The Monster Hunters

  Chapter 23

  We were in a supposedly safe area, farther to the south. It was an actual town, with paved roads and everything. I couldn’t pronounce the name to save my life. Van had mocked me, and done a pretty good imitation of my accent in the process. There were a hundred marines stationed next door, so it was about as secure as we’d been in months. Unicorn was relaxed.

  We’d picked an evacuated two-story hotel to stay in while awaiting new orders. It was ratty, but sleeping under a roof was a big improvement. As usual, the two squads had been broken up, with first being downstairs and us upstairs. It was rather silly at this point, because most of first had seen Travis, and as Destroyer pointed out to Conover, even when Travis was in “disguise” under a big blanket with eye holes cut out, he left giant hoofprints everywhere he went. But orders were orders, and Travis was honor-bound to impress the government enough to get his tribe taken off the PUFF list. Bullmen were big on the whole honor thing. I’d come to love the big shaggy goofball.

  Despite Sharon’s protests about average human males, I’d often caught her batting those big eyes at Conover. They’d been spending a lot of time alone together, and the scents didn’t lie. He was a good-looking man, and unlike many of the people I’d gotten stuck serving under, I actually had a lot of respect for him. Half-siren or not, she could do a whole lot worse. Conover was a rising star in the intelligence community; for all I knew, he was just seeing if they wanted to keep working together. Uh-huh . . . My commanding officer had hooked up with our love-goddess. I was willing to bet that didn’t make it into the official report.

  Travis and I were talking that night. I had asked if he was offended that humans ate beef. He thought that was stupid, and asked if I would be offended if he ate a monkey. That of course led into an interesting discussion on theology, since I figured I had no particular relation to monkeys. I ended up asking about the biology of the Bullmen, particularly their females. Okay, so if they’re like a half-girl, half-cow . . . the whole udder thing? How’s that translate over? Up high like on a human, or down low, and if so how would they walk? And are we talking two or four? Travis had told me that I needed to head out to Texas for a visit, and that if I called his girlfriend a heifer at any point, he would be honor bound to duel me to the death.

  We’d had a lot of conversations like that. Travis was like a younger brother to me. A giant, monstrous berserker younger brother, but you get the idea. He kept score. He said that I’d saved his life seven times. He’d only saved mine twice. He said that he would never rest until we were even. Bullmen are odd like that.

  It hurts to remember what happened next. The first memory is clear, the rest not so much. I remember how it began, and I remember how it ended. Rok’hasna’wrath took much of the rest.

  It began with an explosion.

  I found out later that it had been a truck bomb. Several tons of explosives detonated between us and the Marine encampment. One moment I was playing cards with the Bullman, and the next the hotel collapsed on top of us.

  * * *

  Heather was just glad to get out of the Alpha’s home. The place had reeked of him, and those bones had filled her with a terrible dread. It was like they were looking at her, angry, and declaring that she wasn’t worthy. Harbinger was a few steps ahead, slipping and sliding his way down the icy steps.

  He’d been so graceful earlier, it was a shame that now Harbinger was so slow, weak, and human. He was still a remarkable man, though. And if she’d met him in other circumstances, she might have been interested in getting to know him better.

  Heather sucked at dating. Her track record was dismal. She knew she was one of the prettier girls around Copper Lake, but she’d had zero luck meeting anyone decent. She’d even tried Internet dating for a while, but had just felt dumb and lonely paying money to meet bozos from the next town over and had given up.

  She’d not met anyone like Earl Harbinger before. Not that she would have thought to tell eHarmony to match her up with a chain-smoking Southern monster hunter. He had an iron will, but at the same time he was still a gentleman. Plus, he wasn’t bad looking. Though he was wearing bulky armor, she could sense the muscles of his legs tighten as he tried to find his balance. Even if he wasn’t a werewolf, he was still strong. She could totally mate with that.

