Territory: Werewolves Versus Vampires
The man leading the group looked young, but had eyes that were hard and too old for his face. He was medium weight, just under six feet tall, and dressed in the height of unobtrusive fashion with jeans, work boots and a flannel shirt. The mountain of a man who walked beside him accentuated his plain appearance. He stood six foot eight or more, and was all of four hundred pounds. Close cropped hair and a perennial grin topped baggy clothes that could not hide his heavily muscled frame.
The two men following them were equally contrasted, if not more so. A large angry bruiser with a cowboy hat and boots, and in his neon fueled shadow, a small thin man in an expensive suit. Bringing up the rear was another average sized man in an old camouflaged jacket. The camouflaged man was sniffing constantly, and his eyes never appeared to rest on one spot.
“Get a load of that smell, ” the camouflaged man said as the mountain-sized man reached for a polished aluminum door handle.
“Not as many as we thought,” replied the leader as he grabbed the other door handle.
“So who’s the owner of this establishment?” the leader asked.
“A mister R.L. Stevenson according to the public records I could find” replied the small thin man.
“Let me guess,” replied the leader with a grin, “all you could find was that name, but no birth certificate or social.”
The leader chuckled and added, “These guys do have a sense of humor.”
“What’s so funny about this Stevenson guy?” the bruiser questioned.
“Ever hear of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?” the leader asked.
“Yeah, so what?” the bruiser said.
“Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that story over a hundred years ago. The name is just a cover for the real owner, who probably read the story when it first came out,” the small man answered.
The camouflaged man leaned against the wall to the right of the doors, and after a pause the small, thin man said, “Shall we gentlemen?”
The leader and the giant pulled the doors open, and the four men entered the smoky interior of the club, leaving the camouflaged man to guard the outside. The doors opened on a hallway that led to the main floor of the club. Near the end of the hallway was a desk for the doorman. As they approached the end of the hallway, flashing lights and droning, pulsing music began to assault the senses of the four men. The doorman eyed the quartet and decided they were not the clientele that were normally admitted to the club. The four men started to walk around the doorman’s table, ignoring him.
“You gentlemen will have to.”, was as far as the man got before a forceful backhand from the leader knocked him off his feet, and left him a bloody, crumpled mass against the wall. Three large bouncers from the main floor immediately closed in on the leader, while the giant stepped up to his side.
“The one on the right.” said the leader, and the giant moved to intercept the security. A stiff-arm block put the two bouncers on his left across a table, and a downward right jab crushed the sternum and ribs of the bouncer on his right. His meaty hand grabbed the collapsing bouncer by the throat, and wrenched his head from his shoulders with a soft wet pop. The yellow eyes in the head opened wide, and the fang filled mouth screamed before the head turned gray and started to rot. Then the music stopped.
It was a scene from a movie as every head in the half-filled club turned to the commotion in the doorway. Some of the club patrons stared in goggle-eyed, abject horror, while more than a few projected an ancient hate.
“We’re only here for some of you,” shouted the small man, “if you don’t know who we are, leave now!”
That was enough for most of the patrons and staff, and with worried glances they stormed around the four men and rushed out the door. The thirty men and women left in the club slowly moved in unison towards the entrance, and the men who had disturbed their evening.
A closer inspection of the denizens of the club would have revealed 25 men and 5 women, in black, well dressed gothic style. Most of them would have been considered beautiful, with thin bodies and tight, smooth skin, although their yellow eyes and elongated canines revealed their true natures to anyone who could look past their pretty exteriors.
“You people have been warned to stay out of our territory on several occasions,” said the leader of the four men, “yet here you are. You want to explain this before we kill you?”
The oldest of the denizens moved to the front of his group and replied, “This is my club! Who are you, little dog, to tell us where we can live? You are outnumbered, and frankly” he said as he looked the leader up and down, “outclassed.”
“Outclassed,” said the leader. He looked at his giant and they shared a chuckle.
