Harbinger gave the order, and our pilot pulled a maneuver that left me dizzy. I searched again for the spot that had just flashed by. It was a small patch of sand, with deep swampy forest surrounding it.
"Bingo." I pointed at the small white boat. It was still grounded on the sand. "This is it."
The Hind circled the area. There was a single home set back into the trees a few hundred feet from the landing spot. It was a nice home, two stories with an attached garage, a red-shingled roof and a big chimney. It was a gorgeous piece of property. The nearest homes were a considerable distance away.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Damn sure. I can feel it in my bones."
My boss nodded and punched the intercom, cutting off a good drum solo. "Skippy, can you get us down on that beach?"
We approached the boat cautiously. The Hind tore away, heading farther out to sea to hover and wait. It was broad daylight, but after my experience with the wights, I knew that didn't mean squat. I held Jerry Robert's FAL carbine at the low ready. Earl nonchalantly cradled his Thompson.
"They ain't here."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"I can smell vampires," he answered. "Plus birds are singing in the trees. If your ten-foot winged things were here, I don't think there would be birds singing or squirrels playing."
"How do you know? Maybe they really like squirrels?" I kept my weapon pointed toward the boat. Sure enough, it read Antoine-Henri. It was empty.
"More of that slime," Harbinger pointed out. "Same stuff from the shipping container. Your Cursed One was here. Boogery thing, ain't he? I hate monsters that leak all over the place."
There were no visible tracks in the sand. Any sign left by the creatures had been obliterated by wind or surf. The forest was alive with noise and light. Not at all like the night in my dream. It was good to have the final piece of physical evidence washed up here at my feet. This proved that I was not crazy. Well, maybe not that I wasn't crazy since I was standing on a beach with a battle rifle talking about vampires, but at least not certifiable.
"Let's check the house," he said.
"What if somebody's home?" I raised my rifle to accentuate my point. I had a bag of spare magazines slung over my lime green T-shirt. We did look a little odd.
"There's nobody home."
"How do you know?" The house was half a football field away through the trees.
"I don't hear anything. I don't see any lights. It's hotter than hell and the air conditioner isn't running. If they can afford that house, they can afford to run the air conditioner." I had no idea how he could tell that from this distance. From all of my years of being around loud guns and louder rock music, I could barely hear our conversation. "I want to see why this place is special. They turned that ship a couple hundred miles off course to land here, and I want to know why."
There was a small path through the thick vegetation. I tried to move silently over the packed earth, without much luck. I'm not built for stealth. Harbinger moved like a ghost. He held up his hand for us to stop. He quietly pointed at a spot on the house's roof. There had been some damage to the shingles in a few spots, and one of the corners had been broken cleanly, with the rain gutter dangling into the yard. Something heavy had landed on that roof, a few heavy things actually.
The back door was ajar. A muddy pair of boots had been set aside, as well as a fishing pole and a small plastic tackle box. A welcome mat was slightly askew on the porch.
Harbinger entered first. The door creaked on its hinges as he opened it fully. I had never done anything like this before. It was like a scene out of a bad cop movie, except we were private citizens. We were merely breaking and entering.
I leaned in close and cupped my hand over my mouth. "Are you sure nobody is home?"
"Hello! Anybody home?" he shouted. We waited. There was no response. "Happy?"
"I guess."
The back door entered into the kitchen. The interior was uncomfortably warm. My suspicion had been right; this was the home of an affluent person. All of the appliances were top-of-the-line stainless steel, and the counters were made of real marble. There were dried mud footprints on the otherwise spotless floor, several pairs of them.
The living room was much the same. The fine furniture could have been found in any upper-middle-class home in the country. There were dirty footprints running across the thick carpeting, and running up and back down the wide staircase. Huge polished bookcases lined the walls, filled with thousands of books. Most of them appeared to be history books: Ancient American archeology, Meso-American art, mound builders, Native American religion. There were stacks of magazines and scholarly periodicals, Archeology, the Smithsonian, BYU FARMS newsletter. All of them were addressed to their subscriber, Dr. Jonas Turley. I noticed that many of the books had his name on the spine. The doctor was a prolific writer.
