Monster Hunter Vendetta

Monster Hunter Vendetta

[Monster Hunter 02]

By

Larry Correia

Chapter 1

"When monsters have nightmares, they're dreaming about us."

-MHI Company Handbook

It was less than a year ago that the illusion shattered and I got my welcome to the real world. Up until that point I considered myself perfectly average, living a normal life, with a regular career. That all changed the night my accounting supervisor turned into a werewolf and tried to eat me. Now there are basically two ways to deal with such a problem. Most people confronted with something so hideously impossible tend to curl up into the fetal position and die. On the other hand, those of us destined to become Monster Hunters simply take care of business. He almost ended my life but I tossed him out a fourteenth-story window. He died, I didn't. That makes me the winner.

After that initial encounter I was approached with a job offer. Apparently survivors like me aren't that common, and as a result killing a monster is a real résumé builder. I was recruited by Monster Hunter International, the premier eradication company in the business. We protect mankind from the unnatural forces that come crawling out from our darkest nightmares, and in return, we get paid the big bucks.

It wasn't that long after I started my new job that MHI came up against an unfathomable evil from the past. It took everything we had to survive, but in the end, the Cursed One was defeated and I literally saved the world.

I was employee of the month.

The biggest chupacabra in the pack was only four feet tall, but what they lacked in mass, they made up for in sheer ferocity. Being unable to get to their dinner was making them even surlier than usual. The peasant girl had been futilely tinkering with the engine of her broken-down Chevy Vega when the first chupacabra had come sniffing onto the jungle road. Her screams at seeing the little demon-lizard-insect thing hop down the dirt lane like a demented miniature kangaroo had driven it into a frenzy, and she had barely managed to dive into the car ahead of its snapping jaws. Her continued cries from behind the locked doors of the old rust bucket had attracted the rest of the pack, and now there were a dozen of the creatures clambering on the car.

Chupacabras do not normally attack people. The puncture tubes that jut from their mouths could pierce a human skull like a screwdriver through a milk jug, but instinctively they stick to preying on small animals. Once a chupacabra pack has tasted human blood, however, they absolutely will not stop, and killings become more and more frequent. From what I have seen in this business, people must be either extremely tasty, or addictive, like monster crack.

The creatures were scratching and clawing at the car's windows and roof. The girl just kept on screaming. She had a remarkably good set of lungs for this kind of thing, which is why we'd picked her. Her cries spurred the monsters on, and they all began to shriek as well, echoing across the dark jungle canopy for miles.

The four-footer jumping up and down on the hood of the Vega was pissed. It had to be the pack's alpha male, and it couldn't figure out why the glass wasn't breaking. I watched it carefully through the night-vision monocular.

"I think he suspects something," Trip Jones whispered.

I nodded. They might be clever for creatures with brains the size of tangerines, but the goat-suckers had never run into bulletproof glass before. Finally the alpha hopped off the car and scurried over to the side of the road. I almost keyed my radio, but he hesitated there, looking for something, and came up with a rock. He crawled back on the hood, raised the rock, and started banging away at the windshield. The others cheered and hooted him on.

"Hey, I didn't know suckers knew how to use tools," Milo Anderson said over the radio. He was positioned on the other side of the road. All of us were wearing ghillie suits over our body armor and had been lying in the underbrush being eaten by insects for hours. The foul-smelling grease that we had rubbed on ourselves earlier to hide our smell from the chupacabras' sensitive noses also served as seasoning for the region's bugs.

My radio crackled. "We'll have to update the database," Julie Shackleford replied, the roar of the chopper's engine could be heard behind her. "Tool use…That's fascinating."

Apparently our fake peasant, Holly Newcastle, didn't think it was nearly as fascinating from her position as bait in the front seat of the Vega. The theatrical screaming stopped for a moment. "Uh, guys…" The rest of us could hear the glass cracking in the background. "Guys?"

We had three members of Monster Hunter International hiding in the brush, one in the decoy car, two more on the rapidly approaching attack helicopter, carefully positioned claymores along the roadside, piles of guns, thousands of rounds of ammo, state of the art night-vision and thermal-imaging equipment, a lot of attitude, and a general dislike of evil beasties.

I keyed my microphone.

"Execute."

My name is Owen Zastava Pitt and I kill monsters for a living.

"This is Harbinger," the familiar voice said through the phone, sounding a little groggy. I must have woken him. "What time is it?"

"It's almost midnight here," I answered, which meant that it was like one or two in the morning in Alabama. I was never very good at remembering time zones.

There was a brief pause. "So somebody's either got eaten, or you completed the contract."

"Mission accomplished, chief. Julie's dropping the evidence off at the mayor's office and arranging the funds transfer." The evidence consisted of a burlap sack full of severed chupacabra heads. "It was a big pack. Smoked them all."

"Nice." This had been a lucrative job. The Mexican resort depended on tourism, so when people started getting their organs liquefied and drained, it was bad for business, especially since it was happening during their busy season. It was spring break, after all. "Everybody okay?"

"They're good." Loud music drifted in through the open window of my hotel room. There was a wild party going on around the Olympic-sized pool, populated mostly by American college students engaged in all manner of drunken debauchery. "Looking forward to payday I bet."

"Rush jobs always pay well. How'd the team do?" Earl asked. I knew what he really wanted to ask was how his team did without him. The timing of the mission had just not worked out, as there were very few places that were safe for him during the full moon.

"They were awesome. It was beautiful." Exploding chupacabras were not what most people would find artistic, but I knew Earl would understand. He was after all, the Director of Operations for a company whose mission statement actually read: Evil looms. Cowboy up. Kill it. Get paid.

"Wish I could've been there, but you know how it is. Good work, Z."

That comment made me swell with pride. My boss wasn't known for giving compliments. This had been the first operation that I had been allowed to plan entirely, and it had been a success. Well, I had the very experienced Julie and Milo there to make sure I didn't screw it up, but I had still done pretty damn good. "Thanks, Earl. See you tomorrow."

" 'Night, kid. Tell Julie I love her, and next time, call me in the morning."

I tossed the sat-phone on the bed next to my body armor and weapons. I still needed to clean my guns before I packed them up for the return flight. It had been humid out in the forest, and rust was my enemy. But right now I didn't feel like doing the work, I just wanted to gloat. Picking up my heavy Kevlar suit, I paused to brush some chupacabra juice off the patch stuck on the arm. It was a little green Happy Face with devil horns. Just a simple logo, but for me it represented a lot of hard work. It was MHI's unofficial logo, and the only Hunters who got to wear it were the ones chosen for Harbinger's personal team. I grinned and dropped the armor back on the bed. I'd earned that patch a few times over.

The complimentary hotel room was extremely nice, way nicer than the roach motels that MHI usually seemed to stay in, but I was still too charged up from today's mission to relax. I opened the glass doors and stepped onto the balcony. The hip-hop music was louder now, and the cloud that drifted up from the pool area was strong enough to give a DEA dog a seizure. My room was on the second floor. There had to be a couple hundred people down there, most of them young Americans. An obnoxious crowd had gathered around the DJ table, and a film crew was doing an interview with some rapper who was about to host a wet tee shirt contest or something. An inebriated young woman screamed, lifted her shirt, and flashed me. I waved stupidly. Good old spring break.

Life was good. Monster Hunter International was the best private monster hunting company on the planet. I had not even been doing this for a year, but already I was planning and executing operations in foreign countries, and I had just been complimented by the most experienced Hunter in the world. Not bad for a guy who was basically just an accountant who happened to be handy with a gun.

The wood deck was cool under my bare feet. I leaned on the balcony, directly above the stenciled sign that stated in both English and Spanish that it was not safe to lean on the balcony, and did a quick search of the swim-suited, dancing throng. I could not see any of my team. That wasn't really a surprise though.

Milo and Skippy were probably checking the chopper for the trip home tomorrow. Neither one would be into this scene, especially Skippy, because he wasn't human and was very uncomfortable around crowds. Milo's wife was pregnant and due any time now, so he just wanted to get home as fast as he could. Trip was definitely not the party type. He had picked up the only fantasy novel available in the hotel gift shop, some ridiculous L.H. Franzibald thing, and was probably squirreled away in his room reading like usual. He is such a nerd-and that's coming from an accountant. Holly definitely gave the impression of being a party girl, but with her, who knew? You could tell me that Holly was helping the nuns at the local orphanage or you could tell me that she was dancing on the bar for tips, and either story would be equally plausible.

Julie would be coming straight back here when she finished harassing the local officials for our money. I had planned on going with her, but since I had been the one to saw off the goat-suckers' heads, Julie had ordered me to return here and take a shower. Chupacabras are rather nasty little buggers. My girlfriend-correction, fiancée-would be back soon enough. I was still getting used to the idea of being engaged. We'd skip the party scene. For me personally, I had spent too many years bouncing rowdy drunks to ever want to be a rowdy drunk.

It was satisfying to know that it had been me and my friends who had kept any of the tourists below from being killed. Certainly some of them were going to be dead from alcohol poisoning by tomorrow morning, but that sounded like a personal problem to me. As long as none of them were eaten by chupacabras, it was out of my hands.

My back-patting was interrupted by a hard knock on the door. Julie had probably finished collecting our paycheck and returned. I was looking forward to having some alone time with her. If I had been thinking, I would have lit some candles and put on some romantic music or something to take advantage of our free pseudo-vacation, but I was never very good at thinking of those kinds of things beforehand. I left the balcony, closed the double doors, drew the thick curtains mostly shut, and started across the suite. The bass continued to thump through the glass. "Who is it?" I shouted.

"Is that Owen Zastava Pitt?" came the muffled response.

Shoot. Not Julie. The voice was unfamiliar. Frowning, I paused by the bed, picked up one of my STI pistols, the long-slide.45, and held it down by my leg. I was paranoid back when I was an accountant. As a Monster Hunter I took paranoia to whole new levels. We were registered here under the Shackleford name, and Julie was the one who had done the negotiating with the resort. I couldn't think of anyone other than my teammates here who would know my name. "Yeah? What do you want?"

"Mr. Pitt, I've traveled a long way to meet you." The voice had an English accent, not one of those prim and proper Masterpiece Theater ones, but more like someone who had grown up on the tough side of town. "May I come in?"

One thing that I had learned in this job, you never give an invitation to the unknown. "Look, dude, whatever you're selling, I don't want any." Moving as quietly as possible, I went to the peephole. The mystery man's face was distorted through the bubble glass. The hall lights must have gone out, and he was cloaked in shadow. I could only see eyes and the outline of a face. He did not look like the friendly type, but then again, neither was I.

He must have caught the darkening of the peephole, and automatically glanced up, scowling as if he was thinking really hard about something. There was no way he could see me, but I felt shivers go down my spine as I just knew he was staring me down. "Ah, yes. You are the one."

The door shook in its frame.

Startled, I jumped back and raised my pistol. The shaking increased in intensity, threatening to vibrate the door to pieces. There was a crack as wood broke. I snapped the STI into position. "Back off. I'm warning you!"

Every light bulb in the room popped. Sparks flew from the wall sconces, plunging the room into darkness. There was a splintering noise as the doorframe cracked. Truly freaked out at this point, I jerked the trigger and fired two quick rounds through the center of the door. I knew that the sturdy hotel door would barely slow the 230-grain silver/lead bullets, and whoever was pulling my door off the hinges surely must have been hit. The door quit shaking.

Instinctively, I moved back. I had dealt with enough supernatural bullshit by this point of my life that it just seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Hunching down behind the bed, I wished that I was wearing my armor instead of a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. The music from the pool area continued, cranked so absurdly loud that the other guests had probably not even heard the gunshots.

Blinking rapidly as my eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom, my pistol pointed at the door, I waited. There was an M3 flashlight mounted on the dust cover of my.45. I put my finger on the activation switch. Anything that came through that door was going to get lit up, both with blinding light and bullets, maybe even in that order. "Come on…" I muttered under my breath.

There was a terrible boom and the door flew from its hinges and crashed to the floor. A giant shape flowed into the room, so vast and tall that it gave the impression of having to duck to clear the frame. It straightened up, towering above me, formless and terrifying, with the consistency of smoke, a blob of pitch-black intimidation. I had never seen anything like it before.

I activated the flashlight, flooding the room with brilliant white light. I blinked in surprise. The giant shadow was gone, and a normal man stood glaring at me. He was skinny, tough-looking, probably in his mid-thirties, with a nearly shaved head, and a mean scowl. He was dressed in black jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt, casual enough to fit in with the crowd outside. He held up one hand to protect his eyes.

"Don't move," I ordered, hunkered low behind the bed, my glowing tritium front sight centered in the middle of his chest.

"So this is the great Hunter," he said calmly. "For somebody who's supposed to be so extraordinarily important, you seem rather unimpressive." He swept his hand downward sharply. The bulb in my flashlight exploded.

"Neat trick," I said as I pulled the trigger.

But he was already gone. Giant hands wrapped around my bicep, jerked me to my feet and slung me into the wall. A brutal chill flowed up my arm as he yanked the gun from my hand, almost taking my trigger finger with it. I threw an elbow but touched nothing. He hit me again, low in my side, and it rocked me. The blow was cold as ice and hard as a hammer. I gasped in pain.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I am a mean son of a bitch when it comes to fighting. I can throw down against the best of them, and I had done it in the dark before. There was no time for thought, only action. I came back quick, lashing out at where my opponent should have been. I stumbled into the bed. There was a swish of air as he moved around me. I threw a back fist and missed, and was rewarded with a mighty blow to my shoulders. I kicked out, only to have something cold and impossibly big latch onto my leg. He pulled hard. Off balance, I fell, grunting on impact. This hotel had some solid floors.

He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and lifted me with ease. I tried to grasp his hands to apply a wristlock, but there was nothing there. He crushed me against the wall with brute force, pushing me through a layer of drywall.

"I'm taking you with me, Hunter, whether you like it or not." The Englishman's voice seemed to radiate from all around me. There was a frigid weight pushing against my chest as I swung my forearm through it in vain. The darkness swirled around my arm like smoke, and the pressure increased on my lungs, making it impossible to breathe. My back slid up the wall and I left the ground. I panicked, lashed out with my feet, my knees, my elbows, my fists, but it was like moving through water. Whatever had me trapped was incorporeal, and I was blacking out.

"It's useless," he chuckled through my futile strikes. "I can't believe you're the one. This is pathetic. I was at least expecting a fight. Can you truly be the one who defeated Lord Machado?"

That name. Not again. No, not again. The bad chemical taste of fear was suddenly in my mouth.

My body was hoisted effortlessly into the air, and tossed casually across the room. I slammed into the wall near the bathroom and crumpled to the carpet. My head was swimming but I immediately began to crawl toward my stash of weapons on the bed. Now that I was a few feet away, I could see the giant shadow shape moving across the room, almost as if it were pacing, agitated. My assailant continued to speak. "You must be important though. It took some time for the message to reach me. I was shocked to receive something from the other side. You have no idea how rare it is for the Old Ones to take the time to communicate with this world. Oh, the Dread Overlord is going to be happy when I deliver you. I don't know how you managed to get on his bad books, but you're bloody well fucked."

As the big shadow moved, it passed in front of the sliver of light emanating from the balcony curtains. The shape was gone, and it was just the man again, but as he left the light, his body seemed to drift into smoke and the shadow returned.

Light. I need light. Whatever he was, he only seemed to have a body in the light. "The Old Ones can kiss my ass…Stupid mollusks." I reached the bed, but the shadow was on me in an instant, freezing tendrils clamped around my wrist. He jerked me around and dragged me across the floor toward the exit.

"Time to go. The Overlord awaits."

I thrashed, fought, but only managed to give myself a nasty carpet burn.

There was a flicker of green light across the room. The black force around my wrist coalesced into normal human fingers. He was flesh again. The shadow man frowned.

Fireworks. They were setting off fireworks at the party.

My bare foot collided with his ribs. He stumbled back from the brutal kick, falling through the bathroom door. With no time to spare, I leapt up, reached the bed, and searched through the dark for a weapon. My hand closed around the leather-wrapped handle of my Ganga Ram, a Himalayan kukri. I jerked the massive knife from the scabbard.

A metallic screeching noise came from the shadows of the bathroom as something was torn free. The next firework blossomed red. The illumination was just enough for me to see the flash of a large white object hurtling at me. Flinging myself down, I could feel the wind as the toilet barely missed my head. It shattered the balcony door, tore through the curtains, and flew into the night.

More light from the party flooded into the room. The black shape glided out of the bathroom toward me, but it shrunk into the form of the Englishman as he left the shadows. He charged with a roar. "Oh, it's on now," I grunted as I got back to my feet and drove my knife forward. His face registered the shock as the curved blade of the Ganga Ram slammed through his ribs and out his back. He looked down in surprise. I twisted the blade with all my might, cutting upward through his torso.

I've managed to hack a few things to death with this knife over the last year. I should have been splattered with blood, but there was nothing, no liquid at all; it was like I was sawing through a bone-in ham. He glared back up, eyebrows creasing together in rage as more fireworks exploded outside, and clamped a brutal hand around my throat. The air to my brain was choked off as he hoisted me off the floor.

With a foot of steel driven through his guts, he shouted in my face. "I tried to be polite, and now you have to make me do this the hard way. I wanted to deliver you to the Old Ones with your mind in one piece, but nooo, you have to be difficult…" I continued to saw the blade back and forth, searching for his heart, but he didn't seem to notice. "Fine then. We'll just devour your brain and give the Old Ones a vegetable. They don't respect humans enough to know the difference anyway." He paused as his neck suddenly ballooned up like a puffer fish. "Snack time, little friend…" He opened his mouth wide, tilting his head back, and something came up his throat, black claws pushing past his lips, tiny red eyes blinking into existence over a circular mouth filled with fishhook teeth, crawling, struggling upward, heading right for my face, and strangely enough, I somehow could tell it was hungry.

Screw that!

I yanked the kukri out of his chest, lifted it high overhead, and swung down, chopping his hand off at the wrist. I fell to the floor, gasping for air as the pressure was released from my throat. His running shoe collided with my stomach as he punted me across the room. I rolled painfully to a stop by the balcony, realized that his severed hand was still clawing at my neck, and tore it away. The little shadow monster crawling out of the Englishman's mouth shrieked in an insanely high pitch as he seemed to choke it back down, and with a hard swallow, it was gone. He raised the stump of his ruined arm. Writhing shadow leapt from the end, instantly twisting and re-forming into a new hand. He balled the fresh hand into a fist, lowered his head, and started toward me.

A man has to know his limitations, and I was way out of my league on this one. Instantly back to my feet, I ran for the balcony, bare feet crunching on a piece of broken glass. "Ouch! Ouch!" Heedless of the danger, I vaulted over the railing and plummeted into the party below.

Landing brutally hard, lightning cascading up my legs, I crashed through a rosebush and onto the porcelain shards of the broken toilet. I lay there, gasping for a moment. As a very large man, gymnastic feats were not really my specialty. I struggled through the plants and tumbled onto the tile by the pool, scattering college students like bowling pins. My left ankle throbbed from the impact, but I stood, hobbling, and raised my kukri, which I had somehow managed not to impale myself on.

I roared up at my room, "Come and get me!" The shadow man was leaning on the railing, glowering down at me, fireworks exploding overhead. There was enough light down here that I somehow knew he wasn't going to follow. Several partygoers shrieked, spilled their beers, and ran as I shook my kukri with one hand and extended my middle finger with the other. "Yeah, I thought so, you pansy!"

"This isn't over," the Englishman shouted over the music. He turned his attention away from me for a moment, and nodded at someone on the far side of the party. I had no idea who or what he was signaling, but it probably wasn't the wet tee shirt contest. He returned his attention to me and smiled. "Well done. For now…but, dead or alive, I'll deliver you to the Dread Overlord eventually."

