The bookstore, with its rows of plate glass and happy lighting stood less than four blocks from one of the many bad sections of the city. Harold watched the house at 234 East VanFleet from 10:30 until after midnight. Junkies came and went, until the green Christmas lights around the windows turned to red. Red meant stop, anyone dumb enough to try to get into one of Anzu's houses when the lights were red usually ended up dead. Since Harold had started his little game a year ago they had gotten a lot more trigger-happy.
Through the windows he watched members of 'Cuckoo' Anzu's gang pace about nervously. He looked about the surrounding bushes and trees, they didn't try to post anyone in a place away from the house. They had learned from their mistakes. And they didn't have any dogs either, apparently Anzu could cut his rival ganglords to death by inches but he couldn't stomach the sight of a dog with all of its legs broken... he was funny that way.
At 1:30am Harold walked up the porch, from the bottom step he could see a motion-detector (probably ripped off from some warehouse) clumsily mounted by the door.
He took his time.
At 2:00am he had climbed the four steps that led to the porch. At 2:19 some of Anzu's boys drove by on patrol, their music so loud that Harold could hear them from a block away. They looked right at him, right through him as he hid himself in plain sight four feet away from the alarm. By 2:30 he slowly flipped through his key-ring- he had all the keys to Anzu's four houses, or 'cribs' as they called them these days. The door opened with ease and he picked his way through the warm main room where a good number of Anzu's boys were passed out on the couches and floor.
At 3:12 he found two of the guards playing dominos in the kitchen, both armed, both fairly sober. He worked his blood, standing in the doorway unseen until one of the men got up to go to the bathroom. He followed the other as he got a beer from the refrigerator.
For the first time this night something besides dull interest sparked to life in Harold's breast. A burning hatred flowed from his gut and into his arms, swelling the muscles. Excitement and fear were there too, there was risk, he could be caught.
As the homey twisted the cap off his colt .45 Harold Elden's knobby hands reached around and twisted the gangbanger's head all the way around. He grinned a tight smile, listening to the vertebrae and tendons pop and crunch. The last few desperate heartbeats pushed the blood into the kindred's mouth as he gnawed through the dying nigga'z neck.
Awash in a warm feeling of satisfaction he dragged the limp body to the table, dripping blood from the wound down on the bone-yard. Turning, he hoisting the corpse over his back and casually unlocked the door, not even bothering with trying to disarm the back door alarm- let it ring, let them think their little toys might work.
At 3:28 he left the body in the street, and disappeared into the shadows of the squalid neighborhood even as the lights from Anzu's guard's car swung around the corner, rushing to get back to the house.

"Buddy, can you spare a dollar for a Gulf War vet? I really need something to eat, man..."
At 4:28 a.m. Harold assumed an annoyed air and dug into his coat. The bum's hand shook. That was real, the bum's name was Robert 'hundred yard stare' and he was lying about the Gulf War and the food. He was a 'Nam vet, and he wanted to buy booze.
But then Harold was lying too, he looked like a wealthy yuppie, wool overcoat and tie- some late-night business traveler wearily trudging to his hotel. He pulled out a wad of cash, mostly twenties and all from the gangbanger he had throttled in the hours before. The gangbanger who, because Anzu wanted to know his boys would kill for him, had beaten Robert 'hundred yard-stare's only friend in the world to death with a crowbar.
"Check your six," he said, pressing the cash into the shaking hand.

II

Harold spoke to the cardinal on his finger. The bird, its tiny mind captivated by the power of the kindred, watched him with beady-eyed intensity.
"Anzu is, in a queer twist of cosmic humor, 'innocent' of the world around him. He never knew that his rise to power was merely an unpredicted result of the shifting political landscape of the city's undead. Our little boyeee had no way of knowing that it was merely the exile of the five Brujah of the city by Prince Torres that swept away all his real competition."
Harold held the bird up, he liked the contrast between its deep red and the white snow that the pregnant winter sky had dumped on the city. Without any more questions he sent it on its way, watching through its eyes as it looped about Anzu's own house.
Apparently the Nosferatu's activities had caused more damage than he had thought, there must be some kind of break-down in the money flow of the drug world. The Vendez cartel had sent someone to 'help' Anzu with this problem. To track down and kill this vigilante who was haunting them.
