CHAPTER 60: DOG & BONE | THE RAID—II

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Cameron stared at the vial in his hand.

  A fuchsia-colored ooze stared back at him. Janice told him it was called Roséviscous, and that wasn’t a potion meant to be consumed, but more like an alchemical trap waiting to be thrown. The coloring almost looked odd compared to the puke-green of the pasteurized demon blood hanging from his belt vials; the two he left gained another friend, courtesy of Esme, who had a spare laying around she didn’t need.

  Only a narrow street stood between them and the doors to Spectre.

  They were posted up on a fire escape. Cameron leaned his arms off of the railing, and Tania sat on the railing with her feet dangling off the edge.

  A dewy scent lingered and a thin veil of fog wormed its way in front of them, obscuring the occasional passing car and dulling the neon letters that read SPECTRE right above a set of twin doors. Pedestrian foot traffic was light, if not entirely non-existent. Few people found reason to travel to the tail end of Cyprus Alley unless they were going to Marcus Velvet’s club, which had no reason to be fully operational or open for business while the sun was high. Not that the sun was very bright—the only color to bleed through grim and gray was the occasional neon glow and the headlights of passing cars.

  “You think these things have side effects?” Cameron asked, waving the Roséviscous around in Tania’s face before placing it into his pocket.

  “Fuck if I know. I’m not touching anything even remotely alchemy related until I’m six feet under,” Tania said with a grimace. “In fact, take mine.”

  “You keep it,” Cameron said.

  Tania had tried to hand him a separate vial; a liquid that looked like some blend of mercury and mustard. Fleetfoot, Janice had told them. Something that would make Tania faster than she already was, if she decided to take it.

  She was wearing her usual getup: a long-sleeved thermal shirt, ridiculously long black cargo shorts that went down to her ankles, and boots that went halfway up her calves. A simple dark baseball cap was about the only thing that contained her black and maroon curls. Recent additions to her outfit were a set of golden hoop earrings, and a chunky black grommet belt that she wore over her waist like a sash—both gifted from Esme, apparently, who had no use for some of her unused wardrobe and jewelry.

  Cameron still wore his gray pullover sweater and black cargos, and was starting to miss that stupid beige denim jacket Leroy had gotten him. His Reign 18 was tucked beneath the front of his belt, and Guts whirred along the inside of his sprite-cage next to Cameron’s three unused vials of pasteurized demon blood.

  “Velvet had two people at the door last time. Leroy mentioned them at Esme’s. Luisa and Rhett,” Cameron said. “As far as I know, Luisa is just some mundy with a big gun. Rhett is an accursed, but I’ve got no clue what he’s capable of.”

  Tania closed her amber eyes. Her face twitched, her body chittered, and she tossed her hat onto the fire escape platform. Her hair frilled up and extended just below her waist like a wave of black maroon fur; some of which framed the side of her face like wolfish sideburns. Her dark-olive skin took on a deep gray hue. Her nails fell from her fingers and black claws, sharp and long as small knives, jutted out.

  Her eyes opened; a deep yellow with slits that saw through the fog. “Yeah. I see them.”

  “You’re sure it’s them?”

  “Yeah, Cam, I’m sure it’s them,” Tania said, her voice a tone deeper. “Hispanic lady with a semi-automatic rifle, lanky accursed dude with skin like mine and a face only a mother could love. She’s wearing a black suit and a white blouse with some cleav out, and he’s wearing an all black suit with a black tie that looks like it’s too tight around his neck.”

  Cameron raised a brow. “Not bad. And you’re sure you don’t see anyone else?”

  Tania shook her head. “Nope.”

  Cameron removed his hands from the railing and stared at his palms with an assured grin that just barely peaked through his features.

  With a sudden clench, he leaped over the edge over the fire escape; forcing out a scarlet red miasma from his mouth, eyes, ears, and nose. When his feet landed on the ground they dented the concrete with two shoe-sized craters. Below his clothes, a dense white-ivory shelled over his skin. It ran along his neck, his chin, and cradled the sides of his face.

  Quick, easy, no pain. He willed it out with an ease he didn’t think was possible; transforming with no more than a focused, albeit violent, exhale. It’d been that way ever since the Rite—he could turn his white-ivory armor on and off at will, a passive benefit that seemed miniscule in comparison to the active one he’d been itching to try out in full ever since Moira Saunter spit him out of the Threshold.

