by R W Thorn
His body was bruised, but he knew how to fall without being hurt beyond hope of recovery. And he hadn’t let go of his knife. He shifted his limbs in preparation for climbing back to his feet, but the wight had followed him out of the newsagent store. It was shockingly swift and determined. Before Jack could do anything of use, the creature grabbed him by the left ankle, howled again, and showed him how the security guard had met his death.
The wight spun about in a circle at the same time as lifting Jack from the floor. It was a startling move that had Jack swinging about in midair. He had only a moment to gasp out in shock and the first real fear he’d felt since he’d stepped into the station. He heard Amelia’s ghostly exclamation of horror as he brought his arms up in a feeble attempt to protect his head. Then he collided with stunning force into the gargoyle statue.
“Jack!” Amelia shouted in fear for his safety.
The impact was enough to tear his ankle away from the wight’s grip and to jolt Jack’s knife from his hand. He let out an involuntary grunt of pain and crashed to the floor. Jack’s arms were numb. His brain was rattled to the point of bewilderment, and all he knew was confusion and pain. Only the unnatural durability granted to him by his not-quite-human nature kept him from serious harm.
Yet Jack feared even this might not be enough to save him much longer. Not if the wight continued to attack with such speed and strength. Perhaps he should have drawn his gun the moment he’d thrown the vial of holy water. The bullets were hollow and packed with garlic salts. Perhaps they had the power to slow this creature down enough for Jack to slit its throat and send it back to Hell.
Jack snarled to himself as he shook off the shock of the impact.
“I’m okay,” he muttered to Amelia’s essence. Then he turned his attention back to his adversary. “Come on, you stinking wight. I said it’s my turn!”
As quickly as possible, Jack rolled onto his back and forced his numbed arms into action. Then the wight landed on top of him, its elongated arms raised like clubs to batter him.
“Jack!” Amelia’s ghost shouted again.
Jack swore under his breath. He kept one of his arms up to protect his head at the same time as he fumbled for his gun.
Before he could successfully draw it, he heard a voice shouting words in an ancient, awful tongue.
Lennox
Time slowed.
Jack was aware of everything. He could feel the coolness of the hard, concrete floor beneath his back. The new bruises and scrapes on his arms and shoulders felt raw and mashed, like tenderized beef. He could sense the small hairs on the back of his neck start to rise, and goose bumps appeared on his skin as if he was freezing. He heard his heart beat a single time, thud, but other than that there was an eerie silence throughout the station.
Jack knew what was happening. The shouted words were in a language he recognized. An ancient, vile-sounding language used by warlocks and those who dealt with the occult. Those who had the blood of demons running through their veins.
Like Jack, and like Amelia. And like Lennox Valdis, the woman who had shouted.
Jack felt an instant of relief at the same time as he tensed for impact. The wight hadn’t had time to move, hadn’t had the chance to assess this new threat. It probably didn’t even recognize that there was a new threat. It was still intent on clubbing Jack with its elongated arms and its monstrous strength.
Jack forgot all about his gun. Forgot about Amelia. He just shut his eyes and turned his head away from where Lennox might be.
A fraction of an instant later, he was buffeted by a blast of pure power that picked him up and skittered him across the station floor like a leaf in the wind. He tumbled and rolled in an uncontrolled way, and yet he understood that most of the force had missed him completely.
Jack came to rest in the middle of the floor. He took a moment just to breathe, to let go of some of the rage that had been driving him until then. And to reassure himself that he was okay despite the battering he had received.
He felt Amelia’s sense of relief. Then, as if satisfied that he was safe and in good hands, the shadow of Jack’s dead wife faded away.
Jack cranked open his eyes.
The other main woman in his life stood above him, grinning in good-natured amusement. She was nearly as tall as Jack himself and slim and muscular. Fading flickers of demon-fire were swirling about her head and hands, and her eyes were returning to their normal shade of blue. That day, her hair was pure white and cut off at the shoulders. Perhaps the next day it would be a different color, but now it stood out in contrast to her coffee-colored skin and the black leather jacket she wore.
