Netherkind

by Greg Chapman

  “Well, to begin with, why don’t you tell me what it looks like. Is it some sort of village?”

  “It’s uh…caves mostly, carved from stone.”

  “Interesting, did your people carve them?”

  Nero nodded.

  “Must have taken a long time—how long have your people existed?”

  A nervous shrug: “Thousands and thousands of years I think…we don’t really keep track of our history.”

  Vorn rubbed his chin. “And you consume human flesh—it’s your main food supply?”

  “Yeah…but please don’t ask me how the face-changing thing works, because I really don’t know—”

  Vorn placated him. “Oh, it’s alright—I can tell that you’re probably not the smartest member of your clan.”

  Nero wished Vorn didn’t have the dark arts as protection because he would have gladly ripped him apart in a heartbeat.

  “What system of government do you have—or is it purely tribal?”

  “Gov-ment?” Nero said, confused.

  “Gov-ern-ment—who’s in charge?”

  “Uh…the King.”

  “A King? Very medieval and very interesting indeed—a tribe of flesh-eating beasts governed by a monarch.”

  Nero looked to the floor. “Why are you so interested in us? We’ve never had humans come after us before.”

  “I suppose I should be fair and answer you,” Vorn said. “Mr Harper and I have what you might call…an obsession with arcane objects—creatures and the like, although his desires differ from mine. Regardless, we’d seen your handiwork in some police reports around the city and Mr Harper asked me to track you down—and here we are.”

  Nero raised his eyes to look at Vorn. “What will you and Harper do to me—to us—when I take you to my home?”

  “Well, I’m interested just to see your home, but Mr Harper is a bit of a collector,” Vorn gestured to the items stacked on the shelves around them. “If he likes what he sees, he might just want to take a trinket or two with him.”

  “We don’t have a lot of stuff…” Nero said. “I’m not sure if he would find us that interesting.”

  Vorn knelt down and gazed into Nero’s golden eyes.

  “But your people are “the stuff” he craves Nero—can’t you see how special you are?”

  Nero shook his head.

  “Rejuvenation Nero!” Vorn said. “I’m not sure how you do it, but I know that Mr. Harper is very keen for me to find out the answer and I must say I’m very happy to oblige him.”

  “Well, what if you just kept me?”

  Vorn placed a hand on Nero’s shoulder. “Oh, that’s very honourable of you Nero, but I’m afraid you’re just not the pick of the bunch. And besides, we need you to take us to your home. You are still going to take us there aren’t you Nero?”

  Nero nodded, but he knew he might be dooming his whole race to extinction or worse—imprisonment. With this human—Vorn—having the power of magic like the Stygma at his fingertips, there was little his tribe could do to stand against him.

  Yet as Nero remembered the burning disc in his head and that awful smile on Vorn’s lips, he realized he might still have an advantage.

  He knew the bowels of the earth like the back of his hand. He knew what creatures lurked there, while Vorn and Harper and Colton didn’t. Nero agreed that he may not have been as smart as Gavenko or Malik, but he knew how to evade and trick better than any human.

  Sure he’d take the humans home, but it might not be the home they were hoping to find.

  24

  Bryce Colton’s right arm felt like it was made of cast iron.

  His nerve endings were on fire, screaming at him to soothe them, to plunge it in freezing water, but the only water running nearby was teeming with shit.

  It was hard for Bryce to focus in the dark of the sewers, even with the strangeness of his arm. The rancid darkness seemed to crawl all over him. It was in his nose, his eyes and even his clothes. The stink was almost as strong as the pain. As he looked around at the tunnel walls glistening and dripping with vile moisture, he thought he would puke. He would have given anything for fresh air, clean water and a new right arm.

  Just getting from Niles’ mansion to the city streets was murder, Bryce’s body exhausted from carrying the new burden that was his right arm. The prospect of hunting for more creatures like Nero was now near impossible because of the dull agony he was in.

