Support Your Local Monster Hunter

by Dennis Liggio

  "Look, the answers aren't as easy as you think," he said, running a hand through his hair. "The truce was made a bunch of years ago. I was one man dealing with two separate Sanguine organizations, and suddenly a separatist organization of Leeches showed up. They claimed they just wanted to be left alone. They claimed they weren't going to hurt anyone, but they were going to respond with maximum force if messed with."

  "So what, they said they'd play nice and you believed them?"

  "No, of course not. But I was already knee deep in a territory war and barely managing that. I didn't need a new set of bullshit to deal with." He paused. "But that really was only one reason, not the sole reason. My decision was made when I learned that the Family plays for keeps. They showed me that they could get at my loved ones. I lost someone very dear to me..." He paused, closing his eyes for a moment to re-experience the pain, "and I still fought them. For revenge, because it was right. A few years later they showed me very clearly that the others were still in danger. They threatened my loved ones, and the Family could have killed them but they didn't. It was a message - just to show me I wouldn't have been there, I couldn't protect them."

  "You have family?" I asked.

  "Of course I do," he said. "And I've tried to keep them far out of this on purpose. When the Family showed me that they could get my family at any time, what was I going to do? Ship them out of town? Never get to see them again? I had already tried that and it was hell. My priority was on the Sanguine. The Family was just some new group saying don't mess with them. They weren't a problem and they were not the international Sanguine organization I was trying to stop. They weren't involved in the Sanguine war. The Family seemed a wasp's nest I didn't need to be hitting for now."

  "They seem pretty fucking involved in things now," I said. "They've killed off all the vamps!"

  "There's still the possibility of the OTV standing against them. I'll need to check on them."

  "I still can't believe you made a fucking truce with a group of revenants! How many people have they killed?" You don't make deals with monsters. I'm adamant about that. And this was a huge button topic. My mother had been killed by a monster - a revenant in particular. Who knows how long the Family was around, but part of me wondered if the revenant that had gotten her was part of them. If it was... It was very possible that the one who did it was one Kolchak avoided killing because of this bullshit truce. My anger was starting to burn through me. A truce? What a fucking farce!

  "I made a choice," he said sternly. "You make choices all the time. Some people live, some die. You stand by yours. I stand by mine."

  "You know what, fuck you, just take me home," I said. I remembered the question about acceptable losses. I just didn't realize just how much was an acceptable loss to Kolchak. What if that revenant had come back for my brother and I? Would that have been an acceptable loss? A whole family wiped out?

  Kolchak opened his mouth to say something, but closed it. He nodded his head and focused on driving. In a few minutes we were at my apartment. I had thought of a few blisteringly acidic things to say to him before I got out, but I didn't say any. It wasn't worth it; I knew I'd get the same answers. He was just another asshole who had let me down. I just bottled up all the anger and got out of the car, slamming the heavy door behind me. I went up to my apartment.

  Was everyone full of shit? Was that being an adult? Being a hypocrite? Making stupid decisions and claiming they were the best? Letting people die because you couldn't fucking handle it?

  Out came the whiskey and I drank until I slept, which wasn't long after the adrenaline finally died. I think it had hit me hard because in my loneliness I thought I had found someone I felt I could identify with. Maybe I was wrong to think it, maybe not. But Kolchak seemed worthy of trust. He seemed to understand my life, he seemed to understand the crap I had to deal with. But he wasn't who I thought he was. Knowing he had made a deal with the devil had just reminded me how alone I really was. He had let me down, just like every other person.

  Ready To Fall

  I awoke in the afternoon, half in bed and half out of it. My bottle of whiskey was on its side on the floor and open. Then dampness next to it indicated that I hadn't drank all that was missing, but that it had spilled out. Only a small amount was left in the bottle, which I sadly capped. My head hurt and my mouth felt full of cotton, but I had been to hangover town before. I stumbled to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. I swallowed the last two gulps out of the bottle of Dr. Geezob's Hangover Cure, wondering if that was enough to do anything about my headache.

