Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (36 page)

Harbinger was a man of convictions. There was no doubt that if Nikolai failed this test he would die. Death was a frightening prospect, as werewolves desired survival above all, but Nikolai was a man of his word, and he knew that Harbinger, despite his ruthlessness, was not without mercy. He’d thought of that as weakness before, but now he needed that mercy. They would prove themselves, then he would avenge Lila, and the Tvar’s fury would be quenched in the blood of Harbinger’s enemies.

“First question, did you kill Van Huong?”

Nikolai did not know that name. “Who?”

“Wrong answer,” Harbinger stated. “Pull the trigger.”

When not fighting for control, his human mind was extremely analytical under stress. One in six. A seventeen percent chance. It was a reasonable sacrifice to make for peace.

CLICK

The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He slowly exhaled. His finger creeped forward, and the trigger reset.

“Van was my translator. Disappeared during your attack, was listed as MIA. Ringing any bells?”

Nikolai remembered now. They’d put together an extensive dossier on all of Special Task Force Unicorn, supernatural and normal, before the assault. “Yes. I did. I killed him myself.”

Harbinger’s eyes hardened behind the iron sights of the old Thompson. “He was a good kid.”

“If it is any consolation, I snuck up on him and snapped his neck. It was quick. He never felt a thing.”

“Neither will you. Wrong answer. Pull the trigger.”

“But that wasn’t even a question—”

“
Pull the trigger!
” Harbinger bellowed.

Two of six. Thirty-three percent. Or to look at it another way, one of five remaining chambers was loaded. Twenty percent. Nikolai held his breath.

“Pull the trigger,” Harbinger ordered. “Or I will.”

He could hear the cylinder rotate.
CLICK.

Harbinger sounded grudgingly impressed. “Who betrayed us? How did you find the task force?”

It wasn’t like it was a state secret any longer. “We brought in a Kazakh orc tracker. All orcs have a specialty, and nothing could elude this one. It took him some time to acclimatize to the terrain, but once he did, he led us right to you. ”

“Orcs sure can be talented. I inherited a bunch of Uzbeks. Good folks.”

“You still gave us quite the chase.”

“That we did.” Harbinger’s lips turned up slightly, in a semblance of a smile. “It was a hell of a fight.”

“Admit it, you enjoyed the challenge.”

“A bit.” Harbinger chuckled, then he grew deadly serious. “Oh, and by the way…wrong answer.”

Third of six. Fifty percent. Even odds of death; flip a coin. Or one live round in the remaining four chambers. Only a twenty-five percent chance.

That is not helping.

Nikolai’s voice cracked a bit. It made him ashamed. “I am beginning to believe there are no right answers in this test of yours.”

Harbinger shrugged. “Maybe.”

Enough of this. This is madness. Turn it on him! Kill Harbinger! Kill them all—

CLICK.

He was shaking badly. His mouth was dry. His stomach ached with nervous acid. Going back was not an option. Only Harbinger or the other Alpha could defeat them, and the other Alpha had murdered Lila. Masterless, he was nothing but an animal. Death was preferable to failure. Nikolai forced himself to speak. “Next?”

The nub of Harbinger’s cigarette dangled from his lip, forgotten. “Impressive. I want you to know that. You may be an evil man, Nikolai, but you’re an impressive man. I’ve got one last question.”

Four of six. Sixty-seven percent chance that this question would bring a silver bullet. Or one in three remaining possibilities. Thirty-three percent.

“What do you regret?”

It seemed an odd question, but not to someone like Harbinger. He was, above all, a creature of moral absolutes. He pondered on the answer. Nikolai Petrov had taken so many innocent lives over the decades that numbering them seemed like an impossibility. He’d committed atrocities, followed madmen, murdered, burned, tortured, destroyed, and wrecked his way across half the world. He’d fed the gulags, hammering down the nails that stuck out. He’d killed the dissidents, ripping them from their homes and leaving the half-eaten corpses in the streets as a warning to the others. A cog in the greatest death machine ever, he had lived a life free of mercy, compassion, or accountability. And most of that had been done with the full complicity of his human mind. He couldn’t even blame it on the curse.

