“So, you really are a womanizer,” I said, looking solemn.
“Doesn’t every guy wanna be to some extent? Isn’t it just normal?” he asked.
I couldn’t argue with that, though I wonder what would’ve happened if I did. I didn’t have much time to do it, though.
Lorenz bolted upright, then a lupine ear shifted its way out of the top of his head. “Oh, shit,” Lorenz said with sudden fear in his voice, which made me jump to my feet.
Chapter 32
We rushed down the stairs, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that a group of people held back the door to the bar. It seemed like a group of those black-cloaked fools were trying to bash it down. There was an explosion, which sounded close.
“Oh, that’s going to blow our cover,” Lorenz said, sighing.
“What is?” I asked, starting to panic a little.
“We just got bombed. The fact that the building will have no visible damage will go into the police report, and that’s going to send a wave of detectives over here.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that statement when a shout came up from the basement, where the portal was.
“That was David!” I cried out, and the two of us rushed down.
David was to the left of the hallway, with the bigger man we captured, letting go of a knife. Beside him, in the centre of the hallway, was Carl. David’s left arm had a knife sticking out of it. The two seemed ready to take David out.
“Where did that knife come from?” I asked.
“E-lis, start your Kuji-in!” Lorenz said as he transformed into a wolf and went for Carl.
He sprinted right at Carl, with two sets of footfalls with those powerful lupine legs. He seemed to instinctively want to go to the side, but stayed on track then jumped up. He transformed his legs first into hybrid form and gave the man a dropkick, sending the knife flying backwards out of his hands.
The captive swiped at Lorenz, but David was all too ready to shift the fight into high gear. His right arm transformed. He ducked under the fight between Lorenz and the captive and tackled Carl to the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” he shouted, punching him with his left before raking his chest with his right.
“Loyalty means nothing. You’ll have more who betray you,” Carl said as he grabbed at the deep cuts in his belly.
The big man engaged Lorenz in a fistfight. He threw a left hook with the intent to kill. Lorenz jumped to the right, punching the man in the side of the head and slashing his chest with his claws. The man countered with a strong blow to Lorenz’s side, and I heard the cracking of bone.
Lorenz jumped back to a centre position and kicked the man in the side. He jumped and spun the other way, kicking his other side and slashing at the same time. The man, despite being a figurative mountain, jostled back and forth, and his chest started to bleed.
“Alright, pretty boy, if that’s how you wanna play.”
I realized I was gawking and quickly went through the hand signs. Hey, if nothing else, I could say I did them. If they worked, as they did for the ninja, well, I was that much closer to being one, wasn’t I?
I had picked up some considerable speed while practicing, though I’m not entirely sure that’s something to brag about. As soon as I was done, I bolted for the knife the man had dropped and picked it up.
The captive wasn’t trying to pick his shots anymore. He threw them over and over as fast as he could. Lorenz dodged the man’s punches like he was the world’s best Frogger player on a level with only trucks. He kicked the man’s legs, sending him off balance, and kneed his chin while he was down.
David wasn’t fairing so hot. Carl slashed at him with the silvered knife he’d retrieved. David backed away and went in for a few slashes himself. Both needed to crunch those abs to dodge, and they had about the same reach.
I ran up to that fight, and as Carl extended his hand, I kicked the knife out of it. David clawed him across the chest again.
He recoiled, grabbing the knife, his body starting to get covered in blood. There was no major artery hit so it wasn’t likely he’d get down soon. I jumped back and grabbed the knife that’d fallen just a metre away and dove at Carl.
It’s a surreal experience, literally cutting someone up with knives. David used this time to stand up and feel his left arm.
Carl picked up his legs and kicked him back. I managed to stand and mitigate the momentum. I ended up stumbling into the wall behind the captive. David grabbed Carl by the neck, picked him up, and slammed him into the wall.
“What’s the cypher key?” David demanded.
The larger man managed to land a hit right in Lorenz’s stomach, but Lorenz managed to knock one square on the man’s jaw. The man recoiled, and Lorenz transformed his hand and put his jaws on the man’s jugular. The captive realized this as a checkmate, and while his adrenaline was running high, he remained still.
Seeing the initiative, I put my knife to the back of his head. “Don’t move!” I said, sounding commanding and threatening. “Holy shit, those actually worked!” I said, realizing how effective the Kuji-in was.
“In the Lord’s holy name, you’ll never figure it out, you filthy hellspawn! Go back into your hell portal and tell Satan his time will come!” Carl said, pointing to the glowing portal.
“Would that I could, mate, but that portal goes to the earth elemental plane, not any sort of hellscape!” David spat.
“E-lis!” Silvia cried out as she and Gavin rushed onto the scene.
David turned and looked at her. “Silvia, we need some firebombs, and we need them about twenty minutes ago! Go to the roof and drop them down on the crowd at the front door!” he said and turned to Gavin. “Gavin, you’re the strongest dude here, hold the front door so they don’t get in! The magic won’t hold it for long!”
“What about—” Silvia started to protest.
“Just go. We’ve got them cornered!”
