BULLETPROOF
Larry Correia
Prague is a beautiful city. I’ve been all over the world now, and it’s a stand out. It’s got this unique old-world charm, and the people I knew here were really cool. So it was unfortunate that I needed to murder somebody at one of their biggest tourist attractions. In my defense, the guy I was following with intent was a member of the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition, and they are the worst.
A year ago those dirtbags had tried to kidnap my son. My wife had gotten our boy back, and that particular bunch of cultists had died badly—Julie is the last woman you want to piss off—but the Condition was still out there, and they were always up to no good. There’s no more tiresome pest than somebody willingly to sell their soul to the nefarious Old Ones. They do awful things on behalf of the most evil things in the universe in exchange for power, and I’d made it one of my missions in life to step on them whenever given the opportunity.
And somebody I believed was a cult leader had just been unlucky enough to walk right past me on the streets of Prague while I’d been waiting in line to buy a trdelnik.
Seriously, Czech street doughnuts are awesome. They cook them right there over an open fire on a stick, then cover them in sugar, coat the inside with Nutella, and fill it with ice cream. But I digress. Back to the murder.
The target of opportunity seemed to be out for a leisurely stroll. He had two young men with him—who certainly fit that sleazy dangerous vibe the Condition loved to recruit from—obviously serving as bodyguards. I stayed twenty yards behind, trying to slouch and keep my head down so I wouldn’t get spotted. At six foot five, I stand out. It was a nice afternoon, so the sidewalks were crowded enough they didn’t notice me.
Messing with my family made this personal. I’d bribed an MCB Agent to get us their complete file on the Condition, and I’d memorized the picture of every confirmed member. Despite the fact he was wearing a hat, sunglasses, and had grown a wispy little beard, I was pretty certain I was tailing an asshole named Fletcher Bell, who was allegedly into human sacrifice, dark magic, probably a full-fledged necromancer, and known associate of Lucinda Hood.
Only pretty certain wasn’t good enough to drop the hammer on somebody. I had to be absolutely sure, which meant I needed to get closer and probably even confront him. I couldn’t just do that in the open though.
Normally, killing necromancers is considered a public service. Problem was, I’d flown to Czechia for a funeral for my great aunt. I’d barely known her but had come along to support my mom, who had a lot of family here. I wasn’t here on official MHI business so had no local government approval to do anything. I was unarmed. I had no backup. And even though Fletcher looked like a fat, middle-aged, lump, all necromancers were crazy dangerous.
Being sure the Czech government would frown on an American tourist snapping the neck of a British tourist on holiday, I got out my phone and searched for my contact at Fantom, the local Monster Hunting company. We’d worked with them on the siege of Severny Island, where they had proven to be solid professionals. If their laws were anything like we had in the US, Fantom could kill necromancers all day with impunity and get paid for it.
Since, “Hey it’s Owen Pitt from MHI, I’m in town and I think I found an evil cult wizard you guys can shoot for money” wasn’t a conversation that I wanted to have out loud, I typed a text to Libor saying basically that while I walked, added my location, and hit send.
I couldn’t say that they were heading into an old part of town, because a lot of Prague was very old, but this part was a nice, peaceful, neighborhood with a lot of history. A lot of old Europe had gotten trashed during the war, but Prague hadn’t, so it retained a classic central European charm that had been lost in a lot of other places. They were approaching the square with the famous astronomical clock. From the accents of the various conversations I overheard, there were locals and visitors from all over, taking pictures, eating, and chatting. Fletcher and his goons stopped walking to look at the clock. I stopped and pretended to do the same thing while I actually kept an eye on them, which was difficult, because the clock really was rather impressive looking.
They settled in to wait, like Fletcher was planning on meeting someone here. The two bodyguards kept glancing around the square, hands relaxed next to the bottoms of their untucked shirts, where they were certain to be hiding guns. He seemed nervous, which was understandable, since if he was who I thought he was, Fletcher Bell was a fugitive, wanted by the MCB and every other secret government anti-monster organization in the world. Except when a pair of cops walked through the square, Fletcher didn’t even glance their way. If he was nervous right now, it wasn’t because of the law.
Libor from Fantom hadn’t read my text yet, so I sent another one saying exactly where we were, and that I’d keep following until I heard otherwise. I didn’t say anything about how I’d kill the necromancer if the opportunity presented itself. Libor would know I would, because that’s what any self-respecting Monster Hunter would do in my circumstances, and I didn’t want to leave any incriminating evidence on either of our phones. I didn’t know much about the local National Regulating Service, which was the Czech equivalent to the US Monster Control Bureau, but if a foreign Hunter did what I was thinking about doing in the US, the MCB would lose their friggin’ minds.
