I shot it right between its sunken yellow eyes. It blinked. I fired my last .45 round damned near through the same hole. But it still didn’t go down. Crap. With these things you had to absolutely wreck their brains.
Before one of the cultists could shout the command to attack, I grabbed my still unopened bottle of Coke, and stabbed it right into the monster’s forehead, aiming for the bullet holes. Thankfully it didn’t shatter in my hands. My aim was good. Skin split and skull cracked. I shoved until the bottle got stuck, then I grabbed the automaton by the back of the head, and slammed it face down into our table, hard as I could, driving the Coke deep into its brain cavity. The bottle shattered. The table broke. And the undead hit the ground in a twitching heap, spraying ooze and soda. Kevin screamed and climbed up onto this seat.
I turned back to the wounded bikers just as Baldy was reaching into his vest. Only Milo got there before he could draw, and Baldy caught a Birkenstock to the face.
Trip rushed in the back, pistol in hand. He took in the mess, then shot the automaton in the base of the skull twice just to be sure. “I tossed the last one in the dumpster.”
My ears were ringing. “Did you kill him?”
“Eh…Maybe?” Trip looked a little embarrassed. “That depends on how hard his head is. I wasn’t trying to, but I was in a hurry.”
Kevin was still screaming, and that was getting on my nerves. The guy I’d shot in the stomach was making less noise. “Shush already!”
The waitress/bartender, and I was realizing now probable owner, had stuck her head around the corner. She saw us pointing pistols at two men bleeding on her floor, and one really obviously dead body, and then she ducked back down. I hoped she was dialing 911, not preparing to hang a shotgun around the corner to blast us.
“Don’t worry,” I shouted in her direction. “You’re safe. We’re the good guys. Everything is under control.” Even if she believed me, she probably wasn’t thinking I was that good of a tipper anymore.
After Milo had disarmed the bikers, he had gotten his phone out. “Hey, Eddings…Yeah. It’s Milo. Sorry to bug you again, but since we’re not supposed to be here, would you mind coming down and collecting the PUFF on a…” He looked at the monster. “Huh. I’m not actually sure, but Owen killed it with a soda pop…No…Really.”
The Las Vegas team had all the right contacts with the local PD to handle supernatural business, and they could get all this sorted out. The necromancers would get turned over to the MCB for questioning. As far as the government would be concerned, it would be from MHI Las Vegas, and my guys would have had nothing to do with this.
What was the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition doing here anyway? Baldy was passed out, so I squatted down next to Beardly. I checked his neck, sure enough, he was wearing one of those necklaces with an amulet of their old—now blown to smithereens—squid god on it. I knew from one particularly awful near death experience that the second he gave away too much about the Condition, it would choke him to death, and then he’d reanimate as a zombie.
“Listen carefully, asshole. I’m only going to ask this once. I know you work for Lucinda Hood. Who does the Condition worship now?”
“The Dread Overlord sees all!
“Your Dread Overlord sees zip. He’s dead.”
“You’re lying! He grants us power you can’t even begin to—” I pistol whipped him upside his stupid cultist head, hard enough to knock him cold. The clunk was extremely satisfying.
“What’s that about?” Trip asked.
“Lucinda has her dad’s idiot cult believing their Great Old One is still alive. She’s got them doing Asag’s bidding and they don’t even know it.”
“The Condition attracts power hungry psychos. As long as their black magic keeps working, you think they’re going to get too theologically picky about who is actually answering their prayers?” As an actual religious person, doing unto others as he’d have done unto him, these whackadoodle psychopaths offended the hell out of Trip. “That’s a rhetorical question.”
I went back over to the booth, stepped over the foaming zombie, grabbed Kevin by his polo shirt, and hoisted him up so we were eye to eye. He appeared to be going into shock. That was probably a lot of sudden violence for a regular boring person to process. “Hey!” I snapped my fingers a couple of times in front of his nose. That briefly got him to focus on something other than the monster. “Back to negotiations. I want to revise my previous offer.”
“Up?” he asked hopefully.
I shook my head no.
He looked really dejected. “Okay, okay.” He reached into his pocket, then held up a little thumb drive. “Here. Just take it.”
“You had it on you?” I dropped him. “You are literally the worst blackmailer ever!”
CHAPTER 5
I was sitting at the MHI compound’s conference table, looking at Management’s files. Earl Harbinger was reading over my shoulder. Again, the door was locked, and even though I had no idea if Tanya’s elf squiggles actually kept away disembodied spirits or not, I’d gotten pretty good at making them myself.
“This is the mother lode,” my boss muttered. We were so used to working in the dark against the forces of evil, having anything this solid was like a Christmas miracle. “Every recorded detail of every event related to this Asag since you woke him up. Every document and eyewitness report. The way most of this is written I’m betting that dragon had a mole inside the MCB feeding him intel.”
“Is this good enough to convince you to approve the mission?”
“Knowing about your adversary is a good start, but the key to a successful invasion means you need to know the terrain. All you’ve got on that island is that Myers stuck a pin in a map and told a cyclops to stare at it. And if we’re going to rescue John and Jason, we need to know how to cross over to the other side, and more importantly how to come back in one piece.”
