Dreary
could only describe the cold southwestern night as Jack slowly made his way up
to the top of one of the many stores lining 6th street. The
emergency ladders alongside the buildings were old and rusted, their bolts
loose, grinding against the roughly hewn bricks they were set into. Groaning
beneath Jack’s weight, the ladders still bore him up to his destination with
little trouble.
The
gigantic neon sign of the bar flickered rhythmically as the letters flashed
across the car-lined street below, deep shadows springing to life with every
shade of brilliance that lit up the empty space in front of the packed bar.
Standing on the roof, Jack could feel the heavy bass of the music reverberating
through the cement as he moved to the edge of the roof, dropping his pack to
the ground unceremoniously.
Breathing
into his glove-covered hands to warm his fingers, he rubbed his biceps a few
times to ward away the goose bumps the cold night brought on.
“Damn
I hate the cold…” He grumbled to himself as he dropped into a squat, unzipping
his bag and taking out his high powered rifle, adjusting the sights as he
checked over the expensive tool of war. Popping the clip from the base of the
gun, he smiled grimly at the .50 caliber rounds stacked within the curved metal
canister, each metal slug thinly sliced across the tip, creating a simple star
over each round. “Good. Worried there for a minute.”
Shoving
the clip back into the rifle, Jack laid himself out on the top of the roof,
settling into the gravlly concrete as best he could, and set up his sights
towards the opposite lane of buildings, where a closed nightclub sat deserted
and dark amidst the brilliant lights of the bar-lined street.
According
to Jack’s intel, that was where the beast had been holing himself up. But
tonight was the full moon, a time when all the creatures of the night were on
the prowl. Without a doubt, Jack knew he would catch his quarry tonight, if he
ever.
An
hour slowly died as he lay there, waiting for some small sign of the creature
to emerge from its hiding place, or to return fresh from the hunt. He’d made
certain to check over the whole building during the daylight hours, looking for
alternate entrances or exits, and was pleased to find the only viable entrance
for his quarry was from the alley between the abandoned bar and the Goth club
next to it. For an hour he watched as pale teens in black trench coats came in
and out of the active club, the slight reverb from below distorting the
depressing sounds that escaped from the darker lounge every time the front door
opened.
Just
as his digital watch chimed three, with the last stragglers streaming out from
the numerous bars and clubs drunkenly making their way home, did Jack finally
see a sign of movement from the abandoned building. One of the boards covering
a broken window lifted from the nails, slowly sliding into the darkness of the
forgotten club as silent as an owl’s flight. This action repeated itself three
times, removing the wooden planks from the covering slow enough for the drunken
teens not to notice the subtle movements.
Jack
readied his rifle, leaning forward to look through the scope and into the
darkened window, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the creature he’d come all
this way to hunt.
Emerging
from the darkness like a specter from beyond the veil, a great lupine creature
slinked out of the abandoned club, glowing yellow eyes and lips pulled back in
a hideous snarl revealing a horrid number of jagged fangs. In the pale light of
the neon signs, Jack could make out the hunchbacked frame of the shaggy beast
standing on all fours, its front two limbs long and gangly, ending in wicked
black scythes that vaguely resembled talons.
A
werewolf.
“Fuck…”
Jack muttered to himself, cocking his rifle slowly so as not to attract the
beasts attention. It sat back on its haunches in the shadow of its lair, eyes
watching the numerous drunken revelers stumbling down the street. “It wasn’t
supposed to be a werewolf!”
All
of the attacks that had brought Jack to New York had been the calling cards of
a highly intelligent Vampire. For almost a year, serial killings had been going
on that had been reported as organ thefts, reportedly in conjunction with
illegal organ trade. The local police had little luck in tracking down the
culprit, though they had discovered a number of hospitals that had received the
pilfered parts.
Jack
had, on a whim, checked with a friend of his that was able to access the
hospitals records, asking him to check to see if anything had been recorded as
missing, or as waste, in a gross amount.
A
week later he’d received an e-mail from his friend, confused but happy that
Jack had suggested he look into the matter. While no money was missing or being
skimmed from any departments, a good deal of donated blood was being marked as
tainted and being disposed of. The problem cropped up when his buddy couldn’t
find the appropriate paperwork to dispose of all the tainted blood. It was as
if the blood was simply disappearing.
Jack
knew better.
Jack’s
father, a Hunter in his own right, had tracked a similar pattern in the 60’s,
hunting a Vampire in this very city for almost a full decade, trying to find
the foul creature’s lair so that he could slay the beast by day. He’d never so
much as caught a good glimpse of the beast in the nine years he chased him,
though he had successfully flushed the creature out a number of times,
eventually forcing it to go to ground.
When
a Vampire went to ground, it was virtually impossible to find where the unholy
beast cloistered itself. Jack had briefly wondered if this was the same Vampire
his old man had hunted back in the day. The chances were slim, truth be told,
but the possibility was always there. Vampires were rare in the Americas, and
one with this much skill were rarer still; this one was masking it’s
blasphemous nature behind a curtain of violent crimes, making his acts appear
to be nothing but the run of the mill psychopath.
This,
of course, did not explain the presence of the fucking Werewolf standing in the
middle of 6th street, its slavering jowls blowing hot gouts of steam
into the frigid night air as it looked up and down the street for its next
meal.
Lining
up his rifle, Jack took careful aim, placing the crosshairs just over the
thickest part of the creature’s skull. The rounds weren’t silver, but with the
clever markings he’d made to each round, the lead would fragment upon impact,
shredding through the toughened flesh like a fragmentation grenade, flensing
whatever unfortunate body part the bullet impacted. Cocking back the rifle to
pull one of the .50 caliber slugs into the chamber, Jack sighted his weapon
towards the abominations head.
The
wolf sniffed the air, almost as if it sensed Jack slowly squeezing the trigger
from a distance. Whatever it was that the beast planned to do suddenly became
moot as the left side of the creature’s head exploded from the force of the
rifle’s blast. The crowd of teenagers and drunken college party-goers all
screamed in response to the horrid echo ringing through the streets, a sound
just barely louder than the keening howl the mangled beast let out as it
dropped to the ground, scrabbling at the pavement in agony.
No comments:
Post a Comment