I drew the massive kukri from the sheath on my vest, flipped it around, and extended it to him, handle first. The blade was twenty-one inches of wickedly curved steel, specifically designed for happy little Gurkhas to lop off limbs.
Gutterres hefted my kukri. “This will do.”
“I want that back. Okay, I’ll be the distraction. When he’s concentrating on murdering me, circle around and take his head.”
“Will do.” And then he turned and ran toward the woods. Even injured the dude was so quick that he vanished within seconds, like some kind of Catholic ninja.
Since I needed to draw the monster out, I walked away from the building and out into the open. It didn’t make sense to hide behind a bunch of gas pumps to fight something armed with a blunderbuss that shot lightning bolts.
There was movement inside the country store. Sonya was banging on the glass, shouting something that looked like “What are you doing?” and “Are you insane?” I waved my hand downward, trying to tell her to stay low.
The fog was hanging like a solid wall a hundred yards ahead. I was going to feel really stupid if Gutterres doubled back and grabbed Sonya while I was busy getting hacked to pieces, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut. I started walking toward the fog. “Here goes nothing.”
Just in case my stupid plan didn’t work, I picked out some things I could take cover in or behind quickly. Then all I could do was hope that Gutterres was as good as he thought he was.
There was a growing glow ahead. The eerie light made the trees on both sides of the road look like towering monsters. The Drekavac appeared. The wide-brimmed hat bobbing up and down as it strode toward me. I think he’d been trying to duel me once before, so drawing him out seemed like the thing to do.
“I’m challenging you, Drekavac!” I shouted. “Come over here and fight me.”
I had a feeling the strange being might have been willing to go mano y mano earlier, but that was before I’d hit him with a grenade, because this time he simply pulled his cannon out from under his coat and started blasting.
I ran for the tree line.
Lightning struck. It blew a hole in the road behind me. Flaming chunks of the asphalt rained down as I dove into a drainage ditch and landed face-first in a pile of weeds. Some asshole had thrown some beer bottles in here, and a couple had broken, so I got cut again. Gutterres hadn’t been lying about the Drekavac coming back stronger, because it took a lot less time between shots now than it had before. I crawled forward as the monster blasted the dirt above me. The impact was so close it rattled my teeth and I could feel the pressure in my eyes. I popped up long enough to fire two shots in his direction, but I aimed low on purpose, skipping silver buckshot off the road, because I didn’t want him dead, I wanted him distracted. I was subjecting myself to this abuse in the hopes of making the monster perma-dead.
The Drekavac stumbled as I clipped it in the leg, but then I ducked back down as its gun belched blue fire. Its aim was off, way high, because he missed the ditch entirely and nailed a big tree behind me.
Or at least I assumed he had missed his target, until the top half of that tree landed right on top of me.
I got hit everywhere. The dirt walls of the ditch caught the trunk, but the smaller branches filled the space. My body was shoved hard into the mud. There were so many leaves, I couldn’t see a thing. I tried to move, but I was squished. The harder I struggled, the more branches got stuck. “Damn it!” I thrashed my way forward, trying to find an angle so I could shove the smoking trunk away, but I was hosed.
The Drekavac used that time to walk up to the edge of the ditch. I looked up to see those two fiery eyes staring down at me through the leaves, and there was no pity in the flames. As the creature pointed his gun at me, his face was a twisted metallic facsimile of humanity, but its sliver of a mouth turned into an all-too-recognizable sneer . . . because it knew I was doomed.
Gutterres proved it wrong.
There was a flash of steel. The Drekavac’s head flew from its neck. The body slowly fell to its knees, and then came apart at the seams, melting into blue fire and ashen bits. The big hat caught a gust of wind and floated a little way before it disintegrated too.
The other Hunter went over to the severed head and picked it up. Weirdly enough, the Drekavac’s head still appeared to be alive. It didn’t move or speak, but the fire was still burning in his eye sockets, and the expression frozen there was really pissed off.
“Is it dead dead?” I shouted.
