by John Ringo
“So, is MHI gonna take the call or not?” the MCB agent asked.
“We don’t do imps,” Dave the coroner said as his helpers maneuvered the loaded flat down the steps of the school. “All they leave is ectoplasm.”
“Those you take samples,” Bob said. “Want me to lead you over, new guy?”
“Sure. Lemme put this stuff away. Then we’ll play car tag.”
* * *
There was exactly zero shade in Lafayette Cemetery Number Two. The above ground burial plots and tombs caught what breeze there was and trapped the heat. It was a furnace.
It was a maze. Most of the burial plots were single and just raised. The water table was so high that you couldn’t bury someone six feet under. The raised single plots were about knee height and looked somewhat like Egyptian sarcophagi.
But there were dozens of mausoleums as well. The mausoleums were mostly about a story in height and elaborately made. They were all in bad repair but they’d been pretty when made, you could tell. In addition, many of the plots had statues on them, the Virgin Mary and Weeping Angels featured prominently.
Between the plots and mausoleums were broad walkways and narrow gaps. Both were choked with weeds ranging up to waist-height. Each walkway, in turn, was filled with more kinds of bugs than you could find in the entire Pacific Northwest.
Somewhere in this maze there was, supposedly, a small fire demon. Things which were on fire were often best dealt with by cold. I’d stopped at an industrial supply store and picked up an industrial carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. About then I wanted to just play it over myself.
There was a squealing and chattering from around a small mausoleum with…six people in it according to the inscription. I had the fire-extinguisher in one hand and my other on the pistol grip of the Uzi.
A few small demons were ripping at another corpse. This was an old woman, dressed for church, in a nice dress—well formerly nice—good flat shoes and a hat. By her right hand was a vase with flowers and water spilling out of it. She was pretty well torn to bits at this point and thoroughly cooked. There was a smell of burnt pork in the air.
One of the demons squealed as I appeared and sent a blast of fire my way. The fire breath barely warmed my already warm shins.
“HOODOO SQUAD!” it squealed. “HOOF IT!”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, hitting the lever on the extinguisher.
One of the demons managed to get out of the area of effect. The others wailed and screamed as the cold hit them, then one by one turned to statues.
I hit them with a burst from the Uzi, hip fire, and they shattered like glass, and immediately began to deliquesce.
That left the one who got away. It had darted across the walk way and between two mausoleums, headed for the street.
My only choice was to follow it directly. After reloading I squeezed between the mausoleums. Beyond them to one side was a mausoleum, the other side one of the regular burial plots. I ran across that, apologizing under my breath, until I got to the next walkway and looked both ways.
About that time there was the honk of a horn. I went that way.
There was an NOPD car parked on the next street over. The officer pointed across the road to another cemetery on the other side of the road.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I muttered, crossing the road. I was still carrying a thirty pound fire extinguisher in my left hand.
I heard screams in the cemetery and headed that way as best I could. Another freaking maze.
It was a group cleaning up one of the plots, four young women and a young man, boy, probably ten, pulling weeds off one of the sarcophagi.
“Did you see…” I said, panting. Fucking heat. “Demon…”
“It went that way, Mister Hoodoo,” the boy said, pointing between another couple of mausoleums.
By this time I was starting to notice the occasional scorch mark. Jesse had taught me the rudiments of outdoor tracking and I realized the little demon was leaving sign. The scorching was from whenever it touched some of the burial plots and mausoleums.
It turned, eventually, it had been going straight as an arrow as far as I could tell, and then turned back. At that point I lost it for a bit but picked up the trail again near the road.
I found a scorch mark that still had a faint trace of sulfur to it. I was getting close.
The trail all of a sudden went crazy, going in and out between mausoleums. Like it was chasing something. Finally I found it.
The demon was huddled between a mausoleum and a sarcophagus worrying on the body of a rat.
“OH, NO!” it squealed, dropping the half eaten rodent. “I DON’T WANNA GO BACK!”
