"Yeah?" I cast a sideways look at Greg and slid one hand under the center console of the truck to where I had a Colt 1911 stashed. The forty-five wouldn't make as big a hole as Bertha, but since I was laying on her, it was all I could reach. That reminds me; don't try to sleep on a Desert Eagle. It plays hell with the sciatica.
"Well, that's true." I relaxed my grip on the Colt at the news that I didn't need to give Greg a third eyehole. Skeeter went on. "But it is from a rakshasa."
"And you know this how?"
"I got some sample tissue from the Church's archives flown in and tested it. That's rakshasa hair. The color's wrong for your guy, but it's definitely the same species. The one you're looking for is lighter in color, more a tawny brown than the orange of your new best friend there."
"Tawny brown, huh?" I asked, my stomach sinking a little. "Would someone who waxes a little more poetical call that a golden bronze?"
"Sure, if they were stupid, drunk or...crap."
"Yeah. Crap. I'll get back to you when it's done."
"Sorry, dude." Me too. I was actually starting to like Greg, cat breath and all. He was kinda funny, a sweet guy, and he didn't shed much. This was not going to make him happy.
"Greg?"
"Yes, Bubba? Was that your employer, the genocidal Catholic Church?"
"Are we gonna get into it about the Church again? Cause if so, I could just save us some time and shoot you in the face."
"I don't know if that would kill me. I am a magical creature, after all."
"I alternate my magazines between lead, silver and cold iron rounds. One of those is usually pretty good. If not, I've got a magazine full of white phosphorous rounds. You ever smelled burning rakshasa fur?"
"No!" He shuddered a little.
"Me neither. Let's keep it that way. Now get in here, I've got something to ask you." He pulled his fuzzy head out of the window, hopped out of the bed and opened the passenger door. I straightened up my seat and yanked Bertha out from the small of my back. I put her on the dash where I could reach her quickly in case Greg didn't like my idea.
"What do you want to know, Bubba?" He asked when he got into the truck.
"You don't eat people, right?"
"Typically, no. In extreme cases, I have been known to consume human flesh, but I find it bland and tasteless."
"Do most of your kind feel that way?"
"My kind? You mean rakshasa?"
"Yeah, that's what I mean. I don't mean LSU fans. I know they don't eat human flesh except in certain rituals to get Les Miles more mojo, but we've looked into that and it's no worse than any other major college football program."
"Well...honestly, most of people consider human flesh a delicacy. It was one thing that Aditya used against me with the local elders to gain favor. I don't like the taste of human, and my people are supposed to eat humans, so that oddity helped drive a wedge between my beloved Raina and me."
"Yeah, that's good news. And bad news."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we've identified the thing killing young boys all over Beckley, and it's definitely a rakshasa. But it's also definitely not you. The fur color is all wrong."
"Well, then, all we need to do is find the uncivilized beast and put it down, then I can return to my normal, lonely yet unmolested life. And perhaps develop my budding relationship with the lovely ladies from Junior's Place. I believe that they were quite smitten with me."
"Until you went all fuzzy right in front of them?"
"I let my illusion slip? In front of mundane humans? Oh my."
"Yeah, 'Oh my' is right. And you might have mentioned the fact that they were homely."
"Where they could hear me?"
"While they were carrying you."
"Oh my again."
"Yeah. So I don't think Junior's is where you need to go looking for love, if you get my drift. Too many country songs start that way. But that ain't our real problem."
"Oh? Well, of course we still have to locate the other rakshasa, but with your technological abilities and my heightened senses, that shouldn't be a problem."
"Yeah, that ain't the problem either."
"Then what is?"
"I'm pretty sure the rakshasa that's doing all the killing is your girlfriend."
"Raina? Here?" His furry face lit up like I'd just given him a blow-up doll made of catnip, but it fell just as quickly. "But what makes you think she's the one responsible for the murders?"
"Fur that could best be described as golden bronze was found at the scene. Rakshasa fur."
"Well, it's hardly an uncommon color among our people, Bubba. You shouldn't leap to such conclusions."
