Chapter Two
3 April 2018
Except it wasn’t as easy as just a debriefing. First, the gods that feed on paperwork must be placated, then debriefings and other fun things may occur. Once mandatory debrief fun time was over, Gunny mentioned that Director Goodhart wanted to see me.
“Look, Father Salazar, you’ve been pulling missions for the last six months straight,” Goodhart said as I sat down across the paper-filled expanse that was his desk.
Things were never good when the boss mentioned my vocation. Usually it was just ‘Salazar.’ Occasionally, if I’d done something exceptional, it’d be ‘Jesse.’ But ‘Father Salazar?’ That was Director Goodhart’s version of your mother calling you by first, middle, and last name.
“If you’d get another priest down here—” I started.
“Polk is doing her share,” he interrupted, slapping the top of his desk. “I know by QMG operating procedure there is supposed to be a minimum of one religious type for every team, plus backups. Since Austin has six teams, we’re supposed to have twelve of you religious types. Instead, we’ve got exactly six, and you know why.”
“Door kickers are easy, there’s usually a few of them from either law enforcement or the military running around. And I know we’ll hire cat ladies who manage to kill a daemon with the lid off a can of cat food,” I replied, my face taking on a pious mien. “But someone with true faith who can work killing evil twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five? Rare as hen’s teeth.”
“The injuries don’t help, either,” Goodhart said with a sigh.
“Four out with injuries,” I said. “Two of which were self-inflicted.”
Never eat gas station sushi, especially when you’re 205 miles from the nearest salt water.
“That doesn’t change the fact that Polk and Obediah are doing their share,” he snarled back. “So were you before last night.”
“Polk’s doing more than her share, actually, given her physical condition. And Obediah is busting his ass. But we need another six religious figures, minimum. At this point, I’d shake hands with a Priest of Eris if it meant we got more help down here. This town is going absolutely nuts. NVTS nuts!” I replied.
“History of the World Part I, again?” he asked, staring at me for a minute like I’d grown a third eye.
What can I say? I like Mel Brooks’ films.
“Be that as it may, you assaulted a coworker on the scene last night,” Goodhart said.
“He was an asshole! Playing DJ while two vampires beat the crap out of each other? Seriously? He’s lucky I didn’t shoot him,” I said.
“That’s why you’re on vacation as of now. I don’t care what you do, but you’re not doing it here. Just get the hell out of Austin, because the tracking chip will show us if you’re still around,” he said, quietly.
Tracking/monitoring chips had become a mandatory thing a few years’ back when most of a team of hunters had ‘gone over’—been drained—by some determined vampires to be used as guards. It took six months of long days, coupled with a whole lot of help, to clear that issue up, so the powers that be had decided they needed to be sure where we were at all times. Their solution was a chip that could be pinged through any cell phone network. On top of that, the chips monitored vital signs—if those went to zero, but the person was still moving around, it was a pretty good bet they’d been subsumed.
“Before you ask, it wasn’t my decision.” Goodhart slid a form across the desk. “The head-shrinkers ordered it, in light of the report from last night.”
That put it in a different light. The shrinks had the last word. If they said I was over-worked and under-rested, it was time to take a vacation—or I’d be spending time wearing pajamas and talking about how hunting monsters made me feel, with special interest in how that defined my relationship with my mother.
Not really how I wanted to spend the next couple of months, if you got right down to it.
“Right. Do I need to file an itinerary?” I asked.
“No, just check in daily, huh? Take your kit. It might come in handy if I have to call you in, unexpectedly, ok?”
“Right.” There was hope, after all.
I filed a partial itinerary, anyway—Austin to San Antonio, San Antonio to Marfa, Marfa to Austin. I’d swing through Piccadilly on the way home so I could harass the poor bastard who’d been ensorcelled into being Defender there back in the 1920’s, just because I could. I took my kit—including backup firearms and my Get Out of Jail Free card, because you never knew when some official in Podunk was going to assert authority over someone travelling with enough assorted implements of destruction to arm a rather large guerrilla band, even if they did have a US Marshal’s badge.
