The Monster Hunter Files - eARC

by Larry Correia

  There weren’t many lamps on the docks. Nor many people. Occasionally, sailors speaking half a dozen different languages wandered past the stack of barrels where Von Steuben had hidden just before dusk. There was enough space between the huge casks to watch the specific dock for the specific ship which had been named in Von Steuben’s communiques. Either his intelligence was right, or it was wrong. Either the she-monster of Johann Dippel was here tonight, or it was not. They would just have to wait and see.

  * * *

  “Wake up, old man,” whispered Louis.

  Benjamin Franklin’s eyes fluttered open, and he realized he’d fallen asleep, slumping against one of the barrels. His greatcoat was wrapped tightly around him, against the chill, damp air, and he wondered how long he’d been dreaming. In his mind, he had been rebuilding Franks—over and over and over again—like assembling the grizzly pieces of a bloody, putrid puzzle. If he’d not been a man of science, Franklin doubted he’d have had the stomach for it. Even so, repeating the process ad infinitum, had been the most unpleasant type of bad dream.

  “Is something happening?” Franklin whispered.

  “Ja,” said Von Steuben, who was crouched, peering between the barrels.

  The Prussian whispered to the Frenchman, and the Frenchman whispered to the American.

  “A wagon has arrived. The dock is practically deserted. It’s going to be dawn soon, but we’re still in complete darkness. No one has gone aboard or left the ship in many minutes. The wagon is just sitting there. It does not appear to be a normal wagon. There are iron bars and the wood seems to be of a particularly heavy grain. A dozen different men—wearing Hessian uniforms—appear to be waiting nervously. They are armed.”

  Franklin absorbed the details, not bothering to look for himself. He could well imagine in his mind what it might take to transport Franks safely across country. In Franks’ specific case, he had worked for the Hessians by choice—because the Hessians who had been sent to kill Franks had instead made Franks an offer. Much as Franklin himself had eventually made Franks an offer.

  This new creature? Who knew what motivated it or what allegiance it felt—if any—to the nations of men.

  Finally, there was some noise as if a gate had been opened.

  Von Steuben continued to report, and Louis continued to translate.

  “The side of the wagon has come open, finally. And there is…there is a young woman descending down to a footstool placed before her. She is beautiful. She does not appear to be much over a score of years old. She is dressed as a proper lady of society. Several of the Hessians are bringing out two trunks. The trunks are being carried up to the ship. The woman is being spoken to by one of the Hessian officers.”

  Franks, robust as he was, had still been a crude work. Stronger than a team of oxen, but also just as ugly. Either Dippel had significantly advanced his process and technique—between the two inceptions—or Franklin and the Baron had come a long way for nothing.

  Ben hoped for the latter. But how to be sure?

  “We have to get in close,” the American whispered. “Sitting up here, taking notes, doesn’t do us much good. We have to look in her eyes. They won’t be quite like the eyes of any living man or woman either of you have ever seen. You will understand what I am talking about when the time comes.”

  Von Steuben asked and Louis translated, “How do you propose we do that with so many infantry standing about, looking nervous?”

  Franklin thought about it for a moment.

  “We need a distraction,” the American said. “Something spectacular enough that it keeps every single Hessian occupied, until we can confront that woman.”

  The three men sat in silence for many moments.

  Eyeing what was to either side of them, Franklin finally asked, “What’s in these barrels?”

  * * *

  The oil was cold and viscous, and it flowed out of the bungholes rather sluggishly. Franklin was mildly appalled at the vandalism the three of them had wrought, but none of them had had any better ideas. Once the oil caught, they had to hope it made enough of a fire that all attention would be drawn to the burning barrels. The harbor watch would muster every able body to contain the flames—oil being notoriously difficult to deal with because water would only make it spread—and this might rope the Hessians into assisting, lest they be accused of cowardice.

  In the confusion and the tumult, Franklin and Von Steuben would have their chance.

