I Always Call Him Nick
The next week was a boring series of motions. The Guildmaster refused to throw any hunting jobs my way. All I could do was sit in my townhouse and mope. The local media tried to get a hold of me the day after the explosion. After a few hours of “no comments,” the reporters left me alone, thanks to the kin in the local law enforcement agencies letting little juicy bits of “information” leak out. The cover story was that the private investigator who owned the car, namely me, probed a little too far into the Tampa drug scene. It seemed like a solid story, so I stayed with it. The nice thing about humans was they gave us so much social camouflage to hide in.
I decided enough was enough. I called the Guildmaster to demand something to do. I don’t mind a few days of rest after an incident. After a week, I was bouncing off the walls. The secretary at his office complex told me that he did not want to speak with me at the moment and would call me back at a later time. Most days, I would’ve just taken the hint. Unfortunately, my annoyance was running high, and my self-control was running low. I decided not to take no for an answer. Hell, I could almost feel the dust collecting on my pelt. I called for a cab, as I didn’t want or need to take the motorcycle for this. I thought about getting into more “formal attire,” but then dismissed the idea. Jeans and a t-shirt would be fine for this type of job. As I waited for the cabbie, I packed some toys into one of the many duffel bags I had lying around.
The cab dropped me off in front of the Guildmaster’s office building. I had a distraction planned for the secretary. I really didn’t want to have to use a Wolf’s Growl on her. It would make her uneasy around me any time I walked into the building. I watched as my distraction walked into the building. I followed closely behind the man delivering the flowers. For some reason, human females really like flowers, especially when they’re delivered by surprise. Couple those facts with the fact that humans have a natural tendency to focus on the bright, pretty things in front of them, and I had my distraction. I slipped by the ecstatic secretary and up the staircase.
As I neared the Guildmaster’s office, an odd scent floated in the hallway. It was a mixture of incense, wood smoke, nasty cologne, and a hint of swamp. The scent got a bit stronger as I approached the Guildmaster’s office. The incense, wood smoke, and swamp scents meant a shaman, and the nasty cologne meant a very high-ranking one to be intruding upon the Guildmaster. As the Guildmaster’s personal hitter, I was one of the few lycanthropes that could barge into his office any time I wanted. With that privilege also came the responsibility to only do so when it wouldn’t cause the Guildmaster to lose face. Such as when he had someone outside the Guild in his office – like the shaman in there now. One thing I was not going to do was upset my boss by embarrassing him in front of the damned shaman. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to find out what was going on. I had a feeling it involved me. So, I got out a couple of my toys.
Wizard, the Guild’s techno-geek, designed some custom listening devices after several hunters bitched that the off-the-shelf ones we had weren’t worth shit. Called THWHE, pronounced “thaw”, the acronym stood for THe Walls Have Ears, and it was a damned good bug. It was remotely programmed from a PDA or smart phone – like the one the Guild issued to all of its hunters – and could be set for either steady stream or burst transmission. The best part was that it looked for the unique harmonics of the human/lycanthrope/vampire speech and amplified those to defeat most counter-bug attempts. I placed the THWHE on the Guildmaster’s door and listened through my ear buds.
“I don’t care what your relationship to the abomination is,” an exasperated voice said. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “The Order believes that you need to remand him to us. His actions were inexcusable, and they endangered the Peace in this county. Only the Order can properly sanction the abomination.”
“Since when has the Order supported anything that maintained the Peace in Hillsborough?” the Guildmaster asked, his voice seemingly calm, “John, this is an internal matter, and I am not about to hand any of my wolves over to the Order without a direct order from Lord Vollen.” My mind flashed with the voice’s owner. John Yven, the Spiritmaster’s deputy and political hatchet man. Yven was the one covertly spreading dissent amongst the packs in order to discredit Lord Vollen and the Guild. Or at least, that’s what the Guildmaster believed. Fortunately for Yven, the Guildmaster didn’t have good evidence of Yven’s activities. If he did, I would have already been given the job.
“Guildmaster, the Order wants the entire state to throw off the Peace as one,” Yven stated, “We all saw what happened in the Disputed Territories and the debacle that followed. The Hillsborough Order supports Lord Vollen, and since we are more visible than the Guild, we think it is more appropriate for the Order to publicly discipline him.”
“Let me be blunt, John,” the Guildmaster said in the firm tone that all hunters knew, “The Guild is not going to hand over any of its members to the Order – ever. The Order’s solidarity line is bullshit. Tell the Spiritmaster that he can maintain the facade of the aloof spiritualist all he wants. I am aware of the Order’s attempts to usurp Lord Vollen’s authority, just like you did with his father. That is not going to happen while I’m Guildmaster.”
“That abomination-” Yven began to protest.
“Is standing outside that door listening to us,” the Guildmaster interrupted, “I will remind you that he’s a highly trained hunter that has killed plenty of vampires – and four lycanthropes. Do you really want to threaten him?” I heard the slight screech of a chair sliding. Yven was leaving. I reached over and grabbed my THWHE before the door opened.
Yven and I traded hostile looks, but I could see the tinge of fear in his eyes. Yven was short for a lycanthrope, barely reaching five foot six. He wore his dark brown hair long, bound in a ponytail. He kept a wiry frame, but I doubted there was much muscle on it. The most imposing thing about the little shaman was the intense, but invisible aura that seemed to surround him. I could feel the power of the magicks swirling inside of Yven. I gave him my best menacing look. He pushed past me and left in a furious stalk down the staircase.
“Marcus, get in here,” the Guildmaster commanded. I strode in and dropped my tactical bag next to the chair that Yven had just vacated. The Guildmaster looked angry, but I wasn’t sure if any of that was directed at me. “I told you to stay home. What the hell are you doing here?”
“What the hell are you trying to do to me?” I said, slamming my fists into his desk, “You left me at home for the past week with nothing to do. Dammit, I am your personal hitter, whether or not I got a little too playful the other night. I’m sorry if my actions got you into a bit of trouble, but you can’t leave me out of action.”
“Got a little bored, eh?” he asked. My face hit the oaken desk as he knocked my arms out from under me. I rose up, trying to decide if he challenging me or he was just being playful. I had an odd relationship with my Guildmaster. It was more of mentor-student than commander and soldier. “I was wondering when you would show up. However, I was hoping that you would not try something like this.”
“Do you have something for me?” I asked, my pride still smarting from landing on the desk. He half-smiled, and turned to face his window. I could tell by his body language that he did. The Guildmaster enjoyed these little games of withholding information from me and seeing when I would bite at the few scraps he let me see.
“They’ve found a pup. The pack is going to get her tonight. The pup’s home is inside territory that I’m worried about. I think it may go active. I want a couple hunters to guard the pup and the contact team.” Active territory meant that there had been recent attacks by the leeches in the area. While it wasn’t rare for that to happen, it was uncommon. With that bastard Silanti on the Council encouraging vampires to take any pelt they could the attacks were becoming more frequent.
“Why me, and not a hit pack?” I asked.
