Chapter 70: No Lacking

Thursday December 30th, 2021. Harlem New York.

Two weeks.

It had been two weeks since Bronte got embarrassed in that alleyway by the man who killed his friends…. The man who Watched— helped, Daken kill his brother and gut his siblings.

Two weeks.

He hadn't slept in two weeks.

His grunts were followed and joined by a handful of snores that didn't exactly go with the high intensity vibe of his apartment living room.

He held up eight hundred pounds on the benchpress. One arm.

His other, completely gone. Shoulder and all. Seeing it again for the first time made him vomit. It took some getting used to. Working out helped.

Mend was elsewhere. Out of his head. Relaxing. Exploring his apartment as he did.

"Let's go…."

Brontë cranked out another set of ten and reracked the weight with a heavy metal clang. The floor creaked and strained as Bronte got up and began removing the weight from the barbell.

He stood in the silence. Muscles pumped— fresh and warm. Pulsing with blood. He didn't feel strong. He hadn't felt that in a long time. He wouldn't fix the feeling by lifting heavy weights either…..

The shower called to him as it did after every workout. Having one of the best noses in the world wasn't always a gift.

And neither was being a pack-leader.

"I already fed ya'll breakfast man, bag back." Bronte said to the six dogs crowding his doorway as he stood in front of his bathroom mirror with a toothbrush.

Their varied cropped, damaged and floppy ears jumped at the word breakfast.

Rookie dog owner mistake.

Brontë looked away from the dogs and eyed himself. His stomach twisted.

He hadn't had a retwist in too long. Luckily he didn't have a tapered hairline and his dreads were tied down into cornrows. it combated what should've been a very rugged looking bit of overgrowth. But his beard and bushy— almost connected eyebrows, made all of that pointless.

The three sizes too small stained tank-top truly completed his deadbeat abusive father look. Or his "shell of a man" look, post Sabertooth. But that wasn't the case. That wasn't it. He wasn't empty. Far from it. For the past two weeks he'd been filled to the brim with purpose. More purpose than he'd had for most of the year. It was always there…. Just clawing beneath the surface. Unfortunately it wasn't his own will that brought him out of it. He had to be caught slipping.

He picked up his razor seated on the porcelain counter-top of his sink.

"It's about that time…."

The dogs whined. One of them— an all black Husky, howled. Loudly.

"Damn, man!" Bronte said in response to knicking his skin from the noise.

The apartment went so silent he could hear his blood leak off the blade and splat against the checkered tile floor.

The dogs went alert. Bodies hard as stone beneath fur that stood on end and eyes that stared unbroken.

Brontë smiled as he crouched down over the drop of blood.

He waved a hand in front of their faces. No movement. No unbroken focus.

"That's good….. very nice." Bronte wiped up the blood.

The dogs immediately went back to normal and took seats outside the bathroom.

"Fuck it, come in."

The sounds of claws on hardwood filled the silence followed by cutting hair and showering.

He took his time in the shower. For no real reason other than the fact that he could. The fact that he may have subconsciously felt dirty from his nightly activities may have also played a part. But not enough to be of any importance. He'd been through worse….

Unfortunately, his shower was cut short by the door to his home opening. A habit seemed to be growing.

His claws popped free from his skin as he closed his fist.

His newest set— a single metallic spike, burst from his elbow at the same time. Lost an arm, gained a cla—

"Morning, Bronte. I'm totally not driven to this place out of fear for your mental health! And I'm DEFINTELY not checking your bedside table for that gun….. that I know you don't have a permit for…." Misty said from the living room. Heels clicking on the floor casually. He could smell her so vividly and intimately it would've caused certain physical reactions if there wasn't a series of issues in the way.

"Fuck!" He looked down at his missing arm.

In a rush he hopped out of the shower, blasting his way out of the bathroom and across the hall directly into the guest room butt naked.

He shut the door behind himself and leaned against it.

"DAMN!? What's the deal with all these dogs, Bronte?! Hello? If I get bit I'm calling animal control….. Oh you got pretty eyes, don't you?….. look at that tail! Come here!"

"I think your sex partner enjoys our presence, Bronte." The multi-tendril maned quadrapedal beast said as it stood up on the twin sized bed. Its Symbiote skin shifted and shivered, adjusting to the framing of its host as it changed beneath. The arcane letterings that danced across its skin slithered like snakes and flashed with every breath.

"Right, now gimme a hand before she stops enjoying everything in here."

"Is that what they call a smile?" The monster peeled back its lips, revealing a mouth full of endless rows of bladed teeth.

"Hell no. Simile is what you're trying to say. That's a figure of speech. And not what I did. I did a pun."

"Like the rapper??"

"Mend!"

"Oh, right." Mend jumped off the bed and splashed against Bronte like oil before solidifying….. shapeshifting, adjusting— until suddenly Bronte's arm was back. Leaving a massive Kangal Shepherd Dog standing on his bed with its tail wagging faintly.

A steady knock against the door had him turning around to open it.

