CHAPTER 9
Los Angeles is a huge sprawling mess spread across five hundred square miles, and that’s not counting the smaller cities right next door that always get lumped in with the metro area. There had to be thousands of discos, bars, and nightclubs, plus who knew how many underground establishments that would never be discovered by anyone except for those “in the know.” The club scene here was more secretive than the MCB. The City of Angels was the Wild West when it came to discos. We were going to need a lot of luck to find Nicole before the body count started to rise.
Why hadn’t the MCB already been looking for her? Natalie had said no one else came around to ask about her missing roommate, and it was clear the witness intimidation program—also known as the MCB—hadn’t spoken to her yet. If the sheriff’s department had called us about Lake Arrowhead, then surely they’d told the MCB too, and it shouldn’t have taken me to tell them that the cougar attacks were really suspicious. The Feds were supposed to be more astute than this, and Ray had assured me that they were even more militant than the last time I’d worked with them. Agent Beesley might be a pain to deal with, but she struck me as efficient and ruthless. Taking care of a newly turned werewolf that they had police records on should have been handled ASAP.
The next day, we met to talk about our missing college student. Finding her was what we would concentrate on whenever we weren’t actively working some other case, and there hadn’t been any new callouts since the zombies. We decided that every night we’d split into teams and hit various nightlife spots. We made copies of the photo Melanie had stolen, so at least we’d have something to show around to all our contacts.
Rhino had a surprise for us. He had managed to snag a police radio for each of our vehicles. We could use their emergency channel if needed, which could come in handy when we needed to pass a message back to base. This was really nice because I was always out of quarters when I needed to use a pay phone. I think part of this new project was that Rhino was still mad at himself for getting his leg broken, and at least doing the installs would make him feel useful, but I sure wasn’t going to say that to the poor guy.
While we talked about our werewolf search, eating doughnuts the Gasparyans had brought us and drinking coffee, I could tell that there was another topic looming, and we really needed to have it out. The silences were awkward. Justin kept looking at me like he was expecting me to shape-shift and start eating people.
Surprisingly, Rhino actually read the room for once, did his job, and took charge.
“Alright, we need to clear the air about something. Some of us already knew Chloe was PUFF Exempt. Some of you found out the sudden way.”
“That would’ve been nice to know before,” Justin said.
“Get over it, kid. If that’s the weirdest thing you see in his job, you’ll have gotten real lucky.”
Lizz raised her hand. She actually seemed excited to talk about it. “Ooh, ooh, since this is in the open now, I got questions.”
“Here we go again.” I took a sip my coffee before launching into the usual answers. “No, I’m not a cannibal. No, I’m not a were-jaguar. Silver doesn’t work on me. Yes. I can change form, but I rarely do, because it’s a miserable experience. I save that for when there’s no choice because that part is dangerous to others. I’m not a lycanthrope. It’s totally different. I don’t care about the full moon. I’m not going to flip out and lose control. It doesn’t work that way. I have to specifically want to change. And no, I will not do a demonstration for you.”
Lizz slowly lowered her hand. “Well, that covered most of mine!”
Alex raised his hand. What was this raising-the-hands crap? Were we back in the classroom?
“Practically speaking, what kind of biological differences are we talking about?”
“I like long naps in the sunshine.”
“No, I mean like pragmatic stuff, like . . . powers.”
“I can seduce men and mind-control them with my voice.”
“No way!”
I sighed. “That’s a siren, you idiot. Of course I can’t do that. Pragmatically speaking, I’ve got better-than-human physical abilities, I’m hard to kill and I recover quickly. If I’m ever badly injured, don’t take me to a hospital, just let me sleep it off. I’m serious about that. My vital signs just confuse doctors. And I can see in the dark about as well as Lizz’s scope thing. The downside is that I have a horrid extended family.”
“And an insatiable thirst for blood?” Lizz asked.
“No.”
“Just checking.”
“Try not to sound so disappointed.”
“Sorry.”
This was the most I’d talked about being a nagualii in a very long time, and frankly I found it exhausting. “That’s it, guys. I’m not that odd. I’m pretty boring. I’m the same person you’ve known since training. The only thing that’s different now is my father showed up.”
“Tezcatli-motherfucking-poca,” Justin said. “That’d be like Kimpton’s dad was Jack the Ripper or Adolf Hitler and he kept his trap shut about it.”
“He’s not,” Kimpton stated flatly. “For the record.”
Those were the two Hunters I was the most worried about. Rhino was too jaded to care, I think Melanie still thought of me as a regular person, Alex appeared to find the whole thing fascinating in an academic sense, and Lizz seemed to find my background quirky. But Justin was suspicious, and Kimpton I couldn’t get a read on, but he already seemed to have trust issues.
“Well, Ray Shackleford and Earl Harbinger both vouch for me. Take it or leave it. I don’t care.” I got up from the conference table and grabbed one last doughnut from the box. “We’ve got a werewolf to find.”
* * *
We’d been searching fruitlessly for a week when something odd happened.
That night, Melanie was dressed to kill, with the sort of dress you’d see on a cover of a magazine. Gold was definitely her color, though I’d never seen any color on her that didn’t work. There was a little bit of envy, because I sure couldn’t wear a dress like that straight off the rack. Kimpton looked rather plain next to her in his powder blue shirt and tight white pants, but still cut a rather dashing figure.
Lizz and I decided to go the opposite route and maintain a low profile. We had our body armor and gear in the back seat of my car just in case, but otherwise it was hip huggers and dark shirts. We weren’t exactly trying to be inconspicuous, but if a werewolf spotted us and recognized us for what we were, it made no sense to be in a glitzy dress and heels you can’t run in. The flashy girl gets attention. Attention means the flashy girl gets eaten first. While I don’t want to be eaten at all, if it came down to it, I’d rather get picked last for a midnight snack.
Lizz had given me a pair of pants with strange bumps in the knees to wear. When I rapped my knuckles on them, they gave off a distinct sound beneath the fabric. I was curious and inspected the inside. She had taken some rubber padding and sewn it into the material as well. I looked over at her and noticed her pants were similarly made.
“Padding. I hate kneeling down on pavement and hurting my knees. Those younger hunters might not care now about their knees, but I don’t want to be using a cane when I’m forty.”
I wanted to say something about her leg and its current condition but decided against it. She probably knew she was only a few years away from the hated cane already. There was no point in being a bitch about it. Plus, it was a pretty neat idea.
