Prologue



“A monster writhes, broken and bloody, on the pavement. Its teeth gnash. It looks up into the eyes of its assailant, and two crosses reflect back in the crucifixion glow.

To pray devoutly. To prey mercilessly. The hands folded serenely drip with blood. Even monsters have bogeymen.”

-Dag Scheve


Prologue

A Sleepless Night

As the sinking sun set fire to the sky over a small town somewhere far west of the Mississippi, a man, only slightly smaller than a bull, sat at a bar and poured a glass of whiskey down his throat. His long duster did nothing to conceal the revolver at his side, but most of the other patrons didn’t bother concealing theirs either. Despite the seemingly endless wealth he had spent drinking most of the top shelf that afternoon, the large man had only four things on his person of any value; a tall Stetson hat worth thirty dollars in New York, and far more than that when the sun was bearing down, a long hunting knife that did not look like it would be worth more than five dollars when sheathed, but when it was drawn a keen eye could see that the weapon was forged of pure silver, an ivory handled revolver loaded with silver bullets, each round worth more than most men earn in a week, and last, but by no mean least, a small pin, it too made of sliver, and in the shape of a hammer. It was not the hammer of a carpenter or mason; this was a hammer that would have been used to break bone and shatter armor.

The saloon doors swung open and an old man, maybe fifty-five, entered the bar. He was dressed much the same as the large man drinking at the bar, although his duster was in better repair and his silver pin has recently been polished. The dust of the road followed him, and no one in the crowded room gave him a second glance as he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar. The large man offered him a glass of whiskey. “The moon rises in under an hour,” the old man said by way of refusal.

“That gives you thirty minutes to drink and thirty more to sober up.” The big man smiled as he filled a glass.

“I suppose it would be a shame not to give the bastard a fighting chance,” the old man replied as he threw back the whiskey. “It killed two dozen head of cattle yesterday, tonight is going to be exciting.”

“Something like that can rip a man in half, is it just the two of us hunting it?”

The old man flashed a wolfish smile as he said, “we might bring one or two more boys, just to be on the safe side”.

When the bottle was empty both men rose to their feet, and the big man left more than enough money on the bar to cover his tab. As they walked out into the twilight both men unconsciously checked their revolvers.

+++

In a dark alley in the London slums an aging man in a black fedora and clerical collar slipped past a police barricade. He was not an old man, but was no longer a young one and some of the brown in his hair had started to go gray. The soft lines of his face suggested that he was about forty, but anyone who focused on his eyes would have thought him much older. The cobblestones under his feet were uneven, but the flickering flames of the gaslights provided enough illumination to keep his footing easily, and enough shadow to conceal him from prying eyes. As he walked through another patch of dim illumination there was a flicker of light off a silver pin in his collar. It was his only indulgence in way of ornamentation. The tiny hammer twinkled in the gaslight as he neared the body. He knew what he hunted, but he needed to be sure. A mistake in identification would cost him his life no matter how much experience he had in his brutal trade. Knowledge was one of the greatest weapons mankind could employ, and he would make sure he was properly armed. As he neared the victim he was forced to duck into the shadow of an alleyway to avoid passing patrol men. “Did you see that poor girl?” one asked.

“I tried not to. Looking too long at things like that can make a man mad,” the second replied.

The first man continued as if he had not heard his comrade. “White as a sheet she was, I never saw a thing like it in all my days. Well maybe when a body washes up after it was been laying in the sea for a few days. But even then it is all falling to pieces, not like her.”

“Can you please talk about something else? All this talk and the look of that body, it is enough to make a Christian man sick.”

The other man obliged his squeamish friend. “Did you hear about the fight last night? One hell of a show.” Their voices trailed off into the distance as the man in the collar stepped back onto the grimy cobblestones and continued on his way.

