Monstrous 2

by Sawyer Black

  “Well, that’s nice of you.”

  “I thought so.” Peterson removed his black pocket square. He leaned over the rail of the hospital bed and snatched the oxygen tube off the wrinkled face with a look of disgust twisting his lips. He stuffed the silk into the old man’s mouth, and pressed his hand over the wad of cloth, covering the Purveyor’s nose.

  The old man’s wasted frame strained against the restraints. Pushed into Peterson’s hand. His eyes rolled to every corner of the room, heels beating into the sheets beneath him.

  “Motherfucker!” Henry stepped forward with his fists balled at his side, and Peterson’s horde stepped forward to meet him.

  Mandyel grabbed his shoulder and dragged him back in line.

  The old man bucked. His eyes squeezed shut, tears running into the folds and creases of his cheeks. Peterson grinned with a lion’s mouth, and the Purveyor died with a feeble kick.

  “Henry, old pal,” Mandyel said. “Could you put your ring on the other hand, please?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Henry transferred the ring and burst out of Boothe’s suit in a tornado of luxury fabric. Tatters stretched across his heaving chest and hung in strips at his calves. The line of thugs seemed unimpressed, even when Henry split the entry with his most bestial roar.

  The air cracked with the lightning of Mandyel’s spreading wings, and the goons took a terrified step back as righteous light smeared across their faces.

  That’ll do it.

  Henry squinted into the dazzle revealing the true forms of Petersons’ demons. The man himself sat with shocked awe hanging from his slack face, shielding his eyes from Mandyel’s fire.

  Why wait for an invitation?

  Henry jumped forward and took the face off a man transformed into a slavering beast.

  Mandyel whirled, and shafts of light speared out from his gleaming armor. Henry moved to the next guy up for a beating, and his world narrowed to a blur of movement and pain.

  Claws dug a chink of meat from his thigh. His leg collapsed and dumped him to the floor. On his way down, he dug his own claws into the guts of a bear aiming a shotgun. Covered in filth and blood, Henry continued his fall. The gun roared, and most of the right side of Henry’s face disappeared in a haze of agony and noise.

  His vision went dark, a flap of skin hung over his remaining eye. A fresh spike of agony dug into his guts when a knife pierced his side above his hip, twisting and grating against bone.

  The horrified screams of Mandyel’s victims barely covered his own pain-soaked bellow, and Henry reached up to rip the skin out of his eyes. He flared, and Mandyel’s light dimmed as an omni-directional wave of demonic energy spread from Henry’s center.

  It laid the survivors flat, blowing into Mandyel, who flapped his wings in a thundering answer to keep himself stable against it. Henry’s pain dulled to a deep heat. In the wake of his flare, he tasted the remains of the Purveyor’s life force swirling away in wispy flutters. He sent a silent apology to the old man and pulled the energy into himself, breathing the sorrow deep into his chest. The sweet pain of the old man’s passing lit his palate like a rare liquor, and he rose to his knees.

  A searing heat spiked into his cheek as his eye regenerated. The wound in his side closed. Fresh light registered in his healed vision, and Henry rose to stand under Mandyel’s buffeting wings.

  A demon in a leather jacket pushed to his feet with a snarl. He lifted a club studded with nails over his head, and Henry let him charge. They collided under the angel’s feet, and Henry ducked under the demon’s swing to grab him in a rib-cracking hug. Henry sunk his teeth into the demon’s thrashing neck, and the flesh under its chin tore free in a torrent of black blood, filling Henry's mouth and eyes with stinging salt.

  He let the demon’s gurgling body slide to the floor, and Mandyel struck with a fist that split its head open in a blinding flash.

  Blood pattered to the floor like the end of a spring rain, and Henry and Mandyel turned to Peterson as the final two demons cowered in the hallway.

  “Where’s the fucking horn, Peterson?” Henry growled.

  “I did not expect that, truth be told.” Peterson swallowed, his pale eyes round behind his glasses. He cast his eyes aside to avoid the angel’s holy light. “But I’m not going to tell you where the horn is.”

  Henry stood straight, confusion etched into his face. “What? But why not? We won.” He looked up at Mandyel for support, but the angel was looking down the hall with narrowed eyes. He turned back to Peterson. “We won, right?”

