Some Legends Never Die (Monsters and Mayhem Book 2) Page 6

  “Only thing that ever bothered me is the flickering lights,” Albert said. “Don’t know if it’s the power drain from the assembly lines or what, but the lights never burn steady. Gives me a headache, you know?”

  The crazy heart rhythm returned. Stanley had managed to sniff out a monster right there at Maddie’s holiday dinner table. Two monsters, if you counted whatever had batty old Mrs. Distel’s panties in a bunch.

  Burke met her grandfather’s eye and gave a subtle shrug. By the stunned expression on his face, he didn’t have any more information about the situation than she did.

  “Anyway,” the little worm went on, “it’ll all be worth it soon as we launch. Nothing much left to do on my end but check over the odds and ends and go to the big celebration.”

  “A city on Mars! Amazing,” Luke said.

  “That sounds exciting,” Maddie exclaimed.

  “It will be,” Albert agreed. “Everyone who’s anyone will be at the party. Umbra’s got a whole Dreamliner booked to bring the staff from Italy.” He cocked his head in thought. “You know, Burke, you ought to come with me. My plus one is still available.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Burke said.

  “Well, a man in my position doesn’t have a lot of time to socialize.”

  “I’m sure Burke understands. When she worked in IT, she couldn’t even find time to make a baby,” Maddie said.

  Burke’s grasp on the sharp-tined fork tightened.

  Stanley piped up, “You should go.”

  Burke’s mouth fell open. The man has lost his mind completely. He’s going to drive me to deadly assault with flatware.

  Stanley’s smiling eyes watched her over the rim of his wine glass as he took a dainty little sip before continuing, “Really, Burke. How many people get the opportunity to brush shoulders with a creature like this Umbra? It’s a rare chance to see what others may never have the occasion to witness.”

  “I know I’d go. Wow! To hobnob with the people making history. That’s something special, don’t you think?” Luke said.

  “It’s unanimous, then,” Maddie said, though Richard hadn’t voted and Burke was quite certain she had not agreed.

  Her gaze narrowed on Stanley.

  Stanley nodded encouragement.

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

  Richard scowled at his food and said nothing.

  Ha! See if I stick up for him when the subject of nursing homes comes up.

  Maddie pointed at Richard with her fork. “Don’t eat too much if you’re planning on having pie, Dad. You know how all these rich foods tie up your digestive system. A man of your age needs to be careful with his body.”

  Richard’s eyes darted to the wine bottle but Burke had already polished it off.

  Chapter Eight

  Richard

  Around midnight, Burke slipped into the little bedroom and shut the door carefully behind her. “She’s finally asleep,” she announced. “I double checked to make sure.”

  Richard adjusted the pillow that cushioned his spine against the wall. Stanley had beaten him to the bed, which left him no reasonable choice but to stretch out with a blanket on the floor. He had doubts about whether or not he’d actually be able to get up off the floor again when the time came, but if he’d learned anything in the past six months, it was to deal with one problem at a time. An aching back was a fair price to pay to escape spending a night in bed with a donkey’s hind end.

  Burke cocked her head. “Why are you on the floor?”

  “You’re two pickles short of a barrel if you think I’m sleeping with him.” He jerked a thumb in Stanley’s direction.

  “You’re not even going to be able to get up in the morning,” she said.

  “I ain’t a cripple. I can get up off the floor just fine, thank you.” The note of confidence in his voice pleased him. “Now, are we gonna jaw all night about my preferred sleeping arrangements or are we gonna get down to business?”

  Burke rolled her eyes and perched in the rickety little chair. The thin legs creaked but held her muscular form without collapsing. A full day’s worth of annoyance breathed a frosty mist over, “Spill it, Stanley. And it better be good. Why am I whoring myself out to that slimy little creep?”

  Stanley’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Aw, you’re too hard on him. He’s a bright guy, just a little socially awkward.”

  Burke held his gaze without wavering.

