Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (6 page)

“Orders.”

I could almost have sworn that he sounded bitter about that. “Myers around?” Franks raised a single eyebrow, as if to say
you haven’t heard?
The fact that I understood that gesture told me that I had spent entirely too much time around Franks. “Wait. What happened to your boss?”

“They’ll announce it.” He really didn’t sound happy now. Another agent came up next to Franks and whispered something to him. “Reporter or protestor?” Franks listened as the agent kept whispering. Not that he actually displayed any emotion; having something to do seemed to cheer him up, or maybe I was just projecting, like when you have a conversation with a plant. “Someone is trying to get in without a badge.” He began walking away.

“Well, don’t kill anybody.”

Franks paused for a second. “Why not?”

“Uh…Never mind. See you around, Franks.”

I followed the crowd. Luckily there was a table of coffee and snacks, so I grabbed a couple of doughnuts on the way in. The opening ceremonies were being held in a gigantic ballroom. A stage and podium had been set up in the front, and the rest of the room had been filled with chairs. My wife spotted me and waved. She’d saved us a few seats.

Earl was shaking hands with some old acquaintances. He joined us a moment later with “I hate these sorts of things.”

We sat toward the back. Julie was wearing a conservative dress that just screamed business, Earl was in his leather jacket like normal and extra irritable because there wasn’t a smoking area anywhere nearby, and Nate was in a suit and had a bandage on his nose from last night. The poor kid looked rough, but that was understandable since getting hit by Lacoco was like getting hit by a truck. There were other members of MHI in the mass of Hunters filing in. Many of us had been smart enough to skip this part to go look at guns. I didn’t see Lacoco, which was probably a good thing, and I had no idea if Tanya the elf had ever turned up either. Obviously, Skippy and Edward, who had been working our last case with us, didn’t like crowds and had volunteered to stay with the chopper at the airport. That was unfortunate, because if we’d had Edward’s Orc Fu at the buffet fight we would’ve totally kicked ass.

Julie had been doing this for years and Earl had been doing this for a
really
long time, so between the two of them they knew almost everybody and kept up a running commentary as the other participants came in. “Those are the boys from Tokyo. They positively own the giant monster business. I’ll have to introduce you. They’re all right.”

“Good to see French Hunters made it,” Julie said. “Is that Jean Darne’s son?”

“I think so…I should probably avoid him. He might be a little sore since I beheaded his daddy.”

“You did his dad a favor,” Julie said. “I’ll talk to him later. I can relate.”

“Be good to keep up friendly relations.” Earl nodded. “Those French Hunters are all right.”

There was a sudden flood of matching black polo shirts. They had even choreographed their arrival, with Armstrong in the lead. “Hey, Prehensile Tails got out of jail too.”

“I thought it was Panoramic Toast.” Even Julie had decided to join in.

Earl gave Paranormal Tactical Consulting the once-over. “Well, now it’s obvious why you kids wanted to hit them so bad. They look like assholes.”

That went on for some time as Earl grouped all the newcomers into one of two categories. They were either
assholes
or
all right.
Because of his extraordinarily long career, Earl was like an encyclopedia of everyone in the business, and if he didn’t know them personally, they were more likely to fall into the asshole category. For Earl, everyone from the government automatically went into the first bucket until proven otherwise. By the time the lights dimmed we had seen Hunters from fifteen different countries, sometimes more than one team from the same country, with Earl praising one bunch and cursing the next.

My phone buzzed with a text from Milo.
Dude. SHOT is awesome. Our ammo mfg is loading our 30 cal silver bullets in 7.62x39 and 300 win mag now! I got free samples and a hat!
That simply wasn’t fair.

It took another fifteen minutes for everyone to come in. Many of the latecomers looked hung over and tired, but such was the nature of Vegas. A spotlight turned on over the speaker’s podium and the MC came out wearing a tuxedo. “How long is this going to take?” Earl leaned across me to ask Julie.

She had thoughtfully grabbed a schedule. “Let’s see…Welcome, intros, some announcement from the MCB, a couple of keynote speeches…About two hours. Then the luncheon, then the panels start…And you two had damn well better be attending the ones I’m on. The keynote address is at six.”

