Devil Hunters (Tales of the Crypto-Hunter Book 2)

by Rick Gualtieri

  Danni nodded. “Yeah, I thought so. I caught a hint of scales. Devolved reptoid maybe?”

  “Again with the eyes,” Derek replied. “They were definitely mammalian.”

  “So what does that leave us with?” Francis asked, to which Derek smiled in response. “No. Don’t say it.”

  “Yep,” he replied. “I’m afraid so. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that was the Jersey Devil.”

  As to what the devil actually was, Derek didn’t care to speculate further.

  At least not until they tracked it down again.

  CHAPTER 18

  The creature left a trail that was easy to follow. Danni didn’t need to even check for prints. It ran straight and true, not bothering to mask its passage. They took it slow, however, to ensure it didn’t get a chance to double back and sneak up on them again.

  She had seen the strange and bizarre before. Hell, she’d almost been killed by crazed sasquatches, their minds eaten away by rabies. This was the first creature she’d seen, though, that she could honestly describe as wrong. She’d gotten, at best, a quick glimpse as it ripped the gun out of her hands then stood there, almost leering down at her. It had been enough. She wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon – the asymmetrical body; the strange, leathery skin. Its eyes were perhaps the worst of all, because they bespoke of intelligence.

  However, intelligence didn’t necessarily mean gentle or curious. She’d gotten no sense of that. Though she knew it was foolish to attribute human emotions to an animal, there’d been a malicious gleam in its eye. If she hadn’t known better, she might have also said avarice.

  Whatever the case, all of her doubts about being out there had been thoroughly erased. They’d been on the verge of packing it in, but that had been a rare wrong call on Derek’s part. She couldn’t blame him, though. Even after finding the footprints, she’d been ready to blow the whole thing off as a hoax. But it wasn’t.

  There was actually something out there, some abomination of nature these woods had vomited up. And, while she couldn’t be certain, she had no trouble believing that such a thing could be responsible for all of those disappearances. If Derek hadn’t frightened it off, who knows what might have happened?

  Danni mentally chided herself. Taken down and disarmed so easily. It was pathetic on her part. Her instructors would have been ashamed. She owed them better, owed her brother better.

  She waved the others on after stopping again to make sure they were on the right path. They were deeper in the marshlands now, and the wetter vegetation left a less clear trail of broken branches and disturbed passage. Where that failed, though, the muddy ground was ideal. She looked past a pool of water in their path and easily spotted them.

  Hard to miss such mismatched feet.

  How this thing could exist was beyond her. It was so alien compared to what they normally dealt with, almost like something out of a horror movie. Maybe alien is the right term, she mused. Perhaps this thing wasn’t of their world. Though her team’s access primarily concerned cryptids with terrestrial explanations, she’d heard a few rumors in her year of service. Enough to know that the government had more secrets in their pocket than just bigfoot.

  The team remained silent as they followed, standard protocol for when they were in pursuit. Eyes and ears needed to be focused on their surroundings, especially since they’d already gotten jumped by it once.

  Danni wondered how much stamina this thing had. They’d once chased a rogue squatch for miles through mountainous terrain. Had it not eventually taken shelter in a cave, she was fairly certain they’d still be running after it.

  The muddy ground was starting to take its toll on their pace. Nearly every step they took was accompanied by a wet schlup sound as if the marsh was reluctant to let them continue.

  They had just reached more solid footing when Danni thought she heard someone stumble behind her. She glanced back and saw Francis extracting his boot from a particularly deep patch of mud. She spared a smile his way, then turned and stepped forward.

  The moment her foot touched the ground, it was as if something grabbed her around the ankle. Before she could look down to see what she’d gotten caught on, her legs were pulled out from under her. She hit the wet mud with her backside for a brief moment, enough to elicit a whoop of surprise, then was painfully yanked up into the air by her leg, dropping her pistol in the process as she found herself suspended upside down.

  “Shit!” Derek hissed, stepping toward her before stopping and scanning the ground.

  “A little help here,” Danni said, after the shock had worn off.

  Francis strode forward. “Coming.”

  “Hold on, Frank.” Derek held up a hand and pointed. “There’s another snare right over there. Might be more.”

  “Please tell me this thing isn’t smart enough to set traps,” Danni replied, beginning to sway back and forth.

  Francis cautiously stepped forward, reaching for the knife at his side – an old navy Ka-Bar that his grandfather had bequeathed him. “Let’s hope not.”

