CHAPTER 3
I spent the next couple of weeks teaching. It turned out the biggest challenge to instructing a bunch of monster-attack survivors in monster lore so they could become professional monster killers was convincing them that they actually needed to listen to the wisdom of someone who looked like a petite Mexican girl younger than they were.
“You don’t seem like most of the teachers here, you dig?” one of the recruits attending my class pointed out as we were going over various demons and their archetypes. “But you talk like you’ve seen all this scary shit personally.”
They’d already been here for a couple of months. Every other instructor was a tough guy with obvious experience and the resulting swagger. Earl had introduced me to the recruits as an expert in monster lore who had recently been a consultant for the IDF. Appearances can be deceiving, but I didn’t look like much of a fighter, and I looked too young to be a convincing academic.
My pride told me it was time to establish dominance.
“I’ve seen a fair bit. What’s your name?”
“Wall. Kimpton Wall, ma’am.”
He was a good-looking guy, young, fit, and would probably have a very western All-American athlete feel to him if he was cleaned up, only his hair was too long and shaggy, he was too young to grow out anything but a scraggly, unrespectable beard, and was wearing a beat-up military field jacket.
“What sort of monster got you recruited, Wall?” I asked, figuring I could lord it over him because I’d probably fought one of those already myself. Odds were good, mostly because I’d been around for so long, and done this on multiple continents.
“Yakseya,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “I killed one while in Cambodia.”
“By yourself?” I asked incredulously.
“It had already killed everybody else in my squad, so yeah.”
So much for establishing dominance because that was actually rather impressive. “Okay, wow,” I muttered approvingly. “And you walked away with all your limbs. Nicely done.”
“What’s a yakseya?” the blond girl in the back asked, curious. “It sounds Italian.”
“Sri Lankan demon.” There were only a couple of female recruits out of the entire class. Melanie Simmons was the nice, yet pretty one, who struck me as kind of ditzy. I knew she’d survived a blood-fiend attack, but I had no idea how, unless it had eaten her sorority sisters and then been so full that she’d been able to run away.
“Yakseya are nasty, mean things. Their true origin’s unknown, but probably extradimensional originally, though they’ve established a few breeding populations across Asia. Because the yakseya are Earth-born and apparently not summoned or unholy, blessed water doesn’t usually work with them. They walk most normal injuries off. Or if you know a good pujari—a Hindu temple priest, that is—they’re very effective at destroying a yakseya for some reason. So the yakseya hate them and will go out of their way to kill a pujari. The one you fought in Cambodia, was it near a temple?”
“The ruins of one. Came out of nowhere, took out my entire patrol. Napalm doesn’t do much to them either,” Wall added, his tone quiet.
“No, they’re pretty fireproof. How’d you kill it?” I asked, genuinely curious. The Kidon had fought one once that had stowed away aboard a cargo ship anchored off the coast near Haifa. It had been fast, deadly, and extremely pissed off at us. I’d like to say that we kicked its butt, but to be honest the battle pretty much ended indecisively. We’d lost a man, only blew one of its hands off, and ended up having to retreat and sink the ship to drown it. So I’d call it a draw.
“I set a trap with dynamite. A lot of dynamite. Used myself as bait. Then I took his head with a Ka-Bar after I blew his legs off.”
“Smart. An M67 fragmentation grenade will only annoy a yakseya. When in doubt, use more boom,” I added for the benefit of the class. “Good job, Wall.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
So much for putting a cocky trainee in his place . . . but I had to remind myself a good teacher doesn’t teach to stroke their own ego, they do it to help others reach their potential. And Earl had seen potential in all of these, or they wouldn’t be here.
I’d slid into the role as an instructor easily and found I kind of liked it. I had more knowledge about the subject than most Hunters. My upbringing hadn’t exactly been a normal one, then I’d worked for MHI—mostly in North America, but we got around—and then in the Middle East. The IDF had run into some really weird stuff over the years I had been there and the Kidon were the ones best equipped to deal with it. In the oldest region of civilization in the world, all sorts of creatures dwell in the shadows.
