"The Last Call of the Sunset Lounge"

Trenton – 1984

Truas stumbled through the door. The youth's green eyes burned with searing halos as they adjusted to the grandeur of the chandeliers in the marble hallway. Six hours in the dark gloom of the comm room listening to static through his headphones, face awash in the hypnotic green glare of a computer monitor, left him more a shambling corpse than a person.

He stopped in the center of the grand hall and rubbed his eyes with his fists. It was another shift of 'nothings', same as the day before and sure to be the same as the day after. It was only to be expected given the recent paucity of agents in the field. In years past Truas had been told they ran with six or even a dozen agents per continent, but now he could count every one of the Banrigh's active field agents on the whole globe with one hand.

So it was obvious they'd be less productive, right?

He scratched at his shock of scruffy red hair and yawned, staring down at the tips of his black shoes. He thought about all the talk he'd heard— whispered rumors in dark corners— concerning the reason for this contraction in manpower. Some were saying the Source had dried up, and that no new immortals were being born. Few of these whispers reached his ears— the more seasoned cultists were seldom so casual with their words around a 16-year-old like him— but some of the fuadain, at least, could be less careful. For his part Truas did his best to ignore such talk, and certainly not repeat it in his superiors' presences; it would be unseemly for one whose bloodline had served the Banrigh so long to talk of such things.

Losgaidh ran into the boy near the center of the grand hall. The tall man walked with his hands in his pockets, ambling easily. The skin around his narrow black eyes curled with amusement at Truas' disheveled state.

"Another long one, child?"

The boy nodded. He tried smoothing his hair down as he spoke.

"I don't mind it being so long," he said. "But to be so boring..."

Truas' face blanched at his own words; immediately he thought to backtrack.

"Not that I'm complaining!" He said. "I just—"

"You are complaining," Losgaidh chuckled, pulling out a cigarette from a silver case and lighting up. "And you've got the right, I'd think. Comms is a pretty thankless job, after all."

"Especially these..."

Again Truas caught his tongue. He looked up at the older man with another pained look on his face. This time Losgaidh didn't chuckle. The sharp lines of his thin face seemed hewn of stone. But when he spoke it wasn't in anger.

"Especially these times, you mean?"

The boy nodded.

"Mmm." Losgaidh snapped his cigarette case shut and gave the boy a pat on the shoulder. "Well, service to the Banrigh sees all seasons, my boy. Enough summers and winters to go around. And when there's a 'freeze' like this, well, it does wear on one, doesn't it? Can be plenty boring."

Truas nodded. He stared at one of the grand paintings flanking the marble gallery and swallowed. He looked to change the uncomfortable subject, looking up at Losgaidh with more eager, energetic eyes.

"Anyway, I hear there's some excitement going on upstairs, huh? They won't tell me or the other gophers about it, and I know you can't say, but it must be something really big, huh? Something not boring, at least?"

Losgaidh's thin lips parted. His snow-white teeth stood bared in a Cheshire-cat grin.

"Truas, my boy: it may be the biggest of big things, at that. When the time comes you'll all hear—"

A tinny screech exploded over the speakers lining the hall, loud enough to completely cut off Losgaidh's words and force Truas to shield his ears with his hands. Even after it was gone the boy's head buzzed as if a fly had burrowed into his brain. After a few seconds a new sound came through all the speakers:

"...never mind that we're talking about all the festivities going down on a Wednesday this year— a true hump-day holiday. So it's not exactly the kinda year you'd think the stuffed suits in city hall would be overpreparing for. But hey: when you got your 'cousins' in the transportation department all lining up for that sweet, sweet overtime pay it's no wonder you see the roadworkers laying down enough cones and blocking off enough lanes of traffic to film a scene from The Omega Man.

"Well, speaking of movies we've got some Hollywood news coming up right up after the break. And— speaking of 'sweet' things— we've got a little 'Sweet' treat for you right after that."

The radio station's identifying jingle played, and then it launched into an ad for toothpaste.

Truas and Losgaidh exchanged puzzled looks. The boy motioned up to one of the speakers.

"What the hell was—"

A nearby door burst open. Another cultist stormed through it, flanked by two more. He raced up to Losgaidh.

