I figured that was probably as close to an apology as he had ever mustered. I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything further. Holly entered from the back and Gretchen glided silently in from the kitchen. Julie shrugged out from under Grant's arm and sat down. She was back to business.
"So what's going on back at the compound?" Julie demanded. "And more important, how's Doctor Nelson?"
Grant adjusted his silk tie as he spoke. He did not like being ordered around, but he knew his place. "The doctor's going to be okay. He suffered a coronary, but he's stable." I breathed a sigh of relief.
"As for the compound, Myers and the Monster Control Bureau agents are still there. They want your father, badly. APBs have been issued for him, you and Pitt. They're making life difficult. All of our personnel have been grounded until Ray Shackleford is found. "
"That sucks," Julie said.
"There is good news, though. There have been undead attacks all over Georgia, Alabama and Eastern Mississippi. Looks like the seven split up to cause trouble. Over the last two days, newly created vampires, wights and zombies have wreaked havoc."
"That's good news?" Trip said incredulously.
"Sure is. The Feds are jumping, trying to contain the outbreaks, and still watch the spots they think are Places of Power. Local law enforcement doesn't have any idea what's going on because the Feds are keeping them in the dark. Every National Guardsman and Reservist in the South has been called up on emergency duty. Local officials are panicking. The news is reporting it all as terrorist attacks and Homeland Security has moved most of the Southeast to condition red."
"I'm still not grasping the 'good' part of that," Trip replied.
Grant sighed in exasperation, as if baffled by the ignorance of Newbies. "Harbinger's put the word out to all of the local officials who are on our side. The Governor's office, state legislatures, even Congress and the Senate, pretty much every pro-Hunting politician." I imagined that some of our bounty from the Antoine-Henri job had been used to grease a few palms as well. "They're putting pressure on Myers to let us go so we can do our jobs. We have contracts with these states that we can't currently fulfill because of the Feds. Lots of people are getting ticked off, and the worse the crisis gets, the more their complaints get heard by Myers' bosses in Washington. The last thing that they want is for it to get so bad that the truth can't be contained from the general populace."
"So you think they're going to let us go?" asked Holly. "The Feds are just going to back off?"
"I think so," Grant said smugly. Which I took to mean that Harbinger thought so, and Grant liked to be right. "If there are more attacks tonight like there were last night, then they aren't going to have much choice."
"I'm surprised they're doing this. It isn't like vampires to provoke confrontation with humans. They're powerful, but there are lots more of us than there are of them. Direct confrontation with the living usually gets them staked and chopped in short order. Why all of these attacks?" Julie mused.
"Because in three days, it isn't going to matter," I told them. "The seven are only here to help the Cursed One. They know that we're onto them. They have nothing to lose. They attack. They create more undead. They cause confusion and spread human forces thin. That's what they want."
"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."