They were coming out to me.
None of Topher’s socks would fit and anyway, he didn’t seem to have any clean ones left in his backpack, which is not to say that clean ones were required, only that they were preferable, since I wasn’t dexterous enough in gloves to complete my task, necessitating bare-fingered handling. But Zadie’s socks — particularly her wicking Rayon underlayer — were so just right, Goldilocks herself would’ve approved.
So I soaked one of them in Early Times and stuffed it into the bottle’s neck to serve as a wick. Then I lit it with the Bic these three morons used predominantly to spark up bowls of weed, and I chucked it at the imaginary viewscreen cabin. It sailed in a lazy arc through the air, and I watched it bare-eyed as it flared against the velvet dark.
And then halted in midair, crashing into nothing.
Not nothing in the viewfinder, mind. On the viewfinder, the white-hot Molotov sun failed to complete its arching descent on account of the ghost-green cabin in its way.
I’ll tell you what: I may not have been able to see the cabin with my — er, Nicholas’s — naked eye, but when that bottle burst, I could damn sure see the flames. In that thin, dry air, that wood went up like so much paper, and suddenly, the house-shaped nothing blazed orange-white. The heat of it warmed my cheeks. The light forced me to squint. The sound as it caught was like a rush of water, a sudden wind. And yet still, the protective juju held, so that the something looked like nothing, even as it burned. It looked like a house made of fire itself. And I stood outside it, waiting, Topher’s buck knife in my hand.
I had no idea how many of them lived here. How many were inside. Ada claimed that there was more than one, which represented the alpha and the omega of my intel. Could be two, or three, or five. Could be zero, I supposed. No saying they stuck around once Ada bailed. But I was guessing they hadn’t. Looking back through a hundred years of local newspapers, the nearby municipalities had seen their share of missing children. I was betting the Brethren had stuck around.
What I hadn’t counted on was them being as hard to see as the house that they called home.
I should’ve. Ada couldn’t describe them, after all. But somehow, I hadn’t considered the greater implications of that fact. Hadn’t squared it with the cabin that wasn’t there. Hadn’t thought one lick about how it affected my approach, until the first of them was on me.
I didn’t realize what I was looking at, at first. When I saw its flaming form burst through the crosshatched windowpane with a snap of wood and a tinkle of glass, I could see it fine, or so I thought. Then it hit the ground and rolled in the chill night air, extinguishing the fire that engulfed it, and before my eyes, it seemed to disappear. Only then did I realize my mistake.
I hadn’t seen the beast itself; I’d seen the flames. Like the house I couldn’t see beneath the flames I saw just fine. Problem was, the house wasn’t capable of putting itself out, nor of going anywhere. The big scary whatever that just leapt out of it, on the other hand, was. Lord knew what kind of big and scary it was. I heard it huff and puff somewhere in the flame-split black as if catching its breath. It neither wailed in pain, nor cried in anger. Just breathed audibly, and rustled as it moved. And, if I’m not mistaken, stalked, circling my position as if attempting to discern its best angle of attack. On occasion I thought I caught a glint of starlit silver fur in my peripheral vision, which vanished whenever I wheeled toward it. I couldn’t help but think that if the moon were high and full, by its light I’d see the creature fine. But I had no moonlight to rely on.
What I did have was the camera.
I held it like a talisman before me, swung it to and fro to no avail. There was simply nothing out there for me to see. My heart sank. My pulse raced. And then, as I gave up…
There it was, a lanky, matted, vulpine thing, naked or nearly so. It was half-hidden by the skeletal trunks of trees still bare from winter. Sucking wind as it sat on its haunches, waiting to strike. Unconcerned to see me facing it, because it was so very certain whatever enchantment kept it hidden from prying eyes remained undisturbed. Unaware it had been bested by technology.
I tightened my grip around Topher’s buck knife and advanced upon it, all casual and halting, like it was sheer fucking coincidence I’d decided to strike out into the night straight toward it. I kept the greenish blob of it in the center of my viewfinder at all times, to ensure the fucker couldn’t slink off while I played coy.
But it didn’t slink off. It didn’t even move. And why would it? I was playing right into its hands. I could damn near hear it smacking its lips as I approached, as if it couldn’t believe its luck. I pictured the looks of sheer surprise on the faces of Magnusson and the border creature when I ripped their Godforsaken souls from their inhuman, undead chests, and thought to myself that this was just the first in a list of things this fucker was gonna have trouble believing.
That’s when the second window exploded. Before I knew what hit me, another creature was atop me, and I was surrounded by the pop and smack of searing flesh and snapping jaws. My camera sailed into the night. My clothes singed as the flames that scorched the creature bald leapt from it to me.
But damn if I didn’t hold onto that buck knife.
I rolled over beneath this second beast, the movement a struggle. Whiskey fumes bit at the soft tissues of my eyes and throat, harsh and sharp and explaining why this one still flamed, when its sibling so quickly doused. It grabbed my wrists, and my jacket ignited. A reek like curling irons and bacon filled the air. I screamed as Nicholas-not-Nicky’s nylon shell melted, and his exposed skin blistered and peeled.
The creature was no better off than I — writhing in agony as it burned, but determined to take me out with it. The air between us seemed to waver like a mirage, like shimmering heat-lines rising off of desert blacktop, and through the distortion I caught a glimpse of amber eyeshine, of ropy limbs dusted with filthy gray-brown fur, curling black in advance of the orange sparks of flame that tore through it as the fire spread. Of a face once human warped by its feral ways into something snout-like, pointed at ear and nose and chin like some kind of devil dog — or perhaps a wolf.
The wolf-thing snapped at my throat with slavering jaws, and teeth three inches long. If they’d found their mark, poor Nicholas would’ve gone bye-bye. But they didn’t, because in that moment, I kicked with all I had, and used the creature’s momentum to backward somersault out from under its grasp. I tried to push my free hand into its chest to grasp its soul as I would a human mark. I’d not been close enough to the others to try, but it turns out, it was no use. The creature’s body was strong, unyielding, and my attempt was unsuccessful.
Fine, then. Plan B. Which in this case meant that mid-roll, I drove Topher’s buck knife into its chest.
Unlike Magnusson and Jain, when I plunged the blade in, nothing happened. No piteous wail, no big, dramatic death scene. Instead, I just wound up with a pissed-off wolf man who had my only weapon buried hilt-deep in its chest. Not too helpful, that.
That’s when I realized my mistake. “Simple conductance”, Lilith had said of the replica skim blade, gold-plated from tip to tail. “Nothing more”. Apparently nothing less, either. Because the rebar — also metal from one end to the other — worked just fine. But Topher’s carbon steel knife with a textured plastic grip was a no-go. And of course it was. The instrument was useless unless the soul presented itself to be destroyed, and for that, it needed to be coaxed out by a Collector.