The Monster Hunter Files - eARC

by Larry Correia

  He hoped he would find her outside. Surely she slid away to safety under the waters.

  His shoulder was a fiery vise-grip of pain where he had dislocated it, and his feet were so blistered with burns that he could barely stand, but by sheer force of will he made the silver arm rise up and shatter the sea doors. Pain shot through his whole body, and for a moment he collapsed, staring upward at the hailstones ringing through the broken skylight, at the black smoke pouring up and out.

  Wearily he crawled along the lip of the concrete quay. He had to keep telling himself that if he dove in the water, the sixty-pound weight of the arm would drag him under.

  He passed the body of Grendel. He carefully twisted, then tore the head free. It was dry and crumbling, and he lugged it along by the hair.

  Painfully, slowly, he undid the boatlines. Painfully, slowly, he boarded and crawled aft and spun the engines to life, glad they were not clogged with dead wasps.

  The slim boat slid out onto the Thames. The city was dark. The storm was fierce, but the wind was blowing out to sea, at his back. Shivering in the hail, he wished he had his jacket. He wished he had bullets. He wished a lot of things.

  The wild winds blew the clouds free of the moon, and in that pallid light he saw the ship. Crewed by thin and famished men, and some of them were dead, and some of the dead were skeletons, was the great three-masted clipper, her canvass sails torn and flapping, her hull crusted with barnacles.

  Something splashed behind him. Agnes was there, her arms, shoulders and head coming up out of the water and over the gunwale of the boat. She was nude, and her long black hair clung tightly to her skull and shoulders. Her eyes were beautiful, chatoyant, and were of a dark and deeper hue than he had ever seen before. He was afraid to step across the boat to her.

  She cocked her head to one side, smiling.

  He said, “My coat?”

  She said, “I did not really need it, but I thank you for the gesture. We don’t get cold.”

  He just nodded. “Why did you do it?”

  She said, “Because when you knelt and offered me a little square black box, I knew what it was supposed to hold. It was supposed to have a ring inside, a wedding ring. Instead it was your flat key. We did not exchange vows. We exchanged keys.”

  He felt a pounding in his head. Perhaps it was the combination of burns, dislocations, evil magic, beestings, and a general adrenaline overdose. Perhaps it was the typical frustration of a man talking to a woman. “What—what the hell are you talking about, Agnes?”

  “My name is Aglaope. Aglaope Vanderdecken.”

  “I wanted to know why you chose me?”

  “Your crazy bravery! And you were in Cairo. I needed someone crazy to protect me from Imhotep. What were his last words?”

  “Is that why you came back here? Not to have a last word with me?”

  She giggled. “My last word with you is to ask what Imhotep said when he was carried alive to hell by Apep.”

  “But why didn’t you ever—”

  “—tell you?” She merely smiled, and his words caught in his throat.

  “I was sent by the ruler of my people, Her Highness Aquareine, to spy out Manticore and your doings, because of late you grow ruthless in hunting us down, unseelie and seelie both. Other realms soon intersect with earth, ancient gates will open even we wish kept shut. I was sent to see whether you could be reasoned with. You cannot. You don’t know your own hearts. Your superiors at MI4 assumed you knew I was only half human, and wanted me that way. I become a mortal woman if a man weds me in a church, and would bear him strong sons and fair daughters.”

  “Half human?”

  She pointed. He thought he had never seen an arm so fair, so well shaped. “My father is the captain of that ship, which sailed into the night world long ago, forsaking yours. My mother is Princess Clia, who took him in her arms to comfort him; from the union sprang a porpoise and a sea bream, and the other was me. The great god of your world blows the winds against him whenever he tries to make port. I sent a signal to him earlier asking him to come up the Thames. See how simple? It is like having a storm in your pouch. It will cover my retreat.”

  She heaved herself up on her arms, so that her belly was at her elbow, and her naked, wet, shining breasts were visible. Between them hung the charm of Isis. She pouted and pointed at it with her chin. “May I keep this? I want to remember Imhotep, and things of your world are easy to forget. What were his last words?”