My enthusiastic desire to kick some monster ass aside, Earl was right. “I’ve got some ideas on that stuff…”
“Don’t forget what they say. Good generals study tactics, but great generals study logistics. The target is north of the Arctic Circle in a country that isn’t big on letting foreign Hunters screw around on their turf.”
I sighed. “Friggin’ politics.”
“If this job was all blowing shit up, it would be easy. It’s one thing to say we want to conduct an op, but another to get all the pieces in place. All the firepower in the world is useless if we can’t get it there. But this is good. You’re learning, Z. I’m not going to be around to run this company forever, and I’d like to know that my great-granddaughter’s right-hand man isn’t an idiot.”
“Come on, Earl. You’re too ornery to die.”
“Die? Hell, after reading that dragon file I was talking about retiring.” He clapped me on the shoulder and then headed for the exit. “Clock’s ticking.”
“I’m going to have to put a hurting on the travel budget,” I warned him.
“You know I never look at those expense reports anyway.”
“I’ll go alone and try to keep it cheap.”
“Bullshit. You’ll take a partner to watch your back. You’ve got frequent flier miles, use them.”
* * *
Jet lag is annoying and long flights screw me up. It was lunch time in London, but felt like dinner. I knew from experience that when I tried to go to sleep tonight, I’d really want breakfast. I hated flying all over the place, but Earl had given me a month, so I was going to make the most of it.
I was sitting at an outdoor table at a little restaurant overlooking the Thames. I had a good view of the Tower Bridge. The weather was cloudy and a little too moist. I’d bought one of those floppy tweed hats and a big scarf. The excuse was to help serve as a disguise in case the Condition had people here. The reality was they were keeping me warm. Let’s be honest. When you’re six foot five, scary, and a very solid three-hundred-plus pounds, disguise is a nebulous concept at best.
A cab pulled up and a man got out. I checked my watch. As was expected, my guest had arrived exactly on time. He had a reputation for being precise. He paid the driver and walked over. I recognized him from the picture Julie had shown me from a hunt where MHI had teamed up with The Van Helsing Institute years ago. Only in that one he’d been much younger, and wearing body armor instead of a three piece suit. What is it with British guys and those skinny suits?
A moment later the hostess showed my guest in. He was tall, in his thirties, thin but wiry. Nice suit or not, he still exuded that Hunter vibe, unconsciously scanning the room, looking for trouble, realizing we had the outdoor deck to ourselves, and then sizing me up when I stood to shake hands.
“Dr. Rigby?”
“No need for the ‘doctor.’ My friends simply call me Rigby, Mr. Pitt.” I was twice his mass, but he had a strong handshake.
“It’s just Owen then. Thanks for coming. Have a seat.”
He did. “Thank you for the invitation. Your reputation precedes you.”
“It’s no big deal.” Actually I got a little embarrassed talking about my exploits. Half the time what other Hunters had heard was exaggerated or flat-out wrong anyway. “You’ve got an impressive resume yourself.”
“I have simply carried on the family business.”
“Meaning after a stint in the SAS you became a traveling monster expert. So what color is the boathouse at Hereford?”
“I love that film, but I have no idea what color it is. I was captain of my rowing team at Oxford, though.”
Julie had caught me up on the inside baseball. The Rigby family were the UK’s closest equivalent to the Shacklefords. The Van Helsing Institute tended to be a little more gentlemanly, academic, and refined, and a whole lot less redneck, but before he’d gone on to become some sort of expert occult super scholar at Oxford, Ben Rigby’s grandfather had been blowing up Nazi monsters for the Special Operations Executive during World War Two. Earl said the Rigby family was all right.
“I hope business is good here.”
“Monster attacks are nightmarishly frequent in London, so it has been lucrative.”
We made small talk. He knew my wife, but hadn’t seen her since she’d visited his mother’s ancestral estate in Scotland one summer when Julie had been a teenager. Then we talked innocuous shop talk. The British treated monster hunting differently than we did in America, with the government and private sector working closely together. British Hunters weren’t allowed nearly as much hardware as we were, so the government did most of the trigger pulling. The Van Helsing Institute were more like detectives than mercenaries.
The waitress came out and took our order. I asked for fish and chips, because that seemed properly British. Rigby ordered a hamburger and a pint of beer. After she left he got back to work.
“So what really brings you to London, Owen? Your message indicated that you wanted to discuss a business opportunity. Yet, you wished to meet in private rather than in our offices. In addition, you asked for me specifically, rather than Howard Isherwood, though MHI is fully aware that Howard administers all of our contractual dealings. I must admit that I am curious as to the nature of your visit.”
“You guys really have the coolest accent.”
“We merely consider it talking.”
“I bet the chicks dig it.”
“I’d assume so, but I would not know. However my partner finds it appealing.”
Julie hadn’t told me that about Rigby. Not that I particularly cared. The dude was supposed to be good at hunting monsters. I didn’t give a crap about what my colleagues did in their personal lives unless it messed with my job. “Okay then.”
