Since this was about to turn ugly I roughly stopped the people coming up behind me, while still letting the people who were already crossing off. “Sky bridge is closed for maintenance. Sorry. Go around.”
“Aw, come on,” said a very round, very red, Kool-Aid Man. “The food court’s right over there.”
“Trust me, pal. You don’t want to crash through this wall.” I really wasn’t in the mood. “Seriously, we’re about to have a rumble here.”
“Ooh, a flash mob.” He took out his phone to take video.
For a very tense moment, the regular, unwitting people kept getting off the sky bridge, as an increasingly annoyed crowd backed up behind me, until it was just us, the girl, and the snake people, one of whom was staring at his phone, then at the red backpack, and then back at his phone. “That’ss her.” He hissed, and by hissed, I mean he really put the accent on the s sounds. “Sseize the ssstone.”
That was a very obnoxious affectation. I’d long thought the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition held the title for most annoying death cult, but that fake lisp nonsense sure bumped these guys up the rankings. “Shove it up your asssss,” I said. “Just talk normal, doofus.”
From the way they all pulled out knives, I think my words actually hurt the snake cultists’ feelings. They had been trying extra hard to be frightening.
The girl looked between us and the cultists, then grinned and said, “Ooh, MCB dorks versus snake pricks. Nice.”
“We’re not MCB, and we don’t want to hurt you.” Trip was ever the diplomat, as he appealed earnestly to the possibly psychotic shapeshifter. “I can’t say that for these other guys. We just want the Ward. We can protect you from them.”
She actually laughed. “Aw, that’s cute.” The girl had a very normal, vanilla, middle-American accent, and sounded about as old as all her faces looked. “But I don’t need protecting.”
Then she punched the wall, cracking the thick glass with one tiny fist, and then threw her shoulder against it. The glass shattered as she crashed through.
It was a pretty good drop to the street. Easily far enough to break a bunch of bones, but she didn’t actually hit the street. She fell in a shower of broken glass, landed on the roof of a moving car, rolled, slid down the trunk, and somehow hit feetfirst, as we all stared in shocked disbelief. She saw me watching, then put her hand to her forehead, pointer finger and thumb extended to make an L, calling us losers. Then she started running again.
The witnesses loved that stunt and started clapping for her.
Trip immediately transmitted. “She’s jumped off the sky bridge and is on the street level . . . heading . . . I have no idea at this point. I’m lost.”
“Oh, screw that. I am not jumping out the window after her.”
Even if I had been tempted to break my legs, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity anyway, because that’s when the cultists decided to try and murder us.
The five of them rushed Trip. I thought about just pulling my .45 and dropping them all, but overpenetration is a bitch, and there were about a hundred innocent bystanders just behind them whom I really didn’t want to put holes into by accident. So we’d do this the old-fashioned way. Hopefully Trip wouldn’t get stabbed before I got there.
Except Trip surprised me by pulling out a canister of pepper spray and hosing them all down with it. The cultists screamed and clutched at their eyes. One still managed to slash at him, but Trip leapt back before he could get clipped. I passed Trip by and threw a hook to the cultist’s midsection hard enough to pancake his liver. He bounced off the glass.
Even partially blind and gasping, a moron with a knife is still extremely dangerous. I caught an incoming stab and twisted the wrist hard. He squealed when the bones broke, and I slung him around into one of his buddies. Their heads hit so hard that I knew they were on a one-way trip to concussion town. Trip kicked the next one in the leg, and when that dirtbag dropped to one knee, Trip slugged him right in his stupid fake fangs. Or at least I was assuming they were fake the way they snapped off and went flying. Trip managed to hit him three more times before the silly-looking weirdo flopped to the carpet.
The last snake man still standing was orange dye-faced, crying, wheezing, coughing, and had dropped his goofy butterfly knife, but in his other hand was his phone. Since he’d been looking at it earlier, it must have had the tracking app on it. “Give me that.” I snatched the phone from him. Then I kicked him in the balls really hard, just on general principle.