"Better things than you have tried."

"Farewell, Hunter. We will meet again…assuming you live through the next few minutes, that is." He faded back into the shadows and was gone.

If I could get to my radio, I could rouse the team and chase this puke down. I took a step forward, flinching violently as the pressure hit a piece of broken glass impaled in my heel. Swearing, I paused to yank the tiny shard out and toss it into the bushes.

"Oh, man, dude, are you okay?" one of the bystanders asked stupidly. "You totally like fell out the window!"

I snarled. He cringed back. The partiers gave me a wide berth. I glared at them angrily and anyone who was even vaguely contemplating saying anything retreated a few more feet. Turning my attention to gathering reinforcements, I started limping for the entrance, but there was a commotion on the far side of the pool. Some of the partygoers were screaming now, real cries of terror that could be heard even above the din of the dance music. I turned back toward them, dripping blood, holding a giant knife, and bellowed, "What now?"

Zombies. Lots of zombies.

The party was officially over.

Someone had backed a package truck up to the entrance of the pool area. The rear doors were open and corpses were tumbling out. These undead were in an advanced state of decomposition. Their flesh was rotten and sloughing off. Many of them were missing eyes, noses, and ears. There were so many that they must have been literally stacked on top of each other inside the truck's hold.

There are many different variations of undead, with your basic zombie being the simplest of all. A zombie is just an animated corpse, wandering around in search of one thing: flesh. The big problem with zombies is that they multiply like rabbits. Their bites are always eventually fatal, and the bitten always rise as zombies themselves. Their poison travels instantly through the nervous system, and not even amputation of the bitten limb can stop the transformation. Basically, they're a major pain in the ass, the Monster Hunter's equivalent to cockroaches. Usually stupid, and normally slow, zombies are not much of a challenge for an experienced Hunter, provided that said Hunter has a decent gun and friends with guns. I was pretty much alone, had just gotten the crap kicked out of me, and was armed with only a knife. The kukri was a great big freaking knife, mind you, but still it was only a knife. Not a good recipe for success.

I could have run away. Even with one ankle already swelling, there was no way they could have caught me. I could rally my team and come back to the pool with some real armament. That would be the safe thing to do. But as I watched, one of the tourists, a guy just barely out of his teens, was pulled down by some of the corpses. They descended on him like a pack of dogs, and his screaming and kicking stopped in an instant. The zombies were falling out the back of the truck into a pile, but spurred on by the nearness of meat, they were driving themselves to their feet and lumbering into the mob. The tourists panicked as they saw their friends getting disemboweled right in front of them. Hundreds of people began to crash into each other, trying to shove their way to safety. The small and the weak were smashed underfoot, just more zombie fodder.

The smell of decay hit my nostrils.

MHI was a private company. We weren't cops. We weren't the Fed's Monster Control Bureau. We were contractors, mercenaries. We had no obligation to protect the innocent unless they were paying us to do it. To jump in was suicide.

"Aw…damn it." I raised my Ganga Ram and charged the truck of undead. I pushed past the fleeing partiers. There were lots of them, but I'm a big man, and when I pick a direction, I'm hard to stop. My bare feet slipped on the water that splashed onto the tile as the crowd knocked people into the pool. The patio was packed. You could feel the panic of the herd.

The mostly sober were able to flee, but those that had been in the water were sitting ducks. A young woman was trying to climb out, but one of the zombies had grabbed her by the hair and was tugging her toward its jagged mouth, maggots wriggling in its face. I lopped the creature's arm off at the elbow. The girl flew back with a splash. The zombie turned automatically toward me and I removed the top of its head right above the eye sockets. It went limp. It pays to know your monsters. With zombies, destroy the brain, and they go right down.

Another zombie saw me, locked on, and charged. This one had been an old woman once. "Whoa!" I jumped back as it swiped at me. These zombies were fast. I had dealt with regular zombies before, but I'd only heard rumors of faster ones. It kept coming, head bent, lipless mouth open and snapping. If those teeth broke my skin, I was worse than dead. I shattered one of its knees in a cloud of dust with my bloody heel and it toppled into the pool.

Hacking and slashing, zombies to the front, zombies to the side. Have to protect these kids. An ironic thought considering most of them were about my age. A man went down with one of the undead on his back, biting at his neck. They were too far away; I wouldn't make it in time. I spied a half-empty beer bottle lying on its side, scooped it up and threw it at the creature. The bottle shattered over the thing's skull, but it was far too distracted by food. The man screamed as the zombie latched onto his throat. The scream bubbled off into a gurgle.

I lowered my shoulder and dived, crashing into the undead, feeling its bones snap beneath papery skin. I rolled to my knees much faster than it did, and with a brutal chop sent the zombie's head spinning away from its neck. My blade came away coated in spider webs and blackened ooze with the consistency of mud. These zombies were far from fresh. I gagged on the stink.

The creatures were everywhere. There must have been fifty in that truck, and already they were multiplying, as some of the tourists' bodies began to convulse. The music was still playing. Fireworks were still erupting. The scene was utter chaos. If we didn't stop these things now, we were going to have a full-fledged outbreak, right in a population center, and that's a nightmare. A nearby girl, obviously stoned out of her mind, began to giggle and point at the sillier looking zombies, oblivious to the other one that was heading right for her. Friggin' stoners. I started toward her.

A hand locked around my injured ankle with a grip like iron. Looking down, I saw the man who had been bitten. He pulled at me, his mouth open, hungry, his brain already dead, his system now overcome with only one impulse…food…me. That was near instantaneous reanimation after death, the sign of a bad strain. "Sorry, dude." I bent over and smashed open the top of his head. I was instantly splattered with brains. After two swings he quit moving. The fresh ones are harder to shut down. The distraction distracted me long enough that by the time I was done, stoner chick was missing her nose. "Damn it!"

There was a gunshot. A security guard had come out from the hotel to see what the commotion was. His eyes were wide, staring as the creatures soaked up bullets and kept coming. One of the shots missed and, thankfully, put the bleating stereo out of commission. The patio was now quiet except for the moaning of the recently deceased and the screams of the fleeing.

"Shoot them in the head! Cabeza!" I shouted, leaping over dead and twitching bodies, running for the hapless guard. "Despidalos en las cabezas!"I took the nearest zombie from behind, driving my blade through its dusty throat and wrenching the head aside. The security guard fell to his knees, his hands stretched in front of him as a zombie in a yellowed wedding dress bore down on him. Too far. My Ganga Ram was not balanced for throwing, but I hurled it end over end to strike the zombie in the head.

Unfortunately it hit handle first. That got the creature's attention long enough. I reached it as it turned its attention back to the guard, grabbed it by the bottom of its rotting jaw and the top of its head and wrenched the skull until the spine broke and its open eye sockets were staring at me. The zombie flopped to the ground. Apparently that works too.

Breathing hard, I picked up my knife. The pool, which now had a definite pink tint to it, was cleared out except for a few zombies wandering around the bottom and a couple of torn bodies bobbing on the surface. Everything that was still alive had run. The remaining original zombies were venturing into the resort, chasing after the scattering crowds, spreading their curse. The recently dead were just starting to rise and would be following shortly. The resort was right on the edge of town, and there were fifty thousand people sleeping down there. This could get real ugly, real fast.

The guard crossed himself as he surveyed the blood-soaked patio."Madre de Dios!" I had to remind myself that regular people were always shocked by how fast the carnage happened. I guess I'd kind of gotten used to it.

"Yeah, okay, if you aren't going to use that…" I retrieved his gun. It was an ancient Smith Military & Police revolver, in obviously neglected condition. I opened the rusty cylinder and ejected the empties. "Um…cartuchos?" The guard reached into his pocket with one shaking hand, and dropped six tarnished.38 specials cartridges onto the ground. He got up and ran for the exit. I can't say I blamed him. I knelt down and gathered up the cartridges.

"Z! Look out!" There was a sharp crack of a gunshot and something warm splattered all over my back. The fresh corpse fell onto the patio, skull smashed wide open. "Zombies? How the hell are there zombies?"

"Holly. I'm glad to see you," I answered as I snapped the cylinder shut on the old revolver. Holly Newcastle was running across the tile, rifle in hand, and about half of her armor flapping unbuckled around her torso. "We got a problem."

"Ya think?" she exclaimed, as she turned and mercilessly blasted the rising undead tourists. Holly had certainly become a better shot over the last year. I stuck my fingers in my ears to block out the deafening noise. She had put in her electronic earpieces, but mine were still up in my room. Her.308 Vepr was a loud rifle. "I was down on the beach, saw a bunch of people come out screaming, so I grabbed my stuff. What the hell's going on? Where are the others?" I realized she was wearing nothing but a yellow bikini and flip-flops under her hastily donned vest.

"I don't know." I heard a chattering noise from the street on the other side of the parked truck, a suppressed subgun. "Well, there's Trip. Looks like he's got that end covered." I surveyed the area. There were two other paths out of the pool area between the buildings. "You follow those, I'll go this way. I don't have my radio, so try to raise the others. We've got to take them all before it spreads out of control."

"Got it," she said as she rocked a fresh magazine into her gun. "So how would you tell the locals, Go inside, lock your doors, there are zombies out…I knew I should have taken Spanish."

"Vaya adentro. Cierren sus puertas. Um…didn't exactly cover this in high school…" I speak five languages fluently-Spanish isn't one of them. "Hay muertos andandos afuera. And one more thing, watch out for an Englishman, blond guy, short hair, mean-looking, dark clothing," I ordered. "If you see him, shoot him a lot. And use your flashlight."

"Huh?" I knew that Holly had no moral compunctions about killing anybody, but even she usually needed a reason.

"I'll explain later, but these are his zombies."

"Got it." She turned and ran toward the latest screams.

I went in the other direction, up the stairs, and back into the hotel. The building was nice, new, modern, and up until a few minutes ago, very clean. There was a splattering of fluids, fresh blood, and discarded tissue from the undead staining the carpet. I held the Smith in my right and my kukri in my left as I followed the obvious trail. I kicked myself for not asking Holly if she had a spare gun. My pulse pounded in my head, and I tried to keep scanning every corner, waiting for something to pop out.

I heard a series of loud booms ahead of me, coming from the direction of the front desk. Somebody had a shotgun. I ran faster, pain throbbing in my twisted ankle with each step. I could hear the hungry moaning. They were right ahead of me.

The undead were clustered together, trying to force their way through the main doors and out into the crowded streets. There were at least a dozen of them, some old, some new, all ugly. A lone uniformed Federale stood in their way, blasting them with a pump shotgun. Their bodies were falling, creating a choke point at the entrance. His shotgun clicked empty, and too terrified to notice, he kept on pumping and dry-firing.

I charged the undead from behind. I had no idea how off the sights on the Smith were, so I used it as a contact weapon. Press muzzle into zombie's head. Pull trigger. Repeat. One of the six corroded cartridges failed to fire, but another pull of the trigger put my last bullet through the lucky monster's sinuses. Flinging the empty revolver at the head of another zombie, I stepped over the fallen bodies and started swinging away with my knife.

The rearmost creatures moved against me, reaching, chomping, eyes wide. They were new, and only minutes before had been guests of the resort, happy, carefree, normal kids, with normal lives. I shoved those thoughts aside and went about my gruesome business. My knife was heavy, curved. It was designed for taking off limbs, and I put it to work.

Teeth. Snapping closed inches from my arms. I reversed my blade and cleaved the jaw off of a zombie with a Chico State tee shirt. I realized I was screaming, bellowing something incomprehensible. The cop had regained his senses enough to reload his shotgun. He fired and I was concussively sprayed with brains. I stepped aside, hoping not to catch a stray piece of buckshot, and the final zombies followed me, having zeroed in on the scent of my flesh.

There were three of them, and they were piling on top of each other to reach me. I backed away, swinging at anything that presented itself, leaving fingers and the occasional hand on the ground. The zombies didn't seem to notice. My feet slipped on the now sodden carpet and I slid against the check-in desk. Lunging forward, I slammed the tip of my knife through a nasal cavity, and then jumped back as the final two grabbed at me. My knife handle, slick with gore, slipped from my fingers, still lodged in the falling zombie's skull. Now I was really hosed.

I grabbed the desk and vaulted over it, landing painfully on the other side. The zombies flung themselves at the counter and started to wiggle over, their fingers and stumps flailing at me. Lying on my back, I kicked one of the things in the face hard enough to put bone fragments through its brain, launching it back over the counter. I leaned forward, swatted aside the last zombie's arm, avoided the snapping teeth, grabbed it by the side of the head and twisted. The blood-soaked mess was too slippery for a solid grasp, so I shoved my thumbs through the squishy eye sockets for leverage and twisted violently to the side. There was a brutal crunch and the final undead flopped down, twitching.

"I…hate…zombies…" I lay on the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of blood as the last corpse was drained by gravity. The lobby was quiet. The clock on the wall read 12:21. I gradually pushed myself up and glanced over the counter. It looked clear. There was a pile of bodies heaped in the entryway, but none of them had made it to the street. Gunfire could be heard in multiple directions now, so hopefully my team had gotten on the outbreak quick enough to keep it contained. The sucky part now was going to be isolating the bitten survivors. I had to get to my radio.

The Mexican cop stepped gingerly through the shattered window. His Mossberg was shaking and he was hyperventilating. I recognized the feeling, the feeling that a regular person gets when they find out that the world they live in was not really as it was supposed to be. It could be a real bummer. I walked slowly around the counter, my dripping hands open in front of me. I knew that I had to look terrible, covered in all manner of disgusting stuff, and I didn't want him to mistake me for another zombie.

"Hey, amigo. I'm a friend," I said calmly.

He looked at me in shock, leveled the muzzle at my chest and pulled the trigger. The click of the firing pin landing on the empty chamber was extremely loud. I jumped about two feet straight up.

"Whoa! I'm human! Easy!" I shouted, raising my hands high. "I'm one of the good guys. Soy un hombre bueno."

He nodded slowly, some comprehension dawning in his shocked eyes. I nodded back. Sirens approached. A green truck with Policia on the side screeched to a halt in front of the hotel and men with M-16s jumped out of the back. I looked back to the cop, ready to congratulate him on a job well done, but the last thing I saw was the butt of his shotgun sailing toward my forehead.

Chapter 2

"Do you know what the penalty for having illegal firearms in Mexico are, Señor Pitt?"

"Like a million years per bullet?" I responded. The police interrogator shook his head sadly, nodded at his subordinate, and my head snapped back as the junior policeman hit me. He was wearing some sort of weighted leather glove, and it hurt pretty bad. I leaned my head forward and spit blood on the plastic table. Somehow I had managed to cultivate a hobby of being beaten up by law enforcement officers. On the bright side, this guy was a featherweight compared to my old buddy Special Agent Franks. Now that guy knew how to beat a confession out of somebody.

"You are being held on suspicion of murder, Señor Pitt. I have over seventy bodies to explain, and somebody will be held accountable. I assure you that our justice system is not as lenient as your own." I didn't think that that many tourists had been bitten, so they must be charging me for the original zombies too. I suppose the fact that they had obviously been dead for months wasn't going to help me.

I had no idea where I was, or how long I had been out, having woken up in the back of a truck with a sack tied over my head. Since the air tasted like burning tires, I was guessing that I had been taken inland, and if I had been unconscious long enough, I might even be in Mexico City. The interrogator's English was excellent. He was short, pudgy, with a bad comb-over, but his manner indicated that he was not a man to be trifled with. "Now why did you have multiple firearms and illegal military equipment in your room?"

"About that, any chance I can get some of those guns back? The shotgun and the matching set of.45s? Those have sentimental value…" I went back to the question before he had the chance to signal the other cop to hit me again. "Really, like I already said, contact the consulate. We have written permission from your government. I'm here as an independent security consultant. Our weapons were allowed per the terms of the contract."

"And what exactly was your duty in Mexico?"

"I already told you I'm not at liberty to disclose that." The Mexican government had a policy similar to the United States' official position: Monsters Do Not Exist. The rules are idiotic, but for those of us who made our living cashing in on these governments' bounties for unnatural creatures, we always had to be careful to tiptoe around the truth with the general public. It may have been evil, it may have been stupid, but it was policy. And the people who enforced that policy had no problem shooting people like me if we talked too much. "Just call your superiors. This is all a misunderstanding."

He nodded at the other police officer, and I braced myself for the impact. This time he hit me above the kidney. I grunted. It hurt, but he didn't really drive the fist in there. When you're hitting somebody in the body, you need to punch through the target, not at it. Amateur.

"We already contacted them." The interrogator took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it with a gold-plated Zippo. "Sadly, they said that they had no knowledge of you, your organization, or why you are here."

It sounded like MHI had just been disavowed. Not good. "Well…there's been a mistake then."

"Certainly, merely just a, how would you say? Clerical error." He nodded, and this time I was pelted across the back of my head. At least the guy hitting me was getting some variety. This was bad, very bad. There was no way that the Mexican government had just forgotten about a team of American Monster Hunters. They were going to deny that they had ever contacted us. Better that than to admit there were supernatural creatures on their soil. They were probably already spinning some story to cover up the zombie outbreak and I was willing to bet that my team wasn't going to fit in with the official version of events.

"I can show you our copies of the contract, signed by your state governor. All I need is one phone call."

"I think not. My superiors and the governor's office have already confirmed that they have signed nothing. You are a liar and I'm tiring of this game."

Options were starting to run thin and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a Mexican jail. So I guess that meant it was time to see if the interrogator could handle the truth. "Okay, I'll talk."

"I'm waiting."

I gestured with my head at the other cop. It was the best I could do since my forearms and ankles had been zip-tied to the sturdy chair. "Does this guy speak English?"

The interrogator held up his thumb and forefinger. "Un poco, a little."

My whole body ached. At least if I could get rid of Cop #2 they'd quit hitting me for a while. "You might want him to wait outside. You don't want what I'm about to tell you to get out, if you know what I mean."

The interrogator slowly exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. The three of us were in a small, plain room. The only furniture was my chair, his chair, and a cheap plastic table. There was a bloody phonebook, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and a five-gallon bucket of water sitting in the corner. I didn't want to guess what those were for. Finally he gestured for the younger cop to leave. I heard the snap of a crisp salute, and then the opening and closing of the door behind me.

"Any chance we can settle this with some good old-fashioned bribery?" I asked. "My company's very generous."

"Mordida? Maybe if I only had one or two bodies. But this many? And half of them Americans? I'm afraid not. You see, someone must be executed for this. Tell me what I want to know, and it might not be you."

"Gotcha. Figured as much, but you never know until you ask. I didn't think you had the death penalty here."

He shrugged. "There is the unofficial death penalty. So let us continue, Señor Pitt. Who are you?"

"I work for a company called Monster Hunter International. We're based out of Alabama. We specialize in discreetly handling monster-related problems." He stared at me blankly. "Monsters…For example we were paid to come here to deal with a pack of goat-suckers."

"Chupacabras?" he asked slowly.

"Yes. A few weeks ago, some hikers were killed at the resort, and once those things taste people, they don't go back. We were hired because it was thought more deaths would be detrimental to tourism." I suppose a massive zombie attack rendered that a moot point. "The company I work for is considered the best in the world when it comes to dealing with things like this."

"I see…and the reason that I have never heard of this is…" His voice betrayed no emotion.

"Government-mandated secrecy. Those of us who have monster experience are usually warned by the authorities to keep our mouths shut. That has been the policy for forever. If the regular population were to know that all of the stuff from the myths, and the fairy tales, and the bad movies was real, well, you can imagine the panic and the trouble it would cause."

