Valthor: Battles, then Cuddles

"I saw you fighting down there," said Kiela. "It was... well, it really impressive. All those orcs..."

Valthor shrugged, slightly embarrassed. "I mean, I wasn't the only one fighting them."

"No, but... I mean, you and your friends fight well together, but you all have different styles. Tizrin seemed to be having a bad day -- I'm sure he fights better than that normally, and Rrhorask is deadly with those knives when he has room to throw them, but as long you have have someone to fight beside you're... I'm not sure how to describe it. I could see you positioning yourself, lining up your shot."

Valthor chuckled. "Well, I was raised to believe that precision counts for more than strength -- most of the time, anyway. That one time my cousin Lothos lifted me off the floor by neck, it sure didn't feel that way."

"Your cousin picked you up by your neck?" Kiela asked, sounding slightly aghast. "How old were you?"

"...Seventeen, I think," Valthor told her. "He wasn't trying to strangle me or anything, he just wanted to make sure we understood each other. Pretty typical cousin stuff."

"Um," said Kiela, still studying his face. "Valthor, that's not typical. It's actually kind of insane."

"Is it?" asked Valthor. "I don't know, it seemed pretty normal at the time."

"Trust me," Kiela told him. "It wasn't." She swallowed. "Anyway, you want to come down to the cargo hold with me and have a drink? We set up a nice, discreet spot behind some of the boxes."

"Sure," said Valthor, and followed her down the stairs. 

He was restless after the fight, and horny, but it wasn't until they reached the corner hideaway that he realized what she had in mind. "No chairs," Kiela told him, looking innocent. "We'll have to sit on the bedroll."

Valthor swallowed. "I can manage that," he said.  

MV: Claws Out

Andy called the claws back out. Unlike his first effort, he could pause to really look at them now: seven inches long, razor-sharp, anchored firmly to his fingers. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the beast stirred; it was looking forward to this. He continued down the concrete steps, Veronica right behind him. She had her pistol out, and he was well aware she could shoot him in the back, but he didn't think she would. 

The zombies weren't as intimidating as he'd expected. There were maybe half a dozen of them, and... fuck. They wore nursing scrubs or lab coats, or in one case both. The fucking wight had killed them here in the hospital, brought them back, and turned them to its service. 

It was above them now, moving back and forth -- probably trying to figure out exactly where they'd gone and how to follow. He hoped the nurses at the desk had taken shelter.

Andy launched himself down at the first of the zombies, bowled it over, disemboweled a second one, then rolled back to his feet and tore into the rest, severing tendons and cutting through bones, smashing joints when he could manage it. He'd done some wrestling in PE, and knew how to push a hold into a break; slicing with his new claws was more a matter of instinct and opportunity.

It was still more than the zombies could take. They beat at him, but all they could do was bludgeon him as he tore them apart. 

As the last of them fell, he heard a firm metallic click behind him. "You still okay?" Veronica asked. 

Andy put his claws away and turned slowly to face her. "Yeah," he said, realizing as he said it that he was staring down the barrel of her pistol. "Do wights do berserker shit?" 

"...Not so far as I know," Veronica admitted. "But that was a lot of violence."

"Lady," said Andy, "I am a teenager who is absolutely fucking fed up with all of this, and if I can take it out on a bunch of zombies, that's what I'm doing. So either shoot me now, or come on." 

She eased the hammer back, offered a grim smile. "All right. Let's get the hell out of here. Let the cleanup team handle it." 

MV: Under Siege

"Yeah," Andy agreed. "Are you my current Steve?"

"Yeah," she said. "We take shifts so we can sleep. I'm Veronica."

"Right, pleased to meet you -- and I'll be happy to get back in bed just as soon as I'm not being hunted."

"Miss?" asked the male nurse. "He wants to talk to you."

She nodded and accepted the phone. "Uh huh. Yeah. That's what he says. No... No I don't. All right." She handed the phone back and said, "Fuck," again, this time with a little more force. 

I waited, and she turned back to me. "All right. He's calling it in, but he wants me to get you out of here."

Andy nodded, knowing he was in well over his head. "Please."

"Emergency stairs are over here," she said. "Should be fine unless they're coming up that way."

Andy stopped to focus for a moment. "No, I don't think so."

