"Huh?"
"You don't get it, do you? Ever since we were little, he's put us through Pitt boot camp and treated us like crap, and we hated him for it because we thought he was crazy . . . But now you're some sort of top secret badass fighting evil death cults, and you're using the exact kind of skills that Dad tried to beat into us. Hell, if it wasn't for Dad being such a dick, we'd probably be dead. So I guess that means that he was right all along. . . . That's some mind-blowing shit right there. I'm going to have to tell my therapist about this one."
Crap. Mosh was right. Talk about a paradigm shift. It can be really difficult to admit that you've had such a fundamental misunderstanding about someone. "Well, he's still been a jerk about it," I muttered.
"A prophetic jerk, though . . . Man, I can't believe Dad actually told you any of that."
I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. "He didn't tell me. I read his mind."
Mosh grunted. "You read minds?"
"It's a long story."
It was quiet for almost ten seconds that time. "Okay, what am I thinking right now?" my brother asked.
He was probably thinking that I had ruined his life. I still don't think he grasped the full implications of what was going on here yet. "You're thinking about how you're finally going to get that operation you've always wanted, and how you'll be a lot more comfortable as a girl, and not having to live a terrible lie, and how you can't wait to get a pretty blue sundress to go along with your new spring wardrobe. Now go the hell to sleep already."
"Blue isn't my color . . . Night, bro."
My brain finally gave up. I finally started to drift off. Tomorrow we would figure out something. There had to be a way to defeat the Condition.
"So . . . are dragons real?"
We need to talk.
The whisper startled me awake. I blinked the heavy sleep from my eyes. My alarm clock display read 3:00 a.m. on the dot. For a long moment I lay there, trying to decide if I had been dreaming or if somebody had actually spoken. There was an unfamiliar shape on the cot on the other side of my room, and it took me a moment to remember that my brother was crashing here too.
My whole body ached despite Gretchen's efforts. I had been physically abused over the last few days and I was feeling it right now. Every muscle protested as I sat up. Stupid monsters. There was nobody else in my room, so I must have been dreaming. I needed to get up and use the bathroom anyway.
I walked barefoot into the hall and headed for the bathroom. It was quiet. The other doors were closed. I took care of business and headed back to bed.
We need to talk.
I froze, positive that I had heard that. Scanning both ways, I couldn't see anyone. I was alone in the hallway. It had been a woman's voice, I was sure.
Meet me at the front gate. Neutral ground.
What the hell? I was definitely hearing a voice, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. This was weird, and weird was usually bad. I flipped on my light, causing Mosh to snort, grunt, and roll over, pulling his blanket back over his shaved head. I picked up Abomination off my dresser and waited. I was wide awake now.
It's telepathy, stupid. I'm trying to send you a discreet message.
"Susan . . ." I said slowly, tightening my grip on my weapon.
Yeah. Now pay attention. Broadcasting is hard work. Meet me at the front gate. Come alone. We need to talk. If I wanted to kill you, there are lots of easier ways to do it.
"Bullshit," I stated. I didn't know vampires could do this kind of thing, but I guess it went back to the whole foggy night, hypnotize the victim, and have them walk outside kind of bad Dracula movie thing. This certainly wasn't nearly as smooth as the movies made it look.
You have my word. I need to talk with you, not murder you. It's about our mutual enemy. Time's getting short.
"You can say what you've got to say just fine like this."
"Dude, shut up and kill the light." Mosh muttered. "You're having a bad dream."
I'm trying to help you, moron.
I laughed. "Maybe I don't want your help?"
Oh, so that's how it's going to be. Fine, be stubborn. Don't come alone then. Let me wake up somebody with half a brain and see what they say . . .
Then the voice was gone. I sat there, my shotgun cradled in my lap, waiting, but nothing else came. "Damn it," I muttered, realizing that if Susan really was at the front gate, then I needed to sound the alarm.
Mosh sat up, finally awake, and obviously frustrated. "Man, you're pissing me off. You've always talked in your sleep and—" He stopped when he saw I had Abomination ready. "Whoa . . ."
