The Monster Hunters

  Earl hit the surprised werewolf with his shoulder. Momentum sent them crashing into a vending machine, shattering the heavy glass. Earl ended up on top, briefly, before a hairy claw struck him in the chest and sent him sailing back. Earl hit a chalkboard hard enough to crack it and the wall behind, but he’d gotten what he wanted.

  Roaring, the werewolf knocked the empty syringe out of its neck. The drugs would act rapidly. Earl had an idea and was already covering the distance when the side door opened with a bang. Howling wind flooded the room with snow, flinging every loose bit of paper chaotically across the office. Not having time to see who the newcomer was, Earl grabbed the vending machine and tugged hard. A toe claw caught him in the calf, and he grimaced at the hit, but the armor protected him.

  The vending machine toppled over as Earl jumped back. The werewolf let out a painful squeal as the vending machine landed on it with a terrible crash. Candy bars and packages of doughnuts spilled across the floor.

  The werewolf howled and thrashed but couldn’t get out from under the vending machine. “That should hold you,” Earl said as he stepped away. All four limbs were hanging out the edges, clawing wildly. By the time he got out from under there, the drugs should have kicked in. Earl turned to see who was at the door and had to shield his dark-adapted eyes from the sudden scalding light.

  The bitten deputy, Kerkonen, was standing in the billowing snow with a 12-gauge shotgun with a big flashlight on it aimed right at his head. Wearing an angry expression, she pumped a round into the chamber.

  “Whoa there,” Earl said, raising his hands.

  “Down!” she ordered.

  Earl heard the rustle of fur and felt the flash of warmth as a second werewolf rushed from the cells. He threw himself aside as Kerkonen pulled the trigger. The shotgun thundered in the enclosed space. She pumped the shotgun and fired again. The werewolf shrieked but kept coming. She shot it a third time as Earl quickly drew his 625 and shot the werewolf right through the brain.

  He managed to hit it five more times, had risen, reloaded, and reholstered, before the werewolf hit the ground. Sure enough, it was already healing. Not taking any chances, and only needing one prisoner to question, Earl landed on the werewolf’s back, heavy Bowie knife already in hand. He drove it through the beast’s neck so hard the blade struck the tile. He started slicing. “Hold still, damn it!” Hot blood sprayed up his arms.

  “Oh, that’s nasty,” the deputy said, gagging.

  A few seconds later the head came free in a great pumping mass. Earl rolled off the body and sat on the floor. Still illuminated by the shotgun’s flashlight, he looked down at the red mess on his brand-new armor and asked, “You got any paper towels around here?”

  “Who’s Marsters?” Harbinger asked as he came out of the jail-cell area. He tossed a gold name tag on Heather’s desk.

  With one giant animal with a severed head on the floor, an unconscious one squished under the vending machine, and the bodies of two more of her coworkers dismembered in the back, Heather had needed to take a seat. She’d picked her regular desk. It was familiar, and therefore slightly comforting.

  “Bill Marsters was one of our deputies.” She picked up the name tag. It was splattered with blood. “They got Bill, too?”

  “More like Bill got them,” he answered. She’d found one of their battery-powered camping lanterns, and that gave an even measure of light. The unnerving man who fought like something out of a superhero movie stepped from the shadows in front of her desk and pointed at the decapitated animal. “That is Bill.”

  “Bullshit,” she stated, opening her bottom drawer and taking out a box of shotgun shells. She furiously thumbed more slugs into her Winchester. “Absolute bullshit.”

  “You’ll see in a minute.” He pulled up a rolling chair and took a seat. His strange armor creaked as he put his boots up on a desk. She was about to tell him not to do that, but what did it matter? That desk had belonged to Chase, and he was dead, just like everybody else.

  “Why? What’ll I see? Is it like the wolfman movies? Once they die they turn right back into people?” She laughed angrily.

  “Naw. That’d be silly. It takes a bit. Well, unless you mortally wound one, and it has time to calm down. Then it’ll return to human form before kicking the bucket. But that’s pretty rare. Sure, as the body cools off it’ll start to look human. That’s one reason they can keep lycanthropes secret. No forensic evidence. But we ain’t got all night. I’m talking about this other guy.” He jerked his thumb at the unconscious creature under the vending machine. “Judging by the way the cell door was smashed out from the inside, I’m guessing this dude was locked up.”