It had only taken a few seconds to leave them all unconscious or weeping on the floor.
“That was awesome!” shouted Kool-Aid Man, because apparently the observers thought that had been some sort of elaborate staged event. “I’m posting this on Instagram!” Thankfully for us the crowd’s density and enthusiasm were the only thing keeping the cops from getting through. Except then the cloud of pepper spray wafted over and people started to freak out when it got in their eyes. They thought they had it bad? I’d been closer and it was really irritating my asthma.
“We’ve got to go.” I did glance briefly out the hole the shapeshifter had made, calculated the drop, and decided that I liked my ankles unshattered, thank you very much. We started toward what had been the snake end of the bridge. We were moving through the crowd again fast, but pretty much lost, and on the lookout for the cops. “I didn’t know you carried pepper spray.”
“I never leave home without my spicy treat dispenser.” Trip shook his hand out. “Ouch. This is why right here. I think I broke my pinky on that guy’s head.”
“Yeah, that happens. You need stronger bones.” Which was total BS, because I’d lost track of how many fingers I’d broken over the years against various skulls, human and other. “Drink more milk.”
“Those poor saps will want some milk to wash out their eyes.”
“That’s actually a myth. You want to scrub your face with Dawn dish soap, and then rinse it off with water,” I explained. Trip gave me a quizzical look, wondering how I knew about getting pepper sprayed. “I was a bouncer, remember? Hazard of the job.”
“Oh yeah . . . ” he said. “What do we do now?”
I handed him the cultist’s phone. It was a map of the area with a blinking dot that was steadily moving away from us. “We can use this, but we need to find a way to disappear before we get busted.” This place had to be covered in security cameras.
Trip immediately started relaying directions to Earl as we kept our heads down and kept walking, nice and calm, nothing to see here, officer. APD would certainly arrest us. By the time Boone got everything sorted out with his local contacts, our quarry would be long gone.
We’d wound up in some gigantic food court area. There were hundreds of people waiting in line at dozens of establishments, and every available table was taken. Unfortunately, a bunch of witnesses from the sky bridge were still pointing at us and talking about the fight. And of course, from the opposite direction, more cops were coming, but they hadn’t seen us yet.
“This way,” Trip said, and I followed him around a corner, and then another, where it was slightly quieter. There were still lots of people, but none of them were currently gesturing at us or taking our picture. Down some stairs, and then another turn—this place really was a maze—and now it was just people who looked really tired or hung over, sullenly eating their takeout in quiet.
“If we go after her, we’re just going to get picked up. The cops will all have our descriptions by now.”
“They will,” Trip agreed. “Be on the lookout for a ruggedly handsome black man and the Rock’s chubbier stunt double.”
“Hey now. It’s getting thinner up top but I’ve still got most of my hair. If we’re going to get back in the chase, we’re going to need to hide our faces.” At least disguises couldn’t be too hard around here.
Trip kept giving the others directions from the tracking device as we went down some more stairs and out an employee-only door that led into a narrow alley. A few people
in costumes had snuck out here for a vape break. I could tell they were a group because of the matching costumes. One of them was close to my size, only he was dressed in a gigantic blue suit. A Cookie Monster helmet was sitting on a post next to him.
“Hey, man, how much for the costume?”
“What?” the guy asked, obviously confused. “It wasn’t that much, I guess. I just got it off of Amazon.”
“No.” I took out my wallet. “How much to buy it from you right now?”
“Uh . . . what?”
I checked my wallet. I had eight hundreds, six fifties, a bunch of twenties, and no time to haggle. Damn it. Earl had better reimburse me for this. I pulled out all the cash and shoved it toward the perplexed cosplayer. “Here, take this, and give me your costume, right now. There’s no time to explain.”
