The Hammer Commission

by John Van Stry

  "No one in the order knows, but some like Father Otto have their suspicions."

  Judith sighed and hit the wheel lightly with her fist a few times.

  "You're a monster, aren't you?" She said after a minute.

  "Yeah, I'm a monster."

  She swore, "What the fuck is a monster doing working for the Catholic Church?"

  Mark shrugged, "I was raised a good Catholic boy. That didn't change when I did. Apparently being a monster doesn't make you evil, that's completely up to you."

  "Your wives?"

  "Yup, all of them. Course the kids too."

  "I'm surprised the Church hasn't killed you!"

  "Actually, as long as we don't engage in evil, we're more than welcome."

  "So is that how you killed the vampire?"

  "Partially. It was easier than the first one of course, that one was while I was still a human."

  "You've killed two vampires?" she said surprised.

  "Yeah, in a round about way the first one led to me being what I am now."

  "And just exactly what are you now?"

  Mark smiled, "A werecougar."

  "A what?"

  "Werecougar. Like a werewolf, only I'm a cougar."

  "How did that happen?"

  "Hope found me in the woods. After the first vamp I was pretty messed up. I'd retreated into myself and gone hermit, I had a bad wound that the doctors couldn’t fully heal that was slowly killing me. She and her sisters took a liking to me, and bit me."

  "Geesh, well don't bite me!"

  "Don't worry, doesn't work that way."

  "You just said that's what they did to you."

  "Oh, I'm not a natural werecreature; I was turned, so I don't have all the powers of someone born that way. I can't turn other people, I'm easier to kill, heal slower, few other things."

  "So exactly why did they turn you?"

  "Werecreatures can only breed with other weres; and only ones of the same species at that. They needed a male, I was there, they liked me, so one bite later, instant family."

  "Sounds kind of cold."

  Mark shrugged, "They saved my life. Also Hope and Charity love me, Helena and Faith haven't ever come out and said it, but I think they do as well."

  "What about you?"

  "What about me?"

  "Do you love them?"

  Mark nodded, "With all my being. That's why I do this job. One day they'll be found out, but as they're my family and good Catholics all, the College has promised to protect them."

  "The College?"

  "The College of Cardinals. They're the ones who pick the Pope."

  "So they know?"

  "Of course. They were a little worried about my women, but they were all able to join the Church and go through the rituals. Obviously God accepts them, and accepts me. That's all that matters to the Church. Yeah having multiple women is a bit of a no-no, but concubines are allowed under doctrine, so maybe I spend an extra hundred years in purgatory when I die. Still worth it."

  "Huh. So you can turn furry and all that?"

  "Yup."

  "One of those big hulking monsters?"

  Mark laughed, "No, that's the movies. I just turn in to a rather large cougar, considering that I'm already a pretty big guy."

  "Huh. Give me a few to think about that."

  Mark grabbed the shirt he'd left on the back seat and started to put it on. He leaned back and thought about it as he buttoned the shirt up. He still remembered that night rather clearly.

  % % % % %

  Mark could hear the crashing sound in the woods, something was running towards the camp, or was something being chased? He grabbed a brand from the fire, and checked his heavy machete, since Afghanistan he always kept that at hand. The cries he was hearing suddenly resolved into the sounds of voices and four nude women charged into the camp, two of whom he recognized immediately, Hope and Helena.

  “Grab your pepper spray!” Helena yelled.

  “Screw that, run!” Hope said as the girls ran past him and suddenly a large bear entered the camp.

  Mark didn’t hesitate a moment, he stood between the girls and the bear and waving the brand around he yelled at it.

  The bear gave him a swat, knocking him back, but he rolled with it and came up on his feet and charged the bear as it turned to attack one of the girls. Hitting it on the back of the head with the brand got it’s attention and when it opened its mouth to roar at him he stuffed the brand down it’s throat, kicking at its hind legs the entire time, trying to get it to fall back.

  It raked him several times with its claws, but suddenly he was back in the mountains to the north of Kandahar, deep in that cave. Pain was meaningless, all there was, was the fight, survival. He started to try and drive that brand down its throat, banging on it with the hilt of the machete.

  The bear was almost screaming from the heat of the brand being shoved down its throat. It stumbled and the kicking at the bear’s knee finally paid off as it fell over.

  As soon as it did Mark raised the machete and started chopping and hacking at the bear’s neck. The heavy machete, fueled by the strength of his rage quickly bit deep. It only took him about ten hard hacks to take the bear’s head completely off.

  Helena and the others milled around him, looking suitable impressed. Mark stood there catching his breath, his sides were on fire, the bear had cut him up pretty good, and he was covered in blood, both his own and the bear's.

  “Damn, you are definitely a keeper,” Helena said, her voice actually purring the words out confusing him.

  “What happened?” Mark asked panting.

  “Charity is in heat. He’s been trying to nail her for years. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. This time he got violent. We would have killed him ourselves, but he was one tough customer.”

