THE PINES—NOVEMBER 20th, 1992 | LATE AFTERNOON
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Cameron felt his heartbeat in his throat.
His sprite thrashed within his cage along his belt loop, blinking at Cameron incessantly, warning him.
The danger hadn’t set in until they’d exited the car, and hiding behind the toughness of his walk and the perpetual scowl on his face was fear. It was more uncertainty than anything else, and a lack of a clear target for his fight or flight to latch onto forced him into a state of festering. The Pines were as full as they were empty, absent of noise but ripe with evidence of life. And when life did make itself known, Cameron’s feet became anchors.
He couldn’t move. All he could do was stare at the rows of yellow eyes lingering in the treeline. Accursed were one thing, demons were another, and he’d had enough run-ins with demonic contractors by way of Leroy and Gideon. Rumors be damned—not even a lifetime of cautionary tales about the Pines could’ve prepared him for seeing what he saw.
What dropped down from above onto the fallen tree that covered the road was ugly.
It looked as though it had undergone a spontaneous, forced growth spurt. It was roughly equal in size to a bear, but that was where the resemblance ended. It was some kind of wolf, or dog, or hound, human-like, but not human. Its body was made up of dense musculature and ragged tufts of black fur. Harrowing yellow eyes—as hungry as they were mindless—stared at Cameron and those around him, and drool steadily dripped from its maw.
Cameron heard the growl before he heard the pounce, and he’d hardly blinked by the time it launched itself towards him.
Arthur, who’d been to his side, quickly lowered himself to a single knee, moving far quicker than Cameron could have anticipated; almost like he knew it was coming. The sword-shaped cross on his neck warbled in a dim glow.
He held his bow, Canis, horizontally and closed a single eye in focus, pulling at an empty drawstring.
A radiant orange glow travelled along the length of the drawstring, and what exited Arthur’s bow wasn’t an arrow, but something else entirely. Fire erupted and took the form of a sleek, dog-like apparition which ran along the air itself, homing onto its target point-blank.
A hound.
A hound made of fire, smaller and sleeker than whatever had jumped at Cameron, but stubborn as it was powerful. It wrapped its flaming teeth around the creature and sent the thing hurling back into the fallen tree.
Up ahead, Eisenhower sprung forward, and with a single step, whipped out his sawed-off shotgun from along its leather loop, and fired point blank into the creature. Blood and viscera stained the moss growing along the growing tree a crimson red.
“Lycans?” Arthur asked, standing up and notching his arrow-less drawstring. He shook out his hand, which was sizzling with smoke, and winced under his breath.
“Close, Warden Yeager. But not quite,” Eisenhower said.
One by one, creatures dropped around them from the treeline. Cameron didn’t know how many there were, only that there were a lot of them, and that with each new impact, their confidence grew. He shot Leroy a worried look, and Leroy returned it with an expression of stern urgency; not fear, but fear’s second or third cousin.
“Eisenhower, what are we dealing with here?” Leroy asked, positioning himself closer to Eisenhower, the blue-glow of his contractor’s mark seeping through the fog.
Growls and snarls flooded Cameron’s ears.
He heard their maws snapping and closing shut, and the heaviness of clawed feet eager to take closer steps. Arthur twisted around Cameron, and re-trained Canis towards the crowd of creatures blocking the car.
“Garous,” Eisenhower explained. “A lycan’s curse is not so easily transmitted. Few can turn and retain their sentience. Hence, garous—lycans are not properly bonded to their maker. Strays, so to speak, likely abandoned out here in the Pines. Failed conversions. Absent a proper pack, they form hordes.”
One among many of the garou dared to break formation, and leapt towards the towering Eisenhower. The cross-tattoo on his neck hummed, and he swiveled to the side, ducking under.
He reeled his prosthetic arm back and punched it in the chest. Cast-iron hissed and clanked. Symbols, which Cameron hadn’t noticed before, erupted along the length of his cast-iron replacement. Cameron wondered what Esme would’ve thought about it; a strong right hook capable of calling upon nearby stones to pelt and batter whoever, or in this case, whatever, was hit with it. Some sort of earth or stone array or runes.
The garou was sent hurling, but not before the surrounding gravel—rocks, stones, all of various shapes and sizes along ground—swarmed the creature like bludgeoning insects, pelting it in all directions. It hit the ground as a mess of contusions, turned so black and blue that it didn’t even remotely resemble what it had once been. It didn’t get up.
“Don’t you guys patrol the Pines? How did you not know there was a horde or whatever?” Cameron asked.
One dared to step closer, again, and Arthur pulled Cameron back by the arm, stepped forward, and released his drawstring. A hound of blaze bit into the garou and singed its neck, prompting it to bellow out just before it perished.
“If you’d listened in the car, you’d know why. Marshal Whitfield already said it. We haven’t been along this route in ages.” Arthur shook his hand, and Cameron noticed it was still sizzling. “What’s our play here, Marshal?”
