Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (38 page)

Travis and I were talking that night. I had asked if he was offended that humans ate beef. He thought that was stupid, and asked if I would be offended if he ate a monkey. That of course led into an interesting discussion on theology, since I figured I had no particular relation to monkeys. I ended up asking about the biology of the Bullmen, particularly their females. Okay, so if they’re like a half-girl, half-cow…the whole udder thing? How’s that translate over? Up high like on a human, or down low, and if so how would they walk? And are we talking two or four? Travis had told me that I needed to head out to Texas for a visit, and that if I called his girlfriend a heifer at any point, he would be honor bound to duel me to the death.

We’d had a lot of conversations like that. Travis was like a younger brother to me. A giant, monstrous, berserker younger brother, but you get the idea. He kept score. He said that I’d saved his live seven times. He’d only saved mine twice. He said that he would never rest until we were even. Bullmen are odd like that.

It hurts to remember what happened next. The first memory is clear, the rest not so much. I remember how it began, and I remember how it ended. Rok’hasna’wrath took much of the rest.

It began with an explosion.

I found out later that it had been a truck bomb. Several tons of explosives detonated between us and the Marine encampment. One moment I was playing cards with the Bullman, and the next the hotel collapsed on top of us.

* * *

Heather was just glad to get out of the Alpha’s home. The place had reeked of him, and those bones had filled her with a terrible dread. It was like they were looking at her, angry, and declaring that she wasn’t worthy. Harbinger was a few steps ahead, slipping and sliding his way down the icy steps.

He’d been so graceful earlier, it was a shame that now Harbinger was so slow, weak, and
human
. He was still a remarkable man, though. And if she’d met him in other circumstances, she might have been interested in getting to know him better.

Heather sucked at dating. Her track record was dismal. She knew she was one of the prettier girls around Copper Lake, but she’d had zero luck meeting anyone decent. She’d even tried Internet dating for a while, but had just felt dumb and lonely paying money to meet bozos from the next town over and had given up.

She’d not met anyone like Earl Harbinger before. Not that she would have thought to tell eHarmony to match her up with a chain-smoking Southern monster hunter. He had an iron will, but at the same time he was still a gentlemen. Plus, he wasn’t bad looking. Though he was wearing bulky armor, she could sense the muscles of his legs tighten as he tried to find his balance. Even if he wasn’t a werewolf, he was still strong. She could totally mate with that.

Mate?
Who actually used the word
mate
? Heather stopped herself. She was actually
lusting
after Harbinger.
What the hell? Focus, girl. Psycho werewolf chick or not. I’ve got standards.
She shook her head to clear it. It was just like he’d warned her. Fight the random impulses, stay calm, don’t eat anybody, don’t eat your dog, and don’t rip anyone’s clothes off.
I can do this.
She took a deep breath.
He’s got to at least buy me dinner first.

“You get anything from the journal yet?” Harbinger shouted at Aino as they reached the trucks. Aino started to respond, but Heather couldn’t hear the rest because of the terrible humming noise that suddenly slammed into her head.

Hands clamped over her ears, she cried out as she went to her knees. It was like that background hum she’d been hearing all night, only a thousand times worse. Pain like a railroad spike pierced her skull. The sound was killing her.

Harbinger grabbed her by the coat and held her upright. “What’s wrong?”

She tried to answer, but her jaw hurt too much to form words. Maybe she screamed; she couldn’t tell. Heather grabbed the straps on the front of Harbinger’s armor and clung to him. The pain got worse, radiating from her head down her spine and from there out to her bones. Something cracked inside her as a joint realigned, and this time she knew for sure that she screamed.

Harbinger’s mouth was moving. He was yelling orders. She focused on her hands, curled around the fabric pouches on his chest. Blood was coming from around her fingernails. The pain moved down her face to her teeth. Closing her eyes tight, she tried to make it through the pain, but beyond the pain was terror, and the pain actually felt better than the terror.

