An hour later the four of us were loaded up in a vehicle that from the outside looked like a standard Eastport ambulance. From the interior it looked a little more like a SWAT truck, only painted white. It was loaded up with monster-hunting equipment and ready to rock and roll, just like us.
As usual, I was driving. Derek was in the passenger seat, explaining to me the intricacies of spellcasting. Most of what he was saying was flying straight past me and out the window, honestly. Who knew magic required so much math?
In addition to being focused on the road and on navigating to our destination, I found my attention flicking up to the rear-view mirror where I could see the girls talking in the back. At one point on our drive I saw Tabitha hold up both of her hands a good distance apart and bite her lip, and Bianca’s laughter cut through Derek’s technical descriptions of casting hexes versus charms.
Smirking to myself, for I thought I had a pretty good idea what they were discussing, I lowered my eyes back to the road and gave Derek the impression that I was both listening and understanding a word he was saying.
I wasn’t, but with how excited he was to be sharing all his newly-acquired knowledge he most definitely did not need to know that. Sometimes you just gotta be there for your bros even if you have no clue what the fuck they’re talking about.
A short while later I announced that we were, “Two minutes out,” and the energy inside the vehicle changed instantly. Tabitha and Bianca halted their hushed conversation in the back and started getting set. Derek fell silent and started meditating in the passenger seat, preparing himself for whatever magical mayhem he was capable of bringing forth.
Io’s voice suddenly crackled to life in my ear. Her sultry mezzo-soprano voice delivered straight into my ear drum sent shivers down my spine and we almost had a repeat of the incident from the briefing chamber.
“Well hello, darlings. By the looks of things you are almost there. Let me get you up to speed. There’s a police perimeter set up around the apartment buildings you’re heading towards. Flash your badge and say the magic words, and they’ll let you in. Our suspected Feral is in apartment 209, fifth story, north side. The cops believe they are responding to a hostage situation, but we know better. There are three monsters registered in that building, and we’re not sure which one has gone off the rails but all of them are potentially dangerous.”
“List ’em off for us, Io,” Tabitha ordered, racking her assault rifle’s charging handle.
“Alright. Let’s count ’em down. Resident number one is a man by the name of George Hansen. He’s on a work visa from the World of Magic. Seems like he’s a warlock who deals in antiquities, not much of a threat for turning Feral if you ask me. Next up is Wyatt Keen, naturalized citizen. His parents both came from the World of Monsters and by the looks of it he’s something of a hybrid case. Part siren, part gorgon. He’s a bit of a recluse, understandably. Works from home, has his food delivered, never leaves his house. And then there’s Claire Ashcombe. Poor Claire. She was brought here by a random anomaly just six months ago. We set her up with a foster family, retired Keepers by the looks of it, but it seems she’s been having some trouble adjusting.”
Bianca groaned. “I don’t need to know her whole sob-story, Io. Just tell us what she is and how to kill her!”
Derek let out a, “Hear-hear!”
Hearing him so loudly, callously agree with his girlfriend about killing a child made my skin crawl. Monster or not, this ‘Claire’ seemed to be having a rough go of it. I worried what it said about my old friend that he was willing to contemplate how best to put down some child after knowing so little about her situation.
Had he always been so bloodthirsty, or was this Bianca’s influence rubbing off on him?
As I was turning the last corner onto the street we needed, revealing the police blockade set up around the apartment building that Io had warned us about, my eyes shot to the rear-view mirror and locked onto Tabby’s. She, likewise, was looking at me with the same concerns. Wordlessly, we drew comfort from the fact that unlike the other two occupants of our assault vehicle, we were actually bothered by this situation.
Io’s voice fed through the comm with a touch of annoyance. “Uh, it says here she’s a manticore. A fledgling manticore,” she emphasized, “so there’s no need to break out the big guns. With all four of you there you can easily detain her and bring her back to HQ if she’s even the one who’s gone Feral. Anyway, I’ll be on overwatch, holler if you need anything.”
