SNAFU: Hunters

Hungry Eyes — A Valducan Story- Seth Skorkowsky

“The second one is coming up now,” I said into the radio. From my vantage point, crouched behind a rooftop wall, I watched an orange basket stretcher emerge from the manhole. It stopped as it reached the tripod straddling the opening and swung there, dangling above the pit. Blue-uniformed officers carefully pulled it out and began unstrapping the black body bag secured inside. Colored lights flashed atop the response vehicles, parked to shield the grisly work from the view of onlookers pressing against the nearby barricades. Shouts in French echoed up from the crowd and the police trying to contain them.

Nick’s voice came through my ear bud. “Colin, you in position?”

“Aye,” Colin answered.

“Mal, keep us posted, but stay out of sight,” Nick ordered, his Armenian accent muddling the words.

“Roger that.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead, wishing a cloud might block the summer sun. Below me, the men lifted the bag and set it down on the concrete beside the first.

“They’re going for the third one.” I tucked lower behind the wall as the men sent the now empty stretcher back down into the abyssal hole. In the distance, the distinct nee-noo-nee-noo of a police siren echoed through the Paris streets. The line running from the tripod stopped.

Two minutes later, a worker flipped the tripod’s winch and the spool began to coil.

“They’re reeling it up,” I radioed.

“Let’s get ready, people,” Nick said.

Nervous excitement tingled across my shoulders as I watched the spool grow larger and larger. Finally, the orange stretcher emerged from the catacombs sixty feet below. “It’s up.”

“Distraction coming in fifteen seconds.”

I tightened my jaw, fighting the urge to ask, but knew better. Nick loved his surprises as much as he loved reminding me that I’m the new guy.

“Ten seconds.”

The workers pulled the stretcher onto the ground. The crowd behind the barricade pushed harder, cameras flashing as they strained to see. Police stepped between them and the body, forming a human shield.

“Five.”

I held my breath.

A loud boom thundered two blocks away. Car alarms erupted, accompanied by screams. Another boom sounded a moment later.

The police and medical workers shot upright, peering in that direction like startled meerkats. White smoke billowed from the direction the sounds had come, filling the narrow street.

Several police and paramedics charged in that direction as others ordered the crowd to disperse. It didn’t take much to persuade them, and then the police ran after their companions. One stopped, just beyond the far barrier, his back to the bodies and ear to his radio.

“Clear,” I said. “Still one nearby.”

“Keep an eye on him,” Colin said. He slipped out from between a pair of emergency vehicles and hurried to the bagged bodies, his copper hair hidden beneath a dark ball cap.

Licking my lips, I watched the lone policeman. I stole a glance to Colin to see him peel open the first bag, recoil at the unleashed sight or stench, then lift his camera.

Shouts continued down the street as the thickening white cloud spread. What the hell had Nick done? Was anyone hurt?

“One.” Colin zipped the bag and moved to the next.

The lone officer shifted back and forth on his feet but hadn’t turned. One by one the shrieking car alarms began to silence.

“Two.” Colin said. “These things are weird.”

“No commentary,” Nick ordered. “Mal, how we look?”

“Some of the officers are headed back,” I said. “Block away.”

The lone officer started toward the trio jogging out from the smoke.

“Colin, be quick,” Nick said.

“Just a few more seconds.”

The policeman slowed as he met his companions. They spoke with wild-moving arms, pointing toward some unseen thing down the street. Two of them broke off and headed toward the vehicles.

“Get out of there,” I said, my voice a whispered yell.

Colin looked up from his camera. Quickly he zipped the bag and hurried away before the police noticed him.

I blew a long breath, a wash of relief pouring down my body. “He’s out.”

“All right,” Nick said. “Extract. Meet at the hotel.”

I sat on the bed, laptop before me. Scouring a map of the catacombs, I marked where the bodies were discovered and the best places we might gain access. Colin sat at the small table across the room working on his own computer. He hadn’t spoken much since he arrived, only transferring his photographs over and giving the occasional grunt as he scrolled through the images.

The room door clicked and Nikoghos Tavitian stepped inside, his trimmed black beard framing his ear-to-ear smile. His olive knapsack rattled as he dropped it beside the door. He nodded to Colin. “Doctor,” and then to me, “Doctor.” With a flourish, he set a paper bag on the bed between us and withdrew a brown bundle. “Dinner is served.”

Colin, who isn’t actually a doctor, having joined the Order before completing med school, never liked being called that. Nevertheless, Nick always addressed us that way when he was in good spirits, and terrifying an entire city appeared to have pleased the Armenian immensely.

Nick underhand-tossed a bundle to me. “Good work, Malcolm.”

I caught the crinkly roll, feeling the warm bread inside. “What the hell did you do?”

