Monster Hunter Vendetta

It was the black and white photo that Lee had found last summer from Mordechai's old journal, with the Hunter posed in front of something giant, scaled, and dead. I picked it up and sighed. It wasn't that I missed having a cryptic ghost hanging out inside my brain, but Mordechai would have known what to do. He'd always had the right answers, even when he was keeping them from me for my own protection. He couldn't have told me what to do, because I would've rushed to do it, and inadvertently opened the gate in the process. It had been a fine line to walk, but he'd been wise, careful, and thoughtful, all things that I sucked at. Mordechai died decades before I had been born, but he would always be my mentor.

"I wish you were around, Old Man," I said. "I could use some good advice right about now…" I didn't want to be special, but as Mordechai had said, I'd drawn the universe's short straw and been the one to decide the fate of worlds. Now I was paying for it.

I put the picture down and glared at the stack of invoices.

Screw it. The paperwork could wait.

At least I got paid to shoot, which, as a lifelong gun nut, is kind of a dream come true. From ten until noon I worked on marksmanship and manipulation with the Newbies. At this point they had already been here for two months, and this was the final week of training, so the dumb and dangerous had long since been rooted out and sent home with fat severance checks.

The remaining Newbies were pretty sharp. As usual, all of them were themselves survivors of brutal supernatural attacks. This particular class had a soldier who'd taken out an Akkadian storm beast in Iraq; a cabby who'd given a ride to a vampire (not only had it tried to eat him, it had been a lousy tipper); two brothers whose foundation business, Haight Brothers Construction, had unearthed a skinwalker; an archeologist who discovered that some things were best left undiscovered; and even a kid just out of high school who'd had a blood fiend climb in the drive-through window at the Arby's he'd been working at. And yes, it turns out that you can actually kill a blood fiend by shoving its face into the fry cooker and holding it there until it quits kicking.

I'd been tasked with helping on the range, but I had to admit that most of the Newbies were already proficient shots. One of Esmeralda's guys, a fellow hardcore shooter named Cooper, had done a good job getting them up to speed. But Cooper was primarily an explosives guy, a rifleman second, and I was able to contribute quite a bit of knowledge to teaching the Newbies how to improve with the shotguns and pistols. Not meaning to boast, but as far as I knew, nobody at MHI was as good as I was with a shotgun. Being good at something, and being a good teacher were not necessarily the same thing, and I could only hope that I would do half as good a job as Sam Haven had done for my Newbie class. Now, he had been one hell of a great instructor.

Grant was working with those chosen to be the sharpshooters. I hated to admit it, but he did know more about long-range precision shooting than I did-though in my opinion, he was a perfect example of a knowledgeable but lousy teacher, but then again, I was biased.

This was the largest Newbie class that had ever gone through training, and under Esmeralda's patient tutelage, it was also looking like it was going to have the highest graduation rate. She had better be careful. If she did too good a job, Earl would probably try to draft her to run every training class, and I doubted any of the experienced Hunters would want that as a full-time gig.

I walked back and forth behind the firing line of Hunters. I had approximately half of them today. Each Newbie was paired up, with one serving as coach and the other shooting. Today I was drilling them on transitions, running their primary long gun dry, then slinging it quickly to draw their pistols. Most of them were actually looking pretty damn good. Franks' Goon Squad had integrated seamlessly into the class. I had to hand it to the MCB agents. They were professionals. As far as the other Newbies and Esmeralda's team knew, they had been part of the last Newbie class but had pulled out early due to various training injuries. That also explained their above-average skills and knowledge. Watching them on the range, I learned that Torres was damn good, Archer was well-trained and methodical, and Herzog was decently proficient, but made up for it with maliciousness.

My protective detail hadn't liked me walking around a bunch of potential Condition assassins with guns, but I still thought they were full of crap. The undercover agents kept glancing my way, waiting for something terrible to happen. Sadly for them, nothing did. After transitions, shooting on the move, and shooting from various cover positions, we took a break to hydrate, snack, and reload magazines before moving onto the next series of more complicated exercises. Grant immediately began to tell most of the willing-to-listen about some story where he was the hero. He had lots of those. There was a tin roof set up for shade over the firing line, and I plopped down onto a concrete bench to suck down a Gatorade, seeking solitude away from the Newbies for a moment. Even spring in Alabama is hot when you're standing in the sun carrying a full combat load and wearing a Kevlar suit. My shadow, Franks, wandered off momentarily to answer a phone call.

One young woman broke away from the crowd and approached. She had to have been one of the youngest in the class, an attractive girl in a bouncy cheerleader kind of way, blonde and perky. "Mind if I sit here?"

"Sure," I gestured at the bench across from me. She flopped down, armor pouches banging. I noted Torres, Archer, and Herzog scanning her for threats and assessing if they needed to come over and protect me. I shook my head slightly. The agents went back to their snacks.

The Newbie held out a granola bar. "Want one?"

"No thanks." I mentally ran down the roll call of names. I had always sucked with remembering names. "Dawn, right?"

"Yeah," she smiled, then looked around to see if anyone else was listening. "Do you mind if I pick your brain for a second?" She had a cute Texas accent. I knew that one well from having lived in Dallas. I'd struck out with a lot of girls who sounded like that.

"Brain-picking. That's what I'm here for," I answered. I was, after all, supposed to be the experienced role model. "What can I do for you?"

She looked around to see if anyone was listening. I noted that a couple of other Newbies were watching, like they had dared her to come over here. Dawn leaned in conspiratorially. "You're the guy that destroyed Lord Machado last year, right?"

It wasn't exactly a secret, but it wasn't something I liked to talk about. Way too many things had occurred that night that I preferred to keep secret. "Where'd you hear about that?"

"Are you kidding?" She laughed. "Esmeralda told us about it during monster-lore class yesterday. That fight was the biggest bounty ever collected in MHI history! And you were the primary on the PUFF. One Master vamp by yourself, assists on a couple of others, and a solo takedown of a one-of-a-kind mega-bounty monster."

That was all true, and I had made serious bank off that particular mission, but I hadn't realized that it granted me celebrity status. "Yeah, that was me, but it was all a team effort. I was just in the right place at the right time."

"I knew it. I bet you made millions."

"Something like that." It had been a considerable chunk of money. I had actually donated most of my personal earnings from DeSoya Caverns to the families of the Hunters who had died there, not that I spread that fact around. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. I'd still made a ton. "It was a tough case."

"Wow," she batted her big blue eyes at me. "That is so hot!"

I had been taking a swig of Gatorade and nearly choked on imitation grape. "Excuse me?" I coughed.

"Oh, sorry." The way she looked at me said that she was anything but sorry. "I just love this stuff. You know, we should like totally hook up later and you could tell me all about it. I'd love to hear the story firsthand. Maybe over drinks or something."

As a man who'd spent most of his life ignored by pretty girls, it took me a moment to realize that she was actually coming on to me. It took my higher brain functions a few seconds to compose a response. "Uh, sorry, Dawn. I'm going to be really busy for a while. See, Agent Franks is here as a…goodwill ambassador…and I've got to stay with him." I casually pulled my shooting gloves off in the hopes that she would see my ring.

She saw it. "So, you're married, huh?"

"Engaged."

That didn't deter her either. "No biggie. I was engaged once, but he got decapitated by fish-men. Long story, but that's how I ended up here. You ever see what happens when you shove a humanoid fish monster into a propeller?" She gave me a smile that would best be described as flirty. "I'll have to tell you about it sometime. Maybe we can talk again." She got off the bench. Somehow females still managed to make body armor look good. "See ya later."

Dawn went back to a knot of Newbies. One of the other women giggled at whatever she'd said. What the hell was this, MH Junior High? I shook my head and went back to my drink. Of course, when you're single, pretty girls won't talk to you, but when you're in a relationship…bam, they come out of the woodwork. Fed business completed, Franks rejoined me. He looked down, saw the look of consternation on my face and shrugged.

After hours of yelling at Newbies and shooting cardboard targets shaped like various monsters, I grabbed lunch for two, ditched Franks at the agreed-upon base of the stairs, and met Julie in her office.

My fiancée's office suited her personality. One part order, one part chaos, but the chaos was a work in progress. She had painted the walls a kind of sea foam color, had hung up several nice paintings, decorated everything else, and then promptly buried it all in paperwork and MHI-issue equipment. She had a couple potted plants with flowers that she could rattle off by their Latin names (they all looked the same to me, and bothered my allergies, but I would never tell her that). There was a bulletin board behind her full of photos of friends and family, including a couple of me mugging stupidly for the camera. Her desk was covered in papers, and there were a few piles of strategic paper on the floor, stacked on top of the filing cabinets and in the corners.

The problem is that this kind of work never really stops accumulating. Julie is in this for the love of Hunting, so when there's a job to do, that comes first. But as the designated heir to the family business, she still has to pay attention to the day-to-day crap that all businessmen do. She also has a really difficult time delegating.

As an experienced financial-type professional, I managed to help her out quite a bit between missions, but MHI really needed more full-time office staff. The plan was to wait for some really smart Newbies that we didn't trust enough to go on teams, but we were so short-handed in the field that our standards were low in that regard.

"What's up, sexy," I said as I entered.

Julie held up one hand to shush me. She was listening to someone on the phone. I set her lunch down on top of the pile of quotes, bids, invoices, reports, and a worn copy of a Jane Austen novel. Even Julie takes breaks now and then. She grabbed a pad of paper, pulled a pen out from behind one ear, and started making notes. "Yes…rubbery. Green…eight feet tall. Yes, sir. I know exactly what those are, and yes, we can handle them."

I pulled up a chair and flopped into it, still smelling of gunpowder and oil. It sounded like we got another job. Sweet. Business was hopping, and even if this was in a different team's area, the whole company still shared in the bounties. The last year had been record-breaking, but that had been due to the abnormally high rate of monster activity, not to mention the absurdly large PUFF bounties we had been paid after the Lord Machado case.

Julie was still talking. "No. No, sir. Do not, I repeat, do not approach them…Why?" She rolled her eyes as the person on the other end of the line asked something incredibly stupid. "Because they will eat you…Yes. Eat you." She paused to cover the phone's receiver and said to me, "What is it with these people who want to reason with monsters? Morons."

"I blame it on Twilight." In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire.

Julie went back to her call. "Okay, we'll have a team there in…" She glanced at her watch, and since she didn't have to call somewhere else to check on that team's readiness, I had to assume that it was our team's gig. "Three hours."

The person on the other end of the line freaked out at that. Julie drummed her fingers on her desk while she waited for the tirade to end. I had seen the same mannerism recently from her mother, but where Susan's nails were pointy and red, Julie's nails were kept short so they wouldn't interfere with her shooting. "Sir, listen. They'll still be there. As long as you don't approach them, or bother them, or look at them funny, they shouldn't attack. We'll expect the down payment to be in our account by the time we arrive on scene. Don't let anyone near that property in the meantime. Yes, thank you. Have a nice day." She hung up the phone. "Or as nice a day as you can have when you've got a troll infestation."

"Oooh, trolls. What's the plan?"

"We're driving to Bessamer. Skippy's off today for something, so no chopper. I'll have Milo and the others come over from Mississippi and meet us; hopefully they'll be there in time. That gives us most of the team. The trolls are holed up in a small abandoned building, so there shouldn't be too many of them. Nothing we can't handle. Bounty on a full grown one is"-she checked the PUFF table tacked to her wall-"fifty thousand a pop. Not bad."

"Awesome," I said, looking forward to grabbing Abomination and dispensing some monster justice. "I've never seen a troll before. Let me guess, cute little fellas with big hair?"

She smiled at me sweetly and batted her big brown eyes. "Bummer, you can't see one now."

"Aaahhhh man," I whined.

"I know, I know. Earl's orders though. You're safer here."

"Can I stow away in your luggage?"

"You're too big to fit. Look, honey, I know this makes you angry." Julie tried to be soothing, but she already knew she was failing miserably. I just leaned back in the chair and palmed my face. It was still weird to touch it and not feel a mass of scar tissue. This wasn't right. I should be there with my team. "But don't worry. Once we take care of this cult, life will get back to normal."

I snorted. "Normal?"

"Relatively normal. And speaking of which, in all the excitement, we forgot something," she said with a grimace.

I hesitated. Had I forgotten another stupid wedding thing? I had just wanted to elope, go to Vegas or something, but the Shacklefords insisted on doing everything in a big way. She waited, prompting me to guess. "Pick out napkins?" It was a stab in the dark, but all of these things tended to run together to me.

"Already done. Yellow and lavender. How could you forget?"

"Uh…death cult?" I said in my defense. I didn't even know what color lavender was. I think most men would consider it light blue, or something.

"No. I'm supposed to meet your family. You were going to call them, remember?"

I smacked my forehead. Of course. I didn't really talk to my family very often. The last time I had seen them was when they had come out to visit after Mr. Huffman had torn me apart. I had called Mom and told her about the engagement, and she had gushed and cried on the phone for about an hour and a half, but because of various Hunting gigs, I'd kept postponing an actual visit. As far as my parents knew, I was still an accountant.

"And you were supposed to call your brother too."

"He's still on tour." I had spoken to my brother, David, or Mosh as the rest of the world called him, more recently, but that was to arrange VIP concert passes for some friends, and even that had been a real brief conversation. The Pitt family loved each other, in their own dysfunctional way, but it wasn't like we communicated a lot. "He's really busy."

"He's also coming through the state this week," Julie pointed out.

"Too late. He's already here, and playing Buzzard Island tonight. I got tickets for Skippy and his people. I was going to go too, but I guess that's out of the question now," I muttered.

Julie was perplexed. "You got tickets to a heavy metal concert, in public, for a tribe of orcs? How's that supposed to work?"

"Private sky box," I explained. "You know how they are with crowds. I told my brother I'm doing volunteer work with the local burn ward, so that explains all the masks and goggles. He was totally down with that." He had also been very suspicious as to when I had become the volunteer-at-a-hospital type, but there was lots of stuff Mosh didn't know about me.

"Well, I don't know, as long as Skippy keeps everybody out of trouble…" Julie said, concern evident in her voice. Orcs were still PUFF-applicable so the ones living with us were, technically speaking, illegal aliens. "Thanks for lunch, but I have to find Earl. We've got to hunt some trolls and I need to draft some extra gunmen to fill in for you."

"Esmeralda's good, so are the guys that she brought along. Cooper's hell on wheels with a FAL. I'm sure they're just itching for an excuse to get out of training. I can handle the Newbies."

"Okay, we'll take Esmeralda's team too. It'll be fun for me to get to work with my little brother. That way if Milo's held up, we can still move on those trolls as soon as we get there. This should be pretty straightforward. How's the training going anyway?"

"Good, but I think one of the Newbies just tried to flirt with me," I said. "You know, us ugly guys aren't used to that kind of thing. Gets us all flusterpated."

"Uh huh, sometimes young impressionable Newbies fixate on their more experienced instructors…oh wait. Why does that sound kind of familiar? How was it we met again?" Julie gave me her best playing-dumb look. "Which bimbo was it?"

"Dawn the Texan."

She nodded. "Oh, she is pretty. She was like Miss Houston or something. Pity, I have to murder her now."

"Don't worry, you're the only one for me," I responded dryly. "Even if I am a dashing specimen of manhood and there's plenty of Owen Pitt to go around. You guys take care of the trolls. Grant and I can hold down the fort here."

"You promise to play nice with him?"

I raised my hands defensively. "You have my word, no assaulting Grant."Unless he gives me a good reason, I added mentally. "Seriously, I think we're cool. Seeing him was a surprise though, wasn't it?"

Julie shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't expect to ever see him again, especially not here. Not after what happened to him and the way he left so suddenly."

I turned serious. "You okay?" She and Grant had been pretty tight last year. It was still an awkward topic of conversation for us. I knew that there was still a part of her that felt guilty about the timing of our getting together so shortly after we'd assumed Grant was dead.

She stood, came around the desk, and kissed me lightly. "I'm fine…Now those trolls aren't going to off themselves. I've got to go before the client calls back and screams some more. Love you." That was code for I don't want to talk about it right now.

"Love you too," I responded. "Be careful."

"I will. And don't forget to call your parents." Julie Shackleford smiled her perfect smile as she left the office. "Stay out of trouble!" she shouted from down the hallway.

"Always," I responded, but she was already gone.

It was approaching sundown when I was finally able to break away from the routine. I had been out on the obstacle course assisting while Grant Jefferson yelled at the slower Newbies. Agent Franks stood just outside of bad breath distance the entire time. The trainees kept casting a fearful eye at the brute behind me. Even among brand-new Hunters, Franks was already a legend.

The compound seemed relatively quiet without Team Harbinger and Team Paxton. Skippy's tribe was gone too, but they were virtually invisible even when they were here anyway. The Alabama spring air was thick with enough pollen to make my eyes water and fireflies were beginning to flicker through the chain-link-and-razor-wire fence surrounding the compound. Since it was relatively peaceful, I decided to call my folks while sitting on one of the benches outside the main building. I would need to think of another excuse as to why they couldn't meet my bride-to-be yet, but with a bunch of psychos stalking me, it was pretty rotten timing.

The ever-present Franks sulked ten feet away. He crossed his arms and scowled as I pulled out my phone. "Can I have some privacy?" I asked in exasperation.

He looked around. We were alone. There were no possible threats in view. He looked back. "No."

"You're such a douche bag." I sighed as I pulled up my folks' number. Franks didn't bother to respond. He was the immovable object.

It wasn't that I didn't love my parents. We just didn't communicate well. My mom tended to talk a lot, but seldom about anything important, and my father talked at me, rather than to me. Speaking with him was always awkward, as I was more used to him giving orders and training me for the inevitable fiery apocalyptic end of the world than anything approaching a normal relationship. I had to admit though, if my war-hero father hadn't spent all those hours teaching me to fight, then I wouldn't be alive today. Thank goodness for paranoia.

It rang three times before someone picked up. The voice was raspy and unfamiliar. "Who's this?"

"Who's this?" I responded, glancing automatically at my BlackBerry's display. Sure enough, it read Mom, so I hadn't misdialed.

"Well, hello, Mr. Pitt," replied the man with a chuckle. "That's some good timing. Your parents have a nice little home here in the country. You really should visit more."

A cold lump formed in my stomach. The look on my face must have telegraphed my distress, because Franks immediately perked up, one big hand unconsciously moving under his coat. "Who are you?" I demanded.

"No one important." There was a hoarse laugh. "I am but a mere acolyte of the shadows, but I bear a message from the High Priest of the Dread Overlord. We have your parents. He is willing to offer a trade: your family, for you." There was a shout in the background, an impact thud followed by a crash, and a woman cried out in fear. Somehow I knew it was my mom. "If you don't do exactly as we say, we'll feed them, bit by bit, to the mighty shoggoth."

My stomach lurched. I was speechless. Franks realized what was going on, pulled out his radio and started barking commands, but that was just a gray, background, buzzing noise as my world spiraled out from under me. "I…I…"

"You will do exactly as I say, Mr. Pitt, for we are the spear of the Old Ones' righteous fury. We- Hey, watch the old guy!" Glass shattered, there was some crashing, then something that could only have been a gunshot, and the phone went dead.

"NO!" I shouted, but the signal was gone, and I was only screaming at the silence. "Damn it! Franks! My parents! They've got my parents!"

"On it," he said calmly as he listened to his radio. Apparently their vast files told them right where to go. "Local law enforcement has been dispatched."

Panicked, I redialed. The phone just kept ringing, but nobody picked up.

I found myself pacing back and forth. This couldn't be happening. They had nothing to do with this. This wasn't their fight. They didn't even know what I really did for a living. They were hundreds of miles away. The feeling of helplessness hit like a sledgehammer. A painful minute passed, and I honestly didn't know what to do. I wanted to puke.

"Agent Myers," Franks said, holding out his radio.

I snatched it from him and slammed down the transmit button. "Myers, you son of a bitch, you better go get them!"

"Calm down, Pitt. My men are on it. If they escape before we arrive, we'll cordon off the area. My chopper is warming up now. I will personally oversee the search."

"Damn right you will. This is your fault!" I raged.