She was as different from Amelia as it was possible to get, and yet she reminded Jack of her in so many ways.
“Hey, old man. Looked like you could use a hand,” Lennox said. She had a matched pair of growths at her temples. Slight bulges that in certain lights resembled the beginnings of horns. Like Jack, she had tattoos of protection that could be seen at her neck, above the collar of her jacket. Unlike Jack, she was clean and carried with her a hint of perfume that smelled like jasmine.
In one of her hands, she held a motorcycle helmet. She reached down to Jack with the other and helped him to his feet.
“I could have handled it,” Jack grumbled. But the grumbling was more out of habit than any true rancor. He was genuinely happy to see her, but also annoyed and a little humiliated that she had seen him at such a disadvantage against no more than a wight. “You’re late,” he added.
Lennox raised a playful eyebrow. “Looks like I was just in time,” she observed. Then she wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. “You’re kinda ripe. When was the last time you showered?”
Her tone was light and teasing. Jack had to study her to see how serious she was. “Really?” he asked. He was indifferent to personal grooming, and for him, days could often merge into one. He didn’t care much about how he looked or how dirty his clothes were, but even he had his limits.
It wasn’t the type of thing Amelia noticed any more.
“Little bit,” Lennox said.
Jack had lived long enough that he was rarely embarrassed. Yet at her comment, he turned away in chagrin and searched for a way to change the subject. “Nice blast,” he said finally. “Your strongest yet,” he added.
Lennox’s grin returned with a vengeance. “Yeah, I know,” she said, brimming with confident satisfaction yet still teasing him with her tone. “I’ve been practicing.”
“Good,” said Jack. “Keep it up. Now, let’s finish this.” With that, he turned his attention back to the wight.
Lennox’s blast of magic had indeed been powerful, and the wight had borne the brunt of it. The loathsome creature was crumpled against the front of the ticket booth.
But it was still alive, twitching in pain.
Even now, Jack couldn’t help but despise the vile thing. He had no sympathy for it. To him, it was nothing more than a disease, a blight upon his city, and Jack was the cure. As far as the wight was concerned, Jack was judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one, and his judgment was final.
He shifted his shoulders in preparation for carrying out the sentence and stalked toward the wight with Lennox at his side, collecting his knife on the way.
As he approached the wight, his pager once more buzzed and vibrated. Jack ignored it again and assessed the creature that had given him such unexpected trouble.
It seemed broken. Perhaps the wight would collapse in on itself and give its essence back to Hell without further assistance. Yet it still retained enough strength to glare with hollow, eyeless hate at Jack, and its broken limbs quivered as if it still wanted to attack.
“You going to check that message?” Lennox asked. “Might be important.” She said it with an impudent tone. She knew full well Jack’s aversion to the pager and technology in general.
“Later. Kinda busy right now,” Jack grunted. The wight offered another, much feebler howl. Even though the creature had no
eyes, Jack believed it could see the knife he was holding before it. It was an ancient weapon, forged hundreds of years ago by warlocks who knew their arts well. The blade was nearly as long as a forearm and curved inward. Both the blade and the handle had been inscribed with demonic symbols that bestowed unusual strengths.
Jack took the last step toward the wight and paused. As he did, Lennox’s cell phone started to ring, and she pulled it from her pocket to answer.
The wight’s wailing grew louder, but Jack paid it no heed. He looked at it with congealed hate and a complete lack of mercy. “Go back to Hell where you belong,” he snarled. Then he plunged the knife up through its jaw and into its skull.
Lennox had turned away, although Jack knew it wasn’t due to squeamishness. Likely, she just wanted to hear whoever was on the line and the wight wasn’t dying quietly. Its wail turned into a high-pitched shriek and its limbs were flailing about, clattering against the ticket booth and the concrete floor.
