Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1)

by Josh Reynolds

  Her eyes widened as adrenalin surged into her system. She checked her neck, face and arms. No bites or scratches. Patting down the rest of her body she found no pain except her cheek where the burly bastard had just slapped her to consciousness. “I—I’m alive.”

  His look was skeptical and Corinne could see him weighing the possibilities. He was wondering if he should take the chance of letting her live, or count her as collateral damage and be certain by administering his solution to all problems—a bullet.

  Corinne pushed him aside and stood on the crystal dais, letting the memories reform in her mind. The asra’pa had communicated so much to her in such a short time and all nonverbally, a deluge of images and feelings. She’d never grasp it all, but…

  “You’d better start talking, Doc.”

  The other soldiers had their weapons trained on her as well. “They use a form of anomalous cognition—telepathy, I guess, but that’s not completely right.”

  “Mind control.” The Colonel’s grip visibly tightened on his weapon.

  “No. Not at all.” Corinne eyes darted from stone to stone, lingering on each string of glyphs. “We don’t share a common language or set of complex references…and…”

  “And what?”

  “She needed someone who could handle…the information…someone who would know what she was trying to communicate.” She pressed her hands to her temples, attempting to force the flurry of images to slow. “They’re not recently evolved like we thought, Colonel. They’re impossibly…old. As a species, and maybe even as individuals, these two…”

  “I don’t care if they’re evolved, cursed by Satan or dropped down the chimney by Santa Claus, Doc. All I need to know right now is where the bitch is so we can take her out and end this evolution.”

  In the military vernacular, evolution meant simply a task or a mission, but his use of the word triggered a series of images and Corinne staggered, suddenly understanding more of the asra’pa’s message. She rushed to the closest of the monoliths, directing her flashlight beam deep at the form suspended within. A towering figure with the face of an angel hung there, face framed in a halo of black hair. The mouth stood open revealing three-inch fangs. Elongated limbs and fingers spread wide as if ready to strike. The most recently encountered form of Asra’pa, same as the one they sought. Large dark eyes stared lifelessly, unfocused, as if in serene reflection.

  “Then they were pure,” she said without looking at her companions. Stepping quickly through a gap, Corinne moved outward through rings of monoliths, jumping through centuries, perhaps millennia with each ring. Shining a light into another slab, a similar frozen form, only this one’s face was less smooth and the fangs shorter. The bony fingers ended in sharp points, not claws.

  The soldiers scrambled behind her and she heard the furious drawl of the Colonel commanding her to stop. But she continued on, moving outward several rings each time.

  She stopped, allowing the men to catch up. The Colonel shoved her against a slab, the muzzle of his sidearm pressing into her chest. “You are compromised, Doctor. That monster did something to you—addled your brain.”

  Corinne shook her head. She gestured into the glassy surface. “Look, Colonel. The lower forehead, canines only an inch long. This one’s a female but she’s not more than six feet tall.”

  A soldier stepped forward to the left and shown his light inside. “Can they get out?”

  “They’re just recordings.”

  The soldier stepped around the side of the monolith, his flashlight beam shining through the suspended monster within. “Like a hologram?”

  Nodding, Corinne pushed the Colonel aside, his attention and energy now directed into the shimmering image. Holstering his weapon, he gestured at the soldiers and they directed their weapons away from her.

  “Devolution, Colonel.”

  “Devolu—” He gritted his teeth. “All I see are a bunch of bloodsucking monsters.”

  “Older than any history we have, hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of years, they…” The images spilled through her mind’s eye. “Must have realized, as a species, they were outpacing nature. They were…too successful, evolutionarily speaking.”

  “Too successful a species?”

  She nodded. “And like the rings of a tree—as we move outward from the center, we move forward in time and I’ll bet the outermost ring—”

  Light exploded from above and their radios crackled to life. “Activity at the dais, Colonel!”

  “Move out!”

  The team responded as one, sprinting for the clearing, weapons ready. Corinne darted behind them, but they pulled ahead with each stride. Small arms fire erupted in a roar punctuated by flashes of white light from the UVs. She burst into the clearing as the sounds of the assault faded, echoes diminishing in the distance.

