The Monster Hunters

  Dad stopped him. “What’s a wight?”

  “Think of a zombie on steroids that paralyzes you with a touch. But anyway, that was just the beginning. The rest of us were busy fighting these Master vampires, and we were running out of time, when the kid went back through the portal with a small group to take on the head asshole himself.”

  I swelled with pride. Everybody in MHI knew about my exploits at DeSoya Caverns.

  “Brave and stupid. Sounds like my offspring,” Dad grunted.

  Never mind. I cleared my throat so they would know I was present.

  Cody turned around. “Well, afternoon, Z.” He extended one callused hand. I shook it. “I was just telling your father about the last time we worked together.”

  “That was a tough day,” I replied. My dad scowled at me, as if to say that I wasn’t qualified to judge such things.

  “A bunch of us didn’t come back,” Cody replied as he stood. He was a burly man, thick-shouldered, with a gray beard and mane of hair that made him look vaguely like an old lumberjack. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work.” He turned his attention back to Dad. “It was good to see you again, Augie.”

  “Likewise, old friend,” my father replied. “It makes me feel a little better to see that this outfit isn’t entirely staffed with nut jobs.”

  “Who said that it wasn’t?” Cody smiled. “It takes some getting used to, but this is as good a group of men as I’ve ever served with. And we’ve got a hell of a good CO.”

  Dad’s brow creased. “You mean, Mr. Wolf?”

  Cody didn’t show any reaction, even though all of the team commanders were aware of Harbinger’s condition. “I wouldn’t know. But if Earl Harbinger came to me and said he needed volunteers to follow him on a suicide mission into Hell’s bathroom, I’d go in a heartbeat, just for the chance to watch him kick Satan off his crapper. Don’t worry, Aug, your boy’s in good hands.” The two old vets shook hands and said their good-byes. I waited patiently.

  After Cody left, Dad gestured at the empty spot on the bench. I took a seat. “We’ve got some things to talk about,” he said simply, eyes staring into the distant forest. There was a constant rattle of gunfire coming from the shooting range as the Newbies showed off what they’d learned.

  “Mom told me you’ve been sick. She wouldn’t let me talk to you yesterday. What’s wrong?”

  “She’s protective like that,” he responded, avoiding the question. “That’s not why you’re here.”

  “I want to know about this dream of yours.”

  He shook his head sadly. “You wouldn’t understand. . . .” My laugh was so sudden and bitter that I must have surprised him. “What?”

  “Wouldn’t understand?” My voice dripped with anger. “Don’t treat me like I’m a stupid kid.”

  “Listen, boy—”

  I cut him off. “No, you’re going to listen to me for once. I’ve stood at the edge of the universe and seen what’s on the other side. I’ve faced off against evil that most people couldn’t even comprehend and I shot it in the face. I’ve traveled through friggin’ time.” A lot of pent-up aggression fought its way to the surface. “I’ve read people’s minds. I’ve seen some things that no sane person would ever imagine. I’m not here for you to bully and push around and scare. So don’t you treat me like I’m your fat, dumb, never-good-enough child, Dad. I’ve had enough of your crap, and it’s time I got some straight answers. Man to man.”

  Dad waited. “You done?”

  I realized I was breathing hard. “Yeah.”

  He smiled slightly. “Cody was right. You do take after me. Stubborn. Now put a sock in it.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope that had been folded neatly in half. He handed it to me. My name had been scribbled across the front in bold black letters. “You know I’ve never been much of a talker, and Lord knows you aren’t a very good listener, so I wrote it down for you. I spent all last night and all morning putting down every detail so I wouldn’t forget anything.”

  I took the envelope. “This is the dream?”

  “You could say that. Vision, prophecy, whatever.” I started to open it, but his hand landed on mine. Dad started to speak, but hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Once you read that letter, my life will be over.”

  That sounded ominous. He was dead serious. “What do you mean?”