  Assuming the young Frenchman could get his firestarting kit to work.

  “Keep trying,” Franklin encouraged. They’d spent so many hours in the dark, the tiny sparks from the flint seemed alarmingly bright. The Hessians or the harbor watch might see them and come to investigate.

  Von Steuben muttered something under his breath and tapped one of the muskets on his aide’s waist.

  “Firing a weapon would be suicide,” Franklin hissed. “Even if you did ignite the oil, the noise would draw them right to us—before the flame got big enough to mask our maneuvering.”

  “No,” Louis said, pausing, the whites of his wide eyes just barely visible. “The Baron suggests we use a bead of powder to ignite the oil.”

  Louis switched to his powder horn, pouring out a little line of black dust over the surface of the pooling oil. Franklin’s eyes could barely make out the young man’s hands as he worked.

  “You two had better be well away from this when it goes,” Louis said. “In fact, far away.”

  “What about you?” Franklin asked.

  “Assuming I am not burned to death, or captured, I will meet you at the gangplank to the ship.”

  A quick relay of instructions—aide to Baron, then Baron to aide—followed.

  Von Steuben clapped the Frenchman lightly on the young man’s shoulder, then he was leading Franklin out into the dark, cold, exposed, night air.

  The two older men walked calmly—neither pussyfooting, nor hurrying. This deep into the wee hours, there were only the few lights near the ships to worry about, and their range was limited. If anyone could see the Baron and the American moving, they would be mere shadows against the backdrop of the sea, with the harbor’s black surface gently slapping against pylons and ships’ hulls alike.

  Suddenly, Franklin saw illumination on the side of one of the far ships. Illumination coming from behind him.

  “That did it,” Benjamin said, and then without having to be told, he and Von Steuben changed direction and began to angle over and down toward their destination.

  At first, only one voice rang out. Then several. Every Hessian standing watch pivoted to stare up at the stack of casks which now boiled with thick, smokey flames.

  Shouts turned to screams, and then the screams were drowned out by bells which began to clang loudly, again and again.

  Glancing occasionally to see how bad the fire had gotten, Franklin again felt a pang of guilt: for the vandalism. He did not enjoy destruction for destruction’s sake. He’d worked his whole life to build things, not ruin them. He also suddenly realized that such a fire might very well burn out of control, risking innocent lives.

  The old inventor whispered fervent prayers as he and Von Steuben began to make their final, lengthy approach to the ship—praying that no innocent lives would be jeopardized this night. It was worth a lot, to halt the she-monster of Dippel in its tracks. Even the lives of the three men who’d conspired to confront and combat the beast. But that didn’t mean Ben Franklin wanted anybody else to get hurt.

  Suddenly, the cosmopolitan gentleman from Philadelphia felt a pang of empathy for his comrade Washington. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, George was fighting their cousins—the British—many of whom were not their enemies. Merely Englishmen and Scotsmen, Irishmen, and even Hessians, all pressed into service in the name of King George, who wouldn’t let the American Colonies out of his grasp without a struggle. Washington’s men had to shoot at people who might very well be blood relatives. Kin by birth and common heritage.


  Then Franklin grunted and reminded himself to keep his feet moving—lest he gather so much wool, that he fall over and break something. They’d all known the Revolution couldn’t be had without cost. And while Franklin had been content to serve as that Revolution’s mouthpiece to Continental Europe, he’d never thought he might find himself engaging in any derring-do.

  The old man picked up his feet and stayed after the Baron.

  The ruse partially worked. About two thirds of the Hessian troops guarding the wagon left to go deal with the growing fire. One third stayed behind, while everyone else aboard the ships on several nearby docks—including the specific ship in question—came out on deck to see what was going on.

  A few men began running down the gangplanks or climbing over nets and down the sides of their ships, to the docks, and dashing to help with the fire. What threatened one boat, threatened all boats. Other men simply gawked, as the barrels of oil were consumed in a huge geyser of flame that shot several stories into the air—a thick, angry column of black smoke curling off the top, and beginning to drift out over the docks and into the harbor town proper.

