A woman picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“It’s Earl Harbinger.”
She was quiet for a long time. “It’s been a few years.” There was no polite greeting, no small talk. She had a really pretty voice. It was downright melodic, like a gentle wind through the leaves of a tree, which made it hard to tell her actual mood. “What do you want?”
“I’m really sorry to do this to you. This ain’t a social call. I’ve got a problem with our mutual friends.”
“The ones who gave us our silver tags?”
At first I thought she meant one of the plaques from the memorial wall, but then I remembered that Earl carried one that declared him to be PUFF exempt, and that legally he wasn’t considered a monster who could just be exterminated on sight. Which meant whoever he was talking to also had to be STFU alumni.
“The same.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with them anymore. What did you do to make them mad this time?”
“It ain’t me drawing their ire. Are you currently in Atlanta by any chance?”
“I haven’t been in Atlanta since I saw Bob Marley play at the Fox. And no offense, but I’m not going to tell you where I am in case those people are listening in. I prefer to be left alone.”
“I don’t think they’ve tapped my phone,” Earl said. Since he had shushed me, I didn’t want to interrupt to say that he really was a Luddite, because they didn’t need to tap them anymore. They just collected all the data in the world to scan through at their convenience. Then Earl looked at his phone suspiciously, because even though Heather wouldn’t listen in on his private conversations, her employer certainly would.
“Why on Earth would you think I was in Atlanta? Oh no. My daughter is there.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“What did she do this time?”
“I don’t know if it’s her or not. It could have been someone else who interrupted a deal between monsters and a spy in order to steal an artifact, who knocked out some Feds in the process, and then led my boys on a chase, doing backflips and jumping through windows like some kinda circus performer while changing faces every few minutes.”
There was a long pause. “Kids can be a real pain in the ass.”
“That they can. Have you heard from her lately?”
“She texted me last week. She’s supposed to be working a normal mundane job to pay for her normal mundane education. I warned her not to draw attention.”
“It’s a bit late for that now.”
“She promised me that she’d keep her abilities secret and live like a normal human. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted her . . . Is it really bad?”
“It’s not just them she’s pissed off, but the thing she stole is really valuable to a lot of scary and murderous type beings. They’re all gonna be gunning for her too. And none of them are the sorts to be constrained by concepts like mercy or forgiveness, if you know what I mean.”
“I should have known she’d get in trouble somehow. She’s too proud. She’s just as cocky as her father. She was always the most obstinate little brat, picking fights, causing trouble, but I thought she’d been behaving lately. You have no idea how many times I had to bail her out of jail or beg a judge with tears in my eyes not to send her to juvie. She’s always pushing the limits, Earl. I knew it was just a matter of time before she fell in with a bad crowd and got hurt!”
“Hold on.” Earl tried to reassure the worried mother. “I promised you a long time ago that I would help your family however I could, and I stand by that. I need to find her before they do. Anything you can tell me will help. The presence of the thing she stole, not very many things knew it would be here. Could she have been hired by someone to get it for them?”
“Maybe. I don’t know who though. I’ve done my best to keep her away from that life. I forbid her from associating with Hunters or anything from the other side, but did she listen to me? Of course not! Regular moms have to worry about their daughters experimenting with drugs or dating bad boys, but not me. Oh no. That would be too easy! She never listens. What do I know? I’ve just been dealing with this for hundreds of years. She’s half human so she knows everything! Oh no, Earl . . . What if somebody is using my poor baby?”
I’d watched her poor baby beat up some Feds and leap off of the sky bridge earlier, so I was having a real hard time seeing her as the victim here.
“Stay calm. I’ll do everything I can to find her before they do. Does she have any friends or contacts around here? Anyone she might have mentioned to you?”
“You know how she is. She’s always popular, but never actually close to anyone. She does have a bunch of friends who are into the same music scene though.”
