Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (12 page)

“How?
What?
How?” Heather stammered. The thing under the stranger’s boot was bizarre, unnatural. One of its claws had come to a stop only inches from her foot. “Ack!” She kicked the hand aside.

Taking his time, he put one last shot right between the animal’s eyes. Heather flinched. “Silver bullets,” he explained. He stuck his gun back into his holster, then took a cigarette out of his coat and put it in his mouth. “Your regular ones won’t do shit to a werewolf. I’ll give you a B for effort, though.”

Heather was stunned. The fearless weirdo showed up, punched a giant animal down the hall, shot the hell out of it, and now he was talking about
werewolves
. “Huh?”

“Grading on a curve, obviously. I’ve got to reserve the A for this kid that works for me, killed a werewolf with his bare hands one time. Got another with a pool cue.”

“Werewolf?”

“Yup. That there’s one dead-ass werewolf,” he explained, gesturing at the body. A Zippo appeared in his other hand, and he lit up. He took a long drag then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Name’s Earl. Earl Harbinger.”

She was still staring at the animal. “Uh. Yeah.”

The new guy was completely calm, not even bothered that there were fresh brains on his boot. “That would normally be the part where you tell me your name, Deputy…”

“Kerkonen.” Could that thing really be Joe Buckley? Harbinger had called it a werewolf, but that was just absurd.

“Talkative, ain’t ya? Well, Deputy Kerkonen. Congratulations. You just survived a monster attack. Welcome to big-boy town. Now, how about we go see if there are any other survivors?”

“Temple!” She stepped over the animal’s arm. Heather refused to think of it as a werewolf or Joe Buckley. She couldn’t think of that thing as Buckley without endangering her sanity. “There were others in that room.”

“Let’s go then,” he said, removing his boot from the animal.

She took one last look at the dead body. It had been mere inches from pouncing on her. “Thank you,” Heather stammered as she realized just how close she’d come to being torn apart. Pistol in hand, she started for Buckley’s room.

The two of them had only gone a few feet when the beast rose up behind them like a great black shadow and sunk its fangs into Heather’s shoulder.

* * *

Deputy Kerkonen looked at Earl with an expression of complete surprise as the teeth pierced her. The disbelief turned into realization, and she cried out as the pain hit. The werewolf lifted her off the floor, shook her, then hurled her down the hall. The cop hit hard and went skidding away. The werewolf turned toward Earl, bloody jaws wide.

Earl reacted and slammed his fist into the werewolf’s snout. Bones cracked. Teeth went flying. He slugged the werewolf again with a blow that would have surely killed any human, and then, as the werewolf staggered back, Earl kicked it in the stomach hard enough to knock the werewolf through a heavy wooden door and into the room beyond.

Impossible.
He’d put multiple silver bullets into the new werewolf’s skull. There was absolutely no way that it could be alive.
None
. All werewolves were vulnerable to silver. Earl followed it into the room. There was an old lady on the bed, watching the creature on her floor in surprise. She took the oxygen mask away from her face to point and screech incoherently about wild animals waking her up.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Earl said politely. The new werewolf was rising. Earl slammed his boot into the back of its head and put it back down, holding it there. He drew his Smith, then paused. “Would you kindly cover your ears?” He waited for the old lady to comply. Then he pumped the remaining five rounds into the werewolf’s head. It made a ghastly mess on the floor. The patient began mashing her button to summon a nurse. “I don’t think anybody’s coming, ma’am.”

“What kind of lousy hospital is this?” she wheezed. Grumbling, she got out of bed, grabbed a cane, and headed for the door.

As the patient slowly fled the room, Earl watched the bullet wounds pull themselves closed. He took a moon-clip from his belt and checked it before reloading. Sure enough, it was standard MHI ammo; a silver ball sealed into a regular jacketed lead hollow point. The werewolf should be assuming room temperature, not twitching its way back up to ruin his day. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

The regeneration time was remarkable, faster this time than the first go around, almost like it was adapting on the spot. It was already rising. Strong, too…Earl was shoved back as the muscled beast forced itself from the floor.

