The Right Path

Chapter Three


The man beneath Victor’s grip was in excruciating amounts of pain. He had really gone to town on this one; Victor was surprised he had lasted so long, especially given his physical condition. He hadn’t been ordered to fuck him up so bad, he just felt like getting his claws bloody; it had been too long since he had had a really good kill. Victor had had so much fun just toying with the man, seeing how many ways he could break his body before he eventually offered up his information. His list of injuries was extensive; a dislocated left shoulder, a shattered ankle, four deep and rather angry looking gouges through his left side, a punctured lung, seven missing teeth, two fingers missing from each hand, a ruptured spleen, a broken radius and more cuts and gouges than he could begin to count. And Victor hadn’t even broken a sweat; he could keep it up all night if he had to; he wished he could. Despite the catalogue of pain, the man was still clutching onto his information like a drowning man clinging to a splinter of wood. It would do him no good, the end was inevitable.

“You gonna’ gimme’ a name yet feeb’?” Victor husked throatily, his voice catching like rough sandpaper as it left his mouth.

The bound man simply stared at Victor with all the rage of a thousand men. His eyes burned in his deep dark sockets with unbridled hatred, fear and hurt. He kept his mouth firmly shut and refused to speak. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and congealed quickly.

“Have it your way.” Victor shrugged his heavy shoulders and took a step forward.

He heard a slight splatter as the pained man’s left eyeball and attached optic nerves hit the wall behind him. It stuck there for a moment or two, watching the horror unfold, before crawling slowly down the wall and leaving long slick blood trails in its wake. The owner of the eye screamed in unbelievable agony. A deep and guttural scream that was bellowed out long and hard and pierced the quiet of the crisp night sky. The noise was of such a frequency that Victor turned his head in the slightest of winces. His animal ears and overly keen sense of hearing afforded him the ability to hear a pin drop, but also amplified sounds to the highest degree.

Victor’s thick, muscled arm shot out directly in front of him and his clawed hand clamped down hard on the man’s throat. The screaming ceased immediately and was replaced by a soft pathetic rasp. The man open and shut his mouth in a silent plea for mercy; he resembled a fish out of water, dying and sad. His remaining eye began to bulge, the white tinged with red as the pressure of straining built behind it. His wrists thrashed violently at his sides and his legs jerked spasmodically. There was no doubt that had Victor not taken the time to cable tie the man to the metal pole, he would be clawing at his thickset body. Futile as that attempt maybe. The man’s face was turning a very unpleasant shade of red as the air he required so badly continued to evade him.

“You feel like talkin’ now?” Victor growled, his chest rumbled deep and dangerously.

The man continued to mouth absently, failing to form words, instead just offering up illegible sounds and murmurs. Victor eased his grip ever so slightly, the man sucking in air so fast it gave him a head rush. The injured man drew in enough breath to be able to form just three very stupid words.

“Fuck you asshole…” He cried; blood around his newly empty eye socket still seeping down his flabby cheek.

Maybe he would have offered more pearls of wisdom, but Victor tightened his grip round his throat so fast he thought he might have snapped the poor unfortunate mans neck in the process.

“Not the answer I was looking for.” He snarled.

Victor had no compunction in killing the man in his grasp, he felt no twinge of regret or guilt; he never had in the past, why break the habit? The man was a no body, just a two-bit middle man named Martin ‘Morty’ Short; a sleaze out to make some money on other people’s misery and suffering. He was known to Team X for his various underhand dealings with opposing groups and factions; Stryker had had the man watched for quite some time, but not by Victor. Victor was no good at stealth and observation work, he didn’t enjoy it; he found it boring and would very quickly invent his own ‘interesting’ mission. Morty himself wasn’t overly important, but what was inside his head was absolutely vital. Victor had been ordered to ‘interrogate’ Morty as to the whereabouts of a particularly significant mutant by Colonel William Stryker. Victor had thought the task was a little beneath him and to be honest, pretty tedious. He wasn’t known within the group for his conversational skills; he was more of an act then think type of brute. Victor had however, asked Stryker what would happen if the ‘interrogation’ got a bit…physical. Stryker simply replied that he though it was a real shame that the homicide rate in the city had gone up by so much. He smiled and then left the meeting room without so much as a backwards glance at a sadistically grinning Victor.