Plus, I liked to share that knowledge. Being an instructor suited my personality, and in this sort of environment I could actually talk about some of the crazy things I’d done over the years . . . and if I was careful, do it without revealing too much about myself. I’d even managed to condense down what I thought were the most pertinent Monster Hunter tips into a list, and I wrote a couple more of them on the board every day. Kind of like those motivational posters people put up in normal office spaces. I needed to compile those, because maybe Chloe’s Monster Hunting Tips might be useful to somebody someday.
These particular newbies were smart and had very flexible minds, which was the one trait the Shacklefords had harped on forever. It’s hard to fight some sort of abomination when you freeze up at the horrific monster eating some innocent person in the middle of the street. Hunters had to just kind of roll with things, and not get trapped by their preconceived notions.
On a personal level, I was rather thankful for that philosophy, because it was how I’d ended up working for the Shacklefords instead of getting murdered by them. A lot of other hunting companies would have just seen me as a really nice paycheck. MHI recognized that not everything that had a bounty on its head deserved it.
“Ms. Mendoza.” Another trainee politely raised his hand, like this was an actual respectable school setting, and not the Shackleford Home for Wayward Homicidal Maniacs.
“Just call me Chloe, Alex.”
“Cool.” Alex Wigan was a blond, blue-eyed, super-fit kid who looked like he could have been in a recruiting poster for the Germans during World War II, so it amused me when I found out he was Jewish too. He was one of the youngest newbies but struck me as one of the sharpest. “On the yakseya, silver bullets? Yes or no?”
“Uh . . . ” That was a good question. “Silver is often poisonous to creatures like that, but I honestly don’t know.”
“All I know is that he laughed at the bullets from my M-16,” Kimpton said.
Alex had been one of the only students to actually take notes the whole time, and now he was checking them. “You said that silver tends to work better on things originating from other worlds and shapeshifters.”
“Most shapeshifters,” I corrected. Just touching silver would harm Earl. It didn’t do anything to me. I hadn’t confided in anyone else at the compound about my heritage just yet. Part of my wishful, hopeful side liked to imagine that these kids would be okay with it, but if word got out that MHI hired monsters—PUFF exempt or not—all sorts of business contracts could potentially dry up. Good or evil, we oddities get lumped together in the minds of the customer. “Shapeshifters are a really big tent with a lot of possible origins and types.”
Alex noted that down too, only he didn’t seem happy about it. I suspected he was the sort who liked to have everything neatly categorized.
MHI training was grueling. They spent their days running, working out, training in hand-to-hand combat or with edged weapons, shooting a lot, and their only quiet time was in classrooms like this getting blasted in the face with a firehose of information. At the end of the day, most of them just went to bed early or sat on the couch watching something brainless on the newbie dorm’s television set, mentally and physically exhausted. Only not Alex Wigan. When the training day was over, he was hitting MHI’s archive to find another book or diary to read about monsters.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, both hands were almost at twelve. It was time to break for lunch. After, we’d all hit the range. The boys were quietly taking bets on whether or not Melanie would have another “hot brass in bra” incident like the other day. “Well, that’s about all the time we have to talk about the endless hordes of hell today, kids.”
* * *
A few days later was the company “beauty pageant,” as some of the other experienced Hunters liked to call it. The Shacklefords just called it graduation day. It was an exciting time, with team leaders from all over the country coming in to take a look at the remaining recruits to fight over who got which one.
This graduating class was actually larger than normal, which was nice since the company was expanding. MHI’s hiring standards were strict and the washout rate was high, yet this group was beyond normal in their capabilities. Even Earl had to admit that this was one of the better classes they’d ever had. Most had made the cut. He’d only had to dismiss a few as unacceptable. Those received nice severance checks and were sent on their merry way with a warning about not speaking to anybody about this world, because that tended to draw visitors from federal agencies who really enjoyed permanently silencing witnesses.
