She signaled for a few of the others to go with her. Nobody was going to go anywhere alone on this tub. I watched her walk away. Even coated in dried vampire juices, she was the prettiest girl I had ever known. Trip interrupted my reverie by handing me a Gatorade and a power bar. I scarfed them down as he gave me the blow by blow of their last vampire encounter. I sat on a crate of grenades and listened to my friends. What it all came down to was this: it did not matter what high tech gear we had, or what weapons, or even what training. It came down to the friends that stood by our side, and our will to fight for them. It felt really good to be alive right then, I would stand with these people any day, and I knew that they would stand by me.
I started to tell them about my close encounter with Darné when I heard a voice. I stopped instantly, leaving the others regarding me curiously. Lumbering to my feet, I limped with resolute purpose in the direction of that voice. That smarmy, prideful, movie-star voice. I bent my head from side to side and cracked my neck and back, an old habit that I had picked up in my bouncing days. I used to do that before beating down rowdy drunks.
"Hey, Grant," I said cooly as I approached him.
"Pitt. I'm glad you made it. Look, I'm really sorry, but—"
I cut him off. I was closing distance. I did not want him to run because I didn't think I could catch him.
"Grant. You left me to die."
"Wait just a second." He lifted his hands defensively. "It isn't like that. They would have gotten me too. If I left that hatch open, we would both be dead."
I tried to look nonviolent. That is difficult when you are a hulking, scar-faced brute of a man. I kept slowly closing distance. The Hunters from Boone's team that had been speaking with him sensed serious trouble and backed away.
"You left me behind." I was directly in front of him now.
The railing was to his back and he had nowhere to go. He must have sensed what was coming because he tried to duck. It did not work. I felt great satisfaction as his nose broke with an audible crunch under my meaty fist. His legs buckled and he started to fall.
I grabbed him by his neck guard and jerked him around until he was facing me. Blood was streaming down his face. He tried to perform an aikido wrist lock to break my grasp, but I was far too strong and angry to fall for that. I slammed him backwards into the railing.
"Do you know how to swim?" I asked coldly.
"Pitt, it wasn't my fault, please wait . . ." he begged. I punched him solidly again, this time in the mouth, smashing his lips and cracking a few teeth. My cup was not exactly overflowing with mercy.
"I said: Do. You. Know. How. To. Swim?"
"No, please. I'm sorry."
"You had best be a quick learner then," I said as I lifted him off of his feet, and heaved him over the railing.
I stepped away, not even bothering to watch him hit the water. That had felt really good. I was not worried about him drowning. In a moment of unusual kindness that surprised even me, I had hit the button to activate the emergency flotation device on his harness before tossing him. I can be a jerk, but I'm no monster.
Boone moved in front of me. He did not look happy. All of the other Hunters had come running to see what the commotion was about. From the looks on their faces I was guessing that they had seen Grant take his plunge.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded.
"He left me for dead back there. He left me in a room with a vampire and some wights. He slammed the door in my face, and he apologized before he did it. Son of a bitch is lucky I didn't just shoot him in the head."
The former SF man studied me. He signaled one of his men. "Throw Jefferson a rope."
"He isn't going to drown. I turned on his CO2 before I tossed him over."
"I'm not worried about him drowning, fucktard. I'm worried that all of the wight meat in the water has riled up the sharks and they're going to chew on his pompous ass."
Crap. I hadn't thought about sharks. Oh well. I went back to my Gatorade.
The sun was setting over the bow of the Antoine-Henri. The fourteen surviving members of the MHI teams were gathered on the deck in a rough semicircle, illuminated in our ragged exhaustion by the fading golden rays. Grant Jefferson had been safely retrieved from the water and was standing as far away from me as was possible, with a giant, white cotton swab shoved into each nostril. Harbinger had not been happy, and had promised to talk to both of us later. I was not looking forward to that, and I just hoped that it did not end up with me being terminated.
Julie had cataloged all of the valuable cargo. None of the artwork had been lost. The others had found her excitedly browsing through an open cargo container filled with priceless art. Not being a connoisseur of painting, all of the French artwork looked like bunches of colored dots to me. She had not been very happy when she had heard about what I did to her boyfriend. The look she gave me had been oddly similar to the one that she had given that first vampire before she had shafted it through the heart.
All of the crew and French Hunters had been accounted for. Tissue samples had been taken from each individual creature to be sent to the PUFF offices for confirmation and to begin the bounty paperwork. Between the huge PUFF reward and the fulfillment of the French contract, it had been a very lucrative day.
But it had its price.
The body of Jeremiah Roberts had been laid upon an unzipped body bag on the cold steel deck. His neck guard had been torn away, and unlike the neat little puncture holes that most people seem to imagine for vampire bites, the Hunter's throat was missing a massive chunk of flesh, leaving a hole from his trachea to his spine. Boone's team stood the closest to the body. This was their business. The rest of us were mere watchers. The man they called Priest said a few words. As it turned out, they called him that because he had been one once upon a time. This was a Hunter's funeral, and it was as sacred as any service inside a church.