"And you believe this?"

I paused. I didn't know if he asked if I believed in the government's policies, or if I believed in what I was just telling him. I decided to run with the first option. "No, I think the policy is stupid. People should know the truth. Instead, to keep the problem in check, most governments have some sort of system to keep the unnatural populations down. In my country there is a bounty system administered by the Treasury Department. It's called PUFF."

"Puff?"

"Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund. It pays money to any private citizen who kills a monster on the PUFF list. My company specializes in working the PUFF list, and also in private contracts from municipalities, companies, and private individuals, like your wealthy resort owners. See, lots of important people know about monsters, but they have to keep it on the down low, if you know what I mean. So they call people like us. Let's see, PUFF was started by Teddy Roosevelt, uh…he was our president back in-"

"I know who Theodore Roosevelt was. I attended UCLA."

"Go Trojans," I said.

"You're thinking of the wrong school." He sighed and rubbed his temple with his fingers. "Please continue…"

"I guess you don't want to hear the history of professional Monster Hunting…"

He casually examined the end of his burning cigarette. "No, I really want to know about last night." He glanced absently at his watch. "Fourteen hours ago. What happened at the hotel. There were many deaths, and I wish to know why."

"That was not our doing."

"I have witnesses who saw you chopping people up with a machete."

"Those weren't people. Those were zombies."

"Zombies…"

"Yes. The walking dead. The man who created them, the man you are looking for is an Englishman." I proceeded to give him a rough description of the real villain. I didn't know what the Englishman was, but he'd been there for me, which meant that the carnage at the hotel was partially my fault. "Bastard works for the Old Ones," I muttered under my breath.

"What is an Old One, Señor Pitt?" The interrogator casually reached under his chair and pulled out a manila file folder.

Screw it. It was obvious he thought I was nuts, might as well give him a good reason. I just needed to stay in one piece long enough for my team to find me. "They're a race of ancient creatures. Evil and ugly."

He pulled an ornate pen from his pocket and began to make notes in the folder. "And how will we know when we find these Old Ones?"

My father had always warned me that I didn't know when to shut up. "The real thing? They're hard to miss. The ones you have to worry about are their servants. Last summer…" I caught myself.

"Last summer what?"

I shrugged. He already thought I was a complete whackadoo, so what did I have to lose? Crazy prisoners probably got their own cells. I was guessing that you wouldn't stick them out with the regular population. "Remember last summer, with the missing five minutes?"

"Yes," he replied. Of course he did. Everybody on Earth had experienced it. Five minutes of time had been erased as if they had never existed. It had caused a global panic. People had instantly found themselves where they had been five minutes before, but with the memory of what had transpired during that missing time still intact. Pandemonium ensued. Thousands had been born twice, others had died twice, and others still, like myself, had died, only to have those moments erased to be given another chance.

"That was caused by the Old Ones. Last summer, one of their minions arranged for them to break into this world."

"And did these…Old Ones…succeed?"

I snorted. "Of course not. If they had, you would have known it. But that rift in time, the missing five minutes, was caused by somebody screwing around with one of their ancient artifacts." I didn't mention that that had been me, or that apparently I was the only human in the world with the ability to do so. They had manipulated me in the hopes that I would open the door for them, and they had almost succeeded.

The interrogator leaned back heavily in his chair. "Scientists are now saying that it had something to do with solar radiation. Increased activity causing a distortion in the atmosphere, along with psychological delusions of missing time caused by imbalances in our brain chemistry."

"Yeah, I saw that on the Discovery Channel too, but I'm telling you, it was the Old Ones. That was no delusion. Those things are out there, and they are some bad mothers. This guy with the zombies, he works for them, and if he works for them, then we've got a serious problem on our hands."

"Do we?" He continued writing. From my zip-tied vantage point, I couldn't see what his notes said, but I was sure that it was something to the effect that I was totally screwed and was going to be enjoying a long stay in the Mexican penal system.

"Yes. They'll stop at nothing to get what they want. Those undead you had crawling all over that resort were a joke compared to what these things can whip up." He cocked his head to the side and studied me intently. I could tell that I had lost him, but at least they weren't hitting me with that phonebook. "Talk to a doctor, take a look at those bodies. They've been dead for a lot longer than a day, but they were moving around. I'm sure you have plenty of witnesses to that. You do a little looking, and you can probably find the cemetery where all those bodies were stolen from."

He clicked his pen and dropped it back in his pocket. "I don't know how you dug up all of those corpses and spread them out like you did, but let me assure you, Señor Pitt, pretending to be insane will not get you off in this country. I have had enough of your nonsense. You disgust me, and your fairy tales will not save you. You are nothing but a filthy murderer, and you think that you can come here and spin these ridiculous lies? Do you think we are stupid?" He stood, adjusted his tie, and spit in my face. I could not move my arm to wipe it away, and I could feel it slowly drip down my forehead and into my eyes. The beating was one thing, but that was too much. If I hadn't been tied to the chair, I would have broken the interrogator in half. The door opened behind me and other policemen entered the room. The interrogator switched back to Spanish, but I could understand him relatively well.

"I've had enough for today. We'll work on him again in the morning. Put this piece of shit in Section Six with the other animals. Let them teach him some humility."

Section Six was one large room, subdivided into a bunch of ten-foot-square pens, each enclosed with thick iron bars and chain-link fencing. There was a path between the pens where the guards patrolled with truncheons ready. Small naked bulbs dangled in each alley. There were two sets of cots in each cell, with anywhere from five to seven prisoners shoved into each. My cell had all of the comforts of home, including a bucket, and not much else. You can guess what the bucket was for.

It was dark, and it stunk of sweat, and fear, and violence. I don't think that Amnesty International ever spent much time in this place. I sat cross-legged in the corner of one of the cells. The four other men who shared my tiny space sat across from me, glaring sullenly. Section Six seemed to be where they kept all of the badasses, lunatics, and that general selection of humanity that you just didn't invite to the church picnic. There were incoherent cries and shouts all across the large space. It was not exactly pleasant.

A stocky man with one milky eye, and missing an ear, whispered to his buddy in Spanish. "You think he understands us?"

"I don't know…he don't look too smart," answered the prettier of the two, an obese man with a spider web tattooed across his face. "Look at him. He's got to be messed up in the head. He just keeps staring at us."

The reason I was staring at them was because I had to really concentrate to understand what they were saying. I had practiced up on my Spanish before taking this trip. I have a gift for languages, but the gutter slang these guys spoke was terrible by any standard. I could keep up, barely. Strangely enough, having magically learned archaic Portuguese last summer was really helping.

"They said he was an American."

"He ain't one of us, so I don't care," said the third, a skinny guy who sounded like he had tuberculosis. "Soon as he goes to sleep, I'm gonna shiv him good."

"Jorge, now why are you gonna go and do that?"

Jorge shrugged. "I like stabbing people."

"I don't know, man. He's one big dude. Look at him. That ain't no regular American who got drunk in some whorehouse and wound up here. That dude is gonna tear you up, man. He's got muscles like a luchador."

I just kept glaring. I figured my best bet was to appear as mean as possible. A wise old gunfighter had once told me that if you looked like food, you were going to get eaten, and I really didn't want to end up as prison food.

My body ached, and I was in a really foul mood. They had not even treated my cuts from when I had jumped off the balcony, and they were now big grisly scabs that I was sure were going to end up infected. My left ankle was badly swollen, the little puncture in my heel was driving me nuts, and most embarrassingly, after I had been squirted down with a fire hose and had lice poison dumped on me, the biggest set of prison clothes they had for me were about two sizes too small. Not a lot of 4X convicts in Mexico, apparently. The last thing you want to do when you are already in a bad mood is try to wear pants that are too tight.

"I'm telling you, man, I think he understands us. Look at those eyes. He's crazy pissed."

"See, that's why I need to hurry up and shiv him."

"Jorge, he's gonna rip your balls off."

"Shut up, Mateo, quit being such a wimp."

My options were rather limited. I was in jail. The Mexican government was denying that they had given me permission to be here with enough munitions to arm a small rebellion. I had no idea where my team was, or what shape they were in, or even if they had all survived the outbreak. There was some sort of crazy shadow freak out looking to snag me for the Old Ones. I hadn't been offered a lawyer or a phone call, so I doubted that MHI knew where I was either. And the lice powder really itched.

"What do you think, Esteban?" asked Spider Web Face.

The last man looked up from his bunk. He was older, and had obviously been through some rough times. He had scars all along his face and arms, his hair was gray and long, and his skin had the texture of leather. I knew that he had to be somebody special, since he got his own bunk, and none of this band of thugs messed with him. He studied me silently, and the others waited for him to pass judgment.

Finally he spoke, not to them, but rather to me, loud enough that everyone could hear. "I heard from one of the guards, you hacked up like a hundred people with a machete, arms and legs and heads everywhere, even ate some of them. Killed some cops too. Burned a hotel down. Took twenty Federales to take you out…You speak Spanish?"

"Un poco."

"I figured you did." He put his head back down.

"Oh shit, man," said Jorge. "I was just kidding about the shiv thing. You know, mess with the new guy and all that."

I gave Jorge my most menacing look. He cowered back into the corner. Now, most people would not react well to being put into the ultraviolent, dog-eat-dog world that was a prison full of murderers and psychopaths, but hey, I'd killed a werewolf with my bare hands. I figured that I would fit in just fine here.

"Say, Esteban," I asked over the shouting from the next cell. "Where are we?"

"You don't know?" His eyes peeked out from under his mane of hair. I could tell he was a sharp one.

"Nah…I was pretty worn out from chopping up all those people. You know how it is." If you have a rep, you might as well run with it.

"You're in Tijira Prison. This, my friend, is a very bad place."

"I've seen worse," I lied.

"I'm sure you have. Me personally, I'm here because I avenged my wife's honor against the filthy tyrants, but alas, I failed. May God rest her soul," he said solemnly. Some of the thugs crossed themselves.

"Sorry to hear that."

Without skipping a beat he switched to English. "Naw, just pulling your leg. I'm from San Diego. I was flying coke across the border, got back to TJ, didn't have enough to pay the right people, and they stuck me in here rather than just shooting me. Some days I wish they would have just killed me and got it over with. These morons here think I'm Zorro or something so they leave me alone. If a Yankee wants to survive in here, you need a reputation, so I'll back you up, you back me up."

"Good deal." I held out my hand. He reached over and shook it with a firm grip. "Owen Zastava Pitt."

"Zapato? Like a shoe?"

"No, Zastava. It's Serbian."

"You don't look Serbian."

In other words, I was way too brown. "I'm a little bit of everything." That much was true. I always checked the Other box on any official type forms. "Look, Esteban…"

"You can call me Steve, the Esteban thing is for these guys." He nodded his head at the other criminals. "The story is that I shot it out with the cops and the army to avenge them burning my village or something. If you don't get respect in here, you don't last long."

"Okay, Steve, my company will get me out of here. We're worth a lot of money, and can get the best lawyers. I just need to survive long enough for that to happen, so I appreciate the help. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, know what I mean?"

"That's cool. I'm still waiting for trial myself. I haven't even been arraigned yet. I'm hoping I get my turn in front of the judge before too long."

"How long have you been here?"

He looked up at the ceiling as he gave it some thought.

"Three years come June."

A cold weight settled into the bottom of my stomach. "No kidding?"

"No kidding. Welcome to Tijira."

They had taken my watch, but I guessed that it was about 9 p.m. when the guards killed most of the lights in Section Six. Steve, or Esteban as the local fauna knew him, and I were still talking quietly, me to pass the nervous time, and him because I was the first other American he had seen in a year. The previous guy had lasted all of thirty minutes before somebody had decided they didn't particularly like gringos in their jail. Steve said that it had taken weeks for the bloodstains to fade. He was a nice enough guy for a prison-hardened drug smuggler, and talking to him sure beat talking to One Ear, Jorge, or Spider Web.

"So, Owen, you got a wife?"

"Nope, but I'm engaged."

"That's great. What's she like?"

I tried to make myself more comfortable on the bug-ridden cot. Since I was now the new boss of this cell, I got the luxury accommodations. Sometimes being a muscle-bound behemoth paid dividends. Poor One Ear had to sleep on the floor now. "She's awesome. Smart, funny, tough, brave. Her name's Julie. Julie Shackleford."

"Is she hot?"

"Dude…please."

"Sorry, but I've kind of been in jail for a while," he explained. "It's been so damn long since I've seen a woman…" He trailed off. I just hoped that MHI hurried up and found me soon. I did not sign on to this gig to end up spending my golden years in a place like this. "So what's she look like?" he asked as he lay back on his bunk and closed his eyes. I admit, I could have been offended, but more than anything, I just felt pity.

"Well, she's pretty," I answered. That was an understatement. I had been infatuated with her since the day that we had met. Julie was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and almost losing her had been the worst. "Real tall for a girl, actually. Kind of buff; she works out a lot. Long brown hair, has the prettiest brown eyes I've ever seen, wears glasses…"

"Chicks with glasses are hot."

"I'm with you there, bro, I'm with you there. In fact, she's probably out there looking for me right now."

"Here? In Mexico?"

"Of course. She's a Monster Hunter too."

"Look, I already said that I would back you on the whole crazy-machete-killer thing. You don't need to keep up the monster movie shtick."

I laughed out loud. Tubercular Jorge grumbled at me from his corner. "I wasn't joking. She's a Hunter, and she's good, real good. On the business end, she does most of our contract negations, and she's a real expert when it comes to monster lore. On the operational side she's our team sharpshooter. I've seen her plug a lindwyrm through the eyestalk from a moving helicopter. And tell you what, she can run a pistol like you wouldn't believe. Anyways, I'm a lucky guy. Somehow I've got a Southern belle, sniper, art babe to fall in love with me. I don't know how I pulled that off." That much was true. I still couldn't figure out exactly how a blundering schlub like me had managed to impress somebody like her.

Julie had been one of the first Hunters that I had met. She had come to my home to recruit me while I was still recovering from my initial monster encounter. It had been love at first sight. For me at least. Thankfully, she had come around eventually. All I had had to do was take on all the armies of evil and save the world to impress her.

"Sounds like you guys make a…interesting couple." Steve sounded slightly nervous.

"In fact she's been doing this way longer than I have. The company is a family business, her grandpa is the CEO. They've been into this for over a hundred years now. She was born for it. Killing monsters is what the Shacklefords eat, sleep, live and breathe."

"Sounds like you have some psycho in-laws."

There was a long uncomfortable pause as I thought about what to say. I rubbed the huge welt on my forehead from the shotgun butt. How would I describe my soon-to-be relatives?

"Oh, touched a nerve, I see."

"You have no idea," I muttered. If there was an international award for who had the worst mother-in-law, I would be a sure winner. "Her parents used to be Hunters too, really good people from what I understand, but…ah hell, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Oh come on, like I believe any of your crap anyway."

"Never mind them. Let's just say that they're pure evil now."

"They can't be that bad. I'm sure over time you guys will be able to work out your differences."

"I wouldn't bet on it," I responded. I rolled over on my side as something that felt suspiciously like a centipede crawled between my shoulder blades.

The few remaining light bulbs flickered a few times then died. A murmur rose from the prisoners. "Power's out again," Steve stated the obvious. There was an electric wailing sound in the distance, high-pitched and whiny. It sounded three times and then died abruptly. "Guess not. That's the alarm." Steve rose from his cot and went to the bars. All the other men were moving as well. Anything that broke the monotony of Section Six was a major deal for them. "Something's up."

I sat up. "What's going on?"

"I don't know, man." He turned to rapid-fire Spanish and ordered the thugs to quiet down. They sullenly obeyed.

The room was very dark. I felt a tinge of fear. Maybe the shadow man had come back for me. There were only a few small windows set high in the walls of the large space, but the moon was fat and bright tonight, so some pale light was spilling down in beams. I scanned the bars. I could see the movement of men in the other cages, stalking, curious, nervous.

Gunfire.

I stood. If I knew anything in this world, I knew guns, and that was the sharp crack of a high-powered rifle. Then another, and another, then the gun was silent.

"Somebody trying to break out?" Jorge asked as he absently scratched himself. "Don't sound like he made it too far."

It was quiet. Even the crazies who had been blubbering constantly had shut up.

"Man, nobody makes it over the wall here. Poor fool," One Ear said.

More gunfire. Now there were other rifles, some of them crackling through long bursts of full-auto, and the thumping of shotguns. A flashlight briefly illuminated the cell and then swung wildly away as a guard sprinted past us. The prisoners began to yell at him, but he just kept running until the flashlight disappeared as he left the room.

Could it be Julie and my team, come to rescue me? No way. Not like this. We killed monsters. We tried real hard not to hurt people. If they knew I was here, the rescue would involve lawyers and bribery, not guns. Something else was going on. It had to be the guy from the hotel.

"Anybody got a light?" I shouted. "A lighter, a flashlight, anything."

"Huh?"

"Something that can make light. Sparks, fire, I don't care. Anything."

Jorge held up a lighter. "It'll cost you." He smiled maliciously.

I was across the cell in an instant. He tried to move his hand back, but I locked onto his wrist. He tried to struggle so I wrapped my other hand around the precious lighter. I broke his thumb as I yanked it free. He squealed.

"Shut it!"I shouted. I turned to Steve. His eyes were very wide in the moonlight. "Whatever happens, stay calm. If you see some freaky shit, stay calm. If a great big shadow comes to get me, use this." I pressed the lighter into his hand. "Wait 'til he comes in our cell. His attention will be on me. Just flick it on. Then I can hit him. Understand?"

"What are you talking about?" The gunfire was becoming more sporadic, as if there were fewer guards left able to shoot. There were several pops from a small caliber pistol, seemingly just outside in the hallway leading into Section Six. Somebody in the hall began to scream. I snapped my head in that direction. The scream tapered off into a gurgle and then nothing.

"Just do it." I stepped back from Steve and oriented myself toward the entrance, preparing for battle. There was no way I was getting taken to the Old Ones. I rotated my head and cracked the vertebrae in my neck. My adrenaline was beginning to flow, my breathing unconsciously quickening, filling my blood with extra oxygen. My vision tunneled in on the gray shape of the door, and the sounds of the room seemed to become muted. Outwardly I was calm. Inside I was terrified. If the shadow man came for me here, I had nowhere to run.

The others were worried now. They knew that something was horribly amiss. I heard prayers coming from men who looked like they had not spoken to God in a very long time. The temperature began to drop. Section Six had been warm and humid. It came so suddenly that it took precious seconds for my mind to recognize the brutal, unnatural cold. My breath hissed out as steam in the moonlight. The other men in my cell began to unconsciously crowd in the corner away from the entrance.

The heavy iron door that secured Section Six creaked open on rusted hinges. A hush fell over the room. A lone figure stepped into the blue moonlight. High heels clicked on the concrete floor. I could make out a familiar feminine shape silhouetted in the faint light, and for a split second I thought it was Julie. Tall, perfectly proportioned, shapely, but the supernatural cold told me I was wrong. A larger figure entered the room behind the woman. A broad-shouldered man, almost as tall as me.

"Oh no," I said with much greater volume than I intended.

"Owen, what the hell's going on?" Steve was terrified, and he was hard to understand over the chattering of his teeth. The temperature had dropped to near freezing.

Approaching, they passed directly under one of the windows. I was right. It was them. The woman started toward my cell, walking delicately down the path between the cages. She was achingly beautiful, perfect. But sex appeal to a vampire was like one of those deep ocean fish with the bioluminescent light bulbs dangling over their jaws, just an efficient way to catch their prey. The heels continued to click. The brute glided silently behind her. I didn't take my eyes off of the approaching pair. "Remember when I told you about my in-laws?"

