Monster Hunter Alpha

Chapter 12

I spent that last full moon free on the island. It was a frustrating place for the animal to be let free. There was nothing interesting to hunt. No animals larger than a seagull to kill. My other half was frustrated, angry, and, if I had my way, it was going to remain that way forever.

That next morning, I had sat on the rocks of my nameless island, waiting for Santiago’s boat to arrive to take me back to Cayos de Tiburon with all of my earthly possessions, which consisted of a satchel of worn-out clothes, the books Santiago had given me, a few supplies, and my Smith amp; Wesson. 45.

Something was wrong. Different. There was a sensation in the air. I could feel it, but I couldn’t describe it. At the time I chalked it up to the excitement of returning to the world.

It was the same boat as usual. They were downwind, so I saw before I smelled it, and immediately I knew something wasn’t right. Instead of one passenger, there were three. By the time I recognized the other werewolves’ scents over the diesel stink of the engine, it was too late.

The male was far taller than me, African, wearing a loose cotton vest over a torso made of solid muscle. He actually grinned when he saw me coming down the sand. The female was strikingly beautiful, Latina, with long black hair and a nice shape under her formless white shirt, but then again I hadn’t seen a woman in three years.

Then I saw Santiago crumpled on the bow. Dried blood coated half his face, and fresh blood was still leaking from his nose and mouth. He’d been beaten to a pulp. Hemp ropes had been tied around his arms. He looked up at me through swollen eyes and mouthed the words I’m sorry.

The African, huge and intimidating, effortlessly hoisted Santiago by the back of the neck to better show him off. “Greetings, my son.” The werewolf’s voice boomed, and somehow I knew that this was the leader.“I’ve come a long way to find you. I’ve sensed you for some time.”

“Let go of my friend,” I ordered as I pulled the Smith from behind me. I cocked the hammer and aimed at the stranger’s face. I only had one silver bullet. “Let him go right now.”

“Now, you know that isn’t how it’s done,” the stranger said, his accent thick. “What foolish lies did this old priest put in your head?”

“Kill him!” the female shrieked. “Kill him like he killed my sister!”

I turned the gun on her. Her sister? “Lady, I don’t know who’re you’re even talking about.”

“The one that made you. I made her. So that makes you mine. You are of my pack, upstart,” the stranger said as he passed Santiago over to the girl. She immediately put a long knife to my friend’s throat. The male hopped out of the boat and onto the sand. “I am Seamus. This”-he gestured at the island and the ocean-“is all mine. I lead. Many follow.”

“Kill him,” the girl said again. Santiago grimaced as the blade cut into his neck. “For Maria!”

“Hush, girl,” he ordered, not even bothering to look back. He was getting closer. “You can feel it, can’t you? You know that I am the father.”

I could see now that his eyes were wrong. Too bright, an almost luminescent shade of gold, and I realized that I didn’t know what mine looked like when I was about to change. It wasn’t like I had spent much time looking in the mirror lately.

“My children must do as I say. Live as I would have them live. Let me teach you. Not the lies of this priest. Let me show you real freedom, what it is to run free, to join the hunt, to live as gods.”

I hadn’t shot a gun in a very long time, but I’d gotten plenty of practice in my life and some things you don’t forget. The front-sight blade barely quivered as I spoke. “Let him go or you’ll regret it.”

Seamus laughed at my folly. “You will not best me, upstart. That’s not the way. Join the pack or die. Which one will it be?”

Nobody had ever accused a Shackleford of being the hesitating type. I pulled the trigger.

The huge explosion rocked the grocery store, blowing out every remaining window inside, and most of those in the surrounding buildings as well. Car alarms went off on nearby streets. The town may not have heard the evening’s gun-shots over the noise of the storm, but that certainly would wake them up.

“Not what I expected,” the Alpha stated matter-of-factly. He, the witch, and her two servants were sitting unnoticed on the roof of a house across the street from the grocery store. They had the best seats in the house. The witch’s magic assured that they would not be seen as Nikolai Petrov sprinted across the parking lot, following the tracks of the snow-plow. “I’d assumed that this would be a more traditional contest. This is cheating.”

