The man could hardly keep the mirth from his voice. Sean realized that he must have had this planned for some time, and that there was no chance that Sean would be allowed to live. He stood and turned toward his wagon, bumping into one of the handlers. The butt of the man’s pistol caught him across his temple and he went down.
Hesketh waited silently in the dark with Akiva and Kyle beside him, counting the minutes.
Sean was late.
The longer they waited, the more chance there was that something had gone wrong, and William was not willing to risk it. He leaned toward Akiva and the boy.
“Both of you take Akiva’s horse and ride back to the mine shaft. Don’t waste any time, and don’t stop for anybody or anything.”
He didn’t expect them to run into the Myers brothers or Wallace; he imagined they would have put as much distance in between them as they could after they left earlier. But, William had learned to become wary after the sun went down and he didn’t like that Sean was missing.
He pulled one of his pistols from its holster and handed it to Akiva.
“We haven’t had the chance to discuss how to use this, so it’s set up to just pull the trigger. You have six shots. Keep it in the holster unless there’s trouble. Then, don’t hesitate to use it. Shoot for the head. When you get to the shaft, barricade yourselves in real good, and wait for us there.”
The boy looked at Hesketh square in the eye.
“You bring my father with you…”
Hesketh matched the boy’s stare.
“I will, one way or the other.”
The boy blanched, but Hesketh had no patience left to tell the boy anything but the truth. The two saddled up and headed back the way they had come.
Hesketh headed toward the wagons.
The blow caught Sean under the chin, lifting him off of his feet and sending him flying back into the side of a wagon-wheel. He crumpled at the base of it. The man who had hit him was nearly twice his size, a giant among the others, but as soon as the Keeper spoke, he was quick to step aside.
“That will be enough. Bring me the boy…”
The fire crackled in the following silence. A minute ticked by, then a voice called out, “He’s not in the wagon!”
The Keeper knelt beside Sean who lay bleeding over the trampled snow.
“If it were my choice, I’d rather a loved one die by a bullet. Indeed, I myself would rather die by a bullet than face Hector—the man is violent, even before he changes. He’s out there now, somewhere, with your little boy.” The thin man’s greasy hair hung in front of his face as he took on his most vile sneer.
“I wonder where he will tear him first? He hates you, Sean, and he will not suffer your offspring to die quietly. He is a true savage, Sean. Not like you.”
He leaned in more closely and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I hope the boy is near enough so that we can hear him scream…”
Sean groaned in protest. The fire popped and the Keeper sat back up, voice returning to a conversational lilt.
“Yes, a bullet would have definitely been my choice.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded from behind him, and the Keeper turned to see one of the hands staring past the fire. He looked in that direction to see a man sitting on a horse. The man had his rifle up, pointed directly at the Keeper. Shocked silence lasted for a half of a second before the man broke it.
“It’s a funny thing about choices—they never seem to come along when you could really use one—but they sure as hell pop up when you’re not expecting ’em…”
Hesketh imagined pulling the trigger then. The Keeper’s head would snap back, leaving most of its contents dripping down the canvas of the wagon behind him.
He would fire again, taking the big man in the chest, and again into the group of others. Men would scream in pain and terror. Blood would spray over the snow. His heart raged in his chest, pulse hammering through his veins, and a bloodlust rose in him so fast and so heated that he was forced to suck in air.
The visions were not his. He did not crave the blood that they offered…
He urged his horse forward, keeping the gun trained on the strange man standing next to Sean. The man smiled knowingly. When Hesketh was above Sean, he leaned down to take hold of Sean’s arm and pulled the man up and over his saddle. He kept the gun on the crowd until they were a short distance away, then turned the horse, and were off the way he had come. By the time the other hands reached their guns, Hesketh was out of the ring of firelight and into the night.
Kyle wiped the wet cloth across his father’s jaw, but he did so with care. The man groaned in pain, but gripped his son’s shoulder at the same time, letting Hesketh know that he was still conscious.
Hesketh brought his attention back to the fuse, and the long stick he had fashioned to light it. He could have desperately used Fong’s help now; his hands suffered a light tremor and he was deeply unsettled by his experience earlier. The visage of the smiling man would not leave his thoughts…
Akiva watched him intently as Hesketh tested the length to make sure it would reach the cannon.
“That should do it. This will reach out from behind the barricade and set the fuse off in a flash.”
Akiva spoke quietly then.
“You are certain that this new beast will come here?”
Hesketh just stared at him.
Akiva nodded in understanding.
Hesketh adjusted the cannon so that it would fire directly into the opening of the small room, sending the iron shot to strike at whatever entered.
Sean croaked from behind them, “You should have let me take one of the wolves…”
Hesketh scowled. “I think I like you better all banged up and not able to move. I know I trust you more. Anyway, don’t worry about us. I have something waiting for whatever pokes its head in here…
He turned back to Akiva.
“Let’s get set up. I don’t expect we’ll have long to wait.”
The beast waited, allowing time to pass, men to settle and guards to drop. The defenses that the men had placed themselves behind were no barrier to it; they had put far too much of their faith in the one man, and now they would pay the price.
