Eat Them All: Book 3- Chapter 24 (Patreon)

++Vampires kill werewolves as a matter of course, when possible. But it often isn’t.++

Book 3: Chapter 24

Reggie was used to feeling afraid. He had, of course, spent most of his life feeling it. Most of his conscious life at least. Back when he’d been human, fear was his default setting. It’d kept him alive. Kept him intact. Fear had been sensible, because he’d been one of the weakest creatures in the world, and the world had hated him.

The world still hated him now, but at least he was powerful-ish. With that, though, came a certain relaxing of his long-honed instincts. That had led directly to being jumped by a werewolf. 

It wouldn’t happen again, he was making very sure of that.

As was the elf. She was his main advantage in that regard. Ambushing two people wasn’t just twice as hard as ambushing one, it was many times harder. Ambushing three at once would’ve been many times harder still, but required leaving the Irazhtan mostly alone in Norvhan. Reggie was settling for the elf, and making himself act on the assumption that she hadn’t suddenly gained the will to resist and flee. 

Now he was just being paranoid. Which wasn’t bad, but did demand a level of self-awareness to keep from becoming bad. Reggie felt the weight of his replacement sword, another enchanted blade taken from Norvhan’s dwindling, looted supply, and let it reassure him.

“The blood is thinning,” the elf told him.

Reggie thought back to his fight with the werewolf, and all he knew about them. “Clotting?” he asked.

“Probably more like healing. I’ve heard werewolves can regenerate. Not as fast as vampires, but far quicker than humans, or even elves.”

Lovely. So it could both regenerate its own injuries and fuck with Reggie’s ability to do the same. 

Wait. 

“That means it could’ve stopped setting a trail at any point?” he asked her.

The elf frowned at him in uncomprehension, so Reggie continued. 

“If it stopped bleeding, then doubled back, then cut itself to start the bleeding again, it could basically set false trails leading wherever it wanted.”

Her eyes went wide with shock and fear just as Reggie started turning, still transformed. Reggie’s new sword was flashing down in a wide arc with all his weight and strength behind it, the air screaming as enchanted steel cut through. He missed, his enemy melting back before the blade could meet them and overbalancing him, stumbling him forwards. The werewolf moved to exploit his opening, then hissed as the elf’s own sword slashed along its scything hand.

By the time the werewolf’s other arm came around, Reggie had adjusted his balance and brought the sword back up to guard it.

The good thing about wielding an actual weapon against a monster with talons, of course, was that it was very easy to hurt them while defending. Reggie had learned that lesson from the side of the monster, and it was satisfying to see it draw someone else’s blood for once. The werewolf screamed and stumbled back as gore shot from its lacerated wrist, not a lethal amount but definitely more than just a tickle.

It started backing away more, not just aiming to build distance but looking on the brink of retreat. Reggie darted after it with another slash that raked along its forearm and left a new cut, no deeper than the first but easily twice as long.

Apparently, that pissed the werewolf off. Apparently it really pissed the werewolf off, because it stopped even looking like retreating.

It occurred to Reggie that he may have made something of a misjudgement. Then the werewolf pounced and nothing else occurred but the sight of flashing limbs and the press to move fast and instantly. He parried and ducked, sidestepped, twisted around, always circling to hit the werewolf from where it wasn’t guarding and still too slow to possibly match it by himself. 

But he wasn’t by himself. The elf was slower than Reggie, weaker than Reggie and she was sure as shit more fragile than Reggie. Her weaker healing would be all but useless against those claws. Fortunately, she was also a lot better with a sword, and smart enough to fight pretty damned well alongside him.

Between the two of them, they were keeping the werewolf on the backfoot. 

Reggie was a vampire, his limbs were dead meat pulled by dead muscle. His lungs cycled no air and his blood was stagnant in his veins. He didn’t get tired.

The elf, though, was still living. And though her Class brought her more stamina than a normal human, and her enthrallment brought more still, that wasn’t unlimited. She was starting to slow down after a few minutes of hard fighting.

The werewolf noticed this.

It started focusing on her more than Reggie. Reggie did what he could to compensate, seizing the chance and leaving several ugly wounds on the werewolf, but his enemy was a lot smarter than a wild animal, and it seemed to know that he couldn’t put it down in the time they had. 

Reggie’s arm had been gashed by one or several of the werewolf’s claws, so he tried his blood trick and sent a squirt of ichor right up into its face to clot over the eyes. He knew hardened projectiles just wouldn’t have the punch needed to hurt this one, but a single window of opportunity? That was golden. He lunged forwards and skewered it, felt the enchanted metal sink in deep and gave it a twist for good measure. The werewolf still remained standing, struggling and squirming off the blade, but it was hurt now. Hurt bad.

It backed away, and so did the elf.

“You need a breather?” Reggie asked. 

“Give me a minute,” she heaved.

