by Hunter Blain
Depweg let the howl linger in the air after he stopped, and it had the desired impact. The camp grew silent, and every soldier came out of their ramshackle buildings and stood near the large fire in the center.
With a chuff, Depweg sprang forward and rushed toward the camp. After a moment of awe, I realized what was happening and joined in the chase.
Depweg barreled through one of the flimsy wooden buildings that had been hastily built and out the other side. I mentally took back my statement of Germans building quality structures.
I slowed to a fast walk as I watched this giant wolf, who had somehow doubled in size, rip men apart.
“Save some for me!” I yelled as I started running again. I pulled out a bloodspear and threw it at the men who were frozen in place with fear. It pierced two of them and gashed the leg of a third. I willed blood from the two men before their hearts could stop beating, feeling the rush of life energy flood into me. I started laughing at the top of my lungs and running in place, barely able to contain the energy.
Depweg leaped on the men as they died and began rending massive chunks of flesh from bone. I pulled back my spear and willed it into a sword, letting another sword grow from my free hand.
Bloodlust engulfed my world as I vaulted from Nazi to Nazi, stabbing at swollen livers and inhaling every ounce of liquid flowing through their arteries as quickly as inhaling a deep, chest-expanding breath. Bleached bodies fell to the ground where my new best friend, pun intended, tore into the meatiest of body parts before going to the next.
Gracefully flying through the air in a magnificent summersault, I was in awe of how fast this gorgeous monster took entire thighs in one bite, followed by calves, arms, and then the chest; all the most protein-dense cuts. He seemed to almost swallow the meat whole, allowing for an excellent time-to-kill ratio. PS took note of how powerful the beast was, and stored it for later reference.
Letting my bloodblades absorb back into my palms, I picked up the quivering frame of the last man standing—rather, last man in a fetal position. Holding his neck and pulling his back to my chest, I used my free hand to dive deep into his mind, searching for a particular memory. Letting myself slide down the tendril into his skull, I effortlessly found the part of the mind associated with stored information. Like flipping through a book, I searched his recent memories until I came across what I was looking for, letting myself slide behind the eyes of his past.
I was a passenger in his memory, unable to alter anything. My eyes surveyed what he had seen; my ears listened to what he had heard. Unfortunately, this man suffered from tinnitus, and I could only make out what was directly around me. That was one of the subtle gifts that I’d most appreciated once turned; total silence from the ringing that plagued any who worked around loud animals, machinery, and gunfire.
We were in a room, possibly a large tent, with several seats pointed uniformly to a large map of Europe. On the map were several red arrows, each of which marked a camp and the progression of the spreading army. In an instant, I knew everything I had sought to learn, and let my essence flow back into myself.
“Thanks,” I whispered in his ear before sinking my teeth into his neck. It was fun to go back to the tried-and-true methods of feeding from time to time. I didn’t inhale everything he offered. Instead, I opted to enjoy each frantic heartbeat as it spurted otherworldly ecstasy into my being. My eyes rolled back, and a primal moan emanated from somewhere deep inside my chest. The Nazi fought at first, but grew weaker with each betraying beat of his heart. Once the organ began to pound an erratic beat, I sucked the remaining life in one gulp.
My eyes rolled back into focus, and I was momentarily stunned at the enormous, salivating wolf in front of me. I stood unmoving as the beast chuffed and stepped forward a pace.
Realization dawned as a glob of blood, mixed with saliva, fell in a string to the ground. I held the drained body out in front of me, lifeless limbs hanging loose and head bobbing with the motion. Depweg whined.
“You want this, huh? Do ya boy?” I teased, moving the body back and forth in front of the monster.
Depweg answered with a growl that reverberated through the ground and up my feet. Fangs were bared, and the point was made clear.
“Only a joke,” I said apologetically, dropping the body and raising my hands up in placation.
Keeping his slit eyes on me, Depweg lowered his head and rammed his point home. He bit off the arm of the man then began eating it, bones and all. He might as well have been eating a fresh loaf of bread. His gaze never left me as the last of the fingers went down his throat in a dramatic display.
“You and me, we’re going to be great friends. I can feel it,” I said with a smile.
After he finished his meal, Depweg trotted over to one of the buildings, stuck his head in, then moseyed on to the next. After a few buildings, he chuffed and walked inside. From outside, I could hear the popping of bones and ligaments, accompanied by a controlled, muffled whimpering.
I crunched through the fresh snow and into the lukewarm building to find Depweg removing clothing from a large backpack. I noted the burns on his torso were healing up nicely. He donned the contents of the pack, starting with the full body long johns and finishing with the boots that were a half size too big.
As he finished, I asked, “Hey, you just ate at least thirty kilos of meat. Where did it all go?” I gestured to his flat abdomen.
“How many gallons of blood did you just consume?” he returned the question, staring at my own stomach. I looked down, patting it.
“Touché, sir.” I had always wondered where the surplus went. Ulric had theorized that it was instantly converted into energy, but had had no insight as to where the physical blood went.
Depweg was now wearing a full Nazi soldier’s uniform while I wore the shit out of an officer’s coat, albeit without the medals and sleeve.
