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Chapter 2
The Pain
Adrian managed to stumble back to the boarding house, his mind ablaze with the possibilities. If he did take up Manitou's offer, what would he become? Would it hurt? What had attacked him? He looked at his watch. Ten to ten. After walking a few more paces, he thought; What about Lulu? Another thought guiltily sidled to his attention; You only thought about Lulu until thought number four.
He walked up the pathway to the front door of the boarding house just as Mr. Chung sauntered out of it.
"Hello, Mr. Chung," Adrian stammered, still thinking about Manitou and what he really was.
Mr. Chung smiled and nodded. Adrian knew he didn't speak much English.
"Is everything alright?" Adrian asked, drawing closer to the door.
Smile. Nod.
"See you, then," Adrian said with a grin. He liked Mr. Chung.
Smile. Nod. Then Mr. Chung continued down the pathway. Adrian knew he was going to the All-Night Chung Takeaway in the centre of Little Prospect. He slept during the day and worked all night, running the takeaway.
Adrian closed the door behind him, trying to be as silent as he could. Halfway up the stairs he did his fading trick, passing Nina on the second floor, who was conversing with the mother of the Indian family. After another flight of stairs he arrived at his apartment and opened the door.
Inside, all the exhaustion he had been ignoring while he was thinking about Primals snuck up behind him and forced a counterassault, where he fell asleep standing up. Luckily, he was standing at the foot of his bed, where he fell forward onto the lumpy mattress.
Mr. Chung had opened the steel shutter on the front of his shop, turned the lights on, and shouted to Lee, the chef in the back to get started, when already the first customer had come in. The man had half walked, half staggered in, and Mr. Chung wondered if he was drunk. The man had a crisp black suit on, with a pair of square black sunglasses, even though it was already nearing 10:30 and quite dark outside.
"Do you serve… tea?" the man croaked. He seemed unused to speaking.
"Yes. We have many tea," Mr. Chung managed in fractured English. "Hwhat would you be liking?"
"Just… plain tea, please."
"Okay, sir."
A few seconds later it was ready, a testament to Lee's chefness.
"Be careful, it very hot."
"That's… fine." The man handed over the money; he seemed unused to hands as well. Mr. Chung watched him stumble out of his takeaway, as more customers came in.
"How may I help you?" Mr. Chung said.
Outside, in the alley next to Mr. Chung's takeaway, the man in sunglasses poured the entire cupful of piping hot tea all over his head. He sighed, as if he was in a mildly warm shower.
"Now that's some hot… tea," he said as he walked silently down the alley, into the shadows.
Manitou let the eagle instinct guide his feathery form through the night sky. To all flying birds, the air was a complex, three dimensional shapes that shifted, often without warning. The feel of the wind. The peaks and troughs. He glided inland, growing ever closer to the ancestral homeland, flying over the vast American grasslands. To a casual observer, if there was one, he would have resembled a normal eagle, abet one with insomnia. More learned Primals like him could cloak their true forms from humans, appearing as normal animals.
The updrafts and currents. The shape of the not-sky below. It was important to let the eagle part do its job. Eagles instinctively knew how to fly, humans didn't. Manitou could easily plummet if he snatched control of his winds from the instinct. However, it could be concentrated to just flying. Manitou resisted the urge to massacre a small rodent that his eyes picked out running through the grass far below. You never knew which animals were animals or reincarnated humans. And… flap wings. Again.
Manitou saw what he was searching for. Below, a few more wing-flaps ahead, were a circle of cones. These cones were nine feet tall, slightly transparent, and glowed a dull blue. Only he could see them.
His wings kicked up clouds of dust as he landed, some paces away from the shimmering Native American tepees. Ghosts. These were the ghosts of his tribe, the Diaox. He saw some small children, glowing in the same way as the tents, playing and shouting, though the voices were muffled. They danced and chased each other around a fire, burning bright blue. An elderly woman, also a ghost, approached him.
"Mother." Manitou nodded his beaked head.
"I do wish you wouldn't drop in like this," she chided in a motherly way. "And looking like that, too. I told your grandfather it was a bad idea."
"Is grandfather here?"