“First, because this job only needs one or two hunters, and second, because I have all the hit packs doing other things. Plus, the Order is starting up again about you being an abomination, and that’s never good. Having you associated with bringing in a pup will go a long ways in the eyes of the pack, or at least as much as you can with your surname.” The Order disliked that there was a Badmoon in Hillsborough, and they were incensed that the Guild recruited me. I was supposed to be shunned off to some unhabitated corner of the county if I couldn’t be hounded out to infect some other part of the state. Worse, I was the personal hitter for the Guildmaster. Anytime the Order wanted to discredit the Guild, they began to publicly call me an abomination. I really wanted to go find Yven and beat him to a bloody pulp. Any vengeance would have to wait. There was a job at hand, and from what I could tell a job I where I had to be on my best behavior.
“Who’s the contact group?” I asked.
“Local pack warriors, about four or five lycanthropes,” the Guildmaster answered, “In addition, James is sending Nicholas on this job.”
“Nick’s coming too?” I asked. That made the last week more tolerable. I met Nick shortly after I first joined the Guild. He didn’t care about my being a Badmoon. He was only concerned that I could do the job assigned. I proved that during a job with him. We learned to respect each other’s skills and temperaments as we battled some nasty independents. We remained relatively close friends since. Nick was a little quiet and sullen at times, but he was a fanatical and fantastic hunter. Better yet, Nicky was a loner – a kind of outsider – like me.
“Yes, Nicholas is going on this job. You know how he hates to be called Nick, right?” the Guildmaster asked. I nodded, still smiling. The Guildmaster shook his head slightly in amusement. He wrote down an address in Carrollwood, one of the northern suburbs of Tampa. “Here’s where you will meet the pack. The leader’s name is Peter. You must protect the pup at all costs.”
“Thanks boss. I couldn’t have figured that one out on my own,” I replied with a slight sarcasm.
“Don’t fuck around with this Marcus. Pups are few and far between,” the Guildmaster retorted. I had gone a little too far, and I nodded in silent apology.
“Is the TCV really going to go after them?” I asked, “Especially with tensions as high as they are. The TCV spent weeks denying they had nothing to do with the attack on the pups in tysach.”
“The TCV is not the only vampire faction in Tampa. There are the independents, and they hate lycanthropes just as much as the TCV.” I nodded my understanding. The TCV had done their best to eliminate the vampires that didn’t join them, but the independents still persevered. They mainly stayed to themselves, occasionally forming small covens of less than half a dozen members. Sometimes one or two of them would go out and make a nuisance of himself. That was when the hunters would kill them, if the Bleeders didn’t get them first.
“Why does the Order want me?” I asked, referring back to Yven.
“I don’t know. Yven’s line was full of shit. The Order never decided for a full withdrawal, and he should have known better than that. He’s usually a much better political operator than that. Did you do something to upset them and not tell me?” I shook my head emphatically.
“Nope, just been doing my job. In fact, I haven’t crossed any shamans since the attack on the pups.”
“And arguing with that one shaman is not enough for them to get that upset at you,” he replied, half to himself. He looked back over to me. “We will have to solve this enigma later. Right now, you have to prep for your job. Go to the armory and pick up your gear. I’ll call your authorization over to the brothers. Now get out of here and get to work.” I nodded and left the office without any of my normal retort. I had a job to do.
The armory was actually a gun shop that the Guild owned and operated. The front was a legitimate business that followed the human laws to the letter. It even turned a small profit for the Guild. Better still, rumor had it that the brothers were going to build an indoor gun range onto the store. The Guild had a couple of outdoor ranges set up on some farmland outside of Plant City, but I couldn’t always get out that way. Plus, indoor shooting was a big part of my work, and it would help to have a place to work with that unique environment. I entered the store and nodded politely at the kin sales clerk. I showed him my “VIP” card and he let me into the back. The back, unlike the front, was far from legit. It housed all the spare firepower that a hunter could want, but couldn’t keep at their homes. A reinforced steel door slid open with a hiss out of a science-fiction film when I swiped my card in the slot. Two brothers, John and James Bowmaster, ran the armory. They were a rarity among the lycanthropes because they were twins. They had been recruited by the Guild and placed in with the hit packs. The unique dynamics of hit packs didn’t suit them. Then they were tried out as lone wolves, but they complemented each other so well, their separation actually had a detrimental effect the Guild. After many attempts, the Guild finally found a place to stick the brothers. Both were proficient in their jobs of arming the lycanthropes, especially the Hunters Guild. They carried the packnames of Gunny and Boomer.
Gunny was sitting in the main room of the armory at one of the four long tables in the center, busily reassembling a pistol. The tables ran the length of the room and each table had several stripped down weapons on it. Either Gunny was servicing them or Boomer was customizing them. I looked around, but I didn’t see Boomer anywhere. I figured that he was in one of the branch rooms. On each of the other three walls were two doors that led into weapon racks. Each room held a mix of weapons, but each tended to be heavier in one type.
“Hey, Gunny,” I said as I sat down across from him. He nodded to me, coolly. It was nothing personal, it was just that when Gunny was involved with something, he tended to regard everything else as a disruption to be ignored. I could see he was busy and waited for him to finish what he was doing. Instead of watching him go through his delicate motions, I decided to avail myself to the cleaning kit that he had in front of him. Another cardinal rule of the hunters was to always take care of your weapons. I pulled out my USP from its small of the back holster, and laid it out on the table. I quickly field stripped the pistol and brushed out the rough spots. Gunny finished reassembling the pistol he was working on as I put the slide back on mine. He gingerly laid the big automatic on the mat beside his kit and waited for me to insert my magazine, rack the slide, decock the hammer, and holster the pistol.
“Ranger, I assume you’re here for the gear that the Guildmaster called about.” I nodded. “Boomer’s getting it. He’ll be out in a minute. I’ve got an MP5, accessories, and some pre-loaded ammunition for you. Anything else you will have to procure from your own inventory.” As if on cue, his brother came from the far right door with a gun case. He laid it down in front of me and silently went back to one of his projects on another table. I opened the case, quickly inspected the weapon and gear, and left smiling. I loved new toys.
The night was full of stars, and I had been trying to pick out the ones that managed to shine through the haze of the suburban lights. I sat on my motorcycle, in the parking lot of the strip mall. Waiting beside me on his motorcycle was Nick. Unlike me, he was an impressive looking lycanthrope. His human figure was a full six foot five and well-muscled. He was rather handsome with blond hair and blue eyes – and the object of more than a few female attractions. That was, until they really looked into his eyes. They were cold, hard, and without the hint of humor. Rumors about Nick started when he first came to Tampa. I knew that he was from somewhere in the Midwest and spent some time in Tallahassee before coming down. Some say that he killed his lord in a gunfight. Others said that he was a fallen lord, one that had been banished for some breach of moral conduct. Another story had him insulting the King of the United States himself and was “hiding out” in Florida until the King’s well-known rage settled down. Whatever the truth was, Nick didn’t talk about it, and the few lycanthropes that did know his past wouldn’t either. I didn’t know his story, and I didn’t press him on it. If he wanted to give me his life story, he would tell me. If not, then no big deal. It was more important to me that Nick didn’t give a damn that I was a Badmoon. Those were few and far between.
