Burning Out The Nest

When it was over and the old house was nothing but pile of smoldering embers, Christopher Black stood in the shower and let the sunlight from the bathroom window try to set his new flesh alight, while the steady stream of running water constantly extinguished it and his flesh repaired itself. It was a relentless agony, but illuminating in its way; among other things, the longer this went on the hungrier he became.

He had no idea what he had become. Vampire seemed too tame a term, but he had no other words for it. So he stood, burning and extinguished and healing all at once, while he processed this new transformation.

* * *

"We've been tracking a pattern of disappearances," said Captain Julian Dalmorden, looking trim in his suit and tie while the pistol in the holster under his shoulder broke the lines of the jacket a lot more obviously than any of them were prepared to admit. "It's Charleston and there's a field office there, so we should have been able to narrow it down by now, but something is interfering with our scrying. I want you two to go in, plainclothes, and check out this area. Pretend to be selling solar panels when you visit the houses, dress down and talk to the kids if you can -- Charleston does get some runaways, and they all trade tales -- and see if you can find whatever's taking people off the streets before it notices you."

"Why us?" asked Chris, because that was the sort of thing he was prone to asking. He didn't always see the obvious, so he was always careful to make sure that he knew where he stood. 

"Because," said Captain Dalmorden, "you're both young and attractive, and you still know how to dress like mundane civilians. For people in the Ministry, that's more rare than you might realize."

Chris frowned, because he very much did not know how to dress like a mundane civilian, but he didn't argue. If his highly idiosyncratic and practical fashion sense was enough to satisfy the authorities of the Ministry, that was good enough for him. 

"Do we have any idea what we're looking for?" asked his partner, Antoinette Gillespie. She'd chosen jeans and a suit jacket, and had done a better job of concealing her pistol than Captain Dalmorden had. It was skillful enough, in fact, that Chris suspected that she might have used a phrase to hold it somewhere unexpected. It would have been nice -- and useful -- if he could have done that himself, but Chris was a wolf. Wolves couldn't use mage tricks.

"No," answered Captain Dalmorden, "but I suppose you can consider that job security. The Ministry keeps people like us around precisely because scrying doesn't always work on intrusions from the Grey."

As one of those intrusions, albeit someone who had come in "through channels" and now worked for the Ministry, Chris appreciated the use of the word "us" in that sentence. He nodded. 

"Any other questions?" asked Captain Dalmorden. 

Antoinette glanced at Chris, and he gave a slight shake of his head. "None," she said, rising from her chair. "We'll let you know what we find."

* * *

The neighborhood was older, but well-maintained, and out on the outskirts of the city. Charleston wasn't a city that disdained older dwellings; it honored its history. They spent a day, and then another, walking the streets and knocking on doors, talking to the people who lived there. 

Some doors didn't open, of course; that was the way of things. They marked those down, and the ones with No Soliciting signs, and continued on; another team with a different cover story could check those. 

At night they went to look at bars and clubs and places where people might gather, and asked around about disappearances when they could manage it. Most people knew nothing; the sorts of people who were disappearing frequently didn't have places of their own, or didn't have places that were known to outsiders. 

* * *

It was on the fourth night when Chris stopped, breathing deeply to taste the air. There was something... meat, and blood, and fear... He turned his head, seeking, and found a child standing just at the mouth of an alleyway, holding an uncooked steak in one plastic-gloved hand. 

Antoinette followed his gaze and turned that way, but stopped walking when the child held up a hand. "Not you," they said, in their child's voice. "Just him."

Chris looked at her and she gave a slight nod, so he followed the child back into the alley. 

"You move like a wolf," the child said, looking up at him defiantly. "You even kind of look like one, if I stare hard enough."

He nodded and settled down onto his haunches, well back out of reach. "So I do." 

The child considered that. "Someone, and I'm not saying who, thinks you're looking for the ones who are taking people away."

"Someone is right."

"All right." The child glanced at their plastic-gloved hand. "You want the meat?"

Christopher Black shook his head. "Not really, no. But Someone was right -- it's a distinctive scent, and it got my attention."

"Then I have an address for you." The child came forward, pressed a slip of paper into Chris' hand. They hesitated, then added: "People died to learn this."

"I can't make that right," Christopher said quietly. "I can only do more killing."

