Chapter 89 89

Chapter 89 89


While Detective Diesel waited for the priest in the cemetery, he suddenly caught sight of a face he should not have seen through the gaps in the poplar trees. Short-toed hair, tawny eyes, and a thick, regal beard. Even though it was just a fleeting glance, he recognized the visitor immediately: Clayton Belio.

However, there was a dark red scar on the werewolf’s face, cutting across his entire right cheek. Diesel felt something ominous emanating from that scar. A clerical attendant in a priest’s robe was walking ahead, guiding Clayton Belio toward the endless sea of tombstones.

What was going on? How could a werewolf mingle in a sacred cemetery? This was under the church's jurisdiction! Diesel was on the verge of rushing over, but he stopped himself. He couldn't get too close; the werewolf would pick up his scent. He watched helplessly as Clayton disappeared from his field of vision.

"Sir, if there’s nothing else, we can begin," the priest approached from behind to remind him.

Diesel turned around, his attitude taking a sharp turn from the beginning: "Perhaps it would be better if we just dug a hole and put him in; I’m in a hurry." He was sincere. If he could dig the hole or bury the body immediately, he could find an excuse to follow Clayton Belio. As for Cooper’s faith—he could be dug up later and given a grand funeral at another place. Holding two funerals for a traveler far from home was a perfectly normal thing.

The priest said slowly, "If you are in a hurry, leaving now is also fine. I will have other attendants assist me in completing the funeral. The southern section of the cemetery, which is responsible for new burials, is not open to the public, so you don’t need to worry about the burial. We will handle your friend well."

Diesel was silent for a moment, then changed his mind and continued. Along the stone-tiled walkway, the attendant’s cane tapped rhythmically on the ground, his footsteps passing by the rows of cross-shaped tombstones. Clayton acutely caught a tune in the tapping of the cane—a currently popular melody that wasn't too restless, which was quite friendly for the deceased.

Priests, clerics, attendants. The difference between the three was that a priest had a fixed place of work, while a cleric’s transfers were more frequent and tended to serve areas without churches; the attendant, however, did not need to interact with believers at all, as long as they studied theoretical theology and appeared in certain public ceremonies to assist. In layman's terms, the attendant’s job was to study theology. Regarding those extraordinary things and theological works, they knew more than the average priest.

"Can you tell me what it’s like to go from being a normal human to a werewolf? I guess it must be very itchy? After all, there’s so much hair. Or is it like hair, easily pulled and painful?" Perhaps to kill time, the attendant asked Clayton about his transformation experience on the way. He was in his early twenties, at an age full of irreverence and a love for everything.

There was no one in the cemetery, and even in the daytime, they could speak freely. Clayton followed his footsteps, answering uncomfortably. "Actually, it’s fine once you get used to it; it’s just that the fur gets dirty easily."

"Then do you put your tail inside your pants or outside after you transform?"

"Werewolves don't wear pants."

"Then have you tried cocoa beans? I heard that things like that are toxic to werewolves, but some... phenomena indicate that werewolves don’t seem to show signs of poisoning when eating cocoa products. They don't have a special reaction to it." The attendant tried his best to adjust his wording to avoid making Clayton unhappy. Cocoa beans have had a highly lethal effect on many canines, and within the church, there has even been consideration of adding cocoa bean ingredients to the Eucharist to prevent werewolves from coming to worship. To this end, they did some experiments...

Clayton did not like this topic: "Cocoa is bitter. I didn't like it when I was a human, so I won't try it now."

"That’s a pity. I heard that after adding sugar and cream, it can make particularly delicious desserts."

"That has nothing to do with me. The reason is just as you said—it might be a toxic plant to me now."

The attendant was silent for a while, but not for long. Because their destination had arrived. Near the edge of the cemetery, a patch of tall, gloomy yew trees enclosed the boundary, blocking out the sunlight, making this patch of grass and tombstones appear ghostly. Notably, several tombstones here were crooked, and the pits were overturned. Coffins were exposed from underground; some animal had violently torn open the lids, leaving severe wounds on the skeletons inside where bone and viscera could be seen, and obvious canine tooth marks were left on the wounds. Fortunately, the guys lying here were already dead and wouldn't scream in pain.

