Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC Page 2

  “Are you sure?”

  Holly got on the radio. “I can see him too. I can confirm it is Stricken. If I can get a clean shot, want me to blast him?”

  “Naw. I’ll handle that son of a bitch,” Earl snapped.

  On the bright side, Stricken no longer worked for the government, so murdering him was no longer off the table. The word was that the Feds had busted him for committing hundreds of felonies, up to and including treason. Last I heard, he was a fugitive being hunted by the MCB. So if Earl lost his shit, went all werewolf, ripped Stricken’s head off and kicked a field goal with it, it wouldn’t be that illegal. Heck, there might even be a reward.

  It was Boone who had the guts to point out the obvious. “Hey, Earl, good buddy, what was that thing you were just telling me about big picture keeping our eye on the prize?”

  The reply came a moment later, because no matter how angry he might be—and enslaving his girlfriend into a secret government monster death squad tended to make a man righteously angry—Earl was still a professional. “Alright. That’s fair. Priority is grabbing that package. But once we have that in hand, Stricken’s mine.”

  I looked at Trip again and shrugged. I could almost pity anybody who ended up on the receiving end of Earl Harbinger’s wrath. To his people, Earl was a good friend and great leader, but to his enemies, Earl was a terrifying force of unrelenting murder. But this was Stricken . . . who frankly deserved it, so good. I went back to watching.

  Flanked by umbrella guard, Stricken walked up to the entrance. Another guard held the door open for him but the former head of Special Task Force Unicorn stopped and scanned the street again. I swear his eyes lingered on our van just a bit too long, but that was probably just my imagination. He had been some kind of secret agent super spy, and we knew he routinely used dark magic artifacts that regular sane people would be terrified to mess with, but he wasn’t omnipotent. Though he sure liked to act like he was.

  “Oh, man. Earl is gonna wipe the smug off his face,” Trip said.

  “More like Earl is going to eat his face.”

  “What?” Hertzfeldt asked.

  Newbies weren’t in on the secret. Earl Harbinger being a werewolf was kept on a need-to-know basis. “Nothing.” I keyed my radio. “Stricken has entered the building.”

  “The reptoid and six cultists have gone inside,” Boone said. “There’s at least four more I can see staying with their vehicles.”

  “It’s showtime.” We had the place totally surrounded but knowing Stricken was the buyer changed things. He was a slippery bastard who always had a trick up his sleeve. A cold lump slowly formed in the pit of my stomach. I’d gone from wary but professionally confident to having a vague sense of unease. Stricken had that effect on people.

  Trip asked, “What does Stricken want with a Ward Stone anyway? He claims to be trying to defend Earth from Asag too. You think he wants it for the same reason we do?”

  “Maybe. With that slimeball, who knows? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and as skinny as he is, I bet I could get some serious air on the toss.”

  “So . . . ” Hertzfeldt interjected. “I take it you guys got some history?”

  “We do. Stricken used to be in charge of . . . well, let’s just call it a federal agency. He’s lied to us, used MHI, risked all our lives for his personal gain, and is basically the poster child for that saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.”

  “Luckily for us, he got fired,” Trip said. “So now it’s game on.”

  I ran the binoculars across the plaza, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Stricken didn’t have the full might of a secret government black ops unit at his fingertips anymore, but he still struck me as the sort who’d want lots and lots of backup, especially when dealing with a bunch of backstabbing lizard people and the morons gullible enough to worship them as deities. Except everything seemed really normal. Maybe too normal. Which was when I noticed something that felt a little off.

  “Trip, check out the taco truck. Notice anything weird?”

  It was one of those hippy-dippy, brightly colored, urban-trendy kind of things. Where the food was usually overpriced, used the word “fusion” a lot in its menu, but tended to be really tasty. Trip watched it for a few seconds. “Well, I guess the dude taking orders in the window is white. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white dude work in a taco truck before.”

  “Stop being racist. Tacos are for everyone.”

  Trip snorted.

