Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 7

I knew something was terribly wrong even before I saw the creature.

There are certain types of supernatural beings that can suck the warmth right out of a room, as if their taking action in our world requires stealing energy from their surroundings. I had felt that effect with soulless abominations before, usually different types of undead. When a master vamp gets really charged up it feels like you got shoved into a walk-in freezer.

This was like that, but worse.

It had been uncomfortably warm and muggy inside the bar. The old air-conditioning unit just couldn’t keep up with this many bodies. Then out of nowhere it felt like I’d been dunked in ice water.

It wasn’t just the sudden cold. It was the unnatural stillness. The bar went from super loud to unnaturally muted in an instant. All the other patrons were still shouting or cheering for Sonya—I could see their lips moving—except what had been a roar dropped to a whisper. Clapping hands and stomping boots were muffled thumps.

I glanced toward the front window. It was so dirty it would have been hard to see through during daytime. At night, looking out into a parking lot where most of the lights were burned out, I could only see shadows and shapes. Yet something weird was moving behind the line of Harleys. I thought it was another bike, but it was too tall, and the shape was spikey, and vaguely . . . organic? It stopped. The rider dismounted. When his feet touched the Earth the already weak lights in the bar flickered, and when they came back the place seemed even dimmer. All the hair on my arms stood up.

“Oh, hell.” I hurried and typed another text to send to my team. Unknown monster incoming. The message failed to send. It said I had no connection. I hit retry, then shoved it back in my pocket and moved my hand to the pistol under my shirt.

The bar patrons didn’t seem to realize what was going on yet. For some reason they didn’t feel the change in temperature, sound, or pressure, but Gutterres must have been as tuned in as I was, because he got up and moved quickly toward the stage, where Sonya was so caught up in her performance and gleefully fleecing the Catholics out of more money that she seemed oblivious to the impending doom.

The thing walked through the front door.

It was man-sized and man-shaped, dressed in a long, duster-style coat and a really tall, wide-brimmed hat, like something the pilgrims would wear. Beyond that it was hard to tell many details from where I was sitting because the thing was pitch-black and obscured by the ghostly fog that rolled in with it.

The big bouncer was the first normal person who saw the newcomer. He spoke. Of course I couldn’t hear it, but if I had to guess it was something along the lines of Hey, buddy, wrong part of town for the costume. The con’s that direction.

Only then an eerie light ignited around the shadowy being as it slowly raised its gloved hands. Then two massive black hounds sprang into existence beneath its palms. The dogs were sleek, powerfully built, and dark as night except for their unnaturally white fangs.

The gigantic, experienced, ass-kicking bouncer dude took one look at that obviously supernatural display and must have had the good sense to decide this dump didn’t pay him nearly enough to deal with that kind of bullshit, because he hopped off his stool and ran for the back.

Personally, I get paid a lot more than that bouncer, so I’d be sticking around. I pulled my .45, kept it low at my side, and started walking toward the monster. There were too many people in the way for me to blast it yet.

When the thing lifted its head, the eyes were points of blue fire in the shadows beneath its hat. The sound of the bar was still muted like my ears were filled with slush, but I could hear the monster’s instructions to his hell hounds, perfectly clear, as he pointed toward the stage. “Time to hunt.” When he gave that order, both of the shadowy dog things’ eyes began to glow with the same blue as well.

The hounds launched themselves through the crowd, and since each of them had to be well over a hundred and fifty pounds, they plowed right through. Customers yelped in surprise as they got shoved aside or knocked over. A woman fell off her dancing table. They were heading directly for the stage.

Except then, one of the locals made the mistake of kicking one of the demon dogs. I think it was just a surprised reflex, but he placed a steel-toed work boot right into its mastiff snout. The monster dog’s head snapped around, but when it came back, it was snarling, fangs bared. It bit the man’s ankle, pulled his leg out from under him, and then began savaging him, flinging the poor guy back and forth like he was a chew toy.

The dogs had been given clear instructions, but apparently they were easily distracted, because as soon as the other one smelled blood, it went nuts too and bit a nearby waitress.

For a split second, through all those moving bodies, I had a clean shot on the dog that was biting the man’s leg. The victim was being dragged around in a circle, arms flailing, but I punched the gun out, focused on the front sight, and the spinning dog behind it, and tried to time my trigger pull in order to not shoot the poor dude I was trying to save.

The silver hollowpoint went right through the dog’s head.

The whole animal exploded in smoke and blue sparks.

The bar erupted in chaos.

Hunters learn a lot about how to deal with the public. Legally, we’re required to keep this stuff as secret and low key as possible. However, there are times when we have to act in the open, which means doing it as quickly and decisively as possible, because regular people tend to panic, get hurt, and generally make things worse. Only this wasn’t the usual freak out and run and get eaten type crowd. This was the smash you over head with a pool cue and put boot to dog type establishment. And these guys did not take kindly to a hell hound trying to eat the girl who brings out their beers and onion rings. The nearest bikers started beating the hell out of the beast who was mauling the waitress. All the tough guys who had been sitting stood up to see what the ruckus was about. Knives were flipped open. Guns were pulled.

