“That was me. The beard’s greyer now, but yeah. I used to stop by to check on you guys. Me and my buddy Sam, he’s gone now too . . . but your mom . . . well . . . we’d get to reminiscing about your pop, and the whole thing just kind of made her sad.”
“She does struggle with depression.”
“I think it’s because she longs for her home. There aren’t too many things that make Earth okay for her. You’re one. Your pop was another. Only whenever I’d visit, it was like reminding her of what had been taken from her, what could have been. She’d end up in a funk afterwards, and it was my fault. I was doing more harm to your family than good. I tried to be a good uncle, and instead I was a painful reminder. I’m not good at not talking about things. Now, Earl, he’s great at never talking about emotional stuff. So he kept visiting, but I stopped. I don’t think your mom liked being reminded of the old days.”
“Yeah . . . I’m finding out that my mom was a lot more selective about telling me about things than I ever thought.”
“Don’t get mad at her. It’s a parent’s duty to protect their kids. She did what she thought was right. But either way, I wasn’t ever there for you, and for that, I’m really sorry. Meeting you makes me feel like I let your dad down.”
“Because I’m a thief and a screw-up?”
“I didn’t say that. I think you’re a young woman who made the best choices she could and ended up dealing with some really bad people.”
“Yeah, when the Church guys asked me to grab the package, I didn’t know Stricken was—”
Milo cut her off. “I’m not naive, Sonya. You don’t suddenly know how to steal things, beat up a bunch of Feds, and have preplanned escape routes the first time you do something like that. You’ve been up to some shenanigans.”
Sonya gave an embarrassed laugh. “Okay, yeah, you got me. It seems like a waste to have powers and not use them to have some fun.”
Milo used his dad voice. “Who else have you robbed?”
“Drug dealers mostly. Okay, yeah, I haven’t always made the wisest decisions . . . Please don’t tell my mom.”
“I get it. I was a teenager when I started doing this stuff. You wouldn’t believe some of the stupid crap I did! When we have more time, remind me to tell you about me and your dad playing zombie golf.”
“Zombie golf?”
“Long story and no time. I’ve got a lot of work to do before sundown, but I would love to talk more later.”
“I think I’d like that, Milo.”
“Cool.” Milo sounded relieved that he might actually get to fulfill some self-appointed-uncle responsibilities. “Anyways, I wanted to give you something.” There was some noise as Milo started moving items around on a shelf. “Now, I’m no samurai bladesmith whose family has five hundred years of experience folding meteor steel ten million times and all that metaphysical bushido, soul of the sword stuff that Chad liked to go on about, but I did win the competition on the one episode of Forged in Fire I was on.”
Now I was really curious, so I poked my head back around the corner to see what Milo was giving her. There was a sheathed sword in his callused hands.
“Is that . . . ”
“Mo No Ken. The Sword of Mourning.” Milo seemed rather proud as he handed it over. “I found all the parts in the wreckage after the Christmas Party. It had got bent really bad before the blade snapped off. I salvaged what I could and tried to make it look exactly like how it used to.”
Sonya slowly, reverently, drew the katana. It was a relic, reborn.
“Careful. It’s crazy sharp. I mean, obviously, you’d know that. Not much point otherwise. Like I said, I’m not into all that mumbo-jumbo, but this was a hero’s sword, so treat it with respect. Okay?”
“Milo, it’s beautiful.”
That made him grin, because Milo showed love through giving away weaponry. “I hoped you’d appreciate it. It’s been waiting for you for years.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I was going to give it to you on your sixteenth birthday, but I asked your mom and . . . ” Milo trailed off as he realized he’d said too much. “Well, it didn’t go over well. So I honored her wishes and put it away.”
Sonya had teared up. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Better late than never.”
Then Sonya hugged him.
I walked away and hung up the electronic muffs where I’d found them. Then I picked up a gun magazine off a table and pretended to have been reading it the whole time. When Sonya appeared she had dried her eyes and was showing no weakness., but she was proudly carrying her father’s sword.