"He was the bravest amongst us. So fearless that regular people would think he was crazy, but not us. We understood him and loved him for it. Jerry was afraid of no man or beast on Earth or from Hell. I am alive because of him. Our whole team is alive because of him. He is here because he took the brunt of the attack to protect the rest of us. And today was not the first time he did that, just the time that his luck ran out. We are taught, Greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends. My friend. Our friend. May you rest in peace. Until we meet again in the better place. Amen."
"Amen," chorused the group as one.
Boone stepped forward. His face was streaked where tears had run through the grime on his cheeks. He looked somberly down at his fallen teammate, and then he slowly knelt at his side. The warrior gently touched his friend for the last time.
"I'm sorry I failed you, Jerry. I'll be seeing you around."
I had to avert my eyes because of what I knew was coming next. I was not the only one. The sound of Boone's fighting knife being drawn from its sheath seemed to go on forever. Roberts had been bitten by a vampire. It had to be done.
When Boone was finished the rest of his team helped him to his feet. He cleaned his knife on a rag. Priest zipped up the rubber bag, and the Hunter's funeral was over.
Chapter 10
Harbinger summoned me to the cargo bay. There were only a handful of us left on the freighter. The Hind had taken the most injured of the Hunters, and the Brilliant Mistake had been signaled to return to pick up a few more men and our gear. Surprisingly, the little boat's crew had stayed nearby to help us. Harbinger gave them an extra $20,000 for their trouble and the admonition to never talk about this unless they wanted the government to pay them a very unpleasant visit. He must have been feeling generous due to the big haul. The Director also gave them business cards, along with instructions to contact us if they ever heard of any more monster problems. Since we could not advertise, much of our business came in the form of referrals. Representatives of the French shipping corporation were already en route to retrieve their valuable cargo. The r
emainder of our fee was to be wired to us upon receipt. The Hind was to return for its last pickup shortly.
I limped painfully down the stairs into the vast central bay. Each bootfall echoed hollowly through the cavernous room. I had been paralyzed, drowned, beaten, shot with my own gun, partially paralyzed and choked, and I was hungry, tired and saddened by the loss of some of my favorite guns. If anybody should have been put on that chopper it was me. However, it seemed that Harbinger wanted to speak privately first. That was not a good sign. Even Grant had been sent back to land to get his nose and teeth checked.
Earl Harbinger, Sam Haven, Milo Anderson and Julie Shackleford stood before a giant orange container, the heavy-duty kind that could be picked up through the opening in the deck by a giant dock crane and set onto a semitrailer or train. The sheet-metal double doors were hanging open, and the four experienced Hunters were gathered at the opening.
"Hey," I said as I approached, not that they did not hear me coming, but I couldn't think of what else to say. None of the four looked up. Julie had her arms folded and she appeared rather cross. Harbinger pointed inside the container.
"What do you make of this, Pitt?" He shined a flashlight into the interior. There were seven wooden crates inside. Each was long enough and deep enough to easily hold a person. I ducked my head as I entered, pulling out my own flashlight to get a closer look. The air tasted stale. The lids for the crates had been set aside, and the interiors seemed to be filled with nothing but dirt. I ran my hands through one; it was a thick black loam. Another was white particulate sand, and yet another looked almost like Alabama red clay.
"Coffins," I said. "For the seven Masters in my dream."
"Yep," Harbinger said. "And I'm willing to bet that the dirt is soil from their native lands."
"What does that mean?" Julie asked. "I know I've heard about that in the folk tales, but we've never seen evidence of vampires actually needing to sleep in soil from their homeland."
"Beats me. But this is really a weird bunch. I've never seen anything like this before, and I've never even heard or read about anything like this either."
"We don't know for sure that they are really Masters, Earl," Sam said. "We haven't actually seen any of them yet."
"The stronger the creator, the greater the creation. Some of those sailors we killed were way too powerful to be that young, but they were. Plus creating wights as daylight guardians? Darné was as powerful as a hundred-year-old bloodsucker, and he has to have been turned in the last week. Whoever turned him was one bad dude. So there is at least one Master in this gang. I would bet on it," Harbinger replied.
"So how did you beat Darné anyway?" I asked. The other Hunters glanced at their team leader, curious to hear his response.
"Later. It isn't important right now."
"He was a good guy when he was human," Sam said. "Losing him is a damn shame."
"People change when they are turned. It doesn't matter what they were like before. No matter how good they were, when they turn, they come back as pure evil . . ." Julie trailed off, and then changed the subject. "We probably need to alert the Feds. Seven high-level vamps on U.S. soil? They would shut us down in a second if they found out that we knew and didn't tell them."
"I hate Feds." Milo spoke for the first time. Sam spit on the floor.
"Me too. But they need to mobilize. They're somewhere in Georgia, and heading who knows where. I'll call Myers," Harbinger told them with a look like he had just bit into something sour. "They probably won't believe us though. Hell, I don't believe what I'm saying."
I looked in the other coffins. Thicker sand, rich topsoil, alkali dirt, and finally broken shale and gravel. I noticed something as I shined my light in the back corner.
"You guys seen this?"