  Wisps of ash and steam floated above the crystal platform in a disintegrating spiral like ethereal DNA. Light throbbed like a beating heart, returning to the level of ambient emissions it shared with the slabs.

  “She was gone before we started firing,” said the Colonel, turning to face Corinne. His tone was a mixture of confusion and disappointment as if he’d been deprived of his prize, but he wasn’t sure how or why.

  The monolith to the right of the dais flared to life and they all spun, red beads from their sights flickering across the surface, refracting into the murky depths at odd angles. The flare faded. A moment before the slab had been empty. Now, the image of a female Asra’pa formed as the material popped and cracked. Corinne recognized the face.

  “I think they forced themselves to adapt.”

  “Adapt?” The Colonel crossed to the slab containing his lost prey and spat on the glistening surface. “Monsters don’t adapt, Doctor.”

  “I didn’t get to finish what I was saying earlier, Colonel. I think in the outer ring, we’ll find holograms of modern humans.”

  “People? You’re not making sense, Doc.”

  “It explains so much. Why we find so many ruins that don’t fit our timelines…where these creatures came from…how we don’t plug directly into our own evolution…”

  “What are you going on about?”

  “They were not the monsters.” Corinne ran her fingers along the side of the monolith. Cold seeped into her hands, crawling up her arm. “They were here first, Colonel. If anyone on this planet is an abomination against nature…we are.”

  The Fullness of Your Truth

  Eric Pollarine

  Click. Click. Boom.

  There was a song like that once, by a shit band as I recall.

  That’s what he said to me.

  “Click. Click. Boom, that’s all it takes. That and patience my son.”

  When I was back in training, not out here on my own; fighting off fucking pneumonia and cliché hipster creatures of the night, fucking Twilight and however many other of these asshole books they put out, making everyone believe that these things are more than just monsters.

  Oh yeah, everyone wants to be a monster now, everyone wants to be glamorous and fanged, rotting and walking, hairy and baying at the moon. As if you instantly turned into a follicly enhanced version of Fabio because you let some mangy devil dog lie down with you and take a hunk of your flesh.

  Jesus it’s cold.

  Stamping my feet doesn’t work anymore. Come to think of it I don’t know if I have feet anymore.

  I’m waiting, that’s the trick he used to say, or they said. There aren’t many like me left. Like I said, everyone wants to be a monster. Me, I hate monsters, hate what they are, hate the fact they get the special treatment, the doe and devil eyed starlets of pulp fiction. The harlots and heroines, the image of a hairless and strapping Vlad Tepesh never looked so good, unless of course he was on the cover of GQ or TigerBeat, passed off as a preteen wet dream.

  Fucking hell it’s cold.

  I’ve been here for hours. Sometimes, when I look at my watch and realize that it’s about the fiftieth time in under a
minute that I’ve looked at my watch, it feels like days. February in North East Ohio, give me a fucking break. I would rather shoot myself in the kneecaps and drag myself through a Mexican city street during a rain storm, at least then I’d have a fighting chance at not coming down with something that could kill me.

  These things, these monsters, they’re all fake. Like the way you look at internet porn. The way the women look back at you from the screen and make you believe, even if it’s just for a second, that you could ever have a shot at banging them the way that guy on the screen does.

  “It’s all dirty; it’s all a sin,” so saith Father Marshall. Then again, if Father Marshall had ever tried to shoot his lower gun, I think dust would’ve come out. Powder on the little girl’s face, just like the one I’m hunting right now. But the powder this time is coke, high grade shit she probably gets from Cuba, maybe Florida; it’s the same thing, really.

  I’ve been watching her for hours and I know the type. She glistens in the moonlight; she wears a skin that twinkles; a black dress that slips all the way to her crotch and an open back that lets her alabaster skin flow like a waterfall of pleasure down to the top of her ass. I light a cigarette; I take another sip of my now cold coffee. I watch from across the street, always watching but never appearing obvious. Roberto, my partner, is doing the observing but he’s up the way, on the inside. He wears the nice suits and flashes the big hunks of cash; he casts the line and reels them in. Me, I’m the clean up crew, I gut the fish.

