Sandor found that he was surprised less and less these days.
The man’s face was a red mess of cuts and bruises; it was doubtful his own Mother would recognize him. His mouth opened as he tried to scream, though screaming wasn’t an option. One of his socks filled his mouth and half a roll of duck tap held it in place. His head started to thrash about, his body strained at the ropes. Sandor moved the rifle slightly to the left and focused on what the man was seeing.
Crouching low, it’s over large hands dragging the ground, the troll looked formidable. It must have been all of nine feet tall and nearly quarter of a ton. The head was crunched down between its shoulders, making them the highest part of its body. Its head was small in comparison to the rest of it, the face flattened, ugly. The troll stood looking at the captive man with its head tilted to one side, a quizzical look on its face.
“Come on…come on and take the bait.” Sandor knew it was pointless to take a shot; a troll’s chest and head was heavily armored. The bone was thickest over the vital organs, and even with a high-powered rifle at this range, the bullet wouldn’t penetrate. It had been a lesson he’d learned early on, the first time he’d tracked a troll, he pumped several bullets into it and then went in close to admire his work. Rookie mistake. All he’d done was stun it, and pissed it off. Luckily one of his brother’s had been with him, and had taken the creature out before it had a chance to do any real damage to him. He’d learned years later that his Father had ordered his brother to hold back. The whole hunt had been a lesson, and a painful one at that.
The troll moved closer and the man began to struggle more, blood flowing freely now from his wrists. Sandor knew the smell must be driving the troll wild. It shuffled another step and towered over the bound man, Sandor could see the dark stain on the man’s trousers and knew his bowels had let go. He wondered how some of his victims would feel if they could see him now, bound, bleeding and piss stained. The troll sniffed and its black tongue darted out wetting its thick lips.
“That’s it my beauty you know you want to…” The troll lunged and its body blocked out the captive man, all Marduke could see through his scope was its back. “Perfect.
He squeezed the trigger and there was a soft phut from the silencer, in the scope he saw a puff of red as the bullet hit home between the troll’s shoulder blades. It was the only way to take down a troll—its back had less skeletal armoring, and all that was round there was stomach. The bullet was a titanium hollow tip, it would rip through the outer skin, punch through the bones and stomach. Then, deep inside, the bullet would explode and the shards would shoot off, tearing and rupturing as it went. Not wasting any time, Sandor put another two bullets into the troll. It had reacted after the second, and half turned trying to find what was attacking it.
But it was too late. Already deep inside the troll’s body, the first bullet had exploded and was doing its damage. The troll roared, and Sandor could hear the pain it its voice; it swayed and barked like a dog which Sandor took to be a cough. Blood erupted from its mouth as its body jerked.
The second and third bullets would have done their work by now, and the troll collapsed onto all fours, its head hanging low with a fountain of blood flowing from its mouth.
Sandor put the rifle to one side and rolled onto his back then sat up. He rubbed his legs as the pins and needles began, then turned onto his knees and stood up. Looking down at the small clearing, the troll was prone on the ground and the man was slumped against the ropes that bound him. Sandor could see his chest was covered in a dark stain that was glistening. He headed down the bank and walked the short distance to the troll. It wasn’t breathing; the ground under it was slushy with its blood. Sandor looked up at the man, his jaw and throat was missing, a gaping tear oozing blood. Marduke raised his hand and spoke into the small microphone attached to his wrist.
“One troll bagged, ready for retrieval. We also have a dead body to dispose of.”
Sandor liked to travel in style, and purpose built his RV with all of the comforts of home. Widescreen TV, state of the art sound system, satellite tracking. He spent a large portion of his year on the road during which this was his home, and he was determined not to be short changed.
Dressed in shorts and t-shirt, Sandor was lounging in the living area as Pedro Martin, his driver, pushed the engine to its limits along the dark interstate north from Mexico into California. Sandor wasn’t a big man, tall, but slender. His Father had once said he had the body of a dancer, the ones who wear tights… His hair was cut short, and starting to thin on the top.
