Death.

Blood.

Clark smelled it at once. The metallic odor hit his nostrils like a hammer, and its source was easily discerned. The wizard marched through the foyer quickly, entering the main chambers before coming to the pews.

The skylight was still positioned directly over the aisle; and through it, the pale glow of the moon shone into a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere. Bodies too. Among the dead were the uniformed members of this Holy Order—

—now destroyed.

Their scarlet robes were darkened where they had been splattered with their own blood, and what lies inside hardly qualified as human remains.

The Order was decimated. Its members lie in bits and pieces over the pews. Clark saw arms and legs torn off, strewn about the benches like refuse; and here and there, a corpse lay without a head. The walls were painted red, and illuminated in a surrealistic, macabre scene by the buzzing lights. Intestines hung over the brackets, crushing the flowers. Clark saw empty shoes scattered about the premises, without the rest of the body to go with them.

The wizard took in the scene in a single, panning glance. He saw half-eaten bodies seated up against the walls, with one in particular having his head lowered, as if in deep thought. His chest was entirely red from where his throat had been torn out. That was the elder, the senior of the Order. Father Julien had forced Clark from the Prophet’s House, but he was now dead—and his organization with him.

All except one.

Alejandro was stunned.

Shocked.

He knelt beside the old man with his arms wrapped around the unmoving corpse. He had his head buried against the crook in the old man’s neck, and when he pulled away to scream, his face ran with the priest’s blood. He didn’t care. He cried out, and the same terrible wail erupted bouncing about the tall ceilings.

In a second, Clark was beside him. The wizard touched his arm, and the other swallowed against the lump in his throat. Alejandro forced his eyes away from the mutilated body, and followed Clark’s nudging chin towards a spot on the podium.

There, in Father Julien’s old position before the stand, sat a creature surveying the slaughter and death around them.

A dog.

The golden retriever wagged its tail with its mouth hanging open. It panted, and the furs on its body shifting with the motion. A tongue dangled over one side of its mouth, lolling and bouncing with every breath. The dog sat staring happily at everything, its unblinking stare boring into everything unnervingly as Alejandro reached up to wipe his brows. His hand came away wet with sweat. Even then, the boy felt cold all over. The heat inside the church was such that Clark wondered if someone had turned the thermostat all the way up. The air in the building shimmered, and it was mostly concentrated around the podium in the center. The place was boiling and yet, both men felt as if they were stuck outside in a Canadian winter without their coats. The hot/cold air made the hairs on the back of their necks stand up.

Alejandro prepared to speak up, but Clark stopped him with an upraised hand. He pointed towards the golden retriever, wearing a grim look.

“Don’t move,” the wizard whispered.

Alejandro didn’t.

Then: “You were right.”

The dog continues staring at them. The tongue slid back and forth over its teeth while its hackled bared backwards in a toddler’s grin. It seemed to be seeking validation for what it has done. (Daddy, it asked, are you proud of me now?) And it made the plea even as it sat amongst the broken bodies and the displayed entrails.

A moment ago, the church was hell on earth as every living person inside was fed to this deadly creature with the yellow fur and twinkling eyes. It continued staring, and Clark met its gaze without flinching. Then, in unison, they blinked.

Together.

Man and beast and that was enough.

Alejandro shrieked and fell backwards as the creature set upon him. The golden retriever was the friendliest of dogs, and this one looked no different. As stories go, such breeds would rather invite the burglar into the house instead of taking a bite out of their leg. This most wholesome of mutts now crossed the length of the huge, cavernous chamber in a single leap. Its jaws opened, stretching wider than it should have been possible. Inside, rows and rows of teeth, like that of a shark’s, closed over Alejandro’s head. It was all he could do to squeeze shut his eyes.

He was not devoured.

The boy heard a loud bang, the sound of two solid objects slamming together, and opened his eyes. He looked up not into the cold oblivion of death; but rather saw Clark in front of him, blocking his view with his broad shoulders. Alejandro’s mouth dropped open, for he saw the wizard had one arm upraised, and attached to it, with its huge jaws enclosed over the fist, forearm and elbow, was the monster’s elongated teeth. They were yellow, and very sharp, and already, the sleeve of Clark’s coat was torn to shreds. The pieces flew away on an unseen breeze and beneath it was the wizard’s bared arm. The monster’s teeth scraped over the flesh, which had turned an odd shade of grey.

