Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (44 page)

“Hold still,” Julie ordered. I froze in place. All I could see around me was the wretched churning fog. There was a solid
THWACK
ten feet in front of me. Something hit the ground. “Got it. You can keep going now.”

I found the body of one of the warrior demons just ahead. Julie had shot it through the vulnerable juncture of neck to body. Steaming goo had sprayed everywhere. It was still twitching as I went around it. “You on thermal?”

“Sure am. Told you I was switching rifles. When the fog rolls around it’s the only way I can see.” Anything that emitted body heat would positively glow in this cold mess, and these demons always seemed feverishly hot. “The wind keeps changing, so this might get tricky. There’s an external stairwell to your left.” I couldn’t see a damn thing. “Keep turning. Turning…Okay. Head that way. I’ll cover you. The garden’s crawling with monsters.”

I set out with a sort of hopping, hobbling jog. The demons were shrieking and clicking at each other. There was a trumpetlike bellow from one of the big acid throwers. “They know you’re there. There’s more coming.” It took a moment for her bullet to arrive.
THWACK.
There was a gurgling noise as another creature choked to death on its own blood.
THWACK.
“Two down, but they’re surrounding you. Hurry.”

Hurry
was a relative term when all you could feel from one foot was lightning bolts whenever it touched ground, but I ran like everyone’s lives depended on it.

“Monsters on your right. Two. Don’t have a shot.”

I turned and lifted Abomination. The rapidly moving fog was so wet that rather than raining, water just accumulated out of the air and soaked you. Gusts were like being smacked with a damp towel. The water picked up the blood and ran off me in pink rivulets. The mist swirled. I was ready. The instant a bit of orange broke the fog I shot it to death. Its companion pushed by, only to have a pile of silver rip through its thorax, spilling it in a wet heap.

“Clear. There was a tree in the way. Didn’t have an angle.”
THWACK.
“That time I did.” Julie was an absolutely lethal shot. “Hit the deck!” I did exactly as she said, diving forward and landing on the soft grass. Several spines passed through the air where I’d been standing. There was a series of loud impacts as Julie opened up on them. “They’re down. Move.”

I got up and ran. Blood kept running into my eyes. It turned the fog red, then pink as I blinked it away, then clear. Repeat every few seconds. I vaulted a low iron fence. Hitting the ground hurt so bad it nearly made my legs buckle. The wall of the hotel came into view. I was right under Julie. She must not have realized she was still transmitting. “Edward, hold onto my belt. I’ve got to lean over to see. Don’t let me fall.” I had a sudden vision of Julie toppling over the edge of a twenty-story building while trying to keep the demons off my back. There was a sudden impact off to the side and my heart jumped into my throat, but it was only another monster catching a .308 round right through the top of its bulbous skull. “Door should be straight ahead of you. Two dozen monsters coming your way.”

There was the door. I tried the handle but it was locked. It was a fire exit. Of course it was locked. It opened outward so I couldn’t kick it. I didn’t have any breaching rounds, so being really hopeful that I wouldn’t kill myself with a ricochet, I stuck Abomination’s muzzle next to the frame and blasted the lock into shrapnel. There was enough metal still engaged that it still wouldn’t open. So I overreacted and jerked the trigger twice more. That did the trick, but a chunk of metal ripped a tear in my armored sleeve and drew more blood. The movies always made it look so easy.

“Going in,” I said as Julie killed a few more of the demons chasing me. The interior of the fire-escape stairwell was nothing but plain concrete walls and metal stairs. I looked up. They seemed to go up forever.

“Climb fast. Ed, get ready to toss that black backpack over the side…Yes. That one. Careful. It’ll go off on impact…Yes, boom…Yes, it is heavy…Owen, climb
really
fast.”

“Crap.” Each step felt like taking a hammer to my foot as I put my weight down, but it sounded like Julie was throwing down something nasty, so I gritted my teeth and hauled ass up the stairs. Behind me, bullets fell like rain as Julie kept the monsters off the door. “Second floor.”
Pain. Pain. Son of a bitch. Pain.
Two steps at a time. Not fast enough. Three steps at a time. “Third floor!”

“Reloading,” Julie said. “Keep going, Owen.”

My leg hurt so bad I could taste it. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. One of the bomb nuts made it out of chemicals from the nail salon.”

