Raymond Shackleford the Third, semi-retired super Hunter, whom Julie referred to as Grandpa, and the rest of us normally just called Boss, was sitting at his customary seat at the head of the table. He had aged quite a bit during the time I had known him. His white hair was getting wispier, the scarred side of his face around his eye patch was beginning to droop, and I was sad to notice that his nagging cough had gotten worse since we had left for Mexico. He was more of a symbolic leader. Earl Harbinger, real name Raymond Shackleford the Second, ran the day-to-day operations of the company, but there was no way that the Boss was going to sit out on a death threat against one of his Hunters. Missing his right hand, he banged his stainless-steel hook on the table to get everyone's attention.
He cleared his throat. "All right, people. What's the consensus?"
"Z's hosed," Trip suggested.
"Thank you, Mr. Jones. All in favor?"
The entire table said "Aye," then laughed at my expense. "Thanks, guys," I muttered. Julie patted my hand under the table.
"All right, enough of that tomfoolery," the Boss ordered. "Threat assessment?"
"Very bad, sir," Lee hoisted the first book. "Nobody knows who this necromancer is. I've been reading up on them today, and that title can be used for anybody who dabbles in death magic, animating the dead, all the way up to some really bad men who've done some terrible things."
"What kind of terrible?"
"Pretty much anything you can think of. The last MHI case I can find involving one was in Haiti, 1978. There was a high body count on that one," Lee replied.
"I remember that," the Boss said. "That was the man who had all those doppelgangers working for him, replaced all the city authorities, and then held himself a big old massacre." We'd learned a bit about doppelgangers in training, but hadn't spent much time on them since nobody had seen one for decades. They were perfect mimics, and historically, the mysterious creatures had caused all sorts of trouble. "Good thing we haven't had to deal with those cursed shapeshifters since."
"No, you're thinking of Cuba in '53," Harbinger corrected his son. "Haiti was the one where the necromancer sewed all those bodies together into that giant flesh golem."
"My memory ain't what it used to be," the Boss replied simply. I noted that Harbinger looked a little sad at that. It had to be difficult to see your loved ones age a decade for every one of yours.
"Either way you get the point. This could be potentially really ugly. Historically they've raised the dead, invented totally new kinds of undead, opened portals to other dimensions, that kind of thing," Lee said. "And I'm assuming it gets worse." Our archivist pulled on a pair of surgical gloves before opening the largest, dustiest, and oldest book. The cover was bound in ornate leather and the pages were hand-inked on yellowed parchment. Lee was very careful, almost delicate, in order to not damage the ancient tome. "The Feds' notes mentioned that the Condition has a pet shoggoth, so I figured I would see what one of those could do…" The drawing was of a horrible, bulbous, lumpy, asymmetrical thing, with far too many mouths and eyes. I was really hoping that the artist had been exaggerating. "There are passing references to them in different places. This one is in Arabic, but it had the most info on them."
"Nasty…What's it do?" Holly asked.
The Boss and Harbinger exchanged a quick glance. The Boss spoke first. "They're a pain in the rear, is what they are. My brother Leroy and I fought one once, right here in Cazador. It moved into the forest years back. Stinky, messy beast, started eating townsfolk and livestock. I tried to kill it, but it got away."
"You never told me you'd hunted a shoggoth, Grandpa." Julie leaned across me to see the book. "I didn't know those still existed." Julie frowned as she studied the picture. "Wait a second…Mr. Trash Bags?"
"Who's Mr. Trash Bags?" I asked.
Her mouth fell open as she recognized it. Julie pointed at the old book. "Right there! That's Mr. Trash Bags! He was my imaginary friend when I was a little girl. We used to play games together in the forest. He was big and cuddly and sweet. You know how imaginary friends are. But that's totally him, Mr. Trash Bags. I was like six years old, but I still remember."
She had to be pulling my leg. "Your imaginary friend was a blob?"
"Sorry, Jules. He wasn't imaginary," Earl said apologetically. "And you were four. We never could figure out why it didn't just eat you. You cried for days after we chased it off."
Julie leaned back, looking flustered. "Wow…that…that really sucks," my fiancée said slowly. "He was such a nice…thing."
"Yes, and that's why I didn't tell you," her Grandpa said. "I figured you didn't need to know that your best friend was a soul-sucking creature from the great beyond. I hope you understand, my dear. Please, carry on, Mr. Lee."
Lee appeared a little surprised that one of his managers had been friends with a horrific blob. "Uh…yeah. Shoggoths are basically servants, manual laborers to the Old Ones. They do their bidding, run errands, eat people, dig tunnels, that kind of thing. To quote the original author, who's only referred to as the Mad Arab, 'To look upon their hideous thousand eyes is to invite horror and the suffering of infinite madness, within tombs of blackness where the innocent are devoured for eternity.' And so on."
"He seemed really nice…" Julie said hesitantly. "This is a major bummer…"
"They're amorphous. They can change shape quickly, but they're about fifteen feet across and weigh around two tons," Earl said. "They can communicate, but they're relatively stupid. Just brute force, steamrollers, made out of tar and eyeballs. And they eat everything."Except for a four-year-old girl, luckily. Julie seemed to be taking it well, but she came from a long line of Hunters who were proud of their flexible minds. Harbinger continued. "Fire chased it off last time. Milo, I want all the flamethrowers checked out and ready to go."
Julie rubbed her neck. "Well, that just makes me sad."
Now it was my turn to pat her hand under the table.
Esmeralda Paxton raised her hand politely to cut in. "You have more problems than just a shoggoth, not that those aren't terrible enough, mind you. One of these intercepted e-mail messages mentions, and I quote, ‘The High Priest is prepared to use Force and Violence to satisfy the requests of the great Old Ones, no matter what the cost.' "
"Well, he did hit me with a toilet," I pointed out. "That's pretty damn violent."
She shook her head. "Force and Violence are capitalized."
I looked at her stupidly. "Cultists are bad at grammar?"
"They're proper nouns?" Trip asked. "Those are names."
Esmeralda smiled and pointed at Trip. "Bingo. And if this is who I'm thinking of, the Los Alamos team fought them once before, back when I was a Newbie."
Harbinger thought about it for a moment, scowling. "Cratos and Bia? It can't be. That was twenty years ago."
"Seventeen years. Please don't try and age me prematurely, Earl," the petite woman scolded him. "I'm not a little old lady yet, though I do eventually plan on being a surprisingly aggressive little old lady. They use the old Greek names for Force and Violence. They've been around for a really long time. Some say they're immortals."
"Everything's immortal," Earl stated, "until you figure out how to kill it."
"My team tracked them across southern Europe. They were easy to follow, since they made a mess wherever they went. We even managed to ambush them once, only to discover that they were virtually indestructible. Then they vanished into thin air. We never did get to collect those bounties."
"So, what are Force and Violence?" Julie asked. "I don't remember this kind."