I was sitting on a wooden bench. The delicious smell of sizzling beef drifted from the nearby barbeque. It was nearing sundown, and the heat had broken under the soft Alabama breeze. Fireflies danced in the nearby forest.
"Dwayne, how do you want your burger?"
"Medium," I answered without hesitation.
"Gotcha . . ." Big Ray Shackleford answered as he squished the patties with a spatula. "Honey?" The flames hissed as the grease dripped through the grill.
"Rare. No, super rare." Susan Shackleford was sitting on a lawn chair to my right. She sighed as she tried to get comfortable. She was eight months' pregnant and having a hard time. I tried not to stare at Susan. Even heavy with child, she was still the best-looking woman I had ever known, but she was also my best friend's wife. "On second thought . . . How about you just kind of warm up the outside?"
"Can do." Ray took a second to wipe his meaty hands on his apron and then took a long pull from his beer. He set it down with a satisfied grunt. Ray cut an imposing figure, big, muscular, confident, pretty much everything that I wasn't. "Earl? Dorcas?"
"Rare." Harbinger was sitting at the picnic table. I was still intimidated by my boss, but now that he had picked me to be on his team and had let me in on the family secret, I felt much more comfortable in his presence.
"Medium, Ray. And I mean medium. Not all black and crispy. Don't screw it up again. Damn boy, but I ain't never known nobody to burn up a good piece of meat like you."
Dorcas was also at the picnic table, busy cleaning her .45 Long Colt on top of a piece of newspaper. She was kind of like our mother figure. A bitter crone of a mother figure for sure, but I knew that she loved us in her own demented redneck way. "Damn, idiot. Should have let me cook."
"Yes, ma'am," Ray responded automatically. I don't think that I will ever get used to these Southerners and their incessant politeness to their elders. "Hood?"
"Well done, please." The voice came from behind me. Hood was the youngest member of the team, and supposedly I was his trainer. In actuality he was so on the ball that sometimes it was like he was teaching me. I had even overheard Harbinger talking about how he had never met somebody with a better gift for Monster Hunting. Not bad for a fat kid from Birmingham.
"Since you're the Newbie, you're lucky if you get grill scrapings." Ray laughed hard and drained the rest of his beer. "Julie! Get daddy another beer!"
"Okay!" the little girl shouted. She leapt gracefully off the nearby tire swing and ran for the house, her ponytail whipping behind her. She was only eight, but already I could tell that she was going to be the spitting image of her mom and sharp as her dad. That one was going to be a heartbreaker. She disappeared into the massive old plantation house with a slam of the screen door.
I glanced around at the other Monster Hunters. Grandpa Shackleford was engaged in an animated conversation with some other Hunters about how Ronald Reagan was the most pro-Monster Hunting president we'd had since Eisenhower. He kept swinging his hook for emphasis. That red-headed teenager that Earl had saved in Idaho recently, Milo, was doodling on some scrap of paper, probably about some other weird invention that he had come up with. A few others were drifting up, summoned by the smell of the barbeque, and Ray began to shout questions at each of them. The MHI staff were in a good mood, and rightly so. The case that we had just cracked had been a tough one, and we were feeling invincible.
"Yo, Myers," Ray said.
"Yeah, buddy?"
"We kicked some ass today, didn't we?"
I leaned back on the bench and stretched my bad arm. A vampire had wrecked my rotator cuff and ruined my shot at ever pitching in the majors, but if I hadn't had that encounter all those years ago, then I would never have gotten to become a part of this. I looked at the patch sewn on my sleeve as I turned my arm, just a little green happy face with horns. It wasn't much, but it meant a lot to me.
"We sure did, Ray. We sure did."
These people were my family.
"What are you staring at?" Myers asked me belligerently.
Reality came crashing back. Glancing around, runway, big airplane, my friends, and a bunch of scowling Feds, I was at the compound, out on the tarmac, but I had just been at a barbeque . . . at Julie's house, only it had been a long time ago . . . and I had been . . . Agent Myers? What the hell? "Nothing. . . ."
Myers shook his head and released the folder, probably thinking that I was a complete moron. I must have been out of it for just a few seconds. "Like I was saying, you need to know what you're up against. Do you have someplace where we could talk in private?"