"As long as you're killing the ones who are doing the killing now," said the child. "And you don't start killing the way they do afterwards. My sister and I... we ran away together. She's gone now. They took her." The child swallowed. "Make them pay."

"...I give you my word," said Chris, and closed his hand around the paper. The child stepped back, and he added: "Take care of yourself, kid. Take care of your own. Do good things."

The child swallowed. "I'll do my best."

* * *

The house was old, three stories tall, a well-maintained old wooden home. Chris and Antoinette sat in the car that the Ministry had provided for them, halfway down the street from it, and watched. 

Nothing moved during the day. Nothing moved at night. For all they could tell, nobody was living there. 

"It's a trick," Antoinette said, midway through their second morning of watching. "The kid was hired to distract us, and he did. We've spent a day and a night staring at an abandoned house while people are still disappearing."

Chris considered that. It might be true, but... "I don't think so," he said. "The child was legitimately afraid of me, and not because they were lying. They knew what we were. And they weren't afraid when they gave me the paper with the address."

Antoinette sat for the space of several long breaths, digesting that. The two of them hadn't worked together all that long; Antoinette had started working for the Ministry after completing her schooling two years ago, and Chris had joined only six months earlier, in the wake of the disaster at Pettibone. "Could it be a trick?" she asked finally. 

Chris nodded. "Yes. Anyone who wanted me to kill whoever lives in that house could have set the child up with a sob story and an address. But it's right in the area that Captain Dalmorden wanted us to check, and I don't think the child was deliberately lying."

"Shit," said Antoinette. "All right. You go around the back. Get inside if you think you can do it without being noticed. I'll go knock on the door." She sighed. "It might be nothing, so take it easy."

Chris rolled his shoulders. "Keep your wards up and be careful."

* * *

The back of the house was as silent and utterly bland as the front, but the scents here were... different. There were people, or something vaguely like people, in the house; they used the back door to come and go. He could see the footprints, but could pick up only the faintest hints of their smell, even from the doorknob. The smell wasn't of flesh; it was only the scent of spilled blood, and even that was faint. 

He put his hand on the knob, tried, it, and then drew the door slowly open when it turned. 

He held it open, listening, but heard nothing. Then the doorbell rang through the house, shattering the silence. There was a long, bated moment like an indrawn breath; then the doorbell rang again. 

Movement, more felt than heard, somewhere up at the front of the house... Chris pulled the door open and slipped inside, then closed it carefully behind him. The kitchen was dark and weirdly neat, with no dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, and a thin layer of dust over the countertops. It smelled... unused. 

He let his fingertips and teeth sharpen, as much as an ordinary wolf could do here in the Mundus. Whatever was here was strong, strong enough to defeat magics and keep itself hidden even with the Mundus dampening its power. 

The doorbell rang a third time, and Chris heard a very faint rattle as Antoinette tried the door and found it locked. He padded forward, checking doorways, blind spots, even the ceiling...

On the far side of the house, something clicked sharply. "Ministry," said a low, threatening voice, and then there was faint, brief scuffle as Antoinette was dragged into the house and flung to the floor. The metallic clatter that followed was probably her gun being flung away. Chris continued forward at a steady pace, found the hallway that led to the front.

Someone tried to leap onto him, and he ripped her throat out reflexively. There was a brief moment of startled silence; then the body started to dissolve in front of him and he drank her essence in an act no less instinctive than the killing had been. Belatedly, he pulled his gun out. Whatever they'd found here, they were in for it now. 

Another step forward, silent and alert. Another. A third. A fourth...

He could see the front now. Antoinette was on her back on the floor, a dark silhouette of a figure crouched over her, mouth pressed against her throat. 

Chris emptied his clip into the figure, then reloaded as he watched it stand slowly up and turn to face him. In the dim light from the clouded glass, it was silver-haired and dressed in a dark coat and pants; even with his senses, he couldn't make anything else out. There was an aura around the figure, almost misty, that made it hard to see and harder still to focus on. It probably played merry hell with the magi's scrying, too.

Antoinette was lying just behind the man-shaped thing, sprawled at its feet... but as he watched, she shimmered and disappeared. Good girl, he thought. She'd contacted somebody through the cards, probably Captain Dalmorden and definitely before she'd rung the doorbell. Somebody had been with her, watching as she entered, and as soon as the intruder wasn't touching her they'd pulled her away. 

