by Logan Jacobs
“We’ve gone over this.” I ground my teeth together. “He is violent and a murderer. Remember when I made you memorize my code?”
“Yes,” the Silver Squire said. “You made me memorize it before you let me become your apprentice. It was my first test.”
“I did that so you would learn to live and breathe by it, so you would never stray from the path of righteousness,” I replied. “Miles is a powerful man without a code, and that makes him dangerous.”
It also made him effective, but I couldn’t admit that, especially not to my apprentice. The more I thought about it, and the more we worked side by side, the more I came to realize how Miles’ unrestricted ways made him brutally efficient. He wasn’t held back by anything, unlike me. Miles was free and entirely unburdened by anything he did, since he could easily rationalize it away by pretending that supervillains weren’t human.
I was jealous of that, but I would never be able to forgive myself if I broke my code, and I would no longer be able to see myself as a hero. Heroes were meant to protect the people, and I could do that without killing anyone.
Miles was destined to be a villain.
“I guess so,” my sidekick mumbled.
“We’re no better than the villains we fight if we don’t have a code,” I said as I opened up the door to get out of the tank.
“Yeah, okay,” the Silver Squire replied, but I couldn’t tell if I’d actually gotten through to him or not.
To a fresh new superhero-in-training, I could see why Miles’ methods would look appealing, but I would prove to him that my way was right. Of course, that also meant I couldn’t doubt myself.
I was glad my apprentice seemed to drop the subject as we silently approached the motel that loomed in the distance. All our conversation had done was waste time that could have been spent tracking down the Wendigo, and I wanted to deal with him as soon as possible.
We moved slowly toward the motel so we didn’t draw any attention to ourselves, and I couldn’t believe that it still hadn’t been torn down. With its decrepit, rotting appearance and half-crumbling walls, the old motel wasn’t worth keeping around. Most criminals were learning to avoid it anyway, so it only housed the most deranged and careless of villains.
Which I guessed fit the Wendigo to a T.
When we were a little closer, I signaled to my apprentice that we should stop, so I could contemplate the motel in the distance and watch the flickering lights from the old sign blink on and off.
I wasn’t like Miles, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a plan to follow. I’d formulated one on the way here, but it all hinged on if the Wendigo had a captive or not. It was late enough at night that he was probably on his way back from his latest hunt, and if we could get into the room where he’d set up his nest, we could wait for the creature to arrive to take him by surprise.
That is, if we didn’t have to bother with rescuing his hostage first.
“How are we going in?” my apprentice asked from where he stood at my side. “I mean, Miles’ AI sent us some information again, so…”
“Go ahead,” I growled.
“Okay, so, apparently she calculated which room the Wendigo is most likely to be in,” the Silver Squire said. “So should… should we follow her guide?”
The last time I hadn’t followed the information Miles had sent me, we’d made a major mistake and nearly cost a security guard his life. It was a mistake I still regretted when I thought about it, but in spite of that, I was still reluctant to use anything Miles had sent us. It felt like I was conceding to him if I did, and that made it feel like I had already lost against him. I hated losing, especially when it came to someone like Miles. I didn’t want to give him a single inch of victory over me.
So I really didn’t want to listen to his AI’s calculations, no matter how accurate they might be.
“Shadow Knight?” my apprentice spoke up, again full of hesitation since I hadn’t replied to him yet.
“Fine,” I ground out the words through my teeth. “Show me what his program sent us, but we don’t need advanced technology to figure out where he’s hiding. The smell will lead us right to him.”
The information we had received was a blueprint of the motel, but since I already knew the layout, I didn’t need it. I let the Silver Squire look it over for his own benefit while I mentally calculated the best way to handle this.
“Come on,” I directed as I started toward the motel. “Be quiet and be careful. We’ll need to stake out on the roof to get a better idea, but it shouldn’t be long before we can act.”
“Okay,” my apprentice said and followed after me as I led us toward the motel in the distance.
We climbed up to the rooftop of the hotel using an old, rusted maintenance ladder. The hotel itself was small, with only one floor, so it wasn’t too difficult to scale. I crouched low and began to creep across the rooftop as my apprentice followed along in my wake, and it didn’t take long before I smelled the rot and decay that meant we were somewhere close to where the Wendigo had made its nest.
“I smell it,” my apprentice whispered. “Ugh, it’s gross.”
“It’ll be much worse inside,” I warned.
“What do we do now?” the Silver Squire asked as we crept along the rooftop.
“We wait for it to leave to go hunting, and then we set up inside for an ambush,” I explained. “We’ll set a trap for it to get caught in.”
“Right,” my apprentice said. “Okay. So now we just wait.”
“In silence,” I snapped since I was tired of the boy’s constant questions.
He winced, but did as he was told for once and fell silent.
We didn’t have to wait very long before a window cracked and a stronger smell of rotting meat assaulted our senses. As soon as the scent hit my nose, I motioned for the Silver Squire to duck lower, and we both waited in complete silence as the Wendigo emerged from the hotel room it had made its lair in.
