The bullet pa.s.sed through nothing. Susan"s b.l.o.o.d.y clothing fell to the ground as a thick gray mist rolled across the ruined cemetery. Within seconds the mist had mingled with the fog and rolled out of sight.
"Are you all right?" I shouted at Julie.
"I"m fine. Check Sam."
The burly Hunter was sitting down, pressing his hands against his side. I squatted next to him. "Sam? You okay?"
"Naw..." He moved his hands. Torn sheets of Kevlar parted, and I could see inside his chest cavity. Desperate to protect his wife, Ray"s blow had been so powerful that he"d cleaved right through the armor. Sam coughed violently and blood drenched his giant walrus mustache. "s.h.i.t, that hurts."
"MEDIC!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. Julie spoke into her radio, calling desperately for an orc healer. I wrenched open my first aid pouch and pulled out a pack of bandages. I ripped them from the package and stuck them against him. It was soaked useless almost instantly.
"Gotta lay down," Sam wheezed. I put my hand on his back and gently lowered him. "We...win?"
"Sure did, man."
Julie knelt at his other side, shining a flashlight at the wound. The vampire"s claws had torn four terrible lacerations deep through him. Blood was pouring out. I was shocked he was still conscious. Julie looked up at me, a terrible knowledge in her eyes. "Hang in there, Sam. Gretchen"s coming."
Sam"s strong hand grasped mine. "It"s all good, guys." Other Hunters surrounded us. A group of Feds found Agent Franks and called for a stretcher.
"Not Sam," Holly cried when she arrived. I glanced around the a.s.sembled Hunters. None of us could do a thing. Sam could have taken an injury like this in an emergency room and still not have had a chance. Holly began desperately cutting the rest of Sam"s armor away. There was no way she was going to stop the bleeding in time.
"Figures it would be Ray. He always was a d.i.c.k." Sam closed his eyes. His breathing was rapid and shallow. "I taught you kids good, though. Where"s Milo?"
"Right here!" the little man shouted as he sprinted up to us. "Oh, Sam, no..." Milo dropped down beside me. "What happened?"
His eyes opened. "No biggie." Sam coughed. "Listen...brother...I..."
Then he was dead. The great heart simply quit beating. The hand grasping mine was suddenly still...just like that.
"Sam?" Milo asked. "Sam?"
We were all quiet. Finally Milo, trembling, reached up and closed Sam Haven"s staring eyes.
Chapter 22.
The mortuary became our temporary headquarters while we regrouped and figured out what was going on. Myers had not accompanied his men through the rift from Alabama but was in contact. With Franks incapacitated, Archer was in command. The thin man was pacing back and forth in the mortuary chapel, speaking excitedly into a satellite phone.
"No, sir. I don"t see any way that we can cover this up. Negative. It"s like twenty stories tall." The agent stalked back to the window. When the sun comes up, the town below us would surely see the giant alien tree. It was a secret agency"s worst nightmare. Archer nodded as Myers gave him instructions. "Yes, sir. I"m on it." He closed the phone and started yelling orders. "Johnson, contact British MI4. They have an office in Auckland. They"ll have to evacuate the town before dawn. Have them make up something about...anthrax or plague or something...h.e.l.l, I don"t know, maybe an outbreak of rabid sheep."
I was standing in the doorway, waiting. "Auckland? We"re in New Zealand?" That would explain why my watch was saying that it was afternoon in Alabama; it felt like we were getting close to sunrise. That, and it had seemed unseasonably cool.
Archer glared at me. "What? I"m busy."
"Yeah, Myers sure does make it look easy, doesn"t he? Keeping all those lies straight and all that. The man has a gift," I said. Archer frowned, waiting. "I was wondering if Franks...is he okay?" We had blown up a G.o.d together, after all. Now that"s male bonding.
Archer actually smiled. He really wasn"t a bad sort. "Franks will be just fine. It takes more than getting his spine pulled out to kill him. He probably won"t even take sick leave. I"ll tell him you asked."
"Thanks." I turned to leave.
"Hey, Pitt..." He stopped me, suddenly uncomfortable. "Just so you know, man. I was just doing my job. I didn"t know about Torres. I really was just trying to protect you."
I nodded once, then left the young Fed to his damage control.
