Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (17 page)

The flesh was covered in beads of sweat. Lips peeled back in an unconscious grimace of pain as the jaws seemed to shrink, finally disappearing into the skull, leaving a cartiligious lump where a human nose would be. The skin was loose, dangling and wet. It slowly retracted until the nostril holes were in the right place, and the thing sucked in a great pained breath.

Heather stepped back, biting a knuckle. The worst part was the terrible grinding noise and the moans of suffering. The nearly human parody of a face opened its eyes. One was gold. One was brown. He looked around, terrified, his mouth open, teeth still sharp.
They’re real.
Heather felt a sudden urge to vomit.

Harbinger drew his revolver and placed it against the werewolf’s forehead. “Easy there, partner. No need to make this awkward.”

She could recognize him easily now. The prisoner’s voice was horribly slurred, far too deep. “What’ve you done to me?”

“Pumped enough drugs into your system to date-rape a yak. We’re gonna have us a chat.”

The eyes closed as the prisoner continued panting. There was a horrid scraping noise that came from his teeth that made Heather shiver like fingernails on a chalkboard. Gradually his breathing slowed. His glistening skin turned to a normal shade. When his eyes reopened, they were both brown. “You’re the Harbinger,” he stated, voice at near human tones.

“One and the same,” he answered, cigarette dangling from the edge of his mouth. “Let me in on a little secret, friend. What’s Nikolai here for?”

The prisoner tried to sit up, but was too drugged. He collapsed back into a heap. He began to laugh. It was a horribly distorted noise. “Nikolai’s here for the same reason you are.”

“I want straight answers, or I start hurting you. Trust me. You can torture something that regenerates
forever
.”

“You’re both fools, slaves to the old ways. You’re slaves to your instincts.”

Harbinger frowned. “That ain’t a very nice way to talk about your leader.”

The prisoner growled. “Nikolai’s no more worthy to lead our pack than you are, traitor. We answer the call of the Alpha. He doesn’t lock himself in a cage like a coward or keep part of himself chained inside his own head! My father is the king of all werewolves!”

Harbinger glanced at Heather. “Hmm…I must’ve missed that memo.” He went back to the prisoner. “Tell me about this Alpha. I’d love to meet him sometime.”

“Oh, you will.” The prisoner giggled madly. It was an unnerving sound. “He’s coming to take your soul. He’ll use it to give life to the
vulkodlak.
” The word was guttural, slurred.

“What’s a vulk-odd-lack?” Harbinger asked. His pronunciation wasn’t even close.

“Oh, you’ll see!” he exclaimed with glee. “They’re beautiful angels. Just beautiful. They’re going to usher in a new age. The one-handed witch has revealed the way! But for them to be born he needs a perfect soul to give them life!”

Harbinger rolled his eyes. “Metaphysical bullshit. I swear, it’s always some sort of metaphysical bullshit with these guys. Plug your ears, Kerkonen,” he told Heather. She barely had time to comply before he pointed his gun at the werewolf’s kneecap and blasted it into shards of bone and meat. Screaming, the prisoner grabbed his leg. “Okay, now that I’ve got your attention, get all poetic on me again, and you lose the other one. Got it? Why’s your pack in Copper Lake?”

Grimacing, he pointed one bloody hand at Heather. “We’re here because of her blood!” Harbinger moved his gun to the other knee. “Wait! No, really! One of her ancestors, the Finn, he stole something valuable from our people. He hid it here.”

“Grandpa?” Heather asked.

“He’s a thief! He’s just lucky he got the chance to die before the Alpha tracked him down. But this whole town will pay for his sins!”

“What?” Harbinger shouted, then punched the man in his damaged knee. “What did he steal?”

“All right, all right.” The prisoner whimpered. “The amulet of Koschei the Deathless. Man, that hurts!”

“I
hate
magic. That must be the source of the surge. What’s it do?”

“It makes our kind invincible. The bearer can’t die, just like Koschei of old. The moon no longer matters! The wearer’s children receive blessings, too. It makes us all stronger. The birth of the
vulkodlak
are another. The pack that has the amulet can never be defeated.”

“Where’s he hiding?” Harbinger’s voice was a low growl. Heather took an unconscious step back.

