"It's complicated, I'll try to explain, but is the team okay? And what are you doing with these guys?"

"Everybody's fine. I made Myers bring me when I found out he was looking for you. Oh, Owen, I'm just glad you're safe."

The driver's side door opened and Agent Franks squeezed his bulk behind the wheel. Myers slid into the pa.s.senger side. The interior light died when he closed the door. Myers turned to face us over the seat.

"You didn't make me do anything. I let let you come," he snapped. you come," he snapped.

"I hoped we could use her to ID your body," Franks said emotionlessly. That made two complete sentences in one night, which was pretty good for Franks. Sadly, both of them had something to do with wishing for my death. I suppose I just have that effect on some people. Franks slammed the big vehicle into gear and gunned it out through the gate in a spray of gravel. Prisoners caught in the headlights had to jump out of the way to avoid being run down. Myers turned back around and spoke into his radio, ordering the other two vehicles to watch for an ambush. The gates of Tijira Prison faded into the background.

"And the zombie outbreak? Did we get it contained in time?" I had to know. It was stupid, but I felt like it was my fault.

"There were only a few more casualties after you were arrested. A Girls Gone Wild Girls Gone Wild video crew had their brains eaten...so no significant losses," Myers stated. video crew had their brains eaten...so no significant losses," Myers stated.

"What happened? How did you end up here?" Julie asked. "And what happened to your head? That lump is huge."

"Shotgun b.u.t.t." I dismissed it with a wave. Unfortunately for me, traumatic brain injuries were a relatively common occurrence. "I'll explain later. I saw your mom and dad."

"What?" Julie's voice rose an octave. "Here? Now?" She turned and watched out the window. "Not again..." Normally Julie's Alabama accent was very faint, except for when she got excited, or in this case, scared. Susan and Ray would be a dark spot in our life until they finally got staked and chopped.

"I think they're gone for now." I put my arm over her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. "I'll fill you in on what they said, but I don't want these p.r.i.c.ks to hear." She nodded and her hand moved to the black mark on the side of her neck, an unconscious habit that she had picked up when she was under a great deal of stress. To most people, the mark looked like a thick, black, line tattoo. In actuality it was something entirely different. Susan's parting words had been about how the mark that had saved Julie was going to eventually kill her. Not if I can help it. Not if I can help it.

"Pitt, at the resort, did you see him?" Myers queried, back to business.

"Him who?" I decided to play stupid. I knew that the Feds had not rescued me out of the goodness of their hearts and I wanted to know why.

"The leader of the Condition. The necromancer."

"English guy, turns into a giant shadow when the lights go out, throws toilets at people, that one?"

Myers got excited. "Did you see his face?"

"A little, but it was dark."

"I'll have you talk to a sketch artist on the flight home. You're now the only person we know of who has seen him in person."

"What's the Condition?" Julie asked.

"The Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. They're a death cult. A real bunch of nut-job whackos. They've been around forever, but only over the last year have they really shown up on our radar. The man who attacked you, he's their leader."

"A church? Why don't you just go burn their compound down? You guys are Feds after all."

Myers either didn't get the jab, or he chose to ignore it. "We would if we could. But the Condition is good. They work in cells. Their higher-level operatives are known as the Exalted Order of the Shadows. We can't isolate their leaders, or even most of their ranking members. As far as we can tell they're dabbling in some real hard-core black magic. And they're connected...businessmen, politicians, the media, even movie stars. This cult is now our number one priority."

"Let me guess. They worship the Old Ones?"

"Yes. And they're out to get you specifically," he said, pausing briefly in thought. "How did you know that they were connected to those things?"

I didn't say anything.

Myers turned around and glared at me. "Look, Pitt, if you have information, you need to share it. These guys are bad news, their leader is secret enemy number one, and right now I'm your best chance to survive them." He tried to look friendly, and mostly failed. "I know that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but I'm trying to help you here."

"Why?"

"That's our job. We're supposed to protect and defend the taxpayers." He smiled, and in the dark I wasn't sure if the government man or Susan had been more intimidating, but for totally different reasons. One because it represented a soulless ent.i.ty with the power to suck the very blood from the innocent, and the other because it was a vampire. The Suburban continued to accelerate down the rutted road.

"Bulls.h.i.t."

Myers shrugged. He was smart enough not to waste his time. "All right, let me level with you. You are currently our only in against this cult. Just about everybody we've tried to infiltrate has ended up zombified or worse. I've finally got a man inside, but he's low on their totem pole and they won't reveal anything to him. We can't get any of the known members to turn snitch, and if they seem to think about it, they're never seen again. But the Condition's fixated on you, and through you, it gives us a way to capture some of them for questioning."