Morty had practically turned purple by the time Victor was ready to talk some more. He hated talking to his marks; unless he was taunting them and describing their horrific deaths to them before he dealt them out. He had nothing to say to the pathetic sacks of meat he duly terminated; to him they were just another pay check, just another bottle of beer.

“I’ll ask you one more time frail…you don’t answer…I take your left arm and have it Fedex’ed back to your little wife in Brooklyn.” Victor paused, and then smiled repulsively. “Or on second thoughts…I could deliver it myself. I’ve been told that she’s quite the looker. Funny… I wonder how pretty she’ll look with my cock rammed down her fuckin’ throat?” The image played in Victors mind. He pictured a petite little blond with big plastic tits on her battered knees in front of him, his swollen cock filling the mouth that would normally just spout shit and gossip to those around her. He laughed at the thought; maybe he would deliver that arm after all.

Morty shook his body so violently that had he been a large and more athletic man, he may have broken some of his bonds. (Amazing how frails would react the moment you mention their loved ones.) As it happened, Victor had nothing to fear; Morty was a rather portly, balding, forty-nine year old Caucasian male with the athletic prowess of a 6-month old girl. Victor snapped his head back sharply and locked his deathly glare back into Morty’s eyes. A deep and animalistic growled shuddered from his body and his filthy talons extended slowly piercing the pudgy grey skin beneath them.

“Just gimme the name Morty and maybe when they find you they’ll be able to put you in one body bag rather than several.” Victor felt his offer was more than reasonable.

Victor loosened his grip on Morty’s throat by millimetres, allowing him the chance to offer up a name. Through split, bloodied lips and shattered teeth, Morty breathed deeply and filled his one unpunctured lung with cool night air. As he exhaled a burning pain surged through his chest cavity as the hole in his right lung leaked. He cried out in agony, the whimper of pain was like a symphony to Victor’s ears. Morty spluttered and coughed up some dark blood, trickling from the side of his mouth and dripping down onto his torn blue shirt.

“Alright, alright.” He choked. The pain in his chest was all consuming. “I’ll tell you.”

Morty coughed slightly and sent specks of blood flying on to Victors black shirt. Victor paid no attention.

“Hurt. William…Hurt. That’s…the man you…w…want.”

“Where is he?” Victor barked darkly.

“He…he’s at th…the old warehouse off 25th and…and…and…Saddle.” Morty coughed again, the cooling blood congealing as it made contact with the cold air.

He was dying, Victor could sense it. He could feel his chubby frame beginning to sag and feel limp under his grasp and against the confines of the cable ties. The scent of death hung around him like a heavy shroud; it consumed the very air he stood in. Victor had realised many years ago that the dying had a very unique fragrance to them, quite unlike any other smell in this world. He couldn’t begin to compare it, to do so would be a futile task as no words could describe the aroma. The fragrance was specific to each person and could only be smelt just before they passed over. Morty smelt strange; his scent was musty, like opening an aged book and breathing in the motes of dust that escaped from it. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was instantly recognisable.

Victor had retrieved the information he needed, and Morty’s purpose in this life had now totally expired. He raised his single, battered eye to look at Victor directly, his heavy head hanging down to his chest. The look of resignation weighed heavy in his remaining eye, the bloodshot circle around his blackened pupil flashed defeat. Victor tilted his head to the right and glared back at him with a flash of his white fangs.

With the quickest slash of his claws, Victor had decapitated the dying Morty in less than seconds. His heavy head thudded to the concrete floor and his nose crunched as it broke on impact. It rolled about three feet away from his now slumped corpse, coming to a halt in a pool of thick slick looking blood. His dead eye stared at Victor from the ground, a misty glaze creeping over it ever so slightly as the life blood drained from his broken remains. The naked eye and normal human might not have ever detected this small act, but to Victor, it was as obvious as daybreak.

* * * * * * * * *

Victor collected the bloody and silent head of Morty Short and nestled it safely under the crook of his expansive arm. He’d black bag it and take it back to Stryker at the compound, see what he made of it. Cats always brought gifts back for those they lived with after their little expeditions into the field; birds, mice, frogs…heads. It seemed like the decent thing to do, plus the look on his face would be priceless. He threw a cursory glance at the cold mangled corpse of the former Mr Short. A cruel smile spread across Victors face; he licked his lips once and set off back to his pick-up.

