Mercenaries.
I hated mercenaries.
I could smell the twin allure of both cash and blood radiating from the individuals moving around like cockroaches outside of the doorway in front of me. I had felt disgust toward Charles Devinshire and loathing toward the meth dealers, but these individuals invoked both. I wondered if Summer could feel them moving around and looked down at them.
“Do you sense them?” I asked.
“Only the slashers,” Summer said. “Are there more?”
“Oh yes,” I said, closing my eyes and trying to feel out from my weird psychic ability to sense sin.
Out of the air I picked out the name “Son of Mars” and got a variety of visions for the corporation hired by the Cassidys as a security company to protect their assets in South America as well as Africa after the Vietnam War. Once they had been monster hunters but they’d long since abandoned that practice. They were now drawn from people who couldn’t make it as members of the United States military, the dishonorably discharged or the never accepted in the first place. They were toy soldiers who would be preparing for race wars were it not for the luxury of being paid to kill brown people.
Their murders were many. People were kidnapped from their homes, tortured, and executed. Homes were burned down. There was very little “war” being fought by these individuals, but their campaigns of terror worked well. In the end, by the time I sensed the fact they provided security and victims for these “hunts”, it was almost incidental to the mechanized industrial evil that they were all part of. They were all members of the Fraternity of Orion, but were paid cultists rather than true believers.
“How many?” Summer asked.
“A dozen at least,” I replied. “They’re searching for the survivors in the tunnels.”
“Then we need to move,” Summer said. “Even though we’re soaking wet and leaving a trail with every step.”
“We should split up,” I replied. “Assuming you’re willing to kill humans.”
“All monsters were humans once,” Summer said. “At least the ones I’ve encountered.”
Not all monsters were humans, the Spirit of the Hunt replied. Just the worst of us.
“Alright,” I replied, trying to control my urges. I wanted them. I wanted them all to die by my hand.
Summer’s hand went to the door and she looked up at me. “Can you sense the slashers?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes, but I shouldn’t be able to.”
“Keep track of them too,” Summer replied. “They could fuck us up royally. We’ll stick together and you can tell me where the others are.”
“As you wish,” I said, trying to sense the slashers as well. I had a bad feeling that they knew where we were every bit as well as I knew where they were.
Yes, the Spirit of the Hunt replied. But don’t worry, they won’t interfere in your hunt.
What? I asked.
The Spirit of the Hunt laughed. Don’t worry, this is just a warmup. Well, unless you die. Then I’ll have to rely on your sister for my entertainment.
I was starting to hate the Spirit of the Hunt, but that didn’t change anything. I was reliant on her power to know where the others were. The slashers felt different from the mercenaries moving around the black void I could see beyond the door. They weren’t my prey and I wasn’t zeroing in on them as such despite what the Spirit of the Hunt indicated. Instead, it was more that I could sense their power. They were fellow predators—competitors in the wild if you will. It meant my power was growing, considerably since last night and perhaps related to the Mark of Cain on my hand that seemed to throb with their presence.
I couldn’t see their specific crimes, but from one I caught brief glimpses of a suburban street, a blonde woman who looked a lot like Nancy and Summer, plus a chef’s knife that was soaked in blood. Those are distinctly different from butcher’s knives, by the way. It’s a common mistake to confuse the two. The sensation shifted to another slasher and I saw a child’s bedroom, a sleeping child with a furry hand holding a razorblade standing over him, and a toddler’s eye view of a house. It was a terrifying sort of vision that I had to wonder what slasher that was.
“I think one of the slashers is Mike,” I replied, just as Summer was about to open the door. “The slasher who stalked your mom.”
Summer paused and looked over my shoulder. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“I suppose you want to go after him,” I replied.
Summer surprised me. “No, I’m more concerned about rescuing my sister. I’m afraid she’ll go after him. Our chief priority is getting my sorority sisters out. Your sister, too, unless she’s stupidly gotten herself killed chasing the Necronomicon.”
“If the Fraternity of Orion gets ahold of the Necronomicon again then they will possess the power to end the world,” I replied. “Whether known as the Book of Midnight or the Tome of Darkness, it is linked to the Great Beasts and can bring those few locked away in Hell to this reality to end creation.”
Summer blinked. “Okay, then let’s hope she gets the book back.”
“Agreed,” I replied. “There’s two soldiers right outside the door.”
“Right,” Summer said, swinging open the door at speeds approaching a car driving on the freeway. The metal door slammed into their faces as we both immediately moved around the door.