“I told you they were unpredictable,” the witch insisted. “You assumed these men would still be caught up in the old ways. They’ve evolved, just as you have. Petrov is far too ruthless to play games, even more so when it is personal. It appears he’ll be the one whose soul we harvest.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” The Alpha clutched the amulet of Koschei to his chest. Like him, it was hungry. It would have to be fed soon, regardless of the outcome of this battle. He watched as Nikolai took cover at the hole in the wall. The Russian risked a quick peek inside at the flaming chaos, raised his rifle, and entered. “But I wouldn’t count the Hunter out so easily.”

The witch smirked. “Ten quid says Petrov annihilates him.”

The Alpha wasn’t sure what a quid was in dollars, but he knew from secondhand experience that Harbinger was an extremely difficult man to kill. “You’re on.”

Heather had been going from house to house, waking people up, and had been trying to convince Mrs. Valikangas that she needed to grab her deer rifle and get to safety when the explosion rocked the town.

The retired elementary-school teacher had been incredulous and had told Heather that she didn’t look well, that she needed to come inside to warm up by the fire, and that she was worried about her. Heather had grown more frustrated by the second. Her stomach was growling as badly as her disposition when she’d heard the concussion. They were quite a way down the street, but the shockwave had shaken the Valikangases’ front porch hard enough to dislodge chunks of snow from the roof. It took a second for the rumble to subside.

She had run down the steps, head turned in the direction of the blast. Heather reasoned that the storm must be letting up, though it certainly didn’t feel like it, because she could hear much better now. See farther, too.

“What was that?” Mrs. Valikangas screeched.

“The Value Sense just blew up,” Heather snapped. It was obvious. “Are you blind?”

The woman just stared at the curtain of falling snow between them and Main. “How can you-”

“Be quiet,” she hissed at the woman that had been her fifth-grade teacher. Heather had the sudden and uncharacteristic urge to smack the obstinate lady in her stupid mouth. A seething anger bubbled up inside, and Heather wanted nothing more than to jump up on that porch and-

Calm down. Heather forced herself to take a deep breath. The angry feeling passed. “I told you. We’re under attack by a bunch of creatures.” It sounded asinine, but Heather didn’t have time to argue with every person in town. “Wake up your family and get your guns. Head for the bunker at the high school or stick around here and get eaten. I don’t care.”

Not waiting for Mrs. Valikangas’s reaction, Heather stomped back to the truck, tossed her shotgun on the passenger seat, and climbed in. Mrs. Valikangas was shouting, but Heather ignored her; it was something about how Heather’s eyes were s trange. But then she slammed the door and cut off the old teacher’s ramblings. The tires spun but found enough traction to get her moving toward the grocery store. The sight of multiple flashlights in her rearview mirror told her that at least somebody she’d contacted had listened.

She’d found the silver ammo that Harbinger had told her about, and one of the cans had been 12 gauge, so she’d loaded the Winchester 1300 with it. Strangely enough, Heather was no longer afraid. It was the weirdest thing, but she was actually looking forward to finding one of those monsters. She fantasized about blasting the creatures into bloody bits with her shotgun. They’d killed her friends, attacked her town. This was her territory. She’d blow their heads off. Rip their hearts out. Then she would eat them.

“What?” Heather hit the brakes and stopped in the middle of the street. “What are you doing?” Her gloves were on the steering wheel, vibrating uncontrollably, and it wasn’t from the engine. She had just been daydreaming about killing a monster and eating its still-beating heart. She was breathing too fast. Her heart was pounding in her chest. “Keep it together. Keep it together.”

Surely it was the stress. It was from seeing her friends die. It was from having the men from the government try to murder her. It was from being attacked. It was just stress.

The stress was making her hungry. “I’m starving.” Harbinger had packed the cooler with food, and she hurriedly removed a package of lunch meat, yanked open the plastic, stuffed it in her mouth, and started chewing. “Crap. I’m starving and I’m talking to myself,” she mumbled around a mouthful of roast beef. “I’m falling apart.”

The protein calmed her down. She still had work to do. Heather got the truck moving again. Something was going down at the Value Sense, and it was her duty to help. Agitated, distracted, and increasingly erratic, Heather still had a purpose, and by the time she got to Main Street, she was focused on that.

There was only one thing that was still bugging her. Where is that damn humming noise coming from?