The 'Vee Prob' they called it, in their street slang, he liked the sound of it. Maybe he would spray paint it around the neighborhood someday, just to unnerve Cuckkoo Anzu.
The bird circled around the big silver Airstream RV again, but there was nothing to see there, no sign of who it might be, this new hero. At his command the cardinal landed on a windowsill.
Music thumped out so the animal couldn't hear anything of use, and it saw even less. There seemed to be a meeting going on inside, the remaining regulars meeting and sizing up the new boys.
Harold wanted to size them up too. It was a rare time when business and pleasure mixed, there could be a Brujah there, or one of their ghouls, nosing about the off-limits city. He let go of the bird's mind, not needing it any more.
He waited, hiding under the bright light that burned by the driveway gate. A carload full of Anzu's gang members pulled up to the gate and were let in. Harold followed behind, walking on the hard-packed snow of the driveway. Four more hoods got out of the car and with a lot of loud bitching about the situation they made their way up to the door.
Harold felt it again, the combination of excitement and fear. The thrill of getting so close to them all, to Anzu and his most loyal men, the thrill of picking out tonight's victim. The thrill of feeling their nervousness, their worry at the inexplicable situation that faced them.

His blood moved within him and he wore the face and clothes of Jimmy 'Thumper' Rimes- who was very likely already in the house. It would do to get him in.
The four walked into the house, with Harold taking up the rear. The door was caught in a sudden cold blast of air and nearly slammed shut before he could get in. He hooked his talons around it and walked inside with the appropriate amount of swagger.
There was music and cigarette smoke, and the giggling of whores. Anzu was pulling out all the stops for his guests. And what guests they were, where Anzu's niggaz were mostly tall and lanky these strangers were short and broad. They had the half-breed mud-color that people in border towns get. While Anzu's thugz wore their red bandanas tied in the front on their foreheads these wore red handkerchiefs pulled down so far that they had to lean their heads back and peer out from under them at whoever they were talking to. These kids today!
"Wazzzuuup, hombre?" one of them asked, a wide-faced bulldog of a punk in a ratty black leather jacket. The half-breed lifted his hands in a blur of gang-symbols.
"Nigga luva fool, boyee," Harold answered, reaching out to shake hands with the reckless self-confidence that was the meat and drink of their ilk.
The stranger's arms moved in a sudden blur, and Harold found his proffered hand gripped tightly by the wrist. He saw, heard, and felt the gunshot all at once. The bullet crashed through his midsection, mangling his unused insides in its path. In a split second the gun was thrust into his face.
The second shot caught him in the chin, shattering his jaw and blasting out by his ear, ruining it and deafening him on one side.
Harold moved, tearing his hand out of the savage grip of the cartel's hitman. Blood moved and claws sprang from his fingers as the third shot blasted through the meat above his collarbone.
The world collapsed, condensing to fit into the mouth of the handgun. Sounds crashed into Harold's good ear, shouts and screams, anger and injury. People were reaching for guns and knives, Anzu yelling at the top of his lungs. From inside the barrel of the gun he could see his foe's face, burning with the thrill of bloody victory, heedless of the havoc his actions had caused, his mouth stretching back into an impossibly wide smile showing one and all of his teeth.
Fear rushed in on Harold Elden, fear swarmed in and the power of his blood rushed out to meet it, to close his wounds and strengthen his muscles to stand against the horror of war.
He threw himself against the half-breed, somehow catching his gun hand. The pistol roared defiantly, again and again discharging into the room, maybe into Harold himself, he could not tell. The bulldog's free had swung, crashing hard into what was left of Harold's jaw. Lighting struck down the Nosferatu's spine, forking endlessly to stab every undead inch of his being with pain.
Somehow the gun was silenced, but already the voices of its kin were rising, were they shooting each other? Him? Had he dropped the Mask?
His desperate rush turned suddenly to a desperate flight. He spun and rammed into a wounded bystander, knocking him out of his way and then leapt through the window. He hit the glass hard, smashing through it and the aluminum window frame. He ran, ran wild and mindless, away from the pain and fury that raged in the house behind him. Bullets landed around him, maybe even hit him, he couldn't tell anymore. He ran on, away from the specter of Final Death.

