Chapter 249: Mission with Enid

[Wednesday’s POV]

The trip to the town took us about forty-five minutes. Not bad, we covered 200 kilometers.

The journey was silent, not out of discomfort, but for the sake of efficiency. We reached the outskirts of the town at around 11:16 PM.

And from the very first second, something felt wrong. The streets were completely empty. Too empty, even for such a late hour.

The atmosphere was strange. Every window in the houses had its curtains drawn. There were no open stores, not even a 24-hour supermarket. Nothing.

As if the people here were afraid to go out at night. It reminded me of the murders in Jericho in the past, when people stopped leaving their homes after dark for fear of the serial killer on the loose.

We moved without speaking. Only hand signals and exchanged glances. We had done this enough times to understand each other without a single word.

The town was small, much smaller than Jericho or Shadyside. No one peeked out, not even through a crack in the curtains.

Enid sniffed the air, “I smell blood… but it’s not normal. It’s dirtier than usual,” she whispered with a disgusted expression as she led the way.

Maybe we were getting closer to the place where the killer, or killers, were hiding the dead bodies, and that’s why Enid could smell the rotting stench. I couldn’t. My sense of smell was nowhere near hers.

We walked at a moderate but stealthy pace, heading for a hill to the east. At its peak stood a mansion.

Even from below, it looked a bit imposing, I must say, blackened by time and terribly neglected. It looked more haunted than my own house, and that’s saying a lot.

We slipped into the forest surrounding the hill without making a sound.

The path was winding and neglected.

A stone trail half-covered in dry leaves. In less than five minutes, we were standing in front of a rusted gate.

We jumped over it without touching it. A perfect arc. We landed silently on the other side.

The mansion was surrounded by crumbling stone ruins, broken statues, and collapsed arches. There were no lights. No cracks. Everything was sealed shut.

We started circling the building, looking for a way in without having to knock down a door. Every entrance was sealed.

Boarded up with rotted but solid wood. Same with the windows.

“Yeah, the smell of rotting blood is definitely coming from this mansion,” Enid murmured.

Eventually, we found something. A pair of iron cellar doors, half-sunken into the ground.

Typical access to a basement or underground storage. The padlock was old and covered in rust.

Enid crouched down and took hold of the lock with one hand. Then, with a bit of pressure, she snapped it like a dry twig.

“Ready?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded, and she opened the doors.

A sharp screech echoed as the rusted doors creaked open. Without hesitation, we began to descend. Side by side, all my senses fully alert.

And then, even I could smell it.

The stench. It wasn’t just blood. It was decay.

Enid stopped one step ahead and whispered without turning, “It’s definitely coming from the basement.”

I nodded, and we kept going.

The descent led to a damp stone corridor, mossy and windowless. The walls were coated in slime and moss, and the floor was stained with old marks.

At the end of the hallway: an old wooden door, unlocked.

We opened it slowly. The basement was larger than I expected. Towering wooden shelves rose like improvised walls, filled with old objects, jars, rusted tools, dusty boxes.

Cobwebs hung like curtains. Dust coated every surface. It looked less like a basement and more like a makeshift labyrinth.

We moved through the aisles.

Enid’s breathing was steady and controlled. Her eyes scanned everything, her ears attentive to every sound.

We advanced like that for almost three minutes. Until we turned a corner, and saw it.

An open chamber, clearer than the ones before. The floor was covered in symbols drawn in something that definitely wasn’t paint.

A ritual circle, complex, with precise proportions and heretical geometry.

At the center… a creature lay sleeping.

It was hard to give it a name. It clearly wasn’t a demon. It was a formless, humanoid mass, with torn skin in some places and patches of scales or hair in others.

Four arms, or what was left of them, protruded from its torso at impossible angles.

A dislocated jaw hung open like a beaten animal’s, drooling something thick and dark.

Eyes. Too many eyes. And not all of them on its face.

One word came to mind. “Chimera,” I murmured.

Though of course, far more horrifying than the one from Greek mythology.

It rested like a dog.

