by Kevin Wright
* * * *
Unholy black demon-spume burned Detective Winters’s flesh as he tore his arm free of his coat and dove from the demon’s horned black pseudopods.
He stumbled, turning as the grimgorgon slid and undulated, pulling itself towards Peter’s convulsing form.
Detective Winters knew it for what it was, a grimgorgon, one of the three, released from its prison of unholy steel.
The leeches screamed, fleeing past, ignoring him. They had the right idea.
It was almost upon Peter.
Detective Winters withdrew the Elder Sign and hurled it, bouncing it off the black demon to lay before Peter. Faces immersed in black tar ichor screamed, pleading, silent.
It turned towards Detective Winters then and charged, sliding faster than one could imagine, black tenebrous pseudopods grappling its distorted corpse-frame forward.
Detective Winters ran like hell.
* * * *
“He is free, then.” Lil grasped one of the brethren by the neck, pinning him, writhing, against the cage wall.
The vampire’s eyes were wide with panic, an animal, scrambling like a rat from the great flood. She released him, striding forth through the river of dead-panic surging past her. They slithered past like fish, and hindered her not, for even in their madness, they knew better.
Lil saw it as it rounded the corner. She stood fast, dropping the fur coat from her shoulders to the ground as Gnar, the second grimgorgon, surged towards her embrace.
* * * *
Detective Winters surged along with the leeches, through the hall of cages, punching and trampling them down as he went. One, a woman, he sensed great power from, but the surge of leeches at his back drove him on past her.
Past arms and pleas and cries, he surged along, until he tripped over … Sid?
Detective Winters was on his knees in an instant, covering his head from the charging vampires. Then he was on his knees, hand around Sid’s throat, reflexively. “Ulp!”
Detective Winters let go.
Men screamed from their cages.
“Detective!” Sid yanked on a cage door. “Where’s Pete?”
Undead bodies buffeted Detective Winters, raging past. He gripped the bars of the cage and withstood it.
“Get out of here!” Detective Winters yelled.
“What the hell’s going on?!” shouted the man in the cage.
“Help me!” Sid yanked on the bars. “It’s Pete’s dad. Nate, we’ll get you out!”
Detective Winters frowned, glancing back at the leech who reeked so much of power. Her focus was elsewhere, the demon.
“Move!” Detective Winters shoved Sid aside and pulled a metal pick from his pocket. He glanced inside the cage. “One moment, Nathaniel.” He shoved the pick into the cage lock. Calmly, almost serenely, he moved the pick around, feeling, twisting, then added another.
“Who the fuck is that?” Sid pointed down the hall.
“The queen-leech,” Detective Winters said, studiously witching the picks.
“Holy shit! Hurry!”
With the cries of a thousand souls, the second grimgorgon revealed itself, rounding the corner down the hall. Long black glistening tentacles shot spattering into cages, ripping men from within, drowning and consuming them in foul ichor. It expanded, undulating down the hall, tearing men free as it went, consuming them without stopping.
“And what the fuck is that!?” Sid yelled.
“Her boyfriend.” Detective Winters focused on the lock. He twisted the pick a half-turn, click, and tore open the cage. Detective Winters dragged Nathaniel to his feet.
“My legs!” Nathaniel struggled to stand.
Detective Winters slung Nathaniel across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Wait, help him!” Nathaniel pointed into a cage. The man inside the cage was begging, pleading, crying.
Detective Winters barely paused as he glanced inside the cage and met the Mayor’s eyes and said, “No.”
Chapter 43.
WATER DRIPPED SLOWLY, rhythmically, methodically, somewhere off in the dark; his head was killing.
He cracked open his sleep-encrusted eyes as he wrestled from his slumber. “Hmmmm? What?” He’d heard something. Raising up and half turning his head this way and then that, his neck creaked as an arthritic old hound’s. Nothing, he saw nothing but the gray of cold concrete and chugging sewer water. He lay back down once again, huddling into the fetal position.