I sprayed the remains of the fire extinguisher over the imp. One kick and it shattered.
* * *
“Six flame imps,” I said, holding up the plastic sandwich bags containing traces of the ectoplasm of each. “Four people who saw one of them. One victim. Need coroner. I give these to Ben?”
“I’ll take them,” Bob said, pulling out a ticket book. “I’ll take your word for it. They might get tested they might not. We’re sort of backed up.”
He gave me a receipt with the incident number and receipt numbers for each baggie.
“’Nother call came in while you were chasing that last imp,” Bob said. He had, again, somehow managed to find shade. “Might want to rig up for this one. Remodeling crew in Metairie found what sounds like a nest of vampires in a building.”
I looked up at the sun. It was still well high.
“And they didn’t just stake them?” I asked hopefully.
“Not after one of the workers got his throat ripped out. Like I said, might want to rig up.”
CHAPTER 4
Hit Me with Your Best Shot
It was another mad dash through the streets of New Orleans. We got up on I-10, the way I’d come into town, and made good time. The site was an old strip mall on Metairie Road. It looked not unlike the one where I’d enlisted in the Marines.
The original anchor store had apparently been out of business for some time. The area looked as if it was improving and apparently it was time to clean it up and do things like take the plywood off the…HOLY SHIT VAMPIRES.
What appeared to be a survivor was babbling. It was a patois that was entirely impenetrable. And I’m a noted linguist in some circles.
“Epi li Coolie chire gòj li soti!”
“And then it just ripped the boss’s throat out,” the Metairie PD officer said, in a bored tone.
“San! San!” the man cried.
“Blood, blood.”
“Vampire,” Bob said, nodding his head in a knowing fashion and wagging one finger. “Bet you dollars to donuts.” He turned to me. “Sounds like you’re up.”
“Again,” I said, walking back to the trunk of my car and starting to rummage.
“I’m just messing with you, man. Carter’s stuck in traffic but will be here soon. My guys should be too. Just relax. They aren’t going anywhere before sundown.”
I reappeared with my .45 in a tac holster, a double barrel sawed off in a chest holster and bandolier with stakes and a dozen shotgun shells in loops. I had on a dog collar with spikes I’d picked up to get into Goth clubs. Mo No Ken was slung at my side. I started walking toward the building.
“Seriously,” Bob said. “No joking around. You don’t want to rig up for this one?”
“Too damned hot,” I said. “Where’s the open door, Agent Higgins? And somebody do me the favor to pull down a couple more of these plywood sheets, please.”
The door was in the shade. I thought about it and decided I didn’t like the door option. The sun was shining from the other side of the building. There were windows on the sunny side. Take a couple of pieces of plywood off and I’d be golden. But if I entered by the door, everything would be in shadow and my vision would be horrible. Better in from this side through the windows.
Since none of the workers were willing to go near
the building and MCB Bob wanted to wait for backup, I rummaged in the car again and came up with a Halligan tool, crowbar and axe.
“What all do you have in there?” Bob asked, amused.
“Well, to find out we’ll need something that requires C4, claymores, and a LAW,” I said, grinning.
Bob found a seat in the shade and was writing up an incident report. It probably read, foolish new MHI guy went in solo and got eaten by vampires, the end. “One vampire will fuck you up. There could be more in there, you know.”
A few minute’s work with the Halligan tool and I had the first sheet off the windows. I took down two more and decided that was enough. It was too hot to do this shit. And I had to remember to fill my canteens.
I broke out one of the grimy windows, threw a blanket on the chest high sill and stuck my face up to it.
“Hello! This is your friendly welcome wagon! I don’t suppose you’d like to just come over and get staked?”
“Go away, blood bag,” a female voice hissed from the darkness. “Or I will drink your very soul!”
“Come out here in the sunlight and say that, fang.”
“You come in here.”
“Okee-dokee, artichokee,” I said. “Take your best shot!”
