Monster Hunter Vendetta (15 page)

"Wow," she batted her big blue eyes at me. "That is so hot!"

I had been taking a swig of Gatorade and nearly choked on imitation grape. "Excuse me?" I coughed.

"Oh, sorry." The way she looked at me said that she was anything but sorry. "I just love this stuff. You know, we should like totally hook up later and you could tell me all about it. I'd love to hear the story firsthand. Maybe over drinks or something."

As a man who'd spent most of his life ignored by pretty girls, it took me a moment to realize that she was actually coming on to me. It took my higher brain functions a few seconds to compose a response. "Uh, sorry, Dawn. I'm going to be really busy for a while. See, Agent Franks is here as a
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goodwill ambassador
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and I've got to stay with him." I casually pulled my shooting gloves off in the hopes that she would see my ring.

She saw it. "So, you're married, huh?"

"Engaged."

That didn't deter her either. "No biggie. I was engaged once, but he got decapitated by fish-men. Long story, but that's how I ended up here. You ever see what happens when you shove a humanoid fish monster into a propeller?" She gave me a smile that would best be described as flirty. "I'll have to tell you about it sometime. Maybe we can talk again." She got off the bench. Somehow females still managed to make body armor look good. "See ya later."

Dawn went back to a knot of Newbies. One of the other women giggled at whatever she'd said. What the hell was this, MH Junior High? I shook my head and went back to my drink. Of course, when you're single, pretty girls won't talk to you, but when you're in a relationship
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bam, they come out of the woodwork. Fed business completed, Franks rejoined me. He looked down, saw the look of consternation on my face and shrugged.

After hours of yelling at Newbies and shooting cardboard targets shaped like various monsters, I grabbed lunch for two, ditched Franks at the agreed-upon base of the stairs, and met Julie in her office.

My fiancée's office suited her personality. One part order, one part chaos, but the chaos was a work in progress. She had painted the walls a kind of sea foam color, had hung up several nice paintings, decorated everything else, and then promptly buried it all in paperwork and MHI-issue equipment. She had a couple potted plants with flowers that she could rattle off by their Latin names (they all looked the same to me, and bothered my allergies, but I would never tell her that). There was a bulletin board behind her full of photos of friends and family, including a couple of me mugging stupidly for the camera. Her desk was covered in papers, and there were a few piles of strategic paper on the floor, stacked on top of the filing cabinets and in the corners.

The problem is that this kind of work never really stops accumulating. Julie is in this for the love of Hunting, so when there's a job to do, that comes first. But as the designated heir to the family business, she still has to pay attention to the day-to-day crap that all businessmen do. She also has a really difficult time delegating.

As an experienced financial-type professional, I managed to help her out quite a bit between missions, but MHI really needed more full-time office staff. The plan was to wait for some really smart Newbies that we didn't trust enough to go on teams, but we were so short-handed in the field that our standards were low in that regard.

"What's up, sexy," I said as I entered.

Julie held up one hand to shush me. She was listening to someone on the phone. I set her lunch down on top of the pile of quotes, bids, invoices, reports, and a worn copy of a Jane Austen novel. Even Julie takes breaks now and then. She grabbed a pad of paper, pulled a pen out from behind one ear, and started making notes. "Yes
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rubbery. Green
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eight feet tall. Yes, sir. I know exactly what those are, and yes, we can handle them."

I pulled up a chair and flopped into it, still smelling of gunpowder and oil. It sounded like we got another job. Sweet. Business was hopping, and even if this was in a different team's area, the whole company still shared in the bounties. The last year had been record-breaking, but that had been due to the abnormally high rate of monster activity, not to mention the absurdly large PUFF bounties we had been paid after the Lord Machado case.

Julie was still talking. "No. No, sir. Do not, I repeat, do not approach them.
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Why?" She rolled her eyes as the person on the other end of the line asked something incredibly stupid. "Because they will eat you.
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Yes. Eat you." She paused to cover the phone's receiver and said to me, "What is it with these people who want to reason with monsters? Morons."

