The Redcap worked its jaw around, poking at the tusk with its tongue until Io slapped the dog crate.
“Marrra,” the Redcap grunted out. “Mara Rrrrrrigan”
Io went very still. John looked from the Redcap to him and back, eyebrows raised.
“That mean something to you?”
“Yeah,” Io said. Then, to the Redcap: “I’m sending you home. It will be a little unpleasant, but you’ll be back in Faerie. You come back this way,” he shrugged, “I can’t say what’ll happen. Get me?”
The Redcap made a sound and closed its eyes. Io stepped back from the dog crate and traced patterns in the air using both hands, moving quickly and leaving faint trails behind them. Then he whisked them apart and John caught a glimpse of a wild land.
Then it was gone, and the dog crate was empty.
“You gonna explain any of this to me?” John said as he started his car.
Io shook his head. “Not sure I can explain it to me.”
“One more out there. Should we look for it tonight?”
Io shook his head again. “Don’t worry about it. I have a line on the last one.”
“You sure?”
Smiling, Io patted the roof of John’s car. “Go on, get out of here. I’ll send you an email.” It was John’s turn to shake his head. “Whatever. Until next time.”
Io waved as the car pulled away, then turned to the shadows of the mostly-empty garage. “Alright,” he said. “It’s just you and me. We can do this any way you like.”
A grunt from the darkness answered him, and a large figure lumbered into view. It was the last Redcap, larger than the others by a head and twice as wide. In its left hand, dragging behind, was a twelve-foot pikestaff, battered and scarred. Thickly corded arms hung heavily at the Redcap’s sides. Its black, black eyes bored into Io’s.
He reached back and picked up his holstered revolver, the nickel finish of the .357 gleaming in the dim light. He fixed it to his belt and wrapped the strap around his leg, then undid the snap over the hammer that held the gun in place.
“It can be easy, and I can send you back to Faerie like I did your cousin,” Io said, tilting his head back at the dog crate. “Or it can be hard. I have iron rounds, and it won’t be pleasant, but She won’t have to know, either way.”
“Io,” John said from the entrance. “I forgot to ask…”
“No!” Io shouted as the Recap turned and swung its thick arm. A green and purple ball leapt from the brute’s hand and flew at John as Io pulled his gun and fired. A pair of bullets raced each other to the Redcap’s broad chest and impacted a tenth of a second apart as the elfbolt struck John Chang and erupted in a flash of brilliance.
John and the Redcap both fell over, clutching at their chests. Io ran over and put another round into the Redcap’s chest, then one in its head, and the giant faerie went still.
He turned and ran to John, coming down on his knees at the cop’s side.
With a cough, John turned and came up on his elbow. “What the fuck was that?”
“You’re alright?” Io whispered.
John reached up and pulled the bit of Thunderstone from under his shirt. “You told me to wear it.”
Io looked down at John for a minute before standing and holstering the .357.
“You’re welcome.”
The Pretty Ones
Angel Propps
The cornfield was so dried out that it smelled faintly like popcorn to Annie as she crawled along the rows, trying not to sneeze as dust puffed up and into her nose.
“Daddy, if we get out of this, I’m going to kill you myself,” she whispered and from behind her came a muffled laugh.
The night was achingly silent but for the stealthy sounds of their movements, and the whisper of the dying corn rubbing the inside of its papery husks. Crawling through a cornfield on her belly was hardly what she had pictured doing three years before on her and Daddy’s first date, but since then it had become almost commonplace.
As powdery dust eddied around her body, she thought back to that first evening: the way the candlelight had sculpted Daddy’s hard jaw and cheekbones and the funny feeling that she had gotten right around her heart at the sight of clean white teeth biting into rare meat. She often thought she had fallen in love somewhere between the steaks and the delicate chocolate mousse.
To be fair though, Daddy had told her the truth that very same night. Over a bottle of Chianti drunk on a hotel balcony, under a sky filled with stars, Daddy had told her that killing monsters was a calling, and she had listened. At the time she had thought it a joke. After the first hunt, she had understood in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t.
