Julie stirred. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Owen. What's going on?" she mumbled sleepily. "Wait a second," as she realized that her shirt was cut open and she was only wearing a bra beneath. "Pervert."
"Hey, blame the paramedics. Listen, Julie. I don't have time to explain. We need to get you someplace that your dad called home. Earl is going to have help for you there."
She was obviously high on painkillers or something that the paramedics had given her. She smiled absently. "Hey, what happened to Dad?"
"Uh, he got sedated. Look, can you give me directions? Earl said for us to go home, not the compound, but someplace your dad would think of as home."
"Sure… I can find home. Where are we?"
"I don't know. Look, I'm going to help you to the front seat. You just stay awake and tell me where to go, okay?"
"Okay. Can do. And look, next time you want to see me naked, just ask. Don't cut up my clothes. That's creepy… and I liked this shirt." Her eyes closed and she went back to sleep.
I carried her to the passenger side, as gently as was possible, careful not to disturb her wound or bandages. I buckled her into place as the last of the train cars passed. Julie stirred and mumbled something.
"What?"
"I know this place. We're near Greenville. Just keep going." Her speech was slurred, but she did not appear to be losing any more blood. I decided that if she started to look any worse I was going to take her to the nearest town and doctor. Keeping from getting arrested was not worth her life. Hopefully I would not have to make that choice.
I put the ambulance into drive and continued down the road.
Chapter 17
The home that Ray Shackleford had been referring to was an enormous old plantation house nestled in a beautiful patch of woods and streams. It was far off of the main drive and isolated from the rest of the world. The home had been opulent at one time, but had fallen into disrepair. Thick Doric columns, cracked with age, lined the front porch. Moss and vines were growing up some of the walls, but it appeared as if some recent efforts had been made to paint and restore the old place. There was a black sedan parked near the dry fountain in front of the home.
I parked the van near the entrance, honked the horn, and jumped out to help Julie. She had remained semilucid for the remainder of the short trip, but she was pale and did not look very good. Despite her feeble protest that she could do it herself, I picked her up in my arms and carried her onto the porch. She was not light by any means, but rather heavier than she appeared because of lean muscle. She winced in pain as the pressure changed against her wound. The main door was open, leaving only a screen.
"Hey! Anybody there? We need help," I yelled.
"Z. Thank goodness." It was good to hear Trip's voice. The screen door opened and he stepped out. A smaller figure stood behind him, totally cloaked in what appeared to be a black burkha. "Come on. We have a spot ready. Earl said Gretchen here's as good as any doctor." The robed figure nodded. Only a small patch of her face was showing through her hood, and even then her eyes were covered with large mirrored sunglasses. She gestured for me to follow.
I cradled Julie's limp form against my chest as we hurried down the entry hall. The interior of the home was undergoing serious renovation. Flooring had been pulled up and was in various states of repair. Some walls had been painted, while others were a work in progress. Sawdust and miscellaneous tools littered the floor.
Gretchen led us across the spacious parlor, through a huge dining room complete with chandelier and twenty-foot table, down a small hallway, and into what was probably meant to be a guest bedroom, though right now it looked a bit like an extemporaneous field hospital. A small table had been moved into the room, covered by a white cloth, and littered with strange surgical-looking implements and jars filled with unknown fluids. Gretchen nodded toward the bed and I placed Julie down as gently as possible.
Julie's eyes peeked out from under heavy lids.
"I can't see," she said.
I began to panic. The blow to her head… had it blinded her? Was Julie going to lose her sight? She was a lover of art, and an amazing marksman. Going blind would kill her. I grabbed her hand and squeezed.
"Don't worry. It's going to be okay. I'm here for you. I'm sure your sight will come back."
"Owen." She closed her eyes and sighed. "You big dummy. Of course my sight will come back. My glasses are on the floor of the ambulance. Be a dear and grab them for me… Is that Gretchen?" The robed woman came over and patted Julie's forehead. I had not noticed that the strange woman was wearing surgical gloves. "Hey, Gretchen honey. I'm glad you're here. I'm going back to sleep now…" she mumbled as she drifted off.
