Brutal Asset, page 17
“What have you got, wiseass?” I asked, nodding at the girl seated next to him, whose eyes had bugged out when I walked up behind them.
“Oh Chris, this is Telzey! Telzey – Chris!” he introduced us. Telzey was tiny, dark haired, with black rimmed glasses, a slightly plump frame and the sharpest hazel eyes I had seen in a while. You could just about count the stacks of IQ points behind them. She nodded, then glanced behind me at the security shadows.
“Okay, here's the dump! I scanned in that drawing you did and got a face recognition hit on the Coven database. Dude was one Juan Alverez, Mexican coven from near Ensenada. That is also the area your old pal Reyes came from,” Chet said.
Desiderio Reyes had been a visiting Darkkin who was a Bender, that is a vampire with the ability to force others to do as he desired. He had forced himself on Tanya and I had interrupted which allowed her to get free. But I hadn't known what he was and had mistaken her mind-bent state as willing participation in the sordid little scene. That was not one of my finer moments and the memory still hurt.
“That also places him near where we've pinpointed the center of Loki activity,” Chet continued, not noticing my reaction to Reyes name. His friend Telzey had though, her eyes even bigger if possible.
“Any travel information?” I asked, my teeth slightly clenched.
“Well, Darkkin slide through the borders like they don't exist, but I did find a couple of unsolved murders on the federal law enforcement system near Phoenix. Car belonging to one of the victims turned up in Arkansas, so that gives us an idea of his path. Typical.”
I was learning that many vampires still killed humans pretty much at will, especially the vampires from poorer countries. The thought had occurred to me that I had been shielded from the more feral vamps by my association with the upper echelon of the Coven.
“So it looks like the Central American covens may not be fans,” Chet continued. “On a side note, I got some hits on the DOD web about your attackers. Lots of search activity going on, mostly from Creek's people. They've found a series of murders that look like someone's covering tracks. Two biologists and a DARPA employee. All look like accidents or robberies, but there must be more to them or your Homeland Security buddies wouldn't be interested. They're also searching the military's records for all recent reports of troops killed in action and back checking the validity. Apparently, the ones that attacked you had pretty tight records of death, but there appears to be a few weak spots that Creek's people could use to spot more of these people,” he said. Then he spun to face me.
“One other thing,” he began, “Duclair has dropped out of sight. I can't find her anywhere. Last known assignment was when she was transferred by Creek to the DHS field office near Nome, Alaska. But I don't see where she ever arrived.”
“How'd you spot that?” I asked.
“Actually, Creek initiated a search for her, himself. I happened on it while checking out this stuff,” he said.
That was pretty interesting and I wasn't sure if Agent Briana Duclair was connected to this black ops group or not, but it didn't seem like her to just fade away.
“Thanks, Chet,” I said, with a gentle back smack.
“Hey, Telzey found a lot of it, you should be thanking her!” he said.
“Thanks Telzey! Really! Keep it up you two,” I said.
“Hey how's Tanya?” Chet asked.
“She's doing pretty well, but I'm going to check on her now,” I said.
***
I found Dr. Singh packing up his medical gear when I entered the suite.
“She's resting and I just changed her eye dressings,” he said before I could ask. He was capping a small vial of my blood that he used to soak her new eye bandages before applying them. Kinda ass-backwards from human dressings that you changed when they got too bloody.
I settled onto a lounge with another bottle of Gatorade and my thoughts, trying to process everything I had learned.
A moment later Tanya appeared silently in the doorway from our room, wearing one of my tee shirts and not much else, her eyes wrapped in gauze. Despite the covered eyes she unerringly wound her way to me and curled up on my lap, her head on my chest, then promptly fell fast asleep. The God's Tear necklace warmed slightly where it lay between us and I could just about feel the gem pushing power into her. For the first time all day I felt sort of at peace. Not fully, because my head was spinning with information from Chet, from the witches and from the Outer Guard. I fell asleep that way.
I awoke sometime in the late morning, still covered in sleeping vampire. My dreams had been many, wild and filled with images of witches, weres and magically cursed vampires. I had an immediate need to talk to the witches and an even more urgent need to hit the urinal. Tanya had snuggled up just right to pressure my bladder to explosion point. Carrying my sun-tranqed girlfriend into the bedroom, I tucked her in for the day and then hit the facilities. A shower gave me time to think, then I left the suite, immediately coming face to face with a very tired Arkady and a chipper looking Mr. Deckert, who handled daytime security and was fully human.
“Either of you know where Illarion's witches are?” I asked.
Arkady didn't respond immediately, looking slightly catatonic, but Deckert spoke without hesitation.
“The two older ones are still in the guest quarters they were assigned, but the young one is in the Broadway cafeteria according to my guy watching her.”