A chill in the damp sewer air shivered his naked body. Clutching the parts of him that dealt most poorly with the cold, he fantasized about warm blankets and clothes. Oh yeah, right out of the dryer.
Abruptly, he sneezed, every inch of his body imploding in pain. His vision shocked white for a split second, and then the crushing pain in his pounding head returned tenfold. Pushing himself up on his elbow, he wobbled then retched.
“Urrrrrrg!” Nothing came out. Goddamn, fucking ribs. A web of drool connected him to the ground. He hadn’t eaten since when?
He wiped his mouth. What the—? His hand was gone. No, how could? No! He clutched his forearm, studying it, feeling it, peering close, disbelieving. He could see clearly in the dark. His arm ended at the wrist in a tremendous, crusted scab. No.
He picked at it.
“What the hell?” Then he remembered as if watching snippets of a disjointed movie. The gun. He remembered the gun, and he remembered the werewolf. Lord Brudnoy. How he had lost his hand, remembered seeing it bitten, torn off, his stupefied shock. No pain in his hand, or his arm, just shock because that wasn’t supposed to be, couldn’t be, not to him.
Then he remembered something else from last night, the pain, the gushing twisting pain of the change. “Uhhhg…” An echo of it coursed from his memory like electricity, shaking through him, squeezing, stretching, grip-twisting every cell, pulling, dislocating joints, and then it was gone. Gone and he was left with only the hangover pain in his head, pounding, but a relief in comparison. Last night was something different. He lay back down.
* * * *
The metallic taste of blood was in his mouth as he opened his eyes and pawed his lip absently, wondering whose it was. His stomach growled.
“Rrrrrrg…”
He looked at his stump then at the filth of the dark sewer. Should clean it. It’ll get infected. He sank, grimacing, shaking his head, realizing it wouldn’t. The dead don’t get infections. They infect. They are the infection.
Tears glistened in his eyes as he drew his knees to his breast. He shook his head. The sun, have to meet the sun.
The thought, though, the thought of stepping out into the sun to cauterize himself, he shuddered. Memories of the bridge swamped back, the burning, the searing light, the pain.
Everything he did caused pain.
He couldn’t do it. Even if he had the strength to … Jesus, can’t even stand. He tried but couldn’t, but he was too spent, too weak.
His stomach growled again.
“Shut up…” His voice echoed down the tunnels.
A rat scurried from a pipe, and Peter’s eyes locked onto its form. He froze suddenly, stiffening in a hackled crouch like some drooling wolf ready to pounce.
“My God.” He fell back.
The rat scurried down a tunnel, and Peter watched it go, restraining some new instinct within him, the hunter’s…
A faint breeze blew in then from that tunnel, and upon it he could smell the rat, hear its breath, and beyond that, far away, cars, voices, the river, the searing light of a new day.
“I gotta do this.”
Grunting, he pushed himself up.
His nails scraped on the concrete.
He stepped into the tunnel maw.
Naked, in the dark, chin up, trembling, he strode down.
His soft feet splashed in the sewer swill.
The path twisted; he could see light far ahead.
He limped down toward it.
The fresh air wafted against his face, invigorating him, and
then suddenly it fouled, poisoned, something reeking upon it, something unfamiliar, burnt, charred, something … dangerous.
Peter froze, his one hand against the wall.
He heard footsteps then. Heel to toe. Heel to toe, clicking and grinding on the concrete. Slow measured steps coming up. Up to him. Shadows danced in the distance, rippling on the dull convex wall.
The shadow of a man. He wore a hat.
The hat he wore and the trench coat over his shoulders had been gray once but were now charred black.
“Detective Winters.” Peter stood up straight.
Detective Winters continued up the grade, hands hidden in his pockets.
He said nothing, just walked, face wreathed in shadow.
Peter took a step back. “Detective?”
Detective Winters’s hands were out of his pockets then, up, pointed at Peter, a gun aimed, unloading—
Blam!
An orange blaze, Peter was knocked off his feet, ribs shattering against the floor. Shockwaves of sound ripped past, and he was on his back staring up, and there was no pain yet, just the dull pounding in his brain, the spent cartridge clinking on the cold concrete.
