Monster Hunter International

Chapter 9

None of us moved. The vampire and his four wights stood separated from the Hunters only by one narrow doorway. Julie and I were closest. For some reason the vampire did not move. The wights made chewing motions and stood tensed, ready to pounce. Their red eyes studied us hungrily. They were all wearing the same black body armor. Darne smiled at us, showing off his elongated incisors. He absently rapped his knuckles on the metal hatchway. S-O-S.

"Well, if it is not little Julie Shackleford. My, how you have grown up," Darne said. "You are the image of your mother, an absolutely lovely woman. What a pleasure."

"The pleasure is all yours, Jean," she answered. She shifted her rifle slightly. The two of us were blocking the doorway. The undead were close enough to smell. I did not think I could move fast enough to get away. It would only take a single touch from one of those wights to end up paralyzed.

"Now, now, little girl. Do not try anything hasty. The only thing holding back my 'men' is my will. They are bonded to me. If I lose concentration for an instant your team is doomed." He would have been a very handsome man when he was alive, suave and distinguished with just a touch of gray at his temples and in his thin moustache; his English was impeccable. I'm sure he could have been quite the charmer except for the whole evil vampire thing and the four undead pit-bull equivalents standing beside him.

"So why didn't you make your move? You could have just charged us immediately and taken us by surprise." I could tell Julie was stalling for time. But I wasn't sure what exactly she was hoping for.

"Americans have no flair for the dramatic. You are almost as bad as the Germans. No romance in your souls. Always straightforward." He snapped his long fingers. "I want to make a deal."

"We don't deal with vampires," she stated flatly.

"But you have made deals with monsters before. The truth of that is undeniable. I want to make a deal with you. I will let you live, and I will give you important information, in exchange for safe passage from this ship after sunset."

"Except the monsters that we have made deals with don't leave a trail of bodies wherever they go. I can't do that to the world," Julie spoke softly. One of my teammates moved slowly behind me.

"So naive, girl. Your father would be ashamed. He was such a practical man. He would make a deal with the devil for the right cause. Order your man to stop what he is doing or I release these wights. You don't want to try to toss a grenade in here. There are thousands of gallons of fuel and vapor in these pipes. You would kill your whole team and the others as well."

Julie shook her head. "No explosives. Okay, Jean. Let's talk. But leave my parents out of it."

"Fair enough." The movement behind me stopped. The vampire continued, "Your team will go to the bridge, pull up the anchor and set course for the mainland. Then you will leave this ship."

"How do you know we won't walk out of here and just sink the ship?" Julie asked.

"Because I will keep you as a hostage. Your uncle is running this operation. He will do anything to protect you. I will let you go free when we run aground."

Julie laughed coldly. "And I'm supposed to believe you? You would bite me as soon as the helicopter lifted off. Screw you, Jean."

"Now, young one, please, I did not choose this path, but I am a survivor. I just want to live."

"If you can call that living."

"Do not be so quick to judge. You of all people must wonder about this life. It is marvelous. I fought the darkness for so many years. I did not know what I was missing. I can see everything, Julie. I can feel your pulse from here. I can feel the world. The heartbeat of the very world. It is ecstasy." The vampire was beginning to wax poetic. I had to try something.

"Hey, Jean," I interrupted. "The girl's hardheaded. I'm willing to talk business."

"Your standards are slipping. When did MHI start hiring gorillas?" the vampire asked wryly, glancing in my direction. His red eyes bored into me.

"Owen? What are you doing?"

"Shut up," I snapped at her. "I don't want to die here. You can keep the girl. I'll go up and pull up the anchor and point this barge at Florida. Old man Earl isn't going to want anything to happen to this chick. We will leave."

"A sensible one. You must be new, yes?"

"Yeah, I'm just a mercenary. I'm just in this for the money," I lied. Moisture dripped onto my helmet and rolled hotly down my spine.

"Ahh, good." The vampire steepled his fingers.

"Now you said you had some valuable information. Just what are we talking about, Frenchy? Valuable means something that I can use." I had no idea if vampires were good judges of character.

"I can tell you about the six old ones, and their leader. They are on your country's soil now."

"And what about the Cursed One?" I ordered.

The four wights shrieked in chorus. Darne cringed.

"How do you know of Lord Machado?" The vampire hissed the name.

"Me and him are old pals. Now if you want the girl, I want to know what he's here for."

"Very well then. But it is your doom. Lord Machado has the artifact. He will take it to a Place of Power and he will use it. You cannot stop him. No mortal can stop him."

