He wore a mask that was curved like a beak. I couldn't see his eyes through the huge black circles in the mask - perhaps he had none. Perhaps beneath the mask there wasn't anything at all, just an empty cloak.

The man in the gray suit told me how to get here. "Find a hospital," he said. "Find a place with disease. There will be people there who follow him, who serve him. You will know them. You will follow them. They will lead you to the place where he hides. The heart of him."

I did as he instructed. I found someone - a doctor - as soon as I saw him, I knew. I don't know how, but I knew. There was something about him, something in his eyes. I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his lower wrist, a squiggly line crossed with a straight line. A stick and a serpent. I know what that meant. I've done my homework.

I followed him, followed as he drove to various hospitals, collected various samples, visited various patients. I followed as he stopped at a parking garage and started walking up the stairs. I followed him as the stairs turned from metal to stone, as the cars vanished, as the garage became a castle. I followed him to where the monster was.

The monster knew I was there immediately. The doctor turned, saw me, and his eyes widened in fear. The monster placed one hand upon the doctor's shoulder and the doctor convulsed and fell to the ground, vomiting up a stream of blood and viscera.

The monster in the beak mask looked at me. Perhaps he expected that I started to throw up as well. I could feel disease and pestilence swimming in the air around me, but I was protected. The gun protected me.

I made a bullet last night out of every illness I had ever had. Chicken pox, measles, mumps, the flu, the common cold. It was a sick bullet and it looked like a syringe. I shot the monster in the beak mask and he stared at the bullet with what I believe was disbelief. There was a strange moment when he seemed to become taller, then his cloak split down the middle and rats poured out of it. The rats all seemed sick, however, and they died almost immediately. All that was left was a torn cloak, an empty mask, and a pile of dead rats.

I didn't know how to get back to the parking garage, but I wasn't worried. The gun would show me the way. It would always show me the way to the next monster.