The Big Reap

10.

“Good morning, Collector. I see you’re getting an early start.”

I looked up from my drink — some strange carnivore’s version of a Bloody Mary garnished not with a celery stalk but a single hot-smoked pork rib of all things — to see two blurry Liliths swimming in my meat-suit’s vision, wearing wisp-thin matching silk slip dresses the color of black coffee. I confess, my choice of drink seemed a tad morbid and insensitive, given that I’d not nine hours ago seen poor Topher reduced to a disemboweled, blood-soaked corpse, but it was scarcely 10am in Colorado Springs, and my beverage choices were limited. Took me a good ten minutes’ walk through the mostly residential, tree-lined streets surrounding the sprawling Penrose-St Francis hospital complex before I found anyplace that served booze, and even then, it was just a quaint little brunch joint whose drink menu consisted entirely of Bellinis, Mimosas, and Bloody Marys. You should have seen the looks I got when I ordered one of each to start, and then a round of three more Bloody Marys when I discovered I was none too fond of champagne cocktails. I’d waved off the wait staff’s repeated — and increasingly desperate — attempts to solicit a food order from me, but now that I realized the room was spinning, and my vision was skipping about like a movie that’s jumped its reel, I wondered if maybe I made the wrong call on that front. I made a mental note to ask for some steak and eggs if I hadn’t yet scared the waitress off for good.

“Yeah, well.” I slurred. “Rough night.”

“So I gathered. Were you… successful in your mission?”

I snort-laughed at the politesse of her euphemism. “Yup. I succeeded the living shit outta them,” I said. “And this time, I only killed one civvie doing it. I think my batting average is improving. Although my poor meat-suit probably won’t be playing piano with that hand anytime soon.”

Lilith looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but the waitstaff had long since started avoiding me, and in fact had taken to seating other patrons as far from me as possible about an hour ago, when they decided I was trouble. I think the only reason they’d yet to ask me to leave is because they were worried I’d make a scene. Even chance they weren’t wrong.

You know the problem with going toe-to-toe with a pair of creepy, supernatural dog-beasts in the middle of the Colorado wilds? Once you’re done getting knocked around six ways from Sunday and you kill the fuckers, you’re still stuck out in the Colorado wilds.

At least the walking pole worked like a charm. Soon as I stabbed that evil bitch through Nicholas-not-Nicky’s hand, she and I both started thrumming. My angle was awkward, though, and stabbing through bone both hand- and breast- meant I didn’t drive the pole clean through like with Magnusson or Jain. So there was an awkward moment or two when Angry Dog Chick (it seems weird to me — sad, even — that I still don’t know her name, but unlike human souls, the Brethren’s do not speak to me when I touch them) was reeling backward trying to shake me, as I remained pinned to her dinner table-sized chest. Eventually, I rode her to the ground, and punched the pole through with all my might. The forest rattled and shook as she expired, the land she called home mourning her if no one else would.

Once the beast was felled, and the fog of battle lifted, the pain in Nicholas-not-Nicky’s hand was excruciating. A tender, hesitant Zadie did her best to wrap it for me with a rag torn from her own shirt, flinching every time I winced. When she finished, I thanked her by name, and she corrected me. “Please, Nick, or Not-Nick, or whoever you are — call me Susan.” I guess she was done pretending to be someone she was not — her hipster mask of cool remove discarded. Wish I could say the same, but my whole existence is pretending. Lying. Burying myself so deep I’m not sure I’ll ever find the guy I was again.

Neither of us were in any shape to hike out in the dark. So instead, we called 911 on Topher’s sat phone, and left the line open until they pinpointed our location. Then we huddled together beside the cooling embers of the cabin and waited for our saviors and the morning light to arrive.

Zadie — Susan, I mean — spent most of the night crying. I held her wordlessly and let her weep. What could I have said? There were no words to make her better. And I wouldn’t have said them if there were, for what is mourning if not love’s darker aspect? Seems to me, it’s best never to quash love or push it away, regardless of its form, or of its cost. Sometimes, I think my last tattered shreds of love are all that keep me from becoming as monstrous as the Brethren themselves.

She loved Topher with all her heart, that much was clear. Enough to follow him on his insane quest for answers, for truth, for understanding. You ask me, we’re not built for any of the three. We’re wired for survival, nothing more. Topher’s ruined form, which Susan insisted we drag nearer to the waning firelight so he would not be picked over by animals, stood as a sad monument to the fact that survival and truth were two ends often at odds with one another.

