In 1964 Texas Instruments developed the Paveway series of laser guided missiles. Using a special coded laser signal, a ground trooper could "paint" a target for the missile to hone in on in such a way that the target could not be aware until it was too late. In 1991 these missiles were used to great effect by the United States during operation Desert Storm. This was not a new concept, even in the sixties. This idea harkened back to the days of grass huts and cave paintings, of superstition and demons and blood magic. There was no true difference, only a fresh coat of paint, science and technology covering millennium of ritual.
Like the missiles, the monsters set loose by dark rites upon a target have no particular malice towards it. They are simply doing a job. No, not just a job. The job. The job they were created for. The job we were created for. Monsters of bone and blood, of gnashing teeth and rending claws. Weapons. And just like the missiles, we can be stopped. The huntsman's axe, the silver dagger, certain other talismans, little things far more effective than guards and armies and fortresses. Or, I suppose, police and panic rooms nowadays. Even monsters have to keep up with the times.
The long belabored point is this, we don't hate our targets, we aren't unstoppable, and most importantly, we don't choose the targets. Which can lead to trouble. Some of us have been killed on missions, others have been hunted through the Veil to the homelands, one poor bastard even fell in love with his target. He was the one that discovered we were vulnerable to certain kinds of axes.
There's also the risk of collaterall damage. Lesser brethren spawned because of an errant scratch, a bite on the wrong arm. The outbreak in the seventies started because of a war between the witches of Scotland. There are acceptable losses, acceptable damages, and when one of us falls, we know, and another shall rise to take their place in the hunt, another missile locked and loaded. That said, losing one of us on a mission is rare, and two is unheard of. Which is why, when I crossed the Veil and the memories of the five hunters who had failed before me filled my mind, I knew something was terribly wrong.
The target was a witch, a catch all term used for any human with the power to summon us, and the hunt had been on for centuries. Technically, the target was her satchel, which she had been carrying around the whole time. Sorting through their memories, I was able to piece together a jumbled timeline from the five others, one of whom had run for decades before finally confronting her. In each case but the first, a long hunt, followed by the bright flash of a red bag, followed by nothing. No last moments, no death, just.... nothing.
I could feel the pull of the target to the north, knew that she was less than a day away by car. Sure, I could get there by plane in an hour, but I had a few things left to arrange and since the security crackdowns in the last few decades, air travel has gotten considerably more difficult for my people. I reached in my pocket, pleased to find a set of car keys jangling around with a cell phone.
***********
The next morning found me walking in to Grand Central with the rest of the morning commuters, a familiar scene from my borrowed memories. A nice, big, public place. An army in a modern castle, no safer from my kind than a barred portcullis or a moat. It didn't take long to spot her, she wore the guise of an older human, grey haired, arm in arm with an older man. A quick sniff told me he smelled very strongly of nothing. It didn't take a genius to realize that he was a crafted accessory, nothing more than a man shaped cane.
I thought little more of it as my gaze drifted to her other arm, the bag it held. The target. Glowing red in a way that only I could see, pulsing as if it were alive and breathing. I found myself gripping my arms tight, fighting the urge to shift, to attack, to end the hunt then and there. Regaining control took longer than it should have. The painkillers were effecting me more than I realized.
By the time I regained control of myself she was gone from sight, but the pull of the target was unmistakable. She led me past restaurants, through shops, up and down, through twists and turns that were impossible to keep track of, rewarding me with momentary flashes of red to let me know I was still on the right track.
Eventally, I looked around and realized that the crowds had thinned to nothing and a blank wall stood before us. She turned abruptly, no longer wearing the old face, but the beautiful one I remembered from the oldest of the memories now embedded in mine. The face was smiling, but her eyes held something far crueler.
"Good boy," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "heel."
I fought down a snarl. "You want to do this now? Here?"
"What better place than here?" she asked, waving her hands around in an all encompassing gesture.
"I will not break the truce."
"Silly boy, this is my little corner of the universe. No mere mortal will be able to see anything I don't want them to see. Besides, who ever said a word about you doing anything?" With a wave of her hand, the stone floor came to life, flowing up and around me, forming shackles I could not break. I glanced around nervously, but the few passerby paid us no heed.
"So kill me then. Another will take my place."
She smiled widely. "And another, and another, until I have finished your cursed race. Lambs to the slaughter. But first, a symbolic gesture... " she reached behind my head, pantomiming scissors. Symbolic my ass. The pain that followed real enough.
I growled, straining against my bonds, but slumped as a wave of vertigo washed over me. "What did you do?"
Her grin was almost feral. "I cut you off. Cut the bond that anchored you to your world, to that wonderful mental collective. The next one to cross will only have the fraying edges of your memory to work with."
I fought down the growl, focusing on understanding. That was the last piece of the puzzle, the reason why the memories didn't add up to the time that had passed, why they were so disjointed.
"But don't worry, you will be a long time dying. And oh the games we will play before you beg for the sweet release of death. The first one of you to come after me, we had so much fun. I believe he is the father of what they now call bloodhounds."
"The first you summoned, you mean."
She laughed, a genuine, delighted sound. "Clever boy! You are the first one to figure it out."
I snorted derisively. "The others knew. That's why they ran. We can't kill the employer, and we are trapped here until the contract is fulfilled."
"Oh, well, it really is no matter. Running from me did them no more good than your running into my arms will do you. The story ends the same, one more dead monster."
A gunshot rang loudly in the near empty section of the train station. I fought down a smile. The final favor I called in had just been paid. The few people in the distant hallway jumped, calming quickly when they realized that the noise must have just been their imagination. My opponent laughed again, twirling to show she was unharmed.
"You missed."
I could not hold back my grin this time, but I wasn't trying very hard. It didn't matter any more.
"You think that you were the first person to try this little trick? There's a reason why you have to paint an object, not a living thing."
She looked down at the bag, noticing for the first time the single smoking hole. She could not see what I saw, the brilliant red bleeding away.
"The contract ends when you pierce the target with tooth or claw, a gunshot will not do..." She trailed off as she noticed my smile, now wide, and the two lines of blood dripping down my jaw from empty sockets.
"A gunshot will do just fine, if you use the right bullet."
The last of the red drained, and I braced myself against the pull that would draw me back across the Veil, so that I could finish what I came here to do. A pull that never came. Whatever she had done, it hadn't ended with the contract. No matter. As I shifted, breaking free of the stone bindings, I briefly entertained the thought of keeping her alive, forcing her to send me back, but that little bit of clarity faded with the rest of my sanity.
She had chosen her lair well, tucked in the far nook of a dead end side passage. The remains of my bonds took up most of the entrance, leaving her little chance of escape. Tooth and claw, blood and bone, a guided weapon homing in on its target. One way or another, the story ending the same, with one more dead monster.
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