by N. P. Martin
Smiling despite myself, I fell into step beside her as she strode across the sand and headed for the trees. The wind on the island was blustery, and it whistled as it blew through the branches, rustling the dry leaves. What daylight there was left got swallowed up the second we entered the woods. The trees were thick and gnarly, their branches twisted in a grotesque way that didn’t seem natural, like sinewy arms with spidery fingers on the end that looked like they might try to grab you if you got too close. In between the trees was grass and patches of dirt that occasionally became swampy. We moved around the swampy parts, somehow knowing that we would disappear into the ground if we tried to walk across.
There was also a smell in the air that I can only describe as the lingering smell of death. On my travels in Europe years before, I once visited the Auschwitz concentration camp because I wanted to see for myself the large scale horror and brutality that man was capable of and because I was curious about how strong the magick would be in the place. As it turned out, the black magick in Auschwitz was as strong as I expected it to be. Maybe not as potent as it once was when the camp was fully operational, but I still felt burned by it as soon as I walked through those gates. Needless to say, Auschwitz was also full of ghosts, mostly the lingering essence of those who had died at the camp, and also at least one vengeful spirit that I saw haunting one of the gas chambers. The ghost of one of the Nazis who ran the camp. Aside from that, though, my overwhelming impression of Auschwitz was summed up by the toxic stench of death that poisoned the air around the place. You didn't need to know magick to smell it. Everyone could smell it, could feel it seeping into their skins as they toured the death houses. The Devil's Playground had that same sickening scent of death to it, like thousands of people had died there over the years.
Then as if to prove my assertion, we came across a sight that caused us both to stop and shake our heads in sheer disgust. At least ten corpses in various states of decay were nailed through the chest to an unnaturally thick-trunked tree. A few of the bodies were nothing more than skeletons with bits of ragged skin still hanging on them, but most of the rest seemed relatively fresh like they had all died in the last couple of weeks, both men and women. The spikes in their chests were thick like railway spikes. As the flashlight on Leona's rifle moved over the bodies, the extent of their wounds also became apparent. Each one had died a violent death. Some had bullet holes in them, others slashes and gaping wounds made by sharp blades. Still others twisted around in a way that didn't seem possible, as if a great force had twisted them so.
“What the fuck?” Leona said.
“I mentioned they hunt people on this island, didn’t I? I’m assuming these people were the hunted.”
That wasn't the full extent of it either. As we moved further through the trees, it became apparent that there were bodies everywhere. Some strewn across the ground, others hanging from the branches of trees, ropes around their necks, their bodies in horrific states of degradation. At one point my boot kicked something heavy on the ground, and when I looked down, I saw it was a disembodied head. The head of a young woman to be precise, her lower jaw ripped off by someone or something. Everywhere we looked there were signs of death and decay, extreme violence and bloodshed.
And something else.
Some of the bodies looked eaten as if something with a huge mouth had taken chunks out of them, after and possibly before death. I decided not to mention it to Leona. She seemed spooked enough already.
“I’ve never seen so much death in one place.”
For Leona to say that, I knew the island must have been bad because Leona had seen her fair share of death over the years, serving in some of the most war-torn places on Earth. She was no stranger to horror, but the kind of horror on display on the island, the sheer malevolence behind it, was enough to turn even the hardest of stomachs.
We carried on through the woods, doing our best to ignore the human remains that came into view with every step we took. Then after walking in silence for more than twenty minutes, the dark woods seeming to go on and on, we came to a clearing, on the edge of which was a large mound of rock jutting out of the ground. We both shone the beams of our flashlights over the rock and noticed there was a hole in the center, like a cave entrance. To the side of the cave entrance was an iron gate. Some warning signal sounded in me as I moved the beam of my flashlight from the cave entrance to a trail in the grass that led off into the trees like something going in and out of the cave had worn away the grass underfoot.
“What is it?” Leona asked. “A secret entrance to somewhere?”
