Chapter 15
This Is Why I Hate Job Interviews
At the Guildmaster’s suggestion I showered and changed into a more respectable looking outfit. My jeans were replaced by black slacks. A borrowed oxford blue button-up shirt and a tie were also his doing. I kept my boots, mostly so that I could easily carry my new back-up piece, a Glock 30, but I did shine them a little so that they didn’t look quite so rugged. My trusty USP was still in a small of the back holster, covered by a simple black leather jacket that Hangman had let me borrow for the meeting. My protégé seemed much better after he woke up. From what I gathered, Hangman managed to impress the state trainer, and Hangman was going to be hazed into the State Guild that afternoon. There was pride in his eyes, but the sorrow of what we lost still haunted him. I didn’t push it and slipped out as soon as Hangman left.
I watched the city go by as the Guildmaster drove me to my meeting. He and I made some small talk, but I was getting more anxious as we neared the coffee shop. He let me out at the store’s front, and I thanked him for the ride. He nodded and drove off with a wave. I stood in front of the building a moment before going in. The Java Spear was a hangout spot for the students of the nearby Florida State University. The rich smells of the various coffees and teas flooded me as I opened the door. The central walkway was bordered by two raised drinking/dining areas, each holding roughly ten tables. Large picture windows framed the areas. The walkway continued to the counter where three twentyish humans were waiting on customers. Off to the side of the counter the walkway continued into a back room. I could see Blackhawk standing next to the doorframe. I walked up to the counter, bought a jasmine tea, liberally laced it with honey from the bottle at the end of the counter, and joined Blackhawk in the room.
Unlike the front areas that were heavily decorated with collegiate paraphernalia, this room was devoid of any mention of the Seminoles. The walls were painted a strange green color and the only light emanated from the door and the small lights on the ten tables of the room. There were a couple of humans in the room, heavily involved in their texts. In one corner sat another human, a female, about twenty-five or so.
Blackhawk and I made our way through the maze of tables to where she sat. He sat next to her, as I took the chair opposite of her. She was attractive, but it would take a second glance to notice it. Her hair was long and black. She wore it in loose curls cascading down her back. Her face was a soft pale white, with a light amount of make-up placed about her. What caught me the most were her eyes. They were a deep blue, but what caught me was the intelligence I could see in them. She studied me, much as I did her, and then looked me directly in the eyes, which surprised me. Most humans, and to a lesser extent lycanthropes, do not look people in the eyes and get uncomfortable when someone does look them straight in the eyes. It was a weakness I usually take full advantage of.
“So, Christopher, this is my blind date?” she asked Blackhawk in a playful tone as he sipped his coffee.
“Vanessa Hawthorne, may I present Marcus Badmoon, commonly called Ranger by his colleagues in the Guild.” He produced a manila folder from a small attaché case beside him on the floor, and placed it in front of her. I was curious, but I pushed it to the back of my head as I sipped at my tea. She read what I assumed was a file on me, occasionally making an inquisitive noise, for about a half hour before closing it and setting it down on the table.
For a moment it was quiet at our table. I could see her mentally preparing the questions she had for me. I just continued to sip at my tea, which was almost empty.
“Did you really do all those things?” she asked, almost incredulously.
“That depends. I didn’t read that file, so I don’t know what exactly you’re referring to.” I tried to keep my voice nonchalant. I learned a while back that treating the extraordinary parts of your career as normal usually disarmed outsiders, making them easier to deal with.