"Just stay calm and stay at the compound," Myers ordered.

I hurled the radio back to Franks. He effortlessly snatched it out of the air before it hit him in the face. I started running for the main building.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going after them," I shouted back.

"It'll take hours to get there," the giant stated.

"Shit!" He was right, of course, but that didn't change the fact that I had to do something. Who did MHI have in the area? Julie would know. I pulled out my phone and hit speed dial J. I walked in a circle as it rang repeatedly.

"Hi, you've reached Julie Shackleford, business coordinator for MHI. Please leave a detailed message at the beep."

I swore. Of course she wasn't answering her phone; she was hunting trolls. At the tone, I left what I was sure was an incoherent and panicked message about cultists kidnapping my folks.

My phone chirped. I switched to the incoming call. "Hello?" I said quickly.

"Son?" The gravely voice was winded.

"DAD!" I shouted. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," heavy breathing, "some assholes kicked the door in, started tying us up. Talking all kinds of craziness. Fucking amateurs."

It was like I could breathe again. "Is Mom okay?"

"Sure, she's fine."

Oh, thank you God."What about the cultists?"

"Cultists? These punks? Well, I got three of them. The last one's crawling down the driveway, but he isn't going very fast with all those holes in him, so I'll mop him up in a second. What the hell's going on?"

I let out a huge sigh of relief. He had survived everything assorted communists and terrorists had thrown at him in twenty-five years of warfare, both official and unofficial. He wasn't the type to scare easily.

"Dad, listen carefully. Hang tight, cops are on the way. You've got more guns, right?" I asked. He grunted, almost like that was insulting. "Okay, good. Grab some big stuff, just in case."

"How big?"

"Big as you've got." And I knew that for Dad, that meant some serious firepower. The militant apple didn't fall far from the militant tree.

Franks interrupted. "Cult survivors?" I held up one finger. "We need him." I nodded.

"Dad, don't shoot that last guy anymore. The cops want to question him."

"Well, they best hurry up then. I'll go toss him a towel and tell him to put some direct pressure on it and quit his crying. Now, you listen to me, boy. They were talking about you, that this is all about you. What kind of bullshit are you mixed up in? Is this some sort of mafia accountant thing?"

Of course he still thought I was a CPA. "I'll explain everything later, I promise. I need you to get to Alabama as fast as you can. The Feds will escort you here." I glared at Franks as I said that, but he nodded in consent. At some point he had summoned the Goon Squad, because Archer, Herzog, and Torres had come running, carrying all their equipment. "Did they say anything else?"

Dad gasped. "Damn, forgot. Yes. Your brother, they said that they were sending ‘violence and evil' or something like that after him."

"Force and Violence?"

"Yeah. But then I went for the kitchen gun." Growing up, it had been Pitt family custom to stash at least one gun in every room of the house, so having a kitchen gun had finally paid off, "I shot the son of a bitch that said it in the face, so I was a touch distracted. We've got to get to David."

"He's near me. I'm on it, Dad. I'll see you in Alabama. Just hang tight." I hung up and scrolled through until I found my brother's number. My hands were trembling so bad that it was hard to work the little trackball on my phone.

"Yo?" Somebody unfamiliar picked up and my heart lurched. Was I too late?

"I need to talk to Mosh right now!" I shouted.

"Dude, he's going on stage in a minute. Call back later."

"It's a family emergency," I said forcefully.

"Well, I'm his manager. I'll pass it on when the show's over." The voice was very laid back, bordering on obnoxious mellowness.

"Mosh is in danger. You need to get him out of there, now!"

"Look, man, lay off the dope. It makes you paranoid. Call back in a couple hours." He hung up.

Bellowing something profane and incoherent, I started for the main building. I needed my gear.

"Where are you going?" Torres asked.

"They're coming for my brother. He's in Montgomery tonight. I have to get to him. We can be there in half an hour."

"Our strike team is camped at Maxwell," Archer said quickly, referring to the Air Force base in Montgomery. "I'll raise them."

"Myers said you weren't supposed to leave the compound," Herzog snapped.

"Our team is already there. They can handle it. Driving up there will just put you in danger. This is probably just what the Condition wants you to do," Torres suggested softly. "This could be a trap."

"I'm going," I spun around. "And I'll kneecap the first one of you who tries to stop me." I'm a physically intimidating specimen when I'm enraged. The three junior agents stepped back automatically. Franks didn't flinch. None of them said another word as I stared them down. "You gonna help me or not?"

Franks mulled it over, probably weighing the pros and cons of endangering his charge versus being able to go kill something. The decision didn't take long. "I'll drive."

Chapter 6

The G-Ride speedometer pegged at a hundred and forty miles an hour but we were going much faster as we entered Montgomery and headed west on the 85. The black-armored Suburban had been delivered to Franks sometime in the last few days by some of his minions and I was glad we had it. Although MHI had a lot of vehicles, none of them apparently had a friggin' quarter-million-horsepower engine forged in the fires of Mordor like this thing apparently did. It normally took me forty-five minutes to hit the outskirts of town from Cazador, but Franks had done it in less than twenty, and I wasn't exactly averse to speeding. The demonic roar of the engine was almost as loud as the banshee siren that warned everyone else to get out of the way or be flattened beneath our armored steel bumpers. Our tax dollars had equipped Agent Franks with the SUV from Hell.

Franks was emotionless in the reflected flashes of blue and red, still wearing his cheap suit. A pine-tree-shaped air freshener bounced around under the rearview mirror. I was in the passenger seat, hunched forward by the armor and pouches on my back. Abomination was muzzle down, balanced between my knees. It had been almost impossible to get dressed while we had slalomed around the corners of rural Keene County, but I had managed. The Goon Squad was in the next row of seats, also armed to the teeth, each one intense and ready to fight.

I had run into MHI headquarters long enough to grab my go-bag and give Dorcas a brief rundown. She had been trying to raise the others as we had left. I shoved my MHI-issued earpieces in, partially to protect my hearing from the siren, but also to check to see if any of my people were in range. I was alone. The radio mounted on the SUV's dash was tuned to the Monster Control Bureau's encrypted channel, so I knew that their strike force had mobilized and moved to the Buzzard Island Amphitheater, now only a few miles ahead of us.

"Alpha Team is in position outside the concert and holding," said someone over the radio.

"Any suspicious activity?" Agent Myers asked over the airwaves.

There was a long pause of open air. "Uh, sir, most of the people here are suspicious looking." Apparently they had never been to a Cabbage Point Killing Machine show before. Their tours were legendary. You could drop all sorts of weird supernatural creatures into one of their average gigs and nobody would notice.

My phone rang and I hurriedly pulled it from the small pouch on the front of my armor. "Yeah?"

"Z?" It was Albert Lee. "Dorcas just got a hold of me."

"Where are you?"

"We're a couple miles north of Cazador."

"Who you got?"

"Me and Grant. Dorcas raised Harbinger. They turned back too."Excellent. Lee was a good man, and Grant, say what you would about him, was a known quantity, more than I could say about my current carpool. "Listen, I've got to tell you something. Dorcas said it was Force and Violence. I've been reading up on them. Be really careful."

Franks must have somehow, impossibly, heard that. "Put him on speaker."

I complied so the Feds could hear. "First, what can they do? Second, how do we waste them?"

"Nobody really knows what they are. The descriptions sound kind of like an ogre and an ogress, but they're too fast, too smart, and apparently indestructible. Esmeralda thought they were Greek, and they've been seen in that part of the world a lot, for at least three thousand years, but from the descriptions, I think they're oni."

"Three thousand years?" Herzog said incredulously. "Bull."

Franks held up one hand to silence her.

"What's an oni?" I asked.

"Far Eastern legends talk about them a lot. They're evil spirits that have gained a physical body, usually really big and strong. They suck the life out of other things in order to power their own bodies indefinitely. That's probably what Skippy meant by getting paid in souls. I don't see why some of them couldn't wander over to Europe and end up in that area's folklore."

Some Hunters just seemed to geek out at monster factoids. "That's great. Now how do we kill them?"

"Beats me," he answered. "MHI has never killed an oni that I can find record of. Esmeralda said that bullets bounced off of them."

"Great…" I muttered. "We'll improvise."

"Electricity," Archer chimed in. "Enough current will stun an oni. That's what the field manual says."

"There's more. When MHI went up against them last time, they had a hard time tracking them, which is weird since witnesses say they're huge. But they would suddenly appear, kill something, then poof, they were just gone. So I'm guessing they're either able to fly or teleport. The Fed file said the necromancer can create shadow portals, so maybe they can too. They might even shape-shift, so who knows…"

"Well, that narrows it down. Thanks, Al. See you there. Go to the radio band when you reach Motown." I dropped the phone back in its pouch. This wasn't shaping up to be a fun night.

Updates continued to come in from the strike force as they surrounded the concert. They were all in position. "Stay low profile and hold your position for now," Myers ordered his teams. "Wait for the Condition to make their move first. Our primary concern is capturing a Condition operative. Civilian casualties are secondary. Myers out."

"What?" I shouted and slammed my fist into the glove box. Mosh was a sitting duck up there on stage. "Tell them to go in there and grab my brother now!"

Franks shook his head. "That's not the mission."

"Bullshit it's not. You're using him as bait, like you used me. He's not part of this." I reached over for the radio, but suddenly Franks' ham fist clamped around my left hand, immobilizing it as easily as if I were a child.

"He is now," Franks said, blank eyes never leaving the road as he steered with one hand between freeway traffic at absurd speeds.

"That's my brother out there. Don't you have any family, Franks?"

He scowled. "Yeah. Big family."

"Would you just leave them to die?"

"Not my problem…"

Something broke. I'd had enough. Mosh wasn't going to die if I could help it. Fury bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, as my STI.45 cleared its Kydex drop leg holster with a snap. I screwed the fat muzzle into Frank's ear, hard, and snapped, "Order them to get Mosh, right now."

It only took the Goon Squad a second to react. There was a click of a manual safety as Herzog put her HK.45 against the base of my skull. "Drop the gun, Pitt! Drop it!" she screamed. Archer was a split second slower but he slammed his Sig 229 into my head as well.

"Shut up!" I shouted. I wasn't going to let my brother get killed for their stupid mission. My finger was on the trigger and blasting Franks at this speed would surely end us all. "Call Myers!" Spit flew from my lips. "Now!"

Franks didn't take his eyes off the road, but he did unconsciously squeeze my left hand harder. Bones creaked and I grimaced. "Negative," he said.

"Owen, put the gun down," Torres urged softly. "Use your brain, man. We warned you about the Condition. They'll just keep on attacking everyone you've ever loved until they get you. We have to capture some of them or this will go on forever. Please, put the gun down."

Franks was utterly calm, even with a silver.45 slug aimed down his ear canal. "Do it."

My brother was going to be killed and there wasn't a thing I could do about it from here…Damn it. I couldn't threaten Franks. Shooting him wouldn't accomplish a thing. Deflated, I thumbed the safety back on and slowly lowered my gun. Franks let go of my aching hand and went back to 10 and 2 on the wheel. Archer and Herzog kept their guns trained on me.

"Hand your piece back, slowly!" she shouted, voice shrill in my ear. "Do it or I'll blow your brains out! You're under arrest."

"Screw you," I said. She pushed even harder with the muzzle. I knew that I'd gone way too far this time. "All right." Slowly, I passed the custom long-slide, double-stack pistol, turning it back butt first. She thumped me again, and I handed Abomination over my head, the stubby and bulky shotgun and grenade launcher combo difficult to pass between the seats. Another thump and I sent back my secondary STI off my left hip, this one a compact, bobbed and chopped.45.

"Everything." She whacked me again for good measure.

I slowly passed back the two Spyderco knives I kept on each hip pocket, then dragged out the 21" Chitilangi heavy kukri that replaced my lost Ganga Ram. MHI was one of Himalayan Imports' best customers. "Careful, that one's sharp," I said as I passed it back. Hopefully one of them would cut their fingers off by accident. Another thump. I was going to be covered in lumps from that hag. "Damn it," I muttered as I reached down to my ankle and pulled out the snub-nosed.357 Airweight Smith & Wesson that I kept stashed for worst-case scenarios. Now the three of them had a pile of weapons to contend with.

"How many guns do you have?" Torres asked in exasperation.

"It's a Second Amendment thing. You wouldn't understand."

"You're under arrest for threatening a federal agent, Pitt. Put your hands on your head," Herzog snarled.

"Uh…he's still got hand grenades," Archer pointed out.

"Stand down," Franks ordered his men, sounding exasperated. It took them a moment to respond. "I said STAND DOWN." That time both metallic weights left my head. Franks turned and looked at me, not paying any attention to the freeway that was flying past. For once he actually showed some emotion, and unfortunately for me, it was anger. His black eyes burned a hole through my soul as he sedately said the most words I had ever heard from him at one time. "Primary mission. Keep Pitt alive. We need live bait, so I can't twist your head off. But if you ever point a gun at me again, you'll pray for the Old Ones to take you away, because compared to what I'll do, the Elder Things will be a fucking picnic." He veered us past a semitrailer without looking, and it zipped by so quickly that it was just a silver blur. Franks just kept staring, his black eyes containing nothing but barely controlled rage. The three agents tried to shrink back through the seats. "Got it?"

"Yes."

"Good." Then he slugged me.

It was so unbelievably fast, so staggeringly hard, that I didn't even see it coming. A big fist crashed into my cranium like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. A bomb went off inside my gray matter. My head rebounded against the bulletproof glass of the passenger side door hard enough to crack it. He didn't just hit me in one place, but it was like he had somehow punched my entire face at once. My eyes automatically filled with tears and blood billowed out my nose in a froth of bubbles.

I was stunned, reeling, my brain trying to process what the hell had just happened as I came back to full consciousness either a minute or maybe a day later. "Ouch," I croaked, with the ultimate of understatements.

Franks was back to driving insanely through the evening traffic. The bright lights of the state capitol and downtown Montgomery were off to our right. He took one hand off the wheel long enough to crack his knuckles. "Now we're even."

The Buzzard Island Amphitheater was a new facility, just across the Alabama river, north of Montgomery. It had been a narrow patch of damp, low dirt for most of recorded history, but they had built it up with oceans of concrete, and put in a top-of-the-line convention and concert facility. It was a large, oval building, with a bulging glass dome for a roof, and giant, stainless-steel spires that were probably supposed to be some sort of industrial-modern-art thing. Tonight there were several large spotlights staggered around the amphitheater, casting giant beams seemingly forever into the clear night sky in big circular patterns.

We tore into the parking lot at just under eighty miles an hour, leaving a thick parabolic curve of rubber as we left the main road and got serious air off a speed bump. Our sociopathic driver nearly ran down the orange-vested traffic directors, ignoring all rules of both safety and courtesy, as he searched the lines of vehicles for his target. Apparently Franks found it, because he gunned the engine, cut off another car, and hammered the SUV across the pavement, only to hit the brakes at the last possible second and slide in sideways behind a large, black, SWAT-style van at the far end of the lot. The giant unmarked van seemed appropriate, because that was Myers' idea of low profile, after all.

We piled out of the SUV and around the back of the van, where several black-clad agents were clustered out of sight of the people walking around the lot. Still dizzy from the sucker punch, I stumbled around the vehicle, holding one arm up to my face to pinch off my bleeding nose. Agent Myers was sitting on the back steps of the van, listening to a radio with one ear and to his phone with the other. He was nodding, and it wasn't in time with the music throbbing from the far end of the lot either. Franks put one massive hand on my chest and shoved me back against the passenger side door. "Stay here."

He didn't want to get in trouble for bringing me.

"Watch him," Franks told the Goon Squad, then he turned and went to his superior's side. Torres took the front of the vehicle, Herzog the rear, and Archer stayed right by me. The three agents folded their arms, rifles dangling from their tac-slings, as they waited for me to try something else stupid. I suppose at this point I should consider myself in custody, though the MCB weren't the kind of cops who read people their rights…Last rites, maybe. Myers glanced up, obviously surprised to see his subordinate. They were far enough away that I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Myers appeared really ticked when he saw me. He began to shout and gesture wildly, but Franks said something that seemed to placate his boss momentarily.

I had to do something. We were just going to sit out here until the bad guys attacked. Mosh was toast. I could probably kick the crap out of some of them and make a run for it, but even if I were to somehow ditch them, my guns were sitting in the back seat, and I would have to run across a couple hundred yards of parking lot, only to arrive unarmed where Condition assassins were stalking Mosh. So scratch that plan. Maybe I could pull it off if I had some help. Torres seemed like the least obnoxious of the bunch, but he was further away. "Archer," I whispered to the nearest agent. "Those hit-monsters are going to murder my brother. We've got to get in there and save him."

"Shut up," he said angrily, apparently still offended that I had threatened to shoot his commander. "We're following orders."

"Is that why you volunteered for this? Letting civilians get slaughtered right under your nose, so you could follow orders? Come on, man. Do the right thing." We were at the far side of the parking lot, well away from the crowds, but I nodded toward the throngs on the steps of the amphitheater. "How many of those kids have to die tonight?"

Frustrated, he grabbed me by the straps of my armor, "As many as it takes, damn it! You don't know what the Condition is capable of. They have to be stopped!" Then he tried to shove me against the SUV, but apparently he had forgotten that I was a giant brute of a man. I outweighed the thin agent by probably a hundred and thirty pounds. He barely succeeded in budging me.

"Yeah, Franks makes it look easy," I said.

Feeling stupid, Archer let go. His Adam's apple bobbed nervously, but his eyes were cold, angry, and he kept one hand on the pistol grip of his M4 carbine. "Just shut up, okay." He jerked his head toward the improvised command center where his superiors were conferring. "Agent Myers knows what he's doing. He's a pro. Look…I don't want your brother or anybody else to get hurt, but this is bigger than he is. This cult, they're trying to awake something evil." Archer realized he was talking too much. "Never mind. Just shut up."

The Fed wasn't going to budge. I had to think of something else, fast.

There was movement over Archer's shoulder. Something small and black scurried low between the tightly packed rows of cars, then another shape, and another. How could I have been so stupid? I had forgotten all about them. A goggled head poked up over a Volkswagen's hood, scanned the contingent of Feds and then glided back down, unseen by everyone but me.

I softened my tone. "Look, Agent Archer, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but can I get a Kleenex or something? I'm bleeding all over my armor." I gestured at my swollen nose. It really hurt, so that part wasn't an act.

"Serves you right…" He hesitated, scowling, but finally relented. "Okay, hang on a second." He reached down and pulled open the Velcro tab on his first aid kit. He didn't see the thing crawling out from under a nearby car, then rising silently behind him. The orc grabbed Archer by the strap on the back of his armor while simultaneously kicking both knees out from under him. The agent fell backward, pulled by the weight of his armor and equipment, crying out in surprise.

It was my old pal, Edward. I only recognized him because he moved so smoothly that he made Bruce Lee look rickety. The orc didn't even slow. He covered the distance to Torres, leaping into the air at the last second as the younger agent turned to see what the commotion was about. Edward's heel collided with the Fed's chest, kicking him back. Torres collided with the hood of a car, tripped, and sprawled onto the pavement. There was a thud from the other direction as another black shape cracked Herzog over the head with a club. Gretchen didn't have Edward's moves, but she was mighty handy with her totem stick. The female agent went to the ground in a heap.

The passenger door of the SUV from Hell flew open. "Noble One, hurry fast," Skippy ordered. Franks had left the keys in it. I jumped into the seat as Gretchen climbed into the back. Still on the ground, Torres pulled his pistol, but Edward was on him in an instant and kicked the HK across the lot. The orc bent over and slugged Torres in the face, knocked him silly, spun him on his back like a turtle, and dragged him effortlessly over to Archer. He kicked the first agent again as he was struggling to rise, snatched a pair of handcuffs off Torres' vest, and locked one agent's wrist to the other one's ankle.

Skippy cranked it and the demon engine roared like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He slammed it into reverse and the tires spun as we flew rearward, smashing the back armored bumper into a parked Corvette. The Corvette lost.

