Monster Hunter Vendetta

  The thought hit our minds like a battering ram.

  "Aw hell," Earl muttered.

  There was a terrible screeching noise as the creature said its master's true name. ——— ordered me to this world long ago to serve its mortal priesthood. The High Priest has commanded me to rend this mind to pulp. Already I can see that this is a strong mind, hardened through strife and honed in conflict. I shall consume your memories one by one, growing stronger with each victory. You will attempt to defeat me. I welcome this challenge. This will continue until your spirit departs this shell or the Dread Overlord's servant no longer requires my services and I return to my home plane. Only one of us can survive.

  "Aw hell," Earl repeated himself. The sky began to spin violently, a maelstrom centered on this one place in his memory.

  "How the hell are we supposed to fight that?" I shouted.

  This is not your fight.

  It was addressing me.

  BEGONE.

  A wave of force struck me, bludgeoning my con-sciousness. The world dimmed as the pressure increased. He was banishing me. In this realm, the thing was unstoppable. I could feel my connection slipping. "Earl! He's too strong. He's kicking me out!"

  Harbinger nodded into the wind. "I've seen weirder." He turned to me, deadly serious. "I'll hold out as long as I can, but if he wins here, then the beast might end up in control. If I start to change and anyone else is in danger, shoot me. You have to find Hood and kill him to stop this."

  I was sucked upward into the vortex.

  Let the battle commence.

  My hand burned as I took it from his chest. Earl was convulsing violently, icy sweat pouring from his face.

  "What's going on?" somebody shouted in my ear.

  "He's fighting . . . ​something," I responded. My eyes had recovered from Milo's lights sufficiently that I could see who I was talking to. Esmeralda was at my side, holding a large syringe. She was using it to pull some liquid out of a vial. "Wait, what're you doing?"

  "Horse tranquilizer. If Earl transforms out here, we're all in danger." Her forehead had been bandaged and she appeared absolutely exhausted. "I've already lost too many kids tonight. We can't risk it. I have to knock him out."

  "You can't." I put my bloody hand on hers. Esmeralda stared at me in disbelief, but she didn't plunge the needle in. "He has to be focused if he's going to have any chance at all. We have to get him back to his cell."

  Esmeralda hesitated. She had ten times my experience. If I was wrong, and he started to turn, then we'd have to shoot him or risk all of our lives. "You better be right, Z. Let's get him out of here fast."

  Hunters were scurrying in all directions, securing the compound. A hairy shape lumbered up to us, red eyes glowing. A giant red tongue flopped out as it panted. It was a warg. "Need ride?" Skippy asked from the giant wolf's back. The orc's goggled face swiveled to indicate the others behind him. "See dead things. Clan help."

  "We've got to get him back to his cell," I said. Esmeralda and I lifted Earl's shaking body and put him over Skip's legs. The orc was fearless, despite the twitching man on his lap who might quickly turn into a ball of teeth, claws, and fury. "Do you know where that is?" Skippy nodded. The warg immediately launched itself forward, moving with unbelievable speed for the main building.

  More warg riders were arriving. Esmeralda turned to me. "Owen, go with him. You need to get back right away."

  I didn't know what she was talking about. "Why?"

  "Julie was hurt during the attack."

  My heart lurched into my throat. "How bad?" Oh no. Please no. I grabbed Esmeralda by the shoulders. I towered over the tiny woman. "What happened?"

  She hesitated, not wanting to answer. "Just go. Hurry."

  A second warg and rider padded up to us and stopped. I had never ridden a giant wolf before. The orc extended his hand. The beast tilted its head and examined me quizzically. Hell, I didn't even know how to ride a horse, and this thing had jaws that could bite the head off a cow, but I needed to get to Julie fast. I grabbed the orc's gloved hand. With my other hand I got a handful of fur and pulled myself onto the wolf's back. It yipped as my weight settled and then immediately took off at a run. I hugged my arm around the orc so hard that I probably cracked his ribs, but I was frightened that I was going to bounce off.