  “I mean watch him. He’s busy, but since Stricken’s arrived he keeps glancing toward the target. Gut feeling. I think he’s watching the place, same as us.”

  “Maybe . . . ” Trip snapped a picture, then blew it up on the camera’s screen. “Hey now. Look at that.”

  “What?”

  “Imagine taco guy without the beard, glasses, or hair net and tell me who that looks like.”

  Skinny beard, blocky hipster glasses. It was a decent disguise, but . . . I started to laugh. “Oh, man! It’s Grant!”

  “Who?” our poor Newbie asked, perplexed as usual.

  But I got the radio instead. “This is Z. Attention everybody, the Feds are here. MCB is staking the place out too.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?” Earl asked.

  “Either that or Grant Jefferson’s twin brother is slinging artisanal tacos for a living.” Of all the Monster Control Bureau agents I’d met, I knew Grant the best. Hell, I’d broken his nose once, so I was pretty sure that was him. Having the Feds here was bad, but worse, last I’d heard, Grant had been partnered with the single scariest thing in the federal government’s arsenal, and that’s saying something about people who have intercontinental ballistic missiles and the IRS. “If Grant’s here, Agent Franks is probably nearby too.”

  Earl didn’t say anything over the radio, but I knew from experience right now he would be using a whole lot of profanity, because the MCB’s presence ruined everything.

  We were private contractors. We had an excuse to be working here because reptoids are PUFF-applicable monsters. Boone had a great working relationship with the Atlanta PD: so long as we were discreet, the locals stayed happy. But the Federal Monster Control Bureau were the supreme law of the land when it came to anything related to keeping monsters secret from the public, and they had the authority to tell us to go pound sand. Since they had jurisdiction over all things magical, they would also seize the Ward, and we’d be shit out of luck.

  I searched for other cars that might be doing the same surveillance thing as us. There were a bunch that had been parked here the whole time, and several of those had windows tinted enough that I couldn’t see if there was anyone sitting inside. There could be a tac team waiting across the street for all I knew. Hell, with the MCB’s insane budget and how much they wanted to catch Stricken, they probably had a spy satellite overhead.

  “How do you want to proceed, Earl?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Better think fast,” Trip said, though he certainly didn’t say that over the radio.

  I heard the motorcycle engine before I saw it. The same bike that had passed by a minute ago had turned around and was coming back, only much faster this time. She zipped between a few slowly moving cars, turned into the parking lot, and stopped right next to Stricken’s BMW.

  I hit transmit. “A white and red bullet bike just arrived at the target. Female rider, dressed all in black. Can’t see her face with the helmet. I don’t think security was expecting her, though. They’re headed her way aggressively.” Of course we couldn’t hear anything from way over here, but it was obvious the guards were telling her to move along. Nobody, Nobody, & Douchebag was currently closed to the public. She ignored them, put down the kickstand and took off her helmet. Trip snapped some pictures.

  “The rider is an Asian female, late teens or early twenties. Maybe five foot five or so.” It was hard to estimate from this distance, but she appeared really young and relatively petite compared to the
beefy security thugs who were telling her to hit the road. She shook out her long black hair, smiled at the nearest guard, and then whacked him upside the head with her helmet.

  Before I could key my radio she’d sprung off the bike, spin-kicked another man in the neck, and judo-tossed the next guy across the trunk of Stricken’s BMW. “We’ve got some action here.” I tried to provide a play by play. “The girl’s jumping on the car. And she just leapt on a security dude’s head! She’s monkey-crawling onto his back. He’s flailing! Oh shit, she’s got the choke. That girl’s riding him like a pony!”

  “Slow down.” Apparently, Earl didn’t appreciate my color commentary. “What’s happening?”

  “The rider is beating the hell out of the guards. Really well too!”

  “Everybody hold your positions,” Earl ordered. “Do you recognize her, Z?”