I smashed the window all the way out and looked around.
“Hey, Bob, I need you to bring your car up here on the sidewalk,” I yelled.
“Why?” he said.
“So I can stand on the hood.”
“Stand on your own hood,” he said, indignant.
“I gotta pay for damages to my car,” I pointed out. “Besides, I did most of the bodywork myself. I don’t want to damage it. Yours is issue. Be a pal. Once a Marine, always a Marine!”
“Touche,” Bob said, getting up.
Only I had said all that for the vampire’s benefit. I backed up, put in a couple of earplugs, pulled a flash bang out of my pocket, pulled the pin, flipped the spoon, waited two seconds, and threw it through the window as hard as I could. Then I ran up, put my gloved hands on the sill and vaulted through the window just as the flash-bang went off.
The secret to a flash bang is to know it’s going to happen and have been around it before. They are loud, they are scary, they are very bright. But if you know it’s coming, they aren’t so bad. If you don’t have super-sensitive eyesight and hearing like a vampire, that is.
The vamp was expecting me to climb up on the hood of a car and climb through the window. She was up against that wall, crouched down to avoid reflected sunlight. Her plan was to grab me as I came through and rip my throat out. She probably heard the pin coming out of the bang, but odds were good that she wouldn’t know what it was until it was too late.
I could see her clearly as I came through the window. She was crouched down, pressed against the wall, screaming, her hands over her ears and eyes tightly shut. The image was briefly superimposed on my eyelids as I landed.
I took one step forward and Mo No Ken flashed.
No more vampire.
* * *
A few minutes later I climbed back through the window carrying a skull in a mesh bag.
Vampires deliquesce quick.
“This do for proof of kill, Agent Higgins?” I asked, holding up the bag.
I was more or less covered in blood from cutting her head off. It’s the only way you can kill a vampire. Staking them only paralyzes them.
“Ought to,” Bob said. I swear some of his “you ain’t from around here” attitude was starting to wear off.
I was also standing on a fairly major road and traffic had picked up as schools let out. People were slowing down to figure out why the police cars were parked here. Some people were staring, dumbfounded, at the blood-covered guy. Some were surprised but mostly I was getting horns honking, people holding up thumbs, things like that. A pickup with a bunch of rednecks in the back, including a couple of teenage cuties holding PBRs, went by and I heard an excited “Hey, look y’all! Hoodoo Squad!” and a female voice yell “Wooooo!”
“What was that you were saying about Parris Island Marines?” I yelled, holding one hand up to my ear. “I’m a little deaf from all the monster killing and big ’splosions. I know I heard something about Parris Island Marines.”
“I’ll get a trash bag,” Bob muttered. “Get out of sight before you make my job any harder than it needs to be.”
“I hate fucking heat,” I shouted. “I want to go back to Seattle!”
And that was the daylight part of my first day working the Big Easy.
* * *
Trevor Arnold was a big guy, from his head to his feet. Big bald head, big shoulders, big chest, big gut, arms like tree limbs and legs like trunks. He could barely fit into the office chair in the MHI team leader’s office. One of those tree-trunk legs was currently in a size ogre soft-cast that was propped on his desk. A cane with a silver demon head top was leaning on the desk as well.
The desk was covered in paper. I could tell it was in “this has got to be done, this should be done if I ever get a chance, this is never going to get done” piles. There were more piles around the office. You could tell MHI New Orleans was having a hard time keeping up with the minor shit.
“I hear you did pretty good today,” he said.
He had green eyes that reminded me of a Jamaican guy we had in my platoon before Beirut and what might be called café au lait skin. Other than that his features were more or less Northern European with maybe a dash of Mediterranean. He had a big nose to go with the big everywhere else and high, Scandinavian, cheekbones.
“Fairly well, sir,” I said. I pulled out the sheaf of receipts.
He ruffled through them, nodding, then shook his head.
