Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Monster Hunter Bloodlines -eARC

  Larry Correia

  Look for the final version on August 3, 2021

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC

  Larry Correia

  IN A BUSINESS LIKE MONSTER HUNTING, IT’S ALL ABOUT SETTING PRIORITIES

  The chaos god Asag has been quiet since the destruction of the City of Monsters, but Monster Hunter International knows that he is still out there, somewhere—plotting, waiting for his chance to unravel reality. When Owen and the MHI team discover that one of Isaac Newton’s Ward Stones is being auctioned off by Reptoids who live deep beneath Atlanta, they decide to steal the magical superweapon and use it to destroy Asag once and for all. But before the stone can be handed off, it is stolen by a mysterious thief with ties to MHI and the Vatican’s Secret Guard.

  It’s a race against time, the Secret Guard, a spectral bounty hunter, and a whole bunch of monsters to acquire the Ward Stone and use it against Asag. For as dangerous as the chaos god is, there is something much older—and infinitely more evil—awakening deep in the jungles of South America.

  Monster Hunter Bloodlines

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Larry Correia

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-9821-2549-3

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First printing, August 2021

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data t/k

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  www.Baen.com

  Chapter 1

  A couple years ago my company picked a fight with an ancient chaos demon. The last round had ended in a bloody draw. Nobody knew when our battle would kick off again, but when it did, we had a new strategy to put that immortal bastard down once and for all. My idea was to harness the power of Isaac Newton’s crazy space magic in order to kick some monster ass.

  The only problem was alchemical super weapons don’t exactly grow on trees. We’d had one once but used it up obliterating a Great Old One. There were only a handful of Ward Stones left on Earth, and mankind had lost the secret of how to make new ones. Except we had just gotten word that one of the rare treasures was up for grabs. Which was why two teams from Monster Hunter International were currently staked out around an office park in Atlanta, waiting for a supernatural arms deal to go down, in the hope that we would be able to steal the arcane equivalent of a suitcase nuke from the forces of evil.

  My name is Owen Zastava Pitt and I have the coolest job in the world.

  * * *

  “Z, anything on your side?” my boss asked over the radio. Earl was in a car parked at the end of the block.

  I was sitting in the back of a nondescript work van parked down the street, watching the front of the building through a pair of binoculars.

  “Nothing new, Earl. Just the same bunch of security guards standing around looking bored.” The muscle had been hired by the shady legal firm which had arranged this transaction, but as far as we knew the guards were regular human beings, who probably had no clue what they’d gotten involved in, which meant us hurting them would be illegal.

  “Alright, keep your head on a swivel.”

  Trip was sitting in the back of the van with me and checked his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. “We’ve still got a little time before the mystery buyer is supposed to show.”

  “And lunch hour traffic is terrible around here, especially with the convention in town, so don’t be surprised if he’s late,” said our driver. He was a new guy on Boone’s team named Hertzfeldt. “Who do you think the buyer is going to be anyway?”

  “No idea.”

  “If this deal’s even real,” Hertzfeldt muttered. “We’re putting in a lot of effort over an anonymous tip.”

  It had been Management who had notified us about this sale on the Dark Market. The billionaire dragon had tried to bid for the item himself, but apparently he didn’t have enough baby souls or whatever horrible thing it was these particular scumbag monsters had wanted in trade. But since most of the rank and file of MHI didn’t know of Management’s existence, we had to keep our tipster’s identity secret.

  “Trust me, man. The info will be good,” I assured the Newbie. “And with the sellers being PUFF-applicable, we’ll still get a payday out of this no matter what.”

  That didn’t seem to placate him much. Hertzfeldt had come out of the company’s last training class, so I barely knew him. He was still pretty new to all this weird stuff, but he knew his way around Atlanta, so he had been assigned to drive me and Trip around in the surveillance van. The local team had been divided up so that each of us out-of-towners had a guide who actually knew the area. Which was good, considering half the streets here seemed to be named Peachtree something for some baffling reason.

  While we waited, Hertzfeldt tried to make small talk. “Hey, Pitt, if you don’t mind me asking, there’s this rumor going around about when you all went to that Russian island, that . . . well . . . ”

  “Yeah?” But I already knew where this was going.

  “It sounds nuts, but they told us in training that you got trapped on the other side for six months. But there’s no way that’s true, right?”

  Get stuck in a dimension made out of hunger and nightmares for half a year one time, and everybody has to freak out about it. It had been hard, but the guys I had rescued from the Fey had been there way longer than I had. I’d gotten off relatively easy compared to them.

  “Yeah. It’s true.”