You named me Tvar, the word for feral beast, but which of us is the real animal?

There was only one true answer. “I regret only one thing.…I regret meeting Lila. She showed me a world that I never belonged in. I tried, oh, how I tried for her. I am a corrupter, but I was loved by an innocent. How many like her did I hurt throughout the years? I do not know, but one, just one good person forgave me. Only…” Nikolai’s voice fell to a whisper. “Only, by becoming part of her life, I condemned her to death. It would have been better if she’d never known I existed, or perhaps it would have been better if I had never existed at all.…”

Nikolai did not wait for Harbinger’s judgment. He pulled the trigger.

* * *

“I don’t know what Aksel was goin’ on about. I can read the first part, it’s about being in the war, but this…” Aino gestured at the section about the amulet. “This is mostly gibberish. The words seem made up. Maybe it’s a secret army code or something, eh?”

A gunshot rang out. Heather looked up from her grandfather’s journal. The noise had come from inside the Alpha’s house.

“You hear something?” Aino asked.

“Clear as day,” she answered. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t heard that, but Heather had to remind herself: she wasn’t
normal
anymore. “I’ll be back.”

Heather took her shotgun, got out of the truck, and slammed the door too hard behind her. The biting wind felt refreshing after the artificial warmth of the laboring heater. Quickly, she went up the icy steps three at a time, not even realizing that she did so. The others had to lumber along, lifting each leg high to clear enough snow to walk. Heather forced herself to slow down so as to not look suspicious.

She found Harbinger standing in the living room, the giant skeleton looming behind him. Nikolai Petrov was still on the couch, only slouched forward, and for just a moment she thought that nothing had changed since she’d left. But the smell of exposed brains and blood told her a different story.

How do I even know what brains smell like? Go figure.
“What’re you doing?”

Harbinger walked over to the body and picked up one of his big snub-nosed revolvers from where it had fallen on the couch. “Looking for something to write with. I told you to wait outside.”

Blood was leaking out the side of Nikolai’s cracked skull, dripping down his face, and pooling on the carpet. She should have felt something—revulsion, maybe? But she didn’t. It was more habit than any real feeling that made her speak. “You’re a monster.”

“Correction. Monster
Hunter
.” Harbinger reloaded his revolver and stuck it back under his coat. “I’m only a monster when I have to be. You got a pen?”

* * *

The Alpha opened his eyes. He was standing in the center of the bottom level of the Shaft Six building. The walls were covered in blood. Confused, he studied his hands. They were red up to the elbow. He looked up to see Lucinda Hood standing at the top of the catwalk, her mouth agape. It must have been bad, because it took quite a bit to shock a necromancer. “What have you done?”

He looked down. Two of his pack were at his feet, so brutally mangled, more bone than flesh, that they were barely recognizable. The amulet burned even hotter against his chest. It had been fed. He had been fed. “It is time to free the
vulkodlak,
” he explained.

The witch raised her artificial hand and covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fear as she nodded.

Chapter 22

I quit playing Nikolai’s game. We just fulfilled our missions with precision and got back out. His notes kept coming, but I ignored them. Sharon had helped me put the animal back in its place. I would not let him draw it out. We continued fighting, and we accomplished much, all without a single casualty.

A few weeks passed with no communications left by Nikolai. Conover said intelligence from his chain of command suggested that the Russian had been called home. We were told to stand down and await further instructions.

A week later, it was confirmed. Nikolai had returned to Moscow. President Nixon had agreed to draw down any supernatural assets in country. Apparently we weren’t alone, though we’d never met any of the other special task forces in operation. Preparations would be made. First squad would be returned to their regular units; second was going to be flown home with thanks that could never be talked about and a renewed exemption from PUFF. We celebrated.

Nikolai hit us the next evening. Werewolves are sneaky like that. They get you when you least expect it.

* * *

Stark paced down the line of stacked bodies. There were far more at the hospital now than when they’d left to go for help. The senior MCB agent muttered and swore under his breath as he stepped between the heads.

“We started it, but the other survivors have been dropping bodies off here, too,” Agent Mosher explained. “The guards posted downstairs said that the town has fortified the school and then formed patrols to fight the monsters and gather people.…Kind of like I suggested
hours
ago.”

