Silas Robb: Of Saints and Sinners

Chapter 1-1-3

Yeah, it was powerful.

He heard screams from below and looked over his shoulder. Mortimer was standing up from the table across the street and looked as if he didn’t know what to do. Which he probably didn’t

“You said fairies,” Silas yelled at him. “Not Fey.”

“Is there a difference?” Mort yelled back.

“Is there a difference? You son of a b***h, when I get out of this I’m going to…”

Silas didn’t finish, a large clawed hand covered his face and another grabbed his shoulder, dragging him back into the apartment. He was thrown onto the coffee table shattering it. Pain exploded across his back and the rest of his body ached from his turning the window into a door. The body he currently possessed was large and powerful, but even it would have been shattered beyond repair if not for the demonic soul that infused its flesh.

For a moment Silas’ vision swam, he was still groggy from the drugs. The creature’s head came into view. It grinned and pounced.

Silas thought it might be time to show the red cap who the hell it was f*****g with. He brought his legs up with inhuman speed and slammed them into the red cap’s chest sending it flying into the ceiling. It must have weighed five hundred pounds, but it hit the ceiling with enough power to split wood and send debris down.

The red cap fell next to Silas with a thud and a grunt as it rolled to its feet. By then Silas was also on his feet. They circled each other, the red cap now weary of what it was facing.

Silas reevaluated the situation. He dug into his ancient memories to a time when he had possessed a witch that had often interacted with fairies and Fey. They were closely related, but the Fey were vastly more powerful and much more dangerous. This particular one started off as harmless as a fairy, but infinitely more evil. Red caps sought to murder humans and soak their caps in the blood of their victims. The more victims, the more powerful the red cap.

The red cap charged. Silas was caught off guard by its speed. He dodged to the side, but he wasn’t fast enough. It hooked Silas around the middle. With a heave the red cap threw him through the living room wall. Plaster shattered and wood studs splintered. He landed unceremoniously in the bathtub. The porcelain rang out with a dull thud as his head bounced off the lip of the tub.

The world spun. He knew he had to move. As his vision cleared he was jerked to his feet and thrown through the wall again, this time into the kitchen.

He fell against the sink and hung there hoping he appeared dead or at least unconscious. He had to surprise this thing, he had to buy himself some time to think this through.

He felt the thump as it pushed through the hole he had made in the wall, splintering wood and plaster. s**t, he thought, it was moving carefully. Maybe it wasn’t as stupid as he had thought. No chance to change the plan now, he had to lie still hoping it would get closer before striking.

Red caps are notoriously hard to kill. The best-known way was for their caps to dry out. If they don’t get a regular infusion of blood by soaking their caps in their victims, they weaken and fade into the mists of their world. That cap had been dripping with fresh blood and Silas was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to hold out long enough for the blood to dry.

He felt it behind him. Still he did not move. It sniffed Silas like a large dog. Under other circumstances he was sure they could have been friends.

It was now or never.

Silas spun, throwing his fist out in a back handed strike. He had once possessed a Japanese warlord in the early fourteenth century who had been quite accomplished at martial arts. His fist slammed into its chin.

Silas heard a snap as the red cap spun away. It stumbled into the living room as it tried to regain its balance. Silas sprang through the air and brought his right foot up stomping the creatures face as it tried to recover from the first blow. This move he didn’t learn from the Japanese warlord, the stomp was pure slam dancing 101 circa 1991.

Its jaw disengaged from it skull. Silas could see it swinging loosely as the red cap fell on all fours. With a battle cry worthy of the Hun tribal leader he possessed around 400 AD, Silas leaped onto the back of the red cap. The red cap reared its misshapen head up and bellowed.

It was like riding a bucking bronco, or because of the red caps massive girth, a bucking cow. A big, pissed off cow. To keep from falling off as the creature tried to stand Silas grabbed the cap. His fingers sunk into the sticky wet mess and he remembered there was another, trickier way to kill a deranged red cap.

He gripped the cap as hard as he could and yanked. It stayed stuck firmly to the red cap’s head. He pulled again putting even more of his demonic strength into it, this time he felt it give a little, like prying sticky gum off the sofa. The red cap felt it also, because it jerked up, rapping Silas’s head on the ceiling, denting the popcorn texture and splitting the drywall. Consciousness wavered, but Silas held on.

With a final heave Silas yanked and twisted the cap. It stretched briefly, with stringy flesh, like cheese on a deep dish pizza connecting it to the red caps head. The cap only appears to be a cap and it can be taken off to dip in blood whenever it so desires, but the rest of the time it is connected like any other organ.

The cap came away and the sudden release from the creature’s flesh caused Silas to fall off the back of the monster. He landed with a thud in the Lazy Boy.

The creature paused in its thrashing and reached its hands up to gently probe the top of its head.

Uh oh, now it is really pissed off, thought Silas.

The red cap raised its claws above its head and bellowed. It shook the walls and shattered the widows. It sounded like Godzilla stubbing his toe.

Silas shot out of the chair and lunged passed the screaming red cap, angling for the kitchen door. The red cap lashed out to catch Silas, but striking him across his already bruised and aching back instead. The force of the blow propelled him into the kitchen.

He fell prone on the linoleum floor, blood from the cap and his numerous cuts and scrapes streaked across the white surface as he slid.

The kitchen was small and the angry red cap would be on him in seconds. He rolled to his feet, ignoring the stabs of pain from almost every joint and muscle in his body and grasped the side of the sink. From the corner of his eye, Silas saw the red cap come into the kitchen preparing for a final, enraged charge.

The other way to kill a red cap when you can’t wait for its hat to dry, was to soak that cap in its own blood. It would be vulnerable for a moment. Obviously, this was very hard to do and probably the reason it was not so well known.

Silas stuffed the cap quickly into the drain. The red cap cried in surprise and ran to the sink as Silas stepped back holding his bruised ribs. It shoved its bloated hand down the drain ignoring Silas as it tried to retrieve its precious cap.

Red caps tend, like many Fey, to be anachronistic and not up to speed with modern technologies.

Like, for example, a garbage disposal.

Silas reached over and hit the switch on the wall next to the sink and the blades roared to life. The red cap threw its head back and screamed. Silas seized a cleaver from the knife rack on the counter top. He swung the cleaver at the red caps throat chopping the head from its body and cutting that ear piercing scream short.