As the team leaders arrived, I realized that I didn’t know a single one of them. I really had been gone a long time. So I kept to myself and observed, knowing that one of these would probably be my new boss.
After Raymond Shackleford gave a motivational speech—professionally speaking, it was rather stirring—it was interview time, and the recruits were shuffled off to talk to the various leads to see where they were going to end up stationed around the country. Sometimes it would be based on regional knowledge because locals were always valuable, and other times it would be decided based on a team needing a particular skill set.
During that, I got summoned to the Boss’s office. Raymond looked pleased with himself and Earl was chain-smoking cigarettes, which usually meant he was seriously irritated about something.
“So you’ve decided what to do with me.”
“There’s a couple things came to mind,” Ray answered.
So I’d finally get my assignment. I’d talked with some of the Miami crew the night before, and they needed people. While I wasn’t sure about joining a team whose primary job was hunting luskas, the idea of lying around on a beach, sipping drinks was appealing. Sandy beaches and mai tais versus luskas? It was too close to call. Plus, the eye candy in Miami was to die for. Literally. Luskas, though. Gross.
Just as long as it wasn’t somewhere cold. I hate the cold. Blame it on my roots, but I don’t handle snow.
The odd thing was, I’d be okay staying in Cazador. I had enjoyed training the new recruits a lot more than I thought I would have. I never really thought about how much knowledge of monsters I had to pass on until I tried it. With what MHI already knew coupled with what I’d picked up around the world, these new hunters would be going out to their teams better prepared than ever. It made me smile, knowing the knowledge I’d passed along might one day save their lives. Plus, unlike a lot of Hunters, I wasn’t addicted to the action. I’d be content here, taking a peaceful break. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t afford the pay cut of not constantly collecting on bounties.
“I could stay here.”
“You could stick around, be on call in case my team needed you in an emergency. You’ve got the patience and personality for teaching the youngsters.”
“But . . . ” Earl said.
Ray sighed. “But headquarters staff makes up Team Cazador, which means being ready to roll and support another team anywhere in the country in twenty-four hours. That’s Earl’s team.”
“It ain’t personal,” Earl assured me.
“What for—oh . . . ” I quickly figured it out. A werewolf and a nagualii on one team? That would certainly attract the government’s attention. We were allowed to exist. It didn’t mean they liked us hanging out together. The attention would be more hassle than it was worth. I coughed and shook my head. “Never mind, then.”
“I’ve got something better for you anyway,” Raymond stated.
“Someplace warm?”
“Yep.”
“You know me so well.”
“I figured if I sent you to Minneapolis my life might be in danger.” Ray went over to where there was a map of the US on his office wall. There were pins in it showing where each of the regional teams were based. He pointed at the west coast, which was suspiciously bare, with a lone pin in Seattle.
“MHI hasn’t had much luck in California.”
I’d never been there. “They make it sound nice in the movies.”
“It’s a big state, with a large and growing population, lots of money and excitement, deep history, much of it bad, with a few giant cities and a whole lot of countryside between them for all sorts of nasties to hide in, not to mention a huge number of immigrants, transients, and bums to feed on, all of which means lots of monster activity . . . activity which we should rightfully be the ones handling and getting paid for.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“We’re the best, but we ain’t the only company who does this. MHI started in the South and expanded outward, but we got outcompeted west of the Rockies. The California market has been cornered by Golden State Supernatural for a long time.”
“Who?”
“Buncha assholes,” Earl grumbled. “Governor Reagan was friends with the owner so they got all the municipal contracts.”
“Sometimes connections win over skill. Sad fact of business,” Ray agreed. “Only recent events have opened up an opportunity for us to station a team there again.”
“Reagan quitting to run for president?” I’d been reading the newspapers.
“More like Golden State Supernatural bit off more than they could chew awakening an eldritch being among the redwoods, a bunch of their employees got massacred, and the company filed for bankruptcy.”
Now that hadn’t been in the papers.
