Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 13

When I say that the lich exploded, I’m not talking a little explosion, like I could get from Abomination’s grenade launcher. Oh no. I’m talking a big-ass literal fireball, with a deafening roar and a shockwave that bent the air around it and made me eat dirt.

“That was a direct hit, Gregorius,” Boone said over the radio.

“You know I love me some thermobaric warheads, Jay.”

I lay there, ears ringing, coughing, really thankful that Gregorius had used a round that relied on heat and pressure in the biggest gun we’d brought tonight, as opposed to a warhead with a bunch of shrapnel, because I’d be dead. Instead, I probably only had brain damage. But a lich was a terrifyingly capable foe, so even hitting Phipps with a bunker buster was no guarantee that he was finished. I rolled off Sonya and looked in the direction the lich had been levitating, but there was no sign of him.

“Are you alive?”

“Yeah. Quit shouting in my ear.” Sonya glanced around, obviously stunned. The blast had flattened several of the outbuildings. A few more fires had started and the barn was a mighty blaze by this point. Boone’s guys must have set the farmhouse on fire too, because it was burning. There were brain-shot zombie corpses scattered everywhere. “You MHI guys really don’t mess around.”

“Are you injured?”

“Just this stupid thing stuck to my hand.” She shook the Ward but it wouldn’t fall off.

“Okay, stay down while we finish this son of a bitch.” I got up, checked Abomination to make sure it was ready, and stumbled in the general direction I thought the monster would’ve ended up.

Since we’d gotten separated when the lich had given us that telekinetic bitch slap I looked around for my team. The spot where Earl had been was empty. He’d run off, which was good, because even though he had far more self-control than most werewolves while transformed, he was still a werewolf and would need to stay away from people until he changed back. I spotted Milo and Trip already up and moving, searching the charred area for the lich. I couldn’t see Holly though. I keyed my radio. “Come in, Holly, status?”

“I’m fine, Z. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Boone’s team had moved up on the barn and began searching the ground with their flashlights. Gregorius was there with the gigantic SMAW launcher over one shoulder, grinning. Which was a pretty common expression among Hunters whenever we had the opportunity to set off a truly glorious explosion.

“Got one of his arms here,” Mundy shouted. “It’s still crawling.”

“Hurry and throw it in the fire,” Boone ordered.

Mundy picked up the lich’s arm with a look of distaste. That was understandable since the fingers were frantically grasping. He tossed it on the bonfire. A moment later Sherlock found a leg, and Hertzfeldt found a pelvis stuck beneath the tractor. Apparently, there were some limits on how far apart Phipp’s severed bits could end up and still pull themselves back together. A thermobaric warhead gets the job done.

“Put the parts in different woodpiles and burn them all,” Boone directed his team.

I joined Boone. “You think that’ll work?”

“Probably. Even really tough supernatural bodies can only take so much physical punishment. The real problem with liches is that they pluck their heart out and leave it in a magic jar that their spirits retreat back to when their bodies get destroyed.” Then he noticed a rib stuck in the dirt near his boot and bent over to pick it up. “Where’s the girl?”

I’d been kind of distracted. “I left her back at the car.”

Boone looked at me like I was stupid. “The one who has already run away from you a couple times?” He grabbed his radio. “Anybody got eyes on the shapeshifter?”

“Way ahead of you guys.” I turned around to see Holly and Sonya walking toward us. Holly looked smug, while Sonya looked guilty. Holly had her carbine casually pointed at Sonya’s legs, and her gun handling was good enough that the angle certainly wasn’t on accident. “Our little shapeshifter here was about to make a run for it.”

“I was not.”

“Uh-huh . . . ” Holly said. “I bet you were getting in the car to drive for help, right?”

Boone scowled at me and shook his head. “Moron.”

I felt like such a sucker. I turned toward Sonya. “I can’t believe you stole that nice woman’s Hyundai.”

“I was going to return it. It got kinda trashed though.”

I sighed. A promise was a promise, so it looked like I was buying Bonnie a new car. “Let me see the Ward.”

Sonya held out her hand and showed us the stolen treasure. “Yeah, about that . . . ” She turned her hand over, spread her fingers wide and then shook it hard, but the Ward still wouldn’t let go. “Since I’ve got all you occult experts here, is it supposed to do that?”

I signaled for Milo. “Hey. Magic rock check.”

