night gambit

Scott Harper

 

I knew it was going to be a bad night the moment we logged on in our patrol vehicle. Our shift started at midnight Thursday morning, a time not usually noted for its high call volume. Just seconds after I entered my password and logged us on, however, our buffer was full. By buffer I mean our mobile computer buffer, which can hold up to seven calls for service. My partner and I had received a quick briefing as we suited up at the station; there'd been a shooting at the local rap concert and all of the PM field units were being held over. I put us en route to assist with crowd control at the Convention Center, and Jimenez, my new partner who'd just been signed off training, drove us out of the station.

The name on the badge is Burwell. I've been a beat cop for fifteen years, got the whole wife and kid thing going on as well. Fifteen years on the street is a long time, time enough to get burned out, dealing with the same low caliber of clientele night in and night out. Time enough to start judging people just based on appearances alone. That's what cops get paid to do, though, when you really think about it, make split-second, life-altering judgments based on limited information. I'm pretty good at it (at least that's what people tell me to my face), though it doesn't usually make me the life of the party at home. Jimenez is new to the force, his face young and unlined, no signs of gray in the temples - he doesn't know yet what the career he has chosen has in store for him.

Fifteen years is also enough time to develop a sense for how the night will go. I knew the chaos I walked into at the station was probably only the beginning. It didn't surprise me when we heard our sister unit put out an emergency assistance request over the radio. Choi and Harris were street veterans, they had almost as much time on the force as me and had been through the street wars, so when I heard Choi screaming and begging for help in high-pitched desperation, I knew the night would be one I wouldn't forget. Jimenez hit the lights and siren and drove Code 3 to help out our fellow officers.

Choi had requested assistance at 3rd and State, right next to the Natural History Museum, only four blocks away from our current location. As we flew through remarkably empty streets, I remembered that there was to be a special display at the museum this weekend, ancient artifacts from some pharaoh's tomb or whatnot. There'd been advertisements about it in the local papers and on TV. As a kid I'd seen the mummy movies at the theatres, with curses and walking bandages and the like. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, then, the scene that greeted us as we took a hard left turn onto 3rd and skidded to a halt in front of the marble steps leading up to the museum entrance.

Now, when you put out emergency traffic over the radio (on the patch, as we like to say), you're supposed to stay on the radio and try to update your units as they roll to you. Choi hadn't done that, and now I could see why. His car wasn't far from ours; it was parked facing in the same direction as we were, just to our west. Both the driver's and passenger's side front doors had been torn off of the vehicle and lay discarded like so much garbage nearby. Sprawled out respectively next to each door were Choi and Harris. Both cops lay prone on the ground, Choi in the street, Harris on the sidewalk, each underneath strange moving masses of green flesh. Neither Choi nor Harris was moving.

Jimenez and I bailed out of the car even before it had come to a complete stop, the rookie drawing his semi-automatic pistol while I took out the Ithaca 12 gauge shotgun. As we got closer to the bodies I got a better look at what we were up against. The things on top of the other cops weren't human by any stretch of the imagination. If they had been standing they would have been over eight feet tall, rail-thin, bony, and hairless. The hands and feet were hooked into savage claws with translucent nails, while the skin was luminescent, scaled, and lime-green. Out of habit I screamed at the one on top of Harris to get off him, but it was already too late. The demon (for lack of a better term) had somehow managed to tear off Harris' head, its claws dug into his eye sockets, and was eating away greedily at the neck stump. I heard Jimenez barking orders and imagined a similar scene had confronted him.

I leveled the shotgun directly at the demon and lined up the sights for the shot. As I did so the creature's head somehow levered itself around nearly 180 degrees and faced me. The head was essentially just a hairless skull, lipless gums receding from a maw of bloody, jagged teeth. It had nostril holes but no nose, ear holes without ears. The eyes were just motes of coal, blackness that witnessed either madness or chaos. It gave a predatory screech and discarded the dead cop's head before turning the rest of its body around and launching itself at me.