“I don’t want to be a team lead,” I stated. Being a team leader was like herding cats, and I was way more catlike than most Hunters.
Earl snorted. “You won’t be. We’re promoting one of the shooters from New Orleans.”
“I need you to back him up. This will be his first time in charge of a team. He’s killed about one of everything, but he’s not the most . . . cultured individual.”
“Marco is a goon,” Earl said. “But he’s got potential to be a good leader if cooler heads can coach it out of him. You know more about monsters than he does, you’re easy on the eyes, and you’re far more diplomatic than he’ll ever be.”
“Flattering.”
“Just calling them as I see them. You’ll need to establish a base somewhere in LA, but be aware, the Monster Control Bureau is getting crueler about keeping witnesses silenced there. They’ve got a regional director who thinks a permanent silence is the best one. You’ll deal with the Feds so your team lead doesn’t get MHI in more trouble.”
Lovely. Joining an existing, functioning unit was one thing. Starting a team from scratch was a whole different challenge. “Where are you drawing the team members from?” I asked, though I had a sinking feeling I already knew. It wasn’t as though we had a ton of experienced Hunters with nothing better to do at the moment, and there was this perfectly good newbie class just sitting here . . .
“I’ve got you one Hunter from St. Louis, ten years on the job, precision rifle specialist, and one from Chicago, with two years in. Tough kid, came up on the other side of the law and all the skill sets that entails.” Then Earl trailed off as he looked toward his son to break the bad news I already knew.
Raymond offered me a smile. It reminded me of a used car salesman sinking his clutches into an unwary buyer. “Pick three from your class today to take with you to get started. We’ll send you more as we have them.”
“Oh, come on,” I protested. “Three newbies on a brand-new team is setting us up for failure.”
“All your excess experience will average it out,” Earl assured me.
“I can’t afford to pull anyone else right now,” Raymond countered before relenting somewhat. “I’ll give you first pick, though.”
“How long do I have to decide?” I asked.
“The duration of this meeting, and I’ve only got a couple smokes left in this pack,” Earl said. “Everybody else is waiting.”
“That’s hardly any time at all.” Whining was embarrassing, so I gathered my dignity and bit the bullet. “I can do it, but shouldn’t I discuss this with my new team leader first? Or, you know, actually meet him?”
“Team building isn’t his thing. You know them better than he does.”
“Fine. If I get first pick, Benjamin Cody.” That one was the obvious standout in the class. A decorated war hero, six and a half feet of solid muscle, had a brain like a steel trap, and was one of those men whom leadership just came to naturally. Provided Cody survived long enough, he had future monster hunting legend written all over him.
“First pick, after Ben. I should have clarified,” Ray said apologetically. “He’s already promised to New Mexico for the mad science boys. There’s educational requirements for the government contract there. Did you know he was almost finished with a degree in physics or some such thing before dropping out to enlist?”
“Nice bait and switch, Ray. Alright, then I want Kimpton Wall on my team.”
“Why?” Ray asked, curious. “He’s got a chip on his shoulder and issues with authority. Just so you know, he complained to me about how there was no way some, I quote, little girl had fought so many monsters.”
“Bingo. He was the first one to be openly suspicious of me and wasn’t afraid to call bullshit when he suspected I might be exaggerating my knowledge or lying about my background. I’ll take the honesty.”
Ray nodded. “The boy is currently rather disillusioned, but personally I see having issues with authority a trait that all patriotic Americans should share. Done. You’ve got Wall.”
“Then Alex Wigan.”
“Clever lad. Did a brief stint in the Navy. Ran into a dip on shore leave in Rota, then almost got himself murdered by the MCB because he was too excited to shut up about finding out monsters were real. If we hadn’t found him and made him a job offer he’d probably be at the bottom of the ocean with cinder blocks tied to his ankles.”
