Kathryn St. John threw the silver blade as hard as she could against the obsidian armor of the nearest daemon charging full steam ahead at her. It bounced off like a foam pool noodle and skittered across the tile floor just out of her reach. Wouldn’t you know it? Things never went her way. Didn’t matter if it was love, her day job as a waitress at Tim’s, or the last 200 years of returning daemons to their master Lucifer, nothing ever went the way she wanted or need it to go.
She pulled another deadly sharp silver blade from her boot and launched herself at the oncoming pack, wishing for the umpteenth time that she had a sidekick like all those comic book heroes she read about as a kid. She was getting damn tired of going it alone. She refused to believe that she was the only Hunter left of her order who had managed to stay alive after Lucifer and his daemon horde destroyed the last conclave in 1853 and scattered her colleagues to the four winds.
The nearest soul stealer snarled and clawed at her as her blade sliced it’s way straight through his chest. The ichor black blood slid off the blessed blade with a faint hissing sound and burned holes in the marble tile of the mausoleum floor. The soul stealers were nothing more than daemon lackeys but they could still do serious damage. They needed to take over a body to be able to wreak any kind of havoc on this plane and the bodies of those already dead were the easiest to use, no living souls to fight back, but it meant that there was only a short window of time before the bodies started to fall apart on their interlopers leaving a mess of horror movie proportions behind. They could only hold a body as long as the cranial cavity still held grey matter. The brain could hold a small electrical charge for weeks after death, and it was just enough for the soul stealing lesser daemons to reanimate a body.
The next stolen body swung at her head as she swept in under his arm and sent the offender back against the stone wall with a hard kick to the gut. She spun around just in time to side step another skeletal arm from ripping her heart out. She grabbed the arm and wrenched it hard to the right. The half skeleton went down in a heap next to the other one; both bodies worthless to any daemon spawn with the skulls cracked against the stone walls of the crypt. I’m getting too old for this.
The daemon leader came at her from the left and went down hard with an elbow to the ribs. Her silver blade made a clean arch, severing his head from his body. Even the obsidian armor of Hell couldn’t protect Lucifer’s minions from a blessed blade across the throat. His mortal body crumbled to dust and smoldered like campfire coals.
Kathryn’s vision dimmed for a split second as she felt the last of the daemons leave the re-dead bodies and this plane behind. She walked the three steps to retrieve her silver blade and sunk to her knees to catch her breath. Something glimmered at the corner of her eye. She jumped up and spun around expecting to have to do more damage. Instead she found herself facing the shimmering outline of her Keeper. “What do you want?” she snapped. She had never been on good terms with her Keeper or any of the “higher” beings for that matter. Their condescending tone got on her nerves. She would prefer they just leave her alone and let her do her job. Their constant meddling was not what she needed.
“Hunter please put that blade away. I’m not the enemy remember?” His tone belying any actual concern about her use of said weapon on him. She rolled her eyes and returned her blades to their places inside her boot and the sheath on her left hip.
Kathryn faced her Keeper squarely, hands on her hips, and sighed. “Fine, weapons of mass destruction are hidden from your delicate personage. Now I’ll ask again, what do you want Matthias?”
“Well…” He made a show of smoothing his non-existent robes with his equally non corporeal hands, “it has been brought to my attention from above that another Hunter has been called. The first in a century and you, my dear obedient one have been assigned to make sure that she is escorted to Venice where you will deliver the child to the Keepers for training.
Kathryn exploded, “Like hell I will!” Not in a million years you arrogant wind bag. “There is no way in this lifetime or any other that I am going to play nursemaid to some kid just because you tell me to.” She swore in 7 languages under her breath and spun on her heels to leave the now completely dead mausoleum. Matthias stopped her by flashing himself into the doorway. At least he had the good sense to act like she ruffled him. She’d been trying for years to get an honest reaction out of him. She was beginning to think that all of his communication skills were not real to begin with but an affectation that went along with taking a semi-human form so that he could talk to her.
The Keepers were not, nor had they ever been, “human”. The form that they used to bridge the gap between their plane of existence and the human world was no more their true form than she had wings. She could find no records anywhere of what they really did look like, but it didn’t matter anyway. Even if she could see his true shape, her brain probably wouldn’t be able to process it and her head would most likely explode or something.