I heard Jimenez firing his duty weapon just before the boom and kick of the Ithaca further rocked my world, sending daggers of pain into the aging right shoulder I used to brace the big gun. I didn't have time to see how my partner was doing, I had my own problems. 00 buckshot pounded its way into the demon's chest, sending dark green ichor in all directions. The monster rocked back on what passed for its heels, but didn't fall. More green ooze pooled up out of its core and filled in the parts of its chest that I had blown away. At the same time it tore the shotgun from my hands like it was a toy, then backhanded me with its other claw.

No one has ever accused me of being a small person. I routinely hit the weights at the gym and tip the scales at over 240 pounds. Even so, the strength that beast had in its skinny arms made me feel like a little kid again. One slap lifted me completely off my feet and deposited me on my sorry ass several feet back. If that wasn't enough, I hit my head on the pavement when I landed, filling my vision with all sorts of spasmodic white motes of light. In the background I could hear Jimenez screaming in the same high-pitched tone that Choi had earlier. Things were going downhill quick.

I tried to stand, but the demon was right on me, its face hanging over me like a green moon. I saw ribbons of Harris' skin hanging from its teeth. Its eyes rolled up in their sockets as bloody spittle sloshed out of its mouth and onto my cheek. I pictured what would come next. Every cop has to make preparations for such an occasion; I just never imagined I'd go out like this.

I was making my peace when an ashen hand reached down and latched onto the beast's neck. It let out what might have passed for a surprised whimper, as I could hear its spine being compacted by the awesome strength in that hand. The demon was unceremoniously hauled off of me. I looked up groggily into the face of my savior.

The fact that he was naked didn't really surprise me (at this point surprise would have taken a lot of doing). Not that I was complaining. He appeared to be Caucasian, just a little over 6 feet in height, well-built. Maybe in his late twenties, it was hard to tell. My knight sans armor had light-brown hair that came down nearly to his shoulders. And that's about where anything normal ended. The tips of the man's ears were pointed, like Mr. Spock, and his hands were actually claws, the fingernails long, black, and wickedly sharp. His eyes were crimson, and seemed to glow faintly in the surrounding dark, while twin fangs protruded out over his lower lip.

This guy was a lot easier to classify than the demons. Straight-out vampire. Why he was helping me out, I had no idea. As far as I knew, his kind ate people like me, so who knew, maybe he was fighting with the green guy over first dibs on me. Fang Boy grimaced as he hoisted the demon off of me with one hand, giving me a good look at his dentures. Put those of the green guy to shame. The vamp reached around with his other hand, grabbed the demon by the lower jaw, and wrenched its head around like it was a puppet. I heard a loud snap and assumed the demon's supernatural dexterity only extended so far. He let the body fall onto the sidewalk next to me, and then administered the coup de grace by smashing its skull with a stamp of his foot. Green blood and chunks of pavement went sailing by me. I ended up with demon goop in my face and hair.

I appreciated the reprieve I'd been given, but I didn't waste any time waiting for Fang Boy to turn on me. I picked up the Ithaca again and leveled it at him. The rounds, of course, weren't silver, but maybe a head shot would slow him down a bit. I could only hope. The vamp looked at me like I'd somehow offended him, then proceeded to mouth one word.

"Duck!"

I didn't have time to note the slight hint of an accent in his speech, as the earnestness of those blood-red eyes convinced me to hit the floor. Good thing I did, the other demon launched itself right over where I'd been standing and into the waiting arms of the vamp. This demon was a little chunkier than its dead companion; probably been eating better. It was an Ali-Frazier slugfest as the two unnatural creatures traded blows almost too fast for my eyes to follow. The demon's claws opened up wounds on the vamp's face and torso, wounds that didn't bleed and healed up almost as soon as they were inflicted. In turn, Fang Boy rocked the green beast back with brutal punches that sent blood and broken fangs into the air. It might have been my imagination, but the vamp looked like he was having a good time, like a death fight with a monster from hell was just a sparring match. He actually had a slight grin on his face.

I'd been to a few calls involving metahumans in the past. I'd seen firsthand what can happen to people (and to buildings) when those types get in a dispute. Windows shattered, pipelines burst, bodies broken. I figured monster fights wouldn't be much different. I used the time to roll over into the street, away from the fracas, and check on Jimenez. He was unconscious but breathing, cut-up and bleeding pretty badly, but probably nothing life-threatening. Time to get some help.