  I could see him looking at me in the rearview mirror. I didn’t know what Julie had told the last Newbie class about that place, probably about how the whole warped dimension could twist reality on a whim, and it had been a dumping ground for banished and lost monsters, but whatever my wife had said, the idea of me spending that much time there seemed to unnerve the Newbie. He was probably thinking what the hell did I sign up for?

  “What was that like?”

  I’d fought mutants, Fey knights, and faced off against the immortal embodiment of Disorder. I’d barely survived by sheer stubbornness and a desire to see my family again, but that was none of his business, so I just waved it off by saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  Luckily, Earl Harbinger got back on our radio net and saved me from having to talk about that miserable suck fest further. “Holly, how’s it going in there?”<
br />
  Holly Newcastle and a couple other Hunters were seated at the outdoor patio tables of the little restaurant next to the target location. “All clear here. Just businessmen having lunch. I don’t see anyone who looks particularly culty. The lobster bisque is excellent though. Over.”

  I keyed my radio. “Save your receipts. The company will reimburse for that.”

  “In that case, I’m ordering the bottomless mimosas.”

  “Don’t lie, Holly. We all know you already did.”

  “Guilty as charged.” But Holly was professional enough she’d keep the day drinking to a minimum. Probably. There were still death cultists to tail back to their secret lair. Plus we would have to deal with the mystery buyer, who we could totally shoot if it turned out to be something PUFF-applicable. Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund bounties were our bread and butter.

  The intel Management had given us was limited because the Dark Market had really beefed up their information security after my wife had killed a bunch of their regular clientele in Europe. We didn’t know the buyer’s identity at all, except they were from out of town. The sellers were local, and we were pretty sure we knew what they were because the Atlanta team had been hunting them for months. Management had confirmed that the place we were watching was the neutral location they’d agreed upon to make the exchange, and when our dragon was certain of something, it usually panned out. He had sources everywhere.

  The area seemed remarkably normal. Our target was just a regular business, next to an architectural drafting company, a brew pub, a graphic design shop, and a little plaza with benches and a fountain. It was broad daylight, on a nice afternoon, with dozens of witnesses wandering around. You’d think monsters would prefer someplace more . . . gothy. Or at least shadowy and menacing or something. Hell, there was a food truck selling tacos. Tacos are the antithesis of evil.

  The building we were watching was one of those bland, featureless, two-story brick places. With a nebulous, forgettable name on the little sign like Insert Strong Word Here Consulting, or Nobody, Nobody, and Douchebag LLC, where you could never guess what they actually did inside. Such businesses were common and unnoticeable, which I guess made them perfect for monsters to secretly conduct their affairs.

  “Milo, Skippy, how’s the view from up there?” Earl asked.

  “Nothing suspicious yet, Earl.” Milo answered cheerfully. “These drones are really neat though.”

  The two of them were on the roof of one of the nearby high-rises so they could have an unimpeded radio signal. Earl had wanted some eyes in the sky for this operation, but our giant noisy helicopter would have been super obvious. Luckily our supremely skilled orc could fly just about anything, even by remote control.

  In the background of Milo’s radio could be heard a deep voice grumbling, “Skippy make tiny thing do the tricks! Whee. Barrels roll!”

  “Stop that,” Milo insisted. “It’s not a toy!”

  He wasn’t kidding. The invoice for the drones was still on my desk. Milo had taken Earl’s instruction to get something nice to mean max out the company card on high tech surveillance gizmos. Between the actual flying machines, and the really expensive software package they used, it probably would have been cheaper to buy Skippy another Russian attack helicopter. If our orc crashed one of those drones, Earl was going to be severely annoyed.

  “I’ve got some activity at the back.” That voice belonged to Boone, the experienced Hunter who had been the Atlanta team lead since I’d started with the company. “There’s a black SUV coming up on the parking garage. I bet this is our seller. Hold on. Make that two, no, three SUVs. We’ve got us a convoy.”

  “So much for just having to handle one delivery minion,” I said to the other guys in the van. “Our tip told us that the seller was supposed to come alone.”

  “Think it’s a setup and they’re just going to rob the buyer?” Hertzfeldt asked.

  “No way,” Trip answered. “A rip-off would bring the Dark Market down on their heads, and even dumb monsters aren’t that stupid. As valuable as this thing is, it’s no surprise they’re rolling heavy. From what Julie said about their rules, the seller is responsible until the buyer takes physical possession. If it gets lost before that, they’re still on the hook, and these things do not like to mess around when it comes to contract enforcement.”

  From what Julie had learned in Europe, that was the understatement of the year there. The Dark Market was an illicit underground organization that horrible creatures used to make deals. My wife had told me a really unnerving story about watching some poor German kid get sucked down to hell or someplace equally awful for not reading the fine print on one of their contracts. Sad part was the only reason we knew anything about that organization at all was because my kidnapped son had been the prize in one of their auctions. Except thankfully Julie had ruined that deal, and by ruined, I mean she shot a lot of scumbags in the face and got our boy back.

