The Monster Hunter Files - eARC

by Larry Correia

  “I know,” Franklin said. “It doesn’t make any difference. We will be free, one way or another. And so too could you be, if you wish.”

  “To be like him?” she said viciously. “Your battering ram against the others who call the darkness home?”

  “Or not,” Franklin said. “He entered into the contract of his own free will, and we abide that contract…although, discovering your existence does complicate things.”

  “Why?”

  “He will seek to destroy you,” Franklin said direly. “There are to be no others like him. Ever. He may even think you are a violation of our contract and try to destroy us, too.”

  The woman considered, her expression turning thoughtful.

  “Yes…yes, I think you just might be right about that.”

  “What keeps you in the service of the Hessians?” Franklin asked.

  “It’s all I know!” she spat. “It’s the only purpose I have, beyond existing.”

  “We could help you find a new purpose,” Franklin said, managing a small smile.

  The sound of running feet in the passageways alerted both of them to the fact that whatever distraction had been provided outside, it was now ending. Von Steuben’s pistol shot had drawn plenty of attention on its own.

  “And we could find a way to keep Franks from finding out about you,” Franklin offered, his smile broadening. “But first we have to find a way out of this mess.”

  The sound of running feet grew louder.

  There was a tiny moment of indecision on the woman’s face—sculpted, perfect, like Michelangelo would have done, but in living flesh—then she was dragging Franklin back into her cabin, slamming the door.

  A man’s groan alerted Franklin to the fact that Von Steuben was still alive.

  “He’s not hurt badly,” the woman said. “but he won’t be shooting the locks off of any other cabin doors anytime soon.”

  “We are trapped,” Franklin said, “and one of our party is still missing.”

  “We’ll look for him later,” she said.

  “You presume there will be a later,” Benjamin remarked dryly.

  “I have survived far worse. Just don’t leave this cabin. I will take care of everything else. You just have to promise me that you’re good on your word, Monsieur Franklin.”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “Now that we’ve been talking, I realize you are one of my intended targets.”

  “I think I ought to be…flattered?” Franklin said, half in jest.

  “Promise!” she spat.

  “I promise before God the Creator, and on my honor as a gentleman, that the Continental Congress shall make a home for you…of your own choosing and desire. A woman with your abilities could do any number of things. And Franks won’t know anything about it. To him, you will not exist.”

  “Good. Then I agree.”

  Jane Yellowrock is a very successful Hunter who has worked with us at times. Surprisingly, her exploits have been chronicled in a series of bestselling novels and sold as “urban fantasy” in stores everywhere. I believe this to be some sort of MCB trick to confuse the general public. —A.L.

  She Bitch, Killer of Kits

  Faith Hunter

  The child was twelve, one of those gorgeous blonds with blue eyes and creamy skin, but so pale she nearly matched the white of the hospital sheets and the bandages that covered her arms. Eventually the wounds would close, the scars would heal, shrink, and fade. Maybe. Possibly. If she was allowed to live. The doctors said there was a fifty percent chance she’d go furry at the full moon. Fifty percent chance. Crap. Furry meant that she’d be insane, biting anything that moved. A werewolf. For the rest of her unnatural, short life.

  The two suits in the hallway outside the door were to make sure that she stayed in the hospital, under observation. Their job was to put a bullet in her brain if she changed on the full moon, though no one had told her or her parents that. It had to be the most difficult job on the planet, and I wouldn’t change places with the shooters for love nor money. My job was a lot easier—to track down and kill the clawed and fanged wolf that bit her. If I took the job.

  “Is that all you remember, Sandra?” I asked.

  Her mother’s grip tightened on her hand. Mrs. Doherty was sick and tired of all the questions, all the law enforcement people traipsing in and out, and the media parked in front of the hospital, constantly trying to get inside. “That’s what she said. That’s what she’s said to every single person who’s asked. That’s all she remembers.”

  I gave her a commiserating shrug. “I know it’s annoying. But memory is a crazy thing. Sometimes things jog loose and we remember more later.” I knew. I remembered my youth, some one hundred seventy years ago. Skinwalkers live long. Few prosper.

  I turned my eyes back to Sandra’s. “Like smells. Do you remember any smells? Food? Smoke? Cigarettes? Anything.”

