My honest fear must have been coming through because Gutterres simply said, “I believe you.”
“That demon bitch seduced and manipulated Lord Machado into nearly killing us all, she stabbed my girlfriend—now wife—in the neck, and then tried to trick me into blowing up the whole world to try and save her life. She vanished after we defeated Lord Machado. If Koriniha is back, very bad things are about to go down.” I took a deep breath. And here I’d been so certain that I needed the Ward more. “This sucks.”
Gutterres and I were both silent for a long time. Then he said, “This thing is gathering its forces for unknown purposes right now. So . . . about which one of us needs Newton’s device?”
“I don’t honestly know.” I’d accidentally woken up our world-ender while trying to stop their world-ender several years ago. “One wants to enslave us and use humans for food and entertainment, and the other wants to obliterate the whole universe. It’s like choosing would you rather have lung or colon cancer?”
“I’d prefer neither, but one threat at a time.”
“Flip a coin?”
The Vatican Hunter ate the last of his hotdog and thought about it while he chewed. He swallowed. “Sadly, the decision will be made for us if someone else, like your MCB, gets to Sonya before we do, and then neither of us will have it.”
I looked at the wall clock. It was almost midnight. “And the Drekavac will be after her at sundown again tomorrow?”
“Perhaps. When I leave here, I’ll go directly to a church where I can perform some rites over this head.” He thumped the cooler with his shoe. “That might slow it down a bit, buy us a few extra hours maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Cursed beings of this nature are tenacious. They are only set free when they have a contract to fulfill, so they take a great deal of perverse joy in their work. We need to find Sonya before he does.” Headlights pulled up out front. Gutterres looked over, saw that it was one of those tall Mercedes-Benz vans, and said, “These are my reinforcements. I must go.” He stood up.
I gave him one of my cards. “I’ll have our archivist pass on everything we know about Koriniha in case she’s connected to your problem.”
“I appreciate that, and we’ll do the same for the Drekavac. I recognized this one from the descriptions. This particular creature has been around since the 1600s.”
“Not shocking, considering his fashion sense.”
“The first time my order encountered him was in the aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials. As a man, he was a judge, trusted to be righteous, who instead made a pact with evil in exchange for immortality. What you saw tonight is only a fraction of his capabilities. He’ll only grow stronger the more you kill him. We’re all in great danger. My organization isn’t very keen on working with others, but in this case, I will strongly suggest to my superiors they may want to make an exception.”
“I think that would be wise.”
“We’ll be in touch.” A bell rang as Gutterres walked outside. The van door slid open, and there were two really tough-looking guys sitting inside with carbines slung over their plate carriers. I’m pretty sure those weren’t local clergy. Gutterres got in and they immediately took off.
“That half-Chinese fella seems kinda high strung,” Bonnie declared from behind the cash register.
“He doesn’t work for us. Different . . . company.” We’d shaken on it, but that didn’t mean I could trust him. They were almost certainly going to grab Sonya as fast as they could and not tell us a thing. I waited until Gutterres’ van was down the road a bit. Then I got up. “Could I see that phone you let the girl use?”
“Sure, hon.” She reached beneath the counter and pulled out an old plastic phone. “Here you go. But I thought your cell was working again?”
“It is. But I’m going to hit redial and see who Sonya called.”
“Oh, the girl didn’t call nobody. It was the weirdest damned thing. Somebody called her.”
“Really?”
“It was funny timing too. Nobody ever calls here at night. It’s pretty dead usually. Anyways, as soon as she picked up the phone to dial, there was somebody talking to her. She must’ve picked up before the first ring, but anyways, whoever it was got her to stop and listen to them.”
That didn’t sound like a coincidence at all. “Did you hear what she said?”
“Oh yeah, sure. She seemed real confused, but then she got all excited, perked right up and said that was way more than she’d already gotten paid so far.”
Son of a bitch . . . Somehow—I looked at the security cameras suspiciously—someone had known where Sonya was, and made her an even better offer for the Ward. “Are your cameras connected to the internet?”
“Oh, those aren’t hooked up to anything. The cameras quit working years ago. I leave them up to scare off shoplifters.”
It had to have been some form of magical scrying then, which narrowed down the possible suspect pool considerably. I was going to be extremely pissed off if it turned out I’d been tailed by an invisible gnome all night. “Did she say anything else?”
“She said she knew where that was, it was a bit of a drive, but she was on her way and then hung up. Too bad I didn’t realize she was about to steal my Hyundai, bless her heart.”
“We’ll get your car back, I promise. I’ll even get it detailed.”
“What if you don’t find it?”
“Then my company will replace it with a new one as an apology for inflicting her upon you.” I mainly didn’t want Bonnie filing a police report and complicating matters. MCB monitors that kind of stuff.
“I’ll take your word, on account of the other ones of you I’ve met being so damned courteous.”
I stared at the phone in my hand and tried to remember what the old trick was so you could call the last number that had called you on landlines. Bonnie must have read my mind.
“Star six nine, hon,” she said helpfully.
