October 19, 7 p.m. Year of the Curtain+5
Los Angeles, California
Max and Brie found a table at the Big Time Café just as the sun was beginning to go down. They ordered their drinks, and sat quietly as they waited. Max sipped at his Coors, while Brie peeled the label off her Abita and began to shred it over the table.
“I still don’t feel all that comfortable with this.”
“Brie, just relax. We’ll meet with her, we’ll talk to her, and if we don’t feel like we’re on the same wavelength, we’ll walk away.
“The same wavelength for what, though, Max? What exactly is our goal here?”
“To shut these monsters down, of course. We need to find other people who can do it, people who can do it with us. You know there’s no way we can do all this alone. It seems there are more of these things stalking the Earth every day. Wait, here she is.”
Max waved and a tall, brown-haired woman waved back. As she approached the table, Brie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Something about this woman disturbed her. The way she walked, the way she carried herself… she had a gait like someone who was fully capable of beating the crap out of you and knew it. The last time Max had gotten together with someone who had that attitude had driven Brie crazy.
“Hey, Max. Who’s your friend?”
“Brie Sanders, Annabell Crane.”
“Charmed.”
“Likewise.”
“I didn’t know we’d have company, Max.”
“Brie and I are partners,” he said. “We’ve been through hell together. As long as she wants in on what I’m doing, she’s got that right. This one is non-negotiable, Annabell.”
“No worries, I trust your judgment. Brie, are you one of the girls who went through the siege with Max last year?”
Brie wasn’t a particularly ardent feminist. She referred to herself as a “girl” about a dozen times a day. But somehow, the way Annabell said the word made it feel like an insult. She bit her lip and forced a smile. “Yes, I was. We had to cut our way through a horde of zombies together. Have you ever had to face one of those?”
“One or two. And some vampires. A werewolf or three. And something in Las Cruces that I’m pretty sure was a gremlin, but I haven’t been able to find any documentation to confirm it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Max looked back and forth between the two women, suddenly aware that he was watching a measuring contest that he wasn’t prepared for. “Okay… well, now that we’re all friends, Annabell, you’re the one who started this. What did you have in mind when you gave me your card?”
“In the group, you said you wanted somebody to help you hunt down the monsters, right?”
“Damn right. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about these things ever since the day of the Curtain. Maybe if we had cut it off then the world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in now.”
“You’re thinking about it the wrong way, Max.”
“You don’t want to kill the things?”
“Of course I do, but the day of the Curtain didn’t create them.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a Moleskine notebook. She opened it up and flipped to an early page full of notes and sketches, with dates that seemed to stretch back to the 1600s, if not earlier. “There have been reports of monsters since the dawn of time. We’ve always thought they were just legends, but now it seems pretty clear which of the old stories were accurate and which ones were made up or exaggerated or twisted from their original versions. I don’t know if it’s even possible to shut them down or destroy them all.”
“Well that’s a cheerful thought,” Max said. “I don’t understand, then – if you’re not out to stop them, what are you doing?”
“Two things. I fight them as much as I can – I shut down the groups when I can, I kill them one at a time if I have to. And Nothing’s going to stop me from doing that. But the other thing may be more important. These things have always been here, but something happened on October 15 five years ago, something that turned the dial all the way up to eleven, and now they’ve gotten bolder and nastier than ever before. I want to find out what that was and see if I can turn the dial back down again. I read your book, guys. I know what you went through, and if half of that stuff is true, I think you’re the kind of people I’ve been looking for. Even you, Brie. So what do you say? Are you in.”
Max and Brie shared a look. He was ready to go, he was ready to start fighting now, but he wasn’t going to abandon Brie. They either did this together, or they didn’t do it at all. After a long, slow moment, Brie nodded.
“Okay,” Max said. “We’re in. Where do we start?”
“Well, that’s the tough part,” Annabell said. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“Even you, Brie” That can’t be good for team morale! LOL.