I looked over at him. He was watching the stars, staring at them with an intensity I couldn’t understand. I took a sip from the bottle of water I had brought. It was hot and humid, even this late in September, and wearing a jacket didn’t make me any cooler. It couldn’t be helped. I needed to cover my submachine gun from the view of curious humans, and the long coat was the only thing that did the job satisfactorily. I shifted my weight and checked over my load for the third time since I had met up with Nick in the parking lot. My main weapon was a Heckler and Koch MP5K Personal Defense Weapon variant. The MP5 was renowned as the submachine gun of choice for various law enforcement agencies and military units. Every other sub-gun is rated on how well it performs versus the MP5. The variant I had procured from Gunny was a compact nine-millimeter submachine gun with a folding skeleton stock and a small barrel protrusion that was threaded to ease the mounting of silencers. I had one of those in another pouch. I had stored the MP5 with a short magazine in a specialized shoulder holster so that it hung under my right arm. Under my left armpit was a holster carrying my USP. A few spare magazines of ammunition for both weapons were placed into holders on my belt. My long jacket also held a few “distraction devices” that I had thought I had lost, but recently found in my attic. Silver knives of various types were spread about my gear. An ankle holster held my trusty Ruger SP101 revolver. After making sure that all my weapons were ready and right where I needed them, I looked over at Nick.
“Nick, you sure you’ve got everything you need?” I asked. He continued to stare up at the stars. He seemed to ponder something for a few seconds longer before turning his head towards me.
“Yes Ranger, and please call me Nicholas,” he answered with a slight warning in his voice. I ignored the warning with my usual shrug of the shoulders. Slowly, he turned back to his celestial gallery as we waited for the pack members to show up. I knew he was sensitive about his pack name, but I just couldn’t call him Nicholas. I kept thinking of Santa Claus, someone that Nick never could be. Santa never gutted a leech before and then showed him the entrails as he was dying. Nick had, and on several occasions when he was working with me. Nick could be a vicious bastard where the leeches were concerned.
About twenty minutes, and four more equipment checks later, a light blue sedan rolled up next to us. Four lycanthropes got out and approached us. All were in human form and had the Germanic features that were common traits for lycanthropes. Their clothes fit into the upper-middle-class neighborhood. One of them took a step towards us.
“I’m Peter Ringston, the leader for this jaunt. You two all set?” he asked. I nodded. Nick turned to face him and gave him a once over.
“Are you armed?” Nick asked quietly. Peter nodded. Each of the four flashed a pistol. Nick motioned them to come to us. As they approached, Peter pulled out a map of the area. He set it down on the ground and began pointing out the important parts.
“Okay, this is where the pup lives. Her uncle was to be here, but he was attacked a week ago by the leeches. Normally we don’t have a lot of vampires out this way, so I’m not particularly sure how to use you two. My brother insisted that you go along though, especially considering what happened to her uncle.” We looked at his map and looked back at him. Although the Peace normally meant no hostile actions between the lycanthropes and the vampires, the tradition that grew out of the Peace meant that attacks on adult members was discouraged, but not banned. By the same token, retribution was expected and similarly dismissed.
“What about her parents?” I asked, “Shouldn’t they be brought in as well?”
“Her parents are only kin,” Ringston answered, “At least her father is. He estranged himself from our pack before he married. I guess he didn’t think he would sire a pup.” I nodded. It was uncommon for a kin to sire a pup on his own. Still, pups were pups. They needed to be brought into the packs, at least to be run through tysach. Even full lycanthrope parents can’t teach a pup everything that a lycanthrope would need to know in order to survive in our world.
“How were you going to approach the house?” I asked Peter. He explained how he was going to drive up to a spot about a block from the house, have him and his warriors shed forms and approach the house. Once they had figured out where in the house the pup was, they would crash the house and implant into the pup’s mind the need to go to the pack’s cravex on the next full moon. Nicky and I traded looks and turned back to face the others.
“Alright, we can follow that plan,” I told him, “We’ll follow you to that spot. From there, one of us will take the lead to the pup’s house, while the other covers the rear. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. Anything, and I mean anything, that seems suspicious, and you let one of us know. Don’t try to deal with it yourself. We’re the professionals, so let us handle it. Once we get to the house, we’ll take a look around, and then you can enter. Follow our lead. Do you guys know how to use your weapons?” I motioned to their pistols. They all nodded hesitantly, which didn’t reassure me. “Can you hit accurately with them?” To this, they just looked at each other with questioning glances. I shook my head in frustration.
“Alright, don’t shoot anything unless you are damned sure you can hit it and it’s not one of us,” I told them as I started the motorcycle’s monster engine. “Oh yeah,” I called to them as they started back to their car, “If you have to shoot, don’t stop firing until your target is on the ground.” They nodded slowly in semi-comprehension and got into their car. As Nicky moved alongside of me, I hoped that the four lycanthropes in the car followed what I told them. Just in case, Nicky and I intended to go over the plan with each of them once we got to the rally point.
Our three vehicles raced through the streets of Carrollwood, constantly changing our route and formation to lose any possible tails. Not likely, but hunters were always paranoid. Well, that’s what Nick and I were doing. I wasn’t sure if the sedan was mimicking us or if they thought Nick and I were deliberately trying to lose them. We made the trip to the rally point in just over ten minutes. When we stopped, Nick and I pulled each of the four off to the side and made them repeat the instructions I gave them back at the parking lot. When the Nick and I were both reasonably sure the four of them had it down, we continued on into the night.
The six of us shed our human forms into true form, or the famous half-man, half-wolf beast of the horror films. Now, instead of six average height humans, we were six huge creatures of the night. This would also protect us from the occasional glance from one of the residents, as humans tended to dismiss the supernatural out of hand. The humans wouldn’t see prowlers, just odd shadows that would have a rational explanation. I could see a couple of Peter’s lycanthropes fiddling with their handguns. I growled harshly for them to stop and walked over to where Nick was standing.
“Point or rear?” I asked. He shrugged. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a penny. I always carried at least one coin on me. It’s one of those things that come in handy for any number of situations. I flipped it in the air and caught it. Heads. Since it was my coin, I was to take the point, or lead position.
The six of us crept up the street. We hid in the shadows created by the strange orange light of the sodium-based streetlights. As we approached the house, I drew the sub-machine gun out from under my jacket. Nick and I crouched in a clump of bushes in front of the house next door to the pup, while the others loitered across the street. I screwed on the suppressor as I scanned the pup’s house. If I had to kill something quick, I didn’t want to wake up the whole neighborhood. Our kin in law enforcement knew what was happening, but there was no need to cause them extra hassles if it wasn’t necessary. The house was a single-story split room house, common in the suburbs of Tampa. It was painted in contrasting, conservative colors of white and dark brown, with a manicured lawn surrounding it. It seemed like a normal suburban home. Still, something felt wrong. My instincts were roaring wildly with danger signals.