The prisoner began to laugh. “You think he’s hiding? You think he brought you here so that he could hide? To hide from the Russian? No! Our time living in the dark is over. We’ve been set free. Tonight the pack is going to feast and grow strong. He’s coming for you! He’s coming to take your soul!” The laughter continued, bubbling off into insanity.

“That’s enough,” Harbinger stated, and Heather could sense the grim finality in his voice.

“Harbinger, don’t,” Heather pleaded. This was wrong. She was a peace officer. This man was in her custody.

“What? Gonna lock him up? Figure enough blood’s been shed already and let him go? You become the animal, you cross that line, you get no mercy. It don’t work that way.” Harbinger turned his attention back to the prisoner. “
I
don’t work that way. Any last words, asshole?”

“The Alpha will take your soul!” the prisoner screamed. “All of your souls!”

This wasn’t right, but she looked at the decapitated corpse that had been one of her friends, and she didn’t say another word.

“Ears.” Harbinger stated. Heather complied and this time Harbinger shot the prisoner in the chest. The insane laughter gurgled off into a long groan.

Harbinger stepped away, examining the wound he’d just inflicted. “Interesting. Silver still works on werewolves created before that surge just fine. It’s only the new ones that are immune.”

The prisoner was in obvious pain, but fearless in his devotion. “Fool. I’m of his pack. He’ll sense my death and come for you.” His voice trailed off.

Earl nodded. “Good. Let’s hurry him along then,” he said as he shot the dying man in the face.

* * *

The sudden death of the child stung him. It was not a true physical pain, more of a sense of loss, an empty space in the bonds of the pack. The pack had just been made less. His child’s blood called from the dust for vengeance.

“Your sacrifice was not in vain,” he whispered to the wind, then turned to the witch. “One of the pack has fallen.”

“Which one got him?” She didn’t seem surprised. “Harbinger or Petrov?”

“What does it matter? Come on. It is almost time.”

The witch’s nod was barely perceptible inside her great fur hood. He set out through the deep snow at a speed her weak human legs could never possibly match. One of her diggers gently extended a metal hand, and she gratefully climbed into its arms. The digger held her close, like a mother would hold a child, only in this case the reverse was true. The diggers set out after the running Alpha.

* * *

Disgusted, Earl holstered his revolver and stomped away from the corpse. This was a nightmare scenario. An entire pack of werewolves had declared war on mankind.

Packs formed occasionally, and when they did, they’d often hunt, but always on the sly. They’d kidnap runaways and homeless, take them out to the sticks and chase them down, then melt away to do it again later. Every time he’d discovered this, he’d made sure that MHI had tracked them down and eliminated the rogue pack. This was different. This pack were assaulting an entire community. The town was cut off from the outside. People were isolated in their homes, unaware of what was coming. It would be a slaughter.

Werewolves lived on the periphery. Outright war with mankind was insanity. It would take an incredibly strong leader to force this kind of counter-instinctual behavior onto his followers. That level of suicidal loyalty was bizarre. This was unnatural, a perversion of the natural order of things. It broke
his
rules.

And that really pissed him off.

The deputy was still staring at the body, probably just now realizing that he hadn’t been lying, and that she was destined to that same fate. “Kerkonen,” he said. It took her a second to focus. “You said you were gonna warn everyone. What’s your plan?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“The pack will work its way inward, probably from multiple directions. They’ll kill the ones they think are threats first, while they’re not expecting it. Like this.” He gestured around the damaged station. “They’ll save the remainder for when they’ve got the time.”

She went back to staring at the body. “How do you know all this?”

“Because that’s how I’d do it. Wake everyone you can. Reliable folks first. Have them start spreading the word. Get into groups. There’s safety in numbers. Individuals and stragglers are easy to pick off. Is there a secure building in town? Something you can fortify?”

“A couple of the churches are pretty solid…” she began.

“Too flammable. They look like animals, but they ain’t stupid. They’ll burn you out.”

“The high school. The population used to be a lot bigger before the mines went away, so they built a giant gymnasium.”

“Why? That doesn’t sound very good.”

