"I'm just lucky that kudzu broke my fall," he mumbled.
"Sam and Milo are okay?" I asked. I slowly sat up. I was awfully woozy.
"Yeah, but the worst injured have been evacuated to the nearest hospital. We'll be trucking everybody else there in a few minutes. Sam got busted up. At the end, he was killing wights with his teeth since everything else was paralyzed. And Milo? After his little light show against Julie's mom, they're calling him Saint Milo now."
"Told you not to make fun of religious folks," Trip said.
"Julie?"
"Fine, she's wandering around here somewhere."
"Lee?" The last I had seen he had been hit pretty bad.
"He's going to live. But he's probably going to lose his leg. Gretchen did her best, but she wasn't sure." She sounded sad. "He was one of the lucky ones."
"Who else?" I asked. The others grew somber.
"We lost fifteen Hunters. We have another couple that are critical and might not make it. And then we have about twenty wounded. Once the Masters closed the distance, it got ugly. I guess they finally used the wargs to quickly evacuate everybody out of one side of the valley, so they could bomb the hell out of it. Then they concentrated on the last vamp."
"Are they all destroyed?"
"According to Julie, you killed the German, so we got six out of the seven," Trip answered.
"Let me guess." It was too much to hope. "Susan?"
"Yep. My mom got away," Julie said. She appeared in front of me, hands on her hips. Surprisingly, she looked fine, a little pale, but fine nonetheless. Not bad considering that I had watched her throat get cut only a few hours before. She extended her hand to me, I took it, and she did her best to pull me up, but failed miserably. I pulled her down with me. Despite the news of her mother, she laughed when she hit the ground.
"I'm glad to see you're okay," I said.
"Yeah, and you have some explaining to do. How the hell am I even alive? The last thing I remember is the pain, and then I started losing blood, and I was out. I woke up down here."
"Thrall saved your life. The last little bit of evil magic he had on his body, he gave to you. He held it on your neck and then it flew away."
"That would explain this." She brushed her hair aside. The side of her throat was still red and tender, but there was now a thick black line across the side, almost like a tattoo. "I'm not really into the whole body art thing, you know."
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"Not really."
"Does it feel . . . evil?"
"Not that I can tell. If I get the sudden urge to drown a bag of kittens, I'll let you know."
"Well, let's not knock it then." I moved in for a kiss.
"Slow down. You've got Cursed One and vampire blood all over your face. No offense, but I'm not kissing that."
"Holly! Canteen." I snapped my fingers. "This is a medical emergency."
"Going to have a medical emergency when I shoot your ass," she answered as she tossed me a canteen. I unscrewed the lid and poured the cool water down my face. It felt good to scrub off the disgusting dried mess. I wiped my face on my arm.
"Okay, now I'm kissable."
"Whoa." Julie's eyes betrayed her shock.
Holly leaned over to see. "Holy shit!"
I raised my hands to my face. What was so surprising?
"What? Let me see!" Trip said.
My skin was smooth. It felt normal. Too normal. My scars were gone. The thick ridge of tissue that had stretched from the top of my head to the side of my nose was gone. I poured some of the water on my chest. All of the scars from my battle with the werewolf Huffman had disappeared. The still-healing road rash on my arms was gone. I probed my molars with my tongue. The missing teeth had returned. My body had been totally repaired.
"The Old Ones . . . When they fixed me so that I could fight and sacrifice Lord Machado . . ." I did not know what to say. I had grown used to the scars and injuries. They were all fixed. It was amazing.
"Wow . . . It's like ancient evil ultimate makeover," Holly said.
Julie caressed the side of my face, then she leaned in and kissed me passionately. Her lips were soft, and it felt good to be alive. Thankfully the others refrained from any snide comments.
When we had come up for air, I had to ask. "I thought chicks dig scars?"
"Right now, I could care less. I'm just glad we're still alive."
"Me too."