Most big city police and fire departments have access to the Parahuman Network. All you have to do is put out a Code-M (Code Metahuman) over the radio and the dispatcher automatically contacts the Nework's intake. Intake checks the status of their personnel, whether or not they are available, and how close they are to the disturbance, then dispatches those members they see fit. I'd seen supes pluck falling people out of the sky, throw cars like footballs, and put out fires by turning their own bodies into water. That was the kind of assistance we needed. I used my portable radio to try and raise some help, but for some reason it wasn't working. I could pick up other traffic, but couldn't seem to transmit. Jimenez' radio didn't work, either. I was about to try our car radio when I became aware of loud crashing sounds, noise that was accompanied by mini-earthquakes that shook me a little bit each time my ears were assaulted. I looked west to see what was causing the racket and nearly soiled myself.

A ten-foot-high statue was walking slowly, ponderously down the middle of the street, leaving spider-webbed indentations in the asphalt with each step it took. It was made of an ebony material and had vaguely male features, simple formations outlining hair, boots, shirt, and pants. What it lacked in detail it made up for in sheer brute power. Choi and Harris' vehicle was crushed like plastic underneath its heel as it began to walk out of the street and up toward the museum.

Flying next to the walking statue was someone I can only describe as Merlin. He appeared to be levitating near and guiding the statue. He was an old, balding fellow dressed like some ancient sorcerer, complete with a dingy blue robe, multi-colored rings on every finger, and a shiny silver staff in his hands. Security guards, drawn by the commotion, piled out of the front doors of the museum, where they began unloading round after useless round into the behemoth. It ignored the bullets sparking off its thick hide and began swatting the guards like they were gnats. I cringed as I heard bones breaking and skulls smashing as the bodies went flying. One unfortunate fellow unwisely decided to cap a round at the wizard. For his troubles the old guy raised his staff into the air and called out in some language I wasn't familiar with. As if in response a lightning bolt shot down out of newly-formed clouds and fricasseed the guard and an unlucky fellow next to him.

I was having trouble taking all of this in when an awful, inhuman scream drew my attention back to the battle between the vampire and the demon. A battle which was already over, as Fang Boy's right claw was now protruding out from the demon's back. He extricated his hand from the twitching corpse and let it fall next to its companion, then shook the hand, trying to get all the green ooze off of it. A look of disgust was plastered on his face.

I won't tell you that I'm not a conservative guy, politically, financially, what have you, that I didn't survive fifteen years on the street by taking chances. But I knew then that the only way I was going to survive that night was with the help of the living dead guy standing next to me. I decided to roll the dice.

"What the hell is that?" I asked the vamp, indicating the walking wall.

The vampire looked over at me a little skeptically. "That, sir, is a golem. A magical, nearly-indestructible humanoid made from clay, usually created to serve a community in need. It's not the main problem, however."

That statement threw me for a loop, but I listened on.

"The golem is being controlled by that wizard, as were those bone devils." He gestured at the dead demons. "Torgo summoned them from some forsaken side-pocket dimension and bound them to him, as he bound the golem. They serve merely as diversions. Torgo seeks the Liber Necris, an ancient tome that is part of the display in that museum. With it he will be able to control all of the world's undead. No one has attempted such a feat since the time of the pharaohs."

I must have looked a little perplexed. He continued.

"The book was written millennia ago, before the sinking of Atlantis. Over the years the text has alternately been destroyed and then reconstituted in different societies. Its original author was a sorcerer enslaved to a host of chaos demons, monsters who sought to regain their foothold in this world. Apart from the necromantic spells, it is filled with doom-laden prophecies, foretelling a world in which all the great empires have fallen, where only the mindless dead walk under sunless skies and demons again cavort on an earth from which they were long ago banished. It is said that the book can call out to those of susceptible wills, that any who read from it succumb to a dark pit of insanity from which there is no return.

