Renegade (Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence) (25 page)

“
Did a bang-up job, didn't ya cocksucker?” he sneered.

I said nothing, playing the broken man.

“We captured her and the rest of your stupid group.”

Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If they'd captured Anna then they'd had to have captured Bolt and Cam and Jason. And they would've had to kill John. And if they'd managed that lot they'd be a lot more dead than they currently looked to be. But I had to play along.

“Is she alright?” I pleaded in a small voice.

“
Oh yeah, she's just fine,” he said with an overdone leer. “She sucks cock like a thousand-dollar whore on overtime.”

See? Bullshit. Even with John and everyone else dead, the chances of walking away from raping Anna without getting your dick bitten in half were rather lower than no fucking chance. I surrounded myself with dangerous people for some very good reasons.

I let my head fall forward until my chin was touching my chest.

“
Just a bodyguard,” I whispered. “Nothing to do with me.”

“
Fuck!” said the punchy vamp, disgust in his voice. “I thought these KnightStar punks were supposed to be something special. This one is a fucking pussy.”

Yep, exactly. I'm a fucking pussy. Not worth bothering about.

The blow came out of nowhere, slamming into the side of my head, sending me clattering to the floor. There was nothing fake about my scream of pain as I landed on my broken arm, nor about the stars that flashed across my vision when my ribs hit the ground. A boot drew back then slammed into my gut, forcing the air out of my lungs in a startled whoof.

The boot went back again, this time aimed at my head, and I tensed, prepared to lose some teeth at least.

“Enough!”

This was a new voice.

“Pick him up and get out.”

I could see, blurry through the pain, a pair of shiny shoes and the bottom of a pair of sharply-pressed dark gray trousers. As the two goons hauled me none-too-gently to upright I could see that these items of clothing belonged to a young-looking vamp with slicked-back brown hair and a sharp nose.

After the muscle left the room he sat down in a chair in front of me.

“
Are you in pain?” he asked, concern on his face.

Ah, having been softened up by Punchy and Talky it was time for Nicey to have a crack at me. Still, I had to play along. I nodded, not saying a word.

“Well, allow me to apologize for the overzealous attitude of my companions,” he said. “My name is Michael Tunbridge. I'll see about getting you some medical attention.”

I couldn't place the accent, but it was soft and he sounded to be well educated.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “I need some.”

He sat back to look me over.

“So, you're with KnightStar?” he said finally.

I nodded.

“Good, we'll arrange to have you moved to a KnightStar facility. I'm sorry you were caught up in this tragic mess.”

I tried my best to look like I believed both the apology and the line about the transfer.

“It seems like you were just an innocent bystander.”

Again, I tried to look like I believed that
he
believed that and was pathetically grateful for his conclusion.

“
So, which office are you out of?”

Fuck. The name of our home office had been printed on the credentials we had been given. I had committed the details to memory but now my mind was a blank. I tried to buy some time by pretending I had misunderstood the question.

“I don't know the number but the main switchboard would be able to provide it.”

The vampire sat forward and smiled slowly. I was playing a game and he knew it. He was playing along and I knew it. I tried to clear the fog from my brain and remember the details. I had used an old mnemonic trick to remember the details but I couldn't for the life of me remember which one.

“That's good, but I wanted to know which office you were based out of. I can look up the number myself.”

He was trying to catch me in a lie. If I was a genuine KnightStar employee there is no way I'd forget my home office. I started from base principles. Office. I knew I had linked the word office with... pen... yeah, offices have pens. Pen led me to pentagon. The Pentagon. Probably the most famous military building in the world. And it was in Washington DC. My office is the office in DC.

I opened my mouth to give the answer when I had a random flashback. It was of Siren, our Hunter from Texas. I remembered her correcting me on this point. Contrary to popular belief the Pentagon isn't in DC. It may be part of the Federal government but it isn't in DC. It's across the river in Arlington, Virginia. That was what I had linked the mnemonic to.

“
Virginia,” I said. “I'm based out of the regional office in Arlington, Virginia.”

“
And who was the vampire who was with your group?”

“
Just a client.”

He sat there, looking at me in a way that was supposed to be friendly. I stuck with that and played along.

“We were assigned to her in Virginia. I didn't even know her name. She was just a client.”

The vampire's look remained friendly.

“As you say, just a client. Well, I'll call the Virginia office and make the arrangements to have you transferred to a hospital and then back to your office. I understand KnightStar has an excellent health benefits package.”

“
Thank you, I appreciate it.”

He stood up and looked thoughtful.,

“Or,” he said after a second. “You can stop lying and start telling me the truth.”

Ah, there it was. So interrogation went from physical to friendly and now he was trying psychology on me. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sounding desperate. “I have told you the truth.”

He sat back down.

“Jack Bertrand Henderson,” he said. “Second son of Bertrand and Margaret Henderson. After an undistinguished school career, during which time you not only failed to go to college but also failed to get any significant qualifications in your British GCSE system, you joined the Royal Marines. Served a tour in Iraq during the early days of the US led invasion and a tour in the Falkland Islands as part of the permanent garrison there. Then you dropped off of the radar for a while. Either you led a life so boring it didn't warrant mentioning on any official report or, and my sources say this is the more likely, you joined one of the United Kingdom Special Forces units and your record is officially redacted.”

