Blood & Fur

Chapter Sixty-Two: Skin & Bones

Chapter Sixty-Two: Skin & Bones

The hour of grace had long passed and the hunters’ horns resonated across the land.

Our gracious headstart had already come to an end by the time Chikal, Nenetl, Itzili, and I wandered deeper into the forest. While Eztli took Astrid downstream to the west, where she would hopefully fly the poor girl to safety, we walked to the east amidst the trees. The smell of my blood would inevitably lead Nightkin trackers to us, but the foliage, canopy, and Chikal’s measures to obscure our tracks should shield us from detection for some time.

I hoped it would prove long enough for Astrid to flee to safety; if such a thing existed in Yohuachanca.

Our group walked at a steady pace, even Nenetl. Her endurance took me by surprise. Either awakening her wolf-totem increased her physical abilities or she possessed previously undiscovered wells of resolve.

My own armor proved surprisingly light too. I would have expected these thick layers of scales and cotton to weigh on me, but it naturally clung to me like a second skin. I felt more vigorous than ever.

Perhaps a bit too much.

“You said that the Nightkin track their prey by their blood’s smell,” I said upon recalling Chikal’s words. A dreadful thought had suddenly occurred to me. “This armor is drenched in it.”

“The Nightlord lent it to you so she could track us down more easily,” Chikal replied as she bound her obsidian dagger to a thick branch with her sash and crafted a makeshift spear. “All vampire gifts are poisoned.”

“M-Maybe it will help you in battle, Iztac,” Nenetl said in a vain attempt to cheer us up. “No emperor has known defeat while wearing the scarlet Tlahuiztli.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve bested his predecessor in battle before.” Chikal snorted, her scornful eyes briefly lingering on my armor. “But the vampires did boil its scales in the blood of my best warriors to gain their strength, so who knows? Their spirits might lend us their help.”

Chikal uttered these words as a grim quip, but she might have stumbled onto something. Generations of emperors dipped the scarlet Tlahuiztli in the blood of their enemies after each successful campaign to acquire the fallen’s strength... and I had seen so many ceremonial charades take a life of their own lately.

I swept a small stone off the ground from under a tree’s shadow and pressed it within my palm.

My fingers crushed it to dust, albeit with some effort.

Nenetl gasped in joy, and Chikal’s spooked expression told me that my predecessor never showcased any such power.

Iztacoatl wouldn’t have allowed me to wear this armor if she knew either, so this must be a first. Whether I had to thank the First Emperor or my citizens’ growing belief in my own divine purpose for this blessing, I counted myself lucky. This strength will serve me well.

Would it be enough to crush Iztacoatl’s skull if she dared to confront me? I doubted it, but the irony would be so sweet.

Itzili’s hissing drew me out of my violent fantasies. My feathered tyrant snapped his jaw at the shadow behind us, his tail straighter than an arrow. He had grown more and more agitated the deeper we ventured into the rainforest’s heart, where a tangled canopy blotted out the moon and parasitic plants fearful of the sun blossomed among tall grasses.

Our stalker was growing bolder.

“Something has been following us for a while,” I warned my consorts. Neither of them appeared surprised, though only Nenetl showed any anxiousness. They must have guessed the truth from Itzili’s agitation. “One of Iztacoatl’s dogs, no doubt.”

I should have expected her to cheat. That coward said that she would send her thralls to hunt us down after one hour, but she said nothing about having one of them harmlessly stalking us to pinpoint our location.

Chikal scowled. “I do not think Iztacoatl sent that thing.”

I frowned in surprise, but Nenetl reacted quicker.

“That thing?” she asked Chikal, suddenly uneasy.

“It moves too quietly for a human and a Nightkin would have used flight,” Chikal replied with no hint of fear or concern. Her composure never failed to astonish me. “It has been stalking us since we split up with the others. It would have followed Eztli and Astrid if it hunted on the Nightlord’s behalf.”

She had a point. It would have been child’s play for a spy to notice Astrid’s absence in our group upon taking a closer look at us retreating into the forest. Our stalker instead ignored her and failed to attack us once the headstart hour had passed.

From Itzili’s reaction, I assumed that our pursuer was none other than whatever creature impersonated Cipetl. Iztacoatl did seem genuinely confused when I mentioned her. I assumed she had been trying to mess with my mind, but on the off-chance she was indeed clueless about this particular matter, then this hunt now involved a third party.

The woman I’d met earlier was definitely an impostor of some kind instead of the real Cipetl. What other creature could mimic a human so perfectly?

The answer hit me like a lightning bolt.

