“You don’t need to tell me twice,” said Sarah.

The door swung gently open when I twisted the knob, revealing the darker, seemingly empty room beyond. I squinted into the gloom, seeing nothing but a few sheet-draped tables and what looked like an old-style apothecary’s cabinet. My flashlight beam bounced off the glass, refracting into the room where Sarah and I stood.

“Looks like it’s all clear,” I said, starting to turn back to Sarah. “We should keep on movi—”

Something roughly the size of a Golden Retriever—assuming Golden Retrievers had massive, batlike wings—burst out of the dark behind the door and soared into the room, shrieking loudly. Sarah added her own screaming to the din, ducking and scrambling to get under one of the gore-soaked tables. I stopped worrying about her as soon as she was out of sight. The creature would forget she was there almost instantly, if it had managed to notice her in the first place. The cuckoo: nature’s ultimate stealth predator, and also, when necessary, nature’s ultimate coward.

The creature continued its flight across the room, giving me time to take solid aim on the space between its wings, and get a good enough view to make a hopefully accurate guess at what it was. It could have been your average attractive older Filipino woman, assuming you liked your attractive older women with wings, claws, fangs, and—oh, right—nothing below the navel. Where her lower body should have been was only a thin, pulsing layer of skin, providing me with a nauseatingly clear view of her internal organs.

My brother owed me five bucks. When I’d described the thing that was supposedly attacking downtown maternity wards to him over the phone, he’d barely paused before saying, “There’s no way you’re dealing with a manananggal. They’re not native to the region.” Well, if the thing that was flying around the room wasn’t a manananggal, nature was even crueler than I’d originally thought.

“Hey, ugly!” I shouted, and fired. Shrieking, the manananggal hit the wall, using her momentum to flip herself around and start coming back toward me. I fired twice more. As far as I could tell, I hit her both times. It didn’t slow her down one bit. I dove to the side just as she sliced through the air where I’d been standing, that unearthly shriek issuing from her throat the entire time.

“I fucking hate things that can’t be killed,” I muttered, rolling back to my feet. The manananggal was coming back for another pass. That was, in a messed-up kind of way, a good thing. Mentally, I shouted, Sarah! Go find her legs!

My cousin stuck her head out from under the table, eyes wide. You’re kidding, right? came the telepathic demand.

No! Hurry! I fired at the manananggal again, keeping her attention on me. It wasn’t hard to do. Most things focus on the person with the gun.

I hate you, said Sarah, and slid out from under the table, using the sound of gunfire and screaming to cover her as she slipped through the open doorway, into the dark beyond.

The manananggal are native to the Philippines, where they live disguised among the human population, using them for shelter and sustenance at the same time. They spend the days looking just like everyone else. It’s only when the sun goes down that they open their wings and separate their torsos from their lower bodies. That’s when they fly into the night, looking for prey. Even that could be forgiven—humanity has made peace with stranger things—if it weren’t for what they prey on.

Infants, both newly-born and just about to be born. The manananggal will also feed on the mothers, but only if they’re still carrying or have given birth within the last twenty-four hours. Weak prey. Innocent prey. Prey that, in this modern world, is conveniently herded into maternity wards and hospital beds, making it easy for the manananggal to come in and eat its fill. As this one had been doing, moving in a rough circle through the local maternity wards, slaughtering humans and cryptids with equal abandon.

She’d been getting sloppier, and her kills had been getting more obvious. That was a bad sign. That meant the manananggal was getting ready to find a mate and make a nest . . . and that was something I couldn’t allow to happen.

I’m a cryptozoologist. It’s my job to protect the monsters of the world. But when those monsters become too dangerous to be allowed to roam free, I’m also a hunter. I don’t enjoy that side of my work. That doesn’t mean I get to stop doing it.

The manananggal seemed to realize that her tactics weren’t getting her anywhere. With a ringing scream, she hit the wall again, and then turned to fly straight at me, her arms held out in front of her as she went for a chokehold. I ducked. Not fast enough. Her claws raked across the top of my left bicep, slicing through the fabric of my shirt and down into my flesh. I couldn’t bite back my yelp of pain, which seemed to delight the manananggal; her scream became a cackle as she flew past me, flipped around, and came back for another strike.

I put two bullets into her throat. That barely slowed her down . . . but it slowed her enough for me to get out of her path. She slammed into the wall, hard. I tensed, expecting another pass. It never came. Instead, her wings thrashed once, twice, and she sank to the floor in a glassy-eyed heap, brackish blood oozing from the gunshot wounds peppering her body.

Breathing shallowly, I moved toward the body. She didn’t move. I prodded her with the toe of my shoe. She didn’t move. I shot her three more times, just to be sure. (Saving ammunition is for other people. People who aren’t bleeding.) She didn’t move.

“I hate you,” announced Sarah from the doorway behind me.

I turned. She held up the canister of garlic salt I’d ordered her to bring, turning it upside-down to show that it was empty.

“Legs are toast,” she said. “As soon as I poured this stuff down her feeding tube, the lower body collapsed.”

“Oh. Good. That’s a note for the field guide.” I touched my wounded arm gingerly. “This stings. Do you remember anything about manananggal being venomous?”

Sarah grimaced. “How about we ask the nurse?”

“Good idea,” I said, and let her take my arm and lead me away from the fallen manananggal, and the remains of the last infants she would ever slaughter.

This is how I spend my Saturday nights. And sadly, these are the nights I feel are most successful.

Two

“Treat your weapons like you treat your children. That means cleaning them, caring for them, counting on them to do the best they can for you, and forgiving them when they can’t.”