Monster Hunter Alpha

Chapter 13

If I had used my one silver bullet on the Alpha, then Santiago would surely die with a knife through the neck. So I shot the girl. I was rusty, so it went right through the cheek, just under her left eye. It still killed her instantly though, and she went right over the side of the boat and took Santiago with her.

Seamus charged. He was already changing, faster than I could comprehend. He hit me harder than I’d ever been hit in my life. And I found myself halfway down the beach. I came up with a mouthful of sand, four lacerations that went clear to my ribcage, and a transforming werewolf coming right at me.

He called me a fool for challenging him. The voice had changed, the last word tapering off into a growl. He threw off the vest, and black hair was already growing across his body. His eyes were glowing, fingers were getting longer, bones were cracking. Within seconds the most fearsome werewolf imaginable was towering over me. It was unbelievably smooth compared to the clumsy twitching suffering I went through.

He could have torn my human head right off then, but instead he stopped and cocked his head while his fur rippled in the breeze, crouched on all fours, claws feeling the sand, while he waited for me to catch up. I was a challenge to his leadership. And though I didn’t understand it at the time, a challenge was supposed to be met on equal terms. If it wasn’t, then your victory didn’t mean anything.

I could feel the animal inside, screaming to get out. It was angry. Angry at me. I had kept it locked up, only let it free when I had to. I’d mistreated it, but now I was calling on it to save my life. Furious, it could have denied me, left me to die, but it was part of me. And we both wanted to survive.

Let me tell you, the pain is fire. The jaw clenches spasmodically tight. Blood thunders in your eyes. Your muscles pulse with electric shocks of agony, clenching, unclenching, clenching again, so tight that at each surge you wish for death. You change. Down to the level of individual proteins, and you feel every single bit.

It hurts like a stone-cold motherfucker.

It didn’t matter that there were no witnesses. He waited. That was the way it was done. To kill me unfairly would make his victory meaningless. We were werewolves, creatures of instinct and a strange tradition. One would die. One would live.

The pain ends, and then there is the euphoria. I was whole. Beast and man, one. I became We. Then the other werewolf attacked us with a ferocity that had never been imagined. Bigger, stronger, faster, more experienced, the enemy tore into us. Within seconds the sand was soaked red with our blood. We should have lost. Rolling, tearing, snapping, thrashing, and then our teeth were in his neck and hot arterial blood flooded our mouth.

He tried to shake us off. Claws opened our stomach, spilled the stinking bowels, but it was only pain. Pain was nothing compared to the blood in our mouth. We got a better angle and chomped harder, cracking vertebrae and slicing meat. The tearing continued as our enemy grew weaker and weaker, until the claws dropped away from our eviscerated stomach and lay twitching, grasping futilely.

Somehow, we’d defeated our better. Then the beast was gone, leaving me alone with the pain.

It was the first time I went through a challenge. It would not be the last.

Lins held out his lighter, and the gas-soaked rag stuffed into the bottle caught fire. Kelley took that bottle and used it to light the one in his other hand. “Awesome!” the bearded firebug shouted as he started toward the grocery store, flaming Molotov in each hand. “I’ve got them now.”

“Cover him,” Horst ordered as he ground the butt of his rifle against his shoulder. The other three got their guns up, ready to shoot as Kelley hurried down the relatively cleared path left by the crashed plow, the dump-truck end of which was visible at the opposite end of the building. Kelley was cackling maniacally as he got within throwing range.

“What if there’s some bystanders trapped in there?” Lins asked quickly, realizing that they hadn’t talked through that possibility.

“Screw ’em,” Jo Ann spat. “I’m not going in there.”

Horst scowled, but his girlfriend had a point. They hadn’t thought that far past “burn it down and shoot anything that comes out,” but listening to the racket coming from in there, the idea of survivors was doubtful. “Sucks to be them, I guess.”

Lins didn’t seem to like that, but he went back to looking through the Aimpoint on his carbine and didn’t speak up.