"Look, Jean, I don't want to stop him. I just want to make sure I end up on the winning team. Know what I mean?"

The vampire smiled. "I can help you then. You do not want to be on the wrong side when Lord Machado rules. Do we have a deal?"

Julie interrupted angrily. "Owen? What the hell are you thinking? No deals with vampires; he'll kill me as soon as you walk out the door."

"Shut up, bitch!" I snarled. I move very fast for a big man. In the next second, I dropped my shotgun, letting the sling catch it. I lifted my right hand as if I was going to backhand her. Julie's eyes widened in shocked surprise. The vampire's eyes followed my uplifted hand, as my left hand lifted a grenade off of my webbing. I brought my hands together smoothly. Instead of throwing my fist, I stuck my finger through the safety pin and pulled. The sound of the pin landing on the steaming floor was exceedingly loud.

"Run, Julie. Run now." I held the live grenade up next to my face. The only thing keeping the grenade from exploding was the thin spring-loaded metal spoon that I was holding down with one finger. If I relaxed my grip the fuse would ignite. Five seconds later it would explode, and possibly ignite the engine room in a massive explosion. Julie did not say anything. She nodded and then retreated. The rest of the team followed quickly. I shouted one final instruction: "Get ready to abandon ship!"

"You idiot!" the vampire roared. The wights hissed and thrashed in unison. "You will destroy us all!"

"Better my way than yours, you snail-eating bastard." I started slowly backing away. The wights exploded from the room and spread out in a skirmish line, snapping and clawing at the air. Jean Darne stepped through the portal and strode forward. In the residual steam and in the red emergency lights he looked like the traditional versions of the devil. So this must be hell.

"Give me the grenade," he ordered. Darne locked his eyes on mine. Shivers ran down my spine, though the room temperature was running around a hundred and thirty degrees.

"Oh, I'll give it to you all right."

"I compel you. Hand me the grenade, safely." The red eyes bored into mine. The words repeated themselves in my conscious mind, and burrowed into my subconscious like tendrils. I felt myself starting to comply. The wights began to inch closer. My vision began to darken.

"NO!" I shouted, shaking my head wildly. The wights shrank back.

"You have a strong will, ape man, but it won't do you any good. Give me that grenade. You do not want to die."

"Neither do you! Stay back!" I waved the grenade in front of me. A pound of high explosives was my holy symbol.

"Maybe I should just take it. I am greater than you can understand. The greater the creator, the greater the creation. My creator was the greatest of them all." Darne's devil visage continued to advance.

"If you think you're fast enough, come and get it." I backed into something solid, the escape ladder leading to the cargo bay, forty feet of iron rungs standing in the middle of the crowded room between me and safety. I knew that Darne would never let me make it to the corridor.

"You are not leaving me with any choice, human," the vampire hissed. He stopped, less than ten feet away. His wights stopped alongside of him, two on each side. There was about a yard between each of the creatures. An image of black steel plates popped unbidden into my mind.

It had to be fate.

I kept my left arm extended with the grenade. I reached down with my right and grasped the stock of my shotgun. I had fired this gun hundreds and thousands of times, practiced until my fingers had bled and my shoulder formed thick recoil calluses. My father, the ruthless perfectionist, had driven me hard when it came to shooting, because he sensed that I had a gift and would not settle for anything less than perfection in his sons. The wood was worn smooth under my glove. The Remington glistened darkly with moisture from the steam. I brought the butt into contact with my shoulder. My life came down to this instant. I needed to beat my record.

"Catch!" I tossed the grenade to Darne. The spoon released with a metallic sproing, igniting the fuse. The vampire moved as a blur to snatch the grenade out of the air. The wights mindlessly tracked the moving object. For me, time ceased. The gun and I were one seamless melding of man and machine. The safety was released as my finger knowingly sought the trigger. The muzzle rose perfectly. The trigger was pulled. The sear released. The hammer fell. The firing pin struck the primer. The powder burned.

I was bringing the muzzle onto the second wight's head before the buckshot struck the first. Fire. Work the action. Repeat. Five shots. Faster than I had ever gone before. The fusillade was a continuous roar without pause. I did not miss any of the five undead craniums.

Dropping the shotgun onto its sling, I grabbed the ladder and started to climb as fast as I humanly could. I did not wait to watch for results. I heard thuds as some of the wights fell to their backs, or collapsed to their knees.