  “He said his love for you will never die, even if the sky falls and earth perishes. Or something like that. He said your forgetting him was worse than all the pains of hell.”

  She smiled sadly. “Ah! Did he? Well, my sisters will honor me for that.”

  “You lure sailors to their deaths, do you?”

  “Had you lured me to life, dear Henry, I would have stayed! Something is more important to you than I was. What? What do you hold sacred?” She shook her head. “We are not luring men out of the mortal world to kill them, you know. We need fighters when the time comes, and you humans are the deadliest monsters of all. But we change them. They can never go home again. Sunlight kills them.” She nodded at the silver hand. “You know. Like that. My sisters will honor me for your death, too. You put on that deadly arm for me, didn’t you? How sweet! But Imhotep was serious. You were not. A flat key! Imagine! And me the reincarnation of the Pharaoh’s daughter!” She smiled dismissively. “Him, I shall miss. You, I shall forget.”

  She slipped down and sped across the dark and stormy waters more swiftly and gracefully than a dolphin toward the dark, tattered, ghost ship.

  By the time he reached the English Channel, the black ship was gone, and so was the storm. The sky was pink with coming dawn, and the jolts of pain running down his silver arm to his heart were growing stronger.

  He took out the severed head of Grendel, inserted the small, round stone into the dead man’s mouth, and spoke the words. This time, they did not burn his throat.

  The eyes opened. “I see a mortal man who has no claim on me. Our debts are paid, each to the other.”

  “I propose a new bargain. You are not at peace, by any means, are you? You have monsters you need hunted. I am skilled in the work, and I have it on good authority that we men are the deadliest monsters there are.”

  The lifeless head twisted its lips into a smile. “You wish me to be your lord? Ah, but by what name would we swear our oaths of loyalty and fealty?”

  “There is one thing I hold sacred. Any monster I kill for you is one less to menace the innocent. I gave up everything for my profession. Even love. Some men are wolves and must prey on the weak; most men are sheep and never look up from the grass they graze. I am a wolfhound, and I prey on the strong. I hunt the horrors. I swear by—by Monsterhunting!”

  Perhaps the dark voice laughed. “Then come. Say farewell to sun. I open the jaws of night to you and bring you living to my court of darkness.”

  The boat was later found by the Coast Guard, drifting, empty.

  Trip Jones was picked for MHI’s best team right out of training for a reason. He’s a skilled Hunter, but more importantly the man’s got a bigger heart than the rest of us put together. —A.L.

  The Dead Yard

  Maurice Broaddus

  When monsters want to feed, they went after the poor and the powerless first. The longer I’ve been with Monster Hunter International, the more true I believe this to be. What was worse: those monsters came in all shapes and sizes. I splashed water on my face before leaning heavily on the sink. I took a long, hard look in the hotel mirror.

  How are you doing, Mr. John Jermain Jones? Triple J to some. Trip to friends and family. I could always tell how I knew a person by what they called me.

  I zipped up my suitcase. I never bothered to unpack it at a hotel or on any mission. I hated the feeling of settling in only to uproot myself again.

  My family used to be fishermen in Jamaica, but immigrated to America a few generations ago. They made a l
ife for themselves, but we never forgot where we came from. There was a Jewish teaching that always stuck with me: tikkun olam—repairing the world, the damage done by myself and others, healing the broken pieces, as a way of life. It was what led me to go into teaching high school chemistry. It was also what led me to pick up a pickaxe when a zombie outbreak occurred. That was the way my world worked now. In the end, I just wanted to make a difference and keep my family safe.

  So when word came to MHI about a series of killings on the island, I felt a strange familial tug to lead the investigation team—a small team of people I trust with my life: Owen Zastava Pitt and Holly Newcastle. Family took care of family.

  A young man claiming to be a distant cousin, who kept greeting me as Brother Jones, ran the Sandals resort in Montego Bay. I wanted my friends to enjoy themselves, a moment in the sun before we got down to business, so my cousin comped us a night. A blast of heat let me know I was leaving the confines of the hotel lobby to enter the beachfront. The entire beach line was a series of cordoned-off resorts. Tourism was the lifeblood of the island, with tourists arriving, shedding their old lives, and doing things they wouldn’t dare back home. I knew where I’d find Owen. Under the canopy of an open-air bar, shifting in his seat, never quite comfortable in his own skin. Owen was one of them dudes you’d mistake for being a jock type and never peg as having been an accountant before hooking up with MHI. That was kind of his thing, never quite being what people expected.