  He scratched at the skin of the arm and turned to see Gerhard Vorn pulling Nero along by a chain fastened to a steel collar around the creature’s neck. Bryce didn’t know which bastard he wanted to kill more—the one who’d inflicted the injury or the one who’d left him virtually paralysed from the elbow down. His right arm was his money ticket, the one he fought with, the arm he hunted with—Christ he could barely hold his dick to piss anymore! He wanted to reach out with that arm and tear off their heads, rip out their entrails and—

  No—he could be an expertly lethal bounty hunter, but those thoughts weren’t his, he wasn’t a monster—not like that fucking freak Nero. He should just take out his gun with his right hand and put a fucking bullet square between his pretty eyes and then reach into the wound and yank out his fucking brains and—

  Jesus Christ—stop it! This isn’t you Bryce. You don’t think like this! But maybe he doesn’t have to think anymore—maybe his arm will do all the thinking for him? Just give it a chance. Just let go. Bryce felt his right hand reach down to caress the soft leather of his holster and the cold edge of the Magnum, eyes fixed tight on Nero. Go on, kill the—

  Then a hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to find Niles by his side.

  “Hey, how you doing?” he said, and Bryce wasn’t sure if his concern was genuine.

  “What?” Bryce said, frowning, as if he was struggling to remember where he was.

  “You look like shit, Colton,” Harper said. “You need a break.”

  Bryce flinched, remembering who Niles was, as the billionaire reached into a heavy backpack to retrieve a canteen.

  “Here, have some water,” Niles said, offering it to him.

  Bryce stared at the canteen, trying to will his right hand to take it.

  “Come on Colton, you need to take a drink. We could have a long haul ahead of us and I need you sharp.”

  Bryce stared at his right hand. Move—move goddamn it!

  Niles reached down and lifted Bryce’s right hand and put it in his palm.

  “Have a drink for Christ’s sake!”

  Bryce took the flagon out of his right hand with his left and drank greedily until Niles had to pry it from his grasp.

  “Take it easy Colton, that’s the only water we’ve got!”

  Bryce nodded and handed the canteen back, trying to use its nourishment to get his mind straight. Somewhere water—or some unnameable fluid—was dripping with the sound of a tolling bell, or like a hammer bashing down on a skull. It pounded inside Bryce’s head and arm. He shook his head and watched Niles put the canteen away in the back pack. The billionaire looked ahead to Vorn and Nero, who’d also stopped to replenish themselves.

  “When we reach the freak’s city, I want you to kill him,” Niles said.

  Bryce nodded hesitantly, thinking about how he would kill Nero, for a moment his mind pondered strangulation—his right hand squeezing his throat.

  “How’s the arm?” Niles said. “Are the bandages holding up?”

  Bryce wasn’t sure what Niles was talking about until the mogul tried to touch his right hand to check the bandages. The bounty hunter snatched his hand away.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you, Colton?!”

  “Nothing…” he said. There was a disconnect between his head and his hand. Bryce couldn’t understand it, all he knew was that he had to get it under control. He couldn’t let Niles realise there was a problem.

  He saw Niles frown and reached into his backpack again, this time his hand came out with a narrow yellow pill bottle. He opened it and
showed Bryce the tiny white pills inside.

  “Looks like you need some more pain meds,” Niles said, taking two pills out and stuffing them into Bryce’s right hand. “Do us all a favour and take these.”

  With that, his employer walked away to try and catch up with the other two, leaving Bryce with the pills gleaming white atop the bloody bandages wrapped around his right arm.

  Take them, his brain said. If you think you need them, then go ahead, his arm replied—in his head. Bryce used his left hand to shove the pills into his mouth. He swallowed them, feeling them gouge out his dry throat.

  Chicken-shit, his arm said.

  Bryce shook the beads of sweat from his forehead and shoved his right arm in his overcoat pocket, desperate not to look at it. But as he started to follow Niles Harper into the dark of the sewer, he could still hear his arm in his head—laughing at him.

  Vorn assessed the sewer tunnels in a vain attempt to determine where the creature Nero was leading them. Nero looked forlorn, his dignity in shackles, but what of his resolve? Was he in fact taking them in the right direction?

