“Nope.” I opened the passenger door and lifted Jeremiah out in an awkward bridal carry, making sure not to touch his skin.
“Would you mind running a bath?” I asked as Father Leo took in the half-dressed frog-man in my arms.
God bless the good Father because he didn’t ask questions, disappearing into the house ahead of me. By the time I manhandled Jeremiah into the house, I heard the water filling the tub. We didn’t need to submerge him, just keep him moist. We gentled him into the room-temperature bath, and Father Leo frowned as he noted the bruises.
“Were those—?”
“Yeah. I don’t get it.”
My phone rang, and I saw the call was from Tristan. “Hey, what’s up? Problems with Twitchy?”
“Hi, Mark. And yes, sort of.”
I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Father Leo. “I’m with the padre. Gonna put you on speaker.”
“Oh, hi,” Tristan said, by way of greeting. “Twitchy hasn’t caused any problems. But I was worried because his fur is patchy. If he was getting mange, I figured we’d want to get the crypto vet out here so it doesn’t spread. There is nothing worse than a shifter with mange.”
I could believe that. “And is it?”
“No. The hair hadn’t fallen out. It was shaved, like a vet does to give a shot, or attach electrodes.”
My gaze went to Jeremiah in the tub. I remembered why the location of bruises looked so familiar. They were in the same places I’d had bruises myself when I was in the hospital with an IV.
“Shit. Does he seem sick?” I asked. “Is he acting funny?”
“I have no idea how an Albatwitch is supposed to act, so I’m not sure I can give you a good answer on that,” Tristan replied. “I was wondering if he escaped from a lab somewhere.”
From the look on Father Leo’s face, he was concerned about the same thing—including the nature of the lab in question and who might be running it.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I promised Tristan. “Thank you for letting me know. Please have the guys keep an eye on him and call if anything weird happens.”
“Define ‘weird.’”
“Weird for us.”
“Well, that certainly narrows it down.” The snark was strong with this one. “You got it. Talk to you later.”
I ended the call and looked to Father Leo. “You said something before about mad doctors. Do you think this is related?”
He waved me into the kitchen and poured us both cups of steaming coffee to take over to the table. Room and board comes with the priest gig. The rectory was cozy and comfortable, and it included the services of a housekeeper, who tidied up and left prepared meals in the fridge.
Still not worth a vow of celibacy, although I had to admit that I’d gone without for long stretches and gotten none of those perks.
“The Occulatum views its approach to non-human cryptids as a form of wildlife management,” he said and took a sip of his brew. “We hunt dangerous monsters to keep them from hurting people. But we also try to protect vulnerable paranormal creatures from danger or exploitation. Hence our support for the preserve, up in the Big Woods.”
When I’d floated the idea past him initially, I’d been expecting to get turned down. I was surprised when I gained not only his personal support but a check from the Occulatum that paid for the fancy fencing.
“Which I heartily appreciate,” I said because it was true. “So back to ‘exploiting vulnerable paranormal creatures.’ Are we talking exotic pet collectors? Sideshows and roadside attractions? Or animal testing?”
Father Leo’s expression darkened. He’s nobody’s pushover, and he’s tough in a fight. But beneath that, he has a good heart for creepy creatures, and for fucked-up people like me. I could see that the problem weighed on his mind.
“We’re not sure. Until now, there have been some isolated incidents of cryptids showing up where they shouldn’t be, with signs that they’d been…studied. They were out of your territory, which is why you didn’t get called in,” he added.
“Two in a few days? That’s a lot to be a coincidence,” I replied.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I can ask Chiara to look into it, see what her sources say.” Chiara Hamilton was a good friend and a fantastic occult researcher.
“Probably a good idea,” Father Leo said. “I’ve got my Occulatum sources, and I put a call in to Travis Dominick, to see what he might turn up since his resources are…specialized.”
