CHAPTER 3
MHI company headquarters was usually described as a compound, which was fine by us, because images of crazy militia rednecks out in the Alabama woods kept the riffraff out.
The whole place was fenced in. There was one main building, which was sprawling since bits got added to it when needed, without any regard for how it looked. It was built of heavy brick and steel. Though it was technically an office building, it had served as a fort, and we’d successfully defended it from attacks before. Most workplaces don’t have a portcullis.
The parking lot was nearly empty. The compound was usually a busy place, but most of our regular people were on the mission, and we were between Newbie classes. It kind of had an empty vibe that made me feel a little lonely.
I went straight into the office with little Ray in his sling. The first thing I checked was to see if there had been any contact with the mission, but still nothing since they’d been hit by the latest storm. There wasn’t cause to worry yet. They were on a crappy island north of the Arctic Circle in winter. We lost contact every time the weather turned bad. These sorts of things happened. They were probably fine. Probably.
So rather than fret uselessly, I got to work. I’ve always been the person who did general planning and contracts for MHI, because most Hunters have all the business acumen of a baby opossum. No, seriously. You get all these tough guys and gals who risk their lives in really scary ways, but not too many of them could make a budget, and paperwork confused and frightened them.
I think when my husband took over as MHI’s finance guy most of our team leads were handing in their receipts in a shoebox: weapons, ammunition, Big Macs, clothes to replace the ones shredded by a monster, parking fees, oil changes, and that one time they took their team out for ice cream—just in case, throw it all in the box. Then they’d dump these on Earl’s desk, which he’d ignore until they’d reached a height of three-to-five feet, then sweep them into a file cabinet where he’d continue to ignore them.
Luckily that hadn’t been my problem. During those years, I’d stayed busy trying to book our gigs, negotiate our contracts, and generally keeping us in business. The tax side of it…well, I did the best I could, but there’s not much you can do with stacks of shoeboxes of unorganized receipts compiled by angry gorillas.
Okay, I could have made a wonderful bonfire.
But the IRS wasn’t likely to believe I’d accidentally burned all our records, just like the ATF tended not to believe us each time we told them we’d lost a machinegun in a tragic boating accident. But even the idea of a bonfire had often warmed my heart in those days before Owen.
Then my husband had come along and set everything right just by the force of his personality. He was just tenacious like that. It was the same spirit he used to drag himself through death and back—sometimes literally—to win the day for the good guys.
Damn it, I loved that man. When they’d made him, they’d broken the mold, and there was no way, no way at all that I would resign myself to him being lost in some chaos dimension. If he didn’t come back, I’d go find Owen and drag him back myself. I’d just have to get little Ray to the point I could entrust him to someone to finish raising him.
Maybe Owen’s mom? She’d come to visit after Ray was born, but she’d still been grieving her husband and had been kind of an emotional wreck. Her offer to help however she could had been appreciated, but after staying with us a week she’d gone back to Europe to visit her sisters, to “get her head straight.” I knew she’d rush back if I asked, that’s just how she was, but I wanted to give her time to heal.
Headquarters was too quiet nowadays. With most of us off on the siege, the big place felt empty. I’d moved my office into one of the larger rooms because there needed to be accommodation for little Ray.
How much accommodation does a six-month-old infant need?
Ah. It wasn’t so much accommodation that he needed as it was entertainment, so that he wasn’t crying, complaining, and trying to get me to play with him every minute.
Luckily, his entertainment was orcs.
MHI’s orc tribe lived nearby, in their own little village, but in a heavily forested area where the chances of anyone stumbling across them were virtually nil. They’d moved in with us after Earl had rescued Skippy’s tribe in central Asia, and they’d been crazy loyal ever since. The orcs considered MHI their adopted tribe, and there was nothing they wouldn’t do for their tribe.
Thing is…Baby Ray was very special to them, and not just because he’d been delivered by an orc healer. Why would I go to a hospital when I had perfectly good orcs? It wasn’t even that he was the nephew of Mosh Pitt, whom they called “Great War Chief,” because orcs loved heavy metal music more than anything else in the world. No, they treated him as if he were special, really special, in his own self. Which, of course, he was to me, but I hadn’t been able to figure out why he would be to them. I mean, sure, he was a pretty wonderful baby, and really, despite a tendency to wake screaming at four a.m., I couldn’t think how he could be better.
