Authors: Seth Skorkowsky
“
No. They just don’t share anything with outsiders. Especially regarding the validity of holy relics. We’ve tried many times over the years to open communication, but they refuse.”
Matt wondered just how hard they might have asked.
Blaming the Church was an easy excuse. No telling how many years of animosity might have existed. Maybe thefts. Maybe murders. A lot of bad blood can happen over eight centuries.
“However,” Allan continued, “many of the remaining holy weapons are in the possession of individuals, and that’s why we’ve come.”
“
To warn me?”
“
And to ask for your help.”
“
Mine?”
“
A third of all the known weapons are gone,” Schmidt said. “We can’t afford for any more to be lost. This threat must be stopped.”
Matt
’s eyes narrowed. “So what do you want?”
“
We want you to come back with us,” Schmidt said.
“
What?” Matt asked with a shocked laugh.
“
We want you to accompany us back to France. We are gathering as many hunters as we can for protection and to find whatever is destroying the relics.”
“
Look, I understand the desire to circle the wagons,” he shook his head, “but I don’t feel the need to follow you half way around the world.”
The German opened his mouth to speak, but Matt cut him off.
Leaning forward, he spoke, his voice low and deliberate. “I’ve lived my entire life with monsters and people wanting to kill me. I’ve looked over my shoulder every day since Clay told me about the Valducans, the bogeymen who hunted me the way we hunted demons. So this is nothing new. This is what you’ve put me through ever since my family was killed and I was bitten.”
Schmidt straightened, his lips tight.
“Yes, Mr. Hollis, you were bitten. Clay told us about the wendigo. He said he’d seen its essence burn, yet you still exhibited signs of corruption.”
Matt leaned back, withdrawing his arms from the table, suddenly very uncomfortable with where the conversation had turned.
He felt the old man’s cold, blue gaze drilling into him.
“
He told us that your wounds healed before his eyes, bringing you back from the edge of death. He said you could speak any tongue, just like a demon. Yet he didn’t kill you. He adopted you.” Schmidt drew a long breath, giving Matt another dose of his piercing stare. “At first, I thought maybe you had bitten him, rendering him your familiar.”
“
I’m not a demon,” Matt growled, his jaw tight.
“
Then what are you?”
“
Wendigos can’t make slaves.”
“
Humans can’t heal their wounds. So what are you?” Hatred tinged the old man’s voice.
Matt glanced to Allan.
A tension vibrated through the hunter’s body, like every muscle was primed, ready to spring at any moment. He looked back to Schmidt. The old man gave no sign of fear that he sat unarmed, not three feet from a suspected demon. Balls like that could only come from one of two places. Either the old man was insanely confident Matt wouldn’t be able to reach across and harm him, meaning he or Allan had a weapon other than the one locked in the Englishman’s black case, or that there was a third Valducan. Maybe one of the dozen or so other customers in the near-empty roadhouse. Maybe a sharpshooter trained on him from outside the window. However, Matt somehow doubted that. Even with a hidden weapon or sniper, three feet was too close to be fearless. An incubus once knocked him across a room, even after taking two blessed slugs to the chest and a disemboweling gash from Dämoren’s blade.
The other source, Matt guessed, was that Schmidt wasn
’t just some messenger or minion of the Valducans, like Alfred from Batman. Guts like his could only be had from a man who’d seen Hell. Seen it and lived. “You’re a hunter.”
Schmidt nodded tersely.
“Retired.”
Matt let out a long sigh, releasing a bit of tension.
He hoped the two hunters would follow his lead before things escalated. “I can’t just heal myself. Not exactly.” He peeled the stained Band Aid off the side of his left palm, showing them the fresh cut from the mine ladder. “But when I touch demon blood, I can heal myself.”
“
Demons don’t have blood,” Schmidt said. “Their victims, the humans they possess, have blood.”
“
No,” Matt replied, the tension returning. “It’s demon blood. The burning blood that comes from a demon after its soul has died, but before it returns to human form.”
The old man sat silent, his pale eyes studying Matt
’s face. “What’s in that bottle you’re always carrying?” His gaze darting briefly down to Matt’s jacket pocket.
Matt
’s jaw tightened. There was no telling what the old bastard already knew. What had Clay told them? What had they learned while spying on him?
You’re testing me, you son of a bitch.
“It’s water mixed with my blood.” He pulled the bottle out and set it on the scarred tabletop. “The blood will gather in the direction of a nearby demon. Clay called it my blood compass.”
Allan leaned
in a little toward the bottle of pink fluid, his expression like some zoologist discovering a new type of toad. “Amazing.”
“
It loses potency after a few hours,” Matt added, just in case the two hunters developed some plan to bleed him dry and pass out blood compasses as standard equipment.
“
Demons can sense one another,” Schmidt said. “That’s evidently how they can.”
“
Maybe, but you just said they don’t have blood.”
The German gave
a tight smile, making him appear like he had no lips. “Perhaps I was wrong.”
“
Fine.” Matt stood. “I thank you both for returning the shell.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “But I’m not interested in joining you.”
“
Mr. Hollis, please,” Allan pleaded. “There’s more.”
“
Better make it fast,” Matt said, drawing a ten dollar note.
“
The demons are teaming together.”
“
So?”
“
This isn’t like a vampire nest or a pack of skin walkers. Different species are joining ranks, species that normally avoid one another. They’re grouping.”
Matt paused.
“Joining ranks how?”
“
I mean rakshasas actually mingling with one another,” he whispered, “and also working with werebeasts and yokai.
