Gauntlet Rite of Ascension

by Marcus Abshire

  Abaddon looked at us and stood still, his eyes lost focus as he sent his awareness outwards into the night. A few seconds later he came back into focus and turned to me. A look of newfound respect came over him as he too shifted forms and came towards us.

  “That was a vampire, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes, the abomination is what you understand as a vampire.” Abaddon answered.

  “And those fur balls of fun, what they hell were they?” I asked.

  “They were the Altered. Animals twisted by sorcery, made into what you saw.” Abaddon said.

  He moved off to a nearby stream to wash some of the blood from his body before getting dressed.

  I went to my clothes and put them on. I was less affected by the cold, but that didn’t mean I was immune to it. I put my shirt and pants on, looking at Max the whole time. I had been mesmerized by the vampire for just a few moments, but Max spent much longer under the things gaze.

  “You alright, man?” I asked Max.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good, I just feel kinda violated. That thing had me, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. If it wanted to it could have slowly walked up to me and pushed a finger into my eye and I would have just stood there like a dumbass.” He shivered from the memory.

  He was clearly upset, being powerless to stop something even though your whole body is telling you to is hard to deal with.

  “Sometimes winning in those kinds of situations only entails if you survived or not. I’d say today, you won.” I said.

  Max didn’t say anything; he just nodded and went over to his camping gear. He pulled out a 9mm Glock and checked to make sure it was loaded, and then sat down with his back to a tree. He watched the fire with his elbows resting on his knees, holding the pistol.

  Abaddon came back into camp; he had put on his clothes. His hair was still wet, but all the blood was gone.

  “I’m sure you have questions and I will answer them, but for now we need to get Max to safety. That thing might have left, but it may come back.” Abaddon said, reaching into his backpack for a cell phone.

  “I need you to come get Max.” He said into it after dialing a number.

  “I’m not a child, I can get myself home.” Max complained.

  I could easily hear Katrina’s voice on the other end.

  “What happened? Did he have a nightmare?” She said teasingly.

  “Five Altered were sent after us, along with a vampire. I’m going to take this opportunity to see if Eric can track it.” Abaddon responded.

  “You’ve kept him in the dark too long, tell him.” Katrina said.

  Abaddon looked over at me, knowing I was listening.

  “Yes, perhaps you are right.” He said.

  I don’t know why, but a small shiver went up my spine.

  “I’ll be there in twenty.” Katrina said, then hung up.

  Max didn’t say much while we waited; he sat pensive, holding his gun and watching the fire. I think he was more affected by the encounter with the vampire than he wanted to admit.

  I tried to talk to him a couple of times and got nothing but sullen one-word answers. So far he hadn’t really seen what being a werewolf was about. Yeah he had watched me train and heard all the discussions I had with Abaddon and Katrina about the Pack but all that had been done while I was in human form. At the most it could be considered more like boot camp than anything weird, which was one of the reasons Abaddon insisted on he and I coming out here to train in Beast form. It was traumatic seeing me in full animal mode. I was his best friend, someone he could trust, but that didn’t make my appearance any less frightening.

  Tonight, Max had not only seen Abaddon and myself up close and personal, but he had been enthralled by something of infinite darkness, something whose presence grated at my understanding of the natural world. It had been in Max’s head, holding him prisoner. I could understand that part, but even with the Beast there was something alive about it, something possessed of energy and vitality. The vampire had none of that. It existed in a world of darkness and despair.

  I worried about what the touch of something like that would do to Max.

  Abaddon and I stood apart from Max, giving him solitude, waiting for Katrina to arrive.

  “I have kept information from you because I felt you were not ready, information about your father and his absence.” Abaddon began.

  “You mean his death.” I intoned.

  “We will get to that.”

  “You see your father left the Pack, well, as much as anyone can leave. He led us for years and did so in a just and honorable manner. When he decided to leave he was able to choose his replacement.”

  “His replacements name was Sebastian. He was a good man who respected your father and saw the wisdom of ruling the Pack with the modern understanding of decency and liberty. He and your father helped weed out the medieval and vile practices of certain Pack traditions.”

  “But like with everything else, there are some who abhor change. You have to understand the Pack is not just a few Ascended who get together occasionally for cookies and tea. The Pack is a multi-national organization with members spanning every nation and many different eras in time. It is responsible for managing the financial obligations needed to find, hunt and kill Descended.”

  “Think of it like a country club, where the members come to mingle, but also conduct business before leaving. From time to time there are insurrections, if you will, Ascended members whose ambitions are far greater than their good sense.”

  “Just like with natural predators, fights over territory, wealth and resources occur. The Pack is basically an overseer of disputes among members and a governing body to help keep our presence a secret from normal humans.”

  “It’s kind of like the U.N.?” I asked.

  “That is a close enough comparison. As you can imagine the head of such an organization has vast resources and influence in the world. Keep in mind most of the Pack members interact with the normal world and have their hands in all kinds of power structures the world over.”