Once outside, he made his way across the expansive car park and away from the derelict building, kicking up swirls of dust as he walked heavy footed on the ground. It was beginning to get dark, the blanket of night hung low in the sky and in the distance Victor could see street lights beginning to flicker on all over the sleepy city.

Victor stopped suddenly and raised his head into the air, his grip on the head tightened slightly. He could smell smoke, metal and death. He sensed that not very far from him, maybe a mile or two up the road, there had been an accident; a car crash of some sort. He could smell the distinctive tang of twisted and scorched wood…pine if he wasn’t mistakened, fused together with bleeding, charred human flesh. The two fragrances danced in his oversized nostrils, teasing and playing with his heightened senses. The light nightly breeze billowed down wind and carried the aroma to him, hand delivered with affection. Victor laughed faintly, thinking that he might just stop off on the way back to base and take a little look for himself.

Heavy footed once more, he cleared three more paces towards his car, inhaling the aromatic smell of the woody smoke, until he was stopped dead in his tracks. His entire body froze and his mind went into a frantic spasm. The head of Morty Short fell from Victor’s arms and crashed to the floor, sustaining more post-mortem injuries. Victor blinked hard once more and felt his brain almost implode with a white hot heat.

**********
(FLASHBACK)

The trees the boys were sheltering under created a cocoon around them both. The thick, heavy branches hung only inches off the floor creating walls of fresh warm pine needles around them. The wind still swirled around them but not as badly as it had before. Victor had managed to manipulate the branches and bend them to his will in order to afford Jimmy just a bit more protection from the arctic blasts of cold night air. He had cleared the snow from the ground with his own hands; he did this till he could no longer feel the ends of his fingers and they glowed red from the cold. Victor had to protect his little brother, he would do all he could to ensure he was safe, warm and as happy as he could be. He created a little ‘home’ for them beneath the pines; a haven of safety, warmth and brotherly affection.

“Eat this runt, it’ll make ya’ feel better.” Victor husked to the quaking young boy who sat before him. He held out his own undernourished arm and handed something frosty to Jimmy.

“What is it?” The young boy eyed the meat suspiciously; it didn’t look as appetising as he had hoped. He knew his brother had tried and that he had to be grateful, he just found it very hard. He watched as Victor had tried to warm the meat over the dwindling fire he had made; the little flames and sparse heat barely warming the ice covered flesh.

“It’s polecat, there’s nothing wrong with it…it’s just a little…cold is all.” Victor tried not to falter.

“Where did you get it from?” Jimmy was always a barrage of questions, everything had to have an answer. He was so unlike Victor it was unbelievable.

“I killed it dummy, where do you think I got it from?” The lie tasted greasy in Victor’s mouth, but he knew if he told Jimmy the truth there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of getting him to eat it. He cast his eyes to the freezing earth and chewed on his own piece of frigid meat.

Jimmy took the smallest slither possible from his brother and raised the frozen meat to his trembling lips nervously. He glanced up at Victor for a moment and smiled at him gratefully. Jimmy loved his brother deeply and knew he was loved in return. Victor smiled back at the young boy, genuinely and with affection. Jimmy carefully nibbled at ice-covered flesh and chewed as little of it as he could. It tasted bitter and too cold, the muscular flesh had to be the most unpleasant thing he had ever consumed. Swallowing the solid meat already in his mouth, he screwed his face up and replaced the strip of flesh swiftly next to Victor.

“I can’t eat that, I’ll get sick again Victor.” Jimmy whined impassively. Victor rolled his eyes and cast the strip of meat away into the night, flinging it as far from Jimmy as he could. He racked his brains as to what he might offer his brother to eat. It had taken him most of the day to find that polecat, it was no easy feat. In the middle of winter only the lame, ill or dying were above ground; they didn’t make for satisfactory dining. Victor had searched most of the daylight hours to find the frozen meat, no easy feat in sub zero temperatures.

