“We’ve crossed paths,” the Polish demon hunter said.
Travis nodded. “Once or twice. Figured I might have a special insight into this case.”
“I imagine you would. Surprised they haven’t drawn you back in,” Father Jacinski remarked.
“They try. I keep turning them down.” Travis Dominick had been a priest and an asset for the Sinistram before he left both organizations, something most people only did by dying. If anyone could provide an insider’s perspective to the shadowy group supporting Brunrichter, it would be Travis.
“You’re the private investigator with the office over on the South Side,” Father Jacinski said when he came face to face with Brent. “I’ve had reason to spend some time in that neighborhood over the years.”
“Your name comes up in certain circles,” Brent acknowledged. “I’ve heard good things.”
Since Travis and Brent also had a fair bit of demon hunting experience under their belts, I allowed myself a slight glimmer of hope. Maybe we weren’t utterly screwed after all.
There’s a first time for everything.
I put three pizzas at a time into the oven, while Donny helped set out the cookies. Father Leo grabbed a couple of two-liter bottles of pop out of the fridge and snagged a stack of red plastic cups from the cupboard.
While I waited for the pizzas to heat up, I looked out over the odd crew that had taken over my house. Demon had finally come out from under the bed. He gave the cat shifters the stink eye but found a seat next to Blair, who fussed over him, as usual. Father Jacinski was deep in conversation with Travis and Brent. Joel’s crew stood apart, watching everyone warily. Then again, they were cats. I was waiting for one of them to knock something off a shelf.
“Quite a crew,” Father Leo said, setting out hot pads for me to bring the pizza pans out of the oven. He’s been coming to the poker games long enough that he knows where I kept everything.
“I figured I’d patch Travis and Brent in on video chat, but I’m glad they’re here in person.”
The doorbell startled me, and Demon ran to the front window, barking. I half expected to see Smith and Jones, who would definitely not be welcome.
“Surprise!” Phoebe greeted me as she, Jon, Carl, Scott, and Kayla crowded into the kitchen.
“We brought food!” Kayla announced, holding up two plastic grocery bags of chips and snacks.
“How did you know about this?” I asked, thinking that our “secret” mission was anything but.
“Telepath. Duh,” Kayla said, rolling her eyes. “I stopped by the coffee shop for a snack, and Chiara was thinking so loudly I couldn’t help picking up on it.”
“Besides, I heard from Penny Michaels again,” Jon said. “The ghost girl? She told me stuff.”
“Since you’re here, you might as well toss your coats on the pile in the back bedroom and find a seat wherever there’s room,” I said. I hadn’t intended to involve them, not when we were talking about a battle that was going to be bloody and dangerous as fuck.
Kayla came up beside me. “If these abilities we have are going to be anything more than a burden, then we need to be able to choose how we make use of them. None of us think for a moment you’d take us with you. But we can be your remote intel. Don’t shut us out.”
Damn telepathic meddling kids. But she was right, and I knew it. “Okay,” I said because they weren’t actually kids, and if assholes like the Sinistram were hunting cryptids, they’d get around to poaching those with special gifts eventually.
When the first three pizzas were done, I set them out with plates on the kitchen table, and popped three more into the oven, knowing this crew could put food away. Once everyone had something to eat and drink, we all squeezed into my living room and found places to sit. After most people had at least had a chance to eat some of their pizza, we got started.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “We’re going after the guy responsible for the attacks on cryptids and the disappearances of shifters—and probably other things. He’s holed up in the abandoned Mercer County Poor House, and we know he’s not alone. Which is where all of you come in.”
I gave a quick recap to bring everyone up to speed. Phoebe and the gang looked a bit gobsmacked. Joel’s bobcat crew also seemed rattled by the full story, although they made an effort to look too cool to care. It’s got to be a cat thing.
“Brunrichter is hard to kill,” I said. “He may not be completely human. Mostly, it’s because he made a deal with a demon, who protects him.”