The Sons of Mars mercenaries were a pair of heavily armored soldiers with body armor, Advanced Combat Helmets, and Zeus-12 assault rifles that were inappropriate for this tight level of corridor. Summer had moved behind the one on my left, a woman, and was strangling her with her own rifle. I simply grabbed the second one by his face using my left hand, driving my fingers deep within his tissue, and pushed him down to the ground with a thud that probably cracked his skull. Too horrified by my actions and the element of surprise, he had no time to scream. I proceeded to press down my foot on his neck and crushed it. He died seconds later from asphyxiation.
As Summer finished strangling her opponent, she looked at me. “You know you have a knife, right?”
I looked down at the knife in my right. “You’re right, I do.”
I felt the Mark of Cain on my change again and shook my head. I put the knife away before dragging the two bodies into the corridor we just exited. I would have taken their helmet radios but there was no point as I could sense all the remaining killers nearby.
“Is it a slasher thing?” Summer asked.
“Apparently,” I said. “Why aren’t you taking their guns?”
Summer shrugged. “Too much noise. It’d bring the entire compound down on us.”
She had a point there. “Does this mean that we’re cool?”
Summer did a double take. “It means that I trust you’re more interested in killing these people than me or my sister right now, Slasher.”
“Good,” I replied.
The area outside the door was a series of long metal tunnels with no sign of the artificial caverns we’d been previously inside. There was a series of fluorescent lights every six feet and not much room to maneuver or hide. Numerous other metal doors made the place feel more like a military base rather than the basement of the mansion we were now below. I could see a little sign hanging over a doorway directly ahead of us that labeled the restrooms. It was the only guidance other than the pounding in my head from the soldiers moving throughout.
“We need to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“Didn’t you go before you left?” Summer asked, about to head down the hall.
“They’ll follow our trail,” I gestured to the water dripping off our bodies. “We’ll use it to set a trap.”
Summer looked at me. “You’re good at this. Disturbingly good.”
“It’s a gift,” I said, wondering where Nancy might be in all of this. Why couldn’t I sense her?
It’s more fun this way, the Spirit of the Hunt taunted.
I wondered if it was possible to kill the patron god of slashers.
Yes, the Spirit of the Hunt whispered. But then you’d become me.
Summer headed down the hall and we both entered a white tile bathroom that was immaculately clean. It had rows of wooden stalls, faucets, and mirrors with no sign it had ever been used save a janitor’s bucket and mop to one side. There was a wooden door to what I presumed was a janitor’s closet. In the mirrors, I saw of a woman with long, stringy, crimson-hair covered in blood. She was wearing a wedding dress and reminded me a bit of my sister.
You could kill her now and I’d guarantee your sister’s safety, the Spirit of the Hunt spoke to me, the woman in the mirror’s mouth matching her words. I’ll even save your beloved girlfriend too.
I glared at her. “Go away.”
“What?” Summer asked.
I blinked and the bloody woman in the mirror was gone. “Remove your clothes.”
“What?” Summer asked.
“So the trail ends,” I said, closing my eyes.
I could feel a group of four more mercenaries coming this way and tried to focus on their names but couldn’t. Something about the nature of their allegiance seemed to block me from being able to do so. I could only feel their consecration to something darker and more malevolent than themselves, a name that was on the tip of my tongue but couldn’t quite be plucked out of the ether. It wasn’t Orion, either, but something more familiar. They were getting closer and would soon catch our trail. The other soldiers had stopped all gathered in one room, which bothered me a great deal. I couldn’t sense the slashers anymore. They were everywhere and nowhere now.
Summer reluctantly stripped down to her underwear while I did the same. She had a lithe and athletic frame than contrasted to her sister’s more substantial one. I barely paid her a glance and she seemed surprised by my lack of interest before we both dumped our clothes on the ground. She walked into the nearest stall before climbing onto the top of it and shutting the door. I pulled out a paper towel and cleaned up a few droplets of water on the ground before heading into the janitor’s closet. It was full of bleach, shelves, and mops as well as a large blue uniform hanging inside an open locker.
I could hear the four speaking down the hall as their hearts beat with mixture of excitement and fear. My senses were acute to their presence and my hunger to end their lives was growing larger than my desire to rescue the others. I forced those thoughts down and concentrated on my sister’s face as well as Nancy’s.
You can’t control your hunger for murder, the Spirit of the Hunt taunted. In the end, all slashers give into it. It destroys all relationships and leaves only the kill.
Is that what happened to you? I asked. Is that why you are alone and hated by even your own followers? Ones you must taunt and torture to provide even the slightest bit of amusement to your immortal life?