Lying in a dried pool of blood and ash.

It didn’t move. But its presence alone made the air feel heavier.

I exchanged a look with Enid. Neither of us spoke, but we already knew what had happened to the normies who’d gone missing in this town.

I began channeling dark energy into my right hand. The darkness condensed slowly, silently. It took shape, curved, elongated, lethal.

A scythe.

Beside me, Enid was readying herself too. Her claws slid out with a soft, almost inaudible sound.

Her pupils narrowed. Her breathing grew even quieter.

We didn’t need any more signals. We both knew what had to be done.

Kill that thing, before it woke up and fulfilled an even more twisted purpose.

But just as we took the first step, a voice rose calmly, “Well… I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

We turned around in unison.

From a dark corner of the basement emerged a tall, bald man with pale, sickly skin.

He wore a filthy lab coat, stained with dried blood, ink, and something I preferred not to identify. Round glasses sat crooked on his angular face.

His eyes, small, bright, radiated a barely-contained madness beneath a thin layer of false politeness.

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” he continued in a nasal voice, “but I’m afraid you’re interfering in a delicate transaction.”

I didn’t respond immediately. I just stared at him.

My mind was already connecting the dots. The stained coat, the ritualized basement, the creature stitched together with blood and lesser sorcery.

“Let me guess,” I said at last, my tone dry.

“A mediocre outcast… desperate to climb one rung higher on the food chain. And since there’s chaos now, you’re taking advantage of it, killing people and playing with dark books.”

Clearly, I was disappointed. I’d expected more. A more powerful outcast, or someone with a direct link to the Spellmans.

The man didn’t take offense. He just smiled.

“Yes,” he said bluntly. “Biology. Talent. Blood. We’re all born with a ceiling. And mine, unfortunately, was quite low.”

He said it like he was reading a medical diagnosis. “My abilities… were standard. Not exceptional. No influential family. No special talent. So I did what I could with what I had. But eventually, you realize you’ve hit your limit. So what’s left? Transgression.”

His eyes sparkled as he looked at the creature.

“Using that chimera?” I asked, tilting my head slightly. “Seems like your talent isn’t the only thing that’s mediocre.”

He didn’t flinch. Not even a twitch. That was almost more repulsive than his earlier smile.

“Of course it doesn’t give me power, nor would it raise my biological ceiling,” he replied as if explaining a soup recipe. “The creature wasn’t designed for that. It’s an offering.”

I said nothing. Just watched him spiral deeper into his rotten logic.

“The Spellmans… they’re cautious. Careful. Especially now that they’ve been declared criminals by the Council. They don’t accept new allies easily. Even less so if that ally doesn’t have a powerful family backing them or a dark reputation.”

His voice lowered.

“To them, I’m just an individual. And lone individuals can be traitors, Council pawns, or simply a nuisance. But if I give them something that clearly shows my moral boundaries are on par with theirs… then they’ll let me in.”

If he wants to join them, he must have some way of contacting the Spellmans, or someone who does, I thought, a new idea forming in my mind. Maybe this mission wasn’t as pointless as it seemed. I could interrogate him.

“The chimera is the ticket. An abomination built from normies and two outcasts. Multiple souls. I know the demons working with the Spellmans will love it. It’ll be useful for them to devour…”

Enid pressed her lips together, visibly disgusted.

I kept silent. But I felt the darkness in my scythe tighten in my palm, craving to sever that bald head from its shoulders.

After finishing his pathetic speech, I saw him extend his hand. Carved into his skin was a symbol, and it began to glow.

“But to make it happen, I must eliminate the two of you first,” he said, as the symbol on his palm began to burn faintly.

The chimera opened its eyes. Not two, not four.

But at least eight, uneven, deformed, scattered across its body.

Its spine arched. Its limbs tensed. And with a slow, grotesque motion… it rose.

“You take the monster,” I told Enid quietly. “I’ll deal with the bald idiot.”

The bald man stepped back, raising his marked hand. A telekinetic field burst outward violently, trying to freeze me in place.

