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

by Josh Reynolds

  In reality, they were all either hosts or prey for he and his kin, and would be treated as such—after all, it was only a matter of time before he mastered the bonding process.

  Capital Vices

  Lina Branter

  When Manon became infected with a Greed, she quickly married a media magnate and high-tailed it out of the city before we could get a reading on her.

  As I scan the ballroom full of glittery, amply-perfumed people, cocktails in hand, I wonder what made her come back. Surely it wasn’t this paltry excuse of raising funds for the Children’s Hospital. She could have been long gone, remained undetected in another Capital Vice jurisdiction without much problem. Besides, every Greed Hunter knows that these fancy non-profit soirées are the best hunting grounds.

  So why here, why now?

  I pat my hair to make sure my knife is still tucked deep within the mess of my thick white curls, my family’s trademark of the Greed Sight. Although I love my white hair, I’m not so fond of the pigment-less, cave-dwelling white of the Vices. If only we could inject everyone with the mutation that allows Hunters to see Vices for what they really are—slimy, mammoth maggots, with razor-sharp teeth and poison skin—maybe less people would be tempted by them.

  Keisha is at the bar beside a good-looking man in his forties; her target, most likely. Except for the pulsing red around him, the man looks pretty normal to me. But I know that with Keisha’s Lust Sight she can see the giant, putrid maggot underneath the thin, good-looking man cloak. That seductive smile she’s giving him is one hell of an acting job.

  Keisha looks up and sees me. She’s wearing a blue sequined number and her black hair is pulled back in a complicated French twist. She looks stunning, as usual. The Lust beside her, of course, has not failed to notice. He strokes her hand with his index finger, whispers in her ear and looks up at the ceiling, clearly communicating his intention to get her into his room.

  She smiles, says something to him. He hurriedly walks toward the exit, slaloming through the mass of the rich and leisurely, rummaging for his key.

  Keisha saunters over to me and grins.

  “That was easy,” she says.

  “You haven’t killed it yet Keisha.”

  “I know, but getting them away from the crowd is always half the battle. The rest is a piece of cake.”

  “I wish I was as confident.”

  She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Have a game plan?”

  I shake my head. “I figure she’ll still recognize me. We’ll go from there.” I clench my fists to keep my hands from shaking.

  “Want to get a drink later?”

  “Maybe. I’ll phone to make sure Lulu’s okay.” Although Jay is used to putting her to bed, used to my late nights, I still try to get the job done as quickly as possible. Even if Lulu’s asleep when I get home, I can still slide into her bed and hold her for a while.

  Keisha pats me on the shoulder before she leaves.

  I scan the room again, this time keeping my eyes half shut and widening my vision between opened and closed where it’s easiest to read the different perils framing each person.

  Those who only have a smattering of the sight think they’re seeing an aura. They’re wrong. It’s much more sinister. It’s the color of their biggest failing, the color that attracts a particular Vice. The Greeks had a word for this tragic flaw: Hamartia.

  People without the sight just think these are character failings. If they could see beyond the colors to the actual Vice, the hospitals would have an epidemic of heart attacks on their hands.

  It’s a veritable rainbow in the ballroom tonight. Green for envy (at least the poets got that one right), yellow for gluttony, red for lust, burgundy for pride, brown for sloth, purple for wrath and my own Sight, blue for Greed.

  Everyone is born with one Vice heavier than the other, Hunters included. Mine is Wrath. Keisha’s, judging by her soft brown tinge, is Sloth.

  My mother’s was Greed, the same as her Sight, and the reason why I’m here tonight, in a dress tighter than my own skin, hunting her with her own weapon.

  I squint a little more, blocking out the other colors. I need to focus on great concentrations of blue. That’s where I’ll find her. Different shades explode like Christmas lights in my darkened vision: light blue, royal blue, navy. The faint ones I mentally sweep away, like a finger unlocking an iphone. I focus on the one large spot of incandescent blue and slowly open my eyes.

