The Monster Hunters

  “Dorcas,” I said. Then all of us laughed. Not very likely.

  “What about Grant and Albert?” Holly said. “They were right behind you.”

  “Al? I don’t see it.” Just because I held myself responsible for Lee’s injury didn’t mean he held any grudge. He was too honest a guy to fall in with the likes of the Condition. I paused. On the other hand, Grant had been gone for some time after leaving the company, only to come back just when this craziness started. “What was Grant up to all those months?” I asked.

  Julie shook her head. “No way. He’s a lot of things, but he’s no cultist.”

  But it was obvious. Grant was our prime suspect. “Think about it. He’s perfect. The timing just fits. Why else would he come back when he did?”

  “A fat paycheck, for one thing,” Holly suggested. “Man, I wish I had been along for that stupid oni instead of a lame troll.”

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before Grant Jefferson has to worry about money. His folks own, like, Delaware or something,” Milo pointed out.

  “You sure you’re not letting your personal feelings get in the way of being objective?” Trip asked. “He did save you from the monster that was trying to kidnap you, which would make him a pretty lousy double agent.”

  “Or a really good one!” I insisted.

  “You just hate his guts. It can’t be Grant,” Julie responded.

  “And why are you defending him?” I shot back, and then immediately regretted saying it. Julie glared at me.

  “Well, it’s somebody,” Earl stated. “And until we find them, we’re not safe. Eventually this shadow freak is gonna lose his patience and just have the spy shoot Owen in the back.”

  “And if I leave, then he’ll find me with magic and throw an army of undead at me. Great. At least here I’m safe from the dead.”

  “On the bright side, if it’s a Newbie, then we’ll farm them out to somebody else in the next couple of days,” Holly offered helpfully.

  “Unless I pick the spy for one of our vacancies. I’m a team lead too, and I’m still short since I sent Sam off to form Team Haven out in Colorado,” Earl muttered.

  “I do miss the big lug,” Holly admitted.

  “And then what about the next class, and the one after that? No, we can’t risk filling MHI with a bunch of nut jobs. Not with the kinds of things that we’re running up against all the time. Our people have access to every evil widget that comes down the pike. We have to end this now.”

  As if on cue, a small figure popped into existence, standing in the middle of the conference room table. The gnome tilted his pointy red hat at Earl. “’Sup, dawg. G-Nome, reportin’ for duty.”

  Julie, startled, went for her gun, but I grabbed her arm. “He’s cool,” I said.

  “Damn right, I’m cool. Cool as ice,” he said. His face was badly bruised, and he was wearing a few Band-Aids. I had at least given as good as I had gotten. The gnome turned his attention to Holly, leering down her tank top. “Hey, baby. Lookin’ fine. I do like them blonde human chicks.”

  “Who the hell are you,” she demanded, before adding, “Shorty?”

  “Hey now, baby. It’s all good. I’m G-Nome, out of B’ham.”

  Holly was just confused now. “Genome?”

  “No . . . G hyphen Nome, straight-up gnome killa from the North Side.” He flashed a gang sign, then folded his arms. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m Tony Montana, baby.”

  Julie pulled off her glasses, cleaned the lenses on her shirt, and then put them back on. Nope. He was still there. She glanced at me, and I gave her the I’ll explain later look.

  “You were only supposed to appear to me or Owen, remember?”

  G-Nome shrugged. “Y’all didn’t seem to mind sharin’ no secrets with these.”

  “You find anything yet?” Earl demanded.

  “I’m just gettin’ the lay of the land, know what I’m sayin’? Seein’ the sights. Speakin’ of . . .” He looked back at Holly and raised his eyebrows up and down quickly. “You know, they say once you go gnome, you’ll never go home.”

  “Ewww,” she responded, too grossed out to come up with one of her usual rebuttals.

  “Back off, stubby,” Trip said.

  “Oh, you want to go, homie? Thinkin’ you all bad?” G-Nome said, puffing his chest out.

  “Don’t go there, Trip,” I warned. “Trust me on this one, man.”