A long howl came from a few rows over. Corn fell off the stalks, rattling as it hit the earth. Annie flinched, but Daddy put a warm hand on her ankle, reassuring and steadying her. The wind picked up, blowing grit into their eyes while small rocks dug unmercifully into the tender flesh of their palms and knees.
The smell of rotten meat reached their nostrils and Annie felt an urge to run, but held it back. She felt a small runnel of blood crawling across her palm, a sharp rock had extracted a price from her and she imagined the soil sighing at the small bead of coppery moisture that was gifted to it.
Stars peeked from the dark sky and Annie found herself wondering if they would survive the night. She wanted to believe unequivocally, but given the circumstances, she was a little short in the faith department.
She could, if she lifted her head, see the farmhouse. A sudden surge of anger filled her as she thought of the family battened down tightly inside it with their glowing lights and Bibles and holy water while she and Daddy crawled like animals through the dirt.
Shame followed that short-lived anger. She had accepted Daddy’s calling and had chosen to stay. It was her duty to help those who could not help themselves, and the family in the farmhouse had already lost a child to the demon that stalked their acres. They had not suffered bloodlessly.
They made the last row of corn and relief filled Annie at the sight of the barn ahead. The lanterns swayed in the wind and a long keening sound filled the air. The smell of the wind changed with the direction and she had to swallow bitter acid as she caught the scent of the demon.
“Gross,” Daddy muttered and a hiccup of hysterical laughter escaped Annie’s full lips.
They scrambled to their feet and began to run. Annie’s legs ached and burned, the wet hem of her sundress slapped at her long flat thighs and her throat was bitterly dry. Soft shale threatened to cause her to lose her balance but Daddy caught her thin elbow and dragged her onward.
The barn door was open and they paused there. They had to kill the thing in the barn, or die trying because they couldn’t fight it in the open and the only other place was the house that the family was barricaded into. Annie could have told them no amount of walls could keep a demon out but she didn’t have the heart.
Daddy gave her a tender smile and said, “Do your thing sweetie.”
Annie gave Daddy her most baleful glance. “If this thing fucks me, you better know I am going to be really upset with you.”
Daddy winked and ran into the barn. Annie stood alone in the doorway; a frail girl of twenty-three in a sopping wet dress and bare feet. Her blond hair flew around her face as she began to sing in a high piping voice. The words were nonsense and meaningless, but the demon coming at her cared naught for words.
Annie lifted the dress higher, pulling it up and over her thighs, then higher. White skin made the thing howl, and the hint of pink lips covered with fine, sparse hair made it lick its lips.
Annie knew better than to look away from the demon, even though the sight of it was so offensive. It was like all demons that craved sex and blood with its bloated and grotesquely misshapen body, startling in its near resemblance to humans. Sores dripped and ran with a putrid and sticky fluid. Its eyes were the size of saucers, protruding from its smashed and festering face. Teeth, some broken, hung from its lipless mouth.
“You like this you nasty bastard?” Annie crooned as she held her the bunched cotton of her dress at her waist. “You want to stick that little thing of yours in me, you rotten creep? You want that?”
She punctuated the questions with wriggles and shimmies. The demon’s eyes were locked helplessly onto her sex, black tongue lolling out, licking along a shattered incisor and then it began to pant. It moved closer, no longer interested in simply killing the warm meat that was taunting it. It wanted to rut and Annie screamed involuntarily as its stinking member slid wetly from a grey pouch below its swollen belly.
“Okay not so little,” she said in a weak voice before yelling over her shoulder, “Daddy this thing is out here waving a penis at me!”
“Wave back,” Daddy called in a voice that was far too cheerful.
“The next time we hunt one of these things you are going to be the bait!”
There was no answer to that. They both knew that demons found Annie attractive, Daddy not so much. Annie gave her hips a couple of half–hearted pumps to keep the thing interested. She was no longer terrified, but she was thirsty and hot, and sick to her stomach from the smell and the heat. She wished Daddy would kill the damn thing and get it over with.