  She's going to be fine. She's going to be fine. I kept repeating that mantra to myself, too scared to think. The ride was surprisingly smooth as the warg ran across the compound. Shocked Newbies raised their guns as we passed but the more experienced Hunters shouted them down. I kept my face pressed against the warg's fur the whole time. It smelled like coconut shampoo. We reached the main building in a matter of seconds.

  I slid off and landed, wincing, on my injured ankle. Skippy was already pulling Harbinger off his warg. "Help Skip," he grumbled at the Hunters that came running down the steps. I recognized the shortest one as the team lead, VanZant. Two Newbies were behind him, obviously frightened by the snorting warg. "Take Harb Anger . . . ​safe place."

  Skip knew right where to go and the Newbies took Earl's convulsing arms and legs and followed. I grabbed VanZant by his sleeve. "Where's Julie?"

  He was a stocky man: the other team leads jokingly referred to him as the Hobbit. He was also a no-nonsense, former Army mortar man and a welterweight champion fighter. He seemed surprised to see me. "How'd you get . . . ​Never mind. You better come with me, Z," he responded, then hurried up the stairs. I followed him in a daze. The injured Hunters had been moved into the cafeteria. Those with medical training were tending to the worst hurt. Three female orcs had arrived and were lending their supernatural healing skills to the cause.

  There were too many wounded, moaning . . . ​This was my fault, all my fault. "Where is she?" I asked.

  "She was right here." He pointed at an empty spot on the floor. All that was there now was a bloody towel. "We were on the roof when one of those flyers attacked. I was setting up an 81mm and she was directing fire and then it was right on top of us. It clawed through her armor." He ran his fingers across his stomach quickly. "She was hit . . . ​bad. I carried her down here myself." He started to choke up. "There's no way she walked off."

  I picked up the towel. It was sodden, dripping.

  VanZant was an experienced Hunter. He knew a severe injury when he saw one. "Julie!" I shouted, panicking. But everyone else down here had their own concerns right now. The nearest Newbies were utterly shell-shocked and didn't even look up to see who was yelling. This assault had cost us dearly.

  There was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and stared down into Gretchen's reflective shades. Her manner was inscrutable as usual, but she jerked her head for me to follow. I did so. She led me to the nearest women's bathroom and held the door open. I was confused. She nodded that this was where I was supposed to go.

  I entered to the sound of running water. Julie's green armor vest was discarded on the floor. It was soaked in blood and there were three vertical slash marks on the front, each one an inch wide, right through the Kevlar.

  "Julie?" I asked hesitantly, knees weak, voice trembling, as I stumbled around the corner.

  She's alive!

  Julie was standing in front of the sink, back toward me. Her head was down, long dark hair covering her face, and her hands were flat on the tile, as if holding herself up. She had taken her shirt off and was only wearing her bra. The tile around her was stained pink with blood.

  She was sobbing.

  "Are you okay?"

  She lifted her head slowly. "I shouldn't be." My fiancée turned, lifting her head and revealing her tear-stained face. "Look." She pointed at her stomach. Julie had abs of steel. Currently those abs were pink from half-washed blood. There were three dark horizontal lines down her stomach, but other than that, she looked fine. There was no wound at all.

  "I don't get it." I said quickly. "Esmeralda made it sound like you were dying. VanZant was freaked out."

  "Look," she ordered again. Puzzled, I b
ent down. The three lines were black, like a smudge from a piece of charcoal. The skin around the lines was healthy. The lines looked . . . ​familiar.

  "No way!" I leapt back in shock. "No way!"

  She pulled her hair away from her neck. The line from last summer had more than doubled in size. Now it was a thick black streak. The tattooed man had saved her life with that gift but we didn't understand a thing about it. "I should be dead. I never saw it coming. The claws went right through me."

  "This is impossible."

  "Impossible?" Julie screamed. "I shoved my own guts back inside while they carried me away. Fifteen minutes ago I was disemboweled and now I'm fine." I went to put my hands on her shoulders, but she jerked back. "Don't touch me!"

  "It's okay," I said soothingly.

  "I don't know what I am!" she cried. Julie turned away, unconsciously touching her neck, then realizing what she was doing, snapped her hand down in disgust. With a shout of pure anger she slammed her fist into the mirror, shattering it. She realized what she'd done and stepped back, quivering, blood tricking down her knuckles. She stared at the fresh cut in terror, waiting for something awful to happen.