“Stop laughing!” screeched the oldest denizen as he puffed out his chest. “My name is Francis DeLarch, I am two hundred and fifty years old, and I am the one who will end your miserable lice infested…”
“Borrring”, interrupted the small man. He casually moved to the left side of the leader. “Why do these old vampires always carry on like they can scare us away?”
“Oh mister vampire, please don’t destroy us!” chimed the bruiser as he flanked the giant. “Let’s get this over with, I want something to eat.”
“Food would be nice,” agreed the giant. “A couple of fat steaks, some beers”, and he became lost in thought for a moment until the denizens began to change.
In a creepy slow-motion shudder, their arms and legs lengthened and their fingers stretched out like parodies of a spider’s long jointed legs, complete with razor sharp nails. Their eyes began to glow yellow, and some hissed, showing their oversized canines.
“Grrrrrooowwwhooo” howled the bruiser as a startling change overcame him as well. In an eye blink he had grown a beard. The popping, crackling sounds of bones breaking burst like gunshots from his clothes. His back swelled and broadened, pushing his solid shoulders forward and hunching him. The bones in his arms broke, stretched and set themselves leaving his reach one foot shy of the floor. His fingers grew extra bones and joints, and started to curl inwards towards his palms while his nails thickened and turned black. His thumbs shrank and withdrew into his palms, leaving black, hooked talons. This series of changes wracked his entire body, bursting the seams of his clothing. As his clothes dropped from his torso, a uniform layer of thick brown fur replaced them. Small, black, anger-filled eyes glared from his rabid dog-like face. When he arched his back and howled at the ceiling, his appearance was no longer that of a man, but of a giant wolf in imitation of a man’s two legged stance.
A werewolf.
The vampires inhaled as one with a sound like struck matches and attacked. A dozen male vampires leapt into the air, jumping off the walls and ceiling to attack the quartet from multiple angles. The giant started to swell up until he was over seven feet tall, and rapidly approaching the ceiling. But unlike the bruiser he stopped his change before his clothes were destroyed, and the exposed parts of his body were only covered in a light layer of fur. His strength was fully realized however as he proceeded to swat vampires out of the air with wet, bloody slaps.
The small man also changed slightly, and thrust himself off the floor with his powerful, compact legs to begin his battle in the air. A vampire rebounded from the ceiling, but was cut in half by a sweeping horizontal kick from the small man. The bisected vampire managed a look of disbelief before the two halves of his body turned into gray putrid flesh. The small man planted himself against the ceiling with both hands and feet, and then launched himself like a missile into the group of vampires the bruiser was attacking on the floor.
The battle in the club raged as the leader squared up with the vampire DeLarch.
“Just you and me old man,” said the leader. He squinted his eyes slightly, and a light five o’clock shadow appeared on his face. His fingernails however became the black talons of his fully fanged companion.
“Time to die again bloodsucker,” said the leader with a grin.
“You!” started the vampire in a high-pitched voice that he quickly lowered. “I have destroyed a score of your kind, and your mangy pack will be no exception.” Then a twelve inch silver blade shot out of his ruffled sleeve into the palm of his hand.
“Better be careful old timer,” retorted the leader. “Someone might take that shiny pocket knife of yours, and stick it straight up your faggot ass.”
“Enough!” screamed the vampire, as he levitated himself six inches off the floor. With a hiss and a bearing of fangs, he flew at the leader. He unleashed a torrent of slashes at a speed that bordered the limits of human vision, yet the leader effortlessly dodged and sidestepped the rapid silver blur of the knife. Then the leader counterattacked with slashes and broad strokes of his own.
Francis DeLarch was in fact, as good a werewolf killer as he boasted. He danced around the sweeping paws with a fluidity that made the other combatants in the club look like clumsy children. In a flash he grabbed a furry, outstretched wrist, and jerked the leader off his feet. He quickly spun on his axis, swinging the leader around in an arc, like a parent with a playful child, before releasing him at meteoric speed towards the bar.
Wood cracked, and splintered, and glass and alcohol sprayed the back wall as the leader went through the solid oak bar.
