Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (18 page)

“How do I get out?” she asked suspiciously. “Because that sounds like some creepy serial killer–type implement to just have in your truck there, Harry Houdini.”

“It’ll open automatically in eight hours.” He smiled. “So I’d suggest going to the bathroom first.”

She groaned. “I still think you’re full of shit…but assuming, just assuming that you’re not completely insane, how will I know it’s time?”

When the burning gets so bad that eating that .45 sounds like a great idea.
“Oh, believe me you’ll know.…We better move out. Good luck out there, Kerkonen.”

“Heather,” she stated flatly as she tried to stuff the big revolver into her coat pocket. “My name’s Heather, and if you’re lying to me, you’ll regret it. See you at the bomb shelter.”

Chapter 11

Santiago’s last regular visit came in the spring of 1929, my third year on the island.

“How long have you known?” he asked me as we sat on the rocks with our fishing poles.

“Months ago,” I answered truthfully. I’d been tipped off by some of the tonics Santiago had started taking. The cancer was in his bones. I could smell the sick from a mile away. It was natural for a predator to sense weakness. “I figured you’d talk when you were ready.”

“
Sic transit gloria mundi
…” He saw my confused expression. “Latin. It means the glory of man is fleeting. Such is life, my friend. The church has already sent a replacement, and he seems like a good enough man. My people will be cared for. I suppose my work here is done. I have done my best, and I go to the Lord with a heart that is free in that knowledge. Are you ready to return to life?”

I wasn’t sure. I asked what he thought.

“You’ve sat on top of this rock and let hurricanes buffet you. I’ve seen you do your very best to torture yourself into changing inadvertently. You have read the Bible seven times, absorbed everything I know about werewolves, and have spent many hours in quiet contemplation. I do not know what else you can do here. My opinion is that it is time to move on. Your curse could be a powerful tool in accomplishing the Lord’s work. Besides, I won’t be around to bring you supplies for much longer, and you are a terrible fisherman.” He reached around his back and drew a familiar revolver. He opened the cylinder and ejected a single cartridge before handing it over. “I believe this belongs to you.”

I took the silver bullet, all alone in its half-moon clip. “You know, I could give you the curse. You’d be healed immediately. Werewolves don’t get sick. You’re a strong man. You could learn to control it, better than me for sure.”

“Do not tempt me, Raymond. I am less afraid of dying than I am of failure.…Do you know why I was exiled here?” When I didn’t respond, Santiago continued. “My best friend was a Hunter as well, recruited to our group because of his bravery against the devil’s legions. One day, he was bitten by a werewolf. I was ordered by our knight-commander to end his suffering, but I lied and hid him instead. I tried to help him much as I have tried to help you. I studied everything in the Vatican about lycanthropy. I became our leading expert. However, I still failed. My brother could never control himself. He was eventually consumed with evil. Many innocents died. I was forced to take his life. I was shamed, an outcast to the order, and was banished to live out my days here in a place where I could cause no more trouble.” He turned to look at me, and his sad eyes cut through me harder than my sharpest knife. “I am counting on you to make my life’s work mean something.”

I gave him my word.

* * *

Nikolai maneuvered the snowplow through the empty streets of Copper Lake. It was actually a rather beneficial vehicle, considering the present conditions. It was huge, the cab sat up high, and a dump-truck bed full of sand added significant weight, and therefore traction. The amulet was out there, somewhere, but he couldn’t pinpoint its direction. The false moon was maddening, always just beyond the reach of his senses, and it felt like it was moving.

The storm was hurting his concentration. The scents were muddled and confused, quickly buried under pounds of snow. Past the plow’s rapidly beating wipers, the town had taken on a surreal form. They were on a suburban street, nearing the center of town. The only lights from the windows were from battery-powered lights or flickering candles, but almost everyone was asleep. Every edge and straight line constructed by man had been rounded; several feet of snow had already piled up against the small homes. Even the street signs looked like giant white lollipops. There was nothing soft about this snowfall. It was icy and brutal, harsh and unforgiving. Winter had come to smother the life from this place.

Reminds me of home.

“Shut up,” Nikolai said. “I need to concentrate.”