“It is our four against their many.” Another garou leapt out from the crowd, and Eisenhower whipped it with his sawed off. When it hit the ground, he fired into its face. “I cannot ascertain the size of the horde. Once we have delivered these two, Warden Yeager, we will need to find their maker.”
Cameron looked to Leroy for an answer.
His was a simple one.
Leroy clenched and pulled his hand, and the surrounding fog turned into rows upon rows of floating icicles that lingered overhead. More than Cameron had ever seen at once. More garous dared to approach, and when they did, Leroy used his opposite hand, whisking his fingers to guide the ice-shards into each of them, skewering them with so much force that they were pinned into the nearby trees.
“The hell are you standing there for, Kessler? The quicker we deal with this, the quicker we get to where we actually need to be. Now isn’t the time to be standing there all doe-eyed and stupid.”
Arthur laughed at that. “Let’s see what you’re made of, townie.”
Cameron stared down at the sprite along his belt-loop, and unhooked the cage.
With its single eye, the small ball of wind blinked at him eagerly. Cameron opened up the cage, and as soon as he did, the sprite skirted out of it. Its green-white energy expanded, but not by much. Cameron frowned. Mercedes had grown bigger. Far bigger, and this thing was still tiny by comparison.
“Grow, damn it! What are you doing?! Aren’t you supposed to grow!?” Cameron exclaimed.
Around him, Arthur continued to pellet garous with his chasing flame-hound-things, Eisenhower used up what remained of his sawed-off shotgun, reloading his slugs under the cover of Leroy, who skewered oncoming garou into nearby trees by way of frozen spikes. Even with all of their efforts, it seemed as though the horde’s numbers weren’t dwindling.
The sprite blinked at him.
“Don’t blink at me, blink at the fucking—those things! Go, attack!”
“Kessler!” Leroy yelled. “Get your ass into gear already!”
“I’m working on it, asshole!” Cameron shouted back.
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The sprite continued to look at him.
Cameron set his jaw, and leaned into the anger sitting in the depths of his stomach and until it had nowhere to go but out. Scarlet erupted from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, washing over his skin until it formed a second layer of white-ivory that glistened like steel. He reached for the Reign 18 tucked on the inside of his jacket, and dashed into the crowd of garous.
Arthur, Eisenhower, Leroy and himself had the firepower to keep killing these things, but eventually, they’d start to get worn down, and getting mauled by garous was the last thing they needed. With everyone else playing defense, someone else had to play offense. Battering ram. Sledgehammer. He’d need to be one or the other, or both—a weapon just annoying enough to force the horde to reconsider its approach.
The sprite followed him, staying close by his side.
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A gaping maw clasped down around him.
His white-ivory skin caused the garou’s teeth to break, and as the creature reeled, Cameron pressed his Reign 18 against its chest. He fired three times. It fell flat onto its back, gunsmoke sizzling out of its wounds. But Cameron wasn’t alone. Far from it.
Yellow eyes, hungry and haughty, peered at him and waited for their opportunity to strike. They lingered amidst the fog that clung to the undergrowth, and if Cameron had to guess, there were at least six of them.
Two garou broke through and closed in from either side.
One slashed him along his ribs, cutting through his brown-denim jacket, inadvertently filing down its claws along Cameron’s armored skin. Cameron pivoted and threw a punch in tandem with the spin, clocking the creature in the jaw. It flew into the side of a tree—battered, broken, dead. These things were fast, strong, but far from tough. One down, five to go.
The other garou pounced.
Cameron’s Reign 18 was forced out of his hand and out of reach.
Pinned and blindsided, Cameron heaved, but as soon as he launched it off, it pounced onto him again, and its growls fit into the rhythm of wolfish bellows that encircled them. Cameron was lucky they hadn’t all rushed him at once.
In the distance Cameron could hear Eisenhower’s shotgun firing, the scintillating sound of Arthur shooting Canis, and the distinct puncturing of Leroy’s ice-spikes whisking through the air. They had their own problems, and Cameron had gotten himself into this one. He’d need to find a way to get himself out of it, and quickly.
The sprite.
Why wasn’t it doing anything? He squinted at the thing, and with great effort, nodded towards the garou on top of him. The only thing stopping it from chewing into him were Cameron’s white-ivory hands, which forced open its maw to prevent it from biting down onto him. Pungent saliva dripped just to the side of his face.
“Attack! Go!”
Its singular, green-white eye blinked. Nothing came of it, and it hovered just next to Cameron’s head, watching him.
Heavy footsteps treaded towards him.
The rest of the group, tired of waiting, trampled forward—poised to strike at any moment, and stopped only to look for the best opportunity to do so, inching forward and back like human-wolf spectators. Mangy, crazed looking things.
Cameron’s estimation was right. Not counting the one he’d killed by gunshot or a solid right, five garou remained, and all of them seemed to grow braver by the second. The weight of their footsteps nearing twisted his stomach into knots. He had to move. To do something.
Cameron buckled his hips and sent the thing off of him, and before it could land, Cameron rolled to the side, grabbing hold of the sprite with a single hand as he rolled to the side. The garou pushed off its hind legs, its maw ready to clamp down onto Cameron’s face.