"Communications with the ritual room are down."

Losgaidh's black eyes narrowed.

"Containment teams to the top floor elevator; have an armed team bring up their toys from the armory; we take no chances—"

"Sir, the armory went unresponsive 10 minutes ago," one of the flanking cultists interrupted. "The door is not opening and we have a team working on forcing it. Did you not know?"

Losgaidh's confident scowl quickly fell. He motioned back to the end of the grand marble hallway, towards the ampulla.

"No, I was overseeing the recovery ritual, and..." his voice trailed off. He looked at the three cultist, then Truas.

"Looks like you're going to get to see the 'excitement' firsthand, my boy." He motioned to the three cultists, barking quick orders. "Rouse all available manpower! Riot shields and stun batons! Get that team off the armory door and have them meet us upstairs! Everyone to the ritual room!" He pointed to Truas. "You come with me!"

As he and Truas raced for the elevator Losgaidh pointed over his shoulder at the other three cultist.

"And tell anyone that's got a gun squirreled away in their quarters to bring it up!"

One of the cultists started fumbling over his words, a very guilty look on his face. Losgaidh clapped his hands at the man.

"I know it's done and I don't care: we need that firepower, no questions asked!"

X

X

X

The top floors of the Aurelia Arms, by deliberate design, were accessible only by one hallway, and by one specific door. It was a setup so in violation of every fire safety code known to man that of all the headaches that would be involved in removing the cathair to Manhattan and preparing this building for actual tenants, renovating this area into something even barely passable for safety inspection would be at the top of the list.

But for Losgaidh and the army of cultists that met him it was a wonderful strategic chokepoint. Finding the door still locked, and a guard on duty to confirm that none had passed, was at least a bit of a comfort. He ordered a small team of cultists down to street-level, in case the prisoner upstairs had indeed gotten free and decided to do the sensible thing, smash out a window and leap from the building.

Anything else, after all, would be utterly foolish on their part, wouldn't it?

Truas asked Losgaidh about this, but the older man brushed the boy's query off.

"This one might be different," Losgaidh said. "You must be ready for anything."

Losgaidh had a group of cultists with heavy metal riot shields storm the corridor first, and behind them a phalanx of men with stun batons swarmed the hall. They all stormed up the stairs as Losgaidh directed several men to stay behind and guard the elevator.

By the time they'd climbed the five flights to the ritual room hallway Truas was nearly out of breath; he had no idea how the men holding those massive shields could manage the climb, but all their faces were stony and a powerful determination burned in all their eyes.

Losgaidh gave a quiet countdown at the door. As he got closer to zero Truas' heart raced anew. He drew a breath to steel himself as one of the cultists handed him a stun baton. When Losgaidh's count reached zero one of the beefier cultists slammed his body against the hallway door and burst out into the room beyond. Immediately the shield-bearers filed in, shields locked fast and tight in a wall as strong as a phalanx of Roman soldiers, ready for what awaited them beyond.

What awaited them was a healthy dose of 'golden hour'.

Truas had only seen this part of the cathiar a handful of times, though it hadn't changed much at all in the intervening years. It was an unfinished hallway, windows spanning either side, all draped in translucent amber tarps. The way the light fell in such a warm, honeyed hue always reminded him of sunrise, no matter the hour. In the back of his mind he wondered if anyone else might've thought so.

In the forefront of his mind, however, he was focused on the room itself. The troop of cultists spread out, shields and batons at the ready. Losgaidh and two flanking shield-bearers slowly stepped to the forefront when no one appeared to greet them. He shouted challenges into the hall, his eyes locked on the far end and the bend leading to the ritual room. Across from that the audio system lights blinked dutifully as the radio continued to broadcast on all the speakers in the hall. A smarmy-sounding man was playing up the 'gonzo prices' at his used car lot.

But from that bend in the hallway came no noise whatsoever.

Losgaidh looked back at all the men behind him, his face exuding cold, confident command. But underneath all that Truas could see something else: a wiriness in his eyes and a small furrow in his brow. If he didn't know any better he could've sworn the man had his inner lip snared between his teeth. His sense of urgency was understandable, of course, but Tuas almost felt there was a kind of fear there, too. Truas could understand himself being afraid, but Losgaidh? This situation might be bad, but surely they'd seen worse over the years.