I put my face in my palm. "Oh, come on. Why does everything seem to have it in for me personally?" I figured I knew why I was the target of the Old Ones. I had been responsible for thwarting their invasion, but the Feds did not know that. I was sure of that much, because if the Feds knew what I had pulled off, up to and including time travel, then I had no doubt that my brain would be sitting a gla.s.s jar in some government lab being poked with electrodes to see how it worked.

"About that..." Myers looked away, a little sheepish. "Sorry."

I'd screwed up their invasion plans by not falling in line. I had no idea what Myers had to be sorry about. "Huh?"

"It was a misunderstanding," he said. I waited for the explanation. Myers took his time, actually seeming a bit embarra.s.sed. "See, when MHI was fighting Lord Machado's minions, we decided to play it safe...So we...kind of...dropped a nuke on the area."

"You did what?" Julie shouted. "You tried to nuke Alabama?"

"Only a little one. It was for the best," he said defensively. "We didn't think you were going to succeed. I was certain that the bad guys were going to win, and I couldn't allow that. You know what would have happened then."

"Gee whiz, thanks, Myers. I was right there, and I didn't see a mushroom cloud, so I'm a.s.suming you screwed up."

He shrugged. "When the bomb struck, the rift had already been opened. It pa.s.sed through cleanly and detonated on the other side, inside the Old Ones' reality. It must have made them angry and from what our intel is telling us, it even hurt the big cheese of Old Ones. For some reason they think that you're the one that sent the weapon...Hence, the interdimensional hit out for you. Sorry."

"I don't think sorry sorry covers the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, jacka.s.s." No wonder the Old Ones were blaming me. Not only had I wrecked their invasion, they also thought that I had attacked them in their own world as well. I've made a lot of people angry throughout the course of my life, but I'd never hit a 10,000-foot-tall crustacean with an atom bomb before. covers the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, jacka.s.s." No wonder the Old Ones were blaming me. Not only had I wrecked their invasion, they also thought that I had attacked them in their own world as well. I've made a lot of people angry throughout the course of my life, but I'd never hit a 10,000-foot-tall crustacean with an atom bomb before.

"So, what now?" Julie snapped. "We just wait for this cult to come and kill my fiance? I don't think so."

Myers shook his head. "We're going to fly you home. I want you to go about your business, and wait for the cult to make their move. I'll provide a protective detail to guard you, and when the cult strikes, we'll be ready."

"Why don't I just go hide out somewhere? Lay low for a while?" It was a rhetorical question. I was not the running type.

"They'll find you. The Condition aren't normal nut jobs. Unfortunately the stuff they believe in actually works. No. I want you in the open. And they are going to have to crawl out from under their rock to get you, and when they do..." Myers' slammed his fist into his palm. It was actually not a very intimidating mannerism from a person who looked like a junior college English professor.

"So after they kill me, you swoop in and arrest them?"

Franks finally spoke. "They won't kill you."

"And why not?"

Franks didn't answer. Myers patted the terse man on the shoulder. "You'll be safe because you'll be under the personal protection of my best men, led by Agent Franks himself. His primary mission is to keep you alive."

The very idea was preposterous. Franks? Protecting me? "Screw that," I sputtered. "I'll take my chance with the zombies."

"I've never failed a mission," Franks said simply.

"And what about the Natchy Bottom?"

"Doesn't count," Franks replied. I saw his cold eyes flick to the rearview mirror. He watched me for a moment before returning his attention to the road. Franks had gotten just as dead as the rest of us before I had managed to erase five minutes of time. He had put up an amazing fight and had taken inhuman amounts of damage before going down, but he had still lost.

"I can protect myself," I stated.

"MHI can protect him," Julie added. "We're better at this than you federal guys anyway."

"Civilians," Franks muttered as he swung the wheel hard and took a sharp right onto a less traveled road. I didn't know if he meant us or the other drivers.

"You don't have a choice. Your country needs you, Pitt," Myers said.

"Needs me as bait! I'm not down with that. Get yourself a different worm for that hook, Myers. I don't trust your people at all. And it'll be a cold day in h.e.l.l before I put my life in the hands of that jackbooted thug." I gestured angrily at Franks. The big agent ignored me.

"You're going to let us protect you from the Condition, or we will make life very difficult for MHI. If you think you had it bad last time around, just push me and see what happens this time," Myers threatened. "You've used up your political goodwill from last summer, Harbinger isn't Congress' golden boy anymore, and my agency has been moved from Justice to Homeland Security."

"Didn't know that..." Julie said. Top-secret, shadow-government reorganizations didn't usually end up in the papers.

"Which means I'm now authorized to screw with your company more than ever before." Myers had once been a member of Monster Hunter International before he had left and joined the government. I did not know what had caused him to leave, but he certainly packed a bitter hate for us ever since. MHI had been shut down once before by executive order and I knew that some factions of the government were just itching for us to give them an excuse to do it again. "I'm prepared to take this all the way. Are you? Think on it."

