A Shard of Sea and Bone

by L. J. Engelmeier

  “Lana, get your gear on now!” Oliver hollered toward the back of the townhouse. “I know you can hear me!”

  He stepped forward and pressed his leather boot down on the creature’s massive, bulbous head, firing two more deafening shots into its neck, into its carotid artery. The creature twitched once, twice, and then went still, black blood gushing out onto the hardwood floor in spurts and seeping down into the cracks between the boards. Oliver toed what was left of the creature’s slack snout to the side. Its tongue lolled against a riot of fangs. The monster’s corpse must have been six feet long lying there and as wide around as two whiskey barrels strapped together.

  Oliver scanned the beast quickly—from its pointed ears to its blackened claws to the double-bend of its legs. All of its joints were swollen, all of its limbs and appendages unnaturally long. The creature’s hunched body was grey but slick and deformed as though it had been skinned down to exposed muscle, then boiled.

  A hollowsoul.

  Oliver had researched the monsters once before in the Lindennacht Library as part of his training for the force. He’d never seen one in person, but there were enough sketched likenesses in those books for him to recognize a hollowsoul when one was bleeding out on his floor.

  This was really what ingesting human blood turned demons into? This was what his blood could do to them?

  Oliver shuddered. The creature looked like a bulking, slavering hound on two legs, nothing like the rogue demons he’d put down in town or in the bordering mountains. It didn’t even look like the two filthy demons that had managed to secure a permit to live in the townhouse across the street. Oliver saw them every morning when he went out for a jog by the harbour, in those brief moments before they ducked into their house and pulled their shutters closed.

  The neighbours.

  Oliver’s head snapped up. He looked out through his doorway toward the row of attached houses across the street. Several front doors were askew. Windows were shattered across the cobblestones, shards of glass glittering in the moonlight. The sight spurred him back into action.

  “Lana! Korreş’nė!” Oliver yelled. “We need to—”

  A thunderous earthquake shook the house, stronger than the dozens that had come before it.

  Oliver was thrown into the kitchen counter. He braced himself against it, and behind him, the lamp on the kitchen table struck the floor and shattered, piddling amounts of oil splattering across the hardwood and going up in flames. He held onto the counter helplessly and watched it burn, making up his mind.

  There was no use staying here. He needed to get outside and find the rest of the Lindenwatch.

  They’ll know what in the everloving hell is going on.

  What could have been happening? Lindennacht was only a bay city in northern Osnastedt, its population barely breaching fifty thousand. Its reputation hardly extended beyond its fishing community, breweries, and seedy inns. The city’s greatest historical significance was acting as a port that had supplied food, ammunition, and human soldiers during the Six Year War against the demonic immigrants in the country. Since then, the only newsworthy incident in the city had been a serial killer some seventy years ago, a man that Captain Anders liked to brag his father had caught.

  Now there were earthquakes and hollowsouls, both in one night?

  The second the quaking stopped, Oliver’s little sister Lana rounded the corner and immediately pulled the ratty tablecloth off the table, tossing it down on the fire. She stamped down on it with her enchanted leather boots and then righted herself. Strands of her black hair were stuck to her bottom lip and caught in her mouth. She spat them out before pressing a metal mask over her face and buckling the leather strap behind her head one-handed. Her eyes met Oliver’s through the two oblong holes cut in the metal, her hair a wild black mane of curls around her.

  ‘I’m mute, not deaf, Ollie,’ she signed at him.

  She had on an illegal dragonhide breastplate their father had poached off a drake demon a lifetime ago. He’d brought the scaled hide home along with a fresh set of burns to his face and arms and fashioned it into a cuirass over the next week in the living room. The breastplate was still too large for Oliver’s little sister, who was barely fourteen and as gangly as a skinned rabbit.

  Underneath the breastplate, she wore a hooded, calf-length wool coat Oliver had enchanted himself to harden against any blow dealt to it. He’d pilfered the thing from the uniform closet at the Watchtower, along with its matching mask. The wool of the coat was the same silver as moonlight glancing off the harbour. Standing there, she looked exactly like one of the Lindenwatchmen, which bothered Oliver, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. They needed to flee the townhouse before it came down on top of them or another hollowsoul barged in.

