On a Steel Horse He Rides

The shapeshifter fled through the mystic sylvan glade, and the man in the up-armored Humvee followed.

Saplings thronged thick, but he was easy to follow – against the silver-barked birch trees shimmering in golden sunlight he was an aberration; a twisted shape of flesh and hooves and claws that flitted through the glade like a shadow. Sparrows and pixies burst from the underbrush in little novas of frenzied wing-beats before my Humvee crashed through, emerald-leafed branches drumming chaotic thunder on the windshield as I strained to glimpse my quarry. The foliage thinned and I found myself driving down a crystal-clear brook; sunbeams filtering through the trees to pool like drops of honey on the pebbled streamed between which bright minnows darted and played.

Through the side-mirror, caught in the corner of my eye; ink-black and moving wrong, anomalous as cancer. I seized the steering wheels’ brodie knob in my left and the parking brake lever with my right, tensed my muscles for a heartbeat, and moved. The rear wheels screeched and locked as six tons of Humvee answered my spinning wheel and jerked hard left; a spray of glistening pebbles, pristine water and silvery minnows flying away as tires skidded through the handbrake turn. There was a last sharp lurch as the right rear quarter-panel fetched up against a small tree; bumper now pointed down the brook at the rapidly dwindling dark shape of the shifter.

I floored it.

Silver branches with dew-speckled emerald leaves shook as the guttural growl of the six-point-six liter engine deepened into a savage roar; stones spraying from beneath the wheels till they dug past the stream bed’s silt and into raw gritty dirt – then it lunged like a bull from the gate. The ethereal beauty of faerie blurred into a streak of vaguely pretty light as my gaze hurtled down the narrow path to lock on my target; bellowing diesel and hammering heartbeat heavy in my ears –

– faint rubescent luminescence gliding down the right and rearview mirrors from top to bottom; the ghost of a climbing flare –

– seizing knob and lever again I let off the gas and held my breath; wheel weaving constantly to follow the brook’s gentle meanderings. The shapeshifter didn’t; barreling straight into the thickets on one curving bank – and vanished.

I jerked the wheel right and floored it, feeling all four tires loose traction as they spun. The handbrake screeched; bumper swinging right as the rear wheels locked. I felt the shudder of the front tires scrubbing sidelong against the stream bed and released the brake, wheel blurring as I spun it left. A deafening cacophony of blows rained on the left side and time seemed to stop as I watched from some cold corner of my mind, waiting to see if I’d live or die – but I’d aimed well; missing the old-growth trees and power-sliding through a grove of saplings to kill lateral momentum. Through the shattered branches lying over the hood I espied him again; colored silver and green now but betrayed by the brutal, alien efficiency of its motion. The Humvee lunged forward again, and this time I saw my quarry flinch as the diesel roared through the trees.

For some interminable time we raced; he not so much weaving ‘twixt the trees as twitching between them, every course-correction made in an instantaneous explosion of muscles that bunched and writhed as if fighting each other. The six-ton Humvee simply thundered through, crushing bush and sapling alike as I jerked the wheel carefully to slip by big trees, windshield wipers squeaking sedately as they scraped dazed pixies off the windshield.

Ahead, the merry noonday sun of Faerie flooded a clearing in the forest, and as the shapeshifter reached it he leaped. I caught my first good glimpse of his form – panther-like grace from shoulder to midsection; the powerful hindquarters and hooves of a horse and two sets of clawed arms afore, with a thick lizard-like tail rounding off the abomination. A sunlit pond stretched before him, glowing with radiant magic as he plunged in. My buttcheeks tried to cling to the seat cushions as the Humvee thundered off the shallow bank into open air; vehicle slowing as it hit the water with a WHUMPH!, my stomach plunging for my feet from inertia –

– then the slip.

* * *

You’re not supposed to see anything when crossing from faerie – just faint purple radiance as you plummet through the ethereal and back into reality. Or so they say.

I see plenty; try as I might not to look.

And worse, they see me.

* * *

The Humvee’s suspension creaked as the wheels landed on solid ground again – and I looked out the windshield to find myself eye to eye with some very startled koi.

I shifted into first gear for traction and gunned the engine; wheels slipping in the bottom muck a bit as the Humvee slowly clawed its way out of the koi pond, engine snorkel sucking air and raised exhaust pipe exhaling smoke like a respiring dragon. The koi pond was ringed in by ancient old-growth trees, each one of them encircled by thick shimenawa ropes – and beneath one of them lay the shapeshifter, skin smoking as he writhed in agony.