  He’s very casual, a glance here and there, a small amount of interest, a lingering touch on the arm as if he wants it. Roberto is hardcore though. Never been with a woman or a man as far as I can tell, I don’t think he even looks at Porn. But he’s always on his knees, he prays a lot. Sometimes for strength, sometimes it’s for virtue and other times, most of the time, it’s for me. She moves his way, he’s got it down pat and knows exactly how the game is played. Allowing her to get the scent, there’s something in the blood, his blood, which drives them wild. I use other patsies for other missions. Skin freaks for rickety shamblers, woodsy women with too much underarm hair for the devil dogs. The other patsies are always as pure as Roberto, but none of them have been as good as Roberto. Like I said, he’s hardcore. Me, I don’t pray for anything except the patsies.

  “One day you’ll lose one, one day one of them will get more than they bargained for.” That’s what Father Marshall said. I’ve been waiting for that shoe to drop for at least three years with Roberto, but he hasn’t let me down yet. He’s the best, like me. Or at least that’s what Father Marshall said when I was thirteen.

  “My son, soon you’ll be taking the sacrament of confirmation, rejecting Satan and all his unholy works for yourself. You had Godparents do this for you when you were baptized, but now the choice is yours.” He said, and then he asked me what I wanted to be. I shrugged my shoulders and said I want to be a hunter. It was a very special school. It happens when you’re wealthy. Your parents send you to these prisons, the gothic fronted Hammer Horror façade buildings. The ones that teach you how precious moments of sweaty silence can be.

  “Guilt is a weapon, use it my child,” he said after catching me, then he made me do one arm push ups till I puked. I guess I had a lot of guilt.

  Roberto flashes me the signal, a tip of his chin and a hand movement that dates back to King Solomon and I pull back from memory lane to the present. She walks in deadly beauty; she stalks him and flashes pearly white knives that clench together in anticipation at having found such a willing and handsome convert. They go inside and I lose sight of them but I know the story, it’s a rerun. I’ve seen it too many times and I know how it’s going to play out. They’ll retire to somewhere private, he’ll pray in his mind; recite proverbs and scripture to keep himself true. She’ll try to seduce him, he’ll seem like he’s giving in and then she’ll gently bend like a willow in a storm and dig her teeth into his flesh. She’ll taste pure blood for the first time in her abnormally long life. She’ll be drunk and agree to everything and anything he says, because she’ll have to have more.

  He will lead her out the back, and then up to the designated spot. I’ll be there already, I’ll be waiting.

  “You have to have patience my son, so saith the Lord,” so saith Father Marshall, and then he made me do sets of crunches and variations on the form, a count of 500 till I puked again.

  I make my move through the downtown club crowd and slush filled streets. I feel my blood move back into my feet, stopping at my ankles. I’ll have to rub blood back into my blue toes. I only have eight of them left.

  Seriously, how do civilized people live in this fucking cold.

  Rain, snow and ice ping my face like buckshot as I slip slide through the alley next to the club. There’s a homeless man sleeping next to a giant blue “Waste Management” dumpster. I smile at the irony, civilized people don’t exist anymore. It’s us and them, monsters and hunters. Everyone else is a patsy; everyone else is food or fodder.

  I pass the homeless man by and check my Mark 45. It’s a revolver blessed by Pope this and that of here and there, circa Eighteen hundred and whatever. I flip the cylinder open and make sure there are six smaller cylinders in their homes. They used to be made out of pure silver, but old Rome has been doing some research in platinum recently. Seems to work just as well, especially when you throw the blood of Christ and slivers of the true cross into the mix, I don’t care so long as the gun goes click, click, boom. So long as the monsters go down.

  I pass by more oblivious cool people, wearing cool clothes that are making them shiver. Me, I wear practical and tactical. Roberto gets the nice stuff, he plays the role. I’ve done that job too. I’ve been the one casting the line, but it never worked the same. I’m not that pure, that’s why I’m the best. I know the hunter mentality, I’m a monster too.