Somewhere over the wall and down the street and in the dark and the snow he realized that his ruined jaw worked ceaselessly. He realized that he was chewing and sucking the blood from the raw shoulder of his attacker. The bulldong's entire arm, leather jacket and all, torn form his body in desperate flight.
He kept moving, instinct and reaction pushing him through the streets. Instinct caused him to hide the horrid trophy and reaction caused his hands to pull the gold watch off its wrist and the thick silver ring from its dead finger.
From some part of his mind that could still reason guided his feet to a hotel that rented rooms by the hour and raised the Mask about him again. He dropped the arm in the bathtub and under the cover of a pimp on the prowl he hunted and fed.

Two whore-boys and a john later he felt human, or at least whole, again. The dawn was coming quickly and he fled the hotel, seeking the safety of hideout #14 at a run-down YMCA.
He didn't have any time to play dress-up and give away his new treasures so he simply slipped them into the pockets of those undeserving poor that he felt lenient too. He marked Rufus Jackson (whose best friend Robbie had been beaten to death by one of Anzu's thugz) and the ring he gave to a sad old wreck they all called Mamma Class Eliot. Mamma Cass, while an unfit mother in every sense of the word, had lost her only daughter to one of Anzu's crack-houses.
Behind a permanently locked locker in the basement he worked his way into is crawl space, marked the names out of his book and fell into torpor for the day.

III

"I think that there is a Lupine in the city. I think that the Prince should know."
Harold Elden stood silent, listening to his words echoing in the tunnel of one of the abandoned water rides. Blind Maus, the Nosferatu Primogen shuffled a step forward, nearing the mouth of the old flue. He turned his face to his ancille.
"A Lupine, you say? A moon-beast in the city? Are you sure?"
A long time ago in Portugal Blind Maus had been accused of helping to murder the Prince of Toledo and his eyes had been burned out. Those empty sockets regarded Harold, waiting for an answer.
He felt himself shrink in stature before his elder. The snow around his ankles seemed deeper, up to his knees. But this was no Ventrue to cower before, or Toreador to try to impress, but his own kind.
He continued: "It could see me somehow, it moved so fast... it had to be one of them."
A real mouse climbed up the Primogen's cheek and settled into one of the cavernous sockets. It watched him intently, the proxy eyes of its master.
Blind Maus tapped with his cane and took another hesitant step toward his ancille.
"It is not unheard of for one of the kine, to see through our guises, rare, yes, but not unheard of. Or perhaps it was one of the Brujah, trying to get back into the city."
Harold shook his head, "No, sir, I tasted the blood, in his arm. This was no Kindred, no ghoul."
A screech owl, little bigger than a sparrow, landed on Blind Maus' shoulder, fixing Harold with its unsettling gaze. It unnerved him, predator and prey so close together on the priomogan's body.
"And was," Blind Maus asked, "this blood so strong, so potent that you knew immediately it was a moon-beast?"
"No, sir, it wasn't... but it could have been one of the half-blooded lupines, a scout maybe."
The elder Nosferatu leaned heavily on his stick, then leaned his head back. He crumbled some bread down to the rodent in his skull, looking all the world like some horrid undead Visine commercial. "You sound odd tonight, Harold, your voice gives away what you might hope to hide. You should know the value of honesty among our clan."
Harold shifted uncomfortably, worked his jaw back and forth and felt the soreness of yestereve's injuries flare up again. Snow, light and sharply cold, began to fall over them. It did little to make the abandoned water park look any less uninviting.
"What is the most frightening thing you've ever seen, Primogen?" he blurted.
Blind Maus laughed dryly, "The four kindred who took my eyes rank very high on the list, young one. The burning stakes of the inquisition are in the top three."
Harold nodded, "When I first got to Korea I was scared, it was a war with the godless yellow horde. One day I saw a man step on a landmine. Jerry McGiven- a good corn-fed boy from Iowa. It blew him in half, not just his feet, or his legs, but just seemed to tear him apart from the stomach down."
Harold felt silly, he was talking to a five hundred year old kindred. No doubt Blind Maus had seen beheadings, drawing-and-quartering, and all manners of unpleasantness. But still he continued.
"I wasn't scared anymore after that, I was petrified. I stood there and couldn't move to save my life. I had nightmares about it for weeks. I've never forgotten the smell, the sudden presence of mud and blood and some poor bastard's bowels torn to the four winds."