I glanced back over to Nick, who was crouched a few inches from me. He looked back at me and made a half-circle with his hand. Now what? he was asking in the Guild’s hand signals. I laid the MP5 quietly on the ground and signaled that it felt wrong. Nick went still. He respected my instincts. He walked his claw tipped fingers along the ground. Recon? he silently asked. I nodded.
“Peter, there’s something wrong in the house,” I whispered as the pack warriors huddled around me.
“What?” he stammered, shocked and his mind racing with possibilities. “What do you mean wrong?”
“Don’t know yet,” I answered, looking at him dead in the eye, willing him to calm down, “Nick and I are going to do a little recon. When we think it’s clear, one of us will come get you.” He nodded and started to draw his pistol. My hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Don’t. If we need your warriors to back us up, we’ll let you know. I do not want you to be playing with guns while Nick and I are busy. We’re the professionals. Let us handle our business.” Peter nodded, but he was still overly anxious. I hated this hand-holding crap, but the Guildmaster had told me to be on my best behavior.
“Peter, that pup’s safety is our most important job. Calm down, Nick and I are not going to let anything bad happen to the pup.” I crept back over to Nick. From Peter’s actions and expressions, I was pretty sure that this was his first time leading warriors in the field. Another possible problem to deal with, but the recon would not wait. There was definitely something wrong with that house. I quietly crawled out of the bushes. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Nick’s shape, following me in. No words were necessary, as we both knew what was required. The two of us moved from the bushes to the side of the pup’s house. The stucco’s white paint rubbed off onto my dark jacket as the two of us made our way around the corner to the front of the house.
The designers of this type of house had made the master bedroom in the front of the house and on the other side of the house than the other bedrooms. The master bedroom had large sliding glass doors that was shielded from the front lawn by an eight-foot brick wall the designers called a “privacy fence.” I decided to make our entrance there. As we slowly made our way around the corner, I smelled for the distinctive scent of ozone. Not smelling any, nor feeling any heat from the entrance to the small porch outside the glass door, I concluded that the people hadn’t installed lasers or some microwave detection systems. Most people in this area of town weren’t quite that paranoid, but every so often hunters ran into a real security-obsessed freak. At that point, things occasionally got interesting.
I turned around the corner and looked into the glass door. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Blood streaked the glass. Just beyond the door lay the broken body of an adult human. From my angle, I couldn’t even tell what sex it was. The bedroom was strewn with debris. The queen-sized bed was broken in half and had the insides torn out. A small lamp that lay in the remains of what was once a bed stand threw eerie shadows on the blood-streaked walls. A thumping noise from inside the house came through the glass.
“Shit,” I whispered, “It looks like we’ve got intruders.”
“I think there’s a hit pack nearby. Let me call Sneller and get us some back up,” Nick said, reaching for his cell phone.
“Not enough time,” I replied.
“Those warriors are not ready to clear a house. We can’t clear it with just us,” Nick said.
“Not following the normal rules,” I said, slipping into the little patio. Nick cursed, but he followed me. I grasped the outside handle of the sliding glass door and pulled. It had been locked, but that really didn’t matter. The door was slammed back by the sheer force of my strength. The glass of the door shattered as the rear of the metal frame rammed into the doorframe. I shrugged at Nick. He glowered at me about the noise but didn’t say anything as we entered the house.
The bedroom was even worse inside than it looked. The smell of death, blood, and ruptured innards laced the air. The figure on the floor had been a woman. Whoever or whatever attacked her had apparently tried to see how far back she could bend backwards. When she failed that test, every joint had been violently dislocated. On top of that, the head was facing the wrong direction. There was no way she had survived whatever had put her into that position. On the other side of the destroyed bed was a man faced down. His arms and back were laced up and down with deep slashes. Next to him was a small Ruger LCP. I removed the magazine and pulled back the slide. The stupid human didn’t even have a round chambered. I dropped the pistol and magazine into a pocket. I’d turn it over to the Guild Armory after the job. I turned the man over onto his back as Nick covered the bedroom door with his sub-machine gun. The man’s chest was similarly sliced up and he was missing the front of his neck. Nick glanced over at me. With my free hand I made an upside-down “V,” the hand signal for vampires. He nodded and lowered his weapon. The sound of wild laughter and off-key singing broke through the silence and brought the two of us back to the job at hand.
We made our way out of the master bedroom and through a darkened foyer. We moved carefully, trying to make sure our boots didn’t tap on the cold tile. The rest of the house was as dark as the outside night. In a combination living and dining room area, I could make out a pair of vampires. On the floor, they had an adolescent girl tied up with duct tape. Her hands and legs were behind her, and she was gagged. She was definitely the pup. Both vampires were cackling and taunting the struggling pup when Nicky and I emerged from the darkened foyer. They didn’t even see us as we placed suppressed short bursts into their heads and chests. The rest of the vampires in the house went quiet. Contrary to popular belief, silenced weapons are not silent, merely suppressed. The sound of the supersonic cracks of the nine millimeter silver bullets echoed in the house.
The foyer was connected to a hallway that linked the living/dining room area to another living room area. In between the two of them, and shielded from the foyer by a wall, was the kitchen. Out of the kitchen and into the dining room emerged another vampire. He spotted Nicky and me immediately and tried to pull out some form of weapon. Nick stopped him cold with another burst of his sub-machine gun.
The vampires on the other side of the house realized that something deadly was in the house with them. The murmur of whispers floated down the hallway to where Nicky and I were holed up in the foyer. I nodded my head over to where the pup was still struggling against her bonds. Nicky nodded in agreement. We listened for a moment and were rewarded for our patience. We could hear the carpet rustle as one of the remaining vampires moved down the hallway to where Nicky and I were hiding in the foyer. Nicky was about to round the corner and hose the leech with silver when I reached an arm out and stopped him. With my free hand, I dug out of my pocket a “distraction device.”
Often called a flash-bang, these little things were used to stun opponents for a few critical seconds. The version I held in my hand would let out a 210-decibel roar and a 2.5 million-candlepower blast of light. The advertisement on the box claimed it was like “having a rocket go off in your target’s face.” This was just the experience I wanted our sneaking vampire to have. I pulled the pin and dropped it out into the hallway in front of our stalker. I held my ears and shut my eyes in time to hear the muffled roar of the flash-bang. As I opened my eyes and took my hands from my ears, I heard the vampire screaming in pain from the bright light and shattering blast. I smiled as Nick turned the corner and placed a single shot into the writhing leech’s forehead. As he finished off our stalker, I looked down the hallway into the other living room.
There were no others in the room, but I caught a glimpse of a white face peering out from a recess on the other side of the living room that led into the other two bedrooms. It disappeared back into one of the bedrooms before I could bring my weapon to bear on it. I concluded that the other leeches had holed up in the two bedrooms. Nick and I retreated back from the hall into the foyer. As we put fresh magazines into our weapons, I laid out my idea.