Since we weren’t dressed up or anything, we were actually able to get started on our search while Melanie and Kimpton were still getting ready. Justin and Alex were planning to stay back at base and keep Rhino company. Before we left, we did a radio check and discovered it was working perfectly. Rhino, immensely proud of his installation instructions, actually smiled. With all his scars it was positively ghastly, but at least he was in a good mood. That counted for something.
Pulling out of the garage, we turned and headed toward Glendale. I wanted to avoid Chavez Ravine, since there was a baseball game tonight and it would cause a lot of traffic. That meant heading directly west first, then south. It would dump us out on the north end of Hollywood. From there it was simply cruising Sunset Strip until we either spotted the girl or called it a night.
Melanie and Kimpton would be doing something similar, except they would be looking inside all the clubs. Given the lines that were expected outside some of the trendier clubs, I wondered how they were going to manage to get into more than two. I was sure Melanie would find a way, but other than bribery for the bouncers guarding the doors I doubted they would get much searching done. I applauded our superior search methods.
After a couple hours of absolutely nothing, we changed tactics and decided to simply park near Mann’s Chinese Theatre and walk around the block. Lizz was not a fan of the idea, but it wasn’t like this was a large block. Plus, it would allow us to get a closer look at the lines. There were at least seven disco halls on this block alone, and every single one of them looked like it was packed. Plus, my gut was telling me that we would strike pay dirt if we tried this. However, Lizz trusted my gut about as much as she did three-week-old Chinese food, so it took a little more convincing to get her to walk with me.
We strolled slowly around the block, looking at the people in lines to get into the clubs while trying to remain inconspicuous about it. There was a strange discordance while we made our way along Sunset Boulevard. LA is a strange place, flashy and scummy at the same time. We could see the glitz and glam of the people dressed to the nines, while just to the side and in the shadows were clusters of eyes watching us warily. They were a part of the city’s massive homeless numbers.
A small percentage of them probably weren’t human. One thing they harp on during newbie training is the propensity for monsters to hide among the homeless. Sometimes they’re PUFF-applicable, legit predators, but others it’s something harmless and trying to stay hidden. I heard rumors that there was an entire tribe of Orcs living in a hobo encampment once and nobody even looked twice at them. Lots of monsters use our own preconceived notions against us as camouflage. It’s always a good idea to remain wary. The street bum you might be trying to ignore could be sizing you up as dinner.
We passed hundreds of people, but no Nicole. Occasionally, we’d make conversation and show the copy of her picture and ask if anybody recognized her—and the only reason we could get away with that was neither of us looked like cops—but if anybody had seen her they didn’t speak up. Sad part was, we weren’t the only ones desperately showing pictures of a missing person to total strangers, in the hopes of finding somebody. It was moms and dads looking for their teenage kids, or family members looking for the one who’d gotten hooked on drugs or decided to run off to become a movie star. LA simply devoured people like that, and nobody really batted an eye. It was sad, and just one more reason why I was growing to detest the dark underbelly of this city and the lifestyle it encouraged.
Something strange caught my attention as we walked past the front entrance of a club. The design of the building was unusual, almost gothic, so it seemed out of place. It must have been a popular place because the line to get inside was huge. But the thing that caught my eye was that in the filthy, trash-filled alley next door was parked a dark-colored sedan, and there were two figures inside, both of whom were watching the crowd intently. I cocked my head slightly as I recognized Agent Beesley. I didn’t know who the man in the passenger seat was, but I pegged him as another MCB agent by the suit. I had no idea what they were doing out here in the middle of the night.
“Hey, Lizz. I think that’s our MCB agent on stakeout.”
“Ah, it is old hatchet face. Wanna go see what they’re up to?”
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed. So I sauntered over to Agent Beesley’s car. They spotted us. The man appeared confused. The look on Beesley’s face could have frozen an ocean. Grinning, I rapped my knuckles on the driver’s-side window. Beesley rolled it down and I could almost see her wrestling with the idea of simply shooting me to make me go away.
“Good evening, Agents.”
“What do you want, Mendoza?” Beesley demanded.
“Just wondering what MCB is doing outside a disco on a Friday night,” I replied as Lizz leaned against the front fender.
“Watch the paint,” the male said.
Lizz smiled sweetly at him. “It’s not like you guys worry about a little ding in your fleet cars. Oh, this one’s cute. Is he spoken for, Beesley?”
“How’s your night going, anyway?” It was clear we were interrupting something, and I was really hoping that they were watching this particular place because our werewolf was inside. “Find any good monsters lately?”
“Nothing as interesting as the one that beat the shit out of your boss,” Beesley snapped back. “He couldn’t handle a single angry beaver. Boys, am I right?”
Say what you want about Beesley, but she was spunky for an MCB agent. “Marco’s such a klutz. Great smile, though, what with all his scars and everything. So, what’re you guys doing? We’re innocently minding our own business out here tonight, club-hopping and trying to pick up some hapless guys for wanton times of indescribable fun.”
“Oh really?” Beesley eyed my outfit suspiciously before her eyes moved to my oversized purse. “I’m sure that’s filled with nothing but makeup accessories and prophylactics, right?”
“Of course,” I agreed. It actually contained my Hi-Power, extra mags, a flashlight, a sap, and my butterfly knife because it was cool, and it intimidated Alex that I could flip it around without cutting myself.
Beesley didn’t seem too concerned by my blatant lie. It wasn’t as though I were waving the knife around in public like a lunatic, terrifying all the people around us. For an MCB agent, she was only mildly annoying. I’d met worse in Israel. “Well, I’d hate to interrupt your whoring and debauchery. Good night, Mendoza.” She began rolling up her window.
I put my elbow on the window so it would be harder to crank. “So you guys are just sitting here in a dark alley, enjoying burgers and shakes while watching the night pass by uneventfully, then?”
“You’re very good, Mendoza. You should be a private detective. But we’re all out of burgers and shakes now, so you should go.”
“Got him,” Beesley’s partner suddenly blurted out, his eyes locked on the entrance of the nightclub. “The tart’s with him again.”
Beesley sat up straighter in her seat and I was all but forgotten in the span of a heartbeat. I turned to see who he was talking about and nearly ripped my eyes out of their sockets, because exiting the nightclub was a creature straight out of a nightmare. With huge, batlike ears protruding from its misshapen head, fangs that extended past its bulging lips, piercing yellow eyes with black dots in the center, and a shock of white hair, the beast was hideously ugly.
