Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  Grey stepped up beside Garret. “Mr. Vilner was getting ready to assist me on a case. He was just changing.”

  Garret didn’t even try to keep from rolling his eyes. Halstead spat on the floor, and Orem started to speak, but the sheriff held out an arm, silencing him. “What case is that, Dr. Grey?” Halstead asked sarcastically.

  “Mullins’ roan has a bad presentation. So said his son,” Grey replied smoothly. “He left here not ten minutes ago.”

  Johnson, who was neighbors with Mullins, shifted uncomfortably. “Sheriff, sir, Mullins’ roan did go into labor this morning.”

  If looks could kill, the sheriff would have gutted, impaled, flayed, and skinned Johnson all in one glance. Johnson withered.

  Get out now, Garret thought, feeling his back tighten up, bracing for the nearly instantaneous shift that would signal all of their deaths, or at least injury enough to incapacitate them. You will not waste one more second of Molly’s life.

  Then it came out Garret’s mouth, and it was cold with authority he did not know he possessed. “Get out now. All of you.”

  Grey wound up like a clock spring, but joined in. “Sheriff, we must be off if we’re to save Mullins’ calf.”

  Halstead’s eyes burned. “I don’t give a shit about the calf.”

  Several of the men turned their looks on the sheriff. Livestock was life. Without it, families went hungry and towns wasted to nothing. Grey saw his opening and took it. His bravado solidified into something more formidable when he said, “Well I do, Sheriff Halstead, and so does Mr. Vilner here.”

  Halstead interrupted, cold and angry. “There was a wolf that—”

  Grey interrupted him in return. “That came right through my front window. Thank God Mr. Vilner was here to scare it away with the rifle. If that calf dies, Sheriff, it will be your fault.”

  Halstead had lost everyone, and he knew it. The other men were leaving. One of them offered to give Grey and Garret a ride if Grey’s carriage wasn’t hooked up yet. Grey turned him down. When Garret was a half a second from exploding and tearing random faces off, they all left. Grey sagged against the exam table.

  Garret turned to him and poked him with the gun. “I’m out of time. That means you are too.”

  “Garret, we have to leave in the carriage, right now. They’ll be watching the house.”

  Grey took a step to go around Garret, who pushed him in the chest hard enough to sit him down again. “I don’t care. Tell me what I need to know. Now.”

  Grey slumped and dangled his head. “You can’t kill it, Garret.”

  Garret knelt, his patience long since exhausted. He placed the barrel of the gun against Grey’s chest and leaned on the other end. “I already heard that part. Move on.”

  Grey winced and wrapped a hand around the barrel. He spoke quickly. “It can’t be killed, son! I’ve tried everything, bullets, poison. Its hide is like armor now.”

  Garret backed off. Fear climbed up his spine. “Everything dies,” he said, but not with assurance.

  Grey shook his head sadly. “I’ll show you.”

  Garret took the rifle away from Grey’s chest, letting him stand, which he did, slowly, like an old man. He reached up to the top shelf and brought down a large bowl that had been hidden from sight. It was brimming with thick, red liquid.

  Blood. More than anyone could lose without dying. Garret recoiled.

  “It’s not human,” Grey said wearily, but something in his tone made Garret doubt him. In the middle of the blood floated a chunk of black hide swathed in dark, oily fur. Garret recognized it immediately.

  “How did you get it?”

  “The only way you can,” Grey replied. “The creature gave it to me.”

  Using two fingers, Grey picked it up by the hair and laid it on the counter. He rummaged through a drawer to his left, and emerged with a short-bladed surgical knife. Garret had once seen him use a similar knife to open and drain an abscess on Violet’s flank.

  Grey used the knife to peel up the edge of the counter to demonstrate its sharpness, then handed it to Garret, and motioned to the piece of flesh. After setting the gun aside, which Grey no longer seemed to care about, Garret set the knife tip in the middle of the chunk of flesh and drove it down hard. The flesh bowed and compressed under the pressure, but it did not give. Garret looked at the knife in bewilderment. He tried again, pushing with all he had for Molly’s sake. He stabbed it hard as he could. He pushed down until the blade snapped off. The flesh reacted like a piece of thick leather, flexible, but tougher than steel. It was impenetrable, as Grey had said.

