But then the live camera angle changed, away from the refugees and toward a nearby hillside, where a giant symbol had been freshly burned into the stone. The camera only lingered on it for a moment. Most people wouldn’t recognize it as anything other than random char. We knew it was a calling card.
Julie sighed. “Damn it. Not again.”
Somebody at CNN must have been read in, because the live feed was cut. They switched to the studio, where they began introducing a chemical expert, who I was certain would be paid off by the MCB to regurgitate whatever the Indian government’s official cover story for the incident was.
I was seeing red. How many more people had to die because I’d woken this thing up?
“Are you okay?” Julie tried to take my hand, but it had unconsciously clenched into a fist.
“I won’t be until we stop this son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER 2
I had my ducks in a row. Now it was time to make my pitch.
“Earl, you got a minute?”
“Maybe later, Z. I’m still catching up with all the team lead’s reports, and we’ve got an active Newbie class I’m supposed to be evaluating.”
My boss had been having one hell of a morning. Since he had gotten back Earl had been absolutely slammed catching up with various pieces of business and Dorcas had been sending him calls nonstop. That’s what happens when you drop off the face of the Earth for several days to spring your girlfriend from a secret government monster death squad. They’d gotten that sorted out without getting MHI further involved in the Franks vs. Unicorn debacle. Stricken was on the run. Heather Kerkonen had a new boss—who actually sounded like she wasn’t an evil plotting megalomaniac like her predecessor—and now Earl was trying to get our company back to normal.
I was about to ruin any chance of normal. At least rescuing Heather had put him in a halfway decent mood, so I hoped he wouldn’t shoot down my pitch.
I’d caught Earl in the hall near the front door, trying to escape toward the shooting range. He glanced toward Dorcas’ desk. She was on the phone, and he was probably annoyed that me delaying him meant she had time to send him another phone call. “Talk fast.”
“I know you’re swamped, but this is important.”
“Yo, Earl.” Dorcas lifted her phone. “Mayorga’s team is down one medical retirement, and another for a knee surgery. She wants to know when she’s going to get a replacement shooter sent her way.”
“Her and everybody else in this company.” Earl just shook his head, and pulled out a cigarette. Then he realized he was still indoors, sighed, and put it away. “That goat rope in Vegas screwed us over. Tell her I’ll call her back.”
“Seriously, I need a minute, Earl. This is important.”
“We talking accounting, I need to sign off on something important, because I truly could not care less about the books right now, or are we talking monsters important?”
“Monsters. Though it wouldn’t kill you to look at a P&L once in a while.”
“Ah,” Earl waved one hand dismissively. “That’s what I’ve got you kids for. What do you need?”
“Not here. My office.”
“This had better not be some accountant trick to make me look at a spreadsheet.”
The truth of the matter was that I’d been planning, following leads, and doing research for a week. And if I was right, the entity I wanted to pick a fight with had invisible eyes everywhere. MHI was notorious for our distrust of magic, but we used it when we had to. I’d gotten Tanya to put some Elven charms on my office which would supposedly ward off eavesdropping spirits. She promised they were powerful and would last for a few days. I didn’t really know if our token trailer park elf was full of crap or not, but it was worth a shot. But I wasn’t going to explain that to Earl here with Newbies of unknown character wandering around. I’d learned my lesson about that the hard way.
Earl followed me upstairs. I’d ditched my crutch for a cane, and I’d doubled up on Gretchen’s foul tasting alternative medicine. I was healing fast. Orc potions were made out of things like ground up teeth, pine cones, and raccoon bones, with no logical explanation for why they helped, but damn if they didn’t work great.
My office wasn’t very big, and most of it was filled with shelves and filing cabinets. Earl had let me hire an outside CPA firm—read in on PUFF obviously—to do our taxes, and a retired Hunter as a bookkeeper for the boring data entry bits, so that was nice. Since I squeezed in my company number crunching in between monster killing, there were guns, gear, and boxes of ammo stacked on top of all the cabinets.
Back when I’d been a regular accountant, I’d had a dummy hand grenade on my desk with a #1 through the pin and a plaque beneath that read Take a Number. I couldn’t use that here because it might get mixed up with the regular hand grenades, and that could be disastrous. I closed the door behind Earl and locked it. Elf magic would keep out our enemy’s ghosts, and the door would keep out curious Hunters. Hopefully there weren’t any invisible gnomes hiding in any drawers or anything.
As usual, Earl didn’t miss much. “There’s elf runes chalked on your wall. Why the secrecy?”
I flopped into my chair. Earl sat on the other side of my desk. He wasn’t too grumpy yet, so I had to strike while the iron is hot. “You know about the trip Julie and I took to Albuquerque.”
“A little. She mentioned it when I got back, in between bouts of yelling at me for redecorating her house with Franks’ guts.”
“It’s hell on the carpets.”
“She’s already given me an itemized bill indicating that fact. I didn’t even know there were cyclops still around. I know what you’re thinking, Z. Based on this monster’s word, you want to put together a rescue mission. I feel your pain, I really do. Losing men is a hell of a thing. John was a good friend of mine. Lococo saved my life in Copper Lake. But going back in there after them will be dangerous.”
