“Not her. Lacoco. He started the fight. Not Green.”
“He’s at the hospital.” Earl looked at me funny. “Needed stitches from opening a window with his face. How’d Jason start it?”
“I didn’t know who he was, never knew his name, but…” I pointed at one of my eyes. “The glass one?” Then I jerked a thumb at my chest. “Yeah, that was from me, illegal fight that ended badly. Turns out he’s still holding a grudge.”
“What? Why the hell—”
“I didn’t know. It was a long time ago. When Lacoco saw me he lost it and tried to hit me. Green thought he was with the other guys, PT jumped in, and it just all went to hell from there.”
“Damn it.” Earl rubbed his face in his hands. “That would’ve been mighty nice to know beforehand. I probably would’ve arranged an introduction that didn’t involve quite this much destruction. Well, now we’ve got one more example of why we really need to hire an HR person.”
“That would be an interesting questionnaire. Check this box if there are any members of MHI in need of your vengeance.”
“Jason’s a good man, Z. Solid.”
“He’s a killer.”
“And you ain’t?”
Earl had me there. I hadn’t just killed monsters since I’d taken this job, though I hadn’t lost much sleep over the members of the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition that had wound up on the wrong end of Abomination. “Lacoco’s served time.”
“I’m aware. He also risked his life to save a town from an army of undead werewolves and had the balls to hit me with a fire ax. You’ll pay him the same amount of respect you would any other Hunter, and I’ll tell him to do the same to you. I won’t tolerate any unnecessary bullshit. Understood?”
“No. I don’t,” I answered. Earl glared at me. He was the boss, and though I’d earned my place in our organization, it would be stupid to argue with him. “Okay fine, understood. Maybe if you’d said more I wouldn’t have got caught by surprise. When are you going to tell us the rest of the story about what happened in Michigan?”
A dark look crossed his face. “Never.” He turned and walked away. “Let’s go.”
Despite the fact that we’d wrecked a chunk of the place only a few hours before, the Last Dragon staff welcomed us back with nervous smiles. Apparently their management had been satisfied enough by Julie’s contract to forget the whole thing ever happened. It’s amazing how fast things are forgiven when absurd sums of money and favors are exchanged. This must be what it is like to be one of those rock stars that destroys hotel rooms and drives cars into pools. Normally I could ask Mosh about that sort of lifestyle, but considering my brother’s current circumstances it would probably only make him angrier.
I really should go see my brother while I’m in town…
Before dropping us off, Earl had told me that he would speak to Lacoco once he got back from the hospital. Barely knowing the man, I didn’t know how that was going to go over. It wasn’t like I had any personal beef with Lacoco. What had happened before was stupid, and it was my fault, but it had been years ago. I’d only known the other fighter by reputation, and it was a bad enough rep that though I had felt awful for nearly killing the man, at least I had known that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. But Lacoco still held a grudge. He was lethal and mad at me, which was a terrible combo. Even if he promised Earl that he would play nice, we were in the kind of business where training accidents happened. Lacoco had already gone to prison once, and whomever he’d killed the first time around hadn’t even smashed one of his eyeballs into jelly and cracked his skull open. I would do my best to avoid him, but I would have to watch my back as long as he was around.
We were a motley bunch, ripped clothing, some black eyes, busted noses, split lips, and sour dispositions, and we were the ones that hadn’t needed medical attention. In the lobby, a few men in black suits watched us with thinly veiled hostility. The suits were too expensive for them to be MCB here for the conference, so that meant that the high-end hotel security had gotten the memo and were keeping a special eye on us. Dinner had been six hours ago, so we were all too exhausted to even make eye contact with well-dressed guards as we piled into the elevator to go back to our rooms. Security had to be hating life, especially since Cooper and Lee were still grumbling loudly about how the police had confiscated some of their explosives.