"Naw, it's cool. Stay here." I stood up and stuffed my big feet into my sandals.
"What now?" he asked, rubbing his eyes, suddenly worried.
"Nothing. Go back to sleep," I ordered as I opened my door.
"Oh, yeah, because that'll be easy," my brother responded.
Further down the hall, another door creaked open and Earl stepped out, tugging his leather jacket on over a shirt, Thompson subgun dangling in one hand. He saw me.
"Susan?" I asked.
"Yep," he responded.
"Plan?" I closed my door behind me.
"See what she's got to say, I reckon."
"And what if it's a trap?"
His eyes seemed unnaturally golden in the dim light. "Then I tear her apart."
Earl Harbinger and I moved hastily to the back stairs. We were assuming that Franks was camped out at his usual position and wanted to avoid him. My boss stopped me with a raised hand while he listened down the stairwell. "All clear," he said before padding down. I hadn't realized that Earl was barefoot.
Rather than stopping on the main floor, we continued to the basement. I had no idea where he was leading me. Earl walked quickly through the lower floor, past various storage rooms and the entrance to the archives before turning a corner and heading back into the deepest area of the basement, where I had never really explored. The building really was vast, and I just never really had the time to screw around in the dusty, unused sections. I knew that down here somewhere was Earl's cell for full moons. He finally paused before a closet door.
"What're you doing?" I whispered.
He didn't respond, just unlocked the door with one key from a fat key chain and went straight to the back of the room. He walked to a shelf of cleaning chemicals and shoved it aside. It was on casters and rolled smoothly out of the way to reveal a heavy iron door. He unlocked a padlock, then had to tug the door a few times to get it to open. It creaked on rusty hinges.
Stone stairs led into the darkness.
"You've got to be kidding me . . ."
"This whole place is riddled with secret passages," he responded. "Every major building in the compound is connected. This will take us right up to the gate. Come on." He started down the stairs.
"Why don't we just walk out the front door and across the parking lot?" I asked, as I examined the cobwebbed rock walls. "That'd be a lot faster." And less creepy, but I left that unsaid, because I didn't want to sound like a wimp. I really didn't like being underground.
"If we do have a spy, I don't want them seeing us meeting with a vampire," he said simply. He had a point. The less the Condition knew, the better off we were.
The tunnel was pitch black. I turned on Abomination's attached Surefire flashlight and the brilliant beam flooded ahead of us. Dust swirled through the light as we disturbed the ground underfoot. The tunnel was at least seven feet tall and four feet wide. "I didn't know about any secret passages."
"There's lots of stuff you don't know yet," my boss replied. "No offense, but you're still new at this."
"Relatively speaking," I responded as we walked. "What's to keep undead from using these to sneak in here?"
He shook his head. "The warding extends underground and into the air above us. It's kind of like a bubble in all directions. That's why I've got it hidden dead center in the middle of the compound for maximum coverage."
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"Why don't we just take it with us whenever we go on a case? We could be blowing up undead left and right. That'd be sweet."
"Like I said, you've got a lot to learn. Wards aren't mobile. You can take them someplace and turn them on, but you can only do that so many times before they're worn out, which would be a waste. You've got to tune them for a location, but lots of important places get warded: the White House, the Vatican, NORAD, that kind of thing. But they're rare and expensive. The science of making them has been lost for hundreds of years. There's probably only a dozen ward stones in private hands in the world. I picked ours up off a guy that didn't need his anymore."
We turned a corner. There was an intersection that branched off in different directions. There were a surprising number of tunnels. I was totally disoriented but could tell we were trending upward. "Where'd you get ours from?"
"I looted it from Adolf Hitler's bunker. . . . Ah, here we go." He gestured at a rusty metal ladder sunk into the wall with heavy bolts. He immediately started up, not leaving me a chance to ask if he was pulling my leg or not. "Kill the light."