I didn’t grow up Catholic, so I didn’t understand the first thing about all the different groups like the Jesuits or the Franciscans, beyond knowing they were all priests. Since I started hunting, I’m still irreverent, still unlikely to give up any of my bad habits for Lent, but I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for the complex societies dreamed up by a bunch of guys who don’t get laid.
Dan Brown barely scratched the tip of the iceberg.
I knew Travis Dominick from phone calls. Nowadays, he runs a halfway house in a bad section of Pittsburgh, when he isn’t hunting demons with his buddy, Brent Lawson. Brent is ex-military, ex-FBI, ex-cop, and also a private detective. Travis is a former ninja priest who was an asset for the Sinistram, the Vatican’s black ops team. Compared to them, the Occulatum—the group that Father Leo works for—look like Boy Scouts. Travis managed to get out of the Sinistram—I’m still not sure how—but he has access to a secret archive of occult manuscripts in an underground library beneath Duquesne University.
“Since his resources don’t officially exist, I’d say ‘specialized’ is a good word for it,” I agreed, and took another gulp of java. Hunters run on coffee and whiskey, sometimes separately, sometimes together.
“The real question is whether whoever is causing the problem is working on their own—or for someone else,” Father Leo replied. He looked worried, which is never a good sign.
“Either way, it just got worse,” I said, feeling my stomach sink. Father Leo looked out the window, at the black SUV with dark tinted windows that had just pulled up. “It’s the Dynamic Duo.”
3
Father Leo knocked back the rest of his coffee like it had a couple of shots in it. I knew from the set of his jaw and the thin line of his lips that he was just as thrilled to see the newcomers as I was.
Unlike me, Father Leo would be polite.
Two guys in black suits, sunglasses, and earpieces strode up to the door like they owned the place. We’d run into them a couple of times before, and I wanted to add their photos to Urban Dictionary under the definition of “entitled asshole”—but it would probably get me renditioned to Gitmo.
Father Leo opened the door but pointedly didn’t invite them inside. I came to stand beside him, for solidarity. And because I knew my very existence gave these bozos heartburn.
“Father. Mr. Wojcik. May we come in?”
“The place is a mess,” Father Leo replied. I happened to know that wasn’t true, but I figured the man said Mass seven days a week, so he had plenty of chances to square up a little white lie with the Big Man Upstairs. “We’ll be fine here.”
I’d dubbed the two goons “Smith and Jones” when we’d first met them several cases ago. Smith was shorter, and he worked for the Occulatum. Jones, the big guy, looked like he might have been a linebacker before he joined the brute squad. He was CIA. Or at least, that’s what he claimed. They were both trouble with a capital “T.”
“If it’s not Pinky and the Brain,” I said with a big, fake smile. “I always get confused—which one is which?”
Father Leo sighed. Jones clenched his jaw, and probably his sphincter. If I could have seen through his dark shades, his eye was probably twitching, too.
I have that effect on people.
“Fine,” Jones said, with an exhale that told me he really wanted to mash my skull to pulp. “We’ve been made aware that a dangerous, escaped criminal may be in this quadrant. He has a history of unsanctioned medical experimentation on cryptids a
nd supernaturally-enhanced humans.”
“Back the fuck up,” I said. “Escaped how? From where? And exactly what counts as ‘supernaturally-enhanced’?”
Smith fixed his attention on me. If he was glaring, the sunglasses ruined the effect. He has to play nice, because apparently, Father Leo outranks him in the Occulatum. “Escaped from a secret government facility, which has a classified security system that I’m not at liberty to discuss. And ‘supernaturally-enhanced’ means not plain ol’ vanilla mundane.”
Well, that was helpful.
The bad feeling I’d gotten when the black SUV pulled up kept getting worse. I opened my mouth to ask another question, and Father Leo elbowed me none-too-gently in the ribs.
“Name?” he asked, with that bland expression that would have been a mistake to interpret as harmless.
“Not your concern,” Jones replied. “We’re not expecting you to track, hunt, or attempt to apprehend this man,” he added, glowering at us. “All we want is information, if there’s anything you come across that doesn’t seem…normal.”