That wasn’t hard to imagine at all. Whoever the Monster Control Bureau couldn’t intimidate into silence, they’d ruin the credibility of, and when that didn’t work, they went for more permanent measures. The US government did not mess around when it came to keeping the existence of monsters secret.
“Alex is a nerd, but he’s genuinely passionate about the subject. Guys like that never stop thinking. Their brains are constantly churning. I like having someone I can turn loose to let them find solutions.”
“Alright, you can have Wigan.”
Earl chuckled. “He’ll be happy to go to California. He told me he likes to ride one of them surfboard things.”
“For the third, give me Carlos Alhambra.”
Ray shook his head in the negative. “You can have Simmons.”
“Melanie? The bubbleheaded cheerleader? What did I ever do to you, Ray? You’re sending us to California, which has a big Spanish-speaking population, and Carlos is fluent in Spanish.”
“So are you. Carlos is from Massachusetts, while Melanie’s the only recruit we have this time from California. She knows more about the place than the rest of you put together, and most importantly, her uncle is the Orange County sheriff. We get their contract to handle supernatural events and that gives us a head start on negotiating all the lucrative municipal contracts that Golden State will be defaulting on.”
There was a lot of money to be made off of local contracts. They pay to keep you on retainer, then when they have an issue, you handle their monster problems quietly, and get paid again by the Feds for the PUFF bounty on whatever it was you had to kill. If it wasn’t for the constant potential for violent death, it would be a great business model. Ray certainly had me there.
“Come on, Chloe,” Earl said. “I thought you ladies would be in favor of sticking together—female empowerment and all that feminist equality stuff they’re always going on about now.”
“I can lift one end of a Volkswagen off the ground, so I don’t get too worried about being anybody’s equal. This isn’t a girl-power thing.”
“Good,” Earl said. “Because your rifleman is actually a riflewoman.”
“As long as she hits what she aims at, I don’t care. On the other hand, Melanie seems sweet. She’s genuinely nice, but . . . ”
“She’s a bleeding-heart do-gooder,” Ray agreed. “But don’t underestimate her. She’s smarter than she looks and has got potential.”
“We done, then?” Earl asked.
“I guess.” Which was when I realized that they’d plowed ahead so fast I’d never even agreed to go to California. Yet another demonstration that the Shacklefords had always been masters of negotiating deals.
“Talk to Russ at the armory to gear up,” Ray told me. “We’ll wire money to buy the rest of the supplies you need once you find a base of operations. We’ve got a few suggestions from local contacts, but you’ll need to scope them out and pick the best one. Then start making friends.”
“Build contacts, establish contracts, let the local MCB office know we’re there.” I sighed. It sounded like I was pretty much the team lead in all but name and paycheck.
“Be careful of the competition out there. With the big dog in the area dying, upstart companies might try to come in and poach contracts and bounties. If any of GSS’s decent employees lived and want a job, send them our way, but odds are they’ll form new start-ups. Home base, the Los Angeles area, is big and chaotic, but you’ll also have the entirety of California and western Arizona. Probably as far as Tijuana, maybe even some contracts farther south in Mexico. Las Vegas will also be on your list, since it’s only a few hours to drive there, and that’s probably the next place we’ll stand up a team. But in the meantime, you okay with Mexico?”
Great, I thought. My old stomping grounds. “I’ll make it work.”
“Oh, by the way,” Earl was grinning now. “Your team lead?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll like him. Probably. His name is Marco Moss. Goes by Rhino.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
* * *
Marco was a giant of a man, taller and wider than anyone I’d ever met. If I didn’t know any better I would have suggested he was at least half ogre, but Earl assured me we were the only two PUFF Exemptions in the company.
Marco’s hands were large enough to completely envelop my head. I know this because later on he tried one night while drinking. Well, he drank, I drove. He also had the sunny disposition of a rhinoceros with a tooth infection. Hence, “Rhino.” I called him Marco when I was speaking to him. Pretty sure he appreciated it more than the nickname.
