At his words, one of the beasts lunged towards him, to be rewarded with a flaming sweep that singed its hair and caused it to dart away once more. Movement from behind him now, so he turned, the sword rising above him and sweeping down, ready to bisect his foe. Instead, the werewolf merely caught the blade in one massive, clawed hand. Brian struggled and strained, but the sword remained immovable in the monster’s iron grip. The flames sizzled and spat as they blistered its palm, filling the air with the acrid tang of burning hair, but the beast merely growled, snaking its gaping maw towards him and licking its lips. Brian gulped, but just then the whirring sound of the Punisher’s spinning motor started up. He glanced past the werewolf, through the side window of the Camaro, to see Scylla and Neil frantically gesturing towards the front of the car. Finally, it clicked. Brian concentrated for a moment, then with a puff of black smoke, the duo, man and beast, vanished, only to reappear an instant later in front of the Camaro. Brian released his hold on the sword’s handle and dropped to the earth, and just in time; an instant later, a cacophonous racket as the Punisher opened up with three barrels of lead spitting fury. Silver might be anathema to werewolves and their parasitic benefactors, but supersonic lead, it seemed, would do the job just as well in sufficient size and numbers. The werewolf erupted in scarlet craters, no time even for it to howl in torment, as hundreds of cigar-sized rounds tore through its jerking form. Finally, the sounds of carnage ceased, the only sound that of the barrels slowly winding down.
Then finally, the hideous thump as the lifeless beast fell to the ground.
Brian rose, shakily, to his feet, ears ringing at the proximity of the fusillade, to see Scylla and Neil high-fiving each other in the car. But then suddenly, an enormous bang, and the car rocked on its suspension. Brian’s eyes widened as they took in the form of the second, blissfully unharmed werewolf, which now had its claws beneath the bodywork of the Camaro and was lifting with all its prodigious might. With a howl of rage, it strained, and the car’s wheels left the ground, the entire vehicle flipping over onto its roof as Neil and Scylla screamed within, before it finally settled, rocking back and forth uselessly like an upended turtle, with the pair now a tangle of limbs on the roof turned floor. Satisfied with its work, the monster turned its gaze now to Brian. To find him shaking his head, the safety of his MP5 now switched to live.
“Bad doggy. Down boy.”
The creature roared and lunged, but even its bellow was drowned by the bark of the sub-machinegun. The side-arm was no Punisher, but what it lacked in sheer might it made up for in silver bullets, which thudded and steamed as they tore through the werewolf’s leathery hide, blossoms of crimson pockmarking its flesh by the score. Finally, and with a snarl of frustration, the beast decided that discretion was the better part of valour and quite literally turned tail and fled into the night. Slowly, eyes still scanning the woods in case it returned, Brian lowered his smoking weapon and sighed, glad to at least still be in one piece. The upside-down car doors opened and his two friends scrabbled out onto the tarmac, before rising. As Scylla set about rolling the Camaro back onto its wheels, Neil sauntered over to Brian.
“Well, that went as well as could be expected, I suppose. What now?”
“Now we follow it,” Brian replied. “And hope we find it before it turns back into a man.”
Neil stared at him confused, but Brian was in no mood to explain. He was tired and just wanted to go home and relax. But his life of late, it seemed, was destined to be anything but relaxing. At least all this action was distracting Scylla from talk of Gertie, it seemed. A thud, as the car dropped back onto its wheels and the Nymph laughed as she dusted off her hands.
“Can’t wait to tell Gertie about all of this over a glass of wine. She’ll laugh her head off.”
Brian sighed.
Chapter Nine:
Hippy In Wolf’s Clothing
A sight we must be, Brian thought to himself as he slowly drove down the country lanes along the edge of the field, following the sign posts for the festival. Scylla was hanging out of the passenger-side window, sniffing the air for any hint of patchouli or animal musk, whilst Neil was standing on the rear seats, top half out of the sunroof, silver-laden MP5 poised for the kill.
Any onlookers would have thought themselves watching the world’s most surreal and least funny clown car.