+++

In the town of Westbrook near the city, but not really part of it, a young woman slept in a soft bed with cotton sheets. In the not too distant past such things would have been brought to Europe from the Far East and would have been beyond the means of all but the rich and powerful, but the might of steam and steel have changed everything. Now any cloth that had been brought across vast expanses of water by brave merchants was a relic of the past; eclipsed by mass produced goods. And like most relics the sheets on which this young girl slept were starting to fray. Not too much, not enough to bespeak desperation, just enough that a keen observer might take note that the master of the house was not as great as once he was. Although her bed was soft and her sheets were clean the young girl twisted and turned in the night; beads of sweat formed on her brow and the fringe of her soft dark hair grew damp. In her mind she was in the dark where the sound of a clock thundered like a cannon as it ticked away years faster than seconds. Her hand reached out to still the pendulum and stop her years from ticking away, but bars of forged steel kept her back. Her heart raced as she tried to squeeze through the gap between the cold metal, but with each tick of the clock the bars closed in tighter around her. She was trapped; soon she could barely move her fingers, but still the clock ticked and the bars closed in. Steel bit into soft flesh and she tried to cry out, but the cage had become like a vise and she couldn’t even open her jaw. Still the thundering clock drowned out every other sound. Even the crack of her bones breaking as the cage closed was nothing next to the sound of the great clock. In that moment she awoke, her bed clothes were soaked in cold sweat, and her heart thundered. As she tried to regain her composure she looked around the room to remind herself that she was safe. She looked at the stack of half-finished books, at the wardrobe carved from oak that was her grandmother’s before it was hers. The moon was still high in the sky, but it was not worth trying to go back to sleep. She crossed the room and lit a candle to give her enough light to read. Looking through the pile of books she had squirreled away from the family library she dismissed first the philosophers and then the histories. Content with her choice she opened to the fifth book of the Iliad and started to read.

+++

Under a sky glittering with stars three horsemen rode in ever closing circles around a shadowy and bestial form. As they closed in ever tighter their excitement was palpable. Each carried a torch in one hand; the crimson light from dancing fire cast the whole company in sinister flickering shadows. The creature’s hide was so black it seemed to suck the little light there was out of the air, leaving nothing but a hole of blackness where its body should have been. The only visible points in the pit of shadow were teeth and claws. Although once they might have been ivory white, they are now stained a dark crimson from years of gory use. Soon each had a length of rope in hand. The ropes struck out like snakes and each easily found its mark. One around the thing’s front right leg, another around the back right, the last found the beast’s neck. In a heartbeat each was drawn tight. Making the first sound since coming within ear shoot of their prey, one man let out a hoot of triumph and laughed as the joy of the hunt filled him. The beast let out a howl of rage as it tried to free itself from its bonds. But as it lifted a giant claw to slash through the ropes that held it, a shotgun barked and shards of silver ripped into the gut of the creature. The body started to slump to the ground, but was kept from reaching it by the horsemen’s heavy ropes. As its eyes started to cloud over there was the click of the hammer being thumbed back on a revolver. It did not hear the man say. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I send you back to Hell.” Already its form had started to change. The body shrank and became less muscled. The dark fur that covered it started to vanish. Just before its form became again like that of a man there was the bark of a revolver and a bullet entered its shrinking skull. “It is a shame they turn back when you kill em. That one was bigger than a horse and that muzzle would have looked good on my wall,” the largest man said.

“You will just have to keep on protecting the world for humanity out of the goodness of your heart then,” the oldest member of their company replied. All three smiled at that; cold smiles that showed too many teeth, still white despite of their years of killing.

+++

An aging man in a clerical collar and black fedora stooped over the chalk white body of a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen and given her current state of undress, her murder was not the only indignity she had endured this night. He said a silent prayer for her soul and examined her material shell. The white flesh, the puncture marks on the neck and inner thigh confirmed what he already knew. Of all the things he hunted he hated the undead the most. It was not because they were the most dangerous, far from it. In fact they seemed to be some of the only things that still lurked in the darkness that had a proper fear of God, and when his two callings came together it made his life just a little easier. No, he hated them because of what they made him do to their victims. As he thought, he scanned the darkness once more to make sure he was alone. Satisfied that no living person would bear witness to the distasteful necessity he poured kerosene over the dead girl’s body and lit a match. He knew that she was not killed here. The nature of the wounds and her state of undress suggested that she was killed in a far more private location. It took only a moment for him to move from this understanding to the realization that if the creature intended to stay in London it would not have left this body in the open. The only reason for such action would be as a distraction, to make its exit from the city that much easier. The man let out a silent sigh as he turned toward the train station and started walking.


Next Chapter: Chapter one: An Ordinary Day