Chapter Eight
Crawling through the sewers on a Friday night is not my first choice at a good night out.
But Grace, being all self-righteous and all that, 'convinced' me to.
She hid my Zeromancer and Metallica CDs and wouldn't tell me where they were until after I did my job and hunted out the ShapeShifter son of a bitch.
'If my jeans are ruined after this, I am SO blaming you and you're buying me a new pair. These were cut specifically in a punk-ish way, and therefore were expensive.' I growled, making sure the tip of my scythe didn't dip in the foul, sluggish water.
'I kinda hope we don't find it.' Grace said behind me, ignoring my comment and shining a torch ahead. 'I won't get this stink out of my fur if I Phase for days.'
'Then the whole thing would be redundant, and I'd have to kill you.' I said.
'Yeah, but-' This massive squishing sound filled the air, and I looked back as Grace pulled her purple DC's out of a puddle of skin and gore.
Grace swallowed hard. 'W-what is this?'
'Got a pen or a stick?' I crouched down.
She picked a stick out of nowhere.
'You sure that's a stick?'
'Yes.' She sulked.
'OK then.' I lifted part of the gunk and inspected it carefully. 'Yep.' Standing, I dropped the fugly strip of dead thing. 'It's skin shed from the Shifter.'
'So where's the mortal it fed from?' Grace asked, watching me.
ShapeShifters, if they wanted to keep up a form for more than four hours, had to keep feeding off the blood of the person who's form they wanted to keep.
'Probably dead.' I continued down the tunnel. There was more blood and gore and other miscellanious things dripping off the walls.
'With a shedding this violent, the Shifter obviously no longer needed its host.' I sighed and shook my head. 'I'm such a freak for knowing all this stuff.'
'Yes.' Grace nodded. 'Yes you are.'
***
We continued down the tunnels, going straight, for what felt like hours.
But according to Grace, who had some weird internal clock, said it was really only half an hour tops.
Eventually the tunnel evened out and open up, and I could stand straight again.
Pipes hung from the walls and stuck in the ground, and a couple people, probably dead, were tied up there. The trail of skin had gotten thinner, because Shifters hated being surrounded by it.
It was like each and every one (even though it was an increasingly rare species) had schizophrenia.
There were building plans, maps of the city and heaps of other stuff hanging from the damp walls, and artificial light shone down from an almost broken, swinging bulb.
It was like looking into a demented child's room.
'This looks-'
Grace cut me off, saying, 'Like your room.'
'What?' I turned to her. 'How does it? My room's cleaner than this!'
'Well, picture it.' She began. 'Swap the maps and plans for posters. Pipes for weaponry and dead people for CDs. Then we've got your room.'
'There's a lot of changes.' I continued looking around the room. 'Look at this.' I pointed to a map with a street circled next to an outline of the nearest, massive bank that had at least eight floors tops.
'You reckon it's going there next?' Grace asked, standing beside me and looking up. I was taller than her.
'Well...' I pointed to the other string of maps that had been circled, then crossed out.
'OK, OK no need to be a smart ass.' She huffed. 'So what do you do?'
'What do II do?' I looked down at her.
'Yeah. I come for, you know, recon and stuff, and you go kill the ugly mothers.' She smiled. 'I don't want to get caught in one of your proper fights and you miss whatever you're hunting, slice me and send me to Hell.'
'That's never happened before.' I waved a hand and held the scythe properly. 'Come on, let's get out of here.'
Walking past the people, I saw the ragged bite marks on their necks, like it had been slashed open.
Shaking my head, I said, 'The less of these bastards that are in the world, the better.'
'Amen.' Grace muttered.
