Monster Hunter Vendetta

  All of us started back across the parking lot to the main entrance. Cooper was excited. "Yesterday Julie started having us take turns, working in pairs, monitoring the security system. She told us to be ready for anything. We caught a couple of figures on thermal and went to check it out. We were just getting off shift and these guys were coming on. When we saw the undead we sounded the alarm."

  "How'd you know they were vampires?"

  "I had two on thermal, but four on night vision," Cooper explained. "No body heat. Dude, that was like an ‘oh shit' moment."

  I bit my tongue. He had done exactly what he was supposed to have done. The timing had sucked, but it was what it was. "You did good. Head that way and clear out the barracks. And no word about vampires to anyone, got it?"

  "Sure thing." Cooper ran off with the two Newbies in tow. Dawn hesitated, like she wanted to talk to me, but I had to hand it to her, she followed orders. Herzog, on the other hand, didn't give a damn about my MHI seniority and stayed with me.

  "You better go keep up appearances."

  "Shut up, punk," the undercover MCB agent snapped. "What were you doing outside without coverage?"

  "Taking a stroll," I replied. "I do love spring nights." In the distance there was a terrible noise. A wolf's howl, but it was unbelievably loud and the pitch sounded too human. I had to remember that Earl wasn't just a werewolf. He was the friggin' king of werewolves, the ultimate alpha male.

  Herzog almost leapt out of her boots. "What the hell was that?"

  I was terrified of werewolves myself because of personal experience, but I didn't let it show. "That there is why I want everyone inside. For an agent, you sure are jumpy."

  The noise startled the stocky woman from her usual hard-core façade. "Screw that. I'm no field agent! I'm not used to this crap. Let's go." She took off, moving with the speed of somebody who figured they were about to be monster chow, stubby legs pumping.

  Not a field agent? I frowned. That didn't make any sense. She'd been assigned to protect me. Myers had said they were some of his best men . . . ​handpicked. We were about a hundred feet from the front door and Hunters were piling out, throwing on weapons and gear in response to the alarm. I caught the short woman in a couple of steps, let Abomination hang by the sling, grabbed Herzog around her bicep, and spun her back to face me.

  "Hey!" she shouted.

  "Not a field agent? What are you?" I demanded.

  She began to stammer something. I squeezed harder. "I'm a clerk!" she squealed. "Admin clerk. But . . . ​but I'm a fully sworn agent. I've been through MCB school. Let go."

  "A clerk?" I released her arm.

  Her face fell. "I was at the IRS and I came across some top-secret returns about PUFF. I did some poking around and that's how I found out about monsters. I've never actually seen one. Even the MCB needs somebody to shuffle paper, so they offered me a job and sent me through the academy." Harbinger howled again. He was fully transformed now and he sounded relatively close. "Please, let's get inside!"

  "Why are you on a protective detail?" This didn't make any sense at all.

  "I don't know. Agent Myers assigned me to Agent Franks' command for this mission." Her beady eyes darted around nervously. She was really freaked out.

  "What about Torres and Archer?"

  "Oh no, Anthony's a full-on pro. He's been on all sorts of missions. But Henry's more like me. He's a crypto-commo geek. That's what he did in the Army. But he's cool and he's actually been on a few missions with real monsters, but I don't know if he's actually ever killed any. Please, let's get out of here, before whatever that is comes and gets us."

  She sure had been a lot tougher when she had been threatening me with a gun. "Go." I nodded toward the door. Something was fishy. Franks was a one-man wrecking crew, but the Goon Squad weren't the hardened killers that I had been led to believe they were. Torres had been by far the nicest of the bunch but he was the only one who had actually seen the elephant.

  I would have to think about it later. A bunch of Hunters were fanned out, covering the entrance, weapons pointing outward in a rough semicircle of potential destruction. I had to remember that only the old-timers and the ones wearing Happy Face team patches knew about Earl's little secret. The alarm died off and two giant spotlights ignited on the roof, sweeping randomly across the perimeter.

  It was a relief to see Julie come trotting out, brutal M14 in her lovely hands. "What's going on? Are you okay?" Herzog's stocky form pushed past Julie and retreated inside the relative safety of the fortress.

