The best available room at the compound was on the first floor of the main building, near the stairs to the basement and the archives. It had been set up for clients and VIPs, but since visits like that were extremely rare, the room, though nicely furnished, smelled a little musty.
"Beats a hotel," I suggested helpfully as I put Dad's suitcase on the bed. I still stunk of gas and had quite a bit of my own blood dried on my clothing. Dad just glowered at me.
Mosh was getting cleaned up. It had been about fifteen years since we had last been forced to share a room, but it was either bunk with me, or sleep in the barracks with the Newbies. He'd dealt with enough weirdness so far that the last thing I wanted to do was stick him with a bunch of really gung-ho, brand-new Hunters.
Julie had tagged along. My mom hadn't stopped talking to her since she'd gotten off the chopper. Julie had dropped her vest and rifle behind Dorcas' desk, so now she only had her form-fitting and, in my opinion, very flattering, Under Armor shirt on. Julie was nodding her head patiently as Mom continued to ramble on about her day's adventure as she carried more bags through the door. She gave me a patient look that basically said you weren't kidding about your parents.
Dad waited until all four of us were present. His deep voice indicated that he wasn't messing around. "All right then, I want some answers, and I want them now. There's some strange business going on here. First off—"
"How did you two meet?" Mom asked, clapping her hands together excitedly. Dad rolled his eyes and groaned.
Julie gestured toward me. "Well, we had a contrived story to tell you, but I guess we can tell you the truth now. We work together. The first time Owen and I met was when I interviewed him for this job."
Mom covered her mouth, like me dating the boss' great-granddaughter was the most scandalous thing ever. Hell, like Mom even knew what I did for a living. "You're his supervisor?"
"Technically, yes, but he doesn't take well to supervision," Julie laughed. Mom laughed. Mom began to ask Julie for details. They both plopped down on the edge of the bed. Dad and I exchanged glances. He signaled for me to pull up a chair to the side so we could address man business.
Mom was so personable that when she entered a room, she created her own gravity field that dominated everything. Once free from Mom's sphere of influence, my father turned stern. "I killed four people today. I haven't done that for a while. I'd like to know why."
"So the last guy died too?" I had really been hoping that the Feds could have gotten something out of him.
Dad shrugged. "Looked like a liver hit. I'd be amazed if they got him to the hospital before he croaked. I'm getting sloppy in my old age. Mozambiqued the other assholes. Don't dodge my question, boy." He glanced at his watch. "I'm missing a fishing trip today because of this."
"Okay . . ." I had thought about this moment, and the best way to convey it, for a long time, but all of my practiced lines were forgotten under the stare of those hard eyes. My entire life, this man hadn't ever really approved of me. He had always been gruff and cold. The closest we had ever come to bonding was him teaching me to kill stuff. Well, when all else fails, go for brevity. "I'll get right to it. Monsters are real. I'm one of the people who hunts them."
Dad nodded slowly. "Pay good?"
"Pay's awesome."
"Monsters?" Dad took off his hat and set it on the small table between us. He scratched his bald spot. "All right then. I'm glad we got this all cleared up."
That's it? He showed no emotion. That wasn't one of the outcomes that I had imagined. "Uh . . . cool. Any questions?"
He intertwined his fingers, put his elbows on the table, and studied me silently. I never could read him, and now was no different. It was like being under an electron microscope as he stared right through my façade of confidence. This man could read me like a teleprompter. "Oh, I got questions—lots." Then he went back to glaring at me. It was extremely awkward. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
I've died twice, traveled through time, stopped an alien invasion, and battled just about every terrible being that hell could puke onto the surface of the Earth, but despite those facts, this man could still make me feel like a pathetic fat kid. It really pissed me off. My entire life I had striven to make him proud. I had failed every step of the way. No matter what I did, I would never measure up to his impossible ideals of what it meant to be a real man.
But no more. I knew what I was. And I didn't have to take his shit anymore. I was going to make him understand. He was on my turf now. "Listen, Dad," I said as I reached across the table and grabbed him by the arm. "I—"
Black energy crackled inside my skull.
