The Monster Hunters

  You’re no king.

  They lurched to a stop in a cloud of broken rock. Earl jerked the cable around the Alpha’s neck, then rolled himself over against the Alpha’s chest. He sunk his three-clawed hand into the flesh around the amulet.

  NO. IT’S MY BIRTHRIGHT.

  You have to earn it.

  In desperation, the Alpha let go of the wall to try and tear Earl from the amulet. They were falling again. Earl’s claws tightened around the burning piece of silver.

  They reached the end of the cable’s slack. The loop Earl had created snapped tight, and the Alpha’s unnatural mass slammed against the noose. Vertebrae and muscle tore. The amulet ripped free of the Alpha’s chest as Earl was dislodged and flung aside.

  Earl hit the wall, skidding, but managed to sink his talons against a ledge to catch himself. The amulet scorched his hand, but he held on. Above, the Alpha hung, swaying, his limbs dangling, lifeless. The golden light in the giant’s eyes began to fade.

  He didn’t even know if the Alpha could hear his thoughts, only that he could hear the ones the Alpha chose to broadcast, but he had to try. I’m sorry I cursed you, Adam. I wish I’d known. Maybe I could’ve made a difference. Maybe I could’ve helped somehow. Maybe . . .

  The Alpha’s body gradually shrank as the amulet’s energy left him. The head separated from the body, and both parts plunged past Earl into the darkness.

  Chapter 36

  The strange words seemed to hang in the air for a time, repeating in her ears, even after the Alpha disappeared down the shaft. Heather’s vision blurred, fading in and out of focus in time, as the words turned into a chant. As the world faded, another one replaced it. An older world, long since turned to dust, where one of the four factions had gathered to create their champion.

  The mighty beast had been chained. Capturing it had cost many hunters their lives, but it had to be taken alive, for a dead thing had no spirit to take.

  Heather stood before a great-demon wolf, more terrifying than the Alpha had been. It was upright, shackled and pinned between two great stone pillars. The ends of a hundred arrows and a hundred spears protruded from its bleeding skin. Its hair had been burned away with fire, leaving it blackened and naked.

  It was the last of its kind. The adversary had not created it. He could not create, only corrupt. The sagas said that the adversary had taken the wolf and twisted it to be this, before he had buried himself deep in the world to sleep. There the adversary would lie until time was broken and remade, to fight the great war of the living and the dead, but before his retreat, he had left his great-demon wolves to harry and destroy man.

  But man would steal the spirit of the great-demon wolf and make it their own. For when the adversary returned, they would use his own weapons against him.

  One of the great-demon wolf’s forelegs was lifted with ropes pulled by a hundred of their strongest men. The device was made ready. Designed with plans given by a mad Fallen, built by their wise men using tools stolen from the Old Ones, and given an intelligence of its own, the device had but one purpose: to make the adversary’s weapon their own. The wise men surrounded the quaking limb and buried the flaming device into the beast’s palm. Its howl had shaken the foundations of the world.

  Their greatest hunter had volunteered to be the weapon. He placed his hand against the flames and joined his soul to the beast.

  The ceremony had spanned three days and three nights, as the strength had been drawn out, bit by bit, through the device embedded in the beast’s palm and fed into the heart of their greatest man. At moonfall, all that could be consumed, had been. The strength of a great demon-wolf had been given to a man. The beast had screamed for all three days of the ceremony, but it was dead now. The transfer was complete.

  But something had gone wrong. . . .

  The great man could not control the spirit of the beast; instead it had controlled him. At the full moon, he changed into a pale shadow of the great-demon wolf. Madness spread. The vision ended in blood.

  Heather wiped her eyes and struggled to her feet. Her head was swimming. The vision slowly faded, and she remembered the broken catwalk. She pulled Aino out of the wreckage and tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. Flat on his back, there was blood coming out of his ears and nose. She could sense the weakness, the internal bleeding, and the death that was coming with it.

  He’d insisted on holding her hand.

  “You can’t go back,” Aino said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t talk. Just rest.”

