Like I said, Franks? Never dull.
Not that regular Monster Hunters were slouches. I was still on crutches from fighting a nightmare dragon in Las Vegas. It had been one hell of a month.
“You said Franks wanted to trade information for our old broken demon tracker thingy,” Milo looked up from spraying down the stainless steel operating table and saw me reading. “So what did you get? He used up all my best cadavers so I hope it’s good.”
Now that we were done saving Franks and he’d gone on his merry way, we could get to the important stuff. I slammed the door on the incinerator and pulled the piece of paper out of my pocket. There was an address written on it in Franks’ oddly small handwriting.
“He said this was for a multidimensional research facility that worked with the MCB.”
“Multi, like they research other dimensions, or multi like it exists simultaneously in other planes of existence?”
That was a fair question. In this business it really could go either way. “Well, the address is in Albuquerque, so I’m assuming study. You know how sensitive MCB gets about portals.”
“For once I can’t blame the Feds for being jumpy.” Milo was our resident mad scientist, but even he didn’t like messing with black magic. “So what are we supposed to do? Take a tour?”
“Supposedly they can tell us what happened to the Hunters we left behind at the Last Dragon.”
“Whoa…” MHI had two Hunters missing in action. Between the other companies there were a dozen more whose bodies had never been found. “Good trade.”
“We’ll see. Franks is a dick, but he’s honest about it. If he says there’s a way, there’s a way. I’m going to go find out what’s at this address.” I started hobbling for the door. I had one forearm casted and one foot in a big plastic booty, but I’d left my crutch leaning in the corner. Gretchen made a grumbling noise beneath her mask. She had been giving me vile tasting Orcish healing potions for the last week so the bones would knit faster, but she’d warned me to take it easy. I had a hunch that was going to be a challenge. “Yeah, I know, Doc. Working on it.”
Gretchen just clucked disapprovingly and went back to picking up entrails.
* * *
A little while ago I’d had to make a tough call. Abandon some good men to certain death in order to dust off to try and get a monster to chase us, or stick around to evacuate them and possibly get everyone killed. It hadn’t been an easy decision, but it had been the right one. I’d sacrificed a few to try and save many. Luckily the gamble had paid off, and hundreds of us had made it back alive.
But it haunted me.
Everyone assumed VanZant and Lococo were dead. The Hunters assembled at the first annual International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals had been some of the toughest, hardest, most experienced monster killing bad asses ever assembled, yet when the Last Dragon casino got sucked into the nightmare realm, many of us had bought it, and the rest had barely escaped with our lives. We’d only been stuck there for a few hours. How in the world could a handful of Hunters survive a land of shifting nightmare fog that made your worst nightmares come to life, for nearly two weeks?
Even if by some miracle they were still alive, they were beyond our reach. Creating portals to the other side was the sort of thing done by necromancers and insane wannabe wizards. It never ended well. So even if they’d survived somehow, we couldn’t help them. And that was almost worse.
But logic didn’t matter. These were my people, so I had to know.
Originally I was just going to look the address up myself, but you don’t make it very long as a Monster Hunter without a healthy amount of paranoia. The most wanted fugitive in the world had given this to me. And he was being pursued by Stricken, who was some kind of super spy with a stable full of monster assassins, who’d already screwed my company over multiple times, with the full weight and authority of the US government behind him. The last thing I wanted to do was draw Stricken’s malevolent gaze again. I think he only spared my life in Las Vegas on a lark.
My computer knowledge extended to Excel spreadsheets and that was about it, but hidden in the basement of the MHI compound’s main building was our IT Department. Since it consisted of a single internet troll, it could hardly be called a department, but when he wasn’t distracted being a completely awful contrarian douchebag to random strangers on Facebook, Melvin actually did pretty good work.
This section was off-limits to newbies and anyone else who might flip out if they knew we employed an eight foot tall monster to keep our network running. I used my crutch to bang on the door. It was almost four in the morning, but as far as I could tell, Melvin didn’t actually sleep. Sleep would cut into his Call of Duty time.