Silvia took one last look at me, and I didn’t blame her. I knew I couldn’t kill these guys. Heck, I felt horrible for cutting Carl with a knife, even though he’d betrayed werewolf trust.
“If you give me the password, you can live through this nightmare, but if not, we’re going to have to kill you,” David growled.
He transformed what he could of his head into a wolf’s.
“I’d rather die than give you that information!” he shouted.
Anderson walked in from the portal room, holding a steel broadsword, and peered at each of us individually.
“Mayhap we could find an alternative to executing these individuals in front of Elizabeth. I know you boys understand the morality of it, but she is rather new to this fighting.”
While it’s nice to have a friendly face come in and help you with your problems, why hadn’t he helped David in the first place?
“What do you suggest?” David asked.
Lorenz might have added something if he hadn’t the need to keep his mouth perfectly still to keep the man in check.
“Throw them into the portal and let them see it’s not Hell for themselves, and slow the coming onslaught,” Anderson said.
It was quite weird to hear him talk like this because, the more it went on, the calmer he was. He had a middling tone about throwing people into hellscapes. He was even more chill when he mentioned oncoming onslaught!
“Wait, what?” I asked, turning to him, my eyes wide and my voice going shrill.
“How did this group of people find out about us? Simple, a being that could escape our notice went through the portal and told them about us, doing so to serve their master. So that the weakest defended portal would be compromised and they could enter our world.”
I blinked and then started to push the big man towards the portal. We were down a fair way in the hallway that led to it. My body pumped out adrenaline hard and fast. I could feel every single muscle in my body as it slowly and methodically extended in and out.
David shrugged. “Last chance,” he s
aid, moving Carl Benjamin like he was a paperweight with really long dangling bits.
Carl grasped at his hands and struggled, but it was no use. David threw him into the portal like he’d throw a fastball, and as soon as we got the big guy into the portal room, Anderson, Dan, Minerva, and Cassy all grabbed hold.
“So, what stops them from coming back?” I asked.
“Well, us. And, currently, there’s like a sixty-degree slope for a couple of hundred metres,” Minerva said.
“It’ll shift so there’s an upwards slope soon,” Anderson said as he put the sword over his shoulder.
I nodded, and we started to go see the other front. That’s when Anderson put his hand on my shoulder. The adrenaline in my system made me tense up to a painful degree.
“Before you go, I’d like to try to alleviate some of the tension you have about killing foes. Or perhaps lead you to the healing process of accepting it sooner. You’ve already killed someone. It was in the defence of your friends and yourself, so it wasn’t murder.”
I blinked. “W-what?” I asked, looking around.
“Anderson! Silvia told you not to tell her!” David said, pulling the knife out of his shoulder and shifting into a wolf form.
“Silvia’s a caring child, but she’s just sixteen. She doesn’t know how things function yet.” Anderson’s eyes were heavy, but I could tell this was something he knew from years of experience. I needed to know.
“W-who did I kill? How? I don’t remember being in combat that badly. It wasn’t the first guy who attacked Silvia, was it?”
“That man is still alive,” Lorenz said. “Now, come on!” He waved us upwards and into the main room, where a pile of people tried to hold the door closed.
I didn’t have time to process what I’d done, or even figure out who I’d done it to. Big man was alive, Leonardo was still alive, who’d I fought that wasn’t? I couldn’t figure it out at the time.
Lorenz and David added their weight to the group. In a moment, they were flung off by the force of whatever the people outside were slamming into it, their bodies mainly used to disperse the energy put into the door so that it wouldn’t be broken. Even Gavin was being shoved aside like he was a plush wolf. I ran up the stairs with Silvia as she passed me a belt of alchemical ingredients. In her hand was essentially a Bunsen burner, only it wasn’t supposed to be and wasn’t there to serve that function.
“Should there be a stopper on that thing?” I asked as its flame continued to fizzle out of the top.
“Sally always puts them in the weirdest places! We’ve got no time!” Silvia said as we ran up the stairs.
“Who’s Sally?”
“Alchemy teacher!” Silvia squeaked.
We got to the side of the room, thankfully close to the roof access, and Silvia threw it onto the crowd below. Its contents spilled out and ignited before it stopped in mid-air.
Chapter 33
Silvia and I both blinked as the contents of the mixture returned to the flask, and it shuddered.
“Silvia, watch out!” I said, tackling her down as the thing flung past us and landed on the rooftop, instantly igniting a blazing inferno at our backs.
We both slowly got up and turned our heads, trying to figure out what just happened. There, on the edge of the other building, was a tall slender person in a cloak. It had dark red fur and blue accents running along the edges and forming glyphs on the back, chest, and sides. There were similar on the gloves the person wore.
We couldn’t figure out what gender they were, only the fact that they were carrying a dark red and blue book with black pages.
“That’s… a grimoire,” Silvia exclaimed.
“Ah, yes, of course,” I said, looking from her to the person.
Their face was obscured with a black mist, which seemed to pour out of it like water out of a pipe, then turned into the fog of a fog machine.
“A grimoire is—” Silvia started.
