Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC

with it, it wouldn’t be that illegal. Heck, there might even be a reward.
It was Boone who had the guts to point out the obvious. “Hey, Earl, good buddy, what was that thing you were just telling me about big picture keeping our eye on the prize?”
The reply came a moment later, because no matter how angry he might be—and enslaving his girlfriend into a secret government monster death squad tended to make a man righteously angry—Earl was still a professional. “Alright. That’s fair. Priority is grabbing that package. But once we have that in hand, Stricken’s mine.”
I looked at Trip again and shrugged. I could almost pity anybody who ended up on the receiving end of Earl Harbinger’s wrath. To his people, Earl was a good friend and great leader, but to his enemies, Earl was a terrifying force of unrelenting murder. But this was Stricken . . . who frankly deserved it, so good. I went back to watching.
Flanked by umbrella guard, Stricken walked up to the entrance. Another guard held the door open for him but the former head of Special Task Force Unicorn stopped and scanned the street again. I swear his eyes lingered on our van just a bit too long, but that was probably just my imagination. He had been some kind of secret agent super spy, and we knew he routinely used dark magic artifacts that regular sane people would be terrified to mess with, but he wasn’t omnipotent. Though he sure liked to act like he was.
“Oh, man. Earl is gonna wipe the smug off his face,” Trip said.
“More like Earl is going to eat his face.”
“What?” Hertzfeldt asked.
Newbies weren’t in on the secret. Earl Harbinger being a werewolf was kept on a need-to-know basis. “Nothing.” I keyed my radio. “Stricken has entered the building.”
“The reptoid and six cultists have gone inside,” Boone said. “There’s at least four more I can see staying with their vehicles.”
“It’s showtime.” We had the place totally surrounded but knowing Stricken was the buyer changed things. He was a slippery bastard who always had a trick up his sleeve. A cold lump slowly formed in the pit of my stomach. I’d gone from wary but professionally confident to having a vague sense of unease. Stricken had that effect on people.
Trip asked, “What does Stricken want with a Ward Stone anyway? He claims to be trying to defend Earth from Asag too. You think he wants it for the same reason we do?”
“Maybe. With that slimeball, who knows? I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and as skinny as he is, I bet I could get some serious air on the toss.”
“So . . . ” Hertzfeldt interjected. “I take it you guys got some history?”
“We do. Stricken used to be in charge of . . . well, let’s just call it a federal agency. He’s lied to us, used MHI, risked all our lives for his personal gain, and is basically the poster child for that saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.”
“Luckily for us, he got fired,” Trip said. “So now it’s game on.”
I ran the binoculars across the plaza, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Stricken didn’t have the full might of a secret government black ops unit at his fingertips anymore, but he still struck me as the sort who’d want lots and lots of backup, especially when dealing with a bunch of backstabbing lizard people and the morons gullible enough to worship them as deities. Except everything seemed really normal. Maybe too normal. Which was when I noticed something that felt a little off.
“Trip, check out the taco truck. Notice anything weird?”
It was one of those hippy-dippy, brightly colored, urban-trendy kind of things. Where the food was usually overpriced, used the word “fusion” a lot in its menu, but tended to be really tasty. Trip watched it for a few seconds. “Well, I guess the dude taking orders in the window is white. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white dude work in a taco truck before.”
“Stop being racist. Tacos are for everyone.”
Trip snorted.
“I mean watch him. He’s busy, but since Stricken’s arrived he keeps glancing toward the target. Gut feeling. I think he’s watching the place, same as us.”
“Maybe . . . ” Trip snapped a picture, then blew it up on the camera’s screen. “Hey now. Look at that.”
“What?”
“Imagine taco guy without the beard, glasses, or hair net and tell me who that looks like.”
Skinny beard, blocky hipster glasses. It was a decent disguise, but . . .  I started to laugh. “Oh, man! It’s Grant!”
“Who?” our poor Newbie asked, perplexed as usual.
But I got the radio instead. “This is Z. Attention everybody, the Feds are here. MCB is staking the place out too.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Earl asked.
“Either that or Grant Jefferson’s twin brother is slinging artisanal tacos for a living.” Of all the Monster Control Bureau agents I’d met, I knew Grant the best. Hell, I’d broken his nose once, so I was pretty sure that was him. Having the Feds here was bad, but worse, last I’d heard, Grant had been partnered with the single scariest thing in the federal government’s arsenal, and that’s saying something about people who have intercontinental ballistic missiles and the IRS. “If Grant’s here, Agent Franks is probably nearby too.”
Earl didn’t say anything over the radio, but I knew from experience right now he would be using a whole lot of profanity, because the MCB’s presence ruined everything.
We were private contractors. We had an excuse to be working here because reptoids are PUFF-applicable monsters. Boone had a great working relationship with the Atlanta PD: so long as we were discreet, the locals stayed happy. But the Federal Monster Control Bureau were the supreme law of the land when it came to anything related to keeping monsters secret from the public, and they had the authority to tell us to go pound sand. Since they had jurisdiction over all things magical, they would also seize the Ward, and we’d be shit out of luck.
I searched for other cars