I left Beardo to his shifting and spun around the eagle stone. The knives up my sleeves dropped smoothly into my hands and I launched them as soon as the shifting love birds came into view. The blades flew true and each half-shifted wolf took a silver-plated blade right in the throat. Both went down in gurgly heaps. As they hit the ground my eyes snapped back toward Beard Face. I could now see his head above the eagle sculpture, which meant that he was damn close to ten feet tall. That made my heart flutter for a second. I had figured a big wolf had attacked Marie Catrib’s but fucking Christ. He was almost half again as large as the biggest wolf I had ever seen.
My astonishment over beard face’s bulk almost cost me my innards. Another wolf came charging around one of the big pillar stones. I barely threw myself away in time from a clawed hand that swiped at my belly. As it was, I only kept possession of my guts because of the silver chain that was sown into my hoody. My back hit the eagle stone and I got my head back on straight. The wolf’s big swinging swipe had left him off balance and exposed with his side wide open to me. I pushed off the stone with everything I had and drove my shoulder into his side. The force drove him into the pillar behind him, crushing his torso between me and the stone. I felt and heard all the ribs on that side break. He dropped into a heap at my feet with a shoulder shaped dent in his side.
I’m sure that the wolf had multiple crushed organs on top of the broken ribs but even as he fell I could see his body healing. The dent was rapidly filling back out. My right hand flew to my back and pulled out my machete. One quick swipe and his head rolled off before he had even begun to push himself back to his feet.
An ear-splitting howl tore through the air behind me. I turned to see beard face coming around the eagle stone. The name I had given him was still appropriate. His massive muzzled face hade a gaggle of foot long tentacles writhing out from along his snout. His head was much more bulbous than any wolf I had ever seen. His face resembled an octopus that had grown a wolf’s muzzle. Pure terror ran through my body. He was huge and alien looking. And yet something about that look seemed familiar. It tickled one of my hidden pockets of knowledge. Some fact old me had known but wasn’t connected to an experience I remembered.
A full body shudder ran through me as the full knowledge of what I was seeing virtually exploded into my brain. He looked like an Old One. The old pier smell of rotting fish and corruption that came off of him mixed with that cephalopodan face clinched it. This dumb fuck had made a deal with one of the great old ones. Beings so terrifying that gods and monsters alike shook at their name. Great masses of tentacles and madness that lurked outside our dimension just waiting to get in and devour everything. “Oh fuck” ran through my brain on repeat as the understanding of what I was looking at took root.
On top of his horrifying face Beard Face was massive. He stood a good ten feet tall and was two axe handles wide at the shoulder. Generally, such size would equate to a good deal of lumbering slowness, but not for ole Beardy. He slid around the eagle stone with the speed and grace of a viper. His limbs seemed to be jointed differently than a normal mammal and he moved in alien angles, like normal geometry didn’t mean anything to him. Watching him almost made me want to puke. My brain just could not comprehend what it was seeing.
I tried to slip to the right of his first strike. A straight balled up fist punch, but somehow my dodge put me right in the perfect position to take it right in the chest. I felt my sternum crack as I left my feet and flew between two of the big stone pillars. I hit the ground hard, twenty feet from where I had been, and then rolled in a totally undignified fashion for another fifteen feet. Breaking bones and healing them back up along the way. Luckily my shoes stayed on this time but my machete had flown from my hand when I hit the ground.
I came to my feet as fast as I could. The power of the wolf heart was racing through my veins healing all my injuries. I pulled the colt and wiped the side of the inscribed barrel along my mouth. I had coughed up a good deal of blood during my roll. Probably from a rib tearing into one of my lungs. I spoke the words and the gun accepted my sacrifice of blood and prayer. I felt the power of its holy energy wake up and I started firing.
My hand was steady as a rock and my aim was dead on. Pull the trigger seven times, drop the mag, slam a new one in, unlock the slide and repeat. I threw three full magazines at him as fast as I possibly could. Each magically silvered bullet hit home. All of them center mass. It was text book shooting perfection and it amounted to nothing. That much silver would have dropped a whole pack of wolves. Beard Face seemed to barely even notice. He just stood there looking at me. The lip of his muzzle raised in a sneer.
