Monster Hunter Guardian (ARC)

by Larry Correia

  As territorial as government Hunters were, she had to have some angle where bringing me along helped her, but I wasn’t about to argue my way out of getting another shot at Ray.

  “Then we should strike fast. Last night Susan got injured by a shadow creature enough to be temporarily imprisoned by some kind of curse. From what little we know about vampires, she’ll probably need time to feed and regain her strength. If she’s there, it won’t be for long. The second she thinks anyone is onto her, she’ll move.”

  “I agree. My raid team will be ready by this afternoon. We will strike while we still have daylight.”

  “Even wounded, Master vampires are no joke. How good is this group of yours?”

  “We are few, but very good. People say Portugal, small country, their ASS is a joke. They say you can do whatever you want in Portugal, and ASS won’t get in the way. We have no budget. No training. All you have to do is give them some gloves…some—how do the Spanish say?—mordida, and they’ll bend over backwards for you. And ASS doesn’t get invited to any gatherings of governmental monster hunting agencies. They don’t even call us if they can help it. Right now, one of your MCB is here, Grant Jefferson, acting like we’re beneath him. He acts like we’re the mat under his feet, the rug on the floor.”

  “To be fair, he acts like that to everyone.”

  “Yes, well, what I say is it’s time ASS proves itself. I got promoted to run Lisbon and I’ve kicked out all the bad elements. I copied the rules of the MCB. I want to run a tight ASS.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. Dear Lord, couldn’t they have called their organization something else? I answered as seriously as I could, “I’d be happy to have A—the agency’s help.” Then I thought I’d better come clean. This was a small and prickly bunch, the last thing I wanted to do was insult this little old country’s pride, so I’d better mention my backup. Though I wasn’t going to give any details yet, the last thing I needed was for them to get locked up like my guys in Germany.

  “MHI is sending a team over to help me. They should be here soon.”

  Lopes looked at me, suspicious, “You too think ASS is not good enough to do the job on its own?”

  “Of course not. No insult was intended. When I called for help, I didn’t even know who you were. If you’re going to conduct a raid anyway, I can provide some extra muscle. The last time MHI took out a Master vampire, we used artillery.”

  “But if we win, everyone will say it was the Americans and not the Portuguese. We’ll still be disrespected.”

  “You can say my people were never here. I promise to give all the credit to ASS.”

  There was a moment where it hung in the balance. At first I’d thought that Lopes was just a regular rank-and-file type, who could get me some intel, not an agent in charge who could get me an army. But you didn’t get to a rank like that unless you were a political animal.

  Then she put her hand out, and we shook on it. “And you’ll speak well of ASS to MCB?”

  I promised. I didn’t tell her that my opinion meant jack to the Monster Control Bureau. I mean, normally when we crossed paths, either the excrement was about to hit the rotating object, or we had other, worse problems. But I didn’t have any objections to praising the Portuguese agency to the MCB in the unlikely event the opportunity should arise.

  “Good, good. Then we will work together because, honestly, when I said my group is good…eh…yes, but we’ve never even seen a Master vampire before, so help will be nice.”

  That’s when the schoolchildren came in. They must have been from some sort of private academy or else Portuguese public schools dressed like the stereotypes of Japanese schools. The kids ranged from six to eight or so in appearance. They were small and dark. A lot of the girls had pigtails. All the girls wore white blouses, plaid skirts and black patent leather Mary Janes. All the boys wore white shirts, blue pants and blue blazers.

  There were about twenty of them with two teachers, and they chattered like tropical birds. The kids, not the teachers. If it hadn’t been for the teachers silencing them now and then, we’d not have been able to hear ourselves think.

  The teachers were saying things like “This is the carriage of King Luis the Boring—” although probably not literally that, since royal nicknames are never that honest, and the kids were instead wandering around and looking at everything in awe, just because it was pretty and gilded. They were doubtless too young for this type of museum visit, but I could see myself walking around like that with Ray in a few years.

