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killer shrike
Sun Feb 19, 2006 at 08:38:53 pm EST
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The Adventures of Alcheman #27
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The Adventures of Alcheman #27


“Underworld: Disassembled”







Michael Wooster hurriedly bundled himself into his costume-concealing trench coat and followed his house’s most recent visitor out to his driveway. It was late evening, but even in the night he recognized the insignia on their projected mode of transport.

“Ahm, Miss O’ Mercy, that would appear to be a police motorcycle,” he observed.

“Yes,” the brunette in the taut leather cat suit concurred. She straddled the vehicle with an imperious confidence, “Get on.”

“Right. Well, before I, uh: How did you manage to obtain the use of a police motorcycle?”

If Astarte still breathed she would do so in exasperation, “I borrowed it. Now get on.”

Again Michael demurred, “Miss O’ Mercy… Grace, I must admit I have concerns with your recent, ah, deportment. Primary among those concerns is your conviction that you are in fact a vampire.”

She glared at him briefly and closed her eyes. When they opened they were no longer dark brown but an almost metallic blue. And now when she talked her incisors were much more pronounced.

“We are wasting time. If you wish to save your friend we must hunt down the King of the Werewolves and tear out his living heart so your friend may consume it and acquire his healing powers. Now are you coming or not?”

Michael had heard the Night Nurse’s prescription for curing Varmint of his blood poisoning earlier. With Grace’s transformation it had become even more surreal. Still, even with all the other problems he was facing, he couldn’t abandon her to her mad quest. He wordlessly and hesitantly slid onto the bike behind her.

“Hold on,” Lady Astarte grunted as she gunned the engine and tore out onto the street.

*****


For a rogue superhero hunted by every major law enforcement agency in the country Alcheman seemed overly concerned about obeying traffic regulations.

“The motorcycle’s headlight is out,” he observed as the pair zoomed down the ill-lit backstreets of Hell’s Bathroom.

“Light obscures my vision,” Astarte replied.

“Ah. And, um, should we be wearing helmets?”

The Mistress of the Night didn’t even deign that question worth a reply.

Michael recognized a storefront they careened past, “We’ve been here before. Are we, traveling in circles?”

“Yes. When looking for werewolves, one must seek them out in their habitat. Their hunting grounds. That bar back there, is one of their hostelries.”

Alcheman looked over his shoulder to the corner dive, “Why aren’t we stopping then?”

The woman gritted her teeth as they made an especially tight corner, “I can go only where I’m invited.”

“Because you’re a vampire,” Michael checked. He had come to terms with such a revelation, given Grace’s earlier transformation and the fact they had been in close quarters for the past hour and he had not heard or felt anything resembling a heartbeat coming from her trim figure, “So what is the plan? Should I go in?”

“No,” another hard turn, “You don’t seek out predators in their den. You draw them out and make them fight on your terms.”

Lady Astarte turned the bike again and brought them back to the street where their enemies lazed, ignorant to the carnage that was about to befall them. She opened the bike’s throttle and jumped onto the sidewalk, driving by the bar with breakneck speed. As she rode past she stuck out her shapely leg and kicked over a row of parked motorcycles.

Then she stopped.

The doors to the bar were flung open and a scrum of shabbily dressed men stormed out. They looked at their fallen bikes, then at the woman responsible. One by one the thugs let loose with an inhuman howl, until it became an ear-splitting chorus that raised the hackles on Michael’s neck.

“Werewolves,” he had to agree.

“Yes,” his companion said before noisily driving the bike away, “and the hunt is on.”

*****


“Where are we going?!” Michael asked as he clung onto the back of the bike. Occasionally he looked to see how much ground their pursuers had gained on them.

Lady Astarte explained, “We must bring the pack to where they can’t use their superior numbers to their advantage.”

“I see. And you have a place in mind?”

“The catacombs under the Hammer Street Cemetery.”

“While I’m sure such a setting has the appropriate atmosphere, is it really wise to run somewhere underground, where we could be cornered?”

The Vampire Princess’s determination seemed to quaver a moment before recovering, “Look, I’ve been dealing death to lycanthropes for… for… hundreds of years. I know what I’m doing. We’re leading these beasts like lambs to the slaughter.”

“Yes, well, about that,” Alcheman confessed, “I’m afraid I won’t be helping you slaughter anyone. Or, ahm, letting you slaughter anyone.”

The bike screeched to a halt.

“What?” she demanded.

Michael was bewildered by their standstill, “Grace?! What are you doing?!”

She turned and glowered at her passenger with angry, feral eyes, “If you are trying to keep my from my quest, my sacred duty-“

The rest of the vampire’s threat was drowned out by the baying of the coming wolves.