“This should stop him for tonight. Though the head will turn to ash at dawn, enabling the creature to re-form again tomorrow night.”
I’d volunteered to be a punching bag to buy Sonya one night? “That’s it?”
“I don’t make the rules, Pitt. You have to put down a Drekavac thirteen times before the cock crows to banish it once and for all, but its last few evolutions are so powerful that pulling off that feat is rather legendary. I’ll deliver this head to the local priests and maybe they can do something to slow him down a bit more.” Gutterres walked over to the edge of the ditch and looked down at me. “Are you wounded?”
“Only my dignity.” The tree falling on me had really sucked, and I was going to have bruises everywhere and the cut from the broken bottle, but nothing felt broken or punctured. I tried to wiggle free, but there was just too many branches pressing against me. “I could use some help here.”
“You’re really stuck, aren’t you?” That seemed to amuse him.
“Yeah.” There were probably eight hundred pounds of big fuck-off tree on top of where I was squished. The only reason I wasn’t dead was because the biggest chunk had hit the dirt first, and the leafy branches that were trapping me had spread out the impact. “Give me a hand.”
“That looks like it’ll take you a little while to get out. Here’s your knife back.” He dropped my kukri. It stuck point down in the dirt, well out of reach. Then he began walking away. “Thanks for the assist.”
“Hang on!” I shouted, but Gutterres kept walking. “What the hell, man?”
“Sorry. Sonya made a deal with us. If the Ward survives our mission, maybe we can work something out with MHI. I’ll be in touch.”
“Gutterres! You son of a bitch!” But my yelling was in vain, because he wasn’t coming back. Not that I could blame him, because if the tables were turned, I’d probably have done the same. It beat having a shootout to see who got the Ward. I went to work trying to pry myself free.
It took me a minute of fighting, snapping branches, collecting more scratches, and covering myself in sap, but finally I scrambled out from underneath the fallen tree. I snatched up my knife and ran back to the country store.
Oddly enough, I was surprised to see that Gutterres hadn’t used that time to escape with Sonya. The minivan he had stolen was still there. Minivans are always depressing to look at, but this one looked even sadder than usual, since it was sitting on four deflated tires.
The Catholic Hunter was standing there, looking nearly as ticked off as the severed head he was still carrying. The convenience store lady had come outside to see what all the commotion was about, which was when I noticed that the only other car that had been parked here—which I assumed belonged to the convenience story lady—was missing.
I started to laugh when I realized that Sonya had slashed Gutterres’ tires so he couldn’t follow her, and then stolen the store lady’s car. She’d screwed us all.
“This is not funny,” Gutterres snapped.
I had to disagree. I found the situation hilarious.
Chapter 11
Gutterres and I ended up hanging out at the country store until our rides showed up. Once the Drekavac’s severed head got stuffed into a cooler, our phones started working again. The convenience store lady had made Gutterres pay for the cooler and the bags of ice too.
It turned out her name was Bonnie. She was short, plump, cheerful, and I hadn’t needed to hide from her either. Only a tiny minority of people know abo
ut the world of professional monster hunting, but as soon as Bonnie saw the patch on my vest, she had brightened right up and said, “Oh, it’s Monster Hunter Incorporated. You boys come in and rest up.” It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that she knew who we were, because if anyone was going to know monsters are real, it’s someone who works the night shift at a hole-in-the-wall stop and rob just outside Atlanta. She asked me if that nice man from South Africa was still around because she hadn’t seen him for a few years—he used to get his morning coffee and doughnut here—but I had to tell her that Priest had transferred to our Colorado office.
Bonnie was genuinely upset however, not because of the monster shooting lightning bolts—those things happened—but because that nice young girl had stolen the car keys from her purse and taken Bonnie’s Hyundai Sonata. And it was nearly paid off! I talked her into not calling the police and reporting it stolen by promising Bonnie that we’d get her car back ASAP.