“A couple of highlights. Did you really walk into a coven of vampires with nothing but a pistol and wipe them out?” I nodded casually. It was a couple of years ago. The lord found out about a group of leeches unaffiliated with the TCV that were striking at our kin. The leeches had already killed three kin and critically wounded another two by the time the Guildmaster gave me the job. The Guildmaster made it clear that I was expected to eliminate the entire coven. So, I sanctioned them in my normal, violent method. I found out who was next in their hunt, a kin that I did not know, and liberally laced his blood with a concoction provided to me by a somewhat decent shaman. When the leeches drank from the kin, they also became intoxicated. Then it was a matter of suppressing the three or four ghouls with them, and executing the leeches. The Guildmaster made it sound much more difficult than it was, mostly to keep other lycanthropes from understanding how simply we operated. The Guildmaster did that a lot with the first Vollen, but Stephen Vollen had been much better at just letting us do our jobs and not worrying about the details unless we became excessive – such as my bonfire in front of the TCV Hall.
“You also killed three vampires by smelling them?” she asked.
“Why does everyone keep bringing that up?” I asked in response, a little exasperated, “The dumb bastards made a very bad mistake and landed upwind of me. Any hunter could have done that.”
“Not every hunter would have put it together so fast as to where the leeches were,” Blackhawk said quietly, “That’s what makes you so valuable, Ranger. You observe the world through all of your senses and act quickly on your observations.” There was something in the way Blackhawk made the observation that sent my instincts roaring.
“You’re making a bigger deal of this than it really is,” I replied, “I’m good because I don’t think like most of the others. A nasty flair of the dramatic and a habit of finding the odd solutions is what the Guildmaster told me.”
“And this part about you hearing the assassin assembling his weapon the night Stephen Vollen was killed?” asked Vanessa. I looked up in surprise at the question. Outside of a few hunters in the Hillsborough Guild, I didn’t think anyone knew about that.
“How the fuck did you know about that?” I demanded, my voice dropping to an almost threatening tone. Vanessa’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything.
“The Society’s contact in your Guild was Skiff,” Blackhawk interjected quickly, “He thought it was significant enough for us to know about. The question remains. How did you hear that?”
“To be truthful, I’m not sure how I did that. I just did, and acted on it,” I answered, still a little guarded. The possibility of the Guildmaster being unaware of the Society was growing. Stephen Vollen was the best lord I have ever served under. I couldn’t let him be killed and not do anything. In the end, I was ineffective.” The two of them let that pass without comment, and I pretended not to see the look that went between the two of them.
“How did you know that the person assembling the weapon was hostile?” Vanessa pressed, “How did you know it wasn’t just one of the hunters or a Knight?”
“From my experience, it sounded like a rifle being assembled, a bolt-action rifle,” I answered, keeping my rising annoyance in check. I had to remember that Vanessa had no history with me. She was asking logical questions about the situation.
“How does what kind of weapon determine hostility?” Vanessa asked, clearly confused by my answer.
“Inside the warehouse, we don’t use rifles. We use sub-machine guns and shotguns,” I answered, “Even outside, the shooters use semi-auto rifles. Bolt-action rifles are used for surgical strikes – not protection details. There was no legitimate reason for anyone to be assembling a bolt-action rifle inside the warehouse.”
“See what I mean?” Chris asked Vanessa. She nodded slowly and took a long sip from the cup in front of her.
“Do you know what you are doing here?” she asked, a sudden seriousness in her voice.
“Meeting a prospective partner and deciding on whether or not I want to join the Society,” I answered, “What are you doing here?” Vanessa was taken aback by my reply. I saw a glimpse of a weakness. Vanessa liked to be in control, and she didn’t recover quickly when that control was lost.
“I’m trying to find out if the lycanthrope in front of me is capable of doing what I need done in the field,” she asserted with a lot more force than was needed. I just shook my head.
“Sorry Blackhawk,” I said, standing up, “I’m sure she’s a good analyst, but nothing has been said that wants me to join.”
“Wait, Ranger,” Blackhawk said, “You are needed here. There’s a war coming – and Hillsborough’s one front. The Society will be helping to get the state ready – and we’ll be doing operations to assist once the war council decides on how to proceed. I need my people out in the field to get me the information that the war council will need. I need operators to protect my field assets and to conduct operations that will make the state stronger for the coming war. Including the retaking of Hillsborough.” Blackhawk was punching my buttons – and doing it damn well. He could see it.