“Nothing we deal with is ‘normal,’” I replied evenly. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
I knew without asking that Father Leo didn’t intend to say a word about Twitchy or Jeremiah, and I sure as hell wouldn’t. Which reminded me that we had a wounded frog-man relaxing in the tub. Now would be a really bad time for him to wake up.
So of course, he did.
The ribbit that echoed from inside the house sounded like Kermit through a subwoofer. I could feel the floor vibrate beneath my feet.
“What was that?” Jones tensed, hands moving like he meant to go for the gun beneath his really ugly off-the-rack suit jacket.
“National Geographic,” I replied. “The sex life of Amazonian amphibians.” I raised my hands in mock surrender. “We’re busted. Frog porn.”
Smith took a half-step as if to come inside. Father Leo said something distinctly unwelcoming in Latin, and Smith backed up like he’d been slapped.
“Let us in,” Jones demanded.
Father Leo stood up to his full height, chin raised. “No.”
“We can get a warrant.”
“You can try.” Father Leo’s eyes glinted. “This rectory is owned by the parish, which is paid for by the diocese, which reports to the Vatican. My superiors take the separation of powers extremely seriously. This property is covered by the seal of the confessional and the ancient law of sanctuary. So if the Holy Father, or one of the Cardinals, agrees in writing, then we’ll talk.”
“You can’t do that,” Jones fumed. He turned to his partner. “Can he do that?”
Smith sighed. “Technically, yes. You could press your case through government channels, but that causes, quite literally, ‘holy hell’ for our superiors. The last guy…remember Hinnerschitz?”
Jones paled and swallowed hard. I didn’t know what happened to the unfortunately-named agent, but from Jones’s reaction, it hadn’t gone well. He reached up to tug on his collar and cleared his throat.
“Of course we respect the sanctity of the Church,” Jones replied, in a tone that made it sound like it was his idea all along. “If you become aware of any useful information, we trust you’ll let us know.”
Father Leo and I watched from the doorway until the SUV was out of sight because neither of us is the trusting sort.
“Now what?” I asked when the padre had closed the door, and we both poured fresh cups of coffee.
“Now, I call the cryptid vet and have her take a look at Jeremiah and Twitchy,” Father Leo replied. “See if she can tell what was done to them and whether they’ll be okay.”
“Since I’ll be asking Chiara to look into things, I think I’ll also ask for any leads on this ‘mad doctor,’” I said. “Unless you already know the name?”
“No names. Just rumors.” He shrugged. “Would you be surprised to find out that priests gossip?”
“Shocked,” I deadpanned.
“The one tidbit I did hear—and it might be complete balderdash—is something about the mad doc being ‘immortal.’”
“Vamps? Witches?”
Another shrug. “Don’t know. But when you’re talking to Chiara, you might ask her to go back further than a normal lifespan in the records—just in case.”
“Since you have to deal with the vet, how about if I call Travis?” I offered, and he nodded, seeming glad to hand off a task.
We went to check on Jeremiah. He still lay in the tub like he was relaxing after a long day, but his green seemed a bit greener, and his breathing had evened out. The badly timed ribbit had apparently not been a cry of distress.
“If the vet thinks Jeremiah is up to it, I might let her take the frog to the pond in her back yard. She’s way out in the country, no one around for miles, and the pond has fish in it. Since you don’t have a pond at the preserve,” Father Leo said.
“Maybe we need to come up with something, for the next time we get a water creature.” I’d have to look into that. “You think you’ll make it to poker night?”
“Come hell or high water,” he replied with a smile. “Mark—watch your back with Smith and Jones. They might not get away with throwing you in Gitmo, but they can cause a lot of trouble. I don’t think they’re just going to leave town. If you see Blair and Chiara, and your ‘meddling kids,’ tell them to be careful.”
“Will do,” I promised.