Thirty feet away, Franks' head snapped up. His hand flew under his coat and came out with a fat Glock. Skippy put it in drive and the massive vehicle jumped forward, Gretchen holding the door open as Edward dove through to safety. Franks aimed at Skippy but hesitated, probably more worried about his truck than violating his primary mission. Then we were speeding past. "Big Fed. Look mad," Skippy grunted as he put the hammer down.

I whipped around to see Franks sprinting after us, gun in hand. Skippy wasn't kidding. He looked pissed.

All orcs have gifts. I don't know how it works exactly, but each of them has a unique ability. Edward's was kicking ass. Gretchen was a remarkable healer. And Skippy, leader of the MHI orcs, brother of Edward, and husband of Gretchen (wife one of five), was a helicopter pilot of almost supernatural skill. However, that ability apparently didn't translate into driving ground vehicles, as Skippy smashed the SUV brutally right down a line of parked cars, flinging headlights, glass, and bits of plastic in every direction. Concertgoers were forced to dive for safety as Skippy high-speed crunched his way toward the amphitheater entrance.

"I'm glad to see you guys!" I shouted as Skippy drove over a parked Suzuki motorcycle. Our shocks absorbed the impact rather well. "We've got to get to my brother. Mosh is in danger."

The orcs in back just started passing my confiscated weapons back to me. They never talked much anyway. Skippy piped up as I tucked various guns and knives-even a kukri!- back into their respective spots. "Yes. Joo-Lee call. Say, Great War Chief…in much danger. Twins come. Take soul." His super-gravelly voice sounded angry. His people venerated metal and its musicians above all. A threat against my brother, whom they called the Great War Chief, was serious business. "Twins kill many Urks before…now Urks turn. We go find…Brother of War Chief. See gub mint." He lifted the base of his hood, revealing his tusks, and spit on the steering wheel. Orcs were probably the only people I had ever encountered who had more issues with authority than Hunters. "Gub mint, take you prisoner. So we save."

"Who do you have here?"

Skippy shook his head. "Only few…Grtxschnns, Exszrsd, and-" he grumbled his real, incomprehensible name, reminding me again of why we called him Skippy. "With gub mint here, send tribe away to village. Go home. Be safe. We…we stay for help." He was right. Orcs, even the ones that stayed with MHI, were still on the PUFF list, and thereby fair game to the Feds. What these three were doing was incredibly brave.

"They're heading for the front entrance," said a voice on the radio. "Intercept! Intercept!"

"Belay that order," Myers said. "All units hold position. Wait until we get a shot at those monsters. Pitt, you obstinate pain in the ass, I know you can hear me. Don't you dare go in there."

I grabbed the radio and pulled the mike over to me. "Myers, that's my family we're talking about."

"They'll kill you," he said.

"Yeah, heard that before." I ripped the cord out of the radio. It felt good. Skippy held up his pointer finger and pinky and threw the horns. Rock on. "You guys armed?"

"No. Security," Skip's hood dipped toward the rapidly approaching concert entrance's row of metal detectors. Gretchen held up her totem stick, complete with feathers and small animal skulls, that she had somehow snuck in. There were two sudden clicks as Edward flicked open the ASP collapsible batons he must have lifted off of Torres and Archer. Edward was a lousy shot, but death incarnate up close. I pulled my big.45 and passed it over to Skippy. "Thanks," he said. "Hold to something, now."

We drove up the entrance stairs and slammed the radiator into a concrete wall right across from a giant bronze statue of Hank Williams, Sr. The armored Suburban was so heavy I barely felt the impact.

I leapt out, scanning the crowd. It was a diverse bunch watching the chaos of our car wreck. Most of them were pierced or tattooed, and there was a bewildering variety of hairstyles-everything from shaved heads all the way to long flowing hair and even a few old-school mohawks. They were pointing and laughing at the G-Ride, with its red and blue flashing wigwags perched lopsided on the stairs, which meant security would be here any second.

Skippy grunted to get my attention. "Disguise." He tossed me a blue windbreaker that said Department of Homeland Security in giant gold letters on the back. It was huge, big enough to fit over my armor even, so must have belonged to Agent Franks. I tugged it on and clumsily hid Abomination under one armpit. It was then that I noticed for the first time that all three orcs were wearing Cabbage Point Killing Machine shirts over their usual baggy, black clothing. Skippy's boldly read hold the pig steady. So the orcs were in disguise too.

"Get inside," I shouted, and the four of us ran for the entrance. The concert had been going on for a while, so there weren't very many people standing in line, and we rudely shoved past those that were. "Out of the way. Homeland Security. Coming through!" I bellowed. Having already committed assault with a deadly weapon and grand theft auto in the last ten minutes, what was a little impersonating a federal agent?

Oh crap. The Law."Who the hell are you?" asked the uniformed cop pushing his way through the sea of tattooed skin. He must have seen the G-Ride.

"Agent Franks. Homeland Security!" I shouted, still trying to get to the entrance. "We've got a terrorist incident."

Apparently me and my bloody nose didn't make the most convincing Fed. He held up one hand to stop me, his other hand came to a rest on his holstered sidearm. Alabama cops do not screw around. "Let's see some creds."

"Edward, my credentials please," I requested. The orc smoothly melted through the crowd and batoned the cop to the pavement before anyone could react. The two figures went down and were lost in the churning mass. "Don't hurt him," I ordered, not slowing. We made it around the corner and away from the Suburban. I broke into a run.

There were four people wearing yellow security shirts taking tickets and manning the metal detectors at the gate. "No weapons, no drugs, only eight ounces of sealed bottled water, no flash photography…" the first guard droned automatically. "Ticket, please." I ignored him and strode right through. The detector started beeping like crazy. "Hey, asshole." One meaty hand fell on my shoulder. I instantly grabbed it and twisted, putting the man in a wristlock. He screamed and went to his knees. My jacket fell open, revealing my shotgun.

"Anybody else want my ticket?" I asked.

"Naw, that's cool," said the second guard slowly, hand unconsciously reaching for his radio. There wasn't much I could do about that, short of shooting everybody, and being one of the self-proclaimed Good Guys, that wasn't an option. I let go of the first guard, put my boot on his shoulder, and shoved him out of the way. "Enjoy the show…" said the calm one. The three orcs came next, each one taking the time to politely display their VIP wristbands to security people that weren't really paying attention at that point.

Then we were inside the concourse. This place was huge, with lots of ground to cross, and I knew I didn't have much time. Regular cops would be looking for a big dude in a blue jacket, and a show like this had to be crawling with cops. A giant row of vendors selling souvenirs, tee shirts, beer and food, stretched for what looked like a quarter mile before the building opened up into the actual hall. There were probably a thousand people wandering around, clustered in talkative knots or buying various things between us and my brother. They would have to serve as cover.

"Walk fast, but try to look like we belong," I said, realizing how stupid that sounded as soon as I said it. A man walked past wearing a Viking costume with lit sparklers on his helmet, and in the other direction went two young women whose only clothing on their upper halves was strategically placed, black electrical tape. Yeah, it had been a long time since I had been to one of my brother's shows. Edward suddenly bolted off to the side in the direction of the restrooms. Either he had seen something, or orcs had easily excitable bladders. I kept moving.

Damn, more cops. A few of them were running down the concourse back toward the entrance. I bowed my head so I wouldn't appear so tall and got into a line that was either for funnel cakes or nose rings. The Montgomery PD went right past, but I knew that kind of luck wouldn't last for long.

There was a tap on my shoulder. Edward shoved a giant leather trenchcoat at me. I saw my reflection in his goggled eyes as he nodded at the restrooms. His English was worse that Skippy's. "Fat man. Go pee. No need coat." Then he emitted a low-pitched noise, like shaking gravel in a bucket, that could only have been a hearty orcish laugh. I pulled the DHS jacket off and tossed it on the floor, exposing piles of guns for just an instant, before quickly donning the massive garment, which I discovered came with chains and a row of spikes down each shoulder.

"Sweet," I said. Gretchen handed me a ridiculous cowboy hat, complete with a swath of what I assumed was real armadillo that she had lifted off of somebody else. Orcs were damn sneaky when they put their minds to it. Living in the shadows of humanity for centuries had that effect. I pulled the hat down low, even though it was way too small, and headed for the show.

In the main hall, the music was deafening, driven by a giant wall of speakers behind the band. The place was packed. The floor was a sea of bouncing bodies, hands raised, moving in time with the music, a veritable sea of hands and heads throbbing up and down. It was muggy from the body heat, and I immediately began to sweat under the layers of Kevlar and the absurd coat. The air was thick from glycerin foggers, as strobes and lasers cut confusing patterns above us. The three orcs began to bob automatically, unable to resist the instinctive urge to headbang.

A giant shape loomed over me. Monster! I started to pull out Abomination, only to realize that the huge thing tottering past was some awkward demon costume, made by a girl sitting on a tall man's shoulders, and draped in burlap and tarps. If it hadn't been such a dangerous situation, I would have stopped to admire the fact that they even had red LED lights mounted for eyes. I really needed to get to more of Mosh's shows.

My brother had always been musically gifted. Dad hadn't really appreciated it since it was a skill that wasn't directly useful for survival. But Mom had put her foot down and young David Uhersky Pitt had taken classical guitar lessons. Then one day as teenagers the two of us had snuck out to a Slayer concert and he had found his calling in life. The rest was history.

Brilliant spotlights beamed down on the stage as Cabbage Point Killing Machine played. The singer was moving back and forth, jumping up and down and screaming. Fireballs exploded and soared upward over the stage as the pyrotechicians earned their keep. Then I spotted my brother, the guitarist, just a silhouette standing out in front of a propane explosion, as he played his guitar like I shoot guns. He was one of most talented musicians in the world, in my humble opinion, and I felt pretty justified in that opinion as his fingers flew back and forth faster than the eye could track, coaxing chords out of his instrument not meant for the human ear. The boy could shred.

I tried to stick to the edge of the main floor, as the bodies were only tightly packed here, as opposed to absurdly packed into the center. I headed directly for the stage. There was probably a better way to go around, but I had never been here before and had no idea how the area behind the stage was laid out. Not to mention that there were bound to be more cops back there too.

It was deafening, but I heard a voice in my radio earpiece. I clamped one hand over it in order to hear. "-ing on the freeway. North side of Montgomery," it was saying. It was somebody else from MHI.

My microphone was in a strap that rode around my neck, a military design used so soldiers riding in turrets could still be heard over wind noise. Hopefully, it would work in here. "This is Z. I'm inside the concert."

"What is that noise?" I recognized that voice as belonging to Grant Jefferson. "Are the cultists attacking?"

"No, that's just the music." I had to remind myself that when I had driven Grant's car last summer, all of the stations had been programmed to opera or something. "Stay outside the concert. Feds are crawling all over the parking lot, and they're ticked. They'll probably just arrest you on sight."

"What? I can't hear you over that horrible racket." Some people just can't appreciate good music.

I started to reply, but choked it off as I saw them. Two things were making their way toward the stage, parallel with me but on the opposite side of the floor. They towered over the jumping crowd, a pair of huge, slumped shapes, merely black outlines in the flashing lights. The first was much taller than everything around it, and the other was even larger, and unlike the flailing costumes I had seen so far, these were moving far too smoothly, cutting their way right through the unsuspecting masses.

Grabbing Skippy's arm, I pointed at the monsters. His goggled head swiveled back and forth. Finally, he shrugged. He couldn't see them. "Damn it, the two big things. They're huge. Right there. " I pointed again. The other orcs looked as well, standing on their tiptoes to see, then glanced at each other, shaking their heads as thousands of sweaty bodies jostled around us. They couldn't see them either.

There was no time to ponder that mystery. I doubled my efforts to get to the stage, pushing and shoving, a big man on a mission. Across the hall, the ogres, or oni, or whatever the hell they were, were moving at about the same speed. Somehow, the people being plowed out of their way didn't even seem to notice.

An elbow caught my cheek and a heavy boot kicked me in the thigh. This was the kind of crowd that didn't react well to rudeness. I just kept going. Edward clotheslined a large youth to the ground when said youth took issue with me cutting in front of him. The closer I got to the stage, the more violent it was going to get. Anybody who has been to a show like this knows that the front few rows were not for the faint of heart. It was a downright Darwinian environment. The floor narrowed as it got down to the stage, which was serving to funnel us closer to the approaching monsters.

Risking a quick glance to the side, I could see them clearly through the fog. The lead thing was at least a foot taller than my 6 feet 5 inches and even then, it seemed somehow hunched over. Its head was covered in some sort of gray shawl. It collided with the moshers, and they just parted before it, a few of them getting confused looks on their faces, but none of them seeing the creatures.

"See them now?" I shouted at Skippy.

"No," he said, while looking right at them. "Smell. Smell monsters."

I don't know how Skippy could smell anything over the odor of thousands of bodies and various types of illegal smoke, but whatever worked. The first creature was almost to the stage as I reached the base. More yellow-shirted security were standing behind a row of aluminum rails separating the mob from the band. I climbed over the rail, only to have several pairs of strong hands shove me back. Only tough guys got this kind of job. It was the kind of thing that I probably would have done in the past and enjoyed. I had always been about gigs that allowed me to punch people and get paid for it.

So it wasn't anything personal when I palm-struck the guard in the chest and launched him back into the concrete. I just needed to get on that stage. The other guard touching me went down with a flick of Edward's stolen baton, crying out and holding his fingers. I was over the railing and pulling myself up to the stage in a second, losing my idiotic cowboy hat in the process.

The song finished in a flourish of guitars and drums, along with a propane explosion right over my head. The lights twirled and flickered as they spun the spotlights like a kaleidoscope. I was up and over, rolling onto the hardwood planking as the crowd went insane, asking for, no, demanding an encore. I got to my knees as the lead singer tossed his microphone and leapt past me into the waiting arms of the crowd. He was surfed back and forth on the sea of hands, and I had to admit that at any other time it looked like fun. Mosh better not do that, because I didn't fight my way all the way up here just to have him go and jump the hell off. I headed for the guitarist. I sensed the orcs right behind me as one of them, Skippy, left us and sprinted toward the row of speakers.

My brother had pulled his instrument off, and was waving it over his head like some medieval weapon. People said that he looked a lot like me, but I never saw the resemblance. He was a few years younger, a few inches shorter, and a few pounds lighter. Personally, I thought he looked more like Mom, with me being darker, uglier, and more beady-eyed like Dad. He was wearing a tank top, showing off the typical Pitt family bulkiness and love of lifting heavy objects, and also demonstrating that three quarters of him was inked with various designs. You have no idea how angry that made my dad. Mosh had a long black goatee; his head was totally shaved and shiny under the lights. I was going prematurely bald, and my brother, blessed with a full head of hair, shaves his. Jerk.

For a second I thought Mosh was going to bring the guitar down and smash it on stage, but that would be like me smashing a perfectly good firearm. He was a rock star but we had been raised too cheaply to ever be wasteful. Finally, he lowered the guitar and shook his fist at the crowd, the wide grin of a man doing what he loves and knowing he's the very best at it on his tanned face.

Then he saw me. His mouth formed my name as he tried to process what I was doing here. Security was coming from offstage to get me, but he waved them away as I got closer. Confused, he was starting to ask me a question when the first monster hit the stage. A body in a yellow tee shirt flew twenty feet in the air, screaming, before crashing into an overhanging speaker and taking the entire assembly crashing to the floor in a shower of sparks. The crowd loved it.

The guard's impact caused a giant confetti dispenser to break open prematurely, spilling tons of reflective bits of white paper like snow. "What the hell, man?" Mosh shouted as a great gray mass vaulted effortlessly onto the stage, knocking over stands and crushing a huge bank of Digitech pedals. Through the wall of sparkling fake snow, the creature turned toward us. The face underneath the gray hood was human, mostly, but twisted, somehow too long, too pointy, with a mane of curly black hair framing bulging red eyes set in a purple hag's face. The shroud fell open as the monster rose to its full height, towering over us, spreading wide long purple arms, six-fingered hands opening into a bank of nails the size of steak knives. The form was that of a human female, but far too enormous, with skin the texture of punching-bag leather.

The audience cheered.

I swear it actually smiled-gleaming white pointy teeth poking out in an evil grin-turned, and bowed to the crowd.

"That's one big chick," the drummer said stupidly.

Then it was back to business, as the thing crossed most of the huge stage in two steps, curled toe claws digging splinters out of the floor. A black, forked tongue licked past lips as it spoke, with a voice that sounded surprisingly normal and feminine. "Come along, little performer. Show's over."

"Shit!" Mosh shouted, stumbling back, knowing full well that this wasn't part of the act. "What's that?"

"Oh, now everybody can see them!" I shouted as I pushed past my brother, shrugged out of the stupid coat, raised Abomination and flipped the selector down to full auto. The EO-Tech holographic sight settled on the creature's center of mass as I jerked the trigger. Abomination recoiled up and to the right as I stitched a line of buckshot impacts across the creature's torso. The purple shape jerked under the steady impacts, raising claws to protect its face as I blasted it with a continuous roar of ten magnum rounds. No normal being could have lived.

"Mosh. Run," I ordered as I dropped the spent magazine and pulled another one from my vest.

The clawed hand came down and belligerent red eyes focused on me through the swirling confetti. "You!"

New magazine rocked in, I jerked the charging handle to chamber another round, aimed and fired. The one-ounce silver slug could have blasted a hole through a medium-sized cow but it didn't seem to phase the oni. The projectile actually made an audible, buzzing, ricochet noise and there was a clang as the drum set took the hit.

She turned to the pit and shrieked, "Cratos! He is here. The Hunter arrived, just as they said he would."

The second monster lumbered up onto the stage, also cloaked in gray, but, holy shit, this one was huge. The arms bulging out the sides were bright red, big around as my waist, and rippling with veins as thick as garden hoses. The head rose, revealing a much more demonic visage, rhino-horn-sized tusks pointing up out of a jaw a foot across. Above that, tiny black eyes blinked stupidly. Squat, with thick legs and a stumpy torso, he was still twice as tall as I was, and every inch of him was coated in red hide and hard muscle. It was truly terrifying. "Master will pay many souls for this one, Bia," he bellowed, his voice shaking the foundations of the building.

The audience went nuts. Now this was entertainment. As long as they thought this was part of the show, they wouldn't kill each other trying to stampede out the exits. Edward swung his arms sharply downward, and the two batons extended with a snap. I pointed my shotgun at the big red monster. "Ready, Ed?" The orc spun both batons around him fast enough to make the air whistle, looked at me, and nodded.

One of the bouncers stared up at the giant in shock, backing away slowly, while the others had the sense to run like hell. "Yum…snack," Big Red said. The brute reached down, effortlessly picked the man up and casually bit his head off. Twitching and fountaining blood, the decapitated body was tossed fifty feet out into the audience by the monster like it was discarding an empty beer can. The nonchalant crunching of the skull as he chewed was audible across the entire stage. The purple one laughed.

Edward glanced down at the batons in his hands, then back at me, as if to say, Screw this. We both ran.

My brother hadn't listened to me, and he was watching the two giants, mouth agape, guitar dangling in one hand. "Come on, man!" I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along as we sprinted for backstage. There was a massive roar and a harpy's shriek as the creatures followed, each one of their strides equivalent to several of ours. The other people in this general area were close enough to know that these were not special effects and were fleeing in every direction. My eyes were dazzled from the spotlights as we ran under the overhang supporting most of the sound equipment and into an unadorned concrete hallway. I crashed and tripped over a cart, dragging Mosh with me. Gretchen and Edward were now far ahead, as were the fleeing roadies and stagehands.

Skippy was pushing the metal container cart that I'd run into toward the stage. It took me a second to realize what it was. The black stencil read DANGER: pyrotechnics. Skippy gestured at my vest. Knowing automatically what he wanted, I pulled out an incendiary grenade and handed it to him.

"Owen, what are those-wait, is that a grenade?" Mosh asked as he pulled himself to his feet, still trying to figure out what was happening. Welcome to the party, Bro.

"Yes, and when the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend, so move your ass."

"Bia, here they are," the red oni said as he squatted on his haunches and peered down the hallway. "Filthy souls to eat…he-he-he." His giggle was unnerving.