Now, that hurt.

Earl tried to roll over, but couldn’t. Something was wedged against his side-correction- in his side. All he could see was a red haze. His eyes had been pulverized. He gasped in a partial lungful of dust, and that immediately set off a painful cough thick with blood. It took him a moment to remember where he was.

Nikolai, you sneaky son of a bitch.

Anger gave Earl purpose. He had to move quickly. The Russian would be coming for him. What am I stuck on? His limbs didn’t want to respond at first. The bones in his right hand had been crushed and wouldn’t close into a fist, but he was able to leverage his left around, though it caused a terrible pain to radiate up his side as he turned. He found the source of his problem: he’d landed on a broken piece of shelving, and a jagged chunk of metal had been driven through his armor. Well…damn.

Putting his hand flat against the shelf, he shoved himself up. Six inches of painted steel slid out from between his ribs. The pain was ridiculous. He was thankful for the ringing in his ears, because he was certain that pulling himself off that thing would have made an awful noise.

He flopped down the shelf, rolling onto the floor into a pile of broken glass bottles. Vinegar? At least he could still smell. He’d landed in the pickle aisle. Earl hated pickles.

Keep moving. Blind, he staggered upright. His body was already healing, reordering his cells back to one of its two distinct templates, but healing would take time that he didn’t have. Instinct told him to give in to the pain and the anger, to let the wolf free. But Nikolai had just used a bomb, which meant that he’d mop up with a gun, which meant that Earl needed his brain more than he needed his ferocity. If he was going to change, he needed to find a safe place to do it.

Can’t see. Explosive concussion was hell on the soft jelly of the human eyeball. Hell. Nikolai was coming. He had to get to cover. Despite bleeding freely from his eyes and ears, Earl was perfectly calm as he quickly ran through his predicament. Smell. He inhaled more dust. The truck was smoking, but it wasn’t burning. It was a distraction, but under that…Milk. Meat. Escape. That way. Hurry. Coughing, Earl staggered for the back of the store. He made it three steps, tripped, fell, but forced himself back up again. His right ankle had snapped, so he dragged that boot along behind him.

The blast had crippled him. Earl could feel the blood gushing from his body in great hot rivulets. He’d been torn open in multiple places. Bones ground unnaturally against each other. The pain would have rendered a lesser man incoherent. Groping blindly, Earl smelled milk as his boot dragged through the puddle.

Earl fell against the coldness of the dairy case. The rips in his flesh burned as the skin pulled tight over them, pinching off the leaks. Clumsily, he touched his face and then cringed as he discovered that his cheek was hanging off, dangling slick and wet. He shoved it back over his exposed teeth. Nikolai would smell the blood and track him easily. Blind, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Hiding was out of the question.

Use your head. Earl forced himself up, knowing what he had to do. He needed to be smart. He hit the back wall, smearing bloody handprints across the glass doors. By the time he found the swinging double doors of the stock room, the bones in his hands had reformed enough to make a fist.

Blood. Nikolai’s nostrils flared. Beneath the smoke, thousands of competing food, chemical smells, and dust was the smell of fresh blood. There were dead werewolves and humans inside, and the plow blade had smeared at least one body across half the space, further confusing matters, but Nikolai could smell Harbinger, and the smell was one of injury and weakness.

No fear, though. Come to think of it, Nikolai had never smelled Harbinger’s fear.

Got him. We got him! We’ve finally got him!

The Tvar was eager. Nikolai’s pulse increased, his breathing came faster. The truck was in the back of the store, the dump bed full of sand barely visible beneath the collapsed ceiling tiles. He ran down the open path left by the plow, scanning back and forth, searching for Harbinger. The instant he saw him, Nikolai would put a silver round into his enemy’s head.

It wasn’t sporting. It wasn’t fair. It certainly wasn’t the way that instinct demanded, but there was no time for such niceties. The amulet had been freed, and such a potent device could never be allowed to fall into the hands of a monster like Harbinger.

Before he could even reach the back of the truck, the Tvar practically screamed inside his head. There!

