The abandoned
warehouse squatted next to a rusting railway spur, the faded paint of its sign
almost unreadable against the old brick walls. Too sturdy to knock down, too
expensive to gentrify, the decaying building smelled of mold and dust, rats…and
blood.
Travis Dominick
moved silently through the shadows, intent on his prey. Moonlight and the
distant glow of streetlights filtered through the dirty windows and skylights,
giving barely enough illumination for him to make his way.
He knew his quarry
had gone to ground here. The ghosts told him so, and the vision that woke him
in a cold sweat showed him where to look. With raven-dark hair and black
clothing, Travis melted into the shadows.
There. He saw the creature’s matted brown coat as
it eased around one of the pillars supporting the roof. In its beast form, the
monster was the size of a large wolf or even a mastiff. But that’s where the
likeness to any normal canine ended. The nachzehrer was a
vampire-shifter, a plague-carrier, and it had murdered—and eaten—an entire
family. Travis had come to put an end to its killing spree.
He pulled a silver
knife from the bandolier across his chest and hurled it. It flew silently and
sunk hilt-deep into the creature’s hindquarters. The beast gave a howl, not
from the injury—which Travis knew wouldn’t be lethal—but from the shift the
silver forced.
Sinew and slick
muscle glistened as the dirty pelt stripped away into bloody ribbons, and the
body reshaped itself when bones broke and knit with a disturbing snap and
crunch. The monster hunched, no longer on all fours but not yet standing
upright.
A burst of gunfire
cut into the creature and pockmarked the pillar behind it—fast shots from an
automatic weapon. The beast bellowed, bloodied but not seriously hurt.
Then the bullets weren’t silver. Fuck. There’s a newbie
out there who thinks he’s Van Helsing.
Travis peered out
from where he’d retreated with his back to one of the pillars. The creature
shook off the last gory remnants of its fur. In the half-light, Travis made out
the thing that had once been human, before it brought plague to its family and
stripped their bones clean with the knife-sharp teeth of its changed form.
More shots tore
into the monster’s head and body, but the creature did not collapse, needing
more than steel to slay it. Then, with a burst of speed, it leaped into the
shadows, intent on bringing down its assailant.
“Shit,” Travis
muttered, taking off at a run. I could have done this the easy way,
but no…some Buffy wanna-be has to fuck it all up.
Travis held a
coiled silver whip in his left hand and a Glock with silver bullets in his
right. Silver and steel knives of varying sizes filled the bandolier and hung
from sheaths strapped to his belt. He had come prepared to destroy the monster.
Now, he had to save the idiot who had gone looking for trouble—and found it.
The creature moved
fast, leaping for its attacker with its teeth bared and its sharp claws out. A
man cursed, and the beast yowled in pain. Travis closed in on the scene, to
find a powerfully built, blond man going after the monster with a Ka-Bar in
each hand. Every time Travis moved to line up a shot with the Glock, the
combatants pivoted, putting the man squarely in his sights. As annoyed as he
was at the interloper, Travis couldn’t justify shooting him.
The beast stood
half a head taller than its opponent, but whoever the dipshit was who had
blundered into Travis’s hunt, the guy knew how to fight. Travis might have
answered to a different authority for his training, but he’d learned from some
of the best, and he recognized the close-quarters moves as elite military,
maybe special ops. So perhaps the fight was not as uneven as he had first
suspected.
Travis circled,
looking for an opening, figuring he and the mystery man could double-team the
creature.
“Stay back! I’ve
got this!” the blond man growled, slashing with the knife in his right hand and
thrusting with the blade in his left.
Unless those
knives were edged with blessed silver, Travis knew the other man could harry
the creature all day without ever bringing it down.
“Get out of the
way, and I’ll finish it,” Travis called back. He lashed out with the silver
whip, flaying open a deep gash in the monster’s back. The beast jerked and
turned, recognizing a second threat, but shifted its stance before Travis could
get off a shot with the Glock, putting the man between them.
“I told you, I’ve
got—” The reply broke off as the creature put on a press of speed, swiping its
powerful clawed hand across the man’s shoulder and tossing him effortlessly
through the air. The stranger hit one of the support pillars hard, but he
staggered to his feet, ready for another round.
“Of all the
stupid, asinine, fucking idiots,” Travis muttered as he tried to flank the
creature, but although the beast remained intent on its injured quarry, it was
clever enough not to expose its back to Travis.
