They followed the creature across the country. They almost caught it in an abandoned hotel in Indianapolis, and in North Dakota they missed it by less than an hour on the crest of a snow-blown ridge, its campfire still smoking. They followed the trail on foot for two days, and an hour after crossing the border into Montana they spotted their quarry on a distant hilltop.
It was limping, whether from the bullet Tony had given it on the quayside in New York or the fall from the second-floor window in the hotel in Indy. It had found an overcoat somewhere, but it wouldn't pass for human long, and not at all up close. They fanned out, Tony on the left, Gillian on the right, Jasper in the middle, and stepped up their pace, eating cake from their packs in preparation for the task ahead.
The creature heard them coming, but there was nothing it could do. It tried to climb to safety, and they cornered it on on a scree-strewn slope below a sheer cliff. They stood off it, two hundred yards away apiece, and it drew its gun and tried to draw a bead on each of them, but at that range the caplock revolver was nearly useless, and when it had fired all six shots they moved forward, knowing the old percussion model would take the creature too long to reload.
They drew their own guns and approached.
"Lay down your weapon, creature!" shouted Tony, his rifle at his shoulder. The creature did so, and they noticed its claws extend and retract as it prepared for close-quarters combat. Jasper raised a hand and the three humans stopped.
"Creature," spoke Gillian, gently soothing, but not letting her rifle waver from its target. The creature turned its one good red eye upon her. "We are here to ease your pain, friend," she said, and the creature grunted. Pain was all it knew.
A thunderhead above the butte burst and rain poured down upon them. They blinked through the curtains of water brimming from their hats, but their aim did not waver.
"We are the three, born on the one day, in the one moment, brought into the world to free thee from thy prison," spoke Jasper, the speech that had so far seen the ending of seven murderous beasts on five continents. "We shall give thee a death of quiet dignity or honorable action -- "
The creature leapt.
Even in the rain the shots rang against the cliff-side and echoed across the hills, and the creature was dead before it fell. Blood trickled onto the rocks beneath it. Tony lit a cigarallo, spitting cheap tobacco onto the sand. Jasper leaned on the gun and silently saluted the fallen beast. Gillian stood over the creature, watched its blood mix with the rain and soak into the dirt, and shed a single tear.
And then they went to work.
While Tony and Jasper collected wood with which to burn the body, Gillian stood over the creature, made the sacred sign of the heart and whispered the prayer that would send the creature's tortured soul back to the light.
The rain stopped, and the cold sun shone down upon them, and they burned the creature's body and threw the ashes to the four winds.
And in northern Thailand another tortured soul approached an unsuspecting village, an unquenchable thirst upon its lips.
