by Hunter Blain
On one of the tables was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in all my life.
“Holy Sheoly,” I exhaled as I froze in place.
Hayley turned her head and searched for whatever I was looking at.
“What?”
“There! It’s Rocky Dennis!” I cried out in delight, renewed strength allowing me to support myself as I dashed for the table, nearly tripping over a discarded water bottle.
I gingerly picked up the Battlefield Earth cup and immediately brought it to my face, nuzzling my old friend. Some grape-flavored liquid sloshed out to drip down my cheek, but I didn’t care.
“Rocky...Dennis? Isn’t that the dude from The Mask?”
“Mask,” I corrected, pulling the cup away to lovingly regard it. “The Mask was the Jim Carrey movie. Mask starred Eric Stoltz.”
“Then...why the hell are you saying that...that John Travolta is Rocky Dennis? I’m so confused,” Hayley drawled, looking at John Travolta’s gorgeous face as I pushed it back against my cheek. “And what the hell is Terre champ de bataille.”
“Huh?” I asked, pulling the cup away once more to see what the heck the warden was talking about. “Oh shit! It’s the French title.” It was then that I noticed how many scratches marred its surface as it had clearly been used in a way unbefitting a work of art.
“Aw, dammit,” I lamented as the cup slipped from my grasp to shatter against the stone ground.
“What’s going on right now?” Hayley asked, her face managing to become more confused with each passing second. It was as if the middle of her face was being sucked in by an unseen black hole—which was an oxymoron, now that I thought about it.
“Short story long, I collected Battlefield Earth cups since its original release and kept them locked away in one of the kitchen cabinets. That is, until the asshat Oberon did a freaking sonic boom and destroyed every last one of them. They had to be worth tens, if not hundreds, of pennies.”
In an instant, Hayley’s screwed-up face—which was beginning to resemble an anus—flattened out into a blank expression. I could tell by her eyes that her soul had died a little.
“What?!”
“I...I can’t tell if you are being ironic or not,” she groaned.
“He’s not,” Ludvig answered as a whoomp sounded. Hayley and I rushed to the door in confusion to look down the hall, seeing what was left of my body smolder into ashes.
“Ah, good idea,” I said, absentmindedly running my hand down my new torso. I did a quick check of the celestial batteries to see that a large portion had been used to not only keep me from dying but to repair the massive amounts of removed tissue. I was just lucky that Ludvig and Hayley worked as an efficient team and had kept me from losing anything unnecessary.
Something came to mind, and I glanced at the mostly clean ground where I had been cut apart. There should have been a huge pool of blood.
“Hey, how did you keep me from bleeding out, you know, when the Swede was playing operation on me?” I asked as Hayley and I walked back into the break room, giving me time to check every cup I could find in the cabinets and on the tables.
“I controlled the water in your blood and pulled it away from where he cut just long enough for us to cauterize the arteries.”
“Oh...neat,” I said with only half enthusiasm. It still felt weird to have a large chunk of my body cut away.
“There!” someone yelled in French as a green fireball flew over where Ludvig was dodging backward. He looked like Neo; you know, only a hundred pounds heavier.
Ludvig quickly bounced back up and brought his suppressed Sig to bear, squeezing the trigger which silently burped three-round bursts. The report of the bullets striking the flesh and bone of the offending attackers was impressively louder than the actual firing of the weapon.
Returning to the hallway, Hayley and I looked down to see a pair of warlocks doing their best impressions of Swiss cheese.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” I said in my best John Wayne.
“Who is Tex?”
“Lilith damn it, Lude. You’re gonna have to brush up on your movies if you wanna hang with the big boys.”
“Oh, you were doing an impression?”
“Ye-yeah, dude. John Wayne? Ever heard of him? Arguably the best cowboy of all time— next to Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday, of course.”
“Leave now while you still can, vampire!” a voice crackled over the loudspeaker in a French accent.