I shut down my Surefire, dropping us back into darkness. I was blind. There was a scraping noise from above as Earl moved some sort of cover out of the way. A small bit of light cascaded down the hole. It was blocked momentarily as Earl climbed through the gap. I followed.
It felt good to be in the open air. Crickets were chirping everywhere. It took my eyes a minute to adjust. We were just inside the chain-link fence, twenty feet from the front gate and main road. Earl was squatting to the side. He touched my arm and signaled for me to stay low. We were surrounded by kudzu. I sat in the slightly damp vines and waited. The nearest light came from the fat bulbs over the gate, hazy behind visible humidity. Swarms of miscellaneous insects buzzed around the lights, casting hundreds of tiny dot shadows.
"Where is she?" I whispered.
"Shhhh," Earl hissed.
Then the crickets stopped chirping. I realized the temperature was dropping. Suddenly it was abnormally cold and prickles of discomfort moved across my sweat-damp body. A feeling of dread and discomfort settled into my bowels. She was here. "About time." Susan's voice came from somewhere inside the shadowed forest. I scanned the trees but couldn't make out anything. "It's good to see you again, Earl."
"Hey, Granddad," Ray said. "Been a long time." I couldn't spot him either but I kept scanning.
"Make it quick," Earl responded, his voice sounding strangled. This was very hard for him.
"You don't have to be such a prick," Susan responded. "I'm trying to do you a favor. We were family once."
Earl stiffened. "No. A human being named Susan Miner married my grandson, Ray. They were good people. I loved them. But they're dead and gone. You're just an empty shell with no soul and all their memories. So cut the bullshit, and say what you've got to say, you worthless monsters."
Red eyes winked into existence through the fence. They were coming right at us. "You don't want to hear what I've got to say, old man," Ray was mad. "You left me to rot in Appleton for something that wasn't even my fault. You've got more blood on your hands than a legion of vampires. Which one of us is the real monster?"
Harbinger stood. "Well, why don't you just come across this fence and show me what's up then, boy?"
"I would," Ray spat. The red eyes stopped, hovering a stone's throw away. "But I don't feel like dying once and for all. Remember, I know all about your magic rock. Why don't you come over here and we'll finish up some family business."
"Knock it off," Susan ordered. She sounded just like Julie when she said that. "We're not here to fight. I offered a truce, and I'm standing by it."
"You've got your truce for now, but mark my words: I'm going to end your miserable non-lives eventually," Earl vowed. "You threatened my family, so you have to die."
Susan was livid. "I promised I would leave Julie alone."
"We'll see . . ."
"What do you want?" I asked, speaking up for the first time.
A second pair of eyes approached, swaying through the trees. She stepped from the shadows, an eerie mirror image of Julie, wearing the same dress that she had in Mexico. Her white teeth cut a razor line through the darkness. She was hauntingly beautiful as the humidity turned into swirling fog around her legs. "I want this necromancer gone. He knows I've helped you, and now he's trying to destroy me."
"Help?" I spat. "You can't call anything tainted from the Old Ones help."
"What's it done to you?" Ray asked eagerly. "What did it unlock?"
"Don't answer him," Earl ordered. "Ray talks a big game but he sucks at black magic. Damn near tore an interdimensional hole out Alabama's backside. Caused the death of his own son. He always let his pride blind him to danger."
"I told you that wasn't my fault!" Ray shouted. "I did the best I could."
"And little Ray got his guts torn out for it, as well as over a hundred and twenty other innocent people, including ninety-seven of my Hunters. Appleton was too good for you. I should have left you in that rift with those Old Ones you love so much."
"I was lied to," Ray insisted. "The spell should have worked."
"You can't blame anyone for that but yourself. Nobody lied to you. You dabbled in things no man should, and we all paid for it. If I had known what you were doing, I would have taken you out myself, blood or not. The only person lying here is you. You even set the archives on fire to keep us from finding a way to close your precious gate. You knew exactly what you were doing."
Ray laughed. It was an angry, bitter sound. "I didn't torch the archives, you old fool. I was at Gulf Shores getting ready for the party when that bomb was set. I got suckered, just like you, just like everybody else."
