Chapter Thirty-Four – Hunter

 

“Y’all get what you needed?” Roxy asked as we emerged from the vault, duffel bags tugging at our shoulders. Beside her on her desk were two small, compact black bags.

If Kris was faltering at all beneath the weight, she gave no indication. “No, but we have what we can carry.”

“Good to hear, sugar,” the succubus said with a clap of her hands. She went over to her desk, picked up the bags, and came walking over to us with them. “These are from your colonel. Help you on the last leg of your journey.”

Kris and I both took our bags. “What, pray tell, is in them?” I asked.

Roxy smiled. “Think I opened them up? I’m just the messenger, here, and responsible for helping you get outfitted.”

“How about the next leg of our mission?” Kris asked. “Any insights on that?”

“Just been told to send you up to the roof,” Roxanne said with what, if I wasn’t mistaken, was a hint of a devilish smile dancing around her lips.

“Nothing else?” my partner asked.

Roxy shrugged. “Said it would be self-evident.”

Kris and I exchanged shrugs. “Right,” I said, checking my watch for the time. “We should get moving, then.”

“Yeah,” Kris agreed.

Without much further ado, we both went to leave. As Mike opened the office door for us, Roxy spoke to our backs. “Don’t let Harrington think I’ll forget this little favor.”

Kris turned back to her. “Little favor? That you’re doing for us? Lady, we’re the ones making sure your fucking world doesn’t fall apart. Far as I see it, you owe me and Hunter a bigger debt of gratitude than we owe you for some fucking firearms and explosives.”

I glanced over to Mike to see if I could gauge his reaction, but he didn’t seem to have one. Maybe it was because Kris was right, and he knew it.

The journey we were about to embark on was fucking moronic. Like two hobbits trekking into the land of Mordor moronic, but with the added benefit of Frodo and Samwise being responsible for killing Sauron himself. In our scenario, at least, both Frodo and Samwise were trained combatants, and not just short garbage disposal units from the Shire.

But, honestly, the odds didn’t seem much better in our situation.

I wasn’t sure if Kris was waiting for a response from either of them, but it didn’t seem any was forthcoming. Together, we stepped out into the hall and headed back to the lobby area. We passed Jeanie’s desk without a word, and she didn’t seem to even pay us any attention as we went for the office door.

Kris, determined as always, led the way out into the hallway.

God, I admired her for the way she was willing to be the first into anything. I should have kissed her on the street outside the landing. Should have just told her how I really felt. Instead, here we were, heading out to meet some new contact who was going to take us into Mexico City, and, from there, it was up to us to ride face-first into certain death.

She stopped so suddenly, though, I walked straight into her back.

“The fuck?” she growled, turning violently around. “The fuck happened?”

“Kris, what’s the matter?”

“This hallway,” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t you see it?”

I stopped and looked around the hallway, my mouth dropping open as I realized what she was talking about.

This wasn’t the building we’d been in before. “How the—?”

Kris was already pushing past me, shoving me aside as she returned to the office door we’d just exited through, furious, her eyes literally blazing with green fire. She grasped the door, shouting as she pulled it open. “What the fuck is going—?”

Nothing was beyond it.

Grey concrete floor, electrical wires and computer networking cables hanging from open tiles, steel ribs and half-dry-walled walls for the interior, and city lights outside the office windows. Just an old, unused space in the middle of a build-out.

Carefully, I closed my mouth as I looked around. “Hello?” I called.

My voice echoed back, along with Kris’s heavy, frustrated breathing, as we both stepped deeper into the empty office, spinning around in confusion. The sun had gone down long before we were finished in Roxanne’s place, and the skyline of downtown looked completely different under the moon’s bright, shining light.

“She’s gone,” Kris growled.

“Where to, though?”

“Where? Who fucking cares? What I want to know is where the fuck we are.”

I hitched my duffel up over my shoulder as I walked forward to the office window. Hand reaching out, I stroked the glass as I peered out over the city below. We were still on the twentieth floor, as far as I could tell. That much hadn’t changed. But the sprawl looked different, and the way the lights seemed to climb up into the mountains around us for as far as the eye could see. Like we were sitting in a bowl created by Mother Earth herself.

And, God, the smog. The way it tainted the lights shining all around us. The way they seemed to smudge as they came through the glass. How it crept into your lungs, even up here within a sealed building.

“Where are we?” Kris asked as she stepped up. She got a good look, and now it was her mouth’s turn to drop open like a fish. “Holy shit.”

