The nervous looking cop didn’t seem surprised to see him. Krasnov began asking him questions and giving orders. I understood most of it, all pretty straight forward stuff, witnesses saw one creature, there might be some gunfire noise, keep out meddlers, if we’re not out in an hour we’re probably dead, that sort of thing. My mom had gone to school in Russia and was fairly fluent, and as a kid I’d loved playing language games with her. Lots of that had stuck. Krasnov, however, didn’t know I understood any of his language because I’d played stupid at dinner, waiting to see how much he lied, though his translating had been fairly accurate so far.
When he was done grilling the cop, Krasnov passed over an envelope full of cash. The cop shoved it into his vest and then drove off to block the street. My biggest take away from that conversation was the thing we were hunting was called a Vodyanoy.
Krasnov drove right up to the front door, parked, and killed the engine. “Here we go!” He got out.
I followed. “Am I supposed to just use harsh language?”
“What kind of terrible host do you take me for?” He walked around to the back of the car and popped the trunk. “Help yourself.”
There were several weapons in the trunk, just kind of dumped there in a haphazard pile. Krasnov pulled out a load bearing vest, covered in magazine pouches, and put it on. Only when he tried to buckle it around his belly, the straps were an inch too short. “Eh…It must have shrunk.”
“Yeah, ballistic nylon will do that.” I had a sneaky feeling that my host had been enjoying the good life a bit much and hadn’t gotten out in the field for a while.
He finally gave up on getting the vest closed, and pulled out a Bizon submachine gun for himself. I couldn’t tell what all was in there, it was such a mess, so I pulled out a matching one. At least that way if Krasnov got killed I knew I could use the extra weird helical magazines on his vest.
I hated borrowing equipment. That required me to have faith in someone else’s weapon maintenance. I worked the charging handle to clear it. Everything felt right. Then I dry fired it at the trunk to hear the snap of the trigger. Everything felt okay. I checked to make sure the weapon mounted light worked by shining it on the pavement. There was a clunky red dot sight mounted on it, and I made sure that worked too.
“You are familiar with Kalashnikov style, yes?”
It took me a second to figure out the hinge to rock a mag into place, then I chambered a round, and flipped the safety back up. “Remind me afterwards and I’ll tell you about Abomination.”
There was a pouch with some extra mags. I threw the strap over my shoulder like a camouflage purse. Very fashionable. I had my own flashlight in my pocket that I could count on. I missed my knives. But there was a nasty looking camp hatchet, so I took that and shoved the handle through my belt. “You got a secondary? Handguns I mean?” Krasnov reached into the back of the trunk and pulled out, I kid you not, a plastic grocery sack filled with pistols. “Nice.”
“Only the finest for you.”
I pulled out one of the Grachs and checked the chamber. The Russian pistol was ugly as sin and ergonomic as a brick, but it would have to do. I loaded it, then I felt really ghetto as I shoved it into the back of my waistband. Professionals used holsters for a reason. If I did anything more strenuous than walk in a straight line that pistol would probably slide down my pant leg and end up on the ground. I stuck an extra magazine into the pocket of my jeans just in case.
My host ditched his silly hat and pulled on a ski mask. He offered me one. I looked at it funny. “What? You do not cover faces when you work in America?”
“Not usually.”
“Eh…It makes it harder for people to seek retribution after you accidentally break their things.”
When in Rome…I put the mask on. Whoever had worn it last had been a heavy smoker.
The last thing Krasnov pulled out of the trunk was a sledge hammer. Then he walked straight up to the double doors and smashed the lock. Three big hits with the hammer and the heavy door was toast.
The interior was extremely dark. The street lamps from outside didn’t help much when all the unbroken windows were covered in dust and cobwebs. I shouldered the AK and squeezed the pressure pad to turn on the light. I swept into the first room. The only thing inside was trash and some broken furniture.
Krasnov was humming. I’m pretty sure it was one of the songs from Tetris. He pointed his subgun’s muzzle at a faded sign on the wall. “The pool is that way. Our Vodnik friend will be in water.”
