Monsters Brawl

There were strict rules about monster brawls.

No mixed monsters.

Stick to your own.

Go up the table.

Everyone knew it.

Everyone stuck to it.

Everyone except Hearse.

Hearse was the killer werewolf, the best of his beastly kind. Top dog.

He was bored with moon-kind and thirsty for blood that wasn't wolf. 

What he craved was vintage vampire.

Victorian kingpin vampire blood.

God how he dreamt of it's iron theft, the vineyard of its myriad victims. It must taste like layer cake. A tart of bites. Oh God, Yes!

Hearse was obsessed but the monster code was clear. No mixed monster fights. No exceptions. 

Well fuck the rulebook!

He'd get some top vamp blood no matter what. He had to. Or he'd go insane with vein lust.

As luck would have it however, he overheard something that night.

Something interesting. Something very juicy.

It was in the tavern, the Old Neck, where he was unknown.

Hearse sat by himself in the corner guarding his stout. It was a non-moon night so he could concentrate. 

"You 'eared about King Roma? He's been stood up again. No brawl means he loses pints.  It's that old fucker Globin who bailed. Roma's livid. He's ready to take on any other sucker to keep the crown. The gauntlet's been thrown! They've just to leave word with the landlady."

"There'll be bloody hell to pay for anyone who takes Roma on!"

"You're not fuckin' kiddin' mate!"

At this the two rickety old vamps finished their 'tomato juice' and sidled off into the depths of London's teeming night.

Hearse had heard everything. 

His sensitive ears twitched with excitement and a nasty ruse formed in his furred brain.

Grabbing someone's black cloak and hat from the hooks at the back, Hearse went to the bar and taking a quill, he hurriedly scribbled a note.

It said:

Butchers Wharf.

Midnight tomorrow.

A contender.

Grunting, his face shadowed, he whispered.

Give this to Roma.

With a flourish Hearse left the Old Neck and threw the cloak and hat in the brazier by the door, the burning crucifixes the sign this was vampire turf.

Fuckin' suckers! Can't fuckin' stand 'em but by God do I wanna drink their guts! And Roma, old King Brawler, will do very nicely thank you!"

Hearse chuckled like a dog and slopped off to his quarters behind the Elephant graveyard on the edge of town, where he lived with a girl ghoul called Carrion, who kept the place clean. She was company too on moonless days. Werewolves had a hard time making friends. He'd never eat Carrion either. She'd taste like shite.

Alas, Hearse hadn't been the only interested party in the Old Neck that night.

Another stranger was watching at the bar minding his own business in the gloom of a broken gaslamp.

He'd seen Hearse writing his note. He'd read it's contents. He'd memorised them.

He would be there too. Butcher's Wharfe. 

Kronack. The Beast Hunter. Doing God's work and ridding the world of heathen friends for good.

Yes, he'd be there and kill two birds with one stone.

The following evening was a miserable slur of rain and smog from the Capital's chimneys. 

If monsters don't kill Londoners, the factories will, mused Hearse as he quickly made his way to the tation where the milk train would deliver him by Butcher's Wharfe on the sickly Thames.

He had to hurry to board before the moon was full to its brim and began to turn. 

He took a cheap seat and drew the window blind. Hunkering down, Hearse focused on saving his change until the last minute on the Wharfe.

Two seats in front sat King Roma, intrigued by the challenge left at the bar and savouring the rising tide of fury swirling his stolen blood. His finger bones cracked like pottery as his reverie crescendoed in a dream of welling gore.

Two seats behind sat Kronack, his felt hat low over his scarred face, the gas declined to shadows. On his lap lay the weapons of his trade, the arsenal with which he would smite the two fell kings and deny them their spattered crowns.

As the Milk train rattled like a crate of blood the enormous smoking temples of industry towered by the river's banks, their incessant spew of sulphurous plumes a vision of man's own monstrousness. From the innards of these factories puked soups of wastes and arsenics straight into the bubbling Thames, now but a thick slow eddy of death as it crawled to the desperate sea.

