Part-Time Monster Hunter

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  Nicholas Woode-Smith

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  Please enjoy this debut story for the upcoming Part-Time Monster Hunter urban fantasy series.

  Please be aware: this story contains the first five chapters of an unreleased series. It can be read as a self-contained story, but is meant to be a teaser to build the story’s audience before its release in 2019.

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  Chapter 1. Corpses

  You should never get used to the smell of rotting corpses. It’s bad for your health. They carry all sorts of diseases. Typhoid, cholera, the plague. And even necro-sick. They aren’t a pretty sight and, by the Rifts, do they smell. And if you aren’t fast enough, they’ll take a nice big chunk out of you.

  Me? I’m used to the smell of corpses. I spend a lot of time around them. They smell as you’d expect, but I got used to it pretty fast. What I never got used to, were their sounds. Corpses never shut up! They’re always moaning, groaning, growling and howling. Sometimes, they hiss like a cat, or gurgle like they’re trying out some mouthwash (trust me, they aren’t). That’s the thing about the undead, though - they’ve got patterns. They’re consistent. You find out what type of necro-species or whatchamacallit they are, and then you can understand a lot about them.

  If they walk upright, got misty eyes, smell like year-old meat, walk slowly and won’t stop groaning, then it’s probably a zombie on your hands. If they are hunched, have fangs, blackened skin like ash and red eyes, they’re a ghoul. And if they’re running around on all fours, covered in debris, quills and scabs – then you’re probably not fast enough to run away, ‘cause then you’ve got a gül.

  I’m definitely not fast enough to outrun a gül. Lucky for me, I’m not trying to. Also, lucky for me, this gül was as noisy as any other corpse I’ve faced in my short career, making it easy to find. This was one of the gurgle/hiss variety. It was spitting up a storm, hissing, gurgling and banging its fists on the ground like an angry gorilla. From my hiding spot on the floor above it, I could see the cause of its frustration. A padlocked meat locker. The gül’s grotesque elongated fingers were already flayed, smearing black-red blood on the already dirty locker.

  I shook my head. The monster was hungry.

  That’s a stupid thing to think. The undead were always hungry! Except for skeletons, of course. They were content…most of the time.

  But this gül was particularly hungry. It had been working all night at this locker full of rotting meat to no avail. Only a few scratches and black-red blood stains on the yellowed white exterior to show for its troubles.

  “Probably just got out of a rift,” the voice in my head said.

  I didn’t respond. I was the only one who could hear the voice, but it could only hear me if I spoke aloud. That was not the most prudent thing to do under the circumstances.

  “They’re very antsy when they just arrive, Kat,” the voice continued. “Be careful.”

  “And they’re also very groggy and not used to a human who can defend herself.” I wanted to say. Instead, I remained quiet.

  I had done this before. Plenty of times before. Avoid the quills. Avoid the claws. Avoid the teeth. Slice a tendon on its back leg to incapacitate it. End it with a clean beheading or stab through the skull. Güls had weak bones. Biproduct of the stretching and deformations.

  Yeah, I had done this plenty of times before. I knew the patterns. I had my own. The undead never lived long enough to learn mine.

  But despite all the times I’d done this before, my heart still beat like a war-drum.

  You can do this, Kat, I told myself.

  My short sword’s blades caught some light from the street. The steel glinted in the musty dark. It was a new blade. Slightly curved. Stainless steel. Cheap. I hoped it would last.

  I took a quiet breath.

  The gül had mounted the meat-locker and was trying to pull the door off. From the hole in the floor of this dilapidated apartment building, I had a clear drop to the gül’s neck. A clean stab. A clean plunge.

  I nodded, as if I had just won an argument with myself.

  And then I jumped.

  I held my twin blades together, facing down. They’d find their mark…

  The gül disappeared in a sickly flesh coloured blur. I hit the ground with a thud. A gargling roar filled my ears. I ducked. A clawed hand the size of tennis racket strafed the air where I had just been. I stabbed behind me from a crouch, hit nothing…

  “Sloppy footwork,” the voice said.