"Damn it, boys. That was pathetic," I shouted at my sons as I threw my own pack down. Personally, I was exhausted, but I wasn't about to let them know it. They could never see weakness as an option. The boys were big and strong for their ages, but I had overloaded their bags on purpose. I knew that they had to be hurting bad by now. "That was slow." I made a big show of looking at my dive watch. "We only averaged thirteen minutes a mile. Thirteen!"
"It was straight uphill!" Owen protested. He had to pause, pull out his asthma inhaler and take a deep puff. He didn't use it nearly as much as he had when he was younger, but we were several thousand feet higher in elevation than he was used to.
"And the ground was all loose," David whined. "My feet hurt."
Damn right their feet hurt. My feet were killing me, and I had done forced marches most of my life. They were only fourteen and eleven. Their pack straps had probably abraded right through the skin of their shoulders by now. "You think if the enemy were right behind us they'd be complaining? Hell no, they would've chased us down, raped us to death, then cut us into steaks and eaten us."
"But ‘the enemy' aren't chasing us, Dad. This was supposed to be a camping trip." My oldest gestured around the mountainside. He had always been a smartass. The kid was incapable of knowing when to shut up. Despite how I was always farming him out to the neighbors for adult-level manual labor, and he was strong as hell, the boy was still pudgy. He paused to wipe the sweat off his face with his tee shirt, not that it would do much good, since his shirt was already totally saturated.
David started crying. "I can smell Mom's cooking. Camp's right there. Can I go sit down now?"
"Yeah, go," I jerked a thumb back toward camp. I could smell it too, and my stomach rumbled. "And don't be such a baby." I felt like a complete asshole as I said it, but I had started having the dream again, at least once a week now. Some nights I couldn't sleep at all, even when the dream didn't come, just because I couldn't get it out of my mind. I didn't pretend to understand the dream, but I knew it was true. My children couldn't afford to be weak.
"Dude, drop your pack. I'll take it," Owen offered to his brother as he glared at me. Yeah, the boy may be chunky, but he'd inherited my mean streak. Good. Let him be angry. It gave him something to focus on. David shrugged out of the pack and handed it to his big brother. Owen cradled it in his arms as David ran for our campsite.
"This was supposed to be a fun weekend," he said.
"Fun is relative," I answered. "Having the strength and the knowledge to survive anything the world throws at you isn't supposed to be fun. But it makes you a man. So man up and quit your crying."
"You don't always have to be such a jerk." Owen spat as he walked away.
If only you knew, boy . . . if only you knew.
I took my time following them into camp. The forest was actually very peaceful as sunset approached. He was right. This was supposed to have been a vacation. I had retired from the Army a few years ago, and was now working as a bookkeeper, of all the idiotic things . . . So it wasn't like I got to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors anymore.
My wife was waiting for me, arms folded, scowling, her blonde hair pulled up underneath a handkerchief. She smelled like wood smoke.
"Keeping the home fires burning, huh?" I joked.
She didn't think I was funny. "Ten miles? You made them walk ten miles, and after skipping lunch?" She had grown up in a home where they often went hungry because of Communist ineptitude. To my wife, missing a meal as an American was a serious offense, because this was the Land of the Free, damn it.
"I have to do stuff like this . . . You know it."
God bless her, she at least believed me. "You've been distant lately. The dream again?"
"It's been bad." The sound of an acoustic guitar started back at the tent. It was actually rather good. David certainly had a gift for that silly thing.
Ilyana nodded slowly, understanding. She was as pretty as the day I had first seen her, sneaking her dissident family over from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. "You know that I trust you, but what if you're mistaken? Your children think you're a beast, you know. You push them too hard. And what if you're wrong?"
"I pray every day that I'm wrong." I bit my lip. Saying this made my voice tremble and break, and tears welled up involuntarily in my eyes. "But I know I'm not. I hear the war drums. Some day one of those boys will be known as the god slayer and that's before it even gets really rough."
No father should have to know that it is his son's job to die saving the world.