I checked out a vehicle from the motor pool. The one area where we were over-equipped was vehicles, so I got one of the team Tahoes, in the ever popular matte black with Nightshade-tinted windows—the only windows tinted dark enough that we could move vampires during the day without worrying whether we were going to have to clean gooey ash from the upholstery. Younger vampires are like hot dogs—they plump when you expose them to UV light. Fuel economy was going to be horrible, but I could afford it—I really hadn’t had anything to spend money on since Mel died right before I went to work for QMG.
Most folks, they get the job after they see something weird. Unlike Jed, I’d turned down the first approach. But when Melissa had been killed in an ‘auto accident,’ I’d jumped at the chance to go to work for QMG, as penance for not taking the job the first time it was offered. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that if I’d been working for QMG, Mel would still be alive.
I tossed my cases into the back of the Tahoe and strapped them into place, then I drove by the safe house, grabbed my AWOL bag, and finally headed south on I-35.
There’s never really a good time to travel south on I-35 in Austin. If I’d been on the clock, I’d have jumped over onto the toll road just for the sheer hell of it, running as fast as the Tahoe would hold the highway. But I didn’t. Dealing with the paperwork to reimburse the company for the toll charges wasn’t high on my list of things to do, plus, officially, I was off the clock. So, I-35 it was. Between the constant construction, the lack of a ring road, and Austin’s very own ‘special’ drivers, I’m convinced that stretch of I-35 is a very special kind of hell. I’m sure Dante would have included it in his book, if he’d known about it. I swear, the City Fathers in Austin had been recruiting the worst drivers they could find for years. It took me about two hours to get out of Austin, but because traffic was moving so slowly, I’d had time to book a room in San Marcos at a B&B off Hopkins. Thank the deity for slow week days.
I finally checked in around eight that evening, carried everything to my room—quaint two-story buildings built in the 1880’s tend to lack elevators, so it was a couple of trips—and wandered down to the square to grab a bite to eat after changing into ‘something more comfortable’ as the old line goes—jeans and a t-shirt topped with a light jacket to hide the 1911 in the waist holster at the base of my spine. The jacket had a few goodies in it as well, but was stiff enough to keep the pistol from printing though.
The first face I recognized when my eyes adjusted to the lighting in the College Café was that of my classmate, Robert Miller, now Father Miller, Society of Jesus.
“Jesse! Good to see you,” he shouted over the rumble of students who were scream socializing over bad music.
“Robert? When did you join the Catholic Ecumenical Shock Troopers of Jesus?” I replied, grinning.
“Twelve years or so ago,” he said with a seated bow. “Probably just before you became a heretical priest, actually.”
We had taken a bunch of anthropology classes together and drunk a lot of not-quite-legal beer in late night BS sessions before I’d decided college wasn’t for me and dropped out.
“Ten years ago, I was still working for a living in the Corps,” I said, shaking his hand.
He looked good for someone in the Holy See’s version of mufti; he was still dressed all in black, with the obligatory white tab collar. He had on a vest and, crossing his waist, a slender chain that looked like a watch fob, holding the crossed sword, key, and Petrine Cross emblem of the Knights of Saint Quintus.
“Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable,” he said, reaching over to the chair next to him and moving a brief case to the floor.
I pulled out the chair.
“Not taking off your jacket?” Miller asked with a grin. I was pretty sure he knew who I worked for, based on who he was working for. It’s a very small world, after all.
“Not unless you want to explain to the local cops why I’m carrying concealed,” I replied. “Being as we’re both in the same line of work, after all.”
“How’s taking orders in a lesser church and going to work for The Man going for you?” he asked with a grin.
“Go ahead get it out of your system,” I replied, smirking back. “At least I can get married.”
“Speaking of which, where’s Mel?” he asked.
Back when we’d been going to school in San Marcos, Mel had been a permanent fixture. She’d even waited until I finished basic to pressure me into marrying her. Not that much pressure had been required.
I looked at him. “You want the official story? Or…?”
“Official story first,” he said, patting his lips dry. “If you’re up to it, we can talk about what happened, unofficially.”
“Car accident.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “That’s the official story. It’s part of the unofficial one also.”
“I see,” he said.
“Do you? Because unless we put this under the seal of confession, I can’t tell you what happened,” I said.
“Really?” Miller seemed taken back for a moment.
“Really,” I said pointing to the Knights of Saint Quintus fob he was wearing.
“That puts a different light on things, doesn’t it? Are you sure you want to discuss it here?” he asked, gesturing to the room around us.