  There she is. Dressed in an elegant taffeta gown the color of the sky at twilight, with her bright white hair emphasized by her oil-black eyes. She’s beautiful, just as I remember her. She holds a martini in one hand and gestures flirtatiously with the other. Her audience is enthralled.

  Mom.

  She turns abruptly and looks right at me. No pause in her story, just a passing glance. But she sees me, I’m sure of it.

  I keep vigil at the outskirts of the crowd and watch her weave her magic. They are all hers for the taking, little mosquitoes stuck in her web.

  I can’t move. My mother, fierce and fearless Greed Hunter, now a Greed. The more I think about it, the more angry I get. A tidal wave of fury wells up in me at her fate, at mine.

  An elderly woman in a dress reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth materializes out of nowhere, approaching fast. She grins as if she would like to eat me alive. I squint a little more to let in her Vice color and I see it—a fluorescent purple glow.

  Oh great. Now I’ve attracted the attention of a Wrath. I do a quick sweep with my eyes for Fran, the Wrath hunter, but I can’t see her anywhere. I guess this one’s not on her radar.

  I make a mental note to tell her about Queenie tomorrow, but first I have to calm down or I’m done for.

  I clear my mind and try to focus on the moments when I am feeling the most relaxed. I think of Lulu and Jay. I think of sitting on the couch with my daughter and my husband eating fistfuls of popcorn and watching Empire Strikes Back for the billionth time. I think of everything but my mother.

  Queenie’s grin falters and then disappears completely. She’s not sure I’m a strong enough host. Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep my mind fixed on my family.

  Soon she stops mid-stride. With a look of disappointment, she turns away.

  I sigh in relief. Control yourself Diana. I try to find my mother in the crowd again, but I’ve lost her. I look around, frantic, until a familiar voice whispers in my ear.

  “Hello, Diana.”

  I feel like I just left the spaceship without a space suit, but still I turn around and face her.

  “Hello mom.”

  She smiles slightly at the designation. We both know it’s no longer true. The person in front of me is as much my mother as the Vice Keisha left with.

  “I suppose you’re here for me?”

  I just look at her.

  “Of course.” A strand of her white hair, so like my own, slips out of her loose bun. She dismisses it behind her ear. It is a gesture that reminds me of my childhood, her head bent with mine over my homework. The vanilla smell of her, mixed with peppermint tea.

  “Look, Diana, I know you believe you’re doing the right thing, that Vices need to die. But have you ever thought that maybe we had it wrong? Maybe Vices are necessary?”

  The cadence of her voice is just the same. Her no-nonsense “look, Diana.” I feel my insides crumbling like dry dirt in a fist. A tear slips out of my heavily mascaraed eyes.

  “Now, now, your makeup will run.” She reaches for the teardrop.

  I jerk away from her touch.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere to talk.” I’m surprised my voice is not shaky like the rest of me.

  She tsks her finger at me. “I don’t think so, honey. Remember, I know your little tricks.”

  She looks straight into my eyes and I swear my mother is still inside, that the Greed hasn’t gotten all of her.

  “Mom, what happened?” I won’t cry. I won’t.

  “Oh honey.” Her eyes are my mother’s eyes, her lips
my mother’s lips. “All these Vices getting fat off the rest of us while we fought a losing battle, while you still fight. And for what? Salary freezes and budget cuts and health insurance that doesn’t even cover the injuries of the job. Living in a two-bedroom apartment while the Vices cozy up in their mansions. Having your own child be tethered to the same meaningless destiny. I just couldn’t see the point anymore.”

  She takes a sip of her martini, jabs the bobbing olive with her stir stick. As she pops it in her mouth, I get a clear glimpse of the Greed inside her, it’s translucent whiteness lining her insides like silk in a coffin.

  She sees me looking and smiles. “I know, I know. It’s not pretty. But once they’re in, you can hardly feel it. In fact, all those feelings of guilt and restraint are gone. They make you free, Diana.”

  I scoff at that. Wipe away a traitorous tear. “Free from what?”

  She looks at me for a moment. “Free from yourself, honey.”