I thought that sounded tenuous as hell, but Earl said, “It’s something. I’m going to give you another number I need you to call. That’s Melvin, my internet troll. He’s squirrely, but really good at his job. He’ll make it so our friends can’t listen in, then you give him every contact of hers you can think of, he’ll get them to me, and I’ll find her. Okay?”
“Promise me you’ll keep my little girl safe, Earl.”
“I’ll do my best.” He hung up, blew out a long breath, then said, “Oh boy.”
“So who, and or what, was that?”
“She’s someone I made a promise to once. She’s a type of yokai.”
“Yeah, I know what that is. But how are you friends with something from some spirit realm? Were you two in Unicorn together?”
“Not together. Different teams, different times. We first met when she was one of my Hunters’ guests at the Christmas Party.”
“The Christmas Party?” Which of course meant the big one, where a grief-stricken Ray Shackleford had been manipulated into opening a portal that had almost sucked Alabama into another dimension, and a ton of people had died as a result. That mess had gotten MHI shut down for years.
Earl nodded. “Did you ever read those old memoirs Albert found in the archives, from a Hunter by the name of Chad Gardenier?”
Chapter 6
We didn’t know if this was the same shapeshifter we were looking for, but if so, her real name was Sonya. Her dad had been a Hunter. Her mom wasn’t human, but rather convincingly lived as one. She was actually a creature known as a kodama.
Since Earl was the sort of leader who felt eternally responsible for the families of those who got killed under his command, he kept track of all of them as best as he could, helping out whenever possible, sometimes anonymously when MHI’s help wasn’t wanted. This included the girlfriend and daughter of the man who had given his life so Earl could close the gate at the Christmas Party.
Earl said that even with their shared background of having been in Special Task Force Unicorn, they weren’t exactly tight, because it had been Earl who had ordered Chad Gardenier to his death. Something which the mother claimed she understood had been necessary, but I got the impression it weighed on Earl. He had checked in on the two of them periodically to see how they were doing while Sonya was growing up. From the way Earl talked about the daughter, I could tell he was rather fond of her. He had even talked about offering Sonya a job as a Hunter when she grew up, but her mom had absolutely forbidden that, declaring it too dangerous for her little girl. Earl had respected her wishes and never mentioned it again.
His visits had become more infrequent while Sonya was a teenager, and nonexistent in the years since she’d been an adult. In his defense, we had been really busy, but he was kicking himself for it now, because it looked like she might have turned to a life of crime.
Melvin had called Earl. Our obnoxious—yet surprisingly useful at times—internet troll had set up a secure line and gotten all of Sonya’s info from her mother. It turned out she had a bunch of different accounts under fake names on all the social media sites, each one filled with pictures of a different girl, none of which looked similar, but for whatever reason I could sort of see how they could all be the same person. It was hard to get a handl
e on what Sonya was actually like because each profile was into wildly different things. There was a pretty version, a goth version, a jock, a nerd, and even a cowgirl, but the only thing they had in common was a love of selfies. It was as if she had a different name and face to wear for whatever mood struck her that day. My gut told me none of these public ones were real, and she kept her real personality secret.
Though they all looked extremely different, at least all of her identities appeared to be about the same age, size, and sex. That would narrow our search a bit, but Earl didn’t know if that was an actual limit on her shape-changing powers or not. Looking like a twenty-year-old girl could just be her normal comfort zone, and right now she was escaping the country disguised as a morbidly obese eighty-year-old man named Morton Leibowitz or, hell, maybe even Morton’s seeing eye dog. Earl didn’t know all the details about what that type of yokais’ powers were, her mother kept the family secrets close to the vest, and he knew even less about which of those powers had gotten passed onto her half-human offspring.
