Chapter 10 – A Pack Way Too Big

Lyon flapped his wings in silence. He was small. Very small. A black bat with crooked wings, gliding between the buildings as if the air itself was carrying him. He flew low compared to the rooftops, but very high compared to the streets, in that middle zone where nobody looked because nobody expected to find anything there.

Below him, the city was moving. The officers were outside. Reflective vests. Flashlights pointing in different directions.

One of them, a short guy whose vest was way too big for him, was shouting through a megaphone at a group of neighbors coming out of a building with pillows, backpacks, and crying children.

"To the avenue shelter! Do not stop! Do not split up! To the avenue shelter!"

The neighbors moved forward in a herd, hurried but not in total panic. It was obvious the city was used to this.

They had practiced these protocols before. Everyone knew which shelter to go to. Everyone knew which backpack to grab. Everyone knew how long the siren would last before something started coming out of the portal.

Lyon watched them from above as he crossed the sky, tilted his wings, and turned southeast. He could feel the portal’s energy now too, not just the voice.

It was a kind of itch behind his eyes, a vibration that didn’t come from his ears but from somewhere else, from a sense he didn’t know how to name but that his vampire body knew how to read perfectly.

And that itch was leading him directly to the highway.

The main highway in the area, the one that crossed the southeast of the city like a gray band cutting the neighborhoods in two. An elevated highway, with three lanes in each direction, high bridges, and glowing green signs indicating exits.

Lyon saw the glow before he saw the portal.

It was a purple light. A deep purple, almost blue around the edges, almost black in the center.

Lyon glided downward without rushing. He needed to get a good look.

The portal wasn’t big. Or rather, it wasn’t big yet. It barely rose half a meter above the highway pavement, like a small, round, purple dome. Like a giant bubble that had sprouted from the asphalt and stayed there, trembling slightly, growing so slowly that if you weren’t staring directly at it, you wouldn’t notice it was growing at all.

Around the portal, there was organized chaos.

They had closed two of the three lanes with orange cones. In the third, two traffic officers in fluorescent vests made wide motions with their arms to redirect the few cars still coming from that direction, sending them toward an emergency exit a few meters before the portal.

A couple of patrol cars were parked sideways beside the portal, their red and blue lights flashing, forming an improvised barrier.

Behind the patrol cars, seven or eight police officers with helmets and riot gear, not anti-monster gear, moved nervously, trying to surround the purple bubble without getting too close.

And among them, only one had a weapon that wasn’t a pistol.

It was a long rifle, with a strange tip, the kind special agents used to buy time until a hunter arrived. But him alone, with that rifle, against whatever came out of that bubble, wouldn’t last long.

None of them would last long.

Lyon glided lower.

'How long does it have left?' he thought, the bat’s red eyes fixed on the portal.

"At this rate… ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Depends on how much pressure is coming from the other side."

'Then I have a few minutes.'

"Yes, have fun."

Lyon descended further. He was already level with the highway lights. From that distance, the portal looked enormous, even though he rationally knew it was small. And the police officers, if they looked up, would be able to see the silhouette of a lone bat approaching the center of the perimeter perfectly well.

And one of them looked.

One of the officers, one with a young face, someone who had probably been on the job for less than two years, had his head tilted up, trying to figure out whether the portal was rising or not. And when he lowered his gaze to rest his eyes for a second, he lifted it again, and that was when he saw him.

"Hey! There’s a bat!" he shouted, pointing with his finger.

The other officers turned.

"What?"

"A bat! There! It’s getting close to the portal!"

"Scare it away!"

Two of the officers started waving their arms upward, toward where Lyon was gliding. One grabbed a flashlight and aimed the beam directly at him.

Lyon dodged the light with a short turn, tilted to the right, then to the left, and kept descending.

"It’s not leaving! The thing isn’t leaving!"

"Scare it properly!"

Another officer grabbed a small stone from the pavement and threw it upward. The stone passed about a meter away from Lyon. Lyon let himself drop a little and dodged it effortlessly, then rose again to reposition himself before the next maneuver.

The officers exchanged a look.

"Hey…" one of them said, his voice a little lower. "That bat just dodged the rock on purpose."

"Yeah."

"And it also dodged the flashlight."

"Yeah."

"…"

"…"

"Do bats do that?"

"Normal ones don’t."

The one with the rifle, the special agent, lowered the tip of his weapon. Raised it again. Lowered it again. It was obvious he was hesitating between shooting a small animal that had become suspicious and waiting to see what it would do.

And in that instant of hesitation, Lyon took advantage.

He beat his wings twice with force, launched himself forward like an arrow, passed right over the officers’ heads, tilted sideways to dodge one of their shoulders, and in a single, clean, almost elegant movement, dove headfirst into the portal’s purple bubble.

"IT WENT IN! THE THING WENT IN!"

"WHAT THE HELL…?!"

"TELL THE ASSOCIATION SOMETHING ENTERED THE PORTAL FROM THIS SIDE!"

But by the time they finished shouting, Lyon was no longer on the highway.

He was somewhere else. And that somewhere else was very, very cold.