Mosher was still bitter. Stark knew that it was because he was too stupid to realize just how much trouble they were going to be in once headquarters found out just what a clusterfuck of a containment this was going to be. Stark was too old to recover from this. This line of bodies and the number of people that knew about them was a career-ending event.

“Don’t get lippy with me, kid.” Stark stopped his pacing at the last corpse in the line. It was the body of that first infected deputy, Joe Buckley. It was uneven from the rest. Stark knelt and pulled back the sheet. Burning to death was always unpleasant. The skin was all crispy and black, except for where it had split open to expose red muscle. This one was even worse, since he was all twisted up, mostly shaped like a werewolf but not quite all the way there. The unevenness was caused by one hand sticking up, like it was reaching for him, claws all curled up from the heat.

It bothered Stark quite a bit, like the stupid monster was still being defiant despite the fact that it was dead. Why wouldn’t monsters just fall into line, like everybody else? Stark stood, put his boot on the forearm and pushed down. It wouldn’t budge. Stark grunted and put more weight on it. Ash flaked off and the bones made a sick cracking noise, but the arm finally went down like it was supposed to. Stark nodded and covered the body back up. “That’s more like it,” he whispered.

Mosher sounded worried. “Are you feeling all right, sir?”

Stark walked away without responding. He wandered down the hallway, still muttering, bubbling with impotent rage. There was a strange noise, for just a split second. It was barely audible, kind of a
hum
, but then it was gone. It left his ears ringing and added to his growing headache.

“You hear that?” Mosher asked nervously.

“Probably nothing.” Stark ignored his partner. He found a break room with a soda machine in it. At least the generators were running here. He pulled his wallet out from under his armor and thumbed through it.

Mosher had followed him in like a lost puppy. “Sir? What are we going to do now?”

“I’m going to get a Dr. Pepper.…You got any dollars? All I’ve got is a twenty.”

This was just like the
Pacific Star
. One helicopter load of SEALs against an ocean liner full of Deep Ones. There had been so damned
many
of them. They came out of the walls, through the floor, through the ceiling. They climbed up the sides to slide their slimy heads through the portholes. Every time they’d turned around there were more fish men. All but two of them had been wiped out during the first contact. The fish men had numerical superiority and fucking Dagon on their side. Magic, claws, and ancient mutants against two SEALs? What had Chief Haven expected? Of course Stark had hid.…That was the smart thing to do. Hide, and wait for reinforcements.

But no. Not Sam Haven. Mr. Big Shot Hero. He had to go all balls out and kill ten dozen fish men all by himself and then poke an ancient deity in the eye. Well, who’s dead now, asshole? Yeah. You, Sam. You’re dead, and I’m management.

“No…I…I mean…” Mosher was so confused that he was beginning to stutter. It was unbecoming in an MCB agent. “What are we going to do about the
situation
?”

Stark was getting a headache. He was sick of Mosher’s whining. He was starting to stick up like that crispy werewolf’s arm. “I’ll think of something.…But right now I’ve got other problems.” He put his big hands on the soda machine and shook it. Stark had managed to fix other people’s problems and always kept from getting into anything over his head. He was an ideal government employee. It wasn’t his fault werewolves had taken over a whole town. He kicked the hell out of the soda machine, but it still wouldn’t cooperate.

The door closed behind Mosher. “Sir, look at yourself. We’ve got more important things to worry about. People are dying out there!”

This was not an insurmountable problem. Special Agent Douglas Stark of the Monster Control Bureau was a professional. He would
get
his Dr. Pepper. Failure was not an option. Stark leaned his SCAR rifle in the corner. Studying the machine, he formulated a plan of attack. Drawing his thick SOG knife, he jammed the point in by the lock and began forcing it in, using it as a pry-bar. They’d just blame the property damage on the werewolves. Stark chuckled at his cleverness.

“Agent Stark? Stark! Are you kidding me?” Exasperated, Mosher slammed his fists down on a table. The noise barely distracted Stark from his important task. “What are we going to
do
?” A gloved hand landed on Stark’s broad shoulder and spun him around. “Look at me, damn it—”