Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC Larry Correia (all ebook reader .txt) 📖

exorcist stood up. “The creature you will be facing tonight is known as a Drekavac. It is a rare power bestowed by the devil himself to only the vilest of human beings to have ever lived. Men and women willing to sacrifice their souls in exchange for immortality and terrible abilities. This offer is only made to the most unrepentant mortals who have become the living personification of some terrible sin. This creature in particular is the embodiment of unrighteous judgment. His mortal name was Silas Carver. He was once trusted to protect the innocent, a killer of monsters, burner of witches, but who, in his search to punish sinners, became everything he hated and more.”

“Sounds like a real asshole,” Earl said.

“Grade A,” Gutterres agreed. “He was so focused on destroying evil that he embraced it.”

“One of yours?”

“Protestant, thankfully. But if you want to throw stones about our organizations’ various embarrassments—”

Earl held up one hand before Gutterres could bring up someone like Julie’s dad or Martin Hood. “No need. I didn’t intend any offense. You can’t do what we do without having some bad apples once in a while.”

“Of course,” Gutterres nodded politely. “Silas Carver was relentless in life, and that hasn’t changed in undeath. Each Drekavac is a unique being with differing abilities. We have not dealt directly with Carver before, so I can’t tell you how his abilities will manifest the more he dies. However, I can assure you of one thing: He will become increasingly dangerous until his thirteenth form is defeated.”

Albert Lee was sitting near the front, taking notes so that he could update MHI’s files. “How has mankind beaten these things before?”

“Usually, they don’t,” Gutterres answered. “They try . . . fail . . . and eventually hand over the Drekavac’s target to appease it so that it’ll go away.”

Holly, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, “So that’s Plan B.”

“In the times that mankind has defeated one the full thirteen, it has cost a great number of lives. However, they also lacked modern firepower, which hopefully will make up the difference. I can make certain that once Silas Carver enters these grounds, he is committed, so that this will be finished tonight, and he can’t strategically retreat and come back to attack again when you least expect it.”

“We appreciate that,” Julie said.

“In return, I will require the Ward, whether it is still with the girl or not.”

“Hey, now,” Sonya said. “I didn’t agree to that.”

“You’ve already demonstrated your agreements mean nothing. If you’d simply kept your word, you wouldn’t be in this predicament and I would be on the way to finish my real mission. Instead, because of your greed and dishonesty, we are here, risking all of these Hunters’ lives. Every minute we delay my mission costs more innocent lives. You might not care about those people, but I do.”

Gutterres was so blunt about it that Sonya actually shut up. The man had a gift for guilt-shaming people. It must be a religious thing.

“You going to expound on this ongoing crisis of yours, Mr. Gutterres, or leave it to our imagination?” Julie asked.

“I’m not authorized to give all the details yet, but thousands of lives are at stake. I recognize that MHI’s goals for the stone are worthy. Mine are more so. I could try to persuade you that this is bigger than any of us. Instead I’ll say this. Most of you don’t know me, but you know Agent Franks.” Franks had gone back to sullenly ignoring everyone, but he lifted his head when Gutterres invoked his name. “You may not like him, but you recognize that he is, by nature accurate in his assessments. Agent Franks knows me, my office, and my organization. So I pose the question to him to answer before all of you—do I exaggerate this threat?”

Franks thought it over. “No.”

And that pretty much settled it, because even though Franks was an asshole, he was an extremely straightforward one.

Julie was the official boss, but she still looked to Earl for wisdom. He sat there, pondering on it for a moment. Then he nodded at Julie, knowing that she’d do the right thing. That said a lot about how much faith he had in her.

“I’m fine with you having first access to the Ward, Mr. Gutterres.” That had to be a harder decision than most would realize, because Asag had targeted our family personally. “But only on two terms.”

“Name them.”

“We deal with this monster first. Then we figure out how to remove the Ward, or you work it out with Sonya before you drag her along. Because I’m not letting you kidnap a kid, no matter how much you think you need the thing stuck to her.”

Sonya seemed a little surprised that Julie was standing up for her. She shouldn’t have been.

“Agreed.” Gutterres sat down without another word. He probably recognized arguing with my wife would be fruitless. Smart man.

Back to business then. Julie knew how to run a meeting, short and to the point. Put the plan out there, let the experienced Hunters poke holes in it, fix the problems, and then get back to work. Except there was one potential problem she wasn’t addressing directly, which was the fact we had a bunch of untrustworthy outsiders here, each with their own goals that didn’t necessarily coincide with ours . . . except I had an idea how to keep an eye on them.

Chapter 17

MHI has quite a few secrets. Even in a business that runs on secrets there were some things that needed to be kept from our rank and file for various reasons, like the fact our IT department was a PUFF-applicable troll or our boss was a lycanthrope. I’m about as inner circle as you can get at this company, and there were probably still things that I didn’t know about. For example I still had a deep and troubling suspicion that Milo Anderson actually had a functioning nuclear weapon stashed somewhere.

So while most of the Hunters and our various houseguests were