Graham teleported onto my shoulder. He didn’t smell putrid anymore. Thankfully, it seemed he could turn it on and off.
“You don’t seem the type to claim a reward for a job undone. And you said this is my house now,” he said. “Which means that you going down there will signal that the house is safe. They’ll come up here to loot this place, and you won’t even get your pay.”
I shrugged. “I get paid to kill monsters. No monsters, no pay.”
Graham feigned a flirtatious sigh. “No monsters? You are such a gentleman.”
I snorted.
“Come on, Guy!” Graham continued, pleading as I entered the kitchen, kicking bottles lightly out of the way to create a path. “The way you’re going, none of us get what we want.”
“Alas…”
“What if there was a way we could both get what we want…” the demon pondered for a little while. I stopped, half-consciously. I was admittedly curious as to where he was going with this.
“A deal!” Graham finally said, as if it was a breakthrough.
“My mother taught me to never make deals with demons.”
“Your mother sounds very uncreative…”
My cheeks warmed and fists tensed, but Graham didn’t seem to notice as he continued.
“I can’t stay here, regardless of what happens. You stepping out of here alive will signal the village that they have carte blanche with this old house. A shame that you don’t get rewarded for the trouble. So, how about, I fake my death? You present my corpse to the villagers, and then get rewarded.”
“And then what will you do? They will still come for the house.”
“I’ll go with you!”
“No way. I work alone. That’s the Blood Hunter way.”
“Blood Hunter? What’s that? Some thrash metal band?”
I sighed.
“We’re an order of warriors, training to rid the world of vampiric bloodlines. We travel alone to reduce risk. Because, if a vampire of the Blood detects us as we kill them, our scent, image, sound and even unique essence is transmitted to all other vampires of the bloodline. To be a Blood Hunter is to accept that we must inevitably sacrifice ourselves to rid this world of vampirism.”
Graham yawned, widely, exposing his flat teeth. I gritted my teeth.
“Sounds like pompous nonsense to me. And irrelevant. I’m not scared of vampires. I don’t have blood. Well, I do. But I’m sure by now it’s alcohol levels are so high that one sip would poison a vamp instantly.”
I shook my head.
“No is no.”
Graham appeared on my head, looking down at me upside down.
“Come on! I’m an immortal demonic trickster. A good conversation partner. And I don’t eat a lot. Or anything. Just go past a town once in a while so I can get some booze and we’ll be fine.”
I exited the house and picked up my backpack. Fortunately, no opportunists had risked approaching the house to steal the stranger’s stuff.
Graham sighed, leaning back on my head. He didn’t seem to need to grip onto anything and was even lighter than he looked.
“Well, you leave me no choice. You don’t get paid, and I continue to follow you invisibly, making a nuisance of myself. Making villagers think you’re a witch, telling vampires your blood tastes good, pissing in your water…”
“You wouldn’t dare…” I hissed.
“I would, biped. I’ve got nothing but eternity waiting for me. And demons have been known to do much worse for far pettier reasons. So, accept my company, or don’t. You’re getting it all the same.”
I clenched my fists, and then let out a long breath.
“Fine! You can come. But I’m not taking pay for this one. Just petrol. And maybe some food.”
“Your business is your own but, I must say this, is not a prudent way to run one.”
My empty wallet agreed with the tokoloshe riding on my head as I made the hike back down to the nameless village.
Chapter 11. The Hunt
I didn’t think rotting limbs could be so dextrous, but you learn something new every day on this job.
The zombie lunged forward, thrusting an assegai welded to the stump of its arm in my direction. The rusting blade slid off my armour and pierced my backpack. I winced. I had just sewed it up again!
“Too slow, mortal!” Graham chuckled, as he sat atop the wall of a collapsed white-washed hut, covered in grime and old blood.