However, the Tvar was right. It was just like home. Their early years together had been spent in the Siberian woods, hiding by day, hunting by night, always staying one step ahead of the NKVD Hunters that had so ruthlessly pursued them. They’d raided the small villages, usually eating livestock or, if the Tvar was in control, people, often children. The Tvar preferred children, said they tasted better. Sometimes the lines blurred and he could not remember which one of them had committed the latest atrocities.

It had been a hard time for Nikolai, the idealistic young man whose life had been destroyed after he’d been mauled by a werewolf, but he’d come to understand the new part of himself and had brokered a peace between the two entities that lived inside the same body. They had come to terms, and that had made them truly dangerous.

Many of Stalin’s finest Hunters had died after underestimating them. Eventually, after a chase that had taken them across the most unforgiving terrain in the motherland to a valley high in the Altay Krai, the NKVD had finally cornered them.

Strangely, rather than a silver bullet, they had been offered a pardon. Impressed by reports of the chase, Stalin himself had decided that young Nikolai Petrov would be a remarkable asset to the cause. The man of steel had a fearsome old werewolf serving him and had decided that Nikolai was to be his protégé. In one fell swoop, Nikolai had been given a mission, a mentor, and a purpose.

You miss it.

“Sometimes,” Nikolai answered truthfully. The mission had ultimately been a failure, their mentor a madman. Yet Stalin had given him something greater than himself to believe in. The loss of the Soviet Union and its subsequent desecration had left him empty and selling his abilities to the highest bidders in a world without purpose. Nikolai was a fatalistic man without a bit of optimism in his soul.

Yet, surprisingly, he had found a purpose again, a reason to live. He’d found a human girl who did not fear him. It had seemed so impossible.
Lila.
She’d demanded the best from him and loved him despite the things he had done. So he’d silenced the Tvar. Oh, how it had fought, but in the end, Nikolai had won. They had built a life. Nikolai had lived as a man. They had been happy, for a time.…Before Harbinger had recently ruined everything.

So Nikolai had chosen to set his other half free. It had become so much more demanding since then. It made it difficult to think clearly.

I smell killing.

He stomped on the brakes as a figure ran into the street ahead and fell. The giant vehicle weighed many tons and slid to a gritty stop, inches from crushing the man beneath the plow.

Nikolai took the Val rifle in hand and stepped out of the truck. He dropped into the snow and walked around the front. The man was already scrambling to his feet and had put one hand on the ice-crusted plow blade to steady himself. Clad only in a pair of blue coveralls, he was shivering uncontrollably and stunk of fear so badly that Nikolai could actually taste it on his tongue.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” the man cried, looking back over his shoulder, terrified.

Nikolai’s nostrils twitched. Another werewolf was closing fast. She had been tracking this man, and it was easy to understand how, since his fear stink was like a beacon. Nikolai could not hear the female’s approach over the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine and the howl of the wind. The headlights illuminated only a small patch of road, and the snow was so thick that it was as if the air was filled with hissing static. Nikolai put the Val’s stock to his shoulder and deactivated the safety. The metal was ice cold against his cheek. It gave him clarity.

The werewolf hurled herself through the static. The man-prey screamed and fell against the plow as Nikolai calmly lined up the sights and pulled the trigger of the suppressed rifle. The only sound was the metallic
clack
of the action flying back and forth and the sharp
thwack
of the bullet’s impact. The werewolf stumbled as the heavy projectile pierced her leg, just as he’d intended. She kept coming, but Nikolai stepped forward and slammed his palm into the inferior creature’s snout.

She squealed like a pup and landed on her back. Rolling through the snow, she retreated on all fours, crying, leaving a bright red trail behind.

Finish her!

“I know what I’m doing,” Nikolai said.

A hand fell on his coat. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” the prey cried pathetically, as he got out of the snow. “You saved my life. That thing tore Bud apart. It ripped his throat right out, and then it came after me! There’s more of them there, a whole bunch! We’re all gonna die!”

The human’s sobs sickened him. It was hard to imagine that he’d once been that soft and pathetic himself.

You were. Until I came along.

“Control yourself,” Nikolai ordered. “Where are the creatures?”

