Episode 28
Zeal
After their unsuccessful meeting with Lisa and the discovery that Blak was back in Minneapolis, the hunters realized they still had a lot of work to do. First of all, they asked Lisa and her friends to come to the apartment building to have another serious chat about what they were doing – and not to bring Blak with them. While Randy worked on the hunter bible and Charlotte continued trying to track down Witness1, Melba talked to Chet and Saria and told them what had happened the night before. They were just as concerned as the hunters about Blak's return, and gladly agreed to talk to him while the hunters were dealing with Lisa (and to take the other three guardians along with them in case he tried anything). While Melba set up these meetings, a little more research on Charlotte's part revealed that the only Grouse Mountain Lodge in the United States was located in Whitefish, Montana. When she started looking into apartment buildings in the area, she found one building with a tenant who had legally changed his name five times in the past year, and knew that she'd finally found Witness1. Charlotte showed the data to Melba, and they immediately began making plans to visit Montana during the U of M's spring break, which was in fact the next week.
That night, Melba talked Bergs into taking care of the guardian babies while she, Charlotte, Paladin, and Randy met with Lisa. (This led to a slight problem later on when her second sight spontaneously came on in the nursery and revealed the babies for what they were, scaring Bergs pretty severely until Melba explained the situation to her and managed to calm her down somewhat.) When Lisa showed up, the hunters did their best to explain to Lisa that Blak was not a good person and that she would only get herself into trouble by working with him. But unfortunately, the only person who made any progress with her was Charlotte, when she attempted to appeal to her sensibilities as a Judge – and even then she found a way to justify her actions. Finally, the hunters essentially told Lisa to do what she wanted, but that they'd have her eye on her for as long as she continued to work with Blak.
After the meeting, Charlotte went downstairs to the nursery to begin her shift of baby-watching. But she'd only been in the nursery for a few minutes when she heard a knock on the door and saw someone slide a note underneath the door. The note read, "Hunting season, U of M. Mom says hurry." It was signed "Twitcher," though he had first written the letters "ger" and then crossed them out (which seemed strangely familiar to Randy). Concerned, Charlotte rounded up Arie, Melba, Paladin, and Randy and told them it would probably be a good idea to go find Twitcher. The hunters hired a couple of teenage girls to watch the babies on short notice, then rushed off to the U of M to see what kind of mess Twitcher had gotten himself into this time.
The hunters found Twitcher in the same alleyway where they'd fought the werewolf about a month earlier – only this time, the only thing in the alley with Twitcher was a dismembered human corpse. Twitcher explained quite calmly to the sickened hunters that Charles had done this, and that he was going to kill many more people tonight for some sort of werewolf ritual unless the hunters did something to stop him. He told the hunters that Charles had vanished and was traveling in a different world right now, and that they had to catch him at his house in Eden Prairie because he'd have to come out there. The hunters realized they were way in over their heads this time (no one in their right mind would take on a nest of werewolves with four hunters and Twitcher, even if they did have all of Arie's guns and explosives with them!), but had no choice but to follow Twitcher's directions and do their best to stop Charles and his family. On the way, Randy used his cell phone to get in contact with as many of the other hunters as he could, but he couldn't reach a lot of them and the guardians were still off talking to Blak. Still, it seemed they'd have at least a little bit of backup going in.
At Charles' house, Twitcher motioned for the hunters to follow him in the front door. Arie, Charlotte, Melba, and Paladin followed, and Randy waited by the car to flag down the other hunters as they arrived and tell them where to go. The house was dark and quiet, and Twitcher led them into the basement. The hunters walked for a long way through a huge network of subterranean tunnels, hearing strange noises and howls down distant corridors and getting more and more frightened. Outside, other hunters began showing up (and the guardians even made it, though a few of them appeared injured), and Randy directed them into the house and brought up the rear. Finally, Twitcher and the others arrived outside a large chamber, where they could see a number of werewolves with glowing green eyes, including one who looked like the mother Melba and Randy had met at dinner. Charles, in his wolf-man form, appeared out of thin air before her and handed her a bloody human heart. She growled appreciatively and put it in the drawer of a desk in the room. Then Charles vanished again.
