Tiana and her pack led the five of them through the swamp for a while, taking them through thickets of trees and twisted mangroves before finally stopping at an old, overgrown plantation house. Alain stared at it in awe before she finally broke the silence.

"Inside, you five," Tiana ordered. "Let's get talking."

She motioned for them to enter the house, and they all did as she commanded, filing into the foyer, and eventually, into a sitting room filled with run-down furniture. Alain took a seat on an old, faded couch covered with cobwebs, wincing when he noticed several large spiders scurry away from him and into the cushions.

"Nice place you've got here…" he muttered.

"Spare me your sarcasm, human," Tiana bitterly replied. "We are here to discuss business, nothing more."

"So get on with it, then," Sable demanded. "What do you need us to do?"

Tiana snapped her fingers, and one of her Rougarou emerged from a room deeper inside the house, carrying a sheet of paper under his arm – Alain quickly recognized it as a hand-drawn map of the swamp. The man unrolled it on the old, dry-rotted coffee table in the center of the room, and they all leaned in to get a better look.

"We're currently here," Tiana said, pointing to one of the upper corners of the swamp. "This entire northern part is supposed to be our territory."

"What do you mean, 'our' territory?" Jasper asked. "You mean to tell me there are more packs aside from yours out in the swamps?"

Tiana shook her head. "No, but there are other kinds of creatures out there. The shamans, for one – they're the ones making people into zombies."

"About that," Alain interrupted. "We sort of… killed a bunch of those people."

Tiana stared at him. "So?"

"So, we didn't do anything wrong by doing that, did we?"

Tiana shook her head again. "No. If those people were mindless enough to attack you unprovoked, then their minds were already far too gone to bring them back. If anything, you did them all a favor, putting them out of their misery before a predator could get to them."

"What kind of predators?" Felix questioned.

"Aside from the gators that lurk in the swamp waters? My pack, for one. And then there's the matter of what I'll be asking you five to do…"

"Oh, here we go…" Alain muttered. "Alright, lay it on me. What are we doing?"

"You're looking for a creature called the Honey Island Swamp Monster."

Silence fell over the group for a moment before Alain spoke again.

"Alright, well, none of us know what that is," he said. "Care to explain?"

Tiana rolled her eyes. "It's a giant, bipedal, ape-like creature standing about seven feet tall, that's made of muscle and filled with righteous anger at anything invading its territory."

"Hang on," Jasper chimed in. "Honey Island… that's not very close to where we're at. Why is it here now?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" Tiana asked. "True to its name, the Creature is native to Honey Island, but for some reason, it migrated into our territory a few months ago and has been staying here ever since."

"And I'm guessing it's too tough for your pack to get rid of?"

"It's tougher than it looks. I've already lost several pack members to it, and it showed no reaction to any of our attacks on it."

"Oh, really?" Sable asked. "You're saying the giant, seven-foot-tall gorilla monster is tougher than it looks? How quaint."

Tiana glared at her, but said nothing in response before turning back to Alain. "Anyway, we've been trying to find a way to push it out of our territory for some time now, but have come up empty every time."

"And what makes you think our luck will be any better?" Alain questioned.

Tiana shrugged. "You're here, might as well make yourselves useful to me. Unless you don't want the information I have to offer?"

Alain's gaze narrowed, but he nodded all the same. "Fine, we'll play your game." He leaned in to take another look at the map. "So where does this thing usually stay?"

"Here," Tiana offered, pointing at a small lake in the uppermost portion of the swamp. "It's nocturnal, by the way. It will be active by the time you all get to it, unless you wish to wait until morning. Even then, it's a light sleeper, so good luck sneaking up on it."

"Great…" Alain brought a hand up to rub at his eyes. "Alright, alright… so all we need to do is kill this thing and you'll give us what we came here for?"

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Not even that much," Tiana specified. "It makes no difference to us whether the Creature is alive or dead by the end of this, we simply want it out of our territory. If you can find a way to get it to leave without killing it, that would work, too."

"Yeah, that's a tall order. Damn thing sounds like it could go toe-to-toe with Az in a bare-knuckle brawl and emerge victorious."

"Do what you will, then. It makes no difference to us." Tiana rolled up the map, then handed it to Alain. "Take that with you; odds are you'll need it to traverse the swamps."

Alain nodded, accepting the map and slipping it into his shirt's breast pocket. Once that was done, he rose to his feet, reaching for his shotgun. As Tiana turned to leave the room, he called out to her.

"Wait," he said, stopping her in her tracks. "Remember that we have a deal. Once we do this, we're coming back for that information."

"Of course," Tiana said evenly. "I would never dream of betraying any of Heather's kin."

With that, she left the room, leaving the five of them alone. After a moment, Felix cleared his throat.

"So I'm not the only one who's completely freaked the fuck out by these things, right?"

XXX

Alain winced as he felt yet another mosquito land on his neck, then brought a hand around to smack at it. It splattered underneath his hand, leaving behind a small splash of blood; he stared at the mangled mess of blood and mosquito in his hands, then without looking, offered his palm to Sable.