  Garret was getting dizzy. He had to kill it. There had to be away. “It has Molly. I have to save her. You have to tell me how, Dr. Grey. There has to be a way to kill it.”

  Desperation shattered into despair. Garret sank down against the cabinet. Grey didn’t follow. But then came the rifle barrel again, pointing at Garret’s head. What difference did it make? Garret had finally found his strength. He’d just gotten hold of the edge of what it meant to be a man but it couldn’t help Molly. So what difference did it make?

  Grey’s voice shook when he said, “Garret, I’m sorry, but I won’t let you kill her. She’s all I have left in the world.”

  Garret was so lost in the dull ache for Molly that Grey had sighted on Garret’s temple and was squeezing the trigger before Garret realized what he’d said. Garret snapped a hand up against the side of the barrel as Grey pulled the trigger. The gun roared in Garret’s face, more of a force than a sound he could hear. In fact the only sound was a high pitched ring.

  Garret was on Grey, punching him in the face. Blood flew, peppering the cabinets around them. Grey tried to defend himself for a few seconds, but Garret’s blows soon left Grey’s hands flopping drunkenly. A minute later, Garret sat back from Grey, probably just short of killing him. Garret stayed his bloody fists only with the knowledge that Grey had lied all along: there was a way. I won’t let you take her away from me, he’d said. That meant it could be done. Grey knew a way to save Molly.

  Garret dragged the barely conscious Grey upright and pressed him back against the cabinets. Slapped him around a little. He was still woozy. Garret stood and rummaged through the broken dispensary cabinet. He found what looked like smelling salts. He pulled the top to make sure, then waved it under Grey’s nose. It didn’t have the desired effect for a few seconds, but eventually, Grey became more lucid.

  Desperation was trying to strangle Garret. The clock in the corner boomed out each second as it passed, and as far as Garret knew, any one of those seconds could be Molly’s last. Garret thought hard as Grey regained consciousness. How do I make him tell me? Can I trick him into it somehow? Maybe I can act like he’s already done it.

  Garret forced a smile, which he hoped didn’t look as desperately macabre as it felt. “Thanks for the information, Dr. Grey.”

  Grey gurgled some blood onto his shirt. His voice was slurred, but irritated. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

  Damn it! “Oh yes you did. When I started pounding on you, you spilled the whole story. And now I’m going to kill it.”

  Grey laughed at him. “Boy, can you even spell the word ‘idiot’?”

  No, no, no! It’s not gonna end like this!

  He yelled it in Grey’s face. “It’s not gonna end this way, do you understand me?”

  Out of sheer, impotent rage, Garret grabbed Grey off the floor, picked him up as if he were a log, and slammed him down atop the exam table. Loose change flew out of Grey’s pockets, and the sides of the table crackled. Now that Grey was sprawled out in the light, Garret blinked at the bloody mess of a man. Jesus, did I really do that to another person?

  More importantly, how much further was Garret willing to go? Only Dr. Grey could save Molly, and he wasn’t talking. Garret steeled himself. He was faced with an awful choice. Jesus, I’m starting to shake. His own body was betraying him over the decision. Punching a man in the face was one thing. Trying to use pain to force h
im to talk was entirely another.

  So this is it, then. What will I really do for Molly? How far was he willing to go? He looked back at the bloody-faced man on the table. His usually immaculate vest and even his trousers were splashed and speckled with his life blood.

  If Garret didn’t do this, Molly would die. But he couldn’t torture somebody. But he had to. He put an unsteady hand into the drawer Grey had rummaged earlier and came out with a wickedly curved blade. He waved it in front of Grey’s face.

  “Tell me how to kill it.”

  “No,” Grey gurgled through his smashed, spongy nose and swelling lips.

  “Tell me!” Garret demanded, brandishing the knife an inch from Grey’s throat. “Or I’ll start cutting!”

  Grey laughed at him, and spit blood in Garret’s face. “Have at it, boy. Cut me to pieces for your little girlfriend.” Grey rolled his head away from Garret and snorted out some blood. “Do it.”

