The red eyes had been a flicker, gone as fast as they appeared in the deluge of rain sluicing down the concrete canyons. But I'd seen them. My mask swirled, mirroring the turbulent sky, a constant reminder of the chaos I sought to impose order upon. Rain hammered against my trench coat, soaking into the cheap fabric, seeping into my bones. The city, a bruised canvas of neon and shadow, stretched beneath me, its pulse a constant thrum of sirens and distant screams. I followed the skittering sounds, deeper into the urban labyrinth, my grappling gun a cold comfort in my gloved hand.
Same as alleys back home. Rats scurry. Cats hunt. Predators circle. Different masks, same filth.
This world wasn't mine. The air tasted different, metallic and sickly sweet beneath the rain's cleansing bite. The crowds moved faster, their faces illuminated by holographic advertisements that flickered like demonic eyes. And the masks... too many masks. Not like mine, a self-imposed prison, a statement. These were costumes, brightly colored lies. But instinct, the old familiar animal deep in my gut, didn't care about the color of the paint. It smelled prey, and it smelled predator.
I moved through the deepest veins of shadow, a specter in the city's underbelly, my ears straining above the din. The skittering had grown louder, closer. Not a rat, not a stray dog. Something bigger, something with purpose. Then, it cut through the rain and the distant roar of traffic, sharp and piercing: a child's panicked breathing.
It wasn't a scream, not yet. Just ragged gasps, choked and desperate, echoing from a narrow side street choked with overflowing dumpsters and graffiti-scarred brick. I adjusted my grip on the grapple, ready to move, ready to confirm what my gut already knew. Innocence, or what passed for it in this cesspool, was in danger.
The alley was a forgotten suture in the city's gleaming hide, a place where the rain pooled in oily slicks and the neon glow from above struggled to penetrate. He was there, slumped against a grimy wall, a splash of vibrant, defiant color against the muted decay. A kid. Another clown in tights, my mind supplied, a familiar sneer forming behind the mask.
He looked no older than thirteen, maybe fourteen, his frame scrawny, trembling. His "suit" was a crude affair, hand-sewn, the red and blue fabric ill-fitted and patched. A spider symbol, stitched unevenly, stretched across his chest.
He clutched his side, a dark, spreading stain blooming across the red fabric, his breath coming in shallow, painful gasps. His web-shooters, simple looking mechanisms strapped to his wrists, sparked weakly, dying embers of some fleeting power. He'd tried to fight, that much was clear. But he was cornered, already wounded, a broken thing waiting for the final blow.
My eyes, however, weren't fixed on the boy for long. My attention, honed by years of sniffing out the true rot, shifted. Because even a clown in tights deserved better than the thing that hunted him. The air in the alley had grown still, heavy, as if the rain itself held its breath. The source of the skittering sounds became terrifyingly clear.
It emerged from the deepest shadows at the alley's mouth, not walking, not running, but unfolding. A thin, elongated figure, its movements less human and more insectile, a sickening, broken-doll grace. It was wrapped in a cloak of torn, glistening webbing, not fabric, but something organic, spun from nightmares. Each strand caught the distant neon, twisting the light into grotesque, phosphorescent veins.
Its limbs were impossibly long, too spindly for human bone, and they ended not in hands, but in hooked, needle-sharp claws that scraped against the wet brick walls with a sound like a fingernail dragging across a chalkboard, a sound that made my teeth ache. It crawled sideways, a disturbed crab, its head tilted at an unnatural angle as it surveyed its prey.
The face, if you could call it that, was obscured by a sickening tangle of white chitin strands and fragments of what might have once been a mask, now shattered and fused into its flesh. But through the ragged, glistening mess, two points of light burned with an infernal, pulsing red. The same eyes I'd glimpsed from the rooftop. They were fixed on the boy, cold and ancient.