When I looked back up, Fletcher seemed even more worried than before. This was clearly a meet, and being in a public place that usually meant they wanted witnesses around so nobody would try anything funny. It wasn’t that warm, but the fat man was visibly sweating. Whoever he was waiting for was someone who scared him.
But what would scare a deadly necromancer?
A few minutes later an unremarkable man approached Fletcher carrying a briefcase. They began talking, but I was too far away to hear them over the noise of the crowd. Fletcher seemed relieved at who’d met him, so I got the impression that this was just the delivery boy, not whoever the necromancer was afraid of. I discreetly took a picture of all of them to send to Libor. Fletcher took the briefcase, cracked it open to look inside, and satisfied by whatever he saw, began walking away.
I started to follow, when someone said from behind me, “This is not for you.”
I looked over my shoulder to see a man standing there. He was tall as I was, only lean, and there was something so unnatural about his face—like it had been chiseled from marble by a sculptor who wanted to make a handsome face but wasn’t quite sure what that should look like—that it made me reflexively uneasy. I could have mistaken him for a vampire if we hadn’t been standing beneath the noonday sun.
The stranger had spoken in Czech, which I understood a lot better than I could speak it, but I tried anyway.
“Do I know you?”
“You do not know me, for I am Vadim Dryak, but I know your kind.”
While I had been watching Fletcher, somebody else had been watching me. It was impossible to guess his age, somewhere between twenty and fifty, but I’d bet all of those years had been hard ones. He was dressed like a businessman, only something about his stance suggested he would’ve been more comfortable wearing some uniform with medals and ribbons on it, instead of a jacket and no tie.
“What kind is that?”
“The kind who hunts. The one speaking to my servant is not your prey today. I require his services, so you will not take his life. You have not wronged me . . . Yet. Thus I will spare your life. You are allowed to leave in peace.”
It took me a second to translate that in my head, but I didn’t need to get the words exactly right to grasp the threat in that message. I had a lot of experience with this sort of thing, so I knew when I was talking to something that looked like a person but wasn’t. It’s the uncanny valley, mankind’s visceral genetic reaction to something which looks human but isn’t quite right. For us Hunters, we get to know that valley real well.
“Well that’s nice of you.” I switched to English. “I wonder if you’re something PUFF applicable.”
It turned out Dryak spoke English too. “As I wonder what the contents of your stomach would look like if I ripped open your guts and spilled them upon these stones.”
“Street doughnuts probably.”
I think the creature—whatever he was—took my flippant response as one of ignorance, rather than arrogance. “You have been warned.”
“Warning noted and immediately disregarded.” Fletcher was getting away. There were only a few feet between me and the odd stranger. I was wary but didn’t expect something supernatural to make a move in front of all these regular human witnesses. Only you never know. Some of these things are really arrogant. “The only services someone like that provides are evil. What do you need a necromancer for?”
Except apparently the thing wasn’t big on conversation because he just turned and walked away, in the opposite direction Fletcher had gone.
The presence of something inhuman confirmed my hunch had been right, and the man I had been following really was Fletcher Bell. I hurried and checked my phone to see if I’d gotten a response from Fantom—nothing yet—and by the time I looked up, the stranger had somehow vanished into the crowd, so seamlessly that it was downright unnerving.
I called Libor as I went after Fletcher.
He picked up. “Owen Pitt, I just saw your texts. Why didn’t you tell me you were here? I would have thrown a party. We would have gotten dinner.”
I had to keep my voice low, but Fletcher was pretty far ahead so I hoped he wouldn’t hear an obvious American. “I’m only in town for a funeral.”
“And now you’re gonna kill a cultist? Was one funeral not enough for you?”
“I know, I know. I’m following them now.”
“Some of my guys are already on the way. Don’t do anything until they get there.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to go to Czech prison.”
Libor laughed. “You have been in worse prisons.”
“True. There’s somebody or something else here too, it just talked to me and tried to warn me away.”
“A monster?” I could hear the excitement in his voice. “What kind?”
“I’m not sure that he was. He was a tall, kind of intimidating, odd looking fellow. Threatened to disembowel me if I messed with our friend. Then he vanished. He’s probably still around here somewhere.”
“We have lots of things that look like people, until they don’t.”
“He said his name was Vadim Dryak.”
“Oh fuck that guy!” Libor shouted in my ear. “I’m surprised he didn’t kill you already. He’s fext.”
That wasn’t comforting. “A what?”
“It’s from German, kugelfest. Bulletproof. Undead warriors, indestructible. Very rare. Which is good, because they are cursed and very angry, that sort of thing. He’s been around since the Thirty Years’ War.”
That had been in the sixteen hundreds, which was the extent of my knowledge on the subject, and I only knew that because of a Jeopardy question. Something like that making a deal with the Condition was bad news. “How indestructible are we talking?”