  "I'm fine. Your parents are here."

  "Damn them!" she shouted. Several other hunters jumped at that.

  "And . . ." I raised Earl's empty jacket. She knew right away what had happened.

  "Everybody inside now!" Julie ordered. "Move! Move! Where's Dorcas?"

  Our receptionist was leaning in the doorway in a flowery, old-lady nightgown. Her hair was up in curlers. The reason she was leaning was because she hadn't had a chance to attach her artificial leg yet. It was tucked under one arm. A massive stainless-steel revolver hung loose in her hand. "Yep?"

  "Once everybody's in, I want a full head count. We've got a Code Silver." She gestured at Earl's leather jacket.

  "Aw shit. Not this again," Dorcas muttered. "Let's go, kiddies." She pushed off from the doorframe and hopped out of sight.

  I stayed with Julie at the entrance until the last of the Newbies was roused from the barracks and herded inside. She glanced around, careful to make sure that there was nobody close enough to overhear us. "Why'd he do it? The full moon was a week ago. He didn't have to change."

  "He did it on purpose. He was going after your folks," I whispered. "I think he was dead set on not letting them get away."

  "That was stupid." Julie shook her head. She hadn't had a chance to tie her hair back, and it was so dark and shiny that it reflected the spotlights. "Well, at least he should have some judgment right now. The closer to the full moon, the more out of control it is. He shouldn't wander into town and eat anyone. Sometimes I'm really glad we're in the middle of nowhere."

  "What about Skippy's village?"

  "They know to get inside when they hear the alarm. Skip knows what to do and they've all got silver bullets. Earl goes in there and they'll shoot him. Nothing personal, that's just how it is, and Earl would understand. Their wargs will give them plenty of early warning. Let's get inside."

  The two of us were the last ones in. We pulled the massive doors closed behind us and threw down the bar. There were a bunch of really confused, half-asleep, heavily-armed, almost-graduated Newbies wandering around the reception area. The Hunters experienced enough to know about Code Silver were busy getting everybody calmed down and oriented. Julie rested her head on my shoulder briefly so she could whisper, affording us a tiny bit of affection amid the chaos. "I hope he catches them . . ."

  Wrapping my arms around her, I squeezed her tight. It would be really nice to have the curse of Susan and Ray removed once and for all. "Me too." Damn it, we had almost had a name. I had been right. The shadow man was somebody from MHI's past. If we knew who he was, we could find and destroy him, but that was assuming Susan was even telling the truth to begin with.

  I let go of Julie so she could get back to damage control. Monster Hunters by their nature are not an easily riled bunch, but they were also intensely curious, and with Earl out running naked and hairy through the woods chasing vampires, that left Julie as the de facto head of operations. She needed to get everyone taken care of.

  Dorcas had finished taking a quick roll and reported in. "Your grandfather's upstairs, has his hearing aids out, so slept through the alarm. Milo's in Cazador at his house. Everyone else who should be here is accounted for." She added the next bit with extra volume for anyone listening. "Oh, and Earl Harbinger is in Montgomery on business."

  I noticed my folks standing near the wall of memorial plaques; they'd apparently been woken up by the alarm. Mosh was coming down the stairs. So I had
some explaining to do myself. I started toward my parents and was almost there when a whisper filtered through my mind.

  This message from Susan was weaker than the others. She was either further away, or hopefully busy getting her arms pulled off by an angry werewolf. It was a single word.

  . . . ​Hood. . . . ​

  That sounded familiar. I paused, turning slowly. The wall of plaques stretched before me under the Latin Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. My hand automatically flew to the silver surfaces, passing quickly through them, each cool to the touch. I found the one I was looking for within seconds.

  A. Martin Hood

  1/14/1960-10/17/1986

  Chapter 12

  3:45 A.M. Back in the conference room, with the only people who I knew I could trust: Julie, Trip, Holly, and the absent Milo on the speaker phone.

  "Do you remember this guy, Hood?" I asked. "Supposedly he died in '86."

  Julie shook her head. "Kind of, but I was too young. I know I met him, but I couldn't tell you anything about him. Milo?"

