Chapter 9: The Clash Begins: Part One
The boy knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he turned the corner. There, at the other end of the alleyway, was the tell-tale yellowish-green glow that he’d become painfully familiar with.
Curses ran through his mind, words he knew he wasn’t meant to use, as he turned and ran. There was no time for hiding, all he could do was try to move as fast as he could and hope it would be enough. But even as he tried to force his legs to pump faster, he could hear the distant baying of hounds. Behind him the glow remained, not chasing, but being all too clear that it wasn’t hiding. Some small part of him wondered why it wasn’t chasing him when it had the chance, but most of him just didn’t care.
The simple fact was that he was tired. The night before had been too much, it was as though his hunters had some way to track him that he couldn’t shake. They’d found him again and again no matter what he did. The only reason they hadn’t caught him was because of the strange rules they seemed to follow. He’d been able to fight his way through their last ambush and make it to one of the main streets, one crowded enough to keep them from following him. He still didn’t get why they shied back from the crowds, but since it worked in his favour, he hadn’t questioned it too much.
That wasn’t an option anymore though, not tonight, not with how they’d herded him back to the docks. There weren’t any crowds here anymore, no streets, no shops. There were only dark alleys and empty warehouses.
“No more running, boy.”
The words seemed to reach his thoughts without having to move through the air or his ears. They were just there, hovering in his mind like malevolent fireflies.
“We have your scent now. We have your blood. You can no more escape us than then the horizon can escape the sun. Make things easier upon yourself, end this hunt, surrender.”
Unlike the harsher tones of those who had hunted him before the words in his mind had a smooth soothing quality to them. They sounded . . . convincing, the voice of a calm teacher speaking to a fearful student.
He knew they were a lie, though.
He’d seen what his hunters could do, he knew what they were. Anything that tried to convince him otherwise was just a lie, a trick. So, he’d done the only thing he could, he’d run, and he’d kept running.
But he was so tired now. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep on running. Should he keep running? The boy knew that he couldn’t shake them, not now, they were locked on and they weren’t giving up. Should he try to break back towards the main streets? He dismissed the idea almost immediately. That was where they were thickest. He’d never make it through. All he could do was hope he could last until the sun came up again. That was hours away, but he might manage it. not by running, though . . .
He’d have to fight, that was the only option.
It was strange, the boy was at once scared and relieved. He didn’t want to fight, that was why he’d run whenever he could. That was why he’d left his home. His power . . . he wasn’t scared of it, but he was wary. It was strong, savage, and it ran deep. He hadn’t used all of it, hadn’t seen just how strong it was yet, but part of him wanted to. The way things were looking, the way the hunt was closing in on him, was holding back really an option anymore?
“We have let you run.” The words interrupted his thoughts even as he tried to ready himself for the fight. “We could have found you at any time we wished, but we’ve let you run, let you tire yourself.”
There was nothing soothing about the voice anymore. Instead, it sounded . . . hungry.
“You will fight? Very well. There is pleasure in running prey until it collapses, but a quarry that will stand and fight is a pleasure all of its own. Show us your power. Show us your worth. Show us that we were right to hunt you!”
The boy had come to a stop now, regaining his breath far faster than any normal person would have been capable of. He stood with a thick brick wall to his back, the alley he’d come out of before him and a wide road to either side. One way led to the sea and the main dock, the other would take him back into the warehouses. It was a terrible choice for a last stand, what cover there was working against. hesitating for only a moment the boy turned and ran once more, this time towards the sea and the docks.
“So, you run? Disappointing, but understandable. Flee as you wish, we come for you now.”
He didn’t have to run too far. It might have been a marathon sprint, but with his greater speed and endurance, he was barely breathing hard by the time he drew close to where the concrete met the sea. Behind him, he could see the glow starting to come from all the nearby alleys and roads. The distant sound of dogs, or at least dog-like creatures, howling and barking had grown closer. They were getting closer, boxing him in. From here there was now only the black water behind him. Would they follow him into it? Could they enter the sea? He vaguely remembered hearing something about their kind not being able to cross running water, would that apply? Or was he just getting it wrong?
No, enough wild thoughts! They’d never come at him from the ocean, he was going to have to gamble on that remaining true. If he was wrong . . . well, he’d be screwed anyway, so it didn’t really matter all that much. Reaching deep down the boy felt for the power that had been growing inside him ever since it had sparked into life. He could feel it, hot, heavy, like blood and muscle bearing down on him. It should have felt crushingly oppressive, but instead, it was comforting. Beneath it, he could feel other sparks, dimmer but waiting to flare up. He hadn’t reached for them before, uncertain of just what they meant, but it was now or never.
