The Monster Hunters

  She’s going to be fine. She’s going to be fine. I kept repeating that mantra to myself, too scared to think. The ride was surprisingly smooth as the warg ran across the compound. Shocked Newbies raised their guns as we passed but the more experienced Hunters shouted them down. I kept my face pressed against the warg’s fur the whole time. It smelled like coconut shampoo. We reached the main building in a matter of seconds.

  I slid off and landed, wincing, on my injured ankle. Skippy was already pulling Harbinger off his warg. “Help Skip,” he grumbled at the Hunters that came running down the steps. I recognized the shortest one as the team lead, VanZant. Two Newbies were behind him, obviously frightened by the snorting warg. “Take Harb Anger . . . safe place.”

  Skip knew right where to go and the Newbies took Earl’s convulsing arms and legs and followed. I grabbed VanZant by his sleeve. “Where’s Julie?”

  He was a stocky man: the other team leads jokingly referred to him as the Hobbit. He was also a no-nonsense former Army mortar man and a welterweight champion fighter. He seemed surprised to see me. “How’d you get . . . Never mind. You better come with me, Z,” he responded, then hurried up the stairs. I followed him in a daze. The injured Hunters had been moved into the cafeteria. Those with medical training were tending to the worst hurt. Three female orcs had arrived and were lending their supernatural healing skills to the cause.

  There were too many wounded, moaning . . . This was my fault, all my fault. “Where is she?” I asked.

  “She was right here.” He pointed at an empty spot on the floor. All that was there now was a bloody towel. “We were on the roof when one of those flyers attacked. I was setting up an 81mm and she was directing fire and then it was right on top of us. It clawed through her armor.” He ran his fingers across his stomach quickly. “She was hit . . . bad. I carried her down here myself.” He started to choke up. “There’s no way she walked off.”

  I picked up the towel. It was sodden, dripping.

  VanZant was an experienced Hunter. He knew a severe injury when he saw one. “Julie!” I shouted, panicking. But everyone else down here had their own concerns right now. The nearest Newbies were utterly shell-shocked and didn’t even look up to see who was yelling. This assault had cost us dearly.

  There was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and stared down into Gretchen’s reflective shades. Her manner was inscrutable as usual, but she jerked her head for me to follow. I did so. She led me to the nearest women’s bathroom and held the door open. I was confused. She nodded that this was where I was supposed to go.

  I entered to the sound of running water. Julie’s green armor vest was discarded on the floor. It was soaked in blood and there were three vertical slash marks on the front, each one an inch wide, right through the Kevlar.

  “Julie?” I asked hesitantly, knees weak, voice trembling, as I stumbled around the corner.

  She’s alive!

  Julie was standing in front of the sink, back toward me. Her head was down, long dark hair covering her face, and her hands were flat on the tile, as if holding herself up. She had taken her shirt off and was only wearing her bra. The tile around her was stained pink with blood.

  She was sobbing.

  “Are you okay?”

  She lifted her head slowly. “I shouldn’t be.” My fiancée turned, lifting her head and revealing her tear-stained face. “Look.” She pointed at her stomach. Julie had abs of steel. Currently those abs were pink from half-washed blood. There were three dark horizontal lines down her stomach, but other than that, she looked fine. There was no wound at all.

  “I don’t get it.” I said quickly. “Esmeralda made it sound like you were dying. VanZant was freaked out.”

  “Look,” she ordered again. Puzzled, I bent down. The three lines were black, like a smudge from a piece of charcoal. The skin around the lines was healthy. The lines looked . . . familiar.

  “No way!” I leapt back in shock. “No way!”

  She pulled her hair away from her neck. The line from last summer had more than doubled in size. Now it was a thick black streak. The tattooed man had saved her life with that gift but we didn’t understand a thing about it. “I should be dead. I never saw it coming. The claws went right through me.”

  “This is impossible.”

  “Impossible?” Julie screamed. “I shoved my own guts back inside while they carried me away. Fifteen minutes ago I was disemboweled and now I’m fine.” I went to put my hands on her shoulders, but she jerked back. “Don’t touch me!”