“Hey, troll! I need you to do something.”
“Go away!” Melvin shouted through the door. I could hear explosions and gunfire. “Melvin is on epic kill streak! Epic!”
After Trip had cut a deal with this thing, we’d learned pretty fast that you couldn’t interact with a troll like a regular employee. There was no reasoning with internet trolls. You had to establish dominance. I pounded on the door again. “Listen, you PUFF applicable pile of garden hoses, get off your lazy ass.”
“Bite me, accounting department. Talk to Melvin’s supervisor.”
“Fine. I’ll go get Holly.”
Originally we’d tried using Trip as Melvin’s supervisor, since he’d been the one to give Melvin a job offer—under duress—but Trip was just too damned nice. Now Holly on the other hand, she scared the crap out of Melvin. The video game was suddenly silent. Two seconds later the door creaked open. The hideous green monster loomed over me. His snaggly teeth were coated in so much old sugar that they’d begun growing moss. His eyes were blinking and twitchy, fueled by dozens of Red Bulls.
“How may Melvin serve you today, Mr. Monster Hunter?” He shuffled aside so I could enter.
“Research.”
When we had first hired Melvin, our network was one box under Dorcas’s desk, and this had been a storage room. Now the place was filled with server racks and blinking lights. His desk was an old door on top of a stack of cinderblocks, but there were six monitors on top of it. We’d spent a lot of money on hardware for him, but when he wasn’t being useless he could actually be kind of handy. It all worked out financially because we didn’t actually pay Melvin in anything other than snack foods and bandwidth.
“It smells like troll in here.”
“Odor of excellence,” he wheezed. “Should bottle and sell as Axe body spray. Make millions.”
“Focus, Melvin. I’ve got an address. I want to know everything about it. What’s there, who owns it, who works there, what they’re doing, and every possible way to get in.”
“Is your Google broke, scrub? This insults Melvin’s leet skillz.”
“The hard part is you have to do it without raising any red flags. Nobody can know we’re interested in this.”
“Who you worried spying? NSA? CIA?”
“Special Task Force Unicorn.”
“Oh…” The troll let out a long hissing noise. I think that indicated fear. Good. “Melvin no like Unicorn.”
“Nobody likes them, for good reasons.” Stricken had kidnapped Earl’s girlfriend, used us all as pawns in Las Vegas, and if what Franks was telling us tonight was accurate, even had Agent Myers killed. I still didn’t know how I felt about that. “So don’t get caught.”
* * *
A couple of hours later I went upstairs armed with fresh intel. The sun wasn’t up yet, but there were a handful of Hunters hanging out around Dorcas’s desk. Somebody had brewed a pot of coffee. They were all too excited talking about the events of the night and the potential ramifications to go back to bed. Trip and Holly were there. So was my brother.
“Hey, man. Where you been? I thought you’d gone back to help Julie. Your place is trashed.” Mosh offered me a cup of a coffee, but distracted, I brushed past and went to the memorial wall instead.
&
nbsp; Every Hunter who had ever been killed or gone missing in action since the founding of MHI had a spot on this wall. There had been a lot of silver plaques when I’d started, and we had added too damned many since.
“What are you doing, Z?” Holly asked.
The shiniest, newest plaques were from Las Vegas. We were so used to losing people that we were obnoxiously efficient about getting these made quickly. I found the two I was looking for. John VanZant. Jason Lococo. Everybody gave me a curious look as I pulled those off the wall.
“Not yet.”
And then I limped off. I had a flight to catch.
* * *
An hour later I was at the Montgomery Regional Airport, sitting on a bench, waiting. I had hired a private jet, and was waiting for the pilot to arrive. MHI owned its own cargo plane, but since this might be a wild goose chase, I didn’t feel comfortable taking advantage of company assets. I was doing this on my own dime. What Melvin had turned up made me suspicious that either Franks had been yanking my chain, or this was some sort of clever secret squirrel cover up. It just didn’t seem like the sort of place they’d hide some weirdo paranormal research facility. Regardless, I’d grabbed a Go Bag, sent Julie a text that I needed to take a quick trip, and then driven straight to Montgomery’s little airport.
