The senior agent appeared to mull that over. The idea seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth. "Fine. For now…" Myers said coldly. "We'll see about that in the long term, Earl."
I moved to help Julie stand. She looked shaky. Her wound had reopened, but there was not too much blood. She pushed me away. "I'm okay," she said.
"Bull," I stated. "Let me help you." I took her by the arm.
"All units. We're clear. Hold your fire. Prepare to pull out," Myers ordered into the radio. The Feds attended to their injured. The five men that Harbinger had attacked were all stirring, though some looked to be nursing broken bones. "You better not have seriously hurt any of my men," he told Harbinger. "I don't care how important some people think you are, Earl, I'll personally make sure your special status is revoked, and I'll see to it you rot in prison forever."
"I didn't hurt them too bad," Harbinger said simply. He spread his hands innocently, though he could not mask his predatory confidence. Somehow he had moved, weaponless, through a crowd of ready and armed men, and beaten down any of them that stood in his way. "They shouldn't have tried to stop me."
I remembered how Harbinger had saved me from Darné. At the time I had assumed that it had just been some sort of pro Monster Hunting trick, but after watching him dispatch the Feds with relative ease, I knew that something else was going on. "Just what the hell is he?" I said softly into Julie's ear. Somehow Harbinger heard me from across the room. He winked.
"It's a long story," she replied brusquely. "Earl, Grant's missing. Dad's dead."
"No," Harbinger said. His face fell. "Aw hell."
"My men have not reported any other Hunters on the premises," Myers said. "They probably took your man."
"Milo?" Harbinger shouted.
"I'm not getting Grant's signal on GPS. It's either broke or disabled… He was wearing his armor, right?"
"Yes. He was on guard duty," she shouted back down the hall.
"Sorry, Julie. I've got nothing."
"He will be avenged," Sam told her. The big cowboy was solemn. "I promise."
"If it's any consolation, I'm sorry. But we're wasting time," Myers stated. "I need a Place, and I need it now. You have my word. Whatever thing you have hiding out there, we won't bother it."
"Deal," Harbinger said. "Julie?"
"Somewhere inside Natchy Bottom, Mississippi," she told the room after an instant of hesitation. She would have to grieve later. "You know about it?"
"Yes. We know it," the senior agent replied. "Bad place. Where though? That's a lot of swamp to cover."
"Dad said that it was hidden. You need to talk to the Wendigo to find out where."
"Impossible," Myers said. "Those are just Indian fairy tales."
"Nope," Harbinger said. "The Bottoms belong to him. We have an understanding."
"Fine. We'll handle it. You and your thugs can clean up the local undead outbreaks," Myers snapped. "We'll set up on the Place and blow the Cursed One to kingdom come."
"One problem," Julie said. "The Wendigo isn't going to talk to you. You're going to be wandering around the woods for weeks. You know what the Bottoms are like. The rules don't apply there."
"Let me guess," Myers said. He exhaled slowly, apparently trying to control his anger. "This thing will talk to you people though."
"He'll only talk to me," Harbinger said, before adding with a note of barely concealed disgust, "looks like we're going with you."
Myers cursed. The man had a remarkable gift for creative profanity.
"Looks like we get to work together," I told Franks cheerfully.
The silent brute just nodded as he patted his Glock, doubtlessly contemplating the moment he would finally get to use it on me.
"This is it," I said. "We know where the Cursed One is going to be. We finish this tomorrow-one way or the other."
"About time," Sam said. "Grant was one of us. That slimy bastard is gonna pay." The big cowboy kicked at the gravel.
"Yeah," Milo added with what was for him, unusual somberness. He wore his night vision monocular and scanned back and forth across the property.
The three of us were standing in the darkened driveway of the Shackleford ancestral home near the vehicles. We were waiting for the others. Gretchen was applying some first aid to Trip after the little bit of "stick time" he had received. Holly was grabbing some gear. Harbinger and Julie were standing about a hundred yards away, talking quietly amongst themselves. Apparently Julie had a few things that she needed to speak with him about privately. The Feds had left, quite a bit worse for wear after the beating that some of them had received from Harbinger.
"What do you think they did with him?" I asked. I did not like the way that we were talking about our companion as if he were already dead, but I could not realistically see much hope for the alternative.
"The Old Man's journal said that they needed to sacrifice a Hunter to use their device," Milo said. "I'm guessing that poor Grant is going to get himself sacrificed."
"Sucky way to die," Sam agreed.
"Do they need to keep him alive until the full moon? There is a possibility he could be alive still."
"Maybe," Milo said. "We can hope." He sounded doubtful. Most of the seasoned Hunters' missions involved search and destroy, rather than rescue.
Having eavesdropped on Grant's contrition earlier made him somehow more human now, and made his being taken that much more difficult to stomach. But a tiny, ugly part of me hated him even more now, because I could see that Julie was taking his disappearance hard, and I found myself somehow jealous of someone who was probably already dead. We sat in silence for a few moments. In the distance I could see that Julie and Harbinger were arguing. She looked rather angry and animated as the senior Hunter tried to explain something.
"What do you think they're fighting about?" I asked.
"I'm guessing she wants to know if Earl knew that Susan was a vampire," Milo answered as he looked upward through the night vision. "I can never get over how many stars you can see through one of these things."
"Did he know?"
"Beats me," Sam answered. "We had our suspicions, of course. We had never found her body, and they had been hunting a vampire. I mean, I guess we all kind of thought about it, but none of us wanted to think it was a real possibility. You gotta understand, we loved Susan. The idea of having any of us turned to the other side… well, that… That just ain't no good."
"I've got a chainsaw with my name on it in my workshop," Milo told us happily. "If I'm ever killed by undead, I want you guys to chop me up with it. It's a good chainsaw."
"I reckon it is, Milo. I would be honored to chop your head off," Sam said. I worked with some interesting folks.
The lights in the house were extinguished. Trip, Holly and Gretchen joined us a moment later. Since we had blown holes in the ballroom, and the Feds had kicked in all of the doors and many of the windows, we could not even lock up anything other than the vault. I just hoped that nobody came up here and looted the place while we were gone.
Trip was limping and did not look very good. "Now I know how Rodney King felt," he said through swollen gums. One eye was matted shut, and Gretchen had smeared him with some sort of foul-smelling cream.
"Yeah, but you ain't gonna get no million dollar settlement to blow on hookers and crack like he did," Sam said wryly. "We're just waiting for the boss and we can get out of here. We got us some monsters to kill."
Julie and Harbinger continued fighting for another minute, before finally coming to some sort of terms. He hugged her as she sobbed on his shoulder.
"She's had a tough night," Milo said simply. Estranged father dead. Boyfriend missing. Mother revealed to be undead. Milo Anderson was a master of understatement. None of us disagreed.