Milo came over from where he’d been gathering lich parts to take a look. He tossed Phipp’s jawbone in the nearest fire. Then he approached Sonya and politely said, “May I?”

“Knock yourself out.” She held the stone out to him. “I touched it before and it didn’t do anything, but when I tried to turn it on it got all weird and bright for a second, and now it’s glued to me or something.”

Milo squinted through his glasses. “Huh . . .  Part of it actually disappears into your palm. It’s got to be fused with her bones.”

“What?” Sonya sounded really worried.

“Does it hurt?” Milo asked.

“No.”

“Cool . . .  Sorry. I imagine that’s kind of horrifying, but it’s also kind of amazing what those inventors came up with back in the old days.” Milo ran one gloved hand across the numbers visible across the top of the Ward. They seemed to quiver with a life of their own, but just like when I tried, they wouldn’t move to a different setting. “Yep. This is the real deal alright. A little more compact than our old one, and that one never bonded itself with anyone’s flesh as far as I know. Nifty.”

“That is not nifty. Make it come off.

“I don’t know how.” Milo reluctantly let go of the Ward. “Sorry. We’ll have to research that.”

Boone cut in. “This chick and her pet rock sound like an Alabama team problem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go make sure this lich is really dead and then try to figure out how many reptoids got buried. This PUFF check is going to kick ass.”

“But the lich killed the reptoids, not us,” Trip pointed out.

“The MCB doesn’t need to know that.”

After Boone left it was just those of us who’d been in the barn clustered together. Milo stopped examining the Ward long enough to ask, “You guys okay? Anybody bitten?”

Everybody checked. We were professional Monster Hunters. There wouldn’t be any of that “hide the bite until you suddenly turn on your friends” nonsense with us. If a Hunter got zombie-bit, then it was time to take Old Yeller behind the barn, or go out in a suicidal blaze of glory, depending on that Hunter’s last wishes. There was no cure for a zombie bite . . . Well, except for me once, but to be fair, I’d been trying for the blaze of glory way out at the time.

We all trusted each other. As everyone said they were fine, we all believed them. However, none of us trusted Sonya.

“I didn’t get bitten.” She was filthy, covered in dust and cobwebs, but didn’t appear to be bleeding. “I don’t know if that would work on me anyway.”

“Bummer. I was hoping for an excuse to shoot you,” said Holly.

“Who are you anyway, lady?” Sonya snapped. “Have we met before, or are you just this bitchy to everybody younger and prettier than you?”

“Oh, look at that, the shape-shifting skank wants to catch an ass beating.”

“No. I just want this thing off of me, so I can sell it and get paid. I stole it first, fair and square.”

“You’re not selling shit.” Holly wasn’t in the mood for her nonsense. “My people have had to stick our necks out twice to save your stupid life today.”

“I wouldn’t be sticking that old turkey neck of yours out anywhere people might see it.”

Holly just laughed, because she was smoking hot and knew it. “I’ve got a PhD in Mean Girl Politics, twerp. Nothing that comes out of your fake-ass face is going to get a rise out of me.”

“My face and ass are less fake than those tits.”

“You mouthy little shit . . . ”

I briefly wondered if I’d have to tackle Holly to keep her from murdering Sonya. Trip and I exchanged a nervous glance, but he whispered, “Not it.”

“Ladies, there’s no need for confrontation.” Milo—ever the gentleman—stepped between Sonya and certain death. “We can work this out like civilized—”

Sonya moved with supernatural speed, caught Milo by his long red beard, and spun him around to use as a human shield. She was so fast that poor Milo never even had a chance. She must have had Trip’s tomahawk hidden on her the whole time, because she stuck the blade under Milo’s neck. “Back off!”

I was tired and possibly concussed, so it took me a moment to realize what she was doing. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m taking the stone out of here. If you can’t fix this, maybe the Secret Guard can. Once we’re down the road, I’ll let him go.”

“Uncool,” Milo said. “Very uncool.”

Sonya began backing Milo toward the stolen Hyundai.

“Oh, come on, you idiot,” Holly said as she casually aimed her carbine at Sonya’s face. “We just nuked a lich. You really want to try us?”

“Don’t make me hurt him.”

