Altered Gate Read online

  “Well, saying you saved me is maybe an overstatement,” I said, doing my best to try and downplay it. The fact was, when I was facing the Hellion, Rector, walking away from it in one piece seemed unlikely. If Rouge hadn’t been there, I wasn’t sure things would’ve turned out the way they had. Didn’t mean I had to admit it though. Especially if she’d actually considered joining up with me full time. The kind of danger it would put her in didn’t feel good in the slightest. “It’s all how you look at it, I think.”

  “Oh, I saved you. Don’t try and pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, hot shot. You owe me everything you got. But don’t worry, I’m only partially serious. I would love to do what you do with you, but I don’t think I want to go down that road just yet. But I’d need to cut my nails, and I just went and got these babies done,” she said, smiling and shooting me a wink while flashing her manicure. “When they grow out, though, I may send you my resume.”

  “But if we’re co-workers, do we have to stop dating? Not sure how the HR department feels about inter-office relationships.”

  “Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  She had a point. I just hoped they didn’t know, that nobody in the Collective was paying too much attention to what I was doing. My goal has always been to stay off their radar as much as possible, and then the rule-breaking doesn’t really matter.

  Thursday

  After I left Rouge’s, I went to my place to grab a few things, including a duffle bag to carry what I needed from Godfrey’s. When I got there, I checked my cellphone for messages. I’d left it off overnight so I didn’t get any calls while I was spending time with her. As soon as it powered up, I saw the light was flashing and when I checked I found it full. Sixty voicemail messages, but not one of them was worth the space they took up.

  There were messages from people calling me a fraud, stoners telling me they think their mom is a monster, one from a woman who said she was a monster and needed the cute guy from the video to come over and slay her, and more of that. I listened to each and every one of them, and after they were all deleted I turned my phone off, not wanting any more of the same. After that I went to my computer and checked my email. Nearly two-hundred and fifty new emails in my inbox and just the previews of some of them made me not want to even open a single one of them.

  This couldn’t end fast enough.

  Weaving through a sea of fake calls and messages, knowing that real clients who needed my help may not be able to get through to me, was something I should have dealt with yesterday. The way I find monsters, demons, and spirits in the section of the world I have to cover makes my life easier. I don’t want to be like the others who actually have to go around and find signs or learn to sense weak spots in order to do the job. All of us hunters have a quota. I always exceed mine. I don’t want to start failing because of all the prank calls.

  I grabbed my bag, a few other things, and then got out of there. I needed to just go and stop thinking about all of it; I needed to allow everything to just get back to normal. I drove to Godfrey’s and was thankful for it all being uneventful. I parked down the street from his shop, as I usually do, and then walked the two blocks there. As I was just about to the store, maybe three shops away, someone across the road yelled out “Holy shit! It’s the monster killer!”

  I refused to look over. I ignored it. Even when the guy started singing a version of the Ghostbusters theme, but changing the word to Monster Killer, I walked on and pretended I didn’t hear him at all. I told myself it was fine, everything would pass as it always does. I opened the door and went into Godfrey’s, but it was hard to ignore the chill in my stomach.

  The little bell above his door jingled and my eyes took a second to adjust to the dim little store after being out in the bright day. Someone was already in there. Not unusual, but it was strange seeing Godfrey talking to someone in the shop in a quiet, calm voice. Normally, when anyone other than me is in there, he’s a bit on the mean side. After all, the shop is a front. He’s not really selling anything of interest to people, he’s there to buy and provide weapons, relics, charms, and the likes to help me. I’ve never seen him buy from anyone, but I’ve seen plenty of people in the shop thinking they could pick up something weird and kitschy for a friend. Those encounters don’t go over well. After all, running the shop wasn’t really Godfrey’s idea, it was his punishment.

  On Godfrey’s home planet, he did something wrong, something pretty bad: he’s never gotten into what that was, but it couldn’t have been good. It was bad enough that it got him sentenced to spend an uncertain amount of time on Earth, locked up in this store, until he was called back. In the store, he looks like a middle-aged Jamaican man, but if he steps outside, well, let’s just say people would be freaked out to see an upright, fully dressed creature resembling a crocodile or dinosaur walking about town on two feet. I’ve seen it, and even I was a little freaked out.

  Godfrey’s a good person though. I didn’t always feel that way, but things change. We’ve had our issues in the past, he nearly got me killed once or twice by selling me fake goods, but that’s all in the past. Now I’m the one person he doesn’t treat like a heel when they step into his store.

  Except this guy.

  When I shut the door to the shop, they both turned to look at me. The stranger smiled before he turned back to Godfrey. I saw something on Godfrey’s face I’d never really seen before. The same look I’ve seen on the faces of creatures I’m about to dispatch.

  Worry.

  Fear.

  It didn’t look good on him.

  I walked towards them, did my best to hear what the stranger was saying, but he spoke in a tone too low for me to catch any of it. Godfrey nodded over and over again, glancing from the stranger to me, and back again. The worry and fear never left his eyes.

