Caitlin Kelley--Monster Hunter, #1 Read online

  Caitlin Kelley - Monster Hunter

  Theresa Glover

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Falstaff Books

  About the Author

  More Monster Hunting Goodness!

  Still More Monster Hunting!

  This Monster Hunter Mom is AMAZING!

  The One that Started it All!

  1

  The carousel buzzed, but I didn’t move. A level thirty-six boss took focus.

  Marty, on the other hand, crossed the gray industrial carpet in three long strides to watch the luggage belt grind into action.

  I thumbed the touchscreen, tilted my phone, and mumbled less-than-charitable encouragement to the flickering digital characters throwing explosives at each other.

  A rumble of thunder.

  The crowd groaned in impressive synchronicity as another announcement interrupted the already ubiquitous jazz. I lost the game in the split-second I looked up. At my muttered invective, the woman beside me huffed in disgust and tugged her daughter’s hand as she walked away.

  Marty stomped back and slid down the reddish wood-grained column to sit beside me. “Didn’t I tell you this would happen? I told you not to check a bag. This is why.”

  “And I thought you’d be a good travel buddy, so let’s say my judgement isn’t great and leave it at that for the week, okay?”

  He sighed, shaking off his pout with a toss of his unruly brown curls. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m…” He shrugged.

  “I believe ‘being a dick’ will suffice,” I said and put away my phone. There’s a reason they tell you to pack chargers in carry-on luggage, and I, of course, ignored it.

  “To be fair, that is kind of my thing.” Marty smirked as he bumped my shoulder.

  I bit the inside of my cheek to restrain my grin. “Indeed.”

  Thunder vibrated the glass doors to our right, and the night outside flared purple. In front of me, a swaying woman jumped, waking the little boy in pajamas on her shoulder. His thin frame didn’t give away his age, but his bare feet dangled around her waist. He rubbed his eyes and whined as she crossed the baggage claim area to the luggage belt.

  “I’m hungry. We should have gotten something in the terminal.”

  “Nothing was open.” I ignored the way my stomach grumbled just thinking about food.

  “Oh. Right.” Marty pulled his padded duffel bag into his lap and grunted under the weight of the tech inside. “Maybe I still have snacks.”

  A wail of terror shattered my nerves, and I couldn’t help but look. The little boy clung to his mother, shaking, his face buried against her shoulder as she murmured to him. Without looking up, he pointed over her shoulder into the baggage claim waiting area.

  I leaned my head back against the column, breathing slowly, my eyes closed. Not my kid, not my problem.

  My guts clenched with each howl.

  “I think I ate everything on the plane.”

  I glanced at my friend, my voice raised over the little boy’s cries. “Seriously? You ate everything you packed?”

  He shrugged. “I was hungry. You had some, too.”

  “I had a granola bar. One.” I struggled to focus through the kid’s cries. Marty’d had enough to feed an army of children for days yet inhaled it all in less than a couple of hours.

  “Like I said.” He zipped the bag, thrust it under his skinny legs, and folded his hands across his flat stomach. “You had some.”

  “Mommy, it’s the MONSTER!”

  My back stiffened.

  Monster.

  He said “monster.”

  The boy’s terrified screams silenced the baggage claim area except for sympathetic murmurs and snorts of frustration. Even as his mother turned, helpless to soothe him, he pointed, tracking a spot out of my line of sight. When she turned, he recoiled and clung to her.

  I leaned forward and looped my arms around my bent knees, following the little boy’s trembling arm.

  Casual. Be casual. There couldn’t be an actual monster walking through the Louis Armstrong Airport. New Orleans had monsters, and plenty of them, but few were humanoid enough for conventional travel. And few would dare make so cavalier an intrusion into human space. Not here.

  My hand drifted to my TSA-approved empty pockets as I turned. People swiveled their limited interest where he pointed, but not for long.

  A group of men dressed in similar suits hunched over cell phones between two carousels. They muttered back and forth, nudged and showed devices to each other, but remained oblivious to everything beyond their huddle. One muttered a few words, another nodded, but they all focused on their technology. Behind them, two women overdressed for the airport sneered, glanced at their watches, and rolled their eyes. One snapped her gum and pulled out a mirror to preen. A single young man in shorts, a bright blue polo, and a backpack fidgeted and shuffled his feet as he avoided the crying child.

  “You’re on vacation, Cee.”

  “Yup,” I said. “That’s why I’m sitting.”

  Nothing about the nervous man seemed remarkable, yet he stood out more than I did in my torn heavy metal band t-shirt, tight black jeans, Doc Martens, and the cobalt blue streaks in my hair. The TSA agent in Atlanta had waved me through without a second look, but this squirrelly dude’d warrant a pat-down, at least. Figuratively, I’d seen him a thousand times, this average, early thirty-something, upper-middle class American guy. From the cut of his shorts to his shabby-chic loafers, he might have been coming from or headed to some lake vacation.

  “Stop staring at him, then.”

  “I’m not,” I said. He looked like a former frat boy, tanned, blond, his muscled arms contradicting the hint of a beer belly under his cotton polo. “He doesn’t even see me.”

