by N. P. Martin
Just don’t fucking fail me now, I thought as I started to swing my blade at whichever monster was nearest to me, slicing through rotten flesh and decaying bone as easily as a dick slidin’ into yo’ mama…should your mama be that way inclined, of course…which I’m sure she isn’t…being your mama and all.
Anyway, gotta hand it to Cal, his blades were sharp as fuck.
Swinging the blade with one hand, I used my other hand to land punches with my reinforced knuckles as I kept on the move, ducking under arms as thick as tree trunks as I sliced open ribcages on the way past; firing low kicks at crumbling knees to try to slow the bastards down some, avoiding getting clawed or bitten for the most part.
Although my luck soon ran out when the number of monsters increased until it seemed like they were everywhere, some still not even out of the ground yet.
Jesus, how many of these fucking things are there? And where the fuck is Haedemus?
The surrounding air was thick with the stench of fetid breath and rotting flesh as I continued to try to fend against the attacks coming at me, but there were so many, it was inevitable one of the fuckers would get me.
A loud cry of pain escaped me as one of the bastards sunk its teeth into my shoulder from behind, shaking its head like crazy as it did its best to rip my arm from its socket. It probably would’ve succeeded if something hadn’t knocked it off me, that something being Haedemus, who had now joined the fray.
The Hellicorn was even taller than the werewolves, and he reared up on his back legs, bringing his massive front hooves down on the heads of the werewolves, knocking them to the ground.
As another werewolf went to run toward me, Haedemus speared the beast with his long, jagged horn, jerking his head upward so his horn split the werewolf partially in two.
The second I got a chance, I ran toward Haedemus with the gored blade between my teeth, grabbed his mane, and swung myself up onto him.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” I shouted as I swung my blade at the werewolves surrounding us, chopping down on them from above.
With a hellish neighing sound, Haedemus reared up for a second and then bolted toward the slope, crying out as a werewolf clawed his side on the way past. “Ow! You hairy fuckwits!” he shouted.
Switching to infrared vision, I took control of the Hellicorn and steered one-handed through the trees as we galloped back through the forest again. Behind us, the werewolves stayed in pursuit, howling as they sprinted after us on all fours.
“Motherfuckers are following us,” I said.
“No shit,” Haedemus said. “What did you expect the mutts to do, take a nap in the fucking yard?”
Undead or not, the werewolves were fast, not to mention relentless. As I focused on not crashing into any trees while trying not to pass out from blood loss, I couldn’t help but wonder how long the beasts would keep up the chase.
Very fucking long as it turned out.
Several hours later, just as dawn began to break, the undead werewolves finally stopped their pursuit of us. Though I still kept riding hard, even though my vision had blurred by this stage and I was having trouble staying balanced on top of the Hellicorn.
“I think we should stop now,” Haedemus said, his breathing as labored as I’d ever heard it. “I can’t go on any longer.”
“Don’t…stop,” I said, my eyes beginning to close as my head dropped.
“Oh sure…keep fucking going…he says. Never mind that I’m…completely fucked here…and—”
His voice faded out, and blackness closed in around me as I began to slip off his back.
By the time I hit the ground, I was out of it.
2
“Ethan. Wake up, Ethan. I hope you haven’t died on me. Have you? Oh for fuck’s sake, you have, haven’t you, you inconsiderate—Ethan, you’re alive! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord and all that jazz…”
“Fuck you.”
“And still the same charmer as before, I’m glad to see.”
Sunlight hurt my eyes as I opened them, having to cover them with my hand until they adjusted. “How long was I out?” I asked as I sat up, stifling a cry as pain shot through my wounded shoulder, spreading down my back and arm.
“Long enough for me to think you were dead, you selfish asshole,” Haedemus said.
“Next time a werewolf takes a chunk outta me, I’ll try not to pass out so I don’t upset you.”
“Who said anything about being upset? I just don’t want to incur the wrath of Xaglath—I mean Hannah—if you die on me.”
When my vision cleared, I looked around to see that we were still in the forest, and probably a full day’s ride to civilization. It made me wonder why Scarlet Hood lived so far out. How did people contact her to arrange a hit if she lived out here? And how did she get back and forth? Surely not on foot? Maybe there was some shortcut out of the forest that I didn’t know about. Or perhaps she could teleport. These days, you never know.
Another wave of pain took me out of my thoughts, and I craned my neck to look at my shoulder. Reaching across, I peeled back my ruined and bloody trench coat, then the shirt underneath to see several deep holes in my flesh. I still had some movement in my arm, meaning nothing was broken or dislocated, which was a fucking miracle considering how violent the werewolf had been when it bit down on me.
Blood still seeped from the jagged holes in my shoulder and the top of my arm. Not as much as earlier, but enough that I had to stop the flow. Doing so would’ve been easier if I still had my backpack with the few medical supplies inside, but that was still lying around Scarlet Hood’s place somewhere, probably ripped to shreds by now by the undead beasts who came after us.
“What are you going to do about that?” Haedemus asked, licking his lips as he stared at my bloody wound.
“Getting hungry there, Haedemus?”