A minute wasn’t long for a human. For an elf on ichor, it was kind of ridiculous. She must’ve been pushing herself like crazy to work up so much exhaustion.

A minute was also a very long time for Reggie to spend tangled up with a werewolf, even one as hurt as this. The creature lunged as soon as the elf spoke, which pretty much confirmed to Reggie that it could understand human speech, and lashed out at him with those razor-blade claws. This time, it feinted. 

Reggie overswung and then his guts were out again. The werewolf lifted him up by the claws dug deep into his torso, scraping the spine and making his legs kick out. His arms were fine though, and as the creature’s other arm reared back to slice him in half he swung right down into it.

His aim was perfect, his timing was even better, his sheer luck in hitting an already-open wound was best of all. With the thick skin out of the way Reggie’s enchanted blade bit deep and lodged into something solid. The bone maybe, or perhaps a tendon. Either way the werewolf’s fingers went slack instantly and it screamed, flinging him free.

In his transformed state, Reggie probably weighed five hundred pounds, but you wouldn’t have known it with the sight of how far he went sprawling. The earth quivered and smashed where he thundered along it, skipping like a stone on the surface of a lake. He hit the base of a big, old tree and knocked the fucking thing right down. 

But Reggie didn’t sit there for long, already springing to his feet, he saw the werewolf lunging for the elf. Smart, then. Not just an animal overcome with rage, it knew to prioritise targets. 

But he’d known it was smart already, and he’d already prepared for this. Blood erupted from his lacerated arm and wrapped around the handle of his blade, then lashed out in a long tendril to send the enchanted edge scraping across the werewolf’s face. 

Not a good cut, but it was deep enough to cause a great deal of pain and distract the werewolf for the short seconds Reggie needed to take off with his blood flight and shoulder check them. 

The resulting impact was very much like the world’s largest bear being tackled by a small-ish cow. Speed and momentum let Reggie send his enemy onto its back, but he didn’t send it flying, nor did he hurt it much. He barely snatched his sword back up before the claws dug into both sides of his body and sank in deep into the organs below. He screamed, then rammed his weapon’s blade right into the werewolf’s open mouth when it went to bite him.

That one hurt it, hurt it like a motherfucker. Reggie felt a sickening sensation of mild resistance as the enchanted metal scraped against substances far softer than thick skin. The werewolf’s snarling turned into a repulsive gurgle as blood started to foam up from its throat. The claws dug deeper, twisting now as they slid between ribs and started prying them apart. Reggie’s own mouth was bleeding.

But the core difference, the one that was making this his fight, was that he didn’t actually need his innards.

He leaned down and drove the sword deeper.

The werewolf changed tactics fast and chucked Reggie off him, though that vicious strength seemed to be fading now and Reggie only rolled a few yards before stopping on impact with a rock. He got up fast, just in time to see the werewolf rising into a downward swing from the elf. She connected right with the tip of its snout, opening up both nostrils. Not the sort of wound that was life-threatening, but it looked painful as shit.

And it sounded more painful too, the werewolf’s howl would’ve ruptured a normal human’s eardrums.

But with the weakest enemy present an ichor-buffed elf, all it was was a sign of weakness. Oleri slashed its head again and the werewolf backed away as Reggie leapt to land behind it. It turned, lashing out with a clawed hand while Reggie melted back and slashed at the wrist. He didn’t need any more big, dramatic killshots, just weakening it with more little cuts like this would do fine. They already had the edge and now they could just slowly work on stealing the rest of the fight. 

Oleri’s sword came down to scrape along a knee. The werewolf barely turned her way before Reggie stabbed it in the back, feeling the magic metal sink a few inches in. 

It wasn’t the most sporting of fights, Reggie had to admit, but he figured he was owed a pass on underhanded tactics when his enemy weighed more than both the people it was fighting combined. The werewolf turned, tearing the sword out of itself as it did so and roaring again.

Was it quieter now? Sounded like it was losing strength, and its movements were looking pained and clumsy. Reggie got the feeling he was closing in on a victory here.

Not that he was in the best condition himself. 

Those claws really had gone deep in him, and like before they seemed to bypass his normal resistance to pain. His body didn’t produce adrenaline anymore, so it was pure will keeping Reggie moving. He had a lot of that, but not an infinite supply.

Neither did the werewolf, by the look of it. The elf was still working it over with her sword and keeping back far enough to dodge away if she needed to, while the werewolf itself was unable to focus on her fully without turning and risking another sword in the back. 

Reggie had it. The fight was his, and in just a few more minutes he could suck down the werewolf’s strength for whatever power it gave him.

But he threw his sword down instead. The elf stared at him and made a weird choking sound at the back of her throat, the werewolf stared like it didn’t believe what was happening, and Reggie just raised both his hands.

“You attacked me first,” he began. “And I don’t know why. But I’m not here to fight you. Actually, I think the two of us can help each other.”