In their attempt to figure out the mysteries, humans had created a new trade, a blend of scientist and wizard they called alchemists. The greatest among them was Johann Konrad Dippel. He had invented a potent formula called the Elixir of Life, except every attempt to utilize its healing powers upon the living ended in death. So he decided to work backwards, using the dead to test his potions. Dippel believed only a perfect body could utilize his perfect Elixir. He became a sculptor of flesh and bone. He was an artist, and his masterpiece was a body like nothing any of the Fallen had seen before.
Dippel was not the first to attempt to imitate the Creator. He was just the first who was good at it. Possessing a body like that meant that it would be almost impossible to send one of the Fallen back to the Void.
Many of us watched from the shadows as Dippel worked. He understood the flesh, but he did not understand the spirit. He was unaware that he had created a beacon for the damned. He worked under a cloud of covetous demons. We were jealous of man’s creativity and imagination, but that was nothing compared to the hatred we had for each other. We fought amongst ourselves, each of the Fallen demanding rights to the body.
Then the strongest of the host who had escaped into the mortal world claimed the body for himself. He had been a prince in heaven and a general in the war. He declared that once complete this perfect body would be his, and he would use it to thwart the Creator’s work in the mortal world once and for all.
He had a name once, but since we had been cast out, we only knew him by the title branded upon him when the Creator had hurled us into the Void.
The weak spirits fled from Cursed.
I had other ideas.
* * *
Washington, DC, was a bipolar city. One portion was big buildings, monuments, government lackeys, and tourists. The other was impoverished slums, bad neighborhoods, drug dealers, and gang warfare. Franks went directly to the one that had fewer cameras.
He knew how the search would go because he’d been involved in creating the MCB’s contingency plans. They would make up a terrible but mundane crime, send it to the media, and then splash his picture and description everywhere. Every cop in the region would be on the lookout. It was times like this that he wished he’d built his current body out of average-sized pieces. Being bigger than most NFL linebackers was inconvenient when you were a fugitive. He could swap out body parts, but that required corpses and a place for surgery. Franks could change many of his limbs and organs on his own, but stitching a new face on—and having it actually fit and not look like a bad Halloween mask—was beyond what he could accomplish on his own.
The police had been all over the wreck a minute after he’d crashed through the side of a convenience store, but he’d already been long gone before they’d set up their perimeter. He’d ditched his damaged suit coat and found a black raincoat hanging on a peg by the back door. It was far too tight on his shoulders and he couldn’t even button it, but it had a hood to hide his face. Franks had fled on foot, sticking to the shadows for a few blocks before he’d found a car to hot-wire.
Once he was out of the immediate vicinity of the crime scene, Franks had pulled over and removed a flask from his pocket. He did not want to be driving when he took a swig of the potent, glowing liquid inside. Drinking the Elixir of Life caused a sensation like inhaling ignited napalm, but he was injured, and if he wanted to continue at this pace, he’d need to be in top shape.
He took a drink, and then carefully screwed the cap back on before swallowing. The single dose of the potent alchemical mixture rolled down his throat like molten lava.
Every pain receptor in Franks’ body fired at once. His muscles locked up tight. It was like running hot sandpaper over every tissue in his body. He ground his teeth together and didn’t let out a sound. Several seconds of his supercharged nervous system electrocuting itself later, Franks came back to reality. His grip had bent the steering wheel. Blood ran freely from his nostrils and eyes, but he just wiped it away with some tissues he’d found in the glove box and got back on the road.
That was the stuff.
It still hurt, but now it was the tolerable pain of bone splinters dragging themselves back into place. The sensation would drive most humans mad, but for Franks it just required a bit more concentration to drive safely. He didn’t like the term pain threshold. That implied there was an upper limit to the suffering he could withstand. If there was such a thing in the mortal world, he’d not found it yet. Franks took an inventory of each injury. Anything that would eventually heal on its own could be drastically sped up by the Elixir. Nothing felt irreparably damaged. There were still bullet fragments lodged in his muscle tissue. He’d have to cut those out when he had a chance.
There would be no quarter from the MCB. Even if some of them suspected that he was innocent, they would still do their duty and track him down until ordered off the case. He’d trained them so he’d expect nothing less than their best. They’d have checkpoints at every route out of the city. His credit cards would be monitored, but he always kept a couple thousand in cash on his person, so that wouldn’t be an immediate problem. The stolen 9mm had gone out the window in the crash, so all he had was the Glock he’d snagged at headquarters and half a single partially expended magazine of silver 10mm. His apartment would be watched. He had a very short list of associates and acquaintances, and the MCB would put someone on each of them as well.
Yet he was not without resources. He had stashes the MCB didn’t know about. Once again, three hundred years of hard-earned paranoia would pay off. Franks drove the stolen Honda Civic to the worst neighborhood in DC. The narrow street he was looking for was on the back side of a housing project. Even if security cameras had ever been installed here, they would not have lasted long before one of the locals would have used them for target practice.