But why did the orcs hang around every chance they got, adults and children both coming over to spend time with him all through my workday? Was it some instinct he’d someday be the boss? Orcs were big on the whole bloodline thing. Or was it just the way they treated all babies? Probably not that, because they had a ton of their own. Heck, I think Skippy by himself had like a dozen kids.
Anyways, one side effect of few humans around meant the orcs were more comfortable visiting. My new and improved office, about twice the size of the old one, had filled up with orcs before I’d even finished checking my emails.
It was always the same. Somehow they’d get word Ray was here, they’d run over from their village, I’d get a knock on the door, and there would be some squat little children in ski masks and heavy metal T-shirts asking, “Baby?” and “Play now?” Orc kids have gravelly voices like their parents—and they’d always be followed by a couple of patient, burkha-wearing mothers.
It used to be that the only orcs who ever came around the compound were Skippy, Ed, and Gretchen, that was only ever for work, and they were always shy while they were here. Ray’s arrival had changed that big time. Now I couldn’t get rid of them. Normally all the orcs hid their faces around humans, not wanting to cause any freak-outs because of their pointy ears and tusks, but once they were in my office they were in friendly territory and they’d ditch the masks and sunglasses.
Ray started chortling the minute he saw them.
I had a hanging swing chair, a playpen, and a high chair for him. But it didn’t really matter which one I stuck him in. He wouldn’t be in any of those for very long. A minute later they’d be dancing around with him, or lying on the floor making fight noises while they wiggled Ray’s arms and legs like he was punching and kicking their enemies. I’ve learned quite a bit of their language over the years, so apparently my son had a warrior spirit “pleasing to Gnrlwz,” the orc god of war. Which was good, because I think Gnrlwz had officiated at my wedding.
My workday went something like this:
I sat down and started filling PUFF paperwork, looking up around my third form to say, “Stop bouncing him around like that, he’s going to urk up his break—and there it goes. Thank you for cleaning that up, guys. Play more gently, okay?” By the fourth form, I’d hear “I warg!” shouted by one of the juveniles, getting down on all fours, while another one held little Ray on the back of the pretend giant wolf. And then they’d ride around slaying imaginary monsters. I’m pretty sure once Ray was older he’d end up riding a real warg like the orc kids did, but right now, he was just too small for it, and I’d already put my foot down: no way in hell were they putting my baby on the back of a giant killer wolf no matter how much they promised to hold him tight good.
I went back to my forms and actually managed to concentrate for a few hours, despite the fact that the orcs were singing horribly distorted versions of metal songs the whole time. They were surprisingly gentle with Ray, and he absolutely loved them.
“Julie! Damn it, girl, how many times do I need to call you before you hear me?”
I looked up past the pile of orc kids, to the door of the office, where a forbidding figure stood: Dorcas.
Okay, not really a forbidding figure to anyone who didn’t know her. Some people who weren’t very good at reading people might mistake her for a sweet Southern grandma. But in this office, we both knew her cantankerous, take-no-prisoners persona too well. She could be a mean old lady, but she was utterly devoted to MHI and loved us like her own kids. Unless, of course, one of us had been stupid enough to eat one of her pudding cups she kept stashed in the break room fridge, because she’d straight-up kill you for that.
The reason someone might unwittingly mistake Dorcas for a kindly grandmother was that she was kind of plump and cheerful looking—when she wasn’t yelling at anyone—and her white hair was neat and obviously carefully combed. But she always had a slightly manic gleam in her eye and a big revolver in a shoulder holster under her purple knit sweater. Dorcas had been a Hunter until she lost a leg in a fight with a werewolf, and then she’d been our “receptionist” ever since. Mostly that meant she herded us into shape and looked after us in her own demented way.
Right then she was glaring at me as she maneuvered around the orcs. “What’s so fascinating about Fed forms that you’d ignore me?”
I was her boss but there was no point in debating it with her. She’d known me since I was a baby, and I think in her mind I was still a lot like Ray: a little kid making other people’s lives difficult. So I just said, “What can I help you with, Dorcas?” And then because my heart picked up all of a sudden and I thought maybe, just maybe she’d gotten word. “Is it— did you hear anything from the siege?”
Dorcas went from cheerfully annoyed to sad in a second. “Sadly, no. Hunters on the mainland checked in, but the island’s still getting hammered by that blizzard. We just got a tip there was a monster attack down in Philpot.”
“Alabama?” That was only an hour’s drive away. “What kind?”
“Swamp lurker.”