Earl and I groaned simultaneously. “I’m gonna need a smoke.” Earl got up to sneak out.

“Bring me back a plate of those little sausages and some cheese balls, would you?” I asked.

Regardless of what business you’re in, these sorts of things were always the same. Introduce yourself. Applause. Introduce everybody else. Applause. Tell a lame joke. Applause. Thank everyone and their dog…I mean, come on, the people in this room kill supernatural beings for a living…How could you possibly make that tedious? Yet somehow, they did. The master of ceremonies was long-winded and I was quickly bored. It didn’t help that Milo kept texting me every so often about something else that I was missing.
Z! I met Ted Nugent and got his autograph! He was cool.
Followed ten minutes later with
Found secret killer robot company! Going for a test drive! LOL!
If I hadn’t known Milo was such a nice guy I would’ve sworn that he was tormenting me on purpose.
Picking up more awesome free samples! 20mm cannon!
The number of bodies crammed in made it too warm, and per Julie’s insistence, I’d worn a tie, which made it more stuffy, all of which made me want to take a nap.

When the MC introduced the guests of honor, he mentioned that an invitation had been extended to Raymond Shackleford the Third, owner of Monster Hunter International, but that he’d been unable to attend due to health reasons. Which was partially true, with the other part being that he’d simply thought the whole thing had sounded boring and being a guest of honor was pretentious. When they said the boss’s name, all of the members of MHI, myself included, gave him a standing ovation. I was happy to see that several members from some of the foreign teams stood up out of respect too. They should. He was a living legend.

“Aw, Grandpa would’ve really liked that,” Julie said.

That part was interesting, but then it was back to thanking the generous organizers of this illustrious secret gathering and all that jazz. I hadn’t gotten much sleep, so I think I might have nodded off for a minute or two when Julie elbowed me awake. “Huh? What?”
Had I been snoring?

“Did you catch that?”

“What?” And then I noticed that there was a general murmur going through the audience.

“The next speaker is the new director of the Monster Control Bureau, and it
isn’t
Myers.”

Dwayne Myers had been running the MCB since right after I’d first been mauled by a werewolf, but he had only been the
interim
director, pending congressional approval. The previous real director had been run out because of some scandal. Myers had been running things for so long that I had always just assumed he would end up officially in charge. Myers was a complete jerk, but he was also a ruthlessly efficient jerk. I perked up. Hunters had no choice but to deal with the MCB, so this announcement could go either way.

“What’s his name?”

“Douglas Stark. Sounds familiar, but I can’t remember from where. Ringing any bells?”

“Never heard of him.” I looked around for Earl, since he knew everybody, but he wasn’t back yet. “A new guy, huh? How bad could he be?”

“Never say that about the MCB,” Julie hissed. “You’ll jinx us!”

The MC got out of the way and a stocky man with bulldog jowls entered from behind the curtains. He walked across the stage with a swagger, took his place at the podium to sporadic and lackluster applause, reached into his suit, took out a piece of paper, cleared his throat, and began to read his speech. “Thank you, Ken. Thank you, everyone, for the warm welcome.” The dozen or so MCB agents that were actually clapping stopped. “I’m Special Agent Doug Stark and I am
honored
to be a guest here at the first annual International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals. It is my goal to usher in a new era of cooperation between public sector and private sector Hunters.”

“That’ll be the day.” Earl slid in next to me. He had neglected to bring me more snacks. “Why’s that jackass talking?”

“That’s the new MCB director.”

“You’re messing with me…Oh shit, you’re not.
Him?
” Earl’s eyes narrowed. “God help us…I should’ve killed that son of a bitch when I had the chance.”

After Director Stark’s incredibly self-aggrandizing speech, we broke for lunch, and the first thing Earl did was track down and corner Agent Franks to get an explanation. I followed along, mostly because I wanted to see what happened when the unstoppable force ran into the immovable object. We found the big agent in the hall outside the main room, frowning at the multitude of passing Hunters, surely bummed that he wasn’t allowed to hit them. “Franks. We need to talk.”

“Harbinger.” Franks didn’t seem surprised to see us. “Pitt.”

“What the hell happened to Myers?”