The stranger
didn’t wait for the beast to attack again. He came at it with kicks and punches
in a flurry of expertly trained movement that would have had a human opponent
down in seconds. The two long knives sank deep into the monster’s body, and the
thing howled in fury and pain. It lunged, and claws tore into the fighter’s
shoulder as the beast opened its maw and bared its fangs, lowering its head
toward the struggling man’s throat.
Intent on fresh
blood, the creature made a mistake. Travis dodged into position. He didn’t dare
shoot into the back of the beast for fear the bullets would go through and hit
the man. But three side shots would do nicely—head, chest, and hip.
The monster roared
and tossed the man aside. This time, he did not get up. Travis faced the beast,
putting a silver bullet between the creature’s eyes and through its heart. It
fell to its knees, covered in its own blood and that of its would-be attacker,
and leveled a baleful glare.
Angry red blisters
criss-crossed the monster’s pale skin as the blessed silver worked its poison,
fighting against the unholy energies that animated the beast. Travis reached
for a flask on his belt and sloshed a measure of salted holy water into the
creature’s ravaged face.
Travis raised a
hand in blessing. “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, let there be extinguished in you all power of the devil.” He made the
sign of the cross. “Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever
sins or faults thou hast committed.”
The nachzeher that
had once been a man named Rick Kohrs collapsed in a bloody heap on the floor.
Travis doused the
body with lighter fluid and tossed a match, watching the corpse go up in
flames, assuring that it would not rise again. He ran to where the stranger
lay, fearing what he might find. The man was pale but still breathing, bleeding
from deep gashes where the beast had torn into him. Travis ripped strips of
cloth from the man’s tattered shirt and field dressed the wounds, making it
unlikely he would bleed out until Travis could get help.
Sirens wailed in
the distance. Travis hefted the unconscious man over his shoulder in a fireman’s
carry, and dumped him into the back of his small black SUV, pulling away before
the first of the fire trucks reached the scene.
He toggled
hands-free dialing, and the call rang through. “Have Matthew standing by. I’m
bringing in a casualty.”
“You’re bringing
someone here?” Jon sounded incredulous. “Are you sure—”
“He’s not dying,
but he’s banged up pretty bad,” Travis said, trying not to be snappish despite
the adrenaline crash. “And before we let go of him, I want to know what the
hell he thought he was doing playing monster hunter.”
St. Dismas
Outreach took up a hard-worn former apartment building off Wylie Avenue in the
Hill District of Pittsburgh, a down-on-its-luck neighborhood not far from
center city. Aptly named for the believing thief on the cross, St. Dismas
was—as far as most people were aware—a halfway house, soup kitchen, food bank,
and shelter, a last chance outpost for the tired souls who found refuge there.
Fewer knew that forays like tonight’s battle were equally a part of its vital,
if secretive, mission.
Travis pulled the
SUV up to the back door. Matthew and Jon came out to meet him, gentling the
wounded stranger onto a stretcher and hustling him into the building before
Travis had released his seatbelt. He got out of the car and glanced both
directions. Before they had opened St. Dismas, being in an alley in this part
of town in the middle of the night would have been asking for trouble. Travis
had been no more willing to put up with human monsters than the kinds of
creatures he hunted. It didn’t take long for word to spread that hassling the
folks at St. Dismas wasn’t worth the grief.
Jon met him in the
hallway. “What happened?” Jon was Travis’s second in command, and one of the
few entrusted to the knowledge of Travis’s past and his nighttime hunts. They
were a study in distinctions. At thirty-three and six-foot-two, Travis was
solid, lean muscle, with chin-length black hair and green eyes that were in
sharp contrast to the pale coloring of his Irish heritage. Jon was five-ten and
forty-something, built like a fireplug, with close-cropped dark hair, wary
eyes, and skin the color of espresso. Jon had been an Army chaplain before St.
Dismas, and Matthew, who had disappeared with their visitor, had been a medic.
Their skills still came in handy on nights like this, far too often for
Travis’s liking.
Travis recounted
the mucked-up hunt as they walked to his small apartment on the third floor.
“So you have no idea who this guy is?” Jon asked, pausing at the door.
“Trouble, that’s
what he is,” Travis replied wearily. “And dangerous. He knew how to fight, just
not how to fight a nachzehrer. Navy SEAL maybe, or one of the
other Special Ops.”
“I saw the guns
and the knives. Impressive.”