  Guts jolted around inside its sprite-cage, and Cameron flicked it open, freeing it. It whirred around his head and hovered just above his shoulder. With a newfound deftness, he withdrew his Reign 18 tucked into the front of his belt and held it firmly with both hands. His stance looked practiced—poised, efficient, and lacking in the reckless aggression of a single-handed grip.

  Tania landed next to him on all fours, her claws sparking along the asphalt before she lurched upright onto her feet. She eyed him up and down, with a brow raised slightly in what could’ve been admiration or a snap judgement that he wasn’t sure he’d want to hear, and it occurred to Cameron that this was the first time she’d seen him utilizing his hexling abilities.

  “Huh,” she said.

  “Huh what?” Cameron remarked.

  “You transform. Like me. Sort of,” Tania said. “Are all hexlings like that?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Cameron said. “But we’re all different flavors of ugly.”

  Tania smiled a sharp, toothy smile with fangs that looked deadlier than the claws she’d used to very nearly sever the tendons in his shoulder when they’d first met. Cameron still felt the echo of that pain whenever he caught a glimpse of her grizzly, black as midnight nails.

  “The whole bone-looking turtleneck, goatee and sideburns thing isn’t so bad. Could be worse. Fortunately for you, most of it is covered by your clothes, and you have resting bastard face that scares most people away anyways.”

  “Resting bastard face? What the fuck is that?” Cameron asked, his tone reactive and mildly offended.

  “Yes. Resting bastard face. Unless you’re secretly a woman, or, want to come out and admit that you have a bitch face instead of a bastard face. I’m trying to throw you a bone here, man.”

  Cameron grimaced.

  “Plus, there's that half-mutilated ear,” Tania noted.

  Cameron ran a hand over his ear. She was right.

  “Yeah, whatever. Clock’s ticking, Tania. They’re waiting on us to bust the doors down. You ready?”

  Tania looked both ways. A single car passed through the narrow street, and she began to walk across the road.

  Cameron opened and closed his mouth, only for a minor tut to escape. He had his answer. He switched the Reign 18’s safety off, pulled back the slide, and followed after her.

  ?

  Luisa saw them first.

  She pointed her AR-15 in their direction, her body’s mural of tattoos glistening under the neon light of the Spectre sign. She whistled, loudly, with a defensive and at-the-ready sort of stance that Cameron expected to see from someone like her. Rhett, ugly as Cameron had remembered him, adjusted his black tie before running a hand through his slicked back hair. The mangled flesh along his gray-skinned face was never a pleasant sight.

  “Cameron,” Rhett said.

  Cameron remembered him being kind, in his own way, the last time he was there. A tremble emerged along his hands, and the memory of Hughes flashed before him, pulling him back into the picture of violence he’d drawn for himself so many weeks ago. Cameron’s hand clenched. The tremor stopped, and with it, so too did Cameron’s apprehension.

  Neither of these two, as far as Cameron was aware, were deserving of ugly justice. But they were in the way.

  “Rhett,” Cameron nodded.

  “Not another step,” Luisa barked.

  Tania barked back. But hers was louder, fiercer, and more of a declaration than a response. It wasn’t a warning either—it was a predator announcing that it was present, not because it needed to, but because it enjoyed the idea of the chase its prey might offer it.

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  She dropped to all fours and springboarded herself towards Luisa. Luisa didn’t hesitate. She widened her stance and let her trigger finger do the talking. Bullet after bullet flew in Tania’s direction, and one after another pierced her all the same. Blood spattered onto the ground. Tania roared, growled and sneered in pain, but she didn’t let that stop her. Lead wasn’t silver; it was a temporary setback.

  Clearly, Tania had no use for something like Fleetfoot. She was fast enough already. What she needed was something to bite, tear, and throw, and Luisa just so happened to be her much needed chew toy.

  A bullet-riddled Tania leapt off the ground and pounced onto Luisa. Her claws pinned Luisa’s wrists into the concrete itself, and she bit down into Luisa’s face. It happened so quickly that neither Cameron nor Rhett could register its immediacy; it was less than a minute, just a bit longer than an instant, and paralyzing in its presentation.

