Myxine- What the hell is that?
Chapter 3
...until you´ll tell me how to get rid of it.
Mike had brought her into this...No! Take a hold, stop! Mike hadn´t brought her, but Henry into this sheer hopelessly situation.
"I will do, what I always do, when my partner is in trouble...and until we´ll have found Henry, you´re my chauffeur!" Her words...and Mike had only silently nodded.
I should have planted more than one punch on your chin, if I hadn´t needed you...
Vicki was dumb with rage. She couldn´t simply shout at Henry, just to get rid of her anger. She was so angry with Mike, so angrily with herself, cuz she had blindly trusted into Mike, cuz she could always trust Mike. She was angry with herself, because she didn´t know what she should or could say to Henry. Any excuse? Not being enough when someone had almost died, she thought.
What to tell him, now that he was sitting beside her, trembling and totally tensed. Obviously he tried to keep his countenance after this, his...emotional break out.
"Henry, I know that it won´t help you much, when I´m gonna say anything...Back in the past, on duty...I often had such..."
"You aren´t my therapist, Vicki! I shouldn´t have get started with it!"
"That´s a mistake, Henry! About that, you should..."
"Don´t tell me what I´ll have to do! I´m living long enough to know by myself, what to do or not to do, Vicki!" He looked at her with dark eyes, then getting out of his car. Without a word he was keeping the door open for her.
"So repression starts! What does he even think..." Vicki mumbled, when she got out of the car and went over to the door of the laboratory, after she had taken her samples from the luggage trunk.
Henry will kill me tomorrow, when his luggage trunk is still stinking of this paste, she thought shortly when they entered the elevator.
On the second floor they met Dr. Mohadevan.
"Hello Vicki! What brings you in to me? Mr...uhm...Fitzroy? Right?" she smiled at Henry, who was nodding with a smile.
"Fitzroy. Simply Henry for you, please...We´ve met before. Under some less comfortable conditions.
"You´re working together yet with Vicki?"
"Yes. In a manner of speaking, Dr.!" There was a soft smile on his face. Rajani looked at him, noticing his slightly paler face and calm breathing rate. Not entirely human, she stated to herself.
Vampire.
She wasn´t afraid of him, to her he was simply another species walking the surface of earth. She had learned to know him as a controlled, kindly and always caring being when he was interacting with...mortals. Then she turned to Vicki.
Vicki placed the bag with the samples on the table and Dr. Mohadevan was looking at them with interest.
"Where did you get that from?"
"That´s outta rainwater drain down at Hammersmith Avenue and from a garden, from a lattice of a pond. Half the tunnel was full of it. That piece of tissue, Mr. Paddington meant, is obviously from one of the koi-carps. Henry has found it in a bush..." she explained.
"Koi carp mucosa. In a bush...?" she turned her face, looking at Vicki in a way, that Vicki knew all too well and which said; Not all of what I see, will be written in my report.
Vicki rolled with her eyes. Slime, once again slime. "First; slime, then slime skin..." She gasped in resignation.
"Mucosa." Dr. Mohadevan softly corrected her. "Fishes are having mucosa in difference to mammals, which wear a fur. That´s all. So...this is from a koi carp..." She laid the sample onto a microscope slide, then she bent over her microscope and watched more closely. She regulated the adjustments and looked again, then Rajani directed to the microscope slide.
"That´s definitely koi carp mucosa. Normally the surface should be dry, when you´ve found that outside the water out there. But this sample is covered with large mucosa cells which definitely don´t belong to our koi carp. Additionally the surface is affected. Wouldn´t I know it any better, I´d say...it´s kinda fermented like it has passed through an intestinal system..." she explained.
Vicki bent over the microscope, putting her glasses to the side.
"Uhm...can´t see..." she silently mumbled, when the sight was foggy. Rajani made some adjustments for her and Vicki could see round, white circles that looked to her like balls of glass or images from hailstones, she had seen anytime, anywhere. "To me it looks like...ice globes..." she lifted her head and smiled at Rajani. Then her face got a rather disgusted expression, when she went on:
"Does that mean, if I´m understanding you correctly; fed and thrown up again...?!"
"I´d say so! Let´s have a look on the other samples..." Dr. Mohadevan took a spatula, putting some of the glassy mass onto another slide and inserted it into the microscope.
"The same kind of mucosa cells. Large, roughly structured..." she waved over to her assistant McGormick, who came over to them. "Mac, please take these samples and check them for me, which chemical structure this has...And Mac...it´s urgently, please!" she begged him with some insistence.
