The Daemon Within

by Jeremy Croston

  Isa gave me a quick scratch behind my ears with her long nails. Even the Warg enjoyed that. With that, we were off into the Wormwood to mourn the loss of a brother.

  ****

  It was almost dusk when we returned to the wolves’ encampment. Isa was waiting for me and beckoned me over the moment I was back in human form. Obviously, it hadn’t been a wasted day for her. “Victor,” she started. “I went back to the place where we encountered the mysterious person. Combing the grass, I found this.”

  She dropped a small cross into my hand. It was made of silver, silver that came from a very specific mine. “There’s no way this is possible.” She kinda tilted her head to the side, as if to ask what I meant. “This cross was made with silver from the mine in Full Moon.”

  Isa looked at the cross again, even more intently. “How is that possible?” she asked.

  I turned it over and saw the initials M.B. burned into it. This had belonged to my old friend, Michael Browne. The reason I missed it was this cross had been in my home. It carried my scent. “I need to make a phone call. Is there anywhere we can get service?”

  Our answer came from Dmitri, who by this time, was close to us. “If Victor needs to make call, he can use landline at my house. It vorks, even for long distance calls.”

  Sensing I was in a hurry, Dmitri led the two of us to his house and gave us privacy as Isa dialed out for me. I didn’t understand country codes and what not, so I gave her my home number and she did the rest. It rang three times before a kindly voice picked up on the other end. “Hello?” Michael answered cautiously.

  “Michael, it’s me, Vic.” I could hear him getting ready to greet me with enthusiasm, but I wasn’t ready for small talk. “I hate to cut this short, but I’m in Chernobyl and I found the strangest thing.”

  “What did you find, Vic my boy?” he asked.

  I looked at the cross one more time just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. “Michael, I found a silver cross with your initials on it.”

  He responded with a gasp. “Fits in your palm with my initials on the back?”

  “Yes. It even has my scent from being in my house.”

  “Damnit all.” I’d never heard the pastor swear before. “Vic, I think she’s in trouble.”

  Who was he talking about? “Who’s in trouble, Michael?” I asked.

  “Liz, of course!” His voice jumped an octave. “I gave her that cross a few weeks ago when she was given her most dangerous job to date. Something about exterminating violent wolves in Europe. Come to think of it, she mentioned Chernobyl, too.” Then all the pieces fell together. “Vic, what’re you doing there?”

  My mouth hung open as I didn’t answer his question right away. Liz was the vampire responsible for killing the wolf at the cooling pond. I felt bile rise up in my throat, almost as if I could’ve puked right there on the spot. “I’m here to save these wolves, Michael.”

  “Why on Earth would you be doing that?”

  “These wolves are far from violent. These wolves are the victims.”

  Chapter 5

  I didn’t sleep well after my conversation with Michael. I held that stupid silver cross in my hand, tightly. At one point, I was so angry I squeezed it until my palm began to bleed. It was only then that Isa, without saying a word, opened my hand and took it from me. She gently pushed me back onto the bed and closed my eyes with her fingers. It was only then that my tiredness took over.

  It was well past dawn when I finally came to. The beautiful vampire hadn’t left my side and greeted me slowly as my eyes opened. “I was wondering if you were going to sleep the day away,” she joked with me.

  “I was tempted.”

  I slung my legs over the side of the bed, joining her in a sitting position. Isa leaned her head against my shoulder and said, “I know this is going to be hard.”

  “Damn right.” Liz and I weren’t on the best terms at the moment, but we’d been through Hell and back together. “I need to find her. I need to know why she’s doing this.”

  “That’s going to be easier said than done.”

  Isa was right. Liz had to know that was me chasing her in the forest yesterday. The fact that she didn’t stop to talk, to explain herself meant something was very wrong. The only thing left for me to do was to get back out there and hunt her, and probably her associates, down. If Liz was here, chances are Reno, Ruud, or both were here, too. They’d be the ones we’d find. I wouldn’t stop until I did.