He turned his head away. “Don’t worry, Ethan, I’m not going to eat you if that’s what you’re thinking. While you were out of it, I hunted down a Faerie and ate it. The flesh tasted disgusting, but it filled a hole.”
“So now we’re going to have Faeries out for revenge after us? Great.”
“They wouldn’t dare. The little bastards fear me too much. I’m like a demon to them.”
“Fuck it, I don’t care.” I took off my trench and used my blade to cut a long strip from it, which I then wrapped around my wounded shoulder. “I just want out of this fucking forest.”
“So we came out here for naught then?”
I said nothing as I gave him a look and stood up. He wasn’t wrong. I’d just wasted two days in the wilderness when I could’ve been working a mass suicide case with Walker. I didn’t doubt her ever-increasing competence, but she could get a little lost in herself with so many personalities competing within her, with a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other, not to mention Hannah Walker’s personality and Walker’s own combination of all three. And if that sounds confusing, imagine how she feels. Jeez, look at me, having sympathy for the devil. I must be getting soft in my old age.
Haedemus had to crouch down so I could climb up on to him, and even then it hurt like hell as I mounted him. But once I was up, I held his mane with my right hand and let him do the navigating while I listened to him drone on about being thirsty and how hungry he was.
Unsurprisingly, he drank blood in Hell to sustain himself, as many demons and beasts did, apparently. A lack of water in Hell forced the inhabitants to improvise, even though they didn’t need water to survive since they were already dead. What they fed was an urge, not a need; an urge Haedemus carried with him into this world. I told him if we found water he could stop and get a drink, but we never did. It was just trees and brush until we finally made it to the small mining town of Little Rock about half a day later.
By the time we got there, I was struggling to stay conscious I’d lost so much blood. Not only that, the fucking werewolf that bit me must’ve transferred some kind of infection into my bloodstream, for I had developed a fever a
nd my breathing made me sound like I was asthmatic.
When we emerged from the forest, the first building we came across was a small church perched upon a hill that overlooked the rest of the town. With sweat oozing from every inch of my body and the blood boiling in my veins, I ordered Haedemus to stop outside the church. “I need to rest a minute,” I said.
“Here?” Haedemus said. “It’s a church.”
“I don’t—” I fell off him then, hitting the ground with a heavy thud, landing on my injured shoulder, hardly having the energy to cry out with the pain.
“Ethan, are you alright?”
As I struggled up off the ground, I said, “What…the fuck…do you think?”
“I’m guessing no,” he said. “I think you need a doctor or something, not a priest.”
“Don’t need…either.”
“Oh right, because you’re so tough and everything.” He gave his massive head a shake. “Honestly, Ethan, you look about ready to die. You’re not going die on me, are you?”
“Will you…miss me?”
“Well, apart from Mistress Xaglath you’re the only one I know in this cursed place, so don’t be a selfish asshole and die on me, okay? If you do, I’ll eat your remains and shit you out again. Is that what you want, Ethan? Hmm?”
“God…just shut up.” I started staggering toward the church doors. “I’m going inside to rest…for a while.”
“What about me?”
“Do…what you want.”
“As usual. Thanks, Ethan. I—”
I never heard the rest of what he said as I staggered inside the church, which smelled of old wood and leather and…piss, strangely enough, though that could’ve just been my senses going haywire. Either that or I’d pissed myself, but I was so drenched in sweat it would’ve been hard to tell.
The church was empty, with no sign of a preacher or anyone else. I walked up the center aisle a bit and then slid myself onto a pew before lying down across it.
I wasn’t sure if I was dying, but it felt like I was. The virus from the werewolf’s saliva was attacking my system, and I needed something to counter it. Which I had back at my apartment, but that was over fifty miles away.
I just needed a little rest, and then I could make the final leg of the journey back to the city.
But as I closed my eyes, a voice roused me from my semi-consciousness.
“Are you okay, my son?”
Raising my head a bit, I saw a nun in a black habit standing there in the aisle, looking down at me. For a nun, her face was a vision of beauty, with large green eyes and a serene smile on her flawless face.
“Not…really…Sister,” I said as my eyelids dropped, delivering me into blackness for an indeterminate amount of time.
When I next opened my eyes, the nun with her beautiful face was leaning over me with a gun pointed at my head.
For a minute, I thought I must’ve been hallucinating from the fever, but then the nun said, “You tripped the alarms at my cottage. Cop or not, normally I would put a bullet in you right now and be done with it, but this is your lucky day, Detective.”
“My…lucky day?” I whispered, smiling, only seeing her bright green eyes as darkness closed in around me for what felt like the final time.
“I will save your life,” she said. “Then we’re going to talk.”
My eyes closed, still smiling, I said, “Sounds…lovely.”
Then I blacked out.
When I came to sometime later, my fever had gone, and my breathing was back to normal. Sitting beside me on the pew was the green-eyed nun from earlier.
No, not a nun.
As I sat up, the realization of her real identity sunk in. “You’re Scarlet Hood.”