I pushed the forms aside—damn it, why did the federal government still insist these be on paper—and went back to my computer, already running through my mind who might be available to deal with an incident. Not a lot of people, that’s for sure. We weren’t only a skeleton crew, but the skeleton was picked clean. With over half our employees off on the other side of the world, we were down to some very overworked pros, Newbies, and the people who normally wouldn’t be sent on missions at all, covering the whole country. “I don’t know who we can send—”
“Whoa, slow down. This went down a couple days ago. It’s contained.”
I took a deep breath. Okay. That was good. I was dying to get back to hunting, but it’s hard to charge off to kill monsters when you need to find a sitter first. “We’re just now hearing about it? That’s practically next door. What’re we bribing all these public officials for anyway?”
Dorcas shrugged. “It got stopped so fast nobody got hurt. Some local had a bunch of guns in the back of his truck and took care of business. Those things are freaky as all get out, but he kept his cool and got shit done. By the time the cops were notified, it was all green guts as far as the eye could see.”
“Hmm. That’s good work. Those are tough.”
“Yep. That’s showing some initiative.” The way she said that meant Dorcas had obviously been thinking the same thing I’d been thinking. MHI recruited almost exclusively from the survivors of monster attacks. Come to think of it, that’s how I’d first met my husband. With all the government-mandated secrecy, it wasn’t like we could post help wanted ads.
“You got a name for this local hero?”
“And an address. Philpot isn’t far. I think somebody needs to go interview this guy and see if he’s proper Newbie material.”
“Right.” I looked over at where my son had fallen asleep and was being tucked into his little crib by one of the orc women. Checking out potential recruits was a delicate job, usually reserved for team leads. You’ve got to get a good feel for the individual before you start telling them too much, especially about the money, and you had to make sure they had the flexible mind necessary for this job. I sure as hell couldn’t send Dorcas. She’d pop off her fake leg to explain about what killing werewolves was like and scare him off. “I don’t know who I could send to talk to him just now…”
“Hell,” Dorcas said. “You should go yourself. It’s a nice drive. You’re obviously bored out of your mind. This paperwork can wait.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Well, I am. You’re looking like one of them caged lions. When I was little, the zoo had this lion, and in those days they didn’t know any better, so they put the creature in a cage barely bigger than she was. My mom and dad took us kids to see the lion, and she’d just pace around and look sad.”
“I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.”
“Because you didn’t let me finish. That lion was so bored she eventually died. You’ve had that same look in your eyes as that lion. And you’ve looked that way for months.”
“I’m not caged. I’m only—”
“Beating yourself up you couldn’t go and fight in the biggest mission ever, while everyone else you know has.”
“Someone was going to have to stay and run the day-to-day operations no matter what. The pregnant lady was kind of the obvious choice.”
“I’m too old and crippled and I’m pissed off I couldn’t go either. You’re doing what you’ve got to do. When you choose to become a mother, you’re putting yourself in a cage of sorts—leastways if you give a damn about your kids, because from the moment you have a kid, the kid comes first. You know what I say?”
I waited with bated breath for her to tell me what she said. Dorcas was a great source of off-color aphorisms, but it was hard to think of anything she’d ever said in particular on the subject of the costs of motherhood.
“I say that it’s time you get back to work.”
“I’m at work, Dorcas.” I gestured at my cluttered desk.
“I mean real work. This is the crap that happens after real work gets done. When’s the last time you practiced with a gun?”
I scowled. She had a fair point. In the field, I was usually the one on precision rifle. Honestly, I was really good. Or had been… It wasn’t like I could haul Ray out to the range with me. Babies don’t like to wear earplugs.
“Too long and you know it. Okay, I’ll admit I’m bored. I’m sleep-deprived to the point of brain damage, and I’m either on mommy duty for Ray or mommy duty for this company. I’d love to do anything different. But what am I supposed to do? Put Ray in the car seat and drag him around to interview a prospective recruit?”
“That would make us look like serious professionals.” Dorcas snorted. “All them mothers in other jobs, they go back to work when the baby’s done nursing, and stick ’em in day care, and go about like they don’t have a care in the world.”
“I’m not going to put Ray in day care.” For one, it wasn’t even a sane alternative. Given the things that tried to get at Hunters through their children—I’d had to fight off an incubus at my junior prom—the last thing I was going to do was drop him off somewhere I couldn’t keep an eye on him. Second, most kids in day care didn’t have a vampire grandmother with deranged ideas about reuniting her whole family as happy bloodsuckers. “And you know he wouldn’t be safe.”
