A Forced Disappearance: A Lawson Vampire Mission (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  “Yup.” I pulled the Cloak over myself and judging by the reaction of Belladonna, I’d successfully vanished from view. “Let’s get going.”

  Belladonna eased us back into the traffic slipstream and we maneuvered down Main Street. I kept looking out the back windshield, but I saw nothing to alarm me. I was hoping yesterday’s run in had just been some sort of weird fluke. Maybe the Wonder Twins had been tourists out looking to rough someone up. Idiots were fairly common, after all. I just happened to be the lucky guy who attracted their attention.

  That’s what I was telling myself. The realist knew that there was something else there that I couldn’t quite put my finger on just yet. Frick and Frack had seemed a little too cocksure of themselves and that concerned me. It might have been because I’d been parked out in front of the armory, even if it wasn’t directly in front. Maybe they were just sent to check me out and ensure I wasn’t a threat.

  Maybe.

  I was grateful for the Cloak. It would mask my presence, although I’d still have to be quiet when we moved through the armory. If I stumbled or something else unfortunate happened, I was going to have a real hard time talking my way out of there. And I had no doubt there were cameras everywhere. All I needed was to have the lycans send a tape of me breaking into the armory to the Council.

  Belladonna turned down Mount Desert Street and pulled into the rear of the Hanaford supermarket. She parked the truck far enough up that it shouldn’t have been easy to spot. She switched the engine off and without looking at me asked, “All set?”

  “Get out of the truck and leave your door open as if you’re checking something,” I said. “I’ll slide across and exit. I’ll put my hand on your shoulder when I’m set. At that point, close the door and we’ll start walking. This is going to seem weird until you get used to it.”

  “It’s already weird,” said Belladonna.

  “Speaking of which, what sort of front door does the armory have?”

  Belladonna shrugged. “Simple pull open.”

  “Good, if it was a revolving door, you and I would have to get uncomfortably close real quick.”

  Belladonna laughed. “You say that like it would be a bad thing.”

  I chuckled. “Fair point. Let’s get going.”Belladonna opened her door and left it open as she walked to the front of the truck and bent over to examine something. I slid over immediately and hopped out, making sure to keep the Cloak over my legs. When I was out of the truck, I looked around but we were pretty much alone. The rear doors to the supermarket were at least one hundred meters away and the only people in the lot were headed there to shop.

  I placed my hand on Belladonna’s shoulder and squeezed it. Then I whispered quietly into her ear. “One squeeze means yes and two means no. No talking until we’re out of there, all right?”

  “I’ve no intention of engaging in witty banter,” said Belladonna. “I want us in and out of there quick.”

  “You sure they won’t be suspicious of you coming and going so fast?”

  “Nah. They’re used to me. I come and go at least once a week.”

  “That may be why you were targeted,” I said. “Whoever is behind this clearly had someone watching the armory and got to know your schedule.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it’s what I’d do if I needed something inside of that place. Once they knew you went there often, it would just be a matter of finding out what they could use as leverage against you. Your apprentice was the wise choice. Hell, they may not even know who you or your apprentice are, they just figured it was easy leverage.”

  “When we get to the relic case, the code needs to be inputted at the same time on two keypads.”

  “What’s the code?”

  “7-6-1.”

  “Got it.”

  Belladonna shut the truck door and locked it. “Let’s get going and finish this.”

  “Agreed.”

  I placed my hand on her shoulder and we moved easily down the lot toward the street. Belladonna deliberately walked to a crosswalk a few meters up the sidewalk and pressed the button. While we waited, I scanned the area, hoping someone wouldn’t accidentally bump into me. But without the throngs of tourists that normally clogged Bar Harbor, I was reasonably safe.

  At least out here. Once we got inside, I was depending on Belladonna to get us through it.

  The light chimed and we crossed the street. Belladonna kept her stride easy to match, for which I was grateful. I’d learned how awkward it could be moving underneath the Cloak back in China.

  We drew abreast of the front door of the armory. Now I could see inside. An armed guard stood watching Belladonna, but she just smiled and waved at him.

  She pulled the door open.

  And we walked inside.

  20

  It looked exactly like a bank. I mean, it was clearly supposed to look like that to keep the curious from asking questions about the building on one of the main streets of Bar Harbor. They couldn’t very well hang a sign out front that informed everyone that it was a lycan armory.

  I stayed tucked in close behind Belladonna. The guard waved at her and spoke in Geralach. I’ve never gotten used to hearing the lycan language. It’s rough, guttural, and entirely displeasing to my ears. Belladonna answered him in the same language and then she moved toward a door leading to the back of the building. Anyone watching would assume that she worked at the credit union and was moving into the employee only area.

  The door clicked and we pushed through. Just beyond this was another security area manned by a pair of bored-looking guards. The only thing about them that was intimidating were the assault rifles slung across their bodies. They stood in front of what looked like a heavy gauge steel vault door. Next to it, I recognized an optical retina scanner. That made sense. The lycans would definitely have figured out a method for ensuring that the people who were trying to access the armory were who they appeared to be.

  I assumed that shapeshifting didn’t mean that the retina print changed which is why they would have used it for a security process.

  Belladonna spoke to the guards and they moved aside so she could bend forward and put her eye to the reader. I stayed where I was, hoping that these guys were as bored as they looked. If they moved even slightly and bumped into me, things were going to get crazy real quick. I’d have to take them both out before they could sound the alarm.

  Belladonna stood back up and the door clicked open. One of the guards tugged on the handle and the heavy door swung back on the steel hinges that granted entry to the world beyond.

  And it got a lot busier.

