The sun diluted into a rippling reflection of the sky, dripping steadily into the dark shadows of gentle and undulating waves of water. Like diverging veins branching from its source, our company split into two groups, with the gang of shady men departing for the Endigo speakeasy and our small trio pursuing the bootleg transport at a dock supposedly infested by the Endigo brothers' men. Rick and Rory, men of much longer legs than myself, briskly walked ten steps in front. They carried a conversation and a pace they hoped I could not follow as we headed up the river that burrowed into the heart of Detroit.

"We spend the afternoon searching for this Bulloch fellow to convince him not to come to a potential bloodbath between gangs. He flashes you his bumbershoot all of a sudden and now we're all buddies going after fellas we don't even know are human?"

"Let's presume that they are. You've got the muscle, I've got the magic, and Bulloch has the bullets."

"Yeah, sounds real catchy, Houdini. Even with all of our bases covered, we don't know how many guys there'll be. And you didn't even grab any of the Purples' lackeys when we had the chance before they headed off to Piggy's, save for what they had of their cologne! It doesn't suit you, by the way."

"It's better to control a small number of people than a large one, and I can't trust those savages to control their tempers. For all we know, they might end up shooting at us since they're so trigger-happy."

"It's their battle to pick. They should work out their pissing contest with their blood."

"You're rather ruthless today, Emil, considering how much of a pacifist you normally are."

"I'm not going to make those crooks into heroes. Anyways, what's your plan, Alan? Or are you going to cling to your bloody mysteries and risk our lives again, like always?"

"Please let me know when there is a moment when we don't risk our lives, Emil."

"How about now?" groaned Rory...or Emil, as he was being called by Alan...or Rick; it was all a strange affair to witness in my ignorance of the two men, yet I could only ponder momentarily as Rory turned to me.

"How many rounds have you got on you?" he asked, nodding to the seven-inch item outlined faintly in my pants.

"Five, though I can reload with a full cylinder if need be. I've bullets in my coat pocket."

"That looks like an old model single-action revolver. Remington? Colt? Schofield?" asked the redhead, shifting himself to walk backwards and converse face-to-face with me.

"Colt Navy 1851, .45 long colt with a cartridge conversion, too."

"I should hope so, in this day and age! You fancy yourself as an old Western gunslinger, then? A regular Wild Bill Hickok, huh, Mister Bulloch?"

I shrugged. "I'm just an admirer of the nostalgia. I'm sure there's better out there, but--"

"Of course there is! There's--"

"I'd appreciate it if you two would tone it down with the gun jargon," asserted Rick, injecting himself into the conversation. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Bulloch, but you've eleven bullets with you?"

"And you can go fanning the hammer if you have to?" added Rory, giving me a wink.

"Yes and yes, gentlemen."

"Excellent. I'll expect you to be with me when we begin; we won't have need of your gun until we know what we're up against, and even then I may require other services of you," declared Rick, slowing his stride as we approached the Endigo dock. In a soft tone audible for just my ears, he added, "I hope you're a fast learner, Theona."

We watched quietly from around the corners of empty factories that guarded the area as three vehicles purred in anticipation, aligned in an L-shape by the docks that received an industrialized boat. Men emerged from the marine vessel, carrying in their arms large vases fastened with ropes and cushioning cloths. Under his breath, Rick counted the numbers of our opponents as they weaved throughout the premises to load the cars with illicit goods: one...three...five...eight. Our atmosphere of quiet observation warped in the span of minutes. Rick and Rory exchanged a quick, cryptic discourse of their stratagem; then, Rick bolted out of the corner, stealthily weaving and bobbing behind crates and cars to close the distance between him and the gangsters.

"Won't he be shot at?" I cried in horror, looking to Rory. He dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand.

"He's got a reinforced vest if they start shooting. Which would be odd because chances are they wouldn't be carrying guns in the first place."

"Y'know Rory, I don't know which is crazier: the fact that you're convinced a bunch of mobsters wouldn't carry firearms while they're transporting bootlegged liquor during a turf war, or the fact that I trust your statement. In both cases, it's too late for me to back out now that I'm here."

"Why are you here, Bulloch? You said that you were searching for someone, but is risking your life worth it?"

"Yeah, 'cause--,"

A commotion arose from beyond the wall we hid, and with Rory's nod of approval, I pulled out the revolver from my pants and cocked it before we ran to join Rick, who was chuckling to himself as he stood behind an arrangement of boxes and crates, elegantly waving his arms and hands while watching the men at the docks struggle and yell. I focused with awe upon the area where Rick had his attentions, where a swarm of darkness harassed the men like an infestation of malevolent Lilliputian shadows.