I sighed. This was probably the most pathetic hostage situation ever, with about a zero point zero percent chance of success for the hostage taker. Boone’s Hunters had heard the commotion and were spreading out and shouldering weapons. Sonya struck me as someone young, brash, and in a situation way over her head, but I really didn’t want to see her get that head blown off, so I keyed my radio. “Everybody be calm.” Then I addressed our overachieving hostage taker. “Think this through. This can’t possibly work. If you hurt him, everybody here is going to shoot you. A lot.”

“Yeah, we all really like Milo,” Holly said. “You should have taken Z hostage. He’s way less popular.”

“True that. I’m not nearly as cuddly as Milo.”

“It’s all in the beard,” Milo squeaked.

Sonya’s eyes were darting back and forth, taking in the many well-armed Hunters prepared to shoot her, and surely realizing that she done fucked up. “Wait. Milo? The Milo? Milo Anderson?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh, shit! You were one of my dad’s best friends.”

“Yep. I sure was.”

“Which would make you slicing his head off before being cut down in a hail of gunfire extra tragic.” I slowly stretched my open hand out, trying hard to not make a tense situation a whole lot worse. “So how about you give me back Trip’s happy little murder ax and we chalk this up to a big misunderstanding.”

She wasn’t ready to give up quite yet, so she played the desperate negotiation card. “I really need that money, Opie. Let me sell the rock to the Catholics.”

“Money’s not worth dying over.”

“Somebody is dying though. That’s why I need a lot of cash fast, to save her.”

“Who?” I asked.

“It’s a long story.”

“You didn’t mention that earlier.”

“Why would I tell you people anything? It’s Hunters who made her sick to begin with.”

“Sure. This is all because her grandma needs a spleen transplant or something. Those copays are killer.” Holly turned on her laser and a bright green dot appeared on Sonya’s forehead. “Scrunch down a little, Milo.”

“Hold your fire,” Milo ordered.

“Why?” Holly asked. “You actually believe her?”

“Kind of, and maybe we can help. Chad was my friend. If his family is in need, helping them is the least I can do. Plus, no offense, Holly, but I was one of the people who taught you to shoot, remember? If any of you guys are going to be launching bullets around my head, it should be Z.”

That was quite the compliment coming from Milo. “Thanks, man.”

“Well, all things considered, I’d prefer Julie, but she’s not here.”

“Fine.” Holly slowly lowered her gun. “I did warn you to scrunch down first.”

“Do you people ever shut up?” Sonya shouted, exasperated. “Okay. Don’t shoot. I’ll let him go—”

Except Sonya’s impending surrender was moot, as Earl Harbinger suddenly appeared behind her and grabbed the tomahawk by the handle. Luckily for her, Earl was back in human form. If he’d still been in werewolf form, he probably would’ve swatted her head off her neck. Instead, he just roughly shoved her and Milo to the ground and kept the weapon.

“What the hell are you thinking, girl?” Earl stood there, angry, wearing nothing but the mud and leaves stuck to him. That wasn’t shocking for most of us. When your boss is a werewolf, you learn to expect the occasional incident of workplace nudity. “These Hunters risked their lives to save your fool ass, and that’s how you thank them? That’s downright disgraceful.”

“Sorry, Earl.” And shockingly enough, either Sonya was the best actor ever, or she really did feel sheepish about it. “I didn’t know that was Milo.”

“Because threatening to kill one of my other people is somehow better?” He extended a hand and helped his old friend up. “You okay, Milo?”

“Only thing hurt is my pride,” said the humblest man any of us knew. “She got the drop on me.”

“Yeah. She does that to folks.”

“I said I was sorry. This is a desperate situation, okay? I wasn’t lying about a life being at stake. I’ll explain everything.” Sonya covered her eyes. “But, eww, could you at least cover up or something?”

“Oh, you’ll live.” Earl tossed the tomahawk back to Trip, who caught it. “Trip, would you mind getting my gear? I left it on the back side of the barn.”

“I’ll get your pants,” Trip said.

“I mostly need my smokes.”

“I’ll get your pants,” Trip reiterated as he walked off.

“Is your little friend going to do anything else stupid?” Boone had circled back toward us, probably to get a good angle on Sonya with his rifle. “Because my guys really need to get back to work.”

“Naw, she’s done screwing around,” Earl glared at Sonya. “Ain’t you?”

She nodded sullenly.