  Peterson stood and buttoned his jacket. Straightened his tie. “I said I didn’t expect it, old son. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepared.”

  Music flooded Henry’s ears. Beautiful. Terrible and sad, it filled his mind with a desire to sit. To give up with a knife to his throat, watching his life bleed out onto his chest.

  A Tracker’s song, twisted with bitterness and hate.

  Light swelled from the back of the house. Gold glittering through the staircase balusters, spreading the shadows in a twinkling haze.

  The Tracker from under Prince Hill floated around the corner into the hallway, his wings folded to clear the walls. His wrists were chained to his waist with silver links as thick as Henry’s ankle. His hollow eyes blazed with sparkling light. He lifted a black sword in both hands, veins tracked up his forearms like pulsing tree roots made of shadow.

  Who will release me?

  His voice exploded in Henry’s mind, the query’s weight driving him down to his knees.

  Mandyel rose to the Tracker's level, his arms out in cruciform.

  I will, little brother.

  The Tracker slid into the grand foyer, and their combined light filled every corner with a dazzling that pierced into Henry’s brain. The skin on his face tightened as it burned, but he couldn’t look away.

  The Tracker spread his arms to match Mandyel’s, his sword digging into the ceiling.

  Then come.

  They flew at each other, and their clash filled his body with electricity. Henry’s jaw clenched, his body jittering as he fell. He looked up at the angels in holy combat and found himself on a flat plain of stone. Wind rushed by, carrying the sound of their struggle under storm clouds, roiling with their effort.

  Peterson stepped forward with his hand inside his jacket, his jaw slack with terror and wonder. Dirt swirled at his ankles.

  A leather-clad demon hid behind an outcropping of rock. The remaining thug hunkered in the shadow cast by his buddy. Both faces were turned to the sky, light playing in their wide eyes.

  Henry staggered to his feet, the remains of his suit flapping around him in the cold wind.

  How the fuck did I get here?

  Not this plateau of stone, but this situation of life. This true comedy of misfortune.

  Light blossomed as the clouds parted, and Mandyel rode the Tracker’s plummeting body to the ground. One hand held the Tracker’s throat, and the other held the wrist to keep the black sword at bay. Mandyel’s face flinched away from the dark power emanating from the blade. The Tracker’s teeth were bared, his eyes squeezed shut.

  They crashed into the stone like a fallen star. Dirt and rock flew from their crater in a hanging cloud that rolled into Henry’s eyes and nose. The Tracker’s light dimmed beneath the radiant glow of Mandyel’s glory. The angel stood with his foot planted on the Tracker’s wrist.

  Henry stepped away from the raw emotion etched across the angel’s face and bumped into Peterson behind him. Agony laced through his chest from a white-hot point over his left shoulder. He twisted away with a scream, and Peterson stood with a blood-stained hand held up in front of him, red spots making a warped smiley face on his yellow suit.

  He pawed at the pain in his shoulder, drawing in another breath to scream into the wind. A black blade jutted from the muscle at the base of Henry’s neck. It burned when he touched it, and his knees folded.

  He fell to the ground, tumbling out of his demonic form to land on his side as
plain old Henry. Fat and pale, bleeding to death on an angelic battlefield far above the earth. The boiling agony of the onyx knife in his shoulder radiated into his body, and with every wave of pain, Henry split his lungs with another scream.

  HENRY!

  Mandyel’s voice rippled through Henry’s mind, images of golden clouds played across his sight with every echo.

  Amélie reached for him from the end of a dark hallway, her eyes filled with fear, her mouth open in a silent wail.

  Samantha looking into the eyes of Mike Stone as he climbed on top of her in Henry’s bed.

  Nadia smirking at him through her smoke.

  Mandyel turned and stretched out his hand. His beautiful face filled with panic and loss. Stepping from the Tracker, he kicked the blade buried in Henry.

  It tore free, flipping through the air, humming as it flew.

  Henry gasped and the demon rose back up, twisting his bones, stretching his skin to fit his true form.

  Blood pouring from the ragged wound slowed, and Henry pressed his hand to the cold stone to lift himself up.

