Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC by Larry Correia (read a book .txt) 📕

no idea what the hell the Drekavac was driving, but it had sounded like it had a friggin’ jet engine, so it probably wasn’t exactly slow. I suppose I could have stolen one of the bikes at the bar, but let’s be honest, if I hadn’t gotten shot by the owner in the process, I was a pretty mediocre motorcyclist, and would have ended up in a ditch in short order anyway.

It was a dark, moonless night, and we were heading further away from the city, on a country road with thick trees all around. If they turned off, I’d have no way of knowing. Except, it appeared there was a stark line of icy fog hanging about a foot above the road, and since it was summer, there was no way that was natural. So I followed the Drekavac’s trail.

I got out my phone. “Call Earl Harbinger.” But there was still no service. That had to be interference from the monster because we were only half an hour outside of a major metro area. I’d seen certain unnatural beings mess with things like phones or radio reception before. As the needle on the speedometer climbed, I kept trying other members of my team, but kept getting nothing. I was on my own.

They have a pathological hatred of straight roads in the South, so I maxed out at about a hundred before having to stomp on the brakes going into a sudden corner. I made it through without flipping the 4x4 though, but that near miss reminded me to put my seat belt on.

There was no oncoming traffic, but there were multiple sets of headlights off to the side, crashed at weird angles. The monster had been running everyone off the road. Whatever the Drekavac was riding was causing people to swerve out of the way, and here that meant hitting a tree or driving off into the bushes. Some of the occupants had gotten out and were staring, baffled, in the direction I was going.

What the hell was I chasing?

The fog was getting thicker. I was catching up.

There was a blue glow ahead. From the smoke and dust hanging in the air, it looked like one of the bikes had crashed. The thing chasing them had stopped, and the Drekavac had dismounted in order to approach on foot.

I squinted, trying to tell what I was looking at.

It was hard to explain but imagine giving a mad taxidermist the carcass of a giant black horse and ordering him to stretch that over a bunch of bones put together by a maniac with no spatial awareness. Stitch it together with wire, add spikes and then set it on fire. Then make the fire blue, with ghosts and shit dancing in it because, why not? Shoot for the stars. It didn’t even have hooves. The thing just seemed to hover on a cloud of fog. And worst of all, the Drekavac’s vehicle—for lack of a better term—appeared to be . . . alive? Because as I rapidly closed the distance, it turned its head to look at me, and the eyes were like blinding headlights.

But before I my eyeballs got blasted, I caught a quick glimpse of Sonya, lying there next to her wiped-out bike, and the Drekavac closing on her, sword in hand.

So I aimed for where I thought the Drekavac would be and floored it.

SLAM!

The monster went up over the hood, cracked my windshield, and went flipping over the roof. I saw fiery bits of monster raining down in my rearview mirror as I hit the brakes.

The truck came to a lurching halt. Thankfully, Boone kept up on his regularly scheduled vehicle maintenance, and the brakes worked great, because I stopped only a few feet from driving down a really steep hill.

The Drekavac had been splattered everywhere, but I’d already seen that wouldn’t last long. I saw Sonya in my side mirror. She was staggering to her feet. Judging by how trashed her bike was, she’d wrecked hard, so was either lucky to be in one piece, or her inhuman toughness had saved her life. Since her bike’s rear tire was twisted and glowing blue, it must have gotten blasted with some sort of Drekavac magic. I threw open the door and shouted, “Sonya! Come on!”

She pulled her badly scraped helmet off and tossed it in the grass, revealing that she was still wearing the same rocker face that she had at the bar. “Who are you?”

I pointed at where the fog was glowing and swirling as the monster came back to life behind my truck. “Does that really matter right now?”

“Nope.” She ran to the passenger side door and hopped in. “Go, go, go!”

“Where’s Gutterres?” I barely knew the guy, but I wasn’t about to leave a fellow Hunter behind.

“He tried to protect me, but glowing angry dude blasted him off the cliff with a fireball. He’s dead. Like we’re going to be unless you drive, moron! Drive!”

And to accentuate that, the Drekavac’s horse thing came from seemingly out of nowhere and shattered her window with its skull. I stupidly hadn’t expected it to act on its own. Sonya cried out as it tried to bite her with its big blunt teeth.

I snatched up the sawed-off. “Duck.” Thankfully she had the sense to listen, and I blew a gaping hole through the horse’s head. A shorty 12-gauge is really loud inside a truck cab. There was a terrible screeching noise as the monster horse fell over. I threw the truck in reverse and drove backwards, fast. There was a thump thump as the tires smashed the remains of the Drekavac, then I was back on the road. I put it in drive and accelerated.

A moment later we were clear of the fog and getting away. I took a deep breath and concentrated on not wrapping us around a telephone pole.

“I recognize you. You’re one of those dopes who chased me earlier. You’re the slower, uglier one.”

Only comparatively. It wasn’t my fault Trip was