Travis gave a
snort in reply. “And it did him so much good. I need to make sure he learns
from his mistake and leaves things alone that he doesn’t understand.”
“He’s gonna know
about you when he wakes up, and he’ll connect you and St. Dismas—”
“And I know about
him, too,” Travis replied. “I’ll bet my ‘day job’ is more understanding than
his.”
Jon chuckled at
the understatement. “Yeah. True. All right. I’ve got the front covered. Go be
Batman.”
“Hardly. How’s the
night going?” Travis asked, shifting into work mode.
“Typical. We’ve
got more people than usual for overnight, but that’s probably on account of the
rain. The soup kitchen was scraping the bottom of the kettles, but we took care
of everyone,” Jon reported. “Broke up a fight between a couple of guys who were
too high to be able to tell us what they were actually arguing about,” he
added, shaking his head. “You know. The usual.” He paused. “On the other hand,
the group therapy session with the halfway house residents went really well. So
there’s that.”
St. Dismas served
a tough part of town. While the “Steel City” had remade itself with software
and technology industries after much of its manufacturing went elsewhere, not
everyone could make the leap. Travis often wondered how many of the men who
sought refuge here would have been just fine in the days when a millworker
could earn enough for a nice house, a decent car, and retirement in Florida.
Nothing in their reach paid like that now, or ever would again.
“Good,” Travis
said, clapping Jon on the shoulder. “Then I’ll go see to our new guest. I
wouldn’t mind having one of those flashy-thingies like in that movie, to make
him forget.”
“You sure your
connections don’t have something? They always have the good stuff,” Jon joked.
Travis sighed. “I
doubt it. If people forgot what they did, why would they need to go to
Confession? It would put priests out of jobs, and they can’t have that.”
Jon left,
chuckling, while Travis headed back toward the clinic where his unexpected
guest would be recovering. It had taken three years for him to be able to joke
about the priesthood, after making his decision to leave behind it and the
secret Vatican order of demon-hunters that had nearly cost him his life, his
faith, and his sanity. The Sinistram reported to Cardinal Vasylyk, one step
away from the Pope himself, and its very name implied its role, the “left hand”
of the Holy Father, fighting things too terrible to acknowledge. Those among
the Cardinals who did not approve had another name for the elite
warrior-priests: Filios Tenebrarum. The Sons of Darkness.
Right now, what mattered
to Travis was finding out where the hell this stranger had come from, and how
it was that the man even knew about threats like the nachzehrer.
Travis hoped to be able to dissuade their “guest” from going looking for more
trouble, but he doubted that would be easy.
He reached the
clinic just as Matthew closed the door behind him. “How is he?” Travis asked,
worried about the stranger despite being annoyed that the man had put himself
in harm’s way.
“Banged up, but
not too badly,” Matthew replied. “He’s gonna be sore, and I had to close up the
worst of the gashes with stitches, but considering the alternatives, he’s a
pretty lucky guy.”
Travis gave a
snort. “What’s the saying? That God looks after fools and drunkards?”
He heard a voice
shout from behind the door. Matthew gave him a look. “Well, that particular
‘fool’ is demanding to know what’s going on. He wants to talk to the boss man,
and that’s you.”
Travis grimaced
and rolled his eyes. “This should be fun,” he muttered and shouldered past
Matthew to enter the room.
“Who are you, and
where the hell am I?”
Travis got his
first good look at their houseguest in the harsh light of the clinic. It had
been too dark in the warehouse to see much, and the nachzehrer had
kept his attention occupied elsewhere. The man sitting on the edge of the
clinic bed looked to be in his early thirties, with short blond hair and a
muscular build that suggested boot camp rather than gym rat. The haircut said
“civilian,” but the way the man sat, poised to spring at the first sign of
threat said “military.”
“My name is Travis
Dominick, and you’re at the St. Dismas Center.”
The stranger gave
Travis a glare. “The homeless shelter?”
Travis shrugged.
“That, and more.” He took in the set of the man’s chin, and the fire in his
blue eyes, anger covering fear. “Who are you?”
The newcomer
remained silent long enough that Travis began to doubt he would answer. “Brent
Lawson,” he said finally. “And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what you did,
saving my ass, but why the fuck were you there?”
A side effect of
giving up the clerical collar was that people stopped watching their language
around him, Travis thought. The upside was that they now treated him like a
human being, in all its messy glory. “Why were you?” he countered.