  “Huh?” Mark said. Helena came up to him and started undoing this bloody clothing. Hope was helping, and one of the other two were looking at him with a hunger that was rather blatant. He figured that was Charity. “That was a bear.” It sounded stupid when he said it.

  “No, that was a werebear. We are werecougars. But there are no males anywhere near. No Toms for us to mate with and breed, just humans.”

  “What?”

  “There are more monsters in the world than the ones you saw in that cave Mark,” Hope whispered in his ear and then nibbled his ear lobe.

  Mark felt fear suddenly. Their eyes had changed; they all had eyes like he had seen on that one cougar that he sometimes saw prowling around outside his camp.

  “What, what are you going to do to me?”

  “You stud are about to live every male human’s biggest dream. We need a Tom, a male, and it’s going to be you. Charity there is finally going to get those cubs she wants.”

  “You want me to breed her?”

  “We want you to breed all of us,” Hope told him.

  Mark noticed that Helena’s face was changing, mostly her mouth...

  “But Human’s can’t breed Weres," Hope continued. "So we’re going to have to make a small change.”

  Helena’s mouth opened then and she had a serious set of fangs. Not like the ones those other monsters back in Afghanistan had, these were more animalistic, cat like. He started momentarily when she bit his arm, and held on for a moment, a cold fire flowing into his arm from the bite. Then she released him, her face quickly returning to normal, but that cold fire spread through his body, making him gasp in pain. Pain which spiked rather heavily when it reached the unhealed wounds on his back.

  “What, what did you do to me?” He panted in shock.

  Helena smiled and took his other arm and started leading him to his tent. “I just made you a werecougar.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll take an hour or so to be complete, then you can go make Charity happy. But for now my sexy tough Tom, it’s my turn!”

  Mark tried to dig in his heels but she was too strong. That and Hope was helping.

  “Oh don’t be such a
wimp," Helena scolded him. "That mark on your back was from a vampire, it was slowly bleeding the life out of you. You wouldn’t have lasted the winter. Now let me see if my sister was making false claims about you..."

  Mark lay on the bedroll panting. It was outside of the tent now. All five of them just couldn’t fit inside his small tent. Helena had her way with him for several hours, not that he wasn’t fully into it himself by then, she was incredibly beautiful after all, before declaring him ‘changed’.

  Then Charity had come after him like a woman possessed. Possessed with a need to get bred apparently. He’d spent a very long time doing just that too. He’d lost all track of time, but the girls kept bringing him food, meat mostly, to keep his strength up. Then when Charity had run down Faith had replaced her, but at least she wasn’t in heat.

  He got passed around one more time after that and was then finally allowed to sleep.

  It looked like early morning now, so he yawned and stretched.

  “Ah awake at last,” Helena purred.

  “That was... different.” Mark said trying to settle on the right word.

  “Yeah well, the rest of us will be going into heat soon now that there is a Male in the mix. So get the rest you can while you can. But for now, let me teach you a few things about your new self."

  And then she changed into a cougar right before his eyes.

  Then she showed him how to do it too!

  It was a day of discovery for him, his body was different now, and the wounds on his back had turned into thin scars, fully healed. By the end of the month he had regained all of the weight he had lost, was a lot stronger than he’d ever been before, and had four very lovely women who seemed rather content to share him in every way.

  And best of all, his nightmares had stopped.

  % % % % %

  "Damn," Judith said, "Last time I saw a man smile like that was when my brother lost his virginity!"

  Mark couldn't help but laugh, "It was memorable. They healed my body and my mind. That's why I haven't let anyone else know about them, or about me. I'll happily die to protect them. So please, don't tell anyone."

  "Father Flores doesn't know?"

  "Hell no. Sometimes I think he suspects, but I'll never tell him; he hates me enough already."

  "Here I thought I had finally figured out why he did. Guess I'll just have to keep on trying. Maybe I'll figure it out when I meet him."

  "Just kiss his ass, he likes that."

  Judith laughed, "You don't have a very high opinion of him, do you?"

  "I don't know. The guy has just had everything handed to him in life. He's like royalty; he comes from a long line of famous Commission leaders and members. And he knows it. Yeah he's smart, probably smarter than me. But humility is one of the traits he's sorely lacking in.

  "That and something about the way he smells."

  "The way he smells?"

  "Its a cat thing," Mark said looking out the window embarrassed.

  Judith just shook her head. "Well, we're here," she said pulling into a parking lot. There was a big sign up indicating it was a memorial to the many that had died here.

  "Well let’s go look around."

  "It's two thirty in the morning!" Judith protested.

  "Yup, so no one else will get in the way."

  "It's dark out there! You can't see anything."

  Mark smiled, "I can see just fine."

  "Figures," Judith grumbled.

  "I bought a flashlight at the last stop. Take that. Just don't flash it at me; it'll mess with my night vision."

  "You got the cross?"

  "Yup. Wearing it. Grab the gear. Just in case."

  They got out of the car and got their stuff together.

  "How many died here?" She asked him.

  "I don't know, ten thousand? Twenty? I'm sure the official accounts don't even begin to come close." Mark said leading her into the memorial.