*****


The big man in the do-rag and the sunglasses stepped off his bike, “What the %*&! was all this $#@! For?! Huh? What’s your game, you putrid little bloodsucker?!”

“Ain’t no ambush, Grey,” one of the other cyclists announced, “Nobody’s sniffed another vamp since we started this hunt.”

Greymayne Longfang didn’t need to hear what he already knew. He snarled at his companion for silence before turning back to Grace and Michael.

“Got tired of living forever, izzatit?! Or are you showing off for your meatsack boyfriend there?”

Before Lady Astarte could answer the challenge Alcheman spoke up, “I’m not her boyfriend. I’m her friend. One who should have been more vigorous in questioning her change in behavior,” he stood and shrugged off his trench coat.

“Yo, Monkey Boy’s in a costume.”

“A superhero. Vamp’s riding with a superhero.”

Longfang wasn’t impressed, “He’s a superhero: so what? He’ll bleed like any other human.”

“No, I won’t,” Michael pressed the chemical symbol Ag on his bicep, transforming himself to pure silver. Then her pounced on the nearest clutch of bikers and started swinging.

*****


The werewolves did their best to fight off Alcheman; they dropped their human forms for ones more lupine in appearance, becoming a horde of snapping, snarling creatures of nightmare.

All of which meant nothing to a man who was composed of the beasts’ greatest bane.

Alcheman tossed one of the werewolves through a plate glass window, “This is not all that I can do. Magnesium and phosphorus mix to make napalm. You are vulnerable to fire, correct? Like any other human?”

He grabbed Greymayne Longfang by the throat and raised him so that both sets of his paws dangled helplessly off the ground, “This night has yielded many revelations, and yet things are still unclear. As I have more pressing matters to attend to than determining whose side you’re on I’m allowing you the option of withdrawal. Bark once if you understand.”

Greymayne Longfang gave out a single strangled yelp.

“Good,” Michael set him down, “You and the rest of your brethren can go. Leave your bikes here.”

Alcheman, arms folded, watched the pack skulk off.

“You fool! You let them go!”

Grace was standing behind him, holding a pair of automatic pistols in her dramatically outstretched hands.

“It didn’t make much sense to capture them, as for the moment I have no way to contain them, or any way of knowing if they are in fact criminals. We antagonized them into chasing us, after all.”

“Of course they’re criminals,” she spat, “They’re monsters! They must be stopped! Killed! Every last one!”

Michael shook his head, “Superheroes don’t kill, Grace.”

“Stop calling me Grace! I am Lady Astarte, of Clan Phantomhawk. I have made an oath, by my progenitor’s blood to destroy the Werewolves!” she raised her pistols smoothly and took aim at Michael’s chest.

“Well, I knew you as someone else: as Grace O’ Mercy, the night shift nurse at Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. And I believe you swore an oath to aid the sick and afflicted,” Alcheman pressed the tattoos that ringed his arm and adopted a form that was distinctively more organic, “Do you remember that?”

The young-looking woman faltered as the young man in the sleeveless tunic walked towards her, “I- I’m not sure.”

Michael silently prayed his gambit would pay off, “Let me help you then,” and with nearly trembling fingers her pulled away his tunic and exposed his bare neck. He gouged roughly at his skin, drawing blood.

Lady Astarte/Grace O’ Mercy felt a fierce clash of instincts within her dark psyche. She lowered her guns and murmured, “I’m not sure… what I’m supposed to do.”

Alcheman made the decision for her. He cradled the back of her head and slowly drew her closer. The woman’s lips brushed against his wound, and Grace experienced the rich coppery tang of his blood. It was just a trace of his essence, a mere dose that was not enough for the famished, near delirious vampire.

She gripped at the tall man’s shoulders with the urgency of a drowning victim. Michael gasped when he felt her teeth pierce his skin. When she began to feed it was as if there had been an explosion in the back of his brain, a sensation that made his knees buckle and him nearly forget his plan. He weakly reached for his tattoos….

*****


“Ginseng? You assumed the properties of ginseng?” Grace O’ Mercy asked the man sitting on the rooftop next to her.

Clutching a rag to the side of his neck Michael Wooster nodded, “In hopes the chemical’s memory-enhancing attributes would allow you to remember your true identity.”

The pair were perched above the alleyway where there encounter with the lycanthropic biker gang had concluded. A deliberately tardy police force had finally made its presence known, gathering up the abandoned motorcycles and nervously looking over their shoulders. The gendarmes failed to notice the two young people over them watching their efforts, their legs dangling over the building’s side.

