by Adam Golden
The blood rage was a tempest. The Alpha’s teeth found flesh, its claws rent and ripped, and its muscles strained. The strongest didn’t hear the muscles ripping, the popping of cartilage, or the cracking of bone. It didn’t see the familiar sight of bright eyes filled with challenge going dark. Its thoughts had already moved to the next hunt. The real hunt. Its powerful legs launched it into the air toward its brother Alphas. The head, with its wide-stunned eyes fell, dropped and forgotten like unimportant refuse, as the Alpha reached the apex of its leap. It didn’t consider its latest kill, or even the milling scents of the converging Alphas, it was Strongest. They were meat. The Other belonged to it, no other course was possible. One thought filled the cagey, ancient Alpha’s mind to the exclusion of every other: the way was open, and somehow its leash had slipped.
—
“Only the strong deserve life,” the demon snarled. “I am Strongest! I am best. Your meat is forfeit! I claim it.”
Nicholas tried to rise, tried to fight. His efforts felt like the flopping of a landed fish. He had barely made it to his hands and knees when the monster’s heavy cloven hoof slammed down into his back, driving him back down into the ashen grey rock.
‘What was I thinking?’ he lamented.
Had he really thought he could fight this terror? He’d never been more than a passable fighter. He was a scholar, a politician, not a street tough. He’d always been content to leave the brawling to others while he focused on issues of the mind . . .
The mind.
The mind. This wasn’t the real world. In the real world he lay dying in the hold of a ship. This was in his mind! Injury, pain, and fear all vanished from him as though they’d never been. If there was one thing he never doubted, it was the strength of his mind. He set himself against the ground and pushed. A snarling sort of yelp preceded a heavy crash as the monster toppled to its back and he came to his feet.
“I’ll keep my meat a while longer,” he told the sprawled demon.
The creature roared and surged back to its feet, eyes blazing a fiery menace. Its hooves scraped at the rock, it snarled and snapped, beating at its chest in challenge. He felt a small arrogant smile on the lips of his soul form.
“You forget,” he said. “You’ve tried me before and been found wanting. How long did you heel at my command and hunt at my call like a tame dog? Strongest? Which of us is truly strongest?”
It was fast, almost too fast for him to follow. Hands strong enough to crush stone and claws that could shred timber came for his throat. Nicholas flowed aside, his body moving like water around a rock. The creature’s grasping talons found empty air. A hard right hand landed in the center of its startled face and it flew backward.
Reality seemed to tremble with the force of the impact. A cloud of dust and grit exploded into the air, and the grey stone underfoot shivered and cracked. A stillness settled all around and he realized he was holding his breath so as not to disturb it.
The ghostly faces of the assembled specters alternated between terror, wonder, hope, and confusion. He felt a smug pride welling up inside him as he took in their reactions, and then he felt a boulder as wide across as his chest slam into the side of his head, driving him to the ground.
It should have killed him, and would have except that he willed it not to, and here, will was everything.
‘Idiot!’ he castigated himself. He’d let himself get distracted and ceded the advantage.
The demon fell out the bleak grey sky like a flaming meteor of hate. It hit the ground in a mad flurry of fists, hooves, talons, and teeth.
He backpedaled desperately, arms moving in a blur to fend off the blistering wave of attacks.
The Krampus was savage and fierce, but there was more than brute ferocity to the onslaught. The creature moved with a grace and precision that he couldn’t credit. Every movement and shift of its massive bulk was perfectly executed to compliment every other. Each strike fell perfectly to maximize the damage inflicted. It wasn’t beautiful exactly, it was too raw and brutal for that, but it did inspire a sort of dreaded awe. This was a master at work, a perfectly designed tool of murder.
He was outclassed.