  Then she lunges at me with her long nails. All she has to do is pierce my skin, and the Wrath hovering behind her can swoop in and lay its larva in me. Lord knows I’m mad enough and my defenses are down. Perfect. Fertile ground.

  I side step her swiping motion and draw the knife from my hair.

  She’s not surprised to see it.

  The people near us have stopped talking and look at us with narrowed eyes and pinched, disapproving mouths.

  Manon, acting as if she didn’t just try to take a piece out of me, or more likely, put an extra piece in me, swigs the last of the martini and places it on the teetering tray of a passing waiter. Cool as ever. Now why couldn’t I have inherited that?

  I flip the knife in my hand, the ornate handle pressing into my palm.

  “You’re still using the old knife, I see,” she says in a conversational tone. I’m not fooled. “Family heirloom, that is, belonged to your great, great, great grandmother, the first in our line. Only weapon any of us ever used. I’m sure it gives you great pride to know it is legend in the Greed community.” Sarcasm drips like saliva from her mouth.

  I ignore the jibe.

  “So you chose to have a filthy Greed inside you instead of staying with me?” I don’t know why I even ask. I know it’s true. Vices need to have willing hosts or they won’t thrive, and there’s no other way my mother would have let the Greed pupate in her. She was too good of a hunter for that.

  “I never left you, honey. I knew eventually we’d meet. I wanted to show you what could be accomplished.” She raises her arms in a gesture meant to encompass the room. “Look what one can do with money. Look what good I can do even with this greed in me.”

  I wonder if she believes her own lie.

  “We could be together again. Rich. You could provide for Lulu, send her to a normal school, avoid her having the same fate as us. Jay would never know.” She jerks her head toward Queenie who is hovering close by, ready to pounce. “It would only take a second, honey.”

  I tighten my grip on my knife.

  “Don’t talk to me of Lulu.” I hate her. She lays out all my worst thoughts in front of me, the ones I can’t even put into words, like a teacher at the blackboard.

  “I know you pray to have her spared, just like I prayed for you. But you and I both know that’s not going to happen. Look at her hair. She’s one of us, Diana. Tied to a fate dictated by a random mutation. Is that fair?”

  Her words knead my anger until I’m swollen with it.

  No, it isn’t. It isn’t fair. I want to be a normal mother, who takes her daughter to a normal school and watches her grow up to be something normal, like an accountant. I want to go to the park, attend school meetings, bake things and all that crap.

  The rage I have restrained for so long rises in me like a rain-soaked river. My fist is clenched and longing for impact when I finally see it: my mother’s body draped over the Greed like a thin nightie.

  It is disgusting.

  It is what breaks her spell.

  The knife sings in my grip, ready. I feel a grace I’ve never felt before. All the years of training, all the years of hunting fit into place like the last pieces of a puzzle. I twirl around, the gold skirt of my dress flaring.

  The image of Lulu earlier in my bedroom clapping in delight while I twirled just like this flashes in front of my eyes. I keep it strapped like a sword to the back of my mind.

  The knife knows where to go. It penetrates her chest, ripping off the diamond pendant hanging between her breasts. I feel it sink into her skin and twirl again, pushing down.

  She makes a gurgling noise and looks at me, her eyes wide with shock.

  I won’t look away. I bend her over as if she’s ill and move towards the exit.

  “Is everything okay, miss?” A waiter looks at me, concerned.

  “Yes, yes. Too much to drink…restroom.” Luckily the petals of blood from the garland I ripped from her chest are leaking straight into the thick folds of her taffeta dress.

  I don’t stop even though I can feel the eyes of the crowd like millipedes scurrying down my back. Our small disturbance ripples lightly through the throng only to settle down quickly, like a pebble thrown into a pond. The clinking of glasses, the shuffling of feet, the undercurrent of conversation resumes.

  Queenie is backing away now, terror pulling at her eyes. That’s right, leave us alone, bitch, or you’re next.

  The bathroom is right outside the ballroom. Swinging open the door, I avoid the red velvet arm chairs placed in front of the wall-length mirror in the powdering room. The taffeta now soaked through, my mother leaves a trail of blood on the white and black-checkered tiles. Its iron smell counterpoints the faint odors of lemon-scented cleaner and lavender hand soap.

