Supernatural--Cold Fire

by John Passarella

  Bringing the weapon forward, Dean slapped the flat of the blade across the muzzle of a leaping hybrid, knocking it aside. An overhead swing lopped off the head of a third attacker. He’d need to chop off the limbs to finish the disassembly, but he’d bought himself some time to deal with the others. The hybrids were slowest to recover if they lost their heads. Lop off an arm or a leg and they’d continue to fight, though less effectively. Remove the head, and all the preternatural energy in the hybrid turned to self-repair.

  From across the factory, Dean heard simian screeches and howls, but he needed to dispatch the hyena-teen gang circling him before he could help his brother. Besides, Sam could take care of himself. And, unlike Dean, he didn’t have to worry about giving in to the Mark of Cain and letting the unreasoning rage take over and consume him until it burned itself out in a river of blood.

  No, Dean had to stay focused on killing monsters without becoming one in the process.

  * * *

  Sam barely had time to think before the creatures attacked. Swinging from exposed steel girders in the ruined shell of the factory, they moved with simian grace, though something was off about them. What initially seemed an illusion of motion resolved into a grotesque multiplicity of limbs.

  Two hybrids dropped to the floor on either side of him while a third, larger than the others, sprouted oversized bat wings as it descended, touching down silently. The confusion of limbs became clear, though no less disconcerting. Each hybrid had a human torso and human arms, with a pair of large simian arms above those, for a total of four upper limbs. The hybrids flanking Sam had orangutan arms and legs, judging by the orange-reddish coloring, while the bat-winged leader had the arms and lower body of a gorilla. All three had incongruously smaller chimpanzee heads, filled with a mismatched assortment of crocodile teeth, which became apparent when they screeched in unison, a moment before attacking.

  Sam swung the cleaver at the face of the gorilla hybrid, knocking the leader off balance, while jamming his elbow into the face of the orangutan hybrid on his left and narrowly avoiding the reaching hands of the one on his right. Human and simian hands pawed at him, scraping and clutching, determined to get a hold. Technically, he was outnumbered three to one, but the odds felt much steeper with twelve hands and fists pitted against his two. As the number and weight of his assailants threatened to overwhelm him, Dean chose that moment to kick in the rear door, which struck a hybrid on the far side of the factory judging by its yelp of pain.

  Startled, the simian hybrids paused, looking toward the source of the disturbance. Sam allowed himself an almost involuntary glance Dean’s way, long enough to see a pack of four-legged hybrids circling his brother, without relinquishing the advantage of the momentary distraction. A fierce swing of the cleaver hacked off the face and front of the skull of the orangutan hybrid on his right, then a second quick chop sunk deep into the neck of the gorilla hybrid. Both staggered and fell away, the first blinded, the second clamping both human hands to an apparently severed artery. For such a grievous injury, the blood seeped out in a steady flow, no spurting or gushing. With hands compressing the wound, the hybrid could probably heal itself in minutes without the threat of bleeding out.

  From behind Sam, four arms wrapped around his chest and abdomen, squeezing with inhuman ferocity. A moment before he expected his ribs to crack, Sam slammed his head backward into the chimpanzee head, no doubt preempting an intended crocodile-teeth bite. The grip around his torso slackened and with his arms free, Sam took the cleaver in a two-handed grip and swung the blade wildly behind his head. He felt it bite into flesh and bone. Finally, he broke free of the four-armed hold, spun on his heel, and hoisted the cleaver at the neck join. Another chop beheaded the orangutan hybrid. Headless, it stood there, swaying slightly, as if confused how to proceed. The moment it fell, all four hands would reach for the missing head and begin the reassembly, so Sam left it standing there and went to work on the other two.

  The faceless one cocked its head, orienting itself by sound. The gorilla hybrid crouched, its bat wings snapped outward and it was aloft, but Sam anticipated the move and jumped, timing his leap to catch the top of its right wing with his left hand, then swiping down with the cleaver in his right to sever the wing from the hybrid’s back. The blow was beyond the join, not a true dismemberment at the seam, but effective nonetheless. With only one functioning wing, the gorilla hybrid spun out of control, turning in midair, exposing the back of his neck to Sam and his cleaver. A vicious blow to the right side of the neck from behind, combined with the early deep wound on the left front of its throat, was enough to complete the decapitation.