“Very. It is said they can only be killed by glass bullets.”
Well that was unfortunately specific. “Any chance your guys you sent have glass bullets on them?”
“I doubt it. I just told you fexts are rare. We haven’t fought with one since Samuel Österling returned from the dead to menace Jihlava.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant. “Okay?”
“Doesn’t matter. Improvise. Help us catch these guys and I’ll give you a finder’s percentage on the bounty.”
I’d have taken out Condition for free, but I wasn’t going to turn down money. I’m a devout capitalist like that. “If I break any laws, will you tell your government I was working for Fantom the whole time?”
“Sure. Welcome aboard. Don’t do anything too stupid. “
“Deal.” Then I read off the nearest street sign, and the name of the store I was walking past. Then one of the bodyguards looked back my way. “Got to go.” And I hung up.
Except the cultist must have been suspicious of my lackluster spycraft, because he said something to the other goon, who also looked at me. Then that one kept hurrying Fletcher along, while the first one started walking back toward me . . . Crap.
Condition cultists usually weren’t bright, but I doubted he’d be brazen enough to just shoot me in the street. However, he didn’t need to. All he had to do was stall me long enough to lose sight of Fletcher. Any sort of conflict would be enough to draw the attention of the law.
“Hey, buddy, what’re you looking at?” he demanded as he got closer. “You got a problem?”
Yeah, too many witnesses. There was a narrow alley just ahead, so I turned into it, hoping he’d follow. And sure enough, since cult muscle tended to be cocky and belligerent, he did. He caught up to me and grabbed me by the shoulder. “What’s—”
I turned and sucker punched him right in the nose. He stumbled back, stunned but reaching for his waist. I trapped his arm before he could draw his gun and spun him hard into the wall. That hit must have cracked some ribs, but the dude was tough and kept fighting for his gun. I slugged him in the teeth. The back of his head bounced off the bricks, and that was it for him. He slid to the ground, riding the express train to concussion town.
Looking both ways, no pedestrians were yelling so they’d missed our one-sided scuffle. I took his gun, a CZ P07—appropriate considering our location—chamber checked—loaded—and tucked it into my waistband beneath my shirt. It’s stupid to carry without a holster, but you do what you’ve got to do in circumstances like this, but at least with a double action trigger I probably wouldn’t blow my junk off on accident. I should have gotten out of there then, so some passersby wouldn’t see this and think I was robbing him, but I took the time to check his neck, and sure enough he was wearing one of the Condition’s squid god necklaces. That confirmed who I was dealing with.
Back on the street, there was no sign of Fletcher so I hurried in the direction I’d last seen him. I rounded the corner and looked around. I was in front of a store that sold fancy chandeliers. This was a busier street, and I spotted the necromancer fifty yards away, just as his bodyguard was opening the door of a waiting car. I started in that direction.
“I warned you.”
The crowd parted, and Vadim Dryak had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, blocking my way.
We stood there on the sidewalk, a few feet apart, Hunter versus fext, in some kind of standoff as tourists walked around us obliviously. Fletcher was getting away. I could pull the stolen CZ and shoot him, but this monster’s name was literally bulletproof, so it probably wouldn’t work, and if I missed there were innocent bystanders behind him. So I’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Except when I tried to hit him, Dryak easily dodged my hook, and promptly hurled me through the window of the chandelier store.
I lay there on the floor, dizzy and covered in broken glass. Libor had warned me fexts were nearly indestructible. He hadn’t mentioned that they moved vampire speeds and hit like Agent Franks.
Dryak stepped through the broken window and started toward me, glass crunching beneath his shoes. “It was a simple transaction. I gave him some money and trinkets in exchange for performing a spell. You should not have interrupted.”
“Yeah, well . . . ” I stood up. I’d been cut, but nothing was squirting. “Decisions got made.”
The employees of the store had come running when they’d heard the noise, but then they turned and went back the other way when they saw me pick the pistol off the ground. Of course it had fallen out when I’d gotten tossed. That’s why we use holsters.
Now that Dryak was walking in front of a brick wall instead of a bunch of bodies I was happy to test out just how kugelfest he really was. I raised the CZ and put two in Dryak’s chest.
He stopped, reached up, and plucked the bullet out of his suit, then held it up to show me the mushroomed hollow point. Like that would scare me or something . . . Well, actually it kind of did. But then he started to say something—which I’d been hoping for—so I shot him in the mouth.
Dryak struck me as a talker, so I’d been hoping to see if his insides were as bulletproof as the outside. The bullet hit a tooth on the way in, then slammed into his palate, and hopefully his brain. Not a bad shot for a stolen gun that I’d only had for a minute. But the Czechs make great pistols.