  “By and large, the relative peace that has been established around the world is in large part due to the Packs leadership, especially under your father. Most of the current problems are from small rogue groups that are hard to manipulate because of their rigid fanaticism.”

  “Leaving the Pack like your father did was a huge decision. I’m not saying he was wrong, just that it had ramifications. It created a power vacuum, if you will.”

  “I thought you said he named a replacement?” I interjected.

  Abaddon smirked quickly.

  “Sebastian was weak, yes he had the right ideals and motives, but he was ultimately weak. In the Pack strength is paramount, without it you will be pushed aside. It is a hard truth, but a truth none the same.”

  “Vicktor had been drooling for leadership for years, but dared not challenge your father. He knew your father was stronger than him and he would lose. So he began working a different tactic.”

  “Vicktor began spreading lies about your father, that he was a poor leader and the success of the Pack was a lie. That we had given our power up and that your father’s modern ideas of humanity and a more humane Pack was a poison. He slowly gathered those who felt like him. Those that wanted to have more power themselves and saw their chance through Vicktor.”

  “When your father left, it was the opening Vicktor needed. It took years to undermine Sebastian. When your father first left Sebastian managed the pack and its affairs as well as your father. Over time, however, things began to fall apart. Rival factions began fighting with each other and tensions about the Packs cohesion grew. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to know that Vicktor and his band of followers had been sewing the seeds of disruption. He wanted to not just take over, but destroy everything your father worked so hard to accomplish, so that when he took over, no one would question his choices.”

  “Then he took power, one night he challenged Sebastian and in the ensuing battle,
killed him. Everything changed.”

  “Vicktor quickly imposed his own will on the Pack and began running things his way, ruthless and without remorse. He began reducing the independence of the other pack members throughout the world, taking more direct control, centralizing it. That’s when I began to really see the danger in him.”

  “Those small groups or individuals who refused to allow Vicktor to dictate his will upon them started disappearing.”

  “It was small at first, one or two here, a small family there. It was not unheard of to have Ascended disappear for weeks on end while they fled civilization and spend copious amounts of time alone in the woods.”

  “But over the next ten years, more and more vocal critics of Vicktor simply vanished.”

  “Their disappearances sent warning flags up and I decided to investigate. It was the same in every case. I found houses that showed evidence of a battle, but no trace of anyone other than the missing having been there. You know how powerful our tracking senses are. We can pick up the smallest trail, but whatever was taking our people left nothing.”

  “That’s when it hit me, I knew of only one instance where I encountered something that had no scent. Your father and I, years ago, were in Romania tracking two Descended who were making their way east. One of the local villagers told us about a wraith that occasionally visited the town and took one of their people, once every few months or so, enough to keep under the radar. In the small villages like these, young people frequently ran off to the big cities and were never heard from. Missing one or two people spread out in the surrounding villages went unnoticed.”

  “The man sat in the local tavern, his eyes glazed from more drink than needed. He slumped over his mug, protectively; using his body to shield any would be thieves.”

  “We went to the bar tender and started asking a few routine questions, wondering if any strangers, besides us, had passed through and what they looked like. The bar tender told us he hadn’t seen anyone recently and we were about to leave when the man on the barstool turned to us with a slurred accent,

  “I saw something strange.”

  I was ready to dismiss him when your father asked him to explain.

  “I was in the fields working the last of the year’s potatoes, hoping to get a good yield before the ground froze up and I’d need a miracle from the Almighty to get them out.”

  “The night was dark as I packed up my tools and got ready to head home. That’s when I saw it.”

  “His eyes went unfocused as he looked off into the distance, remembering.”

  “It moved like nothing I’ve ever seen, Floated almost over the ground, yet its legs moved like normal. It looked like a man but it wasn’t no man. Just seeing it made me feel dirty, like a poison in the air that sticks to your skin or the feeling you get when the fever’s upon you, when you know someone nearby is dying and you can feel it, somehow, deep inside. It carried a body on its shoulder. The weight made no difference at all to the things movements, might as well have been carrying a sack of feathers. It moved through the edge of the potato field, about fifty feet and disappeared in the trees.” He shuddered.

  “That’s it?” Your father asked him.

  “I pray to God that’s all there ever will be.” He answered.

  “We left the tavern and went out into the cold night air. Your father asked me what I thought and I told him it was the ramblings of a drunk. He thought there might be more to the story. He said it was common for people to mistake Ascended for all manner of creatures. He was intent on investigating this new lead. We went to the place the farmer described and found nothing out of the ordinary. We did find a perfectly human scent that followed the path the farmer described, but nothing else.”

  “Your father looked around for a minute then started off into the woods, following the scent.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “What do you see, Don?” He countered.

  “Nothing, I see nothing here. There is just the scent of a man passing recently, nothing else.” I said.

  “Exactly.” He answered.

  “Your father was an expert at getting under my skin, I have never met anyone as skilled at that than him, not even you.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” I asked.

