I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1)

by Tony Monchinski

  In this, my time of despondency, I discerned a light in the forest. A torch, much like the ones that had given us chase earlier in the evening. Yet this time there was something different. For one, the torch was receding and not pursuing. Sasha! Viktor! Mina! My siblings I thought. I considered calling out to them but knew if the dreaded Feigl was nigh my cries would surely draw him. Instead I ran again, silently, following the glint of light that threatened to outdistance me at any moment. The flame would pass behind a copse of trees and disappear and I would come up short, staring in disbelief and growing desperation. To have found my little Sasha only to have lost her again, how terrible a fate a young boy should suffer.

  And then the light would appear again, in a direction completely opposite that which I had been trailing. So relieved was I to spy its luminosity once more I thought nothing of its sudden relocation and barreled headlong into the wood, barely containing my cries as I drew ever closer to its bearer. I burst from a thicket into another clearing, a landscape barren of root and brush, and beheld the carrier of the mysterious flame.

  The thing stood tall on two legs like a man, but it was hirsute unlike any man, covered from head to foot in tufts of wild, black fur. Its foot was cloven and it bore a club. Its eyes glowed like coals in the night, offset by the moon glow. It held one hand aloft and from its palm glowed the radiance I had mistaken for torchlight.

  Surfacing from the forest, I stopped abruptly and gasped in awe at this beast before me. Maleva had warned my siblings and I of Leshii, spirit guardians of the forest. Mischievous beings, these fairies delighted in waylaying travelers and in misleading the lost. Maleva had told us of the ways to appease the Leshii, but I was far from home and had no porridge to offer the creature before me. I looked down impotently at my own hands and the dagger in them, realizing they would do me little good should the Leshii strike. Leshii, the gypsy woman had told us in a hushed tone, thrilled in tickling the hapless to death.

  The Leshii looked upon me and laughed, a hideous, phlegmatic chortle that sent shivers through me. Frozen with panic—of this thing before me and the murderous Feigl somewhere behind—I stood my ground. Perhaps the Leshii mistook my petrifaction for resolve. Perhaps it had had its fun and meant a child no harm. Whatever the case, the spirit transformed before my eyes into a bird and fluttered off into the night, leaving me on the desolate stretch of land.

  Though the Leshii had departed, I was again not alone. Low, full-throated growls came from the trees I had left moments earlier. I knew what they were immediately. I had heard their distant howls many a night prior, walking home with my brothers and sisters, safe within the confines of our village borders. Here in the wild, on their terrain, there would be no shelter for me. Mountain wolves. Feral beasts, long in fang and claw, ravenous after the bitter winter. As I watched first one, then a second and finally a third stepped from the trunks into my sight.

  I hefted my dagger as if to show them, clenching my fists. The nearest growled, the growl rising to a snarl and then a howl until the three wolves stood baying at the moon overhead. Off in the remote dark other howls answered back, a chorus of hunger and ill intent. Long before the cries died off I had turned and ran. As I fled I looked up to the looming mountains. The dawn was beginning to color the peaks of the Transcarpathians. I had no need to look back to know that the three gave chase. I swore I could hear the flap of their jowls, saliva spewing from cracked maws as they darted after me. I was nine years old, a boy. I stood no chance. I had almost reached the opposite tree line when they were upon me.

  I turned and raised the dagger, a purely defensive posture that fortuitously impaled the first lupine form upon me. The mighty beast shrieked and bore me to the earth under its immense weight. I was struggling to heave the furry carcass from atop my person when its pack mates bore down on me. My blade was buried deep within its torso, out of reach. Suddenly the safest place for me was under the body of this dead wolf. I did what I could to shield myself beneath it, but the snapping teeth of its two compatriots tore into the flesh of my exposed arms and legs. Their furious bites penetrated deep, striking bone, and I screamed, screams of fear and despair. Fear, that these prying teeth would drag me from under my cover and devour me. Despair, that I would never see my little sister Sasha or any of my other siblings.