Earl hesitated. I could tell he was angry, itching to fight, but that had thrown him for a loop. I realized with a shock that this was the first time the two had actually spoken since the Christmas party that had almost ended everything. "We always thought you were working on your own."
"I promised Owen I'd tell him as soon as I knew for sure. The same man, or used to be man, that we're fighting now arranged it all . . ." Susan said. "My poor, distraught husband did what he did out of love. He just wanted to bring me back. If only he had known I was a vampire, and being kept as a slave, unable to contact him— No, Earl, save that anger. Ray was used. This damn necromancer preyed on his weakness, his mourning for me, and twisted it to his advantage, used him in an attempt to establish a bridge to the other side. That's your real enemy, and he's been your real enemy all along. He hates MHI for what it stands for, and he hates you personally, as he has for years."
"No," Earl stated. "Enough of your lies. Don't make excuses for Ray's bad decisions."
"What? You can't handle the truth? You don't want to hear that you punished your grieving grandson, when he was only trying to do the right thing? You don't want to hear that you've been wrong all this time? Well, too damn bad," Susan said. "You screwed up. The real bad guy was under the nose of the mighty Earl Harbinger for years."
"Who then?" he demanded.
"The man who arranged for me to be enslaved in '90. My death was part of his plan. Oh yeah, he was thinking that far ahead. He needed Ray broken and searching for something. The man who orchestrated the destruction of your company and the deaths of all your Hunters in '95, and when you stopped him there, the government completed his job and shut you down anyway. But it goes back even further, and you were too stupid and guilt-ridden to see it. You lost an entire team of Hunters to him before that, simply because one of them knew too much."
"Give . . . me . . . a . . . name. . . ." Earl said through clenched teeth. His eyes were bright gold now, and he was barely containing his rage. I honestly thought he was going to hop that fence and go toe to toe with both of the vampires.
"What's the matter?" Susan chuckled. "Losing your cool?"
The forest suddenly ignited with light. A red parachute flare was drifting through the sky. The vampires were
both clearly visible now. The alarm began to sound, an old-school air raid horn blaring one harsh note across the entire compound.
"It's a trap!" Ray shouted as he moved back into the darkness.
"Damn you," Susan said as she melted away. "I was trying to help."
"No! Give me a name!"
But the vampires were gone.
"What did you do?" I shouted.
"Nothing," he replied. "Somebody must have picked us up on camera. I've got to go after them."
"You'll never catch them. They're way too fast."
"Watch me." He dropped his Tommy gun on the ground and shrugged out of his jacket. "A human couldn't track them, but I can."
"You're going to change?" And not on the full moon? That was insanity. He never did that. It was utter and reckless stupidity.
But Earl was desperate. "I've got to catch them. They're too damn evil to live." One impossibly strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder. The hair on his arms was now carpet thick and his fingernails were abnormally long. "Don't let anybody follow. Get them inside the main building. It's too dangerous out here."
"We can take Susan."
"No." He smiled beneath glowing eyes. All of his teeth were razor sharp and pointy now and his words were slurred and hard to understand. "Because of me." He took three steps, leapt effortlessly over the eight-foot fence and disappeared into the forest.
"I want everybody evacuated from the barracks and into the main building, now!" I shouted at the approaching Hunters. Esmeralda's man Cooper was in the lead. He had his FAL shouldered, was fully geared up, and was sweeping his rifle from side to side. Behind him were a couple of real Newbies, one of the Haight brothers from Utah, Dawn the beauty queen, and one make-believe Newbie, Herzog, still trying to be incognito.
"What's going on?" Cooper asked.
"Doesn't matter. I want everybody inside. Button the place up. This isn't a drill." I must have looked kind of weird, since I was just wearing shorts, a tee shirt, and sandals, but carrying Abomination in one hand and a Thompson in the other. I had tossed Earl's leather jacket over one shoulder, figuring that if he didn't end up committing any atrocities out there tonight while he was shape-shifted and insane, he'd probably want his stuff back in good shape.