Training Supply Office
2/19th SWG Barracks
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
I stared at my boots for a long moment, closing my eyes and squeezing them tight. The room stank of blood and, if you can believe it, hatred. The knot on the back of my head ached where I'd been knocked out only a few hours before. My wrists burned and ached from being tied up, my shoulderblade hurt from where I'd slammed against the door backing up. A low growling noise, animalistic, inhuman, snapped my attention back to the present.
When I looked up I stared at him. He was staring at me, that ruined left eye blood red, pressure cuts in bruises on unswollen flesh that were sealed with gummy half-congealed blood, slashed and torn uniform, ice and frozen blood in his hair, and dark red blood running down his chin. Blood dripped from those heavy killing hands of his, falling on the floor.
But the pools of blood didn't get bigger, just stayed roughly the size of a teacup saucer.
...interesting...
The other thing that struck me, aside from his stillness, was his size. His was at least seven feet tall, easily a foot wider than he had been. Make no mistake, he was a big man normally, covered in heavy slabs of muscle, but since he'd appeared out of the dark he was even bigger.
Those eyes turned toward me and I could see that his pupils were still fixed and dilated.
"Why is the salt holding him still?" Neelson asked softly. When I glanced at her I noticed she had her arms crossed over her belly protectively.
"I told you," I snapped, turning my attention back to him.
His face was slack, the grim look or that wry smile missing. The nerve on the side of his face that usually spasmed when he was under stress was still. His skin was pale, freckles plain on his face, and the scarring on the left side of his face was evident.
I got up and moved toward him carefully, moving around the thin circle of salt I had poured.
"Is he safe?" One of the girls asked. I think she was with 1st Platoon, working at ASP #3 in Wildflicken with 144th Ordnance Company.
"As safe as he ever is," I said gently, watching as he turned slowly to keep his empty eyes on me.
Something flickered in his eyes as I lit a cigarette and for a second I saw that difference engine that ran inside of his skull. That amazing cerebral wiring that let him take in all the variables in a split second and spit out the answer that gave him the best options and outcome. That calculating decision tree system that I'd seen engaged so often.
That was better than the emptiness that returned.
"What happened to him? They said they killed him," another girl said. Wright, I think her name was. She was out of Kill Shop, probably a sadist and a psychopath in addition to being pregnant.
"I'm not sure," I said. I took a deep drag of the cigarette, glancing at the girl. The condensation of her breath was spreading out, still visible. Goddamn, the room was cold, but I knew it would start heating up soon.
When I looked back at him, I counted to thirty but no condensation appeared in front of his mouth or nose.
He wasn't breathing. With the exception of the blood running down his chin from his mouth I couldn't see any wounds that accounted for the blood that soaked his hands and dripped onto the tile floor.
I could smell something. Something that didn't fit in the Training Supply Office.
Steeling myself I leaned forward close to him and sniffed carefully. He didn't move, just growled low in his throat and swayed slightly.
Blood. The smell of Atlas that had soaked into his uniform and skin. And something else. I sniffed again.
...apple blossoms...
I leaned back suddenly, staring at him.
"What's an Ah-Nah?" Harris asked suddenly. He was motorpool, getting out on a Failure to Adapt chapter.
"Aine," I corrected. "It's a who, mostly." I turned and took another drag of my cigarette, moving over to sit on a stack of MRE boxes and then turning so I could stare at him.
"What about them?" Wright asked.
"She's the reason the mountain didn't take him," I said softly. "Well, not all the way."
"What do you mean?" Harris asked.
"I think he might have been going out and Aine somehow blocked the mountain from taking him and sending him back at us like Tandy or the Axe Man," I said softly, and shivered as goosebumps erupted across my skin.
"Jesus, could you imagine if the mountain sent that at us?" I shuddered. "He's bad enough as a mortal man, but as an immortal killer, as a tool of the mountain?" I shuddered again. "It'd be like a goddamn nuclear weapon."
"Is he as dangerous as he looks?" Neelson asked.
"You'd have to see it to believe it," I thought, thinking about Atlas. I shook my head. "Enough, we need to take stock while I figure out what to do next. Look for any fuel sticks, any of the small Special Forces portable stoves, any extreme cold weather gear left in here."
"Who put you..." Gordons started.
"Do you know how to stop him if he gets free?" I snapped.
