The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Read online

  Kessler sprinted for Jenson. Shots rang out all around. He slid to a stop in the dirt. Jenson’s breath came in short gasps, his mask pried loose, so that Kessler could see the spark of his clenched white teeth, face contorted in pain. His chest rose and fell quick, like the sharp breaths of a woman in labor, trying desperately not to scream and give away their position.

  The legs were gone below his knees and Kessler’s stomach wrenched. He wasn’t the primary medic but he had training and knew enough to save Jenson’s life. He went through the procedures, hissing to Jenson’s face so he could read his lips: “You’re good, hang in there. Going to do a tourniquet and get you out of here. You with me?”

  “Yeah,” he said between sharp breaths. “I’m here. Sure as fuck not—anywhere else.”

  Horror froze Kessler’s hands at first. Revulsion washed through him. The sight of the bloodied stumps struck a gong in his skull that wouldn’t stop ringing. His training muted the noise, dulled the reverberation until it became a persistent buzz. He ignored the human being and focused on the stumps and the tourniquet and the bandages. Instead of operating on a person, he sought only to stop the bleeding. It changed him from a panicked surgeon to a competent plumber.

  Shots like firecrackers erupted all around him, the echoing pop pop pop filling up the sky. Strobe flashes from the cliff sides and the scattered positions of his team ignited the darkness. The radio burst with frenzied messages: “… need helo support now, pinned down…” “Paint the target, Seven, unsure if there are non-hostiles on the ground.” “Enemy behind the trucks, repeat, taking cover behind—” “Then push them back!” “Anyone get a look at the mine that clipped Three?”

  Kessler glanced at the crater in the ground, then at Jenson. “You get a look at the mine?”

  “Don’t fuckin’ know, might have been… might have been under some brush.”

  Made sense. The ground here was short scrub brush sprouting from clay. A freshly buried mine would look like a discolored zit on the open terrain, so they would be hidden under brush. But there was too much dry vegetation to avoid it on their approach. And there had to be a lot of mines, since Jenson had triggered one only a hundred yards out from the trucks. One step could kill or maim Kessler or any of his squad mates.

  No, he thought. Don’t think like prey. He slammed the door on that. Focus on the enemy, focus on what they’re trying to do. The outward-facing trucks and mines were a defensive perimeter. Something had spooked them enough to unload a cache of munitions and mines they must have been trafficking and create an impromptu minefield in the middle of nowhere. He looked at the trucks and their headlights, then the places in shadow where his squad had taken root.

  That was it. The light and the shadow. Not a lot of mines, he realized. Well-positioned ones. The truck lights were meant to corral the enemy into the darkness, into the mines. He tapped his radio. “Four to squad, advise, the mines are in the shadows underneath the scrub.”

  First a pause. Then pops. The truck headlights shattered. “One to squad. Avoid the scrub. Approach in front of the trucks where there was light before. Suppression fire. Chase them back into the alcove and then drop the goddamn hammer.”

  A scrape of boot heels signaled the appearance of Hendrickson from the shadow, hopping and jumping over the scrub like some perverted battlefield game of “the floor is lava.” He knelt by Jenson. “I’ll finish here.”

  Hendrickson was the more experienced medic. Kessler stood and danced over the brush, blending light-footedness with the low, swift movement of a soldier. Alvarez had made it to a forward position and fired his light machine gun from prone. Seo had dug into a flank and together they’d chased back the traffickers hiding behind the trucks. Concussive booms in the distance signaled fire from their snipers. Three traffickers fled to the alcove and then dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut.

  Kessler sprinted past; Alvarez stood and tagged along behind him. They ran parallel to a truck and took cover behind one of the tall spikes of rock just forward of the Fortress’s cliff side, where the cavernous holes hid their enemy. The alcove was partly lit and partly obscured in their night vision by the fire burning in front of it.

  Return fire hit the rocks above Alvarez’s head. Kessler had an angle into the cavern and a glimpse of the shooter. He’d never killed a man before. It was a shot across sixty yards at a partly uncovered torso through the fog of shadow and glare of fire.

  Kessler drew the bead. Gunfire cut through the night air to his right. A stutter of bullets from Alvarez’s machine gun struck the shooter an instant before Kessler could fire. In the grainy night vision it looked to Kessler as if the man’s head folded in, like a smashed pumpkin.