Working backwards through her pages, Melvin had broken into Sonya’s private messages and then email. Trolls are scary. You’d think trolls were scary because they were huge, nearly unkillable carnivores, but oh no, their ability to get into your private info was the real terror. A troll was way more likely to steal your credit card or social security number than they were to eat you. Identity theft was a multibillion dollar busines in this country, and not all of that was done by humans. Melvin had run a trace on Sonya’s regular cell phone, but it was still sitting in her dorm room. Hoping that he had the wrong shapeshifter, Earl had called that number, but it had gone right to voice mail, which wasn’t a good sign.
Melvin skimmed through the recent emails and texts, and it turned out there were a few messages from an untraceable source that seemed to be in some sort of code. It wasn’t slang either, because trolls are really good at keeping up on that sort of thing. Our troll said he’d try to crack it because, I quote, “Melvin love puzzles!”
By the time we got all that from our internet troll, it was nearing sundown. If Sonya had fled the city with the Ward as soon as we’d lost her, she could be hundreds of miles away by now. So this might be a wild goose chase, but we decided to hit everyone she had ever associated within the Atlanta area, going in order of how recently she’d had dealings with them. The rest of the Hunters were already busy chasing down other leads, and we didn’t even know if Sonya was our actual target, so Earl and I split up to start checking her contacts out.
The first few places I stopped by were total duds. One apartment was empty and for rent. The other was a normal-looking house in the suburbs, but nobody was home, and there was three days’ worth of junk in the mailbox.
It was dark when I arrived at a bar on the outskirts of the city. A few of her identities had liked this place, and she had posts about meeting up and partying here. It was not at all what I expected. When Sonya’s mom had said that her daughter had some friends here who were into the same music scene, none of her profiles had prepared me for this.
The establishment was named Perdition’s Abyss; I kid you not. The sign announcing that name was spray-painted on a rusty old car hood that had been stuck in the ground. There was a chain link fence around the property. There were bars on the windows, and razor wire on the tar paper roof. The parking lot was gravel and holes. There were more jacked-up trucks than cars, but motorcycles outnumbered them both. There was even a big-ass Rottweiler on a chain run to dissuade anyone from trying to sneak in the back door.
I parked the company truck and headed for the entrance. Even out here it smelled like stale beer, puke, and weed. I could already hear the music blaring from a hundred yards away. It was heavy metal, and was a cover of one of my brother’s songs, which was kind of nifty if you think about it. It gave me a feeling of connection.
Inside, it was dim, crowded, smelly, and deafening. One look around told me this was a rough bunch. The clientele appeared to be a mix of bikers, rednecks, roughnecks, and that type of youthful belligerent who’d managed to get kicked out of everywhere else respectable. It wasn’t a strip club, per se, so I assumed the drunk women dancing on tables were volunteers. This was the kind of place where if somebody got stabbed, they’d just throw some sawdust on the floor to soak up the blood and keep on trucking. If the health inspector ever came for a visit, they’d just murder him and bury his body in the woods out back. I felt right at home. Working in this kind of place was how I’d put myself through college and where I’d discovered the lucrative world of illegal underground fighting. Knocking men unconscious with your bare hands is a great way to pay tuition.
The bouncer at the door was one big fella, like several inches and a hundred pounds bigger than me, far right side of the bell curve, chonky boy. He had cauliflower ears, scars all over his knuckles, and a beard that had probably won more fights than most people would ever see. Tough guys tend to automatically size up other tough guys, and he looked me over, decided I wasn’t obviously high or looking for trouble, and nodded. I nodded respectfully back. Professional courtesy.
The band was doing a decent job of recreating Cabbage Point Killing Machine’s music, but the sound system in here was painfully distorted. All the regulars had to have permanent hearing damage by now. I gave the room a quick once-over, looking for anyone who might be Sonya. There were a bunch of girls close enough in size and age to be her, though none of Sonya’s online profiles had been in the persona of sleazy bar skank. Places like this always attracted a disproportionate number of suburban girls who wanted to live dangerously. I scanned for anybody else interesting. I’d worked in places like this long enough that I easily picked out the resident drug dealer, and also the guy I would talk to if I really wanted to buy a cheap handgun with the serial numbers ground off. So, the usual.