After one hour Mac came back, presenting her a short-term analysis. Dr. Mohadevan read thru the file, reading it again and then she shook her head. Henry and Vicki were looking at her in utter expectation.
"What is it?" Vicki asked her and her fingertip moved up to the base of her nose, kneading it out of habit. Henry knew, that she did this, when her eyes got tired.
"That doesn´t fit together, anyway how you´ll turn this... Rainwater drain. Lake Ontario. Fresh water..." she mumbled thoughtfully and looked at Vicki.
"What doesn´t fit, Rajani?"
"Myxine glutinosa does not live in fresh water. The slime cells belong to Myxine glutinosa..." Dr. Mohadevan explained to her with a shake of her head.
"WHAT the hell is Myxine WHAT...?"
"I hope, that it does NOT descend from hell..." Henry mixed in with a disapproving glance. Vicki shot him a view. Hell had become a special opponent to Henry...and to her.
"Myxine glutinosa, the North Atlantic hagfish. He lives in salt water of around 50°F, in a depth between ninety and six thousand feet in the Atlantic. He´s a predator and scavenger and a varmint in fishery, because he attacks and feeds on caught fishes in trawl nets. And the slime contains mucin and keratin like proteins. The hagfish can absorb food thru its skin when it´s inside carrion. It´s mouth contains , like in a shark, a tight row of teeth, which are built by horn however, instead of dentin...here, I´m having an image..." Dr. Mohadevan directed to her computer, where she had uploaded an information from the internet.
Vicki put her glasses on, when she bent nearer. Henry was looking over her shoulder and his brows knitted...
A rose up to lightly brown colored, elongated body, equal to that of a snake or worm. The head was surrounded by a ring of thick, sausage like tentacles, the mouth a battery of horn teeth. Length; one foot up to two and a half feet was written in the description.
Not six to eight feet!
"And you´re sure that...it is this beast...?" Vicki directed to the screen, her voice was full of disbelief.
"The analysis of the material says Yes! But the length which you gave, does not fit to it. The less, that you´ve found the slime samples in a garden! Some species of eels can overcome short distances over solid ground in moist area. For example between two arms of a river, but not so Myxine. The hagfish does only live in salt water and was never testified in fresh water."
"Might this beast have come into the Lake Ontario by swimming thru the Saint Lawrence River?" Vicki was asking, when she thought about how this could fit together reasonably.
"Yes and no." Rajani gave back, but even she as a scientist was sounding a bit doubtfully.
"Mike will show up here with a corpse shortly, Rajani! He or she was lying in the same rainwater drain, covered by the same stuff!" Vicki was forewarning her.
"Do you want to indicate, that such an animal could have killed a human. Probably it has only fed on the corpse. Grazing on found corpses is often a problem, Vicki. Because it can hide the real cause of death." She once again watched down onto the sample of slime.
"Then please take a look at the bones, if there are traces of gnawing..." Vicki suggested.
"Uhm, that can also be an indication of...simple feeding or gnawing on a corpse. First I´ll have to dissect the body thoroughly, to tell anything about the cause of death, Vicki...you know it."
"And how long will you need?"
"Difficult to tell." By Vicki´s voice she could tell, that she was concerned about more than the fact that Mike might kick her butt.
"I´m afraid that we won´t have so much time. And Mike will rip off your head, when you´ll tell him what we´ve been talking about here!" Vicki replied. She was looking very skeptically and Henry let his view move through the nightly laboratory.
"Rajani! Please don´t deny the monster-kills-human-thesis. It has always been you who was constantly telling me, that you´re a scientist and by this open-minded for everything." Vicki directed to the table and then to Henry, who had whirled around by her words and was now looking at both women with a view, which was a mixture of astonishment and slight amusement.
"How please, will I have to understand this now? Is it about the scientist question or do you refer to the monster-kills-human-thesis as a hint to me? The negation of the last I´ve testified to you a short time ago, as far as it...affects me!" He directed to himself and his voice had a hint of allegation.
He´s a killer- plain and simple.
Henry was still hearing it in his ears. Mike´s words. And the damn sewer tonight had it all brought up again, almost physically...
"I don´t see you as a monster, Henry!" Dr. Mohadevan explained in utter calmness. She had, by Vicki´s begging, the less by that from Henry, paid a visit at Henry´s home to look at Mike´s bite mark wounds. At the same time she had checked Henry, diagnosing two broken ribs and a lot of bruises. Results of the torture Mendoza had committed on him. Nothing that won´t heal, but uncomfortable enough as long as it would be lasting.