Lost in his thoughts a moment too long, Victor was suddenly snapped back to reality when he noticed that the tiny fire he had made a few hours ago was beginning to die. Its scarce glowing embers were a fragile reminder that it would soon radiate it’s last ounce of heat. A harsh and cruel arctic wind from the North was blowing directly into their make shift camp, and was threatening to take the fire out completely. Weak tendrils of grey smoke rose into the night sky only to be obliterated by a swell of vindictive wind. The smell of burning pine hung in Victor’s nose, it smelt good, strangely comforting, it reminded him of home. But Victor knew he had to keep the fire going somehow; if he didn’t the runt might get really ill; he wasn’t as strong as he was and Victor didn’t know if he could survive another illness like the last one.

Using all his energy and might, Victor crawled across the frozen ground and held himself no more than a few inches away from Jimmy’s face.

“I’m gunna’ go and try find more firewood…” It pained him to abandon his younger brother like this, but he had to go, if he didn’t he might not have a younger brother to protect at all.

“NOOO…” Jimmy protested loudly, he couldn’t bear to be left alone yet again.

“I HAVE to Jimmy, if I don’t find more wood the fire will go out and we won’t have any heat. You’ll get sick again, real sick. You don’t wanna’ get sick again do you?” Victor was brilliant at calming Jimmy. He was firm and fair with him, he did the best he could. He played the role of brother with the greatest of ease and had slipped into the role of father a little too well. Every protective and caring instinct that had ever lived in Victor, surfaced in him with a swell of brotherly affection every time he looked at Jimmy.

Jimmy nodded deftly and wiped his muddy face. There were no tears; it was just an instinctive reflex of a young child hearing something they would rather block out. Victor raised his cold hand and rubbed Jimmy’s shoulder as tenderly as he could without scratching him.

“I won’t be long…I promise. I’ll be back before you realise I’m gone. Here…” Victor reached into his inner coat pocket and fished about for a moment. He produced a small beaded band and handed it to Jimmy. A faint waft of leather filled Victor’s nose as he handed the band to his little brother. The leather was musty and old, heavy and reassuring. It was an old friendship band made for him by his mother not long before she died. To Victor, it was more valuable than all the worlds gold; it never left his side, he kept it with him always.

Jimmy smiled back at Victor as he clutched the little band in his cold frozen fingers. He knew what the item meant to his big brother and that Victor must have trusted him more than anyone in the world to look after it. Jimmy had a special job to do, he had to protect the band till Victor got back. He felt strong and important now; he didn’t want to whine and cry any more, he wanted to be strong like his older brother. He couldn’t let him down.

Victor took both of Jimmy’s clasped hands in his own, feeling the bone claws just below the skins surface. He looked his little brother dead in the eye.

“I’m comin’ back for this. Will you look after it for me till I come back? Don’t lose it now; you know it’s precious to me.” Victor said sternly, the tone of his voice devoid of any anger or frustration he may have felt.

Jimmy nodded enthusiastically and with wide eyes, his cold little hands gripping the leather band as tightly as he could. Victor smiled deeply at him and then rose to his feet. He pulled his coat around him as tightly as he could and he hunked the collar up around his neck some more. Glancing down at Jimmy, he watched him play with the band, stroking the worn out leather with as much love and affection as one might use to stroke a small animal. Victor smiled and spoke softly to his brother.

“I won’t be gone long, so stay here…don’t go ANYWHERE. Wrap that coat around you some more.” He paused. “That’s it. Now look after that band for me Jimmy, I mean it…I’ll be back for it in a few minutes.”

Victor turned and stalked off into the night. His excellent mutant sight aided him against the darkness of the night and he saw almost as clear as he did during the day. He passed a few trees, their branches heavy with mid-winter snow before turning back to look at his little camp, checking as only a brother would. Jimmy was already tightly curled into a ball beneath the tall pine, his hand in a tight little fist; he looked like he was drifting off to sleep.

Victor smiled contentedly before turning and dashing off into the darkness of the night once more.


(END FLASHBACK)
**********

When Victor’s vision returned he spun round frantically, slashing wildly at the air around him with his sharp extended talons. His breathing was ragged and erratic, and his mouth was as dry as cotton husks. His poor head pounded for a few seconds until his hyper-vigilant regenerative factor pushed the piercing pain out of his racing brain. In less than ten seconds, order had been restored to Victor Creeds body. A wave of utter rage washed over him, the searing heat deep inside was threatening to surface. The fire in his stomach poured from his fanged mouth and he roared deeply into the innocent night sky.

