Howl of the Heavens ch.15

     For three weeks Mike has tracked the reports of the creature the people of the town of Big Bear have dubbed the pet thief demon. Now deep in the forest Mike believes he has found the trail leading to the gargoyle’s nest. As he trudges through the darkness he carries his sacred golden cross in his left hand and the Golem Slayer in his right.

 

    “This should be fairly simple,” thinks Mike, “when they’re not hunting gargoyles are sleeping and the locals saw this one take off some time back.”

 

   “Well here I am.” Mike thinks as he prepares himself to enter the large dark cave.

 

     Mike leans up against the edge of the entrance and hears deep breathing from inside, “I guess I don’t need to guess which cave it is, even with out noticing the scratch marks indicating this cave was dug out, nothing makes that kind of rocky grinding breathing other than a gargoyle.”

 

 

    Mike enters the cave (weapons at the ready) to the most unexpected sight, the black gargoyle he has been tracking is slouched over on its nest clearly awake with its arms wrapped around its self.

 

     “It’s just sitting there on its pine needle nest not moving.” thought Mike confused.

 

     His next big surprise comes when he noticed it only has one wing, and it looks to be terribly banged up. It suddenly raises its head and looks at him with a forlorn expression.

 

    Rawl could smell the human enter his cave; he looked up and noticed he carried the same cross his father had warned him about, “So this order has finally come after me.” He thought.

 

     Rawl speaks to the hunter in a sad tone, “So you have come to kill me in my moment of despair, go ahead I have nothing left to live for.”

 

     With that he reaches up to where his left wing should have been and looks back down. Then the most un-expected happens rather than out right killing him the hunter talked to him.

 

    “Your kind are egomaniacs that torture there victims,” said Mike, “and will fight to the death when attacked, you know I am going to kill you yet you tell me to kill you, why would a thing like you just sit there… and for that matter what could have hurt something like you like this?”

 

    The gargoyle answered him in a deep sad voice telling him a story he couldn’t believe. The gargoyle described the very mountain Mike had been searching on; only on the rockier section he had not searched, for he believed any den would have been in the softer soil further north. The description placed the den only ten miles from Pine Ridge, and the gargoyle described its ordeal with the Dire which Mike recognized as the description of Versa.

Mike thought to himself after the gargoyle finished his story, “This creature, this stone demon was defenseless against it, they may be made of stone themselves, that must be the real reason Father Henry gave me this golem slayer, and if what this demon says is true then there are also two cubs. My God the demons are reproducing!”

 

    Mike’s thoughts were cut off by the gargoyle asking him, “Hunter I am nothing with out my wing I have not yet eaten and will starve so I ask you to please kill me.”

 

     The look in the gargoyle’s eyes looked genuine to Mike, “I will kill you; and then I will hunt down those Dire and rid our world of them as well.”

 

    Mike raises the golem slayer to its red point side and chants the Hebrew inscription, the sword glows with a brilliant yellow light. Mike aims the sword at the gargoyle and a beam of light shoots from the sword and strikes the gargoyle. With a mighty howl and beams of light escaping breaks in the monster’s body the gargoyle vanished in a brilliant flash of light.

 

     Mike steps out of the cave; his job finished and as he walks back down the hill towards Big Bear he thinks, “I know where you live now Dire, and I have the weapon that will destroy you. This time I will kill you and send you back to Hell where you belong.”

 

    Back inside the cave a few hours after the hunter left; a strange blue ball of light appears where Rawl the Onyx Gargoyle once sat and rises through the roof of the cave flying across the sky to the north only to be seen for what it really is by one strange woman with long white hair who stands outside a hotel in Big Bear. The ball rushed through the air, and in the darkness of the night is received by the very wing Versa had torn from his body.

 

    Rawl had limited psychic abilities; enough to hear the surface thoughts of the hunter as he thought the name of the Dire which had injured him, and now his evil soul has come back to the last fragment of his body. As the wing regenerates his neck and head along with the rest of his body, Rawl thinks to himself, “Foolish hunter even if one pebble remains we gargoyles can reform our bodies, those golem slayers only work when our entire bodies are attached as one. No matter with the hunter; I will kill you Dire you and your cubs! This time you will not see me coming and…” *oomph*

 

    Rawl’s words are cut short as his now fully formed body sinks in the very ground he is standing on, only this is a pit of shit he has sunk into and the smell tells him it is the Dire’s refuse pit he has sunk in.

 

    “my wing, my beautiful  wing, that bitch threw it out like it was nothing but garbage! I had hoped to reform in her presence to extract my revenge now that she won’t have me by the throat.”

 

    Rawl digs his way out of the pit and climbs up the cliff face to the top where he wipes the dung from his body while growling the most terrible obscenities under his breath. Finally calming down a-bit he says, “Damned she-wolf monster, you and your cubs will die an even slower and more terrible death than I had planned because of this disgrace and insult you have given my gorgeous wing with its black sheen and star white spots. You wont escape for I have your scent and next we meet it will be time for you to die”