It was shaping up to be a cold day. Good. That would also cut down on the number of innocent bystanders who might get in my way. The only people I’d seen out and about so far were a few hard-core runners. And seeing them just reminded me how I’d not been doing that for a long time. Normally I took a great deal of pride in how physically fit I was, but motherhood had screwed that up too.
It had also severely cut into my training time. I was rusty. But if Lucinda went where we expected her to go, then she’d only be six hundred and fifty yards away. If the wind was mild, I could make that shot in my sleep, even with an unfamiliar rifle.
Fabian had hooked me up with an old Steyr SSG with a Schmidt and Bender scope on it. It wasn’t the most advanced rig he’d had in the safe, but it had a suppressor, which should keep the noise to a minimum. And more importantly for him, they’d found it on a job a long time ago, so there was no paper trail leading back to Grimm Berlin. I loved how even the most law-abiding of Hunters, in a country that loved it some gun control, still managed to have a throwaway sniper rifle on hand.
Lucinda had said to meet her at the spot by the river. Since our German counterparts also paid a lot of bribes to various people and things to keep tabs on monster activity, they’d found out where Wilhelm had met her last time. In this case, they were paying off brownies. Those annoying little shits were totally PUFF-eligible, but it sounded like Grimm Berlin had a relationship with them like we did with our orcs. By the time they’d been told though, Lucinda had been long gone.
I could only hope from her vague message that she was consistent.
If she showed up, I was going to threaten her into giving up Brother Death; then I was going to shoot her in the head.
I always felt a little sorry for Lucinda. Not enough, mind you, that I wouldn’t drop the bitch—particularly if she were standing between me and my baby—but still, she hadn’t chosen to whom to be born, she hadn’t had any kind of normal or sane influence in her life, and she hadn’t ever had a chance to develop a moral system that wasn’t messed up. That said, she’d been offered the chance to turn back from her path any number of times, including by us after we’d defeated her father. She’d chosen to be the demented queen of a bunch of cultists and dead things instead. Her involvement in the massacre at Copper Lake had sealed the deal.
It was perfectly possible to be sad for the person that Lucinda Hood might have been, while still thinking the horrible person she actually was needed to get put down like a rabid dog.
But not until after she told me how to get my kid.
The sun was coming up behind and to the right. It was one reason why I’d picked this spot on the map during planning. Glare on your scope can mess you up. There were buildings around where I could’ve gotten an elevated position, but that would have required breaking and entering, or Fabian tricking somebody into letting us in, but that meant more potential witnesses which made it more likely I’d get picked up by SJK. Vacant properties are great for shooting from, and if I’d had more time, we could’ve gone through property listings and done some scouting, but we’d only had a few hours, and I’d managed to sleep for a couple of them.
It had been a fitful, nightmare-plagued sleep. Thinking about Ray made me fret, so instead I concentrated on the technical parts.
I think the reasons I’m MHI’s best contract negotiator are the same reasons that I’m one of our best precision marksmen. They’re both about knowing the details in advance. I’m meticulous. It’s the little things that make you miss, or screw you up and cost your company a whole lot of money. It isn’t about emotion. It’s about repeatable precision and knowing your job in and out.
Since Melvin had screwed up and sent my gear bag first, I’d at least gotten some useful equipment. Particularly my laser rangefinder, and my Kestrel. The rangefinder told me that I was 447 yards from the opposite bank, but since the little sitting area we expected Lucinda to use was downriver a bit, she would be anywhere from 620 to 650, depending on which bench she went for.
The Kestrel is like a miniature weather station, and it told me the barometric pressure, the humidity, and that the wind was moving at a leisurely three-to-five miles an hour. Of course, that could only measure the wind at my position. Looking across the waves of the Rhine told me that it was pretty calm all the way across. The two pieces of yellow surveyor’s tape I’d tied to the fence on the other side told me that the wind was about the same—speed and direction—over there.
Before leaving this morning I’d shot a few rounds across Fabian’s chronograph to get the velocity, and a five-shot group on paper to check the zero. The SSG had put them all in under an inch, so it would do. It was a good thing that their warehouse was long enough. My high-tech backstop had been a few cardboard boxes full of printer paper.
Then I’d measured the scope offset to the bore and looked online for the ballistic coefficient of the bullets Fabian had provided. Once I’d had all that information, I’d plugged it into my ballistic calculator to tell me how many clicks of adjustment I’d need to hit my target, first try. One shot, one kill. Precision, long-range shooting is basically weaponized math.
Milo had told me he was trying to coach my husband on all this wonderful stuff while they were up in Alaska, but knowing Owen, I doubted it would stick. Good as he was at math, when push comes to shove, that man always goes for volume over precision. I suppose that’s why we make such a good team.
Lastly, I’d written my data card on a little piece of paper, did a poor man’s home laminate job on it—as in sticky tape on both sides—poked a hole and zip-tied it to the side of the scope so I could read the numbers without having to move my head off the stock while I was prone.
Now I was in position, hidden beneath a tarp in the miniature construction zone that Fabian’s buddies had set up to combat global warming or whatever. Watching. Waiting. Ready. The only thing moving over there were some pigeons.
