Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (31 page)

They drove for half an hour. The silence was uncomfortable. Stark missed the constant chatter of the radio. He needed to make conversation. “So, Mosher, how’d you get recruited?”

“Akkadian sand demon attacked my convoy heading out of Faluja.” Mosher laughed nervously as their rear end slipped, but they straightened out and managed not to end up in a ditch. “Though none of us knew what an Akkadian sand demon was at the time. We just thought of it as a giant skeleton-mummy that sand-blasted people to death. Turns out they’re all over the place in Iraq. Official story said we’d hit an IED. A couple of us survived, got recruited. How about you, sir?”

“Deep Ones,” Stark said.

“I hear fish people are nasty,” Mosher said. “We’ve been torpedoing their cities since, what, the Thirties?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” As deepwater imaging had gotten better, every country that could afford subs had gone to work eradicating those vermin. They were down to hiding in tiny settlements off the coast, and the last of their cities were too deep to reach. “Scaly bastards climbed up a cruise ship, ate the men, kidnapped the women. I had just joined SEAL Team Two. We were nearby on a training mission. Small team got inserted by chopper before the sardines could escape. Smoked them all, saved a few hostages, but lost some good men.”

“That’s too bad, sir,” Mosher said.

It had worked out well for Stark’s career, though. Sam Haven had been the senior surviving SEAL on that op. Haven had not been pleased with Stark’s performance, even going so far as to accuse Stark of choking under pressure, but what did they expect? It wasn’t like Stark had gone in there knowing there were fish monsters laying their eggs in tourists. However, Chief Haven had been too honest for his own good, and fought with the MCB over the necessary eradication of the survivors. Haven had been drummed out of the Navy, and Stark had become the official hero of the moment. The rest was history.

The last road out of Copper Lake was also history. Luckily, Stark realized what was going on before they drove into the kill zone. “Stop,” he ordered. Mosher complied immediately. Thankfully, the bright white of the snow gave enough contrast that he could make out the multiple vehicles parked ahead. A truck had been stopped across a narrow, low point in the road, completely blocking it. Some of the cars had tried to go around the truck skirting the forest and had promptly gotten stuck. No one was visible. “It’s a trap.”

“Crap.” Mosher put it in reverse, looked over his shoulder, and sped them back the way they’d come. The first bullet pierced the windshield and center console between them. Other rounds struck the Suburban, hitting with loud metallic
pings
. “Ambush!”

Stark couldn’t see where the sniper fire was coming from, but he could see the shadows moving between the trees, paralleling them.
Werewolves.
“Keep driving!” Stark ordered as he rolled down his window, picked up his SCAR-H, and fired the rifle out the window. The stock was still folded, so he didn’t hit anything, but it made the pursuing werewolves think twice, and they took cover.

Mosher got them around the bend, and the incoming fire stopped. The junior agent did a three-point turn, cutting deep new ruts in the snow, while Stark scanned for threats.
Don’t get stuck. Don’t get stuck.
The werewolves had hunkered down and were just watching now, their mission accomplished.

Stark swore and punched the dash. These things were everywhere.

They were half a mile from the ambush before Mosher spoke. He was flushed with excitement. “We should stop here, try to cut through the forest on foot.”

“Negative. I saw at least two werewolves moving, plus the shooter, who had to be in human form. That’s scary good coordination for these beasts. As thick as that forest is, in these conditions? We’d be dead in ten minutes and never even see them coming.”

“We’ve got NVGs and thermal,” Mosher said.

“And they’ve got a million years of evolution, and that—” Stark waved his hand at the frozen landscape outside the cracked windshield—“is their element. Stalking prey in the woods is
what
they do! Regulations say that facing lycanthropes in wooded environments requires at least a complete fire team.”

“The next town is only a few clicks,” Mosher insisted. “I could run that in no time. Let me out, you head back to town and I’ll go for help.”

And leave me alone? Oh, hell, no.
The kid was brave but incredibly stupid. “Regulations say that we can’t split up.”