They’d divided up their one case of silver 5.56 ammo. Horst had bought everyone their own full-auto and then done just like that four-eyed geek Cooper had done during MHI training and yelled at them to only shoot semi-auto, and at ten bucks a pop for the Fed’s “misplaced” ammo, he could understand why MHI only used the good stuff on missions. Horst had kept his FAL, along with a few mags full of silver. 308 he’d managed to sneak out of Alabama when he’d left. Everyone except for Loco had gotten an M-4 carbine. He’d given him the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, because it seemed logical to give the biggest dude the heaviest gun.

The plan was simple. Burn out super werewolf. Hose it down. What could possibly go wrong?

Their arsonist was in range. Kelley chucked the first Molotov squarely through the front of the store. The glass shattered, and gasoline ignited across the broken shelves. Kelley had said that if they had more time he would have made up a better mix with other petroleum products, because that would have really made it stick, but judging by how fast the fire spread, there was plenty of flammable material inside there already.

With a crazed gleam in his eyes, Kelley pumped one fist in the air, then switched the other Molotov to his throwing arm. He cocked back his arm to throw this one deeper inside, but then stopped, his head jerking to the side as something startled him. Trying to see what had distracted his man, Horst squinted, trying to figure out what the tall, narrow thing coming through the windblown snow was.

It was way too tall to be a person, and unless MHI had totally lied to him, it sure as hell wasn’t a werewolf. Thin, its lump of a head bobbed rhythmically, and what looked like its baggy clothing swayed back and forth as it approached Kelley. Its pace would have seemed almost leisurely if each of its long, spindly steps hadn’t covered such a massive distance.

“What is that?” Lins shouted.

Horst had no idea. He must have gotten kicked out of Newbie training before the day Paxton got around to giant, gray, metal, scarecrow robots. “Damn if I know.” It caught up to the scrambling Kelley in three big steps. Screaming his head off, Kelley ran for it, flaming bottle sloshing dangerous and forgotten in his hand. The thing’s arms were so long that they dragged through the snow. The creature lifted one arm, and Horst could see that the block that passed for a hand ended in three big points, like a mighty garden trowel. “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

The four of them opened fire. His earlier instructions about “rapid, aimed, semi-auto” went right out the window as everybody started shooting like mad. Holes puckered in the snow, sparks flashed off the monster, and Kelley looked down in disbelief as a plug of goose-down erupted from his coat as one of his teammates accidentally shot him through the chest.

“Don’t shoot our guy!” Horst shouted, but it didn’t matter. The creature swung its metal claw, striking Kelley in the arm. The bottle shattered as he went down, showering gas all over the burning rag and Kelley’s coat. There was a flash as fire tore across their arsonist’s body. Letting out an ungodly cry, Kelley thrashed and flailed away, flopping into the snow and rolling like mad as the fire melted clothing to skin. Within seconds he was engulfed in black smoke and orange flames. The tall creature stopped to watch.

“It killed Robb!” Jo Ann shrieked.

By the time Horst’s gun was empty, Kelley had quit screaming. The monster watched for a moment, as if assessing whether Kelley was dead or not. When it was obvious that stop, drop, and roll hadn’t worked out, its misshapen head swiveled up on its too long neck and it emotionlessly started toward them.

Everyone else had run dry except for Loco, because he had a two-hundred-round belt in the SAW and was actually firing it in short, controlled bursts like he’d been told. Even with one eye, Loco was the only one that seemed to actually be hitting the monster. “Reload! Reload!” Horst shouted as he struggled to get another magazine out of his pocket.

The creature was closing fast. Its giant legs pumped methodically, leaving a trail of huge, three-toed, birdlike footprints behind it. Most of their panicked shots were missing, and the ones that did hit didn’t seem to have much effect.