The first man never made a sound as the beast took his neck in its jaws and bit down, blood spurting hot into its throat, sending the spirit into lust-fueled glee. Not wanting to move on just yet, it bit down further, crunching through the tender vertebrae of the man’s neck, deep satisfaction nearly rolling through its mind…
It was a struggle, but in the end, the man inside kept control and let go of the nearly severed neck. It was not that much to give up. There were more necks that needing mauling…
For all of its size, it moved with stealth, silently padding its way between them, balancing over them as they slept, bleeding each of them in turn.
He saved their leader for last, as a special prize. This was a rare gift from his master and meant to be savored. The beast hovered over the man, golden eyes intent on the man’s face, willing him to wake. The spirit that rode this man was strong, as evidenced earlier in the evening, but the beast’s spirit was stronger…
The man’s eyes flew open in total and immediate waking, wide with terror as the man realized how close death was…
The beast pressed claws over the man’s chest and pushed down, provoking the defense that it knew must be mounted. The defense came, and as it did, it was surprisingly strong, but riddled with terror and uncertainty, and sweet to both the beast and its own spirit.
The fight did not last long. The man lay in defeat, turning his face away from the beast’s bared teeth.
The beast took the back of his neck in its jaws and bit down, this time letting blood and triumph completely wash over it mind, and did not even try to remain in control.
It had been a silent slaughter, the men having been taken in their wagons as they slept. Massive sickle-clawed tracks led from the forest to the first wagon, perfectly white in the sno
w.
Hesketh looked at where the beast had exited the first wagon, and the tracks were now smeared with blood. As he followed the trail, the tracks became much bloodier, climbing in and out of the backs of the wagons, leaving the mutilated bodies of each man in various, twisted forms.
William and the others had waited all night, huddled in the mineshaft behind the barricade and the cannon, waiting.
But the beast never came.
As dawn broke, Sean whispered that it was another sign of The Company breaking apart. He said it was a temporary stroke of luck for them, but very dangerous.
Now William stared at a charnel scene. He could almost picture the beast creeping around the camp and killing each man as they slept. The thought of it made him shudder in revulsion. He did not pity the men who had died, but he did recognize the stark wrongness of the thing that had taken their lives. He did not want to stay in this place, but he forced himself to follow the trail to its end.
The last man to die had been the thin man that had smiled at him the night before. In his gut, William had known that this man was just wrong, and it was with some relief that he stared at the man’s corpse now.
Bloody claw prints exited the wagon and lead back into the forest. There was no sign of life in the camp at all, save for one wolf, huddled against the back of the iron bars of the cage it was trapped in.
A memory came over William then, of Sara, and he walked to the cage, pulling free the bolt that locked it. The door swung open on an oiled hinge. The wolf did not move.
It had begun to snow again, dusting over the bloody prints and William watched in silence as it slowly blanketed the scene. As white covered the massacre, his thoughts slowly ceased to rage, and a small sense of peace settled within him. He stood there for a little while longer and then turned to walk back to his horse. It was time for him to go and help Sara.
He swung into the saddle and spared a last glance at the cage that had held the wolf. It was empty.
Night and Day
Michael McClung
Seattle turned out to be a wash. The prey had moved on without a trace, leaving behind eighteen corpses—that were found. While the others cursed and swore and kicked inanimate objects, or worked out their frustration in the inadequate Holiday Inn gym, Peter picked up and finished a copy of Pale Fire. It was all the same to Peter. The dead were in the past, and the past was dead. Forget the past. There were plenty of other places to go on Mr. Lester’s dime. There was no shortage of spilled blood out there, enough for all of them to stay busy, enough for all of them to drown in.
Indianapolis and surroundings yielded three successful hunts—Montreal; eight fledglings and an old one. The Elder was dismembered, each piece placed carefully into its own reinforced steel box. Not for the first time, Peter bought a copy of Ulysses. Not for the first time, he eventually flung it into a trashcan in a fit of exasperation.
In their tight-knit team, Peter was the outsider. The others had things to do; Peter had merely to be.
As they drove over the St. Lawrence River, toward the airport in a rented passenger van, Peter tried to ignore the psychic shrieks coming from inside the box that held the Elder’s head. He stared down into the river rushing by, and a memory came into his thoughts, unbidden.
He was ten. He’d gone down to the San Antonio River, and using a broken mop handle and some rotting kite string he’d found, he passed the afternoon pretending to fish. In a few hours his world would go up in flames, but he hadn’t known that then. He’d just been trying to build up the courage to run away so that he didn’t have to listen to his mother’s pleading in his head, so he wouldn’t have to look into his father’s dull, shark-like eyes…
He shook himself free of the memory and whispered, “Forget the past.”
Only Dobson noticed, and he chose not to comment.
In the two years since Peter had joined the Hunters, the Organization had destroyed more vampires than in the previous six. For the first few months, Peter felt exactly like what he was—a worm on a hook. Then he stopped feeling much of anything at all.