The thought crept through his shield of confidence like a vine forcing its way up between two stones. He faltered, and his reactions slowed, just by a blink, but it was enough. The monster’s talons scored four deep furrows down his chest and tore into his stomach. It roared pleasure and drove the hand in deeper. He should have been able to recover. It wasn’t real, just a trick of the mind. He should have been able to reverse it, but feeling the monster’s grasping paw working inside his flesh drove that truth from his mind. It decimated his concentration. It hurt. He was going to die! But . . . wait, it didn’t want that, did it? He was confused. The monster needed him to live, didn’t it?
The demon’s hand ripped up into his chest cavity and closed around a rib, and all thought and worry burned away. The scream that ripped out of him was thoughtless and primal, like the death wail of a tortured animal.
A smile of pure maliciousness spread on the sharp-toothed maw of his nemesis, who effortlessly lifted his torn and battered body off the ground by its new handhold. Hot humid breath, sharp with the rancid tang of carrion, blew in his face as the monster pulled him close.
“I. Am. Strongest!” it’s bellow rang like a struck gong.
The beast shook him hard to punctuate its point. His head lolled from side to side like a doll stuffed with rags. He was still conscious. Why was he still conscious? Oblivion would be such a blessing. He realized he was moving. The monster was hauling him by his skeleton, toting him toward . . . what? The hole! The light. It was going to toss him through!
He flailed weakly, but nothing happened. His mind was too fractured by pain and panic. He couldn’t concentrate. He’d lost. This thing was going to enslave his body, walk the world in his skin, terrorizing humanity for God knew how many ages, and it was all his fault.
The euphoric warmth of the light washed over him, and he thought he might be sick. The joy and calm it tried to force on his pain-drunk mind were unwelcome. It was another invasion, another violation, no different than the monstrous arm driven into his chest, toting him about like a basket. Another loss of control. It made him angry. He battered weakly at the chest of the monster before him. The creature didn’t even laugh. It ignored him. He was defeated, a broken thing, utterly beneath notice.
He slumped around the arm that held him, then straightened again as he caught the suggestion of a grey blur out the corner of his eye. As soon as it registered, the world tumbled and overturned. No, he’d overturned. A jumbled somersault bounced him across the rocky ground before leaving him in a heap of bent and twisted limbs. He flailed about for a view of something other than the rock. What happened?
Three or four long strides away the monster was on its back, twisting and writhing as it guarded itself from a wild series of blows. Tulio’s mangled spirit form straddled the great beast’s massive torso, driving a sharp bit of stone down at its face with both hands. The fallen manservant’s attack was wild, driven more by savage desperation than any sort of plan. It was working for the moment, but the demon was too strong. It wouldn’t be overwhelmed so easily. He had to help.
Determination brought strength. Injuries began to sew together, pain receded, and he started to move. He was just getting to his feet when his eye caught something, a muted glint where there should have been only dull grey rock. His head swiveled of its own accord, seeking whatever it was he’d seen, and his breath caught sharply. A tingle of nervous excitement raced through him. His knife! It was lying no more than ten feet to his left. It’s curved black ram’s horn handle lay there as though reaching toward him. The sharply curved blade of tempered midnight pulsed with menace, sucking in the pale light around it. He scrambled toward the weapon on hands and knees. If he could just get to it. If Tulio could keep the monster distracted just a few more seconds . . .
His fingers closed around the ho
rned hilt of the knife and a jolt of power blazed through him. He felt alive again, strong and complete. Part of him found the elation troubling, but it was a small part. That niggling doubt was quickly silenced as he turned and found Tulio’s limp form dangling above the ground, his throat crushed in one of the monster’s massive paws.
He threw himself at the demon. A roar of animal hatred and rage poured out of him as he slashed and stabbed at any part of the Krampus he thought he might reach.
The monster danced backward, laughing as it flailed his friend’s body before using him as both shield and weapon.
He pressed forward, speeding his wild strikes as much as he was able. Tulio would demand nothing less, he was sure. He had to end it now! He feinted left toward the creature’s chest, once, and then again. He set himself as though preparing to try again, and saw the monster brace. Using every bit of skill that his friend had drilled into him over a lifetime of sparring drills, he spun right, dropping to a knee as he did, and drove the wickedly sharp point of his unnatural weapon through the armor-thick hide over the creature’s thigh just above its knee.