I expected screaming and people fleeing in terror at the sight. What I got was a crowd of people absolutely fawning over the monstrosity that was holding hands with a well-built, middle-aged but normal human man. And everybody was acting like this was completely normal.
Rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I stared harder at the monster. I wasn’t losing my mind. The thing was there, wearing a sparkling designer dress over its lumpy pink body, and all the clubgoers were eagerly trying to get its attention somehow, despite it being the ugliest damned thing I had ever seen in my entire life.
Lizz looked away from the thing, clearly unbothered by it. She must have noticed the expression on my face because she immediately asked, “Are you okay?” I wasn’t retching just yet, but it was a close thing. Clearly there was something going on I was missing.
“Bad tamales,” I lied and risked another glance in the direction of the club’s entrance. The thing was still there but the effect had lessened somewhat the longer I looked. It was like the hideousness dissipated the longer I stared. Either I was going insane or my senses were becoming duller. I couldn’t be certain which.
Lizz, though, recognized the man who was walking closest to the creature. “Hey, isn’t that MCB’s regional director?”
I shifted my gaze from the monster to the man walking next to it. “Yeah, that sure looks like Special Agent in Charge of California, David Orwig, doesn’t it? Isn’t he the big guy in your building, Beesley?”
“Yeah,” she admitted grudgingly.
“Who’s the thing on his arm?”
“She’s just some piece of eye candy,” Beesley said, defeat in her tone.
“Eye candy?” I asked, flabbergasted. “That?”
“She’s a fashion model or something out of Europe,” Beesley replied, actually sounding a little defensive of her boss. She looked at me suspiciously. “You jealous or something? What does it matter to you?”
Son of a bitch . . . I turned away from the agents so they wouldn’t see my eyes change color, and used my nagualii sight. Sure enough, there was powerful magic emanating from the duo. The air around the entire block seemed to be pulsing with magic. The sheer weight of the glamour was palpable. Refocusing on the ugly thing, now I could see a stunningly beautiful woman. It made my eyes itch.
“She’s a hag,” I muttered.
“Naw, everybody says she’s aloof, but that she’s actually very charming once you talk to her,” said the other agent.
Only I’d meant it literally. Hags were born of both Fey and of the Earth, which meant they had some Fey abilities, like glamour, but lacked others. Like me, they were a hybrid being, so which powers they would inherit was unpredictable. They ranged from dangerous, to super-crazy dangerous, to fuck this noise, call in the tac nukes. They were more of a European problem—where the Fey had a longer history of carelessly consorting with humanity—than here. Since hags weren’t usually spotted in the US, I didn’t even know what their PUFF status was. It had to be astronomical since it was technically Fey, after all.
We really didn’t know how many Fey courts there were, only that there were several that intruded into our world at some point to meddle in human affairs, and that most of them hated each other and were continually at war. A Fey court could bring lots of death and destruction to us, but humanity could bring extinction to the Fey. There was some kind of long-standing truce between our two species, the details of which were foggy now, but everybody knew the Fey were extremely dangerous and not to be messed with. Which made this hag hanging on the arm of a high-ranking MCB agent all the more disturbing.
The only reason I could imagine a hag hitting on an MCB agent with that much glamour was for something nefarious, or disgusting. Probably both. It made me sick thinking about how poor, unsuspecting SAC Orwig was going to bump uglies with the ugliest.
That also made me smile, just a tiny little bit, on the inside. I am a bad woman sometimes.
The hag’s magic was clearly fooling both of the MCB agents, as well as Lizz. I hadn’t realized I could see through something like that before, but I’d never dealt with a creature who could fling around glamour like a party girl did glitter, so I never would have guessed it didn’t affect me like the others. Just one more helpful thing I owed to my deadbeat father.
Terrific.
The hag broke away from her adoring crowd long enough for Orwig to talk to the valet, who got some car keys from the booth and ran toward the parking lot. Beesley immediately tensed and started her car.
“Why are you tailing your own SAC?” I asked, because I was going to have to decide real fast whether to warn her about just what she was dealing with here. There could be one hell of a situation if things went sideways. Even though the hag wasn’t a true Fey, it was still plenty powerful enough to wreak havoc, especially in a crowded place like this. There was also the fact that Beesley would probably blame all of the casualties on MHI.
“Seriously, Mendoza, fuck off.” And since I’d stood upright to get a better look at the hag, Beesley successfully rolled her window up.
I struggled for a moment. Werewolf, or hag? Which didn’t take long for me to decide. The werewolf hopefully wouldn’t be a danger until the next full moon. The hag, on the other hand, was a crime against nature right now. If it was influencing the MCB and they didn’t know, this was something I would need to report in to Earl and the Boss as soon as I could.
There was no way the government car had enough space to perform any sort of U-turn, which meant they expected their boss to head out onto Sunset and would follow.
“Beesley, wait.” I rapidly knocked on her window again. “That woman is dangerous.”
Only she studiously ignored me because the valet had returned with a red Porsche. SAC Orwig opened the door for his lady friend, helped the bat-demon thing from another dimension in, then went to the driver’s side. They were leaving in a hurry. Poor Orwig was grinning like he thought he was about to score.
I kept knocking. “Damnit, Beesley. She’s a monster. She’s Fey.” Except Beesley apparently didn’t hear what I was saying, and she flipped me the bird as she pulled out after her boss, clearly annoyed that I was interrupting some private MCB business.
Not wanting to miss out on a potentially gigantic PUFF bounty, I grabbed Lizz by the arm and started dragging her back toward where I had parked. Lizz just trusted me, hurried, and didn’t ask questions, because she’s awesome like that. A short U-turn across the nearly empty street and we were quickly on Beesley’s tail.
“What’s going on?” she asked once we were on the road.
“That fashion model is a hag.”
“Like hag hag, like she’s a bitch? Or Fey hag?”
“Fey. And ugly.”
“Okay,” Lizz said slowly. “I don’t know much about that one.”
“Predatory, carnivorous, clever, totally malicious, and likes to play with their food. They live a long time, and the older ones learn how to use crazy amounts of evil magic. Super dangerous, but huge bounty.”
“Great. What’re we doing exactly?”
“We’re going to follow Beesley as she follows the hag,” I told her.
“What happens if the hag splits off?”
“We stick with the hag,” I decided, not really giving two shits about the sexual predations of an MCB regional boss. Let Beesley deal with that.