  Sam sprang back as the gorilla hybrid crashed to the ground and kicked the head clear of its frantically searching limbs, long enough for him to hack them off. And so his own battle continued, long and bloody work. At some point, he heard the repeated clang of an ax from across the factory: Dean completing a similar chore on the pack of four-legged hybrids that had ambushed him.

  Down on one knee and drenched in sweat, head bowed as he completed his grisly task, Sam froze at the sound of serpentine hissing combined with light, almost delicate footfalls crunching on bits of debris strewn across the factory floor.

  “Sam!”

  As Sam rose to his feet, Dean pointed upward with the dripping blade of his ax, indicating the second floor offices. A long undulating shape—or series of shapes—darker than the darkness it inhabited roiled behind the glass, slouching and rolling, as if rousing itself from a dormant state. Sam had the impression of vast size, and somehow knew that whatever it was, it had destroyed the walls between offices to accommodate its girth.

  The factory itself seemed to rumble.

  Metal creaked, bolts popped and the entire walkway trembled, shedding dust and rust in equal measure. A billowing haze rolled outward and descended around them. A moment later a strained window cracked, followed by others; a short series of distinct breaks, then an overwhelming explosion of sound as the offices erupted, blasting a hailstorm of broken glass in all directions. Only the Winchesters’ distance from the central walkway saved them from serious harm. Sam shielded his face with his right forearm and flinched as a piece of glass nicked his ear, a larger piece glanced off his thigh, and another pinged off the blade of the cleaver.

  The large, misshapen mass of the Chimera, hidden until now within the dark offices, brushed aside the damaged safety railing and launched itself off the walkway, a confusion of multiple heads, limbs and tentacles swirling around the central mass. Until the wide dragon-wings snapped open, Sam couldn’t even guess which way it had been facing. But that word lost meaning when something had multiple faces all over its sprawling body.

  Movement directly in front of Sam commanded his attention.

  In the confusion, he’d only registered the serpentine nature of the hybrid approaching him. Now he saw a scaled woman’s face, seemingly emerging from the thick, tubular body of a python, as if she’d been consumed whole and was somehow able to push her human essence through snake flesh. Bipedal, she had scaled human legs and feet with a mostly serpentine torso and cobra-hooded neck supporting a mostly human but hairless head, with ear holes and a flattened nose. She had two snakes—complete with heads—in place of human arms and hands. When she spoke, he noted her long fangs and forked tongue.

  “Please”—she said plaintively, with a slight lisp—“kill me!”

  Before Sam could react or respond to her plea, her long snake-headed arms darted toward him and she attacked.

  THREE

  Having suffered a few scrapes and bruises but no serious injuries, Dean finished dismembering the hyena-teens to defuse the hybridization process. As he severed the remaining sutures, each hybrid seemed to deflate and rapidly decay. Dean started forward in case Sam needed help dispatching the last of the ape hybrids, but the situation was in hand. Many loose hands, judging by the tangle of hacked-off limbs at Sam’s feet.

  He stopped short when he noticed a pit in th
e floor. One more careless step and he would have pitched head-first into the recess, which had probably housed the base of some robotic assembly equipment years ago, but was now home to something much more disturbing. Glowing with eerie energy in the pale, filtered moonlight writhed a mass of white shapeless flesh in various states of viscosity. Intermittently, unattached limbs would emerge from the surface, twitching and twisting, hands reaching, fingers grasping at nothing, searching for something. Every few seconds, a face—human or ursine or reptilian—rose to the surface, eyes milky, dazed or darting left and right in fear or hunger, before submerging again. Other than a liquid churning as the surface roiled, the mass remained silent until one of the faces appeared and a mouth gaped open to sigh, moan or pant.

  Instinctively, Dean kept his distance from the pit. Shaking his head in undisguised loathing, he muttered, “Nuke it from orbit.”

