1948
Munich
Rancid drool streamed between yellowed, hooked fangs to splash on the pavement as the beast swayed its wolflike muzzle back and forth. Talons the size of a man's thumb gouged furrows into the street.
"Didn't your mother ever teach you manners?"
Rayne did not sound impressed with the lycan's display. She didn't look impressed, either. Her appearance was more suited to an attitude of defiance: short red hair, blazing green eyes, tight red-and-black leather that clung to extremely generous curves, spike-heeled boots whose four-inch heels actually were spikes of sharpened steel, and three-foot blades strapped to a girl's forearms didn't lend themselves well to a pose of "cringing in fear."
She confused the lycan. In its wolfish form, its brain was consumed by perverted, bloody instincts, to hunt and stalk prey. It expected its meat to run, expected to chase the prey and bring it down with slavering jaws. It didn't expect prey to fight back. Confusion buzzed like a hot wire in its brain, and like virtually any emotion for the werewolf it was converted into a burning desire to rip apart the object of that emotion. It growled deep in its throat, then with a powerful surge of its hind legs, it jumped at her.
Again, though, Rayne surprised it. Even as it hurtled towards her, she was jumping, arcing her body forward. Her hand planted on the back of its spine between the shoulder blades, she used its body as a springboard to somersault over the werewolf so she landed cleanly on her feet while it cannoned into the iron pole of a street light.
"Bet that had to sting, huh?" Rayne sallied.
Mythology suggested there were certain effective ways to kill a lycan. Wolfsbane--a plant also called monk's-hood or aconite--was said to be toxic, and of course there were the classic silver bullets or other weapons crafted of the moon-metal. Rayne, though, wasn't much for mythological subtleties. She was a direct woman who preferred direct solutions, and she'd found that slicing the monster up into bite-sized chunks usually was effective to solve supernatural problems. It lacked a certain elegance, but what was a girl to do?
While the lycan shook off the effects of the impact, Rayne flicked her blades around, swinging them from their carrying position against her forearms to their ready pose, the hinge connecting them to her bracers guiding them so the handles came right into her palms. The handles weren't hilts like a sword, but off the blades' back edges like a tonfa baton. It offered her a remarkable ease of control over the weapons for slashing, thrusting, or parrying attacks.
"So, are we going to do this or what?"
The werewolf lunged at her, sweeping its right arm up and around in a massive roundhouse arc designed to hammer its fistful of talons through her body. Driven by the lycan's inhuman strength, the swipe was faster than any human could dodge--but then again, Rayne wasn't human. She ducked, rolling forward while extending her right arm, and its blade sliced across the lycan's chest and along its side, cutting through fur and belts of muscle, scraping along its ribs. The scent of spilled blood perfumed the air, making Rayne's nostrils flare eagerly.
Rayne planted her feet and pivoted her body, bringing her left blade around as the lycan passed her by. Unable to stop its momentum, it left itself completely open for her blade to shear through the bunched muscles of its shoulder and back. The werewolf yowled in pain as it scrambled away, then turned back.
A natural animal, or a thinking human, would have taken the hint. The werewolf had been stung twice, was up against an enemy as fast or faster than it was, an enemy that had wounded it while remaining unhurt. The smart move was to run, but the killing lust was on it, staring redly out of the lycan's wildly rolling eyes as they circled one another. It knew nothing but the urge to slay, wouldn't stop coming until it was rendered unable to keep fighting.
That suited Rayne just fine.
It charged in again, too blood-crazed for anything that resembled strategy, this time sweeping in with both arms as if to bear-hug her or squeeze her head between the enormous paws. This time Rayne didn't dodge aside but stayed in the monster's direct path. Instead, she dropped into a crouch, and while its talons passed harmlessly overhead she thrust upwards, spearing the tips of both blades through the lycan's chest. Rayne's own strength combined with the raw force of its charge to drive it fully onto the blades, stopping only when Rayne's fists slammed into its fur, the blade-points spearing out of the werewolf's back.
Rayne pushed herself erect, standing up while lifting the impaled beast overhead, then turned and flung it. The lycan slid off her blades, flying to crash into the brick wall of the nearest building. Rayne smiled, sensing the kill as she pressed the attack. The werewolf's next snarl of rage was half-choked by blood from its punctured lungs, and it was unable to keep her from forcing its arms aside with slashing, wounding blows. With its defense beaten down, Rayne punched her left blade up in an uppercut, skewering its muzzle from beneath and forcing the werewolf's head backwards. This opened up its throat to attack and Rayne took the opportunity, carving open the werewolf's neck to the spine. Gouts of blood sprayed as the massive body crashed to the ground where it twisted and thrashed for nearly a minute as its life ebbed away.