  Mate? Who actually used the word mate? Heather stopped herself. She was actually lusting after Harbinger. What the hell? Focus, girl. Psycho werewolf chick or not, I’ve got standards. She shook her head to clear it. It was just like he’d warned her. Fight the random impulses, stay calm, don’t eat anybody, don’t eat your dog, and don’t rip anyone’s clothes off. I can do this. She took a deep breath. He’s got to at least buy me dinner first.

  “You get anything from the journal yet?” Harbinger shouted at Aino as they reached the trucks. Aino started to respond, but Heather couldn’t hear the rest because of the terrible humming noise that suddenly slammed into her head.

  Hands clamped over her ears, she cried out as she went to her knees. It was like that background hum she’d been hearing all night, only a thousand times worse. Pain like a railroad spike pierced her skull. The sound was killing her.

  Harbinger grabbed her by the coat and held her upright. “What’s wrong?”

  She tried to answer, but her jaw hurt too much to form words. Maybe she screamed; she couldn’t tell. Heather grabbed the straps on the front of Harbinger’s armor and clung to him. The pain got worse, radiating from her head down her spine and from there out to her bones. Something cracked inside her as a joint realigned, and this time she knew for sure that she screamed.

  Harbinger’s mouth was moving. He was yelling orders. She focused on her hands, curled around the fabric pouches on his chest. Blood was coming from around her fingernails. The pain moved down her face to her teeth. Closing her eyes tight, she tried to make it through the pain, but beyond the pain was terror, and the pain actually felt better than the terror.

  When she opened her eyes, the world had changed. Colors were different, faded. Only life and shadows to hide in stood out. She could see the blood pumping in Harbinger’s neck, and she wanted nothing more than to reach up and set it free. He was still shouting. “You, pop the tailgate on my truck. Unlatch the big stainless box. Move!” He turned back to her. “Come on, Kerkonen. This way. Hang in there.”

  “What’s wrong with her eyes?” The voice sounded too slow, like when you play a video at half speed. The action of a gun was worked. “They’re yellow. She’s one of them.”

  “Calm down,” Harbinger said, and it seemed to take forever. “Get out of my way.”

  “Shoot her!”

  At some point, in addition to the pain in her bones, she must have caught on fire. Her hands were burning. Instinctively, she jerked them away from Harbinger. Bewildered, she watched them, turning them from back to palm. They weren’t on fire at all, but her fingernails were so long. She bit her nails. It was a terrible habit, so she’d never had nice nails before. Too bad they were on fire and bleeding.

  “I said, get out of my way,” Harbinger growled at the unseen roadblock.

  “Do what Earl says.” Aino sounded scared.

  A fresh wave of pain, somehow even bigger than the last, came, this time from her rib cage. The sound of breaking bones was audible even over the humming noise. It twisted her down. She had to drive her hands into the snow to keep from falling over.

  “Step aside, stranger.” Distantly, Heather recognized the voice. Something Prescott. She’d cited him for DUI once. He was a real asshole. He seemed really frightened, though; it was probably because of all that screaming. Oh, wait, that’s me. “I’ll shoot you both. I mean it.”

  “I ain’t got time for nonsense.” There was a sudden movement ahead of her, and a thud, but Heather couldn’t focus enough to lift her head. Somebody hit the ground. “Any of you other slack-jawed idiots get in my way, you’ll get the same,” Harbinger said. “You, boy. Do what I told you. The rest of you, get out of he
re. Now!”

  The fire spread. Now it was a competition between the skin fire and the bone pain to see which would rend her apart first. It was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. The fire was winning, though. The heat kept getting worse. She ripped her coat off and fell into the snow, but it didn’t help. A hand wrapped around her duty belt, and suddenly she was being dragged through the snow.

  “Hang in there, Heather. You can do this.”

  A tremor ran down her legs. The bones of both feet broke simultaneously. She kicked out involuntarily and collided with something. Harbinger went sprawling. The burning wouldn’t stop. She began tearing off the rest of her clothes. Her belt buckle fought her. The complicated thing was too confusing, so she curled her hands around each side and ripped the leather in half. She tried to let the pain out through her mouth, but the screams weren’t taking much pain along with them.

  “The first one’s always the hardest,” Harbinger muttered in her ear as he lifted her from the snow.