“I’m your huckleberry,” I said in answer.
“John!” Hayley harshly whispered as she backhanded my stomach with an expression that said, “Shut up, dude!”
“Release it,” the voice said again, but it was quieter, as if the person speaking had pulled back from the microphone.
“Release what?” I asked the air as the three of us exchanged glances.
There was a terrifying roar that made my nads retreat into my pelvis. It sounded like Depweg’s feral form, which reminded me of a haunted locomotive but with the bass knob turned all the way up.
Ludvig’s red goggles slowly pivoted away from me to stare down the hallway where thumps sounded in a slow, steady progression. Though I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew they were scowling.
Hayley pulled her wand out, the runes already glowing down its length. She stepped fully into the hall and moved to crouch in front of Ludvig.
The Swede moved his hand to rest on her shoulder without taking his eyes off the end of the hallway, prompting the warden to look up. Ludvig simply shook his head back and forth in a slow motion, indicating that Hayley would not be safe in front of the Swedish tank.
Taking his cue, she got up and moved down the hallway in the direction we had come.
“John, go,” Ludvig whispered as he pointed his rifle down the hall. I heard something click, and knew he had just put the Sig into full auto.
That worried me, because the Supernatural Hunter never put his rifle into full auto unless there were several enemies clustered together...or something big.
Taking his hint, I moved to follow Hayley as the thump-thump-thump grew closer.
There was a hiss, and I turned to see a snout poke from around the corner at the end of the hall. It was almost as high as the ceiling, and I gulped. Then the rest of the monster spilled into view.
It was a hideous werewolf that had, indeed, gone feral, standing on two powerful legs with long arms tipped in claws. But something was different about this one. He had a white stripe running down the middle of his head, and the top two fangs were considerably longer than the bottom ones, reminding me of...
“Run!” I croaked as I turned into a full sprint down the hallway, craning my head to look behind me.
Ludvig began firing as he retreated backward, keeping his muzzle trained on the approaching beast.
The monster blurred to the side as machine-gun fire ripped into the stone wall where he had just been.
Ludvig corrected his aim and squeezed the trigger again.
Once more, the giant werewolf blurred to the side as every round hit nothing but air before lodging into the stone wall.
Without missing a beat, Ludvig turned and began running full speed to catch up to where Hayley and I were. As he moved, he yanked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it at his side.
The monster started charging forward with a roar that rattled my teeth, and was only a second away from catching up to Ludvig when the grenade went off, throwing the beast through the wall.
“Keep moving!” Ludvig cried out as he dropped his mostly spent mag and replaced it before letting go of the rifle. It swung on its sling to hang below his right shoulder next to his hip.
There was another bone-shattering bellow from the creature that now sounded pissed off.
Hayley had already made it to the entrance and was trying to get out, but there was no longer a ladder.
As I made it to where she stood, I wrapped her in my arms and bounced off the walls like a parkour performer before ascending
through the hole.
I dropped her before landing, and she rolled into an offensive stance as I smacked the ground with my Fae-crafted boots.
My celestial gladius blazed to life as I turned in time to see Ludvig clear the hole with ease, dropping a spherical glass vial behind him.
“Get clear!” he bellowed as he landed in a roll.
There was a brilliant explosion as the ground shook beneath our feet. The concrete where the bunker had been bowed outward before crumbling and collapsing in on itself, sending twenty feet of rubble and debris down to seal the exit.
“What the banana boat was in that vial?!” I panted, gesturing with my entire hand at the crater.
“My last Big Boom,” he said sourly.
“Can...can we call it Big Bada Boom?”
“Is dat anodder movie saying?”
“...Leeloo Dallas multipass.”
“Goddamn it, John!” Hayley cried out in a rage. “This is no time to play around!”
“Pfft, we’re fine. Ludvig did his Big Bada Boom thing, and the monster can’t get us now. Heck, he probably blew that thing to the far side of the moo—”
A deep growl sounded as if someone had recorded the howling wind at the entrance of a huge cave and then digitally made it louder. Large pieces of rubble began to stir in the hole as something pushed through.