Earl had no idea. I was thinking way bigger than just a simple rescue mission. “We can’t just leave those Hunters there. That’s not how we do things.”
“I know that. I didn’t say we weren’t going to do anything. Assuming this one eyed fat kid Myers has on house arrest is providing actionable intel, isn’t lying or nuts, and by some miracle seven Hunters are still alive, and they’re still alive months from now when this supposed gate opens, sure. But truthfully, I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Way ahead of you.” I unlocked my top drawer and pulled out a stack of paper. The two silver plaques I’d pulled off the wall were in there for safe keeping. “I’ve been doing some poking around—”
“Hang on.” Earl held up one hand. “Before you get all spun up, I just want you to know I’ve seen this before. I know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bull. You’re holding yourself personally accountable for those missing Hunters and it’s eating at you. That’s good.”
“What’s good about that?”
“When you get to the point that life and death command decisions come easy for you, then it’s time to hang it up. It’s a hell of a responsibility. Every time you make a call, a Hunter’s life is in your hands. Leaders make mistakes, people die. Hell, sometimes we do everything right and they still die anyway. You think you’re the first Hunter who has had to leave a man behind? You’re not.”
I exhaled. Logically, I knew he was right, but it still sucked. “I know I did what I had to, but I keep second guessing it.”
“Been there. Dwell on it long enough and you’ll come up with some imaginary solution where everything would’ve come up roses and sunshine. But that’s bullshit. This business hesitation costs lives. So you make a decision, you see it through the best you can. Try not to screw up. When you do, afterwards you pick up the pieces and try to make things right. I’ll do everything I can to bring them back, but I don’t want you trying anything stupid just because you’re chasing a white whale. You get me?”
“I got a B on my eighth gra
de book report about Moby Dick. So maybe?”
“Smartass. I don’t need to lose any more Hunters trying to get back our two.”
That was assuming VanZant and Lococo were among the living, and the seven survivors weren’t all members of rival companies. “Earl, I give you my word. I’m calm and rational as I can be. Everything I’m about to propose I’ve thought through. I’m not flying by the seat of my pants here, and I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“At least not stupider than what we do any other given day. Good. Because with that whole Chosen One thing you’ve got going on, when you go off half-cocked, things gets weird.”
“Fair enough. Here’s the deal. You know this big, evil bastard who has been messing with us?”
“Yeah, Z, it’s been kind of hard to miss. What about him?”
“All of these recent events, he’s been provoking us, testing our resolve. He’s been screwing around on our turf just to see how we react. It’s time we hit back. Action beats reaction. I want to go on the offensive.”
“You and me both. And how do you intend to do that?”
“I’m not talking about just a rescue mission. I’m proposing an invasion.”
Earl’s smile faded. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.” I spread out the papers on my desk. “I don’t think the location Myers had the cyclops watching is just some regular Place of Power with a gate hidden inside, like DeSoya Caverns. It’s a significant target where our bad guy was sleeping away the eons until I accidentally woke him up. At minimum it’s an important staging area. At most, it’s still his home base.”
“Hold on now. I looked at the map after I talked to Julie. There’s nothing of note there. It never came up on MHI’s radar before. As far as what I heard this morning, your cyclops buddy didn’t know jack about it except it made Myers clutch his pearls. What makes you so sure?”
“Because about thirty years ago, that’s the same spot my dad got his brains blown out on a secret recon mission working for Unicorn, before being brought back to life by angels, so that his son could save the world.”
Earl groaned. “Aw, damn it. Not this mystical prophecy stuff again.”
“Mystical or not, you know it works.”
“Sure. I’ve seen you be right too many times with the whole Dreamer, talking to ghosts, reading memories thing for it not to be. Flexible minds and whatnot, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy relying on it to plan an op. I like facts and logic in my mysticism.”
“Says the werewolf!”
“Now that’s just hurtful. All right. I knew your dad long before that. The Destroyer’s as sharp a man as there’s ever been. He’s the living embodiment of no bullshit. He says this is a legit target?”
“Sort of.” I spent the next few minutes catching Earl up on my father’s—hopefully not deathbed—confession. The hard part was next, when I had to talk about the aftermath.
“The thing is, Earl, when they said that was the only reason he got to stay alive, they weren’t messing around. A few minutes after he got done talking to me and Mosh, he got dizzy. Fell down. His nose started to bleed.” I trailed off. It had been all over his shirt, all over the kitchen floor. Mosh had laid there on the linoleum, cradling his head, while I’d called 911. It had been awful. “He passed out. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. I thought he was going to choke on it. It’s like getting that story off his chest pulled a plug or flipped a switch. I swear, I saw him shrink right before our eyes. I thought he was going to die on us right there.”
My boss was stone faced. “How come you didn’t tell me about this before?”
The truth was that I was nervous Earl might be worried about my state of mind and temporarily pull me off the roster. “It was family business.”
“The minute you married my great-granddaughter we became family. How’s Destroyer now?”
