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

“Incoming email from Lee. He’s scrounged up what he could about this place. Let’s see what we’ve got . . . ” She started reading. “Okay, for tonight’s location, who had murder-suicide in the pool for what the awful backstory would be?”

“I did,” said Mundy.

“Then Mundy wins it. Albert says thirty years ago the farmer who owned this place went bankrupt, then went insane and stabbed his wife with a pitchfork before hanging himself in the barn.”

“Hey, I had suicide,” declared Gregorius.

“But not murder-suicide. Pay up, suckers,” Mundy crowed. Because, of course, Hunters always placed bets on what the awful backstory would be of the horrible, haunted places we had to visit. I usually put my money on it being the home of a weird cult that had conducted acts of unspeakable evil there, because I’d had really good luck with that one over the years.

Seriously though, not to get all metaphysical or anything, but there’s just something about places with bad energy attracting bad entities. The worse the history, the worse the occupants it drew. Milo always bet on nothing bad ever happened there, it’s just misunderstood—because he was an optimist—but I don’t think he’d ever once won the pool.

Holly continued reading off her phone. “The bank repossessed the farm. The locals considered it cursed, the usual. It lay fallow for decades, rotting and falling apart, and it looks like ten years ago the land was bought by an obvious shell company—Albert can’t track down any actual real people behind it yet. There’re no weird police reports. The number of missing people in this county is about in line with the demographic average for rural America, so it can’t be anything too hungry.” Holly put her phone away. “So what are we thinking moved in here? Vampires? Necromancers?”

Trip said, “If it’s either of those, then Sonya is probably already dead.”

I’d tried to warn her not to run off. “Lack of missing locals indicates it’s not vamps.”

“Unless they get their food delivered,” Gregorius said. “People are always vanishing in Atlanta.”

“I’m hoping for three kobolds standing on each other’s shoulders in a trench coat trying to look big,” said Boone. Then he went into command mode. Whether leading soldiers or Hunters, the man had a lot of practice giving orders. “Time to shelve the guesswork. I hate going in blind, but we work with what we’ve got. Earl’s already snuck up close and has eyes on. It looks like that car Pitt reported as stolen is parked between the barn and the farmhouse. There’s no other vehicles in sight other than some old rusted tractors and junk. I’ve put the Groffs on the hill providing overwatch. Skippy is on standby with the chopper in case we need a medevac. The rest of us will move in nice and quiet, up that field.” Boone pointed at the weed patch that had probably once grown crops. “We get into position and then breach at the same time. My team will hit the house. The Alabama team will take the barn. Once those are cleared, we can search the rest of the smaller structures. Questions?”

“What about Harbinger?” Hertzfeldt asked.

Though that was a perfectly reasonable question—you really don’t want your allies to be in your backstop—Holly and I shared a knowing look. Poor Newbie.

“Don’t worry about Earl.” But then Boone unconsciously glanced up to see how full the moon was, but it wasn’t even close. “Earl will do whatever he wants. You stick with me and don’t worry about him. Anybody else?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Milo said. “We don’t know what’s hiding in there.”

“You want to just camp here while that shapeshifter gets eaten?”

Milo shook his head. “I didn’t say that. She’s the daughter of an old friend. We have to try. Just be careful, everybody.”

“Noted. Anybody else?” Boone asked again.

There was nothing. Most of us had done this kind of thing a lot. The Hunters were energized, but it was a casual sort of dangerous. You can be confident in your lethality and simultaneously aware of your mortality without getting all worked up about it.

“Move out.”

* * *

The path we took through the fields had already been scouted by Earl, so there weren’t any booby traps—mundane or magical. The worst thing I bumped into was some stickers that attached themselves to my armor like Velcro. We moved, single file, quick but quiet, everyone scanning side to side with their night vision. Whatever they had grown here before had all been replaced by weeds. The trees around the farm buildings were so ancient and overgrown that even if there had been sentries posted, they wouldn’t have been able to spot us through the leaves and dangling vines.

We all heard Earl whispering in our earpieces. “I’m a hundred yards to the northwest of you lying under the old tractor.” The rusting hulk was so covered in moss that it took me a second to pick it out. “I’ve got no lights or movement. No sign of anyone, including Sonya.”

That was worrisome. Earl should have at least been able to catch her scent. The fact he couldn’t meant she wasn’t actually here, or worse, she was, but whatever lived here had a way of obscuring its presence.

“This is Shannon,” said half of our sniper team on the hillside. “The only thing we have moving on thermal is you guys. The car’s still hot though, so it hasn’t been stopped for long.”

We passed a scarecrow in the field, but it was just a regular old boring scarecrow. Not the “built from dead bodies so it can reanimate and murder you with a hay hook” kind of scarecrow. That was the first thing Earl would have checked. But just in case, Holly poked it with the muzzle of her gun to make sure it wasn’t filled with cursed bones.

There was an odd noise. Almost like a high-pitched child’s voice. Every Hunter froze. The noise came again. Eeeeeen. I slowly shifted Abomination in the direction I thought the eerie call was