The hallway was clear of innocents. Not that Skippy probably would have worried about it anyway. He tugged the pin, dropped the grenade on top of the cart, and both of us shoved as hard as we could, sending the heavy load down the hall with a surprising bit of velocity. Five-second fuse on the white phosphorus ones. The cart rolled haphazardly toward the huge figure now waddling, crouched, down the hall. "RUN!" Cratos smashed the cart against the wall, pushing his way past it to get to us.

The three of us made it down the rest of the hall and around the corner before the WP detonated. Willie Petes don't go off with a typical explosion-more of a pop-fizz, and then a layer of flame that sticks to everything and could melt steel goes shooting out in every direction. Cratos roared as phosphorus embedded itself in his hide. "Keep going!" I screamed. The pyro bundle detonated a moment later, not as massively as I hoped, but the shockwave traveled over us, raining dust down from the ceiling.

I hit the floor, sliding forward on my face, quickly rolling onto my back, and checking the way we had come. Smoke was billowing out of the hall.

"It burns me!" The idiot monster shouted as it blundered out of the inferno, still right behind us but now coated in living fire. Flames licked out around him; somehow they climbed the concrete walls and moved between the beams of the ceiling. An alarm began to wail as the fire sprinklers kicked on, pelting us with cold water. He blundered about, crashing into pieces of equipment and smashing the walls into powder, apparently blinded by the fire. The damn thing showed no indication of giving up.

This place was confusing, a maze of concrete halls. "How do we get out of here?" I shouted.

"This way." Mosh pointed down another corridor, this one lined with green equipment lockers. He realized he was still holding his guitar by the neck and tossed it on the floor with a clatter. Too bad; that thing would probably be worth a bundle on eBay. We ran, leaving the burning oni behind, and raced past dressing rooms, equipment closets, and a table lined with all sorts of colorful food that was now drenched by the sprinklers. "Parking lot's this way." A bunch of people clustered ahead of us, mostly groupies hanging out for the afterparty judging by how trashy most of the girls were dressed. The groupies were every bit as soaked and terrified as everybody else and were all pointing down the intersecting hall.

"Why's everybody screaming?" Mosh demanded as we slid through the water behind the women. He got his answer as a small, black object came flying back through the sprinklers. Edward hit the ground rolling, splashing instantly back to his feet. The female oni was right behind him, claws swinging wildly. Somehow she had gotten ahead and cut us off.

Edward dodged under the black claws. Long divots were ripped from concrete behind him. He spun, nailing the creature in the body with the batons: pop, pop, pop. The impacts sounded like solid hits and he was moving unbelievably fast, striking over and over, but she didn't seem to notice. Bia lashed out with one taloned foot, raking a hole in the carpet where Ed had just been.

I pushed past the groupies. "Edward, down!"

"Everybody, this way," shouted Mosh, grabbing some of the women, and physically propelling them through a door that he'd jerked open. Luckily it appeared that all Pitts adjusted quickly under stress. "Move!"

The purple creature ducked under the overhanging lights, which were flickering and shorting in the artificial rain. Orange emergency lighting suddenly kicked on along the floor. Edward dove aside, giving me a clean shot. Bia had protected her face earlier, so I put the holographic reticle on her skull and pulled the trigger. Her head snapped back under the impact as the slug bounced from her forehead. Skippy materialized at my side and my loaned.45 barked as he opened fire. Bia snarled and lifted her gray tattered cloak as if to protect her face. I kept firing as she ducked her head and retreated back the way she had come. Skippy quit shooting. "Where she go?" he grumbled.

They could turn invisible. That’s how they were able to move through the audience. But how come I could still see them? Maybe this Chosen One business did have a few perks after all. "Her head is vulnerable," I told Skippy.

"Garage is this way," Mosh shouted from the door. Water was running in thick rivulets down his goatee. There was a mighty roar from the direction of the burning Cratos. He was on the move. "Let's get out of here."

I followed my brother, walking backward, waiting for that horrible purple screechy thing to charge back into view at any second. The innocent bystanders had used the time to run like crazy and there were a bunch of discarded high-heel shoes on the floor. Mosh, Gretchen, Edward, Skippy and I ran down a steep ramp that had to be at least fifty yards long before we entered the huge open space of the parking garage. The sprinklers in this area hadn't activated, so at least there was plenty of traction. There were several semis and trailers parked here as well as a bunch of miscellaneous cars.

"Pitt! Status!" shouted the voice in my earpiece.

"Busy right now, Grant," I gasped as I kept on running.

We passed a pillar and I was suddenly jerked off balance as someone grabbed my arm. Slamming into the pillar nearly knocked the wind right out of me. I tried to bring up my shotgun but it was swatted aside. Agent Franks shoved me back into the wall, hard, and held a single finger up in front of his lips, indicating the need for silence. The reason quickly became apparent when the wall twenty feet over the ramp exploded in a shower of fragments, dust, and flying rebar shards. Cratos slammed his fists right through the wall. The great red beast launched himself flailing into the room, landing on the floor hard enough to shatter it in a ten-foot circle.

Franks pushed me back even harder with his left hand, raising a stubby FN F2000 rifle in his right. He was still in his suit, and hadn't even taken the time to remove his clip-on tie. Cratos immediately focused in on my fleeing brother and the orcs and took off in pursuit. "Filthy souls to EAT!" He kicked a parked car and rolled it onto its side, scattering a cloud of safety glass. The screech of metal was obnoxious. Earth shaking with each step, the monster ran right past us. Smoke rose from his flesh but he looked no worse for having been doused in chemical flames.

"Now!" Franks shouted, spinning out from behind the pillar and leveling his rifle at the back of the running monster. A dozen other Feds appeared from behind various vehicles and opened fire, filling the garage with the deafening chatter of automatic weapons and the thumps of grenade launchers. Cratos was caught in the fusillade, hundreds of rounds and supersonic fragments impacting his armored hide. He momentarily disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flashes, spinning, off balance. I caught a glimpse of him as he reacted to the onslaught and covered his head. The monster tripped, toppled forward, and crushed a pickup truck beneath its bulk. Mosh and the orcs were nowhere to be seen.

The fire let up as the final guns ran out of ammo. Then came the simultaneous clatter of the well-trained agents quickly reloading. The oni wasn't moving. Nothing normal could have lived through that, but these things were not normal. "Cables," Franks ordered as he jerked the mag from his bullpup carbine and pulled a fresh one from inside his coat. "Go."

Wiping the water from my eyes, I stared in disbelief as four agents sprinted to the downed monster. Each one was carrying a giant steel manacle, thick steel cables strung between them. Several other Feds ran up behind them, carrying some sort of spear trailing a fat electrical cord. A generator roared to life. It was some sort of monster taser. "You've got to be flipping kidding me," I muttered. "Go cut its head off or something."

"Orders said take them alive," Franks replied.

That was stupid. Taking a cultist captive was one thing. Getting close to that downed monstrosity was idiocy. "There's another one around here," I warned.

"Bia," Franks said, indicating that he knew a lot more about these things than he had ever let on. Son of a bitch. "We'll take the big one first."

The red form stirred, the metal of the pickup truck grinding beneath it. The agents began to shout and they hit it with the metal spear. Electricity crackled and the oni jerked and twitched, thrashing violently, smoke rising from the impact with a smell like burning rubber. "Bag him!" one of the men shouted and they started locking the giant manacles around Cratos' thick wrists and ankles. Every time it began to move, the agents on the cables would step back, and they would hit him with the spear again. I had to admit, the MCB was effective. MHI would just have chainsawed the beast as soon as he was down.

Franks got on his radio. "This is Delta. We're taking Force into custody. Violence unaccounted for."

"Excellent. Research was positive that oni were vulnerable to electricity." I could hear Myers reply. "Is Pitt still alive?"

Franks scowled. "Yeah…"

"So, you got your monster to interrogate. I'm guessing we're square?" I asked hopefully.

"I've got three injured men because of you," the big man replied. "We're not done yet…"

"Movement. Shock him!" One of the agents shouted from Cratos' side. The men on the manacles stepped back and the spear was driven in, but nothing happened this time, no arc, no sparks, nothing. "Malfunction! Hit him again." The spear was jabbed again but with no effect. The agents cried for help with terror in their voices.

Franks stepped forward, trying to discern the problem. The red hulk started to rise. The men on the manacles retreated, yelling for assistance. I glanced to the side. The electrical cable leading from the portable generator to the spear had been severed. "Bia!" I shouted, as the purple figure threw off its cloak behind the men providing covering fire. Cackling, she slashed into the agents, ripping through their armor, blood spraying. They died quickly, having never even seen her coming.

"Aim for her eyes!" Franks shouted, but she was already gone, moving behind some parked trucks.

My attention snapped back to the big red one. An agent was shouting, "Sir, Force is-" but he never got to finish the sentence. The massive oni rose, bellowing, cables twisting and snapping, and one huge fist clocked the man, launching him across the garage in a cloud of bodily fluids. The other men started shooting, but they were too close to the beast now. With a roar, Force laid into them, living up to his title. With each movement, another agent went down, and in a matter of seconds, the survivors were retreating in disarray.

"All teams converge on the garage now!" Franks ordered into his radio. He put his rifle to his shoulder and aimed carefully at the twisting and jerking monster, searching for the eye. I put Abomination to my shoulder and centered the sight on the moving target. It was an exceedingly difficult shot. Franks fired and missed. The oni whipped one strand of cable wildly, cracking the air like a bullwhip, and a nearby agent went down. The man screamed incoherently, both of his legs severed at the knees. I tuned that out and exhaled. The eyes were moving. Focus on the holographic dot. The trigger pull was smooth and straight back to the rear.

My slug struck Cratos in one diminutive black eye. The giant paused stupidly, as if thinking about something exceedingly complicated. He stumbled and went to one knee. Something that looked like thick steam came pouring from the now-open socket. He put one meaty palm on the floor to steady himself and shook his head. When he looked back up through the rotating cloud, the eye had returned. His red lips pulled away from his tusks, and he snarled at me as the smoke dissipated. "Filthy souled Hunter!" He came off the floor and charged like an enraged bull.

Franks shoved me aside at the last second. Cratos flew past and collided with the pillar, blasting a giant chunk from it. Franks spun one way, I sprawled the other, frantically dragging myself on my butt through the debris. The giant came out of the dust, shaking himself violently. One piece of rebar, unnoticed, was impaled through his chest. "Lose some souls because of you. Replace it with yours!" he growled, bearing down on me. I kept scuttling away, but he was right there, and I could taste his horrible sulfuric breath pouring down.

His tiny eyes bore into me and the blackness behind those lenses seemed to stretch on forever, inky pools from a horrible place, utterly devoid of light. He extended one giant red hand toward me, palm as big as my chest. I felt myself growing weaker, like all of the warmth was being sucked out through my ribs, leaving my limbs numb and cold. I couldn't breathe.

The life was being pulled out of me…

Suddenly, it was as if I could see through his skin. The oni's body was just a shell, a constructed mass of false tissues, and underneath was the real creature, a swirling demonic bag of stolen souls.

The oni licked his lips hungrily.

Then he was gone. The rear end of a bus smashed into Cratos, driving him back into the pillar with a brutal crunch. I shook my head as air filled my lungs and blood flowed back into my extremities. It hurt. I stumbled to my feet. The door of the Cabbage Point Killing Machine luxury tour bus slid open with an automated hiss. Mosh sat behind the wheel. "Get in!"

One giant red arm was already flailing about, pinned between the pillar and the bus. The rear tires began to slide forward against his pressure. That’s one tough monster. I ran and jumped into the vehicle. The three orcs were clustered behind Mosh. Edward had gotten cut on the arm at some point and Gretchen was ministering to him. Somebody pushed in behind me. Franks.

"Get on the freeway," he ordered. There was a huge gash across his chest, and his white shirt was hanging open and soaked with blood. I didn't know if it was his or somebody else's. Franks didn't indicate that he was in pain, but then again, I didn't know if he could feel pain. "They'll follow Pitt."

"Me?" Mosh asked in confusion.

"No, him." Franks jerked his thumb at me. "Drive."

I ran down the aisle of the tour bus as Mosh ground the gears. The bus was so opulent that if it hadn't been such dire circumstances, I probably would have stopped to gawk. It was like a death-metal version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. "You've got a Jacuzzi in this thing?" I shouted.

"Hell, yeah," Mosh said. "Hold on. I've only driven this once before."

The bus lurched forward, stopped, lurched again, and then was building up steam, heading for the garage exit and the open night. The rear end was crushed and a giant red visage was glaring at me through the broken back window. Cratos' tusked face curled into a snarl as we pulled away, freeing him. I raised Abomination, aimed carefully, and put my finger on my gun's second trigger. These things absorbed people's souls, and somehow that's how they had lived for thousands of years. I'd seen the pressurized bag inside them. Apparently the gateway to that was in their heads. If he lost some energy from a.68 caliber slug through the eye, let's see how he did with a 40mm grenade up the snoot.

"HUNTER!" Cratos roared.

I shot him in the mouth as we drove away.

The explosion blasted his head wide open, unhinging his jaw. There was a billowing cloud of that same white smoke as the giant toppled over and thudded to the earth.

That had to have finished him. The oni shook on the ground, facedown, head deflated like collapsed dough as the false body seemed to shrink. "No backstage pass for you, jerk-off." I laughed.

But then the head puffed back up. The skull was briefly soft as it bulged and throbbed but then it seemed to instantly harden. Re-formed, he looked up and focused right in on me, black eyes filled with simple hatred. Cratos lurched from his knees and started running after us, each step like thunder.

"Step on it, Mosh!"

Chapter 7

We tore out of the Buzzard Island Amphitheater parking lot and up onto the freeway heading south. There were a ton of flashing lights, ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars arrayed around the hall now. Thousands of people were wandering around, aware that something weird was going on, but not knowing what exactly. And it was about to get a whole lot weirder for them when that unkillable red bastard came running out after us.

"Head for the Air Force base," Franks directed Mosh.

"Listen, big scary dude, I don't know where the air base is," Mosh said. "Owen, who is this asshole?"

"He's my bodyguard…" My brother started to turn around. I knew he had a lot of questions at this point, and the look he gave me indicated just how pissed off he was. "Just…Never mind…Keep heading south. I'll tell you where to turn." I held onto a stainless steel pole by the driver's seat as the bus jerked violently through the gears.

Franks keyed his radio. "This is Delta lead. Southbound in the black bus with the primary."

Myers came back. "Are you all right, Franks?"

"Yes, sir. But Alpha Team was rendered combat ineffective." Apparently "combat ineffective" meant that most of them had just gotten dismembered. The quiet man stated it with less emotion than the average person expressed over stubbing their toe.

"Evacuating them now. Apaches' ETA ten minutes," Myers replied. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. There was no way that Cratos could catch up to us on foot before we had some serious firepower overhead. "We've got a level-five containment problem here, a couple hundred viable witnesses." The senior agent sounded really upset.

"Did you get Violence?"

"Negative."

Franks started scanning through the darkened windows. "Roger that."

"Owen, we've got to talk," Mosh said as he painfully ground the bus into a higher gear. He turned and looked at me. "Okay, what the hell were those things? What are you doing playing commando? You're an accountant! And these weirdos keep bowing and calling me War Chief." He waved his hand at the orcs. All three bowed simultaneously. "See? See!"

"I'll explain everything."

"No. You won't," Franks ordered. I had to remember that part of his job was murdering witnesses who couldn't keep their big mouths shut.

"Wait," Skippy interrupted before I could tell Franks to go screw himself. "Smell monster." He lifted up the base of his mask, revealing his face. The wide nostrils in his piglike snout flared as he sniffed the air.

"Aaaahhhh!" Mosh screamed when he saw Skippy's face, jerked the wheel of the tour bus, and clipped the rear end of a passing car. The car careened off the freeway and out into the wetlands. He barely regained control before we went off the road, all of us being slammed back and forth, and stumbling in the aisle. "What the fuck!"

Skippy dropped his mask. "Sorry…War Chief." Then he bowed an apology to Mosh. "Sister here."

There was a thump on the roof.

I raised my shotgun and started blasting random holes through the ceiling. Franks had lost his rifle at some point. A Glock appeared in his hand and he started shooting. Skippy raised my.45 and popped off the remaining rounds in the magazine. The roof was Swiss cheese in a matter of seconds. A purple hand smashed through the roof and wrapped around the shoulder of my armor. Bia hoisted me from floor as if I weighed nothing. My head slammed into the sheet metal as she tried to tug me through the gap. My boots kicked uselessly. Franks maneuvered for a shot. I levered Abomination up and emptied the rest of the magazine through the roof and right into Bia's body. She didn't let go.

Skippy and Gretchen grabbed my legs and pulled down. Monster tug-of-war. I screamed as my head slammed into the roof repeatedly. Ditching the totally ineffective baton, Edward leapt up and pulled the kukri from my vest. He swung, embedding the blade deep into the oni's arm. She shrieked and the claws released.

I landed on the minibar, shattering a bunch of expensive booze bottles and a fancy mirror. The arm disappeared. I hit the floor hard but my new angle gave me a clear view of the freeway ahead. "Mosh! Look out!"

My brother, distracted, had turned toward the action. He swiveled back just in time to see the rear end of the semi we were about to collide with. All of us were flung about as Mosh cranked it violently to the right and stomped on the brakes. We tore one of our headlights off against the rear of the trailer. The bus bounced wildly as we went off the pavement, tearing huge swaths out of the grass. We slid, somehow moving sideways in the mammoth vehicle, then jarred violently back onto the pavement.

We were on an off-ramp.

Mosh righted the vehicle, but now we were curving back, heading to the northeast. We began to climb up an overpass, going back over the freeway. We were in too high of a gear, and the engine made a gurgling noise as Mosh downshifted.

"Wrong way," Franks said simply as he shoved a fresh magazine into his 10mm.

"Maybe we knocked that bitch loose!" Mosh said hopefully.

Bia crashed through the side this time, a purple blur swinging down from the roof. The oni's massive fist hit Franks square in the chest and he just disappeared, his body flying through the glass on the opposite side.

"Franks!" But he was already gone, blasted right out the moving vehicle and into the night. Struggling, I pulled another Saiga magazine from my armor. A long purple arm stretched forward, searching for me, ripping up shards of thick carpet. Edward stepped forward, kukri swinging, and nailed her again. The blade bit deep but no fluids came out. Bia screeched, swinging at Edward, and without room to maneuver he couldn't dodge. The orc sailed down the aisle, colliding with the dash. Ed tumbled down the stairs, landing against the door.

Abomination reloaded, I put a round of double-aught buckshot into Bia's face. She turned away from me, and noticed my brother steering, eyes on the road, a bunch of orange flashing lights pulsing through the windshield past his bald head. Bia crawled further into the bus. "Mosh, move! Move!" I screamed.

But she wasn't going for him. She knocked Mosh from the driver's seat. Claws reached for the wheel and I realized what was happening, but too late to do anything other than shout something unintelligible about holding on. Purple fingers clenched and jerked, the wheels screeched in protest, and the orange flashing lights rushed up to meet us.

We hit the construction equipment at about forty miles an hour.

I woke up.

It must have only been a moment later. I tasted copper. Blood was running freely from my scalp and down my face. I wiped it away with one sleeve, smearing it away from my eyes. The bus was resting at an angle, the right side and front end a lot higher than the rest of the vehicle. The door was open. Edward was still stirring slowly on the steps. The door was open. My brother was gone.

"Mosh?" I sat up slowly, feeling the urge to puke. No answer. "You okay, Ed?" He gurgled. But he always sounded like that. I started to call for Franks, my brain needing a second to realize that Bia had already murdered him. The hole through the side of the bus was splattered with Franks' blood. "Skippy? Gretchen?"

"Pretty bus…all smash," Gretchen said sadly.

"War Chief?" Skippy asked. The two of them had ended up further back toward the Jacuzzi.