Julie muttered something profane about Myers' ancestry under her breath. We both knew the senior Fed wasn't bluffing. The dark Mexican countryside flashed by outside the window as I glared at my reflection. This certainly sucked. In the previous twenty-four hours I had been attacked by a shadow necromancer and his zombies, beaten by Federales, Federales, deloused, visited by vampires, reunited with a shard of the most evil artifact in the known world, been targeted by a death cult, and had it topped off by being placed under the protection of a man who could best be described as deloused, visited by vampires, reunited with a shard of the most evil artifact in the known world, been targeted by a death cult, and had it topped off by being placed under the protection of a man who could best be described as not not a member of the Owen Z. Pitt fan club. a member of the Owen Z. Pitt fan club.

No one spoke for a long time. Finally Myers turned back around to watch the road, knowing in his little black bureaucrat's heart that he had us beat. Julie rested her head on my shoulder. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. We had faced worse together.

Or so I thought.

"What's on your mind?" I asked quietly.

Julie had pulled me aside once we had disembarked at the small airport. A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules was refueling nearby, and soon we would be on our way back to the States. The night sky was bright under the nearly full moon and I could make out the shape of Agent Franks shadowing us thirty feet away. He was scanning the chain link fence, looking for anything moving in the desert scrub. The man certainly took his job seriously. They were running some sort of loud compressor near the aircraft, so I wasn't worried about him overhearing us. Julie and I stood in the darkness behind a diminutive aircraft hangar while we talked about the day's events.

"This is c.r.a.p," she hissed. "I'm so sick and tired of the Feds." She was obviously upset, and her pretty features were drawn into a hard scowl.

"And..." I prompted. I knew her too well. There was obviously something else.

She grimaced. "And what the h.e.l.l were my parents doing here? I hate to say it, but when they offered a truce, I actually believed it. If they ever did anything against us, Earl would make it his life's work to track them down. I at least thought they had the sense of self-preservation to avoid that."

"Believe it or not, I think the truce is still in effect..." I briefly explained the nature of Susan's visit, but I'm ashamed to say that I held something back. I did not mention Susan's promise that Julie was going to die from the mark. I felt bad for withholding information, and I would tell her, but just not yet. For all I knew, Susan was lying, scheming, trying to find some way to unite more of her family into her dark world, the evil b.i.t.c.h.

"A shard of the artifact? How? It disappeared in Childersburg. I always a.s.sumed that the Feds got it when they cordoned off the area. How did my mom end up with part of it?"

I shrugged. "Beats me. All I know is that it hurt like h.e.l.l when she touched me with it. I'm scared to death of that thing."

"Do you think..." She searched for the words. "Could it be starting again?"

"I don't know," I answered. I hugged her tight. I was terrified of the things that artifact had done, and could do, and more especially, what it allowed allowed me to do. I'd rather kill myself than risk turning those things loose. "I just don't know." me to do. I'd rather kill myself than risk turning those things loose. "I just don't know."

"Oh, Owen...I've got a bad feeling about this. I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm not going anywhere. I promise." Saying that made me think of another promise. "I lost my gear. The pistols you gave me...your brother's pistols. They meant a lot-"

She stopped me flat. "We can replace the guns. I can't replace you."

Franks shouted at us, "It's time." As if to accentuate his words, the big engines turned over and the props began to roar.

"He's such an a.s.shole." Julie mumbled into my shoulder. She pushed slowly away, and we started toward the waiting plane. "Speaking of which..." She raised her voice, "Agent Franks!"

The Fed nodded in her direction.

"At DeSoya Caverns, last summer, I asked if you had taken care of my father, I asked if you had let him turn into a vampire, and if you had let him escape. Since Owen just saw him, I'm a.s.suming that you lied to me." Julie was intimidating when she was angry.

I don't think Franks' brain was wired with the capability of being intimidated. Franks shrugged. "Cla.s.sified," he said simply, turned and walked toward the plane.

"Oh, hanging out with him is just going to be a blast, won't it?" she asked.

"And for a while there I thought that me and Franks had come to terms..." We walked under the runway lights. The C-130 was drastically loud. The other Feds were carrying their gear up the loading ramp.

"Mr. Pitt? Ms. Shackleford?" A black-clad agent approached us. He had removed his helmet and balaclava and had tucked them under one arm. This one was young, and seemed friendly enough. His skin was deeply tanned, his neatly buzzed hair black, and his eyes twinkled when he smiled. There was a squat but heavy-looking duffle bag slung over one shoulder. He shouted to be heard over the engines. "I'm Agent Torres. I'm on your protective detail. It's an honor to meet you." He held out one gloved hand, and surprised, I shook it. It was not normal for the Feds to be nice to MHI personnel.

