Monster Hunter International

Chapter 16

The Old Man was waiting for me on the steps of the bombed-out church. He was whittling away at a small block of wood with a tiny pocketknife. The world of the destroyed town was once again whole and complete. Battle damaged, but at least there were no gaps of nothingness. Snow crunched under my bare feet, yet it was not cold. In my dream, I was not in pain. I received a scowl and a firm finger-shaking as I approached.

"Boy. You not very good at this job. Werewolf scar you. Wight paralyze you. Fall off boat. Vampire beat you. Policeman beat you. Gargoyle chase you, and now you fall off car. Moving car at that. Maybe I think we should have picked some other person." He continued shaking his finger. He reminded me of my Czech immigrant grandfather-easily exasperated, and often having a hard time expressing it. "You can no seem to help. You are like, how you say… punching bag. You say, hey monster, here I am. Hit me in head."

"Look, I'm pretty tired of getting my ass kicked too. You want to pick somebody else to bug, feel free." I sat down beside him on the steps. I could not tell what he was carving. One thing was for sure, he did not appear to be very good at it.

"I need to get back. Julie needs me. I need to wake up."

"Sorry, Boy, not can do. You are hurt. Need time for body to rest. You must take time for other things now."

"I've got an idea then. How about some straightforward answers for a change?"

"Bah." He spit in the snow. "You want answers. I give you answers. I try to help you, Boy. Some thing I not can say, I can only show. Is hard to do, you know."

"Why did the Cursed One go after Julie's dad?"

He shrugged. "He is just like you. Always wants the straight answers. Just like you, even has the same questions."

"Where's the Place of Power and when's he going to use it?"

"See. What did say? Same questions. How am I supposed to know this thing?"

I picked up a rock and hurled it against some rubble. I was rewarded with a crash.

"Boy. You are mad, yes? Very angry?" I nodded. The Old Man paused in his carving for a moment and patted me gently on the arm. "You are mad because girl is hurt. Old doctor is hurt. And some of crazy people get smooshed by gargoyle, yes?"

I did not respond. After a moment he got tired of waiting for my answer.

"Hunters must learn, not can save everyone. Sometimes not can save own self even. Is just how it is…" He trailed off. "Bah! Enough talk. Time is short. You wake up soon. I try to show you more memories."

"Not anything recent, I hope," I said fearfully. My brief encounter with Lord Machado's mind had left me very uneasy about that idea. I did not want to risk that again, because I had a sneaky feeling that I might not wake up from it.

"No. Is old memory again. Much safer. He probably not know about this. I not strong enough to try new memory. Too dangerous. Put worms in your head. Eat your brain out."

I did not dare ask for an explanation of whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

"Listen, Boy, hard to explain. This Cursed One, I not can show you things that are in his mind now, for he will know. But these other things, they are long ago in his past. Buried like body in ground. He not pay attention to them now anymore. So we sneak in for look, he not know. You shut up and learn."

"How can you do that?"

He scowled as he searched for the words. "I stuck here, because of stupid artifact. Because of Cursed One, I not can move on. Trapped for long time. Cursed One forgot about me. But he-how you say? — underestimates things I do to try stop him. I sneak chance to talk to you, to help. He not expect that. Now shush. See what you have done with questions? Waste much time."

He set aside his carving, folded his knife, carefully put it away, and placed his hands on my face.

"Let's do this thing," I said, with more courage than I actually felt.

The blasted town faded away.

Lord Machado's memories. I settled into them like an actor taking on a role. I was immersed into the senses of a man who had long since ceased to be a man. The memories were hazy, fragmented, but the important things had engraved themselves deep into the Cursed One's mind.

The priestess Koriniha led me deep beneath the pyramid. I followed, hoping to find answers to my questions. My reign over the city was a success thus far. Treasure filled my coffers, and my small army was training a much larger army of local conscripts. She had been good to her word: the city did not just abide me as a conqueror with an iron fist. They were treating me like their true king, and perhaps, dare I say… their god. I could grow used to being worshipped.

She had told me of her dark and secret knowledge. The priestess' offer had been intriguing. Eternal life and strength. An immortal army under my command. Powers so great, that not only could I control this new land, but I could return to my old, and take upon me the very birthright that was taken from me. If the words of Koriniha were even partially true, I could return home and take the very crown, and the crown of any kingdom I desired.

I desired all of them.

King Manuel the Great? I would show him who the great one really was. Philip and his blasted Spaniards would be next. After that, why not all of Europe, forcefully united under my banner. If a fraction of the dark secrets the priestess had whispered to me were true, then all of that would be a simple task to accomplish. And from the signs that she had shown me, I believed her to be telling the truth.