"That beast last appeared right here. Please catch it quickly; our cemetery cannot remain closed any longer." The attendant pointed to a tombstone that had completely fallen over. The Bishop of the Talos parish had asked Clayton to come for this matter. The watchdog of the Wandering Soul Street Church had mutated. It didn't know what it had turned into, and now it was lurking in the cemetery, sneaking out at night to dig up and eat corpses. Perhaps because it had been kept for a while, at first, this dog did not actively attack people, so others only thought it had gone missing.

But subsequent grave robbery incidents in the cemetery alerted the clergy here. They found fresh feces and a broken old collar behind a broken tombstone; because the dog's name was still on it, they immediately recognized what the monster was. Letting your own dog eat people is against the doctrine.

However, the Wandering Soul Street Church was a very small church. The resident clergy did not have the ability to deal with the dark-born, and handling funerals consumed almost all their manpower. They could only temporarily close the new burial area of the cemetery, stop public visiting services, and cancel the steps for the deceased's family members to participate in carrying the coffin during the funeral to avoid contact with the evil dog. During this period, they tried to sprinkle holy water on the cemetery to drive away the mutated beast, but unfortunately, the dog had always lived on the leftover holy water and Eucharist, and had developed antibodies to it. Divine energy could not restrain it at all; it only made it more restless.

Just a week ago, they invited a few soldiers to surround and annihilate the dog, but they were ambushed and bitten by the dog, and then it hid again. The Wandering Soul Street cemetery extended all the way to the outside of the city. There were many scattered small forests and some spare stone coffins that could serve as hiding places. It was very difficult to find a dog in such a large area.

Because of the toxins on the corpses, the injured soldiers soon fell into a coma and had a high fever. Seeing this, the soldiers' commander transferred them back and refused to help again. This was also why the church turned to the dark-born for help. However, they had confidence in Clayton. Because Clayton was a werewolf, and he and dogs shared a common language.

Clayton crouched by the side of a dug-up burial ground, his palm stroking the texture of the tombstone, identifying the scent in the air. A scent distinct from that of living beings struck his nostrils. He turned to look at the attendant: "I do smell a scent of decay distinct from corpse odor. Are you sure no other animals have come in here besides that dog?"

"Never. And anything that could break in wouldn't be an ordinary animal." The attendant said with worry. Although it was just one dog that had been cursed by the Dark Moon, the incident meant more than that in the eyes of church personnel. If a dog could be transformed here and incarnate into a supernatural evil creature, then humans probably could too. Many young clergy members were worried that the power of the holy land was simply not enough to protect them, so they retracted their faith and were no longer pious. But the actual situation was that there had been no cases of clergy with blessings being transformed into dark-born this year. As for the most recent believer cursed by the Dark Moon in similar cases, that was the ancestor of vampires thousands of years ago.

The attendant of the Wandering Soul Street Church still chose to believe in the power of the holy land. He believed the only reason the dog was transformed was that it wasn't pious enough.

"I heard that Father Petie of the Saint-Melon parish baptized the mayor's dog. Now it seems he really had foresight. A baptized dog must be able to resist that dark curse." He lamented, expressing sympathy for the watchdog kept by the church. "Poor William, we can't save it anymore. If it tries to hurt you, just kill it."

"I will." Clayton responded simply.

He searched this area and walked all the way into the woods. The attendant watched him work with great interest, very much looking forward to Clayton speaking the common language of werewolves and dogs. But this was actually a skill that did not resort to a vocal system. Clayton communicated with canines by changing his own scent. Although he was a wild werewolf, he intuitively knew how to do this. Scents conveyed information more clearly than sound. In the eyes of special creatures, scent is also a language. He could even perceive how much pressure a person was under, whether they were afraid, or whether they were angry through a person’s scent. For canines, or other animals with scent glands, he could perceive more. Of course, there was a probability of error, but overall, the interference factors were all related to the environment, not his sense of smell's fault.

The scent of this mutated dog raging in the cemetery was quite strange. The emotions it expressed after being full were actually quite sad. And thanks to it, the whole cemetery was very sad. Clayton walked for half an hour and finally felt the anger of a hopeless pursuit. He punched the trunk of a yew tree, turned to look at the attendant, and his lips collided violently up and down under his thick beard, which hadn't been trimmed in a month:

"Your dog has been insisting on peeing on tombstones all this time; do you usually not care about that?"