“Okay, then. Time to go?” I asked the group, who huddled to me.
Hayley quickly extended her arm, and we grabbed one another’s wrists. In a hurry, because whatever was coming...was coming, the warden also bound our grips together with a simple spell. Doing so had become standard operating procedure when flying after I, ah, accidentally dropped her from a few hundred feet in the air. I mean, I freaking caught her, but she never let me live it down. Plus that stupid dragonfly had come out of nowhere, man, and needed to be swatted away. You ever see one of those things up close? It’s like the military version of a horsefly.
“John!” Haley cried out as the unmistakable sound of breaking concrete reminded me of the importance of fleeing.
Ludvig grabbed my other wrist, tight enough to pop bones, and I manifested my wings while going, “Ow, ow, ow!” That Swede was stronger than he looked, and he already looked really freaking strong.
Normally, I would crouch down and burst into the air, but because I had passengers on Jet-John who didn’t appreciate having their shoulders torn out of their sockets, I instead opted to vigorously flap my celestial wings.
When we were a few feet off the ground of our agonizingly slow ascent, the were-monster exploded from the ground with a shower of shrapnel.
“Hayley!” I cried out as I stared at the incoming debris that was arcing through the sky.
“On it,” she responded, bringing her wand up and summoning a shield of air above us.
The cracks of automatic fire startled me, even though I had anticipated they were coming, and I glanced down to see Ludvig aiming his smaller H&K at the beast. What worried me was that the normally cool and collected Supernatural Hunter was wildly firing in the general direction of the monster. Then I noticed what he was doing.
The feral werewolf blurred from the initial volley, only to be struck in the shoulder and arm as he moved at speeds that shouldn’t have been possible for anything other than a...
The 9mm rounds barely seemed to tickle the feral Goliath, who didn’t even cry out in pain.
Then he sidestepped and disappeared into thin air. Something shimmered where he had vanished, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was from my current vantage point.
“What the shipping labels was that?” I asked while craning my neck to look behind me, only to have my question answered.
“Look ou—” was all Hayley could get out before we crashed into something massive.
I was distinctly aware of thick, musky fur pushing into my face as I turned, a metric ton of solid flesh behind it...whiiiiiiich should have been impossible, seeing as how we were already a hundred feet off the ground.
There was a sickening ripping sound and a sheet of delectable torment as my wings were ripped off as easily as pulling a Kleenex from the box.
My mind staggered with the electrifying pain of losing my manifestation mixed with the few remaining active brain cells trying to comprehend how the werewolf had become aerial. Pretty sure Depweg didn’t have the ability...or maybe he did and just never told me! Bastard!
The crack of semiauto fire broke me from my daze, as did the oh-so-exciting feeling of freefall. But the weapon’s fire ceased quickly, concern gripping my mind.
I couldn’t see what was going on with a face full of muscle and fur, but I knew without having to think about it that the firing had been from Ludvig’s gun, his H&K now no doubt spent and with no way to change magazines without letting go of my wrist.
The crack of a pistol firing gave me renewed hope as Ludvig pulled out his sidearm and began pumping round after round into the wolf.
The monster roared as his fur started standing on end, and I saw my opportunity. Bringing my legs into my chest, I did a powerful double kick into the monster’s abdomen, separating us in midair. I saw arcs of electricity spilling from a pissed off wizard warden’s wand. She really let him have it, sending enough raw lightning to probably power an entire neighborhood for a year.
My brain screamed about the approaching ground right as Ludvig let go of my wrist. I brought Hayley into my chest and willed the first thing my frantic imagination could produce.
An ivory beanbag the size of a car filled with tiny orbs manifested right as we smashed into the ground, the bag dissipating nearly all of our kinetic energy.
“AH!” Hayley barked out as we came to a stop.