“Distraction.” Nick removed his own sandwich. “Needed something big enough to get everyone out of there. Just a pair of flash bangs and a smoke grenade in an alley. No one was hurt. Though…” He chuckled. “I think one woman did shit herself.”

“You realize this could wind up on world news?”

He shrugged, his smile dimming. “Back page stuff. They’ll write it off as a bad prank.”

Colin nodded to his monitor. “It’ll make the front page if police see what did this.”

I stood and peered down at Colin’s screen. The image of a mottled purple corpse; its teeth and cheekbones gleamed out through ragged holes. Blood-caked lashes framed the pits where its eyes should have been.

The image flipped to another — a girl with curly blonde hair. Her throat was torn out and grimy bite wounds covered her bare shoulders. Blue eye shadow crested the black pits of her empty sockets. I no longer wanted my sandwich.

Nick took a bite of his. “So what do you think?” he asked around a mouthful.

Colin unwrapped his own sandwich, unleashing the smell of fresh bread and meat, completely inappropriate for the horrible images. “Look to be cataphiles.”

“Cataphiles?” Nick asked.

“People who explore the catacombs,” I answered. “The old mines are strictly off limits, but people still go down there to explore, or party. Several even live down there. Three hundred kilometers of tunnels and chambers. Plenty of room for everyone.”

Nick shrugged. “Not for them it seems. So, Mal, you’re the Librarian. What do you think got ‘em?”

I looked back at the screen, this time a young black man with his face mostly chewed off, his grisly skull framed in jagged skin. “Ghouls. Archives show they’ve made their home down there several times before. Last known infestation was during the war.”

Colin nodded. “I agree. Blood wasn’t drunk. Bite marks correspond.”

“What else does it tell you?” Nick asked me.

“There’s at least four of them, either ghouls or ghouls and their undead familiars.” I answered, resenting this thinly veiled pop quiz.

“Why?”

I looked away as the image changed to a close-up of the black man’s mouth. His tongue had been torn out. “Ghouls only attack if they outnumber the victims or if the victim is injured or ill.”

“What about the eyes?” Colin asked.

“What about them?” I asked.

“They’re gone.”

“Ghouls must have torn them out.”

“I don’t think so.” Shaking his head, Colin scrolled to a close-up of the girl’s face. “You can’t pop an eye out without tearing the skin around it. At least not without tools. But the skin is unmarked. Same with all of them. It’s like they were sucked right out.”

Nick leaned in over Colin’s shoulder. “What could do that?”

Colin shrugged. “No clue. Something else? Took the eyes and left the rest for ghouls to eat, maybe?”

They both looked to me.

I studied the picture, and then the next. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” Nick asked. “Your job is to know them.”

I shook my head. “I don’t recall any demon that sucks the eyes out.”

Colin gestured to my laptop still open on the bed. “Then search the records.”

“Only ten percent of the Valducan Archives are digitized. I’d have to go back to the chateau and search the books.”

“We don’t have time to go to HQ,” Nick said. “The authorities are going to be scouring the catacombs for whoever killed these people, which means they’ll probably get killed themselves. We have to eliminate the threat now. So think, Doctor.”

A sharp spike of anger shot through my gut at Nick’s scolding. But he was right. I was the team’s Librarian. This was my job. Closing my eyes, I searched my memory for anything that targeted eyes and didn’t leave a mark. Even beyond the Archives, my experience as an anthropologist gave me a wide knowledge of folklore and supposedly mythical monsters, the main reason I was selected for the job. Other demons ate eyes. Wendigos loved eating them. But surgical removal? “I can’t think of anything.”

Nick frowned, but only for a moment before his grin returned. “A holy weapon will destroy them, regardless.”

“We’re in Paris,” Colin offered. “Maybe the eyes are French cuisine to ghouls.”

We laughed as Nick pulled his duffel from the closet and dropped it on the bed. “We guess ghouls from the initial report. So, Mal, what harms ghouls?”

“Obsidian,” I answered.

“Good.” He withdrew a box of ammo from his bag and pulled out a round. “If things get hairy, these will drop one.” He held up a nine millimeter with a black-gem nose, prongs holding it in place like a goth girl’s engagement ring. “We don’t want to be shooting much down there,” he said, continuing his digging. “Yes, the glass tip will cut down on ricochets, but closed-quarter shooting is always dangerous. I ever tell you about that vampire nest we rooted out of the Moscow Metro?”

“Every time you drink vodka,” Colin answered.

Nick paused. “I do, don’t I?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that.”

“What about my sawed-off?” I asked. “I have some obsidian shells.”

“You and that fucking sawed off,” he said. “Yes, it’ll work. No, don’t shoot it. The other problem with shooting down there will be report. Give us all some permanent hearing loss. We’ll need to run suppressed and even then, it’ll still be loud as hell.”