“Look at him. He has the best day care in the world right here, with all the wards and protections of the compound. They’ll watch him while you go and talk to this prospect.”
“The orcs? Who’s going to watch them watch Ray?” Still, it was sorely tempting to get out. “I don’t know. What if we have a call for help? Or what if our people call?”
“I might be old, but I’m still competent enough to patch through a call from your husband if he happens to show up. So, you go talk to this prospect. You can be there and back by closing time. I’ll man the phones and the orcs would love to mind the baby.”
“But if I run late—”
“I’ll take Ray back to your house and meet you there. I’m a good babysitter”—she patted the Ruger Redhawk in her shoulder holster—“and a better bodyguard. Come on, kid. You need to get out. You look like crap.”
I tried to fight the temptation. The day had warmed up somewhat, and it was nice without being hot. Outside, the sun shone and the day was bright. And I was probably the worst mother in the world, because after months of being tethered to Ray night and day, I just wanted to go somewhere by myself and do my own thing. Even if it was just talking to some random stranger who’d shot up some swamp lurkers. But I had all those forms to file and I really shouldn’t leave my son alone. He was my primary responsibility.
An orc was singing a lullaby that sounded suspiciously like Black Sabbath, and Ray was passed out on his back, his cheeks rosy, and a little smile on his lips.
“You know if you don’t go now, the MCB will get to him first, and either intimidate the hell out of him, or outright send him to a mental hospital, pump him full of drugs, and convince him he dreamed the whole thing.”
“Well, that’s true,” I admitted.
“Of course it’s true or I wouldn’t have said it. Take Albert with you,” Dorcas suggested. “I don’t think he’s left the library in months. That boy’s been working himself to death researching everything the mission’s come across. He’s been drinking more caffeine than Melvin. I think he’s the only other person who got left behind who took it even harder than you. He needs some fresh air now and then before he turns into a mushroom.”
I didn’t demur that time. She had a point. “Okay. You win. I’ll go.”
Dorcas grinned. “Girl, I always win.”
“Get back to work before I fire you.”
I got on the phone and dialed the extension for the archive room in the basement, and when Albert Lee answered, I knew he too sounded exactly like that lion Dorcas had described. It wasn’t being physically confined, but stuck—either by motherhood or a physical disability—while all your friends were off doing something dangerous and important. It was the sort of thing that brought up the toddler complaint but it isn’t fair. Only we weren’t toddlers, so we just tried to do the best we could while dying a little inside. It had made me grumpy, but it had left Albert downright antisocial.
So I told Albert what we were doing. And since I was his boss, I didn’t really give him a choice. Like me, he was driven by a sense of duty, but even then, the best he could manage was “Gee, I don’t know” in the way of objecting.
“Come on, what are you doing that’s so important right now?”
“Cross-referencing the latest monster sightings on Severny Island with historical accounts of arcane energies cutting off radio communications, seeing if there’s any commonality.”
“Fascinating,” I lied. It sounded like he was stuck and bored until the teams checked in, so he was passing his time looking for haystack needles. “Would a few hours make that big a difference to your research? Come on. Road trip. And I’ll buy you lunch at Big Cove Barbecue!”
I could hear him waver. For a man of Asian extraction, Albert Lee has a wicked fixation on Southern barbecue.
“Oh, all right,” he said at last. “But I’m going to call Melvin and get everything on this survivor dude so we can read up on him on the trip.”
I had no argument with that. “That’s what I pay him for.”
“I don’t think he actually gets paid…”
“Whatever. Dress business casual.”
“I’ll even comb my hair.” Albert hung up.
While he was getting ready I wrote down a list of everything that needed to be done with Ray for Dorcas. I knew everyone knew this stuff by now, from where I kept his formula (in the drinks fridge in the office) and his clean bottles (on the top cabinet across from my desk) and the fixings for the cereal he liked (on the bottom cabinet) and that he was on no account to be given raw egg or honey because his immune system couldn’t handle that yet, even though I often suspected that the orcs were feeding him lizards or snails or whatever leaves looked appetizing. My theory was based on the smells I encountered while changing his diapers. Mind you, just like with Gretchen’s disgusting potions, they didn’t seem to do him any harm; on the contrary, he was a shockingly hardy baby.
So I knew my instructions would probably be ignored, but I had to leave the note to make myself feel like I wasn’t a horrible mother for skipping out on my infant.