Still shaking uncontrollably, he wiped his eyes. His name tag read Stevenson. Besides fear, he smelled of petrol and cigarettes. “At the grocery store. Bud was unloading his ice-cream truck. I went in to fire up the generator. Powers out,” he explained as Nikolai cocked his head to the side. The young werewolves would have been attracted to the noise and activity. “Have to keep the heat on or the veggies wilt.” Shivering, he folded his arms in a vain attempt to stay warm. “Thanks, buddy. My name’s Justin. You saved my bacon. We better get out of here, though. There were at least two more of tho—”

Nikolai reached up, grabbed a handful of hair, and brutally drove Justin’s face into the thick metal at the top of the plow blade. There was a sickening crack as teeth shattered. Nikolai let him flop limply into the snow.

Excellent.

For a moment he wasn’t sure if that impulsive action had been his, or the Tvar within. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Nikolai decided to accept responsibility. “His whining annoyed me.”

He walked over to where the other werewolf had fallen. The blood splatter was bright and easy to spot on the snow. He got on his knees and drank in the scent, then picked up a handful of slush and put it in his mouth, rolling it around, savoring the arterial blood and the smoky taste of bone marrow. She was young and had not been one of them for long, a few months perhaps, but long enough to be a valued member of the enemy pack. Particles of silver began to burn his gums, so he spit the blood out.

Badly wounded, unable to regenerate from the poisonous silver, she would surely retreat to her Alpha to die amongst her pack.

Clever and ruthless. I like this side of us.

Justin moaned incoherently as he returned to the truck. Nikolai climbed back into the cab, ground it into gear, and drove, trapping and dragging the weak human beneath the plow blade. The body was dislodged within half a block and crushed beneath the tires. The bump barely registered. Nikolai rolled the window down as he drove slowly, savoring the painful cold and following the scent of blood.

* * *

Not knowing who else in her small department was still alive, Heather had tried Sheriff Hintze’s home first. It was near the station, by itself at the end of a long driveway, but Harbinger’s truck was barely sufficient to get even that far without chains. No one who lived in Copper County was a stranger to snow, but this storm was absurd, even by Michigan standards. The only reason the roads were still passable at all was because the howling wind was pushing most of the accumulation off the flat spots. There had to have been two feet in the last hour.

The lack of radio and phone was infuriating. Help was as close as the next county over, but there was no way to reach them. As soon as she had some help, she’d send somebody on a snowmobile, but until then she was on her own. She had left a note at the station, just in case somebody else came in, but she doubted that anyone would. Copper County was a relatively unpopulated place and had a correspondingly small sheriff’s department. There weren’t that many deputies to begin with, and she knew that almost half of them had been killed in the last few hours. Heather had a bad feeling about the others.

Heather knew that she was too late as soon as she arrived at the sheriff’s house. His front door was wide open, already lodged in place by a fresh drift. The beam of her flashlight found what was left of Sheriff Hintze right inside the front hall, wearing pajamas and missing most of his neck.

A few hours ago, that sight would have scared her, perhaps even made her nauseous. Now she just felt anger. She crouched next to the body, with her Winchester 1300 ready to blast anything that moved, but the house was quiet except for the creaking of old boards. The thing that had done this was long gone. She caught herself sniffing the air, shook her head, and retreated to the porch.

Harbinger had said that it was a coordinated attack. Of course they had eliminated the sheriff. Her boss had been a sharp man and would have stood in their way. Yet why did she believe Harbinger? He was a mystery. And if she were to believe what Harbinger told her about the attack, then why shouldn’t she believe him about the other things he had said? Her shoulder itched, but it didn’t even hurt in the slightest. She was scared to look at it.

The night had already been so emotionally draining that the sight of her dead boss hadn’t even disturbed her. Heather simply returned to the still-running pickup truck and set out for her next destination. She was so hungry it hurt. Heather could smell the food in the backseat and dragged Harbinger’s cooler around. Barely slowing to rip the packaging off, she started stuffing her face, not even caring what it was, as she drove back down the sheriff’s driveway. Regardless of what Harbinger told her, she still had responsibilities to attend to. She’d taken an oath to protect and serve, and she took that oath very seriously.