Monster Hunter Nemesis

  Kurst sprang up and charged. Franks hurled the table at him, but Kurst batted it aside. They went toe to toe, but where Franks had a chance before, now Kurst simply manhandled him. Even bleeding from dozens of shrapnel wounds, Kurst was still too fast. Everything Franks did was turned aside. Kicks, punches, knees, elbows, all traded so quickly it would be difficult for the human eye to track and impossible for the human body to stop, flew back and forth between them, but Franks couldn’t hurt him. Kurst is toying with me.

  “Is that all?” It took everything Franks had to stay ahead of him. Within seconds, his forearms were splintered and bleeding from blocking so many impacts. His hearts were racing. Kurst’s face had stretched until it now resembled a werewolf. His grin displayed a long row of jagged teeth. “I’m only getting warmed up.”

  Franks was hit on one side of the head, then the other, so hard and fast that the turn almost broke his neck. Body blows fell in such rapid succession that it felt like he was being hit with a burst from a machine gun. Then Kurst kicked his leg out from under him, but caught him by the throat before he could fall. Franks was lifted off the ground, and then Kurst swung him around. Glass shattered as they crashed through one of the growth tanks. His blood painted patterns on the floor.

  Claws digging into his neck, Franks grabbed hold of Kurst’s hand and pried back a finger until it snapped.

  “You think that’ll stop me?” The demon paused to hold up his other hand, showing Franks that the damage from the grenade was nearly healed. He wiggled his fingers. “I’ll just grow more.” Then he pulled Franks in, muscles tightening with energy, and then Kurst hurled him across the factory. Franks spun through the air, crashed through another growth tank, and then into the unyielding concrete of the far wall.

  Franks could barely lift himself up. His quick inventory told him that everything was broken or leaking. The glass had sliced through his skin in several places, and a few lacerations were deep enough to render those muscle groups combat-ineffective. He still had two handguns, a grenade, some folding knives, and that broken halberd on him, but when he tried to draw a pistol, he discovered that the too-soft bones in his new hands were too broken to close around the grip.

  I am going to lose.

  Kurst had flung him fifty feet that time, and the demon was strolling over to finish the job. Somebody had gotten the emergency lights on, and Franks could see that his men were in the fight of their lives against the partially grown host bodies and the fully grown Nemesis soldiers. The factory was filled with explosions and gunfire, and if Franks didn’t finish Kurst off now, then the demons would kill his allies, flee this place, and grow themselves an army to conquer the world and ruin The Plan.

  There had not been very many times over the last three centuries when Franks had implored the World Maker for anything, but it was not very often that Franks lost a fight. If you want me to complete The Deal, I require help now.

  The demon prince paused to let Franks collect himself. “You seem surprised I defeated you so easily.” Kurst spied a pipe mounted on the wall, then ripped it free. Steam came shooting out of the gap. He tested the balance, swinging the big pipe back and forth like it was a baseball bat. Satisfied that it would be sufficient to beat Franks to death, Kurst put the pipe over one shoulder and strolled over. “You should know by now that demons always cheat.”

  “So do humans, asshole!”

  BOOM!

  Kurst turned just in time to catch the large-caliber bullet with his teeth. Bits of ivory flew through the air as the back of his skull came apart in a burst of red. Agent Jefferson had braced a huge Barrett .50 rifle over the side body of a forklift. His next round punched through Kurst’s sternum and sent the demon reeling back. Kurst retaliated by flinging the pipe at Jefferson. It hit so hard that it tore the roll cage off the forklift and Jefferson disappeared behind it.

  Kurst grinned. “Bia! Your human is here!” He pointed in Jefferson’s direction. Kurst was answered by a horrific shriek from the rafters high above. A purple winged form dropped from the darkness and shot toward the forklift. Jefferson shouted in surprise as the demon attacked him. There was a lot of gunfire and shrieking. “Enjoy yourself.”

  Strayhorn came around the side of the stairs with a rifle shouldered. He moved toward Franks while laying down fire on Kurst. “Hang on, Franks!”

