The door opened a crack, revealing half of Joe Mani's face.
Seeing Clayton, he quickly opened the door, then turned around nervously, as if on guard for something.
Seeing him so spirited, Clayton was relieved.
The shot just now still had the risk of killing Joe, but Joe has always been lucky.
He reached to the side and picked up the Harpy lying outside the door without any blood marks, then closed the door.
"Lieutenant, have you seen this kind of ghost thing?"
Joe asked with his back to Clayton, holding his gun alertly at the writhing remains on the ground.
The deformed hand at the tip of the broken wing was trying to crawl on the ground.
Clayton looked at the unconscious Harpy in his hand and was disappointed to find that the main body might not be as active as this severed limb:
"I think I have seen it."
Joe didn't see the main body in Clayton's hand, but the increasingly strong smell still made him feel it.
"Damn it, why is it getting stinkier and stinkier?"
"Probably because of it."
Clayton threw the Harpy to the ground, and the severed limb touched it, but it didn't recognize its home at all, just mechanically grabbed, pulling more feathers from its body.
This ferocity made Clayton frown.
He remembered the scene of cremating the newly dead, those who had been determined to be corpses would twitch in the flames.
Joe, sitting on the ground, just realized that Clayton had brought this monster in.
He had also been a soldier, but during his time in the army, he had not seen normal enemies, let alone such monsters.
Such a panic performance made Clayton a little impatient.
If he saw his werewolf form, maybe he could accept it?
Retaining parts of a person on a monster is more disgusting than being a monster.
It's a serious sense of desecration.
If you look at the head, the Harpy's face is still a beautiful young girl, but the bird body that emits a foul smell and the deformed organs retained in the details make this beauty lost.
If Clayton himself were a werewolf with a human head, he might not be able to accept it either.
Thinking of this, he was a little more tolerant: "Joe, haven't you been a guard in a POW camp before? Try to see if you can get anything out of it."
"It?" Joe incredulously pointed his gun at the Harpy's body: "Can this be asked?"
"It at least has a human head. Take it and let's move to another place."
Clayton was skeptical about the safety here. Although no one noticed him shooting, the fleeing coachman might bring the night patrol constable back to check:
Joe looked at his gun, the broken window behind him, and then looked back at the bullet hole in the wall.
This is a rented house.
"Okay."
Soon, they moved the Harpy to a nearby abandoned building.
In the dark and dusty space, the sound of waves outside is clearly audible, but it gives a deep sense of silence, and breathing becomes damp.
This is the dock area on the edge of Sasha City.
But because the landslide of the canal banks blocked the waterway, ships a bit larger found it difficult to pass, and over time, the docks and some surrounding warehouses and factories were abandoned, and only homeless vagrants and some criminals would choose to hide here.
Clayton stood at the door to watch for outsiders, leaving Joe Mani to do things inside the warehouse.
Joe held a candlestick in one hand and a revolver in the other, facing the bound monster, recalling his previous experience.
"Tell me your name."
This seemed to be of no use, and the eagle with a woman's head looked at him.
Joe thought for a moment and asked again in Tautong language.
"Tell me your name."
The Harpy suddenly widened her eyes, and two lines of tears flowed down her face.
Joe's expression froze, and the vivid emotions on her face made him temporarily ignore the other non-human parts:
He turned his head and shouted, "Lieutenant, it's not right here?"
Clayton Bello came in from outside the door with a heavy machine gun: "What do you mean?"
"It seems human."
Clayton leaned against the door with a rifle, flicking the barrel like a harp, and saw the tears on the young face of the Harpy and the disgusting body, feeling inexplicably irritable.
He is a werewolf, but he is also a human, what is this guy?
It doesn't even have a human body.
"Haven't you read 'The Poem of Liaxiu'? They are used to deceiving people."
"But it's crying."
Joe's voice was panicked.
"The more like a person, the better, it means it knows fear. Ask it where its master is."
Joe Mani turned back and translated Clayton's question into Tautong language.
The Harpy opened her mouth but didn't make any sound, and even forced a smile that could be called a smile while tears were streaming down her face.
This time, before Joe could speak, Clayton raised his gun at it, and he made up his mind to finish this matter quickly:
"Speak, or die."
Because of his experience in the war in Luoren, he had also learned Tautong language, but not as well as Joe.
The Harpy's tears gushed out again, dripping down her chin,
It opened its mouth wide, and the face of the young woman twisted, trying to lean forward.
