"...take my hand...don't fear the reaper...we'll be able to fly..."--Blue Oyster Cult--

KnightMask pressed on down the street. With quick pumps of his arms, his wheelchair moved through the gathered dusk. Above him, the moon seemed to burn a hole in the night sky, penetrating through the shifting clouds to shine down upon the city clear, bright and full.

Rolling fog tumbled out from an alleyway ahead of him, while steam rose up from a sewer cap in the middle of the road. Together, the two seemed to swiftly encircle the streets in a mist. The wind began to howl and whip around him. A gust blasted him from behind, knocking him from his wheelchair and to the pavement.

Laughter cut through the darkness and fog. It was sweet, melodic laughter, the laugh of a woman. Yet a sharp cruelty tinged it. He looked up. Through his red visor he saw her. She stood like a statue before him, her hands placed imperiously upon her hips. Her hair whipped about her face in a long tumble of golden ringlets. Her supple brown body was clothed with what seemed to be the torn and tattered remnants of a Victorian-era dress, torn and ripped as if by the claws of some beast.

"And what sort of man is this, that grovels on the Earth before me? Could this even be a man? Perhaps the battered shell of a man. Perhaps. But no true man. For no true man would lie thus at my feet. A true man would stand before me and crush me to him in his powerful arms."

Though her voice dripped with arrogant malice, her words bounced ineffectually off of KnighMask. Insults in general meant little to him. He was not one who subscribed to the notion that every slight upon a wrestler's name had to be answered. If she wanted to find someone to taunt, she ought to look elsewhere. He wasn't biting. He was about to share this thought with her, when a breeze pushed back the golden curls that had veiled her face. Then all words left him.

Her features were so finely chiseled as to seem even in the eyes of the most hardened materialist as the deliberate etching of a Divine master hand. And yet, if her beauty was an example of Heavenly architecture, then her eyes were windows to the smoldering fires of Hell itself. Her irises were a bright red, slit in the middle by serpentine pupils. There was an eager, single-minded hunger in those eyes.

"Lay there KnightMask...lay there and grovel...my kiss is reserved for true men. Where I go, you could not dream of following..."

With a laugh, she turned around and ran off, her bare feet nearly gliding over the pavement. A savage fury woke inside of KnightMask as her mocking laughter grew ever more distant. It was such as he had never felt before; his blood boiled as a heat seemed to envelope his body. All that tamed his soul began to come unraveled. With a guttural growl, he began to crawl after the fleeting, golden haired, brown hued nymph who grew smaller and smaller on the horizon. His thoughts became vague and hazy, his entire motivations centered on catching the strange woman although, truth be told, he did not know what he intended to do if he did.

He began at first on his elbows, in an endless army crawl across the pavement. And yet, as the silhouetted figure of the woman ebbed to a tiny dot, he went up on his hands, walking upon them as he'd learned to do from the earliest days of his training as an amateur wrestler. Though he could no longer see her, the mocking laughter acted like a guide. It led him at last to an abandoned warehouse, through its door and up it steps. One hand after another, he ascended the steps and spanned landings, following ever after that sweet, poisonous laughter. Finally, he reached the top of the stairs, coming to a door which he knew instinctively led to the building's roof.

A barbaric fury coursed electric throughout his body. He came down from his hands, and fueled by the power of his bestial desire, landed upon his feet...and stood. Then, with a roar, he threw all of his power against the wooden door, splintering through it and landing in a crouch.

If he had truly risen above his bestial limitations in his bout with Crimson Cobra, then he had now submerged into the depths of them. Disappeared were any noble pretensions of KnightMask the athlete, swallowed up within the belly of a black beast within him. His was the simple, single minded determination of the predator.

The woman's lips curled back into a smile as looked upon KnightMask, crouched amid the remains of the shattered door. The moonlight glinted off a pair of long, thin canines. Yet again, she laughed.

"Brethren, behold your night's feast! I've brought you a man...young and strong...full of hot blood!"

Springing out of the shadows which seemed to deliberately conceal them in some sort of unholy collusion, two huge wolfs bounded toward KnightMask from either side of him. The masked grappler dove between them, tucking into a forward roll. The two beasts crashed against one another. As they arose from their pile of grey fur and muscle KnightMask, he faced them through a scarlet mist of blood lust.

What reasoning he had was vague and hazy. And so he did not stop to consider that the monsters before him rose up on two feet, or that the huge muscles of their necks, arms and chests were as much human in shape as they were lupine. Nor did he recall the ancient legends, as he ducked beneath swiping claws to snatch up a shard of the broken door, dodged another claw and jammed the shard deep into the midst of a vast, gray chest. With an unholy howl, the gigantic man-wolf collapsed.