  Creaking and rumbling from above caught his attention, drawing his gaze to the observation deck and something large and menacing rising from the shadows of the dark offices. Their suspicions were confirmed. They’d found the lair of the Chimera and killing its hybrid henchmen—henchfiends?—had finally drawn its attention.

  Raising the long-handled ax to point at the commotion above, he called, “Sam!”

  Dean had time to notice the snake-woman blocking Sam before the office windows exploded and the massive Chimera clambered over the ruined safety railing and glided down to the factory floor with the aid of what seemed like expansive dragon wings. Whether the wings were the mutated-beyond-recognition contribution of some unfortunate gliding reptile or actual wings from a real dragon, Dean couldn’t guess. Hell, maybe they were appropriated from an honest-to-god gargoyle. A hunter should know better than anyone that the lines between myth and reality were blurry, and sometimes invisible.

  The Chimera’s unnatural girth settled on a mass of giant squid tentacles ringed by at least a half-dozen lion legs. Closer to the interior of its enormous body, Dean spotted a grizzled lion’s head near a goat’s head with one milky eye—facets of its original design, along with a tail that ended in a snake’s head, though it had three of those now. Over the centuries, the Chimera had added other limbs and heads to its mass—animal and human—in an indiscriminate display of self-modification, or self-mutilation. No rhyme or reason to the assemblage of parts. Trying to make sense of where one species ended and the next began seemed like a short trip to crazy town. There was something profoundly disturbing about the construction of the creature, like the collective nightmares of humankind come to life in one monstrous being.

  Most of the Chimera’s heads focused on Dean, so he had to assume he faced the front of the creature, which was confirmed when it lurched toward him, lion paws scrabbling for purchase along the cracked concrete floor as the tentacles heaved and shoved its bulk from behind, aided by the pounding of its massive wings. The fetid smell of the creature wafted toward him: eau de zoo layered with more than a hint of overflowing septic tank.

  “Hey, Jabba,” Dean taunted. “Think maybe you got carried away with the spare parts?”

  By way of answer, a tentacle lashed out and looped around his left arm as the serrated ring of one of the suckers tore through the sleeve of his jacket and dug into his flesh. Pulling against the hold of the tentacle, Dean shortened his right-handed grip on the ax and lopped off the end, freeing himself. The Chimera lumbered forward again and Dean backed away, narrowly avoiding the swipe of lion’s claws. When Dean cast a nervous glance backward to be sure he was in no danger of stumbling into an unformed flesh pit, another tentacle lashed out, wrapped around the ax handle and lifted him off the ground, hurling him toward the nearest cinderblock wall.

  He struck the wall with enough force to knock the wind out of him, falling to all fours as he gasped for breath. More importantly, he’d lost his grip on the ax and, as he struggled to his feet before the approaching monstrosity, he spotted the weapon, ten feet away, its long wooden handle split in half.

  As the Chimera bore down on him, one of the human heads—a Latino male with a teardrop tattoo—partially raised from the dark pelt like an impacted wisdom tooth, spoke to him. “You will… join me.”

  Literally. Dean pushed the image from his mind as he took an involuntary step back, only for his heel to hit the wall.

  A woman’s head, her left eye sunk below the flesh-line, spoke next.

  “Join me now.”

  * * *

  Sam leaned backward, away from the striking snake-headed arms of the woman–serpent hybrid. If the twin snake heads belonged to constrictors their bites wouldn’t be deadly, but their grip could be. And while her earless human head couldn’t strike like a snake thanks to her mostly human torso, he imagined the venom dripping from the impressive fangs in her too-wide mouth was definitely poisonous.

  “Kill me,” she begged.

  Sam dipped out of range as the snake attached to her right shoulder snapped at his face.

  “Please!” she said, frantically, her plea at odds with her continued attack. “I’m losing—me.”

  Sam bobbed right and left, like a boxer ducking a flurry of jabs while waiting to land a devastating counterpunch. With each step backward, his boxing ring grew smaller. He needed to stop her before she cornered him.

  “Can’t live like—like this,” she wailed, staggering forward as a battle raged inside her, the remnants of her former self struggling against the murderous will of her inhuman creator.

