“Usually, they don’t,” Gutterres answered. “They try . . . fail . . . and eventually hand over the Drekavac’s target to appease it so that it’ll go away.”
Holly, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, “So that’s Plan B.”
“In the times that mankind has defeated one the full thirteen, it has cost a great number of lives. However, they also lacked modern firepower, which hopefully will make up the difference. I can make certain that once Silas Carver enters these grounds, he is committed, so that this will be finished tonight, and he can’t strategically retreat and come back to attack again when you least expect it.”
“We appreciate that,” Julie said.
“In return, I will require the Ward, whether it is still with the girl or not.”
“Hey, now,” Sonya said. “I didn’t agree to that.”
“You’ve already demonstrated your agreements mean nothing. If you’d simply kept your word, you wouldn’t be in this predicament and I would be on the way to finish my real mission. Instead, because of your greed and dishonesty, we are here, risking all of these Hunters’ lives. Every minute we delay my mission costs more innocent lives. You might not care about those people, but I do.”
Gutterres was so blunt about it that Sonya actually shut up. The man had a gift for guilt-shaming people. It must be a religious thing.
“You going to expound on this ongoing crisis of yours, Mr. Gutterres, or leave it to our imagination?” Julie asked.
“I’m not authorized to give all the details yet, but thousands of lives are at stake. I recognize that MHI’s goals for the stone are worthy. Mine are more so. I could try to persuade you that this is bigger than any of us. Instead I’ll say this. Most of you don’t know me, but you know Agent Franks.” Franks had gone back to sullenly ignoring everyone, but he lifted his head when Gutterres invoked his name. “You may not like him, but you recognize that he is, by nature accurate in his assessments. Agent Franks knows me, my office, and my organization. So I pose the question to him to answer before all of you—do I exaggerate this threat?”
Franks thought it over. “No.”
And that pretty much settled it, because even though Franks was an asshole, he was an extremely straightforward one.
Julie was the official boss, but she still looked to Earl for wisdom. He sat there, pondering on it for a moment. Then he nodded at Julie, knowing that she’d do the right thing. That said a lot about how much faith he had in her.
“I’m fine with you having first access to the Ward, Mr. Gutterres.” That had to be a harder decision than most would realize, because Asag had targeted our family personally. “But only on two terms.”
“Name them.”
“We deal with this monster first. Then we figure out how to remove the Ward, or you work it out with Sonya before you drag her along. Because I’m not letting you kidnap a kid, no matter how much you think you need the thing stuck to her.”
Sonya seemed a little surprised that Julie was standing up for her. She shouldn’t have been.
“Agreed.” Gutterres sat down without another word. He probably recognized arguing with my wife would be fruitless. Smart man.
Back to business then. Julie knew how to run a meeting, short and to the point. Put the plan out there, let the experienced Hunters poke holes in it, fix the problems, and then get back to work. Except there was one potential problem she wasn’t addressing directly, which was the fact we had a bunch of untrustworthy outsiders here, each with their own goals that didn’t necessarily coincide with ours . . . except I had an idea how to keep an eye on them.
Chapter 17
MHI has quite a few secrets. Even in a business that runs on secrets there were some things that needed to be kept from our rank and file for various reasons, like the fact our IT department was a PUFF-applicable troll or our boss was a lycanthrope. I’m about as inner circle as you can get at this company, and there were probably still things that I didn’t know about. For example I still had a deep and troubling suspicion that Milo Anderson actually had a functioning nuclear weapon stashed somewhere.
So while most of the Hunters and our various houseguests were distracted prepping for tonight, I snuck down to the subbasement to the janitor’s officer to have a word with one of those company secrets.
I liked our janitor. Though I couldn’t really tell if he liked me or not. Sid was one of those tough-as-shoe-leather types it was hard to get a read on. The little dude was a scrapper and a hard worker, so Earl had offered him a job as a Hunter after he’d beaten a zombie to death. Sid had no desire to be a Hunter as far as I could tell, but all our support staff needed to be read-in on the supernatural too, and he turned out to be a great janitor. The previous guy had been an idiot.