  After what seemed like several minutes of desperate, futile struggle, the vise-like jaws did succeed in dragging me from my concealment. I was beyond fear in those moments and my cries of terror had given way to the imprecations of the damned. I recollect clearly that which I mistook as the dew of the coming morning covering the ground, a wet coverlet. As one beast dragged me bodily across the soil and rock, my lower leg clamped in its jaws, its companion swallowed my hand nearly to the elbow. As I felt its teeth sink into the flesh and muscle of my forearm I fought the urge to pull back, to snatch my extremity from the masticating jaws. Instead, I thrust the aggrieved member deeper into its maw, burying my entire arm clear to the shoulder in the beast’s orifice.

  It was as though I had corked a bottle. The creature began shaking its head and body violently, attempting to dislodge my stoppered appendage. Deep within its throat I forced my fist open and felt around, scraping and ripping what I could until—with one mighty twist of its head—a reverberating crack and a bolt of agony let me know my arm had been broken. But it was still deep within the beast’s mouth and the wolf was strangling, its airway closed off.

  I had little time to relish my success. Its friend was upon me. With one arm broken and outstretched, buried within the cavity of a dying wolf, I was more vulnerable to assault than I had been previously. As a sign of submission, dogs often offer their bellies to other dogs or humans. The stomach is exceedingly vulnerable, housing as it does many of the mysteries of the human machine. The wolf easily ducked my sole fending hand and buried its muzzle deep in my abdomen, goring me. The breath left me, and certainly life itself would have next, had not the latest form interposed itself between myself and my attacker.

  It leapt from the sky like a meteor fallen to earth, the ferocity of its attack outshining that of the wolves. It was a form large, dark and immaterial, faster than anything I could imagine. I thought it was another four legged foe answering the cries of its rout. I was incorrect in my estimation. This brute had come to my aide. I watched wide-eyed as it ripped the wolf from my stomach and buried its own fanged mouth deep in my assailant’s neck. With a brutal jerk it tore the throat from the wolf. The creature stood there, ensanguined with the blood of combat, the dying wolf held at arms’ length.

  It looked down on me and I knew it. The lord, Vinci. He tossed the body of the wolf from him, the creature wracked in its dying spasms. Immediately he came to me, dislodging my arm from the other lifeless creature. He knelt over me and spoke to me but I heard him not. I knew that I was dying. The rush of adrenaline as I fought for my life had kept me from realizing that what I had thought was dew on the grass was in fact my own lifeblood running out.

  I looked up into his magnificent, blood-stained visage and felt reverence. This man had done more than survive in a pitched battle against superior numbers, he had prevailed, conquered. And he had come for me, to me. He cradled my ravaged flesh, holding me tight and dear. He had not forgotten one as insignificant as I. Peering into his depthless eyes as I lay dying, I could think of none other I would emulate, none other I would live so as to serve. M-My Lord, I stammered, I would to be…to be like you, to be as y-you are. His comforting, loving gaze gave way to a hard, considering stare. I remember thinking it was an honor to have known one such as he.

  Vinci looked down on me and then to the sky and the moon and the places beyond the moon. And he spoke. The entirety of his words were lost to me, fading as I was.

  I am that which imbues fear for the shadow…

  He turned his eyes back to me, sighing.

  I am that of which men speak in hushed tones, about the fire…

  My Sasha. That I might never see her again.
/>   I am the nexus at which myth and reality coincide…

  I heard his voice but could no longer see him. When had I closed my eyes?

  I am vampiro, child of the night.

  I felt pain as he latched his mouth to my throat, but as his bite pierced my flesh I knew agony and ecstasy simultaneously, in equal measure. Immediately I felt different. Though I was weak in body, my thoughts were once again coherent, lucid. I was aware as he propped me against the tree. I beheld the coming of the day, the dissipation of shadow on the ground around us. Vinci was burning in the dawn. There were vapors rising from his tunic. He buttressed me there against a trunk and quickly buried himself at my feet beneath bracken and branches. A poor cover it afforded, but it was cover nonetheless.