  “Never seen her before.” The last two security guards charged, but she rolled off the one she’d been strangling, ducked beneath a clumsy swing, and palm-struck that poor fool in the nuts so hard that all three of us in the van winced in sympathy as he collapsed. Then somehow, she pulled off a leg sweep like something out of Mortal Kombat, which put the supervisor flat on his back on the cement. She ran for the door, having plowed through a wall of meat in just a few seconds. “And she’s inside. Okay, that was really impressive.”

  “Like human impressive, or supernatural impressive?”

  “Hard to say.” I’d better get this one right, because there was a vast gulf between how we were allowed to deal with human beings versus how we dealt with monsters. She’d had surprise on her side, but physics were unforgiving and weight classes existed for a reason. That waif-fu stuff where tiny ballerina-looking women routinely beat the hell out of guys my size only happened in the movies. “Probably not all human.” But as soon as I said that, umbrella guard was hurled through the front window and landed in the bushes about ten feet away. I couldn’t have thrown him that far, and I was built like a model for protein shakes. “Amend that. Definitely supernatural.”

  With nothing to see at the building besides some dazed and battered security guards, I turned the binos back toward the food truck. Sure enough the taco vendor was headed toward the door, ditching his hair net and pulling off his apron. From how fast he was sprinting, yeah . . . that was Grant. He’d always been a motivated sort. Several of the people eating lunch around the plaza must have also been MCB, because they jumped up, pulled the handguns they’d been concealing, and rushed toward the building too. I reported that to the others.

  “This is Holly. A table full of people just bolted from the restaurant without paying their bill. I’m guessing undercover Feds.”

  “Damn it.” A whole lot of our effort and scheming had just been flushed down the toilet. Apparently, we’d not been the only party tipped off about this deal.

  “I see Feds swarming toward the back too,” Boone confirmed. “Bad guys are busting out guns. Looks like they aren’t going down without a fight.”

  The MCB were always gung-ho, so Earl was probably going to order us to retreat to keep us from getting shot or arrested. Whenever the MCB decided that MHI had been meddling in their business, it turned into a legal nightmare. But Earl surprised me. “Everybody hold your position. We’re just watching. If MCB sees us, we’ve got a valid excuse for being here.” He must have really wanted that Ward Stone . . . Or more likely, he was hoping to see Stricken get shot while running from the law. If that jerk tried to resist arrest with Agent Franks around, Franks would probably handcuff Stricken, then pull his arms off to use them like nunchuks to beat Stricken to death. That would be hilarious.

  Several unmarked cars along the street were suddenly moving to block off the parking lot. Red and blue lights started flashing. This was a pretty big show of force for the MCB to use in public, but Monster Control Bureau was really good at pretending to be other mundane federal agencies when they needed to. The running MCB agents reached the front of the building. Most of them went through the door, guns drawn. The rest started handcuffing the downed security guards. Stricken’s driver got yanked out of the car and thrown down on the pavement to get cuffed. Nobody was dumb enough to resist.

  But who was the biker girl? Was she with the MCB? Only that didn’t feel right. They’d held their position when Stricken had arrived. They hadn’t freaked out and revealed themselves until she’d rushed in, like her sudden and violent arrival had forced their hand.

  The building was three stories tall. And long before the Feds had a chance to make it up the stairs, one of the big windows on the top floor shattered. That must have been where the meeting was being held, because a man—probably one of the snake cultists from the tats—crashed through the window. A second later the biker girl leapt through the window after him.

  Somehow, she hit the parking lot feet first, rolled, and popped right back up, seemingly unharmed. I couldn’t say the same for the snake cultist, who’d landed flat on his back. Her sudden arrival surprised the MCB agents, and I got my answer as to whether they were on the same team when she throat-punched one, kicked another in the knee, and ran. Trip took pictures.

  She now had a big red backpack.

  A female agent tried to shoot her, but the rider slid toward her like she was stealing home plate. There was a pop pop as the MCB agent launched a couple of desperate rounds—too high—before the girl hit her in the legs. The agent did a flip. The girl hopped back up and onto her motorcycle. She’d even picked up her helmet during the slide. Not only had that been damn near Earl Harbinger speed, it had been smooth.