“Thanks.” Once I heard the dial tone, I punched that in. Except it didn’t do anything. The number was probably blocked, or maybe that service didn’t work anymore. I memorized the number written on the tape attached to the phone though, in the hopes that maybe Melvin could somehow look up who had called that recently.
I texted everything I’d learned and Bonnie’s license plate number to the other Hunters. Then, with no other investigative leads to follow, I used what time I had left to buy a whole bunch of snacks and sodas for the road. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night. I paid for my snacks just as another car pulled into the parking lot and honked. That had to be my ride. I passed Bonnie one of my cards. “Thanks for your help and call me if you think of anything else.”
“Sure will. And tell that cute South African fella to stop by when he’s back in town. I do love his accent.”
* * *
While Holly Newcastle drove, I sat in the back seat with Doc Sherlock so she could fix up my arm. If you’ve never gotten five stitches put in you while riding in a moving Suburban in order to close a gash from a hell hound fang, you aren’t really living. Or so I told myself while Sherlock ran the needle through my arm. She missed a few times because Holly kept hitting potholes. Luckily, that hurt way less than pouring vodka on it.
When I said that out loud, the doc scoffed at me. “There are so many things that work better and hurt less.”
“I know, but I left my med kit at the bar and I lost my go bag in the forest.”
“We found it. Your gear is in the back,” Holly said. “You’re probably going to want to armor up.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Long story short, the gnomes told Trip and the gnolls told Milo basically the same thing, that there’s something crazy evil holed up in an old farm west of here. When word got out that the Ward was up for grabs, that thing started putting out feelers to all the supernatural creatures saying it would pay them a reward for information about the stone’s whereabouts.”
“What kind of evil are we talking about? Beca
use if it’s something that can do magical scrying, somebody found us and called Sonya out of the blue to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
“The city gnolls said the country gnolls said it smelled dead but not, and they were scared of it, which doesn’t narrow it down much because they’re scared of everything. And the gnomes, those greedy little shits, didn’t know what it was either, they only cared that it was offering to pay a reward.” Holly was distracted, mostly focused on the road, because we were going way too fast in the dark. “The rest of the guys are on their way there now.”
I was kind of surprised. That was more fly by the seat of the pants than was normal for MHI. Usually, if there weren’t any lives in immediate danger, we’d at least try to find out what kind of creature we were dealing with. Blundering into the unknown was a great way to get killed. “That’s not a lot to go on.”
“I know, and Albert’s doing a rush job on the research right now, but fifteen minutes ago a state trooper buddy of Boone’s who was at one of the fog wrecks said that he let through a young woman in a car that matches the description you gave us, going in that same direction.”
Considering how long it had been since Sonya had ditched me, that meant she’d probably had time to retrieve the stone from wherever she’d hidden it—and it made sense that her stash would be somewhere near Perdition’s Abyss—and now she was on the way to meet her new buyer.
“And don’t forget the other complication,” Sherlock said, as she wrapped my arm in medical tape. “That’s the best part.”
“Oh, yeah. The stupid-ass gnomes told the lizard cult the same thing they told us. So the reptoids are more than likely on the way too. I wish Trip would’ve clocked the little thug who told him that but Trip’s too merciful. I would’ve kicked him right in the beard.”
Holly really didn’t like gnomes.
“Friggin’ gnomes.” I reached over the seat and grabbed my bag so I could get my armor on. This night just kept getting better.
Chapter 12
Thirty minutes later we reached the location. The property was in the middle of nowhere and consisted of a couple hundred acres in its own little valley stuck between some heavily wooded hills. It was almost MHI compound-level hidden. Easily secluded enough to be a home for some kind of secretive monster, assuming the gnomes weren’t lying to us and this was just their attempt to have us take out a rival meth cook or something.
The other Hunters were parked in a field off the main road half a mile from the farm. We were the last to arrive. The other vehicles were out of sight and hopefully we weren’t close enough yet to tip off whatever it was that owned the property.
The other Hunters were already gearing up. Mags were being checked, rounds were chambered, and night vision tested. A couple of Hunters had already gone up the hillside to set up sniper positions. Earl—who was by far the stealthiest one among us—had gone ahead to reconnoiter the farm. That left Boone in charge. The Atlanta team lead had a laptop out and was using Google Earth to map the property and give assignments to everybody else. It appeared there was a two-story farmhouse and a big barn, as well as a bunch of smaller sheds and outbuildings.
After an evening being chased by a horrific evil without much in the way of help, it felt really good to be with my team again.
Boone saw me get out of the truck. “I heard you had a rough night, Z. You up to fight?”
“Hell, yeah. This is just a scratch.”
He looked to Doc Sherlock, who wasn’t about to lie to her boss, and raised an eyebrow. Luckily, she covered for me. “It looks like a regular dog bite. He’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” Boone asked.
“How many Vicodin have you taken for your bad back today, Boss?” Sherlock responded.
“Point taken.” Hunters working while messed up wasn’t exactly an oddity. We spent a lot of money on painkillers and energy drinks. “Jump in.”
Holly checked her phone. “Incoming email from Lee. He’s scrounged up what he could about this place. Let’s see what we’ve got . . . ” She started reading. “Okay, for tonight’s location, who had murder-suicide in the pool for what the awful backstory would be?”
