Hornet's Night Off

by ~gyroscope

The night sky was filled with the twinkling of satellites and airplanes, the only stars a large city can reasonably hope for, but Hornet was busy admiring another type of beauty. The woman glanced back at him as they climbed the exterior staircase to her apartment.

Her rump, to Hornet, was the most glorious moon he had ever seen, and her vibrant grey eyes were as clouds bursting with electricity. He looked forward to traversing the field of her chic green dress, to discovering the universe of her body. He hoped he would be able to remember it afterwards.

He was already having some difficulty recalling the events that had led up to this. Drinking had been involved, of course, along with a bar he frequented during downtimes. But he could not remember if he had talked to her first or if she had approached him; he did not know what the bulk of their conversation had been nor what her name was, and he would be damned if he could retrace their steps back to the bar. The only real answer he could come up with for most of these fleeting questions was that the opposite sex had a hard time resisting his craggy charms, that his undeniable handsomeness made up for his total lack of social skills. That and the levels of drunkenness he sometimes achieved could serve as a subjective form of time travel and teleportation.

If one were to give Hornet more than a passing glance, he or she might be inclined to disagree with Hornet's own view of himself. But apparently this woman had enough time to think about it, with her final decision coming in the form of unlocking her front door and pushing it open with her pale, slender hand.

Hornet tried to make a mental note that she lived on the fourth floor of this five-floor apartment building. Sadly, the numbers on her door gave him a bit of trouble – they moved far too much for him to even read, let alone memorise. He would have to make do with subtly stealing a letter or bill that had her address on it, a trick he had learned in his younger, more carefree days. Somehow it beat asking the woman herself.

A lamp was turned on at its dimmest setting; Hornet stepped inside and the woman closed the door behind them. For a moment the woman's eyes looked like darkened almonds, but Hornet blinked and they returned to their regular shining grey selves, capturing what little light there was in the apartment.

'Mm,' she said, and Hornet wondered if her wordless sound was actually something he had misheard. 'The bedroom's the first door on the left.'

He understood that part. The door was already open, and as he ventured into the room he tripped over something that rolled against his foot, sending him crashing onto an unmade bed. He turned onto his back and gazed stupidly at the woman's silhouette in the doorway.

'Is this where you wanted me?' he asked, clearing his throat at the end of the question.

'I want you everywhere,' the woman said, her smile cutting across her face like a crescent moon.

Hornet blinked back the sudden sensation of unexpected bliss. The woman's hands traced the folds in his jacket before helping him out of it. She then straddled him, unzipping the mouth of his pants as his real lips parted to gasp. Something large and obtrusive ran across his face.

'Wait-' he called out soberly, but the punctuation escaped him, his lolling tongue chasing mindlessly after it. The woman's tail had wrapped itself around his neck and was slowly crushing his throat.

She cackled as she pinned down his legs, his hands slapping and pulling and clawing at the hard flesh of her tail.

'Don't tell me this isn't what you were expecting,' dripped the syrup of her lascivious voice. 'There are many men and women who would pay good money for this.'

Hornet could only squeak in response, his fire-red face fit to bursting. The woman made a show of alternately flexing and relaxing her tail.

'Don't worry – I've had good practice in keeping humans alive,' she told him. 'This is the oldest profession, after all, and I've been at it since the beginning. You're going to experience a lot of pain, and it'll take a very long time to get your breath back when I'm done, but you'll live.'

'Urk.'

'Oh, obviously I will kill you if you don't tell me what I need to know. Just because I'm ancient doesn't mean I'm sentimental – I'm as sentimental as death and space. Any kisses I've planted upon you tonight were only to taste your meat; every time I set these false human eyes upon you it was to size up your meagre but delectable portions. Did you know that all that nicotine inside you makes for the most delicious coating? Well, it does, and if I kiss you further tonight it's only to lick the grime from your throat.'

The cadence of the woman's monologue was unnervingly familiar. Of course, the woman's tail made it easier to place: she sounded exactly like Eryle and Celia, twin tail-sharing demons that Hornet and his small team of hunters had received a sizeable bounty on but two months ago.

Those demons had been aspects of Janus, a powerful demon that had split itself up into anthropomorphic elements of power, and as the shock left his system, Hornet could tell that this 'woman' was an aspect of Janus as well.