  “Doubt it,” Derek replied. “Remember what Mitch was saying about Pineys. This place is kind of the northeast’s answer to the bayous of Louisiana, or used to be anyway.”

  “Great,” the big man said. “Not only do we have to deal with some murdering monster, but you’re saying we need to keep an eye out for swamp hicks, too?”

  “Who’s to say? All we know is that someone still hunts out here. No telling if they’re close by or not.”

  “Or if that thing got them.”

  “Exactly.”

  “This is all fascinating,” Danni replied, “but maybe we could have this discussion once I’m down.”

  Francis laughed. “Hold your horses. We need to make sure your head doesn’t wind up buried in a mud puddle. Although, you can bet if that happens, it’s definitely going on the show.”

  “Remind me to call Shakti and ask her about how big of a house she wants.”

  “Enough, you two,” Derek said. “Just cut her down and let’s get a move on. I want to wrap this...”

  A chuffing sound interrupted their banter, almost as if something took a halting, wheezing breath.

  “Shit,” Francis whispered, suddenly very loud as the bog around them once more fell silent.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Derek pointed toward a stand of high swamp grass where the sound had seemingly originated. He glanced back, debating what to do. The smart thing would be to let Francis finish cutting Danni down. Problem was, if they didn’t do something quickly, this thing stood a good chance of getting away.

  Leaving their tracker behind to swing in the wind wasn’t an option, though.

  Something about this hunt was starting to leave a very bad taste in his mouth. He’d dismissed aloud the idea that this thing was smart enough to set traps, but now wondered if he was wrong. If not, might it have been intelligent enough to lead them here in the hopes that they would become entangled? It wasn’t outside the realm of reason with some of the cryptids they’d encountered. Sasquatches, for example, could be very smart, on the order of bonobos or higher.

  He backed up, being mindful to steer clear of the other snare he’d spotted. His foot came down and Derek felt a tug against his ankle, as if he’d just tripped a...

  A crackle of branches snapping from on high caught his attention and he looked up to see a log swinging toward him suspended by ropes. Derek didn’t have time to think. He dove for the ground and pinned himself flat in the mud as the trap swung over him, feeling the breeze as it passed. He quickly rolled out of the way to avoid getting slammed by it on the back swing.

  “Holy shit!” Francis cried.

  This went way beyond someone setting traps for deer. Whoever had put that there meant business. The problem was, there was no telling what other surprises were in store for them.

  That did it, as far as Derek was concerned. They were getting out of there. There was only so much he was willing to risk on a hunt, and this s
ituation was getting out of hand. It wasn’t the first time they’d run into manmade obstacles. Plenty of forests were full of moonshiners and poachers. However, they had no idea what they were dealing with here.

  “Cut me down,” Danni repeated.

  Derek rolled onto his back and sat up just as Francis moved to help her. The big man stepped toward Danni, his hand again reaching for the knife at his side, when something large launched itself toward him from out of the bushes.

  The flat of Danni’s rifle stock smacked into Francis’s face, sending him sprawling. The creature that had ambushed them earlier lurched forward, swinging the weapon like a club.

  Damnit! It had somehow gotten the better of them twice now.

  Danni, still upside down, tried to reach up to free her ankle, but the devil slammed her own gun into her backside, eliciting a cry of pain from her before once again turning toward Francis.

  Derek, however, was already lining up a shot. He’d had the sense to hold onto his weapon when he’d fallen flat. Now to only hope the barrel wasn’t clogged with dirt.

  Problem was, the creature was in a less than ideal spot for a clean kill. If he missed to either side, he’d end up hitting one of his teammates. Fortunately, their attacker was large and not overly graceful. As it bent down to attack his cameraman, he saw his opening.

  He fired and saw skin erased, followed by a small flash of white from one of the ungainly protrusions sticking from the creature’s back.

  Fuck! From the look of things, he’d hit solid bone, meaning he’d probably done jack shit in the way of actual damage.

  The creature howled in pain and staggered back, away from Francis, finally dropping Danni’s weapon from its misshapen hands. It grasped behind its malformed body but couldn’t quite reach the wound on its back.

  The distraction was enough for Francis to draw his own sidearm and fire up at the beast, sending a spray of blood from its side that elicited a keening wail of agony from the monster.

  It backed away, turned toward the bog, and took a few steps before sinking to its knees and whimpering.

  Derek stood, covering the creature with his rifle while Francis pulled himself to his feet. “You two okay?”