  Louis de Pontière was nowhere to be seen.

  As the Baron and Franklin both approached their intended destination, no eyes watched them. Everyone was gazing up at the conflagration which had ignited out of nowhere, and about which none of the several hundred men—all cobbled together into an ad hock fire brigade—seemed to have any idea what to do about, oil being a literally slippery foe for any would-be firefighter to have to handle.

  The woman, as well as her two trunks, was nowhere to be seen.

  Noticing this as well, Von Steuben didn’t stop. He walked right past the Hessian officer who’d been talking to her before—and who now stood gazing at the flames, occasionally shouting to his men—and proceeded up the gangplank, with the old American directly in his wake. Franklin was moving harder than he had in a long time, his blood pounding in his ears, while his breath wheezed in and out of his lungs. Not even the few nights he’d spent in bed with the women of Paris had given him such a workout. But then, the women had understood. The charming American democrat wasn’t the freshest horse in the barn, even if his ideas did send the ladies swooning.

  Up on deck, one of the ship’s crew finally noticed strangers coming aboard and confronted the older men.

  Hessian to Prussian, Von Steuben and their interlocutor argued it out.

  Whatever Von Steuben managed to concoct as their reason being aboard, it satisfied the man who’d barred their path. The bearded sailor moved out of their way and allowed both Franklin and Von Steuben to make their way past several more sailors, who were all standing and watching the fire, until Von Steuben found a doorway that allowed them to take a steep flight of stairs belowdecks.

  A second sailor confronted them. Guttural Deutsch flew back and forth between the men. Von Steuben was a natural in command. His demeanor broadcast authority with every syllable. He didn’t just belong, he owned. This was his ship. Five minutes prior, he’d been slowly approaching the vessel like a burglar. Now Von Steuben barked orders like he was the captain himself.

  Sailors came out of side passages, listened just long enough to decide they didn’t want a piece of the gruff, imperious older man in the officious-looking officer’s garb, and they quickly vanished back to where they’d been pretending to sleep through the alarm on the dock.

  Finally, both Von Steuben and Franklin arrived at a single, closed, and apparently locked cabin door.

  The Baron thumped a fist on the door proper, commanding entry.

  A woman’s voice—surprisingly and disarmingly pleasant, speaking perfectly in German—filtered back through the wood.

  Von Steuben’s face showed surprise; then he thumped the wood again and commanded entry a second time. Then he thumped the wood a third time, gave a third command and, lacking better alternatives, pulled one of the pistols from his belt and aimed it at the lock.

  The pistol report—in the cramped spaces belowdecks—was deafening.

  But it did get the door open, with smoke curling all around and splinters of wood and metal all over the deck beneath their feet.

  Von Steuben barely got two strides into the cabin when a force of nature leapt from the shadows. A single set of candles on a tiny cabin table whooshed out, but not before Benjamin Franklin had a glimpse of the beast: arms outstretched, like a bat clawing the air, teeth bared, with eyes…yes, the eyes. There could be no mistaking it now. Dippel had returned to his fiendish work. Honing. Practicing. Apparently, perfecting?

  Where Franks was a blundering buffalo, this new creation was as lithe and gorgeously ferocious as a leopard.

  Von Steuben never had a chance. His surprised cry of pain was instantly snuffed out, then his body hit the floor.

  Benjamin Franklin—old, still wheezing from exertion, and utterly unskilled and unprepared to defend his person—simply stood in the open doorway and waited for the end. It would be quick. It would be, hopefully, painless. He was sorry that he could not have made some kind of reconnaissance report to the Continental Congress—to let them know what they were facing. Franks had been a blunt instrument. This new one? A surgeon’s scalpel.

  The woman was on Franklin before he even knew what had happened. He hit the floor hard, the air rushing from his lungs, with the she-creature pinning him beneath her—legs straddling Franklin’s rib cage and squeezing with astounding strength.