"No, but the Ancient is." The Ancient was the name the Diaox had for the massive collective conscious of the ancestral spirit he conversed with through his mirror. He followed his mother's spirit through the gateway of the largest tepee. Inside, he could still see through the semi-transparent walls to the grasslands outside. He sat down in his cross-legged way, in a similar manner when he was talking to Adrian. The tips of his wings passed through the tepee's walls, making them quiver slightly. Opposite him was a cloud of mist that sparked and flickered with images. Next to it was his mother, gazing into Manitou's eyes. The effect was disconcerting to say the least. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul, but this was the soul, so there was nothing for the eyes to be the windows to. They were dark holes, but still seemed friendly and kind.
The mist flickered again and took the form of a squat Native American. He was in full colour, but still transparent. He looked as fragile as a stained-glass window.
"Hello, Manitou," the man whispered. The voice was like thousands of voices speaking at once, but was quiet instead of deafening. The image of the Native American flicked to a tall, skinny Aborigine shaman, before returning to the American. "We see you have found a new one."
Manitou nodded. It was hard to hide things from the Ancient.
"Unfortunately, We see that an incarnation has found him also."
"I took care of Sorrow, though." He could say the incarnation's name, just not in earshot of Adrian.
"Yes, We saw. Your skills in the astral plane are exemplary. But, it is a different incarnation that stalks the boy now." The image blurred to a small, bald Tibetan monk with a long, thin moustache. Then it blurred back.
Manitou jolted forward in shock, his wings unfurling partially. "Which one?" he asked, his beak clicking.
"We do not know. They are clouded from us. We do know, however, that it is there physically, not an astral projection." The image now flickered between a Celtic warrior, in full battle gear, an African witch doctor and finally, and only for a bare sliver of a moment, a tall, handsome Arabian tribesman. Then it was back to normal.
"This is serious," Manitou growled. Sorrow was only dangerous in the astral plane, but any other incarnation was even worse in the flesh to the untrained. This was precisely what Adrian was. And Adrian could unintentionally lead it to other Primals.
"Could you find out which one it is?"
"We will try." The Ancient was fading. Dawn was coming. The ghosts were always there, but their glow was drowned out in the light of the sun. "Hurry. It may have already found him."
Manitou nodded again to his mother's spirit, who bode him farewell, then fixed the Ancient with a stern gaze. The Ancient nodded, and then dissipated, like a sugar-cube dissolving in water. Manitou stood and took off through the ghost of the tepee in one fluid movement. He gained his bearings in the dull morning light and began to fly back to Little Prospect.
Adrian awoke from the dream of the jungle again. There was a voice this time. A deep, female voice with a growl to it. He shook his head to clear it. Whatever the voice had been saying, he couldn't remember it now. Maybe it was the spirit guide Manitou told me about, he thought through the dull fog of early morning memory.
He looked at his hands. No change, he thought. Then he thought; Why should there be? He realised he was still wearing the clothes he had on yesterday. He didn't even remember falling asleep.
He changed clothes into a white long sleeved shirt and baggy combat pants and grabbed the basics he needed for Tuesday. Something informed him about double biology, maths, English and a free hour he had absolutely nothing to do in. He hated maths; numbers made his head hurt, and he nearly fell asleep in the last double biology lesson he had. Adrian could never grasp maths or biology, all those letters and numbers meant nothing to him. But Lulu was in the same biology lesson as well, so the day wasn't all bad.
Out of his apartment, he almost forgot to lock the door, though there was nothing of any worth in there except the TV, and Haverton owned that. He faded just incase he met her, because he didn't fancy meeting up with her this early in the morning. On the landing below he snuck past Manitou, who turned and said, "Good morning, Adrian."
The shock of being seen when he was faded pulled Adrian back into normal sight. For a few moments he faded into the foreground, causing the wall behind him to blur and himself seem ultra sharp. He flicked around to face Manitou.
"How?"
"Eagle eyes." Manitou pointed to his face with a thumb. "You should be careful. The… thing that attacked you can sense when you do that. You may be invisible to other people like that but… you become even clearer to the creature," Manitou warned. "Fortunately, I've put it out of action for a while. Just be careful."
Adrian bade him goodbye as he continued down the stairs. He didn't want to end up in hospital again, but how was he supposed to avoid the daily annoyances of school.
At the junction at the end of the road, he was surprised to see Lulu waiting for him. The day was looking up.
Maths passed without incident, apart from when Mr. Johansen dropped his notes, showing how dull the lesson was. The clock's minute hand crawled across its face at a snails pace, and Adrian counted the seconds until he could see Lulu in double biology.