  Even with Kurst wounded, the rookie was no match for the demon prince. “Get out of here,” Franks ordered, but his voice was so weak and broken that his order couldn’t be heard over the gunfire.

  The rookie didn’t listen to him. Strayhorn was pulling something from one of his pouches, and he tossed it. The oval-shaped object hit the floor and slid toward Franks just as Kurst lunged for Strayhorn.

  Franks crawled toward them. “Run!”

  It was certain death, but the rookie kept shooting. Kurst moved through the bullets and raised one hand. The claws flashed like lightning, and Strayhorn was torn nearly in half.

  “No . . .” Franks whispered.

  Strayhorn lay there in a spreading pool of blood. Kurst stood over the mutilated body, claw dripping red. “Interesting . . . You cared about this one, didn’t you, Franks?”

  The thing that Strayhorn had thrown at him had been a canteen. The plastic had bulged and the cap had burst off on impact, spilling glowing blue liquid.

  Kurst licked his fingers. “This is the same blood from the riverside . . . You saved this one before. But why would any human matter to something like you?”

  “They matter. We don’t.” He could barely speak. Franks reached the canteen and scooped it up with clumsy, broken hands. The canteen was still mostly full. “This world belongs to them. It was never ours to take.”

  “You have followed the Creator’s lies for so long. Next will I have to listen to you preach about mercy and sacrifice?”

  “I’ll never understand mercy.” This would most likely be fatal, but Franks had a mission to fulfill. He lifted the canteen and drank the whole thing. He poured ten doses’ worth of molten agony down his throat. Every artery and vein on Franks’ body began to glow. His skin made a sizzling noise like bacon hitting a hot pan. His hair began to smoke and singe. It hadn’t even really kicked in yet, and already the pain was incomprehensible. Franks spoke through grinding teeth, “But I do understand sacrifice.”

  Kurst turned around, saw the empty canteen fall from Franks’ convulsing fingers. “Fool.” The demon prince shook his horned head. “You’d burn yourself to a crisp for nothing. You will never be pure enough for Him.”

  The demon started toward him. There was nothing Franks could do about it. Every muscle in his body had contracted so tight that the tension was audible. Impurities burned off and bled through his pores as his bones turned molten. Nerve endings sent messages made of encoded pain, died, were born again to transmit even more suffering. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced. It was beyond anything Franks had ever imagined.

  His body was producing such incredible heat that it threatened to spontaneously combust. The edges of his clothing smoked and began to burn. The polyester of his tie caught fire and melted into his skin. It felt like soothing ice compared to the heat engulfing him.

  Franks saw the Void open up before him. It beckoned to him. Hell would have been a release compared to this. He wanted to die. Anything to end this pain . . . Kurst would be doing him a favor. The demon’s huge clawed feet stopped inches from Franks’ face. “What’s that, Franks? Do you wish to escape? Such pain . . . Will you beg me for death?”

  It was so tempting. Then he focused on Strayhorn’s dead body . . .

  “Too bad. You’re going to get it anyway.” Kurst lifted his foot to snap Franks’ neck. “Farewell, Brother.”

  “Hey, Kurst!” someone shouted.

  Kurst sighed and put his foot down. “What now?”

  Grant Jefferson limped around the side of the forklift. His armor had been torn to shreds, his face was crisscrossed with scratches, and blood was running freely from s
everal deep wounds. He stopped at the edge of the open space and lifted one arm. Jefferson held a handful of black hair, and dangling beneath that was the severed head of a purple-skinned female demon. He tossed the head at Kurst. It hit the floor, bounced a few times, and rolled over to them. “I killed your girlfriend again.” Weak from blood loss, he went to his knees. “Don’t know why people keep underestimating me . . . I’m a total badass,” Jefferson muttered before passing out and falling flat on his face.

  Kurst shook his head, then turned back to Franks. “Where were we, Broth—”

  Franks uppercut Kurst so hard it lifted the demon straight off the ground, high into the air, to crash back through several storage lockers.

  “We were sending you back to Hell,” Franks snarled. He squeezed his fist closed and cracked his knuckles.