Jack gave his knife a twist, and the wight stiffened as if it had been tased. Then it relaxed and crumpled in on itself, leaving a miasma of rot and sulfur and a mess of sludge and ashes behind.
Jack gave a grunt of satisfaction and spoke a silent thanks to Amelia for the help she’d offered. Then he did his best to clean his knife on his coat and put it away. Though disappointed with his own errors, he was happy enough with this result. New Sanctum was no place for creatures of this ilk.
But if he thought that the day’s troubles were over, he was sadly mistaken.
Lennox gripped his forearm to get his attention. “That was the Brotherhood. They’ve been trying to get hold of you. Apparently, something is going on that is much more urgent than this. They want us back at the base.”
Jack peered at her closely. She still wore a ghost of her typical smile, and her eyes were sparkling. But there was worry in her expression as well. Whatever was happening, it must be major.
He took one last look around the station. “Did you order a cleanup crew?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Then we’re done here,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Ducati
It was gloomy and gray outside of Coven Street station. The first spits of rain had started to fall. Jack didn’t care. His trenchcoat would keep his body dry, and as for his head, Lennox was right. It had been a while since he had last showered. His scalp was starting to itch, and he could feel the grime building up at the back of his neck. Perhaps the rain would do him some good.
He ignored the spitting and looked about. Coven Street was in a mainly commercial part of New Sanctum. The station sat a little apart from a jumble of office buildings made of old stone and new glass. There could have been crowds of people about watching in morbid curiosity as they did when someone lost to despair prepared to jump from a ledge. There could also have been cops and firemen, unaware of how inadequate they would be in facing the wight. And maybe an ambulance or two to give hope to the injured.
Instead, Jack noted with some relief, there was just the usual mix of everyday folk, going about the day-to-day business of their dull, oblivious lives. They were sheep, and he was their shepherd. Their protector. They didn’t know of the terrors that haunted their city’s shadows, and Jack was determined to keep it that way.
Those who might have witnessed the wight in the station were no longer present. They were gone, perhaps back to work or on their way home, putting the experience behind them however they could. Either way, the Brotherhood would find them and ensure they did not talk about the horror they had seen.
But that wasn’t Jack’s concern. He just needed to get to the Brotherhood, to find out what was so important. Jack’s pager would let him reply to the messages he received, to acknowledge that he had seen them. But he didn’t even check the messages. Lennox had told him what he needed to know, and in his mind replying would only delay them.
“Need a ride?” Lennox asked him. Also ignoring the drizzle, she looked at him with a playful grin. She knew Jack didn’t have his own set of wheels. He used public transport whenever he could, and walked when he couldn’t. He’d arrived at the station by bus, wary that his foe might have been on the tracks and unwilling to be taken by surprise.
He offered an affirmative grunt and looked about for her bike. But Lennox kept grinning.
“Try not to stain the leather this time, will you?” she said. “I mean, sure, you’ve just been fighting a creature of darkness, but what is that you’ve got on you?” She raised an eyebrow and pointed to the front of his coat.
Jack looked down and saw a new brown smudge that hadn’t been there before, on the left side. He stared at it in confusion, then tested it with a finger. The smudge stuck to his skin. He sniffed it, then gave it a lick.
“Eww!” said Lennox, her voice filled with disgust and her face screwed up.
Jack couldn’t help but give her a half-grin. “It’s chocolate,” he said. “The wight was gorging on it.”
Lennox’s expression relaxed somewhat, but she rolled her eyes in disbelief. “It’s still revolting,” she said. “But then, what did I expect? Come on, old man, and don’t get any of it on my bike.”
Somewhere in the depths of Jack’s mind, he could hear Amelia laughing.
Lennox’s bike was a Ducati Diavel, a sleek, black monster with red highlights and a throaty roar. It wouldn’t look out of place on a racetrack and would likely leave many of the competition bikes in its dust. It had been fitted with foot pegs and a modified seat for a passenger, and Jack rode on the back with his hands on Lennox’s hips. He was acutely aware that she wasn’t the abandoned demon-child he had first met more than twenty years before. In the eyes of the law and the rest of society, she was an adult in all ways.
