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

I didn’t need thirty minutes though. I barely needed two before the Drekavac’s mount broke one of the lasers.

BOOM!

It was only a pound of C4, but it had pre-segmented wire wrapped around it for shrapnel. One coil silver. One coil iron. I couldn’t see them because of the trees, but from the awful noise radiating through the whole forest, I’d nailed the horse. The scream abruptly died, and somehow I knew it was because the Drekavac had put it out of its misery.

Not that it wouldn’t just come back to life again anyway, but at least it bought us some time. I kept running, trying in vain to catch up with Sonya before the dogs got her. And they were definitely after her rather than me. The noisy hound had passed by on my right and was now ahead of me. I never even saw it through the brush to get a shot. I’d bet anything it was chasing her right into a trap.

“Sonya, look out!” But then I lost my footing on steep downhill and ended up sliding on my back through the leaf scatter, light bouncing crazily through the trees, unable to stop until I caught a log with my boot.

“Face me, Hunter.”

I looked back and saw the Drekavac standing on the crest of the rise above me. He hadn’t waited for his horse to come back to life but had pursued me on foot. The monster had its sword in one hand and the blunderbuss in the other.

“You will pay for meddling in my—”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence because I shot him with Abomination’s grenade launcher.

The 40mm round got him square in the chest. The resulting explosion flung flaming monster pieces every direction.

I got up and ran after Sonya, hoping I could reach her in time. I heard her surprised cry over the barking. The trap had been sprung. There was a gunshot, and then another. One of the dogs yelped.

I crashed through the brush until I blundered into a clearing. The flashlight I’d given Sonya was lying on the ground, still on. There was a glowing blue spot, still flickering with weird fire, where one of the dogs had gotten blasted. The other one was at the base of a tree, snarling and leaping, scratching at the bark because Sonya had climbed up into the branches. She had dropped the empty shotgun but fished the little .380 out of her pocket and was trying to get an angle to shoot the dog below her.

I saved her the effort and put a load of buckshot into the back of its head.

“About time,” she shouted as the dog dissolved. Then she hopped off the branch, which had to be ten feet up, to land effortlessly on the ground. “I thought you said you could protect me.”

“You’re not making it easy.” I looked around, trying to get my bearings, and it was then that I realized that she hadn’t just run off without me, but she’d done it in the wrong direction again, and taken us further away from the road. “You’ve got a horrible sense of direction in the woods.”

“That’s kinda embarrassing actually, considering my family tree. It’s a long story.”

“Save it. Come on.” I pointed. “This way.”

Sonya retrieved the light and shotgun. “What was your name again? Opie?”

“Owen. Now stay close because I can’t help you if you’re running off like a—”

There was a hissing crack as the lightning bolt hit the tree Sonya had been hiding in. The trunk blew apart, throwing chunks of wood in every direction. The shockwave put me on my ass.

I sat up, blinked a few times, and realized the newly re-formed Drekavac was stalking through the trees toward us, manipulating its archaic weapon, probably to reload. How do you reload lightning? But I didn’t have time to think through magical weapon logistics. “Run!”

Getting to my feet, I cranked off several quick shots in the Drekavac’s direction. Rather than let me kill it, this time the monster ducked behind a tree trunk. Maybe it only had so many lives, or maybe it was just tired of having to pull itself together. Either way, it wasn’t shooting at me for a second, so I fled.

I crashed through the forest as fast as I could. Sonya’s light was bobbing along ahead of me. At least this time she was heading in the right direction. It wasn’t until I’d gone too far to go back that I realized I’d lost my gear bag when the lightning had struck. Most of my kit was back there in the clearing. I kept my light pointed straight ahead so I could see the ground, because if I stumbled here, I was probably going to get flash-fried.

There was another hiss-crack as the Drekavac fired. The lightning hit a stump next to me and ripped it to pieces. I could feel that impact in my lungs. Dirt rained from the sky. I vaulted over a waist-high boulder, turned around, and snapped off two more shots at the Drekavac, forcing it down. It probably expected me to run, but instead I waited a second, sight on the spot where I’d last seen the Drekavac. And the instant the pilgrim hat rose into my vision, I pulled the trigger.

The hat went flying and the Drekavac stumbled out of view. He hadn’t disintegrated into sparks that time, so I’d probably only winged him. I moved up on him, aggressive, searching for the glow, looking for a shot.

And then his damned falcon hit me right in the head.

It had dropped out of the sky like a bomb. The only reason I didn’t lose an eye to a talon was that it struck my flipped-up night vision first. The PVS-14s got torn off, but better them than my face. It screeched, pecked, and scratched at me, wings beating around my head. It was a lot bigger than it had looked in the air, with a wingspan longer than I could stretch my arms.

I