  As the sun rose, he counseled me from his camouflage to savor my final day. I would have my wish come the eventide, he vowed. I would know what he knew. I would come to know the hunger. And then he was silent, hidden. The sun was upon us in all its effulgence.

  As I rested in the shade cast by the tree, I felt at once that I was healing and yet…there was a new perception, one unknown before that day. I knew not what it was then, but I would learn shortly it was the hunger of which he had spoken, full fledged and exacting. I sat there, and I pondered my situation, the circumstances, the course of the blazing orb in the sky, the possible whereabouts of Sasha and my other family. For all this, I was oddly and suddenly untroubled.

  Feigl stepped into sight. He looked all the worse for wear, exhausted and thwarted. I knew he had followed no trail, spied no sign of my passage. Mere serendipity had crossed our paths. He looked at me with disbelief and then something far more sinister. No doubt he thought his revenge was at hand. He stepped to me purposefully, driven. As he tread towards me he spoke of the torture and agony he would inflict on my mortal form, of death as the only release, but of a death that would be long in coming. I sat there quietly, oddly unperturbed by his threats, by his foaming mouth, by his determined step.

  He was nearly upon me when my master struck from his refuge. An arm lashed out, much too quickly to be seen clearly, and Feigl staggered back, clutching his eyes, wailing. My master’s arm retracted as quickly as it had appeared, the only evidence of its existence the fumes dissipating in the air. Feigl screeched and covered his face, blinded. I watched him stumble and trip over his own feet and crawl when he could no longer stand. I viewed him with disinterest as he was no longer a threat. He dragged himself to a tree stump and huddled there, burying his wounded face, bawling.

  I sat there patiently and watched the shadows grow long and then disappear into the dark. Feigl had grown silent after some time. With a rustle of twigs and pine my master stood, brushing sprays and sprigs from his shoulders. He beckoned me and I rose, ravenous. My garb was stiff on my frame, my own blood dried upon it, yet I knew no pain from any wound, as there were no longer any wounds of which to speak. Even my arm had healed. In place of my injuries, I was wracked by a craving, voracious.

  Feigl had heard my master rise, had heard us converse, and he tried to scuttle away on hands and knees. My master stood above him and drew the Ashkenazi to his knees by his hair as he begged and cried. Vinci summoned me near and as I approached he bent down and champed on Feigl. He drank for some time, Feigl struggling and sobbing the entire time, and then he invited me to partake. I did not hesitate. In life, Feigl disgusted me. He was a miscreant, scum, and a progenitor of miscreants and scum. A more disagreeable person one would be hard pressed to find. Yet as he died, I could not help but think how savory was his taste, how delectable his blood.

  We left him there, drained. My master promised me he had much in which to instruct me. He asked me to accompany him and I did so willingly. The night had just begun, he explained, and with it our vengeance. I did not question my master, I followed. We walked for several hours, a trail familiar to me. When we stopped it was immediately outside the village where I had spent my nine human years. Vinci told me to wait and observe as he entered the village, and I did.

  Nearly all the able-bodied men and women of our village had died in their pursuit of us the night before. Most of those who were left were too old, too young, and infirm. I listened and watched as my master went from cottage to cottage, destroying those he came across. I saw him visit a nightmare to their waking lives. The night was rent by the screams of the doomed, beseeching mercy, finding none.

  My master was a cruel and terrible lord in his vengeance. Some he dragged from their cottages, ripping their throats out, tearing limbs from torsos. The wounded and delimbed staggered about, benumbed. He killed young children in front of their parents and elderly parents in front of grown children. Doors were locked and barred to no avail. My master moved in the shadows, a shade himself. He set cottages alight and when their inhabitants sought escape he either tossed them back, so much kindling for the inferno, or dispatched them at his leisure. The few who stood to fight died the worst, shorn limb from limb.

  If a history of my village were ever written, its demise would be chalked up to some pogrom, some plague. The true nature of its denouement was inconceivable and must remain so for my master’s survival. Hence he took no prisoners and allowed no survivors. Not even the infants were spared.