Steve nodded quickly in the dark.

"They're here."

Some poor idiot who hadn't seen a woman in decades made a horrible mistake. Unable to control himself with the ethereal beauty passing before him, he opened his big stupid mouth. The language was such profane slang that I couldn't have translated it even if I had been able to understand the lowest level of gutter Spanish.

Susan Shackleford paused before answering the man. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Her Southern accent was obvious, her voice perfect. When she smiled I could see the white of her teeth. Chills ran down my spine.

"Yeah, puta, I show you good time!" Some of his buddies whooped for him. These guys must have already forgotten the hundreds of rounds of gunfire that had just been expended. Well, it wasn't the cream of the intellectual crop that ended up in places like this.

The big figure stopped. "That's my wife you're talkin' about, asshole." In the poor light, it was hard to tell what happened next. The prisoner was standing in the center of his cell, well out of reach from the bars. Yet somehow Ray Shackleford reached through the tight barrier, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled the prisoner through the bars. Iron bent and bones shattered. The man screamed in agony before his heart exploded as it was jerked through the two-inch gap. He ended up dangling a few feet above the ground, mangled top half in the alleyway, pelvis and kicking legs still inside the cell. A puddle began to widen under the twitching corpse.

"Thank you, honey. That was downright chivalrous."

"You're welcome, dear."

The population of Section Six exploded. Everyone surged against the far corners of their cells, pushing against bars or chain link. Dozens of voices rose into the night air, panic, confusion, terror.

"Y'all be QUIET!" Ray bellowed. I involuntarily covered my ears as the shockwave hit. His voice shook the building. Dust fell from the ceiling.

Now there was only whimpering and crying. The prisoners knew that something terribly inhuman was in their presence. The vampires approached slowly. "Owen. Good to see you again." Susan smiled at me. Her eyes seemed to glow pale in the dark.

"Heya, kid. How's it hanging?" Ray waved.

"Susan…Ray…" I nodded at them. Every joint in my body ached with fear. I was a dead man, or worse. Much worse.

I had fought Susan twice before. Both times I had been lucky to escape with my life. She was a Master vampire, strongest of all the undead. The first time we had squared off she had taken a twenty-second burst from a flamethrower and a direct hit with a grenade, and had walked away. The second time she had only been turned aside by the faith of Milo Anderson. Compared to Milo, my faith sucked. She could move faster than the human eye could track, tear a man's head off with her pinky finger, and I had personally put half a dozen silver shotgun slugs through her skull with no effect. If Susan wanted to kill me, there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it.

Steve began to flick the lighter.

"What, you want an encore or something?" Ray laughed. "‘Freebird'! Whoo!"

"If you've come for me, I'm not going down without a fight," I snarled.

"You've got cojones, kid," Ray said. "I'll give you that. See, dear, I told you he was a good match for Julie. She always had the best killer instinct of our kids." He gestured at me. I had only known Ray for a brief time, and that had been after I had sprung him from an insane asylum. The last time that I had seen Ray he had still been human, barely alive, and rapidly bleeding to death from the savage wound Susan had inflicted on him, so I had to admit that he looked a lot better now. "If we wanted to off you, we would've done it already."

"Wrong. You can't come into a home if you aren't invited. And this is currently my home," I said as I gestured around my cell. Though many of their limitations were a mystery, I knew that at least some of the vampire legends were true. "So back off!" I ordered with a lot more confidence than I felt.

Susan sighed. She approached the bars and leaned against them. It was shocking how much she looked like her daughter, only Susan was inhumanly perfect. Her fingernails were painted bright red and showed up like beacons in the dark. I took an involuntary step back. "Owen, honey, don't lawyer up on me now." She absently flicked one finger towards Jorge. Her piercing eyes didn't waver from mine. "Can I come in?"

The prisoner gasped as she invaded his mind with all the subtlety of a battering ram. His eyes rolled back into his head and he began to convulse violently. I started toward him, but I was too late. "Si!" he sputtered, then toppled over, dead.

"See? If you weren't so damn obstinate he'd still be alive. No great loss, weak mind, easily controlled, and so disease ridden I wouldn't have drunk him if I was starving." She drew her long fingers away from the bars, and then slowly pushed her face against the iron. She seemed to compress into the space. The gap was only a few inches across, but Susan slid through easily. She stepped into the cell and then casually brushed the dust from her skin-tight dress.

One Ear screamed like a little girl.

I waited for her to make her move, though realistically if I even saw her coming it was only because she wanted to play with her food. Susan looked down at one of the cots in disgust, shrugged, then sat on it. She crossed her legs, briefly showing off entirely too much thigh, and placed her hands on her knees. Ray frowned.

"Sit. We need to talk."

I looked at her stupidly.

She gestured at the other cot. "I ain't here to hurt you. I'm here with a business proposition."

"You've got to be kidding me…" I said.

Susan's gaze did not waver. "Ray, you told me he was smarter than he looks." She began to absently drum her fingers on her knee, impatient.

"He is, but it takes him a minute to warm up." Ray folded his arms and leaned against one of the other cells. The hardened prisoners huddled in the far corner. Ray assessed them like I would size up steaks in the meat department. "Hey, honey, how about Mexican for dinner?"

"Sure, just pick a good one…Look, Owen, I promised a truce, and I'm good for it. You didn't come looking for me, and I can respect that. I'm prepared to leave you and my precious daughter alone, just like I said before. That isn't why I'm here. Please sit. We don't have much time before their reinforcements arrive and you don't want to force me to kill a bunch more innocents. Do you?"

I backed up and slowly sat, careful to keep my eyes on her the whole time. Susan Shackleford emanated predatory danger. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to fight or flee. I tried to steady my voice. "Okay…"

"So how've you been?" she asked, trying to sound casual. Was it possible that this was awkward for her too? I never really wondered if the undead had societal niceties. Apparently Southern politeness really did die hard. "Wedding still on for August?"

"Yep. We're fine. So how are you guys? Still dead and evil? Ray still insane?"

"No, he's much better now." She uncrossed her long legs and leaned forward, pouting. "So much for being pleasant."

"Pleasant would be you doing us all a favor and going for a long walk on a sunny day."

"Kid," Ray growled. "Your terminal smart-assitude is starting to piss me off. You better show a little more respect."

He had a point. "It isn't anything personal. We don't want anything to do with you. Leave me alone."

Susan sighed. "Fine. Let's cut to the chase. I want to hire MHI. I've got a job for you to do."

My mouth dropped open. "Serious?"

"Duh. You think I came to this shit hole for fun? I'm serious. Not hiring MHI as much as hiring you in particular. And this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. The man, or used-to-be-a-man, that attacked you yesterday, I want to help you destroy him."

That didn't make sense. "Why?"

"He's your enemy. He's trying to suck up to the Old Ones, so he means to deliver you to the Dread Overlord itself."

I licked my lips. "Susan, last time we met,you were a servant of the Old Ones."

"Wrong. I owe no loyalty to those things. Jaeger forced me to serve Lord Machado. I was as much of a pawn as you were. When you killed Jaeger and his boss, I was freed from their servitude. I serve only myself now. I hated those crusty ancient bastards."

"Right…You're no ordinary vamp, Susan. We both know that. You're too young to be a Master, but you are. Somehow you became way stronger than you should be, and I think I know how." From my own experience with the Old Ones' magic, I knew the kind of gifts and curses that they could bestow.

"Owen, you're an idiot. Don't strain yourself thinking so hard." Just for a moment, the turn of her head, the sound of her voice, it was almost as if I was speaking with Julie, but with a hiss, it was gone. She waved her hands dismissively. "Sure, I'm powerful, more powerful than the dusty old vampires that came before me. The decrepit coots should never have turned a Monster Hunter into a vampire. The source of my power is my business, but I give you my word that I'm not with the Old Ones. My offer is to help you…and in so doing, help myself."

"Why? What's in it for you?"

"That guy after you? He's a necromancer, a wizard with powers over the undead," Susan said.

"Even you?"

"Perhaps, but I'm not in a particular hurry to find out. I've been a slave before, and I don't intend to let that happen again. He's building an army, and I don't feel like getting drafted. Basically, this necromancer is a threat to me, to all the independent dead."

I snorted. "Even more than MHI? If I recall correctly, we kicked your ass pretty good last time."

"Wrong again. Goody-two-shoes Milo banished me last time. If we tangle again, I'm taking him out first, and he won't see me coming. So don't push it unless you want his blood on your hands too."

That made me furious. I clenched my teeth.Nobody threatens my friends.

"Just so you know, when you get angry, you broadcast your thoughts like you had a loudspeaker. Try anything stupid and I'll just kill you and save the necromancer the trouble. Relax, Ray," Susan said soothingly to her husband. Ray must have heard my thoughts, as he had silently moved up to the bars. He moved just on the other side, like a lion at the zoo. He didn't look as disheveled and crazy as when he was human, but now his square face was drawn, angry, and extremely dangerous. He was as protective of his wife in death as he had been in life. Whereas Susan was cold and calculating, the newly undead and far-less-powerful Ray was barely restrained crazy bottled in room-temperature flesh. I forced myself to calm down before Ray pulled me through the bars like the earlier prisoner.

"That's better. Now listen close," Susan ordered. "After our little altercation last summer, you drew the attention of the boss king of the Old Ones itself. That's quite a feat for a mere blood bag. You're a marked man now. This guy trying to kill you? He thinks popping you will score him big points. If he brings you in, he'll be rewarded with all sorts of power. And that's bad news."

She's scared of him."For you and me both."

"As much as it pains me to admit it, yeah."

This whole thing was unsettling. Only a fool would trust a vampire. Ray was still glowering at me. The other prisoners were whimpering and trying to hide. What she was saying made sense in a way. If she was working with the shadow man, it wasn't like she needed any elaborate hoax to catch me. "How about you tell me who he is and where to find him?"

Susan shook her head. "I'm still working on that. I've got some suspicions, and you'll be the first to know if I'm right. But you ain't ready to face him yet. His magic makes him untouchable."

"So how do I beat him? I'm all about killing stuff."

"What? I'm supposed to do all the work?" Susan's sultry laugh was creepy. "I don't know exactly. You'll need to figure that out yourself."

"Well, fat lot of good you vampires are."

"Stuff it." She reached into the fold of her dress and produced a small white handkerchief. "As you surely know by now, since you survived Koriniha's little test, you're a very special man, Owen. Only one human born every five hundred years has the gifts you do. I know more about you than you do about yourself. Ray has been doing research again…"

"Last time he did that he almost sucked Alabama into another dimension. You sure you want to let him do that?"

"Hey, I'm a pro," Ray said, in mock embarrassment. "I was still learning then."

Susan ignored us. "He thinks you'll be able to destroy the necromancer. You have abilities beyond your understanding." She unwrapped the small package and dropped a tiny object into her palm. Her bright red nails curled around it like a Venus flytrap. "I'm going to give you a present, a little something to unlock your true potential. That way when you face the Old Ones' pet magician again, you'll be able to finish him and do us both a favor. Understand?"

"What is it?" I asked hesitantly. I knew a little bit about my abilities, and though I didn't understand them, I knew enough to be deathly afraid of them.

She opened her hand. There was a tiny sliver in her palm, a rock chip. It began to emit a faint glow, reflecting on her pale skin. Then it seemed to pulse as a bit of living darkness flashed across it. Recoiling, I fell off the bed and crashed into the bars. I pushed against one of the prisoners and whoever it was scurried away from me.

"Keep it away!" I shouted. I don't know how she got a piece of Koriniha's artifact, but I recognized it immediately for what it was. I felt it. The Kumaresh Yar. It existed before our world. It exists to destroy our world, but to be used to its full potential, it needs to be activated by someone like me. And now a piece of it was here, dangerously close.

I was shaking. "You don't know how dangerous it is, to everybody, everything. I can't use that thing. I'll kill us all."

"Don't worry. This is only a small fragment. Ray's worked some spells on it, so it should be safe…mostly. I'm gonna use this to help you," Susan said. I blinked and she was standing, hovering over me, the tiny shard of the dreaded artifact of the Old Ones held out like a talisman only inches away. "Ray's research says that this probably won't kill you, but it will put you in touch with a little bit of that power you experienced before. The last thing I want to do is make a Hunter stronger, but you're my best bet to get rid of this necromancer."

Ray suddenly twitched, looking at the ceiling. "Better hurry, dear. We've got company coming. Sounds like the Feds."

"I hear them," she answered. She pushed the shard toward my forehead. I tried to swat her arm away. I might as well have been hitting the bars of the cell. I shoved as hard as I could, but she was far stronger than I was. She ignored the flying fists, intent on her mission. "Don't worry, honey, this won't hurt a bit."

"No!" The tiny chunk of the Kumaresh Yar touched my skin. The world exploded in pain. Black lightning crackled across Section Six and sparked across the chain link. It was as if someone had driven a glowing-hot ice pick through my brain, and then twisted until it pierced out the base of my skull. I screamed as a cascade of strange visions tore through my mind, pummeling me with disjointed alien memories.

Something inside of me woke up.

Fueled by the artifact, I struck Susan. This time it had the desired effect. She flew back and crashed into the bars. The pain and pressure subsided. I rolled onto my side, limp, eyelids heavy, barely able to breathe.

"Hot damn!" Susan exclaimed. She had left a human-shaped impression in the iron. Most of the prisoners were openly crying for their mothers now. The last of the rampant black electricity dissipated, but left a smell in the air like a chemical fire. Susan rotated her neck and arms as the bones knit back together. "That was unexpected."

"Told you it would work," Ray said smugly. "Now let's go. Feds are almost here, and I ain't up to taking on somebody like Agent Franks."

Susan held up one hand to silence her husband. She rewrapped the shard and put it away. I no longer had the strength to hold up my head, and it slowly flopped to the concrete. I watched as her high heels clicked toward me. She stopped and squatted down. I felt her nails caress the back of my neck. She bent down and her cold lips pressed against my ear. Her voice was barely a whisper. "One last thing. The thing that saved Julie, the Guardian's mark on her neck. You know that it'll eventually kill her, don't you? It's from the other side, where everything comes with a price. When that time comes, my earlier offer stands. When either of you is ready for immortality, call my name and I'll be there. That's what family is for."

I struggled to keep my eyes open. So weak…so very cold. I could barely move. Susan kissed me gently on the top of my head.

"So what about dinner?" Ray sounded petulant.

"This one here smells disease-free. Grab him. Let's go."

The last thing I heard before the darkness came was Steve screaming for somebody to help him.

My strength gradually returned. Feeling tingled back into my limbs. Fighting back waves of nausea and dizziness, I pushed myself to my hands and knees. What had Susan done to me? The bars of my cell had been bent wide open so Ray could extract Steve alive. Perhaps if I hurried, a part of me thought, maybe I could save him. The logical part of my brain already knew the truth. He was long gone. The temperature was already returning to normal.

One Ear grabbed me by the arm. "The devil took him! Poor Esteban. You brought this on us!" He cocked one meaty fist back to pummel me. I was too weak to defend myself. The prisoner flinched as a shot rang out. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling. One Ear raised his open hands over his head as multiple flashlight beams converged on us.

"I may not speak the language, but I'm assuming a 10mm into the ceiling is pretty universal for cut it out." The voice spoke in clearly enunciated English.

Squinting into the super-bright weapon-mounted lights, I could make out several dark shapes. "Myers? Is that you?"

"I'm afraid so. You're coming with us, Pitt. Consider yourself extradited. Okay, men, fall back. Watch out, vampires on premises."

Gloved hands grabbed me by each arm and dragged me out of the cell. Flashlight beams stabbed in every direction as more armed men formed a perimeter around me. Their uniforms consisted of black body armor and every bit of high-tech tactical gear known to man. Feds. Not Federales, but rather United States federal agents, specifically the men of the Monster Control Bureau of the U.S. Department of Justice. Deadly professionals, every last one, and you would be hard pressed to find a bigger bunch of assholes.

"Pitt, what's your status?" Special Agent Myers snapped. Unlike the other Feds, Myers was wearing his standard uniform of a cheap suit and skinny tie. No matter how important a lawman he was, and last I had heard, he was the interim director of the whole top-secret agency, he would always look like a junior college English professor to me.

"Susan and Ray Shackleford are here," I gasped. Myers and I had a bit of history. He and his partner, Agent Franks, had been the representatives of the government who had visited me in the hospital after my very first monster encounter. They had threatened my life if I didn't keep quiet that day, and they had come very close to fulfilling that promise on a few other occasions. I suppose you could say that I did not have a very good working relationship with the government.

Myers spoke into his radio. "We've recovered the target, all teams return to extract. We have at least two vampires. One Master. Repeat one Master. The dark-haired female Caucasian is the Master. The large white-haired male is the lesser, but is still very dangerous. If you see her, do not hesitate, because she sure won't." He stepped past the corpse that Ray had pulled through the bars. There was still some residual twitching. The agents pulling me along slipped as their boots lost traction in the spreading puddle of blood.

I never thought that I would think of these guys as a sight for sore eyes. "Glad to see you too, Myers," I said cheerfully.

"Shut up. You have no idea how much trouble you've caused me." Myers sounded frustrated. My legs were starting to wobble less, so I tried to walk rather than be baggage. The Feds just kept on pulling. "I was sent to find you at the resort, but when I arrived, there had been a zombie outbreak. I found your team, but they had no idea where you were. It took a lot of diplomatic work to track you here. And then we roll up to find this mess. You're not an easy man to find."

Why had Myers been looking for me?

The hallway outside Section Six was splattered with the bodies of dead guards. Even as jaded as I am to this kind of thing, I had to look away. These people had done nothing to deserve the vampires' wrath. The Feds kept Myers and me in the center of a protective diamond formation as we hurried outward. The Fed on point led us quickly through the maze of winding passages. There were many confused survivors, guards, loose prisoners, and staff all wandering around in the dark, but nobody challenged the squadron of well armed Americans. Good thing too, because I had seen how trigger-happy the Monster Control Bureau was.

The courtyard was engulfed in chaos. One guard tower was on fire. The main truck gate was wide open, with one of the heavy gates lying broken and splintered in the road. Denim-clad prisoners were running out the opening and fleeing into the dark. Torn shapes sat in the moonlight or dangled from the razor-wire fence. Those must have been the men who had tried to stop Susan.

Three black Suburbans were parked directly in front of the exit, engines running. A large man in drab black armor was waiting for us, a stubby F2000 rifle looking tiny in his massive arms. The man was broad and muscled like an NFL linebacker. He was a frightening apparition. Something about this particular Fed emanated a nonchalant capacity to deliver unbelievable pain. His dark face scowled from under a pair of night vision goggles when he saw me being dragged out of the building.

"Franks, my brother, what's up?" I shouted. Special Agent Franks of the Monster Control Bureau particularly seemed to hate my guts. On the day that it becomes expedient for the government to end my life, I somehow know that it will be Agent Franks who'll get the job.

"Too bad," he muttered.

"What's too bad?" I asked as the Feds shoved me through the open door of the waiting Suburban.

"We got here in time." He slammed the door after me.

Chapter 3

"Owen!"

I blinked my bleary eyes as they tried to adjust to the lighted interior of the Suburban. Suddenly I was squished against the door as someone hugged me tight.

"Julie?" She was as beautiful as ever. I hadn't been exaggerating when I had described her to my poor dead cellmate. Tall, brunette, gorgeous, way smarter than I am, talented, and tough as nails. Julie is the spitting image of her mother, only alive and not filled with soul-crushing evil. "Oh, man! I'm sure glad to see you." I hugged her and ran a filthy hand across her cheek. Being a tough guy, I tried not to cry like a sissy in front of the federal agents. She held me tight. She must have thought that she had lost me. I sure did hate that feeling.