As the scene got brighter, I got more nervous.
What if we’d come to the wrong place? What if Lucinda had figured out it was a trap? Was I just wasting my time?
What if Ray is already dead?
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
But after ten minutes of second-guessing myself, Lucinda appeared in my scope. She was late because she’d stopped for coffee and a pastry. The leader of the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition took her sweet time walking into the little park. She was just strolling along, looking like a young woman out for a nice walk. Lucinda was rather pretty, in a blonde, waifish sort of way, and today she was wearing a long coat and sunglasses. Her long hair was free, which was good, because that was one last indicator of wind direction and speed.
She looked around for a minute. It was hard to accurately read facial expressions at over six hundred yards on only 14 power magnification, but she seemed annoyed that Wilhelm wasn’t already there. For a second I was worried she’d just keep on walking, but she took a seat on the first bench and nibbled at her breakfast.
Six hundred twenty yards then. I adjusted the focus a bit, checked parallax, and watched as pigeons immediately began to cluster around her, hoping that she’d share some of her food.
Fabian had supplied me with some cheap cell phones, I had one in front of me, and I’d left one beneath each bench.
I dialed the first preprogrammed number then went back to my scope. I had a Bluetooth earpiece in.
Lucinda seemed startled. She looked around, like maybe she was just going to bolt. I really hoped she didn’t because I needed her to talk before I shot her. But her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because she reached beneath and found where I’d taped the phone.
“Who’s this?”
“Hey, Lucinda. This is Julie Shackleford. We need to talk.”
“I don’t think so.”
The line went dead.
She started to stand up, but I’d been prepared to send a message.
One of the pigeons near Lucinda’s feet exploded in
a cloud of feathers.
A .308 round does a real number on a little bird. I couldn’t see from here, but I was betting she’d gotten peppered with pigeon bits. She’d spilled her coffee, and the rest of the pigeons began fighting for her discarded pastry. The flying rats didn’t even have a moment of silence for their fallen comrade. Lucinda calmly raised her hands to the surrender position and stood still. The sun gleamed off her metal hand… What was it with me and people with one hand lately?
The suppressor had taken care of most of the noise. There was still the sound the supersonic bullet made flying over the top of the river, but just the one by itself, most people weren’t going to hear that and think gunfire.
I worked the bolt to chamber another round, then hit redial.
Through the scope, I watched her sullenly move the phone back to her ear. “You made your point.”
“Then sit your bony ass down.”
She did. “What do you want? I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Oh, I believe you do. A member of my family has gone missing, and I want him back.”
Her eyes swept the bank of the river. “Where are you?”
“Where I can see you…and kill you if needed.”
“Very well.” I had to hand it to her. She’d matured over the last few years and had really perfected that whole British stiff-upper-lip attitude. She was as cool under pressure as her father had been. “If you wanted to shoot me, you already would have, so I’ll humor you. What do you want?”
“I want my son back.”
“I wasn’t aware you’d misplaced him.”
“Don’t play coy. Your loony cultists, Wilhelm and friends, hired an entity called Brother Death to kidnap my son, so I would exchange him for something you want very much.”
“Ah. I had a hunch you were the one who had the Kumaresh Yar. And did you make that exchange?”
“Briefly. But I wasn’t given my son, so I took it back.”
“Did you now? That’s fascinating. And what happened to my friends during all this?”
“Dead or picked up by the SJK, except for one poor bastard named Benno who got his soul collected by a creepy…something…hell if I know what it was.”
Lucinda took a deep breath. “Benno was a numpty, though unfortunate about Wilhelm—he had real potential. Bloody unfortunate turn of events all around, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
I was dialed in. The whole time we were having this conversation, I had the crosshairs sitting on the top of her chest. They barely quivered as I spoke.
“This was started by your people. I hold you responsible.”
Lucinda laughed. “That takes some gall. I hold your people responsible for killing my father, but you don’t see me being a bitch about it. Go home, Julie. Make other sons. Count your blessings that you haven’t also lost your god, or a part of your body.”
“Your father was a lunatic necromancer, his god tried to take over the Earth, and your hand got ripped off by a vampire who I wouldn’t trust further than I could throw a stake. I’m trying to be diplomatic here, Lucinda, but either you talk or I shoot you. Tell me about Brother Death.”
She thought about it for a moment. So long in fact that I’d moved my finger back inside the trigger guard.
“Brother Death is from Ghana originally. He’s hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. Various tribes worshiped him as a god or feared him as a demon. Either way, they made sacrifices to him…virgins, children, that sort of thing. He sometimes chose to live among them, appearing as a human, carrying out tasks in return for blood sacrifices or other items of magical value. During the colonial era, he discovered that Europeans were exceedingly eager to pay for services such as his. He has been a mercenary ever since.”
“He’s an Adze, isn’t he?”
“A near meaningless term from folklore, trying to identify and quantify a creature beyond mortal understanding, but fine, that’ll work. He works primarily in Europe now, but will take contracts anywhere and is very good at what he does. Back in the day, King Leopold hired him to do things to people in the Congo the likes of which sound heinous even to me. My father used his services on occasion, as have I. But not this time. This whole thing was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. I neither told him to take your child, nor do I know where he is now.”
