Harder Than Steele
Posted: 31 Jan 2016, 17:14
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Nothing in this darkness was too strong. The evils of this wicked city, built on sin, were weak. Darkness cast out by the light and the life of his Lord. Truth and glory were a radiance so bright that they were painful to look upon in this place of treachery and deceit; by the good graces of God on high, he was given strength to vanquish the enemies of his divine light. He could feel His will coursing through his veins, the power of his protection as it crept across his muscled chest, his flesh hard as iron as he flexed with the hefting of his blade.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
The steel of his blade was a masterful piece of work. Working with the metal had been his whole life for more than fifteen years. The harsh, hard work that his body had endured was reflected in his physique. Lean, hard, powerful; he wasn’t the kind of man to take lightly. The steel mills of Pittsburg had honed his body to a lethal, powerful machine. Heat, intense, blinding, melting heat helped to meld his body, the excruciating exertion that he had endured tempering his muscle, training his entire form to swing a weapon, though never in his days had he held so fine a piece of steel as this one.
The blade itself was the length of his arm, a wicked, straight edge polished sharp enough to cut clean through a man like white hot steel through soft butter. The weapon was light, nearly weightless in his powerful grip. He flipped the blade in his grasp, the tip of the ******** sword dipping to scrape across the ground as he approached the darkness, filling the eerie silence with the rasp of steel against concrete. He passed into the mouth of the alley, his powerful figure dominating the light that tried its best to pour into the small, cramped space. He could feel the evil in the dark, like it was calling to him; like it was drawing him out.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The blackness of that deep, thick darkness swallowed him, the alley a yawning cavern that stretched on and into the black. The sound of steel whispering against the concrete echoed off the walls as he continued to mutter the prayer beneath his breath. The words were a comfort, each one sending a surge of strength through his body until every muscle in his body was hard as wound iron. His entire body trembled with anticipation, with an unspent energy screaming for release.
Long, golden hair was tied high on his scalp in a top knot, loose strands framing his scruffy face. Blonde beard hung to his chest, disheveled and unkempt. He had made for Canada as quickly as possible. He hadn’t taken time for stops, pushing the old Bronco hard, until the engine erupted in a plume of black smoke, thick with burning oil. He had walked, then. Nearly half a hundred miles to Harper Rock from where he had abandoned the old truck. Back then, his companions had still been with him.
Tre Yrons, a friend since childhood, they had grown up closer than brothers. Never had two boys become men that had been closer, more tightly entwined in deed and will. They were so alike, their thought patterns so similar that people often had mistaken them for twins, the way they appeared to share some kind of telepathic connection. Pittsburgh had been tough on them, making them tough in turn. They had both taken after their fathers, taking positions in the Oliver Iron & Steel Company. Ephraim had been a Blacksmith, forging, hammer welding, and heat treating iron and steel materials. Working the forge had been hard, hot work in a hard, hot place. Living in the forge was akin to living in the belly of a beast of hell. It had kept him strong, in body and in faith. Tre had been a Welder. His job was taking the metals and making them into something new, either by conjoining or separating, welding or cutting. He had been a natural.
Father Uphrin Krell had made both of their acquaintances in the chapel, the only church between the mill and their meager living arrangements. The man had been old, that was plain to see. His face said early fifties. His body was a work of wonder, however. Powerful muscle that didn’t belong to someone Ephraim’s own age wrapped a strong skeletal frame. The black cassock he wore draped over his frame evenly, keeping his unnaturally powerful physique hidden to most of the world. What he had shared with Ephraim and Tre, was the unique and hidden history of an ancient order of warriors blessed and ordained by the church. He had shared the power of the paladins with them, and taught them to seek out the darkness and destroy it wherever they might find it. It was Father Uphrin that had guided them to Harper Rock, a city of evil that by all rights should be purged from the earth. Such a blight of wickedness and wanton sin was a blotch upon His creation, a cancer that needed cutting out. They were merely the instruments by which God’s hand would remove this darkness.
Heather Lockheart was an instrument herself, though not the weapon that her companions had been. She had joined Ephraim on his nightly visits to the chapel, their late nights spent in prayer or teaching and learning of the Word. The past nine years, she had been inseparable from Ephraim and Tre, the three of them sharing the cramped apartment they called home. She had learned from the more radical members of the church, friends of Father Uphrin, that she was blessed with an ability of her own, a power to bestow gifts upon the paladins of the old warrior order. She learned to weave this magic into marks upon their flesh, granting them the supernatural strength and speed, a stamina that none of them might ever have imagined. Along the way in her teachings, she had learned to mask the marks in ink, her artistic hand weaving magic into each stroke of a needle into their skin. She was a true artist, in body, mind, and spirit. The power that she wove into them was intricate, the spells delicate but powerful. The clergy were most impressed with her skill, and with the young men she touched with her power. She was a true prodigy, an asset to the Church.
They were all dead, now. Ephraim was alone.
Father Uphrin had fallen first. Whether he was recognized as the strongest of their little band, or the head of the viper, Ephraim couldn’t be sure now. The attack had been quick and brutal. They crossed a long track of wilderness, following a narrow highway into town. They had set through a set of twin hills, tall trees about them shielding the world from view. It was a small vale, beautiful as it was frozen. The bend was wide, the road ahead of them and behind them hidden in a veil of white snow as they trekked through the darkness. They didn’t even hear the crunch of snow as the unholy monster descended upon them with a speed they would never have believed.