  One of the security guards in front of the building got a message on his radio, probably to notify him about the VIP’s arrival, because he snapped at the others to look sharp. Cigarettes were stubbed out and cell phones were put away.

  I scanned the street through the binoculars, but still no sign of the buyer. The taco truck was busy and had a decent crowd waiting in line. It was Labor Day weekend, but it wasn’t as hot as usual, so people were sitting around the plaza, eating and having a nice time. There were other people walking by, but nobody was heading toward the unremarkable building of boredom.

  A bullet bike drove past our van. The rider was obviously female. Though she was wearing a helmet, the riding outfit was so formfitting it didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. Hertzfeldt whistled appreciatively. Even Trip, who tried ever so hard to always be the gentleman, obviously noticed her, though unlike the Newbie, he at least tried not to stare. Plus, Trip was currently in a serious relationship and if there was ever anybody who took the concept of loyalty seriously, it was Trip.

  The rider slowed down enough that I thought for a second she might be our mystery buyer, but then the bike passed by the front of the building and kept going.

  Boone got back on the radio. “They’re getting out of their vehicles and heading inside. I’m guessing snake cultists from the sleeve tats, but there’s one larger figure wearing a hood and a mask and carrying a big red backpack. That’s got to be our seller. Way he’s dressed, he’s gotta be the real thing.”

  “Nasty-ass reptoids.” Hertzfeldt shuddered.

  So only one of the sellers had come. By their standards they were still within the terms of the auction contract, because from what I’d heard, the lizard monsters thought of their human cultists more like pets than equals.

  “Alright, everybody,” Boone said. “The stone is probably in the backpack. We let the deal go down, let them part ways, then Team Harbinger nails the buyer, and my boys will tail the snake morons back to wherever they’ve been hiding so we can clean out their nest.”

  “We can’t make that call until we see who the buyer is,” Earl cautioned. “I know these scaly assholes have been a thorn in your side, Boone, but if we have to choose between letting them get away, or grabbing the package, the package comes first. That’s the big picture. Keep your eye on the prize.”

  “Roger that,” Boone obviously didn’t like it much, because when a tribe of reptoids moves into your city, starts eating people, and idiots start worshipping them and doing human sacrifices in exchange for dark magic blessings, that gets super annoying. However, Boone had been at Severny Island and seen the world-ending magnitude of the threat gathering there. He knew what was at stake. It wasn’t every day MHI could score an Isaac Newton original capable of smoke-checking a chaos god.

  “No matter what we’ll stick at least one car and one of Milo’s drones on the lizard lovers’ convoy.” Earl said. “Things that mostly eat the homeless really piss me off too. It’s not like those folks don’t already have it hard enough already without being terrorized by reptoids.
”

  “Thanks, Earl.”

  I noticed a car approaching from the opposite direction. The blinker came on as it slowed to enter the parking lot. “This is Pitt. I’ve got something in front. A silver BMW sedan is pulling up to the front entrance now.”

  The car stopped. Two security guards moved to get the rear door. Oddly enough, I noticed that one of the men was carrying an umbrella. He popped it open to protect the new arrival from the sun.

  “Curious.” Trip raised his new camera with the giant telephoto lens and took a picture. Milo hadn’t been the only one to go nuts putting new equipment on the company card once given the surveillance excuse. “Somebody must have requested shade.”

  “Maybe it’s a vampire,” Hertzfeldt suggested.

  What a Newbie thing to say. I started to correct him, because it would take way more than an umbrella to protect a vampire from bursting into flames beneath the sun, but then I watched a very tall, very thin, very pale man unfold himself out of the back seat. Once safely under the umbrella’s shade, he checked out the street, his eyes hidden behind odd persimmon-colored sunglasses.

  “This is way worse than a vampire.”

  Trip, who almost never used profanity, simply said, “Aw, shit” when he recognized the buyer.

  “You know that albino guy?” Hertzfeldt asked, worried.

  “Unfortunately, yes.” I got on the radio. “We have eyes on the buyer. And, uh . . . Earl?”

  “Go ahead, Z.”

  “Promise not to hulk out.”

  “Spit it out already.”

  I looked over at Trip, grimaced, then reluctantly pushed the transmit button. “It’s Stricken.”

  The radio was silent for a long time. Trip and I exchanged a very nervous glance, because Earl hated Stricken probably more than anyone or anything on this plane of existence. To be fair, we all hated the former head of Special Task Force Unicorn, but for Earl, it was really personal.