Monster Hunter International

Chapter 18

The Shackleford ancestral home was an imposing structure. Once one of the finest of the great antebellum homes of the Old South, it was the crown jewel of a once-massive plantation. Ages ago it had been the center of thousands of acres of timber and farming cut out of the woods of Alabama. The original builder's heirs had sold the home and the property to the first Raymond Shackleford nearly a hundred years before.

"You can see out this window where the slave quarters used to be, the kind of empty spot right there. You can still make out the foundations. They were pretty rickety and busted up by the time I was a kid." Julie pointed out the back windows off of the main corridor. "I burned them down when I was twelve."

"Why? Some sort of protest against the injustice? A young girl trying to right the wrongs of the past?" I asked.

"Nothing so noble. Me and my brothers were learning how to make homemade napalm. Styrofoam packing peanuts dissolved into a bottle of gasoline. They make the best Molotov cocktails. I let one of mine get away from me. I'm just lucky that it didn't spread and burn the house down… Those were the days."

"I can understand. I did something similar once when I was a kid. My brother and I built a pipe bomb. Big thing. We smuggled powder out of my father's reloading room for almost a year so he wouldn't notice. Mixed it with a whole bunch of other ingredients. Detonated it in the backyard when my folks weren't home. It was a little bit bigger boom than expected though, dug a four-foot trench in the yard, cut the gas main and forced the neighborhood to evacuate."

"No wonder the ATF has your name on file," she said. "I wonder if all future Monster Hunters blow stuff up as kids?"

"Probably. The ones that live that long at least." I shrugged. "Hey, I was an upstanding citizen until I met you guys."

"I bet… Anyway, I was sad when the old slave quarters burned down. I was just a little girl. I hadn't really understood what they stood for. I mean, I knew what they were, but not why they were important."

"Lot of history in the South," I stated.

"Don't go getting high and mighty because of slavery. You grew up out West, you have no clue about the South. My family might own this house, but that doesn't mean that we approve of the kinds of things that happened here. I had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, but I would be real surprised if any of them had two nickels to rub together, let alone owned a slave. People think that the South is racist, and it was, and some parts still are, but for the most part, we've dealt with our history. The biggest racists I've ever met aren't here, they're in politics, and they are smug bastards. They're the ones that are quick to play the race card, the ones that pimp poverty. Those are the real bigots."

"Touchy subject."

"I guess. But Bubba Shackleford employed black Hunters in his very first group of Professional Monster Killers. Remember 'Flexible Minds.' He made that little credo up. That's not just about the unnatural, it's about how you look at the world. He only cared if they could fight, and that they kept it together when strange stuff started. They were some pretty tough Hunters too. You don't want to know what happened to the Klan boys that messed with them."

"I can guess." I could only imagine that after dealing with werewolves and vampires, yokels hiding under white sheets were not that big of a deal.

"Rumor has it that a bunch of night riders ended up buried in the back forty. Great-great-grandpa never had much trouble from those folks after that." She changed the subject. "Let me show you the ballroom. This is probably my favorite room in the whole house." She pushed open some double doors and led the way into a huge space. The floor was vast and open, ornate antique chairs lined the walls, and an opulent crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Most of the walls were mirrored, with old-fashioned and slightly distorted glass. A large stage filled the back corner of the room, complete with carved pillars capped in brass. Staircases spiraled around and upward to the second floor, perfect for the Southern belles of old to descend for their grand entrances.

I walked into the room. My boots echoed on the worn smooth wood, stirring up small clouds of dust. I could imagine the parties of bejeweled women and men in Confederate gray, royalty of a forgotten time and kingdom. "Impressive."

"I haven't done any work in here. I don't really want to. I'm just going to leave this one alone. We never used this room growing up. If this old place has a soul, it would be in this room. So I leave it closed." I watched her reflection in one of the many mirrors. She awkwardly placed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "I know it sounds silly, but that's how it is."

"I understand," I said, not really, but it seemed like the correct answer. Even though there had not been any music played in this room for generations, I had to resist the urge to ask her to dance.

"Um… Through here is the formal living room. Now this one, we used a little, for guests and that kind of thing." I followed her through another set of double doors into a much less lavish room. This one was under drastic construction. Tarps had been thrown over the furniture, and sawdust covered almost everything. Only one wall was not in the process of being stripped and repainted. It was covered in painted portraits of Julie's ancestors.

"Five generations of Monster Hunters," she proclaimed, "and a few who decided to stay out of the family business, but we still love them too. Even if they are strange." There were dozens of paintings. Most done in a classically formal style, kind of stuffy, and not really befitting the homespun, slightly insane, good nature of the family as I knew them. The first painting was of Raymond "Bubba" Shackleford, followed by a picture of his wife and children, and then each of the succeeding generations after that. There was a single blank spot on the wall where Raymond II was missing, but other than that there were a lot of pictures up there. In totality it created a beast of a family tree. The last of the pictures were of people I recognized. The Ray Shackleford IV that I knew as a wild-eyed lunatic was captured on canvas as a handsome, square-jawed man. His wife, Susan, had looked almost exactly like Julie did today. My tour guide's portrait must have been taken when she was younger. I did not feel that the painting had done her justice. She looked slightly artificial. I felt for the painter, capturing something like Julie's beauty had to be difficult. You could get the technical details correct, but how did you convey the spirit?