We proceeded to the next floor. I began to touch the banister and my companion stopped me. "Don't leave fingerprints." I nodded. We had not been upstairs yet, but already we both knew that this was shortly going to be considered a crime scene by the local authorities. No need for complications.
The door to the master bedroom had been smashed into kindling. As I stepped through the wreckage, my nose was assaulted by the smell of decay and small biting flies buzzed around my head. We had found the Turleys. Tissues break down rapidly in the warm humidity of coastal Georgia.
"Do we need to cut their heads off?" I asked hesitantly. The old couple had been savaged and torn. Blood had coagulated and dried on the sheets. I tried to sound confident to the more experienced Hunter, but desecrating the bodies of old folks in their own bedroom was a lot more wrenching than doing it to a creature that had just tried to take my life.
"No. They're dead. Really dead. They ain't coming back. The vamps didn't bite them, they beat them to death. I wonder why?"
"Maybe they didn't want him coming back. Why this guy? What makes him so special?"
"I don't know. Search the place. Look for papers. Journals. A diary. Find his computer. Anything." The doctor's office had been ransacked. Pieces of ancient North and South American art had been pulled from the walls and smashed. The computer had been pulverized. Papers and books were strewn everywhere. In the far corner a small wall safe had been ripped from the studs, and the door had been torn open. The contents, a stack of fifty-dollar bills and an old. 38 special, had not been disturbed.
"This is going to take hours. There's got to be thousands of pages of notes here."
"We don't have hours. We've got company." Harbinger craned his head back and closed his eyes. "Helicopters. Lots of them. Low and fast… Feds. Damn it." He must have had freakishly good hearing. I could not hear anything other than the creaking of the floorboards. "We don't have time to meet with the Hind. No need for Skippy to get dragged into this." He pulled a radio out of his pocket and clicked the transmit button three times. The response came back with two clicks in the affirmative. Our chopper was heading back to the airport.
By the time that we reached the living room even I could hear the drumming of the multiple helicopters. There were at least four UH-60 Blackhawks, and two Apache gunships to provide cover. They surrounded the Turley home and multiple teams of black-clad men rappelled to the ground.
"Wow. Isn't this a bit of overkill?"
"That there is your tax dollars at work. Best throw your guns down in case one of the storm troopers has an itchy trigger finger." He placed his Thompson and his snub-nosed 625 on the loveseat. I carefully put Roberts' FAL and Smith on the couch. We both stepped to the center of the room, away from anything that could be considered dangerous. Harbinger placed his hands on top of his head. That seemed like a good idea so I copied him.
"Should we open the door for them?"
"Nah. The Feds are going to blow it open anyway. Best close your eyes and stick your thumbs in your ears. Open your mouth a little, that will equalize the pressure. This is gonna hurt."
I had no idea what he
was talking about, but they proved to be good instructions. Almost simultaneously half of the windows in the house shattered into tinkling glass as flash-bang grenades were tossed in. The concussions were horrendous, the noise was amazing, and I was dazzled even through my closed eyes. Harbinger was laughing.
The black-suited Feds came crashing through the door, piled on top of each other, each one taking a section of room and covering it. They began to scream commands at us. I went to my knees, and kept my hands on my head. It didn't matter because somebody moved behind me, kicked me in the back with a heavy boot, forced me down, and ground my face into the carpet. My arms were jerked behind me and I was placed in handcuffs. They really cranked them on tight, biting the steel deep into my wrists. The boot was placed back on my spine, and I had no doubt that the trooper's muzzle was aimed at my head.
I stayed there, with my face shoved into the carpet, while the Feds secured the home. They entered each room by tossing in more distraction devices, clomping around, and then shouting "Clear." After a few minutes the noise died down a bit, and the radio chatter started up. A slightly scuffed, black leather wingtip stopped inches from my nose.