He lay with his head back, eyes closed, listening to music on his headphones. There was a pinging sound and his eyes snapped open, sat forward, and pulled the headphones off. His system was set to give an alarm for anyone who called. It may have been considered elaborate, but Sandor didn’t have that many social acquaintances. In his line of work, he didn’t have time for friends. That left only a few possibilities, and he knew this tone very well, though he was slightly surprised to hear it now.
“Accept.” The big screen came to life showing an older man at a desk. He commanded the screen, distinguished, with hair so grey it was almost white. He had a trimmed goatee, tan skin, and there was a white scar running from under his hair, across the bridge of his nose and down to his chin; a souvenir from a Wraith’s razor claw years before Sandor had been born.
“Dad…”
“Sandor.” Sir Gilmore Marduke wore his near seventy years well. The room behind him was darkened, but Sandor could see the oak paneling and crystal glass on the doors. His Father was at Landseer, the family seat, which surprised him a second time in a minute.
“This is a surprise, everything alright?”
“It’s Victor. He’s lost.” His Father was not one to waste time with small talk. “Your Mother has been searching, but she is beginning to despair.”
“Was he on a job?”
Gilmore looked down at his hands, “Whisper-Wraith.”
Sandor tried to suppress a laugh but it escaped him. His Father’s eyes hardened, and he regretted it immediately. Whisper-Wraiths were hardly the most fearsome of creatures. They were mostly harmless, and the base for the Willow-The-Wisp legends. Sandor had taken down a few in his time; it usually required a holding spell to ground them into solid form. Once they were solid they could be dispatched as easily as a human.
“Sorry Dad, but a Whisper-Wraith? Victor is better than that.”
“I know. That’s what concerns me. What’s even more worrying is your Mother not being able to find him. Even if he was dead, she’d still be able to see him.”
Sandor’s mother was gifted, as were all Mardukes, whether they were of the blood or married in; Lady Linda was a third or fourth cousin to Gilmore. So the legend went that Mardukes carried Druid blood—and not the ones who congregated at Stonehenge every Solstice—real Druids. They’d been there when the Romans had come and they’d seen them leave. They’d been around when the Saxons, Danes and Normans followed the Legions. And through all of that time, Mardukes had been fighting monsters, devils and demons.
“Where was he?”
“LA. The last time I spoke to him he was going to south central Hollywood to be exact.” This time it was Sandor’s eyes to harden. When he was in the States he was based in Los Angeles, there was only one reason Victor would have been in that part of the city.
Once he’d given the new destination to Pedro he went to lay down; they’d be there in a couple of hours and he knew he’d need to be alert. It was close to dawn when the RV pulled into a vacant lot a block away from the address Sandor was heading for. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and had spent the last hour sitting going over what he knew about his destination. As he stepped down from the RV, he pulled close the long coat worn to conceal the twin snub-nosed Magnums under each arm.
Once out of the lot, Sandor headed west toward the ocean. He wasn’t that far inland and could catch the smell when the wind was in the right direction. The few
people that were about gave him a wide berth. Californians were used to seeing strangely dressed people on their streets, but it was the height of summer and he was in a coat. No doubt some of them thought he was being filmed. None of the shops he passed were open yet, and ahead, a Seven Eleven had a few night workers standing outside smoking. One of them gave him a long stare as he walked passed but none tried to hinder him. At the intersection he turned left, passing a car lot and gas station, and finally to a warehouse that had seen better days. Most of the windows at ground level had been smashed and boarded up. Sandor stood looking up at it. He knew the building well enough as he’d visited it a number of times looking for information. Checking left and right, he headed across, angling toward the only door out onto the street.
He wasn’t surprised to find the door unlocked. The owner of the building had specialized security that made common locks and alarms pointless. Stepping into the cool interior Sandor eased the coat off and dropped it to the floor, wearily he looked round the small room he’d stepped into and at the four doors facing him. He eased one of the pistols from its holster, stepped forward, and pushed one of the doors open.
