by Tim Waggoner
I saw other criminals that I'd help put away – the Lotus Bleeder, Zack the Knife, Nightshadow, Carnality and more. All of them glared at me as if hoping the hatred in their gazes might reduce me to dust, but none made a move toward me, presumably out of respect for – or fear of – Gnasher. It's good to have friends in low places.
After a while I realized that Gnasher had been pulling more objects from his pockets than he should've had room for. I was sure there was some sort of magic at work and probably a high-level enchantment too. After all, the Dominari could afford the very best. Given that I rely on the contents of my own pockets in my work I was more than a little envious of Gnasher's jacket, but I didn't ask the verman for the name of his tailor. Whoever it was I knew I couldn't afford his services.
Gnasher was talking with a tall man in a black suit who'd been jailed for smuggling dead bodies between dimensions without proper authorization when a fanged being covered in crusty armor plates lumbered up and grabbed the verman from behind. The creature – a she, I guessed based on the configuration of her armored chest – got Gnasher in an arm lock and held him tight.
"What do you think you're doing?" the verman said in an indignant squeak that sounded more like Mickey Mouse's voice than that of a well connected mobster. "Don't you know who I am?"
"She knows," said a gravelly voice. "She just doesn't give a damn."
I turned to see Rondo approaching, a grin splitting his distorted face. The Tall Man decided he was suddenly needed elsewhere and rapidly moved off on those long legs of his.
I nodded toward the vaguely lobsterish looking She Creature. "I'm surprised you found someone to help you. I didn't think scum like you had any friends."
Gnasher struggled in the She Creature's clawed grip, but she was too powerful and he couldn't break free.
Rondo stopped a dozen feet from me, evidently having learned to keep his distance after our last encounter. He might look like a slender Neanderthal but that didn't mean he was stupid.
"I don't need friends," Rondo said. "Not when there are lots of people here who hate your guts almost as much as I do. You don't know her -" he nodded toward the She-Creature – "but her brother was a gill man you had a run-in with once."
"I remember. The fishface kidnapped a selkie and was holding her captive as his sex slave. Her parents hired me to get her back, which I did, but I needed a dehydra's help to do it." I turned to face the She Creature, who was glaring at me, long ropey strands of saliva dripping from her fangs. "You ever see a dehydra at work? Those creatures can suck all the moisture out of a person in seconds. They're like water vampires. Your brother went from gill man to bipedal prune in less than five seconds."
The She Creature snarled and started to loosen her grip on Gnasher, clearly tempted to let him go so she would be free to attack me.
"Don't listen to him, Marla," Rondo warned. "He's just trying to goad you into making a stupid move."
The She Creature looked like she was still considering having a go at me, but in the end she tightened her grip on the verman once more.
Rondo gave me a triumphant grin and I shrugged.
"Can't blame a guy for trying. So… what's next? She's going to hold Gnasher while you and I fight? Do you really think that will help? I managed to kick your ass all by myself the last time we met and I only needed a little sneezing powder to do it. You're not nearly as tough as you think you are."
Rondo kept grinning, but his gaze turned deadly cold.
"Much as I hate to admit it, I agree. Which is why I've brought along another former friend of yours."
A crowd of prisoners had gathered as we talked, all of them looking excited at the prospect of witnessing some prison yard mayhem. But now they began whispering among themselves and looking back nervously over their shoulders. More than a few moved off, as if they decided they'd be better off watching the proceedings from a distance. A moment later I found out why when a husky man with shaggy brown hair came walking toward us. He wore a loose tan shirt and matching pants, but no shoes. His black eyebrows were just as thick as the hair on his head and they met in the middle, a sure sign that he was a lyke. But I already knew that because I'd encountered this shapeshifter before. I didn't know what his given name was, but I was all too familiar with his street name.
Lycanthropus Rex.
TEN
"Don't take this the wrong way, Rex, but I sincerely hoped I'd never see your butt ugly face again."
"I bet," Rex growled.
