“Where?”
“Alabama.”
“That’s a long drive. Lots of traffic cameras.” Franks had done something to modify the bone structure of his face since they’d first met, but Strayhorn didn’t know if it would be enough. “You’ll be seen.”
Franks pointed at a cooler on the floor. “I kept his liver and his face. I will wear it like a mask.”
Holy shit. That was creepy.
“No wonder my mother left you . . .” It was one thing to find out you’d been sired by a monster built from spare body parts, it was another to find out that he was a fallen angel who’d escaped from Hell. “What Dad said back in the shipyard, about you and Nemesis—”
“True, but classified.”
“Got it.” Even when Franks was attempting to be conversational, he was very intimidating, but Strayhorn pushed on. “When you said she realized what you are, you’re not talking about her knowing you were the idea behind Frankenstein. She knew that already, didn’t she?”
Franks didn’t so much as blink.
“But she learned what you really are. She couldn’t handle the idea that she’d fallen in love with a demon.”
“I informed her.” Franks lowered his head for a brief moment as he thought it over. It was the only sign of weakness that he’d ever seen from Franks. “That was a mistake. It can be . . . difficult for a mortal to deal with such truths. This is why my origins must remain classified.”
“Does that mean that I’m a . . .” Strayhorn really didn’t want to finish that particular sentence.
“You possess the spirit of a normal human.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Yes, thank Him. I don’t know how your existence fits with The Deal, but if your body had been inhabited by one of the Fallen, I would have destroyed you already.”
“Wow. Thanks, Pops.”
“Don’t call me that . . . ever.” Franks picked up the cooler and left the room without another word.
* * *
The last twenty-four hours had been hell. Franks had shot down one of his helicopters, killing one of his precious prototypes and injuring another so badly that it had to go back into the vat to grow new legs. Then Franks had killed two more saving Myers, and now Myers was missing, out there plotting who knew what manner of nefarious bullshit. The blood analysis suggested that Myers had lost so much he was probably dead, but with that sneaky bastard, nothing was confirmed until they had a corpse on a slab. Until then, Myers was just one more thing to worry about. Then some of his prototypes had decided to slaughter a bunch of civilians and blow up a gas station, which could have been a complete fuck-up with the administration if he hadn’t thought fast and blamed that on Franks too.
He could tell his supporters on the Subcommittee were getting cold feet. If the President punked out now, all of his efforts would have been for nothing. Stricken popped some extra strength Tylenol and got back to work.
He’d just gotten through chewing out the prototypes for burning the gas station. They’d had a good excuse. They thought they’d seen Franks inside, and that was enough to justify an immediate, violent response. They’d been mistaken, but they’d still been forced to eliminate the witnesses. They were programmed not to lie to him and their version of events was plausible. He’d thought about flipping the kill switch and annihilating them, or at least the big stupid one, to serve as an example to the others, but it had been his call to send them without an overseer, and he was already down a few units. So he chalked it up to a learning experience.
Stricken’s office at the STFU bunker was completely unadorned. There were no pictures, commendations, or awards on the walls. There wasn’t even a nameplate on his desk. In fact, there was nothing on his desk except for his computer. He liked it that way. It was a habit formed over decades of working undercover in foreign hellholes. The less he had, the less he’d have to burn or shred if he needed to leave in a hurry. Nice and simple. Clean.
Unfortunately, now he had to take care of some more STFU personnel matters, and that would be anything but clean.
There was a knock on the door. His secretary stuck her head in. “Mr. Stricken, Heather Kerkonen is here for her appointment.”
“Send her in.”
The redheaded werewolf came into the office and his secretary closed the door behind her. Kerkonen really was a good-looking woman, though her nose was too big, and it wasn’t like something capable of regeneration could get plastic surgery. But right now she was too apprehensive to be pretty. She had never been summoned to the STFU command center before, probably had never had a clue where it was, or if a central physical location even existed at all. Stricken liked to think of his assets as mushrooms, where the best way to grow them was to keep them in the dark and feed them shit.
“Impressive place. I expected the big office, but I kind of figured you’d have a view.”
“Figuratively speaking, most of my career has been underground. Why should it be any different now that I’ve reached the top? Please, have a seat, Heather.”
There was a single chair in front of his desk. She eyeballed it like it was a trap. Her body language suggested she had probably been expecting tarps on the floor to catch the blood. Heather was playing it cool, but she was nervous. He could tell she was testing the air, using her heightened werewolf senses to see if he had brought any help. He hadn’t. He really didn’t need to. Brute force was for suckers.
She sat down. “You wanted to see me?”
“No. I had you brought to my top secret lair for kicks.” Stricken tapped his long, thin fingers on the desk rhythmically. “I figured maybe you’d want a commemorative snow globe from our gift shop.”
“I was kind of hoping for a shirt. I put up with the shadow government for two years and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” Heather didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she hated him. Most of his assets at least made some effort. Even his weird ones, like the guy whose eyeballs had been sucked out by a rage ghost, or the creepy-ass Spider, made some effort to suck up.