Betrayal with the face of a friend. I assumed it could have been referring to one of Itzacoatl’s tricks or Eztli’s treatment of her mother, but now I began to wonder about the wording. Who sent it then? It couldn’t have anticipated my visit to Acampa nor learned about Cipetl’s importance without local support.

I quickly deduced the two most likely culprits; the Three-Rivers Federation, which the First Emperor’s bats blighted after the New Fire Ceremony and whom Iztacoatl threatened with an undead plague if they didn’t surrender to me; or Inkarri, who had already sent a magical monster after me in my sleep. Both had the means and motive to hire an assassin.

Itzili’s presence kept it from attacking so far, but it would likely seize its chance to strike at the first opportunity; one which the hunters would likely provide.

We heard a hunter’s horn a bit too close to our liking. Chikal knelt and applied her ear to the ground.

“Trihorns, coming from the west,” she said. “Four, maybe five.”

Iztacoatl pressed her thumb on the scale to favor her hunters. I didn’t fear human cultists and would relish killing them, but they wouldn’t have been able to chase us so far without a tracker.

“There are Nightkin above us,” I said. “The canopy blocks their sight.”

“Not for long,” Chikal warned before presenting me with her makeshift spear. “Will you do me the honor, Iztac?”

Did she even need to ask? I offered her my palm and let her cut it thinly. The weapon’s obsidian point glowed with bright flames that illuminated the dark.

A Nightkin descended upon us in an instant, screeching as it crashed through the branches and heavy foliage.

As the monster breached through the canopy with its jet-black wings and fearsome claws, it suddenly occurred to me that it was my first time fighting vampires in direct battle. These beasts could prove frighteningly stealthy when they wanted, with speed and ferocity surpassing that of any mortal creature. I’d faced worse foes in the Underworld, but I couldn’t lower my guard either.

Especially since I couldn’t afford to use magic.

The terrain thankfully didn’t favor the monster. Vines and vegetation slowed its progress, which allowed Chikal to throw her blazing spear at its throat. She trusted a Nightkin’s instincts to force it to immediately attack the moment it smelled my fresh blood and thus leave itself open for a counterattack.

The blazing tip of the spear gored through the monster’s neck like an obsidian knife through the softest of flesh. The Nightkin’s battle cry turned into a gargle as its neck erupted in a shower of blood and flames, much to Nenetl’s horror. Her scream echoed across the woods as the corpse fell at her feet, its head rolling out into the grass.

I marveled at the strength required to decapitate a creature that large with a thrown spear, even with my burning blood boiling their vampiric flesh. I knew Chikal had only shown me a fraction of her warrior skills during our training, and I had now seen a glimpse of her true might.

My gaze briefly lingered on the Nightkin’s corpse. I watched the bat shrink into the form of a beautiful young man. Wrinkles began to cover his lustrous pale skin, and his black hair turned milky white soon after. Centuries caught up to that dead spawn of the night in the span of seconds, until his flesh and bones returned to the dust from which we all came.

“So long...” Chikal muttered to herself, a cruel smile spreading on her lips. The bloodlust dwelling in her heart answered victory’s call. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long!”

I would have shared her joy once, before I learned the Nightkin’s true nature. That monster used to be the misbegotten son of an emperor and a concubine, both of them slaves to cruel masters. He too had been a Nightlord’s victim.

My own son would fly in his place if I failed.

I felt no sorrow for the creature, since it tried to kill me and my loved ones... but I hoped that my burning blood and death’s kiss freed his tormented soul from the vampiric curse.

Chikal recovered her spear while Nenetl kept her hands over her face in horror. Itzili roared loud enough to wake the dead. A second Nightkin descended upon us from above, while I heard the footsteps of hunters closing in on us. The foliage, the darkness, and the shadow of the trees obscured almost everything, but I could see strangely well through my bat mask. The night held no secrets from the First Emperor’s gaze.

Arrows surged from among the trees. Most of them missed due to the rainforest reducing visibility, but a few aimed straight for Itzili. My reflexes kicked in and I leaped in the projectiles’ way. They swiftly bounced off my armor’s scales or shattered on impact.

Quite the precise shot, I noted grimly. Few hunters could aim so well in a thick forest in complete darkness. It couldn’t be mere experience alone guiding their bows. If Iztacoatl can change someone’s appearance with her magic, she could easily sharpen her servants’ senses.

I should expect anything from that cheater.

The second Nightkin chose to target Chikal and proved too quick for her to intercept mid-flight. Realizing how the canopy limited its movements, the creature swiftly transformed into a muscled, naked bald man with elongated claws sharper than spears and a lipless mouth of fangs. The vampire landed on the ground with a loud thump and immediately lunged at Chikal.

