I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  Boone squinted, thinking he’d seen something down the corridor.

  “Boone!” She had her hand out for a magazine. He fished one from his webbing and handed it over when he saw them, the two Ninja coming back down the passageway, little more than shadows themselves, moving incredibly fast, a glint of firelight against the sharpened steel one wielded.

  Boone cleared the 9mm he wore, not enough time to reload the Italian shotgun, the pistol in his hand barking, his rounds sparking off the hall walls, the Ninjas moving faster than any human being should be able to, dodging back and forth, up and down as they came, seeming to run across the walls themselves, Boone already a terrible marksman, all his shots missing.

  The pistol broke open on an empty chamber at the exact moment the first Ninja reached him, the warrior dropping to its palm and delivering a handstand kick dead center to the red cross on Boone’s chest, his other leg snapping out, batting the spent pistol from Boone’s grasp. The Ninja kicked him twice more from the position—Boone knocked back—before springing to his feet, turning at the bottom of the stairs to face Rainford’s daughter right when she fired a short, ragged burst from her reloaded UMP, the Ninja’s chest exploding in puffs of air and the thing crumbled where it stood, dust cascading to the corridor floor.

  The second rolled past the first and was on Boone as he regained his senses, processing what was happening here—Ninja vampires!—the Ninja leaping into the air and latching onto Boone’s neck with both hands, bringing its knees into the young man’s chest, driving the breath from his lungs and propelling Boone further back, Boone turning into it, smashing the Ninja into the wall behind them. The Ninja twisted around on Boone’s shoulders, its feet never touching the ground, getting behind him, one arm against his throat, the other against the back of his head, pressing Boone into the choke, the blade of the sword clanging against the wall as they struggled.

  Boone snatched his hand out and grabbed the sword’s blade, squeezing. He felt it open his palm, felt the wetness in his hand. He reached up and grabbed the arm that was across his throat. The touch was enough. The vampire dropped off him, its limb smoking where Boone’s blood had contacted its skin, the ninja forgetting about Boone, shaking its arm frantically. Boone reached out with the same bleeding hand, pressing it to the exposed area of the vampire’s face, under the hood, like he was anointing it. It fell to its knees shrieking, grasping its smoking face in its hands, wailing until it promptly disintegrated.

  “That was impressive.” Rainford’s daughter remarked from the lower stairs. “And please don’t touch me.”

  “Where’s this go?” The passageway stretched away from them. The Ninja and the soldiers had been in a hurry to get somewhere.

  “The nursery.” Rainford’s daughter gripped the shotgun, Damian’s H&K slung on her back.

  “Nursery?”

  “Yes.” She had her hand around Boone’s arm, intent on the stairwell.

  “Nursery like babies?”

  “Yes. What did you think—plants?”

  Boone shrugged her off and started down the corridor.

  “Wait!” Rainford’s daughter called after him. “What are you doing?”

  His hands like his insides, empty. The .44 was back on his hip. The machete sheath on his thigh was empty, the blade buried in the jailor back in the dungeon. Boone’s H&K hung at his side on its sling. Blood dripped from his clenched hand to the corridor floor.

  They passed one body, then more. Soldiers, Ninja, Thuggee—all posed in death. A hand reaching up from the floor, fingers curled and frozen in place.

  “They were protecting them.” Rainford’s daughter followed Boone through the carnage.

  Protecting who? The thought registered in Boone’s distraught mind as he pushed through a wooden door into the chamber beyond.

  The room was warmly lit, electric lights and various medical equipment running off backup generators. Rows of bassinets like a maternity ward in some hospital. A wail of infants. Boone looked down into the nearest cradle, nothing but ash and a puncture mark in the mattress.

  “Oh.” Kane was down on one knee over at the wall, twisted around with his 9mm fixed on Boone. “It’s you.” He lowered the pistol and went back to his task, affixing plastic explosives. His sword was propped against the wall next to where he worked, its blade stained.

  “What—Kane, what are you doing here?”

  A baby stood in its crib, legs unsteady, screaming at the Wrath. The little thing had worked itself into a fervor, its skin flushed pink, little fangs showing. Other babies cried where they lay.