Trying to figure out how to play this cool, I went up to the crowded bar. They were so busy it took a minute before I caught someone to ask for a beer. The bartender was female, had a mohawk, and asked me what brand. I told her whatever was cheap. I didn’t intend to drink it anyway. Working in places like this and dealing with alcoholic morons had really soured me on the whole drinking thing, and I’d just never picked the habit back up, but I figured having a bottle in hand would make me look more natural.
I was suspicious enough that I checked out the bartender as she fetched my drink, but she was too tall, too busty, and probably ten years too old to be our shapeshifter. Unfortunately, she caught me staring. Fortunately, she seemed to take that as a compliment and gave me an obviously flirty grin in return. Considering I’m a rather ugly individual, that should tell you how comparatively unattractive most of the other meatheads in here were. I reflexively got embarrassed at her smile and knew that Julie would laugh at my discomfort. Thankfully, they were so busy the bartender had to go right back to work.
As I watched the crowd, I tried to figure out how to proceed. I couldn’t just whip out my phone and start asking random strangers “Have you seen this girl?” because, first off, I figured that only worked in cop movies, and second, though I had a bunch of pictures of her, I didn’t know which face, if any, Sonya would be currently using. But what the hell, the bartender seemed kind of into me, so it couldn’t hurt to ask her first.
I was spared that awkward exchange because that was when I noticed somebody who looked vaguely familiar sitting at a little table in the corner. It was poorly lit and smokey enough that I’d not noticed him during my initial survey of the room. He was average size, maybe a little older than me, dark hair, vaguely Asian, wearing bland clothing, and being otherwise completely forgettable. He was so unremarkable that it was no wonder I hadn’t noticed him. He was the living embodiment of the grey man concept. Except something had pinged my radar. It took me a second to remember where I’d briefly seen him before. It was the Vatican Hunter who had found Agent Franks when we had been putting him back together at the MHI compound.
The Blessed Order of Saint
Hubert the Protector was the Catholic Church’s secret monster hunting organization, though I didn’t know if they actually answered to the Pope, or if they were just loosely affiliated—it was really hard to tell with them. It wasn’t like a tiny organization colloquially known as the Secret Guard was an open book. They were supposedly the oldest group of Hunters in the world and didn’t really associate with the rest of us. They rarely collected PUFF bounties and didn’t compete for contracts, so they weren’t really competitors either. Their rep was that of a bunch of mystical warrior monks who went around killing monsters because it was a good deed or God willed it. Which sounded cool and all, though I preferred getting paid obscene sums of money while doing the same thing.
On the Harbinger scale—which consisted of ranking all rival Hunting organizations from Asshole to Alright—he had declared them alright. Only I knew that Earl had a soft spot for the Catholics because it had been a former member of the Secret Guard who had helped him learn how to deal with his lycanthropy, so he was probably a little biased.
The real question was, what was one of the Secret Guard doing here? Surely it couldn’t be coincidence. You don’t accidentally run into other Hunters in random scum holes in a big city neither of you live in. Hunters just aren’t that common. I didn’t think he had noticed me yet, so I tried to slouch down on my stool to look smaller. There was a mirror behind the bar, so I used that to keep an eye on him, rather than directly staring like a moron.
I got out my phone and texted Earl about who was here, then watched and waited. The Hunter’s expression remained neutral. He really didn’t seem that into the music either, despite them being pretty talented for a cover band. He idly checked his watch. A minute later he checked it again. He was waiting for someone and they were late. I got the feeling he was annoyed but trying not to show it. Could he be waiting for Sonya? There was a racing jacket over the back of his chair and a long canvas pack at his feet. I really wanted to know what was in the bag. If it was a stack of money, then maybe the Catholics had hired her to steal the Ward for them? If it was weapons or explosives, maybe he was here hunting her too? Either way meant I’d be getting involved.
Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC Page 10