“Then why bring guns?” Colin asked.

“Cause I’d rather be deaf than dead,” I answered.

Nick nodded in approval. “That’s my boy.”

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“Three hundred klicks leaves a lot of room for them to hide. The sooner we begin the better. I say 2200 hours we go in. So rest up.”

The night was still and humid as Nick and I exited the van, gear in hand. My sacred charge, Hounacier, a bone-handled machete, hung at my waist. Nick’s holy nadziak, a Polish war pick named Ozkareen, clanged from the black plastic ring at his belt. Colin drove off the moment the door was closed, leaving us alone on the empty street.

We stopped at a metal door set into the sidewalk and lit by a single light post orbited by moths. We heaved up the door and a caged screen beneath, revealing a landing four feet down and steel rungs descending into the darkness below.

Nick drew a milky plastic tube from his vest pouch and cracked it in one hand. Orange light ignited within like liquid fire and he dropped it. The glow stick fell and fell, tumbling past more steel rungs until finally bouncing out of sight twenty meters below. He stabbed a finger downward and I swung my legs through the opening and dropped onto the landing. Nick handed me a heavy pack, which I set at my feet before moving to the rungs.

I clicked the lamp affixed to my caving helmet, unleashing a beam of crimson light. With a final nod to Nick, I started the climb down. Dizzying patterns of multi-colored spray-paint and marker covered every inch of the walls. Symbols, names, professions of love, and illegible slogans scrawled in dozens of different languages all stating the unspoken truth — I was here before you.

The heat of the summer night quickly vanished, the temperature dropping with each rung downward. The sweat on my neck grew colder, bringing a chill. Colin’s whispered voice sounded above me as he returned, the van now safely parked. I looked up to see his silhouette pull the door shut, sealing us in with a metallic thud.

The shaft around me opened up, revealing a long passage, the floor peppered with cigarette butts, spent batteries, empty wrappers, and burnt matchsticks. Nick’s glowsitck burned at my feet, casting its light across the graffiti-etched walls. I shone my light either way up the passage, seeing only a short way down each before the darkness swallowed the red beam. Dust rained down from my companions’ descent and I stepped aside. I brushed the grit from my face, a pointless endeavor, I knew, as there would soon be so much more to wipe over the next few hours.

Nick was grinning as he reached the bottom, his white teeth glowing red in my light. “Reminds me of Moscow,” he said with approval.

Colin’s voice echoed from above. “Reminds me of a carnival house into hell.”

I glanced over at the giant pentagram spray painted beside me, its disproportionate goat’s head leering out from the inverted star. I knew that Colin, the ever-devout Irish Catholic, was going to hate this hunt.

He reached the bottom and curled his lip at the painted symbol.

“Welcome to hell,” Nick said. I wasn’t sure if he was merely being dramatic, or translating the French words scrawled above the goat’s image.

Colin snorted and touched Saighnean, the holy anthropomorphic Celtic sword at his waist. “Fuck this place.”

“Which way?” Nick asked, turning to me. Joviality was gone. Only the cold steel seriousness of a Valducan knight remained. He was a different man when he hunted.

I pointed down the eastern passage. “Bodies were found that way.”

Nick drew his torch, clicked on a bright red beam, and started down, taking point.

We followed the winding tunnel past small chambers littered with spent candles and empty beer cans. One room was still lit with burning candles, but there were no other signs of the occupants. The air was still, completely unmoving, and when we did stop, the absolute silence was more unsettling than I cared to admit. More than once, the low passages forced us to crawl like worms to continue and I was grateful for the helmet as I banged my head into the rock above.

After two hours, the smell of decay tickled my nose. We turned into a small room. Dark splatters, almost black in our red lights, marred the pale limestone walls. Dried, bloody mud covered the floor, broken and dusty under booted footprints. The stink of ammonia prickled my nose somewhere deep below the stench of dried blood and spilt intestines.

“Here we are,” I said. Taking a moment, I removed my water bottle and washed the dirt from my mouth with a healthy swallow. My left hand burned from the numerous nicks and scrapes, and I wished I’d worn a glove on it. But the warding eye tattooed on my palm would be useless if covered and taking the time to remove a glove might not be an option if I needed it. The tattoo, one of several on my body, was a gift from Hounacier, a blessed medal to commemorate a special kill.

Nick walked into the center of the dried stains and looked around, searching the ceiling and walls for some hidden secret.

“Wish we could have seen what it looked like,” Colin said. He ran a gloved finger around one of the sharp holes left by tripod feet dotting the cracked floor, remnants from where the workers had recorded the gruesome scene before moving the bodies.

“So, Malcolm,” Nick said, his headlamp’s light falling on me. “Where to?”