  Garret’s hands wouldn’t move. He couldn’t make them. He wanted to save Molly. He wanted to do whatever it took, but he had allowed himself to be who he was, and there was no taking it back now. Garret blinked as the whole horrible weight of the realization crushed him. He would die a horrible death if it would save Molly, but he couldn’t inflict that death on someone else. He could not torture another human being. He didn’t have it in him.

  It was done. He was beaten. He had failed.

  There was no crumpling that time. Garret simply collapsed, hit the floor like a ton of bricks, mercifully not landing on the knife. His breath whuffed out of him, and he laid there and wished he was dead. Not that his death would be worth a damn thing either.

  Garret lay on the floor for a long while before he heard the soft sizzling noise. In front of his nose lay the piece of the creature’s flesh. It was burning, curling up as if on fire, though there were no flames. Garret pulled himself closer to the smoldering piece of skin. How had it gotten on the floor? Then he noticed the greasy blood splashed everywhere, including on his naked body, and the broken pieces of the bowl. He must have knocked it off the counter while he was throwing Grey around.

  Grey, still lying on the exam table, gurgled a laugh. “She knows I’ll find the cure. That I’ll do whatever it takes to set her free of it. That’s real love Garret. That’s why I’m going to have my girl back, and you aren’t. You can’t do what has to be done. You’re weak, just like your father was. You never did figure it out, did you? Never did realize I was the one who...”

  Garret ignored him, so intently was he watching the piece of flesh shrivel. What was happening to it? Nothing had fallen or splashed on the skin. No liquids from the broken dispensary cabinet, not even any dust or dirt that Garret could see. He picked it up, and it stopped smoking as soon as it was in the air. On the floor, beneath it, lying in a smear of blood, was one of the coins from Grey’s pocket. The piece of skin had landed atop a quarter.

  A silver quarter.

  Garret grabbed the coin, dropped it and the shriveled skin into his palm and made a fist, crushing them both together. Despite the pressure, he felt the creature’s skin attempting to writhe and shrink away in his hand as it burned up. Garret grabbed a dime off the floor, also silver, and tried it, just to be sure. Same results.

  Hope roared back to life in his chest. It brought color to his vision that had nothing to do with a lack of wolf senses. Grey was still talking in a relaxed monotone.

  “You know, I actually thought you were going to do it there for a second, but I’d never tell you either way. She will live forever. You won’t live out the end of the week. She’s—”

  Garret stood, crowed like a school boy, slapped the quarter onto the middle of Grey’s forehead, and was out of the house on all fours before Grey could sit up.

  Garret ran out into the deepest, darkest part of the woods. Pumped with adrenaline and shaking with exultation, he ripped off the wolfstrap, spat the coin of out his wolf mouth into his human hand, and yelled into the night. “I know how to kill you! Do you hear me, I know how to kill you! If you want to keep your secret safe, you’ve only got one way, come and find me!”

  Without a sound, the monster stepped out of a shadow just to his right. Garret turned and looked up at its massive form, blocking out the moon.

  Wow, that was easy!

  The creature’s humps of shoulder muscle flexed, and it turned its black, hell-lit eyes down on him. Its long, ragged claws slid out of the ends of its fingers.

  Wow… That was easy.

  “Uh,” Garret said as he backed away. “Y—you didn’t bring Molly with you.”

  I’m going to offer you one chance to live. I suggest you take it.

  Garret clapped his hands over his ears, but it did no good. The creature was forcing its thoughts into his own again, but this time it wasn’t letting them flow, it was ramming them. It felt like having a hair-thin blade driven through his brain. Garret stumbled backwards, but the creature simply vanished and reappeared again in a closer shadow. It bared its teeth.

  One chance to save her, or I will strip the flesh from her bones one inch at a time.

  “No, wait,” Garret begged, one hand still over his ear, the other extended as if it would offer some protection. In addition to words, the creature began to drive images into his mind. It showed him Molly, naked as she had been the last time he saw her, but this time she was bleeding and screaming as the creature tugged its black claws through her flesh, ripping her muscles loose one at a time as if it was gutting a gasping fish. Garret was forced to see through the creature’s eyes, forced to feel the claws sliding through Molly’s body as if they were extensions of his own hands.