Darne had been a Monster Hunter for longer than I had been alive. He knew what to do with live ordnance in a bad place. He had caught, and then immediately launched the grenade with a pitch that would have made any major league pitcher proud, right through the doorway and into the corridor. He did that even as my silver buckshot pellets penetrated his skull.

The grenade hit the corridor wall and rolled away, now belching orange signal smoke. It was a harmless smoke grenade.

Darne screamed as the silver burned him. "Kill him! KILL HIM!"

Two of the wights shrugged off their shattered skulls and damaged brain tissues, leapt to their feet and charged. The first began to climb after me as the second jumped onto one of the engines and began to climb up the metal surface like a spider. One wight had its eyes put out and stumbled blindly for the ladder, searching for me by smell. The last had its spinal cord severed and was flopping wildly as random impulses fired from its undead brain. I climbed as fast as I could, legs pumping, arms grasping and pulling with all of the desperate strength I could muster. The wights were far faster.

I was halfway up the ladder when the first wight clawed at my boot. Grabbing the shotgun, I fired a single round straight down between my feet. The creature's hand exploded on impact and it fell toward the ground. The blind wight quickly took its place, scurrying after me. The wall crawler matched my pace, and launched itself at the ladder. There was barely time to swing around to the other side as it crashed into the slick steel bars. I dangled over the floor as it wildly tore at me. One paralyzing touch and I was dead. I swung the shotgun like a club, smashing the wight in the face. It tore my weapon away, ripping through the sling as it fell to the deck. I slipped on a wet rung, and then forced myself to start climbing again.

Darne caught my Remington in one hand. He expertly pumped the weapon, aimed it at me and fired. The buckshot slammed into my armored chest, knocking me back. I grunted in pain, but the silver pellets stopped against the woven Kevlar. My gloves slipped on the wet steel, and I toppled backwards in flailing panic. My knee wrenched painfully as I crashed upside-down into the ladder. I hung suspended, my boot wedged under one rung, and my knee bent over the top of another, like an insane trapeze artist. The blood rushed to my head, and I watched as Darne pumped the shotgun, aimed it right between my eyes and pulled the trigger.

Nothing. The click was the loudest sound in the world. That had been my seven shots.

The blind wight surged upwards, sensing my warm blood. Still facing down, I swung my fist and shattered its undead face. The creature was knocked aside and fell. Instantly my hand went numb, and coldness rippled up my arm. I grunted as I did an upside-down sit-up, grabbed the rung above me with my left hand, and pulled. My right arm hanging limply and my knee throbbing in pain, I kept pulling myself along; push up one rung, lean in, reach up for the next one, repeat. My shotgun shattered as it ricocheted spectacularly off of the rail next to my head. Darne had a good arm.

"That was my favorite gun!" I bellowed as I kept inching nearer to the hatch. I now had a wight on the ladder below, rapidly gaining, and two more scaling the wall to pounce on me. The hatch was still ten feet away.

"You should have taken my offer," the vampire roared.

He jumped impossibly high and landed on the ladder directly below me. The metal shook under the impact. Hot water droplets flew off and struck me in the face. Three wights and a vampire in striking distance in the next few seconds. I just kept climbing because that was my only option. I was pretty much screwed.

Then the hatch opened, directly above my head. It was my savior.

It was Grant Jefferson.

"Grant! Help me!" I screamed, clawing my way toward him.

His eyes grew wide as he saw the undead creatures swarming upwards. He started to hold out his hand to me, and then he apparently decided that he did not have time before the creatures would be on him as well. I could see the fear register on his face as he did the math. They were too close. Grant stood in his polished black body armor, bristling with useful weaponry, and said two words: "Sorry, Pitt." He looked right at me as he slammed the hatch.

"Arrgghhhh!" I shouted unintelligibly. Darne laughed below. I stuck one of my legs through the ladder to lock myself into position as well as possible. I reached across my body and drew my pistol with my left hand, sighted on the closest wight spider-crawling upward, and shot it in the head four times before it slipped from the wall and fell thirty-five feet onto its back with a bone-jarring crunch. The other wall crawler leapt, and I just barely had time to align the front sight on the monster before impact, firing a silver slug through the monster's brain. The wight's momentum carried it forward where it struck one of my legs. It fell away screaming in rage. Darne easily avoided the falling undead, but the blind wight underneath was not so lucky. The two monsters collided and fell the rest of the way to the hard metal floor. This time they did not rise. My now-numb leg buckled, and I only barely held on.

