel lighter, softer, and more malleable. I felt the skin grow back around my wrists and hands. I buried my fingers in his hair, yanking his head to one side so I could sink my fangs further into his flesh. More and more of his blood gushed into my mouth and down my throat. I felt my whole being loosen.

Jack shrieked from beneath me. He thrashed his arms and legs about like a wild animal. The more I drank of his blood, the weaker he became. With my flesh feeling subtle again, I closed my eyes and readied myself to kill Jack Seth.

Then I heard him cry out, “Before I die, before you kill me, I need to tell you…”

I pulled my teeth from his throat. With blood running from my chin and onto his face, I screamed, “Tell me what, Jack! Tell me what became of poor little Jack and his brother? I know how this ends. It ends with me tearing your fucking throat out!”

Jack rolled his head to look at me, blood pouring from the puncture wounds I had made in the side of his neck. His face was white and so emaciated now, it looked nothing more than a skull covered in a sheet of tissue paper.

“You will only be able to make your choice if you understand what happened in those seven days my mother and father Paul went missing,” he gargled around a mouthful of his own blood. His eyes rolled back into their sockets, and his lips twitched at the corners. “Don’t ya wanna know?” he smiled, closing his eyes.

What was I doing? I wondered as I dragged Jack Seth across the room and up into the chair. He slumped forward, his chin against his bloodstained shirt, as I secured him with the chains which had held me. I didn’t want to know what had happened in that time that Jack’s mother and the Blackcoat Father Paul had disappeared. I believed it must be what had turned Jack to the point of no return. Perhaps if I understood the secret shared between Kathy Seth and Father Paul, I could save Jack yet.

Once he was secure, I raced back across the room, and freed my father. He moaned in pain. I placed my hand over the gaping wound as I lay him on the floor. His face was white and waxy-looking, and he had slipped into unconsciousness. Blood seeped between my fingers as I tried to stop the blood flow from his stomach.

I looked back across the room at Jack.

“What is this secret your mother and the Blackcoat shared?” I asked him.

Jack slowly raised his head and looked at me. The yellow in his eyes was faint. With a weak smile on his lips, he said, “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!” I demanded.

“You promise to make your choice if I tell you?” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

“Yes,” I snapped at him, glancing down at my father.

“Okay then,” he said, blood running from the two black holes in the side of his neck. “Much of the last part of my story you already know…”

Chapter Thirty-One

Jack

I fled with my ten-year-old brother. Over the next few years we begged, borrowed, or robbed to keep ourselves alive. On occasions I murdered, too. Not for any reason other than I enjoyed it. I wanted those euphoric feelings I had first felt after killing my mother. They had become like a drug, but the more I killed, the more I hated.

The more I hated, the more twisted and sick I became inside. I wasn’t only changing on the inside – I was changing outwardly, too. My skin was wrinkling and aging. I lost weight until my bones were sticking through my skin. It didn’t take long for that fourteen-year-old boy I had once been to disappear. I seemed to get taller too, until I looked as you see me now – nothing more than a skeleton covered in skin. It was like the rage and hate was poisoning me – but I just couldn’t stop killing.

I would leave Nik, who had now come to see me as a father, alone in the room we had rented, or the derelict shack we were hiding out in, and I would go and make my kills. I had grown so hideous looking; I repulsed all the women who I tried to lure away with me. It was then I developed the ability to trick woman into coming with me by staring into their eyes. I could make them see whatever they wanted to see. Mostly I made them see themselves making love to me – wanting me like they had never wanted no man before. The sense of power I had over them was exhilarating and drove me on to kill more.

Then when I thought I was truly lost, I met Eloisa Madison. I can’t say I loved her – but I did care for her. Like me, she had been born innocent, but it had been while watching local villagers set fire to her grandfather as a small girl, that the curse had taken her. Years later she took her revenge on those humans at a place they called the Wolf House and that is where she met your lying, cheating lover, Potter. Now, just like me, she was on the run from her past.

We both took comfort from that, and Eloisa became a stable influence over me. She no longer wanted to kill now that she had avenged her grandfather’s death. She wanted her curse lifted, too. So gradually, I stopped my killing.

Instead of creeping away from her side at night, I would lay tormented as I fought the demons inside of me. As I lay there, a cold sweat covering my body, I knew I would never truly beat the curse until I knew the secret my mother and father Paul had shared, and had revenge on the man who had killed my father.

Eloisa woke me one morning, her eyes burning bright. She lunged at me with her claws.

“What are you doing?” I roared, throwing her off me.

“You promised you would stop killing, Jack!” she howled.

“And I have,” I barked at her.

“Then explain this,” she yelped, throwing a newspaper at me.

I read the front page, which described the horrific killings of several women from the local town. Each of them, the story read, had been torn to pieces by what could only have been a giant wolf.

“It wasn’t me!” I promised her.

“Then who?” she snapped.

That night, as I lay in bed and fought the almost overwhelming desire to go out and kill, I heard Nik slink from his room, go downstairs, and open the door. I crept from my bed and followed him into the night. I hid in the shadows across the street from the bar where he stood and chatted with a beautiful young woman. Nik was beautiful, too. He was no longer a boy, but in his late teens.

With his blond hair and blue eyes, he looked like an angel. I watched them leave the bar together, and followed as she led Nik back to her apartment. I crept up the narrow staircase towards her room. With my heart racing, and hoping that I was wrong about my younger brother, I heard the woman scream.

The door flew inwards as I leapt against it, bounding into the room. The young woman was spread naked across the bed, the white walls now red with her blood. The wolf standing over her lifted its bloody snout from her guts and looked at me.