Conscious of guilt as she was, the first nights Vicki had always asked for the wound marks on his chest, when Henry was coming to her. Anyway they needed longer to heal than the other wounds. Her proposal, that he should drink more blood was regretfully negated by Henry. Doesn´t bring anything, I´ve still tried it...I´ll simply have to wait, he has answered.
"What do you think of me, though?" Henry threw back at her. He sounded a bit huffy and it seemed, that he wanted to provoke anyway. What the heck was going on with him? Which touchiness did they expose in him?
Dr. Mohadevan could almost read it in his face. An expression of hurt that was shining up in his eyes. So she decided to intervene.
"A special and interesting species. For me, there are no monsters in the sense of the word, Henry!" Dr. Mohadevan tried to soften his mood. "I see, I notice and I accept, when I meet somebody or anything, who or what is unusual and new to me. You have been in an extraordinary situation, though you didn´t kill neither Mike nor Vicki, although you could have probably done it! And that, this...control...differs you from what humans normally call a monster!"
He looked at her, being astonished, being silent for a moment and she gave him a conciliatory smile, putting the copies of the analysis files together and then she reached them to him.
"Take this and speak about it with Vicki and her assistant. Maybe you´ll find a possibility to withdraw it from the area, before it can cause more damage...Maybe you should turn to the Department of fishery too, when the attacker strikes from the Lake Ontario..." she recommended.
"Thank you, Dr.!" Henry nodded, taking the files and reaching them to Vicki, who was hiding them into her large bag.
"We should take care for, that we´ll make a lift-off before Mike shows up here! In the moment I´m not up to his ideas!" She was referring to Mike´s verbal attacks against Henry and his partnership with her.
On the road again
When they were down again, sitting in Henry´s Jaguar, Vicki brought up the theme again, what needed all of her bravery. Not when it came to Henry but the more with herself.
"Henry, what was going on? Nobody does accuse you cause of what has happened. So you shouldn´t accuse yourself. Where have your pride and your self-confidence gone to? Both you could built up enough within the last five hundred years, as that Mike´s sappy talk might touch you!"
"Mike´s sappy talk, as you so eloquently put it, has almost killed me! And you too! And this has nothing to do with pride or self-confidence. Still think about what he took out again tonight!" Henry countered.
"Henry!" Vicki laid her hand onto his forearm. "...you don´t know Mike that long, as I do...He has his imaginations about, how his world has to work and you´ve shaken his view of the world to the core...Mike did help me in these two days! Without him, I wouldn´t have found you...Not fast enough to prevent this lunatic from killing you...And...uhm, you have bitten him..."
"I have been starved out and almost mad by pain."
"Exactly! That hasn´t been a normal feeding. And what is coming from Mike now, is more the reaction of a frightened kid, who betakes himself for attack, so nobody will see his fear. Because in one thing Mike is as stubborn as I am; a cop with fear does not fit into his self-conception! Attention; yes! But that been...deadly fear. Mike has only felt fear when you had been hanging at his throat... And because of this, by now he will not let pass by any option to attack you!"
"Should I have asked for his permission beforehand to take his blood? I have been halfway dead! I was starving...!" he looked at her with his eyes turning cobalt. It was Mike who drove me that far, this accusation was written in his eyes. Mike needed no excuse, it had to come from Mike´s side!
"Please, Henry...! You´ve...asked me too when you had been severely hurt. In the park. Have you thought of this?"
"That has been another situation. I had everything under control. That´s the difference!" he looked at her with a view between hurt pride and...desperation.
The loss of control had to be gnawing at him far worse than the other tortures he had been suffering. He, who had been fighting for his humanity after the turning. And who was carrying his human side in front of him like a shield. He had told her how much he had been fighting to get the animal within under control, when he was newly turned. He had told it her when they had been hunting the Windigo. And in the same night, all his conceptions had threatened to go down the drain...
Vicki did believe him, did trust him.
And she was still trusting him now. Anything else was out of the question for her. Irrespective to what Mike was arguing.
Mike, who was acting like a naughty child.
All of it...self-defense. Camouflage in an attempt not to be showing any fear.
Definitely, Henry had attacked him, being completely out of control, ravaging his throat. By this everybody would simply feel fear. Also an experienced cop who was standing his ground. For Mike it had been like the attack of a freaked out fighting dog. With the difference, that this hadn´t been a dog but anything that looked like a...human.
