“Maybe I should, lousy stitching like that. You’ve ruined my chances of becoming a swimsuit model.”
“You can still live your dream. That’s what Photoshop is for.”
“Are you two done screwing around?” Earl asked. Trip gave him a thumbs-up as I rolled my ripped pant leg back down, pulled the armor guard back into place, and cinched it up tight. That stung. Everybody else had been dismissed. “Cody and the smart kids are inspecting the attack scenes, looking for clues about how to beat this damned thing. Get over to the nightclub and brief him on everything you saw. Take the elf with you, see if she can’t…wizard something up. Hell if I know, whatever it is elves do.”
I hadn’t seen my wife in the meeting. “Is Julie with them?”
“I gave her a few more men and sent her back up to the roof,” Earl answered.
“Why?”
“To keep an eye out…” Earl said, strangely defensive. “My call. Got a problem with that?”
Normally I wouldn’t argue with Earl, but this was my wife we were talking about. “Yeah, I do. What’s the deal, Earl? You’ve been weird about her since this started.”
Earl frowned at me and moved his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other, thinking. I wasn’t about to back down, and he knew me well enough to know it. “Trip, give us a minute alone.”
Trip, looking concerned that I’d just crossed some line with our scary werewolf boss, complied. “I’ll be right out here when you need me.”
Earl glanced around to confirm that nobody was close enough to listen. “I put Julie on the roof because the roof is safer. She’s with solid Hunters in a wide-open space. No civilians with nightmares to raid. And if anything happens she can keep an eye on things for us.”
“As much as I appreciate the sentiment of keeping her out of harm’s way, she’s got to have hated that order.”
“She did. She called me a few choice names and raised holy hell, but as much of a pain in my ass as that stubborn girl has been over the years, she trusts me enough to do what I ask.”
Now I was just confused. Earl had never been overprotective of Julie before. She had started participating in MHI missions when she was still a teenager. Julie had actually cut her prom date short in order to tag along with Earl to take out an ogre. “She’s one of the most talented Hunters we’ve got. Why waste her up there?”
Earl’s manner made it obvious that he didn’t want to be having this conversation. “Because if everything goes to complete shit, or that bastard Stricken makes his move early, she can make a break for it in the chopper with Skippy. No matter what, she needs to survive.”
“Yeah, no kidding. We don’t do this kind of thing and try not to survive. You yelled at her for going into 1613 too. I’m not leaving until I have an answer. What’s the deal?”
“Listen to me, Owen…” Earl tossed the butt of his cigarette into a potted plant. “Here’s the deal. I don’t want her in harm’s way because Julie’s pregnant.”
“Wait…” My stomach lurched. “What? How?”
Earl folded his arms and smirked at me. “How? Really, kid?”
“No, I mean…” My brain was having a really difficult time sending messages to my mouth. Suddenly flushed and dizzy, I was really glad I was already sitting down. “Pregnant? How do you know?”
“You forget how sensitive my nose is. Humans are walking hormonal cocktails. Werewolves can spot a pregnant woman a mile away, you know, pick the slow ones out of the herd. Don’t you dare tell her I said that. I could tell as soon as y’all flew in. So yeah, that’s my first great-great-grandkid in there. You’re gonna be a father. Congratulations. Now, no matter what, we make sure Julie lives through this. Not counting the Boss back in Alabama, who ain’t no spring chicken, the last of the Shacklefords are all here, and I will not tolerate my family dying out. Period.”
I wasn’t mentally ready for this. We’d talked about it, but because of the Guardian’s curse we’d been too scared of the repercussions to risk it. What if the baby inherited the marks? We’d taken precautions. Julie was on the pill. Ninety-nine percent effective, my ass. Thoughts and emotions were colliding in my head. I was too confused to know how I felt. “I…Wow…Oh, man. Does she know? Did you tell her?”
“Thought about it. I couldn’t decide if that would make the situation better or worse. Quarantined with a nightmare creature? I figured she had enough to worry about without complicating matters. What was I supposed to do? Maybe I haven’t been thinking too clearly myself.”
“I’m sorry about Heather.”
Earl shook his head. “I’ve not given up on her yet. Heather’s a survivor. You’d like her. And now that I know more about what’s going on, when I get out of here I will find her…So yeah, that’s about it, Z. I’ve been protective because your wife is gonna have a baby. Regular cause for rejoicing. Normally I’d say ‘let’s celebrate,’ and you could fetch me a beer and a cigar, but right now I’ll settle for ‘let’s not all die.’ So now that I’ve ruined your calm…” He reached out and patted me on the shoulder. The gesture was about the most tender familial thing I’d ever seen from Earl Harbinger. “Get back to work.”
Chapter 16
“Hey, Z. Are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah, fine.” Truthfully I was in a daze. I wanted to be talking to my wife, not wandering through this ridiculous flashy casino, looking for a nightmare monster. “Sorry, just tired is all.”