"Damn it!" Clayton suddenly lowered his gun.
From a distance, he couldn't see its face clearly, so he didn't feel anything when he fired. Now Clayton couldn't find the state of mind he had at that time, and an inexplicable emotion made him unable to pull the trigger.
He calmed down after a few seconds, squatted down, and forced the Harpy to open its mouth by pressing its cheeks:
"You'd better say something, otherwise"
He stopped, and his fingers retracted as if they had been electrocuted.
In the wide-open mouth of the woman's head, where the tongue should have been, there was only a tangled mass of flesh, and a few teeth were missing.
She can no longer speak.
"Are you human?" Clayton parted the feathers under the neck, where there was a circle of purplish-black marks, the edges of which had begun to fester severely,
The "Harpy" nodded and then looked at the gun in Joe Mani's hand, her eyes full of longing.
Clayton stood up, turned around, and Joe took a step back because of his gaze.
"You kill her."
Joe thought he didn't hear clearly: "What?"
Clayton didn't explain anymore, directly took the gun from his hand, and fired backward without looking back.
The woman's head jerked backward and hit the empty rusty iron frame behind her, but the sound was negligible compared to the gunshot.
"Let's go, we've wasted our efforts."
Clayton tightened his collar, discarded the revolver, picked up his rifle from the ground, and slung it over his shoulder as he walked out.
Joe looked at him but didn't follow.
The night outside the abandoned warehouse was quiet, with only a little moonlight shining down.
Clayton's amber eyes glowed.
He walked back along the original road alone, not knowing how long he had been walking, but there were more and more residential buildings on the road.
"Good evening, do you need help?"
At the end of the street, a man blocked the way ahead.
He was wearing a black long overcoat, a flat round hat, holding a very excited dog in one hand, and a cane in the other. The badge on his chest proved that he was a constable.
Clayton raised his left hand and sniffed under his nose.
The smell was indeed very strong.
"No, I just finished fishing and am going home."
To prevent the gun barrel from reflecting and exposing his position, Clayton's Conqueror rifle was covered with a thick black cloth, and he wasn't worried that the other party would recognize what it was.
"Night fishing, you are in a good mood."
The constable nodded: "But it's so late, even the Saint Mellon parish is not safe. There seems to have been a shooting incident just now, it's really not safe. I'd better accompany you for a while."
Refusing again would be suspicious.
"Thank you very much," Clayton said, smelling the scent of the coachman he hired on the constable, and it was logical for the other party to track him down based on the smell.
He stepped forward, and the dog held by the man sniffed at his shoes but did not bark.
Dogs and wolves are the same animal, and Clayton can control them.
The constable let out a light laugh:
"No need to thank me, we descendants should help each other."
Clayton's eyes narrowed.
He had just done something that made him very uncomfortable, so he was more irritable than usual.
"Descendant? Is this a new term?"
"It's not a new term, it's a theological term."
The constable walked leisurely with the dog, seemingly not worried about Clayton's sneak attack from the side.
"You don't know about this?"
"I don't understand."
Clayton guessed the relationship between the other party and the Holy Grail Society,
He grabbed the gun strap with one hand, ready to fight at any time.
"Don't be nervous, my name is Galid, and I have been the constable of this city since four years ago. I usually maintain the kingdom's laws, but I will also help you, such as descendants, to hide."
Galid glanced at Clayton with his peripheral vision for a second or two, then turned back.
"Especially recently, there have been a lot of newborns like you who don't know anything, which has caused me a lot of trouble."
Clayton felt as if he had been hit by a heavy hammer:
Such an important institution as the constable actually mixed with non-human existences, and it has been there for a long time!
If this person is telling the truth, what kind of city does he live in?!
He looked back and was glad that Joe didn't follow.
"This is really hard for me to believe, can you prove your identity?"
Hearing his doubt, Galid did not respond directly.
"We are not familiar yet, so this is a secret. But if you are interested, you can come to the General Constabulary to find me tomorrow. I can answer some of your questions."
Galid's steps suddenly stopped, and their front was the location of 214 Mercy Street.
Joe Mani's window had a lot of glass scraps falling out.
"Releasing our own power is our nature, but don't be too presumptuous."
Galid looked at Clayton earnestly: "The elders of this city do not want to break the peace again, chaos will make our business impossible to continue."
"It's not the old era anymore."