The Primogen waited, standing still and letting Harold continue.
"I woke up tonight to that smell again," he said, "in my haven, not twenty feet away. He- it- was there, it was in the same building as me, probably even the same room. They got Mamma Class. They cut her open and nailed part of her intestines to one of the support posts..."
The silence of the night descended on them, inside the empty socket the mouse gnawed on its bread. The wind blew slowly through the trees, snow found its way into the primogen's tunnel.
"I think they burned her with... something, made her run around the post, disemboweling herself with each step. Rufus was dead, too. His throat had been cut. I've been frightened like a child all night. It works at my stomach, I can't shake it."
Blind Maus stood very still, "That's a very sad story, Harold. And a very alarming one, but the Prince will care little for your departed friends. He may even think that you are discovered, that you are endangering the Masquerade. He may not offer the hand of the city to help you, he may even turn it against you."
That was, among the myriad other things, something that Harold was afraid of. He stood silent, unsure of what to say, of what to do.
"We are not the only creatures that trade in fear and terror," Blind Maus said at last, "Nor are the Lupines, there are other beings that roam the world.
"There are many others. When I was young, mortal, there were more of the wyld creatures. The faeries in their raths and mounds. Perhaps this is what you have encountered. Tell me, besides the fear that eats at your heart, do you feel anything else?"
Harold considered, "I'm... my stomach hurts."
Inside the socket the mouse sat up, watching him.
"Hurts?" Blind Maus said, "There is hesitation in your voice, Ancille."
Harold laughed bitterly to himself and ran a hand over his hairless head. What was one more confession and embarrassment now?
"I'm hungry, Primogen, ravenous."
"And have you fed tonight?"
Harold shook his head, "No, but it isn't the hunger for the blood. I long for solid food, like a long fast is over with. I'm sorry, Primogen, it is very unseemly. I haven't felt this way since my first nights."
The owl on Blind Maus' shoulder took to wing, off on some errand for its master.
"That," he said at last, "is the mark of the fair folk. Their blood does things to our kind, awakens old feelings, grants visions and nightmares. You have taken in this one's blood, it has laid claim to you."
Abruptly the old Nosferatu turned and shambled back into his tunnel, "Come, old Blind Maus has a cure."
Harold walked into the tunnel, once in the darkness and clutter of the old water ride Blind Maus moved quickly and confidently. The Primogen fished in his pocket, somewhere the beeping of some sort of alarming mechanism sounded softly.
"Never, ever, enter my tunnels without my invitation," Blind Maus warned as he lifted a section of the fiberglass floor up and propped the trapdoor open. Together they went down into the earth, down to where the bones of the ancient water pumps sat and collected dust.
Blind Maus began pawing through the various piles of trash and treasure that crowded the room. At last he turned back to his ancille holding a filthy old Mason jar.
He dipped his long fingers in it and pulled out an ancient iron pin-broach. Oil dripped sloppily from the elder's prize.
"I have to take precautions to keep it from rusting away, as so much of the past has done."
Harold took the pin, it was simply and bluntly made, heavy and cold in his hands. He was unsure of what to do.
"Your stomach," Blind Maus said, "stab yourself with the pin. Where you hunger the most."
Harold was gripped for a few moments by a fear of the pain such a request would bring. He forced the fear away and without ceremony drove the needle of the clasp down into his gut.
He grunted as the spike reached inside of him, the pain burned down into him. Through the sharp injury Harold could feel his stomach once again die and the hunger he felt turned again into the familiar void that he carried among his ribs.
He pulled the needle out of himself and stood while the wound closed.
"It is a small gift, but a functional one," Blind Maus said and a smile spread across his face. "You can take this too," he said, handing him a .357 magnum and two speed-loaders.
"Thank you Primogen." Harold could get guns fairly easily, but one didn't refuse a gift from an elder.
"May these meager tools keep your nights safe, ancille. And beware, the fae have no fear of final death as we do. Like the Lupines they hold that their spirits flow between this world and another. Fearless, and they have a hundred tricks to cling to life. They fear iron like this, as the Lupine's fear silver and we flee the sunlight."
Blind Maus raised a hand in warning, "No doubt this creature has been seeking you even as you seek it. You must be cautious."