“I smell him,” Scylla shouted. “Over there, somewhere in that copse of trees in the middle of that field. But he smells… different.”
“Different?” asked Neil. “How?”
“I can guess how,” Brian sighed. “Still, we’d better go pick him up. At the very least we might find out from him whether there’s any more of them.”
Brian pulled onto the farm track that led onto the field, white, fluffy sheep staring impassively after them from behind the wooden fence, driving along the bumpy road as close as he could to the copse of trees, before pulling Bertha to a halt. The trio jumped out, Neil still wielding the sub-machinegun, Brian his sword, Scylla no more than her hands, though they were mighty in their own right, but Brian had an inkling they’d have need of none of them. He was soon proved to be right; as the motley crew reached the edge of the copse, a noise could be heard. Not the low growl of an eight foot beast, no, but something altogether quieter. And infinitely more pathetic.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, what have I done this time?”
As the trio rounded a tree, there in the moonlight could be seen the source of the fitful sobbing; a man, skinny and pale, lay naked in the undergrowth. Long hair trailed down over his shoulders and a scraggly beard covered a chin miraculously weaker than Brian’s own. Curled up in the fetal position, the man rocked back and forth, whimpering to himself with the insane gibbering of the damned. His skin was remarkably unharmed, flattened silver bullets lying spent and useless on the ground where no doubt they’d been pushed from his body as he’d undergone his transformation from beast back to normal man. As the trio approached, the man caught sight of them, his eyes widening in fear.
“No stay back! You don’t know what I am! What I’ve done!”
Brian raised a hand to calm the man, before replying.
“We know what you are, mate. And what you’ve done.”
“Yes,” snarled Neil. “And we’re here to put an end to it.”
He levelled the barrel of the MP5 towards the terrified man but in an instant Brian lunged to push the weapon aside.
“Whoah whoah, Neil! Hold ya horses, we’re not here to kill him.”
Neil stared at him, confused.
“Wait, what? Since when?”
“Since he turned back into a man,” Brian explained. “If we’re gonna kill him, we have to do it while he’s hulked out.”
“But it would be so much easier to just do it now!”
“Tell me about it, but them’s the rules. Apparently.”
The man who, by now, had stopped his fitful sobbing and simply lay there watching their exchange with confusion and not a little fear, opened his mouth, frowning.
“You… you know what I am? Who are you?”
“I am Helsing,” Brian told him.
“Oh,” the once-werewolf replied. Before fainting.
Brian shook his head at the patheticness of the specimen before them, before stopping himself, remembering his first foray into the strange world of the Sanctum, when he’d himself fainted upon first seeing the terrifying sights of the Bestiary; his was not to judge others’ cowardice, not when he’d long been the yardstick by which others’ lack of courage had been measured. As the three stared down at the prone figure, it was Scylla who broke the silence.
“I mean, not that I can feel it, but judging by the frost all about, it’s cold out right? Isn’t he going to freeze to death if we just leave him here all naked and such?”
“Perfect,” Neil nodded. “There ya go; no need for us to do anything. We’ll just take our leave and let nature do its thing.”
“No, Neil. If we leave him to die, w
e might as well have just pulled the trigger ourselves. Besides, we need to ask him how many more of his kind there are and where we can find them. Come on, let’s get him in the car.”
“I’m not touching him. He’s naked.”
“Fuck’s sake, Neil; I’ve seen you make out with guys when you’ve been high as a kite in a club, now you’re scared to touch one who’s unconscious?” With a sigh, Brian removed his trench coat and threw it over the man’s form. “Better?”
“Ish. It’ll have to do, I suppose.”
Together, the three used the huge trench coat as a hammock and lifted the weakly moaning figure, carrying him from the copse and across the field, back to the Camaro. Propping him up in the passenger seat, Brian switched on the car, blasting the heaters out for all they were worth.
“Come on, mate. Wake up. We’ve things to discuss.”
Slowly, the werewolf-man’s eyes flickered awake. When they finally focused on Brian, he recoiled in terror.