There was a crash below me as one of the demons thrashed its way through the broken door. “Fourth floor,” I gasped.

“Let it go, Ed.
Ahhhh!”
Julie screamed. “Not
me!
The bag! The bag! Drop the bag. Hold onto me!”

“You okay?”

“Fine. Orcs can be so literal sometimes.”

I was still climbing when the improvised explosive device hit amid the demons crowding their way against the entrance. The boom wasn’t as big as I’d expected, either that or I was so frazzled that my system just wasn’t registering concussions anymore, but a look over the railing showed me that the bottom floor had been sprayed with colorful blood and entrails. A foul smoke was drifting up the stairwell. The chemical stink of acetone burned my eyes as it hit, but nothing else was trying to get through the door. “Clear?”

“For a minute. They’re milling around.”

“Who made that one?” I asked as I resumed climbing. Talking kept my mind focused on something other than my foot, which felt like it was so swollen that I was expecting my boot to pop open.

“Cooper, Lee, or Milo. I’m not sure. I think those three are having a competition to see who can build the most dangerous thing out of household chemicals.”

There was a fierce rumble. The hotel shook. Dust fell down the stairwell. “What was that?”

“Damn! Half the conference center just blew up. It was the overlook area where the demons broke in. That was
huge
. I think Milo just took the lead.”

“Right on.” Getting those particular pyromaniacs together was like a Discovery Channel show gone horribly wrong. The Mythbusters had nothing on our guys.

“I’m sending a couple of the men down to meet you. Skippy’s prepping the chopper. I hope you know what you’re doing, Owen.”

Not really.
“Sure do. Don’t worry.” I thought about telling her about the baby, but quickly dismissed that thought. We needed to concentrate on not getting killed first, then talk about the future. Now I could understand why Earl hadn’t said anything. Normally it was the woman that knew about this sort of thing first. This was supposed to be happy news, not
hey, we’re trapped in a nightmare dimension surrounded by demons and a nightmare creature that’s going to swallow our souls, but you’re pregnant! Yay!
This sucked.
Keep climbing. Keep your head in the game, Owen.
I had to focus on the task at hand. Not my stupid foot, not fatherhood, but focus on beating the
Nachtmar
.

Beating him required getting his attention first. “I’ve got to talk to Earl.” I toggled through the channels and found the main band. It was chaos.

“Holding on two, but Kantrowitz is down.”

“Demons are stalled at the escalators. I don’t know who, but somebody’s flanked them.”

“There’s fifty of them at the conference side entrance. We can’t hold them. Falling back.”

“No, damn it. Belay that. This is Nate Shackleford. I’ll hold that side. We fail here and Russians will be stuck in the open. Don’t you dare move!”
I’d never heard Nate so fired up before. He was a Shackleford after all.
“Haights on me. Hold this fucking line until everyone is in!”

Every second counted. I had to get the
Nachtmar
’s attention away from the others, but if he knew what I was planning, he’d take me out before I was in position. I had to wait. My chest hurt. I could barely breathe, but I kept taking the steps three at a time. Abomination banged back on its sling against my back as I used my hands to pull myself up the railing. I listened to the radio chatter for several awful minutes. The world’s Hunters were taking a beating.

“We’ve got some of those acid-tank bastards coming through the hole.”
Nate was shouting into his microphone.
“Gregorius, I need more ammo for that fifty-cal.”

“Hang on, Shackleford. Omaha Stakes on the way to back you up. Shit! They’re coming through th—”
Static.

The Hunters were losing.

Chapter 22

There was movement above me on the stairwell. Footsteps. It was quicker to draw my pistol than reach for my shotgun. I put the STI in my left hand so I could keep using my right to hurl-drag myself up the rail. A flashlight bounced above. It was the Hunters Julie had sent. Someone bellowed a challenge. “Pitt, is that you?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” It was time to get the monster’s attention. I switched to Earl’s command channel, but somebody else was talking.

“Earl. This is Lindemann. I believe I just saw my father killing demons. This is troubling, since he died fighting vampires when I was young. Am I losing my mind? Over.”

“This is Pitt. Negative. The Hunters’ ghosts are on our side. They’ll stall the monsters as long as possible. It’s a long story. Over.”

