The cab pulled up to the Pierre Hotel after a brief, albeit exciting, bout with New York traffic. We pulled up to a private entrance that led only to my penthouse apartment. I valued my privacy very dearly and had paid even more dearly for it. The doorman opened the door for me and I walked into my personal lobby. The black marble and gold accents were a little extravagant for my tastes but it had an amazing designer attached to it so I didn’t put up a fuss. I rode the elevator up the forty or so floors to what passed for home sweet home.
The elevator doors opened into the familiar entryway. The last couple of days had been a sheer nightmare and there was no sign of things letting up any time soon There was a box waiting just inside the door with a return address from headquarters. That was strange enough in itself, ARC never being known for its speed or efficiency. It wasn’t a day where the staff was working so I distantly wondered just how the package had gotten in but that was another afternoon’s problem. For now, my plate was full. I tore into the small box and found what looked like a government-issued earpiece inside and the note that said ‘wear me’. Wonderful… theatrics. Just what I needed. I fitted the earpiece in position and waited. Nothing happened.
“Hello?” I spoke and the only sound I heard returned was the echo of my voice. A stinging pain shot through my head just behind my ear. I tore the earpiece off and threw it in the corner. The thing must have been Blake’s idea of a joke to somehow get even with me.
“…and we’re just waiting for him to come on-line.” I heard a woman’s voice coming from my right. I was slightly lyrical in tone and I thought I heard a trace of an accent, maybe Scottish, buried deep. “Oh good. He’s coming through now. Mr. Hunter, it is my pleasure to at long last make your acquaintance, my name is Holly Cowan. Sorry about the little sting, we’ve found sub-dermal implants much more reliable than the old wireless earpieces.”
“What the hell, lady? You couldn’t warn me you were about to give me a head piercing?” I rubbed the sore spot where the transceiver had been injected.
“Well then you wouldn’t have put it on, would you?” She laughed, she actually laughed at me, I knew I needed someone fast but there was the issue of respect. “Speaking of which who puts on something they find in their entryway without talking to security or anything? Isn’t that sort of the entire purpose of having security in the first place? Someone’s gotten a little complacent taking orders so much, haven’t we? Well, I’m here to tell you that not-thinking time is over… bucko.”
“I take it that you are Blake’s replacement while he remembers how much he misses a steady paycheck?”
“Mr. Ophei’s departure has given us the opportunity to work together, yes.”
“Terrific, you got anything on what happened in Paris, yet?” That was met with a long pause.
“Not as of yet, no. Heard it’s a great city.”
“Well never mind that right now, we’ve got more important things to focus on. How could someone infect a person with a virus they had been vaccinated against?” I walked between the two large staircases heading upstairs and went into my office.
“There shouldn’t be a way. ARC uses a subunit vaccine against lycanthropy, it has all the characteristics of the virus without being infective. They found that even injecting a killed organism had a chance of infection so this worked better.” I could hear her typing rapidly over the link. “It looks like Mr. Storm was even up to date on his boosters. Let me see what we can find out once we can get the body downstairs. I’m sure we’ll know more once we can take a look.”
“Fine.” I flipped through the mail that had been stacked up on my desk while I was away, mostly bills. I put them aside to be forwarded to my accountant to take care of. I would have to invite him and his family over for dinner sometime soon. I never passed up an opportunity to hear their globe-trotting exploits in the wide world of finance. “I also got an envelope that may have something to tell us. I’ll get a messenger to send it your way. Needless to say, I want this to be a high priority. Nate was more than a friend, he was one of ours.”
“I’ll get right on it as soon as we get the package.”
“Terrific.” It was, I had to admit, great to finally work with someone professional again, maybe I was too quick to judge the new girl. I almost regretted that someday Blake would be returning to my life. Then a letter from my ex-wife’s lawyer in California caught my eye. He was one of the few slimy creatures out there that no matter how badly I wanted to chop his head off I wasn’t allowed to. I opened the envelope and scanned the first page of several legal-looking documents. “I have to call you back.”
I picked up the phone and quickly dialed Amy’s number.
“Cartwright residence.” It was their housekeeper, Rhonda. Yet another expense I got to take care of just for the right to see my daughter a week or two out of every year.
“Put Amy on the phone.” My voice was brusque, I was already getting impatient to the point of screaming when the other end of the phone finally replied.
“What do you want now, Derek?” Amy’s voice these days always sounded like she was making an effort just to communicate with us lesser beings.
“What do you think you’re playing at trying to get full custody of Kelly?
“I wasn’t even sure you would notice it.” She sighed. “I mean you were too busy for her birthday a few weeks ago.”
“I was working, Amy. Someone has to pay for your nice new beach-front condo and your cars. I don’t see you schlepping out to an office any time soon.
“Kelly’s only fifteen, Derek, she can’t even drive yet and you have her flying across the country on her own?” She didn’t even sound angry, just tired. “Two weeks out of the year is just too difficult to ship Kelly across the country when we don’t even know if she’ll spend the time with you or your staff.”
I wish I could say that she was wrong. Years of working had proven to me that any hunt could take days or even weeks. Amy had been a kind caring person when I met her but the job affects more than just the people working it. It affects the people at home as well… maybe even more so.
