The Hunter's Tale Ch. 02

Scurrying along the ground, she quickly armed himself with his repeater rifle.

He fired again, another near miss as the birdwomen surrounded them in a cackling circle of cacophony.

Another bullet clipped one of the harpies, and then, aiming at another, he pulled the trigger.

Click.

He was out.

That same harpy started towards him, beating her wings with furious anticipation.

"Shoot her down." Right as he said that, Morgan leveled the long gun right next to him, stock to her shoulder.

He reached inside his jacket for bullets to reload.

The woman aimed. The woman worked the lever.

She fired...

...and missed!

The bullet whizzed by as the harpy closed in on them like a bird of prey with her prey firmly in sight.

"Dammit!" She frantically racked the lever again but the Hunter would tackle her to the ground just as the winged demon nearly took her head off with her taloned feet.

Now on the ground, he fixed her an indiscernible look before taking the rifle from her and getting up.

Without pause, he leveled it upwards just as the harpy seemed to be coming back around for another dive-attack.

Securing his target, he fired and the bird-woman subsequently shrieked out in sharp agony as his shot hit center of mass.

As she writhed and wailed in mid-air, he turned to the sound of near gunfire as Morgan had finally drawn her own handgun.

She fired shot after shot, some missing but some connecting.

However, she was making glancing hits at best, not anything that could ground them for good.

"Behind you!" He suddenly spotted one swooping in on her blindside, raising his rifle.

She turned and fired- but not before shouting out as she was slashed on the shoulder by a talon.

Crying out also in pain, the harpy retreated back to the skies as he quickly ran to her aid.

"Shit, I'm fine. I'm..." Morgan grabbed at her upper body as he took up a defensive position next to her.

He got off one last shot at the screeching frenzy of winged creatures above them before going to examine how deep the wound was.

With every step, he was reloading. Fast and furiously.

The shirt she wore was cut open from the point of contact. Skin showing. Blood trickling.

But she wasn't bleeding crimson.

She was bleeding black.

He hesitated for a moment.

Morgan looked up at him. "Watch out!"

Twirling around, he racked the lever.

"Ugggghhh!!!" And got knocked off his feet by two taloned feet slamming into his sternum!

Falling and flailing over his shoulders and neck with the momentum, the Hunter landed on his front with a loud grunt.

Mid-tumble, the rifle flew from his hands.

The fluttering of wings was descending upon him fast.

Bringing himself up on all fours, he saw the gun right in front of him.

Not within grabbing range, but close enough.

Moving on instinct, he made a determined rush towards the weapon.

Seizing it, he brought it up- and just in time for another harpy to barrel into him feetfirst.

The Hunter grunted out as her clawed talons knocked him on his back, the man just barely able to brace against the thumping impact with his rifle now held horizontally against his chest.

Hitting the ground, he grunted as the harpy bore down on him with her full weight!

Pinning the long gun against his sternum with pressure threatening to crack his sternum open.

In close-range, he could look up and see the face of a beautiful woman sneering down on him.

Beautiful and baleful.

Her lips curled with a gleeful smile, she spoke no words but, in her eyes, she communicated her intent to him clearly.

As his rifle pressed down on him more and more, he found himself fighting for breath.

Struggling to alleviate the anvil-like pressure on his torso.

Revealing teeth in her savage sneer, she started to lean in for-

"Aacckk!" Right as the unsheathed blade of Morgan's knife was shoved through her neck from the side.

Throwing herself into the thrusting motion, the brunette woman managed to take the harpy down to the ground next to him, where it made a few strangled noises under her.

Freed of the bird-woman's burden, the Hunter sat up with the gun back in a firing stance.

Two more of them were hurtling towards them.

He racked the lever and squeezed the trigger.

Again and again and again.

The bullets flew faster than their wings.

And each one hit its mark.

He fired until they were felled.

And kept squeezing until he heard nothing but click. Click. Click.

Then, he got to his feet and with wary eyes reached into his jacket for more rounds.

Feeding the wooden beast in his grip, he was about to rack the lever again when a sound from his blindside caught his ear.

Twirling around with rifle at the ready, he held back as Morgan finally twisted the knife out of the now limp harpy's neck.

