Chapter One
Gwen Cooper was having a
really bad morning. It began with the flashing red blip on her computer screen.
It was also flashing on Jack’s in his office. Jack, as she knew it, was still
somewhere off planet, and as much as she hoped he was safe, right now, she
really wished he was here. With her. In this office.
Red blips as they were used to regarding
them as, and often raised excitement in Toshiko’s eyes, were not something that
Gwen regarded with joy. Red blips signified trouble. It had been weeks since
Mitchell and Clark had returned from wherever they’d been. Neither of them had
talked about the incidents onboard the battlecruiser. Least of all Goodson.
Gwen glanced towards his vacant desk and sighed heavily. She’d need to call in.
See how he was. Pick up any groceries. Give a reassuring smile. No longer
military. No longer sure of his role within Torchwood. No longer capable of
believing the words from anyone who knew him, Clark Goodson had locked himself
away in his flat, and cut communications with everyone. Everyone that is except
Gwen Cooper. Somehow, her face seemed to bring a radiance of light into his
life. It just wasn’t enough to convince him, that he belonged anywhere in the
world. He’d been used. Manipulated. He was tired of it all.
Marley was busy at her desk, analysing the
same Rift patterns since the return of the two boys. It was, if anything, a
distraction. It took her mind off the questions that were building and the
stabbing pains behind her eyes. Every now and then Gwen sensed that Marley
would eventually ask that one question she wouldn’t be able to answer.
The phone rang. It was Andy.
‘I thought you might be interested in a
case. I could do with a bit of help, to be honest.’
It hadn’t taken much encouragement to get her
out of the building. Several mauled bodies lay across an open space of flooring
in ‘Long Stop Over’ fast food restaurant in Splott. A cleaner had discovered
them at the start of her shift. She sat in the back of the ambulance, wrapped
in a blanket, face drawn and pale.
‘I called you, because…well, look at them.’
Andy pointed. ‘Those aren’t human teeth marks on that body, or that one, and
those…’
Gwen noticed how much paler Andy was, and
she couldn’t blame him. The smell of blood and body juices was sour on the nose
and at the back of her throat.
‘Can you not open a window?’ She glanced
about the room at the large bay windows, the décor sprayed with blood from
floor to tiled ceiling. A mural of modern art that would be snapped up in a
gallery. All windows displayed no openings.
Gwen studied the bodies. All of them wore
the logo of the company. ‘How did the attacker get in?’
‘The back door was wide open. Traces of
blood led out that way. We’ve got foot prints. A lot of them. Which is why I called
you.’ Andy led her through to the kitchen area. A set of red paw prints
decorated the once washed floor. They led outside into the back yard where
overturned bins scattered torn open black bin bags, that lay on the concrete ground.
‘I’ve put a call out for escaped lions and
big cats in general and wolves but…not heard back as of yet.’
At the mention of wolves, Gwen looked up.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and called Marley.
‘I need you to focus your attention on that
blip reading. Need to know where it is. Call me when you find it.’
Gwen pocketed her phone.
‘Andy, I need to ask a favour.’
Mitchell Harkness balanced
nimbly on the overhanging branch of the oak tree, twenty feet off the ground.
Below him, unaware of his presence stood a muntjac deer. Its short stubby horns
close to its head, not yet fully grown, it’s tight coarse hair bristling in the
breeze, it ate quietly, one ear twitching, picking up the sounds around it. Now
and then it lifted its head as it ate. It sensed that it wasn’t alone. For the
past few weeks, many of its eating places had been overshadowed by human
voices. It had grown used to them. But there was something else drifting on the
wind. A new scent. Suddenly without warning, it bolted for the woods.
Mitchell sighed and lowered his head. He sat
down on the branch, legs swinging below and tilted his head at an angle towards
the long meadow grass swaying in the gentle breeze.
‘I almost had it.’ He yelled towards the
long grass.
‘You were dawdling.’ A voice yelled back. An
old voice. As old as the meadow.
‘I needed to get the angle right. She would
have speared me with her horns.’