  The ghost of an emotion filled him, irritation or relief, but no time to process it, and like a shadow it was gone. He poured on suppression fire and the squad caught up, then shifted forward under alternating fire.

  “Paint the overhang,” their commander radioed. “Aim high, don’t damage the package.”

  The helicopter rotors grew in volume, desert sand flew past Kessler’s ankles, and then its big guns opened up. Thunder cracked the sky in half and roared palpably into Kessler’s shoulders. The cliff wall above the overhang transformed into powdered stone. Between bursts they could hear the rattle and collapse of rock formations crumbling under the onslaught.

  “No rockets and keep it over their heads,” the commander said between explosions from the heavy cannons. “Don’t want to breach the package.”

  Blind spots for the overhang rested along the cliff wall. They could position there and sweep the inside. Kessler pointed at the wall to Alvarez, who nodded. Over the fire and noise from the helicopter, they sprinted for the cliff. He sensed Seo and Ike hustling to the right-side cliff wall as he and Alvarez went left. Return fire from the enemy position came in sporadic bursts. Not even aiming. Not chancing a glance around their stony cover from inside the overhang, lest the helicopter’s fire rip them to pieces.

  Kessler hit the cliff wall and spun. The motion ground one shoulder strap along a serrated rock, slicing the fabric halfway through. He and Alvarez looked ahead. Up close he could see a tall wooden post, like a short telephone pole, that they had planted in front of the fire. They’d tied a shapeless black mass of supplies to the top of the pole with baling wire to keep it from predators. A round from the helicopter snapped through the middle of the pole and obliterated half the thick beam. The big guns quieted and the wood groaned in the night air, threatening to snap.

  “Go, go, go,” said Ike. Kessler rounded the overhang’s wall and stepped into the alcove.

  Bang, bang, bang, each rifle shot a percussive beat in the tight confines. Seo’s shots lanced through a trafficker who crumpled forward without a sound, like a wind-up toy whose spring had run down. Another trafficker popped up and aimed at Seo. Kessler’s rifle snapped to attention. His finger teased the trigger.

  Ike fired first and the trafficker’s head snapped back. He collapsed.

  Kessler finished rounding the corner while Alvarez strafed for a rock, wanting a spot to set up his machine gun. For a split second, it was only Kessler. A figure ran from around a stone pillar, away from Ike and Seo as they cleared the opposite side of the cavern. Running away rather than toward the fight, he had his rifle down. Maybe fleeing, maybe repositioning. He ran straight into Kessler’s path.

  For one split second Kessler saw him. Saw through the bandana on his face and to the surprised, black-eyed face beneath, eyes un-creased by age or experience. He had the lank body of a teenager. His weapon tensed.

  It was going to swing up or drop to the ground. Kessler’s gut told him it was swinging up.

  He fired.

  The trafficker hit the ground. His rifle skated away from his fingertips. Kessler pushed back the desire to second-guess himself and swept the rest of the corner just in time to see one more enemy step out from a rock formation and fire into the space Kessler had occupied a breath ago. Alvarez’s machine
gun kicked the camo-dressed man off his feet into the back wall of the alcove.

  The team cleared the rest of the small opening in the cliff wall. The helicopter’s gunfire had killed three men and the rest had died in the brief firefight.

  “Possible ID on the package,” Seo said.

  Kessler knelt and waved a handheld black box over the surface of a metal crate about the size of a garbage disposal. The black box clicked rapidly and he nodded. “Positive ID,” he radioed. “Package is intact.”

  “This thing going to give us cancer?” Seo asked.

  “I wouldn’t lick it if that’s what you mean,” Kessler said. “But the seal’s tight enough for short-term handling.”

  “Area secure,” radioed Davis. “Bring in the evac bird. Sending the package and Jenson back in Artemis One, per Extraction Plan Bravo. Hendrickson, stay with Jenson.”

  Kessler and Seo went carefully over the rest of the bodies. “Got a live one,” Seo said.

  They both knelt around a young trafficker, his hood pulled back to reveal heavy black hair and nut-brown features. Kessler came in close to the man and lifted the night-vision goggles on his own face. Seo brought his penlight out. “Tell us where you were taking the package. Who was your contact?” Kessler checked the man’s wounds, putting pressure on them. Two to the center mass. He didn’t have long.