Sid wasn’t in his room, but with all the battle space prep work being done around the compound that wasn’t a surprise. He’d probably jumped in to do manual labor on one of the projects because that was his nature. We’d warned all the noncombatants and support staff away because of the Drekavac, but I’d be willing to bet Sid would stick around just to get a jump on the cleanup. He was stubborn like that.
There wasn’t anything secret about Sid though. He was just another regular human being. However, the things he’d met and made an alliance with a little while back weren’t human at all, and since they’d escaped from a secret government lab, we had made a deal to keep their existence on the downlow as much as possible. Only me, Sid, Earl, Julie, and Milo knew about Justinian’s legion. Even the veterinarian I’d taken a few of them to had been kept in the dark about their intelligence. In exchange for letting the legion live here and the occasional request for supplies, they served as our subterranean early warning system and took care of small problems for us.
One of the heating ducts had been marked with red tape. I went over and knocked on it with the specified pattern that indicated I needed to parley. Since Justinian had a phone, I could have just done this via text, but asking for a favor, it seemed more respectful to do it in person. Knowing that they’d need to dress up their honor guard—because every visit with Justinian was a formal one—I sat on the concrete floor below the vent and waited.
A few minutes later I heard music coming from the duct. It was some grand military marching tune. The vent popped open, and the honor guard filed out in an orderly row of five rats wide, four ranks deep. Each rat had a little red shield and X-acto knife spear on his back, secured with Christmas ribbons and fishing line. They came to a halt in a perfect phalanx right in front of my knees. It would’ve been cute if it hadn’t been so disturbingly militant. Those knives were razor sharp and these little dudes were disciplined . . . and also probably smarter than a lot of the humans I knew.
Next came the band, which in this case consisted of two rats carrying a cellphone that was playing a marching song from YouTube. Then Justinian himself appeared. His armor had been painted gold, and he was wearing a plastic crown that had probably come off of a toy. Justinian gave me an adorable little bow. I returned the gesture and resisted the urge to pet him, because then I’d probably die a minute later from hundreds of tiny stab wounds. Justinian stopped next to the phone-carrying rats as another phalanx of warrior rats brought up the rear. They were very big on pomp and circumstance. Justinian may have been tiny, but the rat emperor had gravitas.
As the song finished, the rats maneuvered the phone so that I could see the screen. Justinian swiped the screen to a different app and began to type.
GREETINGS MR. PITT. ALL IS SECURE IN THE LANDS BENEATH MHI. TO WHAT DO WE OWE THIS PLEASURE?
I still couldn’t get over how weird this was, even by my jaded standards. Some mad scientists had decided to genetically engineer smart rats, they’d escaped, heard about somebody named Earl Harbinger who might give them sanctuary, so now I was basically their landlord. Life comes at you fast.
“I have brought a gift as a demonstration of MHI’s continuing friendship with the legion.” I reached behind me and p
icked up the grocery bag I’d brought down with me. “It is a selection of dried meats and quality cheeses from around the world, which my wife picked up on her last trip to Costco.”
EXCELLENT. THANK YOU FOR THIS BOUNTY. MAY OUR ALLIANCE ENDURE FOREVER.
Not only was the rat unnervingly intelligent, he was also an excellent typist. His tiny fists were punching the letters on the screen as fast as I could work a heavy bag.
YET IT IS NOT FINE CHEESES WHICH BRINGS YOU TO THE SUBBASEMENT TODAY. YOU ARE CLEARLY TROUBLED. HOW MAY WE AID YOU?
“There’s a very dangerous creature coming to attack the compound tonight.”
DIRE TIMES. DO YOU WISH US TO AID YOU IN BATTLE?
“No. This thing is crazy dangerous. It would be best if you stayed out of sight.” They were smart, but also proud of the warrior ethos they’d adopted, so I had to tread carefully here so as to not give offense. “I mean, obviously you would be very helpful but MHI has need of your skills in a different way.”
