Chris Holm - The Big Reap

I tightened my grip around Topher’s buck knife and advanced upon it, all casual and halting, like it was sheer fucking coincidence I’d decided to strike out into the night straight toward it. I kept the greenish blob of it in the center of my viewfinder at all times, to ensure the fucker couldn’t slink off while I played coy.

But it didn’t slink off. It didn’t even move. And why would it? I was playing right into its hands. I could damn near hear it smacking its lips as I approached, as if it couldn’t believe its luck. I pictured the looks of sheer surprise on the faces of Magnusson and the border creature when I ripped their Godforsaken souls from their inhuman, undead chests, and thought to myself that this was just the first in a list of things this fucker was gonna have trouble believing.

That’s when the second window exploded. Before I knew what hit me, another creature was atop me, and I was surrounded by the pop and smack of searing flesh and snapping jaws. My camera sailed into the night. My clothes singed as the flames that scorched the creature bald leapt from it to me.

But damn if I didn’t hold onto that buck knife.

I rolled over beneath this second beast, the movement a struggle. Whiskey fumes bit at the soft tissues of my eyes and throat, harsh and sharp and explaining why this one still flamed, when its sibling so quickly doused. It grabbed my wrists, and my jacket ignited. A reek like curling irons and bacon filled the air. I screamed as Nicholas-not-Nicky’s nylon shell melted, and his exposed skin blistered and peeled.

The creature was no better off than I — writhing in agony as it burned, but determined to take me out with it. The air between us seemed to waver like a mirage, like shimmering heat-lines rising off of desert blacktop, and through the distortion I caught a glimpse of amber eyeshine, of ropy limbs dusted with filthy gray-brown fur, curling black in advance of the orange sparks of flame that tore through it as the fire spread. Of a face once human warped by its feral ways into something snout-like, pointed at ear and nose and chin like some kind of devil dog — or perhaps a wolf.

The wolf-thing snapped at my throat with slavering jaws, and teeth three inches long. If they’d found their mark, poor Nicholas would’ve gone bye-bye. But they didn’t, because in that moment, I kicked with all I had, and used the creature’s momentum to backward somersault out from under its grasp. I tried to push my free hand into its chest to grasp its soul as I would a human mark. I’d not been close enough to the others to try, but it turns out, it was no use. The creature’s body was strong, unyielding, and my attempt was unsuccessful.

Fine, then. Plan B. Which in this case meant that mid-roll, I drove Topher’s buck knife into its chest.

Unlike Magnusson and Jain, when I plunged the blade in, nothing happened. No piteous wail, no big, dramatic death scene. Instead, I just wound up with a pissed-off wolf man who had my only weapon buried hilt-deep in its chest. Not too helpful, that.

That’s when I realized my mistake. “Simple conductance”, Lilith had said of the replica skim blade, gold-plated from tip to tail. “Nothing more”. Apparently nothing less, either. Because the rebar — also metal from one end to the other — worked just fine. But Topher’s carbon steel knife with a textured plastic grip was a no-go. And of course it was. The instrument was useless unless the soul presented itself to be destroyed, and for that, it needed to be coaxed out by a Collector.

Metal worked because it completed the circuit between the soul and, well, me .

The creature and I separated. It found its feet and spun to face me. The roll had doused its flames; my own, I patted out. But it was clear to see the creature’d taken damage. First off, I could see it. And second, most of its fur had burned away, revealing cracked red-black flesh at once dull in spots and glistening. One ear was a curl-edged nub, looking like the melted-candle counterpart of its intact mate. And one eyelid looked to have burned off completely, revealing a mad, bloodshot orb that rolled wildly by the light of the burning cabin.

The creature raised a hand to the knife handle that jutted from its chest, and with an audible growl, removed knife from flesh, tossing it to the dirt at its feet. The wound pulsed with blood as the blade exited. We faced off a moment, me eyeing him, him eyeing me. His flesh smoked. His outsized, muscular chest heaved in the bitter night air.

And then he pounced.

Not graceful like a cat, more the sheer brute force of an attack dog. Nails as thick as talons bit at the tender flesh of Nicholas’ shoulders, and knocked me flat once more. But this time, I was ready. I jabbed my fingers directly into the seeping knife wound as far as they would go, and the creature howled in pain. The two of us seemed to vibrate all of a sudden, two tuning forks at odds synchronizing.

It bit my neck. Blood soaked warm into my collar. And then the creature’s jaw went wide, my neck released. I held its dead dry soul inside my hand.

I squeezed.

It slackened.

The ground shook beneath my feet. The cabin this creature called home, weakened by flame, collapsed within itself just as its former inhabitant collapsed. A flurry of sparks spiraled skyward toward the star-speckled heavens from what now looked like no more than a goodly bonfire, as if the abode’s soul were now somehow freed as well.

And then there was one.

The problem was, where?

I cast about for Nicky’s — fuck, I mean Nicholas’s — camera, finding it some twenty feet away, and in three pieces. I tried to reassemble it by the firelight, but it was no use. Cold-clumsy hands conspired against me, and it’s not like it’d been carefully disassembled, the goddamn thing was broken, its viewfinder black and dead.

I cast the expensive hunk of useless trash aside, and wondered how the hell I was gonna find the second creature. Then I heard the screams — Topher and Zadie both — and the sickening wet pop of tendons and ligaments separating, like twisting off the turkey leg at Thanksgiving dinner. Zadie’s screams became suddenly more desperate, Topher’s thick and strangled.

Sounded like they’d gotten loose. Sounded like they hadn’t listened when I told them they’d stay safe if they stayed put. To a one, protection spells are locational, not person-specific. If I could have carved the runes into their flesh and kept them from a horrid end, I would have. But as it stood, the best that I could do was bar entry to their cave by those who’d do them harm. I couldn’t do shit for them if they decided to leave them damn selves.

But they could apparently still do something for me.

Because they’d just told me where the creature was.

I sprinted back toward their hidey-hole, stumbling on the uneven earth and slipping here and there on fallen leaves. This far from the cabin, the firelight dwindled, and the world was drawn in deep blues outlined on each object’s eastern edge in orange. It was enough to keep me from bouncing off of trees, at least. And as it turned out it, was enough for me to see the horror of what had happened.

As I rounded the hillock whose far side afforded entrance to Topher and Zadie’s narrow cave, I pulled up short. The beast stood plainly visible, just outside the protective barrier of the cave, back arched, and one hand held high above its head. In its hand was Topher’s severed arm, dripping blood into the creature’s open mouth. It hadn’t seen me coming, it was too focused on the cowering girl inside the shallow cave. This creature was bigger than the last, and more wolven. Its back legs were articulated such that the joints appeared to hinge backward, not forward like a human knee; its broad chest was thick with muscle and dusted here and there with fur. Shriveled flaps of nippled flesh draped from each broad pectoral muscle; it took me a moment to realize that in its prior, human life, this creature was a woman. Its arms were massive, its left one reaching almost to the ground while its right held Topher’s some ten feet in the air. Clawed hands the size of rowboat paddles dangled menacingly at the end of each thick wrist.