  Just as I got close enough to where I might be able to hear them, the stranger turned around and began to walk towards me. I stopped, my heart rate jumping. I thought he was about to come right at me. My hand went to the inner pocket of my jacket, my fingers wrapped around the handle of a small dagger I had there, and I readied for an attack.

  “How’s it going?” the stranger said as he brushed past me. He walked by and headed out the door, never looking back, and I was confused. He’d seemed like a threat as he came towards me. Godfrey had looked scared, and I’d felt something, but he barely paid me any mind. Then he was gone and I turned to Godfrey.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Nobody. Just someone looking for something I don’t have. No big deal.”

  “Really? So what was with the look?” I asked and Godfrey stared at me as though he had no idea what I was talking about. As someone who deals with creatures that are frightened and willing to lie in hopes of getting what they want, there was no way I’d miss that fear in him. “I’ve known you for too long not to know something’s up, Godfrey. You don’t have anything close to a poker face, so you might as well just tell me who that was.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he replied, but his words couldn’t hide the fear clearly written on his face.

  “Your face tells me different. You might as well just tell me who it was and what they were doing here. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “You mean you couldn’t tell? I thought you were the best hunter around, but you couldn’t tell what that was? I guess that explains why you didn’t notice what was up with your priest friend.”

  That was a low blow, but I ignored it and turned towards the door. I replayed the whole encounter, from the moment I walked in to when the stranger brushed past me and left. There wasn’t anything that popped for me. He was average height, brown hair, no marks or scars on his face, his eye colour unremarkable, weight average. Not one thing stood out in my memory-

  I turned back to Godfrey. A thought popped into my head, but there was no way it could be true. I o
pened my mouth to say what I thought it was, but nothing came out. He nodded despite my loss for words.

  “What’s another hunter doing around here?” I asked when I realized everything about him was so similar to me. Nothing about us was out of the ordinary, not a single feature to make us stand out in a crowd. Average everything so it’s easier to blend in, easier to be forgotten.

  “He didn’t say. He just said he was going to be around for the next little while and was introducing himself to me. Are you being replaced, Dillon?”

  I had no idea. My stomach began to roll a little. Were the big bosses mad about the video, or me killing earthbound creatures, or maybe that I was dating a human? Was it one of those things, or all of them? I’ve broken the rules so many times over the years and never been called out them, so why now? What was the play here?

  Those kinds of questions could eat a hole right through my tough stomach. I didn’t need the stress, so I did my best to shake it off and talk to Godfrey about what I needed resupplies of. We talked for a bit, and I made a great effort to avoid thinking about all the possibilities. Yet try as I might, there was always a whisper of it in the back of my head, like an itch that wants, no, demands to be scratched. I didn’t want to leave Earth, or my area for that matter. I had it so good here. Not just with the job and my life as a whole, but with Rouge too. We had a bit of a whirlwind relationship, things hit off fast between us, but there was a real connection there, real feelings I’ve never had before. I couldn’t imagine leaving her.

  “You okay?” Godfrey asked, and I snapped out of my downward spiral for a second to ask him what he’d said. “I said that I won’t be able to get you any more silver water until I find a new supplier. The guy I used to get it off is in jail. Put some guy through a window at a bar. He thought it was no big deal. Cops said otherwise.”

  “No problem, but what about the other stuff on the list?”

  “I got most of it in the back. Hold on a sec and I’ll go get it. You sure you’re okay? You look a little grey around the gills.”

  “I’m fine. I’m going to use your bathroom for a sec.”

  I went to the washroom and he went to the back to get my stuff. I felt a bit weak and dizzy out of nowhere, but I knew it wasn’t out of nowhere really. It was stress. As someone who hunts down monsters for a living, it’s something I’m on a first name basis with. Usually, I get adrenaline dumps to help me deal with stress so I avoid this feeling until much later, but I couldn’t help playing out every possible situation that might occur if I was in trouble. And I had to be. There was no other way to explain it. Why would another hunter show up here, come see Godfrey, and say nothing to me when I showed up? In the past, if another hunter came here, or I ended up on some other hunter’s turf, introductions were made and the reasons for the visit were explained. It’s only happened a few times in my life, but that’s what we do. It’s kind of a protocol. This, it had to be something else, and that something was not good for me.

  In the bathroom, as the scenarios rolled around in my overactive imagination, my knees felt so weak that I had to grab the sink to keep from falling. I looked at myself in the mirror. I did look like shit. Stir fried and served up cold. This was ridiculous. The same question rolled around in my head why now? Was this any worse than all the other things I’d done?

  It couldn’t be.

  “You’re blowing this out of proportion, dummy,” I whispered to my refection. I tried to smile. It was as genuine as someone posing at Glamour Shots.

  I drank some water and went back out to see Godfrey. I wanted to get out of there and call Rouge. I hoped she’d be home and not too busy. If anyone could talk me off the ledge, it was her.

  “Feeling better?” Godfrey asked as I came out.