  It still hurt. In fact, it hurt nearly as badly as the height of taking a normal dose of Elixir, only the burning he was still feeling now produced a fraction of the heat of Franks’ unholy rage. The molten glow was no longer visible through his skin and his muscles were responding. When he hit Kurst again his fist made an impact like a sledgehammer.

  Kurst sprung up. Franks slammed his fist into the side of the demon’s head so hard that bone slivers erupted through the skin. Kurst bounced off the floor, then looked up at him in shock. The demon’s body had already taken a beating. Now Franks was the strong one. Franks kicked him across the factory floor.

  The demon prince broke through the railing at the base of the stairs. He saw Franks coming after him, and scurried up toward the catwalk.

  Franks watched him go, then moved toward his fallen agents. Jefferson was still breathing, but there wasn’t time to assess him. Franks knelt next to the rookie. The wound was terrible. He might have been Franks’ blood, but he had a body as fragile as any regular human. Maybe the Elixir could still save him . . .

  The spirit had departed. Tom Strayhorn was gone . . .

  Franks punched the floor hard enough to crack the concrete. He took Strayhorn’s rifle and stuffed a few of the magazines into his pocket.

  Kurst was moving down the catwalk. Even hurt, he still was incredibly fast, and the grating beneath him shook with each heavy footfall. Franks put the red dot of the Aimpoint sight just ahead of the demon and let it rip. Most of the rounds hit sheet metal, but a few found muscle and bone before Kurst ducked behind the next girder.

  There was a big platform behind Kurst’s cover. Franks couldn’t get a visual on what the demon was up to, so he kept moving, looking for an angle. There was a screech of metal rubbing against metal, and then a large machine came hurtling over the edge. Franks dodged to the side an instant before two hundred pounds of metal crashed right next to him.

  “I’m going to smash your guts out, Franks!” Kurst appeared, a big cart filled with computers and electronic equipment held overhead, and he threw that as well. Franks barely had time to dive over a table before the cart bounced off the floor where he’d been standing. Bits of glass and plastic flew everywhere. “Then I’m going to eat them!” Kurst bent over, looking for something else to throw. He came back up with a heavy gas cylinder in both hands, zeroed in on Franks, and lifted it overhead.

  Franks put a bullet into the gas cylinder.

  It ruptured. There was a high-pitched whistle as thick orange smoke shot out. Franks didn’t know what chemical was in there—he’d been hoping for flammable or explosive—but whatever it was made Kurst roar in pain and clutch at his eyes. Kurst dropped the hissing cylinder, but the smoke cloud was already obscuring much of the platform. Kurst began to cough. He’d fashioned himself a fancy new body, but he was still breathing air through relatively normal lungs.

  This was his chance. Franks ran back to Strayhorn. He was wearing a Strike Team uniform, and doctrine made them all organize their kit in the same way so they could use each other’s equipment in an emergency. Franks rolled the body over, found the big pouch he was looking for, took out the gas mask, and pulled it on. The rubber straps were far too tight on his big head, but it made for a good seal.

  Jefferson was groaning. “Put your gas mask on!” Franks ordered. The agent was too out of it. He had more important things to do, and he should have just let him die for letting the rookie do something stupid, but Franks took a few seconds to get Jefferson’s mask on. It was like one of those annoying videos they made him watch on civilian airplanes, but if Jefferson died now, then Franks wouldn’t be able to punish him later.

  He sprinted back toward the catwalk. The orange gas was heavier than air, and it was settling, rolling along the floor. The chemicals made his bare skin burn. Franks followed the sounds of Kurst crashing about until he thought he was directly beneath. He might have been able to see through the grate if it wasn’t for the fog, but when he figured he was close enough, Franks pointed the muzzle of the SCAR straight up and ripped a full magazine through the metal.

  Kurst roared. “Damn you, Franks!”

  Drops of blood fell through the grate and splattered against the plastic face shield of the gas mask as Franks slammed another magazine in. The booming footsteps were moving, so Franks followed them and emptied another magazine up through the grate. The muzzle blast blew the orange smoke away from him in a spiral pattern.