She tilted her head back and kissed me. Man, I'm glad to be out of jail. Finally she broke away, removed her glasses and wiped a tiny bit of moisture from her eyes. "You taste like chemicals."

"Lice powder. What's going on?"

"I should ask you that. What happened at the resort? There were zombies, and then you disappeared, and then the Feds showed up looking for you."

"It's complicated, I'll try to explain, but is the team okay? And what are you doing with these guys?"

"Everybody's fine. I made Myers bring me when I found out he was looking for you. Oh, Owen, I'm just glad you're safe."

The driver's side door opened and Agent Franks squeezed his bulk behind the wheel. Myers slid into the passenger side. The interior light died when he closed the door. Myers turned to face us over the seat.

"You didn't make me do anything. I let you come," he snapped.

"I hoped we could use her to ID your body," Franks said emotionlessly. That made two complete sentences in one night, which was pretty good for Franks. Sadly, both of them had something to do with wishing for my death. I suppose I just have that effect on some people. Franks slammed the big vehicle into gear and gunned it out through the gate in a spray of gravel. Prisoners caught in the headlights had to jump out of the way to avoid being run down. Myers turned back around and spoke into his radio, ordering the other two vehicles to watch for an ambush. The gates of Tijira Prison faded into the background.

"And the zombie outbreak? Did we get it contained in time?" I had to know. It was stupid, but I felt like it was my fault.

"There were only a few more casualties after you were arrested. A Girls Gone Wild video crew had their brains eaten…so no significant losses," Myers stated.

"What happened? How did you end up here?" Julie asked. "And what happened to your head? That lump is huge."

"Shotgun butt." I dismissed it with a wave. Unfortunately for me, traumatic brain injuries were a relatively common occurrence. "I'll explain later. I saw your mom and dad."

"What?" Julie's voice rose an octave. "Here? Now?" She turned and watched out the window. "Not again…" Normally Julie's Alabama accent was very faint, except for when she got excited, or in this case, scared. Susan and Ray would be a dark spot in our life until they finally got staked and chopped.

"I think they're gone for now." I put my arm over her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. "I'll fill you in on what they said, but I don't want these pricks to hear." She nodded and her hand moved to the black mark on the side of her neck, an unconscious habit that she had picked up when she was under a great deal of stress. To most people, the mark looked like a thick, black, line tattoo. In actuality it was something entirely different. Susan's parting words had been about how the mark that had saved Julie was going to eventually kill her. Not if I can help it.

"Pitt, at the resort, did you see him?" Myers queried, back to business.

"Him who?" I decided to play stupid. I knew that the Feds had not rescued me out of the goodness of their hearts and I wanted to know why.

"The leader of the Condition. The necromancer."

"English guy, turns into a giant shadow when the lights go out, throws toilets at people, that one?"

Myers got excited. "Did you see his face?"

"A little, but it was dark."

"I'll have you talk to a sketch artist on the flight home. You're now the only person we know of who has seen him in person."

"What's the Condition?" Julie asked.

"The Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. They're a death cult. A real bunch of nut-job whackos. They've been around forever, but only over the last year have they really shown up on our radar. The man who attacked you, he's their leader."

"A church? Why don't you just go burn their compound down? You guys are Feds after all."

Myers either didn't get the jab, or he chose to ignore it. "We would if we could. But the Condition is good. They work in cells. Their higher-level operatives are known as the Exalted Order of the Shadows. We can't isolate their leaders, or even most of their ranking members. As far as we can tell they're dabbling in some real hard-core black magic. And they're connected…businessmen, politicians, the media, even movie stars. This cult is now our number one priority."

"Let me guess. They worship the Old Ones?"

"Yes. And they're out to get you specifically," he said, pausing briefly in thought. "How did you know that they were connected to those things?"

I didn't say anything.

Myers turned around and glared at me. "Look, Pitt, if you have information, you need to share it. These guys are bad news, their leader is secret enemy number one, and right now I'm your best chance to survive them." He tried to look friendly, and mostly failed. "I know that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but I'm trying to help you here."

"Why?"

"That's our job. We're supposed to protect and defend the taxpayers." He smiled, and in the dark I wasn't sure if the government man or Susan had been more intimidating, but for totally different reasons. One because it represented a soulless entity with the power to suck the very blood from the innocent, and the other because it was a vampire. The Suburban continued to accelerate down the rutted road.

"Bullshit."

Myers shrugged. He was smart enough not to waste his time. "All right, let me level with you. You are currently our only in against this cult. Just about everybody we've tried to infiltrate has ended up zombified or worse. I've finally got a man inside, but he's low on their totem pole and they won't reveal anything to him. We can't get any of the known members to turn snitch, and if they seem to think about it, they're never seen again. But the Condition's fixated on you, and through you, it gives us a way to capture some of them for questioning."

I put my face in my palm. "Oh, come on. Why does everything seem to have it in for me personally?" I figured I knew why I was the target of the Old Ones. I had been responsible for thwarting their invasion, but the Feds did not know that. I was sure of that much, because if the Feds knew what I had pulled off, up to and including time travel, then I had no doubt that my brain would be sitting a glass jar in some government lab being poked with electrodes to see how it worked.

"About that…" Myers looked away, a little sheepish. "Sorry."

I'd screwed up their invasion plans by not falling in line. I had no idea what Myers had to be sorry about. "Huh?"

"It was a misunderstanding," he said. I waited for the explanation. Myers took his time, actually seeming a bit embarrassed. "See, when MHI was fighting Lord Machado's minions, we decided to play it safe…So we…kind of…dropped a nuke on the area."

"You did what?" Julie shouted. "You tried to nuke Alabama?"

"Only a little one. It was for the best," he said defensively. "We didn't think you were going to succeed. I was certain that the bad guys were going to win, and I couldn't allow that. You know what would have happened then."

"Gee whiz, thanks, Myers. I was right there, and I didn't see a mushroom cloud, so I'm assuming you screwed up."

He shrugged. "When the bomb struck, the rift had already been opened. It passed through cleanly and detonated on the other side, inside the Old Ones' reality. It must have made them angry and from what our intel is telling us, it even hurt the big cheese of Old Ones. For some reason they think that you're the one that sent the weapon…Hence, the interdimensional hit out for you. Sorry."

"I don't think sorry covers the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, jackass." No wonder the Old Ones were blaming me. Not only had I wrecked their invasion, they also thought that I had attacked them in their own world as well. I've made a lot of people angry throughout the course of my life, but I'd never hit a 10,000-foot-tall crustacean with an atom bomb before.

"So, what now?" Julie snapped. "We just wait for this cult to come and kill my fiancé? I don't think so."

Myers shook his head. "We're going to fly you home. I want you to go about your business, and wait for the cult to make their move. I'll provide a protective detail to guard you, and when the cult strikes, we'll be ready."

"Why don't I just go hide out somewhere? Lay low for a while?" It was a rhetorical question. I was not the running type.

"They'll find you. The Condition aren't normal nut jobs. Unfortunately the stuff they believe in actually works. No. I want you in the open. And they are going to have to crawl out from under their rock to get you, and when they do…" Myers' slammed his fist into his palm. It was actually not a very intimidating mannerism from a person who looked like a junior college English professor.

"So after they kill me, you swoop in and arrest them?"

Franks finally spoke. "They won't kill you."

"And why not?"

Franks didn't answer. Myers patted the terse man on the shoulder. "You'll be safe because you'll be under the personal protection of my best men, led by Agent Franks himself. His primary mission is to keep you alive."

The very idea was preposterous. Franks? Protecting me? "Screw that," I sputtered. "I'll take my chance with the zombies."

"I've never failed a mission," Franks said simply.

"And what about the Natchy Bottom?"

"Doesn't count," Franks replied. I saw his cold eyes flick to the rearview mirror. He watched me for a moment before returning his attention to the road. Franks had gotten just as dead as the rest of us before I had managed to erase five minutes of time. He had put up an amazing fight and had taken inhuman amounts of damage before going down, but he had still lost.

"I can protect myself," I stated.

"MHI can protect him," Julie added. "We're better at this than you federal guys anyway."

"Civilians," Franks muttered as he swung the wheel hard and took a sharp right onto a less traveled road. I didn't know if he meant us or the other drivers.

"You don't have a choice. Your country needs you, Pitt," Myers said.

"Needs me as bait! I'm not down with that. Get yourself a different worm for that hook, Myers. I don't trust your people at all. And it'll be a cold day in hell before I put my life in the hands of that jackbooted thug." I gestured angrily at Franks. The big agent ignored me.

"You're going to let us protect you from the Condition, or we will make life very difficult for MHI. If you think you had it bad last time around, just push me and see what happens this time," Myers threatened. "You've used up your political goodwill from last summer, Harbinger isn't Congress' golden boy anymore, and my agency has been moved from Justice to Homeland Security."

"Didn't know that…" Julie said. Top-secret, shadow-government reorganizations didn't usually end up in the papers.

"Which means I'm now authorized to screw with your company more than ever before." Myers had once been a member of Monster Hunter International before he had left and joined the government. I did not know what had caused him to leave, but he certainly packed a bitter hate for us ever since. MHI had been shut down once before by executive order and I knew that some factions of the government were just itching for us to give them an excuse to do it again. "I'm prepared to take this all the way. Are you? Think on it."

Julie muttered something profane about Myers' ancestry under her breath. We both knew the senior Fed wasn't bluffing. The dark Mexican countryside flashed by outside the window as I glared at my reflection. This certainly sucked. In the previous twenty-four hours I had been attacked by a shadow necromancer and his zombies, beaten by Federales, deloused, visited by vampires, reunited with a shard of the most evil artifact in the known world, been targeted by a death cult, and had it topped off by being placed under the protection of a man who could best be described as not a member of the Owen Z. Pitt fan club.

No one spoke for a long time. Finally Myers turned back around to watch the road, knowing in his little black bureaucrat's heart that he had us beat. Julie rested her head on my shoulder. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. We had faced worse together.

Or so I thought.

"What's on your mind?" I asked quietly.

Julie had pulled me aside once we had disembarked at the small airport. A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules was refueling nearby, and soon we would be on our way back to the States. The night sky was bright under the nearly full moon and I could make out the shape of Agent Franks shadowing us thirty feet away. He was scanning the chain link fence, looking for anything moving in the desert scrub. The man certainly took his job seriously. They were running some sort of loud compressor near the aircraft, so I wasn't worried about him overhearing us. Julie and I stood in the darkness behind a diminutive aircraft hangar while we talked about the day's events.

"This is crap," she hissed. "I'm so sick and tired of the Feds." She was obviously upset, and her pretty features were drawn into a hard scowl.

"And…" I prompted. I knew her too well. There was obviously something else.

She grimaced. "And what the hell were my parents doing here? I hate to say it, but when they offered a truce, I actually believed it. If they ever did anything against us, Earl would make it his life's work to track them down. I at least thought they had the sense of self-preservation to avoid that."

"Believe it or not, I think the truce is still in effect…" I briefly explained the nature of Susan's visit, but I'm ashamed to say that I held something back. I did not mention Susan's promise that Julie was going to die from the mark. I felt bad for withholding information, and I would tell her, but just not yet. For all I knew, Susan was lying, scheming, trying to find some way to unite more of her family into her dark world, the evil bitch.

"A shard of the artifact? How? It disappeared in Childersburg. I always assumed that the Feds got it when they cordoned off the area. How did my mom end up with part of it?"

I shrugged. "Beats me. All I know is that it hurt like hell when she touched me with it. I'm scared to death of that thing."

"Do you think…" She searched for the words. "Could it be starting again?"

"I don't know," I answered. I hugged her tight. I was terrified of the things that artifact had done, and could do, and more especially, what it allowed me to do. I'd rather kill myself than risk turning those things loose. "I just don't know."

"Oh, Owen…I've got a bad feeling about this. I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm not going anywhere. I promise." Saying that made me think of another promise. "I lost my gear. The pistols you gave me…your brother's pistols. They meant a lot-"

She stopped me flat. "We can replace the guns. I can't replace you."

Franks shouted at us, "It's time." As if to accentuate his words, the big engines turned over and the props began to roar.

"He's such an asshole." Julie mumbled into my shoulder. She pushed slowly away, and we started toward the waiting plane. "Speaking of which…" She raised her voice, "Agent Franks!"

The Fed nodded in her direction.

"At DeSoya Caverns, last summer, I asked if you had taken care of my father, I asked if you had let him turn into a vampire, and if you had let him escape. Since Owen just saw him, I'm assuming that you lied to me." Julie was intimidating when she was angry.

I don't think Franks' brain was wired with the capability of being intimidated. Franks shrugged. "Classified," he said simply, turned and walked toward the plane.

"Oh, hanging out with him is just going to be a blast, won't it?" she asked.

"And for a while there I thought that me and Franks had come to terms…" We walked under the runway lights. The C-130 was drastically loud. The other Feds were carrying their gear up the loading ramp.

"Mr. Pitt? Ms. Shackleford?" A black-clad agent approached us. He had removed his helmet and balaclava and had tucked them under one arm. This one was young, and seemed friendly enough. His skin was deeply tanned, his neatly buzzed hair black, and his eyes twinkled when he smiled. There was a squat but heavy-looking duffle bag slung over one shoulder. He shouted to be heard over the engines. "I'm Agent Torres. I'm on your protective detail. It's an honor to meet you." He held out one gloved hand, and surprised, I shook it. It was not normal for the Feds to be nice to MHI personnel.

"You must be new," I shouted.

"Yes. Just assigned to the Bureau. I came over from Border Patrol." He shook Julie's hand as well, and his face betrayed his surprise at the impressive strength in her handshake. I had had that reaction the first time I met her as well. "Ms. Shackleford, I read up on your family in the Monster Control academy. Wow, all I can say is, wow…You guys are amazing. Your great-grandfather was one of the pioneers of Monster Hunting. This is a real honor."

"Well, thanks," Julie stammered. Apparently I wasn't the only one surprised at meeting a friendly agent. My usual encounters with them involved bullying, threats, intimidation, and the occasional fist fight.

He unslung the duffle bag and handed it to me. "I think this belongs to you."

The bag was as heavy as it looked. I unzipped it, peered inside, and was greeted with a wonderful sight. "Abomination!" I shouted. I put the bag down and pulled out my customized Saiga shotgun. I pulled back the charging handle to check the chamber and the bolt was as slick as ever. It was a brutal weapon, a shortened, full-auto, magazine-fed 12-gauge, complete with underslung 40mm grenade launcher, EO-Tech holographic optic, and-the pièce de résistance -a side-folding, silver-inlaid bayonet. Abomination and I had been through some serious things together. It wasn't just my gun, it was damn near my friend.

"And my STIs…And my armor!" I was really geeking out now. My two.45s, built originally for Julie's brother Ray, had been put back in their holsters. The only thing missing was my Ganga Ram, last seen lodged in a zombie's skull. "No freaking way. This is awesome." In my defense, you don't get very far in my line of work unless you really get to know and love your equipment. "I thought these babies were gone forever…how did you find them?"

Torres seemed rather proud of himself. "My team secured the perimeter at the prison. I found this bag in the hands of a fat Federale, dead in the parking lot. Looked like he was planning on taking these home, but he'd been ripped apart, you know, and the bag was open, and when I shined my light on it, I saw this." He pointed at the Happy Face patch. "And I've heard how hard it is to earn one of those! I figured if you were still alive, you were going to want your gear back." He shrugged. "No biggie."

I had to resist the urge to hug him. "Thanks, Agent Torres. I appreciate it."

"Consider it a professional courtesy. Hey, I'm going to help guard you for awhile. Just call me Anthony." He shook my hand again. "Really nice to meet you guys. I've got to go." He smiled, waved, looking almost like an embarrassed teenager, and ran to rejoin his team on the ramp.

I turned to look at Julie. She was as perplexed as I was. She mouthed the word "damn." I put Abomination back in the bag and zipped it shut. When I picked up the duffle, the weight seemed familiar and reassuring.

"Maybe this won't be as bad as we thought," I said. "I didn't know the Monster Control Bureau employed anybody nice."

"He must have slipped past Human Resources."

Cazador, Alabama. Population 682. A pretty much run-of-the-mill little village nestled deep in the woods south of Montgomery. A quick drive through town-and there was no such thing as a long drive through Cazador-wouldn't reveal much except the catfish plant, a few stores, and a pair of churches. But a few miles out of town was the headquarters compound of Monster Hunter International. The main office building was two stories on the surface, and built like a medieval fortress. From the air it looked like a wide, squat bullfrog. The other buildings were spread out-a hangar for our plane and chopper, the sunk-in bunker that was the armory, Milo's prefab workshop, the body shack, and a handful of small buildings that served as the barracks for the Newbie training classes. A tall, chain link fence which was topped with razor wire and coated with kudzu enclosed an area largely made up of bulldozer-pushed berms of red clay soil. MHI's shooting range facilities were top notch.

The Air Force plane came in low over the thick forest surrounding the compound. For a brief instant I saw Skippy's village flash by underneath, then the mostly hidden homes were gone. Seconds later the tires chirped as we hit runway.

"Hey!" the Fed shouted. His voice sounded nasal through the intercom headset. "Mr. Pitt. Pay attention."

"Huh?" I glanced away from the window. The sun was rising, and the view had been nice. The Fed showed me his laptop screen with a picture of the man who had attacked me at the resort: a lean face, square jaw, intense eyes, short hair. "Yep, that's pretty close."

The agent swiveled the laptop back so he could look at the screen. "What about it isn't right?"

"I don't know. It was dark, and he was beating the living hell out of me." Plus it was hard to explain that I had not seen a soul inside when I had looked through the man's eyes. How exactly do you convey that to a sketch artist? "Besides the little demon-leech monster thingy that crawled out his mouth, that's good enough."

The C-130 rolled to a stop near our hangar. I removed the ice pack from my swollen forehead and unbuckled my harness. The Monster Control Bureau had been nice enough to clean my cuts, wrap my ankle, and provide some pain-killers. I was in a pretty happy place. Yep, the government issues good pain-killers. The drugs had even made the uncomfortable web seats, temperature swings, and noise bearable.

The hydraulics that powered the loading ramp made a truly impressive amount of noise as it was lowered to the ground. Most of the agents were already standing, preparing to exit the plane. Many of them looked slightly nervous. The last time they had been here had been to secure the compound and arrest Julie and me. In the aftermath many of them had gotten royally beaten by a slightly perturbed Earl Harbinger. I recognized a few of them, including one agent who had a slightly crooked nose. If I recalled correctly, I think that I might have given him that nose. He scowled at me, then flipped me the bird, low enough that I would see, but that it wouldn't come to Myers' or Franks' attention. Yep. That would be the guy. Grabbing my bag, I stood and headed for the ramp. Julie was right behind me. We would be damned if we waited for the government men.

A few Hunters were already waiting for us on the tarmac. Earl Harbinger still appeared to be in his forties, and I knew that if I died of old age, by that time he might look fifty. Wearing that same old leather bomber jacket that was like an MHI fixture, Earl stood stiffly, his arms folded in front of his chest, his cold blue eyes examining the plane and its occupants. He was really just an average-looking guy, not big, not particularly intimidating in any physical way, but he emanated a certain old-school toughness, a wily competence that smelled of tobacco smoke and pure animal cunning. Earl Harbinger was not a man to trifle with, and that was only taking into account his human side.