The sound of heavy clothes hitting the floor on either side of him was followed by the sound of small but threatening bits of metal landing on top. That was when Hornet realised he could no longer feel his own body,

'Ah, I sense you're waking up to the reality of your situation,' the demon cooed, and although it was facing away from Hornet he could hear the menacing smirk in its words. 'Allow me to more formally introduce myself: I am Venenifer, blood sister of Eryle and Celia. And you are the one who forced them into an unwanted vacation.'

Venenifer relaxed its tail so that he could speak, but Hornet found he had nothing constructive to say. He did use the moment of slack to look down at himself, attempting to see what Venenifer was doing with his numb body. He was not happy with what he found.

What she had done was strip him down to his boxers, rendering him defenceless but for his damaged layers of skin and hair.

'Are there more of you, Venenifer?' Hornet asked. He knew how much demons enjoyed the sound of their own names – it was one of the oldest tricks in the demon-hunting handbook.

'I'm here to question you, little toy.'

Venenifer lifted the fabric of his underwear to see if he was hiding any weapons in it. Only one, Hornet thought.

'How sentimental you are for being such disgusting lumps of fat and guts,' Venenifer said absently, as if to itself. 'For example, I know you must be keeping the physical remains of my sisters around; if not you, then who you work for – and if not them, then who they work for. Because that's how humans work, isn't it? Everything is a pyramid scheme, right down to the family trees.'

'Eryle and Celia liked to talk as well,' Hornet commented, 'yet they didn't have the same conversational knack you do, Venenifer. Why is that?'

'My tail is still around your neck,' the demon said, and these few words were enough to make Hornet clamp his mouth shut.

This was the first moment of the night that Hornet truly considered a life-or-death situation. In response he swiftly brought his hand up to his ear and tore the silver earring off his lobe, scattering drops of blood onto Venenifer's tail and his chest. The scales on Venenifer's tail rattled excitedly at this little taste.

Hornet used his forefinger and thumb to unlock a miniature mechanism built into the earring; he held it for a moment before tossing the device towards Venenifer's tilting head.

The earring exploded into a not-particularly-lethal but altogether disorienting cloud of spirit power, a powdery residue made from the ashes of a psychotic demon bird. Venenifer let out an inverted shriek, a bizarre noise that sounded like its throat was closing over its mouth. In its confusion it unravelled its tail from Hornet's neck and crashed forward into a dresser, covering itself in drawers and clothes.

Hornet leapt off the bed and burst out the room. He sprinted the short distance down the hall to the apartment's front door, where he struggled desperately with the handle.

'Locked!' he shouted stupidly to himself. 'Damn it!'

He ducked down behind a short table with an unkempt fern set upon it. With no immediate recourse available, he jammed his finger into his ear and tapped an enchantment that turned his head into an echo chamber. He hoped to hear Basque's voice in it but there was no answer – the old brute had undoubtedly turned his head off to ensure a peaceful night of rest. Hornet touched a different line on the enchantment and Aril's voice soon appeared in his ear.

'You're interrupting a late-night hazelnut latte,' she said. 'This better be good.'

'I'm a few minutes away from being eaten alive by Janus,' Hornet told her flatly.

From the bedroom came the sound of frustrated stomping. Hornet hoped Venenifer was kicking the bed frame and not actually getting to its feet.

'How does that happen without us?' Aril scolded. 'You know you're not good enough to hunt on your own anymore!'

'Yell at me later. Right now I could use some help.'

He could hear the sound of Aril sucking in air between her teeth.

'I've already tracked you. I can't get a hold on Basque but there's someone else available. We'll be there in time.'

'You work quick,' Hornet said. 'I always liked that about you.'

'Don't get sentimental. You're not dying. And you know I'm good at multitasking, that I can "think" three different things at once – it's more a pain than anything, really.'

'It's possible I'll be in a lot of pain shortly, followed by no pain at all. Get here soon, Aril.'

'We'll be there in time.'

* * *

Ten thousand years (actually a second in standard time) passed before Hornet managed to move his body again. He fled to the room on the right of the hallway, which ended up being the living room; his plan was to either wait out an opening to the bedroom, where his weapons were strewn across the floor like a collection of harmless toys, or the arrival of Aril and whichever hunter she could find on such short notice.

He hid his thin body in the skinny nook between the television cabinet and far wall; from this position all he could do was listen closely and try not to breathe, but at least it was better than standing in the open like a piece of meat hanging in a butcher shop window.

The sound of a heavy tail dragging after heavy feet entered the hall beyond the living room. Hornet felt the short hairs on his neck stand erect. There were no other life-saving earrings available to him, and there was nothing left for him to throw for distraction except his underwear. And if he was going to die, he decided, it would be with his underwear on.