His other half, with its simple animal cunning, often noticed things far quicker than his analytical human mind could. Then he understood the reason for the excitement. There was where Harbinger had landed. A massive smear of warm blood was on a broken shelf and a thick trail of droplets led away from it. Nikolai turned to the utterly demolished cab of the truck and noted how the sheet metal had been peeled and twisted by the explosive. The blast had hurled Harbinger twenty feet. He should have brought more explosives.

A jagged shaft of metal was coated in blood, bits of flesh still clinging to it. A handprint showed him where Harbinger had forced himself up. There were bloody boot prints, but only from one foot; the other was a drag mark. Nikolai couldn’t tell if it was him or the Tvar, but one of them was extremely excited. Harbinger was vulnerable. Revenge was within his grasp. He lifted the Val and followed the trail.

Harbinger had fallen and stopped here for a moment. Nikolai crouched next to a waist-high refrigerator unit filled with butter, studying the signs quickly. So much blood had been lost that Harbinger would be extremely weak, but Harbinger had gotten back up, and the droplets were fewer and farther between. Now there were two boot prints instead of a drag mark. His foe’s healing speed was impressive.

Hurry. Kill him! Kill him!

The Tvar was correct. He had to strike while Harbinger was weak. Nikolai moved faster; the trail was still easy to follow through the debris. Blood never lied. Harbinger had crashed into the glass doors of the dairy case, dragging himself along, and then he’d gone-

He’s hiding in the back!

There were two bright red handprints, one on each of the swinging doors to the stock room, clear as day, as obvious a sign as could be given. Driven by the Tvar, Nikolai kicked the doors open and stepped through…

And saw nothing.

The lights were on. A large generator was in the rear, chugging away. There were rows of shelves on both sides, but the blood trail had just stopped…Fragments were strewn everywhere, and part of the truck’s plow was stuck through the wall, but there was no place for Harbinger to hide.

No! No! Where is he? You should have let me do it!

“Shut up!” Nikolai snapped. He knelt to smell the floor. Harbinger hadn’t come in here. He’d left his smell on the door…and backtracked. The blatant handprints on the door had been a trick. The blood hadn’t lied — Harbinger had. “Yob tvoyu mat!” Nikolai stood, turning back to the store, just as a cloud of grit hit him right in the eyes.

Nikolai was blinded by the fistful of road sand. Earl could still barely see anything himself. His opponent was nothing but an angry red blur, but Earl could see well enough to know that the long tubular thing in Nikolai’s hands was a rifle, so he knocked it away. The rifle clattered across the floor. With a roar, Earl grabbed Nikolai by the coat and hurled him out into the ruined grocery store.

Earl had needed time to regenerate, and that meant a place to hide. After touching the back doors, he’d leapt as far as he could manage toward the truck, hoping the spilling diesel smell would temporarily cover his tracks. He’d found the cold metal of the truck bed and, not seeing any alternative, had climbed in and buried himself in the sand. Most of his bones had knit back together, the bleeding had mostly stopped, and he could hear, and even see a little, but he was still terribly weak, disoriented, and now had sand stuck in every crevice of his body, and was therefore in a really bad mood.

Nikolai hit a shelf and went to the ground on his back. Earl was right behind. He landed on Nikolai and slugged him in the face. The Russian got his hands up, trying to shove Earl off, but Earl knocked the hands out of the way and hit him again. Then he got his weight onto Nikolai’s chest, and Earl’s fists were flying, one after another, slamming Nikolai’s head over and over again, beating his face into a bloody mess.

“Cheatin’ asshole!” Earl roared as he cocked back another right and tried to drive it through Nikolai’s face. Nikolai’s hand shot up, and he managed to hook his thumb into Earl’s eye. The Hunter bellowed as Nikolai gouged it deep into the socket, but he didn’t let up. Earl took Nikolai’s head in both hands, raised it, and slammed it into the floor repeatedly. The second impact cracked the tile; the third, Nikolai’s skull.

Gasping for breath, Earl raised his fist to strike again but stopped as a terrible pain shot up his side. He rolled off, cursing, reaching for the source of the agony, found the hilt of a folding knife sticking from his kidney, and jerked it out in a spray of blood. Nikolai raised one leg and kicked Earl in the chest, sending him crashing against the truck.

Blinking through the blood, Earl stepped forward. His opponent had already risen and had picked up a can of creamed corn. Earl threw the knife and missed. Nikolai threw the corn and didn’t. The can smashed Earl’s nose flat.

