by CJ Brightley
She stepped closer anyway, giving the creature a wide berth. Her eyes were transfixed on its face for another long moment. It looked wrong.
Then she looked at him.
He was on his knees, sitting on his heels, the longer sword on the floor in front of him in easy reach. The hilt and blade were smeared with blood, and so was his face. She brought the lamp closer. He sighed in weary frustration, turning his face away from the light.
“Let me help you.”
He was covered in blood, the thin shirt sticking to him wetly. His shoulders dropped and he grunted again. “You should leave.” It wasn’t so unfriendly this time.
She didn’t answer. She reached forward to push his hands away from the wound. One of the wounds.
It looked like the creature had tried to gut him, his stomach ravaged. She brought the lamp closer to see the damage, but it was hard to make out in the flickering light. Everything was red blood, soaked dark into the ripped fabric. He’d been trying to tie his extra pair of pants about his waist, but the fabric was difficult to knot tightly, especially since one of his hands was badly mangled. A broken bone glistened white against the red flesh and blood.
She tried not to look at it, feeling bile rise in her throat.
“What is that thing?” she asked. She had to keep him talking. He would go into shock and die.
“A vertril.”
“Are there many of them in the city? I’ve never seen one before.” She felt panicky at the thought. Blood smeared her hands, and she stared at them, appalled. I have to stop the bleeding.
He snorted, and she looked up at his face. “You wouldn’t have,” he said.
“I’ll take you to the hospital. You need better care than I can give. And you need it soon.” He shouldn’t still be talking. He should be dead. How much of that blood on the floor is his? She pulled the knot tight, the fabric slick in her fingers.
“I’ll be fine.” He leaned forward and rested a moment on his right hand, holding his left close to his body, then stood. He blinked, and swayed a moment, then focused on her. “You need to leave. It isn’t safe here.”
She reached out for his mangled left hand. “Let me bandage that.”
He ignored her, knelt to pick up his sword and wiped it on his pants.
“I don’t think that helped much,” she ventured. “You’re pretty gory.”
He slanted a look at her sideways. His mouth twitched, as if he was going to say something, but then he only frowned and said nothing.
“I need to take you to the hospital,” she repeated. “If it doesn’t hurt too much now, it’s because you’re in shock. You need medical attention.”
He bent to pull his rucksack over one shoulder and straightened again, more steadily this time, and looked at her. “Thank you for your help. I hope I never see you again.” One corner of his mouth twitched upward in a ghost of a smile, and he turned away.
She let him go.
She stayed on her knees, too queasy to rise just yet. She stared at the great beast in horrified fascination. It was covered in grey-brown fur, layered as if it were a cold-weather creature. The teeth were white and sharp, and she peered at them in the lamplight. The largest was nearly as long as her hand. Bloody smears across the floor highlighted long gouges in the linoleum. Claw marks.
He should have been dead. It had bitten him, savaged him. The beast too, should have been dead two or three times over. It was cut and stabbed in twelve or thirteen places. Two sword strokes went deep into its gut, but she guessed the throat wound had killed it.
She startled at the sounds in the hallway. The Imperial Police Force was here. The IPF was reassuringly competent, and they would handle this.
“What happened here, ma’am?” the corporal at the front asked. “Are you injured?”
“No.” She gestured helplessly toward the beast.
“Yes, I see it. What do you know about it?” He didn’t seem as surprised as she’d expected. Has he seen one of these before?
Aria licked her lips. “I think he said it was a ‘vertril’? Is that a word?”
He looked at her sharply. “Who said that?”
“The man who killed it. You didn’t think I did, did you?”
He blinked at her. “Wait a moment.” He pulled an electronic tablet from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. A light pulsed softly on the end pointed toward her. “Start at the beginning.”
She hesitated. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Not exactly. “I was here because, well, I heard a sound, and I thought it was suspicious. It wasn’t loud. It might have been only a cat or something. But I was just trying to do my duty, and check to see if anything was wrong, so I came in. And I was walking through the hall there when I heard a growl.”
The man stared at her. “Wait a moment.” He tapped on the screen a few times, then frowned. “Continue.”
“Well, it sounded big. And I was frightened. So I waited in that room and when it sounded like everything was over, I came out to see if everything was okay. It sounded like it might have killed someone.” She felt panic rising up again at the thought. The smell. The sound of the fight. What if it had found her first?
“Breathe, miss. Take a deep breath. Continue.” The man was looking at her with a combination of compassion, disbelief, and suspicion.
“This man had killed it. With a sword.” She heard her own choppy language and thought distantly, I think I’m in shock. “He was hurt, and I tried to take him to a hospital, but he refused. He left.”
“Did you see where he went?” The man’s eyes were sharp on her face.
“Down the hall.” She waved vaguely.
He called out over his shoulder, eyes not leaving her face. “Teams one and two, ready for retrieval ops. Direction unknown. One target, armed and dangerous. Stand by.” Then, to Aria, “What did he look like?”
She blinked. “He’s not a criminal. He killed it. That’s a heroic thing, I’d think.”
“What did he look like?” He barked the question at her.
“Medium height. Dark hair. Blue eyes.” She felt obstinately unwilling to help them. What did they want with him anyway? He hadn’t done anything wrong. If anything, they needed to find him to save his life. He’d be bleeding out now, if she guessed right. Probably no more than a block away.
“Anything else? Distinguishing marks?”
“He’s hurt.” She stared at him sullenly, wishing she’d lied.
“Medium height, dark hair, blue eyes, wounded. Go!”
All but three of the IPF squad sprinted away.