I spent the rest of the afternoon at the garage and body shop I own in Atlantic. Pete Kennedy, my shop manager, keeps the place running when I have to deal with things that go bump in the night. The guys who work for me don’t know the details about my monster hunting—they think I help out the Park Service when there are feral creatures—but they’re a good group.
Nothing clears my head like a few hours spent on my back underneath a classic car, one that isn’t all computers and plastic. The smell of grease, motor oil, and gasoline soothes my soul in a way I really can’t explain, and so does working with my hands on something real and tangible.
By the time we closed for the night, I’d lost some of the tension from earlier in the day. At least my shoulders didn’t feel like they were up around my ears, which was a win.
I’d called Chiara and Travis to fill them in on the latest situation and ask for their help. I wouldn’t hear back from Travis for a day or two because he needed to go through channels to access the secret archive at the university, but Chiara said she’d tell me whatever she could when I came over for pizza.
I pulled into the parking lot for Hamilton Hardware just a little after seven, late as usual. The store was already closed, but Crystal Dreams next door, the coffee shop/bookstore, was all lit up.
“Hiya, Mark!” Blair Hamilton greeted me with a fist bump when I came through the door. As usual, the shop smelled of fresh coffee and baked goods, which made me suddenly ravenous.
Blair inherited the family hardware business, taking over when she finished her time in the Army. She backs me up on hunts when I need an extra hand. Chiara is her wife, and they’d been together since high school. Cute couple. Chiara runs the coffee shop and bookstore, which has a doorway to connect it to the hardware store.
A large dog that looked like a German Shepherd mix padded up from his bed behind the counter in the hardware shop and pressed against my leg. I reached down to scratch his ears, really hoping he remembered his manners and didn’t go for an inappropriate sniff. Donny was a shifter who worked as a guard dog for Blair and Chiara. He was too wolfy for most people and too people-y for the local werewolves. Since there wasn’t a nearby pack of shifters, Donny was stuck trying to run with the weres. It usually didn’t go well. This job seemed to suit him just fine.
“Pizza’s on its way,” Blair added as if she could read my mind. Maybe she just heard the rumble of my empty stomach.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, looking around.
“Looking for your ‘meddling kids’?” Chiara joked, coming around the counter with a la
rge coffee for me. “They’ll be here. Have you ever known them to miss Pizza Night?”
She glanced around to make sure it was just the three of us and dropped her voice. “I got some hits on the info you asked for.” Chiara grabbed a folder from under the register and handed it to me. I put it in my backpack.
“The short version is, two names keep coming up—Adolph Brunrichter, and Francis Tumblety. They’re either aliases or immortal because they’ve been doctors since the late 1800s,” Chiara told me. “And Brunrichter especially is either a very busy boy, or he’s had some identity theft issues because there’s activity at certain times in too many places to all be one person.”
“What kind of doctors?” Part of me wanted to sit down and dig into the file, but tonight was important to spend with my crew, and I needed a night off.
“Surgeons. Shady reputations, linked to bad stuff. Tumblety even made the shortlist of suspects for Jack the Ripper.”
“Yowza,” I muttered. “Okay. Really bad dudes. How are they immortal?”
She shook her head. “No idea. Of course, it could be a Dread Pirate Roberts kind of situation—where the names are famous enough, they get handed off from person to person over the years.”
“Maybe. Thanks. This is helpful.”
“Wait until you read the whole thing before you decide,” Chiara replied. I knew how good she was at research and at looking for things that didn’t show up in normal searches. She was an ace hacker, so I also knew she would have done some digging in places most people couldn’t get into.
Just then, the bell over the door jangled, bringing our conversation to an end. Five twenty-somethings tried to enter at the same time, and stumbled, laughing, through the doorway.
“Hiya, Master Splinter! Kowabunga!” Carl called out when he saw me, breaking into a grin. He pushed his blond hair out of his eyes. His scraggly beard barely covered his acne, but it kept him from looking too young to drive.
“Scooby gang, reporting for duty!” Kayla added. This week, her brown wavy hair had purple ends. The color changed frequently.
Monster Mash Page 3