  It was Luisa’s blood-gurgled scream that activated Rhett and stripped him of any kindness or decency that Cameron remembered him having. Out went the mild-mannered bouncer, in came the accursed. With a simple flex, Rhett’s blazer and shirt ripped and tore from his torso; in its place was a lanky frame, gray-skinned, lithe, and covered in bite marks that had their own sets of teeth. Mouths that were alive.

  Tania’s head swiveled to the side. She didn’t think, she just went for it.

  Cameron slid between the two of them, eyes narrowed in focus, body moving with a reactive efficiency instead of instinct. Rhett wasn’t planning on throwing a punch. He was planning on Tania going to him, arms spread wide, pocketed in bite-mark-mouths same as his torso.

  He bear-hugged Cameron instead.

  Rhett’s many sets of teeth tore into Cameron’s pullover, only to crack as they clamped down onto the white-ivory. Cameron, a head shorter than him, had to lurch up on his tiptoes to headbutt Rhett with one of the only parts of his body not covered in white-ivory—his forehead.

  Rhett stumbled back, if only ever so slightly.

  Now freed, Cameron adjusted his grip around his Reign 18.

  Planting his back foot, he surged forward into Rhett with a two-handed grip, shoving the barrel of the pistol into one of Rhett’s torso-mouths. He fired once. Rhett cried out in pain. Guts whirred, complacent, still, and unblinking. It sensed no danger and no credible threat to Cameron.

  Cameron created a danger for it, by way of proximity.

  He dislodged one hand from his pistol and quickly grabbed Guts. Rhett was still close, and well within arm’s reach. Cameron reached towards the wind-sprite. His armored fingers clutched around Guts, whose blades of wind slithered and screamed between his grasp.

  Cameron shoved Guts against Rhett’s torso.

  And it blinked.

  He was sent hurling across the sidewalk, body slamming against the asphalt.

  Before he could even stand, Tania lowered herself to all fours and zipped towards him, chasing his long body with all the urgency of a dog seeing a thrown stick. She clamped her teeth onto his ankle, hard, and whipped him to the side. Rhett’s back banged against the wall just beside the doors leading into Spectre. Dust and debris plumed outward.

  Cameron returned both hands to his gun and trained it on Rhett, shoulders relaxed, feet spread slightly apart. Guts returned to Cameron’s side, unblinking, and unbothered.

  Tania stood up, bipedal once more, and wiped Rhett's accursed blood from her mouth, spitting out whatever was left onto the side of the street. “Yuck.”

  Cameron allowed himself a half-smile. Eager as he was to put his new abilities to the test, Leroy’s training and his own progress in handling Guts proved sufficient. More than sufficient—it was effective, and there was no need to waste the power he’d just earned on people who didn’t warrant him using it to begin with. His eyes trailed towards the door to Spectre. Inside, he’d have his chance.

  He glanced over towards Luisa, or what used to be Luisa, and couldn’t bring himself to look at the state of her face, which wasn’t much of a face anymore. Tania studied her handiwork with ambivalence, and Cameron tried to get a read on if she felt bad, or sad, or guilty, only to find that it was none of the above. Her hands didn’t tremble like Cameron’s used to when he’d nearly killed Hughes. Her lips didn’t quiver. Her face wasn’t plagued by indecision.

  She looked relieved. Not to have killed someone, but to have scratched an itch that was either a byproduct of her fiendhood—an intuitive prey drive likely ruminating in each and every lycan. It was either that, or she was content with the opportunity to blow off some steam. Steam built up by Leroy, his lack of forthcomingness, and the way he’d oh-so-casually glossed over the fact that Tania had grief with the Order of the Wardens that he demanded she put on hold for the sake of the raid. Either way, Luisa was on the receiving end of a much needed release.

  “Inside?” Tania said, nodding her head towards the door.

  Most of her bullet wounds were already beginning to close, gray-skin reforming over the holes in her clothing where Luisa had peppered her with an AR-15 that ended up being more decorative than useful.

  “Yeah,” Cameron said.

  A hand reached out through the remnant dredges of the dust and smoke. Rhett’s hand. He wasn’t dead, but close to it, hugging the concrete in a prone position, greasy hair unkempt, each breath heavier than the last.

  Cameron trained his gun on him.

  Tania assumed her usual position, lowered herself, and prepared to pounce.

  By the time the smoke had finally cleared, Cameron’s eyes widened. A vial rolled out from where Rhett laid, the near silent clanks of the glass prompting Cameron to follow it to where it stopped in front of his boots. His eyes swiveled back to Rhett. Glowing blue residue trailed from his mouth, like specs of salt.

