The Monster Hunters

  “Hunting’s in your blood,” I answered slowly.

  “That’s Shackleford myth,” he hissed. “There’s no such thing as a born Hunter. The only thing in my blood now is the curse of the vampire, and when I die I’ve got to get my head sawed off because of it. Nailing supermodels and going to all-night parties is great, but every morning I got to look at a failure in the mirror. I’m here for one reason and one reason only. I’m the best at everything I decide to do, and I can’t quit until I prove I’m the best at this too . . . I can’t quit until I beat this. I will be the most effective Hunter in the world or I’ll die trying. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Damn it. He was telling me the truth. I could see it in his eyes. This was a man who was just as driven as I was. No wonder we never got along. “No,” I answered. I walked out the door and he slammed it shut behind me. I gave a long sigh. “Welcome back, Grant,” I muttered to myself.

  “Owen, I’m glad to see you,” Mom said as she answered the guest room door. “I’m afraid you woke us up. I know it’s the middle of the afternoon, but we didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

  “Sorry, Mom, but I need to talk to Dad. It’s really important.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Sucker-punched by a troll . . . Really, I need to ask him some questions.”

  Mom looked me over. I really wasn’t in a state of grooming that was up to her usual standards. I was actually impressed that she didn’t whip out a cloth, spit on it, and start rubbing my face. She had gained some self-control over the years. “Why do you have that big gun on?” She pointed at Abomination.

  “Protection,” I shrugged. I had been ready to shoot Grant with it, but that was too long of a story. Now that it looked like he was just another emotionally deranged Hunter, I was back to square one. “I use this for work. You know, my real work.”

  “Ooohhh, that must be your Abominator. Julie talked about it.”

  “Mom . . .” Leave it to your parents to screw up even the coolest stuff. “It’s Abomination. And quit stalling, I need to see Dad.”

  She turned and looked back into the darkened room. I could hear Dad snoring. She moved out into the hallway, barefoot and in a borrowed bathrobe. She closed the door softly behind her. “He needs his rest.”

  “But—”

  “No, you but. Your father needs his rest. He’s been sick.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “Sick?”

  “Oh, hello, young man. I didn’t see you there.” Mom smiled politely at Agent Franks, who, as usual, was following me around. “I’m Ilyana Pitt. You must be one of Owen’s friends.”

  I snorted. Friend . . .

  “Ma’am,” Franks nodded.

  I cut her off before she could start to harass Franks. I knew even the most stoic man I’d ever met couldn’t withstand her, and within moments she would beat his life story out of him and probably enroll him in her book club or something, but I didn’t have time for that. “I’ve got to talk to him right now.” I put my hand on the door and started to push.

  One surprisingly firm hand landed on my chest. “Oh, no you don’t, mister.” Mom shoved me back. She was angry now. “You can talk to him when he’s rested. I’ve been listening to this magic prophecy dream business for the last twenty-five years and I’ve had to put up with all sorts of strangeness and nonsense, and stockpiles of guns cluttering up my basement, and you two fighting and being obnoxious to each other that whole time. The very least you can do is come back later.”

  “But, Mom, it’s important!” I’m afraid I whined; parents can do that to you.

  “And it’ll still be important in a few hours when we’re not all cranky and stressed. Now go before I get mad.”

  I couldn’t believe this. We’re talking about the end of the world, and I was getting kicked out by my mother. This was embarrassing. If I hadn’t been exhausted and injured, I probably would have pushed it, but as it stood, all I wanted to do was flop into bed and not get beaten up by oni, trolls, gnomes, or zombies for a while. “Fine,” I muttered.

  She actually patted me on the cheek. “Good. See you later. Love you.” Then she slipped back inside the guest room and closed the door.

  I groaned. Franks’ emotionless mask almost appeared to be smirking. “Your mom seems nice,” he said.

  I sank onto my bed, frustrated, exhausted, and with no clear idea of what the hell I was going to do about the problems facing us. We had a spy, this shadow cult had shown they were willing to pull out all the stops, my family was now involved, and I was once again experiencing strange, Old One-related abilities. Normally I would have just lain there, too spun up to sleep, but I had gained a roommate.

  “Okay, so what was the weird chick in the ninja outfit that put that smelly grease on my cuts?” Mosh asked. He wouldn’t know just how effective that “grease” was until morning. “With the tusks?” He had been asking me monster-related questions for the last hour.

  “Orc. They’re distantly related to humans. Most of them never speak. They always wear masks, but even then they’re painfully awkward. Each one has some sort of gift that they’re magically good at. Gretchen is a healer. Skippy is the best pilot in the world.”

  Mosh was nodding thoughtfully in the dark. “So that explains the Stig.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind . . .” Mosh muttered. “I thought orcs were the bad guys and elves were good.”

  “It’s complicated. This particular tribe is good.”

  “Are there elves then?”

  “Yes, the local ones live in a magic trailer park. Go to sleep, Mosh.”

  I had killed the lights, but I could sense the shifting on the cot on the other side of the room. It was quiet for a long time.

  “So, the reason Dad’s always been a jackass is because of a dream? And because he’s been afraid?”

  I sighed. I still hadn’t really absorbed that yet. All these years I’d just assumed my father was a paranoid jerk by default, and now it turns out that he had reasons. “I suppose so, but I don’t know yet.”

  “I can’t believe he told you that. . . . Dad only ever told me stories about murdering communists. It’s not like he ever talked about his feelings. Hell, I didn’t know he even had feelings. . . . So it turns out that Dad was right the whole time?”

  “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 f
inally 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.”

  “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 goo
d 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?”