  I sit my mother down on the toilet in a cubicle, lock the door and watch her die.

  In the end I know it’s my mother looking out at me, not the Greed. She reaches for me and it takes every bit of strength I have to not go to her, to not hug her like I did when I was a child. But she still has the Greed in her. Although it can’t implant its larva in me, its acid skin and scythe-like teeth are still lethal.

  When the blood stops flowing, I see the first sign of the Greed. It oozes out of her like froth from a rabid dog’s mouth. Bile rises to my throat. This is the worst part. The incomparable stench, like burning rubber and skunk put together, fills the small space. I try to block it out the way they taught us at the Academy, but I’m tired and weak. I lean against the door of the cubicle, not able to hold myself up. I sink to the floor, my knife clutched to my chest.

  “Lulu.” My mother utters one last word before her heart rattles to a stop.

  Lulu. My daughter. At home with Jay. Lulu making her dad read to her until he falls asleep.

  I wield the image of her, use it to break the stench’s claw-like grip.

  The Greed is almost on me. I unlock the door and pray that nobody else is in the bathroom. All I need is for someone to come in and see me slashing at thin air.

  The Greed unfurls itself to its full height, its maw hovering over me like a cloud of moldy scythes. It’s about to chomp. I back up and hit the row of sinks.

  I turn my back to the Greed for a moment and leap onto the smooth white porcelain. In the mirror above the sink I see it coming in for the kill.

  No time to turn around. I flip my knife so the tip points upward, thrust back and up. My blade rips through its membrane, the acid eating at the metal. Flecks burn potholes in my skin. I quickly drop the knife and whisper a tiny prayer of thanks to Wardrobe for the gold, elbow-length gloves that came with the dress.

  The Greed rears back, wriggling in pain. Ripping a slit into my dress, I leap into the air and land by one of the red, velvet armchairs in the powder room. I grab it by the back and slam it as hard as I can into the soft flesh of the Greed. It slides to the floor a gelatinous mess.

  I make my way to its only weak spot, jumping in and out of the cubicles to avoid contact with its poisonous skin.

  The Greed’s jaw is co
ntorted in a grimace, its teeth working side to side like an overturned mechanical shovel. There is a slight gap between the rows of teeth.

  I’m going to have to time this perfectly.

  Wrapping the torn gold lamé dress around my leg, I wait until the bottom teeth are the farthest to the left and slam my foot into the Greed’s mouth. I stab the soft flesh of its palate just as it is about to clamp down. I snap my leg back out, but my gold sequined stiletto gets stuck. Its body writhes violently, splashing acid on my dress. Feeling the sting through the flimsy cloth, I back away quickly.

  Finally the Greed is still.

  Wardrobe is not going to be happy. Maybe I should suggest they make an evening gown out of Teflon. Oh, and while there at it, might as well make the gloves Teflon as well.

  The thought makes me laugh until I cry, then the sobs crash through me like earthquake tremors. I cry for my mother. I cry for myself. I cry for Lulu. I cry until the black of my mascara runs out and the tears run clear.

  A weight I didn’t know I was carrying is lifted off my shoulders and I feel light, almost hopeful. Well, as hopeful as someone in my line of work can be, anyway. I am not my mother. Her choices are not mine.

  I get up and reach inside the Greed’s mouth for my shoe. I have to work it slowly, rocking it back and forth, careful not to touch any part of its skin. Finally it’s free. I wipe off a chunk of Greed palate on the bathroom floor.

  I pick up my little handbag with my keys and my cell phone. I’ll have to call Corpse Removal, and of course the boss, to let her know Manon is dead. I’ll go for a drink with Keisha, maybe even ask if she wants to come for dinner one day, meet the family. Tomorrow, I’ll go into work as usual. And next year, when Lulu turns five, I’ll enter her into the academy. I’ll do what needs to be done.

  Destiny, it turns out, is a matter of choice after all.

  Kudzu Jesus

  Edward McKeown