For reasons that were still unclear to me about a year earlier Lycanthropus Rex had gone on a rampage in the Sprawl one night when I happened to be working on a separate case. I was in the right place at the right time (or maybe wrong place, wrong time – take your pick) to stop him. When the dust settled, seventeen people were dead, thirty-two were injured and Papa Chatha had to reattach all four of my limbs. Rex had been taken away by the Sentinels and cast down into Tenebrus.
Rex walked up to join Rondo, and while I was gratified to see the lyke also kept his distance from me, the feeling was tempered by the knowledge of how much firepower he packed. I'd been lucky as hell during our last encounter and even then I'd barely defeated him. I didn't think much of my chances to win a rematch, let alone survive it.
"I never met Rondo before today," Rex said, "but he and I have something in common. We've both spent every minute since we were thrown into this shithole dreaming about someday getting a chance to tear you to fucking pieces. And you know something, zombie? That day's today." He grinned, displaying a mouthful of sharp canine teeth. "Who says dreams don't come true?"
Rondo began to step away from Rex then and I knew what was coming. Lycanthropus Rex was going to show his fellow inmates how he'd come by his name. A lyke's transformation from human to wild form is usually a rapid one, but with Rex it took a bit longer, I think because he got off on watching people's reactions when he changed. And I had to admit, the man put on a hell of a show.
There were two separate aspects to his change. First came the standard shift from humanoid to animalistic features and in Rex's case that animal was a wolf. Thick tufts of brown fur sprang forth from his skin, his fingernails darkened and lengthened into ebon claws, his ears became pointed and moved farther up on his skull and his mouth and nose blended into a canine snout. His already intimidating teeth became longer and razor sharp and his eyes – while still blazing with human intelligence – became a feral yellow. But as impressive as that change was, the second part of the transformation was what really made you want to drop a load in your shorts.
Rex began to grow. And when I say grow, I don't just mean Rex put on a few dozen extra pounds of monster muscle and another foot or two of scary height. This son of a bitch grew. He stood about 5'5" in human form but as he assumed werewolf shape he increased in size to seven feet tall, eight, nine, ten – and he kept on growing. His clothes had been loose on him when he'd started changing, but they soon grew tight, then split at the seams and fell away to become nothing more than torn rags lying on the ground.
Everyone in the vicinity was watching the spectacle of Lycanthropus Rex's transformation – everyone, that is, except Rondo. He was watching me and grinning like it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had brought him a pair of gold-plated hand exercisers.
"You liking this, Richter?" he asked, grinning. "Because I'm loving it!"
Fifteen feet… twenty… twenty-five… and Rex's growth showed no signs of stopping.
One of the things about monsters is that they're so used to being well, monstrous. Like animals facing off in the wild, they often seek to intimidate one another with displays of size, strength and ferocity before attacking, partly because – like Rex – they enjoyed scaring their victims first. And if, also like Rex, you can scare other monsters… well, it just doesn't get any better than that. So while Rex was busy frightening the piss out of everyone within eyeshot, I had a few precious moments in which to act.
First I checked my pants pockets to see i
f I was carrying anything that might prove useful in combating a gargantuan wolfman. I usually carry all my best weapons in my suit jacket, though, and what I had left was even less deadly than the sneezing powder I'd used against Rondo. And even if the Sentinel hadn't taken my jacket and gun from me back at the Nightspire none of my weapons would've had much effect on Lycanthropus Rex. My 9mm was loaded with silver bullets that had been dipped in a solution of holy water and garlic along with a few other herbs and chemicals given to me by Papa Chatha that make them effective on just about any creature I might encounter in Nekropolis. The silver in my bullets might've killed Rex when he was normal sized, but now… But I didn't have my gun, so the matter was academic. What I needed was a weapon powerful enough to slay even a giant werewolf, preferably one I could get my hands on in the next several moments.
Something like Gnasher's dire blade.
I glanced at the verman and the She Creature who still held him in a tight grip. I couldn't just run over and try to grab hold of the dire blade, though. For one thing I didn't know where Gnasher kept it. In his jacket, I assumed, but since his pockets seemed bottomless, it was possible there were other enchantments on his frock coat that would prevent anyone else form locating the blade, let alone taking it off his person. But that wasn't what made me hesitate. I may be unique among Nekropolis's zombies, but there's one thing I share with my dead brothers and sisters: I'm slow. If I made a go for Gnasher's blade I'd move so slowly that both Rondo and the She Creature would guess what I was up to and one or both of them would stop me. If I wanted a chance at Gnasher's dire blade I'd have to use my head. Good thing Victor Baron had put it back on for me.