Nikolai used the moment to his advantage and charged, throwing his knee. He managed to hit Earl twice in the side while the Hunter’s hands had involuntarily flown to his broken nose. Each hit lifted Earl off the ground before he was able to shove Nikolai away.

The two moved with incredible speed, striking, blocking, each impact sufficient to kill a normal man. Nikolai grabbed Earl by the straps of his armor and rolled, throwing him down the aisle. Earl landed hard on his shoulder, but his hand fell on a weapon. Nikolai came in fast, but Earl slammed the wine bottle over the Russian’s head. The thump echoed through the entire store. Earl tried to club him again, but the bottle shattered across Nikolai’s raised forearm. Wasting no time, Earl drove the jagged remains directly into Nikolai’s abdomen. Nikolai’s responding snap kick launched Earl through a snack display.

They met in the next aisle. The two circled, breathing hard as their bodies healed.

“You’ve gotten slow,” Nikolai said, holding the contents of his stomach in with one hand.

“You’ve gotten sloppy,” Earl snapped. “I can’t believe you fell for that.”

“You’re the fool picking up booby traps…” Nikolai wiped the blood and sand from his face. “You snuck up on me. You could have changed first. You could have torn me apart. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t need to be a werewolf to kill a punk like you. We’re in a town full of innocents,” Earl answered, blinking as his eye popped back into place. Everything was much clearer now. “How dare you bring a challenge here?”

For a moment, Nikolai’s expression changed. His voice was suddenly too deep. “ This is no challenge. You want a challenge? Let’s- ” Then he grimaced, gnashing his teeth together. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to a normal pitch. “No…Not yet. You’re a nuisance, Harbinger. A scourge.”

“You ain’t right,” Earl said. The Russian was nuttier than he remembered.

“I’ll never let you have it.” Nikolai closed his eyes and shuddered. The other voice came back. “Enough! We end this my way. ” Nikolai’s eyes flashed gold. The transformation had begun.

“We can’t do this here!” Earl took a step back. “You lunatic. You psychotic fucking lunatic. We’re in a town. People live here.”

“ Their mistake! ” Nikolai growled.

A transformation was incredibly risky, but he had no choice. Nikolai was changing, and if he didn’t, he stood no chance. Earl knew that he’d just have to destroy Nikolai and then maintain enough control to get away from civilization until the blood lust died down. He unbuckled his armor. “You could’ve done this the old-fashioned way, and nobody else had to get hurt.”

Nikolai’s strange voice roared, his hands curling into fists, teeth visible, every vein in his neck standing out, as he fought… something. “You have no room to talk!” The first Nikolai shouted. “You killed her! She was innocent, defenseless!”

“I’ve killed a mess of folks. You’re gonna need to be more specific.”

“Lila!” Nikolai was enraged. Bloody spit flew from his lips. “You murdered her. You murdered my wife.”

Earl paused, scowling. “I’m drawing a blank.”

Nikolai screamed as he leapt.

“I told you we’d have a good fight,” the Alpha said. The witch glowered at him, then went back to watching the battle. She didn’t like being proven wrong.

He was pleased to see that he’d made the right choice. Harbinger and Petrov were both unbelievably fearsome while still in human form. He could only imagine what they would do in their purified state. Certainly, he could defeat either of them in a challenge, but he was beyond such things. No slave to the old ways, he would set his own path, forge a new way for all of their kind. Harbinger’s foolish rules dictated that they were only men, nothing better, just different, and that they needed to live in humanity’s bloated shadow. On the other hand, at least Petrov understood that they were superior beings, super predators, but even then, he was content to remain a mere tool for human ideologies and lacked the imagination to do what needed to be done. Petrov had a slave’s mentality. Neither of them had the vision necessary to lead their kind into the future.

His superior senses told him that many humans were coming out of their homes. They’d heard Petrov’s explosion. Some of them had realized that they were under attack and were spreading the word. The streets were coming alive. His children were confused. The magical storm had reached an unbelievable intensity. But none of that mattered. The important thing was which of the mighty werewolves below would be the one whose soul would power his ascension.