‘You hesitated. She sensed that.’ An old
man, with white hair and a grey muzzle straightened up,hands on hips, looked
towards the young man in the tree. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re not
wanting to attack her.’
‘She’s done nothing to hurt me. Why would I
want to hurt her?’
‘It’s the way of the warrior. You don’t know
when you might need to learn survival skills.’
‘I’ve got by up till now on my
instincts.’ Mitchell jumped down from
the branch and dusted the lichen from his pants.
‘You can’t always guarantee that there will
be fast food restaurants on every street corner. If you’re out in the wilds,
you can’t rely on modern establishments to feed you. You have to be able to
fend for yourself.’
‘I’m not hungry enough to eat deer.’
‘You weren’t hungry for rabbit either.’ The
old man narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you hungry for?’
‘Chips.’ Mitchell looked to his old carer
hopefully. ‘Come on, Greer. I’ve been out here for a week now, and none of this
makes any sense. I’m not like Wolf. I’m not like my father. I’m not who you
think I am. This is not going to save my life.’
Greer’s eyes narrowed. He cuffed the boy
across the head, taking Mitchell by surprise. His voice commanded authority and
he growled angrily at the boy.
‘You have no idea how much danger you will
be in without my training. Do you think Jack Harkness will protect you when
Caleb demands you back in the fold? No. Jack Harkness is a coward. He will
always run at the sign of trouble. He has no courage in him unlike your father.
A proud and honourable man. You will do well to remember that. Now get up and
give me two laps around this field. Move.’ Greer roared.
Mitchell fell onto his bed
that evening, exhausted. He had little energy to shower, or to eat. He heard
his phone buzzing like an erratic bumble bee trapped in a box and reached for
it on the bedside cabinet. There were several missed calls. All from Marley.
He switched on the shower and pulled up the
blind in the bathroom, opening the window a touch. He locked the door for
privacy and called Marley, waiting on her answer. It was good hearing her
voice. He smiled. She didn’t have to do anything, but she lit a candle in his
heart, and he would do anything for her.
‘Hey, where were you, I’ve been calling for
ages?’ Her broad accent a welcome break from the grating old man voice of
Greer.
‘I’m safe.’ He replied. A familiar tone of
‘don’t ask’ wearing thin around the edges.
‘Is it raining?’
‘What do you want, Marley?’ He sighed.
‘We’ve detected a low level signal of
activity in a Scottish settlement, that we’re going to need to check out.
Scotland, Mitch. If we wrap this up quick enough, I could take the train and
meet mum and dad.’ She sounded happy. For once in her life so far, she felt a
glimmer of hope and Mitchell was going to destroy it in one word.
‘No!’ His voice boomed around the small
bathroom.
‘Are you alright up there, son?’ Old Greer
called from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Yeah, dropped the soap. Sorry.’
Even now he could picture Marley grinning.
He’d given up his location.
‘You can’t go to see them, what if she’s
there.’
‘Then I’ll go when she’s not. Mitch, I don’t
have to physically touch them to see them. I just…’ he heard her voice break.
He pictured tears welling, and emotions of a family she knew she’d never ever
see again, and an alternate family there in Glasgow, and she so badly wanted
her Mum to wrap her arms around her and tell her everything was going to be OK.
‘I’ll call you back in a few minutes. I need
to get dressed.’
It was more than a few
minutes by the time Mitchell had showered and dressed and in his room pulling
on a pair of sneakers. He felt invigorated after the shower. He called her
again.
‘Where are you?’ He asked.
‘Pulling up outside your safe house.’ She
replied.
Mitchell’s blood ran cold.
‘What? No. Stay in the car. Do not get out.’
Grabbing a few essentials, he opened his window and escaped into the night.
Marley sat in the car for a few minutes
before switching off the engine.
‘Yeah right. Like that’s going to happen.’
