Erosion

By La Loup Garou


**********************



I was usually much more careful than this, and much more prepared. I knew my father would be horrified with me, his Danny boy, lost on a shitty job. Patrolling is hardly what I call work, it’s little more than glorified guard duty. And so, lazy and overconfident ass that I am, I left my blaster, knives, ropes, and other assorted toys at my apartment. Scattered to God knows where. Only pride had kept my longsword attached to me during that past few shifts.

For fuck’s sake Dan, quit worrying about your old man and concentrate! My thoughts raced through my head as fast as I raced through the streets. My adrenaline levels had long ago spiked and were starting to fall, I needed a escape route, and fast. I tried to recall something, anything that would improve my chances of outrunning the beast. It had been closing in steadily for several minutes and seemed to be taking an leisurely approach in pursuing me. Smug fucker. Why couldn’t it maul me now and be done with it?

I took a quick look behind me to check the thing’s progress and was rewarded with a near collision with the dingy alley wall. The space behind me was completely empty save for the falling rain. The lights from the skyscrapers cut straight to the pavement. No shadows from Mr. Monster showed up. I needed to stop running and give my aching lungs a break, but paranoia stopped me. It wouldn’t give up that easily and I had only temporarily outdistanced it. I was doing what it wanted, exhausting myself and making it easier to be caught and toyed with at the creature’s leisure.

Instead I dashed across the alleyway and into the icy rain. The searing cold of the rain jolted some sense back into my panic-stricken brain. An idea gradually lodged itself in my head, not much of one mind you, but it was better than being someone's lunch. If plan C didn’t crap out I might make it out alive.

Right as I got to a network of buildings a silky voice wormed into my mind. /It’s better to give up while you can still die with dignity,/ it crooned.

“Fuck you, you furry bastard”, I mumbled into the night air. Not the best comeback, but I knew it was the sort of thing that would piss him off. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard a low rumbling growl far off into the darkness of the streets. Good he’s pissed, I thought. My turn to fuck with his head. I smirked giddily, reeling from fatigue.

The entrance to the complex was barred, but lacking time and equipment I gritted my teeth and forced the door with my shoulder. That probably wasn’t a good idea, left me with one hell of a bruise. The building I entered had to have once been part of a museum. It was cluttered with more junk than I could ever name. Not that that was bad, it was just what I needed. The more junk, the more places to hide.

“Bingo,” I said grinning, and sprinted the rest of the distance to a low wall. It was actually a fresco and covered with all sorts writings and figures. If time hadn’t been so pressing I might have stopped to study it, it’s a shame I didn’t have the chance.

Now, I’m no mage, sorcerer, wizard or any such thing. All I can manage is basic cantrips, and even those are pain in the ass to execute properly. First and foremost I’m a merc, magic was always a secondary skill at best. But right then and there I was wishing that dear old dad hadn’t been so stingy with the tuition for my magic classes.

“Concentrate you moron,” I mumbled to myself. I could feel the spell stir inside of me, but nothing tangible happened. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been any reason to go into hysterics. On my best day I’d never done this trick in less than five minutes. But I didn’t have five minutes.

I concentrated harder. Drops of sweat fell from my forehead to the dusty floor. The monstrosity had started clawing at one of the boarded up windows. Every shriek of a board being pulled was punctuated with a murderous growl.

Oh shit. But I kept straining. But just as I heard the panes of glass shatter and clatter to the floor, I felt the spell give in and mold itself to my command. Now all I had to do was wait and hope to God that this didn’t blow up in my face.

I could hear it padding softly towards my hiding spot. If it was fooled by my little gimmick, it was seeing what I wanted it to. On the other side of the wall I was hiding behind a spell-conjured doppelganger of myself crouched, mirroring my every movement. At the reverberation of a sharp snarl and the sound of its pace picking up to a gallop, I sprang up from my crouch and brandished my sword. Hopefully my clone looked like it was meeting the beast’s challenge.

The next few seconds went much better than I had imagined. First, the dumb beast charging me decided to cover the last few feet with a flying leap. It would’ve been a spectacular way to disembowel me, but as I wasn’t actually there all it did was propel the beast headfirst into the stucco wall. Second, I felt the collision rattle the wall. Which meant in all likelihood the creature had hurt itself.

Dust swirled around the edges of the wall, curling softly about my boots. The impact had shattered the painted plaster into swirling white dust. I covered my mouth with my hand in a vain attempt to keep out the dust and carefully edged around the wall. As I stepped out of the shadows I got the first good look at my pursuer since this whole mess had started.