Wendigo was once a man, but no longer did he even remotely resemble one. The skin around his skull was pulled taut and he no longer had any lips, which put his grotesque, yellow teeth on full display. Twisted, bone-like shapes curled up from his skull like antlers, and his hair was thin, dark, and scraggly as it fell down his back in a matted mess. His body was stretched and elongated, with a protruding rib cage and long, claw-like hands.
He climbed out of the window like an animal on the hunt, sniffed the air once, and then took off into the night.
“He’s gone,” the Silver Squire stated the obvious in a grating manner.
I opened my mouth to snap back at him, but before I could even say anything, I was interrupted by a sudden shout that shattered the silence.
“Help!” the feminine voice shrieked from the Wendigo’s room below us. “Is anyone out there? Help me! Please!”
“A hostage, then,” I said. “We’ll have to adapt the plan.”
“Okay,” the Silver Squire agreed. “Rescue the hostage first, right?”
“You’ll be doing that, yes,” I said.
I didn’t like my apprentice trying to guess my plans when he was still new. He wasn’t listening to me enough, and that was going to be a problem in the future.
“What are you going to do?” my apprentice asked.
“I’m getting to that,” I growled. “This is the new plan: we go in now, while the Wendigo is out, and you clear out the hostage. I’ll wait in one of the adjacent rooms to ambush him with the trap and catch him once he comes back.”
“And I rejoin you after I get the hostage to safety, right?” My apprentice seemed too eager.
“No,” I said. “You take care of the hostage.”
“Why can’t I help you?” he huffed.
“You have never dealt with anything on the level of the Wendigo before,” I replied gruffly. “You have no experience. You will take care of the hostage, and you won’t question me.”
“I just want to help,” he insisted. “In an actual way. I want to fee
l like I’m really your apprentice, and not just some sidekick you can replace.”
“You can help by taking care of the hostage,” I finally snapped as my patience entirely ran out. “Stop acting like a whining child and focus on the mission. Not following my orders exactly is what gets superheroes killed, so follow. My. Orders. And focus on the mission.”
For a second, it seemed like the Silver Squire might actually try to fight me about it. He looked away from me and then nodded.
“Fine,” he relented.
I was no stranger to rebellious apprentices, but I had a feeling this hadn’t come out of nowhere. Being around Miles was clearly a detriment to my apprentice’s ability to properly do his job. That damnable man had also had a negative impact on Beacon, and I was still seething from the fight we’d had earlier.
I had absolutely not called for Beacon, and I just knew it had been something Miles had done to trick him, but I had no proof of that. Once we had handled all of these escaped supervillains, I would start to investigate Miles further, and I would stop him from causing any more damage to my city.
But for now, we had a job to do.
Based on the dead silence after the Wendigo had left and the fact that no one had even attempted to investigate the woman’s screaming, I could deduce that the rest of the motel was empty. Either that, or the Wendigo had already made short work of anyone else who had been there when it arrived, and I knew that was probably more likely.
Despite the fact that only the dregs of society ever bothered to visit this motel, it still bothered me. None of them deserved to die in the way the Wendigo killed, by chaining his victims alive and ripping off their body parts to consume them. He let them watch as he devoured them piece by piece, and he preferred his meat to be alive while he ate it.
Even I was unsure if the Wendigo was the kind of person that could be reformed and redeemed. The last killing spree the Wendigo had gone on was brutal and mindlessly violent, so I didn’t expect this one to be any different.
It would be a lot for my new Silver Squire to face, and that was why I had him on hostage rescue duty, but he would have to learn the truth of this world one way or another. I just hoped he wouldn’t uselessly panic once we entered the Wendigo’s lair. From the determined look on his face, he seemed to be doing his best to make up for his earlier whining, so I was confident that at the very least, he would be able to get the hostage away to safety.
Now that we knew there was no one else living in the hotel other than the Wendigo who had just left, I glided back down to the ground with my cape.
“Around back,” I directed.
“Alright,” my sidekick said as he landed solidly after me, and his voice lacked any trace of the attitude that he’d had toward me before.
“Don’t scream once you see his nest,” I warned.
“Huh?” He blinked up at me. “Why would I scream?”
“He’s a cannibal,” I said. “You said it smelled bad with the window closed. I expect he’s already caught a few victims and has made a nest out of their bodies, so on the inside, it’ll be even worse.”
“I’ll be fine.” He gulped. “I’ve seen the pictures of his last kills. I know what to expect.”
I still thought he was taking this too lightly and that just the pictures probably weren’t enough warning for him, but I wouldn’t have taken him as my next apprentice if he had a thin skin for gore.
We crept around the back of the motel, but there was no sign of the Wendigo, any of his victims, or any dismembered body parts. I gestured toward the back entrance to the ancient motel and then silently stepped forward to open the door.
We were immediately assaulted with a powerful scent of rot, blood, and meat. It was worse than anything we’d smelled up on the rooftop, even with the window open.
“I’m gonna hurl,” the Silver Squire groaned.
“Quiet,” I hissed as I assessed the hallway in front of us.
