He tried to call out to her. He heard her muffled cries just as he finally got a look at the face of the one in front of him, the hold of the two beside him too powerful for him to break free. The eyes were serpentine, and the face was reptilian, though vaguely human nonetheless. It was one of his own kind. The one called Tisiphone, if he recalled.
Again they’ve trapped me, he thought. Just like in Venice.
This time he wasn’t going to be nearly as gentle.
For an instant, he smiled. But it was a sad kind of smile. Sad like the way Maggie had smiled when she’d first seen him on the couch. The sentiment was lost on his attackers.
As they looked on, as Tisiphone reached out for his throat, even, Vince’s face changed.
His eyes contorted. They bulged, swollen from within. Then they shrank, receding deep into red, open sockets. His skin seemed to wither, the color suddenly drained as though sucked inward from something underneath. In a moment, it was gone too.
Exposed muscles, pulsing arteries and blue veins stared down at the four. Tisiphone felt the skin dissolve from under her grip, the liquid flesh seeping over her arm. A skull was now facing them. It was laughing.
She recoiled, gripped her arm in sudden agony. The stuff that had leaked off Vince’s neck spread over her like hot tar. It bubbled, blistering her skin. Burning. She fell shrieking.
If he had needed to, he could have slipped out from under the hold of the others, but it wasn’t necessary. They stepped back when their leader collapsed.
Gone from in front of him, Maggie was afforded a clear view, horrified by what she saw. The two assailants eased off her. The one with the blade stepped away. The one behind her, however, did not. She heard a woman’s voice in her ear, whispering.
“Fear not Margaret, I am a friend of Sean’s.”
She could only watch as the bastard-thing that had been Vince suddenly burst out of his clothes. Flames incinerated his coat, charred his hat. His decomposing body suddenly, violently combusted.
A scream erupted within the rush of fire, like the call of a hawk. From the core of the raging human pyre there sprang forth a phoenix. It soared into the night, a golden-blazing firebird; wings spread wide and trailing cinders.
“Lucifer,” the one behind her mumbled.
Maggie shivered.
Tisiphone writhed in the dirt. But Horus and Icarus threw off their clothes, revealing their inhuman forms. Lifted by their own wings, they flew to challenge the firestorm that had been Vince Sicario.
Maggie could only gasp when the attacker in front of her dropped his own hat. The face of a jackal stared her down, his pointed ears trained upward. Anubis growled. He brought his blade to her throat, heedless of the chaos above.
Before the cut could be made, she felt the hands on the back of her neck edge her aside. She watched as the bony, albino figure of Charybdis, herself fallen out of disguise, sidestepped the attack. The jackal-man was taken by surprise, for only a moment, but it was long enough.
Her own curved steel bared, Charybdis passed the blade once across the middle of the beast, opening a gash that immediately surged blood. In a fluid motion, before Anubis could even howl, she sliced the dagger through his thick neck. Then deeply into his snout.
A final, cruel pass across his groin was unnecessary, but it felled the monster a moment quicker than he would have dropped otherwise.
Maggie dropped to the dirt, her face and hands splattered with canine blood. Her side ached with a deep wound. Charybdis was next to her an instant later, but her eyes were fixed on the deadly display overhead.
The phoenix figure darted left, then right, burning a trail of orange and red across the night. Horus, talons bared, climbed in a high arc and dove upon the firebird from behind.
His claws caught the other in the wing, piercing its flame-swathed flesh and jerking it backward. Icarus saw the attack. He circled, his long saber drawn before him. Horus, momentarily ensnared by his own falcon claws, fought to pull his talons loose. His feathers burned in his skin.
The long blade lifted, Icarus swooped down, carried by his lofty white wings. His cut split the heated air, but the phoenix bird suddenly flailed. The sword sliced clear through the talon claws of Horus. It severed the bird-hybrid’s legs from under him.
He wailed in a voice that was neither avian, nor Homo sapiens, but something torn between the two. Agony sounded much the same, no matter the species.