The Feds had taken the comfortable waiting room, leaving MHI the soaking wet and partially burned chapel. Our people had moved in to tend to our injuries and check our gear. The mood was chaotic and somber. Julie was sitting on one of the pews, wrapped in a wool blanket. She looked haggard, with big dark circles under her eyes. She gave me a weak smile when she saw me. I flopped down next to her.
"I just got some good news," she said. "Nate"s going to be fine. He broke his leg when he fell down that hole and took a good whack on the head, but other than that, Gretchen"s not worried about him."
"Good thing Shacklefords are so hard-headed," I responded.
She didn"t laugh. "I haven"t told him about Dad yet."
"Oh...okay." That was going to be hard. This would be the second time they would have to deal with his death, only this time, it was permanent. "Have the Feds found the artifact yet?"
Julie bit her lip. She seemed deep in thought. "No...not that I know of."
"Well, when they do, they better stash it someplace that n.o.body will ever find it. That thing"s too dangerous. I hate the idea of them even having it, because eventually somebody is going to use it again. Anything else?"
She shook her head. "Amazingly enough, we"ve got a ton of injuries, multiple gunshot wounds, and one Newbie lost a foot, but we only had the one fatality. The Feds lost two pilots, but the other two lived."
"How"s Skippy?"
"He"s good. He managed to put the Hind down right side up. Not bad considering the tail rotor was gone. Minor injuries on the orcs running the door guns, but that"s it. Skippy even thinks that we can fix it, provided we can ship it home."
"We"re in New Zealand," I pointed out.
She nodded. "We checked GPS as soon as we stepped through the portal. By the way"-she pointed at my armor-"your patch is upside down." Sure enough, I had stuck it back on wrong after tearing it off Torres. I had been a little preoccupied at the time. "Will you look at that? Upside down, it"s a penguin...swimming right at you. Never noticed that before."
Milo arrived and sat down next to me. He looked even worse than Julie. He and Sam had been friends since Milo had joined MHI as an orphaned teenager. He was holding together right now, but that was only because there was still work to do. "I checked. The magic rope"s toast. Half of it is still stuck under that stupid tree, so I don"t think I can turn it back on. Don"t have the ward stone to juice it up either."
"How did you do that, anyway?"
Milo shrugged. "Couple of clever people, a killer deadline, and a mutant that happened to be familiar with the inventor"s work. Esmeralda figured out how to turn it back on, and I said, why not splice it into a couple hundred feet of climbing rope and fly some attack helicopters through it...Seemed like the reasonable thing to do with a magic teleporter thingy. Then we took volunteers to go through it, and that turned out to be just about everybody who wasn"t already banged up."
"Well, you guys saved my life. I"ll never forget that."
"Don"t ever forget Sam Sam." Milo sniffed and blew his nose into a handkerchief. "Darn, I must be allergic to penguins or something, making me tear up and stuff. Well, if you"ll excuse me, I"ve got to see about arranging transport out of here. I"m a.s.suming most of us didn"t bother to bring pa.s.sports."
Milo walked away. I corrected my patch. "Does New Zealand have penguins?" I asked.
Julie shrugged.
The British Supernatural Service, commonly known as BSS, working in conjunction with the U.S. Monster Control Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security, was gracious enough to provide lodging and transport for the forty-some-odd members of MHI stuck in Pukerua Bay, New Zealand. Mostly I think they just wanted to get us out of the rapidly disintegrating situation. The small town had not been evacuated quite in time, and many photos and even cell phone video of the ma.s.sive Arbmunep Arbmunep had been taken and dumped on the internet. People were freaking out. The Feds were scrambling to come up with a plausible cover story. had been taken and dumped on the internet. People were freaking out. The Feds were scrambling to come up with a plausible cover story.
Not my problem.
Skippy had refused to leave until Archer had agreed to have the Hind crated up and shipped back to Alabama. I didn"t know if Myers would allow his subordinate to keep that promise, but if he didn"t, I figured the orc would probably just hunt him down, and it wouldn"t be pretty. That chopper was Skippy"s baby.
I was riding business cla.s.s on a transoceanic flight when I got the phone call. My phone was still sitting at the bottom of the Alabama River, so Earl had finally managed to get a hold of Julie. She woke me up with a poke to the ribs and pa.s.sed the phone over, violating the h.e.l.l out of the airline policy about using electronic devices in-flight.