When she opened her eyes, the world had changed. Colors were different, faded. Only life and shadows to hide in stood out. She could see the blood pumping in Harbinger’s neck, and she wanted nothing more than to reach up and set it free. He was still shouting. “You, pop the tailgate on my truck. Unlatch the big stainless box. Move!” He turned back to her. “Come on, Kerkonen. This way. Hang in there.”

“What’s wrong with her eyes?” The voice sounded too slow, like when you play a video at half speed. The action of a gun was worked. “They’re yellow. She’s one of them.”

“Calm down,” Harbinger said, and it seemed to take forever. “Get out of my way.”

“Shoot her!”

At some point, in addition to the pain in her bones, she must have caught on fire. Her hands were burning. Instinctively, she jerked them away from Harbinger. Bewildered, she watched them, turning them from back to palm. They weren’t on fire at all, but her fingernails were so
long
. She bit her nails. It was a terrible habit, so she’d never had nice nails before. Too bad they were on fire and bleeding.

“I said get out of my way,” Harbinger growled at the unseen roadblock.

“Do what Earl says.” Aino sounded scared.

A fresh wave of pain, somehow even bigger than the last, came, this time from her rib cage. The sound of breaking bones was audible even over the humming noise. It twisted her down. She had to drive her hands into the snow to keep from falling over.

“Step aside, stranger.” Distantly, Heather recognized the voice. Something Prescott. She’d cited him for DUI once. He was a real asshole. He seemed really frightened, though; it was probably because of all that screaming.
Oh, wait, that’s me.
“I’ll shoot you both. I mean it.”

“I ain’t got time for nonsense.” There was a sudden movement ahead of her, and a
thud
, but Heather couldn’t focus enough to lift her head. Somebody hit the ground. “Any of you other slack-jawed idiots get in my way, you’ll get the same,” Harbinger said. “You, boy. Do what I told you. The rest of you, get out of here.
Now!
”

The fire spread. Now it was a competition between the skin fire and the bone pain to see which would rend her apart first. It was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. The fire was winning, though. The heat kept getting worse. She ripped her coat off and fell into the snow, but it didn’t help. A hand wrapped around her duty belt, and suddenly she was being dragged through the snow.

“Hang in there, Heather. You can do this.”

A tremor ran down her legs. The bones of both feet broke simultaneously. She kicked out involuntarily and collided with something. Harbinger went sprawling. The burning wouldn’t stop. She began tearing off the rest of her clothes. Her belt buckle fought her. The complicated thing was too confusing, so she curled her hands around each side and ripped the leather in half. She tried to let the pain out through her mouth, but the screams weren’t taking much pain along with them.

“The first one’s always the hardest,” Harbinger muttered in her ear as he lifted her from the snow.

He sounded like he was in pain.
I’m sorry!
she thought, but now, behind the pain, the burning, and the fear, was something else.
Excitement.
It beckoned to her. If she could make it past the first three, the last one called. Harbinger’s hands felt like ice blocks on her naked shoulders. He was steering her toward something. It was a silver box. Inside was darkness.

Don’t go into the hole. There is only death in the hole.

She shoved him away. Her push was enough to send him flying across the street.
I’m really sorry!
In horror, she looked down at her hand again. It was covered in red hair. Fire was red. The burning was leaking out of her skin. Her nails had turned into knives.

Harbinger sat up in the snow, ten feet away. There were new tears down the front of his armor. He winced as he felt the blood. He looked over at Heather and lifted his gun. “Aw, damn it.”

I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!
She reached out to him, but then her pelvis snapped. Her spine pushed her skin to the bounds of elasticity. Teeth sawed through her gums. She fell again, screaming. But the scream had changed, this was a new scream, and it let out much more of the pain. No, this was no scream. This was a
howl
.

Looking up, there was Harbinger, standing over her, bleeding. “I’m sorry,” he said. She saw nothing but meat.

Now she understood why Joe Buckley had begged her for death. She understood why Harbinger had given her the gun—forgotten in her coat—with the silver bullets. The change was starting to feel
good
.

Kill me! Please! Hurry.

Harbinger lifted his gun.

She lowered her head.
Kill me before I kill you.