Closer now, its head was round, featureless. It had no eyes, no nostrils, just a long slit from one side to the other that had to be a mouth. The neck was abnormally long, and the front of its neck swung back and forth with a jiggling mass of loose skin. Parts of it seemed to be made of a rough metal shell, but the joints looked like gray meat. What he’d thought had been loose clothing was actually skin, swaying rhythmically. It was like an obese man that had lost tons of weight, way too fast, leaving a skeleton inside a sack of drooping skin, and then the devil had crammed the whole mess into a suit of rusting metal armor. “Slow down and aim!” he shouted. “Aim for the soft bits!”

Taking his own advice, he put the sights on the bulbous mass of a head. Horst had used guns his entire life, mostly cheap ones fired out car windows while driving past the homes of people who owed his uncle money, but it was MHI that had actually taught him to aim. Turns out that he was pretty decent at it.

The bullet hit the monster right between the eyes, or would have, if it’d had eyes. It stopped, a plug of meat dangling from its face, leaking green slime. Jo Ann stepped past him, shouting, “How you like that! Huh? How you like that!” as she shot at its head.

She got her answer a second later when the creature lumbered over to her, its gash of a mouth stretching wide open. Its two huge hands landed on her shoulders, trapping her. Jo Ann’s head disappeared into its mouth as its metal hands scooped her up. “Holy fu-” she screamed as the creature lifted her and reared its head back. Her lower half was visible as it choked her down, her feet kicking wildly. The flap of loose skin under the monster’s neck stretched, like a pelican eating a fish, as it swallowed her whole. Her shoes disappeared as she travelled down its long throat. The skin stretched in places, Jo Ann’s body visible through the slick membrane as she rolled around and fought inside the pouch.

The creature lowered its head and closed its mouth gash. It rumbled around, towering over Horst. The skin stretched madly as Jo Ann kicked, like a kid playing under a blanket. Her muffled cries could barely be heard as the now-full pouch dangled across the front half of the creature’s body.

A giant, chicken-footed, faceless, scarecrow, robot, pelican monster had just eaten his girlfriend. “Fuck this. Retreat!” Horst said as he turned and ran like mad. Lins was already twenty feet ahead, sprinting for the road.

Fury boiled Earl’s blood. Nikolai landed on him, teeth taking a chunk of meat and pale hair from his snout. Earl swatted him off, and one claw cut Nikolai’s nose in two. They clashed again, both reaching for the other’s throat, hind claws searching for soft guts to pull out, teeth snapping for jugulars.

They crashed through the human garbage, spilling blood. Earl was weak from before. His muscles quivered. His body was a furnace, burning itself to stay alive. Moving so fast. Apart again. Circling. Attacking again. Slashing. Earl’s chest was torn open, but not deep through bone. Nikolai’s claw flashed again, but Earl was ready. His teeth pierced flesh!

The taste of blood. Nikolai’s arm ripped open, his wrist torn, and he retreated. Weak.

Nikolai attacked, his teeth grinding on bone, but it’s shallow. Earl’s claws opened Nikolai’s guts. He retreated, fell. Earl bit again but missed the neck, snapping bones in Nikolai’s shoulder. Claws raked Earl’s back. Claws slipped on his guts. He could taste his own blood.

But the enemy was weak, trying to get away. No escape for him. Must kill. Only kill. Earl howled.

Nikolai was dying. Earl tore into him and blood sprayed. Meat filled Earl’s mouth. Filled his belly. Earl’s hunger cried out. Claws ripped. Ribs broke! There was Nikolai’s beating heart.

Distraction. Glass shattered and fire spread.

FIRE.

It burned Earl, his hair on fire. Nikolai screamed as fire burned him, too. Earl pulled away, and the fire was between them. Human garbage burned black. Nickolai’s heart still pumped. Red. So close. Earl tried to pass through, but the fire burned too hot.

Earl retreated, his body still on fire. RAGE! Nikolai fled. Ran. Nikolai’s fear stink was strong. Earl never stank of fear. Earl howled so the world would know his anger.

Circle. Pounce. Nikolai couldn’t escape. Earl moved away from the fire, to the safety of the cold. The snow melted as it hit the burning, and the water cooled.