Flanagan managed to break free of his assailant, for an instant. He dragged himself from behind the car, pulling his heavy, aching self forward with desperate, bloody fingers. From the shadows, he emerged into the firelight, beaming down in random cascades from overhead.
Jagged, fleshy wounds hobbled his thighs, staining the fabric of his torn trousers a slimy wet-black. Claw-scratches had robbed his torso of any human dignity; his muscles and tissues were little more than raw meat now, wounded prey ripe for the kill. His coat was shredded. The remains of his cheap oxford shirt were hanging off him in a mess of bloodied rags.
He felt it breathing behind him; snarling and slurping blood from its teeth, savoring his salty taste. It was not yet pursuing. He had a moment to get away, or maybe not even that long. But his legs would not oblige him.
As hard as he pushed, as much as he willed them, the bones would not obey. They just lay there, clinging to his waist, cruelly disconnected. All he could do was rake his hands against the cold dirt.
He screamed. It was anger mixed with fear. A last, dying hope for pity.
The beast Lycaon reared on his hairy haunches and leapt forward.
Flanagan felt his bowels release as the wolf’s jowls seized the soft, fatty skin of his throat. Then everything went cold.
Icarus circled. Scalding embers sparkled in the smoke around him. His eyes watered. He tried to look through the tears, but he no longer knew which way was up.
A hand reached out when he turned. He never saw it coming. He did see the face of Sean Mulcahy, however, as it took shape upon the phoenix, replacing the bird-form entirely in a matter of moments.
Sean’s hand clenched his larynx. It squeezed the delicate cartilage like a vice. Icarus tried to fight off the pressure, even as he felt the skin of his face swell and his lungs burn.
Horus, squealing horribly, dropped from the sky, landing in a splash of his own blood. The last sound he heard was the crack of his spine, as every bone in his back splintered apart.
Sean now hung aloft, suspended by the wings of Icarus. The bird-man struggled desperately to breathe through the grip that was collapsing his throat. The pair of them fell together, Icarus unable to break the vicious hold, or to maintain consciousness.
They landed in a heap only a few yards from Flanagan’s car, in plain sight of Maggie and Charybdis, and the now roaring, kill-maddened Lycaon.
With hands that were uncommonly gentle, despite the chaos, Charybdis moved Maggie behind her. She slowly guided the wounded lady backward and away from the fight.
Now Lycaon stood alone. From the pile of flesh and shattered bones that had been Icarus, Sean rose. There was not a scratch on him. His skin glowed.
“Your friend is dead, and now your time has come, Lucifer,” the werewolf snarled, exposing his yellow, bloodstained fangs.
Flanagan’s insides were strewn about the dirt beneath him, savaged human detritus steaming in the cool night air. Spongy little pieces of him clung to the animal-man’s whiskers.
Sean did not respond. He passed a slow gaze over the desecrated husk that had been Pat Flanagan, barely recognizable for the monster’s butchery. Then he returned his eyes to the growling visage of Lycaon. But he did not approach.
Instead, his sight stayed locked on the beast, and the wolf-thing kept his own wild eyes trained hard on his foe. Sean stepped gingerly over to where Tisiphone continued to toss and turn through the dust. She was still peeling in agony. Her skin was blistered and singed all over her body, as though doused with acid. Careless of the sight, Sean laid his hand on her
arm.
She squealed one final time, and the pox seemed to leave her, drawn out into the touch of the changeling. Her moment of relief passed, she smiled with a last notion of sweet release.
Then her heart gave out within her feral breast.
Seeing this, the wolf-beast roared and leapt upon him, claws held high. Sean remained still, however. He made no attempt to evade the creature. A second later, Lycaon learned why.
The huge paws of the creature struck the bare, undefended chest of their prey. Instead of sinking through the flesh and tearing into the muscle beneath, as Lycaon fully expected, they shattered. Lycaon howled, his paws fractured. He recoiled.