As far as these normies could tell, this wasn’t a monster, it was a lunatic in a big hat who’d interrupted their evening with a fog machine, blue glow sticks, and a pack of fighting dogs.

When the monster saw the whole bar was ready to throw down, it said, “You were not to be my prey tonight, fleshlings. I am here to judge the thief. Step aside.”

“Who the fuck you think you is?” somebody shouted back.

The monster lifted its hand again. The fog swirled beneath its palm, congealed, became solid, and the dog I’d just killed, re-formed, alive and whole by his side. The beast snarled directly at me, obviously annoyed that I’d just killed it.

“If it be battle you seek, then it is battle you shall receive,” the monster said. Then it sprang forward, moving crazy fast, and swatted a biker across the face. He went flying. It grabbed another unlucky bastard by the neck and hurled him ten feet straight up, into, and partially through the ceiling tiles.

Everybody there started at the unnatural monstrosity that had just planted one of their friends headfirst through the roof. “What the shit, man?” one of them shouted as we were all drenched in years of accumulated ceiling dust, because even in a place this seedy, there are certain rules, one being that it’s never cool to violate the laws of physics.

Then it drew a sword.

When three feet of blue glowing pirate cutlass came out, I think every other armed individual in this place had the same thought that I did, which was screw that. Guns rose. Of course most of these guys had guns. This was Georgia after all.

I shot first. At least half a dozen others joined in. Plenty of rounds missed and put holes in the walls, but a lot more hit. The guy standing next to me whipped out a Yeet Cannon and shouted, “Let’s dance, homie!” as he held the gun sideways and dumped the whole mag in the monster’s general direction.

The thing jerked and twitched as it was riddled with bullets. It bled sparks. I nailed it repeatedly where the brain should be. The body seemed to break apart, into shards of black and blue, before collapsing into the fog.

My ears were ringing. At some point the automatic sound system had turned back on and started playing Rob Zombie’s “Lords of Salem.” It appeared the monster had vanished. I hadn’t seen where the shadow hounds had gone.

“Damn it, Jack! Why’d you let that freak with the dogs in here?” the bartender shouted for her missing bouncer. “You know the cops shut us down for a week every time we have a homicide!”

I retained my partially spent mag, reloaded with a new one from my belt, and then walked toward where the monster had dropped. There was a vortex of fog swirling a foot off the ground with a pale glow coming from the center of it. As I watched, the monster slowly rose from the mist. And I don’t mean it stood, I mean it floated up through the floor.

The wide-brimmed hat tilted back, allowing me to stare into the horror that was its face. There was no skin. Instead of flesh and bone it looked like barbed wire had been twisted into a sort of human form to make a cage that barely contained the cold fire burning within.

“Amusing.”

As it said that, whatever warmth had been lingering in my body fled. I cranked off two rounds into its chest, but then had to dive to the side as the sword whistled past my head. The monster followed. One palm shot out and struck me in the ribs. It was like getting hit with an ice-cold hammer, and I flipped backwards over a table.

Which was when the dogs came seemingly out of nowhere to attack the crowd. Jaws clamped onto the throat of the man with the empty pistol and dragged him down, gurgling. The other bit a biker on the arm, which was unfortunately holding one of those goofy Taurus Judge shotgun pistols, and when he spasmodically jerked the trigger, he accidentally shot another biker in the leg.

As the thing with the sword waded into the crowd, the fog seemed to follow, billowing outward, filling the space. It swung and removed a man’s arm. Then spun and took off another man’s foot. That was one sharp sword! Somebody smashed a chair over the monster’s head, but it simply turned and ran him through the guts, then yanked the sword out in a red spray.

“The prey is escaping,” the monster told its dogs. “Get her.”

Since I was lying on the sticky floor, I had to sit up to see the stage. Sonya had seemed really cocky earlier, but from the surprised look on her current face, she hadn’t been expecting anything like this.

The dogs let go of the men they’d been mauling and bounded across the room directly toward Sonya. One leapt onto the bar and ran down it. I fired at that one, nailing it in the ass and spinning it around in a blue flash. The dog flew off the bar, crashed into the wall of bottles, and shattered a lot of glass.

The other dog jumped at the stage but crashed against the chain-link fence. The fence was meant to keep the band from getting pelted with trash on open mic night, it really wasn’t intended to stop a really pissed off demon dog, and it began tearing it down immediately. Only Gutterres came from behind and slashed it with some manner of edged weapon. The dog’s neck split open, leaking light, and then the whole beast disintegrated.

Sonya bolted from the stage.