“Demon,” Carl repeated. “For real?”
“Oh yes,” Father Jacinski said. “Very real. Do not worry. Father Leo and I will handle the demon. And if we need assistance, Travis and Brent have some experience with these things.”
No one seemed to be doing well on the “not worrying” part.
“We’re certain Brunrichter has his own goons,” I added. “We don’t know how many, or whether they’re a mix of humans and other creatures that obey him.”
“If this was a poor farm, it has ghosts,” Travis said. “And I’d wager many are still there. If they’re active, I might be able to convince one to be our ‘inside man’ so to speak.”
“I heard from Penny again.” Everyone turned to look at Jon. As usual, he stuck close to Phoebe, who patted his arm reassuringly. “She’s a ghost who used to live there. She told me she doesn’t like the monsters in her house.”
“Interesting,” Travis said. “You’re a distance away from the location. I usually need to be fairly close.”
Jon shrugged. “I have no idea how this works for me. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Travis gave me a nod. “Simon and I can help when we’re done with all this.”
I thanked Travis and turned back to Jon. “You said you had some information when you got here.”
Jon nodded. “Penny came back, asking if we could get rid of the monsters. I told her I needed to know where they were. So she described the inside of the brick castle.” He smiled. “I typed it into my phone when I came out of the trance. It’s not exactly a map, but pretty close. There are four floors—one is a basement. It has the cages for the monsters.”
I heard a low growl from someone in Joel’s group, and I glared to shut them up. “Some of those prisoners are being held against their will. But we don’t know what all Brunrichter has been doing to the creatures he kidnaps, or whether he’s managed to change them.”
“Change, how?” Robby the bobcat asked.
“He wants to use them as weapons, or super soldiers,” Father Jacinski replied. “So he has been experimenting.”
“Fuck,” Robby muttered. “This is like the X-Men.”
“It’s worse because it is real,” the Polish priest corrected. “This is no game.”
“Which means, we want to free the prisoners, but we need to be careful,” I continued. “Donny, Joel, and the bobcats will find and free the prisoners.”
Donny and Joel eyed each other, and then both men nodded.
“Travis will handle the ghosts and be our first line of defense if the Sinistram has any agents there,” I went on.
“I’m fine with the ghosts. I don’t know how likely it is there’s an agent babysitting this guy, but if there is, I’ll handle it,” Travis replied.
“Brent and I will go after Brunrichter and his guards.” I glanced at Brent, who nodded in agreement. With our new reinforcements, I’d needed to make some adjustments to the plan the priests and I had come up with the night before, but this felt solid.
“When it’s over, it would probably be good to have the padres bless the cemetery so those souls can move on,” I added.
“And I can goose the ones that don’t want to leave,” Travis replied. “After all this time, they need to go.”
“What about us?” Phoebe asked.
“We’re going to be their tech ops back up crew, like in the movies,” Chiara said. “That way Blair and I can keep you safe, and we’ll all be in one place in case
they need information. Since Travis will be with them, Simon and I can take over if there are lore questions.”
I didn’t mention Otto. He had volunteered to help since we’d heard a rumor one of the local vamps had gone missing. Tristan and Gus agreed to handle the night shift at the preserve to free up Otto. I didn’t want to freak out Joel’s gang and Donny. I figured I’d quietly let the more experienced hunters know so no one staked Otto by accident.
“What if we get there and find out this mad doctor guy has more helpers?” Keith, the bobcat, asked.
“Then we deal with it on the fly,” Brent answered. “Count on surprises. Even the best intel is never one hundred percent.”
“That won’t change your part of the mission,” I told Joel and Danny. “It just might mean you have to go through a few more bodies to get to the prisoners.”
“I’ve been wanting to scratch up someone for taking Corey since he went missing,” Joel replied. “That won’t bother us at all.” His friends nodded, their expressions making it clear that they were ready for a fight.
