Sanctuary's Fiend

by Andrew Lynch

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “In fact, you’ve been off your game a lot recently. What’s up?”

  Tell them, or not tell them? Maybe Tuesday night cheerleading wasn’t the best time.

  Nope, I just couldn’t. Not right now, anyway. I sighed. “It’s nothing, really. And can we not make ‘off my game’ mean ‘good at things’ please?”

  “Girl problems?” Bhav asked.

  “Guy problems?” Peter asked.

  “Really guys, it’s nothing!”

  “You know,” Bhav began, “you’re going to have to break down these barriers and tell someone.”

  “Why not us?” Peter said.

  “I can’t even explain it to myself, so I don’t know how I could to someone else.” At least, not without using the word ‘vampire’.

  As we were about to cross the street, I smelled something odd from behind us.

  I couldn’t quite place it.

  “Do you guys smell that?”

  “Must be my new cologne,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. He hasn’t quite learned not to drown himself in it yet. I’m still teaching him.”

  Bhav shrieked. Presumably Peter had playfully let him know his thoughts on that comment.

  I turned around and all I could see was a long imposing stone wall. “This is the church, right?”

  “Uhh, yeah. But it’s a few blocks that way. It’s all graveyard at this point.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve been in for years,” I mused.

  “Well, graves, not much to see.” Bhav shrugged.

  That smell. What was it? “You guys go ahead. I’m going to poke around.”

  “Did you hear that, Peter?” Bhav asked.

  “It sounded like, just after she told us she’s having emotional troubles that she’s not ready to open up about yet, she told us she’s going to go for a walk. On her own. Through a graveyard.”

  “It did have that ring to it, didn’t it?”

  “It did. At least it’s not nighttime!”

  “Bye, guys,” I said and started walking towards the cemetery gates.

  “Sure you don’t want us to come with you?” Peter called after me.

  I waved them off, but their muffled tones as they spoke to each other afterwards sounded very disapproving.

  What was I smelling?

  And why was I suddenly trusting my nose so much? I wasn’t a dog. Another Draugr thing, I guessed.

  I reached the large black gates in between the whitewashed stone walls. They were open, so I walked straight in. I hadn’t been here for years. I barely remembered it. A giant stone, gothic cathedral loomed in the center of a massive graveyard - four blocks long, six deep. The walls encased it on every side, although at the farthest edge, trees rubbed up against the walls - Sanctuary’s grand forest letting its presence be known. I realized that we were quite close to Lincoln Park, where the murder had happened, and I shivered. Still, I wasn’t going to let that put me off.

  This wasn’t a new cemetery, with orderly rows, and everything carefully mapped out. Headstones ran mazes between larger mausoleums, tombs, vaults, and crypts. Name a way to bury someone, and it looked like at some point this place had tried it.

  That smell. My legs followed my nose.

  It reminded me of last night, of having my face shoved in the ground by Johnny.

  Was it dirt? No, I’d smelled dirt before. This wasn’t dirt.

  What else had I smelled that night?

  Mr. Anderton?

  His blood.

  Shockingly, at the thought of blood, I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t know if that was because that blow to my head had really knocked something loose, or if this was just like my parents had said. My abilities and instincts would naturally ebb and flow. Maybe I was even getting better control.

  And the smell definitely wasn’t blood. That had an indescribable allure.

  This smell had no allure. No attraction. In fact, it was repulsive. Only my curiosity was pulling me forward.

  It smelled of… death. Not the dead, that would have made sense, being in a cemetery and all, but ‘death’.

  I found myself in the back corner of the graveyard. I hadn’t even acknowledged the six blocks I’d walked. I was standing in front of a crypt.

  I couldn’t mistake the smell now. It had been so subtle yesterday, and I had been so distracted, but there was only one word for it. Putrid.

  The door to the crypt was sealed. Weren’t these things supposed to be airtight? Why could I smell what was inside?