  The creature had gone silent the moment they set foot in the sewers, just steadily shuffling through the mire. Each brick wall looked like the next, shit-smeared grey, the mortar as black as night, slick with a disgusting sheen. Even the flow was turning black. It was becoming harder to think and breathe for the three travellers, but the creature seemed unaffected, obviously accustomed to the foul environment. Vorn could no longer resist the urge to question his captive.

  “Is this the way to your home?” he said.

  “I know where I’m going,” Nero replied, keeping his eyes on the ground.

  Vorn pulled on the chain around Nero’s neck and the creature stumbled, landing heavily on his elbows.

  “Do you really?” Vorn said. “Or are you leading us astray?”

  Nero snarled as Niles encroached upon the scene.

  “What the fuck’s going on here, Vorn?”

  “I’m trying to determine where Nero is taking us, Niles!”

  “He’s supposed to taking us to his home city, isn’t he?”

  “Well, I’m not so certain—”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Nero interrupted “I said I know where I am—I’ve lived down here most of my life! I’m taking you the right way okay!?”

  Vorn yanked on Nero’s chain again, but Niles interceded by shoving the disgruntled occultist away.

  “Knock it off, Vorn he’s no good to us if he can’t walk is he?”

  Niles helped Nero to his feet and then offered him a drink from the canteen.

  “Fuck off!” Nero said and pushed Niles’ offering away.

  The mogul gripped his arm. “Now look, you little fuck. I’m normally a pretty patient man—a lot more so than Vorn or Colton here, but don’t fucking test me okay? Now, point out where you’re leading us and then we can get going right?”

  Nero nodded in submission and pointed ahead to the mouth of a wide tunnel, a dull grey light emanated from within.

  “Where does that go?” Niles asked.

  “To my city,” Nero said.

  “How far is it, then?” Vorn interjected as Colton came to stand beside them, eyes glazed over.

  “It’s about a mile.” Nero said.

  Vorn sighed and Niles pulled his backpack higher on his shoulders.

  “Well,” Niles said. “We’d better get moving, then.”

  With flashlights in hand, they recommenced their march, the narrow beams of light, barely penetrating the miasma of shadows.

  “Vorn, can’t you light this place up, you know, with the flame trick?” Niles said.

  “Yes, Niles, I can, but I need to conserve my powers.”

  “What are you a fucking battery, now—I thought you just cast a spell or something?”

  Vorn turned to him, his patience waning. “Yes, I do, but each spell wears on me physically—I have explained that fact to you many times, Niles.”

  Niles spat into the brown river. “Yeah, well I mustn’t have been listening—”

  “Oh, you are so inept, Niles—why you have any understanding or regard for the obscure things you crave is beyond me!”

  “Oh, put a fucking sock in it, Vorn!”

  With their arguing, Vorn and Niles hadn’t realized they’d walked several feet past Nero, who had stopped in his tracks. Bryce, who was behind the creature however, noticed Nero’s blank face and tried to see what he was staring at.

  “Wait,” Bryce said, forcing the other pair to turn back.

  “What is it now!?” Vorn said.

  Bryce nudged Nero. “Why have you stopped?”

  Nero turned to him, a wry smile on his face. “I needed to rest.”

  “Bullshit, we just rested before.” Niles said. “Now fucking move it before I really do lose my patience!”

  Nero continued to stare off into the tunnel mouth. Bryce tried again to see what the creature was seeing, the flow seemed to slide through the mouth and curve away to the right. The grey light that shone from within the tunnel splashed thickly on the wall. As Vorn and Niles joined Bryce in his study, there was a sudden flicker or a ripple of shadow on the wall, like something moving. The dull sound of pipes creaking, or a horn blowing could be heard, but the sound was more organic.

  “Why have we stopped, what’s up there?’ Niles said to Nero, who just kept on staring.

  “There’s something wrong here,” Bryce whispered.

  “No, I just needed a rest, that’s all,” Nero said quickly, before walking on. “Come on, we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  It was when they entered the mouth of the tunnel that Bryce felt a spasm in his right arm. It was a rhythmic twitch, almost in Morse code, an itch that followed the nerve endings back to the primal centres of his brain.

