Chapter 14 Kursk #2
I charge, spear in hand. The Spiritslayer hums like it’s been waiting for this, the green Khallumite tip glowing like a sun trapped in crystal. The sound of the crowd fades. All I hear is the music, my breath, and the wet snarl of the Vorfaluka as it meets me halfway.
We clash like titans.
It slashes. I parry. Sparks fly.
The beast’s skin is molting mid-fight, sloughing off like wet bandages, revealing tendons shot through with black fire. Its top head screeches ancient curses while the bottom mutters frantic gibberish. Both hate me.
Good.
I slam the butt of my spear into its chest and twist. The beast screeches and flails, stumbling back—but not down. Not yet. The music pulses louder, pushing it. Weakening it.
“KEEP THE MUSIC GOING!” I roar over my shoulder.
Olivia’s already working the AV board like it’s a weapon. Her fingers fly across dials and sliders, face tight with focus. Sweat glistens at her temples. She’s not just scared—she’s furious. And brave.
Booger appears beside her, dragging a propane tank.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yells.
“Improvising!”
He tosses her a lighter and starts dousing the perimeter of the dance floor with a trail of gasoline, looping it in a wide circle around the creature. Burnout appears behind him with two more tanks and a look on his face that says this is either gonna work or kill us all.
“You two are clinically insane,” Olivia mutters, but she takes the lighter.
I dodge a swipe from the Vorfaluka and land a blow to its shoulder. The Khallumite bites deep, sizzling. The thing screeches and backhands me across the chest. Pain explodes through my ribs, but I roll with it.
The music screams louder. A double bass drum kicks in.
The fire ignites.
A ring of flame bursts into life around the dance floor, cutting the creature off from the fleeing crowd. The flickering blaze casts everything in infernal gold. The Vorfaluka shudders, shadows twisting around its feet like it means to vanish—but it can’t.
Not with the sound. Not with the fire.
It’s trapped.
I rise from the dirt, bloody, grinning.
“You’re mine now, monster.”
The Vorfaluka lunges.
I meet it head-on.
I stab forward again, the Spiritslayer flashing green fire in the night, and this time the Vorfaluka bleeds. Not normal blood—this is something else. Thick, black, and glittering with rot. It hits the dirt and hisses like acid.
It stumbles. Just for a breath.
I smell it then—fear. Real fear, like rusted steel and old fire. The beast is weakening. The music, the fire, the fury—it’s all working. I can feel it start to turn.
One more blow.
“YOU STOLE IT!”
The shout comes from behind me, jagged and echoing with madness.
I spin, and the stench hits me first—sweat, rot, something chemical underneath, like burning plastic and old meat left in a sunlit trunk.
Then I see him.
Calvin Hobbes.
Or what’s left of him.
His suit hangs on him like a corpse’s borrowed skin.
His tie is askew. One shoe is gone. His hands twitch at his sides like they’ve forgotten how to be human.
Veins glow a sickly green beneath translucent skin, pulsing like they're filled with liquid poison.
His eyes blaze—not metaphorically. Literally. They shine with unholy emerald fire.
“The Spear!” he shrieks, eyes locking on mine. “It was mine! It chose me!”
My grip tightens on the Spiritslayer. “You touched it,” I growl. “You let it inside you.”
Calvin laughs, a high, broken sound. “It wanted me. The power wanted me! And you—you—you were just the delivery boy!”
He hurls himself at me.
The moment he moves, the Vorfaluka moves too.
It feels the shift. Seizes it.
I see it through the smoke—both heads snapping toward the break in rhythm. The ring of fire flickers as Calvin barrels through it, and the Vorfaluka’s malformed feet slip into the gap before the blaze can catch hold again.
“NO!” Olivia screams.
The Vorfaluka dives into the shadows beyond the tents and vanishes.
Gone.
The ring closes, but it’s too late.
My roar shakes the sky.
“You fool!”
Calvin hits me like a drunk freight train—more flail than strike—but his hands burn. Wherever he touches, my skin sizzles. The taint of the Vorfaluka pulses through him like battery acid in a flesh pouch.
He claws at the spear.
I slam my forehead into his nose. Bone crunches. He staggers, snarling, but doesn’t fall.
“I was gonna change this town,” he spits, blood and bile dripping from his lips. “Gonna make it clean. Efficient. I saw the plans—the monster showed me!”
“You’re infected,” I growl, raising the spear.
“No. I’m chosen.”
I drive the butt of the weapon into his gut.
Hard.
He flies backward, skidding through the dirt. The crowd gasps. People scatter even faster, screams mixing with the fading music. The ring of fire collapses into flickers. Chaos reigns.
“Calvin!” Olivia’s voice slices through the madness, shrill with betrayal. “You helped it?”
He’s coughing, laughing, coughing again. “You never understood vision, Olivia. You wanted a dusty library and moldy paper. I wanted—more.”
“You got monstrous,” she snaps. “And now it’s in you.”
I step forward.
She grabs my arm. “Don’t kill him.”
I snarl. “He cost us the beast.”
“I know—but if we kill him, we’ll never know what it told him. He’s tainted, but he’s still… something.”
I pause. Just long enough.
Calvin scuttles backward on broken limbs and bile-slick hands. Then he’s on his feet, staggering, disappearing into the night like the coward he’s always been.
Gone.
“Shit!” Olivia yells.
Then I drop to one knee.
Pain erupts in my side like molten steel lanced through muscle. I press a hand to my ribs. Blood. Hot, thick, sticky. It oozes between my fingers.
Olivia’s eyes go wide. “Kursk—no no no—”
“I’ve had worse,” I mutter. “I think.”
Footsteps thunder.
Then Peggy Sue appears, armed with nothing but a two-foot maglite and a purse that probably weighs as much as my spear. She skids to a halt, eyes bouncing between Olivia, the fire-scorched field, and me.
“Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” she breathes. “You guys weren’t kidding.”
Booger runs up behind her. “That was so metal.”
Olivia ignores them. She drops beside me, grabbing my wrist. “We have to get you out of here.”
“Agreed,” I rasp.
“Kursk—you’re bleeding bad.”
I meet her gaze. “Not enough to stop.”
“That was the second time you’ve said that,” she snaps.
Peggy snorts. “You people fight like it’s prom night in Hell. Come on. My Jeep’s out back.”
Olivia hauls me up. Pain screams through my side, but I grit my teeth and move. The world blurs, tilts, but I stay upright. For her.
Behind us, the festival ground burns low, firelight casting strange shapes across the grass and booths. The music’s dead. The town is shattered.
The creature is free again.
Stronger now.
I don’t know if I can stop it next time.