Blood of Gato

Somewhere far away — beyond the wall of wind and rot — Letecia screamed.

It wasn't just a scream. It split the air open like glass fracturing under a blow. The forest froze. Leaves shuddered in stillness. Even the insects — those tireless witnesses of decay — went silent.

A lightning bolt, thin and white as a straightened nerve, flashed over the swamps.

On the far side of the country, where the wetlands bled into graveyards and the ground remembered the weight of centuries of bones, the darkness beneath began to wail.

The Coven moaned.

A rumble of anguish and rage rolled through the crypts, shaking bone and coffin alike. Thousands of dead cried out all at once — then were cut short, the world swallowing its own tongue.

Silence fell, thick and damp as tar.

Those dead still standing stopped mid‑motion. Heads turned in unison, empty sockets staring into nowhere. For a heartbeat, even time seemed to hold its breath.

But only for a moment.

From the muck and trembling night came a voice.

It didn't echo — it inhabited the air, coiling through wind and splintering branches.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, YOU WRETCHED WHORE?"

The roar of the Southern Lord split the forest in two.

Smoke rose from his chest — not ordinary smoke, but black frost, a vapor that clawed beneath the ribs of the living. The abyss itself seemed to cough, unable to hold his fury.

"You," the voice rasped — a storm dragging across tombstones — "pitiful serpent. I'll make you eat your own bones. You'll rake the soil with what's left of you. You'll dig your grave with your fingers and sleep in it forever."

The words themselves boiled the ground. The trees shuddered, shedding bark like old skin.

The dead began to move again, but sharper this time, twitching as if their tendons were pulled by anger itself. Rain ate away the old charms that bound them, washing off flaking skin, revealing something beneath that was no longer human — something older, crueler.

William stood among them, breath hanging ragged in the storm. Every inhalation clawed inside his chest. His skin had gone pale and slick, veins glowing faint blue beneath the surface — as if some other blood moved through him now.

He looked down at his hands. Where fingers had been, claws grew — long, curved, shining with his own blood. Not metal, not magic — flesh evolved into a weapon, trembling between agony and rage.

He flexed them; the pain was exquisitely real. Each movement ripped new seams open in his palms, but he didn't stop. Fear lived behind his eyes, but something else too — the steady ember of fury.

Before him, the monster loomed — a grotesque tangle of roots, skulls, and meat, cords of black sinew pulsing like the veins of a buried god. It smelled like death that had learned to breathe again.

Then the Southern Lord whispered.

"Did you think you stopped me, little witch?" the voice said — quiet now, almost tender.

"I see you. Every crack in your heart, every shadow you hide in... I saw your mother, Letecia. I saw her scream when I took her soul. She smelled sweet — honey and rot. Do you smell the same? I bet the boy's soul tastes just as ripe."

Letecia clutched her head, but the sound found her anyway — vibrating through her bones, curling behind her eyes. Blood‑tears streaked down her face, mingling with rain and mud. She knelt, shaking, each bone inside her creaking like wood under fire.

Her voice was a whisper at first — but alive, defiant.

"Ya ain't—" she spat through trembling lips, her Cajun drawl as thick as the swamp air —

"ya ain't touchin' him, cher… not now, not ever."

The fury in her tone cut through the downpour like a spark in oil. For an instant, even the darkness recoiled.

Then the storm broke again.

The dead lunged. William drove forward, claws tearing through rot and bone, slicing open torsos like wet bark. The sound wasn't a scream but a chorus, a thousand voices crying pain and worship.

Mud, blood, rain — all one color now.

He tore through them, think­ing nothing, mov­ing only on the pulse of rage, until the monster reached for him — a tower of sinew and shadow. Its roots coiled around his leg, flinging him into a tree so hard the trunk split.

He staggered, coughed red, and smiled — a death's grin.

Lightning tore the sky again, and in its light, Letecia rose — her silhouette a smear of fire and rain. Her eyes glowed like two embers dragged from hell.

"Oh, Letecia…" whispered the demon.

His breath seemed to stroke her hair, brush her throat — warm and cold at once.

"You've lied to yourself. I can feel it — your heart trembles, yes, but it's strong. Strong and stubborn. I like that."

There was a smile in his tone — a smile made of rot and honey.

"You'd make a beautiful vessel for my breath. My flesh. My miracle."

His words coiled around her like silk soaked in venom.

"Give me the boy. His head. And I will not grant you death… I will give you forever."

The monster's body obeyed, groaning like timber under strain. Every bone cracked, every root hissed — knowing what it was about to touch.

It leaned in, its rotting cheek nearly brushing hers.

"Think about it," the Southern Lord whispered. "He's no man, only a beast. You smell it, don't you? That's not blood in him — that's ash. Kill him, child, and I'll make you queen over everything that still breathes beneath the rot."

"What the hell are you babblin' 'bout, you filthy demon!?"

William's voice tore from his throat like a growl through broken glass. His eyes burned amber — a predator's fire dragged from hell.

"Another word, and I'll rip your damn jaw clean off."

