Part-Time Monster Hunter

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

I did so and faced the zombie in the dark.

  “What do I do?” I asked, my now bleeding hand clutching a knife before me as the shadows roiled and the groans increased.

  “Courage, my lady. Stand your ground. That is all one can do against the Dead.”

  The shadow-veiled zombie became clearer in the moonlight.

  Stand.

  I was standing. My hand shivered. I reached over and held the blade with both my hands. Alone, they shook. Together, they froze. Steady.

  “Stand your ground.”

  I stood my ground.

  A snarl. A flash of greying, rotting flesh. And pressure, an immense pressure. I heard the crack and felt the squelch. My gut wrenched, but I did not vomit. My anger transformed into cold calculation. My fear shifted. It was still there but was no longer the debilitating trauma towards the thing that had taken everything from you. When faced with a cat, a rat either runs or it bites back. I was biting back.

  I kept pushing the knife into the zombie’s skull. Deeper and deeper. Every bit of sinew, bone, skin and flesh held the knife back. But I pushed. And it broke through. The creature went limp and collapsed. I let go.

  As if by some poetic miracle, the lights came on. I gazed at my hands. They were covered in black blood. My own red blood was kept to a small cut on my finger and palm. The blood wasn’t touching, thankfully. Necro-sick wasn’t a pleasant experience. The kitchen was a quagmire of black blood, strewn flesh and clattered cutlery. The zombie lay on its stomach, crumpled like a dead animal. Truly dead.

  And I had killed it.

  I looked at my hands. Covered with blood, bruising from the punch.

  I had killed it.

  And while I still feared it, and whatever master had brought it into the world, I knew that fear was a tool. It had a purpose. And I knew what its purpose was.

  “Do not relish the kill, my lady.”

  “Who are you?” I asked. It felt odd to speak to a voice in my head, but I did it all the same.

  “I am Treth of Concord, Knight-Paladin of the Order of Albin.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, who are you?”

  I had been biting my lip. I again noticed the beating of my heart. My breathing was easy, though. I felt no hint of nausea.

  “Kat. Kat Drummond.”

  “Well, Kat Drummond. It is an honour to meet you. I look forward to an enriching partnership.”

  “Partnership?”

  “I find myself without a body,” Treth said, sounding a tad embarrassed. “Through some cosmic fate, my spirit has been sent to you in your time of peril. I can only guess that the gods wish me to continue my quest through you.”

  “What quest?”

  Treth hesitated. His voice lowered, filling with a fiery determination. “Something I failed to do in life. Something I may never truly complete, but I must do all the same.”

  “What is it?”

  “Slaying monsters.”

  “All of them?”

  “The ones that deserve it.”

  I looked at my hands again, covered in undead blood. I remembered the zombies that had held me down, as my parents were sacrificed by a necromancer for a ritual I did not understand. I remembered being released as the Puretide Agency burst in, too late to save my mom and dad, and too late to catch the necromancer who disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

  Monsters…

  “I’ll do it…”

  Treth didn’t reply, but I somehow felt him nod.

  The parents of the children arrived early. The relief in their eyes at seeing their children unharmed was only passed by the look of fear and revulsion that they had when they saw the corpse in their kitchen, and my bloodied hands.

  Despite the safety of their offspring, despite the slain monster in their kitchen, this blood-stained teenage girl was too much for them.

  I left the house at their behest. I didn’t receive any pay. I’m sure I could have threatened them for it, but I was tired. Too tired.

  “Do not lust after reward,” Treth said. “A hero acts for valour alone.”

  My stomach rumbled as I rubbed it. “I hope valour tastes good.”

  Chapter 4. Struggles

  I awoke to the hustle and bustle of students hastily packing their notes and laptops into bags. Many attempted to make a break for the door, just to be stopped by the inevitable mosh-pit of students all with the same idea. The professor had already made his escape through the staff entrance. I blinked, my head still resting on the desk. As I realised that the class had ended, I sat upright with a start. I reached for my pen and my notepad, to salvage what I could off the white-board. My paper wasn’t in front of me. I looked around, and then felt the paper fall off my cheek and drift harmlessly onto the table top.

  Too late. The notes were gibberish without their context. Professor Crowley was a traditionalist. He didn’t like using digital notes or spoon-feeding information. This made for an active and attentive class, but also meant that I was lost.

  “I got most of it,” Treth said.

  “Thanks,” I whispered, and smiled faintly. Treth didn’t need to sleep. From whatever incorporeal chamber he resided, he was able to watch everything around me, including these lectures. I just hoped he had been paying attention.

  I stood up, collected my things, and left. I felt sticky. The congealed sweat of my exertions was getting too much for even me to bear. Thank the Rifts that the day was over! I needed to get some sleep, right after I finished my history assignment, and right after a shower.

  Mercifully, the buses were running on time on the way back home. I lived relatively near to campus, in a residential area called Rondebosch. Well, it used to be residential. The discovery of an untapped weyline led to several magicorp – corporations specialising in magical products and services – building their obnoxious skyscrapers in the historic district.