The bruiser had bitten a vampire across the torso and was shaking him like a chew toy when he noticed his leaders less than soft landing. He growled and leapt thirty feet across the room, vampire still clutched in his muzzle, at DeLarch. DeLarch settled to the floor and sidestepped the werewolf’s leap, flashing his silver blade across the beast’s trajectory. The vampire chew toy’s legs were cut off, and the werewolf’s side was opened up. The werewolf and his toy landed in a bloody slide across the floor.
The small man beheaded one female with a knife hand chop, and kicked through the breasts of a second, finishing off his opponents. He started towards DeLarch when the bar exploded outwards, filling the air with splinters. The leader emerged from the wrecked bar in a more pronounced lupine form.
“Help him,” he said in a semi-intelligible bark and nodded at the giant, who was strangling a male vampire with one hand while trying to remove the three females biting into his back with the other.
“Sure,” said the small man. He leapt onto the giant’s back and knocked the jaw off a particularly beautiful female.
“Round two, cocksucker!” said the leader, and he charged DeLarch. His boots had been torn open by his transformation; the remnants and his clawed toes slapped the floor as he closed the distance to the old vampire. DeLarch tried to sidestep as if his attacker were a slow moving bus he could easily dodge, but the oncoming werewolf veered to match him. DeLarch would have sweated if he were still human, and worry crossed his face as he started to jump out of the way, but it was too late. The werewolf ran him down, clawed toes shredding his clothes, face, and tearing out one of his eyeballs in the process. The werewolf dropped to all fours and spun around. His claws dug into the floor and brought him to a stop.
The leader became human again and strode up to the vampire DeLarch, who was lying on the floor clutching the ruins of his face, his knife and his superiority forgotten. The leader picked DeLarch up off the floor by his collar, and held him up in the air.
“My handsome face,” bawled DeLarch.
The leader shook DeLarch violently and yelled in his face, “We warned you effete assholes to stay out of our territory! If you want to fight us for it, you better leave your girlish good looks and flashy moves at home.”
“Fucking die!” he yelled and broke the old vampire’s back over his knee, letting the body fall to the floor. The battle around him had ended with only his people left standing.
The bruiser werewolf started to rise from the floor, emitting a few whimpers before he became human again. The large gash in his side had become a small cut with only a trickle of blood leaking out.
“Hey, you dead yet?” said the leader with a grin.
“Not until I’ve dealt with that undead prick!” replied the bruiser. He cocked back his bare foot and kicked. DeLarch’s head flew from his neck with the speed of a golf ball sliced from a tee.
The lifeless head disappeared in a flash of light before it could hit the wall. The body collapsed like cigarette ashes leaving its residue on the floor. The other vampire bodies had already reverted to the corpses they should have been. The club looked more like a well-lit mausoleum than the scene of a brutal fight that had been underway only moments before.
“Damn, those old ones always pull that dust to dust shit. They should just shrivel up like the young ones”, said the bruiser and he spit on the remains of DeLarch.
“If they live long enough then they will. One time I killed one that was just old enough to turn into a skeleton”, said the leader.
“That’s just creepy”, the giant said as he shrank to his normal size.
“You know” offered the small man as he reverted to normal, “we should probably be leaving now.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” agreed the leader.
The foursome congregated on the doors, and the leader said “All clear?”
The front door opened slightly and the camouflaged man’s voice replied “Clear boss.”
The group stepped outside and the camouflaged man continued.
“Nobody but people escaped the club, and what did you do to that doorman?”
“He got what he deserved, helping feed people to those goddamn vampires”, the leader said.
The giant stretched his massive arms and said “Well, what now?”
The leader gestured at the now naked bruiser.
” We get some clothes for him and boots for me, then we get something to eat, and talk about our new business”, he with a smirk.
The small man looked at the leader and asked “What new business?”
As they started to walk towards their truck, the leader put his arm around the small man’s shoulders and asked, “How would you like to be a club owner?”
This is my first try. It looked better in the original format. The story is iffy but the action sequences are good. Would like criticism. Also interested in working with someone who has a good story idea.