“Ask him to keep her there for a minute or two. I have some questions to ask her.”
He raised his eyebrows but just spoke into his throat mike without comment. Arkady managed a nod then I was gone at a jog.
Broadway cafeteria is just named after the surface street, it's not actually under Broadway. Citadel's center complex has several cafeterias for humans, spread around its sprawl. In a way it reminds me of a really big hospital, at least the central complex does, with elevators and corridors every which way. As you might have surmised the names of various parts all come from the city above. The lighting is lower than a hospital, and of course the outlying parts seem more military complex if not outright miners tunnels. It's very complex and takes a while to get the hang of navigating, which is intentional in case it ever gets invaded. But if it's one thing I remember, it's how to find the food. I arrived in a minute and twenty seconds by my internal clock and immediately spotted Anna sitting alone at a table, with one of Deckert's men nearby. I took the time to whip through the food line, gathering two trays of scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, juice, coffee, toast and a cheese danish.
I slid into place in front of Anna who was nursing a cup of tea (green by the smell) with honey. She jumped a little as I rattled my trays into place, her startled expression giving way to disbelief as she eyed the amount of food I had.
“Hey, good morning!” I said.
She just watched me warily, sipping her tea.
“I have some more questions for you, if you will,” I stated, my tone not really leaving room to disagree. She tried anyway. Silly witch!
“My Lord has made it clear that we are not to speak to you,” she said with a worried tone.
“Let's just call it table chat, shall we? Surely Illarion hasn't directed you to be rude has he?” I asked.
She shook her head as she thought about it, but still looked alarmed.
“Just a couple of quick things, who knows, it might save your Lord's life,” I said. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have couched it that way, as I was thinking the answers would benefit the entire Coven. Her wide eyes and furrowed brow led me to believe she thought it was a threat on his life.
Either way she nodded hurriedly, so I pressed onward.
“Okay, first, does sympathetic magic work on vampires?” I asked.
“Yes, of course!” she said.
“Second, if a witch and a were had a baby, could it be both witch and were?” I asked.
Shock, revulsion, then curiosity all flashed across her face.
“I, I don't know...,” she admitted. “I've never heard of it before. Weres and witches don't usually get along. We've usually allied with vampires.”
“Do you think it's possible?” I asked.
“Maybe...I'm not really sure. It's possible that my mother or aunt would know, but they won't talk to you and they don't speak English.”
“Do you think you could ask them? It might be really important.” I asked.
She looked balky at the idea so I added a thought.
“If a were that was a witch got hold of a vampire's nail clipping, what could they do?” I asked, hypothetically.
Her eyes got really wide and I could almost see the part where she re-evaluated my statement about a threat against her 'Lord”.
“I will see what I can do. I must go now before anyone comes looking for me,” she said, then left, taking her tea cup with her. It occurred to me a moment later that a witch was probably very careful about leaving anything personal behind, even if it was just saliva on the lip of a paper cup.
I continued to eat breakfast, but on my second trip through the line I grabbed the cordless phone from the wall and placed a call through Citadel’s secure system.
“Hello?” was the puzzled greeting I got. Chet’s systems insured that Citadel’s phone came up on caller ID as something different.
“Hey Gramps! How’s things?” I asked.
“Boy, I never know what name you’re gonna call under next!” he said.
“What’s it this time?”
“Sal’s meat market,” he replied, his exasperated tone hiding a chuckle.
“How’re you doing? How’s Len? How’s Semp and Sherm?”
“Me? I’m old and mean. Len’s older and meaner – “ I heard Len in the background making an anatomically improbable suggestion to Gramps – “The dogs are good.”
“Did I hear there was some sorta problem up there?” I asked, not mentioning the mauling directly. Gramp’s cell was a Chet special, but the budget of the people who routinely watched the farm and every other aspect of my life was immense. Our conversation was almost certainly unsecure.
“Yup, a spot,” he admitted. “Remember Shane Gotting?”
“Yeah.”
“Dumb fool got himself killed by a pack of feral dogs!”
“No shit?”
“We got most all of them, cept the leader. Big bastard got away, but we’re still looking,” he explained.
So the local drunken poacher got mauled and feral dogs were being blamed. The big one was likely the werewolf that actually killed him. I was now really concerned.
“Gramps you be careful. Keep the dogs close and keep armed. I’ll be up,” I said, my mind whirling with the steps I needed to take.
“Aw! We’re fine. The renters helped us track down the dog pack and did pretty good for a bunch of city kids. They tracked the big one off the edge of the property and feel it’ll just keep going,” he said, his voice relaxed and confident.
“Really? That group of city slickers actually helped?” I asked.
