Age of Blood

65

Walker shot up the stairs and through a door like a heat-seeking missile fired from a rabbit hole. The world was bled of color, replaced by a blur of blacks, whites, and grays. Everywhere he looked, the focus was precise and perfect, his vision capable of telescoping several hundred feet in front of him. But his peripheral vision was a blur, the world to his left and right reduced to a state of fuzzy resolution. Gone was his exhaustion, left behind in the alternate universe where SEALs couldn’t travel Mach 1.

Through the door, he found himself inside the basement of an ancient building. Dust coated the floors. Webs held the corners together like silken flying buttresses. The walls were carved and it took tremendous focus for Walker to be able to figure out what they were. Religious motifs—but that was as much as he could make out.

He knew what a drunk felt like, if that drunk was also stoned out of his mind on a Mexican cocktail of uppers with a chupacabra speedball chaser. Each turn of his head sent a blur spinning across his vision. He brought his right hand to his head to still the images, but then he spied Ramon walking ahead, smoothing his rumpled pants and running long fingers through his hair, acting as if he were Mr. Cool in a land of ancient filth.

“Ramon!”

He turned at Walker’s call and his eyes gave away his surprise. He yanked his own vial out and drained it dry. Then he turned and ran impossibly fast.

Walker followed drunkenly.

When they hit another set of stairs, he tumbled up them, ending in a somersault, then popping to his feet. He’d lost ground. Ramon was already through another door and gone.

Walker raced after him and became aware of the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. The sound took over everything and was his universe. He opened the door and spied Ramon at the end of the central aisle of a cathedral. Mass was in session and the priest was standing with both arms out toward the congregation. When Walker ran into their midst, they screamed at the red-faced devil in camo among them.

He was out the door and into the plaza before he saw Ramon again. They were in the Zócalo once more. This time it was daytime. Ramon was running southeast. Walker chased after him, zooming past people, between groups and around those who were sitting. He was becoming used to the speed. The trick was to plan ahead. Just as he thought he was doing fine, a man pushing a cart with the words LA ROSA prominently on the side moved into his path. Walker couldn’t swerve. All he could do was leap it, or else they’d tumble in a crash. Walker jumped early, or at least he thought he did, but his speed carried him over the cart. His leg buckled when he landed and he rolled several yards before he was able to regain control and stand.

But he’d gained ground on Ramon.

The former hit man glanced behind and tried to speed up.

But Walker could still run faster. The potion, if that’s what it was, seemed to work on his inherent athleticism.

They left the square and rocketed down the center of Avenida de José María Pino Suárez. It was a one-way road toward the Zócalo, with a bike path on the left and lined with brightly blooming trees and old-fashioned streetlights. A trio of buses lumbered along it side by side and both the chased and the chaser moved to the bicycle lane.

Traffic was moving in the next cross street and the crosswalk in front of them teemed with people. Ramon slowed and Walker did as well. Those who saw them pointed and made space, afraid of the white blur of a man being chased by the red-faced demon. They slid through the crowd and into traffic. A beat-to-hell Toyota pickup truck swerved, lost control, and crashed through the window of a clothing store on the southwest corner of the intersection.

They turned down Calle Venustiano Carranza, heading east.

Walker’s heartbeat was growing louder.

The road cleared momentarily in front of them and they both poured on speed. They turned south, then east, then south for three blocks, moving so fast that he couldn’t keep track of the street signs. Now they were on the Regna heading east. To their front was the Mercado Central. Barely two lanes, the walls closed in on them. They had no choice but to slow down.

A bus backed out of a park, forcing Ramon to come almost to a stop. Walker caught up to him and plastered him against the side of the bus so hard windows popped and the bus rocked. Walker punched Ramon in the jaw, the increased speed of his arm translating into increased power.

Ramon’s head swung on his neck.

But then the man got his balance under him and shoved Walker away.

Walker held his ground and kicked Ramon on the top of the knee with a Kuai Lua kick, sending him to the ground.

Ramon roared and his body began to change. He ripped through his once fine linen suit, his body growing and bulging with muscle. Within moments, gone was the gentle patrician, replaced by a werewolf whose arms and shoulders bunched with a mountain of muscles.

Walker punched the werewolf in the face.

The werewolf shrugged it off and grinned with too many teeth.

Walker felt a sudden sense of his own mortality. He feinted left then leaped. Using the werewolf’s head as a step, he was up and over the bus, running toward Mercado Central.

The roaring behind him told him that he was being followed.

Walker ran as fast as he could, the universe a blur with a pinhole to move through.