  The black sword burst out of Mandyel’s breast, squealing against the golden armor as it passed through. The angel’s wings wilted, and a geyser of black blood shot from Mandyel’s mouth in a scream that dwarfed Henry’s pain in both volume and length.

  The clouds disappeared, and Henry slid through his own blood on the slick wood floor of the Purveyor’s foyer. Mandyel’s face twisted as he dragged another breath past the smoking sword in his chest.

  Henry dug into the floor, and charged through the angel’s waning light. He launched into a drop kick that hit the Tracker in the face, slinging him to his back and slashing blood from his torn cheeks.

  The blade slid from Mandyel’s body, and the angel collapsed in a gurgling heap, blood gushing from the split in his armor.

  Henry fetched up against the bottom of the stairs, spinning to right himself as a wave of dizziness rocked his brain, spinning the house all around him.

  The Tracker gasped in pain, and his light dimmed. Mandyel’s light winked out. NO!

  The Tiffany lamp next to the dead man in the front room was the only light to banish shadows from the scene. Henry froze. Shadows.

  The Tracker groaned, and Henry shook his head. His thoughts cleared.

  Peterson stood from the corner with the black knife sizzling in his hand, and Henry launched himself into Mandyel’s back. He dragged the angel into the darkness, and the swirling shadows that glowed in Henry’s mind like a darkened theater’s EXIT sign.

  Pulling Mandyel into the escape tore the power out of Henry in a crippling wave of agony, nearly as sharp as Peterson’s blade. But he held on. Without Mandyel, he’d never see Amélie again.

  It was the perfect time to pray, but he’d be damned if he asked for God’s help now.

  He’d leave it to the professionals, and Henry happened to know just the guy.

  CHAPTER 24

  Henry burst out of the shadows in front of the Burg Spires Church of Hope. All the windows were dark, but the front door opened under his hand.

  He fell into the entry with Mandyel tangled in his arms, landing on top of him and driving the breath from his lungs. He struggled out from under the angel’s flopping weight and stood with Mandyel’s arm slung over his shoulder. Back in his Sam Spade costume, bright blood spread across his white dress shirt, dripping onto the floor.

  The wound in Henry’s shoulder had torn open during his flight to the church. Blood dripped from his fingers to mix with the angel’s. When they met, there was a sizzling and a puff of smoke.

  The fuck is everybody?

  Henry dragged the wheezing detective down the side of the pews toward Pastor Owen’s office, sliding in blood, fighting against Mandyel’s dragging weight. It was nearly pitch black inside the church.

  That’s right. Fucking bingo night.

  He hitched Mandyel higher on his shoulder and reached for the door handle, freezing in confusion. No wait. Bingo night was yesterday, right?

  “Henry?”

  He spun, heart in his chest. Mandyel slid to the floor with a wet thud. Pastor Owen stood in the front door, silhouetted by the street lights outside.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Henry sagged in relief. A passing car sent a shaft of light through the stained glass, and colored reflections across the opposite wall. Henry dropped to his ass next to Mandyel, chin to his chest. “Yeah, sorry about that. How was bingo?”

  Another set of headlights splashed through the window, and the colors bloomed into a sparkling kaleidoscope caroming across the room. The Tracker’s song filled Henry’s ears. He fought his exhaustion to look up at the religious images of redemption depicted in colored glass, and the window exploded in a shower of twinkling shards and blazing golden light.

  The Tracker burst through the shattered glass, black sword extended in his right hand and a glowing net fluttering from his left. Peterson dangled from the chain at the Tracker’s waist.

  Pastor Owen rose to his knees, his dazed eyes filling with blood from a gash on his forehead.

  You will know peace this night.

  Henry fell back, barely able to throw his hand out to keep his head from bouncing off the floor. He welcomed the Tracker’s message. He was exhausted. An end to his suffering seemed like just the thing right about now.

  The Tracker’s net spread above him and fell to cover him in rippling waves, like a sheet fresh off the line.

  Peterson jumped down and walked over to Mandyel’s crumpled body. Kicked him over and lowered into a squat. Pulled the angel’s shirt, jacket, and overcoat open, exposing his chest wound. Then he lifted the black blade over his head and plunged it into the split in the angel’s breastbone.