My consort dodged the attack with a panther’s grace and struck back, her spear skewering the Nightkin’s shoulder and narrowly missing the vampire’s head. He shrieked in fury as my flames melted away his flesh, but quickly retaliated by attempting to grab the shaft with one hand. Chikal swiftly pulled back before he could succeed.

The transformation was immediate. A layer of fur grew over her pale skin, her nails turned into claws and her gentle visage twisted into a snarling wolf’s face. The bear hardly had time to react before Nenetl pounded him with all her might. The two shapeshifters brawled in the grass while Itzili crawled away.

The Nightkin tightened his grip on my throat and forced me to look at him.

“I asked you a question!” the Nightkin snarled at me. The source of his fury confounded me. I’d learned to recognize hatred and rage well enough, but this vampire’s anger swelled from a different source; something purer and familiar.

Concern.

The Nightkin’s identity finally dawned on me. His hair, the runes on his skin, his exotic accent... The chaos of battle and the veil of bloodlust clouded my mind to the truth before, but I finally recognized the familial resemblance with Ingrid.

A smile stretched on my lips. “Do you hope to save your sister yourself, Fjor?”

The sound of his own name shook the Nightkin more than a blow to the face. “How do you know my—”

His hold loosened slightly. Not much, but enough.

I wrenched my arm free and punched him in the chest. The blow would have killed a normal man, yet it hardly shook Fjor off me. I raised my obsidian club for a counterattack. Fjor instinctively raised his arms to protect his neck from a killing blow, as I expected him to.

I lowered my blazing bladed club and sliced off his legs.

My blood melted his knees and muscles enough for the obsidian to cut through them. My own inhuman strength did the rest. I cleanly severed his legs and caused him to collapse at my feet.

Fjor began to transform back into his bat form, with wings springing out of his arms. He probably expected to heal from his injuries in an instant, but my blood carried the radiance of sunlight itself. His cauterized knees wouldn’t let him grow new legs anytime soon.

“You didn’t have the courage to stand up for her when she needed you the most, coward,” I taunted him with all of my scorn. “It is only now, on the precipice of her death, that you find any resolve within yourself?”

The Nightkin, now more bat than man, widened his wings to take flight. I cut off his left one before he could even flap. He pathetically tried to grab my leg with his last arm, powering through the pain, but I easily kicked him in the chest as if he were a dying animal.

It would have been easy to finish him off. One swing and his head would roll on the grass at my feet. It would have freed the lost prince’s soul from the vampiric curse and spared his sisters further heartbreak.

Yet I stayed my hand.

I recognized the look he’d sent me when slamming me against a tree: the same worry that fueled Ingrid when she begged Iztacoatl to spare her sibling. Eztli’s transformation didn’t strip her of her affection. She never stopped loving her parents, no matter how much Yoloxochitl attempted to ruin their relationship. Fjor retained that bond with his sisters, enough that he wished to protect one from his own mistress.

Fjor was trying to save Astrid.

He hoped to get to her first so he could protect her. So great was his devotion that he was willing to fight Yohuachanca’s own Emperor and Godspeaker; one of the few beyond his grasp as a Nightkin. I would have admired his resolve if he had dared to stand up to Iztacoatl when he had the chance, or perhaps he thought he would have a better chance of saving Astrid if he hid his goals from his mistress.

In any case, I decided to spare him; for an audacious plot had crossed my mind, daring in its strategy and cruel in its execution. A grand plot of the highest irony that could yield such incredible results.

I knew it the moment I identified Fjor and his reasons for fighting.

I knew how I would kill Iztacoatl.

It would require Astrid and her brother to survive the night and significant preparations, but all the pieces I required had fallen onto my lap. The Nightlord’s cruelty inadvertently gave me the tools of her own demise.

That would wait for later however. Nenetl’s howls were turning into whines.

Leaving the beaten Fjor behind, I rushed to my consort’s rescue. The sight of her lupine body bleeding on the forest’s floor left me shaking with rage. Itzili protectively crawled in front of her and snapped his jaws like a wounded dog trying to defend his injured packmate from a predator.

The bear stood over her on its two legs, battered and bloody, its back tense with frustration. It must have hoped to slay Itzili during the confusion by passing it off as an animal attack, then maybe abduct a consort and impersonate her. Perhaps it hoped that the Nightkin would do its job for it.

My allies’ strength hadn’t been enough to overcome the monster in battle, but sufficient to ruin its plan.

So it dropped the act.