I felt the pressure in the air, like the oxygen had thickened. But it was nothing I hadn’t faced before.

I’ve trained with Luke. His telekinesis, the last time we sparred, could lift over fifteen tons.

This guy’s power was clearly much weaker. I slid around the flank.

Darkness surged in my left palm, forming a dense cloud. I wrapped it around myself like a second skin, breaking through the pressure of his telekinetic grip.

I closed the distance, and his desperation became obvious. He began hurling objects from the surroundings, rusted crates, metal pipes, wooden fragments.

All deflected with a single slash of my dark scythe.

“Pathetic,” I muttered, without slowing down.

Beside me, Enid’s roar echoed off the basement walls. She and the creature were already locked in combat.

The chimera charged with clumsy but brutal force, while Enid moved with wild agility, blocking with her forearms, striking with her heels, dodging with quick, precise movements.

The sound of her claws tearing into the chimera’s deformed flesh rang clear.

My scythe collided with a telekinetic barrier, one that didn’t last a second. It shredded like paper.

The bald man fell backward, gasping, raising a bloodied hand to try to form another defense.

Weak, I thought with disdain. He looked three times my age, and this was all he could do.

Not even a full minute. If instead of whining about his lack of talent, his biological ceiling, and wasting time with cheap dark sorcery, he had trained and worked to improve… he might have been stronger.

Still, before I could land a killing blow, especially before cutting off the arm he used to control the creature, he didn’t surrender.

The symbol on his palm glowed once again. This time, the light was unstable, flickering.

And in an instant, through a dense black cloud, the chimera appeared right in front of me, shielding its pathetic master.

I truly hadn’t expected that. It wasn’t telekinesis.

It was rudimentary spatial distortion, something he likely learned from some dark grimoire.

The chimera, now less than two meters away, opened its jaws. Wide. Uneven. Lined with both human and animal teeth.

And it lunged at me.

There was no room, no time to retreat. All I could do was form a shield of darkness. But just as I began to shape it, the bald man raised his palm again.

The symbol carved into his flesh burned like a hot coal. I felt the pull. Like the air around me had collapsed. It wasn’t a push, it was suction.

An unnatural pressure dragging at my limbs, as if space itself had decided to swallow my energy.

My focus broke for a split second, and it was already too late.

Then, just as I braced to feel the bite tear into my side… Something slammed into me. Enid, partially transformed.

She struck me from the flank and threw me several meters back. I rolled across the stone basement floor, shielding myself with darkness before crashing into a shelf.

I got back on my feet immediately, just in time to see Enid take my place. The chimera’s jaws clamped down viciously on her fully transformed left arm.

Enid growled in obvious pain, but she didn’t freeze. With her free arm, she raised her claws and slashed upward, straight at the beast’s throat.

Its deformed flesh tore like wet paper. A dark stream of blood splattered the walls and part of Enid’s face.

The chimera shrieked,a mix of voices, and then she kicked it with her right leg, straight into its stomach.

The chimera’s body flew through the air and crashed into a shelf. The old wood cracked and splintered. The monster hit the ground hard, wheezing.

Before the bald man could do anything else, I sank into my shadow.

The floor swallowed me. And a second later, I emerged right beside him.

Before he could raise his marked hand, my scythe was already in motion. The blade sliced through the air and cut off his arm at the elbow.

The symbol stopped glowing. He screamed, a sharp, almost shrill sound. He turned toward me, his left arm. I cut that one off too.

He collapsed to his knees before me. To make sure he didn’t try anything, I extended my free hand, and tendrils of darkness slithered out, wrapping around his torso and neck, constricting him with precise force, leaving him breathing, but completely immobilized.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Enid approach the chimera.

She simply raised her claw and drove it into the creature’s skull.

One strike. More out of mercy than rage.

Enid stepped back a few paces, breathing heavily.

Blood dripped from her wounded arm, dark and thick, falling onto the basement floor in an irregular rhythm.

