“No. Not yet. Wait.”
Mr. Trash Bags stopped, poised where he was, tentacles extended to the top of the boot, little eyes on stalks turned to me hopefully.
It was time to try good cop/bad cop. Even in the mood I was in, I could still play good cop. We Southern women are good at being cordial even when we hate someone. “If I were you, I’d talk. He really wants to eat your toes. He’s been frozen for a while, and I guess that builds up an appetite.”
The cultist’s eyes filled with tears. Blood was dripping from where a dime-sized piece of flesh had been bitten off his nose. His lips trembled. “I’ll talk.” His voice was all watery and childish. “But I don’t know anything.”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Benno Jurgen.”
“Right, okay, Beano—”
“Benno!”
“Sorry. I know this is really traumatic, but I need to know what you have done with the baby your guys stole.”
The tears multiplied, “We never got a baby. We just wanted the artifact.”
“Fine, okay.” It was neither fine nor okay. I’d recovered it, but what I really wanted was my son. “So you wanted the artifact, and what did you do?”
“We should never have done it!”
“Undoubtedly.” I couldn’t roll my eyes any further without risking their falling out. “I mean, yeah, mistakes were made, you should never have done it, but what did you do?”
“The high priestess, Lucinda, she told us if we had it, we could cast a spell that would mean none of us would ever die, and also make everyone our servants and us kings of the world.”
“Of course she did.” Every religion in the world warns that evil is corrupting, evil is seductive, evil is all sorts of bad things, but they never tell you that evil is boring. Still, the evil ones always all want the same thing: control. They’re predictable. They prey on naïve losers like this. Benno looked very young and that was playing havoc with me. I wanted to wipe his face and tell him to sin no more, but he’d messed with my family, so I was fresh out of pity. “Then what?”
He snuffled, wiped his nose—blood and snot—on his sleeve and said, “I can’t tell you.”
“He’s going to eat your toes.”
“No, be listening to me. I can’t tell you or they’ll kill me. They said if we left for any reason, they’d kill us. I liked it when it was just cool parties and drinking, but I didn’t like to do things to people, and all the dead robots. All the robots made from parts of dead people and things.” He shivered. “But they said they’d kill me. They’ll use my flesh to make more automatons.”
“Well, bless your heart,” which was Alabama woman for wow you’re an idiot. “That’s one of the risks you take when you join a death cult.”
“Toes?” Mr. Trash Bags yelled, and he began slithering inside the boots.
Benno shouted. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk! We hired Brother Death.”
That was a new one on me. “Keep your voice down. If you attract attention, Mr. Trash Bags might eat your tongue. Nod if you understand… Good. Tell me about this Brother Death.”
“We hired him to retrieve the artifact. So we could give it to high priestess Lucinda. Our leader wanted to impress her. He messaged her as soon as it arrived, very proud. She’s coming to Koln tomorrow to get it.”
Since the artifact was in my pocket, Lucinda was going to be pissed. “Where’s your leader now?”
“You just shot him in head! I was only his driver.”
“In that clown car?”
“Wilhelm said it’s easy to park and good for the environment.”
I resisted the sudden urge to shoot him in the face.
“The high priestess didn’t know about our plan. It was to surprise her so our church could gain favor. We are a new chapter, but we would be first among the Condition, and blessed with power and riches. Wilhelm just told her so she can come and get it.”
“You guys are ambitious. Who is Brother Death?”
He hesitated too long. Mr. Trash Bags now had more than a few tentacles down Benno’s boots and was looking at me, bouncing gently, like a dog waiting for the order to eat the treat on his nose; like a toddler with his hand in the cookie jar, waiting for the go-ahead. “Okay, but just his pinky toe.”
“No! No one knows much about him, even in our circles. He’s an entity, from Africa originally, but he’ll work anywhere for a price. He’s very old, older than humanity. Dirty jobs you want done, you summon him, make a deal, and he does them. He can sneak in places and take over minds. To kill things or take things, he is the best. Very dangerous, very smart. So we made a contract and signed it in blood.”