Most of the streetlights were dead. There were broken bottles in the gutters. If his stolen car got a flat tire, he was going to be pissed. Franks found the house he was looking for. It was rundown, even by this neighborhood’s standards. There was a cinder block wall around the backyard. The graffiti on the wall was similar to the signs at his apartment. The local human thugs knew not to mess with the secret horrible supernatural terrors that lived here. Only a fool would intrude on gnome turf.
The car’s interior light came on when he opened the door. Not wanting to be spotted, and not bothering to look for the off switch, he just punched the light and broke it. It took a minute for Franks to maneuver himself out of the Honda. He’d barely fit inside to begin with and got one leg stuck under the bent steering wheel. He’d steal something roomier as soon as he had a chance. Franks didn’t appreciate economy. He appreciated horsepower, ramming capability, and legroom, in that order.
Franks approached the building. Most passersby would assume it was a crack house, but that would probably be a step up. Several dogs started barking. It was after two in the morning and speakers in the backyard were still playing loud rap music. The bass was a constant distorted rumble. He knew that there were already eyes and probably guns on him, so he kept his hands where they could be seen. He skipped the front door and went to the side gate, which had a skull and crossbones painted on it. Not bothering to knock, he just pushed the gate open and went inside.
It wasn’t several dogs, it was just one, but it had three heads so it made three times the noise. Each head was barking and snarling at him and the animal was the size of a calf. There was a leather leash attached to its spiked collar and a foot and a half of gnome muscle was hauling back on the beast, keeping it from attacking Franks. “Hold up, homie . . . Damn, you tall!” the gnome shouted over the noise.
The barking was getting on his nerves and he still had a headache from the Elixir. “Down!” Franks snapped at the superdog. All three heads stopped barking. Franks scowled at it, and the dog began to whimper. It rolled over submissively.
The gnome handler was shocked by his normally vicious animal’s immediate surrender. “Who you be
?” he asked nervously.
“Franks.”
There were other sentries approaching. Gnomes seemed to appear out of the woodwork. Every one of them was packing heat, but none of them were stupid enough to pull. Normally they’d be flashing gang signs and talking smack, but most of them either knew who he was, or could sense that he wasn’t to be trifled with. “What you want, tall man?” one demanded.
“Tell Olaf I want my stuff.”
“Old Olaf done got his ass capped.” A younger gnome, his beard barely halfway down his chest, approached with a swagger. “Looks like you came into the wrong yard, motherfucker!”
The one with the dog tried to warn the punk off. “Yo, tomte. That’s the Franks. He’s likely to shoelace your face just to learn you better.”
“I don’t know no Franks.” Other gnomes tried to shush the young upstart, but it was too late. He lifted his shirt and flashed the cheap piece-of-shit .25 automatic shoved in his waistband. “You’d best step off fo’ I bust a cap in yo—”
Franks kicked him over the fence.
The gnome disappeared into the night. He’d left behind a gold chain and one shoe. There was a collective gasp as the other gnomes took a few nervous steps back.
“The rest of you know who I am?”
Most of them nodded.
“Then get my stash . . . Now.”
A bunch of them took off running.
“Turn that shit off.” The gangster rap fell silent. Franks folded his arms and waited while the rest of the gnomes watched him hesitantly. A few turned invisible, hoping he wouldn’t notice them. Gnome culture was big on bluster; they’d been pushy in the old country, and they’d naturally taken to the thug life here, but Franks had been dealing with gnomes since he’d wandered across northern Europe hundreds of years ago, and some things never changed. The best way to deal with punks was by establishing dominance, and luckily for Franks, establishing dominance came naturally. There was a lot of whispering about him being the tallest. “What are you looking at?” Franks asked one of the gnomes.
“Nothing, Mr. Franks!” The gnome averted his eyes.
They dragged up two big plastic hard cases from their underground tunnels. It took six gnomes on each to carry them. They dropped the suitcases at Franks’ feet and then scurried away. He checked to make sure the locks hadn’t been tampered with. Olaf might have been a criminal scumbag, but he’d kept his word in exchange for Franks not stomping the life out of his little PUFF-applicable gang. He put in the combination and opened one to make certain it was as he’d left it.
“What’s in them boxes?” asked one of the gnomes. Several of them scooted forward, hopelessly curious. When they saw what was inside there was a chorus of oohs and aaahs. “You mean to fuck somebody’s shit up real good, G!”
“Yes.” Satisfied, he closed the case, then picked them both up. They weighed over two hundred pounds each. Gnomes got into everything, everywhere, so it couldn’t hurt to ask. “His name is Stricken. He’s with a group called Special Task Force Unicorn.”
“Everybody knows there ain’t no such thing as unicorns,” said one of the gnomes. “Yeah, we know that tall white scary motherfucker and his deals. His crew is monsters and shit. Even badass straight-up tomte killas don’t play that game. PUFF exemption is for chumps.”
“I got my PUFF exemption right here,” one of the gnomes grabbed his crotch. The other ones hooted and fist-bumped.
“Find him for me.”
“Sounds like work. How much green you talking about, G?” asked another gnome suspiciously.
“The next time one of you makes me mad, I’ll remember the favor and not kill you all,” Franks stated. He scanned the short crowd as that sank in. The gnomes knew he wasn’t lying. “I was never here.”
The gnomes breathed a collective sigh of relief as Franks left their yard.
