Memory Hunter

by Frank Morin

  He would take the small victories.

  Gregorios surged back to his feet just in time for Asoka to try gouging out his eyes. He broke Asoka’s hold and spat on him. They had both fought several facetaker duels over the centuries, and going for the eyes broke tradition.

  “You’ve abandoned honor twice over,” Gregorios snarled.

  “To destroy you, I’d make a deal with the devil,” Asoka cried.

  “You’ve already done that.”

  The two of them launched simultaneous attacks, but hissing growls began echoing in the room. Gregorios glanced behind him in time to see four emaciated creatures climbing out of the pit.

  The creatures looked roughly humanoid but their skin was a sickly gray color and it hung loose over their bones. Their hands and feet had long fingers and toes capped with filthy, curled nails. Their eyes were black, and their mouths filled with fangs.

  They smelled like all the athletic socks left in all the high school lockers in the world had been drawn together into a single room, left to rot for a year, and then released. They were known as pagkamatay and they were the one thing Asoka feared above all else, for they represented violent, eternal death.

  They were also incredibly hard to kill.

  Asoka actually shrieked when he saw the monsters crawling out of the pit with hungry howls. He sprinted away and dove through the wooden door that separated them from the torture chamber. The movement drew the attention of the first two monsters, who rushed right past Gregorios and chased Asoka. Although they looked emaciated, they moved with terrifying speed and would run him down in seconds.

  Gregorios lifted his hands and willed a pump shotgun into them. It was already loaded with one of his all-time favorite exotic rounds.

  He shot the next pagkamatay out of the air at a distance of two feet, just as it gained its feet. The boom of the shotgun pealed through the steel-sheathed room. The death shriek of the monster nearly ripped out his ear drums.

  He had fired a magnesium pyrotechnic round known as Dragon’s Breath that could blast fire up to one hundred feet. It punched through the monster’s sternum and filled its chest cavity with churning fire. The impact blasted the creature back across the floor with three thousand degrees of final judgment melting it from the inside out.

  Gregorios dodged the second pagkamatay as it leaped from the lip of the pit at him. He pumped the shotgun as the creature reversed direction and came at him again. It howled as it charged, so he fired a round through its open mouth. Even so close to the blood-streaked torture chamber, the resulting scorch marks were spectacular.

  He followed Asoka into the torture chamber and found his enemy fighting one of the other monsters. Mai Luan held the last beast in her hands and was calmly breaking each of its limbs. The pagkamatay howled in pain and struggled to escape, but she broke its final leg, ripped its jaw off, and crushed its head under her stiletto heels.

  Gregorios raised his shotgun, but a paw attached to a limb as thick as his waist swatted his feet out from under him. He hit the ground already rolling. Another paw cracked stone behind him. He came back to his knees to face the snapping maw of a wolf-like creature.

  He fed it his shotgun and pulled the trigger.

  The monster burned like a torch.

  Gregorios kicked it back into the smaller room and its tortured rolling dropped it right down the pit.

  They needed to be more careful. They were messing with the memoryscape too much and nightmares were working in through the cracks.

  Mai Luan was bludgeoning to death the pagkamatay that had been savaging Asoka, who had suffered several deep lacerations and looked dazed from having to face his worst fears.

  Gregorios charged, planning to tackle Asoka and rip his face off before Mai Luan could intervene. Hopefully that would end the dream and block her goal of gaining the master rune.

  Asoka had other ideas. An antique wooden baseball bat materialized in his hands and he smashed Gregorios to the ground with it.

  Gregorios groaned. He should have expected that. Asoka had loved American baseball with a passion, and kept a replica of this exact bat in a glass case in his office.

  Asoka jumped on top of him and grasp his face with glowing hands.

  So much for hand-to-hand combat settling the fight.

  “You cheated,” Gregorios growled as he embraced his nevra core and blocked Asoka’s nevron from slicing his soul from the body. The two struggled for dominance and Gregorios slowly pulled Asoka’s hands away.