  My eyes were suddenly wet, and I had to turn away so Lopes wouldn’t see that I was a barely functioning wreck.

  Which was when I heard the rumbling. It took me a second to recognize the sound because, you see, we were in a museum, with carriages that were quite obviously not only stopped, but had no driver or horses. So, who the hell expected to hear carriage wheels?

  The growing noise was coming from the dim recesses of the museum, composed of squeaks, the sound of wheels turning, and horses’ hooves striking the floor.

  “What in the world?” Lopes said as she reached beneath her jacket to rest her hand on her gun. “Did something from the church last night track you?”

  “I don’t think so. Were you followed?”

  “Eh…” Lopes shrugged. “Maybe? I was obviously in charge.”

  Great.

  Something was coming. The children had heard it, but they were standing there paralyzed, their teachers too. I started shooing them out of there. “Move! Run!”

  Then the ghost carriage burst through the wall.

  I’ve got to hand it to her, Lopes was quick on the draw. She was firing before I even saw the carriage clearly. It was being pulled by black steeds with fiery eyes, with a shadowy driver in outmoded attire, bowling towards us at full speed. Animals, rider, and carriage were all translucent, and I could see the far wall of the museum through them.

  Lopes’ bullets went right into the horses, but the impacts simply rippled like water. They weren’t actually here, but the floor behind them was left glittering with ice crystals. As the horses collided with one of the adult museumgoers, he fell through the carriage but hit the floor twitching like he was having a seizure. His skin turned grey. It was as if just the touch had sucked the life right out of him.

  Everyone screamed. The teachers reacted and began herding the kids away.

  Except there was one little boy standing there, frozen with fear, right in the path of the ghost horses.

  I just reacted.

  The ground was shaking. The cold was like walking into a freezer. I wasn’t going to make it but I ran directly at the danger anyway. Scooping the child up, I hurled myself to the side. I landed on my back to protect the kid, but a ghostly wagon wheel rolled right over my foot. Except rather than a nasty crunch and squirting blood, it passed through like fog, only where it touched was so cold. It was like all the strength went right out of my body.

  All I could do was lie there shivering. I tried to ask, “Are you okay?” but the kid was obviously fine. I’d taken the hit for him. He started wailing and flailing about, broke free from my cold, numbed hands, and ran for his life, thankfully in the direction opposite the ghostly carriage.

  Lopes was still shooting, but it wasn’t doing anything. The carriage narrowly missed her, but then the ghost driver whipped the demon horses and the carriage turned, passing right through the real carriages. It was coming back around to run us down.

  In my perception, time seemed to slow down, so the screaming of the kids, the rolling of ghostly wheels, all the noise, the cries of the teachers, everything got weird like when you play a recording at one tenth the speed.

  I noticed that even though every other bystander was running or hiding, one burly older man was off to the side watching, amused, almost gleeful. Son of a bitch looked like he would be eating popcorn. He saw me looking at him and smiled back, and in that expression I recognized Brother Death.

  Hands trembling, fingers like block
s of ice, I pulled the Sig. As the red dot crossed his torso, I jerked the trigger.

  Brother Death laughed as I killed yet another of his possessed victims.

  The ghost carriage just vanished. One second it was there, terrorizing the school children and giving everyone frostbite; blink, and it was gone.

  Shaking and weak, I managed to get to my feet, and stumbled over to the man I’d shot. He was lying on the floor with a hole in his abdomen. My guess was that I’d hit him in the liver. The sudden cold snap had really messed with my aim. His eyelids were squeezed shut against the pain, so I couldn’t tell if they were that unnatural green, so right then all I could do was hope that I’d made the right call and that I hadn’t just shot some innocent man who just happened to really like carriages.

  Brother Death would’ve hurt me far more by leaving me with those doubts, but he was so cocky that the idea probably never even crossed his mind. It was like he was compelled to taunt me, and the voice that came out of the dying man was clearly that of the Adze.