Raleigh was bad. Four Hunters and a bystander dead before the smoke had time to clear, and the prey escaped. Mr. Lester had to pull strings to hush that one up. But that didn’t leave time to mourn. Replacements were flown in from other teams, and the work kept rolling in. The Witch Corps, a separate arm of the Organization, provided a steady stream of leads to Mr. Lester’s Hunters. Mr. Lester, a deeply religious man, disapproved of them, but the Board had voted down his objections.
Memphis. Iowa City. Toledo. Lincoln. Mexico City. Taos. Anaheim. They even made a covert trip to Brussels to hit the Raleigh vampire (Mr. Lester had to pull even more strings for that—Europe was infested, and most of the governments corrupt).
Peter read Infinite Jest in its entirety, and could remember virtually nothing about it two days later.
There was always another city and another target. The methods of their quarry changed from place to place. In San Francisco, the prey haunted late night laundromats. Peter washed dozens of loads of laundry and read his way through Nabokov. In Detroit the homeless had been disappearing at a fearsome rate. Peter slept under bridges and behind dumpsters, and developed a healthy crop of body lice. All in all, he preferred the ones who cruised the bars. At least he could pretend to be a normal human being with a normal life while he sat on a bar stool or stood in a corner watching a show.
When dawn came and he’d locked himself inside whatever generic hotel room was home that week, he’d lie face down on the bed, fully clothed, and swear that some day he would just walk away from it all, the targets and the victims, the photos, and the blood. There was always so much blood. No matter the size of the victim, always so much blood.
He’d never imagined infants could have so much of it coursing through their bodies.
After Peter had both his legs broken in Fort Worth by what had been a seven-year old girl who wandered shopping center parking lots, Mr. Lester visited him in the hospital.
Mr. Lester, the Director of the Organization, was a small man, no more than five-two. He’d been getting on in years when Peter had first met him as a boy, after the Hunter team had rescued Peter from his own parents. Now, twelve years later, Lester looked like an incredibly wizened child.
They talked about the weather, about what a shit-hole Fort Worth was, about how the Cowboys were doing in the playoffs. When Peter couldn’t stand the small talk anymore, he sat up in bed, looked Lester in the eye and said without passion “I quit.”
Lester sighed. “I wondered when this was coming.”
“I mean it. I’m done being your stalking horse. Get somebody else.”
“Sometimes I forget how different you really are, Peter. Most of the people in the Organization do what they do because they have this fire in their hearts. It never stops burning. They are driven to the hunt. They’ve lost family members—”
“Are you forgetting I lost both my parents?”
“No, of course not. But the vampires didn’t kill them. We did. And that’s bound to make a difference. Your momma got turned and she turned your daddy—”
“No, she didn’t. He never fed. For weeks he sat at the kitchen table during the day, staring off into nothing, and at night he’d go down and feed her…” For the first time, heat made its way into his voice. “But he never fucking turned.”
Mr. Lester nodded, “The daddy you remember was one strong-willed man. But I remember that night as well, and the Hunter team that moved on your house. Your daddy wasn’t dragging you down to the basement that night to play Parcheesi.”
Peter turned away from Lester, choking on memories.
“What I’m trying to say, Peter, is that most of us come to this business as adults, having someone we love taken from us by the monsters. You came into it as a ten year-old boy, and we saved your life by taking the lives of your parents. You were forced to put away childish things long before you were ready. That’s why I’m not going to walk o
ver there and slap you silly, the way I want to right now.”
“Fuck you. I quit. Get yourself some other bait.”
“Tell me, Peter, who? Who can I replace you with? Who has the ability to sense them like you? Who attracts them like you do? You find me another and I’ll accept your resignation.”
Lester stood up and put a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“What happened to you wasn’t fair. You and I both know that. You and I both know that fairness don’t come into it, in this world.” Darkness slid behind his eyes. “If it did, my little girl wouldn’t have had her throat torn out on her first birthday.”
A nurse entered then with a little paper cup full of pills, saving Peter from yelling something he knew he wouldn’t mean, and would later regret.
“I’ll be going now, son,” said Lester. “When you finish up with your physical therapy, I want you to start some martial arts training. Ask Dobson which one he thinks is best for you.” Peter gave Lester’s back the finger.
Four months later he began ba gua zhang training.
During his leave, two Hunter units had been wiped out. The rest were spread thinner, but the jobs were coming in faster. They had less time to prepare for each, which was a recipe for disaster in Peter’s opinion, but Mr. Lester seemed undeterred. They’d never experienced such bloody failures, but they’d never reaped so many successes, either. As Dobson succinctly put it one night over a beer, once the Witch Corps had laid down a location, Peter drew in the bloodsuckers like shit drew flies.
The cities and jobs began to blur, the targets’ faces all blended to look alike. It had all turned into a nightmare that seemed like it would never end. Until Austin…
It was a club inside the old ice factory on Red River, off Sixth Street, and away from the main bar scene; very dark, and very goth. Electronic music pounded and pulsed, making his chest cavity vibrate. The deejay swayed with the music on a six-foot riser, shirtless behind barbed wire. The place was called Nox.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 16