“Then I have absolutely no reason to let you live.” I let that obvious threat hang there.
“You Americans are so trigger-happy. Calm down. I didn’t say I don’t know how to contact him. Though extremely powerful and deadly beyond your imagination, Brother Death’s defining characteristic is greed. At his basest level, he’s a simple creature. It isn’t about spending his wealth, it’s about accumulating it. As long as your child can be sold to someone, then Brother Death won’t harm him. And the brat of Julie Shackleford and Owen Zastava Pitt? I can guarantee something out there will pay dearly for blood like that.”
The sad part was that as she said that, I knew she was telling the truth. My family had made a lot of enemies. There would be no shortage of evil things who’d love to hurt us… or worse… What if my mother found out?
“That makes me want to shoot you more, not less,” I snarled.
“It boggles my mind that there is so much about the real world you Hunters still don’t know. There’s a whole underground economy. Brother Death will surely auction off your child. He’s done it before when he’s come across something of great value to people like me. Once he gets set up, he’ll send out invitations to a very select clientele. He might already have; I’ve not checked my email yet today. There’s no way you can get an invite to that table—you’ve got to be able to pay in suffering or necromantic power—but I can. In the dark market, I’ve got an excellent credit rating. So be a dear, put the gun down, and I’ll buy your child back for you.”
“Uh-huh… That sounded like a reasonable offer from a totally trustworthy source.” I was tempted to wipe the smug off of her face with a bullet.
“You didn’t let me finish. I wouldn’t do that out of the goodness of my heart. Frankly, the idea of some horrible being from the nether realms buying your child because Earl Harbinger wronged it generations ago is pretty damned funny. The things I associate with can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe. But poor beautiful Wilhelm was right about one thing: I want the Kumaresh Yar more than anything else in this world. I’ll buy your child back, and then we can exchange him for the artifact.”
I’d already made that deal once, with the devil I didn’t know. The devil I knew was already aware that I’d made that trade before, so I’d probably do it again.
“It’s not like any of the other bidders would be willing to work something out with a goody two-shoes like you. Come on, Julie. This is a win-win situation. We both get what’s rightfully ours.”
“Until you use the artifact to blow up time or whatever half-baked insanity you’ve got going on this time.”
“Don’t worry, love. The Kumaresh Yar’s not that easy to use unless you’re one of the rare mortals it was meant for. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort for the rest of us to harness even a small bit of its power.”
“You killed a town, Lucinda.”
“That was just an experiment. My new boss is busy now because your friends are mucking about in his business. You’ve already seen, he’s taking his time. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunities to stop him, but only one chance to get back your boy. Or tell it to yourself however you have to so you can justify it enough to sleep at night, but I’m your best chance.”
“Tell me how to reach him myself.”
“As a display of my good will, fine. Brother Death always works through an intermediary called Le Marchand. He manages the affairs of several powerful beings in Europe. When one of us wants to hire Brother Death, we send a message to Marchand, he passes it on, and if his client thinks the offer is sufficient, he’ll take the job. But Marchand won’t respond to someone on the side of t
he angels. Contact him and see what happens. Mark my words, the sale will be announced soon and the fact is I’m the only bidder you could possibly make a deal with…though come to think of it, I bet your dear old mum shows up.”
The thing that had been my mother was a nefarious, well-connected, extremely powerful vampire now. She’d offered to turn all her loved ones into vampires so we could live together forever, and when I’d turned her down, she’d tried to do it by force. She’d surely want the same messed-up fate for Ray. And in Lucinda’s terms, my mother probably had one hell of a credit rating.
“I know what you’re thinking, Julie, but Susan Shackleford is a solo act. I inherited my father’s estate. I can outbid her.”
“How could I possibly trust the likes of you?”
“You can’t, really.” Despite the prospect of getting sniped, Lucinda seemed annoyingly confident. “The only thing you can be certain of is I don’t give a damn about some stupid baby, but I’ll pay anything to have the artifact. I’m leaving now, Julie. You can either shoot me in the back, or let me go buy your son.”
Lucinda threw the phone into the river. Then she started walking away.
The crosshair rested right between her shoulder blades. My improvised wind flags were hardly moving. I put my finger on the trigger and slowly exhaled. Lucinda was a monster. She’d hurt hundreds of innocent people. I had the shot.
I didn’t take it.
“Shit!” I took my finger out of the trigger guard and put the safety on. “Shit! Shit!” I got up, wrapped the rifle in the tarp I’d been hiding under, and started back toward Fabian.
“What are you doing? Take the shot, Julie!”
I turned back. In the distance, Lucinda was already gone. She’d probably had a magic rope on her just in case. The crazy, cult-leading murderess was once again in the wind.
Fabian looked at me with disbelief and disgust. “You were supposed to kill her!”
“I couldn’t.” The next part made me sick to say aloud. “I need her alive.”
Monster Hunter Guardian (ARC) Page 14