“A grimoire is a magical tome, connected to one of the magical power sources, capable of granting a mortal the powers of magic with careful study and use of the book,” the figure said in a shrill male voice. “This is the grimoire of a blood mage. One who’s bound by blood to do their master’s bidding can wield its power and learn its secrets!” the person said, lifting a hand to their chest as if we couldn’t guess they were talking about themselves.
“It is my honour to serve my Lord and Saviour on this day and rid the world of you savage scum!” the person added, pointing a gloved hand at us.
His hand went from holding the book to just lying open under it, as the book opened up and floated on its power. The pages flipped, and a pink circle, with many details I couldn’t hope to recall, formed underneath the figure.
A raspy voice spoke ungodly sounds, and different coloured runes filled in slots of the circle, three in total. On the other hand of the mage formed an orb of water, which was flung onto the fire, dousing it.
Silvia looked at me and back at the person, tilting her head slightly. “I’m guessing your master isn’t what these simpletons think it is,” I asked smugly.
“Too true. My master has been in charge of a lot, and until now, never really had a lack of places to expand into. Now, he finds it rather difficult to get a good hold on this Earth. Such hard treks through the plane make large armies impossible, and those werewolves are so well trained to deal with things like him, but enough of that,” the mage said as the pages turned to another area.
Another glyph appeared, and this time, a ball of green gas started to form in their hand. I gulped. That didn’t look good. I grabbed Silvia by the shoulders, pushed, and pointed to the building behind the community centre.
She got the hint as the entire rooftop was suddenly covered in a thick green, presumably poisonous, mist. Silvia made the jump, just barely, but whimpered as she hit the other side and struggled to climb up the wall.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at the thick green smoke.
“It burns!” she said, shifting back.
While I’d managed to hold my breath for long enough, it seemed she wasn’t as lucky. She struggled to breathe. Her eyes watered, her face went red, and she looked to be in some serious pain.
The mage skipped along the side of the building to get a better view of us. It looked almost as if they could levitate or fly with how effortless it was for them to move.
“Someone’s a smart little doggy. How about this?” they said as the pages once again flipped.
I took out the alchemical knife and threw it at the mage while their focus was on the book. It got close enough to slice their cheek. They did dodge most of the blade, though, and I realized I could throw a knife fairly effectively.
The mage caught it afterwards with their weird floaty grip a foot from their arm and dropped it onto the crowd. This caused one of the men to shout in pain.
“So, doggy has some long-range claws, eh? Well, don’t think I lack claws of my own!”
The grimoire flipped rapidly to the back area of the book, and a much larger circle formed. This one didn’t have the mage in the centre. The mage was the subject of one smaller circle, with one larger one bordering it, offset by a ring of rectangular areas that rapidly filled with different runes, though these ones lacked the colours of the other spells. The bigger circle glowed, and a big red limb flailed out of the spell circle and grabbed the edge of the community centre. Another nearly crushed the façade of the building on a diagonal. The arms were at an obtuse angle, like the portal was just above the demon in question. The beast seemed to have trouble getting a good grip as the buildings, other than the community centre, crumbled in its grasp.
“Silvia,” I mumbled slowly, “now would be a good time to howl!”
She transformed and leaned back to howl our situation to those inside the community centre. The gas seemed to be burning her vocal cords, as she could hardly get a raspy choking cough out.
The monster finally got a good grip on the community centre an
d forced itself out. The thing was two stories tall. It had bright red skin, a black metallic-looking spiky beard, and two horns like a ram’s curling back over its head.
Its black, soulless eyes turned to us, and its face twisted into a sinister smile. I quickly ran over to Silvia, and put her, now once again human, arm around my shoulder and looked for a way out of this situation.
I ran over the signs in my head, my hands being occupied and all the stress building up as the monster tested the limits of the buildings around him. It’s like he was on some solid ice around some not so solid pieces.
He tested putting his weight onto the ledge. It held, but when he put more weight onto it, it crumbled and fell into the intervening space below. The mage flew up to his ear with a sickening fluidity.
“No need to worry about the terrain, just jump on them!” The mage pointed at us, and the demon bent down.
I swapped my direction of movement and picked Silvia’s legs off the ground as the thing jumped. With a deafening crash, it landed just a few inches away from us. It smashed through the building. I lost my balance and nearly fell in after the beast as the roof crumbled. Dust poured out of the building, and those evil looking eyes rose to stare at us from the deep dusty pit.
By now, the gas had cleared on the community centre’s roof, and I desperately wanted to be back there. If nothing else, Silvia could maybe make a poison antidote for the gas with her alchemy knowledge. I didn’t know if my alchemy gear had anything for that.
The mage flew over the hole and started casting again. I didn’t know what he was capable of, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good. My mind went to the thought of this mage making the creature fly, and the glass flask was in and out of my hand in an instant.
This time, it landed on the mage’s side. It burst with the power of the reagents inside, sending a sizable shard into his rib. Blood trickled down his robe. The only reason I could detect this was I could see it running through to the blue line about halfway up the robe’s side. The red fur did well to hide a lot of the blood.
The Stray Human: A college age urban fantasy with werewolves, werewolf community center book 1 Page 14
