The beast thrashed, its ruined eye gushing black ichor, its whole frame trembling with rage. The parking lot looked like a warzone—cars overturned, concrete split, the air thick with dust and the stench of rot and metal. The emergency lights that still worked flickered in sickly orange, strobing shadows across pillars and broken glass.
Charles could barely breathe. Every rib screamed. Blood slicked his hands—some his, most not. Yet as he watched the thing stagger with injuries that he had inflicted on it, something raw and unyielding burned up through the fear in his chest.
"We can kill it" he muttered with a glint in his eyes.
The rat shrieked, a sound so sharp it felt like the air was vibrating. Claws like hooked chisels gouged deep trenches as it barreled forward towards them, half-blind, feral, driven by pure rage.
"Hold steady!" Marco barked, voice hoarse but cutting clean through the thunder in Charles's skull. His makeshift spear was clutched tight despite the blood slicking his forearm. "Don't give it room. Its weakening, keep pressure on it!"
Selene moved first. Her hands still trembled, knuckles white around the shaft of her spear, With a desperate cry, she drove the point into the soft place beneath its jaw. The tip slid between folds of hide, shallow, but true. A new injury, a new weakness.
The rat howled and slashed. Its tail whipped like a cable, smashing a side mirror into shrapnel, Marco snagged her elbow and yanked her out of reach of the attack.
"Its slower now" he snapped, pivoting past a swiping claw to jab and retreat, jab and retreat. "Charles look for a chance to end this thing, I'm going to try to make one!"
The beast swiveled to track Marco. Its ember eye blew wide. It lunged, jaws snapping for his throat. Marco twisted, not quite fast enough to clear the bulk: the thing's shoulder clipped him, launching him across the lane. He hit a hood hard enough to crater the metal, slid off, then caught himself on a fender with a strangled breath.
"Marco!" Selene's voice cracked.
But Charles was already moving.
Pain screamed for him to stop. Every step felt like he was kicking glass. He moved anyway, pushing through with gritted teeth, will and pure spite, his vision tunneled onto the slit Selene's spear had opened along the monster's throat. The puncture glistened, weeping black.
That's it. That's the door.
His bent pipe felt like a length of rebar poured full of lead. He switched his grip, thumb braced along the spine to guide the point. The rat's head swung toward him, strings of ichor dangling from its snapped teeth.
"Come on," Charles rasped, forcing his legs faster, drawing out from the final reserves of his newly increased stamina. "Come on!"
The tail went first—a blur. He threw himself low and felt the wake of wind over his scalp. Claws hammered down. He rolled under the stroke, concrete skinning his elbows raw, and came up inside its reach, breath a ragged saw in his throat.
At this point though he didn't notice it himself, he no longer thought of his fear, he was focused, focused on ending this monster after his life.
His body responded to his will, He drove the pipe into Selene's wound and put his whole body behind it—hips, back, with all the strength he had left in him.
The creature's scream detonated against his eardrums. The hide gave with a wet pop; then resistance: dense muscle, a sheath of cartilage. Charles snarled and kept pushing, teeth bared, his boots skidding on ichor-slick stone. The stench hit him full acid and rot burned his sinuses. Tears sprang to his eyes. His skin prickled where droplets landed and sizzled.
"Just die already!" he roared, twisting the pipe to widen the puncture. He felt something part inside—cords, sinew, a shuddering tube that pulsed against the metal.
The rat convulsed. Its claws threshed, carving crescents from the floor. Its tail swept wild, obliterating a bumper, flipping a loose hubcap that spun like a coin before clattering away. The pipe vibrated in Charles's grip as the monster bucked to shake him off.
The creature shrieked—a deafening, bloodcurdling sound that rattled his bones. Its claws flailed, its tail lashed, smashing cars into twisted heaps. But Charles held on, teeth bared, forcing the pipe deeper, twisting it as ichor sprayed his face and burned his skin.
"Die!" he roared, voice cracking under the strain.
The beast convulsed, its body thrashing, then began to falter. Its legs buckled. Its strength waned. And finally, with one last choking bellow, it collapsed in a heap, shaking the ground as it fell still.
Silence followed.
Broken only by Charles's ragged gasps.
Charles staggered backward, dropping the blood-soaked pipe. His arms shook. His vision blurred. But he was still standing.
Selene stumbled toward him, eyes wide, cheeks streaked with grime and tears. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. Instead, she just clutched his arm, grounding herself in his presence.
A rough cough answered from across the lane. Marco pushed himself off the dent he'd left in the car's hood and limped over, one hand clamped to the torn meat of his shoulder. He stopped a few paces away and scanned—over the corpse, over them, through the lines of cars and concrete to every shadow that could hide a second threat. Only then did his eyes settle on Charles.
The three of them stood there, battered, bleeding, but alive, even though barely.
Charles wiped his face with the back of his wrist and came away streaked black and red. The skin burned where the stuff had spattered. He could feel his heartbeat everywhere—throat, temples, wounds. He stared at the monster's corpse, its twisted frame still twitching faintly as ichor pooled beneath it.
"We did it," he muttered as he stared at the still twitching corpse of the monster.