Nobody had been in here for years. “You’d think it would be drained.”
“He is smart. He would turn the faucet on. They like water. My mother always said after they rip out your spirit, they have to keep it in a little bubble under the water, or it will float away.”
I stopped. “Hold on. What the hell are we dealing with?”
“It is called Vodyanoy. A water monster from Fey age. This one has drowned many little childrens.” He went back to humming as he walked down the hall, kicking cans and bottles out of the way with his boots. Stealth and subtlety weren’t exactly his thing.
“How tough are they?”
“They are like men. Some tough. Some not so tough. This Vodyanoy is from the river, eh, should be medium tough at most.”
“That sounds like a pretty scientific measurement.”
“What we do is more art than science, my friend!” There was another door at the end of the hall. It was locked too, so Krasnov smashed it with the sledge hammer. Being a softer interior door, it flew right open. That made a bang that must have surely been heard through the entire building. “Like men, some Fey are nice, some are not so nice. This Vodyanoy is very not nice.”
“I take it we’re not trying to sneak up on it.”
“Of course not. There are only two of us. He will think two men are not so many to kill. He will attack, but we will show him who is getting killed! This way we will not have to search.”
The air in this corridor was warm and moist. It smelled swampy. We were getting closer to the pool. I was moving forward, crouched a bit, metal stock pressed against my shoulder, ready to fire in an instant. Krasnov was just blundering along, stubby Bizon casually in hand.
Our guns were only 9mms, which by MHI’s standards was a round reserved for pixies. They worked fine on people, but monsters tended to be more resilient, which was why we made the big bucks. “And what if he’s more than medium tough?”
“We run away and blow up building with bomb. But then the city pays less on contract. So bullets are more profitable.” Then he went back to humming.
There were locker rooms on one side, and saunas on the other. There was a slimy, black trail leading to one of them. That door was open just a bit, so I shoved it the rest of the way with the muzzle, then pied the corner. There floor was covered in bones, white, glistening, and licked clean. Most of them were from dogs and cats, but there were a few that were obviously human.
“Told you he liked to eat the childrens.” Krasnov leaned around and took in the whole sauna. “Looks like some grown-ups too! Quite the appetite this one has! This will be a fine bounty.”
Next was a set of double doors. The slime trail led right through them. Before Krasnov could gleefully hit them with his sledge hammer, I shook my head, then pushed on one of the doors with my boot. It swung freely. Looking a little disappointed, Krasnov set the hammer down and got his Bizon ready.
We entered, and the air was so moist, foul, and unnaturally warm that it was like getting smacked in the face with the Everglades. It was a big room. There was a large swimming pool taking up the center. The water had turned thick, green, and was covered in scum. It really stunk in here. A kind of fetid, humid, rotting stench. The only reason we could breathe at all was that that there had been glass panels in the ceiling, and some of those had shattered so the stench could waft into the night.
Clouds of little flies buzzed in front of my face and got in my eyes. Okay, one nice thing about wear
ing the ridiculous stinky balaclava was that the insects couldn’t fly up my nose.
“Come out, watery asshole!” Krasnov shouted. “We know you are here!”
The only response was when several large bubbles rose through the murk and burst open at the top. That made it smell even worse.
“He probably doesn’t speak English,” I suggested.
“Of course!” And then Krasnov launched into a giant tirade of profanity laced insults in Russian. I only understood about half of it, but it was mostly about the Vodyanoy’s mother and her promiscuous nature.
I nodded to the side, warning him that I was going to go right. Since he’d told me nothing about what this thing could do, I didn’t want to be standing right next to him in case it turned out it could breathe fire, or spit acid, or who knew what. Things that got filed under Fey get weird. I had to step carefully. The tile was slick with mold.
Krasnov kept up the insults for a couple of minutes, and I’m fairly sure he never repeated himself. I couldn’t speak for the aquatic monster, but I know I would’ve been insulted. But after that initial gurgle of bubbles, there’d been no sign of the thing.
The fat man stopped his tirade. He looked over at me. “Eh. Maybe he is not hom—”
The pool exploded.