“Are we going to be in some sort of crazy-assed gunfight involving cars?” Lizz asked, sounding a little worried. “I don’t want to be in a gunfight after some crazy car chase, okay?”
I scoffed at her. “A gunfight in Hollywood? This isn’t the movies. This is real life.”
She sounded uncertain. “What about the werewolf?”
“The next full moon is a month away. We’ll get her before then.” And then it hit me. “If the local agent in charge is under Fey influence, he could be corrupt, and covering things up, working for this dark-master thing.”
“You suggesting he’s on the take?”
Lizz hadn’t seen just how profoundly gross that bat-woman thing was. “He’s on the something.”
I grabbed the radio. “Base, this is Hunter Two,” I said, clicking the handset once I was finished.
“Go,” Rhino’s voice seemed extra gravelly over the radio.
“Got a lead on a monster, Lizz and I are following now. Will radio for backup when needed.”
“Confirmed monster?” Rhino sounded a little surprised. “The werewolf?”
“Worse,” I told him. “Hag.”
“There hasn’t been a hag seen in decades,” Alex cut in, so excited that I could just imagine him wrestling the radio handset away from Rhino. “Where are you guys?”
“Sunset Boulevard, near Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Be warned: MCB agents are already on scene, but are . . . doing something else.”
I clicked off the mic and frowned as I thought about it. What were the MCB tailing their own SAC for? Beesley hadn’t acted like she was on bodyguard duty. She was spying on him, not protecting him. And then I remembered how she’d reacted when I’d followed up about my report on Nicole, and Beesley had been surprised that she’d not been told about it. Beesley struck me as rather driven. She had probably looked into it and discovered that it had been Orwig who had squashed my report.
“I think Beesley thinks her boss is dirty, and I bet she’s doing her own unofficial investigation.”
“How dangerous are hags?” Lizz asked.
“Big range of danger. All bad, but the really bad ones are really bad. They’re half Fey, half human, all hideous.”
“Aren’t you half Fey and half human?”
“Yeah, but my mother was human. Hags are what you get with a human father and a Fey mother. Totally different.”
“Uh-huh . . . ” Lizz, who normally preferred to shoot from range, had come prepared for up close and personal, and out from under her blouse came a rather impressive .357 Magnum revolver. I hadn’t thought Lizz was big enough to hide something like that. She opened the cylinder, made certain it was loaded, and then put it back in the holster. Because of how I was dressed, my gun was in my purse. Which wasn’t ideal, but I’d put trying to blend in ahead of function. Apparently Lizz didn’t have that problem.
“Don’t get too close, Chloe. We don’t want to get spotted. Or too far, and we’ll lose them.”
“I know what I’m doing.” Working with the Kidon had taught me the art of surveillance. If you followed a car directly behind them at the same speed, you’re sure to get noticed by a suspicious driver. Since I’ve never met a Fed who wasn’t suspicious, I wasn’t going to follow Beesley in an obvious manner. Instead, I changed lanes to stay on her right and two car-lengths behind. I fluctuated my speed a little and even let a few cars come between us when they needed to turn.
I was also keeping an eye on the flashy red sports car Orwig was driving. I was pretty sure Beesley knew how to tail someone, but there was always the possibility she could lose him. This was Los Angeles, after all. Traffic was normally pretty bad. Tonight, thanks to it being after midnight, it wasn’t too harsh for the moment, but if Orwig got onto the 101 and put the hammer down in that thing, we’d probably lose him. Even on a Friday night it was precariously balanced between being a road or hell and purgatory.
“You concentrate on driving, Chloe. I’ll keep the boys updated on where we are.”
Once again, we got lucky. Orwig kept his sports car on Sunset Boulevard heading east, out of Hollywood until he turned into the area of town known as Little Armenia. Not entirely sure where we were at, I kept on Beesley’s tail. Lizz, though, seemed to know our location.
“We’re near Silver Lake Reservoir. Nice neighborhood. Upscale. Not Malibu, but pretty close.” She reported street names over the radio as I kept an eye on our surroundings.
It seemed rather scenic and nice, which was odd considering we were still in the LA basin. The area was hilly and the streets narrow, far different from what I was used to dealing with when it came to driving around the rest of Los Angeles. Even Covina had wide roads, and the city had barely a fraction of the area this had.
It was weird watching someone watching someone else. It made for a strange game of cat and mouse, except in this case the mouse was a creature that could rip us apart in a matter of seconds and the cat was a well-armed sociopath from a heartless federal agency. I couldn’t decide if the cheese was poisoned or explosive.
I checked my wristwatch. It was almost one in the morning and the streets were very quiet. I had to hang back much farther than I liked, but Beesley would be sure to notice us here. The Porsche stopped at a nice two-story home overlooking the reservoir, so I stopped on a nearby hill and killed the lights, a hundred yards from where Beesley parked and did the same.
The house was really big. I figured that must have set him back a pretty penny. When I mentioned this to Lizz, though, her face became serious.
“I betcha that’s why Agent Beesley is following him. Fancy cars, fancy house, government salary.”
“MCB agent on the take from supernatural forces? Selling out mankind for money? That’s . . . disturbing.”
“Probably why Beesley’s watching him, though. Trying to find out who he’s working for.”
“She acted surprised about Lake Arrowhead,” I pointed out.
“What if the SAC knew but hadn’t told anybody else about this werewolf trying to build a pack? That makes no sense.”
“Just means more work for the MCB if there’s a pack of them running around,” I agreed.
“But if someone else told him to keep it quiet, like say his hag girlfriend, who works for some dark monster thingy who’s also powerful enough to be recruiting werewolves and raising zombies and who knows what else, who also happens to be scary enough to worry a Fey court like your feathers people—”
“Court of Feathers,” I corrected.
“Whatever. Somebody who rivals them. At first glance it looks like the Fey might have control over the Los Angeles MCB. That could be bad.”
“Understatement of the year right there, Lizz.” I got my binoculars from the back seat and settled in to wait. It appeared Beesley was doing the same thing we were. “Think we should go talk to Beesley?”
“And risk her getting angry at us? Or spooking the hag? Oh, heck no. I say we camp, tell spooky stories in the dark, and wait for our friends with the van full of guns to get here.”
It was better than anything I could think of, so we hunkered down and waited. About thirty minutes later, Agent Orwig left the house and began walking back to the Porsche. There was no sign of the hag.
“This might not be his place,” I suggested. “Looks like he’s leaving.”