Trip Jones stared grimly at the descending ramp, his dark features drawn into an intense frown. Normally Trip was probably the happiest, most easygoing and likable person whom I had ever known, but his last encounter with Feds had involved a massive beatdown, with him being on the receiving end of the beating, so he was understandingly distrusting. Trip was from Florida, Jamaican by ethnicity, devout Baptist by belief, and MHI moral compass by default. Trip was our Samaritan, our good guy, if you will. He was a Hunter because he was innately a hero. Comparing myself to my friend always made me feel guilty because I knew that I could never be the kind of man that he was.

Holly Newcastle could best be described as hot, both in looks and temperament. Fiery by nature, always looking something like a villainess from a Bond movie. Only a fool would underestimate her. Our former stripper liked to play up the dumb blond angle whenever it was convenient, but she was sharp as a tack, mean as hell, and probably the most merciless Hunter I knew. She regarded the plane with a mischievous grin. If Trip was a Hunter because he was a hero, Holly was a Hunter because it was the best legal avenue she had to inflict violence on the forces of evil, and she was damn good at it.

Earl's face lit up when he saw Julie and me coming down the ramp. After Susan had disappeared and Ray had gone into seclusion, Earl had been like a father to Julie and her brothers. The man looked relieved, yet exhausted, but he always looked tired the next few days after a full moon. Being locked in a concrete cell while you attack the walls in a psychotic rage all night will do that to you. He gave Julie a quick hug.

"Jules, Owen, welcome back…" He stuck out his hand and shook mine with his standard eye-watering and bone-crushing grip. Trip and Holly descended on me, clapping me on the back and demanding to know what had happened. The three of us had started out in the same class of Newbies, so we had been through some crazy things together. It was good to be among friends again. Other Hunters approached in the distance, drawn to the commotion and the sight of the massive plane. A lone figure, dressed from head to toe in black, watched from near the hangar. He waved awkwardly when he saw me, then slunk back into the building as the Feds disembarked. Skippy did not like crowds, or most people for that matter, but especially hated anyone from the government. The Feds clustered around the ramp, bunched up, checking out the compound, a few of the experienced ones no doubt taking stock for the day when the political winds changed and they finally got the order to shut us down by any means necessary.

The plane's engines died and the runway was suddenly very quiet. The two groups stood separated, like the freshmen boys and girls at a high school dance. Finally Myers and Franks broke away and crossed the divide. Myers' imitation-silk tie flapped over his shoulder in the wind. The two stopped in front of Earl. Nobody offered to shake hands.

"Earl…" Myers said.

"Well, if it isn't Special Agent Dwayne Myers," Earl responded, just oozing contempt. Myers' first name was Dwayne? I learned something new every day."And his faithful sidekick, Mongo." The quiet brute nodded slightly. I did not think Franks actually liked anyone, but he did seem to slightly respect those who might present a challenge in a physical confrontation. Now, Harbinger versus Franks? I would pay serious money to watch that one because I didn't care how tough the Fed was, I'm pretty sure if he caught Earl in a bad mood, they would have to scrape Franks up and carry him out in a couple trash bags.

"I'm guessing you got the call?" the senior agent queried. Myers' voice and attitude was cold. I knew that he despised Harbinger, as Myers used to work for him, and though I did not know the specifics, I certainly knew that there was some bad history between the two.

"I did. And I don't like it one bit. Are all these"-Harbinger gestured contemptuously toward the Feds-"the ‘protective detail'? Because if you're going for subtle, that ain't it."

"No. I'm leaving four handpicked agents. They'll shadow Pitt and try to look like your people…so sloppy…and unprofessional. The rest of us will be on standby. We'll be staging out of Montgomery until this is resolved. I'm expecting MHI's full assistance. The legality of continued private Monster Hunting is coming under congressional review next session and you wouldn't want me to testify that you didn't want to cooperate."

"Oh, we're the spirit of cooperation…So now why don't you take your goons and get the hell off my land?"

"Believe me, I can't wait. But take this. You should at least know what you're up against." Myers held out a manila folder. "I don't think you realize the magnitude of the threat that's coming for you."

It was hard to believe that Myers had once been one of us. The very thought made me cringe. I reached for the folder, and as I did so my fingertips touched the agent's thumb. Black lightning crashed behind my eyes.

I was sitting on a wooden bench. The delicious smell of sizzling beef drifted from the nearby barbeque. It was nearing sundown, and the heat had broken under the soft Alabama breeze. Fireflies danced in the nearby forest.

"Dwayne, how do you want your burger?"

"Medium," I answered without hesitation.

"Gotcha…" Big Ray Shackleford answered as he squished the patties with a spatula. "Honey?" The flames hissed as the grease dripped through the grill.

"Rare. No, super rare." Susan Shackleford was sitting on a lawn chair to my right. She sighed as she tried to get comfortable. She was eight months' pregnant and having a hard time. I tried not to stare at Susan. Even heavy with child, she was still the best-looking woman I had ever known, but she was also my best friend's wife. "On second thought…How about you just kind of warm up the outside?"

"Can do." Ray took a second to wipe his meaty hands on his apron and then took a long pull from his beer. He set it down with a satisfied grunt. Ray cut an imposing figure, big, muscular, confident, pretty much everything that I wasn't. "Earl? Dorcas?"

"Rare." Harbinger was sitting at the picnic table. I was still intimidated by my boss, but now that he had picked me to be on his team and had let me in on the family secret, I felt much more comfortable in his presence.

"Medium, Ray. And I mean medium. Not all black and crispy. Don't screw it up again. Damn boy, but I ain't never known nobody to burn up a good piece of meat like you."

Dorcas was also at the picnic table, busy cleaning her.45 Long Colt on top of a piece of newspaper. She was kind of like our mother figure. A bitter crone of a mother figure for sure, but I knew that she loved us in her own demented redneck way. "Damn, idiot. Should have let me cook."

"Yes, ma'am," Ray responded automatically. I don't think that I will ever get used to these Southerners and their incessant politeness to their elders. "Hood?"

"Well done, please." The voice came from behind me. Hood was the youngest member of the team, and supposedly I was his trainer. In actuality he was so on the ball that sometimes it was like he was teaching me. I had even overheard Harbinger talking about how he had never met somebody with a better gift for Monster Hunting. Not bad for a fat kid from Birmingham.

"Since you're the Newbie, you're lucky if you get grill scrapings." Ray laughed hard and drained the rest of his beer. "Julie! Get daddy another beer!"

"Okay!" the little girl shouted. She leapt gracefully off the nearby tire swing and ran for the house, her ponytail whipping behind her. She was only eight, but already I could tell that she was going to be the spitting image of her mom and sharp as her dad. That one was going to be a heartbreaker. She disappeared into the massive old plantation house with a slam of the screen door.

I glanced around at the other Monster Hunters. Grandpa Shackleford was engaged in an animated conversation with some other Hunters about how Ronald Reagan was the most pro-Monster Hunting president we'd had since Eisenhower. He kept swinging his hook for emphasis. That red-headed teenager that Earl had saved in Idaho recently, Milo, was doodling on some scrap of paper, probably about some other weird invention that he had come up with. A few others were drifting up, summoned by the smell of the barbeque, and Ray began to shout questions at each of them. The MHI staff were in a good mood, and rightly so. The case that we had just cracked had been a tough one, and we were feeling invincible.

"Yo, Myers," Ray said.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"We kicked some ass today, didn't we?"

I leaned back on the bench and stretched my bad arm. A vampire had wrecked my rotator cuff and ruined my shot at ever pitching in the majors, but if I hadn't had that encounter all those years ago, then I would never have gotten to become a part of this. I looked at the patch sewn on my sleeve as I turned my arm, just a little green happy face with horns. It wasn't much, but it meant a lot to me.

"We sure did, Ray. We sure did."

These people were my family.

"What are you staring at?" Myers asked me belligerently.

Reality came crashing back. Glancing around, runway, big airplane, my friends, and a bunch of scowling Feds, I was at the compound, out on the tarmac, but I had just been at a barbeque…at Julie's house, only it had been a long time ago…and I had been…Agent Myers? What the hell?"Nothing…"

Myers shook his head and released the folder, probably thinking that I was a complete moron. I must have been out of it for just a few seconds. "Like I was saying, you need to know what you're up against. Do you have someplace where we could talk in private?"

Harbinger nodded. "Let's go." He motioned to the main building. All of the Feds began to follow and he raised his hand. "No, just the protective detail. The rest of you assholes can stay on the plane." My boss didn't wait for any sort of disagreement, he just spun on his heel and led the way. I did note, however, that he was grinding his teeth together rather violently.

Still reeling from what had just happened, I reached out and grabbed Julie's hand. Nothing happened. No flash of black lightning, no visions. She looked at me strangely.

"Z, are you okay?" Holly asked me. "You look kind of flushed."

I shook my head. I couldn't say anything in front of the Feds, but the last time I had lived someone else's memories, Lord Machado's to be precise, it had been powered by the same artifact that Susan had just exposed me to again. "No, I'm fine. Must have been the flight…Let's get this over with."

Franks regarded me suspiciously as I walked after Harbinger and Myers. Finally, he nodded at three other agents. They picked up their gear and followed.

The group entered the main building, passing quickly through the entryway, as Earl was walking at a pace that indicated he wanted to get this done with. Agent Franks made note of the portcullis chained above us, almost approvingly.

"Welcome home, Z. Milo told me you'd killed yourself a mess of zombies," Dorcas, our secretary, receptionist, and semi-retired Hunter, said from behind her massive desk. She looked like a typical matronly Southern grandma, except for the Ruger Redhawk bulging from the shoulder holster underneath her knit sweater. "I can always count on you for a good killin' story or two, about the only entertainment I get around here nowadays."

"Yes, ma'am, I'll tell you all about it after this meeting."

When she spied the Feds coming up behind me, her smile vanished, and her eyes narrowed so dangerously that they turned into little slits. For a second it looked like she thought about going for that magnum. "Myers…" she spat.

"Dorcas," the senior Fed responded slowly.

"How's the traitor business treating you?"

Myers was unperturbed. "Good, good…How's your leg?"

"It's made of plastic. How'd you think it's doing?"

"Yes, of course…Forgot. See you around." Myers nodded smugly and followed Earl down the hallway. The hate-filled look that Dorcas cast after us almost peeled the paint off the walls. I paused for a moment. Our receptionist was usually cranky-hell, she was prepared to commit murder if any of the other employees messed with her lunch in the cafeteria fridge-but I had never seen her like that before.

I waited until the Feds were out of earshot. "What's that about?"

She sneered. "Old times…me and Judas there have a score to settle."

"What'd he do?"

"He saved my life…" Dorcas shook her head and went back to answering the phones. "Now get. I've got work to do."

I caught up with the others as they were entering the smaller conference room we had set aside on the first floor. It was going to be a tight fit, but apparently Harbinger didn't want to give the Feds access to the nicer room on the second floor. Myers had stopped Earl in the hallway right in front of the wall of silver memorial plaques and was speaking. "Just you, Shackleford, and Pitt. I have some very sensitive information, and it's on a need-to-know basis. My men will stay out here."

"Negative." My boss gestured at Trip and Holly. "They're on my personal team. Anything you can say to me, you can say to them."

"Your team?" Myers grew furious. His face turned red and he raised his voice. "The great Earl Harbinger? Not keeping secrets from his team? That's new." It was a surprising change in demeanor. The small man went to the memorial wall and started scanning back through the names, obviously looking for one in particular. He finally found the one he wanted, chronologically over a dozen deaths before the large number from the Christmas Party of '95, and stabbed his finger into it. "No secrets? So, you've told your team about Marty then?"

Earl did not respond for several seconds. All the Feds except for Franks appeared surprised at their commander's sudden emotional outburst. Franks looked bored. The Hunters were confused. Finally my boss sighed, apparently not prepared to debate the point. It was shocking to see him back down on his own turf. "You two, wait outside. Don't let these guys touch anything," He pointed at the rest of the protective detail. Trip and Holly knew not to argue. They stepped aside.

I stopped to read the indicated plaque as the others entered the conference room. The plaque had a small picture of a young man with a sly grin on his chubby face.

A. Martin Hood

1/14/1960-10/17/1986

Nothing really set it apart from the other four hundred and some-odd other plaques on the wall. I went into the meeting.

Chapter 4

Franks and Myers sat on one side of the table, Earl, Julie, and I on the other. The senior Fed still seemed uncharacteristically angry. He gestured to the folder that he had given me. "Open it."

"Why the secrecy?" Julie asked.

"Open it," Myers repeated. I dropped it on the table between us and flipped through the thick stack of papers. The top sheet was a sketch artist's interpretation of the shadow man from the flight home. "The Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition, or Condition for short, was founded ten years ago," Myers stated, as if he had given this briefing a few times. "They didn't come up on our radar for a while. We thought they were just another bunch of scam artists taking money from gullible morons, until they released this…" He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Harbinger.

"A proclamation heralding the return of the Old Ones…" Earl frowned, "It's a bunch of crap about welcoming our new overlords back to Earth." He held up the paper, "And a really bad drawing of some sort of sky squid." I had seen that particular shape once before, while my disembodied spirit slugged it out with Lord Machado for control of space and time, only the picture didn't do it justice. In real life the Dread Overlord was as big across as ten aircraft carriers parked in a line.

"Check the date." Franks spoke for the first time.

Julie leaned in to see. "That was printed two days before Lord Machado tried to use the artifact in Childersburg, one day before we got killed in Natchy Bottom…So, they knew beforehand?"

"Yes, and once the whole world got to travel through time for five minutes, it really helped the Condition's recruiting," Myers said. I was still really glad that the government didn't know that was my fault. "They're growing, and the word is out that their leader, this guy"-Myers tapped the artist's rendition of the shadow man-"is building an army to help prepare the Earth for the Old Ones' return. Monster Control Bureau agents were sent to investigate, but we've had almost no luck and I've lost some good men. The Condition is brutal, devious, and their magic actually works, so our intel is extremely limited."

"Who are they?" Julie asked.

Myers picked out another sheet. "These are some of the members we know about, but they're just useful idiots, celebrities and suckers they're scamming money off of to fund their operations. We've investigated them thoroughly. As usual, they don't have a clue what they're into. Publically, the Condition is just another oddball religion. They preach about ending the greedy tyranny of man and building a perfect utopia on Earth, under the wise leadership of the benevolent Old Ones, of course."

My side of the table gave a collective snort. We'd all dealt with those things before.

"I take it you can understand why my superiors are so concerned. This church has been recruiting monsters, various types of undead, and they even found a shoggoth somewhere."

Earl picked up the picture of the Englishman. "So I take it you can't find this asshole?"

"They call him their Shadow Lord. He's an enigma. All of their leadership is cloaked in secrecy. Finding him is where Pitt comes in. They'll be forced to send some of their operatives to get him, and when they do, we'll take them. My orders are to shut this church down, no matter what. I just need an in."

"What? Worshipping giant space mollusks that want to enslave humanity isn't cool? What's next, you guys going to pick on the Scientologists?" I asked sarcastically.

"I'm sensing some serious First Amendment issues on this one," Julie offered.

"ACLU's gonna be pissed," Harbinger responded.

I laughed. Franks leaned forward, flipped through the stack, and pulled out a glossy crime-scene photo. He shoved it at me. It was, or had been, a woman. She had been brutally torn to bits. The laughter died off.

"Oh…That's terrible," Julie said.

"That was our last undercover agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the Condition, Special Agent Ashley Patterson. They left her on the front steps of her kids' day care like that," Myers said. "She was still living at the time this picture was taken. They used necromancy so she could suffer longer than was humanly possible."

Ouch. I had seen a lot of terrible things in the last year, but that made even my stomach lurch. That was a whole new level of cruel.

"Friend of mine…" Franks stated.

It was a somber moment, but that idea just struck me as odd. "You have friends?" I blurted.

Franks scowled at me but Myers continued. "Agent Patterson did find this." The next picture appeared to be of a large piece of pink skin that had been engraved with a knife or something to leave very crude writing. "Apparently you can't just send a message from the other side. They had to slice the note onto one of their living minions and then launch it through a portal. It can be very messy."

"Gross." Julie adjusted her glasses and tried to make out the words carved on the piece of meat. "To all minions of…I can't make out the next word…Overlord? Find and utterly destroy the human Hunter known as…Owen Zastava Pitt…"

"What!" I exclaimed. "Let me see that…" Sure enough, there was my name, etched onto some sacrifice. This was too much. The Dread Overlord had declared jihad. This thing was terrifying. It was huge." An alien god has a vendetta against me? Oh, that's just awesome."

"Yeah," Franks said. "Awesome." I swear the bastard almost smiled. Almost.

"So now we wait for the Condition to come to us," Myers said proudly. "It turns out the Old Ones never bother to communicate with their followers here, so this message was a big deal. Capturing Pitt is now the cultists' primary goal. They'll do anything to get him. Any attack they launch gives us one more lead that we don't currently have."

I turned back to the picture of the MCB agent. She was in five pieces and still alive. I did not want to end up as a crime-scene photo. "Your plan sucks."

"This file contains everything we know about the Condition, their assets, their methods. We'll be ready for them to make their move. In the meantime, you just go about your business and pretend we're not here."

"Okay, so why the secrecy?" Earl asked sharply. "Or was your little tantrum out in the hallway just to prove a point?"

The senior Fed shook his head. "Marty was my friend."

"Mine too…"

"Then maybe you should have thought of that before you murdered him," Myers snapped.

Earl flashed with anger, shoved his chair away from the table and stood, glaring down at Myers. His fist hit the table hard enough to crack the wood. "It was an accident!"

I've got to hand it to him, Myers didn't so much as flinch, and since I knew he also knew what Earl was capable of when he was angry, that was especially impressive. "What, are you going to accidentally kill me too?" Franks' hand inched toward his holstered Glock, surely loaded with silver bullets, ready to plug Earl if he should so much as twitch, and for a moment the little conference room teetered on the edge of violence. "Do it. And it'll be the end of MHI once and for all." The college professor was locked in a staring contest with the werewolf and the killing machine got ready to shoot everybody.

"Enough." Julie was calm as she spoke. "Earl, sit, please. Agent Myers, we're cooperating fully. You two can murder each other over personal business later. We've got work to do." Harbinger pulled his chair back to the table. He was really ticked. Franks put his big hands back on the table. Since I was sitting next to her, I was the only one who saw Julie discreetly return her compact.45 to her lap. She had been prepared to shoot Franks under the table, Han Solo style. My God, I love this woman.

It took a moment for everyone to calm down. I don't know what had transpired between the two men, but Earl was still flushed as Myers pulled out a final piece of paper. "As for the secrecy, we've been eavesdropping on the Condition's communications-wire taps, reading their mail, the usual."

"Shocking," I muttered.

Myers dropped the bomb. "The Condition has a spy inside of MHI."

The three of us glanced at each other. The idea was absurd. "Horse shit," Earl snapped. "I know my men."

"We have several messages in here that reference a mole. You've been infiltrated. How many people have you hired since the battle with Lord Machado?"

We looked to Julie. She was the one who kept track of logistics. "Two training classes, twenty-six Newbies in total, made it through to hiring, with another fifty currently going through." And the three of us knew that of those fifty, we would be lucky if half of them made it through training and this current class had been the biggest that we had ever had. MHI had been drastically short-handed since we had been allowed to reopen. We had been cranking through classes as quickly as possible. "You honestly think one of our new employees is working for the Condition?"

"In their mind, your company is what stopped the second coming. What do you think? You can't trust your senior people either. Keep in mind what kind of things you're dealing with. The Old Ones are powerful, and it wouldn't take much to flip someone you've known for a long time."

"Yeah, you know all about betraying people, don't you, Dwayne?" Earl said. Myers' nostrils flared, but he didn't respond. Earl continued, "I think you're full of it. You hate MHI, and you just want to spread doubt and get us mistrusting each other. I know how you operate. This is all about getting us shut down, but the people you answer to said we're sticking around, and that just pisses you off no end, don't it?"