  Oliver moved over to open the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, then reached up under it for the pistol he’d mounted there four years ago, the day after their father’s funeral. His fingertips hit the smooth wooden grip of the gun, and he pulled it free.

  “Obâdeş’nė,” he said, and tossed it underhanded to his little sister. As commanded, she caught it.

  The barrel was nearly as long as Lana’s forearm, but her grip on it was steady as she lifted it in her left hand, pointed it at the doorway, and cocked the hammer. With her right hand, she signed: two fingers pointed straight up followed by a motion like she was turning a doorknob.

  ‘Watchtower?’

  Oliver shook his head, signing back one-handed out of habit as he spoke. “We’ll find the Lindenwatch in the streets.” He popped open his revolver, dumped the empty casings onto the counter, reloaded three of the barrels using the bullets looped into his belt, then snapped the gun back shut. He drew his second revolver from its holster, set both on the counter, and grabbed his metal mask from the empty sink. He’d dropped it earlier when he’d been peering through the kitchen window. The sounds of screaming and breaking glass had ruptured the relative quiet of the city’s nightlife as he’d been reading a dog-eared novella with Lana before bed, the sounds followed not long after by the Watchtower’s howling distress sirens. He’d half-thrown on his uniform and had left his sister behind to survey the street. He’d seen a few citizens sprinting down the road, but he’d seen more ducking into alleys or shuttering their windows.

  And then that hollowsoul had smashed through the front door, tearing hinges and splintering wood. Oliver had warned it, raising his pepperbox and circling to block its path to the rest of the house, but there was never any reasoning with a wild animal. It was always best to put it down without question.

  Oliver pressed his mask into place, the metal cold against his skin, and buckled it tight behind his head before drawing up his hood. He shifted to breathing through his mouth, through the mask’s barred slat. He could taste dishwater. “You stay in sight at all times, understand?” he said, turning back to his sister. She rolled her eyes behind her mask. “Agiddeş ne, Lana? You can’t cry for help, and I’ll bet on Pop’s grave there’re more hollowsouls out there. I need you close.”

  ‘I know,’ she signed, the jerk and flick of her right hand sarcastic. ‘I’m not stupid, Ollie. I remember our drills.’

  Still worried, Oliver picked up his revolvers and cocked them. Then he and Lana stepped over the hollowsoul’s corpse and barrelled out into the street, guns raised. Glass crunched underfoot. The full moon drowned everything in a bluish light so harsh it felt like day outside. Oliver looked down the street to his left. It was mostly empty. Two bodies were already sprawled in the street. A few straggling citizens were frantically looking around for shelter, some climbing through broken storefront windows. From where he was standing, Oliver could see the café he frequented a couple doors down, The Cat-Eye, despite the fact it was run by a tiger demon who’d immigrated from another Realm and didn’t speak much of any of the languages of this one. She made a decent cup of chocolate coffee, but the way she always kept an eye on Oliver’s revolvers bothered him. Now, her café’s windows were
blown out across the street. Over the entrance, the wooden shingle sign was creaking back and forth.

  Oliver had to trust that demons were concerned enough with their own well-being to get themselves out of the immediate area if they were in danger, not that the filthy race would stop to help the other citizens of Lindennacht on their way out. For that reason, Oliver busied himself with scanning the street for Lindenwatchmen or for humans in need of immediate aid.

  The only people in sight now, though, were a small family—a mother, father, and two young children—who poured out of their front door across the street and several houses down. The father made eye contact with Oliver only after his wife tugged at his sleeve and pointed in Oliver’s direction, but after a moment, the father shook his head and dragged her and their children frantically the opposite way, deeper into Lindennacht and toward the darkened Lindenfels, the mountain range visible just over the towering, pointed tops of the attached buildings of the city.

  Oliver almost turned away from the family.