The monster staggered backward, falling to a knee as it wailed in pain and disbelief. It’s retreat nearly tore the hilt from his hand, but he wrenched the blade free with savage pleasure and squared himself up as he advanced on the crippled nightmare.
The demon was sucking air into its massive lungs in panting gasps, and its horned head was lowered, shaking from side to side as though in disbelief. One heavy paw clutched at the ragged wound in its leg, trying to hold in the torrent of black blood that rushed free. The other was still on Tulio’s throat, holding the ragged refuse of his friend’s corpse against the ground.
As he approached, he was startled to see that there was still awareness in those eyes. Tulio lived, or existed, or whatever word one used for the continued existence of a dead man’s soul. Anguished eyes begged him, pleaded him.
He would end the monster and see his friend freed. He moved faster and more gracefully than he could ever have dreamed in his mortal form. Each placement of his feet and shift of his weight was perfect. He executed a diving leap at the kneeling form of the demon and drove the tip of his weapon out in front of him, turning himself into a spear aimed at the monster’s heart.
Die!
The fiend moved faster still. Faster than he could credit. Its head came up, a grin of undiluted malevolence and cruelty on its thick lips. It whipped back a thick arm and hurled Tulio’s broken body directly at him.
The former servant’s spirit form sailed through the air like a rock from a sling and hit with all the force and weight his mortal body would have propelled by the incredible strength of the monster. They sailed backward and struck the ground in a rolling, confused jumble of twisted limbs and battered meat. They hadn’t even come to a stop before another impact drove the tangled soul bodies back into the air.
The demon. The monster’s gargantuan bulk struck the knotted soul forms with a devastating tackle. Sharp talons locked into both men’s bodies, anchoring the three together as it propelled them backward with the force of a wagon team at full gallop. Satisfied laughter boomed as the jumble of forms blasted through the brilliant white rift and out of the demon’s prison.
IV
To Burn and Rave
Clamor and Crash
The crew of the ship Vexin had named ‘Nemesis’ were ants in a whirlwind. It bucked and twisted like a maddened stallion doing its best to throw its rider. Waves spanning taller than the main mast crashed over the decks again and again, washing any man not lashed to the rails, and even some who were, into the angry sea.
The pirate captain staggered below deck and collapsed against a bulkhead. Dizzy, spent, and half-blind from the blood in his eyes, Vexin held a hand to the gash that had been torn into his brow when the center mast was ripped from the ship. When the blow first began he’d lashed himself to the tiller, for all the good it done him. He’d been tossed about like a paper doll, utterly impotent. He could no more direct the vessel in this madness than he could have carried the bloody thing on his back.
Sheets of boiling black cloud snarled above him, drowning the sun. Lightning struck the water in pounding droves like volleys of arrows. Endless walls of water crashed over him. The stunned pirate shivered. He still felt the biting, frigid water in his lungs, still felt the panic that only came with the sense of drowning.
The voices of desperate men calling on their Gods rang in his ears still. Many who claimed no Gods whatsoever had called to any they could think to name. They called for secours, for mercy, some called for a quick death. None had found what they sought. No God looked down on the whirling, spinning decks of Nemesis, at least no merciful god.
The storm . . .
One moment he and his command had been sailing through clear waters, returning to base after a successful raid, the next the storm had burst into being around them, fully formed and raging. It wasn’t natural.
While the squall battered his ship, drowned his men, and slammed Vexin about, the same thought repeated again and again. He should have killed them. The moment he had them he should have slit their throats and dropped them overboard. The wild-eyed one had sworn Belsnickel would want them, sworn he could manage his former master. Why hadn’t he killed them both? Why had he listened? Vexin wasn’t certain. His thoughts snarled, and had since he’d come into contact with the man.