When he got to double biology, however, the teacher wasn't Mrs. Laurence, their usual teacher, but a tall and incredibly pale man in a black suit and expensive looking Italian loafers.
"Good morning… class," he croaked.
After the class had settled down, Adrian in his usual seat at the back, where he could pick out Lulu's dark blonde head from the crowd.
"Hey, where's Laurence?" one of the students asked in a big voice.
"Mrs. Laurence is… ill. I am Mr…" the substitute teacher paused, as if looking for a name. "Morcedi. I am your… substitute until Mr. Johansen is well again."
"Why are you wearin' sunglasses, sir?" the student asked again.
"I have… sensitive eyes." Mr. Morcedi's sudden pauses were distracting. "Now," he continued, "today we will be learning… about cell division."
Adrian switched off, staring out of the large windows at the small trees outside. There were birds in the branches, and he was reminded of Manitou. The sound of Lulu's voice snapped him back.
"Sir, you're supposed to do the register," she said. There was a collective, almost unnoticeable, sigh from the rest of the class. Any diversion from cell division was a godsend, especially since Mr. Morcedi's gasping pauses caused the sentences to drag along.
Morcedi stared at Lulu through his sunglasses, the board marker grasped in a spindly hand.
"Ah, thank you. I almost… forgot," he croaked. With that, he picked up a red folder on the desk in front of him, opened it, and started to call out names. Adrian switched off again.
The minutes passed as Mr. Morcedi droned on, the pauses irritating Adrian as he watched a fly's futile attempts to bore through the windows. Somebody was calling his name.
"Adrian… Davidson?" Morcedi gasped. He was glancing about the room.
"Oh, uh, here, sir," he mumbled. Mr. Morcedi fixed him with a stony stare for a second, and then continued. Adrian noted the teacher had a certain… hungry look about him when he had stared at his face.
Half an hour passed as they took notes on mitosis. Adrian doodled in the margin of his workbook, the rigid wooden chair and desk making his back ache slightly. For some reason, all his doodles had something to do with animals. When he looked up again, he saw that Lulu had twisted around in her seat to face him. She winked when she caught his eye then turned back round. Adrian's stomach back flipped.
The gasps in Mr. Morcedi's speech became more sudden and more like coughs as the lesson wore on. Adrian wondered if he had a speech impediment as well as sensitive eyes. He felt a small stab of pity in his gut.
As the hour hand approached eleven, Adrian noticed Mr. Morcedi was sweating, the skin on his face clammy, though it wasn't that hot. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. The substitute loosened his necktie and continued writing on the board. His skin looked yellowish, too.
Ten minutes later, he addressed the class. "Students… I have some urgent business to… attend to. Please… turn to page… 87 and complete the… tasks."
He half stumbled out of the room, looking slightly ill. Immediately the room erupted in chatter and the occasional ball of paper.
Mr. Morcedi stumbled down the corridor, his skin turning a reddish colour, tinged with yellow. Had to find something. There was a blackish bulge on his left check. Find it now, to relieve the… feeling.
He staggered through a door into the school's Chem. Store, where they kept the equipment and jars full of liquids used for chemistry. Locating a large jar, filled with clear liquid and a black lid, marked with 'Sulfuric Acid, Danger: Harmful,' he hurriedly took it down off the shelf and unscrewed the lid.
He could feel his lips sealing slightly as he plunged his hand up to the wrist into the jar, where it hissed and gave off a chemical smell. Mr. Morcedi sighed in relief, his distorted features returning to normal.
Replacing the jar back on the shelf, he walked out of the Chem. Store, inspecting his hand. It was its usual palm, spindly self, instead of just stripped bone.
"Humans come up with the best… toys," he mumbled as he returned to the lesson.
Adrian watched as the war waged on over head. A full scale paper ball fight had broken out; he had been hit in the side of his head, to his slight annoyance. He found a blank piece, crumpled it up, and flung it back at the sender.
The sender turned out to be Lulu. She grinned as she returned the ball, hitting him squarely in the face just as Mr. Morcedi walked back in.
"Now, now, settle down," he said, all trace of stutter gone from his voice. The lesson resumed, both sides of the paper war glancing at the other with "Okay, that was a draw, but next time…" faces.
The heat of the room was stifling, and the low drone of Mr. Morcedi made Adrian drowsy. His forehead hit the desk with a low thud as he slowly dropped off.
