As he gingerly regained his feet, Nicholas noted with mild surprise that the gaunt was attempting to do the same. Panting, he watched its pitiful struggle. It did not possess the inhuman regenerative capabilities of the ghast. With one arm snapped and the other severed, it could barely support itself, and its newly game leg stole whatever balance it had left. The occasional groan escaped it, but its fighting spirit had all but fled.
Nicholas froze. For a brief moment he saw another gaunt, broken and bleeding like the one before him. Not a vision this time; a ghost of his own, a long-blurred memory of a home destroyed by the creature, the husband mauled and mangled in the living room, the wife, in the bedroom, unrecognisable save for a shredded dress and a pair of shoes—and outside, their nine year old daughter, ripped in half before his dazed and helpless eyes. He remembered the once perfect front lawn he had admired on his arrival, slick and scarlet as he had emerged from the house. He remembered the bus of screaming grade-school children, its panicked driver gunning the engine, racing the ungainly vehicle to safety. He remembered the girl’s torso dangling in midair as her life had drained from her body and down the monster’s throat.
And he felt the phantom imprint of the Louisville Slugger he had found in the bedroom, its handle crushed against the palm of his shaking right hand.
Sudden rage overtook him and he ran forward, his own scream now filling the building. He struck at the beast furiously, blindly, his fists hammering the creature’s back, skin and muscle and bone tearing free with each blow of the silver knuckles. The beast bellowed helplessly, its stump waving the air in a vain attempt to ward off its assailant, but the Hunter took no notice, pounding relentlessly at the creature until its strength gave out and it collapsed at his feet.
Seizing its neck, Nicholas hauled it up with an unholy roar, battering its skull with left after left after passionate left, until with one last cry he took it in both hands and slammed it into the wall below the stairs.
The gaunt sagged limply against the wall, its breathing shallow and labored. The bones in its face were so badly smashed that it no longer looked like even a member of its own species. Its left eye rolled miserably in its socket, attempting again and again to focus on Nicholas and spasming away; its right was glassy and bloodshot, damaged beyond function. It no longer appeared monstrous or menacing. It looked pathetic.
Nicholas’ own breath came harshly as he leaned on his knees and stared at the creature cringing away from him like a whipped dog. His fury was unsated—far from it—but his fight was spent as well. His lip curled in loathing, but he remained still, content to breathe.
As he stood, he felt the Messengers brushing at his mind. He thrust them away, but the sensation returned, stronger and insistent. The Sight crowded in, forcefully almost, its grayed whispering veils superimposing themselves over his normal vision.
It was the same vision he had received in Hallmark’s—the end of it, more precisely, the screaming man in the floor. Nicholas hadn’t worried much about it when he’d seen it; the Messengers had left him such sensory gifts in the past as an impetus rather than a portent. Why did they care about their hasty message now?
Insight struck him then, as he stared at the ghostly images. The Messengers had sent him that vision because there had been no time for solving riddles. They had only shown him the danger, knowing he would act to stop it—but there was the answer. They had shown him all of the danger. The gaunt had surprised him on the concourse because the warning he had received had not been of its actions, but of its transformation.
Nicholas scoffed in disbelief. Was that their intent?, he thought, bemused. Did they want him to feel sorry for it? to pity it? He shook his head, biting back a frustrated expletive, and gave the dying creature before him a hard look. The ghast were once human as well. Should he not also care about them?
A long, silent moment passed.
In a sudden motion the pistol was in Nicholas’ hand and leveled at the gaunt’s head. He thumbed back the hammer, staring at the creature over the barrel’s sight, his gaze frigid with contempt, willing the beast to meet it.
One weary eye flicked to him.
“In pace requiescat.”
The Blackhawk roared.