  I stood there, useless, helpless. The pain seemed to calm her down. The blood just kept trickling from her hand. Nothing happened. It was just a normal cut. She slowly unclenched her fist and sighed. Her fingers were shaking badly as blood dribbled down them to splatter the tile.

  "Oh, Owen, what's happening? What's inside of me?"

  I couldn't answer that. I grabbed her and pulled her close. She struggled at first as I kept saying that it would be okay. Finally she relaxed and just sobbed into my chest. "It's all going to be okay."

  But all I could think of was what Susan had told me in Mexico. You know that it'll eventually kill her, don't you? It's from the other side, where everything comes with a price. I stroked my filthy hand across her cheek. "Everything will be fine."

  Finally she quit sobbing. Her voice cracked. My heart cracked. "I've got to get out there. They need me." I wanted nothing in the world more than to disagree with her, and tell her that she just needed to rest, but she was right. We did need her. She pushed away. "I need a shirt. Can't rally the troops like this. . . ."

  I pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and passed them to her. She took them and pressed them against her injured hand. It was then that she stopped to look at me. She seemed surprised. "What happened to your face?"

  I hadn't looked at it yet, but I knew the silver-haired chick had cut me good. I could feel the flap of skin dangling wetly. I pushed it back into place and held it there with the rest of the paper towels. "Werewolf in the barracks clawed me."

  "Barracks?" she asked, confused. "When? How'd you get there?"

  "Franks, Grant, and I went after the ward stone," I explained.

  Her brown eyes went hard behind her glasses. I'd seen that look before. The sadness, the shock, the fear, it was all gone, replaced with hard determination. Usually when Julie got that look, something was about to get killed. "Hand me my armor. We've got to go."

  "Where?"

  She threw the blood-soaked vest on, not even bothering to buckle it closed. "To have a talk with somebody." She pulled the door to the hall open. "You coming?"

  We almost collided with a very excited Cooper entering the cafeteria. "Oh man," the young Hunter sputtered when he saw me. "I was supposed to find both of you. Holly says you need to come quick."

  "Where?" Julie asked.

  "Basement." He hoisted his FAL and ran. Julie was right behind him. I had no idea what was going on, but followed. Cooper was headed for the stairs. Several Hunters stopped to point at Julie, surprised to see her alive, let alone running through the halls. Everyone who tried to talk to her was dismissed with a wave. She was too focused on whatever it was that we were doing. We went down two stairs at a time and found Holly Newcastle waiting for us at the base.

  "He went that way"—she pointed—"looking nonchalant."

  "Heading for the tunnels probably, trying to get away," Julie replied. "Come on."

  The four of us moved quickly. There was a massive hole punched in the wall next to the archives. Broken cinder blocks were scattered everywhere and piles of loose dirt had spilled onto the floor. "What happened?" I asked.

  "The shoggoth dug right up to the basement. Then undead crashed through. They were under us, above us, and outside. It was nuts," Holly said. "Lee held them at this one. He wasn't going to let anything hurt his precious books. Trip stopped them at another breach by Earl's room. We tossed some explosives down each and collapsed the walls."

  "And you were with the group that stopped the breach next to the control room," Julie said.

  "What?" Then it hit me. "The doppelganger!"

  "So that's what it is," she replied. "After Dawn stood up in the meeting and shot Earl, the lights went out, and she vanished in the confusion."

  "Why would she take my form?"

  "I intend to find that out right now," Julie responded as she jerked open the janitorial closet door. She held up one hand for the rest of us to stop. "Owen, honey, where are you going?"

  I heard my own voice reply. "Oh, hey, Julie. I was just checking to make sure this door was secure. What's with the gun?"

  "Don't move!" Julie shouted. "Take them both."

  Cooper leapt through the door after her. I froze as a cold steel muzzle was jammed into the base of my neck. Holly's voice was totally calm. "Z, I'm pretty sure that you're the real you, so this is nothing personal, but if you so much as twitch, I'm going to blow your head off, got it?"