“I need Vanessa out in the field,” Blackhawk said, “And I need someone to keep her from getting killed, giving her help in analysis, and acting on the information she develops. In return for doing these tasks, I’m going to give you a mostly free reign of action in executing these tasks. And, I’ll make sure you’re in on the retaking of Hillsborough.” It was enough to keep me from leaving. I knew Blackhawk was manipulating me, and I was falling for it.
“Okay, I can work with her.”
I retrieved my things from the State Guild and was taken by Blackhawk to my new home. I was expecting a townhouse similar to what I had when I was with the Hillsborough County Guild, but it was actually a small house on the outskirts of the university. It was a single story two bedroom house that mainly catered to college students that didn’t want to live on campus. As I walked around the empty house, Chris explained the locale.
“The Society does most of its admin and intel analysis on the campus of the university. Mainly it’s hiding in the open. So, we try to keep our members close. Furnishings are selected by you and the Society pays for them. Same thing goes for your vehicle.”
“When do I do all these things?” I asked, completing my inspection of the house.
“Over the next week and a half. We want you here during the Bone Moon. The Society always hunts together. May I make a suggestion?” he broached.
“Go ahead,” I answered, not really sure what he was going to say.
“Take Vanessa with you when you go shopping. She is much better interior designers than I suspect you or I am. We do want you to maintain appearances. It helps with the hidden nature of the Society. I’ll bet if you do your own decorating, it will turn out looking like a barracks. She, however, actually has a style that is more mainstream.”
“How good is she really?” I asked him, “At her job, I mean.”
“She is perhaps the finest intelligence analyst I have ever met. I won’t bore you with her accomplishments other than to say that she is quite capable of making excellent use of the fragmented reports we get here. I think if you two communicate freely she will surprise you with her conclusions.”
“What about weapons and field training?” I continued.
“She’s streetwise and knows how to spot a tail, but she has had only rudimentary training in weapons and advanced field training. She was recruited under my predecessor, and he failed to see the use in putting analysts out in the field. Of course, that was before Dade and Broward counties fell to the vampires.”
“I’m going to have to train her myself then,” I said, not really looking forward to it. I’ve never been a good teacher, mostly because of a lack of patience on my part. I usually do my best training in refining the techniques that someone was already using. Hunters never stop learning, and we often learn from each other.
Blackhawk nodded, seeing the annoyance on my face. “She may surprise you. I doubt that she will ever be as proficient as you are, but I think she will grasp what you are going to teach her fairly quickly. Now there’s only one question left.”
“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.
“What kind of car are you going to get?”
Hangman joined Vanessa and me as we searched through the kin-operated car dealerships. After wasting most of the day, I settled on a black Dodge Ram full-size pickup with an extended cab. It was a custom order rig that the person who ordered it found he could not afford. I had no such problem. It was big and loud, thanks to that huge diesel engine, and came loaded with a bunch of neat goodies, such as a bedliner and hard cover for the bed, and after a quick spin on a secluded driving range, I fell in love with it. Vanessa just grinned at us in a condescending manner as Hangman and I poured over it back at my new house.
Blackhawk was right about Vanessa though. She helped me go through the drudgery of decorating my new home. She responded well to my own tastes in modern furniture and helped me coordinate the rooms of the house. I had a modest bedroom. The other bedroom I turned into an office, complete with a new computer and phone system. The living room looked better than average, and the kitchen was actually neatly put away. I wasn’t sure how long that would last, but it was nice to start out right.
Vanessa later confided in me that interior decorating was what she was originally working towards, but her intellect and kin status brought her into the Society, and she never left. I learned a little of her background as we worked making my house habitable. Her brother and father were both lycanthropes. Her mother was a kin, but Vanessa didn’t say which members of her mother’s family were lycanthropes. She had always known about our world. She had even tried to find the elusive Pathwalkers in order to prove herself to her parents. Fortunately for everyone, she gave up that quest and decided to act like a normal human. She didn’t even become involved with the lycanthropes until her college years when she joined the Society.