“I did,” said Mundy.
“Then Mundy wins it. Albert says thirty years ago the farmer who owned this place went bankrupt, then went insane and stabbed his wife with a pitchfork before hanging himself in the barn.”
“Hey, I had suicide,” declared Gregorius.
“But not murder-suicide. Pay up, suckers,” Mundy crowed. Because, of course, Hunters always placed bets on what the awful backstory would be of the horrible, haunted places we had to visit. I usually put my money on it being the home of a weird cult that had conducted acts of unspeakable evil there, because I’d had really good luck with that one over the years.
Seriously though, not to get all metaphysical or anything, but there’s just something about places with bad energy attracting bad entities. The worse the history, the worse the occupants it drew. Milo always bet on nothing bad ever happened there, it’s just misunderstood—because he was an optimist—but I don’t think he’d ever once won the pool.
Holly continued reading off her phone. “The bank repossessed the farm. The locals considered it cursed, the usual. It lay fallow for decades, rotting and falling apart, and it looks like ten years ago the land was bought by an obvious shell company—Albert can’t track down any actual real people behind it yet. There’re no weird police reports. The number of missing people in this county is about in line with the demographic average for rural America, so it can’t be anything too hungry.” Holly put her phone away. “So what are we thinking moved in here? Vampires? Necromancers?”
Trip said, “If it’s either of those, then Sonya is probably already dead.”
I’d tried to warn her not to run off. “Lack of missing locals indicates it’s not vamps.”
“Unless they get their food delivered,” Gregorius said. “People are always vanishing in Atlanta.”
“I’m hoping for three kobolds standing on each other’s shoulders in a trench coat trying to look big,” said Boone. Then he went into command mode. Whether leading soldiers or Hunters, the man had a lot of practice giving orders. “Time to shelve the guesswork. I hate going in blind, but we work with what we’ve got. Earl’s already snuck up close and has eyes on. It looks like that car Pitt reported as stolen is parked between the barn and the farmhouse. There’s no other vehicles in sight other than some old rusted tractors and junk. I’ve put the Groffs on the hill providing overwatch. Skippy is on standby with the chopper in case we need a medevac. The rest of us will move in nice and quiet, up that field.” Boone pointed at the weed patch that had probably once grown crops. “We get into position and then breach at the same time. My team will hit the house. The Alabama team will take the barn. Once those are cleared, we can search the rest of the smaller structures. Questions?”
“What about Harbinger?” Hertzfeldt asked.
Though that was a perfectly reasonable question—you really don’t want your allies to be in your backstop—Holly and I shared a knowing look. Poor Newbie.
“Don’t worry about Earl.” But then Boone unconsciously glanced up to see how full the moon was, but it wasn’t even close. “Earl will do whatever he wants. You stick with me and don’t worry about him. Anybody else?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Milo said. “We don’t know what’s hiding in there.”
“You want to just camp here while that shapeshifter gets eaten?”
Milo shook his head. “I didn’t say that. She’s the daughter of an old friend. We have to try. Just be careful, everybody.”
“Noted. Anybody else?” Boone asked again.
There was nothing. Most of us had done this kind of thing a lot. The Hunters were energized, but it was a casual sort of dangerous. You can be confident in your lethality and simultaneously aware of your mortality without getting all worked up about it.
“Move out.”
>
* * *
The path we took through the fields had already been scouted by Earl, so there weren’t any booby traps—mundane or magical. The worst thing I bumped into was some stickers that attached themselves to my armor like Velcro. We moved, single file, quick but quiet, everyone scanning side to side with their night vision. Whatever they had grown here before had all been replaced by weeds. The trees around the farm buildings were so ancient and overgrown that even if there had been sentries posted, they wouldn’t have been able to spot us through the leaves and dangling vines.
We all heard Earl whispering in our earpieces. “I’m a hundred yards to the northwest of you lying under the old tractor.” The rusting hulk was so covered in moss that it took me a second to pick it out. “I’ve got no lights or movement. No sign of anyone, including Sonya.”
That was worrisome. Earl should have at least been able to catch her scent. The fact he couldn’t meant she wasn’t actually here, or worse, she was, but whatever lived here had a way of obscuring its presence.
“This is Shannon,” said half of our sniper team on the hillside. “The only thing we have moving on thermal is you guys. The car’s still hot though, so it hasn’t been stopped for long.”
We passed a scarecrow in the field, but it was just a regular old boring scarecrow. Not the “built from dead bodies so it can reanimate and murder you with a hay hook” kind of scarecrow. That was the first thing Earl would have checked. But just in case, Holly poked it with the muzzle of her gun to make sure it wasn’t filled with cursed bones.
There was an odd noise. Almost like a high-pitched child’s voice. Every Hunter froze. The noise came again. Eeeeeen. I slowly shifted Abomination in the direction I thought the eerie call was coming from. Milo pointed his rifle that way, cranked up the magnification on his scope, and scanned. A moment later he whispered, “It’s just an owl.” That got relayed down the line and guns were lowered.
Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC Page 16