  As much fun as it was watching the MCB get their asses kicked, I wasn’t even going to try and narrate what I’d just seen to the others, so I just told everyone, “I think the rider’s got the Ward Stone. She’s making a break for it.”

  Tires squealed, and then the bike took off, crazy fast. The girl popped a wheelie through the parking lot. Feds had to leap out of the way to not get run over. She hit the street on both wheels and accelerated, zipping between cars.

  “Follow that bike!”

  Chapter 2

  The Newbie punched the gas. Except there was no way this lumbering tub was going to keep up with her, let alone with her being able to weave through traffic. “Milo, Skippy, there’s a motorcycle heading south. She’s got the Ward. You got eyes on her?”

  “Got her, Z. Skippy’s following.”

  There was a bunch of noise, followed by lots and lots of gunshots. I couldn’t tell if it was from inside the building, the parking garage, or both.

  Boone got on the radio. “Cultists are shooting at the Feds. We’ve got us a gunfight back here.”

  “Get the hell out of there, Boone,” Earl commanded. The MCB wouldn’t want our help anyway and the last thing we needed was for one of us to catch a stray round. Knowing the MCB, they’d probably bill us for the bullet.

  “Already moving. So much for quietly following these assholes home so we could pop them all at once. Stupid Feds.”

  The MCB would be focused on their rapidly unfolding gun battle with the reptoid and friends. They were probably here for Stricken, not the Ward Stone. We could still salvage this. Earl must have seen the opportunity too, and immediately started giving a series of rapid-fire orders. The bike was moving fast, but we had an aerial view, and four vehicles in motion. Five, if Holly and the Atlanta Hunters she was with could get to their car before the Feds locked the plaza down. We just needed to stick with the thief long enough to find a place to corner her.

  The biker kept accelerating. Hertzfeldt drove like a maniac. Which I guess was the default for Atlanta anyway. Angry drivers honked at us. We made several hard turns. I got tossed off my perch and ended up sliding around on the open floor of the surveillance van. If I’d known we were going to get into a car chase today, I wouldn’t have volunteered to ride in the vehicle that didn’t have any real seats in back. Trip was smart enough to climb forward and get in the passenger seat to buckle himself in.

&nbs
p; “She’s trying to shake us,” Hertzfeldt warned as we careened wildly around a corner. Cars honked as we zipped through a red light.

  “I doubt she knows we’re behind her,” Trip said. “She’s just trying to get some distance between her and that office before a hundred cops show up.”

  “I’m going to lose her.”

  “That’s fine. That’s what Skippy’s for. Everybody’s got their job. Yours is to not crash.” Trip keyed his radio. “This is the van. She’s too fast. We can’t maintain visual.”

  All I could see was sticky van floor. Luckily Milo had the rider on camera and kept giving everyone directions. “She’s southbound on West Peachtree, passing Ponce De Leon.”

  “What is up with you people and all the friggin’ peach trees?” I asked noone in particular. But this was where having the local team driving really came in handy. Boone’s team lived here. This was home turf for them. All Milo had to do was read street names off a computer screen and our locals would know how to box her in. I could hear sirens closing fast. The MCB’s antics had attracted the regular police. I struggled upright so I could see out the window. “I bet she slows down to avoid attracting attention now.”

  Sure enough, once we were several blocks from the altercation, Milo told us that the rider had stopped zipping between cars and was now blending in and not breaking any traffic laws. That meant lights and congestion were going to slow her down, but it was better than drawing the attention of a cop. We’d mounted a police scanner in the van, and from the sounds of it, the local cops were pretty agitated because some unexpected downtown bust by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had turned into a gunfight. Good old MCB and their fake credentials.

  “Okay, Hunters. Try to get close as you can without being seen and get ready for her to bail,” Earl warned. “We’re dealing with a pro. I bet you she’s got another vehicle stashed, or she’s got some other escape route planned.”