"You did it," Earl said. "As soon as the link with the Dread Overlord was broken, Rocky said he was done and went home."
"Rocky?"
"You know, Rok"hasna"wrath Rok"hasna"wrath, devourer of worlds and all that c.r.a.p. We spent a lot of quality time together, so we"re on a first-name basis now. I think he was surprised to find that I was a little tougher than he initially figured. I didn"t give up anything without a h.e.l.l of a fight."
"Any permanent damage?"
Earl was quiet for so long that I thought I had dropped the connection. "Well, I lost a few things..." He didn"t specify further. I remembered the terrible fate of Carlos, and was just glad that I had been able to spare one of my friends from that. "Thanks, Owen. Thanks for everything."
"I"m sorry about Sam."If I hadn"t freed Susan...
"Don"t be. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Sam Haven was a hero and one of the best friends I"ve ever had. He died how he lived, brave as h.e.l.l, saving lives, and getting the job done. That"s exactly how he would have wanted it." Sam Haven was a hero and one of the best friends I"ve ever had. He died how he lived, brave as h.e.l.l, saving lives, and getting the job done. That"s exactly how he would have wanted it."
"See you in a few, Earl."
The day after our return, I had been summoned to a meeting at one of the miscellaneous federal buildings in Montgomery. I was to come alone. It had not been a request. Apparently the MCB had a few questions they wanted answered about the events of the last few days.
I wore my only suit, which was normally reserved for funerals and weddings. There was still a very good possibility that I was going to be prosecuted for the various things that I had done. There was also the much smaller possibility that they were just going to make me disappear for being a general nuisance. My gut feeling told me that was unlikely though. If the government ever decided to just pop me, I knew that they would just send Franks.
Myers had requisitioned an office near the courthouse during his stay in Montgomery, and the receptionist pointed me in the correct direction when I got off the elevator. There was a single chair outside the office, and it was occupied by a fidgeting Grant Jefferson.
I paused, waiting.
He stood, adjusting his suit, which was much nicer than mine. He looked a little nervous, which was understandable, despite the fact that I"d had to go through a metal detector in the lobby. "I wanted to talk to you before your meeting."
I waited. I didn"t really have anything I needed to say to him.
But he apparently felt the need to get something off his chest. "When you asked me why I came back, I wasn"t lying when I answered." I didn"t respond, so he gradually continued. "I did feel like a failure. I hated knowing what was out there, and I felt like a coward for not fighting anymore. I was bitter. I felt like MHI had let me down, not the other way around. When Myers approached me, I saw a way that I could do the right thing. I could protect people, serve my country...I saw a way that I could make a real difference."
A difference? Hiding the truth, killing people who talked too much? All while deluding yourself that you"re a hero?"Why are you telling me this?"
He shook his head. "I...I don"t really know. I just thought you should understand."
"You done?"
He stuck his hand out to shake. I just glanced down at his waiting hand. It would be a cold day in h.e.l.l before I accepted his pseudo-apology. Finally, awkwardly, he lowered it back to his side. "Never mind then." He brushed past me and walked quickly down the hallway, footfalls echoing on the granite. I put my hand on the doork.n.o.b. Grant paused and glanced back. "One last thing, Pitt."
I waited.
"Be good to her. She deserves the best." Then he walked away.
Agent Myers was waiting for me on the other side of a desk. He had a file with my name on it sitting open in front of him. His fingers were steepled together and his elbows were resting on the desk. His cheap suit was wrinkled and I was willing to bet that he hadn"t gotten much sleep over the last few days. "Have a seat."
I pulled up a chair.
He got right down to business. "The necromancer is dead. His plot to utilize the Arbmunep Arbmunep weapon, defeated. All of our intel indicates that the Condition is collapsing without him. There are a few splinter groups holding together, and one young woman claiming to be his successor-" weapon, defeated. All of our intel indicates that the Condition is collapsing without him. There are a few splinter groups holding together, and one young woman claiming to be his successor-"
"His daughter, Lucinda."
"Correct. But we will find her before she causes too much trouble, so don"t worry about that. I"m not too worried about a teenager with one hand and a shattered organization. That"s not why I called you in here." He lifted the top page in my file. "In the last week, you"ve threatened one of my agents with lethal force, failed to cooperate in a federal investigation, lied to investigators, and hindered an ongoing operation. These are all very serious charges."
