Page 364 - Hunter - The Vigil

as guilty of their deaths as the bastards who did the deed.” He folded his thick arms
and fi xed the man with a steely glare. “You want to stay off death row, you’d best tell us
everything you know about your Russian partners.”
“Look, it’s not like that,” he protested, wilting beneath the detective’s remorseless
stare. “I mean, I wasn’t actually there to buy anything from them. It was all a
setup.”
“No shit,” Vince growled. “We saw the whole thing. You and your buddies were going
to rob the Russians at gunpoint.”

“No, goddamnit!” the man shouted. “You’ve got it all wrong! I was undercover, posing
as a buyer. We were trying to get close to the Russians and bust up their operation.”
Gabreski scowled at the man; he hoped he wasn’t giving away the sudden sense of
unease that gripped him. “Is that so?” he replied. “You got a badge under that jacket
somewhere?”
Vince nodded to Andrea, who crept forward and began patting the man down. He cursed
himself inwardly for not searching the guy earlier. The whole night seemed like a blur
at this point. He checked his watch. It was just past two in the morning.
Andrea came up with a wallet and a smart phone in the man’s jacket pocket. “No gun
or badge,” she said, checking the wallet for ID. “Out-of-state license. Says his name
is…Robert Humphrey.”
“I’m not a cop,” Humphrey admitted. “I never claimed I was. I work for a company in
Chicago called Pharmacological Solutions.”
The news made Karl sit up straight. “Whoa. That’s interesting.”
“You’ve heard of these guys?” Vince asked.
“Hell, yeah,” the reporter said. “They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of a European
pharmaceutical conglomerate called the Cheiron Group.” Karl eyed Humphrey as though he
was an especially venomous breed of snake. “They’ve been tied to dozens of paranormal
incidents across the globe.”
“Says who?” Vince asked.

Karl shrugged. “You know. People. Guys I know.” He pointed to his laptop. “If you
could get me somewhere with a wireless connection, I could show you the reports. It’s
the Information Age, dude. Some of us are keeping track of this kind of stuff.”
Vince turned his attention back to Humphrey. “So what were you after with these
Russians?”
The question seemed to surprise the man. “To get the ghouls, of course. We’ve been
after them for years.”
“According to —” Vince caught himself before he mentioned Carver’s name. “According
to one of my contacts, the Russians have only been in the country for about a year.”
“I’m not talking about here,” Humphrey said. “The Iron Curtain was the best thing that
ever happened to the creatures of the night. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things that
found sanctuary in Eastern Europe and Russia after World War II.” The suit pushed himself
upright with a grimace. “It took our Russian subsidiaries almost 10 years to track down
the Khaurovs. They’d been pretty marginalized during Stalin’s time, and were in exile way
out in Siberia. But they still served the monsters that Maxim made his pact with, back
in 1520. When our agents caught up to them, they had been living like nomads for years,
traveling from one village to another and digging up the local cemeteries to feed the few
ghouls that were left.”
“So when things got too hot in Russia, they packed up and came here,” Vince said.
Humphrey nodded. “That’s what we fi gure. They’d pretty much worn out their welcome
in Europe, and our guys were closing in. Apparently someone in the family must have had
some contacts in the Mafi ya, who put them on a ship at Vladivostok.”
“Okay, so what the hell are these things?” Karl asked. “Are they diabolical entities,
or just some kind of cryptid?”
The suit shifted uncomfortably, clearly uncertain how much he was willing to share.
“Well, no doubt you’re familiar with the legends,” he began. “Ghouls are creatures that
haunt graveyards and feed on human fl esh. Reports from Siberia suggest they’re physical
entities, rather than malevolent spirits —”
“Oh, they’re solid, all right,” Andrea growled. “Seven feet tall and bulletproof,
with teeth like sharks.”