He Who Fights and Runs Away...
Lanark, 34 miles west of Edinburgh
It had been about ten minutes since Rattus Rattus Rex disappeared down into the sewers whilst issuing dire threats and, even though it wasn’t an unpleasant aroma, Cooper was getting sick of the smell of the catnip he was drenched in and was looking forward to getting a shower.
They were heading back to base with Cassie at the wheel, driving down a tree-lined street into the setting sun, he was lying back against the headrest contemplating taking a nap when a deep voice whispered inside the car, “Darkness doth augur mine arrival,” Cooper’s staff, which was wedged diagonally across the folded-down back seat, reacted by flaring glaringly brightly.
Temporarily dazzled by the light, she slammed on the brakes, spinning the wheel, sending the car into a sideways skid across the road, stalling the engine as it juddered to a halt, smoke wafting up from the tyres.
Two cars and a van swerved around them, horns blaring loudly as she tried to start the engine again. The ignition just clicked and every warning light on the dash flickered on as all the street and house lights winked out, leaving the moon as the only source of illumination as the sun dipped below the horizon.
The last of the shoppers and shop workers had fled for the safety of their homes, or were staying put as a sense of impending doom filled them with an unnamed dread. As the moon disappeared behind heavy cloud cover the voice hissed once more, “The night maketh thee mine,”
They both leapt out of the car, Cooper struggling to pull his staff free once he was clear, “It got dark awfully fast,” he said as he held it out at head height and pivoted around slowly in a full circle, the red beam piercing the darkness like a searchlight, it fixed on something big and ugly that stood in the middle of the road in the direction they’d been travelling, “What the hell is that?” he said so low that it was almost a whisper, terror gripping his heart.
“It has to be a nuckelavee,” Cassie said, her voice trembling with fear, “watch him, he’s a parasite who leeches on magick.”
Red wasn’t the best colour to show details and all they could see was something like a horse, but with only one eye in the centre of its face. The naked, limbless torso of a man was growing out of the back like a rider, writhing as his face contorted in constant pain.
But it was the horse’s head that spoke, “Warlock, I shalt delivereth thee alive into Morrigan’s thraldom or thine head to her upon a spike, chooseth thine fate.”
“Let me get right back to you on that,” Cooper said, swinging the staff down until it was horizontal and yelling, “Scort! Scort! Scort!”
Three bullet-sized balls of red light hit the creature, changing to green and illuminating him completely, giving them a good look at him for the first time.
He was a little bigger than a normal stallion, with large fins growing out of the side of his knees. He didn’t have any skin, or male genitalia, just pale pink flesh.
They could see his tendons and muscles working as a rotting, distorted heart pumped black blood through yellow veins. Two, hairy, man’s arms hung down from his chest below where the rider squirmed in silent agony.
The light faded away harmlessly, leaving the complete darkness of night to envelope them once more. The creature leaned his head back, puckered his lips and, with a whispered puff of breath, used the stolen magick to blow the clouds away, illuminating the scene by moonlight.
“Ah, there thou art, warlock, I wast told that thou art the most powerful of thine kind; hath standards slipped so low that thine piteous powers art what passeth for spell-casting in these wretched times?” the nuckelavee said, snorting like a horse.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Cooper said, swivelling his staff upright, and slamming it down with a cry of, “Taiceil!”
A gale force wind of solid air boiled up between them from out of nowhere and hit the creature like an invisible battering ram, pushing him back, several feet, his hooves digging into the tarmac, before it spent its fury, leaving him not just unhurt but looking even stronger.
The nuckelavee reared up on his hind legs and held a hand out, causing an unseen force to rip the staff out of Cooper’s grasp. Catching it, he swivelled it to point inwards and said, “Scort!” six times as green beams played harmlessly over his body.
“What thou needs must grasp, warlock,” he sneered, “is that, though I hath not the magick in mine blood, I canst useth thine own against thee, and for every moment thou hast had thine powers I hast had mine for a hundred thousand more,” he said, lobbing the staff over his shoulder, clattering it to the ground behind him.
Cooper grabbed Cassie by the collar and pulled her after him as he sprinted away. He knew that he couldn’t outrun a horse, but with her behind him he didn’t have to.
As he raced past their car, he could hear her laboured breathing fading away as he gained ground on her, then she let out a terrified scream. After a moment’s silence the creature spoke, “Warlock!” Its voice boomed out, “This mortal hath not the magick in her blood and meaneth naught to me. If thou wouldst rescue her, then cometh unto me and taketh her place.”
He skidded to a halt, closed his eyes and grimaced before turning around to jog casually back the way he came. The nuckelavee was standing on his hind legs, holding her tightly in his arms.
“Keep her!” he shouted, “She’ll tell you that I always look after number one, isn’t that right, Cassie?”
He waited a few seconds before continuing, stopping when he was close enough to talk at a comfortable level, “You’re going to kill her anyway, and if I get away and destroy that psycho goddess chick she won’t have died for nothing.”
“Thou hadst not a fraction of the power thou needeth to overcome Morrigan, nor the fortitude to abandon thine woman to her fate,” even though she was terrified and being squeezed tight she still managed to look indignant at being called his woman.
“Please, you’re talking to a man who left his own parents to die in Edinburgh without a second’s thought. Go ahead, kill her, so I can get on with the rest of my day.”
“Then cometh closer and improveth thine view as I gut her.”
“Okay, but before I do, tell me why you caught her in the first place.”
“Because she is beloved to thee.”