  When Isa and I told Dmitri we were going back into the forest, he was adamantly against it. “Last night, Gregor spotted Chernybog in Vormvood. Large black shadow looms over camp,” he shuddered.

  “But it’s daylight,” I reminded him. “We should be okay as long as we’re back before nightfall.”

  “This is important to us, Dmitri,” Isa pleaded. “We won’t be reckless.”

  If he approved our idea, he didn’t say. The Alpha crossed his arms and gave a short nod to Isa. With that resolved, we continued our journey out into the Wormwood. The forest seemed even quieter today than it had yesterday. Could this have been due to the lingering presence of the Chernybog?

  I decided to press Isa for more information. “C’mon, shoot it straight with me. What do you know about this mutated fallen God?”

  She put her fingers on my lips. “Don’t speak about it so loudly.” She actually sounded a bit spooked. “Creatures like that, they aren’t to be trifled with.”

  “This makes me think you have some experience with this thing.”

  “No,” she said as she shook her head. “I’m just not foolish enough to challenge malevolent beings that have been around since the dawn of time.”

  As I mentioned before, I was the last person who should’ve been skeptical. Since leaving the seclusion of Full Moon, I’d met an angel, been stranded on an island with the Sphinx, and even came face to face with the lost druid, Oberon. Even with all that under my belt, the idea of a fallen God that had been altered by the meltdown of the power plant just baffled me. I’d heard its horrible rumble of a laughter my first night here, but until I actually saw it, I felt like I wouldn’t truly believe.

  “Trust me when I say you don’t want to meet that thing,” Isa indicated. “You don’t know much about Germanic legends, do you?”

  I didn’t know much about any mumbo jumbo legends. “They didn’t teach us about these sorts of things back in the good old USA.”

  We stopped for a moment so Isa could look at me head on. “Chernybog,” she whispered, “is the old God of darkness. An old acquaintance of mine from the old days studied various myths to find out the real truths. Only in passing did he mention this particular one.”

  She left it open, not finishing her story. “And?”

  “Would you even believe me if I said he was convinced Chernybog was a fallen angel?”

  “As in used to live in Heaven before he got kicked out?”

  I may have brushed it off as a joke, but Isa was dead serious. “We’re in his territory. We just need to play by the rules and try to avoid running afoul of a very powerful creature.”

  Maybe it was seeing someone as strong as her actually frightened that made it real for me. Even from within, the Warg seemed to want me to back off of this. I wondered if he knew anything. I’d have to ask him later. “I won’t push it. Let’s see if we can’t pick up a trail before we have to head back.”

  Isa led us to the spot she found the cross. It was still in her possession, as the thought of what it represented still pissed me off greatly. Using the sun as a point of reference, Liz had been traveling north, looking as if she’d been on her way out of the exclusion zone. I wondered what we’d find if we kept going.

  “Isa, what’s north of us?”

  “A state park of some sort, I think it’s called the Polesky State Reserve. My Ukrainian geography is a bit lacking,” she cracked.

  “You think we have time to make it up there?” I asked.

  “If we hurry.”

 
With an understanding that speed was required, I let the Warg out and Isa took the lead. We started to burn rubber, as it was very important to get back to camp before the sun set. As we ran, I found myself settling into a zone, allowing the Warg to do its thing and keep up with Isa. In this state, we could communicate through our thoughts. I asked him about the Chernybog, only to be given a stone wall. It was clear he knew something but wasn’t willing to give me any information.

  At about mid-afternoon, Isa came to an abrupt stop. The Warg wasn’t thrilled with having to retreat, but it understood our arrangement. “Where are we?” I asked as I stood up on two legs.

  “We’re out of the exclusion zone. Something doesn’t seem right.”

  I sniffed the air. Nothing out of the ordinary on this cold afternoon. Still, her intuition wasn’t to be ignored. “You think something is waiting for us?”

