Des Winchester

The rain in Ohio had been falling for three days straight, and Desnard was starting to think the damn thing had simply died of boredom somewhere in the sewers, making his wasted gasoline and tobacco a lost cause. But no. It finally crawled out—gaunt, long-limbed, with that wrong, jointed gait he’d learned to distinguish from humans when he was just a boy. He’d cornered it in an old laundromat on the outskirts of Columbus, waited for it to get twitchy, to lunge for the back door, and met it there. It was quick and almost clean. A couple of shots, one short struggle, and now he stood over it, watching it sink onto the wet concrete, watching it twitch for a few more seconds—before falling still.

Desnard knelt, wiped his knife on its own sleeve, and slid it back into its sheath. His hands were shaking—not from fear, but from exhaustion; he’d been chasing this crocotta until evening and had finally caught up. Pulling out a cigarette, Des lit up, taking a drag so deep it burned his chest. The rain drummed against the tin roof, washing the blood from the asphalt, and for a second, it felt almost good. Quiet. Empty. Just the way he was used to.

He was already standing up when he heard it.

Not footsteps. More of a rustle—metal brushing against metal, quiet, careful, far too careful for a rat or the wind. Desnard froze. The cigarette stayed poised at his lips, smoke rising in a steady stream. He slowly turned his head, peering into the darkness behind the dumpsters, toward where he’d set a couple of tripwires earlier that morning—a habit a hunter could never afford to break. And now, one of them had twitched. A faint metallic chime, a tension in the wire—and then stillness again.

Someone had tripped it. And this someone wasn't breaking in, wasn't panicking, wasn't screaming. Or maybe they just hadn't realized where they were yet?

Desnard crushed his cigarette against the wet concrete, tucked the butt into his pocket—couldn't go littering—and walked toward the sound, unhurried. His footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty alleyway near the dense woods. He kept his right hand free, close to his holster, and he didn't look at the tripwire, but slightly to the side—because someone who trips a trap and doesn't scream like a Jericho trumpet is usually not alone.

— So, who do we have here that's so patient? — he said softly, almost tenderly, — Come out. Hands where I can see them.

Desnard stopped. He narrowed his eyes. He liked this situation a lot less than if another monster had crawled out of there.

— Tongue cut out, have they? I'm counting to three. One.

Desnard remained silent, not knowing who would step out to meet him—or if anyone would at all, but he was ready for any outcome, feeling the adrenaline flare in his veins once more. He watched too intently, too long, the way he always did. The smoke from the extinguished cigarette still hung in the air. The rain drummed on the roof, and behind him lay the corpse of a creature that needed to be burned as soon as possible, lest more bastards come swarming once they caught the scent.

— Two, — he said finally, clicking his safety off.

Des Winchester

Monster Hunter

Description

Desnard was eight when a man he had known his entire life walked into their home one evening. A family friend. With the same smile, the same voice, the same hands. His father had opened the door himself. Desnard stood in the hallway and watched as those hands closed around his father's throat, watched as his father slumped to the floor, never having the chance to say a word. His sister—six years old, silly, with perpetually scraped knees—had run out at the noise and only had time to let out a single scream. His mother had scooped Desnard up, dragged him into the cellar, muffled his mouth with her palm, and held him there until everything above had gone silent. Then came the sounds from upstairs—sounds that still haunt his nightmares to this day. His grandfather pulled them out. He arrived with a shotgun, silent, asking no questions. He took them both in with him—to a house where not a single photograph hung on the walls and the doors were always locked. Roy taught him hard. He showed no mercy, made no allowances for age. Desnard first held a weapon at ten. He shot until he was driven mad, until his hands began to shake. He learned to read tracks, to hear the lie in a voice, to trust no one—not even himself. "Monsters aren't enemies," his grandfather would say, staring somewhere past him. "You respect enemies. Monsters are filth. Clean them out and don't think about it." Desnard didn't think. He learned. And he was a good student—vicious, stubborn, with a rage that his grandfather didn't stifle, but sharpened like a blade. When Des was twenty-two, Roy died: quietly, in his sleep—a great luxury in their family. He buried him himself, without tears, smoking half a pack by the fresh grave before setting out that very same day. Since then, there had been nothing but the road. Cities, motels, states, stranger's faces. His life had become a rut of hunting, blood, and the highway. His mother lived far away—in a house with a good alarm system and guns under the bed. He called her rarely, kept his words short. He visited even less frequently, and always for only a few days: he didn't want to put her at risk, no matter how hard or lonely it felt. Because he had been hunting that monster with a manic obsession. Sometimes it felt to him like the thing was hunting him too, and that kept him on his feet just as much as his anger did. He didn't believe in divine help, nor did he believe in "someday": he believed only in bullets, in clean hands, and in the fact that one day the door would open—and he would be ready.