  It was not.

  As I started swilling as much water as I could keep in my stomach to... I don't know, drown my hangover out of me, I checked my phone. Nothing. I actually rebooted my phone, thinking there was a malfunction. I should have had some text or call. At least a damn notification from an app I hadn't used in months. But no, even after a reboot, there was nothing. Nobody was calling me. Nobody was texting me. I really was a pariah. Doubly so after yelling at Kolchak, something I was regretting in the harsh light of day.

  This may sound like some super emo bullshit, but when you realize your friends really aren't calling you in the middle of a massive hangover, it really does seem like the worst thing ever. I've never been the friendliest person in the world, but I was used to certain people in my life. People who would stand by me. Since I had fucked that up, the absence was glaring when I was feeling at my worst.

  I thought of calling Dickie to apologize. I was pretty sure he wasn't following the rules of intervention and we were just having a fight like friends do. We'd be fine enough when we cooled down and shared a few drinks. But I realized I wasn't ready for him. If I called and made up with him, he'd still try to get me into Avalon X. I just couldn't suffer through that pitch again and would probably yell at him... again. I vetoed that idea.

  I could call Paulie and Meat, but that hadn't done shit before, I didn't expect it to do anything now. Vetoed.

  Yasmin? Vetoed with extreme prejudice.

  I pulled up my brother's contact on my phone and hovered my finger over the button to call him. Bullshit about love, sex, and honor aside, he was the most damn important person in my life. And he was my only family. It didn't matter what asinine intervention that Yasmin had put together, he and I should be figuring shit out. If he had a problem with me, he should have come to me directly. I could call him, I'd say something stupid, he'd say something stupid back, we'd laugh about it, we'd talk about how stupid the intervention was, we'd laugh about that, and then we'd be back to normal. Everything good, right?

  But part of me worried. What if he really was onboard with the intervention? What if he really did feel that way? What if when I called him, he was just going to rebuff me? What if he told me that the intervention was real, and by bailing on it, I was out of his life? What if he told me I really wasn't his brother anymore? Could he actually say that? It was these thoughts that stopped me from calling him. I was already feeling pretty terrible. I couldn't take it if he said those things. I couldn't deal with that final reaction. Not now.

  I found myself dialing Kolchak instead. Why?

  Because as much as I was mad at him, I understood him and he understood me. Oh, I was still mad as fuck at him and thought his truce with the Family was some grade-A bullshit. But I had to admit I understood where he was coming from. He and I had both made some fucked up stupid decisions in our life. And we both made them thinking we were doing the right thing. And after all was said and done, it seemed neither of us were sure they were the right decisions, but they were the one we picked and we were sticking to our guns. The consequences sucked. He understood that, and I damn well appreciated that he did.

  At least that's what I was thinking when I called him.

  "Call me after dark." Click.

  I was left holding the phone, my mouth still open from the "Hello" I had been about to say. Well, that exchange was mostly good, right? He actually answered and he said to call la
ter. He wasn't mad at me, right? Obviously his voice was stilted, but I didn't notice anything of anger in it.

  Maybe I was over examining it. What I did know is that I needed to shower and shrug off the hangover before nightfall. And so I went for a cold shower, a hot microwave meal, then a hot shower, then two cups of coffee. I don't know if my hangover was gone, but I was buzzed from caffeine and feeling more relaxed. I sat on the couch nursing my third cup of coffee until the call came.

  "At your curb in two minutes."

  I guess I didn't need to call him. I was actually excited, so I ignored the feeling of being watched, and was down at the curb before he showed up. I got into the car, trying to smile, instead getting a forced grimace. "Hey Ace!" I said, rubbing the dog's head. Then I turned to Kolchak. "Hey."

  "I have a list of the OTV lairs," said Kolchak. "We need to find out if they're alive. Pretty similar to last night." He pulled the car out into traffic, not saying anything more.