  His voice was strained. “I’ve been living on borrowed time for over thirty years. My life was a loan, and once you read that,” he gestured at the letter, “the loan can get called. So humor me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  My dad chuckled. “See, I told you so, Mr. Know-it-all. There’s a place, a terrible place inside the border of the old Soviet Union. The coordinates are on that sheet. I was sent there on a black op a long time ago. Some really shady stuff was going on, some weird weapons project, and we needed to find out what it was. I didn’t survive . . .”

  “Huh?”

  “I was murdered. Dead. Done. Literally, a hole blown through my skull. But I was sent back, healed, given that dream and a charge that I couldn’t fail. See, I wasn’t done yet. I was told that I was going to have a son, and I had to prepare him for something unthinkable.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It sounded so farfetched, so impossible. But then again, I had experienced the same thing myself. Mordechai had told me I’d drawn the short straw and then sent me back to slug it out with the Cursed One to see who got to decide the fate of the world. You could say I was pretty open-minded.

  “I never knew if it was going to be you or David, but one of you was chosen before you were born. But from what I’ve heard over the last few days, you must be the one. I’m sorry, son.”

  “I am the one,” I responded. “But I did the job, and I’m still here.”

  He spied a stick on the ground, bent over, and used it to draw a design in the dirt. He tore at the ground furiously. The symbol was unfamiliar.

  When he was done, he asked, “Have you seen this before?”

  Looking at it left me strangely queasy. It wasn’t like the Old Ones’ writing I had seen in Lord Machado’s memories, or like Hood’s grimoire, nor was it like anything I had seen in the regular world. But at the same time, it seemed like something I should recognize, but it was just beyond the edge of my consciousness. “No. I haven’t.”

  “Then it isn’t time yet. When you see that sign, the time has come.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a name.” He kept the stick in his hand and absently poked it at the dirt. “There were a few other signs. Some that I could see happen and others that I wasn’t sure about. The five minutes of backward time. That was one of them. Before it happened, I had almost been able to convince myself that none of this was real. You kids were grown-up, leading your own lives, the dream wasn’t coming as often, and maybe I had imagined the whole thing, you know. But the five minutes, that settled things.”

  My father didn’t know that that had been my doing. There was no way he could know that. “That was my fault.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. “That was part of it. In the dream, time is like a tube filled with water. As time goes by, the water freezes. The past is frozen solid, unchangeable, but the future is fluid until it happens. We live at the surface of the ice, the present. The water goes on forever. Whatever you did flash-melted a tiny bit of that water, moved us back in time. You woke him up.”

  “Who?”

  He gestured at the symbol, an unknown player in this game. Then he erased it with his foot, blotting it out with a look of disgust on his face. “You had no choice. There are multiple sides at work, and if any of them win, we lose. This is the first and the last. That jackass that’s messing with us right now? He’s with one faction, but his side isn’t the worst. Not by a long shot.”

  “How do you know this stuff, Dad?”

  “It’s all in the note. And once you read it, my job will be done.” He sighed. “I had a g
ood run.”

  I lifted the envelope. “You make it sound like as soon as I look at this, you’re going to just keel over or something. What’s going on?”

  Dad paused. “Nothing.”

  I groaned. “You’re the worst liar ever. It has something to do with Mom saying you’re sick, doesn’t it?”

  He smiled. “When I died, I got shot here. Boom. Headshot. Asshole with a Dragunov.” He tapped his finger to the base of his skull. It was utterly improbable, but I lived in a world of improbabilities. “Then I met the others. They stuffed my brains back in, fixed me up, sent me back, and I woke up on a mountainside covered in my own blood, with the understanding that when my mission was complete, when my son was prepared and taught, it was time to go home. A couple of years ago, guess what a physical turned up? Right in the exact same place . . .”

  His words hung in the air. My world came crashing down. It was impossible. It couldn’t be. “Oh no, please, no.”