I gave it one more shot but I knew when I was beaten.

“No, you're making a mistake,” I whined. “That's not me. Please.”

“
Then you returned to the land of the living. You resurfaced and took a position with the Ministry of Paranormal Research and Defence as a vampire hunter under the codename Pagan.

“
You are currently the leader when it comes to confirmed vampire kills. Eighty-six in a little over four and a half years, not including that incident in the city of Sheffield when you led a group of hunters against a large army of Indominati.

“
Currently in a relationship with a female werewolf by the name of Marie Hennessey who was kidnapped recently and brought to the USA. You, against the wishes of your government, set off on your own personal crusade to retrieve her. How very Hollywood of you.

“
The vampire who accompanied you is Anna Clarke. Turned three years ago by a vampire who was subsequently killed by her husband, John Clarke. He did us a favor there, incidentally. That particular vampire was a contemptible fool and the world is better off without him.

“
Also with you were Samir Hasaan, who goes under the name of Bolt, and a werewolf by the name of Cameron who recently joined your team after escaping from the service of Marcus Demios, one of the three vampires who used to rule the North of England. A vampire you, incidentally, killed in Sheffield.

“
Did I miss anything?”

The guy had some of the picture. Not all but enough to blow my story away. No point in playing the game now. Sure, he'd missed Jason, Steph and Loki but he knew enough. I stared at his shiny shoes as I tried to figure out how to handle this.

“Such a pity,” he said sadly. “I've always wanted to meet a genuine Huntsman. It's a shame that the first one is such a disappointment. I'd heard about you being full of fight and fire and defiance and blood. But now I know it was just stories. Just legends. You are ghost stories vampires tell to frighten the timid. Killing you is almost going to be merciful.”

“
Let me guess,” I said eventually. “You're going to kill me and dump my body in DeClerc's house for the police to find. A British soldier leads an unprovoked attack on an American vampire. Lots of sympathetic press, lots of pressure on the government to do something?”

“
And what makes you say that, Pagan?” he asked.

I raised my head and looked him in the eye. I was done playing the interrogation game. It was getting me nowhere. The guy knew me.

“Because that's the way you fuckers always do business. You have fingers in about every level of every government and yet you're the poor, persecuted, downtrodden masses.”

The vampire stared at me for a long time. I cursed myself for breaking character and ignoring my training. I shouldn't have said anything. I should have kept my head down and just let the guy rant. Fuck.

I hoped that my response had come from a place of resignation – the realization that there was no point in playing the game any longer – rather than a visceral reaction to the insults. Frankly I didn't give a shit what this vampire thought of me.

“
It works, doesn't it?” he said finally. “As the old saying goes 'No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public'.”

I remained silent.

“You want to know why I became a vampire?”

“
I really couldn't care less.” I said with a weary sigh.

“
I was a bottom of the pile, menial worker. I did everything I was told. I went to school, got good grades, went to college, got a degree and for what? A succession of crappy jobs working for crappy pay for crappy companies. By the time I was thirty I had been laid off of four jobs that went to Pakistan or Mexico. Jobs shipped abroad just so the board of directors could see a bigger share dividend. And even when I was working it was just the way business was done.

“
Do you know I actually had a job once where the management made a point of telling us that we could be replaced? That we had no special skills that the company needed? I was raised to believe that if you worked hard and put in the effort, you would be rewarded, you could become rich. The American Dream, they said. The American Dream is dead. Dead and gone. So one night I was approached by an old frat brother. He'd been turned and he was offering the same for me. I didn't even hesitate.”

Well, I thought, bully for you.

“The American public have been sold a lie. Work hard, work long hours, do your job, and work yourself to death. And the weirdest thing is that half of the country would take up arms to defend this crap. America is the only civilized county without some sort of universal healthcare and instead of being ashamed of that, they would have a civil war to protect it! This is humanity, Pagan. This is what you're fighting to protect. These shambling idiots, so obsessed by their microscopic, insignificant lives. That's what you die for? Why? Do they love you? Do they lionize you? Or do they wonder if vampires should have human rights? We're monsters!”

The vampire broke up into a shrill giggle.

“We live on human blood, The only way we can survive is to feed on humans and the humans are out there protecting our right to do that. It's like the cows rising up and taking over the slaughterhouse and sending out the next shipment on time! It's almost unbelievable.

“
Why are you fighting us, hunter? They don't want you to fight. We don't want you to fight. I'm sure you'd rather not be fighting.

“
Seriously, it's like they gave us the keys to the candy store. And the babes? Flash a fang in some bars around here and the panties just fall off!

“
They even have a reality TV show where hot babes are competing to be a vampire's next meal. Highest rated show in America. Guy actually samples their blood on TV before deciding who to eliminate and millions of Americans are turning in to watch. Guys jacking off to porn featuring vampires feeding from the people they're fucking. People who say we're monsters are being picketed and protested and boycotted. And we don't have to arrange anything, the humans do it themselves.

“
We just had a Senator here in Tennessee voted out because he opposed vampire rights legislation. We didn't even have to contribute to his opponent's campaign. Humans did it all! It's outstanding, hunter, it's inevitable.

“
We're gonna win and there's nothing you can do about it.”