“Are you kidding? When an orc fixes something, it stays fixed. They’re like wizards with duct tape. Magical duct tape wizards, right, Ed?” Milo reached over and thumped Edward on the shoulder. The orc tilted his goggled head, apparently confused by the red-bearded human touching him. After a moment, Ed went back to looking at the window and listening to the talk radio streaming on his earphones. “Well, Ed is more of a duct tape samurai, but you get the idea.”

All of our rivals were racing for the same place, but as far as I knew, we were the only Hunters with a helicopter. It was still almost three hundred miles to the site, and our pace wasn’t exactly set for fuel efficiency, so we needed to stop and refuel once along the way. MHI owned a decent-sized airplane, but it was parked uselessly in Alabama. We were also the only company with Hunters stationed in Salt Lake City, which was the closest metro area, but unfortunately all of them had been attending ICMHP too.

Earl Harbinger had decided to cover all the bases, so he had paid a ridiculous sum to hire a Gulfstream on short notice. It is amazing how fast you can get flight plans altered when you carry a suitcase full of money everywhere you go. Interestingly enough, another prop plane had taken off on an emergency flight a few minutes before we’d gotten to the airport, hired by someone they had described as a businesslike German man.

The group on the Gulfstream would beat us there by a good margin, but we wouldn’t be too far behind. We had no idea how hard the creature was going to be to track, so the air cover could potentially come in handy. Behind us was a convoy of vehicles, MHI-owned for some, and rentals for our Hunters that had flown in. Obviously, most of us at the conference were travelling light, but Eddings, the Las Vegas team lead, had one hell of a well-stocked armory in their office that was hidden in the basement of a pizza place.

Nearly thirty members of MHI and an unknown number of our rivals were on their way to northeastern Nevada. “This many Hunters will be overkill.” I tried to lighten the mood. “It’s probably just a troll angry that he lost his internet connection.”

Holly wasn’t buying it. “That kind of PUFF money, Z, it’s more likely Godzilla.”

“Or Dracula riding Godzilla,” Trip said.