“He could be innocent and just be thinking that he’s gotten lucky with some high-end model.”
She hadn’t seen the bat-faced thing. There was nothing lucky about that.
“Follow him, or stay here?” I asked, but it was a rhetorical question. “Stay here. Hope Beesley follows her boss so the MCB aren’t around to complicate things. And kill us a hag to collect a big old bounty.”
“Before we kick in some rich lady’s door, are you sure you saw what you saw?”
“Yep.”
“I’d hope so, Chloe, but we followed her to her house. It’s not like we caught her murdering people. This seems kinda . . . ”
“Premeditated?”
“Yeah. What if she’s PUFF Exempt, like you?”
That was a valid point. We were extreme rarities, but maybe there was a perfectly innocent explanation for why a senior MCB agent was hanging around with a supernatural predator with crazy illusion powers. Probably not, but maybe.
“Gimme the binoculars,” Lizz said, so I handed them over. “Something’s wrong. His car’s rocking.”
“Ew.”
“No, look.” She handed them back.
I sighed and peered through the darkness. In spite of the suburban nature of the neighborhood, there wasn’t much illumination. However, Orwig had parked directly beneath one of the few streetlights, and sure enough the Porsche was shaking. There wasn’t just one form in the car, but two shadowy shapes, and it looked like they were wrestling. The movement grew more violent with each passing second.
“Wait . . . there’s something in there attacking him! Radio it in!”
I started the car, shifted into gear, and floored it. We had realized what was going on and reacted faster than Beesley had, but their headlights turned on as we sped past. I slammed on the brakes and stopped right behind the Porsche. I grabbed my pistol and bailed out of the car, thankful I’d not worn heels.
Beneath the lonely streetlight, the little red sports car was shaking violently and I could hear shouting coming from inside. Whatever was in there was doing a number on Orwig. I reached the car just as the screams abruptly cut off and so much blood hit the back window that it was like somebody inside had thrown a bucket of red paint.
The rocking stopped. The car was still.
That much blood that fast, it must have ripped Orwig in half.
I raised my 9mm and it suddenly felt really inadequate in my hand.
“Lizz, grab the shotgun from the trunk.”
My heart was hammering in my chest. Even though I was only a few feet away, there was so much blood coating the windows there was no telling what was still inside the car.
The MCB car stopped right behind me, and I heard the doors open, but I didn’t dare risk taking my eyes off the threat to look back.
“What are you doing here, Mendoza?” Beesley asked as she ran up beside me.
“Saving your butt, apparently,” I snapped in reply.
Then Beesley saw all the blood, exclaimed, “What the hell?” and she pulled an old GI .45 from a holster on her belt. “Hang on, Orwig!”
“I think your SAC is dead.”
“I’ve got to check.” Beesley’s hands were shaking so badly that I could hear her gun rattling. “Cover me!”
Beesley was brave. Stupid, but brave. I heard the chu-chunk of a shotgun being pumped, so I knew Lizz was ready. I moved toward the passenger side so Lizz would have a clean shot. Beesley, however, was already heading for the driver’s-side door.
“Wait for your partner!”
“He’s on the radio calling for back—” Except then something kicked the Porsche’s door so hard it flew right off. The door nailed poor Beesley and it still had enough energy to fly across the street. The MCB agent dropped like a sack of potatoes and didn’t move.
Me and Lizz both started blasting. Bullet holes and buckshot patterns appeared in the metal. Glass shattered.
The monster must have ducked down behind the seats because I couldn’t see anything in the shadows. It couldn’t be very big if it could hide that well in a car that small.
By some miracle the flying door hadn’t removed Beesley’s head from her shoulders. I could see she was still breathing, but there was a lot of blood. She was alive for now, but if she kept losing blood at this rate it wouldn’t be for long.
The monster launched itself through the broken rear window, right at my face.
It was like getting sucker-punched in the forehead by a bowling ball. Before I could even register pain I found myself sailing backward.
I landed heavily on the pavement and barely had time to recognize that something was on top of me. Teeth snapped at my throat, but I brought the Browning up and reflexively fired. The creature screeched and rolled off. I scooted backward until I hit the curb.
My attacker was scurrying on all fours beneath the streetlight, still painted red by Agent Orwig’s blood, maybe five feet tall counting the tail. It was like someone had crossed a monkey with a gecko or stuck four hairy limbs that ended in all-too-human hands onto the body of a snake, and that was all the time I had to comprehend what I was dealing with, because it was coming back around to bite my legs with its baboon face filled with dagger teeth.
I kicked it away, then Lizz blasted it with the shotgun. Meaty green chunks flew out the side of its body, spinning it sideways. I cranked off what I thought was a few more rounds, only to be surprised when the slide locked back on an empty mag because I’d already burned through thirteen. I reached for my purse for a spare, only it wasn’t there. I spotted my purse in the gutter, lying atop leaves, twigs, and an oil stain. There would be no saving it. My bag was probably ruined. In the back of my mind I mourned the death of my favorite purse, which considering what was going on right then tells you just how hard I’d hit my head.
Lizz slammed another round of buckshot into the thing, which rolled it over, but it popped right back up, and left a trail of green blood in its wake as it ran toward the fallen form of Agent Beesley. I also rolled over, dragged my purse from the gutter, and grabbed another mag. Lizz kept shooting.
I thought that maybe the thing was going to finish Beesley off, but the clever little bastard slithered behind her, nudged her unconscious body upright at the waist and hid behind her, using her as a human shield.
It was only then that I noticed something about the strange monster that I’d not seen before—that its tail ended in another humanlike hand, which was really freaky, and got more so as that tail shot out way farther than I’d have guessed was possible, to snatch up Agent Beesley’s dropped handgun. The muzzle swung my way.
I flung myself behind the Porsche as the monster started shooting wildly. “Duck!”
The monster was using Beesley as a hostage, its skinny body mostly hidden behind the unconscious agent, while its super-prehensile tail stuck out over her head, firing blindly in our direction. Sometimes life wasn’t fair.
I looked over to Lizz crouched behind our car, hurriedly shoving more shells into the Ithaca riot shotgun. She cringed as a bullet clanged off the engine block. “What is this thing?”
I risked a glance over the Porsche’s hood, to see that the Beesley’s gun was empty. “Out of bullets!”
The monster tossed the Colt, dumped Beesley, and ran toward the lake, crazy fast. Lizz and I both popped up and started shooting. It got hit a few more times, and flopped over, but kept crawling.
