Chapter Twenty – Luke

 

I’d never seen anything like this before, this shadowy black substance left behind on the ground. It reeked of the same dog thing I’d smelled back at the mansion, and had smelled on the golden coin riding passenger in my hip pocket. Behind me, Molly audibly winced as I ran my finger through the stuff and brought it up in front of my face. It wasn’t an ash, or a slime, or an ichor of any kind I’d ever seen. Instead, it was like the stuff of shadows itself had dyed my finger a darker shade.

“What did this come from?” I wondered aloud.

Molly had stayed behind me, back in the house. Good. If she was there, I wouldn’t have to worry about her as much. “From the thing.” She paused, licked her lips. “From the capcaun. He left the gold coin, too.”

“A capcaun?” I muttered as I wiped my fingers clean on some untouched stones. What the hell was that? We were hunting a zmeu, weren’t we?  But, maybe it was both. Maybe they were working together. I just hoped I didn’t need the unicorn horn for both of them. “What do you mean?”

“I searched for it on the internet,” she said. “Dog-head ogre.”

“You…you saw it, didn’t you?”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and her face was a mix of emotions as she worked through what was happening. Not only was this all real, but I also knew about it. Not only did I know about it, but I’d also been hiding information from her. Not only had I been hiding information from her, but hiding that information might also have gotten her hurt. Or worse.

My gut mirrored the reactions as she made them, followed by the sinking feeling that Molly could be next.

“Molly,” I said as I walked up to her. “We need to talk, okay? There’s a lot going on here, and not all of it is going to make sense when I tell it to you. I need you to trust me.”

“Trust you?” she asked, eyes wide as she took a step back from my reaching hands. She glanced down at them, a look of sudden disgust on her face like they were tentacles. “I-I-I don’t even know you.”

“Molly,” I said as I tried to reach for her hands, her hands that had fit so perfectly into mine just moments ago, “I’m just trying to protect you. Just trying to keep you safe.”

“I can keep myself safe,” she said, her eyes glancing away from me for a second, back over my shoulder. Her eyes widened, to the size of dinner plates, almost, as she backed away.

“What?” I asked, stepping forward as she raised her hand to point back behind me, to the porch.

She opened her mouth, but words didn’t come, just a low gasping noise.

I whipped around, my hand already pulling out my sidearm.

There it was.

The capcaun. A hulking beast of a thing parked right in the shadows of the privacy fence across the back of the yard. It growled, baring the row upon row of white fangs filling its powerful jaws.

I drew my pistol, the firearm solid, heavy, and reassuring in my hand as I drew a bead on it. At that distance, accuracy with a pistol was questionable. If you were trying to hit a person. But, with this thing, it was more like trying to hit the broadside of a barn.

“L-L-Luke, you can’t—!”

I fired, three shots. The gun roared as, behind me, Molly screamed in surprise, and ahead of me, the thing screamed in agony. Black shadow sprayed back across the yellow wood of the fence, staining it like ink from a surprised octopus, and the creature began to shrivel back into the shadows.

“Stay here!” I barked, not even looking back. I was already off the porch before she could tell me to wait, or could tell me to be careful, or could try to make me stay. Whatever this thing was, I needed to put it down. Not only because of what it had done to Heidi, but because it had shown up here a second time.

Looking for Molly.

“Luke!” she screamed from behind me, even as my dress shoes slapped the aggregate around the pool. “Wait!” Ahead of me, the capcaun shriveled to the size of a Frisbee, a black disc that seemed to move over the surface of the fence as it darted right across the fence for other shadows.

I kept running, my eyes following its every move despite their tunnel vision.

It crossed over into the neighbor’s yard.

I hit the fence at a run, caught the top with a free hand as the toe of my loafer found the middle beam supporting the panels, and launched myself over. I rolled forward as I hit the rocks, using my shoulders as support as I kept moving.

“Hey!” yelled a guy to my right, probably the neighbor, just as I slammed into his cactus with my back.

I didn’t even feel the spines, or acknowledge the man. Because the disc that the capcaun had become was already across the yard, darting down and through a small hole that was near a gate in the fence, and heading out into the back alley.

Sewers. It was going for the sewers. How else would something like that hide during daylight hours in a place like Arizona? Or anywhere, for that matter, in this day and age?

“Is that a gun? Holy shit!” The neighbor’s back door slammed shut as the man, wisely I might add, ducked back inside.

Back on my feet, I kept moving, rocks and dirt flying out behind me as I sprinted for the gate, my lungs sucking in air like it was going out of style, my chest burning and heaving already, my feet slipping and sliding for purchase on the gravel and rock. Why the hell couldn’t people just have fucking grass lawns?