Before him he could see the huge hound-like wolves slinking out of the shadows, their eyes casting that sulphurous green light everywhere they gazed. They were taking their time, amassing their numbers and prowling back and forth. In a way they were acting more like jackals than wolves, holding back, waiting to spot weakness. But rather than fear or caution the boy was sure it was because of the voice that had spoken in his mind. They wanted to see what he’d do, to enjoy chasing him or fighting him, whatever he did. They didn’t fear him, they didn’t think anything he could do mattered.
The boy’s hands bunched into fists at his side and his eyes glared back in defiance. Fine! Time to see what he could do!
For the first time, he reached for his power and drew on all he could. Before, he’d never had the chance, he’d always been afraid. Back at home, while on the run, he’d had to be careful. Becoming a bear had been all he’d dared to use, and he hadn’t even tapped into all of whatever that power meant.
Now . . . now he did.
For a moment the boy felt as though the rest of the world had just gone away. The smell of the sea, the sound of traffic, the night breeze on his cheeks, the taste of sweat on his lips, the growing glow before him, all of it went away. Instead, there was the roar of the beast, the thundering hammer of a heartbeat that seemed to shake the skies. There was the scent of smoke and the comforting warmth of a nearby fireplace. There was the hardness of metal, the reassuring strength of it within and without. The beast roared, the inferno roared, the thunder of the forge, of hammer on metal, reached up into the heavens and tried to shake the stars themselves!
Blood and fire and metal, that was all there was to the world for that brief glorious instant. A great crescendo of forces that he could barely comprehend.
Then he was back on the docks, wondering just what the hell that had been. The next moment the world was shrinking around him as he took on the form of a bear and he didn’t have time to wonder anymore. This time the transformation was different though, the world seemed to recede more, more than any other time he’d shifted. On top of that, his body, his muscles, and his very being felt as though someone had jammed a connector cord from a nuclear powerplant into his spine and turned the juice up to the max!
He roared! The act was as much an instinct as drawing in a breath. He felt strong, he felt defiant, so he roared as he came slamming down onto all fours. He felt the pavement and concrete crack and crunch beneath his weight, his claws digging in with ease. He felt the fire in himself start to . . . trickle out, then the trickle grew to a stream, then a flood. He could feel the air around him ignite, the flames dancing in the corners of his vision.
Before him the wolves halted their advance, their earlier eagerness now gone, replaced with wariness as they backed up.
Okay, he wasn’t sure if this was going to work, but he was sure of one thing. If these hunters wanted to bring him down, he was going to make them work for it! Yeah, it was going to cost them. In blood!
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I’d been hovering up in the sky and looking down on the docks for what felt like hours, but in truth, it had only been about twenty minutes. Every passing second had a small eternity. Three o’clock had come and gone and I was left wondering if something had gone wrong, if I wasn’t in the right place, if there’d been a mistake. Or, even worse, was I the one that made a mistake? Had something happened and I’d missed it?
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I knew that most of my fears were irrational. It wasn’t like I was the only one there, so even if I did miss some sign the others were on the lookout too.
I tried to calm down.
Could I have done something already, just be by being here? Had I been meant to be seen by someone out on the town and that was it? Were we talking about a butterfly effect? Was there someone depressed, and on their way to making a . . . dangerous choice who’d looked up, seen me and had second thoughts? And now they’d go on to cure cancer or something?
Well, it was a thought, but surely there was more than that, right? This was a prophecy from an angel at the request of a saint! I was meant to do something a bit more active than just floating in the sky and looking pretty, right?
I was just starting to get worried when an eruption of fire lit up the darkness, and the screech of rending metal tore through the silence of the night.
The whole thing was shocking in its suddenness. It went from calm and still to warzone-crazy in the blink of an eye, throwing me off for a moment.
I still hadn’t quite gotten over my fear of heights yet, though I was slowly doing better. As it was I was high enough that I could see lights that illuminated the docks. They were small islands in the dark that seemed so small when compared to the swathes of dark allies and warehouses.
That made it easier to see where the fire was coming from, and as I came down another burst of flame licked up into the sky, this time accompanied by a flash of greenish yellow light.
