Max didn’t step off the sidewalk so much as he was pulled. He almost stepped in front of a passing car, but it didn’t faze him. He was in a tunnel, and it led one way.
He stopped by his car and popped the trunk. There, he unlocked a black plastic box and took out a Taurus 1911 pistol. This was one of Max’s fancier guns, with a nickel finish with dark wood grips and gold hardware. He slid a magazine full of copper hollow points, chambered a round and locked the slide. He put the gun in his bag.
The occupants noticed him coming right away and jumped out of the car to confront him. Max pulled the gun from the bag and kept it loose at his side. He recognized these two idiots right away.
“Are you guys on me twenty four, seven?” Max shook his head. “Doesn’t that bitch have anyone else to send?”
“We’re on a rotation,” Kearny explained. “Today we get the day shift.”
“We got a weekend off coming up,” Tritter added. He eyed Max’s pistol nervously. “Maybe you want to get together? Hit the strip clubs?”
“I’ll pass.”
Max saw Kearney’s hand creep towards his belt. He shook his head.
“This isn’t for you. This is in case any of our skinhead friends see me talking to you. I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Okay…” He didn’t exactly relax. “What do you want?”
“Tell her I want to talk to her. Tell her to meet me at my place in three hours. Got that?”
Kearny nodded. He kept his eyes on Max as he backed away. Max didn’t put the gun away until he got in his car.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sadie’s moped was chained on the porch when he got home. He found her sitting in the den watching television. She was supposed to be at work.
“Why are you here?”
“James called me after he saw you talking to two vampires in a parking lot. He wanted me to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Are you?”
She gave him a long look. “I know you better than that.”
Max smiled a little and walked to her side. She took his hand and pulled him to the couch. The pressure on his fingers made his hand sting.
“That’s a new one. What did you do?”
“Punched a guy.”
Sadie sighed and leaned against him. Max put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against his chest. The top of her corset hung open and exposed her breasts. Max ran his fingers over her cleavage and caressed her soft white skin. She looked up at him like she expected a kiss. He didn’t give her one.
“Sorry… I’m not trying to lead you on. I just wanted to touch you.” She stopped him from pulling away his hand with a smile. He ran his finger up her neck then along the line of her jaw. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. She blushed a little and looked down. “I don’t tell you that enough. I don’t tell you I love you enough either, but I do.”
She looked up with a smile. It disappeared quickly. “Why are you telling me this now?” She leaned back from him. “Oh! You’re going to do something really stupid, aren’t you?”
“Mercedes—”
“Don’t.” She put the side of her face against his chest. “I said I’d ride this through to the end so… let’s ride.”
“You don’t exactly sound enthused about it.”
“I’m not.” She rolled her legs under her body until she was like a little ball in his arms. He noticed some of her makeup was rubbing off on his shirt, but he didn’t mind. “But I can feel it eating you inside. I mean, I feel it literally dissolving parts of you, and if you don’t do whatever it is you’re planning to do… there won’t be any Max left.”
He looked straight ahead and let her in. There wasn’t any reason to fight it. She deserved to know. It felt like being stared at in the dark. He knew she’d taken enough when she let out a little gasp.
“God… both of them?” She squeezed his shirt. “Oh, baby… you saw her!”
“I had to—”
“No.” She looked up at him with wet eyes. “I mean… you saw this before it happened.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You don’t believe that. You saw her…in your dream.” Max closed his eyes. She touched his face, and he opened them again. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“I don’t understand,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Why am I able to see these things if I can’t stop them?”
She pressed her forehead against his. “Because you can’t stop some things.”
“Some things I can.” He lifted his arms. She folded them around her body and pressed against him. “Do you want to know?”
“No. I’ll just worry.” She rubbed the inside of his leg and pulled his arms around her tighter. “Just keep doing this for as long as you can.”
“Okay.” He kissed the back of her head. “I love you.”
“I know,” she whispered. Max saw her eyes close. “I love you, too.”
Two and a half hours later, Max awoke to the doorbell. He glanced out the window over his shoulder. Three familiar forms lined his porch. Sadie sat up slowly and yawned as Max rose from the couch. She gave him a nervous look as he opened the clock and took out the gun. He reassured her with a smile and some of the nerves went away.
“It’s safe,” she whispered, gesturing to the door. “They don’t want to hurt you… more than usual, anyway.”
Max grinned and opened the door. Dwayne looked him in the eye before he glanced down at Max’s gun. Max tucked it in the back of his jeans.
“Not this time,” Max said as he stepped out on the porch.
“You’ve got a lot of balls,” Dwayne said as they walked to the same black SUV on the street. This time it had come alone, except for the brown sedan parked up the block a bit. Kearny walked next to Dwayne, but Tritter had stayed in the car. The other vamp from the porch was the shaved-headed one he’d met before. Max somehow remembered his name was Paul.
“Thanks.” Max stopped at the closed door of the vehicle. “To what specific ball-intensive act do you refer?”
“Tellin’ them Feds about our house of pain, and then callin’ us to come see you.”
“Why would I tell the Feds about that?”