The view out the crowded glass elevator was very nice, since the interior of the hotel was one gigantic open space for most of the interior. They were still painting and decorating the top floors. Despite being huge, the hotel itself was like a ghost town. The ICMHP attendees were the only people staying here. There were a few hundred guests, but that wasn’t much considering just how vast this place was. The new hotel’s staff was still learning on us. You might as well work out the bugs on people that were here for something top secret, who wouldn’t be allowed to give bad reviews afterward. We liked to think of ourselves as celebrity guests, but realistically we were probably more like test subjects.
They had stuck most of MHI on the sixteenth floor. I was the last one off the elevator. The room I was sharing with Julie wasn’t too far down the hall. I said good night to the others and ran my key card through the machine. I was surprised that despite the very late hour, my room was packed with Hunters, most of whom laughed at me when I entered. A few of them took up a chant. “Rocky! Rocky!”
Julie was there with the others. Julie was dressed for business, not the armored, hair tucked under a helmet so it wouldn’t blow in front of her scope, prescription goggles, sniper-rifle-wielding outfit; but the other, conservative, yet attractive business look, hair down, normal glasses, hot-librarian look that she used for schmoozing with officials and bureaucrats. Both of her modes made MHI lots of money, but tonight only one of them had helped get me out of jail. My lovely wife folded her arms and clucked disapprovingly. “See? You always overdo it at the buffet and then regret it later.”
“Why’s everyone having a party in our room?”
She came over to inspect my face. “Not too bad. By your regular standards, you got off easy. I can barely tell you were in a fight at all. Usually you look like hamburger,” Julie said with a smirk, then gave me a kiss. “Earl rip you a new one yet?”
“Started to, but this one wasn’t my fault. Long story.” I raised my voice. “Aw, come on, guys. It isn’t funny.” My fellow combatants heard the commotion and followed me in from the hall. Now the suite was really packed. “Seriously, I’ve had a crappy night. Everybody beat it.”
“And miss the fight?” Julie took me by the hand and led me over to the TV. Someone’s laptop had been hooked to it. It was showing what was obviously a security-camera video from dinner. The video was right at the point where Lacoco and I hit the window; it shattered dramatically around us, and we plunged out of sight. The assembled Hunters had a great chuckle at my expense.
Holly was sitting on the couch and running the computer. “Hey, Z.”
“How’d you get out?”
“Escaped through the kitchen…Here, watch. We’ve seen this five times now. It never gets old.” She backed it up and started over. The file began at the point where Lacoco and I bumped into each other at the crab legs. “The look on your face when the big PT guy hits you with a tray is priceless.”
“What? He’s not—shit. How did you get—”
“Melvin,” Holly explained. “Somebody told the troll back at base, so he showed some initiative, broke into the casino’s systems, and lifted the video. Piece of cake for him. We’ve got the buffet from three angles. Don’t worry. I told Melvin that if he stuck this on YouTube I’d kill him. He’s still scared of me.” She saw the very embarrassed Trip standing behind me. “Hey there, Slugger. At one minute and ten seconds in, you totally wreck some dude. Epic face-plant. I didn’t know you had it in you. On the other hand, we’ve got Cooper there getting his ass handed to him by that square-jawed good-looking one…”
Cooper was trying to get to an angle where he could see the TV in the crowded room. “Hey, he was really strong, okay? I thought I did pretty good.”
“Video don’t lie, Coop. I was waiting for him to start hitting you with your own arm and repeating why do you keep hitting yourself?” Holly looked up. “Oh, hey, Albert! You guys need to see this. On camera two you can totally see Lee trying to drown some poor bastard in chocolate. The chocolate smackdown is amazing. We should totally sell this online.”
“Having an IT troll is great,” Lee said. “I’d buy a copy. This is better than pay-per-view.”
“Sell enough, we might recoup the ridiculous cost of that ice swan,” Julie suggested.
“Speaking of ice, I could use some for my back…So really, everybody get out.”
The audience booed. “Come on, Z. Can we watch it one more time?” Holly begged.
“Fine.”
There was a chorus of yay from the Hunters. I sighed. My people were completely incorrigible.