“I got this.” Lizz ditched the shotgun, pulled her .357, cocked the hammer, braced her arms across the hood, and smoothly nailed the monster square in the back of the head. Green brains squirted and it went down, barely inside the circle of light.
My ears were ringing, but I think it was quiet. One of the monster’s rear hand-leg things was twitching, but barring magic or some weird regenerative powers, I was pretty sure Lizz had killed it for good. Wow. My head hurt and the world was spinning. It hadn’t been very big, but that thing had hit like a truck.
I threw my purse strap back over one shoulder and got shakily to my feet. Nothing was moving at the hag’s house, but that was another menace we still had to worry about. Moving around the sports car, I got to see what was left of the Orwig, and the gecko thing had torn the stuffing out of him. The Special Agent in Charge had been dismantled. The coroner was probably going to have to use an air hose to blow the bits of him out of the air-conditioning vents.
“I’ll check on Beesley.” I started in her direction.
“The boys are almost here,” Lizz said.
That reminded my poor traumatized brain that the MCB had been calling for backup too. “Where’s Beesley’s partner?” And I turned to look just in time to see the second—totally different—monster crouching atop the other agent’s obviously dead body. And by obvious, I mean really obvious, even in the dark, what with him being decapitated and all.
The newcomer saw me staring, and stood upright, and unlike the first thing that had been lean and wiry and quick, this one was hulking and thick, and it started my way with a lumbering gorilla walk.
When it got into the headlights, I couldn’t believe my eyes, because the agent wasn’t the only one missing his head. The thing probably would have been seven feet tall, if it had a regular skull, only its body just kind of stopped at the very broad and hairy shoulders. But a lack of a head didn’t keep it from seeing me, since it clearly had eyes—black and unblinking—in the top of its chest, and it still had a mouth . . . a gigantic, snarling, snaggle-toothed maw where its belly should have been.
Lizz saw it too. “Nuh-uh. Nope. Fuck that.”
I’d never seen one in person before, but from that rather unique description, this had to be an Ewaipanoma—a headless Amazonian ogre—which meant we were in deep shit.
The grunting, slobbering monstrosity was coming my way. “Lizz, get in the car and go.” I lifted the Browning, aimed for where I hoped its heart should be—right between the eyes—and started shooting. I was unable to tell if the 9mm even did anything to it, but I think the end result was it only became angrier. It bellowed loudly and charged, its heavy footsteps reverberating up my spine. The monster ran past the unconscious Beesley, barely missing stomping on her as it aimed for me.
A fool would have made a brave, final stand, protecting the downed MCB agent. I wasn’t that stupid. I ran.
Instinct told me not to run down the street, because even though this thing was so dense with muscle it had to weigh a ton, it would be quick in a straight line. So I got the Porsche between us. The Ewaipanoma was fast as I feared, but it cornered like a Corvair with flat tires and tripped over its own feet trying to slow down. It tumbled across the sidewalk and onto the hag’s front lawn, taking out a pink flamingo lawn ornament and one of those cheap bird fountains in the process.
The headless ogre picked itself up off the grass, the broken beak of the plastic flamingo stuck to its chest fur, and it began circling after me around the car. It viewed me as the biggest threat since I’d shot it multiple times. Mission accomplished. That would give Lizz a chance to escape and regroup when help arrived. I just needed to stay ahead of it until then.
Except I should have known Lizz wouldn’t abandon me, and she laid into it with her hand cannon. “Leave her alone, ugly!”
Only Lizz didn’t know what we were dealing with, or that Ewaipanoma were legendarily difficult to kill, and we’d not packed any elephant guns. Her .357 Magnum bullets just flattened and bounced off its magic hide.
I sprinted over to where Beesley lay and grabbed her by the wrist. Crouching down, I hoisted her over my shoulder. She was the kind of lady who preferred weight lifting to manicures, so she was heavier than she looked. This was one of those rare times I was thankful I wasn’t fully human, and supernatural strength was a nice bonus in situations like this. Carrying Beesley, I ran back toward our car. “Drive, Lizz, drive!”
The shaggy creature was snarling now, its stomach-mouth frothy, and drool running down its belly. I don’t know what levels of anger this particular monster could feel, but if I had to guess I would say it was the next step past slobbery rage, into frothy homicidal berserker mode.
Lizz had gotten in the driver’s seat. I reached the passenger side and was trying to figure out how to get Beesley and me in before the ogre got here and stomped our guts out, when Lizz shouted, “The engine’s dead!”
And then I remembered how the first monster had managed to hit our car with its crazy tail-driven mag dump. It must have gotten lucky and hit the battery or something.
“Go to the MCB car.” Lizz ran for it. With Beesley over one shoulder, I turned back and shot at the ogre, doing the same thing as before, trying to keep a vehicle between us as a barricade. One of my bullets chipped a belly tooth and it roared. If I thought it was angry before, the hatred this thing must have felt toward me now could have powered a thousand suns, and it began chasing after me at a rate far faster than I thought possible. Then it really ruined my plans when it reared back with one stump leg, and kicked my car so hard that it spun sideways. I narrowly avoided getting clipped. There really wasn’t any reason for me to hang around anymore so I did what any sensible girl would do and ran for my life.
Luckily, the back door of the MCB sedan was unlocked, so I was able to pull it open and toss Beesley inside. I jumped in after her. “Go! Go!”
Lizz appeared at the driver’s-side door, panting. “I hate running!” She barely gave the decapitated agent a second look as she tossed her shotgun inside and stepped over his body. There was blood pooled on the bench seat but Lizz didn’t even care. She was so tiny she looked like a little kid sitting in the driver’s seat. It would have been ridiculous except for the monster trying to kill us all. I shot it right through the window. A 9mm is super loud inside the confines of a car.
Luckily, the engine had already been running but Lizz seemed to be struggling.
“Just drive!” I shouted as I grabbed a fresh magazine from my bag.
“I told you I don’t like driving!” she screamed back.
The monster slammed into the side of the car, desperately trying to get at us. The rest of the windows shattered, and a massive hand came through the window, searching for me. Glass stuck to my bloodied clothing. It caught hold of my sleeve. Its beady chest eyes were looking at me, and the gaping maw was only a foot from my face. It had horrible, rancid breath and was dragging me toward its scary, flat chomping teeth.
I pulled back and thankfully my sleeve ripped off. I used up the rest of the rounds in my second magazine, and that must have stung enough that it momentarily pulled back.