"What?" Harbinger asked as he entered and came up next to me. I squatted and pointed at the ground. Something had dissolved all of the paint in the corner. A dark substance coated the floor. I sure as heck wasn't going to touch it. It felt unnatural from where I stood, and I had a visceral feeling that it was some sort of secretions from the cloaked and armored monstrosity from my dream. Harbinger knelt and studied it. "Ichor. Looks like snot from somebody with real bad allergies. Let's take a sample."
I breathed a little easier once I was out of the claustrophobic box.
"But wait, there's more," Sam stated. "I saw this earlier when we were getting set to blow the steam pipe. Check this shit out."
He took us to another shipping container. This one appeared normal until we circled it and saw what was on the other side. The steel walls had been pierced and peeled back from the inside. I touched one of the edges. The steel was a quarter-inch thick, and the reinforced tubing around the edges had been easily bent.
"Wow," Milo said, stroking his beard absently, "no sign of explosion or cutting torch, or anything like that. Something just punched its way through. Isn't that special?"
"Yeah, it just fricking warms my heart," Sam said. "Why can't we ever fight cute, helpless monsters? Like the ones on Sesame Street?"
"The big things from my dream," I said. "They could have done this. They had to be at least ten feet tall. And they could fly, they had huge wingspans. They were ugly, and they had horns and big teeth and claws. That was about all I saw because I was just moving too fast."
The four Hunters surrounded me.
"Now start from the beginning and tell us the whole story about this dream," Harbinger ordered.
"So that's why you brought me down here. I thought you were going to yell at me for beating up Grant," I replied cheerfully. Julie folded her arms and glared.
Harbinger shook his head. "Oh, don't worry, I'll get to that. But business first. From the beginning, tell us every single detail you can think of. Even things that you might not think are important."
"We might as well get comfortable. This is going to take a while." I told the whole story. Starting with my initial dream in the hospital. I tried to convey the weirdness of it, and probably failed. I went into as much detail as I could about the next dream. I did not, however, tell them about seeing the Old Man when I had been underwater. I was still not sure if that had actually happened, or if it had been a panicked trick of my oxygen-starved brain. When I was finished the others began to drill me with questions, only some of which I could answer.
"The head vampire called the Old Man, Bar Eeka?"
"As near as I could tell. Something like that."
"Could he be a wraith? Maybe a revenant even?" Julie asked. "No wait, those have bodies. How about a shade?"
"Beats me."
"There is a possibility," Harbinger stated. "I've heard some weird stories since I've been doing this kind of thing. He could be a ghost, and he could have hooked up with you while you were dead on the operating table. You might have actually met him on the other side and brought him back. Now he's using you somehow. Problem is, we don't know jack about ghosts, so how do we figure out why he's trying to help you?"
"Be sure to ask him that the next time you see him," Milo told me.
"Except I only see him when I'm dead, or about to come close to death," I added sardonically.
"That will be convenient for you then. You're a Monster Hunter now. Plenty of good opportunities to die all of the time!"
The ocean rushed by below. The interior of the Hind was very loud, and that was not helped by the fact that our pilot felt the need to blare heavy metal through the intercom. Excellent selection though. Disturbed, Slip Knot, Rob Zombie, and even the latest single by my brother's band. I figured I would have to let the pilot know that I knew Cabbage Point Killing Machine's guitarist once we landed. I had not met the pilot yet, and all that I had been told about him was when Milo had jokingly said that he had been included in the purchase of the chopper. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. All that I had seen so far had been the back of his helmeted head.
I had never ridden in a helicopter before, and it was kind of exciting, loud and with painful vib
rations, but still fun. Almost like a roller coaster ride with the added advantage that it could shear a bolt and kill you in a matter of seconds.
We were sitting in the cramped crew compartment. The Hind had originally been used to move Russian infantry, though this particular specimen had been tweaked and customized extensively by MHI. It was still tight, but I was given to understand that it was downright plush compared to what it had once been.
Almost all of the other Hunters had immediately gone to sleep. They understood the basic principle of sleep when you can because you don't know when you are going to get to do it again. I couldn't do it, so I passed the time by picking silver buckshot pellets out of my armor. I made a mental note to add Milo Anderson to my Christmas card list.
I held up one of the silver pellets, now deformed from the impact, and studied it, deep in thought. I had almost died today. Now that the adrenaline had left my system, I found my exhausted brain once again pondering just what the hell I was doing, and truthfully, I didn't have an answer.
Julie's head was rolled to the side and she was snoring. She had hardly spoken to me since she had found out about my little altercation with Grant. I was not about to apologize. He had left me to get eaten, and I did not like that one bit.
Harbinger opened his eyes. He had been awake. He checked to make sure Julie was out, and then unbuckled his seatbelt and moved next to me, flopping solidly into the uncomfortable chair. He turned and shouted in my ear.
"I wanted to talk to you about Grant."
"Okay," I shouted back.
"I know about what happened."
"He left me behind to save his own skin."
"I know," he yelled. It was hard to have a conversation by shouting. "Grant says that he didn't think he could save you . . . That you would both have been killed."
Perhaps. I did not respond, not knowing what to say, and not wanting to admit that Grant very well might have been right, and honestly not really knowing what I would have done if our situations had been reversed.
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