“I’ll fight you on this Amy. You know I will. You can’t just take Kelly away from me like this.” I slammed the receiver down with a crash. After a few breaths, I double-checked to make sure I hadn’t broken the phone… it wouldn’t be the first time if I had. The phone stubbornly lived to see another day, though. The buzzer in the hall rang, letting me know there someone was waiting to come up from the lobby. “Who the-”
“Um… it’s probably the messenger I sent over.” Holly spoke somewhat sheepishly into my ear.
“I thought we were done, Holly.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. These new implants don’t really have any kind of off button.”
“So what? You can listen in to me any time headquarters decides it’s okay?”
“Well… in a way. I can’t be here every moment of every day obviously so you’ll likely only have an open link during ops.” She honestly sounded a little sorry… a little. “The higher-ups just thought it might be a good idea to have some sort of way to keep track of you with your habit of going off-book.”
“Off book… Yeah. Sounds like them.” I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and sealed it in an evidence baggie to give to the messenger. “My prints and that of a hopefully registered mage with the tower should be all over the outside. Hopefully, you can find something more.” I buzzed down to the lobby to let the messenger ride up and went out of my office to wait for him. “I’m also sending the bullet I recovered from Paris, we can keep that secondary until we find out more about what happened to Nate but I’d hate to lose the thing.”
“I hope you don’t mind, Holly but after today, I need a shower. You might not want to listen to that.” I smirked as I handed over the bag to a youngish kid way too thin to be eating properly. His eyes went wide when he saw me and I distantly realized that I was still bleeding from the fight with the were.
“And why exactly is that, Mr. Hunter?”
The kid stepped back into the elevator and I headed up the stairs to clean up. “Because even people who like me say my singing voice is jarringly atrocious.”
~ * ~
Nearly an hour later I stepped out of a steaming hot shower. I decided to just throw out my clothes from that day. Between the rips and the bloodstains, it would be easier, and likely cheaper just to replace them. I checked myself over in the mirror, reviewing the latest damage I had done to myself.
At a shade over six foot tall, I suppose at one time I would have been called attractive, a broken nose or two ago. The spreading bruise on my side from my now certainly fractured ribs would be a huge crowd-pleaser. My physique, while certainly not scrawny, would never win me any body-building competitions. There was a muscle tone built up not from exercise, so much as from a life of hard work. Turning to check the marks on my back from the fight with the were I could see a set of deep gashes. I must have gotten hit a lot worse than I had realized in the heat of the moment. They were deep enough to leave some new scars.
I grabbed an aerosol can from the medicine cabinet and twisted my arm behind me to spray the pseudo-skin onto the wound. I had been forcibly made double-jointed when a golem pulled both my shoulders out of the sockets a while back and that helped to get the angle I needed. At least with the gashes covered this way they would have a chance to heal without the need of some bulky-looking bandage. I ran my fingers through my hair and chuckled. You could trace my career by the injuries I had sustained. As I did so I noticed something odd. My dirty blond hair, which I had kept purposefully short since a naga had used it to throw me into a wall, was even shorter than usual. I scanned my scalp thoroughly and found scorch marks on the ends of several hairs. Guess that punk kid almost got luckier than I had figured.
“If you’re done preening, Mr. Hunter, we found something you might be interested in.” To my credit, I only jumped a little when Holly’s voice sounded in my ear this time. Once I figured out what exactly happened to Nate she and I would have to have a discussion about boundaries.
“I sure hope you at least found something good for me to go on.”
“Nothing definitive yet but the saliva on the envelope had well over one hundred and twenty chromosomes. With humans only having forty-six I think it safe to assume the origin is supernatural.”
“So that narrows it down to slightly less than half the population of the earth.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’ll get right on to tracking that down.”
“No need to be rude, Mr. Hunter, I hadn’t finished yet. We also found a hair wedged in the bottom of the envelope. Preliminary typing suggests it was canine in origin. So it is not inconceivable that whoever sent that envelope may have either had a dog or…”
“Been a dog. I get it.” I crossed the room and started pulling on some new clothes. “Not surprising considering what we knew already but at least it gives me something to threaten the weres with.”
“Just remember to stay within the confines of what was stated in the treaty back in 2010. You’ll need to let them know of your intentions for your investigation.”
“Great. So I have to warn them I’m trying to nail them to a wall for messing with my friend before I even start to do it.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “Things were so much easier before politicians got involved. See what you can do about making an appointment with the werewolf king for me then.”
“Alpha, Mr. Hunter. The werewolves answer to an alpha, the vampires to a prince, and the fae to a king.” She didn’t even try to hide the smugness in her voice. “Remember, knowledge is power.”
“No, Holly. Power is a thermonuclear device.”
“I’ll attribute the fact that you think I can’t do just as much damage with just a few keystrokes to our only very recently making each other’s acquaintance. I’ll send the directions to your phone and have the meeting set up by the time you get there.”
I hated to admit it, but I think I was starting to like her attitude. I walked back to the office to retrieve a new phone out of a box of them I stored there. I had found through the years that my job wasn’t the kindest to technology and a spare or dozen was a good investment.