The fear that had held so tightly on Harold's will was loosing its grip with each moment. He clipped the brooch onto his ragged old coat and put the gun in the inside pocket.
"It was right on top of me in the day today. It either is very confident or it does not yet have the knowledge it seeks. The balance is in my favor."

IV
There was a term, in the '50s, that Harold had learned in the army. The 'Alamo' was the last and best-fortified place, a place where men on retreat went to do their final bit of fighting. For Anzu and his thugz the Alamo was 3436 N. 123rd street, in an old warehouse building. The place was huge and well-lit inside and out. It was in a part of the city that didn't question odd noises and shadowy dealings.
Harold had searched tonight, from the cribs that Anzu held in the slums to his fancy house. No sign of the gang-leader anywhere.
That left the Alamo.
Harold Elden walked down the street to the building, passing other warehouses. His tread was heavy, weighed down as he was with the tools that he had chosen for tonight's business. He had traded his old long coat for the heavy material of a fireman's coat. Beneath that a kevlar vest salvaged from the city's last round of race riots clung to his torso. He bore the burden through the cold and went unseen between the lights and the darkness that spilled from each one. He checked his watch, 2:48am.
He didn't know as much about the warehouse as he should, just that it had four entrances- two loading docks and two small doors, whatever purpose it had served in Anzu's drug empire he had never really cared to know.
He paused outside of the pool of light that shined down on one of the two smaller doors. 2:54am.
Anzu had his gangstaz guarding the entrance, that much he had picked up off the street-talk. His few remaining henchmen were unhappy about that, about their leader choosing the cartel hoodz to be his bodyguard, and there had been loose lips. Anzu and his men were just mortals, meat-sacks, given time they would break their watch to eat or shit or fuck.
He felt the blood move within him and in a heartbeat he wore the face of the utterly fuckable Christina Chyna Wilyans- Mamma' Class' fine prostitute daughter.
"Yo! Open up dis dah," he slurred in his best wacked-out whore voice.
From beyond the door he heard the sound of voices. finally the door opened a crack and a huge ebon skinned man grunted, "What hell you doin' here, bitch? You get yo ass capped!"
The man's name was Jimmi, his last name escaped the nosferatu. The mortal's breath steamed out as he spoke.
"I skeered out here," Harold said, checking behind the man, one, maybe two more were there. "Anzu called me fo' yo. Let me in, Jimmi, and I suck you first."
Harold's words, pushed from his cold lungs, didn't fog up the air. Other kindred had been captured by more observant hunters for such things. Somewhere on the other side a bolt was pulled back and the door opened. Harold saw the young man behind it and pulled his gun from his pocket. It wasn't the heavy .357, the (gun?) was light and had a silencer. With a smooth, fluid motion he raised it and even as his victim reached into his huge jacket for his own piece, Harold blasted most of his head off.
The blood surged through him and he easily shoved the door inward, knocking the corpse aside. Two other guards raised weapons, and then hesitated when they saw that Harold wore Anzu's face. He began firing as soon as there was an opening. His gun coughed a half dozen times and the two remaining guards fell to the concrete floor beneath the deadly flurry. Silence would do him no good now.
The warehouse opened before him, dim lights hung between the great metal ribs thirty feet above casting their pale light down. It was cold here, almost as cold as outside. Harold had entered next to one of the truck bays and a large open space led away from him to the small cinder-block office building in the middle of the chamber. Behind that rows and rows of wood and metal shelves leaned sadly against one another holding machine parts.
Harold ran at a lope to the pool of light that surrounded the guards at the loading dock. He ran up, pulling air into his lifeless lungs and pushing it out in an imitation of a pant. He wore the face of the Jimmi the guard as he ran to the light.
"-what you open da doo' fo mothafucka fool!" one of Anzu's boys snarled as closed the distance.
"Its in!" he answered, "muthafucka Vee Prob monsa out there."
"Fuck tha shit!" the guard, Culafi Johnson, shouted, where it izz?"
Guns appeared, knives appeared, chains appeared. Anzu, for all his dissin' of his own folks, had certainly kept them well armed, bought their loyalty with weapons.
"Goin' ta get Aznu. Da Cuckoo'l know wha' to do."
Harold turned and began walking, trying to walk like he figured a gangbanger would swagger if he was in a big hurry. For a few crucial seconds there was muttering talk behind him as the second group tried to decide what to do. Then the sound of footsteps followed behind him.