He was in the jungle again. He though, Ah, not the bloody forest again.
"Hello Adrian. Finally got your attention, it seems," a female voice purred behind him. He spun round to confront a tiger. He immediately wished he hadn't. It was slouched on the leaf-covered ground and looked both smug and relaxed.
"Don't be afraid," the animal purred again. "I suppose Manitou told you about me?"
"Uh… are you my spirit guide?" Adrian squeaked. The tiger didn't seem hostile.
It chuckled. "You catch on pretty quick," it purred again. "As expected." The tiger stood up, stretched in a small cat way, and started to pace around him. "My name's Oro. Manitou's right. You could be good." The tiger sat down on the other side of the clearing and started pawing the ground.
"What are you doing?" Adrian asked. He felt like some small rodent.
"I just… I'll tell you in a bit. When you wake up, you'll feel, I dunno, a sort of thing in your chest. That's your 'switch' you'll use to change, okay?"
"Uh… okay," Adrian's brow creased. "So what are you doing?"
"I just need a good run up." Suddenly, the tiger pounced and charged at Adrian, who couldn't move for fright. Oro hit him in the chest, but instead of being squashed under 350 pounds of tiger, Oro simply disappeared in a small flash of light.
Adrian jerked and sat up in his desk. He was back in the classroom. Nobody had seen him asleep, it seemed.
Adrian tilted his head to see Mr. Morcedi staring at him. It was there for only a second, but a smile slipped across his face like a lizard scurrying over rocks. Then he turned to a girl's raised hand to answer a question.
As the clock neared twelve, lunch time, Adrian felt something heavy land on his shoulder. Looking to see what it was, he only just stopped himself from yelling out.
On his shoulder was a gently glowing golden eagle.
"Don't be alarmed," it said.
"Manitou?" Adrian whispered. The bird nodded.
"This is how I appear in the astral plane. I can appear to you if I want to."
Adrian glanced around. Nobody else looked as if they had seen the bird. "What are you doing here?" he whispered again.
"I found that the things that I told you about have sent another one after us."
Adrian twisted around, panicked. "I'm not going to collapse again am I?"
"No. This one is here in the physical world. Just be careful of anybody who acts oddly."
"Hey, I had the dream with the guide thingy," he whispered.
"Really? This soon? You could have great potential." Then the glowing bird disappeared, like morning fog fading in the sun. Adrian suddenly felt very paranoid.
When the lesson ended, the class filed out of the room, Lulu waiting for Adrian, whose stomach back flipped again. Mr. Morcedi watched him go from behind his dark sunglasses.
"So, how you doing?" Lulu chirped. Adrian blushed.
"Not much," he mumbled. "I've got a free hour after lunch."
"When can you move in with me?"' she asked quietly, a smile playing on her lips.
"Uh," said Adrian, surprised at Lulu's sudden brashness. "Whenever?"
"How 'bout tonight?"
"Uh… sure?"
"Okay! I'll come 'round to yours then! Bye!" she said as she trotted off.
Adrian ambled down a corridor painted in that green schools always seem to be painted in. He had two hours before English, with nothing to do. He was making his way to the quad when a hand clapped onto his shoulder. Damn, damn, damn! If he had seen the person coming, he could have faded, but they had snuck up behind him.
"Adrian?" a voice croaked.
Adrian spun round to see Mr. Morcedi looming over him. He hadn't realised how tall he was in biology.
"Yes, sir?"
"I… almost forgot to tell you. English is… cancelled, Mrs. Jones is ill as… well. I was the only… available substitute teacher."
"So… I can go home?"
"If you… want to," Mr. Morcedi gasped then stalked away. Adrian found Mr. Morcedi gave him the creeps. He accelerated out of the front doors and started to walk back to the boarding house as fast as he could. There wasn't anywhere else he could go.
Adrian turned the corner onto Magnus Avenue when he saw a gang of hoods. There were at least six of them, but they hadn't seen him yet. Adrian didn't want any trouble, so he faded and walked past them, careful not to bump into one of them on the way. If he touched somebody while faded, he snapped back into normal vision, like when Manitou had seen him.
He stayed faded for a while, just in case one of the hoods turned. Adrian was lean and sort of strong, but not the proper sort for fist fights. But he got the feeling he was being watched.