"The last translation was thought lost in a long-forgotten Egyptian sorcerer's tomb, forgotten and buried. Unfortunately, a recent American archaeological expedition uncovered the tomb and with it, the text. Torgo has fallen under the book's spell. It has called to him from afar. He will not stop until it is in his possession. Think of one of those awful Romero zombie movies you've seen at the late night theatres, and then multiply the carnage by a thousand. With the Liber, Torgo will flood all of the world's capitals with millions of the dead. It will be, literally, hell on earth."

Sounded pretty bad to me. Of course, ten minutes ago, I wouldn't have believed a word of it.

"I'm gonna call for some superhero help. This is beyond bullets." I started to walk toward my radio car. The vampire frowned.

"That will be of no use. Torgo has bespelled this local area, I doubt if any of your transmissions will be heard." I noted how the surrounding shadows seemed to coalesce around him, as if they were actually extensions of him. He was so covered in darkness that his lack of clothing hardly seemed an issue.

"What can I do?" I gulped, trying to sound confident.

"Let me first stop the golem. Torgo will then focus his attention on me. When he is distracted. . ." He looked at my Ithaca. "I'm sure you know how to use that."

I nodded.

The vamp's body began to grow, the bones of his arms and legs stretching while black membranes formed underneath his arms, shooting out to attach to his lower back. His ears lengthened and his nose flattened, brown fur now covering the majority of his body. This wasn't ol' Lon Chaney Jr. vanishing in a puff of smoke to be replaced by a flapping piece of rubber on a string; this was more like some supernatural fusion of a giant bat and a gargoyle. It impressed the hell out of me.

My undead friend took to the air, streaking over to intercept the golem before it reached the museum doors. I noted that all of the security guards were dead, either crushed by the golem or fried by the wizard. The stench of blood and burnt flesh hung heavy in my lungs. As the golem began to pry open the security doors like they were made of paper, the vampire shot up under its massive, outstretched arms and gave it a pump kick right in the mush a la Bruce Lee. The maneuver gave the vamp room to operate as he began to rain blow after thunderous blow on the giant's face. Those punches were strong enough to dent steel, I would imagine, but they did little damage to the behemoth. They did, however, push the creature back toward the street. The golem tried its best to swat the vamp away, but its movements were too ponderous, while the vamp moved like quicksilver.

The wizard appeared none too happy about the shift in the tide of battle. He spouted off again and the lightning started up anew. The vamp dodged out of the way of the first few bolts (which left behind nasty burn marks on the street and sidewalk), then returned to hammer away at the golem. Merli. . . errhh. . . Torgo became irate and repeated the same series of phrases he had before, only this time he kept repeating them. The bolts fell from the sky one after the other, the vamp continuing to barely avoid them, zigzagging across the horizon until suddenly he came to rest on top of the golem's head. The big bat latched its claws onto the golem's face, then looked skyward, as if anticipating the next bolt. The clay creature's huge paws had begun to encircle the bat's head when the vamp just up and disappeared. The golem's hands closed on empty space, just as a lightning bolt struck where the vampire had just been; i.e. stone puss' rocky melon.

I heard the wizard curse loudly as orange sparks danced from the golem's head. It stopped in its tracks and began to wobble backward, knocking over a fire hydrant in the process. White smoke, which I had initially assumed was coming from the golem, settled in front of the clay being and began to coalesce, revolving in and around itself, until it assumed a vaguely human shape. Next thing I knew, the vamp had reached out of the mist and slammed both hands into the golem's chest, tipping it over like a giant turtle onto its back. The golem landed in the street with the sound of a thunderclap, sending pavement and concrete bits flying everywhere. I don't want to guess at the amount of strength it took to knock that huge creature over; let's just say I was glad dead boy was on my side.

The vampire didn't rest on his laurels; he morphed into bat form again and took off into the sky, closing in at rocket speed on the wizard. Every time the vamp got close, though, more lightning bolts would come his way. Torgo appeared to be tiring, however, and was sweating appreciably. Must have taken a lot of effort to levitate and command lightning at the same time. I figured it was time I tried to help out, so I leveled the shotgun at the old guy and took aim.

I was about to fire when Fang Boy's luck ran out and one of the bolts hit the big bat dead on. It must have been an awesomely powerful shot; the vamp just disintegrated into bits of dust. What was funny, though, was that the dust didn't fall to earth. It sort of hung there for a few seconds, and then seemed to flow directly up toward the only half-full moon, as if it was traveling on the beams of moonlight.