“I’m unable to comment on personnel matters.” He said the words like they were memorized. I had a sneaky feeling that would be the standard line from any member of the MCB.

“Come on. We both know this is a bad call. I can’t stand Dwayne, but he’s a strategic genius compared to Stark. What did they do with him?”

The wheels turned, but apparently Franks had something to gain by not being a totally uncooperative dick. “Transferred. Agent Myers is over the Special Response Team.” To the best of my knowledge, the MCB’s Special Response Team were the ones that came swooping in with all of the big guns. It was a job that seemed a little too
militaristic
for Agent Myers.

“That’s a demotion. Why in the world would they do that? Are their heads that far up their asses over there? Stark’s a coward and a moron. We both know that.”

Franks looked around to see who was listening, and for the very first time ever, I think he might have been
uncomfortable.
“I’m unable to comment on personnel mat—”

“Cram your personnel matters. You unable to comment about what happened in Copper Lake? Or the Arbmunep? Or Lord Machado? Or all the other shit popping up around the world since then? Things are speeding up everywhere and your boss was throwing a fit about it. I know about you stopping something big in California recently.”

Franks scowled, suspicious. “He told you?”

“A little, because as much as me and Myers hate each other, that son of a bitch at least knew what was at stake. We had an understanding. Something’s coming. We can all feel it, and they put fucking Stark in charge? The man spent half a werewolf siege trying to throw children out of a bomb shelter so he could take a spot. What is
wrong
with you people?”

Franks glanced around again, apparently didn’t see any of his men, then surprisingly, reached into his suit and shut his radio off. “Agent Myers was…opinionated.”

“Dwayne rocked the boat.”

Franks shrugged. “Over my pay grade.”

I couldn’t help myself. “You get paid? I figured you were in this for the perks.”

Franks had a real talent for ignoring me. “Agent Myers had some…disagreements…with the administration. Agent Stark…”

“Is a bootlicking bureaucrat paper shuffler who’ll roll over and do whatever he’s told.”

“I am unable to comment on personnel matters,” Franks said again, but I could’ve sworn that one sounded like a
yes
. “Agent Stark was cited for valor for stopping an outbreak in Michigan.” It was so very hard to tell when Franks was being sarcastic. “He likes you, Harbinger.”
Okay, that time I could tell.

“I bet he does…I’m the one that broke his fat nose. So someone in the government wants their strongest entity for dealing with the supernatural neutered and out of the way.” Earl leaned in really close and looked Franks square in the eye. “Unicorn is calling the shots again, ain’t they?” Earl said that with a lot of venom.
Unicorn?
I didn’t think he meant like an actual magic horse with a horn.
Who the hell was unicorn?

Whoever Unicorn was, Franks didn’t like hearing that word. Franks took an uncomfortably long time responding. “This conversation never happened.” He reached into his coat, turned his radio on, and went back to scanning the crowd, ignoring us completely.

Earl stomped off and I followed him down the hall. “What’s he talking about? Uni—”

My boss silenced me with a hard look. “Not now.” This had to be related to what had happened in Copper Lake, but Earl was in such a sour mood that I didn’t dare bring it up.

Julie and Nate were at the luncheon, mingling and being social with some of our competitors. The two of them saw the look on Earl’s face and immediately knew something bad had happened. “You okay?” Julie asked as she excused herself from a red-faced Englishmen with a really big mustache.

“We’ll talk about it later, but right now, do me a favor, talk to as many of the overseas Hunters as you can. I want to know what kind of activity they’ve been seeing lately, and especially if it seems to be on the rise.”

“You want me to spread the word?” Julie pulled out her iPhone. “There’s a mess of us here.”

“Get Holly. All she has to do is smile and any man will tell her whatever she wants to hear.” Earl thought about it for a second. “On second thought, ask everybody you think can play it close to the vest and talk to our competitors without getting into fistfights.” He glanced at me as he said that.

“In my defense, I didn’t fight anyone from PT. I fought one of our Newbies.”

“Skip Paranormal Testicles or whatever the hell their name is. I want to know about outside the country, areas where we don’t have a lot of contacts especially, and I don’t want this getting back to the MCB that we’re asking.”