Slowly, shakily, a person emerged from the remains. He was a short man, and his features were hard to distinguish beneath the soot. He was naked except for the remaining armor, and a few tatters of the once opulent robe. He struggled weakly to his hands and knees, a tiny creature amongst the ruins of his former body.
I waited.
He spoke slowly, not used to forming words. The medieval Portuguese was still very familiar in my mind.
"The curse is lifted. I am a man again. Human at last."
"Yup."
He looked at his hands in wonder, and brushed the ash away from his skin. He began to cry, tears rolling down the soot. "Five hundred years of torment. I am free. You have freed me from my curse… Somehow it is broken."
I tied Abomination's tattered strap over one shoulder and drew the full-size. 45 from my waistband. The click of the safety was eerily loud. I carefully put the front sight in place and placed my finger on the face of the trigger. He looked up at me warily. "But… but I have been redeemed."
"I'm not in the redemption business."
BOOM.
A hole appeared in his forehead. The silver bullet mushroomed perfectly through his brain tissue and ruptured out the back of his skull in a spray of red and white. The single brass case bounced on the ground. A thin line of blood fell from the entrance wound. Lord Machado's eyes rolled slowly back into his head and he flopped into the ash.
I kept the gun on him. His leg kicked spasmodically a few times. There was no magic. He was not coming back.
Lord Machado was dead.
I slowly lowered the gun to my side. It was over.
The pyramid shook violently. I stumbled, but somehow managed to stay upright. In the distance the edges of the little valley began to disintegrate, collapsing as the unnatural force that sustained the pocket dimension began to dissipate. Trees dropped through the ground, disappearing in showers of dirt and snow. Gravity was a jealous bitch.
I sprinted for Julie. I lifted her into my arms and looked around. The spot where we had entered the little world was gone. The portal was no longer there. The rocks that had supported it were now plummeting hundreds of feet to the earth below. It was shrinking fast, and the ground was falling away, forming a boundary that was heading quickly for the ivory pyramid.
If only I had a parachute.
Hell, I didn't even have a shirt. I might as well have wished for a rocket pack. I wasn't exactly James Bond here.
We were going to die. The artificial ground was gone now. Only the ruins remained. My footing slipped as the pyramid began to shift wildly, the last vestiges of ancient magic fleeing. The structure dropped for what seemed an eternity, only to slam to a halt, shiver and quake, and then drop again. This halt was especially violent, and I knew that it was our last.
Blocks of ivory broke away, cracking and slipping into the darkness. We only had seconds left before this whole thing fell apart and we were dumped into the air.
Something clanged against the ivory, bounced a few times, and then stopped. The artifact! The pyramid jolted again and it slid toward the edge.
I started after it. If I could reach it, I could use it to get us out of here. I surged forward, one hand holding Julie's limp form tight, the other grasping for the little stone box.
My fingers stopped an inch from the artifact. I froze. "Nice try, you evil bitch."
Koriniha's voice echoed through the night air. "Pity. Now I have to put up with five more centuries on this shitty planet." Her spirit drifted away on the winds and was gone.
With a groan the pyramid began its final disintegration. A seam split open between my feet. The artifact slid over the edge and disappeared. The corpses fell away. The last blocks began to plummet, hurtling toward the ground. The top tier was all that remained, and we began to fall. It was a sickening feeling. Air rushed past my ears, deafening me. This was it.
Blinding light. What the hell? The spotlight veered away, and something metallic clanged against the ivory. In the split second before the block beneath my feet dropped, I realized it was a chain ladder. I extended one hand and grabbed it. My foothold was gone. I held onto the rung with all of my strength. Julie and I fell. My arm wrenched painfully in its socket. My fingers popped. I cried out in pain as I struggled to hold on. I kicked my legs wildly, panicking, trying to get one foot on the rung. The Hind jerked wildly above as Skippy tried to get us safely to the ground.
It had been an amazing feat of piloting. The clumsy Russian chopper was not known for its precise handling, yet he had managed to match speed with the dropping pyramid long enough to snag us.