  “It’s okay,” I said soothingly.

  “I don’t know what I am!” she cried. Julie turned away, unconsciously touching her neck, then realizing what she was doing, snapped her hand down in disgust. With a shout of pure anger she slammed her fist into the mirror, shattering it. She realized what she’d done and stepped back, quivering, blood tricking down her knuckles. She stared at the fresh cut in terror, waiting for something awful to happen.

  I stood there, useless, helpless. The pain seemed to calm her down. The blood just kept trickling from her hand. Nothing happened. It was just a normal cut. She slowly unclenched her fist and sighed. Her fingers were shaking badly as blood dribbled down them to splatter the tile.

  “Oh, Owen, what’s happening? What’s inside of me?”

  I couldn’t answer that. I grabbed her and pulled her close. She struggled at first as I kept saying that it would be okay. Finally she relaxed and just sobbed into my chest. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  But all I could think of was what Susan had told me in Mexico. You know that it’ll eventually kill her, don’t you? It’s from the other side, where everything comes with a price. I stroked my filthy hand across her cheek. “Everything will be fine.”

  Finally she quit sobbing. Her voice cracked. My heart cracked. “I’ve got to get out there. They need me.” I wanted nothing in the world more than to disagree with her, and tell her that she just needed to rest, but she was right. We did need her. She pushed away. “I need a shirt. Can’t rally the troops like this. . . .”

  I pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and passed them to her. She took them and pressed them against her injured hand. It was then that she stopped to look at me. She seemed surprised. “What happened to your face?”

  I hadn’t looked at it yet, but I knew the silver-haired chick had cut me good. I could feel the flap of skin dangling wetly. I pushed it back into place and held it there with the rest of the paper towels. “Werewolf in the barracks clawed me.”

  “Barracks?” she asked, confused. “When? How’d you get there?”

  “Franks, Grant, and I went after the ward stone,” I explained.

  Her brown eyes went hard behind her glasses. I’d seen that look before. The sadness, the shock, the fear, it was all gone, replaced with hard determination. Usually when Julie got that look, something was about to get killed. “Hand me my armor. We’ve got to go.”

  “Where?”

  She threw the blood-soaked vest on, not even bothering to buckle it closed. “To have a talk with somebody.” She pulled the door to the hall open. “You coming?”

  We almost collided with a very excited Cooper entering the cafeteria. “Oh man,” the young Hunter sputtered when he saw me. “I was supposed to find both of you. Holly says you need to come quick.”

  “Where?” Julie asked.

  “Basement.” He hoisted his FAL and ran. Julie was right behind him. I had no idea what was going on, but followed. Cooper was headed for the stairs. Several Hunters stopped to point at Julie, surprised to see her alive, let alone running through the halls. Everyone who tried to talk to her was dismissed with a wave. She was too focused on whatever it was that we were doing. We went down two stairs at a time and found Holly Newcastle waiting for us at the base.

  “He went that way”—she pointed—“looking nonchalant.”

  “Heading for the tunnels probably, trying to get away,” Julie replied. “Come on.”

  The
four of us moved quickly. There was a massive hole punched in the wall next to the archives. Broken cinderblocks were scattered everywhere and piles of loose dirt had spilled onto the floor. “What happened?” I asked.

  “The shoggoth dug right up to the basement. Then undead crashed through. They were under us, above us, and outside. It was nuts,” Holly said. “Lee held them at this one. He wasn’t going to let anything hurt his precious books. Trip stopped them at another breach by Earl’s room. We tossed some explosives down each and collapsed the walls.”

  “And you were with the group that stopped the breach next to the control room,” Julie said.

  “What?” Then it hit me. “The doppelganger!”

  “So that’s what it is,” she replied. “After Dawn stood up in the meeting and shot Earl, the lights went out, and she vanished in the confusion.”

  “Why would she take my form?”

  “I intend to find that out right now,” Julie responded as she jerked open the janitorial closet door. She held up one hand for the rest of us to stop. “Owen, honey, where are you going?”

