Harvest Moon (36 page)

I entered through a maintenance cover in a back alley. When I dropped down into the muck, the stench hit me like a linebacker blindsiding a quarterback. I staggered and would have fallen if I hadn't caught myself on the slimy, curving wall. I bent double and retched. I'd been expecting a powerful stink, of refuse, and shit, and stagnant, filthy water. I hadn't been expecting the overpowering reek of dead, rotting flesh. Based on Samael's description of the ghoul, I supposed I should have been.

I dropped a protection on myself to keep the toxic
fumes at bay, and then I spun my nightvision spell. The magic seemed to penetrate the gloom well enough that I didn't think I'd need a light. There were sounds in the tunnel—the metallic groaning of distant valves, dripping water, the animal noises of small vermin. Nothing that sounded like a ghoul or a detective in distress. I picked a direction and crept down the tunnel.

As I advanced, the smell grew stronger. I had to flow more and more juice just to avoid adding the contents of my stomach to the sewage. Even with the juice, the hideous stench began to take its toll. My eyes, nose, and bare skin began to burn, as if from an extreme allergic reaction or exposure to toxic chemicals. My breathing became labored and fatigue numbed my limbs. I realized this wasn't just the mundane unpleasantness of the sewers. It was magic.

I'd gone maybe twenty feet when I stepped in the first pitfall. I dropped into the liquid filth, and though it was only about five feet deep, the fall plunged my head below the surface. I came up gasping and puking. I pulled myself out of the crude hole and hunched over, heaving until my stomach was empty. Then I heaved some more. Sludge clung to my skin and clothes and plastered my hair to my scalp.

The shakes had mostly subsided when I heard the noise, a horrible symphony of splashing and chittering growing louder as it approached. I knew what it was before I could see it. A massive horde of rats spilled down the tunnel toward me like a roiling, black flood. My nightvision resolved the amorphous, writhing mass, and the hundreds of tiny eyes shone like bright pinpoints of white light in the gloom.

I reached for the juice and it tasted foul as I drew
it in. “A great flame follows a little spark,” I said, and a ball of fire exploded down the tunnel and burst over the horde of rats. The horrible smell of burned fur and flesh washed over me and drove me to my knees. Oily, noxious smoke filled the tunnel, choking me.

The rats kept coming. The survivors swarmed over me before I could spin another spell. I lost my balance under the weight of the scratching, biting horde and toppled backward into the hole. I went under again, submerged in filth and a squirming blanket of rats.

I'd drained all my combat talismans in the pointless duel with my evil twin. The rats pressed me down below the surface and tore at my flesh with their teeth and claws. With no air in my lungs and no strength in my body, I couldn't spin a spell. I beat at the rats with my fists, but my feeble attacks had no effect. I was dying.

Your life is supposed to flash before your eyes at the moment of death. Maybe it was delirium or a misfiring brain overloaded by abject terror, but I was spared the traditional recap. I simply panicked. I cast out mindlessly for the juice, sucking it in like fresh air, drawing into me all the magic I could hold, and then drawing more.

Magic awakens something primal in the human mind. In its presence, humans become agitated, paranoid, and aggressive, and particularly strong magic can cause them to degenerate into an almost animalistic state. Turns out, it can have an even more dramatic effect on a horde of frenzied rats.

There was a deep, electrical humming sound as the magic rushed into me, and my body began to blaze with an arcane radiance. I felt the smothering vermin freeze and begin to convulse, as if they were one organism.
They went mad. Some of them turned and began to devour each other, others began to devour themselves. Some flipped and twisted spasmodically as if in their death throes, and others flailed in the water, churning it to a disgusting froth. Still others simply fled, exploding away from me down the tunnel in either direction.

I crawled out of the hole and dragged myself to the side of the tunnel, smashing or swatting aside any of the repulsive creatures that came near. I sagged against the wall, struggling to breathe, still burning with the magical fire. I gradually regained control of myself and began spinning spells to bleed off the juice that threatened to consume me from the inside out. No fireballs this time—I wielded focused, precise force spells like hammer and scalpel, smashing and impaling the maddened rats one by one.

