by Art DeForest
“No threats? No dirty politics?” I asked, one eyebrow trying to crawl up my forehead.
“Nothing unusual.” Said Siobhan walking over to a small bar and pouring amber liquid into two tumblers. She swayed back over and handed me a glass.
The sweet, smoky goodness of a top notch Irish whiskey slid down my throat. “New vampires don’t just get left alone in office buildings for no reason,” I said after swallowing the amber elixir.
Siobhan sighed and nodded her head. “I agree, but none of my people are involved.” She said in a troubled voice. “There is an unknown player, and we’re not sure what they want.”
“I didn’t think there could be a vampire in this city that you didn’t know about,” I said, honestly confused.
“Up to last week, I wouldn’t have thought it possible.” She said with a troubled expression. “I have enough contacts around the city that I would have known if any outsiders were here without paying proper respect.”
I nodded my head in agreement. Siobhan looked like sex on a stick, but she knew her business. She’d been at it for hundreds of years after all. “Any ideas how they’re getting away with it?” I asked.
She shook her head and eyed me seriously. “It’s almost like whoever made those children didn’t have any regard for them. It’s as if they were made by another youngster that didn’t know what they were doing or….” she trailed off shaking her head again.
“Or what?” I asked gently.
She looked up at me with an uncertain expression on her face. It made her look vulnerable and adorable. The protective side of my inner caveman started to rise up. Of course feeling protective of a being who could snap me in half like a twig wasn’t exactly rational, but then again, neither was my inner caveman.
“Or someone who isn’t a vampire has figured out how to make them,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I know that sounds impossible, but someone had to make the first of us.”
I’d never really gone into the history of monsters. I’d learned enough to know how to kill them while having half a chance to stay alive in the process. “You don’t know how your race started?” I asked in puzzlement. “I figured there was a few of you still around that remembered the event.”
“Do humans know where they came from?” she asked with a sardonic smile. “We have our various origin stories, just like humans do with their stories of Adam and Eve or evolution, but like humans, vampires don’t have factual evidence for any of them.”
I could see her point. I had my own faith; you almost had to when you were in my line of work. There were enough other stories running around, however, that someone looking in from the outside would be hard pressed to know what to believe. “Well, keep in touch if you hear anything. I’ll try to do the same.” I said, preparing to leave. I thought Siobhan was troubled enough that I could get out of there without having to defend my virtue. I was wrong.
“I like keeping in touch.” She purred as she stepped deep into my personal space and wrapped her arms around my neck.
My hands came up to her waist, and I tried to push her back, but if a vamp doesn’t want to let go of you, there’s damn little you can do about it shy of staking them. Since I wanted to be alive when I left this place, staking wasn’t an option.
“Dale, how long will you pine for what you’ve lost? I’m right here.” She said softly.
This was a side of Siobhan that I hadn’t seen before. In the past, all she’d done was throw blatant sexuality at me. Actually acting like she cared for my feelings was something new. I didn’t trust it.
Reaching up I grasped her wrists, and she let me pull her arms from around my neck. “It’s not time,” I said with a rasp in my voice.
She looked deeply into my eyes for a moment before standing on tiptoes and kissing me on the cheek. “I can see that.” She said as she backed away. “Don’t wait too long,” she said seriously.
3
Boom, boom, boom! The three round burst from Charlie’s M16 didn’t even make it flinch. Dust flew off the creature’s chest to swirl in the beam emitted by the flashlight on Charlie’s weapon. Small holes appeared in its chest like he was shooting a piece of old leather. I guess he was, kinda. The monster looked like a man with leathery brown skin stretched over sinew and bone. It looked like one of those mummies that you see on the Discovery Channel without the bandages like in the old movies. The fucker was fast too.
It had already taken down Jones and Akron. Stepping out from behind an old stone statue, it touched both of them on the shoulder. Their limbs immediately seized up, and they fell over like they’d been turned to stone. Charlie reacted first and managed to get off that burst into the thing’s chest. All it did was make him the next target. The monster moved so fast it almost blurred in the dusty beams of the squad’s lights as it crossed the intervening space. A clawed hand came arcing around, and it took Charlie’s throat out with one swipe.
Conner and Murdoch opened up from across the room before I could get turned around. Two M16’s on full auto seemed to have a little effect, but not much. It twitched and danced as the guys emptied their mags, but the monster, a ghoul, I would find out later, was already within reach and attacking before they could drop their mags to reload.
I was standing next to this big stone crypt. It was probably four feet wide by eight feet long. Faded engravings covered the entire thing. Right in the center, at the head of the crypt, the image of some demonic face was etched into the stone, screaming in rage at whoever looked at it. It was creepy as hell.