"Lot of Raymonds. Must be kind of hard to keep track of them."

"It's a bit of a tradition. Oldest son got the name. I'm the oldest in my family, so it went to my younger brother." She pointed at one of the last of the portraits. He resembled his father.

"Where's he now?"

"Dead," she said sadly. "It's been a few years."

"I'm sorry."

"No. He died well. You can't be sorry for somebody that brave. You can be sad, but not sorry. He earned his plaque at the compound. Even the best of us get it eventually."

"What happened?" I don't know why I asked her, but I did. She hesitated only briefly before speaking.

"1995. At the Christmas party, Monster Hunter International's one-hundredth anniversary. He was one of the ninety-seven Hunters killed that night. He was just a Newbie, but he fought like a champion. You should have seen him. He sure was something."

"I've never heard the whole story."

She gestured at one of the tarp-covered couches. I sat, and she sat next to me, under the watchful painted eyes of her ancestors. We sunk into the deep cushions with a rustle of plastic. I could taste the sawdust in the air.

"It was a great party. Hunters know how to throw a great party-you know, live fast, party hard, die young. That kind of philosophy tends to grow amongst people with such a dangerous job. Everybody who wasn't in the middle of a case was there, so most of us at least. Well anyway, it was at a resort near Gulf Shores, right on the beach. Beautiful spot, Dad had picked it out, reserved it for us. At the time I was just glad that he seemed to be coming out of his mourning, coming out of the archives, and participating with the living again. I had been worried about him for so long. Little did I know that he had picked that spot because it was the right place and the right time for his damned summoning." She brushed aside some dust. "I should have seen it coming."

"You couldn't have known. Nobody could have."

"I know, but that doesn't change the fact that it was my job to know. I'm the historian. I'm the researcher. I'm supposed to be the one with the answers. That's my job, and this one was right under my nose. I knew Dad was sad about Mom's death, but I never expected him to do something like this. The resort was his Place of Power. We didn't know until later that it was built on top of what used to be some tribe's sacred ground. It was his chance to bring her back. While the rest of us were gathering down at the resort, he planted a bomb in the archives. None of us ever learned the real logic behind that. He had the information he needed stored in his head, so he probably wanted to destroy the books that had the information on how to stop him, just in case. That's my guess anyway. Burned a big chunk of it down."

She sighed, apparently studying her father's portrait, trying to discern reason behind the painted mask. She continued, "Every Hunter that could be there, was there. Even the retired ones. Lots of wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, dates, it was a great big party. Even the caterers and the bartenders had been picked from people who knew what was up. People who knew about monsters and who and what we were. We could let our hair down. There weren't any secrets being kept in that room. I don't know why Dad wanted such an audience, but he had it.

"At midnight, Dad went to the center of the dance floor, splashed some blood in a circle, and said a few words. I think most of the folks near him thought that he was just drunk or something. I saw him doing it, I didn't understand, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that something bad was about to happen. His voice became louder, almost like he was talking with a megaphone. I've heard about every language there is, but not this one. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant to be pronounced with a human tongue. The blood caught on fire and the floor under him disappeared, it just kind of opened right up. I was far enough away that I didn't get to see where it opened to, but some of the others did. They died first."

"What was it?" I asked.

Julie appeared shaken as she recalled the memory. "A rift. To someplace else, we don't really know where. We say hell, but that isn't really right, that's just our way of explaining something that we don't understand, but it was not on Earth, that's for sure. Things came out of that rift, bad things. I can't even begin to describe them. They tore through the party like the Hunters were made out of tissue paper. Dad's plan had gone wrong. Bad wrong."

She unconsciously clenched her fists, the muscles in her jaw contracted, and her eyes narrowed angrily at the memory.

"We fought. We fought hard. But we had been caught unaware, and these things were tough. More and more of them kept pouring through the hole every second, and they weren't going to stop. We held them, we killed them until their husks were piled waist-deep. We couldn't retreat, because they just kept flooding out the rift. If we gave up at the gate then these things would have filled the country, don't ask me how I know that, but somehow we all did. Every inch we gave up was one more inch that would no longer belong to our world, it would belong to them. Everybody stood and fought. No Hunter ran."

I reached over and grasped her hand. She was shaking.