"I also killed one of your agents with a grenade launcher," I pointed out, "which I think I should get bonus points for, and not to mention that Franks and I blew up the Dread Overlord itself."
"I"m aware of that, and Agent Franks will be reprimanded accordingly. He was not authorized to enter another universe or to attack an unknown ent.i.ty. The Congressional Subcommittee has ruled it an act of self-defense, however, so Franks will not be terminated."
Did that mean fired or dismantled? "You know that"s absolute bulls.h.i.t, right?"
Myers, unfazed, continued. "Even more troubling is that it seems like you"ve been keeping secrets from me. I have evidence here that you have some sort of psychic powers and that somehow you are the only person in recorded history to have survived a zombie bite."
"That"s impossible," I said with no inflection.
"Indeed," Myers said. "Because that would mean that your continued existence could prove to be an important national security issue." I did not respond. If Myers wanted to just make me go away it was certainly within his power. "But I"m really doubting the accuracy of this report," he said as he waved the paper.
"Why"s that?"
"Because this same intel indicates that the Condition"s Shadow Lord was really a man named Martin Hood, who died quite some time ago. See, I happened to know Martin Hood, we were actually close friends, and I would hate to see his good name slandered."
I nodded. "And it would also call into question the judgment of the interim head of the Monster Control Bureau if it turned out that one of his oldest friends was really the leader of an evil death cult." Myers was concerned about his a.s.sociation with Hood coming back to haunt him...
Unless...
Could Hood have also approached Myers about working together, like he had with Carlos? It was a definite possibility. They had been best friends. Had Myers known just what kind of craziness Hood had been dabbling in? Had he known about Hood"s father"s book? Had he known, but protected his friend anyway?
I had to know. "Can I see that report?"
Myers extended it to me and I reached out and touched his hand instead. It wasn"t so difficult to use the ability this time. After all, the memory was just sitting there, floated to the top by the pressure of Agent Myers" buried guilt.
Ray Shackleford was furious. His face was turning a shade of red that was normally reserved for when he was chainsawing a monster in half. He shoved the chubby Hunter against the wall, enraged. "d.a.m.n it, Marty! What the h.e.l.l were you thinking? I told you not to screw around with this stuff anymore!"
Ray was such a brute that Marty"s feet dangled a few inches off the floor and the big man didn"t even notice that he was holding him up. But the smaller Hunter was undaunted. "Don"t you get it? I figured it out! I"ve learned the language of the book. I"ve read the entire Skia Thanatou! Skia Thanatou! I can control the dead. There"s no limit to what we can do now," Hood gasped, trying to breathe past the meaty hands clamped around his throat. The wall of Shackleford family portraits was at his back. The family estate was packed with Hunters but we had this room to ourselves. I can control the dead. There"s no limit to what we can do now," Hood gasped, trying to breathe past the meaty hands clamped around his throat. The wall of Shackleford family portraits was at his back. The family estate was packed with Hunters but we had this room to ourselves.
"You were animating zombies, you idiot, and Carlos found out, and in the morning when Earl wakes up human, he"s going to know too." Ray let go and Marty dropped, gasping. "I got you transferred so you would quit d.i.n.king around with the magic s.h.i.t in the archives. You weren"t supposed to sneak the evilest book down there with you!"
"It was my book to take," Marty snapped. "It belonged to my father, and his father before him. You didn"t think it was such a bad idea when I used it back here and was making us millions in bounties!"
Ray rubbed his face in his hands as he stomped away. "What are we going to do? Does Carlos know anybody else helped with your research?"
"Of course not," Marty snapped. "You think I"m stupid? Now lower your voice, or the whole house will know. I"ll handle this. I"ll tell Earl that it was all me. I"ll take the heat. What"s he going to do? Kill me?" Marty snorted.
"Yes," Ray snapped. "My dad and grandpa are a lot of things, especially old-fashioned, but they"ve got principles. They won"t tolerate a Hunter using dark magic. One of these days, I"ll be in charge, and that"ll change. We all know that this stuff can be harnessed for good, but until then, we were supposed to keep our mouths shut shut."
Marty"s fat face opened in a wide grin. "Don"t worry, mate. I"ll handle this. If there"s one thing I can do, it"s keep a secret. n.o.body ever has to know who helped me."