  “Shut up, Treth!” I yelled. Didn’t need to be quiet anymore.

  I turned just in time to roll away from the gül lunging at me. It had taken a running start and stopped just before battering into the locker. It turned to me and arced its back. Bones and blades protruded from its flesh like grotesque porcupine. It growled, deep and menacing. Güls were like wild animals. Always trying to intimidate their opponents.

  “Trying to scare me off, bub?” I said. I clanged my swords together, sending out a metal ring that seemed to unnerve the undead beast before me. “You ain’t scarier than a nightkin and I eat them for breakfast.”

  “You never eat breakfast,” Treth commented.

  “It doesn’t know that.”

  “And neither does it know or care what you are saying.”

  The gül started to circle, slowly. I took a defensive stance. Off-hand sword in front with my right-hand blade pulled back, ready to strike.

  The gül bit the air in front of it with an audible chomp. Drool, filled with its own corrupt blood, pooled below it. I charged, holding my dual-blades in an X across my chest. The gül hissed and jumped towards me, leaping through the air with its rabbit-like hindlegs.

  I couldn’t help but smirk.

  Mid-charge, I dropped to my knees and slid. The underbelly of the beast passed right over me, and its outstretched legs. I cut out in a wide arc and was rewarded with a spray of black-red blood. I was glad for my goggles and doctor’s mask then. Didn’t want to get necro-blood in my mouth.

  I stood up. Blood and dirt covered my kneepads. I rubbed some black off my goggles with my sleeve. The gül had collided with the floor. Its hind-legs were limp. Held on by thin fleshy tendrils. It was dragging itself towards me, leaving a trail of blood on the decaying hard-wood floors. Its gurgles sounded like a whine. Like a hurt dog crossed with a kettle that really needed to be thrown away.

  “Don’t underestimate it,” Treth, the voice in my head, said.

  “I know, I know. I won’t make the same mistake that I did with that wandering zom last month.”

  Treth seemed to grumble. He didn’t take my claim seriously.

  I walked to the pathetic creature. It slashed towards my legs. Long arms still made it dangerous. I feinted going forward and when it lunged with its one hand, I chopped it off. It howled and then swiped with its other hand. I raised my other sword to block.

  Clang and snap.

  Shit.

  I jumped away just in time, still holding the now half-blade hilt of my off-hand short sword.

  “Cheap garbage,” I hissed through gritted teeth, sheathing the half-blade. Hopefully, I could sell it for scrap.

  “That’s what I told you when you bought it on that glowing box,” Treth said.

  “The computer. I bought it on the computer...”

  I stepped back quickly as the gül crawled one-handed to my position, and then continued.

  “And I gotta eat. Sorry that no Lady of the Lake has bequeathed me some holy sword like you palis probably got. This is Earth and I’m eating ramen for dinner. We’re using $8 swords if they snap or not.”

 
“False economy…”

  The gül stopped and tried to swipe again. I jumped up onto the meat locker and then strolled to the other side of the room.

  “Didn’t know they had economics in Land of the Knightly Things.”

  ‘Ava…’ Treth grumbled under his disembodied breath. Then spoke properly.

  “Put this thing down. It’s pathetic to look at.”

  “Right-o, boss paladin sir.”

  I walked towards the gül. Its sickly yellow eyes followed me and it began scratching the air in front of it.

  I frowned. It really was pathetic. And yet, it had the ability to do so much harm.

  I side-stepped its claw and plunged my sword deep into its skull.

  It stopped hissing and gurgling and its arm collapsed, limp.

  Suck and squelch. I withdrew the sword and flicked it, splattering blood and grey skin flakes across the room. I cleaned off the excess blood with a cloth before sheathing. This sword survived its first night. It deserved a little care.

  “Another day, another dollar,” I said, stretching my arms and legs. That fall really did a number on my knees.

  “That all you care about, Kat?”

  “Course not,” I said, retrieving a sawblade from my bag. “Slaying these things is its own reward, but gotta eat. And gotta get new gear.”