  Taking advantage of her hesitation, Sam shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around his left forearm to build a thick layer of padding, like a man in a bite suit training an attack dog. He thrust his arm out and let one of the snakes sink its fangs into the jacket. The moment it took hold, he brought the cleaver down at a point where a human elbow would have been. Not a species join, but one less obstacle to ending the hybrid for good.

  The snake-woman took a startled moment to process the loss of her limb, long enough for Sam to swing his padded forearm to the right and avoid a bite on his unprotected side. The second snake arm bit the rolled jacket, right next to the dangling, severed snake head, and suffered the same fate.

  The hybrid’s arms swayed to and fro aimlessly, blood oozing from the twin stumps. She walked forward, flashing fangs, droplets of venom falling to her scaled chin. “Now, finish it,” she said. Her neck thrust forward, jaws snapping. The snake heads still dangling from his forearm twitched as she neared him. Her arms suddenly had purpose, reaching toward their missing heads, seeking reconnection.

  “Do it!” she screamed, once again snapping at Sam with her fangs.

  He shoved her back with the butt of the cleaver, buying time, if nothing else.

  So much simpler to kill the monsters when they had animal heads to go with human parts. They behaved more like rabid beasts, murderous and vicious. Killing them was the only rational choice. But when the hybrid had a human face and a human voice—even if that voice pleaded with you to kill it and end its misery—it wasn’t so simple. She hadn’t always been a monster. She’d had no choice in her re-creation.

  But she had a choice now.

  She was living a nightmare. She would never be anything close to human again. Sam could honor her last human choice.

  He shook his head, tightened his grip on the cleaver. “I’m sorry…”

  Whether she doubted his resolve or could no longer offer even token resistance to the unspoken imperative of the Chimera, she screamed and lunged toward Sam, mouth wide, fangs extended, forcing the issue. The internal debate ceased in an instant. One moment she’d been about to plunge her fangs into his throat, the next she staggered backward and toppled over, headless.

  After detaching her snake-scale-covered limbs, it dawned on Sam he might have to skin her to completely reverse the hybridization. But that gruesome task could wait. Stepping around the snake-woman’s remains, he sprinted toward the Chimera.

  When he saw Dean, bloody and smiling, behind the bulk of the attacking creature, he c
ouldn’t help but worry about his brother. What if he won the battle with the Chimera at the cost of losing the war to the Mark?

  * * *

  If there was a fate worse than becoming a hybrid, it had to be becoming part of the monster that created hybrids, nothing more than a fleshy ornament on a living, metric ton of nightmare fuel. Not happening, Dean thought.

  A third head, probably belonging to one of the hyena-teens, echoed the Chimera’s refrain, “Join me.”

  “Like hell.”

  The long-handled ax, now broken, lay out of reach. But Dean hadn’t come without backup party favors. From inside his jacket, he took out a metal-handled hatchet and a long hunting knife.

  “Way I see it, you’re just one big plate of sushi.”

  The Chimera lurched forward—its weight buoyed by powerful dragon wing thrusts, undulating forward on giant squid tentacles and multiple lion legs—attempting to trap Dean against the factory’s cinderblock wall. Diving to the side, Dean drove the point of the hunting knife through a meaty paw as he somersaulted out of range. Multiple arms reached out for him and he managed to hack a hand off at the wrist when it attempted to pin him to the floor. He sprang to his feet in a heartbeat, slashing at one arm, chopping another, stabbing a third. Severed fingers spun through the air, followed by the cheek and nose of an impacted face he caught with a backhanded blow of the hatchet. With every opening in the creature’s defenses, he plunged the knife into the rolling flesh, but despite the flurry of wounds he inflicted, the damage was superficial, with minimal bleeding and no true dismemberments, at least not at species joins.

  He caught a blur of motion in the periphery of his vision and narrowly avoided the darting snake heads that sprouted from the creature’s long tail. But a tentacle slammed into his back and knocked him to the ground. When it tried to wrap around his leg, he slammed the hatchet into the slick flesh, only partially severing the appendage. Another tentacle struck his chest, hurled him into the wall again and he lost his grip on the weapon.