“Mark, why are you still here?” she asked suddenly. Vanessa was an outstanding cook, and she was demonstrating her skills as I cleaned my USP. We were both waiting for Hangman to show up. Although Hangman was still learning the ropes at the State Guild, he always seemed to show up at my place for dinner. I was too glad to have him over for me to question why he was at my house instead of at the Guild where he should have been.
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused by the sudden question.
“I was talking to Sam last night, and he told me about you and Elizabeth Vollen,” she answered. I felt anger rage inside me at Hangman’s betrayal and Vanessa’s casual reference to Elizabeth – the Lady-Apparent. Vanessa stepped out of the kitchen with a large pot of pasta and saw my expression. “Mark, calm down.”
“Why?” I growled, “He had no right to tell you that!”
“He had every right,” she answered with an annoying calmness. I forced the slide back onto my pistol, trying to control my impending explosion. She drew her face into a similarly annoyed expression. As I focused on my pistol, Vanessa walked over to me and slapped me upside the head.
“In case you never noticed, Sam doesn’t come over here for you,” Vanessa said as I glared at her, desperately restraining the urge to hit her. “He comes over here for me.” That stopped me in my tracks. My mind began going back every time Vanessa and Hangman were together with me. Over the past week, Hangman had shown up a lot, and yes, he did have a different look in his eyes when he looked at Vanessa. Was that how I looked when I thought of her?
“Sam’s worried about you,” Vanessa explained, “He says you haven’t been acting normally since your county was taken over.”
“So why’d he tell you?” I asked, still angry. The head slap was unexpected.
“That’s what lovers do, you idiot,” Vanessa said, exasperated, “Good God, you’re such a newbie at this stuff. Unlike your dumb ass, Sam and I knew right away. After a few long talks, we were both sure. So, he confided in me what scares him. You not being your normal self scares him.”
“So why ask why I’m still in Tallahassee?” I asked.
“I want to know why you haven’t left to go find her,” Vanessa asked, “If what Sam’s been telling me is true, you’ve gone off the deep end for this Elizabeth Vollen, but you haven’t gone looking for her.” I felt an unfamiliar pain as she talked.
“Why do you care?” I shot back.
“One, because I like you Mark, and I hate to think of you in pain,” she answered, “I also want to know that my partner isn’t going to vanish in the middle of an operation to go chasing some phantom.”
“Do you remember two nights ago when I kicked you and Hangman out early?” I asked. She nodded, a little lost, but willing to see where I was going, “The State Guildmaster arranged for me to sit down with a shaman.” Vanessa’s eyes went wide at my admission. Considering how many times Hangman and I disparaged the shaman in front of her, her reaction didn’t surprise me.
“The Guildmaster was worried about me too. So, he asked Melissa to come over and talk with me.”
“What happened?”
“She and I talked about me – a lot. About my professional side, and my personal side. It was fucking painful.”
“My God, I can only imagine. Did she help?”
“Yes and no. She helped me see objectively acknowledge that the Lady-Apparent is probably dead. She made the pain a little more bearable. I don’t know. I still think the Lady-Apparent’s alive, but I know that I can help her better by my work in the Society. The county doesn’t need a single hunter. It needs the whole damn state to come charging in. I think the Society will accelerate that.” We both fell silent. It was uncomfortable. I admitted this much because Vanessa was my partner, and she needed to know why I was doing this. The Society wasn’t like the Guild – I didn’t work for the Society out of personal honor and pride. I did it for personal – selfish – reasons. Finally, Vanessa spoke.
“You could call her Elizabeth,” Vanessa suggested, “It sounds so stilted when you call her the Lady-Apparent.”