Torgo looked relieved, a big smile on his face as he floated to earth, settling down just a few yards from me. I didn't need an invitation. I started unloading the shotgun at him. Four loud rounds and the Ithaca was empty. I reloaded from the sleeve and pumped the fresh rounds into him. Then I tossed the Ithaca aside, took out my duty Beretta 9 millimeter and let him have all sixteen rounds. For all the good it did me.

The old wizard laughed at me, showing yellowed, uneven teeth. He appeared somehow unscathed, as if I'd been firing dummy rounds. I noted expended lumps of inert lead surrounding him on the ground and assumed he'd found some way to take the energy out of my rounds. Before I could investigate further, Torgo made a flicking motion with his right hand and the Beretta went flying out of my grip. He reversed the motion and my extra magazine rounds popped out of my gun belt and went sailing away. He chortled again.

"So much for the third string, law dog."

The look of confidence on Torgo's mug became even more unsettling as the golem began to right itself in the street. Short of the Marines showing up, this fight was over. Torgo raised his staff high in the air with both hands and began another harsh, guttural incantation. I was making my peace for the second time that night when I noticed it had become awfully foggy for some reason. . .

The vamp shot up directly behind Torgo and brutally twisted the wizard's neck to the side, shutting off the incantation and exposing the throat at the same time. Fang Boy latched his two huge incisors into Torgo's carotid and began to vacuum out the wizard's lifeblood. The old man seemed paralyzed, his eyes staring unfocused and glassy. In retrospect, I'm sure that his neck had been broken. The vamp focused his attention on me as he fed. I noticed that his eyes, already red, seemed to become even more vibrantly crimson as the meal progressed, as if they, too, were becoming suffused with blood.

After a few seconds, Fang Boy discarded the broken corpse onto the sidewalk. He stretched out his arms, as if he'd just woken up from a refreshing nap.

"Hellsteeth, what a fine feasting this was!"

"My sentiments, exactly," I mumbled.

* * *

Needless to say, it took me some time to finish explaining what had happened when my backup finally showed up. I pretty much feigned ignorance, stating that I'd been knocked out by the golem and had assumed that some superhero had showed up and saved the day. Luckily, a few lesser metahumans had arrived on scene shortly after the fracas. These guys were probably recent additions to the roster, as I didn't recognize any of the costumes. As I spoke with Homicide, a handsome, blonde-haired supe in blue body armor strolled arrogantly by, directing the work of rescue crews as his heavy metal boots cracked the pavement. I played dumb with him, shouting "Hey, buddy, thanks for the help there. You really saved my rear!"

The supe looked at me in shock, his eyes bugging behind the little half-assed face mask he sported. He didn't know whether to be grateful or insulted, so he gave a slight smirk and continued to move on, barking orders at the poor workers. I finished my statement to Homicide.

Torgo's death had apparently freed the golem from his control. The last I'd seen, it had been walking back up 3rd street and out of sight, headed home, wherever that was. My vampire friend had quickly left the scene as well. One second he was there, the next he was gone, poof. Paramedics were treating Jimenez; he was going to be OK. I'd have to break in another partner, but hey, after fifteen years, that was nothing new. Officials from the coroner's office were taking care of Choi, Harris, and the bodies of the museum security guards. Grisly, dirty work. I walked away and found an alcove off of the museum's entrance, taking a seat. I deserved a break and needed time to process what had just occurred. Now aware of what lurked just below the surface of the world as I had once perceived it, I was unsure if I could still be a cop. Before, I'd known that any routine call could turn deadly. Every cop knows that. Now I had to accept that any call, heck, any life event, could precede an encounter with the supernatural. My head was spinning. Definitely not your average night.

I was just beginning to catch up on normal breathing when Fang Boy literally walked out of a shadow next to the wall. By now, I was used to such entrances from him.

"I was wondering when you'd be back. Nice to see you've got some clothes on now."