He took the money, looked at it surprised, but then said, “But I can’t take it off. I’m not wearing anything under here. It’s really superhot in this thing.” In fact, his face was really sweaty.
“Gross,” Trip said.
“Okay, just the helmet thing then.” Then I pointed at his buddy. “But you’ve got to throw in Elmo’s head too, for my friend.”
“Oh, come on,” Trip said. “Can I at least have Oscar?”
“No!” It turned out the one wearing a garbage can was female, and she put her hands on her mask protectively. “Mine’s custom. I put a lot of work into it!”
“Fine,” Trip said as he begrudgingly took the Elmo helmet from the other guy.
Headless Elmo and Cookie Monster counted their money. “Whoa, thanks, dudes!”
It was costing me about thirteen hundred bucks to avoid getting arrested, but hopefully this would work. I put the helmet on. It smelled like someone had been eating goat cheese in there.
We hit the street, following the tracking app. She was way ahead of us, but it looked like the shapeshifter was moving at walking speeds, probably trying to avoid any further attention. Trip kept giving directions to the others. Hopefully one of them could get eyes on the Ward before she vanished.
Thankfully, Skippy’s flying skills saved the day.
“This is Milo. The drone is over the location Trip gave. I do see one woman carrying a red backpack. She’s no longer in the black jacket though. Looks like she had a white shirt under it.”
Despite the giant googly eyes on my head, the vision on this thing was horrible because I had to look out a mesh-covered slit in the mouth. I kept bumping into a lot of people, but I tried to get into the spirit of it. “Me so sorry! Me clumsy!”
“You look like a ridiculous bobblehead,” Trip muttered.
Doubtlessly true, because so did he, but sometimes you just needed to embrace the absurdity. “Me want cookie! Me want catch shapeshifter to get arcane superweapon! Nom nom nom!”
“I refuse to do the voice. I’ve got too much dignity,” Trip insisted.
“Elmo need tickles!”
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
I switched back to my real voice. “Well, someone’s in a mood.”
“I didn’t realize I got pepper spray on my hand when I punched that cultist, until I touched my eye putting this stupid thing on my face.”
Trip had a good excuse to be cranky. That shit burns.
The blip on the phone kept moving in the same direction, coinciding with the info Milo was feeding us. She must not have known about the cultist’s bug or the drone. She could ninja leap and shape-shift all she wanted, but slow and steady was going to win this race . . . I hoped.
We were moving away from the main hotels, so the crowd was thinning out some. But there was still a lot of foot traffic, and every place that sold food or drinks was packed and had a line out the door.
“The target is turning into a building on the west side of the street,” Milo reported. He had a street address from the computer program, but no information as to what was located there. Holly checked in. She was close too. Earl and Gregorius were a minute behind her because they’d also had to dodge the law, only I couldn’t imagine either of them wearing costumes. Gregorious because he was just so dour, and Earl on general principle . . . Though come to think of it, he could have turned into a werewolf and in this crowd people probably would have just complimented him on how realistic it looked and then tried to take their picture with him.
“Sorry, guys, the drone has lost visual.”
We got there a moment later and saw that it was an office building where a bunch of different kinds of firms rented the lower floors, but residential apartments above. There were a lot of people inside the lobby area, but none of them had a big red backpack. Trip and I got strange looks from the business-casual-dressed people, which meant it was time to ditch our silly disguises. I pulled Cookie Monster’s head off and tucked it under my arm before approaching the receptionist.
“May I help you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Did a young woman come through here a minute ago?” Since I didn’t know what face our shapeshifter was currently wearing, that was all the description I could give, but come to think of it, her being limited to young and female was just a guess on my part based on her behavior so far. “Or maybe somebody else with a big red backpack?”
We must have looked like shifty, sweaty, dangerous types, because she said, “I’m afraid that’s none of your business, sir.” Except as I had asked the question, her eyes had flicked unconsciously down the hall to the left.