Gretchen took her gloved hand from Julie's head and immediately started to remove the blood-stained bandage. The petite robed woman examined the injury. The wound path actually started behind the point of Julie's shoulder and traveled down into the muscles over her shoulder blade. It was a nasty puncture. I had seen a few knife wounds like that while I had been bouncing, but never one that big or at such an angle. The mysterious woman must have then realized that I was still in the room. She looked up until I saw my reflection in her mirrored shades and she made a shooing motion.
"Me?" I pointed at myself. She nodded and kept waving her hands at me. "Sorry." I backed out of the room and gently closed the door behind me. Trip was waiting for me.
"Don't worry. Earl said Gretchen's the best. She's supposed to be able to fix any injury. Milo and Sam swear by her. I guess we're supposed to leave her alone to do her thing."
"Any relation to Skippy? They share the same fashion sense."
"Yeah. They said she's one of his wives. I think she's like the tribal healer," he said.
"Wives? With an S? As in plural?" That was a bit surprising.
"Sam said he's got like five of them. Hey, different cultures. Whatever works, I guess."
"Dang. I don't even have a girlfriend and Skippy has extra wives," I replied.
"No wonder. You look like shit," Holly said from behind me. Between her sultry looks, her swimsuit model's body, and the. 308 Vepr in her hands, she looked like she should have been in a James Bond movie. "You're bleeding all over the carpet. What the hell did you do to yourself this time?"
I turned to regard her and smiled broadly. "I fell out of the van. While it was moving."
"You should stick with accounting. Holy crap. You have gravel stuck in your arms. Sit down, I'll grab some iodine. Trip, get a towel, and by the way, the property is clear. I didn't see anybody out there."
"Julie's dad is strapped down in the back of the ambulance. He's out cold. You should probably see to him first," I told them as I studied my shredded arms. They looked almost as bad as I felt.
"Is he hurt?" Trip asked. "I'm no Gretchen but I know first aid."
"Mildly concussed probably. Crazy son of a bitch tried to drive us into a train so I clocked him in the head until he quit. Watch him. He's nuts. Find a room to lock him in, and keep him tied up. Preferably chained to something heavy."
"You really are a people person, aren't you? Give me the keys too, I'll hide the ambulance around back." I tossed them over. He left to retrieve Ray.
"I'm not kidding. Lock him in the attic if we have one," I shouted after him. "And check the room to make sure there aren't any weapons in it."
Holly forced me to take a seat in the kitchen while she raided the extensive first aid kit. I sat next to the marble sink with my shirt off while she painfully removed each piece of bloody gravel with a pair of needle nose pliers. The kitchen was also under construction, someone had pulled down most of the cabinets to be restained, and a pair of sawhorses and some plywood served as the kitchen table. Mercy was not Holly's strong suit, and after violently ripping each piece free she dropped them into the sink with a clatter. It was not a pleasant experience.
She told me about how after Julie had called from the asylum, Earl had immediately loaded up a response team in the chopper
to come to our rescue, only to be intercepted and forced to return to the compound by the Monster Control Bureau's helicopters. While the Feds were watching them land, Earl had called to check on our status and had gotten Ray instead. Since Holly and Trip were considered mere untrained Newbies by the Feds, and not really important in the grand scheme of things, he had given them directions to the Shackleford family home and had them sneak off with Gretchen.
"What's this stuff? Looks like you got splashed with slag from a cutting torch or something," she asked as she removed a chunk of metal from my arm. It left a small hole that immediately began to well up with blood.
"Gargoyles bleed molten. I beat one of them to death with a fifty barrel. It kind of got on me."
"No kidding?" I flinched as she jerked out a particularly pointy piece of asphalt.
"No biggie. It only had one arm. And it was stuck under the van. It was the bastard that stabbed Julie. I lost the barrel, so I finished it off with a tire iron. When I cracked its head it kind of just squirted everywhere."