Claws sharp as razors glinted in the moonlight, brighter than the crystalline snow that crusted the earth beneath them. Red flashed through the night, splashing hot and bright against that pure white mound of the hill. The powerful frame of the elderly Father crumpled to the earth, his skull lost in the snow. Blood rushed from the exposed stump of his neck as the creature wheeled on them again. His second attack was not so successful.
Aware of the assault, Ephraim and Tre had formed a protective wall of steel between the monster and Heather, the gifted sorceress. Seeing the beast in the crisp white light of the moon, they could see the evil in its eyes. It appeared more monster than man, a corpse living beyond its time through some unholy means. Its very existence could not be tolerated in the eyes of the Holy Father. As the beast lunged at them again, blood spraying from its mouth, thick as spittle as he screamed his hatred, twin blades flashed in the moonlight. The steel made barely a whisper as they contacted the hard, cold flesh of the creature. It passed between the large, muscle-bound figures to charge at the sorceress.
The contact between their bodies was a bone-jarring crunch, sending the short, stocky blonde to her back. The vampire, however, split into three parts. His legs fell back, kicked by a flailing boot of the sorceress as she fell. His torso landed on her chest, knocking the wind from her as his head sailed through the air and rolled through the snow to vanish. Dark, black blood stained the very air, its taint clinging to existence in an inky cloud. It seemed to evaporate from the pools around the corpse’s pieces, thin trails of black smoke rising from what looked like slicks of oil. Ephraim leaned down, one hand on the creature’s severed torso to haul it off the woman. Upon his touch, the flesh melted into shadow, vanishing into darkness.
Shocked, he had jumped back, blade lifted and prepared for another attack. He held out the palm of his hand, keeping Heather down in the snow, low and out of the way as his eyes moved through the darkness. Tre was standing by the Father’s corpse, sifting through the snow to search for his severed head. When nothing came, he let out a long, low breath, appearing as a thin stream of white as he reached out his hand for the blonde on her back in the snow.
Together, they had buried Father Uphrin.
The roadside grave that they had made for the Father would have sapped the energy from lesser people, but thanks to Heather’s tremendous gifts, their stamina seemed nearly inexhaustible. They had marked the place with a cross of wood, taken from the surrounding trees, hanging the man’s Capello Romano from the cross’s crown. It had only seemed appropriate that they had stood over the grave and said some words. That luxury wouldn’t be afforded to the rest of them; they already knew. They knew that they were going to die here in this evil place. They just didn’t realize how soon it would really come.
“Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
Onward, he stalked into the gaping maw of darkness. He had seen the vile creature dash into the alley, the splashes of blood that clung to the bricks gave away the monster that had left them behind in a trail of crimson. The monster, inhabiting the shell of a woman, had darted into the darkness in hopes of escaping him. He had been on the hunt for her for two unbroken days. Two days filled with blood, horror, and a deep sense of emptiness that only brought his hatred, his loathing to a boil.
He could hear the scrape of its useless leg now as it dragged the shattered, twisted limb behind it. A woman’s shoe was left behind in the alley, red before the blood had coated it, it seemed to bleed the dye from its manufacturing. Kicking the shoe aside, the broad, powerful frame of his shoulders hunched in the darkness as he advanced, his pace steady and sure. The abomination was nearly finished. It had only barely fled his last attack, his ******** sword lancing its heart. The scream that had left those bloody lips was horrific; music to his very soul. This was personal.
This was vengeance.
Tre had been next. The new knowledge of their enemy had made them wary, prepared each moment for an attack as they drew closer to the city. “Do either of you notice it getting darker?” Heather’s voice had cut through a silence that felt like it could suffocate them beneath its burden. The city was in sight, then, the lights a faint glow against the hilltops, like a halo ringing their crests. An image of false innocence, a lure; a trap. He turned to answer when the shadows shifted, just from the corner of his eye.
In a blink, his blade was in his hand, Tre already rushing into the darkness. A single wide, powerful arc of his heavy broadsword brought a screech from the shadows, blood clinging to the air as the creature backpedaled, forcing itself into the wilderness. His blade trailing thin tails of the smoky blood, Tre moved to charge into the darkness of the trees when the wail of terror rose in such a terrific shriek that it seemed to pierce their skulls, sending Heather to her knees as Ephraim plunged his blade into the snow to maintain his balance. Tre was holding his ears, blood running from beneath his left palm as he grit his teeth against the pain in his skull.
The snow at his feet had swallowed his blade, blood splattering the pure white earth as it dripped from his beard. He worked his jaw against the ringing in his head as he knelt to retrieve his weapon.
“I think… maybe we should go back home. Maybe we should leave…” Heather moved to tug on Ephraim’s sleeve. “We could go back… get married, like we talked about… we just need to go home…” The darkness filled with another shriek of pain, coming from behind them, now, the sounds of a titanic struggle filling the forest, the crack of splintering wood echoing all around them and growing closer. He frowned, and took her wrist. “We need to move.”
Onward was the only way. Back was certain death. He could feel it. He pulled her through the snow, nearly dragging her as she pumped her legs to keep up. Tre had collected his sword and was running with them as the sound grew more intense, the horrified, piercing sounds of pain mingled with the nightmarish growl of some creature far more fearsome than the beast that had retreated into the wood. They were going to be overrun.
The snow crunched as Tre planted a boot in the snow and stopped, wheeling around and lifting his weapon to the ready. “You two go ahead. I’ll hold them off.” He shook his head and bulled over Ephraim as he opened his mouth to protest. “Just go! You don’t have time to argue. I’ll catch up.” With that, he turned into the darkness, the howl of the struggle reaching a crescendo as he charged into the night. That was the last that Ephraim saw of his friend; his brother.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.”