“Good. Alright, Hunters, we should be clear to burn all of old Buford here, but the only way to get rid of a lich once and for all is to destroy his phylactery. His nasty spirit will fly right back to it to hide. Considering his history, I doubt we’ll find it here though.”

“Sounds like you guys have met before,” I said.

“Afraid so. Buford Phipps has been a nuisance since the Civil War, when he was just a mortal jackass who found a spell book and started raising zombies. Last time he popped up, Ray and Susan took him out. Before that, Leroy Shackleford destroyed him. I’ve killed him once before, way back when. Hell, it’s practically a family tradition. First time one of us killed him was Bubba Shackleford himself hitting Buford with a cannonball. If luck holds, we won’t see old Colonel Bone Head for another twenty or thirty years, when some poor bastard finds his phylactery and gets possessed again. Hmmm . . . about that, just in case . . . ”

“You heard the man,” Boone shouted at his team. “If you find a cursed artifact, do not play with the cursed artifact.”

Regular family traditions were things like do you open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, but I’d married into the Shacklefords, where the traditions were things like fighting a Confederate lich every few decades. Someday little Ray would probably get to blow up Phipps too. Good times.

Most of the Hunters went back to scouring the area for body parts, but the Newbie, Hertzfeldt, was still staring at our naked boss. “Wait. Harbinger is . . . ” He trailed off, astounded. “So that’s why we weren’t supposed to shoot the werewolf.”

“Yeah, kid,” Boone patted him on the shoulder. “That’s one of those company secrets covered by that NDA you signed in training. Now come on. Let’s go count how many reptoids got buried so we can collect us a big-ass bounty.” Boone led the bewildered Newbie away.

“It’s not as much of a secret as it used to be after the siege,” Earl muttered. It was really hard to turn into a werewolf every full moon when you’re stuck at the top of the world with hundreds of other Hunters in close proximity for a year. Trip returned with Earl’s gear. “Thanks.” First thing he did was fish out a pack of cigarettes and lighter to get his nicotine fix. He lit one and then started getting dressed. “Milo, call Skippy for an extract. Boone can clean this mess up without us. We’ve got to get this Ward somewhere safe.”

“What about me?” Sonya asked.

“Call a taxi. Or one of them Uber things they’ve got now. I told your mom I’d try to keep you safe, and we’ve more than fulfilled that promise. Then you paid back that kindness by threatening one of my men. After that behavior I’m not in the mood for any further bullshit. You’re on your own.” But then Earl saw the pained expression on Milo’s face. “What?”

“You missed that part. The Ward has merged with her. I don’t know how to remove it. It has to be something to do with her not-human half messing with magic designed to be used by humans. We can probably figure it out, but we have to take her with us.”

Then it was my turn to deliver more bad news. “From what the Vatican Hunter said, that Drekavac thing is going to be coming after her again in . . . ” I checked my watch. It was just after two in the morning. Sundown this time of year was around seven. “ . . . about sixteen hours at the earliest.”

“Sucks for her then,” Holly said.

Earl took a long angry drag off his cigarette. “You sure about that, Z?”

“I’ve got no idea, but Gutterres seemed pretty certain of it. That Drekavac is going to keep coming back, stronger and stronger, until we manage to kill him thirteen times in one night. I probably got about halfway there and it was already one scary son of a bitch.” I gestured toward the road. “Not burying a bunch of cars in a dirt-tidal-wave-level scary but getting there. He’s fast, mobile, has really bitey spirit-animal helpers, a blunderbuss that shoots lightning bolts, and he strikes me as the highly motivated type. On her own, she’s as good as dead.”

“You’ve got to help me, Earl,” Sonya begged.

I cut her off. “What was it you said to me earlier when I told you MHI needed the Ward Stone to stop an ancient chaos god from destroying the whole world?” I feigned confusion trying to remember a distant memory. “Oh, yeah. ‘Sounds like a personal problem.’”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Sonya batted her eyes and tried to look innocent for Earl. I wasn’t sure but she might have even shifted her face a little bit to look more victimized and forlorn, and she was already wearing her Girl Scout cookie dealer face. “So I stole a thing from a bad guy to try and help some good guys, and in exchange I was going to use the reward money to help a loved one in need.”

“And then everybody clapped,” Holly said sarcastically. “So she’s the real hero, but I’ve got a suggestion. We could just saw her hand off. We keep the stone, and then maybe she can find Stricken and apologize enough that he’ll call off his attack dog.”