Bianca scoffed. “As if. The sass in her voice. Ugh. Can you believe these drone operators? They think they know what it’s like out in the field, they don’t! Do they, Derek?”
“Hell no,” Derek agreed, instantly.
Ignoring them, I pulled the truck over on the side of the road and put it in park. All four of us disembarked as one and started heading towards the police line. Tabitha and I both looked like SWAT officers with our tactical vests, collars, and weaponry, and we had our badges on display so we barely even needed to acknowledge the beat-cops as we strode past them with confidence. Bianca and Derek looked like plain-clothes detectives and just flashed some badges they must have been carrying on them to gain access.
There was some guy on a bullhorn shouting up into the complex, talking about demands and the safe release of hostages and whatnot, but as far as I could tell he was talking to himself.
Tabitha led the way, following the directions Io fed to us via earpiece, and we threaded our way through the throng of officers and snuck inside the apartment building.
Inside it was a scene straight out of a horror movie. Blood-smeared walls. Flickering lights. Claw marks gouged out of door frames and body parts tossed here and there. The smell was overwhelmingly foul. A potent mix of sewage, coppery blood, and some tangy scent that agitated my blood in a way I can scarcely describe. Like one sniff was all it took for my dino-arm to suddenly start trying to sprout from my stump.
There was this buzzing sound too. Like an annoying fluorescent lamp only amplified tenfold. It was almost enough to overwhelm me for a second, but just as with every time my dino-arm had popped during a sparring session, I breathed evenly and rode it out, balancing myself after just a second’s hesitation.
Likewise, I caught Tabitha suddenly pause as soon as we entered the complex, and a flash of yellow from her eyes gave me ample warning. I nudged her with my left elbow to get her attention. Her eyes were flickering yellow and telltale lines were starting to appear along her veins, letting me know that her wolf form was about ready to burst out and take over. In such tight quarters, if she wolfed out now right beside Biance and Derek? Shit was bound to get messy.
“Hey I’ve got an idea! Why don’t you two hit the west stairwell? We’ll swing around east and meet in the middle up on the fifth floor,” I suggested to Bianca and Derek.
Derek nodded sagely. “Pincer movement, nice. Let’s!” He and his girlfriend eagerly slipped off and I shoved Tabitha into an open apartment.
She growled at me, both eyes flaring yellow and her grip on her assault rifle slackening.
Forgive me, Hannah.
Low on time and short on options, I gripped her by the jaw as gently as I dared and pressed my mouth to hers in a kiss. It started off as my best impression of what I would have given to Hannah when she was on the verge of a panic attack and needed me to short circuit her mind by giving it something to focus on. But after that first heart-pounding second where her eyes were still yellow, they faded back to normal. She kissed me back and it very quickly became obvious that there was some real heat behind her lips.
Things started to get more urgent, she even reached for my belt with one hand while pulling my head closer to hers with the other, when something else started growling.
Our lips broke apart and we both glanced towards the apartment’s kitchenette.
Looming over the mangled corpse of someone’s grandmother was a lithe cat-like creature with a prehensile tail covered in jagged spikes.
“Oh shit,” Tabitha cursed, pushing away from me and drawing her rifle.
The manticore, Claire, hunched lower to the ground, her hindquarters rocking back and forth in preparation to pounce, and her tail flicked towards Tabby. A dagger-sized quill shot forth from the end of the Feral’s tail and sliced right through Tabby’s bicep; punching a hole clean through the wall behind her and probably one or two after that as well.
My vision ran red.
My dino-arm was out and I was already three strides towards Claire before I even had time to think about my next actions. Her tail swiveled to track me and she shot five or six shots at me in the blink of an eye. I raised my left hand like a shield and felt five distinct needle-like impacts stab into my forearm. The sixth zipped past my ear as I drew my shock-knuckles and kept marching towards her.
