The Monster Hunters

  Why aren’t we dead? And why did you shoot us? Fool!

  “Now you know I mean business. Do not question me again.” That silenced the Tvar. Nikolai could sense its fear. “Cower. I’ve shown what will happen if you disobey me.”

  But why were they alive? He had played Harbinger’s game and lost. Nikolai lifted the bullet fragments to his nose. Lead. It hadn’t been a silver bullet.

  But you thought . . . You would have killed us. . . .

  “Lying to me, tricking me. You deceived me. That will not be tolerated again.”

  Standing took a moment; he was weak with hunger. His body had stripped itself of every spare molecule in order to heal. A folded piece of paper had been shoved into the remains of his shirt. The edges were jagged from where it had been ripped from a small notebook. Aching eyes were barely able to make out the handwriting in the darkness.

  Nikolai,

  I used a frangible lead round. They make a real mess and take a while to regenerate from, but you’ll live. I needed to know if you were telling me the truth. Nothing personal. I think I understand you better now. I’m impressed. That could have been silver, but you did it anyway. There are only two ways for this to go from here. If you changed your mind, you got one chance to walk away. But if you’re a man of your word, help me find this Alpha and kill him. Help me save this town. This is not their fight. They were dragged into this because of our kind. Help me make this right. Either way, know that I’m sorry about your woman. I swear to you that I had nothing to do with her murder. We were both lured here by him. He needs to pay. He needs to be stopped.

  Harbinger had shown him an unexpected mercy. The quest to silence the Tvar should have killed them both. His Val rifle had been left on the floor. There was food in the kitchen. It would not take too long to heal enough to hunt.

  What do we do now?

  The Tvar was actually asking for direction, and meekly at that. It was not shouting at him, nor telling him what to do. Nikolai was not used to such a tone.

  “I have won,” Nikolai whispered. He’d begged Harbinger for assistance, but it had been Nikolai who’d demonstrated that he had the courage to take control. Harbinger was a trickster, but he was no longer the king of the werewolves. Nikolai did not need a master. Harbinger was not nearly as clever as he believed himself to be. Nikolai had just demonstrated to the Tvar who was the master. Harbinger’s continued existence was nothing more than a liability.

  “We came here for revenge. That has not changed. We find the Alpha werewolf and destroy him.”

  What of our nemesis?

  “First we avenge Lila. Then we settle old scores.”

  The snow cutter was faster than it looked and they reached the perimeter of the Copper Lake school grounds in three minutes. Aino stopped the tractor so Earl could survey the scene. “Think they heard us coming?” Even though the driver’s seat was only a foot away, Aino still had to shout to be heard.

  Between the two of them and all the extra guns crammed into the cab, it made for a tight fit. Earl had smashed out the rest of the side window for a place to sit, straddling the edge, with one leg dangling over the tire, and the windchill had damn near froze him.

  “Just ’cause they’re dead don’t make them deaf.” Earl lowered his binoculars. Some of the vulkodlak were already moving to intercept, but the vast majority were still concentrating on attacking the gym. “Here they come. Head straight for the front door while they’re still bunched up.” Aino let out the clutch, and the tractor crept forward. Both men put on safety glasses taken from the shop. This was about to get extremely messy. “Remember, if you see somebody out there that you know, it’s not them anymore. Run them down and try not to look at the faces.”

  “Eh . . .” Aino shifted gears. “I don’t really like most folks anyway. Like ’em even less when they’re trying to eat me.” They were about to use the devil’s personal blender to make an undead smoothie, but Aino did not strike Earl as the type of man destined to end up in Appleton in need of psychiatric care afterward.

  Earl adjusted so that he could lean farther out the window. Several vulkodlak were running right toward the tractor. Aino and Earl weren’t in danger of breaking any speed limits, even in a school zone, but they were going fast enough that it would be difficult for the vulkodlak to simply climb onboard. His job was to make sure that didn’t happen.

