我的狼人代码。

9 Sniper

The Watcher's means were truly in the sky. Clayton played with the putrid feather for a moment, guessing it was the means of a sorcerer. Those mysterious beings were rumored to be able to conjure up dead creatures and then borrow their eyes to observe the outside world. For this, he took great comfort in the fact that there was really nothing much he could do if the Grail Council was truly shut down because the last Watcher had been taken out by him. While the new Watchers were a little more advanced than Clayton had thought, it made his investigation easier. If the watcher was human, then it was inevitable that it would pick up a barge of scents from dealing with other people on a regular basis. But if it was a bird that barely landed on the ground, its scent would instead be more specialized, reflecting that of its owner. Having only one feather in his hand right now wasn't enough for Clayton to pick up enough scent, he needed a whole one. Stripping off his clothing and hiding it in a patch of brush behind a tree, Creighton moved his arms and legs, then unleashed his transformation. His muzzle elongated into the shape of a wolf, black fur surged from his pores like waves, his muscles swelled and spewed heat, and the ankles of his feet grew rapidly. The full-bodied werewolf was no smaller than a horse. Clayton's hand clawed up and took the Conqueror rifle in his mouth, his white fangs holding the barrel in place. Then he braced himself on all fours and ran like a true beast. The tawny eyes glowing in the darkness cut through the street like lightning. There would be no one but a handful of sheriff's deputies on the streets at night, and Clayton could do his best to unleash himself. To be on the safe side, his route was two blocks away from the wagon, and he looked for out-of-the-way paths where the sheriffs wouldn't come in and out to check on him, so he wouldn't be spotted by the watcher. The gusty wind grazed both of Creighton's cheeks, and the silky ebony fur and two pointed ears fell back. The scenery on either side of him was almost continuous in his field of vision. The werewolf wasn't a wolf, and Creighton's speed rivaled even the military horses he used to ride, and his stamina was even better. He was certain to reach St. Mellon Parish faster than the wagon he had hired. Just by arriving early at the observation point of the General Sheriff's Office's guarded bell tower, he would be able to figure out just what was following him. .................. ding ding ding ...... Joe Mani bent down and picked up the dropped spare bullets and stuffed them back into his pocket. Then he sat back on the bed, his back against the wall, and gazed through the window at the world outside the humble house. The room he was in was all that was left of the dwelling; the place was small and shabby, with water seeping through the ceiling, but it was the best place he could find at the moment. His face was still doing his daytime disguises, and since each one required the consumption of wax and glue and upwards of an hour of preparation time, he'd let them go for the night. The downside was also obvious. He scratched his face, intending to get some mint cream for prickly heat as soon as Big Brother Clayton had settled the Grail Council. The revolver flopped around in his hand as he absently flicked the magazine out and then flung it back in. Joe wasn't really much of a gun man. But the thought of Clayton's reminder yesterday somehow scared him a little, and he carried the revolver with him even when he bathed and slept. "Watch the sky." He got the creeps. The Grail Council trainedBirds to keep track sounded feasible, and was the only explanation he had come up with on his own, but how was it practically possible? He'd come back by train. How could guys with brains not quite as big as one of his fingers, not to mention speed and stamina to keep up with the train, and even if they did, how could they find themselves in the sky out of all those heads? It was too implausible. Joe Mani winced and pressed the magazine back for the last time. He decided to go to bed. If he fell asleep, he wouldn't have to think about anything. Draping on a blanket and pressing the pistol under his pillow, he lay facing the wall. Then counted down silently to the pocket watch he had removed. The alarm bells of St. Mellon's parish rang every quarter of an hour, the sound accentuated in the stillness of the night. He hadn't moved here long enough to get used to the system, so he pinched the hour every day and had to be assured that he would not fall asleep until the bell had rung. This was especially true if the time was close to the full hour, otherwise the sound of the bells in the middle of a dream would banish all sleep. This had been going on for four days. The hands on the pocket watch gradually leaned towards nine o'clock, and as they reached the proper position, the familiar sound of a loud bell chimed outside the window. Dang - dang - dang - ......... Bang! The window on the side of Joe Mani's head suddenly exploded, splattering crumbs of broken glass all over the place, and a strange thing flew in, possessing the softness and activity to wriggle twice while emitting a strong stench. Someone was shooting up the place! He sat up sharply to bring his revolver to bear, aiming it warily at the window. Then crouched and went over against the corner. The light of the moon shone into the room from above his head, and Joe made out the object that had fallen in