'You keep wanting to play games,' said the faux feminine voice of Venenifer from everywhere at once, 'but how can we play a game that doesn't have any rules? What we're really dealing with here is a kind of disrespect. You would be a fool to believe you'll go unpunished for it.'

Venenifer kept talking, hoping to draw out Hornet's voice. It was a trick Hornet had to work hard at fighting – he found he tended to speak more to demons while he fought them than he spoke to close friends or relatives on any given day.

'Maybe you're in the bathtub,' Venenifer said. 'Maybe you're in the skinny nook between the television cabinet and far wall. Maybe, maybe, maybe.'

Hornet bit down a curse. He would have to run past the demon to reach his weapons and do it without being killed in the process. There was no other option.

He bolted.

* * *

Basque brought his car to a screeching halt in front of the apartment building. He and Aril had prepared enough on the way over to not have to worry about being subtle.

'Stay in the car and search for weaknesses,' Basque ordered. 'I'll go in and see if there's any Hornet left to save.'

Aril had contacted Basque immediately after talking with Hornet and had been surprised to get through. Basque explained that he had been cleaning out his ears with cotton swabs at the time.

'If that's all it takes to put me offline,' he had told her, 'then we could be in trouble in the long run.'

Now he was getting out of the car as both he and Aril received an incoming transmission from Hornet. He stopped halfway, with one foot on the crumbling sidewalk.

'I managed to get my weapons back but they're not doing anything,' Hornet said, frustration collapsing the spaces between his words. 'The bitch has a Grand Shield activated.'

Aril, already glowing green with enchantments, confirmed this:

'It's covering the entire building,' she said. 'We won't be able to get in until it's deactivated. We'll look for it.'

'Pronto.'

'Yes, pronto. It has to be nearby in order to be so strong. Think you can hold off a bit longer?'

'I'm going to have to,' Hornet sighed. 'Luckily Venenifer likes to talk more than she lets on.'

A blue string of light passed in front of Aril.

'I see you've barricaded her in the washroom. But you should know she's changed the tip of her tail into a poison stinger – if struck, the poison will gradually paralyse the victim.

'I'm now switching my focus to locating the Shield. Good luck in there, Hornet.'

Hornet sighed again in response. Basque left the car and surveyed the neighbourhood.

Across the street was a large park. Even at this time of night there was a group of university students walking its paved paths, laughing and squealing obnoxiously, daring each other to climb one of the park's ornamental tanks. Basque could not see them being the Shield.

He looked more carefully. Sitting on a bench was an old man reading a newspaper by lamplight and muttering. A black squirrel ran along the tops of the benches, leaping the gaps between them. Basque ducked down and peered into the car.

'Anything?' he asked.

'It's the old man in the park,' she said as if stating the obvious. 'And he himself is unprotected.'

Basque looked at the old man again, this time focusing on his lips: it was now clear to him that the old man's muttering was a looping chant. He then looked for the students and found them riding some false cannon. It did not seem like they would be leaving the park anytime soon.

'We'll have to take out the old man without it seeming like we're taking out an old man,' Basque said to Aril.

'I'll work on that.'

* * *

At this point Hornet was standing in a shuttered closet. It was the last hiding spot he had left, which meant it would also be the first place Venenifer looked for him. He breathed in slowly but deeply, nearly choking on the horrific stench he was sucking into his nostrils.

The stench was like body odour but worse: muskier, more fecal and with a hint of copper. He remembered showering in the morning so it could not have been him. He was now more curious about the smell than he was about being killed, and so he slowly revolved in the cramped space of the closet, his arm knocking a broom against a wall and his hand touching something rubbery and clammy.

He was staring face-to-half-the-face of what must have been the apartment's original tenant. When Venenifer's spiked hand crashed through the closet door, Hornet was thankful for the distraction.

He twisted rapidly, dodging the trajectory of a too-sharp claw, and shoved his dagger up into the flesh between the demon's ribs. He looked up to see its reaction, if it was experiencing any pain; what he saw instead was a mouth opened wider than the circumference of his head, and the mouth was bearing down on him.

He winced, preparing to have his head crushed like a watermelon. But the demon stopped. He could feel the humidity of its breath on his hair, but not a single tooth clamped onto him.

Venenifer suddenly flew backwards, taking the rest of the closet door with it. A new face appeared in the hole.