I reached over the seat, grabbed Liz’s shotgun, shoved the muzzle out the window, and fired a round of buckshot right into one of its eyes.
The Ewaipanoma screamed so loud that if it hadn’t broken all the windows already that might have done it.
“Go!”
“I’m trying!”
“It’s an automatic! Pull the level down and step on it!”
“I know how, I can’t fucking reach!” And I realized Liz was scrunching down so awkwardly because she was trying to find the gas pedal, and the dead MCB Agent must have been really tall. It wasn’t like she’d had a chance to adjust the seat.
“Are you serious?” I turned the shotgun back around, leaned over the seat, and stabbed the gas pedal with the smoking muzzle. That wasn’t exactly a precise move, and the rear wheels squealed and created a cloud of rubber smoke.
The monster must have sensed we were trying to escape because the damned thing bit my door and wrenched it off the hinges. Turning, it spit the metal out the same way a ballplayer would sunflower seeds. It reached for me, but the tires had finally found purchase and we were going forward. The monster took a swipe and his impossibly strong fingers scored deep gouges across the rear paneling. I heard a loud bang! from the rear. I looked back to see chunks of rubber flying, and immediately realized the thing had caught the tire, causing it to blow out.
The car was moving at a decent speed now but there was no way Lizz—who really was a terrible driver—would be able to handle it for much longer. I let off the gas as the rear began sliding to the left. The car continued to slide and Lizz panicked, overcorrecting the steering wheel to the right. This had the opposite intended effect and we went into a spin, which meant Lizz’s short legs then missed the brakes, and we hit the one fucking tree on the block.
We were probably only doing forty by then, but that collision would have thrown me against the door. Only I didn’t have a door anymore. So I got tossed out.
In the movies they always show the hero leaping from the vehicle, rolling on the pavement, and coming up without so much as a hair out of place, ready to continue the fight against the army of villains in pursuit. Entertaining, sure. Realistic, oh no. For one, it’s probably a stuntman jumping from the car. Two, the reel was probably sped up a little to make the car appear to be moving at a much higher speed. Because realistically, you’re gonna get hurt.
What should have happened was me losing all my exposed skin as I slid across the pavement, broken all my teeth, probably an arm or leg as well, and maybe some ribs.
It’s what would have happened to any normal human being.
Sometimes it’s nice to not be normal. I like to claim that I always land on my feet, but not doing forty.
I hit hard on one shoulder, bounced, smacked my head on the ground again, somehow landed on my knees, and slid to a stop. The pain was intense, almost causing me to vomit from the sheer, sudden intensity of it, but I’d gotten off easy. Sure, I had a concussion, but at least those knee pads Lizz had sewn in there for me had worked great!
The monster began stalking toward me now. I knew it could smell my blood, my injury. Monsters are like that. Any weakness, any injury, and they go into predator mode. Before it had been lashing out, trying to hurt us. Now, with fresh blood in the air and a seemingly helpless victim, it was savoring the moment before the kill.
Boom!
A .357 fired directly over my head to hit the monster in the shoulder.
Dang, Lizz was tough, and not about to let some little thing like a car crash slow her down. Another bullet hit the monster in the chest, right between the eyes. That was good shooting considering we were now in the dark.
Except we weren’t.
I blinked, feeling stupid. The light was from oncoming headlights. The monster didn’t seem to notice there was something larger and decidedly more dangerous coming up from behind it.
I should probably move.
Rhino’s van seemed larger than anything else I had ever seen in my life, and even though everything hurt, and I was feeling rather dizzy and sluggish, I staggered up and somehow managed to get out of the way.
An unearthly scream filled my ears as the lower half of the monster was pulverized by a few thousand pounds of a fast-moving van. Blood and fluids splashed everywhere on impact.
The van’s engine coughed, sputtered, then died.
Inside the van, someone was shouting. Dark clouds of smoke erupted from the front as a fire started in the engine compartment. The Ewaipanoma was trapped under the front tires, still alive, but not reacting well to the fire. The rest of my team climbed out of the back of the van in a hurry.
A puddle was spreading along the ground from the back end of the MCB Plymouth. It took me a second to recognize a new smell. Gasoline. The van had wound up only a few feet away.
Oh, that was bad.
I forced myself up and stumbled to where Beesley was still in the back seat unconscious.
“The door’s bent!” Lizz shouted. “I can’t budge it. I can’t get her out.”
The head injury and near-death experience must have lowered my inhibitions a bit, because the nagualii was right there waiting for me to ask for help, and I tore the twisted metal wide open with my bare hands. Lizz just stared at me in shock as I hoisted Beesley out.
I carried her away as the puddle reached Rhino’s truck, soaking the monster’s fur. It raged and thrashed and was even making some progress trying to lift the van off itself, but not for long. I didn’t know how big the explosion was going to be, but as a rule of thumb, the farther away the better.
Then Kimpton was running alongside me, warning, “There’s dynamite in the van still.”
Where’d he come from? I kicked the running up a notch.
My team stopped what felt like a safe distance away, and I was glad to put Beesley down. She was still breathing, so I sure hoped all that effort hadn’t been for nothing. I collapsed to the ground with the worst headache ever, while the stars spun in circles overhead.
Alex knelt next to me. “Are you okay?”
“Ha!”
“I think she’s in shock.” He gently moved himself into position to cradle me so I wouldn’t hurt myself further. Fingers probed through my hair. “She’s got a bad head injury.”
Alex was either stronger than I thought, or I had lost some weight, he maneuvered me so easily. He also smelled surprisingly good. I nuzzled my cheek on his chest, which caused him to squirm uncomfortably.
“Hola, chico,” I purred into his chest. Or was it the nagualii? “Eres muy bonito.”
“I think she’s really concussed!” Alex added loudly. “Not making much sense. Lizz?”
“We got everyone here,” Justin shouted in reply. “Keep your heads down. Van’s gonna blow.”
As if on cue, the flames from Rhino’s engine met the fuel on the ground. I watched with mild euphoria as the fire spread, rapidly heading toward the destroyed gas tank of the Plymouth. The monster’s screams were becoming more and more desperate.
“Oh, Agent Beesley’s going to be mad,” I laughed and closed my eyes. My head was spinning, probably from all the blood loss. Or the head injury. When did I hit my head? Weird.
“Just wait until Rhino finds out what we did to his van,” Alex said.
Mercifully, just before the world blew up, I passed out.