  “There’s no way to operate without killing me. The mass is at the base of my brain. But it hasn’t grown or changed since the doctors found it. It’s just sitting there, waiting. Just a lump of abnormal cells. Usually it don’t bother me. I know it’s not going anywhere until my job’s done. That’s a lot more assurance than a man can ask for.”

  “Does Mom know?”

  He nodded.

  His life had been prolonged to give me this? I shoved the letter toward him. “Take it back.”

  My dad didn’t move. “I can’t. The time will come that you’ll need it. See, I’m not the only dead man walking here. Your fate is sealed as much as mine. Only you can’t be weak. You can’t fail.” He grabbed my arm, hard, and shoved the letter back against my chest. His eyes bored into mine. “You have to be strong.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Stunned, speechless, his hand crushing mine and the letter, I sat there. All these years, all the things that he had taught me, it was all for this. “Don’t do this to me.”

  He let go. “Son, I’m sorry. But we’re both soldiers. We didn’t pick the job. It picked us. It isn’t like I’m going to live forever anyway. And now that I know you’re the one, there’s no time to waste. The longer you hesitate, the stronger he’ll become. Read the note. It’ll tell you what must be done.”

  “That’s insane. I can’t kill you.”

  Auhangamea Pitt, war hero, man of courage and honor, father, wiped his eyes and turned away from me. “My job’s done. I just hope that when you read this, you can know that I was just doing what I felt was right.”

  It wasn’t right at all. For the first time in my life I finally felt like I knew where my father had been coming from. We’d talked, finally as equals, hoping to come to terms, to understand him, not this. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. But I knew what Dad would say to that, the same thing that he’d told me for years. Life isn’t fair.

  But I was tired of being a pawn in some cosmic game. I stood and dropped the note on the bench next to Dad. He just looked at it, then back at me, disappointed. I had to get out of here. “Well, whoever this scumbag is, he can get in line. Dream your dream, and tell the people who sent you back that I’m not ready yet.”

  “It won’t work, son. This is inevitable.”

  “I’m getting real tired of that word,” I spat. “I’ll find a way to beat this. My father didn’t raise any quitters . . . I’ll talk to you later, Dad.”

  Inevitable.

  There had to be a way to fix this. That’s what I do. I fix things. I find ways to make them right. There had to be a way.

  I half walked, half stumbled, away from my father. I wandered aimlessly across the compound. There was a spot of shade under the roof of the barracks. It was a secluded spot, and I leaned against the wall, head in my hands. Before I knew it, my knees had weakened, and I sank to the ground, shaking.

  I couldn’t wrap my brain around not having my dad around. He had always been a rock. What was going to happen to Mom? Hell, somebody had to tell Mosh. I needed to talk to him, to somebody, but I couldn’t find the strength to rise. So I sat there for a long time, just tired, too dumbfounded to string a coherent plan together, feeling stupid and guilty for not staying with my father.

  Finally, something woke me from my stupor, a hard tapping on my arm.

  “What’re you crying about?” G-Nome was standing in front of me, partially hidden in the shadows of the barracks. The sky behind him indicated that dusk was approaching. I had been sulking for a long time.

  “I wasn’t crying . . .” I rubbed my face. “What do you want?”

  “Sissy,” he answered. With me sitting down, I still towered over him, even if you counted his pointy hat. “You humans get all emotional about shit. . . . Well, I done found your spy.”

  That got my attention. “Who?”

  “It wasn’t easy. But I caught him. He’s been texting on his phone. I been readin’ over his shoulder. He’s been tellin’ somebody where you at all the time.”

  “Who?” I demanded.

  The gnome smiled, eyes twinkling over rosy cheeks and puffy white beard. He took his time answering, taking a cigar out of his shirt and lighting it. He must have realized that I was about to wrench his head from his shoulders and finished quicker than he started. “That pretty-boy human, Grant.”

  “Grant Jefferson? You’re sure?”