"Vicki, please! I´m...!" he swallowed hard and she could see his Adam´s apple jumping and for mere seconds his eyes closed, then he breathed out, then he went on; "I...I´m not up for it to discuss this out yet thoroughly. Please, Vicki! I begging for your understanding, only this once. Maybe once later. I...I know that you only want to help me, but...that´s hurting to much now! Not...from your side, but I simply can´t this in the moment..." Henry looked at her, his eyes a plea.
"Let us drive, Vicki!" Henry directed backwards to where a familiar car was approaching.
Mike Celluci.
Vicki turned her head to get sight of what Henry had been referring to, then she nodded in agreement.
"Go, Henry!" she agreed. The Jaguar moved out of the parking lot, slipping into the poor traffic before Mike would get sight of them.
While they were driving, Vicki called Coreen from her cell. Though it was late, the goth was suddenly fully awake. "A hagfish? What kinda hagfish?" Coreen´s perky voice was sounding from the cell receiver.
"Rajani means, that the creature, that is responsible for the disappearing of all these pets, is a..." Vicki looked into the file; "...a North Atlantic hagfish...Myxi...Myxine glutinosa. At least so far as it comes to the analysis of this sticky slime paste, which we have found everywhere, where animals got lost. And...there´s a case of death!"
"Oh goodness! Do you think that this eel has...killed someone? Like the Windigo did?" She heard Coreen gasping.
"I´m afraid...yes! Please look what you can find out! We´ll meet at my office! And first of all...how we can find this beast and how it can be killed!" Vicki hung up.
"Do you think this to be a good idea, Vicki? Setting off and killing it? Practically you´re knowing nothing about it, but that it´s large and dangerous, Vicki..." Henry warned her, while he was driving the Jag through the traffic. To make matters worse, it started to snow again. No large, moist snowflakes but rather small grains of snow. Henry knew that this could only mean one thing; the temperature had gone down and it was about to become really cold... So be it, he thought. They won´t have to think about the snow now, but about the fact that Vicki obviously hasn´t learned anything from the last disaster in hunting down an unknown being...
Her intention was bearing a fatal resemblance to the Windigo case.
"First we have to find out, if it is using the sewer as an entrance to its hunting grounds. Probably we´ll get hold of it on its prey."
"To disturb anybody or anything during feeding is a super idea, Vicki! Really! Absolutely fantastic! I can really recommend this, when you want real trouble...!" Henry looked at her appraisingly.
"In the past they caught wolves with baits too!"
"Wolves! Vicki! Those aren´t six to eight feet long and all over slick." Henry closed and shook his head no.
"A wolf of some five feet might have a damn large yap!" Vicki added sarcastically.
With some concern he thought back to their last trial of a hunt, when Vicki wanted to kill the Windigo. Even for him the monster had been one size too large and too strong in the first attempt. Who knows what this hagfish was hiding behind the edge.
"We´ll search for a solution, together with Coreen. And then I don´t wanna hear any patters like: the great vampire is afraid of a zombie!" Henry looked at her meaningful. "When one can´t choose his opponent, one should start it advisedly and not with the head right thru the wall, like you tend to do, Vicki!"
"That means...you don´t wanna help me, Henry?!" Vicki complained in annoyance. What was going on with Henry? Had she done anything to piss him off? Or was it all about Mike and him being involved again, now that the case of lost animals had improved into a case of...animalistic...homicide.
"I´ll help you, Vicki! But you won´t be going into it this time all alone. Do we agree with it?"
"I´ll listen to you, Henry..." she looked at him with such an impudent grin, that Henry could only shake his head in disagreement. Did Vicki think that she was shielded by any invisible immortality, since the demon signed her with these tattoos?
"Every time when you got started all on your own, against former, contrary agreements, you´ve brought you into imminent danger.
"Which you had saved me from always." she countered with a smile.
"I did not imagine our partnership as a steady-state of a saving-your-life-situation, only because you don´t go with the formerly made agreements, Vicki! And that isn´t funny at all right now!"
Shortly after Henry and Vicki had reached her home and office, Coreen was showing up. She was carrying a whole pile of books, which seemed to be heavy enough to let it simply drop onto Vicki´s desk.
"Coreen!"
"Yes, Ms. Nelson...!?" Coreen gave her an innocent look, being well aware what was coming next.
"Coreen, please tell me now, that you didn´t organize all these books anywhere again!" Vicki looked at her warily and her voice made it clear, what she thought about the organization talents of her assistant, which seemed to be at least...questionable...from time to time. Or better not.