Disgusting filth sprayed the walls as the monster launched itself from the bottom of the pool. A green bolt of enraged muscle hit Krasnov like a truck.
It was hard to tell what was happening because sludge had gotten all over my weapon light. Blinking slime out of my eyes, I swung my gun over, but the monster was on him, and the two were rolling across the floor. I didn’t have a shot. Slipping and sliding, I tried to get closer.
Krasnov was shouting and trying to lever his subgun around, but the beast was shaking him back and forth like a terrier with a rat. It was actually a little smaller than the hunter, but it must have been really strong. I timed it, and the instant it raised one misshapen arm to rip his face off, I popped off two quick shots into the back of its head.
It turned around and hissed.
The Vodyanoy was part man, part frog. It had two great big glassy eyes far out on the top of its lumpy head, and a mouth that had to be a foot across. It was jowly, and had a green beard made of algae. The creature was fat, squat, and sitting on top of Krasnov’s massive gut, with one webbed hand wrapped around the straps of his load bearing vest. A pink tongue popped out of its mouth, way too long, and rubbed the spots where I had shot it, glaring at me the whole time, as if to say I can’t believe you did that.
I had like fifty something more where that came from so I opened up on it.
The monster leapt off, bounding halfway across the room to stick to the wall, and then it instantaneously rebounded and launched itself at me. It was lightning fast. I tried to dodge to the side, but the floor was slicker than snot, and I slipped, crashing against the tile and sliding through the mold. The Vodyanoy flew past, landed behind me, flipped over, and started waddling back toward me.
I rolled over, lifted the gun, aimed, and snap. In an instant, that pink tongue shot out like a whip, stuck the receiver, suction cupped on, and then ripped it right out of my hands. The tongue detached from the gun somewhere on the way back, and the Bizon went spinning end over to end, to disappear into the pool with a plop.
It started waddling toward me again. The weird googly eyes seeming to point in different directions. I tried to get up, to make distance, but it was like the floor was greased, and all I succeeded in doing was sliding around and embarrassing myself. I reached for the Grach in my waistband, but of course, it wasn’t there. Because we use holsters for a reason.
But then one of its big eyes compressed violently as Krasnov put a bullet in it. The eyeball didn’t burst, but the way the Vodyanoy started blinking its massive eyelids, it had certainly felt that one. It tilted its head violently, then bounded right over me, nearly reaching the tall ceiling, and heading straight for the Russian. It seemed to want to kill him more. Maybe Krasnov really had hurt its feelings when he’d made fun of its mother.
Krasnov kept on shooting. I found a rusty metal towel rack on the wall and used that for stability as I got back to my feet.
“I do not think this is medium tough!” Krasnov shouted as his bullets did basically nothing against the rubbery beast.
With one gun in the drink and the other bouncing around, the light in here was awful. I pulled the Streamlight out of my pocket and turned it on. I spotted the Grach where it had fallen out of my waistband, and picked it up. I liked my flashlights actually mounted on the gun, but if you hold a little light through your fingers like a cigar in your off hand, you can still get a pretty good two handed shooting grip. I shot the Vodyanoy repeatedly in the back. It turned, the tongue flashed out again, and wrapped itself around the muzzle of the pistol. It was warm, slimy, and really, really gross on my hands. I barely got my finger out of the trigger guard before the pistol was sucked away.
This time it simply swallowed the smaller gun. The creature actually looked smug about it.
Krasnov bashed the monster over the head with the metal folding stock of his Bizon. It retaliated by grabbing him by the shoulders, swinging him around, and tossing him through a glass partition into the showers. Krasnov hit the wall hard. From the way he struggled back to his hands and knees, he was obviously dazed.
I pulled the little camp axe from my belt and followed. I had to use the wall to keep from falling over. It was like going to the roller rink as a kid and wearing skates for the first time.
One googly eye looked at Krasnov with the other looked at me, like now I’m gonna eat your friend, what are you going to do about it, human? Then it toddled over to finish him off.