"We didn't have armor-hell, all I had was a cute little black dress. All we had were handguns, of course everybody was packing, I mean, think about the crowd that we're talking about here. Some Hunters made it to their vehicles and grabbed heavier weapons and came back, others had been thoughtful enough to have some already stashed at the resort. After the first few minutes I was out of ammo and down to using a table leg as a club. My brother Ray stood with me, all he had was a broken beer bottle. I watched… watched as something pulled his intestines out and painted the ceiling with them. I killed it, but I was too late. I didn't even have time to see him die. I was too busy fighting."

Silent moments passed as she regained her composure. She lifted her glasses and wiped under her eyes. "Sorry."

"No… no, that's okay," I said.

"Right after my brother was hit, something big bumped against the rift. Unbelievably big. It's hard to explain, but all I saw was its pupil, but that was bigger than this house. The rift was growing. It was coming through into this world. Grenades and rockets just made it blink. If it came through, then this world was gone. We all knew it. Earl saved us. He made his way into the rift. He killed anything that came near him. He came out a second later with my dad slung over his shoulder. When Dad was pulled through, the rift collapsed. We had beaten them. Whatever they were.

"Then we had to run. The resort had caught on fire, the building was coming down. I carried one of my wounded friends out, and by the time I made it outside she had already started to convulse… Poor Piper. Apparently the monsters from the rift were poisonous. She died in my arms. The building burned. It was still burning when the Feds arrived. It burned for three straight days. Nothing could put it out. When it was done there was nothing but ash, and charred bones that weren't human."

She stared off into space, reunited once more with the memories of her fallen family and comrades. I did not speak.

"Three quarters of us were dead. And some who had been too close to that rift just walked away and never came back. Ninety-seven dead Hunters and forty dead guests and resort staff. Within a few days an executive order was issued and we were shut down. The Feds took my dad away. The news reported that an oil tanker had run aground and caught fire. I went to a lot of funerals."

"Julie. I don't know what to say."

She put her head down and cried softly. I put my arm around her and waited for her to stop. She sobbed a few times as she was temporarily overcome with emotion.

"I'm okay." She raised her head, sniffed, but then pushed away and stood proudly. "And now you know about us. You know the whole story. And you know why I don't give a shit if that son of a bitch who claims to be my father lives or dies. It would be better for a whole lot of people if his damned black heart quit beating, but if he lives, I think that Appleton is far too nice a place to hold him. If I had my way I would have left him in that rift. He's caused too much pain. He isn't my father. He's nothing but a monster. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let him be taken to help some other monster unleash that kind of terror on my world again."

"I know."

"Good." She stopped. "I loved my brother. I miss him still. And I lost friends, people I've known since I was a kid. I hold him responsible for this. So that's why I've been acting the way I have. I'm sorry if I've been harsh, but I'll kill him before I let him go free."

"If anything, I think you've shown remarkable restraint. Thanks for telling me the story." She was an interesting woman to say the least. I was still curious. "What did you do next?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"After the company was shut down, until we started back up. What did you do?"

"Well…" She sat back down next to me with a creak of plastic. I don't think that she had expected to continue her story. "I went back to school. Finished up my degrees. I tried to be normal for a while."

"Normal?" I had been struggling with the concept myself, doubting myself, my choices, and my abilities. It was strange to hear Julie, super Monster Hunter Julie Shackleford, say the same thing. Strange, but comforting.

"You know. Not a crazed monster killer. I didn't fight evil. I didn't do anything like that. I went to college. I went on dates. I got a job. I didn't really need the money, but I wanted to be like everybody else. I started working on this house as a hobby. I painted."

"You paint?"

"A little," she answered sheepishly.

"Can I see them?" I asked.

"They're not very good. Maybe another time."

"I bet they're fine," I assured her. "Another time then."

"Earl kept hunting. Only now he had to work out of the country and had to compete against established companies, with more assets and the backing of their respective governments. Milo and Sam and the others like them kept hunting free-lance overseas. They would contact me, invite me to come work with them, but I always turned them down. I wanted to pretend that world never existed."

"I can see why."

"Grandpa got sick. The shock of what his son had done almost killed him. He actually came and lived here for a while with a nurse. You can imagine how well he did without Hunters to boss around. I tried to help him, but even he encouraged me to go work with Earl and the other survivors. I turned him down too, and I think it made him even sicker. I vowed that the family legacy was going to die with me. No more Shacklefords were going to hunt monsters ever again."

"So what happened?" I asked. I could not imagine having gone through the things that she had. It made me put my own family relationships in perspective. Nobody in my family had ever summoned any demons. At least as far as I was aware.

"I was in school. Students started disappearing on campus. Young girls. The police said that it was a serial killer. The whole community was scared to death. But I knew what it really was. I could recognize the signs. I ignored it at first. It was somebody else's problem. That world didn't exist for me anymore. I was just a grad student working on my thesis. I pretended that it was just a normal human killer, and that the authorities would handle it."

"It didn't work out did it?"