"Mosh?" I asked again, pulling one leg out from under me. Dizzy, I crawled down the stairs, past Ed, hands crunching bits of broken safety glass into the thick carpeting, and tumbled, face first, onto the pavement. Bia had steered us into a giant orange vehicle labeled Alabama Department of Transportation. Judging by the front of our bus, it was one solid chunk of machinery. Other orange vehicles were parked behind it. One lane of the overpass, the one that we were currently in, had been blocked off by rubber cones. Glancing back, Mosh had managed to run over at least fifty of them. I pulled myself up the side of the bus, and tucked the butt of my shotgun against my shoulder. "Mosh! Can you hear me?"

We were on the edge of the overpass. Southbound vehicles flew past beneath us, in the direction we were supposed to have been going to meet air support. Would the Apaches know where to find us? Gun raised, I stumbled around the side of the bus. That evil she-demon had to be around here somewhere.

"Pitt. Come in, Pitt." It was Grant.

"Listen, we're on the overpass about two miles south of the concert, just north of the river," I replied. "We need immediate extraction."

"Damn it, that was you behind us." His voice became quieter as he said, "Flip around, head back to the overpass," then returned to normal volume. "We're on the way."

The construction crew was on foot, running for their lives down the edge of the overpass, scared to death of something. A car zipped past in the open lane. Every passenger in the vehicle swiveled their heads in the same direction, a family of four, each of them with mouths wide open, all staring at something just around the end of the bus.

Bia! I flew around the corner, Abomination up. I was going to pop her in both eyes and kick her ass off this bridge.

"Hey, Bro…" Mosh croaked, "…could use a hand."

My brother was dangling over the edge of the overpass, Bia's claws encircling his throat. Mosh was holding onto her wrist with both hands, arms bulging, legs kicking futilely as vehicles screamed by below. The oni smiled, her sharp white teeth a brilliant contrast to her leather skin. She was standing on the raised concrete barrier to keep cars from driving off the side. If the drop didn't kill him, a passing car would.

Bia dipped her head in greeting. "Greetings, Hunter."

"Let him go," I ordered.

She ignored me and continued speaking. My brother had to weigh at least 250, but she didn't seem to even notice his struggling weight. Her focus was entirely on me. "I should have pulled you out of there instead of this one, but you humans all smell the same when stinking with fear."

Grant's voice sounded in my earpiece. "We're south of you. What's that purple thing?"

I keyed my radio as discreetly as possible. "Snipe her," I whispered, hoping that the throat mike would pick it up.

The oni didn't seem to hear me. "The old gods have smiled upon us tonight. I was afraid we would have to harm you. The Shadow Lord's contract specified that our payment would be halved if you were injured. Luckily, the foolishness of humans knows no bounds when their blood kin are threatened. When the Shadow Lord's minion reported that you had left in such haste to come to your brother's aid, I knew we would surely capture you tonight."

That staggered me. There is a spy. I had a clean shot at her eyes, but I was terrified she'd drop Mosh. "I don't care about your contract, just my brother."

Bia cackled. The unnatural sound caused the hair on my arms to stand up. "The contract is everything. Would you break a contract, my fellow Hunter?"

"Fellow Hunter?" I snorted, never letting the muzzle of my gun waver. "I don't think so."

"Oh, we're very much the same, we are. My brother and I deal in the same trade as you, only we're not picky who we work for." She reached with her free hand into her gray cloak and pulled out a tangle of rope. She tossed it at my feet. "Just like you, we have contracts to fulfill, and now I must fulfill mine."

It was just a small bundle of hemp rope. Then suddenly, it twitched. I took a step back. The rope moved on its own, uncoiling into a memorized circle. As the ends met, there was a flash of fire, and the cement inside the radius disappeared into nothingness. It was like there was a black hole in the floor of the overpass.

"The portal will take you to the Shadow Lord. You will step into it willingly."

"Fat chance of that."

"Or I drop your blood kin to his certain death." She shook Mosh painfully. His eyes were shut tight as he yelped in pain. "Then I will make you get in the portal. If I cannot, then my brother will be here in a moment. You would much rather do it my way than his. Cratos will simply pull your limbs off and toss you in. I would rather not lose our bonus. Either way, you will be at the feet of the Shadow Lord before this night is through."

"Violence…" The ragged voice came from slightly behind me. I turned.

Franks! He was alive, barely. Blood was running freely from a dozen lacerations. His suit had been reduced to rags. He must have lost his gun, because now all he had in his right hand was a folding fighting knife. He limped right past me, one foot dragging on the pavement.

He was seething.

"We have no quarrel with your kind," Bia said. "This is not your concern."

"Bullshit," Franks muttered, closing, as he left a splatter trail behind.

Bia was distracted by Franks. "Grant, you got a fifty?"

"Yeah. I've got my McMillan."

He'd been working on precision shooting with the Newbies today. I could only pray that he had a good zero. There was no wind. "Head shot. Don't miss. Wait for my signal,"

"I'm three hundred yards away," he protested.

"It's a big head, asshole," I hissed.

Bia shook my brother again. Mosh was struggling to hold onto her arm, slipping. "I only want the Hunter."

"You can't have him," Franks said slowly, still drawing closer to his target. I had to do something before he got close enough to attack, because I knew he wouldn't care if Mosh was splattered into road kill.

"Have you grown so weak, so jealous, that you would live as a slave?" She extended one huge hand toward Franks, pleading. "The Shadow Lord understands the fallen. He can grant you true freedom. Join us." Bia said something else in a strange, almost musical language.

Franks stopped, turning his head slightly, as if thinking about her offer, whatever the hell all that weirdness meant. There was a bellowing cry in the distance. Car horns were blowing. Cratos was almost here.

"Ready," Grant said in my ear. "Hostage is blocking the shot."

"Hey, Bia!" I shouted. She turned her attention back to me. I was way too far to make a grab for Mosh. "I'd go with you to save my family. Your shadow guy was right about that. But you've got one problem…"

"Yes?" Her red eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"That's not my brother. You grabbed the drummer by mistake."

Curling her massive arm, she pulled Mosh closer for examination. Purple lips pulled back, puzzled, over those deadly sharp teeth. Mosh was suspended over the concrete now.

Grant was calm. "Clear."

"Send it."

The impact made a distinctive sound, like a watermelon being struck by a bat. The boom of the.50 BMG sniper rifle arrived a split second later. The bullet missed her vulnerable eyes but pierced directly through her ear hole.

Bia's head jerked violently to the side. Mosh was thrown against the concrete, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling away. A terrible whistle emanated from the oni as something unnatural ruptured. Her hands clenched spasmodically over her ears, trying to staunch the energy screaming from her collapsing skull. The inner creature had been ruptured. There was a vortex of white light and vapor shooting from her ears, eyes, and mouth, spinning, flashing upward under the halogen lights.

Franks covered the last few feet, stopped, and glared up at the monster as Bia added her inhuman shriek to the noise. "You always did talk too much," he said simply. Then he put one hand on her chest and shoved the oni over the side.

It was a twenty-foot drop to the freeway, but I couldn't tell if she actually hit the ground before the speeding 18-wheeler's grill struck her. The entire engine block of the semi instantly collapsed around her, driving steel through Bia's animated body. The truck turned brutally to the side, trailer jackknifing as the truck's weight slammed the oni solidly into the base of the overpass. The truck shuddered to a smoking-rubber halt. Suddenly a shockwave expanded outward from the impact point. Brilliant white light turned night temporarily into day. The wave passed and there were ghostly figures, literally hundreds of shapes, men and monsters, intelligences and lives that had been captive for thousands of years, now freed, leaping into the sky. They were gone in an instant.

"All those people…" I muttered as I walked to my brother's side, trying to comprehend the sheer horror of the creature we had just ended.

"What people?" Mosh asked hysterically, surely waiting for something else to try to kill him. "Where?" He hadn't seen them.

Franks regarded me suspiciously, shook his head, then stepped forward and peered over the edge. The truck was crushed below us. The trailer-a giant, stainless-steel tube-was sideways directly underneath the overpass, blocking two full lanes. It was tall enough that I probably could have just jumped down to the trailer and been fine.

Franks still had his radio. "We're on the overpass." I was far enough away that I couldn't hear the response. "Good. Evacuate the road." The southbound traffic was stopped by the wreck. The Feds must have blocked the northbound route, because nothing was coming from that direction either.

The orcs materialized, Edward balanced between his brother and sister-in-law. I checked Mosh. He was shaken, confused, but seemed okay. It was when I stood up that I noticed how badly Franks was injured. His left arm had been ripped apart from hitting the road, flesh shredded and hanging in strips, splintered bone shards visible through the welling blood. His clip-on tie had been applied as a tourniquet around the top of his bicep.

He caught my shocked expression. "Just a flesh wound," he said nonchalantly.

"BIA!"

The cry was so loud that the halogen lights overhead exploded. All of us flinched. Glass rained from the sky.

"SISTER!" Cratos was crashing down the freeway, colliding with the stopped cars. His gray cloak was flapping behind, rendering him visible to all. People ditched their cars and fled screaming from the red nightmare giant. "Filthy souls! Filthy souls must die! Kill! Killed SISTER! NOOO!"

"Oh, man. We've made him mad," I said.

Franks scowled, doing the math. The oni was a few hundred yards away and closing quickly. "Go," he ordered without looking. He limped to a nearby construction vehicle and retrieved a length of heavy cable from the back with his good arm.

I didn't know what Franks was planning, but anything involving staying and fighting was suicide. "Come on!" I shouted at him as I ran to one of the Alabama DOT trucks. Of course, there were no keys in it. I swore.

"Primary mission, protect Pitt from the Condition," Franks stated as he pulled out the cable. His injured arm was leaking everywhere, but he still managed to use his left hand to open the steel clip on the end to fashion a loop. Franks tugged out the other end of the cable, pulled it over to the bus and crawled under. He started wrapping the cable around the frame.

"Pitt! We're below you," Grant screamed in my ear. A horn honked on the freeway just south of the wrecked truck. "There's a big red thing coming this way, and I think I just killed its sister or something."

Franks was going to sacrifice himself to slow down Cratos. He looked up from his work long enough to glare at me. "I’ve never failed a mission."

In other words, it was time to go.

The fastest way down to Lee and Grant was to go right over the edge. Skippy was way ahead of me. He climbed over the concrete ledge and jumped down to the top of the trailer. His boots bounced, and he fell, but managed not to go over the side. He stood and gestured for his wife. Gretchen was much more nimble and she had somebody to help catch her. Ed, weaving badly, but still managing more dexterity than I would ever have, went over next. I helped Mosh to his feet and we wobbled to the side. "You've got to be shittin' me," he said when he looked at what was still a pretty darn scary leap down to a narrow, stainless-steel catwalk. Cratos roared again, much closer now. "Point taken." He jumped, landing awkwardly. I waited for Skippy to help him before I went over.

The yellow sign said that this was a 20-foot overpass. It felt like ten times that when I stepped into space. My boots hit the trailer just as the smell hit my nose. Gasoline. Pain surged up through my ankle, still tender from Mexico. Strong hands grabbed my arm. Mosh shoved me toward the ladder. "Gas truck!" he shouted.

I slid down the ladder, past a bevy of red signs saying danger/peligro and flammable, and landed with a splash. I was standing in gasoline. The tanker had ruptured on impact. My brother was down a second after me. Lee laid on the horn. "Come on!" But then Mosh was running in the wrong direction. "Damn it!" I shouted as I followed. He was running toward where Bia had died. Didn't he realize we had to get out of here, either before this thing caught on fire or before Cratos got here? Stupid idiot.

Then I felt like the idiot as Mosh scrambled his way up to the wrecked truck. He was trying to get the driver. The engine block was completely smashed into the wall and fragments had been hurled a hundred feet but the trucker could still be alive. Mosh jerked on the door but it was crumpled tight. I reached him just as he crawled, headfirst, through the broken window.

"Hurry, man. We've got to go," I insisted.

"Working on it," came the muffled reply.

"KILL! KILL!" Cratos screamed.

I saw Agent Franks standing at the top of the overpass, perched in the exact spot that Bia had been in only a minute before. He held the thick loop of cable in his hands, noose ready. Was he going to actually try to lasso the thing? The rear of the tanker shook as Cratos slammed into it, pushing past, splashing into the gasoline. He was so absurdly tall that his head terminated nearly three quarters of the way to the overpass above. He saw me.

"FILTHY HUNTER DIE!"

Franks waited patiently for the monster to step into view.

Force roared. The sound began as a rumble, but then rose in intensity, until it was a primal scream of pure hate. He lowered his head and charged.

Franks tossed the makeshift noose. The oni's head passed right through and he made it three more steps before the cable jerked tight. The bus was jerked several feet. His beady eyes bulged as the cable tightened around his throat. Too enraged to stop, he kept tugging inexorably toward me, dragging the bus with him.

The ground was littered with wreckage, gasoline quickly spreading and washing over it. I realized with a shock that much of the debris was actually what was left of Bia. The purple bits looked like dried clay. "Grab my feet and pull!" Mosh shouted. I grabbed him, glad that he was wearing those giant lineman boots that laced all the way up to his knees, and yanked as hard as I could. The adrenaline was surging through my system and I pulled my brother back out the window. Mosh saw Cratos struggling less than a hundred feet away but he was a man on a mission. "Help me with this guy."

We both reached through the window. I found an armpit, and we pulled, lifting the unconscious man through the gap. Of course, he had to be a big, heavyset guy, too. No, it would have been too much to ask to have to carry a petite person out of a probably soon-to-be-exploding truck with an angry giant thing trying to eat your soul. No, Owen Z. Pitt, you get a three-hundred-pounder. It took two strong and desperate men to pull him through the window. I slung the trucker over my back in a fireman carry and ran for our lives.

Cratos was trying to scream, but the sound was choked off by the cable. The harder he pulled, the tighter it got, but he was still getting closer. Driven by supernatural strength, he had dragged the tour bus partway over the cracking ledge. If that thing went over it was bound to spark and blow us all to kingdom come.

Then I heard the choppers. The MCB's Apache gunships were coming in, low and fast, from the west side of the island. Their mission was to put some hurting on this monster.

And they didn't know about the fuel tanker.

What Franks did next absolutely stunned me. With his knife held in his good hand, he leapt over the edge, not to the trailer top, but rather, straight to the ground, directly behind Cratos. Franks landed on his feet, automatically rolling to absorb the impact, but still surely breaking his legs. He tumbled through the gas, coming up in a petrochemical splash, right beneath the oni's leg. Franks slashed the knife brutally, chopping through whatever served as the unnatural beast's ligaments, hamstringing it. Cratos collapsed to one knee, the cable pulling even tighter.

The beast swung, tearing one mighty fist at Franks, but hitting only gas and pavement, as Franks had rolled behind the other leg, and struck deep there as well. This time Franks wasn't fast enough, and a backhand landed hard enough to tear a cloud through six feet of road. Franks was flung into the darkness, disappearing into the trees along the river.

Now, with both legs damaged, the oni toppled, hanging itself entirely. It struggled, twisting, legs flopping, as it swung back under the overpass.

The gasoline was everywhere, soaking my legs, as I lumbered up to the MHI van. Grant was holding the back door open. "Toss him to me!" he shouted. I shoved the injured trucker in before clambering up behind. Grant and Mosh were in a second later, and Lee had us moving before we could even get the rear door closed. An angry dragonfly shape passed overhead as the first Apache took aim.

"Gun it, Lee!"

"Going as fast as I can," the little man stated calmly, as he put all of his weight and will on the gas pedal. The MHI vans were all supercharged V8s, and that was a good thing.

"Go! Go! Go!" Grant shouted.

Behind us, Cratos raged and fought. The millennium-old killer was hanging, thrashing, tiny eyes bulging with hate, when the chopper fired. The 30mm cannon struck him in the torso, depleted uranium shells exploding out his back in a shower of fragments and white light. Rocket pods launched, lancing fury under the overpass. The gasoline caught, flames tearing across the freeway, leaping back up into the emptying trailer, igniting the massive amount of fumes in a conflagration that was probably visible in Cazador.

A wall of heat and pressure rocked the van, blowing the rear windows out in a spray of hot glass. I covered my head. A killing wind smashed through the interior, super hot and stinging. The exterior paint caught on fire.

But we made it.

A roiling red-and-black mushroom cloud rose behind us, hundreds of feet into the air. Somehow I alone could see through the conflagration to see the ancient oni's final moments. Through the curtains of fire and smoke and howling wind, the beast hung by a fraying cable, false flesh boiling away, energy fleeing, until finally in a flash, he was consumed. The container was destroyed, freeing thousands of trapped souls as his body exploded into clay dust that was sucked upward into the flaming vortex.

"You okay?" I asked softly.

My brother had spent the last fifteen minutes doing CPR on the trucker. The two of us and the rapidly cooling body were the only ones left in the van. He had done his best, and his chest heaved from the stress and exertion. He smelled like evaporating gasoline.

After we had stopped the van, Gretchen had examined the man for only a few seconds, shook her head sadly, then walked away. If Gretchen had said nothing could be done, then truly, it was over. Mosh didn't know what I knew about her healing powers and had continued trying to resuscitate, pumping the man's chest over and over, stubbornly trying to work a heart that was just plain done, then filling the lungs with air and trying again.

The back of the van was bare. It made a decent work space for first aid. Mosh leaned back against the wall and rubbed a filthy hand over his face.

"You okay?" I repeated, a little louder this time.

The trucker was a big old boy with a Charlie Daniel's beard, with those kind of thick arms that bordered on fat but were amazingly strong, and he had LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles and HATE tattooed on the other. It was cheesy, but it didn't matter now, because he was dead, and it was my fault. College kids in Mexico, who knows how many innocents tonight, my family put in danger, and it wasn't going to stop…All because of me.

Mosh gave a sad little laugh. It was a pathetic sound. "Hell of a night."

"Yeah…Listen, dude, I can explain everything."

He just shook his head. "Shut up."

"No, really. Everything you saw, I can explain."

Mosh lowered his hand. His face was bloodstained and scratched. "Just leave me alone right now, okay?" His eyes got a dangerous squint to them and just for a second I could see that family resemblance that everybody always told me about.

I nodded. I could understand. There was a helicopter landing outside. This particular talk could wait. The back doors of the van were pulled open. Grant was standing there in his perfect black armor. "Feds are here," he stated, though it was pretty obvious with the black helicopter settling on the freeway a hundred feet away.

"Hey, Grant."

"Yeah?"

I clapped him on the shoulder. It was kind of awkward. "Good shot back there."

Grant just nodded, his expression inscrutable. It was no secret that he disliked me. "Just doing my job." Saving my life was a professional courtesy, nothing more. "I suppose that makes us even."

He was talking about me pulling him out of DeSoya Caverns. Technically I figured I was still ahead by one, but I had broken his nose for that incident. "Fair enough."

The fire was still burning in the distance. We were parked on the bridge between Buzzard Island and Montgomery. State police, by order of the Feds, had blocked the bridge into town. This area was now quarantined, certainly as part of what Myers had referred to on the radio as a Level 5 Containment Event. Agent Myers, trailed by Agents Torres, Herzog, and Archer, approached as Grant and I waited. The Goon Squad looked pretty beat up. Archer had a black eye and a Sig 229 dangling from one hand. Skippy, Gretchen, and Edward were nowhere to be seen, which was probably real smart right about now.

"Pitt…Jefferson," Myers addressed us, anger barely contained. I was waiting for him to explode. I was going to jail, if I was lucky.

"Myers," I said gravely. "Have you found Franks yet?"

"We will find him," Myers stated matter-of-factly, somehow talking while keeping his jaw clenched. "As for you…"

I waited patiently for my arrest.

Agent Myers hesitated, obviously waffling between having the cuffs put on or ordering his agents to just shoot me to get it over with. The look he gave me was a mixture of anger, frustration, and something else that I wasn't sure about. He turned from me, studied the surviving members of my protective detail one by one, and then scowled back at me, deep in thought. Finally he seemed to deflate. His teeth unclenched and then Myers just seemed like the tired, middle-aged, glorified bureaucrat that he was. "You, I'll deal with later. Go home…" He waved his hand. "Just…go home."

That was a surprise. "Seriously?"

"But, sir!" Herzog shouted. "He attacked us."

"I never touched you," I said, which was true. The orcs had beat the hell out of them-not me.

