Excerpts from Black Fire: The First Book of the Low War.
“Mm,” Sandy smiled. “Nice place, that Birmingham. What brings you up here, Mr.….” He leaned over and turned the register book around. “Jones?”
Blake sighed out of sheer exhaustion. Sleep deprivation had made him giddy. “Well, I was possessed by a demon for nearly a decade--cost me my marriage and family, but an angel reversed the possession so that I control the demon now. Well, most of the time. Sometimes it just bursts out of my hands like black fire. It burns everything it touches. Hell on the sleeves I tell ya’. It causes me to have nightmarish visions of Evil that won’t let me sleep until I destroy said Evil. Consequently, I’m being used as a secret weapon by the angel that handles all of God’s dirty work. But that’s all a whole different story. Tonight, I’ve come to hunt the beast preying on the good peoples of this fair haven, Windburn.”
“Ya’ what?”
“Fishing trip.”
“Oh.”
They stared at each other a while, neither one entirely sure what had just been said. Blake’s eye began to twitch.
* * * *
“I don’t know what the hell this thing is. But it came down here on two legs, and I don’t mean just a little ways. It walks upright.”
“What?”
“I know. It goes against…well, hell, it goes against everything. But the tracks are plain as day in here.”
“You don’t think this could be some kind of hoax?” Johnson asked.
“I hope not,” Luke shook his head. “That would be one twisted son-of-a-bitch. We’d be talking murder in Mr. Brenner’s case.”
“Just how big is this damn thing, Luke?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere from two hundred to three hundred pounds, maybe. I need casts of these tracks, run the gait pattern through some computer programs.”
“Now you’re scarin’ me, son.” Johnson rubbed at the back of his neck.
* * * *
The wolf roared and dove at him. Even hunched over, its teeth were level with Blake’s face. He saw the long arms, the claws at the ends, reaching out around him. The jaws opened, all dripping saliva and flashing white, as the yellow eyes locked on his own.
He did what came naturally; he drove a flaming uppercut into the thing’s muzzle. Water vapor in the air screeched as it evaporated with the passing of his fist. It wasn’t the impact of Blake’s hand that snapped that massive head back. It was the searing darkness of the black fire eating through fur and flesh to the bone beneath.
The wolf reared back, almost folding backwards in its effort to escape the pain. As it did, Blake pressed his advantage. He drove his other fist down along the wolf’s chest, carving a furrow of melted hide and stinking black smoke. The wolf doubled over, rolled, and landed on its feet.
It moved as if to tear Blake’s face off, then feinted, spun, and caught Blake in the chest as he raised his arms to block nothing. He felt ribs crack. He spun in a hard cartwheel and crashed, face down, to the ground. Blood poured from the gouges in his chest. He felt it seeping through his ripped shirt, sinking into the cold dirt beneath.
The black fire coursed to his wounds. As Blake stood, the gashes smoked and sizzled, cauterizing and knitting together.
He looked up at the wolf, only a few yards away. The beast squatted on its haunches, watching Blake heal. He could sense uncertainty in it, now. But it was matched by his dismay at seeing the wolf’s wounds slowly drawing together of their own accord. It could heal itself, too.
“This is gonna’ be a long night,” Blake called to it on that strange battlefield lit by the crooked beams of the sedan’s headlights. He had the feeling that this would only end when one of them was so badly injured that regenerating wouldn’t be possible. Burned to cinders or torn to pieces. The look in the wolf’s eyes told him that it had come to the same conclusion.
Round one was over and the fighters knew each other now. Round two would be to the death.