  I began sawing at the limbs of the gül. The pieces separated easily, if not cleanly, from their host. The bones were brittle and were cut effortlessly. Its blood had stopped flowing instantly after whatever necromantic aura infesting it had been destroyed. It was just the flesh that was difficult to stomach. It pulled apart like wet paper. I resisted gagging and turned my attention away from the discoloured gooey sight.

  “Long specimen,” I observed, examining the now genuinely lifeless corpse. Its torso stretched around two metres long. It was thin. Its flaky skin hugged closed to its brittle skeleton. Güls always relied on speed over brawn.

  “I faced beasts like this twice the size in my world.”

  “Hopefully, I won’t have to.”

  I stood and cracked my back. Segments of the gül’s arms and legs had been deposited in plastic bags. I knelt down and sawed off its head. That also went in a bag.

  “Grotesque work. You should just burn them,” Treth said, his voice filled with an all too common tinge of disappointment. Kat imagined him shaking his head, hands on his hips.

  “And miss out on most of my payday? The landlady over yonder is paying me enough for a week’s worth of ramen. Half a week if I want stir-fry. The bits are where the money’s at.”

  Treth was probably rolling his invisible eyes round about now.

  Every piece of the gül was eventually placed in one of four plastic shopping bags. I hoisted two in each hand and left the room and the stench of rotting beef. I’d have to make sure to remember to report the locker to Sanitation. It was a big necro-risk.

  I sighed. Abandoned buildings like this were common in this part of the state of Hope City. They attracted all types of malcontents. Not just rogue sorcerers, but all manner of imps and the undead. They were attracted to the decay. And as the decay attracted them, the area continued to darken as its weyline was corrupted with dark magic.

  “Any critiques, Treth?” I asked. He had been unusually quiet during the surgery. I didn’t like him spouting criticism when I was in the middle of a fight, but I did value his input. As I had begrudgingly accepted a year before – he was much better at this than I. A lot of what I now knew, I owed to him.

  “The slide was flashy,” Treth replied, matter of factly.

  “Thank you.”

  “Wasn’t a compliment.”

  I snorted in amusement. The bits in my bags squelched as I mounted the steps and began to descend the concrete stairway. Old flyers, covered in dirt, were stuck to the steps and the walls. They were old “The End is Nigh!” posters. Three decades old. Practically artefacts. Of course, they had been wrong, but couldn’t blame doomsayers when magical portals were opening up all around, spilling out dragons, nymphs and the gods of human myth.

  “So, how would you have fought that?”

  Treth took a breath. He loved talking about this.

  “I would have come through the doorway. Shield first. Planted it before me, sword pointed straight out by its side. I’d have made an oath to Bel and then shouted taunts at the beast. With its small, twisted mind, the undead would have charged into my kill zone, where I would have thrust with my sword – ending its miserable unlife in one stab.”

  “There’s a problem with me doing that…”

  “Not flashy enough?”

  “I don’t own a shield.”

  The night air was cool on my face. A gust of wind carried the smell of salt. It was refreshing, if a bit chilly. I hoped that the salty sea smell would overcome the rotting stench of necro-blood and guts covering my clothes. The night was dark. No stars out. Just a lonely streetlight lit the entire street, emanating a golden pool on the tarmac. It was quiet. No wonder the landlady from a block away had wanted me to check it out. The noise of a corpse smacking at a fridge was the only thing that would have been heard for hundreds of meters. The wind would have carried the gurgles and inhuman screeches even further.

  I put down the squelchy bloody bags and took out my phone.

  “Shit,” I swore. I had tried to swipe the phone open without taking off my gloves. “Blood all over my damn screen.”

  “This is why you should use falcons. They’re reliable and don’t balk at a bit of blood.”

  “They also can’t take apps.”

  I wiped away the blood with my almost fully bloodied sleeve and took off my glove. My phone desktop was some study notes for an upcoming history test. I frowned.

  When was the test again?