Stricken made a big show of being disappointed. “I had such high hopes for you, Heather. I took you in, gave you valuable training, and provided you with an opportunity to serve your country, and all I’ve gotten for my benevolence is attitude.”
“What do you want, Stricken?”
“I want to know why you’re poking around in Task Force business you’re not cleared for.”
She was stone-faced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been asking around about Project Nemesis.”
Heather’s eyes narrowed. She was trying not to show it, but Stricken could tell she was doing the math. If he meant to do her harm, she would make a run for it, but she’d probably try to take his head off first, just on principle. “I don’t know, Mr. Stricken. What is Project Nemesis?”
“You might think you’re a good liar, but you’re not. I’m better at this than you are. Your professional lying days were limited to junkies and whores, but I routinely lie to Congress . . . Well, never mind. I suppose we’re not that different after all. By now you know Nemesis was a Cold War-era research project to build more soldiers like Franks, but he didn’t like that. In fact he didn’t like it so much he blew up the lab, killed the prototype, and murdered some of the scientists. And he got away with it too, because Ronald Reagan decided to honor some bullshit treaty dating back to George Washington.”
“I always enjoyed the History channel.”
“I find it interesting you never asked about Nemesis before you ran into Franks in the subway. Funny . . . According to your report you two didn’t exactly have a conversation, it was really more of a lopsided ass-beating. My last werewolf could have taken him.”
“Your last werewolf was a psychopath.” She gave an exaggerated shrug. “What can I say? Franks was tougher than expected.”
“Indeed. I wish you would have come directly to me instead of asking your handlers about Nemesis . . . Oh, don’t give m
e that look. Don’t worry. The Flierls didn’t snitch on you. They’re very talented at managing my little menagerie but they’re the Task Force’s resident goody-two-shoes. Luckily for them, their skills outweigh their troublesome integrity, but that’s why I keep an even closer eye on my humans than I do on my monsters. Sadly, your actions have put Beth in danger. Now she too is asking questions which are better left unanswered.”
As expected, that shook her. Kerkonen was predictable. Her psych evaluation had nailed it on the self-sacrificing tendencies and how she was extremely protective of others. “Beth had nothing to do with this. Franks mentioned Project Nemesis. I was curious. That’s all.”
“So curious that your deceased former STFU handler’s login was used yesterday to access classified operations files. And this happened to occur on a computer at an STFU safe house where you were being locked up that night because of the full moon?”
“I don’t—”
“Bullshit!” Stricken slammed his open hand against his desk. It made the werewolf jump. “I’ve got a guy that reads electrical impulses with his mind. You were caught red-handed.”
He could tell Kerkonen wanted to say something else but she held it back. Inherently honest people were such easily manipulated chumps. She was pissed. She knew something, but confronting him with it would only dig her grave. STFU wasn’t the type of outfit that issued reprimands, it issued bullets. Kerkonen had probably gleaned enough to figure that Nemesis had been reactivated without authorization. If she was as smart as he thought she was, she’d probably even figured out that something was up with the hit on the MCB.
Too bad . . . He’d been hoping to get some use out of her. Werewolves that were actually sane enough to be operationally valuable were few and far between.
“You got anything to say for yourself, Kerkonen?”
“No,” she growled.
She was going to make a run for it. He could tell. Knowing her, she’d probably memorized where all the guards were on the way through the bunker, and calculated how fast she’d need to move before they got the place entirely locked down. It was a good thing he’d already made his move.
Kerkonen stood up so fast she knocked over her chair. She took a halting step toward his desk, but was having a hard time standing. The effects of the neurotoxin were kicking in.
He held up his hand. The remains of the capsule he had smashed against his desk were glittering on his palm. “Odorless, even by werewolf standards. This stuff is a pretty nifty little concoction they discovered during Decision Week. Don’t worry. I’m immunized against it, but it does a real number on lycanthropes.”
“You son of a bitch.” Kerkonen reached for him, the ends of her fingers had begun growing into claws, but she was having a hard time since by now the room was spinning and she was probably looking at three of him. He had to hand it to her though, she almost got him. Launching herself across the desk, her claws tore four deep gashes through the leather of his chair. Only he’d already disappeared and was standing a few feet to the side.
“How?” Heather spotted him, but she was so dizzy that she couldn’t let go of the desk without collapsing.
“Precautions, Kerkonen. I have access to every contraband magical artifact the government has ever confiscated. I was doing this sort of thing before you were born. I’m not stupid.”
Heather was much tougher than expected. In testing, a few aerosolized molecules of this stuff had knocked out even a strong werewolf in thirty seconds. Her regeneration rate was impressive. He would have brought more of the stuff, but this was the only capsule in STFU’s inventory. Procurement was a bitch when it came to alchemical solutions made from rare flowers that bloomed only on out-of-the-way mountaintops under a full moon. So he reached into his suit, pulled out the tranquilizer gun and shot her in the chest.
Heather looked down at the dart. “I’ll kill you.” Her words were slurred. It took her a couple of clumsy tries to pull the dart out, but it had already delivered a dose of drugs sufficient to drop a rhino.