  I heard my own voice reply. “Oh, hey, Julie. I was just checking to make sure this door was secure. What’s with the gun?”

  “Don’t move!” Julie shouted. “Take them both.”

  Cooper leapt through the door after her. I froze as a cold steel muzzle was jammed into the base of my neck. Holly’s voice was totally calm. “Z, I’m pretty sure that you’re the real you, so this is nothing personal, but if you so much as twitch, I’m going to blow your head off, got it?”

  “Got it,” I responded. I knew better than to argue with Holly, and I had taught her to shoot that .45 currently aimed at my medulla. Holly would not hesitate.

  A large man stumbled into the hallway, thick arms raised, hands placed on top of his short hair, the muzzle of Cooper’s FAL covering him. Except for the fact that he was wearing my armor, carrying my weapons, and was far cleaner, it was like looking in a mirror. “Against the wall,” the young Hunter ordered.

  “Watch it, kid,” the duplicate replied.

  “Do I actually sound like that?” I asked. “Man, I sound goofy.”

  The doppelganger looked up, seemingly surprised to see me. “What the hell is this?”

  “Cut the crap, Dawn,” I responded.

  My beady eyes squinted back at me. “No way. This is some Condition trick. Blast it, Holly.”

  “Both of you, shut up,” Julie ordered as she came out. Her 1911 was at her side. “One of you is my boyfriend, the other one’s dog food.”

  “See you in hell, dog food,” the doppelganger said. Dang, that was a good impression.

  “So, how do you want to figure this out?” Holly asked slowly.

  “We could get Earl to sniff them both, see if they smell different,” Julie said. Cooper looked confused at that. Apparently he wasn’t part of the in-the-know clique.

  “Yeah, go get Earl. He’ll know,” my double said.

  “Except your stupid boss put a demon in his head and Earl’s busy fighting for his life right now,” I said. Julie frowned. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you. I tried to help, but he’s on his own for now.”

  “Personally, I’m thinking this one’s the real one,” Holly tapped me on the back of the head.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because the real Z’s strategy is always to get right in front and let the monsters beat on him until they get tired. The other one’s too clean.”

  Julie nodded. “Valid point . . . but . . .” She turned back to me. “How’d you know to say that it was a doppelganger?”

  “I found G-Nome stuffed into one of the toilets in the barracks. He saw Dawn cleaning up from murdering whoever was on guard duty in the control room. I read his mind before he died.”

  “You what?” Cooper was really confused now.

  I heard approaching footsteps, and turning slowly, so Holly wouldn’t get jumpy, tried to see who it was. Trip was leading the way with a massive, hulking shape loping along right behind him. It was the troll, Melvin. “What the hell?” the doppelganger and I said in perfect unison. What was that monstrosity doing loose? And armed? He had a sawed-off, 10-gauge Browning BPS in one hand.

  “Hey, guys,” Trip said. “Z . . . and Z.” He was unperturbed. “So I guess one of these two is Dawn.” He must have witnessed the shooting during graduation. He stopped and looked between us, trying to guess. “You know, that is some creepy stuff right there.”

  “Oh! Oh! Melvin help,” the troll wheezed eagerly. “Trolls have good senses. We can smell evil Fey.”

  “You can’t trust that thing,” the doppelganger said.

  “Okay, I’ve got to agree with the shape-changing monster on that one,” I pointed out. “I missed the part where he joined our side.”

  Trip smiled and jerked a thumb at the troll. “The undead were breaking into the basement. I was outnumbered and desperate, so I made Melvin a fast job offer. He saved my butt. Say what you will, trolls are mighty handy in a fight.”

  “Melvin Monster Hunter now!” the troll said proudly. “Old clan all dead, because stupid. Melvin have nowhere else to go. MHI is my clan tag now.”

  Julie pushed her glasses back on her nose. “Trip, we’re really going to have to have a discussion about this.”

  “He’s agreed to certain terms of employment,” Trip responded. “No eating people.”

  “Melvin not like eating people anyway. Like snacky cakes better.” He smiled, showing off rows of rotting teeth. MHI did at least have a good dental plan. “Melvin will make badass IT department for you. You can pay Melvin in Red Bull and internet connection.”

