Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3)

by Joshua Reynolds

  He knew what he was looking for; Springheeled Jack appeared almost human, except all of the details were slightly off. His features were twisted and sinister, the most prominent feature being his eyes, which were fiery and luminescent, described as shades of red, orange, and yellow. He had a narrow and long widow’s peak and elf-like points at the tops of his ears. His mouth was too wide for his face, giving him a horrific jack-o-lantern grin. He was taller than most men, but improbably lean, with skin that looked like oilcloth: pale, shiny and lifeless.

  Most notably, the demon was named for his ability to jump incredible heights and distances.

  Aedan knew that he’d never spot this freakish character strolling down King’s Road. He knew that terrified screams would alert him to the demon’s presence, that Jack would come bounding out of hiding, jumping from the young darkness to attack some poor girl. He accepted that he could not prevent another attack, that, in fact, he needed one more to find the fiend.

  Walking the streets as darkness gained depth around him, intensity seeped into the air as the last light of sunset faded below the horizon. Aedan felt predatory as he listened for that scream, and he felt guilty for needing it. Something about this demon offended him in a way that he wasn’t used to. Most of the things he hunted killed people and devoured them…yet, this demon almost seemed worse in a way. He didn’t prey on people to survive. He didn’t need blood or meat—Jack used people like toys and tortured them for fun. It made him less dangerous, but somehow more and the thought revolted Aedan. To most monsters, their relationship with humans was serious: either a source of sustenance or a war for survival.

  For Springheeled Jack it was just a game.

  Aedan went back to his hotel room just before one in the morning. The demon was active when people were out, and the streets of Chelsea were dark and empty long before Aedan gave up.

  He headed back to his room and went to bed. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, sure that an attack had occurred, that he’d just been in the wrong place and missed it.

  Aedan pictured a young woman strolling down a busy street, the last bright bits of daylight fading behind her. She looked like Nikoletta. Same wavy, dark hair; same beautiful mouth. The eyes, however, were wrong. They were afraid…a look that Aedan had never seen in Nikoletta’s eyes. These were wide with terror even before the demon sprang out of the darkness and landed in her path…

  He forced himself to think only of his quarry. He cleared away every image but Springheel’s not quite human face.

  Thinking about Nikoletta could not help him now. He reminded himself, as he had so many times already, that it was better this way. She’d been right. They should not be.

  He tried to picture the demon’s grinning face.

  He wished his father were still alive. Aedan could have discussed Nikoletta with him. He would have understood, would have helped Aedan to see with a clarity he could not attain on his own, whether or not he’d been right to let Nikoletta go. His father could have wiped all the doubt away.

  But his father was dead.

  In frustration, Aedan rolled over and tried to sleep.

  The morning papers confirmed what he’d already known. Springheeled Jack had attacked a sixteen-year-old girl heading home after piano lessons. He’d torn her clothes and spat fire into her face, blinding but not burning her. Though the girl’s vision returned after a few hours and she received only minor bruises from the encounter, the reports indicated that she was suffering what appeared to be posttraumatic stress disorder.

  People saw the attack from a distance, but it had lasted only seconds. Then the demon sprang away with his inhumanly long leaps. By the time they reached the girl, Jack was long gone.

  Aedan crumpled the newspaper and threw it into the trash. He paced in front of his bed for a few minutes, his agitation making his muscles twitch.

  He decided again he needed to get out of the room, to burn off some of his excess energy. He went for another run.

  Aedan returned to the hotel a little over two hours later. He’d run the same route as the day before: a meander up to the park followed by innumerable laps around the Serpentine.

  He went up to his room and into the bathroom. He stripped off his sweat-saturated clothes and spread shaving cream over his face.

  He needed to fill his day. If he sat around, waiting for sunset, he’d lose his mind. He decided to go to the hospital, to talk to the two hunters who’d already had their chance at Springheel and see if they could offer him any advice about tracking the demon down.