The first thing that grabbed my attention was the bear. How could it not? First off, the beast was surrounded by flames, great arcs of fire marring the concrete around it even though there wasn’t anything actually burning. Secondly, the bear was glowing in places, literally glowing yellow and orange brightly enough to cast even more shadows around, even with all the flames. And lastly, and maybe most importantly, the bear was freakin HUGE!
At first, I didn’t quite get it, all the flames and dancing shadows making it hard to get a good perspective to judge it by. But as I drew closer, I could see the buildings around it, the pavement it fought on, and the nearby railings, all of it gave me a sense of proportion that finally drove what I was seeing home.
I could recognise the bear as a grizzly, that breed of bears had been a passion of mine when I was a kid. The round ears and the large hump on its shoulders easily gave it away. Grizzly bears weren’t the largest breed in the world, but they were big. Even on all fours they were, on average, at least three feet tall at the shoulder. On their hind legs and at their full height, they were almost eight feet tall. Those were the official stats.
In this case, they didn’t apply.
The bear roaring amidst the flames was eight feet tall . . . but that was while it was on all fours! The beast was huge, massive in a way meant for an elephant rather than a bear! I could see it pawing at the pavement, its claws tearing it up as though it were Styrofoam instead of concrete, and then it let out a bellowing roar and lashed out with one front paw.
I was still a good thirty feet above and behind the bear, having circled around as I drew closer, but the sheer volume of the roar still made my ears hurt, but that wasn’t what I was paying attention to. What my eyes locked onto were the trio of massive dog things that came bounding through the flames to throw themselves at the bear. They were sort of dog-like in shape, maybe even wolf-like, but there was something about them that just seemed wrong, their proportions were off, and they were too bulky in some places and skeletally thin in others. Oh, and they were also the size of ponies. Sure, they still looked like toys next to the bear, but to a person they would have been huge.
The three creatures leapt through the fires, only for two of them to be met by the swinging paw of the bear. The paw must have been bigger than my whole torso, and the forelimb it was attached was probably thicker than my whole body. When it hit the bodies of the dog-things didn’t so much break as they did spatter, but I didn’t really have time to be awed at the gory display. Almost immediately after being reduced to bloody chunks, the remains of the creatures burst into greenish-yellow flames. They burnt so fiercely that the remains were consumed in an instant, but I recognised the colour as the same as that earlier flash I’d seen.
The third beast wasn’t deterred by the violent end of its partners though, instead, it lunged forward, its jaws snapping down on the bear’s shoulder. The spot it chose to bite was fur rather than a glowing spot and I was close enough now that my enhanced eyes could see its teeth sink into flesh.
It might as well have been a chihuahua trying to bring down a lion.
With an almost contemptuous shrug, the bear sent the dog-thing sprawling to the pavement, its teeth visibly smoking from the blood on them that seemed to be burning. Even so, it was on its feet in an instant, snarling defiance at the massive predator before it. For a moment I was genuinely impressed by its courage, then I saw it wasn’t alone. More creatures were prowling out of the darkness and into the light, lots of them. There were wolves, smaller than the dog-like things that had attacked the bear, but still bigger than regular wolves. Their fur bristled, their jaws snarled, and their eyes burned with sulphurous green flames. There were hounds, almost normal sized, but black as tar and wreathed in more of the greenish flames that touched the other beasts.
At first, there were only a handful of them, but then more and more came out of the dark alleys, eventually forming a pack more than twenty strong. There was a moment of stillness, the bear furiously glaring at its gathering enemies as the pack simply waited. It gave me time to think, time to realize I wasn’t sure what to do.
Who was I meant to help here? If I was going to go by simple TV logic, then the bear was the obvious hero. Bigger, outnumbered, fire powers, typical protagonist clues. The fact that the monsters threatening it all had those sickly sulphurous fires somewhere on them wasn’t winning them any points with me, just the opposite actually. Seriously, the only way they could have looked more villainous was if their leader had a skull for a face and was cackling maniacally.
Still, I didn’t want to make a snap choice here. Etienne had seemed to just be a monster at first, but he’d just been someone that needed help. How did I know who needed or deserved help here? Maybe the bear was some sort of thief? I just had no way to know.
This line of thinking lasted right up until I saw the figures that were following the wolves and monster dogs out of the shadows. So far there were only four of them, but I got the impression that they were far from the only ones coming, they were just the first ones to get here. These newcomers were short from what I could tell, barely taller than the shoulders of the smaller wolf-creatures. They wore black cloaks with ragged edges, but those cloaks failed to fully conceal the forms beneath.