I removed my tablet and winced as the screen came on, shining in my eyes like a floodlight. My night vision, previously preserved by the crimson lights, was gone in a painful cinching of pupils. Through slitted eyes I studied the catacomb map and highlighted the path we’d covered. I pointed to an arched doorway. “That will lead us to a lower level. My guess is the nest is deep.”

“All right,” he said. “You be sure to keep track of where we are. I don’t want to get lost.”

I flipped off the tablet and stored it away. “Follow me.”

We headed down the passage, gradually sloping deeper beneath the Earth. Once we had to climb down a near vertical stretch until reaching an arched passage. Standing water filled many of the halls, forcing us to wade thigh-deep through it to continue and leaving us cold and wet. I imagined unseen hands grabbing us from below the murky surface, yanking us down to be drowned and eaten. I wanted to rush, but the threat of unseen pits hidden beneath the water forced us to move slow. More than once I felt what I was sure to be a bone crack under my boot.

Eventually we stopped in a room with benches hewn from the stone walls and I checked the map. Five hours, and we’d barely begun to cover the catacomb’s length.

“I think this is good for tonight,” Nick said around a mouthful of cereal bar. His coating of chalky dust left his beard gray, giving him the appearance of a statue come to life. “We should head back. Continue tomorrow. I don’t want to stay down here.”

“I completely agree,” Colin said. “But let’s find these bastards soon. I don’t want to spend all summer crawling around in this shit.”

“Let’s hope the next hunt is somewhere warm and sunny,” I said, flipping off my tablet and returning it to its plastic bag.

We headed back, Colin taking the lead. The journey felt longer than it should have, my perception of time warped by exhaustion and the impatience to breathe fresh air. While I frequently turned to check behind us, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling we were being followed. Unseen eyes watching us from the blackness. Once, I even stopped the others, convinced I’d seen a shadow move at the edge of my light, but there was nothing there.

“You’re tired,” Nick said. “Just stay alert. Never assume it’s in your head.”

The paranoia continued to mount until we finally crawled back up that painted shaft and out onto the streets and into sunlight.

We headed down at 2100 hours from a new location, a locked and rusted gate along the Seine. This time I wore rubber waders and carried dry socks stuffed into bags. Three hours later, we reached the room we’d stopped at the night before.

“Look here,” I said, shining my light onto the dusty floor. A bare footprint — its long toes resembling a hand with their length and positioning — marked the very center of one of our own old boot prints. “I knew I heard something behind us.”

“They knew we were here,” Nick whispered, his hand moving to the war pick at his belt. “Biding their time for an opening. Stay sharp.”

I sympathized with Theseus, hunting and being hunted by the Minotaur in Minos’ labyrinth. I sniffed, a faint and familiar smell tingling my nostrils.

“Ammonia,” Colin said, reading my face.

We continued on, searching the tunnels for any signs, that tickling at my nape that we were being watched now fueled and unstoppable. Three times we wheeled around, believing something behind us, but there never was.

We’d rounded a corner when Colin, in the lead, brought up a clenched fist, telling us to stop. He motioned to his ear.

Holding my breath, I listened. Only silence. I opened my mouth to whisper a question when a distinct grunt, like from some large rooting animal, echoed from the darkness ahead. Then the sounds of splashing water followed by another grunt.

Nick looked back at me, his hand lowering to his war pick. I drew Hounacier and we moved forward, silent as we could.

The passage sloped downward, turning twice before opening into a long, vaulted room, its floor completely submerged in milky-brown water. Nick’s bright torch reflected off the surface, throwing its shimmering glow across the ceiling.

Another splash brought the light down onto a vaguely human shape twenty meters away at the far end, standing before an arched doorway. The ghoul’s eyes reflected the light from their deep sockets. Wild black hair crested its simian head and down its hunched back. Wet rags, the remains of whatever clothes the owner had worn when the demon had taken them, hung in shredded tatters, dripping on the landing on which the creature stood. The ghoul’s lips curled back as it growled, long and steady.

Colin began swinging his sword beside him, the blade quickly gaining speed. He took a step forward.

“Stop!” Nick hissed.

Colin looked back, but kept Saighnean spinning.

Nick nodded to the floor. “We have no idea how deep that is.”

As if in answer, the ghoul let out a howl and slammed its fists into the floor.

“He’s right,” I whispered. “It’s not coming at us.” I scanned the water, searching for any sign of a floor or movement beneath. I didn’t know if ghouls even needed air, but their undead familiars wouldn’t.

The ghoul roared and hopped, but didn’t advance.

“Just keep at it, asshole,” Nick said. He dropped his holy weapon into his belt loop and drew his pistol. The black suppressor made it look like a cannon.

The ghoul slapped at the water and took a step forward, obviously unconcerned by the gun.