Earl came on next.
“Z, I thought you were dead. Milo said you got blown up by that meteor.”

“Nearly.” My ankle made an audible popping noise as I reached the fourteenth floor. “I’ve got a plan.” It was hard to talk and run stairs at the same time. “Mordechai showed me how to kill the
Nachtmar
.”

“We’re in a world of his creation. He can certainly hear you,”
warned Lindemann.

“Good. He should listen. I know his secret. If he can read minds, then he knows what I’m going to do next. Come and get me, asshole.”
Only four more floors.
The flashlight from above shined in my eyes. It was Jason Lacoco. The squat shadow behind him could only be Edward. “Get ready,” I warned them. Once I got the
Nachtmar
’s attention, things would probably get really hairy. Lacoco only grunted. He might have hated my guts, but this was business. Edward took the lead. Lacoco grabbed onto my left arm and helped me along. The son of a bitch was so strong that he actually began dragging me. Not that I was complaining. My leg muscles had turned to jelly.

The information that Sam had given to me was all there, crammed painfully in between my own orderly memories. Of course I was the one picked for this. My brain was like a filing cabinet stuffed with folders from multiple people. Hell, I spoke sixteenth-century Portuguese because of this sort of thing. I was prepped for this sort of craziness. Thanks, stupid Old Ones and your stupid artifact. I flipped through the files, examined what my brother had overheard, until I found what I needed.

I kept broadcasting. “We’ve been calling him
Nachtmar
, Nightmare, things like that. We guessed right all along. That’s all he is. He’s nothing without us. He needs humans to give him form. He can’t do anything without us. He feeds on our fear. The Nachtmar is just an alp. He’s a parasite. He’s a worm. Humans made him strong and he’s only this powerful because of his human host. If he’s connected to somebody weak, he’s nothing. He’s a pathetic little alp. The
Nachtmar
ain’t shit.”

It was working. I could tell the monster was listening. The hotel rumbled. Edward turned to look at me as if to ask
are you sure this is a good idea?

“This particular little nightmare spirit was lucky enough to find a powerful human to stick himself to a long time ago. One of the Chosen.”
Like me,
I didn’t add. There was only so much fate I wanted to tempt at one time, and I didn’t know what to make of that possession business that Dr. Blish had spoken about near the end of the memories. “The
Nachtmar
was too pathetic to take a man like this over on his own. It was the scientists that broke him and let the
Nachtmar
in. All of this? The dream monsters, the destruction, it’s all from the power of a special human mind. The
Nachtmar
likes being thought of as a wrathful god, but he’s just a manipulative little prick piggybacking off a great man.”

“This is Julie. Owen, you’ve got incoming.”

“What now?” There was a violent crunch. The cement wall on the landing above us was suddenly riddled with cracks. Lacoco and I stopped.

“Gargoyles. You’ve got three gargoyles on the exterior of the stairwell.”

Edward ran back past us, hit the nineteenth floor landing, yanked the door open and looked inside. He nodded quickly.
Clear.
The concrete on the twentieth floor was raining down in dust and chunks. An enclosed space was a stupid place to take on an animated stone monster. We went after Ed.

His response had been much faster than expected, but I wasn’t done provoking our monster. “Gargoyles? Probably the same ones from Appleton. See, what did I tell you? Now he’s cherry-picking Julie’s memories. He can’t do anything on his own. He’s a chump. He’s got no imagination.” The three of us entered the nineteenth floor. It was pitch-black, but Lacoco and I turned on our flashlights. Ed could see in the dark. This floor was still under construction, and was a mess of half-finished metal frames, dangling wires, scaffolding, and stacked sheetrock. There had to be another interior stairwell in the middle, and we could take that to the roof. “He’s limited to the weapons we provide him, and even the poor deluded human he’s keeping alive isn’t powerful enough to handle the things I’ve got in my head.” I could only hope that the great Old Ones were so sanity-bending and incomprehensible that they couldn’t be copied, otherwise we’d all just get squished.

There was a horrendous crash as the gargoyles broke into the fire stairwell. We kept moving as fast as we could, but I’d seen how quick these things were. It was a straight shot down the middle. Ed found the door for the next set of stairs and jerked it open. Ed looked inside, up, down, then back at us and nodded.
Clear.