MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

Levi reached over and ran a hand across the craggy wall. Close now. The Mudman could crush all three, but an ambush was best. He ran a finger around the lip of the gaping wound in his thigh.
Better to play it safe
. Not to mention, he needed them closer. These three were fleeing, not hunting. If they saw him too soon, they might turn and dash away, escaping their well-deserved punishment. Levi was many things, but fast was not one of them. If they ran, he’d be hard pressed to stop them, especially with his leg.

Plus, the right side of his body was going numb around the edges. The digits on his right hand were fuzzy and indistinct, and his right leg—complete with puncture hole—was little more than dead weight. Had to be the gooey poison from the javelin, worming its way through his system. That and the substantial blood loss—
ichor
loss, in his case—he’d suffered from the blow. Still, no poison could kill Levi, just as no poison could kill a mountain. It’d take time, but his body would heal, would cleanse itself. Only God knew how long, though.

This new development, however, only reinforced the necessity of an ambush. He wouldn’t let one tiny mistake ruin his night out, but he would be more cautious. It was only prudent.

A short distance up ahead was the perfect spot for his attack. A narrow section of tunnel formed a tight bottleneck: On the right side, the stream swelled inward, forming an eddy of swirling black water. On the left, a minor cave-in had created a sprawling pile of rubble—a mound of rough stone and glimmering crystal—which left a path, only five feet wide, running straight between the rock heap and the stream.

A good spot.

Levi inched forward, inspecting the layout with an experienced eye. On the backside of the rock pile was a niche he could squeeze his bulk into, though barely. The space wouldn’t conceal him, not completely, but his intention wasn’t to hide. He only needed to draw the Kobos in close enough to strike his blow.

The footfalls grew louder by the second, followed by the hiss of inhuman voices and the panting of tired lungs. As quickly as he could muster with his damaged leg, the Mudman shimmied into the tight space, bald head peeking out just enough to offer him a view of the tunnel.

Even in the dark of this place, a colony of fungi adorning the walls offered sufficient light for Levi to catch a glimpse of his prey: humanoid in shape, but a crude parody of homo sapiens. Upright, the Kobocks might’ve stood at five or six feet, but they skittered about on all fours, their movements almost simian—disproportionately squat legs and scrawny arms dangling all the way to the ground.

A pronounced hunch adorned each form. Bluish, opalescent skin covered lanky limbs and potbellies, while flabby tits wobbled on all the creatures—women and men alike. One had lank, greasy hair, while the other two were bald as eggs. Each wore a dirt-caked loincloth wrapped around their nether bits, and each carried a pitted weapon made of rough stone or crystal—the kind of rudimentary tools some prehistoric Neanderthal might fashion.

Levi stood in stark contrast to the Kobos.

An enormous creature, he was seven feet of towering fat, gristle, clay, and muscle. Built like an old brick shithouse: arms the size of small tree trunks, hands like dinner plates, fingers thick as bratwursts, a great barrel gut, and an irregular, bald dome. Levi wasn’t a looker, not by anybody’s definition. His beady black eyes sat recessed in his uneven face, and he had a sloping
Cro-Magnon
brow and the square jaw of a silverback gorilla. He sported a pair of flimsy black shorts—worn only for modesty’s sake—leaving the rest of his chalky gray flesh exposed to the world.

In this form, his true form, he’d never win a beauty pageant. In the Deep Downs below the Hub, however, there was no one to impress anyway. Just monsters, horrors, and ancient godlings biding their time.

Here, Levi fit right in.

The three Kobos continued their mad dash toward the narrow gap, unaware their death waited only moments away. They couldn’t see the Mudman yet, not enfolded in the rocky wall, and that was good. Levi smiled again. He could take three, even badly wounded and poisoned. One of his enormous, ashen-gray hands distended and distorted, fingers intertwining and melding together, forming a colossal shovel where meaty fingers had been a moment before. He scooped up a load of rock chips and broken stone with a
scrape.

The Kobos hesitated at the sound, but didn’t stop.

Too bad for them.

Closer they drew, thirty feet, twenty, ten—near enough for Levi to taste the fear radiating off them in pulses and see rivulets of sweat cutting tracks into the dirt covering their bodies.

