The Big Reap (18 page)

Topher's body lay at the creature's gnarled bare feet atop a forest floor slick black with blood. He'd been unzipped from crotch to sternum in one clean motion, no doubt by one swipe of razor-sharp claw. His viscera gleamed purple in the dim firelight.

As it drank from Topher's severed arm, the whole creature seemed to swell, a process accelerated when it cast his arm aside and twisted his head off of his lifeless body, raising it to its mouth and sucking blood and brain from it as if extracting marrow from a bone. Muscles strained its leathery skin to the point of splitting. Teeth pushed through grayish gums, crowding a snout that grew ever longer by the second. Clawed feet knuckled harder into the dirt as the beast struggled to keep its feet through a growth spurt that plainly seemed to pain it.

It rose to eight feet tall. Then ten. Then twelve.

Guess all those years of strict rationing while it fed in dribs and drabs off the life-force of small children left the pump primed for some serious binge-eating. Kinda wish the end result was diabetes and Rascal scooters like the rest of us, and not, you know, “Hulk smash!”.

When it threw back its head and roared, I cowered like a frightened child.

But you know what they say: the bigger they are… the likelier they are to rip the head off your fucking meat-suit and drink lustily from its brainpan.

Then I thought of poor aged Ada, and the countless more like her loosed into the vast empty wilderness once they had nothing left to give, only to die of exposure or starvation because they were not so lucky as to be discovered and I thought, fuck it – let's kill this creepy hellhound.

But first I'd need a weapon.

Scratch that, I thought, as the creature cocked back one massive fist and punched the shelf of rock that formed the cave lip so hard it cracked directly atop one of my protective runes. This thing wasn't as dumb as it looked. So my first order of business was to keep it from breaching my hasty defenses and snacking on yet another hapless innocent.

It punched the rock again, so hard its bones cracked, its metacarpals pushing bloodily through the hairy skin. The creature bellowed in pain and animal frustration. Zadie screamed and crab-walked as far back as she could go – a whopping three feet. A chunk of stone the size of a cantaloupe fell from the underside of the lip, right where Zadie's head had been. The rune was still intact, but damaged; it couldn't take another blow like that one. No time for me to formulate a plan, I had to do something on the quick. So, as the beast brought back its ruined hand for another devastating blow, I fell back on an old standard: snark and false bravado, with shit-all to back it up.

“Hey, bitch! How's about you try out a chew toy that might bite back?”

The creature turned toward me and cocked its head. Her head, I found myself thinking, because – warped though this creature was – the eyeshine reflecting off its retinas could not fully mask the humanity they contained, and her features had an inexplicably feminine cast to them at odds with her hulking physicality.

“That's right,” I said to her. “Who's a good dog?”

A low rumble started in her throat and trembled her lips. “Who are you to speak to me this way?” she said.

“I'm the guy who's gonna end you,” I told her. “Just like I ended your friend back at the cabin.”

She chuffed in laughter. “Impossible,” she said.

“Lot of that going around,” I told her, making a show of looking her up and down. “But look at me – and at the runes that kept you from entering the lovely lady's cave – and tell me if I'm bluffing. Oh, and by the way, Jain and Magnusson send their best – or, rather, they would if they weren't dead as well.”

Doubt crept into her eyes, her voice. “You lie!”

“You're right,” I said. “I do. But not about this.”

At that, she threw her arms wide, and let out a roar that shook the trees, and blew my hair back from my face.

And then she attacked.

She was smarter than her friend, didn't blindly pounce like he did. Instead, she first uprooted a full-grown tree with her uninjured left hand ,roots popping as Topher's shoulder had, and dry dirt sounding like rain as it pattered to the ground beneath, and hurled it at me with all her might, her own bulk following close behind. I dove aside, too late. The trunk drove hard into my shoulder blades, and I ate dirt. Honestly, that tumble probably saved this meat-suit's life. The dog-beast sailed clear over me, rolling on one shoulder and springing upright in one fluid motion, once more facing me. On all fours, she was the size of a goddamn Clydesdale. Only every bit of her, from snout to what appeared to be a gnarled, half-formed fleshy tail, appeared designed to kill.