Grace shook her head, “You know, there is no medical data supporting the theory that ginseng helps a person’s memory.”

“And I imagine there is a surfeit of medical data supporting the conclusion there is no such thing as vampires.”

“Heh. Good point,” the Night Nurse glanced at Michael’s throat, “The bleeding hasn’t stopped yet.”

“No,” there was a hint of anxiety in the man’s voice, “Perhaps I need stitches. Could you-“

“Let’s try this,” Grace leaned over and took away the rag that Michael used to stanch the wound, “A vamp- my saliva acts as a natural coagulant. If that’s OK?”

“Uh, of course,” Michael braced himself as the pretty young woman again her brought her mouth to his neck. After several flutters of her tongue his bleeding stopped.

“Better?” she asked after pulling away.

“Ah,” he whimpered, subtly moving his hands so that they now covered his lap, “yes. Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you. However you did it, you snapped me out of my Goth girl biker bitch persona before I could do any real damage.”

“I was glad to help. Do you have any idea what caused your transformation?”

Grace shook her head, “It was some outside force, trying to manipulate me. I think it was trying to get me to hurt you.”

“Really?” the news surprised him.

“Yes,” she looked at Michael with her normal, yet just as compelling, eyes, “Something like this has happened before. With someone else.”

“Oh.”

“That’s not to say I’m some kind of slut or anything, trying to do in any hero that comes along,” she snorted, “Not that you’d know it by how I’m dressed.”

“Of course. That is, its obvious you’re not a, uh, wanton woman,” Alcheman clarified his perceptions.

“It’s just, I’m a bad person to be around.”

“That’s not true,” Michael objected with surprising vigor, “You’ve helped hundreds of people at your job. You certainly helped me on more than one occasion. I don’t know much about the, ah, vampire lifestyle, other than what I’ve seen in popular entertainment, but it would seem to me you’ve chosen a career path that doesn’t exactly conform to that particular niche.”

“No, I suppose not. I’ve been able to resist most of those stereotypes: the dark clothing, the excessive make-up, the slavish devotion to Trent Reznor, the predatory libido…”

“Yes. Good things to avoid,” he nodded furiously.

“At least until now. Lord, I’m glad I can’t see my reflection. I can feel the weight of all the eye shadow I’m wearing. And my lipstick: what color is it? Black?”

“No,” Michael squinted, “More of a deep purple.”

“Even worse,” she reflexively sighed, “I should have thrown all this stuff out years ago,” she gesticulated at her attire, “At the time of my… transformation; I thought maybe this might be what to become.”

“But you grew out of it, and that’s all that matters,” the young man hesitated, “We all have our silly little digressions before we decide on our calling.”

“What was yours? Your digression, I mean.”

“Well, when I was younger; much, much younger, I knew I wanted to make a difference. To inform people in a way that would also entertain. So I wanted to be a political satirist.”

“Like Johnathan Swift?”

“Not exactly,” he confessed, “Are you aware of the work of Mark Russell?”

Grace broke into a wide grin, “You’re kidding? The PBS guy? With the piano? Him?

“We were only allowed to watch public television,” he explained futilely, “and I had been taking piano lessons since I was five. So, you can see, it was a natural decision.”

“If you say so.”

“Yes, well,” Alcheman blushed, “at any rate, as I grew older, my attitude changed, and I discovered there were other ways I could help others.”

“By being a superhero.”

“Well, first it was by becoming a civics teacher. The superheroing came later,” he decided Grace didn’t need to hear that particular tale, “I suppose we should be getting back. That is, me to my house and you to your, uh, likewise.”

“I have an apartment. I wasn’t taking you home when I was heading to the Hammer Street Cemetary. Not all vampires live in a coffin in some crypt after all,” she teased.

The pair helped each other to stand.

“You’ll be able to get home safely?”

“Yes. To be honest, there isn’t much that scares me anymore,” she said, though she left out herself when she considered the list.

“Good. Again, thank you for all your help. And if you can still get the hospital to run those tests on Varmint’s blood, it would be greatly appreciated.”

“Of course. And you be careful yourself. There is something out there, something magical, that wants to do you harm.”

Michael assumed the form of water vapor and gave the Night Nurse a self-conscious wave, “I will.”

Grace watched him waft away before disappearing into shadow herself.


Next: Bendist reveals a stunning secret, and is promptly tortured. Chiaki is tortured in an entirely different way, and reveals a not so stunning secret. Alcheman is tortured metaphorically about the decisions he has made as a son and a brother, which are no big secrets. And we meet the Brass Bushi, who should expect to learn some secrets and be tortured as well once one sees who he kidnaps. Out soon.












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