Free Changeling: Zombie Dawn by Steve Feasey Page A

did matter was that she’d captured him to stop him taking any role in defending against it. But why?
    ‘What am I doing here?’
    ‘You’re my. . . guest, albeit a reluctant one at the moment, but that will change, Trey, you’ll see. We have your best interests at heart?’
    ‘We?’
    ‘Marcus and me.’
    ‘Marcus?’
    ‘He’s joining us soon. In fact, he should be boarding a plane in the next few days. I called him and told him to come.’
    ‘Does he know that you’ve kidnapped me?’
    ‘That’s a rather emotive expression.’ She snorted and shook her head. ‘Kidnap indeed!’
    ‘He doesn’t, does he? If he did, he’d be here right now.’
    ‘Like I said, I have your very best interests at heart.’
    ‘Really?’ Trey let out a short derisive laugh. ‘Is that why I’m in chains? Is that why you injected me with goodness knows what drugs? Forgive me, Ella, but I think I preferred it when I didn’t have you looking out for me!’
    ‘You’re wrong. You need us as much as we need you. You just don’t know it yet. And when I say we, I mean lycanthropes – your own kind. We need you with us, not gallivanting around with some bloodsucking freak trying to save the world.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let the vamps war against each other. And when they’re done, we’ll emerge as the strongest force that this world has ever seen.’
    Trey looked up at her then, his face a mask of incredulity. This was not the Ella he’d met and befriended in Canada. And this certainly was not the girl who’d saved his life. She was like a different person, as if possessed by some evil spirit who spoke and acted through her, and for a moment Trey wondered if this were the case, if some denizen of the Netherworld were controlling her, because there was no way that the caring, giving person he had left not that long ago in Canada could be this thing before him now.
    She nodded as though reading his thoughts. ‘You don’t like the new me, do you? Well, that’s too bad because the meek and pathetic Ella you once knew has gone . . . forever.’
    ‘What’s happened to you?’
    ‘I woke up.’ She snorted and twisted her face into a sneer. ‘That’s right, I woke up to the reality of what I really was. After you left Canada I went back to Norway to try and start my life again. But I didn’t know what it was like to be without the Pack, Trey. I had no idea how much I would miss it – miss the power and the . . . the sense of belonging. And then I had a full-moon Change. You know, one of those “turn-into-a-savage-murderous-beast-and-not-remember-anything-about-it” Changes?’ She shook her head. ‘I was too late getting to my lock-down. I changed before I could make myself secure.’ When she looked at Trey again, there was a terrible expression on her face. ‘You know I told you that my parents didn’t want anything to do with me?’
    Trey nodded.
    ‘They’re dead. They died that night.’
    A long and terrible silence hung between them as Trey took this in.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a low voice.
    ‘I need the Pack, Trey.’ Ella’s voice matched Trey’s and he had to strain to hear her. ‘I was the female Alpha, for heaven’s sake. I was at the centre of that beautiful living thing of power, and I can’t just give it up.’
    ‘You don’t need me though. It only takes three lycos to get together to make the controlled Change without the moon possible. There’s you, and Marcus and Lawrence. Lawrence loved the Pack. I’m sure he’d—’
    ‘Lawrence is dead.’
    ‘Dead?’ Trey thought about the gangly ginger-headed youth he’d met during his time in Canada with the Wolfen pack members. It wasn’t possible he could be dead.
    ‘It seems Marcus and I are not alone in needing the Pack. When we disbanded following Jurgen’s death, we all went our separate ways. But the bond we’d formed between us was too strong. Lawrence left a note saying he couldn’t go on any longer, and that he’d rather