Renegade (Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence) (21 page)

It was nearing midday. For vampires it was the lowest ebb and the house was correspondingly quiet. The perfect time for us to be skulking around.

We had gathered in our rooms and, after sweeping the place again for bugs and listeners, planned our attack.

“The 'ouse guard is tiny,” said Loki with a snort. “Nine guards total, includin'—quote—one fat bastard who never leaves the office 'cept t' piss 'n' smoke—unquote.”

“
Could just be really dedicated to watching the security cameras,” said Anna. “And if he's quick to phone the police it could mean trouble for us.”

“
Naah,” said Loki. “Accordin' t' the guards I spoke to the only thing he's dedicated to in there is watchin' porno.”

“
Weapons?” I asked.

“
They carry pistols. Glocks. There's an armory in the office, a small number of AR-15s an' plenty of ammunition. Nothin' terribly impressive.”

“
Patrols?”

“
Two guards on the gate, rotated every twelve 'ours. Two guards patrollin' the grounds, also rotated every twelve 'ours. Four guards on downtime but on call, and the fat guy in the security office. 'E usually manages eight or so 'ours a night before 'e slopes off to the livin' quarters. 'Bout the only one who could be a problem is the guy name of Carl. 'E's an ex college linebacker, built like a bull with brains to match. Only bin here for a few months and 'e's still takin' it seriously. Patrols regular-like and careful to boot. Other than 'im the others are skivin' as much as 'umanly possible.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Steph gave voice to my concerns.

“It doesn't add up,” she said. “The kidnapping took serious muscle and a lot of organization. It doesn't fit with this setup. The guy's a businessman who is either legit or is playing real hard at faking it.”

“
That's true,” I replied. “This lot look like they couldn't manage a piss-up in a brewery either way. So what's going on?”

“
Someone else involved, you think?” asked Anna. “Someone helping them out?”

“
Possibly. Or someone else did it entirely. Possibly
mine host
is nothing more than a patsy. Much as I'm itching to shoot the place up I think the softly-softly approach might work better.”

“
Saints preserve us,” muttered Anna.

“
But just in case the brown smelly stuff hits the fan,” I went on, ignoring the jibe. “We need an exit strategy.”

“
Kill everyone and leave,” said Cam, not a hint of a smile on his lupine features. “Set fire to the place on the way out.”

“
We have to see about getting you transferred to another team,” said John. “You're picking up some bad habits being on this one.”

“
Still, not a bad plan,” I said. “I want the cars warmed up.”

“
Sure thing, boss,” said John. “And on that note I think you might find this interesting.”

He picked up a big plastic case and sat it on a table.

“I was checking the boot of the patrol cars we borrowed from our friends at KnightStar,” he explained. “Despite the signs on the cars that say 'armed officers' there isn't much in the way of firepower about those vehicles. In each boot were a couple of shotguns and a couple of MP5s with two spare mags each. KnightStar Security officers carry sidearms, Actually, they carry these.”

He pulled a pistol out of his pocket. It looked like a cut-down version of a Colt M1911. It had a shorter barrel and a slightly thicker grip which hinted at a double-stack magazine. It was gleaming silver—probably nickel-plated—with black rubber grips.

“Nice,” I said.

“
KnightStar Armaments makes these, sells them on the civilian market. In the boot there was also this case.”

He opened the case and threw the lid back. In the foam-lined interior were a half-dozen weapons which looked like bulky, oversized pistols.

“These,” he said, pulling one of the weapons out of the case, “are electrolasers. KnightStar Armaments KSM-12s to be precise. It works like a stun-gun but instead of using wires attached to prongs to deliver the charge it uses a laser. The laser creates a path of ionized gas and the electrical discharge follows the gas. You get a loud crack like a tiny sonic boom and your target goes down for a while.”

He tilted the gun over and indicated the bulge on top. He pushed a switch with his thumb and slid the entire rear of the weapon off.

“This is the battery for the laser,” he said. “Fully charged it's good for fifty shots. When you're down to less than ten shots a little LED flashes orange each time you pull the trigger.”