I would throw another of my flash-bangs into the recess where I saw the head. When it went off, I would move into the hall and cover that area. As I did that, Nick would grab the pup and bring her back to the foyer. In case there were more leeches in the kitchen, I gave Nick my last flash-bang. He nodded silently as the two of us moved toward the mouth of the foyer. I pulled the pin on the one in my hand and tossed the flash-bang through the hallway and across the other room. It arched gracefully through the air and landed into the recess with a quiet thump. As it erupted in brilliant light and sound, I scrambled into the hallway from the foyer, falling to the floor as I reached where the hall opened into other living room. I scanned the room. A couch was set against the wall opposite of me, although it looked like the leeches had already done some damage to it. A small couch and a recliner were on the far wall to my right, along with a sliding glass door that led out to the back yard. On my left was an entertainment console that had most of the equipment destroyed. I also discovered a set of double doors in another recess to my left. Deciding that the shut doors may hold something a little more dangerous to Nick and me, I gave myself a generous field of fire in the general direction of the doors. I was ready if anything hostile came out of the room behind the two doors. I heard the suppressed stutter from Nick’s sub-machine gun and figured he had found another target. So far, so good. Then the sliding glass door at the rear of the room shattered as four lycanthropes came barreling through.
I instinctively turned towards the noise. Peter and his group of lycanthropes staggered up from the floor as the cuts from the glass sealed themselves. While the noisy entrance distracted me, the double doors flew open and gunshots rang out. Peter and the warrior next to him were thrown back as bullets slammed into their chests. Blood poured out onto the carpet, as the two slumped down dead. Silver, my mind rapidly concluded as I turned myself back to the doors. Two vampires cackled as empty magazines dropped down onto the ground from the pistols they were holding. As the remaining two pack warriors groped for their guns that had fallen on the floor, the two leeches gleefully inserted fresh magazines into their pistols. The vampires didn’t see me. They were tunneling in on their targets. That was good for me, not so good for them. I brought up my MP5K from my couched position and fired short bursts at both of them. I saw them fall back into the room with black ooze covering the front of them. I heard Nick’s footsteps on the kitchen tile coming up to support me. I didn’t hear the girl come up behind me or behind Nick, so where was she? Out of the recess at the far end of the living room came four more vampires, a couple of them wielding pistols. Nicky and I cut the group down from our firing positions. It was a beautiful killing field for the two of us from our positions.
One of the vampires was intelligent enough to use his comrade in front of him to shield himself from our gunfire and leapt over the twitching corpse of his shield to one of the injured pack warriors. The leech grabbed the lycanthrope by the throat and used him as a shield. He put his pistol to the lycanthrope’s temple and smiled. His white face looked like a porcelain mask, just about to crack.
“Throw down your guns, both of you!” he demanded in a falsetto tone. He was scared and trying to maintain a façade of bravado. I heard Nick’s gun hit the floor. Grudgingly, I threw my sub-machine gun from where I was crouched into the room.
“Now, I’m going to go out this door, and you two asshole dogs aren’t going to follow me. If you attempt to stop me, dweeb-brain, here, loses his head,” the vampire laid out, shaking the lycanthrope by the neck to emphasize his threat. In the darkness, I reached under my jacket and found the grip of my USP. I peered at him from around the corner of the hall. He was focused on where Nicky was. I figured he didn’t think I was carrying any other weapons, or that I wouldn’t try anything. Either way, the leech was fucking stupid. He was moving slowly to the shattered glass door making sure that the lycanthrope was between him and the two of us. I unsnapped the holster and drew my USP. I kept my pistol in Condition One with the hammer cocked and the safety on. All I had to do was snap off the safety and I had the nice light single action trigger. The vampire slowly backed up towards the glass door as the other living pack warrior crawled over to where Nicky was in the kitchen. I watched the vampire move and made the calculations in my head. It wasn’t going to be easy. Just for once, I wish it would be easy.
As he was halfway out the glass door, I leapt out of the hall. Startled by my sudden appearance, he quickly turned from Nicky to face me. I rolled up into a crouch and leveled my pistol at him. I focused as the three light green dots on the sights of my pistol lined up across his exposed bone-white face. I gently squeezed the trigger, and the pistol roared.
The vampire dropped his gun and his hostage as the .45 caliber Silver Shok bullet struck him dead center in the right eye. The leech dropped his hostage as he screeched in astonished pain. As the leech grasped at his shattered eye, I reoriented the sights to his now-exposed body and fired several more times. The bullets forced him back out of the house and onto the concrete porch, but he just wouldn’t go down. I kept firing, unloading the remaining bullets into the leech’s chest. He screamed in pain, but he just wouldn’t fall down. The slide of the pistol slid back and locked as the last round left the chamber. My forefinger instinctively levered the magazine release as my left hand snatched a spare magazine from my belt. I was in the middle of changing magazines when a loud roar rocked the house. The vampire was violently thrown down to the concrete back porch. Nicky came out of the kitchen pointing a large revolver at the downed leech. The revolver was Nick’s baby, a Smith & Wesson 629 .44 Magnum. Nick casually strolled over to the leech and fired a couple more times for good measure.
I retrieved my MP5K and searched the rest of the house for any remaining vampires. I couldn’t find anyone or anything else. I walked back over to where Nick was helping the pup and the two injured lycanthropes to the liquor cabinet. It took vast quantities of alcohol to get a lycanthrope drunk because of our supernatural healing, but a drink of something strong usually helped relax the adrenaline system after an intense situation. I examined the pup for injuries. She was about five feet tall, her body in the beginning of puberty. She wore her blond hair long. High cheekbones and an even nose framed her blue eyes. I could tell that she was going to become the object of every young male lycanthropes attention in a couple of years.
“What’s your name?” I asked. She stared at my monster form for a few seconds, and then came out of her trance.
“Jennifer Denton,” she answered as Nick handed her a shot of brandy. She looked me up and down with a wide-eyed stare. “Are you really werewolves?”
“We are called lycanthropes. You’re also a lycanthrope,” I answered, availing myself to a glass of vodka that Nick had set in front of me. She sipped at her drink, and then spat it out. She definitely hadn’t had too much liquor before.
“If you want to finish that, make it quick. We’ve got to get moving,” I told her.
“But what about Mom and Dad?” she asked, beginning to break down over her ordeal of the past few hours. I swallowed my retort as Nick answered. He was much better at this than I was. Sensitivity wasn’t one of my strong suits.
“They’re dead, Jennifer,” he answered with a gentle tone, “Now, I need you to focus. There’s nothing you can do for them. You must come with us. We, the lycanthropes, are your only family now.” Jennifer managed to compose herself. I had to admit that I was impressed with her. Too many pups just fall to pieces when confronted with the brutality of our existence. That was what tysach was for, to condition the pups to deal with our lives. She seemed to already have made the decision to deal with everything later. She pushed the glass away from her and started towards her room. Nicky gently grasped her by the arm and shook his head.
