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

glowing blue sword point slowly punched through the vault steel. The Drekavac had given up on smashing his way in, so he was cutting his way in. The tip was glowing like a plasma arc. It had to be using up a ton of the Drekavac’s remaining power, but he was shearing through the locking bolts.

“There’s too many tunnels to cover even if we split up, and we’ve got two wounded to carry.” I checked my radio, but still got nothing but static. Not surprising, considering the source of the distortion was on the other side of the door.

“We’ll just have to pick a route and hope,” Lee said.

Cody was a big guy, but even missing three limbs, Melvin still weighed more. So I scooped up our troll. “You’re going to have to ride piggyback.”

“Melvin’s ego not fragile.”

Trip and Lee dragged Cody to his feet and each of them got one of his arms over their shoulders. That Drekavac was making unnervingly steady process. The door was dripping molten steel. An incredible amount of heat was coming off of the metal. It wouldn’t hold for long, but at least whatever was left of the Drekavac would have been weakened by such an expenditure of energy. We were about to make a run for it when the sword tip suddenly disappeared. There was a muffled crash and a crunch on the other side. For twenty seconds we heard the sounds of violence but couldn’t really tell what was going on. The Drekavac screeched, but that sound was abruptly cut off.

Whatever had just taken out the Drekavac must have known the exterior combo, because a moment later the wheel began to spin. The door swung open.

Earl Harbinger staggered into the room. He was human, or at least mostly human, but still in the process of turning back. His body had been savaged. He was covered in so many rapidly healing bullet holes it looked like he had the chicken pox. One eye was still werewolf yellow; the other was filled with blood. He’d burned so many calories regenerating that all his still twisting bones were visibly poking through his skin. The blood-soaked figure made it a few halting steps into the cell, and then slowly sank to his knees.

“Damn, man,” I said. “You look like shit.”

“That’s the last of them,” Earl gasped, exhausted. He was so tired he sounded drunk. Then he looked past his battered Hunters and saw the hole in the wall. “The fuck you do to my room?”

“Sonya’s been taken. I think by Stricken.”

“Oh . . . ” Earl said as the fog of the last Drekavac he’d just taken out swirled by him, past my legs, and flew down the tunnel out of sight. “Thought we were done, but that slime’s going somewhere.”

The Drekavac wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t sacrificed all of his thirteenth form against us. He must have left a body hiding somewhere in the compound to fall back to, and it had collected who knew how many monsters’ worth of power. Lana was going to carry Sonya right into that thing’s arms.

Earl tried to stand up, but then flopped over on his side, too injured to keep going. “Gimme a minute.” Then he promptly passed out. Which was saying a lot about how badly he’d been torn up, because Earl Harbinger was a tank.

I dropped Melvin again, who made a very disgruntled noise when he hit the floor. “Lee, stay with Earl and Cody.”

Trip knew what was up. We were Sonya’s last chance. “Better. Get to the intercom, alert the others, then stay with these guys.”

“Will do. Good luck.”

At least I wouldn’t be here when Lee found out that I’d had a gunfight in his library.

Chapter 22

Trip and I ran through the tunnels.

This section had been dug clear back in the Bubba Shackleford era. They were seldom used now because they were prone to cave-ins. Our weapon-mounted flashlights revealed crumbling brick walls. Obnoxious spider webs got over my face. We reached a fork in the tunnel, and when I aimed my light down each, it revealed more side tunnels ahead. The floor was mostly small rocks so we couldn’t even see tracks to tell which way Gutterres had gone. Even though we were on our home turf, we were just as lost as the Catholics probably were.

“How are we going to find her?”

“I’ve got a secret weapon.” Then I raised my voice to shout as loud as I could. “Justinian! I need your help.” The sound echoed in the narrow space. I had one hell of a loud voice. You get a lot of practice when you have to be heard over gunfire. The key was to speak from the chest. “Justinian or any of his legion, if you can hear me, MHI needs your aid.”

“Who?” Trip asked, confused.

I held up a hand to shush him. “Which way did she go?”

“What was that about?”

“Sorry. I’ll explain later. Just listen.”

“Is that . . . ?”

I hadn’t heard it, but Trip had less hearing damage than I did. “What?”

“Something’s squeaking.” He pointed down the left fork.

“Go! Follow it.”

To his credit, Trip didn’t question. He trusted me and acted. Like Harbinger had taught us, a Hunter’s greatest weapon was a flexible mind. But I also knew that he was a bit of a germaphobe who kind of freaked out about stuff he thought was gross. “Don’t step on any rats!”

“What—” He suddenly leapt to the side. “Yikes!”

There was a big brown rat standing in the middle of the tunnel, and Trip had nearly run over him. I knew right away that this was one of Justinian’s tribe because of the way he stood there on his rear legs, defiantly rather than scurrying away. The rat began squeaking rapidly and gesturing down the tunnel.

“Which way was the girl taken?” I pulled out my phone and flipped it to the notes app. Then I knelt and held the phone where the rat could reach it. Without hesitating he quickly began typing a message.

I AM ATTICUS SON OF