He snapped the battery back on the top. He tilted the weapon upright and repeated the procedure with a bulge under the front of the weapon.

“And this is the battery for the stun-gun itself. Here's the bad news, it only holds enough for eight shots. The good news is that they had somebody with a brain design this. In the handle is a backup battery. Even with both batteries dead or removed you flip this switch and you get two more shots. Smart people at KnightStar.”

“
So, any use in our current predicament?”

“
No, not a lot,” he said with a shrug. “But seeing as we're not supposed to be here I thought it might not be a bad idea to minimize the deaths we cause.”

“
I suppose so,” I said without enthusiasm. “Well, hand them out anyway, they might be useful. Steph, Loki, Jason, I want you on the front door. Just loiter for a while, see if you can pin down where the guards are. If it comes down to fighting I'll want to know where they are.

“
Bolt, you go with John and Anna. I want all three cars running. We can pile in two if necessary but I want to be prepared.”

“
Yes, boss,” said Bolt.

“
And where will we be, boss?” said Cam.

“
You and I will go pay a little visit to Mr. DeClerc. See what he has to say for himself.”

Cam and I checked our weapons before we left, his big ARWEN 37 looking like a slightly large revolver in his fist.

“Tell me you're carrying rubber bullets in that thing, Cam,” I asked.

“
Yeah, 'course, boss,” he replied. “Got some tear gas rounds too.”

“
Yeah, okay, let's go.”

The mansion was quiet and almost deserted. We moved as quietly as we could towards the vampires' quarters. One of the guards had naively provided the location in response to Bolt's innocently-worded questions. DeClerc occupied four rooms near the middle of the mansion. At this time of the day he would, according to the security guard, be in his office. DeClerc liked to maintain the image of the driven, successful businessman, working long into the 'night' and sleeping little. Hell, maybe I was being unfair. Maybe he did work hard for long hours. And maybe he was going to give up sucking necks and start a course of monthly hemoglobin injections instead.

We found his offices in short order and met the final obstacle in our way, the last guardian of DeClerc's inner sanctum.

His secretary.

She was a pretty blonde vampire with large breasts, a narrow waist, wide hips, and a little pug nose. I realized that this had been the woman by the pool from earlier. If she had reached her twentieth birthday before she was turned I would be surprised.

“
Hello?” she said with the kind of cutesy lilt which makes every sentence a question and the listener feel like they'd willingly punch a baby if it would shut her up. “Is Mr. DeClerc expecting you?”

“
No,” I replied, “but we were hoping he might give us a moment of his time.”

“
I'll see what I can do?” she lilted, making me seriously consider kicking a few puppies too.

She slipped out from behind the desk and undulated towards the door. I had no idea how she was able to get so many different parts of her body moving in so many different directions at once but I did think it would take about five minutes for everything to come to rest if she stopped suddenly.

She disappeared inside a door. Cam, who had been watching the swishing, sashaying walk very closely, muttered something about showing her what
he
could do. I allowed myself a brief smile, keeping my eyes on the door. Interesting. Even though the secretary's voice seemed fully capable of etching glass at fifty paces, not a single sound could be heard from within the office. DeClerc's office was soundproofed. I liked that. It would give me extra options once inside. Soundproofing wouldn't completely eliminate the sound of a gun but it would effectively muffle any screams I had to extract.

The secretary swished back through the door, a smile as fake as her boobs popping onto her lips.

“Mr DeClerc has a gap in his schedule right now?” she grated. “You can go in now?”

“
You
may
go in now,” Cam muttered.

“
I'm sorry?” she asked vacantly.

“
Nothing, thank you.” I said as we stepped into the vampire's office.

It had to be acknowledged, DeClerc's office was impressive. Deep carpeting muffled the floor. A desk, large, but not ostentatiously huge, sat unobtrusively, just back from the center of the room. Brass shaded lamps illuminated the corners of the room and one wall was dominated by a big flat screen TV which was showing some business channel, sound muted, with share prices ticking along the bottom. Two other walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes and various ornaments and knickknacks, a golf ball here, a signed print there. On one shelf a wooden rack held a collection of cigars, the glass tubes sealed with artfully dripped wax. On a small side-table off to one side stood a fax machine, on the desk, a laptop, both slim and expensive looking.