She looked up at him.

The bleeding had seemingly stopped in her shoulder now.

"Close your eyes for one second, and you wake up to the whole damn world's trying to kill you. This life, huh?" she remarked at him.

He didn't reply.

Whirling back around at another cawing sound, he fired at the final bird-woman attempting to fly away from them.

It took one, then two shots to put her down on the ground.

He paused before pulling the trigger again, observing the winged woman writhing in obvious agony.

At this distance, he could make a mercy shot.

He took aim once again.

"I got it."

And then lowered his weapon as Morgan walked past him, knife in hand.

He looked on as the determined, dark-haired slayer closed the distance between them and the shot and suffering harpy.

The sounds of the wounded bird-woman failed to raise much sympathy within the hardened Hunter.

Throughout the years, he had heard many a tale of what befell unfortunate travelers caught in the talons of a harpy flock.

Usually, those tales ended with grisly recountings of bodies found at the bottom of ravines with eyes plucked out and internal organs rendered external.

But while the Hunter eased his weapon down at his side, his attention was not just on the harpy.

It was now on the woman kneeling down to drive her blade into the base of her skull.

____________________________

He didn't sleep once as the night turned to day.

She did, eventually.

But not him.

Shoulder bandaged, Morgan would eventually drift off on the ground.

The Hunter remained awake and aware, sitting on a rock to watch the skies...and also to watch his companion.

Hours passed before the sun came back to replace the moon.

It was time.

"C'mon." On the saddle of his steed some minutes after they had eaten some light jerky for breakfast, he held his hand out to help her onto the animal as well.

The horse grunted to them both in greeting before he tapped its mane, and they were off.

Passing by the bodies of harpies now ironically being preyed upon by buzzards.

She wrapped around his waist from behind, and he just stared ahead.

Just thinking.

They rode on for a few more hours, traveling past towers of rock that seemed identical to ones they passed miles back.

But eventually, the familiar started to become less familiar as they crested over a sloping hill, and finally...

"That's it," she gestured up ahead.

He looked with scrutinizing, unwavering eyes.

A set of incomplete metal train tracks fed directly into the mouth of an open mine shaft feeding into a mountain-sized canyon.

From a distance, it couldn't be any more out of the ordinary.

Of course, he knew better.

"You remember the plan?" the Hunter said, cajoling the horse to go cantering a little further downhill.

"Do what you say. Then when things start to go sideways, start shooting until that redheaded bitch goes the hell down?" Morgan offered.

"Something like that." Finding some decent shade underneath a nearby tree, he dismounted from the steed.

Taking out his revolver, he popped open the cylinder and checked the chamber.

Six rounds.

It may not be enough at first, but it was at least a start.

Reaching into the saddlebag, he unclipped the Winchester repeater and handed it to the brunette as she hopped down to the ground.

"You make every shot count," he told her while reaching for something else.

"Oh I intend to."

He looked over his shoulder at her as she continued on, "Been waiting for this a long damn time."

The Hunter nodded, and then started out towards the mine.

Step after step, his face remained resolute. Devoid of even the slightest trepidation.

"Just so we're clear," he said as they were halfway there. "We walk in there, I can't guarantee you'll walk out."

"Ain't you a gentleman," she remarked sarcastically after him. "Don't you worry about me, I'll handle business."

He didn't give an immediate reply, only cocking his revolver while continuing to walk.

Through the threshold, and into the dark.

Advancing into the mine shaft, he led with his shooting arm while Morgan followed closely behind.

He remained cautious. Careful.

Taking in anything and everything.

He smelled death- and within seconds, he saw it as well.

First a corpse slumped up against a column built into the earth.

The face was beyond unrecognizable, a vaguely masculine skeletal sketch at this point.

A tattered uniform, colored in faded gray from the war, clung to the bony remnants.

He looked at another corpse slumped against the wall. His identity was also lost to time.

Then another one. One slumped next to him.

After a glance around his surroundings, he took a knee next to them.

He had looked at the faces of dead men many times, over many years.

This hardly unnerved him...until he looked down at their torsos.

And saw bullet holes through the fabric.

The connection was quickly made.

"Damn." Sighing, he paid a silent homage to a slayer slain in the line of duty before remarking aloud, "Just seems a waste, don't it?"