  On the way home, I told Treth to fill me in on the lecture. His interests were pretty focused on monsters and Earth’s development of lawmancy, but he did absorb enough info on other topics to help me. As much as his holier than thou, perpetually heroic and chivalrous attitudes got irritating, I appreciated him.

  After the incident with the zombie and the baby-sitting, we got to know each other, as much we could and were willing to do so. Treth was from another world – one much more magical than Earth. While Earth had only been experiencing the onslaught of monsters and the mystery of magic for the past few decades, Treth’s world had been suffering the plague of necromancy and dangers of fantastical beasts for millennia. In his world, he was a knight of an order dedicated to hunting monsters. Then he died. He never said how. I didn’t press. Somehow, after his death, his spirit had travelled through a rift and onto Earth, where it became fettered to me.

  We soon learned that while his voice sounded like it was coming from my head, he wasn’t in my head. If anything, he seemed to be an incorporeal and invisible spirit, chained to me. This meant that I still had to speak out loud to him, but also meant he could see what I didn’t – watching my back and keeping watch as I slept.

  Together, we had been hunting the undead for over a year. It started small. I was young, after all. I was not sure my parents would have approved. But I wouldn’t have been doing this if they were still around. First thing I did was post a hand-written notice (I didn’t and don’t own a printer) at the local grocery store, advertising my services as an undead slayer.

  I had no bites for a long time. Treth was anxious to get hunting, but as I reminded him – I needed money and couldn’t just go tracking down zombies and ghouls wantonly. I needed this to be sustainable – and profits sustained.

  Finally, while I was doing some data-entry for Trudie’s dad, just before my first semester started, I received a phone-call. An old lady was convinced that her dog had been taken by ghouls. I doubted that, but the money was good. It would be enough to keep me fed for a few days. And I didn’t really think it was ghouls. She was basically paying me to find her missing dog.r />
  And I was right, it wasn’t ghouls. It was a nightkin.

  That had been a hard fight. Treth didn’t know what it was. I had only ever heard about them in passing. It was an undead, but not exactly. It resembled a monkey. But if a monkey’s flesh was made of charcoal, covered in black flame and had eyes of magma. The dog was still alive. Nightkin, I discovered later at the behest of Treth to research the beast, were an undead/spirit hybrid with connections to vampirism. They collected their prey alive, so to feed later. They needed fresh blood and preferred fresh meat, right off the writhing carcass.

  Somehow, Treth and I managed to defeat the nightkin. The pay wasn’t worth it, but Treth enjoyed himself. I also couldn’t help but smile when the dog ran up to its owner.

  Things sped up after that point. My studies began, and I was on a deadline. While my family had saved up money for my tuition, this was not a stable economy. The investment had since devalued, and I was sitting with enough money to finance a single year of studying.

  “That’s enough,” I told Treth. I had already decided I wanted to become a monster hunter.

  “It is never enough when it comes to learning. Study comes before the quest. Knowledge is power.”

  He was full of adages.

  But it motivated me.

  After the nightkin, I was allowed to start listing my services on the MonsterSlayer app. That was the real godsend. People started hiring me. First, because I was the cheapest, and because my age was a novelty, but then because I ended up doing a good job. I took almost every job I was hired to do, and I delivered. Typically, delivered heads. Sometimes hands. Mostly pictures, because clients didn’t really like the smell. Neither did I, but as I said, I got used to it.

  And Treth was with me every step of the way. The annoying conscience telling me to serve valour and glory, and not just the allure of mammon. But annoying or not, I couldn’t have done it without him… Didn’t mean I had to put up with everything, though. Especially the constant talking over everyone.

  But that didn’t mean there weren’t challenges. I was just one girl, trying to take down monsters normally reserved for agencies. And the types of monsters I could handle were not the type that paid well. Sure, I was surviving – but as Trudie constantly pointed out, not in a way that any human should live.

  We arrived at the bus-stop and I walked the rest of the way to my apartment. Treth was still regaling me about the lecture. He was putting disproportionate detail into his explanation about the establishment of the Spirit of the Law of Hope City.

  Five years after the Cataclysm, when the Vortex Rift opened in Siberia and led to many people gaining The Spark and becoming magic-users, the nation was in turmoil. In everything but name, it had split up into separate states. In the east was the Zulu Empire, ruled by a powerful sorcerous emperor. In the north, was the Goldfield Magicracy, run by a semi-democratic but ultimately oligarchical body of mages. At the southern-most tip, was Hope City. The last bastion of democracy in southern Africa, for all that was worth.

  It was bloated. A toothless council with ineffective functions. The best thing it did was occasionally get out of the way.

  But it had done one thing right. Five years after the Cataclysm, a group of lawmancers emerged. They were hastily trained – the first of their kind on the planet. Through a system of complex compulsion, purification and divination magic, they formed a literally living constitution to govern Hope City. A document that judged all laws, defended democracy and kept the already swollen city council from getting any fatter. This was the Spirit of the Law.

  Treth was truly intrigued by the concept and neglected the main gist of the lecture to describe this topic to me. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I listened attentively.

  Once home, I greeted Alex and showered. Treth was always silent during these times. Despite all this time we had spent together, he still seemed embarrassed. Tentative. In many ways, it was inefficient that he had been linked to a girl. He didn’t seem used to them.