He came upon the creature curled into the darkness, making itself as small and docile as possible. It was frightened, and it should be. This monster, this… beast… it had taken the last of his hope. It had put an edge of darkness on the righteous purpose that he had come to spread through this city. It had tainted his reason. The tip of his blade whistled through the air as he raised his weapon, laying it against the hollow of the creature’s throat. Once, it had been human. It had been beautiful. He had loved this monster.
In the city, Ephraim and Heather had taken refuge in a condemned building, living on the scraps the local Church could spare. The city was crawling not only with the wicked creatures of darkness, the demons of the damned, but with people; fodder for the beasts. They milled about their lives, most of them, clueless to the agents of Satan scurrying through their city like roaches, worming their way into the very foundation of their refuge and rotting the souls of every one of them from the inside out, until each of them was an empty, hollow husk of a living thing.
These people, these poor and unfortunates, he couldn’t take from them. He took only the bare leavings, the dregs of the Church’s stores, refusing the hospitality of the chapter and staying only a short distance down the block in the run down hotel. The dilapidated building served his purposes nicely, allowing him to come and go as he needed, without questioning or an escort or watchers of any kind. Heather had taken the bed in the room they were keeping, the large, wide bed coated with dust the day they had first taken refuge in the ancient shell of a building. He slept on the floor, a bedroll laid out across the hard, bare planks. It was plenty for him, to be honest. He had lived through much worse conditions.
She offered, multiple times, to share the bed with him. Multiple times, he refused. As close as the two of them were, his vows were sacred to him. Only when he had taken a wife, would he lie with another woman. The Church had changed him, cleansed his soul in a holy and righteous fire. He never wanted to let that go.
Days had passed, and they had heard nothing from Tre. His phone had been silent, no texts or calls from the man left behind. Maybe he had lost his phone, or it was broken in the fight. Maybe he had survived, crawling out of the fray to make his way to a hospital somewhere in town. Maybe…
Deep down, he knew that the man was dead. He knew that he would never see Tre again, and a mixture of emotions churned in his chest at the thought, a storm so violent and fierce that some times it felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had taken to easing the pain by hunting, taking out each and every creature of the darkness that he could find. Blood bathed the streets, ashes floating in the wind of Harper Rock, thick as the snow that never seemed to stop falling. He should have known about the weather, this far North it was never very warm, and in the dead of winter, the chill was a murderous thing.
The evening two nights prior, Heather had joined him on patrol. Sometimes, she would come along with him, on nights that he would be tracking some of the lesser, more predictable and easier targets. They had stopped by a restaurant, still open in the early hours of the morning to share a burger. The meal had been more than fine; real food was a rarity for them these days, the cash flowing into their wallets only coming from the leavings of the monsters they had slain. The night before, he had managed a real find, a fledgling vampire with a roll of nearly two thousand dollars in his coat. It was finally a material good to come from their newfound life, a way to provide themselves with real sustenance.
When they left, the snow had picked up again, harder than it had been that afternoon. The cold was a biting chill, wind slicing through their coats like a blade. Her teeth chattered as she looked up at him and smiled, a spark in those shimmering blue eyes as water edged its way down her cheeks, tearing up against the cold. He returned her smile, and hooked his arm into hers. “I know where this one hunts. It shouldn’t be difficult to catch it unawares. You just have to stay close, and be ready for anything. If something happens to me, you run.”
Blue eyes rolled in her skull as she just punched his shoulder and walked alongside him, her head resting against his bicep, her frame too short to reach his shoulder with her cheek. Beneath them, the snow crunched against their steps, the scraped sidewalks already crusted over again with the night’s fresh fall.
Deeper, they trudged into the dilapidation and decay of the forgotten corners of the city. Where bright, shining towers of wealth and power loomed from the city’s core, the skirts of the tight knot of civilization were all but ruins in places. Here, they found most of their prey, darting among the darkness of the burned out shells of buildings, or collapsed homes, or broken factories. Here, the creatures made their nests, the vile, feral beasts more akin to animal than man. So horrific were these monsters that even their own kind hunted them down, often falling into the traps of the paladin. It was a rare and beautiful thing to find one of these more organized creatures, to remove their taint from this place as well.
As they walked in silence, listening to the broken world around them, the street lamps that lined the street began to flicker, winking out in places while simply dimming in others. The wide, white street was dimmed to a blue-white glow, a single point at the far end of the industrial sector. They pushed on, only pausing briefly to feign their surprise. Heather trembled at his side, though whether it was from fear or anticipation, he couldn’t discern.
The darkness around them seemed to take on a life of its own, the black air pulsing, breathing, crawling. It reached out and brushed against their skin with icy cold fingers, paper soft and gentle in a sinister sort of warning. A tremble shot down Heather’s spine, this time he knew, from pure terror. He could feel the weight of the darkness pressing down on them, and knew that the demon was near. It seemed to materialize from the darkness, the shadows gathering around it as it swung a black blade of shadow, catching Heather across the neck as she wrenched away from the blow.
A choking sound left her as she fell into the snow, her hot, red blood spraying across the icy white earth. The beast descended upon her as Ephraim lashed out with his blade, taking the creature’s arm. A howl of pain filled the air as the monster dashed to the side, nearly toppling without its balance, weight thrown off by the missing limb. Dark, red blood splashed across Heather’s face as she clutched at her throat, fighting to keep the blood from seeping from her throat, and failing. A red gush spread around her fallen frame as Ephraim rushed over her thrashing figure to advance on the demon. Another scream filled the air as his blade caught its leg, sending blood and meat splashing across the snow before it vanished into ash.