Marley stood outside the
quiet, unassuming cottage just on the outskirts of the derelict military
training ground that had been closed since the early 90s for a new housing
scheme, which never happened because of funding issues. It was now a haven for
flora and fauna. The house needed a fresh lick of paint, its garden tidying up
but it was a safe house, and Torchwood, she knew wouldn’t want to draw
attention to a decorated dwelling sticking out like a sore thumb against a wilderness
backdrop.
The front of the house was in complete
darkness. She caught brief flickers of torchlight at the back of the house.
Instinct had taught her to be on her guard at all times. Torchwood had taught
her to keep her wits about her. Never leave doubt room to move. She removed her
gun from her shoulder holster and removed the safety. The light of the moon
shone brightly against the house and grounds, allowing her safe passage around
the building. She crept stealthily towards the back door, hidden from view by
the hawthorn hedge that wrapped its way around half the garden, a metal fence
the rest of the way.
The back door sat open and a foul acrid
stench drifted out into the night air. It caught at the back of her throat. She
took a step back, contemplating her next move. It should have been to call
Gwen. She didn’t.
The torchlight in the back room went off.
Gwen sat sipping a cup of
coffee in an all night café. The table was covered in photographs and details
of each lay beside them. Andy sat opposite, an empty plate and a fresh coffee
beside him. The photographs of mutilated bodies with their throats ripped out
and gored flesh made him wish he’d not asked for a bacon sandwich with ketchup
– but it had been a long shift, and he doubted very much that he’d be leaving
any time soon. Lunch seemed such a long time ago.
‘So, what do you think it is, Gwen? Are we
looking at animal or alien?’
‘I don’t know, Andy.’ She splayed her hand
out to match the score marks on a particular photo. It did look like it could
be an animal but it seemed too random, too frenzied.
‘Only we’ve run a check on escaped circus
animals and zoos nearby and nobody has come back to us about a missing lion or
bear. Not that we get many lions or bears released into the wild…unless you
class the black cat on Bodmin moor.’
‘That’s just a hoax Andy, to drum up
business.’
‘So, it could be alien then? Or…’ he studied
her hand against the photo. ‘Werewolves?’
‘Don’t be daft Andy and keep your voice
down.’ She frowned. ‘It could be Weevils. They attack at random. Although,
there’s not been any sightings of them in years. We thought after the Rift
closed up that they disappeared with it. If it is them though, we need to know
what’s brought them to the surface again.’ She gathered the papers and slipped
them back into their folders.
‘I’ll need copies of these, Andy.’ She
pushed the files towards him. He pushed them back.
‘They’re yours. I took copies for myself.
Nobody is sure what made these, and to be honest, we could do with some outside
help.’
She smiled gratefully and laughed. ‘You’re
one of the team, Andy. Thank you.’
He smiled. Finally,
Torchwood were letting him in.
‘No.’ Gwen stopped his daydreams dead.
‘Oh, but…’
‘If this is Weevils, you need special
training to handle them, and I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt. You
understand. It’s not something you’d be able to write up in a report and be
believed by your team. We see this every day, Andy, and we have the tools to
deal.’
‘So, I’m just your tea and bacon butty man,
with files of unsolved murders?’
‘Yeah, something like that.’ She laughed.
‘Right then. That’s me told. I’ll be off.’
He grated his seat back and pushed it back under the table. ‘Find who is doing
this, Gwen, if I can’t be there. Be careful.’
Gwen watched him go as she drained her mug
of coffee. She said good night to the café owner and went to her car, parked
outside. There was an angry sky above her. A storm was coming. By about now on
any other night, Jack would send her a text. Something was coming. They’d be in
the Hub, with Jubilee pizzas and the team would work together to find the
culprits and end their games. Now. Now it was just Gwen, a silly girl from an
alternate universe, a young Welshman who was suffering a mental breakdown, and
a wolf boy who could be Jack’s son, and Jack, wherever the hell he was now.
Gwen climbed into her car as her phone
buzzed in her pocket. It was Rhys. They were out of milk.