The zombie gurgled at me, as if echoing the tokoloshe’s jab. It wore traditional Zulu dress. And, by traditional, I mean 19th century. Hide loincloth and covered with trinkets and animal parts. Where his hands should be was an assegai grafted into his flesh, and a metal shield covered in decayed cowhide on the other.
Shaka’s Chosen. An impi who had died honourably and been brought back by one of the Emperor’s necromancers to serve the Empire – even in death.
The undead let out a breathless roar and charged with a ferocity unbefitting someone who had been dead and abandoned in these hills so long ago.
Villagers had told tales of the Hill Horror, an impi who had died here ages ago and now tormented the hills looking for flesh and blood. They weren’t that far off. But I recognised this type of zombie. The impis kept them away from the public. In fact, they kept them away from even the other impis, most of the time. I wondered if Sifiso knew about them. What he would have thought about them.
Shaka’s Chosen were not a secret. They were held up as one of the highest orders and honours to be awarded a fallen soldier. But, the practicality of the honour was very different. Zombies were slavering creatures, consumed by an insatiable desire for flesh. Only the necromancers could keep them obedient. But, when their circle of necromancers was killed, the zoms went rogue. These hills were only lucky that this zombie had been content to roam only the isolated homesteads and hadn’t attacked a village. It couldn’t infect anyone. Not anymore. But that was a small mercy for someone who was being eaten alive.
“Stop zoning out, twinkle toes!” Graham laughed. Was he eating popcorn? Where did he get that?
My glancing at the odd tokoloshe perched on the hut wall rewarded me with a blow to my stomach, as the zombie bashed me with its shield.
Graham let out a guffaw, spitting out unpopped kernels.
I grunted and ducked below another thrust of the assegai. The zombie still had muscle memory from when it was controlled by its necromancer. Maybe even more. Some witch doctors who dabbled in necromancy said that skilled living made skilled undead. I didn’t really like the implication there. If our flesh held our skills, then what was the importance of keeping us alive?
I hoped the Emperor didn’t talk to many necromancers.
The zombie pressed in for another attack, unceasing. Zombies were not the smartest enemies, but they were unrelenting. Untiring. The epitome of a perseverance hunter. Which meant I needed to kill them quickly.
I sidled past the zombie, shoving against its pseudo-traditional shield with my free hand. Its last lunge and the shove pushed it off balance, allowing me to kick at its shin. It tripped, falling over with a confused gurgle.
I kicked it while it was down, breaking teeth, before I stomped down hard on its shield arm. It craned its head desperately to try and bite at my boot. I hefted my machete for a swing at its neck but hit bone. With a second swipe, the machete carved through the zombie’s uplifted arm. Its assegai fell to its chest.
One swing. Thud. It still moved but stopped gurgling.
Second swing. And the head was free.
Even in actual death, the impi zombie looked angry. Famished. It had raised its arm, as if to shield itself. I frowned. Zombies weren’t meant to have self-preservation. But…muscle memory.
Were we just sacks of meat with memory?
The smell of cheap booze and putrid fur wafted suddenly towards my nose as Graham teleported onto my shoulder.
“I thought you were a monster hunter,” he jibed, holding onto my hair for balance, even though I suspected
he could maintain perfect balance without being an inconvenience. But, being an inconvenience was Graham’s entire nature.
I grunted in reply, sawing off the last sinews of the zombie’s head. I would need to present it to the client. I carefully manoeuvred the grotesque head into a plastic bag. I didn’t worry about anyone thinking it was human. It was far too bestial and was already dripping the gooey black necroblood found in the undead.
“You’ve been hunting small-fry like this for the…what, three weeks that I’ve been tagging along? And you struggle every time.”
“Three months,” I corrected him, and it had been torture the entire time. “You could have helped, you know?”
Graham shrugged, grinning his too large grin.
“And miss out on the show? I’m a spectator, mortal. A connoisseur never dabbles in the practicality of his art. It ruins the mystique.”
“I was under the impression that a connoisseur was expected to dispel mysticism.”