"It never does… A friend of mine was next. Got nailed while coming out of the library late one night. They never found her head. She was a nice kid. Freshman, from a little town in Illinois if I remember right. That one was my fault, don't try to disagree, you of all people understand, Owen. I tracked the vampires down. I found their lair. They were sloppy new creations. Weak, stupid and hungry. I went in alone, first time I've ever hunted solo. I spent the whole day staking and chopping. Going from one coffin or hole to the next. Finally I thought that I was going to run out of daylight before I had found them all, so I used some of those homemade Molotovs and burned the science building down. The killings stopped and the cops figured that their imaginary serial killer had moved on. Police never caught the arsonist." She smiled weakly. "I finished my dissertation the next week, boarded up this house, and joined Earl and the others on a case in Uruguay. A few years later, we're back in business. I've never looked back."

"Are you glad?"

"What do you think?" She snorted. "I was deluding myself in school. Normal is an illusion. Normalcy doesn't exist." She gestured at the wall of paintings. "That is normal. These people are real. All that stuff I told you back at your apartment, when we were trying to recruit you. Yes. I do actually believe that. I believe in what we do. It's more than just the job. It's more than the PUFF check."

"It's a calling," I said.

We sat in silence beneath the pictures. We had an understanding.

"You have another brother?" I asked, pointing at the last picture. He looked more like Julie.

"Nate," she laughed. "He wants to kill monsters so bad he can taste it."

"Where's he at now?"

"Seattle. He went through the last class of Newbies. He's doing okay from what I hear. I made sure that he's with a great team who'll keep him alive long enough that his enthusiasm gets tempered with experience. He's nineteen. You'll like him. He's just insane enough to be entertaining…" She put her hand on my knee. I could not tell if she had done it on purpose or if she had done it without thinking. Either one was fine with me. "Well, that's pretty much the tour. Sorry I got all blubbery and emotional on you."

"Julie. If you didn't get emotional about that, then you wouldn't be human. Thanks for the tour. I can tell you love this house."

"I can't say why, but I do. One of these days I'm going to get it all fixed up. I could probably hire professionals to do it and just get it over with, but that doesn't seem right. There are a lot of memories here…" She suddenly snapped her fingers. "Wait a second, I've got something for you." She jumped up, and walked quickly to the door. "I'll be back in a minute, I've just got to find it."

I sat on the plastic covered couch and waited. After a few minutes I grew restless and decided to check out the portraits more closely. The Shacklefords were one interesting group-heroes, villains and everything in between. I stood close to the wall and examined the intricate paintings. Julie's grandfather had been a handsome man before he had lost his eye and been so disfigured. I could see the resemblance to his son, and they both looked slightly like Earl Harbinger. I was not exactly sure how he was related, but there was no picture of him on the wall, and there were no Harbingers listed at all. Looking at the other pictures, I decided that Julie was very lucky that she took after her mother. Besides the lack of glasses and the slightly outdated hairstyle, they could have been the same person. I would imagine that a historian would be able to compile quite the entertaining book about this family. Of course the government would probably end up sending somebody like Agent Franks to the author's home to shoot him in the brain.

The one blank spot on the wall was interesting, but I did not dwell on it for long. Even an auditor's curiosity only runs so deep when there are other matters at hand.

Julie returned with a dust-covered, wooden case. "Found it." She sat it on the tarped-over table and opened the metal clasps. "Now you are going to appreciate this, Mr. Gun Nut." She opened the box with a flourish. Inside the molded case were two pistols. One was big, and the other small, a matched pair, down to the finishes. "Go ahead. Check them out."

The guns were custom. STI frames, the full-size had an extended, threaded barrel, and was complete with a rail for a mounted light. The smaller one was a custom chopped version, cut down in every possible dimension for concealment. For a competition nut like myself, these pistols were the kind of thing that I dreamed about. Normal men had pornography. I had gun magazines. They were beautiful.

"Twenty-eleven frame, fourteen rounds of. 45 in the big one, twenty with the extended mags. Ten in the little one, but it can take the full-size mags, they just hang out a bit. I worked them over so they're reliable with our silver bullets. Match barrels, these are scary accurate. But clearances are loose enough that these should be able to get really gunked up and still work fine," she told me proudly. I pulled back the slide to check the chamber, and it glided as smoothly as silk. I checked the trigger. The hammer fell with a snap. It was possibly the nicest trigger I had ever felt on any weapon, ever.

"These were made for somebody with mutant hands, notice even the long trigger. Extended safeties for shooting high thumb; beaver tail, small mag release so big-handed shooters don't release them by accident; you guys don't need to shift your grip to change mags anyway."

"Sweet. Did you do these yourself?"

"They were an old project."

I gently put the guns back in the box. "They're beautiful. Much nicer than my old one. I've gone through quite a few guns this week."

She closed the box, snapped the clasps closed, and shoved it over toward me. I looked at it in confusion for a moment.