“Cursed wolf,” the beast hissed angrily, its voice twisting from an animal’s snarl into a woman’s malediction. “Curse your stinking jaws and silver fur!”

The Skinwalker shed its fur like a snake did with its skin.

The bear’s skull split open to reveal a grotesque horror underneath. A lurching hunchback of stitched skin emerged from within, bloated and abominable. Its emaciated figure was humanoid in shape only, with antler horns surging from its skull and arms too long for a man. Its elongated, bloody fingers yearned for the touch of living flesh.

The monster only had skin over its bones, none of it its own. Its body was a grotesque amalgamation of half-faces stitched together by strings of pulsating sinews. I saw Cipetl’s eyes and nose on the shoulder, stuck between sprouting fingers and lipless mouths wheezing in agony. I noticed a few animal body parts here and there—bird beaks, bear fangs, serpent scales—but most body parts belonged to humans. Hundreds of victims contributed to the squirming hill that served at its back’s hump.

How many screams did it take to weave this horrifying tapestry?

The Skinwalker’s only unblemished face was its own; or should I say, her own. Sunken white eyes opened on a blad sulk, right above a crooked nose and wrinkled cheeks. They oozed malevolence that rivaled the Nightlords’.

The abomination met my gaze.

Lahun warned me that to lock eyes with a Skinwalker was to open oneself to their influence. Being on the wrong end of the process allowed me to understand it fully. A Skinwalker’s Tonalli was a mangled abomination, a monstrous chimera of warped skin. I caught a brief glimpse of a butchered quail-like bird forming the broken heart of the monster. It must have been her totem once, in the days before she stained it with the act of kinslaying. It lingered to this day as the crooked foundation of a patchwork tapestry of death.

The Skinwalker’s Tonalli invaded my mind and filled my eyes with visions. I saw myself hung to a hook of bone, a razor sharp knife gently peeling my skin away until my flayed flesh shed it off. I witnessed Cipetl put on a costume harvested from my own body and wear my skin with smooth ease.

The Skinwalker showed me all the horrors it would visit upon the world upon taking my place: the mountains of corpses it would raise, the wardrobe of skins it would harvest from my harem, the rivers of blood it would shed, the empire it would destroy from within. A gruesome spectacle of rapes and murders and tortures unfolded, each crueler than the last.

This mental assault likely left many warriors quivering in fear, their souls so broken that their minds would forever be beholden to the Skinwalker’s will. Her malevolent Tonalli would subsume their spirit and lurk over their shoulders in their darkest nightmares. A normal human would have no choice but to submit to her gaze. The Skinwalker would crush their will, the mere threat of meeting her eyes again sufficient to enslave them.

I responded the only way I could.

“Ha...” The sound came rolling out of my mouth, slow and deep. “Ahah...”

Like with Smoke Mountain, a billowing eruption followed the tremors. My laughter echoed through the vision, dark and cruel. The Skinwalker’s vicious confidence crumbled at my unrelenting scorn.

“Hahaha!” I struggled to breathe through the fits of laughter. “Pathetic!”

I had stood in the presence of King Mictlantecuhtli, the First Emperor, and the Lords of Terror. I had survived the Nightlords’ tortures, the Burned Men, vampires, and hordes of maddened beasts.

How could this human abomination hope to frighten me?

My own Tonalli rose to challenge the Skinwalker’s, its black wings enveloping the mangled tower of flesh in a predatory embrace. A colossal dark owl of shadow rose from the Underworld’s depth with a purple blaze for a heart and the shadow of a great, hungry bat looming behind it.

My baleful Tonalli overwhelmed the Skinwalker’s own. My will took the initiative in this battle of the mind, and I wrestled control of the vision. To the Skinwalker’s cruelty, I answered with a memory of the House of Jaguars burning, of the Lords of Terrors dancing among the ashes of the wasteland I had created, of Smoke Mountain’s breath devastating the world.

The Skinwalker’s shadow recoiled at the sight of a greater darkness. She had sought to intimidate me with prophecies of what she would do; I answered with memories of what I’d already accomplished.

I gave her a taste of annihilation.

“What a poor fool you are, to face me with such paltry strength!” I taunted her. “You are a breeze challenging a hurricane!”

The vision collapsed on its own, the Skinwalker’s will repelled by my own. She was strong and ancient, her sorcery refined by decades, possibly centuries of depravity.

But I alone feasted on a dead sun’s embers.

The night enveloped us and its court answered my authority. Swarms of red-eyed bats descended from the leaves and branches to devour their emperor’s enemy. The dead rose from their forested grave to feast.

The hunter had become the hunted.