  Then Mai Luan dropped to her knees beside them. Her uniform again looked spotless, her face smooth, and her hair glistening as if recently washed.

  Who had time for details like that?

  She placed her hands onto his jaw. “I’ve got this.”

  Her nevron struck like fifty of Asoka’s baseball bats. The sheer immensity of her Cui Dashi core drove his will into a corner of his mind where it whimpered in fear.

  Pure, unfiltered terror filled him.

  He couldn’t stop her.

  I’ll never admit it to them, but perhaps the council was right. Their warnings of revolt and political chaos resulting from my activities are proving all too accurate. I cannot be blamed for wanting to embrace my soul power can I? With my heka lover, I am a god and will not be ruled by them.

  ~Rasputin, Rogue facetaker

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Mai Luan shouted in victory as her fingers began slipping under Gregorios’ skin, despite all his efforts to stop her. Her fingers seared his face while her nevron burned his soul. He had not lost a life-fight like this in eighteen centuries, but she was going to destroy him. There was nothing he could do to stop her.

  Then her fingers stopped and a look of confusion etched her smooth face. Some other power was blocking her ability to completely remove his soul.

  Then he understood.

  Eirene.

  Her soul was still engaged in the real world. That must amplify her power in the dream world because although Mai Luan struggled with renewed determination to finish him, she could not sever the tie between him and Eirene.

  Once again his wife stood between him and destruction. He really loved that woman.

  “Tag.” Sarah spoke from right behind Mai Luan, out of Gregorios’ view. “You’re it.”

  A shotgun roared and Mai Luan sprawled sideways, spurting blood from a ghastly hole in the side of her head. Asoka lunged, but Sarah shot him in the chest and side-stepped his clumsy charge. She shot him again in the back, sending him stumbling into the small pit room. He fell, rolled twice, and tumbled headfirst down the ancient well.

  She turned her gun back to Mai Luan and fired, but the Cui Dashi shot off the floor in a fantastic, convulsive move, landing on her feet like a cat.

  Alter apparently didn’t like cats.

  He opened up with the fifty-cal at point blank range on full auto. Bullets ripped into her, shaking her like a puppet on a string in a high wind. The noise was a marvelous din that continued to grow as echoes built upon echoes. Gregorios laughed despite the deadly rain of lead passing over him and shredding Mai Luan.

  She retreated under the onslaught, spurting blood from dozens of wounds and screaming so loud that Gregorios hoped Alter would puncture a lung to quiet her down.

  Gregorios rolled out of the line of fire, and Sarah helped him stand.

  “You arrived just in time,” he shouted above the constant dine of Alter’s machine gun.

  She gave him a dazzling smile, then joined Alter shooting slugs into Mai Luan’s already bloody torso. The onslaught shook her so badly she couldn’t escape. She tried dodging, but the two kept up such an intense rate of fire, she couldn’t break free. The terrible damage she was absorbing began to take its toll and she dropped to one knee in a pool of blood.

  Then Alter and Sarah both ran out of ammo.

  “Hey,” Sarah exclaimed, shaking her shotgun. “What gives?”

  Gregorios’ headache intensified, and he winced. “One of them is messing
with things again.”

  Mai Luan rose to her feet, her riddled body already healing. “I warned you, Sarah.”

  “I choose not to accept your offer,” Sarah said, and threw the shotgun.

  Mai Luan swatted it out of the air and brushed back her hair. “I grow tired of your lack of vision, Sarah.”

  Alter tackled her. Normally she could have dodged his enhanced speed or punched him out of the room, but she seemed a little rattled by the incredible trauma she’d just suffered. He knocked her off her feet and the two slid through pools of blood for a dozen feet.

  Alter came to his knees beside her and clubbed her repeatedly in the head with his empty machine gun.

  Gregorios summoned a Husqvarna chainsaw with a twenty inch bar and an aggressive chain. It was already running, and when he pulled the trigger, it roared revved up to a hungry roar.

  Sarah cringed away. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to have to take off her head.”