"You'd better be more careful with these then. Lose them and I'll kill you."

"But, but… you're just giving these to me?" I asked. "Why?"

"I have these lying around the house. They don't fit me at all. Some Hunter with ham fists needs to put them to good use, and you currently don't have a pistol at all. My little brother won't use them. He's a Glock nut. The poor deluded bastard. Plus the way these things shoot, they need to be in the hands of a real pistolero. You'll have to do." She smiled. "Consider it my way of saying thank you for saving my life."

"Thanks," I said. It was the nicest gift that anyone had ever given me.

"Look, I've got to go," she said, sounding almost sheepish. "I need to take care of some things."

"Thanks," was all that I could think of to say.

"Don't mention it." She winked at me and walked away.

I watched her leave the room before opening the case and examining the fine weapons again. I did not want to look like a total dweeb in front of her, but for me, Christmas had come real early. Grinning like an idiot, I field-stripped and checked the guns. The case even came with a cleaning kit. I lubed the guns, and did several practice draws, adjusting my grip each time, until the sights snapped unconsciously into place. Finally I forced myself to put them down. I needed to take over for Trip on the perimeter. It was my turn to stand guard.

I noticed something as I started to shut the case. The foam in the top half had come slightly undone. Between the foam and the wood was an envelope. The envelope was blank, but it contained a small handwritten note.

Dear Ray,

I hope you like these. After that luska ate your other guns, I thought I would do something nice for you. I built these up just the way you like them. Milo's been teaching me everything he knows about gunsmithing, and I think that these have come out really good.

Dad's doing better. He's been really excited, looking forward to the 100th anniversary party. Should be a blast. Nate's bummed he can't come. Earl is doing good. Piper Cavanaugh has been dying to talk to you. I think she has a crush on you. She's cute. You two should hook up. See you at the party.

I love you, Bro. Hope you like the guns.

Julie

12/2/95

I carefully refolded the note, placed it in its envelope, and put it back in the case.

Trip was waiting for me on the porch. We were not taking any chances, and were taking turns with one heavily armed and armored Hunter outside to watch the skies for more gargoyles. Of course all of us were wearing our radios, and the person patrolling the outside checked in constantly. If there had been more of us available, we would have worked in pairs and had a better rotation, but as it was, there were only the four of us on our little baby-sitting detail.

"Holly is watching the video feeds. Julie has one heck of a system installed here. Don't go more than twenty yards from the building or you'll probably activate a sensor. Check in with her every few minutes." He handed me the RPG. If anything suspicious landed on the property, we weren't going to screw around. The huge rocket-propelled grenade would take out an armored vehicle, so a gargoyle would not be a significant problem. "You learned how to use one of these, right?"

"Dude… please." I patted the lethal tube gently. If third-world goat herders could figure out an RPG, I wasn't worried. Even though I had not shot one yet, Milo had trained us in their basic use. I was looking forward to firing one. And if the target happened to be a ten-foot-tall, animated chunk of rock, that was fine by me.

"Never mind. I forgot I was talking to the combat accountant. I haven't seen anything except for bugs and a cottonmouth."

"Like the killer snake cottonmouth?" I asked, glancing nervously at the ground.

"Yeah, but it was just a baby. You should have seen the ones we grow in Florida. They climb trees, and drop on you. When you're on the river fishing, they will swim out to your boat and climb in. Mean little bastards," he told me this with a straight enough face that I was not quite sure if he was making it up or not. "Anyway, if you need me, I'll be on the radio."

"Okay." He started to walk away. I stopped him. "Hey, Trip, one last thing… Thanks for coming out here to help me and Julie," I told him. "I appreciate it."

"Dude, don't worry about it. Harbinger needed somebody not very important to the Feds, is all."

"Still. Thanks," I said. He shrugged and went back into the house. The screen door clattered behind him. I shifted the RPG to one shoulder and started my patrol.

The afternoon air was thick with humidity, and moisture gleamed on the surrounding foliage. The once-cleared farmland that had surrounded the plantation had been retaken by swift-growing plants, including the evil nemesis of all that was good in the plant world-kudzu. It was stiflingly hot in my armor, and sweat ran freely down my back. I had left my hockey helmet behind in favor of a simple ball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes. I sipped constantly from my CamelBak. Big guys dehydrate fast in the summer.

I did not see anything of note as I passed the time. Holly checked in every few minutes to make sure that nothing was trying to kill me, besides the bloodthirsty clouds of gnats of course. So far I liked the South. I liked the people and their attitude, but I sure could do without all of the damned gnats, mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks and other things interested in eating me.

As I approached the remains of the old slave quarters, I noticed one solid piece of construction not destroyed down to its foundations. It was a tiny building, slightly lopsided from settling over time, probably only ten feet across, but constructed out of thick-mortared stones. There was a very heavy door, but it was hanging open on massive rusty hinges. I debated it briefly, but decided to take a look inside the old relic.