While I was killing time, I checked my emails. There was another one from Mom about Dad. It wasn’t good. I put my phone away. It was all second hand bad medical reports. I couldn’t look at that now. Damn, I was tired.
“Bad news?”
Surprised, I looked up to see Julie standing there, glasses perched on the end of her nose, big green duffel bag over one shoulder, cleaned up from earlier—though she’d missed a spot and had some dried blood under one ear—yet still gorgeous as usual. Her long dark hair was tied up haphazardly for once, so I could see the black line on her neck. That meant she must have been really weary, because she usually tried to hide the Guardian’s mark.
I blinked stupidly. “What’re you doing here?”
“Taking a trip apparently.” My wife gave me a tired smile. “I got your text.” She dropped her bag on the floor, and then flopped down in the seat next to me. “Cryptic.”
The waiting room was nearly deserted at this hour. Nobody was close enough to eavesdrop. “I figured if Stricken suspected public enemy number one was going to try and make contact with us, all our communications are being monitored.”
“More than likely. From the look on your face though, whatever you were reading’s not good. Your dad?”
“Yeah. He’s not doing any better.” His condition had been degrading steadily ever since he’d spoken to me and Mosh. His borrowed time was up, his purpose fulfilled. At least that awful, shitty, part of his prophecy had proven to be true. “I don’t know what to do.”
Julie put her hand on mine. “I’m so sorry.”
I changed the subject. “What are you doing here?”
“If I sat around any longer looking at what’s left of our place, I was going to lose it, so I might as well do something useful. I was finally getting the old house looking half decent. Damn Earl.”
“Where is he, anyway?”
“I think he’s tailing Franks to see if he can find Heather.”
That was ballsy, but sounded about right for Earl. “We should go help.”
“I asked. Earl very specifically said we’re not supposed to. He made a deal, MHI sits this one out.”
“You say so.” I hoped our boss knew what he was doing.
“Trying to avenge the love of his life, I can forgive him jumping the gun and wrecking the house, but Earl’s paying for the repairs. All the repairs. Frank’s blood is everywhere. I’m hiring contractors for that mess. So in the meantime, I’m going with you.”
“But you’re—”
“A couple months pregnant, not a fragile porcelain doll. I come from a long line of hardy southern gunslinger moms who squeezed out babies and then got right back to work, so don’t try and coddle me. You’re the one that’s supposed to be taking it easy, not me.”
“Okay.” We’d had this discussion before. I had finally gotten her to agree to avoid active monster hunting for the safety of our kid. “This shouldn’t be anything dangerous.”
“Honestly, I think I should at least be able to provide sniper fire until I can’t buckle my armor anymore.”
“You promised,” I reminded her. And of course, minutes after I’d finally gotten her to make that promise, we’d had Frankenstein versus the Wolfman in our living room.
“I’m kidding. Look, I’m still coming to terms with the idea. Being a mom doesn’t seem real yet. I wasn’t exactly expecting this. Having a family? With all of the weirdness in our lives?”
She was mostly worried about the Guardian’s curse. We still didn’t have a clue what that was doing to her, let alone our baby. “Your folks were Monster Hunters and you turned out great.”
“Just as long as the two of us don’t end up like my parents.”
“That’s not going to happen.” At minimum my Chosen thing and her Guardian thing meant we couldn’t be turned into vampires, but I was pretty sure she was speaking in general. There are plenty of ways to go out badly that didn’t involve becoming one of the undead.
Julie changed the subject. Between me not wanting to dwell on my dad and her not wanting to worry about impending parenthood, pretty soon we would be talking about the weather. “Melvin told me what you’re looking for. I just hope you aren’t getting your hopes up.”