"Maybe not, but there aren't many of 'your people' on 'my continent,' so it kinda stands to reason that if there are two rakshasa in the same small town in West Virginia, then they're probably linked together somehow. By the way, is it rakshaha, or rakshasas? Rakshasi? Rakshasen?"
"It's rakshasa, and it doesn't matter. It isn't Raina. She turned her back on me, choosing a life of luxury with her father and her wealthy, man-eating suitor over a life of love with me." I was getting pretty good at reading the expressions on his cat-face, and I could tell that he'd just done the feline equivalent of setting his jaw stubbornly. Nothing I said was going to convince him that his lady love was eating middle school rednecklets. In some ways that was good, because I could still get him to help me track her down. On the other hand, when I found her I was probably going to have to figure out a way to kill two magical cat-people with poisonous claws and really, really big teeth. I put the truck in gear and headed to the last crime scene. If there was trace for Greg to follow, it would be there.
The last kid had been killed on the outskirts of Beckley, close to the New River Gorge. A few thousand square miles of forest surrounded the crime scene, so I was really hoping Greg could pick up something. If this beast wasn't working the local cemetery scene, it was probably in the woods, and I didn't have a whole lot of faith in my ability to find a big jungle cat-person in a national forest. The crime scene had been released, and the road into the forest had been popular with looky-loos over the last couple of days. I pulled off onto an abandoned logging road and hopped out. I opened the back door and flipped up the rear seat, exposing my toolbox. I popped the top and pulled out a shoulder rig for Bertha, tucking her under my left arm with a couple of spare magazines. My semi-auto Saiga 12-gauge went on a sling over my right shoulder, and I strapped a 14" Bowie knife with a silvered edge to my right thigh. I thought for a second, and then dropped the Saiga to pull on my favorite Harley jacket. The thick leather promised to have me sweating like a whore in church while I tromped through the woods, but the heavy jacket was a pretty good defense against claws. I poked around the toolbox for a few more minutes, deciding against incendiary grenades because of all the wildlife around. Hey, only you can prevent forest fires, buddy.
I slammed the lid on the toolbox and reached behind the back seat, sliding out a rigid plastic tube. The top was held in place with nylon webbing, which slid free as I released the plastic buckles on the side. I pulled out a plain black katana and strapped it across my shoulders. The sword had no ornamentation, just a flat black sheath and a plain crosspiece. It was not a particularly pretty weapon, but it got the job done.
"What's that?" Greg asked as he watched me strap on the sword.
"I call her Whisper."
"Can I hold her?"
"No. The only way she's touched by anybody other than me is blade-first. No offense."
"None taken." But he took a small step backwards, I suppose just in case I did let him touch the sword. "Where did you get her?"
"She was created by master swordsmith Amakuni over twelve hundred years ago. She survived many battles, slew many enemies and passed through the hands of many men before being taken to the US by my grandfather."
"In World War II?"
I nodded. "He was with the 2nd Marines on Guadalcanal. Then they went on the offensive, my gra
nddad was at the tip of the spear, as they called it. His platoon cut through the Japanese like a hot knife through butter, and he found himself facing a Japanese officer one-on-one. Somehow they had both gotten separated from their units, and it was just this moment of calm in all the fighting. The officer had no gun, nothing but this sword. He stood there for a minute, staring at Granddad, but after a long staredown, Granddad put his rifle on the ground and pulled his Ka-Bar. According to Granddad, they fought for more than half an hour before either one of them made a mistake. I don't know if the officer's foot slipped, he tripped over a root, or what, but whatever happened, Granddad got the upper hand, killed the officer with his knife, and brought the sword home. It came to me when he passed ten years ago, and I've carried it with me ever since I got started in this business."
"How often have you needed to use it?"