  The fifty-round drum made the Thompson feel ponderous in his hands. Snow puckered around the vulkodlak as Earl struck the first few down with a burst of .45 ammo. Earl stuck his head back into the cab. “Fire it up!”

  Aino pulled a lever, and the blades began to turn with an ominous series of clanks. Within seconds the noise had grown into a roar. The first of the vulkodlak he’d shot came out of the snow just in time to hit the blades. They were yanked in, thrashing until they disappeared. The ones on the outside edge were clipped, instantly dismembered, and launched spinning through the air.

  “Hot damn!” Earl exclaimed as a severed leg flew over the scoop to strike the windshield. “That would even impress Milo.” Aino just spat on the floor and turned the windshield-wiper speed up a level. Earl stuck his head back out the window and started shooting at anything that moved.

  The vulkodlak at the back of the crowd surged toward them in a wave. Earl mowed them down until the bolt flew forward on an empty chamber, so he automatically yanked the cumbersome drum and slid in another. The drums were much slower to get into place, and by the time he was ready they were in the midst of the creatures. Aino jerked the wheel to the side and caught another vulkodlak in the scoop.

  “Head for the big group!” Earl shouted as he pulled the safety pin from a frag grenade. “I’ll get the stragglers.” He chucked the grenade out the opposite window. It detonated a few second later, ripping the vulkodlak with prefragmented silver wire.

  They were moving too slowly. Now that the creatures knew what was going on, they were dodging the blades and swarming up the sides. Earl kept shooting. Putting a distracting burst into one target before quickly switching to another. His second drum was finished too quickly and he threw another grenade. Before it had even exploded he’d had to draw a revolver and shoot a vulkodlak off the back of the tractor. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

  Aino shifted gears again. Black smoke belched from the exhaust as Earl locked in another drum. A vulkodlak made it between the tires and came up the side. Earl barely had time to cock the Thompson before it was onto the hood. Earl fired through the cab and shattered the front windshield. The vulkodlak flipped over the side.

  “Well, now I can’t see nothing!” Aino shouted.

  Earl knocked the rest of the glass out with the butt of his gun. “Better?”

  “Much. Thanks.”

  They were surrounded. Some of the creatures were more damaged than others—those ended up in the blades or under the tires—but many of them were nearly werewolf-fast, and those were a severe problem. Earl knocked off another two with his Thompson, emptied a revolver into one coming up the side ladder, and, with his bowie knife, struck the hand clean off an arm that came reaching through the back window, but there were more coming.

  Knife in one hand, Thompson in the other, Earl kept on fighting as the tractor’s cab was covered in bodies and reaching claws. He moved from window to window, continuously shooting or reloading, on a violent reactionary autopilot. Their course had been set, Aino had aimed them right for the entrance, and now with his hands free he took up Heather’s shotgun and opened fire. They were a raft floating in a sea of undead monsters. The tommy gun was smoking hot as Earl dropped his final drum and switched to stick mags. The cab floor was filled with spent brass.

  Antifreeze and oil were spilling from punctures along the engine cover. Claws ripped through their tires. A particularly agile vulkodlak grabbed the rotating tread and rode the tire up to the cab’s level. It had been a girl, once. She latched on to the driver’s seat and pulled herself inside. A split second before she reached Aino, Earl d
rove his knife through her head, grabbed a handful of ponytail, and hurled the vulkodlak back out the window.

  They crashed into the main crowd with an incomprehensible ripping sound. Earl looked up just in time to see the blades impact the packed-in mass of the vulkodlak pressed against the gymnasium entryway. A sea of white eyes and snapping teeth was fed into the tearing blades, but with walls on both sides, there was nowhere for the vulkodlak to escape. The scoop barely fit between the brick walls. Hundreds of the monsters were trapped.

  It was disturbing, even by professional Monster Hunter standards. Earl couldn’t look away. The vulkodlak were simply consumed, like wheat in front of a combine. Some made it over the top of the steel scoop, usually missing their legs, only to flip over to end up under the tires.