Mitchell, back pack on,
ran hell for leather through the heavily wooded forest. Low branches reached
down to him as he leapt over exposed roots and shallow ditches. His heart
pounded against his chest. His legs screamed to ease up. Still he ran on. He
had no need of a torch. He knew the lay of the land, he’d ran it often enough.
Marley was already too far
from her parked car to make a run for it. She’d weighed up her chances of
survival. She contemplated calling Gwen but the voice on the end of the phone
would belittle her to the point that Marley would hang up and go it alone. She
was merely cutting out the middle man, or woman.
‘Come on Marley, toughen up old girl. You’re
Torchwood. Geoff would go in.’ Except in like Flynn Geoff was already dead.
Dead from Elvis the tufty haired crocodile. He’d let his guard down. He’d put
them both in danger. She was not like Geoff. She was Marley Hanratty and she
was Torchwood. Fumbling nervously for her Maglite torch, she switched it on and
entered the darkened building, her heart in her throat.
The porch entrance gave
way to a short hallway with rooms on either side. Dust spores floated in the
light of the torch as she edged her way inside, gun ahead of her, light fixed
to the gun for added measure. Bloody finger streaks smeared the walls ahead of
her. It told a story of desperate futile hopes of escape. Bloodied hand prints,
clinging to door frames in a bid to evade full capture. Splayed blood patterns
from wall to ceiling, pooling on the ground where a body lay mauled. The body
itself indistinguishable. She couldn’t identify male from female.
Quick movements of the torch around each
room showed nothing but a bloodied mess and foul odour but the strongest was
coming from the main living quarters. Her heart pounded in her chest. Her eyes
nipped from the stinging aroma of death. The stench of blood and body juices
clung to the back of her throat. She was going to throw up. She swallowed,
pushing back the bile and her sausage roll from earlier and the quarter of a
pound of Midget Gems she’d worked through in the car. She had to see this
through. She had to find Mitchell safe.
She made her way to the small kitchen and
stifled a scream. Lying in the doorway, wearing a military great coat, was a
heavily mauled body of a man. His face was disfigured but he was the size and
shape of Captain Jack Harkness. Tears pricked her eyes. She knelt beside the
body lying prone on the ground and felt for a pulse. There was none.
A trickle of memory caught her by surprise.
She knew these markings. She’d seen them before. Back in her old life. Geoff,
Geordie, that girl with the Swedish name she couldn’t pronounce and called her
Dahlia for short. They had found a mansion of grizzly murders. Unfathomable to
the local police squad. Torchwood had an inkling of its merit. Torchwood knew
most of the murders and murderers. This one. This one had stumped even them.
‘It’s not weevils.’ Geoff had said.
Knowledgeable beyond measure. Geoff had even proved that fact.
‘How many fingers do weevils have?’
It couldn’t be the same. An alternate
universe would have the flip side of this reality. If it wasn’t Weevils in the
last, perhaps it was in this, but Geoff was correct about the fingers. She
shone her torch at the score marks on the walls.
‘It’s not Weevil.’ She croaked.
She made her way cautiously towards the
living quarters, shining her torch this way and that, detecting blood splatters
on walls and dripping from ceiling. She was nearing the lair. She could taste
it in her mouth. It was warmer in the centre of the building. Her foot
connected with another body. She froze. This one groaned. Shining her torch at
the body at her feet she was horrified to discover an old man, blood spatters
on his clothing, but he was sleeping, blinking only from the glare of light in
his eyes. She felt warm breath against her neck and froze. Someone else was in
the room with her. Someone a little taller. His acrid breath as sour as the
bodies on the ground.
‘Who do we have here then, walking so freely
into our den?’ It growled in a deep gruff voice, full of menace.
‘Den?’ Marley was wracked with a painful
understanding of just what she’d walked into. She felt a warmth down the inside
of her right leg hurried to her shoes.
‘You’re trespassing on private property. I
need you to leave.’ Marley spoke, struggling to maintain an air of authority.
She was trembling.
‘The door was open. It seemed a fair invite.
And you’re a long way from home, doll.’ He chuckled darkly as he circled her.
