Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 11

Gutterres and I ended up hanging out at the country store until our rides showed up. Once the Drekavac’s severed head got stuffed into a cooler, our phones started working again. The convenience store lady had made Gutterres pay for the cooler and the bags of ice too.

It turned out her name was Bonnie. She was short, plump, cheerful, and I hadn’t needed to hide from her either. Only a tiny minority of people know about the world of professional monster hunting, but as soon as Bonnie saw the patch on my vest, she had brightened right up and said, “Oh, it’s Monster Hunter Incorporated. You boys come in and rest up.” It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that she knew who we were, because if anyone was going to know monsters are real, it’s someone who works the night shift at a hole-in-the-wall stop and rob just outside Atlanta. She asked me if that nice man from South Africa was still around because she hadn’t seen him for a few years—he used to get his morning coffee and doughnut here—but I had to tell her that Priest had transferred to our Colorado office.

Bonnie was genuinely upset however, not because of the monster shooting lightning bolts—those things happened—but because that nice young girl had stolen the car keys from her purse and taken Bonnie’s Hyundai Sonata. And it was nearly paid off! I talked her into not calling the police and reporting it stolen by promising Bonnie that we’d get her car back ASAP.

I got ahold of Earl and he was sending someone to pick me up. My colleagues had already found the wrecked truck. Earl had used his nose to follow my trail. When I had called, he had been in the clearing where I’d lost my bag. It might take a few minutes for them to get here though. It turned out the reason we hadn’t seen very many cars driving by was that a crazy thick fog wall had formed around the area as the Drekavac had grown more powerful, and there had been several car accidents which were now blocking the nearby roads. It was a real mess.

After I got that straightened out, I needed to tend to the dog bite. To disinfect you need pretty strong alcohol, but all Bonnie had for sale was beer and wine. Probably a legal thing. “You got anything stronger?”

“Oh, hon, of course I do.” Then she pulled something out from under the counter. “Personal stash. Help yourself.”

I took it, and nothing screams quality like vodka in a plastic bottle.

Bonnie called after me, “Don’t bleed all over in there. I just cleaned it!”

The wound wasn’t too deep. Pouring the alcohol over it hurt more than getting bit, but I dealt with it as good as I could with what I had on hand. There were lots of monsters with infectious bites, like zombies or lycanthropes. I had no idea about ghost dogs, but one perk about being Chosen was that I was apparently immune to that sort of thing, so I wouldn’t be turning into anything. However, I was still human and could get a nasty infection as easily as the next guy, so hopefully a hundred proof would kill any germs that got in there. Then I washed the sink because it’s rude to leave blood all over the bathroom. When I returned to the main room, Gutterres was still there. Bonnie was grilling him about what had been outside her store throwing lightning bolts and what was in that cooler, and he was being vague but also trying to reassure her that it wasn’t anything she would ever have to worry about again.

Gutterres appeared to be in a sullen mood. Which was understandable. He was about as beat-up as I was and was holding a towel full of ice from the soda machine against the burn on his neck. In addition to getting swatted across the forest, his organization was out a bunch of money he was probably accountable for, and Sonya wasn’t answering his calls.

“Leaving me stuck under a tree was a dick move.” I sat next to him at the end of the little lunch counter. Then I slid the half empty bottle of Popov in front of him.

“Sorry about that.” He took a swig of the vodka and grimaced.

Bonnie got two hot dogs off the roller, stuck them in buns, and dropped them in front of us. “On the house, boys.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Gutterres said. Then he grumpily went about eating his plain hotdog as Bonnie went back to work.

I squirted ketchup all over mine. I’ve got the constitution of an ox and a gut that can digest anything so I actually kind of like gas station hot dogs, and this one hadn’t been on the roller long enough to turn to jerky, so it wasn’t bad. Gutterres drank more of the vodka. For a moment, we were just two tired Monster Hunters who’d had a hard day at work.

Gutterres spoke in a way that would let him blend in anywhere in America, but there was just enough of a rough edge to it that suggested English wasn’t his first language, and something else that made me think he’d not learned it here. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Macao.”

“Huh. Neat.” I’d kind of expected him to say Rome.

“You?”

“Military brat. We moved a lot. So how do you know Sonya?”

“She reached out to us last year. She said that her father was of the faith and had been a holy warrior chosen by God.” Gutterres chuckled at that.

I’d skimmed those memoirs. “Wasn’t he?”