"You rushed a giant monster with an empty gun to save her?" She jabbed me with the pliers.
"I guess. Ow. Careful." I grimaced as she grabbed a chunk of flesh instead of rock.
"Hold still, you big sissy… Look, Z, let me be honest here. I'm getting a little worried about you. Seriously." Holly sounded earnest. She paused to wipe her brow. It was uncomfortably warm and stuffy in the kitchen. "Back on the freighter you were willing to play chicken with a vampire to save Julie. And now you take on a damn ten-ton gargoyle with a stinking tire iron to protect her?"
"It wasn't that big. And on the freighter I pulled that grenade to save all of us, not just her."
"Sure…" She did not sound convinced. "Z, I'm not stupid. I can see how you get all dopey around her. Whatever. I don't want to see you do something stupid and get killed for her is all."
"Nothing that I wouldn't do for anybody else," I said defensively.
"I don't doubt that either. You would probably do something stupid to save anybody. You and Trip both. Idiot wannabe heroes who would probably run into a burning building to save kittens or some shit. I'm surrounded by idiots."
"I didn't know you cared." I grinned. She stabbed me again.
"Trust me on this one, Z. There'll come a time when you're going to have to make a choice. Somebody who you can't save, no matter what. And then you're going to have to choose, you can either save yourself, or you can die trying. Sometimes the choice is between running like a coward, or fighting like a fool." Holly sounded angry as she said that.
"What are you trying to say?"
"Just something I learned the hard way is all. You know, before…" She trailed off, then changed the subject. "I think that's the last of it. I'm going to put some iodine on this now. You're missing a ton of skin, so this might sting."
"Before what?" I pressed. "You're the only Newbie who has never told us how you got into this business. Everybody knows about my werewolf, or Trip's zombies, or Lee's spiders. Holly, you're tough as nails, and you don't take crap off of anybody, but you're buttoned up so tight about your past. What happened before? You know you can tell me any… Yeeaaarrrgghhh!" I screamed as horrible burning pain ripped through the raw nerves of my arms.
"Oh, my bad. That wasn't iodine. That was rubbing alcohol. All your babbling distracted me. Now shut the hell up," she ordered.
I did as I was told. I wasn't going to push it while she still had that bottle of liquid pain. Damn, that hurt. The iodine stung, but it was nothing in comparison. Trip returned after he had secured Ray and had hidden the stolen ambulance.
"What did I miss?" he asked. "Holly, you don't look happy."
"Nothing," she replied stonily. "Hold still. Some of these holes are going to need stitches."
"Gretchen could do it, probably?"
"She's busy. Julie has a real injury, this is just a boo-boo. Besides, I know what I'm doing. This won't hurt a bit. Well, actually it'll probably hurt like a son of a bitch. Bite down on something," she suggested.
Trip pulled up a chair and sat down next to the improvised table. "I put Julie's dad in a bedroom upstairs. I checked the room for weapons, found this. I think Julie has loaded guns stashed in every room of this place." He placed a. 45 Beretta in front of him. "Don't worry though. I've got him handcuffed to a wrought-iron bed frame. He isn't going anywhere."
I thought about that for a moment. It beat thinking about the needle that Holly was running thread through. I hated getting stitches. I had done it plenty of times without local anesthesia. Illegal fighting rings did not exactly have the best insurance. "Where exactly did you get handcuffs?"
He shrugged. "They were in one of the gear bags."
"They're mine," Holly said. Trip jumped. She looked up at us in consternation. "Get your mind out of the gutter. Damn, I am supposed to be the support person, remember? I was just thinking ahead. Earl said we had a dangerous crazy guy to baby-sit."
"Sorry," Trip said.
"Bible thumper," she muttered under her breath as she stuck the curved needle through my skin.
"No really, I didn't mean-"
"Whatever, Trip. Just because I danced naked for money doesn't make me a whore."
"Sorry. That wasn't even what I was thinking," he replied, raising his hands defensively. Holly was quiet as she continued stitching me up. Trip was too dark to blush, but he was obviously embarrassed. "I'll go check on Gretchen." He left the room in a hurry.