Peter stared up at the tunnel ceiling, gulping, gasping silent.
The acrid stench of gunpowder singed the fresh air, and Peter heard more footsteps.
Close.
He could lift his head, barely. His vision blurred, the silhouette of an Oxford-quality hat glaring down at him.
“Winters…” Peter murmured.
The silhouette stared.
Peter’s lungs filled with blood.
“Good … good, you promised.” Peter stared at the gun in Detective Winters’s hand.
Detective Winters grasped his foot in one hand and turned.
Across the concrete, down the slope, toward the searing fate that awaited him, Peter scraped along through the muck, his fingers outstretched, reaching automatically, instinctively, for survival, for purchase. There was none.
Never looking back, never stopping, Detective Winters trudged down the tunnel slope.
Peter craned his neck, feeling the pain from the gunshot then, dull, muted, in his chest. Then fresh air met his face. He inhaled, barely. The light of the sun was closer now, blaring six-hundred decibels of searing pain he could already feel in his mind.
Peter’s fingers found purchase suddenly, a pipe, and without thought, he clutched onto it with the last vestige of his failing strength.
Let go.
“I can’t,” Peter said.
Please, just let it go.
Water drizzled from the pipe.
Outside, the river rumbled past.
Blam!
Detective Winters shot him again.
Shuddering limp, breathless, Peter let go and was dragged away, feeling nothing, no pain. He couldn’t move. The sunlight was so close he could taste it. The concrete left him as Detective Winters pulled him up to his knees at the edge of the pipe, limp, and then hurled him out into daylight.
Upon the concrete spillway, Peter smashed hard. Skidding and rolling, tumbling rag doll-limp, head over heels, down, down, down. He slammed to a final halt against a pile of rot and squish. He opened his eyes, but couldn’t see.
The sun!
He threw his arms up to protect himself, his eyes, but it was futile. He couldn’t move. Was he burning? He could feel nothing.
His vision returned after a moment, a swirl of colors zigzagged scarring across his eyes. He wasn’t burning, and he could see. And the cold trickle of sewer water soaking his back felt … refreshing?
For once it was not pain.
He tried to move, “UUUUhhgg,” but the pain rocked back.
His ribs slid, crunching as he inhaled.
Footsteps approached down the spillway.
Peter struggled to move, gagging up blood, growling. Still, he could not. His fingertips wriggled around a stick, forming a fist. Feeble. Peter glared up.
Detective Winters stomped down the long spillway, a cell phone at his ear. He tucked it away, looked down, his gun still in hand.
Peter struggled like a cocooned caterpillar, squeezing the stick. If he could just throw it? But, no, it fumbled from his fingers.
Detective Winters sat on the concrete edge of the spillway, looking past, out over the dark river, the cold clear sky. The sun was bright. He doffed his hat and pulled the clip from his gun. Bullet by bullet, he reloaded it.
“End it,” Peter mumbled.
Detective Winters pushed the last bullet into the clip. Just get it over with. He slid it back into the gun and pulled the slide back, ka-chung, loading it.
“Just do it already!” Peter snarled.
Detective Winters looked down at him; he shook his head. “No.”
“Please…” Peter slumped.
“This is no longer my jurisdiction.” Detective Winters still gazed out over the river. “I told you I was currently unemployed, back at the club. Think of a good question.”
“Why…? Why aren’t I dead?”
“Which dead do you mean? Dead, or undead?”
Peter grunted.
“You will find that one will answer the other,” Detective Winters said. “First, Peter, you are not dead because I shot you with lead rounds. Deadly, of course, to humans.”
Peter looked up, an eyebrow raised.
“Peter, you are not dead from the bullet wounds because you are no longer human,” Detective Winters said. “You are a lycanthrope. A were-creature. In this case, of the wolf variety.”
“What?” It hurt to speak.
