Exton

I take in a deep breath and let it out again in a sigh. It's hard to work up much enthusiasm for nursemaiding a bunch of college-age shapeshifters who all want to grow up to be super heroes... Not that I need much enthusiasm, because this bunch has it in spades. They remind me of nothing quite so much as a litter of puppies, all bright-eyed and eager, endlessly curious… and utterly brainless; if they had tails, they'd be wagging a mile a minute. They all can follow a scent trail, thank God, but that's pretty useless right now, 'cause there's no scent trail to follow.

So here I am, the lone vampire, puppy-sitting in a part of town that makes me want to plug my nose with chewing gum. The pungent aromas of cheap booze, vomit, urine and other, less distinctive odors all swirl together into a truly impressive olfactory miasma that you can almost taste. I'm just as happy I haven't eaten yet....

About a hundred yards ahead of us is our lure... our bait, if you will. Her name is Catherine; she's a buxom little thing, curvy in all the right places, but still seemingly as fragile as a breadstick. Problem is, things in Exton are seldom as they seem.... Catherine's other form is a panther. I grin as I think about her claws and what they could do to an attacker....

Despite the cold, she's dressed in a remarkably short skirt. "If we're just meat to them," she pointed out logically, "let's put it in a display case." That had earned her some raucous laughter, as well as comments about "rack of lamb" and "leg of lamb". Fortunately, Kitty has a thick skin….

Now the catcalls are done and the pack is ghosting along in pursuit. We have flankers as well as followers, using every shadow, every piece of urban cover to stay out of sight. Catherine is putting a bounce in her steps, a wiggle in her hips, making the bait as tempting as possible.

It works.

The ghoul seems to materialize from a patch of shadow, stalking his prey in utter, eerie silence. Now the pack goes into action. Sweats are cast aside, shapes shift to animal forms and I vamp out. The ghoul reaches out, catches Cat by an arm. She whirls to face him with a snarl, shedding the long coat in the same motion. Her dress is cast aside even as she changes - no buttons or zippers, just Velcro - and the startled ghoul finds himself facing not a helpless human girl, but a pissed-off were-panther.

Even odds.

But then I signal the flankers to move in, and then the rest of the pack - and the ghoul finds himself in the center of a circle of very unhappy therianthropes who are looking for some payback.

Lips flare back from bear-trap teeth, claws extend and the flesheater takes a fighting stance. Dumb. He's badly outnumbered and pack animals fight as a unit.

It starts slowly, a seemingly lazy swipe that draws three red lines across his calf; then it escalates, shifter claws scoring on him again and again - from every side, every angle - and soon he's dripping red from at least a couple dozen slashes. There's no chivalry here, no pretense of fair play. It's fast, brutal, and merciless.

Then he moves fast, snatching a girl from the circle, holding her in front of his body, teeth poised at her throat. "Let me go or she dies."

To a shifter, the pack is everything; the good of the pack is paramount, beyond every other consideration, and anything that diminishes the pack is by definition bad.  Faced with an impossible choice, the pack turns to the pack leader - which is me, at least for the moment. I think for a moment, then -

"Let him go." I lock eyes with the ghoul and speak softly. "They have your scent now. Run as fast and as far away as you can." I leave the rest unspoken. It'll never be far enough.

The pack opens a gap in the circle to let the ghoul pass. Eyes glitter coldly and nostrils flare. He takes a dozen steps, then gives the girl a hard shove. She goes limp and is easily caught and held before she hits the ground. I give him a hundred-yard head start, then shout, "NOW!" and take to the air. He makes it maybe another twenty yards before I slam into him like a meteor and drive him into the pavement.

He gets up swinging. We're pretty evenly matched. We both have superhuman strength, we can both change shape, our teeth and claws are pretty much the same, despite differences in shape and function. He can't do the mesmerism thing, but I can't use it on him, either. We pummel each other with fists and claws for a while before it occurs to me that I can end this quickly; and with that, I call Johnny Corkscrew.

He lunges for my throat just as Johnny shimmers into existence and I feel his talons sink into my shoulders. I crack him over the head with the pommel and give him a hard shove to break the clinch. "Oh no you don't, motherfucker!," I roar and then I go under his ribcage and ram Johnny straight through his heart.

Shit!

Killing a ghoul is a messy business. Kill a vamp, it's mostly a 'dry' affair. A vamp my age would go to a skeleton in no time; an older vamp - say 300 years or older - goes straight to dust, no waiting, with maybe a few flakes of bone mixed in.

But a ghoul…! They go all wet and rotten like Monsieur Valdemar and the stench makes an open sewer smell like Sweet-Lily-of-the-Valley. Gag… They kinda just fall apart in really revolting stages until you have a pool of what Poe would probably have called "loathsome putrescence."

Suddenly I want a shower in the worst way….