Agent Stark wasn’t a coward. He’d done some remarkably brave things…when he was younger. This easy little job to earn some under-the-table PUFF had turned into a disaster, and he really didn’t feel like getting eaten for nothing. He’d been like Mosher once, full of piss and vinegar, but years of pushing paper in a soulless bureaucracy had sapped that youthful naïveté. He’d long ago accepted that he wasn’t a hero, he was a bureaucrat. The young guns like Mosher were the ones that got to risk their lives playing hero. Stark was
management
now.

His young partner must have taken Stark’s lack of response as hesitation. “We need to do something. People are dying!”

Stark sighed. He needed to take a different tack. Mosher was too earnest for his own good. “You’re right, Agent. And getting torn apart in the woods isn’t going to help them. Get us back to the hospital. We’ll do what you suggested earlier and protect these yokels.”

He obviously didn’t like it, and they drove on in stony silence, but like all good MCB agents, Gaige Mosher knew how to obey orders.

* * *

Earl Harbinger found himself in a tricky predicament. Normally he wouldn’t be too concerned being around someone newly turned into a werewolf. Worst-case scenario, they’d flip their lid and he’d have to deal with it with some good old-fashioned violence. But he was no longer in a position of strength. Before, if there was a sudden change, and he caught a surprise claw, he’d just tear the upstart’s head off and then heal up in short order. Now, if Heather wigged out on him, he’d probably be dead before he got his gun out. He wasn’t the king of the werewolves anymore. Now he was just another fragile human, and therefore he should do what any sensible human would do in his situation and promptly shoot her dead as soon as her back was turned. Instead, he found himself trying to comfort the distraught young woman turned killing machine because she was upset she’d eaten her dog.

“I’m pretty sure Otto had already been shot before you got to him,” Earl explained. “I’m sure that’s what set you off. He probably never felt a thing.”

Heather had managed to wipe off most of the blood, and she seemed
relatively
okay after spending the last ten minutes in the bathroom puking. She pushed past him and walked down the hall. “You think so?”

“Sure. Otherwise he would’ve just run from you. Dogs are smart like that. Besides, don’t beat yourself up about it. The first time I changed I ate a family of five.”

“That really doesn’t help.”

He followed her into the bedroom. Heather hadn’t specified what she was looking for, except that it was related to the amulet and the fact that the prisoner had said her grandpa had stolen it. Heather immediately went to rummaging through the back of her closet. With the power out, it was extremely dark back there, but she didn’t bother to turn on her flashlight, and Earl wasn’t about to point that fact out because it would probably just disturb her more.

Now that his vision seemed pathetic, Earl had to use his own flashlight to scan the walls. The room was more
feminine
than he’d expected for some reason, with frilly pillows, pastel colors, and scented candles. Maybe it was because the entire time he’d known her he’d only seen the tough side of the girl, but it was a little surprising. Also humanizing, but that didn’t exactly help along his thoughts about the potential need to hurry up and shoot her. His light fell on some portraits.

At first Earl thought the lady in the picture with Heather might have been the Queen of the Elves, since she was about the right size, as in morbidly obese, but she had bright red hair. The man standing next to her was dark and thin. “Your folks live around here?”

“Used to. They’re dead,” she answered, not looking.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s been a rough couple years. Mom got sick first, not that she was exactly in good health before that. Dad wasn’t exactly the nursemaid type and really couldn’t handle it, so I ended up quitting my job and moving back here. I got a job at the sheriff’s department. It was supposed to be temporary. Crap.” There was a crash as Heather knocked something off a shelf. “Mom died, but then Grandpa got sick, so I ended up sticking around.…Then, right after Grandpa died, Dad…well…It’s complicated.”

“It’s really none of my business.”

“That’s okay. After Grandpa died, my dad changed. They weren’t close or anything, but Grandpa’s death really did something to him. Messed Dad up. Mom was gone. He started having all sorts of psychological problems, insomnia, and it got worse. He wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t get help. He got really depressed.…Shot himself last Christmas. So I guess it’s been almost a year now.”

That was a tough one. “My condolences.”

“Really screwed it up, too. He was in the hospital in a coma for weeks before he slipped away. He really should’ve asked me for advice. Heaven knows I’ve responded to enough suicides to know how to do it right.…Wow. That’s morbid. Sorry.”