Pure terror ran through me. It paralyzed me. I had grown so used to being damn near invincible. Stronger and faster than almost anything I fought. And in those times when I wasn’t stronger or faster, I was smarter (except for one time in North Dakota but that’s a story for later). I had not felt true terror in years. Fear, sure. The fear of how much something would hurt, or just the fear of the unknown, but not pure pants shitting terror. Beard Face was better than me. He was stronger, faster, and immune to my best weapons. Facing him, all the wolf heart would do was make the pain of getting beaten to death last way longer.
I’m not much of a hero. I’ve mostly been out for myself. I have helped people. In truth, I have helped a fair number of people, but in general it always stemmed from me being pissed off. I see a bully or a monster picking on the helpless and I get pissy. Heroes shake off terror because there is a job to do; a person to save, a wrong to right. I’m no hero, but I can be one salty mother fucker, and sometimes that works too.
I looked at the huge beast sneering at me and I pushed that swell of terror down. He was going to kill me, I was pretty sure of that fact, but fuck me if I’d make it easy for him. He might be able to heal away every hurt I inflicted on him but, until I breathed my last, I would make him hurt. Killing me would be the worst experience of his life.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my silver knuckle dusters then sprang forward. I closed the distance between the two of us, snatching my machete off the ground as I went. At ten feet away I pushed off and leapt right at him. I was as fast as a striking snake but Beardy was faster. He easily side stepped me and gave me the slightest nudge right into one of the stone pillars. I hit it with the force of a speeding car. The pillar wobbled for a moment and then toppled over. I fell unceremoniously in a heap on the ground. This time I kept ahold of my machete. I considered that an improvement and I was in a mood to take a win where I could find it.
I pulled myself off the ground again and stood facing Beardy. His sneer was still in place and I thought I detected a slight wheezy laugh escaping his muzzle. The fucker was really enjoying toying with me. Well fuck him very much. I coiled for another leap but, instead of going high, I went low. I came in low and to the left of his right leg. My machete flashed and took him right in the ankle. I landed in a roll and spun as I came to my feet. Beard face stood there balancing on one foot. The other foot lay off to the side. Black, thick blood poured from the wound for a moment. With a startling suddenness, the blood flow stopped and a tiny mass of wriggling tentacles burst from the stump and began to weave itself into a new foot. Disturbing doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I decided to skip watching the full disgusting show and I sprang forward again. I drove my left fist toward his midsection but he flowed like a snake away from it. I tried to spin away from the blow he sent hammering down on me but once again his strike did not seem to obey the normal laws of geometry and my spin turned from a graceful evasive tactic into a face meets fist maneuver. Light exploded behind my eyes and I found myself on the ground again.
I popped back up as fast as I could but when I gained my feet my vision was totally fucked. My left eye was trained on Beard Face but my right eye seemed to be staring at my feet. The disconnected vision made me swoon with vertigo. I realized that his blow had popped my right eye completely out of my fucking head. I reach
ed up and with no small amount of pain and queasiness pushed my eye back in its socket. My vision righted itself just in time for me to see him step forward and launch another fist into my chest. This was once again followed by the flying and rolling from before.
As I tumbled across the ground like a windblown sack the one part of my brain that was not yelling obscenities latched onto one thought, “Why the fuck was he punching me?!” He had claws; big, wicked, fuck off claws. He could have been carving me into bite sized chunks but, instead, was beating me to death. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. But, then again, I was fighting a ten-foot-tall werewolf who was apparently powered by a pact with the Great old ones in broad day light, so sense was pretty much out the window at this point.
My tumble finally stopped and, for like the hundredth time that day, I found myself flat on my back on the ground. My plan of at least inflicting pain on him was not going well unless you counted his knuckles being bruised from punching me so god damn much. I had to try something else and my brain was stuck on the question of him not just gutting me. It had me mean something.
