Life With A Werewolf

Ceramic Game of Thrones Part 3

          I wasn't the only one having a bad night that night. Crash was on his way from one emergency to another. The kind of night that is filled with excitement, but no fun. The exact type of night most of us think about when he think of what life is like for a cop – a night of stamping out fires and hoping none of them are just flaming bags of dog crap.

          His first emergency was relatively easy, though it got a bit bloody. Fortunately for the small community on the other side of the county, the ogres didn't make it into town. Crash said if they had it would have been a blood bath. But he won't go further than that.

          There are more dangerous mythical creatures out there. The types that would never live with humanity and sees us as basically food, an annoyance, or 'toys', creatures to be tortured and killed when bored. Think of it like a serial killer with a kitten type mentality. Perhaps that will give you a bit of a mental picture of what he was dealing with the ogres. He never told me what it was, but said he ended covered head to toe in “red goo.”

          There's a stream that runs through the county on the south side. At times it's small, other times it opens up wider, until it runs head long into another larger stream, which is part of a tributary system that feeds itself eventually into the Mississippi river a few states away. This stream is in a wooded area and is crystal clear. Crash said that even I could see clear to the bottom of it on a near moonless night. A coat of dead leaves cover the ground giving it the look of being shoved into one of the better slasher films from the eighties.

          He had stopped there on his way to another “stalk and check”, to check up on some other strange activity that had been anonymously reported. There was something different about his tranquil spot. The air felt energized somehow, as if he was standing near a power line. Even the trees, which were usually comforting, felt more like sinister sentinels. He walked towards the stream and stopped. Putting his nose to the ground, Crash brushed the leaves back. There beneath that blanket of leaves was a rune. It was thick, and held a dull light of its own, a soft sickly yellow glow. Apparently, it was part of a circle of runes that ran around the very stream Crash wanted to wash up in. He backed a single step and smacked into a solid wall of leaves, mud, and sticks. Crash leaped upwards, but was grabbed by the creature, who attempted to hurl him into the rune circle.

          If you learn nothing else from this little blog, learn this: never, EVER attempt to grab a werewolf. That is, unless you're a werewolf yourself. It will not workout for you. When this creature grabbed Crash, he lashed out with claws of his own, thrashing through mud, worms, leaves, sticks and other muck. He thrashed, snarled and fought, literally clawing his way through the mud mound until he was on the other side.

          Gasping for breath, he looked up, and saw twin eyes staring at him from the mud. Crash was fighting a creature he'd never fought before – a gollum. There was a hole in the center of the mud creature that glared down at him.

          Crash knew two things in that moment. First, that he had to avoid that circle at all costs. Second, was that somewhere out there, Kheid was up to something, and that it wasn't going to be good for any of us.

***

          The night at the house was one of those half moon kind of nights. The sort of night that felt waxing and waning, the kind that in my military days felt as if it was drawing itself out longer on purpose. The front lawn was covered in gnomes with red hats. There was no blue hatted gnomes left. None of the gnomes cheered my capture. They all glared at the both of us as I was walked down the stairs.

          “Alright,” Valyur snarled. The blue hatted gnome leader still held the gun on my back. “You bastards get back, or I'll blast a hole through his skull right here.”

          I heard a low threatening growl when he said that. I turned my head to see something I had never thought I would have. A smaller visage of a werewolf in sparkling white and gray fur, ceramic just like the rest of the gnomes. He had a collar on, with a bit in his mouth like he was a horse with a gnome seated on top of his shoulders. “Yeah, what he said,” the gnome growled. “His majesty wants him alive, you bastard.”

          “Mitch,” I said. “I never knew they could get you.”

          He turned he head down, his ears folded back. I looked at him riding high upon Mitch's shoulders. He was wearing a vest of some kind, with his beard braided into twin braids that hung almost to his knees. They rested on both sides of the werewolf's head he sat upon. “Yar! You bastard,” the gnome said as it grabbed his ear and wrenched it back. A whine escaped Mitch's throat as the gnome raised his head up to look at me.

          “What is your name,” I asked.

          “You don't get the pleasure of my name,” he snarled.

          “You're afraid to tell me?”

          That made the gnome sputter. “I fear no fleshpot!”

          “Then tell me your name.”

          He looked around at the others for a moment who all stared at him expectantly, then sat high and proud. “I'm Lavrishk, proud general of the one true Kheid's army. Tamer of the mighty werewolf.” And he grabbed Mitch's ear again and twisted it harder.

          “You're going to want to stop that,” I said.

          “Why's that,” he said, and twisted it one more time. A soft whine grew in pitch before leveling off.

          “Cause now, before the night's over, I'm going to kill you.” That caused a chorus of laughter. Valyur nudged me forward and forced me down the steps.

          Lavrishk kicked the sides of Mitch, and drove him forward with a growl. “I'd like to see you try, fleshpot. I'll have him naw your arms off and spank him with yer bones.”

          I remembered I still had my pistol, but, I didn't draw it. Something told me right then wasn't the time. “Tonight,” I shouted walking down the path that was set out before me. The path they cleared to the woods near our little home. “Tonight, you will all see what is inside a gnome. And I will show you all, what it takes to kill a...”

          A shot rang out. I felt it whizz by my head almost before I heard it. “Shut up,” Valur snarled. “And keep walking.”

          I expected there to be a bonfire of some kind, with gnomes dancing around it like a pagan ritual pulled straight from an Indiana Jones movie. Instead, there sat Kheid, upon a giant ceramic throne. The arm rests were made of skulls, and the back rest was built up as long bones which looked as if they were supposed to be femurs, but had been stretched and arched to make it into a more comfortable seat for 'his majesty.'

          “I told you I'd get you,” he said and smirked. The ground around him glowed in strange thick runes. “And...” he paused for a moment.....

***

          Crash leaped from tree to tree, trying to climb it. His only goal then was to get out of the woods. Flee the woods and race over to the next county, which was close. Get the assistance of the wolf next door, so to speak. Up he jumped, higher and higher. He leaped to one branch. Then to another. Then another. He was close to his goal. He could see the break in the woods in front of him. Just one more...

          He was hit with what felt like a wall of mud. The fall from the height and the added weight of mud knocked the wind out of him and dazed him. Crash stared up at the trees, as he was half dragged, half thrown into the rune circle.

***

          Kheid held up a single finger for a moment and smiled, “Now I have all of you. You shall join us and abandon that disgusting flesh for the proper ceramic you should have.” He leaped down from the throne. “And I know once you spend a little time as my subject like your friends,” he pointed to the edge of the clearing, and there they were. Zack, Kris, Sean. All of three of them standing there in ceramic, wearing red gnome hats, glaring at me as if waiting for something. “You will love it.” He grinned wickedly at me.

          “Still won't bring Faenie back, Falkurk.”

          There was a dangerous glint that entered his eye then. “Meaty one, I will make you pay for that!”