  Tania tensed and flared her claws. “Is that—”

  “Ether,” Cameron said.

  An accursed was one thing. A mundy on ether was another thing. An accursed on ether was a wildcard; a combination so unnatural that he wondered if it would even work. Tania growled in his direction, her voice wolfish, her body so tense that her waist-length mass of wolfish, spiky hair frilled up in agitation. Guts whirred in agitation.

  Rhett stood on both feet, eyes blood-shot, body pulsing with protruding veins. The mouths along his torso were bigger, hungrier, and cared little for the fact that most of their teeth were broken.

  He went to leap. So did Tania.

  Cameron beat them both—his trigger finger was faster.

  Two to the body.

  One to the head.

  Every hour he’d spent refining the Mombanzique drill at Lieberman Scrap and Stack pulsed through his hands. If not for the white-ivory shell beneath his clothes, the recoil of the successive shots would’ve traveled up his arms and shoulders like brief bolts of lightning zapping his frame.

  On ether, Rhett didn’t feel pain. On ether, Rhett felt only anger. On ether, Rhett advanced.

  He surged forward in spite of the bullet holes in his body and the bum ankle he’d been gifted by Tania. He advanced in spite of the piece of his jaw that was missing; a result of Cameron’s successfully aimed shot to Rhett’s head.

  Two to the body.

  One to the head.

  More and more chunks of gray-skinned flesh were flayed away from Rhett’s body as he took another step. Blood poured from him in droves.

  Five bullet holes closed five mouths along Rhett’s torso. That hadn’t stopped him.

  The sixth bullet had minced his jaw. That hadn’t stopped him.

  And the seventh bullet—the second shot to his head, after the second use of the Mombanzique drill—went straight through Rhett’s left eye.

  Rhett fell forward only a few feet in front of Cameron. His head rattled against Cameron’s boot and smeared its tainted leather in viscera. The raw breath of a danger put to rest exited Rhett’s mangled mouth. And it was his last one.

  Cameron felt something heavy in his chest.

  His fingers felt liable to tremble, and he stopped it only by tightening his grip around the handle of his pistol. Ugly justice was best served elsewhere, and best delivered on the people who Cameron knew really, truly deserved it. He didn’t know if Rhett deserved it. All he knew was that he was in the way.

  “Want to, need to, or have to,” Cameron muttered, so low in tone that he doubted even Tania's ears picked up on it.

  He moved his foot out from Rhett’s head, crouched down and placed his pistol onto the ground. With a sudden and easy heave, he flipped Rhett to face upright.

  “What are you doing?” Tania asked.

  Her wolfish voice fell on deaf ears. Cameron hovered a white-ivory hand over Rhett's face. With a single finger, he closed Rhett’s remaining eye shut.

  He retrieved his Reign 18, tucked it into his belt, and made towards the doors of Spectre. He anchored one foot behind him, rocked his arm back, and threw a fist forward. The doors were forced from their hinges and slid across the inside of a near empty Spectre, creaking and grating along the inside flooring like nails on a chalkboard.

  No lights were on, no music blared through the distant speakers lingering on a DJ stage lacking in disc-jockeys or record-spinners, and no one was inside. No one but two silhouettes who waited in the atrium hallway just before the central dance floor.

  Tania raised a brow, and stepped inside first before Cameron had the chance to.

  “Are these two anything like the last?” she asked, not turning back to face Cameron.

  Aria Remeau took a swig from a booze bottle, her neck-length chestnut red hair swaying a bit as she did so. She wore the same dusty trench coat, the same old jeans, the same white tank top. To her side was Rachel Chen, wearing her oval sunglasses, black hair tied into a tight bun, adorned in the dull orange biker jacket Cameron remembered her in. Business slacks covered her legs and gladiatorial-adjacent, movement-efficient sandals covered her feet. The Blade of One-Hundred, a very old looking Chinese jian blade, rested along the frame of her shoulders. No Hughes, either. Maybe he had the sensibility to leave this all behind, or maybe, Marcus had found a use for him elsewhere.

  “No, Tania,” Cameron said. “Meet Aria Remeau and Rachel Chen. The real security.”

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

  TANIA ACKERMAN

  RHETT

  LUISA

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