Surely.

Truas didn't have long to ponder this question: slow, deliberate footfalls soon sounded from around the bend at the end of the hall.

A shadow shuffled out into view, almost entirely swamped by the darkness at the hall's end; only their vague outline was illuminated by the wan lights of the audio system. Losgaidh and his flanking escort steeled themselves.

"Identify yourself, now!" He barked.

The shuffling figure came to a halt, still facing the audio system and in profile to the men at the other end of the hall. As Truas's eyes adjusted he realized the figure must've only stood 4'8", at best. Its arms rested at its side, and one of its hands held a bulky, rotund object. There was something else about the figure; it looked like it dragged a strip of something dangling off its backside, almost like a tail.

Losgaidh stepped forward and his shield-bearers did likewise.

"Who are you?" He demanded.

Slowly the figure's head turned to face the men. After a brief moment its body turned, again making Losgaidh alert. Once the figure was facing the cultists it took a small step forward, its shoes scraping over the unfinished floorboards of the hallway. After only two steps the figure was beside a set of windows and amber light fell on it.

Truas's eyes shrunk to pinpricks.

X

X

X

He'd been 12, once.

Like most people he'd aged up since then. But he had been 12, once.

Truas remembered the week after his 12th birthday more keenly than most; that happened to be the week of his first hunt: his first official action for the cult. The prey in question was more skittish and dangerous than most, so the cultists running her case decided to use a 'long lure' to reel her in. And Truas, as it happened, would be the bait.

She'd been living on the streets of Saint Petersburg, eking out an existence alongside other street rats, and since Truas knew the language and the streets well-enough he was tasked with tracking her down and earning her confidence. The first part was easy, but the second not so much. He soon learned her name, or at least the name she'd been given. It was Tikhaya Mysh': the 'Silent Mouse'. He quickly learned the reason for each descriptor: she was an absolutely tiny and reed-thin little girl of no more than 10— which was expected— and as for the 'silent' part it turned out she didn't speak.

At all.

That was unexpected.

Truas lived on the streets of the city for the better part of a month before he first saw her. The pack of street boys he ran with let her be when they saw her darting down an alleyway with a bag of very appetizing-looking stolen vegetables under her arm. When he asked why she was given such deference one of the boys gave him an evasive and uneasy answer, only saying that this 'mouse' had 'fangs'. He was told to steer very clear of her.

Not long after that he managed to track down her home turf: a shuttered-up enamelware factory wedged into the twists and turns of some run-down streets. He knew he was risking his life that first night, pretending not to know that he was in the 'Mouse's lair', sleeping under the rusting remains of a company truck on the factory floor. It took all his courage to accept that if he woke up he'd have to play his part just right and claim ignorance. Assuming he would wake up at all.

So it was a pretty tense night, all things considered.

The next day he did wake up, and when he did she was crouched up on the remains of the vehicle's floorboards, staring down at him with large dagger eyes framed around a very small button nose. Those eyes were gray, so much so that he almost thought her blind at first, but through that foggy silver he felt the heat of her gaze.

That, and her anger.

She held no weapon in her hands on that day but it mattered little. If she wished for it he'd be dead in seconds, if not sooner, and Truas knew this well. And so he knew— even as he gave a stammering apology and reached into his shirt pocket— that it was highly probable that he didn't need to worry about making any plans for birthday number 13.

She backed up, gray eyes narrowing as he pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket. It was better, all things considered, that she was more like a flighty bird than a charging tiger. The former, when all's said and done, is far more difficult to lure in, but also easier to survive.

And their first encounter ended with both of them surviving. She didn't take his chocolate. But as he saw her on the streets in later days she became at least friendly enough to pull a job with him from time to time. One day he saw her standing near a smartly-dressed man browsing at a shop window. She locked onto Truas with those giant gray eyes and then looked to the man's coat pocket, where a gleaming silver watch dangled from an elegant chain.