“I can’t, it just hurts too much,” I admitted, “Calling her by her station lets my mind think without devolving into emotion.”
“Okay,” Vanessa answered. She didn’t push it any further. Neither of us mentioned anything about our conversation when Hangman finally joined us.
It was a quiet meal with a lot of meaningful looks between Hangman and Vanessa. Finally, I kicked them both out to think. As I paced through my small house, Elizabeth’s face haunted me. I felt guilty for letting the shaman push Elizabeth to the back of my mind. I wished for the thousandth time that Nick was with me. For some reason, I knew he could help me with my problem. I didn’t trust anyone else. The shaman tried to help me because my work was important to the state. I didn’t blame her for that – it was what shaman did. In lycanthrope society, the needs of the pack – in this case, the state – outweighed the pain of the individual wolf. Pain could be healed after the pack was safe.
When you got right down to it, that was the essential truth of the hunter. We bore the pain to protect the packs. We did the jobs, and bore the pain, to make sure that the packs were safe. We even did the most horrific jobs – and we did it without hesitation. I was ashamed of my earlier disdain for hunters who went through the emotional turmoil of watching their private lives die because of the Guild’s demands. Without warning, my old sarcasm flooded through me. If those bastards managed to struggle through and do what was necessary – then I could damn well do it. I was too good a fucking hunter. I began jotting down notes of things I needed to do to get Vanessa ready for the field.
Elizabeth still haunted my dreams that night.
As I started working with Vanessa, I noticed that she was actually somewhat talented at many of the basic aspects of fieldcraft. She didn’t have any problem spotting tails, losing tails, covertly passing intel, and picking up dead drops. One thing that she was miserably at was shooting. After we had my house set up, I had taken her to a pistol range in the area. I brought several pistols with me, most of them borrowed from Hangman, who in turn, borrowed them from the State Guild. The range was an indoors range that wasn’t too far from the State Guild. I chose that particular range mostly because if Vanessa was going to get into a firefight, it was more than likely to be inside a building. The lighting and the gunshots echoing off the walls make a building a unique shooting environment. We took a place at one of the “doubles” booths that allowed two people to stand at the firing bench rather than one. I laid out the pistols I had brought with me on the bench in front of us. While I loaded them, Vanessa put up the silhouette target.
“Alright, the first I’ll start you out on is the revolver. You had the standard firearms instruction, right?” I asked her over the loud background of the range. She nodded. “Okay, this one is a Ruger GP-100 .357 Magnum revolver. I’ve loaded it with .38 Special bullets so you won’t have to deal with excessive recoil. Now what’s the first thing we’re going to do?”
“Make sure the way is clear,” she answered confidently, hefting the large revolver.
“Nope,” I answered, “I’m teaching you how to combat shoot, not competition. The first thing you need to do is to make sure the gun is loaded.”
“But I saw you load the gun earlier,” she protested.
“Yes, but I’m trying to get you in the habit of checking any strange weapon’s ammo supply before shooting. Will there be times that you can’t check it before shooting? Yes. Is this one of those times? No. Check to make sure the weapon is loaded.”
She fumbled for a moment, until I showed her how to release the cylinder. She looked at the casing bottoms briefly and then began to whip the cylinder back into the frame. My hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before she could continue the motion. She looked up at me in anger.
“What the hell?” she said with her eyes burning with fury. When Vanessa was sure she was right, she didn’t take correction very well. It was an annoying personality quirk, but one I would have to work around if we were to survive in the field.
“First, were any of the primers fired?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked, hotly, in response.
“Those little round things on the base of the casings,” I said, pointing them out on the rounds in the cylinder, “They provide the initial spark to the powder inside the casing, which fires the bullet. With a revolver, you need to check the primers to see if they have small dents on them from the firing pin of the gun. If they do, then the bullet has been fired. Understand?”