I’d just put a gold necklace and pendant that I found in a little coffer beside the crypt, around my neck and turned to show off my prize when the monster struck. Before I could comprehend the situation, much less move, the ghoul had Murdoch down, blood gushing from his neck. It had a clawed fist wrapped around Connor’s throat. It was pulling him in close, and his mouth was opening wider than it should have been capable of. Huge fangs extended from the mouth as it opened, preparing to bite a huge chunk right out of Connor’s face.
The only good thing I can say about myself from that day was that I didn’t lose my cool. I was a thieving, cowardly piece of shit who got my squad killed but I didn’t panic. My M16 came up, and I put an aimed shot through the side of the ghoul’s head, trying to distract it at least from killing Connor. It worked for about half a second.
The ghoul’s head whipped around to glare at me. It’s eyes seem to glow in the beam of my light as its evil gaze met mine. It seemed to take great pleasure in watching my reaction as it crushed Connor’s throat in its clenched fist. Fear and panic overtook me as its eyes penetrated into my skull and stirred my lizard hindbrain into action.
Scrambling backward down the tunnel towards the entrance, I kept firing single shots as I went. It seemed to slow the ghoul down enough for me to keep space between us. The tunnel lightened as I got closer to the entrance and the ghoul’s approach slowed. Holding up a taloned hand, it tried to shield its eyes from the encroaching sun. It came to a complete stop, hissing in fury as I reached the entrance. It’s fanged jaws made loud popping noises at it snapped them repeatedly in frustration.
My pounding heart and trembling hand kept calling me a coward as I grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin. There were no ironic quips or bold statements as I tossed the grenade down the tunnel. I just ducked around the corner of the entrance and crouched down, covering my ears. When the grenade exploded, I woke up.
I sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. I was drenched in sweat, and my heart thudded against my ribcage as my eyes darted around the bedroom, looking for threats that weren’t there. My heart rate eventually slowed, and I ran a hand through my short salt and pepper hair. Looking over, I checked the time on my alarm clock. 4:23 am. Damn
Too early to get up, too late to go back to sleep. Sighing, I chose the first option and dragged my ass out of bed and into the shower. Yeah, I’d have to shower again after my run, but getting the stink of fear off me was an imperative.
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br /> The hot water from the shower soothed the knots from my back as I contemplated my nightmare. I’d had that same one so often now that it was almost like an old friend. There were worse ones hanging out in the depths of my subconscious.
This one had actually happened. It was how I found out that monsters really did exist. The official report said I was delusional from PTSD after an encounter with elements of the Iraqi military hiding in that cave. I disagreed hard enough that I was discharged from Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and told by a Colonel with a stern face not to talk about it or they’d find a deep dark hole for me. He also gave me a card and told me to call the number on it when I got back to the states.
My hand came up and grasped the amulet on my chest. The same one I had found next to that crypt. I’d worn it next to my skin ever since I got out of the caves in order to keep the memory of my squadmates fresh and alive inside me. It had the heavy weight of gold and the screaming demon visage from the crypt was also engraved on the amulet. There were writings engraved on the back, but searching the internet hadn’t come up with anything like it. Shrugging, I dropped the amulet back to its spot over my heart and finished my shower.
A long run and a second shower put my head back on straight. By the time I got to the office, the sun had come up, and I was looking forward to a day of paperwork and training exercises. Not so much the paperwork part, but I liked the money it put into my bank account.
It turns out that all those conspiracy theorists are right, the government does know all about monsters. At least parts of it do. Their response is to pay people like my team and me to handle situations as they come up. The card that Colonel back in Iraq gave me was the contact for the bureau that wrote the checks.
That’s how I got started in this business. The people on the other end of the line already knew about me. The were the ones that would have that unpleasant conversation with me if I started spouting off about what I’d seen. After verifying my service record so they knew I could handle the cool toys, it was just a matter of some paperwork. All the sudden, I was a monster hunter.
I was also very lucky to survive my first bounty. I think the Bureau does that on purpose to weed out troublemakers. The situations don’t come up very often, to be honest since for the most part, the monsters police themselves.
Yup, it turns out that the scariest monsters of them all are mankind. The last thing the monster community, as a whole, wants to do is wake that monster up. People might be individually weaker, but there was a hell of a lot of us. Added to that, imaginations that excelled at finding new and better ways to kill things and you had a recipe for monster extinction.
Of course, just like people, there were monsters who didn’t have a very firm grip on reality. They had their share of egomaniacs contemplating world domination, and brainless morons bent on destruction, just like we humans do. Occasionally, however, one of them slips through the cracks and starts to cause trouble. If the monsters can’t handle the trouble without drawing even more, unwanted attention to themselves, then people like me get called in to take care of things.
I’m not sure why the government didn’t have a monster hunting agency of its own. Theories abound. Some said that there just weren’t enough monster attacks to warrant its own agency. Some said that the monsters ran the government and didn’t want to be found out by some nosy bureaucrat.