“That friend of yours, Brett, he did really good. He’s the one that feels that big dog won’t be back. Probably went back across the border to Canada where it came from!”
If I was reading this right, then Gramps emphasis on the word ‘back’ meant that Brett had killed the were that caused the trouble and that one had come from Canada, maybe drawn to the new pack on the border. Pack law, at least the law of the pack I knew, stated that any were that killed humans would be hunted down and executed for putting the whole Pack at risk. Humans and technology were too big a threat to ignore.
The guys that cleaned up after me, Creek’s guys, were more than capable of handling weres. Of course, if they did attack a pack of weres there would be very high casualties among the highly trained soldiers, something that Creek could avoid by sending me in alone. Brett’s action was solid and timely, making me proud of my friend and his fledgling pack.
“You’re sure everything’s okay?” I asked.
“Yup, we got it handled!” was the confident reply. We talked for awhile about things on the farm, about the were’s pemmican business (Gramps had gotten a local bison rancher to sell the business meat at a reasonable price), he asked about Tanya and Lydia (I explained one made life heaven the other hell – he laughed). Finally he asked me how I was doing and the undertones in his question told me he was really asking about the Loki hunting, demon banishing, vampire city living, federal spook avoiding totality that had become my life. “Life is….interesting,” I allowed.
“Just like the Chinese curse, huh?” he asked.
“May you live in interesting times,” I quoted. “ Dad used to say that one a lot. It definitely fits. Hey, I’m back in school…taking a class at Columbia,” I said.
“How’s that going?” he asked.
“Interesting,” I said.
Chapter 24
It was close to three-thirty in the afternoon when I got back to the suite. I spent the day above ground in Manhattan, running some errands and doing a little old fashioned research at the public library.
I found Tanya awake which wasn’t too unusual, but also Lydia and Galina, which was. The sun had not yet set above ground, although it was pretty low on the horizon. Daylight starts to fade pretty fast in September.
“Hey how are you feeling?” I asked. She was sitting in a rocking papasan chair, her bare legs curled under her, the bright white bandages across her eyes a sign the doctor had been there. It looked like he’d stopped the blood soaked bandage treatment, which I took to be a good sign.
“Trapped! I feel trapped!” she said, her frustration evident in every word.
“Whoa! Sounds like you’re doing better!” I said.
“Tell us about it!” a sleepy Lydia said from the easy chair she was sprawled in.
“What’s Doc Singh say?” I asked.
“He says she’s doing incredibly well, considering the damage,” his voice said from the side room. He moved fully into sight, closing his medic bag as he did.
“How are her eyes?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
He shook his head. “Ridiculous! Almost fully regrown, but not yet fully functional, so they have to stay under wraps for a day or so.”
“She already repaired all the damage/” I asked, remembering the ruin of her face.
“Most of it. I’ve never seen anything heal as quick as she did,” he said, looking me full on. “I don’t know if it was just your blood applied immediately or that strange necklace of yours or a combination, but it is what it is,”
“Doctor, I want to get out of this apartment!” she said, her voice carrying a note of command. Yup, definitely feeling better.
“Tanya, I would prefer it if you stuck to below ground for a while, the darker the better,” he said.
“Hey, that reminds me Tanya, some vamps from Outside were asking about you. An Alex, a Dave and a Leet, whatever that is,” I said.
“They’re part of the Outer Guard. They asked about me?”
“Yeah extremely concerned,” I said. Lydia was eyeing my head with narrowed eyes.
“I could visit them in the sewers! How about that Doctor?” she asked, more excited about sewers than anyone should ever be.
“That would be fine, Tanya, just take Chris with you okay?” he said, looking my way. I nodded affirmative and he headed out.
“You got a haircut!” Lydia suddenly accused.
“A haircut? I want to see!” Tanya said, frustrated again. I walked over and sat on the edge of the papasan and put her hands on my head so she could feel the short bristly hair.
“Yeah, I was doing some errands up top and thought I’d get it cleaned up,” I admitted.
“You wanted to change your appearance!” Tanya said, reading my intent.
“Yeah, maybe that too,” I said.
Both Lydia and Galina snorted in derision. “That will not do much Chris,” Galina said, with a smirk.
“It’s a start,” I replied, slightly stung.
“No, it’s not even the beginning of a start!” Lydia said. “You have to do a ton of work to change your appearance Chris. You’re not really undercover material.”
“Well Tanya’s in the same boat,” I said.
“Not really. Tanya is five- five, so she’s average height or so. Cover her with a baggy dress and coat, some droopy stockings, and a shawl over her head and she starts to disappear. Contacts and a wig, along with theatrical makeup and she can disappear,” she said smugly. “We used to do it all the time to let her get out and about without drawing attention.”