“Mexico City,” I breathed. “I thought her new office looked too damn similar to the one in Paris.”

“Jesus,” she said. “Can you imagine what it would take to move her office like that?”

“Cheaper, I’m sure, than building a replica of that vault in each city she does business. Also makes for a hell of an insertion plan, wouldn’t you say?”

“Better than having to drop out of a Blackhawk into the ocean two klicks offshore, that’s for damn sure.” She threw her bag up over her shoulder. “Wish she would have said something, though.”

“Whether it’s the fake, overly expressive Southern accent, or the revenant as a receptionist up front, Roxy’s always had a flair for the dramatic.”

“You don’t say,” Kris said, glancing in my direction. “Well, should we go up?”

“Roof? Think we’ll really meet our contact up there?”

She shook her head. “I think that’s just our next departure. You rested up enough for a long flight?”

“Three hundred kilometers?” I asked, a little smile on my lips. “I can do that on my back.”

“Uh-huh,” Kris said. “Right.”

Together, we climbed the rest of the way to the top of the building, all fifteen flights. I will admit, I did break a sweat, but that was mainly because I had about fifty pounds of gear strapped to my back as I jogged behind Kris. For her part, she barely seemed flagged by the whole thing when we made it to the roof top access.

I disabled the door’s warning alarm, and we both stepped out onto the roof.

The air was sweltering as it touched our skin. Even the sheen of sweat I’d developed did nothing for me, instead just making it worse as my clothes suddenly stuck to my body uncomfortably. Everything just seemed hot, sticky, and humid, and I found myself actually missing St. Louis for the first time in…well, ever.

We dropped our bags unceremoniously to the tarred and papered rooftop, which was just radiating heat back up at us and not improving matters.

Kris dropped to her knees beside her duffel, pulling out the small bag Harrington had given to Roxy in order to be passed on to us. I followed suit, unzipped mine, and began to dig through it.

Waterproof map, compass, utility tool, wires, additional flashlight, sports bra, women’s briefs.

“Got your bag by accident,” I said.

“Oh? How can you tell?”

I held up the utilitarian and functional underwear over my shoulder.

“Aw,” she said as she snatched them out of my hand, “he kept my measurements on file.”

“Quite frankly, that is completely beyond weird,” I said, pulling out the compass and checking the cardinal directions. “You’re facing west, by the way.”

“Need a compass for that?” she asked. “Thought you had a deposit in your nose.”

“Only works really far north,” I said with a grin she couldn’t see as I pulled out the map and looked it over. Printed on a light vinyl material, it was a custom print job of the topographical area surrounding Del Noche and the area we were going into. I checked the time on my watch. “If we leave now, we’ll touch down just a touch after midnight.”

“Should give us enough time to scope out the place, see if we can’t find our informant.”

“My thoughts exactly.” I glanced back over my shoulder. “Ready?”

I shouldn’t have even bothered asking, though. Kris was already up off her knees and stripping down to nothing. If any helicopters or spy satellites were in the vicinity, they were about to be in for a show.

Following her cue, I stood up and began to do the same, careful to keep my head forward, no matter how much my lesser impulses were compelling me to turn.

“Nervous?” I asked as I pulled my shirt up and over my head, tossing it on the roof beside me.

I’d thought it would be refreshing to be this far up, that maybe this little nudist session would somehow feel better. Instead, the air was muggy and thick as it clung to my skin.

“About the flight, or the mission as a whole?”

I kicked off my loafers, saying, “The mission. Flying is easier than walking.”

“If you’re not nervous, and you’re not scared, you haven’t been doing this as long as I have.” She paused, as if she were considering something. “We have, I mean. What about you?”

“Terrified,” I replied, as I went to unbuckle my belt and take my pants off. “And, yes, I feel like it’s opening night, and I haven’t bothered to learn any of my lines. The fate of the human and supernatural world is resting on our shoulders.”

“Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “welcome to the Paranormal Defense Board. It doesn’t get much better. Seemed like every mission we were sent on back at the PRB was the same thing. Same apocalypse, different day.”

“Well,” I said, “just look on the bright side.”

“What’s that?” she asked as I crouched down next to my bag and pulled out my black insertion gear we’d be using for night movements. Behind me, Kris did the same.

I gave them the once-over before carefully rolling them up and placing them back inside the bag. “Things can’t possibly get much worse.”

“You’d be surprised, Hunter. Believe me, you’d be surprised.”