He flicked his head round to see Mr. Morcedi walking in a determined way up the street. Adrian got the feeling that Morcedi was looking right at him, even though he was faded. One of the hoods stopped the teacher by standing in front of him and pulled a small knife out of his pocket. Adrian had to stop to watch. Morcedi simply smiled and lifted his glasses up. Adrian couldn't see what the hoods saw, but whatever it was sent the hoods yelling down the street in terror.
Flicking his glasses back down, he continued to walk towards Adrian, who started to run. Morcedi gave chase. Adrian uncloaked, concentrating on staying faded and running was too hard, and he ran down a back alley onto the seafront.
Turning round, he saw Morcedi framed in the alleys entrance. He was grinning. Adrian sought for a place to run to, and then saw the old warehouse Manitou had told him of Primals inside.
He hurried to the door and slammed it shut behind him. He wished he had his bat now; Morcedi was definitely one of those… things. He stumbled backwards over an old metal pipe. He picked it up, watching the door, the weight of the rusty pipe in his hands reassuring him. Something thudded against the door. Fingernails scraped against the rusted metal, but the fingernails themselves sounded metal.
What is Morcedi? Adrian thought. He was seriously panicking, he wasn't sure if he could face one of the things alone. Where was Manitou? The scraping stopped.
Oro's voice coasted into his mind, as if from far away. The… feeling in his chest tightened.
"Change now… It's your only hope against him…" the voice whispered. But Adrian was as scared at changing as he was of Morcedi outside.
Something clattered across the corrugated-iron roof, and smashed a skylight window. As Adrian turned, ready to swing, he saw a dark shape drop to the floor and dart to a shadowy corner.
"Heh, heh… heh," Morcedi chuckled. It went on for what seemed a long time, and was a hundred times worse than maniacal laughter.
Then it stopped. Adrian faded almost instantly. The sound of Italian loafers scuttling around echoed off the walls, making it hard to pinpoint where Morcedi was heading.
Something was behind him. "I see you," Morcedi gasped as Adrian turned. Morcedi clutched Adrian's throat with a gnarled, clammy hand, and Adrian instantly unfaded.
"Can't hide… from me." Morcedi gasped. His cheek had a strange black protrusion and there was a similar lump on his opposite temple. His lips also seemed to have trouble parting to talk normally. "This may hurt… a bit."
He held up his other hand. The middle finger was grotesquely elongated, and with a greyish colour. Morcedi pointed this hideous finger at one of Adrian's eyeballs. "Who am I… kidding?" he gulped, struggling to get the words out. "It's gonna hurt a lot."
Adrian came to his senses in time to swing the pipe around and smack Morcedi a resounding blow on the side of his head. Morcedi let go of Adrian's neck, a look of surprise on his pasty features, and as he stepped back. Adrian smartly brought his foot up and kicked him in the groin. Morcedi grunted and fell backwards, arms flailing. Adrian dodged a hand with a longer than natural finger and brought the pipe down on Morcedi's skull.
He would have, if it wasn't for one of Morcedi's clawed hands reaching and blocking. Adrian stared in horror at what the hand now was. All of the fingers had shrunk to nothing, but the middle finger had lengthened, hardened and curled round to form a giant butcher's hook. The wrist was hidden behind two blocks of stained wood, nailed together with rusty nails, all fixed onto a red raw stump of an arm. The hook easily pushed Adrian back while ripping the pipe from his grip. Adrian stumbled and barely stayed upright as Morcedi rose, both arms ending in massive, rusty hooks. The black suit Morcedi wore had ripped in places as fish hooks and nails poked through his flesh. The two bulges on his head had turned into a large nail that went straight through Morcedi's skull. Adrian fought back the urge to vomit. The creature's stitched up lips smiled at Adrian's revulsion. It still wore the sunglasses that were once on a figure that Adrian believed was human, giving it a slightly comical look. It also seemed to have grown a few inches as well.
It slowly reached up with a hook and gently teased the glasses off its face, revealing what had caused the hoods to run petrified.
What should have been eyes extended from the creature's face on thick stalks. The tiny mouths on the ends of the stalks chittered endlessly with little needle-like teeth and tasted the air with thread-thin tongues. This time Adrian really did throw up.
"Holy shit," he gasped at the monstrosity in front of him. It threw back its head and laughed, the eye-mouths doing he same. Then it circled its prey on six spindly legs. Adrian had been staring at the upper half so much he had not seen Morcedi's legs change as well. They had each split into three thinner legs, tearing away the flimsy material of the trousers, through the creature didn't have anything to hide. It also had no feet, and the Italian loafers lay discarded on the floor. Five legs ended in a long, bony spike and one with a massive switchblade attached to the leg stump in the same way the hooks were stuck on the arms.