  “We had one crazy prisoner. State troopers found him wandering around a campsite preaching about Armageddon.” She had just assumed that he’d gotten eaten like the others when the strange creatures had invaded, but then she chided herself for being in denial. She’d seen Buckley change. Girl, you don’t know what you’ve seen.

  “He was planted here,” Harbinger stated, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Interesting.”

  She got her older Beretta 96 out of the bottom drawer along with a few spare magazines and a box of .40 Speer Gold Dots. Loading magazines was therapeutic. “What the hell are you?” she asked finally.

  “Mind if I smoke?” he didn’t wait for her to respond before he’d already lit up. “Well, I’m with a company called Monster Hunter International,” he replied. “I kill supernatural critters for a living.”

  “So this is all in a day’s work for you.”

  He shrugged. “It’s got its perks.”

  That didn’t explain how he moved twice as fast as anyone else she’d ever seen. He sat there smoking, which was an obnoxious habit, but he didn’t offer any further explanation. Once her mags were loaded, she stood. “I need a doughnut.” Luckily there were a few packages that had spilled clear of the unconscious creature, because even as much as she needed sugar, she didn’t need it bad enough to get close to that thing, sleeping or not. She found some old-fashioned crumbly doughnuts and returned to her desk.

  “How’s your shoulder?” he asked finally.

  After running from the hospital, she’d gone into a gas-station bathroom, rinsed it out, and taped a bandage over the punctures. It itched and felt unnaturally hot. The sensible thing to do would be to get tested for rabies, but then sensible didn’t take into account the strange men with guns trying to murder her. She could still see the little red hole appearing in Chase’s forehead and how the back of his head had come off every time she closed her eyes. She didn’t trust this Harbinger. For all she knew, he was with the same outfit as the murderers. “None of your damn business.”

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said softly. “I ain’t your problem. Those men were from the government, and I’m afraid they won’t stop looking for you until you’re dead. They’re very persistent. I’ll give them that.”

  “Screw them,” she said as she shoved a doughnut in her mouth and crunched the wonderful staleness. She was terribly hungry all of a sudden. “Why?” she asked with an impolite mouthful. “Why did they try to kill me? Why’d they shoot Chase?”

  Harbinger took his feet off the desk and placed his hands on his knees. Talking about this seemed to pain him. “I’ll be straight with you. You’ve been bitten by a werewolf. Which means you’re cursed. You’re gonna turn into one of them.”

  “That’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I’m telling the truth.” He let out a long sigh. “At the next full moon, you’ll turn into a werewolf. You’ll be completely out of control, and you’ll kill anyone unlucky enough to get in your way. But odds are that you’ll descend into a homicidal psychosis before that, though. It ain’t pretty.”

  Heather laughed—until she began to choke on the doughnut. Then she couldn’t help but start to cry a bit, because the men who’d shot Chase sure believed it. “You actually believe that?”

  “Sorry,” he ans
wered sincerely. “It’s on my head. If I’d been a little faster, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

  Get a hold of yourself. She hurriedly wiped her eyes and strengthened her resolve. She was not going to cry in front of this weirdo. “Look, Harbinger, is it? This town’s in danger. Somebody needs to warn everyone about these things. I’m going back out to do my job. If I see those assholes, I’ll deal with them.”

  “You’ll feel it soon. The hunger first, then the strength, then the urges.” He shook his head sadly. “Your injury will be gone soon. By then, the change is in full swing. You don’t believe me. I suppose it’ll take some time for this to sink in . . .” He trailed off, looking at her strangely.

  “Oh, what the hell now?” she asked.

  “Time . . . Hey, your buddy at the hospital, how long ago was he mauled?”

  “His name was Joe Buckley.” Time seemed so compressed. It seemed like forever. “Just over twenty-four hours ago.”

  “And Bill, did he get injured recently? A bite or a scratch?”