  “Don, think, you have spent too long using that snout for all your information and forgot about your other senses. When a person walks by leaving a scent trail, what else to they leave?” He looked at me with quiet patience, like a teacher explaining basic math to a five year old. It was maddening.”

  “I looked around and realized what he meant; there were no foot tracks, nothing at all. That was not normal. Something had carried someone through here and left no trail. Without another word, we both began tracking the scent trail left behind.”

  “We followed it for miles as it wound its way further into the mountains. The path was treacherous, but with our enhanced abilities we were able to stay on it. Eventually, we came to a large crack in the mountain, a dark deep fissure that split the rock wall and allowed access to its inner mysteries. We were still young, about thirty years old, and felt invincible with our Beast’s power. We never imagined there was anything in the world scarier than us. We were wrong.”

  “I carried my dual swords as I do now and your father had a single blade, its length longer than average. Normally that design would make his offense powerful, but slow. Your father was able to wield his blade with precision, power and speed. He was lethal indeed.”

  “We strode into the black heart of the mountain without a worry, sure of our own superiority. The going got tight at times and the path narrowed to small gaps in the mountains hard rock interior, but soon we entered a large opening that was maybe the size of a modest living room, maybe thirty by thirty. In this area we saw the victim who we had been tracking and bent over him, leeching the blood from his body was the vampire.”

  “A wave of rotten corruption hit us like a hammer blow. I felt a deep and powerful wrongness radiating from the thing in the chamber and it sent the hairs on my neck straight up. We watched in horror as it drained the man of his body’s liquids, his skin shriveled up as this thing somehow pulled every bit of moisture from the man’s body, creating a mummified corpse in the span of a few seconds.”

  “That wasn’t all; as we looked around we saw dozens of similar bodies lying around the space. Dried out husks, each one a person who would never see their husbands, never see their wives, never get to grow up and make love for the first time, never delight in the wonder and fear of having a child and the ecstasy of creating that child.”

  “The thing turned from its meal and looked towards us, drawing us into its gaze, trying to paralyze us. My Beast arose within me and fought it off, allowing me to break its stare. It seemed unsure of what happened. A strange look came over it, like a person walking into a dark room and reaching out for a light switch they have used hundreds of times only to find it not there anymore.”

  “Your father rushed it first, seeming to have recovered from its gaze quickest. He had his sword out in front of him and in one lunge impaled the thing right in the chest. It neither registered pain nor fear. It took a step towards your father, impaling itself even greater and punched through your father. It did not send him into the wall with its punch; it literally punched a hole in your father’s chest that exited his back. Its hand covered in your father’s blood and tissue.”

  “Your father let out a gurgled moan of pain and anguish before I could get there to help. I reached them and used my swords on it. It was fast, faster than anything I had fought before. It didn’t know what to make of my blades, but it knew they would hurt it. It easily dodged my attacks and even landed a devastating blow to my head that sent me sailing through the air into the wall where I felt bones break under the strength of its power.”

  “That’s when I started getting worried. This thing had easily beaten back two of the finest fighters the Pack has ever known in the span of a few secon
ds. I heard a growl and saw your fathers form shift and I willed myself to follow suit. It came at your father first, and he brought his sword down in a quick and decisive stroke, severing its arm from its shoulder. The severed limb hit the floor and its hand flexed, the muscle and tendons showing stark in the pale flesh. The vampire never slowed and again struck your father in the chest, only this time it sent him flying into the wall with a large dent in his chest where the vampire had crushed his ribs and sternum.

  I don’t know why, but one thing that kept nagging at me was the lack of blood, not from your father or me, we bled like usual, but from the arm lying on the ground and the things shoulder no blood at all fell. As if it wasn’t able to flow out or perhaps it didn’t have any in its body.”

  “The one armed monster followed your dad’s trajectory and if I hadn’t been there it would have been able to attack him while he was defenseless. The blow it gave him knocked him momentarily unconscious and the vampire was closing quickly.”

  “I wasn’t going to let your father die at the hands of such a creature. I again rushed in, only this time I treated it with more respect and caution. I slashed its back and saw my blade open up a deep gash that never drew blood. It turned to face this new threat and I focused myself and drew on my Beast to add speed and control to my blades. It didn’t let me down, I came at it and with a series of quick slashes, severed its other arm and one powerful slice took its head from its shoulders.”

  “The thing dropped to the ground but stayed animated, as if all I had to do was bring its parts close enough and they would reform. To my amazement and horror I finally saw its blood. A deep black ichor oozed out of its neck and slowly flowed towards its body. I knew if it reached its torso the thing would be back in the fight so I kicked its head away into the corner to buy some more time.”

  “Your father had recovered and stood next to me staring down at it with disgust. The thing still emitted the strong aura of discord that I associated with funerals. The unease of death and the certainty that everyone at a funeral feels, knowing death is close and that eventually it will happen to you. It was the aura of morose nothingness that I felt, the power of the unstoppable abyss.”