“Yeah, keep playing dumb,” said Paul, “I hate you so much—”
“Shut up, Paul,” snapped Dwayne.
Max grinned when Dwayne opened the door. It was warmer inside the SUV than outside, and drier. Moonshadow sat in the same place as before, this time in a more casual top with a dark red blanket wrapped around her waist. Half her face was hidden behind big round lenses of designer sunglasses. Her fake legs were covered in a long brown skirt. Max would never get tired of seeing her pretend to have legs.
“I guess you have exhausted all other avenues?” she asked without looking at him. Dwayne and Paul got into the other seats while Kearny shut the door and waited on the sidewalk. Paul didn’t have a shotgun this time, but he made sure Max noticed the pearl handle of his pistol jutting out from under his arm.
“You could say that.”
“Why don’t you just have Puff fly in there and smash everything to shit?” asked Dwayne with a grin. Moonshadow continued to stare out the window through her dark glasses.
“Because there are kids in there, and I can’t trust Garrett to be careful.” It wasn’t just that, he couldn’t keep asking Garrett to punch and kill things for him. He’d eventually say no, and then the vamps would think they had a free pass to take Max out. And Garrett was his friend. He didn’t want to keep calling him to clean up messes.
“You can prove they were selling kids in our territory?” Moonshadow looked at him again. “Because that’s the only way we can justify an action against them.”
“I can,” Max said with a nod.
“Independently verified,” Dwayne added. “Not just catching a skinhead and torturing a confession out of him. Not that that don’t sound like fun, we just know that won’t convince the big man.”
Max had grabbed
his bag on the way out of the house. He took out a folder and tried to hand it to Moonshadow. She ignored it. Dwayne took it instead and flipped through the pages.
“Who the hell is Ree Shay?”
“She’s in charge of the Eternal Life Christian Church School. She’s also the science teacher.” He almost laughed. “Her husband was one of the church elders who came into power right before they stopped dealing with you and started dealing with the Aryans.” Max looked at Moonshadow. “I’m guessing the Aryans infiltrated the church and changed it into a front for their operation. That meant taking it from you, of course.”
Moonshadow replied, “We had very little to do with them before the Aryans. Selling children is low, and not very profitable for the effort.”
Max glowered at her.
“This woman knows everything?” asked Dwayne.
“Yeah. She keeps records, too. After you grab her you’ll be able to get them.”
“You’re so dead set against working with us, why didn’t you give this to the police?”
Max answered, “Probable cause. I can’t even prove there is a child slavery operation; much less that it’s connected to the church. I’d be laughed out of court. And the police don’t have access to your ‘information discovery’ tactics.”
Moonshadow looked at Dwayne. Max watched him nod at her from behind the open file.
“We’ll verify this,” she said, looking at Max. “If what you say is true, and this woman has the information you claim, we will return this evening.”
“And we’ll be prepared to take action,” added Dwayne.
“I want in.” Max locked his eyes on hers.
“Of course,” she replied. “I would’ve insisted you go. We can’t have you double cross us to your Government friends.”
Max grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dwayne tossed the file to the seat and opened the door.
“There is something else I want.”
“Oh, Maxwell… really?” For the first time she genuinely seemed annoyed. “We have already agreed not to restart the child slavery—”
“An agreement I am sure you will do your best to subvert, if it’s ever in your interest to do so. No, this is more immediate. I go after the Aryans with your hitters, I want something in return right away.”
Moonshadow sighed. “Very well… what do you want?”
Max reached into his bag and took out another file. He looked at Dwayne before opening it.
“Close the door.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The vampires returned for Max just after dark. Max left with them. Sadie stayed at the house with Frank. She wanted to stay alone, but he didn’t want to worry about her. Not that it helped much; he was going to worry about her anyway.
He rode in the back of the SUV with Dwayne and Paul. Moonshadow was not there. Dwayne all but ignored him, though Paul kept staring with a big stupid grin. Max felt like he should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. Not even when they pulled into a big warehouse outside of town near the old mines.
Max knew Joplin well enough to know they were only a few miles from the Hagshead. This was a mundane place. Max had seen it dozens of times and never once suspected it had anything to do with vampires. When the garage door clattered shut, Dwayne let Max out of the truck and they all moved to the center of a dim storage room.
“I guess everything checked out?” Max said when he saw a bloody body tied to a chair in the middle of the room. He barely recognized Mrs. Shay. It looked like they’d peeled off part of her face.
“Yeah, it checked out.” Dwayne chuckled and walked past the corpse.
Max felt a little bile rise in his throat when he got a closer look. She was naked and one of her breasts had been sliced off. Some of her fingers were missing, so her hands looked like raw hamburger. They’d given her toes the same treatment. Max wasn’t sure if he should feel responsible for this or not.
“Was she in on it willingly?”
“What?”
Max followed him around the corpse. In another part of the room under a cone of dim light, he saw what was once a man tied to another chair. He didn’t recognize him, though he doubted he would have even if he’d known him. His body was torn up worse than Ree’s.
“Were she and her husband willing participants, or acting under charm?”
“What does that matter?” asked Tritter.
Max looked up to see Kearny and him walk out of the shadows with two large, plastic crates.