Most nights Vexin still woke in cold panicked sweats with nightmares. He couldn’t have so much as a sheet on his cot without waking in dread of being choked by some unnatural haunted cloak. The pirate shuddered. Pylae Wharf had ruined him. He kept a good handle on it most of the time. He’d gotten very good at not crying out when the dreams woke him, and he didn’t let the men see the tremors. He held up his hand and watched the violent spasm that shook it for a moment before he clenched his fist around the hilt of the rough knife at his waist and pulled it free. First Pylae, now here . . . too much to be coincidence. That aristocrat and his pet madman were responsible. It had to be them.
The newly minted pirate captain lurched down the corridor, deeper into the bowels of his violently bucking ruin of a ship. A thick perfume drifted forward, a strangely sweet, smoky scent. Vexin shook his head, squeezed his suddenly burning eyes shut for a moment, and plodded farther toward the stern cabin. The smoke seemed to thicken with every step as Vexin reached the middle of the ship. Tears blurred his vision, and a violent cough burst free every few moments.
Fire.
A sharp surge of panic threatened to freeze Vexin in his tracks. He stepped out of the haze that blanketed the lower decks’ forward section into a scene straight out of Hell. The aft was ablaze. The walls writhed with blankets of flame. The pitch used to seal cracks between boards and keep the vessel watertight bubbled and smoked, filling the air with toxic fumes.
Noxious air struck Vexin like a fist to the throat, dropping him to his hands and knees as a violent series of gasping, choking coughs clawed their way from his battered lungs. Tongues of flame licked at his hands and clothes. Waves of heat battered his face as though he stood too close to a smith’s forge. The bone hilt of the knife felt hot in his hand, almost too hot to hold. In truth it was too hot. He thought he could feel the skin blistering beneath it, but he dared not let go.
Vexin struggled forward, his weapon out before him, flailing blindly. Pylae might have ruined him, but some of the man he’d been remained. It did. Some must. A terror, that’s what they called him, a fiend. Tough men, killers and brigands, walked small around Vexin. A hard man. Second only to the boss himself. The words sounded like lies in his mind, but he clung to them as he struggled through the flaming corridor.
The doorway to the aft cabin wreathed in blue-tinged flame, surrounded by choking clouds of grey smoke. It stood glaring like a gateway to hades, promising doom, a flaming eye of Medusa which held the trembling captain still as stone. Menace pulsed around that portal, standing amidst the flames and smoke that would soon overwh
elm the corridor. Vexin genuinely considered staying there as a preferable option to passing into whatever horror awaited beyond.
A terror, indeed! the man spat disgustedly inside his own mind. If this is what you’ve come to, why not just curl up and await the flames?
Driven by his own overpowering sense of self-loathing, the once fearsome underworld enforcer threw himself through the burning portal with a desperate roar that turned to a shrill shriek of horror.
—
The room was awash in spattered gore, as though someone had flung buckets of thick red paint and chunks of uncooked beef haphazardly in every direction. It ran in streaks down the walls, puddled on the floor, even dripped from the ceiling in places. The crazy one, Vixen felt a maniacal sort of laughter threaten at that.
Crazy one? As if . . . that . . . is sane?
The one he’d dealt with, Titus? Julio? Whatever it was, the poor bastard was dead.
God let him be dead! Vexin prayed for what might have been the first time in his life.
The object of his silent prayer lay spread out on his back, a shredded mess of blood and pale lifeless flesh staring sightlessly at his own blood dripping from the boards above. The body trembled and shook, arms and legs drumming against the deck at the movements of the other . . . the other . . .
Vexin huddled against the cabin’s far wall, both frozen stiff and quivering like a leaf in a high wind. The spreading thick wetness on his chest and legs didn’t register, nor did the stream of vomit running off his chin and into his lap. He didn’t feel it come up, didn’t feel his body trying to heave forth everything he’d ever eaten. His whole mind was taken up by a blend of mad terror and stunned horror. Vexin had mocked the idea of evil, laughed at those who knelt muttering their pathetic charms against imaginary monsters. Now he wished he knew more of those charms.