"I can't get it out of my face!"

"Waaaargh! What are these things? They just sprung outta nowhere! Mitz!"

Mitz, embroiled with the shadows like the two other men in his company, yelled for reinforcements: "Horen! Horen, ya gotta help us out here!"

"Oh dear," muttered Rick, turning his head slightly to us but still observing the men. "I've got to get closer to them to strengthen the illusions for a more mind-crippling effect. I'll raise a miasma to conceal your movements momentarily, but be covert nonetheless. Go and destroy or dump as many of those large liquor vases as you can," he said curtly before reciting an incantation under his breath in preparation for the miasma.

"Bulloch," murmured Rory, patting my back for reassurance, "stick by me, would ya? I'd get awful lonely out there." He gave a teasing wink.

I snorted, tempted to knock him over the head with the barrel of my Colt Navy. "You just want a human shield!"

"No, I just want a partner who has guns like me!" he said boisterously, flexing his arms.

"Emil." Rick threw a small bottle of perfume at Rory. "Douse yourselves in that, and then get ready."

Confused but unwilling to question him, we followed his instruction, dabbing the oils along our skin as thoroughly as possible until the dizzying pungence of jasmine and sandalwood emanated from us like a thick, scented aura. Rory and I then locked onto Rick's form.

With a subtle flick of his wrist combined with the conclusion of his incantation, a haze rose slowly from the ground. The stormy blue glint of Rick's eye glancing back at us was our cue to spring into action; Rory and I pursued the loaded vehicle parked by the lake, while the slick-haired magician continued his disorienting assault with sadistic amusement.

Rory popped the trunk and opened the doors of the automobile, carrying and dumping the contents of four vases before I could even bring a single earthen jar towards the water. Unaccustomed to the heftiness, my palms burned from clinging to the abrasive rope tied around the container. I hobbled towards the lake, but eventually I could feel my sweaty hold slipping, and while the jar did not break upon landing, the lid was nicked open, spilling forth the alcohol it contained...as well as a multitude of severed human fingers and ears.

I retched, physically nauseated from the bombarding scents of liquor mixed with perfume and the shocking image of body parts floating in a puddle of whiskey. Rory immediately halted his process of grabbing the last two jars to console me with brief strokes on my hunched back, looking up frequently to scan our foggy surroundings.

"I know you're spooked but you've gotta get it together, champ. If we don't finish this job, we're gonna meet a fate worse than that."

"You guys...hnngh...knew about this? What they were...urgh...doing?" I uttered between heaves.

"We had a hunch," answered Rory quickly. "More than a hunch, really, 'cause Alan's honed his sixth sense throughout our travels together, but that's beside the point. The point is, they're Wendigos."

"Wendi-what?"

"Wendigos!" hissed Rory. "Cannibal monsters that are extremely powerful and will devour us if they get the chance!"

"Have you...faced them before?" I asked, my nausea transitioning into panic. "You have, right?"

"This is my first time encountering them," admitted Rory, "but I'd rather not find out what they're capable of, if you know what I mean."

I nodded, and having recovered from my infirmity, did my best to assist Rory with the rest of the liquor jars, until a sudden yelp dissipated the misty cover, revealing us to an enormously tall and grotesque man that clutched Rick's skull in his clawed hand.

"You can't deceive my eyes, sorcerer," Altan Endigo crooned, squeezing Rick's noggin to elicit a pained and muffled cry from the struggling, dark-haired man. "And I will crush your head to prevent any future machinations from taking for--"

Five rapid bangs interrupted the morphing man's proclamations; I had heeded Rick's position and unloaded my first round of bullets at the creature's massive body. In light of my attack, the Wendigo hurled Rick away from itself, and the magician landed with a heavy thud on the concrete where several unconscious bodies were sprawled.

The emaciated creature raised its elongated snout majestically to the sky, and inhaled the aromas of the atmosphere, just as quickly huffed with cruel disdain, exposing its long, fishbone-like teeth in a grin. It poised to charge at me while I attempted to unload my spent cartridges and extract ammunition from the inner pockets of my tailcoat to reload my revolver. However, the Wendigo lunged with frightening speed, and I would've been killed had Rory not shoved me aside and tackled the beast down on my behalf.

"I'll handle the big boss for now! Go and make sure Alan's okay!" urged the redhead as he wrestled the monster.