I got to my feet again and moved toward him slowly, my brain turning the idea over and over. And then I latched onto something. It was a slim hope but it was really all I had. I sped up and came at him again. I went full frontal assault. He tensed and I saw him drawing back his fist for another huge punch. This time as he let the blow fly I didn’t dodge. His fist snaked out at a strange angle as if his body was moving through a fourth dimension that I couldn’t see. His fist ended up exactly where I would have been if I had tried to dodge. But I wasn’t there. I launched myself right at him. As I hit him chest to chest my left arm snaked out and grab his furry shoulder. I planted my feet on his hips and came face to face with him. The tentacles on his muzzle writhed and I saw little hooked suckers on them. His eyes widened in surprise and his maw came open in a gasp. The difference between punching me and carving me up, other than the speed of my death, was blood. Punching me let him avoid contact with my blood. The magic of a wolf flowed through their blood. It started in the heart but it was carried by the blood. If old me had somehow purged the wolf then that magic must still be in my blood to keep it at bay. Banking on that hope I spit the mouthful of blood my tumble had granted me, right down his stupid throat.
The reaction was almost instant. His eyes flew even wider and a violent shudder passed through his body. I let my hold go and sprang off him. I threw in a back flip just because I could and landed as he doubled over. Fur began to fall off him in clumps and his body shuttered as it folded in on itself. His muzzle withdrew and his old face began to take shape. All traces of the wolf were fleeing him as he violently shuddered and wretched his evil fucking guts out.
It probably only took a minute at most for him to go from tentacled engine of destruction to shaking, naked middle-aged man, but I savored every second. When the puking was done I walked over and stared down at him. He was crying and whispering “What have you don’t to me?” repeatedly. It was pathetic and sad really. A good man would have just walked away and waited for Anders to show up with the police. A good man would definitely not use his pathetic weakness to score a few cheap shots. I, however, am not the best guy, so I booted him in the ribs until I heard one crack. Then I grabbed him by the hair and the two of us had a little talk.
Gregory Tailor, that was his name, was quite talkative. Without the power of the wolf in him anymore, or, at least, suppressed for the time being, he proved to be a bit of a coward. I didn’t even have to break anything to get him to tell me everything. I mean I did break some stuff, but I didn’t have to.
Epilogue
I left ole Greg for the police to find. I didn’t have anything to tie him up with so I improvised and broke his arms and legs. That probably wasn’t standard procedure but it was better than he deserved. And it was the least I could do to get a little vengeance for the people who had been killed because of me.
I was across the street when the police showed up. I watched them swarm the park. In the chaos, I slipped over and grabbed Lily from Anders’ car. I took a hit of wolf heart, picked up my little girl and beat feet to my apartment. On foot, I was faster than any car in city traffic and, with all the crazy shit that had happened in the open, I figured I wasn’t risking much.
By the time the police had shit sorted out at the park and came looking for me I was on I-196 heading south. I left a note for Anders. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t running away. I was off to make sure that this sort of thing never happened again. Ole Greg had started down his path a long time ago, 1780 to be exact. That was when he had been turned. But it wasn’t until he was partnered with one Kevin Lucas, a mage in the employ of the U.S. government, that his path took a sharp turn for crazy town.
The old me had introduced him to the lore of the Great Old ones. It was the old me that had started fucking around with their power. Upon my request, he had infected me. I was looking to prove a theory I had and wanted to figure out a way to cleanse the taint of the wolf from a human by tapping into the power of the old ones. I wanted a way to control lycans, a threat to hold them in check, and a way to stop them if they got out of control. Apparently, I succeeded, but, as with everything, the cost was high and the backlash was huge.
After my spell went all sideways Gregory could hear the old ones calling to him. They promised power and they lead him to where he could get it. That was where I needed to go. The old Kevin was dead. None of this was really my fault but it was my responsibility. I had inherited the problem when I woke up in this flesh suit. So, I was off to the shores of the North Sea, to see a wolf out of legend, but first I had to go see the one person who might enlighten me about how to kill the fucker.
More from C.G. Calhoun
The wolf’s heart journals
Book One: The Scions Of Fenrir – Out now
Book Two: The Colt – Mid September 2017
Book Three: TBD – Dec 2017
Wolf’s Heart journals- Season One Omnibus Early 2018
Get updates on new projects and book releases at
https://www.facebook.com/Calhounbooks/
Fan website coming soon.
The Scions Of Fenrir (The Wolf's Heart Journals Book 1) Page 7