The body at her feet continued to snore.
‘You’re Scottish?’
‘Aye, is that a crime?’
‘No. Why so far South?’
‘A change of scenery. I was looking for someone.’
‘Looks like you found them.’ Marley
swallowed back her sick for a second time.
‘Trespassers. Homeless. Those looking for a
bed and breakfast. They got their bed, and I got breakfast. Dinner. And
supper.’ He growled, his whiskery cheek brushed against hers.
‘Who are you?’
‘Death.’
She gasped as his cold wet nose touched her
ear. She yelled out in fright, loosening off a round from her pistol that went
wide and clipped a chunk of plasterboard along the corridor. Marley herself
lost her footing and fell, dropping the torch in the process. Her gun clattered
to the floor as hard as her hand and she yelled in pain.
As if by magic, all the lights in the house
flicked on at the same time, illuminating the entire living quarters, showing
Marley the devastation at her feet. A radio played in the kitchen, a tinny
noise barely blanketing any emotion that would swallow up the bloodbath in the
lounge.
Marley stared in horror at the wolf man
before her, blinking at the strong blinding light that had hit him so hard,
unable to fully adjust. He was part male and part wolf. His long clawed fingers
had identified him as the killer of all those people she had seen in the
folders back home, and were currently in a folder on Gwen Cooper’s kitchen
table, where Gwen herself pored over them, trying to match them against Weevil
attacks. Laptop on and photographs random creatures that could prove beyond a
shadow of a doubt that a weevil could not have done it.
Marley had found the killer. The killer had
found Marley. Marley would not live to tell the tale. She felt as helpless as
the victims that lay at her feet. She would never be found. Never be
identified. Would never feel the love of another against her. Would never get
to see her Mum and Dad, or the new Mum and Dad she wanted to meet. All of this
had been for nothing. She was going to die in an empty safe house, where one of
these bodies could be Mitchell.
Tears fell, like the rain hammering the
windows. She was done for.
The older of the two wolf
men got slowly to his feet. He saw the terrified young woman on the ground and
the young male, claws trained ready to rip her throat out.
‘Time to die, hen.’ He leered.
‘No! Stop! No more!’ The old man yelled.
‘There’s been enough death.’
‘She’s seen us. She risks our identity.’
‘You’ve risked our identity since we came here.
You’re the one they’re all looking for. Low profile Caleb ordered. You could
destroy us all.’
‘If I kill her, nobody needs to worry. We
kill all those who come here.’
‘No more.’
Marley saw the younger man’s shoulders sag.
He turned to the older wolfman and nodded. ‘Alright, have it your way, Kayiler’
The old man smiled.
‘Good, now just…’ Before he could utter
another word, he was overpowered by the younger wolfman and lay unconscious on
the ground, a large gaping wound in his left flank.
In the
kafuffle Marley reached for her gun, as the young wolfman straightened up, she
fired a shot into his right flank, and three in his chest. He was taken
completely by surprise. Staggering back, he was momentarily winded. It did
little good.
‘Shit….Shit.; Marley cried.
High above, crouched on
the balustrade, Mitchell watched the scene unfold below him. He’d only read
about the wolf men in Greer’s history books, hand written and handed down
through generations, Greer’s books were a masterpiece – and every word was
true.
Caleb had sent scouts to find Mitchell and
bring him back into the fold, and Greer, just like Wolf, had been his
guardians, to protect him from that, to train him, and ready him for the moment
when everything changed, and he had to be ready.
Kayiler and Swiftbone had been sent as
scouts to bring back the young ‘prince’ to be the new heir of the tribe.
Swiftbone was the second in command and by rights, the new heir. He knew the
tribe as well as all the rest of the pack but he showed little grace or
sincerity that would ensure their safety, and he was impatient, and that would
cost him dearly.
Kayiler, according to the
stories by Greer, was the old tribal member, there to shepherd the younger
wolf, to teach him of the old ways. He had obviously failed, and when they
returned to the settlement, Caleb would punish him.
