Monster Hunter Guardian

by Larry Correia

  I set course for Cannes, which was a fancy way of saying that I drove in the general direction of Europe. The rain had let up a bit, and the waves weren’t too rough. I was in bad shape. Everything hurt. The Guardian’s marks had stopped the life-threatening wounds, but didn’t do anything for the dozen or so smaller ones. The cut on my hand was the worst, and it was bleeding through the bandage.

  While I was piloting the boat by guesses, Mr. Trash Bags had climbed on my head and made himself thin, so that I was in fact wearing a Mr. Trash Bags hat. The shape he had assumed was somewhat reminiscent of a Napoleonic hat, albeit a Napoleonic hat with a lot of crazy little eyes and mouths.

  He was just being protective. I suppose I was getting used to the little guy again. He’d saved me from getting my guts stomped out by Ducharm, and he only seemed to leave drool or slime when he wanted to. Most of the time he had the consistency of silly putty and the loyalty of a really good dog. More people should get miniature shoggoths. It turns out they make great pets. At least mine did.

  Management had given me some landmarks to look for and said he’d provide a driver to get me to the airport. There were binoculars on the boat, and I was able to pick out a restaurant that had a dock in front of it. Management’s description had been pretty good, especially when you considered that he’d never actually seen the place with his own eyes and was going off of photos on the internet.

  Not knowing what I was doing, I made a mess of docking, bumping and scraping the expensive boat against the wood until I got it close enough I could jump across.

  Nobody was eating at the outside tables because of the weather, so I’d not drawn too much attention, but I told my shoggoth companion to take cover anyway. Mr. Trash Bags wrapped himself around my neck like a stole while I trudged up the stairs. A waiter came running out waving his hands at me while shouting something about how I couldn’t park there.

  I tried to ignore him and keep going, but as he drew close to us, Mr. Trash Bags extruded several eyes and opened several little mouths to scream, “Eat noses, eat toes, eat EYES!”

  The poor kid ran for his life.

  After years of having humans break out the torches and pitchforks whenever they saw him, Mr. Trash Bags should know better about attracting attention, but he cared about me so much he was willing to risk exposure when he thought I was in danger…either that or freezing him had given him brain damage.

  “Please, don’t do that. You’ve got to stay hidden until I tell you.”

  I staggered out to the road in front of the restaurant just as a limousine rolled to a stop and a uniformed driver stepped out. Since I was the only person walking in the rain, he asked, “Julie Shackleford-Pitt?”

  Since Management was the only person I knew who insisted on the hyphenated last name, I knew this wasn’t a trap. “Oui.”

  He opened the door for me. “Je suis ton chauffeur.”

  “Fantastic.”

  In the back seat there were packages of snacks, and I was dying, but before I could open one, a phone began to ring. A cell phone had been left on the seat across from me. Of course, the display read Management.

  “I hope this method of transportation will suffice.”

  “Oh yeah. It’s super low key. Did you miss the part where I’m wanted for a bunch of murders?”

  “I did not. Did you know that the man you kidnapped is the son of a member of the German parliament? What happened to young Benno anyway?”

  “Eaten by cosmic horrors.” That would also explain why the SJK and, by extension, all the EU monster agencies really had it in for me.

  “The plane is being prepared now. These hirelings have no knowledge of your business, but they will do anything I ask. Do you have any requests?”

  “Guns. Lots of guns. Ammo, preferably silver. Explosives. Night vision. Body armor. I can give you a detailed equipment list, but I’m not choosy.”

  “Ah…these humans are my employees, but I’m afraid they are from legitimate businesses. They only know Management as the mysterious majority shareholder of their various companies, not as the fearsome dragon I truly am. However, the man who will represent me at the auction is a capable sort. He will meet you in Portugal. I will instruct him to see what he can do. You will attend as his plus one. I have ordered suitable attire for you.”

  “Suitable attire?” What did you wear to a monster gathering? A flying purple people eater costume?

  “These events are formal occasions, almost festive.”

  “I can’t imagine what kind of horrible assholes would have fun at an event selling babies.”

  “The most horrible you can imagine, but they will abide by certain covenants during the event. There is often a great deal of animosity between the various attendees, but Brother Death’s security team keeps the peace. This one will be taking place in the Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which he has rented for the night.”

  “A convent? Am I supposed to dress up as a nun or something?”

  When a dragon clicks its tongue, it’s a really loud click, even when you’re just getting it over the phone. “No. It is no longer a consecrated building. It was abandoned after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. The convent building itself has been renovated and used for various purposes over the years, but the church has never been recovered and is left in ruins. All the stone parts are extant, but it has no roof, and everything that was wood has been burned. For a while in the 1970s it was boarded up, and some tourists who broke in were eaten by rats.”

  “Not rats,” I said, speaking from my internal certainty of how these things worked and the stories that were made up to cover up monster outbreaks.

  “An excellent guess. Only a fool believes the news. In actuality, there is a lair of lamias beneath the abandoned church.”