"He pulled a gun on Agent Franks." Archer said. "That's-"

"Enough!" Myers cut his subordinate off. "Pitt, if I thought it would benefit my mission I'd have you locked up for eternity. Your actions jeopardized my men."

I had no idea why he was letting me go. A smarter man would have kept his mouth shut, but my temper tended to run faster than my brain. "You knew more about these oni than you let on. I had nothing to do with your trap failing. Did you expect me to just let them kill my brother?"

"You're a free man for one reason only. You're still our only in against this group," Myers spat. "Don't mistake my actions for mercy. I need all of my available men for this containment but I'll provide another protective detail shortly. We'll assess how tonight's setback affects our case against the Condition. Hopefully, the cultist your father shot will survive and we can get some information out of him."

"How are my parents?" I asked.

"Fine. They're on a flight now."

"Parents?" Mosh spoke up from behind Grant, concern evident in his voice. "What happened?"

Myers gestured into the back of the van. "One of your people?"

"That's my brother, the one you were going to leave to die," I said, pointing to Mosh, who looked really exasperated.

Myers sighed. "I meant the dead one."

"Driver of the tanker." Grant spoke for the first time.

"We tried to save him," Mosh said.

"I understand." The senior G-man nodded. "Men, carry this body to the chopper."

"What about Mom and Dad?" Mosh demanded.

"I'll explain later," I said. Mosh scowled in a manner that suggested he was giving serious thought about attempting to kick my ass. I was bigger and had a lot more experience but I knew my brother was damn tough when he got angry. "Chill out, dude. They're fine." Mosh punched the side of the van and stomped away. I waited until the Goon Squad had picked up the trucker before returning my full attention to Myers. It took all three of them to hoist the body up and shuffle away, each of them telegraphing their distaste for their superior's decision not to haul me off. "Any idea how many more dead?"

"Not as many as you would think," Myers replied. "We got lucky. Some civilians at the concert and I have four men dead and several more wounded." I didn't know if he was counting Franks in that quantity. "We got most of the cars stopped away from the tanker and the people stuck behind the crash were smart enough to run when they saw Force drop his invisibility. As far as we know, nobody else was caught in the explosion. In the meantime, I've got hundreds of witnesses and a slew of damage that I have to explain. Some idiot is going to talk about this and that means they'll have to be dealt with…" He trailed off, finding the idea distasteful.

"Wouldn't it be better if we just let the truth be known?" I suggested.

"Not my call, Pitt. I just enforce policy. I don't make it." He began to walk back to the waiting Blackhawk.

"You murder survivors and witnesses!" I shouted. "You destroy lives to keep up this illusion of safety! People should know what's really out there."

Myers paused, turned, and shook his head sadly. "Can you imagine what would happen if the world found out the truth? Chaos. Pandemonium. No. People need to be kept safe from themselves, and I'll do whatever I have to, lie, cheat…kill…anything, to keep my country safe." The professor was a dedicated man.

It was disgusting. "How do you sleep at night?"

Myers actually chuckled, his normally bureaucratic demeanor apparently damaged by his losses. "I don't. If you knew what was coming"-he resumed walking, the wind from the rotors snapping his cheap tie over his shoulder and making it difficult to hear-"you wouldn't sleep anymore either."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I shouted after him.

But he didn't answer. The chopper lifted off a minute later, leaving me to ponder what it was that Myers thought was coming. Clearly there was more to this cult than the Feds were letting on. Lee hobbled around the side of our van. He was in jeans and a Schlock Mercenary tee shirt. He had bailed out of the compound so fast he hadn't even had time to gear up. Grant must have gotten dressed on the road. The sight of Lee in normal attire made me especially thankful for my friends. They hadn't hesitated to go after me any more than I had for my own brother. "Z, I've got Harbinger on the phone. He's been trying to reach you."

I pulled out my cell phone. It had gotten cracked at some point during the evening's excitement. "Piece of crap!" I cocked my fist back and chucked it far out into the Alabama River. That small bit of random violence made me feel better.

Lee shook his head and grinned. "You know the company phones have a warranty on them, right? You could have got that replaced for free. Now you'll have to buy a new one."

I groaned. "What did he say?" I knew it had to be some variation of Pitt, you suck. Go hide at the compound. Lee handed me his phone.

My boss actually sounded concerned. "How're y'all doing?"

"We're good. Only minor injuries." I hurried, knowing that he was going to rip me for disobeying his orders. "We got to my brother in time. Agent Franks is dead." Saying that sounded weird. Franks had always seemed so stoic, so invulnerable, that it was hard to imagine anything being able to end his life.

"He was a jackass but he was a pro," Earl said simply.

I turned away so the others wouldn't hear. Something that Bia said had been gnawing at me. "The creatures knew I was coming. Somebody told them I was on my way. There is a spy at the compound."

There was a long silence at the other end while Earl mulled that over. "Either there or it could have been somebody who's with me right now. Julie got your message and told everybody else. We're on our way back. I've got an idea. I want you to meet me someplace. Can you ditch the Feds?"

"Already done."

"Okay, Lee's driving? Pass the phone back to him."

I walked back to the others and handed the phone to Lee. "What's going on?" Grant asked. Lee was listening to instructions and went forward to program an address into the onboard GPS.

"Earl wants us to meet him somewhere."

"I don't like it. Myers said we should go back to the compound," Grant said.

"Screw him," I said automatically. "When did you start caring what the Feds say?"

Grant snorted like that was absurd. "I don't."

"You're just worried that you're too pretty for prison." They'd have loved Grant in Tijira. Lee came back. "Where to, man?"

"Birmingham. Harbinger gave me an address for a house in a neighborhood called Hensley." Lee said.

"Never heard of it, but cool." So Harbinger had something up his sleeve after all. The whole "hide and wait for the bad guys to kill me" plan hadn't gone real well so far, so hopefully he had found a way to go on the offensive.

I like being offensive.

Chapter 8

Birmingham was the next big city north of Montgomery. It took us awhile to drive the van through all of the various detours that popped up in the aftermath of the concert. It gave Gretchen a chance to bounce around between the seats, applying greasy, smelly ointments to all of our various injuries.

"Yes, damn it, Tim. The tour bus exploded…Yeah, you heard me. Ex-Plode-Ed," Mosh said into Lee's borrowed cell phone with quite a bit of consternation. He had wanted to contact his band to let them know that he was still alive. "No, I don't know what's going on…Atlanta? Hell, I guess we're probably going to have to cancel it, don't you think? Since the bus exploded. " He shook his head sadly. "Okay, whatever, I'll call you back as soon as I can." My brother handed the borrowed phone back and then banged his forehead against the window.

Yep, I've had nights like that before.

Mosh wasn't very responsive and appeared deep in thought. He hadn't even commented as Gretchen had applied a paste made out of old squirrels and herbs to the scratches on his face and arms. I had thought about taking him to a real hospital but I knew that he was a lot safer with me than floating around out there, alone and a target.

The worst injury to our contingent had been to Edward. Bia had clubbed him pretty good. He was resting in the back, and Gretchen informed us that he would be just fine. Orcs were built tough.

The broken windows made conversation difficult but at least the airflow made the evaporating gas stink from my soaked boots bearable. Grant rode shotgun, literally in this case, with a 12-gauge FN auto-loader sitting across his lap. It was still unknown just how much info the Condition had about us but we were a relatively small and vulnerable force out here on our own.

Lee had asked for details on the monsters while Gretchen pasted an inch-long cut on my scalp shut. I had lost a lot of scars because of the magical healing at DeSoya Caverns but I was having no problem picking up new ones. Lee had pumped his fist in the air when I had told him the details of Force and Violence's demise. "Yes!" our librarian shouted. "The clay, the explosions, the ghosts, that's textbook right there. They were giant, animated, soul containers. I was right. They were definitely oni, disembodied spirits living inside a created form. That's awesome." He turned to look at me over the seat. Apparently I gave him a stupid look. "Don't you get it?"

"Uh, no? And watch the road, I've already been in two car accidents tonight. Don't make me make a tacky comment about Asian drivers."

"Puh-leeze, like I've got a Camry with a giant spoiler on it."

Lee flipped back around. "PUFF on an ogre is only like twenty grand, depending on the breed. They're big but they aren't anything special. The PUFF bounty on an oni is in the hundreds of thousands."

Grant perked right up at that. "You all saw it. I got a confirmed on the purple one. So I'm the primary," he said smugly. At MHI, the entire company shared bounties, but the team, or in this case, the individual who did the most work, got the most pay. "And to think Earl left me behind to train stupid Newbies while he wasted his time on some wimpy trolls. How many hundreds are we talking about?"

"I'll have to look it up. It's not like anybody has killed one of these in a long time." Lee almost giggled. He was such a dork when it came to monster lore. "And the best part? The Feds smoked the big one, but the law says that government representatives can't collect PUFF."

"Really? Agents don't get PUFF?" Grant was incredulous. "That's…that's crazy. Well, good thing I'm not a Fed! We'll file the paperwork for an assist on the red one in the morning." He had been MHI's golden boy once, but had left in disgrace. Pulling off a great kill in his first few days back would probably help his reputation. "They couldn't have got him without our providing a distraction."

"Oh, that'll piss off Myers, but good." Lee held out his fist for Grant to bump knuckles. Grant looked at him awkwardly for a moment and then did so.

"On a personal note, it sucks to be the number one target of a godlike interdimensional being, but it sure is good for business," I added.

"That's it." Mosh finally spoke up. "I've had about enough of this shit. PUFF? Ogres? Oni? Who the hell are you people?" He jerked his thumb to where the orcs were sitting quietly in back. "What the hell are those people?" He turned toward me and stabbed one callused fingertip into my armored chest. "And you. You owe me an explanation or you can pull this thing over and let me out right now."

I glanced out the window. It was the middle of the night and we were in the country. "Not the best place to hitch a ride, bro."

"I swear I'm about to beat you like a tetherball," Mosh said.

"Well, it's a long story," I began.

"Give me the short version."

"Monsters are real. We make lots of money killing them," Lee piped in.

"I didn't ask you. I asked my stupid brother, who I'm guessing isn't really a CPA." He thumped me in the armor. "I want answers."

I laughed. "Short version?"

Mosh gave me a dangerous look. "Break it down for me."

Well, if he wanted to be that way…"Cool. Remember last year when my accounting supervisor turned out to be a serial killer? Nope. Werewolf. Remember last time we talked and I told you about my new finance job? Nope. Monster Hunter. These guys are some of my coworkers." I waved toward Grant and Lee, then I jerked my thumb to the rear. "Those folks back there are orcs, but it's all good, they're on our side. That muscle-bound guy who got killed back at the overpass? He was my bodyguard, assigned by a shadow government agency that keeps monsters secret from the public. The things at the concert were mythical creatures hired by a death cult to sacrifice me to a giant space mollusk because they think I poked it in the eye with a nuclear weapon last summer…Any questions?"

Mosh glared. "You always were a dick."

"You ready for the long version now?"

I wrapped up as much of my story as possible by the time our GPS guided us to the location that Harbinger had given Lee. It was in an old, rundown, kind of scary area on the northwest side of Birmingham. We pulled onto a narrow street. To our immediate left was a series of fat, rectangular, red-brick buildings. Each identical building was aesthetically awful, with barred windows and knee-high brown weeds in the neglected yards. We were in the Projects.

"So, what do you think?" I asked my brother. "We cool?"

Mosh had been stroking his goatee and quietly looking out the window for the last little while. He turned back to face me. He was still incredulous, but taking it well. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

Honestly, I had wanted to. I shrugged. "If you hadn't seen what you saw earlier, would you have believed me anyway?"

"No. I would have told you to put down the crack pipe. But now? Hard to argue with what I saw tonight." When I had first joined MHI, Harbinger had told me that Hunters' greatest weapons were the flexibility of their minds-their ability to take in situations, no matter how weird, and just deal with them. I had made a pretty good Hunter, and judging by my brother's reactions, flexible minds ran in the family.

Hensley had the look of a tough town. The streets were mostly deserted at this late hour, but there were still knots of rough young men standing under the streetlights on various corners. They glared at us suspiciously as we drove by, not recognizing us as part of their regular customer base. "Friendly place," Grant said, clutching the shotgun. Now this would certainly be the wrong vehicle to carjack.

"Come on, trust fund baby. You haven't been in the 'hood before?" I asked sarcastically. "This is the kind of place that me and Mosh grew up in. Right, bro?"

Mosh raised a single eyebrow. We had grown up in a middle-class suburb, but he was quick enough to play along. "Hell yeah, straight up ghetto. Right out of Compton. Slinging…gats. Yeah."

"Word," I said.

"Pimpin' ain't easy," Mosh stated, dead serious.

Grant shook his head, having his negative opinion of me confirmed again. Lee stifled a laugh, realizing immediately how full of crap we were.

The GPS computer voice told us to make a turn and head down under a railway into an even older neighborhood. Lee had to hit the brakes to keep from creaming a nasty-looking Chow dog that blundered stupidly in front of us. To the right was a street of small frame houses, each one with a tiny front yard. The indicated address was the only one with lights on. An MHI vehicle was parked in the driveway and another was in the street. We pulled in behind it and stepped out.

I heard deep barks coming from a dog in the fenced-in backyard. Other than that, this particular street seemed eerily dead. Trash and broken bottles were scattered in the other yards, and every single lawn was dead. There were a lot of smashed windows on this street. It looked like most of the surrounding houses were long since abandoned, leaving this one particular home isolated. It felt good to stretch my legs. There were a few random gunshots in the distance.

"Owen," Julie cried as she stepped out of the other MHI vehicle. She ran over and engulfed me in a hug. The Hunters from Esmeralda's team piled out behind her. I kissed her forehead as she held me tight, almost like she was afraid to let go of me again. "I'm glad you're okay."

"No biggie," I said modestly.

Mosh cleared his throat.

"Oh, Julie, this is-"

"David!" Julie said, letting go of me, and grabbing Mosh by the hand. She was almost as tall as he was. "Oh, I've heard so much about you!"

Mosh looked surprised, first because of the use of his real name, and second because of how strong her handshake was. I'd had that reaction the first time I'd met her too. "You must be Julie…You know, I've never dated a Julie," Mosh smirked. "But I did date Ms. July once and you are way prettier."

Julie hesitated, not sure how to take that particular compliment. "He actually did," I explained with a sigh. My brother had dated centerfolds, supermodels, and famous actresses. Where I turned into a stammering moron around women, Mosh had always been smooth.

Mosh grinned. "Z really talked you up."

"I bet. He's a regular poet," she said. "I've wanted to meet his family forever. We've got so much to talk about, but first-" She jerked her head toward the house. "Owen, Earl's waiting for you inside."

"What is this place?" I asked.

"I don't know. He wouldn't say. He was adamant: just you, and…" Her pause indicated that the next part was going to suck. "You need to leave your weapons out here." She raised her hands defensively. "Yes, yes, I know. He knew you'd freak out, but he said he didn't want to offend them. "

Them?"Oh, what now?" I groaned. I hated being unarmed on principle, let alone after the week that I'd had, but I trusted Earl. I unslung Abomination. "Fine…" It took me almost a minute to completely disarm.

Skippy joined us. He took one glance at the lit house, then shook his head sadly. "Trouble," he muttered before wandering off.

Under the orange streetlights, Mosh looked a bit apprehensive about being left with a bunch of heavily armed strangers. He grabbed me by the arm and leaned in close. "Where are you going?"

"Just hang out, man. Besides, Julie can explain all this stuff way better than I can."

"Yeah, about that, you said she was hot, but…damn." He whistled. "How the hell did someone like her go for someone like you?"

"My charming personality." I shrugged his hand off. "Now back off before I scissor-kick you in the neck. I'll be back in a minute. Just relax."

A moment later I found myself at the waist-high chain-link gate in front of the house. There was a plastic sign with a cartoon pit bull printed on it saying beware of dog. I lifted the latch, and walked up the path. Nothing came out to bite me. This yard was free of trash but the grass was just as brown and dead as the neighbors'. The streetlights were blocked by a few overgrown trees, and most of the yard was cloaked in shadow. There was one of those cheesy garden gnomes in the desiccated bushes of the flower bed but nothing else that gave a clue to the personality of the residents. Light was coming through the window but the blinds were drawn, so I couldn't see a thing inside.

This place gave me a bad vibe. I stepped up onto the porch and went to ring the doorbell, but paused as there was a flicker of light from the flower bed. I glanced down and realized it was orange ashes from the end of a fat cigar. The lawn ornament returned the lighter to the inside of its blue shirt, dusted the ashes out of its white beard, and swiveled its head toward me. Beady eyes peaked out from under a pointy red hat.

I stood there awkwardly. "Hi."

"What you lookin' at?" the tiny little man said. "Got a problem?"

"No."

"Damn right, punk-ass bitch, best step off my porch," he said around his massive cigar. He was a stocky eighteen inches tall, not including the hat, but his attitude indicated he meant business. "Hunters think they're tough, actin' up in here like they run the place? Ringin' that bell's gonna wake up Momma, and you don't wanna wake up Momma." He lifted his shirt, exposing the butt of a small pistol shoved in his waistband. "You hear me, big man?"

"Hey, I don't want trouble."

"That's right, you don't. I don't take nothin' off no Hunters," he snarled around the cigar, one diminutive hand landing on the gun. "Move."

I stepped off the porch, my hands still held in front of me defensively. This was a strange encounter, even by my admittedly jaded standards. "I'm looking for Earl Harbinger."

"Your boy's around back with my homies. We owe him a favor, only reason I don't go upside your head and show your crew what's up. I'm addicted to killin', so don't go temptin' me."

"Gotcha," I said slowly, extending one finger and pointing around the side of the yard. "I'll just go…"

The gnome let go of his gun and let the shirt fall. He blew out a huge cloud of smoke. "S'all good. Follow me. Your boy probably get pissed if my dawg ate you, know what I'm sayin'?"

"Uh…yeah."

The little man swaggered around the side of the house, and I tagged along obediently, following the cloud of smoke. There was a taller gate to the backyard. He pushed it open and entered. The source of the barking was back here. The backyard was even more barren than the front. There was a long steel cable running from the house to the kennel with a length of heavy chain dangling from the middle. But there was no animal currently attached to the dog run. The grass had been packed down into nothing but hardened dirt. The barking picked up and something large crashed into the kennel's sheet metal wall.

The gnome went back to the kennel, paused to unlock a big padlock, then opened the chicken-wire-and-rebar gate. "Down, boy," he snapped, his voice way too deep for such a little creature. The barking obediently stopped. He disappeared inside. I paused, confused, outside the kennel. It was too dark to see in. His red hat popped back out the door. "You comin' or what?"

"What's in there?"

"Our secret hideout, what you think this is?" The red hat disappeared back into the shadows as the gnome continued to mutter. "Tall people is stupid."

I ducked my head to keep from stabbing it on the makeshift structure. I had a sneaky feeling that any cut I got from this thing would result in tetanus. I had to crouch to fit. The inside of the shack smelled like wet dog and poop. There was a huge animal curled in shadows of the corner. The surly gnome paused long enough to move a water bowl aside, then pulled up a hidden trapdoor. The bowl read Fafnir. A ladder led down into darkness.

The gnome simply stepped into the hole and disappeared. My attention snapped toward the dog as it growled. It sounded unbelievably scary in the dark. The shape moved slightly with the rustle of chains and brute strength. The gnome shouted from down the hole. "Better hurry 'fore he gets hungry." Then he laughed. I shuffled over to the hole and glanced down. I couldn't see the bottom, and it looked like an absurdly tight fit. Screw that.

The dog moved forward slightly and now I could see it better and I immediately wished that I hadn't. It had the thick face of a Rottweiler and solid black jowls pulled back to reveal a row of sharp teeth and dripping saliva. Then two more heads appeared on each side. Each one was big enough to gnaw my arm off, and all three necks terminated on the same muscular body.

All three heads growled.

The hole was barely wide enough to fit my shoulders but it beat staying up here with Super Dog. I was down the ladder in a second. I landed hard and the trapdoor fell shut above me with a slam. A small flame ignited, revealing that we were in a brick room. The gnome snarled at me over his lighter. "Watch it, stupid human, big old feet stompin' on everything. Scuff my shoe and I'll go psycho on your ass."