She took two steps backward, not daring to take her eyes off the demon’s face. If it sensed a trap, the demon would rush her, and Daddy would be helpless to prevent her from being raped or killed, or both. Careful consideration of that thought made her think that she might actually want to die if the worst was to happen.
That thought caused her nerve crumble, and her voice to falter and fail. Her stomach shrank and shriveled and her legs began to tremble. A tear slid down her left cheek. The demon saw it and a grunt brought a whiff of its breath to Annie. The rich, rotten odor and the fat maggots that fetched up from whatever regions they had hidden within made Annie’s stomach lurch.
Daddy hissed, “Now!” and Annie took one long step back even as she vomited onto the dirt. The demon rushed. Annie jumped and rolled to one side; stars exploded in her vision as she went too far and knocked her head against one empty stall. The comforting smell of horse and hay made her want to curl up in a ball and stay there.
Her eyes cleared and she staggered to her feet, watching as the demon now stalked Daddy across the floor of the barn. No longer thinking of sex, its member swayed and hung listlessly, long streamers of a viscous fluid pattering to the old boards, while bloodlust glared out of its eyes.
Daddy held the Bible in one hand. That low, dirty alto that Annie loved whispering in her ear on long sleepy mornings spent in bed, was now raised in a prayer. Daddy’s elegant fingers made signs in the air; the demon flinched and howled, gnashed its teeth and rushed at Daddy.
“Shit,” Annie sighed and ran into the fray.
Daddy kept up the prayer, but then, Daddy had a lot more faith than Annie did. Annie believed in weapons she could hold and she grabbed the huge flamethrower with hands that were suddenly steady.
The demon yelped as it was hit with a bright orange ball of fire. The impact knocked it off its feet and sent it flying into a wall, which promptly caught fire.
“I don’t think the people who hired us are going to be happy,” Daddy said calmly, beating at flames while trying to avoid a dazed demon.
Annie dipped back into her piled up arsenal and came up with a small lethal grenade.
“Annie,” Daddy said, “Leave the barn standing while we are in it, please.”
She shrugged and tossed the grenade back into the pile and came out with a large bellied water gun that had begun life as a Super Soaker. She often felt a pang of conscience for having denied it a life filled with sunshine and happy people with water drawn from a water hose, but she had more often been grateful for its presence. It was great against vampires, demons or any other creature that suffered holy water.
The demon was fully enraged and determined to kill the both of them. It didn’t care which one it took out first. It wanted meat, preferably alive, and lunged to grab Annie up in its scabbed and scaled hands.
Annie yelled out a curse and then tried to suck her head down into her spine as the demon did its best to open its mouth wide enough to bite her head off. Annie felt a moment of panic as she fought against it, the idea of her head being sucked into that maw reminding her of the poor little kitten her crazy brother had brought home one summer. He had insisted on stuffing the kitten’s entire head into his mouth, laughing silently as the kitten struggled. Annie had always been terrified he would simply bite it off one day but his way been far crueler. One afternoon, while it was raining, he had closed his mouth tightly and suffocated the little furry thing.
Daddy rushed in with a pitchfork, the tines sank deep into the demons leg; jet black blood spurted out of the wound as the pitchfork withdrew. The demon howled and dropped Annie. Her feet hit the floor hard enough to send a jolt through her entire body. Her teeth clicked together and she tasted blood from her tongue.
Annie decided enough was enough. She reached for the grenade again but Daddy beat her to the punch. There was a long sickening tearing sound as the pitchfork went deep inside the soft meat of the demon’s belly and then was yanked upwards, towards its throat.
More blood poured onto the floor and shot into the air. The demon made a garbling sound that reminded Annie of another day she had seen her brother choke her mother, and she closed her eyes, hugging herself tightly as Daddy said the final prayers. A meaty thud was followed by the odor of burning. Annie knew the husked out body of the demon was turning back to ash and dust, it was a process she had seen too often and she could not bear to witness it again.