When it was finished, I sat in the sludge amidst the floating rat corpses. I threw my head back, looked up at the low ceiling of the tunnel, and screamed. I didn't care if the ghoul or anyone else heard me. The terror and revulsion felt like a living thing inside me, and I had to get it out.

Time passed. Eventually, I marshaled enough strength to climb to my feet and get moving. I stumbled through the sewer in a haze of pain and exhaustion. When the tunnels branched I followed the stench, forging onward as it grew stronger, backtracking if it began to subside. There were more pitfalls, and I avoided some of them. In one of those I didn't avoid, I discovered a crude tunnel leading away from its bottom perpendicular and several feet below the main line. I suspected there was a whole warren of tunnels down there that hadn't been excavated by the Public Works guys.

The tunnel brightened ahead of me and I saw that it opened up into a broad intersection of four trunk lines lit by an overhead electrical fixture. The ghoul had chosen this space for its lair. I might have expected a little decor, comparable to what a homeless person might cobble together. Some personal effects, maybe, or at least a pile of garbage for the ghoul to call its own. But the ghoul didn't have anything like that. Instead, its lair was littered with bones, which I discovered when they began shifting and snapping under my feet, and with the partially eaten carcasses of its victims.

I didn't have much time to soak in the ambience, because I was distracted by Meadows and Sullivan. The detectives hung suspended from chains anchored to the roof in the center of the tunnel intersection. It was a crossroads, I realized, and I wondered if the ghoul chose this place to do its killing for the same reason I chose mine.

Meadows was unconscious, beaten and bleeding, but I could see the rise and fall of her chest and hear her ragged breath. She was alive. Sullivan wasn't so lucky—the ghoul had gotten busy with him. His right leg had been gnawed off a few inches below his knee. His abdomen was torn open, and the organs and entrails were exposed. His face was a mask of blood and ruin.

Then his eyes snapped open and fluid sprayed from his mouth as he gasped. “Puhhh…”

“Jesus Christ!” I yelled, and spun a spell. A blade of force sliced through the chain suspending his body and he collapsed in my arms.

“Puhhh…” he groaned.

“Shut up, Sullivan,” I hissed. “Don't talk.” I wanted to help him—stop the bleeding, cover the open cavity
where his abdomen was supposed to be, something, but I didn't even know where to start. Healing isn't exactly my specialty, and I didn't have any magic that could help him.

“Puhhh…” he said again. Then he clenched his jaw and forced out a word. “Partner…” He tried to turn his head toward Meadows, but he couldn't find the strength. He sank back and his eyes closed.

“She's okay, Sullivan,” I whispered. “You protected her.”

Detective Sullivan sighed. A bloody air bubble formed on his lips and popped. Then he died.

I released him and cut Meadows down. I cradled her, shaking her gently and patting her cheek. “Wake up,” I said. “Please, Meadows, wake up. I don't think I have it in me to carry you out of here.”

The lights went out.

It wasn't just the overhead fixture—the intersection was engulfed in a supernatural darkness. I could feel the magic in the air. I could taste it, as thick and nauseating as the stench. My nightvision was useless. I was blind.

I heard a splash to my left. Then I heard an airy, wheezing sound in the darkness that I couldn't identify at first. After a moment, I recognized it. Sniffing.

I spun up a light spell, hoping it would neutralize the magical darkness. It didn't. The spell came together like it should, but it didn't produce any light. The ghoul had some juice, and he was pumping more of it into his spell than I was. I could power up my spell, probably enough to overcome the darkness, but then I wouldn't be doing anything else. That didn't seem like a winning strategy.

I dropped the light spell and slowly stepped back,
away from the sniffing. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten about Meadows and I tripped over her unconscious body. I went down in the disgusting soup, again, and the ghoul seized the opportunity to attack.

There was no splashing to warn me, and I thought the creature must have leaped. One moment I was gathering my feet beneath me, and the next moment the ghoul was on me. We crashed into the water and rolled. My head plunged below the surface and smashed into the slimy concrete. I felt the thing's claws dig into my chest, pushing me under, and then its teeth bit deep into my shoulder, pain lancing through me like a hot knife.