I clamped Julie's unconscious body tight against my chest. She threatened to slip away. I could feel the rung trying to pull out of my hand. Instinct told me to drop her and use my other hand to hold on. Screw instinct. My hand was on fire, but I held on. We were losing altitude quickly. I tried to get a foot through another rung, but the ladder was whipping wildly in the wind. Finally, by some miracle, I was able to get the toes of my boot through the chain to brace myself. I held on for dear life.
Ground. Blessed ground. It came up frighteningly fast. Skippy flared the chopper upward, slowing us at the last possible instant. Almost gently he lowered us until the ladder was dragging in the grass. I hopped off, covering my eyes as the blades tore up a mighty cloud of debris. Hunters moved quickly from the woods, swarming toward us. I waved happily. I had no idea what was going on down here, but the Cursed One was dead. The Old Ones' plan had been foiled. No matter what, we had won. I was briefly illuminated in the spotlight of the Hind as it quickly banked up and away. I grinned like an idiot and gave everybody a thumbs-up.
The final rung of the ladder struck me violently in the back of the head. The last thing I remembered was a bunch of flashlights shining in my eyes and somebody hollering for a medic.
Chapter 28
I had to be dreaming. Either that or I was dead.
The field stretched as far as the eye could see. It was the same unnaturally beautiful place where I had first met the Old Man. Only now, the sky was clear. The storm had passed. The crops that had resisted the winds had survived. Their roots had been anchored deep. Now watered and tested, they would be much stronger than before. I felt the moisture under my bare feet. It was a peaceful place.
"Hello, Boy!"
I turned around. The accent was familiar, but the voice was wrong. It was far too young and happy. "Mordechai?"
"You look surprised to be seeing me, you do." He grinned. I suppose I couldn't call him the Old Man anymore. I still recognized him, but instead of being arthritic and frail, he was in the prime of his life. Young, handsome, and strong. Probably what he looked like when he had first started Hunting. He was not even wearing glasses.
"You're alive?"
"No. Am still dead of course. But no longer stuck. You killed the Cursed One. Prison was opened. Now free I am to go."
"Go where?"
"I not know. Have not been to next place before. Have been stuck for long time."
"What do you know about it?" It could not hurt to ask.
"My friend. You find out that for your own self some day." He held out his hand to shake. I pushed his hand aside and engulfed him in a bear hug. I easily picked him up and squeezed. "Ugh… Easy, Boy. Respect your elders!"
I put him down. "Thanks for everything," I said. "Sorry about your cane."
"I not need it any more now." He quickly stomped his feet to demonstrate. "Is better used up killing Nazi bastard son of bitch. No, I thank you. Free because you did good, though for second, I thought we were, how you say… screwed. But heart was good, and made right choice. I thank you. In fact, many others want also to thank."
"What do you mean?"
He nodded his head off to the side. There was a crowd of people assembled who had not been there before. Men and women, all of them young and fit and strong, much like Mordechai. They were all of different races, and were dressed in many styles of clothing. Robes, furs, silks, even ma
il armor. A tall man with a curled Babylonian beard saluted me with his bow. The others followed suit, one by one, raising their spears, swords, axes, a musket. I recognized one of the men. He had been the Brazilian Hunter sacrificed by Lord Machado in the memory. He raised his obsidian-tipped club overhead and gave me a nod of approval. There have always been monsters. And as long as there are monsters, there will be some who dare to hunt them. These were my people. I bowed to the ancient Hunters.
One by one they began to walk away. Slowly they became transparent, and began to fade. Within a moment they were all gone. The sacrifices were free.
"Prison is broken, so now they go. Only one of us could break away to contact the one from prophecy. I got to be one to teach you, because mine was the best English speaker." He sighed contentedly. "Sorry I could just not tell who you were, but it was not allowed. Only some things I could see, others I could say. Rules were different. But it is all good now. For me, work is done." Mordechai patted me tenderly on the shoulder. "You probably should be waking up now." He turned and began to walk quickly through the crop, running his hands through the rain droplets clinging to the leaves.