I followed her farther into the darkness. The priestess' hips swayed beneath her thin robes. She was a wanton creature, beautiful and cunning, wise in many arts unknown in my homeland. I had already taken her as my concubine, as was part of our initial agreement. It had been a very beneficial arrangement indeed. It had legitimized my rule over this people, and I enjoyed the benefits befitting a man of my station.

The torch in my hand flickered and spat as damp winds traveled down the tunnel. I had a brace of pistols in my belt, fresh matches stored in a wax-tight pouch, and the very ax that was the source of my family name slung over my back, yet somehow I still felt uneasy. There was darkness under this pyramid, not just darkness of the eyes, but a darkness of the soul.

Friar de Sousa had attempted to warn me away from the priestess and her strange cult. I had discovered him trying to send a messenger back to our ships on the coast. The note had been intercepted. The Jesuit had been worried that I was descending into madness and following a pagan religion, and especially damning, he wrote of the riches of the city and how I had thus far kept our expedition a secret from both the crown and the church. He had been a kindly man, wise and merciful, and his knowledge of languages had been a valuable tool of conquest. It had saddened me momentarily when I hsd ordered him burned at the stake. Of course to keep that fact from the men, I had blamed it on the locals and had had five hundred of their priests executed, supposedly in retribution. Appearances had to be kept up, after all.

Some of the men had been suspicious, but as long as I kept them supplied with riches, I was not worried about their loyalty. Sacks of gold would satisfy even the most pious amongst them. The crown's military governor had no knowledge of our expedition's location, so my troops were effectively sealed from the outside world. My secrets were my own to keep.

We walked for what seemed like hours, always down, always descending. The walls changed from stone and mortar into natural rock, and then finally into something else. Something that I had never seen before. Slick, soft and oily, almost pulsing with its own strange energy. Out of the corner of my eye it would sometimes seem as if the very walls were moving.

Finally we entered a huge space, deep in the bowels of the earth. I could not tell how big it was, but my meager torch could illuminate but a small portion. The floor was smooth and slick, and I had to be careful to maintain my footing. Water drizzled down from above, splashing upon my armor. The air was heavy, and did not taste like air that should be breathed into the lungs of men. It was salty, and the cavern smelled faintly of decaying fish.

Koriniha led me toward the center of the vast darkness. We walked for miles. I realized that if she had so desired, she could have run out of the circle of torchlight, and I might not have ever found my way out. A lesser man might have felt fear at that, but not I. The temperature dropped until I could see my breath. The floor became softer, and my boots left impressions in the oily surface. The priestess halted in front of the first landmark we had happened upon in the otherwise featureless room.

It was an obelisk of black metal, tall enough to disappear into the darkness above, yet so thin that I could not comprehend how it could stay upright. The object had been inscribed with strange writing. Not like the now-familiar picture writing of the civilization above, but something rather far more complex. The runes appeared to move under the flickering light of the torch. A small, unadorned stone box sat in a tiny alcove of the obelisk. It hurt my eyes to look directly at it, as if I had stared into the sun.

"What is this thing? Is this the key? Tell me now," I ordered.

She smiled at me wickedly, dark eyes flashing red in the torchlight. "Yes, Lord Machado. This is the key to unlock infinite power. The very power of the Old Ones themselves, and they have been waiting for one such as you."

"Such as I?"

She placed her delicate hands on my bearded cheeks and her eyes bore into mine. They seemed to flicker unnaturally in the light of the sputtering flames.

"Yes, my lord. The Old Ones left this device. It is ancient. Older than this world. It is an item of such power that it was never intended to be used by mortal man. It is a device intended for the service of what you know as angels or demons, and even then best left alone even by them. Yet every five hundred years, a man will be born, a mortal with the power to use this device and bend it to his will. You are this man, you are the one who has been prophesied by the Old Ones." As she spoke, I felt the air rush past as if something incomprehensibly huge had just taken a breath.

"Tell me this prophecy, woman."

She took her hands from my face and gestured at the obelisk. The runes changed, and were now written in the Latin letters I had learned as a youth.

He will come

Son of a great warrior

Taught in the skills of the world

Yet drawn to the sword

His very name taken from

The weapon of his fathers

Given a quest by the crown

To defeat an impossible foe

Possessor of visions

Ally of dark forces

Friend of monsters

Leader of men

Only he will have the will

And the power

Through his love of another

To break time and the world

The words resonated with me. I was the one meant for the power and the greatness. My family name came from the very ax now strapped to me, the very weapon used by my forefathers. My father had been a great general. As one of the younger sons, I had been sent away for an education, expected to manage the family fortune, yet I had failed, and become a soldier and eventually a commander. My task was to pacify this land for the crown and deliver its treasure unto my king and its inhabitants' souls to my mother church. I had visions of leading my host to glory. As for darkness, I had no doubt that my concubine and her cabal of heart-removing priests and their rivers of sacrificial blood would serve that purpose.