  Stanley held up the battered journal he’d been studying to pass the time until Maddie fell asleep. “I looked it up to make sure I wasn’t mis-remembering. Umbra is thought to be the name of one of the top leaders of an organization known as The Children of Cain. They operate out of a remote part of southern Italy. Any hunter who’s been around for more than a minute has bumped into them in some way, shape, or form. Busar battled them more than once.”

  “They met up with Busar and lived to tell about it?” Burke asked. Neither she nor Richard had met Stanley’s old mentor, Busar, but to hear Stanley talk, the man had been a cross between Chuck Norris and James Bond. He’d learned hunting at his father’s knee and creatures across the world quaked at the sight of the powerful Ugandan. A few years back, Busar met his match—a story Stanley had never quite mustered up the will to share.

  “A man can no more destroy The Children of Cain than he can destroy the concept of God within the minds of the human race. They are part of our collective consciousness and so deeply entwined in our society that to pull them out would unravel the entire tapestry. But it’s more than that. They are mist. Just an idea, a thought so ancient, the first of them wrestled the Nephilim before the time of Noah’s flood.”

  The number of things about Stanley that Richard found annoying were too numerous to count, but his habit of dropping tidbits like ‘Noah’s ark was a real thing’ into casual conversation ranked in the top five. Well, maybe the top ten.

  Stanley opened the book to a page dotted with familiar symbols—the all-seeing eye atop a pyramid, a five-pointed star in a circle, the Masonic compass, and a dozen others. Symbols associated with power, the Illuminati, the not-all-that-secret secret elite who supposedly rule the world. “The Children of Cain are the fathers of every one of these and more. They out-date the Knights Templar by tens of thousands of years. When the cornerstone to the first pyramid was laid, you can bet the master architect knew of them, an ancient authority, even then.”

  Imagining the squirrely little cyclist as one of the Great Powerful Elite stretched credibility as far as anything Richard could think of in the last half year. Burke voiced exactly that.

  “I don’t think he’s one of them,” Stanley said. “I think he works for them, as many unwitting men and women do.”

  “At the company that’s getting ready to build a colony on Mars,” she said.

  “Precisely.” Stanley beamed at her, the star pupil.

  “Ain’t no monsters in space, are there?” Richard asked, once again playing scenes from black and white movies in his memory.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Stanley said. “But there will be in just about a week if we don’t do anything to stop it.” He turned to Burke. “You need to see if Umbra is who I think he is and, if he is, we need to find a way to stop them from launching.”

  A bizarre half-grunt, half-laugh exploded out of Burke and she threw her hands up. “Oh, is that all I need to do? No problem. I probably won’t even need to stay any longer than the cocktail hour.”

  Stanley crossed his legs under him, sitting on the bed like a little boy, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Can you imagine, Burke, an uninhabited planet—a whole world ripe for the picking—settled by monsters with their very own hand-selected crop of humans?”

  Silence grew in the room like a cancer while they all digested that thought.

  Once more, Richard thought about that cookbook, To Serve Man. The Sci-Fi guys had proven again and again to be prophets, foretelling the dangers of the future. How long bef
ore society began taking them seriously? All those politicians in Washington squabbling over the funding for a highway over here and a new national park over there when one of their daddy’s contemporaries had flat out warned them they’d end up in the literal stew pot if they didn’t watch their step. Did they pay attention? No. They rolled their eyes and stuck to the safer, less controversial, subjects like gun control and immigration.

  Stanley’s oft-repeated words drew Richard back to the conversation at hand.

  “Hunters are led to the hunts that are theirs to accept. Perhaps we are here for just such a time as this. You’re not alone, Burke. Your grandfather and I are going to do whatever we can as well, but this hunt”—he lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness—”this hunt was laid before you.”

  Burke rubbed her forehead with her fingertips.

  Stanley went on, “You’ll need to walk on eggshells. There isn’t a monster on earth who doesn’t, in some way, ultimately owe allegiance to the Children of Cain. Anything could be at that party.”

