Brian prayed. Oh god, he prayed, his heart thumping so hard he could feel himself vibrating along the floor, his head starting to swim. Neil, on the other hand, seemed in his element, still wandering about, mouth open in amazement.
“No vampires in here?” he asked.
“No,” Otto replied, shaking his head. “They’ve a nasty habit of just, well, dissolving after they’ve been killed. Probably something to do with the fact that they should have died a long time ago. It’s as though, when killed, the ravages of time they’d so far cheated all catch up to them at once. Maybe if we’d got a fresh one, newly sired, we might be able to keep it on ice, study their physiology. Thankfully, trial and error over the centuries has taught us much about them and how to fight them.”
“Stakes?” Neil ventured. “Garlic? Sunlight?”
“Stakes, yes.” It was Gertrude, the Master of Combat, who answered his question. “A stake through the heart works wonder, same as it does on anyone. Garlic, not so much. They don’t like it sure, but in the same way I don’t like prawn cocktail crisps. And sunlight’s not their favourite either; they can’t venture out in anything but weak daylight and, even then, they have to wear factor fifty. It takes a concentrated burst of UV to do them any real harm.”
“Like the flashbang Helsing used to save Bri?” Neil asked.
“Correct,” Friedrick answered, his leathery, wrinkled face cracking into a grin. “One of my favourites of all my inventions, the UV grenade.”
“There ya go,” Neil laughed. “You know who to thank for saving your life now, Brian. Brian…?”
His friend was prostrate on the floor, eyes closed, face pale, his consciousness having finally, mercifully, fled him in the face of this hall of horrors in which he’d now found himself. Gertrude grunted in amusement. Heimlich sighed, before turning to Neil.
“Is he always this much of a pussy?” he asked him.
“Pretty much,” he answered, with a shrug.
Chapter Eight: The Sound Of Being A Colossal Twat
“Oi.” A psychic slap across his metaphysical face, echoing across the void of his unconscious mind. “Wake up, Helsing. Can’t have you sleeping on your first day on the job. Swim towards the light.”
Brian didn’t want to swim. He wanted to stay here, where it was warm, comfy, no vampires or gribbly, towering demons. It was safe here, in oblivion. But some strange compulsion overtook him, a glamour in those words that made him start to swim, with arms that weren’t arms, legs that weren’t legs, up and out of the grey, towards the pinprick of light racing towards him in the distance. He only hoped that the light wasn’t a train coming the other way. It would be just his luck.
He woke with a start, blinking his suddenly opened eyes against the light to see Heimlich bent down in front of him, his face but inches from his own.
“Good, you’re back in the land of the living,” the Master of Magic announced, straightening himself and walking over to a mahogany drinks cabinet. “Took some potent sorcery to drag you out of there,” he continued, as he poured a brandy into a crystal glass. “You were proper dug in there. Like a stubborn tick.”
“Where… where am I?” Brian murmured, sleepily. “Please don’t tell me I’m still in that Bestiary…”
“You’re sat on a sofa in the Snug,” Heimlich told him, striding over, glass of brandy to hand. Brian reached out with an unsteady hand, grateful for the drink, but Heimlich frowned and snatched it away from his grasp. “Oi. That’s mine.”
“Oh.” He paused, embarrassed, before glancing about the room.
It was small, softly-lit, with tapestries on the walls, bookcases and cabinets along the edge of the room, a large, open fireplace at one end and a coffee table in the centre. On other chairs, the other three Masters sat. Well, two of them; Friedrick sat as ever on, or rather in, his wheelchair. Steve, the guide from before, was gone. And one other glaring omission Brian noticed.
“Where’s Neil?”
“We sent him away,” Gertrude told him. “He was a distraction.”
“I… I didn’t find him distracting,” he told her, confused.
“Not for you, for us,” Heimlich replied. “It was like a case of ‘look at what you could have won,’ and it was starting to get on our nerves a bit. So now we’ve got you on your own. And if you’re not planning on fainting again anytime soon, it’s time to start getting down to the nitty-gritty.”
