A conference table was off to one side. Several members of the delegation were already seated there, reviewing documents. All of them were wearing suits and harried expressions. At the head of the table sat Graaf van Suchtlen, dipping a toast soldier into a soft-boiled egg and chortling over the latest edition of Private Eye. Odette walked over to him, Alessio trailing silently behind her. They stood wordlessly by the patriarch’s side until he acknowledged them.
“Ah, Odette and Alessio! Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
“Good morning, Grootvader,” they said, almost in unison.
“I trust you slept well, surrounded by the guards of our allies?” he said.
“Absolutely,” said Odette. Alessio smiled weakly.
“Alessio, you look very smart in your suit, but you won’t be needing it today.”
“Oh?” said Alessio warily.
“No, the Checquy have kindly made arrangements for you to be entertained. A group of students from their training facility—”
“The Estate,” added Odette helpfully.
“Yes, a group of students from the Estate are in London for a field trip to visit various musea and landmarks. You will be joining them.” Odette did not dare look at her brother, but she couldn’t hear him breathing, which was not a good sign since he needed to do that in order to live.
There was a fraught pause.
“Oh, Alessio, you’ll get to see London,” she said encouragingly. “That sounds like fun.” She nudged him.
“Yes. Such fun,” he said woodenly.
“However, in order to fit in with them, you will have to be wearing the school uniform. Frau Blümen, the headmistress of the Estate, has thoughtfully sent one in your size.” Van Suchtlen did not make any gesture, but his secretary Anabella, a plump older woman, immediately came over carrying a uniform on a hanger.
A blazer of lurid orange, lime green, and purple stripes burned Odette’s dilated pupils. There was a tie in the same horrendous colors, which was apparently worn over a white shirt. A pair of gray trousers appeared to be trying to hide themselves so as not to be associated with the blazer and tie.
“And, of course, the hat,” said Anabella, presenting a straw chapeau of the sort that Odette vaguely remembered was called a boater. It was adorned with a broad ribbon in the school colors.
“Well, that all looks very impressive,” said van Suchtlen in the cheerful tones of a man who did not have to wear it. Alessio reached out and took the suit as if it were made out of the scrota of war criminals. “Go and put it on so that we can all see how it looks.” Alessio tottered out of the suite, beaten down by the knowledge that he would be spending the day with the traditional enemies of his family while wearing a suit that might induce epilepsy in passersby.
“Grootvader, forgive me for asking, but will he be all right on this excursion?” Odette said.
“He’ll be fine. It will do him good to get out and spend more time with children his own age.”
“I meant, will he be safe with those people? Those children are already trained warriors. Are they going to know who he is?”
“They’ll know,” said van Suchtlen. “Their teachers will have advised them. Alessio is part of the negotiations. His presence is a sign of good faith on our side.”
So my baby brother will be a hostage, thought Odette. Terrific. But she knew better than to voice any complaint. Really, they were all hostages, but the Checquy, for all its unnaturalness, was a government agency and could be trusted to keep visiting dignitaries safe. Probably.
Odette sat down at the other side of the table and woke up her tablet computer. She reached for a cup of coffee, but one of the aides moved the tray out of her reach with a disapproving look. As she reread the files on the Checquy’s hierarchy, other members of the delegation entered the room. Almost all of them stopped to pay their respects to van Suchtlen, standing patiently until they were acknowledged. Her great-uncle Marcel, however, merely traded a nod with the head of the Grafters before walking directly to Odette. He pecked her on the cheek and sat down beside her.
He was still wearing his original body, so although he was several centuries younger than Grootvader Ernst, Marcel Leliefeld looked as though he could be the graaf’s grandfather. He was a dapper little man with old-fashioned side-whiskers and a suit that had last been in style during World War II. The nature of his enhancements was a matter of much speculation among the younger generation, but it was known that, in his prime, he had torn open a bank vault with his bare hands, and just last year he had broken the neck of a Komodo dragon that had escaped from its pen in his atelier.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said. “Your eyes look lovely.” Odette could feel herself blushing, and stopped it. “Did you have any coffee?”
“No.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Don’t have any more,” said Marcel. “Your throat needs to heal.”
“Fine,” said Odette.
“Doing some last-minute reading up on the key players?”
“There are still two spots in their Court that haven’t been permanently filled,” said Odette. “I don’t understand why Rook Kelleher and Chevalier Whibley are only temporary. Especially since they replaced Bishop Conrad Grantchester right away. Clearly they can move quickly when they need to, and I would have thought his position would be harder to fill than the other two.”
“Well, there’s some speculation that they are deliberately leaving those spots open,” said Marcel. “Perhaps a newcomer will be granted a role.”
“One of us?” asked Odette, startled. The Court was the executive branch of the Checquy and possessed authority over enough supernatural individuals to destroy a nation with ease. Any nation.
“Or perhaps they just want us to think that it is a possibility.” Marcel shrugged. “We are coming to them as supplicants, but we are not a power to be treated lightly. If this merger is to work, then both parties will be forced to change.” Odette opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment the entire room fell silent as, at the end of the table, van Suchtlen shut his magazine and handed it to one of the hovering aides.
