Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC by Larry Correia (read a book .txt) 📕

the cafeteria. As the new official CEO since the death of her grandpa, Julie was in charge. Earl was there—with his nearly a century of practical experience—to gently correct her if she got anything wrong, but he mostly sat there looking tired. Earl didn’t need to say much because Julie knew what she was doing and transforming into a werewolf off the calendar always left Earl exhausted and gaunt. Normally he spent a month gaining weight just to lose it all at the full moon, and he’d burned even more calories than usual because Phipps had really worked him over.

The compound’s defenses were already solid, and a bunch of Hunters had spent the day making sure everything was ready. Julie handed out assignments to everyone else where they could join in as soon as we were done here. The plan had already been presented, and she was trying to make the rest of this quick. The more we could accomplish before the Drekavac arrived, the better off we’d be.

The assembled Hunters gave Franks and Grant a wide berth. No matter how many times MHI worked with the MCB, that general feeling of animosity between our organizations would probably never change. Half of their job seemed to be making our lives miserable. The other half was keeping monsters secret, which made our lives complicated. To the MCB we were the messy cowboys who kept blowing shit up in public making it harder for them to keep monsters secret.

Speaking of secret, the guys who were so secret that they literally had secret in their name were there too. Gutterres hadn’t even introduced himself yet, but all the Hunters already knew what he was. It turns out that in a business where most of us work for money or glory, mystical warrior monks develop something of a rep. The soldiers he’d brought looked a lot more like regular Hunters, but the exorcist was an oddity. I caught Gutterres looking at Sonya a few times, probably annoyed that she hadn’t just delivered the rock like they’d hired her to do.

Sonya struck me as somebody who normally enjoyed being the center of attention, but not today, not like this. All of the big-brain Hunters had taken a look at the Ward stuck to her, and they were treating her almost like an afterthought. I don’t think they were being dicks on purpose. It’s just that a good bedside manner wasn’t normally that important to what we do.

Cody was watching her like a hawk. After the mentally and physically grueling siege, he had been happy to retire. After decades of leading MHI’s team that handled all of our mad-science contracts with various research labs, he’d been happy to buy a fishing boat and a little place on the beach in Gulf Shores to live out the rest of his days in peace and quiet. Except as soon as Julie had told him another Ward Stone, he’d probably broken a whole lot of speed limits to get back here. He’d been baffled at how Newton’s weapon was interacting with Sonya.

Our young shapeshifter was probably pretty good at hiding her emotions behind various faces, but it was obvious that she was really bothered when Tanya—who she had been promised would surely know how to fix this—had been confused too. It turned out there wasn’t a lot of overlap between elf magic and Newton’s alchemy.

Unfortunately, one thing Cody and Tanya had both agreed on was that it couldn’t be good for Sonya’s long-term health to have an artifact crackling with magical energy embedded in her body. Too bad she was basically shit out of luck until they could figure out how to fix it.

“Some of you may have noticed that we’ve got a few guests who will be helping us tonight,” Julie told the cafeteria full of Hunters. “Most of you know Agent Franks and Agent Jefferson of the MCB.”

I was impressed. Nobody booed. But that wasn’t out of respect so much as fear of Franks.

“Do you have anything you want to say to everyone, Agent Franks?” Julie asked.

Franks slowly looked around the room, surely trying to decide if he wanted to regale us mere mortal Hunters with his copious wisdom. “No.”

Julie wasn’t surprised or disappointed by that answer. “Great. Moving on—”

“I’d like to say a few words,” Grant interjected.

“Of course you do.” Julie sighed. “Agent Jefferson.”

Grant stood up to address his former coworkers. MHI is a pretty tight bunch. When one of our own ditches us, joins the hated MCB, and then comes back to spy on us, it leaves some hard feelings. So of course there was some muttering from the crowd. Among that I picked out the words, traitor, Judas, backstabber, and dickhead . . . Okay, I’ll admit, that last one might have been from me. But I was sitting in back so not too many people heard it . . . probably.

“I just want everyone to know that the MCB will in no way hinder MHI’s operations tonight. We are merely acting as observers. I’m fully aware of everyone’s feelings about the Bureau and about me personally. However, we’re going to set that aside because we all have more important things to worry about. Officially, all I can say is that if you have any knowledge pertaining to the whereabouts of the man known as Stricken, the MCB is offering a reward for any information leading to his capture. Thank you.”

That was a remarkably non-dickish message by Grant standards. Holly golf-clapped for him.

“Thank you, Agent Jefferson,” Julie said, a little surprised that Grant had managed to keep it that professional. He must have been bucking for a promotion. “And over here, we’ve got some representatives from the Blessed Order of Saint Hubert the Protector, who have agreed to share their intel about tonight’s threat.”

“In exchange for access to the Ward Stone,” Gutterres specified. “We have a rather pressing need for it.”

“After we figure out how to get it unstuck from our other guest, sure,” Julie said. “But please, continue, Mr. Gutterres.”

The combat