  "Strange..."

  "What?"

  "With all the people who died here, you'd think it would feel more... I don't know, oppressive? Instead it feels very peaceful."

  "These places have been heavily blessed, and continue to be blessed. The evil that was done here won't go away for at least a hundred years. So they do what they can to contain it until it slowly fades away."

  "Wouldn't a devil disrupt that?"

  "Very much so. You'd feel it long before you saw it. Come on; let’s go check the ambush site."

  "You know where it was?"

  "Yeah, I read the report, saw the pictures. It's over this way."

  "So how do you think they're tracking us?"

  "Wish I knew. Credit card is my first guess, which is why I got all that cash from Rafe. Also why I don't want to buy an airline ticket. Those get tracked by name as well."

  "And when we rented the car back in Paris we had to show them a credit card."

  "Exactly. I don't want to make that mistake again." Mark looked around and checked the landmarks. "Well, here we are."

  "Someone's already patched the concrete," Judith said flicking her flashlight over the walkway.

  "The walls have been repainted too," Mark said pointing to the white building they were standing in front of.

  "So where did this thing come from?"

  "From inside there," he said pointing.

  "Shall we?" Judith asked.

  "Of course. You any good at picking locks by the way?"

  "I'm a cop Mark."

  "I take it that means no?"

  Judith laughed, "It means I can do it about as easily as picking my teeth. We get taught all sorts of interesting skills if we want to learn them. Most want to. Never know what might save someone's life."

  "Then after you," Mark said motioning.

  It took her about a minute to pick the lock, and then they went inside and searched around some more.

  "The door is new."

  "Yeah I noticed that." Mark said. "I don't see any signs of anything."

  "Well they've had a few weeks to clean."

  "Yeah." He thought about that a moment, "Let me try something," he said and started to quickly strip his clothes off.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Judith hissed at him.

  "This!" Mark said as he kicked his pants off and suddenly there was a rather large cougar in the room with her.

  "Oh shit!" Judith said, backing away from him.

  The cougar just looked at her, made a loud 'yoww' like sound and then tilted its head and rolled its eyes while looking at her.

  "Well excuse me!" She said stopping. "You could warn a person first!"

  Mark the cougar shrugged and then started to sniff at the floor. He covered a good deal of the room, going back and forth. Eventually he stopped at one spot, turned a circle and then Mark the man was standing there again. Stark naked.

  "This is the spot where is showed up."

  "How can you tell?"

  "Devils leave a pretty foul stench that takes months to wear off. Because it’s from the pits of hell regular cleaning chemicals and methods won't get rid of it."

  "Okay. Well let me mark the spot while you go get dressed nature boy."

  "Sure. Sorry if I scared you."

  "Just put your clothes on."

  "So, what do you see on the floor around there?" Mark asked as he was dressing.

  Judith played the flashlight along the floor. "Nothing."

  "What about the walls?"

  "Just memorial stuff, pictures."

  "Ceiling?"

  "More nothing. What are you looking for?”

  “Summoner’s Circle, Wards, any of the things that would indicate it was linked to something already here.”

  “Could it have been under the floor?"

  "Then it would have appeared beneath the floor and have had to tear through it."

  "It wouldn't have appeared above it?"

  "Not normally."

  "We should go look."

  "Fine, give me a minute." Mark said and started s
tripping again.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Do you want to crawl through the dirt under the floor?"

  Judith shook her head.

  "Me neither." He handed her the cross, "You might as well hold on to this, I have to take it off when I change, the chain is too small for my neck and I don't like leaving it on the floor with my clothes."

  Judith nodded and put the chain for the relic over her head, wearing the cross like Mark had been.

  Mark shifted again and she followed his cougar self out the door and watched as he found an opening and squeezed under the building.

  Mark looked around; it was pretty dark, even for him. But he saw nothing, smelt nothing, felt nothing.

  Twenty minutes later they were back in the car driving into town.

  "So what's our next move?" Judith asked.

  "Get a room, get some sleep, then go to the church the team was working out of and ask a lot of questions."

  "You know, you look pretty good as an over grown kitty cat," Judith said relaxing in the passenger seat.

  "Thanks."

  "Guess I'll need to stock up on catnip?"

  Mark just sighed.

  11

  "So who are we looking for?" Judith asked as they pulled up in front of the small church. It was actually fairly close to the site of the former camp, only a mile or two away.

  "Father Ryswelski, he was there and survived the attack.”

  “That must have been quite a shock for him.”

  “Well, you can ask him,” Mark said getting out of the car.

  Mark started to walk around to the back of the church.

  “Where you going?”

  “To the Rectory.” Mark looked at Judith, “Where they live?”

  “Oh, hadn’t thought about that.”

  Mark shrugged, “Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know at first either.”

  They stopped outside the door of what was best described as a small apartment block and Mark knocked on it. After a minute a rather young looking man in a priest’s cassock opened the door.

  “Yes?” He said in Polish.

  “Father Ryswelski?” Mark asked in English.