  I ran through the undead supernaturals that I could think of who might live in a graveyard. I’d heard of ghosts, vampires, liches, and ghouls. But of those that lived in Sanctuary, they all lived in houses just like the rest of us. Erin’s home was one of my favorite places for weekend sleepovers. So that didn’t make sense.

  I walked carefully around the crypt. It was several yards wide and the dark stone was covered in lichen.

  When I reached the far side, I saw that the wall had crumbled. I peered in.

  The inside was bare. The only feature of note was a staircase leading down.

  As I stepped inside, I steadied myself against one of the fallen walls, and my fingers slipped into a groove. I was no geologist, and anything could have gouged stone, but I felt my stomach drop. The graveyard, the smell, and those marks.

  I knew I should have just turned around. Why was I going towards this? Going alone into an abandoned crypt was a really bad idea! What was I trying to prove?

  Oh yeah. That I could control myself.

  Suddenly this seemed like a terrible way of proving that I could control my instincts.

  No. If I could bring forth my abilities, and repress them on command, then I wouldn’t be a danger. To me or to my friends.

  I steeled myself and stepped inside the crypt.

  A shaft of light from the stairwell penetrated the crypt’s darkness. The contrast made it harder for me to see than if it was just pitch black.

  The air down here was damp in the back of my throat. The basement chamber was much larger than the upstairs room, and it had two rooms splitting off either side.

  There were four coffins in this room, spaced evenly in the corners.

  I saw all of this, but what struck me most was the smell. It was horrible, and I gagged.

  Something had to be down here with me. The thing I’d smelled last night. I began shaking as adrenaline and fear ran through me.

  It was time to stop acting like a human. Time to deliberately switch on my abilities. Become fast, and strong, and hopefully invincible. Yeah, invincible sounded good.

  I heard something scrape against stone from the room on the left.

  Without thinking, I swiveled around and started back up the stairs.

  No! I stopped myself. This wasn’t about anyone else. I had to do this or face the fear for who knew how long, afraid of what I might do to any human. I had to control myself.

  My parents said it was stress that triggered supernatural instincts, and this was definitely stressful enough to trigger anything I might be capable of.

  Right?

  I stepped back into the room. More unseen scraping.

  With care, I made my way into the middle of the chamber, my eyes fixed on the room to the left.

  I couldn’t stop myself from shaking, but I kept walking. Once in the middle of the room, I couldn’t see anything special, but I heard the scraping again.

  A step forward… and I froze.

  Hot, moist, putrid breath blew down the back of my neck.

  I whipped around, and came face to face with… whatever this thing was.

  It was twice my size, and dripped green pus from its body. It had hunched down onto all fours, sticking its face into mine. Its teeth were brown and sharp, and saliva spat against my face as it breathed.

  It roared, and that was what I needed.

  The shaking stopped. Time slowed. Its jaws lunged forwards and began to close. But I could see it all happening.
I stepped backwards, dodging the powerful jaws.

  I could almost imagine the confusion on its face when it bit down on nothing.

  Its eyes opened comically slowly, and saw me still standing in front of it. Time to see what I could do. I pulled my fist back and swung at the meaty jaw now in front of me. I connected, and saw its dead flesh wobble at the impact, and its head knocked sideways with the blow.

  But then, it sped up! I could tell I was still moving fast. It just… matched my speed.

  The back of its meaty hand swung at full speed, and I felt myself lifted off the floor.

  I crashed against a wall, and my head slammed against it. It hurt – although not as much as I had expected it to.

  I needed to be faster and stronger. But I didn’t know how!

  As I staggered to my feet, legs shaking, and head burning, the beast charged at me.

  I dived sideways out of the way.

  It slammed into the wall, knocking several stones loose.

  I scrambled to my feet, and ran. I’d made a mistake. This was too powerful for me to fight. I had to get out.

  Half way across the room, I felt something on my back. I missed a step and fell, skidding along the floor until I lay only a long stride from the stairway.