Claire leapt towards me, claws out and ready to go all out. Her eyes were blazing red candles, just like dino-man’s had been back at Hilltop. She had gone completely Feral.
I backhanded her with my left arm, redirecting her pounce and following it up with an uppercut straight to her stomach. My shock-knuckles sunk into the soft flesh of her belly and released a charge that launched her up through the ceiling and onto the second story with a deafening yowl of pain.
Instead of leaping down to finish the fight, Claire sped off into the hallway and started galloping toward the west end of the building.
Tabitha, wincing as her right arm already started healing, met my gaze and motioned towards the doorway. “Shit that burns. Just gimme a second, I’ll be right behind you.” When I didn’t move right away she added, “She’s heading right for Bianca and Derek. Go!”
I hesitated for only a second after that to make sure she was really okay before I nodded and charged out of the apartment, heading for the eastern staircase and activating my comm. “Io, Claire is the Feral. We have a small manticore loose on the second story, I repeat, we have a small manticore loose on the second story!”
“Understood. Her heat signature shows her on the south side, heading towards her apartment, number 75, if I’m not mistaken. Bianca and Derek have engaged George on the third floor. The Warlock attacked on sight, his motives remain unclear. No sign of Wyatt anywhere. He seems to have fled the premises. You and Tabby focus on bringing down the manticore, and I’m sure our unit will have the situation in hand in no time.”
Io’s calm voice in my ear helped soothe some of the hammering heartbeats I was experiencing after that little rollercoaster. The taste of Tabitha’s lips still lingered on my tongue, and now I was taking the stairs two at a time chasing after the monster who had tried to kill us. But hearing the utter lack of panic in Io’s words was no small comfort.
By the time she was done, I was already shouldering my way through the door onto the second story and swapping my shock-knuckles out for my Roulette, keeping it at chest level as I scanned both ends of the hall and moved towards apartment 75.
I ran between apartments 55 and 56 and suddenly halted as a stinging pain shot up my left arm. Like needles, dozens of them, puncturing me over and over again all the way up to my shoulder. The last time I felt something this overwhelming I wound up growing a dino-arm.
A crash from up ahead drew me back to the present moment and out of my head.
It was just pain. No different than the phantom pains I had been putting up with for a year. I could handle this.
It was just pain.
I shook myself and kept moving, and was about halfway down when Tabitha emerged behind me and rushed to catch up. Aside from the blood smeared across her right arm, she looked completely unharmed. Not a mark on her.
That’s such a cool trick.
Together we formed up on either side of the broken doorway, the letters 75 hanging at odd angles as the door itself was only hanging on by a single hinge. She signaled me to go in first, which I chose to interpret as a sign of trust in me to take the lead and not a sign that she viewed me as expendable.
Gunblade up, I moved into apartment 75 expecting a fight.
What I found was a young girl. Maybe high school age or just out of high school, curled in the fetal position in the middle of an absolutely wrecked apartment. The place was fucked. Furniture? Torn apart. Flat-screen television in pieces. The sliding glass door that led to the patio was a thousand glass shards scattered everywhere. The fridge was in the bedroom, and judging by the lack of any standing walls between there and the kitchen, it had gotten there in as direct a manner as possible.
Maybe it was just denial that kept my gun pointed elsewhere, but I couldn't bring myself to point the blades towards this girl. I couldn't bring myself to lay the blame for all this carnage at her feet.
Tabitha moved past me and swept the area, stepping into the bedroom and then returning.
“All clear,” she reported a second later. “Two corpses. Several days old, by the smell.”
How she could tell that just by the smell was beyond me. Maybe it was a werewolf thing. Maybe she had been around enough bodies that she just knew. Either way, I believed her.
My eyes roamed the apartment with a new attention to detail. Questions started forming before I could stop them. Questions I wasn’t sure I’d like the answers to.