It was a perfect struggle. Nature had selected these two as the ultimate predators in their sphere. One would die. One would live to feed his hunger. Which would fuel his metamorphosis? The excitement was unbearable.

The witch pointed at the street below with her flesh hand. “We have visitors.”

A black SUV was sliding into the parking lot of the Value Sense. The driver was clueless in the snow, and they gently collided with a light pole. The doors opened and five heavily armed humans got out. “MCB?” he asked. There should have been no way that they could have arrived through the storm. In fact, they wouldn’t even know about the slaughter of Copper Lake until morning.

“Worse,” the witch muttered. “Hunters.” She held a very special hatred for monster hunters.

“Harbinger’s men?” That seemed odd. His intelligence had said that Harbinger surely would have come alone. He would never involve his human pack in werewolf business.

“No…not even close. I’d know if they were. MHI has a certain… swagger. Nothing would make me happier than the arrival of MHI,” the witch grumbled as she extricated herself from the thick snow of the roof. “Enjoy your show. I’ll handle these intruders.” She made a clicking noise, and one of her diggers stepped forward, ready to serve. Eight feet of armored monstrosity bowed before its witch. This time she pointed with her artificial hand. The steel gauntlet seemed disproportionately large sticking out from the sleeve of her fur coat. “Destroy those humans.”

The massive digger leapt from the roof and fell silently to the ground two stories below. The Alpha nodded approvingly. The unnatural things were nothing if not efficient. It would eradicate those vermin. His attention returned to the grocery just as an ear-splitting howl rose into the night. The main event had just begun. “Beautiful.”

“Look what you did to my Caddy!” Horst shuffled through the three feet of freshly accumulated snow to where the Escalade’s front bumper was crunched into the light pole. It actually didn’t look too bad, but Lins had screwed up. Sure, it was hard to drive through slush, but that was no excuse for scratching his ride. “Is that a dent? That’s a dent. That’s coming out of your pay, moron.”

Lins was livid as he got out. “Screw you, Ryan. What do you expect in a blizzard?”

“Shoulda let me drive,” Jo Ann said. “I’m at least-”

The sound that cut her off pierced all of the Briarwood team to their cores. It started as the cry of a man, filled with anger and pain, only impossibly loud, but as it went on the cry changed, becoming deeper, fiercer, seeming to linger far after any mortal lungs would have run out of breath, until it slowly mutated into a full-on animal howl. A primal, terrible cry, instinctively more terrifying than anything that could ever emanate from a natural creature. The storm had frozen Horst’s skin, but that howl froze his blood.

The staff of Briarwood Eradication Services was actually quiet for once. Horst looked to his employees. Every one of them except for Loco was staring back at him with wide eyes. Their big man just grunted and went back to pulling his machine-gun out of the Caddy, probably too dumb to be scared.

“I think I just pissed myself,” Kelley said.

Jo Ann turned toward the grocery store. “What the hell was that?”

That was an actual monster. The other things they’d run into were nothing compared to that. The fear ran deep. It wasn’t any sort of conscious, logical thought. It was deeper, coming from the lowest part of his brain, warning him that they needed to get away before that awful thing consumed them all. Horst forced himself to speak, and tried to sound as confident as possible. “That’s the sound of money, baby.”

Then there was a second howl, even louder than the first, and somehow Horst instinctively knew that this was a different werewolf. Lins jumped. “There’s two of them? You didn’t say nothing about two of them!”

They were chickening out. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Everybody shut your stupid mouths.”

“This isn’t nothing like those zombies we killed,” Kelley exclaimed. “I’m outta here.”

Jo Ann and Lins were babbling, too, as the three of them started getting back in the Caddy. His dreams were falling apart right in front of his eyes. His people were scared senseless. None of them were cowards, but they hadn’t been expecting this. That howl was just wrong, and the answering one was even worse. He understood now that Stark had been telling the truth. This wasn’t a normal werewolf; that thing in there was ancient, and therefore worth a huge PUFF bounty. They couldn’t back out now. There was a reason the government had to pay such stupidly large bounties for this level of creature, because no sane person would willingly go looking for one.

Somehow, Horst found his courage. He was the leader of an elite company of monster hunters. If he walked away, it would be like all those stuck-up MHI chumps would be laughing at him. Ryan Horst had vowed that he was never going to be a nobody again.