“There is one thing I would like to cover before Alessio returns,” he said. “But first, we shall take some precautions. Lars, please check the room.” One of the assistants bowed from the waist and opened a bulky plastic suitcase. Nestled in the foam were small black appliances that were handed out to several of the other aides. They immediately began passing them over the walls and fixtures, checking for electronic surveillance devices.
“Didn’t they check for these last night?” Odette muttered to Marcel.
“Of course,” said Marcel, “but the Checquy are extremely talented, and we are on their home turf. It is always best to be cautious.” Van Suchtlen gestured to Harold, one of their financial executives. Harold removed his tinted glasses to reveal his extraordinary eyes. Irises lay within irises, green circling brown circling blue circling gold circling purple. Odette squinted to watch the circles in his eyes rotate around each other. She knew that some of their craftsmen had labored for months to construct them.
“No listening devices, Excellency,” said one of the aides finally.
“And I don’t see anything unexpected in the spectrum from gamma through microwave,” said Harold.
“Thank you,” said van Suchtlen. “That’s very encouraging. I like to think that they respect us as a diplomatic party. Well, then, let’s get started. To begin with, I understand there have been more attacks on the Continent?”
Odette braced herself. The attacks had started a couple of months ago, shocking the Broederschap with their randomness, their complexity, and their spite. Ever since the battle with the Checquy, the members of the brotherhood hadn’t considered themselves truly safe; from then on, they had operated at a level of extreme paranoia and had a policy of keeping to themselves that had helped them avoid any significant conflicts. That had all changed as their facilities and personnel were suddenly subjected to
a series of hit-and-run attacks engineered by a body they had come to call “the Antagonists.”
The Antagonists were not a government organization intent on subjugating the Grafters. Nor were they a mindless group of supernatural monsters that wanted merely to kill. They were motivated by hatred and anger; their attacks were designed to cripple, to wound, to mutilate. They not only caused horrendous damage but also served to keep the Broederschap completely off balance. There was no pattern to their malice. One day, it was an elaborate act of vandalism at a private gallery of historic Grafter masterpieces; the next day, a strike on a lab that left people injured and equipment destroyed. And then for weeks nothing would happen, and dread grew in the ranks. With no idea where the Antagonists were based, the brotherhood could not strike back. And now there had been more attacks.
Marie, the (currently) short-haired (currently) blond head of security for the delegation, raised her hand.
“They are escalating their strikes against us. There have been three more attacks in the past six days. Several vats in Ixelles have been found befouled—irreparably. Their contents are being destroyed. One of the labs at Seraing has melted. And the head groundskeeper at the Madrid house . . . well, his arms and legs fell off yesterday evening without any warning. We’re not entirely certain that the Antagonists are responsible for that, however. He may have been veering from his prescribed diet.”
“And no progress in tracking them down?” asked van Suchtlen, looking grim.
“We have a few leads, extrapolating from where they’ve been striking at us.” Marie did not sound hopeful. “You know, I think that the Checquy could probably assist us with this sort of thing,” she said tentatively. “Their connections are much more extensive than ours.”
“Absolutely not,” said van Suchtlen sharply. “We are trying to court these people; we don’t need to air our dirty laundry in front of them. When you’re pursuing a woman, you don’t tell her that you have the pox at that moment. You keep bringing her the flowers, and you dance the minuet, and the whole time, you are getting the treatment with the mercury.”
A bemused silence ensued.
“They will not want to merge with us if we come bringing enemies,” said van Suchtlen, apparently oblivious to the nonplussed expressions of his staff. “If we arrive at the negotiating table admitting this problem, then we are already weakened.”
Oh, this is a great start to an honest relationship, thought Odette.
“And matters have grown even more complex as of last night,” continued the graaf. “Odette and I were invited to visit a Checquy occurrence site, and there were unmistakable signs. The Antagonists have followed us to London, and they have killed at least sixteen people.”
Reactions around the table varied. There were some gasps, and one of the assistants gave a little screamlet. Marcel simply closed his eyes. Marie’s hair went from blond to white. Harold spilled his orange juice across the table.
“Why would they do that?” he asked. “Why would they come here? With the Checquy acting as the supernatural police, this is the most dangerous place on earth for their kind.”
“They hate us,” said the graaf. “They hate what we are, they hate our work, and they will not leave us alone.”
“So what is our next move?” said Marcel.
“We can endure the strikes on the Continent,” said van Suchtlen. “For a little while longer, anyway. Security must be increased at all the houses and facilities—Marie, inform your mentor.” She nodded. “Their presence in London, however, needs to be addressed immediately. If the Checquy discover the truth about this, it will mean the end of everything we have worked for.”
“I can’t cover a city with what we have here now,” said Marie. “This delegation is all lawyers and financiers.” Some hurt expressions blossomed around the table, which Marie ignored. “They all have enhancements, but they don’t have the training, and they don’t have the time. All we have in terms of military is ten bodyguards. The only fleshwrights we have are Marcel and Odette. And all of us will be constantly under the eyes of the Checquy.”
“Perhaps we could bring in some Chimerae from the Continent,” suggested Marcel. Odette looked at him, surprised.