"Here."

She stared at the contents of his palm, a look of pure disgust crossing her face. "What in the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

"I don't know, figured you'd want a snack."

"I'll pass."

"Suit yourself." Alain brushed his hand against a nearby tree as they marched past it, then turned a glance back to the map in his other hand.

"Do you know where you're going?" Jasper asked, jogging up to march next to him.

"Vaguely," Alain replied. "This map is pretty shit, though. Looks like an eight-year-old drew it."

"To be fair to the pack, did you see their hands?" Felix said. "I'd have trouble drawing with those things, too. Hell, the fact that the map actually ended up somewhat legible is probably a small miracle in and of itself."

"I wouldn't call this legible," Alain said. "There's no way to measure distance on it, it just has a few sketches of what appear to be landmarks lining the way to the lake."

"Landmarks?" Az questioned. "What are we looking for, exactly?"

"A fork in the road marked by a large tree stump with a broken ax head embedded in it, it looks like," Alain reported, squinting to get a better look at the map. "At least, that's what I think it is."

"Let me see," Jasper insisted. Alain passed him the map without argument, and he furrowed his brow as he read through it before finally shrugging and handing it back. "Seems like that's about right, I guess."

"Mind if I ask you something?" Felix asked. "How do you feel about your sister being… well, that?"

"She's still my sister, monster or not," Jasper retorted. "Though admittedly, it does make things harder, considering I'm supposed to be hunting monsters for a living. Then again, I suppose as long as she doesn't do anything that would put her in my sights, it's not an issue…"

"She's still recruiting people into her pack," Sable pointed out.

Jasper bristled. "She said they all consented to that."

"And I don't believe her for a second, the same way I don't believe she ultimately won't double-cross us in the end when it comes to providing information on Alain's mother. Tiana talks a big game, but I'll believe what she has to say as soon as she's proven herself to be trustworthy, and so far, she hasn't."

"What makes you say that?" Alain asked as he pushed his way through a section of dense foliage. Another mosquito landed on his throat, and he again smacked it, gritting his teeth when he felt its body splatter in his hand. "Was it the fact that everything about her seems suspicious and untrustworthy, or was it that she's setting us up to be killed horribly by whatever this Swamp Creature is?"

"She's my sister," Jasper protested. "She wouldn't put me into harm's way like that."

"Respectfully, you haven't seen her in years, and I'm sure she's changed more than physically since then. Unless you mean to tell me she truly was that closed-off and distant the last time you spoke with her?" Jasper said nothing, and Alain pursed his lips. "I'm not saying she's completely untrustworthy, just that it would pay to be careful around her for now, at least until we have a better indication of what she wants."

As Alain finished speaking, the five of them emerged out from the underbrush, stepping out into an old, weathered path that forked in two. True to the map, the tree stump was there between the two paths, the rusted ax head still embedded square in its center. Alain folded up the map at the sight of it, then motioned to the leftmost path.

"That way. Jasper, Felix, keep your guns up; Sable, Az… do whatever your closest equivalent is, I guess."

Sable and Az pushed past him, Az cracking his knuckles as he went.

"Stay behind me, my lady," he said. "I have been meaning to test my strength with a worthy opponent for some time now, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so. Besides, there is no need for you to dirty your hands dealing with riff-raff such as this."

"I will determine when and how I wish to dirty my hands," Sable said dismissively. "But very well, your request is granted. You are clear to engage the Creature however you see fit, provided it proves to be hostile."

"So what's up with the two of them, exactly?" Jasper asked as they began to move down the path, trailing slightly behind Az and Sable.

"Truthfully, we have no idea," Felix explained. "All we know is Az is her servant."

"What is he?"

"He's an Az, and that's all you need to know," Alain offered. "Not even Sable knows what he is, and he's never seen a need to explain it himself, either. I can only assume that means we don't want to know what he is, which I'm more than okay with, given he's on our side."

"And what about her? She's awfully restrained for a vampire."

"Being staked and left to slowly regenerate over several centuries has a way of forcing people to do some soul-searching and mellowing out. At least, that's how she explained it to us. Again, we know better than to question-"

The tress nearby starting to rustle made Alain pause. He turned towards the noise, shifting his shotgun to a firing position, then began to slowly creep towards it, Felix and Jasper just behind him.

He was completely unprepared for an enormous, hairy, ape-like creature to come bursting out, a feral roar escaping from it as it charged at Az.

For any other opponent, that would have been their end – Az would have caught their incoming blow and then torn them limb from limb as easily as a person might pick apart a particularly juicy cut of beef. But not this monster – it made impact with Az, shoulder-checking him at full speed, and to Alain's amazement, Az went flying deeper into the forest.

The Creature stood there for a moment, its breath coming out somewhat ragged from its wild charge. But then, it whipped around to face the four of them, another roar erupting from its throat before it began to lumber towards them.

As he stared down the giant, seven-foot-tall, mountain of muscle that was stalking towards them with murder in its eyes, Alain's thoughts suddenly involuntarily manifested themselves in four simple words.

"Oh, fuck my life…"