If he was going to defeat the werewolf, he needed silver. He’d left the magazine with the silver-tipped rounds back in the temple. His hope was that the central market would provide the necessary tools. Of course, he also hoped that he’d keep the wolf so busy it wouldn’t eat all the patrons.

He was forced to slow to enter the open-air market and the werewolf took him in the back. They tumbled like two trains derailing at three hundred miles an hour, taking out tables and goods, leaving people scattered in their wake.

Walker stood first, feeling his speed wane. The blur of the world was becoming less and things were beginning to come into focus. He didn’t want to be human. He knew no mere human could defeat a werewolf hand-to-hand, not even a SEAL.

But he had one more vial. He pulled it out and brought it up to uncap it and drink, when he was struck on the side of the face by a dump truck.

He flew through the air, realizing that the dump truck was actually a werewolf fist.

“You should have left it alone,” came the guttural lupine voice.

Walker landed on a table of children’s clothes, which scattered like confetti. He managed to get to a standing position. Somehow he’d kept his fist around the vial and it was protected. But when he opened his fist, the vial was broken and the liquid ran down his arm.

“I could have owned a god,” Ramon roared.

Walker stared stupidly at the liquid, wondering if he’d get the same result if he licked it. Then he turned toward the sound of an avalanche, except it was the werewolf tearing through tables as it came for him.

Fuck it. No time.

Walker wiped his hands on his pants, turned and caught the wolf in midleap, one hand on its groin, one hand on its neck, and he helped it fly. The werewolf landed hard on the ground, rolling and rolling, until it came to rest in a pile of dust at the base of one of the central poles that held up the roof fifty feet above them.

Walker turned and ran. Merely human now, he could see what was to his left and right. He knew what he was looking for. He’d seen them in Tijuana a thousand times, resting on blankets in front of hooker bars. But were they really made of silver? And if they weren’t, would silver plated work?

He finally spied a table stacked with religious icons wedged between a table selling used books and a knife sharpener.

He grabbed one of the crosses, but it was too light to be anything but silver painted on wood. He grabbed another and another, all the while ignoring the seller’s screams. Then it wasn’t the seller who was screaming.

Walker ducked as the wolf raked the air above him with its claws.

He turned and punched upward into the werewolf’s groin. Supernatural or not, even werewolves had nuts. The wolf howled and bent over double holding his little wolf cubs in his clawed hands.

Walker backed away, his eyes searching for an advantage. All manner of edged weapons were arrayed on the knife sharpener’s table. The sharpener himself was huddled several feet back. Walker gave him a wave, then selected two machetes, both with edges that looked like they could cut through Excalibur.

He turned just in time to swing at the wolf. Both blades dug in. The wolf shrieked. Walker backed away and watched as the wounds closed.

The wolf came for him again.

Walker swung again, this time applying Filipino stick fighting techniques, using the machetes in a Heaven Six pattern, to worry the wolf into striking. The interweaving of the blades did just that. Although they couldn’t kill the wolf, they could cause it great pain.

One, two, three. One, two, three. The blades leaped out in a complicated rhythm, daring the wolf to come at him.

Walker backed away as his arms moved.

He saw it in the wolf’s eyes before he made a move.

The wolf charged, his arms out in front of him.

Walker fell to the ground, rolled under the outreached arms, and popped to his feet. As the wolf passed, he swung both machetes so that they came together in the middle, then crossed his body. They bit cleanly through the wolf’s neck. Its body continued several feet farther, then fell.

They say silver is the only thing that can kill a werewolf. Walker doubted much of anything could survive losing its head.

He found the head and speared it with one of his machetes.

He also became aware of sirens.

The people of the market were becoming brave. They began yelling at him, probably wondering who was going to pay for all of the broken merchandise. They formed a circle around him and the dead werewolf, who’d already resumed human form.

The sirens increased and vehicles skidded to a stop about the time he became aware of some activity above him. His body was suddenly impaled by a great halo of light as part of the roof slid aside.

Police poured into the Mercado, but stopped as they saw two men slide down a rope and land next to Walker. They wore the uniform of the GAFE and were unquestionably Mexican military.

Navarre greeted Walker. “You’ve made quite the mess.”

“I can stay and clean up, if you want. How do you say does anyone have a broom in Spanish?”

Navarre chuckled. “We got that covered. Here,” he said, handing Walker a Palmer rig.

Walker stepped into it and quickly adjusted the straps. He accepted the rope Navarre offered and wove it through the D rings. The next thing he knew, all three of them were rising into the air. The other two carried the body and the head. Soon they were in the bright sunlight of day, dangling on taut ropes from a GAFE helicopter.

Walker loosened his mask and let it fall free of his face. He inhaled deeply of the morning air. God, but it was good to be alive.