castle AND coyote

teaser

(WARNING: VIOLENCE, ADULT LANGUAGE, AND GROSS STUFF. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!)

chapter one

He writhed above me, sweat dripping from his forehead and trickling down the sides of my face. His breath puffed out in hot bursts, interrupted by occasional animalistic grunts. I would have been panting, too, but I couldn't seem to fill my lungs. Stars exploded like tiny fireworks at the edges of my vision. I bucked beneath him and gasped. My breath escaped in erotic moans that seemed to excite him. Or maybe it wasn't the moaning that excited him.

Maybe it was his massive hands locked around my throat, squeezing the life out of me by agonizing degrees.

I was never a good fighter on the ground, and less so on my back. I preferred more pleasurable activities in that position. Inviting this monster to my motel room might have been a bad idea.

As his grip tightened another fraction of an inch, he forced a decidedly unsexy choke-gurgle from my throat. I had maybe a minute left before unconsciousness—less if the bastard decided to expedite the process. My left hand was wedged under his jaw to keep his snapping teeth off me. These guys carried more infectious bacteria than any reptile. Foul spittle oozed down my arm; apparently I’d whetted his appetite.

My right hand crawled like a drunken spider across the motel carpet, searching blindly for my special knife. The beast already had three of my mundane blades sticking out of him, but normal weapons didn't concern these guys. I needed my special knife.

My fingertips grazed the leather-wrapped handle. The familiar, soft deer hide calmed me and restored a portion of my confidence. Though I was losing the fight—rather badly—all I needed was the ancient knife to reverse my luck. I strained to grab it. The beast was so preoccupied playing with his dinner, he was blissfully unaware that dinner was still kicking and armed with the equivalent of a scorpion's stinger.

I walked my fingers across the grip, rolling it into my hand and closing my fist around it. The old stone blade scraped across the carpet as I pulled it to me. The noise attracted the creature’s attention, and I moved fast. His ugly head turned toward the sound just in time to meet the knife as I plunged it upward. The angular blade sank into his throat with liquid ease, and a cocky grin split his face.

Then the venom kicked in—or that's how I assumed it worked. It could have been cursed, for all I knew. But I was familiar enough with the effects. As the beast's eyes widened in realization and he clawed at the knife, I scrambled out from beneath him and backed against the wall. I wanted a bit of distance between us before his guise melted. That part could get messy.

He rose from the floor and slapped the knife out of his throat, but the damage was done. The venom slithered through the skin he wore, poisoning the abomination hiding beneath. This beast had chosen the body of a flannel-clad trucker whose beer belly was balanced out by an intimidating frame, no less than six foot eight. The man who had previously inhabited that body had been dead for at least a few days, judging by the condition of the skin. A gray pallor had washed out the body's tan flesh, and bruises and sores decorated its exposed parts. He smelled like garbage rotting in a puddle of congealing blood.

He opened his mouth wider than humanly possible. I flinched, expecting a roar, but none came. A wet growl erupted from somewhere inside the beast like an angry stomach on the verge of vomit. I continued shielding myself against the wall. There was no way to predict what sort of disgusting, horrifying, or mind-boggling abilities these guys had, because they were all different. The only things they had in common with each other were embodiment of primal fears and a healthy appetite for human flesh, preferably well marinated in terror.

The beast exhibited a tame death compared to what I'd seen before, and I made the mistake of relaxing. Then he bent over and belched. Scores of squirming maggots squirted out of his mouth and plopped onto the carpet in a glistening pool of plump little bodies. My hand went to my mouth, stifling my own vomit. The stench was unbearable.

He stopped and looked at me with a few wet maggots still clinging to his beard. His eyes were black with fury. Then they melted out of his sockets, and I realized they were flies. Dozens of them swarmed out of his face, filling the room with the droning buzz of their collective wings. Almost as soon as they escaped, they began to die and dropped to the floor like heavy drops of rain.

The beast's flesh erupted in oozing sores, splitting open and seeping unspeakable fluids. Slimy leeches wriggled out, inching along the diseased skin. Finally, the shell of flesh ripped open down the middle to expel the creature’s true form.

I looked away. I always looked away for this part. Only once had I glimpsed one of these monsters in their true form, and it had taken a permanent toll on me. Humans weren't meant to bear witness to such unearthly horror.

The demon sizzled into nothingness with the sound of frying bacon. There was no puff of smoke, no strobes of light, no thunderous crashes to announce its passing from this world into the next. Once the slurping noises stopped, the demon was simply a dark, wet stain on the motel floor. It had thoughtfully left behind its piles of maggots and flies, as well as the hollow corpse of the poor bastard it'd been riding around in. As usual, I was left with the cleanup.

In the bathroom, I wiped the monster’s drool off my skin. It had managed to ooze down into my cleavage, and I gagged as I scrubbed it out. Another bra bites the dust. I filled the bathroom sink with bleach and sanitized all of my knives, with the exception of the ancient stone blade, which never needed cleaning. Surveying the room as I sheathed my various weapons, I realized I hadn't bled during the fight—points for me—so I didn't have to worry about bleaching evidence of my presence out of the floor or walls. As for the beast's evidence...it was copious. After running through my options, I decided on my longtime favorite method for disposing of these creatures' remains.

When in doubt, burn it.

I crept outside to retrieve the gas can strapped to Elvira, my sexy motorcycle, grateful for the beast's nocturnal nature. Nobody stirred in the parking lot or at the windows, and no sirens wailed toward the motel. Our altercation had apparently gone unnoticed.