It must have been some sort of prison cell for the slaves so long ago. The interior of the room was empty, but the few small windows were blocked with thick steel bars set deep into the stones. Thin shafts of light pierced the gloom, but not nearly enough to see by. The inside of the door was banded with iron slats, and the door itself was constructed of ancient pieces of wood, almost big enough to serve as railroad ties. It was a construction far heavier than possibly needed to keep anyone from escaping. There was a latch on the doorframe where a big crossbeam could be set to keep the door closed, probably held in place by a long-since-missing chain and padlock. The air was stale and damp with mildew.

I entered the cell. It was dark. I blinked a few times, but my eyes were adjusted to the summer sunlight outside. Raising Abomination slightly from its tac sling, I activated the powerful weapon-mounted flashlight. The room was instantly flooded in brightness. Much better. The texture of the stone walls was strange. It took me a moment to understand exactly what it was that I was looking at.

Scratches. Tens of thousands of scratches. Some sort of hard and sharp implement had scratched every reachable surface. The only clear spots on the walls were more than ten feet high, but even then there were a few marks above that where the creator must have gotten a running start. I looked down. Even the floor was torn with a patchwork of deep marks. The marks were deep, as if struck into the rock with great force.

An involuntary shudder passed down my now-cold spine. I did not understand what had made the marks, but someone had spent a whole lot of time tearing at the tiny prison. It had to be hundreds of hours' worth of either methodical work, or perhaps savage frenzy. Now uncomfortable, I left the flashlight on until I was back out in the sunlight.

Holly relieved me on guard duty a few hours later. I took a turn watching the security cameras. It was a monotonous job, but somebody had to do it.

At least the little room with the monitors had a ceiling fan. The central air had died, and none of us had been able to fix it. The security system was impressive: motion detectors, pressure sensors, and video in regular and thermal images. The most paranoid recluse would be proud to own this system. Very fitting for the home of a Monster Hunter.

Holly appeared on one of the screens. I was glad to see that she had paid attention to her lessons in tactics and was varying her route to keep any tunneling creatures from being able to set up an ambush. My earpiece crackled as she checked in.

"Nada. I almost wish that something would attack. This is boring," she told me. On the monitor she moved the RPG to her other hand. "I would love to blast something. These things are awesome."

"It worked pretty good for you back on that boat."

"Yeah, you missed it since you were busy drowning. Turned those wights into chum. RPGs rock." She went back to her patrol. I went back to my monitors.

An alarm sounded and a red light on the control panel started to flash. "We have company," I said into the radio as I checked the appropriate camera. "A car is coming up the lane."

Julie's voice came over the radio. "Can you tell who it is?"

"Negative."

There was a brief pause as she digested the information. "Everybody assemble toward the front. Except for Gretchen, stay back in case one of us is wounded. Holly, use the corner of the house as cover. Trip, you and me, front porch. Owen, second-floor balcony. Be ready for anything."

"It's daylight. At least it can't be vampires," I said as I left the control room and headed for my assigned area. I swung Abomination around my back, and grabbed the flattop AR-15 that was mounted over the doorway. If I needed to engage targets off the second floor, the. 223 rifle would be better suited for that task than my relatively short-range shotgun. I chambered a round. I loved Julie's idea of home decor. She had a weapon stashed every ten feet.

"It could be anything. We didn't know the CO had gargoyles either," Julie said. Now even she was using the abbreviated form.

"What if it's the Feds?" asked Holly. "I've got an RPG," she added helpfully.

"Hold your fire," Julie ordered.

Somehow, I did not find that comforting. I found a spot on the balcony overlooking the front approach. I left the window closed. If I needed to shoot, I could do so through the glass, and there was no need to give away my position beforehand. I grabbed a nearby dresser and pulled it into position to use as a rest. I gazed through the 4X magnification of the Trijicon scope. The car was a new, black Mercedes, and it was approaching rapidly, spinning up a cloud of dust behind it. I put the illuminated reticle on the car's windshield.

"I only see the driver… No visible passengers. But the windows are tinted. Hard to tell."

"Roger that," Julie responded. "Everybody get ready. I'll walk out to meet them. It might just be somebody lost, or a salesman, or the Jehovah's Witnesses or something."

"J-Dubs huh? Like I said, I've got a perfectly good RPG…" Holly offered.

"Mercedes is at two hundred yards and closing."

"Mercedes?" she responded hopefully.

"Yes. A new black one," I replied through my mike.

It was quiet. I watched the car pull into the courtyard and stop next to the dry fountain. The scope vibrated slightly as I waited for the driver to exit. We waited as the driver took his sweet time putting his sunglasses away and checking his hair in the interior mirror.