“Ready to go?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What did Milo want anyway?”
“None of your business.”
I was happy to let it go.
Chapter 18
The fog rolled in about midnight.
I was on the roof, braced against the ledge, watching my sector, when all of a sudden it got uncomfortably cold. Since I was wearing all my armor and gear I had been uncomfortably warm and sweaty because all that weight on your chest and back really traps the heat in, but then zap, within seconds I was chilled to the core.
“You feeling that?” Julie asked.
“Yeah. He’s here.”
Julie keyed her radio. “Wake up, everybody. This is Julie on the roof. We have a supernatural temperature drop outside. Get ready. I think this is it.”
Honestly, being a spotter with nothing to spot for several hours can be terribly boring, to the point that I’d been in danger of falling asleep. There were six two-man teams stationed on the roof of the main building, because it was our best elevated position. Everybody else was waiting at their designated battle stations.
The main building had already basically been a fort, but we’d done extensive renovations and put in improvements since Martin Hood’s attack. The walls had been reinforced and every window had armored steel shutters now. We’d installed more cameras and every kind of sensor you could think of. Tonight would be the first real-world test of Milo’s new point defense system, and he was downright giddy about that.
Tanya and her elves had checked and rechecked the magic markings they’d inscribed around the property to weaken the Drekavac. She assured us they’d used their most powerful magic—also known as “Mama’s special recipe” on the main building itself, which should theoretically keep the Drekavac from porting in or re-forming his body inside the walls. If the Drekavac wanted to come inside, he would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Since Sonya, the target of his unholy wrath, was hiding in Earl’s concrete cell in the basement, he’d certainly try.
Sonya had wanted to be outside, to be quote, where the action is, except Earl had told her to take her scrawny ass to the bunker, which was also a direct quote. That hadn’t been up for debate. Cody was with her and a bunch of books from the archives, still trying to figure out how to get the Ward detached.
Gutterres had walked us through what he knew about other Drekavacs’ thirteen manifestations. The Church’s records were spotty, and since each Drekavac was unique, possibly inaccurate for ours. Nobody had fought all the way through against this particular one and lived to tell about it that they knew of. So we’d prepared for everything we could think of.
I listened over my radio as the Hunters watching our video feeds reported in. There was something moving fast along the private road heading directly for the front gate. As I watched, that same thick, oily fog as last night oozed out of the forest and began poking through our chain link fence.
“Alright, Hunters. It’s time to get to work. You know the plan.” Only as Earl spoke over the radio, the signal started breaking up. “Expect to lose coms. Hold your fire until after the exorcist does his thing.”
There was a lot of static. Something about the Drekavac’s aura screwed with our radio the same way he’d killed my cellphone, but we were prepared for that.
A single vehicle pulled away from our main building and s
tarted driving toward the gate. “There goes Gutterres,” I muttered. “I hope his little ritual works.”
“They’re the oldest Monster Hunting organization in the world,” Julie replied. “They didn’t last this long by being stupid.”
“Maybe they lasted this long because they can coast on tithing money while leaving the heavy lifting to companies like us?”
“I don’t know how big their memorial wall is, so fingers crossed. You’re just sore he left you stuck under a tree.”
Maybe I was a little indignant still. Hunters are a prideful bunch.
The car stopped by our front gate. Gutterres got out of the passenger side. One of his guys was driving and stayed behind the wheel, ready to get them the hell out of there. Gutterres walked by himself to the unmanned gate shack.
“Okay, that’s a little disappointing,” I said as I watched through Cazador’s scope, that I had turned all the way up to twenty-five times magnification.
“What?” Julie asked.
“He’s just dressed in normal clothing. I figured a combat exorcist would at least rate some cool robes or a big funny hat.”
“Focus, dear.”