"What?"

"Her telling James to shoot Jeremiah before turning the gun on himself. She had two of us alive to drain, and she'd rather them both be dead?" he pointed out to Morgan over one shoulder. "Don't make much sense."

She finally offered a conceding shrug. "No, I suppose it doesn't."

That was all he needed to know.

Standing back up, he resumed surveying the area.

Going from that wall to another, where more bodies were stacked up. More bodies with bullet holes in them.

"I don't see her," Morgan called at him.

"Doesn't mean she doesn't see you. Keep an eye out." The Hunter soon followed his own advice, something catching his observant stare.

Or perhaps someone.

Venturing a little deeper inside, he saw another figure slumped up against a column with a blanket draped over her body save for an emaciated arm sticking out.

The smell of death couldn't be more profound, but he fought through it.

"Cover me." He got closer.

"I got you."

Reaching for the blanket, he took it off revealing...

...a naked and dead woman who looked very much like Morgan.

Same face. Same body but mutilated. Horrifically mutilated.

The chest was slashed and sliced to a point of violent excess.

She was naked, deprived of every last dignity.

Eyes sunken, jaw broken open in an unnatural shape. Head shaved with lacerations along an exposed scalp.

"What is it?" Morgan from behind spoke to him.

The unsettling truth was staring right at the Hunter.

He stood straight up and said the words that had been building within him for some time. "The succubus was never here, was she?"

The slayer gradually turned around to see the muzzle of his own rifle aimed right at him.

Brandished by someone who stole the face of someone he once knew.

"No," she spoke in a voice that sounded...different. Distorted.

Where once her face seemed welcoming and warm, it was now cold and callous.

A malevolent smile carved across her face as she held him at gunpoint.

"Just me." With one hand still on the trigger, she reached for the back of her neck with the other hand, pulling ever tightly until...

He narrowed his eyes as 'Morgan' removed her brunette locks like it was a wig, revealing a bald head to go with her gleaning eyes.

"I can't tell you how good it is to finally let my hair down, hunter." She threw the facade of familiarity down on the ground.

He started to raise his revol-

"Uh uh." Right as she raised his own rifle against him, the smug faced woman subsequently mocking him, "In a hurry to die so soon? I thought you'd at least want to know why."

Reluctantly, he holstered his weapon. "Does it matter?"

"To me it does. I've looked forward to this day for a very long time."

"You could've killed me anytime before we even got here. But your ego just wouldn't let it be that easy," he growled.

"Ego's got nothing to do with it. This is revenge, something you should be very familiar with." She took a step towards him, her voice adopting a harder, vindictive edge. "Revenge for what you took from me."

"As far as plots go to take my life, you ain't the first and you sure as hell ain't the closest. You gave yourself away when I mentioned James earlier. James has been dead for two goddamn years," he told her. "I should know. I watched him die. Morgan did, too. The real one."

"Doesn't matter. I got you here, didn't I? All by myself." Her smile widened with cruel relish. "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

"I don't much care, being all honest," came his flippant reply.

"They didn't care either." She nodded towards the bodies all around. "Until I did to them what you did to my family."

"If your family brought evil upon good people, they had it coming," he replied steadfastly, without hesitation.

"They said you'd say something like that," came her sly reply.

"Who's they?"

"Now now, can't be telling you all my secrets," she playfully chided him. "I'll let you die with some of them, though, if it's any consolation."

"You can tell me now when you're able, or later when you're bleeding and begging. Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

The playfulness washed from her face, replaced by a bitter veneer. "My parents told me about someone like you. I never believed them, until you came one day. Found us up in the mountains. They told me to hide. Told me you'd only see them as threats, and they were right. You saw them, you didn't see me. But I saw you, hunter. I burned your face deep inside my mind so I'd never forget. I'd never forgive. And the day would come when I'd take everything from you, too."

"Someone already did that," he responded cynically.

"Oh right. You and her." Her lips curled into a coy grin as she went on, "Finding you after all these years, now that was some hard work. Most everyone knows about you, but no one knows you all that well. Not even a name. But I have a habit of keeping up appearances, so I made sure to be at the right place at the right time. Eventually, things started to come together."