  As he shaved, Aedan looked at all of his scars. He tried not to think about Rome, but he was not very good at not thinking about her…not good at all.

  Joshua and George were in the same private room in the hospital. Both were in their early twenties. Both had short brown hair and a few days worth of stubbly beard growth on their faces. The nurses gave Aedan a hard time at first, thinking he was yet another reporter.

  Once he finally convinced them that he was not from the media, Aedan entered to find George awake with a book open in front of his face.

  Joshua was asleep. Both of his eyes were black. His face was swollen and bruised. His left arm was in a cast that was held elevated by a strap, while his right was wrapped at the elbow. Several of his fingers on each hand were in splints.

  Aedan knew from the Ecumenical reports, filled out in part by George while Mason filled in the rest, that Joshua also had several broken ribs, a broken ankle, and enough trauma to his brain that there were fears he’d never fully recover. His days as a hunter were over. That much was certain; not much else about his future was.

  Aedan looked at the book in George’s hand: The Master and Margarita. It was not a book Aedan had read, though he’d heard Father Stephen mention the title in conversation a few times.

  “And you are?” George said without lowering the book.

  Aedan knew that George also had a few cracked ribs, as well as a fairly severe concussion, several scratches to his face and neck, and a dislocated shoulder that he’d reset himself when he’d tried to pursue Springheel despite his injuries.

  “Name’s Aedan,” he said.

  George lowered the book without closing it. He stared at Aedan with narrowed eyes.

  “Halloway,” Aedan added.

  George pulled a bookmark from the last page of the book, stuck it into the opened page, and snapped the book shut. “So they called you in to deal with Jack…”

  “They did. How is he when he wakes up?” Aedan asked, glancing at Joshua asleep a few feet away.

  “Confused. Doesn’t remember much of what happened. Doesn’t fully trust the bit he does remember.”

  Aedan nodded. “And you?”

  George laughed slightly and then winced. “I’ll mend with time. Be good as new aside from a few more aches and pains. At least I’ll be able to hunt again.” He looked at Joshua. “Disappointed though.”

  “I’m sure,” Aedan said.

  “You don’t understand,” George said. “My family has been hunting since the fourteenth century. The man who killed Springheeled Jack the last time he terrorized London, back in the nineteenth century, was my direct ancestor. I approach this job, and this hunt in particular, as a birthright.” George smiled angrily and shook his head. “Rather than sending the demon back to Hell, he trounced the both of us in front of a crowd of onlookers.”

  Aedan sought words of consolation. He found none.

  “That, however, is none of your concern. You came here for a reason. I’m fairly certain that it was not just to check up on us.”

  “I was hoping you could give me some insight into the demon. How did you two track him down?”

  George nodded. “Allow me to confirm your fears. There is no efficient way…you will spend your evenings prowling the streets of Chelsea until you stumble onto him.”

  “Damn,” Aedan said.

  “I wish they’d have let another English boy take a crack at him before calling you in,” George
said.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, it’s foolish, I know. Just feels like a Brit should handle Jack. Feels like we’re asking an American to do our job.”

  Aedan understood that, but the job was now his. “Sorry,” he said.

  George waved that away. “No. You’re not. I’ve heard about you. Who hasn’t?” He smiled, then winced. “You’re a killer and the higher-ups have put Jack in your sights. You’re not sorry; you’re eager.”

  Aedan hated that so many of the stories people believed about him made him seem like a robot, like he was more weapon than person. Hunters who had never met him often expected Aedan Halloway to be an emotionless killer. That’s why he’d never settle down or have children. That’s why he’d never retire. He was made for killing, only for killing. Aedan wished that, if people insisted on making him so two-dimensional in their tales about him, they’d chosen to highlight a different dimension.

  “I can be sorry and eager,” Aedan said.