Earl didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I guess I’m still a little angry at him. Sad, but bitter, too. Well, anyways, everybody is gone, but I don’t know…After Dad died, I just felt like I should stay here. I can’t explain what changed. You know, I moved away from Copper Lake as soon as I could when I was younger. I used to hate this place. But somehow I ended up right back where I started.”

“Life’s funny like that.” He moved to the next picture. “This your grandpa?”

Her head popped out of the closet. Heather had discarded her skullcap, and her hair hung in front of one eye. “Yep. That’s the famous Aksel Kerkonen.”

He was a weathered old man, scowling hard at the camera with his wiry arms folded. A gangly teenage girl stood next to him, and it was only the hair color that tipped Earl off that it was a much younger Heather in the picture. “He don’t look friendly.”

“He wasn’t.” Heather went back to looking. “He was a morose, bitter drunk, with an awful temper. He was kind of a local legend, since he kicked the crap out of roughnecks a third his age, got into a few knife fights, and the only reason I think he never went to prison is because everybody in town was too scared of him to testify.”

“You didn’t like him, I take it.”

She came out with a long wooden box and set it on the bed. “Oh, I didn’t say that. I loved Grandpa Aksel. I was about the only person he liked. The guy was a real character.” Heather opened the clasps and lifted the lid. “This was his. He was a sniper during the Winter War.”

Earl shined his flashlight onto the bed. The rifle was an old Mosin Nagant. “May I?” Heather nodded, and Earl lifted the long bolt action from the case. The wood had been worn smooth by hands and much use. The bolt worked easily for a Nagant, probably polished by a good smith at some point. No scope, which was odd by American precision-rifle standards, but scopes hadn’t been as good back then, and not nearly fog proof, which really mattered when you were fighting in the miserable cold, spitting distance from the Arctic circle. Earl knew his tools and could tell that this rifle had been used hard but well cared for. “M28.” He moved the receiver into the light. “Sako. 1939. The Finnish ones are supposed to be more accurate, I hear.”

Heather was removing items that had been stashed under the rifle and setting them on the bed. “You seem like somebody who knows guns.”

Earl shrugged. “Eh. I got shot by one of these once. Right in the kisser. Pow! That hurt.” She gave him a strange look. “It was a Russian version, though, back in ’45. Race to loot Hitler’s experimental occult bunker…Long story. Never mind. What’re you looking for?”

Heather held up a small book. “This belonged to Grandpa, too.” She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “I’d forgotten about this, but your Russian friend was asking about an amulet that Grandpa might have had. Check it out.”

He traded her the rifle for the book. It wasn’t that different than the little leather-bound journal in his own pocket. Earl held up his flashlight to the yellowed pages. The letters were rough, almost drawn rather than written. “I can’t read Finnish.”

“Me, either, and Grandpa was barely literate anyway, but look at the
picture
.”

Earl found the little ink drawing she was talking about. Aksel Kerkonen hadn’t been much of an artist, either. “It looks like a pointy blob with a hand in it.”

“That’s what I thought when I first found this after he died, but look at the line around the back. But if that’s a claw, then it’s what I was asked about earlier. Now I’m thinking that line means it’s supposed to be a necklace.” It could be the amulet. After all, Earl hadn’t got the best look at it while it had been ripping him to pieces. The claw in the picture was also short a finger. “And check this out.” She moved in close to him and turned the page. “What’s that look like to you?”

There were a bunch of stick figures, one of which had a gun, a couple of directional arrows, more words in Finnish, and a very cartoonish picture of an explosion. It took him a second to realize what he was looking at. The stick figure’s actions were
numbered
. “These are instructions.”

“Bingo!” Heather said excitedly. “The prisoner said Grandpa stole their amulet, and I’m betting this is about how he did it. Maybe it can help us get it back, and I can get cured.”

Earl realized that she was standing uncomfortably close, close enough to feel the feverish warmth coming from Heather’s skin. Distracted by the book, she brushed against his chest. Her hip touched his leg. Earl stepped back politely.

Heather caught his uncomfortable reaction and frowned. “Chill out, Harbinger. I’m not going to eat you.”