"Hello again, Earl. And if it isn't Owen Pitt, CPA. I warned you not to fall in with this crowd."
"Hey, Myers. How's it hanging?" I mumbled through my mouth full of high quality rug fibers. He barked an order and my arms were yanked in a vain attempt to get me up. The Fed doing the pulling couldn't dead-lift me, and I wasn't feeling particularly cooperative. Another one grasped me, and with a grunt they jerked me to my feet. I was about ten inches taller than my old friend that I had dubbed the Professor. Agent Franks stood behind him, now in his black body armor and carrying a brand new FN F2000 with grenade launcher. The stone-cold killer looked far more comfortable in his combat gear than he had been dressed up at the hospital. Myers was still in a cheap suit.
"Franks. What's up, my brother? Kill anybody interesting lately?"
"Tons."
"Good for you," I said cheerfully.
The muscular Fed read the message on my lime green attire. "Nice shirt."
"We're not doing anything illegal, Myers. We called and let you guys in on this case as soon as we knew how big it was. We're totally in our rights." Harbinger had a thin smear of blood next to his lip. Apparently one of the Feds had felt the need to help him to the ground.
"You are at a crime scene related to that case and you haven't bothered to call. That could be construed as withholding information concerning a monster menace," Myers stated in a smug and condescending manner, "which is very illegal."
"We just got here. We were meaning to call. My cell phone wasn't getting a signal," he lied.
"I bet. So tell me how exactly did you find this place?"
"We flew down the coast until we spotted the motor launch missing from the freighter. The same launch I told your people about last night."
"So you just happened to fly around until you found it? And you just picked it out of the ten thousand other boats around here."
"Pretty much."
"I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Come on, Myers. How else do you think we found this place? Do you think we have visions or magic dreams or something? Okay, I give up. You got me. We called the psychic friends network, they gave us the coordinates." My boss certainly turned into a smart-ass when dealing with federal agents.
"So what are you guys doing here?" I asked.
Myers started to answer and then caught himself. "None of your damn business."
"You got our call last night about the seven vampires and the Cursed One, and within a few hours you end up right here. That has got to be an amazing coincidence."
"Yes. Pretty amazing coincidence, Mr. Pitt."
"Ironic," Franks said, patting his Belgian assault rifle tenderly.
"Yeah, silly me. Never mind I said anything."
Myers' phone rang. He still had that annoying ring tone of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." "This is Agent Myers…" He listened for a minute, then he covered the receiver and spoke to us. "Earl, get your crew and take them home. This is no longer your affair. If I see a single Monster Hunter poking around Georgia I'll shut you down so fast your head will spin."
"I've got Hunters that live in Atlanta, Myers."
"Well, they better not be doing anything involving this case. At all. Period. I want you and your freak show back in Alabama immediately. You're lucky you caught me in a good mood. I don't want to hear about you doing anything with these seven vampires, or anything related to them. This case and everything pertaining to it is a federal matter. Got that?"
"Understood. Mind if we call a cab or something?"
"Get them out of my sight." He went back to his phone call.
We were shoved rudely out the front door. Franks stopped us on the porch long enough to undo our handcuffs. I rubbed my tender wrists. My boss leaned in close and whispered a single word.
"Stall."
I raised a single eyebrow incredulously. What the heck was I supposed to do? Talk about the weather?
"Hey, Franks?"
"What, Pitt?"
"What about our guns?"
"They're evidence."
"Evidence of what?" I had the urge to punch the morose man in the snout. He was one ripped son of a gun, he even had big veins bulging in his forehead and neck, so at least I would get a good fight out of it. Except the other forty Feds would probably shoot me. Scratch that stalling plan.
"Crime."
"What crime?"
He shrugged.