"If you wanna mean, that I came into ownership of these books illegally, then you´re pretty wrong with it!" Coreen looked at her and her voice sounded a bit insulted.
"Zoology of the fishes of Lake Ontario...Taxonomy of the species of the northern maritime zones...Zoo-pathology of salt water fishes..." Vicki was reading over some titles. "I know that you´re interested in the paranormal and occultism, but I didn´t know that your a fan of fishes..." Imaging her assistant to sit in front of a tank with plants and a swarm of fishes in it...OMG! Coreen would at least prefer a terrarium with lizards, snakes or at least hand sized bird spiders. Without being talking about more strangely creatures...
"My Mom once had an ornamental fish tank. But all of them were small, nice fresh water fishies. These books have been borrowed from my neighbor, who studies biology. Honestly, really! I told him that I´ll have something to research and he borrowed them to me..." Coreen affirmed.
Henry rolled his eyes with an inner sigh. Hopefully Coreen hadn´t n off any more details about what she wanted to research exactly. It was none of the neighbor´s business to know, that they were in search for an oversize-slime monster, that was endangering the lake and the surrounding area. The vampire hysteria which had infected Toronto in spring, had been enough to show him , how fast his security could be endangered. And a mass hysteria cause of an oversized hagfish; absolutely a no go!
"I hope that you´re aware of how expensive books for the university are!"
"Ms. Nelson! I´ve been studying myself! I know it!"
"Whereas your exclusive works are for sure more expensive than these bio-tomes!" Vicki shot back, unable to let this end without having the last word. As usually, Henry thought. Why did humans always discuss matters endlessly, instead of focusing onto what was up on the table? First thing comes first! Not so with Vicki and her assistant...
"Okay! Stop that now, enough of these discussions! Probably we should come to terms with the case now!" Henry mixed in now, who was knowing Vicki´s escalating talent for discussions all too well.
He turned to Coreen, fixing her eyes with his suddenly blackened eyes, his voice got the timbre he used to influence his target subjects:
"Has your neighbor asked you about your research, Coreen? Did he ask anything about a mysterious killer?" Henry wanted to know if the case of death has spread among people´s knowledge, like the Norman Bridewell demon murders had in April...
"He asked me what I´m searching for and I told him, that I want to help my friend, who had caught a salmon with fin deformations. He didn´t ask any more details..." Coreen answered. She didn´t sound as if being under compelling, but Henry could hear the fine change in her voice, telling him, that he was successful with his attempts.
"Good! You will not give him any further information! Your neighbor is a nice guy, but it´s none of his business!" Henry commanded and then he released her from his control.
"Quite okay! No information!" Coreen agreed.
Vicki took Henry to the side; " Has this been necessary yet, Henry? This no-information-thing? This is Coreen, not one of your meal-on-legs!" Vicki whispered.
"Coreen for sure is a very good assistance, but sometimes she´s a bit too unselfconsciously open..." Henry whispered in such a low voice that Coreen couldn´t hear him. Vicki shrugged her shoulders and started her computer.
"Coreen, please search for mutations in this hagfish species. I´´l search the web!" Vicki split up work.
"We should search for methods to catch and finally disturb it, Ms. Nelson. It seems to have spread its natural habitat unexpectedly. A fish, more or less on dry ground, and this...with these temperatures!"
"Probably this whole slime protects it from drying out and from the weather too!" Henry meant. "It would explain why it can enter the sewer and solid ground. At least for a restricted time."
"When we might catch it onshore or in the sewer...Probably we´ll have a chance to cut it off from its way back and it may have to stay onshore so long, until all of its slime won´t help him out anymore! Fish dried out. Fish dead!" Coreen stated with a grin that was confident of victory.
"Not bad! But we don´t know, how long it´ll hold out under the slime cover until it´ll start to dry out! At least it has to be able to breathe normal air, outside the water. Normal eels can move over solid ground in moist areas to reach new places. Please look, if in any of your books anything is written about eel migration, especially hagfish migration, Coreen!" Henry recommended while he was paging through one of the books from the pile.
Vicki became aware how fast he was paging through the pages, mere seconds remaining on one page. She tipped onto a page and Henry looked up to her.
"Ya reading the pages, Henry?"
He nodded. "Yes. One of the vampire skills; faster reading..."
"Wow, you should be working as an editor and review books! With this speed you´ll make more money with it than with the graphic novels..."
"But graphic novels are a way more creative way to make money, Vicki. It´s way more accommodating to me!"
"Creativity! Uhm, got it! It´s your favorite skill" Vicki gave back casually.