"She keeps a sharp edge" was all I said as I slid the sword across my back. I re-slung my Saiga onto my shoulder and slipped a pair of mini-binoculars into my jacket pocket. I started down the trail towards where the last body was found, trusting the cat-man to follow me. We traipsed through the woods for a solid fifteen minutes before we came to a clearing. Trees stood tall around us, and even my heavy boot treads were muffled on the bed of pine needles. An impromptu monument had been erected in the center of the clearing, with photos, unlit candles and other mementoes piled near where the boy's body had recently lay.
"His name was Brandon. He was thirteen. This was his first solo camping trip. His parents only let him stay out here alone because his dad came out with him to set up the tent and scout around for predators. He called it safe, left the kid with a charged cell phone, made sure he got service back here in the woods, and went back to the trailhead to sleep in his car. He was parked right where we left my truck. He never heard a thing. No phone call, not even a scream. The kid never knew what hit him. When his dad came back for him the next morning, his arms and legs had been chewed to the bone. His throat was ripped out by something with big, powerful claws. Tawny fur was found under his fingernails. The kid was a fighter, but he never had a chance."
"That's terrible, Bubba. But I fail to understand your anger. I'm here helping you, why do you seem angry at me?" I didn't answer. If he couldn't see that this mess was his fault - that he'd brought his girlfriend here by running away - I wasn't going to waste valuable oxygen explaining it to him.
"Can you pick up a scent?"
Greg knelt over the shrine, wrinkling his nose. "I can detect nothing here, the scents are too mingled by the candles." He moved out from the body site in a spiral, nose down. He was about ten feet from the body when I saw him tense.
"What is it?" I asked, loosening Bertha in her holster.
"I think I have something. Follow me." He took off through the brush on all fours, his previous gentility forgotten.
"Cats." I muttered. "All prim and proper, but show 'em a laser pointer or a feather on a stick and they go nuts every time." I snapped the holster tight across Bertha again and led with the Saiga. If I was right, even Bertha might not stop what I was running into.
We ran through the woods for a couple of miles at least, and I was starting to be real glad I had a GPS on me. If I had to try to remember where I parked out here, I was screwed. Greg stopped suddenly, and I had to grab onto a tree to keep from running him right over. "What is it?" I asked when I had my balance secure again.
"It's close."
"Would you like to narrow that down a little for the humans in the audience?"
"We're close to the creature's lair. The scent is very strong. And male." He looked over his shoulder at me with a raised eyebrow. I hate getting the I told you so eyebrow from a guy that pees in a litter box.
"So this would be a good time for me to lock and load?" I racked a shell into the chamber of the Saiga and flipped off the safety. I didn't see anything suspicious, but I didn't have any kind of funky super-sniffer. A rustle in the leaves above me was all the warning I got before half a ton of fuzzy anger dropped down on me from above, knocking the Saiga from my hands and into the heavy underbrush. I went down and rolled over onto my back before the rakshasa had a chance to bite my head off. I looked up into a snarling maw of pithed-off puttytat, as Tweety Bird might say. Dagger-sharp fangs dripped hot saliva onto my face, and I grimaced. It would take forever to get the smell of cat out of my beard. I wedged a leather-clad arm between the jaws, blocking the beast's best shot at my throat, and tried to keep rolling to get position on top of it. No good - the creature outweighed me by at least five hundred pounds, all of it muscle, and all of it unhappy about me being there.
Suddenly the weight of the monster on my belly vanished, and it let out a surprised yelp as it flew across the clearing into a tree. I rolled to my feet and pulled Bertha, only to have her smacked out of my hand by a huge paw. Greg stepped in front of me and said "Get back. This is my fight."
"Is that your girl?" I panted, checking my scarred jacket for puncture wounds. The leather had several deep new scratches, but it had held up to the rakshasa's initial onslaught.
"No." He looked back at me like I was some kind of moron, the kind of look I usually only get from attractive women or Skeeter. "That was Aditya."
"The dude that stole your woman? What the hell is he doing here?" How was I supposed to know it was a guy? I wasn't checking for that when I was trying to stay alive.
"Apparently ruining my life at home was not enough for him. He had to follow me here to finish the job."
"Don't flatter yourself, coward." The other cat-dude dropped from a tree to land about ten feet in front of us. And of course, he landed on his feet. You know, cat and all. "Where is she?"