  Francis nodded, although he was breathing hard from the pummeling he’d just taken.

  “Danni?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “Just hanging around.”

  “Cute,” Derek said. “Cut her down, Frank. I’ve got this.”

  “You ... sure, boss?”

  Derek focused on the thing that had attacked them. It was still alive, but most of the fight appeared to have gone out of it. Still, he wasn’t about to take any chances. He kept his rifle trained on the creature, which still huddled in the shallow bog waters.

  He took a moment to think about the shot he needed to line up. The creature’s bizarre morphology meant he couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t just hit another bony patch. This thing needed to be put down, but he wasn’t a cruel man. He didn’t believe in letting an animal suffer needlessly.

  Though it wasn’t normally considered a sound idea, he aimed for the back of the beast’s head, hoping to put it out of its misery quickly and cleanly. Afterward, he’d radio Mitchell to come back and join them for an impromptu autopsy.

  Standing about twenty feet away, he sighted the monstrosity’s head through his crosshairs just as it turned to look at him.

  He’d begun to squeeze the trigger when it held up its hands and uttered in a guttural, barely understandable voice, “Nooo. Don’t s-shoot.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Derek almost shot the thing out of sheer surprise alone. Surely he hadn’t heard what he just thought he had. He quickly rationalized that it must have been some cry that only mimicked speech, kind of like how some people taught their dogs to bark in a way that sounded like they were telling their owners they loved them.

  “Please!”

  Or maybe not.

  This time there was no mistaking it. Derek lowered his rifle and backed up, not quite believing what he was hearing.

  Behind him, he heard the thud of Danni finally being cut down.

  A moment later, Francis was by his side. “Am I hearing things, or did the Jersey Devil just talk to us?”

  Derek had no immediate reply to that. They’d faced some intelligent prey before, but none that had actually spoken to them.

  He didn’t quite dare lower his gun, not yet. This thing had attacked them, after all. More importantly, it was believed responsible for multiple deaths and disappearances. It was possibly a simple territorial response, but if this thing was smart enough to speak, then that went beyond mere instinct. “Do you understand me?”

  The creature nodded.

  Derek glanced back at his two companions. Francis merely shrugged, a wide-eyed look on his face. Danni was down on one knee massaging the leg that had been caught in the snare. She looked up at him and shook her head, the meaning clear. She had no idea what to do with this one.

  Neither did he. This was way outside of his normal jurisdiction, leaving him and his team in a very bad spot. Doing their job would now potentially be tantamount to an execution, something he most certainly wasn’t okay with. Bringing the creature back with them, however, opened up a whole other can of worms. Their job was to disavow, not confirm.

  Then there was Yarlberg to consider. There was no telling what he’d do. He might order the thing put down regardless, or he might call another goddamned press conference and throw it in front of the cameras. And if this creature wasn’t unique, what would that mean for others of its species? Dragging it back with them could easily spiral out of control, leading to the eradication of an intelligent race ... genocide, in other words.

  What choice did that leave him with? Could he simply ask it to stop, to try to avoid people?

  Would that even work?

  Derek wasn’t certain, but as leader of his team, he knew he had to make a decision, and quickly.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Danni was unnerved. She’d sensed this creature was more than it appeared when it first attacked her, running off with her gun like a trophy. Being proven right, however, wasn’t quite the win she’d hoped it would be.

  She could tell Derek was warring with the same emotions. Francis almost certainly had opinions, too, but he was a team player to the end. He’d go along with whatever Derek decided, trusting in their leader. Danni realized she should, too, but this thing actually speaking to them in English had shaken her. When she got back up, she didn’t even bother to retrieve her weapons. She just stood there, staring.

  Now, dead center as it was in the beam of Derek’s light, she got a good long look at it. It truly was like nothing she’d ever seen before. She’d read up on the legends of various cultures in the year since she’d joined the team. Several had tales of chimeras, creatures said to combine the traits of two or more other animals. That was the word that sprung to mind. The Jersey Devil didn’t look like any mythological devil so much as several different creatures thrown into a blender and mixed together: the bipedal gait of a human; skin that seemed to fluctuate between reptilian scales and rhino hide; bony plates on its back; tufts of wiry hair on its head; and more. One of its hands ended in what appeared to be stubby fingers with an opposable thumb. The other lacked the thumb, but had pronounced claws like something you’d expect to see on a dinosaur.

  In short, it was hard for her to think of this creature as anything other than an it, despite obvious male genitalia that was vaguely human in appearance.