  He advanced, but Mai Luan caught the gun as Alter brought it down for yet another blow. Shooting her with the machine gun had slowed her down a bit, but hitting her didn’t deliver nearly enough damage.

  Gregorios rushed forward. He only needed a few seconds to get into position and tear that monster’s head off.

  He wasn’t going to get that much time.

  Mai Luan surged to her feet, lifting a struggling Alter with her. With a snap of her elbow, the threw Alter into Gregorios. He tried to dodge, but was too close. He managed to twist the chainsaw out of the way and release the trigger before hurting either of them as they crashed to the floor in a heap.

  Before he could extricate himself, Mai Luan snatched Alter off of him and tossed the young hunter over her shoulder. He sailed across the room, shouting and flailing his limbs, and crashed into the wall on the far side hard enough to dent the steel.

  Gregorios swung the chainsaw around, but Mai Luan had regained her super speed. She plucked the weapon out of his hands and kicked him in the ribs.

  He felt two ribs break, and the shocking pain rattled him for a second before he could sever connection to those nerves. The blow tumbled him across the floor, through the broken wooden door in the dividing wall, and into the well room. He clutched at the smooth stones of the floor, and slowed his slide enough so that when he passed the edge of the hole and began to fall, he managed to catch the lip with one hand.

  Dangling over the edge, his feet scrabbling against the slick stones above hundreds of feet of empty space, he clutched that lip of stone with all his strength. Echoes of regular banging, like steel on stone, reached him from far below in the darkness of the well. He had known Asoka had survived the fall, for the man’s resistance to his control over the memory had faded initially but then returned as strong as ever. If he had time, he’d drop rocks down on his old enemy, but he needed to deal with Mai Luan first.

  From the direction of the torture room, the chainsaw began to rev.

  Only Sarah stood against Mai Luan out there.

  Without a doubt, Napoleon fields enhanced troops. Their superhuman battle prowess turned the tide against us. I recommend contracting with the hunters to counter those rounon powers. Without their assistance, we cannot defeat Napoleon. As to the rumors of a Cui Dashi advisor to the emperor, I could gather no concrete facts. One informant did offer the name of Xiao but who or what they may be is unclear and the informant died trying to learn more.

  ~Holy Roman Emperor Francis II in a letter

  to British Prime Minster William Pitt after

  his defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Sarah rushed for the idling chainsaw, but Mai Luan reached it first. She picked it up and revved the engine, holding the throttle wide open for three long seconds.

  Sarah backed away, feeling terribly vulnerable. She wished she hadn’t thrown her shotgun. She might be out of ammo, but facing Mai Luan with empty hands was worse.

  Mai Luan grinned and advanced slowly, continuing to rev the chainsaw. Sarah retreated. She didn’t flee, because that might encourage Mai Luan to run her down and rip her apart with that terrifying weapon. As she walked, a strange numb sensation rippled through her, beginning at her left shoulder blade where her new rune was located. Sarah couldn’t imagine what it meant, but hoped Mai Luan wasn’t somehow messing with her rune. Cui Dashi possessed rounon powers as well as nevra core, so it might be possible.

  “Sarah, Sarah,” Mai Luan chided. “I’ve decided what to do about you.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Sarah said. “Feel free to take your time.”

  “I’ve wasted enough time here,” Mai Luan said. “And your time has run out.”

  Sarah glanced toward Alter, but couldn’t see him past a row of cabinets holding implements of torture. She looked toward the well room, but the angle was wrong to see the hole in the floor, so she couldn’t see if Gregorios had risen yet.

  She was on her own.

  Mai Luan revved the chainsaw again. “I’m going to remove your hands and your feet.” She spoke in a conversational tone, as if discussing what she planned to wear for the day. “The pain will be excruciating, but you will survive, at least for a while. In that way, you can witness my ultimate victory.”

  Sarah shuddered, her eyes glued to the spinning chain as Mai Luan advanced. She had always refused to watch any of the B horror movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for good reason. She wondered if Mai Luan had seen them as a small child. It might explain part of why she’d turned out so badly.