Misty stood in the doorway.

She was a tall woman. Almost as tall as Bronte for that matter.

Her hair was in its usual natural form. She still wore her work clothes. Long coat, blazer, white button up that fought like hell to stay together around her chest area. Black jeans.

Just another day.

"Hey." She sighed with a smile, worked up from playing with the dogs.

"What's good?"

"What's good yourself, why did your apartment go from a studio to an animal shelter?"

"Picked up some strays. It's getting cold out there, you know." Bronte led her back into the living room, opening and closing the hand of his recently connected arm— still in shock that it felt like his own.

"Oh I'm well aware. That's why I came over." Misty eyed him.

"Oh word?"

"Word…. Come here." Misty pulled him in for a hug.

"How you been?" Bronte asked.

"Fine. Work is….. ugh. But I'm getting my steps in. Accepting the fact that I won't be having a Christmas break."

"No Christmas break?"

The dogs circled around Bronte and Misty, sniffing her incessantly.

"Crimes are up. You know Winter-Night Crime Flux is real. Longer nights…. Harsher weather, greater need for resources creates greater potential for crime. Chief needs all hands on deck. Funny enough, one issue is strays." Misty disconnected from the hug, looking around at all the dogs.

"It's weird….. like real weird. And I'm a Detective Bronte, you know that. We don't like weird." Misty shifted as she stood, resting a hand on her hip.

"I do know that…."

"It's like as soon as you get some dogs, we're hearing all this chatter over the radio about packs of dogs at night. Barking and snarling in the sewers…." Misty side eyed him.

"What you want me to say this is Harlem. By Sunday we might have a voodoo priest turning pigeons into dragons. Be easy, Misty."

"Explain this then."

Brontë stretched as he looked around at the dogs.

"I just don't want you getting into anything you shouldn't."

Her and all her care. Last time it was getting out of the house which led him to Reed. This time…

A lightbulb went off in his brain, "I went to see a therapist."

Misty's face lit up, "That's…. That's great!"

"Oh yea I'm going to hell…." Bronte thought before replying, "I told them about my anti-social situation. They recommended I try less complex…. And annoying beings first. Plus I grew up around…. Animals kind of."

"And you just grabbed some strays off the streets?"

"Here and there."

Misty side eyed him, slowly looking back to the well trained and well groomed dogs seated around them.

"I'm good with dogs."

"Yea just as good as you are with music."

"Don't gas it now."

Misty playfully punched his arm, "Seriously though, that's great. How's it coming along…. Working with dogs and such."

"Good. We're making progress... ERHM…. Speaking of that, I actually have to meet with my therapist now."

"Now?" Misty said.

"She likes to work when the suns up. Seasonal depression and all…"

He led her to the door, spitballing half hearted excuses until she was out of the apartment and he was standing surrounded by dogs…. And his own thoughts.

"Nice. Now I get to pretend like I'm being mentally repaired by some white woman with a psychology degree everytime I talk to Misty."

"If you'd like I can force your hind brain to release more dopamine when Misty arrives." Mend spoke into his mind.

"That's a joke right?"

"Of course. We will not become addicted to anything harmful, Bronte. We will get better! Did my joke make you laugh?" An eye opened in the back of his hand and studied him.

"Did you see me laugh?"

"Not on the outside."

"Alright then."

"Is it time for work?" Mend asked as Bronte rolled his shoulders.

"Hell yea. Go get your gear." Bronte replied and ordered the dogs.

They all snapped to attention and took off, digging through the apartment, hitting all the key hiding spots.

Under the bed, behind the counter, in the sink, under the kitchen sink.

In seconds they all returned with full body kits held firmly in their jaws.

Stab proof vests, chain mail, locator collars emergency medical kits and silver stakes.

"Drop."

The floor shook as they dropped the gear. Brontë suited them up in minutes, throwing dog poncho's over them to hide the gear from the general public before putting his own clothing on.

Nothing like his old suits. Nothing particularly heroic or flashy to represent a power he use to have.

Just a black sweater full of tears and bite marks, facemask and a north-face jacket with boots.

"Alright. Let's go for a walk."

The dogs barked in unison like soldiers giving a pre-war hoo-rah before they left the apartment.

Even with Bronte's attempts to blend in, he was still a physically imposing man with sharp silver canines and six unleashed dogs. For the short portion of time they spent on the snowed in streets, the locals gave them a wide berth.

And then they hit the alleys.

The dogs kept their noses to the floor and tails high. Brontë kept his eyes glued to the map he'd been working with for the past two weeks.

Every sewer entry point was marked. Every homicide of interest and its location marked with a check or x depending on if he found the culprit. And over all of that, was varied triangulation points. Sequences across the five boroughs of New York.

Within the center of each, hospitals.

Blood banks.

The crimes bloomed from each mainline hospital, getting more ferocious and sloppy the further away you went.

Today, Bronte was the furthest he'd been from a hospital. But there were no homicide reports in the area.