  “I’m setting the charges. The layout of this keep,” Kane gave the screaming baby a look, “we’re looking at the foundation,” patted the wall, “right here.”

  “No. What are you doing to these…?”

  Kane stopped what he was doing to scowl at the screaming baby. “They’re not babies, son, if that’s what’s bothering you.” The Wrath took up his sword and crossed to the crib, impaling the protesting child, lifting it from the crib. He held the thing up for Boone to see, its little arms and legs wriggling furiously. “They’re not babies.” The child blanched, disintegrating to ash around his hand.

  “I kill monsters, son.” The look on Boone’s face disappointed Kane. “Don’t go getting all soft on me now.”

  “You kill…”

  “I kill monsters,” as Kane said it, Rainford’s daughter stepped into the room behind Boone. “That’s what I do. Hello there, miss.” The look that came over Kane’s face. “Well,” he recognized what she was.

  “Not her you don’t,” Boone told the Wrath of God.

  Kane looked from the girl to Boone, made some kind of mental calculation then sighed, sheathing his sword. “Some other time then,” he promised, going back to his explosives.

  She had her hand on his arm again and Boone let her lead him this time, away from the room, away from the wailing babies and the monster that knelt against the wall planning to bring it all down around them.

  “Was that…” Rainford’s daughter started to say to Boone in the corridor. “You know what? I don’t want to know who that was.”

  48.

  11:00 P.M. (EST)

  Mitchell lay under an old army blanket on the floor on Dodd’s mattress, gripped with fever, babbling incoherently.

  Dodd sat across from him in the bare apartment, his back to the wall, one leg drawn up, the other stretched out. The .38 was tucked away in the beltline of his jeans, the 9mm on the floor next to his cell phone.

  Mitchell’s infection was spreading. Dodd had bathed the wound on his friends’ hand, cleaning it out. But it was showing no signs of getting better. The skin around the bite was turning grey and shot through with black lines, like the capallaries had frozen and rose to the surface of his skin.

  Dodd had stripped off the man’s jewelry and laid it beside the mattress in a little pile next to his sneakers.

  He couldn’t find any of Mitchell’s crew. His driver, Trey, gone. Dodd’d thought Malik and a couple of the others had stuck around, but they were nowhere to be found. He’d called Mitchell’s studio from a pay phone. The voice that had answered hadn’t sounded too friendly. Talking about where he at, they come pick him up. Dodd had hung up on them. Somethin’ wasn’t right.

  He could try and talk to one of the Conyers soldiers, maybe one of the brothers themselves…thing was, right now, nobody knew where Mitchell Givens was, nobody except Dodd.

  There’d been crime scene tape outside the Moses houses the morning before, police tape blocking the street. Mitchell’s Mercedes being towed away. The cops had cleaned up fast and left.

  Some boys had found Busta hiding under the ping pong table in the rec room in building three. Come and got Dodd. Dodd had told them they’d done good, given them some money, told them to keep quiet about this. The one boy was Alizah’s oldest, name of Terry or Terrence if Dodd remembered correctly, though the boy’s friend kept calling him Tore. Dodd actually believed these boys might
keep their mouths shut, unlike that fool Luke. Dodd hadn’t seen Luke around for a few days and didn’t care to.

  Mitchell lay there, sweating and whispering things that made no sense.

  The television was on, its volume turned low. There’d been nothing on the news. Nothing about Moses. Nothing about Busta Nutz going missing. Not a thing about their world.

  Dodd sat there looking at his friend. There were only so many times he could clean and oil his handguns. Whatever Mitchell had got himself into, he wasn’t going to get better on his own. Dodd wondered about the woman over on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Thinking he might need to get Mitchell over to Miss Celeste, see about the gris-gris, see if she had any vodoun powerful enough to help his friend.

  49.

  5:01 A.M. (CEST)

  Flames lit the bailey from the buildings burning inside the castle. Bodies were strewn among the debris. Machine gun fire sounded from the gatehouse, down into the road outside the castle, return fire from the road beyond the wall echoing back. Boone and Rainford’s daughter exited through a sally port, finding themselves on the far side of the castle.