As Benno said that, a chill ran down my spine. I remembered the voice on the phone saying I couldn’t pay the price he charged. “How did you pay him?”
“Souls, human sacrifice, magic, pain, whatever.”
It sounded like they’d hired a top-tier supernatural hitman. It was obvious that this was a new and fairly inept branch of the Condition, but they’d made a deal with something truly dangerous. “Why did you think of hiring something like him?”
“I don’t know. Lucinda taught Wilhelm how to summon him. Other groups of the church have hired him before, so we thought—”
“You’d promise my son in payment?” My voice must have had some kind of edge because Benno blanched and Mr. Trash Bags said “Toes?” hopefully.
“No, no, nonono! We didn’t know he was going to get your son, I swear!”
I was sure he wasn’t the mastermind of this plan, and he certainly wasn’t even one of the big wheels in the small group he belonged to. Hell, it was quite possible that he had been desperate to quit the Condition ever since he’d realized they were more than a drinking club, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to gut-shoot and leave him to bleed out in agony. Because of their stupid idea, their impulse no more serious than giving an apple to a teacher, my grandfather had lost his life and my baby was missing.
I noticed the night had grown uncomfortably cold.
“How do you contact Brother Death? Where can I find him?”
“That was Wilhelm’s job! I don’t know. I only met him once when we signed the contract.”
“You signed the contract too? What did it say?”
“It was…I don’t know…hard to read. The language was weird. It was written on a piece of skin. I was scared but Wilhelm told us we all had to sign or else!”
I realized that fog was gathering in the alley.
“Oh shit.” I could no longer hear the noise of the party. Something weird was going on. “You never sign a contract with monsters!”
“Danger, Cuddle Bunny,” Mr. Trash Bags warned as he crawled off of Benno and toward me. “Collection imminent.”
Benno was still lying on the ground. The fog collecting around him had begun to glow red, and it was as if the light was coming from beneath him.
“What?” he shrieked. “What’s happening?”
What was happening was that their magical contract with Brother Death had probably had a nondisclosure clause, which Benno had just violated the hell out of, and now hell was going to violate him.
The streetlights dimmed to nothing. Now the only thing illuminating the darkness was that eerie red fog. All my instincts told me to run, but I stayed. The ground around him seemed to fade away. From beneath, rusty chains appeared, acting with a mind of their own, curling around Benno’s body and pinning his arms to his side. They’d come literally out of nowhere. It happened so fast all I could do was leap back.
“Help! Help me!” Benno screamed as the chains tightened.
What came from below to collect him was lumbering, simultaneously slimy and furry, a mix of discordant parts which I had too much sanity to identify. To collect him to where, I had no idea. That had probably been specified in all that supernatural legalese these cultists hadn’t bothered to explain to Benno.
The dim light spared me a good view of the creature. All I got was hin
ts, and that was enough to make me nauseous. Benno started screaming, but a black hand with six fingers clamped his mouth shut. It had several heads. One of them—the closest approximate description would be boarlike—turned toward me.
This does not concern you, Hunter.
The way that terrible swarm of wasps of a voice assaulted my brain, I knew that this wasn’t the thing I’d been talking to on the phone. This was sick and wrong. Its presence on Earth was trespassing. Standing in front of that terrible, otherworldly horror, I should have been frightened, but I was a mother on a mission.
“I think it does concern me.”
The trade was made. It traded itself to the Adze. The Adze traded it to us. We will claim what is ours now.
That was the kind of terrifying shit right there that nobody was going to put on a parade float.
“The Adze called Brother Death. He’s stolen something of mine. I need to find him.”
While Benno kicked and thrashed and tried to get away, the demon thought it over.
We could trade for this information. Only that which we collect, you cannot give. The Guardians already claim you.