  The tractor lurched and groaned as the scoop was packed with vulkodlak. “Gotta put her in low.” Aino dropped the shotgun and got back into the driver’s seat. The snow cutter engine groaned as gallons of red material and rags were pumped out the spout and sprayed against the gym walls. It came splashing through the broken windows.

  “That is . . . amazing,” Earl said as his safety glasses were hit with spatter. A claw slashed wildly through the bottom of the door, forcing Earl to turn his attention back to keeping them alive. He stomped it with his boot until he was positive that every bone was broken.

  It was a painful, gradual approach as the tractor inched forward. The vulkodlak ahead of them scrambled, pushing themselves up the walls to escape, only to be sucked back down as the creatures below them turned into hamburger and were belched out the spout. The ones in the front tried to break through the barricades with renewed frenzy, but they were ineffectual under the crush of bodies behind them.

  At the rear of the tractor, the remaining creatures were gathering, slashing at the already shredded tires and scrambling up the bumper. Earl wasted a dozen rounds on one before he realized it was wearing MCB armor and switched to carving its head apart. The dead MCB agent went over the side, but there were too many others at the rear to drop with small-arms fire alone. “Fire in the hole!” Earl shouted as he threw a pair of grenades out the back window. The twin explosions shredded many of the remaining creatures.

  The vulkodlak were as savage as any undead Earl had ever encountered, but they weren’t stupid. They knew when to regroup. The crowd behind the tractor broke and fled.

  At the front, the last of the trapped vulkodlak was sucked into the blades. The barricade was clear. Aino stood up for a better view over the scoop. “That’s all of ’em.” And not a second too soon, because their engine was spitting and hissing, and several warning lights were flashing on the dash.

  The cab was entirely filled with cold, wet gore. The air tasted like blood, and Earl coughed as he tried to breathe against the haze. “Throw her in reverse,” he ordered.

  They backed over the crunchy remains behind them. Earl scanned for threats but couldn’t spot anything that seemed worth shooting. Aino put the clutch in, and they rolled to a wet stop, engine rumbling, blades slowing and coming to a stop. The only movement came from the continued twitching of the many severed limbs. Blood dripped from the cab’s ceiling, covered every surface, and formed shell-casing-filled puddles on the floor. The brick corridor leading to the front door was greased with a substance that could best be described as mush. Everything in a large circle around them had been painted a sloppy red, and the snow was a discolored pink for another hundred feet past that.

  Earl tried to find some part of his body that was not covered in blood to wipe the safety glasses on but finally gave up and tossed the glasses out the window. Aino shut off the engine, and the tractor gurgled its last. After the mechanical noise and the gunfire, the night seemed abnormally quiet. The only sound was the hissing of air escaping from their punctured tires. Even the snow had stopped falling.

  “You know, I’ve been doing this kind of thing a long time. . . .” Earl pulled out a cigarette and lit up. Thankfully, at least it wasn’t red. “I’ve got to say that this is the single nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. And trust me, brother, I’ve seen some crazy shit in my day. Smoke?”

  “Yup.” Aino surveyed the carnage. Earl was impressed that the old man didn’t need to puke. They built them tough up here in the frozen north. “So, this is what saving the day feels like, eh?”

  “Something like that. Welcome to the exciting world of professional monster hunting. Usually not quite so . . . messy. Well, it’s always messy, but we’ve reached a whole ’nother level on this one.”

  It would be dawn soon. The storm was wearing off. The energy used to disrupt local communications was weakening. It was only a matter of time before the MCB found out what they’d done here, and there would be hell to pay. It had been nearly twenty years since this level of supernatural carnage had been inflicted on American soil. The MCB would surely react with overwhelming force.

  Yet, the Alpha wasn’t even slightly worried.

  Lucinda Hood had mustered her courage and had descended into Shaft Six. The Alpha had been surprised to see her come down into the dark. The witch stank with fear, and it wasn’t the nervous anxiety of earlier: it was actual terror, and it was because of him. “Somehow they’ve killed most of your bloody vulkodlak. It’s stupid to stick around,” she shouted. “This is madness!”

