A full 24 hours later; Tabitha, Io, and I were moved out of HQ and into a safehouse a short drive away from the Oceanfront Galleria where I had spent my first mission. The safehouse was this luxury hotel suite called the Diamond Suite. Half of one of the top floors had been converted into this penthouse-esque loft space overlooking the busiest white-sand beach in Eastport, which was allegedly being occupied by some high-roller who did not wish to be disturbed.
We had access to our own private elevator that opened up into its own private garage filled with Bureau-modifed vehicles, and a massive set of rooms filled with stupidly expensive shit like a golden bathtub and silk sheets. A part of me wondered if Aleksei had handled the details of our reassignment personally, and if so what he had hoped to achieve by giving us such a nice safehouse, or if he had just handed it off to some secretary who took pity on us.
Either way, I was not about to look this gift horse in the mouth, I was just happy to be enjoying some of the luxuries my minimum wage grind kinda life had never allowed me to experience.
“We have our own private pool!” I said, flabbergasted.
Tabitha sighed. “Yes, Ryan, our safehouse has a pool. I get that this is your first time seeing what the Bureau is capable of outside HQ but could you please stop repeating how cool you think this is? Look at our itinerary for the next month! Aleksei has us running mission after mission after mission. No time to enjoy any of the luxuries of our safehouse, it’s just a place to park our heads for a few hours of shut-eye, alright?”
I nodded, not because I agreed with her, but because I didn’t want to argue.
“You’re mad because instead of addressing the fight you had with him, your father figure is shoving you off to go on dangerous missions but also affording you some of the highest luxuries money can buy. Which are pretty mixed messages. Am I on track?” I asked.
Tabitha was quiet for a moment. “Keep your eyes on the road, hotshot, and stay outta my head. Our destination is coming up on the right.”
Weird side effect of my new werewolf powers was that—in addition to the new hand—I also had a very low-level psychic bond with Tabitha. I was still getting the hang of it and it was pretty faulty, like a bad radio, but occasionally her emotions were transmitted to me free and clear, telling me exactly what she was feeling and why. It was pretty cool.
Io’s voice spoke calmly in my ear. “Hello, lethal lovers. I’ve cleared a parking spot for you on parking deck three of the garage coming up. Here, follow Buster.”
Buster was the name of one of Io’s magic-tech drones. What appeared to be a pigeon suddenly swooped down before our vehicle, which looked like a K-9 Unit SUV on the outside but on the inside looked more like a freaking tank and even had a button overhead that said ‘Arm Missiles’ which Tabitha yelled at me when I tried to press.
I followed the fake pigeon into the parking garage and parked my secret-organization-modified vehicle in an open parking spot, and my partner clipped a badge to her belt that identified her as a member of a police force which we were definitely not a part of, then stepped out of the vehicle. I checked both of my holsters to see that my new guns—Olson gave me two upgraded Roulettes now that I had two hands—were in place before I stepped out of the vehicle and joined her.
We both put on glasses we did not need, and a head’s up display flashed across the lenses, giving us a tactical readout of our surroundings. Her glasses looked like aviators. Mine looked like standard frames, but both Tabitha and Io assured me I made them work. I didn’t really care. They could have been pink and fuzzy or made from cheap plastic for all I cared. So long as they gave me this cool HUD; I would’ve worn ’em anyway.
Both Tabitha and I were wearing some better gear than on our last mission. Slim-fitting combat vests that hid pretty well under our long coats that also hid our holsters and badges. We sort of looked like tv-show detectives. Only cooler, in my opinion. I had to admit all these growth spurts were putting me pretty firmly in the category of guys who stood out in a crowd no matter what I wore, so trying to blend in was out of the question.
I grabbed a single-strap backpack from the back seat and slung it over my shoulder.
“C’mon. Mission’s this way,” Tabitha said, leading me out of the parking garage and onto the street level. I fell into step beside Tabby and enjoyed the way people made an effort not to be in our way as we strode down the street.
Buster the pigeon-drone flapped up to my backpack and slipped into an open pouch, his little mechanical body folding itself into the shape of a smartphone.
Convenient.
Over the comms, Io started filling us in on the mission.
“There it is. Cafe Ouroboros. Best coffee in town, allegedly. I know a bunch of Bureau agents frequent this place, but I’ve never been myself. Don’t get out much on account of the whole snake-body thing. Might freak some humans out, no offense.”
“None taken,” Tabitha replied coolly.
“All the gear they got down at HQ and they can’t spear some sort of wheelchair rig?” I said incredulously. “You can’t stay cooped up inside forever, Io.”