"You know, Rondo, you didn't have to go to all this trouble," I said. "If you want to destroy me, all you have to do is walk on over and give me a close-up look at your face. The shock would be so intense that I'd probably just collapse into a pile of dust on the spot."
Rondo's grin gave way to a truly impressive scowl.
"Laugh it up, Richter," he snarled. "That's the last joke you're ever going to make."
"No it's not. This is: when you were born, you were so ugly the doctor couldn't tell which end was your ass, so he slapped both ends just to make sure."
Rondo roared with fury and came racing toward me, ham-hands outstretched and ready to cause some serious damage.
I had to time this just right. When Rondo was almost upon me I sidestepped and angled my body so that instead of grabbing me his right hand struck me a glancing blow on the shoulder. I didn't feel the blow, of course, and I allowed the impact to spin me around, and I stumbled toward Gnasher and the She Creature, trying my best to make it look like an accident. As ungainly as I was I didn't have to try very hard.
The verman guessed what I was up to, for as I collided with him, he whispered, "Inside front pocket," and spoke a couple words in a language I was unfamiliar with. Some sort of mystic phrase I figured, designed to deactivate whatever enchantment protected Gnasher's blade. Before the She Creature could react I reached into the jacket and I felt cloth part beneath my fingers as if it were a living thing willingly opening itself to me. I found the hilt of the dire blade, grabbed hold of it and pulled it free of Gnasher's jacket. I'd never touched a dire blade before and I was surprised to feel a sensation of intense cold as my fingers wrapped around the handle. The sudden feeling in my dead flesh was so startling to me that I almost dropped the weapon, but I managed to hold on to it.
I spun around, ready to wield the dire blade against Rondo with deadly efficiency. But before I could do anything Rondo grabbed my wrist with one of his giant hands and squeezed. I heard bones splinter and my now-useless fingers sprung open and the dire blade tumbled to the ground.
Rondo's grin was back.
"Nice try."
"I have to admit, I'd have preferred to kill the three of you myself," I said, "but I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with letting Keket's people do it for me."
I pointed with my left hand and – still holding on to my broken wrist – Rondo turned to look. A half dozen jackalheads were rapidly approaching from different directions, as were a trio of silver skulled Overwatchers.
"You really didn't think Lycanthropus Rex could transform without drawing the guards' attention, did you?" I asked.
Rondo said nothing, but he continued to hold my crushed wrist as we both watched the jackal-heads go to work. When they were within twenty feet of Rex – who had by this time reached his full fifty-foot height – they stopped, leveled their golden spears and released blasts of energy at the giant wolfman. Rex roared more in anger than pain and lunged toward one of the guards, snatching him up in one gigantic paw with a single swift swipe. Rex squeezed and the guard let out a scream as the life was crushed out of him. Rex then hurled the body at another guard, taking him out with truly impressive aim.
One of the Overwatchers glided toward Rex from behind and twin beams of light lanced forth from its silvery sockets to strike the gargantuan wolfman directly between the shoulder blades. From Rex's bellow of agony it was clear that whatever energy the skull emitted it was more effective than that produced by the jackalheads' spears. But however powerful the energy blast was it didn't slow Rex down. He whirled about, snatched hold of the Overwatcher and hurled it to the ground. The metallic skull hit not far from where I was standing and I saw the device break open like a large silvery egg, spilling out electronic components, blood and bits of brain matter. Victor Baron built his creations to last, but even his genius hadn't anticipated the Overwatchers going up against a creature of Lycanthropus Rex's power. A second later the Overwatcher exploded in a spectacular flash of light and fire.