  "You sound funny on speaker. You aren't that high-pitched in real life, Julie," he replied. "He was the one who made the balloon animals at your birthday party a couple of years. He was really good at that."

  "Oh! Dad's pudgy friend."

  "Yeah, Marty Hood. The fat funny guy. He was on Earl's team when I first joined up. Couldn't ask for a nicer Hunter. I was a really young Newbie and he was always helpful. He had a reputation of being smart. One of the nerdy, brainy types, rather than the kick-in-the-door-and-blast-everything kind of Hunter. No offense, Z." That made me smile. I had a bit of a reputation. "Julie—him, your dad, and Myers were good friends, like brothers. Earl loved him like a son. I didn't know him that well, but I really liked him. He died not too long after I came aboard."

  That didn't sound at all like the hyper-intense religious fanatic I had met.

  Holly cut in. "Yeah, he was man of the year, but was he British?"

  Milo answered immediately. "Yes, he was. I remember that. I thought it was funny, because he was from Birmingham, only the England one, not the Alabama one."

  Holly sat back in her chair, looking smug. "Bingo."

  "Looks like we've got our wizard," Trip replied. "He must have faked his own death."

  The speaker-phone box was a triangular plastic thing and the noise that came through it had to have been Milo Anderson clearing his throat. "Uh . . . ​that's not real likely, Trip."

  "So you had a body?" I asked.

  "Well . . . ​we had most of a body. But it was obviously him. And we gave him a Hunter's Funeral, so there's no way you can fake that." Milo had a point. A Hunter's Funeral featured a decapitation. When you had to deal with the icky, contagious things that refused to die as often as we did, beheading and cremating your dead was a good habit to get into. "I saw the body, so did a bunch of others. No, Marty Hood died, and it was really horrible, and permanent . . . ​and messy."

  Holly was nonplussed. "Magic."

  Trip shook his head. "Real magic isn't just where you can wiggle your fingers and say some words and then break all the laws of physics. There's got to be another explanation."

  "Yes, there is," Julie added. "My mother's a liar, and she picked a random dead British Hunter to make us waste our time." The hate in her voice was obvious. "We can't trust her." That explanation was plausible. Susan's motives were murky at best and only a fool would trust the dead. Julie unconsciously rubbed the mark on her neck, reminding me again of how Susan had said that the mark was eventually going to kill the love of my life. I needed to believe that Susan was a liar.

  "So how did he die then?" Trip asked. It took my tired brain a moment to remember that Trip hadn't been there when Harbinger had admitted to killing Hood by accident, thereby earning Myers' eternal animosity.

  The phone was quiet for a real long time. Finally, and with obvious reluctance, Milo began to speak. "I don't know if I should be telling you this. It's probably something that you need to talk to Earl about, not me. I wasn't there when it went down. I just helped clean up."

  "Earl's a little busy and can't come to the phone right now," Holly said. "You know, blood-lust rampage . . ."

  "It was an accident," I added, prompting Milo to go on. "It was Earl's fault." The others looked at each other in confusion.

  "You know already?" Milo asked, sounding relieved. "Well, in that case, yeah, it was a terrible accident. I got there too late to help. Dorcas had already been taken to the hospital. Ray had gotten it under control and barricaded the door while he regenerated."

  "Huh?" Julie asked. "While who regenerated?"

  "Earl," Milo responded like this was the most obvious thing in the world. "Dwayne wanted to finish him off, go in there with a 12-gauge and some silver double-aught, but Ray pulled a gun on him. They got into a big fight. Dwayne was really mad."

  Milo's stories tended to jump around a lot. "Dwayne?" Trip asked.

  "Myers . . ." I responded. "Back when he was with MHI. Right?"

  "Yeah, he was going nuts. Wanted to go in there and take Earl out, walked right up to the door with a shotgun, only Ray just laid him out cold, then stuck a .45 in his face. Hood's blood was everywhere. It was really intense."

  "Okay, you need to back up a whole bunch," Holly suggested. "You lost me a while ago."

  "Just like tonight. It was a Code Silver," Milo said.