  Mandyel’s eyes sprang open, and they lit on Henry’s gaze. He reached for him, but Henry lacked the energy to reach back. Mandyel’s hand fell, and his eyes rose to fix on something overhead. Henry forced his gaze toward the angel’s attention. Christ. Hanging from the cross, His carved face spoke of forgiveness through pain. Sacrifice.

  Mandyel’s final breath returned Henry’s attention to the floor. The angel was dead, and Henry felt only mild curiosity. The heat settled over him, and his pain fell away. His troubles were a thing of the past. He no longer needed to worry, and he almost wept with relief beneath the net.

  Peterson stood with his wild eyes on the bleeding heart in his palm. He lifted it to his mouth and took a squelching bite, blood squirting onto his cheeks and dripping onto his chin. He swelled, his form filling his yellow suit to a ripped stitch from bursting. “The power!” He exclaimed.

  The back of his suit split with a rasping tear. Leathery wings spread from his shoulders. Black horns at the tips, and pulsing veins running the length of his translucent skin. The Tracker’s light reflected off of bristling hairs.

  The remains of the heart blackened in his hand, and Peterson let it tumble through his fingers to the floor. He bent down and gathered a handful of the net, smirking at the sizzle in his hands. He slung the net over his shoulder, and Henry curled into its comforting heat.

  “We’ll be leaving now, padre.”

  “You have much to answer for.” Pastor Owen sounded pissed.

  Henry nodded.

  You’re fuckin’ A right, Peterson.

  Peterson shrugged. “Maybe. But not this night, guvnor.”

  “Begone!” the pastor shouted, and Henry rose into the night on beating black wings.

  Henry woke in a stone room lit by candles set into the walls. On a wooden chair with the Tracker’s light warming his face. His mouth watered from the roasting meat. Peterson walked in to block the forgiving light, his black wings folded along his back. He wore only the yellow pants, and the Order From Chaos tattoo glistened with the sweat on his chest.

  He strode up to Henry and flicked the black knife through the net at his throat. Burning strands fell away, and the searing pain crashed into Henry’s senses in a blinding wall o
f agony, crashing harder by the heartbeat.

  Peterson smiled and jabbed a thumb at the Tracker standing in the corner with his eyes at his feet. “Yeah, them cunts know how to hurt a guy, don’t they?”

  Henry moaned as the pain wracked his body, burning wherever the net sunk into his steaming flesh. He rolled his eyes up and fixed Peterson with a desperate glare. “You’re one of them, you fucker.”

  Peterson wiped a finger across his tattoo. “What, this? Of course I am, Mr. Serafino. Or is it Henry?”

  “You killed my daughter. MotherFUCKER!”

  “Your daughter?” Peterson’s face fell in thought, only to brighten with memory. “Henry Black? The comedian?” He laughed and slapped his knee. “Mr. Punchline, his very self? Sorry, that wasn’t me. But I did show up to join the boys soon after and put my cock in your wife’s bum while you bled out on her feet.”

  Henry lunged forward, but his boiling flesh sent ripples of heat and smoke in front of his eyes. He fell back, gasping for breath, tears making cool paths down his face. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! You’re fucking dead, and you don’t even know it.”

  “Come now, Henry.”

  “You don’t even fucking know.” Henry’s voice was a wheezing whisper, choked by pain and the smoke of his own burning skin.

  “I was told to keep you alive, Henry. And alive you’ll be. But first …” Peterson stabbed the black knife through the netting, piercing Henry’s hand, staking it to his burning thigh. His red skin turned pale. His black claws thinning into dirty fingernails. Pain jolted through him in a galvanizing flood, seizing his muscles and cracking his thoughts into a thousand points of light.

  Peterson reached through the net, slid the ring off of Henry’s finger, then stepped back and slid it onto his hand.

  Henry fought for breath. For sanity against what he saw standing before him: Mike Serafino looking at his hands in confusion.

  “What’s this?” Serafino’s voice and accent. Only his hairdresser would know. “This will come in handy the next time I see your wife.”

  Henry vented his rage and pain in a howl that made Peterson fall back in alarm. The Tracker raised his head and stepped from the wall.