  “Get back to work. Report in when you’ve got something,” Earl ordered.

  “Peace.” And he was just gone. It was really unnerving.

  “So, that’s the secret weapon you were telling me about? One of the guys from the Rice Krispies, only psychotic,” Julie muttered. “What’s this place coming to?”

  Milo harrumphed. “And you made fun of me for bringing home a troll,” he said with a great deal of indignation.

  Earl tried to placate his people. “He’ll find the spy. Gnomes are sneaky. In the meantime, I’m going to bump up our security here. That attack on the concert was too brazen, too crazy. Monsters don’t normally operate in the open like that. It brings down too much heat, but those just didn’t seem to care.”

  “Undead and transdimensionals can’t enter the compound because of the warding, but he may try to attack us with his human followers or other types of monsters,” Julie said. “Obviously it doesn’t work on lycanthropes . . .” She waved at Earl. “It probably won’t stop anything that was born on Earth.”

  “So something direct from the Old Ones couldn’t come here either?” I asked, thinking of the swarm of Christmas Party monsters we’d fought in Natchy Bottom.

  “As far as I understand how the ward works, it’s basically a focus point for our reality. Like a magnifying glass under the sun. Undead are an unnatural thing in this world, so it just blasts them. Things from outside this reality can’t take the heat,” she explained. “It’s part magic, part physics, and way over my head.”

  “Groovy,” Trip said. He loved the magic stuff. It came from being a fantasy geek.

  “We’ve got the security room in the basement. The whole perimeter is wired with cameras and motion detectors, but we hardly ever man it,” Julie suggested. “That should give us plenty of early warning.”

  Earl nodded. “I want somebody in there, around the clock.”

  “I’ll make up a schedule,” she answered. “I’ll have to cycle through the Newbies too, which means some of them will have to get limited basement access.”

  “Just keep them away from my personal space. Well, that’s it for now then. Let’s get some rest. I know none of us did last night.” My boss yawned as he said it. Hunters tended to work really weird hours, but even we had our limits.

  I raised my hand. “We’re not done yet, Mr. Wolf.”

  He groaned. “I didn’t get to pick the name. I thought it was goofy as hell. Hey, let’s name the lycanthrope Mr. Wolf, because nobody will ever see through that. The government spooks love naming supernatural assets like that. I knew this one poor weredolphin in the Pacific that got coerced into working for the OSS doing naval recon back in ’44. They designated the poor girl Ms. Fish.”

  “Dolphins are mammals,” Milo pointed out helpfully.

  “Exactly. And yes, Z, I have met your dad. I didn’t ever know his real name either, so I never knew you were related, though I can see the resemblance now.”

  “You actually worked for the CIA?” It sounded surreal in a black-helicopter, conspiracy-theory kind of way.

  “I’m the only non-PUFF-applicable werewolf in the world. They didn’t grant that status for kicks. I’ve been called up to serve my country twice, three times if you count back to when I was just a poor human kid. People like me got to earn PUFF exemption, and sometimes earning it means working the occasional odd job for the Man, like you have to go somewhere nobody else can and eat a specific bad guy’s face. Got it?”

  “You were an assassin?” Trip asked in disbelief.

  “It’s hard to run a guerilla war when there?
??s a werewolf sharing your jungle,” Earl sighed. “I did what I had to do. Y’all would’ve done the same. I’m just not proud when I have to let the beast run free. Maybe that’s why I’ve been such an effective Hunter. I understand both sides, real good.”

  That gave me pause. The Englishman had said Harbinger was a liar and a murderer. That put the murder part into new perspective. I let it go though. I was too tired to exercise any critical thinking skills right about now. “Sorry, Earl. None of my business.”

  Chapter 11

  Grant had to be the spy.

  Maybe I was biased. We had butted heads ever since I had been recruited. I had never liked him and the feeling had been mutual. The fact that I’d had a crush on his girlfriend hadn’t helped things, and then when he’d screwed up on the Antoine-Henri, it had pretty well sealed the deal. I had learned later that he had regretted his call to abandon me so much that it had made him doubt his abilities as a Hunter. That, coupled with the brutality of his time being a captive of the Seven, had led to him leaving.