“She’s beautiful,” Amelia whispered. Jack grunted an acknowledgement. There was no doubt about it. Lennox was beautiful. And wild and fun, and also one of the few people in all of New Sanctum who knew Jack’s true nature and had no reason to fear him. If anything, she had more demon blood in her veins than Jack did in his. And it was much closer to the surface with her.
It wasn’t the first time Amelia had made such an observation, and Jack understood her intent. It had been a long time since Jack’s wife had died. A long time since anyone else had truly captured his interest.
But compared to Jack, Lennox was young. Impossibly so. And he was her partner, her mentor. He thought of himself as her protector, despite her growing power and the fact that she’d just saved him from the wight. To think of her as something more felt wrong, despite the tingle he felt in his skin as he held her.
Yet it wasn’t just his wife’s whispered words at play. Jack had to wrestle with his own thoughts and desires as Lennox shifted against him to lean into a corner. Nor would Amelia mind if Jack chose to do more than just sit back. Her approval was more than apparent.
Perhaps one day he would take more active steps in that direction. But not yet. There was still more wrestling for Jack to do first.
The roads were damp, and while Lennox was dressed for riding in her helmet, leather, denim, and boots, Jack was not. He didn’t care to wear a helmet, and the rain wasn’t heavy enough to be more than a minor irritation. His trenchcoat billowed out behind them like a superhero’s cape as they sped in and out of slower traffic, Lennox reveling in the thrill of the speed and the danger it represented.
Jack leaned close, over her shoulder almost, to ensure as much as possible that she could hear. “Don’t you think we should slow down?” he yelled loudly.
Lennox looked at him briefly. Her visor was down, but Jack could see the exhilaration in her eye.
“What’s the matter, grandpa?” she shouted back, her tone playful. “Can’t handle the heat?”
With that, she threw the throttle wide open. The powerful engine roared and the front wheel left the road. Combined with the acceleration, this was nearly enough to dislodge Jack from his seat. He gripped Lennox more tightly, only to hear fragments of laughter blow by
him on the wind.
Jack’s grew angry at Lennox’s careless behavior, at least at first. But he knew the danger was slight. Not only did Lennox wear protective clothing, but she could probably use her magic to save herself at need. And it wasn’t like he would be hurt much in the event of a crash.
With some surprise, Jack found his anger fading quickly. He discovered that he was enjoying himself.
He started to smile.
Row House
The ride through New Sanctum was liberating but disappointingly brief. All too soon, they pulled up in front of the Brotherhood’s temple in the middle of Hybrid Lane. The temple was an old Gothic church, made of spires and rough-hewn stone, and complete with stained-glass windows and numerous grotesques high up on the walls. It looked foreboding, a grim structure that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. Nevertheless, Jack thought it magnificent.
The Brotherhood called it the Temple of Hope and Eternal Defiance. Jack remembered walking its halls just after its completion, more than a century ago, before the demonic protections had been added. It had been surprisingly bright and open, and he’d experienced a true moment of peace. It had felt as if there might be an alternative to this lifetime of rage and hate and battles that were all he’d ever known. As if there really was a reason for hope.
He’d wanted to stay and savor the feeling for as long as he could. But then the protections had been completed, shutting him out for good.
It had been a few seconds since Lennox parked the Ducati on the sidewalk outside of the church, and Jack hadn’t moved.
“You okay there, old man?” Lennox asked. “Was the ride a little scary for your ancient bones? Or are you just taking a moment to enjoy the feel of my ass in your hands?”
Jack flinched his hands away as if he was stung, but Lennox was still wearing her grin. She was still teasing him, and Amelia once more laughed him his mind. Jack gave a noncommittal grunt, acknowledging to himself that he had been enjoying holding onto her.