  Lamias are sort of like the Roman’s idea of vampires, only—well, I know this is going to sound weird considering that my mother is a Master vampire whom I loathe, and that my family has fought countless different kinds of vampires and has yet to find one that isn’t a horror—lamias are nastier than vampires.

  To begin with, they’re not fully in human form. They’re all female, but from the waist down, they have the body of snakes. Kind of like a more repulsive form of mermaids though, frankly, mermaids are also nothing to be friendly with or to have Disney movies about. The best that can be said about mermaids is that some of them are just not evil enough to earn a PUFF exemption if they work really hard at it. Lamias—no. Like other forms of supernatural monsters that are completely unredeemable, lamias have no human qualities. They’re the embodiment of cruelty and blood lust.

  “I trust that nest has been cleaned out.” I couldn’t imagine whoever owned the place was renting it out if people were likely to get eaten.

  “Not precisely. I believe they’ve been given other outlets, and they are spared as long as they stay out of the nice part humans still use, and they only prey on undesirables.”

  “Fantastic. If those scrubs aren’t going to be near the party, why share the trivia?”

  “Because, if you do have to make a hasty escape with your purloined baby, Brother Death’s security would not expect you to exit through a lamia den.”

  “Good point. Any chance you’ve got a map of the building I could study, or some interior shots you could send me?”

  “It will be arranged. Anything else?”

  I realized that we were going really fast. The chauffeur wasn’t messing around. And then I realized I was getting blood all over the nice interior. “Okay, I do have a request. Can you get me a doctor, nurse, or somebody who can do good stitches? I’ve got a couple of cuts that I can’t get a good angle on or I’d do them myself.”

  “My dear, I already have a seamstress, makeup artist, and hairdresser waiting to help you in Lisbon. You should have led with needing a doctor. I shall summon one immediately to the plane. Oh, and please keep this phone. It is untraceable. We shall speak again soon.”

  If I ever had a chance of being some
one’s kept woman, I’d want to be Management’s kept woman. Never mind that he’s a dragon and doesn’t, so far as I can tell, even understand sexual attraction behavior in humans. But if Management kept a kept woman, he’d do it right.

  The limousine had a minibar, from which I got three water bottles, because I hadn’t been able to drink anything since I’d arrived at Ducharm’s place. I didn’t even trust his tap water that much. The limo also had little cheese crackers, which right at that moment felt like the finest ambrosia. I leaned back into the comfortable seat and watched the narrow streets and stone walls of Southern France pass by, while Mr. Trash Bags absorbed a container of cookies, plastic wrapper and all.

  Our destination was a private airfield. Before we got to the plane, I warned Mr. Trash Bags, “You need to play it cool.”

  “What is cool?”

  “Don’t let people see you. You need to try and stay hidden. Quit freaking out.”

  “What is freak out?”

  “Just hide in the bag until I tell you otherwise, please.”

  Though Management had said jet, I’d assumed it would still be a small plane, like the one that had gotten me to Cannes, but with better engines. But this was a jet, as in the nicest thing money could buy. I didn’t know enough about airplanes to guess the make or model but it was way bigger than anything MHI had ever chartered.

  There was a stewardess who greeted me at the bottom of the stairs. She’d probably been told to expect some super important business executive, not a scratched-up lady bleeding all over her German novelty sweater.

  As I went up the stairs I found that the cabin was basically a living room. The interior was like how I imagined Air Force One looking, but this was a little more upscale. Even on hunting money, it had never occurred to me that we could buy this sort of flying palace to whisk us swiftly around the world. MHI’s cargo plane had been bought used from the Post Office.

  Honestly, though, I had no desire left to travel. I just wanted to go home. Perhaps years from now, when the kids were grown, Owen and I could take a tour of Europe, hitting up all the museums. He’d be horribly bored but would get over it. And for just a moment there was a very clear picture of “the kids” in my head: four of them, two boys and two girls, with Ray the oldest, getting ready to step in to command Monster Hunter International when I retired.

  Then my heart clutched at the thought that it was all a dream, all uncertain, that my husband might already be lost, and I’d have to fight for every bit that was left.

  I took a seat on one of the sofas, and a young man in a black tie bowed to me and asked if there was something he could do to make me comfortable. I ordered a sweet tea, mostly to have something to hold in my hand, and he gave it to me seconds later, the frosty glass sweating, the tea perfect.

  The doctor arrived right after I did. I don’t know which of Management’s companies he worked for, if any, but he didn’t even bother to ask me any questions. Hell, I didn’t even know if he spoke English. He just unfolded his kit and started gesturing impatiently at the red stained bandage on my hand.

  The doctor frowned when he saw how deep the cut was. He’d probably been expecting this to be easy. He gestured at the waiter who stood by—I wondered if he had a place to strap in—and held up two fingers. A moment later he was brought a short, heavy-bottomed glass with amber liquid at the bottom and he took a sip. I didn’t think it was iced tea. Behind me, I could hear the sound of the door closing, and then the plane started moving. I noted that the waiter remained standing and didn’t so much as sway.

  The waiter brought me another sweet tea—I’d not realized I’d already chugged the first—asked if I wished to watch a movie or if I required anything else, and I shook my head no. I was too keyed up and nervous to concentrate on a movie.