The beast was an enormous lion, easily outweighing me by a bulky 250 pounds. It had the usual tawny coat and large mane. Though the mane was streaked black, brown, and blond. The lion didn’t look quite right, for one thing its eyes were gray and held a odd intelligence, even though the animal was obviously stunned. Not something I could recall seeing in your run of the mill lion. Strangest of all, its pelt was shiny. Dully shiny like foil, with an almost metallic luster to it.

At the sound of my footsteps it turned and stared blankly at me. It reminded me of the look my mates get when they’ve drunk themselves under the table. The lion tried to take a step in my direction, but didn’t quite make it. It made a queer whuffing noise and plunked down uneasily on its haunches. And with that promptly fell forward, unconscious, onto the dusty floor.

“Darren you’re a real prince. Did anyone ever tell you that?” I said to the feline sprawled in the dust.

***
“Darrrreeen,” I wheedled. “Would you please get the fuck uuuupppppp?”

No response. Not so much as a twitch from his pert nose. That would’ve been entirely too easy. He was laid out on the bed with all the finesse of a corpse. Evidentially in the exact same position I had left him in hours earlier. He looked sort of cute and innocent, all peaceful and conked out. As cute and innocent as he gets anyway.

He had been unconscious for a few hours, and I was growing impatient. I knew he had a slew of spells that would have him up and in perfect health in five seconds. Of course, since he was out cold, that didn’t do any good. I certainly didn’t know any spell that would be of use, although blowing a hole through his roof with a lightning bolt would’ve improved my mood.

Somewhere along that train of thought another idea occurred to me. Am I that much of a bastard? It’s not exactly a cattle prod, but it *might* work. It would certainly make me feel much better than if I blew out his roof. But as much as I was tempted to give Darren a jolt or two, I knew I couldn’t do it. Between my long run, the emergency spell casting, and hauling him to his apartment I was completely worn out.

I had honestly considered leaving him where he had fallen after he knocked himself out.

It never failed, even when I did best Darren he always got me in the end. I wasn’t mean enough to leave him there, so I had to rouse him to semi-consciousness. I was however very tempted to kick the big cat at my feet a few times though. That had been the problem, he was still a big cat. I could haul the human Darren home, but not the lion one. 170 pounds is a hell of a lot easier to move than 450 pounds.

He must’ve somehow sensed that I was considering to just leave him there, because I saw his tail twitch. It flopped to the side and brought up a tiny puff of dust. God damn him and his sense of self preservation. I had sighed, and reluctantly resumed goading him out of semi-consciousness.

After several sharp prods in the ribs and a few choice expletives, I succeeded in getting him to sit up. He was still dazed, but was starting to look pissed. Good, he’s finally awake. I had to listen to him bitch the rest of the way home but at least I was able to drag him home.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to urge him to change shape. His metallic fur had melted away like liquid sand, and his body had folded and collapsed onto itself. Claws, fangs, and whiskers retracted. Last of all his tufted tail snaked back into his spine. He hadn’t dressed to impress. His clothing was much like mine, black, militaristic, and plain. His black bob was a scraggly mess. Thank God he didn’t have a mirror.

After that I had dragged him to his apartment, and all but threw him onto the bed. He had lapsed back into a mostly dead weight as we walked. That had sent spasms of pain shooting through my shoulder from trying to walk and support him at the same time. I hadn’t bothered to do anymore than that, I went straight for his guest bed and all but passed out myself. I don’t remember what happened after that, but my sense of direction must’ve served me well. I woke up the next morning in the right bed, which is always a plus. Especially since Darren was likely to be extremely pissed off.

It was still morning out when I came to, lying hodgepodge in the borrowed bed, shoulder aching like a bitch. I ran a safety check of my limbs- all present and accounted for and in somewhat working order.

I gingerly hoisted myself out of bed, trying to avoid putting pressure on my injured shoulder. I paid no mind to Darren, he was sleeping and much more peacefully than I had by the looks of it. After shuffling over to the full-length mirror in the corner I gave myself a look over.

My first thought was: Dan, you look like crap. And I did. My skin was paler than it needed to be, too sun-starved for my tastes. My hair was a rat’s nest, the tangled state rendering its blond highlights invisible. There were a few nicks and cuts from the night before, but my shoulder put them all to shame. The bruise was a ugly purple color, and filled the entire dip of my right shoulder. Bloody hell. I knew I shouldn’t have used myself as a battering ram. It tends not to end happily. Off to the shower then.

I felt marginally better after that, and reluctantly climbed back into my guard’s trousers. For once I actually wished I wore the same size pants as Darren, I can’t stand wearing dirty clothing. I borrowed a white, button up shirt of his though. Which wasn’t very smart, as I couldn’t move my right arm without setting my shoulder off. Oh, the hell with it, what’s it matter if it’s buttoned or not? He certainly doesn’t care.