  There was a hard knock on the door. It immediately opened and Dorcas, still wearing her flowered nightgown, was standing there, out of breath. She had finally gotten the chance to strap her leg on. The old lady slammed the door behind her, seething, hobbled right up to the table, pulled up a chair next to me and flopped into it with a grunt.

  The four of us exchanged glances. Dorcas didn't speak, she was breathing too hard. I suspected that she had actually run up the stairs. Her face was red beneath her white hair and pink curlers. "What? Who's that?" Milo asked.

  "I caught part of your call when I picked up my phone downstairs," the crotchety old lady said. "Y'all need to remember to use the secure line if you're gonna be talking about secret stuff." She gave us all a withering death glare. "Spies and whatnot all around this place, and you use an unencrypted line?"

  "Sorry," Julie responded, looking embarrassed. In the rush she had just called Milo directly. Even somebody like Julie could slip up when in a hurry at three in the morning. She started fiddling with the phone.

  "Milo, you've got no business sharing this story. It ain't your story to share. You weren't there until the end."

  "No, ma'am," Milo automatically replied. His response to cranky, scary old ladies was exactly the same as mine. "But they need to know."

  "Damn right, they do," she answered. "But let somebody who was there tell it. I earned that much." Dorcas leaned way back in her chair, reached under her nightgown and pulled on a couple of straps. Her plastic leg popped right off. She tossed the prosthetic on the table with a clang. It had a fire-breathing warthog engraved on it and there was a pink slipper on the foot. "I earned it."

  "Yes, ma'am. Yes, you did."

  "That's right, that's why I'm gonna tell it." Dorcas gestured at Holly. "Get me some coffee, girl. Black. Move." Even Holly knew better than to argue with that. Then Dorcas turned to me. "You, what did I tell you about werewolves when we first met?" She stabbed one bony finger at me like an angry question mark.

  "That you used to kill them yourself . . . ​before one took your leg."

  "That's right, Z, my boy. Those of us who've got torn up by those things understand. Only you got all cured up by those Old Ones and lost your scars. Well, I got to keep mine. I earned my scars." She reached over and poked me in the forehead, right where my big scar had been.

  The conference room disappeared.

  ◈ ◈ ◈

  What's that ruckus? It was coming from the old slave quarters. I sat up in bed and listened. Earl was unnaturally agitated. Hell, he sounded right crazy. My watch said it was just shy of two in the morning. I got ou
t of bed. The guestroom of the Shackleford place was real nice, but there was no rug in here, and the wood was October cold under my feet. I winced a little. Wide awake now, I pulled the curtain open and looked outside.

  The little building that they kept Earl locked up in during the full moon was right under my window. The old slave quarters they called it. Damned bunch of scratched-up rocks I called it. The moon was bright and there weren't no clouds in front of it right then, so I could see somebody standing outside the door of that little prison fiddling with the chains. Damn idiot. What was he trying to do? Let loose a werewolf? Best put a stop to this nonsense real fast. My armor was sitting on an old chair by the bed, but I didn't have time for that. My team patch, Sparky the Warthog, was on the sleeve, but I probably wouldn't need ol' Sparky. Probably just some stupid country kid trying to figure out what kind of animal the crazy old Shackleford family kept locked in that little outbuilding. I stopped to get hold of my Ruger Redhawk and my flashlight, because my momma didn't raise no fools, and nobody ever said that Dorcas Peabody was a fool.

  I hurried downstairs. I always was a fast runner. Even though I was starting to feel the age and the pains and whatnot, I could still show up those youngster hotshot Hunters. There were a bunch of us staying at the old Shackleford place tonight, Hunters from all over the damn place. Big case just got wrapped up, and it was nearing Halloween, which was always our busy season, so we'd celebrated, and I had drunk a little too much with dinner. It had been good to see so many old friends. I suppose I had probably drunk less than some of the other Hunters, though, which was probably why I was the first one to get my ass downstairs and out the back porch.

  The soles of my feet were hard as leather. Where I grew up in Tuscumbia on the Tennessee River, shoes were for church and that was about it. Even though I could afford real nice shoes now, I still had country feet. I didn't even notice what was under them as I walked to the old slave quarters. All I was thinking about was somebody messing with Earl's door and how nobody was fool enough to let loose a werewolf.