* * *
I drove while Albert read the files Melvin kept emailing him. After a while I got tired of the silence and said, “It’s good to be out, isn’t it?”
“Sure.” Albert didn’t sound sure. He sounded like he wanted to be sullenly hiding in his library, trying to feel useful.
“Come on. It’s a nice day. Though…I do feel a little guilty.”
He looked up from his phone long enough to give me a sickly smile. “Because the women, children, old folks, and cripples who got left behind haven’t heard anything from our friends who are busy risking their lives?”
“Don’t remind me, but I was actually talking about Ray. This is the longest I’ve ditched him since he’s been born.”
“Oh.” Albert looked a little sheepish at that. He’d volunteered to go on the siege and was assigned to Cody’s big brain squad, but Earl had changed his mind and shot him down at the last minute. It had been gentle by Earl’s standards, with him saying that Albert and his skills would be more valuable here, while his messed-up leg would be a liability on Severny Island. So not particularly gentle, but this was Earl we were talking about. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Maybe it was just a Hunter thing. Even though there had originally been over a thousand men on that mission, each of us was big-headed enough to think that we alone could have made all the difference by being there. Albert Lee had to wear a brace and walk with a cane, and he’d still fought for a spot. To be fair, he probably would have been way more effective than a really pregnant sniper.
“It’s cool, Albert. I’m with you. You can vent.”
“Okay. This friggin’ sucks. I could’ve spent the last six months manning a gun turret on that boat or on one of the supply convoys just as well as anybody. But no, I’m sitting at a desk all day waiting for a call, just in case they need help figuring something out. How dorky is that?”
“Not dorky at all, considering how many times something you looked up saved someone’s ass in the field.”
“I’m going to remind you that you said that when it comes time for annual bonuses.”
“You do that.” But considering that I knew he’d moved back into the company barracks like a Newbie, just so he could be close to the archives 24/7 in case someone on Severny Island had a question, Albert was getting a good bonus this year. “In the meantime, I feel like a teenager sneaking out of school.”
He grinned at me. “I guess it does. I did need to get out of that basement. I’ve been down there so long that Melvin is starting to make sense.”
“That can’t be good for your mental health.”
“Probably not. And just so you know, I’m still looking into that other thing for you, but I’ve got nothing.”
I nodded. He meant the Guardian curse. What the marks meant, and what they’d eventually do to me were still a mystery. I’d put out feelers to all our scholarly types and asked Ben Rigby to have his people check with Oxford. Yet, even with centuries of collected monster hunting wisdom, it was like nobody knew a damned thing about the Guardians.
“It’s all good, Albert. I wasn’t getting my hopes up.”
It was a nice day for a drive. Philpot wasn’t quite as hidden in the middle of nowhere as Cazador was, but I remembered how to get there. They were Cazador’s Pee-Wee Football’s rivals. Both my brothers had played.
I changed the subject. “Anything of use on our potential recruit yet?” I asked. “Anything that I should know, at least?”
“Melvin’s last email was titled I bored and had this guy’s tax records attached. It’s like central casting called for a small-town white guy from Alabama.”
“Hey, you just described most of my relatives.”
“Except for the werewolf…” Albert muttered as he scrolled through. “High school quarterback, married his high school sweetheart who was a cheerleader. Worked as a mechanic. Took over his dad’s auto shop and been there ever since. Never been arrested, never even had a speeding ticket. The most interesting thing about him is that he shoots guns on a friend’s farm after work, and Melvin only knew about that because they posted pictures on Facebook.”
“He seems pretty normal.”
Albert looked up from his phone and scowled. “Julie, serious question: how many monster-encounter survivors have you interviewed would you describe as normal?”
“It’s about half and half. For every guy from a stereotypical overachieving Asian immigrant home whose uptight parents expected him to be an engineer, but who rebelled and joined the Marine Corps instead…”
“I like this guy. He sounds like a badass.”
“Let me finish. Who then got a job as a librarian, until he nuked the county library because of a giant spider infestation, and got interviewed by me right after the MCB was threatening him into silence with felony arson and bomb-making charges…for every one of those interesting types, I interview a Johnny Football Hero who took over his daddy’s auto body shop.”
“Brakes and mufflers mostly it looks like from their webpage,” Albert corrected me. “But fair enough. I don’t usually do interviews. I just figured most of us would be weirder.”
“Oh, they’re weird too. They just hide it better.”