  “Perhaps you can,” George said. “When you kill him, do your best to make him suffer.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Plenty, I’m sure, coming from a man with your reputation.” He opened the book and removed the bookmark, slipping it in between the last page and the back cover.

  Aedan turned to leave.

  “Oh…one more thing,” George said. “I had a thought as I watched Jack bound off into the night. There was an error in our strategy.”

  Aedan’s brow furrowed.

  “Maybe my advice will help and I can feel that I contributed in some small way to Jack’s defeat.” George placed the open book, page side down, on his lap. “Knowing his weakness is his eyes, we focused too much on them. He was too fast, too agile. Had we immobilized him somehow, even just slowed him down a bit…things would have gone differently.”

  “Thanks.” Aedan turned away again. He looked back as he neared the door to see George reading again.

  He stepped out into the hall. Almost any other creature would have killed both of them, devoured them in one fashion or another. Aedan knew that George was still young enough to see his survival as some sort of embarrassment. A hunter was, in the mind of many young hunters, to kill or be killed. Those few who lived to see more hunts, who survived to mature, realized that it was always better to live, that being alive was far more precious than being remembered as one of the multitudes who died on the hunt.

  Aedan stopped at a bookstore on his way back to the hotel. He bought a paperback copy of The Master and Margarita.

  He read for a few hours to fill his time. The novel was not what he’d expected. Aedan found it impossible to read it without considering the context in which it was written. It made him think of his legacy, about what he’d leave behind. When he died, he knew, only those stories about him would remain, stories in which he’d been the perfect hunter, stories in which he was inhuman.

  The realization that all he’d leave behind, that his only mark on the world, would be a tombstone and a bunch of inaccurate stories, was like being told he was dying. It made him feel sick and outraged.

  He had, however, no way to change it. He thought maybe the stories were correct in one sense—maybe all he was good at was hunting. Maybe it was fitting that his legacy would be nothing but tales of violence.

  Aedan couldn’t read anymore. He laced up his running shoes….

  He walked down King’s Road at sunset. His mind felt cluttered, filled with too many thoughts about things that had nothing to do with the hunt.

  He thought about Joshua and George. One would never hunt again. He’d take some job at the London House, perhaps making weapons or filing reports. He’d settle. He’d likely live for a long time. The other would return to hunting and probably be dead before he was twenty-five, possibly leaving behind a widow and children.

  George had spoken of Joshua with pity, but Aedan wondered now if Joshua wasn’t the lucky one.

  Aedan was a hunter. He was proud of that. He did not regret it or wish to change it. It had, however, begun to feel, more and more since Rome, that being a hunter was only a fraction of who he was. He’d begun to feel that he’d been neglecting parts of himself that he hadn’t known existed. To make matters worse, he did not understand those parts of himself, did not recognize them or see what they needed.

  He felt like a stranger, and again he wished he could speak to his father. Thinking of his father brought back memories of his childhood, of his father—like Aedan, a man of incredible violence, a man who’d been bred and then groomed to kill. His father had been capable of tender moments and laughter. His father had found peace in his wife and son.

  When dying, his father had said he was proud of how he’d spent his life. Aedan tried to replay that last conversation in his mind, tried to detect by some change in tone or expression if his father had been more proud of his accomplishments as a hunter or as a husband and a father.

  When he woke the next morning, Aedan knew he’d be angry when he read the newspaper. He went up the steps to the sitting room and opened the door to the hall. The paper was on the floor, neatly folded before the door. The headline Another Girl Attacked mocked him. Aedan picked up the paper and brought it right to the trash.

  He rarely let himself get frustrated, but he was running out of patience. Though he’d been on hunts that had lasted weeks, this case had already gotten under his skin. Aedan wanted to catch Springheel, to let out all of his frustration, to focus the pain and rage and confusion into his fight with the demon.

  Aedan wished he could go back to bed and sleep until evening. He wanted to fast forward to his next opportunity to catch the demon. Everything else was just waiting, just running.