“Well, you’d think that, as you are prone to being wrong.”
As if by magic, because that was probably the case, a bottle of beer appeared in Graham’s hand. He began to drink, holding his finger up, telling me to wait.
I rolled my eyes and secured the head in the bag onto a hook on the side of my backpack.
Graham let out a satisfied sigh and a burp, before tossing the bottle into a bush.
“See? I’m a connoisseur of your beverages, because I know very little about them. Every good story ends when the mystery is solved. I don’t want this story to end, so I continue in blissful ignorance.”
I didn’t reward his discourse with a response. He teleported onto my shoulders as I turned away from the scene and followed the long path down to civilisation. I had walked all the way here from the main village, not wanting to alert the undead to my presence. Fat good that had accomplished. The Chosen had stumbled right into me as I entered the homestead.
“You do not enjoy the hunt,” Graham said, nodding understandingly.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, immediately regretting my action. Graham sometimes stayed silent if you ignored him for long enough.
“You never smile on the hunt…or ever really. It’s all clinical, for you. Calculated. There’s no art. No passion.”
“This isn’t a game, tokoloshe. This is life and death.”
“The biggest game!”
I rolled my eyes, as Graham teleported to investigate a discarded liquor bottle, which he soon realised was his own from earlier.
The village which had hired me to rid them of the Hill Horror was tiny. More a collection of homesteads surrounding a schoolhouse and small store than any more substantial settlement. It was cosy, though. Far away from the highways and towns that were the focus of imperial control. I liked it here.
A herdsman stopped observing his herd as he saw me approach down the dirt path. He was visibly shocked and peered at me for a bit longer to confirm that I wasn’t some sort of spectre.
As I entered the village, the herdsman and some other villagers congregated around me. Graham had, of course, long since disappeared. He didn’t show himself to any other humans. Thankfully. I didn’t feel like losing business because a demon kept hanging off my ears.
I lifted the bag off its hook and held it before me, slightly open. The villagers looked at each other, tentatively, as they wrinkled their noses at the smell. Finally, the oldest among them hobbled forward and peered into the bag. His eyes widened and he looked close to gagging. I closed the bag.
“The Hill Horror…the Aimless Impi…it is dead?” the herdsman asked for confirmation. The man who had seen the head nodded, slowly.
One at a time, the faces of the congregated villagers lit up. The air seemed lighter and the sun brighter, as their collective relief washed over me.
“I will discard of this head in a deep grave. Do you have payment?”
The villager’s relieved smiles faded, slowly. They began fidgeting. I repressed sighing.
“Um…we didn’t expect you to actually do it. Most strangers just come and go. No one has actually…” the younger man cut off.
“We lied,” the older man who had since recovered from the disgusting visage, interjected, sounding genuinely ashamed. “We don’t have any money. At all. There are no jobs for money. We live off what we produce.”
Typical…I wanted to get angry at them and insist on payment. My pistol was still empty, and I had only barely managed to get enough money for petrol working on a construction site. Graham had really found that amusing. He’d weight down bricks when I was trying to pick them up.
But, seeing the relief on their faces after I had slain the beast that had been tormenting them…
I unclenched my fists and sighed.
“Do you have a meal I can eat, at the very least?”
The villagers’ relief was palpable as their eyes lit up.
“Aphiwe! Please get some food together for our hero,” the older man called. A young lady, about my age, poked her head out of a hut and nodded.
I inclined my head in thanks. “I will bury the head…”
“No, no! You have done enough. Boys, bury the head. Far away from the village,” the older man continued, taking charge.
I handed the packet to two young men who grimaced at their package.
“Place some rocks over it before filling the hole,” I said to them. “And bury it deep! Don’t want any corpse eaters coming close to the village to dig it up.”
They nodded. They probably knew the drill. Even before…that night in Mqanduli, I knew how to discard of monster bodies. It was something you just needed to learn living in a rural area, where the darkness hid many terrors.