“That’s the plan, folks. If you’ve got comments or concerns, now’s the time to say so. Otherwise, we meet up here tomorrow night at sunset and convoy out,” I told them. I didn’t mention Smith and Jones. Honestly, I had no idea what their idea of “keeping the Sinistram off our backs” involved, and whether that meant leading shadowy agents on a wild goose chase or disrupting their satellite signals. For all I knew, the Wonder Twins might not even show up in person.
Travis had questions for Jon about his connection to Penny. I needed to know more about the inside of the old building since we hadn’t been able to turn up any blueprints.
“It’s a very big building,” Jon said. “According to Penny, everything is happening in the center section. The wings aren’t being used. The basement has the cages for the ‘monsters,’” he continued. “Guards are on the first floor. The ‘hospital’ is on the second floor.”
“Probably the infirmary,” Travis said. “It was a poor house, not an asylum, so there shouldn’t have been a need for an operating room.”
“We hope,” I muttered.
“She said that ‘people sleep’ on the third floor,” Jon added. “So maybe where the mad doc and his goons have their quarters?”
“What about the fourth floor?” Father Leo asked, coming up behind me.
“Penny wasn’t sure,” Jon said. “She never went up there when she was alive. Her room was on the third floor. The attic might be empty.”
I looked at Father Leo, and then to Travis. “What do you think?”
Travis shrugged. “I’ll know more when I try to talk to the ghosts myself—if I can get cooperation. It all depends on whether they see this as their problem—like Penny apparently does—or are too faded to care.”
“I’m a little relieved that we may not have to go searching through the whole place,” Father Leo said. “Three floors—maybe four—is plenty.”
“Thank you,” I told Jon and the rest of my Scooby gang. They didn’t have to show up, but they came anyhow.
“We just want to do our part,” Phoebe said. “We’d be pretty mad if they grabbed any of us.”
“We’re all going home with Chiara and Blair,” Kayla added. “Safer that way. We’ve already called off work. Nasty stomach bug,” she said with a smirk.
“Slumber party tonight, and backup for you tomorrow,” Chiara confirmed. “We’re set.”
“You two are welcome to bunk here,” I told Travis and Brent. “I’ve got a second bedroom and the couch. No promises that Demon won’t be your surprise cuddle buddy in the middle of the night,” I warned, and Demon thunked his tail with a goofy doggy grin.
“Father Jacinski is going to stay at the Rectory with me,” Father Leo said. He looked at Joel and his friends with concern. “What about you?”
Joel grinned. “It’s a nice night, and you’ve got woods behind your cabin. Me and the guys are gonna sleep in our fur tonight, maybe rustle up a rabbit or two for a midnight snack.”
Donny was standing with Chiara and Blair. I saw a flash of sadness in his eyes at being left out, even if he was a dog, and they were bobcats.
Chiara must have also noticed. “I figured people would want to nibble, so I’ve got a big box of pigs in a blanket we can throw in the oven.”
Donny’s eyes lit up. “Those little hot dogs in the wrappers?”
“Yep,” Chiara said. “Plenty for everyone.”
Blair herded their crew out to the cars. Chiara bumped my shoulder on her way. “Be careful, Mark. We want everyone back in one piece.”
I appreciated her concern. “Can’t promise, but we’ll do the best we can.”
Everyone left except Travis and Brent. They brought in their gear, and then came out to join me in the kitchen. I put a bottle of whiskey on the table and three glasses because damned if I didn’t figure we all could use something stiffer than Corona. They sat down around the table, and for a moment, we each stared into our glasses like the amber liquid held the meaning of life.
“So…Brunrichter works for the Sinistram?” I finally said, and took a sip of my drink, relishing the burn.
Travis rolled his eyes. “Hardly. More like he’s being used by them. The Sinistram wouldn’t have any qualms about utilizing a butcher like him, but they’d consider themselves morally superior.” His tone made his contempt for the organization clear.
There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but none of them were my business.