The clearing he stepped into reminded him the one he’d killed the troll in, though he knew it wasn’t. The trees were evergreens and it was colder. Judging by the misting his breath made, he was farther north. He glanced behind at the door, into the room he’d just left, and nodded his head.
“You and your games, Corvus.” Corvus was a broker, the Mardukes, and people like them, used him for information and sometimes guidance. Corvus wasn’t human; he was a Gestalt, a creature that was a combination of souls, with one controlling mind. You could never be sure which side of his being you’d get, though, which was why Sandor had come armed. Some of the souls that were part of Corvus weren’t there voluntarily. Sandor headed into the trees, he had no idea where he was going but on past experience it was best to keep moving forward.
The trees thinned after twenty feet and he came upon a stream, across on the other bank a small man sat dressed in vivid greens with a fishing rod. His hair was bright red, and he was smoking a long necked pipe. Sandor holstered the gun and eased his way down the bank to wade across the water. The man didn’t pay much heed to him as he climbed up and sat next to him, when Sandor was settled, the man offered his pipe.
“Smoke?”
Sandor shook his head. “Just information.” Sandor wasn’t looking at the man but was scanning the trees across the bank.
“Its good shit—Columbian.”
“Victor. I want the where, when and how.”
“Ah…”
Sandor finally looked at the man.
“Ah? Don’t give me Ah, Corvus.” He looked back at the trees and up at the sky. He knew that the man next to him was just a creation. It might have been a memory of one of the souls that made up Corvus, or it might be Corvus itself.
“Cut the shit. This is not the time—you either deal with me, or my Father…” Sandor looked sideways at the man as he started to dissolve, the trees and stream shimmered, and he found himself on a chair in a room that resembled a Police interview cell. There was a desk and another chair, opposite him a mirror, which he supposed was two-way. He tried to check his anger; getting pissy with Corvus would gain him nothing, no matter how much he threatened him with his Father.
The door opened and a middle aged man walked in with a folder in his hand, dressed in a suit with short cropped hair, he fitted the generic description of a hard bitten cop. Sandor rubbed his eyes and waited for the man to sit.
“Information comes at a price, even for a Marduke.” The man had odd coloured eyes and Sandor noticed one had no pupil. He reached inside his pocket and took out a piece of parchment, placing it on the table between them. The man looked down at it and reached out. Quicker than the eye could see, Sandor grabbed the man’s wrist, and it was solid, no illusion this time. Pushing it down hard, Sandor had pulled one of his pistols and had it pressed to the man’s forehead.
“I warn you Corvus, one hint you’re playing me and I’ll tear this funhouse of yours down. This may be a construct but you made it solid to take the payment, I can hurt you through it.” He held the man’s hand for several seconds before releasing it, the man scooped up the parchment. “Now, Victor?”
“Victor.” The man said as he opened the folder. “Your brother was after a Whisper-Wraith that had been active in the Beverly Hills area for some months. Low level mostly, but recently there had been some more aggressive incidents.”
“Violence? What sort?”
“Animals, mostly, kids being roughed up at night, pretty much what you’d expect from your run of the mill Poltergeist.” The man slid a sheet of paper over. “Victor had done site visits but was coming up blank. I suggested this.”
Sandor looked at the sheet; the symbol drawn there was one he was unfamiliar with. Three interlocking circles around an inverted pyramid with hieroglyphs round the outside.
“It’s an anchor, works on most spirit based entities, so it should have worked with a whisperer.”
Sandor looked at the symbol, he knew a lot of warding spells and could conjure protection if needed, but this was something new. Perhaps his Father might know of it. He looked back up at the man. “And?”
“And…Victor went away happy.”
“That’s it?”
The man cocked his head looking at Sandor then closed the folder; he leaned forward pressing a button on the black box that had appeared on the table.
“Interview terminated 0910 hours.”