I got ahold of Earl and he was sending someone to pick me up. My colleagues had already found the wrecked truck. Earl had used his nose to follow my trail. When I had called, he had been in the clearing where I’d lost my bag. It might take a few minutes for them to get here though. It turned out the reason we hadn’t seen very many cars driving by was that a crazy thick fog wall had formed around the area as the Drekavac had grown more powerful, and there had been several car accidents which were now blocking the nearby roads. It was a real mess.
After I got that straightened out, I needed to tend to the dog bite. To disinfect you need pretty strong alcohol, but all Bonnie had for sale was beer and wine. Probably a legal thing. “You got anything stronger?”
“Oh, hon, of course I do.” Then she pulled something out from under the counter. “Personal stash. Help yourself.”
I took it, and nothing screams quality like vodka in a plastic bottle.
Bonnie called after me, “Don’t bleed all over in there. I just cleaned it!”
The wound wasn’t too deep. Pouring the alcohol over it hurt more than getting bit, but I dealt with it as good as I could with what I had on hand. There were lots of monsters with infectious bites, like zombies or lycanthropes. I had no idea about ghost dogs, but one perk about being Chosen was that I was apparently immune to that sort of thing, so I wouldn’t be turning into anything. However, I was still human and could get a nasty infection as easily as the next guy, so hopefully a hundred proof would kill any germs that got in there. Then I washed the sink because it’s rude to leave blood all over the bathroom. When I returned to the main room, Gutterres was still there. Bonnie was grilling him about what had been outside her store throwing lightning bolts and what was in that cooler, and he was being vague but also trying to reassure her that it wasn’t anything she would ever have to worry about again.
Gutterres appeared to be in a sullen mood. Which was understandable. He was about as beat-up as I was and was holding a towel full of ice from the soda machine against the burn on his neck. In addition to getting swatted across the forest, his organization was out a bunch of money he was probably accountable for, and Sonya wasn’t answering his calls.
“Leaving me stuck under a tree was a dick move.” I sat next to him at the end of the little lunch counter. Then I slid the half empty bottle of Popov in front of him.
“Sorry about that.” He took a swig of the vodka and grimaced.
Bonnie got two hot dogs off the roller, stuck them in buns, and dropped them in front of us. “On the house, boys.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Gutterres said. Then he grumpily went about eating his plain hotdog as Bonnie went back to work.
I squirted ketchup all over mine. I’ve got the constitution of an ox and a gut that can digest anything so I actually kind of like gas station hot dogs, and this one hadn’t been on the roller long enough to turn to jerky, so it wasn’t bad. Gutterres drank more of the vodka. For a moment, we were just two tired Monster Hunters who’d had a hard day at work.
Gutterres spoke in a way that would let him blend in anywhere in America, but there was just enough of a rough edge to it that suggested English wasn’t his first language, and something else that made me think he’d not learned it here. “Where are you from?”
“I grew up in Macao.”
“Huh. Neat.” I’d kind of expected him to say Rome.
“You?”
“Military brat. We moved a lot. So how do you know Sonya?”
“She reached out to us last year. She said that her father was of the faith and had been a holy warrior chosen by God.” Gutterres chuckled at that.
I’d skimmed those memoirs. “Wasn’t he?”
“He certainly believed he was. Was he really? How should I know? Sonya was interested in following in his footsteps. She approached us, told us of her abilities, and then asked to join our order.”
So much for Sonya’s mom trying to keep her sheltered from this line of work. “And you hired her?”
“Of course not. We shot her down. Politely, but firmly.”
“Ouch.” In the extremely brief time I’d known her, she hadn’t exactly struck me as the humble type. “How come?”
“You don’t apply to my order. My order observes, and then approaches the rare person it deems worthy. Some of us were raised from birth for this work, and even then there are years of training and testing before we are offered knighthood. We are few in number. When we need more manpower, we call upon the Swiss Guard, but the order itself is rather select. How can I explain this? MHI is a job. This is a calling.”
