“Most make their way here within hours,” the Master chuntered. “Soon as the ring is on their finger, soon as the dying words imparted, they race here, eager to embrace their new calling.”
“Really?” Brian was sceptical. “People must have families, surely? Commitments, jobs.”
“And what’s your job…?”
“Well, I’m, err… I’m kind of between jobs at the moment,” he stuttered.
“I see.”
“And anyway… number twelve? That’s like Mcdonald’s-level turnover of staff. I saw how Helsing XII died; and you expected me to rush down here?”
Friedrick reached a new door, his chair rolling to a stop with a splutter as he turned it with a tug on a brass lever, angling himself towards Brian, even as he fumbled for some keys in a large pack sat in front of what remained of his lower torso. His face was unreadable.
“I expected you to be at least a little curious.”
“I am,” Brian admitted. “Same way I am when I see a car crash on the other side of the road.”
Neil chuckled quietly beside him, even as Friedrick glanced to Steve, the youth merely shrugging. With a sigh, the Master found the right key and placed it into the door before him. A click, a whirr, and the heavy door slowly rose upwards, vanishing into the stone ceiling.
“Behold,” Friedrick told them. “The Sanctum of the Helsings.”
Brian blinked as the little group walked through into the wide, high ceilinged chamber. Carved out of the very bedrock of the mount itself, no doubt with the weight of the castle in its entirety bearing down upon it, the room was buzzing with activity. Functionaries ran to and fro, scuttling about long tables filled with equipment, computer screens, jars of strangely coloured liquids. Various tall corridors stretched off from this large central room, delving further, deeper into the depths of Cornish granite. At the sight of the pair of newcomers, everyone stopped going about their business, now standing and watching them in fascination.
“This is your base of operations,” Friedrick told him, spreading his arms wide and proud. “The very heart of the Helsing Order. Here we scry for threats, keeping a tab on all supernatural activities of our foes, those who skulk in the night and would prey on the innocent.”
“Like Vampires?” Neil asked, excitedly.
Friedrick nodded sagely.
“Amongst other such creatures, yes.”
Neil’s eyes glistened in wonder and he strode over to a long oak table, upon which was a pair of strange objects, looking for all the world like Christmas trees, sparks of blue lightning arcing between them with a buzz.
“Tesla coils?” he ventured, as Friedrick grinned, nodding. I could have told him that, Brian thought darkly; they were in Command and Conquer: Red Alert. A line of them and no tanks could get to your ore harvesters. Slowly, Neil took off his jacket, discarding it on a chair, before reaching forth with a finger, tiny tendrils of electricity reaching out to caress his skin. “It tickles,” he laughed.
Friedrick sat there in his chair, regarding the man’s curiosity and seeming lack of fear, seeing too his gym-honed muscles that all-but bulged from his tight Superdry t-shirt. Then his gaze turned once more to Brian, and his face sagged.
Brian shrugged.
“I didn’t choose the Helsing life; the Helsing life chose me.”
“Indeed. A strange twist of fate, for sure. But we work with what we get. And once gifted to you, the ring can never be removed, not until death.”
“Besides,” came another voice, this one deep, rich, booming, smooth as molten chocolate and aptly so, for it belonged to a tall, well-suited black man, his head bald, face square and handsome, with eyes that glimmered like shards of obsidian glass. “It is our job to train you.”
“Helsing,” Friedrick said to Brian. “This is Heimlich, the leader of the Masters. Heimlich; this is number thirteen.”
“Lucky for some,” the man chuckled, reaching out to shake his hand.
Not for me, Brian mused as he shook hands.
“Friedrick, Heimlich; those names sound German,” he said. “But you don’t. What gives?”
Heimlich stared into his eyes, his own form not too much shorter than Brian’s own, quite a feat.
“Tradition? The original Masters of our order were so named and, as each mantle is taken up by someone new, they keep the original name out of respect.”
“What was your real name?” he asked.
“Bob.”
“I see why you changed it.”
A moment’s pause, then Heimlich’s face split into a grin, showing perfect white teeth.
“Indeed. Each of the Masters bears a name and holds a position, our goal; to teach you the skills needed to be Helsing, the ultimate hunter of demons, protector of mankind. The wealth of knowledge from centuries of past Masters and Helsings is ours to bestow upon you. Each of us has our own speciality subject and we will pass on our skills to the best of our ability.”