“You’re going to have to leave your things behind for now,” Nick explained in that same calm tone that seemed to reassure the pup, “Some of us will come back for them later. The police are going to be here soon, and we need to be gone. Follow those two lycanthropes back and wait for Ranger and me there.” Jennifer nodded without any further words. The two pack warriors led her out of the house as Nick and I called in a contact report to our respective bosses. The Guild would need to coordinate the clean-up of the fight. With that task completed, Nick and I collected Peter and the other slain pack warrior and walked out the front door. As we made our way through the shadows back to the rally point, we heard the sirens of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies. A pair of squad cars raced by us as we crept in the darkness, burdened by our heavy loads. Thank the Ancestors for the humans’ blindness.
When we got back to the vehicles, Nicky and I laid the two bodies gently into the back seat of the sedan. Jennifer was sitting in the front seat with one of the lycanthropes. She was almost unnaturally still as she looked straight ahead. The other lycanthrope met with us back from the car in the shadow of a large tree. He explained to us that he would take the bodies and the girl back to his pack. The pack leader would deal with them. He thanked us for saving the pup’s life and walked slowly back to the car. As the sedan drove off, I wasn’t sure if the events of the night had truly presented themselves to the pack warrior. Nick and I stood there for a moment, each of us quietly examining the last hour’s events in our own way. We started up our motorcycles and left our separate ways. Our job was done, mostly successful.
“At that point, Nick and I finished extracting out of the neighborhood,” I finished my verbal report to the Guildmaster. We were joined in his office by two other hunters. The first was the hunter who would have been my superior if the Guildmaster hadn’t selected me for the personal hitter slot. James Surebolt went by the pack name of Deadeye and was responsible for the operations of the lone wolves. Deadeye was unique amongst the majority of lycanthropes in that he was a handsome, medium height, wiry African-American. The lycanthropes were mainly Germanic with brown hair and brown or blue eyes, but in the United States, lycanthropy had spread in small numbers to other ethnicities. It really didn’t matter to us, a lycanthrope was a lycanthrope, and it didn’t matter what his human form looked like. It was simply a natural camouflage to allow us to blend into our natural prey. Deadeye had been a hunter that specialized in the art of sniping. Give him a rifle, and there was very little that Deadeye couldn’t hit within an effective range. His knack for organizing jobs had been noticed by the Guildmaster. Deadeye spent a year after the Guildmaster was appointed to head the Guild learning with the Pasco County Guild and had been chosen to lead the lone wolves upon his return. He was liked and respected by the lone wolves, and worked well with Sneller, who commanded the hit packs. Deadeye had been invited because Nick was his subordinate, and the Guildmaster was the type of leader that believed in open communications between the Guild’s leaders and their subordinates. It made corrections easier.
The other attendee was Dennis Matric, a rat bastard of a hunter. Dennis was one of the few hunters that had no pack name, so he was called by his human name. He was a medium height, dandily dressed, expertly manicured and coiffed hunter with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He was also the Guild’s liaison to Lord Vollen as well as the political advisor to the Guildmaster. Matric and I despised each other, and were barely civil to each other in the presence of the two senior hunters. I wasn’t sure why Matric was in attendance, but I trusted the Guildmaster had a damned good reason. He didn’t usually put Matric and I in the same room unless it was necessary.
“Why did Ringston’s warriors jump in?” Deadeye asked, half-rhetorically.
“Best guess is that they heard the first flash-bang go off and decided that it was time to fight,” I answered, “Those warriors were looking for a fight. They were armed, and one of their pack had been taken down shortly before the job. I didn’t see it.” In retrospect, I could clearly see all the little physical signals that the warriors were hyped up for combat, and I wondered why I missed them. It was something I would have to remedy. “Also, what was with the fucking Bleeders being there?”
“How did you come to that conclusion?” asked the Guildmaster. His calm tone told me that he was already aware of the fact.
“The two that gunned down the warriors stayed holed up after the flash-bangs, even though they had weapons and surprise,” I stated, “They waited until they had to have figured that they had all of the warriors in one killing field. Too much discipline for average vampires, especially for the idiot ones that were in the house.”
“Damn,” Deadeye murmured, “Do we have confirmation?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” the Guildmaster answered, “George’s hit pack was sent in to recover the pup’s belongings. He confirmed that two of the vampires were Bleeders.”
“When we tell Lord Vollen this, he’ll hit the roof,” Matric said, “The Bleeders went after a pup. That’s a major escalation.” I rolled my eyes at the obvious statement. The Guildmaster noticed and vigorously hand-signed for me to behave myself.
“We’re going to hold off on telling him,” the Guildmaster said. Deadeye and Matric both began to protest. The Guildmaster silenced them with a wave of his hand. “We are not going to Lord Vollen without a plan for retribution. I will not allow the Order of Spirits a chance to try and use this against the lord. Now, do you have any suggestions for a target before I call in Kurt?”
“The harem,” I said flatly. All three turned to look at me. I just looked at the Guildmaster with same level look I always used when he was picking my brain. “They tried to take away one of our most precious things. Let’s take away one of theirs.”
“Are you insane?” demanded Matric, “Attacking the harem could escalate things beyond control!” The Guildmaster cleared his throat, and Matric bowed his head in recognition in apology.
“I’m not so sure,” Deadeye replied, “It’s been on our hit list since we found out about it. Attacking it now would send a message to the Bleeders and maybe a strong enough message to the TCV to make them back down from this latest round. We’ve been playing tit for tat for nearly two months. If we can stop it, and make the TCV ‘reaffirm its commitment to the Peace,’ then we hand over a pretty nice win to Lord Vollen.”
“Which would give the shaman a nice kick between the legs,” Matric assented, “I’m still worried that such an attack would just push things even farther rather than make the TCV back things down. Silanti has been growing in power. This could be just the provocation he needs to push the Inner Council fully into his hands.”
“We’ll present the option to the lord,” the Guildmaster said, “I’ll have Kurt get one of his hit packs ready. Matric, you will sell this to Lord Vollen. As soon as the operation is finished, I want every hunter speaking to their contacts. I want it known that we would rather if both sides agree to cool down, but we are prepared to go to war if the vampire refuse to back down or attempt any further retribution.” We three subordinates simply nodded. As all of began to leave to carry out the Guildmaster’s orders, the Guildmaster stopped me, “Marcus, stay back for a bit.”
“I have a feeling I am going to need you on this job,” the Guildmaster said as soon as the door to his office was closed. I gave him a level look.
“Not that I’m complaining boss, but isn’t this a job for a hit pack?” I asked, “Sneller might get a bit pissed if you just use your personal hitter, even for something of this magnitude. Plus, the harem’s really too big for just me. Even if it’s a slash-and-burn job.”
“I fully intend to have a hit pack doing the majority of the work,” the Guildmaster answered, “Sneller’s hit packs are very good, but on a job of this sensitivity, I want my best on scene. I want you there to advise and back-up whomever Sneller sends.”
“As long as it’s not JB’s team,” I replied, “That wolf’s a fucking asshole.” JB was the leader of one of the better hit packs, but he and I had a bad history. Both of us still held a grudge.
“You do realize that many of the Guild have the same opinion of you,” the Guildmaster chided, “You’re good, but sometimes that chip on your shoulder mentality gets to be a bit much.”