He pulled out the deceased guard's cell-phone and punched up Anzu's not-so-secret number, turning to Culafi as he did so.
"Call up tha other boyz, tellum to get ta the Cuckoo."
As Culafi juggled his guns and dug out his phone Harold's own handset sprang to life.
"Who the fuck's this?" Anzu's voice hissed down the line.
For all of Anzu's crimes Harold had to admit that it was the first time he had ever heard him sound anything but utterly confident.
Harold just held the phone, letting the ambient sounds of footsteps and worried snatches of conversation drift down the line.
The two other groups of Anzu's boyz fell in with Harold's pack and they crossed the patch of darkness that stood before the cinder-block office building.
The phone clicked off as Anzu hung up. He was, even in this late hour, not one to waste any time.
Shadows flew across the wire-reinforced windows of the office and the knob on the heavy metal door began to turn. Harold called upon the blood as the door opened, clouding the minds of the mortals so that they could not see him.
One of the cartel hoods knelt down as the door opened, another stood over him, both lowered their automatics and opened fire. Some of the windows opened, others just exploded out as the Cartel hoods opened up on Anzu's gangstas.
Two bullets crashed into Harold's kevlar vest as he turned and ran at an angle toward the Alamo, another random bullet struck him in the leg. With mounting fear he stumbled, in a half second Anzu's boyz began to shoot back and Harold crawled across the concrete, hoping to stay under the crossfire.
It was an unfair fight, Anzu's thugz were, for all their ferocity, just hoods, kids with guns. They were not military, they were never meant to advance under fire. The niggaz made a very brief stand before trying to save themselves. Harold was military, long ago, and he crawled resolutely forward.
The warehouse echoed with the crash and rumble of gunfire and singing of bullets through the air and across concrete. Harold raised his .357 and added four more shots to the din. The first two caught the kneeling hood in the chest, crushing his sternum and blasting out of his back. The third bullet missed the standing thug's head and the fourth caught him in side of the neck. As blood exploded from the wound the Hispanic stumbled back, leaving the door beautifully unguarded.
Screams and shouts rang from within the Alamo, another Mexican hood tried to get his arm out the window to get a good shot at the Nosferatu. Harold's free hand dug into the pocket of his fireman's coat and he pulled out a phosphorous grenade with bits of tire duck-tapped to it. One last souvenir from Seoul. He hooked one of his needle-like canines around the pin and pulled, tossing the antique device into the open door.
The pop-and-whoosh sound of detonation was still an old familiar friend to him, good against the gooks, good against the Brujah, good against anything. Yells and screams turned to shrieks as the interior of the Alamo caught fire. Screams turned to choking as the tire pieces began to burn and smoke savagely.
Harold paused to check his six, behind him Anzu's boyz were piled atop one another, some were dead or dying a few feet away from the main pile. The stuffing of their coats was falling about them like snow, blasted out by the cartel hoodz. A good half of them had been shot in the back, cut down as they broke and ran.
Beside him the cartel hood who had leaned out the window now shoved himself through the opening, his legs and back on fire. Harold watched him for a few moments before putting a .357 slug into his gut. The thug jumped, loosing his gun, and then flailed like a badger in a trap.
Harold thought of the sight Mama Cass with her intestines wrapped around the post of the shelter and smiled a tight smile as he watched the vain struggles of the mortal. He quickly dumped the shells from his gun and dropped in a speed loader. Drawing his fireman's coat around himself he walked into the Alamo.
The room was an inferno, furniture and bodies were unrecognizable under the film of flame and the pouring black smoke. Some shapes moved in the flames, writhing in the heat. Fire spread through the two open doors on the side, and spilled through the open door on the opposite wall. Harold let the smoke do its work, driving the few surviving Cartel hoods to the ground, he squatted down and picked off two of them as they tried to drop and roll.
The Nosferatu followed the sounds of shouting into the next room. It was better furnished, with expensive stereo equipment, a bed, and fridge.
"Anzu's home away from home. Fuck!" Harold grated, cursing his bad luck that he had come at the Alamo from the wrong side.
The metal door on the other side was closed tight, but the inside bolt was drawn back. With two strides Harold was at the door, holding his pistol in one hand while he turned the knob with the other.