between the light and the corner of the wall. It was an ochre-colored wing. Exuding a putrid odor, the tip of the wing had deformed, shrunken, tiny human hands gripping it nervously. Joe Mani lost the strength in his legs and he sat paralyzed on the floor, shivering as he raised the muzzle of his gun and aimed it at the mass of flesh. "This is ..... WHAT THE HELL!!!" ..................... Three minutes ago. Clayton crouched on the clock tower, and instead of returning to his human form, he rested his powerful werewolf arm on a long rifle with a metal barrel covered by a black cloth, aiming calmly at the end of the street. The darkness hid his form. He watched as his rented wagon appeared, then slowly dragged to a stop on Mercy Street, and And above it a shadow hovered noiselessly. Not the size of an owl or a kestrel or anything like that he'd expected, the thing was literally the size of a man. Rather, it was about the size of a man. While its entire body was that of an eagle, its head belonged to an adult female with long hair. Because it was flying at about the same altitude as the top floor of the Vigilant Clock Tower, the parallel convection winds quickly blew the putrid odor into Clayton's nose. It was the Hawkwoman. It didn't take much knowledge of the mystical world for him to recognize it. For there had been excerpts from the country's mythological epics in the grammar school textbooks of yesteryear, and the eagle-bodied banshee had a separate illustration as the villain of that chapter of the text. They were born of the gods, but are immortal because of a curse, and are skilled in sorcery and love lies ...... InAs King Liatius traveled by ship to the Isle of the Giants, the sailors were bewitched by a harpy and maneuvered the ship off course, lost in the endless sea. It wasn't until Liathius came to his senses and shot them with his copper-headed bow and arrow that the sailors were relieved of their deluded state. All in all, this was a monster that had deceived ancient kings! Compared to that, monsters of the level of werewolves all seemed quite approachable. "Daughters of the ever-rotting gods ......" Clayton gritted his teeth and pushed himself up on all fours, prancing across the roof a few times to move into a more shootable position, re-pointing the mechanical sights on his Conqueror rifle at the flying shadow and waiting for the bell to ring. Even if it was a Hawkmaster, it wasn't like it could harden itself against bullets. He'd read the well-known biologist's work, Naturalism, and any community of creatures capable of flight had discarded a great deal of mass over generations of evolution, with hollow and easily broken bones being the price they paid for flight. Creatures capable of flight are more fragile than land creatures of the same mass! And even if the Hawkmoth had some special ability, it wasn't enough to affect him a hundred meters away. The carriage stopped in front of the house at 214 Mercy Street. The coachman sat on the driver's seat and called out twice, receiving no response from the passengers. Instead of continuing to hover above, the eagle banshee stopped on the eaves of the house a little to the side and gathered its wings to stiffen and stay still. It looked like a stone dripping beast in the poor light of the night, and echoed the real dripping beast on the house on the other side, all unbeknownst to those on the ground. The coachman jumped down from his seat and went around the back to see about his guests, but only found Clayton's spare clothes. When - when - ........ The coachman seemed to misinterpret something and threw those clothes out of the wagon as soon as he could, then panicked and returned to the driver's seat, pulling up the reins and driving the horses along at a rapid pace. There was clearly no Clayton Bello inside. The eagle-bodied banshee finally noticed the difference, and with a flicker of doubt on its human face, it swooped downward with its wings fluttering, ready to chase after the wagon itself and observe its interior. And all this movement was like a miniature dancer dancing on the stage of a rifle-lit door, and was clearly seen by Creighton. But the moment the three bells rang, Clayton pulled the trigger. The sound of the gunshot was muffled under the bells, and the high-speed projectile rushed out of the barrel under the correction of the rifling and went straight through the wing of the eagle-bodied banshee that was a hundred meters away, breaking a tip right off. The bullet didn't stop after passing through the flesh, a window behind the hawk-bodied demoness exploded, and after being unbalanced from the damage it received, its body couldn't collect the force to hit the back end of the carriage with a muffled sound. The driver of the wagon felt the jolt and jerked his head up and down on the reins, disappearing across the street in a matter of seconds. Clayton leapt down with his rifle in his mouth, raising a cloud of dust as he landed on all fours. The hawkmaster seemed to have lost consciousness after that earlier impact and lay straight in the street. Clayton looked at its human head and felt the possibility of an exchange. The black wolf fur retracted as he resumed his human form and put on the spare clothes next to him, then fighting through the stench of the stench cradling the rifle in one hand and lifting it in the other he walked toward the door of the house at 214 Mercy Street and gently snapped the toe of his shoe on the door. "Joe, it's me." The house light came on.