A heavy limp slowed the monster nearly to a crawl as it tried its best to evade his slashes and thrusts, growing slower, weaker, less sure with each powerful blow. Red lips spat blood into the snow at his feet as the monster’s cold, dead breasts heaved with useless breaths. Teeth clenched as it hissed with pain, blood and spittle spraying through the clenched, pearly white maw. “May the Lord make your judgement swift, monster, and have mercy upon your black soul as he casts you into the lake of fire.” He lifted his blade as the thing pursed its lips and spat at him again, catching him on the cheek.
“**** you, faggot.” She hissed through her pain. Even with all the bravado, she screamed as his heavy ******** sword came crashing down into her skull. She flinched back, head smacking against the brick as the steel bit into the bone with a sick crunch. Blood splashed through the air, her brain left open to the air as he yanked the weapon free of her broken head, her face nearly cleaved in two. The body quivered, legs kicking once before the pale figure fell still. He lifted a boot to kick the corpse into the snow, and it vanished into a pile of ash. The blood sloughed from his blade like a fine layer of dust as he flicked it clean of the ashy remains, sliding it into the scabbard at his back.
Quickly, he turned to where Heather lay in the snow, her legs still kicking weakly in her pain as she glanced up at him in the dark. “Help me…” Her plea was barely a whisper, her voice as thin as paper as hands white as the snow beyond the pool of her blood clutched at her throat. The blood had slowed now, her entire body shivering violently.
It was too much. He clenched his fists and slammed a punch into the ice. He felt the skin break against the sharp edges of the frozen crust before slamming into the snow, the freezing cold enveloping his fist as she clung to life with what strength she had left. He pulled the broken fist from the snow, the skin already stopping the bleeding as it began to heal. He leaned down, careful not to move her with such a mortal wound, and brushed sticky golden curls from her face, blood caking his fingers as he moved the strands aside. “I am so sorry, Heather… I failed you.” She trembled against his palm as the blood between her fingers all but stopped. “I love you.”
Finally, she smiled, before a long sigh left her blue lips in a thin stream of steam. Her body trembled once, and fell still, the light in those shimmering blue eyes vanishing in an instant. He knew that she had wanted to hear that. It was a comfort in her final moments, he had seen it in her eyes. He lifted a hand, gently pushing her eyes shut as he grit his teeth. He lifted a hand to his long, golden hair and twisted fingers into the strands, pulling with terrible might.
She was the last of them, and she was gone.
They were all gone, and he was alone, left to the task set before them.
He had taken a breath, prepared to scream in his frustration when the corpse at his knees shifted, just a fraction of an inch. His gaze dropped in time to see her lunge at him, her hands reaching out to grasp at his coat as her teeth went for his throat. His fist punched the center of her chest, sinking between her breasts until he felt her sternum crack, shoving her away and into the snow.
He had run, then.
What else could he do? He couldn’t kill her. She was just a nightmare, a vision burrowing into his skull, a maggot eating through his brain, spreading a corruption, a sickening madness through his mind, driving him ever onward toward the brink of insanity. It was a vision of his loss, a fabrication of a broken mind.
It wasn’t until a week later, when he had finally pushed himself back into the streets that he had come to accept what he had seen.
She was one of them.
Heather was a vampire.
He had known it in his heart the moment she had stirred. He had known that she had come back, not as the angel of light, the tool of righteousness that she had once been, but a twisted monster, taken by the night. He had just denied it, choosing instead to keep hope in his heart, than to abandon her.
It was when he had found her, teeth buried into the flesh of a man’s neck as the final vestiges of life fled him that he couldn’t set it aside any longer. He knew her the minute he saw her, blood splashed across her ivory face, her lips stained red. She was cleaner than before, freshly washed, her hair brushed meticulously, her dress far above her former station. All of it stolen, all of this some kind of ruse, some sort of distraction. It was Heather, but it wasn’t. That was the night that he had begun his hunt, the night he had resolved to slaughter Heather Lockheart, the night that she had truly become the monster he had prayed she would never have become.
Now, with the sharp tip of his blade pressed into her throat, she looked as fragile as she had the night they had come into the city, begging him to leave. She was a frightened girl again, not the monster that he had been stalking for days. She was a lost, scared woman in a world of darkness and sin. She needed a savior, a deliverer. He twisted his blade, a bead of blood running down her throat as she swallowed. “Please… Ephraim, please…”
Her voice was the same… her eyes… they were the same. How was he going to do this? How was he supposed to kill her, when she was the same?
His steely resolve disintegrated in the face of her mortal peril. He dropped his blade, the weapon landing in the snow with a single crunch as it broke the crust of snow and sank into the white fluff, the twisted form of what had used to be his girlfriend scrambled to her knees, pulling herself through the snow and through a small opening in the chain link fence that divided the alley into two halves. She brought herself to her feet, her useless leg twisted beneath her as she put her weight on the bare foot of her good leg. She turned to look at him, the two of them staring through the fence for a long moment, before she turned to run, limping into the darkness, until he could no longer see her as she stumbled through the black.
What was he supposed to do? Who had he become, if he wasn’t the righteous hand of God, sent to this city of sin to exact his judgement upon the wicked? Where was he supposed to go, now that he couldn’t find the heart to slay even the heartless beast that had taken Heather’s flesh as its own? He was no holy warrior. He was no true instrument of the Lord.