“Sorry boss,” I said, contritely. If the Guildmaster was bringing it to my attention, then it was beginning to be a problem. I knew I had some issues arising from being a Badmoon, as much as I publicly stated otherwise. Sometimes it did caused some friction between myself and other hunters. I was going to have to watch myself and try not to cause the Guildmaster as many problems. I knew the Guildmaster had risked a good deal of his personal honor by appointing me as his personal hitter, both because I was extremely young for the position, and because of my status as a Badmoon. I would sacrifice myself rather than betray that kind of trust. “Let me know what you want me to do.”
“Ranger, do you have any movement?” asked Whisper. Whisper, proper name George Ghostwalk, was the leader of the hit pack that Sneller had selected for the job against the harem. Matric must have done a hell of a job selling the operation to Lord Vollen, because we had a green light barely four hours after the meeting with the Guildmaster broke up. I met up with Whisper’s pack at the Guild and the five of us sat down to plan the operation. I was glad that Sneller chose Whisper and his pack. I’d worked with them before and I trusted them. Trust was going to be an essential factor.
There were good reasons why Guild chapters were built on a mix of hit packs and lone wolves. Different jobs required different techniques. Lone wolves worked singly or in pairs, while hit packs normally numbered at least four members. Although lone wolves and hit packs trained together, there wasn’t the instinctive integration that each section fostered amongst their own members. Add that normal rift with the fact that I was the Guildmaster’s personal hitter, who trained even less with the hit packs, and it meant an extremely high Murphy factor for the job. Trust went a long way to quell the gremlins, both during job planning and execution – especially for a job of this magnitude.
The harem had been discovered by accident about a year ago. Nick was sent to sanction a leech that had been snatching women on our territory. Nick snatched the leech off the street and took the leech to a safe house for interrogation. It’s not like we can plant spies into the vampire hierarchy, so any vampire we think might have some intelligence we want, we spend a good deal of time extracting it. Most of what we get is worthless shit, but every so often we manage to produce a real nugget of joy. The harem was one of those nuggets.
The harem was part of the vampires’ quest to produce the ultimate vampire. The vampires have no religion and no deities. What they do have a crusade that seems to be prevalent among all of them, particularly among those few vampires that manage to survive beyond a century. They wanted to create the ultimate vampire that would lead the entire race to victory over the lycanthropes and such. I know that at least two attempts that almost succeeded, but were destroyed. Not by us. The pathwalkers simply wiped them from existence. Why the vampires continued to court destruction from the demi-gods of our world I will never understand, but they always do. The harem was a breeding program where the TCV was attempting to produce a human that had all of the physical and mental characteristics that would translate into the ultimate vampire once the human was transformed. The fact that the TCV had a eugenics program in Tampa wasn’t really important to the lycanthrope community. We were confident that the pathwalkers would obliterate the harem if it actually got to the point of possibly producing the ultimate vampire. What was important was that the harem was very important to the vampires. That made it a prime target. The Hunters Guild had covertly built up its intelligence on the harem, because we knew it would be one of those high-value targets for a political situation such as we were facing.
The harem was located near the University of South Florida, in an area known to the locals as Suitcase City for the transient nature of the residents. It was a high-crime area and a place easy to hide a couple dozen of human slaves. The building itself was a converted warehouse. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and topped with razor wire. The blue paint was faded and there were rust spots on the metal walls. That was just camouflage. We knew that there were advanced security around the building. When the Guild had been gathering intelligence on the harem, hunters had detected the presence of low-observable cameras, infra-red beams, and motion detectors. Further probing had found that both the chain link fence surrounding the harem and the ground just beyond the fence were also laced with detection devices. This detection grid would alert the leeches inside the harem as well as lighting off some well-concealed spotlights. It looked like any type of covert entry attempt would trigger the grid. At that point, the intruder would be caught in a suddenly daylight-bright open area, with no cover, while the leeches from inside could cut him down without ever having to expose themselves. It was euphemistically called in the intelligence report as a “non-optimal entry situation.”
Whisper, by his nature, still favored a covert entry and extraction. So, it was decided a daytime operation would be used. It was kind of funny. When humans thought of covert operations, they thought of people skulking around in the dark. We were just the opposite. The night was when the vampires were active. By operating in the daytime, our opposition was limited to ghouls only. The ghouls would fight to the death, but they rarely had the ability to effectively coordinate beyond set patterns. We also set the operation for two hours before dusk, which in early October meant that we would be doing the job around five in the afternoon. Our entrance would be covered by human drivers using the back streets to avoid the rush hour backups on Fletcher and Bearss Avenues.
I accomplished the first part of the job during the morning hours. As part of our covert surveillance of the harem, the Guild had rented out apartments and homes on the streets surrounding the warehouse. Starting at an hour after sunrise, I destroyed the surveillance cameras with a suppressed M4 carbine. The Bowmasters had customized the M4 I was using for suppressed precision shooting. The sound of the brass hitting the floor was louder than the report of the carbine. From the view of ghouls, it should have looked like the hunters were randomly knocking out the cameras. It wasn’t the first time we’d done it. Not enough to make it look like we knew what was there, but just enough for harassment. The ghouls responded by doing foot patrols and increasing the number of beams on their infra-red emitters. After I completed the destruction of the selected cameras, I parked across the street in a converted van. A switch on the dashboard made smoke come out of the van’s engine compartment. I faked an attempt to fix the van, pretended to walk off, and then sneaked into the back of the van. The van had a pair of concealed fiber-optic cameras in the side linked to a large monitor. In addition to those, I could tap into the cameras that were stationed in the apartments around the harem. I watched as the ghouls maintained their vigilant patrols. As the two hours stretched, the ghouls began to relax. The ghouls knew that their masters would be rising soon. It was time for us to strike.
“Two patrollers on my side,” I answered to Whisper. His hit pack was rolling up on the other side of the harem. “Negative on your side. Negative movement in the target.”
“Initiate in fifteen seconds,” Whisper replied. My part in this job would be limited. The Guildmaster primarily wanted me on scene in case the shit hit the fan. Well that, and because his own personal honor demanded that his personal hitter would be part of our retribution. The TCV was about to learn what happened when you fucked around with our pups.
I picked up the M4 and braced it in the gun port. Both of the ghouls that were patrolling on my side of the harem went down from suppressed shots. That would draw some attention from inside, but I wanted all the ghouls looking away from the monitors and from where Whisper and his hit pack were infiltrating. For that I had the Bloop Gun.
I put the muzzle of the grenade launcher through the firing port and fired a single round of white phosphorous at the fence. White phosphorous, more commonly known as willey-pete, burned like thermite and could catch metal on fire. Fire was not one of those things that vampires could ignore, nor could their ghouls. The round hit the chain-link fence and exploded, immediately immolating everything in a ten foot radius. A second round hit the northwest corner. The ghouls came pouring out of the harem. I smiled as I watched the ghouls used fire extinguishers on the two chemical blazes. Those would be less than useful.