"I blame it on Twilight." In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire.

Julie went back to her call. "Okay, we'll have a team there in
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." She glanced at her watch, and since she didn't have to call somewhere else to check on that team's readiness, I had to assume that it was our team's gig. "Three hours."

The person on the other end of the line freaked out at that. Julie drummed her fingers on her desk while she waited for the tirade to end. I had seen the same mannerism recently from her mother, but where Susan's nails were pointy and red, Julie's nails were kept short so they wouldn't interfere with her shooting. "Sir, listen. They'll still be there. As long as you don't approach them, or bother them, or look at them funny, they shouldn't attack. We'll expect the down payment to be in our account by the time we arrive on scene. Don't let anyone near that property in the meantime. Yes, thank you. Have a nice day." She hung up the phone. "Or as nice a day as you can have when you've got a troll infestation."

"Oooh, trolls. What's the plan?"

"We're driving to Bessamer. Skippy's off today for something, so no chopper. I'll have Milo and the others come over from Mississippi and meet us; hopefully they'll be there in time. That gives us most of the team. The trolls are holed up in a small abandoned building, so there shouldn't be too many of them. Nothing we can't handle. Bounty on a full grown one is"—she checked the PUFF table tacked to her wall—"fifty thousand a pop. Not bad."

"Awesome," I said, looking forward to grabbing Abomination and dispensing some monster justice. "I've never seen a troll before. Let me guess, cute little fellas with big hair?"

She smiled at me sweetly and batted her big brown eyes. "Bummer, you can't see one now."

"Aaahhhh man," I whined.

"I know, I know. Earl's orders though. You're safer here."

"Can I stow away in your luggage?"

"You're too big to fit. Look, honey, I know this makes you angry." Julie tried to be soothing, but she already knew she was failing miserably. I just leaned back in the chair and palmed my face. It was still weird to touch it and not feel a mass of scar tissue. This wasn't right. I should be there with my team. "But don't worry. Once we take care of this cult, life will get back to normal."

I snorted. "Normal?"

"Relatively normal. And speaking of which, in all the excitement, we forgot something," she said with a grimace.

I hesitated. Had I forgotten another stupid wedding thing? I had just wanted to elope, go to Vegas or something, but the Shacklefords insisted on doing everything in a big way. She waited, prompting me to guess. "Pick out napkins?" It was a stab in the dark, but all of these things tended to run together to me.

"Already done. Yellow and lavender. How could you forget?"

"Uh
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death cult?" I said in my defense. I didn't even know what color lavender was. I think most men would consider it light blue, or something.

"No. I'm supposed to meet your family. You were going to call them, remember?"

I smacked my forehead. Of course. I didn't really talk to my family very often. The last time I had seen them was when they had come out to visit after Mr. Huffman had torn me apart. I had called Mom and told her about the engagement, and she had gushed and cried on the phone for about an hour and a half, but because of various Hunting gigs, I'd kept postponing an actual visit. As far as my parents knew, I was still an accountant.

"And you were supposed to call your brother too."

"He's still on tour." I had spoken to my brother, David, or Mosh as the rest of the world called him, more recently, but that was to arrange VIP concert passes for some friends, and even that had been a real brief conversation. The Pitt family loved each other, in their own dysfunctional way, but it wasn't like we communicated a lot. "He's really busy."

"He's also coming through the state this week," Julie pointed out.

"Too late. He's already here, and playing Buzzard Island tonight. I got tickets for Skippy and his people. I was going to go too, but I guess that's out of the question now," I muttered.

Julie was perplexed. "You got tickets to a heavy metal concert, in public, for a tribe of orcs? How's that supposed to work?"

"Private sky box," I explained. "You know how they are with crowds. I told my brother I'm doing volunteer work with the local burn ward, so that explains all the masks and goggles. He was totally down with that." He had also been very suspicious as to when I had become the volunteer-at-a-hospital type, but there was lots of stuff Mosh didn't know about me.