She slowly circled around the man, again motioning at Truas with her eyes, ordering him to stand on the man's opposite side. She sidled up to the man and made a clumsy show of reaching for one of his pockets. The man reared back, bumping into Truas with both his body and that lovely watch, which the boy deftly dispossessed him of as the man was busy grabbing the girl's wrist. He yelled in her face, denouncing her as a thief and then threatened to thrash her.

She responded by kicking one of his legs out from under him, sending the man down to the icy sidewalk even as she easily pried his fingers off her wrist.

After that it was the alleyways for the two of them, and Truas could scarcely keep up with the girl as she sprinted through the labyrinthian sprawl of corridors. They were unlucky enough to have some nearby officers on their tail, and Truas was unluckier still to stumble over some debris in his path. An officer tackled the boy to the ground and pinned him. He struggled with all his might, but that struggling did no good.

The officer rolled Truas over with one hand and was about to force him to his feet when two tiny hands grabbed the man's wrist. Tiny muscles in tiny arms made a tiny motion, and after that there was a twist.

To this day Truas remembers that man's scream; he wondered if the officer ever regained the use of his hand or not.

By the time they made it back to the lair, panting and doused in sweat, they collapsed side-by-side in a heap. He thanked the girl and again offered her his chocolate bar. She hesitated at first, but then broke off a respectful piece from it and took a bite. Truas remembered her smile as she did so. He could never forget it.

He wished he could.

His minders picked that time to strike. The first round hit the girl in the shoulder, splintering her collarbone like kindling wood. It sent her careening back into the wooden crates they lay against, spinning about. She recovered in an instant, leaping from the wreckage with her weapon in hand: a dull and rusty sickle. Where she hid it on her, and how, he had no idea, but he assumed she'd lived long enough to learn. When he saw her standing over him with that hooked knife he felt his world coming to an end.

Instead, however, she did something he couldn't fathom.

The girl grabbed his hand and tried to get him up, but in his daze that was no easy task. A second bullet then cut into her gut, prompting a tortured scream out of her. As soon as she fell to the ground his handlers were on her, swarming the girl in a pile. Her rusty blade fell out of the scrum, and when the men got to their feet she was cuffed wrist and ankle, thrashing about like mad.

Her thrashes temporarily ceased when one of the men helped Truas to his feet and gave the boy a congratulatory clap on the shoulder. She looked up at him with those massive fogbank eyes and he, still in his daze, returned the gaze. Her eyes trembled.

And then there was the scream: something he could never forget hearing as the girl was lifted up and carried off. Something he wished he could.

Something he'd pay every penny he'd ever seen to forget, in fact.

The cultists with Truas shared a chuckle as the girl was carried off. One of them said something about the girl's 'wings being clipped', or the like. He couldn't really focus on their words. For the longest time he could do nothing but see that girl's smile in his head and hear her scream in his ears.

That was his first and last direct participation in any of the cult's hunts. The experience sapped him of all his nerve, or whatever he actually had to begin with. The Banrigh, however, was patient with the boy, and in time accepted that the hunts were not for him. For a time he did odd work around the cathair. He found he had a talent for drawing and so put that to use keeping and maintaining the Banrigh's sketchbook: an ancient tome of many pages, all detailing the existences and likenesses of child immortals known to be 'at large'.

The Banrigh herself was no small talent with drawing likenesses, and as a rule she preferred to do her own sketching. But the secret truth was that her hand, which could so easily brandish the heaviest of claymores, was nonetheless prone to tremors when dealing with more 'delicate' work. The problem seemed to have gotten worse in recent centuries, she says. Truas didn't know what to make of that.

But he did relish any task she'd have for him that didn't involve the hunts.

He never wanted to look another of those children in the eyes ever again.

X

X

X

Now the pages of ancient history came to life before him.

Truas saw a body. And he saw a face.

And he saw a pair of eyes.

They were a pair of eyes that seemed to leap off the page of that old sketchbook. The air itself seemed to ripple around this figure's frame, as if he were nothing more than a cruel mirage.

The echo of Losgaidh's roaring challenge still dominated the amber corridor. Behind Truas the fuadain Diùlt raced up to join the company at the hallway's entrance, coming to Truas' side. Diùlt stopped in his tracks when he saw the boy at the other end of the hall. Still the echo of Losgaidh's words sounded, and still they were unanswered:

'Who are you'?

