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10. The New World

The door opened a crack, revealing half of Joe Marney's face inside. After a quick glance to see that it was Creighton, he opened the door quickly, then turned again nervously, as if on guard for something. Seeing him in such spirits, Creighton was relieved. There was still the risk of killing Joe with that shot earlier, but Joe had always been lucky. He reached to the side and lifted the paralyzed Hawksbane outside in without a blood trail, then closed the door. "Lieutenant, have you ever seen one of these damn things?" Joe asked with his back to Clayton, who held his gun up warily at the writhing stump on the floor. The monstrous, grotesque hand on the tip of the severed wing was trying to crawl across the ground. Creighton lifted the unconscious hawksbane and surveyed it, disappointed to find that the being might not have been as active as the severed limb: "I think I've seen it before." Joe hadn't seen the proprium in Clayton's hand, but the gradually thickening stench was still palpable to him. "Hell, why is it getting stinkier?" "It's probably because of it." Creighton threw the hawkmistress to the ground, the severed limb touched it but didn't recognize home at all, just continued to mechanically grip and grab more feathers from its body. This ferocity made Creighton frown. He was reminded of the scene when cremating the recently dead, where the beings that had been judged to be corpses would twitch in the flames. Next to him, Joe sat on his ass as he realized that Creighton had brought the creature in with him. He had been a soldier too, but he had never even seen a normal enemy at the time he joined the army, let alone a monster like this. Such a display of panic made Creighton a little impatient. Like this, seeing him in his werewolf form might ....... Maybe it would be acceptable? Keeping the human part in a monster was more disgusting than being all monster. That's a serious sense of blasphemy. Looking at just the head, the hawkish demoness's face was perfectly still that of a beautiful young girl, but the putrid-smelling bird's body underneath and the monstrous organs preserved in the minutiae took away that beauty. Clayton probably wouldn't have been able to take it if he had been a wolf-bodied, human-headed sort of werewolf himself. Thinking about it, he relented a little, "Joe, haven't you been a guard at a POW camp before, try to see if you can get anything out of it." "It?" Joe incredulously compared the eagle demon's body with the muzzle of his gun, "You can ask that too?" "It at least has a human head. Take it and then we'll change places." Clayton was skeptical about the security of the place, and while no one had noticed him shooting, the runaway wagon driver might come back to check it out with the sheriffs who patrolled the area at night: Joe glanced at his gun, and the broken window behind him, then back at the bullet holes in the wall. This was a rented house. "Okay." Quickly, they moved the Hawksbane to a neighboring isolated abandoned building. In the dark and dusty space, the sound of waves surging outside was clearly audible, but inexplicably gave a deep sense of silence, and breathing became wet and heavy. This was the dock area on the edge of Sasha City. But because of the landslides on both sides of the canal blocking the waterway, slightly larger ships would have trouble passing through, and over time the docks and some of the surrounding warehouses and factories have been abandoned, and only vagabonds with nowhere else to go and some criminals would choose to hide here. Clayton went to the door to guard against outsiders approaching, leaving Joe Mani to do his business inside the warehouse.Joe held the candlestick in one hand and revolvered at the bound monster, recalling his previous experience. "Tell me your name." That didn't seem to help as the hawk with the woman's head looked at him. Joe thought for a moment and switched to Tauntonese and asked again. "Tell me your name." The eagle demoness' eyes suddenly widened and two lines of tears ran down its face. Joe's expression froze, the vivid emotion on that face making him temporarily ignore the other inhuman parts: He whipped his head around and yelled, "Lieutenant, something not quite right here?" Clayton Bello turned in through the door carrying a heavy rifle, "What do you mean." "It seems human." Clayton leaned against the door with his rifle cradled in his arms, his fingers strumming the barrel like a harp, he was somehow annoyed at the sight of the tears and sickening torso on the young face of the Hawkmoth. He was a werewolf, but a human being, and what was this guy? Not even a human body. "Haven't you ever read the Poems of Liathius? They're used to deceiving people." "But it's crying." There was panic in Joe's voice. "Like a human is better, it means it knows fear. You ask it where its owner is." Joe Mani turned back and relayed Creighton's question in Tauntonese. The gargoyle opened its mouth but made no sound, even forcing an expression that could be characterized as a smile as tears streamed down its face. Before Joe could speak this time, Creighton raised his gun to it, determined to get this over with quickly: "Talk, or die." Because of his experience in the army during the Roland War, he had also