CHAPTER 36: HORDE

  THE PINES—NOVEMBER 20th, 1992 | LATE AFTERNOON

  ?

  Ice gathered from the fog.

  Leroy slid across the undergrowth along a path of ice, feet anchored to a self-building pathway that skidded to a halt directly in front of Cameron. Half a dozen garou were either dead, or close to dead.

  “Not bad, Kessler,” Leroy chimed, stepping off of his frigid path.

  “You talked up the Pines like we’d be walking into hell. All I’ve seen so far as a bunch of damn mutts,” Cameron said. His sprite lulled around his head absently, blinking, but not doing much else.

  Leroy removed his handgun from the inside of his brown leather jacket. “Putting down some strays hardly makes you a damn warden, Kessler, and we’ll both be lucky if that’s all we see today.”

  “And how many did you kill on your way over here?” Cameron asked, voice thick with distinction.

  “More than you,” Leroy said with a smile. “And Eisenhower killed more than me.”

  With his P89 in-hand, he fired off a shot in warning towards the eager and, seemingly, ever-growing horde of garou that threatened to venture forth from the treeline. It startled the creatures just enough for him to survey their surroundings, and the longer Leroy tried to take a tally of what they were dealing with, the more yellow eyes he noted.

  Leroy placed his gun inside of his coat.

  A dim blue glow erupted along Yaerzul’s brand, and he reached two hands into the air, closed them into fists, clenched, and pulled. Frost speedily crawled up the bark. Crystalline shards stacked along one another and formed a frozen wall, and another, and another, utilizing each of the surrounding trees like connective tissue, creating a zig-zag of interwoven defenses. That would hold off the horde, for now, but their time was limited.

  Howls and bellows gave the undergrowth life. Claws and maws chipped away at Leroy’s latest creation. Leroy kept his fists clenched and his focus steady, constantly re-supplying the icy walls with more fog to rejuvenate them.

  “Kessler, keep an eye out for any breaches,” Leroy said.

  Cameron reloaded his Reign 18. His sprite hummed, but remained otherwise docile. “Yeah, got it.”

  “Eisenhower!” Leroy shouted, glancing over his shoulder.

  Mammoth-like footsteps approached. Eisenhower ran towards the small clearing with impetus, but given his size, it took him a bit longer than Leroy would’ve liked. The helmet-masked man skidded to a halt, his shoulder cape fluttering as his booted feet lifted up chunks of dirt.

  Eisenhower removed a few shotgun slugs from his equipment belt and loaded them back into his sawed off. “I am here, Leroy Waters.”

  “And Arthur?” Leroy asked.

  “He has insisted on finding a vantage point, for ease of access,” Eisenhower said plainly with an undertone of assuredness.

  “Look, the fog here, it’s thick, and I can keep recycling the water, but I can’t do that forever. Need to get out of here, Eisenhower, and the quicker—”

  A gunshot pierced through the air. To his side, Cameron grazed a single garou who decided to brave the walls with a leap. With a grunt, Leroy twisted his clenched fist, and formed a spike along the wall to skewer through the interloper.

  “Remind me to take you to a damn shooting range once we’re done with this contract, Kessler. You’ve got shit aim!” Leroy yelled.

  “If we finish the contract! And you!” Cameron glanced towards the towering Eisenhower. “I thought you guys were damn monster hunters, or something? You wanna’ explain to me how the fuck, or why the fuck, there’s so many of these things? I thought you guys patrolled, and hunted, or—..whatever!”

  Silhouettes jostled among the treeline. Four figures leapt from branch to branch, and once over the small clearing, they landed several paces from Cameron. Clever mutts. They must’ve climbed up a set of trees unaffected by Leroy’s frost. Leroy gritted his teeth. The fog had to stay firmly rooted along his walls, and he couldn’t afford to shift his focus.

  But he didn’t need to.

  Eisenhower hunkered forward, and just as one neared Cameron, he punched it with his cast-iron, artificed hand. Industrial pistons and gauges whirred alongside the resonating hum of the arcane, and a series of orange-brown runes and arrays ignited along the gauntlet-hand’s grooves and rivets.

  A single punch the garou skidding, and as it did, the surrounding rocks and pebbles lingering on the ground swarmed it like stone-sized insects, pelting it to an immediate and sudden death.

  Another sallied forth. And another, and Eisenhower responded curtly by emptying his sawed off—blasting a hole into one, and another. The fourth and final interloper dared to try the warden, and he quickly removed a finely-caved wooden stake attached to his utility belt and stabbed it through the mouth. He withdrew the bloodied instrument and wiped it clean along his shoulder-cape.

  “Regrettably, Cameron Kessler, it has been overlooked. I suspect that the lycan responsible for creating these has been trying and failing to grow a pack for some time now. Warden Yeager and I will see to it that they are exterminated.”