“Don’t… don’t kill me,” he gasped, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery leather. “Please.”
“Calm down, I’m not about to kill you. Not yet, at least. What’s your name?”
“Aa… Aaron.”
“Right Aaron, I’m Helsing. This is Scylla and Neil. We need some information from you. How many of your kind are there nearby?”
“Wh… what? Hippies?”
“For Christ’s sake, I swear I must have a cloud of retardation that follows me around everywhere. No, werewolves, man. Lycanthropes. How many more of you big furry fuckers are there?”
“Oh, well… erm, in my pack there’s twelve altogether. The ten back at the barn near the festival. Then there’s me, and obviously Grant.” The man looked puzzled and gazed from side to side out of the windows. “Where is Grant, anyway?”
“Dead,” Brian told him. “It has a tendency to happen to people who try to eat me, but people never learn, it seems.”
“Dammit,” the man sobbed. “Poor Grant. It was his first hunt, too. I knew something like this would happen. And he was really looking forward to Mumford and Sons tomorrow.”
“I’m sure he was.” It was Scylla now, leaning in through the driver’s side window. “But you said something about there being ten more lycans? Where are they? Are they out hunting even now?”
Aaron shook his head.
“No, they’ll be locked up safe in the barn on the farm near the festival.”
“Locked up?” Neil mused. “Why’s that?”
“We only change for a few nights around full moon,” Aaron explained. “But if we were all out at once, well, you could imagine the chaos. The attention we’d attract. So we take it in turns, only two or three of us out each night, the rest locked up to keep everyone safe. Everywhere we roam, we always scout out somewhere secure, like this barn. Tonight was mine and Grant’s turn to hunt. Poor Grant. He was such a gentle soul.”
“Yes,” Brian repeated, remembering the eight-foot killing machine that had threatened to bite his head off. “A gentle soul. So your fellows are still locked up in the barn, yes? That’s good, but I’ve a question for you. If you always manage to find somewhere secure enough to pen in a dozen hungry werewolves, why don’t you all just stay in there until the full moon is over?”
“We can’t,” the man gibbered pathetically. “The hunger; you can’t possibly understand it. Whatever is inside us, it demands that we feed to fuel it. The pain it inflicts on us if we don’t eat at least once each full moon doesn’t just hurt us in our werewolf state, but all of the time. It’s constant.”
“Hence the weed,” Neil nodded, sagely.
“It’s one of the few things that helps,” Aaron admitted.
“Why aren’t you a werewolf now?” Brian asked. “How come you’ve changed back?”
“I… I must have eaten something,” the man replied. “After eating, we usually transform back into men shortly after… Oh God, what did I hunt?”
“Relax, it was a deer.”
As Aaron sighed in obvious relief, Neil tapped Brian on his shoulder, the two leaving Scylla to care for the still shaken man.
“What’s the plan? We can’t off him. We just gonna take him back to his mates?”
“I think that’s all we can do,” Brian mused. “If he takes us to where his friends are being kept, then at least we know where they are.”
“But what then? Do we… do we just mow them all down with the Punisher? Set the barn on fire?”
Brian shrugged. He was out of his depth. It was easy to use lethal force on a vicious monster that was actively trying to kill you, but now having seen for himself the fact that within each beast was a normal – albeit smelly – man, it made things seem far more complicated. But then, complicated was the story of his life, it seemed. Scylla suddenly appeared beside them, looking thoughtful.
“I think I’ve got an idea,” she told them, eyeing a sheep that stared into its own reflection in the side of the Camaro as it idly chewed on grass, oblivious to her gaze.
Chapter Ten:
Feedin’ Time
The Camaro crept down the farm track towards the barn visible in the field, with all the stealth a quartet of howitzer exhausts could muster. As Brian tickled the accelerator, wincing at every burble and pop, Neil beside him gulped.
“Aaron… are you sure they’re locked away in that barn? We’re not gonna have ten angry werewolves launching themselves at us any moment are we?”
“Nope,” the hippy replied.
“I’d feel better if I knew which question you were answering.”
