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

testing before we are offered knighthood. We are few in number. When we need more manpower, we call upon the Swiss Guard, but the order itself is rather select. How can I explain this? MHI is a job. This is a calling.”

That was my turn to laugh. He obviously didn’t get why I thought that was so amusing either. I had drawn the galactic short straw and had been getting my ass kicked ever since. “Dude, I know a lot more about callings from higher powers than you’ll ever guess, but never mind. Please, continue.”

“In this case, Sonya took it personally, and said a few rather unkind things about our order, our leadership, and the chastity of their mothers.”

“She strikes me as having a bit of a chip on her shoulder.”

“You think?” Gutterres snorted. “However, when we learned about the auction, we didn’t have sufficient resources in the area—my flight just arrived this afternoon—my superiors remembered Sonya approaching us, knew she was living here, and since they were desperate, they made her an offer. Retrieve the Ward for us, and they would reconsider her previous application.”

“I take it that didn’t go over well?”

“She was still offended about how we rejected her previous advances. She said her father knew Saint Peter personally so how dare we, so on and so forth.”

“Heh. I can’t really relate. When I came back from the dead the first time, my guide was Jewish.”

Gutterres gave me an incredulous look, but then continued. “Sonya said she would do it, but only if we paid her a very large sum. Despite my objections, my superiors agreed to her terms. I was supposed to meet her, confirm the Ward was real, and take possession.”

I made sure Bonnie was out of earshot before asking, “Okay, level with me. What world-ending crisis do you guys need the stone for?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it with outsiders.” But then he sighed, realizing that we were stuck here together for a bit, so he might as well say what he could. “What I can tell you is that there’s been a serious incident in South America.”

I wondered if that might be the event Stricken had been alluding to. “Where?”

“In an area where the people have few resources, so their pleas for help are usually ignored. Their government has no PUFF equivalent for a threat of this magnitude, so it’s nothing your company would be interested in.”

“We might surprise you on that. We do some pro bono killing on occasion. I hear you Secret Guard guys are big on charity cases.”

Gutterres nodded. “There’s a network of the knowledgeable among the local priests. People come to them with their problems, so word of monster trouble always gets back to my order eventually. One of us was dispatched to check on the rumors. What he found was extremely troubling.”

“What kind of troubling?”

“Evidence of Old One activity. Not minions either. The real deal.”

“No shit?” In that case troubling was a serious understatement. The Great Old Ones were bad news, though the world had seen a lot less activity from that particular faction since Franks and I had obliterated their Dread Overlord.

“They are mobilizing, reasons unknown. Anyone who gets in their way has been killed or worse. The Secret Guard has tried to stop them, but it appears a major offensive is brewing. At first we just thought it was cultist and some minor summonings, but there is a major entity involved. Some type of very large creature from their dimension, which had been hidden and dormant for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years in an odd cavern deep beneath the ground.”

I nearly choked on my gas station dog as Gutterres described something I had once seen in the centuries-old memories of a conquistador.

“Are you okay, Pitt?”

“A cavern where it’s almost like the walls are made of living tissue, and the wind is its breathing, with mystical pillars made of obsidian inside, that’s way out in the jungle in Brazil, beneath an ancient lost city? Or at least it used to be out in the jungle, but that was a long time ago. I don’t know about now.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Some of that must have matched with their scout’s reports. “How do you know about that?”

That was a really long and complicated story, and I didn’t have time right then to tell him about how as one of the Chosen I was sometimes granted the power to read people’s memories, including the times that I’d seen some epic weirdness from the point of view of a conquistador who had been cursed. “That’s where Lord Machado got turned into a monster five hundred years ago. I thought the big thing would have slithered off after that, but . . . ” It was obvious that I’d confused the hell out of the poor guy. “Look, I’ll explain everything, but you need to know right now, the big thing you’re dealing with? Assuming we’re talking about the same thing, it’s not just the thing in the cave you’ve got to worry about. It’s connected to this other being, she’s some sort of herald, messenger, string-puller, instigator for the Old Ones, and she’s been around for a long time. She’s been out there for thousands of years impersonating goddesses and screwing with mankind. I knew her as Koriniha, and she’s insanely dangerous.”

My honest fear must have been coming through because Gutterres simply said, “I believe you.”

“That demon bitch seduced and manipulated Lord Machado into nearly killing us all, she stabbed my girlfriend—now wife—in the neck, and then tried to trick me into blowing up the whole world to try and save her life. She vanished after we defeated Lord Machado. If Koriniha is back, very bad things are about to go down.” I took a deep breath. And here I’d been so certain that I needed the Ward more. “This sucks.”

Gutterres and I were both silent for a long time. Then he said, “This thing is gathering its forces for unknown purposes right