Brian raised an eyebrow, dubious.
“And what’s your area of expertise?”
Heimlich grinned.
“Magic,” he whispered, from behind Brian, right in his ear.
Brian spun one-eighty, then staggered backwards, shaking his head. Somehow, in an instant between the blinks of his eye, the man had appeared behind him.
“What? You… you were… how?”
“As I said,” Heimlich chuckled. “Magic. I call that one the Heimlich Manoeuvre.” He laughed, briefly, then stopped, realising no one was laughing with him, before clearing his throat. “And I shall teach you these skills. In time. Only with a certain amount of sorcery can you defeat foes that are, by their very essence, magical in nature.”
Neil clapped in amazement at the show, even as Brian blinked, furiously, his mind simply unable to comprehend what he’d just witnessed. Sounds of laughter from a wheelchair nearby, Friedrick sat there, clearly amused, in a cloud of steam.
“And what’s your gig?” Brian asked him.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Friedrick asked him, gesturing to his chair, to the various artefacts and gizmos that popped, banged and crackled on the tables all about. “Technology. I will arm you with tools beyond your wildest dreams. All secrets of technology are clear to me, plain as day, for I am the Master of Ordinance.”
“Then why is your wheelchair steam powered? I mean, there’s such a thing as mobility scooters, you know? They don’t choke everyone around. And they don’t need coal.”
“Neither does this,” Friedrick grinned. “It runs on whiskey.” He rummaged in the cavernous bag where his lap should be, pulling out a bottle of Famous Grouse, unscrewing the top. “One for me,” he said, taking a glug, before pouring a dash into a nozzle by his side. “And one for the chair.”
“Sounds expensive,” Brian told him. “And stupid.”
“You’re stupid,” Friedrick pouted. “And the chair, like our titles, is tradition. As each of my predecessors used it, so do I.”
“Wait, what?” Brian blurted, puzzled. “Did they have no legs either?”
“Don’t be silly. Some of them had one.”
“That’s still doesn’t make any sense. But then none of this does.” He looked about, growing more irate by the second. “I’m going home,” he told the group at large. “Ring be damned. C’mon Neil.”
At the exasperated stares of the two Masters, he made to move back towards the door, but a fresh figure now blocked his path; a petite woman, young, pretty, slim, with black hair streaked with brightly coloured dye, all the colours of the rainbow, and tied back into pig-tails. She stood there, barring his way, a smile on her face, her eyes wide and glistening like some Japanese cartoon character.
“And who are you?” he asked with a sigh.
“I’m Master Gertrude,” she told him, giggling.
“Gertrude?” He rolled his eyes. “They get better and better. What are you Master of? Cosplay?”
“No, silly,” she laughed. “Combat.”
He raised an ey
ebrow, a sudden flood of nerves tingling him, despite his bluster of before.
“Well,” he started. “I still wouldn’t get in my way. I’ve been told I’m pretty strong now, by a vampire no less. And they know a thing or two about being strong, believe you me. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off.”
As he began to move once more, the girl glanced towards Master Heimlich, who nodded, a wry grin on his face. Even as Brian strode past her, her hands darted out with eye-searing speed. Out of unnatural instinct, Brian’s own arms flashed up, catching her arms by the wrists and holding her in place. Even he looked shocked at his own speed.
“See?” he told her, before crying out in pain as she kicked his knee, sending him crumpling to the floor in pain. His head, even on his knees, was all-but level with hers. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he managed to gasp out, even as she headbutted him, causing him to release her wrists and fall flat on his back, stars in his vision. He shook his head, blinking, eyes watering. “I’ve warned you,” he croaked, trying to right himself. “I won’t…”
Before he could even gasp out the last words, Gertrude was upon him, her hands a-blur as they pummelled him in key places, fingers strangely contorted as they struck his flesh with pinpoint precision. With each strike, Brian felt his arms, his legs, his neck losing all feeling. Finally, she rose, dusting off her hands and standing back with a satisfied smile, leaving Brian lying there on the stone floor, completely paralysed.