"Stop him?" Gordons asked.
I didn't bother to look at him, staring at the massive man swaying gently inside the ring of salt. "If he breaks out of that ring, can you stop him before he kills both of you men and does God knows what with the females?"
"Umm..." Gordons said.
"Then shut up and get to work," I told him, staring.
His boots were smeared with clotted blood, the leather a dull black instead of the highly polished black I'd seen them when we'd headed up the mountain. His hands, which I'd seen him use to crush the life out of people with my own eyes, were larger than they usually were.
But then, so was he.
How did Aine do it? I wondered. Something was nagging at me, something from last year. The weird little Fruit Bat isn't exactly of this world, but neither is Alfenwehr.
"Raise your left arm and turn so I can see your side," I said.
He raised that arm, his muscles bunching under his uniform, and turned enough that I could see the left side of his back and his left side. I could see three holes in his uniform, the fabric around the holes dark with frozen blood.
"Lower your right arm, let me see your back," I told him. After a moment he moved.
His thought process was extremely slow.
No stab wounds on the back, and the blood hadn't spread to his back. He must have landed face down, his blood flowing down to his chest.
"Raise your right arm, turn so I can see your right side."
Again, it took almost a full second before he started to move. No stab wounds.
"Lower your right arm, face me," I told him. Again, it took a second before he did it. I stood up and took a good look at his top.
His throat had bruising across it. There were six holes in his uniform, right about at his sternum.
Someone choked him, stabbed him from the back, stabbed him in the chest, I figured. I looked at his hands and noticed something I'd missed before due to the blood dripping from his hands.
Those prominent knuckles of his were covered in torn skin on both hands. He'd gone down fighting.
I knew where the stab wounds would have gone. The ones in the chest had more than likely hit his ribs, slid along the ribs, and mostly missed his vital organs. The three in his back would have clipped the lung, but not much else unless they knew exactly what they were doing.
The man in front of me would have been precise, almost surgical in nature. I'd seen his handiwork plenty of times.
The people who had stabbed him had been amateurs.
The members of 32nd Forward Support, First Cavalry Division (Army Reserve) didn't train for knife fighting, they had just been activated, sent up to Alfenwehr, and were pretty much non-combat for the most part. I doubted they had anyone who had fired a weapon at another human being in 15 years.
He would have bled out. His lungs filling with blood. As he died the mountain would have reached out and gathered him close, taken him to wherever its weapons were hidden until it was time to use them.
Aine must have reached from Graf and kept Alfenwehr from taking a man she had known literally all of her life.
"Found a box of stoves," Groom said, moving up next to me. Her belly wasn't sticking out further than it had when she had been sent away from Atlas, but she was only like three months along.
"Light them," I told her.
"What about fumes?" She asked.
"Move the boxes and crack the window," I told them.
Groom stared at the man in the salt circle. "Jesus, it's like he's stomped out of my nightmares."
I nodded. "Yeah."
"Was it Aine?" She asked, and shivered.
I remembered that she had taken part in bringing Aine back into the mortal world after the Atlas Explosion had dismembered her and Bomber had brought her newly healed body back to the Fort. Had bathed the diminutive woman in blood until she had awoken.
"Had to be. I could smell apple blossoms," I told her honestly, lighting another cigarette.
"Why you?" She asked.
"Blood lines," I told her, shrugging, "I've got the type of bloodline that she respects."
"What bloodline?" She asked me.
"Cromwell was an Englishman who took over England in the 17th Century. I'm a direct descendant, mixed with an Irish family when my family fled to Talbot Country, Massachusetts after Oliver Cromwell died," I told her. "I'm old blood, and Aine respects that."
"Meaning?" She asked me.
I exhaled the smoke, watching it curl around the ring of salt, not crossing the line.
"Holy shit," Groom said softly.
"Yeah," I answered. "It means things that I'm not ready to explain. Light the stoves, warm it up before all of you preggos freeze to death."
Groom turned away, and I ignored the chatter of the two chapters and the ten pregnant female troops kept up.
The man just stared at me as I finished my cigarette and lit another one.
"Blood for Lugus," I said softly in Gaelic. "Blood for Cernunno."
Stillwater just stared, blood dripping off of his hands and into the puddles.
...what do I do with the half-dead? what do I do with an neamh-mairbh, anAbhartach?...
Stillwater just stared.