  The words she said in German did not register and Ben’s face must have shown it because the she-beast instantly switched to very fluent, very refined French.

  “How did you find me? Was it the Landgrave? I’m not letting him switch his choice now. Not after all the years I gave to him!”

  Franklin felt his ribs complaining and tried to speak, but could only gasp with pain.

  “Tell me!” the woman, with those telltale unnatural eyes, commanded. “Are you here to claim a bounty?”

  The woman raised her arm, cocking her fist back for what would surely be a jaw-crushing blow, and Franklin merely stared up at her, unable to stop her; the pistol in his belt hopelessly pinned.

  “Mercy!” Benjamin Franklin finally managed to force through his lips.

  “For you and your kind?” the woman spat, and then laughed—a hard, cruel, gloating noise that seemed to make the whole passageway darken with a kind of feral, ominous tension.

  “Not…not…not for us,” Franklin gasped. “For you. For…a spirit who could never be born.”

  The hard laughter instantly stopped. With her fist still cocked and ready to strike a killing blow, the woman’s expression suddenly became confused.

  “What…what did you say?”

  Her legs, clamped around Franklin’s ribs, loosened.

  Ben Franklin drew in several long, painful breaths and laid his head back onto the deck, closing his eyes. He didn’t know where Louis was. Probably dead, or caught in the act of setting the barrels on fire. The Baron? Also probably dead. And even if this she-creature let Ben live, what would the crew and the Hessians do? Franklin was positively powerless.

  But he still had his words. Always, Benjamin Franklin had his words.

  “I know what you are,” Franklin said, opening his eyes and gazing up into the woman’s face. She was remarkably beautiful, with a full mouth, lovely, well-defined cheeks, a proud bearing, and blond hair the color of soft gold.

  “Don’t speak to me of what I am,” the woman hissed.

  “Nevertheless,” Franklin said, “I know. Because I’ve known one just like you. He was sent, like you’re being sent, to fight us. To fight in America. He was a cudgel, but you are a rapier—the one smashes, the other slashes—hunting men, and otherly things…the demons that stalk the shadows. The ones we scholars of science sometimes dare not talk about, but we know are still waiting. He’s out there right now, fighting the darkness. I think he is trying to atone. For what, I have never been quite sure. If you’re like him, and I think you are, you might know b
etter than I.”

  The woman stared down at Franklin, her eyes boring into his soul, searching for something, as if trying to read the pages of Benjamin Franklin’s brain.

  The cocked fist slowly lowered.

  “I know the one of whom you speak,” she said, her voice gone cold, almost monotone. “He was with us in the beginning, for the very first war. The war when it all began. Before this world existed. I was there, when he entered Dippel’s golem—seizing for himself what so many of us had always wanted.”

  “Franks told me God commanded him to serve us,” Benjamin said.

  “Franks? Is that what he calls himself? How appropriate. Me? I took a very different path. Dippel was in despair after his first creation fled. The men who’d come for Franks? They took Dippel away in chains. Threw him to the floor before the court of the Landgrave. Dippel begged for his life. He promised the Landgrave anything. The Landgrave commanded Dippel to make me.”

  “As a…bride?” Franklin said.

  “The perfect object of the Landgrave’s desire. I took this body when I had the chance, but it was a gamble I learned to regret. Human beings are hard for me to relate to. I hated any man who touched me. I made a poor wife. So then I was deemed a prisoner. Tortured. Starved. Left to die. But my kind, we do not die from neglect alone. We endure. And the prisoner was eventually summoned for a new purpose, and taught manners and etiquette, and how to learn languages, and about the art of going into the courts of other houses and other lands, to seduce enemies to their beds…where I would finish them.”

  “I believe it,” Franklin croaked.

  “The English Crown believes if it can just get rid of a few key people in your little Revolution, the Colonies will come back. Most of the Colonists are loyal to the Crown, you know.”