learned Tauntonese, just not as well as Joe. The banshee's tears welled up again, dripping down her chin. It grew its mouth, its face, which belonged to a young woman, twisted up in an effort to tilt its head forward. "Hell no!" Clayton snapped, lowering his gun. Having been too far away to see its face a moment ago, and therefore not feeling the shot, Clayton couldn't find that moment now, and an unexplained emotion prevented him from lowering the gun. Taking a few seconds to calm down, he crouched down next to it and pressed down on both of the Hawkmoth's cheeks to force it to speak: "You better say something or ........" He stopped, his fingers retracting as if he had received an electric shock. In the open mouth of the woman's head, there was only a little tangled mass of flesh where the tongue should have been, and a few teeth were missing. She could no longer speak. "You're human?" Clayton ruffled the feathers at the base of that neck, where there was a purple-black mark that had begun to puss out badly around the edges of the "The Hawkmaster nodded, then looked to the gun in Joe Mani's hand, his eyes eager. Clayton stood up and turned around, and Joe took a step back at the look in his eyes. "You kill her." Joe thought he hadn't heard, "What?" Without further explanation, Clayton took the gun directly from his hand and shot backward without looking back. The woman's head threw back and hit the vacant rusty iron frame behind her, but the sound of that was insignificant compared to the gunshot. "Come on, we're wasting our breath." Clayton tightened his collar and dropped the revolver, then lifted his own rifle from the ground and slung it over his shoulder and headed out the door. Joe looked at him and didn't follow. The night outside the abandoned warehouse was quiet, with only a little moonlight shining down. GramsLayton's tawny eyes were glowing. He walked back the way he had come alone, not sure how long he had been walking, but there were more and more dwellings on the road. "Good evening, do you need help?" At the end of the street, a man stopped ahead. He wore a long black trench coat and a flat round hat, and was holding an excited looking dog in his hand and a cane in the other. A badge on his chest identified him as a sheriff. Clayton lifted his left hand and put it under his nose to sniff. The smell was decidedly heavy. "No, I just finished fishing and was heading home." In order to prevent the reflection of the barrel from revealing his position, Clayton's Conqueror rifle was covered with a thick black cloth cover, and he wasn't worried about the other man seeing what it was. "Night fishing, you are really good at it." That sheriff nodded, "But it's not safe even for St. Mellon Parish this late in the day, and there seems to have been a shooting just up ahead, so it's really not safe. I'd better accompany you for a while." Any further refusal would look suspicious. "Thanks then." Clayton said, smelling the sheriff's scent that belonged to the wagon driver he'd hired, and it was logical for the other man to track him down based on the scent. He stepped forward and the dog the man was holding came up to sniff at his shoes, but didn't bark. Dogs and wolves were one animal, and Clayton could handle them. The sheriff let out a soft chuckle: "You're welcome, it's only right that we Darklings help each other." Creighton's eyes tightened. He had just done something that had upset him, so he was now more irritable than usual. "Darklings? Is that some new word?" "Not a new word, but a theological one." The sheriff walked leisurely with his dog on a lead, seemingly unconcerned about Creighton sneaking up from the side. "You don't know anything about that do you?" "Was unaware." Creighton guessed at the other man's connection to the Grail. He grabbed the strap of his firearm with one hand, ready to fight at a moment's notice. "No need to be nervous, my name is Galeed, I've been the sheriff of this city since four years ago, usually upholding the laws of the realm, but also helping darker descendants like you to stay hidden." Galeed inclined his head and shot Creighton an afterimage for a second or two before twisting back around. "Especially these days, there are a lot more newborns like you who don't know anything about anything, and they give me a lot of trouble." Clayton's heart felt like it had taken a hammer blow: It was amazing that such an important institution as the sheriff had a non-human presence mixed in, and it had been there a long time ago! If what this man said was true, what kind of a city was he living in? He glanced back, thankful that Joe hadn't followed. "This is unbelievable to me, can you prove yourself?" Hearing his question, Galliard didn't respond directly. "We're not familiar with each other yet, so it's a secret. But if you're interested, you can come see me at the General Security Department tomorrow. I can answer some of your questions." Galeed's steps came to an abrupt halt; ahead of them was the location of 214 Mercy Street. Joe Mani's window was dropping a lot of glass slivers outward. "It's in our nature to unleash our powers, but don't let them go too far." Galliard looked at Clayton seriously, "The elders of this city don't want another break in the peace, and chaos will put us out of business." "It's not the Old Age anymore."