Renegade (Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence) (12 page)

She walked around the bed and opened a drawer on the bedside table. There was a tiny gasp and a clatter as she swept the dildo and book into the drawer before slamming it shut. She was actually blushing as she turned around. In her hand was a manilla folder.

“Over here,” she said, walking to a desk.

She snapped on a desk lamp and opened the folder. Inside was a thick sheaf of documents. The uppermost was a full-face picture of the vamp I'd tortured.

“This is Abraham Bollen,” she said. “He does not owe allegiance to me. Neither do these three.”

She spread out three more pictures.

“Their bodies were found a few miles from here earlier. Apparently your werewolf put up quite a fight when they took her.”

“
Marie,” I said. “Her name is Marie.”

“
Sorry,” she said, topping the previous insincerity by at least an order of magnitude.

“
So who do these vamps work for?”

“
These, and these four,” she said, spreading out more pictures, “work for this man.”

“
Vampire,” I corrected as she pulled out another picture.

“
Vampire, then,” she said.

The picture was of a vampire who had been middle aged when he was turned, a sharp face with intelligent eyes and a thin mouth.

“This is Tony Pollard—not the name he was born with, I assure you—who owes allegiance to one Huang Jin-Wa.”

She put another picture down on the desk. It was of a man who, but for his business suit, looked like a samurai warrior.

“Huang is over two thousand years old and has survived so long by not taking chances. There's no way he's behind this. Whatever was done was done without his knowledge. He would never risk going up against you. Never.”

“
So who? And why?”

C
HAPTER

27

I struggled back to the light. Something was forcing me upwards. It was Jack. Jack's voice. Some lecture about... about being captured.

I tried to focus my thoughts, fighting with the fog.

“
Escape,” said a fragment of Jack inside my head.

I concentrated.

"Escape is easiest." he said.

I fought the drugs, clinging to the memory like it would save my life.

“Escape is easiest just after capture,” said my memory of Jack. “The longer you are in enemy hands, the more you are passed along the chain, the better prepared they are to hold you.”

I couldn't remember why we'd been given Jack's lecture on escape and evasion, but I could see what he'd been saying was true. Originally I'd been in the back of a van secured with easily broken ties. Now I was in a cage. Presumably, when we got where we were going, I'd be locked up in a cell.

So I had until the end of this journey before escape became more difficult than it was right now.

I slowly started taking deep breaths, trying to remain as quiet as possible. I was concentrating on my nose and ears. My nose was telling me that I was in a truck with three vamps and a human. My ears were telling me that only the human was awake. He was paging through a newspaper. I cautiously opened my eyes, fighting against the weariness that seemed to weigh me down.

Whatever had been in those darts was wearing off fairly quickly but I still felt woozy.

To my left was two pairs of legs. The vamp with the older voice who had been there the first time I awoke was near my feet. The second pair of legs was a female vampire's. To my right was a pair of legs it took me a moment to identify. They belonged to the vamp whose leg I'd broken. He must have gotten some blood from somewhere.

It took me a further few minutes to figure out where the fourth pair of legs was. The human was sitting on the bench to my right, with his feet up on the cage.

All the thinking was helping to clear my head. I started to tense and release muscles. My legs, my arms, my shoulders, my back, working around my body, trying to get blood pumping, trying to clear the drugs out of my system as fast as possible. I had no way to know if it was working, but it made me feel better to at least try.

C
HAPTER

28

Lucia was pacing around the room, deep in thought.

"This could be a plot to discredit me," she said finally. "That this could happen—that the Pagan could be baited in this way—in my territory without my knowledge makes me look weak."

"Yes, let's concentrate on what this means for you, shall we?" I said, with sarcasm that could have cut concrete.

"If we know the why, we know the whom, Jack," she said patiently. "It wasn't Huang, we know that for sure."

"No, we don't. You think that, you don't know."

"Yes, I do. Huang's here, right now, in the ballroom downstairs. When he saw Bollen was involved he was livid with rage. One of his minions had betrayed him by moving against another Lord without his permission. That is a killing transgression. One or the other of them has to die."

"You told him that I killed this Bollen character?"

"I had no choice. Bollen was his. Your performance made a lot of my people nervous, Jack."

"That was the point," I replied, staring at the wall and thinking.

"Many of my people already believe you are the Devil incarnate. As humans tell ghost stories to scare each other, we tell tales of the Pagan. You can kill vampires with your bare hands and suck out our souls with a single glance."

She shook her head and smiled faintly.