  "So look," I finally said after a minute of silent driving. "I wanted to apologize... for last night. I feel like I was out of line. I was still all tense after the accident and the attack. I mean, I don't think it was fair of me."

  Kolchak shrugged and slurped some coffee. "I've made some decisions in life. Big ones. Some good, some bad. Some used to be good and are now bad, some were bad but turned out to be good. Even some of the good ones I regret. If I were younger, if things had been different, I probably would very much have agreed with you and decided differently. But I did what I did, and it's done."

  "I know, I know, I'm saying that I get that now."

  "I know, but let me give you more advice about this. What I'm trying to say is that regret is terrible. Even if you swear you made the right call, sometimes you maybe want to step back later and look at it again. I regret some of the good decisions... recently I especially regret one I made long ago. I can't go back and change it, though. I can only act from now forward. But that doesn't keep me from having a lot of regret that I'll never get rid of."

  I frowned. That felt uncomfortably familiar. "That happens to me. Sometimes I feel like I might have decided wrong. I'm still convinced that my argument for what I did was right and it makes sense, but I see what happened afterward and I still hurt. Are right decisions supposed to hurt?"

  "Sometimes," he said distantly. "But sometimes that's telling you that it's the wrong decision. That it would have been better to try to muddle along with the less desirable choice." He paused and rubbed his eyes. "I don't know. I'm sorry. Old guy talk. Don't worry about it."

  "I guess," I said.

  "C'mon, Szandor, let's find some vampires."

  The second vampire organization, OTV, was the more traditional and aristocratic of the two groups, so the locations we hit were much nicer: a few mansions in the Avalon Hills, a Wellington apartment, a yacht house by the lake, and a Midtown penthouse near all the night clubs. I was surprised how many addresses Kolchak knew and how many of them turned up to be correct. He was batting maybe 80%, which made me think that he could have possibly cleared out a lotta vamps if he got a team together and didn't sleep for 40 hours straight.

  Of course, someone had done that work for us. Despite hearing about them, so far I had never seen a single OTV vampire. Not living, at least[10]. I saw a bunch of heartless desiccated corpses, but that was hardly representative of what these vampire aristocrats supposedly were. Kolchak was unnerved by this, after seeing so many dead after yesterday. I had a bit more balanced impression. On the one hand, yes, a whole swath of vampires were taken out within days, probably by the super badass revenant organization that had already indicated that it wanted to kill us, giving the revenants a major opportunity to use the power vacuum. On the other hand, a whole shit ton of vampires were dead. That had to be a huge win for Kolchak, who had dedicated years to this war against them. As someone who had only learned vampires existed two days before, I still wanted to monster hunter high five on this one. But I've never been one to think about power vacuums until someone brings them up.

  "Is the Family really that strong?" I asked, lighting a cigarette. I cracked the window and held the cigarette out it.

  "In general, their breed is stronger and faster than the conventional vampires," said Kolchak.

  "You'd think they'd have taken over or killed off the other vamps sooner."

  "On paper that seems obvious, but it's not quite as easy as that. They only come from Avalon, like all the other strange monster variants you find here. They're not centuries or even possibly millennia old organizations like OTV. The old Sanguines have structure which has reinforced their power. The Leeches have never had anything close to that. There are less of them. They're aggressive, so they often fight amongst themselves, leading them to become loners. Organizing was counter to their natures."

  "Until now," I said sourly.

  "Until now," he said glumly."The Family is different. It's due to leadership. From everything I've learned, it is more like a cult. Their leader is their goddamn messiah and the head of the family. Everyone else is a fanatical member of that cult. They are very insular. I've even stumbled on other revenants killed by them."

  "Were they missing their hearts too?"

  He shook his head. "I've never seen that before yesterday. There are many ways to kill, but I think the Family is trying to make a point. Rather than a stake through the heart, they're tearing the hearts out."