This thing was about to swallow Benno’s soul and could probably flay me alive with a thought, but I was angry and desperate. I didn’t know what being a Guardian entailed, but all these cosmic horrors seemed to. “Tell me how to find him or I will hurt you.”
You would not even know how.
“I might not now, but if I can’t get my kid back then I’ll make it my mission in life to find a way.”
A snake head slithered over and whispered something in the boar’s ear. The sound could best be described as gibbering madness. Just hearing a little bit of it made my nose bleed.
Brother Death is a valued seller…However, strife in the mortal realm amuses us. And we owe you. You have done us a favor.
There was no way I’d ever do a favor for something like this. Just the idea made my skin want to crawl off.
By recently killing a few of those who signed the contract, we did not have to wait for them to age and die before collection. By making this one violate the terms, we may rightfully claim both spirit and body. They are more useful to us when they still have flesh.
Useful for what, I didn’t want to know. “Then tell me how to find Brother Death.”
In the place of power you’ll find him, where evil dwells beneath. In the country of the sea.
I almost thanked it, but something warned me that would be a mistake and I started walking away instead. “Come on, Mr. Trash Bags.” Country of the sea. So probably not Germany. I mean, it had shores, but no one ever called it a seafaring country primarily.
Farewell, Guardian.
The poor, stupid, condemned cultist pleaded for help with his wide, tear-filled eyes. “Sorry. You’re on your own, Benno.”
It felt good to be back under the electric lights. By the time I’d reached the street, the fog had dissipated. I turned back to look, and the alley was empty. Where Benno had been, there was just a damp spot on the pavement.
That’s what you get for not reading the fine print.
* * *
It’s always been my experience that if you walk along looking like you know what you’re doing and are precisely where you’re supposed to be, few people will call you on it. But the area was crawling with cops and there had to be eyewitness descriptions of me circulating—5’11” Caucasian female, dark hair, glasses, athletic build—but luckily that description wasn’t that unusual here. I had no idea if I’d been caught on Europe’s ubiquitous cameras, and then I started worrying about anything I might have left fingerprints on. I tried to remember how I’d touched the Smart Car, and then I really started hoping that the fire had spread to destroy the evidence.
I wasn’t in the country legally. Germany was super strict about monster hunting, and I didn’t have a license for the gun I had tucked beneath my shirt. I’d just committed at least a couple murders, a bunch of attempted murders, arson, and grand theft float. In the US it was legal to kill anybody who qualified as a necromancer, but even then, local law enforcement was going to assume you were a psycho and roll you up until the MCB arrived to sort it out. I wasn’t sure if it worked the same way in this country, or if they even had a necromancer exception at all. If they caught me, I could be looking at prison.
The problem was that for every minute I spent answering police questions and waiting for rescue, it was that much longer Ray would be in the power of a supernatural assassin, and that I could not abide.
So I kept walking and tried not to get noticed, which was easy amid the crazy costumes. I moved in behind a group costumed as zombies and shambled along with them.
“Dead are not real dead. Confused.” Then Mr. Trash Bags climbed up on my shoulder for a better view, and he must have enjoyed the wind on his half-dozen eyeballs. “Whee.”
That was just too unnerving. Whatever survival instincts Mr. Trash Bags had when he’d been huge and fearsome must have gotten burned away with his bulk. Monsters were usually smart enough to hide. “You can’t let anyone see you, for both our safety. Don’t make a sound, and hide in my gear bag until I tell you otherwise.” Somehow the little blob managed to look disappointed, so I told him, “And good job back there. You did great. Thank you. Because of you we’re one step closer to rescuing Cuddle Bunny’s Cuddle Bunny.” That seemed to make him happy, and Mr. Trash Bags oozed down my shoulder to drop into the bag.