A sound, faint but high-pitched, escaped it. It was a hiss, like steam escaping a cracked pipe, but laced with something utterly monstrous, something that grated against my nerves. A child's laugh. A soft, innocent giggle, interwoven with the sibilant rasp, creating a symphony of pure, unadulterated wrongness.
The thing began to circle Spider-Boy, deliberately, its movements slow, savoring the hunt. A predator with its kill already in its sights, toying with it, prolonging the inevitable. The web-cloak shifted, revealing glimpses of a gaunt, sickly frame beneath, skeletal and starved.
Not man. Not mask. Parasite in human skin. Predator. My internal monologue was terse, distilled down to cold, hard facts. This wasn't some costumed lunatic, not another victim of this city's madness. This was something else. Something ancient and hungry. And it was going to tear that kid apart.
My grapple holster was already open, my fingers slick with rain but steady. Whatever the hell it was, had moved within striking distance of the Spider-Boy, its claws twitching with anticipation. There was no time for analysis, no time for caution. Just action.
I fired.
The grappling gun barked, a sharp retort in the sudden quiet of the alley. The hook screamed through the air, a silver blur, and tore into the creature's cloak, just below its left shoulder. The organic webbing ripped with a sound like a hundred silken threads tearing at once, a shriek of violated chitin and frayed terror.
The creature's circling stopped dead. It recoiled, a convulsion of elongated limbs, and let out a sound that wasn't a hiss or a laugh anymore, but a high-pitched, keening screech, raw and full of unmasked agony. The red eyes flared, momentarily losing their predatory focus, replaced by a terrible, sudden rage.
The distraction was all Spider-Boy needed. He gasped, his small body jolting, and pushed himself away from the wall, stumbling, half-crawling, half-staggering toward the alley's open mouth, toward what he hoped was safety. He didn't look back. He couldn't.
The creature's head snapped towards me, its movements now swift and deadly. The unnatural curiosity I'd sensed before was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating assessment. It studied me, a flicker of something ancient and alien in its glowing eyes. Another prey item had interrupted its meal. And now, it was my turn.
The fight, if you could call it that, was brief and brutally efficient. I didn't come here to win; I came here to buy time. That much was clear from the creature's first, impossible lunge.
I met its aggression with my own. My police baton, reinforced with a steel rod, slammed against its elongated arm. The impact reverberated up my arm, a jarring shock, but the creature barely flinched. The clack of bone on steel was sickeningly hollow. I followed up with a brass-knuckled fist, aiming for where I imagined its face might be beneath the web-chitin tangle. The blow landed, a solid crunch, but it was like hitting a brick wall wrapped in thorns. It hissed in annoyance, its head snapping back, but there was no lasting damage. Damage that would incapacitate, that would stop it, felt like an impossible goal.
It moved with unnatural speed, a blur of elongated limbs. It launched itself at the closest wall, skittering sideways with a terrifying agility I couldn't match, those hooked claws finding purchase on the slick, rain-soaked brick. It was on me in a heartbeat, a whirlwind of chitin and razor-sharp appendages. I barely parried a swipe, the claws ripping through the sleeve of my coat, just missing my arm. The cold air hit my skin, a stark reminder of how close I was to having my flesh flayed open.
Its strength was disproportionate to its size, a skeletal frame belying immense power. One blow, a casual backhand with an open clawed palm, sent me sprawling. I slammed against a dumpster with a deafening clang, the impact rattling my teeth, sending a jolt of pain up my spine. Iron taste in my mouth. My head hit the cold, greasy metal, and for a split second, the world spun.
Not here to win. Here to buy time. The mantra solidified in my mind, cutting through the pain and the confusion. This wasn't a street thug, not even the toughest I'd faced. This was something else entirely. Something beyond the reach of conventional brutality. My only advantage was its perverse enjoyment of the hunt, its focus on its initial prey. And that prey, Spider-Boy, was still stumbling away. I needed to keep its attention.
Spider-Boy was a distant, desperate scuffle at the far end of the alley, a fading sound of wet shoes slapping against concrete. He was almost clear. My mission, now, was to ensure he stayed clear.