THERE IS NO NEED TO MINCE WORDS MISTER PITT. THOUGH FEARSOME MY SOLDIERS ARE APPROXIMATELY 1.5 POUNDS EACH. I AM AWARE OF OUR LIMITATIONS IN BATTLE. EVEN BOUNDLESS COURAGE WILL NOT OVERCOME PHYSICS.
“You are wise. The reason I’m here is that there may be untrustworthy people among us.”
DO YOU WISH FOR US TO ASSASSINATE THEM IN THEIR SLEEP?
Judging by the fact these guys could sneak in anywhere and were armed with razor blades, I could see how that would work frighteningly well. “No. Nothing like that. They’re supposedly our allies. I just need you to keep an eye on them for me during the chaos tonight.” Come to think of it, last time I’d worked out an arrangement like this, it had ended up with a gnome being stuffed in a toilet. Intelligent rats were easier to deal with than gnomes, with way less ego, but nearly as invisible. “I’m afraid some of our enemies or even some of our so-called friends might try to take advantage of MHI while we are concentrating on the monster.”
Justinian studied me with tiny black eyes which were unnervingly astute. He gave me a small nod, and then typed, THAT IS WISE. WE SHALL SERVE. YOU SHOULD OPEN THAT CHEESE AS WE DISCUSS THE DETAILS.
* * *
With all the preparations going on, Milo was probably the busiest guy in the company right now. He was our go-to expert on all things mechanical or chemical, which meant most of our defenses. So when he called and asked me for a favor, I dropped everything and got to it as fast as I could. Which meant grabbing Sonya from the “guest’s quarters” to escort her to Milo’s workshop on the far side of the compound.
I had to talk Cody and Tanya into letting me temporarily borrow her first. That odd couple were still fighting over how to get the Ward out of Sonya without killing her. Edward was also there, serving as Tanya’s bodyguard and moral support. Not that he got involved in the magic versus science arguments. Ed was the strong silent type.
Sonya and I walked fast. The sun would be setting soon, and we didn’t know how soon after that Silas Carver would show up.
“What do you think Milo wants?” Sonya asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“You think he’s going to yell at me for the whole threatening to kill him thing? Because I really do feel bad about that.”
“Milo’s not really the yelling type.” Seriously, by Monster Hunter standards that guy had reached some sort of Zen one-with-the-universe level of chill. “But I’m sure it’s important or he wouldn’t have asked for you.”
Hunters were running every which way, moving guns, ammo, and medical supplies into the main building. Sonya took note of all the activity, but nobody had any time to pay any attention to our guest. “You guys are serious about tonight, aren’t you?”
“This thing is bad news. So we hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”
“They’re doing all this for me . . . ”
“You could look at it that way, but honestly they don’t even know you. They’d take this risk for anybody, well, anybody and a paycheck. This is just the kind of thing Hunters do. It’s our job.”
“Yeah, I know your spiel. You’re the good guys, recruited from survivors who find out monsters are real. I’ve known about the supernatural my whole life. Too bad Earl Harbinger never thought I was good enough to be one of you,” she muttered that last part.
I stopped walking so suddenly that Sonya nearly crashed into me. “That’s some bullshit. That’s not what happened.”
“My mom told me all about it. I talked about trying out to be a Hunter, like my dad, but Earl Harbinger didn’t think I was good enough so don’t even bother.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Earl was excited to make you an offer. He barely tolerates most Newbies. He already liked you. Plus, shape-shifter powers. Duh. Your mom forbade him from ever bringing it up because she was trying to protect you from this life. She was worried about you getting hurt. Hang on. Is this why you’ve got such a chip on your shoulder about us?”
“No . . . I . . . ” Sonya scowled. “Shit.”
“Your mom straight-up lied to you.” I laughed, and then started walking again. No wonder she was grumpy at Hunters. She’d thought she had been rejected by us and the Secret Guard. “So how long have you been butt-hurt about this imagined sleight?”
“I’m not butt-hurt.” She followed, silent for a long moment. “But that does make more sense than Mom telling me that a half-kodama wouldn’t be welcome here, considering I just met your trailer park elf employee, and she’s kind of nuts.”