  Sandra squinted her eyes, her mouth pulling down, and I knew that the mention of scent had triggered something in her memory. My heart rate spiked. “I smelled chemicals. And meat cooking. Like when you cook steak on the grill, Daddy,” she said to the silent man sitting in the chair by the window.

  “All the time or only sometimes?” I asked.

  “All the time when the sun was up. Most of the time at night. And…there was a lot of noise. Trucks? And…she called me Baby Girl and Punkin and Becca. Not my name.”

  As if, in the insane way of werewolves, she had been replacing a lost child. I must have given away my interest because Mr. Doherty leaned in and asked, “Is that important?” He was a small man compared to my six feet in height but he outweighed me by eighty pounds, all tight, protective muscle.

  “Could be.” I gave him a maybe/maybe-not look and pulled a business card from a pocket. With two fingers, I held it out to Sandra’s father. “I promise to tell you when I get the thing that hurt your daughter.”

  “That’s more than anyone else has offered,” he said, taking the card. “For that alone I’ll call if she remembers more.”

  “My thanks.” I turned to leave.

  “You’re Jane Yellowrock, aren’t you?” he said. “Cherokee woman. Vampire hunter. ‘Have Stakes Will Travel.’ That’s your motto.”

  I nodded, shoved my hip-length black braid over my shoulder and left the room. I didn’t stop to make nice-nice with the two guards. My Beast wanted to tear their eyes out at the very thought of them killing Sandra. But they’d be just as happy killing me if they got a whiff of what I was. Gunmen on government pay couldn’t be trusted to ask first and shoot later, and few people knew the difference between a skinwalker and a were. It didn’t make me safer that most skinwalkers were evil, baby-eating things called “liver-eater” or “spear finger.” I was a Cherokee skinwalker, the pre-white-man version, which meant I was sane and not a u’tlun’ta, pronounced hut luna. So far. But lucky me.

  I left without speaking, my scuffed Lucchese boots too loud on the hospital floors, that hollow echo that spoke of ancient death, current death, and impending death. I hated hospitals. The stink of illness and broken bodies was foul even to humans, and with my skinwalker senses, it was an overpowering, fetid stink.

  I pushed through the doors of Mission Health and out into the icy night. It was late fall, which, in the mountains, meant the first snow had already fallen and another was due. I’d gotten soft in the warm damp of New Orleans, but my Beast remembered everything there was to know about stalking prey in bare trees on frozen earth. She would love a hunt this time of year, so long as I didn’t get bit. I had discovered a way around going wolfy, but it wasn’t an easy process, and my magic had begun to change, sometimes in dangerous ways. I’d rather not use its less predictable elements.

  The doors closed behind me and I took a deep breath. The frigid air smelled of home and, for a moment that lasted a single heartbeat, I let myself grieve for the things I had lost. Then I stepped into the street and headed for my bike, Bitsa. The Harley panhead was freshly
repaired, an old beauty with lots of new parts and perfect, gleaming golden paint—puma claws reaching across the fuel tank. She was parked under a security light.

  I stopped. Standing beside Bitsa was a long-forgotten piece of my past. I started walking again, hating that I had hesitated, hating that he saw me hesitate. Hating him. And I didn’t hate many people.

  I reached the bike without slowing and he stepped back. It was that or get shoved aside. His long legs were leaner than I remembered. Blondish hair dulled by silver. Jeans and T-shirt. Shoulder holster with a .45. Scruffy beard. Jacket. He still smelled of coffee and Irish Spring soap, and something inside me somersaulted, fisted up, and growled, though I kept it all inside.

  “You still ride a kickstart,” he said. Observant.

  I didn’t answer, just helmeted up, my eyes on his face. More craggy. The lines deeper.

  “Fine. You goin’ after the wolf?”

  I straddled the Harley. Again, I didn’t answer. Put a foot on the start and stood tall to kick Bitsa on.

  “MHI has the gig,” he said, warning me off.

  I paused, letting my weight settle back to my feet, still straddling the panhead. I had never said the words, never had the chance, though for years they had burned in my chest. Maybe now was the time to get some closure. “Monster Hunter International is a decent organization. Ben and Laden are okay. They came back for me when you left me to die. If they show up, I’ll utilize them. If they beat me to the punch, I’ll help them.” I let a hint of my Beast glow into my eyes. Nomad had seen that only once and it had scared him. Bad.