“Hang on,” Sonya shouted.

“She’s kidding,” Trip said. “We wouldn’t do that.”

Holly shrugged.

Of course this offended Milo’s sense of chivalry. “We can’t abandon her. Her dad was a fellow Hunter!”

“And my dad was a construction worker, Milo,” Holly said. “That doesn’t mean everybody else owes me a free house. She just threatened to cut your throat.”

Milo grimaced because Holly had him there. “Yeah, but—”

“No buts. We’ve got what we came for. You want to find a nicer way to get the rock, great, do surgery, whatever, but then kick her to the curb. If princess here wants us to save her ass, she’d better talk to the accountant.” Holly jerked her thumb toward me. “Maybe she can work out a payment plan.”

“What’s the PUFF on a Drekavac anyway?” Trip asked me.

There was a sudden crash as a bunch of the burning barn beams split, dumping more shingles into the inferno. A giant cloud of sparks rose into the night sky.

“I don’t think that monster is on the tables. I’d have to fill out a request form and send it to the MCB for a special one-of-a-kind ruling. Judging by his abilities and annoying ability to keep coming back from the dead, it’s got to be a pretty good payout.”

“Give me your best guess, Z.” From Earl’s tone, he was asking that question as the man who had to pay for all this stuff. SMAWs and attack helicopters aren’t cheap.

“Well, specials are all over the board. Like this lich. They’re all different based on their danger and history. MCB will look at their criteria and then decide the payout. What did MHI get paid for Buford last time?”

Earl thought about it for a second. “I can’t recall exactly, but since he’s been annoying the Feds for over a century, it was pretty good. I remember the company cleared seven or eight hundred thousand after Leroy parked that bulldozer on Buford’s head, and that was back in the Eighties.”

I said, “With inflation, it’ll be a lot more than that. You know, Gutterres told me this Drekavac has been around since the 1600s. If we could document that—and he said the Church would share their records—that creature could be one hell of a lucrative PUFF bounty for us.”

My boss was clearly thinking the same thing I was. Though with Earl, it probably wasn’t about the money. My guess was that he’d angrily said he was going to ditch Sonya, but he was far too honor-bound to leave her to her fate, and it was easier to act tough but mercenary in front of his Hunters than it was to be a big softy. Except a seven-figure PUFF was a seven-figure PUFF, so even Holly, as much as Sonya clearly rubbed her the wrong way, was interested in getting paid. We did a lot of good things, but we were ruthlessly practical about it whenever we could be. It took a lot of work to pay for this rock-and-roll lifestyle.

“I do like when the paycheck comes to us,” Holly muttered. “Beats chasing them down. I made bank on the siege, but I sure didn’t like having to go to the ass end of the Earth to do it.”

We all looked down at Sonya, who was still sitting on the grass, trying to look helpless and forlorn. Except she was too cunning to make that stick for long. “Hang on now. You’re thinking you could potentially make millions of bucks for scary hat guy. Only in order for you to ambush him, you need me for bait. If I don’t cooperate, you’re out of luck.”

“If you don’t cooperate, your head is going to end up mounted on the Drekavac’s wall.” That monster struck me as the kind of thing that would decorate his lair with taxidermy.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“What’re you going to do, kidnap Milo again?” When Holly said that we all laughed. Well, except for Milo. It was hard to tell in the firelight but knowing him he was probably blushing.

“I’m always happy to help MHI,” Sonya suggested, innocent as could be. “Okay, I volunteer. I’ll go with you. Only I get a percentage of the bounty. Like half. Like I should for this lich too, because you wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t for me.”

“Wow. You really are greedy,” Trip said.

“Not greedy. Just desperate.”

Earl looked toward the sky. His superior senses could hear Skippy’s chopper long before the rest of us. Our ride was almost here.

“One other thing to think about,” I said to my boss. “From what the lich said, he’s not the one who called Sonya and told her to come here. It was a trap. Somebody else had eyes on us. They might be watching us right now.”

“I was thinking the same thing. And why did they send her here? We’ll talk about it later.” Earl looked down at Sonya and sighed. “Let’s go.”

“So we have a deal then, half the bounty?”

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. But I did promise your mom I’d try to keep you alive. Don’t make me regret it.”



Back | Next
Framed