  Richard realized his mouth had dropped open at some point and he clamped it shut again, lest the fish-out-of-water routine become habit. He made a mental note to work on his poker face. The pressure of the blood pumping furiously through his veins ignited little spots of darkness and light that popped at the edges of his vision. Friggin’ Stan Kapcheck. “You can’t seriously be suggesting the kid go in there alone?”

  Stanley remained unperturbed. “She’s been invited to attend a very high-profile dinner in a public forum. I imagine every major news network and half a dozen style channels will be filming. She’ll be in no danger at the event. Well, no more danger than she can handle.”

  “My life wasn’t so bad,” Burke said. “I had a lovely routine, exercised every day, read a lot of good books.”

  “You were dying of old age in your forties, my dear. You are not a woman destined for a life of quiet reading and reflection,” Stanley said. “You’re only regretting it because you’re focused on the dirt and long car rides instead of the lasting importance of the work to which you’ve been called.”

  Richard considered the ease with which she’d stalked through the forest in combat boots with an automatic weapon in her hands. Stanley was a donkey’s hind end, but he wasn’t often wrong. “Is that what crapped in your corn flakes? You been grumpy because you’re regretting this life?”

  Burke slumped against the back of the chair. The chair yelped a little protesting squeak. “I thought, in hunting, I’d found some great purpose. I thought I was finally making a difference,” she said. “But there’s always another monster. Always. There’s no end to it, and there never will be, and now you’re telling me that the monster wranglers are actually the most powerful beings on earth.”

  Stanley stretched his legs out before him once more and leaned against the headboard. He smoothed the blanket that covered him and folded his hands over his stomach. “A man was walking on the beach one day at low tide. At his feet, stretching hundreds and hundreds of yards, were countless starfish, stranded by the receding waters. With the patience of Job, the man picked them up, one-by-one, and tossed them back into the sea.

  “His neighbor came along and scoffed at him. ‘Why bother?’ he asked. ‘You can’t possibly save them all. Not even half of them. There’s no way you can make a real difference when such a vast number of them are stranded here.’

  “The man bent and picked up one fish and returned it to the water. ‘I made a difference for that one,’ he said.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. Now the man had resorted to telling parables as if he were the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Tomorrow he’d probably try walking on water.

  Burke stood and headed toward the door. “Tone it down, Stanley,” she said before leaving. “Your messiah complex is showing.”

  A wheezy laugh catapulted straight up and out from Richard’s chest as his granddaughter departed the room following her fantastic exit line. He lay down on his cold, uncomfortable pallet and drifted off to sleep with a grin on his lips. No troubles or worries like those expressed by Burke plagued his mind. He understood the score in no uncertain terms. In his time at Everest Senior Living... Heck, in all the lonely years before that, he’d never once fallen asleep smiling.

  Morning dawned bright and cool. Richard flopped onto his back like an octopus washed up on the beach and stared at the ceiling, contemplating the best way to lift himself from the floor. His left hip throbbed in a dull bass-note rhythm. His right arm tingled and buzzed as circulation restored itself. Both feet had grown so cold during the night he’d woken up in pain before they passed into the stage where he couldn’t feel them anymore. Presumably, they still resided in their usual place at the ends of his legs, but he couldn’t see past the swell of his gut to verify the fact.

  Shifting his head left, he could see the bed was unoccupied and neatly made. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the floor, trying to speed the process of waking his muscles.

  The door creaked open. “Oh, Dad,” Maddie groaned. “Why on earth are you sleeping on the floor?” She bustled over to him and squatted down. “Maybe if I hold both hands and pull you forward—”

  “I don’t need no help,” he declared. “Maybe I just ain’t ready to get up, yet. I ain’t no cripple. Why’s everyone always treating me like one?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could suck them back in. His entire life, he’d been plagued by lips that moved faster than his brain.