The shot cracked through the room, louder than I would have expected. The round caught the demon in the thigh. It howled, stumbling back, blood pouring down its leg. Nick fired again, this time blasting a hole in the wall behind it.

The ghoul scrambled back through the doorway. The obsidian-tipped slugs couldn’t harm the demonic spirit, but they’d definitely kill the possessed body. It leaped for cover as Nick’s third shot rang out.

We stood there for a solid minute, listening.

“Cheap trap,” Nick said, holstering his pistol. “Lure us into some sunken pit. Let us drown and eat us.” He turned to me. “Is there a way around?”

Giving the water a wary glance, I stepped back into the passage before sheathing my machete and opening the map. “Yes. Take us about an hour.”

We headed back and circled our way around, eventually making it back to the flooded chamber from the other side. The ghoul’s blood still spattered the ground, but didn’t lead us far before ending at another submerged hallway with no way around.

After nine laborious hours, we returned to the surface, tired, bruised, and frustrated.

“We’ll get them tonight,” Nick promised as we started down the manhole on our third night. “I promise.”

“You said that last night,” I said.

“But tonight they’ll get aggressive. Their trap didn’t work, so they’ll make their move. We just have to beat them to it.”

“If you’re wrong,” Colin said, his voice echoing up from below. “You owe me a drink.”

Metal and concrete grinded above as Nick slid the manhole cover into place. It thudded, pinching off the light from above. “Deal.”

The ladder ended in a circular brick chamber. Shards of broken bottles gleamed from a mound piled along one side. Three arched doorways led from the room. Above one, stenciled in metallic paint, read Dante’s immortal line, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, the words framed with winged skulls.

“All right, Doctor,” Nick said as he reached the bottom. “Which way?”

I nodded to Dante’s door, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here,” and we headed through. We followed the passage past several antechambers, each decorated in its own style. In one, a support pillar had been carved into that of a long-haired maiden, a rotted green blanket wrapped over her shoulders like a cape, and a hundred empty tea light cups laid out on the floor before her. I took comfort that none of those candles were burning.

The passage continued on, shrinking lower and lower until we had to crawl. Nick cracked another glow stick and hurled it ahead. It skittered and fell into a room at the far side. “Is there another way around?”

I shook my head. “No. Not unless we doubled back three kilometers. That should empty into the hall we want.”

He shined his light onto the ceiling, revealing a wide crack running the length. One good bump might easily bury us forever.

“Stay low,” he said, and continued forward.

Something moved past the light ahead, casting a shadow. Icy fear shot down my spine. There was no way to draw our weapons and fight in this tiny space, and whoever crawled into that room would be open to attack, helpless.

Scratching came from ahead, like fingernails desperately trying to dig their way through a chalkboard.

“Back!” Nick whispered through clenched teeth. “Back! Back! Back!”

We scrambled backwards. Colin cursed as my heel nearly took him in the eye, but I dared not slow lest Nick’s back-scrambling boots hit me. Heart pounding, sweat ran down my face and into my eyes. Finally, my feet made it back to the opening of this death trap and I nearly screamed as hands gripped me from behind, yanking my belt.

“Gotcha,” Colin said pulling me out.

I rolled onto my knees and helped pull Nick from the hole.

I peered down the empty tunnel, seeing an orange glow the far side, but nothing more. “Did you see it?”

Panting, Nick shook his head. “No. But, it… growled.”

“Shit.” I looked back down the shaft. “You think it’s waiting?”

He blew a long breath. “Possible. If it is, whoever sticks their head out of the passage first is a dead man.”

“What if we go close to the edge and pushed each other through at the end?” Colin asked.

“Not willing to risk that. Not if there’s another way.”

“Three kilometers,” I said.

“Then we need to hustle.” Nick cracked another stick and dropped it on this side of the shaft. “Keep your eyes and ears open. They’re hunting us now.”

Taking point, I led us back down the passage, past the cloaked maiden, and into another hall. Steps led down into gray water, leaving narrow ledges on either side. Straddling the flooded passage, our backs against the arched ceiling we moved on, our red-hued reflections staring up at us.

Twice we stopped and listened for sounds behind us, but heard nothing. Each time we dropped another glow stick so that we might see any pursuers following us past that point. After two hours, I turned down a passage and saw an orange glow ahead. Cautious, we drew our weapons and crept forward.

The glow stick rested on the floor, nine inches beneath the square passage in the wall. Hounacier ready, I removed a telescoping inspection mirror from my belt and held it out, making sure the tunnel was vacant, then peered through. Fifteen meters down, I could see the light of Nick’s second stick. “Clear.”

“Look at this,” Colin said, kneeling beside me.

More bare footprints, like those from the previous night, marred the dusty floor. They crisscrossed back and forth across the side entrance.