That was my turn to laugh. He obviously didn’t get why I thought that was so amusing either. I had drawn the galactic short straw and had been getting my ass kicked ever since. “Dude, I know a lot more about callings from higher powers than you’ll ever guess, but never mind. Please, continue.”
“In this case, Sonya took it personally, and said a few rather unkind things about our order, our leadership, and the chastity of their mothers.”
“She strikes me as having a bit of a chip on her shoulder.”
“You think?” Gutterres snorted. “However, when we learned about the auction, we didn’t have sufficient resources in the area—my flight just arrived this afternoon—my superiors remembered Sonya approaching us, knew she was living here, and since they were desperate, they made her an offer. Retrieve the Ward for us, and they would reconsider her previous application.”
“I take it that didn’t go over well?”
“She was still offended about how we rejected her previous advances. She said her father knew Saint Peter personally so how dare we, so on and so forth.”
“Heh. I can’t really relate. When I came back from the dead the first time, my guide was Jewish.”
Gutterres gave me an incredulous look, but then continued. “Sonya said she would do it, but only if we paid her a very large sum. Despite my objections, my superiors agreed to her terms. I was supposed to meet her, confirm the Ward was real, and take possession.”
I made sure Bonnie was out of earshot before asking, “Okay, level with me. What world-ending crisis do you guys need the stone for?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it with outsiders.” But then he sighed, realizing that we were stuck here together for a bit, so he might as well say what he could. “What I can tell you is that there’s been a serious incident in South America.”
I wondered if that might be the event Stricken had been alluding to. “Where?”
“In an area where the people have few resources, so their pleas for help are usually ignored. Their government has no PUFF equivalent for a threat of this magnitude, so it’s nothing your company would be interested in.”
“We might surprise you on that. We do some pro bono killing on occasion. I hear you Secret Guard guys are big on charity cases.”
Gutterres nodded. “There’s a network of the knowledgeable among the local priests. People come to them with their problems, so word of monster trouble always gets back to my order eventual
ly. One of us was dispatched to check on the rumors. What he found was extremely troubling.”
“What kind of troubling?”
“Evidence of Old One activity. Not minions either. The real deal.”
“No shit?” In that case troubling was a serious understatement. The Great Old Ones were bad news, though the world had seen a lot less activity from that particular faction since Franks and I had obliterated their Dread Overlord.
“They are mobilizing, reasons unknown. Anyone who gets in their way has been killed or worse. The Secret Guard has tried to stop them, but it appears a major offensive is brewing. At first we just thought it was cultist and some minor summonings, but there is a major entity involved. Some type of very large creature from their dimension, which had been hidden and dormant for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years in an odd cavern deep beneath the ground.”
I nearly choked on my gas station dog as Gutterres described something I had once seen in the centuries-old memories of a conquistador.
“Are you okay, Pitt?”
“A cavern where it’s almost like the walls are made of living tissue, and the wind is its breathing, with mystical pillars made of obsidian inside, that’s way out in the jungle in Brazil, beneath an ancient lost city? Or at least it used to be out in the jungle, but that was a long time ago. I don’t know about now.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Some of that must have matched with their scout’s reports. “How do you know about that?”
That was a really long and complicated story, and I didn’t have time right then to tell him about how as one of the Chosen I was sometimes granted the power to read people’s memories, including the times that I’d seen some epic weirdness from the point of view of a conquistador who had been cursed. “That’s where Lord Machado got turned into a monster five hundred years ago. I thought the big thing would have slithered off after that, but . . . ” It was obvious that I’d confused the hell out of the poor guy. “Look, I’ll explain everything, but you need to know right now, the big thing you’re dealing with? Assuming we’re talking about the same thing, it’s not just the thing in the cave you’ve got to worry about. It’s connected to this other being, she’s some sort of herald, messenger, string-puller, instigator for the Old Ones, and she’s been around for a long time. She’s been out there for thousands of years impersonating goddesses and screwing with mankind. I knew her as Koriniha, and she’s insanely dangerous.”
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