I knew we were heading in the correct direction due to the repulsive stench of death, so now it was only a matter of picking the right door to open. As we moved down the hallway, my sidekick retched, but I just glared at him in warning. He braced his hand against the wall and covered his mouth with his hand, and he held up the other one to signal that he only needed a minute. I knew he’d never experienced something as horrific as this, but I expected him to perform better.
We hadn’t even seen the bodies yet.
Once the Silver Squire had gotten a hold of himself, we continued down the hallway. My sidekick had pulled up the map again and pressed his ear against a door off to the side. Based on the map and what we had smelled on the roof, it seemed that the Wendigo had made his main hideout in a connected suite.
From what I knew of the Wendigo’s hunting habits, we had a bit of time before it returned from the hunt. It would hopefully be enough time for the Silver Squire to get the hostage out to a safe distance, while I remained here to wait for the Wendigo to return so I could ambush it. I would need time to set up my trap as well, so we needed to move quickly.
After a moment of carefully listening in, my apprentice gave me a thumbs up.
I gestured for him to move off to the side, and I tested the door. None of the locks on these motel doors worked anymore, but someone had intentionally put a deadbolt on this door, and that proved the Wendigo still had some semblance of a human mind inside him.
“Is anybody there?” the woman’s panicked voice came from inside.
I tore the deadbolt off like it was made out of paper, barged into the room, and was assaulted by an even worse scent than the one in the hallway.
The room was a basic hotel connected suite, even though it had long since been torn apart by vandals and graffiti. But in the corner of the room, there was a pile of rotting, desiccated body parts that looked like they made up some kind of visceral nest. Arms, legs, fingers, and bones littered the floor in a macabre pattern. There were torn up heads too, with gouged-out eyes and gaped open mouths. Blood seeped into the filthy carpets, and the entire room stunk like copper and rotten meat, but that wasn’t all we found.
There was also a terrified brunette woman chained to a radiator in the corner of the room. Her clothing was torn and bloodied, but she didn’t seem to be injured. Her expression was frantic, with tears and snot that dripped down her face at the sight of us.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she wailed in between each gulp of air. “Shadow Knight, thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank us,” I replied.
The Silver Square ran over to free her. He pulled out a pair of bolt cutters that I probably should have used on the deadbolt, but now my apprentice used them to crack the chains that held her to the radiator. The woman collapsed into a sobbing mess as she clung to the Silver Squire, and I tried to be patient, but I knew the Wendigo would return to his nest any minute now.
“Silver Squire, take her back to the tank,” I instructed, since we had to get her out of the way before the Wendigo came back.
“Are you really sure you can take him all on your own?” my apprentice asked as he held his arms around the hysterical woman.
“Yes, I’ve said that already,” I growled. “Just put her in the tank and call an ambulance.”
“W-wait, you can’t just leave me there!” the woman wailed again.
She pulled away from the Silver Squire, stumbled over toward me, and collapsed at my feet, while I stared down at her. I was already tired of dealing with her, but I tried to be patient as she continued to wail.
“He’ll come for me, please, he wants me more than anyone else, he said now that he has my scent, even if I escape he’ll come back for me no matter what, please, you can’t leave me,” she babbled on in complete hysterics.
“No, he won’t come for you,” I said. “We’ll ensure he won’t be able to escape from prison this time.”
“Prison?” She lowered her head in despair. “He’ll escape! He always escapes! Please, Shadow Knight, please, you have to k
ill him!”
“I won’t kill him,” I replied.
“Why?” she shrieked. “He doesn’t want anything but me, and he has my scent! He’ll never stop trying to find me, unless you kill him!”
She trailed off with a sob and clawed at the legs of my suit, and I motioned for the Silver Squire to take care of her again. He staggered forward and pulled the woman up to her feet, where she continued to sob and claw at me despite his hold.
“You’re overreacting,” I replied. “He won’t track you down, since he’ll be in prison. Silver Squire, get her out of here already!”
“Yes, he will!” she shrieked again, this time as angry tears flooded down her cheeks, and she fought against my apprentice’s attempts to pull her away. “He will! He will! He isn’t even human, he’s so far from human, he’s just a monster! An unfeeling, uncaring monster who won’t stop until he has me again!”
“You’re hysterical,” I sighed. “And you’re letting your emotions and trauma get the better of you.”
“How dare you!” she howled and still clawed at the Silver Squire’s arms. “I thought you were a hero, but you’re letting someone like him live?”
“He could come back at any minute,” I growled. “Instead of bitching at me, go with the Silver Squire, and he’ll take you to safety.”
“You bastard!” she wailed in utter despair.
I knew she was just overreacting due to her ordeal and tried not to take her ingratitude personally. I wouldn’t kill the Wendigo, no matter how monstrous he’d made himself, and no hysterical woman was going to change my mind.
“Are you really sure about this?” the Silver Squire asked me as he held the sobbing woman in his arms. “I don’t know if we should take her out of this room yet.”
“Don’t question me!” I barked. “She needs to get out of here.”
“I’m not questioning you!” he half-shouted. “But if he’s after her specifically, shouldn’t we have her stay? I mean, we don’t want to risk him smelling her outside and not coming back here, right?”