“Thanks.” The two of us started walking in that direction, but then I paused briefly when I saw the sign on the door. It was the lady’s restroom. Trip checked the tracker, then nodded. I shrugged, dropped Cookie Monster’s head, drew my handgun, and pushed the door open.
“You can’t go in there!” the receptionist shouted after us. “Security!”
We swept in, guns up. It appeared to be empty. There was a red backpack sitting on the sink. I rushed to it, while Trip checked both of the stalls.
The bag was flat. Empty. No magic rock.
“The stone’s gone.”
“Clear,” Trip said after shoving open the second door. “Where’d she go?”
About ten feet up, with no practical way for a regular person to reach it, was a window. From all her jumping and flipping, it wouldn’t have been too hard for her. It was open. I keyed my radio. “The target has snuck out the back. She ditched the backpack with the tracker, but she’s got the Ward.”
“What’s Skippy looking for then?”
“I have no idea.”
“We’ll do what we can. Milo out.”
“Damn it!” I kicked the garbage can in frustration.
“Boost me up,” Trip suggested.
“Good idea.” We hadn’t been that far behind her. He might be able to see something. So I holstered my gun, made a stirrup with my hands, Trip stepped on them, and I lifted. Hunters have to practice for weird crap like this, so hoisting Trip up there was a piece of cake.
I grunted. “See anything?”
He held onto the windowsill and peered out. “Just a parking lot. I think I can fit. I’m going after her.”
Trip had far broader shoulders than the shapeshifter, so it took him a few seconds of precarious struggling, but then he made it and I could quit holding him up. He wiggled through. “I’ll catch up,” I shouted as Trip dropped into the parking lot on the other side.
As we were pulling off that clever maneuver, I could hear the receptionist screaming at somebody else they couldn’t go back there, again. That was probably our friends.
Only the thing that came through the door was no Hunter. In fact, it was bigger than me, and clad entirely in dirty, tattered robes. My nostrils got hit with a smell like the reptile house at the zoo. Rags covered most of its face, but in the shadows beneath its hood could be seen two unblinking yellow eyes. Its green, scaly hands were visible, each finger ending in a long black talon. In those hands was an iPhone in a pink bejeweled case which was incongruously cheerful and really didn’t match the rest of th
e creature’s ensemble.
This was probably the one time of year a thing like this could walk around downtown Atlanta and not get shot on sight. This was no squishy human cultist. This was the real deal.
The reptoid glared at me, then it glanced down at the blinking light on the phone it had surely taken from one of its human cultists, then it looked over at the sink and the empty backpack. When it saw that the stone was gone, the monster let out a really perturbed hissing sound.
“Dude, I know how you feel.”
I’d vented my anger by kicking the garbage can. Apparently, the creature decided it was going to take out its frustration over losing the Ward on me, because it came over and tried to swat my head off.
CHAPTER 3
It turns out reptoids are shockingly fast.
I managed to draw my pistol. There wasn’t time to bring up the sights, but we were so close it didn’t matter. I fired twice from the speed rock. The .45 was deafening in the small, tiled room. Both silver hollowpoints nailed it in the chest.
It slammed into me anyway.
My back hit the wall. I ducked as claws cut across the tile, shoved my pistol into its robed belly and pulled the trigger repeatedly. The monster grunted but didn’t go down. That wasn’t good. I’d never fought one before, but my Newbie classes had never mentioned reptoids being bulletproof.
I tried to angle the gun up toward its head, but claws flashed across my forearm and opened me up. Fat droplets of blood splattered on the wall. My STI went sliding across the floor.
“Shit!”
I narrowly dodged aside as the lightning-fast swipe of one hand ripped through my T-shirt and left four shallow lines across my chest. I thought I’d made it, but the reptoid kept spinning, and I’d forgotten they have tails.
Its tail swept my feet out from under me. I was briefly airborne. Then I hit the floor hard with my hip.
Monster Hunter Bloodlines Page 4
