Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

Walker looked down at the two linen-suited men, then knelt. He ripped open their bloody shirts. Each of them wore gold necklaces with a small vial containing a milky substance. He grabbed them.

“’Cabra. Drink,” YaYa said, pointing weakly toward the steps. “Chase. Kill.”

“Drink this?” Walker asked, holding up the vial. But YaYa was out. He glanced at Laws, who looked at him with widened eyes and shrugged.

YaYa had said “’cabra.” Would the substance turn him into one of the creatures? Walker found it hard to believe. “Fuck it.” Walker rotated his red mask from where it rested on his back, placed it over his face, and tightened the straps. Then he opened the vial. “Drink me,” he said, invoking the craziness of Alice in Wonderland and laughing a little too maniacally. He tilted his head back and let the liquid flow into his mouth. As the substance hit his system, the entire aspect of the universe changed right in front of his eyes.

Walker shot up the stairs and through a door like a heat-seeking missile fired from a rabbit hole. The world was bled of color, replaced by a blur of blacks, whites, and grays. Everywhere he looked, the focus was precise and perfect, his vision capable of telescoping several hundred feet in front of him. But his peripheral vision was a blur, the world to his left and right reduced to a state of fuzzy resolution. Gone was his exhaustion, left behind in the alternate universe where SEALs couldn’t travel Mach 1.

Through the door, he found himself inside the basement of an ancient building. Dust coated the floors. Webs held the corners together like silken flying buttresses. The walls were carved and it took tremendous focus for Walker to be able to figure out what they were. Religious motifs—but that was as much as he could make out.

He knew what a drunk felt like, if that drunk was also stoned out of his mind on a Mexican cocktail of uppers with a chupacabra speedball chaser. Each turn of his head sent a blur spinning across his vision. He brought his right hand to his head to still the images, but then he spied Ramon walking ahead, smoothing his rumpled pants and running long fingers through his hair, acting as if he were Mr. Cool in a land of ancient filth.

“Ramon!”

He turned at Walker’s call and his eyes gave away his surprise. He yanked his own vial out and drained it dry. Then he turned and ran impossibly fast.

Walker followed drunkenly.

When they hit another set of stairs, he tumbled up them, ending in a somersault, then popping to his feet. He’d lost ground. Ramon was already through another door and gone.

Walker raced after him and became aware of the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. The sound took over everything and was his universe. He opened the door and spied Ramon at the end of the central aisle of a cathedral. Mass was in session and the priest was standing with both arms out toward the congregation. When Walker ran into their midst, they screamed at the red-faced devil in camo among them.

He was out the door and into the plaza before he saw Ramon again. They were in the Zócalo once more. This time it was daytime. Ramon was running southeast. Walker chased after him, zooming past people, between groups and around those who were sitting. He was becoming used to the speed. The trick was to plan ahead. Just as he thought he was doing fine, a man pushing a cart with the words LA ROSA prominently on the side moved into his path. Walker couldn’t swerve. All he could do was leap it, or else they’d tumble in a crash. Walker jumped early, or at least he thought he did, but his speed carried him over the cart. His leg buckled when he landed and he rolled several yards before he was able to regain control and stand.

But he’d gained ground on Ramon.

The former hit man glanced behind and tried to speed up.

But Walker could still run faster. The potion, if that’s what it was, seemed to work on his inherent athleticism.

They left the square and rocketed down the center of Avenida de José María Pino Suárez. It was a one-way road toward the Zócalo, with a bike path on the left and lined with brightly blooming trees and old-fashioned streetlights. A trio of buses lumbered along it side by side and both the chased and the chaser moved to the bicycle lane.

Traffic was moving in the next cross street and the crosswalk in front of them teemed with people. Ramon slowed and Walker did as well. Those who saw them pointed and made space, afraid of the white blur of a man being chased by the red-faced demon. They slid through the crowd and into traffic. A beat-to-hell Toyota pickup truck swerved, lost control, and crashed through the window of a clothing store on the southwest corner of the intersection.

They turned down Calle Venustiano Carranza, heading east.

Walker’s heartbeat was growing louder.

The road cleared momentarily in front of them and they both poured on speed. They turned south, then east, then south for three blocks, moving so fast that he couldn’t keep track of the street signs. Now they were on the Regna heading east. To their front was the Mercado Central. Barely two lanes, the walls closed in on them. They had no choice but to slow down.

A bus backed out of a park, forcing Ramon to come almost to a stop. Walker caught up to him and plastered him against the side of the bus so hard windows popped and the bus rocked. Walker punched Ramon in the jaw, the increased speed of his arm translating into increased power.

Ramon’s head swung on his neck.

But then the man got his balance under him and shoved Walker away.

Walker held his ground and kicked Ramon on the top of the knee with a Kuai Lua kick, sending him to the ground.

Ramon roared and his body began to change. He ripped through his once fine linen suit, his body growing and bulging with muscle. Within moments, gone was the gentle patrician, replaced by a werewolf whose arms and shoulders bunched with a mountain of muscles.

Walker punched the werewolf in the face.

The werewolf shrugged it off and grinned with too many teeth.

Walker felt a sudden sense of his own mortality. He feinted left then leaped. Using the werewolf’s head as a step, he was up and over the bus, running toward Mercado Central.

The roaring behind him told him that he was being followed.

Walker ran as fast as he could, the universe a blur with a pinhole to move through.

If he was going to defeat the werewolf, he needed silver. He’d left the magazine with the silver-tipped rounds back in the temple. His hope was that the central market would provide the necessary tools. Of course, he also hoped that he’d keep the wolf so busy it wouldn’t eat all the patrons.

He was forced to slow to enter the open-air market and the werewolf took him in the back. They tumbled like two trains derailing at three hundred miles an hour, taking out tables and goods, leaving people scattered in their wake.

Walker stood first, feeling his speed wane. The blur of the world was becoming less and things were beginning to come into focus. He didn’t want to be human. He knew no mere human could defeat a werewolf hand-to-hand, not even a SEAL.

But he had one more vial. He pulled it out and brought it up to uncap it and drink, when he was struck on the side of the face by a dump truck.

He flew through the air, realizing that the dump truck was actually a werewolf fist.

“You should have left it alone,” came the guttural lupine voice.

Walker landed on a table of children’s clothes, which scattered like confetti. He managed to get to a standing position. Somehow he’d kept his fist around the vial and it was protected. But when he opened his fist, the vial was broken and the liquid ran down his arm.