I felt the ghoul's teeth grinding against bone. My lungs burned and white spots began to explode before my blinded eyes. I kicked and thrashed, struggling against the weight that pressed down on me, but the ghoul held me fast. I briefly managed to get my head above water and choked down a mixture of sewage and precious air before I went under again.

Abruptly, I could see. I looked up through the thin veil of foul water and saw the mottled gray form of the monster atop me. Its skin was loose and wrinkled, but the muscles that moved beneath it were lean and corded. I couldn't see its face because it was buried in my flesh, but the ghoul appeared to be completely hairless. Then it tore away from my shoulder and leaned back. It looked down at me with milky, dead eyes. A gobbet of my flesh hung from its withered lips, caught in a monstrous grinder of crooked, yellow fangs. The ghoul went incorporeal momentarily, flickering like a video image on the fritz.

The ghoul swallowed greedily, and then it opened its mouth wide, its lower jaw distending until I thought it
would snap. It grabbed my head in both hands, immobilizing it, and I felt its claws sink into my scalp. The ghoul leaned down until its horrid maw filled my view.

Then I heard a muffled retort, another, and another. The ghoul's head snapped around, looking over its shoulder, and its grip on me loosened. It phased out again, shimmering and ephemeral as a mirage. I pushed my face out of the water and sucked in air. The ghoul became solid again, and a sharp crack followed instantly. The back of the ghoul's skull exploded, and a black, oily fluid sprayed from the ruin and spattered my face.

The ghoul screamed but it didn't die. It thrust away from me and launched itself at Detective Meadows, who was leaning against the tunnel wall and leveling her service revolver at the thing. She fired again as the ghoul rushed her, but it phased out and the bullet passed harmlessly through its center of mass, ricocheting off the far wall. When it was almost upon her, the ghoul became solid again.

“Vi Victa Vis!”
I gasped, and struck the monster with a hammer of force in the small of its back. The spell hurled the ghoul over the detective's head and to her right, and slammed it into the concrete. There was a wet sound of pulped flesh and the crack of splintered bone, and the creature crumpled to the ground.

The ghoul twitched and jerked, phasing in and out, and its broken body crackled and snapped as it struggled to its feet. It turned and looked at me with those pale, soulless eyes, and it screamed again.

I looked at Meadows. “Run,” I said. She looked once more from me to the ghoul. Then she ran, scrambling away as quickly as her injured body could move.

I looked back to the ghoul. “A great flame follows a little spark,” I said, and the ball of blue-white fire spun into being above my upturned palm. The ghoul screamed again and flung out a gnarled claw at me. The force spell that struck my chest wasn't as powerful as mine had been, but the impact extinguished my fireball and hurled me backward, tumbling head over heels until I smashed into the opposite wall. The back of my head cracked painfully against the concrete. “God
damn
it,” I said, and slowly staggered upright, swaying momentarily until I caught my balance. I extended my hand and clenched it into a fist. “Man is born free,” I said, “but everywhere he is in chains.” Bands of force encircled the ghoul and began to constrict. The creature went incorporeal again, but I didn't release it. When the ghoul became physical, I flowed juice into the spell and tightened my grip, slowly compressing the creature's withered body as if I'd dragged it to the bottom of the sea. The ghoul's eyes popped and its internal organs were pulverized. Then a staccato snapping filled the tunnels as every bone in its body was ground to fragments.

When I was finished, the thing I held had all the structural integrity of a sack of jelly. I released it and it sank to the ground almost soundlessly. I walked a few paces down the tunnel Meadows had taken, and then turned. I spun up the fireball again and hurled it at the corpse. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of the ghoul except the stink.

After a few minutes, I found Meadows wandering lost through the sewers. “Detective,” I called, and spun a light spell so she could see. Meadows whirled and
leveled her revolver at me, then slowly lowered it until it hung at her side.

“I knew it,” she said. “I was right all along—about you, about all of it.”

“Yeah, you were right. What are you going to do now?”

“I can't do anything, can I? No one will believe it, and even if they did, you wouldn't let me do anything, would you? You could put a hex on me, make me forget. You could make me disappear.”