At first, Lyon saw nothing. The inside of the portal was a white void, with no direction or outlines.

There was no up, no down, no left or right.

Only white.

A dense white, almost liquid, where Lyon felt like he stopped flying for a moment because there was no air to push with his wings.

It lasted one second. And then, thud, the world appeared.

Lyon fell a few centimeters forward, beat his wings to stabilize himself, and suddenly he was no longer in the void.

He was in a place. A place with a sky. A place with ground. A place with air so cold that it pierced through his tiny bat body as if it had needles inside it.

Lyon landed on the ground. The moment his little feet touched the snow, the red light wrapped around him again.

Fwoop.

And in his place, the white-haired girl appeared, crouched over the frozen ground, with the rain jacket hanging too large from her shoulders, and the sunglasses and face mask still on.

And the first thing he did was shiver.

"…Ow."

"Ow!"

"OW!"

Lyon hugged himself instinctively and hunched his neck.

The cold was absurd.

It wasn’t normal cold. It wasn’t the cold of a chilly night in the city. It was the cold of being inside an industrial freezer. The kind of cold that hurt your teeth even if your mouth was closed.

"It’s cold," Lyon said out loud, the girl’s higher voice still trembling.

"Impressive deduction, Lyon," the voice inside his head replied.

"Shut up. It’s seriously cold."

"I know. I feel it too. It’s your body. We share the thermometer."

Lyon adjusted his sunglasses and face mask and tried to look around.

But he didn’t see much.

Around him was a snowstorm. Not a gentle snowfall, not postcard snow, but a strong, dense blizzard, with wind pushing his white hair all to one side and snowflakes hitting his face hard enough for him to feel them.

The landscape was barely visible. Gray shapes on the horizon that could have been mountains or ruined buildings. He couldn’t tell.

The ground was covered in a thick layer of snow, so thick it reached Lyon’s ankles, with dark spots here and there that could have been rocks, or branches, or something worse.

And there was no sun. Or if there was, it couldn’t be seen. The sky was a uniform gray ceiling that didn’t give even a hint of where the light was coming from.

'Great,' Lyon thought, as a chill ran along his arms. 'Great. Of all the portals that could’ve opened near my apartment, I got a terrible one.'

"Feel like going back?" the voice asked, sounding amused.

"No."

"Okay."

"I came to de-stress."

"Okay."

"I’m not turning back now just because it’s cold."

"Okay."

"It’s just a matter of enduring it for a few minutes and that’s it."

"Okay."

"…Although it really is very cold."

"Just fight already. You talk too much."

Lyon took two steps forward, trying to see something beyond the blizzard. The snow crunched under his sneakers. The wind pushed his white hair so far to one side that it looked like a flag.

And then he heard the roar.

"GROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

It was so loud that Lyon brought both hands to his ears by pure reflex, pressing his head as if that was going to make any difference.

The roar pierced through his eardrums as if it came from inside and outside at the same time. It vibrated in his chest and made him bend forward slightly.

"OW!"

"Hey," the voice inside his head said, with perfectly fake calm. "That sounded close."

"YOU THINK?!"

"I’d say… very close."

"OW!"

Boom.

A step.

A step so heavy that Lyon felt it in the soles of his feet before he heard it with his ears. All the snow around him trembled. A small circle of flakes rose into the air from the vibration. And then another step, an instant later.

Boom.

Closer.

And then, through the blizzard, it appeared.

At first, it was only a silhouette. A dark shadow against the white, so large that Lyon initially thought it was a hill that was moving.

Then it was a shape. A tall shape, with a back, with four thick legs like columns. And then, when the blizzard opened for a second, he saw it completely.

It was enormous. Half the size of Lyon’s entire apartment. A body covered in thick white fur, almost indistinguishable from the snow, except for two huge eyes of a dull yellow color that stood out clearly.

Spiral horns grew from its head, twisted, curved, each one the size of an adult’s arm. Its mouth was half open, and hot vapor poured out of it, turning into mist in the freezing air.

Lyon looked at it.

And for one very brief second, he felt like everything was going to be fine. After all, it was just one very big monster.

Then he heard the other steps.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Behind the first one, more silhouettes appeared through the blizzard.

One. Two. Five.

Eight.

Twelve.

All the same as the first. All with the same white fur, the same yellow eyes, the same spiral horns, and the same vapor pouring out of their mouths.

A pack.

An entire pack.

Lyon stood still in the snow, his hands still near his ears, his dark glasses covered by a fine layer of frost, staring at the dozen beasts that were staring back at him.

Inside his head, the voice let out a soft, restrained laugh, almost delighted.

"Well, well, well," the voice said, clearly amused. "Look, Lyon. You really are going to get to de-stress. You have plenty of material to fight with."

Lyon didn’t answer right away.

He clenched his fists inside the oversized sleeves of the rain jacket. He breathed in through the face mask and felt the frozen air burn the inside of his throat.

And slowly, very slowly, he muttered:

"If you’re not going to say anything useful, shut your mouth."

"Ooh."

"Shut up."

"Whatever you say, boss."

"GROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!"

The twelve animals roared at the same time and began to move.