“It matters to me.”
“Max, you know we can’t make people do things they won’t do anyway.” Dwayne lit what appeared to be a joint.
“Some can,” Max replied. “Remember MacDuvall?”
“Yeah…” Dwayne took a long drag off his joint then passed it to Max. Max took it and sucked back a mouthful. Paul snatched it out of his hand and took the next drag while Dwayne exhaled. “They was in on it from the beginning.” He turned away from the cloud of smoke to the dissected corpse in the chair. “We had a whole lot of fun!”
“Looks like it.”
Max examined the corpse. Most of Mr. Shay’s skin was gone. “What did you do to his knees?” Max gestured to the big holes in his kneecaps. “Was that a railroad spike?”
“Naw,” laughed Dwayne. The joint came back to him from Tritter, and he took another drag.
“Power drill,” answered Kearney, the only one not smoking. “We started with a small bit, drilled a hole and then moved up to bigger ones. It’s excruciating.”
Max widened his eyes. “And this got him to talk?”
Dwayne shook his head as he passed the joint. Max took a drag as Dwayne let out a cloud with a laugh. “Shit, he already talked after we cut up his old lady. We was just having fun by the time we got out the drill.”
“Are these the only two?” Max asked, holding in his breath as he passed the joint to Paul.
Dwayne shook his head. “After these two ratted out, we picked up six more who was in on it. We’ll handle them.”
Max released the smoke and looked down at the corpse. “Good.”
After finishing off the joint, Paul popped open the crates. Everyone gathered around as he flipped open the top.
“These are Mossberg special purpose twelve gauge shotguns.” He lifted one out and held it at chest level. It was big, long and black with a ventilated heat shield. “They hold eight rounds of two and three quarter inch shotgun shells. These have been outfitted with a folding stock for easy carriage.” He demonstrated the folding stock. “Also includes a SAW pistol grip and the sling holds twenty rounds.”
He pulled a sling full of clear plastic shotgun shells from the crate and attached it to the shotgun. “These also include a threaded barrel,” he continued, reaching into the crate and pulling out a small black cylinder about the size of a soda can. “The suppressor fits the threads and also serves as a flash hider.” He screwed the suppressor to the barrel of the shotgun.
“Nice,” Max said as he took a shotgun out of the box. “Especially the suppressors, that’s a nice touch.”
“We’ve also got these.” Paul slung the shotgun over his shoulder and opened the second plastic crate. Arranged within were several smaller plastic boxes. He pulled one out and opened it. “Springfield Armory nineteen-eleven in forty-five ACP, complete with threaded barrels.” He held the box up for Max to see a dark pistol in a foam mold, next to a cigar-shaped suppressor.
“Ah, those are okay, but… that’s a lot of weight to carry for seven rounds of forty five.” Max reached behind his back and drew a small Glock pistol. He barely had it out before every vampire in the room had a shotgun or pistol aimed at his head. “Whoa…whoa!” He pointed the barrel up. “I’m not drawing down on you guys, I promise. I just brought my own—”
“A’ight,” Dwayne said with a chuckle. He holstered his pistol and gestured for the others to do likewise. “What you got?”
“This is a Glock twenty-six ultra-compact, als
o called the baby Glock.” He held it up for them to examine. “I’ve replaced the stock barrel with a threaded one so it’ll accept a suppressor. With subsonic nine millimeter rounds it’s virtually silent.”
“It’s small,” said Kearny. “It barely fits in your hand.”
Max drew a magazine from his belt. “I’ve replaced the magazine floor plates with extensions. It expands the ten-round capacity to twelve, and it gives me a place to put my pinky.” He popped the magazine in and demonstrated by gripping the gun. “I’ve also added a laser sight on the grip, lightened the trigger pull and replaced the trigger assembly so there is zero overtravel. Glocks are double action only, so I don’t have to mess with a hammer.”
“I don’t know if the threads on our suppressors will match the threads on your barrel,” said Paul.
“I have my own.” Max drew it out of his jacket pocket and showed it to them before screwing it on to the barrel.
Paul winced. “How’d you get a suppressor? Those ain’t legal in Missouri.”
Max shrugged and grinned.
“Nine millimeter has a tendency to over-penetrate,” explained Paul “And the hydrostatic shock doesn’t work well against vamp bodies—”
“With sub sonic rounds that isn’t an issue,” Max explained. “Also, these are fragmenting rounds so once they’re in, they’re in.”
“How did you get fragmenting rounds for a nine millimeter?” asked Kearny as he loaded a shotgun. “Only law enforcement can get those.”
“I know a guy.” Max put the Glock back into the holster on his belt. It had an open bottom so the suppressor poked out. “So we’re going in quiet… that’ll work on the humans, but the vamps will still smell us.”
“That isn’t a problem.” Kearney placed a satchel on top of the shotgun crate and unhooked the edges. Several vials of purple chemicals were lined up inside. “These are very expensive, but the boss knows a guy who makes ‘em for her.” He took one of the vials and held it up in the light. “Still, there is a pretty big demand for these right now, for some reason. They’ll suppress any natural odor in your body for six hours.”
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 51