Unfortunately, my brilliant idea didn’t work, because Dryak just shook his head, then rolled his tongue around, and spit the bullet out. He was kugelfest through and through.
Well shit.
Outside I saw the car with the necromancer in it take off. People were fleeing the gunfire. The police would be on their way. Hopefully Fantom would get here first.
The fext rushed me. This time I dodged, but he still managed to knock me into a counter. The display items got scattered everywhere. I rolled out of the way just before his fist punched a hole in two inches of wood where my head had just been. I scrambled away, crashing between the chandeliers that had been hung low for customers to look at. Dryak followed me through the swinging chandeliers.
I didn’t have glass bullets, but I was in the best place ever to improvise a glass knife.
There was a chandelier that had a bunch of long bits, so I grabbed one and snapped it off. It was round so I didn’t cut my palm, and the broken end looked nice and jagged. With pistol in my right, and glass in my left, I turned to face Dryak.
The fext scoffed at my little shiv. “By sword, lance, and gun I have made war through the centuries. I have survived bombs and cannon and fire, and you think can defeat me with that?”
Only I didn’t need to kill him. I just needed to survive long enough for help to arrive with more firepower. “I’ve killed bigger with less.”
That actually seemed to offend the fext and he charged.
Only I didn’t lead with the shiv. I used the gun he assumed to be useless, aiming for his eyes.
The bullets bounced off, but he’d been human once, and humans flinch when they get hit in the eyes. Luckily for me centuries of immortality hadn’t caused that reflex to go away, and Dryak closed his eyes.
Sidestepping the blind charge I jabbed the glass deep into his side. It snapped off in my hand.
We parted.
Dryak looked down at his abdomen, where red was rapidly spreading across his white dress shirt. He seemed really surprised as he said, “I bleed.”
“You know what that means!” I said gleefully as I picked up an even bigger glass rod that had fallen on the floor.
A car stopped in front of the shop. Hopefully that was the Czech Hunters.
Dryak looked that direction, then back at me. “We will meet again, Hunter. You will pay for this.”
“Dude, get in line.”
Except the fext was already fleeing out the back of the store, way faster than I could hope to chase it.
Two men ran into the shop, and the one in the lead had a big FK Brno hand cannon, which told me these were Hunters rather than cops. “You’re MHI?”
“Yeah.” I pointed at his gun. “Does that thing have glass bullets in it?”
“Yes.”
I pointed. “The fext went that way.”
* * *
It took a few days to sort out the mess. Mom got mad at me for messing up the rest of her trip, since I was getting stitches and doing paperwork rather than visiting relatives with her.
Vadim Dryak had gotten away. You can’t win them all. I have no doubt we’ll run into him again. But Fantom had caught Fletcher Bell and turned him over to the authorities for a nice reward, of which I got a percentage.
However, that percentage wasn’t nearly enough to cover all the damages. Fantom covered for me with the cops, but I was on the hook to pay for a dozen chandeliers. It turns out Czech chandeliers are very nice and priced accordingly!
When Libor took me out for lunch I finally got my street doughnut though.
LARRY CORREIA (* 1977)
American writer and a lucky man, because he’s fulfilled several of his lifelong dreams. He grew up at a small farm in California, yet did not become a farmer, but studied economics at university. Then he made a living as a bookseller, a shooting instructor and a gun shop owner, which is almost a dream job for a fan of guns like him. Correia, however, knew of an even better job. He had been trying his hand at writing since his university days, but it wasn’t until 2007’s Monster Hunter International that he was satisfied with his novel. So satisfied, even, that when publishers rejected it, he ended up self-publishing it. That’s when the book was noticed by Baen Books and, as they say, the rest is history. Correia’s first novel became a bestseller. It was also a gateway to a world where humans and monsters live side by side, and to avoid many tragedies, there are also professionals who hunt said monsters for a living.
The Monster Hunter series currently includes eight books in the main series, plus a spin-off called Monster Hunters Memoirs, where Larry wrote the first trilogy with John Ringo and collaborated with Jason Cordova on the second, and many short stories. Larry Correia hasn’t limited himself to action-packed Hunter stories, however; he’s also written the three-volume noir-tinged Grimnoir Chronicles (Baen Books, 2011-2013), as well as the almost classical fantasy Saga of the Forgotten Warrior (Baen Books, 2015-). In addition, he writes books about a secret unit called the Dead Six (Baen Books, 2014-2016) with Mike Kupari, and the trench fantasy The Age of Ravens (Baen Books, 2022-) with Steven Diamond, and the list of his books doesn’t end there.
And because he likes his peace of mind, he bought a mountain with the royalties from the books he sold, built a house on it and lives there happily. It’s only a small mountain, but it’s his!