  He couldn’t. Too busy watching the inconsolable child.

  The boy peered over his mother’s shoulder, “monster” the only recognizable word among his shrill, incomprehensible syllables.

  The man winced and ran a hand through his short hair, his mouth twitching as his gaze hesitated on the doors.

  Marty snorted, shifting his bag and looping the strap across his chest. “You’re about to cause a scene and get us kicked out, aren’t you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I can’t be on the no-fly list, Cee. I’ve got places to go, and so do you,” Marty continued.

  Frat boy-man sucked in his stomach and wove through the crowd, hands up to avoid contact as he side-stepped unobservant people in his path with the extreme caution of a germaphobe. Every few steps, he glanced over his shoulder.

  Until his eyes met mine.

  The carousel buzzed again, announcing the arrival of chaos.

  Frat boy-man stumbled into a thick, forty-something man in a suit, both hands splayed across his back and jostling him against his neighbor. The older man dropped his phone. Frat boy-man didn’t acknowledge or apologize, only jerked his hands back and hurried away.

  The man in the suit blinked. His younger neighbor emerged from his technology haze and met the older man’s blank stare as he crumpled to the floor. The younger man’s mouth opened in comical surprise, his phone teetering in his fingers. Another from their group repeated a foreign-sounding word and knelt beside the fallen man, shaking his limp shoulder. As other members of the group noticed, their commingled voices buzzed, punctuated by occasional panicked cries.

&nb
sp; The little boy’s voice carried above the ruckus. “Don’t let the monster get me, Mommy!”

  I stood. Slow. Intentional.

  Frat boy-man hesitated and turned, far enough away to avoid implication, but his nonchalant curiosity couldn’t conceal him. Especially from me.

  A woman yelled for 9-1-1 in heavily accented English and dropped to the fallen man’s side.

  Marty sprang to his feet.

  I stepped around the column, losing sight of frat boy-man for a moment as he navigated the crowd. He emerged from the clot of people milling around baggage claim and stared me down before dashing out the glass doors toward ground transportation. “Come on.” I snatched Marty’s hand and dragged him as I ran.

  The doors opened with a hiss and a hydraulic sigh of humid Louisiana air. My skin instantly slicked with sweat, wisps of hair sticking to my face.

  Few people waited on the damp concrete sidewalks and fewer vehicles passed. LED signs flashed warnings, alerts, and I ignored them all. Yellow-orange overhead lights buzzed louder than the bugs swarming around them. No evidence of frat boy-man or his hurried passage.

  “He couldn’t have disappeared.”

  “But he did,” I said with a sigh. “Weren’t you just reminding me I’m on vacation?”

  “Yeah, but I’d rather kill a little time hunting than have you brood over every Hurricane and cup of étouffée.” He shifted the weight of his bag. “Do you see him?”

  “No.” I scanned one direction, then the other.

  “Why’d the kid call him a monster? He looked normal to me.”

  “Don’t know.” The tinted glass made baggage claim shadowy and cavernous. Two brawny men in dark uniforms, EMT printed across their shoulders, parted the crowd. “Know of any humanoid monster that causes incapacitation with their touch?”

  “Dude, you are asking the wrong person. You’ll have to call her.”

  I restrained the groan to an inward cringe. Arranging temporary coverage for my absence had been an ordeal, but even suggesting I wasn’t doing all the relaxing I’d said I desperately needed would probably cause an issue. She, Sister Betty, would be…perturbed. At best. “I’m supposed to be on vacation,” I said. Ignored luggage chugged along the carousel as the EMTs worked on the fallen man.

  “Yup. But you won’t be until you report this.”

  And probably not even then. First the report, then debriefing with in-town contacts, following up on the guy being lifted onto the waiting gurney. I’d come to let go of responsibility, but the burden was already heavier than before I left. “Let’s get my bag and get out of here. It’s going to be an early morning.”

  2

  “Have you called?”

  I didn’t look up from my writing. “You know I haven’t.”

  In the bed farthest from the desk, Marty stretched, grunted, and flopped back into his pile of pillows, a tumble of muddy-brown hair falling across his eyes. “Never thought I’d be able to sleep in a haunted hotel.”

  “Your snoring scared everything away.” Except my nightmares.

  “You’re still here.”

  “Uh huh.” I drew a line through my last sentence and sat back in the creaky chair. No matter what I wrote, Sister Betty would still give me shit. Sleep shortened by a kaleidoscope of nightmares made it harder to strategize around her inevitable resistance. “I don’t count. I’m a glutton for punishment.”

  “It’s a good thing I love you.” The old bed creaked as Marty climbed out and stretched, his inky silhouette arching with feline drama in front of the sunlit window. He crossed the room, adjusted his pajamas, and looped his arms around my shoulders. He rested his chin on my head with a yawn. “Writing yourself a script?”

  His chin slid against the top of my head as I nodded. Though I’d been at it for over an hour, I had nothing to show but a page of crossed-out half sentences, two crumpled sheets of paper in the trash, and stone-cold coffee.

  “Think it will work?”