The unholy screaming noise of the Drekavac’s ride approached. The fog hovering around the front gate began to glow. “The bad guy is approaching the main entrance.” I didn’t need to tell Julie the range to the front gate—five hundred and fifteen—because she had the yardage of every possible shot across the compound memorized. “Zero wind.” In fact, it was eerily still.
“Got it,” Julie said as she peered through her scope. Her JP Cazador was chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor, which had a way better ballistic coefficient than my .308. It had a trajectory like a laser beam. Hitting someone at that range would be child’s play for her.
“Can you hear me, MHI?” Gutterres asked.
“Barely,” Earl responded. He was in the command center with all the cameras and had the most powerful receiver and antenna. “Lots of static.”
“I’ll leave this transmitting so you can hear what the Drekavac says, but I will stop while I perform the rite. No offense.”
“None taken. I understand. Trade secrets.”
“More sacred than secret.” Gutterres let go of his radio. Obviously, he was still talking, but from way over here we couldn’t hear him. He lifted something silver in one of his hands and flicked it at our gate. Oddly enough, as Gutterres chanted the fog seemed to pull back from the fence a bit.
“I think that’s the sprinkler thingy I saw in their van.”
“If it’s used for the ritual application of holy water, it’s called an aspergillum,” Julie said.
“How’d you know that?”
“Art history degree, remember?”
“Ah . . . ” And there was another example why other couples would only play Trivial Pursuit against us once. We were undefeated. The only other couple that had given us a good challenge was Trip and his new girlfriend, Cheryl, and that was because they got all the sports questions. Julie and I both sucked at sports trivia.
Gutterres finished his ritual just as the horse and rider came into view. The horse thing was so big it could have easily crashed through our gate, but it slowed down. As it slowed, the horrible sound tapered off. It came to a stop and the Drekavac dismounted to approach the gate on foot, his long coat nearly dragging along the ground behind it. The big black hat hid his awful face. I’d already dialed in the range so I put my crosshair on his chest. Gutterres opened the channel so we could hear the thing’s eerie voice.
“You know why I have come.”
“I do,” Gutterres responded. “Only I know who you are, Silas Carver.”
“You know my mortal name. Then you must also know that I will never stop. To stand in my way means certain doom. Move aside, Hubertian. My oath must be fulfilled. The transgressor must be punished. The auction must be retrieved.”
“No. I will not. For I too have taken an oath. Your oath is to the prince of lies. While mine is to Almighty God. I have invoked the exilium aeternum.”
The Drekavac’s angry hiss temporarily shorted out all of our radios.
“Which means however many lives we take from you after you cross this threshold, they are gone forever. Upon taking your thirteenth life after you enter these grounds, you will be banished from this mortal plane for eternity. Like most things who think they’re immortal, you’ve grown complacent. Break your oath, turn back, and relinquish this contract, or we will rid the world of your foulness once and for all.”
“You offer a false choice. There is another option. Kill you all before you can kill all of me and claim my prize. Your threats do not sway me.”
“Only the vilest sinners to walk the Earth have been offered your mantle, and only thirteen have ever been foolish enough to accept it. Mark my words, Hell Spawn. If you cross that fence, Satan will be down to twelve.”
“Okay, that is pretty metal,” I said.
“No kidding,” Julie responded.
“I shall slay everyone who stands against me until this place is soaked in blood.”
“You can try.” Gutterres turned his back on the Drekavac and started walking to the car. “All yours, MHI.”
“Dibs,” Julie shouted so everyone else on the roof could hear her. And since she was the CEO now, nobody was going to argue with that. She aimed, slowly exhaled, and fired on the respiratory pause. The suppressor mounted on the end of her Cazador turned the muzzle blast to a muted whump. The Drekavac’s head snapped back and its hat flew off.
“Hit,” I confirmed for her as the body turned into sparks and melted into the ground. “Looked like right in the face.”
“One down,” Harbinger told us all. “A dozen to go.”
Then, for good measure, Julie brained the horse monster too.