“What’s the plan, Deppyweg?” I asked playfully.
“Well, Jonathan—”
“It’s just John,” I provided with a rehearsed interruption.
Putting emphasis on the first word, he continued, “I plan on taking out as many of these bastards as I can for using my body in their experiments.”
“That is the keenest thing I’ve ever heard. Thank you for sharing that with me,” I said in awe.
His stern look was both assessing and annoyed.
“That is whacky of them, though. But hey! I happen to know where every one of those jerks’ camps are, and what directions they are going. I could show you?” I was less than confident that he would bite, if you’ll excuse the pun.
“What, like a couple of spooks?” he asked. His features softened.
“Pardon? I haven’t heard that lingo before,” I said, confused if I was in or not.
To answer, he said in German, “Better get used to modern slang if you’re going to be in cahoots with me.”
I answered in perfect German, “I don’t know what ‘cahoots’ means either.”
“Your German is too perfect. There are nuances to each region. Tell me, where is the next encampment?”
I told him, and we were off. As we trudged through the snow, he provided information on the accents of the different regions, and told me of his horrific backstory. After I told him my own, we walked in silence, feeling each other’s seeping wounds that drove us to eliminate the villainous cancers of the world. A comradery was born that night, and it felt good to walk alongside another supe with a moral compass that aligned with my own.
Chapter 25
Present day
I awoke to cold water dripping on my forehead. My eyelids felt like weighted steel and were almost impossible to open. The muscles in my body felt like concrete, and it took a massive effort to move. I drunkenly pawed at the LED switch on the side, and the lights came on.
The trickling sped up as water found new cracks to enter through, meeting in the middle and rushing to kiss my face.
I pushed with all my might on the lid, but my muscl
es couldn’t bear the weight. Water started pouring in like a cascade into my coffin.
I wasn’t worried about drowning, but the water was starting to burn from the iron residue being dragged in and mixing into a John soup. “Good to know,” I murmured, trying to force myself awake. It was taking all my energy to stay conscious.
Placing my hands on the iron, I tried to move it sideways, upward, and downward. Nothing worked. I lay back in the burning water and started to panic. I knew it had to be daytime outside, but I shouldn’t be weak enough that I couldn’t even lift my damn lid! An image of me wearing Uggs and holding a Starbucks coffee while yelling, “I can’t even!” shot through my mind.
The iron-infused water was now up to my ears. I raised my head and became aware that an alarming amount of my hair was now floating, unattached to my noggin.
Water filled the coffin up to where the switches were, and sparks exploded in my face. Darkness swallowed the light in an explosion of blackness, leaving me alone with only my gasps of panic and sloshing water for company. The iron would soon snake its way into my blood, ensuring I would die an incredibly painful death inside my own coffin.
In my best (given the circumstances) Bill Paxton voice, I said, “Game over, man. Game over!”
There was an impact on the lid, moving it slightly, but then fell back into place. I lifted my burning head and screamed, “Da? Da, is that you?”
I could barely make out a voice from outside the coffin saying, “Who else would it be, you dolt? Now push! I can’t move this thing alone.”
“On the count of three!” I yelled, gurgling water as it neared the top. “Three!”
There was another impact, and one of the hydraulics broke apart. Inside the coffin, I flattened my back, which dunked my head under the corrosive water, placed my palms and feet on the lid, and pushed with everything I had left.
My eyelids were starting to be eaten through, and my lips were unable to hold their seal. Acidic water poured into my mouth, sending a renewed hysteria through my core. I shifted my hands and feet to the side that had the broken hydraulic and pushed. It was unlife or death. There was an impact on the bedroom floor that was felt just as much as heard, even with my ears underwater. After that, the lid came up easily on the remaining hydraulic.
Da peeked into the coffin as I was jumping out, and I trampled him as we both fell into the water that was invading my home. I made my way to my knees and pulled myself up to wobbly feet. There was a giant boulder lying next to my bed with a ton of dark dirt everywhere. Looking up, I noticed a SUV-sized hole on my ceiling.
Drunkenly, I asked, “The fuck is going on, Da?”
“We are being attacked,” he said while climbing up one of my drawers to try and dry his clothes. “I think it’s Locke. Perhaps it’s time to test out your bat exit, yes?”
“Wait,” I said while reaching back into the burning water of the coffin to grab a few bags of sealed blood. With them secure, I said, “Okay, let’s go.”
We made our way to my bookshelf—me stumbling like a Russian on any day of the week. I ripped open a bag and sucked it dry, feeling instantly better, but the damage was still severe. I needed as much blood as I could to fight off the detrimental iron particles that were making their way to my bloodstream. The blood wasn’t even a fraction as effective as straight from the tap, but anything helped.
I drank the other bag, threw down the container, and flipped the head of the bust on my bookshelf. Underneath was a button, which I pressed. There was a click, and the hidden door swung inward. We moved through it, and Da closed it behind us as I stumbled through the waist-high water in the tunnel. It was big enough for two men standing shoulder to shoulder, and tall enough to accommodate my six-foot frame.