“The noise should cover us. Besides,” I said as I reached up and tapped the cross and medals under my T-shirt, “I’d know if they were listening magically.”
We waited while the server, a kid ten years too young for the Ramones t-shirt he was wearing, came over and took our orders and dropped off a bowl of chips and salsa. Once he was gone, Robert pulled a pocket book of prayer out.
“Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It’s been…it’s been a really long time since my last confession,” I said with a wry smile.
“Go on,” he replied.
“It really was a car wreck,” I said. “Unfortunately for her, she ran into a trailer that was hauling a lich and his minions.”
“Oh God…that’s horrible,” he said, crossing himself.
“That’s not really the worst part, depending on how you look at it,” I said. “I was six months out of training with QMG when we tracked her down. Because we’d been married, I was the one who had to drive the stake through her heart.”
The waiter dropped off our burgers. I picked mine up and began eating. Miller was staring at me like I’d grown a third arm.
“What’s the matter, Father?” I asked.
“You’re so, just so…I don’t know…blasé about it,” he replied.
“I’ve had a couple-few years to get used to it,” I said. “Besides, she’s free now.”
“Is that how you got into this line of work?” he asked after crossing himself.
“More or less. They’d approached me after I came back from Iraq the first time in ‘05. My company had gotten tasked with covering a QMG insertion team that was looking for a ghoul farm Saddam was running over there. I’ll just say things did not go as planned, so we had to pull the survivors out of the hole in the ground before Marine Aviation bombed the ghouls into a fine paste. I turned QMG down when they offered to buy out my contract with Uncle Sugar, sticking it out in the Corps until my hitch was up in ’08, then went back to school. Oddly enough, my Gunny took them up on the offer at the time. He runs a team out of Austin these days.”
“I’m still confused,” Miller said. “When did you have time to take Orders?”
“I did that after I got back. Used the GI Bill to go to seminary. Mel was making good money as a pharmaceutical rep until she, well, you know,” I said between bites.
“Yes,” he replied picking up his burger. “So after the wreck?”
“QMG sent Gunny Thomas around to talk to me. He’d gotten the call when they found the car, stinking of lich. This time I took them up on the offer, so I was filling in for his team priest when they found Mel. I got to do the honors,” I said. “Fries aren’t up to what they were when we were going to school here, are they?”
“No,” he replied. “Probably using just vegetable oil to fry them, rather than the same oil they fried everything else in. Missing the flavor from the chicken fried steak, I think.”
I looked him in the eye. “Robert, look, I’m sorry. The company shrink says I tend to one of two reactions when talking about Mel—either I get angry, or I blow it off. Neither one of them, according to him is, quote, healthy, end quote. But he’s happy to work with me on it so I don’t suck start a shotgun or something.”
“You’re not drinking as a coping mechanism?” he asked.
“No. I have the best coping mechanism in the world. I get to kill the things that took her or their, what’s the phrase? Close cognates,” I said, finishing off my burger. “When did you go to work for the Knights?”
“They recruited me out of the seminary,” he said. “I do research for them, mainly. I’m here to see about a relic, actually.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, chasing ketchup across my plate with a fry.
“It’s a bird bath that’s associated with visions of Saint Mark the Evangelist,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.
I chuckled. “Could be worse. Could have been a toilet seat.”
Miller spewed tea across the table.
I buffed my fingernails on my jacket. “Timing is everything.”
“You staying in town?” he asked once he could breathe again.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yup,” he said, sliding me his card across the table.
I slid him mine.
“Call you in the morning?”
“Make it afternoon,” he said. “I’ve got to see the little old lady who owns the font in the morning.”
“Font? I thought it was a bird bath?”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” he replied.
“I’ll call you in the afternoon,” I said. “I’m burning vacation at this point.”
“Hey, on second thought, why don’t we just meet at the Pearl over there at two or so,” he said, rising to put on his jacket. “If we’re lucky, they’re still using the same filters they were when we were in school.”
“Works for me,” I replied, taking his check while he had both arms in his sleeves.
I waved a hand to forestall his complaints.
“My employer pays better,” I said.
“True,” he replied before going out the door.
I only had one beer and nursed it, listening to the chatter around me. Nothing important, just the usual struggles of college at Texas State. The kind of thing we were trying to protect.
* * * * *