Her claws retracted. Her transformed arms began to shrink. The skin smoothed. The fur vanished. Within seconds, her arms returned to normal.

I walked toward her without saying a word at first.

The cultist was still trapped behind me, his arms severed, trembling, half-laughing…

But I didn’t look at him.

Not yet.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my tone as flat as ever.

Enid sat on the floor, leaning her back against one of the blood-stained walls.

She looked down at her arm. The bite was on her tricep and part of her bicep: swollen, bruised, with uneven fang marks.

“I’m… fine,” she murmured. But her voice was weaker. “My regeneration’s working… but it’s slow. Way too slow.”

I looked at her more closely. Her pupils were dilated. Her skin paler.

“Poison?” I said aloud. Though it wasn’t really a question. It was a deduction.

And as if he had been waiting for his moment, the cultist spoke.

“Of course…” he panted. “A rather exquisite blend, I must say. Even a werewolf’s regeneration would struggle with it… though sadly, it’s not lethal.”

He burst out laughing. I didn’t turn to face him. I just listened.

Then I looked back at Enid. Her breathing was heavier, but she was still conscious.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I finally said.

“Save you from a bite that would’ve taken off your entire arm?” she shot back, with a lopsided, tired, but steady smile.

“Yeah. Clearly, I didn’t have to.”

I didn’t argue, because she was right. I had let my guard down. I had underestimated the bald one’s pathetic telekinetic strength.

Enid adjusted herself against the wall as best she could. Her breathing seemed to worsen with each passing minute.

Her arm remained swollen, bruised. Her regeneration wasn’t working.

“Interrogate him,” she said suddenly. Her voice was weaker, but still sharp. “We finally have one who didn’t off himself the moment he lost.”

I nodded silently.

I turned and walked toward the cultist, still bound by my shadow ropes.

He writhed and trembled, his bloodied stumps twitching, his eyes filled with a mix of desperation, fanaticism… and a flicker of twisted dignity.

“What was your method of contact?” I asked.

My voice was firm, emotionless. “Who were you going to reach out to, to deliver the chimera?”

The bald man smiled, teeth stained with blood.

“You think I care about helping you?” he spat.

“I already know I’m going to die… why would I help you?”

I looked into his eyes, searching for cracks. He wasn’t going to give me anything.

I could torture him, make him beg for a quick death. But that would take time. Time I didn’t have.

I glanced over my shoulder. Enid had her eyes closed. Her chest was rising and falling with effort. She was losing consciousness.

Her body was trying to hold on, but it wouldn’t last much longer.

I made a decision.

A spear of shadow formed in my hand, and without a second of hesitation, I drove it through his chest.

The cultist convulsed, coughed up blood… and died with his eyes open, confused. Clearly, he’d been expecting more conversation.

I crouched down, took the dark sorcery book from one of his pockets, and stashed it away.

Then I walked over to Enid, “Let’s go. It’s time to head back,” I said.

“Done interrogating him?” Enid murmured. She was clearly not in her right mind.

I hadn’t expected the chimera’s poison to destabilize her so quickly.

“Yes. Now get up. We need to get back so you can be treated,” I replied, helping her to her feet.

She opened her eyes slowly and stood up awkwardly. Her legs were shaking.

“I don’t need help,” she muttered stubbornly.

I raised an eyebrow at her.

And when her leg gave out a second time, I picked her up. Forced her onto my back.

She growled softly in protest, more out of pride than actual will. Her body was far too weak to resist.

“This isn’t necessary,” she mumbled.

“Yes it is,” I said simply.

And so, with her on my back, I began the return. The trip was clearly slower. Carrying a medium-sized werewolf isn’t exactly comfortable,

but it’s not impossible either.

Fifteen minutes. No more.

It would really be nice to have Luke’s abilities in moments like this. His telekinesis… the way he could lift me like I weighed nothing.

And now, with his green aura amplifying it even further. I really miss him—

No. What am I thinking? I shook my head. This isn’t the time for that.

It’s strange, really… That I’m carrying Enid now, rushing to get her treated. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have done this.

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