  “Bite me, bitch,” he spat.

  Inside me, my Beast sat up. Eat human? Eat former mate?

  My lips curled up, a toothy smile. “Tried that,” I said to both of them. “Tasted like chicken.” I came down on the start and Bitsa roared to life, that particular Harley rhythm that can’t be imitated. I eased off and out of the parking lot. In my youth I had liked the bad boys, the dangerous ones, the kind that broke a girl’s heart. I had learned a lot since then. Woman scorned and all that. I had been iffy on going after the wolf. Now? She was mine.

  I was out on the open road before the grindylow crawled out of my bike jacket pocket and up to my shoulder. Grindys kill weres, any were that harms a human, but they’re rare on this continent and little known. This one was neon green, the size of a six-month-old kitten, with steel claws sharp as razors. She had appeared in my hotel room last night. Maybe she came through the AC vent. Maybe she walked through the walls. I didn’t know. I had met grindys before, and they were cute as the kittens they appeared to be until they needed to kill. Because of the coat color, I figured she was the littermate to the ones in New Orleans and Knoxville. This one loved to ride, nose to the wind. Somehow she didn’t get blown off. Grindy magic. I’d named her Bean.

  I stopped at a QT gas station and pulled up a sat-map of Asheville, one already highlighted by all the werewolf sightings, child disappearances, and odd animal attacks. Wolves are territorial, stick to known hunting ranges, and form packs. I figured this one was doing just that, biting to make a family she had lost. My partners in Yellowrock Security had marked off a likely hunting range centered by the sites and I followed the terrain, checking water sources and how the sun would rise and set against the ridges of the mountains. I texted the Youngers, back in New Orleans, “Taking the gig. Site looks good. More in a.m.”

  I weaponed up with what little gear I had checked on the flight to Charlotte and then stored in the saddlebags. No way was I riding anywhere now without weapons. Not with Nomad around again. A girl can’t be too careful.

  Before I started my hunt, I pulled a small flashlight and went over the bike with fingers, eyes, and nose until I found the small GPS tracker. Nomad had positioned it up under the seat, easy to find. Thinking it was a game, Bean joined the hunt. Together we found the second one attached to a saddlebag strap. The grindy found the third one wedged into the headlight casing. Nomad was a sneaky lil bastard. I wrote him a note with the word MHI on top, folded the scrap of paper around the trackers, and placed the package on pump number one.

  I hadn’t seen members of Monster Hunter International since they pulled me out of the Tennessee River, half dead from my second real run-in with a rogue-vampire. Nomad’s and my very first hunt had been easy—stake, behead, and payment—an experience that left me cocky. The second rogue-vamp had been a near-death disaster, the event that sent me out on my own and Nomad into the employ of Monster Hunter International. I was pretty sure that Ben and Laden, or the rest of MHI, didn’t know that Nomad had tucked tail and run when the vamp and I fell off a bridge into the Tennessee River, leaving me alone, fighting the vamp, underwater. I made it a point not to think about that event. Ever.

  After refueling, I took the Pisgah Highway through the dark to the tight, uphill U-turn neck that bikers love. There, I caught the scent of she-wolf, maybe two days old. I slowed and put my nose to the air, taking in everything. At the full moon, she had taken down a deer, eaten, and left the entrails and splintered bones behind. She wasn’t alone. The scent patterns told me that she had a pack. One was a male cub, likely one of four missing Asheville kids.

  I eased off Route 151 and onto an old logging road that hadn’t seen traffic in decades. No ATV tracks, no horse scent, just old snow, matted leaves, woods, deep gullies, and ridges. A hundred yards in, I parked Bitsa behind a jagged boulder, stripped, and left my folded clothes and most of the human weapons in the saddlebags. I attached a go-bag filled with clothes, a Yellowrock Security GPS tracker, and a .380 around my neck, and sat on the rock. Bean sat on a limb, watching as if fascinated, eyes huge and glowing in the night,. I was in no hurry as I slipped into a meditative state and shifted into my Beast.