“Finally,” she said. “You’re awake. Don’t try anything stupid.” She held up her gun for me to see, then placed it back down by her side.
“What did you do to me?” I asked her.
“Gave you a shot.”
“Of what?”
“Just something to counteract the virus in your system. You should be back to normal soon. I’d get that bite wound looked at, though.”
I stared at the blood-soaked piece of trench coat wrapped around my arm and shoulder. “I intend to. What do you want?”
“I could ask you the same thing…Detective Drake.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You first,” she said, her porcelain face still framed by the nun’s habit. “Who sent you to kill me?”
Swinging my legs off the pew and onto the floor, I sat up straight and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in my trouser pocket, along with my zippo lighter. When I lit the cigarette, I coughed on the first drag, and Scarlet started waving her hand to keep the smoke away from her. “Hope you don’t mind,” I said.
“You’re going to smoke in a church?”
“So? You brought a gun in here.”
“Just blow it away from me.”
I did as she asked, blowing the smoke to the side of me. “Did you kill a nun to get that habit?”
“What do you take me for?”
“A ruthless assassin,” I said without hesitation.
“I kill only those who deserve it,” she said. “And the nun is taking a nap in the confession box.”
“And the preacher? I don’t see any sign of him either.”
“Also sleeping. I didn’t want any interruptions.”
“You’re very thorough,” I said, impressed.
“I just don’t believe in taking chances.”
“And yet you’re talking to me now.”
She pointed the gun at me again, which I saw was a SIG Sauer. “I can just kill you if I don’t like what I hear.”
“So what do you want to hear?”
“Who sent you to kill me?”
“I didn’t come here to kill you,” I said, before taking a drag on my cigarette.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. I was sent to kill you, but decided against it when I got a feeling there was something else going on.” I turned my head to look at her as she stared straight ahead. “You’ve taken down a few traffickers lately, including the cousin of the man who wants me to kill you. The man is Carlito Martinez. You know him?”
Her face tightened with anger as she looked at me. “I know him. He’s next on my list.”
“What list? What did all these guys do? Are you killing them for someone else? Are they all contract hits?”
“Do you work for Martinez?” she asked, ignoring all of my questions.
I shook my head. “I just owe him a debt.”
“What debt?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. Tell me.” She pointed the gun at me again, her finger on the trigger this time.
“I owe him money. Eighty grand.”
“What for? Are you a gambler?”
“No, but my ex-wife was,” I said. “She ran up the debt playing online poker. She was going to lose her house, which meant my daughter wouldn’t have a roof over her head, and I couldn’t have that. So I went to Carlito for a loan.”
She stared at me a moment as if trying to figure me out. “Your wife and daughter were killed.”
“Yes. How would you know that?”
“Your pet unicorn—or whatever it is—likes to talk.” She gestured behind her with her head, and I turned around to see Haedemus standing by the church doors, busy lapping holy water from the font.
“Oh, hey,” Haedemus said when he noticed me looking at him. “Don’t mind me or anything. I’m just a hell beast drinking holy water in a church.”
“You told her about me?” I said, glaring at him.
“What can I say? She’s very persuasive.”
“More like you just have a big fucking mouth.”
“Ethan,” he said in mock shock. “Watch your language. We’re in God’s house here.”
“Fuck you.” I turned my head back to look at Scarlet again. “So what else did he tell you?�
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“That you’re a detective with the FPD and that you work occult investigations.” She paused to glance at me. “He also said you were mean-spirited and selfish, not to mention supremely arrogant.”
I looked back at Haedemus, who pulled his rubbery, decaying lips back into something that I guessed was supposed to be a smile that showed his rotten teeth. “She’s twisting my words. I didn’t say any of that. I told her how kind and considerate you were, what a great friend you—oh fuck it, I told her you were an asshole, because you are, Ethan. It’s something you need to work on if you want us to keep being friends.”
“We’re not friends, you stinking Hellicorn.”
He almost choked on his holy water. “Ethan—now I’m just offended. Was there any need for that kind of hurtful remark? My undead heart is in bits here. What if I called you a stinking human?”
“You have, more than once.”
“Well, there you go then. You know how hurtful it can be when—”
“Shut up!” Scarlet said, snapping her head around to look at him, causing me to smile. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
“Great, another asshole,” Haedemus said. “I will wait outside while you two finish your meeting of assholes.” Turning, he pushed the doors open with his horn and walked outside without saying another word.
“Don’t ask,” I said as she stared at me as if waiting for some explanation.
For the first time, a slight smile appeared on her face. “It’s a strange world when a police detective is riding around on a…what did you call it? A Hellicorn?”
“Even stranger now that a top assassin dressed in a nun’s habit is sitting pointing a gun at me,” I said, taking the last drag of my cigarette before crushing it underfoot. “Are you going to tell me why you’re choosing not to kill me?”
Scarlet stared straight ahead for a moment, then said, “This Carlito guy. How well do you know him?”
“Well enough. Why?”
“Did you know he’s in the sex trafficking business?”
“No, not exactly. I mean, I had an inkling he was. Carlito keeps his business interests closely guarded. Why are you so interested, anyway?”