  “Aksel figured it out too late. The Baba Yaga didn’t lie, but she didn’t know the whole truth. You’ve got to give yourself to the amulet first, then it decides who gets it. They fought Koschei twice. First time, Aksel was the only survivor, but part of the wolf spirit went with him. When they fought again, it decided it liked Aksel better.”

  “Shh . . . Hang on. I’m going to carry you out of here.”

  “Don’t shush me, girl. I’m dying, not stupid. Listen. You’ve got to know. Aksel fought Koschei twice. Second time . . . said the spell again . . . and he took it. The wolf spirit takes the measure of who’s fighting over it . . . decides who’s worthy. It used Aksel. That part of the wolf spirit changed him, and when he died it changed your daddy, and then it changed you.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about your people was special. Its job is to pick an heir. It’s looking for the last one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Last heir gets it all. Aksel hid it . . . Because if it picked somebody bad to be the last . . .” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Good or evil . . . it’s their call. Your call . . .” He trailed off.

  “Aino?” her voice cracked.

  “Good old Six,” he whispered. “Always thought she’d be the death of me . . .”

  “Aino?” She squeezed his callused hand, hardened from a lifetime in the mines, but there was no response. Her eyes burned. “Oh, Aino.”

  There was a scraping noise echoing from the shaft. Heather turned, expecting to see the Alpha coming out of the hole to finish them once and for all. She scanned the room for help, but there was no one else there. Even the girl Earl had punched out was gone. There was just a weird piece of rope and a burned spot on the floor. She was alone. A sudden clang of metal told her he was getting close to the top. I’m all that’s left. She picked up her grandfather’s rifle and, determined to go down fighting, walked to the edge of the pit.

  The werewolf was climbing quickly. The Alpha was normal-sized now, but it didn’t matter. He was still more than a match for her. She aimed the rifle at the top of the Alpha’s skull, but hesitated. Her gray vision could tell that this one was lighter in color. He must have heard her, and golden eyes turned upward. Though she had never seen him transformed, instinctively she recognized him. Heather lowered the rifle. “Harbinger?”

  Nervously, she backed away. Harbinger wasn’t like her. He’d told her about how the moon drove him insane, about how he had to lock himself in a reinforced prison cell whenever the change overtook him. The monster version of Harbinger was an animal, a pure killer, nothing like the honorable man she’d known. It wasn’t safe.

  The werewolf crawled up the shaft and, with an exhausted grunt, leveraged himself up and over the side. Harbinger stood upright, a foot taller than she was in her human form. His light fur was matted and streaked red. His skin was torn with dozens of deep lacerations. Frothy blood dripped from his jaws and ran down his chest. His head swiveled to study her. He took a step forward.

  “Harbinger! Stop. Don’t make me shoot you.” He took another halting step. She raised the rifle, but there was no growling, no fearsome roar or baring of teeth. He just looked tired. “Earl?”

  Slowly, he held out one damaged hand. It was covered in blood and hair, and there was a black scab where his pinky-finger had been, but he was offering something to her. She took a step closer. The amulet! Harbinger was offering it to her. He took another step and swayed, as
if he was going to collapse. Without thinking, Heather moved forward and caught him.

  One hairy arm fell over her shoulder. His fangs were dripping the Alpha’s blood down the side of her face, but she understood that she wasn’t in any danger. She held him upright as the pace of his breathing slowed.

  Teeth retracted and flattened. The fur receded. A moment later, he was only a few inches taller than her. She still continued to hold him as the last werewolf features fell away, until she was holding only a very battered man. Heather squeezed him even tighter. She’d only just realized she was crying. He placed one hand on the back of her head and kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’s all right,” he rasped. “Everything’s all right now.”

  “I know . . .” But she didn’t let him go.

  He was looking past her and saw the corpses of Aino and Kirk. “Aw, hell. So many . . .”

  Harbinger was alive. He had the amulet. “Is he . . . ?”