“I know because Lord Brudnoy bit you last night.” Detective Winters glanced down for an instant as if for confirmation. “And I know because Lord Brudnoy, too, once was a man. And during the night of a full moon, thirty-four years ago, a werewolf was set upon him by his enemies, by our enemies.”
Peter blinked.
“It mangled him, yes, but he survived, barely. That was enough.”
Peter shuddered.
“Terrence Brudnoy was attacked at his home, by leeches one week prior to his ordeal with the werewolf.”
“Yeah, rrrrg, his wife was killed,” Peter said.
“And Brudnoy was injured, as well. Infected by the leeches.”
“But, Salazar—”
“Salazar did not know. And still he does not. Brudnoy refused treatment, so there was no record of the injury. He kept it hidden. Only Brudnoy and the leeches who attacked him knew,” Detective Winters said. “And I suspect he tore them apart years ago. The vengeance of the werewolf is keen, swift, inevitable. They were probably his first, far from his last.”
“How do you know?”
“Research, reasoning, both inductive and deductive, intuition, torture, and interviews allowed me to form a hypothesis from the maelstrom of information.”
“A what?”
“Did Brudnoy speak to you last night?” Detective Winters asked. “Before you shot him in the face?”
“Uh, yeah. Rrrrrg … didn’t make much sense, even less than the last time I saw him.”
“His mind was deteriorating quickly.” Detective Winters nodded. “Even through his increasing dementia, though, he was still aware. Do you recall what he said?”
“Yeah, something about some payment or debt maybe?” Peter took a deep breath. “And something, some guy, named, Tear?”
“Tyr.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Peter winced. “Something about ties, or binding? Binding some wolf. Him, I guess?”
“You will heal,” Detective Winters said, “and faster than you might imagine. Brudnoy’s method of paying off his debt. He gave you life, even as his was taken.”
“I…” Peter closed his eyes. “I didn’t mean for him to die.”
“He did, though, Peter. It was what he most desired. Release. It was his time,” Detective Winters said. “His was a harsh life, and he was old beyond his many years, in mind if not body. And so in one bite Lord Brudnoy released you from the gun a
nd cured you of the infection. His efficiency was commendable.”
“Yeah.”
“He did so not as a gift, though, but as a reckoning, and because he saw worth in you, honor.”
“A reckoning?”
“A balancing of accounts.”
“Hmmm. So … we’re even?”
“That is for you to decide in the coming days, Peter. And only you.”
Peter nodded slowly, a twitch.
“Don’t remember being a werewolf,” Peter said.
“And you will not. You will not remember any of what transpires while you are ruled by the beast,” Detective Winters said. “I do not apologize for my actions. Within the crucible of pain, even wastrels can be forged into men. Its fires scar the mind, the body, and the soul. But there is no other method. Burning hot, searing, scarring, they brand the wise, the unwise, the unlucky. Any and all who dare.” Detective Winters gazed out over the river. “Risks too numerous, too great, I have ventured, and I have felt the kiss of flame and been scarred every time, but all was for the greater good, and I shall do it again if need demands. And need shall. A life bereft of scars, Peter, is flat, featureless, soft. Yours is none of those things now.”
“You scare me less when you’re shooting at me.”
“It had to be done, Peter. It was a test, and you passed because you live.”
“I can’t be a … a werewolf.”
“If still you remain unconvinced,” he brandished a silver bullet, glinting harsh in the sunlight, “I have this.”
“No … no thanks.” Peter took a deep breath. “So, I’m … I’m a werewolf then. What does that mean? Will my hand grow back?”
“No,” Detective Winters said. “It means many things, but, for now, most importantly, it means you have your soul, intact, and for that, a hand, a limb, a life, even, is no great sacrifice.”
“Yeah, well, I noticed you didn’t want to put that damned collar on him.”
“You are quite astute.”
Peter almost laughed, but then his face fell, tears welling in his eyes. “Look, is my … my dad’s dead, right? I mean, isn’t he? Thought I heard him in the hall … in that hall, the cages, before that, that thing came out. Before it … it came for me. Couldn’t think. I was so scared. Jesus, it was even eating the freaking ghouls—”