Victor gathered Morty's decapitated head; it felt cold to the touch already and the bluish-complexion of the victim's skin was indicative that it was already advancing into its first signs of decay. He dug his stained claws into the forehead, carrying it like one would a bowling ball. He jammed his car keys into the lock of the pick-up and flung the grotesque head callously and thoughtlessly to the right, losing it somewhere within the cramped, passenger space. Ramming the keys into the ignition, the four-litre engine roared to life and before a moment's passing, Victor swerved the vehicle round violently, speeding out of the parking lot as fast as he could."

A frustrated growl permeated from his throat. He was going to try and wait, to hold out for a little longer, and test his control over the undesired flashbacks. His limit peaked, he had pushed himself as hard as he could and was trying his damndest to ignore them. But they were getting progressively worse still. The memories kept flooding back to him; forcing him to see everything in his violent, colourful past. Every man he had mutilated, every woman he had tortured and raped, every baby and child he had skewered and maimed, every life he had destroyed, snuffed out on a whim. They were all laid out in front of him, had emerged like ghostly shadows from some horrific and morbid nightmare. He could face and accept most of it, gladly turning a blind eye to most of the fucked-up stuff he had done. Hell, he even found the violent flashbacks almost amusing, like highlighted reminders of 'fun times.' They wore him down after a while, but only due to the sleep deprivation that followed them. He tired of seeing frozen faces and twisted corpses, mixed together in some dreamlike state

But the childhood memories were what burned him the most. Any memory of him and Jimmy cut him to ribbons, to an extent that he could face no more. The drivel of sentimentality was too much to bear; it ate at his brain like a fat, lazy grub slowly chewing its way into rich, decaying pulp. He saw his unfortunate mother, his drunken father, poor, weak little Jimmy, the kind and loving Mr. and Mrs. Howlett and all the other significant characters that made up the play of his childhood. They surfaced into his mind like actors onto a stage, re-enacting scenes from years past. His flashbacks were increasing in frequency, like a malignant tumour that weakened his resolve and made him question himself too deeply. Initially, it had surfaced after particularly bloody killing sprees; a random memory would reappear inside of his head before fading away into the murky depths in the back of his mind where he wanted them to remain. They merely popped up like pretty fireworks and then disappeared as though it had never been. But now, nearly eleven months down the line, the flashbacks could not be predicted. They came with no established pattern and with no recognisable trigger. Anything from a particular scent, to a facial expression, a touch, a texture, to a visual image could stimulate one without warning, a painful memory explosion deep inside his thick-headed skull.

Victor could take no more. It was affecting his whole life and he needed a release from the burden of these memories. The thought that his actions in life had disappointed Jimmy was more than he could bear. He could rape, kill and maim till the end of time and never feel any guilt, hell he enjoyed it. But the thought of letting Jimmy down, even by one terrible extension of his long claws caused the guilt to crash down upon him with all the weight of a black hole. The internal conflict was beginning to rip Victor apart; it was tearing at the very fibres of his being.

He needed the glow.

He needed it so badly that he was willing to kill for it, his body and mind ached for it in equal measure. He needed that sweet relief, the complete numbness that accompanied the glow. He needed his twisted thoughts and haunting memories to be pushed far from his racing mind and for respite from the animal within. He had battled internally for long enough; for months he had toiled with himself, he longed for his ‘fix’. He had to see the empath; she was the only one that could help him now. She had the power, the ability to hold back his thoughts; she could afford him enough time to collect himself and regain his composure. He didn’t need her to control his thoughts, only his memories; he needed her to temporarily eradicate them for him. He craved the ‘afterglow’, those few days of absolutely exquisite peace that allowed him to see things clearly and with a free mind. It was like a drug to him, twice as addictive as cocaine and ten times more potent. He had to dose up now, he was crying out for a fix. The glow made him feel like the raging beast within him had been tranquilised; as if it rested in a dreamless slumber. The constant state of anger and choas was replaced with stillness and order, the burning fire in his throat quenched. After the glow, his whole body tingled and buzzed with the type of peace he had not felt for over a century. He needed that now.

There was only one place he could go to tonight, only one person that could help him.

Louisa.

His pick-up screeched onto the deserted freeway, swerving and faltering as the ground changed from gravel to asphalt. He slammed the gear box roughly into fourth and cruised at an increasing speed to his goal.