“He certainly believed he was. Was he really? How should I know? Sonya was interested in following in his footsteps. She approached us, told us of her abilities, and then asked to join our order.”

So much for Sonya’s mom trying to keep her sheltered from this line of work. “And you hired her?”

“Of course not. We shot her down. Politely, but firmly.”

“Ouch.” In the extremely brief time I’d known her, she hadn’t exactly struck me as the humble type. “How come?”

“You don’t apply to my order. My order observes, and then approaches the rare person it deems worthy. Some of us were raised from birth for this work, and even then there are years of training and testing before we are offered knighthood. We are few in number. When we need more manpower, we call upon the Swiss Guard, but the order itself is rather select. How can I explain this? MHI is a job. This is a calling.”

That was my turn to laugh. He obviously didn’t get why I thought that was so amusing either. I had drawn the galactic short straw and had been getting my ass kicked ever since. “Dude, I know a lot more about callings from higher powers than you’ll ever guess, but never mind. Please, continue.”

“In this case, Sonya took it personally, and said a few rather unkind things about our order, our leadership, and the chastity of their mothers.”

“She strikes me as having a bit of a chip on her shoulder.”

“You think?” Gutterres snorted. “However, when we learned about the auction, we didn’t have sufficient resources in the area—my flight just arrived this afternoon—my superiors remembered Sonya approaching us, knew she was living here, and since they were desperate, they made her an offer. Retrieve the Ward for us, and they would reconsider her previous application.”

“I take it that didn’t go over well?”

“She was still offended about how we rejected her previous advances. She said her father knew Saint Peter personally so how dare we, so on and so forth.”

“Heh. I can’t really relate. When I came back from the dead the first time, my guide was Jewish.”

Gutterres gave me an incredulous look, but then continued. “Sonya said she would do it, but only if we paid her a very large sum. Despite my objections, my superiors agreed to her terms. I was supposed to meet her, confirm the Ward was real, and take possession.”

I made sure Bonnie was out of earshot before asking, “Okay, level with me. What world-ending crisis do you guys need the stone for?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it with outsiders.” But then he sighed, realizing that we were stuck here together for a bit, so he might as well say what he could. “What I can tell you is that there’s been a serious incident in South America.”

I wondered if that might be the event Stricken had been alluding to. “Where?”

“In an area where the people have few resources, so their pleas for help are usually ignored. Their government has no PUFF equivalent for a threat of this magnitude, so it’s nothing your company would be interested in.”

“We might surprise you on that. We do some pro bono killing on occasion. I hear you Secret Guard guys are big on charity cases.”

Gutterres nodded. “There’s a network of the knowledgeable among the local priests. People come to them with their problems, so word of monster trouble always gets back to my order eventually. One of us was dispatched to check on the rumors. What he found was extremely troubling.”

“What kind of troubling?”

“Evidence of Old One activity. Not minions either. The real deal.”

“No shit?” In that case troubling was a serious understatement. The Great Old Ones were bad news, though the world had seen a lot less activity from that particular faction since Franks and I had obliterated their Dread Overlord.

“They are mobilizing, reasons unknown. Anyone who gets in their way has been killed or worse. The Secret Guard has tried to stop them, but it appears a major offensive is brewing. At first we just thought it was cultist and some minor summonings, but there is a major entity involved. Some type of very large creature from their dimension, which had been hidden and dormant for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years in an odd cavern deep beneath the ground.”

I nearly choked on my gas station dog as Gutterres described something I had once seen in the centuries-old memories of a conquistador.

“Are you okay, Pitt?”

“A cavern where it’s almost like the walls are made of living tissue, and the wind is its breathing, with mystical pillars made of obsidian inside, that’s way out in the jungle in Brazil, beneath an ancient lost city? Or at least it used to be out in the jungle, but that was a long time ago. I don’t know about now.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Some of that must have matched with their scout’s reports. “How do you know about that?”

That was a really long and complicated story, and I didn’t have time right then to tell him about how as one of the Chosen I was sometimes granted the power to read people’s memories, including the times that I’d seen some epic weirdness from the point of view of a conquistador who had been cursed. “That’s where Lord Machado got turned into a monster five hundred years ago. I thought the big thing would have slithered off after that, but . . . ” It was obvious that I’d confused the hell out of the poor guy. “Look, I’ll explain everything, but you need to know right now, the big thing you’re dealing with? Assuming we’re talking about the same thing, it’s not just the thing in the cave you’ve got to worry about. It’s connected to this other being, she’s some sort of herald, messenger, string-puller, instigator for the Old Ones, and she’s been around for a long time. She’s been out there for thousands of years impersonating goddesses and screwing with mankind. I knew her as Koriniha, and she’s insanely dangerous.”