I thanked the villagers, despite the non-payment, and took my leave while I waited for my meal.
There was a tree just behind the schoolhouse. I could hear loud counting in unison from inside the wooden structure. Its rhythm was nostalgic. Calming.
I took off my backpack, unbuckled my weapon’s belt and leant up against the tree, enjoying the shade and cool breeze on my skin. I closed my eyes. It was calm. I loved these villages. Mqanduli had been larger, but very much like this.
I felt a discomfort, waking me before I could truly fall asleep, and I opened my eyes to the sight of Graham staring at me. His furry-flanked face looked confounded.
“What?” I hissed.
“You can’t keep letting them get away without paying you, Guy. You look like a patsy. They can smell it miles away. Makes you a sucker.”
I sighed. “These people don’t have much. It feels wrong to exploit them.”
“You aren’t. You risk your life to fight their monsters. You deserve a bit of moola.” He rubbed his fingertips together. A very human gesture.
“I don’t expect a demon to understand,” I started, but then stopped as I heard footsteps. Graham disappeared without a trace.
Aphiwe appeared, poking her head around the tree as if looking around a corner into a room. I tried to smile, looking up at her, but she flinched. I opted to look impassive instead.
“I brought food. I hope it’s okay…” she said, passing me a bowl and plate as I stood up straight.
She had to be my age. Maybe a bit younger. Her black hair was long, kept in a braid. Strands of the braid fell in front of her, covering the top of her orange and blue dress.
“Thank you,” I said, glancing away as I realised I was staring. The food was another thing worth looking at. Pap and beef mince, boiled mielies, homemade scones and amasi. It seemed they did feel guilty for not being able to repay me properly.
I expected Aphiwe to leave immediately as I accepted the food, but she lingered as I dug in. I looked up, and she glanced away shyly. When I caught her staring, it was either at my machete, sheathed beside me, or my holstered pistol, or on the scars by my neck.
“What happened there?” she finally asked. She pointed shyly at a large scar.
I shrugged. “Ghoul. I was fighting its colle
ague and it used the chance to slash at me with its claws. Bit deep but managed to kill the creature and get a bandage over it.”
Her eyes widened. “You had friends to help you with the wound, right?”
“No. Why? It’s fine. I was able to apply enough pressure and do the necessities before passing out. My teacher taunt me an incantation to slow the bleeding.”
She seemed to flinch at the admission. A lot of backwater villagers were suspicious of wizards. Sorcerers were one thing. Their spark was a gift from God, or the ancestors, or any other native god. Depending on if they were Christian or had embraced Neo-Traditionalism. But wizards were different. Their discipline was complicated, requiring years of study that most people could never understand. That made them outcasts in the eyes of many.
I didn’t like it. Wizards earned their place. Sorcerers had their power thanks to an accident of birth. But, it would take much more than me to overturn centuries of superstition.
“You are a monster hunter, then,” she said, almost sounding relieved, but she kept her distance all the same. “I almost thought you might be a charlatan. Or someone who got lucky. But, from the scars and the…weapons…”
She stopped as she caught me staring at her, holding a chunk of bread up to my mouth.
“There is another monster,” she said, steeling herself, no matter how uncomfortable I apparently made her feel. “An inkanyamba. It has infested the freshwater river where we used to collect our water and wash our clothes. The other rivers are closer, but they are too small and too dirty. Some of the children are getting sick. I know we can’t pay you anything, but we have more food. And you can stay in one of the spare huts…for a while.”
Not forever, she meant. They would accept a Blood Hunter to slay their beasts for them, but never to live among them.
“Are you sure it’s an inkanyamba,” I asked. “They’re rare.”
She nodded, earnestly. “It’s big. Way too big to just be an eel. It consumed the boats we had beached there in a single bite, leaving only splinters. And, around the shores of the river, it is said that there are storms unlike that everywhere else.”
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