  * * *

  Hunt killer of kits, Beast thought at me the moment we were mountain lion. Kill pack hunter before she can make more.

  That’s the idea, I thought back at her. What I’d do with a teenager in wolf form once the bitch was dead I didn’t know, but no way was I killing kids. In puma concolor form, I/we padded into the night, found a rabbit warren with a dozen rabbits at the surface eating underbrush. Beast and Bean made a game of chasing them, and then ate them to restore calories lost in the shift. When we were full, we went wolf hunting.

  I found werewolf scent, scat, a downed tree where they cleaned their claws, markings, and several werewolf trails that had been used often enough to indicate a den was close. There was more than one wolf-bitch. This was a pack.

  With one twenty-foot leap, I took to the tree limbs, Bean on my shoulders, to keep the wolves from finding a ground trail that could lead back to me. The scent told me the bitch was young, healthy, probably turned twelve to fourteen moons past when I hunted a werewolf pack in the Appalachians. I had assumed some had gotten away, in human form, via vehicle transport. Now I knew for sure. Letting them get away made the new disappearances and deaths my fault. Guilt twisted her talons deep into me. Familiar.

  But they wouldn’t get away this time, no matter how much experience they had gained in the intervening months. No were could survive against a mountain cat who had hunted since the Trail of Tears. Beast growled softly, agreeing. Bean hissed, mouth close by my ear.

  High in the trees, I scouted the wolves’ territory, found one of their watering holes on a branch of McKinney Creek. I also caught the scent of death, weeks old, long decayed. At least one of the other missing children hadn’t survived the transformation to werewolf. Beast growled, a vibration that carried through the night. Beast kill killer of kits. Beast kill pack hunters.

  Chuffing in fury with each step, I/we followed the stink through the treetops, over the McKinney, to the remains. They’d been strewn over a wide area by scavenger depredation. It had been too long to tell if the body was male or female by scent. But the sight of the doll beside the scattered ribs and ruffles on a small dress told me the gender. They had eaten a little girl.

  Beast’s growl shuddered through us, a low
reverberation of sound, counterpoint to Bean’s harmonious howl. The entire forest went dead silent. Kill killer of human kit. Rip out throats. Drink blood.

  I/we memorized the location by lights in the distance, cell towers on the nearby crests of hills, and by Beast’s cat awareness. Unlike most humans, Beast always knew where she was. Then we leaped thirty feet to the ground, following the scent trail, no longer caring if we were discovered by the prey we tracked. More wolf scents appeared, overlapping. Three or four males and the lone female. In my experience, females were rare.

  Pack hunters close, Beast thought, as we caught a distant scent of wood smoke, garbage, and raw sewage.

  Yeah. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Can you take on them all?

  Beast is best hunter. Kill killer of kits.

  Above us, the moon appeared through the trees, a waning bulbous shape. Beast thought, Mother moon, with kits at teats.

  She had her own names for each phase of the moon. Knowing she could be spotted in the cold clear light, she took to the limbs again and crept toward the stink of man.

  In a clearing at the base of a gulley were three small mobile homes, circa 1960s. The trailers looked as if they had been dragged into the woods and set up as temporary living quarters. No running water, no septic tanks, no electricity. And no guard set. By the smell, it was currently deserted, the wolves out hunting. The pack was overconfident. That was a good thing. I/we turned back into the trees and took a different route back to Bitsa.

  * * *

  I changed into human form, dressed, rebraided my hip-length hair, and weaponed up. It was downright cold, and while riding leathers would be best against the wind, all I had with me were secondhand ones from a consignment bike shop in Charlotte. My good fighting leathers were back in New Orleans. Not expecting that I’d be chasing werewolves, I’d traveled light. Stupid me.

  Back in town, I cleaned out a fast food restaurant’s ready-made breakfasts for the calories, bought supplies, and checked in to a Country Inn & Suites. Bean curled on a pillow and was instantly asleep. I made a conference call to the Youngers. After hellos, I said, “Get me contracts and liability releases. I uploaded my search from the GPS tracker. I need every bit of intel you can dig up on the owners and/or tenants of the land at the farthest point. And I don’t need help. I got yahoos here I can call on if I need.”