Alejandro squinted. He had to blink a few more times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. He wanted to slap himself for good measure, but his arms won’t move just then. Clark had landed before him in a half-crouch, and rose to his feet now with the dog dangling from his arm. It continued to press its jaws closed, scraping its teeth noisily over his arm. All four paws scratched at the air excitedly. As Alejandro watched, the claws elongated before his very eyes to become hooked talons, with the points glinting wickedly in the dim light. A scratch would have been enough to disembowel a fully-grown man. Yet, when the nails flashed over the upraised arm, there was only a dull, horrid screech in reply.

Clark raised his other fist. It looked the same as his bared arm. In fact, his skin took on the same tones. Flakes of rock appeared on his face, and in between the seams of the plates Alejandro could swear he saw small tufts of yellow, dry grass. Before he could react—to fully comprehend what he was seeing—Clark had thrown his fist forward. He did it with the force of a battering ram, and the result was a sonic boom that made Alejandro clap his ears shut. No human punched like that. The force was huge, and the crunch shivered the air as the dog was sent flying. It sailed over the pews, back the way it had come. Then, it crashed and slid over the floor, breaking apart the tiles in a shower of colorful shards. It came to a skittering halt—

—and immediately bounced back up to its feet.

The golden retriever sat down and resumed panting at them happily.

Somehow, that was even more unsettling.

Alejandro saw the huge hole which sat in the center of the creature’s torso, where it had almost been punched all the way through. The opening in its chest sat pulsing in time with its breathing, and through it both men saw blood clotting the fur and broken ribs protruding at odd angles. One piece of bone dangled on a fleshy thread. Yet, the creature remained unperturbed.

It continued smiling.

Alejandro looked up at the wizard as Clark said, through rapidly thickening lips: “Stay put.” His voice had a growling, echoing quality about it, for the spell which has turned him (mostly) to stone also gave him a throaty, earthen cackle. He swallowed, and Alejandro saw his apple moving up and down. The motion was accompanied by loud grinding noises.

Before the young man could reply, Clark reached into his pocket. He whipped out a stack of flimsy yellow papers, and Alejandro’s eyes widened. He saw they were the same kind the wizard had used before to shrink him down to size; and with a wave of his arm, Clark threw them into the air, vaguely in the monster’s direction.

Alejandro saw him make signs with his hands. There were no muttered words, no shouted ‘abracadabra’ or ‘flame on!’ to give away what he was doing. The fluttering paper hovered briefly, before suddenly streaking towards the dog from all directions. The tags flew on invisible lines, their tails flapping noisily as the crackling chorus fell upon the monster.

They stuck to him all over, and the result would have looked almost comical. Clark was making it rain, but he was distributing holy parking tickets instead of bank notes. Each one stuck to the creature with crackling energy. Small sparks blossoming all over the golden retriever, even as it sat dumbly in the middle of the bombardment without doing anything.

From experience, Alejandro knew the magical tags were very potent. He saw Clark smile while making complicated gestures with his hands. They were both expecting something to happen. Maybe the monster can be shrunken. Maybe the spells held other effects. Alas, the smile soon disappeared. The creature shook itself all over, doing so in the unique manner of its species. It shuddered as if it had just come out of the water, and some of the tags fell away with the gesture.

Then, it pushed forward at a bound.

Alejandro shrank backwards. He cried out involuntarily as, again, Clark stepped in between him and the attacking monster. The dog was coming for him, plainly ignoring the wizard who had turned himself to a man of stone and earth. As it leaned into its charge, Alejandro saw the tags rain away, smoke sizzling from the floor where its tongue threw droplets of saliva over the tiles.

Again, there was a collision.

Again, the church shook from the impact of these two supernatural forces.

Alejandro recoiled from the blow. For him, being eaten was the least of his worries now. The boy had seen how the Order was destroyed, how the dog had toyed with them from the first bite, and turned living human beings into chew toys. It had torn them apart with a speed that was unnerving, but even that paled in comparison to how it fought with the wizard now. Thank goodness for Clark, whose fingers looked browned by dirt as he wrestled with the creature. By now, a flower was growing on the back of his hand. He threw the monster away, before backing up.

Clark adopted a boxer’s stance. He shook out his shoulders, pumped his arms one after the other. If Alejandro had not been frightened out of his wits, he would have laughed. The gesture looked like what they were—reloading shotguns in the middle of a firefight. The room was silent as Clark cried out at Alejandro.

“Go!”

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