  “No spam or fraud,” Trip continued.

  “Aaahhh . . .” Melvin whined. “Fine. Whatever.”

  Julie just shook her head in resignation. She’d had a very long day. “All right then, which one is the real Owen?”

  The giant troll stood between us, swiveling his head back and forth. Melvin’s nostrils flared. He pointed one clawed finger at me. “That one.”

  “Julie!” the fake cried. “You can’t believe that thing! It’s a monster.”

  “Keep your hands on your head. Coop, take his guns,” Julie said.

  “I can’t believe you’d fall for this,” it grumbled, as Cooper lifted Abomination’s sling. “This is such a crock of—” The doppelganger moved suddenly, slamming his armored elbow back into Cooper’s face, smashing his glasses. The Hunter crashed back into the wall. The doppelganger reached across his chest and yanked out my kukri. Julie calmly shot it in both legs. The bullets didn’t penetrate the Kevlar weave, but struck like hammer blows. My duplicate dropped to its knees.

  “Ha! Melvin just guess! Monster go all dumb! Ha ha!” The troll bellowed, then looked stupidly down at his hand as it separated from his arm. The rubbery appendage hit the floor. “Hey!”

  My double had swung the heavy blade right through Melvin’s arm. Julie shot the doppelganger in the hand and it dropped my knife. She shot it in the other hand just to be sure. Two fingers flew down the hall. It was kind of unnerving how little hesitation Julie had to shoot something that looked exactly like me. The creature tumbled to the floor and glared up at her with four injured limbs.

  I was closest and grabbed Melvin. His rubbery skin squished under my hands as I caught him. “Are you okay?”

  “Stupid monster. How can Melvin type now with one hand? Poor Melvin!” It sobbed as it sank to its knees. “How can play video games? Life is ruined. Noooo!”

  “Somebody get me a tourniquet!” I shouted.

  The troll emitted a strained, wheezy noise. He was laughing at me. “I kid. I kid. Melvin grow new arm by tomorrow. Trolls very resilient.”

  My duplicate struggled to rise. It still spoke with my voice. “Fools. You can’t stop the Condition. The time of man is done.”

  Julie strode over and snap-kicked it in the face, putting it solidly down. “Drag it inside. Let’s see what it knows.”

  I used
the opportunity while we taped the doppelganger to a chair to strip it of my gear. It felt good to have my armor back on. I used a bandage from my first aid kit and patched my cheek. I needed to have Gretchen look at that, but she had serious injuries to deal with upstairs, and I didn’t want to bug her about my cosmetic boo-boo. It would probably leave a terrible scar. I had gotten used to having werewolf scars once before. No big deal. I had more important things weighing on my mind.

  Cooper was in over his head and had a broken nose to boot, so he went back to join up with his team. Melvin got put back in the cell while he regenerated a new arm. We didn’t really know what to do with him yet anyway, but Trip was a man of his word, which in the best case meant that we couldn’t just shoot him, and worst case meant we probably owed him a job.

  We stuck the doppelganger in the next room where it couldn’t hear us while I caught the others up on Earl’s state and what had transpired during the fight for the ward stone. We were using Earl’s office, and just on the other side of the vault door, he lay alone and twitching, fighting an improbable battle against some shade of the Old Ones. With the possibility of him losing control and reverting to his werewolf state, we didn’t even dare leave anyone inside with him. This shape-shifter could hold the keys to finding Hood, and if I could find him quickly enough, we might still be able to save Earl.

  I debriefed them as fast as I could. Julie patted me on the shoulder when I was done. “Doppelgangers can read minds a bit. That’s why they’re such effective mimics, so it’ll know exactly how far you’re willing to go to find the truth. It’ll play with us, mess with our minds. This is a job for somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Earl doesn’t have time.” Every second we waited put him one step closer to ending up like Carlos.

  “I know,” she said. “Do what you can. I’ll find Sam, Boone, or Cody. All of those guys have had to get information out of actual human beings back when they were military. This won’t be a problem for any of them.”