There wasn’t room to maneuver even if I’d wanted to, so I dismounted, Mark 48 machine gun in my hands.

“Guess ya should’ve checked the sign before you took the exit, jackass!” I shouted, and opened fire from the hip.

The ‘48 was thunderous even through my electronic earplugs; belted API-T stitching across its mutated form in sprays of black ichor. My legs churned through knee-deep water as I advanced, not much minding my aim. The abomination's flesh quavered; then peeled away from some horrific, vaguely-humanoid nucleus covered in sinew and bone. It – he – rose on two legs; translucent octagons of light flaring bright and visible as bullets ricocheted from them, his shield pushing away the fetid meat of his discarded form as it expanded.

He charged, clawed hands open and grasping.

I held down the trigger till he was two breaths distant, then slid my hand back over my hip to seize the cheap bakelite hilt waiting there. I dropped the Mark 48 as I drew, thrusting into his lunge.

No two mages’ shields are exactly alike but most of them spark or flare when they’re strained or overwhelmed. My blade passed through his like it wasn’t there; his eyes widening as he jerked away with inhuman reflexes. We paused a moment, ankle-deep in water, sizing each other up. Flesh and sinew slowly peeled away from him as the extraneous mass of his shape-changed form disintegrated, hastened by his unplanned dunk in holy water.

“What’s wrong, asshole?” I said. “Can’t get it up without your new buddy?”

He took one look at the cheap handle and faded finish of the M7 bayonet in my hand and his entire visage twisted with contempt. The green scales on his clawed fingers spread up his hands, forearms swelling with new muscles as his arms shape-shifted clear to the elbow. With one clawed hand bladed and the other open, he lunged.

We collided and bounced apart twice; trading parried blows each time. He was wary of the blade and I kept it close, on centerline in a middle guard where he couldn’t easily try to pin it. I saw his lips begin to move and lunged; blade skipping off the back of his scaly hand as he guarded. He seized my knife-hand wrist and caught my left fist across his jaw for the trouble before he tied up my arm, right hand gripping my left bicep. He spoke again and I slammed my forehead into his face, knocking the spell back down his throat.

The rage that exploded from his throat then was all him, and no less deafening for it. Shorn of his dark patron's gifts, reduced to only the mortal magic he’d earned, he was still a mage grappling with a normie with a knife. His body thrummed with power as he channeled everything he had, his grip on me tightening till my bones ached. We leaned into each other, toes digging into the silt for traction as we strained for advantage.

For a moment I forgot myself. There was only our heaving breaths on each other’s face, foreheads pressed together to prevent headbutts as I glared into his bloodshot eyes that brimmed with insensate rage. He finally took a fraction of a step, surging the last of his strength to throw me and muscle memory took over, my knife-hand twirling into a moulinet, twirling under his forearm and severing the tendons in one clean cut.

The bellow was deafening, earplugs be damned; seeming to reverberate in my breastbone as his forehead slipped against mine and teeth sank into my shoulder, and I drove the bayonet home under his breastbone. He pitched back, pulling me along by the shoulder and I managed to land on one knee, keeping enough room to yank back the blade and thrust, and thrust and thrust...

A wide halo of bloodied water surrounded us both before my arm began trembling, splashing water audible again over my hammering heart. I got to my feet shakily, aching and bloodied, old bayonet dripping blood as I looked down on the motionless shapeshifter.

It was over.

As my breathing slowed I heard one other thing aside the low malicious mutter of the Humvee’s idling diesel – a warbling high-pitched heEeeEeeEeeeeeEEee like a teakettle with a shaky vibrato. Turning, I found a small Shinto shrine, rear deck bordering the koi pond, and sitting upon it with her back pressed against the offering box, the shrine’s priestess. She thrust her gohei at me, zigzag paper streamers jittering about as her arm shook, an incomprehensible chant streaming from her lips.

“… well hello to you too,” I said, feeling a bit miffed. People never react well to, well, that but they usually didn’t try to exorcise me…

… with a Shinto ritual, at a Shinto shrine, of which there were only four in the Continental United States, and I’d been to all of them and this one I definitely didn’t recognize.

I closed my eyes and sighed. “Well, shit.”