The man dissolved much in the same as the one by the stream had, but the room remained this time, and Sandor looked at the door wondering what his next move should be. He looked at the symbol on the paper, turning it this way and that to try to make out what the glyphs meant. Frustrated, he folded it and pushed it into his pocket, pushing himself up from the table. Opening the door, he found himself back in the small room he’d first entered, looking at the door that led outside. He headed over and opened the door, but instead of stepping out onto the street, he found himself facing a brick wall, confused he stepped back and spun round. The other doors were all gone, the room was sealed and he was trapped.
Sandor wasn’t sure how long he’d sat against the wall waiting; he should have known something was amiss when he’d gained access to Corvus so easily. All of his previous visits had been more problematic, more combative; it was part of the price you paid for Corvus’ services. Corvus was bored and needed entertaining. He wondered it Victor was trapped in here as well, somewhere in one of Corvus’ constructed environments. Maybe he was wandering around going through door after door still trying to find Corvus and ask his questions.
He never noticed the door appear, one second there was blank wall and next a painted red door. Sandor got up stretching his legs and back and headed over to grab the handle. He’d be a liar if he said he wasn’t happy when the door opened; on the other side was an alleyway. It was dark, the nearest light was at the end of the block, Sandor looked up and down but it was deserted except for a few refuse skips. It had been raining and Sandor could feel a chill in the air, when he stepped through he tried to figure out if this was another construct or if this was the outside of the building for real. He tried getting his bearings. To his left, the alley ended in the wall of a building. There was no fire escape, so he couldn’t climb out. The other way led out onto a road, but he couldn’t tell if it was the road he’d crossed earlier. Would he find Pedro waiting for him, looking for him?
He turned right toward the road, but when he reached it, there was no traffic, no sign of life, no Pedro. It took him a few seconds to realize it wasn’t the road that ran alongside the warehouse, but it looked familiar. He was sure he’d been here before, but couldn’t place when.
“Corvus, enough games now. Why are you doing this? Is Victor still here?”
Sandor noticed it had got considerably colder. The air misted from his mouth; the small hairs on the back of
his neck twitched and there was a charge in the air.
“In some form, maybe.” There was a strange resonance to the voice; if a snake could talk it would probably sound like this. Sandor stiffened, and turned.
Corvus stood on the pavement, if such a thing could truly stand when it had no legs. In some way it resembled a giant brain; a brain with over a dozen tentacles, three feline looking eyes and a long gash of a mouth. Sandor suppressed his revulsion; slime oozed from the folds in its skin, the two outer eyes looked in different directions, the central one straight at him.
“Corvus, would it not have been easier without all the theatrics?”
“Easier…but not as much fun.” When it spoke it revealed countless rows of crooked, yellowed teeth. A great black tongue lolled about in the mouth. “Why the face Sandor? If you’d prefer I could always assume another form. One more pleasant on the eye?”
“No I prefer to talk to you, the real you. I tire of games.” Sandor reached under his coat and pulled one of his guns free. “This may be one of your constructs but I’m guessing if I shoot enough lead at it, I might get lucky.”
“You Mardukes think you’re so clever.” A noise like water gurgling down a drain came from its mouth; Sandor took it to be a laugh. “A simple glamour, and I draw you in ripe for the picking.”
“Glamour? Why are you doing this Corvus? If you’ve harmed Vic…”
“You’ll what?” Corvus vanished and appeared on the opposite side of the street under a street lamp. “You can’t hurt what you can’t catch, Sandor.” He vanished again and Sandor felt a tap on his shoulder, spinning round he faced Corvus behind him, one of his tentacles flicked up and gently caressed Sandor’s face, making him flinch. “You’re no fun; Victor was a lot more… animated.”
Sandor brought the gun up fast and fired several shots, all passed through nothing, as Corvus wasn’t there.
“What did I tell you Sandor…” The voice was coming at him from all directions, echoing. “You can’t hurt what you can’t catch. Me, on the other hand…” Sandor heard a noise behind him and turned in time to see a vague shadow and a fist.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 38