  “Take me,” he said in English. “Take me away. Before it gets me.”

  Seo and Kessler shared a glance. “Sure,” Kessler said. “Just tell us who your drop contact was. We’ll get you out of here, get you patched up.” It was a lie. Without a new liver, he would die. “I need a name.”

  “No. I’m dead,” he said, glancing down at the black blood on his vest. “Take my body away. Before it drags me to Hell.”

  “No one’s dragging you to Hell,” Kessler said. He was confused. There were old military tales of Westerners wrapping dead Muslims in pig flesh or filling their mouths with pork before burying them, ostensibly to threaten Hell on their enemies, but the mission brief said these traffickers didn’t worship anything except money. So why the superstition?

  “Took them. Took them to Hell. I heard them screaming. Only found pieces of my friend, small pieces. It was not from this world. Men cannot move like that. And the sounds it drew out of the other men… men do not sound like that.”

  “He’s hysterical,” Kessler said.

  Seo shook the trafficker. “What screaming?”

  The dying youth lurched up and grabbed Kessler, his fist tight around the front of his jacket. With the strength wakened at the precipice of death, he pulled Kessler face to face. Seo drew his sidearm, but didn’t fire.

  “We followed their howls. Followed the trail of… remains. It ripped apart seven more of us before we brought it to the ground. Just one did that, and the girl said there are dozens more out there. We cut it for hours to draw them out, but it made no sound. I— I do not think it can die. Please kill it. If you can. Then take me from here. Don’t let it have me! Fly my corpse away and throw it into the sea. Hell lives in its eyes.”

  He collapsed, eyes wide open and staring straight up into the air, the motion and life in his body evaporated, so that only the husk remained and not the animating force of the man.

  Seo scratched the back of his head beneath his helmet. “How many drugs you think that guy was on?”

  “All of them,” Kessler said.

  They both walked out of the alcove and toward the fire, built with the remains of wooden crates. The post groaned in the breeze, threatening to snap in half from where the round had blasted through it. Kessler looked again at the bundle of supplies strapped to the top. It didn’t look like much, just a lump wrapped in black trash bags, strapped to the stake with baling wire. A big, metal tent spike had been driven into the post up high to nail it in place. Seo gave it a firm push with his shoulder and the post cracked, falling to the side and away from the fire. “Timber.”

  The post hit the hard desert ground and the bundle of supplies growled at them.

  “Holy shit,” Kessler said. Had they tied a wild animal up? He leveled his rifle, clicked on the front-mounted light, and shone it over the misshapen heap of bags. He traced his light up the pole. Rust-brown bloodstains coated the wood below the bags. Then he passed his light to the tent spike.

  “Oh holy God,” Kessler said. It wasn’t a strap they’d nailed to the post. It was a human wrist. “It’s a person.”

  He and Seo dropped to their knees. He flicked his combat knife out and sawed the baling wire. Seo worked from the bottom up and snapped a wire off, then forced the mass of garbage bags aside, baring small feet. Please let them be attached.

  Seo clipped another wire. They were. Kessler ripped the plastic bag open where there was a lump like a head, above where the wire tightened around the shape of a neck.

  “It’s a girl,” Kessler said, his throat and stomach contracting all at once. “I think.” It was hard to tell. Her face had amassed brown and purple bruises, eyes swollen to slits, her mouth a bloody mess.

  “Look at her wrist,” Seo said.

  He did. She’d been tied to the post by baling wire and covered in plastic, but her wrist was stretched straight over her head. They’d pounded a railroad tie–sized spike through her wrist just below where the bones in the forearm met. “Jesus. The wire on her throat’s tight,” Seo said. “Can’t get my knife in. Think she’s conscious?”

  “Has to be,” Kessler said. He swallowed. “Only way she could keep from choking to death…”

  “…was by hoisting herself up on the spike in her wrist,” Seo finished.

  They glanced at one another, and then Kessler radioed. “We have a hostage in bad shape. Need an evac with Jenson. Badly injured left arm, low on blood, unknown number of other injuries,” he said as they pulled the plastic bags off. Her skin was chalk-white wherever it wasn’t bruised.