* * *
We cleared out the rest of the wounded. Between the chaos of the mighty storm and the undead-inflicted carnage across the state, most of the hospitals from here to Birmingham were working around the clock. We still had a lot of cleaning up to do, but for today, MHI was done.
Gretchen had ridden up on the back of a mighty warg. She had taken one look at the back of my head and pronounced me something incomprehensible. I did not know if it was good or bad, but the other orcs had laughed at me, so I took that to be a good thing.
Harbinger was still missing, so Julie and her grandfather had effectively taken control of the chaos. Her brother Nate stood protectively nearby. I barely knew the kid, but he was not going to let any of his remaining family out of his sight. I could respect that. Once the wounded were safely gone, the rest of the gear was packed into the surviving vehicles, and then finally the dead. It was a somber duty, but we were not going to leave our dead in the hands of the local authorities.
I helped to lift one of the shrouded bodies into the back of a van. It was Chuck Mead. He had fought hard, and died bravely. But in the end, even the bravest of us would eventually buy it. We had trained together, and I was going to miss the big, simple Ranger. He had been a good man.
Priest said prayers over the bodies of our fallen. He stepped around the corpses, one arm coated in dried blood and slung to his chest. He ignored it. He had work to do. Our comrades would be taken back to the compound where we could perform a proper Hunter's funeral. It was grisly business, but in our line of work, having your friends cut your head off was the final sign of respect.
"It seems bad, but considering what we were up against," the senior Shackleford stated, "we did good. We did very good."
"Grandpa, has anyone seen Earl since last night?" Julie asked.
" 'Fraid not, dear," he answered quietly. "Some of VanZant's boys saw him go past the mortar emplacement after he killed that Master. They said he looked mighty tore up. He was heading into the woods."
"I hope he's okay," she said softly.
"Um . . ." I was sorry to intrude on the family moment, but I had to know. "So Earl's a werewolf. I mean, I'm cool with that. It isn't the first time I've had a werewolf boss, you know."
"Yes. He's a werewolf," the Boss answered, using his hook to tap me on the chest for emphasis, "and that information doesn't go outside of MHI. When that bastard Myers quit and joined the Feds, they found out about him, and he had all manner of trouble. The Feds wanted to kill him."
"And it was only through a whole lot of legal wrangling that he was given a special status," Julie said. "Earl is the only non-PUFF applicable lycanthrope in the world. And even then he is kind of on probation."
"But I thought werewolves were crazy, and violent, and just killed people at the drop of a hat," I said. I unconsciously rubbed my hand on my face, only to realize that my scar was no longer there. I lowered my hand, feeling stupid. "But he seems so in control." It all made sense though. The way he had defeated Darné so easily on the freighter. The way that he had fought in Natchy Bottom.
"Well . . . he's had a lot of time to work on it," the Boss said. "He has more control over his abilities than any other one that we know about. On the full moon, he still has to lock himself up, because he ain't got no choice but to change then. On the full moon, he just loses it, and it's all animal. He tears the hell out of things, but by morning he's fine. We got us a concrete room with a steel door in the basement of the compound. Built just for him."
"On holidays Milo throws a cow in the cell with him,
" Nate added helpfully, "kind of like a special Christmas dinner. In the morning we just hose it down."
"He used to lock himself up at the family estate. We had a little building out by the old slave quarters," the Boss said. "Had to build the new cell when he started to wear it out. He didn't want to get loose and hurt somebody when he wasn't in full control."
I knew exactly which little building he was talking about. It had given me the creeps at the time. All of those marks that I had thought had been made by a tool, they had been frustrated claw marks. "But there were millions of scratches in there," I blurted. "It had to have taken hundreds of hours to do all of that."
The three Shacklefords looked at each other, trying to decide what exactly to say. Finally Julie started to speak.
"Not hundreds of hours, but almost that many years."
"Huh?"
"Julie!" Nate said, looking over his shoulder to make sure the other Hunters were not in earshot. "You can't tell him about . . . that."
