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bitten_notshyCold moonlight lay over the stones. There was no sign of the beast.
Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and watched. Garrett let her shoulder brush Sebastien's; he wasn't warm, but he was solid, and that comforted her. She would have expected Doctor Tesla to pace, but he stood as solidly as Jack, occasionally rising on tiptoe to peer through windows too high for her to see through.
"Nothing," Tesla said at last. "Perhaps it is too wise to come where it must perish."
The chip of tooth was back in Garrett's pocket. She handed Mrs. Smith her wand and fished the envelope out again, then shook the contents out. Juggling revolver and tooth, she tugged her gloves off with her teeth, and let Mrs. Smith take them.
Cold wind stung her hands. She felt the skin drying, but the cool rippled texture of the tooth was more important. "How do you suppose he controlled it?"
"Kostov?" Sebastien asked, without turning his head. His wariness kept them all alert, she thought, although Jack -- bony and slight as he was -- was stamping now to keep warm. "He must have had a means, mustn't he? He was there when it killed."
"I'll check his pockets," Jack said, when Doctor Tesla gave a doubtful glance at the house, rubbing his gloved hands together as if he would not care to rummage through another man's clothes.
"No," Garrett said. "Let me try this, first." She dropped to one knee and laid her revolver on the cobbles by her hand. From the carpetbag, she drew a silk envelope. "Doctor Tesla, do you have a bit of copper? Silver? Anything that might conduct?"
As the doctor rummaged in his pockets, Sebastien cleared his throat. She glanced up, and saw him glance at the silver and garnet ring upon her finger. "Oh, of course," she said, and slid it off easily.
She dropped ring and tooth into the envelope and tied the strings. Then she re-arrayed herself in gloves and wand and pistol, closed the carpetbag, stood up, recited a few sharp words in Latin, and tossed the package underhand over the curved chalk line.
Doctor Tesla nodded in understanding, and the others were used to her by now. There was no bang, no flash of light, nothing but the peal of silver on stone.
It rang for a long time, though, and did not die away. Rather, it seemed to be picked up by the steady electrical hum, rising like a church bell somehow struck and unfading.
And as it rose, something bounded to the top of the stones along the Seine.
In the moonlight, the beast was black as a cat, and big as a bear. It moved with powerful lightness, though, paws flexing on the stones, and Garrett could see, quite plainly, its lean body and the dense moon-frosted coat as fluffy as any mink stole. The tail was longer, thicker than a cat's, lashing sinuously. A vertical slash of white dripped down its chest; its eyes trapped and amplified the light from the laboratory, reflecting back a greenish shine. It had a longer face than a panther, and a shorter face than a wolf, and all its teeth were bared.
"It's not dying," Jack said mildly. Doctor Tesla stepped back, although Garrett was not certain if that was in response to Jack's words, or the animal's stare.
And Mrs. Smith raised her derringer and gave it both barrels.
The little gun no more than stung it. The thing turned quickly on paws like a big man's mittened fists, its curved nails scratching the stone. Garrett leveled her pistol too, drawing a meticulous bead on the eye. Six shots, and a gun like this had a laughable range. They should have had rifles. Getting rifles would not have been easy, though, and there had been no time.
She squeezed the trigger, and saw the bullet strike. High. There was no sense of motion, of the bullet acting upon flesh: a red furrow only appeared in the thing's head above the eye, and there was a spray of fur and blood hanging in the air about it. By that long red line, Garrett knew that the bullet had glanced off the skull.
She fired again, and Jack was firing too. He shot fast, with no particular care for accuracy. He could get off two bullets for every one off Garrett's by fanning the hammer this way. Emptying his gun, hoping to slow and distract the creature while she chose her target with more care.
The beast uncoiled into a spring.
It was thirty feet away, across the entire width of the yard. Garrett fired once more while it was in the air, the eye a lost cause, aiming now for the white patch so beautifully visible on its chest and belly and hoping somehow that her bullet would penetrate the muscle and the rib cage, bounce into the gut and tear something vital wide.
She tracked it as it came, one single leap carrying it the entire distance, and realized only as it landed that she had not been the target of its wrath. Jack was on the far side of Mrs. Smith; his sixth shot struck the animal's body as its paws slammed down on his shoulders and he vanished beneath its black-furred shape. For an instant, it did not hurt, so he did not scream, but only huffed as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. His gun skittered out of his hand and across the cobblestones.
Mrs. Smith fell too, scrambling or knocked aside. And then someone else was screaming -- shouting -- Sebastien, so fast now that Garrett did not see him go past until he hurled himself onto the monster's back. His arms locked around its long throat, dragging the head back.