And behind the desk sat the vampire himself.

“
How can I help you gentlemen?” said DeClerc with an unctuous smile.

I heard the door click shut behind us.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“
I'm sorry, where is who?” DeClerc asked, taken aback.

My patience, never too sturdy to begin with, snapped at that point. I ripped my SIG from its holster.

“The female werewolf,” I said. “Where is she?”

“
Really subtle, Jack,” said Cam with a fierce grin.

He reached over the desk and grabbed DeClec by the front of his shirt, lifting him clean off of the floor.

“Female werewolf,” he snarled into the terrified vamp's face.

Cam pulled the vamp over the desk and tossed him towards a chair, which splintered under the impact and spilled him to the floor.

“She was kidnapped from England yesterday by an associate of yours named Abraham Bollen,” I said, keeping my pistol trained on him. “She was brought over the Atlantic on a KnightStar flight and loaded onto a truck bound for right here. So, where is she?”

“
I have no idea what you're talking about!” DeClerc shrieked.

I squatted down next to the vamp's head and put my pistol against his chest, directly over the heart.

“Now, I'm not gonna lie to you about there being an easy way and a hard way,” I said gently. “There's only one way this goes and that's you telling me what you know about this vampire Abraham Bollen. I know you don't have the pull to make something like that happen, and I know you don't have the motive either.”

“
Motive?” said DeClerc desperately.

“
She is an MPRD Vampire Hunter and I just don't see what you'd get out of kidnapping her. There's no motive.”

“
Right!” he babbled. “Right, right! No motive!”

“
So who does Bollen—did Bollen—work for? He hired out to whoever wanted him. You were just his latest stop.”

“
Whomever,” said Cam.

“
Whatever,” I replied. “So who was Bollen working for?
Who snatched the werewolf
?”

“
Tunbridge! Bollen worked for Tunbridge!”

“
Who is this Tunbridge?”

“
He is the leader of the Redtooths around here,” he said. “Wait, the Redtooths musta ordered it. Ah've got nuthin' t' do with them!”

“
Who are the Redtooths?” I demanded.

“
They're a po-
lit
-ical group,” he sneered. “Small but powerful. They want a war with humanity. They want us t' go back t' openly hunting humans. It's from the old 'red in tooth and claw' saying. They say cooperation makes us weak and want a return to the old ways.”

Oh great, a vampire return-to-the-soil movement. We'd suspected as much but now it was confirmed. Sure, we had similar goals. I'd like to see all-out war with the vamps, too. Just not in the way they wanted. Something else occurred to me. Lucia was always banging on about these 'conservatives' who opposed any changes made in the vampire lifestyle and her in particular. Part of me wondered whether this Redtooth organization was part of that same group, and whether this was no coincidence. I remembered Lucia saying that Marie's kidnapping might have been aimed at discrediting her. I didn't believe it at the time but it was starting to make a certain twisted sense if you took the view that the world revolved around Lucia.

“So she would be in the hands of this Redtooth group?” Cam rumbled.

“
Yes—no!” the vamp's eyes went wide and he gasped. “She escaped! It couldn't be anything else. Had to be her.
Had
to be!”

“
Had to be what?” I asked.

“
Yesterday,” he said. “There was a—they said it was an accident but it wasn't. A truck, out on the Interstate. Vampires killed, humans injured, one vampire was literally torn to pieces.”

“
Sounds like Marie,” said Cam.

“
Please,” said the vampire, indicating the gun still pressed against his chest. “
Ah
can show you where it happened.”

I gave it a moment's thought, then backed off and gestured with my pistol for the vamp to get up.

“Thank you,” said DeClerc as he got to his feet. “But understand that
ah
do this purely because
Ah
hate the Redtooths. They're tryin' t' stir up trouble and
Ah
, for one, enjoy
mah
comforts.”

He glanced across at the shattered remains of the chair.