Marley meant the world to him, but at this
moment in time, she was the spanner in the works, and ideally, if she was dead,
their identity would go unnoticed. They would disappear as quickly as they
came. But this was Marley. This was a death he couldn’t have on his conscience.
Swiftbone had to be stopped.
He watched as the wolf man came into view
and threw himself off the balustrade, landing on the back of the young man,
bringing him to his knees. He tossed a small hand held black box towards
Marley.
‘Open the box Marley. You can kill him with
these. Do it!’ Mitchell yelled before raining down punches that knocked the
wind out of the wolf man’s sails. It wasn’t long before Swiftbone regained his
composure and fought back, snapping and snarling and throwing clawed fists
towards the young male assailant.
The shock of the weight on
his back knocked the wind from his sails and his anger into overdrive.
Kayiler opened his eyes. He felt groggy from
the assault, and a pain lingered against his thigh. He saw the girl, horrified
and overwhelmed by all she saw, and the black box with a silver bullet lying
beside it. His eyes widened.
Swiftbone and Mitchell crashed over
furnishings and fixtures and fittings. Mitchell ducked and dodged every blow
but landed several against the riled wolf man.
Marley trembled as she removed the magazine
from its housing. She was going into shock. Her teeth chattered and tears
streaked her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed the old man move from his position.
Hadn’t seen him until it was too late, and his ‘human’ hands closed over hers
and the gun in her possession. Their eyes met and for a faint moment, she saw a
hope in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. He took the gun from her, fed the
bullets into the magazine and clicked it back into its housing.
As Swiftbone focused on the boy now pinned
against the ground, his right hand claws outstretched, he stopped. Before him
lay the prince and he laughed. He called over to the older man.
‘Hey, we’ve found him.’ He got to his feet,
stepping away from the boy and turned to face Kayiler. To his horror he found
him standing beside the girl, a gun in his hand, pointed directly at the
younger wolfman.
‘Hey, what are you…?’
‘It’s over.’ He pumped three rounds into
Swiftbone’s chest and saw him fall. He was dead and human again by the time his
body hit the ground.
Silence fell across the
room. After a few moments, Kayiler called to Mitchell.
‘You can get up now. It’s over.’
‘Says you with the gun in your hand.
Marley?’
‘She’s safe. I won’t shoot you. You are
Porlicanthus’s boy. Your father was a great warrior and friend. Stand up and
let me see you properly.’
Mitchell rose to his feet, wiping his hands
on the back of his trousers.
‘How did you know we were here?’ Kayiler
asked after a while.
‘Greer. He was getting agitated. Said my
time was coming and I needed to train. He looked scared.’
‘Greer is still alive?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Greer is my brother. I haven’t seen him in
years. Not since the division. Caleb wanted loyalty. Greer wasn’t as committed.
To be honest, many of us weren’t. Caleb had no vision of its survival through
the dark times. Too many youngsters to control, to brain wash.’
‘So why does he want me?’
‘You’re the son of a great warrior. His son.
Caleb realises that young blood will only work with young blood as its leader.
You are destined to be the leader of a great pack and we need you on board.’
‘I’m not a wolf.’
‘You are Porlicanthus’ son. In you is the
will to survive and hunt and be the strong warrior leader we need. You have to
come back with me.’
‘No, I don’t. I’m part of Torchwood now.
This is where I need to be. You can’t force me to come with you.’
‘He can, Mitch.’ Marley replied, trembling
still. ‘He’s still got the gun.’
‘We need to leave now before daylight. You
turn 25 in less than 48 hours. And you have initiation into the fold. I saw you
brought transport.’ He threw the question to Marley. ‘You need to drive us to
Scotland. Now.’ He pointed the gun directly at Marley’s head. ‘I’m not afraid
of death. Are you?’
‘OK. But we have to make a detour first.’
‘NO. I forbid it.’
‘Then she dies, and you’ll have to kill me,
because I will not go until we’ve been to Glasgow, and Marley says goodbye to
her parents. Is that clear?’