“They’re locked away, trust me. There’s an enormous iron bar keeping the door shut. Even hungry werewolves aren’t getting through it.”
“Good,” Brian said, pulling the car over next to a hay bale, a dozen yards from the barn. “Then let’s get this over with. And let’s hope it works.”
Climbing out, the four, Aaron now clad in Brian’s spare clothes from his overnight bag, each garment five sizes too big for him, made their way to the back of the car, before opening the boot. A pair of pitiful black eyes greeted them, staring up from a sea of fluffy white that all but filled the space. Short, hooved legs were bound with duct-tape.
“Do we really have to do this?” Neil asked. “I mean… look at it. Poor thing’s terrified.”
“It’s a sheep, Neil,” Brian replied. “I don’t think they know the meaning of fear. Look into those eyes, man; there’s nothing there.”
“That’s what I see when I look into yours, half the time. Doesn’t mean I’d feed you to a werewolf on a whim.”
“It’s not a whim; if we can feed the wolves each night, then they’ll change back and there’s no need for them to go off roaming. The parasite’s happy, the humans inside them are happy, and the general populace of The Lizard are happy too, because they won’t be on the menu. Everyone’s a winner. Right, Aaron?”
“Right.”
“Good. Then let’s get it over with, and no more trying to make me feel guilty, Neil. Not only is this the lesser of two evils, but just staring at this thing is giving me a craving for some mint sauce. I’ve hardly eaten all day. I’m thinking Maccy D’s after this.”
“That’s if there is an after,” Neil grumbled, before helping Brian drag the pitifully bleating sheep from the boot.
Hoisting the woolly creature onto his shoulders, the sheep staring around with bewildered eyes at this remarkable break in routine, Brian started towards the barn, the other three following him.
“So, how do I get it in?” Brian asked Aaron. “I’m assuming the front door is a no-go? Don’t fancy my chances against ten werewolves, especially with a fluffy bull’s-eye across my shoulders.”
“There’s a huge skylight up there,” the hippy told him, pointing up to the sloped roof some thirty feet above. “If you open that, you can probably drop it in from there.”
“It has a name,” Neil grunted. “Shaun.”
“Don’t name the fucking sheep, Neil,” Brian be
rated him. “Do you name your pizza before you eat it?”
“My pizza doesn’t have a face.”
“And most likely neither will you for much longer, if we don’t get on with this. We’ve a code-red werewolf situation, Neil, and if it’s not brought under control, people are gonna get eaten, starting with those closest, namely us. I’ll trade a sheep for people, all day long.”
“How are you going to get up there?” Aaron asked.
“Don’t worry, got that covered.”
A sudden rush of parting air, a pop, a bang, a puff of smoke and a curious metallic taste on the tongue, and Aaron started in shock as Brian vanished, only to reappear atop the roof high above them, before disappearing out of sight.
“That’s some trick,” he murmured. “No wonder I couldn’t eat him.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Scylla told him, “you gave it a good go.”
Thirty feet up, Brian wobbled precariously, as his feet struggled for grip on the sloping, wooden roof. Regaining his balance, he took a deep breath, before clambering his sheep-burdened way up the slope towards the large skylight he could see. Gently, he lowered the animal to the wood, the sheep contenting itself with staring up at the stars in the clear Spring night’s sky overhead as Brian set to work trying to open the skylight. The window was designed to be opened from the inside, by the looks of it, by a long pole with which one would turn the little winder he could see through the glass. The window pane itself was thick, double-glazed, made to withstand the worst the Cornish weather could throw at it. But glass was nothing to a Helsing; with a surge of concentration, Brian summoned his chi, feeling the pins-and-needles tingle prickling across his skin as his strength began to increase. He raised his fist high above him in readiness, but was stopped by the sight of his own reflection wagging its finger at him in the glass.
But no, not his own reflection; but older, with lines in a weathered face and eyes that twinkled with something between amusement and seriousness.
Brian Helsing: The World's Unlikeliest Vampire Hunter. Mission #3: Howlin' Mad Page 6