"For now." Before Myers could say more, his phone rang. It was still set on that annoying version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Glaring at Earl, he answered, listened for a moment, then stood, cupping the phone so the caller wouldn't hear. "We're done here," Myers did his best to act unruffled and professional. "All I require is your full cooperation against the Condition. Go about your regular business and Agent Franks will stay close to Pitt at all times. The Congressional Subcommittee on Unearthly Forces expects MHI to be willing to work with the government. Go against them, I dare you, because then I'll get my wish and MHI will be finished."

"Prick," Earl sullenly murmured under his breath.

"You've got the file. Do whatever you want with it. I don't care. Either way, I win. I can show myself out." Myers adjusted his tie and buttoned his cheap suit. "I'll be in touch."

"So that's it. Just keep doing our job like nothing special is happening?" I asked in exasperation. I was still having a difficult time liking this plan. If you could call being a sitting duck a plan.

"As for your job, I wouldn't worry too much about hunting monsters," Myers said, "because the monsters will be hunting you." The senior agent left the room without looking back.

I glanced at Earl. He was grinding his teeth again. Julie was baffled and tired. She closed the file. We had a strange symbiotic relationship with the government. We lived off their bounties, chafed at their rules, and had to put up with a lot of their crap, but this was something entirely new.

It was uncomfortably silent for a solid minute. Franks looked across the table at three scowling Monster Hunters and asked nonchalantly, "So, what you got to eat around here?"

"Julie, could you show our guest to the cafeteria?" Harbinger asked. "Owen and I need to talk…alone." Julie stood. Franks hesitated, his mind probably running through the potential of me being assassinated should he walk twenty feet down the hallway. Finally, he relented, shoved his bulk back from the table and followed Julie.

I waited until the door had closed. "Well…this sucks."

"It's a load of crap, is what it is," he spat. "I got the call this morning. Cooperate or else. So, I guess we ain't got much choice. Stupid government…Now what exactly happened in Mexico?" Earl Harbinger was the most experienced Hunter in the world. If anyone would know what to do, it was him. I told him everything I could think of, having learned last summer that even the seemingly irrelevant details counted. He rubbed his face wearily when I told him about being exposed to the artifact. He stopped me after the part about how Susan had told me that the mark was going to kill Julie.

"Did you tell Julie about that?" He ran his thumb down the outside of his neck. I shook my head in the negative. "Good. Don't. Susan's a liar, and I wouldn't put it past her trying to manipulate you two into doing something stupid. It probably ain't as bad as she's making it out."

"I'm still worried about her."

"Understandable. But Julie will be fine. I know a thing or two about curses, and no matter what happens, she's a survivor. She gets that from me…If you were to die, she'd get by fine. She's a Shackleford. On the other hand, if you lost her, you'd fall apart, and for some reason, she's taken a shine to you. So that alone will keep her around. She's stubborn like that."

I didn't know what to say to that. It was odd having ultimate badass, Earl Harbinger, trying to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. Yet, I could tell that he was as nervous as I was. He loved Julie like she was his own child, but then Earl was back to business. "What else?"

"Well…I don't know how to explain it, but I had a vision, or something, just a few minutes ago."

Harbinger cringed. "Not this shit again…" I couldn't blame him. Last time I had visions, I had almost destroyed the world.

"Well, this one was different than before, but kind of the same. I think it was some sort of flash because of the artifact. Last time I had visions, I lived through parts of the Cursed One's life. But this time, it was just some weird little thing from Myers, of all people, when I touched his hand outside, and it wasn't even any big deal. It was just some random memory, where you guys were all eating burgers or something, but it was real…I think." My boss reached over and poked me hard in the arm with one finger. "Ouch! Hey, quit it."

"Anything?" he asked. I looked at him strangely. "What? I don't know how all this weirdo magic stuff works either. What else happened?"

"That's about it, and now you know what I do. No, I take that back. You know more than I do. What's the deal with you two anyway?"

Earl paused for a long time, trying to think of what to say. "It don't matter."

That pissed me off. I had put it on the line for this company. "Oh, Myers seems to think that it does, and it looks like I'm stuck in the middle of your feud. I've bled, killed, and even died with this company. I think I've earned the right to know a few of MHI's deep dark secrets at this point."

He just looked defeated now. "It's no big secret, just not something I'm proud of. There was a Hunter named Hood once, good buddy of Myers and your father-in-law to be. They were real tight, like you, Trip, and Holly are now. Until I…I killed him by accident."

"On a mission?" It wasn't unheard of. We made our living off the judicious use of firearms, high explosives, and pointy things in a real dynamic environment. Bad things happened occasionally. Hell, Holly had nearly blown up Trip once.

Earl shook his head. "No…look, it don't matter. It was my fault and I made sure that it could never happen again. It was just a stupid mistake. But that's when Myers left us, and he's hated my guts ever since. He held me responsible, and by extension, all of MHI. I just…just don't want to talk about it."

I believed him. I could honestly say that I had never actually seen him look remorseful before. The look was gone in an instant, and replaced with his usual gruff exterior. He coughed. "No need to worry about that. What's done is done. Myers can kiss off. First priority, we need to keep you from getting capped by some death cult. If I let you get killed, Julie would never shut up about it." He held up his hand and tapped his thumb and fingers together for the universal sign for nagging.

"Gee, thanks."

"Aw, just messing with you. We're down to the last few days of this training class, and they're looking remarkably good. I've got some experienced Hunters running it, but they could probably use some help." None of the senior Hunters liked taking time off paying jobs to pull training duty, especially since training didn't involve collecting any bounties, and seldom involved any killing, which were the two main reasons most of us got into this business to start with. "As of right now, you're off active duty. You're going to stay at the compound and help with training."

"What?" I shouted. Harbinger's personal team was kind of like MHI's mobile strike force. We mostly bounced around, assisting local teams as they needed it. It was considered the sweetest gig in the company by many, and with the level of monster activity around the country being what it was, we were almost always busy. "No way. I should be out there working cases. Our team's due to get called up anytime now."

"The rest of us are. You ain't. Not until this blows over. Look, Owen, it's not anything personal. I would do the same thing for any of my men, and you would too, should you get your own team someday." I had noticed that since I was planning on marrying his great-granddaughter and heiress-apparent, Harbinger had taken an interest in my leadership skills. "Provided you live that long."

"That's not fair," I muttered.

"Fair? Boy, you're in the wrong business if you want air. What's not fair is all of us getting killed walking into an ambush meant for you. The compound is the safest place for you to be, surrounded by firepower. No monster has had the guts to attack the compound in fifty years."

"I can take care of myself, Earl." I insisted. "This is bull-"

He cut me off. "Decision's final, Hunter." His tone suggested that he was not about to listen to me. Earl had been running this gang of type-A personality mercenary killers since my grandfather was in diapers. Nothing I said here was going to sway him once he had picked a course of action.

"What's to keep them from sending an army of zombies against the compound? He did it in Mexico."

"This place has been warded," he explained. It was obvious that I didn't get it. He sighed and backed up. "You know how vampires can't come into a place unless they've been invited? Well, we've got something even better than that covering the compound. No undead can enter here, period. And if this guy's main weapon is bossing around undead, this is the safest place you can be. No transdimensional creatures either, which rules out anything sent directly from the Old Ones."

"How's that work?" I asked.

"Beats me, but it does. We found a ward stone a long time ago, and set it up here. Any undead that cross the threshold of this property just explode. It's really kind of neat. Don't go spreading that around, though, because once in a while some undead come by with a bone to pick, and it's fun to watch them blow up when they cross the gate."

"I don't like it…" I muttered.

Harbinger pulled out a pack of Marlboros and shook one into his hand. "I didn't say that I'm going to make you sit here forever, did I? Don't worry. We'll figure out a way to deal with this cult. The Feds might not be able to handle it, but they're a bunch of bureaucratic twits. I'll call in some favors and we'll start working our sources out on the dark side. We'll find them ourselves, then take care of this problem, MHI style…"

"Which usually involves chainsaws," I said happily.

"Yes. Yes, it does." He flipped open his MHI logo Zippo and lit his cigarette, indicating that this was bothering him more than he was letting on. He usually didn't smoke inside the main building unless he was under a lot of stress. "In the meantime, you lay low here at home base."

"If the compound's so safe then what about this spy?"

"I think Myers is a liar," Harbinger answered, a little too quickly. "But…I didn't get this old by not being paranoid. Look, you think getting stuck on training duty is a joke, fine. Congratulations, you're now responsible for rooting out this mole if there is one."

Now I figured he was just humoring me. "And just how am I supposed to do that?"

Harbinger shoved the Feds' file folder toward me. "I don't know yet. Use your imagination. I'll gather the others that I know we can trust, and you can meet me in the main conference room at six. Ditch the federal weasels on the way. In the meantime, don't let Franks screw around with any of our stuff. I don't trust that guy."

"Okay, first off, we need to set some ground rules," I spoke slowly and avoided using big words so Franks wouldn't be confused. Past history indicated that when he got confused, he tended to hit me. He and the three other Feds were sitting across from me in the MHI cafeteria. Franks was on his fourth sandwich and apparently had a metabolism like a blast furnace. The other agents-Torres, Herzog, and Archer-listened intently. The one thing I could say for the Feds, they did take their jobs really seriously. "You don't need to be so close. Here at the compound, I'm safe."

Franks snorted. Agent Torres actually raised his hand, which made me feel a little silly. I pointed at him.

"Owen. May I call you that?" I nodded. My friends around here usually just called me Z, but it would be a cold day in hell before I ranked anybody from the MCB as a friend. "I know this is awkward, but we're just here to help." Torres was the youngest, and seemed sincere. He did seem to really respect MHI, which was abnormal. After the meeting, Holly had told me that she thought he was the cutest too, which had caused me to roll my eyes so hard that I had actually hurt myself. He had given me back my precious guns though, so I was inclined to not totally hate him.

"When people from the government tell me they're just here to help, I get nervous. You're supposed to blend in, right? We've got a giant Newbie class going on now, the compound's crowded, and always having four of you walking in formation around me looking like a bunch of storm troopers isn't going to help."

Archer spoke. "So what do you expect us to do? Just sit back and wait for the Condition to murder you?" Archer was tall, but unlike most of the overly buffed MCB, he was skinny. The average Fed made your average Hunter look pretty dumpy. But Archer was thin, with an angular nose, and a large Adam's apple. He had one of those haircuts that worked if you were a Marine, but otherwise just made you look kind of silly, with the buzzed sides, and the perfectly straight flattop, so symmetrical that it had to have been done with surveying gear.

"Look, Pitt, we don't want to be here any more than you want us to be," Herzog said. She was the first female MCB agent I had met, all of five feet tall, and built like a bulldog, complete with jowls. She also had the worst attitude. "We all know this is a bullshit assignment, and I don't know what we did to piss Myers off to get stuck doing this scut work, no offense, sir," she nodded at Franks, who stopped chewing long enough to grunt an affirmation. "We should be out killing monsters, and taking down the Condition the old-fashioned way. Beating the ever-livin' hell out of everyone in it until somebody squeals where the bosses are, and then putting a bullet in the brain of every last one of the squid-worshipping fanatics. We kneecap enough of these assholes and cut off enough thumbs, somebody will talk. They always do. We need to be out there putting the fear of God into these freaks, not babysitting…you."

Torres had mentioned Border Patrol at the airstrip. Archer had an 82nd Airborne tat on his forearm. All the MCB types apparently started out in regular government jobs, so I had to know. "Herzog, who were you with before being recruited by the Monster Control Bureau?"

"Internal Revenue Service."

God help us."Oh…well…okay then." That made sense. I had a sneaking suspicion that she had once audited my old job. Somebody from the IRS had actually taken the time to draw frowny faces in red ink on a depreciation schedule that I had filled out. She seemed like the type. "Look, personally I agree. I would much rather have you out there doing your thing, cutting thumbs off and whatnot, and not following me around. Like this, you're going to stick out. This just isn't going to work."

"The only Hunters who know who we really are Harbinger and his immediate people," Torres suggested to Franks. "We can blend in with the new recruits. Nobody, including the Condition's spy, will ever even know we're on site unless Owen needs us."

"You three, maybe…but everybody knows of Franks," I pointed out. I didn't add that his reputation for brutality had an almost urban legend quality to it in Monster Hunting circles. "He'll have to go, I don't know, live in the forest or something."

Torres was undeterred. "Okay, then the cover story can be that Agent Franks is a liaison, assigned here to build camaraderie between private sector and governmental Hunters." The man was just chock full of helpful suggestions, though I still liked my live-in-the-forest idea better. Franks nodded slowly, as if the idea of him being an ambassador of goodwill made any sense whatsoever. "We stay out of your way, we're still accomplishing our mission, everybody's happy."

"Everybody saw your great big airplane land today."

"Nobody was close except for your friends. We can say it was for Agent Franks. The rest of us are late additions to the class."

I bit my lip. Torres had a point. "That'll work, but there's one more thing."

"Oh, I'm sorry, is putting our lives on the line to protect you from the forces of evil inconvenient?" Herzog asked, just oozing sympathy.

"Yeah, it is." I had no patience for this nonsense. I didn't ask for their help. "Inside this, the main building, you're not allowed past the first floor. When I'm working here at the compound, my room is upstairs. Upstairs is off limits. The basement is off limits." Really, I didn't care, but I knew that MHI had a lot of things stashed around here that they really didn't want the government to know about. Hell, I still didn't now what was in half of the basement. Plus it was one more way for me to be a pain in the ass to Franks' Goon Squad. I can't help it. I really do have an antiauthoritarian streak.

"That's not going to make our mission any easier," Torres suggested gently.

"You want to blend in with the Newbies? They aren't allowed past the first floor either until they've graduated training. Deal with it."

"Myers warned us that you'd be difficult," Archer said, raising his voice slightly. "So that's how it's going to be then. Who the hell are you to-"

I raised my hand and cut him off. "You want to go upstairs, get a warrant. Otherwise, shut it, Buzz Cut. We all know why you're here, and that's to capture some assassins. You could care less what happens to me. So worst-case scenario, I get killed, then you can mop up and your boss is happy. This whole damn thing is his fault anyway, and I don't have to have you all crowding my personal space." That seemed to really piss off Herzog and Archer. Torres looked like it hurt his feelings that I would question his honest intentions. He was almost like a governmental version of Trip.

Surprisingly enough, Franks didn't argue, he just kept chewing, taking the time to savor the Wonder Bread and bologna. Finally he swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of one massive hand. "Whatever…It's your funeral." He glanced across his team and nonchalantly ordered, "It's settled. Hang back until someone tries to kidnap Pitt. Interrogate the survivors."

Somehow that didn't give me a real good feeling.

The file on the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition was fat with color photos, weird intel, and disturbing reports. I had spent the last three hours poring over the notes, and the more I read, the more worried I got. It had grown dark outside and stuffy inside the second-floor conference room.

"Man, what a bunch of jerks," Milo Anderson said as he leaned back in his chair, holding a sheet of paper in front of his bushy red beard, eyes darting back and forth behind thick round glasses as he read through the list of the various atrocities. "I never knew there were this many ways to sacrifice a virgin!"

"Better watch out, Trip," Holly muttered under her breath as she flipped through the pages, her shoes up on the conference table, absently chewing a pencil between her teeth. "They're coming to get you."

Trip studiously ignored her and kept on reading factoids about the people who wanted to bundle me up and ship me across the universe to be devoured by a giant mollusk. Harbinger had said that he was going to bring in the people he trusted, and apparently, that was pretty much everybody who would normally be here anyway, which wasn't exactly surprising. When you spend this much time risking life and limb with people, they aren't just coworkers, they're family. And apparently, having one of that family personally threatened gets taken pretty damn seriously.

"So which of y'all's got a plan on how we kill all these folks on here?" Dorcas asked, holding up the list of the suspected cultists. She slurped noisily from her coffee mug. Normally our senior-citizen receptionist wouldn't be in a team planning meeting, but she had taken an almost grandmotherly liking to me over the last year. Either that or she was just itching to shoot somebody.

"We're Monster Hunter International, not Doofus Hunter International," Julie said soothingly. "We're not interested in these chumps. Most of them probably don't even know what they're involved in. Besides, knowing the government, their intel is probably wrong on half these names anyway. Sorry, Dorcas."

"Tempting though…" Holly said, glancing at the list. "I hate that guy's movies."

"Terrible actor," Trip agreed.

Albert Lee was the last to arrive. He limped into the room carrying a stack of books hastily gathered from the archives under one arm and balancing his cane in the other. Lee had worked as our archivist ever since his leg had been severely injured at DeSoya Caverns. Though mighty handy on demolitions, his real calling was in research. He put the heavy books down and then thumped me hard on the back. "Good to see you made it home, man," he said with a grin.

I shook his offered hand. "Good to be home, Al."

"Wait 'til you see what I found. Dude, you are so screwed," he said as he sat down next to me, his metal leg brace creaking audibly. I felt bad whenever it seemed to cause him discomfort, which was often. I had been serving as his team leader when he had taken that hit and I still held myself responsible. Realistically, there was nothing that I could have done differently, but that's still how I felt. Lee, a tough former Marine, had never uttered a single word about it, except to joke about how it had finally given him an excuse to buy a badass sword cane.

The room was relatively full. Earl Harbinger, Julie Shackleford, Milo Anderson, Trip Jones, and Holly Newcastle were normal fixtures, as they made up the backbone of my team. In addition, Skippy, our pilot, and leader of our orc contingent, was standing quietly at the back of the room, still wearing his hood and goggles, unwilling to take a seat at the table, even among his friends. It wasn't that Skippy was unsociable, it was just that being around humans was always painfully awkward for him. And compared to most of his people, he was the life of the party.

The only other active Hunter present was someone I only knew in passing, and had never personally worked with, other than briefly last year when all of MHI was gathered for DeSoya Caverns. Her name was Esmeralda Paxton, Seattle team lead, and she was the one who had drawn the duty of training this Newbie class. Paxton was probably only a little over five feet tall, in her early forties, with auburn hair tied up in a bun, and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. She had on a folksy patchwork vest, a fashion that really didn't seem to fit in with all the hardened killers. She looked more likely to bake up a plate of chocolate-chip cookies than to stake a vampire, but Earl trusted her enough to lead a team in one of the most active parts of the country, and Julie's very own younger brother had been assigned to her care, so apparently she was a lot more dangerous than her motherly looks indicated. She had not spoken much yet, but continued to study the material intently.

Raymond Shackleford the Third, semi-retired super Hunter, whom Julie referred to as Grandpa, and the rest of us normally just called Boss, was sitting at his customary seat at the head of the table. He had aged quite a bit during the time I had known him. His white hair was getting wispier, the scarred side of his face around his eye patch was beginning to droop, and I was sad to notice that his nagging cough had gotten worse since we had left for Mexico. He was more of a symbolic leader. Earl Harbinger, real name Raymond Shackleford the Second, ran the day-to-day operations of the company, but there was no way that the Boss was going to sit out on a death threat against one of his Hunters. Missing his right hand, he banged his stainless-steel hook on the table to get everyone's attention.

He cleared his throat. "All right, people. What's the consensus?"

"Z's hosed," Trip suggested.

"Thank you, Mr. Jones. All in favor?"

The entire table said "Aye," then laughed at my expense. "Thanks, guys," I muttered. Julie patted my hand under the table.

"All right, enough of that tomfoolery," the Boss ordered. "Threat assessment?"