I shook the cobwebs from my brain and found my feet. She approached me slowly now: threatening, unconcerned. I backed up to maintain the distance between us – twenty feet, maybe less – but it was no use. Her every step – powerful haunches flexing, hot blood-tinged breath pluming iron-scented in the night – brought her closer.

My eyes locked on her, my feet carrying me ever backward, I stumbled and went down hard. Like a goddamn amateur. Like some fucking horror-movie-teenaged-twenty-something-bottle-blond. That's when she leapt. I knew then I was screwed but good; no getting out of this one, Thornton. So I clenched shut my eyes, tensing for the killing blow, and thought of Guam.

I'll tell you, I don't know if it's all the hiking or what, but that Zadie chick has got some muscle on that tiny frame of hers. And she's damn quick, too. But then again, maybe I would have been as well, had I just watched my only shot in hell of leaving these woods alive just up and quit.

Tiny hands bunched the shoulders of my jacket within their grip, and yanked me backward. My eyes sprung open as I slid along the forest floor. A fraction of a second later, the dog-beast landed in the spot that I'd just vacated: too late, because Zadie'd dragged me back into the shallow cave.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, incredulous, as if the news surprised me. “You?”

“Yes. You're not Nicky, are you?” she asked.

“He prefers Nicholas.”

Her eyes glinted with good humor. “No offense,” she said, “but so do I. Not so fond of being tied up.”

“Nicky's got some audio files that argue otherwise,” I told her. “You ever make it back to camp, you might want to see about destroying them.” And though the light in the cave was dim, I could swear she colored at that last.

“So can you really kill this thing, or was that bullshit?”

“I can,” I said. “I think. Hey, how's it feel to find a real, live monster?”

“Not great,” she said. “This was always Topher's dream, not mine.” She smiled, then, not with any real cheer, but with sadness and fond remembrance. “For what it's worth, I told him not to leave the cave. Once he got free from his restraints, I mean. But he wouldn't listen. He said he hadn't devoted his whole life to finding evidence of beasts like these only to go home empty-handed now. He said he'd rather die.”

“At least he found what he was looking for,” I offered weakly, as if the words would comfort her in the slightest.

“Yeah,” she said, eyeing his cave-side remains. “And I lost what I was looking for.”

“I'm sorry,” I told her, and I meant it. After all, I thought, the image of Elizabeth rising unbidden in my mind, I knew exactly how she felt.

A huff of breath announced the creature's presence outside the cave. I looked up to find it hunkered down on its haunches, its eyes staring back at me in the near-dark. Even crouching as it was, the damn thing was taller than my meat-suit at full height. Curled up to fit inside the cave, I felt pretty damn insignificant by comparison.

“Fe, fi, fo, fum,” I muttered. The creature snorted in what I realized was laughter.

“I smell more than blood,” it told me. “I smell your fear. Your desperation. You'd given up, hadn't you? If your lady-friend hadn't saved you, you'd be dead right now.”

“Nah,” I told her. “Worst case, I'd be sipping Mai Tais on the beach. And she's not my lady-friend.”

The creature sniffed the air. Her black canine lips parted in a smile. “Of course she's not; I can smell her scent all over this one. I suppose she and I have each taken something from the other now, then. The only difference is, I will soon get
you
back. Perhaps for her impertinence in stealing you away from me, I'll make her watch while I disembowel you.”

Zadie scoffed. “For my impertinence, sure. What was your excuse for making me watch you kill my boyfriend?”

“
His death was not my fault!
” the creature bellowed. “For one thousand years, my brother and I have subsisted without killing a soul – taking only what we needed to sustain ourselves and no more. First from the animals of this vast continent, not so uninhabited as we'd hoped when we happened upon it in our self-styled exile from humanity, but absent enough of people we could, for the most part, avoid temptation. Then from those who settled here, tasting, sure, but never killing. The same can sadly not be said of Jain, nor of Ricou, both of whom we were forced to turn out centuries ago on account of their… unfortunate lack of willpower. But then
you
arrive,” she said, jabbing a clawed finger in my direction, which bounced off the plane of the cave mouth as surely as if it had just met a sheet of plexiglas, “and all we've worked toward goes to shit. Lukas is dead. My fast is broken. And I fear that after such delectable game as this,” she said, licking clean her gore-strewn lips with her wet, black tongue, “weaning myself back off it may well prove troublesome.”