"Wait. What do I do now? Is it over?"
He paused, and looked up as if he was enjoying the sun. "My friend, you still have much work to do. You still have calling. Short straw you have drawn, and you not done until you end up like us. What to do now? Hunt monsters of course. For you, is never over."
I raised my hand and waved. "Thanks, Mordechai. Without you we would have lost. The whole world would have lost. Thanks."
"Silly Boy. Wake up now. Pretty girl is waiting for you. Be nice to her. Is brave and shoots very good." He winked. "Not find girl like that very often. Good-bye, friend."
He walked away with a spring in his step, ready to embark on his final adventure. Mordechai Byreika had been one of the greatest Hunters of his day. He had risked all to stop the storm. He had been my mentor and my friend. He turned one final time to grin at me, eyes twinkling, excited to continue on. He faded from sight and disappeared.
"Hey, guys, Z's awake," said a voice. "Dude, you've got to be the clumsiest, most accident-prone oaf I've ever known. I'm amazed you've lived this long."
"Trip?" I asked, trying to rise up so I could look around. My head ached, and I did not need to touch the back of my skull to know that there was a huge lump. "You're alive?"
"Can't kill a brother that easy." He laughed, and began to cough. His armor had been cut away and bandages encircled his chest and most of his head. One leg was propped up and had been tied to a splint. We were lying on blankets, set under the shade of a tree. The morning sun was rising in the distance. Several other wounded Hunters were also resting here. "No thanks to Holly," he joked.
"Shut up, dick," Holly said from the other side. "It was a good idea at the time." She was kneeling next to an unconscious Hunter that I did not know and applying a clean bandage to his arm. She appeared to be fine. "Besides, one little hit on the head and you sleep through the whole battle, while me, Sam and Milo get to kill like half a million wights."
"I'm just lucky that kudzu broke my fall," he mumbled.
"Sam and Milo are okay?" I asked. I slowly sat up. I was awfully woozy.
"Yeah, but the worst injured have been evacuated to the nearest hospital. We'll be trucking everybody else there in a few minutes. Sam got busted up. At the end, he was killing wights with his teeth since everything else was paralyzed. And Milo? After his little light show against Julie's mom, they're calling him Saint Milo now."
"Told you not to make fun of religious folks," Trip said.
"Julie?"
"Fine, she's wandering around here somewhere."
"Lee?" The last I had seen he had been hit pretty bad.
"He's going to live. But he's probably going to lose his leg. Gretchen did her best, but she wasn't sure." She sounded sad. "He was one of the lucky ones."
"Who else?" I asked. The others grew somber.
"We lost fifteen Hunters. We have another couple that are critical and might not make it. And then we have about twenty wounded. Once the Masters closed the distance, it got ugly. I guess they finally used the wargs to quickly evacuate everybody out of one side of the valley, so they could bomb the hell out of it. Then they concentrated on the last vamp."
"Are they all destroyed?"
"According to Julie, you killed the German, so we got six out of the seven," Trip answered.
"Let me guess." It was too much to hope. "Susan?"
"Yep. My mom got away," Julie said. She appeared in front of me, hands on her hips. Surprisingly, she looked fine, a little pale, but fine nonetheless. Not bad considering that I had watched her throat get cut only a few hours before. She extended her hand to me, I took it, and she did her best to pull me up, but failed miserably. I pulled her down with me. Despite the news of her mother, she laughed when she hit the ground.
"I'm glad to see you're okay," I said.
"Yeah, and you have some explaining to do. How the hell am I even alive? The last thing I remember is the pain, and then I started losing blood, and I was out. I woke up down here."
"Thrall saved your life. The last little bit of evil magic he had on his body, he gave to you. He held it on your neck and then it flew away."
"That would explain this." She brushed her hair aside. The side of her throat was still red and tender, but there was now a thick black line across the side, almost like a tattoo. "I'm not really into the whole body art thing, you know."