  “Dead.” His voice was ragged. “The Alpha’s dead, and I got this.” He lifted the amulet of Koschei and held it between their faces. “Your town should be safe. Now we need to figure out how to cure you . . . us . . . all of us. Wait . . .” He stopped, horrified, and stared at the rapidly disintegrating amulet. The silver claw was cracking as its outer edges bled into dust. “No. No! NO!” Harbinger shouted. He let go of Heather and tried, futilely, to squeeze the pieces together. Dust streamed between his fingers. Harbinger fell to his knees and tried to collect the ever-shrinking bits. Within seconds, they were gone.

  Heather felt the magic leave, and the last fuzzy remnants of the dream went with it.

  “I can’t believe this. It was a cure. . . .” Harbinger stayed there, on his knees. “No . . . We could have ended the curse.”

  Heather shook her head, trying to recall her dream. “It was waiting for someone worthy. The curse was on purpose, but the people that took it weren’t ready yet. They didn’t know what they were asking for. The monster’s spirit was stronger than theirs. But the amulet had a mind of its own. It held something back for some reason.”

  “You saw something, too . . . didn’t you?”

  “I did, just now. Like it wanted me to know.”

  “Me, too. Little bits and pieces, when I lost my curse, and when I saw the bones.” Harbinger ran his fingers through the dust. “The amulet was a test.”

  “It wanted to be found. It was waiting for someone. The thing was only making werewolves stronger to attract even stronger challengers.” She placed one hand gently on his shoulder. “It found what it was looking for. It picked you.”

  “No. It didn’t.” Harbinger stood and took Heather back in his arms. “I wasn’t enough. It picked us.”

  “Harbinger?”

  “Earl. Really. It’s just Earl.”

  She kissed him, gently. He still tasted like blood. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  “You hear that?” Heather asked once they got outside. “It’s quiet.”

  Earl listened, it was good to be able to really hear again. “I’d say too quiet, but I suppose that’s because we’ve killed everything in a mile radius.”

  “No, smartass. There’s no gunshots from town.”

  It was like he’d figured. The vulkodlak had only existed because of the amulet. Once it was gone, there was nothing keeping those undead walking. The question was if they’d stopped them in time to make any difference. There was some clothing hanging on the railing at the entrance to Number Six. Which really brightened Earl’s morning. He wasn’t the self-conscious type, werewolves seldom were, but he was still a Southern gentleman, so walking around buck-naked with a lady seemed rather uncouth. Heather still had his coat, but he passed her the pants. There was a rather nice wool overcoat, so he took that. It smelled like the Alpha. There was a wide-brimmed hat, too. Earl put it on. “Souvenir.”

  “You look like a flasher,” Heather said as she put the pants on. They were too big for her. She unconsciously let one fingernail elongate into a point to poke a new hole in the belt so she could cinch the pants up tighter. “You could just leave it off. You’ve got a good body for a senior-senior-citizen.”

  “Damn, woman, you are forward.” Earl checked the pockets. Sadly, it appeared that Adam Conover had been a nonsmoker. “In my day—”

  “In your day they invented the airplane. Besides, somebody would just call it in and I’d have to arrest you for indecent exposure. Let’s see if anybody else survived and find us a ride out of here.”

  Despite being too tired to think, Earl found himself smiling. The girl had spunk. If she didn’t degenerate into an insane killer, he could see this actually maybe working out. It would be nice to have some female company again. “Then some breakfast. I could eat a horse.”

  “I know where some are near here. The Randall place is just over the hill. I’ll split one with you.”

  Because of the fire, and the smoke, and the dozens of corpses, he couldn’t locate any of his companions by smell. So it took longer than he would’ve liked. They found Jason Lococo near the gates. The Hunter was in bad shape, covered in slime, barely conscious, but breathing. Close by was the exploded remains of one of the Old Ones’ diggers.

  Earl knelt next to him. “How you feeling, Jason?”

  He gestured weakly at an empty syringe on the ground. “Stark . . . Antidote.” Jason’s good eye rolled back in his head, and he was out. Earl checked the syringe. Atropine. Stark must have known the digger’s poison caused nerve damage. Nasty stuff, but it looked like it had been caught in time. His nose was telling him that Jason would live.