I forced myself up, shaking off the impact from the dumpster, my muscles screaming in protest. The creature was already upon me again, its red eyes blazing with renewed hunger. It wanted to play, to revel in the fear it inspired. I used that. Instead of fighting it head-on, I began to retreat, drawing its attention, making myself an active target.
I moved with a practiced, desperate agility, ducking under its swipes, weaving through the refuse of the alley. Its claws ripped air where my head had been moments before, shredding the tarp draped over a stack of crates. I led it deeper into the alley, away from where Spider-Boy had disappeared, making myself the new, more interesting, challenge. Every glance over my shoulder confirmed the boy's escape, a small, weary victory in a fight I couldn't win.
When I judged enough time had passed, when the sounds of Spider-Boy's frantic retreat had finally vanished, I decided to press the advantage, however fleeting. I launched my grappling hook again, not at the creature, but at the sturdy fire escape ladder above, intending to swing behind it, box it in, maybe get one solid, incapacitating hit.
The grapple shot true, the hook biting into the corroded metal. I pulled myself up, swinging wildly, my boots skidding on the slick concrete. But the creature was faster, smarter, more intuitive than I'd anticipated. It didn't bother to dodge. As I swung past, it simply extended a single, elongated claw, glistening and sharp as obsidian.
A sickening shiiing sound, like a butcher's blade through silk. My steel grappling line, thick and braided, parted cleanly, sliced through like paper. I hit the ground hard, rolling to avoid another swipe. The creature didn't pursue. It watched me fall, its head tilted, and then, with a single, impossible leap, it launched itself onto the wall, a spider ascending its web. It vanished into the oppressive gloom of the rooftops, leaving behind only tatters of its web-cloak, glistening like torn cobwebs in the persistent rain.
I knelt, gasping, the rain plastering my coat to my skin. My chest heaved, air burning in my lungs. My grapple lay useless, a severed tether. My knuckles throbbed, my side ached, and a cold dread began to seep into my bones.
"Strong. Fast. Wrong," I muttered, the words thick with exhaustion and a dawning, terrible understanding. "Not man. Not clown. Something else." Something new, something ancient, something that didn't play by any rules I knew. This world was full of monsters, it seemed. And I had just provoked one of its most potent.
A faint thwip echoed from above, followed by a clumsy thump. I looked up. Spider-Boy, or what was left of him, had reappeared, clinging to the side of a building across the street, illuminated briefly by a passing air-car's headlights. He looked even worse than before, his mask askew, his youthful face pale and drawn beneath it. He raised a trembling hand, a small, hesitant wave of thanks, then fired a weak stream of web. It barely managed to latch onto a nearby gargoyle. He swung away, a pathetic, almost comical arc, disappearing into the churning, neon-streaked skyline, a lost child in a labyrinth of glass and steel.
I watched him go, the exhaustion and fear radiating from his small form like heat. Children fighting monsters. The thought clawed at me. World sicker than mine. My world, with its grand conspiracies and nuclear anxieties, felt almost quaint by comparison. At least there, the monsters wore human faces. Here, they were… evolving. Or maybe I was just seeing them clearly for the first time.
My gaze drifted to my journal, clutched in my hand, its leather cover soaked through. It was flipped open, not to the page I'd been writing on, but to a fresh, blank sheet. And on it, in ink that looked too new, too dark, almost like bleeding wounds, new words dripped across the page. Words I hadn't written. Words that twisted my gut with a familiar, chilling paranoia.
The predator has smelled your mask.
I snapped the journal shut with a growl, the wet leather slapping against itself. A cold fury, sharper than the rain, hardened my resolve. This wasn't some cosmic joke, not some random act of violence. This was personal. This was a challenge.
"Doesn't matter," I rasped, my voice raw. "Hunt's on."
The rain continued to fall, washing the blood from the alley, but it couldn't wash away the scent of fear, or the promise of the hunt. Not now. Not ever.