“…warn you again,” Brian finished his sentence with a sigh of resignation. He glanced up at the gathered Masters who now surrounded him, Steve, Neil too, each trying to stifle their laughter as they regarded his prone and pathetic form. “I can’t feel anything,” he groaned. “I’m not… I’m not gonna shit myself am I?”
“It could be arranged,” Gertrude told him with an infuriating smile. “One more tap in the right place.”
“God no,” he replied. “I’ve had enough. I give in. I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry.”
“Clearly,” Heimlich told him. “Either way, like it or not, this is your life now, lad. The ring has chosen you and only death can remove it. The supernatural will find you wherever you might be, just as it did in Wetherspoon’s last night. The only difference is, with our help, you’ll be better prepared. Luckily for you, that vampire you encountered last night, Beth, was but small fry on the scale of such creatures.”
“You heard about that?”
“We see all,” Heimlich told him with a nod. “Our team scry the land, with magical artefacts, police scanners. We scour the news, the airwaves, the ley-lines, Reddit, seeking out the darkness wherever it may be. And your job now is to learn how to fight it. You might be a buffoon, but you’re humanity’s greatest weapon in the fight against the creatures of the night. Are you ready to accept the responsibility and become Helsing?”
Brian pondered the man’s words. If he could, he would have scratched his head, maybe rubbed his chin in some philosophical way. As it was, all he could do was lie there flat, like a discarded strand of spaghetti.
“No,” he finally replied. “But it doesn’t look like I have a choice in the matter, does it?”
Gertrude glanced at Heimlich, expectant, and the man shrugged.
“Good enough, I suppose,” he told her.
With that, the girl crouched down, hitting Brian once more in some strange pattern. The numbness began to subside, pins and needles now flooding his every limb as feeling began to restore. Slowly, carefully, lest he fall over, he climbed to his feet, shaking out his arms and legs.
“Not going to try to run again, are you?” Friedrick chuckled.
“Don’t think so,” Brian replied, eyeing Gertrude suspiciously.
Please do, the girl mouthed at him, silently, her eyes twinkling with amusement.
Brian sighed heavily, feeling the weight of destiny bearing down inexorably upon his bony shoulders, and turned back to Heimlich.
“So, where do we begin?” he reluctantly asked.
“First,” the man told him. “You need to learn what it is you’re up against. Only then can you learn how to fight them. And so we will take you to Otto; the Master of the Bestiary.”
Great, thought Brian, still rolling his shoulders and freeing himself from the last vestiges of the nerve strikes of before. Another Master. How big was this strange Order? And would every single one of these Masters look at him as though he was in idiot? As he followed, glumly, behind the pack, down one of the corridors that led off from the main chamber, he wondered what fresh humiliation awaited him behind this next door.
Chapter Seven: Loins. And The Girding Thereof
This Otto was something of a strange chap, Brian thought to himself. What gave it away? Was it the mad professor hair that fell in a great, white mane down his back, matching the straggly white goatee on his chin? Or was it the way he was hacking away at the corpse on the marble table before him with an axe, bright blue blood and ichor spraying to coat his overalls?
As Brian watched on in horrified fascination, the smell suddenly hit him and he all but retched; the reek of fermenting fish and stagnant water wafted over from the ruined cadaver. It smelled like Newlyn Harbour on a scorching summer day. The others all seemed reasonably inured to the smell. Even Neil only pulled an amused face.
“Ripe,” he commented.
At the sound of his voice, Otto stopped his feverish work, dropping the axe to the tiled floor with a clang and striding over.
“You must be the new Helsing,” he told Neil, reaching out to greet him. Before, at the pointed stares of the other Masters, he paused, turning his gaze to Brian instead. “Oh.”
“What is it with oh?” Brian blurted out, immediately regretting opening his mouth as a greasy tendril of fish-stench wormed its way into his throat, causing him to retch once more at the taste.
“Nothing,” Otto laughed, craning his neck to look up at Brian. “Ignore me. It’s an honour to meet you, Number Thirteen.” He stuck out his hand to shake. Brian stared at it; slimy ichor dropped from his fingers. Was that a kidney lodged between two of his fingers? No, thought Brian; it looked more like a spleen. Otto glanced at his own hand. “Ah, yes.” He wiped it on his overalls, proffered it Brian’s way once more. It was no better the second time round.