"Ssso, your the new primal, hmm? Thin little streak of meat. Should taste nice, hmm?" it taunted in a croak that had echoes of screams of the tortured in the background. "Hm? Not got the hang of changing yet? I though you were going to be interesting." It sighed. "If it wasn't for Manitou, Sorrow would have finished you off before he could get started. Bird-boy really pisses us off, see?"
"You know Manitou?" Adrian squeaked. He noticed the creature wore a tarnished silver chain with a yellow, triangular gem hanging from it.
"Yesss, I suppose he told you about usss, though not by name I assume. He's stopped us too many times." Adrian had backed up to one of the steel support poles that held up the ceiling at this point. I'm gonna get minced, the little voice at the back of his head told him.
"Minced, hey? I've not tried mincing before. Hmm."
The creature charged slicing through the air with its deadly hooks; Adrian ducked just in time to hear them clang into the pole behind him. He crawled hand and foot away from the thing, its stamping barbs barely missing him. He rolled forward as a hook crashed into the floor behind him. He'd rolled over to the pipe he had dropped before, so he picked it up and swung.
The pipe connected with the thing's chest. Adrian heard a crack of a breaking rib and the thing shrieked and staggered backwards. Adrian then brought the pipe around in a low sweep, catching half of its legs, sending it crashing to the floor. It wasn't down for long, the back legs were like those of a grasshopper, and it leaped up, knocking Adrian over and pinning him to the floor with its hooks. It leaned down and brought its face close to Adrian's. The two tiny mouths chittered in anticipation.
"You're not making this easy." The two mouths extended and clamped themselves over Adrian's temples, the needle teeth digging into his skin. He couldn't move; the legs of the monster had pinned his trousers to the floor. His hands flapped pathetically at the creature as the skin on his temples started to burn.
Suddenly, before Adrian passed out from the pain, the creature jolted upwards, releasing him and spun round, screeching horribly. Adrian saw a small axe sticking out of its back which the creature tried to dislodge with its hooks.
"Damn you, Manitou!"
Adrian breathed a sigh of relief; he could see Manitou's silhouette in one of the skylights. Manitou dived down into the warehouse, dodging a hook, and slammed into the creature's waist, sending it flying across the room.
"Adrian, change!" Manitou yelled, struggling with the creature.
"How?" Adrian shouted back.
"Just do it!" the bird man commanded. "It's obvious!"
Then Manitou screamed as the creature stuck one of its barbed legs straight through one of he wings. Blood turned his downy white feathers red, and the creature laughed at his pain. Adrian suddenly realised that it was obvious how to change. It was like flipping a switch.
Adrian 'flipped the switch,' and time slowed near to a halt. There a sense of calm descended on Adrian as he felt his bones start to stretch and change shape. He felt lots of tiny pin-pricks all over his skin, and seconds after that the dead layer of his skin flaked away as long ginger and black hairs erupted all over him. He looked down in surprise at his changing hands, the backs of them covered in tiger-like fur and black claws growing on the ends of his hands. He could feel his face lengthening in a feline shape and his ears moving up the sides of his head, where they became pointed. The fur then grew all over his face and his own hair lengthened down his back into a mane.
As his teeth sharpened and pointed, the little voice at the back of his mind told him he should be screaming. He told the little voice to be quiet, so he could speed up the transformation to save his friend, who was moving very slowly in the slowed time Adrian occupied. His jeans split up to the knees as his legs grew in mass and became the double jointed types all cats had. As his shoulders widened and his biceps grew in size, his t-shirt ripped and ginger and black striped fur showed through the holes. The fur down his chest was white, however, and felt soft when he gingerly stroked it. Then the base of his spine tickled, and Adrian realised he had a tail. He fiddled with the remnants of his jeans until it hung out, striped in black and orange. He swished it from side to side experimentally.
"Whoa," he gasped. Then normal time resumed and the feeling of calm disappeared. The creature had its hooks around Manitou's neck and was slowly succumbing to asphyxiation. Adrian roared, surprising himself at how ferocious he sounded and leap at the disgusting creature. The thing looked almost shocked as Adrian knocked it off Manitou and they landed in a corner. Adrian felt the tiger's, no, Oro's, fury at the beast drive him forward to slash its face with his claws. Though deep gashes appeared in its chest and face, it didn't do much bleeding and the cuts healed up almost as soon as they were inflicted.