"We might test it out, Vicki!" Henry replied with a hint of passion in his voice. He looked at Vicki for her reaction, waiting.
"You mean...me...as a model for your next graphic novel? Vicki Nelson, private eye in action, with a gun and a baton! Uhm...should do some training before for acting..."
"Model. Uh, not exactly what I had in mind first of all..." Henry smirked. " I might prove my creativity, if you´ll only let me, Vicki!"
Vicki was fully aware of what he was up to.
"This theme had already been on the table, Henry..." she tried to slow down his...insinuating... optimism. "I´ve told you before, that this won´t work out..."
"Opinions can be changed and opposites can be proven..." Henry replied with his incomparable smile which only he could master. He bent nearer to her, as if he wanted to look onto the screen, his nostrils were widening a bit when he inhaled her scent. He could smell, that her scent had slightly changed into something more... So his words didn´t stay without an effect in her
Like by coincidence his nose touched her earlobe.
Vicki slightly twitched, she took her head back in an attempt to get a better look at him. "Henry!?" Hopefully it had escaped him, that a warm wave had been running down her spine to certain areas. Vicki tried to keep her face neutral, ignoring the slight trembling inside her.
"What...?" he asked her with an innocent smile.
"I´m not ready yet with my internet research!" Vicki replied and it sounded like an escape.
Henry looked on his clock.
"The night is still long enough and we might..."
"Henry! We have to solve a case!" she brought him down on the rug of reality and was typing determinedly on her keys.
He sighed inwardly and turned back to his book.
Coreen had been following Henry´s and Vicki´s playfully banter from one side. She had to hide a smile. Vicki was a tough woman and she had the guts to cope with a vampire. Coreen had brought up the point, that Vicki should put down her inner reluctance. A woman between two amazing, charming and interesting men! How could she be so self-restricting? When Henry would have turned his interest on her, Coreen, she wouldn´t have hesitated to run off with him immediately!
Henry shot her a look from the corner of his eye and Coreen pretended to be surprised by it, her lips opened slightly when she produced an innocently questioning smile. For sure she couldn´t fool a vampire! Hastily she turned to her own book again, in the hope that Henry won´t mention anything.
"YUP! Guess, that might it be!" Coreen suddenly brought out on such a level that especially Henry was twitching. Everybody looked at her.
Coreen was all smiles.
"Stop torturing us, Coreen! Share it with us!" Vicki had gotten up from her seat, but Coreen was still on her way around the table, putting the opened book onto Vicki´s desk. She directed to an article.
"Look, just here...: In rare cases the species Myxine can, by a jump mutation in the gen XP24-N, which causes a blockade of the regulation of linear growth, reach a size up to five feet. One specimen of unusual length, that was caught in the Northern Atlantic was showing the genetic defect, of which couldn´t be found out, by which reason it was caused. Until yet investigations couldn´t verify, if the mutation was caused by environmental influence or due to exposition to a noxa...heaven, what´s a noxa?" Coreen groaned.
"A noxa is a substance or a poison in the environment..." Henry was helping out.
"...caused by a noxa! Goodness! What if any environmental hog has poured anything into the lake again and all the fishes will mutate to monsters! These are horrifying perspectives!"
"we won´t hope for that, Coreen. But the text shows, that it can come to abnormal changes in the linear growth. And who knows if these five feet are the upmost limit! Possibly this had been a young specimen of the mutated variety...and our hagfish here is full-grown!" Henry meant after a look onto the image; "What is leading us to the next question:...
...How can we kill it?"
The last words came out with the pragmatism of someone, who wasn´t about to kill for the first time in his life.
Henry is a killer. Plain and simple! Angrily Vicki wiped the memories of Mike´s words aside.
Henry had been confronted by opponents, enemies and even paranormal creatures more than once in his long life. If any, then Henry was able to bring up a reasonable solution for their problem.
"A flamethrower always helps!" Coreen´s voice sounded confident of victory, as usually. Would there be anything outside, from which Coreen would shrink back? Sometimes her assistant was rather...unbiased.
"Especially when this thing conks out after the first shot!" Vicki´s voice was full of sarcasm in indication of the failed attempt to roast the Windigo with the self-made construction. "Your´s is only usable to flame-scarf a Christmas tree!"
"I didn´t tell you that you shall use up the whole tank volume on an innocent Christmas tree, Ms. Nelson. Eventually this isn´t the military version from Aliens!"
"With that toaster we´d probably be in the better position!"