“You could avoid the issue altogether,” I told her, “and let me kill you here and now.”

She mock-pondered my proposal for a moment, bobbing her monstrous head from side to side. “It's true,” she said, “I could, provided you're capable, which I doubt. For if you were, why have you not yet struck?”

“Ask your brother,” I goaded her.

“
Lukas
,” she enunciated carefully, as if speaking of him pained her, “was struck by your makeshift bomb when you attacked. He went up quick, and was no doubt quite weakened by the flames. Still, I hold out hope that, given time, he will recover; I shall bury him beneath the garden to allow him to knit himself in peace. For he and I have naught but time. As for the others, perhaps they are truly dead, or perhaps you're but a flim-flam man, lying to buy yourself time. But I assure you, I have plenty of it to spare; if I wished, I could just sit here and watch you two slowly die of cold and of starvation, and then go on my merry way. The idea does have its appeal. But I confess, my earlier meal has left me oddly peckish, and edgy, and eager for more… I'd forgotten how succulent the meat and brain of your kind can be. So I fear instead,” she said, raising her ruined right hand to show the jutting bones, “I'll simply have to sacrifice my good hand, and hope that between the two of you, there's enough sustenance to make me whole once more.”

The great beast rose. Zadie whimpered. I pressed her back against the far wall of the shallow cave, and stood before her like a shield. Fist met rock, and rock yielded. The creature howled in pain and celebration.

And as it crouched once more to strike, I snatched up the nearest kinda-sorta weapon – the handled end of Zadie's broken walking pole – and did the only thing I could think to do. I rushed the creature, put my hand smack in the center of its chest, and drove the jagged pole clean through both with all the strength I had.

 

 

10.

“Good morning, Collector. I see you're getting an early start.”

I looked up from my drink – some strange carnivore's version of a Bloody Mary garnished not with a celery stalk but a single hot-smoked pork rib of all things – to see two blurry Liliths swimming in my meat-suit's vision, wearing wisp-thin matching silk slip dresses the color of black coffee. I confess, my choice of drink seemed a tad morbid and insensitive, given that I'd not nine hours ago seen poor Topher reduced to a disemboweled, blood-soaked corpse, but it was scarcely 10am in Colorado Springs, and my beverage choices were limited. Took me a good ten minutes' walk through the mostly residential, tree-lined streets surrounding the sprawling Penrose-St Francis hospital complex before I found anyplace that served booze, and even then, it was just a quaint little brunch joint whose drink menu consisted entirely of Bellinis, Mimosas, and Bloody Marys. You should have seen the looks I got when I ordered one of each to start, and then a round of three more Bloody Marys when I discovered I was none too fond of champagne cocktails. I'd waved off the wait staff's repeated – and increasingly desperate – attempts to solicit a food order from me, but now that I realized the room was spinning, and my vision was skipping about like a movie that's jumped its reel, I wondered if maybe I made the wrong call on that front. I made a mental note to ask for some steak and eggs if I hadn't yet scared the waitress off for good.

“Yeah, well.” I slurred. “Rough night.”

“So I gathered. Were you… successful in your mission?”

I snort-laughed at the politesse of her euphemism. “Yup. I succeeded the living shit outta them,” I said. “And this time, I only killed one civvie doing it. I think my batting average is improving. Although my poor meat-suit probably won't be playing piano with that hand anytime soon.”

Lilith looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but the waitstaff had long since started avoiding me, and in fact had taken to seating other patrons as far from me as possible about an hour ago, when they decided I was trouble. I think the only reason they'd yet to ask me to leave is because they were worried I'd make a scene. Even chance they weren't wrong.