Milo was obviously proud of his latest creation. I had no idea how much he was paid by MHI, but whatever it was, he certainly deserved more. "Go ahead and take it. It's yours."

"For real?" I said, putting the warm gun over my shoulder.

"Yeah, you get to be the beta tester. If any other Hunters want one I can build more. Personally, I'm going to stick with my carbine. Abomination is a little on the clunky side for me."

"Thanks, dude." Christmas had come early for Owen Z. Pitt.

"You can consider it bribery. Remember what I was talking about earlier? About that…" He drew in close. I felt rather conspiratorial. "Look, here's the deal, after Julie's mom was lost on a mission, her dad kind of withdrew from the world. He spent all of his time down in the archives. He read and studied every book we had, and then he started gathering more from all over. It became his thing. You think Julie is smart? She gets that from Ray. He was probably the smartest Hunter we have ever had. If anybody has heard of this Cursed One it would be him."

"What happened to her dad? Why the falling out?"

"From all of his studying, he learned things that no human should have ever learned. It was stupid. Ray loved his wife and tried something desperate to get her back. It did not go according to plan."

"So why doesn't Julie want to speak to him, and why does her grandfather and her uncle freak out at the mention of his name?"

Milo jumped about a foot off of the ground when he heard Julie speak. "Because my dad is dangerous and insane." We had not heard her approach. I stupidly removed my ear plugs. I had shut down the amplification to avoid wasting the batteries. I found myself wishing that I had left them on.

"It didn't go according to plan?" Julie snapped at Milo. She strode between us, and stopped directly in front of him, arms folded. She was quite a bit taller than he was. "Didn't go according to plan? Don't you think that's a bit of an understatement?"

"Well… I suppose that you could say…"

"According to plan? According to plan? Milo, all hell broke loose. Literally. Ninety-seven Hunters were killed, and it was only a miracle that we didn't suck all of Alabama into another dimension. Even then the government shut us down, and put all of us out of work. Monster attacks on innocent people went through the roof because we weren't around to stop them, and Dad is responsible for that too." Milo shrank a little in the face of the onslaught. She whirled and faced me. "And you. What did I tell you before we left Georgia?"

"Stay out of your business?" I answered, feeling like an idiot.