“Anyway, Otto,” came Heimlich’s drawling voice. “Why don’t you show our new champion what you’ve been working on?”
“Yes, yes, a good plan,” the Master nodded, turning back towards the slab and the festering cadaver thereon. “Have you any idea what this creature before you might be, Number Thirteen?”
“The name’s Brian. Or Helsing, if you absolutely must. And nope. Nor do I want to know.”
“It’s a mermaid,” the man told him, completely ignoring the second part of his statement. “Or more precisely, a merman. You can see his penis here.” He pointed to a strange appendage that Brian could happily lived his entire life without ever seeing. “Between his legs,” he continued unnecessarily, gesturing to what remained of the creature’s lower half.
“Don’t mermaid have tails?” Neil asked.
Otto chortled.
“No, only in fairy tales,” he chuckled. “What use a tail when mermaids hunt on land, on beaches and riverbanks?”
“Hunt?” Brian gulped. “What do they… what do they eat?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer to the question.
“Whatever they can catch,” Otto shrugged. “Fish, deer, people. They’re not picky.”
As Brian shuddered, Neil ventured closer to the corpse, eyeing the remains closely.
“The meat,” he said. “It’s white. Like a fish.”
“Correct,” Otto nodded. “You’ve a good eye. Their musculature is composed primarily of fast-twitch muscles, giving them great strength.”
“All the better for catching people,” Brian murmured.
“Quite.”
“Otto.” It was Gertrude’s voice now, all light and whimsical, despite the grim offerings on display.
“Shall we show our new Helsing the Bestiary?”
“Absolutely,” he beamed. “Please, follow this way.”
The group followed Otto across his lab, past other such slabs with their own corpses on, most of them thankfully covered by white, gore-stained sheets, towards a pair of huge brass double doors. He opened one, the door swinging open on oiled hinges with nary a squeak, before disappearing, the others following, all bar Heimlich who stopped and placed a strong hand on Brian’s shoulder.
“Prepare yourself, Helsing.”
Brian blinked.
“How?”
“How… what?” Heimlich asked, frowning.
“How should I prepare myself?”
“Erm, I… dunno. Gird your loins?”
“What does that even mean?”
“No-one knows. Just… just go in, lad.”
With one last gulp, Brian turned back to the doorway. What could possibly await him that would be worse than everything he’d already been through, he thought? Surely his adrenal glands were all but empty by now, for his heart couldn’t take any more surprises. Slowly, hesitatingly, he began to shuffle through the brass doors. A firm shove from behind, a big hand in the centre of his back, pushing him quicker.
“Get on with it. Jesus.”
Now fully in the room, Brian gazed about. He was wrong; his adrenaline wasn’t quite depleted yet, his heart pounding, his pulse rising to a staccato beat in his ears as his disbelieving eyes took in the monstrosities on display. Neil strode here and there, eyes wide with wonder, taking in the strangeness, the foreignness of all the creatures on display, but all Brian could think about was how quickly he wanted to run away from this place and how far. John O’Groats might do, he thought. But then a knowing wink from Gertrude pinned his feet firmly to the earth.
“The Bestiary!” Otto called out in something approaching a weird kind of pride. “This is the hall where we keep a body from each foe we encounter, along with information on their strengths and weaknesses.” He pointed to a glass display cabinet containing a small, stunted skeleton, about the bare bone chin of which still clung a wiry ginger beard. “A kobold. Usually peaceful, but they can turn quite nasty if provoked.” Then he pointed to a preserved corpse in another, larger display case, this one swollen and hairy all over, with baleful eyes, rending claws and teeth like knives. “A lycanthrope, or werewolf, to the layman. Normal, law-abiding citizens in day-to-day life, but come the full moon they become bity buggers.” Another questing finger, another case. This time, a skeleton jet black, nine-feet tall, with a twisted, monstrous face and horns atop its skull that stretched wider than even Brian could stretch his arms. Even just a glance at it caused shivers of cold dread to worm their way down Brian’s spine. “A demon-baron, from the fifth circle of Hell. A nuclear fireball of power all wrapped up in a convenient devil-shaped package. Pray you never bump into one of those bastards,” Otto chuckled.
Brian Helsing: The World's Unlikeliest Vampire Hunter Box Set 1 - Missions 1-3 Page 5