  I hadn’t managed to study at all this week. Too much work for too little pay. First, there was that rogue zombie eating someone’s trash, then a wight who decided to camp out in someone’s treehouse. That wasn’t to mention the lesser vampire squirrel that had killed my neighbour’s dog.

  Yeah, it had been a busy week.

  I logged into the MonsterSlayer app on my smartphone and checked the ongoing jobs tab. I selected this particular job and took a photo of the bags and sent it through. A few minutes later, I received a message:

  “I can finally get some sleep but didn’t need to see that!”

  A notification popped up. $50 had been sent to my account. I grinned. That would keep me nice and fed for a little bit. But that wasn’t where the money was. I changed to a different app: MonsterMarket.

  While eliminating monsters was good and all, it wasn’t that rewarding. Any dolt with a blunt instrument could swat an imp. The real money in hunting came from butchering the prey and then selling the parts to alchemists, mages and corporations for a quick buck. Even three decades after the Vortex Rift opened and magic came into the world, people were still needing fantastical beasts to dissect.

  “Anyone looking for goolie bits?” I said, in a sing song voice, to myself as I selected the search filters, looking for a buyer. “Ugh, Rifts…”

  There was a buyer. Looking for a full dismembered gül. They were offering $150 for the body. But…it was Drakenbane. A top-notch executive level monster hunting agency. And one that I really didn’t like.

  I quickly checked to see if there were any other eligible buyers. None. I clenched my fist and with my other hand, pressed the sales button. My location was sent to Drakenbane’s courier. I really hoped it wasn’t Brett…

  And it was Brett.

  He arrived half an hour later. I had just settled into some studying for my history test on the establishment of the first elf colony in New Zealand, when an armoured car blaring scream metal almost knocked over a corner bin and screeched to a halt in front of me.

  “Would you consider him flashy?” Treth asked.

  “No,” I whispered, as Brett got out of the armoured car. He was the typical agency muscle-head. Arms the size of tree tru
nks. Black hair in a lengthening buzz cut. Stubble meticulously kept light, like a movie-star or male model. He wore a black Kevlar vest, with combat pads on his shoulders and arms. Slung over his shoulder was a pump-action shotgun. Emblazoned on his dark grey-clad chest was a stylistic symbol of a crimson dragon in flight.

  “Oi, Katty!” he called with a grin, immediately lighting a cigarette. I hoped that didn’t mean he meant to stay around longer than necessary. The dark was subsiding. He took a drag of the cigarette and then exhaled, generating an acrid smog. I only just stopped myself from coughing.

  “Brett,” I said, simply, and then indicated to the packets behind me with my thumb. He ignored the gesture, eyeing me up and down. His eyes rested on the hilt of my sword.

  “Still using blades, Katty? You aren’t going to get anywhere if you don’t get a gun.”

  “Alas, Brett. Easier said than done. I don’t have a license and don’t have an agency backing me to pull the strings.”

  Brett took another drag and blew another cloud in my face. “Drakenbane could change that, Katty.”

  “You know that Drakenbane rejected my application.”

  Brett snorted derisively. “Ah, right. ‘Cause of your hang ups on killing non-undead. Stabbing drakes give you a stomachache?”

  “Undead are more a threat than some overgrown geckos.”

  “Tell that to the executives shitting themselves whenever the little shits do fly-bys on their high rises.”

  I rolled my eyes. That’s just what I wanted to tell them. But they paid the bills, even if it was the undead tearing the slums apart.

  “So…got my money?” I asked, tapping my foot impatiently. I made sure he heard the tap-tap-tap on the tarmac.

  “Relax, Katty.” Brett took a final drag and then tossed the still lit cigarette onto the street. He sauntered over to the bags and opened one. A waft must have hit him as his face went white and he recoiled.

  “Some rank zombie bits you got there.”

  “Gül bits.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  I sighed. “Zombies are the slaves of necromancers. Ghouls are the slaves of vampires. Güls are feral. They act like wild animals. This one looked like it was straight outta a rift.”