He needed to do something quick. He thought back to his brief time with MHI. What would they have done? Those bozos were always motivated. What would Earl Harbinger have done? He would have gotten his crew fired up. I can do that. Horst reached into his coat, unsnapped his shoulder holster, and drew his FN 5.7 pistol. He hoisted it into the air and yanked the trigger.

The sudden bang got their attention. Horst realized how stupid that had been as soon as he’d done it, because the insides of his right ear suddenly felt like someone had hit it with a hammer. “Listen up!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, waving his gun toward the giant hole in the grocery store. “This is what you signed up for. Pull yourselves together, damn it. Each one of those hairy bastards in there is worth at least fifty large. Fifty large! We came all this way to kill these things. We got guns. We got silver bullets. What do they got? Teeth? Shit. They got nothing! I am not going home until I got one of these bastards as a rug. You hear me? We’re Briarwood, and we’ve come up here to show these animals who’s boss.”

The three mutinous members of his crew turned their heads sheepishly, afraid to look him in the eye. Damn right. Lowering his piece, Horst glared at them. After chewing them out, Earl Harbinger had always softened his voice when he was trying to make a point to the MHI Newbies, like they weren’t worth raising his voice over, but it forced you to listen extra hard. So Horst tried it, speaking quietly, but firmly. “So get your shit together and let’s go. We can do this.”

They actually surprised him then. His people responded and went to work. There were a series of metallic clacks as weapons were readied. A smirk crossed Horst’s face. Damn. I’m good.

Nikolai was on him in a flash, claws erupting from the ends of his fingers. Earl moved aside easily, the change pumping massive amounts of adrenaline through his system. His body was flushed with heat. Despite the freezing wind blasting through the gaping wound in the store, sweat rolled from every pore. Time slowed as Nikolai tore at him, Earl swung with all his might, hand open, fingers wide, and was rewarded with a spray of blood as his nails ripped through the Russian’s flesh.

His enemy stalked away, circling. Four lacerations crossed his heaving chest, having cleanly sliced through his ammo pouches. Nikolai ripped the canvas off and tossed it aside. “MURDERER,” Nikolai roared, his jaw already distorting. “I’ll rip you apart for what you did to her.” Nikolai leapt at him.

Earl caught his opponent in midair, using the momentum as a weapon, and hurled Nikolai down the aisle. Earl got one ear sliced nearly in half for the trouble.

Nikolai hit the floor, rolled, and slid on his knees to a gradual stop. The change was fully upon him now. “You die now,” Nikolai gurgled. He said more, but it was unrecognizable as he tore off his shredded clothing. “Die for thing you done.”

Earl had a hard time forming a response. His mind changed along with his body. Words became hard to understand, even harder to use. “Try me,” he answered, his voice a distorted growl.

After the heat came the pain. It started in the bones and radiated out from there. It was part fire, part grinding, all horrible. The pain in his jaw grew as bones twisted, cracked, stretched, and reformed. Blood leaked between his teeth as they changed, new sharp edges slicing through gum tissue. Heart rate elevated, breath coming fast, Earl cringed as his old skin ripped.

Nikolai was a mirror image as he went through the same process, matching cracking bone for cracking bone. Dark gray hair grew rapidly across the Russian’s body.

Clothing. Constricting. Earl pulled off the rest of his armor and kicked off his boots. The change wrenched through him, ten times faster than when he’d first been cursed, but the pain was all still there, just accelerated. Burning. Twisting.

Earl took a step forward. The soles of his feet were hard as leather, but he screamed as they hit the floor, bones cracking, heel separating. His toe claws dug through the garbage. Earl took another step, the pain traveling up his leg, joints tearing, burning, reforming. Muscles hardened, becoming tighter, and it was only because of long exposure that he was able to keep moving. He fell onto all fours, but as the geometries changed, that didn’t matter.

Earl scratched his claws into the floor and howled. The challenge had begun.

Earl was angry. Hungry.

Nikolai raised his face, showing his teeth in a vicious snarl. Earl wanted to eat that face.

As his mind descended into chaos and visions of cascading red, Earl’s last rational thought was a desperate plea. God. Help me now. Keep me sane. Kill enemy. Hurt no people. Amen.