'Six,' Hornet said in dry disbelief.

A woman with wolf-bobbed hair smiled back at him, her lips a lively pink. She had black marks under her eyes. Born Charlotte Sisks, she was known to the organisation as the God Hand and to everyone else as 6. She folded a collection of playing cards into her palm.

'Your lucky number,' she said smirkingly.

Apparently it was not hers, as the demon's clawed hand clamped itself around her arm and pushed her to the ground. Hornet acted without thinking, yanking out the dagger he had left in the demon and stabbing holes throughout its rough, putrid body. The demon winced, its wild eyes circling towards Hornet; while it was distracted, Charlotte slid a playing card out of her sleeve and into her palm. She breathed on it for good luck and shoved it into the demon's back, the paper becoming sharper than steel and cutting in deep.

The demon shoved Hornet back into the closet, nearly collapsing the wall behind him. Charlotte leapt onto the demon while it was distracted and then quite suddenly let go. The demon dropped to the ground.

Charlotte helped pull Hornet out of the wreckage of the closet. Hornet looked past her at the slumped-over and motionless Venenifer; the demon had three different cards lodged into the back of its neck.

'One for paralysis, another to keep it breathing and the third to make the whole experience very painful,' 6 explained.

She had started out as a card dealer, using enchanted cards to manipulate the favour of each game. One night she had used the enchanted cards to protect herself from the advances of some sore loser, not expecting the outcome of the hand she had dealt: the first cards had cut through him like shards of glass, while the card that came after froze him in a block of ice. From then on she used this lethal deck in a way that earned her far more money than she could have ever made in some shady casino.

She yawned.

'Get any sleep last night?' Hornet asked.

'You know I never do,' she answered.

Hornet rubbed the back of his neck.

'But we made those sleepless nights a hell of a lot of fun,' he said wistfully.

* * *

Elsewhere a polar bear was roaring, with half a bucket of saliva splashing out of its enormous, black-lipped mouth; its raging eyes were inverted moons, reflecting the dark of night around them, while its thick white fur bristled in disturbing directions. Its whole body shook with mindless ferocity.

The students screamed until their throats ran raw. They grabbed and pulled at each other, a tangle of limbs desperate to save the group as a whole, the girls skidding on their heels as they were being dragged by the boys. Finally they all managed to turn towards the same direction and rushed towards it, not caring what their eventual destination was – just as long as it was somewhere far, far away from the bear.

A sickening crunch broke through the cries and receding footsteps. This was followed by the stench of innards collapsing in on each other.

Aril swallowed down bile and prodded the body of the old man. She had decided on the illusion of a polar bear to chase away the students, a spectacle so absurd that nobody would believe them if they talked about it; even the police, after thorough attempts at convincing, would see the tale as nothing other than an obnoxious prank by a bunch of university kids.

But the students would be scared and not scarred, which was the main thing. After all, watching an old man be killed by someone who looks like a bank vault would have been scarring, and it would have sullied the reputation of the organisation in the public eye.

Basque had caved in the old man's chest in a surprise attack. This was something that even Aril had found somewhat gross.

'It was an accident,' Basque said.

'We would have had to kill him anyway,' Aril said in consolation. 'Once his mind had been taken over by an aspect of Janus, that was it for him. He was a tool.'

'This is why Grand Shields are the worst.'

Basque carried the body to the car and stuffed it into the trunk. A rush of static entered his and Aril's ears, followed by Hornet's painfully relieved voice.

'Six cheated,' he said. 'Venenifer is out of commission.'

'I would certainly hope so, considering we have the Shield in the trunk,' Aril said. 'God Hand was taking a risk by going in like that.'

'Yeah, she really is great, isn't she?' Hornet said.

Basque had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

'We're having some drinks upstairs,' Hornet continued. 'I'm not exactly dressed for the occasion, but if you'd like to celebrate with us then by all means come on up. You probably have to anyway if you guys want to tag the body with your IDs.'

'Splitting a bounty four ways is not my idea of a celebration,' Aril said somewhat bitterly, 'even if it does mean you're still breathing.'

'What does "not exactly dressed" mean in this situation?' Basque asked quizzically.

'Venenifer managed to destroy my clothes in all the chaos,' Hornet explained. 'I'm sitting here with a rum and coke and underwear.'

The sound of 6 laughing at him crashed into their ears like a tide hitting a shore.

'We'll be up in a moment,' Basque said. 'I have a feeling seeing you in this state is going to make up for a lot of things.'