  “What’s that?” Owen stared at the beverage in his glass, an umbrella tilted to the side like an assassin poised to strike.

  “An umbrella?”

  “The bartender insisted that I try it. Wanted to give me a taste of the island. I’m not sure I trust any drink with an umbrella in it.” Owen turned his hulking frame, fully revealing the scar on his face. My dad used to love this show called The Rockford Files. He told me what he loved was how the main detective got his butt kicked so often while working a case. That was Owen’s go-to move in a nutshell: putting himself between danger and innocents. The scar was only one of his souvenirs from doing so. “Everything okay, Trip?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You look like you’re carrying the weight of the world’s problems. You know, more than usual.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be okay.” I glanced around. “Where’s Holly?”

  “Um…taking point on tactical surveillance.” Taking a sip, nodding approvingly at the glass before carrying it with him, Owen led the way to the pool. Wearing a black-and-white-striped bikini, Holly floated on an inflatable mattress. She raised her sunglasses when she saw us.

  “Getting a taste of ‘resort’ Jamaica before we get to ‘real’ Jamaica?” I asked.

  “This is real enough for me.” She eased back into her air mattress to bask in the sun. All blond-haired and blue-eyed, she had a swimsuit model’s body and knew it. She didn’t care how people gawked at her, since she was once a stripper in Las Vegas. She had this fierce sense of self and a will nearly as strong as Owen’s. Not that I’d ever tell her, but I’d always admired how she carried herself as a Hunter.

  By the time I realized I was staring, Holly met my eyes. “Never see a woman in a bikini before?”

  “This is the kind of hunt we need to do more often,” Owen interrupted to rescue me from an awkward moment. “What are we looking at?”

  “The series of murders have been localized to a single parish just outside of MoBay,” I said.

  “MoBay?” Holly asked.

  “That’s what the locals call Montego Bay,” I said.

  “You couldn’t sound any more like a tourist if you tried,” Owen said.

  “I still feel a…connection to this place. My mother used to tell me stories her mother passed on to her about this place. You know how kids are…after a certain age you just tune out your parents’ voice. As I got older, I realized I had no stories to tell them.”

  “I bet you have some now,” Owen said.

  “Not if I’m actually trying to get them to sleep.” I scanned the area for potential eavesdroppers. “My ‘aunt’ is the justice of the peace of the St. James Parish. Her family, our family, is hosting the Nine Nights.”

  “Nine Nights?” Holly asked.

  “Think of it as an extended Irish wake. Some people still refer to it as the Dead Yard. The latest victim was a baby. Nine days old, drained dry. Emotions are running high, so the Nine Nights has been closed to just family. She invited me and my family to come stay with her”—I turned to Owen—“though she wasn’t real receptive to the idea of me bringing a friend.”

  “Wait,” Holly sat up like a student still working out a math problem. “When you say family…”

  “She wanted to meet…Mrs. Jones.” I avoided her eyes.

  “Ha!” Owen snorted. “This mission just gets better and better.”

  “Whose idea was this?” Holly crossed her arms.

  “Apparently my aunt is very traditional. So having Owen as my wife was out.”

  “Why would I be the wife?” Owen asked.

  “Because it’s my story. So if a woman was going to come along, she’d have to be someone’s wife in order to be ‘under her roof’ as she put it. So your cover would be either Mrs. John Jermain Jones or…”

  Owen held out his arms and started humming a wedding march.

  “It’s like choosing between the lesser of two evils,” Holly said.

  “What do they think it is?” Owen asked. “Baruragaru, chupacabra, vampire, loogaroo?”

  “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Our best guess is we’re looking at some sort of undead.” I was still settling into the idea of being in charge of the mission. Because it was family, Earl wanted me to lead it. Part of me enjoyed the way they turned to me as leader. Owen especially. Owen didn’t do well with authority, or anyone, telling him what to do. But he listened to his friends. “Officially, we were called in as a favor to a government official.”