"Better put that out. I'm covered in gas."

He appeared to think about immolating me for a moment. "Yeah, I thought you smelled funny." The lighter snapped shut, leaving me blind again. He rapped his fist on something steel. A slit of light appeared at knee level and another set of beady gnome eyes peered out at us. A moment later the slit slammed shut, and there was the sound of metal on metal as bolts and locks were undone. The door, which was thankfully normal-sized, opened with a creak.

A second gnome, complete with red hat, white beard, and sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun, was waiting for us. He cradled the shotgun in his arms, and the short weapon was longer than he was. I couldn't imagine what would happen to the little guy if he touched it off but the look he gave me indicated that he wouldn't hesitate to use it on me to find out. My guide passed some complicated signs with his hands and asked "Wuzzup?"

"Chillin'." The shotgun bobbed as he nodded his red pointy hat down the dimly lit hall stretching behind him. He looked me up and down. "The boss is waitin' for you, so hurry up. You disrespect the boss, and we bust a cap in you, big human. Know what I'm sayin'? You're on gnome turf now." He leaned his shotgun against the wall and picked up a metal detecting wand and swiped it over my lower half. He could only reach up to my stomach, even standing on his tippy-toes and stretching. That seemed to really piss him off. "You gonna bend over so I can finish this, or am I gonna hafta whup your ass and bring you down here?"

Putting my usual sarcastic comments in check, I knelt down so he could search me. I got the impression that these guys had zero sense of humor. The only thing that beeped was a couple of buckles and some pocket change, and seemingly disappointed that he didn't get to blast me with his 20-gauge, the guard signaled for me to continue. My guide walked down the hall. Judging by the size of the hallway, this had been a normal human structure until they had taken it over. The brickwork was old and crumbling. Naked light bulbs flickered and dangled from exposed wiring. We turned the corner and entered a large room.

A stereo was playing gangsta rap. There were at least two dozen of the diminutive creatures in here. All of them were tiny, with long white beards and pointy red hats. There was furniture scattered around, and I was guessing that it had originally been intended for little kids, as it was all plastic and in festive colors, but these certainly weren't little kids, and they sure as hell didn't look festive. One of the gnomes had his shirt off and was laying on a plastic stool, bench-pressing a single forty-five-pound dumbbell. He had Thug Life tattooed on his chest. Every other gnome had an alcoholic beverage in his hands and these were full human-sized drinks. The smoke was thick enough to constrict my lungs. And guns, man, these guys were armed to the teeth. Everybody was packing, mostly a bunch of cheap.25s and.22s, but with an occasional larger gun shoved awkwardly into a waistband.

The gnomes glanced up as I entered. Way up. Every one of them tried to appear as threatening as possible. A few passed complicated gang signs at me. One little guy raised his arms out wide, as if to say, "You want a piece of this?" Then he jerked his head toward me to see if I would flinch. Since he was small enough that I could probably kick a field goal with him, I can honestly say that I didn't show any fear.

"Word up," my guide said to the largest gnome, who had to be all of two and a half feet tall, including the hat. They performed a complicated handshake, and then did one of those man hugs where they pat each other on the back once. During the ritual, I noted Harbinger waiting at the back of the room. My guide put one hand on my calf and shoved me forward with a remarkable amount of strength. He laughed as I stumbled, and I resisted the urge to toss him across the room.

Harbinger nodded when he saw me. Someone had brought out two adult-sized folding chairs, and he motioned toward the other one. He was sitting at a wooden table that had its legs sawed off. On the opposite side of the table was another gnome, dressed identically to the others, except for the giant, golden, bejeweled dollar-sign necklace he was wearing. The necklace sparkled in the dim light. The room was large enough that we had a little bit of privacy from the other gnomes now. Other tunnels led off in various directions, suggesting that this place had a lot more to it than what you might first expect. I took my seat.

"Owen, this is Sven Bone-Hand, leader of the Birmingham Gnomes. Sven, this is Owen Pitt," Harbinger said to the boss gnome. "He's the one."

The two of us, sitting hunched forward, across the short table from the gnome, made it feel like we were playing tea party with stuffed animals. The creature sized me up. "He's extra big," the gnome said slowly, like that was a bad thing. "Real tall."

Harbinger nodded. "I know, but he's okay. I vouch for him."

"You didn't say nothin' about him being tall," the gnome said. "This changes the game, man. I don't trust tall humans."

"You don't trust any humans." My boss leaned forward. "You going back on the deal?" He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a stack of rubber-banded currency. It was fat, and the visible bills had Ben Franklin's picture on them. He put the cash on the table and slid it toward the gnome.

Sven picked up the money and thumbed through it. He smiled. His teeth had diamonds embedded in them. "Harbinger, my brother…I'm a hustler, but I keep my promises. Let me do my thing." Then he vanished.

Literally vanished, he was there one second and then just gone. His chair was empty. The money was gone too. I blinked. Earl didn't seem surprised.

"Where'd he go?" I asked.

"Gnomes can do that. That's why they come in handy. They have a gift for not being seen." Somebody had given Earl a beer, and he tilted it at me like it was a toast. "You didn't stay at the compound like I told you to."

"No. No, I didn't."

He took a theatrically long pull from his drink. I had disobeyed his orders, but he knew me well. He knew I was borderline suicidal when it came to loyalty. "With family in danger, I would've been surprised if you had." At least he wasn't mad at me.

I glanced around the basement. "So, what did you just buy?"

"Information."

"Oh, good. I thought you were branching off into wholesale drug distribution or something," I said. "What kind of info?"

He didn't respond directly. "At first, I thought Myers was a liar. There was no way we had a mole at the compound, but if those things knew you were coming, then we've got to face facts. We've been infiltrated. So now we're bringing in a secret weapon. You've met some of the other races that live in mankind's shadow, but they live on the outskirts. Gnomes have mastered living right under our noses, thousands of years, damn near in plain sight. Gnomes are sneaky. Every city has them and nobody ever knows."

"They're urban?"

Earl glanced at the crowd of little creatures watching us suspiciously as the rap music thumped. "Well, duh." He went back to his drink. "Scandinavian originally, but everybody adapts. In the old days they hid on farms, cursing the animals if the owners didn't leave them good offerings. Basically an old-school protection racket, they've just gone mainstream over time. Unfortunately, these learned American culture from watching TV…rap videos mostly."

I lowered my voice, "I thought gnomes were supposed to be like all quaint and cute. You know, rosy cheeks, big smile, chubby little guys you put on your lawn. These guys aren't nice…They're freaking scary."

"Humans love to take terrible things and make them cute," Earl said. "Read some of the old fables, before they got prettied up for little kids. If you left your farm's gnome a bowl of porridge and you forgot to add butter, he'd get mad and slaughter all your cows. That sound cute to you?"

"No. That sounds like the kind of thing somebody would hire us to blow up. Can we trust these things?" I whispered.

"Of course not, they're crooks. But this bunch owes me a favor…Let me do the talking."

There was a shifting of the air in front of us and suddenly Sven was back in his chair. His "grill" gleamed when he smiled. It was slightly unnerving.

"We good?" Earl asked.

"It's like this…I got a business to run, Harbinger. Sparing a soldier? B'ham's up for grabs, my man. I need strong arms to hustle. So it's gonna cost you. Dog-eat-dog world, you know what I'm sayin'?" Almost on cue, the kennel above us shook and the three-headed mutant started barking at something. "West Coast Gnomes tryin' to move in on my turf. Punks gonna get took down."

My boss nodded at me, apparently feeling the need to explain. "The Southern gnome families are from Sweden. The ones from California are Norwegian. That side wears blue hats."

"We got no beef wit' 'em, but these gnomes is straight off the boat, tryin' to muscle in on my turf. Ain't gonna happen. This is the dirty South, know what I'm sayin'?"

Earl smiled. "Consider what I gave you the first half. Second half when we catch the rat. And I know you're up to it. Did I ever mention that I worked with Al Capone once? You remind me of him."

The gnome boss beamed at the compliment. Apparently being compared to Al Capone was pretty darn neat for him. He snapped his fingers. Instantly another gnome materialized at his side. That freaked me out. "This my boy, Heimdall Thorfinn Flargin, but we call him G-Nome, 'cause he's a straight up killa'. He's like a gnome Tony Montana. He's got your back." The new arrival puffed on his cigar. I recognized him as the one that had threatened me on the front porch.

"He'll do," Earl nodded.

"He'll do what?" I asked in confusion.

"Find your snitch. Take care of biz-ness." G-Nome lifted his shirt and flashed his gun again. In the better light I could tell it was a chromed Walther P22.

"No. You'll stay invisible at the compound. Keep an eye out until you find out who's talking to this Condition. And you only talk to me or Owen, that's it."

"Shit, whatever, dawg. Long as I get paid."

"The sooner you find the spy, the sooner I give you the rest of your money."

Sven seemed to take exception to this. "G-Nome's so good, I think we need the rest of the dough up front, know what I'm sayin'?"

"I know what you're saying, and it sounds like you're trying to take my money without showing me any results. No. Half up front, half when you find the spy." Earl acted like dealing with criminal scum was something that he had done a few times, but hell, apparently he had known Al Capone. I had to remember that my boss had been around for a long time.

"Harbinger, my dawg, G-Nome's my main gnome. My main tomte like we say in the old country. He'll get it done. Even if we have to lower ourselves to dealing with"-he sneered at me-"tall ones."

I was getting tired of these little bullies and their lame tough-guy act. "At least I'm not a lawn decoration," I muttered.

"What?" Sven shouted as he shoved away from the table. "What'd you say?"

"Oh hell," Harbinger muttered.

There was a huge chorus of clicks and rattles as a dozen guns were tugged from various waistbands, safeties removed, hammers cocked, or slides jacked. I was sitting down, so G-Nome was able to reach my neck. His little Walther jammed painfully under my ear. "You got a death wish, bitch?" he shouted. The entire gang of gnomes surged forward, guns extended, most of them held sideways and I was about to expire in a slew of small-caliber gunfire.

Apparently I had just made a serious breach of gnome etiquette.

"Do it and I'll get angry," Harbinger stated. "I dare you."

That caused the gnomes to hesitate. Apparently they knew just what my boss was capable of. A dozen little muzzles hovered around my skull as Sven huffed and turned increasingly dark shades of red. "You know how insultin' it is to be stuck out on a yard to keep away Fey? Do you, punk? You ever have a wizard hex you and plant you out in the grass, huh?"

"Sorry. I didn't know!" I cried, hands raised in the surrender position.

"You come in my house, and think you can get away with calling us lawn gnomes? I don't think so. Waste him, boys," Sven ordered.

"Hold your fire." My boss stood, towering over the diminutive gang. "He doesn't know Scandinavian fairy lore. Give the kid a break. He's had a tough day."

G-Nome snarled. "I demand respect!"

"Shoot him and you've got to deal with me, and even if one of you little bastards was smart enough to load silver bullets, then my great-granddaughter and a bunch of Hunters are parked outside. They hear gunfire, they come down here, and Julie will kill you all."

One of the gnomes piped up. "I saw her. She's really tall for a girl!" Several other gnomes nodded at this, as if that fact was somehow extra terrifying. It was a really tense moment.

"Your man has to pay for dissin' my boy in our own house," Sven stated.

"Hell no," Earl said.

"You know I can't lose no face in front of my crew, comin' in here and callin' my tomte a lawn gnome. So either we get some respect, or we're gonna have us a gunfight. He's at least gotta get a beatdown."

Harbinger appeared to mull that over for a moment. "Sounds fair."

"Earl!" I shouted.

"I told you to let me do the talking," he told me calmly. "A beating's better than getting shot. Okay, Sven, but let's make this sporting. Make it a fair fight. My man wins, you still do the job, and it's half up front, half on completion. Your gnome wins, you get it all up front, plus I'll throw in another ten grand as a bonus."

The gnome leader thought about this, stroking his beard slowly. "But it has to be a fair fight…"

"Fair?" I asked in confusion. Fairy-tale creatures or not, I was a three-hundred pound former, illegal pit fighter. I bench-pressed over four-hundred pounds and had once beaten a gargoyle to death with a tire iron. I was having a hard time seeing how me fighting somebody the size of a Cabbage Patch Kid could be construed as fair.

Sven held up both hands, fingers splayed open, displaying them to Harbinger. Gnomes had six fingers on each hand. "Twelve."

My boss shook his head. "Eight."

Did these guys have to haggle about everything? He turned down two fingers. "Ten. Or somebody's takin' a bullet."

"Fine, but no weapons. And you're not allowed to kill him. I need him on my crew. Once he's out, you leave him alone, or I step in."

"Deal." The gnome clapped his hands together. Suddenly it seemed like there was at least another thirty gnomes in the room. Money immediately began to change hands as they started taking bets.

"Seriously?" I asked in total bewilderment. G-Nome pulled his pistol out of my neck. He was grinning savagely as he passed his.22 off to another little guy, and then started signaling specific other gnomes. Those tossed their pieces also. The shirtless Thug Life one dropped the dumbbell with a clang, stood, and cracked his knuckles. Other gnomes began to efficiently remove the plastic furniture from the center of the room. I had a feeling they'd done this before.

"Don't hold back. They're tougher than they look. Sam Haven got drunk one time and picked a fight with half this many gnomes and got his ass handed to him. It was hilarious. Don't worry about murdering any of them. They're magical, so they don't die easily. And try not to lose, 'cause it's gonna cost the company another ten thousand dollars." Earl clapped me on the shoulder as I stood. "Though, personally, it's worth it for me to watch you fight ten gnomes at one time."

"But, but…" Somehow this had all just spiraled totally out of control. "I've already had a really crappy day!" There was a huge quantity of gnomes in the room now, as a veritable sea of red hats formed a large circle around us. Ten of the little buggers were waiting for me. G-Nome was stalking back and forth, high-fiveing the others. "I can't hit them! They're tiny." The audience began to boo.

"Owen, there ain't no rules. Don't forget to protect, well…" Earl waved toward his crotch. "You know, they're gonna hit you low."

This was ridiculous. I couldn't hit them. They'd like explode or something.

"Get It On!" Sven Bone-Hand shouted from his vantage point on top of the table.

"Welcome to my Thunderdome, bitch!" G-Nome bellowed.

"Oh, this just sucks," I muttered as ten gangster gnomes charged me simultaneously.

I've been in a lot of fights, but I can honestly say that this was a new experience. It was like a wave of meat collided with my kneecaps and I was instantly swept to the ground in a sea of white beards. Tiny fists began to slam into me with the speed and intensity of a tropical rainstorm, only each one hit like a rock. I screamed something incoherent as I tried to protect my vital parts. They were remarkably strong for their size.

"I told you not to hold back!" Earl shouted from the sidelines as a child-sized leather boot smashed into my larynx. "Get up and fight, damn it! I've got money on this."

I was on my back. There were three of them sitting on my chest and stomach, doing the ground and pound, punching like tiny little jackhammers, while the rest were in a circle kicking me. I reached up and grabbed the only thing I could, which turned out to be a handful of beard. Then I pulled as hard as I could. The gnome flew off my chest and disappeared.

"No fair!" The audience cried. Apparently beards were sensitive. Well, screw 'em. This hurt like hell. I snagged a kicker on each side by their beards, and yanked them together over me. They only weighed about thirty pounds each, and collided with a great deal of force. I rolled over, tossing gnomes in every direction as the beating continued.

Roaring, I squished one underneath me, and the little bastard just kept hitting me in the kidneys. I sat up, a gnome on each shoulder. One of them tried to fishhook me while the other one bit my ear. "Aaarrrgghh!"

I slugged that one in the face and he was airborne. I struggled to my feet, gnomes hanging off of everything, all of them punching, kicking, kneeing, elbowing, biting, and just being a general obnoxious pain. Standing now, I started tossing gnomes into the audience. They landed, got pats on the back from their brethren, and got right back into the fray.

It was G-Nome himself that maneuvered right in front of me and threw an uppercut into my testicles. A wave of unbelievable pain followed by nausea surged through me. I went back to my knees. "Oh…it's on now…" I gasped through the continuous stream of impacts. All thoughts of fairness went right out the window as righteous fury bubbled up from my core. G-Nome's smiling face appeared in my view, beady eyes searching for another good strike. That smile disappeared as my massive hand clamped around his throat. His eyes got very wide.

I picked G-Nome up as I stood, grabbed one kicking leg with my other hand, and slammed him up into the brick ceiling. He disappeared in a cloud of brick dust. The audience made a noise that sounded like "ooohhh." I brought him back down, let go of his neck, and swung him around by his leg. Half a dozen gnomes were knocked spinning out of the circle. At the apogee of the arc, I let go of G-Nome's ankle and he flew down with the hallway. The gnomes surged back toward me, and it was a swirl of violence. I remember gnomes hanging onto each of my feet as I dragged them across the brick floor, gnomes crumpling under my fists with every swing, and gnomes twirling through the air in every direction. But then somebody shattered a beer bottle on the back of my head, and it got kind of blurry.

"I said no weapons!" Earl bellowed. "That's it!" I stumbled back and fell on my butt, a literal pile of moaning gnomes scattered around me. The audience was booing and throwing trash at me, but luckily no more bottles.

Mad as hell, I stumbled to my feet, disoriented and ready to go beat the entire audience to death. I could feel hot blood spilling down the back of my neck. More miscellaneous objects flew at me. "Hey! Watch it, you little assholes!" I grabbed a passing gnome by the neck and lifted him overhead.

"Enough!" Sven shouted and the missiles quit flying and only one, last, empty soda can bounced off my boot. My chest was heaving from exertion, my brain ached from the shattered bottle, every inch of my body pulsed with bruised tissue and firing nerves, and I felt an unbearable urge to vomit. But mostly, I was really angry. I was ready to go another round. I cocked my fist back. The gnome I was holding squealed in fear.

"Owen, drop the gnome," Earl ordered.

I slowly lowered my fist and let go of the little man. He scrambled back into the audience. Sven shouted over the noise of the booing crowd. "All right, Harbinger. You win. Deal's a deal."

G-Nome reappeared, missing his hat, blood and dust staining his white beard. He walked back into the circle and spit on the floor. The audience got really quiet. He glared at me dangerously as he flexed his muscles and I got ready for him to charge. "You done yet?" I gasped.

The dangerous little creature eyed me for a moment. "You know what? You're all right for being so tall." Finally he grinned, showing off his bloodstained teeth. "Best damn rumble I've had in years." He turned to Harbinger. "We still on?"

Harbinger held up the roll of bills. "If you’re gnome enough?"

"Hell yeah," G-Nome answered as he caught the money.

The gnomes all cheered.

Julie asked what had happened when she saw me come out of the gnome house, battered and bruised. Unfortunately, Earl and I hadn't thought to come up with a cover story, and lying to Julie, especially after sustaining a minor brain injury, seemed like a really bad idea. So I told her it was a secret and that I would explain later. I don't think she liked that one bit, but was enough of a professional to understand that Earl and I had our reasons. On the bright side, I didn't really want to tell her about how I had gotten beaten up by a gang of garden decorations.

Mosh had been on the phone again, trying to explain how the tour bus had exploded to somebody else. Apparently, rampaging monsters was a bit beyond his PR firm's regular duties. I crawled into the back of the van and Gretchen began sewing up the back of my head to match the repair she had made on the front earlier. Ahh…symmetry. Earl signaled for us to roll out and our convoy started back to Cazador.

Julie and Mosh were in the same vehicle, and as I lay there, incoherent, a bone needle and thread being run through the fleshy part at the base of my skull, my fiancée tried to explain to my brother how he was currently a lot safer hanging out with us for a while. Obviously, safe was a relative word. After a few minutes their conversation was just background buzz.

It probably wasn't a good idea to take a nap after receiving a serious blow to the head, but I was exhausted, sore, and was asleep by the time we got on the freeway.

Chapter 9

Brilliant sunshine scalded my closed eyelids. I must have slept for hours.

Nope.