He swung out from behind the rubble pile, the motion awkward with his numb right leg. His massive arm whipped forward—the limb like a rubbery slingshot—unleashing the hail of deadly projectiles at the oncoming creatures. The rocky shrapnel bashed into lopsided bodies without mercy, bludgeoning flesh in places and tearing great chunks of meat away in others. One boulder, large as a volleyball, collided into the leader’s skull, caving in the side of its head and splashing the ground with purple blood.

The Kobo dropped like a sack of potatoes, its body hitting the deck with a wet
smack,
then slipping into the dark stream.

The other two let out shrieks of surprise. One tumbled to the side, clutching at a badly broken arm, the bone protruding through its feeble bicep. The other likewise took a fall, one of its legs mangled below the knee. Broke-knee cried out, a strangely human squeal, and tried to drag itself to safety; claw-tipped fingers dug down, scrambling for purchase as it pulled its body back the way it’d come.

A twinge of guilt surged up inside Levi’s chest as he watched the pair battle to live, crying out in pain and fear.

Pastor Steve’s words lingered in the back of his mind.
“We all wrestle with sin, we each have our crosses to bear. You have to die to those darker parts of your nature, turn your back on those baser instincts. It’s not easy, sometimes, but you have to choose the better way.”
It’s not good to kill: so says Pastor Steve and so says the Good Book. And that was true. Tonight’s expedition was a relapse, a mistake. But it felt
good
. That was Levi’s darker nature. He wanted to control it, but he
needed
to kill—to shed blood, rend flesh, break bone. He’d been created for it and his nature compelled him, drove him onward.

His blood pumped and his soul sang as he watched the Kobos perish. Life and fierce joy welled up in him, unmatched by the boring routines of the everyday—AA meetings, church services, client commissions, grocery trips. But he also felt sick. Self-loathing writhed around in his guts like a brood of snakes.

Better these monsters than some hapless mortal up top
, he reminded himself.

And these creatures
were
monsters. Living down in the stony depths, worshiping dusty, forgotten, evil Principalities and Powers of old. Though most of their kind shunned the surface, that didn’t prevent their raiding parties from stealing into the human world: abducting children for their dark rituals or snatching women—breeders to propagate their twisted race. He saw death in the two remaining Kobocks, saw the murderous deeds swirling around them like a dark cloud.

Guilty.

That was part of his gift, too. He could read murder on people. See it in their aura as clear as the stars on a cloudless night in the backcountry. Murder, the greatest of desecrations, left a mark no one could hide, not from Levi’s beady eyes.

Still, this
was
a relapse. He’d have to pay penance when this was all over and done with. His hands itched at the thought of the flames lapping at his skin, searing his nerve endings though leaving the skin unmarred—his own unique form of self-castigation.

He shivered, then rudely shoved the thoughts of guilt away, his bloodlust winning out for the time being.
It’s not good to kill
: so says Pastor Steve and so says the Good Book. Except sometimes it
is
.

He scooped up another load of rubble and sent it flying,
plop, thwack, crack.
The creature with the mangled leg took a jagged chunk of rock to the throat—its windpipe crumpled inward like an empty soda can. The creature clawed at its ruined neck, its feet drumming on the ground as it fruitlessly attempted to fill its lungs. A lost cause, that. The beast was dead, even if its body didn’t know yet, and good riddance. Levi watched its struggles, waiting for the usual rush of bright-hot satisfaction that came with a kill. The dying beastie writhed on the ground for another few seconds before its eyes grew dull and lifeless and it gave up the ghost.

Levi watched on, waiting. No surge came. No satisfaction at all. Just an empty spot in his center.

That was good, maybe. He’d never felt empty before, not when it came to killing. Maybe the AA and church services were working after all?

A
splash
floated to his ears and drew his attention away from the body splayed out before him.

It took only a second to locate the ripple spreading out in the slow moving stream. The third Kobo, the creature with the fractured arm, was gone. Disappeared into the murky water. The smile gracing Levi’s blunt face vanished in an instant, stolen by the tricky fiend. He ground his teeth in frustration, a low growl burbling out from his chest. The beast Needed. To. Pay. Levi couldn’t let it escape, not with retribution so close. The Kobo was badly wounded, and trying to swim through the water with its brutalized arm would be near-impossible. Plus, it would need to come up for air eventually.

Levi just needed to bide his time.