I took a precious moment to dig out one of my flasks from a saddlebag. The cheap whiskey rolled like lava down my bruised throat and into my stomach, spreading warmth to my nerves. I inhaled the fresh air to clear the remaining maggot stench from my sinuses, and then raised the flask to my lips for another long swig.

Some might say I have a drinking problem. I'd retort that if they lived my shitstorm of a life, they’d be driven to find solace in the self-medication of their choice, too.

Gas can in hand, I returned to the room, gagging again at the stench hanging in the air. Fuck, he was a ripe one. I picked through the hollow remains of the trucker-turned-monster with my thumb and forefinger. Locating the man's wallet, I gave it a wipe-down on the remaining five square inches of clean carpet and tucked it away in my tight jeans pocket. I daydreamed about the potential wad of cash as I doused all the integral areas with the gas. Using the room's phone, I made an anonymous call to the local fire department. I then returned the can to my bike, gathered my things, and bid farewell to the monster with a flick of matches and click of the closing door.

A warm glow danced behind me through the motel window as I donned my helmet and my big bike roared to life. By the time I turned out of the parking lot and raced past the motel on the lonely highway, the glow had ignited into an orange inferno of cleansing flames.

I was happy to put yet another nameless little desert town to my back, and happier still to add another dead beast to my tally. As far as I knew, nobody else could see them for what they really were, and they'd been in the States feeding on the local populations for centuries. They weren't ghosts or aliens. Nothing so conventional.

According to my partner, they were rakshasas, horrific cannibalistic monsters of Hindu origin. I theorized that was part of the reason I could see them. Though the Castle family in Texas (rest their souls) adopted and raised me, I was born in India.

I figured after the shit I'd been through, it was my duty to kill as many of these assholes as I came across as long as it didn't deter me from my goal. Sam Castle: Rakshasa Slayer. Yeah, that would sell a lot of comic books.

It did foster a mutually beneficial relationship with my partner, who also wanted all of the vermin dead. Where the hell was he, anyway? He usually showed himself once I left a town, especially after a kill. As my headlight flashed by the dusty edges of the desert road, I caught a glint of light to my left. A few months before, I would have blamed it on a reflection from a discarded bottle or some other detritus and kept on riding without another thought. But now I knew what it was.

I slowed down enough to make a U-turn and came to a stop on the shoulder. Cutting my bike engine left me in eerie silence, and the darkness around me was broken only by the stars. But I wasn’t alone.

My little keychain flashlight illuminated a pair of reflective yellow eyes. They winked at me from the edge of the light. My boots crunched in the dirt as I approached, and finally I made out the greater details of my partner.

He squatted in the dust, lanky legs bowed lazily to the sides. As always, he wore a creepy half-grin as though one side of his face was in on a hilarious joke while the other side desperately tried to maintain poker neutrality. The teeth revealed on his smiling side were jagged and sharp, and whiter than one might expect. He cocked his head and wagged his tail as I greeted him, big ears pointed attentively.

"Glad to see you're not roadkill, Coyote."

He lowered his head and snorted.

"Have you been as busy as I have?"

Of course. The next couple of settlements are duds. No rakshasas yet.

His thoughts flowed into my mind, interweaving almost seamlessly with my own internal monologue. When he spoke to me, it wasn't speaking or telepathy. I just had an accurate sense of what he communicated. It was like empathy on steroids.

"Good. That last one was fucking gross. I think I'll ride through the night...and it would be nice to take tomorrow night off."

Depends on where you stop. If you go beyond where I've checked, you may run into one of them.

I crossed my arms like a stubborn child. "Well maybe I don't care. Maybe I'll just sleep through the night for once in my life, and keep moving on the next day. We have bigger, badder rakshasas to take out. I'm tired of wasting my time and energy on these baby raks."

Suit yourself, slacker. I'm sure everything will resolve itself anyhow.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Keep heading north. This road will keep you far enough away from Vegas and all those city nests of baby raks you hate.

"Thanks for being so thoughtful."

I had learned the hard way that cities hosted my nightmares. Lesser raks liked to gather like cannibal gangs in highly populated areas. The presence of a single rakshasa tugged like a cold wind at the nape of my neck. The presence of a dozen or more felt like being dunked naked into an ice bath. It helped me to be aware of them, but too many meant that I might freeze up like a living statue in nausea and agony.

The lesser raks didn't matter to me, anyway. I was after one particular big, old guy, one who had been carving out a place for himself in the American frontier since before the invasion of milk-skinned foreigners from across the sea. My fixation didn't make Coyote happy, because he wanted them all dead. But I had provided him with more help than he'd gotten in centuries, so he didn’t complain about my attitude. Besides, he hated the old ones even more than I did. And that is saying something.

Coyote sprang to his feet, stretched his long legs, and trotted away into the darkness of the open desert.

"Bye then, I guess."

His sentiments invaded my mind from a distance: Good luck, Castle. I’ll find you again to the north when I feel like it. Try to stay alive...you're still useful. His canine cackles yipped from the blackness like mocking laughter.

Ah. Such a sweetie. And yet, he was the closest thing I had to a friend. As I trudged back to my bike, I realized I didn't mind that at all. He had chosen me, and that was pretty special. Although technically, I had chosen him first when I accidentally summoned him. I still hadn't come close to mastering the summoning ability, or even understanding it, but Coyote had given me a crash course.

I'm a summoner, and in theory, I can call creatures and gods to my side with a single thought. Coyote demanded that I never use it on him, explained that it would take years for me to learn control, and then refused to tell me any more about it. So far, he was the only being I could summon, and I had no idea how it worked. Once I was finished rak-hunting, if I survived, I might look into it some more. But killing monsters was my priority. Studying weird-ass magic crap could wait.