Except I managed to get there just as it was picking Krasnov up, and planted my hatchet into the back of its fleshy head. The blade hit with a very solid thunk.
It dropped him. The weird Fey made a noise that sounded like mrrrrrrpp? It spun, but I planted one boot onto its slimy back and wouldn’t let go of that axe handle. We began to spin around the room. I dropped my flashlight and held onto the axe with both hands. It kept twirling, trying to reach me. It was like a dog chasing its tail. I was getting dizzy. It was a Vodyanoy rodeo. Pink blood started squirting out of the hole in its head. It almost looked like shampoo.
As we spun by, I saw the Russian was trying to get up. “A little help here, Krasnov!”
Since it couldn’t flail around with its arms enough to dislodge me, the monster decided to head back to the pool. If I wouldn’t let go, it would just drown me. My flashlight got kicked by a webbed foot, but at least it ended up being pointed at a tile wall, so the bounce back made it so I could clearly see my approaching doom. It waddled for the edge. If I went in that muck I probably wasn’t coming back out, but I didn’t want to let this jerk get away either.
Only I didn’t have to make that call, because with a roar, Krasnov ran over and body checked all of us back to the floor.
This was a real mess. I ended up on the bottom of the dog pile. The frog man was rolling and thrashing. Krasnov got up and kicked it in the chest. I wrenched the axe out, and hacked the hell out of it again, but I didn’t have as good an angle. It was spraying bubbly pink blood slime in every direction. It kept hitting me with its squishy elbows.
It rolled off, flipped back to feet, and crouched, like it was going to launch itself back to the safety of the pool.
I slammed the little axe through its knee. The leap turned into a sprawl.
Krasnov apparently remembered that he’d been lugging a sword around this whole time, quit giving it the boot, and drew his blade. It was a long saber of some kind. He swung it hard. When he hit the Fey in the back, the flesh parted and gave us a pink shampoo lawn sprinkler effect.
At that point the two of us just went to hacking at the Fey. It was hardly what I would call professional. I would have given anything for my kukri right then instead of this dull little hunk of thrift store garbage. Luckily, the monste
r didn’t have claws, but it could still knock the hell out of you. It clocked me in the side of the head and sent me sliding into the wall.
Krasnov retaliated by running it completely through with his sword. He speared it through its back so hard that steel pierced out its chest. The Vodyanoy seemed really perturbed at that, spun around, and threw him back into the showers again. But since it had to turn around to do that, it presented me a perfectly good sword handle, which I grabbed, twisted hard, and ripped back out.
“Mrrrrrrrp?” the annoyed Vodyanoy asked, as it turned around to beat me to death.
Somehow I’d wound up with a sword, so I lifted it, and kept it pointed between us. I didn’t know a damned thing about sword fighting, but that part seemed pretty self-explanatory.
Krasnov struggled back up, but rather than getting back to the fight, he headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I shouted after him.
“Do not worry, you have got him!” Krasnov said as he fled.
“Son of a bitch!” That’s what I got for trusting a gangster. But then I had to concentrate on the slimy frog man that was flailing away at me with its ridiculous gorilla arms. The swords grip was only long enough to get one hand on it, but it was light enough that I could swing it really fast. I wasn’t going to get any points for style, but I just kept hacking at the rubbery thing. Most of the hits bounced off, but a few parted flesh and more pink blood spilled.
Only the Vodyanoy didn’t seem to notice the cuts or care. If this was medium tough I’d hate to see what they considered difficult around here. It was backing me into a corner. Because of how slick the floor was, I couldn’t even do much about that except try not to lose my footing. I should have been scared, but I was too busy being angry. For several tense seconds the two of us kept trying to murder each other.
THUD.
The Vodyanoy froze. Both of its great googly eyes turned inward to study the sledge hammer that was embedded deep in the top of its head. Krasnov had not only come back, he’d come back with his hammer, and hit it so damned hard that its skull seemed to deflate. He lifted the sledge hammer to strike again, and the Fey just stood there quivering on its stumpy legs, probably because Krasnov had given it brain damage.