I shook my head just as I caught a strong, musky smell coming from the cave. “More like a pen.”
“A pen?”
“Yeah, like a dog pen.”
“A dog pen?”
I closed my eyes for a moment as I spread my awareness out around us, reaching into the woods in different directions, not sure exactly what I was looking for, but knowing there had to be something out there. Then I sensed something a couple of hundred yards to the west of us, something alive and predatory. Something closing in. When I opened my eyes again, I said, “We should go. Now.”
"What is it, Creed?" Leona asked as I started jogging into the woods again.
“I don’t know. A werewolf maybe. I’m not sure.”
“A fucking werewolf?” Leona was running alongside me now as we tried to avoid the bodies scattered over the woodland floor. “Those things are hard to stop. They just keep fucking coming. Are you sure?”
“You couldn’t smell it?”
"Maybe, I'm not sure. Where are we running to?"
A howling noise cut through the night air behind us, and we both stopped dead. “Shit. That’s not far away.”
Leona shouldered her rifle. “Fuck it. Let it come. I’ll kill it. It can’t see us anyway, right?”
"No, but it can still smell us, whatever it is."
Something crashed through the trees about a hundred yards away, splintering branches, churning up the earth with heavy sounding paws or feet. Without thinking, I formed a sphere of blue energy in my right hand, ready to blast whatever came through the trees at us. Leona stood near me, her rifle up as she sighted into the trees beyond.
Snarling noises sounded as the creature got closer. Then there was more noise from the east side of the woods, the snapping of branches underfoot. Loud, menacing snarling. "Oh, shit," I said. "There's more than one. It's coming up my side."
“Take it,” Leona said. “I’ll take the one in front.”
Leona was more at ease than I was with the fact that we were about to be attacked by unknown creatures. Her training was kicking in, whereas fear was the only thing kicking in on me. Over the years, I'd come across numerous entities that could be described as monsters—werewolves, wendigos, vampires, pissed off ghouls and goblins, various other creatures that most people never see or hear off but which are still out there—and some of those monsters I had to face down in battle, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. It wouldn't have been the first time I got bit by a werewolf or thrown across a room by a vampire. I would face those things if I had to, but I certainly didn't get pleasure from doing so (as Leona sometimes seemed to). The rush of battle is not my thing. I'd rather read a good book.
Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck as the creature nearest me forced its way through the trees and undergrowth. When it drew closer, I heard it breathing, hard and loud, and I just knew it was salivating, whatever it was, in anticipation of getting its jaws wrapped around human meat again. The creatures were no doubt responsible for the half-eaten bodies lying around. Belger’s pets, probably used in the hunts. Bastard must have let them out, which meant he knew we were there on his island.
We waited, but nothing came. The noise stopped as well.
“What are they doing?” whispered Leona.
As I kept staring at the trees, a pair of glowing red eyes made my heart stop for a second. “Playing with us,” I replied.
No soo
ner had I said it when the red-eyed creature came bounding out of the trees toward me. In my peripheral vision, I saw the blur of movement as the other creature charged at Leona.
Adrenaline dumped into my system.
Then the fight was on.
31
Pit Bulls On Steroids
MY FOCUS LOCKED onto the animal that was charging at speed towards me just as gunfire sounded from behind me, telling me that Leona had her own fight on her hands. With my adrenaline pumping, I tried not to panic when I saw the creature coming, its red eyes fierce in the dark of the night. The full moon still beamed overhead, casting its pale silvery light over the wolf-like creature that had just burst through from the undergrowth. The thing was moving so fast, I only got a snapshot of what it looked like. It was bigger and bulkier than your average wolf, completely over-muscled for its size like a pit bull bred for fighting. At first, I thought it was a werewolf, but then I noticed the long spikes sticking out of its back along its spine like thick porcupine quills. Then, as the creature got nearer and opened its mouth to snarl, I caught sight of the long incisors curving down from the top of its mouth. Not quite as long as a saber-toothed tiger's, but long enough to make me shutter. Certainly not something you would expect to see on a wolf, if indeed the creature even was a wolf. It seemed more like a hybrid that some twisted mind had dreamed up in a lab.