  “Favor? Not to sound too crass, but favors don’t pay the bills,” Owen said.

  “Did I mention the victims were nine days old? Besides, as I understand it, my aunt is paying the equivalent to the PUFF herself.” The Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund was the government-issued cash bounty for monsters. Since the PUFF didn’t apply out of country, someone had to foot the bills. This was a job, not a calling, after all, and it didn’t get done cheap.

  “So they want a low-key investigation. That all?”

  “It’s just…this one is personal.”

  “This time it’s personal?” Holly lowered her glasses. “Buy me whatever Owen’s drinking, Trip, and I’ll let that line go.”

  * * *

  When we exited the resort, a taxi driver snapped to attention. A bowler hat with feathers stuck in it topped his grizzled dreadlocks. Yellowed, bloodshot eyes tracked us. A strikingly well-trimmed silver mustache framed two rows of perfectly white teeth. Hardscrabble hands waved us over. “You Jones?”

  “Yeah.” I stepped forward.

  “You a rasta?” Pulling the cigarette from his mouth, he ground it out under heel as he studied my dreadlocks.

  “No, it’s just…my hair.”

  The man made a noncommittal noise. “Come on. I have the rest of your luggage already loaded.”

  “Any trouble with customs?” I asked.

  “Not if you know the right people.” The driver half sneered at me. “Why have you come here?”

  Ignoring the challenge in his voice, like I was some unwanted trespasser, I dropped into the passenger seat. “We were asked. Come to investigate some deaths under…mysterious circumstances.”

  “You Americans don’t think we can handle our own business? You people come and stare and make fun, like we’re exhibits at a zoo for your entertainment.”

  “I have family here. We were called in to help, not take over.”

  “Then you’re hunting your heritage.”

  The taxi sped by a billboard which read DON’T BE IN A HURRY TO EN
TER ETERNITY. Armed police stopped traffic at a road side check. We were officially leaving resort Jamaica. I leaned forward to catch the eye of the taxi driver.

  “No problem, man, no problem,” the driver wound his hands like he was patting down the air.

  One of the men pointed at Owen and demanded that he open his bag. Owen complied, revealing several shirts with loud prints on them, toiletries, and a magazine. Disappointed, the police officer waved us through.

  The drive up the mountain gave a perfect view of the parish, a tableau of green hills covered by low-lying clouds. A series of potholes and edges which bled into a scree of crumbling asphalt, the road was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass. The taxi driver stayed in the middle, honking his way around the blind curves. Only if another vehicle honked in response did he drift into his proper lane.

  “I’ve flown in helicopters through enemy fire that was safer than this,” Holly said.

  “How much longer?” I asked.

  “Soon come,” the driver said. “Just around the corner.”

  A couple miles later, we stopped in front of a house. Concrete walls surrounded the property, seven feet high topped with razor wire. Metal gates jerked open. The long driveway took us past an intricate garden filled with banana, coconut, breadfruit trees along with rows of corn, tomatoes, and vegetables I didn’t recognize. The main house was a pastel castle, with its thick turquoise walls trimmed with a pink-and-red-tiled roof. Metal grating painted white enclosed the portico. Each window fitted with “burglar bars”—wrought iron bars fixed to the exterior—gave the house the appearance of a prison. At least they were painted white to match the portico.

  “Mind if I check my bags?” Owen stepped out of the taxi.

  “No one trouble your stuff, man.” The driver walked to the rear of the car and popped the trunk.

  Owen opened the top chest. A couple of Jericho pistols. A Beretta 1301 Tactical, a gas-piston-operated, semiautomatic, 12-gauge shotgun. Tavor assault rifles. A Negev machine gun. Magazines of ammunition. Not our usual gear, but since we were operating in another country, we didn’t know what might get caught up in customs. Or was legal. Or what we’d have to ditch on short notice. Owen strapped a Jericho to his hip and exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath the whole time. “I just wanted to make sure none of our equipment grew legs.”