Bullets slammed into the metal door as he opened it, one sliding through the opening and winging him in the side. He could hear someone shouting from outside.
"-da man? You da fucking man?! C'mon, you wanta be the man?"
Anzu. Harold had always assumed that he would drive the gang leader mad with his constant forays into his territory, that one day he would just kill himself. Barring that he had always thought he'd put him down like any of his thugz, maybe let him see his face first. Under the circumstances, though, just shooting him would give him a deep satisfaction, poetic justice be dammed.
He walked back into the inferno, grabbing one of the still-kicking cartel hoods. Blood flew to his limbs, giving him the strength to drag the burning blood sac to the door.
He kicked it open, letting the smoke pour out for a moment before throwing the hood out. Gunfire erupted on the other side for a few seconds as Anzu fired into the burning Mexican. Harold stepped out, raising his .357.
Anzu stood defiant and alone by the heavy-packed shelves. The gangleader seemed unfazed at the sight of Harold's true shape. Anzu had spurrened the overstuffed jackets that his gangmembers fancied. He wore a long fur pimp-coat. Stylish.
He landed two shots into the Nosferatu's gut, the bullet-proof jacket turning the deadly blasts into rib-cracking blows. Harold fired, watching his shots skip across the concrete floor or crash into the shelves behind the gangleader.
Anzu turned and ran behind the racks of machine parts. Harold took off after him, craning his head around as her ran. He could see no sign of the Changeling. Perhaps God had seen fit to let the monster die in the phosphorous fire in the office.
He hit the storage area, seeing Anzu dance away two rows back. Running down the isle Harold made one turn, then another amid the rows. Ahead of him he could see Anzu turn a corner. Harold popped off two shots, missing both times. He popped out the casings and dropped in his second speed-loader. He ran, untiring, around the corner.
Dead end.
He spun around, looking wildly for any sign of Anzu or the Changeling. He could hear Anzu running, could hear his breathing and the clink-clink of his gold chains.
He turned and ran back around the corner.
Dead end.
The rows of shelves had closed in behind him.
"Tricks! A hundred tricks!" he grated.
Abruptly gunfire erupted from beside him. A slug crashed into him, shattering his forearm and burying itself into his kevlar vest.
Harold Elden fell to the floor, running, crawling away from the deadly hail of gunfire. Bullets bounced off the ground around him, thumping into his jacket.
"-fucked up monsa muthafucka, you gonna be the man?!" Anzu roared over the shoots, sounding not ten feet away.
Harold couldn't see him, couldn't see anything behind the shelves but more shelves, row upon row of machine parts piled up in dusty storage.
The shots were coming from his left, landing around him, into him, as if there was no barrier between he and the shooters at all.
His maimed arm dug into his fireman's coat and he pulled out the iron needle. With a clumsy throw he tossed it toward the gunfire. Another bullet caught him in the chest, knocking him back.
He forced his head back up in time to see the shelf and its contents shatter like glass as the needle struck it. Behind it stood Cuckoo Anzu, his gold-ringed fingers in a white-knuckle grip on his pearl handled .45.
The two began firing at one another, both wild, both using more hatred and panic than skill. One of Harold's shots caught his enemy in the stomach, blasting him open and buckling him over. Gold chains, black skin, gray fur, all trying to roll themselves into a ball.
Harold was up and on him in a heartbeat. Grabbing a handful of Anzu's hair he yanked his head back and buried his fangs into his neck, sucking the man's blood down his throat, using it to close the wounds he himself had created.
Through the euphoria of feeding a shadow fell over him. Throwing Anzu to the side Harold spun, flinging blood from his mouth as he shouted a wordless yell.
The Changeling was huge, nearly seven feet of horror hidden behind a huge kite shield. Over the rim Harold could see the face he had glimpsed briefly at Anzu's crib, bits of silver and gold glinted from innumerable piercings, his nose, his lips, his eyebrows. A conquistador style helmet covered his head, sprouting red plumage.
At once Harold's stomach writhed within him, fear and pain and hunger all flowed from his belly out. He wanted to turn, turn and run until even his untiring legs could hold him up no longer. Somewhere at the end of his fear-numbed hand his finger squeezed the trigger.
The shot thumped into the metal shield, bouncing off the dreamstuff barrier. Again he pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with a dull click.