"So what does this mean? What must I do now?" I asked. The priestess did not answer. She reached into the alcove and removed the small rectangular box. She shouted something in her language, and the rush of air changed direction as if something massive had just exhaled. I held out my hand, and she placed the box gently in my palm. It was small, but unnaturally heavy. I shuddered as cold shivers pulsed down my arm. "What is this?"

"It is the key, my lord. Alone, it is an object of mighty strength, capable of great magic, but when you are prepared, I can take you to the proper place, a Place of Power. There you can utilize it to inflict your will upon the entire world. No one shall stand in your way. The world will be yours."

"Is that all?"

"There is but one last thing to fulfill the prophecy, my lord. You must do it through love of another. You are a lover of power, but not of people. You must do so to utilize the artifact. Love is a notion of the weak, yet through it great power can be unlocked. It is a tool to be used as needed."

"I have a wife and children in Lisboa, will that not suffice?" I did not have time for weak notions such as love or mercy. Not when there was plunder to be taken, and lands to be crushed. A wife of good blood was a political necessity and a way to produce heirs, nothing more.

"Perhaps not, my lord. But I will provide a way." The priestess untied the front of her robes and let them fall to the slick floor. "I can be your love. Together we can rule the world."

The damp wind picked up again, almost as if the cavern itself was filling unseen lungs, far greater in intensity this time. My torch was blown out, plunging us into darkness.

I was sitting on the steps of the church, once again in my own body, and seeing the world through my own eyes. Reliving the Cursed One's memories left me feeling unclean. The Old Man had gone back to his carving, gently flicking the blade of the knife over the small block of wood. Chips were falling onto his homespun pants. Even if the clear winter sky around me was a figment of my imagination, it was a far nicer place than the mysterious unnatural cavern.

"Why are you showing me these things?"

"So you understand. Is important."

"What is important? That Machado was an evil bastard when he was human, so bad that even the Aztecs or the Incas or whoever they were prophesied him coming, and that some mysterious Old Ones wanted to give him a magical whatchamacallit to blow up the world?"

"You not have name for that people. They are gone. World not know about them today. Is probably for best. But there is more, Boy. You must pay attention more."

"Pay attention to what more? He was about to score with the evil priestess chick. That was pretty hard to miss," I replied.

"Young people. Mind always in gutter. No, more important things to learn."

"How about you just tell me how to kill him?"

He shrugged. "I not know."

"Who are the Old Ones? The Elf Queen mentioned them also."

"Very bad. Very much bad. I not know. But they here long before us. Not supposed to be. But they are-how you say? — trespassers. They want nothing more than to kill world. They kill anything they not can have."

He used his coat sleeve to brush aside the snow on one of the steps, creating a clear spot. He placed his carving on the smooth surface and spun it. The little top made it only a few turns before flopping over. It looked like crap and was horribly unbalanced. He was not very good at whittling.

"Your top is broken."

"Is not 'top.' Is dreidel. Fun little game. Should be made out of clay. But I try wood." He picked it up and went back to carving. "No laugh, Boy, is harder than it looks. Time for you to go. You wake up now. Be careful of big red thing. No want to crash."

"What big red thing?"

"You see."

I woke up disoriented and confused. I was lying on some sort of gurney, and I cracked my face painfully into a white metal cabinet when I sat up. Julie was a few feet away, also lying on a stretcher. Her shirt had been cut away, and a much better bandage had been placed on her shoulder. She was still out. A siren was blaring. We were in the back of an ambulance.

"What the hell?" I said, as the ambulance turned far too sharply and I bounced off of the wall. Mad laughter came from the front.

"Hang on, kid. It's been a while since I've driven last. You know, with being locked up and all that." Ray Shackleford honked the horn and screamed out the window. "Watch out, moron!"

I squeezed my way through the narrow space and into the passenger seat. I had to push aside a big black duffel bag. I was glad to see that it was the bag that held my armor and personal gear, including spare magazines and grenades for Abomination. My shotgun was sitting on the dash, sliding crazily back and forth as Ray jerked the wheel. The speedometer showed one hundred and five miles an hour. I had not known that an ambulance could go that fast.

"What happened?" I shouted over the siren. Ray's gray hair was flapping madly in the wind from the open window. He was grinning maniacally, and having far too much fun for an escaped lunatic.