Christ. Listen to me. Leave it to booze to make even a denizen of hell all maudlin and philosophical.

Anyways, by the time the rescue crew arrived — by ATV, not helicopter as I’d envisioned — the embers of the cabin fire were cold and dead, and the two Brethren corpses had withered to dust. That left only Topher to explain. Poor Susan was too despondent to answer the men’s inquiries, so I filled in the gaps where I could. Some kind of large animal. Hit too fast for us to see. Dragged Topher away from us so quickly, we gave chase without thinking, and wound up lost. By the time we caught up, this was all of him that was left. And this fire? Some kind of abandoned structure, we told them. Collapsed for decades, no doubt, before we ever stumbled across it. Without means to fell a tree, it was the only wood we had available to burn. And why not just pitch our tents? The body, I told them. She couldn’t bear to leave it. And so we sat together in the bitter cold beneath the stars, and watched the fire die as we mourned our friend.

The men made some noises about bears and mountain lions, but it was clear by the looks they shared when they thought I wasn’t looking that they had no idea what could have done this. But they didn’t seem to think Susan or Nicholas did, so that was something, at least. They did ask whether we’d captured any footage of the attack, but I told them the camera wasn’t rolling at the time, and anyway, it was damaged in the chase that ensued — beyond repair, as near as I could tell.

That last part was true enough. I spent twenty minutes bashing the camera with a rock before they found us on the off chance I’d inadvertently recorded anything.

I stuck with Susan until the hospital. Then I hopped a ride inside an orderly just before they put me under for hand-surgery. Felt the bile rise in his throat when I took over, but I sucked wind, and willed him not to puke. He didn’t, his body acquiescing to my commands more easily than I would have expected. It’d been that way of late. Guess I was developing the knack. I wondered if maybe that means I’m a little less human that I used to be. I wondered why I didn’t care much about that fact. Told myself it was because I had a job to do, but I didn’t fully believe it. If you ask me, I didn’t care much about my humanity slowly bleeding away because the part of me that would have was now in the minority.

Nicholas started ranting about monsters and possession just before I left the room in my new meat-suit. Freaked out and started thrashing on the gurney. They strapped him down — for his own safety, they kept telling him — and sedated him. His lids slammed shut like a set of blinds whose string’d been pulled, and the poor guy was finally, briefly, at peace. He’d probably start right back up with the freak-out when the drugs wore off. The scuttlebutt at the nurse’s station afterward was that he’d experienced a mental break on account of all he’d seen. For what it’s worth, they weren’t far from wrong. Except for the part where they thought the insane nonsense he was spouting wasn’t true.

Personally, I find that judicious application of alcohol helps stave off such mental breaks. Hell, some days it’s all that keeps me from being Thorazined into oblivion and left to drool inside my very own padded cell. No lie, today was one of those days. Which is why — for strictly therapeutic purposes, you understand — I walked straight out of the hospital in my new meat-suit, not even bothering to ditch the scrubs in favor of street clothes, and found myself a drink or six.

“So that makes what?” asked Lilith, mock-sweet as Splenda, “Four Brethren down? Just think, you’ve only five to go.”

“Yay,” I said. “Can’t hardly wait.”

“I can tell. The enthusiasm’s coming off of you in waves. No, wait,” she amended, “those are vodka fumes.”

“No worries. I’ll ditch this skin-suit before the hangover hits.”

“How lovely for him,” she replied drolly. “Perhaps I could be of assistance in identifying your next vessel.”

“I take that to mean you’ve got a new assignment for me?”

“That’s right.”

“Another feral Brethren?”

“Feral, no. Brethren, yes. Leads on the two remaining feral Brethren have been scant of late, I confess. For a time, I felt as though I might be closing in on one of them in rural Brazil. I’ve been following centuries of lore about a strange creature dragging villagers and livestock into the dark waters of the Amazon under cover of night. Rumors of new abductions came at a rate of one or two a week stretching as far back as there’ve been people there to spread them. But a few months back, they seem to have ceased.”

“You think whatever’s been, uh, eating all those people and chickens or whatever has gotten wise to what we’re doing?”

“I think it’s likelier than a sudden change in diet,” she replied. “And regardless, I think you’re unlikely to find the thing if it’s not hunting.”

