Patterson. They left her on the front steps of her kids' day care like that,' Myers said. 'She was still living at the time this picture was taken. They used necromancy so she could suffer longer than was humanly possible.'
Ouch. I had seen a lot of terrible things in the last year, but that made even my stomach lurch. That was a whole new level of cruel.
'Friend of mine…' Franks stated.
It was a somber moment, but that idea just struck me as odd. 'You have friends?' I blurted.
Franks scowled at me but Myers continued. 'Agent Patterson did find this.' The next picture appeared to be of a large piece of pink skin that had been engraved with a knife or something to leave very crude writing. 'Apparently you can't just send a message from the other side. They had to slice the note onto one of their living minions and then launch it through a portal. It can be very messy.'
'Gross.' Julie adjusted her glasses and tried to make out the words carved on the piece of meat. 'To all minions of… I can't make out the next word… Overlord? Find and utterly destroy the human Hunter known as… Owen Zastava Pitt…'
'What!' I exclaimed. 'Let me see that…' Sure enough, there was my name, etched onto some sacrifice. This was too much. The Dread Overlord had declared jihad. This thing was terrifying. It was huge. 'An alien god has a vendetta against me? Oh, that's just awesome.'
'Yeah,' Franks said. 'Awesome.' I swear the bastard almost smiled. Almost.
'So now we wait for the Condition to come to us,' Myers said proudly. 'It turns out the Old Ones never bother to communicate with their followers here, so this message was a big deal. Capturing Pitt is now the cultists' primary goal. They'll do anything to get him. Any attack they launch gives us one more lead that we don't currently have.'
I turned back to the picture of the MCB agent. She was in five pieces and still alive. I did not want to end up as a crime-scene photo. 'Your plan sucks.'
'This file contains everything we know about the Condition, their assets, their methods. We'll be ready for them to make their move. In the meantime, you just go about your business and pretend we're not here.'
'Okay, so why the secrecy?' Earl asked sharply. 'Or was your little tantrum out in the hallway just to prove a point?'
The senior Fed shook his head. 'Marty was my friend.'
'Mine too…'
'Then maybe you should have thought of that before you murdered him,' Myers snapped.
Earl flashed with anger, shoved his chair away from the table and stood, glaring down at Myers. His fist hit the table hard enough to crack the wood. 'It was an accident!'
I've got to hand it to him, Myers didn't so much as flinch, and since I knew he also knew what Earl was capable of when he was angry, that was especially impressive. 'What, are you going to accidentally kill me too?' Franks' hand inched toward his holstered Glock, surely loaded with silver bullets, ready to plug Earl if he should so much as twitch, and for a moment the little conference room teetered on the edge of violence. 'Do it. And it'll be the end of MHI once and for all.' The college professor was locked in a staring contest with the werewolf and the killing machine got ready to shoot everybody.
'Enough.' Julie was calm as she spoke. 'Earl, sit, please. Agent Myers, we're cooperating fully. You two can murder each other over personal business later. We've got work to do.' Harbinger pulled his chair back to the table. He was really ticked. Franks put his big hands back on the table. Since I was sitting next to her, I was the only one who saw Julie discreetly return her compact. 45 to her lap. She had been prepared to shoot Franks under the table, Han Solo style. My God, I love this woman.
It took a moment for everyone to calm down. I don't know what had transpired between the two men, but Earl was still flushed as Myers pulled out a final piece of paper. 'As for the secrecy, we've been eavesdropping on the Condition's communications-wire taps, reading their mail, the usual.'
'Shocking,' I muttered.
Myers dropped the bomb. 'The Condition has a spy inside of MHI.'
The three of us glanced at each other. The idea was absurd. 'Horse shit,' Earl snapped. 'I know my men.'
'We have several messages in here that reference a mole. You've been infiltrated. How many people have you hired since the battle with Lord Machado?'
We looked to Julie. She was the one who kept track of logistics. 'Two training classes, twenty-six Newbies in total, made it through to hiring, with another fifty currently going through.' And the three of us knew that of those fifty, we would be lucky if half of them made it through training and this current class had been the biggest that we had ever had. MHI had been drastically short-handed since we had been allowed to reopen. We had been cranking through classes as quickly as possible. 'You honestly think one of our new employees is working for the Condition?'
'In their mind, your company is what stopped the second coming. What do you think? You can't trust your senior people either. Keep in mind what kind of things you're dealing with. The Old Ones are powerful, and it wouldn't take much to flip someone you've known for a long time.'
'Yeah, you know all about betraying people, don't you, Dwayne?' Earl said. Myers' nostrils flared, but he didn't respond. Earl continued, 'I think you're full of it. You hate MHI, and you just want to spread doubt and get us mistrusting each other. I know how you operate. This is all about getting us shut down, but the people you answer to said we're sticking around, and that just pisses you off no end, don't it?'
'For now.' Before Myers could say more, his phone rang. It was still set on that annoying version of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame.' Glaring at Earl, he answered, listened for a moment, then stood, cupping the phone so the caller wouldn't hear. 'We're done here,' Myers did his best to act unruffled and professional. 'All I require is your full cooperation against the Condition. Go about your regular business and Agent Franks will stay close to Pitt at all times. The Congressional Subcommittee on Unearthly Forces expects MHI to be willing to work with the government. Go against them, I dare you, because then I'll get my wish and MHI will be finished.'
'Prick,' Earl sullenly murmured under his breath.
'You've got the file. Do whatever you want with it. I don't care. Either way, I win. I can show myself out.' Myers adjusted his tie and buttoned his cheap suit. 'I'll be in touch.'
'So that's it. Just keep doing our job like nothing special is happening?' I asked in exasperation. I was still having a difficult time liking this plan. If you could call being a sitting duck a plan.
'As for your job, I wouldn't worry too much about hunting monsters,' Myers said, 'because the monsters will be hunting you.' The senior agent left the room without looking back.
I glanced at Earl. He was grinding his teeth again. Julie was baffled and tired. She closed the file. We had a strange symbiotic relationship with the government. We lived off their bounties, chafed at their rules, and had to put up with a lot of their crap, but this was something entirely new.
It was uncomfortably silent for a solid minute. Franks looked across the table at three scowling Monster Hunters and asked nonchalantly, 'So, what you got to eat around here?'
'Julie, could you show our guest to the cafeteria?' Harbinger asked. 'Owen and I need to talk… alone.' Julie stood. Franks hesitated, his mind probably running through the potential of me being assassinated should he walk twenty feet down the hallway. Finally, he relented, shoved his bulk back from the table and followed Julie.
I waited until the door had closed. 'Well… this sucks.'
'It's a load of crap, is what it is,' he spat. 'I got the call this morning. Cooperate or else. So, I guess we ain't got much choice. Stupid government… Now what exactly happened in Mexico?' Earl Harbinger was the most experienced Hunter in the world. If anyone would know what to do, it was him. I told him everything I could think of, having learned last summer that even the seemingly irrelevant details counted. He rubbed his face wearily when I told him about being exposed to the artifact. He stopped me after the part about how Susan had told me that the mark was going to kill Julie.
'Did you tell Julie about that?' He ran his thumb down the outside of his neck. I shook my head in the negative. 'Good. Don't. Susan's a liar, and I wouldn't put it past her trying to manipulate you two into doing something stupid. It probably ain't as bad as she's making it out.'
'I'm still worried about her.'
'Understandable. But Julie will be fine. I know a thing or two about curses, and no matter what happens, she's a survivor. She gets that from me… If you were to die, she'd get by fine. She's a Shackleford. On the other