Void of curiosity in the throes of his blood lust, KnightMask did not witness the strange transformation that occurred as his slain foe shook, convulsed and finally shrunk into the form of a naked, bleeding man...before at last crumbling to dust and blowing away in the night wind. Before he could rearm himself, the remaining monster leaped on the masked grappler, crashing into him with the full force of his unnatural might. Even as the beast wrapped it's massive arms about KnightMask, he instinctively closed his hand around his attacker's wrist and in one motion threaded his other arm through the wolf-thing's armpit to grasp his own wrist, forming a Kimura. Using the hold as a lever, KnightMask fell onto his back, kicking up as he did so and thus sending the monster sailing over him.

KnightMask maintained the Kimura, flipping atop the beast and throwing all his might into a convulsive, violent wrench. The beast's shoulder ripped apart, but its animal instincts had no concept of tapping out or saying uncle. Instead, it clawed and bit at KnightMask with its jaws and its good arm. Releasing his submission hold, KnightMask back-flipped away as the inhuman jaws and claws sought after him. With a baleful howl, the beast lunged after him. KnightMask slipped behind the beast and jumped onto his back, his legs locking together around the monster's torso. He smashed the edge of his forearm across the monstrosity's face and locked his hands together. With all his strength, he began to force the beast's face towards its own shoulder.

The beast thrashed and clawed with its good hand, howling its fury. KnightMask, little more than a beast himself in his current state, pressed his hold until finally, the beast's very jaws were in a sickening alignment with its own shoulder. And yet, still there was no sound. He torqued and torqued, yet the beast's powerful, bull-like neck refused to give. Meanwhile, though its enormous arm could barely reach KnightMask's place on its back, its claws still managed to tear and rip at the wrestler, opening cut after cut upon his powerful frame, until it seemed that man and beast were struggling over a small crimson lake. Then, there was a sound like a gunshot, and the beast slumped to the ground, its neck finally broken.

KnightMask collapsed to lay amongst the pool of his blood, when suddenly he saw the beast looming over him, its jaws roaring, even as drool slavered down from its hungry teeth. In desperation, KnightMask grasped at the same wood shard he'd used to kill the other beast. The beast struck down with its claw, its rage giving it an explosive swiftness. At the last same, KnightMask got hold of the shard and thrust it up into the beast's heart, jerking his head as he did, so that the claw passed harmlessly by him.

And then, he was left alone with the object of his insane pursuit. He staggered towards her, even as he felt the madness which she had birthed him slipping away. And as it gave out, his paralysis seemed to return. As he approached her he felt the feeling in his legs grow ever slighter, until, when was finally upon her, they were numb once more. He collapsed into her arms, whose strength belied their slender structure. His soul that had been submerged now surged up from the depths of his being.

The realization came upon him that he lay in the arms of a dead woman. Animated only by some inexplicable, unholy means, yes. But a dead woman nonetheless. A dead woman which, only seconds ago, he'd been brimming with desire for.

"Come to me...bold suitor...you have truly earned my kiss..."

He felt around for his cross, but it was futile. He had left it behind, back in his room at the gym. The silver key about his neck...the silver key the old man had given him...KnightMask clutched for it, but the vampiress held both his wrists fast, in a vice-like grip.

"Don't be silly, my brave knight...you pursued me across a city, you fought for my affections...would you now refuse the fruit of your labors? You who dream of transcending your bodily limitations for brief flashes...are on the cusp of soaring entirely beyond them...this is the culmination of everything you are...! Now you are verging on the life of a cripple...but soon, under my caress, you will be able to fly!"

"You-you tried to kill me!"

"Is it not a woman's right to put her suitor to the test? What queen does not thrill to see her knight in action, for her affection, slaying dragons at her whim?"

"You're not my queen...you're no queen at all! Don't you see? You haven't broken free from anything...you've made yourself into a slave...of everything that's wicked and perverse in humans! You're only free to indulge your darkest desires...and that's no freedom at all!"

"Silly boy...that's the best kind of freedom! And the most fun sort! Alright, enough small talk...I'm hungry."

With the speed of a coiled cobra, she lunged forward, biting down onto KnightMask's neck, even as the sun emerged upon the horizon, setting the shadows of the night to flight before its rays. Together, they screamed...and then she was gone in a swirl of mist...and KnightMask, unsupported by her, collapsed, in a pool of his blood. The last thing he remembered, was smoke rising from the wound upon his neck, as if it was be cauterized by a brand.

TO BE CONTINUED