  He sounded like he was in pain. I’m sorry! she thought, but now, behind the pain, the burning, and the fear, was something else. Excitement. It beckoned to her. If she could make it past the first three, the last one called. Harbinger’s hands felt like ice blocks on her naked shoulders. He was steering her toward something. It was a silver box. Inside was darkness.

  Don’t go into the hole. There is only death in the hole.

  She shoved him away. Her push was enough to send him flying across the street. I’m really sorry! In horror, she looked down at her hand again. It was covered in red hair. Fire was red. The burning was leaking out of her skin. Her nails had turned into knives.

  Harbinger sat up in the snow, ten feet away. There were new tears down the front of his armor. He winced as he felt the blood. He looked over at Heather and lifted his gun. “Aw, damn it.”

  I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! She reached out to him, but then her pelvis snapped. Her spine pushed her skin to the bounds of elasticity. Teeth sawed through her gums. She fell again, screaming. But the scream had changed, this was a new scream, and it let out much more of the pain. No, this was no scream. This was a howl.

  Looking up, there was Harbinger, standing over her, bleeding. “I’m sorry,” he said. She saw nothing but meat.

  Now she understood why Joe Buckley had begged her for death. She understood why Harbinger had given her the gun—forgotten in her coat—with the silver bullets. The change was starting to feel good.

  Kill me! Please! Hurry.

  Harbinger lifted his gun.

  She lowered her head. Kill me before I kill you.

  Everything went black.

  A single tiny candle flickered on top of the pathetic little cupcake.

  Happy birthday to me.

  Happy birthday to me.

  In a mine shaft with a bloody werewolf,

  Happy birthday to me.

  All across Copper Lake, dead bodies rose, powered by the waves emanating from the amulet of Koschei. Anyone that had been killed by one of the Alpha’s pack was born again as one of the wretched vulkodlak. They were remarkable creations; undead lycanthropes, caught somewhere between man and werewolf, nearly mindless, driven only by a single instinct: the need to spread their curse. They would never tire. They would never stop. Smelling prey, the creatures were already surrounding the survivors clustered at the school.

  They would kill, but not feed on the flesh. The vulkodlak were vampiric. They would rend the flesh, drink the blood, and within moments the deceased would become one of them. Once the last of the survivors was turned, the vulkodlak would set out in every direction. They were swift on foot and could cover many kilometers before the magic driving the storm died off.

  Lucinda knew that the American government would never allow the vulkodlak to spread. Northern Michigan would be burned to ash before they’d let that happen. But the Alpha had thought ahead. Before the government bombs fell, she would use her magic to whisk herself and the Alpha to another prepared location. She had a portal rope tied around her waist, just waiting to be activated. Werewolf-killed corpses had already been prepped and hidden across the country. Vulkodlak would arise elsewhere. Chaos would ensue. Her new god would be pleased.

  The plan was brutal and blunt. Her father would not have approved. Martin Hood had been discreet; he’d wielded magic like a surgeon’s scalpel. He’d planned his every move years in advance. In contrast, the Alpha’s plan was like a sledgehammer.

  Martin Hood had served the Dread Overlord with the utmost devotion, but in the end, it had been for nothing. MHI had killed her father and her god. Her church had fallen apart, and her hand had been torn off by that super-bitch vampire. Alone, she’d built a new hand with magic and steel, and set about recovering much of her father’s work. It had been a depressing time.

  Then she’d found a new god, or rather, he had found her, and a world of new possibilities had opened. She had been the one to introduce the Alpha to her new god. The Alpha had already been working with the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. They had even traded two of his pack for two of her father’s diggers, to aid his quest to find the amulet of Koschei. The two werewolves had been lost in the assault against the MHI compound, killed by that damned Owen Pitt and the disgusting thing known as Agent Franks, but the Alpha had understood that their deaths had been for the greater good.

  She had respected the Alpha at first. It was difficult to admit, but he’d almost become a father figure since Pitt’s bayonet had ended up in her own father’s heart. He was charming, not just because of the gifts he’d inherited from birth, but there was also a certain nobility to his purpose in protecting the werewolf race.