“Is that all you know?”
“I… think so?”
He studied her for a moment and said carefully, “I’m not questioning your truthfulness, but in cases like this, there is often some… confusion… in the witnesses. I’m going to prompt you a little where things don’t seem to make sense. Just tell me what you actually remember, not what you think I want to hear. If you can’t remember, you can’t remember. But don’t be afraid to add things or change your story if you think of something you didn’t say before. If you realize you were confused and said something that wasn’t true, now is the time to tell me.”
She licked her lips.
“So, you hadn’t seen the man before? You just came in here because of a strange noise?”
Aria swallowed. It wasn’t really believable, was it? If they thought she was lying, or even just not telling everything she knew, she could be arrested. Kicked out of school. Who knew what else?
“Um. Well, actually I saw the man earlier, in a bookstore. I thought he was… odd, somehow. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just caught my interest, I guess. Maybe he reminded me of someone?”
The man’s gaze sharpened at this.
“So I guess I followed him here without really thinking much about it. I was out walking, and this was as good a way as any. It’s not that far out of my way. I didn’t think much of it before…” she gestured at the vertril corpse on the floor.
> “He reminded you of someone? Who?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t at all. Maybe it was something else about him. He just seemed a little strange somehow, and we’re supposed to pay attention and report strange things, aren’t we?”
He relaxed a little and glanced at the screen before him. “Where did you first see him? Did you speak with him?”
Oh. They thought she might be associated with him somehow. That was not good at all.
“No, not really. I saw him, just for a minute, in a bookstore where I do homework. It’s called Dandra’s. He was looking for something and I asked if I could help him, but he turned and left without answering me. I hadn’t seen him before that. I left the store a few minutes later and happened to see him again on the street while I was walking around, and I guess I just followed him here without meaning to. Then I heard the noises.” That was a better story. They could verify with Dandra that she’d been at the shop, and hadn’t seemed to know the man. And she hadn’t really said anything that would help them catch him.
“Is any of this blood his?”
She nodded uncertainly. “Take samples,” he said over his shoulder to the other men. “Your name? Age? Address?”
“Aria Forsyth. Twenty-four. 19 McKenna Walk.”
“That’s North Quadrant. Why are you here?”
She blinked at him innocently. “What do you mean?”
“This is East Quadrant. Why are you here?”
“Like I said, I was just on a walk. This isn’t where I’d normally go, but it’s not any farther.”
“Three miles from home.” He frowned at her skeptically.
“I’m a student. I walk everywhere.”
“Hm.” He noted something on the tablet. “We’re done here. Gert, call cleanup.” Then to Aria, “Go home. Have a good evening. I’d recommend staying in North Quadrant for your walks from now on.” He smiled at her coolly and pointed her toward the door.
As she left, she heard another IPF officer say quietly, “It’s number 235, sir.”
She hurried down the hall, away from the blood streaks and terror. She’d gotten more than she bargained for. What had she expected if she broke into his apartment, anyway?
Any man would be annoyed, at best, at finding someone breaking and entering. Dandra was frightened, either of him or of those he worked with. Worked with, as if she knew what his connection was with Petro. Or who Petro was. Not to mention the danger of other things. Some men couldn’t be trusted alone with a girl at all. She’d thought she could take care of herself, but he’d taken her by surprise. Twice.
Now, in the aftermath of the… what would she call it? Her attempt at breaking into his apartment? The incident with the great wolf beast? The second time he could have killed her but didn’t? In the aftermath, as she walked into the light winter sleet, she thought about him.
He meant to be frightening, but she wasn’t frightened. Not of him, anyway. The thought of another vertril in the streets was enough to make her look over her shoulder and hurry a little faster. She was curious, still. Worried, too. Guilty.
What if they caught him? The IPF hadn’t seemed concerned about his wounds at all. She tried to put into words what she’d seen in the corporal’s face. Bloodthirsty? It sounded harsh but yet terrifyingly accurate.
She heard IPF teams as she hurried through the darkness. They were quiet, but she was alone in the street and she could tell that many people moved through the darkness around her. Their boots squished softly on the damp asphalt.
“That way.” She heard them running swiftly past her. She stopped, her heart in her throat, at the quick flash of a laser sight. It disappeared, and she heard them moving again. No shot sounded.
She stood frozen in the street. They’re trying to kill him!
She tried to follow the sounds, but they were fast and she was already tired. She lost them some blocks away. Not that she had any idea what she would do if she caught up with them.
Maybe she was wrong.
Maybe they weren’t going to kill him. But what were “retrieval ops” and why did they merit weapons with laser sights? The whole team had been armed, once she thought about it. Heavily armed. Their guns had silencers. She’d assumed it was to deal with the vertril, but now she wasn’t sure. How had they known to come in the first place? Number 235? What did that mean?
She walked home briskly, huddled in her coat. It was a long walk with the sleet picking up, and she wondered why she’d thought it was a good idea to walk in the first place. She stayed under the lights on the busier streets. Even at this hour, there were plenty of people out in the commercial district.
How many of them know about the vertril? Would they hunt here, among the crowds? How had she lived in this city for twenty-four years and not known of such monsters? She slipped into her little apartment with a sigh of relief. She locked the door behind herself and pulled off her coat and sweater, her boots, and finally her pants. She ran her hands over her face and through her hair.
A shower. I’ll feel better after a shower. She shivered.
As the hot water ran over her, she felt some of her tension and fear melt away. No vertril would get her here. But it didn’t soothe her guilt. Somewhere, a man was dying, and she had barely tried to save him.