  “Doubt it.” I sipped the bitter brew. “I’m just trying to limit how much crap I’ll have to take.”

  “I think she gets off torturing you.” He shuffled to the coffee maker and inspected the foil-topped white plastic pods.

  I scowled. “Don’t talk like that. She’s a nun.”

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t always a nun.” He popped a plastic container into the coffee maker.

  He was right, of course. Sister Bridgit MacKenna, known in our little circle as Sister Betty, had once been like me. The Catholic Church bankrolled hundreds of operatives around the world to hunt and kill monsters, and though some names inspired awe, few were as notorious as Sister Betty. She was the one they called in for hush-hush jobs, especially when the monsters were big, bad, and out of control.

  She’d grown up somewhere in Massachusetts or Maine or something, but monsters orphaned her sometime in her early teens. To hear her tell it, she’d lived like an ascetic, her vengeful life nearly ending in a feverish faint on the steps of Saint Patrick’s in New York City. After a few drinks, she’d regale anyone who’d listen with impressions of the rattled Cardinal of the New York Diocese and the stormy night the old man interviewed her at her hospital bedside, his blessed flask in hand. That he didn’t throw the feral woman-cub into Bellevue after tales of monsters she’d slain since her parents’ death suggested he wasn’t quite as shaken as she claimed. Whatever won him over, when Betty healed, the Catholic church whisked her off to Ireland, inducted her into the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mercy of Saint Brendan, and trained her in stealth and the art of monster hunting on behalf of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  Retired from active duty, she took vows to train the next generation of monster hunter, with special attention to her previous expertise. How Father Callahan convinced her that I would be a good candidate still baffled me. Yet, she’d agreed to work with the thick, angry, scared pre-teenager he brought to her. Week after week, we worked together with varying degrees of success. Her patience fluctuated, but not her commitment. Even now, I still had more to learn, but everything I knew about monsters and fighting came from her. No one I’d met matched her ferocity or skill.

  And she was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen in a habit.

  “You’re having sex thoughts about Sister Betty again, aren’t you?”

  “Huh?” Heat climbed my neck. “What are you talking about?”

  “Please,” he sneered, stirring his coffee. “You’ve had a thing for the hottie in the habit since forever.” He took a sip, and I forced myself not to look away. Little bastard loved staring me down. “You get all quiet when you think about her, and it’s the same dreamy, far-off look as when you’re ‘shipping Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch.”

  “You’re insane.” I returned my attention to the paper in front of me. “I don’t ‘ship Scarlet Witch.” With anyone but me.

  “Right. Okay. Whatever you say.” He laughed and headed to the bathroom. “I may not the one who needs to be hosed down, but I’m getting in the shower anyway. Good luck.”

  When the door closed, I sighed and leaned back in the chair. How the hell did he know? It’s not like we talked about anything like that. When it came to “yucky love stuff,” most of what I tried to explain didn’t make sense to him. He understood affection and love, of course, but sex, or even the desire for it, confounded him. It didn’t matter. I assured him he was better off without it. He agreed. “Besides, you sex up the world enough for both of us anyway.”

  Scribbles and crossed-out text taunted me from my abandoned script attempt. No matter what, she was Sister Betty, and preparation didn’t change that.

  On the other side of the thin wall, the shower hissed and metal shower rings scraped against the rod. I should take advantage of the privacy he offered. And the sooner I finished the work stuff, the sooner I could pull out my book, grab a drink, and crash at the pool.

  After one last deep breath, I dialed my phone.

  “Thank you for calling the Holy Order of the
Sister—”

  “Hi, Sister Betty.”

  “Hmm. Time off hasn’t improved your manners, I see.” The reproach stung despite her teasing lilt. Though I recognized her teasing, years of taking critical feedback during survival training didn’t break easily. “And, m’dear, aren’t you supposed to be taking time to—how did you put it? Recharge and restore?”

  “Can I say I missed your unflinching kindness?”

  “Not if you want me to believe you.”

  Despite myself, I laughed and slid farther into the chair, trying to relax and sound casual. “Then I’ll save my flattery for someone who’ll fall for it.”

  “Wise. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of delectable delta tarts more than willing to take the tumble.” I imagined her curled up on the couch in post-workout sweats cradling a bowl of cereal, the phone pressed between her shoulder and ear, her rust-colored hair bound up in a messy bun. “Now tell me why you’re up so early. And why you’re working.”

  “I wanted to talk to Father C.”

  “He’s not here,” she said, her words colored with the hint of battling intercontinental accents. “The Archdiocese of Santa Fe called him in. Something about a kerfuffle in Albuquerque between the local hunter and law enforcement.”

  “Damn.” I leaned on the desk, grinding the heel of my free hand against my eye.

  She laughed. “I’d scold you for language if I thought you’d stop.”

  “Or if it bothered you.”

  “I have taken vows, dear.” Vows or not, Sister Betty’s faith wasn’t rigid and humorless, though I never doubted her piety after seeing her with a rosary in hand. At her most stern, her affection shone through. With a soft cough, she changed the subject. “Why do you need Father’s help, Caitlin?”