Friedrick steamed forwards a couple of feet, sliding a black binder across the coffee table towards Brian. He stared at it for an instant, before slowly taking it and laying it in his lap, flicking it open. The pages within were laminated, the writing and clip-art pictures banded with faint lines as though printed out on an inkjet that was running low on ink.
YOUR FIRST DAY AS A HELSING AND WHAT TO EXPECT the title on the first page read.
He looked up from the folder, eyes full of disbelief. The Masters watched him, expectantly. Finally, realising they were serious, he began to leaf through the folder. Managing finances, handling weapons, how to disguise your secret identity. Chapter after chapter, each with bullet-points, diagrams, inspirational quotes from past Helsings. Finally, he closed the binder and slowly placed it back on the coffee table.
“Really?” he said. “A welcome pack?”
“Well, yes,” Heimlich told him. “It’s a job, just like any other.”
“A job doesn’t ask you to risk life and death on a daily basis,” he gasped. “Well, apart from the army. And maybe the police. And the fire brigade.” He paused, before shaking his head. “You know what I mean.”
“You exaggerate,” Gertrude laughed. “You wouldn’t be risking your life on a daily basis. I think it averages out as weekly. Weekly?” She glanced to Friedrick, who nodded. “Yeah, weekly.”
“Still!” he exclaimed. “That’s not the point. I work to live, not to risk that life. I should be at home now, trawling through Indeed, or maybe signing on down the Job Centre. Demon-hunting isn’t going to pay the bills. And my pantry looks like old Mother Hubbard’s right now.”
“If you actually took the time to read through the welcome pack properly,” Heimlich told him, “you would see that finances have been arranged. A hungry Helsing is a distracted Helsing. Bills are a non-issue, the Order has wealthy benefactors; the powers that be have always appreciated the work we do.”
Brian slumped back into the sofa, defeated. No matter his protestations, they always, infuriatingly, seemed to have an answer.
“I just want to be at home, playing on my Xbox,” he grumbled. “I’m one level from unlocking the ACR assault rifle on Call of Duty…”
“Ah!” It was Friedrick who gasped, his one good eye widening as he smiled. “So you like guns, eh? Well come check out the arsenal I have in store for you, young Helsing. That might perk you up a bit.”
Brian doubted it, but rose from his seat all the same, moving to follow Friedrick who was performing a three-point turn twixt sofa and coffee table, filling the room with oily steam. Finally, the Master of Ordinance was en route for the door, but Brian paused by the drinks cabinet. He glanced at Heimlich.
“May I?”
The Master of Magic nodded.
“If you think it’ll help cheer your miserable white ass up then sure, have at it.”
Brian blinked, nonplussed at the response, before turning his attention back to the drinks, selecting the same brandy the Master himself had just drunk. He poured himself a glass, knocking it back in one fiery gulp. Heimlich winced.
“That’s about fifty quid’s worth of extremely rare vintage brandy you just inhaled in one go,” he mumbled.
“Good.”
Brian poured himself another generous measure, taking this one with him and following the tell-tale cloud of steam that trailed behind Friedrick, resigning himself to the fact that he’d have to complete this magical mystery tour before he’d be allowed home. The two of them, the other Masters electing to stay behind in the Snug, made their way down the corridor, head
ing into, and crossing through, the busy room in the centre of the complex. As they traversed the large room, the busy junior members of the Order gifted him smiles, nods, greeting him as he passed them by.
“Well met, Helsing!” one said.
“Sup.”
“We have faith in you,” another proclaimed.
“Cheers.”
“Don’t fuck it up,” a third told him.
He didn’t have a response to that last one, so he just raised his brandy glass in mock salute.