  His attention was arrested by two hollowsouls. They dove out of a narrow alleyway on two legs and into the family, taking the wife and one of the children to the ground. Screams and demonic shrieks pierced the air.

  On instinct, Oliver launched into a sprint, coat flapping around his legs. He aimed his revolvers at the struggling mass of limbs ahead, but he was too far away and his arms were too unsteady for a clear shot. The father threw himself onto one of the hollowsouls’ hunched backs.

  Oliver was still three houses away when a shot rang out. The hollowsoul with the child in its grasp flopped to the side, and a Lindenwatchman stepped out of an alleyway, six-shot revolving rifle levelled for the second shot it buried in the hollowsoul’s twitching body. When the Lindenwatchman aimed at the other hollowsoul, the creature slammed the father still clinging to its back to the ground and faced the rifle head-on.

  A third shot rang out, and Oliver watched as the hollowsoul dodged it, pivoting sideways with unnatural speed. He heard the bullet whiz through the air and strike stone across the street. Before the hollowsoul could shift its footing to attack the Lindenwatchman, though, Oliver came to a stop, lifted his right revolver, and fired three shots, two into the creature’s upper back and one into the side of its skull. The last bullet blew a fist-sized hole through the demon’s head, brains spattering wet across the cobblestones. The creature collapsed.

  Oliver closed the short distance between himself and the frantic family as they flurried with movement.

  “That you, Bretner?” the Lindenwatchman asked conversationally, giving Oliver a onceover with two beady black eyes as he reloaded the chambers of his rifle. When he was done, he stepped over the nearest hollowsoul’s corpse and looked down at the huddled family. Oliver followed his gaze and regretted it. The family had surrounded their youngest child, a little girl who was gasping through what was left of her face, convulsing.

  The sight brought Oliver back to a muggy evening four years ago when he’d stood in a stone morgue. He could smell formaldehyde all over again—feel himself trembling as the mortician had lifted that white sheet.

  “Is it Richard?” she asked in a clinical tone, and Oliver’s throat clamped up. He could only point at the old burns on the backs of his father’s familiar hands and nod.

  Oliver shook himself from the memory.

  “Shh, nji beshna,” the father of the family whispered, cupping his daughter’s shredded, blood-slick face. Those words were the same Osnata words Oliver said to Lana every night before she went to sleep. He couldn’t help but imagine Lana lying there in the little girl’s place and turned toward his sister to make sure she was all right. She was standing at his side, staring pointedly at the ground, but she was in one piece.

  A hand shook his shoulder. When Oliver’s attention snapped up, the Lindenwatchman pulled his gloved hand back. Underneath his silver mask, his dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

  “Bretner?” the man asked, and Oliver nodded. Then recognition finally dawned on him. He knew that gruff voice. He and Druerr had done rounds together often enough, during those horrible shifts in the middle of the night, full of nothing but rats, drunkards, prostitutes, and the lonely toll of the clocktower bell. They’d gotten off together once, too—though most of that night was still a blur of kirsch and saliva-damp palms. He wondered where Druerr’s wife was tonight.

  “What’s going on out here?” Oliver asked.

  “Hell on earth,” Druerr said with a shrug. Then he waved a shooing hand at the family crouched in the street like stray cats on his stoop. “Go on! Get out of here! Lóeş bjaa’nėl!”

  At their feet, the father of the family scowled and lifted his daughter, who was no longer gurgling blood, over his shoulder. His wife let out a blubbering wail but was pulled away, the family running down the street, their sleep robes snapping loudly between their legs. A demon could have heard them a mile away, but there was nothing Oliver could do to protect them now. He needed to clear the streets of hollowsouls and get straggling citizens to safety in case another earthquake happened, whether doing so jeopardized his own safety or not. He would send Lana with an evacuation party if he found one, but he was staying here. He’d sworn an oath to protect Lindennacht.

  And if I have to die on duty like my father did, so be it. A promise is a promise. I won’t abandon my city.