Trip just shook his head and continued between the slot machines. He knew me better than almost anyone, so didn’t bother bugging me further. Cutting through this gambling area was the quickest way to get back to the nightclub. Tanya and Edward were right behind us, Edward happily pointing and grumbling at the pretty lights and video poker. Finally Tanya said, “Jeez, chill, Ed. Don’t get all tourist and make us look like hicks.” I’d seen the trailer she’d grown up in. The girl wasn’t fooling anybody.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Julie and I were going to have a kid. You wouldn’t think that would be so mind-blowing—I’d fought alien gods, after all—but it really was. We had a lot to talk about, a lot to plan, a lot to get ready for. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time, but right then, mostly terrifying. Sort of like my job in that respect. Not that I wasn’t motivated to survive before, but now I really had a reason to beat this thing.
A phone began to ring.
“Oh, heck…” Trip muttered. Tanya’s pointy ears weren’t just for show, and she picked out the source first. The sound was coming from the entrance to a nearby sports bar. I found the phone under the hostess podium.
“This is Pitt.”
“This is Mitch. Are you guys okay?”
I glanced around. Everything was as normal as a deserted, haunted casino could be. “We’re fine.”
“Good. We were watching you, but then you weren’t on camera anymore. Where are you?”
I read the sign over my head. “Johnny Football Hero’s Sports Bar and Grill.”
“I’m looking right at it. That can’t be right…” Mitch’s voice faded as he gave instructions to one of his employees. “Where? Jump up and down or something.”
I sighed. “Everybody smile for the cameras. Move around so they can see us.” The rest of my team did so, everyone picking out one of the silver balls in the ceiling and waving at it. Edward waved at a slot machine that had a clown on it.
“We can’t see you. There’s nobody on camera. You guys aren’t there.”
Oh, that can’t be good.
“What’s going on?” Trip asked.
“Technical glitch with the cameras?” I asked hopefully.
“Impossible,” Mitch said. “I’m going to call your boss and warn him something’s up.”
“Do that—” The air temperature was dropping rapidly. My breath came out as steam. “Mitch, we’ve got company. I’ll have to call you back.”
“There’s something wrong…” Trip said as he lifted the KRISS to his shoulder. “Feel that?” Edward drew his short swords. Tanya pulled an arrow from the protective foam quiver and tried to nock it with suddenly cold fingers. Every shadow in the dimly lit gambling area was suddenly threatening. “Where’s the fastest way out?”
“Back the way we came.” I flicked Abomination’s safety off with my trigger finger. “Walk fast.” There was an awful moan. It was impossible to tell where it came from. “Real fast.”
“You smell that?” Tanya asked nervously.
“Dead things,” Ed answered.
“Movement on the left,” Trip said. I turned, ready to shoot. “It’s gone now.”
“Aw, hell.” I caught something in the corner of my vision and turned. Something had moved between two slot machines. “Contact right.” Shadows were dancing along the wall, but there were so many different oddly placed light sources that I couldn’t tell where they originated from.
“They’re behind us too!” Tanya exclaimed. She was gesturing wildly at the sports bar we had just left. I turned just as several dark shapes were shuffling out the front door of the restaurant. Covering them with Abomination, I lit them up with the mounted flashlight. The shapes were illuminated in a brilliant white beam. At first I thought they were people, a crowd of at least eight, but then I noticed the blood and the torn clothing, then the exposed bones and missing chunks of flesh, and then their dead, blank eyes turned toward the light and they stumbled forward.
“Zombies!” Trip and I shouted at the same time, but no one could hear us because we started shooting at almost the exact same moment. Heads ruptured as I worked Abomination across their line, one, two, three, four, five, dispatched in just over a second. Trip had started with the other side, and the zombie in the middle got a neat .45-caliber hole in the forehead a fraction of a second before a 12-gauge slug removed three quarters of its skull.
I stared at the pile of corpses. There was no hesitation when it came to zombies. In any other situation our training would’ve demanded that we wait long enough to be a hundred percent sure that they were actual undead monstrosities and not people dressed up in costume, but here in Hotel Hell, I was ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Anybody we know?” I asked, but they didn’t look like they’d been animated from any of the people I’d seen trapped here so far. That meant…I glanced at the others. Tanya was quaking, face pale, limbs quivering. Trip, having come to the same realization, was staring back at me. “These from my past or yours?”
“Either way it’s bad.” A chorus of undead moans filled the entire casino, dozens, maybe hundreds of them. “Keep going!”
The purple carpet near my feet ripped open and a rotting hand poked through, grasping wildly. Beneath the carpet was soft, crumbling black dirt. I flinched and jumped back. “Impossible,” I muttered as I smashed the hand beneath my size-fifteen boot and took off after my friends.
Tanya screamed as a hand broke through a nearby wall and reached for her. She backed into a slot machine, and another hand shattered the glass and grabbed a tangle of her hair. Suddenly, Edward was by her side, his sword humming through the air, and the hand went flying. It landed on a nearby blackjack table, still twitching as spasmodically as the maggots poking out of it.
“How the hell does that work?” I took a step around the broken slot machine. There wasn’t even room for a zombie to fit inside, but laws of physics be damned, there was still a zombie crawling out of it. The broken glass cut through its rubbery, bloodless skin. “I hate monsters that cheat.” I blew its head off.