Boneswulf...Finale

(With apologies for the delay...)

As I left to follow the trail, a quick glance back showed that Ravyn was coming to and Herne was moving around a little bit better than he had been only a few minutes earlier. Something inside told me not to tarry long however, there was a nagging feeling that I had something to finish, and quickly.

I tightened my grip on each drawn Witchbane blade and started to follow the trail of glowing green ichor to where Grendel had decided to retreat.

The path was rather straightforward. the tunnel seemed to be heading straight, with perhaps a slight, almost imperceptible curve to the right, and an ever so slight feeling of descending as well. The thin layer of mud and even the occasional puddle of stale looking water made the trail that much easier to follow, even though there were several sets of tracks, probably his travel over the last few weeks. Apparently this place was his own personal highway through Manhattan.

There were literally dozens of side passages, old rusted doors, and wrenched open grates, both in the ceiling above and in the floor itself. Many of them showed usage of some sort, with tracks leading to and fro, but the trail I was following now was right down the middle of this passageway.

After about a half mile, the passageway took more an angle downwards, causing me to slow down, the mud was slippery, and the slope was steep enough to make the descent more than a little harrowing, especially since it went on this way for quite some time.

As I descended, I felt something almost familiar about the unknown place I was approaching. It took me a couple of minutes to recognize the spiritual residue I had felt when I had visited Ground Zero when i had first come to New York. I was definitely coming close that place again. It felt very similar, but there was a distinct difference in...flavor? There was a building sense of dread that I tried to stamp down until I realized that it was not something that I was personally feeling, but something that was pervasively present. It was emanating from where it was that I was heading.

Up ahead I saw the tunnel begin to level out, but it also made a sharp turn to the right, obscuring whatever was at the end of the tunnel itself. Something, no someone, lay slumped on the floor right at the corner. As I approached, I could make out the prone form of the one armed Grendel.

His form lay completely still. In my various encounters with him, I could not ever recall having seen whether or not it breathed in the way that all living vertebrates do, so I wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t faking his ‘death’ as I approached.

I came to stand just out of easy reach in case he was still ‘alive’ and surveyed my surroundings. The feelings of dread, fear, and...sorrow seemed to flow from the dark doorway at the end of the tunnel, just beyond where Grendel’s prone form lay. He was laying face down, his one arm reached out towards the inky blackness that somehow seemed to be reaching out towards him as well. There was a small puddle of his ichor pooled around his wounded shoulder, but nothing seemed to be flowing anymore.

I moved next to the body, prodded it with one foot. No response.

I crouched down next to him, used the tip of one of the blades to just puncture his skin, again no reaction.

OK, I thought to myself, if it doesn’t rect to being pinked by one of these blades, then his well and truly dead.

I put one blade aside and used that hand to grab his intact shoulder to roll him over. His body was nearly as heavy as mine, so it took quite an effort, but it did roll over part of the way. His face didn’t seem quite as demonic laying there as it had when he was alive. His face was a mask of pain and suffering as he had bled to death short of his goal.

As I was examining his face and features, I noticed a tendril of darkness emerging from the doorway and making its way cautiously towards us.

I jumped back for a moment, grabbed that other blade and assumed a defensive position. The tendril soon assumed the clear shape of an inky black tentacle that seemed to be formed not of flesh and muscle, but of the very darkness itself.

It reached out slowly towards the prone form of Grendel, it brushed up gently against his face, almost stroking his cheek lik a mother would her child...

Uh oh, Mama Grendel does exist. This can’t be good.

A second tendril began to emerge from the darkness that enshrouded the doorway, this one a little thicker than the last one. It also formed into a tentacle and started reaching out towards me tentatively.

I was curious, but not that damn curious. As soon as the tentacle got close enough, I lashed out with one of the Witchbane blades and watched satisfied as the part of the tentacle that I sliced off dissipated into a harmless smoke, while the remainder of the thing jerked back to the safety inside the doorway. The first tentacle also withdrew when I approached Grendel’s body waving the blades.

So there I stood over the dead body of my slain foe, glaring menacingly at an unnaturally black doorway. Somewhere in that darkness, Mama Grendel waited, but for how long?

“Why have you done this to my son?”

I about jumped out of my skin when I heard that question. Startled beyond words for a moment, I looked up from Grendel’s body to see a female form emerge from the doorway, although it was pretty hard to distinguish her features, she was made of the same ephemeral stuff as the tentacles had been, only the barest glints of light reflected off the shiny surface of her skin. She stood just outside of the doorway, her voice had a smoky quality to it, but I couldn’t be sure I actually heard the voice, or if came inside my mind as some sor tof telepathic message.