"Sorry, bro. In the last few days Owen has almost destroyed the universe twice to save me. I'm guessing that he can know about the family secret," she said politely. The Boss nodded for her to proceed.
"Earl isn't just a special case. He is the special case. As far as we know, he is the oldest living lycanthrope in the world. He is, quite literally, the king of werewolves. He was bitten back in the 1920s. Over the last eighty years, he has aged maybe twenty years. It took him a real long time to get the hang of it, and to keep from flipping out and killing people like a regular werewolf. That's probably why he smokes so much. When he doesn't get his cigarettes, he gets cranky. When he gets cranky, people get eaten."
"Gives a whole new meaning to nicotine fit," Nate quipped. His grandfather groaned. It probably wasn't the first time that joke had been made in the family.
"He changes his name every generation, always trying to keep his secret safe. Only a handful of us know who he really is. My family has protected him the whole time."
I thought back to the Shackleford family estate, and more importantly the wall of family portraits. There had been only one missing, conspicuous by its absence.
"Raymond Shackleford the Second," I said slowly.
"Yep. You're pretty quick for a bean counter. I like this young man, Julie, much better than your last boyfriend, but I digress. I was only a young man when he was bit, but we stood by my daddy," the Boss said. "Shacklefords take care of their own." The other two nodded. He pointed toward the road where some other vehicles were arriving. "Well, looks like we got some company. Come on, Nate, let's give these two a moment." He shuffled away, grandson in tow.
"So let me get this straight." I took Julie by the hand. "You hang out with your great-grandfather, who's some sort of mutant super werewolf. Your mother is a vampire. Your father was a mad genius who almost destroyed the world. Your grandfather is a half-crazed Monster Hunter with one eye and a stainless steel hook for a hand, and he's the normal one of the bunch." I took a deep breath. "Is that about it? Is there any other family weirdness that I need to know about?"
"No. That's pretty much it," she answered, looking a little sheepish. "Can you deal with that?"
I pulled her close. "Julie, at this point you could tell me that you sprout butterfly wings and a third eye on every second Tuesday, and I would still be in love with you."
"Good," she said with a grin. "Well, there's still my Uncle Leroy, but that's complicated . . . so that story is going to have to wait." She pointed at the horizon. There were several black shapes approaching. Helicopters. The Feds had finally arrived.
The Blackhawks set down in the blasted valley. The Apaches circled over the area. The Feds did not speak as they fanned out into the forest to stake out the fallen blocks of ivory debris. There were only a handful of MHI staff left at the scene, as almost everybody else had packed up and left. We found the Boss arguing with Agent Myers near the original National Guard position. The Guardsmen were mostly still there, though their lieutenant had locked himself inside the APC and refused to come out. Agent Franks stood off to the side, listening intently to the radio traffic as his men scoured the forest for anything of interest.
"It's over, Myers. We done killed the damn thing. Biggest PUFF bounty ever!" the senior Shackleford shouted. "See, we didn't need no stinking government help."
"Whatever, you old coot," Myers retorted. "This is our scene now. Turn in your paperwork to the PUFF office for approval. I don't care." He saw me approaching. "Mr. Pitt. What happened to your face?" Agent Franks looked up and scowled at me. Once again he was the ugliest man in our line of work. Haha sucker.
I ignored the comment. "It's over, Myers. The Cursed One is dead. His body's out there with the rubble. Along with that artifact." I pointed in the direction I thought most of the pocket dimension had landed in. "If you find it, I suggest you don't play with it. Just put it some safe place, and leave it the hell alone."
"That's our business now. Don't you worry. It'll be in good hands. Now get out," he ordered. "This scene is our jurisdiction."
"Fine, but I'm warning you. That box is a lot more than you can handle." I nodded at Franks. "A bunch of your men were killed in that cavern. Turned into wights. You had best see to them."
Franks nodded in understanding. I think that we had come to terms.
"Earl!" Julie shouted. She pointed toward the trees. "He's alive."