“Aww, you’re sweet Ryan. The R&D department is a little more focused on making assault vehicles and field equipment to hunt monsters. I don’t think making a custom wheelchair to fit a lamia is high on their priority list.”
“Well we’ll have to make a requisition then, won’t we?” I countered.
We made our way to the front entrance of the cafe and stood in the long line to await our chance to grab a cup of this supposedly best coffee in all Eastport—or so their posters claimed. Io continued filling us in as we waited in line.
Apparently a whole lot of missing person’s cases had all been linked to this particular cafe in the past two months. Nothing the cops could prove definitively enough to place the blame on the cafe itself, but enough to have them believing there was a serial killer using this place as their hunting grounds. They weren’t far off.
Yesterday morning a body was found in Eastport’s Central Park that matched one of the missing persons. The deceased looked like it had been mauled to death by a bear. Which might have made sense if the guy died in the forest, but he was dead smack in the center of the city and the zoo was clear across town, so the police were stumped.
One of the Bureau agents embedded within the city’s police department, however, instantly recognized the claw marks as those belonging to a wendigo. After some digging through a few cold case files, they realized that several other bodies found in the park over the past few years also showed signs of monster attacks and could be linked to this little cafe.
Io made it pretty clear that everyone including the cops thought this was pretty much a dead end from the jump. But the place needed to be staked out anyway. Naturally, Aleksei made sure we got sent to do the honors as our first stop on his tour of punishment.
We got our drinks and found a table by the seat that had a good view of the whole store. I pulled a pair of laptops out of the backpack I had slipped on and we set up like we were coming here for the free wi-fi so we could get some schoolwork done since we were both about the right age to be college students.
An hour and a half went by as we sipped our coffees—they were pretty spectacular, but not life-changing—and drafted fake essays. All that changed were the faces in the crowd. The whole luxury suite safehouse was starting to lose its appeal as I contemplated the possibility that my days were going to be filled with such monotonous assignments.
Around the hour-forty-five mark, Io broke up the boring routing by cutting into Tabitha and my idle banter about who could do more pushups. For the following hour she kept up a running commentary on all the cafe’s patrons; making up such ridiculous stories about what they did with their lives that Tabitha and I found it impossible to stop laughing.
A couple of the nearby customers smiled at us, assuming we were just a cute couple making each other laugh by sending one another memes on our laptops, unaware that we had an extra voice in our ears that was actively roasting them while we laughed. It was nothing mean-spirited, just utterly over-the-top things that were weirdly accurate. She said one guy looked like he kept a collection of vintage stuffed animals, for instance, and like I saw it. Io may not have been able to get out much but she was excellent at reading people.
Something caught my eye as we were laughing at her latest spot-on assessment, and I turned towards the bathrooms suspiciously.
There had been this hella cute girl that I checked out a while ago who walked in, ordered a coffee, and then headed to the restroom. Only she never came back, and they never put a coffee out for her.
Come to think of it…my brain was starting to piece together a list of other people I had seen pull that same move. Walk in, wait in line, place an order, head to the bathroom, then vanish. Either those bathrooms had another exit that connected to another portion of this building, or some of Cafe Ouroboros’s customers weren’t here for the coffee.
Which begged the question. What were they here for?
Tabitha tapped the table to get my attention and made an inquisitive face.
I began typing on my laptop right away, opening up a shared document with the burner email accounts Io had set up for us and explaining what I was seeing. A few minutes later it was like I could see the gears clicking into place inside of Tabitha’s head as she noticed the same phenomenon.
Io told us to stay posted and started working some digital magic, reviewing the drone footage from the entirety of our stakeout and marking which customers vanished into the bathrooms so she could figure out what they were doing differently from everyone else.
The answer lay in a strange green card that they were using to pay for the orders that never got sent out. They looked like gift cards printed with a strange circular symbol of a snake eating its own tail, and the only people who had them were the ones who vanished into the bathrooms never to return. All of this she conveyed to us via our comms as we grew more and more serious by the second, our fingers flying across our keyboards as we both provided input into coming up with a plan to gain access to whatever secret these people were participating in.
“Alright, Ryan, looks like you’re up first. The man with the red wrist watch? He’s your mark. Follow him.”
Rising from my chair by the window, I leaned over and kissed Tabitha on the forehead. It was as much for my own benefit as it was a bid to continue the appearances that we were just a happy couple stealing some free wifi so we could get some homework done together. And not, y’know, a power couple who were also secret agents on a monster-hunting mission.