I thought back to Jain’s words in the tunnels, to the nameless dog-beast’s in the forest just last night. “Ricou,” I said.

Lilith’s eyebrows shot up, and she flashed me a look of puzzled surprise. “Excuse me?”

“The thing you’ve been tracking,” I said. “I think its name is Ricou.”

“That’s all well and good, Collector, but as I said, this Ricou of yours seems to’ve pulled up stakes, or at the very least, stopped hunting, which is one of two reasons why I think it’s time to move on one of the three members of the Brethren who’re still on hell’s radar.”

“Do I get to pick from off the menu, or do you have a particular one in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. His name is Grigori.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why him?”

“His behavior’s grown erratic of late. Ever since our ill-fated first attempt to eliminate he and his fellow Brethren, he’s been moving vast quantities of money around — liquidating assets, reshuffling the deck on his portfolio of shell corporations, offshore accounts, and corporate holdings. Some of that went to the other two we’d been monitoring — known to us as Drustanus and Yseult — who’ve since vanished. And I think he’s looking to do the same. The other two are far from feral, but they’re both vicious and impulsive, operating strictly hand-to-mouth and leaving a bloody trail of bodies in their wake; without Grigori’s aid, I’ve no doubt we could track them down in no time. But a man of his means, who’s spent fifty lifetimes learning to live beneath the radar, can no doubt hide a good long time. If we allow him to vanish, it may take centuries to find him.”

“‘Ill-fated first attempt’,” I parroted. “Funny way of saying this guy and his buddies slaughtered the last set of folks hell sent to kill them.”

“I rather thought you wouldn’t like to be reminded of that fact.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t like I ever forgot. And you buried the lede just now, didn’t you? The fact is, this guy ain’t just my next target, he’s the biggest and baddest of the bunch. Not only that, but he’s helped the remaining Brethren on our list disappear, so for all intents and purposes that makes him our only play.”

Lilith paused a good long while before answering. “You’re not wrong,” she said grudgingly.

“Okay, then, lemme ask you, if he’s the guy who helped the other two fall off your radar, doesn’t that mean the only reason he’s number one on hell’s Most Wanted list is because he fucking volunteered? Or, put another way, does this look at all to you like one seriously big-ass trap?”

“Possibly,” she said, “but I’m afraid we’ve no other choice. These orders come down from on high.”

“You’ve,” I corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“What you meant was you’ve no other choice.”

Lilith smiled as if she were a teenager caught sneaking a twenty from her pushover dad’s wallet. “I suppose I did, at that.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic. So where’m I headed?”

“That’s the spirit,” Lilith said, clapping me on the shoulder as if I’d responded with great brio and not resigned indifference. “And perhaps your task will prove less unpleasant than you suspect. After all, I understand the Carpathians are quite pleasant this time of year.”

“The Carpathians.” Me, incredulous.

“That’s right.”

“As in Transylvania.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’ll admit, it’s a tad arch, but I assure you I am not,” said Lilith

“You got an address?”

Lilith paused. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

She sighed. “When we last moved on him, he was at his summer home on the French Riviera, one of seven such homes we’ve routinely monitored over the years. Needless to say, he hasn’t been back since. We’ve always suspected he keeps another abode — home base, perhaps, or safe house — but wherever it is, it’s always been well hidden to our seers. He must have masked it with some kind of occlusion spell, the strongest of its kind I’ve ever seen, in point of fact.”

My mind tracked back to Pemberton Baths, which seemed to go all Teflon beneath my eyeballs’ gaze, and to the cabin of last night, which existed only in the viewfinder of Nicholas-not-Nicky’s camera. “Seems the Brethren are quite fond of those,” I said.

“Yes, well. Our seers had their third eyes on him after the Riviera debacle, tracking his movements eastward across the continent remotely, but then, suddenly, he vanished. Working with our best chronomancers, those seers were able to revisit the moment of his disappearance again and again in their minds, and have narrowed his position down to the twenty-square-mile patch of countryside surrounding Bucura Lake, which is nestled in the southeastern elbow of the Carpathian Mountains.”

“Awesome,” I said. “I can’t tell you how psyched I am at the prospect of traipsing around a whole new batch of cold-ass mountains, looking for the biggest, scariest baddie left on the table.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she said, and then she left me to continue getting stinking drunk in peace.