  After showering and lunch, Aedan forced himself to spend another few hours reading. He tried to imagine Mikhail Bulgakov writing—Aedan knew that this author was aware of the importance of his work, was aware that his novel would live on long after its creator had died.

  There was a line in the novel, made all the more poignant by the fact that Bulgakov had destroyed an early draft of the work by burning it, that manuscripts don’t burn.

  Aedan thought there was something there, something important, something about legacies and permanence, about a type of immortality…

  He mulled this idea over, applying it to himself in different ways; he was letting other people write his manuscript, letting their stories dictate what he left to the world.

  Aedan thought about those parts of himself that he had neglected, wondered what they needed to leave behind. He kept thinking about his own death, but there was nothing morbid about it. He was concerned not with his life ending but with what remained after…

  He looked up at the fading light. Darkness approached.

  The sun had set, the last faint glow of light slipped away. Aedan walked the streets of Chelsea, dreading that he was in for another wasted night, for more frustration.

  Then he heard a screeching wail that carried a note of hysteria.

  Aedan’s eyes went right to the source of the cry. In the distance, indistinct in the darkness, he could see a tall, thin figure crouched over a shape lying prone on the ground.

  Whereas everyone else on the street froze for an instant, Aedan headed for the looming figure at a sprint.

  Springheeled Jack turned. In his eyes was a fire that had burned since the beginning of time, like flames that purged sins from damned souls with their excruciating heat. The demon laughed and the sound of it was like two voices at once: one a high, manic squeal; the other a rumbling growl.

  He sprang up King’s Road, effortlessly jumping ten feet high as he bounded away from his pursuer.

  Aedan ran past the girl, trusting that, with Jack chased away, the still frozen bystanders would come to her aid. He sprinted but he could not gain on the demon.

  Jack cackled. “How’re your friends, hunter?”

  Aedan reached for the pouch on his belt, slowing slightly as he did so. He pulled a throwing star and watched
Jack land in a crouch. He held the star ready as the demon leaped forward again. As Jack reached the zenith of his jump, Aedan threw the star.

  One of the sharpened tips struck the arch of the demon’s foot, sinking into the shiny flesh that looked like fabric.

  Aedan ran forward as Jack came down on the injured foot, his weight and momentum driving the sharpened star deeper, and fell forward. Jack rolled twice and then slid to a stop.

  The demon growled as he looked down at his foot. Then, plucking the weapon from his skin, he giggled. He tossed the star to his side and it hit the sidewalk with a soft, metallic clatter.

  Aedan pulled the switchblade from his right pocket. As he popped the blade, he looked into those fiery eyes, Jack’s weakness.

  Springheel looked as if he intended to bounce away again. Instead, he launched himself at Aedan feet first.

  The hunter sidestepped but took a glancing blow to the chest that knocked the wind out of him and snapped one of his ribs, sending heat and pain radiating out through his torso.

  Ignoring the pain, Aedan caught Jack’s leg with his unarmed hand. The demon’s skin was clammy. Though it looked like cloth, it felt rubbery, repulsive.

  Aedan stabbed the switchblade into Jack’s knee and twisted the blade.

  The demon screamed and bellowed in his dual voices. He squirmed free before Aedan could pull the knife back out, scratching at the hunter with clawed hands as he retreated.

  Aedan dodged, and new ripples of pain went searing through his body.

  Springheel jumped at Aedan, a small hop compared to his superhuman leaps, and collided with the hunter, knocking him to the ground.

  Jack ground his knee in Aedan’s chest, wrapped both hands around his throat and squeezed. The sharp tips of his claws dug into the side of Aedan’s neck. His mouth opened wide to let loose another bout of laughter.

  Aedan could see flames flickering at the back of the demon’s throat. He couldn’t breathe, but for a moment he didn’t care. He punched Springheel in the face. He wanted to pound Jack’s smile into a pulpy mess. He wanted the demon to suffer before he died.