Ghostfinders 01 - Ghost of a Chance

Happy. “There’s a Great Beast here, remember? Let us put all our efforts into surviving the next few moments.”
    He pushed Erik aside so he could crouch before the frost-covered figure and peer into its frozen face. Erik reached for a weapon. Natasha grabbed his arm and glared at him. None of the others noticed, intent on the still body.
    And then there was a sound, and they all turned to look. It was an abnormally low and unnatural growl. It resonated in their bones and in their souls, triggering a strangely familiar atavistic fear. It was a sound from the Past, out of the Deep Past, out of the ancient shared past of the human species. From when we all lived in the forest, and we all lived in fear of the wild. It was the sound of the Beast, of all the wild things that ever were. Full of hate and contempt and brute bloodlust.
    JC moved slowly forward, through the archway, and the others went after him. Because they’d come this far, and they had to see, had to know, for themselves. And because something in that terrible sound compelled them. And once they were through the archway, the light blazed up, and they all saw what poor little Billy Hartman had seen.
    Huge and vast and intense beyond bearing, big as a house and more imposing, cruel and vicious and utterly wild, a great Wolf’s head. It had manifested on the earthly plane by manufacturing a shape out of its surroundings, using stone and cement and steel for its bones, then covering them with the wet red flesh and blood of the commuters it had abducted in its hell trains. Its great sharp teeth were made from human bone, and its huge shining eyes were formed from hundreds of human eyes. There was no fur, only wet crimson meat, to give shape to the Wolf’s head, all of it held in place by an implacable, inhuman will. It even had great pointed ears made of human flesh. It growled, and its breath stank of dead things.
    For all its makeshift form, it was still Fenris Tenebrae, one of the Great Beasts, and its sheer presence was overwhelming. To look on it was like staring into the sun. It was all teeth and snarl and malevolent eyes, every wild wolf that ever was, embodied in a single brutal avatar—ancient and primordial, almost abstract, blazing with hate and hunger and cunning. Hatred especially for all the small running things that had dared to prosper in this world, dared to get above themselves and forget their true place as prey. The Wolf, the Great Wolf, Destroyer of Civilisations, and of Worlds.
    Fenris Tenebrae.
    Nature red in tooth and claw and loving it, all in one terrible face. No wonder poor little Billy had been driven out of his mind. Most people aren’t equipped to deal with monsters. But JC and Happy and Melody had been trained and hardened and refined by the Carnacki Institute, and Natasha and Erik had been beaten into shape by the harsh masters of the Crowley Project. So that they could track down monsters and stare them in the face, and not be broken or disturbed. So they could go face-to-face with things that were so much bigger than them, more real than them . . . and not look away.
    They were agents. And Kim was dead. And not one of them was prey.
    In the end, JC laughed in the Wolf’s face. It took everything he had, and it was only a small, brief sound, but it was enough to break the mood. Natasha and Erik shook their heads, as though coming out of a bad dream. Melody shuddered, and Happy put his arm round her shoulders and held her close, comforting, and she let him, glaring defiantly back into the Wolf’s huge eyes. Kim moved in close beside JC, and he laughed again—a real, hearty, dismissive sound. It hung on the air, refusing to go away. Natasha laughed, too, and Erik sniggered. Happy gave Melody a comforting squeeze and managed a breathy laugh of his own. Melody smiled coldly.
    The Wolf growled again, a great roar of a sound, loud enough to shake the surroundings and rock the floor under their feet. A hateful sound, to fill all the world with cruelty. The stench of blood and carrion from the gaping jaws was sickening. Happy sneered at the Wolf.
    “I have to say, as projections of the infinite into the material plane go . . . this really is pathetic. Only a head? What happened to the rest of you? Get stuck in the hole you opened because you couldn’t make it big enough to crawl through? Is your rear end hanging out on the higher plane? Maybe somebody’s hanging their washing on it, like they did with Pooh’s behind