His thoughts were scattered, incoherent, and he fought to corral them, attempting to recall what had just happened. His head lolled and his vision was suddenly occluded by a foreign substance; they were his own tears, he recognised, and he blinked to clear them. Farther down the concourse, he could hear a steady rhythmic thumping and a dreadful keening noise, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was, or what to do about it—or even if he should do anything about it at all. He hurt, a lot, and that seemed to be more pressing at the moment, although he wasn’t altogether certain what to do about that, either. The thumping was annoying, though. It made his head throb.
It was very hard to think clearly, he decided, when the world was sideways. He knew it wasn’t supposed to be, and that, he thought, was probably why he couldn’t . . . well, why he couldn’t. He couldn’t when things were sideways, they were supposed to be up, and he wished very hard that they would go back to being up so he could.
Whatever it was that he couldn’t.
He considered this situation a moment—he wanted very much for the accursed thumping to stop, it was confusing him—and realised abruptly that it was not the world that was sideways, it was he that was sideways, and the world would go back to normal as soon as he did.
With a grunt of effort he righted himself. This was good, he mused, this was better . . . except now something else wasn’t right. He waited for the solution to present itself because at present he couldn’t find it, and he busied himself testing various parts of his body to see if they were still there.
It was his hand, he thought suddenly. Something was wrong with his hand. He glanced down and flexed it. No, that wasn’t it. His hand worked fine. It was something else. Something was . . . missing. His hand was empty, something should be in his hand, he needed whatever was supposed to be in his hand and if he could just find what it was, if he could just—if he could just stop that damnable thumping, he could remember what it was! Where was that noise coming from, anyway?
It was getting closer, too, he noticed. He cast about for a source and in the process spotted a very tall and very gangly-looking gray thing a short distance from where he now sat. He knew what it was, but the word for it escaped him; it was a game, was a grape, a guard, a . . . .
“Ugh,” said Nicholas, shaking himself.
Clarity came rushing back to him. A gaunt. It was a gaunt, it was coming to kill him, and he was sitting here in a heap because the beast had swatted him with its own severed arm, grabbed probably without realising what it even was. His left hand crept across his body to his protesting side, and he was relieved to find that the deadly claws had only caught in his duster and had not torn into his flesh. No serious damage; he could still fight.
The monster reached him, and the Hunter’s right hand stole into the duster’s large pocket for his ace in the hole. He lay still against the wall as it leered down at him, letting its own curious snuffling distract it from the furtive movements of his arm. He waited until its grotesque visage was inches from his own before revealing his surprise.
“Invictus.”
The glow of power flooded his body and he slammed his right fist upwards, cross-studded metal knuckles crushing the hideous jawbone, sending bits of teeth showering into the ceiling. The monster reeled in surprise and stumbled backwards, batting at its head with its hands.
Nicholas continued the motion, turning it into a clumsy sideways roll to put enough distance between him and the monster for him to get to his feet. He dragged himself up from his flop and retrieved a second matching set of silver-plated knuckles from his left coat pocket, slipping them easily over his fingers, and he prepared to face down the wounded and enraged creature.
But now time had become his ally. The gaunt’s maimed arm was unstaunched, and it was still losing torrents of blood from the stump. Already its eyes were starting to glaze; though it could still pack a nasty wallop, it would be slowed considerably, and avoiding its blows would be much easier.
The gaunt, howling in pain and fury, spotted Nicholas and lurched at him, almost tripping itself as it dropped too-quick into a lumbering charge. Still filled with the glow of power, Nicholas strode to meet it, holding onto the warmth as long as its invocation would last. He saw the beast’s arm sweeping from his right and, planting hard, drove his left fist down to meet it.
The gaunt’s elbow snapped at the impact, its forearm whipping harmlessly past him; Nicholas pressed forward, throwing a hard right at the beast’s abdomen. The cross-emblazoned silver ripped ichorous chunks from the creature’s flesh. A left hook followed, and then a pair of equally vicious punches—and Nicholas realised as the monster reared back that he simply wasn’t doing enough damage.
Stepping back, Nicholas aimed a blow at the beast’s right knee. The joint shattered as if made of glass. With a shriek, the gaunt tumbled forward; too fast, the Hunter realised, the momentum of its own strike was pulling it down. He dove clear, and the beast collapsed to the ground with a thundering crash.