I mean, he didn’t come out and say it, but it was there. Beneath the glower and the frown. Oh, and the scars. God, the scars. I don’t think there was an inch of exposed skin on his arms or face that wasn’t scarred up somehow. He’d seen and killed it all, and most had taken a good chunk of flesh in return.
Within a few hours of meeting him, I could tell exactly why Ray had assigned me to be Marco’s second-in-command.
For starters, Marco seemed to think there was no reason to elaborate when a simple “yes” or “no” would do. The man simply didn’t volunteer explanations at all. He’d give orders but getting him to explain the why behind them was worse than pulling teeth. I hoped he’d get a little better as time wore on, because it was a long drive from Alabama to California.
Asking around to the other experienced Hunters, it turned out Marco was very accomplished indeed. If a human being could theoretically pick up a gun, then Marco could shoot it well. Rifles, shotguns, machine guns? Obviously. Grenade launcher? Yes, please. Somebody claimed to have watched him fire two separate shotguns simultaneously and nail both ghouls he was aiming at. He was almost inhuman with firearms. Give him a knife and he’d probably end up cutting his own pinky finger off. He could manage the stake part of vampire killing well enough, but he was lacking in the chop department.
Those same Hunters who praised the man as a badass tended to give me a surprised look when I asked them about Marco getting promoted to a leadership role, and ask, “Marco Moss? Are you sure?” Which I didn’t take as a good sign.
Ray had flown all the members of our newly formed California team in so that we could get to know each other and start planning. He had set up the big meeting room at headquarters with various maps of the state, including the San Francisco, San Bernadino, San Diego, Oakland, and Los Angeles areas. Seeing it all laid out like that really put into perspective that we were just a temporary bandage to be slapped onto a logistical nightmare. At the same time it was beautiful, unorganized chaos, and actually made me a little excited at the prospect of being on a true MHI team for the first time in a very long time.
It was a huge area to cover, but the thing people need to keep in mind about monster activity is that it ebbs and flows. Sometimes an area will get crazy, and business will be booming. Others, it will be quiet, and a team will spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs. With monsters being a government mandated under penalty of death level secret, a lot of times there could be activity right under your nose and you wouldn’t even know about it. A huge part of our job would be building the network necessary to know what was really going on, so when we got word something supernatural had sprung up, we could move on it fast.
It would be an interesting team dynamic, that was certain. Four men and three women—one of whom was a PUFF-exempt creature from mythology. Thankfully, neither Ray nor Earl brought up the nagualii in the room.
Ray provided the introductions. He talked up Marco, which was easy, because he was intimidating as hell. He introduced me as someone who’d consulted to the IDF on monsters before coming aboard, but left the rest of my history vague, and made it sound like this was the first time I’d worked here. Thanks for that. He also made it abundantly clear that I was his pick to be second-in-command, and that if anybody had an issue with that, too damned bad. Nobody said a word.
Up next was Justin Moody, our Chicago transplant. A former Marine who had done two tours in Vietnam, until he’d encountered a hob in the jungle. The encounter had landed him in the hospital with a wicked chest wound, and a deep hatred for all forest folk. MHI had recruited him a few years ago. Ray left it at that for the official introductions, but since I was responsible for making this team work, I’d done some asking around.
Justin had grown up a poor Black kid in the roughest neighborhood in Chicago. His home life had been awful. Even his old teammates couldn’t tell me a thing about his family because Justin never talked about them. What they did know about his upbringing suggested the same tragic story I was hearing about a lot of American cities now: poverty, drugs, gangs, and plenty of senseless violence.
He hadn’t joined the Marines willingly. A judge had given him the ultimatum: enlist or do time. Only Justin had taken to it, loved it, and probably would have made a career out of it if he’d not gotten himself nearly clawed to pieces.