Finally the door opened and the driver's expensive Italian shoes touched down on the gravel. I exhaled slowly, perfectly balanced, ready to shoot. Julie's back appeared in my field of vision, quickly approaching the Mercedes. The man unfolded himself gracefully out of the vehicle. He was tall, handsome and wearing a finely tailored suit. Julie hugged the driver, and I watched her kiss him through 4X magnification.

Shit.

It was Grant Jefferson. The insufferable little ass-clown.

I put the safety back on the rifle, and moved the muzzle into an upward direction. I swore and violently kicked the helpless antique dresser. Grant Jefferson. Monster hunting legend… in his own mind at least. Brave hero who didn't think twice about leaving me to die. Perhaps the most stuck-up prick I had ever met, and worst of all… Julie's boyfriend.

I would have preferred vampires.

"Hello, Pitt." Grant greeted me as I stomped down the stairs. "I'm glad to see you were able to escape those gargoyles." He lied easily enough. I knew that if I had been pasted all over rural Alabama he wouldn't have shed many tears. I resisted the urge to snap-shoot the scumbag right between the eyes.

"I bet you are," I grunted.

"Owen saved my life," Julie told him. "If it hadn't been for him I'd be dead. He beat one of them to bits. Saved my dad too."

"Really? Good job… Newbie," Grant said. Trip entered behind them and rolled his eyes when he saw Grant.

"We had a little help." I thought of the farmer with the NRA hat and elephant rifle. "Some folks aren't too chicken-shit to risk their lives for somebody else."

"Owen!" Julie snapped. "We don't have time for that right now."

Grant surprised me then. I had not known that the man had any humility in him at all. "No. That's okay. I'll admit, I made a tactical error. I didn't think I could save you, so I retreated to a more advantageous position. It seemed like the prudent thing to do at the time." He draped one arm casually over Julie's shoulders.

I figured that was probably as close to an apology as he had ever mustered. I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything further. Holly entered from the back and Gretchen glided silently in from the kitchen. Julie shrugged out from under Grant's arm and sat down. She was back to business.

"So what's going on back at the compound?" Julie demanded. "And more important, how's Doctor Nelson?"

Grant adjusted his silk tie as he spoke. He did not like being ordered around, but he knew his place. "The doctor's going to be okay. He suffered a coronary, but he's stable." I breathed a sigh of relief.

"As for the compound, Myers and the Monster Control Bureau agents are still there. They want your father, badly. APBs have been issued for him, you and Pitt. They're making life difficult. All of our personnel have been grounded until Ray Shackleford is found. "

"That sucks," Julie said.

"There is good news, though. There have been undead attacks all over Georgia, Alabama and Eastern Mississippi. Looks like the seven split up to cause trouble. Over the last two days, newly created vampires, wights and zombies have wreaked havoc."

"That's good news?" Trip said incredulously.

"Sure is. The Feds are jumping, trying to contain the outbreaks, and still watch the spots they think are Places of Power. Local law enforcement doesn't have any idea what's going on because the Feds are keeping them in the dark. Every National Guardsman and Reservist in the South has been called up on emergency duty. Local officials are panicking. The news is reporting it all as terrorist attacks and Homeland Security has moved most of the Southeast to condition red."

"I'm still not grasping the 'good' part of that," Trip replied.

Grant sighed in exasperation, as if baffled by the ignorance of Newbies. "Harbinger's put the word out to all of the local officials who are on our side. The Governor's office, state legislatures, even Congress and the Senate, pretty much every pro-Hunting politician." I imagined that some of our bounty from the Antoine-Henri job had been used to grease a few palms as well. "They're putting pressure on Myers to let us go so we can do our jobs. We have contracts with these states that we can't currently fulfill because of the Feds. Lots of people are getting ticked off, and the worse the crisis gets, the more their complaints get heard by Myers' bosses in Washington. The last thing that they want is for it to get so bad that the truth can't be contained from the general populace."

"So you think they're going to let us go?" asked Holly. "The Feds are just going to back off?"

"I think so," Grant said smugly. Which I took to mean that Harbinger thought so, and Grant liked to be right. "If there are more attacks tonight like there were last night, then they aren't going to have much choice."

"I'm surprised they're doing this. It isn't like vampires to provoke confrontation with humans. They're powerful, but there are lots more of us than there are of them. Direct confrontation with the living usually gets them staked and chopped in short order. Why all of these attacks?" Julie mused.

"Because in three days, it isn't going to matter," I told them. "The seven are only here to help the Cursed One. They know that we're onto them. They have nothing to lose. They attack. They create more undead. They cause confusion and spread human forces thin. That's what they want."

"Three days?" Grant asked in confusion.

"That's when my dad says that they will use their artifact," Julie said. "Come on, what else?"

He continued, "Harbinger doesn't want to turn your dad over. He thinks the Feds have a leak. How else could the CO have known about Ray? The only people who know about him are us and them." Grant seemed saddened that this news did not shock us.

"I told you so," Trip said. I golf-clapped for him. He flipped me the bird. All in good fun of course.