"Very bad, sir," Lee hoisted the first book. "Nobody knows who this necromancer is. I've been reading up on them today, and that title can be used for anybody who dabbles in death magic, animating the dead, all the way up to some really bad men who've done some terrible things."

"What kind of terrible?"

"Pretty much anything you can think of. The last MHI case I can find involving one was in Haiti, 1978. There was a high body count on that one," Lee replied.

"I remember that," the Boss said. "That was the man who had all those doppelgangers working for him, replaced all the city authorities, and then held himself a big old massacre." We'd learned a bit about doppelgangers in training, but hadn't spent much time on them since nobody had seen one for decades. They were perfect mimics, and historically, the mysterious creatures had caused all sorts of trouble. "Good thing we haven't had to deal with those cursed shapeshifters since."

"No, you're thinking of Cuba in '53," Harbinger corrected his son. "Haiti was the one where the necromancer sewed all those bodies together into that giant flesh golem."

"My memory ain't what it used to be," the Boss replied simply. I noted that Harbinger looked a little sad at that. It had to be difficult to see your loved ones age a decade for every one of yours.

"Either way you get the point. This could be potentially really ugly. Historically they've raised the dead, invented totally new kinds of undead, opened portals to other dimensions, that kind of thing," Lee said. "And I'm assuming it gets worse." Our archivist pulled on a pair of surgical gloves before opening the largest, dustiest, and oldest book. The cover was bound in ornate leather and the pages were hand-inked on yellowed parchment. Lee was very careful, almost delicate, in order to not damage the ancient tome. "The Feds' notes mentioned that the Condition has a pet shoggoth, so I figured I would see what one of those could do…" The drawing was of a horrible, bulbous, lumpy, asymmetrical thing, with far too many mouths and eyes. I was really hoping that the artist had been exaggerating. "There are passing references to them in different places. This one is in Arabic, but it had the most info on them."

"Nasty…What's it do?" Holly asked.

The Boss and Harbinger exchanged a quick glance. The Boss spoke first. "They're a pain in the rear, is what they are. My brother Leroy and I fought one once, right here in Cazador. It moved into the forest years back. Stinky, messy beast, started eating townsfolk and livestock. I tried to kill it, but it got away."

"You never told me you'd hunted a shoggoth, Grandpa." Julie leaned across me to see the book. "I didn't know those still existed." Julie frowned as she studied the picture. "Wait a second…Mr. Trash Bags?"

"Who's Mr. Trash Bags?" I asked.

Her mouth fell open as she recognized it. Julie pointed at the old book. "Right there! That's Mr. Trash Bags! He was my imaginary friend when I was a little girl. We used to play games together in the forest. He was big and cuddly and sweet. You know how imaginary friends are. But that's totally him, Mr. Trash Bags. I was like six years old, but I still remember."

She had to be pulling my leg. "Your imaginary friend was a blob?"

"Sorry, Jules. He wasn't imaginary," Earl said apologetically. "And you were four. We never could figure out why it didn't just eat you. You cried for days after we chased it off."

Julie leaned back, looking flustered. "Wow…that…that really sucks," my fiancée said slowly. "He was such a nice…thing."

"Yes, and that's why I didn't tell you," her Grandpa said. "I figured you didn't need to know that your best friend was a soul-sucking creature from the great beyond. I hope you understand, my dear. Please, carry on, Mr. Lee."

Lee appeared a little surprised that one of his managers had been friends with a horrific blob. "Uh…yeah. Shoggoths are basically servants, manual laborers to the Old Ones. They do their bidding, run errands, eat people, dig tunnels, that kind of thing. To quote the original author, who's only referred to as the Mad Arab, 'To look upon their hideous thousand eyes is to invite horror and the suffering of infinite madness, within tombs of blackness where the innocent are devoured for eternity.' And so on."

"He seemed really nice…" Julie said hesitantly. "This is a major bummer…"

"They're amorphous. They can change shape quickly, but they're about fifteen feet across and weigh around two tons," Earl said. "They can communicate, but they're relatively stupid. Just brute force, steamrollers, made out of tar and eyeballs. And they eat everything."Except for a four-year-old girl, luckily. Julie seemed to be taking it well, but she came from a long line of Hunters who were proud of their flexible minds. Harbinger continued. "Fire chased it off last time. Milo, I want all the flamethrowers checked out and ready to go."

Julie rubbed her neck. "Well, that just makes me sad."

Now it was my turn to pat her hand under the table.

Esmeralda Paxton raised her hand politely to cut in. "You have more problems than just a shoggoth, not that those aren't terrible enough, mind you. One of these intercepted e-mail messages mentions, and I quote, ‘The High Priest is prepared to use Force and Violence to satisfy the requests of the great Old Ones, no matter what the cost.' "

"Well, he did hit me with a toilet," I pointed out. "That's pretty damn violent."

She shook her head. "Force and Violence are capitalized."

I looked at her stupidly. "Cultists are bad at grammar?"

"They're proper nouns?" Trip asked. "Those are names."

Esmeralda smiled and pointed at Trip. "Bingo. And if this is who I'm thinking of, the Los Alamos team fought them once before, back when I was a Newbie."

Harbinger thought about it for a moment, scowling. "Cratos and Bia? It can't be. That was twenty years ago."

"Seventeen years. Please don't try and age me prematurely, Earl," the petite woman scolded him. "I'm not a little old lady yet, though I do eventually plan on being a surprisingly aggressive little old lady. They use the old Greek names for Force and Violence. They've been around for a really long time. Some say they're immortals."

"Everything's immortal," Earl stated, "until you figure out how to kill it."

"My team tracked them across southern Europe. They were easy to follow, since they made a mess wherever they went. We even managed to ambush them once, only to discover that they were virtually indestructible. Then they vanished into thin air. We never did get to collect those bounties."

"So, what are Force and Violence?" Julie asked. "I don't remember this kind."

"We're not sure what they are," Esmeralda explained. "Physically, they seemed similar to ogres, but they're smarter, or at least the female, Bia, is rather clever. The male, Cratos, is dumb as a rock, but unbelievably strong. They're either ancient or they took their names from minor gods in the Greek pantheon to give that impression."

"Ancient Greece, like Zeus comes down from Olympus and turns into a giant horny swan, kind of stuff?" I asked. "Because, you know, this stuff wasn't weird enough already."

Earl leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. "Don't mock ancient Greek monsters. A minotaur near cost me my life, once. There's nothing tougher than a giant bull-man with bulletproof hide…I made a coat out of him."

"Well, we don't really know what they are. But they're monsters that show up every so often and go on a killing spree. The weirdest thing was that they didn't just kill people, they killed other monsters too. Their behavior was a mystery. This message might not even refer to the same creatures, but I just thought I should point it out," Esmeralda said. "If we run into two humanoids, and one's twelve feet tall and bright red, and the other's about eight feet tall, and purple-"

"Stop." Skippy suddenly cut her off. His gravelly voice made me jump. He had been so quiet that I had forgotten he was even in the room. The orc walked up to the table awkwardly and stared at Esmeralda, goggles tilting to the side. "Skippy…knows. Knows these…" He said some unpronounceable word in his own language. "Like you, Harb Anger, like MHI…they hunt. But bad. They bad things. No honor…Not hunt, to protect…hunt for kill. Hunt for make suffer. Hunt my people. Many Urks die." Skippy bowed his hooded head toward us, his shielded eyes inscrutable as ever. Speaking English always seemed painful to him. "Enemies…pay to kill many Urks." He said that same word again.

"What's that mean?" Trip asked. My friend had spent a lot of time at Skippy's village over the last few months, fascinated by the tribe, and had been picking up a lot of the orcish language.

Skippy stood awkwardly, tilting his head to one side, trying to find the words in English. "Think you call…Hit Men."

"Assassins…" Esmeralda nodded thoughtfully. "That makes sense. We never did know why they attacked where they did, but there did seem to be a definite pattern. Then when their work was done, they just disappeared."

"This just keeps getting better and better. Ogre hit men…" I muttered. This Condition was just full of fun. "So, they're like the monster version of us?"

"No!" the orc responded with surprising intensity. Skippy shook his head vehemently. "Not like MHI. No honor!"

"How are they different, Skippy?" Trip asked calmly.

The orc continued to shake his head, agitated. Skippy seemed really offended by the idea that his adopted clan was anything at all like these things. "You, Hunters, paid money…for kill monster. These two…They kill, but paid…paid in souls. Eat the soul, live forever." Skippy finished talking and then retreated quietly back into the corner, seemingly embarrassed by saying so much. The others continued to talk back and forth in excited tones. Hunters tend to get pumped at the prospect of taking down something new.

My attention was diverted from the conversation as the conference room door swung open and another person walked in. I recognized him immediately, but was taken completely by surprise. The others didn't seem to notice.

The newcomer was about as tall as I was, but where I was hulking, he was lean, and where I was ugly, he was movie-star handsome. He was wearing standard issue MHI body armor only his was in black, had been tailored to fit better, and it still apparently had that magic ability to never get dirty. The spot where the green Happy Face with horns patch had been on his arm was blank Velcro now, but other than that, he looked exactly the same as the day he'd resigned.

"Hey, everyone, sorry I'm late. We had to wrap up today's training first. We started the Newbies on long-range rifle." Grant Jefferson, former Hunter, apologized as he walked up to the table. "I came as soon as I could, Earl. Why is Agent Franks guarding the staircase?"

I hadn't seen him since last summer. I glanced at Julie and she was as surprised to see her ex-boyfriend here as I was.

"Have a seat, Grant, I'll catch you up later," Earl said, gesturing at an open spot across the table from me.

He wasn't the only one who needed some catching up. "Hey, Grant. Why are you here, exactly?" I asked, probably a little louder than I needed to. The bad acoustics of the conference room were probably what made me sound a little more perturbed that I should have been. Acoustics. Yeah.

"Oh, hi, Julie," Grant said, easily ignoring me as he smoothly slid into the chair. He casually put his armored elbows on the table. "When did you get back from Mexico?" His tone was friendly.

"This afternoon…" she said slowly. I didn't know which was more of a surprise for her, Grant or Mr. Trash Bags. "MCB flew us back."

"Sorry I missed you earlier. Your brother is still out on the line. He said to tell you he'll catch up soon." Grant pretended to notice me for the first time. "Pitt, good to see you," he lied politely.

I grunted something noncommittal.

He turned his attention right back to Julie. "And congratulations to you two on getting engaged. That's just great." His fake smile was very convincing.

"Thanks." Julie was not deterred by small talk. "What are you doing here?"

Grant raised his eyebrows. "No one told you?"

"Aw, crap. Forgot," Earl said quickly. "It's been a busy few days. While you were in Mexico, Grant came by, asked for his old job back." I glared at Trip and Holly. They'd gotten back yesterday. Apparently they had forgotten to mention Grant's rehiring during all the excitement. They knew how well the two of us got along. Trip made eye contact and shrugged, as if to say whoops. "We're so shorthanded, I was glad to have the help."

"I guess the whole Hollywood thing didn't work out for you, huh?" I asked suspiciously.

He just smiled. His perfectly capped white teeth looked almost like Tic-Tacs. "No. It was fun, but Hunting is my true calling. I'm glad to be home."

I bit my tongue. Home? Sure, he had seen some horrible things while in the clutches of the Cursed One's seven Master vampires, but everybody had been as nice as possible to him in the aftermath, and he had still walked away, a quitter.

"Well…it's good to have you back," Julie said civilly. Their breakup had been a bit on the icy side. I hadn't been there for the actual "discussion" part, though I had been there when she'd knocked him out with the butt of an M14. Julie had never wanted to talk about it, so I had left it alone. With Grant gone, it had been one topic of conversation that we'd just mutually avoided.

"Where's your team patch?" I asked, being a complete jackass. Grant's hand subconsciously flicked to his arm, and just briefly he let slip a scowl. The golden boy never could handle failure.

Earl, sensing tension, spoke again, "I've assigned Grant to help Esmeralda with training for now. When the other team leads come in at graduation in a few days, we'll find a spot for him on one of the teams. We need all the experienced Hunters we can get out there in the field."

"Glad to help," Grant replied, still glaring at me. I smiled, noting that his once perfect nose had healed with a slight bend from when I had broken it.

"Yes, yes, back to business," said the Boss, who apparently could not care less about our petty personal dramas. "Anything else we need to know about this Condition?" Nobody had mentioned the potential spy. Earl caught my eye and shook his head slightly so the others wouldn't notice. Apparently we were keeping that part a secret.

"We're dealing with an organization that has a couple hundred human members, tops," Earl said. "And most of them are going to be fanatics rather than professionals in this exalted order of assholes. Their leader's powers are useless here, so we should be relatively safe from a direct assault. Unless he sends his other non-undead monsters against us, and if that happens, we'll just button up and deal with them. In the meantime we need to prepare for any other threats he comes up with. None of you will breathe a word of this to anyone outside of this room. We'll come up with a plan for this Condition." He began to rattle off duties. "Everyone, keep an eye on Franks. I don't trust him. Lee, see what you can find out about these ogre things from the archives. Julie, Dorcas, I want you to contact all the team leads, give them a brief rundown about this cult and see if any of them can scare up any local intel. Milo, Trip, Holly, go see the elves, check if they've had any dealings with them."

Holly groaned out loud.

"I really do know them better than anybody, I guess." Milo squinted toward me. "My wife's about to have a baby, and if I'm off talking to trailer park elves about you when she goes into labor with my first child, I'm holding you personally responsible."

I nodded slowly, not really sure how I was going to help with that.

Earl continued. "Esmeralda, Owen will be helping you with training. Don't let his goofiness fool you. He's actually a decent firearms instructor."

"I certainly could use another hand," she said.

"And you'll be adding three undercover federal agents to your class," Earl added. I believe that Esmeralda actually groaned louder than Holly had about the elves. Apparently the Seattle team leader got along with the government as well as everyone else at MHI. "Yeah, I know. Just pretend they aren't here."

"Damn Feds, on my property," the Boss murmured. I swear that if he wasn't such a gentleman, he would have spit on the floor. The government paid a large portion of the bills through PUFF, but that didn't mean we had to enjoy working with their Hunters.

"Can I at least be extra mean to them?" Esmeralda asked.

Harbinger smiled that predatory way only werewolves can. "But of course."

"I've got just the thing." Esmeralda grinned back. "Milo, we'll need some more cow entrails for another Gut Crawl tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair if our late arrivals missed out on that."

"I don't have anything fresh," Milo stated.

"Even better…"

Chapter 5

I settled into a routine over the next few days. Whenever I was working at the compound, I slept in a small room on the top floor directly across from Julie's temporary room. Some of Harbinger's team had their own homes off site, mostly in nearby Cazador, but I had been living at the old Shackleford family estate, or at least I had until Earl had decreed it was safer for me to stay here. The routine started early; Esmeralda and her Hunters had the Newbies up and running by six. I'd shower and head downstairs for breakfast where, inevitably, Agent Franks was sitting in a chair at the base of the stairs waiting for me. We had assigned him a private room, but as of yet, I was unaware if he had actually used it. The giant apparently never slept, and if he did, I was willing to bet it was with one eye open. Each morning since we'd gotten back he had been in the exact same spot, in a folding chair stolen from the cafeteria, back against the wall, waiting. And each morning, he would just nod at me when I would appear, as if he had heard me long before I had come down, and had been waiting patiently.

Franks had gone incognito. After the first day, I had pointed out that if he was supposedly some sort of liaison, he probably wouldn't be wandering around wearing his full suit of armor, with his assault rifle slung on his back, and what looked like about fifty pounds of ancillary gear. Apparently, he had agreed. So now Franks was in his other uniform, a cheap black suit, with a black clip-on tie, and a white dress shirt that had never been intended to be buttoned around a neck as thick as his. I had spotted him carrying at least two full-size Glocks, and I was guessing he had a grenade in each coat pocket, but for Franks, that was real low profile.

"Mornin', Sunshine," I said sarcastically, inwardly wishing that he would just go away.

He glowered for a moment, apparently impatient that nothing had tried to murder me yet. He adjusted the grenades in his pockets, checked his clip-on, and stood. As usual, Franks didn't have much to say. I started for the cafeteria, Franks trailing sullenly a few feet behind.

Today was going to be much like yesterday. After breakfast, I needed to catch up on paperwork, then I was supposed to run the range and teach the Newbies how to shoot better-hopefully at the targets and not at each other by accident, which got harder to do as the exercises got more complicated. Esmeralda had me doing that for most of the day.

"Any new intel from your people?" I asked Agent Franks over breakfast. We were alone in the large cafeteria. The Newbie class was out on their run, and Harbinger's team were mostly still working on the jobs he had assigned to them. I knew that Trip, Holly, and Milo had road-tripped it to Corinth yesterday to shake down the elves at the Enchanted Forest Trailer Park. Lucky them.

"No," he said sullenly over a mouthful of bacon. Franks chewed with his mouth open. Loudly.

"Any idea when this cult might make their move?"

"No."

"Think they're scared because I'm here?"

He shrugged.

"Anything interesting happen last night?"

"No."

Being by nature the kind of person who is uncomfortable with long silences, I kept trying. "If we're going to be hanging out, we might as well get to know each other some. I've known you for a while now." I didn't need to mention that our first meeting had been with him pointing a gun at my head, and our second had involved him beating the ever-living hell out of me. "And I don't even know what your first name is."

He didn't respond for a long time. "Agent."

So much for being friendly. "So, Agent, got any hobbies? Chia Pet farm? Collect Pokemon cards?"

I could feel the disdain. The power-lifter veins in his forehead bulged slightly as I annoyed him. "No."

That was pretty much the same as every other conversation I'd had with Franks. Apparently the government had not issued him a personality. The man was a hulking, violent, silent enigma. I sighed, and went back to the routine.

My office was on the top floor. I suppose that it was technically the Monster Hunter International Finance Department, but that seemed a bit pretentious a title for just me and a computer with Quickbooks Pro installed on it. I guess that I was the interim finance department, since I'd finally talked Earl into hiring a full-time bookkeeper, but I'd been too busy to follow up on it, so in the meantime, it was all me.

The accounting for MHI wasn't nearly as complicated as my old job. I managed to mostly keep everything up to date between missions. Before I'd come on it had been a real mess. Apparently killing and math were mutually exclusive skill sets for most people, but I'd gotten the books cleaned up. I'd steered us through an IRS audit a few months ago and that had been almost as hard as defeating Lord Machado.

The books were rough. I wasn't exactly proud of the General Ledger, but that was the beauty of being a privately held company. There were no shareholders to make happy and none of that awful SarbOx nonsense that big corporations had to deal with. Most of our money came from PUFF and they always paid on time. The hardest part was trying to track the expenses, since the various teams threw bags of money around in the course of completing their missions, and all of them were better at destruction than reliably e-mailing me their expense reports.

The stack of invoices had grown fat since I'd left for Mexico. As usual, the other Hunters couldn't be bothered to file anything correctly, and it all tended to just get dumped into one big pile right in the middle of my desk. This was going to take forever to book. The top sheet was labeled Project Leviathan in red Sharpie. "Crap, Milo, ten thousand dollars for custom-machined harpoons? How many of those things do you need?" I muttered as I tossed the invoice aside. I had one expense account titled "Milo." It was filled with weird items.

Groaning, I flipped through the stack. My heart just wasn't in it today. I was too preoccupied with a death cult to get any work done. In my heart, I knew I should be out there, doing something useful. There were some framed pictures on my desk: me and Julie after hiking to the top of Mt. Cheaha together, the Amazing Newbie Squad posed with Friendly Fernando when we'd gone back to visit DeSoya Caverns as tourists rather than exterminators, and the only picture I had of Mordechai Byreika.