The last experienced Hunter that Ray was giving us was Lizz Yarborough. She was shorter than I am, which is impressive, since I’m not big. Lizz was downright petite, but she had a chip on her shoulder that more than made up for lack of height. She’d gotten mauled by a mutant catfish down in Florida and had nearly lost her leg, which was her introduction to this world. Despite the gruesome injury and pretty interesting scar—I quote, “Damn thing was shaking me like a rag doll, so I popped it in the head five or six times with my pistol, then stuck my hand in its gills and strangled it”—she had been recruited afterward and been on our St. Louis team for nearly a decade, making her the longtimer after Marco. Well, and way after me, but I was a super longtimer, and that was none of their business.
Lizz warned us she wasn’t fast because of the old leg injury, she was too small to wrestle anything, don’t expect her to lift anything heavy, oh, and she was an absolutely terrible driver who should never get behind the wheel, however . . . she was a really good shot. And when she had claimed that, Earl, Ray, and Marco had all nodded in agreement, having seen her in action.
Ray testified, “Lizz once plugged a running werewolf in the dead of night with a Winchester Model 70 from the observatory of the Gateway Arch at just shy of seven hundred yards, killing it instantly with a silver bullet through the cranium.”
“Ayup. Not my longest shot in the field, but that is the company distance record on a lycanthrope,” she bragged.
Lizz would do just fine on our team.
Mostly I stayed quiet during the get to know you portion, and evasive whenever anybody got curious about my background. The newbies—Kimpton, Alex, and Melanie—knew me from training. The experienced ones would accept me off of Earl vouching for me. I was riding his reputation. That wouldn’t last; before long I’d have to prove myself competent. Once everyone seemed to be warming up to their new teammates—except for Marco, because nobody had ever accused him of being warm—the Boss cleared his throat.
“None of you have ever been a part of a new team starting up, so listen closely.” Raymond Shackleford the Third had been around the block a few times and knew the score. He was an expert at quieting Hunters down with nothing more than a glance with those ice-blue eyes. “You’ll be starting almost from scratch. We have some contacts in the northern parts of the state thanks to our team out of Seattle catching the occasional case there. However, southern and central, you’ll have to start slowly and build as you go. Local sheriffs may or may not be read in on the supernatural. That’ll all depend on who the Monster Control Bureau has needed to brief. Tread carefully there. You make contact with somebody not read in, they’ll think you’re nuts, and when word gets back to the MCB they’ll be furious. MCB regional headquarters are in Sacramento. I want you to avoid that office. They’ll still be sore they ain’t collecting kickbacks from the now-defunct Golden State Supernatural and will probably try to squeeze money out of us instead.”
Earl pointed toward the map of the biggest urban area. “Your home base will be in the LA basin, because it’s got the highest levels of activity. Get established there first, then worry about the rest.”
“There’s an MCB office there as well,” Ray warned. “They’re very good at manipulating the local media and keeping things quiet. I’d rather you build a relationship with them than the ass-kissing parasites in Sacramento. Active cases take priority over networking. I’m fond of long-term profitability, but I really hate innocent people getting preyed on. Once you’re settled, start making friends. We’ve got a list of counties, cities, and big companies that Golden State had contracts with to handle their monster problems. I’ll give that list to Chloe to prioritize and figure out the best way to approach them.”
Great. Now I was doing door-to-door sales too.
“The sooner you accomplish these things, the sooner you will be making large sums of money. Listen to your team lead. Marco has the experience to get you through. If things get to the point where you are unable to handle them, he’ll call me. Marco knows his stuff. Listen to him and you’ll survive long enough to spend all that hard-earned money. We’ll take the next couple of days to plan and iron out details, then some of you will fly out there to arrange accommodations, while the rest of you drive your equipment across the country. I expect Team Rhino to be fully up and running within a month.” And the way Ray said that left no doubt that we had better not let him down.
Even Marco picked up on that tone. In an organization full of tough, accomplished, professional monster killers, there were some men we all still looked up to. Nobody wanted to disappoint this man. “We won’t let you down, Mr. Shackleford.”
“Got it, boss,” I agreed.
The rest of the team said so too.
Earl looked around at all of us and seemed to approve. “Good hunting.”