  “Boone. We’ve got to get out of here.” Colson staggered towards them, bearing an injured Halstead at his side, katana in his free hand. “We don’t have much time. The reinforcements have arrived.”

  “Who is…?” Halstead saw Rainford’s daughter first.

  Colson knew without being told, his katana rising.

  “No.” Boone brought the H&K around on them both.

  “To never see my Pomeroy again,” sighed Halstead.

  “How ‘bout you?” Boone asked Colson. “Got anything to say?”

  Colson turned his head away in contempt, elbows rising, sword born aloft in a challenge.

  Boone cut them down with the H&K, bullets treated with his own blood blowing holes in the vampires, Colson’s katana falling to the ground amid two clouds of ash.

  “Let me guess,” surmised Rainford’s daughter. “You were supposed to escape with them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looks like you pulled a burn then. What was your escape plan?”

  An airplane sounded overhead and they both looked up. The Wrath stood atop the Keep, the red cross of his mantle clearly evident. He wore some kind of harness that was connected to a lift line, the line lighted and disappearing into the night sky. Far above a balloon drifted at the end of the lift line. Kane held a detonator in one hand, thumb poised over the button. His other hand resting on top of his submachine gun, the weapon against his stomach, slung over his neck. He stood there in the eerie glow of the flickering flames, waiting patiently.

  “Run!” Rainford’s daughter grabbed Boone’s arm and dragged him along until he found his legs and joined her, the plane’s engines filling the night air, a shadow coming in over the castle. Soldiers on the road fired into the sky, the plane zipping over the castle, catching the lift line, whisking the Wrath from the Keep, his white surcoat trailing behind him.

  The machine gun in the tower continued to fire down into the men on the road until the castle started to come apart. The lower levels of the Keep blew out, the tower collapsing inwards. Other sections of the bailey walls and the minor towers around them disintegrated, building materials and body parts raining down.

  The concussions washed over Boone and Rainford’s daughter where they sprawled amid the trees, hands over their heads.

  When Boone sat up, the machine gun had silenced. The gatehouse towers were gone. Great plumes of dust boiled up into the night.

  “Well.” He looked over at the female vampire. “What now?”

  “Come with me,” She said, looking up to the paling sky. Whatever this was, they were in it together now. “I’ll get us out of here.”

  “How?”

  “Just follow me before she comes.”

  “She?”

  “My mother.”

  “Well, I already know your father.”

  “You don’t want to meet my mother.” The girl smiled at him, lip raised over an ivory fang. “Believe me.” She started to get up.

  “Wait a minute. Can you drive?”

  “Why?” She looked down on him sitting there like a big, well-armed kid in a white cloak with a large red cross imprinted on it. “Can’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry. I can.”

  50.

  6:30 P.M. (EST)

  “Pass the corn, would you please, Mark.”

  Father Mark sat at dinner in the kitchen of the rectory with the Monsignor and Father Tad. They were finishing their meal, the Monsignor indulging in a last helping of pork chops a parishioner, Mrs. Daly, had prepared for them. The Monsignor liked Mrs. Daly’s food. A nearly empty bottle of red wine was on the table. The Monsignor enjoyed his wine also, as did Father Tad, whose face was flush from alcohol.

  The Monsignor was telling them about Biafra, as he did on the nights when the wine had loosened his tongue, not that the man needed an excuse to talk. He was known as something of a formidable recantour and his homilies were enjoyed by the parishioners. In his seventies now, Monsignor was a friendly looking man, quick with a smile and a kind word.

  Mark, who had known him for a few years, knew there was pain behind his eyes. Times like these the pain came closest to the surface. Biafra, Nigeria now. The civil war between the Igbo and the other clans. The Igbo, the Jews of Africa. Things the Monsignor spoke of and had spoken of before: the Black Scorpion, Doctors Without Borders, the mercenaries on the side of the Biafrans. The horrors of the starvation. The kids with their rectums hanging out of their bodies between their legs, like tails. That detail had made Father Tad flinch, resort to his wine.