“Kind of? And we’ve got a troll and a ton of orcs too, but oh yeah, our werewolf boss is super sensitive about keeping this outfit humans only. Damn, you’re gullible.”
“Like you’ve got room to talk, Mr. Self-Righteous. Gullible like back in the meeting, when the lady in charge was telling everyone about how she wouldn’t let the Vatican kidnap me, which is kinda funny while I’m being held prisoner.”
“First off, that lady in charge is my wife, so check yourself before you say anything about her to piss me off.”
“She married you?”
“Yep.” I wasn’t even offended. When a five hooks up with a ten you get that kind of reaction a lot. “Second, as for you being our prisoner, the gate is that way. Ain’t nobody stopping you. Have fun with the Drekavac.” Of course, rather than run for the hills, she kept following me toward Milo’s workshop. “Didn’t think so.”
“A girl has to weigh her options.”
“Yeah, you just keep on looking out for number one,” I said.
“It’s not like anybody else is going to do that for me. It’s a cold cruel world out there.”
We were silent for the rest of the long walk. Milo’s workshop was far enough away from everything else that if one of his experiments went horribly wrong, the resulting explosion wouldn’t get the rest of us. There were several Hunters working there today. Bombs were being carefully loaded into the back of a pickup while Milo supervised.
“Careful . . . gentle . . . oh, hey, Z.” And Milo immediately forgot about the ultra-deadly explosives being handled so he could wave at us. “Sonya! I’m glad you came. Welcome to my workshop. Come on in. I’ve got something for you.”
We followed Milo into the chaos. There was a table full of hydraulics and hoses, then another full of circuit boards and wires, then boxes and boxes of gun parts, and then past something that looked like a riding lawn mower had a baby with a tree trimmer except it had a machine gun mounted on it and the whole thing appeared to be remote-controlled.
“What does he do here exactly?” Sonya whispered.
“Whatever he feels like. Milo goes where his muse takes him. I just pay the invoices and try to stay out of the way.”
Milo had heard me. “Oh yeah. If monsters hadn’t eaten my family when I was a kid, I’d probably be building Mars rovers now, or maybe working at a Ren Faire. Could’ve gone either way, I think.”
“He’s a mechanical genius,” I said.
“Naw. I just get ideas and then poke at them until they w
ork or blow up. That happens a lot too. Anyways, I’m really sorry about how it went yesterday.”
“I’m the one who attacked you.”
“Yeah, but it was a heated situation. You roll with it, sometimes you make a dumb decision, but we all learned from it, and nobody got shot, so no hard feelings.” We reached the back corner where Milo had set up his forge. There was a big anvil and a wall full of hammers and tongs. Milo had all the modern tools for metal working, like lathes and drill presses, but sometimes he felt like going old school. “Hey, Z. You mind giving me and Sonya a minute?”
“Sure thing, man.” I looked to Sonya. “Promise not to take him hostage again?”
“I’ll try not to,” she said sarcastically.
I nodded and walked around the corner to give them some privacy. I didn’t wander off too far though, not because I was worried, but because I was curious. Milo was being kind of weird. Not his regular weird-weird this time, but awkward weird. There was a pair of electronic earmuffs hanging off one of Milo’s power hammers, so I put them on and then cranked up the volume on the microphone so I could listen in on their conversation. It was probably rude of me to spy, but I was trying to look out for my friends, and I still didn’t entirely trust the shifty shapeshifter to not stab us in the back again.
Sonya was apologizing, “I really am sorry. I know you and my dad were tight and—”
Milo stopped her. “Yeah. We were. Which is why I needed to apologize to you.”
“But I . . . ”
“You screwed up one day, Sonya, but I screwed up years. Your dad was one of my best friends. I should have helped more after he was gone, just because of that. I owed Chad that. Only I was never there for you.”
“I remember we met once,” she said, sounding hesitant. “Or did I imagine that?”
“A few times actually, only you were little.”
“I just remember somebody who made me laugh who had a big fluffy red beard.”
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