  “Not that I know of.” She paused mid-doughnut, thinking of the crazy prisoner biting him during their wrestling match. “Wait. The prisoner did take a chunk out of his hand yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? Impossible.” Harbinger scowled. “And he must have been in human form . . . Holy shit. That’s bad news.”

  “Why?” she asked, but Harbinger was distracted, looking toward the vending machine. He got up and walked to the now-stirring monster. “Is he awake?” She didn’t realize that she’d switched from it to he.

  “Sorta,” Harbinger said, slinging his stubby weapon, then bending over and picking up the vending machine. It had to weigh a couple hundred pounds, but he didn’t so much as grunt as he put it back upright. Crap, he’s strong. Snack foods cascaded down onto the hairy form.

  Heather picked up her shotgun as she got up. “Careful.”

  There was a crinkle of cellophane wrappers as the pile of snacks seemed to compress, only Heather realized that it wasn’t the plastic moving: it was the body under it seemingly shrinking. She watched one twitching paw. The fur didn’t seem so thick now. When she blinked, it seemed more like the hair on a man’s arm. The long black claws seemed to retract. Their color lightened, turning white. The skin around the nails seemed moist, pliable, almost squishy.

  The head was obscured by wrappers. Heather was nauseous, but she had to see. “His face. I need to see his face.” Harbinger nodded, then squatted down, knocking away the packages. She recoiled in disgust.

  The head wasn’t exactly canine, but it was similar. The animal had long jaws, but instead of a nose like a pad, it was more like the nostrils on the end of the snout were holes in the skin stretched tight over the bone. The skull wasn’t low and flat like a wolf, but rounder, like a human. As the covering mask of dark hair receded, individual hairs crawling back into the skin for their proteins to be reabsorbed, the skin beneath went from gray to sick pink. Heather shuddered at the sound of cracking bone.

  The flesh was covered in beads of sweat. Lips peeled back in an unconscious grimace of pain as the jaws seemed to shrink, finally disappearing into the skull, leaving a cartiligious lump where a human nose would be. The skin was loose, dangling and wet. It slowly retracted until the nostril holes were in the right place, and the thing sucked in a great pained breath.

  Heather stepped back, biting a knuckle. The worst part was the terrible grinding noise and the moans of suffering. The nearly human parody of a face opened its eyes. One was gold. One was brown. He looked around, terrified, his mouth open, teeth still sharp. They’re real. Heather felt a sudden urge to vomit.

  Harbinger drew his revolver and placed it against the werewolf’s forehead. “Easy there, partner. No need to make this awkward.”

  She could recognize him easily now. The prisoner’s voice was horribly slurred, far too deep. “What’ve you done to me?”

  “Pumped enough drugs into your system to date-rape a yak. We’re gonna have us a chat.”

  The eyes closed as the prisoner continued panting. There was a horrid scraping noise from his teeth, like fingernails on a chalkboard, that made Heather shiver. Gradually his breathing slowed. His glistening skin turned to a normal shade. When his eyes reopened, they were both brown. “You’re the Harbinger,” he stated, voice at near human tones.

  “One and the same,” he answered, cigarette dangling from the edge of his mouth. “Let me in on a little secret, friend. What’s Nikolai here for?”

  The prisoner tried to sit up, but was too drugged. He collapsed back into a heap. He began to laugh. It was a horribly distorted noise. “Nikolai’s here for the same reason you are.”

  “I want straight answers, or I start hurting you. Trust me. You can torture something that regenerates forever.”

  “You’re both fools, slaves to the old ways. You’re slaves to your instincts.”

  Harbinger frowned. “That ain’t a very nice way to talk about your leader.”

  The prisoner growled. “Nikolai’s no more worthy to lead our pack than you are, traitor. We answer the call of the Alpha. He doesn’t lock himself in a cage like a coward or keep part of himself chained inside his own head! My father is the king of all werewolves!”

  Harbinger glanced at Heather. “Hmm . . . I must’ve missed that memo.” He went back to the prisoner. “Tell me about this Alpha. I’d love to meet him sometime.”

  “Oh, you will.” The prisoner giggled madly. It was an unnerving sound. “He’s coming to take your soul. He’ll use it to give life to the vulkodlak.” The word was guttural, slurred.