  “There was so much latent psychic energy here to take advantage of, how could I resist summoning a shade?”

  “What do you want from me now?” I shouted.

  “Before, it was business, but last night’s debacle was a personal insult.”

  How many poor fools did he have wandering around who he had already gotten his hooks into, where he could possess their bodies and use them like this? Had he followed me? Or had he been tailing Lopes? Had he overheard our plan?

  “I don’t give a shit about you, Death. I only care about my son.”

  “But I care you about you, Julie. I’m enjoying myself. Toying with you has been the most fun I’ve had in years. Everything needs a challenge. You will be mine.”

  And then the monster was gone, and it was just some poor man bleeding out from a fatal gunshot wound.

  Lopes joined me, wide-eyed, frightened, and trying not to show it. She’d heard the exchange. “Are you hurt? You’re very pale.”

  The warmth was already starting to return. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I recognize this man,” Lopes muttered. “He was one of the bystanders ASS questioned last night. A spy! Go. Get out of here. ASS will take care of it.”

  “Just don’t shoot the kids,” I mumbled through chattering teeth. “Okay?”

  “What?”

  “The witnesses.”

  “Ah, no. I’m trying to make us more professional like the MCB, not brutal like the Germans. Who cares if there’s a bunch of press out of Portugal talking about ghost things? It’s good for tourism. I mean, we’re not as lazy about it as Brazil. Those guys, anything goes! Never mind. Get out of here. My superiors can’t know I met with you.”

  I started stumbling for the door. “Don’t forget our deal.”

  “Call me in an hour and I will tell you where to meet. Go! I promise no shooting school children.”

  Chapter 22

  An hour and a half later I met Lopes at a private hangar at the Lisbon airport. The guards at the gate had let me through with no problem.

  There were an assortment of government cars, Toyota Land Cruisers, and a couple bigger military trucks parked out front. A whole bunch of men in black fatigues were loading equipment into a large cargo plane. Mortars, flamethrowers, explosives—you know, the usual stuff.

  This would be a great time for Lopes to arrest me to turn me over to the SJK to curry favor, but I parked Management’s car behind the trucks anyway. This was my best bet to get Ray back, so it was worth the risk. Here goes nothing.

  As soon as I got out, Lopes spotted me and jogged over. She was dressed in black fatigues and had put her hair up in a bun. The first thing she did was hand me an iPad.

  “Here’s a summary to read on the flight.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the engines, and we weren’t even that close. “Your mother is a couple of hours away. To the south there is a province called Algarve. Many beaches. Most people there are retired British. It used to be all fishermen villages but now there’s a lot of buildings, but not so many tourists to the part we’re going. It’s still too cold.”

  I made some kind of noncommittal sound, saying that, yes, it was cold. I tried not to think how cold it must have been on Severny Island when the nuke— Focus. When I had Ray back, I could mourn my husband and all my friends. I didn’t know how, but I would. The plaques on the wall of memory would outnumber the ones from the Christmas Party, but we’d get by.

  She’d kept talking, and I realized that I’d gotten distracted and missed something. It made sense: I was emotionally wrung out, injured, tired, and running on caffeine. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “I said that when I was little, everyone vacationed in Algarve, but because of all the foreigners, no one can afford it now. It doesn’t matter. Not relevant.”

  “Are we going to get there in time to hit the place before dark?” Only an idiot hunts vampires in the dark, and only a suicidal idiot would try that with a Master.

  “I don’t like it being this close, but yes. We have to move today before the network realizes Marchand is gone. Look, I’m not going to make excuses. Portugal is a Latin country. In every Latin country there’s the official government, and then there’s the network. It’s all godfather, padrinho—a network of godfathers, compadres.”

  “The mob?” I said, now thoroughly confused.

  “No, no, no. Those stupid movies. No, I mean real compadres. Like when people are your child’s godfather and become family. Family, influence, you know.” Ah yes. Good old boys. We understand good old boys in Alabama. “There are important men who got rich making us turn a blind eye. If this is a vampire’s house, that will be very embarrassing to them. Word of Marchand’s death has not spread far yet, so we must strike before the network tries to stop us. We must kill this vampire now or never.”