“At least two,” Colin said.

“And one in shoes,” I added, nodding to a set of sneaker tracks mixed in with the other prints.

“Which way?” Nick asked.

I motioned ahead.

“So let’s find ‘em.”

We marched on, following them as best we could until reaching bare stone. We stopped in a cathedral-like chamber with four other exits. After checking the map, I selected one. Nick left a fresh stick on the floor as Colin and I built a line of empty cans across the passage entrance.

We made it twenty meters down the hall before coming to a chamber with a dusty folding chair resting in the middle before a framed photograph affixed to the wall.

“That’s just creepy,” Colin whispered.

I nodded, about to move toward it, when a distant sound of falling cans came from behind.

We spun and headed back. Heart thudding, I crept closer to the room, seeing the spilt can-wall cast in red and orange light. I reached it first and looked around the cathedral seeing nothing.

Nick’s bright lights swept the room then froze on a lone figure standing before the far wall, with its back to us.

“Bonjour?” I said, stepping closer. My fingers tightened on Hounacier’s horn grip as the figure shuffled but didn’t turn. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, only a human in dust-caked clothes. “Turn around!” I ordered, raising my holy machete.

The figure didn’t move.

Nick stepped up beside me. “Don’t get any closer.”

Just then, the figure turned toward us. The flesh along the left side of its face was gone. Its single milky eye locked onto us and a hissing growl came from its shredded mouth.

More hissing sounded to the right. I turned, bringing my headlamp’s beam on two more staggering corpses coming from another passage. Each only had one eye.

“Behind us!” Colin yelled, his voice booming in the stone chamber.

A trio of ghouls scurried out from another tunnel, moving on all fours like long-armed monkeys.

“Circle up!” Nick ordered. He swung his nadziak at the half-faced creature coming toward us, though it was still a good seven feet away. Yanking the weapon back mid-swing like a cracking whip, a shockwave of compressed air shot like a cone from the war pick’s tip. The cone struck the creature’s shoulder with a loud thop, and blew a hole through it like a high-powered rifle. The creature reeled around, its arm coming free at the motion and landing several feet behind it. Nick lunged forward and slammed the pick into the zombie’s chest — heart shot — before it could recover. It fell dead to the ground.

Colin stepped beside me, eyes on the circling ghouls, and swinging Saighnean before him in a figure-eight. The blade moved faster and faster, gaining momentum until it was nothing but a whirring blur.

“Mal, take the minions,” Nick shouted. “Colin, the demons.”

Hounacier in hand, I threw my left palm forward toward the closing zombies. The tattoo’s warding eye stretched wide, feeling as if the flesh might rip. The zombies froze their advance, their growling hisses rising even above the sound of Colin’s swinging sword. Seizing the opening, I lunged, driving the machete’s blade at creature’s heart. It brought an arm up, deflecting the blade so that it plunged into the right side of its chest and missed the target. Unfazed, the creature grabbed my forearm.

I screamed. The bones in my arm bent, threatening to crack under the creature’s inhuman grip. Desperately, I tore Hounacier free from the rotting corpse and swung, burying the blade into the zombie’s skull but to no effect.

Nick moved past me in a blur and buried Ozkareen in the creatures back. Its chest exploded as the pick came through, showering me with rotted gore. “Go for the heart!” he shouted.

A pair of ghouls charged Colin.

One moved as if to lunge, but dashed to the side at the last moment. The other one leapt toward him, claws raised. Colin brought his blurring sword up as it reached him. The ghoul’s arms diced apart, the blows striking so fast they seemed simultaneous. Shrieking, the demon fell, blood spurting from its twin stumps. Colin rammed the blade down into its head.

Golden yellow fire ignited along the slain demon’s skin and from the severed pieces scattered about the room.

The last zombie was coming for me. With my wrist still aching from its near break, I lifted my warding palm, freezing the creature again, then rammed Hounacier up under its ribs and into its dead heart. The zombie fell, nearly yanking me off balance with the sudden weight coming down on the impaling blade.

Yellow firelight danced along the walls. I wrenched Hounacier’s blade free in time to see Nick swing Ozkareen in that whip-like fashion, launching another cone of air at a ghoul. The beast dropped to the floor, dodging it. The cone blasted past, dissipating after ten feet.

The demon leaped toward Nick, but he spun out of the way of a slashing claw.

I ran toward it, bringing my warding palm up. The ghoul turned to face me but then froze, shielded its eyes from the displayed tattoo.

Before it could recover, a conical shockwave struck it on the neck, blasting its head nearly off. Golden demon fire sprayed into the wall and the ghoul’s corpse fell, its soul burning away.

Colin began swinging Saighnean in another unstopping pattern, its speed quickly accelerating into a blur. The final ghoul raced toward the nearest exit but I ran around to meet it, Hounacier raised and warding palm out.