Claws lashed out. Earl barely moved aside as they cleaved the air where his head had been.
Too fast.
Jaws flashed, and Earl calmly fed the werewolf his right arm. Teeth clamped down on his jacket and shook him from side to side. He could feel the intense pressure through the leather, but hardly anything on Earth could pierce minotaur hide. He kept a small, Entrek fixed-blade knife at the small of his back for just this sort of occasion. Calmly, Earl pulled the blade free with his left hand and drove it between the werewolf’s ribs.

The werewolf let go, surprised. Earl moved in a blur, slashing the blade across his enemy’s throat. The werewolf stumbled, gurgling, brain temporarily deprived of air, but Earl was already doing the math. The kid was too fast, too strong, and already healing. Earl wouldn’t be able to outfight him in human form, and it was too dangerous to invite a change with all these bystanders around. Unexpectedly, he had a real fight on his hands, and this kid needed to be put down before he hurt anyone else. The bigger weapons were in the truck, and he hadn’t thought to stick a hand grenade in his coat before dinner.

Then Earl spied the abandoned oxygen bottle and had an idea. As his daddy, Bubba Shackleford, the greatest Monster Hunter who’d ever lived, had always taught: when all else fails, kill it with fire.

* * *

Heather came to, flat on her back, looking at the dimly buzzing florescent lights. Her head throbbed from the impact. There was a warm slickness coating her chest.
I’m bleeding.
Disoriented, she reached up, pulled open her ruined shirt, and felt around her shoulder. The strap of her vest had stopped most of the damage, but there were several ghastly punctures in her skin, trickling slowly. It hurt, but nothing felt broken. Mostly her head ached from bouncing off the floor.
Lucky.
She could have ended up like the nurse. A wave of nausea hit as she stood. There was crashing and banging coming from a nearby room, probably that Harbinger dude getting killed, but Heather was focused on Buckley’s room. Chase Temple was injured and needed help. She had to get him out of here.

There was a path of giant red paw prints leading back to Buckley’s room. The blood on the floor made it slippery. She had to use the door frame to steady herself.

There was a man standing in the center of the hospital room. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a black suit, and had his back toward her. There was a pistol in his hands, and something about his demeanor just screamed law enforcement. Help had arrived.
Thank God.

Temple was on the floor, alive but hurt bad. Bailey was upside down in the far corner, obviously dead, nearly decapitated. The man was standing over Chase and asking, “Were you bitten? Did the creature bite you?”

“On my leg,” Chase answered through gritted teeth. “It’s bad. Help me, please.”

Heather caught the man’s profile as he shook his head sadly. He was young, beefy, with a buzz cut. “I’m really sorry, man.”

“What?” Chase reached out plaintively. “Just get me out of—”

The suit raised his pistol and coldly shot Chase twice in the chest and then once in the forehead.

The world dropped out from under Heather. Her mouth fell open in shocked disbelief, but no sound came out.

The murderer lowered his weapon and shouted, “Clear!”

Heather stumbled back, reaching for her Beretta, but her holster was empty. Her gun was somewhere back where she’d landed. Still dizzy, she tripped over a severed arm, slipped in the blood, and fell. The killer heard her and came into the hall, pistol trained on her face, finger on the trigger. “Don’t move! Agent Stark. Hallway. I’ve got another survivor.”

A different man appeared from a side room, also in a suit, also pointing a gun at her. This one was even bigger than the first, older, bald, and looked like he meant business. “Shit. Local cop…This is gonna mean a lot of paperwork. Where’s the creature, lady?”

Scared to death, she tried to keep her voice composed. These bastards had just executed poor Chase. She was next. “Back that way. Please. Don’t shoot.”

“Were you bitten? Did it bite you?” the murderer demanded.

He must not have realized that she’d witnessed what happened when he’d asked Chase that same question. “No! I’m fine,” Heather exclaimed.
They’re going to kill me.
She knew that if she made a sudden move they’d shoot, but she had to do something. She wished that she’d worn her backup gun, but the little .380 she’d bought for that purpose was sitting in her sock drawer because she’d gotten lazy.

She had other tools on her belt though.…
Steady.