Sean’s skin had turned to stone.
Wounded, but not swayed from his rage, Lycaon was not finished. He whirled his massive tail, and used his rear legs to spring to the side of Sean. He moved with the speed of a wild predator, and his long tail wrapped around Sean’s neck like a noose.
Again, the attack had little effect.
Lycaon found the man’s throat as inflexible as the rest of him. The pressure he exerted did nothing but constrict his own tail.
Sean shook his head. He wrapped his fingers around the tail, and as Lycaon looked up, momentarily helpless, he yanked the appendage so violently that it tore away from the monster’s rear.
Lycaon tumbled to the dust. His mangled front claws throbbed. His hindquarters quivered, raw and bleeding from the severed vertebrae. Still he snarled, but his defenses were lame. Sean approached, slowly. He extended his right arm. His flesh congealed. As though his skin was more liquid than solid, his fingers merged, forming a single, long appendage where his hand should have been.
The beast staggered backward, yelping. Sean pursued at a pedestrian pace. He allowed Lycaon to feel every terrible second of his demise.
All color had vanished from his arm. From under his torn sleeve a serrated dagger menaced in place of a limb. He raised it, and Lycaon was blinded momentarily by the glint of moonlight reflected off organic steel.
But the pursuit ended without Sean laying a finger on him. Lycaon howled his last when he limped backward. It was one step too far. The blade of Charybdis was waiting. It plunged deep into the soft flesh between his shoulders.
The beast put down, Sean turned his attention to Maggie. She was on her knees, looking up at him with eyes that were wide like a child’s.
“Sean?” she stammered. “What did … how could … how?”
He had returned to a passably human shape.
“This isn’t the time to explain,” he replied.
“The hell it isn’t!” she shouted back.
He knelt beside her, looking at her ripped jacket and the blood on the dirt. Her blood.
“You’re cut, you need to get help,” he said.
She ignored his concern. When he tried to place his hand on her exposed side, she batted it away.
“What have you done to Vince?” she demanded.
“I haven’t done anything to him.”
He feigned ignorance, knowing full well that he was telling the truth. She didn’t care for his irreverence.
“Don’t lie to me, damn you! I saw the whole thing, whatever the hell it was. I saw him standing there! I saw what happened!”
Sean merely stared back at her, stoic, almost like Vince used to do.
“I did see him, didn’t I?” she continued.
“You did,” he assured her.
“So what happened to him? Where’d he go?”
Sean breathed heavily. He knew where the conversation was going; it was a talk he had intended never to have. This especially, was not the time. Regardless, he answered.
“He was never here.”
“But you just said …”
“You saw what you thought was Vince. An imitation of him. A reproduction.”
It made no sense to her, and he knew that.
“But I talked to him. I sat with him. I kissed him,” she said, more to herself than to him.
Sean shook his head slowly. His own memories of those brief moments played out in his mind.
“It wasn’t Vince,” he finally said.
Her expression was befuddled. Even though he hated the very idea of it, he knew he needed to explain.
“It was me,” he said.
“You?” she replied, exhaling. “I don’t believe you.”
Sean nodded. He’d expected that response, even with all that Maggie had just witnessed. He was going to have to show her. He just kept thinking how badly that same attempt had gone with Vince.
“Watch carefully,” he whispered.
Stepping back a few feet, Sean craned his neck. He loosened his joints and breathed deeply. He seemed tired, and the change that came over him this time was slow. But Maggie saw every second of it.
First the color faded from his skin, leaving it looking more like wax than living tissue. Then, as though they were no more than temporary, his features dissolved. His eye sockets widened. The bone beneath was soft and malleable, shaped by some unseen sculptor. His nose lengthened and his mouth expanded in the same way. Greasy secretions from his scalp dampened his hair like black sweat. The strands were becoming darker and heavier.
In a few short moments, Sean’s face was gone. Maggie found herself staring at Vince Sicario again.