  "Got it," I responded. I knew better than to argue with Holly, and I had taught her to shoot that .45 currently aimed at my medulla. Holly would not hesitate.

  A large man stumbled into the hallway, thick arms raised, hands placed on top of his short hair, the muzzle of Cooper's FAL covering him. Except for the fact that he was wearing my armor, carrying my weapons, and was far cleaner, it was like looking in a mirror. "Against the wall," the young Hunter ordered.

  "Watch it, kid," the duplicate replied.

  "Do I actually sound like that?" I asked. "Man, I sound goofy."

  The doppelganger looked up, seemingly surprised to see me. "What the hell is this?"

  "Cut the crap, Dawn," I responded.

  My beady eyes squinted back at me. "No way. This is some Condition trick. Blast it, Holly."

  "Both of you, shut up," Julie ordered as she came out. Her 1911 was at her side. "One of you is my boyfriend, the other one's dog food."

  "See you in hell, dog food," the doppelganger said. Dang, that was a good impression.

  "So, how do you want to figure this out?" Holly asked slowly.

  "We could get Earl to sniff them both, see if they smell different," Julie said. Cooper looked confused at that. Apparently he wasn't part of the in-the-know clique.

  "Yeah, go get Earl. He'll know," my double said.

  "Except your stupid boss put a demon in his head and Earl's busy fighting for his life right now," I said. Julie frowned. "I didn't get the chance to tell you. I tried to help, but he's on his own for now."

  "Personally, I'm thinking this one's the real one," Holly tapped me on the back of the head.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because the real Z's strategy is always to get right in front and let the monsters beat on him until they get tired. The other one's too clean."

  Julie nodded. "Valid point . . . ​but . . ." She turned back to me. "How'd you know to say that it was a doppelganger?"

  "I found G-Nome stuffed into one of the toilets in the barracks. He saw Dawn cleaning up from murdering whoever was on guard duty in the control room. I read his mind before he died."

  "You what?" Cooper was really confused now.

  I heard approaching footsteps, and turning slowly, so Holly wouldn't get jumpy, tried to see who it was. Trip was leading the way with a massive, hulking shape loping along right behind him. It was the troll, Melvin. "What the hell?" t
he doppelganger and I said in perfect unison. What was that monstrosity doing loose? And armed? He had a sawed-off, 10-gauge Browning BPS in one hand.

  "Hey, guys," Trip said. "Z . . . ​and Z." He was unperturbed. "So I guess one of these two is Dawn." He must have witnessed the shooting during graduation. He stopped and looked between us, trying to guess. "You know, that is some creepy stuff right there."

  "Oh! Oh! Melvin help," the troll wheezed eagerly. "Trolls have good senses. We can smell evil Fey."

  "You can't trust that thing," the doppelganger said.

  "Okay, I've got to agree with the shape-changing monster on that one," I pointed out. "I missed the part where he joined our side."

  Trip smiled and jerked a thumb at the troll. "The undead were breaking into the basement. I was outnumbered and desperate, so I made Melvin a fast job offer. He saved my butt. Say what you will, trolls are mighty handy in a fight."

  "Melvin Monster Hunter now!" the troll said proudly. "Old clan all dead, because stupid. Melvin have nowhere else to go. MHI is my clan tag now."

  Julie pushed her glasses back on her nose. "Trip, we're really going to have to have a discussion about this."

  "He's agreed to certain terms of employment," Trip responded. "No eating people."

  "Melvin not like eating people anyway. Like snacky cakes better." He smiled, showing off rows of rotting teeth. MHI did at least have a good dental plan. "Melvin will make badass IT department for you. You can pay Melvin in Red Bull and internet connection."

  "No spam or fraud," Trip continued.

  "Aaahhh . . ." Melvin whined. "Fine. Whatever."

  Julie just shook her head in resignation. She'd had a very long day. "All right then, which one is the real Owen?"

  The giant troll stood between us, swiveling his head back and forth. Melvin's nostrils flared. He pointed one clawed finger at me. "That one."

  "Julie!" the fake cried. "You can't believe that thing! It's a monster."