I was exhausted, hungry, needed to get off the streets before I got arrested, and had to plan my next move. Benno had said Lucinda was on the way to Cologne to get the artifact. She was the one who’d taught their leader, Wilhelm, how to summon Brother Death. I got out the phone I’d stolen and read through his texts while I walked. My German was rudimentary so I couldn’t understand most of them, but Lucinda was British, and sure enough there was a text—no names—in English, a few minutes after I’d sent the artifact through the rope that said I have found something very special for you. I hope you will be pleased.
And then the response. Don’t waste my time.
Then poor stupid Wilhelm tried again. It was your father’s most precious thing. I have it in my hands.
Dawn. Meet at the river.
That was infuriatingly vague. Cologne was a big city on both sides of the Rhine. So all I had to do was figure out how to find the cagey leader of a death cult who was really good at not being found, in an unfamiliar foreign city.
I needed help.
MHI took the occasional job in Europe, but for the most part, hunting here was dominated by governments and a handful of private companies. The biggest and most successful of those was Grimm Berlin. They virtually owned private monster hunting in Germany and were our biggest single competitor when it came time to compete for foreign contracts in countries that didn’t have their own monster hunting companies. We’d teamed up a few times now and had a pretty good working relationship, but that was mostly with their leader, Klaus Lindemann.
Only Klaus and most of his top-tier personnel were at Severny Island with my husband and friends. But monster hunting never slept, so to speak, not even when most of us were off saving the world. They surely would have left behind enough staff to look after things while they were gone. Like MHI, it would probably be the young, the old, the half trained, the nearly retired, and all those they could spare from the really dangerous and important business going on up north.
Even if they were the B team, they would still have access to resources I didn’t. This was their home turf. If Lucinda was coming here, Grimm Berlin was really my only hope of finding her, and she was my only hope of finding Brother Death.
There was a little outdoor café where a bunch of hipster types were hanging around smoking, drinking, and talking. So I stopped there, waiting at the edge of the tables but not sitting down, got out my phone, and called Grimm Berlin’s main line. I keep all the different company contacts ready in case of emergency. The phone rang so long that I was revising my
opinion of whether they had left anyone behind. Then an irritated voice answered, “Yah, yah, Grimm Berlin, was ist los?”
It seemed like a less-than-professional way to start the conversation, but who was I to judge. We had Dorcas. Her greeting was dependent upon her temper, her pudding coefficient, and whether they’d interrupted her all-important game of solitaire. Plus, even though I was still on Alabama time, it was getting late here.
I hoped this lady spoke English, though not doing so was actually surprisingly rare in this country. “This is Julie Shackleford from Monster Hunter International.”
That sure got her attention because she started shouting into the phone. “You’ve heard then? From Severny Island?”
Of course that’s what she thought. Why else would MHI be calling? Their people were just as much in danger as mine. I knew how she felt, having spent all these months waiting anxiously for every check-in, and being worried that I was about to be given news of my husband’s death, like this, with no preamble, over the phone.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t heard anything. That’s not why I called.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I hoped you had news of Klaus and the others.”
“Me too. I’m afraid I’ve not heard anything since that blizzard started. I’m in Cologne pursuing something, and I could use your assistance.”
There was a long pause. “Our teaming agreement with MHI states that you must inform us when taking a contract in our territory. Not to mention foreign Hunters must register with the government twenty-four hours before entering the country, and we’ve received no notification of—”
They sure loved having their papers in order. “Listen. I don’t mean to be rude but an hour ago I was in Alabama. I fell through a portal to get here, and at the time I didn’t even know where here was. A few minutes later I walked right into an active cell of Condition cultists and shot them with a gun I’m probably not supposed to have, and now I need to know if you’re going to help a sister out or turn me over to the police.”
“Why—”
“Because I just found out that Lucinda Hood is on her way to Cologne right now.” That caused an audible gasp and then a really long pause. Long enough for one of the local studly-looking young guys to wander over to try and flirt with me. Flattering as that was, I moved the phone away from my mouth and said, “Buzz off.”
Monster Hunter Guardian (ARC) Page 12