Everything went black.

* * *

A single tiny candle flickered on top of the pathetic little cupcake.

Happy birthday to me.

Happy birthday to me.

In a mine shaft with a bloody werewolf,

Happy birthday to me.

All across Copper Lake, dead bodies rose, powered by the waves emanating from the amulet of Koschei. Anyone that had been killed by one of the Alpha’s pack was born again as one of the wretched
vulkodlak.
They were remarkable creations; undead lycanthropes, caught somewhere between man and werewolf, nearly mindless, driven only by a single instinct: the need to spread their curse. They would never tire. They would never stop. Smelling prey, the creatures were already surrounding the survivors clustered at the school.

They would kill, but not feed on the flesh. The
vulkodlak
were vampiric. They would rend the flesh, drink the blood, and within moments the deceased would become one of them. Once the last of the survivors was turned, the
vulkodlak
would set out in every direction. They were swift on foot and could cover many kilometers before the magic driving the storm died off.

Lucinda knew that the American government would never allow the
vulkodlak
to spread. Northern Michigan would be burned to ash before they’d let that happen. But the Alpha had thought ahead. Before the government bombs fell, she would use her magic to whisk herself and the Alpha to another prepared location. She had a portal rope tied around her waist, just waiting to be activated. Werewolf-killed corpses had already been prepped and hidden across the country.
Vulkodlak
would arise elsewhere. Chaos would ensue. Her new god would be pleased.

The plan was brutal and blunt. Her father would not have approved. Martin Hood had been discreet; he’d wielded magic like a surgeon’s scalpel. He’d planned his every move years in advance. In contrast, the Alpha’s plan was like a sledgehammer.

Martin Hood had served the Dread Overlord with the utmost devotion, but in the end, it had been for nothing. MHI had killed her father and her god. Her church had fallen apart, and her hand had been torn off by that super-bitch vampire. Alone, she’d built a new hand with magic and steel, and set about recovering much of her father’s work. It had been a depressing time.

Then she’d found a new god, or rather, he had found her, and a world of new possibilities had opened. She had been the one to introduce the Alpha to her new god. The Alpha had already been working with the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. They had even traded two of his pack for two of her father’s diggers, to aid his quest to find the amulet of Koschei. The two werewolves had been lost in the assault against the MHI compound, killed by that damned Owen Pitt and the disgusting thing known as Agent Franks, but the Alpha had understood that their deaths had been for the greater good.

She had respected the Alpha at first. It was difficult to admit, but he’d almost become a father figure since Pitt’s bayonet had ended up in her own father’s heart. He was charming, not just because of the gifts he’d inherited from birth, but there was also a certain nobility to his purpose in protecting the werewolf race.

Only, the Alpha was becoming increasingly erratic as the night went on. The amulet was changing him. He had devoured several of his own children in the last hour and hadn’t seemed to notice. Despite knowing that he needed her knowledge of magic to complete his plans, she was becoming frightened of the Alpha.

However, her new god seemed pleased by their progress, and she would do what he commanded. Her new god was not as ancient as the Dread Master; in fact, he’d only recently been awakened from millennium of slumber. But he was far more interested in the affairs of humanity than the distant Old Ones she’d grown up serving.

The new god felt that it was time for the defenses of man to be tested. The Alpha was to be his instrument, and she was to be his prophetess. Today was her nineteenth birthday. She’d packed a Hostess cupcake in her kit along with a single candle and a lighter, because it was a celebration, after all. She’d stuck the candle in the little snack and lit it. Singing to herself seemed a little odd, and everyone else at Shaft Six was either being eaten by the Alpha or hiding from him. The diggers weren’t much for singing, or communicating in general. So, once again, she was on her own.

Lucinda Hood rested her tired head against the cold steel of her artificial hand and watched the snow falling beyond the double-paned glass of the window. There were only a few hours left until dawn. After making a wish, she blew the candle out.

* * *

I do not recall what happened next. Rocky destroyed the memory of my final confrontation with Nikolai. He ripped it apart and spread the fragments. All I got are glimpses.