“Kathryn Mellissa Bridgette St. John, you do not have a choice in this matter.” He really did appear to be flustered. He rarely used her given name, preferring to call her simply “Hunter” as if calling her by name put a sense of familiarity into their working relationship that was uncomfortable for him. Good. It might be good for him to have to come down from the ethereal every once in a while.
Why now? Just as he said, there hadn’t been a Hunter called in over a hundred years. Why would the Higher Powers call one now? I don’t think I want to know the answer. She sighed again but sensing a battle she could not possibly hope of winning, she acquiesced and nodded. “Fine, I’ll play babysitter and make sure the little brat gets to Venice but don’t expect me to be nice. Our work is underappreciated and thankless enough. She better start developing a tougher skin now.” The stench was getting unbearable now that the soul eaters had departed from the reanimated bodies. All three of the husks had begun to melt into puddles of black goo as the residual essence of the lesser daemons continued to eat through left over flesh and bone like acid.
“I don’t think you quite understand the situation Hunter.” Matthias was back to his tone of superiority. “The training of this Hunter should be of the utmost concern to you. Once her training is complete she will be sent back here to you for her apprenticeship. You are the only senior Hunter in the northern hemisphere. This is what you wanted is it not?” A smug grin played across the ethereal face for just a second. He really was getting the hang of human emotions after all these years.
“When I was wishing for a sidekick this was not what I had in mind and stay out of my head Matthias, you won’t like what you find in there.” He really was an arrogant ass sometimes. Wait a minute, “What do you mean ‘in the northern hemisphere’? Are you saying there are more Hunters in the southern hemisphere? Where, Australia, Brazil, Africa? Why didn’t you tell me? Why keep us separated? Do they know they are not alone?” Anger started to boil up from somewhere around her solar plexus blinding her for a second.
Her Keeper seemed to realize he’d made an error when she drew the blessed blade from her hip and looked for all the world to be judging if it would hurt him to throw it straight at his “head”. He wasn’t about to tell her that the silver blade would work just as well on him as it did on the daemons. That was one bit of information they never told the Hunters in their training and he wasn’t about to break that silence now.
“Yes, there are a few other Hunters left, but you are all scattered so far apart that my superiors thought it best to not tell any of you about the others. We needed you to stay where you were and continue the fight until we could find new Hunters to train. If we had told you about each other, you would have spent your time searching for each other and not holding the lines of defence. If all of you that are left had come together, it would have made it so much easier for Lucifer’s minions to destroy you leaving the world defenceless against an all-out invasion.”
Matthias’ form shimmered thinly for a few seconds and then disappeared. He reformed outside the doorway in the humid air of an Arkansas summer night. The full moon glowed brightly in a cloudless sky rimming the gravestones with platinum halos. “We really didn’t see any other way Kathryn.” There seemed to be real regret in his tone. She just wished she could believe it.
She returned her blade to its sheath on her hip once again and followed him outside. The heavy air hit her like a wall. She stopped for a second to get her bearings and then began walking the few rows back her truck. Her job at Tim’s was just a cover story. The Order always made sure that their Hunters were well enough off to never want for anything. She could have afforded just about any kind of car she wanted. But she had discovered that it was better to blend in with the locals and not flash the wealth of the Order in front of the local authorities, it tended to make them nervous, suspicious, or both.
To be honest though, she liked her old truck. It was a lot like her, it didn’t look like much on the outside, but under the hood was a strong, dependable 1989 Chevy 350 engine. The only modifications she’d made to the truck were bulletproof windows and a hidden compartment in the back of the glove box that held an extra set of blessed blades and new identity cards along with enough cash to get out of town if she had to.
There was a manila folder on the passenger side of the bench seat when she reached the truck. Inside was a name and a plane ticket to Los Angeles. She tossed the ticket aside. She preffered to drive. Flying still made her nervous. She still remembered when humans kept their feet firmly on the ground.
She had no reason to back into town. She never left anything in the random houses she stayed at. The sun was cracking over the soft line of the Ozark mountains as she pulled out of the cemetry and pointed the truck in the direction of Fort Smith. She had a two day drive ahead of her. That's if she felt like taing her time.
The only question in Kathryn's mind as she sped down highway 64 was why the Keepers wanted this particular child bad enough to send one of the few remaining Hunters to collect her in person when they could have just sent her a Calling instead. She would have shown up on her own at one of the many safe houses scattered across the world. It didn't make any sense.
Comentários