  A few hours later, well before the coming of the sun, my master returned to where I waited. He dragged an old woman along by her hair. Maleva. She screamed and cried and begged for mercy, but none was forthcoming. My lord, I protested, this woman saved my siblings and I. She warned us and led us from this accursed village.

  Do not be a fool, child, my master warned. This woman led the crowd to your father. She is responsible for your orphanage. I looked upon Maleva, but she did not deny his charge. She stopped crying long enough to look up at me, yet whatever she saw made her sob so much more strongly. Is this true, Maleva? I demanded. Is what he says true? She could not bring herself to answer me. I took her reticence as confirmation.

  My master ordered me to end her and I did, pinning her arms to her sides as I latched onto her neck. It was my first kill and I was clumsy. I opened up her esophagus and had to readjust my bite. She struggled for several minutes, wailing aloud in her native tongue. The resistance made her fluids taste that much finer.

  When we were finished we stood looking down on the conflagration. The moon above us was full. I turned to Vinci and, earnestly, I thanked him. His smile was wry and I would not understand the reason for some time, convinced as I was that he had saved me, that he had granted me access to something great, something mighty. I asked him to teach me all he knew, to instruct me in all there was to know. He agreed, though even then his assent seemed reluctant. He had saved me from death, staved off my non-existence.

  Though my master, Vinci, was no longer human, I considered his a great act of humanity.

  Together we walked off, seeking a suitable haven for the coming day. He was my lord, my master. He would be the teacher of my novitiate. I had years of training ahead of me.

  Thus was my genesis.

  Time Indeterminate

  The blood had dried and crusted, a red smear on the floor of the corridor. It emanated from a dark room and ended under a man crumpled in a heap. There were things in the dark, things that watched the man and welcomed the shadows spreading in the hallway. The shadows consumed the light and all in it, their reach presaged the coming of the night, and with it, death.

  Boone blinked. His eyes focused. Across from where he lay the doorway loomed, its frame bullet-splintered. The sun in the passage where he lay was weak and forbidding murk crept down the passage. The space in which he lay, under the blown out window, was darkening. A lone shaft of light, a last remnant of the passing day, separated him from the door and the black that lurked within.

  “Still alive, then?” Rainford’s voice called from the dark. “Very well…”

  Another thing in the room with Rainford cackled in anticipation.

  Boone felt…he didn’t feel well, not well at all. But he felt much b
etter than earlier. He had one hand on his stomach, under the flannel. He flexed his fingers to bring feeling back to them. After a few moments he could begin to feel again and when he could he was thrown for a loop.

  He touched his stomach wall and found it had closed. His intestines were no longer threatening to spill out of his midsection.

  What the…?

  “You look, all things considered, remarkably hearty and hale.” The vampire Lord’s voice echoed from the murk. “You are, indeed, as tough as it has been claimed.”

  The shadows in the hall crept up on Boone. There were creatures like the ones in the room across the hall prowling within those shadows, creatures immaterial, unformed, waiting to pounce and destroy him once and for all.

  He craned his neck and looked back in the directions of the stairs. The hallway gave to a darkened maw. At its other end, the hall ended at a brick wall. There was only one way out of this corridor.

  “I want him Lord.” The voice dripped with pure malice.

  His arm that wasn’t pressed to his midsection lay outstretched, resting on the stake. He drew the limb back to his body, under the flannel, abandoning the stake on the floor of the hall.

  “Remember me you fuck?” It called to him from the dark. Boone thought he knew exactly which one it was.

  He sat up, his back to the wall under the window.

  “I’ll burn again just to start this early!” The disfigured vampire, Shane, stepped from the darkened room into the hallway. Its skin immediately started to sizzle in the remaining light of day. “It’s dinner time, Boone. And guess what’s on the fucking menu?”

  Boone straight armed the Smith & Wesson, the flannel falling from his seated form, firing one round, the discharge reverberating down the passageway. The .44 magnum round blasted through the creature’s shoulder and its arm dropped to the ground.