  I slip past headlights and DUI checkpoints undeterred; I’ve had a lot of practice. I begin to wait again. I can’t smoke now, have to keep silent, have to keep still.

  “Saul was struck blind until he had faith, so saith the lord,” so saith Father Marshall, and then he made me stand with my arms outstretched and holding pails of ice until my slender shoulders collapsed. Then I had to hold them for twice as long.

  I see Roberto, I can tell his lanky form. He’s moving faster than we had planned. Maybe something went wrong. Sometimes that happens, nature of the beast and all that; sometimes you’ll get a bouncer that’s a monster too. He or she will allow things to happen in the club, in the private rooms, in the basements or the attics. That’s where they hide when the sun is out. Haven’t seen the sun in a long time so maybe I’m wrong, but I’m probably not, the story very rarely changes.

  Roberto is holding his head and I see her glide behind him, the mixture of weather and cold doesn’t touch her, it dances around her body as if even it’s afraid to touch her. Her magenta and raven feather hair trails around her perfect face, surrounding her sleek features like tiny threads of deaths hooded sweatshirt, like strands of spider silk. This is wrong, she’s leading him.

  I can pull the Mark 45 out as slowly or as quickly as I want to. I’ve had practice and the gun does what it’s supposed to and the oak handle is in the palm of my hand as if it were always there. Maybe it was, maybe I’m imagining that I had put it away. I lean back into the shadows; they’re my only real protection. Roberto is the faith, I’m the rod. His face comes into focus and I can see that he isn’t holding his head, he’s holding his neck. There are blossoms of crimson down the front of his expansive clothes.

  Shit.

  I can feel my heartbeat begin to synch with the thumping bass of the kick drum on the dance track coming out of the building I’m leaning on. I hate dance clubs. Each breathe has to be coordinated to steady my hand, the rerun was actually one I hadn’t seen before. A lost episode that I never thought I would have to see. Damn it Roberto, all you had to do was play the fucking part. I move closer to the recycling bin to my right, creep down
and watch as she spins him around to face her.

  “Who sent you?” she demands and even though Roberto is pure and true he spits it out, “Old Rome,” he says back, though you could tell he didn’t want to. Roberto is still alive in there somewhere. She hasn’t finished him off yet, so it isn’t an unmanageable situation. “Old Rome,” she says and gives him a puzzled expression, throwing a perfectly arched eyebrow towards her perfectly combed hairline “I thought they were a myth?”

  He looks down and begins to pray, he’s muttering psalms and passages to give him strength. He’s on his knees and he’s shaking and I’m pretty sure no one is listening. I figured that out a long time ago. Sorry Roberto. He looks back up at her, he has to, she asked him a direct question, and it’s the way it works.

  “Funny, we thought the same way about you,” he says back to her. Good boy Roberto. Then he smiles and this is different; he almost looks like he wants it. He wants her to cleave his head from his neck, end the torment of being under her spell. He’d be with God, his one true love. I need to move, you’re not Joan of Arc Roberto.

  She snarls, her epic beauty breaks like porcelain, her delicate eyes and subtle lips transform into her true form, her real shape. Her mouth gapes and her teeth become as jagged and numerous as a sharks. The once luminous moonlike glow of her pale skin flips to charcoal grey, her eyes dance in her head as if they were living fire and her once elegant posture crumples like an empty beer can, leaving her frame crooked and broken. Her arms spindle and break and allow the webbing of her great wings to unfurl. She allows Roberto to gaze on the true form of evil. The only thing that makes the sight less horrific is that she’s still wearing the black evening gown, which does nothing anymore to cover her numerous sagging and distended breasts.

  Even with his back to me I can tell Roberto is frozen in terror, to him she must look like a vision of Hell, the vision of hell itself. Sorry again Roberto, Hell is much, much worse. She lets loose a sickening hawkish shriek and I wince a little at the ungodly sound. Roberto snaps and pulls his hands to his ears. I have to move fast. I look around for an opening, anything that will take the advantage away from her and give it back to me.