They were . . . wrong. What proportions I could see were off, legs bending the wrong way, too short in one place, too long in another. Arms that were thin but bulged with cable-like muscles in the wrong places. Ugly and inhuman faces were briefly illuminated by the flames, then faded back into the shadows of their hoods, noses that were too long, eyes that were too wide and too flat, and cruel grins that spread too wide. As if to cap it all off two of them were laughing, a high, discordant cackle that set my teeth on edge.
Yeah, it was at about that point that I decided to just throw my hands up and give in. Maybe it was shallow of me, but I really couldn’t see any way in which I’d willingly be working with these guys. Sadly, my decision came a bit late, because I’d run out of time to think
There was a wordless battle cry from one of the figures, and then they and the beasts all surged forward at the same time, a wave of teeth and claws.
For a moment I found myself stunned into immobility by the the sight before me. The way the dogs and wolves all moved was terrifying, almost liquid. In the dark, all of them with black or dark fur, they blurred into each other until they all seemed to be just one mass. For a moment I was reminded of the horde of mutated creatures I’d faced on my way to fight Etienne, but that had been different. Those monsters had come at me in the light of day, I’d been able to see them clearly, though there had been times when I wished I couldn’t. more than that, though they’d all moved with the same goal there hadn’t been any sense of unity between them. They’d all been solitary hunters going after the same prey and taking no notice of each other.
This pack . . . they were working together, it was clear in the way that they covered the distance between themselves and the bear. Each one was bounding like lightning, but none of them got in each other’s way, instead, they seemed to coordinate perfectly, following after each other with liquid grace.
Then they were on the huge grizzly, and I didn’t have any more time to be stunned. The beasts swarmed around the larger predator, surrounding it and all attacking at once. I could see at least three of them all bite into one of its hindlegs at once, then pull on the limb, trying to drag it out from under the massive bear as the others bit into wherever they could. Despite their size the dogs and wolves were still small when compared to their quarry though, their bites digging in, but unable to go too deep. They drew blood, but they didn’t look like they were reaching anything important, not yet.
The bear roared and rose up on its hind legs. For a moment it stood there two wolves dangling from one forelimb where their jaws were fixed, one of the huge hound-things hanging from the other. Then it came down, the concrete shattered, the beast that assaulted it scattered, and the creatures that had been clamped onto its forelimbs died. More fire burst out from it, a wave reaching out to engulf everything. Those closest were immediately reduced to ash on the wind, their forms seemingly coming apart as the blast of fire hit them. Those further back though, they survived, screens of the same green and yellow flame that lit up their eyes forming around them, protecting them. In the next instant, they were on their feet and darting back at the grizzly behemoth, followed by cloaked figures who had drawn wicked-looking shortswords.
Okay, enough being a spectator!
I could see that things would be stalemated if I did nothing, but I was also sure that that would only be so for the time being. The bear could obviously soak up punishment, but whoever its enemies were, I was guessing there were more of them coming than what was already here. I took action as the cloak-wearing creatures leapt at the bear, their jumps carrying them impossibly high and far, enough so that I was sure they were aiming for the bear’s head. Firelight glinted off two wickedly curved blades and didn’t have time to think anymore.
My hand came up, and a crackling arc of electricity briefly connected me to the figure. Then there was a loud cracking sound, and the cloaked figure was sent flying back.
Yeah, before facing Etienne I couldn’t have been able to manage that. My lightning bolts hadn’t had they had that much range, I’d barely been able to get them to go more than six feet from me before they lost cohesion and split like the branches of a tree. They also hadn’t been that strong, not much more than a harsh Taser if I had to guess. Now . . .
I lowered myself, being careful to maintain my full sphere shield around myself. The huge head of the bear swung around, its glare turning into wide-eyed surprise as it saw me.
“Okay,” I spoke as loudly as I could, trying to make myself heard over the crackle of the flames. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you guys are tearing up the place, and look to be doing the same to each other. So, any chance that we can talk this out? There doesn’t have to be more violence here.”
My answer came in the form of two arrows and a thrown dagger crashing into my shield one after another. All three weapons burst into sparks of sulphuric green energy, though only small ripples ran through my defence.
“I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’, right?”
More figures emerged into the light of the flames, small and stooped. Some had swords, others had daggers, and others held bows and arrows ready. None of them said a word before they attacked.