  G-Nome took a long puff, then blew it out in a perfect ring. “Sure, I’m sure. Last night, when you left with that blonde hottie and your homie, he waited till you got outta sight and then he was all like textin’ some fool about it. I read it, sayin’ you had bags packed, like you was escapin’ out the back, know what I’m sayin? But I been followin’ him to make sure and he just got called by somebody checkin’ on you.”

  “No chance you’re wrong?”

  “Hells yeah. He texts in all the time. Always sayin’ where you’re at and who you’re talkin’ to. When you went to sneak out last night, he’d sent the message before you’d even made it out the back door! Ain’t just about you all either. He’s been tellin’ them all about MHI business.”

  Bastard. All that talk about needing to succeed, not being a quitter, and I had bought that, hook, line, and sinker. He had totally snowed me. I should have trusted my initial instincts. My legs had fallen asleep, and tingled painfully as I stumbled to my feet. Coldly, I drew my .45 from my inside the waistband holster and pulled back the slide slightly to make sure I had a round chambered. “Where is he?”

  “In the big building. My dawg, Harbinger’s talkin’ to his peeps, some graduation ceremony or somethin’, I don’t know. That’s why I had to find you. You gonna bring the pain?”

  “I intend to kill him if that’s what you mean.” I shoved my gun back in the holster.

  “Sweet!” G-Nome turned his head to the side, as if listening to something I couldn’t hear from inside the barracks. His nose twitched, like he was smelling the air, and he suddenly frowned. “That ain’t right. Gotta bounce. Have fun.” And with a pop, he disappeared from sight.

  I started toward the main building, murder on my mind. Thirty yards away was a figure leaning against the trunk of a tree, waiting. Franks had been following me the entire time, fulfilling his duty, but keeping his distance while I had my emotional collapse. I passed him without a word. I didn’t turn my head to look, but I knew he followed.

  As long as he didn’t try to get in my way for what was about to come next, I didn’t care. The traitor had to die.

  The rational part of my mind urged caution, that maybe I should slow down, think it through, get some help first . . . Maybe it was because of my dad’s terrible news, maybe it was because I somehow knew with absolute certainty that the gnome was telling the truth, I didn’t know exactly, but rationality went right out the window and I was in a red haze of anger that could only be cured by facing the traitor.

  The main building was busy. Everyone was congregating for the graduation ceremony that Esmeralda had organized. Earl was going to say a few words, an
d then announce where the Newbies were going. The atmosphere was one of excitement. Nobody else was aware that I was a man on a mission as I barged through the entrance. Dorcas was behind her desk, being harassed by joyous Newbies. From the look of her, I was guessing that for the special occasion there was more in her coffee cup than just coffee. She saw me and started shooing the others away. “Z, where’ve you been? Julie’s looking for you, but your phone isn’t picking up.”

  That’s because my BlackBerry was at the bottom of the river outside Montgomery. “Have you seen Grant?”

  She must have realized from my expression that this was serious. “No. What’s going on?”

  I glanced in both directions, just a bunch of Newbies walking toward the cafeteria. Earl was about to speak. “Has anyone seen Grant Jefferson?” I asked loudly. The Newbies shrugged and continued on.

  Franks tapped me on the shoulder with one gloved hand. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking care of some personal business,” I responded as I kept walking.

  Franks began to say something, but paused as his phone started buzzing. He looked at the display in frustration, then stopped to read the text. I took the opportunity to head down the hallway after the Newbies.

  The cafeteria was packed with folding chairs and loafing Hunters. The leads were all sitting in front, joking and heckling each other. The Newbies were filing in, taking their seats. Earl was pacing back and forth, waiting for everyone to gather. Not being the kind of person to go for a lot of ceremony, he was wearing his regular scuffed bomber jacket and looked agitated that he was doing this kind of thing. I’d heard him refer to his little talks as dog and pony shows more than once, but he was a hell of a good motivator. Julie was seated next to her grandfather. She waved when she saw me.