  "I guess gruesome is something we can add into the description of them."

  "And ruthless," said Kolchak. "I'm not looking to tangle with them. I admit, I got a little lazy since they were keeping to themselves unless messed with. But they're showing just what they're capable of if they have the will to do it. I just don't know their long term plans."

  "That might be your new job," I said, only half joking. "If they did indeed kill all other vampires in town, you'll need to figure out what your new objective is. They might be your new target."

  "That's one of the things that worries me," said Kolchak.

  "So what do you do for money?" I asked, as we drove to the next place.

  "For money?" asked Kolchak.

  "I mean, how do you fund your hunting? I've been brainstorming for ways to keep going with it. Supplies, time, it's all expensive. It's hard to do it out of the goodness of your heart when your rent is due."

  "This is simply something I do," said Kolchak. "I have an occupation that pays for it. I don't expect hunting to pay."

  I nodded. "It seems that way. But what if - hear me out - what if we did find a way to pay for it? Like, not only helping people who pay us, though I don't want to turn people down. But maybe like community money or donations."

  "You want to become part of the government?" said Kolchak, not understanding.

  "No! I mean, what about a crowdfunding campaign? That's what I'm trying now on FundstarterGoGo. You put up there what you're trying to do, and people pledge money to back you, sometimes getting a perk for helping."

  "A perk?"

  "Like, a free shirt, access to behind the scenes videos, or a free service."

  "You're making shirts?"

  "No," I said, though I wondered if my campaign got popular enough if I should make shirts. I'm sure Dickie would have accused me of leaving money on the table. "I'm thinking videos of me in action hunting might be something people want to see."

  "You're not to film anything of me or while we're together," said Kolchak gravely. It was a statement, not a question.

  "No, I would never do that without permission!" I said. I had already surreptitiously snapped a picture of Kolchak on my phone, from the first night in case he turned out to be a serial killer and they needed to use my phone to find out who had done me wrong. "But it's just an idea of something I can do at no cost to give them a look inside hunting. It's also an incentive for them to pledge money to back me."

  "Are your finances really so dire?"

  "Honestly? Yes," I said, taking a drag on my cigarette. "I have collect
ions calling me daily. I got fucked up by a giant serpent in April and the hospital bills continued that fucking. I'm having trouble just making normal bills, much less the hospital debt. If I make my goal on my campaign, it will just about cover my debt. Though I hope to make more than that so I can pay bills, maybe get new gear."

  "People will pay more than your goal?" said Kolchak. "They don't stop once you hit what you claim you needed?"

  "Nope, it's all about stretch goals! I can say that if I get X amount more money, I can do other things! Maybe promise people more stuff!"

  Kolchak shook his head. "These new crowd things are a mystery to me."

  "It kinda was to me, but a friend helped me with it. But I'm hurting bad for cash and I'm trying to find anything I can to get out of this hole I'm in. My brother helps when he can, but he's only a little more financially comfortable because his girlfriend lives with him. My mom's gone and my dad was a deadbeat loser who left when I was really young, so I have nothing to fall back on."

  Kolchak frowned. "That is very terrible," he finally said slowly.

  "It's my dream to one day just do hunting and make a living at it," I said. "I'm not sure how. Maybe this campaign is it, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's the Matreon thing I got going on too. I don't know. But it's my dream, and I'm going to find a way to make it work."

  "Well, I hope your dream happens one day," said Kolchak with a shrug.

  "Me too."

  Our next destination was not in the typically lush, opulent, or affluent areas we had been tracking down the aristocratic OTV in. This was instead a house on the Husks side of Huskerville. While north of the highway, it was still south enough from the main part of the Husks that it was in the residential area, not the warehouses. People lived in this area, but it was still pretty sketchy and bordered some vacant properties, such as stores and factories. It actually wasn't very far from the Night Market, though nothing of that wonderful bazaar was visible from this street.