The creature brought its two front legs up under his shoulders and tried to push Adrian off itself, but Adrian's new shape was too heavy. Adrian desperately thought of something to do as Oro controlled his punches. Time for something else, he thought.
Reaching out with a paw, he now saw it was more of a paw than a hand, he grabbed the creature's face and held one of its mouth stalks with another.
"This may hurt a bit," Adrian said, and pulled. The creature screamed horribly as the stalk came loose under Adrian's new strength and struck him in the chest with both hooks, throwing him off. It staggered up, the broken stalk spewing blood and brownish ichor on the floor. Adrian tossed the still twitching, worm-like monster piece away.
"How do you like me now?"' he roared, striking the creature a mean blow to the side of the head. It seemed if he ripped bits off, it couldn't heal those missing bits. So he grabbed an arm.
The creature anticipated what he was about to do, and struck forward with its remaining eye/mouth, biting Adrian on the shoulder. He felt the slithery tongue enter the wound. The stabbing pain drove into the bite and travelled all the way to his head. Adrian roared, this time in pain. It was agony. No, it was… Agony.
Adrian could see what the creature was, the physical manifestation of torture. It was now or never, he had to get this thing off him or he and Manitou would be dead. Gritting his teeth, no, fangs through the pain, he grasped one of the hooks and pulled. The rusted metal squealed against the stained wood. Adrian grunted and yanked at the arm, Agony struggling to get even footing. Till the pain bore into Adrian's mind. With a pop, the arm came off at the elbow, making the creature release the mouth from his shoulder. Agony howled in rage and charged forward, its front pair of legs both stabbing into Adrian's thighs. The remaining hook came down on his shoulder, knocking him to the floor. The mouth came forward to Adrian's face.
He pushed up with a paw, onto its neck, stopping the mouth just short of one of his eyes, and grimaced as both the legs and the hook dug into him.
"YOUR WORLD WILL END!" yelled Agony, the ropes in his lips stretching. Oro yelled in his mind, what to do, get rid of it.
"No," Adrian growled, reaching with his other paw to the yellow gem on the silver chain. When he touched it, the warehouse blurred, it seemed as if another, entirely different world had been pressed into this one. It was break, rocky, and cold. Things, similar to Agony, wandered across the landscape, though Adrian could still see the warehouse, like looking through tinted glass.
Holding onto the gem, he squeezed with all his newfound strength. A hairline fracture appeared, and Agony impaled his foot with another leg, not that Adrian noticed. He put more pressure on the gem, and it shattered in his grasp.
The ghostly landscape flickered, and so did Agony, who went sort of limp for a second. Then the warehouse returned, and Agony screamed in fury. Adrian had broken its connection with this world and… where ever that was. Agony distorted like a carnival mirror, and seemed to twist into that plane, leaving Adrian gasping on the floor. It was gone, and Oro said it would stay gone.
John cowered in his cage. He hated cowering, but he had no choice. Wrath was kicking off at something; this time whatever it was had the incarnation really riled. It stormed about the cavern where the larger animals where kept, making dents in the floor and toasting the walls.
John had been separated from Sarah, who he had been quite attracted to, and now he was friends with the small elephant next to him. They communicated by scribbling in the dust on the floor of their cages. Now both of them cowered.
In the long cave where Sarah was, Insanity was really living up to its name. It was sitting on the floor, arms folded around its knees, rocking back and forth, and gibbering. Sarah watched it with slight amusement. The eyes were rolled back into its skull, and it said constantly; "He's gone, gone, ehehehehee, gone, not allowed, not fair, gone gone gone."
"What the hellsss going on?" Anya hissed, gliding through the thick brown sludge with a look of extreme disgust on her face. Robert was crouched on a table.
"It's Filth. He just melted," he said grimly.
Sorrow twitched and wailed on the floor in the centre of the pentagram. Xanthi watched. He was wondering what he should do. He'd never seen one of the incarnations in real pain. He was also pissed at the fact Sorrow's powers were apparently out of control, and they were causing half of him to cry. He strode out of the cavern to find Ganas, the man in the saffron robes.
Ganas de Velierious, his full name, was in Despair's room. Despair was sitting cross legged in the room, barely moving.