Only after it had stopped moving did the outlines of its body flex and ripple, shrinking down into the naked form of a man in his mid-twenties. In death, it was free of its bloodlust.
"That makes one of us, at least," Rayne said as her own system began to relax, the killing fever leaving her. In her way she was no less a monster than it--as a dhampir, half human, half vampire, the lust for violence, the predator's urge was in her as well, alongside the red thirst for human blood. Unlike the cursed freak she'd just destroyed, though, her mind was her own. Rayne could choose what to unleash her blood rage on--and so far as she'd found, there was never any shortage of mortal or supernatural horrors that she could let the demon out of its bottle against and still sleep like an innocent lamb.
Maybe, she thought, that was why she still kept up her association with the Brimstone Society even though her patron, Professor Tremain, was dead, his corpse burnt to ash in the explosion that had consumed Rayne's devilish father. Its work in fighting unnatural horrors guided Rayne to a steady stream of creatures like the lycan, things that while fighting she could let herself go, give the vampire side of herself free rein without worry.
Of course, with that opportunity came burdens, obligations. Things were never all just one way when dealing with people, especially people like Brimstone, who had gone much deeper into areas most sane human beings tried hard to avoid.
Rayne dealt with one of those obligations by spending several minutes on a public phone waiting for the operator to put through an international phone call. Postwar telecommunications weren't at their best, and these things still took time. Ordinarily she'd just have reported to the local chapter, but there wasn't a local chapter--not after the werewolf had gotten through with them.
Finally, the operators managed to put the call through.
"Hello?"
"It's me," Rayne said.
"Rayne?" The voice was deep and male, the kind of voice that went well with giving orders to secret agents. This one was American; Brimstone was nothing if not eclectic.
"Yeah. It's done."
"The locals?"
"Dead, all six of them. You boys are slipping; I didn't think one werewolf would give them that much trouble."
The voice was silent for a long moment, making Rayne wonder if she'd pushed things a little too far with the wiseass attitude. Authority figures didn't much impress her, but now and again she was a little too eager to make the point.
"No," the voice said at last. "No, it shouldn't. Not all of them. It lends credence to their report, though."
"Report?"
"It arrived by messenger the day after we sent you out to investigate, a coded packet sent by Brimstone's Munich chapter. They were on to something, organized occult activity."
"You think the werewolf wasn't just a random attack. Someone set the lycan on them, someone with knowledge of Brimstone's activities."
"Exactly." There was another pause, making Rayne wonder if he was conferring with someone else. "Rayne, we'd like you to look into this further. If it's reached the stage where someone is willing to snuff out six lives at once rather than risk exposure, then time is of the essence."
"All right. Besides, I said I'd investigate whatever made the Munich chapter go out of contact. If someone made that lycan attack, then they're as responsible for the deaths as it was. I do so hate to leave a job half-finished. What's my next step?"
"You'll need the information the chapter sent to us. By fast train we'll have it to you tomorrow night. And, Rayne?"
"Yeah?"
"Watch your back."
-X X X-
The man was big, well over six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. His hair was jet black, a wild shock of it, together with a bristling beard and moustache. Between thick, fleshy lips his bright white teeth gleamed in the firelight, looking sharp, almost pointed.
"Ja?" he said into the telephone receiver. "Gut." He set the instrument down, then turned to the other man in the room.
"You were right, Commander," he continued to speak in German. "The Brimstone Society learned something before we put a stop to their activities."
"I am not surprised, Hessler." The other man adjusted his monocle slightly. "For all their proclaimed altruism, these men understand the way of the hunt. They are not sheep to be led, but rather wolves who must be destroyed before they threaten the flock."
"Shall I take steps?"
"Oh, most definitely. Is that not what the shepherd does when his flock is threatened? That is what we are, Hessler. We raise and protect the flock. We cull from its breeding those who are weak and unfit to pass on their flawed genetics through the race. And when there is a threat from outside it is not with cruelty but as a simple matter of duty and sound policy that we crush it utterly and without mercy."
--
NOTE: I've always thought calling werewolves "lycans" was a bit...precious...for my taste, but since the creatures aren't in the games at all I've used the term based on the comic issue, "Lycan Rex."