“I’m okay.” Lacoco came out of the smoke covered in dust and a trickle of red rolling down one cheek. He reached down for where he’d left his shotgun, but that whole section of wall was gone. He looked around and swore.

I shouldered Abomination, which was still faithfully tethered to my armor. “You’ll want to put a sling on that. Losing guns gets expensive.”

“Go to hell,” Lacoco told me.

Cooper walked up, proudly surveying the damage. Lee joined him a second later, laughing his ass off. They high-fived each other. The fire alarm was an annoying beep beep beep. Thank goodness the sprinklers didn’t go off, because that would have extra sucked. Hunters appeared through the haze, converging back on 1613. Earl walked out of the chaos, waving his hand in front of his face. “It’s over,” he assured everyone.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Julie reached my side and began running her hands around my head and neck. It wasn’t out of tenderness, though. She was looking for injuries. Being right next to an explosion was always a bitch, and bleeding to death while you were in shock was always a possibility. Someone else was inspecting Lacoco. “I’m okay,” I assured her.

“Uh-huh…” Now she was checking my arms for blood. “Keep talking. How’s your head?”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“What’s the anniversary date of the first time we met?” she asked.

That was a terrible question to check for traumatic brain injury. “Uh…” I sucked with dates. “It’s on the calendar?”

“Hah, gotcha,” she grinned. “Owen’s good.”

“What happened to mostly fire, Milo?” Earl asked.

Milo peeked his head around the corner of the next room. “That was way more explodey than I expected. What brand laundry soap was that? Oh…wait a second…I was thinking of something else. Never mind.”

The smoke cleared out quickly because there was a strong breeze. And when we could see again, the source of the breeze was fairly obvious. The pocket dimension, if that was what it had been, was gone. Room 1613 was back, but it was toast. The Cooper-Lee-Anderson insta-bomb had removed the windows, most of the back wall, and the balcony from 1613. The lights of the strip were bright through the gaping hole in the side of the hotel. The walls were shredded and blackened, the ceiling hung in tattered strips. The furniture was mangled.

Ten Hunters in various states of dress and preparedness swept into the room and secured it. There were no signs of the monsters, of the river or the forest, and especially no sign of Hugo. I walked to the edge of the remodeled outer wall and looked down. The balcony had landed in the pool. It was a good thing nobody had been swimming this early in the morning. There were a lot of flashing lights in the parking lot below as police cars and fire trucks arrived.