With a sudden jerk, he shoved the sprite into the garou’s mouth, breaking its teeth with his white-ivory hand, and slipped it out as easily as he’d slipped it in.
The creature’s snarls hummed in its neck. Cameron clasped both of his hands around its maw and forced its mouth shut.
“There—now you’ve got something to eat,” Cameron muttered, voice straining.
No time to waste. Cameron had no idea what would happen, but had a hunch, and if he was even remotely right, he didn’t want this thing to be around him. With his hands still clasped around the garou’s maw, Cameron stepped forward, lowered himself, and lifted.
With a sharp pivot, he threw the garou over his shoulder and into the encroaching members of its pack.
As it flew through the air, it looked like a tennis ball was pushing up against the inside of its body, forcibly stretching the garou’s skin, pingponging around its insides like a trapped monsoon.
The garou crashed into the four others.
A miasma of blood violently bursted into the air, and what remained of the garou’s body was enveloped in a miniature, cyclonic force of green-white. The sprite hadn’t grown any bigger, but that didn’t seem to matter. Its wispy form twisted and turned, and it was greeted only by four pairs of yellow and hungry eyes.
It blinked. A gust of wind zipped out from its singular eye and forced one garou into a wayward tree branch, skewering it. The remaining three bellowed and yelped.
That was it.
The sprite had seen Cameron kill. It had seen him activate his abilities. It blinked to alert him of the danger, but it didn’t rush towards it because the sprite never thought Cameron himself was in danger. Mercedes’ sprite must have acted on command, always believing her to be facing certain death. But this one believed in him—how sweet. Sweetness, in this case, was more an inconvenience than anything else, but by some miracle, he’d discovered a workaround.
Make the sprite believe it was in danger, and it had no choice other than to react. No choice other than to defend itself.
Cameron’s eyes trailed towards the ground. His Reign 18 remained in dirt, and with a sudden roll, Cameron grabbed hold of it and pushed himself off the ground. If he’d learned anything so far, it was that he was a shit marksman. He’d have to bring the gun to them.
Three mutts remained, and all of them seemed too busy with Cameron’s sprite, chasing it like it was some sort of ball, only to find that the ball bit back. A small gust of wind sent one of the garou towards Cameron as he advanced, almost as if the sprite was pushing one towards Cameron on purpose.
Cameron planted a foot and stopped the garou by ramming his shoulder into it, and with a slight pivot, pressed his Reign 18 against the creature’s spine. Gunfire rang through the undergrowth, and blood spattered onto Cameron’s body as he littered the thing with bullets.
It dropped to the ground.
As soon as it fell, one of the remaining two garou pounced.
Something else reached it first. Something hot. A subtle glow of orange-red flashed across Cameron’s face, and the searing heat of one a flaming hound pressed itself into the garou, sending it skidding across the ground. Cameron swiveled his head to the side, and saw Arthur’s silhouette outlined through the fog, Canis in hand, a knowing smile on his face.
Cameron nodded in his direction. Arthur nodded back.
By the time he turned back forward, the final garou seemed intent on finishing what the other couldn’t. Cameron steeled his gaze. He ducked, lowered himself to a squat, uncoiled himself, and sprung up to deliver a punch straight into the wolf-thing’s chest. It flew two feet in the air, and as it fell, Cameron stepped to the side, only to step on its back.
He pointed his Reign 18 at the back of its head and fired.
A bullet pierced its head, and the trigger of his gun clicked.
The sprite whirred back towards him, and hovered to the side of his head, swirling in place, the subtle glow of its white-green crescents washing over Cameron’s features. The eye blinked at him, and Cameron blinked back.
“Mercedes never gave hers a name."
The sprite’s single eye blinked at him.
“We’ll go with Guts.”
It blinked again.
Cameron squinted. “Don’t give me that look. It makes sense, alright? You went into that thing’s guts, carved your way out, and now you’re here.”
Another flash of orange whisked past Cameron. Arthur had fired off another shot from Canis, and sent yet another blaze-dog into an approaching garou. Cameron turned around, and saw that his estimation had been completely off. A swathe of yellow eyes erupted among the fog, and Cameron felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The group that had attacked him was only the lesser sum of a greater whole. Of a horde.
ba-dum-tissss) ??. On the same note, I'm excited to be delving a bit more into the monsters/fiends of Brinehaven.
Also, as promised, the extended map showing off a bit more of the Pines region:
*Note: The Argent Group has its headquarters within the Commonwealth Industrial Park, but think of it more aptly as a 'loading bay' where they go back and forth. As mentioned in previous chapters, they are responsible for transporting workers to and from Silver Falls through the main road. However, they are not a full-on private security force for the zone. Individual factories can and do employ the Argent Group as guards, but only typically within their actual facilities.
LEROY WATERS
CAMERON KESSLER
GUTS
MARSHAL WHItFIELD
ARTHUR YEAGER
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