  Two things exploded at once. My back exploded in fire, and I realized the monster had raked its giant diseased claws, tearing my skin. And the rear wall of the crypt exploded, showering the whole room in shards of stone. I shrieked in pain and shock.

  I tried to stand up and keep running, but my legs didn’t respond. I looked down, and I saw blood pooling around me. Was that mine?

  Darkness was creeping over my vision, and I let out a moan.

  My last thoughts were of why the monster hadn’t already finished me. And why had the wall exploded?

  Chapter 16

  Mr. Anderton

  I brushed aside the leaves and lifted the metal grate.

  Cold, damp air wafted out and hit me in the face. It would have felt refreshing compared to the sweltering heat of the sun if it hadn’t been for the cloying sweetness attached to it.

  I put down my can of oil, its job of stopping the hinges from screeching complete, and pulled out my pistol. I thumbed the flashlight attachment into the on position and looked down.

  The light didn’t reach the bottom of the shaft.

  I holstered the pistol at my waist to allow the flashlight to point down, pulled my mask up from around my neck to cover my mouth and nose, and crawled onto the ladder.

  After I’d left Tom’s last night, I’d returned to the park and followed the smell. I couldn’t risk losing my only clue. It had led me to this area before the Lyfe had left me. I’d spent the next hour scrambling around and searching, until I’d found this.

  I’d come fully prepared. My Glock 17, and a shoulder slung Mossberg 500 tactical pump-action shotgun which would hurt just about anything I found, mortal or otherwise, and a block of C4. Just in case. And my pen, of course.

  It went without saying that I had a vial of Lyfe in my tactical vest.

  Finally my feet touched firm ground. Well, not very firm. I could tell it was wet and sludge-like from the way my boot slipped as I put weight on it. I looked down and saw a brown slurry.

  ‘Just dirt, I’m sure,’ I muttered to myself.

  I pulled out my pistol again, and held it in front of me. It lit the way, and meant that anything stupid enough to charge me head on would end up very dead, very quick.

  The tunnel started out as a metal tube, but that quickly ended. The hole continued as a dangerous looking, unsteady earthworks, with the occasional wooden beam keeping things propped up.

  I carried on, moving slowly, making sure I didn’t miss anything. After a minute, the earth wall on my right started to be intermittently replaced with stone. Small stones, not large blocks of it. I didn’t know too much about the area, but I assumed that meant they were very old walls.

  I knew from the smell last night that I was searching for a Fiend. I’d faced one before in the catacombs under Paris. Disgusting monsters that oozed death from their pores. They didn’t have venom, but they were so corrupted that their saliva could kill if it mixed in the bloodstream. The only thing they seemed to fear was sunlight. They felt pain, but nothing would bring them down apart from sun, or decapitation and burning. Or the plague sacs in the back of their neck, but those were never the easiest option.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for when I needed to find one on my own though, and short of stumbling across a dead body, or the Fiend itself, I was lost. I didn’t want to take the Lyfe until it was required, but without it I had no clues. Perhaps with it, I’d be able to follow the smell of death again. Right now, the air just had a slight sweetness to it through my mask.

  A faint noise came from the other side of the tunnel. I stopped next to one of the walls. Had I really heard something? I scanned the wall with my flashlight but didn’t see anything unusual. I moved closer and pressed my ear to one of the stones. I thought I could hear...

  The wall crashed into the side of my head, making me topple to the ground. My gun stayed at the ready despite my falling.

  The wall had bent inwards where I had been standing, and a small hole had been knocked out right where my head had been.

  I jumped to my feet, and peered through the hole. There was a ray of light in a large room, with silhouettes crashing around. The smell suddenly hit me like a blow to the face.

  Pulling the C4 out of my tactical vest pocket, I stuck it to the old wall. I set the detonator and ran down the tunnel, crouching after I was out of the blast radius.

  I pulled the vial of Lyfe from my pocket, and finished the mental count of five in my head.