  “What’s a vulk-odd-lack?” Harbinger asked. His pronunciation wasn’t even close.

  “Oh, you’ll see!” he exclaimed with glee. “They’re beautiful angels. Just beautiful. They’re going to usher in a new age. The one-handed witch has revealed the way! But for them to be born he needs a perfect soul to give them life!”

  Harbinger rolled his eyes. “Metaphysical bullshit. I swear, it’s always some sort of metaphysical bullshit with these guys. Plug your ears, Kerkonen,” he told Heather. She barely had time to comply before he pointed his gun at the werewolf’s kneecap and blasted it into shards of bone and meat. Screaming, the prisoner grabbed his leg. “Okay, now that I’ve got your attention, get all poetic on me again, and you lose the other one. Got it? Why’s your pack in Copper Lake?”

  Grimacing, he pointed one bloody hand at Heather. “We’re here because of her blood!” Harbinger moved his gun to the other knee. “Wait! No, really! One of her ancestors, the Finn, he stole something valuable from our people. He hid it here.”

  “Grandpa?” Heather asked.

  “He’s a thief! He’s just lucky he got the chance to die before the Alpha tracked him down. But this whole town will pay for his sins!”

  “What?” Harbinger shouted, then punched the man in his damaged knee. “What did he steal?”

  “All right, all right.” The prisoner whimpered. “The amulet of Koschei the Deathless. Man, that hurts!”

  “I hate magic. That must be the source of the surge. What’s it do?”

  “It makes our kind invincible. The bearer can’t die, just like Koschei of old. The moon no longer matters! The wearer’s children receive blessings, too. It makes us all stronger. The birth of the vulkodlak are another. The pack that has the amulet can never be defeated.”

  “Where’s he hiding?” Harbinger’s voice was a low growl. Heather took an unconscious step back.

  The prisoner began to laugh. “You think he’s hiding? You think he brought you here so that he could hide? To hide from the Russian? No! Our time living in the dark is over. We’ve been set free. Tonight the pack is going to feast and grow strong. He’s coming for you! He’s coming to take your soul!” The laughter continued, bubbling off into insanity.

  “That’s enough,” Harbinger stated, and Heather could sense the grim finality in his voice.

  “Harbinger, don’t,” Heather pleaded. This was wrong. She was
a peace officer. This man was in her custody.

  “What? Gonna lock him up? Figure enough blood’s been shed already and let him go? You become the animal, you cross that line, you get no mercy. It don’t work that way.” Harbinger turned his attention back to the prisoner. “I don’t work that way. Any last words, asshole?”

  “The Alpha will take your soul!” the prisoner screamed. “All of your souls!”

  This wasn’t right, but she looked at the decapitated corpse that had been one of her friends, and she didn’t say another word.

  “Ears.” Harbinger stated. Heather complied and this time Harbinger shot the prisoner in the chest. The insane laughter gurgled off into a long groan.

  Harbinger stepped away, examining the wound he’d just inflicted. “Interesting. Silver still works on werewolves created before that surge just fine. It’s only the new ones that are immune.”

  The prisoner was in obvious pain, but fearless in his devotion. “Fool. I’m of his pack. He’ll sense my death and come for you.” His voice trailed off.

  Earl nodded. “Good. Let’s hurry him along then,” he said as he shot the dying man in the face.

  The sudden death of the child stung him. It was not a true physical pain, more of a sense of loss, an empty space in the bonds of the pack. The pack had just been made less. His child’s blood called from the dust for vengeance.

  “Your sacrifice was not in vain,” he whispered to the wind, then turned to the witch. “One of the pack has fallen.”

  “Which one got him?” She didn’t seem surprised. “Harbinger or Petrov?”

  “What does it matter? Come on. It is almost time.”

  The witch’s nod was barely perceptible inside her great fur hood. He set out through the deep snow at a speed her weak human legs could never possibly match. One of her diggers gently extended a metal hand, and she gratefully climbed into its arms. The digger held her close, like a mother would hold a child, only in this case the reverse was true. The diggers set out after the running Alpha.