"All right. Follow me." She strode off down the hall, and Andy fell into place a step behind her. "We've got a team on station," she said. "We were kind of hoping this group would come looking for you."

"Is that common?" 

Veronica shrugged. "Not really, but common enough to be worth preparing for -- especially with a group like this, who've managed to cover their trail so well that any regular pursuit has proven useless." She hesitated. "If I could be sure of the timing, I'd say you could do more good as bait in your room, but I don't know how far out the team is and Steve doesn't want you running up against the wight who turned you."

Andy didn't want that either. Not until he was better prepared, anyway. He followed her through the door to the emergency stairs and started down. "Thank you for helping me."

"I'd tell you it was a pleasure, but--" 

They both huffed a laugh. 

There were footsteps on the stairs below them, coming up. Veronica slowed, then stopped and looked over the rail. She frowned, then said: "Zombies. This wight must have raised some help."

"We can do that?" asked Andy, appalled. "Like, wights can animate corpses?"

Veronica nodded. "Yeah, at least temporarily. Wights are pretty decent necromancers: speak to the dead, raise zombies to help them, stuff like that."

Do not want, Andy thought. Rather than saying that out loud, he asked: "How tough are zombies?"

"Tough is about all they have going for them, honestly," Veronica said. "They aren't especially strong or smart, and most of them weren't created from herd who knew how to fight."

"So you can kill them with bullets?"

Veronica hesitated. "I'd rather not. These are silver rounds, good for wights as well as werewolves -- two-thirds of the trifecta that attacked you."

Andy nodded. "Do you trust me?"

Veronica tilted her head to regard him. "What did you have in mind?"

"I've figured out one basic trick," he said softly. "Save your ammo, and let's see how well it works."

Veronica was easily old enough to be his mother, but she regarded him evenly and then said. "All right. Stay where I can haul you back if it goes badly." 

MV: Monster on the Loose

He slipped out into the hall after a quick look around the curtain. Clothing would be nice, but right now it didn't matter. No alarms were blaring, nobody was screaming, but he could still feel that presence approaching and the closer it got, the more he was certain that this was the same undead thing that had made him into what he was now. 

Finding the nurses' station was a relief, right up until the black girl in her early twenties caught sight of him and shrieked. Andy slowed his pace and held his hands up as he approached her, watching as she sat frozen. "It's okay," he said. "I mean, it's not, but I'm not going to hurt you."

The man behind her turned, caught sight of him, and reached out to slap a large red button. Now there were alarms blaring, lights blinking, and all the alarums and excursions he'd been expecting. He bypassed the woman, and handed the card to the man. "Call this number," Andy said tightly. "Tell him I said my maker was here."

The man nodded, then reached for the phone as Andy stepped away. 

"Hey!" said a woman's voice down the hall. "You there!" 

Andy turned, and found himself regarding a woman with hand on the pistol at her belt. She was taller than he was, stocky with muscle, and dressed in loose-fitting clothing. He raised his hands, waited. 

"How the hell did you get out of your room?" she asked, stopping three steps away. She hadn't actually drawn the pistol, but from there she had a good chance of drawing it if he came at her. Maybe better than I think, And admitted to himself.  

"Necessity," he told her. "Steve said to contact him if I could sense my master's location. Well... I can, and he's here. Or she. Or whatever."

The woman regarded him for a long moment. The nurse was speaking quietly into the phone. The other nurse was still frozen in her chair. 

Finally the woman said, "Fuck."  

MV: Premonitions

He'd been drifting again, not quite in that dismal almost-sleep that he'd found earlier, but... maybe dozing at the edges of it. The TV was still on, and someone in a helicopter was chasing a train, and also displaying a reckless disregard for basic physics. Andy would have changed the channel if he could, but the remote was out of reach and he was still strapped down. He'd lost track of the plot some while back, regardless...

Something nudged at the edges of his awareness. There was someone nearby, unknown but strangely familiar, coming closer. A wave of dread swept over him, and he thought, Oh, shit. 

He forced his eyes all the way open, looked around, and then thought, Oh, shit, again. He hadn't been dreaming it. There was definitely something nearby, outside the hospital but working its way towards him. "Nurse?" he called. 

Nobody answered. Of course they didn't. He tugged at his bonds. "Steve?"