Now it was just me and Darne. He flew up the ladder. I fired the remaining ten rounds as fast as I could pull the trigger. I hit him repeatedly but with almost no effect. I dropped the pistol, and he swatted it out of the air. I watched hopelessly as it flew into multiple pieces. I grasped wildly for my knife, but it was too late. He was beside me on the ladder.

His clawed hand clamped around my throat like an iron vise, choking off my air. A bullet hole in his forehead closed and squeezed out a mushroomed. 45 slug like some disastrous pimple. I learned a few things right then. Vampires did not breathe, and I was in fact still afraid of dying. I was surprised that I was thinking about Julie. I just hoped that she made it.

"Tell me just one thing, you poor brave idiot," the vampire ordered as he shook me. "How did you know about Lord Machado? How?"

"I went to France once," I gasped.

"And what does that have to do with anything?" Darne asked, fangs extending as he prepared to feed on me. I wondered if I had the strength to break free long enough to fall to my death. It beat the alternative.

"My family went there to see where one of my grandpas was buried. He died on Utah Beach."

"How touching. Now, if you tell me how you learned about Lord Machado, I'll make your death painless."

"I learned that the people in the countryside were pretty nice. But the people in Paris were a bunch of stuck-up, self-righteous pricks. I'm guessing you're from Paris."

"Idiot." Darne's jaw distended as his mouth opened like an anaconda about to eat a goat.

"Darne!" a voice shouted from below. It was Earl Harbinger. He strode into the engine room through the swirling orange smoke.

The vampire's mouth slowly closed. "Hello, Earl. It has been a while."

"Come down here and face me. You know you're not going to get out of here alive. MHI controls the whole freighter. Your goons are all staked. It's over."

"I have your man as a hostage. Let me go, or I kill him," the vampire hissed.

"You know the rules. You helped write them. Let him go and come down here and fight me. You know you've wanted to prove something for a long time. Let's go. Either way you're going to die. At least this way you get the satisfaction of seeing if I am as good as they say."

"And what if I just kill this piece of merde?" He squeezed so hard that the vertebrae in my neck popped. I cringed in pain, and involuntary tears rolled from my eyes.

"Then I'll have my men at the hatch above you throw down buckets of holy water. I'll just stake you while you're laying on the ground and sizzling. Or even better, I'll tie you up and drag you into the sun. You've seen it. You know how much that has to hurt. I swear that if you kill that Hunter then I'll drag you out of here and nail you to the superstructure and watch you burn. I figure you can probably go a while before you finally quit kicking." Harbinger unbuckled his armor straps and set his weapon harness on the deck. "Just you and me, Darne. One last go-round."

"How do I know you don't have ten Hunters waiting in the hall?"

"You don't. But you know my reputation."

"I do. Fine, Earl. Let us see who the best Hunter really is." The vampire released me and I dropped, barely managing to grab a rail. Darne let go and fell swiftly to the floor, landing as if it was nothing.

The two combatants squared off in the red light and steam. I watched in amazement as Harbinger began to circle. He was just a normal man, maybe two thirds of my weight, and in training he had never given any indication of having any sort of special fighting skills. On the other hand, I had just watched Darne perform several superhuman feats and smash my pistol into bits with his bare hands. This did not look good for Harbinger.

The hatch creaked open above me. Strong hands reached through and grasped the handles of my armor. The smell of Copenhagen told me that it was Sam Haven. He hung upside-down through the hatch and scanned the room. He saw Harbinger and Darne preparing to fight.

"Oh hell. We've got to get out of here!" Sam blurted. He tugged on me and grunted. "Help me, you hare-lipped derelict! You're too damn heavy."

"What about Harbinger?" I asked in a panic.

"Don't worry about Earl. He'll be fine. You don't want to be around him when he gets into one of his moods. Now move, damn it!" I struggled up the ladder with Sam pulling me. More hands grasped my arms and helped. Chuck Mead was there as well. The two burly men pulled me into the cargo bay. Sam threw the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it behind us.

The cargo bay was much cooler. The steel of the floor was cold under my face. I lay there for a minute, panting, as the feeling painfully returned to my arm and leg. I could not understand what had just happened. Earl Harbinger had just given up his life for mine. I was sure that Darne was tearing him to pieces as we sat here uselessly. I gradually pulled myself to a sitting position, my back resting against a sheet-metal shipping container, my stomach clenched in agony, and my knee twinged as I moved it.

"We have to help him."

"Trust me, Pitt. Earl's fine. Too late to do nothing now anyways. Let's get up to the weather deck."