  Blessedly clean, at last, I dried my now loose hair with a towel and made my way to the couch. I was still tired, but I had an assignment to write, and then monsters to slay. The constant cycle of my life. Hopefully, I would find time to put sleep in there.

  My phone buzzed on the coffee table, where I had left it while I got dressed. Hair finally tied up, I checked it. I almost dropped the phone.

  “What is it?” Treth asked.

  “The…” I had to stop to calm down. The excitement was overwhelming. “The new Warpwars novel is out!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a series that has been on hold since I was in high school.”

  The speed of my dressing increased tenfold.

  “What’s so great about it?”

  “Well, amazing characters, amazing world-building, high-stakes action…” I said, as if it was obvious.

  I put on my black leather jacket, the one I use for low-power undead hunts and checked Alex’s food.

  “You’re going to go buy it now, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve been waiting for it for years, Treth.”

  “You’ll spend money on some frivolous fiction, but not on a decent weapon?”

  I didn’t respond. I gave Alex a final pet and locked my apartment behind me.

  Treth sighed as I walked to the mall.

  Chapter 5. Shopping

  Despite Treth’s protestations, I found myself at the entrance of the Riverstone Mall in Old Rondebosch. It was home to my favourite non-magical book store and my one-spot stop for all my grocery and entertainment needs. My friend, Pranish, worked there part-time, which got me all the super-secret release details long before other readers. It was Pranish who had sent me the message, telling me that Warpwars was now selling at his bookstore, without any official announcement from the author or his marketing team. Hopefully, I would beat any ensuing queues due to my inside knowledge.

  “You have hardly enough time to study,” Treth said, still pleading for me to reconsider my purchase. “When do you think you will find time to read this?”

  “I’ll make time.”

  Upon entering Riverstone Mall, my hair stood on end and goose bumps covered my arms. The air was cold. And while I could hear the traffic on the street and the chatter of people throughout the building, I had the feeling of an unnatural silence. As if something was muffling the sounds of life, obscuring it and attempting to make it as dead as it was. It was a pseudo-silence and it unnerved even me, and I hunt monsters for a living!

  “I feel something,” Treth said. His voice didn’t sound normal. It was no longer haughty and self-assured. It had become tremulous. I imagined a deer considering running away from the headlights of a car. “It feels familiar.”

  “Anything familiar to you isn’t something I want to face unprepared. Should I go back and get my sword?”

  “No…” Treth considered. “This is not something that falls to steel. Go on.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to buy the book,” I tried to chide him.

  Treth grunted in reply.

  I proceeded through the mall. Other customers were not acting out of the ordinary. They chatted, and they shopped. Old Rondebosch was located within the safer parts of Hope City. Its people felt protected from the big bad monsters of the slums and overrun districts. That is, until a rift opened in their backyard – and then they’d hopefully call me. But until then, they were content with their lives, benefitting from the boons of the Rifts and the clean weylines that the agencies and people like me helped protect.

  My uneasiness grew as I trod deeper into the mall. It felt dark, despite the bright lights flooding the white-tiled floors. And the quiet that was not, continued to deepen.

  And then, I heard screams.

  Before I knew it, I was running. Joining the screams were shouts, bangs, crashing, smashing and the cacophony of wanton destruction.

  A horrific thought crossed my mind:

  Pranish!

  As I f
eared, the sounds were coming from the Riverstone Book Shoppe. The place where my friend worked, and which contained Warpwars.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered around the entrance to the shop. Many covered their mouths with their hands in shock. I noticed wet marks on the pants of many. Must have been a hell of a fright. The deeper, bitterer side of me didn’t think it would even have to be. So many of my fellow Hope City-dwellers were cowards. They just didn’t know it. They’d never had to face anything to clarify it.

  The lights in the shop were flickering, as if deranged. I heard bangs. The crash and snap of furniture.

  I pushed my way to the front of the crowd. Many were too shocked to care. From the front, I saw a storm of books, paper, bookshelves and other debris being flung in a veritable cyclone. A wave hit me. Like a gust of wind, but a wind made out of torment.

  “Pranish!” I shouted.

  I heard muffled cries from within.

  “He’s still in there,” one of the onlookers said, sweat pouring down his pale face.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  This wasn’t my forte. I hunted undead. Sometimes, lesser vampires. This was a spirit, and seemingly a powerful one. Neither Treth nor I had much experience with spirits – despite Treth, in all likelihood, being one. Spirits were different. You couldn’t just stab them to death. Most of the time, steel just passed right through them. Had to use enchanted weapons, or silver. But even then, many incorporeal spirits didn’t care.

  I was no exorcist.

  But…

  My friend was in danger.

  I advanced. Some people cried out, but nobody came closer to stop me.

  “It’s going to be dangerous, Kat.”

  “And?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I stopped involuntarily at the threshold of the shop – the line separating open mall and the book shop within. A force field of palpable unease barred me.

  I wracked my brain for all the info I had on spirits. Flinging stuff around. Feelings of unease. I looked within the store and saw no obvious signs of a monster, besides the hurricane of literature.