"Where is who, you filthy son of a mangy dog?" Greg seemed to genuinely dislike this other rakshasa. Worked for me, I pretty much hated his ass too after the whole trying to kill me thing.
"Raina, you fool! You stole her from me and fled to this godsforsaken hellhole! I've tracked you for months, watched you here for weeks, waiting for you to lead me to her. But now you come to my home? Now I kill you!" He pounced then, just compacted himself and flew across the clearing. I shoved Greg out of the way and punched the flying catman in the face with everything I had. He stopped in midair and collapsed to the ground, but bounced up almost as soon as he landed.
"Well that didn't go as planned." Skeeter's voice came crackling through my ear.
"Does anything?" I asked.
"What did you say? Reception is for crap out there!" A loud burst of static made me wince, and I turned it into a drop and forward roll as Aditya sprang at me again. I smacked the Bluetooth thingy, and Skeeter shut up. Neat trick, since I could never get him to do that in real life.
I came up with my granddad's sword drawn, the cold iron blade flickering in the morning light. Cold iron is a strange substance, extremely hard to heat and forge. It's kinda like titanium, only with magical juice to it. It can cut through almost anything, and most magical creatures are scared shitless of it. The only problem is, if a creature is usually a predator, it probably won't take kindly to suddenly becoming prey. And that usually means that drawing cold iron around a magical creature means you're going to end up in a huge fight. The kind of fight that only one of you walks away from.
Aditya tensed, ready to spring at me, but I didn't flinch. I've been in enough fights with enough predators to know not to blink. You blink, you're dead. But in this case I didn't have to blink, the fuzzy bastard just moved so fast I couldn't follow him. I slashed at the air where I thought he should be and I hoped he would end up, but touched nothing.
He landed fifteen feet away from me, poised on all fours to strike again. He was a big mother, half again as big as Greg, and dark orange with black stripes. Traditional tiger markings, with a blaze of white fur under his chin. "Crap." I muttered as I stared at Aditya along the edge of my sword.
"What's wrong?" Greg asked from beside me. "We have him outnumbered. We shall rip his head from his shoulders and defecate in
his neck."
"As much as I'd like to do that, he's not the killer."
"How do you know?"
"What killer? I am more than enough killer to destroy the two of you fools!" Aditya snarled, showing me that he still had a scrap of black leather caught in his teeth. I wondered if there was a dental floss in the world strong enough for that mouth.
"Somebody's been killing and eating young humans in these woods. It ain't you." I explained to the latecomer.
"Of course not!" He said. "I would never eat a youngling. There's no sport to it. That is the type of hunt I would expect from this flea-bitten rodent-catcher!" He pointed at Greg in case there was any chance I didn't know who he was talking about. The bad feeling in my gut that had nothing to do with last night's bender just kept getting worse.
I turned to face Greg, my sword just a few inches from his throat. "Where is she, Greg?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know Raina's here. I know you know where she is, and I know you've been covering for her. And you brought me here, hoping your furry friend over there would kill me and I'd be out of your hair. But he doesn't know crap about this, he just knows that you and Raina eloped and ran off to America, and he's been chasing you ever since you left India. And you've managed okay on people food, but Raina likes her kibble a little fresher, so she's been hunting lately. And now I'm here, and Aditya's here, and we're on to you both, so you've got a problem. You can deal with it a couple of ways, but no matter what you decide, somebody dies here tonight. So what's the plan, catman?" I never moved the sword from his throat, and he never made a move to back away.
"I was hoping you wouldn't figure it out. I like you, Bubba. I really do." I had almost enough time to think "aw, crap" again before his claws were flying at my throat. I slashed out with my sword, but he was way too fast for me to touch. Fortunately my strike carried me out of the path of his slash, so all he caught was air. I struck out at his legs, but he hopped into the air like Jordan in the playoffs, and I got nothing. He never landed, though. Aditya caught him in midair and the real fight was suddenly happening without me.
Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1 Page 11