Finally, leaving the large room behind them, they journeyed down another of the myriad corridors, this one opening out into what, for all the world, looked like a warehouse. A huge sign above the arched entrance proclaimed ‘Armoury.’ Fucking tip, more like, Brian mused; mountains upon mountains of wooden crates, racks and racks of weapons, piles of gizmos, gadgets, spare parts, springs, cogs, knives, sharp sticks. In the distance, what looked like a target range. Here and there, scorched and battered wooden dummies in the shapes of men and other vaguely humanoid creatures. And towards one end of the room, a glowing forge, from which emanated a wash of scorching heat. A hulking man, as tall as Brian himself yet twice as wide and heavily muscled, with a greasy leather apron and thick gauntlets, was ferociously beating a piece of hot metal into submission upon an anvil.
“Helsing, meet Frank.”
“Hi Frank,” he said.
The titan paused in his craft, turning his gaze to Brian, before grunting and continuing to beat the metal with his hammer.
“Frank doesn’t talk much,” Friedrick explained. “Anyway, weapons you need and weapons we have in spades. If you can’t find it in here, chances are it doesn’t exist. Every Helsing needs a core kit of equipment always close at hand. Helsing XII liked the traditional crossbow and a straight sword, the latter enchanted thanks to some of Heimlich’s magical runes. And obviously he always kept some of my UV grenades close at hand too. But each Helsing has his own preferences, of course. So…” He dragged out that last word, eyeing Brian expectantly. “What will it be for our latest champion?”
“I… I don’t have the foggiest,” Brian admitted, swilling his brandy in his glass. “I’m pretty new at this, so… dealer’s choice? Set me up.”
Not like I’m going to use any of them at all, he thought. Soon as I’m out of here, I’m straight home. And that’s where I’m going to stay. What were the chances he’d bump into supernatural horrors if he simply stayed within the triangle between home, the job centre and Sainsbury’s, he thought?
“Set me up, he says,” Friedrick grinned, rubbing his hands together with glee. “Then set you up I shall. Frank!” The big guy looked up once more. “Let’s show our new Helsing here what we’ve got.”
Frank grunted, laying his hammer down on his anvil and thumping away out of sight. Moments later, he returned, dragging with him a huge metal case on wheels, six feet high, twenty wide. After parking it in position, he rolled the shutter up, revealing a rack displaying various implements that Brian was forced to assume were weapons yet in all honesty looked like nothing he’d ever seen.
“This,” Friedrick proudly proclaimed, brandishing the first gizmo Frank handed him from the rack, “is the bola-launcher. It may look like an ordinary pistol, but believe me, it’s anything but.” To Brian’s eye, it did indeed look anything but. If it was any kind of pistol, it was one from a steampunk wet dream; all ivory handle, brass barrel, and ludicrously huge green-lensed scope. With a grin and an ancient, trembling arm, the Master of Ordinance took aim at an unsuspecting wooden dummy, before squeezing the gigantic brass trigger, a motion that took some time given the arthritis Brian suspected riddled the man’s fingers. Finally, a shock of recoil, a hiss of steam from the sides of that barrel. And two round orbs, a length of wire between them, launched from the end to go soaring harmlessly into the warehouse air, leaving the dummy blissfully unbound. “I, err, have a slight issue with my aim these days,” the Master chuckled sheepishly, tapping the whirring monocle where his left eye should be. “Lack of binocular vision, you see. Regardless, believe me when I say no monster of the night will be able to get away from you once you fire this baby at them.”
Brian stared, distinctly unimpressed by the display, before taking a sip of his brandy. Part of him was tempted to slow-clap, but he didn’t like the way that hulking Frank was staring at him.
“Very useful,” he managed to choke out. “What’s the next one?”
Frank grasped the huge, heavy machine from the rack, hefting it like a toy in his meaty arms.
“Ah,” Friedrick said, face alight with glee. “The auto-staker. I like this one, yet for some reason the last Helsing never saw the opportunity to use it. Frank; show him how it works.”