  And it increased in intensity every time he looked at Nero. Bryce tried desperately to ignore the sensation, even tried counting his steps as he walked, in case they became lost and needed to find their way back, but he knew it was a bid to distract himself from the discomfort of his arm.

  With each glance at Nero, the twinge and the subsequent pain increased and eventually Bryce realized the arm was somehow trying to warn him.

  But by then it was already too late.

  As the tunnel curved away to reveal a wide pool of sewage, they saw them. Six figures crouched down, lapping at the filthy water with long proboscis-like tongues. Bits of their bodies slid off and dropped into the sewage, splashing heavily to mingle with bubbles of methane gas.

  “What the fuck are they?” Bryce heard Niles exclaim. The twinge became a searing burn and involuntarily, he moved his hand to his gun and unclasped the holster clip.

  The creatures, on seeing the newcomers, immediately began to mingle, as if in conversation, debating the odds. But this discussion lasted only a few seconds because before long, they had dispersed, taking up their attack positions. They approached them slowly, but deftly and as they came closer, Bryce realized the rags they wore were actually their own skin, tattered and torn.

  Niles turned to Vorn, who wore a look of complete and utter terror.

  “Vorn, what the fuck are they?” Niles said.

  “I…don’t know—but we need to flee!”

  Bryce noticed the freak Nero backing away and the bounty hunter turned towards him.

  “This is an ambush isn’t it?” Bryce said, as one of the stalking brood began to scale the sewer wall above them, looking down at its prey as a spider would.

  Nero smiled. “Good luck assholes!” and retreated into the darkness.

  Bryce wanted to pursue the freak, but his arm screamed at him to pay attention to the current threat. Three more leprous beasts swam through the shit-pool in their direction.

  “Fuck! Vorn fucking do something!” Niles said.

  Vorn hesitated, trying to rummage through his bag of tricks. Bryce drew his gun and lined up one of the creatures as it pulled itself out of the fetid water.

  T
he arm—Bryce’s arm—felt as if it wasn’t even there, like it had been amputated and incorrectly reattached. But with the gun in his disconnected hand, the twinge was gone.

  “Get behind me!” he told the other two.

  The pair complied, Niles cowering for his pathetic life, while the occultist was torn between morbid curiosity and terror. The creatures crept closer, sunken eyeballs, shining white in pits of black, jaundiced skin sloughing off the meat of their arms, like they were wearing raggedy shirts five sizes too big.

  “What are you going to do Mr Colton? You can’t shoot them all!” Vorn said.

  One of the freaks jumped towards them. Bryce’s right arm took aim and the right index finger squeezed down on the trigger.

  The creature’s head exploded, the body falling decapitated to the ground like a stone. Another creature, moaning and drooling, as if in sorrow at the loss of its brother, was close behind.

  The barrel of the .44 burst with muzzle flare again, the bullet sending the creature cart-wheeling backwards. Bryce’s arm didn’t even recoil. Yet more of the creatures came, a pair taking the pincer approach, flanking the trio on either side.

  “We’ve got to make a run for it!” Vorn said.

  “Can’t you do something?” Niles said. “You’re a warlock for Christ’s sake!”

  Vorn shook his head uncontrollably. “They’re too many of them!”

  The two Lepers skittered up to them simultaneously. So, they were smart, Bryce realized. I may only be able to get a shot off into one of them, but not the other.

  “Move back!” Bryce said, pushing against his terrified companions, who were seemingly paralysed. Bryce literally had to step on their toes to get them to move. Eventually, Niles’ and Vorn’s survival instincts kicked in and they followed the bounty hunter’s orders, inching back quite a few steps.

  The creatures came at a run—or a fast swagger—unafraid of the gun that had already felled two of their own, they knew they had the upper hand. Once they were about fifteen feet away, they leapt at the trio. The occultist and the billionaire screamed for their lives, while the bounty hunter calculated, his eyes and gun hand in perfect sync. He counted the seconds as the attackers came shrieking, closer and closer until—