Suddenly, Twitcher said very loudly, "Ah, nuts!" Every werewolf in the room suddenly turned their eyes toward Twitcher and the hunters. He yelped and started retreating down the corridor, and everyone followed him – except Arie. He lobbed a few of his "sticky grenades" into the chamber, then retreated, prompted both by the explosion that resulted and the shouts of his friends. On the way out, the hunters ran into their backup and shouted for them to get out – not a hard task, considering that the howls were getting closer. Arie looked over his shoulder and, seeing three werewolves approaching, stopped again and stood his ground. He managed to stick a grenade to the biggest one, but it vanished and took a significant chunk out of him on its way out. Hearing the sounds of battle inside, Charlotte, Chet, Melba, Paladin, Randy, and Saria acted against all common sense and turned back to save Arie – as did Twitcher.
In the tunnels, things were looking bleak for Arie, who was now almost too wounded to fight back against the remaining two werewolves. Just then, Melba and Paladin showed up and bought a little more time with Ward, which pushed back one of the werewolves but did nothing against the other. The hunters thought their arsenal was completely exhausted – until, quite suddenly, Twitcher raised his arms. Streams of fire poured out of Charlotte, Chet, Melba, Paladin, and Randy (apparently representing their inner Zeal) to join the enormous wall of fire which flared up and scorched both of the remaining werewolves. In the gloom beyond the burning wall, the hunters could see the glowing green eyes of werewolves and hear their howls approaching. Twitcher's shirt burned away, revealing tattoos of the Avenger, Defender, and Judge symbols all over his upper body. He reached for the back of his neck, and one large Avenger symbol that was tattooed there suddenly became a flaming sword he could hold in his hand. With his other hand, he motioned for the hunters to get out while they still could, and they gladly obliged. (Arie tried to stay behind, but his wounds made it easy for Chet to hold him back, pick him up, and carry him outside.) On their way out, the only person who stood in their way was a butler, who was easily frightened off when Arie began telling him just how many explosives he was carrying at that moment.
Once outside the house, though, the battle wasn't quite over. Charles suddenly appeared before the hunters, still in wolf-man form, with a sickening black goo dripping from his body, and attacked them. In full view of the rest of the group, the guardians transformed and the hunters prepared for yet another fight. In the combat that followed, both Charlotte and Saria were badly wounded, but Chet managed to finish Charles off with a lot of help from the others. The group was thinking about going back in after Twitcher when, quite unexpectedly, the house exploded. Remembering the SWAT team's quick response to explosions two weeks earlier, the hunters ran to their cars and took off for the apartment building as quickly as they could.
Their escape was interrupted, however, by the sudden appearance of the deformed werewolf Melba and Randy had met at dinner. He was holding Twitcher's limp body in his arms. The hunters stopped and rushed over to him. He set Twitcher down gently, then shrugged and said, "Sorry," and ran off, never to be seen again. The hunters checked on Twitcher to discover that he was inches from death. Melba prepared to heal him, but he stopped her, saying, "I have to go home now...I have to see my mother and my sister." He smiled weakly at Charlotte and said, "Tell Kurt he doesn't have to worry anymore." Then he handed her a computer disk and said, "Here. He'll need this." Twitcher then motioned for Arie, Charlotte, Melba, and Randy to get closer to him and put their hands on him. They did, and suddenly felt a rush of fire coursing through their bodies. When they could take their hands away, each one of them felt greater zeal for the cause of the hunt – but Twitcher was dead. (That was when Randy realized where he'd seen the letters "ger" before – he was thinking of Geraal, the Hebedite god of Zeal who had created the guardians. Could that have been Twitcher? It certainly seemed possible.)
Both invigorated and demoralized, the hunters put Twitcher's body in the back of Arie's Explorer and headed back to the apartment building, where other hunters were able to heal their physical wounds at the very least. It had been a confusing night, but they now knew one thing for certain: They were going to have to explain the existence and the legend of the guardians to the rest of the hunters, and do it soon.