I watched as the tear in my flesh gradually closed. She did good work. I felt the need to defend my friend. "I don't think Trip was judging you. He's real religious, but he isn't that way at all."
"I know." She continued stitching. "He's probably the nicest guy I've ever met. And he's real innocent at heart. At least as much as somebody can be in this job." She finished closing the gash.
"You're pretty good at that. I should know… I've been stitched up plenty of times. I've even done it to myself when I didn't have help," I told her.
"Thanks." She tied off the end. "I learned how in nursing school."
"You were in nursing school?"
"Yeah… don't act so surprised. You think I took a degrading job because of the quality people I got to hang around? I needed to pay bills, you know."
"I'm not. I understand."
"I was at UNLV. I only had a couple of semesters left is all… And don't ask."
"Got it." I understood. There seemed to be no shortage of Monster Hunters with secrets in their past. She finished stitching me up and wrapped clean gauze over my arms.
"That's about all that I can do," she said. "You need to get some rest, and you probably need to eat. I saw some food in the fridge. Trip and I will keep watch tonight."
"Thanks," I told her. She stood and stretched, then retrieved her rifle and slung it over her back. She paused on her way out of the kitchen.
"Think about what I said earlier. I don't want you getting killed for no reason."
"I promise I won't," I replied.
"Whatever… Stupid heroes." She left the room. "Sweet dreams, Z."
I picked one of the many bedrooms on the top floor. The plan was for all of us to sleep in the same general part of the house. Splitting up seemed like a stupid thing to do considering that we did not know how safe we were here from the Cursed One's minions.
It was a small room, and the walls were bare sheetrock, but the bed was soft and I was exhausted and still in pain. I popped a handful of Tylenol and hoped that it would help. There were plenty of stronger painkillers in the ambulance, but the last thing I wanted to be was groggy. It took me a few minutes to find a comfortable spot on the bed where nothing was rubbing a scabbed-over patch of missing skin. That was rather difficult considering the extent of my road rash.
The Cursed One was coming. I knew that. I could feel it in my bones. I knew that he was close, I was not aware of how I knew that, but somehow I knew. Ray was the key. Something in the man's head was the secret that Lord Machado was look
ing for. Some bit of knowledge gleaned from his own forbidden studies in breaking the laws of nature and bringing back the dead. I would kill Ray Shackleford myself before I let him fall into the hands of the enemy. I did not relish the thought of murdering a human being, but it beat the alternative.
I was asleep in minutes.
My dreams that night were brief. The Old Man did not pay me a visit, and thankfully I did not have to see the world through the lens of the Cursed One's memories. For most of the night I slept like a normal man, not bound by strange visions or plagued with old prophecies and mysteries.
I had a brief nightmare, a panicked, disjointed chase through the halls of the Appleton Asylum. This time the gargoyles were much faster. This time I could not save Julie from them. They took her from me and tore the life out of her with their stone claws. A well of rage and hate opened up inside of my soul. Every bit of anger that I had ever possessed was uncorked and unleashed upon my enemies. I crushed the massive unnatural beings into dust with my bare hands as if they were nothing. My rage continued, until finally in my wrath I destroyed everything around me, leaving nothing but a smoking wasteland of death.
I slept.
I woke up late the next morning, sunlight streaming through my window. I felt remarkably good considering how badly beaten up I was. Despite my hectic schedule over the last few weeks, and my total lack of down time, I felt downright refreshed. Rolling out of bed, I could already tell it was going to be a great day.
A horrible odor assaulted my senses. My bandages were missing and had been replaced by something foul. A green, tarlike substance was smeared all over my arms. It stunk of dead road kill and body odor. I gagged reflexively as it hit my nostrils like a hammer.
"Hey! There's something going on!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs. Considering the weirdness we dealt with in this business, I figured that if you woke up to find yourself coated in strange secretions, it was probably best to alert your co-workers. Unlike most polite jobs, of course.
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