  Yes, boy, that is what you will feel. Only next time, if you refuse me, this will be real. You will smell her blood. I will make you drink it.

  Molly was screaming. Garret was rolling around on the ground. “Stop, stop,” he sobbed. “I’ll do anything! Just don’t hurt her.”

  The creature’s voice softened, becoming human. Wickedly human. “Agreement already? But Garret, we haven’t discussed your little brother yet.”

  Garret lost it. “I’ll do anything!” He was on his knees before it. “Please don’t hurt them. Please, please...”

  The creature laughed, deep and satisfied. The sound seemed to fill the ground, reverberating between earth and hell. It was the sound of finality. The sound of the end.

  As Garret listened to the laughter ring, he began to understand what had lain before his eyes, unseen, all along. Everything was lost. Not only that, it had always been lost. He’d been too stupid to see it. He’d never been a match for the evil he’d tried to fight. He had learned its weakness, so what? He’d called a demon down on himself with a silver dime in his hand. As Garret hunkered on the ground, he tasted true despair, the last breath of fleeting life, grasping at a burning thread as if it was a life rope.

  There was no thought in Garret’s next action. Powered by the most base human and wolf instincts, and by reckless abandonment, Garret was fast. He flung himself at the monster. If he could injure it, maybe Molly and Sarn would be able to escape. Or maybe he made the suicide charge because the world had become too dark a place to live in. He fastened his jaws around the creature’s throat and it grabbed him around the rib cage.

  The creature took a step back with Garret’s impact, but did not fall. Garret clamped down on its throat with every muscle in his head and neck. It didn’t break the skin. As the creature tore him free, it made a gagging sound that turned into a chuckle as Garret’s teeth peeled away. The creature held him at arm’s length and squeezed, in exactly the way it had bruised him so badly before. It was agonizing. Stitches popped. Trickles of blood started.

  “Oh,” the creature purred in a thoroughly human way, “Oh, but you are fun.” It slammed him into the ground at its feet, as if it was trying to splatter a rotten apple. Garret’s world spun, the blunt impact shocking every cell in his body.

  The dark power returned to the creature’s voice. “Colleen
and Powell Malvern are returning to their home this night. You will go there and kill them, and I will release both your precious Molly and your brother.”

  Molly’s parents? Garret’s thoughts were slurring. You want me… to kill… Molly’s parents?

  Life for life, it replied.

  Garret had lost his wolf form without realizing it. He sat up on his human behind, his head still singing from the impact with the ground. His back was a bloody mess again. “Wait,” he slurred, his body slumping to the side. “Why can’t it be me?”

  The creature smiled. It was the most repulsive thing he’d seen it do.

  With one light step, the creature retreated into the shadow, and was gone.

  Chapter 17

  Numbness set into Garret’s human body. He let it come. The wolf had fur, but he let the cold soak into his bare skin because his mind couldn’t be bothered with such things as shifting. His mind too was numb, deadened by the constant pounding. He was broken of thought and spirit, much the way old circus animals wouldn’t run from their cages, even if the doors were left wide open.

  Life wasn’t supposed to be like this, and Garret couldn’t cope. It wasn’t that he lacked the courage, he just wasn’t mentally or emotionally equipped. He was trapped. He couldn’t make the choice to murder two people in cold blood, but if he didn’t, that in itself would be making the choice. He had no doubt the creature would keep its word on what it intended to do to Molly, or what it intended to make Garret do to Molly. Sarn would die at least as horribly.

  In the end, Garret pushed himself off the ground and turned towards the Malvern’s mansion. He could have reasoned that Mr. and Mrs. Malvern were much older and therefor, if a horrible choice had to be made, Garret should save the younger people at the expense of those who had already lived much of their lives. Or he could have told himself that the Malverns, being normal parents (not that Garret had experience with such things), would probably be willing to sacrifice their lives for the life of their daughter if given the option. Or logically, as the creature had said, he was trading two lives for two lives, and he could make a swift, perhaps even painless end for Mr. and Mrs. Malvern, whereas Molly and Sarn would be tortured until they begged for death.