* * *
The phone woke her. She fumbled around, knocking things off the nightstand looking for it. That was the problem with sleeping in a different hotel almost every night. Sure, she had heightened senses and could see in the dark, but she needed to actually open her eyes for that to work, and she was too tired to do that.
She found the phone. The number was unknown. “What?”
“You’re on, Red.” It was Stricken. “There’s been a situation.”
“There’s always a situation . . .” Of the many complaints she had about being forced to work for STFU, boredom wasn’t one of them. Heather Kerkonen rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s time to get your ass out of bed, go downstairs, and meet your new team.”
“The only reason I need a new team is because you got my old one killed.”
“Those are the breaks . . . So how much time do you have left before you earn your PUFF exemption?”
She resisted the urge to chuck the cell phone across the room.
“Come on, Heather. I know you know it off the top of your head.”
She felt like a prisoner making hash marks on the wall of a cell. “Three hundred and seventy-two days.”
“Aw, you’re almost halfway there! Too bad for those three hundred and seventy-two days I own you.”
“There’s an Amendment about that,” she grumbled.
“Funny. I don’t remember the Emancipation Proclamation saying anything about werewolves. Be downstairs in twenty minutes.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, before realizing that Stricken had already hung up.
I hate that guy. Heather had far better control of her werewolf urges than anyone else of her kind, but sometimes it was fun to imagine chasing a terrified Stricken through a forest like he was a deer, but since she was still a good person, she didn’t like to think about the parts where she caught up and ripped him to pieces . . . much.
She rubbed her face with both hands. Heather could recognize when she was exhausted—not physically, because it was hard to keep a werewolf down—but she was emotionally drained. Las Vegas had been a nightmare . . . literally, and she couldn’t believe she was being called back up already. STFU didn’t give a damn about its monsters. They were expendable assets, nothing more, and if they were lucky enough to survive to the end, then they’d get a PUFF exemption that said the government wouldn’t murder them unless it became convenient. It was a hell of a deal.
Hotel rooms sucked for anybody, but they sucked more when you could still smell the last hundred people who slept in your bed, and especially how gross some of them were. She went to the shower, got the water as hot as possible, which wasn’t nearly hot enough, and tried to scrub herself clean. Since she could regenerate, her body was free of scars, but she couldn’t say the same thing for her mind.
The last year had been nuts. Ever since she’d been forced to leave Earl and coerced into this shitty job, it had been nonstop awfulness. There’d been a brief training period, but STFU’s methods tended to be throw the monster at the problem and see what happens. Stricken liked to say he was a proponent of on-the-job-training, but that was code for I’m an asshole who doesn’t particularly care if you live or die.
So far she’d gotten to visit scenic places like Pakistan and Venezuela, and eat interesting people. Luckily for her, everyone and everything she’d been sent after so far had been astoundingly, obviously evil, and up to no good, so she at least had some moral justification left to get her by. But every time Stricken called, she was terrified to find out what the next assignment was going to be, and his definition of what constituted a threat to America seemed a little loose. She feared her luck wouldn’t hold out, Stricken was going to send her after somebody who really didn’t deserve a werewolf in their face, and then she was going to face some very difficult choices.
Heather got dressed, grabbed her backpack of extra clothes—being a werewolf tended to be hell on your wardrobe—and took the elevator down to the lobby.
It was really early in the morning. The free breakfast bar wasn’t even open yet, which was a bummer. Lycanthropy didn’t have
too many perks, but being able to eat an entire tub of biscuits and gravy and still having a figure was one of them.
The lobby was nearly empty, but even if it hadn’t been, she still would have been able to pick out her contact because the person smelled like monsters. The handlers weren’t monsters themselves. Every STFU handler she had met had been a perfectly normal human. This one was a woman, sitting in a corner, reading a paper. She stood up when she saw Heather coming. Heather still had cop eye so she sized her up quickly. Mid fifties, approximately five seven, one twenty, attractive but relatively normal looking, dressed nice but casual, nothing about her appearance suggested that she was an STFU operative, except for the fact that something supernatural had shed on her sweater.
When you were around supernatural beings you tended to get their scent on you. It was especially odd for a regular person to have the scent of multiple types of monsters on their clothing at the same time. Heather picked through the details as she approached. “You’ve got an ogre, an undead something or other, and a weird thing I’ve never met before, but it likes Korean food. And you’ve got big dogs for pets.”
For being a top secret monster wrangler, the woman had a friendly smile. “I raise Irish wolf hounds.”
“Oh, I love dogs,” Heather said, except dogs didn’t love her anymore. In fact her presence scared them to death. And she could understand why, since she’d lost her mind and eaten poor Otto. She still felt like crap about that. Poor little guy. “Well, I used to. I’m Heather.”
“Beth Flierl. I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m sorry about Las Vegas.”
“You win some, you lose some . . .”
“And some you get sent into a bad situation and lose friends when your shot-calling muckety-mucks screwed up because they didn’t do their homework. They shouldn’t have sent you in there at all.”
It was a little surprising to hear one of STFU’s human employees come out and say something like that. “I won’t lie. I’m still mad about it.”
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