Do Or Die

Chapter 6

Xin felt the bullet land squarely in his right shoulder from behind, nicking his collar bone on entry. He howled and nearly turned into a werewolf at that moment. His teeth gnashed as the wound bled. He felt the hairs on his neck nearly give way to the sharp bristles of his supernatural self. Luckily, he reined in the werewolf transformation. Not yet, Xin thought, deliberately calming his beating heart. Then he stilled. His nose twitched at a familiar smell – vampire.

Xin stood at his full height, his face a mask. If he was having fun before, now he was deadly serious. "Vampires, here?" Xin snickered. He turned, spiraling out of the darkest fringe of the clearing and slashing a gunman across the back diagonally from left to right. He was dead. His body did not regenerate. He was human. But there was a vampire...somewhere.

"Hmph." Xin placed his hand in his pocket, casually walking into the jungle canopy that shrouded his presence. As he did so, three men with firearms walked into the clearing Xin had been using as his vantage point since he had arrived on the site.

Xin watched the men closely circling the clearing. He studied their expressions. The dead bodies they had encountered so far on their way to base headquarters must surely have them spooked. If he weren't so astutely trying to accomplish a stealthy approach, he would surely have enjoyed having a fit of brazen laughter at their expense. 

The men were anxious and their movements were jerky. Beads of sweat leaked from beneath their black berets down the side of their faces, disappearing into the damp open collars of their black fatigues.  Their eyes frantically searched the dense darkness of the tropical jungle around them.

Xin stood up.  The clearing was not much to bolster his position: everyone was about six or seven feet from each other. He withdrew his twelve-inch hunting knife and held it by the blade, lifting his throwing arm. As the man farthest from him turned around, Xin flung the blade with such force into the man's chest that the gunman was thrown back to land hard against a tree trunk. His rifle released a few shots, drawing the attention of the two men closest to him.

Xin used the diversion to come upon the remaining men from behind. He pierced the shorter of the men through his jugular with his blade.

No, Xin thought to himself quietly.  

He drew his sword upward, slicing through the rest of the man's neck before the blade entered the other man's head, slicing it at such an angle that the head was severed diagonally, leaving one eye intact. The third man was dead before the body of the second man collapsed to the floor.

"No," Xin thought again. "Not a vampire." But there was no mistaking that dank, familiar smell of rotting corpse. "Hmph." Xin swung his sword to allow the guts and blood that had collected there to slide off. He deduced that the vampire must have been on the island a long time, having to deal with the Caribbean heat, in order to allow its body to pass along its scent so strongly to a human.

The gunman stuck to the tree was still firing at him. Xin grabbed the body of the third man whose head-top was lopped off and proceeded to use it as a shield as he advanced towards the gunman.  

The man's aim was irregular; the bullets from the rifle tore into the "shield's" lower abdomen and legs. Xin covered the few steps to the enemy right away. He drew the corpse he held with his left hand up against the arm that held the rifle and the handle of the knife in his chest. The burdensome weight preventing the gunman from reciprocating, his rifle fired shots at the earth.

Xin then pressed down on the corpse, placing pressure on the handle; he looked down into the eyes of the gunman until they rolled back into his head.

Xin stilled.

Another one?

Smiling, he swiftly swung the sword upward, overhead. The tip of the blade landed dead center into the head of an armed gunman who had been hiding so as to catch him unawares.

So, the others exposed themselves to draw me out, did they?

He slowly eased his index finger onto the trigger that rested at the collar of the katana. Xin pulled the trigger, and a bullet escaped the spacer of the katana and blasted the head of the gunman clean off.

The unique magazine hidden in the hilt of his katana couldn't retain many bullets, so he made sure the ones there were capable of maximum effect. He normally resorted to such tactics when dealing with vampires. Firepower that exploded on impact made all the difference...against a human it was a total waste.

Hmph , all human...

Xin heard the rest of the men heading in his direction. He turned right and darted towards the building. A bullet entered his midsection from behind and he released a fierce howl before he leapt a yard into the air.

In mid-air he felt the proportions of his human form contort grotesquely into an abnormal shape. The drastic change was so sudden and crippling a regular human unfamiliar with the pain would have lost their mind to the agony. But for him it was a clean and welcome occasion that he could acutely manipulate. His whole body convulsed as he transformed. Thick, dark-grey, bristling hairs grew out instantaneously along the stretch of his back. Brown fibers mirrored the effect on the other parts of his body. Human ears gave way to long, thin ears that burst out on either side of his head. His human face transformed into the massive embodiment of an overgrown jackal.

With the transformation into a were behind him, he landed onto the side of the building. The strong claws of his  large, newly-formed jackal paws grappled the stone face, chipping away at its white brick finish.

Xin, now a fully formed were-jackal, scanned the crowed of overzealous pursuants firing at him. He still wore the dark suit, which had been especially tailored to suit his needs for transformation. A young pup would have been left bereft without such attire in a sudden- transformation situation such as this.

Xin turned his blade downward, his thumb rest handily on the butt cap. With one sure press of the hidden button at the base of his katana-gun handle, he detonated the grenade that was hidden inside the hunting knife that he had planted in the gunman moments earlier. The gang of gunmen was decimated by the explosion that ripped through the tropical jungle. Burnt body parts flew into the air over the ball of fire that surged and threatened to go further than the three mile radius it had impacted.

Xin sheathed his unique sword and dutifully began the arduous task of climbing up the side of the building with all fours, bullet wounds in his back.