The Chimerae were the elite of the Grafters’ soldiers—humans who had been completely transformed into weapons. They were rare, not only because they were recruited from the best but because they were fabulously expensive to create. Rigorously trained in combat, each one represented months of work by the Broederschap’s most skilled artisans. Each had multiple offensive enhancements drawn from across the biological kingdoms. No two were alike, but they all, as a baseline, could easily break every human record for speed and strength.
In the olden days (which meant up until a few months ago, when Ernst had made his announcement), they had been stockpiled in preparation for the moment the Grafters brought their revenge against the Checquy. Until then, for the most part, they had served as guards of the brotherhood’s most valuable holdings. In hidden vaults and strong rooms dotted across Europe, they stood vigil over hoards of wealth and precious biological specimens—though each of them was as much a treasure as the riches he protected.
On those rare occasions when they were unleashed, they solved problems.
For instance, in the eighteenth century, a brilliant young student from the University of Ingolstadt caught the eye of members of the Broederschap. His work with galvanism and chemistry was deemed to have tremendous potential, and they recruited him. He was given a thorough grounding in the core principles of the brotherhood’s techniques, but he chafed at their restrictions and eventually went rogue, disappearing to pursue his own research. Agents scoured the known world for him, but it was years before five Chimerae were dispatched to the Arctic, where he had constructed and animated a monstrous being using cadavers and lightning. Four of the five troops were killed, but the rogue doctor and his creation also died out there on the ice.
In the late nineteenth century, a Grafter research facility stood on Noble’s Isle, a remote island in the Pacific. The head of the facility designed and oversaw a private project in which more than one hundred animals were surgically altered and augmented with heightened strength, rudimentary intelligence, and opposable digits. In a development of outstanding predictability, the subjects rose up, briskly slaughtered the Broederschap staff, and began constructing crude vessels with an eye toward escaping. Seven Chimerae were sent to address the problem. None of the experiments left the island.
In the early 1990s, when a Colombian drug lord decided not to pay the Broederschap the agreed-upon price for a significantly extended life span (one unencumbered by cancer, male-pattern baldness, or impotence), he retired to a fortified estate and surrounded himself with a private army. After several increasingly emphatic invoices went unpaid, ten Chimerae descended on the fortress in the dead of night and systematically slaughtered almost everyone. (Graaf Ernst had felt that it would be inappropriate to punish the domestic staff, and so their memories were instead forcibly readjusted.) The Broederschap had then pillaged the drug lord’s private zoo for some rare specimens, leaving only his hippopotamuses to gambol about freely in the jungle and terrify the local fishermen.
Despite the Chimerae’s effectiveness, the Grafters’ paranoia about the Checquy (and any other possible Continental equivalents) was such that their soldiers were deployed for only the most serious situations, and even then measures were taken to ensure that they left no trace. Odette assumed that substantial safeguards had been built into the Chimerae’s very frames to guarantee that no incriminating skin cell or drop of blood would ever be left behind for examination.
“Deploying the Chimerae here is a terrible idea,” Nikolina, the communications liaison, said flatly. “If the Checquy found even one Chimera trying to enter the country, they’d take it as a declaration of war.” Odette nodded in agreement. The Chimerae were unmistakably the creation of the Broederschap; some of the Chimerae’s organs would literally have
Grafter fingerprints all over them, and the nature of their enhancements would leave no doubt as to their purpose.
“There are eighteen Chimerae in Cardiff,” said the graaf. “They are in hibernation in an apartment there.” The entire table was silent for a moment in horrified awe. If he had declared that he had a couple of nuclear weapons tucked away in Wales, they couldn’t have been more startled.
Another one of his arrangements, thought Odette, impressed. The canny bastard.
Looking at him, one could easily forget that Ernst van Suchtlen was centuries old, with all the cunning and foresight these years had taught him. His strategies were hugely complex, spanning decades, and very few others in the Broederschap were privy to his plans. When he had announced that, as the culmination of years of work, the Grafters would be entering into negotiations with the Checquy, Marcel had been the only person she knew who was unsurprised.
It was only when she was told that she would be joining the delegation that Odette learned about the extensive preparations Graaf van Suchtlen had made before he presented himself to Myfanwy Thomas with his proposal. He had not been interested in simply throwing himself and his brotherhood on the dubious mercy of the Checquy, and so, while he had extended the open hand of peace, his other hand had been holding a selection of weapons—just to make peace as appetizing a prospect as possible. To that end, he had put in place two weapons of mass destruction in British urban centers. He had suborned Checquy operatives. He had even purchased the loyalty of two members of the Checquy Court.
None of his measures proved very successful—Myfanwy Thomas had smashed them all before he could even enter her office. But now it appeared that there had been other preparations, other contingencies.
Always planning ahead, mused Odette. But he wasn’t prepared for the enemy behind us. He never foresaw the possibility of the Antagonists, and now they are threatening our future. She wondered what other schemes he had put in place. He might very well have more facilities and operatives dotted around the country. In the back of every Grafter’s mind was the knowledge that, should the negotiations fail, they would need to fall back from the wrath of the Checquy.
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