“I ask you again, Slayer, why have you slain my son? I must know why you have done this.”

“Uh...well you do know that he has been killing people in the City above, don’t you?”

“Grendel was a hunter. He hunted for me. He brought me sustenance. He was a good son!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t let you feed off of innocent people like that. Your son committed serious crimes against the people of this city, for that he had to be brought to justice.”

She spat at me, “Justice! What is this Justice you speak of. Our people have been cast away from your society for time immemorial. We do what we must to survive!”

“Your people? There are more of you?”

She laughed at this, approaching just a little bit more, growing in size perceptibly. “Fool! There are many of us, hidden away in the crooks and crannies of your so-called society. We feed in the Dark of Night! We bring terror and nightmares wherever we go. You take us wherever you go, for we are bound to you as one, yet you reject any knowledge of our presence. We are called by many names, demons by some, Children of Cain by others. We are the Vampires, the Werewolves, the Evil Within!”

As she loomed ever closer, I slashed out with one of the blades, it sliced through her like a hot knife through butter. Her form dissipated like so much smoke.

The voice came back inside my mind, “Fool, your blades will only affect the part of me that I choose to make flesh! We shall see how well you stand against my full might!”

A dozen large black tentacles launched from the doorway and snatched at me. I lashed out with both blades cutting off large pieces that merely dissolved when I hit them, but more kept coming out. Bdefore I knew what was happening, there were more tentacles than I could fight, one grabbed an ankle, another grabbed a wrist. Soon I was immobilized and was being dragged into the doorway, into her den.

I struggled whenver the chance was allowed, slicing at unseen appendages, feeling those disappear, only to be replaced by two more for each one I destroyed. One wrist became so entangled, that I felt the blade wrested from my grasp. It took a moment for the distant clank of it hitting the floor to tell me that I was fairly high up, suspended by the grapsing, pulling tentacles.

“Ah, I sense that you are closer to us now than to the humans whom you serve at the moment. Why do you serve those fools, when your powers could be much more usefully employed with us?”

“Never!” I gasped out loud, even though I felt the possibility of answering mentally.

“I know your Creator, your Father. I have met him many times. Why have you rebelled against Him?”

I responded mentally this time, since my face was covered by a pair of heavy tentacles. “Drake is not my father, or my creator! I am a man, a human being!”

Her voice almost purred as she answered, “Correction, you were a human. But now you are one of Us. We are brethren, you and I. Cease your struggling, and I shall teach you things, powers, that you have only dreamed of acquiring. I can give you the strength to overcome your Father!”

“I’ll never serve you! You and all of your ilk should be destroyed!”

“That is impossible. As long as humans exist, they will fear the dark, they will lust for what they cannot have. Their fears, their greed, their avarice and hatred, their lust are what feeds us. As long as humans are human, they will create that which they fear the most, they create us, we feed on them. It is a cycle that is as natural as the cycle of life and death that you have violated with your very existence.”

“I will never become like you. I am human!”

“Very well. If you wish to be human so badly, then perhaps I shall treat you as such. It seems a shame to destroy this body though. Perhaps I can make use of it after all!”

As she said that, I could feel the tip of one of those tentacles force itself into my mouth, then elongate and force itself into my body. I tried to push back Spiritually, like I had against Papa Locks that time we had faced him in the mine, but to no avail. It was like trying to stop an avalanche with a shovel, the force of her entering my body and taking control was too overwhelming.

I had a sense of falling as I was pushed back within my body, into smaller and smaller spaces within it. More and more of her essence filled my body, I soon ceased my efforts to resist her, and instead forced my way to the one hand that still held something in its grasp.

I could barely feel that the body was now standing on its own as the tentacles had all dissipated as she had filled my body with her essence. A strange feeling of near limitless power surged through the parts of the body that I could still feel, but no longer control I had been forced into the one arm, but I could feel her essence overwhelming me even there. Too much longer and I would be consumed by the power of her evil essence.

Gathering all of my remaining strength, all remaining vestiges of my control over my own body, I reversed the grip on the blade in my hand and began to bring it up to her/my chest.

She was trying to resist, but with all of her power over things magickal, she was new to my body and had not yet learned how to control it very well. I felt her try to fight me internally. A struggle of Wills ensued that I nearly lost, as her overwhelming power began to absorb me within her vastness.

With one final, desperate push, I surendered the fight against her spiritually so that I could plunge the dagger deep into her/my chest.

Pain...exquisite, blinding pain like I had’t felt since that fateful Halloween evening nearly two years ago. Pain...darkness...release...

In the far distance, I hear a small desperate female voice calling out froma million miles away. “Rusty! NOOOOO! Don’t you quit on...me....”