"Well, I don't know, as long as Skippy keeps everybody out of trouble
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." Julie said, concern evident in her voice. Orcs were still PUFF-applicable so the ones living with us were, technically speaking, illegal aliens. "Thanks for lunch, but I have to find Earl. We've got to hunt some trolls and I need to draft some extra gunmen to fill in for you."

"Esmeralda's good, so are the guys that she brought along. Cooper's hell on wheels with a FAL. I'm sure they're just itching for an excuse to get out of training. I can handle the Newbies."

"Okay, we'll take Esmeralda's team too. It'll be fun for me to get to work with my little brother. That way if Milo's held up, we can still move on those trolls as soon as we get there. This should be pretty straightforward. How's the training going anyway?"

"Good, but I think one of the Newbies just tried to flirt with me," I said. "You know, us ugly guys aren't used to that kind of thing. Gets us all flusterpated."

"Uh huh, sometimes young impressionable Newbies fixate on their more experienced instructors
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oh wait. Why does that sound kind of familiar? How was it we met again?" Julie gave me her best playing-dumb look. "Which bimbo was it?"

"Dawn the Texan."

She nodded. "Oh, she is pretty. She was like Miss Houston or something. Pity, I have to murder her now."

"Don't worry, you're the only one for me," I responded dryly. "Even if I am a dashing specimen of manhood and there's plenty of Owen Pitt to go around. You guys take care of the trolls. Grant and I can hold down the fort here."

"You promise to play nice with him?"

I raised my hands defensively. "You have my word, no assaulting Grant." Unless he gives me a good reason, I added mentally. "Seriously, I think we're cool. Seeing him was a surprise though, wasn't it?"

Julie shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't expect to ever see him again, especially not here. Not after what happened to him and the way he left so suddenly."

I turned serious. "You okay?" She and Grant had been pretty tight last year. It was still an awkward topic of conversation for us. I knew that there was still a part of her that felt guilty about the timing of our getting together so shortly after we'd assumed Grant was dead.

She stood, came around the desk, and kissed me lightly. "I'm fine
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Now those trolls aren't going to off themselves. I've got to go before the client calls back and screams some more. Love you." That was code for I don't want to talk about it right now.

"Love you too," I responded. "Be careful."

"I will. And don't forget to call your parents." Julie Shackleford smiled her perfect smile as she left the office. "Stay out of trouble!" she shouted from down the hallway.

"Always," I responded, but she was already gone.

It was approaching sundown when I was finally able to break away from the routine. I had been out on the obstacle course assisting while Grant Jefferson yelled at the slower Newbies. Agent Franks stood just outside of bad breath distance the entire time. The trainees kept casting a fearful eye at the brute behind me. Even among brand-new Hunters, Franks was already a legend.

The compound seemed relatively quiet without Team Harbinger and Team Paxton. Skippy's tribe was gone too, but they were virtually invisible even when they were here anyway. The Alabama spring air was thick with enough pollen to make my eyes water and fireflies were beginning to flicker through the chain-link-and-razor-wire fence surrounding the compound. Since it was relatively peaceful, I decided to call my folks while sitting on one of the benches outside the main building. I would need to think of another excuse as to why they couldn't meet my bride-to-be yet, but with a bunch of psychos stalking me, it was pretty rotten timing.

The ever-present Franks sulked ten feet away. He crossed his arms and scowled as I pulled out my phone. "Can I have some privacy?" I asked in exasperation.

He looked around. We were alone. There were no possible threats in view. He looked back. "No."

"You're such a douche bag." I sighed as I pulled up my folks' number. Franks didn't bother to respond. He was the immovable object.

It wasn't that I didn't love my parents. We just didn't communicate well. My mom tended to talk a lot, but seldom about anything important, and my father talked at me, rather than to me. Speaking with him was always awkward, as I was more used to him giving orders and training me for the inevitable fiery apocalyptic end of the world than anything approaching a normal relationship. I had to admit though, if my war-hero father hadn't spent all those hours teaching me to fight, then I wouldn't be alive today. Thank goodness for paranoia.

It rang three times before someone picked up. The voice was raspy and unfamiliar. "Who's this?"