“Realistically, I know they’re gone. But Lococo had a daughter. It would be nice to tell her I know for sure what happened to her dad.”
“I’ve known VanZant for years. He’s one of our best. We owe it to them. But these people actually knowing anything useful is a long shot. This trip will probably end up as begging academics or arguing with government employees. Negotiation is my job. You on the other hand, have a spotty track record for diplomacy.”
She handled all of MHI’s contracts and could charm or schmooze just about anybody. I was good with spreadsheets. “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it.”
“Exactly.” She laid her head on my shoulder and snuggled up against me. “I didn’t get a lick of sleep because of stupid Franks. Wake me up when it’s time to waddle to the plane.”
“Whatever. You don’t even look pregnant yet. But I bet in a couple months you’ll have the sexiest waddle ever.”
“Damned right I will.”
I was glad she was here.
* * *
Julie rang the doorbell.
The way Franks had made it sound I’d been expecting something fancy. Like a brutalist concrete building that could serve as a bunker, or something high-tech with lots of black glass and swoopy architecture, that sort of thing. Multidimensional Research sounded impressive.
I hadn’t been expecting a house in a middle class suburb of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It wasn’t even that big of a house. According to Melvin it was twenty-five hundred square feet of brick, stucco, and lame. It was owned by a real estate company that was more than likely a shell corporation for the MCB, and had been for a few years. There was zero indication that there was a secret tunnel network beneath it hiding anything interesting, like a supercollider, or a star gate, or something. This was the kind of street that had minivans parked on it. Instead of lawns everybody had sand, gravel, or cactus. Across the street and two houses down a little girl was peddling Girl Scout cookies.
“It’s not exactly Cheyenne Mountain.” Julie stated as she rang the doorbell again.
“I don’t know. Check out cookie girl.”
“She’s adorable.”
“Too adorable. She’s eyeballing us. I bet she’s an undercover MCB sharpshooter.”
“The pigtails are a dead giveaway,” she agreed, sarcastically.
“You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty high-speed, low-drag haircut.”
“I rocked that look when I was that age.” Julie gave up on the be
ll, and gave the door a firm knock. It wasn’t even a metal security door or anything. Just regular soft wood. If I didn’t have one foot in a plastic booty I could have kicked it open in one try.
We had an MHI team in New Mexico already. Julie had rightfully pointed out that there was no reason we couldn’t have asked them to do this and saved us a trip. Of course, she’d said that, but she hadn’t tried to talk me out of it either. I think we both needed to feel like we were doing something proactive.
The blinds in the nearest window shook as somebody peeked through at us. They quickly snapped shut.
“I hope this isn’t Agent Franks’ idea of a joke, and something horrible lives here,” Julie muttered.
“If we’re about to get eaten, I’m glad my last act of defiance was getting Mosh to tattoo our smiley face logo on him.”
There was the sound of locks being undone, and then the door creaked open. It was dark inside. All I could make out was part of a face and one eye. There was a security chain latched on the inside, but that was a laughable safety feature to a three hundred pounder like me. The door must have been even thinner than I thought, because he had heard what I’d said. “You know Agent Franks?”
“We’re passingly familiar,” Julie said, not wanting to commit to having just seen the thing with the quarter billion dollar PUFF bounty on his head. “Is this—”
“He’s not here, is he?” The guy inside sounded young, but breathy, like he was chunky and needed an inhaler. He tried craning his head around to see past me through the crack. “Agent Franks scares me. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You’ve not been watching the news lately, have you? Franks is indisposed. Listen, sir, we were told you might be able to help us with something.”
He stopped his futile scanning for Franks long enough to take a good look at my wife. “Hang on…Are you Julie Shackleford?”
“I am.”
“The Julie Shackleford?”
As opposed to all the other Julie Shacklefords? “That’s me.”
“No way!” He quickly closed the door, there was a rattle as he undid the chain, and then he flung the door wide open. “I’m a huge fan!”