“Alas,” said Declerc, “that chair was over two hundred years old, a gift from Governor Sevier.”

“
Shame,” I said with no conviction whatsoever.

“
Well, no matter,” he said, walking to his desk. He turned the laptop around and brought up a window. After a few moments searching he found what he was looking for.

“
I-75, just before the Prescott County line heading south,” he read. “Dead vampires, humans unconscious.
Mah
sources tell me there has been a hunt involving Redtooth agents an' assets, so far unsuccessful. If you'll pardon the advice, you might want to start with the Prescott County Sheriff’s Department. Those Redtooth imbeciles lost your friend right next door to their jurisdiction. Prescott County is one of the biggest werewolf communities in the country and the Sheriff's Department is literally run by them.
Mah
kind tends to keep away from that part of the state.”

He tapped a few keys and brought up an email.

“This was sent this morning,” he said. “It's a request to be on the lookout for a female werewolf. There's a picture. Two, actually.”

The pictures he brought up were grainy, low-res, but both were clearly Marie. Human and wolf form.

“It says she's a fugitive from justice, escaped from pre-trial detention in Georgia.” I read. “Says she killed a police officer and a prison guard in the process of her escape. Says it's from the Tennessee State Police.

“
Now
ah'm
no lawyer,” said the vamp, “but interstate fugitives are federal jurisdiction if
ah
recall. Th' State po-
lice
would be involved but the US Marshall's Service would be taking the lead on that. Silly mistake,
ah
feel.”

I didn't give a flying fuck about the vamp's stupidity. I was having difficulty keeping myself calm and still. I wanted to leap around the room whooping for joy. Marie had escaped from her captors and, apparently, spread a few of them around the landscape in the process. That's my girl.

Now I had to find her. Starting with this Prescott County Sheriff’s Department.

Actually, no. I'd have Loki check in with the British Embassy. Surely she would have immediately contacted them? She wasn't the one here illegally, after all. She was a kidnapping victim.

Before I could finish the thought the door opened in a manner which could best be described as impolite. A threesome of armed vampires charged in. And that was where they made their mistake.

When people rush into a room they need a second to identify targets, to absorb the layout of the room, the positions of the occupants. People inside the room, however, know exactly where the threat is coming from and can react a heartbeat faster. It's why the Regiment developed flash-bangs—stun grenades—designed to throw the occupants of a room off balance for long enough to effect a safe entry.

The vamps who rushed into the room didn't use a stun grenade. They simply rushed in. And rushing into a room containing armed people is a tactic used by quite a few corpses in the history of the world.

The first had barely cleared the threshold when Cam's Arwen came up and he pulled the trigger. A rubber bullet sounds reasonably harmless but catching one in the top lip from less than five feet away is not the way I'd like to start my day. The figure did a backward flip and crashed to the floor, his face a bloody ruin. The second took two rounds in the chest from my SIG, the third got both. A rubber bullet in the throat and a double-tap in the chest. That will put a serious crimp on your day. I took a moment to pump a couple of rounds into the vamp with the rearranged smile, just to make sure he stayed down.

DeClerc was staring at the three dead vamps with his mouth hanging open.

The three bodies weren't dressed in DeClerc's blue uniform. They were wearing ordinary street clothes. Each had an M4 carbine and Glock pistols. I had no idea who they were until DeClerc pointed a trembling finger.

“Those are Redtooth soldiers,” he exclaimed. “Ah'm sure of it!”

Good luck proving it, I thought. These guys looked like they weren't carrying anything that could identify them. Not that it mattered. I was burning to leave and get on Marie's trail.

“You better find yourself an escape route,” I said to DeClerc as I bent to pick up one of the fallen assault rifles.

“
Why would
ah
need that?” DeClerc gasped.

“
Because I doubt these three came alone,” I replied. “And we're leaving.”

I finished searching the bodies. Six spare mags for the M4, loaded with silver-tipped rounds. That sealed the deal. The assassins had come loaded for vampires. They had intended to kill DeClerc. I would prefer to have my trusty FAL with me but needs must.