  Sarah backed into one of the empty steel torture beds, still streaked with dried blood. She jumped over it, placing the bed between her and the advancing chainsaw.

  Mai Luan shook her head. “That’s all you’ve got, Sarah?”

  “Give me a minute!”

  “You don’t get a minute.” Mai Luan slammed the chainsaw blade onto the bed. The chain sparked and made a horrible racket as it scarred the steel surface.

  Sarah dodged away and snatched up a metal tray from a table next to the next bed, scattering knives and picks and pliers whose use she didn’t want to think about.

  Mai Luan vaulted the last bed and came on fast, swinging the chainsaw in slow arcs. She could have moved the heavy weapon much faster, but appeared to enjoy taunting Sarah with it.

  Sarah dodged the first strike, but ran into the nearby torture bed. With nowhere to run, she brought up the steel tray to block the next strike. The tray bucked and rattled in her hand, and the screeching of the chain as it skittered against the tray sent shivers of fear rippling up her arm along with the powerful vibrations. Again she felt the strange numb sensation spreading from her new rune, and wondered if she’d made a mistake forcing Alter to inscribe it there.

  Mai Luan struck again, this time knocking the tray right out of Sarah’s hands.

  When she raised the weapon to strike again, Sarah lunged, closing with the smaller woman and grappling for control of the saw. She pulled with all her strength, but barely shook Mai Luan’s arms.

  “Way to go, Sarah,” Mai Luan laughed. “Showing spirit to the bitter end.” The woman wasn’t even struggling. She looked calm, unworried by Sarah’s close proximity.

  Sarah kneed Mai Luan in the ribs as hard as she could. With her greater height, she got great leverage, but the blow caused no visible effect.

  Mai Luan’s lip curled into a mocking smile, then she head-butted Sarah in the face.

  The blow knocked Sarah off her feet, and for a second she saw nothing. Her mind went blank, overwhelmed by the sharp pain. She blinked her eyes open and found herself lying on the floor, with Mai Luan standing over her, chainsaw already descending toward her left hand, engine roaring on full throttle.

  Then the terrifying machine tumbled out of Mai Luan’s hands. The Cui Dashi spun, and only then did Sarah notice Alter standing behind Mai Luan, a heavy pipe in his hands.

  He tried to club Mai Luan with it, but she snatched it away a
nd grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off the floor. “I’m tired of your interruptions. Tell me your name before you die.”

  “I am Alter, son of Melek,” he grunted through the pressure on his throat as he kicked her ribs repeatedly. “And I defy you.”

  “I’ve killed several of your relatives,” Mai said, ignoring the blows. “They had better taste in clothing, but I found them just as pathetic.”

  He struggled harder, squirming against her grasp even though she could snap his neck any tie she chose.

  Sarah used the distraction to roll to her feet and snatch up the idling chainsaw. She revved the engine and the heavy tool shook with deadly power in her hands. She turned toward Mai Luan, but felt sick by the thought of what she was intending to do.

  Mai Luan slammed Alter onto a nearby torture bed so hard she drove the breath from his lungs. When Sarah rushed in, trying to drive the blade of the chainsaw into Mai Luan’s back, the woman kicked it out of Sarah’s hands.

  She didn’t even look worried.

  “I’ll finish you in a minute,” Mai Luan said as she snatched Sarah off the floor. She tossed Sarah away, sending her tumbling through the broken door into the well room.

  Sarah collided with Gregorios, who had just climbed to his feet at the edge of the well, knocking him back over the edge.

  Gregorios managed to grab the lip, but Sarah slid right over the edge and began to plummet into the black hole. She screamed, but her scrambling fingers couldn’t reach the stones of the far side.

  Gregorios caught her ankle.

  She crashed into the side of the well, striking her head hard enough to rattle her thoughts and leave her hanging limp in his hands. His voice helped her focus her scattered thoughts as he repeatedly called her name.

  “I’m alive, I think,” she groaned.

  “Good.” He sounded relieved. “I can’t hold you forever. You need to help me.”