The boy at the other end of the hallway drew a long breath.

"I am Penance Cameron!" He took a small step forward, squaring his body with the men. "Some have called me the Lochiel of Achnacarry: the chief of Clan Cameron..."

He took another small step, still toting that bulky and rotund object in one hand at his side.

"Others have called me gille gu bràth: the forever boy..."

Another small step.

"The Powhatan called me Papasowh Sansaqivawwh: the sunrise unbending..."

Another small step.

"In Burma they call me Kyarr Aahcarraahcar, for I would challenge a tiger's strength..."

Another small step.

"I'm the one with the snowy ears! The Rabid Fox! The little prince that contends with the same court as your queen!"

At each of the boy's steps the men drew their formation tighter and the shield bearers pulled those riot shields closer against their bodies. Most eyes were not on the boy himself, but on that rotund object in his hand. He tossed it across the hallway and let it roll like a clunky bowling ball.

Measan's severed head came to rest near Losgaidh's feet. It stared up at the man with a surprised expression scored into its dead eyes.

The boy put his hands to his hips, his teeth bared with a contemptuous scowl.

"Any who stand in my way on this day will call me death!"

That echo reverberated through the hall for seconds that seemed like hours. Diùlt stared down at Measan's head, then up at Penance, then down at the head once again. With a final glance at the boy he promptly turned tail and ran back through the corridor entrance and down the stairs. Losgaidh noticed this cowardice with a sideways sneer, but he had bigger problems to take care of.

The commercial break on the radio program came to an end; the DJ's voice sounded from the hallway's speakers.

"So just today the MPAA— that's the motion picture folks— put out this new movie rating that's supposed to sit somewhere between a 'PG' and an 'R'. They say it's for the kind of movies a parent would need to be— and I quote— 'strongly cautioned' about. 'Strongly cautioned'? Since when is it such a problem to take your 8-year-old to see a movie where a guy gets his friggin' beating heart yanked right out of his chest? Or eyeballs served in a soup? Meanwhile show half of a nipple for a quarter of a second through a millimeter of clothing and they're liable to hit you with an 'X'. Go figure.

"And 'PG-13', huh? Who's the bright bulb that figured a 13-year-old should be just fine watching, say, a guy getting his head ripped off but a 12-year-old's just too fragile and delicate a li'l flower? Lemme tell you: there's some pansy-wansy 13-year-olds out there, and believe me when I say I've seen some 12-year-olds I wouldn't wanna meet in a dark alley. Heck, a fully-lit one!

"And what's next: some rating between an 'R' and an 'X'? Maybe call it 'RX', 'cause the whole system's just a prescription for confusion."

At the same time, and with the same sour expression, both Penance and Losgaidh visibly recoiled at that awful pun. Any other time that would've been riotously funny, Truas thought.

Not so much at the moment.

"Well, that all might be a convoluted nightmare, but your favorite station's got a prescription for some 'Sweet' dreams coming right up..."

Losgaidh motioned for the men to fan out, shield bearers in the lead and those with electric batons following them. By now more men were mounting the stairs with pistols in their hands, and Losgaidh led his men across the hall to take the boy down.

Penance, meanwhile, reached up with one hand, making everyone's bodies tense. The boy, however, merely reached against one of his ears and pulled out a lone, crooked cigarette from its place behind it. He set it to his lips, and then he pulled a gold-plated lighter from behind his back.

Losgaidh looked back at his assembled men with a cruel, incredulous smirk. He ordered his advance party through the hall and moved to surround the boy. Penance merely watched them approach, his face almost broadcasting boredom as he held the lighter up to the cigarette in his mouth. The air seemed to burn around the boy's body, exuding menace itself.

That's about the time Truas realized that the air was rippling around Penance's body for a very different reason.

He didn't know if Losgaidh saw this too, or if he was close enough to smell it by then. None of that mattered by then anyway. Truas had a split-second to remember all his time up here, limited though it was. He remembered that small hole between then floorboards under Penance's feet. He remembered a frowning face: an odd pipe junction.