I figured it was somewhere in between. I mean, have you seen John Kerry? If he’s not a vampire, I’ll eat my hat. Terrible disguise.
Anyway, if something big and bad got out in public, I or someone like me got a call. The hours sucked. Mostly at night as you might guess. Your life expectancy shortened considerably, but it was never boring, and the paychecks could run into six figures.
A couple hours of paperwork was all I could stand before the overwhelming need to shoot something finally got the better of me. Jumping on the elevator, I hit the button for the basement. Nightstalker Inc. owned the ten story building outright. We rented the top eight floors to local businesses and kept the bottom two as well as the basement for our own use. The basement was where we kept the armory and the shooting range. Extensive remodeling and soundproofing are insurance that a small war could kick off in that basement without the pedestrians walking by outside ever having a clue.
I heard the reports of automatic shotguns firing precision bursts over at the kill house. Someone was practicing tight quarters combat. Given our last job, that was a good idea. As I meandered that direction the firing stopped and my Dreadnoughts came trooping out the door.
Leading the pack was Lori, my team second. Rumor had it she’d won a beauty pageant in her younger days and looking at her; it was easy to believe. She was soft spoken with warm brown eyes. She had a smile for everyone unless you happened to be a monster. Then those eyes burned hot. The last thing many of them had seen before the end were those brown eyes staring at them over the barrel of a 23 gauge.
We met when a half-assed necromancer I was tracking raised three zombies. I say half-assed because he immediately lost control of them and was promptly eaten. Afflicted with constant raging hunger the trio, like all zombies, had made their way to a local park. The laughter of little kids drew them like a magnet. All that saved those kids was Lori standing between them and the zombies armed with nothing more than a folding lawn chair and an aluminum softball bat. Don’t laugh. The only way to kill a zombie is by destroying the brain. She’d already put down two by the time I got there.
The rest of the team filed out behind her. Jake and Tommy were both former Special Forces. Ray was a former jarhead like me. Monica, or Money to her friends, was former Chicago Swat. John, and of course, Petey were just really tough guys who’d seen things that humans shouldn’t see and survived to tell the tale.
Lori took off her helmet and safety glasses before giving me the nod. “How’s it goin’ boss?” she asked coming to a stop in front of me.
“Good,” I said. “How’d it go in there?” I asked, nodding my head towards the kill house.”
“Smooth as butter, just like always,” she said with a grin. “You gonna take a run with us?”
“That’s the plan,” I replied. “I have an overwhelming need to kill something. Even if it’s fake.”
Lori raised an eyebrow at that. “Rough night?”
Lori knew about the nightmares; she’d been hunting with me long enough that she’d helped kill some of the sources personally. “The usual,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“Siobhan have anything enlightening to say?” She asked with a quirk of her lip as the rest of the team drew around us.
“She swears she doesn’t know the source,” I said with a shake of my head. “She thinks there’s a new player in town.”
“Bullshit.” Said Jake shaking his head. “She know’s everything that moves in this town, right down to the cockroaches.
“Usually I’d agree, but something has her spooked,” I replied, my brow furrowing into a scowl. “And if something has her spooked, we better be on our toes, boys and girls,” I said, nodding once again to the kill house.
The next few hours were filled with gunsmoke as we ran various scenarios and talked about tactics. We also took the time to work out with our personal firearms, blades and other self-defense gadgets that Smoke had come up with.
All of us carried at least a decent sized combat knife around with us. Not so much for actual combat, but to take the head of anything that we could persuade to hold still long enough. You might not think that decapitation was possible with a knife, but those ISIS fuckers had proved that it was not only possible but effective if you knew the proper technique. ISIS, now there’s a group of monsters I’d cheerfully take the bounty on.
The gadgets that Smoke had come up with were things that would help you get away from a situation, so you could call in some firepower to put it down permanently.
Our version of pepper spray was a good example. It not only had high concentration capsaicin in it like bear
spray, but it also had colloidal silver. Simple, but an amazingly effective deterrent when sprayed in the face of the various lycanthrope species. We usually tried to take lycans alive, since most incidents involving them were caused by accidental infection. If we could restrain them and get in touch with the local pack, there was a chance that we’d just have another productive member of society running around who just happened to get furry once a month. It was more dangerous to capture than kill, but it was a lot easier to live with yourself afterward.
We also had high amperage tasers that were effective if you had to go one on one with pretty much any monster while you were in your street clothes. Most things with a physical body conducted electricity fairly well and our tasers had enough kick to scramble the nervous systems of even the undead. At least for a few seconds. Tazing, then running as fast as you could in the opposite direction was your best chance at survival in that instance.
Each of us carried our own personal arsenal around wherever we went. It varied from person to person, but we practiced diligently with what we carried as well as with what everybody else carried. You never knew when you’d have to take up a weapon from a fallen comrade to save everyone else.