He lunged, teeth bared, claws catching the glow of the lightning.

The demon laughed.

It wasn't human laughter. It wasn't even bestial. It was the sound of the earth itself, coughing up its dead.

"Funny," it breathed, almost tender. "You want to send me to hell? Boy, I think you just wanna go home."

William snarled, claws shredding corpses apart — flesh and tendon spraying in hot arcs through the rain.

The air steamed with the scent of decay and burnt marrow.

He ripped and tore, every motion pounding in time with the thunder, until the swamp was a red slurry of bone and mud. Yet for every corpse that fell, ten more shuffled up to take its place.

Each strike echoed inside his skull: What the hell is this thing? It's in my head… digging in... Just stop thinking. Stop giving it a way in.

The demon's voice pressed deeper, threading through his thoughts like disease.

What sleeps inside you hates you more than I do.

Once, it burned things like me — burned the world clean. Now you carry it, pitiful flesh, a half thing even the witch pities...

Look. She doesn't believe in you anymore.

Letecia stood frozen. Between her and William the air had gone thick — like water, dark and heavy. Her lips trembled. In her eyes burned rain, firelight, and a terror not of death, but understanding.

The forest shrieked.

The dead moved again, flames kindling on their rotted flesh — spontaneous, hungry fire, wordless and unbidden.

William howled. He struck again and again, his claws snapping ribs, tearing spines free like roots from wet soil. Flesh burst, steam rose off it.

But as he fought, something in him cracked wider. The longer he battled, the louder the demon's whisper became — deeper, more sweet, more poisonous.

Letecia staggered to her feet, blood and rain running down her face.

Her voice came rough as mud and bourbon.

"Shut yo' mouth… you stinkin' son of a bitch…"

The demon chuckled, low and affectionate, like a wolf crooning to its kill.

"You'll both be mine," he murmured. "I will eat your souls, my darlings — and wear your dreams like skin."

Rain sheeted down hard, a black curtain between the living and the damned.

Letecia knelt, pressing her palms into the soaked dirt. The mud bled up through her fingers, clinging, gurgling, as if the swamp itself were begging her not to go. Not to move closer to what thundered and screamed below.

Each drop cut into her skin like cold lead, not rain but punishment. The storm didn't fall from the sky—it descended, heavy and deliberate, as though Heaven itself was pushing her down.

Below, where the ground had torn open, the nightmare raged.

William— or what once had been William— moved through the dark like something starving. He didn't fight anymore; he lived inside the violence.

His bones snapped and welded back again with each strike. Claws lengthened in wet bursts, eyes glowing the color of molten copper. He howled, and the air shook. Steam rolled from his mouth— not breath, but blood evaporating from the heat that burned inside him.

The creature before him was no less awful. The mass of rot had grown, stretching into the earth around it— tendons, ribs, and roots twisting together. It pulsed, every inch alive, every piece whispering in a thousand stolen voices. The stench that rose was ancient, remembered by the soil— death so old it had become a kind of wisdom.

"Look at him, witch," murmured the Southern Lord, his voice crawling just beneath her skin like the legs of an insect. "Look how your little beast tears at the flesh, not even knowing why. He's not fighting for you; he's fighting himself. Can't you feel it? The hunger in him isn't love—it's the beast learning what it wants."

Letecia bit her lip until she tasted iron.

She didn't answer. Just watched.

The world blurred under thunder and rain, and through it, she saw William caught inside the beast's grasp—the thing's arms closing like a tomb. Ribs split. The sound of snapping echoed like a door slamming shut forever.

"William!" she screamed. Her voice shattered against the roar of the storm—broken, human.

And yet, he heard her.

His head jerked up, eyes burning red, the whites drowned in blood. His skin split in places where veins glowed faint blue beneath blackened flesh. For a moment, something inside him tore free—something no longer tethered to mercy or man.

He fell out of his body.

The beast inside him woke.

He lunged. The swamp itself seemed to bend away from the motion. His claws tore open the monster's chest, a wet explosion of steaming tar and dark, greasy blood. The air filled with the metallic stink of burned fat. William clawed, bit, tore—unmaking the creature one furious shred at a time. He wasn't battling death; he was feeding on it.

Every strike was an act of hunger, every mutilated limb a confession of what he'd become. The sound was unbearable—meat ripping, bones grinding, and behind it all, the deep gasp of earth trying to breathe again after centuries of stillness.

The monster screamed, not from mouth or throat, but from somewhere deeper—the way the earth screams when it's split open.

"NO!" thundered the Lord's voice, no longer a whisper but a hurricane of fury that shook mud from the trees. The air itself twisted, the rain falling sideways in sheets as if gravity now belonged to his wrath.

Letecia raised her head, her soaked hair clinging to her face. Through the stormlight, she saw William stand upright amidst the carnage—his chest heaving, claws hanging crimson, steam rolling off his skin.

Whatever wore his name now… it looked back at her.

And in its burning eyes, she didn't see vengeance.

She saw recognition.