"Dude, that FAL and that 4506 belonged to the Hunter that got killed yesterday. Have a little heart. Give them back and I'll deliver them to his sons. Give them something to remember their dad by."
"No."
"Why not?" I knew that there was no way that was going to happen. The Smith was legal, but the full-auto FAL had to be the property of MHI, because it would be too illegal to own without the special paperwork and permissions. Stupid laws.
"Evidence."
"Listen, you monosyllabic moron. Let me spell this out. You can't just go around confiscating private property. There's a fourth amendment. Maybe you heard of it?"
"Did you just call me a moron?" That was possibly the longest sentence I had ever heard from him.
"Yeah, I did. I'm using my right to free speech to call you a moron. That falls under one of those other amendments."
Franks handed his FN to one of the other Feds. He tapped his radio. "This is Franks. Are there any cameras or witnesses in the immediate area? Over." He listened for a moment and then smiled.
He hit me harder than I have ever been hit before. His fist was like lightning, striking deep into my gut. The air exploded out of my lungs in a rush. I have fought in dozens of brawls and underground fights, and won most of them. I've been hit by bikers, construction workers, crack heads, karate experts, and semiprofessional boxers, and just yesterday I had been hit by a vampire. Franks must be dropping some serious 'roids, because none of the others held a candle to him.
I fell off of the porch and landed in the flowerbed. I jumped up, and turned to face him just in time to catch a hammer blow to the side of my head. I tripped backwards over the small white fence and landed on my back. Some of the other Feds stepped forward to give me a little stick time, but Franks just held his hand up to dismiss them. This was his gig.
He waited patiently for me to stand up. I dropped into a fighting stance, legs bent, arms up, hands open and loose. The pain was displaced by my anger. I was ready. "Come get some."
"Okay."
Franks moved faster than I thought possible. I blocked his first two punches, and narrowly ducked under the third. His dark face was emotionless, and his eyes were unblinking. I threw a fast jab and then a hook. He dodged them easily, and then kicked me in the chest. I was rocked backwards in shock. He followed with a spin kick, again hitting me in the stomach. I grunted as my abdominal muscles absorbed the blow.
I'm extremely fast
for my size, unbelievably fast. I threw a flurry of punches, and then followed with elbow and knee strikes as the range closed. I did not manage to hit him once. Franks swatted my blows aside with bone-jarring force. He dodged under my elbow, blocked the knee, and then head-butted me in the face.
With eyes watering I dove for his waist. I had been a wrestler. If I could take him to the ground I would have a chance. He pushed off against my shoulders, avoiding my trap, and broke some of my teeth with a hook. He followed that by kicking me in the sternum. Good thing I'm padded with muscle or that one would have killed me.
"Enough!" Myers shrieked.
Franks instantly stopped. He was not even breathing hard. I was panting and bleeding. I spit a blob of blood and half of a molar on the ground. The Feds that had been watching moved aside to let Agent Myers through.
"Striking a federal agent? This is a new low even for your thugs, Earl."
"He didn't hit me. Too slow," Franks stated.
"I'll try harder next time," I gasped.
"Look forward to it."
"Get off this property now before I have you arrested," Myers ordered. Harbinger put his arm over my shoulders and led me away. We walked down the driveway, more like my boss walked and I weaved. My head was throbbing, my eyes were watering, my nose and lips were bleeding, my chest and stomach burned in pain, and I felt at least two broken teeth with my tongue. I had not gotten my ass handed to me in a one-on-one fight like that since I was fifteen.
He waited until we were well away from the helicopters and perimeter of armed guards before speaking. "Good stall. Not exactly the tactic I would have used, but letting Franks beat you up was great."
"I didn't let him."
"Good job anyway." He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. I held it tightly under my nose.
"So what was the purpose of that little exercise?" I asked. "What was I stalling for?"
"I was trying to listen in on Myers' phone call. He was standing right in the living room."
"Do you have superpowers or something?"
"Nope. I just have good senses," he smiled. "And I know how to pay attention."
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