"Huang even asked me when he got here if it was true you'd eaten the Heart of Dracula."

"Is he still here? I need to speak with him."

"Jack, Huang's not... your usual kind of vampire. He's very old, and very powerful. He has an odd sense of honor. He may help you just because it was Bollen, or he may consider the debt settled and refuse to even talk to you."

"Try," I said in a voice that brooked no argument.

"As you wish," she said, beating her own record for insincerity.

As she spoke on the telephone I unscrewed the suppressor from my MP7 and holstered the weapon. I kept the SIG out, though.

"He's coming up," said Lucia, replacing the handset on the cradle.

I looked her up and down. The robe didn't even cover the bottom of her shorts and the dress was still lying on the floor by the bed.

"You want to put more clothes on?" I asked pointedly.

"Jack, you're not worried he'll think we've been making love up here, are you?"

"What worries me is that's what you seem to want him to think," I replied.

"No, Jack," she said with a sigh, looking so genuinely glum that she actually looked human for a moment. "That's what I wish had happened."

I felt my face harden.

"But don't worry," she went on. "He'd be able to smell sex, so he won't think for a second that anything untoward has been happening."

C
HAPTER

29

I was feeling better and better by the second but, eventually, my time ran out.

The human folded his paper and sat up. I could hear the thump as his feet hit the floor of the truck. I immediately stopped moving and closed my eyes. I could still hear him lean down.

"What are you doing, human?"

"I think the drugs are wearing off, Master."

"Then administer another dose. We're close now, but it wouldn't do to have her wake before we arrive."

"Yes, Master."

I react without thinking. I rise to my forepaws and knees, willing my body to move. My knees hit my chest as I place my paws on the floor and I stand up, straining with every muscle against the roof of the cage.

Someone yells. I take no notice.

The cage groans and cracks open in a shower of wood and metal and I roar my triumph. The human dies, his blood warm on my hands. The female vampire brings up the dart gun and I break her neck. The young male vamp sits there, blinking stupidly. I grab him by the chest and slam him into the wall. The older male vamp is scrabbling for the gun. I wrap a paw around his neck and, using every ounce of strength in my body, hurl him against the rolltop doors. The doors break and the vamp tumbles out, slamming into a car that had been following the truck. The car veers off of the road and disappears with a crash and tinkle of broken glass.

Brakes slam on, sending me tumbling towards the front of the truck. I struggle upright and leap for the gaping doorway, digging my claws in and flipping myself onto the roof. As the truck stops a door opens. I drop onto the roof of the cab and grab the human by the back of his jacket. The door on the other side opens and another human steps out, so I hit him with the only thing I have close at paw—the other human. The two collapse in a heap.

I leap down to the ground, my blood pounding, my head clear.

The older vamp is running towards me, lips drawn back from his teeth. He leaps into the air, his hands extended like claws.

I have the real thing. I step into his strike, sinking the claws on my left paw into his face, grinding them into the bone beneath. My right punches through his chest and I simply tear his head from his body.

The truck had stopped by a farm, a field of crops, on the other side, a dense group of trees. I drop the vampire's remains as I hear a groan from the back of the truck. I leap over the fence and start running.

C
HAPTER

30

There was a knock at the door and Lucia called for whoever it was to enter.

"His Excellency Lord Huang," said the guard who opened the door.

The vampire who walked in the room was wearing a severely tailored dark suit and had long hair pulled into a braid that ran down his back. He stopped, his oriental features briefly registering mild surprise.

Once the guard had left us alone he bowed formally.

"You are the one called The Pagan, are you not?" he asked.

"I am," I replied.

"It was not such a leap," he replied, smiling slightly. "There are few humans who could be in here with ease, fewer still that would be welcomed by Lady Lucia so calmly."

Huang had a faint Japanese accent and a rigidly formal mode of speech.

"I must apologize for the actions of my servant," he went on. "and had you not already disposed of the problem I would gladly have offered you his head. Let me assure you that I had nothing to do with this ... outrage."

"I only disposed of part of the problem," I said. "I still have others to kill."

"Indeed, they must be punished. And they will be punished. Your mate should not have been taken if the target was you. It is dishonorable. The act of cowards."

Huang had spat the last word like it was the worst insult in the world. I wondered if he knew that Marie was a werewolf. Snatching me would have been less risky. Still, I found myself actually appreciating the sentiment for a second or two before reality asserted itself. Huang was doing the vampire's favorite trick: mouthing all the correct words and wringing his hands. It was the work of a rogue minority. It wasn't our fault. We will provide whatever assistance we can to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.