“Cam, get to the cars and make sure everyone made it,” I said. “Ditch those rubber bullets. Load up something with a bit more bang.”

“
And where will you be?” Cam asked.

“
Covering your escape, big boy.”

“
Who are you people?” DeClerc screeched, his eyes showing the whites all round his dark irises.

For a second I was tempted to tell him.

“Just some guys who happened to be passing,” I replied.

Besides, saying something like 'I'm your worst nightmare' would not only have been tacky and clich
é, but I didn't have a cigar to take out of my mouth or a pair of sunglasses to put on to dramatically punctuate such a line. And that would have been a waste of a good comment. So I walked away.

Outside of the office there was the sudden chatter of automatic gunfire. Someone was attacking the mansion openly. Probably more of those Redtooth fanatics. There was no sign of DeClerc's annoying secretary. There was, however, one of DeClerc's few guards, laying on the floor, his blue uniform darkened with blood.

Cam and I cautiously made our way through the hallways, sweeping the area with our guns, the silence broken only by the occasional bursts of gunfire.

Cam stepped through a large arched doorway into the building's foyer and stopped abruptly. I pulled up short, eyes darting around to see what he had spotted. Cam suddenly dived to one side, bringing his launcher up and firing at a target I couldn't see. At the same instant shots rang out. I dropped to one side of the doorway and returned fire. Cam's shot had hit the wall and buried itself in the plaster. It was burning with a fierce white light, tinged with blue. I had no idea how Cam had gotten hold of them but I knew UV flares when I saw them. There were three vampires crouching behind the scant cover of an antique couch, shying away from the light. As one popped up to fire I nailed him with a long burst, right through the back of the couch.

Cam fired again, this round going deep into the couch and igniting in a shower of sparks. As the two vamps jumped away from the burning wreckage I cut one of them down. As I drew a bead on the second I suddenly registered the M203 under his M4. I sprang backwards and rolled as I hit the floor. I heard the chug of the grenade launcher as I tumbled to one knee and brought my assault rifle up and fired. My shots hit the vamp and his grenade hit the side of the doorway at the same time. The doorway shattered under the impact and explosion, sending cracks up the wall. I stood helpless as the whole archway and a large part of the wall came down, blocking my exit with rubble and filling the corridor with billowing clouds of dust.

“
Aw, fucking Jerry-built  bullshit fucking building!” I yelled.

“
You okay boss?” Came cam's voice.

I coughed some dust out of my lungs before replying.

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“
I think I can dig you out.”

“
No, get outside. I'll find another way out and meet you at the first rendezvous point.”

“
Okay boss. Getting out now.”

I quickly reloaded my misappropriated M4 and staggered away from the rubble, shaking my head in an attempt to clear the
ringing out of my ears. Fuzzy recollection penetrated the fog. The building had three—no, four—other exits. The kitchen, one door on either side, and a door in the servants' quarters which let out into the stable. I decided on the last. To reach it I had to go up the main stairs, through the house proper, and then down the back stairs through the servants' quarters. Moving cautiously and covering myself with every step, I made it to the top of the stairs. There was a brief burst of gunfire from outside and the sound of vehicles starting up and accelerating away. My team making their escape. Or so I hoped.

Up on the landing there was another dead guard. His weapon was still clutched in one hand. The cause of death was obvious. Two bloody wounds in the middle of his chest. A cursory search of the dead guard's pockets revealed the reason why. The house guards were armed with standard lead-core, copper-jacketed, 5.56mm NATO ball rounds. Obviously someone had made the decision that the guards weren't going to be armed with anything with which they might harm their vampiric employers. A paranoid move which might seem understandable under any other circumstances. Or maybe it was budgetary. Silver tipped rounds cost more than standard.

I put the magazine back in the guard's pocket and slowly crept down the hallway, tracking the assault rifle left and right, covering each doorway as I passed. The scent of smoke was drifting down the hallway. Seems like Cam's little accident hadn't been extinguished. Either that or someone else had taken a leaf from the Pagan Book of Tactics and set fire to the place all on their own. Not so much fun when you're on the receiving end, I suppose.