“Even for round here that’s a rough first day,” he said.
The air conditioning was a window unit that could barely keep up. It was probably eighty degrees in the office. If Trevor noticed it wasn’t apparent. The interior of the offices were more pleasant than the exterior. There was a nice team room in the front by the balcony that was finely carpeted with wood paneling, comfortable furniture, projection TV and a full wet bar.
Trevor’s office was even well set up. More like a lawyer’s office than a monster hunter’s. There were custom bookshelves on the walls and the desk he had his foot propped on looked to be an antique. On the wall behind him was a shadow-box with an SF beret, jump wings, various other Army doodads I mostly didn’t recognize. One was a diver’s helmet I was pretty sure was SCUBA school, and an awards set surmounted by the Silver Star. There were a bunch of Vietnam decorations I recognized but didn’t know what they meant.
“If it wasn’t for the heat, I’d say I enjoyed myself, sir.” Which was true. Say one thing for New Orleans, I wasn’t going to be sitting on my hands. And that one day of Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund bounties was what I’d usually make in Seattle in a month.
“Plus most of those will count as solo, so you’ll get one hell of a check. But about that…”
I got ready to be chewed out for going in alone on the vampire. “The situation was—”
“Shut up, Chad. I don’t care. Every good hunter has a different style. You want to lone wolf it, and you get killed because of that, that’s on you. You’re a professional. Use your brain. It’s better to wait for help, but if you can’t, you can’t. This is a job, not a suicide pact, but the man on the scene has to make the call. That said, you get somebody else hurt because you aren’t where you should be, that is all on your head, son. And I will remove it from your shoulders.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Good. Joan Nelson called me to talk about you. By the way, she loves you and thinks you’re a brilliant hunter, but she also said you’ve got a lot of self-destructive tendencies, delusions of invincibility, and possibly a death wish.”
“Well she is a psychiatrist.”
“I told her with a resume like that you’ll fit in fine in New Orleans. I asked Ray to shake the trees and find us some more help—you’r
e hopefully the first of many—but until then we’re short handed, and everybody but you has something injured. I’m hopping on one leg, Ben shouldn’t be moving that arm at all yet, but Shelbye should be up for light hunting tonight. You two will be on call,” Trevor said, pulling out a beeper. “You got a cell phone?”
“I’ve got a radio phone, sir.”
“Probably won’t work around here. Soon as you can, get a cell. See if your radiophone works. Maybe keep both. You’ll need them. If it is something the two of you can’t handle, you call me. Gimped up or not, I can still shoot. Keep Shelbye from getting in close if you possibly can. That’s not her thing.”
“Close is sort of my specialty, sir,” I said. “Be nice to have someone at my back.”
“Here’s the deal,” Trevor said, as if he’d repeated the briefing too many times. “New Orleans has always been one of MHI’s busier postings, and it has a history of going nuts on the full moon. You’ve got to have our shit together here, or you will not last. I’ve been here for the better part of a decade, but lately everything has been getting worse.”
“The MCB agents said the same thing. Any idea why?”
“Nope. We’ve got bodies popping out of graveyards, loup garou moving in, and fucking vampires think this city is Mecca, but we’ve always got that. Lately? It’s like the black magic spells suckers are always trying have actually been working, which gets more suckers trying it. The darker it gets, the more it riles up the monsters. The more folks talk, the more some asshole is going to be tempted to play with magic. MCB isn’t doing their regular scare or shoot the witnesses thing lately, so we’ll see where that gets us.”
“Agent Castro says he’s a lot more lenient than regular MCB. I was covered in blood and getting honked at today, and there was an agent just sitting there.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ve seen SACs come and go. He could get replaced tomorrow by an agent with a stick up his ass. Until then, this is probably the one place in the country where we can get away with being identified as monster hunters by the locals and it isn’t the end of the world. But we still try to keep our business away from the public as much as possible, because when we make the MCB’s job easy, they’ll make our lives easy.”