Still nothing. He sighed. Could he trigger the alarm for his mental activity somehow? No, that must have been a one-time thing, or it would already have picked up on his distress. There was a call button for the nurse, but his restraints kept it out of reach as well.

Okay. Steve said wights had claws, so in theory I have claws. Or I can have claws. 

He considered his fingers, then flexed his hands. I hope so, anyway. If it was his murderer that he was sensing, he wanted nothing to do with it. He needed to be able to escape.  Come on... The shift was sudden, the transformation unfamiliar but unmistakable. Long, slightly-curved claws slid out from his fingertips, firmly anchoring themselves in a way that fingernails weren't, and he curled his fingers in and began working at the heavy leather bands around his wrists. 

They parted with surprising ease, and he moved to the strap that held his hips down; it parted easily as well. The collar around his neck was chained to the bed on either side, but he worked a claw under it and sawed at it until it parted. The restraints around his ankles were last to go. 

He was already sitting up; it was a minor effort to slip over the bed rails and put his feet on the floor. The hospital gown gaped open in the back, reinforcing the absurdity of his entire situation, but he forced his new-found claws back and scooped Steve's card up from the metal table. He needed to find help, or he needed a way out, and whichever he could find, he needed it now.  

MV: Reflections

Andy let his thoughts drift, but this time he didn't sink down into unconsciousness. He was dead, returned as a wight, maybe barely able to disguise himself as a living person if he took in enough of other people's... how had Steve put it? Youth. Vitality. Life force. Something like that. His family thought him dead -- rightly -- and his only allies were monster hunters and government caretakers. His first and only girlfriend was dead, and -- if they were to be believed -- not reborn as a monster. From what he remembered of the werewolves, he could believe that. They were supposed to be at their most infectious when they delivered a bite but failed to make the kill. 

Like that one did to me, he thought, remembering the pulsing wound in his shoulder, the shivering and loss of control even as he struggled to fend it off, the waves of heat and cold sweeping through his bone. 

But then the hand had come down over his face, and he'd woken back up as a wight instead.

He held himself still, let himself relax into the movie. Some guy with a Gatling gun in his passenger seat was trying to kill two girls and a guy in an armored car, while they tried to figure out how to shoot back without getting cut in half. One of the girls was returning fire, while the other cowered, obviously out of her depth...

Action movies. Action movies are normal. He kept watching, waiting to see what happened next. At this point, he needed as much normal as he could get.

MV: More Questions, More Answers

Carol was back fifteen minutes or so later. "Sorry," she said. "Usually they're better prepared for this."

"So this was... some kind of court-ordered thing for him?" asked Andy. 

The older woman nodded. "Yeah. Sometimes it's a way to work off a prison sentence, but people can also volunteer to do it meet community service requirements. We also have some people like Loida, who volunteer. But usually, by the time they get to us they've done this a few times before. I'm not sure how Gautam slipped through net on that, but... you handled it pretty well. Thank you."

Andy managed to shrug; his restraints didn't prevent that. "If I look anything like the thing that killed me, I can see why he'd be scared."

"How'd it go this time?" 

"Control was a lot easier this time. The hunger didn't try to run riot, and the beast just watched." He felt like an absolute lunatic saying that out loud, but Carol just nodded. "I think," he added cautiously, "that the hunger doesn't see touch as an invitation to feed unless I grab something, and the beast realized what I was doing and didn't feel the need to push it further."

"Huh," Carol said thoughtfully. "Do you think it would let me look inside your head now?"

Andy raised his eyebrows. "I'm not a psychic, but I wouldn't risk it."

"All right." She studied him for a long moment. "Listen, for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry this happened to you."

Andy nodded uncomfortably at that, because, well... he didn't care how she felt about it. She wasn't the one who'd woken up dead, learned that his girlfriend was dead, and been told that his family thought he was dead. Her sympathy might be well-meant, but it was useless. "Would you do me a favor?" he asked. 

"What kind of favor?"

"Turn on the TV. Find a channel with, I don't know, action movies. Mindless explosions."

"Oh." Carol's face went still. "Sure." She rose, found the remote, and turned on the television. It took a few tries to find a channel where a car chase was going on, but she managed. "Anything else?"

Andy shook his head, and she left his hospital room again.