Murder of Crows: The Killer Sheep

<Monster hunter Elizabeth Fox and team are assisting SWAT in arresting a Mexican Cartel middleman in his home. They hear a scream, and go down to the basement...>

The room was the size of a typical office or study. There was no ceiling, only a mess of pipes. Every wall had shelves, and every shelf flickered with hundreds of candles in glass jars. Each one of the jars had a different saint painted on them. At the back of the room was an altar, and on the altar was an effigy - Santa Muerte, the Holy Death: the favored deity of Mexican housewives and cartel kingpins alike.

But it was what was in the center of the room that arrested us. There was half a corpse - the legs - splayed crudely in the middle of a magic circle. The circle had been drawn in red paint. Part occult, part Catholic, part Mesoamerican, it looked like something a bruja, a Hispanic witch, might draw.

Standing over the severed legs, in the middle of the circle, was a very large sheep.

 The officers aimed at the human remains, then the sheep.  Gunner actually giggled. “What in the fresh fuck?”

The blood-spattered animal bleated and nosed around, oblivious to the commotion. It had its back to the door.

I advanced over the threshold, fighting not to hold my breath against the stench of blood and death. As I stepped over, the sheep seemed to tense.

“I heard screaming. What the hell is this?” The first officer exclaimed. “Death by sheep?”

The sheep turned around and looked at us with fathomless black eyes. Gore dripped from the matted fleece of its face. It placidly chewed a cud of bloody gristle.

“Get back!” I roared. “Back!”

The monster paused for a second, but before the officers could believe what they were seeing, the sheep’s skull split from side to side and peeled back to reveal a horrorshow of needle fangs. It squealed, lashing a spiked, barbed tongue with an end like a harpoon, and lunged toward us.

Both the officers screamed in unison and opened fire, drowning out my cries with the roar of AR-15s. Candles burst, lights extinguished, the Santa Muerte statue was shattered, and the monster shuddered and danced as the bullets practically cut it in half. It toppled to the floor in a pool of its own viscera, wailing with a very distinct, odd cry as it went down. “AOWH! AOWH!”

Jack’s voice burst through my earpiece. “It’s an Ao Ao! They multiply! Get the fuck out of there!” 

I grabbed the nearest cop and hauled him back from the circle. He was too stunned to resist. Even as I was dragging him back, something lanced out of the Ao Ao’s guts and speared the other officer - Gunner - through the face. It was over before anyone could do anything: he dropped his gun, clutched at the tentacle-like thing for a heartbeat, and then sagged as it effortlessly dragged him into the magical circle. The body of the sheep-like creature engulfed him whole, body armor and all... and then it swelled, bloating like a balloon, and the mass split into two wooly, horned, hoofed horrors straight out of The Thing.

“Ao Ao is a cursed creature! Fast healing! Worshiped as a demigod in Paraguay!” Jack barked the information as I turned and shoved the cop out the door. “Silver shot good, holy items better, palmwood stake to finish it off! Liz, roll left!”