"Three days?" Grant asked in confusion.
"That's when my dad says that they will use their artifact," Julie said. "Come on, what else?"
He continued, "Harbinger doesn't want to turn your dad over. He thinks the Feds have a leak. How else could the CO have known about Ray? The only people who know about him are us and them." Grant seemed saddened that this news did not shock us.
"I told you so," Trip said. I golf-clapped for him. He flipped me the bird. All in good fun of course.
Our visitor ignored our antics. "We learned some more things while you've been away." He nodded in my general direction, not quite willing to actually mention any contributions I have made, but needing to emphasize the source of their intel. "We found the name Byreika. We think we know who he is, or maybe I should say, was."
"The Old Man?" I was shocked.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his suit pocket. He carefully unfolded it and read. "Mordechai Byreika. Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1874. Freelance Monster Hunter. Did rather well for someone who worked solo, mostly in Eastern Europe. Last whereabouts were when he was arrested by Nazis in 1941, he was sent to a concentration camp, escaped, was recaptured, sent to another camp in 1943, and never heard from again." Grant handed the paper over to me. There was a single, grainy, black-and-white photograph photocopied under the information.
It was him all right. Slightly younger, not quite as worn down by age and time, but still with the same hard eyes behind small glasses. I was sure of it. In the picture he was standing, with a rifle in hand, in front of the corpse of some sort of massive scaled monster. It was a trophy shot, the kind that you took as proof to collect on a bounty.
"Is that the man, Owen?" Julie asked, standing up, and crowding next to me to see the picture. Trip and Holly followed closely, also curious to see. Gretchen was inscrutable under her burkha and shades. She wandered off toward the kitchen, probably bored and looking for something to eat.
"This is him. I'm sure of it. How did you find him?"
"His journal is in the archives. It was found on a contract mission to Prague back in the '80s."
"We collect information from old Hunters every chance we get. We aren't any smarter than the old-timers, we've just learned from their experience," Julie explained.
"Lee found it. He was cross-referencing everything in the archives, and the name stuck out. He remembered Pitt saying that name from his dreams."
"Remind me to give Albert a fat bonus when we get back," Julie said. "What's in the journal?"
"Years and years of hunting, but if you skip to the end, he was after the CO. It was kind of like a quest for him. Killing that particular monster was his Holy Grail," Grant told us. I found that a slightly ironic turn of phrase to use about a Jew. "Byreika studied him for years. He was sure that the creature's physical body was someplace in Europe. His search led him to believe that the Nazis were in league with Lord Machado."
"In league for what?" Holly asked.
"Complete and total control over time."
"Sounds familiar," I said.
"It's worse. Byreika studied this for years. He was convinced that the CO had the ability, and the insanity, to do it. The only thing holding him back was that he needed a certain artifact that was protected by some sort of ancient guardian. Once it was taken from the guardian, it had to be taken to a certain place, at a certain time, and activated with a special blood sacrifice. The journal went into a lot of details about what he thought would happen if the CO was successful."
"How bad?" all of us asked in unison.
"I don't know, haven't read it yet. But Harbinger absolutely freaked out. Said that we should shoot your dad rather than let anything come near him, including the Feds. Milo read it, and then he had to call the general authorities of his church. Even Sam didn't look so good, and I didn't even know that man's brain was wired to understand fear. I mean, I've never seen those three scared of anything before, ever."
"I've only seen them scared once," Julie stated. I thought of her story, with the giant pupil looking through the rift into our universe.
"Literally the end of the world," Grant told us as he adjusted the lapels of his expensive suit. "I mean, seriously, I'm a little nervous about the whole thing myself."
Holly cleared her throat. "This might sound bad… and I'm sorry to be the one to bring it up, but if it's that serious, why don't we just kill Ray right now?"
"Holly!" Trip sputtered. "That would be murder."
"Hey, I'm trying to be practical here," Holly retorted. "Whole world dies, or one nutcase buys it, no offense, Julie…"
"None taken," she said.
"Then I'm siding with the whole world. It's a pretty sucky place, but I like it not destroyed. Let's just plug Ray and bury him in the backyard," Holly said. I reminded myself to stay on her good side. Trip looked disgusted. Grant seemed impressed by her logic. I was morally ambivalent, but it was too damn hot to have to dig a deep enough hole to hide a body.
"I've thought of that myself," Julie told us. "But there's one problem. Dad is probably not the only way for them to find their Place of Power. I mean, Dad found a way, so that information is out there somewhere. And on the other hand, he is our only way to find out where the Cursed One is going to be…"
"So we can be waiting for the son of a bitch," I finished for her. My hand instinctively moved to the grip of my shotgun. "We need to make Ray talk."
"Stick Holly in with him for ten minutes," Trip said in disgust.
"Can I borrow your car battery and some jumper cables?" Holly batted her eyelashes innocently. "I've got fifty bucks says he talks."
"Damn, woman, you have serious issues," Trip said.
"Anything else, Grant?" Julie asked.
"Just one thing. The blood sacrifice to turn on this evil artifact… Byreika said that it had to come from a hero, a protector, a mystic champion."
Apparently none of us had a clue what that meant. I shrugged. Personally I had had about enough with the mystic garbage.
"The blood has to come from the heart of a Monster Hunter."