  Just because I was biased didn’t make me wrong.

  Grant Jefferson was staying in the barracks temporarily. He would be assigned to another team within a few days. I’d told the others that I was going to bed, but had immediately gone for a stroll. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go talk to him first. I mentally justified the lie, as Earl Harbinger had put me in charge of rooting out the mole, after all.

  I was just going to talk to him and see if his story made sense, nothing more than that. If he slipped up and said something suspicious, I would just take it back to Earl. The fact that I had stopped long enough to sling Abomination over my shoulder was just a coincidence. It wasn’t like everybody around here wasn’t always armed to the teeth anyway. This was just a friendly little social call.

  As usual, Franks had tailed me. I still didn’t know how the hell he was alive, but I didn’t really have the energy to dwell on it. This conversation was none of his business.

  The main room of the barracks was filled with Newbies taking a break. The recreation room was actually a rather nice facility, complete with a pool table, big screen TVs, and lots of video games. We were a paramilitary organization, but we certainly weren’t into that whole Spartan thing. Dawn, the Newbie who had spoken with me yesterday, was playing a game of pool. She perked right up when she saw me. That girl’s default setting was flirt. She batted her eyes. “Hey, Z. Care to join me?”

  Oh, so it was “Z” now? “Naw, I’m on business. Have you seen Grant?”

  Her expression changed when she saw the hulking form of Franks fill the doorway behind me. For a second, she actually looked frightened. Maybe Franks had paid her a visit after her first monster encounter too. “No, haven’t seen him,” she answered quickly. “I’ve got to go.” She tossed the pool cue on the table and walked away.

  Some Newbies playing a game of Guitar Hero pointed me toward the correct room. Too bad I was a man on a mission, because I was the reigning company champ on that game. And to think that everybody thought my brother had inherited all the musical talent. The Newbies got really quiet when they saw that I had Agent Franks with me. I couldn’t say that I blamed them. He just had a kind of dampening effect on people.

  “Yo, Franks,” I said. “You mind hanging out here for a minute?” He just stared at me blankly. “Private matter.” He didn’t even bother to respond. I leaned in closer so that the Newbies wouldn’t hear. “I need to talk to somebody, alone.”

  Franks looked at me like I was an imbecile. I couldn’t tell him that I thought Grant was the spy, since there was no way in the world he was going to leave me alone with somebody who might be a member of the cult he was supposed to be protecting me from. Franks glanced around the room, studying the inhabitants. He seemed awkward in a place dedicated to recreation.

  “I’ve got to talk to Grant Jefferson. He . . . saved my life last night. I need to thank him. And I need to apologize for being a jerk to him.” Franks raised an eyebrow. The concept of saying “thank you” or “I’m sorry” probably did not compute, but for whatever reason, he nodded. “One minute.” Leaving Franks to watch the Newbies try to beat Arterial Black on “Hard,” I went down the hallway and knocked on Grant’s door.

  “Yes,” came the voice on the other side. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Owen Pitt.”

  There was a long pause and the noise of a drawer closing. Finally the door opened. Grant’s black armor was hanging in the closet behind him, and he was wearing normal clothing for once. “Is there a mission?” he asked hopefully. I shook my head in the negative. “Does Harbinger need me?”

  “Naw, man, I . . . uh . . . I just wanted to . . . talk.”

  That confounded him. “Talk?”

  “Yeah, about . . . stuff. Can I come in?”

  “I guess.” Grant stepped out of my way. Harbinger had at least given him one of the private rooms so that he wouldn’t have to share with a Newbie. There was a desk and I pulled out the chair and sat, casually letting my shotgun dangle at my side. Grant, puzzled at what I was doing here, closed the door and sat on the bed. “What can I do for you?”