For once, the Spirit of the Hunt was speechless. Apparently, I was correct in my assessment of the evil god.
You know nothing, the Spirit of the Hunt said.
Don’t I? I asked.
The mercenaries discovered the corpses of their comrades in the corridor. They’d also found the water droplets on the ground. It was a trail that led directly to the bathroom and would result in our deaths if they found us now. That was when I heard words that chilled me.
“We’ve intercepted the escapees. We have them now. What should we do?” It wasn’t from the four down the hall, but their radio chatter. I could hear it. It was the Spirit of the Hunt taunting me.
“Hold position,” one of the soldiers just a dozen feet away spoke. “We’ve found a trail for some others. It could be the Artemis and another subject. We’ll attempt to detain them, but if necessary, we’ll terminate them.”
“What does it matter? They’ll just come back,” the voice on the other side said.
“Haha,” the soldier replied.
Bastards.
The hunger threatened to overwhelm me as I felt them enter into the bathroom. The four of them spread out and prepared to search each of the stalls as well as the janitor’s closet. I felt the heartbeat of one come right up to the door. That was when I finally got a name and a sense of the person involved.
Annie Brackenridge.
Annie was a woman in the Sons of Mars, but that wasn’t so uncommon as might have been expected. Almost a quarter of the organization’s membership was women. She’d been the daughter of a military family and found the Army less than enlightening.
The Sons of Mars had recognized her true talents and only asked her to prove her willingness to do whatever it took to have a position there. She’d thought it would be sex like her previous commanding officer had extorted from her before passing her over for promotion. No, they’d wanted her to put a bullet into the head of the man while he was tied up in a chair with a blindfold. It had been easy.
Annie’s membership in the Fraternity was ironic as she could tell most of her squad got off on the hunts, particularly when they were of beautiful women. However, the money was too good and Annie was supporting a family of eight back home. Her actions were unforgivable but her motives understandable. So I made her death quick.
As her hand reached for the knob, I smashed my hands through the wooden door and grabbed Annie by the jacket before pulling her through as her rifle went off. Her scream was almost immediately cut off when I broke her neck with one easy motion. I threw myself to the ground just as the door was torn to pieces above my head by bullets. Annie’s corpse rested on top of me and took several stray rounds even as I heard screams come from the three attacking me. Within seconds, the gunfire stopped and I felt each of the hearts stop. I’d provided the perfect distraction for Summer to kill them all.
Or so I hoped.
I pushed off Annie’s body, stood up, and removed the janitor’s overalls from the locker. There was a bullet hole in the center but that didn’t stop me from putting them on. There was also a ballcap, pair of sunglasses, rubber gloves, and dust mask. I put it on and pushed open the shattered door. I found myself looking at Summer, a knife in her hand, standing over the dead bodies of three mercenaries. Their throats had all been slit and they had bled out on the floor, looks of horror on their faces.
Summer was breathing heavily. “I hate killing humans.”
“I thought you didn’t see any difference between killing monsters and humans,” I replied.
“I don’t,” Summer said, looking up. “I bet this is getting you off, though. This is all some twisted murder-sex thing for you.”
I looked at her confused. “I don’t think you understand me, Summer. At all.”
She’d have been right about my father, though.
Summer blinked as she looked at me. “What’s with the outfit. Are you switching serial killer themes from the Accountant to the Janitor?”
“No, I find that covering my face and human features makes me a more terrifying presence,” I said. “It depersonalizes me and makes me a more elemental force of nature.”
“You look like you’re going to clean out my gutters,” Summer said. “Anyone coming in the next few seconds?”
“No,” I replied. “Not yet.”
Summer started stripping the pants off one of the dead soldiers, another woman who I didn’t know the name of. She started dressing as one of the Sons of Mars, having assembled a clean outfit from the dead. “How many more of them are there?”
“More all the time,” I replied, feeling a lot of movement above our heads as well as around us. “I think we need to depart quickly. I have a distraction planned, but it’s going to go off soon and won’t help us if we’re not ready to take advantage of it.”
I didn’t know how to share my suspicion that Nancy and the others had been captured. Fate ended up taking the necessity away.
A thick Brooklyn accent spoke over what I assumed to be the basement’s intercom system. “Hey, Billy Junior, Summer Girl, we have your friends. We’re going to start gutting them in ten seconds. Come out with your hands up.”
Well, crap. “It’s Lucky. We’re screwed.”
“Who is Lucky?” Summer asked, looking at me.
“Evil teddy bear,” I replied.
Summer stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Ten…” Lucky started counting down. “Nine…Eight…”
We both ran for the door simultaneously.