He didn't have time to remember much else. At that moment Losgaidh looked back at his assembled men with wild eyes. His mouth yawned into a terrified scream and he threw one warning hand behind him. He barely had time to make a noise.

Before him, face still full of boredom, Penance Cameron lit his cigarette.

The concussive force of the blast sent Truas tumbling even from his relatively large distance away. Fire and a freight train's roar rose up through the hall, blasting all the windows to pieces and scattering the amber drop cloths beyond all about the building's exterior: a mess of fiery ribbons.

In the ashy, smoky aftermath Truas found himself in a pile with several other men, one of whom lay still with a piece of wood the size of Truas' fist lodged snugly in his skull. Groans and coughs met his ears; men stumbled to the feet in the dark corridor, their shadows highlighted by flickering flames all along the way. Truas belted out a few raspy coughs as the hot, dirty air scored his lungs.

The speakers, all ruined on the floor, still whined with the last vestiges of a signal. They began to belt out a peppy little bit of glam rock, but it all came out as a horrible distortion that turned the song into a threatening, anxiety-inducing mess.

Truas couldn't get up right away. He panted and gasped, cradling his bruised side. He looked around for Losgaidh; he looked for any sign of leadership, or any comfort.

He saw the creature, instead.

The small shadow ambled through the smoke on a hideously deformed leg. With a commanding bash of one fist it set the femur and began to walk more freely. But in its gait it still shuffled like a zombie, and the movement of its body was very unlike a human. What stepped out of that smoke was anything but.

No, this was not a human.

This was a creature.

Its upper body still smoldered. The length of a strap from a straitjacket still clung behind it and it openly burned like the tail of some demonic abomination. In one hand it clutched a little knife. And in its eyes Truas saw the most terrifying thing of all.

He saw nothing.

One of the cultists near the creature went after it with a stun baton. One second the man charged it, and the other he took that little knife to the throat with enough force to send the tip out the back of his neck.

Singing started to come through those speakers, and again the distortion turned the peppy glam rock into an otherworldly mess barely recognizable as a song.

"I... don't wanna know your name..."

A cultist grabbed the creature by the neck, only to be instantly gutted by a piece of broken glass in its free hand. The creature pushed that body into a group of men marshalling behind him.

"'cause you don't look the same..."

It rolled atop the body of the cultist bearing its knife, deftly ripping the thing out of the man's throat and slashing to one side, hitting another man right across the face, obliterating his nose and slicing clean through one eye.

"...the way you did befoooooore..."

Two cultists charged the creature and laid it out, one of them holding down its knife-hand and the other grabbing at its legs. The creature gave off a savage roar and twisted its body, not enough to free its hand.

But enough to get its teeth within range of that man's throat.

"Okay... you think you got a pretty face..."

It sprung up off its back. Frothy, bubbling blood cascaded from the corners of its mouth. When the thing breathed the froth went flying from its face like some hellish ocean's foam. It gave the man holding its legs a quick tracheotomy with its knife.

"...but the rest of you is out of place..."

It stumbled getting up and took another tackle, this one by a man who came down with the creature upside down, pinning it to the floor with the creature's face near the man's groin.

The creature had an answer for that, too.

The man's scream filled the hall, rising over the fire alarm and the crackling of burning wood.

"...you looked alright befoooooore..."

A man near Truas found a pistol lying on the ground at one corner of the room and went to retrieve it. Truas stumbled to his feet and found a loose 2X4 in the wreckage. While the creature slashed open an unfortunate belly facing the opposite side of the hallway Truas swung for its head.

Never had he seen the kind of speed the creature showed him. It caught the wood in one hand and loosed its knife in one fell motion. Truas felt the blade skirt his ear, and then he heard the scream of its actual target behind him. Before he could even understand what had just happened the creature grabbed his wrist and twisted his hands.

The force wasn't just enough to snap Truas' wrist. He felt a sickening turn around his funny bone, and even a loud crack at his shoulder. His scream of pain cut out as the creature punched him once in the chest, sending him careening backwards. When he landed against a bank of ruined windows he coughed, and in that cough he felt the deep crack in his breastbone. He slumped to the ground.