Like the fucking Island Of Dr Moreau this is.
I didn't have time to think about the Razor Wolf's origins (that's what I'm calling it, given those incisors and sharp spikes on its back). It leapt at me from ten feet away, getting scary height and velocity thanks to the rippling muscles on its gray-haired body. With a sharp intake of breath, I drew back my hand, which still held the sphere of crackling blue magick in it. As I released the magick blast from my hand, I was vaguely aware of more gunfire from Leona's automatic coming from behind me, then a scream of pain, either from Leona or the Razor Wolf attacking her, I'm not sure which.
My focus was on the beast cutting through the air towards me anyhow, its jaws wide open, globs of saliva dripping from its stained teeth. The magick blast caught the creature in the belly, halting it in mid air like it had just slammed into an invisible brick wall. It was thrown back several feet before it thumped to the ground and skidded back into the trees.
While the Razor Wolf was down, I chanced a look over my shoulder, calling Leona’s name and getting no answer. I couldn’t see her anywhere, nor the Razor Wolf that had attacked her. “Leona!”
A blast of gunfire resounded through the trees, loud in the night. Hard to tell exactly from which direction it came from.
She’s out there somewhere with that thing, I thought. I have to help her.
For the moment, though, I turned my attention back to the Razor Wolf I had just put down. It was now rolling to its feet, snarling at me, its red eyes never leaving me (or at least where it sensed me to be) as it shook its head as if to clear it so it could ready itself for another charge.
There was no time to mess about. Leona was out there facing off against the other Razor Wolf. If the creatures were creations of Belger’s, the Warlock would have made them hard to kill. It was doubtful if bullets would stop them.
No ordinary bullets anyway.
Sticking my hand inside my coat, I found the pistol in its holster and pulled it out. It's a rare occasion when I have to get the pistol out, normally reserving it for hard to kill beasts like werewolves, vampires or Fae (or genetically engineered wolves with foot long incisors and spikes in their backs). Unsure of what I would end up facing on the island, before I left, I made sure the pistol was loaded with heavy duty ammo. In this case, that ammo was hollow point rounds infused with chaos magick. The hollow points by themselves would inflict enough damage on most creatures. The chaos magick gave the rounds an extra kick, though it was hard to anticipate the effect of the magick itself. It being chaos magick, it sometimes had a surprising effect on whatever creature it infused. Sometimes they exploded. Sometimes they would be reduced to a puddle of goo on the ground. The last time I used the bullets was on a goblin serial killer (if you can imagine that). Nasty little fucker was taking victims from my neighborhood, so I tracked it and shot it in its ugly head with one of the chaos bullets. Imagine my surprise when the goblin mutated into something even uglier, and twice the size, nearly killing me before I managed to take it down.
As I pointed the pistol at the Razor Wolf, I prayed that the pit bull on steroids wouldn’t get any bigger after I shot it. It was scary enough at its normal size.
The Razor Wolf made a barking noise that any hellhound would kill for, so bone-rattlingly scary was it. Then it dug its huge paws into the earth, its muscles tensed and rippling as it took off towards me again.
I thumbed back the hammer on the pistol and tried not to panic too much as I got the beast in my sights. When the creature got to within six feet of me, I pulled the trigger, the heavy recoil slamming the pistol butt into my clenched hand.
The bullet was on target, catching the wolf in the upper chest just as it reared up to launch itself at me. The power of the shot forced the wolf back down again, and it made a high pitched yelping sound as the hollow point ripped through its chest. I pulled the hammer back on the pistol, ready to fire again, but after a moment, I realized I wouldn't have to. The wolf was down, blood pumping from the fist-sized hole in its chest, tendrils of chaos magick crackling inside the wound, already racing around the body of the wolf, doing god knows what to it.