She nodded and re-inspected the rounds more carefully. Satisfied, she was about to whip the cylinder back into the frame, and again my hand caught her again. I could see in her eyes the internal battle. She was annoyed, but she knew me well enough that I wasn’t trying to annoy her – I was trying to keep her alive.
“That looks really good on television and in the movies, but it’s going to damage the gun,” I told her, “We try very hard to treat our guns properly, because you never know when you’ll have to depend on them. If you don’t take care of your weapons, Murphy will fuck you over like nobody’s business.”
She was getting frustrated, but she securely locked the cylinder into place. She pointed the gun at the silhouette’s looming figure about ten yards away. She was holding the revolver wrong, but not dangerously so. I watched without comment as she yanked the trigger. The gun bucked slightly up from the recoil and a hole appeared just above the silhouette’s right shoulder.
“You probably scared him,” I commented as the two of us surveyed the target.
“Very funny, asshole,” she said in her usual sweet voice, “Now show me how to hit it.”
“Outstretch your right arm in front of you, and then support it with your left hand. Don’t lock your elbows, allow your arms to jump up a little to compensate for recoil. What you have now is the Weaver stance, which is what you should be practicing. Got it?” I asked.
She nodded her head as she placed her arms like I was showing her. I finished up the stance by moving her arms and legs for her. When I was satisfied that she had the stance right, and that she wasn’t uncomfortable in that position, I began the next part.
“Can you see the front sight on the gun?” I asked.
“The white dot in the middle of the other two dots,” she answered, slightly annoyed with all of my corrections. I kept my own frustration under check. Vanessa didn’t know how gentle I was being with her.
“Yup. Place the dot over the target’s center and then line up the other two dots. Got it?” I asked, watching for her to nod, “Good, now relax. Gently squeeze the trigger. Don’t yank it and don’t jerk it.” I watched as she gently pulled back on the trigger. The hammer of the revolver rose slowly and fell violently onto primer of the round in the chamber. The gun roared again as the bullet was thrown out of the chamber by the explosion of the powder within the brass casing. The bullet hit the target about two inches to the right of the center. Center mass and definitely a kill shot.
“Much better, Vanessa,” I complimented her. She beamed at the hit.
“Pretty good, huh,” she said. I might have agreed, but she was going to have to do much better than that before I could feel safe with her having a weapon in the field. The real world was a harsh test for the inexperienced.
“I said much better, but you still have a ways to go yet. You took about thirty seconds to get that hit. When we’re done, you should be able to hit the center of the target with less than a second to fire.”
“Less than a second? Are you kidding me?” she asked. I picked up one of the automatic pistols that were on the bench, a stock Colt 1911A1 .45. I hit the magazine release, inspected the rounds, and slipped the magazine back into the pistol. I pulled the slide back, loading the first round into the chamber.
“Time me,” I said as I pointed the Colt at the target.
The sights came into line, and my finger squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared once, then twice, and continued for another five times as I blew out a two-inch section of the target’s chest. The slide locked back on the empty magazine, signaling me to quit firing. I lowered the pistol and released the magazine.
“Less than five seconds for seven shots,” she stated, looking at her watch.
“All of them placed in roughly the same area. That was a bad shooting set for me. The Guild expects better performance. Vanessa, I don’t expect you to match a Guild shooter, but I wanted to show you exactly how weak of a shooter you are right now.”
“You expect me to learn how to do that in a few hours?”
“Of course not. Not even in a few weeks, although you could if I constantly drilled you. The first few sessions are going to be getting you to instinctively get into the right stance and hit a high center mass without a problem. We also need to a find a weapon that suits you. Now, let’s get back to work, okay?”
The shooting session went mostly well. Vanessa was a quick study, and she went through all the guns that I had brought with me. By the end of the session, she had the timing mostly down, but her accuracy left a great deal to be desired. At least she was hitting the target with all of her rounds, but there was a good enough chance that the target would still be walking afterward, which was never a good thing in our line of work. Still, it could have been much worse.