The giant pulled a ripcord, a two-stroke motor, just like the one in Brian’s moped, buzzing into life, the noise resounding about the hall as fumes began to fill the air. As Frank pulled upon a trigger, a wooden stake at the end of the device flashed in and out at lightning speed, the vibrations of the machine causing even what little fat there was on Frank’s massive form to jiggle about, lending him all the appearance of a murderous trifle.
“It’s not exactly stealthy,” Brian pointed out. “And really, if you think about it, it’s just a jack-hammer. With a stake on the end.”
“Well, yes,” Friedrick admitted, his one good eye already beginning to water at the acrid exhaust fumes. “But think of the possibilities! You could stake the hearts of a dozen vampires in as many seconds!”
“Only if they’re all standing in a row. Do they do that? I mean, I don’t know much about the undead, but waiting patiently in lines for people to pull-start power tools doesn’t strike me as something they’d do.”
The Master of Ordinance mumbled under his breath, visibly deflated, even as Frank killed the engine with a sigh of obvious relief, hanging it back on the rack.
“Well, what kind of weapons do you want?” Friedrick asked at length. “I’m showing you my best and you’re shooting them down, lad.”
“Don’t you have any, well, guns?” Brian enquired. “I mean, that thing there, what’s that? That looks like a gun.”
He pointed to a long, sleek-looking device, with three lengthy brass barrels affixed together, behind which was what looked like a hopper for ammo. No stock on this weapon, but two large handles, like a chainsaw, and a leather shoulder strap.
“Oh, that old thing?” Friedrick’s voice was almost bored sounding. “The Punisher, it’s called. I mean, it’s effective and all. But it’s so… ordinary. It’s more like something the army would use.”
“Can I… can I give it a go?” Brian asked, placing his brandy glass on a nearby crate, his eyes still fixed on the strange device, a weird tingling, nerves, yet also excitement, beginning to make itself known in the bottom of his belly. “I don’t care if it’s… ordinary.”
“Well, sure, knock yourself out. Frank? Hand him the Punisher.”
The big man handed Brian the weapon, looping the strap about his shoulders. It wasn’t as heavy as he’d feared. In fact, he thought, as his hands found the twin grips and he pulled the weapon tight, it felt almost right. He felt like Vasquez in Aliens. Except not Hispanic. Nor a woman. So really, barring the gun, nothing like her at all. He nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied at last, swinging about to talk to Friedrick.
“Christ, man!” the Master exclaimed, pointing away with urgently flailing hands. “Down the range, down the range. I said it was ordinary, not a toy!”
With a grimace of apology, Brian swung the weapon back around, striding slowly towards the targets down the range. With a grin on his face, the first one that entire day, he lightly rested his finger upon the trigger. At the first instant of contact, the three gleaming brass barrels began to spin, faster and faster, filling the air with an electric whine that sent shivers of ecstasy down his spine and into his groin. He didn’t notice Friedrick and Frank back away behind him. And then again some more. With a snarl, as though ready to u
nleash all the pent-up frustrations of the day, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, the barrels continuing to spin but the expected fusillade nowhere to be seen. Brian frowned.
“Might want to switch the safety off,” Friedrick called out from several yards now behind. “Next to the trigger.”
Brian’s eyes found the little switch, but like an idiot he kept the trigger depressed as he thumbed the weapon from safe to live. A cacophonous roar, like that of thunder, only again and again and again and again, a hundred times each second, as fiery lead spat from each of the spinning barrels in turn. The recoil blasted the unready Brian from his feet, the man landing hard on his back, finger still on the trigger, the weapon spraying all over the place like an out of control fire hose. Bullets tore through crates, rebounded from metal, gouged chunks from the walls and ceiling. Finally, the hopper ran dry, yet still the barrels spun, Brian’s finger yet tight about the trigger in terror-induced cramp.
Friedrick appeared above him, craning his neck from his chair to look down at him, voice mouthing words but no sound coming out.
“What?” Brian asked, before realising he couldn’t even hear his own voice. “I can’t hear you?”
Brian Helsing: The World's Unlikeliest Vampire Hunter Box Set 1 - Missions 1-3 Page 6