“What?” I urgently asked, knowing though my friend was tough, she wasn’t even in the same ballpark as me.
“My leg!” she growled between a jaw that refused to open as she spoke.
I let the manifestation drop, which was an oversight on my part, and we fell the rest of the way to the ground.
“Damn it, John!” Hayley cried out in a higher pitch. She rolled on the ground, grabbing at her foot, which was facing ninety degrees to the right.
“Yeesh,” I said right as the wolf landed on the guard shack, crumbling the structure like it had been made with playing cards and popsicle sticks.
With a searching gaze, I located Ludvig strolling toward us, swapping out first his Glock’s mag, and then his H&K, holstering each as he finished. Then he brought his full-size Sig up to sight on the shack while gliding in a shooter’s stance over to where Hayley was writhing on the ground.
I wanted to ask how he had survived a drop from that height without so much as a limp, but before I could even inhale, the rubble of the guard shack started lifting.
Ludvig bent down, extending his nontrigger hand, and placed it on Hayley’s ankle.
“Sorry about dis,” he said through his breathing apparatus before snapping the foot back in the general direction it should be facing.
Hayley shrieked, more in rage than pain, before a white light started flowing from Ludvig’s hand.
Warden Broadway’s screaming died off like a balloon losing the last of its air as a look of wonderment filled her face.
A loud pop followed by a wince from the wizard indicated that everything was back in place.
Once Hayley was healed, Ludvig stood and took a few steps forward, placing himself directly between the giant wolf and the woman he loved, his barrel staying trained on the threat.
The feral beast roared in fury, making my sternum vibrate uncomfortably. I shook the feeling away with a quick shudder as I willed my gladius to life once more, heavenfire licking the air above my blade.
“Lude,” I loudly whispered as I walked up to stand next to the large man. “I...I think he has some of my abilities. I can’t explain why.”
“I know,” was all he said in a serious tone of concentration.
The beast squared off with us, and I was alarmed to see where Ludvig had
shot his silver rounds had already healed completely. That wasn’t anything to do with being either a werewolf or vampire. Come to think of it, neither was the fact the SOB had somehow teleported through the air.
He roared in challenge before taking one hulking step forward. My instinct was to move backward, but Ludvig’s steady determination kept me in place.
The first rays of light crested the horizon, slamming into the clouds as orange, purple, and red all bloomed brighter in the distance.
Ludvig seemed to notice the healed bullet wounds and dropped his rifle to his side, opting to slowly pull the cold-iron katana from its sheath on his back. At that instant, I missed my own katana and silver kukri which Ulric—the bastard—still had in his possession.
Then the wolf did something that shoved a fire hose of dread up my ass and filled my guts with the black sludge of doubt and fear; he manifested his own obsidian sword, complete with what looked like teeth all around it, almost like a saw blade. The sword was long, with a handle just as long as the blade itself, reminding me of...
“Tez!” I cried out in understanding.
“What?” Ludvig harshly whispered as Hayley got to her feet and stood between us, keeping her stern gaze on the monster ahead.
“This fucker has wolf, vampire, and even god abilities, man. That sword belonged to the Aztec god, Tezcatlipstick! That would also explain how the bastard could teleport.”
“And heal from de silver,” Ludvig added somberly.
“It doesn’t seem to like lightning,” Hayley added angrily. She didn’t like being up against something potentially more powerful than all three of us, and she showed it by getting mad. I had to respect that about her. Where most people would collapse into a fetal position or run, this badass spit in the face of adversity.
“Lightning,” I repeated, willing Mjolnir into my left hand. It crackled with electricity that promised fur boy a positive experience. Get it? Physics pun.
The monster hefted the sword that was nearly as long as he was, scowling with yellow eyes that flashed crimson.
He blurred forward, and I was able to track him as he approached. I prepared to launch a blast of lightning from Mjolnir when the monster vanished through a sudden hole in the air.