  “How bad?” Davis radioed.

  “Bad. Counting multiple wounds to her torso. Combination gunshots and knives.”

  Seo checked her scalp. “Someone shot her close range. You can see where the bullet glanced off her skull.”

  They’d half freed her from the wire when her eyes slitted open beneath the swelling. They were black.

  She spat a wad of blood. White teeth flashed and for a split second Kessler thought he saw fangs. He leaned in to get a better look. Then she seized his throat. He gripped her skinny arm at elbow and wrist, pried, but he couldn’t shake her. He wheezed, eyes watering.

  Seo grabbed her and pulled from the other direction, but she gripped like a demon. Ike and Alvarez saw them and both jumped on. Finally they wrenched her loose. She fought them, a flurry of animal sounds, elbows, wild punches. One knocked Alvarez’s helmet sharply down and to the side and he fell onto his ass blinded by his own gear. Kessler leapt onto her and pinned her midsection, forcing a forearm across her throat. “Settle! We won’t hurt y—fuck!” She’d sunk her teeth into his forearm. Felt like a bear trap. Bled like one too. Seo went to rip her head back and Kessler yelled, “No, fuck, get back.”

  They stared.

  “Just get back!”

  The three of them did. He stared into the slits she had for eyes, blood seeping out of his forearm. He could see where her unnaturally pointed canines had penetrated the flesh. She had teeth like a wolf’s, a bit too long on top and bottom.

  He swallowed through the pain and looked down at her. “I’m a doctor. I won’t hurt you.”

  She growled but didn’t rip his skin off like he was sure she could.

  His hand snaked around and he put the syringe into her neck. He pushed the plunger down. She spat out his arm, clubbed him with a tight-balled fist, and rocked him off her.

  Seo dragged him back. “What’d you give her?”

  “Enough. I hope.”

  It wasn’t. She wriggled, arched, and a crack of wood sounded. She squirmed free. Then she grabbed the tent spike.

  With one, two wrenches, she tried to rip it
free. At last, she collapsed flat on her face, making a soft thump as she hit the dusty ground, where she lay motionless on her stomach.

  They all stood and approached with weapons leveled on the slight, raven-haired girl. Ike toed her with his boot like she was a Fourth of July firework that had failed to detonate. “You think she’s with the traffickers or being trafficked?”

  “Neither,” Kessler said. “They wouldn’t ship just one person at a time. And she’s white. Foreigner.”

  “Think she’s American? English?” Seo asked.

  “No idea,” Kessler said. He knelt and checked her pulse. “Going to live, though.”

  “Jesus, look at her back,” Alvarez said.

  Kessler got on the radio again. “Subject’s sedated. Highly combative. Looks like multiple lacerations on her back. On her everywhere, I think.”

  “Lacerations?” Davis asked.

  “Torture,” Kessler said. “A lot of it.”

  “Keep her sedated. She rides out in Artemis Two. Keep her away from Jenson.”

  “Copy.”

  CHAPTER TWO: Feral

  Ryn woke bound and powerless. Her brain felt sticky from the drugs. She smelled lifeless plastic, tasted the iron tinge of human artifice on her tongue. A prickle of urgency tensed the muscles in her legs. They had her in a machine. In a whirling, thundering abomination, bound to a gurney, and two of them prodded her with fingers covered in man-schemed rubber. The stench of their gloves caught in her throat and alien hands probed her wounds.

  Wounds.

  It was a type of sacrilege, to be harmed by such temporary creatures, but dragging the village girl called Aina back from death had been no small feat; and she had given the mortal a second gift of breath to carry home to her dying sibling. Giving life back was the hardest thing she could do and she’d never dared it twice in a row before. That was why Ryn had fought with no more strength than a mortal, why her power had yet to return.

  At least she knew Aina had succeeded. She had sensed the expulsion of her power across a vast distance, felt in that moment how her life force had punched into the heart of Aina’s brother. Ryn was glad. Though she disliked mortals as a rule, Aina had the clean scent of rain on her skin—free of the stink that oozed out the pores of the species. Whatever the price, paying it had freed the little village girl who Ryn had watched from the time she’d swelled her mother’s womb. Now Aina, too, would have time to grow old.