I slipped the latch on the gate, slammed it open with my shoulder, and hung a right down the stretch of shaded pavement.

It wasn’t perfectly dark here, or anything, but it was dark enough for the dog-headed ogre to move unabated. The disc shot ahead, easily outdistancing me, as it raced along the pavement now, its destination clear: a storm drain.

Shit! I pumped my limbs harder, my legs burning with lactic acid as I passed garbage can after garbage can. I couldn’t let it get away! And if it made it all the way down there, the chances of that happening increased damn near exponentially.

The disc paused for a moment, like the capcaun was trying to decide how best to lose me, before quickly darting within the foot-tall gap in the pavement and disappearing into the pitch black.

I growled as I came to a slapping stop, my nose filling with the mix of supernatural canine and rot spewing from the damp belly of the sewers in front of me. This was it, though. This was my chance. If I could somehow catch this thing, injure it enough to where it could be interrogated, maybe I could find out what was actually going on with these women.

Something. Anything.

All I needed was to get down inside the storm drain. I jerked around, trying to find something I could use to lever up the manhole cover, and saw that one of the neighbors had a bunch of clothes hangers rammed into their plastic garbage can. It was overfilled—they couldn’t even shut the lid.

“Who the fuck needs that many hangers?” I breathed as I began to pull them out. I got about eight of them together so that their hooks were all lined up, and bent over the manhole cover. I hooked the little bar, easing it out of its concrete and steel nesting. I swore loudly as the wire began to bend, but managed to insert the toe of my dress shoe between the cast iron lid and the concrete, catching it before it could slam back down with reverberating force.

Breathing heavily, I hooked my fingers around the bottom edge, wrenched up the steel, and flipped it and the still-attached wire hangers off to the side. A ladder, nothing more than metal bars mounted directly into the concrete, descended into the depths of the Tucson water system. It was dark, and it smelled foul. But I could see even down there, I knew, and I’d smelled worse.

Gun holstered, I lowered myself onto the ladder, and I began to make my way down. I could smell its stink of evil here. Even over the sewage and rot of the storm drain, I could smell it.

And if I could smell it, I could find it.

The temperature dropped as I lowered myself down the ladder, enfolding me with its cool and clammy embrace as I steadily climbed down the rusted metal rungs, surrounded by the smell of the thing Molly had called a capcaun. I wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but if its reaction to three silver bullets was any indication, it could be injured.

Icy water floated into my shoes, ruining my leather loafers as they submerged six inches in the water running at the bottom of the sewer tunnel. It wasn’t raw sewage down here, just runoff from the storm drains around the neighborhood. The square tunnels were easily eight feet tall—probably had to be to handle all the water during the rainy season here. I couldn’t imagine the rock and gravel lawns around here could handle the water if it came all at once.

Overhead storm drains allowed the occasional shaft of light to penetrate into the black, giving me more than enough to see with down here. I could smell the thing in the air. Like a line of darkness in the near pitch darkness. A smoking trail of filth that cut through the already putrid-smelling air. I followed after it, sidearm drawn, water sloshing with every step.

I estimated I went about fifty before I turned left at the first intersection, going into an older bit of tunnels. Telling distance was next to impossible down here, and I was too on edge to count steps. I followed the tunnel for a little while longer, the smell of the thing hanging like a fetid corpse, the only sound in my ears that of my steady breath.

Sidearm raised and ready, I passed through another shaft of light coming from one of the storm drains above. The smell kept going ahead to a section of tunnel free of any light. It had come this way. I could practically hear it licking its slathering chops as it waited for me.

I gripped my sidearm more tightly, rolling my shoulders a little as I thought of Molly back on the surface. Wondered if I’d made the right call in coming down here.

No, this thing had violated her. Had entered her backyard, had left a gift for her, too. If I didn’t take it down, she’d be next. I just knew it.

I stepped into the tunnel ahead, my feet trudging through the water. Darkness enveloped me on all sides like I was submerging myself into a pool of darkness, and I could suddenly feel its evil creeping up my spine. Could feel all four of its eyes watching me.

“You shouldn’t have come, shifter,” it rasped from all around me, its voice echoing from the concrete walls.

Pistol raised, I whipped around, but couldn’t see anything. I needed some kind of ambient light to see, but it was too dark in this tunnel for even me.

“You should’ve stayed above ground, where you were safe.”

Holding my breath, adrenaline kicking like a mule, I spun again.

Nothing.

I felt the breath on my neck, smelled its stinking rot. Not rot like the tunnel, but the stench of putrefied meat.

“You’re in my world now, shifter.”

And it was right.