Gutterres got back in the car and the driver floored it, trying to get back to the cover of the main building as fast as possible. “Good shot, MHI. Keep the Drekavac on the other side of the fence for as many lives as you can. Once he crosses the threshold, his body will be able to re-form inside the perimeter.”
There was a lot of noise from the runway as Skippy fired up the helicopter’s engines. We’d kept him on the ground in order to save fuel so that we’d have him when we needed him the most. Now that it was on, Skippy could do what Skippy did best. Even though Franks was here, Earl’s executive decision had been to leave the munitions on the Hind. We’d risk the charges. That had made Skippy’s day.
Besides, Franks wasn’t a snitch. Grant, on the other hand, might. I’d jokingly offered to frag him, because accidents happen, but Julie had given me a disapproving look so I’d dropped the topic.
A few tense minutes passed. Surely the Drekavac had re-formed by now. The fog was floating back toward us. Every light in the compound was burning so that we could see better, and we had several giant spotlights mounted on the roof, but the bulbs by the front gate flickered and died. The eerie glow was growing again. “He’s coming up the road again. He’s going to crash the gate.”
The Drekavac appeared, riding hell-bent for leather. The horse’s legs were moving so fast that they were a blur. It had to be going about seventy. Milo had floated the idea of installing some of those big hydraulic car bomb barricades last year, but Earl hadn’t thought we’d ever need them. Usually monsters just walked or flew in.
“Open fire,” Julie said, and everybody on the roof was happy to comply. We had even mounted a 7.62 minigun on the roof earlier. At six thousand rounds per minute, it made a hell of a racket, but they walked a line of red tracers right into the fast-moving target. The Drekavac veered hard to the side, hit a tree, and went up in a big—very unnaturally blue—fireball.
Everybody on the roof cheered.
“That’s two,” Earl said from the control room. “Round three, fight.”
“Did Earl just make a Mortal Kombat reference?” I asked.
“I highly doubt it,” Julie said. Then she raised her voice so the roof crew could hear he
r. “Don’t celebrate yet. You heard the Vatican Hunter. We’ve got to keep this monster on the other side of the fence as long as possible.”
“There,” someone shouted. “Light on the main road again.”
That had been fast. The Drekavac wasn’t messing around. This time the monster had gotten a running start and was moving much quicker. The horse had to be doing at least a hundred miles an hour by the time it came into view. Every sniper on the roof shot him and then the minigun shredded the Drekavac and an acre of forest behind him. Only this time he got hit dozens of times before losing control. The horse flipped, end over end, tumbling toward the gate. It skidded to a halt, just barely touching the metal. As the bodies disintegrated, the fog seemed to close in a bit more.
“That was too close,” Julie said.
“That’s three,” Earl said. It was hard to tell with all the static now, but he wasn’t sounding nearly as confident.
“He’s getting too much momentum for us to stop him from crossing the line.” Julie keyed her radio. “Skippy, hit him further out.”
The Hind roared toward the gate. There were orcs hanging off both sides, manning door guns. They threw the horns at us as they passed. MHI owned thousands of acres around the compound, so that was our land, and we could blow it up if we felt like it. If somebody had blundered into the area by accident, they were about to have a real bad night, but this was a perfect example of why we had all those No Trespassing signs posted.
The Drekavac must have re-formed a thousand yards down the road to get more acceleration, because lines of tracers shot from the Hind were firing at something that was out of our view. From the way Skippy had to turn and chase his target, the Drekavac was moving even faster than before. Rockets lanced down from the chopper, causing a rapid chain of explosions along the road. But then Skippy stopped firing and banked away.
Skippy transmitted something, but I could barely make it out. It sounded like “Monster get blowed up.” That would be four down, only Earl didn’t confirm the count because that was when even our most powerful radios went out entirely.
Thirty seconds later, the Drekavac must have already re-formed, because I could see blue fire racing down the road. One of Skippy’s door gunners started shooting, but our orc wasn’t going to be able to swing his nose around in time to track the monster down with his big guns.
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