Competition: Nameless Supplement - Gun Crows #11

The soul-dredged screams, ripped to a barely human pitch, punctuated by occasional hellish growls and the sounds of ripping meat and snapping bones, went on for perhaps thirty seconds.

When it all quietened down Harland took a look around the corner of his covert.

What he saw was like a vision of what one street in Hell, or one corner of an infernal forest, might look like. Men torn asunder into steaming, gory chunks and offal, carcasses being stripped of meat and most identifying features. You would not know how many individuals had died there now in that uniformity of slaughter. And in the midst of this abattoir turf, at unholy banquet; on all fours, squatting amidst annihilation or lying on their bellies, six beastly forms, all well mired in gore and fresh meat, chewing, nuzzling, licking, growling, wolfing down gobbets of their kill. One was rummaging with a clawed paw-hand in a stomach sack as if it were a lucky dip. Another had its head and shoulders buried and busy in a gaping, ruddy torso. But what accentuated the horror of them was the human aspect inherent in each.

Harland moved back out of sight into the bullet abused doorway. He smiled still, but he also trembled, for he feared these changeling ones too.

Their hairless faces, beautiful. Pointed eared, grey skinned, muzzled and be fanged angels. They were more like demon imbued French sphinxes. With big, dark, moist eyes, one had looked at him, stopping its chewing briefly, squatted there inside a wrenched wide carcass, looked with simple, unconcerned curiosity.

God how he loved them. Yet, always would he be apart from them. Though they always answered his call, they were, to his mind, too dangerous and unpredictable a quantity.

Since his first Call at twelve years old, he had kept his distance, looked, and been watched, but never, ever, did he approach them.

Some 'Callers' could bring in several different tribes. There were coyote, cougar, mountain lion, leopard folk. An Indian Shaman had once offered to teach him the Calls of other breeds but he'd never pursued it.

He had only ever been able to Call wolves.

After a while he simply stepped out, intent on leaving the alley by the unmarred, unoccupied end. He would step quietly and calml-

A single shot rang out.

Harland seemed to have felt the impact, like an abrupt hand push in the chest, just before hearing that shot.

A man ran away from the alley mouth up there. Two forms streaked silently after him on all fours. He would soon be dragged back into the alley and fully dealt with.

He coughed once, and tasted blood.

He tried to breathe deeply, and found it painful.

He stumbled back on his heels and struck a clapboard wall.

He heard a wolf whine.

He felt the vitality draining out of him. A ringing in his ears?

He slid down the wall, feeling every board ripple up his back.

Heck, it really did flash before your eyes, he thought, as memories of his existence unrolled before him. . .

He sat there in the dirt and bled.

Nearing the end he thought that all he could see was the face of the moon.

Then, a she-wolf's face intruded on that. Full wolf again, muzzle close to his own face, she sniffed at his blood, whined softly, licked at his cheek and throat, giving him the strong scent and the vivid marks of their enemies' deaths. Her teeth nuzzled at his neck, paused.

He gargle-gasped his final word. "No."

Offer denied she stepped back and simply watched him with her passive animal face and human eyes.

He did not want that gift. And, yes, he knew it was from fear that he revoked it.

He quietly damned all the times in his life that fear had triumphed.

He once more mourned for all the opportunities wasted, all the wonders denied. All those times he'd tried so hard to reach a goal, and come up short.

The she-wolf sat, cocked a head at him. Some others, bloody muzzled and crimson flecked, joined her.

He knew, now, in certainty, that they would not harm him. That they never would have.

He so desperately wanted to raise a hand, to touch -

Not ten seconds later a massed howling rose up from the town in unity from six wolfen throats.

Big C men kept clear of the source area of that ululant chorus.

And many of those ranged against the Big C killers paused, for they knew what the eerie, mournful sound meant.

A Crow had fallen.



http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=tYN_zirnk70&feature=related