"First we´ll have to lure our opponent into a trap, from which it can´t escape, without getting us! Maybe we should think about this!" Henry threw in.
"The best chances to lock in the monster and to kill it, we´ll probably have when it is in its favorite tunnel...On the lake and with one or a couple of boats...that´s too conspicuously and also ineffective, because there, its range of movement is too large..." Coreen came to the point. She had definite doubts that they would even be able to find the monster anywhere in the lake, if not with a sonar. Which only the police would have or any fisherman...
"The tunnel will be locked up by the police after the corpse was found in there..." Vicki pointed out.
"I don´t believe that this hagfish is capable of reading! If he wants to get in, he´ll get in! I only want to remind you of the sagged gate element!" Henry countered. The only question was, if the city had sent a repair group and the gate was locked up again.
"I´m for the tunnel option! There it can´t escape us so easily." Coreen was sounding damned euphoric. The argument was logical, admittedly, but there was someone who wasn´t all too enthusiastic. Coreen could read it in Henry´s face.
"Any doubts, Henry?" she asked.
"I hate sewers" Henry answered with utter conviction.
"Did you never spend the day.. in a tunnel?" She sounded rather astonished.
"I´ve already taken refuge for the day at the most different places; rock caves, holes in the ground, mine tunnels, cellars...but not in tunnels in which oversized slime excreting or bone marrow eating creatures are dwelling."
"Tombs too? I mean, vampires are often descending from tombs..." Coreen was digging deeper, yet when they once got started with the matter.
"Do you think of me to be a relative of this moronic Count Dracula?"
"Coreen! Please! Henry is suffering from a sewer trauma, just in case you´ve forgotten it!" Vicki was looking at her over the edge of her glasses with a certain strictness.
"Do you have to put it that way?" Henry groaned and looked at her and shook his head. It was showing, what he was thinking of it.
"Henry, we have been talking about it at full length, down in your car and Dr. Mohadevan would agree with me in a medical sense, when I´m saying that you´re having a tunnel trauma. There are thousands of people suffering from any trauma.,,"
"I´m a vampire, Vicki!" Henry protested in a low but sharpened tone.
"Oh! I´ve obviously forgotten it! And that will make Your Grace, son of a king,vampire immune against it!" Vicki´s voice was dripping with sarcasm, then it turned to a more conciliatory timbre, when he shot her an angry view; "Henry, please, I only want to tell by this that I´m understanding, when you aren´t excited of the tunnel option. That does not make you vulnerable, but...more human. I´m not perfect at all in everything and that´s what makes us what we are. Perfectionism is making people cold and uninterestingly. And that´s not you, Henry! For this...I´ve met way too much cold perfectionists. And these were mostly found among criminals. Perfectly in everything but one... namely that we´ll get them all anytime!"
"I would prefer to get this monster now, before it gets the next clueless citizen!" Henry wasn´t in the condition or in the mood now to extend the theme with Vicki. That might be led by good intentions and it showed him, that Vicki was more interested in him than commonly. But after the rather physical pain had subsided, which the last encounter with the Great Inquisitor had caused him, he just needed time for himself to cope with the anguish. In this case Henry was glad that he was unable to dream.
That was sparing him any nightmares.
"Does somebody have an usable proposal, how we can get our hands on this beast? We won´t be able to avoid the tunnel, as this is the only bounded room..." Henry changed the theme now.
"We have to search for a fitting weapon and then I recommend, that one of us will take a position near to the sewer entrance, while the others are waiting inside...And the one who´s at the entrance will alert us when the slime monster is crawling in..." Coreen was coming up with a battle strategy.
"Good and well! And who´s the outpost?" Henry was rather skeptical, that this would work.
"Best is...you´ll do it, Henry!" Vicki directed to him.
"Why me?"
"You´ve said that the Windigo can´t smell your blood. Maybe also the slime bag won´t be able... That´s why I thought of you. It may not notice you, when it creeps in and not be growing suspiciously..." Vicki explained to him. She didn´t feel certain about this option, but to be honest, she didn´t have another, better idea.
"And you are standing in the sewer with waving arms, like a bait! Great option! Nobody knows how fast this slick bomb is..."
"But you´re the by far, fastest from all of us...and you can see in the dark. You´ll with us so fast at all...There might nothing be going wrong, Henry..."
"Wish I´d have your trust..." Henry groaned, who was already seeing in danger to be pasted and eaten by a slime drooling giant fish.
"I´m trusting you with my life, Henry! Still forgotten?" Vicki reminded him of the night on that cemetery, when they had eliminated the Voodoo queen.