Sure enough, Harbinger came walking through the trees. Dirty, caked in mud, grass and leaves, dried blood matted over most of his body—he was totally naked, but did not seem to care. He walked past the Feds, most of whom stepped away from him, slightly fearful. He strode directly up to us, stopping only a few feet from Myers.
"Hey, Myers."
"Earl."
"Got a smoke?"
Myers nodded nervously, took out a pack, and handed over a cigarette. The senior agent handed over his lighter as well. Harbinger took a drag, and sighed contentedly. He looked like a nightmare wild man of the forest, but he did not care in the slightest.
"It's good to have lungs that regenerate," he said. "So, Myers, we've done your job. The threat's dead. The vampires are dead. I suppose right about now MHI is on your bosses' good side. I'm guessing we're square."
The Fed hesitated, not really wanting to answer. "I suppose so."
"Full access to fulfill our contracts?"
"Agreed."
"My teams can move freely?"
"Fine."
"Call off OSHA, the EPA? Fish and Game? ATF?"
"I'll see what I can do."
"IRS?" Harbinger removed the cigarette and blew smoke out his nose. He absently scratched himself. "I bet some certain committee heads are loving us right about now. Probably even the senators who need to approve the appointment of the next head of the Monster Control Bureau."
Myers looked like he had a foul taste in his mouth. "Fine. I'll call off the heat. You're golden for now. But when your people screw up again, your asses are mine."
"Buddy, you should never tell a naked man that his ass is yours," Harbinger said, totally deadpan. Franks snorted. I think it was almost a human laugh. Myers whirled around and glared at his subordinate. "I've just got one question for you."
"What?" Myers snapped, visibly agitated.
"Once the battle started, and everything went down here, how come you guys didn't just nuke the place to be sure?"
"Who says we didn't try?" Myers answered cryptically. He turned his back on Harbinger and stomped away.
"Hey, Franks," Julie called out to the silent Fed.
"Yeah?" he grunted.
"I heard that you guys didn't cut my dad's head off. I heard that you let him turn, and that he escaped." Julie asked. There was a current of anger in her voice. "Because if that was true, I would be . . . disappointed. So, is he still alive?"
Franks took his time composing an answer. His cold eyes studied us.
"No." He nodded grimly, and then followed after his boss.
We watched him
go.
"Think he's lying?" I asked.
"I don't know," Julie answered. "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."
"I know one thing for sure," I said slowly. The others waited. "I know we need to get Earl some pants." The king of the werewolves laughed.
We stopped by the National Guard soldiers to thank them for their help in the battle. Sergeant Gregorius was offered a business card and invited to come see us if he was interested in a lucrative career in beating down evil. Turns out that Boone had already done the sales pitch, and the big soldier had already volunteered for the next Newbie class. I was not surprised. For people like us, Monster Hunting was a calling.
The compound was somber that day as we held fifteen funerals. The fallen were decapitated, cremated, and their remains sent back to their families along with whatever the made-up excuse was for that particular Hunter. Sometimes having a job that had to be kept secret from most of the world was a real bummer. The team leads had to make the phone calls, and I did not envy them at all. The next few days were quiet ones. There were far too many new plaques on the wall.
We watched the news anxiously, just like everybody else in the world. Gradually the panic over the missing five minutes died down, and people, being people, moved past it. Cults were formed, wars were started, nut cases blew stuff up, books were written, theories published, and everyone came away with their own interpretation of the events. As for MHI, we just kept our big mouths shut.
Milo's wedding reception had mutated into one heck of a party. The compound had been decorated and looked pretty festive for a paramilitary fortress hidden in the backwoods. It was good to have many of the MHI staff united again, this time under much happier circumstances.
The Amazing Newbie Squad sat around a table off to one side in the boisterous cafeteria. Holly was in the process of getting wasted. Trip was frowning in disapproval. Lee was tapping his cane on the floor in time with the music. The dance floor was crowded, and Milo and his new bride appeared to be dancing a cross between the hokey pokey and the funky chicken.