  Her whole body sagged like a half-deflated balloon. “Fine.” She rose to her full height and peered down at him. “Stanley said he was going to the library. Burke and I are going to the mall. We’ll be home in time for lunch. If you’re still laying there when we get home, I am checking you into a facility, if I have to get a court order to do it. A man your age ought to know better.” She spun around and huffed out of the room. The slamming door cut off her muttering.

  A few minutes later, the garage door rattled, sending a vibration through the floorboards beneath him, and he heard the hum of Maddie’s sedan fade into the distance.

  Whatever tiny seedling of guilt had sprouted a moment earlier, withered and died. A man his age? Who was she to lecture him about what was and was not appropriate? Did she harp on Stanley about his socks with the stupid little neon pizzas on them, or about the way he trotted along the slick sidewalks with his hands in his pockets as if he’d bounce like a twenty-year-old if he fell? No! She flirted with him. Bah!

  Spurred on by righteous indignation, he flung the covers off.

  His right arm had returned to full functionality. Both feet felt cold again. He could do this thing. Rocking a little to build momentum, he rolled onto his belly. From there, he managed to get his knees under him, crawl to the edge of the bed and leverage himself up. No way the whole operation took more than five minutes. “Hmph,” he muttered into the silence. “In time for lunch, indeed. I ain’t no cripple,” he declared again, just to remind himself.

  After giving his body a chance to figure out he’d shifted from horizontal to vertical, he fetched his clothes from the suitcase along with a little flat tin full of balm given as a gift from a Healer in New Mexico. He wasn’t crippled, that was for sure, but he wasn’t too vain to acknowledge that his hundredth birthday was closer than his fiftieth was to the current date, and he did have a handful of titanium screws drilled into his bones, after all. He vowed once more to be the first to the soft, warm bed that night. Let Stan Kapcheck enjoy a night on the floor since he was so almighty spry.

  After showering, he made himself a lovely, heaping plate of leftover stuffing smothered in steaming-hot gravy with a slice of pecan pie on the side for breakfast, and settled onto the sofa to eat in front of the television. Four remotes lay spread out before him. By the time he’d poked enough buttons to figure out how to turn the thing on and change the channel, his food had cooled to lukewarm. He flipped through hundreds of stations—talk shows, soap operas, a live-feed of one man on the floor of th
e Senate talking to no one about nothing in particular. How had he spent years of his life entertained by this?

  You weren’t entertained. You were just passing the time until you died.

  Oh yeah. Well, no more of that!

  Only a scattering of crumbs remained on his plate. He licked his thumb and used it to clean them up and pop them into his mouth. “Don’t scold me,” he told Barbara’s ghost, whom he could feel preparing to admonish him. “Manners only count if there’s someone around to see them.”

  Poking the power button that had brought the screen to life accomplished as much as pissing on a forest fire. Patience exhausted by the ridiculous electronics, he walked over to the television, reached behind it, and unplugged the contraption. Ha! Who needed buttons?

  Earlier, he’d noticed a stack of books next to his duffle and assumed either Burke or Stanley had left them for him, hoping he’d have a chance to do something useful with his morning. Leather covers invariably meant difficult curly-cue text, and these thick tomes failed to be the exception to the rule. He squinted at the pages as he flipped through Powerful Occult Leaders of The World, Nineteenth Century Edition. Not exactly hot off the presses, but the book did indeed speak of a mysterious individual by the name of Umbra who operated out of an estate on the Italian coast and moved among the supernatural community with a power far greater than that dreamt of by the average man or monster. Maybe this Umbra was father or grandfather of the current Umbra. Could well be the same guy. Stanley had burst into the unsuspecting world during the final years of the nineteenth century. No reason someone else couldn’t have bent a few rules along the way.

  * * *

  Umbra lives a reclusive existence, seen directly by only a handful of most trusted associates. All known information points to his being fully human and mortal with the strength and advantages one would expect from the highest order of witch, shaman, or healer and more.