Jack only caught glimpses of Sebastien's battle as his arms and legs flailed with the effort to knock the attack away. It seemed to him that he took three bites to his shoulder and head for every one he stopped.
He heard no gunshot, and realized the women must have held their fire out of fear of hitting him. Stupid, he thought, and then the monster nipped into his throat and there were no thoughts at all.
But then the monster turned, writhed, its white teeth slicked with red as it turned its head over its shoulder on a longer neck than a wolf's or a lion's, rolling in Sebastien's grip and rolling with Sebastien, taking him over, taking him down, off Jack, trying to scrape the wampyr off on the cold cold ground.
And -- as Doctor Tesla bounded past her, something in his hands and his arms uplifted -- showing Abby Irene its belly.
She had four bullets. She put each one, methodically, in a line from the animal's groin to the center of its chest, while Doctor Tesla stood over it, silently and savagely chopping at the beast's head with the edge of a flat coal shovel.
Sebastien shoved the monster's body -- half-headless, from Doctor Tesla's efforts -- off his chest and rolled to his knees. He didn't bother to stand but crawled across the corpse and across the slick stones toward Jack, and Phoebe, who bent over him, her dress shredded all down the side, her hands covered with something that looked black in the moonlight. Ten feet, only, and before Sebastien had covered three of them Abby Irene grabbed at his coat sleeve, trying to tell him something. With her other hand she was tossing her gun aside, fumbling for her wand.
He brushed her aside like a ghost. Phoebe, seeing him coming, ducked away.
No need to tear his wrist with his teeth for the blood; the beast had bitten and clawed him to the bone. His coat hung in tatters, his shirt shredded. He willed more blood into his wounds, felt it swell his dry flesh, saw it drip from the gashes. "Jack. Jack."
Heartbeat, there must be a heartbeat. Jack had still been fighting when Sebastien hauled the animal away.
For an endless moment, it seemed as though there would be nothing -- but then he saw Jack’s chest rise and fall with a rattling breath.
Sebastien had said, and more than once, that he'd never again take the risk of creating another David. But now the moment was here, and Sebastien’s only thought was keeping Jack in the world. Better he live to curse me. His wrist smeared some gore on Jack’s lips before Abby Irene all but shoved him out of the way with her wand.
“Damn you,” she said quietly. Then the sorceress muttered a single Greek word and flicked her wand in the way that froze a body into stasis. Under the enchantment, even the all-but-dead might have an hour or two out of time. It was the most basic of all medical spells -- one all thamaturgists kept loaded into their wands. And it would keep Jack alive until he got to the hospital where more could be done.
Sebastien surprised himself with a keening sound of grief as a wind even colder than the midnight air stroked his neck. When he turned his head, he saw the wolves. A ring three deep, surrounding all five of them. The wolves' bones showed through the ghosty skin, and their eyes reflected the moon, but not the electric light. They lay atop the wall and they sat upon the stones and they paced and circled, walking through each other as often as they walked past. At their center and front was Courtaut, his cropped tail held low, his ears pricked.
If there had been a stone in Sebastien's hand, he would have hurled it. If he breathed, he would have held his breath. But all he could do was stare.
The wolf stared back. And then, when he expected it to leap, or fade, or something -- it turned and vanished over the wall, towards the frozen river, and all its brothers and sisters followed after like a wall of fog rolling down a bank.
In half a minute they were gone, blended and torn and blown away, nothing but mist and memory. In their wake the air felt warm.
Dimly, as if they were still quite far, Sebastien could hear the clop of the horse shoes as the ambulance came. Tesla must have rushed to summon one. There’d be a commotion now, shouts and questions and the chaos that went with saving a life, and Sebastien had never been more grateful for it.
Jack was being loaded into the carriage as Sebastien raised his eyes to Phoebe, her torn dress, the blood smearing her cheek and matting her hair. Jack’s blood, he realized: The beast had bruised her and ruined her clothing, but the corset she wore stopped it from piercing her skin.
"You're hurt, Sebastien," Mrs. Smith said. He dimly felt the pain as Abby Irene's hand tightened on his shoulder, her calf and knee and thigh pressed to his side.
Sebastien slipped his wrist from her grasp and knelt back on his toes, his hands open on his knees. "I'll heal," he said.
And wished it wasn't true.
[OOC: NFB, NFI, edited from New Amsterdam. Part of this. Last post largely stolen from the story! Warning for violence and serious character injury, though I hereby promise Jack isn't dying in my version. More on that to come tomorrow.]
Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and watched. Garrett let her shoulder brush Sebastien's; he wasn't warm, but he was solid, and that comforted her. She would have expected Doctor Tesla to pace, but he stood as solidly as Jack, occasionally rising on tiptoe to peer through windows too high for her to see through.
"Nothing," Tesla said at last. "Perhaps it is too wise to come where it must perish."
The chip of tooth was back in Garrett's pocket. She handed Mrs. Smith her wand and fished the envelope out again, then shook the contents out. Juggling revolver and tooth, she tugged her gloves off with her teeth, and let Mrs. Smith take them.
Cold wind stung her hands. She felt the skin drying, but the cool rippled texture of the tooth was more important. "How do you suppose he controlled it?"
"Kostov?" Sebastien asked, without turning his head. His wariness kept them all alert, she thought, although Jack -- bony and slight as he was -- was stamping now to keep warm. "He must have had a means, mustn't he? He was there when it killed."
"I'll check his pockets," Jack said, when Doctor Tesla gave a doubtful glance at the house, rubbing his gloved hands together as if he would not care to rummage through another man's clothes.
"No," Garrett said. "Let me try this, first." She dropped to one knee and laid her revolver on the cobbles by her hand. From the carpetbag, she drew a silk envelope. "Doctor Tesla, do you have a bit of copper? Silver? Anything that might conduct?"
As the doctor rummaged in his pockets, Sebastien cleared his throat. She glanced up, and saw him glance at the silver and garnet ring upon her finger. "Oh, of course," she said, and slid it off easily.
She dropped ring and tooth into the envelope and tied the strings. Then she re-arrayed herself in gloves and wand and pistol, closed the carpetbag, stood up, recited a few sharp words in Latin, and tossed the package underhand over the curved chalk line.
Doctor Tesla nodded in understanding, and the others were used to her by now. There was no bang, no flash of light, nothing but the peal of silver on stone.
It rang for a long time, though, and did not die away. Rather, it seemed to be picked up by the steady electrical hum, rising like a church bell somehow struck and unfading.
And as it rose, something bounded to the top of the stones along the Seine.
In the moonlight, the beast was black as a cat, and big as a bear. It moved with powerful lightness, though, paws flexing on the stones, and Garrett could see, quite plainly, its lean body and the dense moon-frosted coat as fluffy as any mink stole. The tail was longer, thicker than a cat's, lashing sinuously. A vertical slash of white dripped down its chest; its eyes trapped and amplified the light from the laboratory, reflecting back a greenish shine. It had a longer face than a panther, and a shorter face than a wolf, and all its teeth were bared.
"It's not dying," Jack said mildly. Doctor Tesla stepped back, although Garrett was not certain if that was in response to Jack's words, or the animal's stare.
And Mrs. Smith raised her derringer and gave it both barrels.
The little gun no more than stung it. The thing turned quickly on paws like a big man's mittened fists, its curved nails scratching the stone. Garrett leveled her pistol too, drawing a meticulous bead on the eye. Six shots, and a gun like this had a laughable range. They should have had rifles. Getting rifles would not have been easy, though, and there had been no time.
She squeezed the trigger, and saw the bullet strike. High. There was no sense of motion, of the bullet acting upon flesh: a red furrow only appeared in the thing's head above the eye, and there was a spray of fur and blood hanging in the air about it. By that long red line, Garrett knew that the bullet had glanced off the skull.
She fired again, and Jack was firing too. He shot fast, with no particular care for accuracy. He could get off two bullets for every one off Garrett's by fanning the hammer this way. Emptying his gun, hoping to slow and distract the creature while she chose her target with more care.
The beast uncoiled into a spring.
It was thirty feet away, across the entire width of the yard. Garrett fired once more while it was in the air, the eye a lost cause, aiming now for the white patch so beautifully visible on its chest and belly and hoping somehow that her bullet would penetrate the muscle and the rib cage, bounce into the gut and tear something vital wide.
She tracked it as it came, one single leap carrying it the entire distance, and realized only as it landed that she had not been the target of its wrath. Jack was on the far side of Mrs. Smith; his sixth shot struck the animal's body as its paws slammed down on his shoulders and he vanished beneath its black-furred shape. For an instant, it did not hurt, so he did not scream, but only huffed as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. His gun skittered out of his hand and across the cobblestones.
Mrs. Smith fell too, scrambling or knocked aside. And then someone else was screaming -- shouting -- Sebastien, so fast now that Garrett did not see him go past until he hurled himself onto the monster's back. His arms locked around its long throat, dragging the head back.
