Chapter 13: Monsters Arising

--- Aurelio Hermenez ---

As he walked home from work he had a skip in his step that he hadn’t been able to lose since Harper agreed to go out with him. Not even pulling a shift by himself while both Hendrickson and Mick went wherever they were spending their Friday had been enough to make him lose it. Not even when no one tipped him during that entire shift!

(Well, at least Hendrickson is paying me extra, that should cover my date with Harper.) He felt a giddy smile work its way to his face as he thought that.

Admittedly, it did dim briefly when the sirens of a firetruck rushed past him, the high pitch squeal hurting his ears. But that was only briefly as, as soon as it was out of sight he was back to grinning in full once more.

“Got my own apartment, got my own job, my own money, got a date with a pretty girl, and most importantly I don’t have any of those assholes from home!” He laughed, once more thinking (running away to the big city was the best decision of my life.)

Of course, it was just as he was thinking this that he watched a blonde man stumble out of an alleyway while clutching his chest before falling to his knees.

His eyes immediately widened as he ran forward. “Oh shit!” (Is this one of those city stabbings?)

Despite being optimistic about his new city life, he wasn’t naive to the fact that the city was a dangerous place, especially at night. Which is why he’d looked up a bunch of basic safety tips that weren’t common sense to someone from a small town, things like not going out at night, staying away from alleys, and so on. (Tips this guy clearly could’ve used.)

He knelt down next to the man and steady him while taking note of how pale and in pain the man’s face was. “Shit, where are you hurt? I’ll, uh, I’ll call nine one one!”

Just as he pulled his cell out of his pocket he felt something wrap around his throat, forcing him to drop his phone as the world disappeared in a blur of shadows.

The light returned just before he felt his back painfully slam into a brick wall, and the hand on his throat lifted him a full foot off the ground.

“I… I am sorry about this… truly.” The blonde man apologized, his face still looking pained in spite of how easily he had manhandled Aurelio. “I hate harming innocents but… my blood is boiling so much I… I need this to survive and… my kin need me…”

He wasn’t sure what the man was talking about and given how glazed his eyes looked, he wasn’t sure the man knew what he was talking about either.

“So I’m sorry if… If I can’t stop myself…”

With that said the blonde man opened his mouth far wider than any person should be capable of before-

Fangs tore into his throat, and he could feel the blood rushing out of him and into the maw of the monster mauling him.

The world around him began to fade like the setting sun as darkness seemed to creep in from all angles, and from behind the monster he could see a beautiful pale woman with hair black as night waiting with a smile on her face.

With no small amount of blood loss he couldn’t help but think, (huh… the reaper’s… kind of hot…)

An equally beautiful laughter filled his head just as the night sky lit up like daylight and the monster pulled back to stare.

“What in the good blood’s name?” The monster gasped, its grip slacking as it let him fall to the ground.

Not stupid enough to let this opportunity slip by, he crawled away from the distracted monster. Deeper into the alley, where the shadows met him like the embrace of the sweetest of lovers.

Only… it wasn’t far enough he realized as he found his limbs unable to crawl any further.

(I… I’m going to die…) The thought was as cold as the concrete he collapsed against.

(No…) A beautiful voice whispered, and he could swear he felt fingers running through his hair. (Tonight you live, and you’ll live like you never have before.)

He looked up to the pale woman, who looked so familiar. “M-mom…?”

The woman smiled, her lips black as midnight with just the faintest touch of red, before leaning down to kiss him.

--- ??? ---

It felt something in the air shift and twist, something familiar to its original self. Something that left a strong enough impression that even separated from his main self, he could feel an almost instinctive hate towards it.

Looking to the sky it saw several golden cracks forming, spreading out through the air above this city.

Seeing such a massive thing he tried to dig through the memories it had inherited from its main self, to see if its old body’s enemy was responsible for this or not, but found that it couldn’t recall the memories being one of the many it was apparently not allowed to remember. (Meaning my old self was an even bigger idiot than I thought.)

If the other was an enemy, then every piece of it should know the threat it represented.

(Maybe I can convince it to help me kill my original self? If I can’t, well, I’ll just devour it like everything else.)

--- Harper Everette---

Her eyes drifted to the sky glowing as if it were the middle of the day rather than sunset, massive golden cracks in reality leaking light into the air.

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“Frankie… you seeing this?” She asked, wondering if her overactive imagination was getting to her once more. The fact that other people were getting out of their cars to stare at it told her it probably wasn’t.

“Yeah…” The redhead confirmed with a frown. “I’m also not liking it.”

She swallowed, remembering something she’d seen once when she was little. Something she’d tried very hard not to remember. “What… what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but… we should get home as soon as we can.” Frankie told her, pulling out the keys their manager had foisted on the other woman before burning off.

“Y-yeah.” She agreed as her friend turned back to the cafe door to finish locking up, Harper’s eyes never leaving the cracks so high up in the sky.

At least not until a black one opened up much much closer.

“Uh, Frankie you might want to hurry…” She warned the other woman.

A set of claws began to reach through the crack.

“Or better yet, unlock the door!” She suggested with no small amount of panic as she realized whatever the claws belonged to was slowly opening the crack.