Agony. He is banished. rang through Ganas' head.
"How is this possible?" Ganas mused.
We underestimated the new primal. We will not make the same mistake again.
"You had better not," Ganas growled.
Despair rose to his feet and was in front of Ganas faster than Ganas saw him move. Do not talk to me like that. You are still human, you are not ascended yet. I could take you apart instantly, until you are nothing more than traumatized atoms.
The metal face of Despair withdrew and turned away from Ganas. We are just… grieving for our lost brother. He has gone back to the Realm, and won't return until the Nightmare enters this world.
"Then he shall return."
"Where's Robert?" a voice gibbered.
Why?
"Me an' him are going to Chicago!" Insanity yammered. "Revenge is needed, and I need his genes!"
"What… sort of revenge? Nothing that will cause suspicion?"
"Not suspicion, more like chaos. Don' worry, nobody'll find us."
Let him go have his fun. You'll see what he has in mind soon enough. Despair whispered in the back of Ganas' mind as Insanity bounded away.
Adrian gasped as he returned to his human shape. All the tiger's fur just moulted away as his arms and legs shrunk back to their original proportions. Looking to a puddle on the floor, he saw his face was human again. His clothes, however, were torn and bloodstained. He checked his injuries, and found they were nothing more than scratches.
"How the…"
"Remarkable, isn't it?" Manitou's voice said. "The change seems to heal wounds, I've never really understood why." Manitou appeared, in his human shape.
"Here," he said, tossing Adrian some clothes. "It's always handy to keeps some spares around. I come here when I want to relax, to be my true self."
"Thanks for the help," Adrian said gratefully, pulling on the trackies and white shirt.
"It was you mostly. Agony could have killed us both if you hadn't crushed its lifeline."
"So you can say its name now?" Adrian asked as they left the dingy warehouse. It was still bright outside, but the warehouse somehow dimmed it.
"Oh, yes. It gone back to where it came from. Agony won't be bothering us now."
"You don't sound too certain."
"He'll come back if the Nightmare appears here. But he's like a bothersome fly compared to the Nightmare."
Adrian didn't want to think how bad the Nightmare was, the fight was still going through his mind. How the creature could disguise itself as a human. How many people out there now where just facades?
Adrian still had nothing better to do, so he walked back to the boarding house with Manitou. He looked at what little people where on the streets, mothers pushing babies in pushchairs, business men rushing about in their flash cars, tramps standing in groups around those flaming bin things, all unaware of the terrors just a shadow's thickness away.
"You were very brave, you could do more than you think," Manitou said, breaking the silence.
"Really? So, you saying you could train me or something?"
"Sure. It is what I do, after all."
When they arrived at the boarding house, they found a man unlocking the door on the flat which was where the Indian family lived. As they approached, he turned and held out a hand.
"Hello," he said cheerfully. "I'm Arnold Fister. Looks like I'm your new neighbour."
Arnold Fister was a short, chubby man with curly black hair. He looked the bookish type, which was reinforced by the small box of leather-bound books next to his foot. His slightly bulging eyes looked out from behind a thick pair of glasses.
"Hi," Adrian said, shaking the outstretched hand. "I'm Adrian Davidson, I live upstairs. This is, uh…"
"Manny Borlington," Manitou said, also shaking the hand.
"Well, it's been nice meeting you both, now, if you'll excuse me, I must ring my mother. She's a little, you know." Arnold made circling motions next to his temple with a finger. He smiled, picked up the box and entered his new flat.
Adrian said bye to Manitou and sat on his bed in his grubby apartment, going over his fight with Agony. If that what he was up against, then he was glad Manitou was here. He felt like he needed a wash after meeting Arnold Fister, the man's hand had been unusually clammy.
"Ah, Chicago," said the man gleefully, waving his arms. The other man next to him shifted uncomfortably. Robert did not like being human. Even though his animal was a rat, he held the belief that humans were weak.
"So, why am I here?"
"Hee hee, I need your genes for this. Don't say my real name, heh, call me… uh." The man, tall and with a shock of spiky black hair, seemed to have trouble holding back manic fits of giggles.
"How 'bout…" Robert struck out for a name, and took a swig of the can he was holding. "Jack Daniels?"
"Fine!" 'Jack Daniels' danced a little jig. People walked past, staring at the man they thought was drunk. "Let's go have some fun, rat boy!"
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