“Weak. Good days, bad days, in and out of the hospital, but mostly in lately. Mom’s been giving me updates. Doctors don’t understand what’s wrong with him. He’s deteriorating physically. Mentally, he’s fine. They see the place where the Others healed him and think it’s an inoperable tumor. There’s no diagnoses for sorry, the angels are done with you, time’s up on your borrowed life.”
“So that’s why your brother took sick leave to get out of Newbie class he’d just volunteered for.” Earl nodded slowly as he pulled out a smoke. “Command decision, Mosh has got enough extracurricular experience lately that I’ll make sure he doesn’t get held back. Seeing the real world damn near wrecked him. That boy needs to be a Hunter.”
“Pitts don’t do good without a purpose. So about this invasion…”
“Trust me on this one, Z. Take some time and spend it with your dad. In the end, your kin—by blood or by choice—they’re all we’ve got. You should be there too.”
“I will. Soon. Only this was what he was kept alive for. Let me make his sacrifice mean something. Please.”
Earl lit a cigarette. I wasn’t about to complain about it him violating his no smoking in other people’s office self-imposed rule. He was quiet for a long time, smoking and leaning back in his chair, deep in thought. He began drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair as he pondered on it, a habit that Julie had inherited.
“Okay, Z. Let’s talk invasion then. What do we know about this particular monster?”
“Almost nothing.”
“What do we know about the location?”
“Even less.”
“That’s a whole lot of nothing.”
“We’ve got to start somewhere. He’s older than dirt, the scary ass Great Old Ones see him as a competitor. He’s powerful enough to freak out Management, turn Myers into an insomniac, and even the Nachtmar tried to use him to frighten me into teaming up. He’s controlled or manipulated some dangerous creatures, and judging by the symbols left behind, his reach is global. I’ve made a list of all the specifics we do know about him, and I’ve come up with a plan of how we can learn more. I can walk you through it.”
“Hell, I bet this plan of yours has got bullet points.” Earl muttered as he took the papers. “You’re such an accountant.”
“Bullet points are awesome.” It was a good thing I’d held off on showing him the Excel file I’d built detailing the resources I’d need. That might have been a touch much. “Just check it out. When we go in, we’ll be loaded for bear, ready for anything and everything. I want this son of a bitch to regret crawling out of his hole.”
Earl read my notes, and nodded slowly. I could tell he was seriously thinking about it. Our unknown enemy was powerful, malicious, and had hit us repeatedly and gotten away with it. I was hoping he wouldn’t be able to resist his natural inclination to hit back.
“What day is this gate supposed to open?”
I flipped around my desk calendar. I had already counted. “One hundred and forty seven days from today. We get in there, wreck his place, blast his minions, seize that gate, and get our guys back.”
“And kill him.”
“If he’s there, obviously.”
Earl passed the papers back to me. “I want to know everything about what we’re facing, with accent on the parts about how we put him in the grave. You hearing me? We do this, it can’t be half ass. If we’re dealing with something that makes Old Ones skittish, that means a potential world ender, and that means he’s gonna be tough. Things that think they’ve got what it takes to conquer everything usually are. If that’s the case we’re talking about one hell of an operation, all hands on deck. We made some friends in Vegas, so we can reach out to them too. I ain’t too proud to ask for help.”
“Absolutely, boss. So does that mean the mission is a go?”
“Draft who you need from my team. Anybody else is need to know basis only. We play this close to the vest. We don’t know how far this monster’s reach goes, so take no chances. For the time being this is now your only job. I’ll give you a few weeks to convince me it’s doable.”
I’
d take it. “I’ll put it down on my calendar as tentative.”
“But go see your dad first.” Earl stood up. “That’s an order.”
“I will.” It was going to be hard to see somebody that strong, rendered weak. My dad had raised us to be tough, but Pitts sucked at the emotional side of things.
“Trust me. You’ll regret it the rest of your life if you don’t.” He began walking to the door.
“Hey, Earl.”
“Yeah, Z?” He paused in the doorway.
“You ever done an op this big before?”
“Hell, kid,” he called out as he left. “I invaded Normandy.”
* * *
Dad was back in the hospital. I’d heard Mom and Mosh were taking turns at his bedside. Since my flight got in so late I didn’t want to inconvenience them, so I just caught a cab from the airport. Of course, that meant I surprised my mom, who immediately got upset that I’d paid for a taxi when she could have picked me up. My good intentions or relative wealth didn’t matter, because Mom is frugal. Which was our family’s nice way of saying she was incredibly cheap.
To be fair, she’d grown up in a communist country where things like fresh fruit and splinter-free toilet paper were luxuries reserved for the connected. If you spent a buck unnecessarily around Mom, you were going to get a lecture about it. The only thing the Pitts spent ludicrous amounts of guilt free money on was for stockpiling ammunition and canned food. Both of my parents had agreed that was cool. Anything beyond that, Mom didn’t like it. She still buried coffee cans full of cash in the yard and didn’t trust banks.
All of that meant I never told her the reason Dad was getting care from the best doctors in the best hospital in the state, instead of taking a number at the VA, was because I’d written the administrator here a big honking donation check.