* * *
“ . . . biggest explosion I’ve ever seen in my life,” a voice was saying as I came to. Everything looked fuzzy and it took me a moment to realize I was no longer in the middle of the street being attacked by monsters. Glancing around, I recognized the bunk room at HQ, and from the sunlight coming through the window, it was the middle of the afternoon. The speaker continued, unaware I was awake. “Glad you remembered those explosives were in the van before the fire hit, or I don’t think any of us would’ve lived!”
“Rhino’s still furious about his van blowing up, though,” Melanie said from somewhere to my left. She stepped into my field of view. “Hey, look who’s finally awake.”
“Your healing ability is amazing!” The first speaker turned out to be Alex, and he looked relieved to see me awake. “If not for the whole ‘my father is a monster’ thing, this seems like a pretty neat thing to have.”
“The van blew up?” I asked, rolling my neck to see how badly I was injured. It didn’t feel too bad, mostly sore. My back wasn’t throbbing with pain, so either I was on the good pain meds or it had healed. Perhaps both.
“Alex blew up his van,” Melanie corrected.
“That was only partly my fault.” Alex sounded sheepish. “I mean, it’s not my fault the box full of explosives was unlabeled. Melanie remembered, though, and we got away before they went up.”
“Agent Beesley?” I asked.
“Alive but in the hospital still,” Melanie answered. “Lizz is okay. Because an agent died, the MCB said they want to question you.”
“I’m not even sure what happened,” I admitted, and honestly, everything was rather blurry. “How long have I been out?”
“A day and a half,” Alex helpfully provided. “But like you asked, we didn’t take you to the doctors. We’ve been taking turns watching you. Let’s see, what else . . . ? A three-car accident is pretty easy to explain, so MCB was actually happy about that.”
Melanie handed me a cup of water, and I took a big drink. I would’ve preferred coffee. “What about the hag?”
“Lizz told us everything you said, but she thought we shouldn’t tell the MCB. If Beesley and her partner were suspicious her boss was crooked, then who knows who else might be involved?”
Melanie gave me the plastic container with Rhino’s codeine pills in them. I popped three of them in my mouth, and washed them down with the rest of the water. “Good call.”
“But we know when they were checking the neighborhood to see if there were any witnesses, that house was empty. It’s a vacant rental.”
That made no sense. “Did she lure Orwig out there just to have him killed? If she had him under her control, why? We’ve got to talk to Beesley.”
Alex and Melanie shared a look, and Melanie said, “Sorry, Chloe, she’s in a coma. They don’t know if she’s going to pull through or not. She doesn’t have Aztec princess powers.”
I closed my eyes. “Shit.” I should have stopped her, taken charge, done something to keep her from rushing in, not that Feds ever listened to people like us. “That’s on me.”
“Not from what Lizz told us,” Alex said. “We don’t even know what the monsters that attacked you are, and their bodies got burned in the fire.”
“The big one was what’s called an Ewaipanoma. They’re native to the Amazon.”
“I thought so!” Alex seemed proud of his correct guess. “But it was hard to tell off Lizz’s description, what with it being pretty dark, and her trying not to die. They’re terrible things, but extremely rare and never seen in the US.”
“They were sometimes used as foot soldiers by the Court of Feathers in their glory days, though,” I muttered, recalling Tezcatlipoca’s words about how our mystery threat was recruiting monsters. “Which means the little thing with the tail hand that ambushed Orwig was probably an ahuizotl.”
That seemed to make Alex’s day. “Those are the ones who hide in rivers, crying like a kid drowning, and when someone rushes over, sees the little hand sticking out of the water, and goes to help, it drags them down and drowns them, just out of spite.”
“That’s mean,” Melanie said.
“Ambush predator, and the little shit packed a punch too,” I said, as I gently touched the wicked lump on my head. “Good PUFF on both of those, I take it?”
“Yeah, I’ll have to look it up, but it’s a nice payday.” Alex nodded, smiling now. “Not bad, Chloe. Not bad at all!”
“I’ll go tell everybody you’re okay.” Melanie got up to leave.
“More important, tell them that that his hag has to be our big bad monster that the Court of Feathers was warning me about. She is coming. And our crazy werewolf was taking orders from a woman.”
“Are hags powerful enough to do that?” Melanie asked.
“Oh, yeah. They can be. Recruiting monsters and co-opting the federal monster cops at the same time? She’s dangerous and up to something.”
“I’ll warn them,” Melanie said as she left.
Once we were alone, Alex seemed really hesitant about something. “Hey, so, uhm . . . ” He scratched the back of his neck. “While you were injured, you said something to me . . . about . . . ”
I remembered, but I feigned stupidity, because frankly, I’d been knocked stupid. Yes, Alex was a very attractive young man. However, I was a very old, moderately attractive half human who kept the potential romance side of my life totally locked down, not even sorta open to exploration. Relationships with colleagues were complicated anyway, and I was extra complicated, with an incomprehensibly different background and life experiences and a whole lot of baggage that I wasn’t going to inflict on any poor Hunter. The downside was that I was a workaholic with no social life, so the only men I ever got to know were my coworkers . . . so basically I was a nun . . . with the occasional meaningless liaison every decade or so, over the last half a century, which I’d tried to forget about afterward.
I’d dealt with Mrs. Robinson situations before. It got easier over time.
“I’d just got brained and everything was blurry. I don’t remember what I said. I apologize if it was something dumb. Let’s just forget it ever happened and never ever talk about it again. Cool?”
“Yeah, totally cool . . . ” I couldn’t tell if Alex was relieved or disappointed, but whatever it was he was quick to move on. I’d been told that even though I have a young face, I’ve got old eyes, and luckily that scares most potential suitors away. “This whole situation, I mean with the MCB SAC, it feels like it’s connected to the werewolves, the human sacrifices, and the warnings from your relatives, like there’s something strange afoot and it’s all connected. Why did two monsters who are native to Mesoamerica assassinate a senior MCB official in California? While he was out on what appeared to be a date with a Fey creature? Was it her doing? Because if the hag wanted him dead, she had plenty of other ways to do it that wouldn’t draw attention from the MCB. Even powerful monsters avoid attracting the government’s eye. Or did someone else send the assassins? If so, who? The Court of Feathers maybe? But why?”
That was too many questions for a headache this bad. I yawned, feeling like I could sleep for another two days. “We’ll figure it out. Tell the MCB I’m still brain damaged. I’m going back to sleep now. Wake me up tomorrow.”