Jack only caught glimpses of Sebastien's battle as his arms and legs flailed with the effort to knock the attack away. It seemed to him that he took three bites to his shoulder and head for every one he stopped.
He heard no gunshot, and realized the women must have held their fire out of fear of hitting him. Stupid, he thought, and then the monster nipped into his throat and there were no thoughts at all.
But then the monster turned, writhed, its white teeth slicked with red as it turned its head over its shoulder on a longer neck than a wolf's or a lion's, rolling in Sebastien's grip and rolling with Sebastien, taking him over, taking him down, off Jack, trying to scrape the wampyr off on the cold cold ground.
And -- as Doctor Tesla bounded past her, something in his hands and his arms uplifted -- showing Abby Irene its belly.
She had four bullets. She put each one, methodically, in a line from the animal's groin to the center of its chest, while Doctor Tesla stood over it, silently and savagely chopping at the beast's head with the edge of a flat coal shovel.
Sebastien shoved the monster's body -- half-headless, from Doctor Tesla's efforts -- off his chest and rolled to his knees. He didn't bother to stand but crawled across the corpse and across the slick stones toward Jack, and Phoebe, who bent over him, her dress shredded all down the side, her hands covered with something that looked black in the moonlight. Ten feet, only, and before Sebastien had covered three of them Abby Irene grabbed at his coat sleeve, trying to tell him something. With her other hand she was tossing her gun aside, fumbling for her wand.
He brushed her aside like a ghost. Phoebe, seeing him coming, ducked away.
No need to tear his wrist with his teeth for the blood; the beast had bitten and clawed him to the bone. His coat hung in tatters, his shirt shredded. He willed more blood into his wounds, felt it swell his dry flesh, saw it drip from the gashes. "Jack. Jack."
Heartbeat, there must be a heartbeat. Jack had still been fighting when Sebastien hauled the animal away.
For an endless moment, it seemed as though there would be nothing -- but then he saw Jack’s chest rise and fall with a rattling breath.
Sebastien had said, and more than once, that he'd never again take the risk of creating another David. But now the moment was here, and Sebastien’s only thought was keeping Jack in the world. Better he live to curse me. His wrist smeared some gore on Jack’s lips before Abby Irene all but shoved him out of the way with her wand.
“Damn you,” she said quietly. Then the sorceress muttered a single Greek word and flicked her wand in the way that froze a body into stasis. Under the enchantment, even the all-but-dead might have an hour or two out of time. It was the most basic of all medical spells -- one all thamaturgists kept loaded into their wands. And it would keep Jack alive until he got to the hospital where more could be done.
Sebastien surprised himself with a keening sound of grief as a wind even colder than the midnight air stroked his neck. When he turned his head, he saw the wolves. A ring three deep, surrounding all five of them. The wolves' bones showed through the ghosty skin, and their eyes reflected the moon, but not the electric light. They lay atop the wall and they sat upon the stones and they paced and circled, walking through each other as often as they walked past. At their center and front was Courtaut, his cropped tail held low, his ears pricked.
If there had been a stone in Sebastien's hand, he would have hurled it. If he breathed, he would have held his breath. But all he could do was stare.
The wolf stared back. And then, when he expected it to leap, or fade, or something -- it turned and vanished over the wall, towards the frozen river, and all its brothers and sisters followed after like a wall of fog rolling down a bank.
In half a minute they were gone, blended and torn and blown away, nothing but mist and memory. In their wake the air felt warm.
Dimly, as if they were still quite far, Sebastien could hear the clop of the horse shoes as the ambulance came. Tesla must have rushed to summon one. There’d be a commotion now, shouts and questions and the chaos that went with saving a life, and Sebastien had never been more grateful for it.
Jack was being loaded into the carriage as Sebastien raised his eyes to Phoebe, her torn dress, the blood smearing her cheek and matting her hair. Jack’s blood, he realized: The beast had bruised her and ruined her clothing, but the corset she wore stopped it from piercing her skin.
"You're hurt, Sebastien," Mrs. Smith said. He dimly felt the pain as Abby Irene's hand tightened on his shoulder, her calf and knee and thigh pressed to his side.
Sebastien slipped his wrist from her grasp and knelt back on his toes, his hands open on his knees. "I'll heal," he said.
And wished it wasn't true.
[OOC: NFB, NFI, edited from New Amsterdam. Part of this. Last post largely stolen from the story! Warning for violence and serious character injury, though I hereby promise Jack isn't dying in my version. More on that to come tomorrow.]
