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

the remains of Holly’s car, clambered up the crumpled hood, hung Cazador out the gap and dumped a magazine as fast as I could pull the trigger. He was so big I couldn’t miss.

The Drekavac was dying, but not fast enough. He didn’t draw the sword this time. It was more like he willed it into existence. The crackling blade hit the first floor and sheared right through the concrete like it was a laser beam. I sure hoped the Hunters at those windows had gotten out of the way in time.

The floor beneath my feet rumbled. It felt like this whole side of MHI’s HQ was about to collapse beneath us. It was odd. Nobody screamed. Nobody panicked. We all just kind of froze for a moment, staring at each other wide-eyed, not even daring to breathe, as the building groaned below us.

It didn’t fall down.

We all started to breathe again. It was a good thing Grandpa Shackleford hadn’t skimped on the construction of this place.

The super-giant Drekavac slowly sank to his knees, too damaged to continue. And died. Twelve.

By my count, he still had one life left.

Franks appeared next to me, reloading the 20mm cannon that was longer than I was tall. “Hmmm . . . make that five thousand pikemen.”

“The main doors have been breached.” Julie shouted. “Tanya’s spells are broken. He can come inside. Get ready for anything.”

I looked down at the Drekavac. As he died this time, he didn’t dissipate back into fog, because every bit of fog was already compressed into this one huge form. The body had been burning with that evil supernatural blue, but it looked like the fire was hardening into ice.

“Something weird is happening,” I warned.

The body crystalized. Cracks formed. The cracks began to spread, faster and faster.

Franks scowled, looking out into the night as if he’d sensed something. “Lana’s here,” he muttered.

“That’s your takeaway from this?” I flipped out. “That’s what you’re worried about right now? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You got your mission. I got mine,” Franks said as he ignored the giant super monster that had suddenly turned into crystal, sounding like somebody had just turned a garden hose on ten million bags of Pop Rocks. Franks walked away. I looked down again to see that the Drekavac’s corpse was shaking with building energy.

“Everybody get back.”

For a second I’d thought the monster was going to go off like a bomb. What actually happened for his thirteenth and final form was a whole lot worse.

The giant shattered into an army of Drekavacs.

Chapter 20

There had to be hundreds of them, each the size of the original being. Every bit of the monster’s mass was converted into new bodies all at once, and it had been huge. The kneeling giant collapsed in an avalanche of skeletal blue bodies. The parts that had just been blown off by the explosives split into monsters too. All of a sudden, I was looking down at a concert-sized crowd of glowing horrors. The ones who had been born in the middle of our lawn inferno insta-died. The rest charged MHI HQ.

“We’ve got lots of monsters incoming!”

The Hunters opened fire. Only ghostly flintlock pistols materialized in about half of the Drekavacs’ hands and they shot back. Tiny blue bolts smacked into the walls around us as Hunters had to duck down. The pistols seemed far less powerful than the blunderbuss, but each impact still left a glowing blue hole.

While we were being pinned down, the other half of the army formed spectral swords or axes and charged our front door. I tossed a grenade out the window, and by the time I’d reloaded Cazador, it had detonated. Then I stood, picked out a Drekavac with a gun, and shot him in the face. I swiveled, picked up another monster, and shot him through the side of the head. Both of the creatures dropped. Which meant that they were probably only about as tough individually as the Drekavac’s first iteration. Too bad there were piles of them now. I had to duck as half a dozen ghost bullets clanged into the wrecked Audi.

The monsters may have all been aspects of the same being, but they sure didn’t act that way. It was like each one had an independent mind because they were moving in every direction and trying multiple lines of attack. Some were breaching our doors. Others were climbing up the walls to get in the opened windows. A bunch were taking cover and shooting at us. Milo’s turrets were slicing them down, but then groups of monsters began targeting the turrets. It was nuts.

Julie was shouting orders, sending most of us downstairs to reinforce the first floor, while she kept a crew up here to pick off the monsters in the open and climbing up the walls. “Owen, go with them.”

“On it,” I said as I jumped up and rushed to the stairs. My wife knew me well. Close-range face smashing was my specialty. I was wearing rifle pouches, but I’d left Abomination leaning in a corner with a belt full of drum mags, so I grabbed my shotgun along the way. There were several other Hunters ahead of me, including Milo and Holly.

Earl was in the lead. “These sons o’ bitches ain’t getting through us.” He shoved another mag in his Tommy gun and yanked back the bolt. “We kill as many as we can and leapfrog back as we need to. They’ll be heading for the vault.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Milo warned.

“No shit?” Holly said sarcastically.

“No, I mean a math problem. I don’t know his original density, but square cube law and all that, figure that big fella had to weigh one or two hundred tons at least.”

“That’s a lot of fog,” I said.

“Magic fog, so I’m assuming it’s less dense than something solid like a kaiju, and he looked kinda wispy so I’ll guess a hundred tons. The baby Drekavacs look pretty skinny all thin and wiry like that, but he’s probably heavier