  Visibility was improving enough to see that Kurst had shoved his claws through the grate and was prying the metal apart to come down and get him. Franks dropped the rifle, pulled out the halberd blade, got a running start, and swung as he jumped. Kurst bellowed as two of his fingers fell off. The demon moved away from the gap he’d made, cursing in the old tongue. Not missing a beat, Franks pulled his last grenade from his coat pocket, yanked the pin, and tossed it hard, up through the hole.

  “I will destroy you for this! Destroy you!” And then Kurst must have seen the grenade coming back down. It landed and rolled across the catwalk. “Shit.”

  Metal fragments ripped through everything on the platform, blew a hole in the grate, and shredded the concrete beneath, but Franks was long gone by then. He’d been moving while Kurst had been ranting. Once the shrapnel had flown past, Franks had climbed on top of some boxes, leapt, and caught the edge of the catwalk.

  “I’m better than you, Franks!” Kurst had been knocked back by the blast. The flesh on his chest was hanging in strips and blood was pouring from dozens of wounds. He was looking down at the mess, and plucked a chunk of jagged metal out of his ribs. “It’ll take more than another toy to stop— Aaaarrrgghhh!”

  Franks drove the halberd spike through the back of Kurst’s knee. He wrenched the spike around, utterly destroying the joint before yanking it out in a spray of blood and cartilage. While the demon prince stumbled back on his collapsing leg, Franks pulled himself up over the edge, drew one of his full-auto Glocks with his left hand, and ripped the demon from pelvis to forehead in one continuous thirty-round burst. Kurst lurched and tripped, hitting so hard that the entire platform shook. Franks followed him, reaching across his body to pull the other pistol, and repeated the process, putting multiple bullet holes into every one of Kurst’s vital organs.

  “I don’t give a shit how superior you’re supposed to be, that hurt.”

  Franks dropped the empty pistol, took up the broken halberd shaft in both hands, and began methodically chopping at the demon as if he was splitting wood. He struck the partially blind and wounded demon ten times before Kurst had even had a chance to try to defend himself. Franks dodged a desperate kick and responded by slicing Kurst’s heel off. Franks was impressed; the Swiss made good steel.

  The blade kept on rising and falling. “You should have listened.” Franks hacked into Kurst’s shoulder blade. “You don’t belong here.” The demon rolled over, swinging at him wildly, but Franks lacerated that bicep to the bone. “This is not your world.” Kurst raised one injured hand to defend his face, but Franks took the rest of those fingers off. “This was never your world.” The blade split Kurst’s jaw open.

  So much blood had struck the gas ma
sk that Franks could barely see. Kurst was trying to crawl away, desperately buying time for his body to heal. Franks paused to smear the blood around with one ragged sleeve in a futile attempt to clean the plastic off. Frustrated, he pulled the mask off and tossed it aside. The remaining chemicals made his eyes burn. Kurst had reached the edge of the broken platform. “You should have stayed in Hell.” Franks kicked him over the side.

  The demon landed flat on his back. The rush of air caused the dissipating orange fog to be blasted away. Franks followed him over the edge, dropping directly onto his enemy. The impact hurt Franks’ feet, but broke Kurst’s ribs. Franks knelt on his opponent’s chest, spun the halberd blade around, and then he drove the spike through Kurst’s chest so hard that it was embedded into the floor on the other side. “You shouldn’t have attacked my people!”

  Blood shot from Kurst’s mouth, but Franks was too angry to quit now. He grabbed the demon’s horns, used those as handles, and began slamming the back of his skull into the floor. Franks roared as Kurst’s skull broke into pieces. “You shouldn’t have killed my son!”

  Kurst’s impressive demon body was shrinking. He almost looked human again, and a nearly dead human at that. Kurst laughed and spit up blood. “I hope it hurt.”

  Franks jerked when the bullet hit him in the back. He turned and caught the next one in the chest. Then one of the partially formed demons tackled him, knocking him off of Kurst. “I’m not done!” Franks roared. They could communicate so Kurst must have called for help. The Nemesis soldier with the gun reached Kurst, pulled the spike out of his heart, and then picked his superior up. The demon on top kept wrestling Franks, trying to hold him down, while the other carried Kurst away.