Who is Ephraim Steele now?
Nothing in this darkness was too strong. The evils of this wicked city, built on sin, were weak. Darkness cast out by the light and the life of his Lord. Truth and glory were a radiance so bright that they were painful to look upon in this place of treachery and deceit; by the good graces of God on high, he was given strength to vanquish the enemies of his divine light. He could feel His will coursing through his veins, the power of his protection as it crept across his muscled chest, his flesh hard as iron as he flexed with the hefting of his blade.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
The steel of his blade was a masterful piece of work. Working with the metal had been his whole life for more than fifteen years. The harsh, hard work that his body had endured was reflected in his physique. Lean, hard, powerful; he wasn’t the kind of man to take lightly. The steel mills of Pittsburg had honed his body to a lethal, powerful machine. Heat, intense, blinding, melting heat helped to meld his body, the excruciating exertion that he had endured tempering his muscle, training his entire form to swing a weapon, though never in his days had he held so fine a piece of steel as this one.
The blade itself was the length of his arm, a wicked, straight edge polished sharp enough to cut clean through a man like white hot steel through soft butter. The weapon was light, nearly weightless in his powerful grip. He flipped the blade in his grasp, the tip of the ******** sword dipping to scrape across the ground as he approached the darkness, filling the eerie silence with the rasp of steel against concrete. He passed into the mouth of the alley, his powerful figure dominating the light that tried its best to pour into the small, cramped space. He could feel the evil in the dark, like it was calling to him; like it was drawing him out.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The blackness of that deep, thick darkness swallowed him, the alley a yawning cavern that stretched on and into the black. The sound of steel whispering against the concrete echoed off the walls as he continued to mutter the prayer beneath his breath. The words were a comfort, each one sending a surge of strength through his body until every muscle in his body was hard as wound iron. His entire body trembled with anticipation, with an unspent energy screaming for release.
Long, golden hair was tied high on his scalp in a top knot, loose strands framing his scruffy face. Blonde beard hung to his chest, disheveled and unkempt. He had made for Canada as quickly as possible. He hadn’t taken time for stops, pushing the old Bronco hard, until the engine erupted in a plume of black smoke, thick with burning oil. He had walked, then. Nearly half a hundred miles to Harper Rock from where he had abandoned the old truck. Back then, his companions had still been with him.
Tre Yrons, a friend since childhood, they had grown up closer than brothers. Never had two boys become men that had been closer, more tightly entwined in deed and will. They were so alike, their thought patterns so similar that people often had mistaken them for twins, the way they appeared to share some kind of telepathic connection. Pittsburgh had been tough on them, making them tough in turn. They had both taken after their fathers, taking positions in the Oliver Iron & Steel Company. Ephraim had been a Blacksmith, forging, hammer welding, and heat treating iron and steel materials. Working the forge had been hard, hot work in a hard, hot place. Living in the forge was akin to living in the belly of a beast of hell. It had kept him strong, in body and in faith. Tre had been a Welder. His job was taking the metals and making them into something new, either by conjoining or separating, welding or cutting. He had been a natural.
Father Uphrin Krell had made both of their acquaintances in the chapel, the only church between the mill and their meager living arrangements. The man had been old, that was plain to see. His face said early fifties. His body was a work of wonder, however. Powerful muscle that didn’t belong to someone Ephraim’s own age wrapped a strong skeletal frame. The black cassock he wore draped over his frame evenly, keeping his unnaturally powerful physique hidden to most of the world. What he had shared with Ephraim and Tre, was the unique and hidden history of an ancient order of warriors blessed and ordained by the church. He had shared the power of the paladins with them, and taught them to seek out the darkness and destroy it wherever they might find it. It was Father Uphrin that had guided them to Harper Rock, a city of evil that by all rights should be purged from the earth. Such a blight of wickedness and wanton sin was a blotch upon His creation, a cancer that needed cutting out. They were merely the instruments by which God’s hand would remove this darkness.
Heather Lockheart was an instrument herself, though not the weapon that her companions had been. She had joined Ephraim on his nightly visits to the chapel, their late nights spent in prayer or teaching and learning of the Word. The past nine years, she had been inseparable from Ephraim and Tre, the three of them sharing the cramped apartment they called home. She had learned from the more radical members of the church, friends of Father Uphrin, that she was blessed with an ability of her own, a power to bestow gifts upon the paladins of the old warrior order. She learned to weave this magic into marks upon their flesh, granting them the supernatural strength and speed, a stamina that none of them might ever have imagined. Along the way in her teachings, she had learned to mask the marks in ink, her artistic hand weaving magic into each stroke of a needle into their skin. She was a true artist, in body, mind, and spirit. The power that she wove into them was intricate, the spells delicate but powerful. The clergy were most impressed with her skill, and with the young men she touched with her power. She was a true prodigy, an asset to the Church.
They were all dead, now. Ephraim was alone.
Father Uphrin had fallen first. Whether he was recognized as the strongest of their little band, or the head of the viper, Ephraim couldn’t be sure now. The attack had been quick and brutal. They crossed a long track of wilderness, following a narrow highway into town. They had set through a set of twin hills, tall trees about them shielding the world from view. It was a small vale, beautiful as it was frozen. The bend was wide, the road ahead of them and behind them hidden in a veil of white snow as they trekked through the darkness. They didn’t even hear the crunch of snow as the unholy monster descended upon them with a speed they would never have believed.
