The priest finished and the king bowed before me. The royal party did so as well. Jaguar helmets touched the ground as their army followed suit. I could grow used to this.
All bowed except one, a dark-skinned woman in the opulent robes of a priestess. She alone met my gaze. She stood proudly as the other members of her strange priesthood cowered. I had not seen such beauty and poise since I had been banished from the royal courts so long ago. I gestured for two of my men to seize her and bring her forward. She held up a hand to stop them, and approached of her own volition.
The king glared at her as she made her way across the courtyard, and hissed something at her in their incomprehensible language. I spurred my horse forward. With a snort and flared nostrils, the mighty beast knocked the king roughly to the ground. The royal party gasped in astonishment as the old broken man scurried away from my war-horse's iron-shod hooves.
"Who are you and why do you think you should not bow?" She was a beautiful wench, and it was going to be a waste to kill her as an example, but the pagans could not be allowed to see weakness from my army. My fingers drifted toward the handle of my ax. Regardless of the answer I planned to take her head, though perhaps if she amused me I would have my way with her first, and I would do it in front of the royal family. Friar de Sousa hurriedly translated.
She cut him off. "I am Koriniha, High Priestess of the Temple of Neihor."
My hand moved away from my ax. "How do you speak our tongue?" Many of my priests and soldiers began to murmur at this surprise. We were the first civilized Christians to make it this far into the interior of the continent, that we knew of at least. Had some of the blasted Spaniards beaten us here?
"There is power here, untapped for generations. I have learned your language in preparation for this very day. The spirits burned your words into me so that I may speak with you," she boldly retorted. "I have been waiting for you. Your coming was prophesied by the Old Ones. Your men come here, searching for riches, like pigs, simple in their greed. Your priests come for souls, numbers to feed their machine. But you, my Lord Machado, you are different. Your quest is for power. It is what you seek in your heart. I can offer you power. Power beyond your dreams."
"She is a witch," exclaimed Friar de Sousa. "Kill her, Lord Machado, the devil has given her our speech."
"Silence, priest. Do not presume to tell me what to do." The friar bowed his head in submission. I was interested. Something about the beautiful priestess provoked something deep in the back of my mind. "What do you speak of, woman? Make it good or I will be most displeased by this interruption."
She bowed slightly. "I can offer you much, Lord Machado. With my help I can keep this city docile and willing to serve you."
"They will do that now," I stated.
"But only out of fear. You are a wise general. You know that eventually they will rebel. Brave ones will rise up, as they always do. I know that you are only men. Mighty and wise men to be sure, but you must sleep, and you must eat our food, and your flesh can be pierced by an assassin's blade when your guards are not alert. You need not rule this city out of fear, if I can make this people serve and worship you. Why plunder one country, one people, when you can instead bend that city to your will and use it to build your own kingdom out of this land?"
I found myself intrigued by the ruthless cunning of the witch.
"Tell me more, Priestess."
I blinked and the vision was gone. I was no longer an unwitting passenger in the Cursed One's memory. We were back in the destroyed church, except now the make-believe world was no longer in sharp focus, there were blank spots around us filled with nothing. The Old Man was losing his concentration. He was sitting on the steps of the altar, pale and wheezing. His hands were shaking. I sat down next to him.
"Sorry, Boy. Can only do for so long. Is very difficult."
"What were you trying to show me?" I felt unclean from seeing the world through the Cursed One's eyes, feeling his pride and his calculating mind, hearing his thoughts, and experiencing his casual brutality.
"Can't explain. Must show. I will try again if there is time, but now am weak. Very weak."
"How are you tied to Lord Machado?"
The Old Man was silent. He gently tapped the hard wood floor of the church with his cane, apparently lost in thought.
"How are you tied to him? I want to help you."
"Don't worry about me, Boy. I am trapped. I am no matter."
"Do you know where he is? Or where he is going? Can you show me a current memory?"
He laughed tiredly. "You can see his old memories from when he was man, but now? One look in his head and you either dead or go crazy." He used his finger to make a swirling motion around his ear. The universal sign of insanity. "Maybe I can send image. Maybe like photograph from what he sees. I will try . . . after I rest."
"Thank you." I thought for a moment. "One last thing."
"Hurry."
"What about the tattooed man?"
"Guardian of the artifact. Do not trust. He wants one thing. Just one thing. Get in his way—" The Old Man dragged his bony finger across his throat and made a gack sound. "You go now. Help your lady friend. Keep her safe. She is good girl. You two make cute babies someday." He patted me on my arm.
"Huh?"
"Go, stupid boy. Try not to get dead!"
I awoke with a start. My alarm was buzzing with all of the gentleness of an air-raid siren. I pounded the snooze button and jumped out of bed, alert and breathless. The sun would not rise for a few more hours, but I had to tell the others about my dream immediately. I still did not understand exactly what was happening to me, but somehow I was being given some serious knowledge about our adversary. I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and rushed out of the barracks, not even bothering with shoes. I crashed into Trip on the way out the door. He swore as he spilled his coffee. I shouted an apology as I sprinted for the main office building.