My honest fear must have been coming through because Gutterres simply said, “I believe you.”

“That demon bitch seduced and manipulated Lord Machado into nearly killing us all, she stabbed my girlfriend—now wife—in the neck, and then tried to trick me into blowing up the whole world to try and save her life. She vanished after we defeated Lord Machado. If Koriniha is back, very bad things are about to go down.” I took a deep breath. And here I’d been so certain that I needed the Ward more. “This sucks.”

Gutterres and I were both silent for a long time. Then he said, “This thing is gathering its forces for unknown purposes right now. So . . . about which one of us needs Newton’s device?”

“I don’t honestly know.” I’d accidentally woken up our world-ender while trying to stop their world-ender several years ago. “One wants to enslave us and use humans for food and entertainment, and the other wants to obliterate the whole universe. It’s like choosing would you rather have lung or colon cancer?”

“I’d prefer neither, but one threat at a time.”

“Flip a coin?”

The Vatican Hunter ate the last of his hotdog and thought about it while he chewed. He swallowed. “Sadly, the decision will be made for us if someone else, like your MCB, gets to Sonya before we do, and then neither of us will have it.”

I looked at the wall clock. It was almost midnight. “And the Drekavac will be after her at sundown again tomorrow?”

“Perhaps. When I leave here, I’ll go directly to a church where I can perform some rites over this head.” He thumped the cooler with his shoe. “That might slow it down a bit, buy us a few extra hours maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Cursed beings of this nature are tenacious. They are only set free when they have a contract to fulfill, so they take a great deal of perverse joy in their work. We need to find Sonya before he does.” Headlights pulled up out front. Gutterres looked over, saw that it was one of those tall Mercedes-Benz vans, and said, “These are my reinforcements. I must go.” He stood up.

I gave him one of my cards. “I’ll have our archivist pass on everything we know about Koriniha in case she’s connected to your problem.”

“I appreciate that, and we’ll do the same for the Drekavac. I recognized this one from the descriptions. This particular creature has been around since the 1600s.”

“Not shocking, considering his fashion sense.”

“The first time my order encountered him was in the aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials. As a man, he was a judge, trusted to be righteous, who instead made a pact with evil in exchange for immortality. What you saw tonight is only a fraction of his capabilities. He’ll only grow stronger the more you kill him. We’re all in great danger. My organization isn’t very keen on working with others, but in this case, I will strongly suggest to my superiors they may want to make an exception.”

“I think that would be wise.”

“We’ll be in touch.” A bell rang as Gutterres walked outside. The van door slid open, and there were two really tough-looking guys sitting inside with carbines slung over their plate carriers. I’m pretty sure those weren’t local clergy. Gutterres got in and they immediately took off.

“That half-Chinese fella seems kinda high strung,” Bonnie declared from behind the cash register.

“He doesn’t work for us. Different . . . company.” We’d shaken on it, but that didn’t mean I could trust him. They were almost certainly going to grab Sonya as fast as they could and not tell us a thing. I waited until Gutterres’ van was down the road a bit. Then I got up. “Could I see that phone you let the girl use?”

“Sure, hon.” She reached beneath the counter and pulled out an old plastic phone. “Here you go. But I thought your cell was working again?”

“It is. But I’m going to hit redial and see who Sonya called.”

“Oh, the girl didn’t call nobody. It was the weirdest damned thing. Somebody called her.”

“Really?”

“It was funny timing too. Nobody ever calls here at night. It’s pretty dead usually. Anyways, as soon as she picked up the phone to dial, there was somebody talking to her. She must’ve picked up before the first ring, but anyways, whoever it was got her to stop and listen to them.”

That didn’t sound like a coincidence at all. “Did you hear what she said?”

“Oh yeah, sure. She seemed real confused, but then she got all excited, perked right up and said that was way more than she’d already gotten paid so far.”

Son of a bitch . . . Somehow—I looked at the security cameras suspiciously—someone had known where Sonya was, and made her an even better offer for the Ward. “Are your cameras connected to the internet?”