Upon mention of the other man, I caught Alan (or Rick as I knew him) in the distance meticulously stabbing a stone knife into the bodies that surrounded him. From his inflictions, the prone figures crackled into chalky stone, and he succeeded in eliminating five of the seven visible gang members in his petrifying process as I drew near. I scampered towards him while loading and spinning the cylinder, yet a curly-haired young man halted my progress, and leapt in front of me with a devilish gleam in his eyes.

"What's the hurry? Don't you wanna stay and play a little while? I promise I'll make it hurt," he growled, as the bones in his body elongated and enlarged, his graying skin stretched and ripped to accommodate the gaunt transformation. The ghastly semblance of his new visage was more vivid than the transformation I encountered before. Had I not known any better, I would have thought that this new beast was an entirely different creature altogether. The milkiness of his eyes flooded with an inky darkness, and his irises cleaved to form tinier dots that expanded the scope of his vision. Once completely morphed, he resolved to focus on me.

Casting my fears aside temporarily, I snapped the chamber of my revolver into place and pointed it at him, prepared to shoot at the slightest twitch of movement, but Rick intervened with a surprise leap attack from behind, his arm slung around the creature's neck while he struck the creature's back with the stone dagger in his other hand. The abruptness of Rick's actions caused me to fire a shot that grazed Rick's arm before the bullet lodged into the monster's chest, and the Wendigo whipped about in a frenzy, bucking Rick off of him.

The slick-haired gentleman rebounded from the dismount a short distance from me, raising himself to his feet with elegant ease."I thought I told you to save those bullets, Bulloch. How many have you got left, now that you've shot me?" He glared at me between glances at the writhing Wendigo we faced, watching for any signs of petrification from the stone dagger attack.

"What better use of bullets could there be, if not to shoot giant monsters that are about to end our lives, hmn?" I jogged towards him with an innocent look and firearm in hand.

"Remind me to teach you telepathy if we survive this. Which might be doubtful." Rick now gazed steadily at the Wendigo.

"Why is that?" I glanced over to the creature myself, who did not appear stony at all and was rising to face us again.

"Because the cologne was supposed to mask our bodily scents so that we wouldn't be easily tracked by these creatures without them associating us as henchmen of the Purples. Even if we were to escape this ordeal, it's guaranteed that we'll be found again in the future."

"What, why?"

"Because I'm bleeding, and the scent of blood is overwhelmingly distinct for flesh-hungry monsters. And...the Gorgon dagger apparently doesn't work on a fully-formed Wendigo, so we need to figure out another way to defeat two Wendigos..." Rick saw a looming, burly figure descend from the Endigo gang's boat. "And potentially a third."

Rick's words spurred an epiphany within me, and I momentarily ignored everything else. "Wait, do you mean the Gorgon dagger from the ruins of Pompeii? Stheno's Fang?"

"Another time, Theo. On my command, shoot!" Rick grabbed a liquor vase nearby and pitched it at the risen Wendigo. "Now!"

I fired at the container, which shattered on impact and showered our Wendigo with liquor. Coupled with fire magic summoned forth by another one of Rick's incantations, the alcohol-drenched Wendigo writhed wildly in azure flames, until finally succumbing to the fiery demise.

"That solves one of our problems," sighed Rick in relief.

"Incoming!" exclaimed Rory, knocking the wind out of Rick and me when his body plowed into us.

"The Bernstein brothers are desperate to have recruited a hexed man and a mage. The third, I think, is just an imbecile with a gun," said a bearded, brawny man, marching confidently toward us with the first Wendigo close behind. "What will you have me do with them, Altan?"

The remaining Wendigo, a ferocious specimen of horror that displayed its superiority with a second set of teeth upon its chin and a crown of antlers that resembled fragments of human ribs, stalked the older, broad-shouldered man.

"I'm going to rip every piece of meat from their bodies, Horen. In your power, touch their bones and regrow their flesh," snarled Altan the Wendigo, his words simmering in rage. "I want them to suffer a thousand deaths for their transgressions."

I was the first to rise from the crash and raised my revolver to the two figures. "Why stop at a thousand? Why not a thousand and one?" I chuckled, wincing from a sharp pain in my body that was likely a broken rib or two.

Enraged at my impetuous remark, the Wendigo dove at me with long, bony claws, and seizing the opportunity, I fired a successful shot at his hand. A deafening whiteness consumed my vision, and I could feel his sharp nails plunging through my body before 

                                                                                                                                                     the world

                                                                                                                                                                  melted

                                                                                                                                                                            to nothing

                                                                                                                                                                          in my waning

                                                                                                                                                                                          mind.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 ∞ 

Art by Vishnu Prasad