  I hadn’t really thought through my plan. Planning’s not the kind of thing you do when you’re exhausted and just got beat up by gnomes. Might as well try to be nice, lower his defenses. If that didn’t work, I would probably just start punching him in the face until he talked. “I just wanted to say thank you for saving my brother’s life. That was a good shot.”

  “Yes, it was,” Grant replied. “And?”

  And? “Well, I just wanted to tell you I appreciate it.” I paused. “And I wanted to welcome you back,” I lied. “We never really got along before. I wanted to get us off on the right foot this time.”

  Grant was smart enough not to buy that. “That’s nice. I’m glad to be back.”

  “Yeah, about that . . . why?”

  “Why?”

  He knew damn good and well what I was asking about. “Why’d you come back? I heard you’d moved out to Hollywood, and were living large, hanging out with movie stars and all that. Hell, I’ve been told that you’re already worth a fortune. Your family are like billionaires. Why give up the sunshine and the babes and come back to this?” I gestured around the rather plain little room. He didn’t respond, so I continued. “Slogging through the blood and the guts, risking life and limb. Most of us are doing this to make the kind of money that you’ve always had. Why risk that?”

  “True, I’ve been financially blessed, just a happy circumstance.” He regarded me suspiciously. “But Hunting was never about money.”

  “Why then? Why’d you come back?”

  There was quite a bit of hesitation. Got you, sucker, you were coerced into it by a giant squid cult. Admit it. Finally, Grant cleared his throat. “It isn’t any of your business.”

  “I think it is,” I answered, then corrected myself. “Not just for me, but for everybody in the company. You’re going to get asked eventually, so what are you going to tell them?”

  “I’ll tell them what I just told you. That it is none of their damn business . . . So, is this an official visit or personal? Did Harbinger send you to check on my level of commitment or is this because you don’t like having me around Julie? Are you worried about something?”

  What? “That’s just stupid.”

  “Is it?”

  “Epic stupid. She has nothing to do with this.”

  Grant smiled. Holly had told me that he had a disarming smile. I found it rather patronizing. “You know what I did before I was a Hunter?” I shrugged. Julie had said that he’d gone to Harvard. “I was a new attorney at a very prestigious firm. I’d won every single case that I’d had, and some of them were rather impressive. You know why?”

  “Because you’re just that good?”

  “Yes, that and because I can always tell when someone is lying to me, and you, Pitt, are a terrible liar. You’re worried that your future wife”—he practically spat the word—“still
has feelings for me. Before you came along, we were close. We had a real future together. You screwed that up. You feel inadequate, and now you’re scared that I’m back—”

  I cut him off. “Don’t flatter yourself, dude.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I’m done with her. I don’t know if she had an aneurism or what to distort her judgment enough to fall for somebody like you, but it doesn’t matter. Damaged goods now. If you think that I came back to MHI like some lovesick puppy, then you’re a fool.”

  This was certainly spiraling in a direction that I had not expected. Might as well run with it. “Why’d you come back then, Grant? What pushed you to swallow your pride? Was it that hard to admit that you were wrong?”

  Grant stood. “Wrong?” he shouted. “I was a snack for a nest of vampires. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Quitting wasn’t a mistake. It was what any sane person would do.”

  “So you quit because you were scared?”

  He went to the door and jerked it open. “Get out.”

  I slowly stood. I had two options. Continue to push it, or let it go for now, and I hesitated, undecided. If I was wrong, I couldn’t just start kicking the crap out of another Hunter in the barracks, but if he was the spy, then the longer he was free, the greater the danger to everyone. I split the difference. Stopping in the doorway, just inches away, I asked one final time. “I just wanted to know the real reason why. That’s all. I’ll never bug you again.”

  Grant was seriously angry. His face had turned a shade of red I’d not seen before. Something must have snapped. “I came back because I’ve never failed at anything. I don’t know how to fail. Of course I was scared; only idiots like you are immune to fear. But I let the fear win, and I ran away, and I hated myself for it. Every single day, I’d read the papers. I’d recognize the cover stories. The missing persons, the obvious tricks to hide monster attacks, and the anger just filled me.”