The older man got closer, gun still carefully trained on her, grabbed the tattered remains of her coat and pulled it back. She cringed as the fabric pulled at the wound. Biting his lip, he studied her bloody shoulder for a moment and then turned to his partner, shook his head, and stepped out of the way.

“Wait! I’m fine! What’re you doing?”

“I’m sorry. This is for the best,” Deputy Temple’s executioner apologized as he aimed at her heart.

“She’s wearing a vest,” corrected the older one.

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. “Didn’t think of that.” The muzzle rose toward Heather’s forehead.

Then the hospital exploded.

Chapter 8

My new home was a tiny black rock in the middle of the ocean. There were some trees, a beach, and a shack. I could walk across the whole island in two minutes.

“Nice place,” I said, glancing around the shack that had been tied together out of the remains of an old shipwreck. “How’s the neighbors?”

Santiago chuckled. “Far enough away that you won’t be sorely tempted to devour them.”

It took a while to help move the supplies ashore. He would return to visit once a month.

“There was once a knight commander of the Order of Christ by the name of Bartolomeu Zarco Cabral. He was bitten by a lycanthrope, but after spending some time cloistered in meditation on top of a mountain, he was eventually able to control his nature and became a fearsome warrior for good. He even protected Prince Henry the Navigator from a master vampire once. He was a fascinating man.”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the knight or the navigator. “Uh-huh…And how much time did he spend meditating on that mountain?”

“Twenty years before he was able to not fly into berserker rages,” Santiago said but then tried to reassure me. “But you strike me as a fast learner.”

* * *

Nikolai saw the fireball rise in the distance. It was barely visible as a flash of orange through the haze of windblown snow, but he’d seen many explosions in the snow over his long life, dating back to Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War, and he knew immediately just from the sound and color that it had been small, and from the time for the sound to travel exactly how far away it had been. Considering the strange events that were culminating in this small town, it was certainly no accident.

Assessing the explosion was the first coherent thought he’d had since the accident. It took a moment for the Tvar to return direct control to him. It was jealous, but it knew that now was the time for careful strategy. Ruthless savagery would surely have its turn, but for now Nikolai needed to be the one in the driver’s seat.

A poor analogy.

“Silence,” Nikolai wheezed.

The lights along the road were out. In fact, most of the lights in town were dark. The taillights from the snowplow were visible fifty yards away. He realized that he had struck a tree. Three ribs were broken. One lung was punctured and had subsequently collapsed. Pressure was building in the thoracic cavity as blood filled the space. That was the most pressing injury. Compound fracture of the femur. Left tibia broken. Armani coat, absolutely ruined.

Nikolai grimaced as he drove his thumb into his side and pulled out the rib. He palmed the jutting bone back into his leg. Impediment removed, the flesh immediately began to reform as the cells burned energy to return themselves to their normal station. Nikolai understood the science. A werewolf had two separate biological settings. Through horrendous amounts of physical energy, it was able to rapidly change between the two patterns. As a side effect, any deviation from those sets was quickly corrected.

Nikolai understood that, but even after eighty years, watching his flesh reseal before his eyes still seemed like magic.

What was that?

There was only one thing that could have that kind of powerful effect upon them. “The amulet is free,” Nikolai explained to the Tvar. The false moon was still there, but not as strong now. The direction was unclear. He sniffed the air. “But…No
vulkodlak
yet. There’s still time.”

Harbinger must have it.

“Do not be a fool.” Nikolai stood, bent over, and hacked up a great clot of blood. His breathing slowly returned to normal. He felt much better already. “Do not let your hate make you stupid. If that
nye kulturnye zvoloch
had it, we would already be dead. One of Harbinger’s minions must have retrieved it. We have to intercept him before he can activate it.” He then noticed the dead body cooling in the snow. “What’s all this?”

Driver of the snowplow. He came to help us. I struck him to protect us. We should eat him now.

Regeneration took fearsome energy. Nikolai’s stomach rumbled, but he knew that human flesh would only inflame the Tvar and make it intolerable. “There is not time for your foolishness.” Nikolai limped away. By the time he reached the remains of the BMW, the limp had corrected itself and he walked with purpose.