 The he in question was looking like he might wake up soon. But Sleeping Beauty he was not. Without the fur in the way I could see the damage my little ruse had done. Nevermind that it was his own fault that he was an overzealous moron, he’d blame me anyway. There was a huge, nasty-looking bruise on his temple. Having been beaten black and blue a few times by my brothers as a kid, I concluded that it had to hurt like hell. His first waking words only convinced me further.

Ah, success! I had gotten Sleeping Beauty up without resorting to a kiss. Or a good whack to his arse. Take your pick.

“Daniel, you’re a conniving, scheming bastard,” he said, sitting up slowly.

Shit. I should’ve let him sleep it off.

Now name calling is his standard abuse, but this time it was all quite true. In fact I’m proud of it, but why the hell can’t he ever admit to being at fault? Is it too much to ask for? That Darren Hayes say he’s made a mistake just once in his life? It must be, because the longer he bitched the more sure of my guilt he became.

“Darren, do you think you can heal yourself?” I asked, interrupting before he had a chance to open his mouth again.

“What? I guess so, I’m still sort of dizzy. My headache isn’t really helping,” he said grimacing a bit.

“Good, you had better start now. Before that head shot you took has a chance to become dangerous.” I expected him to protest but he didn’t say a word. He noiselessly laid back down and closed his eyes, apparently deep in concentration. Either that or he’d gone into the sulk phase faster than I thought.

But as I watched the bruise on his forehead began lightening from purple and went through the entire rainbow of bruise tissue before settling on yellow. It didn’t go completely away though.

“Are you sure that’s enough? Shouldn’t you try getting rid of it all together?” I asked. I never liked messing with head wounds, the small amount of time I had spent in the army had seen to that. You can almost never tell from outward appearance how much damage has really been done.

“Don’t you think I would have already if I could?” he snarled from the pillow. Oh, how lovely. There was venom behind that. If I kept this up he might very well try to turn me into a frog when I wasn’t looking.

“Besides,” he added. “I won’t do one more fucking spell before I get rid of this headache.” He looked at me accusingly with gray eyes that held the glint of steel behind them. “Help me up.” It was a command, not a request.

I decided to humor him, I supposed that if I had knocked myself out I would be acting much the same. As far as I was concerned though, he was the one who owed the apology. Unfortunately for me he didn’t wait for me to offer a hand and just grabbed for me. He used my right forearm to haul himself up. It felt like he’d tried to wrench my arm from its socket.

“Fuck!” I yelled, hissing like treed cat. “Don’t you ever think of waiting for just one fucking second?! Maybe if you did every once in a while, you wouldn’t always have to depend on your precious magic so much.”

I expected him to hiss right back in his typical, somewhat lionish way. But his eyes softened from steel to a dove gray. Then he did something I hadn’t seen him do since I had first met him years ago. He looked down so that his hair fell in front of his eyes, hiding them from view. It had been a childish habit of his, something he had done when he was embarrassed or hurt. It didn’t work very well that time around, his black hair was still scraggly and stuck together from him sleeping on it. But that didn’t stop it from impacting me any less. I couldn’t believe I had genuinely managed to hurt him. The man who had perfected hiding all but the feelings he chose to show to an artform.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still hiding behind a curtain of messy hair. He turned, as if to avoid looking at me, and walked towards his small indoor garden. Where he had gotten all the flowers I’ll never know. To me some of them looked like plain old weeds, if pretty ones. They didn’t smell particularly nice or bad either. Most of them didn’t smell at all.

“The skin isn’t broken is it?” he asked, snapping me out of my wondering. He looked as though he was going to cut a few plants but picked up a small sac next to the garden instead.

“What? Oh, no it’s not. Just bruised pretty badly. The muscles are probably just sore and cramped. I’ve had much worse in the army, I’m sure it’ll heal with no problem.”

“More than likely,” he said a bit thoughtfully. “But put this on it anyway.”

“What is it?” I asked, handling the bag. It just barely filled my palm, and was very light.

“A poultice, keep it on until I get back. Then I’ll take a look at it myself.”

“And were are you going? You should be using this, not me.”

He smiled at me then. The sort of smile that makes me squirm because I know I’m being an idiot. “I’m not going anywhere, just the shower. You don’t expect me to look at you without a clear head do you?”

He walked off towards the back rooms of the apartment. And stopped momentarily. “Besides, I can always scream if I start drowning.”

I knew he was smirking as he said that. But it was good to know he was feeling well enough to be bitchy again.



~TBC~


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