I was dreaming. My surroundings were a city park, but not one that I recognized. The trees were thick, brilliant green, and the grass was manicured to perfection. The air was clean and fresh. It was a huge city. Tall buildings rose above the leaves on all sides, but the skyline was unfamiliar. Children ran, laughing, playing, while a nearby street vendor peddled food that smelled really good. Everyone looked happy and the walkways were clean of grime and garbage.

Must be Canada.

I wandered down a stone path, not sure where I was going. In my dream state I noted that I was still dressed exactly the same as I had been when I was awake, complete with armor and weapons. None of the attractive locals seemed to notice. Everyone greeted me with a polite smile, guns and all, so that definitely ruled out Canada.

"Hello," the Englishman said. He was seated on a wooden bench at the edge of a pond, looking as rough as the first time I had met him, lean frame hunched forward in a bulky gray hoodie, head and cheeks bristling with brown-gray stubble. He was a relatively average-looking man, the kind of guy where you would never guess that he had a demonic leach monster living inside of him. His cold eyes had that same deadly focus as when he had tried to kidnap me, only now he was holding a loaf of bread and tearing off pieces to chuck into the pond. A rioting crowd of ducks clustered there, fighting for crumbs. "Have a seat, mate. We need to talk."

"Uh, no," I responded as I automatically pulled my.45 from the holster. I raised it in one hand and cranked off four quick shots into the side of his head. The gun recoiled and noise blasted my eardrums but nothing struck him.

"Don't be like that. This is neutral ground," he said, sounding unperturbed, still not looking at me, all his attention on the ducks. I stupidly lowered the STI as a bunch of kids ran past carrying balloons that had been twisted into various animal shapes. Not even the ducks had seemed to notice the sudden gunfire. He pulled off a big chunk of bread, crumpled it into a hard ball, and pitched it far out into the pond. The ducks swam after it, quacking angrily. "You're safe here. You've parlayed before."

I had spoken with Lord Machado in my dreams once, and that hadn't turned out particularly well. "I'll stay over here, thanks."

"Suit yourself, but we do have business to discuss, you and I. Circumstances have changed since we last met."

"Met? You tried to eat my brain and murdered a bunch of innocent people."

"My apologies. I'm working for the Dread Overlord itself. One can't hesitate when fulfilling the orders of something so epic and terrible that even saying its true name can cause insanity in mere mortals."

"Well, you can take those orders and shove them up your Dread Overlord's ass, or whatever orifice crustaceans have."

He ignored me. "But that was before that meddling vampire exposed you to a shard of the sacred artifact. Events have been set into motion and I'm afraid it may be too late for us all." The Englishman finally turned to face me. His eyes pierced through me with an unnerving cold. "I need your help."

I actually laughed out loud. His expression did not change. "Wait…you're serious? Hell no."

"You think I'm evil, that I'm some sort of monster, don't you?"

"They teach deductive logic at Necromancer College?"

He shook his head. "I'm no monster. I'm just like you."

That ticked me off. "You’re nothing like me. I don't go around murdering innocents."

"Yet," he muttered, his voice hoarse, "you murder every day to earn your living. Innocence is such an arbitrary thing to a Hunter. Where you see creatures of evil, I see wonders of the unnatural world, yet you destroy them out of fear and greed."

"And I'm damn good at it. Get to the point."

"Remember your search for Machado's Place of Power? You learned that they only existed at certain junctures, certain specific places and times, and that they were oh so rare. Well, it isn't just places, mate. It's people as well. People like you and me. Destiny falls like a mantle on very few of us, and we're given the power to shape the world, whether we like it or not."

Or as Mordechai would have said, I had drawn the short straw. I knew this part pretty well. "Yeah, yeah, I'm the Chosen One. Whatever."

"Yes, a Chosen, but not the One, rather one of many. We are the artists, and this reality is our canvas," he began to pontificate, reminding me why he was the leader of a religious nut cult. "We're brothers, pawns in a cosmic struggle, where only-" I lifted my gun, centered the front sight on his forehead and pulled the trigger. BOOM. Still no effect, but it was strangely satisfying. That seemed to annoy the Englishman. "Oh, piss off then. I'll tell you why I'm here."

"About damn time."

"I'm not as simple as you might think. Yes, I do work for them but only because I was able to see the future. The greatest Old One will return, no matter what mankind does. It's inevitable."

"Inevitable?" I was unable to accept that. "We've beat him before. I stopped him last time. He'll try again in another five hundred years and somebody else will stop him then."

"You think that's the only way? Do you honestly believe it's so easy? No. There are other plans, other ways back. And it's only a matter of time before he returns. I was exactly like you once. I learned about the Old Ones, and I thought that I could stand against them. I studied their ways, their power, originally with the noblest of intentions, only to discover it was futile. I could not stop them, so I joined them."

"So you wanted to kiss up to the winning side? Noble," I spat. "Selling out humanity so you don't end up as dinner? I got the same offer from Machado, and my answer stays the same as last time. Go to hell."

"Machado was a fool." He went back to the bread and ducks. "You can think that if you like, but I'm not ‘selling out' humanity. No, I'm the savior of humanity. If I can conquer this world and present it to them, then we will be spared from their full fury. Those are the conditions of my employment." It was totally insane, but I could tell that he actually bought what he was shoveling. He was a true believer. "If I fail, then eventually they will win, only they won't be as merciful as I would be."

"You're nuts."

He chuckled. It was a rough sound. "Perhaps. But there's a war coming, a war that man cannot win. The only question remaining is how brutal will be our defeat. Your way, your struggle, it only ends in death, the eradication of all life on this world. My way, many will perish, so that many more will live. It will be a time of rebirth, renewal, where man will take his place as righteous servants of the great Old Ones." I started to raise my gun again. "Okay, okay. You're so bloody impatient. I'm making you an offer…"

"I won't join you."

"Join me?" he said incredulously. "Why would I do that? I'm asking you to surrender." Right about then I found myself really wishing that this wasn't the dream world, and this wasn't a dream gun, filled with dream bullets, because I'd blow his brains all over the duck pond. "Hear me out. The Dread Overlord has never been personally offended by a human before. He called you byname!" He said that like I should be proud. "His fury is infinite. By sacrificing yourself, you will salve his anger. The longer it takes for me to bring you to him, the more the entire world will pay for your insolence."

"That's one hell of an offer."

"I'm a humanitarian. Think of your friends, your loved ones…You've personally spit in the eye of the deadliest being in the universe. He will get you. It's only a matter of time. But it's my job to make sure that your meddling doesn't endanger us all. I'm trying to protect the innocent. Your irresponsibility threatens my plan to save the world."

He was telling the truth, but there was something more. I thought of what Susan said. "There's something else…Something in it for you."

"I have made a deal, yes. The great gods of the beyond do not give power easily. It must be earned. You will be traded for something that I, and my father before me, have yearned for. You are the key to achieving my life's work, the merciful domination of this world. "

"You're as deluded as Machado was. I've seen what those things want, and mercy isn't part of the equation," I said.

"The Old Ones don't want to destroy this world. They're ambivalent masters. They only destroy that which they can't have." He tossed more bread on the water. The ducks quacked and fought for the crumbs. "There are many factions of Elder Things. They don't care about us. They only want to control as many worlds, as many souls, as they can, and deprive the others of their ownership."

"Nice touch." I pointed at the duck pond. "So, are these like some sort of symbolic illusion of great warring interstellar beings and we're the bread?"

He looked at me like I was dense. "No. They're just ducks."

"Yeah, I'm not real good at this whole metaphysical dream thing. How about we hook up someplace out in meat-space so that I can shoot you with real bullets?"

"Owen, I'm begging you. Help me present this place to them. It's the only way to save us all. Fighting only makes them mad." He gestured around the city. For the first time I noticed some sort of massive, alien tree amidst the skyline, as tall as the skyscrapers around it. The branches were segmented, twisted, unnatural and black. There were no leaves, rather strange membranes, shimmering like locust wings, stretched between the insectoid branches. It was wrong. It did not belong on this world.

"What is that?"

He was rather proud. "The key to man's unity. The key to our survival. Under its boughs, there is only peace."

The beautiful city had been built around the tree, for the tree. I shuddered.

"This is my world. My world will be a utopia. No more war. No more starvation, strife, or disease. I will banish death. But if we continue to struggle, their patience will wear thin, and their methods will turn from subterfuge to brute force…" As he said that, the sky darkened. The nearby leaves and grass turned brown, wilted, and died. The giant buildings twisted and collapsed in gushing clouds of dust, but the great tree remained unharmed, standing alone on the burning horizon. The sky turned blood red with smoke and fire. The sounds of laughter in the distance mutated into screams of pain and the wails of torture. "And this will be the result…" The clean water of the pond turned to black pollution. The feathers burned off the ducks in a stench of acid and bile. Oily purple tentacles the size of spaghetti noodles encircled the frantic birds and sucked them down in a spew of harsh bubbles. "My way is the only way. Help me stop this."

Glancing around the terrible landscape, I knew he wasn't exaggerating. I had seen this before, different variations of this vision many times. The Old Ones were coming. This was the future…

No. This was a future. I strengthened my resolve and gave my final answer. "I've already picked my side."

"Your side?" he replied derisively. "Oh, I'm quite familiar with them. Your side is made up of ghosts and fools. You ally yourself with the Hunters, yet Harbinger's a liar and a murderer. You think the government can protect you from my religion of truth, yet Myers is a traitor and a coward. The vampires Shackleford offer you an out, but my own sins pale before Susan's ambitions and Ray's pride. Your side is an alliance of flawed convenience, and it will shatter at its first test."

He spoke like he knew them…"Who are you, really?"

"I'm your friend. I'm the only one who'll tell you the truth." His voice raised in volume and intensity. "I am the Lord of Shadows, High Priest of the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. I am the first Horseman of the Apocalypse, the herald of the burning sunset of one age and the dark dawn of a new."

My grip tightened on my pistol. A hot wind blew through the destroyed park. I had had enough of this nonsense. "No. You're just another pain-in-the-ass psycho screwing around with magic shit that shouldn't be screwed with. Listen real careful, you quisling fuck, I'm coming for you and your little church, and I'm going to end you."

"I was afraid of that, but I had to offer. I'm not by nature a violent man," the Englishman responded, but the steel in his voice indicated that was a lie.

"Well, I am," I responded.

We were plunged into shadow as a huge shape blotted out the reddened sun. I glanced up, my brain unable to comprehend the massiveness of the creature swimming through the air above us, trailing streamers of flesh, thorns, and a thousand eyes for what had to have been a quarter mile. Part blimp, part squid, all gut-wrenching terror. I knew that there were hundreds more just over the horizon.

"You've made your choice," the Englishman said, but when I turned my attention back to the park bench, the thin man was gone, and now it was a hulking shadow shape there, a formless mass with the consistency of oil-fired smoke. It tossed the rest of the loaf of bread into the bubbling tar, which disappeared with a hiss. The shape moved, flowing up from the bench, towering above me as it prepared to leave. "When we meet again, expect no mercy."

"Likewise."

By the time we rolled into the compound, the sky had reached that kind of muted, quiet gray that came just before dawn. Most of the occupants of our vehicle were asleep at this point. An exhausted Lee was still driving. Julie was out, somehow actually using the butt stock of her M14 to prop up her head, and snoring loudly, which she did quite a bit, though I would never let her know. Mosh had finally passed out, having called his PR firm, manager, agent, and band mates before the borrowed cell phone battery had croaked.

My muscles groaned in protest and my ankle burned painfully as I stepped onto the gravel outside the office building. I was still hurting from Mexico, let alone wrecking the tour bus and getting my ass kicked by gnomes. I had removed my stinky gas-soaked boots, and the little rocks jabbed painfully into my too-soft soles and still-bandaged heel. I didn't really think about the pain, which was nothing a handful of aspirin couldn't dull, but rather I was preoccupied about my meeting with the shadow man.

He had known Harbinger, Myers, and Julie's parents. There was just something about the way he had mentioned them that indicated some familiarity. I had a higher opinion of Earl than murdering liar, of course, but I couldn't really fault his assessment of the Fed or the vampires. If he knew them, then they might know him, and at this point, any intel was good intel. I intercepted Harbinger as he was stepping out of the passenger side of the other MHI vehicle. "We need to talk. I just had a psychic meeting with the bad guy."

It was a testament to the weirdness of our job that he didn't even bat an eye. "No shit? Okay, conference room in five minutes. Just me, you, and Julie. We don't know who else we can trust."

"Make it ten. Give me a chance to scrub the gas off before I get foot cancer or something," I said quickly as the road-trip weary Hunters from Esmeralda's team began to pile out and unload their gear. I had to keep in mind that one of these people could be the traitor.

"Well, that was a waste of time," Cooper said as he pulled a rifle case out of the back of the truck. "Didn't even get to shoot any trolls."

"You're such a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy," his team leader said, stifling a yawn. Esmeralda didn't manage to look any more intimidating wearing all her gear than she did wearing a sweater with kittens on it. "Think of that as a chance to drive around scenic Alabama."

"It was dark. Then we stopped in the ghetto," Cooper muttered. He was a relatively new Hunter, about my age, a few inches shorter than me and stocky, with square glasses and short dark hair. He had been an explosive ordnance disposal tech before joining us last year. He'd just gotten off active duty and gone on a road trip when he had encountered a winged terror eating travelers at a rest stop on I-15 in middle of nowhere, Nevada. The manner in which he'd shoved an illegal hand grenade down the creature's mouth had gotten him recruited. "Yeah, that was awesome."

Nate Shackleford unfolded himself out of the driver's seat. He was the junior man on the team, but men of our stature always got the front seat. I did not know Julie's little brother very well yet, but he really seemed like a likable, energetic, humble kid. Like Julie, he took more after Susan than Ray, though I could see the resemblance to his father, only without all the crazy. "I can't believe that Milo took out the whole infestation."

Cooper snorted. "Infestation…It was one troll!"

"I warned you guys that eye witnesses always exaggerate," Esmeralda chided them.

Julie joined us. "The client was pretty excited on the phone."

Esmeralda automatically lapsed into teacher mode. "You never know what's going to happen when you meet a new client. Most of the time they're pretty normal, but every once in a while, one answers the door and tries to chop your head off with an ax."

"Wow, has that ever actually happened?" Nate asked.

"No…but it could."

Mosh was trailing along behind Julie, looking around in confusion at the paramilitary compound. "Oh, man…" His jaw fell open when he saw our red and white MI-24 Russian attack helicopter parked in front of the hangar. I suppose that my workplace was a bit different than the average. "You guys have a Hind?" He had always appreciated anything with an engine more than I had. "That is so awesome!"

"That's Skippy's baby," Julie responded.

My brother turned to the orc. "Can I have a ride?" Skippy began to nod vigorously, eager to please the Great War Chief.

"Shhh…" Earl held up his hand. I couldn't hear a thing, but he was the one with the werewolf hearing, so I shut up. "Chopper coming in." He paused. "Blackhawk."

It could only be the government. With the huge debacle of the freeway explosion and the hundreds of witnesses to the oni there, I had been sure that the Feds would have been too occupied with damage control to dispatch new babysitters. Apparently I had been wrong. With Franks dead, I had no idea who they would send this time. Unfortunately, after my talk with the Englishman, I wasn't feeling real optimistic for the fates of those assigned to guard me.

It took another thirty seconds before anyone else could hear the Blackhawk. It came in low over the trees, circled the compound once, then set down in the parking lot in front of the office building. The blades kept turning as the door slid open. A Fed in a jumpsuit and helmet exited from the side. He positioned himself to help the next person out, which turned out to be a burly, older man.

"Oh crap," I said. "I forgot."

"Dad?" Mosh asked in confusion.

My father had exited a few helicopters in his day, and even had one shot out from under him once in 1968. We had heard all of those stories as kids. He glowered at the agent attempting to assist him until the man shrank back under that intimidating stare. Keeping one hand on his head to keep his hat from blowing off, he extended his other back inside and-

"Mom?" My brother was really flustered now.

My mother was really excited to have ridden in a helicopter. We were far away, and the rotors were beating, so we couldn't hear her, but she was animatedly talking to the agent, probably about the weather, or her book club, or trying to find him a wife, or who knows what, because Mom was always talking about something. The agent actually took the time to snap a crisp salute to my dad. Probably a former military man himself, and everybody saluted my father once they knew who he was. Dad did one of those "whatever" salutes in return, grabbed Mom by the arm, thereby interrupting her conversation-not that anybody could have heard her over the rotors anyway-and steered her away from the chopper. The crew began to unload luggage onto the parking lot.

Dad saw us and approached with that bulldog walk that only men with really thick necks and big shoulders can pull off and still look tough. Mom paused to point at the chopper as it lifted off because, despite the inconvenience of being evacuated from her home after a kidnapping attempt by rabid cultists, riding in a chopper is pretty darn cool any time you get to do it.

"Mom and Dad?" I think Mosh had been less surprised to have an oni dangle him from an overpass than to see our parents get out of that Blackhawk.

"Mom, Dad!" I waved.

"Oh, shoot. Your mother…oh, crud, I wish I had a chance to change," Julie began to fidget. I thought she looked perfectly presentable, since she was wearing armor and carrying a sniper rifle, which I personally found to be remarkably hot, but women are weird like that. "Why didn't you tell me?" She didn't add you insensitive jerk but I could tell it was implied.

"Lot of stuff on my mind," I muttered out the side of my mouth.

"Like that's an excuse." She was trying to decide what to do with her rifle. Finally she just slung it, and let it hang behind her. She always wore her long hair pulled back when she was working, but that didn't stop her from patting her head to make sure it was still there.

My parents stopped right in front of our group. Dad was angry. Of course, he had just shot four men and knew it was somehow my fault. Mom looked kind of confused. She pointed at my feet. "Where are your shoes?"

"Uh…" With all of the weird things that were going on for them right now, that wasn't one of the questions that I had been mentally prepared to answer.

"You'll wear holes in your socks!" Mom had immigrated to the U.S. a long time ago, and you could barely hear her accent, except when she got excited. Apparently my socks were very exciting. My mother was white-blonde, pale, tall and, shockingly enough considering the man she had married and the sons that she had spawned, skinny.

Dad just scowled. His skin was dark, wrinkled and creased from years of sun and wind. His once-thick, curly black hair was gray. He was wearing a hat, mostly, I knew, because it hid his bald spot. That killer gaze swept over our crew. All of the miscellaneous Hunters took an involuntary step back, then quickly decided that they were better off unloading the rest of their gear later, and dispersed without further comment. Dad just emanated this attitude of the only reason I don't kill you all is because it would be illegal. Only Mosh and I were immune to The Look, and that was only because of overexposure.

"Boys," Dad stated.

"Owen blew up my bus," Mosh exclaimed, as if that explained everything. I had to remember that my brother hadn't actually spoken to our folks for several years, and their last parting hadn't been friendly. Despite Mosh's massive success, Dad had never approved of his decisions. This reunion had to be kind of awkward.

"The government blew up your bus," I explained calmly.

Only Earl and Julie had stayed. Julie elbowed me in the ribs. I grunted, realized that I was supposed to introduce her, and stammered, "This is Julie. My girlfriend. I told you about her…and stuff. I guess." I had to remember that pretty much everything I had told my folks about the two of us had been fabricated, because, at the time, I had no intention of ever telling them how we had actually met or what we did for a living. This complicated matters.

"Yay!" my mother exclaimed, and immediately wrapped Julie in a hug. "She's beautiful. Let me see the ring! Oh, I'm so proud, Owen." Apparently Mom didn't even notice that Julie was dressed for combat. She was probably just glad that I had found a girl at all. She had certainly hounded me enough on that subject my entire adult life. Mom had probably been suspicious that Julie was imaginary, and I had just made her up to stop the nagging.

Dad scanned Julie once and nodded in approval. "M14. Nice rifle." My father was a practical man. Then he gave Earl The Look. Earl didn't flinch. That alone should have alerted Dad that Earl Harbinger wasn't actually human anymore. Dad stared at my boss for a long time, bit his lip, looking confused for a moment, almost perplexed, like a bullfighting bull that just got poked and was trying to figure out whom he needed to gore. Mosh and I glanced at each other. Dad perplexed was scarier than normal Dad. "Do I know you?" the senior Pitt asked.