Claws sharp as razors glinted in the moonlight, brighter than the crystalline snow that crusted the earth beneath them. Red flashed through the night, splashing hot and bright against that pure white mound of the hill. The powerful frame of the elderly Father crumpled to the earth, his skull lost in the snow. Blood rushed from the exposed stump of his neck as the creature wheeled on them again. His second attack was not so successful.
Aware of the assault, Ephraim and Tre had formed a protective wall of steel between the monster and Heather, the gifted sorceress. Seeing the beast in the crisp white light of the moon, they could see the evil in its eyes. It appeared more monster than man, a corpse living beyond its time through some unholy means. Its very existence could not be tolerated in the eyes of the Holy Father. As the beast lunged at them again, blood spraying from its mouth, thick as spittle as he screamed his hatred, twin blades flashed in the moonlight. The steel made barely a whisper as they contacted the hard, cold flesh of the creature. It passed between the large, muscle-bound figures to charge at the sorceress.
The contact between their bodies was a bone-jarring crunch, sending the short, stocky blonde to her back. The vampire, however, split into three parts. His legs fell back, kicked by a flailing boot of the sorceress as she fell. His torso landed on her chest, knocking the wind from her as his head sailed through the air and rolled through the snow to vanish. Dark, black blood stained the very air, its taint clinging to existence in an inky cloud. It seemed to evaporate from the pools around the corpse’s pieces, thin trails of black smoke rising from what looked like slicks of oil. Ephraim leaned down, one hand on the creature’s severed torso to haul it off the woman. Upon his touch, the flesh melted into shadow, vanishing into darkness.
Shocked, he had jumped back, blade lifted and prepared for another attack. He held out the palm of his hand, keeping Heather down in the snow, low and out of the way as his eyes moved through the darkness. Tre was standing by the Father’s corpse, sifting through the snow to search for his severed head. When nothing came, he let out a long, low breath, appearing as a thin stream of white as he reached out his hand for the blonde on her back in the snow.
Together, they had buried Father Uphrin.
The roadside grave that they had made for the Father would have sapped the energy from lesser people, but thanks to Heather’s tremendous gifts, their stamina seemed nearly inexhaustible. They had marked the place with a cross of wood, taken from the surrounding trees, hanging the man’s Capello Romano from the cross’s crown. It had only seemed appropriate that they had stood over the grave and said some words. That luxury wouldn’t be afforded to the rest of them; they already knew. They knew that they were going to die here in this evil place. They just didn’t realize how soon it would really come.
“Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
Onward, he stalked into the gaping maw of darkness. He had seen the vile creature dash into the alley, the splashes of blood that clung to the bricks gave away the monster that had left them behind in a trail of crimson. The monster, inhabiting the shell of a woman, had darted into the darkness in hopes of escaping him. He had been on the hunt for her for two unbroken days. Two days filled with blood, horror, and a deep sense of emptiness that only brought his hatred, his loathing to a boil.
He could hear the scrape of its useless leg now as it dragged the shattered, twisted limb behind it. A woman’s shoe was left behind in the alley, red before the blood had coated it, it seemed to bleed the dye from its manufacturing. Kicking the shoe aside, the broad, powerful frame of his shoulders hunched in the darkness as he advanced, his pace steady and sure. The abomination was nearly finished. It had only barely fled his last attack, his ******** sword lancing its heart. The scream that had left those bloody lips was horrific; music to his very soul. This was personal.
This was vengeance.
Tre had been next. The new knowledge of their enemy had made them wary, prepared each moment for an attack as they drew closer to the city. “Do either of you notice it getting darker?” Heather’s voice had cut through a silence that felt like it could suffocate them beneath its burden. The city was in sight, then, the lights a faint glow against the hilltops, like a halo ringing their crests. An image of false innocence, a lure; a trap. He turned to answer when the shadows shifted, just from the corner of his eye.
In a blink, his blade was in his hand, Tre already rushing into the darkness. A single wide, powerful arc of his heavy broadsword brought a screech from the shadows, blood clinging to the air as the creature backpedaled, forcing itself into the wilderness. His blade trailing thin tails of the smoky blood, Tre moved to charge into the darkness of the trees when the wail of terror rose in such a terrific shriek that it seemed to pierce their skulls, sending Heather to her knees as Ephraim plunged his blade into the snow to maintain his balance. Tre was holding his ears, blood running from beneath his left palm as he grit his teeth against the pain in his skull.
The snow at his feet had swallowed his blade, blood splattering the pure white earth as it dripped from his beard. He worked his jaw against the ringing in his head as he knelt to retrieve his weapon.
“I think… maybe we should go back home. Maybe we should leave…” Heather moved to tug on Ephraim’s sleeve. “We could go back… get married, like we talked about… we just need to go home…” The darkness filled with another shriek of pain, coming from behind them, now, the sounds of a titanic struggle filling the forest, the crack of splintering wood echoing all around them and growing closer. He frowned, and took her wrist. “We need to move.”
Onward was the only way. Back was certain death. He could feel it. He pulled her through the snow, nearly dragging her as she pumped her legs to keep up. Tre had collected his sword and was running with them as the sound grew more intense, the horrified, piercing sounds of pain mingled with the nightmarish growl of some creature far more fearsome than the beast that had retreated into the wood. They were going to be overrun.
The snow crunched as Tre planted a boot in the snow and stopped, wheeling around and lifting his weapon to the ready. “You two go ahead. I’ll hold them off.” He shook his head and bulled over Ephraim as he opened his mouth to protest. “Just go! You don’t have time to argue. I’ll catch up.” With that, he turned into the darkness, the howl of the struggle reaching a crescendo as he charged into the night. That was the last that Ephraim saw of his friend; his brother.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.”
