SNAFU: Hunters

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.