Harbinger nodded. "Let's go." He motioned to the main building. All of the Feds began to follow and he raised his hand. "No, just the protective detail. The rest of you assholes can stay on the plane." My boss didn't wait for any sort of disagreement, he just spun on his heel and led the way. I did note, however, that he was grinding his teeth together rather violently.
Still reeling from what had just happened, I reached out and grabbed Julie's hand. Nothing happened. No flash of black lightning, no visions. She looked at me strangely.
"Z, are you okay?" Holly asked me. "You look kind of flushed."
I shook my head. I couldn't say anything in front of the Feds, but the last time I had lived someone else's memories, Lord Machado's to be precise, it had been powered by the same artifact that Susan had just exposed me to again. "No, I'm fine. Must have been the flight. . . . Let's get this over with."
Franks regarded me suspiciously as I walked after Harbinger and Myers. Finally, he nodded at three other agents. They picked up their gear and followed.
The group entered the main building, passing quickly through the entryway, as Earl was walking at a pace that indicated he wanted to get this done with. Agent Franks made note of the portcullis chained above us, almost approvingly.
"Welcome home, Z. Milo told me you'd killed yourself a mess of zombies," Dorcas, our secretary, receptionist, and semi-retired Hunter, said from behind her massive desk. She looked like a typical matronly Southern grandma, except for the Ruger Redhawk bulging from the shoulder holster underneath her knit sweater. "I can always count on you for a good killin' story or two, about the only entertainment I get around here nowadays."
"Yes, ma'am, I'll tell you all about it after this meeting."
When she spied the Feds coming up behind me, her smile vanished, and her eyes narrowed so dangerously that they turned into little slits. For a second it looked like she thought about going for that magnum. "Myers . . ." she spat.
"Dorcas," the senior Fed responded slowly.
"How's the traitor business treating you?"
Myers was unperturbed. "Good, good . . . How's your leg?"
"It's made of plastic. How'd you think it's doing?"
"Yes, of course . . . Forgot. See you around." Myers nodded smugly and followed Earl down the hallway. The hate-filled look that Dorcas cast after us almost peeled the paint off the walls. I paused for a moment. Our receptionist was usually cranky—hell, she was prepared to commit murder if any of the other employees messed with her lunch in the cafeteria fridge—but I had never seen her like that before.
I waited until the Feds were out of earshot. "What's that about?"
She sneered. "Old times . . . me and Judas there have a score to settle."
"What'd he do?"
"He saved my life . . ." Dorcas shook her head and went back to answering the phones. "Now get. I've got work to do."
I caught up with the others as they were entering the smaller conference room we had set aside on the first floor. It was going to be a tight fit, but apparently Harbinger didn't want to give the Feds access to the nicer room on the second floor. Myers had stopped Earl in the hallway right in front of the wall of silver memorial plaques and was speaking. "Just you, Shackleford, and Pitt. I have some very sensitive information, and it's on a need-to-know basis. My men will stay out here."
"Negative." My boss gestured at Trip and Holly. "They're on my personal team. Anything you can say to me, you can say to them."
"Your team?" Myers grew furious. His face turned red and he raised his voice. "The great Earl Harbinger? Not keeping secrets from his team? That's new." It was a surprising change in demeanor. The small man went to the memorial wall and started scanning back through the names, obviously looking for one in particular. He finally found the one he wanted, chronologically over a dozen deaths before the large number from the Christmas Party of '95, and stabbed his finger into it. "No secrets? So, you've told your team about Marty then?"
Earl did not respond for several seconds. All the Feds except for Franks appeared surprised at their commander's sudden emotional outburst. Franks looked bored. The Hunters were confused. Finally my boss sighed, apparently not prepared to debate the point. It was shocking to see him back down on his own turf. "You two, wait outside. Don't let these guys touch anything," He pointed at the rest of the protective detail. Trip and Holly knew not to argue. They stepped aside.
I stopped to read the indicated plaque as the others entered the conference room. The plaque had a small picture of a young man with a sly grin on his chubby face.
A. Martin Hood
1/14/1960-10/17/1986
Nothing really set it apart from the other four hundred and some-odd other plaques on the wall. I went into the meeting.