Rakshasas forming packs?
A knot of dread formed in Matt’s chest.
Allan gestured to Matt
’s empty seat, which Matt took. “One of our teams found a pack outside Krakow. The beasts had raided the estate of a former hunter and taken his sword. At least eight demons. Among them: two rakshasas, two werewolves, a vampire, and a yokai.”
Matt let out a long breath, trying to imagine the speed, cunning, and raw power of a pack like that.
“Did they save the sword?”
The Englishman nodded.
“One of the hunters was maimed. The demon that bit him escaped.” His lips tightened. “They had to finish him.”
“
Jesus.”
“
That’s not the worst,” Schmidt said, his voice calm like a doctor delivering bad news. “We’ve begun encountering new species. Things we’ve either never seen before or breeds that haven’t been reported in centuries. Monsters we’d thought extinct are reappearing.”
“
New species?” Matt said, mostly to himself. He leaned back into the chair.
“
Yeah,” Allan answered. “Which means that aside from holy weapons, we don’t know what else affects them. Learning that a silver blade works on one species, while another needs glass or iron, took centuries and untold lives. We’re blind.”
“
But how?” Matt asked. “If a demon can only enter a body that it marked, how are new ones appearing?”
“
We don’t know. We have theories, but nothing—” Allan’s gaze moved to the table beside Matt.
The pink water in the plastic bottle cleared as a crimson bead of blood formed against the side facing the window.
Matt turned to Allan. “You said you killed the aswang.”
“
I did.”
Flipping the snap open on Dämoren
’s holster, Matt peered out the roadhouse window. About fifteen cars littered the parking lot. He knew more were around the corner at the gas station. He leaned further, trying to follow the blood compass’s direction, but didn’t see anything. The red sphere elongated and split like a dividing cell.
Two demons.
He barely heard the door behind him creak open.
“Get down!” Allan yelled. He pulled the old man to the ground and threw the table over, slinging beer and shattering plates across the floor. A woman screamed.
Matt whirled around to see a pair of men in
the doorway with shotguns, raised in his direction. He dropped behind the table just as the gun blasted. The wall behind him, where Schmidt’s head had been a moment before, exploded. Splinters of paneling and shards of glass from a framed photograph rained down around him. Matt drew Dämoren as another blast blew apart the table edge beside him.
The distinct
cha-chunk
of the shotgun’s pump came from the other side, followed by another blast. The heavy table jarred back. Four holes, big enough for Matt’s little finger, suddenly appeared before him. Hunkering back, he cocked Dämoren’s hammer.
Allan lunged
with his arm out, grabbing Ibenus’s black case and pulled it beside him before another loud shot blew the floor to shreds.
A gun clicked behind Matt.
He looked back to see Schmidt huddled behind him, clutching a .357. Blood tricked down from a cut atop his balding head. Shards of glass and wood clung to his thin white hair like tinsel.
Another blast took off the table
’s top corner. He stole a quick glance through the buckshot holes. The two men closed in. Their eyes held a yellow sheen.
“
Take the one on the left,” Allan said, pulling the black and gold khopesh from its case. “I’ll get the other.”
“
Wait, you ca—” Matt started.
Clutching the sword, the Englishman swung upward and vanished.
Another shotgun blast vaporized the right half of the table where Allan had hidden.
Matt peered th
rough the holes to see Allan standing eight feet from the table. One of the gunmen swung his weapon toward him, but the hunter stepped forward, swiping his sword and suddenly appeared three feet away from where he’d been. Allan swung again, and again seemed to blink another step with impossible speed.
“
Shoot!” Schmidt yelled behind him.
Raising
his head above the table, Matt leveled Dämoren and fired. Blue smoke plumed out from the holy revolver and the yellow-eyed shooter’s chest exploded in a burst of crimson. Cocking the hammer, Matt brought Dämoren around toward the second attacker, but stopped as Allan suddenly appeared between them. The Englishman opened the gunman from his shoulder to his opposite hip in one horrific swipe, spraying a fan of blood across the room and onto the screaming waitress hunkered behind a barstool.
Dämoren out, Matt stepped around the table and approached the bodies.
They didn’t burn.
Allan moved toward the door, clutching Ibenus.
Matt followed, hurrying through a haze of gun smoke.
Crouching to one side of the wood door, Matt held the revolver in both hands and nodded to Allan.
Allan threw the door open and Matt leaned out. A shot fired. The bullet whizzed past Matt’s head, hitting somewhere behind him. The shooter, a redhead in a dark blue van, adjusted her aim as Matt jerked himself back to the safety of the wall. Two more shots. The doorframe splintered with a hard crack.
An engine revved and tires screeched on pavement.
Braving a peek, Matt leaned out to see the van tear out the lot, turning left onto the road.
He jumped up and raced out of the door.
Scrambling for the keys in his pocket, he yanked them out and pressed the unlock button several times. His car’s lights flashed with every click. Once he reached it, he opened the door and dove inside. He had the keys in the ignition when the passenger door flew open.
Matt
blinked as Allan scrambled into the seat.
Allan slammed the door shut.
“They’re heading south!”
Matt opened his mouth to tell the knight to get the hell out of his car when Allan slapped the dashboard.
“Go! They’re getting away.”
Fuck it.
Matt cranked the key, popped the car in reverse, and squealed out of the parking space. “Hold on!” He shifted to drive, hit the gas, and shot out onto on the street after the van.
Trees blurred past as they sped down the narrow county road, engine roaring.
Matt yanked the car around a sharp bend. Momentum slammed his shoulder against the door.