“Actually, she’s just my adviser,” he smiled.
“I’m your boss,” Cassie gasped as she struggled futilely to break free.
“Nope, you’re definitely not,” he said without taking his eyes off the nuckelavee. “Anyway, here’s the thing: if she doesn’t matter to you why did you stop chasing me once you caught her? I thought killing her would only slow you down, unless… those shark-sized fins of yours,” he said, pointing to the creature’s knees, “which I’m sure are just super-duper in the water, make you as aerodynamic as a brick on dry land, and you couldn’t catch me,” he said, sticking his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he started walking again.
“Thou art a wastrel who squandereth time; come unto me and she shalt have a painless passing.”
“You’re immortal, aren’t you, so what’s the hurry?” he said, stalling until he was only a few feet away, then he pulled a handful of pebbles out of his pocket and flung them into the big, unprotected eye.
The nuckelavee instinctively lifted his hands to shield his face, dropping Cassie, “Run!” he shouted as he jumped back out of range.
She started sprinting towards the car, until he screamed, “No, up a tree!” then she made a sharp, right turn, hurdled a low, stone wall and scaled a large oak with surprising speed, stopping to sit on a branch and look down from thirty feet up.
The creature jumped the wall with ease but got there too late to catch her. He reared up but couldn’t get anywhere nearly close enough.
“Oops,” Cooper, who’d followed him, said, “don’t tell me you’re not one of those tree-climbing breeds of horses.”
“Thou thinkest thyself sharp of wit, warlock, but, even though this oak is ancient and mighty, I canst still shake it with all of mine might until she falleth into mine jaws.”
“True, but not without taking that one, extremely creepy, eye off of me,” he said with quiet menace.
“What became of thine, ‘each unto thine own’ way of doing?” The creature said scornfully.
“I’m glad you asked, Nuckie, you don’t mind if I call you Nuckie, do you?” he said, the expression on the nuckelavee’s face showing that he definitely did mind. “To be honest (a phrase you won’t hear me use very often) I need to keep an emotional distance for that to work, so I don’t see them as real people. Usually I only know their nicknames or first names, but when you caught her, I realised that I’d spent too much time in her company to make that possible anymore. I don’t deny that she talks too much, has a depressingly strong belief in the goodness of humanity, and a sense of morality that’s going to get me killed one day, but I still can’t let you kill her.”
As he spoke he was circling around to get nearer to the tree, forcing the creature to turn his back to the deserted road to keep him in sight. The nuckelavee watched Cooper stagger, as he felt a momentary weakness, before he righted himself.
“Thou canst feeleth it, canst thou not, Warlock? Mine power suckling upon thine, drawing thine magick unto me, weakening thee as long as thou art nearby. Thou no longer hast the strength to run, soon thou must chooseth to surrender thine will unto mine, or perisheth with thine woman.
Cooper staggered again, as his strength drained slowly away, suddenly he could feel the stinging pain from his thigh, where Rattus had sliced through the flesh, along with a dozen cuts and grazes all over his body as exhaustion filled him with a desperate desire to sleep.
“Understandeth me well, Warlock, I hath bestrode this mortal realm since thine ridge-browed ancestors dwelt in caves. I hath destroyed witches and warlocks who hadst far mightier magick than thou couldst even imagine. I knoweth each and every spell that thou canst pluck from the air. There is no incantation that I canst not overcome, no conjuring I canst not defeat. Thou hast no hope of vanquishing me.”
“There’s always hope, even when falling from six thousand feet up without a parachute,” he said, slumping onto his knees, fighting the desire to just lie down and sleep.
“I knoweth not what kind of flying beast this ‘parachute’ be, but it is not here to saveth thee now,” the creature sneered, “how shalt thou triumph over me without it? What phrase wilt thou pulleth from the air to destroyeth me? What word canst thee utter to slayeth me?”
“Glock,” he said, pulling his gun out of his belt holster, gripping it two-handedly, and emptying it into the nuckelavee. Suddenly, he felt the magic flooding back into his body, like someone had turned on a tap.
He stood up and slapped a new magazine into place as the creature swayed, uncomprehending eyes staring down in disbelief at the black blood welling up in the fifteen tightly clustered bullet holes in his chest.
Cooper holstered his weapon, held his right arm straight, palm out, towards the nuckelavee, like he was signalling him to halt, and yelled, “Fusada!”
Runes flared in the road a moment before the staff hit the creature in the back as it broke the sound barrier, the sonic boom shattering the windows of the nearby houses. It burst out of the demon’s chest without even slowing down, leaving a gaping hole. Although it had been hot enough to cauterise the wound, when it dropped into his hand, it was barely warm to his touch.
The creature toppled slowly forward onto his face, before the weight of the rider on his back flipped him over onto his side. Cooper walked over and studied the body intently, his staff glowing faintly in readiness, but there was no life left in the eyes of the nuckelavee or the rider as blood that looked like oil seeped into the grass.
Cassie climbed down from the tree with ease and ran over to him as the lights all came back on, “I knew you wouldn’t leave me to die, I just knew it!” She said, hugging him as he stood bolt upright with his hands by his side, “Get off me! Pack it in! Everyone’s entitled to an off day!”
When they got back to the car, the warning lights had all gone out, and it started easily. He fitted his staff back in and checked the chemistry sets were still undamaged before climbing into the front passenger seat. He scowled at the broad grin on her face, “Don’t tell anybody what happened here, I don’t want people to start mistaking me for someone helpful,” he said as they drove off.