  “Nice work, kid.” Lococo was probably twice his size, but it wouldn’t be difficult for Earl to carry him out. “Let’s get him to some medical help. Kid’s got real potential.”

  “That just leaves Stark,” Heather said as she scanned the compound. “I wonder where he ran off to?”

  Special Agent Douglas Stark of the Monster Control Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security watched the fire-haired werewolf through the scope of Harbinger’s precision rifle. The crosshairs were floating around on the back of her head. He had a solid position. There was zero wind. He’d known they would stop to help the injured Hunter. From the top of Number Six, the range was a piddly hundred and fifty yards. It was an easy kill.

  “Agent Stark. Stark! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  Stark listened to the Bluetooth earpiece. He’d gotten headquarters. He’d gotten help on the way. National Guard out of Marquette were going to cordon off the area while the MCB airlifted in a cleanup team to bag the bodies and intimidate the witnesses. They’d come up with a plausible cover story, like they always did, and the whole Copper Lake mess would just go away.

  “I’m here,” Stark whispered.

  “There are choppers en route to your position. I’m trying to get an ETA. Are you secure?” Agent Archer asked.

  There were three dead werewolves that had gotten in his way on the stairs. He was pretty proud of those kills. There were only two werewolves left down there, and he was glassing them with a sniper rifle. “Secure enough.”

  “Good work, Stark, good work. The outbreak will be contained. Thanks.” Archer sounded like he was getting choked up. “Thank you.”

  Stark moved the crosshairs over to Harbinger’s back. A few ounces of pressure on a trigger that would break like a glass rod, and that asshole was toast. Harbinger shouldn’t have punched Stark in the face. “What’re you talking about, Archer?”

  “My hometown is right down the road. If you and Mosher hadn’t stopped the outbreak, we might have been forced to . . . Well . . . shit, sir. You know. Just . . . thanks.”

  “Uh huh,” Stark said as he put his finger on the trigger. Obviously, he’d given headquarters his interpretation of the day’s events. There was still a lot of explaining to do, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

  “Well, sir, you’re a hero. A real hero . . .”

  That temporarily floored him. He had never been
called that before. A hero. Previously, the biggest compliment he’d ever received in the line of duty was followed orders well.

  Hero. That’s what they called you when you risked your life for somebody else, when you saved lives, and they’d probably saved a ton of lives. Anybody that lived through the night in that shitty little one-horse town, and the people in the neighboring towns that weren’t getting nuked to glass right now, was because of Harbinger and the people that had followed him.

  He couldn’t shoot Harbinger or the redhead that had helped him. They really were heroes. They were what Mosher would’ve been if he’d gotten his way. He was what Sam Haven had been, and Stark was suddenly deeply ashamed of himself.

  His finger came off the trigger. “It’s your lucky day, hero.”

  Besides, there was a small chance that he could miss, and then Harbinger would be really mad . . . and that man was terrifying.

  The responding MCB agents had taken Earl into custody and taken his statement before they’d passed him off to the military. After eating three complete MREs lifted from the Michigan National Guard, Earl had collapsed into a provided bunk and slept like the dead. It had been a long time since he’d been this tired, if ever. He’d slept so deep and dreamless that the pounding on the door had taken a while to even register.

  He took the time to light a smoke before getting out of bed. The rubberized food packages hadn’t been the only things he’d managed to snag from the National Guard. He made it to the door and cracked it open, squinting at the sudden brightness. “What?”

  It was a young lieutenant. “Mr. Harbinger, I need you to come with me, please.” He looked a little nervous, unsure why the secretive federal agency in charge of the incident had felt the need to stick this man into a room at the local roach motel and then post a dozen guards to make sure he didn’t leave. Their instructions had been to be polite, but firm. “Agent Myers wants to see you now.”

  Earl looked around the hotel room, spotted the shoes and clothing that had been left for him neatly folded on a chair. His old, reliable minotaur coat had been thrown on the floor. “All right. Tell Dwayne to relax. I’ll be there in a minute. What time is it anyway?”