"You passed out. Can't say I blame you. You look like shit. Julie had a cell phone in her pocket. It started ringing so naturally I answered it. It was Earl." The crazy man laughed. "Old son of a bitch was a bit surprised to find himself talking to me. Didn't expect that one bit. Well, anyway…" He swerved around a truck and into oncoming traffic, dodged a station wagon, and jerked back into the correct lane. I cringed. "As I was saying, Earl called, said that the Feds were heading this way fast. They put out an APB on me and both of you. He said not to go to the hospital because the Monster Control Bureau guys were already en route, and not to go back to the compound because the place was already crawling with Feds. So I'm supposed to take us someplace safe to hide out."

"You didn't kill any of the paramedics did you?" I gestured at Abomination.

"Oh no. I've never killed a human being… on purpose at least, so I ain't gonna start now. I bluffed our way out. Told them I was an escaped mental patient."

"Gee whiz? I'm surprised they believed you." I had not realized, but he was wearing sweats, and a bathrobe. With the matted hair, and the unkempt beard, he looked the part. Plus when I had passed out he had been singing the theme song from the Monkees.

"I know. Imagine that." He scratched himself as we tore down the road.

"Julie needs medical attention."

"Earl has arranged for some. Don't worry. We're going home."

"But the compound is covered in Feds."

"Nope. You'll see. Earl said 'Go to your house, Ray. You can remember how to get there. Just go home.' "

Ray turned to look at me as he explained. Crazy people must use the Force to drive or something. "We're going home. It'll be just like old times. All the kids, Ray the fifth, Julie, even little Nate, they can play in the tree house. And Susan will be there too. It'll be great. We can have a barbecue."

"Ray. Watch the road." I noticed flashing red lights ahead. He was no longer living in the same world; instead he was taking a little trip down memory lane.

"Maybe there'll be an Alabama game on today. Roll Tide. That would be fun. Maybe even the Alabama versus Auburn game. Best game of the year. Yep, I lost a lot of money on that one last season, I tell you what." I realized that the flashing lights originated at a train crossing. The crossing arms were coming down.

"Train. Ray, brake. Hit the brakes!"

He turned and studied it absently. "Yep, train. How about that? You like hotdogs or hamburgers? Susan might have even marinated some steaks if we're lucky." I watched in horror as the train came into view. The engine was enormous and red. We were not going to make it in time.

I shoved my way over into the driver's seat, squishing Ray painfully into the door. I stomped my boot down on the brake and I fought for control of the wheel. The tires locked up with a squeal, leaving behind plenty of rubber and smoke. Ray tried to fight me. I elbowed him violently in the forehead, snapping his head back against the seat.

Keeping the van under control while braking and fighting for the wheel against an insane man while barreling toward a train is not a pleasant experience. Luckily the ambulance had some decent brake pads installed. We broke through the wooden safety rail with a slow crack, and skidded to a halt, our front bumper inches from the sparking train wheels.

"Car-jacking! Car-jacking!" he shouted in my ear as he tried to stick his thumb in my eye.

Ray kept fighting, unaware that I had just saved his life. He tried to choke me with the seat belt, so I elbowed him in the face until he stopped moving. It took three good blows to his noggin to put him out. I'll admit, I enjoyed that part. I put the van in park and crawled back out the passenger door. I went around, deafened by the roar of the train only scant feet away, opened the door, after a moment found the switch to kill the highly annoying siren, pulled Ray's unconscious body out of the driver's side and set him on the gurney in the back. There were straps to hold down thrashing patients, and I applied them snugly.

Julie stirred. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Owen. What's going on?" she mumbled sleepily. "Wait a second," as she realized that her shirt was cut open and she was only wearing a bra beneath. "Pervert."

"Hey, blame the paramedics. Listen, Julie. I don't have time to explain. We need to get you someplace that your dad called home. Earl is going to have help for you there."

She was obviously high on painkillers or something that the paramedics had given her. She smiled absently. "Hey, what happened to Dad?"

"Uh, he got sedated. Look, can you give me directions? Earl said for us to go home, not the compound, but someplace your dad would think of as home."

"Sure… I can find home. Where are we?"

"I don't know. Look, I'm going to help you to the front seat. You just stay awake and tell me where to go, okay?"

"Okay. Can do. And look, next time you want to see me naked, just ask. Don't cut up my clothes. That's creepy… and I liked this shirt." Her eyes closed and she went back to sleep.

I carried her to the passenger side, as gently as was possible, careful not to disturb her wound or bandages. I buckled her into place as the last of the train cars passed. Julie stirred and mumbled something.

"What?"

"I know this place. We're near Greenville. Just keep going." Her speech was slurred, but she did not appear to be losing any more blood. I decided that if she started to look any worse I was going to take her to the nearest town and doctor. Keeping from getting arrested was not worth her life. Hopefully I would not have to make that choice.

I put the ambulance into drive and continued down the road.