There was movement outside the store: Guns. Humans in the snow. An unknown threat stalked them… Hunters? My Hunters?

The human Earl forced his way to the top. The moon was not here. The Hum was not loud. Earl could still think. He could smell nothing over his own burned hair, but Earl knew these were Hunters. Hunters were his pack. Nikolai was forgotten. Hunters in danger. No one messes with my Hunters. Earl hurled himself out into the snow.

The monster swallowed a human. That made Earl mad. He forgets about Nikolai. Closer now. He could see better. These were not his Hunters. But they were Hunters, and that’s enough for Earl.

The monster smelled of deep earth. Of ground and mud. It stank of Old Ones. Rot. Corruption.

Earl covered the space in a few bounds. Tall. He hit it low, diving into its legs. Its shell was very hard. But Earl sensed flesh at the gaps, and flesh was weak. Slashing, he searched for tendons. The skin was thick, hard to cut. But Earl was mad, and the skin broke, blood-pus coming out. Tendon-meats snapped.

The monster fell. Earl was on it, ripping. He never stopped ripping. The top part had less metal, more soft, easy to hurt. It had a long neck, and that long neck was weak. Earl bit the weak neck. His mouth filled with the blood-pus. POISON!

Earl spat it out. It burned his mouth. He leaped away and gagged in snow.

The monster rose silently. One leg was crippled but there was no fear smell. Skin moved on monster’s front. The human was still alive inside. Earl circled, chewing snow to clean poison from teeth.

The monster opened its slitted mouth and vomited the human into the snow. The human female moved weakly, covered in the blood-pus. She smelled like she’d live.

The monster was lighter with pouch empty. Faster now. Ready for Earl. Claws were metal, made to rend. Monster was old, grown strong, deep in the ground. Monster reeked of dark magic: Hood’s magic. Earl was weak and his muscles quivered. He was cold and sluggish. Nikolai had hurt Earl. The monster was made of metal and death.

But Earl was mad.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have our winner.”

It was Harbinger that emerged from the burning grocery store. His lighter-colored fur was easier to identify, even scorched and soaked with blood. Despite the fight, he still moved with blinding speed, covering the length of the parking lot in a split second. The witch watched, fascinated, as Harbinger effortlessly took down her massive digger. “It appears you were right.”

“I’m always right. Pay up,” the Alpha said.

Harbinger made the mistake of biting the rancid flesh of the digger and had to back away from the vulnerable kill. The Alpha marveled as the digger rose and disgorged the woman. The Old Ones’ servants were remarkably sturdy. Harbinger, on the other hand, was ragged. Nikolai had almost taken him, but almost wasn’t good enough when dealing with a wily killer like Harbinger.

“Sorry. I left my purse at home. Are you ready to harvest his soul?”

The time had come to unleash the full power of the Deathless. His army of vulkodlak were begging to be born. It was time to finish the job that evolution had started. “Take him.”

Earl was focused on killing the monster. He paid no attention to the large human male until the ax was planted between his shoulder blades.

The ax bit deep. Earl screamed.

The Hunter wrenched the ax out. Earl fell.

Confusion. Blood filled his lungs. The human thought he was enemy. The ax rose. Earl wanted to strike, but the Hum was weak. So Earl could think. No.

Earl spared the Hunter’s life. The ax came down. Earl caught it in his claw. The Hunter was strong, but no match for Earl. Earl took the ax away, took it in both hands and snapped it like a twig. He swatted the Hunter down, careful not to lay him open. The big Hunter scrambled back, the fear stink present, but the smell of determination stronger. Earl tossed the ax bits aside, growling. The Hunter knew death had come, but stood to fight anyway.

“Loco…Help…” the female cried from the snow.

Fists raised, the Hunter hesitated. Go. Earl dipped his head at the Hunter, dismissing him, then turned to face the real threat.