  Mark didn’t drink. He’d heard the stories before, at this very table. Before Father Tad it had been Father Cameron and before Father Cameron, Father Sherman. Father Sherman and Father Cameron had been elderly and both had passed on. So now it was Father Tad at the table with Mark and the Monsignor; Tad, who was older than Mark but still young enough, maybe forty. Mark had something he wanted to say to Tad when the Monsignor retired for the evening. Something Mrs. Daly had confided to him, something one of the altar boys had told her.

  “Igbo or Yuruba, Hausa-Fulani, I don’t know,” the Monsignor held his wine glass aloft. “I didn’t see the difference. God didn’t.” The old man drank his wine. “The Egyptians were the ones bombing the Red Cross centers. So it goes.”

  Tad planned to take some of the parish kids to the ticker tape parade next week. Mark pictured him standing there with the kids on lower Broadway, in the Canyon of Heroes, all that shredded paper and confetti reigning down on them from the office buildings. Their parents trusting their kids were safe with Tad. Trusting him implicitly, because of who and what he was, because of his station and the authority of the Church.

  Not Mark.

  He didn’t trust his fellow priest one bit.

  Canyon of Heroes my ass, he thought, and he didn’t even have any wine in him.

  “You’re going to take some of the boys down to the parade, Tad, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Monsignor.”

  “That’s nice. I remember my first ticker tape parade, for Lindbergh back in ’27. I was nine.” The monsignor’s voice quieted. “I’ll never forget what happened to his son.” He smiled, “I was there for the Giants in ’54 too. They swept the Indians that year like New York just did to San Diego. The last year they played in the World Series,” the Monsignor and his ’54 Giants. “Moved to San Francisco in ’57.

  “Decade later I was in Africa. I got out in December of ’69. A month before the ceasefire.” The Monsignor looked down into his glass as he swished the remainder of his wine. “A million dead by then,” he finished his wine. “Couple months before, they’d had another parade, here, for the Mets. Oh well. Gentlemen,” the old man rose, “I believe it’s time for me to excuse myself.”

  Tad got up also, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his linen napkin.

  “Hey Ta
d,” Mark spoke, his voice level. “Hang around a minute, want to talk to you about something.”

  Tad sat back down, placing his napkin on the table.

  “Yes, Mark?”

  “Good night boys.” The Monsignor wished them well and headed off to his quarters.

  “He gets like this, you know,” Mark said of the Monsignor. “More so as he ages.” Tad made a noise in agreement, mmmm, encouraging Mark to continue. “He’s a good man,” opined Mark, “sees the best in people.” Mmmm. “To a fault. Sometimes he’s blinded by his optimism.” Mmmm. “Sometimes he doesn’t see clearly what’s in front of him.”

  Tad didn’t offer an mmmm.

  “Myself, on the other hand. I’m not so optimistic. I don’t know if I actually buy that whole story about Eve tempting Adam with the apple and we as a species being damned forever after, but something I know for a fact, there’s evil lurks in the hearts of some men. And I know we can’t ignore it.”

  Tad listened to what Mark had to say, seeimgly patient.

  “I’m hearing some things about you, Tad. And it’d better not be true. If it is, it has to stop.”

  “What is it that you think you’re accusing me of, Mark?”

  “Not accusing. Just saying.”

  “You’re just saying what then? That…”

  “What I’m saying is the reputation of this place,” Mark gestured expansively to the building around them, “rests squarely on the shoulders of men like him,” pointing towards the door the Monsignor had exited, “me,” pointing at himself, “and you.” Punctuating his next words with jabs of his finger. “Anything, any one of us does, that threatens to—”

  “Enough, Mark. Who said anything to you, anyway? JoAnn—” Mrs. Daly’s “—what does she know? Did you ask them? Did you ask the boys?”

  “That’s funny, Tad. I didn’t say anything about boys.” Mark thought of a million bad jokes Boone had made with him over the years about priests and young boys, a million bad jokes he had laughed at and encouraged. He felt sickened now. He wanted to leap across the table and pummel this—