A problem since he could smell decay as clear as day over every vent in the sidewalk and on the sides of the road.

It stuck to the fog spewing from them like slime.

Like ghosts asking to be avenged as they soaked into the pedestrians clothing and their pets furs.

A quiet scratching had him looking up from his map to find one of his dogs— a pitbull-bloodhound mix, clawing at a manhole cover behind a dumpster.

Brontë rushed over, shoving aside the metal green box of reeking garbage to squat over the cover.

The dogs surrounded him.

"Y'all know the drill. It's only been two weeks…. For some of you it's been less, but you know what this is. You've been on the streets, you see it. You saw it before me... I gotta make up for that. So be on the right timing. Y'all know how it goes. You bite before they do and I'll blast before you bleed. Stick and move, stick and move."

Brontë pulled the manhole cover out of the ground and dropped in. Memories of the fight with Sabretooth firm in his mind. Memories of how it ended even firmer. The questions that followed were always the same.

Sewer water splashed and soaked his boots in icy coldness he couldn't feel. Only smell.

If there was ever a time to have his magic back.

The dogs hopped in after, Bronte caught them one by one before setting them down on the walkways lining the sides of the sewer.

Soon after they were back on the hunt. Following the scents of decay amidst the sewage and wet stone.

The dark did nothing to hide the bits and pieces in the green stream. Or the rats skittering across their feet and into the holes in the stone where colonies lived based on the brilliance of squeaks he heard with every step.

They were hiding.

And it wasn't because of him and his.

He knew that when he saw the first hand float down the stream.

He clicked his teeth and one of the dogs took off, diving into the stream to swim after and retrieve it.

Seconds later and the hound caught back up to him, placing a hand in his grip.

He studied it in the dark alleyway, not once questioning his sight despite the oddity of it.

Green skin. Scaled knuckles. Four fingers. Black claws.

"Drained of blood. Not Vampire. Not Human. Mutant…?"

He ran a finger across the hand, taking note of the dry feel to its interior. The lack of intense freezing cold or water logging.

It was recently thrown into the stream. Cast aside….

Brontë broke off into a sprint. The dogs followed closely behind.

They headed north, up wet stone hills and stairs, over gates and bridges until they reached an intersection of sorts with eight different pathways. The walls were cluttered with art and statues made of things abandoned by the surface.

It almost felt like a…. Home?

Brontë sniffed the air. The heavy run-off of sewer water was too strong. The millions of floating droplets from splashing waters bonded to a corroded the trail of scent molecules he followed. With nothing left to do, he held up his right arm, aiming down the pathways.

His skin turned black, fingers growing eyes and extending like snakes, slithering down each pathway. For a moment his dogs waited in the silence, panting.

"Left!" Mend spoke from a mouth that opened in his shoulder.

Brontë took off down the left most path.

The art and torches that once cluttered the walls became smeared with blood and entrails… scorch marks and impact fractures that split the stone.

A warzone.

And then, he exited the slim hallway and found himself in a main hall of sorts. Probably an old bunker in case of national emergencies in the early days.

That didn't matter.

It hadn't been used as such in a long time.

Couches and bleachers lined the upper floor. Stickers and stuffed animals were strewn across the railing.

Ground level, where he stood, more signs of home living— colony living, continued.

So did the signs of struggle.

And massacre.

Limbs and body parts were laid about everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling even.

It was like a tornado swept through. Leaving only brutalized Mutants in its wake. Unmistakable Mutants at that. The ones that society wouldn't accept for another hundred years if high-school history taught him anything.

Some had multiple eyes on faces removed from bodies.

Others had multiple arms. Tails. Fins. Antlers.

Brontë suddenly remembered a conversation he had with his siblings years ago. Back when they were in South America. One year after leaving The Xavier Institute…..

"So what, Laura? We can't find these bastards. They want to bomb the locals with energy blasts, let them. If they weren't oppressed in the first place maybe they'd have the infrastructure and acceptance to handle their differences civilly. This isn't our problem."

"This is our problem, Daken. We're here, we can do something about it. It's our problem now. And there's one place we haven't checked. Below ground."

"What? Like the Morlocks back in New York?"

"Exactly like the Morlocks."

Brontë was taken out of the memory when a bat flew in from a back tunnel ahead of him and landed on a body, shifting into a meek and pale skinned human in a blast of black and red smoke. It's tattered clothes were soaked in garbage and blood.

The being grabbed a muscle bound severed arm and brought it to his lips, sucking the last remnants of blood from it fiendishly.

The dogs growled.

The Vampire snapped to attention, hissing at Bronte the moment he took notice.

Brontë popped his claws.

The Vampire coughed and keeled over.

"HsssSSAA!!…HAHAHA… it's working!….." The Vampire straightened out, bones snapping as its muscle expanded, just like the arm it drank blood from. The only problem was its dead skin couldn't follow the transformation well enough, causing dozens of tears and rips that revealed the bubbling muscle beneath.

The— now muscularly mutated Vampire, let out a mannish roar.

"Shit."