“How long?” I asked aloud, surprising both myself and Tabitha.
“‘How long’ what?” Tabitha asked, not understanding.
“How long ago did it start?”
Claire, on the other hand, looked up at me with a knowing expression. “Six days.”
I knelt before her. Way closer than I would have felt comfortable getting when she was still a manticore. But her eyes were clear. Something was different.
In a small voice, little more than a whimper, she spoke. “Do you hear it too? That sound? The buzzing. Like office building lights, but higher. I swear the humans can’t hear it. It’s driving me insane!” Her eyes flashed red for a moment, but I set my dino-hand down on the ground before her and moved nice and slow. I tried to get my voice to do for her what Io’s had done for me earlier. I spoke calmly, like I had all the time in the world. I almost believed it myself.
“Easy, Claire. We heard it too. It’s been going on for six days, you said?”
Claire’s eyes cleared up instantly and she nodded. “I held on for four. But it just kept. Getting. Louder. Four days in they…my foster mom, she…and I—” Claire looked like she was getting confused, trying to remember the words for what she was trying to say. Then she winced and covered her ears with her hands, revealing her naked body. She was pale, and far too skinny to be healthy. A part of me wondered if that was a product of her transformation, but I knew better. No one gets that skinny after just a few days, not even a monster.
Her foster parents had been starving her.
“Aaah! It hurts! Can’t you hear it?”
I could, but it was fainter than before. Like it was moving further away. I glanced up at Tabitha to see her shaking her head like she was trying to get rid of something that had fallen on her hair, a spider or a bit of snow or something. Her eyes flashed yellow in the same second that Claire’s flashed red.
“I’m so hungry!” Claire roared. Her voice was no longer that of a child.
Spikes sprouted from her spine, splattering blood all over the place as they shredded free. That same jagged tail that had fired quills through Tabby’s arm, and mine, suddenly burst free from her tailbone and curled up into the air. With a howl of pain, Claire arched her back and grew stiff all at once like she was experiencing a seizure as the transformation took hold completely.
She screamed, “Nooooooooo!” even as her human form split apart to reveal the manticore beneath. Tatters of flesh and splatters of blood exploded all across the decimated living room.
I barely noticed. My eyes were on Tabitha, for a similar transformation was starting to take place with her as well. I knew her. She was in control. She never almost wolfed out twice in one day, let alone less than ten minutes apart.
That sound. The buzzing. What did Aleksei call it in the hallway? The Signal.
Claire sprang to her paws and hissed at us ferociously, eyes red as brake lights, her shift into Feral animal was utterly complete. But Tabitha was still mostly human. She hadn’t been subjected to the Signal for nearly as long.
Pieces were coming together in my head even as I sprang into action.
I gripped the handle of my Roulette and hit two buttons before I unholstered it, swapping the ammunition mode over to cryo-rounds. Lashing out with my dino-hand, I gripped Claire by the muzzle and threw her towards the balcony, then rush-tackled Tabitha into the bedroom.
Her growl was dangerously close to canine as we landed on her back, but I locked eyes with her and got in her face.
“Stay human, Tabitha. You’re stronger than this. That little girl held on for four days. You can manage it for four minutes, okay? I need you to hold on for four minutes, got it?”
The yellow in her eyes faded. Her irises locked onto mine and she nodded.
That was as close to a guarantee as I was going to get, so I took it.
Claire came bounding around the corner towards the bedroom and I opened fire, spraying concussive filament her way and peppering her feline body as I rose to a protective standing position over Tabitha and unloaded Roulette’s cylinder. Halfway to empty, all the filament jutting from her white fur suddenly sparked and super combined, just like Olson had warned me it would.
A concussive blast knocked Claire flying away from where my shots had landed; knocking her clear through the wall of her apartment and into the hallway.
I strode after her calmly, Roulette leveled at her as I moved.
My intention was to knock her out cold and bring her back to headquarters.
I never got the chance.