Gutterres went after her.

“Wait!” I got to my feet. “Shit!”

The monster with the sword came at me, looking like a hellish version of Solomon Kane, and I had to scramble backwards to retain my head. My back hit the bar. It swung downward, and I barely had time to get out of the way before it planted the glowing blade deep into the wood. I drove my pistol into its armpit and fired. It grabbed my wrist with one gloved hand and slammed my knuckles against the wood hard enough to leave a dent. I lost control of my gun and the STI went sliding across the bar.

The bartender with the mohawk had ducked down when the dog had gone flying past. She stood up now, having retrieved a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun from under the bar. From only a foot away, she blasted the monster right in its nasty wire face.

The pilgrim hat went flying. The thing collapsed in a shower of sparks and the black matter turned to fog.

The dog I’d shot was still in one piece though, and it collided with the bartender, jaws snapping for her face, but all it got was a mouthful of wooden stock. It tore the shotgun away, but better the gun than her throat.

I slid over the bar, grabbed two handfuls of icy fur, and slung the dog hard into the wall. The mirror I’d been using to spy on Gutterres shattered. The dog popped right back up, but I grabbed a whiskey bottle and smashed it over its head. The first hit made a meaty clunk that deformed its head. The next broke the bottle and cut my hand. It didn’t even leave me a convenient stabby bit like in the movies.

The bartender was crawling away. Her shotgun was lying in the broken glass. The dog was getting back up, so I scooped up her weapon and turned, just in time to jam the twin barrels into its open mouth. “Choke on this.” I gave it the second barrel and blasted fiery magic dog goo all over the wall. The now headless thing dissolved through the floor.

Glancing back toward the stage, I saw that Sonya and Gutterres were gone. The room had filled with the weird fog and a lot of wounded, dismembered, and freaked-out people. Sadly, but expectedly, the blue light had coalesced in the center of the dance floor and the fog had begun to spin around it again. Evil hat guy was coming back.

I picked up my pistol but kept the shotgun too, because you should never turn down a free shotgun. I thumbed the lever and popped the action open. The two spent shells auto-ejected. “More ammo?” I asked the bartender.

She pointed one shaking hand at a cardboard box beneath the counter. I reached in and grabbed two rounds of double aught, dropped them in, and closed the action . . . but since the monsters were still re-forming, I spent that valuable time shoving the rest of the shells into my pockets. Since I was on my own, I’d probably need everything I could get my hands on because the other professional Hunter was nowhere to be seen. Thanks for the backup, Gutterres.

By this point, the assorted tough guys had realized that this was not normal, and most of them were beating feet, except for the unlucky few who’d just lost their feet. On the bright side, everybody running away meant there would be fewer people for it to massacre.

The monster rose to its full height. It had even regained its hat, and worse, had two fresh hounds with him.

“You must be the Drekavac,” I said.

“A title, rather than my true name.” It seemed content to stop slashing people for a moment to talk. “You are a Hunter. We have no quarrel. Once a pact has been broken, it is my obligation to punish the transgressors.” The thing had an ominous voice, as bone-chilling as its clinging fog. “Leave in peace, or fight and die.”

For me, Plan A when dealing with monsters was kill it. But since this one just kept coming back to life, I’d try Plan B. Diplomacy. “Wait a minute. Stricken won the auction. He’s the contract holder. He asked me to take care of the problem for him. So your work here is done. You can float on back to the scary hat store.”

“You have your contract. I have mine. They are not the same. She must be judged.” The Drekavac looked toward the stage. “Except our thief has fled. Good. I enjoy a challenge.”

Which was when the bouncer came back into the room, except now the big man was carrying an old-school, M60 belt-fed machine gun that had been stashed in back. The bouncer hadn’t fled. He had been gathering hardware.

“Get the fuck outta my bar, devil man!”

I hit the deck as the machine gun opened up and hosed down the monsters with hot lead. The bouncer bellowed as he raked the muzzle back and forth, machine gun in one hand, belt in the other, Rambo style. The Drekavac exploded. The monster dogs exploded. The floor around them exploded. The wall behind them exploded. I stuck my fingers in my ears as he kept on hammering the place with what was probably an extremely illegal Vietnam War bring-back. The fog moved like a living thing, rolling out the front door and into the parking lot. A hundred rounds and ten very loud seconds later, the bouncer shouted, “And stay out!”

Through the broken window and Swiss cheese wall I saw two bullet bikes fleeing the parking lot. The first had a female rider, the second, a male. That had to be Sonya and Gutterres. They took off fast, cutting through the mist.

Only it appeared the monster had a method of transportation as well, and it had re-formed ready to ride, because all of a sudden there was a terrible, gurgling roar, followed by a terrible, ear-splitting screech as a giant shadow flew down the road after Sonya.

I went after them.



Back | Next
Framed