  “Not something.” With lightening quick reflexes, she pulled a knife from her jacket and sent it into a tree adjacent to us. I heard a muffled yelp before a figure tumbled out and landed awkwardly on the ground.

  The two of us ran over to where the figure dropped. The knife was buried into the shoulder of someone I considered a very good friend. “Gregory!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked up in pain. “Vic,” he wheezed. “Lord above, the rumors are true.”

  I noticed that Isa faded into the background, just out of view of the young looking vampire. Don’t let his looks fool you though; he was over a thousand years old. “What rumors?”

  “That you’re working with a rogue vampire with the abominations in the exclusion zone.”

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him up into an upright position. “No, I’m here to rescue a pack of wolves that’s being wrongly hunted.”

  I saw him trying to wince to see who was with me. “Vic, I think you’re in a lot of danger. Please come with me, we can talk about this,” he implored.

  “No can do, Gregory.” My allegiance was with the werewolves. “The best I can offer is for all of us to meet under a truce. You gotta believe me when I say the wolves in the exclusion zone are good people.”

  I helped him remove the knife from his shoulder. He gave it a good long glance before handing it back to me. Softly, “Vic, who are you working with?”

  I remembered clearly Isa’s distrust of the vampire hierarchy for her stay on Neverland. If she wanted to stay out of this for now, I would respect that. “A trusted friend,” I answered. When that didn’t seem good enough for him, “Someone who helped me get off that God forsaken island.”

  He could tell he wasn’t going to get any more from me. “I’ll take the request back to the others. If they agree, where should we meet you and your group?”

  Neutral ground would be best, but I didn’t think the vampires would go for that as it would be perceived as a sign of weakness. “If they agree,” I began, “we meet here tomorrow when the sun is at its highest. If some can’t come during that time, then so be it.”

  “Of course, the threat of the Chernybog,” he remarked offhandedly. “Very well, I will do my best to convince them. I hope to see you here tomorrow, Vic.”

  I didn’t have any hard feelings towards him, so I helped him back to his feet. “Me too, Gregory. I want this whole misunderstanding worked out.”

  He gave one last look over towards Isa who was still lingering just out of view. “As do I,” he said, right before he left.

  With Gregory gone, Isa returned from the shadows of the trees. “Sorry, I’m weary of older vampires, as you know.”

  She didn’t need to explain anything to me. “I get it, I really do.” My eyes were still glued to the direction Gregory left in. “I just never thought I’d be on the different side of the fight than my friends. It’s just a strange feeling.”

  She pointed to the sun, which was quite a bit lower in the sky than last time I looked. “We need to get going.”

  There was no point in lingering. With one final glance, I turned away and we headed back towards Chernobyl.

  Chapter 6

  We hadn’t even made it halfway back to the wolves’ camp when the snowstorm hit. My senses were pretty damn good and I usually knew when precipitation was coming, so to be surprised like this was generally concerning. We needed to find shelter and fast.

  Over the howling winds, “The exclusion zone is known for people never leaving, living here illegally,” Isa shouted. “We need to find one of these homesteads!”

  By we, she meant me. The bitter cold was starting to affect me and trying to call upon my senses was really hard. A voice in my mind reached out to me. “Use me, host.”

  The Warg. “What can you do in this freak blizzard?”

  “This is no freak blizzard; this is the work of the Chernybog.”

  During my self-imposed exile after getting back to New Mexico from Neverland, I took a lot of time to get to know the Warg and try to befriend him. The two of us came to an uneasy alliance through some negotiations. He’d lay off hitting me with the bloodlust after transformation as long as I gave him more freedoms. It was a give and take relationship. Eventually, no matter what he did, the bloodlust would hit me and that’d need to be quenched.

  I was very close to needing to pay the piper.

  What choice did we have? That’d just have to be something I squared up with once we were safe. Turning the keys over to the Warg, in no time flat the big, black, hellhound was ready to do his thing. I knew he’d need my senses added to his own, so I focused everything I had on trying to pick up a scent.