  “Fulfilling a destiny isn’t madness,” the Alpha corrected. There was no way he could be upset with her. Her pathetic senses couldn’t see what his could. Even her new god was less than what he was becoming. “We’ll leave in plenty of time, but there’s one last thing to do. He’s coming for me.”

  “Who?” Lucinda asked, confused. “Who’s coming for you?”

  The amulet had whispered that there was one last challenge to be faced before he was complete. It had become more aware as he’d fed it souls, until it had begun to communicate freely. The spirit of the forerunner was restless, but after being kept dormant by Koschei for so long, it had to know that he was worthy of all its gifts. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “But he’ll be here soon. I’ll prove myself worthy. Then we’ll go.”

  “Worthy? Harbinger killed Petrov. You killed Harbinger. Who else is there? There are only a handful of other werewolves of their caliber, and none anywhere near here.”

  “Petrov is alive. I can smell him. Maybe he’s the one, maybe not.” Despite the fact that his senses were ridiculously acute, the clues were more confusing about Harbinger. He would surely know if there was another Alpha out there, and he’d seen Harbinger die, the spirit ripped right out of his body, and used to feed the amulet. . . . Yet there was a strangeness in the air, almost like a shadow of Harbinger was lingering.

  There was only one other werewolf in range that didn’t belong to the pack, but created by one of his line just this very night, an anomaly caused by the mad fluctuations of the amulet. A woman, and she had the blood of the thieving Finn, but also something else, something odd about her scent. Could it be her? The idea was absurd; she was too inexperienced to be a threat.

  At this very moment the female was watching this place from the shelter of the forest, thinking that her presence was unknown. The Alpha had assumed that she had been driven by instinct to come begging for a place in the pack, but instead she’d just stayed there, observing. Perhaps she was frightened to come down. Maybe she understood how he’d fed on his own pack earlier, but he was satisfied now. With the bloodlust past, she would have been safe enough. He was feeling merciful. Yet, though there was a hint of fear on the mystery woman, there was far more resolve.

  Lucinda continued to plead with him, but the witch could never hope to comprehend what the amulet wanted. Since putting it on, his understanding had continually increased. He knew now for sure that this was the item used to create the very first of his kind. It was not alive, it was not intelligent, but it had been programmed to search for someone worthy. Now it was telling him all that remained was to confirm he was truly the one. That meant facing one last unknown challenger.


  The Alpha had learned about the amulet from intel gathered by the original Operation Unicorn during the Second World War. It had been far before his time, but he had read the OSS reports detailing the mysterious Koschei and his mysterious abilities. It wasn’t until archeologists had uncovered the bones of the forerunner that he’d come to understand his mission in life. The MCB had seized the forerunner’s remains, but not before word had spread to his own organization. The first time he’d touched the bones, he’d known. The spirit of the forerunner had filled his mind with images. The dreams had begun shortly after, and finding the lost amulet had become his sole purpose in life.

  Of course it was fate. He was a werewolf, but he’d also started as so much more than a human. It was obvious why the forerunner had chosen him. It was still far beyond his comprehension how or why the amulet had been fashioned through human alchemy and the Old Ones’ lore, and then used to rip the spirit from the fiercest of all monsters to be bonded to a man, but he knew with all his heart that he was the one they had built it for. He was the true Alpha, the one who would prepare the way.

  As the Alpha listened to the witch’s protests, the unknown female werewolf left the tree line and loped back toward town. Running her down would have been easy, but the amulet told him to let her go. Apparently, it thought she had some part to play.

  Chapter 27

  The good people of Copper Lake came out of the gym to check for survivors, then promptly took an ax to any vulkodlak that was still moving.

  “I’ll be damned, Mr. Harbinger. I do believe you’ve made an unholy mess of things out here,” Nancy Randall said after she climbed through the barricade. She looked down at the organic slurry under her boots in disgust and then back at Earl with only slightly less disgust. Earl stood his ground. His armor was still dripping blood. She cracked a smile. “If you weren’t so damn gross, I’d give you a hug.”