Without looking at the tattoo, it lurched to the side, but too late before Colin was on it. Spectral flames erupted as the ghoul seemed to come apart into four pieces. Colin grinned as he pulled the sword out from a hunk of burning torso where the blade had finally stopped.

“Looks like you were right, Nick.” I turned to see the Armenian standing, pick raised at his side. A figure stood in the passage before him — fat, vaguely feminine, and naked, reminiscent of a Paleolithic Venus. It had no face at all, only a smooth blankness.

Nick stepped closer, nearing the range for Ozkareen’s shock missile.

A vertical slit opened along the creatures face like a lipless mouth. The crack lengthened, stretching down its body, between its sagging breasts, and splitting its hanging gut. Then the demon unfolded like a flower and Nick screamed.

Thousands of eyeballs filled the inside like the seeds of a pomegranate. They rolled and moved in swirling patterns, set to some unheard music. A honey-like aroma flooded the chamber, but beneath that, lurked the eye-watering ammonia stink. Nick’s screams ceased. His raised arm lowered and fell limp to his side. Ozkareen slipped from his grip and clanked to the floor.

The demon moved closer. Slender tendrils, rooted at the mass’ center, wriggled toward him.

“No!” I charged toward it, and raised my warding eye before me, thrusting it over Nick’s shoulder.

The rolling eyes all zeroed in on my palm and then seemed to boil along the flower’s surface. The demon flew off like a swimming jellyfish, slinging dust as it surged away into the darkness, tendrils trailing behind it.

Nick’s head lolled. I caught him as he stumbled forward and vomited. Colin stepped in and helped me move him to a sitting position, my eyes never leaving the dark passage through which the demon had fled.

Nick feebly reached for Ozkareen lying in the dust.

“Here,” I said handing it to him. “Are you all right?”

Still panting, Nick nodded. “What… was that?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“You’re the fucking Librarian,” Colin snapped.

Setting my jaw, I pulled off my pack and opened my tablet. He was right, this was my job. They’d killed the demons, while I’d only killed a mindless servant. I scrolled through the record. While the tell-tale smell and resemblance to the Venus were certainly noteworthy, the sheet of eyes reminded me of something I’d read before, something I thought I’d never encounter.

Nick crawled to his feet and stood behind me. Whether real or imagined, I could feel his mounting impatience. It was getting away.

“Here,” I said, clicking a file. A crude image of a Japanese screen peppered with eyes filled the top of the page.

“What is it?” Colin asked without taking his gaze from the passage. His free hand touched his chest, surely feeling the rosary beneath his shirt.

I licked my lips, reviewing the scant description. “A mokumokuren.”

“Mokuwhat?”

“Mokumokuren,” I repeated. “Extremely rare. Thought to be extinct. Last one reported in Turkey 1892. No mention of stealing eyes, but said to… entrance its prey with hypnotic patterns of eyes. Lives in dark places, moves in aquatic fashion, and it can strangle you with its hundred tentacles.”

“Lovely.”

“What hurts it?” Nick asked, peering closer.

“Pure quartz.”

He grunted. “I don’t have that.”

“I have one shell.” I clicked off my screen. “Mixed load, but quartz is in it.”

“Just one?” Colin asked.

“Better than nothing,” Nick said. “Load it and let’s get after that thing.”

Quickly, I stored my tablet away and withdrew a lumpy, rolled bundle. I unfurled it, revealing a rainbow assortment of hand-loaded shotgun shells. Moving my fingers along the rows I removed a white plastic shell with a red and black band. I clicked open my Remington and switched it out with one of the obsidian loads before putting the bundle away. “Ready.”

Nick held out his hand and I gave over the sawed-off. The yellow light flooding the room had begun to wane as the slain ghouls returned to their once human forms. The honey aroma had faded, but the cat-piss stink seemed to have gotten worse. Nick took point, with me behind him, Hounacier in hand.

We moved slow, checking each chamber and crevice before going on. The passage wound its way deeper, angling sharply before leveling out. Fueled with paranoia, my heart pounded and sweat beaded my gritty face despite the cold, unmoving air.

Nick moved toward a pit-like vault, but I touched his arm.

He turned toward me and I pointed down at a low crevice in the wall by his feet. The limestone dust before it was rippled like miniature wind-swept dunes.

Instantly, he moved past to the other side, his holy weapon raised. I drew my mirror and angled it at the hole. A tunnel, no more than eighteen inches high and two feet wide, extended into darkness.

I nodded to Colin beside me and he lowered his torch, shining the crimson beam along the tight passage. It extended a little over a meter before opening into another chamber. Relaying this to my partners, I crawled onto the smooth floor.