I stood back as the creature thrashed around on the ground like it was full of deadly poison, arcs of chaos magick (dark blue mixed with flecks of cobalt) breaking out all over its body, which was beginning to bubble in places as if its very molecular structure was changing.
More like its fucking insides are turning to mush, and it's about to explode like a goddamn blood volcano, I thought.
I’d seen it happen before. Trust me, you don’t want to be standing within a ten foot radius when it did happen, not unless you wanted to look like one of those game show contestants after they got dunked in a tank of goo.
As an unearthly howl of pain and fear sounded from the creature's mouth, its skin bubbling all over like hot mud now, I decided not to stay for the big finale and turned and ran off into the trees, in the direction I'd heard the gunfire coming from a few moments ago. "Leona!" I called, as I tried not to run into any trees or trip over any human debris on the ground.
I stopped to listen for a moment. Then I heard a scream coming from not far away. Cursing, panicking in case Leona had been hurt by the other Razor Wolf, I bounded as fast I could see through the trees, in the direction of the scream. Then, under the pale moonlight, I caught sight of the Razor Wolf up ahead, partly shielded by a gigantic, gnarled tree. All I could see was its head twisting violently, its jaws snapping at Leona, who was underneath it, the beast having pinned her down. “Leona!”
Running towards her and the beast, I aimed the pistol as best I could at the wolf on top of Leona, but the creature was moving too erratically and I didn't want to fire in case I hit Leona. Stopping a few feet away, I thrust out my hand, ready to use my magick. Before I got the chance however, the beast on top of Leona gave a shrill cry as it suddenly fell to the side. And that's when I saw the huge knife in Leona's hand glinting in the moonlight, dark blood running down the blade. As the creature fell, Leona rolled herself over on top of it, straddling the beast, raising the knife again and again as she stabbed the creature multiple times, over and over, thick jets of blood arcing up in the silver moonlight, the creature squealing uncontrollably before suddenly going silent.
The Razor Wolf was clearly dead, but Leona didn’t stop stabbing. She kept thrusting the knife into the Razor Wolf until the beast was just a mess of blood and guts.
"Leona," I said, stepping towards her. "I think it's dead now. It stopped moving ages ago."
Leona pulled the knife out of the creature's body one final time and then looked at me, rage still in her eyes
, flecks of blood all over her face and neck. "Motherfucker bit me," she gasped.
“Where?”
She looked down. "My damn leg." She tried to stand up, but couldn't. "Shit…"
“Wait.” I put the pistol back in its holster under my coat. “Let me help you.”
Wrapping my arms under hers, I helped her stand up. “I don’t think I can walk, Creed. The bone…” She winced in pain as I helped her hobble over to a nearby tree.
“Sit,” I told her, helping her down to the ground.
“What are you going to do?”
“Heal your wound.”
“Seriously? You can do that?”
“I can do a lot of stuff.” I smiled at her as I knelt down in front of her.
“What about that other mutt? Did you kill it?”
I nodded. “It’s even deader than yours, and that’s saying something.”
“I was mad at that fucker.”
“No shit.”
She smiled, and I put both my hands over the blood-soaked wound in her left thigh, causing her to wince slightly, which didn't surprise me because the damage was severe, her leg bit to the bone. If it were me, I would have been screaming the damn forest down by then. Leona was made of sterner stuff than I, however, and merely gritted her teeth as I poured a phial of yellow ointment over the wound, the greasy substance mixing with the crimson blood to form a dark orange color.
“What is that shit?” she asked. “Not some old guy’s scrotum again, I hope.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “No, everything in here has special healing properties. Backed up with magick, it should at least mend the bone and close the wound.”
“Handy stuff.”
“I never leave home without it.”
“Lucky for me, eh?”
“You mightn’t think so in a second.”
“It’s gonna hurt, isn’t it?”
“Yep.” Closing my eyes, I said a few words to activate the magick in the ointment. When I opened my eyes again, I saw a yellowish glow bathing the wound in Leona’s leg. “Get ready.”