After a hundred feet, it started to curve upward at a slant. In short order, the water was down to my knees, then ankles, until we were finally out of it. We continued moving at an angle away from my home. My legs still moved as if fully submerged in water, and the tops of my eyelids fought to hold on to the bottoms, like a scared mother and child huddling in the dark with iron grips.
“How the hell did he know where my coffin was?” I drunkenly asked Da.
“Probably because it’s the only spot in the compound that he couldn’t see,” he suggested.
In my best Bob Peck impression, I said, “Clever girl…”
We made our way to the ladder constructed of 2x4s and climbed the ten feet up to the cover we had hidden with a fake bush at the edge of the property.
“Hey, what time is it. Do you know?” I asked Da, looking down at him.
“Do I look like I wear a watch?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. iPad,” I mocked.
I placed my hand on the cover and lifted extra slowly. My muscles still had concrete inside them, so I had to put some force into it. So instead of inching the lid up, it shot up all of a sudden when I put in too much uncontrolled effort.
Thank Lilith for the shade that the bush had provided, but the sunlight still shone through, scalding my face and blinding me.
A scream escaped my mouth as my eyes melted in their sockets. I clamped my hands around my mouth to dampen the sound, and I dropped the metal cover on my head, knocking me down to the ground ten feet below. Da barely dodged out of the way with a curse, dropping down after me.
“Are you alright?” he asked in alarm.
“Sun: 2. John: 0,” I said, barely conscious.
“I think it’s daytime, John,” he remarked in response to my earlier question.
My head slowly turned toward his voice with, what I imagined to be, an obvious look of annoyance.
“Let’s just hope they don’t find my supersecret exi—”
An explosion of wood sounded deep in the tunnel behind us.
“You had to say something,” Da said with a sigh.
“Well, shit,” was my only response. “What now? Grab a walking cane and attack Locke with it?”
The sound of sloshing water was barely audible in the distance.
“They’re coming. Can’t you use some magic to collapse the tunnel behind us?” he asked.
“It’s day, man. I’m having trouble just staying awake, let alone use any of my focus. Plus, being kissed on the forehead by sunlight isn’t fucking helping at all. Not to mention the freaking iron dust in my Lilith-damned body!” My voice started to rise at the end.
“Alright. Alright. Let’s calm down,” he begged.
“Calmer than you are,” I said.
“If we can’t use your magic, then let’s outthink them,” he said with hope in his voice.
I heard tiny hands digging in the dirt about six feet away from the ladder, where it would still be dark even if the cover was taken off. I grasped what he was doing after a moment, and blindly crawled on my hands and feet to where he had already dug—I was assuming—an adorable little hole.
My hands dug into the cool, damp earth, which I scooped into a big pile.
The sounds of trudging through the water became quicker as they moved up the tunnel into the shallows.
“Climb in,” Da said. “I’ll throw them off your trail. But first…”
I heard him fly away and up the ladder. There was the sound of the cover coming loose. Warm light flooded the tunnel and stayed that way for a couple of heartbeats. Then the cover was replaced, and Da flew back to me.
“Now, this may hurt a little,” he warned before stabbing me in the chest with what I could only assume was a piece of molten metal forged in the depths of Mordor itself.
With a pitch reserved for little girls, I sharply inhaled to scream again, but the agony wouldn’t let me exhale.
“John, I need you to scream with all your might,” Da said, and then used another piece of white-hot metal to cut off my arm at the elbow. I obliged his request.
The scream shook the walls, and loose dirt rained down. The sound of footsteps stopped.
“What…?” I started, at the edge of passing out.
&nb
sp; “I stabbed you with iron to prevent Locke from finding you via divination. Then I cut off your hand to place it at the edge of where the light is.”
“So that they think I died trying to escape,” I finished through clenched teeth.
“Exactly!” he said triumphantly.
“I think I already had enough iron in my body to prevent that,” I remarked as he moved the mound of dirt on top of me and then spread the excess around the tunnel.
He briefly stopped. “Better to be extra sure, then!” he said.
After he was finished, I heard the plop of my arm, and then the tunnel cover was opened again, letting the edge of the light sear the end of my arm to a smoldering ember. With that, he did his disappearing act right as the first goon made his way up the tunnel. The cover went back into place, leaving behind the smell of burnt and rotted flesh behind.
The goon walked all around the tunnel, looking for any clues he could find. He stopped at my arm for a moment, then stepped forward to the ladder. I could hear his dull footsteps on the wooden rungs as he made his way up, then the sound of the cover moving. Another few moments passed before the goon moved it out of the way entirely and then climbed back down, grabbing my arm. With that in hand, no pun intended, I could hear him retreat down the corridor toward my underwater home.
With the tunnel spinning and no longer able to keep my nonexistent eyes open anymore, I succumbed and let the black tendrils of unconsciousness grab hold and pull me under.
“Jonathan,” I heard in my dreams. “I know you are not dead. Well, more dead than usual.”
I snapped back into reality, aware of a darkness near me.
“John-a-thon…” Locke purred, only feet away from me. “I can smell you, still. You aren’t dead, are you?” His footsteps wandered back and forth up the tunnel, stopping periodically.
I kept as still as inhumanly possible, which was incredibly easy with the iron stabbed into my chest.