“Mother of God,” she gasped. “That morning in front of the apartment, with Paulie … the other day, when you were suddenly better … the alley with the kids.”
“I know it must be hard to understand,” Sean attempted, though she did not allow him to finish.
“Where is he?” her expression suddenly took on a fierce glimmer.
“What?”
“Vince. If he’s not here, then where is he?”
“He’s alive,” Sean replied, his face grotesquely reforming as he spoke. The change did not seem to bother him, but for a slight shiver.
“Where is he, Sean!” she shouted. “Enough lies, tell me the truth for once, damn it!”
She winced when she yelled. The pain was evident in her eyes.
“He’s with my master, at a church on the Lower East Side. He’s safe, I assure you,” Charybdis answered, suspecting that Sean might not.
“I want to see him,” she said.
“That’s too dangerous,” Sean answered.
“Dangerous? After what happened here you’re telling me that’s too dangerous? No Sean, you’re going to take me to Vince, right now. Understand?”
He looked at Charybdis. The pale figure nodded.
“Fine.”
“I don’t know what the hell is going on, and maybe I don’t want to know. But this charade has gone on long enough, and you better have some goddamn answers,” Maggie said.
Sean looked away, to the pool of her blood in the dirt.
“Not now,” he said.
She was about to yell something back at him, but Charybdis intervened.
“He’s right. You are owed an explanation my lady, without a doubt, but not here. The locals hide now, but they will be out soon to investigate. We must get back to the city, back to a safe place. Then there will be time enough for answers.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
FLANAGAN’S GAR HAD TAKEN THEM AS FAR BACK AS Harlem. Then the gas had run out, and they were in no shape to seek out a filling station.
Charybdis had another option; one that she guessed would be safer anyway. The tunnels.
Sean was skeptical, but he knew it made the most sense. He could pass unnoticed among the crowds. Both she and the still-bleeding Maggie could not.
Once they had walked for about an hour, Maggie stumbled. Sean tried to pick her up, to carry her the rest of the way. They saw that she needed rest more than anything else.
Sean set her down at a junction where two old IRT lines had once met. The darkness of the underground swallowed them, so deep within the bowels of the city that the stench of rot and grime enveloped them fully. The reek no longer bothered them. They didn’t even notice it anymore.
>
They were safe, for a time.
The pause left a gaping silence that seemed to magnify every drop of sewer water and every skittering shuffle of a rat in the darkness. Sean finally broke the pall.
“Now you’ve seen me. Now you know what I am,” he said, exasperated.
“I know who you are, I think. But what? I haven’t a clue, Sean,” Maggie replied, wheezing from the pain, more animated by her anger than anything else.
He nodded, and let himself ease backward, out of the filmy light. In the wet shadows, she could barely see him.
“The other day, at Vince’s, you asked me about where I went, what I did after I left. I never really answered you. Now I suppose I can,” he said.
“I’m waiting,” she answered.
There was a second long pause, so long in fact that Maggie thought he was not going to make good on his word. But then he spoke, and she found herself quickly in awe.
“Obviously I am not like you. I guess I’ve always been this way, but I never knew for sure until the first time I saw another one of my own kind. That, I remember, was a freakish thing,” he began.
“Your own kind?” she asked.
“In a manner of speaking. Most of us are not like me. In fact, I’m really quite the oddity, even among a bunch of the oddest folk walking the good Earth. I don’t molt, at least not unless I want to, which is why I never really knew what I was back here all those years ago. Oh, I had my suspicions, but I never really knew, not until France.”
Though she couldn’t have been sure, with the darkness hiding most of his face, Maggie thought he took on a different expression then. If she was right, then Sean was sad, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.
“I met Howie on the trench-line. He wasn’t an original member of the Fighting 69th like me, but he got placed with us like a lot of newbies after things got rough and we starting losing our New York boys. I’d describe him to you, how tall he was, how his blond hair was cut or the way he smoked a Camel, but it really wouldn’t be worth the effort, since, as I eventually found out, none of that was really him anyway.
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