He came upon the creature curled into the darkness, making itself as small and docile as possible. It was frightened, and it should be. This monster, this… beast… it had taken the last of his hope. It had put an edge of darkness on the righteous purpose that he had come to spread through this city. It had tainted his reason. The tip of his blade whistled through the air as he raised his weapon, laying it against the hollow of the creature’s throat. Once, it had been human. It had been beautiful. He had loved this monster.
In the city, Ephraim and Heather had taken refuge in a condemned building, living on the scraps the local Church could spare. The city was crawling not only with the wicked creatures of darkness, the demons of the damned, but with people; fodder for the beasts. They milled about their lives, most of them, clueless to the agents of Satan scurrying through their city like roaches, worming their way into the very foundation of their refuge and rotting the souls of every one of them from the inside out, until each of them was an empty, hollow husk of a living thing.
These people, these poor and unfortunates, he couldn’t take from them. He took only the bare leavings, the dregs of the Church’s stores, refusing the hospitality of the chapter and staying only a short distance down the block in the run down hotel. The dilapidated building served his purposes nicely, allowing him to come and go as he needed, without questioning or an escort or watchers of any kind. Heather had taken the bed in the room they were keeping, the large, wide bed coated with dust the day they had first taken refuge in the ancient shell of a building. He slept on the floor, a bedroll laid out across the hard, bare planks. It was plenty for him, to be honest. He had lived through much worse conditions.
She offered, multiple times, to share the bed with him. Multiple times, he refused. As close as the two of them were, his vows were sacred to him. Only when he had taken a wife, would he lie with another woman. The Church had changed him, cleansed his soul in a holy and righteous fire. He never wanted to let that go.
Days had passed, and they had heard nothing from Tre. His phone had been silent, no texts or calls from the man left behind. Maybe he had lost his phone, or it was broken in the fight. Maybe he had survived, crawling out of the fray to make his way to a hospital somewhere in town. Maybe…
Deep down, he knew that the man was dead. He knew that he would never see Tre again, and a mixture of emotions churned in his chest at the thought, a storm so violent and fierce that some times it felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had taken to easing the pain by hunting, taking out each and every creature of the darkness that he could find. Blood bathed the streets, ashes floating in the wind of Harper Rock, thick as the snow that never seemed to stop falling. He should have known about the weather, this far North it was never very warm, and in the dead of winter, the chill was a murderous thing.
The evening two nights prior, Heather had joined him on patrol. Sometimes, she would come along with him, on nights that he would be tracking some of the lesser, more predictable and easier targets. They had stopped by a restaurant, still open in the early hours of the morning to share a burger. The meal had been more than fine; real food was a rarity for them these days, the cash flowing into their wallets only coming from the leavings of the monsters they had slain. The night before, he had managed a real find, a fledgling vampire with a roll of nearly two thousand dollars in his coat. It was finally a material good to come from their newfound life, a way to provide themselves with real sustenance.
When they left, the snow had picked up again, harder than it had been that afternoon. The cold was a biting chill, wind slicing through their coats like a blade. Her teeth chattered as she looked up at him and smiled, a spark in those shimmering blue eyes as water edged its way down her cheeks, tearing up against the cold. He returned her smile, and hooked his arm into hers. “I know where this one hunts. It shouldn’t be difficult to catch it unawares. You just have to stay close, and be ready for anything. If something happens to me, you run.”
Blue eyes rolled in her skull as she just punched his shoulder and walked alongside him, her head resting against his bicep, her frame too short to reach his shoulder with her cheek. Beneath them, the snow crunched against their steps, the scraped sidewalks already crusted over again with the night’s fresh fall.
Deeper, they trudged into the dilapidation and decay of the forgotten corners of the city. Where bright, shining towers of wealth and power loomed from the city’s core, the skirts of the tight knot of civilization were all but ruins in places. Here, they found most of their prey, darting among the darkness of the burned out shells of buildings, or collapsed homes, or broken factories. Here, the creatures made their nests, the vile, feral beasts more akin to animal than man. So horrific were these monsters that even their own kind hunted them down, often falling into the traps of the paladin. It was a rare and beautiful thing to find one of these more organized creatures, to remove their taint from this place as well.
As they walked in silence, listening to the broken world around them, the street lamps that lined the street began to flicker, winking out in places while simply dimming in others. The wide, white street was dimmed to a blue-white glow, a single point at the far end of the industrial sector. They pushed on, only pausing briefly to feign their surprise. Heather trembled at his side, though whether it was from fear or anticipation, he couldn’t discern.
The darkness around them seemed to take on a life of its own, the black air pulsing, breathing, crawling. It reached out and brushed against their skin with icy cold fingers, paper soft and gentle in a sinister sort of warning. A tremble shot down Heather’s spine, this time he knew, from pure terror. He could feel the weight of the darkness pressing down on them, and knew that the demon was near. It seemed to materialize from the darkness, the shadows gathering around it as it swung a black blade of shadow, catching Heather across the neck as she wrenched away from the blow.
A choking sound left her as she fell into the snow, her hot, red blood spraying across the icy white earth. The beast descended upon her as Ephraim lashed out with his blade, taking the creature’s arm. A howl of pain filled the air as the monster dashed to the side, nearly toppling without its balance, weight thrown off by the missing limb. Dark, red blood splashed across Heather’s face as she clutched at her throat, fighting to keep the blood from seeping from her throat, and failing. A red gush spread around her fallen frame as Ephraim rushed over her thrashing figure to advance on the demon. Another scream filled the air as his blade caught its leg, sending blood and meat splashing across the snow before it vanished into ash.