  The explosion rocked my entire body, but as soon as I could tell up from down, the Lyfe hit the back of my throat. That same copper and sulphur onslaught hit me, and I charged back towards the now wrecked wall.

  In a single fluid movement I breached through the wall, and brought my shotgun up to bear. The flashlight lit the room, and I saw Sanctuary’s Fiend.

  It had its back to me, so I didn’t hesitate. I fired two shots. The roar of pain it let out was louder than the explosion. It whirled around, turning on me, and lunged.

  I dived out of the way, firing another shot that went just wide of its face. It fell through the hole in the wall, tumbling out into the tunnel, and I rolled back onto my feet. As I swept my eyes around the room, my flashlight picked up something on the floor. With the Fiend out of the room, I gave myself the heartbeat I needed to take in what it was.

  A body lay face down and still, in a patch of slick wetness. Poor girl. I must have just missed saving her.

  Carefully, I brought my shotgun back to where I knew the Fiend would be attacking from. I could hear it picking itself up. They were resilient, but predictable. I could finish this here and now.

  But I also heard a moan.

  I glanced back to the body. It was moving. She was trying to look at her own ruined torso.

  Rel.

  Shit. Not again.

  I let my shotgun fall to my side, and sprinted over to her.

  There was no time to check anything, as the Fiend burst into the room again.

  I scooped Rel up in my arms, my Lyfe infused body handling her as if she weighed nothing, and ran to where the shaft of light was coming from. There had to be a way out. She must have got in somehow, whether by herself or dragged in by the Fiend waiting to torment her. I had to get her to safety.

  If there was anything I could do, I’d do it. I refused to bring a lifeless body to her parents.

  As I ran up the stairs, I could hear the Fiend gaining on me, but there was no time to look back.

  I came up into a small room, with sun streaming in from one side. I took the entire room and the small wall in a single leap, bursting out into the sunlight.

  We were in the church’s cemetery.

  Of course, I knew a Fiend wouldn’t risk coming out into the sunlig
ht, but I couldn’t stop moving. Rel wouldn’t last long, if she would last at all.

  I cast a hurried glance over my shoulder, only to see the Fiend’s eyes glowing from the staircase, and a large claw start to burn in the sunlight.

  I ran.

  Chapter 17

  Reliquiae

  I felt myself thrown onto something soft.

  I was on a couch again, but this time I really couldn’t move.

  My eyes refused to open. I couldn’t feel my legs.

  But I could smell my desire. Blood.

  My eyes opened, not on my command, but to better locate that which I hungered for. And this was definitely a hunger.

  Mr. Anderton’s face came into sharp focus. He was leaning over me, saying something I couldn’t hear.

  His face was streaked with his own blood. A cut on his cheek openly flowed with the sweet red fluid. I tried to move to taste it, but I couldn’t. Nothing worked.

  I panicked. Why couldn’t I move? What had happened to me?

  The last thing I could remember was… the monster. It had become faster than me. I’d been fighting it, but… How had Mr. Anderton found me? Why hadn’t the monster killed me?

  A voice finally broke through my deafness. It was panicked. It was prey.

  “Dad?! What’s happened?”

  Rick.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Anderton said, still leaning over me. “Stay here and talk to her.”

  “What?! It’s not ‘nothing’! Shouldn’t we call an ambulance? She’s bleeding!”

  “I can handle this. I just need something from upstairs.”

  As he stood up, a single drop was pulled from his cheek, and I watched the glistening fluid fall to my own face, splashing on my pale lips.

  He rushed away, but it didn’t matter. My tongue slithered out of my mouth, and probed around until I found it. I gasped.

  Rick replaced his father and leaned over me, whispering panicked reassurances that he obviously didn’t believe.

  He faded away. The room I was in faded away.

  I tasted water after a thousand years of drought. It was the first gasp of air after almost drowning. It was the birth of a child, and the death of an enemy. It was the most honest thing I’d ever experienced in this life. I was so weak, and I hurt so much, and this would make me strong again.