"What's a weather deck?" Mead asked with a blank stare. The big Ranger was splattered with blood, and there appeared to be claw marks on his M249 Squad Automatic Weapon.

"Fricking army. The top. The top part of the ship. The part that can see sky."

"Oh, okay. Sunlight would be good."

"I'm unarmed. Darne broke my guns," I stated as Mead pulled me up.

"And that's a sorry state to be in. Here. Take this thing. The French guys don't need it no more." Sam handed me a French FAMAS bullpup assault rifle. It was a slightly unwieldy and strange-looking weapon, but it would have to do. "The crew, security team and Hunters have all been accounted for. We should be clear, but you never make no assumptions in this business. Let's get."

As we made our way out of the cargo bay, I could not help but ask, "Where is Grant?"

Sam scowled, his handlebar mustache scrunching in consternation; he finally spit a nasty clump of chew and shrugged. "Reckon I don't know. Probably in the light."

"He left me to die," I said hotly.

"Yep. I figured as much. Some folks are brave when others are watching them, but it is harder to be brave when there ain't no witnesses. Grant's never flaked on us before. He probably figured you were dead anyway, no use getting killed for no reason. I reckon that Earl will want to talk with him about that."

"Yeah. Me too." I cracked my knuckles. I had murder in my heart and it must have been obvious to Sam. He just smiled.

"Just don't kill him. We're short-handed as it is," the former SEAL pointed out. "Plus then Julie would probably shoot you, and you don't want to mess with her." Sam pointedly went back to his radio traffic, warning the others that we were coming out. I could not listen along. Somewhere along the line my radio had been broken.

The daylight was beautiful. The breeze was cool and refreshing. I was surprised at how low the sun was on the horizon. We had been in the dark bowels of the ship forever. It felt good to be alive. Almost all of the Hunters were milling around on the deck. Boone's team was somber near the sheet-draped body of their lost man. My team was there. Holly and Trip rushed to me, hugging me and slapping me on my back. Lee was lying on some blankets, his shirt off and thick bandages encircling his chest. He shouted my name and clapped. Julie was there as well. She quit giving orders long enough to run over and grab me by my armor.

"I'm sorry we couldn't come back for you. There were more of them in the corridor waiting for us. We got jumped. I'm sorry. How did you make it?" She looked really happy to see me. The feeling was mutual.

"Earl saved me. I think he's dead."

"Nope. I just talked to him on the radio. He is on his way up and he has Darne's skull as a souvenir."

"How?" I asked in surprise. My spirit lifted upon hearing that bit of news.

"Like I said. Earl is the best Hunter alive. Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you're okay. I thought for sure that you were dead…" She paused. "That was really brave. Stupid, but brave. Thank you."

I blushed. "No big deal."

She patted my arm. "I've got to go inspect the cargo and make sure nothing is damaged before I contact the clients. You stay here and get some food and something to drink. You look like crap."

She signaled for a few of the others to go with her. Nobody was going to go anywhere alone on this tub. I watched her walk away. Even coated in dried vampire juices, she was the prettiest girl I had ever known. Trip interrupted my reverie by handing me a Gatorade and a power bar. I scarfed them down as he gave me the blow by blow of their last vampire encounter. I sat on a crate of grenades and listened to my friends. What it all came down to was this: it did not matter what high tech gear we had, or what weapons, or even what training. It came down to the friends that stood by our side, and our will to fight for them. It felt really good to be alive right then, I would stand with these people any day, and I knew that they would stand by me.

I started to tell them about my close encounter with Darne when I heard a voice. I stopped instantly, leaving the others regarding me curiously. Lumbering to my feet, I limped with resolute purpose in the direction of that voice. That smarmy, prideful, movie-star voice. I bent my head from side to side and cracked my neck and back, an old habit that I had picked up in my bouncing days. I used to do that before beating down rowdy drunks.

"Hey, Grant," I said cooly as I approached him.

"Pitt. I'm glad you made it. Look, I'm really sorry, but-"

I cut him off. I was closing distance. I did not want him to run because I didn't think I could catch him.

"Grant. You left me to die."

"Wait just a second." He lifted his hands defensively. "It isn't like that. They would have gotten me too. If I left that hatch open, we would both be dead."

I tried to look nonviolent. That is difficult when you are a hulking, scar-faced brute of a man. I kept slowly closing distance. The Hunters from Boone's team that had been speaking with him sensed serious trouble and backed away.

"You left me behind." I was directly in front of him now.