I moved towards the bathroom at a leisurely pace and ended up reaching the door just a second or two sooner than the man with the red wristwatch. Pretending to just notice him, I gave him a polite lips-folded expression and held the door open for him.
He raised his eyebrow like this polite gesture was something foreign to him, and strode past me with a brusque disregard for proper holding-the-door-open protocol. Not even an awkward lip fold of acknowledgment.
I instantly felt about thirty percent less bad about what was about to go down.
Following the man into the bathroom, I moved to the urinal and started unzipping my pants. Captain ‘red wristwatch’ moved toward the handicap stall and pulled out the green access card. Then he glanced around the bathroom to see if he was being observed.
Our eyes met as I was pulling my dick out of my pants. Awkward.
He frowned, a bit of anger flashing across his face as he turned toward me.
“What’s your problem man?” I said, stealing the words right out of his mouth if I was reading his expression correctly. “Can’t a guy visit the loo in peace?” I didn’t know where the British accent came from, and I didn’t have time to unpack why my brain went with it. My dick was out and I was about to have to kick this guy’s ass in the middle of a public restroom. I don’t think my brain was ready for this scenario when I woke up this morning and it clearly made some weird choices.
Doubling down on the weirdness and deciding to use it to my advantage, I stepped back from the urinal and ran with the accent. “You wanna have a go, mate?” Captain Wristwatch lost all ability to speak as his eyes dropped to what was dangling out of my jeans. I think I short-circuited the poor bloke. “Oi! My eyes up here, pal.”
He held his hands up, still holding the green card. “Sorry man I wasn’t looking, I was just trying to use the stall. I-I uh—”
“You drive a car, mate?” I demanded, taking a step toward him.
“What? I, yeah I drive a car. Can you please put that awa—”
“Uh-huh,” I said, acting like I didn’t believe him just to get under his skin, “and does this car of yours have a handicapped placard hanging from the mirror?”
This guy was several different kinds of confused. I figured I’d help him out by stuffing my cock back in my jeans, but I made sure to do it as slowly and deliberately as possible without breaking eye contact. The fact that I was still walking toward him did not help his situation. He should have been polite about me holding open the door, and that’s all I have to say about it.
“Dude, it’s just a bathroom,” he protested.
“Handicapped people need to use the bathroom too, ya fuckin’ tea kettle!” My accent was wearing thin, and by now I was in the distance I needed anyway, so I cut this bizarre encounter short by lunging forward and punching the guy straight in the jaw.
He barely even had time to flinch before he dropped like a sack of potatoes.
The guy was out cold. In one punch.
Fuck yeah!
I snagged the access card before it hit the ground and reported back to Io that my mission was a success.
“Great! Hold tight until Tabs has one too, alright?”
I glanced down at Captain Wristwatch’s unconscious form and sighed. I figured I’d better move him into one of the other stalls before someone came in and saw this.
Reaching down to grab his arms, I yanked him into a sitting position and let his dead weight drop against the wall of the bathroom. Which was when I realized a slight tactical error on my part and had to hold him upright with one hand and try to reach back and open one of the stall doors with the other.
This was not one of my finer moments.
I was standing with this guy’s head right about waist level. I was cradling his head so he didn’t fall and split his skull on the tile while I’m reaching back trying to open a stall door, when someone walks in. Some completely random dude who probably just wanted some coffee and had to pee. He took one look at the situation unfolding in the bathroom and immediately reached the conclusion that this dude and I are sharing a private moment.
What I wanted to say was ‘this isn’t what it looks like!’ But what came out (in a British accent nonetheless) was, “This is exactly what it looks like.” Fuck my life.
“Right. I’ll…come back later,” The guy decided.
“Good choice, mate.”
As soon as the door closed I moved the stupid red-wristwatch-wearing jackass into an empty stall and zipped myself up, swearing that I would never breath a word of this to anyone.
Acting on instinct, I took the man’s red wristwatch and put it on. It was gold, just tinted to have a red hue to it. The pattern made it look like it was molten metal whenever I rotated my wrist. It was sort of beautiful in a I-have-more-money-than-you kind of way.
I took off my glasses and folded them up, placing them in a jacket pocket.
A few tense minutes went by before I got the signal I was waiting on.
“Alright, Ryan. Tabs has her card. You are clear to proceed.”
“Copy. I’m going in.”
I slid the green access card in front of the hidden sensor built into the handicapped stall. The entire door dissolved into a shimmering portal and I took my chances by stepping through it without any idea what was on the other side.