  “As good as I can be.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, but if it is, I’ll help you any way I can. That guy seems like a real dick.”

  “We’re all dicks, but thanks.”

  “You have a job tonight?” he asked, handing me the duffle bag and the list of items I’d given him. It was heavier than he made it look.

  “No. With that video of me going around YouTube, all I seem to be getting are crank calls. So I turned my phone off. I’m going to see Rouge perform tonight.”

  “Good. That might be the best thing for you. I don’t know what you’re worried about with all this, but it can’t be that bad. Just go out tonight and relax. Enjoy that woman of yours, because she could do so much better than you.”

  “Wow. You know just what to say to make a boy feel special.”

  Rouge was busy. She’d gone to a spa called Body Blitz with one of her performer friends. When I asked if I could swing by, thinking a spa treatment sounded like just what I needed, she told me it was a women-only place. She said after the spa she’d head to the venue so she could meet me there. That was still five hours away, so I decided to go to my place and kill some time. As soon as I’d turned my phone back on to call her, the little plastic nightmare went crazy beeping at me, letting me know more idiots had seen the damn video and wanted to call to curse, praise, or irritate me. I didn’t bother to listen to them. I put the phone on silent, shoved it in my pocket and drove home.

  When I got back to my apartment, I put my bag away, made some food and sat down to watch some mindless shows. I felt drained, so I set my alarm just in case Anthony Bourdain couldn’t keep me entertain and distracted as he ate weird food in dangerous places. I didn’t want to miss or be late to Rouge’s show, no matter how shitty I felt.

  I woke up to the overly loud alarm three hours later and nearly threw it across the room to shut it up. When I turned on the screen there was a call coming in from Godfrey. My mind immediately jumped to something bad, guessing the new hunter had come back and told Godfrey why he was there. I quickly answered it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, and could hear the sleepiness in my voice.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Don’t worry about it. What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong, but I got a potential client for you. Interested?”

  “Wait, someone called you to get me? How did that happen?”

  “It was one of my sellers. They told me about this guy in Niagara Falls who’s claiming he’s haunted. The guy told someone about it, asked for a specialist in the occult. He says there’s a demon or ghost following him around and it or they are going to kill him. Seller knows I deal with you so he told me about it. Since you’re getting all those fake calls, thought this might help.”

  Maybe it would. Work had a way of making other things disappear. I took the number from Godfrey and thanked him. He told me he had my back and after everything he’d done for me recently, I believed him. It was nice to finally trust him. After all the years he came off as a sly, con-artist who couldn’t be trusted to say an honest thing, it felt good to look at him as an ally.

  After I hung up, I decided to Google the potential client, Chance Anderson. It didn’t take long, as there weren’t many people in Niagara Falls with that name. I opened up the first link and found out he was a real estate developer in the Niagara region. He owned some huge properties including many of the tourist attractions in Clifton Hills. He seemed pretty normal, nothing in any of the searches turned up potential that he’d be crazy or lying, so I dialed the number Godfrey had given me. The woman who answered the phone, Ms. Mittz, said Mr. Anderson was out of the office at the moment and wasn’t expected back for the rest of the day.

  “If you tell me what this is in regards to, I can get him to call you back at his earliest.”

  “Well, I’d like that, but to be honest, I’m not even sure what it’s about. A friend of his contacted a friend of mine and said he had some sort of issue I might be able to help him with.”

  “You mean the ghosts?”

  I was surprised by that. This guy clearly had no issue talking a
bout his problems.

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. He’s been just a wreck over the last few weeks. Would you be able to come see him tomorrow? He’s not really seeing any clients at the moment, so it’s no problem fitting you in. The faster this gets handled, the quicker we’ll have Chance back. He hasn’t been the same since this all started.”

  “I can do tomorrow, but it’ll have to be the afternoon.”

  “No problem. Whenever you can get here, that’s just perfect. Like I said, things have been so bad lately; I’d just like to have my old boss back. Thank you so much, Mr.—”

  “Just Dillon. And I’ll see you then. Is the address the same as on the website?”

  She said it was, and I jotted it down. And just like that, I’d for­gotten everything else and was as calm as ever. Work has a way of doing that to me.

  I left my car in a pay parking lot next door to the venue Rouge was performing at. The show was set to start in thirty-five minutes and I sent her a text as soon as I arrived. She asked if I could grab her something to eat since she’d been too busy with her tech setup to grab anything. There was a Tim Hortons in the plaza where the parking was so I went in, grabbed her some goodies and headed to the main doors.

  As I passed the narrow alley, I saw there was already quite a lineup of people waiting to get in, but stopped in my tracks when I heard my name whispered from the shadows. I didn’t know the voice. I turned and peered into the darkness. Something moved, shifted, and then stepped forward. My hand went towards my belt where the Tincher was, and I nearly dropped the food and drinks I was holding.

  “I’m not here to fight,” it whispered and finally the orange street lights found it and I saw what it was that had called me. “Come here.”