That, of course, left Chris unsupervised and without any backup, but he was used to that from the Ministry.

"Wolf," said that same, almost-silent voice, and the figure smiled. "Ministry tool--" 

It was on him immediately, too fast to dodge, too strong to shake off, its canines stabbing into his neck like needles as its hands held him pinned. Antoinette was gone, and with her any help from the Ministry. He was alone, without backup, and firmly in this thing's grip. His hand was reflexively emptying the second clip into his enemy's gut, but... 

"Irksome," said the thing, then ripped the gun out of his hand and flung it aside. If he'd been human, it would have ripped the fingers off with it. 

Unsupervised, he thought. Nobody who mattered would see him if he let loose. Chris reached out, took the monster by the throat, and let the change flow over him. The holes in his throat disappeared as his flesh reformed, and he became taller, thicker, heavier -- almost too large for the room -- and burning with dark energy. Featherless gray wings spread out behind him, and his tail lashed hard enough to cut gouges in the wooden floor. 

"What--?" asked the intruder, breathless as Chris's reconfigured hand closed around its throat and snapped its neck. He could feel it trying to heal, to restore itself to its proper shape, but he held the break in place.

"What am I?" he asked softly, leaning in and opening his mouth to show fangs far longer and sharper than the vampire's would ever be. "I am Vengeance. And Reconciliation, but mostly Vengeance." He shifted his grip and bit in, tearing and swallowing, and watched as the monster withered and bled. When it was done he drank its essence, and watched with satisfaction as it dissolved into black ash. 

He turned, knowing there were others behind him, but they were gaping and backing away. "You should run," he growled. 

One of them screamed and leapt for him, but these were slower and weaker than the silver-haired man had been. He ripped out the almost-man's heart with a gesture, and absorbed his essence as the body crumbled to ash. Shadow-dark flames rose up around him, and the ceiling began to burn. The floor smoldered and burst into flames a moment later. 

There was a woman in front of him. She stood as the baker's dozen of others fled. "Thank you," she said. "I don't know if you understand just how much of a mercy you've done us, but thank you."

For a moment, Chris hesitated. Then he said, "You're welcome," and loosed the flames. Between the fire inside and the sunlight outside, he didn't think any of them would escape. 

It wouldn't matter if they did. He could always find them later.

* * *

"Ah, Christopher," said Captain Dalmorden, sounding ever so slightly surprised over the phone. "It's good that you're still alive. You haven't suffered any... difficulties... have you?" 

"No," said Chris, having rehearsed this lie in advance. "Still just a wolf. Antoinette distracted them; they never heard me coming. Is she okay?"

"She's in treatment," said the Captain, "but she'll be fine."

"All right," said Chris. "The house where it happened is on fire, but I'll get the car back to the field office, and wait for you to bring me in from there."

"Ah. Yes. Good job, well done," said Captain Dalmorden. "We'll see you back in a couple of days."

* * *

"Chris?" asked a voice. 

He heard the door open just in time, and brought himself back to being a wolf. 

"Chris? Are you okay?"

He swallowed. "I just burned out a nest of vampires," he said, and ate enough of them to become one. "I'm fine."

"Thank God somebody is," said Antoinette. She was standing in the doorway of his bathroom, seemingly oblivious to the overt amount of steam in the air and the fact that Chris was, well, naked and in the goddamned shower. "Dalmorden tells me you saved my life when you started shooting."

Chris swallowed, considered, and devoutly wished she'd go away. "There was a lot of shooting," he said, "and a certain amount of personal violence. You vanished just as it started, so I think you can credit Damorden with saving you. Now can you please go away and let me finish taking a fucking shower?"

"Right," she said. "Yes. Going now. I just..." She hesitated, and he growled softly. "I was grateful. I am grateful. I'm going."

She retreated, pulling door closed behind her, and he sank down to the floor of the shower, letting the water run over his wolf-self. 

It was only later, much later, that he realized that she might have come looking with the intent of having sex, and even in hindsight he was relieved that he'd rebuffed her by accident. If he'd realized and tried to do it on purpose, it all would have been so much more awkward. And Antoinette, attractive as she was... he wasn't over the things that had happened at Pettibone. Maybe in another life it could have worked, but not in this one.