"You must be new," I shouted.

"Yes. Just a.s.signed to the Bureau. I came over from Border Patrol." He shook Julie's hand as well, and his face betrayed his surprise at the impressive strength in her handshake. I had had that reaction the first time I met her as well. "Ms. Shackleford, I read up on your family in the Monster Control academy. Wow, all I can say is, wow...You guys are amazing. Your great-grandfather was one of the pioneers of Monster Hunting. This is a real honor."

"Well, thanks," Julie stammered. Apparently I wasn't the only one surprised at meeting a friendly agent. My usual encounters with them involved bullying, threats, intimidation, and the occasional fist fight.

He unslung the duffle bag and handed it to me. "I think this belongs to you."

The bag was as heavy as it looked. I unzipped it, peered inside, and was greeted with a wonderful sight. "Abomination!" I shouted. I put the bag down and pulled out my customized Saiga shotgun. I pulled back the charging handle to check the chamber and the bolt was as slick as ever. It was a brutal weapon, a shortened, full-auto, magazine-fed 12-gauge, complete with underslung 40mm grenade launcher, EO-Tech holographic optic, and-the piece de resistance piece de resistance -a side-folding, silver-inlaid bayonet. Abomination and I had been through some serious things together. It wasn't just my gun, it was d.a.m.n near my friend. -a side-folding, silver-inlaid bayonet. Abomination and I had been through some serious things together. It wasn't just my gun, it was d.a.m.n near my friend.

"And my STIs...And my armor!" I was really geeking out now. My two.45s, built originally for Julie's brother Ray, had been put back in their holsters. The only thing missing was my Ganga Ram, last seen lodged in a zombie's skull. "No freaking way. This is awesome." In my defense, you don't get very far in my line of work unless you really get to know and love your equipment. "I thought these babies were gone forever...how did you find them?"

Torres seemed rather proud of himself. "My team secured the perimeter at the prison. I found this bag in the hands of a fat Federale, Federale, dead in the parking lot. Looked like he was planning on taking these home, but he'd been ripped apart, you know, and the bag was open, and when I shined my light on it, I saw this." He pointed at the Happy Face patch. "And I've heard how hard it is to earn one of those! I figured if you were still alive, you were going to want your gear back." He shrugged. "No biggie." dead in the parking lot. Looked like he was planning on taking these home, but he'd been ripped apart, you know, and the bag was open, and when I shined my light on it, I saw this." He pointed at the Happy Face patch. "And I've heard how hard it is to earn one of those! I figured if you were still alive, you were going to want your gear back." He shrugged. "No biggie."

I had to resist the urge to hug him. "Thanks, Agent Torres. I appreciate it."

"Consider it a professional courtesy. Hey, I'm going to help guard you for awhile. Just call me Anthony." He shook my hand again. "Really nice to meet you guys. I've got to go." He smiled, waved, looking almost like an embarra.s.sed teenager, and ran to rejoin his team on the ramp.

I turned to look at Julie. She was as perplexed as I was. She mouthed the word "d.a.m.n." I put Abomination back in the bag and zipped it shut. When I picked up the duffle, the weight seemed familiar and rea.s.suring.

"Maybe this won't be as bad as we thought," I said. "I didn't know the Monster Control Bureau employed anybody nice."

"He must have slipped past Human Resources."

Cazador, Alabama. Population 682. A pretty much run-of-the-mill little village nestled deep in the woods south of Montgomery. A quick drive through town-and there was no such thing as a long drive through Cazador-wouldn't reveal much except the catfish plant, a few stores, and a pair of churches. But a few miles out of town was the headquarters compound of Monster Hunter International. The main office building was two stories on the surface, and built like a medieval fortress. From the air it looked like a wide, squat bullfrog. The other buildings were spread out-a hangar for our plane and chopper, the sunk-in bunker that was the armory, Milo's prefab workshop, the body shack, and a handful of small buildings that served as the barracks for the Newbie training cla.s.ses. A tall, chain link fence which was topped with razor wire and coated with kudzu enclosed an area largely made up of bulldozer-pushed berms of red clay soil. MHI's shooting range facilities were top notch.

The Air Force plane came in low over the thick forest surrounding the compound. For a brief instant I saw Skippy's village flash by underneath, then the mostly hidden homes were gone. Seconds later the tires chirped as we hit runway.

"Hey!" the Fed shouted. His voice sounded nasal through the intercom headset. "Mr. Pitt. Pay attention."

"Huh?" I glanced away from the window. The sun was rising, and the view had been nice. The Fed showed me his laptop screen with a picture of the man who had attacked me at the resort: a lean face, square jaw, intense eyes, short hair. "Yep, that's pretty close."

The agent swiveled the laptop back so he could look at the screen. "What about it isn't right?"