  Leroy smirked at the look plastered across Cameron’s face: dumbfounded and impressed in equal parts.

  “We’ll need to get going, Eisenhower, and soon. We can keep taking these things out, but more will come, and by the time we’re finished here, Kessler and I will be dog tired,” Leroy stated. Beads of sweat gathered along his temples. Maintaining several walls worth of ice to this degree was wearing on him.

  Eisenhower offered a single, short laugh. “Yes. You’ve your arbitration contract to tend to. You will need to be well-rested and capable for that. Entrust this horde to my charge and I.”

  “You don’t even know how many there are,” Cameron said.

  “No. But an army of two will suffice. Warden Yeager and I have felled a great many fiends in our day, and this day will be no different,” Eisenhower declared, and issued a curt nod in Leroy’s direction.

  Eisenhower Whitfield, Marshal of the Order of the Wardens. Leroy believed in him. More than that, he trusted him. Brinehaven had a way of chewing up and spitting out honest men, and the ones who survived the city’s hunger came out more capable, sure, but far from honest; with only a few exceptions to this rule. Captain Holmes, Minister Rostavich—honest good-to-do men who loved the city. And for every Captain Holmes and Minister Rostavich, there were twice as many criminals, wayward witches, and enterprising accursed. But there was only one Eisenhower Whitfield, and he was the kind of man that would damn himself to Hell if it meant saving someone from going there.

  “Pack it up, Kessler,” Leroy said.

  Cameron’s features lit up in indignation. “You’re just going to leave him?”

  “Eisenhower can handle himself. And this isn’t where we need to be, not right now,” Leroy said. Fists unclenched and his twisted wrists unwinded back into a neutral position. Fog lingered, and stopped feeding the walls that had since acquired a taste for the misty vapors.

  “You must drive the truck along that path, Leroy Waters. You will come to an impasse at a waterfall. From there, you will need to proceed on foot. Left of the waterfall will be a dirt path. Follow it, and it will lead you to the rear of the Commonwealth Industrial Park.”

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  Grating scratches dug against the frigid walls. Wolfish howls filled the air. Branches creaked from afar. As above, so below. Noise was evidence, and by listening to the cacophony of sound, it seemed to be the case that what remained of the horde had split in two. In overwhelming numbers, one section of the wolf-things focused on breaching the walls, and what remained of them opted to try and travel from above.

  “The entrances will be—”

  “Sigilmasonry. Yeah. I know, Eisenhower. I know. Good luck out here,” Leroy said, and tipped his hat towards the marshal.

  Eisenhower nodded back.

  Leroy grimaced. “Kessler. To the car, now. Let’s go.”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said, reluctance spreading across his features.

  He broke into a brisk walk back towards the road, and Cameron followed after him. Overhead, an orange-yellow glow gnawed through the fog, and the mist parted to reveal Arthur half-crouched on top of a large rock. Leroy followed the flaming mutt to its eventual end, and saw it crash into a garou attempting to blindside Eisenhower from above. Smart. From that vantage point, Arthur could ensure that anything from above trying to crash land onto Eisenhower would be immolated before it could pose a problem, and with Eisenhower himself covering the breaches in the ice walls, he had the undergrowth covered.

  Briefly, Leroy glanced at Cameron, and exhaled. Where Eisenhower and Arthur were a well-oiled machine of a unit, he and Cameron were more like the rust or corrosion that stopped a well-oiled machine from working. Individually, they did well enough, but in tandem, they had work to do. A lot of it.

  As they neared the truck, Cameron halted, and looked up to where Arthur had secured his vantage point. His sprite lingered, its white-green glow pulsing through the fog. “Gonna’ burn through the skin of your hand at this rate.”

  Leroy squinted, and honed in on Arthur’s attire. The bandolier. All of those vials of pasteurized demon blood. While all curators were soul-bound to their objects of power, not everybody was like Rachel Chen with her Blade of One-Hundred. Some had conditions for use, and it seemed that Arthur’s Canis demanded a bite’s worth of burned flesh from his hand whenever he decided to pull back that drawstring.

  Arthur popped a vial open with his free hand, bit off the cork, and downed the pasteurized demon blood with a look of disgust. “Nah.”

  “Careful with those,” Leroy said. The bile-vomit-part of his hangover was over, but Leroy’s head still ached like he’d been punched several times over.

  “Don’t need to tell me, Mr. Arbiter. These are diluted with water,” Arthur said, almost knowingly, and drew his drawstring back once more. Canis spat out a flaming dog that found its way into an unsuspecting garou.

  Leroy blinked. Steadier healing. Slower, but consistent, Leroy imagined, but still not exactly foolproof. For a guy like Arthur, though, it was a better bet than drinking a fully potent vial. “Huh. That’s a trade secret if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “Just an old warden’s gimmick, is all,” Arthur said, closing one eye to focus, re-aiming Canis. He shook out his sizzling hand. “You two better get going. Got somewhere to be, yeah?”