“Annie.”
She opened her eyes slowly and Daddy’s face swam into view. Under the shaved scalp of a penitent, were kind brown eyes, a high forehead and cheekbones that supermodels would have killed for. Full and sweetly pink lips and a high straight nose with a determined chin completed the picture. The body below was androgynous: wide and thick without feminine curves or a man’s wiry hardness. Daddy did not look like the average woman, but neither did she look like anyone else.
They had met one night at a bar that had been infested with demons wearing the faces and bodies of women. Daddy had been there hunting and so had Annie, but Annie had been in search of love and comfort. That night Daddy had taken her to dinner instead of killing, the next night they had cleared the bar of its damned, and they had been together ever since.
“Yes Daddy?”
An expression of guilt crossed Daddy’s face. “I am sorry I used you as bait. It’s over; we are never doing this again.”
Annie sighed. That was typical of Daddy. After a killing she always felt guilt and shame, and she always plunged into depression if not distracted from it. Annie often wondered if Daddy’s depressions were born from a longing to return to the convent that had given her the boot after it had been discovered that she was having an affair with a fellow nun. She wondered but she never asked because she loved Daddy and was afraid to bring up the sexual part of their relationship and religion in the same conversation.
“I want pancakes.”
Daddy blinked. Outside of the barn, a thin line of red began to crack the outer edge of the horizon and Annie walked toward the doorway, her eyes focused on the coming dawn. She wondered if anyone back in her tiny home town still talked about her brother; the kid who killed his own mother while his baby sister lay chained on the kitchen floor, awaiting her own death.
She had asked Daddy once why she had survived so many terrible things and Daddy had touched her arm softly and spoken gently, “You are one of the pretty ones Annie. Pretty ones are born to fight the ugly.”
Daddy fell into step beside her and took her hand. The fields sighed in the wind, and the corn rustled. The windows in the farmhouse glowed with a welcome amber light that banished the purple shadows that hung about in the silent yard and small vegetable garden.
“And bacon.”
Annie’s lips twitched. “You
are going to die from a clogged artery one of these days.”
“God willing.”
God willing,” Annie echoed and squeezed Daddy’s hand.
Overhead the sun rose.
Coward’s Run
H.J. Hill
The dry mesquite tree’s branches rattled against the still air. The afternoon was windless and Morne wiped sweat from his brow. He peered through the sparse leaves. If no breeze caused the tree to stir, something else did, something he did not want to meet. He squinted to protect his eyes from whatever might fly at him from hiding. He did not want to see too clearly. He tightened and released his fists, pulled his pistol from his waistband and ordered his feet to stand firm and his knees to stop quivering. This time he would not faint. This time he would not run. He would not run. He ran.
Casting a long backward glance over his shoulder, he checked the tree just in case he was being chased, but that was a foolish waste of time. He could not run faster if he tried. This whole adventure was foolish. No one should expect him to face a monster. He was not a brave man. Not everyone was a hero. So be it. If everyone were a hero, marble statues would grow as thick as weeds. He had broken and run. So what? His next step tripped over an extended boot and he fell flat on his face at his mentor’s feet.
Saida stood over him, her arms crossed. “Mr. Morne, however will you face down your own demons if you cannot face down someone else’s?”
She was many years younger than his mother, but they must have studied at the same school because she sure sounded like her.
“Get up! This is but a small challenge.”
Morne scrambled to his wavering feet. “Then you take care of it, ma’am. It is more to your size.”
Saida pinched the homespun of his dropsleeve shirt and tugged him along, her feet hurrying toward the mesquite wood. She pointed to the spot in the tree where the leaves were still trembling. “Face it and destroy it!”
Morne glanced at his saddled horse stamping its feet and swatting flies with its ragged tail thirty feet away. He would not make half the distance before Saida would have him caught, thrown to the ground, and likely hog-tied into the bargain. Twisting his mouth in disgust, he jerked his sleeve away from her and sidled toward the scrawny tree that hid the nasty little creature. “How does this go again?”
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 50