He was sporting a long, black leather coat, which billowed out behind him like a cape. Jeans and boots now covered his lower extremities. He looked a lot different, now that he was calmed down. His eyes were actually black, with a slight reddish tinge, and his ears were no longer pointed. The teeth he displayed when he smiled were white and even. An aura of cold, ancient power surrounded him, his presence more palpable and powerful than any metahuman I'd ever run into. This was no common everyday supe. He was something far more powerful and complex, and infinitely more scary. And yet, based upon his actions, he qualified as a superhero nonetheless. His motives weren't pure, and he served no higher cause, but you couldn't argue with the results. In a pinch (say, when no other supes were around), he'd fit the bill.

"Clothing and shapeshifting just don't mix. I've gone through more wardrobes over the centuries than I care to remember."

"Centuries? So, the v-word applies, I take it?"

"One of the finer specimens, if I do say so myself."

The teeth, the strength, the powers. . . it all made sense. Or, at least some of it did.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did you survive getting hit with a lightning bolt? I could swear I saw you turn into dust."

"You did indeed, officer. Have you ever read the Stoker novel? Most people haven't, though its conventions form the basis of the modern conception of the v-word, as you put it. In Dracula, Van Helsing summarized the pros and cons of my condition quite well: 'He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust.' It's a little trick of the trade most have forgotten, Torgo included."

"Ok then, let me guess. . . as a member of the dearly departed, you, too, could have been drafted into the army of the dead?" Nobody on the force had ever accused me of being a gumshoe, but even I could begin to guess at the vamp's true motives for helping out tonight.

"An excellent deduction. After all these years I have no desire to become one of Torgo's mindless minions. Despite all my flair and charm, I'm still technically undead, and would have been susceptible to his call if he'd acquired this."

Fang Boy pulled out a gold receptacle from inside his coat. It was covered in hieroglyphics. Inside, I presumed, was the book he'd been so worried about.

"You know, as an officer of the law, I'm going to have to ask you to put that back, sir." I smiled as I spoke, to show him I was just goofing.

"Officer, think of this as a way of saving yourself and your fellow officers from having to respond to a call some night where your bullets will be just as ineffective as they were on this occasion. I assure you, the book will be in good keeping," he replied good-naturedly.

"And you knew to show up here tonight because. . . ?"

"I've been tracking Torgo's moves since he left his home base in the eastern part of the country a few months ago. A friend of mine, an old rabbi, warned me about the golem's disappearance from a Jewish community in Poland a few weeks back. The warehouse that was holding the items for the display was ransacked just a few nights ago. The surviving guard's description of the burglars matched Torgo and the golem to a tee. Unfortunately, the investigators handling the case dismissed the man's contentions as insane. By chance, however, all the display items had been moved during the day to the museum. Tonight was the last chance for Torgo to act before the display drew too much public attention."

"Not bad detective work for a dead guy," I mused offhandedly.

"I have my sources. You might say that my hearing is sharp as a bat's."

"Ha, ha, yeah, that's cute. . . so, if you don't mind my asking, what comes next? More monster hunting?"

"What else is there for an old nosferatu like me to do to stay busy? I long ago gave up eating folks like you. Even an undead life needs its challenges. I'm not going to let myself become one of those semi-catatonic rat-eaters, sitting in the basement of some abandoned house, afraid of my own shadow. Not that I have a shadow, now that I mention it. Still, after all these years, I suppose ennui has set in. Perhaps what I ultimately seek is the true death, delivered at the hands of the few unnatural beings capable of administering it to me." As we spoke I noted the sky was lightening to the east.

"Not that this little heart-to-heart we're having isn't fulfilling, but isn't it about time you were on your way?" I asked, indicating the rosy horizon.

"Not to worry your precious little heart, I'm a vampire's vampire. You know, gargle with holy water, pick my teeth with crucifixes. Why, once in Egypt, I endured an hour in the noon blaze, dispatching a resurrected mummy and his horde of were-jackals. That's a story for another occasion. . ." Fang Boy was slowly moving off over to a nearby patch of ficus trees in a small park that adjoined the museum.

"I never got your name," I called out as he left.

"Oh, I've had many names over the years, but Justin will do just fine for right now." And he was gone, one with the shadows. I imagine that was a situation he was comfortable with.