Nick cracked one of his last glow sticks, filling our tunnel with brilliant orange light then he hurled it down the shaft before me.

The stick ricocheted off the tight walls, finally bouncing to a stop just a few feet inside the room. The chamber appeared small, but I couldn’t see much from my limited view. I extended the mirror’s handle to its full length and stretched my arm as far as I could to get a better look.

It wasn’t long enough to reach and I had to crawl a little inside, my arm out before me. Rotating the mirror, I saw no exits. I pushed it out a little further for a better view. Black whip-like strands shot down from the ceiling, wrapping around my mirror and ripping it from my grip.

I cried out in surprise, banging my head as I tried to scramble back. More tendrils fluttered along the top edges of my tunnel, reaching blindly. A palpable waft of sweet nectar filled the passage. Colin seized my belt and dragged me back out.

They didn’t have to ask what I’d seen.

“Exits?” Nick mouthed.

I shook my head, panting, then pointed upward. “On the ceiling.”

“What do we do?” Colin whispered, his mouth so close I could feel his breath on my ear.

“If we try to crawl in we’re dead before we can make it,” I replied, looking back down the now empty hole.

Nick crouched beside me, silent as he studied the shaft. He shook his head steadily, seeming to run through our few options.

I licked my dusty lips. “I have an idea.”

Nick gave me a look and I pulled off my pack and lay on my back. I drew Hounacier. “Give me my gun. Push me through. Fast.”

Colin shook his head.

“It’s the only way.” I mimed firing the Remington, then hacking the machete.

No! Colin mouthed. He looked to Nick for support, but the Armenian nodded instead.

“It’ll work. But I’ll go. I’m senior knight.”

“You don’t have this,” I said, opening my palm. “Bang,” I whispered, miming pulling the trigger, then dropping the gun and rolling my empty palm before me. “I’m the only one that can do it.”

Nick’s lips tightened. He handed me the sawed-off. I’ll push you through, he mouthed. Then you, pointing to Colin, push me. One, two.

I nodded.

Colin looked at Nick, then to me. Finally he nodded. “You need earplugs.”

“Ah.” I reached for my pack and drew out the yellow foam plugs Nick had given us. With those firmly in place, I returned to position, gun and Hounacier against my body and before my face.

“Close your right eye,” Nick ordered.

I did.

“Open it after you’ve fired. Otherwise the flash will leave you blind.” He cracked his final glow stick and set it on my stomach then took position at my feet, crouched in a runner’s stance, hands on my boots. Colin squeezed in behind him, mouth tight in an unhappy line.

Right eye clenched, I nodded to Nick and mouthed, three… two… one.

I launched forward, rocks scraping my back. The tunnel flew past me in a blur. As my head came into the room I extended the shotgun toward the ceiling. I had only a moment’s glimpse of a thousand eyes looming above, black tendrils lashing toward me.

I fired.

The brilliant flash burned my vision and the boom was so loud it jarred my bones. A keening shriek filled the room, audible through my plugged and ringing ears.

Without time to think I rolled to my feet, staying low but still banging my head, and slinging the other glow stick onto the floor. The room was no more than five feet high. Opening my unblinded right eye I saw the demon before me lashing and writhing like an enraged manta ray. Thousands of eyes rolled to focus in my direction. I dropped the smoking shotgun and extended my warding palm. The tattooed lid stretched wide and the beast shrieked again.

I lunged, thrusting Hounacier into the heart of the thrashing mass. Her blade buried deep. I yanked it free and hacked and hacked, shredding rolling eyes as slimy tendrils squirmed and whipped at my face and arms.

Screaming, I rammed the machete’s blade back into the twisting folds with both hands, and then slashed to the side, splitting the monster nearly in half.

Brilliant maroon fire spilled from its wounds as the demon crumpled to the chamber floor. Panting, and covered in blood, now burning with cold flames, I noticed Nick beside me. Hounacier twisted in my grip moving like a dowser’s rod, her blade coated in flickering fire.

Loosening my grip, I allowed the machete to move, to guide me where she wanted to go. The blade bent, moving in circles. Transferring her to my off-hand, Hounacier dipped toward my now-emptied right. I brought it up to meet her, palm flat. The edge met my skin then bit in with sharp pain. Demon fire surged into the wound and the machete’s fighting ceased, her newest gift bestowed. An orange and blue half-lidded eye, similar to the one tattooed in my left palm, glowed within the flesh of my cut hand. Then the image faded.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

“What was that?” Nick asked, his voice muted.

“Hounacier telling me to get a new tattoo.” I turned as Colin scrambled into the room.

“Thank God,” he said, looking at the dead monster. “Everyone all right?”

“Yes,” I replied, closing my bloodied hand. “Let’s get some fresh air, and buy Nick a beer.”