"No, I haven´t forgotten. And I´m trusting you with my life too. But...that doesn´t mean, that we won´t have to be careful though, because we don´t know much about the skills of our enemy, but being able to crawl thru sewers and over solid ground, to breathe air and to feed on everything that is coming in front of its shark mouth." Henry had enough fighting experience throughout his life, so that he knew nobody to be taken too easily.
"And to break even strong iron bars in its path! So it´s pretty strong..." Coreen added with a warning undertone.
"Coreen, I don´t wanna wrestle down that beast, I wanna shoot it!" Vicki warded off her objection.
"Silver bullets, Ms. Nelson?"
"The last of them you´ve given Mike!"
"Uh oh, when the monster isn´t from the twilight zone or the otherworld or worse...one of Astaroth´s creatures, then normal projectiles will do too...You or Mike have even..."
"Keep Mike off it! He´s already sick of my freaking cases. This Medusa had been more than enough for him! I´m just asking myself, how he´ll be explaining-to-normal this corpse from the sewer to Kate..." Vicki groaned. Mike never had anyway manipulated evidences.
"Your detective is an amazing writer, Vicki!" Henry grinned.
"Where from do you know what Mike is writing in his report files?"
"Cuz I´ve helped him with the final report of the Norman Bridewell case..." Henry explained with a casual voice.
"You have...? I mean...Mike has asked you for help? I don´t believe it yet!" Vicki looked into Henry´s eyes, her facial expression was showing her disbelief; "You didn´t coincidentally...convince him into it, ain´t you? Ya know what I mean...!"
Henry lifted his hands in a gesture of innocence.
"I might do it to him. Unlike you, Detective Celluci isn´t immune to my manipulative skills. But it hasn´t been me that time! I only wanted to be certain that he doesn´t write any crap, which pulls me into it and that´s why I paid him a visit in his office. There he was sitting like someone in desperation in front of his report. And I´ve offered him to set up something for him, what he can look at and save finally. I only had to change small details, so it would fit into your police procedure. That´s all!" Henry shrugged his shoulders, tilting his head and he smiled.
"But don´t make that a habit! Mike shall do his work on his own and you´ll better stay with your graphic novels, Henry!"
"So shooting! Do you have any gun, Henry? I mean...anywhere..." Coreen´s hand made a movement like turning a key; "...locked up? Probably a shotgun or any equal large-caliber weapon. Elephant gun? Silver rifle?" She looked at him like at someone to expect the next wonder from. Henry, Knight in shining armor with Excalibur.
"Large-caliber weapons are but rather Vicki´s class. A woman who doesn´t read crochet tutorials, but using instructions for firearms." Henry couldn´t hide a smile now. Vicki with a crochet hook in hands.
This she would only use, when she might pull a monster out of its hole with it!
"I´ve only a handgun. World War Two. And it´s since then lying unused, wrapped and well oiled, in my cellar compartment. My largest weapon by its size is my sword! Possibly beheading will help. That´s what I can. Even pretty good!" Henry shot Vicki a smirk.
"At your time this had been the weapon of your choice. But if anybody will catch you with it, they´ll think it´s Highlander real life in Toronto yet!"
"Would make a good excuse. I simply say that we´re filming a new episode and I´m still waiting for my colleague Duncan McLeod!" Henry grinned.
One of Toronto´s further secrets.
Immortals!
Henry wasn´t the only immortal being in Toronto. He wasn´t sharing his vampire territory, but the city contained a couple of other human beings, which were hiding among the mortals. Sean was one of his old...very old, even older than him...friends. The Highlander movies were set up to hide the existence of an immortal species from the mortal eyes, creating a movie myth as humans tended to believe, that what they saw in movies can´t be real. And Augustus had his fingers knuckle deep in the pie!
"You´re never running out of quick-witted excuses, aren´t you, Henry?" Vicki looked at him with a wide smile.
"I´ve just more at hand than only the best break-up wisecracks. Wanna test that out, Vicki?
"Later on! I´d love to. But in the moment..."
"May I have that to understand as an invitation?"
"Henry!" she warned him.
Vicki forcefully pushed down the surge of her hormones at the imagination of what else of wisecracks Henry would have on hand. She wasn´t a fan of dirty talk, but almost five hundred years of experience might be worth a try. Not only these boring, hackneyed sayings...
But stop! She commanded herself. Concentrate on the mission ahead! Now Toronto had to be cleaned from a dirty killer!
To be continued