As if being shuttled through Hell itself, the trio of strangers peeked behind the blinds to glimpse this stygian stream, oblivious to the fate that awaited them on the abandoned Butcher's Wharfe.

As the locomotive slowed it's steaming heart to stop, the conductor roared down the mostly empty string of carriages,

Butchers! Next stop Butchers!

The three disembarked into the Wharf's darkness, each disappearing behind stacks of mouldy crates and rusting derricks.

From the farthest carriage a fourth alighted too, a tall hooded veiled woman in a long sable velvet cloak. 

She too slid into the blackness of the jetty and vanished.

As Midnight approached, Roma flexed his pallid digits and ran his ancient acrid tongue across his fangs.

He hissed in anticipation of a skirmish with his kind, a ruckus to keep his bloody crown, King Roma, Vampire Brawler. 

The pound of twelve strikes echoed along the Thames from Big Ben up river and reverberated round the derelict docks.

It was time.

Time to step out onto the cobbled Wharf.

Roma strode into the moonlight, his terrible pulse beating fast.

He heard the growl first and then his heart sank. 

A creature of legend crawled into the scene, snarling at the moon. 

Not a vampire at all. A werewolf. A wolfman of enormous proportions.

Hearse.

Sacrilege!

Mutinous!

As the grimacing monsters circled each other, sizing strength and power, a third figure entered the glowing stage.

Greetings Creatures of the Night. It is I, the Monster Killer, here to vanquish you both to Hell!

Roma purred.

Kronach! You human scum! It is you who will perish this night and join my legion of the vampiric dead!

Hearse roared.

Kronack! Roma! It matters not how many there are! You shall all end up between my jaws!

The three enemies stared and waited before striking.

Roma lunged first, his long fingernails scraping Kronach's cheek, dark hot blood flinging across the flaking capstans.

The Killer winced, then pounced, his sabre slicing off the King's pointed ear. It fell into Hearse's open palm, who devoured it, before leaping into the fray and raking the vampire's back with razor-sharp talons. 

The old King wailed and unleashed himself fully, hurtling through the blood-fogged air, landing on Hearse's back, where he bit deep and hard into the werewolf's neck. 

The wolf howled as the tensile fangs entered its flesh and began to feed. Hearse reached back and grabbed onto Roma's oily head with his gargantuan paws. Both tensed in stricture.

Kronach seized the moment and expanding his telescoping silver spear ran full pelt at both beasts and pushed it's brutal tip first through Hearse and then Roma, the long shaft impaling both and exiting out of the other side.

The fiends reeled and shrieked in agony as they writhed on the blessed lance pinning them together, it's caustic sacristy dissolving their flesh.

Kronach bellowed in triumph as his quarry visibly wilted upon his spear and he flicked holy water across their hissing forms.

It was at this moment that the fourth passenger from the train glided past the dreadful fray, the mysterious woman.

Who goes there! 

Kronach bared his fearful sword.

Show yourself!

Now!

The form halted and exiting the wharfe's shadows, seemingly floated into the moonlit ring, where she stopped dead.

Reveal yourself Woman!

Kronach barked as the two flailing monsters, gnashing and spitting, began to free themselves from the spear.

The woman slowly pulled down her hood and removed her veil.

It was then that the Monster Killer regretted ever speaking to her, for he recognized her vile and fatal countenance in an instant. 

Medusa! But how?

The question froze on Kronach's lips as his body petrified completely. 

Hearse and Roma, gnashing their teeth, began loping madly towards her hell-bent on this interloper's cruel demise. As quickly as they crept they both choked, as their gutteral snarls stuck in their throats like the rest of their stiffening frames.

They turned entirely to stone at Medusa's feet, the monsters' drool setting as it ran.

The Gorgon looked upon her impromptu work dispassionately and pulling up her hood and veil returned on her passage across the dark wharves towards the moored steamer in the far distance bound for her ancient homeland of Greece.

In the morning the few sleepy people who frequented the old Butcher's dockland were amazed and frightened in equal measure by the sight of the new statue on the cobbled yard, one hewn from solid stone and depicting a terrible and hellish battle between a vampire, a werewolf and a human monster hunter.