“Why?” Frankie frowned, glancing over before following her gaze to see the many teeth inside of the growing crack. “Shit!”

The redhead threw the doors open. “Inside now!”

Not one to argue when her life was clearly in danger she did as the larger woman suggested and ran inside before turning around as Frankie began to lock the door behind them.

“Is that really going to do anything?” She found herself asking.

“No idea, but it’s better than nothing.” Frankie pointed out, just as a massive thud shook the ground, drawing their attention to a massive mass of gray flesh and teeth sprawled out in the middle of the street as people finally began to run and scream from it.

The monster picked itself up and shook itself off before turning to one such person and lunging at them, bringing them to the ground in a display she was glad she couldn’t see from the other side of the monster.

Not that it kept her from knowing what it looked like when (claws tore through flesh, spattering blood on the wall as screams died down.)

“W-wait, we need to open the doors!” She whispered breathlessly.

Frankie looked at her like she was crazy. “Why the hell would we do that?”

“People need some place to hide!” She tried to explain as the monster outside began to pick itself up and anot. “We, we can’t just leave them out there or else that thing will get them!”

“Then they should run while they can, there’s only o-” Another thud cut Frankie off, her eyes going wide.

A third thud had them slowly turning as a pack of the monsters began to flood the streets.

“Fuck…” Frankie cursed.

Seeing a mother and daughter both with familiar blonde hair, she lunged for the door quickly opening it before calling out, “In here quick!”

“Thank you!” The mother told her, rushing in with her child in hand.

“Over here!” She yelled at the nearby people, one or two of them hearing her and rushing over. “Over he-agh!”

She yelped, as Frankie pulled her away from the door before slamming it shut and bracing it just in time for one of the monsters to slam into the door, causing it to buckle but not give under her weight. “Quick lock the door and then through the second!”

Moving quick, she did as the other woman told her and locked the cafe’s main doors before rushing through the second set that she’d always found an annoyance until right this moment when it would provide another barrier between her and the monster.

Just as quickly if not more so Frankie followed after her before bracing the inner doors. “Find something to barricade the door!”

“R-r-right!” She nodded, quickly looking for anything the cafe would have to brace the door before grabbing a couple of chairs and dragging them over to the other woman. Something that a couple of the people she’d managed to bring inside began to help her with.

“I-I think this is the best we can do.” She told Frankie once every chair in the building was in front of the doors. An amount that looked distinctly short in the face of a monster the size of a small car.

--- Alexander Pierce ---

He looked down on the poor boy he’d attacked when his boiling blood had seemed to dry his very veins out.

A boy the very shadows of the night seemed to cling to as the blood in his veins sang in a way it only did with the closest of his kin.

A boy he did not mean to give the gift of blood to.

“I… I have to take responsibility.” He realized as he stepped towards the new blood, his blood beginning to boil once more.

--- Nicholas Grimm ---

There was something wrong, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

Part of him felt like making sure Mathias wasn’t hiding in some shadow, but the fact that both Jessica and Vanessa were looking equally upset as him was proof enough that it wasn’t Mathias behind whatever this was.

“Do… Do you guys feel that?” He eventually asked from where he sat on the floor.

“I… yes.” Jessica sighed from her desk. “I don’t know what it is but I can feel it.”

“Yeah, and I was trying to ignore it.” Vanessa admitted, throwing her remote at the TV. “Not that it's doing me any good.”

“Should we… Should we ask one of the Doctors?” He grimaced, already knowing Vanessa’s reaction.

“No, we shouldn’t.” His friend growled, before taking a deep breath and letting it out. “Just ignore it long enough and it’ll go away on its own.”

“That… that doesn’t sound right.” He frowned.

“It works for you and Mathias.”

“Vanessa!” Jessica hissed.

Feeling a hurt in his chest he stood up, “I’m, I’m going to go check on Cyn…”

Vanessa grimaced. “Wait, Nick I-”

The air screamed and he dropped to his knees unable to form a thought as a pressure weighed upon every inch of him, making skin stretch as if it was too tight for his bones.

As he toppled to the side he could just barely register that both Vanessa and Jessica had fallen to the floor, their eyes having gone white, and blood dripping from their noses as they each let loose a silent scream.

--- Sarah Sionis ---

She felt something in the air, something reaching out and grasping in search of something, before immediately shutting it out as she withdrew all of her Malice back into her. Cutting off every connection she’d spent the last week making without a second of hesitance.

(I have had enough fingers probing at my mind, thank you very much.) She shivered before climbing off of her bed and making her way to the door.

With her Malice returned in full she felt it beginning to twist and turn inside of her, similar to how it would with her pawns only less prominently given how it was a natural part of her unlike the people she tied her strings to. Still it was enough to let her natural senses spread further than she could manage on her own, and with those senses she could hear the sounds of yells and running boots echoing throughout the base.

All guards being recalled from watching their prisoners as a crisis even greater than their possible escape hit the city. (Interesting…)

It wasn’t something she could take advantage of just yet, but given how she was wary of anything that could reach her mind without her being able to see and pinpoint them…

A skill she’d more than mastered growing up in the Sionis family as one of her father’s knights. (If only to figure out which thoughts were my own…)

Well, she was willing to let Sanctuary handle this one without her interference. (For now…)