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"Not really."
"Does it feel… evil?"
"Not that I can tell. If I get the sudden urge to drown a bag of kittens, I'll let you know."
"Well, let's not knock it then." I moved in for a kiss.
"Slow down. You've got Cursed One and vampire blood all over your face. No offense, but I'm not kissing that."
"Holly! Canteen." I snapped my fingers. "This is a medical emergency."
"Going to have a medical emergency when I shoot your ass," she answered as she tossed me a canteen. I unscrewed the lid and poured the cool water down my face. It felt good to scrub off the disgusting dried mess. I wiped my face on my arm.
"Okay, now I'm kissable."
"Whoa." Julie's eyes betrayed her shock.
Holly leaned over to see. "Holy shit!"
I raised my hands to my face. What was so surprising?
"What? Let me see!" Trip said.
My skin was smooth. It felt normal. Too normal. My scars were gone. The thick ridge of tissue that had stretched from the top of my head to the side of my nose was gone. I poured some of the water on my chest. All of the scars from my battle with the werewolf Huffman had disappeared. The still-healing road rash on my arms was gone. I probed my molars with my tongue. The missing teeth had returned. My body had been totally repaired.
"The Old Ones… When they fixed me so that I could fight and sacrifice Lord Machado…" I did not know what to say. I had grown used to the scars and injuries. They were all fixed. It was amazing.
"Wow… It's like ancient evil ultimate makeover," Holly said.
Julie caressed the side of my face, then she leaned in and kissed me passionately. Her lips were soft, and it felt good to be alive. Thankfully the others refrained from any snide comments.
When we had come up for air, I had to ask. "I thought chicks dig scars?"
"Right now, I could care less. I'm just glad we're still alive."
"Me too."
We cleared out the rest of the wounded. Between the chaos of the mighty storm and the undead-inflicted carnage across the state, most of the hospitals from here to Birmingham were working around the clock. We still had a lot of cleaning up to do, but for today, MHI was done.
Gretchen had ridden up on the back of a mighty warg. She had taken one look at the back of my head and pronounced me something incomprehensible. I did not know if it was good or bad, but the other orcs had laughed at me, so I took that to be a good thin
g.
Harbinger was still missing, so Julie and her grandfather had effectively taken control of the chaos. Her brother Nate stood protectively nearby. I barely knew the kid, but he was not going to let any of his remaining family out of his sight. I could respect that. Once the wounded were safely gone, the rest of the gear was packed into the surviving vehicles, and then finally the dead. It was a somber duty, but we were not going to leave our dead in the hands of the local authorities.
I helped to lift one of the shrouded bodies into the back of a van. It was Chuck Mead. He had fought hard, and died bravely. But in the end, even the bravest of us would eventually buy it. We had trained together, and I was going to miss the big, simple Ranger. He had been a good man.
Priest said prayers over the bodies of our fallen. He stepped around the corpses, one arm coated in dried blood and slung to his chest. He ignored it. He had work to do. Our comrades would be taken back to the compound where we could perform a proper Hunter's funeral. It was grisly business, but in our line of work, having your friends cut your head off was the final sign of respect.
"It seems bad, but considering what we were up against," the senior Shackleford stated, "we did good. We did very good."
"Grandpa, has anyone seen Earl since last night?" Julie asked.
" 'Fraid not, dear," he answered quietly. "Some of VanZant's boys saw him go past the mortar emplacement after he killed that Master. They said he looked mighty tore up. He was heading into the woods."
"I hope he's okay," she said softly.
"Um…" I was sorry to intrude on the family moment, but I had to know. "So Earl's a werewolf. I mean, I'm cool with that. It isn't the first time I've had a werewolf boss, you know."
"Yes. He's a werewolf," the Boss answered, using his hook to tap me on the chest for emphasis, "and that information doesn't go outside of MHI. When that bastard Myers quit and joined the Feds, they found out about him, and he had all manner of trouble. The Feds wanted to kill him."
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