They glared at each
other, and Travis was reminded of staring matches back in middle school.
Finally, Brent chuffed out a breath and looked away. “I tracked that thing to
its lair. But I had bad intel, and the weapons I had didn’t work.”
“I noticed,”
Travis replied. “A nachzehrer is a vampire shifter. You
needed silver to kill it, and nothing short of a head shot, decapitation, and
then burning would do it.”
Brent gave him an
appraising look. “And you know this, how?”
“Training,” Travis
replied with a maddening smile. “But you still haven’t told me how you ended up
tracking a monster to a warehouse.”
“It’s what I do,”
Brent said after a moment. “At least, it’s part of what I do.” He glanced
around. “Looks like you’re in the part-time monster hunting business, too.”
Having been a
full-time hunter with the Sinistram, Travis was quite content to be
“part-time,” although he couldn’t tell Brent that. “You would have died back
there.”
“I said ‘thank
you.’” Brent’s eyes narrowed.
Travis leaned back
against the wall. “You really need to leave this kind of thing to people who’ve
been trained for it.”
“Like you, Father
Dominick?”
Brent couldn’t
have known about Travis’s past, but the barb still made him wince. “I’m not a
priest. Not anymore,” he said quietly.
Brent frowned,
then managed to look contrite. “Sorry. I thought priests only went monster
hunting in the movies.”
“And I thought
soldiers didn’t go freelance.”
This time, Brent
flinched. “Yeah, well. I’m out now. I have my own detective firm.”
“And someone hired
you to look into the family’s deaths?” Travis guessed.
Brent nodded.
“Yeah. A brother from out of town. When I put the pieces together, I knew it
wasn’t something the cops would ever believe. So I decided to handle it on my
own.”
Travis tried to
unpack that statement because there was as much not said as what Brent
admitted. “The cops wouldn’t believe a monster killed those people, but you
did?”
“Apparently, so
did you.”
Travis was in no
mood to explain his past, and from the look of it, neither was Brent. “So the nachzehrer is
dead, and the family is avenged,” Travis said, trying to defuse the stubborn
glint in Brent’s gaze. “Now you can go back to busting Worker’s Comp fraud and
finding cheating spouses. Or tracking mobsters.”
“Fuck you,” Brent
said, sliding down off the table and reaching for his shirt. His face and
shoulder were already starting to bruise from where the creature had thrown him
around, and despite the stitches, the wounds looked sore and puffy. There were
older scars, too. Two that looked like bullet wounds, but others that might
have been from knives, teeth, or claws. Travis had similar scars, knew what
made marks like that. It lent credence to Brent’s claims that he wasn’t new at
this.
“It’s the middle
of the night,” Travis replied, ignoring the outburst. “You’re welcome to stay.
Matthew would probably like to check on your stitches in the morning. Those
claws can carry taint.”
“Not my first
rodeo.” Brent grimaced as he moved to pull on his shirt. “Thanks for the
assist, and the medic. But I need to get home.”
“You almost died
out there,” Travis said, blocking his way.
“And I’m glad you
were there,” Brent said evenly. “But I’ve been at this for a while now, and
it’s like any battle—you win some, you lose some. Every fight might be the
last. Goes with the territory.”
Travis reached
into a pocket of his tactical vest and pulled out a card. “Look, the next time
you hear of something like this, how about giving me a call? If I can’t talk
you out of going after it, maybe we team up? Safety in numbers?”
Brent scowled,
staring at the card as if debating whether to accept it, then finally snatched
it from Travis’s fingers and shoved it into his jeans. “Yeah. Maybe. Depends.”
He moved around Travis. “I’d give you my card, but why bother? You think you’ve
got it all figured out.” With that, Brent walked out and headed down the
hallway, to the rear exit and into the night.
Matthew returned
to the clinic before Travis could leave. “Did you talk him out of a repeat
performance?”
Travis shook his
head. “Nope. And I believed him when he said he’s done it before. Hell, maybe
‘Special Ops’ goes after creatures like this, for all we know. Not like they’d
tell civilians.”
“Then it’s out of
your hands,” Matthew said. “Maybe, with luck, he’ll decide it’s a bad business,
and you’ll never run into him again.”
Travis stared down
the empty corridor at the back door. “I doubt that. I wonder what his story is.
No one starts hunting monsters for fun,” he said quietly. “They lose someone.
It’s always personal.”
No comments:
Post a Comment