  “Where’s our squadron?” Oliver asked, and Druerr shrugged one-armed. “Have you seen anyone else? The sarge? Captain?”

  “All I know is what I saw. Most of the Quadrant Two squadron’s over in the plaza—place is teeming with these bastards, I swear. Never seen so many damn demons in my life and I live in a building of the arrogant zhoukaz,” Druerr spat, and kicked the hollowsoul at his feet. He hefted his rifle up against his shoulder. “Nothing natural about them. The kaarikz probably got together and planned this months ago, going by how twisted their ugly mugs are. Just don’t know where they got all the blood to transform. Don’t know how we didn’t see this coming.”

  Oliver grimaced as he imagined what their squadrons must have overlooked. “Me, either. There should have been bodies. Hundreds—”

  Lana jerked Oliver’s sleeve, interrupting him. He scowled down at her. Instead of signing, though, his little sister pointed down the road on their right. The street stretched out another two and a half blocks before it opened out onto the bay’s loading docks where waves were crashing thunderously. It was impossible not to see what his sister wanted him to see there. The looming buildings had it framed in like the sights of a gun.

  Oliver’s heart leapt into his throat.

  What the fuck?

  There, miles out in the harbour, illuminated by the harsh moonlight, was a black wolf the size of a mountain. It dwarfed the Lindelfels fencing in Lindennacht at Oliver’s back, eclipsing the horizon and the night sky. The deep North Rock Bay failed to climb even halfway up its shifting legs. Clippers and schooners that were normally moored at the pier or anchored out in the waters were in scattered pieces, masts broken like weeping flowers, the bay littered with a graveyard of debris. No matter how long Oliver stared, the wolf didn’t vanish like a trick of shadow. Instead, it moved, rearing its head back with a rumbling growl.

  “Holy shit,” Druerr said. He pulled a jangle of silver charms from his pocket and started praying, fervently calling on the saints. “Kjeveta, åmnachteş ne njel. Nicholais, znókteş ne njel. Peytr, khemneş ne njel. Liliana, ootageş ne njel.”

  Oliver’s fingers itched to wrap around the silver pendant at his own throat so that he could say his own set of prayers, but the pendant was tucked underneath his wool collar and he couldn’t make himself let go of his guns. Making due, he settled on a single, silent wish and hoped someone heard him.

  If anyone’s out there, please help us.

  Oliver fought against his trembling and held tight to his revolvers. He’d never seen anything like this wolf before in all his life. He was trained to protect his people and keep demons in line, b
ut he didn’t know how to deal with whatever this thing was.

  How in the absolute hell do we kill something like that?

  But oath be damned, he knew there was no hope of the Lindenwatch taking down this wolf. The beast would have the town crushed beneath its paws before Oliver could evacuate a single house. Maybe they could rebuild after the beast blew through the area, but right now, they needed to get far out of its path and fast.

  When the wolf took a step forward, its red eyes gleaming like two blood moons, the bay waters rushed around its legs—and the ground lurched in another quake. Hard, Oliver’s body slammed down against the cold, damp cobblestones. He groaned and squeezed the ivory handles of his revolvers until the quaking died away.

  Then an eardrum-shattering howl ripped through the air. Even though Oliver frantically covered his ears with his forearms, he couldn’t block out the piercing call. It bounced around his skull, underlain by the wail of the town’s sirens. The howl was loud enough that it brought tears to his eyes. It made his stomach turn and his head feel light.

  The second it ceased, Oliver turned to his sister, who had dropped her pistol and flattened herself against the street. The high clang of the Watchtower’s emergency evacuation bell began to bellow.

  “New plan,” he told his sister. “We run until our legs give out.”

  THE OPEN DOOR

  _______________________________

  I swear to protect the integrity of the Infinity. I swear, with both body and soul, to protect the citizens of every Realm, including my own. I swear it from this day until my last, or let me be stripped of my rank.

  excerpt from the sacred oath of a Guardian of the Infinite Order, translated from the original Su’net

  THE GUARDIAN REALM OF FOGS