Wait and be patient. Patience was hard, though, especially with a victim near at hand. Still, he restrained himself. He wanted that Kobock’s head on a spike, but he wanted nothing to do with that water. Castigation by flame was awful—excruciatingly painful—but the thought of dipping into the water was too revolting a notion to consider. So he waited. And waited more. As he waited, he turned the situation over and over in his mind, his need to dispense justice balanced against his fear of drowning.

This was taking too long.

After a moment, vengeance, and his bloodlust, won out. After all, how could he let a little moisture prevent him from executing his duties?

Cautiously, Levi left the makeshift sanctuary of rubble behind and trudged forward, his movements ungainly with the poison flowing through his system. His left hand reverted to its normal form, shovel giving way to fingers, as he crept toward the water’s edge, moving to the place he’d seen the ripple in the stream.

Then, another
splash
, not far off, followed by a greedy gulp of air. He wheeled about, eyes running over the surface of the murky creek, finding nothing but uninterrupted swirls of black. He took a deep breath, suppressing the anxiety swelling inside him, and hobbled a few steps closer to the bank. He crouched down, laying his left palm flat against the rocky shore, mere inches from the stream. He didn’t sweat—couldn’t sweat, in fact—but had he been human, great beads of the stuff would’ve rolled down his lumpy noggin.

Levi redirected the ichor inside him, sending a surge of molten gold toward his palm, calling out to the earth below, probing at the water. After a moment, Levi grunted and shook his head. Useless. The creek was a dead spot in his mind. He could feel the presence of the water, or rather the void it created, but the Kobock in the drink was invisible.

Nothing he could do about it, then. Chances were, the Kobo’s wound would do it in anyway. Might be, the creature would do the world a favor and drown—a fitting end. Or maybe the arm would go septic. Gangrene was a worry even for Kobos.

Levi turned with a sigh, resigned to carrying on. There was still plenty of game afoot, after all—

A geyser erupted on his left, the Kobo with the gimp arm propelling itself through the air, its stone blade, scalpel-sharp, outstretched. Levi moved, but too slowly. The blade plunged into the Mudman’s side, the pain like a lance of flame burying itself in his innards. The Kobo retracted the knife in a flash and danced back, water flying from its body as it evaded. The Mudman hadn’t been expecting such a bold play, and the gash in his side was the price.

Levi advanced, his steps ponderous, the right side of his body useless now, the puncture in his ribs a spike of agony. As with the wound in his leg, the blow to the gut wouldn’t kill him, but neither was it pleasant. Levi wasn’t sure what exactly it would take to kill him, but he’d survived worse than this.

The Kobo shot in again, lightning quick, his stone blade thrusting upward, seeking out Levi’s heart like a homing missile. Levi threw up a beef-slab arm, the block narrowly arriving in time to intercept the thrust. The blade stabbed into Levi’s forearm, gouging a deep trench in his skin. The knife tore free, and the creature danced away again before Levi could respond. Despite the Kobock’s injury, it was still fast, faster than the Mudman, and smart, too. Always lingering outside Levi’s strike radius.

The Mudman moved forward, circling right and pushing in toward the tunnel wall, hoping to back the creature into a corner where he could pummel the beast into a pile of vile, tainted blue meat. He shifted his left hand, letting the ichor beneath the skin melt and bulge, his fist transforming into a spiked mace the size of a bowling ball. The Kobo dove left as Levi lunged forward with a snarl, lashing out with his spiky bludgeon. Levi’s strike was awkward and clumsy, his deadened right leg working against him, but still the mace collided into the creature’s flabby gut with a
crack
—shattered ribs—swatting the Kobo to the ground like a line drive.

In a flash, the creature scrambled gracelessly to his feet, one arm dangling, the other outstretched, its blade clutched in a white-knuckle grip. Levi charged forward again, raising his club-hand for a killing blow—

The creature darted in low, first feinting left, then hooking right, ducking as it shot inside Levi’s guard and buried the blade up to its rocky hilt in Levi’s good leg. The Mudman faltered at the sudden pain and pressure. He reeled backward, his upraised mace throwing off his already shaky balance. He staggered onto his worthless right leg—a terrible mistake. His weight came down on the numb limb, only to find the leg refused to support his considerable bulk. The knee buckled and he tumbled, his good arm pinwheeling as he crashed toward the ground.