  Isa huddled against our fur, trying to stay protected from the worsening storm. As the two of us worked in unison, a scent was picked up to the east. It wasn’t strong, but it was one of death. The Warg wasted no time leaping off in that direction, with Isa hot on our heels.

  The snow slowed us down a bit and visibility was terrible. If it wasn’t for the scent that was getting stronger by the minute, we’d be lost and left for dead. Our destination was close. We burst through an old fence and into some sort of yard. Dead animals were scattered all over the place, as well as two dead humans, hunched over and huddled together. They’d been gone for a while.

  The Warg relinquished control and I returned. The blood lust hit me, hard. I hunched over, clutching my stomach as Isa rushed in and grabbed me. She scooped me up and carried me into the house. Laying me down on an old rug, “Hold on tight, Vic. I need to get a fire started,” she said, rubbing the hair out of my face.

  Sweat formed along my hairline, the pain welling up like it always did when the time came. I didn’t know how we were going to deal with this, but soon an arm was presented to me with a cut along the forearm. “You’d do the same for me,” she said.

  As distasteful as it was, I did what I had to. After a few minutes, the price had been paid and the pain subsided. I could breathe again. “Thanks,” I spit out.

  Isa slid me over closer to the fire that had begun to burn brightly in the homestead. “I know it’s not easy to deal with, but the help of your inner daemon may have just saved our lives.”

  “Sometimes, it’s not very easy.”

  “Night is about to fall. We aren’t very protected here,” she went on.

  I gave our dwelling for the evening the once over. It’d seen better days, that’s for sure. I reached into my coat and pulled out Roscoe. Each chamber had a silver slug loaded into it, with a dozen more in a case in a hidden interior pocket. “You think this Chernybog is allergic to silver?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I really hope we don’t have to find out.”

  As the minutes slowly passed, the tension picked up. At first, I thought I heard something outside only for it to be the wind from the snowstorm. Just as I relaxed slightly, The Chernybog made his presence known. It was the same deep, awful laugh that I’d heard our first night here. And it was close. Right on the other side of the door close. Isa stood up, her fangs out.

  I joined her, with Roscoe pointed at the door. I was fi
ring the moment it opened. A large shadow passed over, blocking out what little light came from the moon reflecting off the snow. Then it disappeared. Hoping the Chernybog had gone away, “Maybe he doesn’t know-”

  The front door blew off its hinges. Snow poured in, no longer confined to the outside. I fired two shots off, hoping to hit whatever was coming in. No one was there. At least no one I could see. The door picked itself off the floor and returned to a closed position in the door frame. Something was here with us.

  An eerie mist formed and took the shape of a large man. In the middle of the mist, one large, red eye appeared. “I am Chernybog, master of the Wormwood,” it said.

  Isa put her hand on her and took a step forward. “I’m Isa, elder vampire and here on the request of Dmitri, Alpha of the Chernobyl wolves.”

  The eye blinked once. “An old one, how interesting,” he said. “Another very much like you is near.”

  “None of them are like me,” she spat.

  “If you say so,” he chuckled. “I was planning on killing the two of you.”

  “You’re not now?” I asked over Isa’s shoulder.

  His attention lingered on me for a moment. “You are the host of the Warg.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. “The two of you are quite the interesting pair.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, and Isa was just as speechless. The Chernybog seemed to enjoy causing discontent as he was more than happy to stand there, keeping us on edge. Eventually, “As I am sparing your lives, I have a request from you, Warg host and you, old one.”

  “And if we say no?” Isa questioned aggressively.

  The mist went solid in the blink of an eye. We got a glimpse of the Chernybog’s true form and it was horrifying. He easily could’ve been confused with the Devil himself in black armor with giant wings. He rushed towards me, knocking me over before I had the chance to do anything. A small cut formed under my eye – a quick reminder that we weren’t in charge.