The Changeling bore down on Harold with its impossibly bullet-proof shield, ramming into him and smashing him against the shelf behind him. Harold' blood pushed through the waves of panic that rolled over him, his nails sprang out and his arms grew strong with the power of his curse.
He clawed madly at the shield, trying to get past it to the eyes or neck of the changeling. It had but one arm, it could hold its shield, no more. What little courage Harold could summon up was anchored on that fact.
The changeling rammed into him again, took a step back and swung at him with a great spiked mace.
Harold's anchor of courage collapsed as the weapon smashed into the side of his neck, smashing his collarbone and unhinging his jaw in one horrid blow. The world spun in a mad whirl as Harold faltered and fell.
The changeling stood over him, its breath shooting out like hot steam as it laughed. Holding his shield in one hand and his mace in the other. Whole and horrid it loomed over the prostrate Nosferatu. It was a nightmare collision of archaic and modern. High-tops and baggy pants lead up to its bare muscular torso. Brass tacks had been driven around its neck and into its chest like a rosary. The crucifix gleamed between the swelling muscles of its chest, bolted directly to the sternum. Tattoos vied with one another across its body and arms.
The mace hammered down with a fury matching that of any Brujah. Harold's shoulders were pummeled beneath his kevlar vest. He lifted his already injured arm to ward off the blows that were aimed at his head.
The mace swung down, catching him in the legs, knocking him around like a top. He rolled onto Anzu's still body. Behind him the changeling was coming for him. The stations of the cross were tattooed from its shoulder to its wrist of its weapon-hand. Beyond it, through it Harold could see the chest heave as the monster breathed.
The arm that lifted the weapon was not real, some part of Harold's mind knew. It was gone, he had torn it off two days ago. This was a dream of a limb, a flight of fancy of the mind somehow given form and power. Drooling blood and spit Harold swung his head around, looking past Anzu's body. The iron needle lay in the dust.
The kindred lurched clumsily toward it, the blow that should have caved in his skull burying itself into the small of his back. He struggled, pinned beneath the evil spikes. His fingers brushed the needle and immediately his fear and hunger fled.
Again the mace lifted and again Harold drove forward, his own long claws tearing into his palm as he gripped the pin. He rolled over as the mace came down, lifting his maimed arm to try to ward off the blow.
The club beat his arm down and struck him in the head, a spike found its way into his eye, blinding it.
Harold flopped what was left of his arm around the mace, holding it down while he stabbed with the needle at the hand that held it. Through his good eye he saw the iron spike drive into the changeling's wrist, beneath the tattoo of Christ's empty tomb.
Suddenly the arm and the club were gone, and the air rang with a mad shriek.
The dream arm was gone and the grisly, poorly-healed socket of the shoulder was in its place.
Harold stabbed down, driving the pin through the monster's high-tops, nailing its foot. Again it roared, and above him Harold could see the form of the beast fade, becoming more of a secondary reflection of the gang-banger he had met two days ago.
The seconds flew by, Harold stabbed with his pin. The fae kicked him brutally in the head and fell down. It had no shield, no rosary nailed to its body.
Again and again the needle dug into the hood, Harold's hand grew slick with blood in the struggle. The changeling's good hand shot to the floor and lifted Anzu's pearl-handled .45.
The gun shook at the end of the unsteady arm, not a foot from Harold's head. The thug yanked on the trigger, firing and missing, then fired again, even wilder.
Harold stabbed, driving the needle into the breastbone. He pushed, trying to get to the heart. The changeling lifted the shaking gun and shoved it into his own mouth. It went off with a roar, blasting the back of his head off, tearing the red bandana free.
Harold watched the body, what was left of it, fall. He sat for long moments, the blood-hunger welling in him.
Somewhere in the pit of his stomach he knew that he hadn't struck the mortal blow. Blind Maus had said that their kind had no belief in final death, they took courage from their belief that they would return again to middle-earth.
Smoke from the burning office began to fill even the great warehouse, somewhere someone groaned. The blood that would heal his wounds enough to get away. His legs were damaged badly, the mace had broken one and he had a bullet in the other.
As the smoke grew thick Harold Elden stared into the face of his departed enemy, committing it to memory. Wondering when in nights to come it might return to hunt him again.