The monster had not moved. Another monster approached. Two monsters faced him now. Earl coughed blood as he healed. His body burned, weak but full of hate. The big Hunter got close enough to the monsters to scoop up the female Hunter. The monsters ignored him. They’d come for Earl. Earl waited for the humans to flee. Then he charged.

FIRE!

But it was not fire. It was light. So bright it burned like fire. The light came through him. He saw his bones through his flesh. Weak, shaking, Earl roared as he pushed on.

“Impressive, isn’t he?” Voice familiar. From before. The pretender. The false Alpha. “Hold him.”

The light was a pillar, shooting straight into the sky. The snow melted. The air was thick. Earl could barely move, but he did. He would kill this challenger. Rip him apart. The light burned hotter, and Earl was blind. Cold metal hit him on both sides. Iron fingers locked together around his arms. Earl kicked and thrashed, snapping his jaws, but only filled his mouth with more of the poison blood-pus.

“I’m ready,” a female said.

“Do it, Lucinda,” the false Alpha shouted.

She began to chant. The sound of Old Ones’ magic.

The human part of Earl forced itself to the top. Concentrate. Get out of here. Can’t fight dark magic.

A human hand grabbed his throat. Earl tried to bite the arm off, but the other hand squeezed his jaws shut. The hands were strong. “I’ve waited for a long time for this, Harbinger.” The chanting was louder. Louder than the wind. Louder than the light that burned. The pretender shouted in his ear. Earl could smell him now. It was familiar. Long ago, but not quite right. “I brought you both here because the two of you were the finest of our kind. Nikolai would have done just as well, but I want you to know I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad you’re the one.”

Earl felt the light burning through him, pulling him apart. The pain was worse than changing. With his muzzle crushed closed, Earl choked on his screams of agony.

“You feel that? Do you taste it?” the pretender asked. “That’s your power being consumed. You need to understand how much this means to me, how much this means for our people. From your soul will be born a mighty army. In future generations, when our people rule this world, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

Something is wrong. Though his body was changed, Earl could think clearly.

Chaotic images flashed in his mind, one after the other, each one tearing through his head like the shuffling of cards. He could reason, he could remember everything, and he followed along as the magic cataloged his entire life. For one split second Earl’s mind was complete, the werewolf and the human, truly one, and Earl saw. The werewolf spirit travelled across generations; each life appeared for an instant then vanished. The visions came faster and faster as the pain grew to a crescendo.

Then the visions stopped, and Earl witnessed the beginning of all werewolves.

The agony pulled Earl back to the present. Wracked with horrific pain, it was as if his body were being unraveled like a great rope by the burning light of Old Ones’ magic. The rope split into cords. The cords split into smaller strings. Again and again, as he was spread through the light. The werewolf side broke away, and the ancestral memories disappeared with it. There was a sucking vortex on the pretender’s chest, absorbing every other string. Leaving some, harvesting others.

The vortex ended in a three-fingered claw.

I’m dying. For the first time, Earl smelled his own fear.

The false Alpha drew close and whispered in Earl’s ear. “Thank you, Father.”

Earl felt his life end.

The chanting reached a fevered pitch. The light consumed everything. A sudden concussion rocked the world as the vortex was filled.

The pathetic human body hung between the two diggers. The Alpha rested his hand on the side of Harbinger’s blood-soaked head. There was no pulse. No breath. The amulet of Koschei had been fed. A great man had fallen.

“It’s done…,” the witch gasped. She took a few halting steps, then sank to the ground, exhausted. Her metal hand made a clanking noise as it hit the bare asphalt. The spell had blown the parking lot clear of snow.

He should have felt triumphant, but instead he was plagued with a sense of loss. It made sense, he supposed. For a new age to begin, an old one had to come to an end. The Alpha removed his hand from Harbinger’s head and wiped the blood on his pants. “Release him,” he ordered the diggers softly.