  Only, the Alpha was becoming increasingly erratic as the night went on. The amulet was changing him. He had devoured several of his own children in the last hour and hadn’t seemed to notice. Despite knowing that he needed her knowledge of magic to complete his plans, she was becoming frightened of the Alpha.

  However, her new god seemed pleased by their progress, and she would do what he commanded. Her new god was not as ancient as the Dread Master; in fact, he’d only recently been awakened from millennia of slumber. But he was far more interested in the affairs of humanity than the distant Old Ones she’d grown up serving.

  The new god felt that it was time for the defenses of man to be tested. The Alpha was to be his instrument, and she was to be his prophetess. Today was her nineteenth birthday. She’d packed a Hostess cupcake in her kit along with a single candle and a lighter, because it was a celebration, after all. She’d stuck the candle in the little snack and lit it. Singing to herself seemed a little odd, and everyone else at Shaft Six was either being eaten by the Alpha or hiding from him. The diggers weren’t much for singing, or communicating in general. So, once again, she was on her own.

  Lucinda Hood rested her tired head against the cold steel of her artificial hand and watched the snow falling beyond the double-paned glass of the window. There were only a few hours left until dawn. After making a wish, she blew the candle out.

  I do not recall what happened next. Rocky destroyed the memory of my final confrontation with Nikolai. He ripped it apart and spread the fragments. All I got are glimpses.

  When I began writing this journal, I already knew I was missing that part. The real first memory I have after the battle was stepping out of a chopper onto the deck of an aircraft carrier. Six men of first squad had been killed, and one was missing. Every other man had been injured.

  The huge body of Travis Alamo Sam Houston was unmistakable under his blanket, now soaked with blood, as the corpsmen laid him on the deck. Conover and Sharon had both been injured, Conover not too badly, but Sharon had suffered a severe laceration and had been rushed away. We’d been left unsure as to her fate. Conover had cried on my shoulder.

  The memories would have been blurry anyway, since I knew that we’d clashed as werewolves. I still know that there was a truce between us, but I don’t know how we got it.
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  STFU was disbanded. We were instructed not to speak about it and not to contact each other. I was sent home. A few months later, I got a fancy letter stating that I was once again PUFF-exempt, along with an anonymous note telling me that Sharon had survived, but no other details.

  A Bullman came to visit me in Cazador a year after I’d returned. My Hunters almost attacked him before I was able to get them to stand down. He was a holy man. He told me that Travis Alamo Sam Houston had earned a PUFF exemption for the Bullmen of East Texas, and that in his final message to his people, he’d spoken of how he’d declared a werewolf to be his brother, and therefore of his tribe. The shaman had brought me a gift. It was a leather hide.

  I damn near blew a gasket when I found out it was Travis. The shaman explained. The greatest honor a Bullman could bestow was to give his body in the service of his tribe. It was their way. I suppose it was like Travis telling me that death wasn’t about to keep him from watching my back. It would be a huge dishonor on all Bullmen not to use the gift. Plus, the shaman was Travis’s father.

  Turns out Travis’s letters to his tribe had detailed how he still needed to save my life several times before we were even. The shaman explained that this was the only way that Travis’s spirit could get a proper rest in Bullman heaven. Together, we crafted the hide into a coat—broke a mess of needles in the process—and the shaman enchanted it with the Bullmen’s strongest medicine. I’ve used it ever since. It was the nicest gift anybody ever gave me.

  I’ve not heard from Nikolai since Vietnam. He’s out there. Waiting. I know there will come a time when we meet again. I can only pray that I’m stronger and wiser this time. I have to rise above.

  Nikolai reminded me what a true werewolf was. It’s not the claws or the fangs. It isn’t just the physical manifestation. It is the darkness that lives inside us all, left free to roam. The Hum awakes the evil inside. The only difference between us and everyone else is that we can’t keep our evil bottled up like everyone else. We have to face it. We have to overcome it. In Vietnam, I failed. I let myself become like him in order to fight him.