  We were both in a hurry, but for entirely different reasons. “Works for me.”

  Lopes looked in the backseat of my car, but it was empty. “So about you bringing that help…”

  “I wanted to make sure this wasn’t an elaborate plot to arrest me first.”

  Lopes shrugged.

  “Radio your guards at the gate and tell them to let my friends through,” I suggested. As Lopes got on her radio and spoke some rapid-fire Portuguese, I got out Management’s untraceable cell and called a number. They picked up immediately. “We’re good. Come on up.”

  “How many Hunters?” Lopes asked.

  “Eighteen of mine. Plus I don’t know how many more who’ve come in from other countries.” Dorcas had been scrounging up everyone she could. Apparently some of Grimm Berlin were ticked that their guy Fabian had gotten thrown in jail, and Darne’s people were thankful I’d just scored them a free bounty on a bicho. “But we’re going to need to borrow equipment for most of them.”

  Lopes nodded appreciatively. “As long as you understand I’m in charge, and that they will follow ASS commands without question.”

  “Of course.” My baby’s life was at stake. I could swallow my pride. But if it looked like ASS was going to screw this up, I wouldn’t hesitate to frag Lopes myself. She seemed like a pro, but I’m goal-oriented. “Tell me about the target.”

  “Those with no passport, no money come to Algarve to sleep on the beach. So who cares if five or ten disappear a year? No one even notices. As long as this vampire never take locals, the network takes Marchand’s money and says look the other way. It will be the end of my career, the end of funding for ASS if we don’t.”

  I was getting the picture, and it took my breath away. For as annoying as the MCB could be, at least they didn’t turn a blind eye to vampires.

  “This team here is supposed to be on cleanup duty at the convent. By the time my superiors find out what we are doing, it will be too late. I’ll be honest. That’s why I invited you.”

  I had pieced that together on the drive back from the museum. “So if this all goes horribly wrong, you’ll tell your bosses that you w
ent there because you got a tip I was going to be there so you could arrest me. Where I’m from we call that plausible deniability.”

  She actually laughed. “That, and eighteen more shooters will be nice too. I’ve got twenty, counting me.”

  And here I had been getting my hopes up. Occasionally working alongside the MCB and their seemingly bottomless toy box had given me an unrealistic view of what other government Hunters’ resources were like. “Don’t you guys have private hunting companies here you could contract?”

  “A few. Dark Fate. The Legion of Mary. The Aguas Santas Slayers. Not very big you know. Nothing like your company. But I told you we’re a very old country, lots of outbreaks. Little ones, big ones. We could have hired one, probably in Algarve: the Pescadores de Polvo. But their hands are tied even more than us. Going against pressure from above would destroy our funding. We believe in protecting people, but you can’t do that if you can’t eat. But private Hunters? They would go to jail.”

  That would have pissed me off, giving something that evil a pass, just because it didn’t rock the boat too hard. “We’ll make this work.”

  “The target’s name is Sergio Saturnino, millionaire shut-in. He throws parties like your—what is it?—Playboy Mansion. But only at night.” She showed me a picture on the iPad. The house was huge. It looked like something I’d expect out of Morocco or certain parts of Greece, a sprawling construction, painted white, with a couple of round towers that looked like they belonged on Cinderella’s palace. There were a few chimneys sticking up from the center that looked like they were made of ceramic and then cut and recut, with curlicue openings, so they were elaborate enough to match the towers.

  Lopes flipped through more pictures, probably taken by her spies. “The beach immediately near it is not as sprawling and its sand not as white as the other beaches nearby, so it hasn’t been colonized by tourists and expensive restaurants. The house does have a stairs for access to the beach, and more stairs within the garden walls.” The backing up allowed me to see that the house did have a substantial garden, with mature trees and eight-foot-tall white walls.