Seeing an Overwatcher brought down, the prisoners in the area let up a cheer and, emboldened by seeing how easily Rex had dealt with Keket's guards, they began to riot. Inmates turned to whoever happened to be standing close to them and began hitting, clawing and biting – sometimes all three at once. Jackalheads fired energy blasts and Overwatchers unleashed eye beams in all directions, hoping to quell the riot before it could spread too far, but they might as well have been trying to hold back a tsunami with a few sandbags and a whole lot of good intentions. Within moments the fighting had spread throughout the entire general population as near as I could tell from where I stood and the canyon air was filled with the sounds of hundreds of beings beating hell out of each other. On impulse I glanced upward toward the balcony from which Keket had dropped me down to the canyon floor and I saw the mistress of Tenebrus standing there, gripping the railing with cloth wrapped fingers, face hidden behind her golden mask. I remembered what Gnasher had told me about how Keket was entertained by watching the inmates fight. If so, the undead sorceress was undoubtedly ecstatic right then.
I was used to matters going from bad to worse – it's pretty much standard operating procedure for me – but this was bad even by my standards. I could've tried to slip away from Rondo and Rex in the confusion and lose myself among the rioters, but I didn't want to abandon Gnasher. He might have been Dominari but he'd taken care of me since I'd been tossed into the general population and I owed him. Besides, the thought of running from lowlifes like Rondo and Rex made my dead stomach turn. Still, I had no idea what I could do at this point. If I was faster I might've made a lunge for the dire blade lying on the ground, but if I so much as twitched in the weapon's direction the She Creature would snap Gnasher in half like a white furred twig.
I felt gentle fingers of thought brush my mind, the sensation both familiar and very welcome.
Don't worry, love. I know someone who specializes in fast.
I saw a blur of motion and felt the pressure of a breeze whip past and suddenly I was holding the dire blade in my left hand – which was good since Rondo still had hold of my broken right wrist and the hand attached to it was useless now.
Thanks, Tavi, I thought and swung the dire blade toward Rondo's chest. The Creeper's gaze was fixed on Lycanthropus Rex who was still battling jackalheads and Overwatchers and
thus didn't see the strike coming. Not that it mattered. My arm swung wild and instead of driving the ebony blade deep into Rondo's chest it swept through empty air.
See? You should've let Victor Baron fix that when you had the chance!
I didn't respond to Devona, partially because I didn't have any time, but mostly because she was right, and it irritated me.
Rondo must've caught the motion of my failed strike out of the corner of his eye for he turned to face me and without hesitation rammed a fist into my face. I felt nothing, but given the force with which he struck, if I hadn't been dead already, I'm sure the blow would've killed me. As it was my nose was reduced to pulp and I'm pretty sure my skull was fractured. Rondo had maintained his hold on my right wrist with his other hand and now he yanked me back toward him, intending to hit me again. But there was another blur as something whipped past us and a stream of liquid splashed into Rondo's eyes. Rondo screamed as Tavi's cobra venom did its job and the Creeper released his hold on my wrist so that he could use both hands to frantically try to clear the venom from his eyes.
With Rondo momentarily out of commission I turned to Gnasher and the She Creature. Seeing Rondo get injured – and more importantly, seeing me standing before her gripping a dire blade – she tightened her hold on Gnasher and the verman shrieked in pain.
"Stay where you're at, zombie, or the rat-man dies!" she said in a gurgly voice, as if she had a throat full of mouthwash.
"You know, it's a policy of mine never to listen when someone threatens me, but considering that a friend of mine is walking up behind you as we speak, I think I'll make exception this time."
The She Creature let out a laugh that sounded like a water balloon bursting. "You don't seriously expect me to fall for that old trick, do you?"
"It's no trick," I said, "and yes, I do expect you to fall – hard."
The She Creature frowned, perhaps realizing from my tone that something wasn't quite adding up here. A moment later she realized what it was when a scaly clawed hand clamped down on her shoulder and burst into flame. The She Creature screamed in agony at Scorch's fiery touch, and while the demon might not have been able to suck the moisture out of a water monster with the ruthless efficiency of a dehydra, she was no slouch in that department. The She Creature's armored plates quickly dried and tiny cracks fissured across their surfaces. She released Gnasher and the verman fled, moving with a swiftness that would've done Tavi proud, and disappeared into the crowd.