The man with the gun finally turned it on the creature but the creature put its hand to the muzzle and pushed it out of the way. When the man fired a round it tore through the creature's hand, but the creature still had enough strength to wrench the gun from the man. It took the gun in its off-hand and put two rounds into the man, then it started firing at as many shadows it could make out in the smoke-filled corridor.

The limp wrist of its off-hand, however, helped ensure that it would jam a round, which it did after exhausting half the magazine. By then its good hand was healed up enough to take up the gun by the muzzle. It found a cultist struggling to his feet and bashed his head in with the gun's butt. His skull started splintering on the third hit.

A volley of rounds sang out from across the corridor and the creature took bullets in one leg and its shoulder; it glared down the corridor at its attacker, eyes consumed with animal rage, and it roared at the smoky darkness, flinging more frothy, bloodied spit out of its mouth, teeth dripping with blood. It threw the gun through the darkness, and a sickening crunch and a scream were all the proof of its accuracy. The creature raced through the corridor, picking up the little knife from a cultist's forehead as it did, and it dashed into the smoke.

Truas couldn't see what happened then. He only heard the screams.

None of them lasted long.

The fire was now spreading and some of the beams started falling down. They landed in a heap near the entrance to the corridor atop each other, forming a fiery ring. At this point reinforcements poured into the corridor, more of them armed than before, and they gaped at the scene before them. One of them saw Truas lying near the windows and he motioned for them to help the boy.

Truas tried to speak. He tried so hard to say anything even remotely comprehensible. But he could only quiver and draw ragged breaths as the men peppered him with questions, their backs to that ring of fiery wood. Something in the boy's broken mind made him think of when he was younger, when he'd gone to a circus. They had tigers that could jump through rings like that.

What jumped through that ring was not a tiger.

It was not a human, mind you, but it certainly wasn't a tiger.

They were the closest ones yet. One of them managed to put a round through the creature's cheek, but it harmlessly exited the other side after shattering its jaw. Soon only two cultists were left. One of the cultists managed to get a bead on the creature from a distance, only for the creature to send its knife flying through one of the man's eyes. The other man tried overpowering it, only for the creature to get its hands on a broken lead pipe in the struggle.

One swing would've been enough.

Ten, however, seemed like overkill.

Truas watched all these blows land. It didn't take seconds, but almost a minute. Almost a minute of this dead-eyed abomination pounding the jelly of a man's former head with that pipe, its ragged breaths still spurting frothy blood as its ruined jaw reformed itself. Truas gibbered as he watched, arms wrapped around his torso as if he were clutching a comforter, warding the monsters under his bed away.

Those dead eyes, though, soon turned their attention to the boy.

And that pipe stopped coming down on that ruined head.

Truas gibbered as the creature froze there, staring at the boy. He started skirting back on the floor, and that's when the creature started stumbling towards him. With each step it dragged the pipe on the ground beside it, scraping it against the wood floor.

"N— no. No! Please. N— n— n—"

Truas skirted back against the wall, leaving a streak of urine in his wake. He looked up at the thing looming over him. His hands shook as he tried to show surrender. Snot dribbled from his nose as he cried.

"Please! Please! P— p—"

The creature tilted its head. It closed the distance and Truas cradled his head in his arms, closing his eyes. He tried to scream.

But he couldn't.

It was a mercy when the pipe finally came down. But then it wasn't the kind of mercy he expected.

The pipe landed on the floor with a dull thud. After a brief moment footsteps sounded in front of him, moving for the AV cabinet. Truas dared not peek his head out from his hands. He could barely hear the cabinet's metal door squeaking open. Hands rooted through it, and then footsteps sounded once more. The footsteps passed him without breaking their slow stride. They were hard to make out over the churn of the fire further down the hall, but Truas could tell at least one thing about them.

The footsteps sounded human, at least.

"Yeah, yeah… you've looked better, too, you fleabag..."

A human's voice— an exhausted boy's voice— sounded as the footsteps trailed off toward the hallway's exit.

When Truas finally mustered the courage to look up he found himself all alone, save for the dead around him and a lead pipe lying on the floor before him. He stared at that lead pipe, unthinking, for several minutes.

And then he cried his eyes out, awash in nothing but animal fear.