The railing was to his back and he had nowhere to go. He must have sensed what was coming because he tried to duck. It did not work. I felt great satisfaction as his nose broke with an audible crunch under my meaty fist. His legs buckled and he started to fall.

I grabbed him by his neck guard and jerked him around until he was facing me. Blood was streaming down his face. He tried to perform an aikido wrist lock to break my grasp, but I was far too strong and angry to fall for that. I slammed him backwards into the railing.

"Do you know how to swim?" I asked coldly.

"Pitt, it wasn't my fault, please wait…" he begged. I punched him solidly again, this time in the mouth, smashing his lips and cracking a few teeth. My cup was not exactly overflowing with mercy.

"I said: Do. You. Know. How. To. Swim?"

"No, please. I'm sorry."

"You had best be a quick learner then," I said as I lifted him off of his feet, and heaved him over the railing.

I stepped away, not even bothering to watch him hit the water. That had felt really good. I was not worried about him drowning. In a moment of unusual kindness that surprised even me, I had hit the button to activate the emergency flotation device on his harness before tossing him. I can be a jerk, but I'm no monster.

Boone moved in front of me. He did not look happy. All of the other Hunters had come running to see what the commotion was about. From the looks on their faces I was guessing that they had seen Grant take his plunge.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded.

"He left me for dead back there. He left me in a room with a vampire and some wights. He slammed the door in my face, and he apologized before he did it. Son of a bitch is lucky I didn't just shoot him in the head."

The former SF man studied me. He signaled one of his men. "Throw Jefferson a rope."

"He isn't going to drown. I turned on his CO2 before I tossed him over."

"I'm not worried about him drowning, fucktard. I'm worried that all of the wight meat in the water has riled up the sharks and they're going to chew on his pompous ass."

Crap. I hadn't thought about sharks. Oh well. I went back to my Gatorade.

The sun was setting over the bow of the Antoine-Henri. The fourteen surviving members of the MHI teams were gathered on the deck in a rough semicircle, illuminated in our ragged exhaustion by the fading golden rays. Grant Jefferson had been safely retrieved from the water and was standing as far away from me as was possible, with a giant, white cotton swab shoved into each nostril. Harbinger had not been happy, and had promised to talk to both of us later. I was not looking forward to that, and I just hoped that it did not end up with me being terminated.

Julie had cataloged all of the valuable cargo. None of the artwork had been lost. The others had found her excitedly browsing through an open cargo container filled with priceless art. Not being a connoisseur of painting, all of the French artwork looked like bunches of colored dots to me. She had not been very happy when she had heard about what I did to her boyfriend. The look she gave me had been oddly similar to the one that she had given that first vampire before she had shafted it through the heart.

All of the crew and French Hunters had been accounted for. Tissue samples had been taken from each individual creature to be sent to the PUFF offices for confirmation and to begin the bounty paperwork. Between the huge PUFF reward and the fulfillment of the French contract, it had been a very lucrative day.

But it had its price.

The body of Jeremiah Roberts had been laid upon an unzipped body bag on the cold steel deck. His neck guard had been torn away, and unlike the neat little puncture holes that most people seem to imagine for vampire bites, the Hunter's throat was missing a massive chunk of flesh, leaving a hole from his trachea to his spine. Boone's team stood the closest to the body. This was their business. The rest of us were mere watchers. The man they called Priest said a few words. As it turned out, they called him that because he had been one once upon a time. This was a Hunter's funeral, and it was as sacred as any service inside a church.

"He was the bravest amongst us. So fearless that regular people would think he was crazy, but not us. We understood him and loved him for it. Jerry was afraid of no man or beast on Earth or from Hell. I am alive because of him. Our whole team is alive because of him. He is here because he took the brunt of the attack to protect the rest of us. And today was not the first time he did that, just the time that his luck ran out. We are taught, Greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends. My friend. Our friend. May you rest in peace. Until we meet again in the better place. Amen."

"Amen," chorused the group as one.

Boone stepped forward. His face was streaked where tears had run through the grime on his cheeks. He looked somberly down at his fallen teammate, and then he slowly knelt at his side. The warrior gently touched his friend for the last time.

"I'm sorry I failed you, Jerry. I'll be seeing you around."

I had to avert my eyes because of what I knew was coming next. I was not the only one. The sound of Boone's fighting knife being drawn from its sheath seemed to go on forever. Roberts had been bitten by a vampire. It had to be done.

When Boone was finished the rest of his team helped him to his feet. He cleaned his knife on a rag. Priest zipped up the rubber bag, and the Hunter's funeral was over.