“Not this thing. It’s huge, its solid, and the windows are all up high. There’s even an old civil-defense bunker under it, because it was built back in the Sixties, and there used to be an Air Force base down the road back then. They still use the bomb shelter under the gym for storage. There’s only one way in, and it’s all concrete. Even the roof is metal. It’d be hard to set on fire.”

Earl nodded. That was good thinking. “Start moving people there. If space is limited get the women and kids inside and lock it up tight. And if anybody has a bite or a scratch, or you even suspect that they’ve got one, don’t you dare put them in that vault. I’ve got cases of silver ammo in three calibers in my truck you can have. Regular ammo will work, but they’ll heal quick, so hit them again while they’re down. Cut their heads off, remove their hearts, or set them on fire. No mercy.”

“We can do that,” she promised. Earl nodded approvingly. These U.P. folks had spine. “Where will you be?”

“Doing what I do best. I’m going on the offensive. The most effective thing I can do for your town is to start picking them off. The more I kill, the less your people have to worry about.”

“How many of these things are we talking about?”

“Unknown,” he answered truthfully. That probably would have been a good question to ask the dead guy, but it was a touch late for that. But from the complicated smells when he’d first arrived in town…“At least a dozen, maybe twice that.”

The more troubling question was what about the new ones? Normally it took weeks for the metamorphosis to take place and the power of the full moon to unleash it. He’d already seen two cases of the change happening in less than a day, and they had both been set off because of that unnatural surge.

He glanced at Kerkonen suspiciously. She was a ticking bomb and didn’t even realize it yet.

He’d tried to help others who’d been cursed, but Santiago had been right. It was almost impossible to learn to control the curse. It wasn’t just a physical mutation, it was a change at the most fundamental of psychological and philosophical levels. Over the years he’d had several of his Hunters end up bitten. They had each been a warrior, tough, hard as nails, but in the end every last one of them had failed. He’d tried to help dozens of the survivors that he’d met over the years. He’d had young werewolves instinctively seek him out, looking for guidance.…All of them were dead now. Most eventually by their own hand, or if they lacked the strength, by Earl’s.

Mastering the curse took more than locking yourself behind impenetrable walls a few nights a month. It made you into a perfect killer every single day. And it made you
want
it.

This was the hard part. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, Deputy Kerkonen. What I’m about to say is gonna be difficult. You’re infected. I need you to deal with that. These people need you right now.”

“Infected?” she asked incredulously. “Like a disease? What do we do?”

“There’s no cure. There never has been. Believe me, a lot of really smart folks have tried. Bites are always infectious. If you start to change, you’re gonna become part of the problem.” He drew his backup gun, a snub-nosed 625, spun it around in his hand and held it out to her, butt first. “This is the solution.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“It’s loaded with silver bullets. If you start to change, stick this in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

“That’s—”

“Necessary,” he stated coldly. “Otherwise when you change, you’ll murder everyone around you. You’ll kill, and kill, and kill again, until you’re bloated on blood, and then you’ll puke it up and go back for more. The first time is always the worst.”

“I don’t believe you,” she insisted, louder this time.

“Yes. Yes, you do.” The Smith & Wesson stayed there, between them. “Take this. I’ve got a spare.”

Finally, she asked, “Is there any other way?”

He had the portable time-lock cage in the truck, brought specifically just in case he was stuck out during the full moon.…But he’d brought that for himself. It barely fit one. If that surge came back any stronger, it was his life insurance.

Kerkonen was terrified, but trying not to show it. She put on a tough act. Earl could only tell because he could smell the fear on her skin. Her hand closed around the gun, and she took it from him hesitantly.

At least he would have a chance of controlling himself if the surge came again. She didn’t. The drugs were unreliable and a safe dose might not work fast enough. Enough to knock her out for sure was enough to kill her. Silver bullets hadn’t worked on the other new werewolf, so they might not on her, either, and he really didn’t want to kill the poor scared girl himself. He wasn’t some heartless MCB executioner.

Damn it…
He made up his mind. “There is something. If you can secure yourself, you can wait it out. It’s got to be extremely solid, though. You saw what he did to your jail cell. Your strength goes through the roof. But I’ve got a box in the back of my truck that’ll hold a werewolf.” He pulled out his key ring and passed them over. “Take my truck. Get in there if you need to. Pull the lid shut behind you, and it’ll lock.”