Our visitor ignored our antics. "We learned some more things while you've been away." He nodded in my general direction, not quite willing to actually mention any contributions I have made, but needing to emphasize the source of their intel. "We found the name Byreika. We think we know who he is, or maybe I should say, was."

"The Old Man?" I was shocked.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his suit pocket. He carefully unfolded it and read. "Mordechai Byreika. Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1874. Freelance Monster Hunter. Did rather well for someone who worked solo, mostly in Eastern Europe. Last whereabouts were when he was arrested by Nazis in 1941, he was sent to a concentration camp, escaped, was recaptured, sent to another camp in 1943, and never heard from again." Grant handed the paper over to me. There was a single, grainy, black-and-white photograph photocopied under the information.

It was him all right. Slightly younger, not quite as worn down by age and time, but still with the same hard eyes behind small glasses. I was sure of it. In the picture he was standing, with a rifle in hand, in front of the corpse of some sort of massive scaled monster. It was a trophy shot, the kind that you took as proof to collect on a bounty.

"Is that the man, Owen?" Julie asked, standing up, and crowding next to me to see the picture. Trip and Holly followed closely, also curious to see. Gretchen was inscrutable under her burkha and shades. She wandered off toward the kitchen, probably bored and looking for something to eat.

"This is him. I'm sure of it. How did you find him?"

"His journal is in the archives. It was found on a contract mission to Prague back in the '80s."

"We collect information from old Hunters every chance we get. We aren't any smarter than the old-timers, we've just learned from their experience," Julie explained.

"Lee found it. He was cross-referencing everything in the archives, and the name stuck out. He remembered Pitt saying that name from his dreams."

"Remind me to give Albert a fat bonus when we get back," Julie said. "What's in the journal?"

"Years and years of hunting, but if you skip to the end, he was after the CO. It was kind of like a quest for him. Killing that particular monster was his Holy Grail," Grant told us. I found that a slightly ironic turn of phrase to use about a Jew. "Byreika studied him for years. He was sure that the creature's physical body was someplace in Europe. His search led him to believe that the Nazis were in league with Lord Machado."

"In league for what?" Holly asked.

"Complete and total control over time."

"Sounds familiar," I said.

"It's worse. Byreika studied this for years. He was convinced that the CO had the ability, and the insanity, to do it. The only thing holding him back was that he needed a certain artifact that was protected by some sort of ancient guardian. Once it was taken from the guardian, it had to be taken to a certain place, at a certain time, and activated with a special blood sacrifice. The journal went into a lot of details about what he thought would happen if the CO was successful."

"How bad?" all of us asked in unison.

"I don't know, haven't read it yet. But Harbinger absolutely freaked out. Said that we should shoot your dad rather than let anything come near him, including the Feds. Milo read it, and then he had to call the general authorities of his church. Even Sam didn't look so good, and I didn't even know that man's brain was wired to understand fear. I mean, I've never seen those three scared of anything before, ever."

"I've only seen them scared once," Julie stated. I thought of her story, with the giant pupil looking through the rift into our universe.

"Literally the end of the world," Grant told us as he adjusted the lapels of his expensive suit. "I mean, seriously, I'm a little nervous about the whole thing myself."

Holly cleared her throat. "This might sound bad… and I'm sorry to be the one to bring it up, but if it's that serious, why don't we just kill Ray right now?"

"Holly!" Trip sputtered. "That would be murder."

"Hey, I'm trying to be practical here," Holly retorted. "Whole world dies, or one nutcase buys it, no offense, Julie…"

"None taken," she said.

"Then I'm siding with the whole world. It's a pretty sucky place, but I like it not destroyed. Let's just plug Ray and bury him in the backyard," Holly said. I reminded myself to stay on her good side. Trip looked disgusted. Grant seemed impressed by her logic. I was morally ambivalent, but it was too damn hot to have to dig a deep enough hole to hide a body.

"I've thought of that myself," Julie told us. "But there's one problem. Dad is probably not the only way for them to find their Place of Power. I mean, Dad found a way, so that information is out there somewhere. And on the other hand, he is our only way to find out where the Cursed One is going to be…"

"So we can be waiting for the son of a bitch," I finished for her. My hand instinctively moved to the grip of my shotgun. "We need to make Ray talk."

"Stick Holly in with him for ten minutes," Trip said in disgust.

"Can I borrow your car battery and some jumper cables?" Holly batted her eyelashes innocently. "I've got fifty bucks says he talks."

"Damn, woman, you have serious issues," Trip said.

"Anything else, Grant?" Julie asked.

"Just one thing. The blood sacrifice to turn on this evil artifact… Byreika said that it had to come from a hero, a protector, a mystic champion."

Apparently none of us had a clue what that meant. I shrugged. Personally I had had about enough with the mystic garbage.

"The blood has to come from the heart of a Monster Hunter."