“Oh, those aren’t hooked up to anything. The cameras quit working years ago. I leave them up to scare off shoplifters.”

It had to have been some form of magical scrying then, which narrowed down the possible suspect pool considerably. I was going to be extremely pissed off if it turned out I’d been tailed by an invisible gnome all night. “Did she say anything else?”

“She said she knew where that was, it was a bit of a drive, but she was on her way and then hung up. Too bad I didn’t realize she was about to steal my Hyundai, bless her heart.”

“We’ll get your car back, I promise. I’ll even get it detailed.”

“What if you don’t find it?”

“Then my company will replace it with a new one as an apology for inflicting her upon you.” I mainly didn’t want Bonnie filing a police report and complicating matters. MCB monitors that kind of stuff.

“I’ll take your word, on account of the other ones of you I’ve met being so damned courteous.”

I stared at the phone in my hand and tried to remember what the old trick was so you could call the last number that had called you on landlines. Bonnie must have read my mind.

“Star six nine, hon,” she said helpfully.

“Thanks.” Once I heard the dial tone, I punched that in. Except it didn’t do anything. The number was probably blocked, or maybe that service didn’t work anymore. I memorized the number written on the tape attached to the phone though, in the hopes that maybe Melvin could somehow look up who had called that recently.

I texted everything I’d learned and Bonnie’s license plate number to the other Hunters. Then, with no other investigative leads to follow, I used what time I had left to buy a whole bunch of snacks and sodas for the road. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night. I paid for my snacks just as another car pulled into the parking lot and honked. That had to be my ride. I passed Bonnie one of my cards. “Thanks for your help and call me if you think of anything else.”

“Sure will. And tell that cute South African fella to stop by when he’s back in town. I do love his accent.”

* * *

While Holly Newcastle drove, I sat in the back seat with Doc Sherlock so she could fix up my arm. If you’ve never gotten five stitches put in you while riding in a moving Suburban in order to close a gash from a hell hound fang, you aren’t really living. Or so I told myself while Sherlock ran the needle through my arm. She missed a few times because Holly kept hitting potholes. Luckily, that hurt way less than pouring vodka on it.

When I said that out loud, the doc scoffed at me. “There are so many things that work better and hurt less.”

“I know, but I left my med kit at the bar and I lost my go bag in the forest.”

“We found it. Your gear is in the back,” Holly said. “You’re probably going to want to armor up.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Long story short, the gnomes told Trip and the gnolls told Milo basically the same thing, that there’s something crazy evil holed up in an old farm west of here. When word got out that the Ward was up for grabs, that thing started putting out feelers to all the supernatural creatures saying it would pay them a reward for information about the stone’s whereabouts.”

“What kind of evil are we talking about? Because if it’s something that can do magical scrying, somebody found us and called Sonya out of the blue to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

“The city gnolls said the country gnolls said it smelled dead but not, and they were scared of it, which doesn’t narrow it down much because they’re scared of everything. And the gnomes, those greedy little shits, didn’t know what it was either, they only cared that it was offering to pay a reward.” Holly was distracted, mostly focused on the road, because we were going way too fast in the dark. “The rest of the guys are on their way there now.”

I was kind of surprised. That was more fly by the seat of the pants than was normal for MHI. Usually, if there weren’t any lives in immediate danger, we’d at least try to find out what kind of creature we were dealing with. Blundering into the unknown was a great way to get killed. “That’s not a lot to go on.”

“I know, and Albert’s doing a rush job on the research right now, but fifteen minutes ago a state trooper buddy of Boone’s who was at one of the fog wrecks said that he let through a young woman in a car that matches the description you gave us, going in that same direction.”

Considering how long it had been since Sonya had ditched me, that meant she’d probably had time to retrieve the stone from wherever she’d hidden it—and it made sense that her stash would be somewhere near Perdition’s Abyss—and now she was on the way to meet her new buyer.

“And don’t forget the other complication,” Sherlock said, as she wrapped my arm in medical tape. “That’s the best part.”

“Oh, yeah. The stupid-ass gnomes told the lizard cult the same thing they told us. So the reptoids are more than likely on the way too. I wish Trip would’ve clocked the little thug who told him that but Trip’s too merciful. I would’ve kicked him right in the beard.”

Holly really didn’t like gnomes.

“Friggin’ gnomes.” I reached over the seat and grabbed my bag so I could get my armor on. This night just kept getting better.



Back | Next
Framed