The MHI library was located in the basement. It was a massive room, tight with shelves and dusty tables. All of the company's monster encounters had been logged and documented for the last hundred years. In addition, books of topical value had been brought here by more scholarly-minded Hunters the entire time. In total there was a century of accumulated paper moldering away in that room. It was probably the world's biggest collection of actual monster lore, but it was a daunting task to find any one particular thing.
I found Earl Harbinger in the archives, staring vacantly at a heavy old book. From his appearance I could not tell if he had gotten up really early, or if he had never gone to sleep.
"Another dream? Did you learn something?" I nodded in the affirmative. "What did you get?"
"It was weird, but I got his whole name, General Joao Silva de Machado, and I know a lot more about him. He was an evil bastard when he was human, and apparently he has just gotten worse with age."
Harbinger smiled tiredly. Apparently that was the best news he had gotten lately. "Good work. With that I bet we can pin him down. I'll go get the others," he said as he left.
I pulled out a chair and sat down tiredly. Whatever happened when I had these dreams, it certainly wasn't restful. I put my head down on the old wood table. I closed my eyes. The minutes ticked by. I did not feel so good.
Then the vision began. The Old Man had been true to his word. Once he had recovered enough he attempted to bring me a more recent memory from the Cursed One. This was merely a visual snapshot, just a single image that might help us locate the enemy, nothing more.
However, it came from such a tortured mind, so filled with hate and darkness and pain, that just the brief second I felt the connection was enough to knock me to the ground and leave me gasping for air in a blind panic. The Old Man must have made a mistake. I could feel the Cursed One as he sensed me intruding. I could feel his anger, and his promise to destroy me and the very fabric of my world. He sent me a message. I screamed in agony and clutched my face as I was wracked with spasms of unspeakable pain. Crash
ing out of the chair, I twitched wildly as thousands of invisible blades stabbed at my flesh. Tears streamed from my eyes as I thrashed about, trying to evade the pain. Everything went mercifully black.
The others were standing over me. Julie was kneeling at my side, her hand gently resting on my forehead. They all looked very concerned.
"What happened?"
"You were having a seizure or something," she said. "How do you feel?"
"Like crap. That wasn't a seizure. Lord Machado sensed me. I had another vision."
"While you were awake?" Harbinger asked sharply.
"I requested it. Last night in my dream. I asked for a picture, a current memory . . ." The other Hunters looked at each other in confusion. "I'll explain later, look . . ." I tried to sit up but I was too dizzy. I gave up and embraced the cold floor. "I saw one of his memories. I saw the world through the Cursed One's eyes. I don't know from when, but it was a recent memory."
"Owen, take it easy. Tell us what you saw." Julie's voice was soothing and relaxed.
"He was in some sort of vehicle. It was dark. I just saw the road illuminated in the headlights. They were approaching a sign . . ."
"What did it say?" Julie asked.
"Welcome to Alabama."
Chapter 14
The Appleton Asylum was located on the banks of the Alabama River. It was an isolated location, far off of the main road, nestled deep into the thick surrounding trees. According to the map it was only sixty miles from the MHI compound, but the barely paved route to the asylum was so circuitous that I think we had to go twice that far. The nearest actual town was Camden, and to call it close was a stretch. The afternoon air was still thick with dew. Spanish moss dangled over the roads, dappling them in shadow, and dragged along the roof of our van.
The asylum itself was an enormous, four-story gothic construction, gray and stern, surrounded by a high, wrought-iron security fence. The narrow windows were barred, and the building emanated a quiet bleakness. The sign above the entrance said appleton. I had almost been expecting it to have a quote from Dante's Inferno instead.
Julie and I had slipped away after the morning debriefing. I had given as much detail from my dream as I could to the other Hunters. None of us really knew what it all meant, but we knew that the Cursed One and his minions were now on our turf. Unfortunately, as near as we could figure, there were at least a dozen roads along the border that had a sign like the one I had seen, plus we had no idea how old the memory was. Reports had begun to drift in that the government had activated all of the National Guard units in the southeastern U.S., including units that had just gotten back from long deployments overseas. The morning news had a report showing tanks and trucks parked at the Pharr Mounds in Mississippi. Reports indicated that there were also troops protecting Civil War battlefields, Indian burial grounds and historic monuments. The spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security explained that it was merely an exercise to prepare for potential terrorist threats. Apparently the Feds were nervous as well, and trying to cover any spots that might potentially be the Place of Power.
Julie Shackleford was silent as she drove up to the gate. She had barely spoken during the drive. Her lips were set in a hard line, and she wore a look of concentration similar to the one that she had before we had stormed the bowels of the Antoine-Henri. She tapped her fingers nervously on the steering wheel. She was not looking forward to speaking with her father.
"It will be okay, Julie. Don't worry about it," I said, in an inane attempt at comforting her.
"Are your parents weird?" she responded, still staring out the window. She had stopped besides the security intercom, but she had not yet hit the button.
"Mom thinks that if we don't eat all of her cooking we don't love her. When she gets excited she forgets to speak English. My dad made us kids call him Sergeant."