Quickly he put one and one together. "You're a shifter, then."

"Smart boy!" she mocked him. "The others weren't so smart though when I first came to them in the skin I wore before."

Catching something out of the corner of his eye almost for the first time, the Hunter spotted what appeared to be a blonde wig thrown haphazardly across the floor.

"Amazing what a pole licking'll do to a man's intuition, ain't it?" she teased, bringing his irritable stare back to center. "I did such a good job on Jeremiah that night in the inn, he practically begged the others to trust me when I said I could take them to the big bad monster all the way in the mine. Only of course it was just little ol' me the whole time."

"For a demon who hates humans so much, you sure do love sleeping with us," he pointed out shrewdly.

"What can I say, I'm a damn good actress," she cooed with sultry, sneering satisfaction. "Sometimes you really get into the role."

His eyes narrowed as she continued on, "Make a long story real short, I shot them all dead once we got in here...except her. Once she let on about the relationship you two used to have, I knew I needed her alive just a little longer."

The Hunter took a second to look back at the eviscerated body, her death-sunken face having witnessed all the tortures inflicted upon her by this twisted doppelganger.

"...so I took that fancy knife of hers and cut her up good. You wouldn't believe how loud it got in here. The sounds..." She took in a breath, almost aroused at the mere memory. "...eventually, she told me what I wanted to know."

Then, with a suggestive purr, she added, "And then some."

He was barely keeping composure at this point.

"From there, well, you know how the rest goes. Now..." She leveled the rifle at him with intentions clear. "It wasn't personal what I did to them. But this- this is a long time coming."

The Hunter remained defiant. "You gonna keep talking me to death or you gonna actually do something?"

He wasn't afraid.

She smirked, and then squeezed the trigger.

Click.

He was prepared.

A victorious leer soon melted as her hubris turned to horror. "The hell?"

"That's the thing about the real Morgan. She would've checked her gun," he told her, before promptly aiming his revolver at her.

Her eyes grew wide as she fumbled for her own side-

Bang!

He shot the shapeshifter in the stomach. Point-blank.

The booming sound echoed throughout the mine shaft as she looked at him, face captured in shocked disbelief.

Her legs buckled. She crumpled under them.

The Hunter, solemn and stoic, kept the gun trained as she started grunting and groaning on the dirt.

Holding her abdomen. One grimace after the next.

Approaching warily, he stepped the heel of his boot on the Winchester that lay at her side.

She looked up at him with black liquid starting to trickle out of her paling mouth.

Looked up directly at the metal barrel pointed down at her.

"If you don't tell me who hired you in the next five seconds, I'm pulling this trigger. Talk," he growled.

She looked at the seriousness of his expression, and after wincing in a particularly painful breath, sneered her response. "Go...to...he-"

Bang!

He shot her again. Not in the face.

But in a spot that would surely make the shifter wish he had.

She gave a wounded howl as he put another round in her torso, just shy of a killing blow. Just.

"You first," he responded calmly, before cocking the hammer back again. "Try again."

She glowered up at him with hate that was seemingly undying.

Deciding to try a different tact, the Hunter reached inside his jacket and pulled out the thing he had initially taken back when they were outside.

A canteen full of water.

"This is about to go in your face. Every last drop. And when it does, it's gonna burn until you no longer have a face." He popped open the lid.

Holy water.

She scowled. "Fuck...you."

He started to tip it over.

After spitting her blood out to the side, the demonic doppelganger reluctantly gave a new answer, "...Elizabeth...Stein."

He nodded, taking that in with a subdued scowl. "Figured as much."

"I didn't take...nggh...her money. Seeing...the look...on your face...worth everything," she further taunted him.

The Hunter would ultimately holster his gun, bending down to take the Winchester from her weakened presence.

Slinging it around one shoulder, he would remove the sidearm from her belt, taking it from her person as well.

Tucking it inside of his jacket, he stepped to the side.

"Kill me," she snarled as he cast one last meaningful stare around.

"Already did. You're gonna bleed out in minutes." Then he looked back down at her with nothing but disdain. "You killed a lot of good people to get to me. Way I see it, you got just enough time to make peace with them before you go back to whatever hell spat you out."