“Please, continue.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. I came to you, because no offense to your company, we don’t know them. Earl Harbinger vouched for you and your family.” In fact, the Rigbys were some of the few people outside of MHI who knew Earl was a werewolf, and that family knowledge went back a long time. “We’re working a job involving a high-value target. The thing we’re up against has a reputation for having spies everywhere.”
Rigby nodded. “Both supernatural and earthly spies I presume. Hence the Elven runes designed to ward off ghosts chalked on the boards beneath our table, and your associate up on the bridge pretending to be a tourist with the binoculars, observing anyone who wanders by to make sure we are not being eavesdropped on.
“He’s good.” Holly Newcastle said in my earpiece. “Cute too. Too bad on the gay thing, because that accent really is a panty dropper.”
“Never mind her. She just volunteered to come along because she wanted to go shopping and play tourist afterward.”
“Seriously, I could listen to him read the phonebook.”
I reached into my coat and turned down the volume on my radio. “We also swept the place for bugs too because he has human cultists working for him. I’m here because I need a favor. I’ve got a source that said we could find more information about our HVT in Oxford’s sealed collections. MHI has a pass, but nobody knows it as well as you guys. If my people go poking around in there about him, somebody is bound to notice.”
“Everyone with access is sworn to secrecy, but the secret collection is rather vast. It would not surprise me to know the forces of evil keep an eye on it. Oxford has been collecting monster lore and occult volumes for centuries. Who is your source?”
“The individual who organized the first annual International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals. Which was, unfortunately, also the last annual Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals.”
“After that debacle I can understand your source’s desire for anonymity. I’m sorry I missed Las Vegas. I was on a consultation in Iraq. Many of my associates were at that conference. Not all of them came home. I would have liked to help. Such a terrible business.”
“Yeah, it pretty much sucked.”
“Speaking of which, I was told you had broken your arm there. I must have been misinformed.”
“Naw, I broke the shit out it, but we have an Orc witch doctor. She knocks months off of recuperation.”
“That is nice. We have to make do with a leprechaun.”
Now Rigby was just messing with me. “Since VHI has unlimited access to the collection, and you’re a regular there, I was hoping you could do some research for us.”
“If a creature has ever crossed the path of man, there will be a mention of it in there somewhere. The issue is folklore and legend are notoriously unreliable, and the collection is an unfortunate mingling of both fact and fiction. However, I also have sources within the Supernatural Service. That is our equivalent to your MCB. What would I be looking for?”
“Three things.” I glanced around. It appeared to be all clear. “First, anything there is about a being known as Asag.”
Rigby gave me a curious look. “Disorder.” I must have appeared perplexed, because he immediately clarified. “I’m sorry. I’m something of an expert on ancient Mesopotamian mythology. Assuming we are speaking of the same creature—and he was once rather infamous—that is what Asag translates as…Disorder.
“That actually seems really fitting. So far he’s been a behind the scenes string puller more than an in your face, Hulk smash kind of monster.”
“Appropriate for a being who could best be described as a god of chaos. Asag was the demonic villain in a cuneiform poem that is several thousand years old, so hideous that his mere presence boiled the fish in the rivers. He is real then?”
“Oh yeah, and he’s a dick. MCB has him flagged as a potential extinction-level threat, not that they ever tell us anything. He was behind the attack in Vegas, and a whole bunch of other things. Anything you could find could help.”
I think the monster detective took that as a challenge. “Consider it done.”
He was being a little too helpful. There were lots of altruistic heroic types in this business, but only suckers worked for free. “What could MHI do for you in return?”
&nb
sp; “If this Asag of yours is a world ender, that means the PUFF bounty would be astronomical. I know what your Lord Machado payout was. Even if it is bagged outside of the United States, if the threat is sufficient your government will still pay PUFF, like they did on the Arbmunep. I’ll help you, but in exchange the Institute gets a piece of the action.”
“Standard consulting percentages off the total, and equal shares based upon any manpower provided to the actual operation.” I was ready for this. I was the company’s accountant after all.
“That sounds more than reasonable.”
Rigby was sharp, but he probably didn’t yet realize the sheer scope of what I was putting together. This was going to need to be a multicompany operation anyway, so by agreeing to that I wasn’t giving up too much. “I’m fine with that. But you can’t tell a soul what you’re working on until we bring you in officially. Deal?”
“We have a deal. And the next item on your shopping list?”
This was worth a shot. “Anything you can get your hands on related to how travel works in the Nightmare Realm, and how to get back safely.”
He just stared at me, incredulous. “Are you mad?” He didn’t need an answer. He just shook his head, as if to say it’s your funeral. “Very well. And last?”
“Anything you can find about monster activity, current or historical, on Severny Island.”
“I’ve heard of it. There has been quite an uptick of monster activity there in recent years. Wait…” He chuckled. “That’s really where your target is?”
“Yeah. So?”
“You’re pulling my leg.” Rigby laughed harder this time. “You’re serious? Bloody hell.”
“What?”
“Then you’ve got a problem, mate. Severny is covered by a KMCG contract. Any monster problems there belong to Ivan Krasnov’s company. You’d need to get the Russian government’s permission to operate there, which means you need Krasnov’s approval.” When I showed no reaction to this apparently really bad news he asked, “Do you even know Krasnov?”