The witch made a clicking noise with her tongue. Her creatures immediately complied. The joints of their metal claws snapped apart, dumping Harbinger’s body in an unceremonious heap. “Gently!” he bellowed, outraged at the lack of respect.

The snow had been temporarily burned from the sky by the amulet’s power. It began to fall again. Softly this time. In the distance his children howled as they continued their assault on the town. They were answered by gunfire. The prey were fighting back.

The witch placed her human hand on his arm. “There’s still much to do,” she suggested. “Our time’s short.”

He took one look at Harbinger’s still form, crumpled there. She was right. They needed to have everything in place by dawn. His mission depended on it. “I know,” he answered as he walked away. The witch was a few steps behind. Her diggers, one walking, and one limping, followed silently.

If the MCB didn’t slag this place with nuclear fire before the night was through, the Alpha promised that he would return to this spot someday and place a statue in Harbinger’s memory. He had been a hero to the werewolf race.

As a young man, I’d often been accused of thinking I was invincible. I took risks that others found mad, but I kept on surviving. As a boy I disobeyed my daddy’s orders and tagged along on all sorts of dangerous things. It was a game to me. I joined the AEF and survived bullets, disease, poison gas, and suicide charges across no-man’s-land. I came home and killed things that sane men couldn’t even comprehend. After a while, folks all said the same thing. I was either crazy or invincible or both. I suppose I even started to believe it myself. God had given me a mission, and that mission was to kill monsters. Becoming a werewolf was like God sending me a message.

“Yes, my son. You are invincible. Now get back to work.”

“Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen-”

So cold…

“Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen-”

There was pressure on his chest as someone pushed down in rhythm with the counting.

“Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty-”

It was freezing. He was lying on the ice.

The counting stopped. Hands tilted his head back and opened his mouth. The soft lips that were placed against his were either feverishly hot or he was so cold that they just seemed that way in comparison. Breath was forced down his airway into his lungs. The warmth left him…

And returned to desperately pushing on his ribs. “One. Two. Three-”

I’m alive. Well, don’t that beat all?

Earl gasped and began to cough. The pressure left his chest. He cracked open his eyes. A woman was hovering over him. The thick snow falling past her created the illusion of a halo around her flaming red hair. “Harbinger, can you hear me?”

Heather…Why couldn’t he smell her? He tried to move. The blood splattered all over his naked body had frozen into slush, and his back was stuck to the pavement. He was dizzy. His hearing was muffled. Everything seemed dark, like his eyes were cloudy. Why was he so cold?

The Hum was gone.

“Harbinger.” Heather waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Stay with me.”

For the first time in over eighty years, the Hum was gone. The world had gone silent.

He was pretty sure that the moon hadn’t exploded. It was impossible. There was no way that could happen.

“What? What’re you saying?” she leaned closer and put her ear close enough to hear.

His voice was barely a whisper. “I’m human.”

I was mostly human by the time I was coherent enough to shove my guts back in.

Silver isn’t the only way to kill a werewolf, just the easiest. We heal at a remarkable pace, but it takes energy, and there is only so much available. Outpace that, and we die. Lose enough blood, and you shut down, or inflict enough damage, and we’re done. Or you could end up like Seamus, his head only barely attached to his body by a handful of bloody fibers. Apparently that worked, too.

Despite having his hands tied behind his back, Santiago had somehow managed to struggle ashore. He was hurt bad from the beating, bones broken, bleeding internally, I could smell the death building up in his tissues.

Santiago was delirious by the time I got him back in the boat and we set out toward help, the pathetic little motor running as hard as it could.

His eyes were unfocused. “You’re alive…”

“We’re going to get you some help.”

“I knew you could do it. I knew you could control the monster. God told me you would. He sent me to you.”

He was incoherent. “Just hold on, Santiago.”

“He has given you a gift. You-” He began to cough. I could hear the bones in his chest grating. “A great and terrible gift…Use it for good…”

Those were his last words. I was alone except for the sound of the motor and the noise of the tides. The ocean was a stark and endless blue that I’ll never forget.