“You’re not walking this one off, Red. I had this stuff worked up in case I ever needed to put down Adam Conover.” It was hard to use tranqs on humans to take them alive, since a dose sufficient to take them out in a timely manner was also strong enough to possibly kill them, but werewolves were absurdly resilient, so you could go a little nuts with the chemistry. “Don’t worry. I’m not killing you yet. You still might be useful.”
Her knees buckled. She hit the desk, then slid to the floor and lay there gasping for breath. Barely conscious, her body was stuck mid-transformation. She wasn’t quite so pretty now, all deformed with fangs and body hair.
The door opened. His secretary stuck her head inside. “Is everything alright, Mr. Stricken?” She saw the werewolf sprawled on the carpet, but didn’t show much of a reaction. She’d seen stranger things working here. “Would you like the cleaners to come up?”
“Have the boys stick her in a holding cell. We’ll torture the shit out of her to make sure she hasn’t talked to anybody else. And get me a new chair. This one has holes in it.” Stricken kicked Kerkonen in the ribs, just to make sure she wasn’t faking. This really was a disappointment for him. A werewolf is a terrible thing to waste. . . . But that made Stricken think of something. There was another werewolf out there he was acquainted with who was supposedly the biggest baddest werewolf and Monster Hunter around. Yet he had—surprisingly enough—not gotten in on the hunt for Franks, and Stricken had been so very personally disappointed by that. Looking at Kerkonen’s body gave him an idea.
“Will that be all?”
“One other thing, Sarah, get me the phone number for Monster Hunter International. I need to make a call.”
CHAPTER 14
Darmstadt, Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt,
Holy Roman Empire, 1709
“Send out the monster, Dippel, or we will break this door down!”
Most of the angry mob was armed with torches and farm tools. They did not concern him. It was the men in front, dressed in weathered steel breastplates and helms, armed with pikes, swords, and firearms who interested him. He could recognize that those mortals had the spirits of warriors. He’d fought them in the before time. Did they not understand that he was no longer their eternal foe?
“They’ve come to destroy you, my son.” Konrad Dippel was disheveled and filthy from his escape from the mob and flight through the forest.
He peered through the narrow window at the force arrayed against Castle Frankenstein. “Who are they, Father?”
“Fools who do not understand the importance of science!” Konrad Dippel raged. “They would destroy that which they cannot comprehend! They are hunters of monsters, and a dread beast has been preying upon the village. Women and children have been devoured. They have heard rumors of your existence, and now they blame you for these atrocities.”
He thought of The Deal which had been struck. If it was an intruder, it had to go. “What if I were to destroy this other monster for them? Would they accept me then?”
“They will never accept you. I will not see my work undone by these shortsighted fools. You must flee from this place. Run away, and never return.” Dippel unlocked his son’s chains.
He studied his naked wrists and marveled at the small measure of freedom. He could have snapped his manacles long ago, but he’d been waiting for this day. “I will save the village,” he stated. “I will destroy the other. The humans can accept me or fear me. I do not care.”
“You cannot face the Hunters of the Secret Guard, my son. Go north and hide. They will not follow you into the frozen wastes. Please, you must escape,” his desperate father begged. “Do not allow my life’s work to come to naught.”
“I will not,” he answered. Father did not understand his true purpose. Father had given him a mortal form and prepared him for the world. He had been taught the word gratitude, but he had never really understood what it meant until now. He would never see Konrad Dippel again. “Goodbye
, Father.”
He walked straight toward the main door.
“Not that way! The Hunters will destroy you.”
“They will try.” He decided that he did not care for these . . . Monster Hunters.
He flung the door open and entered the world.
Today
Franks saw the sign.
CAZADOR, ALABAMA, POPULATION 682.
He had driven here from West Virginia, sticking to back roads whenever possible, wearing another man’s skin stretched over his face whenever he’d had to use the freeways or highways that might have had traffic cameras. The mask had itched. He had ditched his last car and stolen a new one in Tennessee. He suspected that he was clear. It was doubtful that STFU would expect him to go here of all places. Why would a monster go directly into a den of Monster Hunters?
The drive had given him time to think. It was time wasted that would have been much better spent destroying his enemies. Thinking caused doubts to form, doubts about his strategy, doubts about his decisions, and most of all, doubts about The Deal. He was allowed to exist as a tool for taking life, not creating it. He had a son. What did that mean? Franks wasn’t big on looking for deeper meaning.
The Creator had a sense of humor. Franks did not like being the butt of some cosmic joke. It really ticked him off.
Franks passed the country road that would take him to the MHI compound. The item he required was there. He had seen it stored and forgotten in their tunnels during his battle for the ward stone. The Hunters obviously did not know what they had in their possession. To them it was probably just another magical trinket, discovered on some mission and hidden away with the rest of the items they were afraid of, but too stupid to understand. He could simply go there now and take it, but to do so would certainly end in a direct confrontation against MHI. Not that he would mind that so much, but it was not conducive to achieving his current mission, and there was the possibility, however small, that they would be able to best him. Then nobody would stop Kurst, and that was unacceptable.
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