  Cameron lingered, and with great difficulty, spoke a word that surprised Leroy. “Thanks.”

  Arthur was equally as surprised, but smiled nonetheless. “Don’t sweat it, townie.”

  “Kessler.”

  “Yeah, coming.” Cameron stepped back onto the backroad, he came to a sudden halt, and Leroy almost thought to look away as his white-ivory dissipated into a scarlet miasma that Cameron was forced to inhale through every orifice in his face. It was an ugly thing to look at.

  “But it’s on you to get that damn tree out of the road. I’m fresh out of juice," Cameron said.

  ?

  Leroy put the truck into park as soon as the waterfall came into view, and sat inside the driver’s seat staring at it for longer than he realized. To his side, without even needing to look, he had a hunch that Cameron was equally as enamored by it, evidenced by their shared silence. They’d driven uphill for what must have been another thirty minutes, and however many miles that was, Leroy didn’t know.

  It wasn’t particularly large, but the gray crags hugged either side of a precipice that jutted out along the stony hillsides of the Pines that seemed to grow larger and steeper the higher up they drove the truck, mingling with the tall trees and the dew and the moss. The waterfall fed into a small pond, which seeped downhill amidst dirt, jagged rocks, and plantlife.

  “Come on,” Leroy said. “I need a break. Think we both do.”

  Cameron opened the door. “Yeah.”

  Leroy killed the engines and exited the car, closing the door as he treaded towards the edge of the pond. As soon as he sat down, his knees would’ve smiled at him if they had mouths to do so, and his muscles would’ve done the same. Fatigue compounded within him and threatened to take him over completely. He’d pushed himself too far over the last several days, more than he was used to, and his body was angry at him for it. A moment of reprieve, then, if only for a moment, might do his old bones some justice.

  Leroy twisted slightly and dipped his hand into the pond. The water was warmer than he expected, and far from cold.

  “You made this place out to be like it was some kind of hell on earth, Leroy,” Cameron said. When Leroy turned back to face him, his underarbiter stood with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket. His sprite hovered next to the side of his head, and seemed to follow wherever Cameron was looking.

  Leroy shook his head. “Never said that. Said it was dangerous. And it is.”

  “We did well enough,” Cameron retorted.

  “We were being escorted. Eisenhower’s a marshal. A horde of garou, at least what remains of it, will be easy enough for him to deal with. And Arthur isn't anything to scoff at either.'

  Cameron turned, and his sprite did with him. “And we are?”

  “Didn’t say that either, Kessler, but people like you and me? We’re built for the city, and you know it. We aren’t wardens.”

  “But you’ve hunted monsters before, or, whatever they’re called, fiends,” Cameron said.

  “And most of them were in the city. Only a handful of arbitration notes or contracts have taken me into Silver Falls, and fewer still have taken me to the Pines.”

  Cameron crossed over to the pond and sat along the rocks, letting his hands hang between his knees. “That’s how you met Eisenhower.”

  “That’s Marshal Whitfield to you, but, yeah,” Leroy said with a nod. “A few years back. Made a friend out of a guy who, otherwise, probably would want nothing more than to see a guy like me dead.”

  “A demonic contractor,” Cameron noted.

  Leroy noticed a shift in Cameron’s features.

  A pensiveness that wasn’t usually there, or maybe, some level of curiosity that was hidden among the intensity of his gaze. There was a burning question that lingered on the tip of Cameron’s tongue, and Leroy wanted to save himself from it. Cameron asked questions. A lot of them. And as the arbiter to his underarbiter, Leroy, in most cases, was required to answer them. Him being in the know-how could make or break them during jobs, but Leroy had a pressing instinct that there was one question in particular Cameron wanted to ask.

  One day, Leroy would let him. But that day wouldn’t be today.

  Leroy cleared his throat, and nodded towards the sprite that had been following him around since he released it. “I see you never put that thing back in the cage.”

  Cameron glanced at it. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t want to, I guess,” Cameron said, sharing a glance with the sprite.

  Leroy had seen it follow him, but as far as he knew, it hadn’t done much else. “Did it work?”

  “Sort of,” Cameron said.

  Leroy scoffed. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of is better than no.”

  “You’re onto something with that, Kessler,” Leroy said with a wry-smile. “That thing have a name?”

  “Yeah. Guts.”

  “Guts? You’re serious?” Leroy asked.

  Cameron exhaled. “It ate through a garou’s guts, sort of. So, yeah. Guts. And I don’t want to hear any more shit about it. You named your cat Foot.”

  A small laugh escaped Leroy, and Cameron smiled. It was the first time he’d seen Cameron smile since he'd met him.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

  MARSHAL WHItFIELD

  ARTHUR YEAGER

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