  “How long is the flight?”

  “Just over two hours, madam.”

  “Awesome.” I winced as I undid the bandage. “Hey, Doc, stitch fast so I can take a nap.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I woke up, looked out the window, and realized we were landing in Lisbon.

  It was sunset. The first thing to meet my eyes was unexpected: a giant statue of Christ, arms wide open, as if for an embrace.

  “I thought that Christ statue was in Rio de Janeiro.”

  The doctor was sitting across the aisle, and it turned out he did speak good English. “The statue of Christ the King. No, there is one on either side of the Atlantic posed so that if they could be brought together they would embrace.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. They were built to commemorate some kind of agreement between the Portuguese government and the church after the civil war. There are two, but Rio is more photogenic than Lisbon for the movies.”

  He was right, I think. After all, in Rio, the cameras could pan bridges and tropical greenery. As we turned in a wide circle, I did glimpse beaches, though they seemed deserted at this time of year, and there were briefly seen palm trees lining the city’s avenues. There were a bunch of tall buildings, like the skyline of any modern city, glinting in the sun.

  Respectable. But not nearly as photogenic as Rio.

  I flexed my bandaged hand. “Thanks for the help.”

  “I was paid to aid you and not ask questions.”

  “Good. You don’t want to know.”

  In a few more minutes we touched down. The kid in the tie tried to help me off, but I shooed him away. I had the impression that Management’s regular guests were way more demanding than I was being. I didn’t care. This wasn’t a pleasure trip.

  Turns out the other half really live differently. I’d been through the usual mess that is entry into an EU country. None of them except maybe Germany seem to have any idea of organization in order to go through customs and passport control. Instead, they dump everyone arriving from overseas into large rooms, willy nilly in no particular order, and then leave tourists, businessmen, families and presumably everyone else to elbow their way into one of the three or four lines moving at glacial speed.

  There was none of that in this case.

  As our door opened, Management’s waiter got out ahead of me, which seemed out of character with his, up till then, very courtly manner. As we descended the stairs to the tarmac, we found a man waiting for us. He was small, slim, Mediterranean and he wore some kind of uniform. I didn’t know if it was a security official uniform, or merely the uniform of the airport or some airline. All I know is he received us with a smile, the steward shook hands with him, and looked over passports that were handed him.

  I didn’t know what the passports were, or what the names on them were. My own passport was in Alabama. My only other ID was in the bag which now held the artifact, somewhere in the depths of Mr. Trash Bags’…depths.

  Stamp, stamp went the man. Smile, smile, and gestured us toward a small building.

  There was another man waiting there for me. He was wearing a business suit and had a briefcase in one hand. I knew right away that he wasn’t just another servant. He was middle-aged, looked like an undefinable mix of European and Asian, with receding black hair and dark grey eyes. He exuded that air of assurance one expected from an executive.

  “Mrs. Pitt?” He extended a hand to me. His handshake was firm, and mine was just as firm in return. I remembered my dad teaching me to shake hands in business occasions, when I was eight or so, and telling me that a firm handshake inspired confidence. It totally works. Daddies have more influence over their children than they’ll ever know.

  “I’m Gerard Hansel. Management sent me.” He put his hand sort of around me, not really touching me, but guiding me, and at the same time conveying that I was under his protection. It was a gesture as old as time and accepted by most people instinctively. The building we entered was grey, utilitarian from the floor to the walls. There were broad doors leading to the outside.

  We entered one, crossed the expanse of maybe two hundred feet, and exited through the other doors into a balmy e
vening with just a hint of a chill wind. I smelled a big city: fumes, the inevitable odors of human occupation, perfume and trash, cleaners and dirt, all together. Where we’d emerged, a long way from the main entrance to the airport, there was a stained, cracked sidewalk. Waiting there was a gleaming black stretch limo. The driver was holding the back door open for us.

  As Hansel followed me in, I noted the interior was similar to the limo in Cannes. We sat back, leaning into the upholstered seats; the door was closed and we were off, down an avenue, into a tunnel, and out the other side as the lights of the city were starting to gleam against the fading light of the sun.

  Now that we were somewhere we couldn’t be overheard by normal people, he opened his briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. I couldn’t place his faint accent. “I have been deputized to bid on your son for you.”

  “So you’re informed about what’s going on?”

  “I am an attorney who specializes in a very select clientele. I am very familiar with the supernatural world. Or as you Americans like to say, I am read in. Management has retained my services before.”

  “Good. And you know if you don’t win the auction…”

  “You will likely take more direct measures? Yes.” He handed me the papers. “This is the contract for my services. Please look that over.”

  A quick glance told me that Hansel’s standard agreement had clauses for things about how his clients weren’t supposed to swallow his soul…select clientele my ass. He was a lawyer for monsters.

  “I’m not signing anything. You work for Management, not for me.”

  “True. However, since I have been asked to serve your needs, this is to protect myself from liability should you take any actions which…let’s just say, cause distress in certain communities.”

  The car started moving.

  “Where are we going?”