A heavy limp slowed the monster nearly to a crawl as it tried its best to evade his slashes and thrusts, growing slower, weaker, less sure with each powerful blow. Red lips spat blood into the snow at his feet as the monster’s cold, dead breasts heaved with useless breaths. Teeth clenched as it hissed with pain, blood and spittle spraying through the clenched, pearly white maw. “May the Lord make your judgement swift, monster, and have mercy upon your black soul as he casts you into the lake of fire.” He lifted his blade as the thing pursed its lips and spat at him again, catching him on the cheek.
“**** you, faggot.” She hissed through her pain. Even with all the bravado, she screamed as his heavy ******** sword came crashing down into her skull. She flinched back, head smacking against the brick as the steel bit into the bone with a sick crunch. Blood splashed through the air, her brain left open to the air as he yanked the weapon free of her broken head, her face nearly cleaved in two. The body quivered, legs kicking once before the pale figure fell still. He lifted a boot to kick the corpse into the snow, and it vanished into a pile of ash. The blood sloughed from his blade like a fine layer of dust as he flicked it clean of the ashy remains, sliding it into the scabbard at his back.
Quickly, he turned to where Heather lay in the snow, her legs still kicking weakly in her pain as she glanced up at him in the dark. “Help me…” Her plea was barely a whisper, her voice as thin as paper as hands white as the snow beyond the pool of her blood clutched at her throat. The blood had slowed now, her entire body shivering violently.
It was too much. He clenched his fists and slammed a punch into the ice. He felt the skin break against the sharp edges of the frozen crust before slamming into the snow, the freezing cold enveloping his fist as she clung to life with what strength she had left. He pulled the broken fist from the snow, the skin already stopping the bleeding as it began to heal. He leaned down, careful not to move her with such a mortal wound, and brushed sticky golden curls from her face, blood caking his fingers as he moved the strands aside. “I am so sorry, Heather… I failed you.” She trembled against his palm as the blood between her fingers all but stopped. “I love you.”
Finally, she smiled, before a long sigh left her blue lips in a thin stream of steam. Her body trembled once, and fell still, the light in those shimmering blue eyes vanishing in an instant. He knew that she had wanted to hear that. It was a comfort in her final moments, he had seen it in her eyes. He lifted a hand, gently pushing her eyes shut as he grit his teeth. He lifted a hand to his long, golden hair and twisted fingers into the strands, pulling with terrible might.
She was the last of them, and she was gone.
They were all gone, and he was alone, left to the task set before them.
He had taken a breath, prepared to scream in his frustration when the corpse at his knees shifted, just a fraction of an inch. His gaze dropped in time to see her lunge at him, her hands reaching out to grasp at his coat as her teeth went for his throat. His fist punched the center of her chest, sinking between her breasts until he felt her sternum crack, shoving her away and into the snow.
He had run, then.
What else could he do? He couldn’t kill her. She was just a nightmare, a vision burrowing into his skull, a maggot eating through his brain, spreading a corruption, a sickening madness through his mind, driving him ever onward toward the brink of insanity. It was a vision of his loss, a fabrication of a broken mind.
It wasn’t until a week later, when he had finally pushed himself back into the streets that he had come to accept what he had seen.
She was one of them.
Heather was a vampire.
He had known it in his heart the moment she had stirred. He had known that she had come back, not as the angel of light, the tool of righteousness that she had once been, but a twisted monster, taken by the night. He had just denied it, choosing instead to keep hope in his heart, than to abandon her.
It was when he had found her, teeth buried into the flesh of a man’s neck as the final vestiges of life fled him that he couldn’t set it aside any longer. He knew her the minute he saw her, blood splashed across her ivory face, her lips stained red. She was cleaner than before, freshly washed, her hair brushed meticulously, her dress far above her former station. All of it stolen, all of this some kind of ruse, some sort of distraction. It was Heather, but it wasn’t. That was the night that he had begun his hunt, the night he had resolved to slaughter Heather Lockheart, the night that she had truly become the monster he had prayed she would never have become.
Now, with the sharp tip of his blade pressed into her throat, she looked as fragile as she had the night they had come into the city, begging him to leave. She was a frightened girl again, not the monster that he had been stalking for days. She was a lost, scared woman in a world of darkness and sin. She needed a savior, a deliverer. He twisted his blade, a bead of blood running down her throat as she swallowed. “Please… Ephraim, please…”
Her voice was the same… her eyes… they were the same. How was he going to do this? How was he supposed to kill her, when she was the same?
His steely resolve disintegrated in the face of her mortal peril. He dropped his blade, the weapon landing in the snow with a single crunch as it broke the crust of snow and sank into the white fluff, the twisted form of what had used to be his girlfriend scrambled to her knees, pulling herself through the snow and through a small opening in the chain link fence that divided the alley into two halves. She brought herself to her feet, her useless leg twisted beneath her as she put her weight on the bare foot of her good leg. She turned to look at him, the two of them staring through the fence for a long moment, before she turned to run, limping into the darkness, until he could no longer see her as she stumbled through the black.
What was he supposed to do? Who had he become, if he wasn’t the righteous hand of God, sent to this city of sin to exact his judgement upon the wicked? Where was he supposed to go, now that he couldn’t find the heart to slay even the heartless beast that had taken Heather’s flesh as its own? He was no holy warrior. He was no true instrument of the Lord.
Who is Ephraim Steele now?