"Well, Owen, that sounds like Leave It to Beaver to me. My mom disappeared on a mission and my dad locked himself in a library for a few years. He twisted forces of ancient and unspeakable evil to his will and tore open a rift in the fabric of space and time to bring her soul back from the other side. He failed, and a horde of rampaging demons from a different dimension killed most of the friends I have ever had. Now Mom is still dead, and Dad's insane . . . so don't think that you can tell me that it is okay."
"Got it," I answered. So much for being helpful. Another minute passed in silence. Finally, with a dejected sigh, she rolled down the van window and pushed the intercom button.
"Who is it?" asked the tinny and static-laced voice of the intercom.
"Julie Shackleford. I'm here to visit my father—Raymond Shackleford. He is a patient of the Doctors Nelson." There was a long pause before the heavy, iron gate creaked open under hydraulic pressure. We drove through.
"Doctors Nelson?"
"Lucius and Joan. Husband and wife team. One is a psychiatrist, the other is a psychologist. I can't remember which is which though."
"What's the difference?"
"Beats me. I was a history major. You're the trivia nut," she replied. "They are actually both retired Hunters. They bought this place from the state when they left MHI. They're good folks. I've known them since I was a kid. They are getting up in age, but they do really good work here. The Nelsons have done some great research. They help a lot of people with special problems."
"Special problems?"
"Mostly they work with regular mental problems, like any treatment center, but they specialize in people who have had monster encounters. Not everybody has a flexible mind like those of us who become Hunters," she answered.
I had never thought about that. I was still internally freaking out about the things that were happening to me. I could only imagine how some people would react from that kind of trauma. Apparently here was my answer.
We parked in the near empty lot under a large tree. Thick leaves dangled across the windshield. Julie cautioned me to make sure the door was locked. Her suggestion made sense considering that there were crazy people roaming the lawn, and we had something like a dozen firearms, grenade launchers, a flamethrower, edged weapons, and several pounds of high explosive in the back of our huge Ford passenger van.
The grounds around the asylum were immaculate. The lawns were green, and comfortable chairs had been placed in various strategic locations for the patients to make themselves at ease. A group of casually dressed people were sitting in a circle, listening to one of their own tell a story. The woman was very animated, and obviously distressed.
"They would bite me, and it would hurt, and they would suck on me until I was so weak I was almost dead. But they would never kill me. They would just go until they got full, and then they would just stick me in the hole with the others. They would throw enough food down the hole to keep us alive. It was always dark, so we couldn't tell what we were eating, but it was always raw meat. But we were so weak and hungry that we had no choice." The woman was crying and shaking. She was twisting the bottom of her Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt violently. She was young, and had been probably been very pretty once, but was now prematurely aged from stress. "Sometimes, when one of us would finally get too weak, and . . . and . . . and finally die . . . Then the next day there would be more food. So we knew what it was. But we were too weak to fight. Some of us went crazy. Crazy. Waiting for them to come back and drag another one of us out of the hole to feed on. It went on and on and on like that. I don't know how long because it was always dark. So dark." She finally broke down in deep pitiful sobs.
An older woman who was obviously a doctor stood and comforted her, hugging her and telling her that she was so brave, and that it was all going to be okay now. The group echoed the sentiment, congratulating the woman for sharing. The crying patient returned to her seat.
"Vampires," said a man who had stopped beside me.
I had been so distracted by the patient's story that I had not heard him approach. He was a short, pudgy gentleman with huge, thick glasses and wild hair. His pants
were hitched up over his belly button and kept there with a giant pair of suspenders. If I were to guess I would have to say that he was in his sixties.
"One of the ways that they stay off the radar. Abduct some poor folks, and keep them locked in a pen, like cattle. Rotate through, feeding just enough to keep them alive. They don't need to take as many victims that way. Keeps them from drawing the attention of Hunters. Saddest part of all is that even if a victim has only been bitten once, even if it was years and years before, when they die, they will return as a vampire themselves. That's the real reason we embalm people nowadays. Keeps them from coming back. Even though this poor girl survived, she has to deal with that knowledge the rest of her life."
"Dr. Nelson!" Julie exclaimed. She hugged the man. He grunted as she almost lifted him off of his feet.
"Ah . . . little Julie. You have grown so much. My gosh, let me have a look at you." He studied her for a moment at arms' length. "My dear, you look just like your mother. Susan was a beautiful woman too."
I swear that Julie the fearless Monster Hunter blushed. "Thanks, Doc. I'm told that a lot. Everybody loved Mom."
"Yes, we did. She was a shining light to all of us knuckle-dragging hooligans. She kept us in line, kept me and Joan alive on more than one occasion as well. How is your grandfather? Still a cantankerous old bastard I hope? Is he well?"
"Of course, on the cantankerous part. Health wise? He's getting older, but he's tough."
"Good, good. And Earl? Staying out of trouble? He needs to call more often to check in. I would love to write a paper about his condition if he would just sit on my couch long enough for an interview."
"Earl is good. I'll tell him to call . . ." She changed the subject. "This is Owen Pitt. One of our newest Hunters."