“Arson accomplished,” I announced, “You’re a go.” I watched as the four lycanthropes emerged from one of the nearby houses. All four wore cargo jeans and long shirts to blend into the local background. As they neared the harem from the southeast, the long shirts were stripped to reveal tactical web gear and small assault rifles. I kept the ghouls distracted by a flash-bang round from the Bloop Gun. The hit pack scampered over the fence as the ghouls were stunned by the loud brilliance of the pyrotechnic round. I watched as the hit pack neared the door, shed forms, and entered the harem. It was now the most difficult time for me because I would have to watch and wait instead of actually participating in the fun and games. Even worse, I couldn’t see what Whisper and his hit pack were dealing with inside the harem. The Guild always emphasized simplicity of load when doing a job, and the additional burden of proper video monitoring was considered as too distracting.
The ghouls realized what was happening as soon as Whisper’s hit pack entered. Some of the ghouls fighting the two fires perked up and held their hands to their ears. My first instinct was to land a frag round into their midst, but I had caused enough damage with the willey-petes. Part of jobs was balancing firepower used with the need to stay below the pathwalkers’ radar. Grenade explosions would draw unnecessary attention after the fact. Flash-bangs, on the other hand, were little more than powerful fireworks. A second flash-bang round detonated between the ghouls and the harem.
“Whisper, you’ve got company coming,” I said.
“Ranger, kill them all,” Whisper answered. My instincts began roaring. There was something very wrong in Whisper’s voice. “Kill them and then get in here.” There was something about the way he said it that demanded an urgency. The precision M4 was left on the floor of the van. I unclipped its nastier brother from the rack behind me. This one had a shortened M203 40 mm grenade launcher attached under the barrel. As I slinked out of the back of the van, I brought the M4 to my shoulder and fired the beehive round from the grenade launcher. The beehive round was a custom load that sent dozens of high-speed flechettes into the mass of ghouls. Several went down screaming. The rest froze in shock at the attack. Before they had a chance to react, the grenade launcher was reloaded. The second group of ghouls got a beehive round fired at them. The few that managed to raise a weapon were cut down by precise bursts from the carbine. Rather than reload the M4, I let the weapon fall on its sling, and drew my pistol. The few remaining ghouls were finished in short order. I shimmied over the fence and ran to the harem.
“Whisper, I’m on the wall,” I said as I reloaded my weapons, “SITREP?”
“The warehouse is open area. East side has a catwalk. Multiple alchemists on catwalk reigning hell down on us. Cannon is down. We are pinned down just inside our entry.” What the fuck? Alchemists were the leeches’ version of shaman. Magical powers and a bad attitude were their trademarks. They also had a nasty habit of underestimating opponents that didn’t wield mystical forces. They were also rare enough in vampire society that they generally weren’t allowed into areas that the lycanthropes controlled. I would have to sort out their presence after the fight.
“Whisper, are any of them oriented towards me?” I asked, loading the grenade launcher. This was going to be damn risky.
“Negative,” Whisper answered, “Plan?”
“Get ready to move,” I replied, “Fire in the hole.” The door went down from a swift kick. I stuck the muzzle of the weapon through the door, pointed at where the catwalk should be, and launched the flash-bang. Nice thing about alchemists is that they have to maintain concentration to work their magic. Most alchemists could handle some combat distractions like gunfire and the occasional bullet whizzing by them. Damn few individuals can withstand the visual and audio fury of a flash-bang grenade, especially in the 40 mm caliber.
I was through the door as soon as the grenade detonated, shedding forms as I moved. Shedding on the move is difficult because your limbs, strength, and senses are changing between steps. Sometimes it’s just damn necessary. The interior of the harem was dark, almost to the point of being able to defeat even a lycanthrope’s vision. The floor of the harem was divided by a series of heavy canvas curtains with walkways that ran between the doors and a central walkway. The catwalk was to the east of the building. It was essentially a raised viewpoint for supervising. The leech alchemists were still stunned from the effects of the flash-bang. Whisper, Patches, and Fencer were up and firing at the alchemists. Between us, the alchemists were cut down within a few seconds.
The sounds of the gunfire faded. The four of us began to clear each individual section. In each partition was a human female on the concrete floor, unconscious, naked, and covered with small cuts that looked like runes of some sort. The whole area made my instincts roar with danger. We methodically cleared the harem. There were about twenty females in the ritualistic poses on the main floor of the harem. On the catwalk we found five alchemists. We also found a dead male ghoul with similar rune cuts on his body. All of it confirmed why I hated magicks. It was just too fucking weird. Whisper called me down from the catwalk to meet up with his hit pack near where they entered the harem. They were surrounding their injured member. Cannon was still unconscious and twitching in pain from whatever the alchemists had hit him with.
“Let’s burn this place and get home,” Whisper said, looking at his convulsing companion. I could see in his eyes the concern he held for his downed subordinate.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head, “We need to call a shaman out. I don’t know what was going on in here, but I don’t think this was a normal harem. This was something far nastier. We need this place purified, and burning isn’t going to do it. We need a shaman to do it right.” I could feel the taint of the place trying to seep into me.
“We do that, and the shaman will try to take credit for this job,” Patches countered.
“Yeah, I know, but we need to completely eradicate this place. Not only the structure, but all of the nasty stuff they did here. Besides, a good shaman may be able to tell us what the hell was going on here, and fix up Cannon.” The three murmured agreement, but it was obvious that they were not happy with the situation. In truth, neither was I, but this was why the Guildmaster sent me along for this job. I pulled out my phone and called my boss. He might be able to call out a shaman that wasn’t too involved in the political situation.
A pair of shaman arrived roughly ten minutes later. I didn’t know either of them, but Whisper knew the elder one. They talked for a moment as the other hunters and I kept a look out for additional ghouls or human problems. The shaman looked the scene over and frantically began calling other shaman. From what I could overhear, we had stumbled into something big and nasty, magically speaking. Within two minutes, four more shaman arrived. Two took Cannon away for healing, while the rest began discussing some ritual or another. Then Jeremy Ghosttalker arrived. Jeremy was just under Yven in the Order’s hierarchy, and while he wasn’t a friend to the Guild, he wasn’t an enemy either.
“I suggest that you vacate,” he told Whisper, visibly ignoring my presence. Jeremy was one of those who considered me an abomination, but as long as the lord tolerated my presence in the county, Jeremy wasn’t going to do anything against me. He was a jackass, but at least he was a tolerable jackass. “We are going to have to do some intense magicks, and I don’t want any problems. Especially from the presence of an abomination.” He nodded his head in my direction. Whisper and the others tensed, readying for a fight. I was pissed, and I would have loved to put a lead bullet in Jeremy’s back. Unfortunately, it was neither time nor place for a throw down between shaman and hunters. There were bigger issues.
“We’ll just leave you to do the tidying up,” I said, walking back to the van, “After all, we’ve already done the hard work. Not that you’d know what the fuck that is.” I ignored Jeremy’s sputtered retort as I casually walked over to the van. It would be dark soon, and there was another part to this job.