“The short version is, I grew up in a devout family, and they made me believe that the things I could do meant I was born wrong,” Travis said, and I didn’t know whether he just guessed my unspoken questions or his psychic ability had kicked in. “The Sinistram made me think that if I worked for them, I could, somehow, purify myself. It wasn’t until I was on the inside that I realized how twisted they were. I finally figured I’d take my chances with Heaven and Hell on my own terms and walked out on all of it.”
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for him, leaving the priesthood and the organization that had misled him.
“Don’t be. I’m good with who I am now, both with the outreach center I run, and the hunting Brent and I do. Sometimes, the route to get where you belong just takes some detours,” he added with a lopsided smile that didn’t entirely reach his eyes. He knocked back a good portion of his whiskey, making me think that the old scars weren’t quite as healed as he liked to suggest.
“And I’ve been getting chased by C.H.A.R.O.N. for a couple of years now,” Brent said. “I keep saying no; they keep asking. Travis and I make quite the pair, getting stalked by the Evil Empires.” Like Travis, Brent’s eyes didn’t match his joking tone.
“Why?” I asked, willing to be a little nebby. “Why you two?”
Travis shrugged. “Because both of us are damn good at what we do, for one thing.”
“And because we each have natural aptitudes that are apparently hard to find,” Brent added. “Trust me; it’s not a category anyone wants to fall into.”
“Smith and Jones, the guys from the CIA and Occulatum, seemed to think they’d need to keep the ninja priests off our tail when we went after Brunrichter. Do you think that’s something to worry about?” I asked, toying with my glass.
Travis sat back, watching the whiskey move from side to side as he tipped his glass one way and then the other. “They’re probably going to block communication signals, fry drones, cordon off the airspace, that kind of thing. Since we don’t want them getting reinforcements, it’s worth it.”
“Do the ninja priests do this kind of thing a lot?” I asked.
Travis gave a bitter chuckle at my reference. “This isn’t the organization’s only try at meddling with the very kinds of abilities they claim are abominations,” he finally said. “Hell, it’s probably not the only program of the sort going on right now. They always have a lot of projects going, knowing that most of them will flame out.”
He took another sip and seemed to choose his words carefully. “I’m sure they’ve assigned him a handler. That person is their plant in Brunrichter’s team, to feed information back to headquarters. I can’t see them tying up a lot of their people to guard him, and they can’t do too much to ward the building with magic without risking that someone would notice.”
Travis shook his head. “I don’t doubt that the organization would love to be able to do the kinds of things the mad doc promised them. And it would be very bad for everyone if they succeeded.” He knocked back the rest of his drink.
“And they’re okay with him working with a demon?” The more I learned about the Sinistram, the more I deeply disliked them. Hypocrisy pisses me off, and making a guy like Travis feel ashamed for being a psychic medium and then turning around and supporting someone who made a demon deal just stuck in my craw.
“The organization is willing to use any means necessary to achieve their goals,” Travis said, his voice going cold and flat, and the look in his eyes was shuttered. “They believe they have a mandate from God, and that makes them above the law, above the teachings of the church, above everything.”
No one gets into our kind of hunting for sport, or fun, or to prove how tough they are. It’s a blood brotherhood of people bound by loss and the need for vengeance. I didn’t have any special abilities like Travis or Phoebe and the crew. If I was a reluctant recruit, then they were the conscripts, the ones who got dragged into this sorry business just because of who they were and what they could do. I always had the option of walking away. They didn’t.
“We’re gonna get this guy,” I said, draining my glass and bringing it down on the table with a thunk. “And I’m mighty glad you’re here to help.”
7
Holy fuck, it does look like a castle,” I muttered as we came in sight of the Mercer County Poor Farm. The Victorians built beautiful institutions where horrible things happened to the people who had to live in them. Over the years, I’d dispatched vengeful spirits from old insane asylums and psychiatric hospitals, orphanages, and homes for wayward children. Those ghosts deserved vengeance, but their chance for justice against those who hurt them was long gone.
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