Trigger warning: No sexual violence, but rather graphic martial/arsonous death and some glamorized prostitution.
*****
Aud eluded me in the dark water - my trickster-hearted Kuma Lisa - while I retreated blindly to her cave. A Selkie! Nothing had given me such good chase in decades, and certainly none had escaped. I'd brought down hundreds of Vampires, Berserkers, and Werebeasts without fail, but a fuzzy bantam seal battles free? Being disabled and escaped by a skittish little Selkie infuriated and fascinated me. Cunning as she may prove, I'd have the pale beauty now as a point of pride.
By necessity, Aud would emerge from the ocean before she got far. The New Moon would bring the rivetingly contradictory woman ashore. I put the Doppelgänger to finding her trail and bringing me someone to eat.
After a week of swimming steadily, hampered by my injuries, San Francisco Bay loomed at the horizon. I was running out of time. Within two days I'd become human again naturally, and I'd only covered a few hundred miles.
In yet another aspect that folklore got partially right, werebeasts do automatically morph into and remain in their animal forms for the three or so days of fullest moon in each lunar cycle. We have an exact opposite reaction to the new moon.
While still a ringed seal, I made my way up the Napa River under a sliver of remaining moon. Eventually, I found a cabin with weekend warrior tarps draped over a docked boat and
nouveau riche
decorations that suggested the house would be unoccupied midweek and have resources I'd need.
From their back porch, I tossed a softball sized rock with my rear flippers - a skill I'd developed over years - at the sliding glass door. It cracked in spiderwebs so that a series of headbutts shattered it. After a half hour with no response from neighbors, inhabitants, or security, I morphed back into my human form and crawled carefully inside.
Stealing from the short trophy wife who weekended there, I dressed myself in her ill-fitting clothes, then filtched untold thousands in gaudy jewelry and an illegally modified Desert Eagle .50 cannon with a few spare clips, stowing them in a Louis Vuitton handbag. The absurdly large pistol mayn't have been hers, but it oddly matched the oversized purse.
A '69 Pontiac GTO in the garage - albeit in an unfortunate avocado color - suited me nearly as well as the gun. Classic custom muscle cars are easy to hotwire and crazy fun to drive, although too conspicuous to keep for long. (Just as well. Nothing quite screams GTA like the regular screwdriver I'd be using in place of a key).
Still, it would get me to Reno in the morning. After drilling out the lock pins in the steering column and checking that the GTO would start with a screwdriver turn, I showered and crawled into bed and curled up around a pillow.
Sleep should have come easy in my exhaustion, and goodness knows I should have taken advantage of the relative safety of the anonymous house. But it was cold and lonely. For the first time in years, I didn't have a warm body holding me as I slept.
With nothing to distract me, the vampire's face hovered before my mind's eye, beautiful and terrible, tongue extended and flicking, teeth sharp and gleaming, black eyes beckoning me down...
I physically shook my head, trying to rid myself of the image and wondering why I couldn't. I doubted very much that I kept thinking of it due to some mystical ability on its part. No vampire had displayed that ability previously around me, and I'd always suspected that they were beings ruled by the laws of physics and nature like me or berserkers. A raging berserker is an awe-inspiring thing to see and the genesis of the lycanthrope/werewolf legends of most cultures, but not anything inexplicable or recondite.
I miss living openly among lycanthropic peoples, especially my time with the Hamrammri tribe of berserkers in what is now Belgium. (The exact year is beyond my reckoning, but I armed myself with an iron sword and javelins and my chainmail was of iron rings.)
As a raiding party, we stole through the woods as quick as armed men could move. Scouts had been sent ahead to kill lookouts. Our target was another raiding party camped out foolishly on the bottom of a medium hill, so we took the summit from the wooded area at the base. Then we cascaded down upon them like an iron avalanche.
At the time, about a quarter of the tribesmen were lycanthropes. Their elevated position within our social structure and their natural advantages of fortitude and venom came with the responsibility to lead the battle from the frontline. Seeing them furred and snarling in their rage while falling upon their enemies with their iron and teeth bared is still one of the most terrific visuals I've ever known.
The enemy formed up quickly, but two fell to my javelins before ever wetting their blades and more still to the javelins of others. The non-berserker male warriors fought alongside me and the other female warriors, adding numbers to our lycanthropic core. Our berserkers broke their ranks fully, and the chaos of open battle reigned as we poured in behind them.
I drove my blade under an enemy's chin and out the back of his neck while simultaneously blocking an incoming thrusting spear. Klothilde jumped forward and hamstrung the spearbearer, effectively removing him from the fray and from any future fray.
"You owe me, Seehunde." The tall golden blonde woman shouted to me over the din as she turned to kill a swordsman to her left with another swift and powerful stroke. I hadn't the time for a clever retort as I blocked another blow and ran through another warrior.
The battle ended as quickly as it began, but with no one on their side still standing. As a healer, I walked the battlefield with my medic kit and sharp dagger; tending to our injured and ending the suffering of those who wouldn't be leaving the battlefield. Others walked among the dead and dying for the latter reason or to ransack the bodies of friend and foe alike. Occasionally, one would call me over for a verdict before performing a mercy killing.
"Seehunde!" Klothilde called out to me. She didn't have a candidate for me, but looked to be leaving the field with some new gear and valuables. "I leave you to your business for now. You can pay off your debt to me tonight." She grinned at the warriors walking with her and looked at me again. "I'll like you better after you wash off the battle anyway."
Though savages, the hierarchy of the tribe - nearly to each individual member - was poorly defined but perfectly understood. As an immortal fighting healer, I certainly ranked the reckless young warrior, so her publicly and loudly making demands on me was more than a little brash.
I liked her brashness though, enough that we'd casually slept together with fair frequency for most of her twenties to that point. "See you then, Klothilde."
We were the aggressors in the battle with position and number, so only a few of our warriors took damage. Cleaning, bandaging, sewing, and medicating wounds still made for slow work, but the close friends and relatives of the injured stayed behind to help hold patients still as I worked, hold poultices of calendula, comfey, yarrow, and garlic over wounds, and hold waterskins to drink and mandrake to chew for the few in bad shape.
Hours later, the last of the savable were saved and the rest were good and dead. After tramping back to our own camp with the last of my patients and comrades, I washed the muck and blood of battle and its aftermath off in the stream nearby. Klothilde asking me to clean up was largely irrelevant. I'm natural disinclined to remain covered in gore.