  Beyond the vault door, as I was calling it, ran a corridor with several branches leading off in various directions. Belladonna ignored the corridor and headed right for an elevator bank in front of us. She pushed the call button and waited for the car to arrive. I had no idea where we were going, but I hoped the elevator was empty when we got on.

  The doors slid back and we stepped inside. I was about to say something when Belladonna started softly singing an old tune from the 80s by Rockwell, “Somebody’s Watching Me.” I scanned the car and thought I saw a small pinhole lens. So there were cameras in the elevator. Good to know. I wished I’d questioned her more extensively before we came in, but at least she had her head on right and had warned me.

  The car dropped as we descended and my stomach felt the lurch as we came to an abrupt halt after ten seconds. When the doors slid open, we were obviously in a basement and it reminded me of the Council building back in Boston. A single corridor ran to our left and we followed it along. A few people walked past us but no one seemed to pay us any mid, which was great.

  We passed any number of doors that all had signs on them in Geralach. I had no idea what any of them meant. I’d never really had the need to know what lycans wrote since my main concern was with humans finding out about us. The lycans knew we existed just like we did them. And I’d never really op
erated against them aside from my dealings with Shiva way back a number of years.

  I was determined to keep my heartbeat under control, but the truth was I was deep in enemy territory. While vampires and lycans co-existed, there was always a degree of animosity under the surface of our relations. We left each other alone and that had worked for years. My being here put all that in jeopardy.

  Finally, just as I was starting to think we were never going to get to the armory itself, Belladonna drew to a slow stop outside one of the doors. A keypad sat on the wall next to it and she quickly punched in four numbers. The door clicked open and we walked inside.

  The room was larger than I expected and looked more like a museum than an armory. All around us, I saw ancient weapons and objects that were enclosed in glass cases. The room was deserted for the moment, but that could change in the blink of an eye. We needed to make this as quick as possible.

  Belladonna moved to the rear of the room. My attention was immediately drawn to one case in particular that housed a circular amulet on some type of chain. It was encrusted with what looked like rubies and sapphires with a huge diamond in the middle. The thing must have been worth some serious coin. If the guys who had taken her apprentice wanted to they could have lived off the money they could get for it for years.

  But I suspected the amulet had a lot more power than just in appearance.

  Belladonna moved to the left side of the case and I moved to the right. She looked at me, nodded once, twice, three times. Then I punched in the code as she did the same. I heard the hiss of air pressure and then the glass case slid open, revealing the Corantu for the first time. She brought her hand out from under her shirt and faster than I would have thought possible, she’d switched the fake relic for the real, quickly pocketing it.

  We punched the key codes in again and the glass started to side back into position, protecting the fake Corantu.

  Done.

  Now we just had to get out of here.

  Belladonna turned to leave and I stayed behind her.

  Just as the door to the room clicked open.

  21

  Belladonna froze and so did I.

  I saw the guard from upstairs when we first walked in standing there. He smiled at Belladonna. “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

  I frowned. Was it weird that everyone else had been using Geralach since we’d been inside but this guy suddenly switched to English? I didn’t know if that was something to be concerned about or not. But for her part Belladonna just smiled sweetly at him.

  “Just popped in for a quick look at one of the relics for my research.”

  The guard nodded. “All right, sounds good. Are you all done? I need to log you in if you’re not.”

  I felt tension creep into Belladonna’s body. “Yes, I’m all done.”

  “Great, just great,” said the guard. He stood aside as we walked past him and out of the door back into the corridor. Belladonna quickened her pace and we reached the elevator bank in record time. She punched the button. Clearly she was upset about something and I was desperate to ask her, but I couldn’t risk it. Not until we were out of the armory itself.

  It seemed to take the elevator forever to get there, but it was probably only a matter of seconds. We stepped on and the doors closed. I thought someone else might jump on at the last moment, but no one did and we were whisked upwards to the ground floor.

  When the doors parted and we walked through the secondary checkpoint, Belladonna waved to the guards and then we walked back out into the front of the credit union and out the main doors. On the street, Belladonna avoided the crosswalk and walked directly across to the parking lot. I almost had a hard time keeping up with her, but it wasn’t necessary to stay right behind her any longer now that we were out of there.

  She wove through several groups of cars in the parking lot and stopped by the truck. She opened the door and waited as if checking the tires while I slid inside.

  “Good,” I said simply.

  She slid into the truck, gunned the engine and then drove out of the parking lot through another exit instead of putting us back on to Mount Desert Street. She wove her way around several times until at last I pulled the Cloak off of me and looked at her.

  “We got it, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I have it in my pocket.” She kept her eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Did it strike you as odd that that guard spoke to me in English?”

  “Yeah, I wondered about that. But I figured it was okay.”

  “It’s not,” said Belladonna. “Inside the armory, Geralach is to be used. Other languages are expressly forbidden. It’s a silly rule, but one that we don’t break.”

  “If that’s the case then why would he speak to you in English?”

  “I don’t know, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out. Because frankly, I don’t think that guy was a what he seemed to be.”

  “How do you know?”

  Belladonna steered us down another street. “I don’t for certain. But something just seemed off about him. Didn’t you feel it?”

  “Not really,” I said. I was watching the rearview mirror too now. “But then again, I was just trying to keep it together being inside a lycan armory and all. I’m sorry but I missed any clue that he might not be who he said he was.”

  Belladonna shook her head. “And if he’d been the same guard as we saw when we entered the armory, then why was he all of a sudden downstairs in the armory itself? Plus, there’s no real log system. There doesn’t need to be. The retinal scan checkpoint provides all the logging information that’s necessary.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “What I was thinking was to get the hell out of there. If that guy was an intruder, then I didn’t want us wrapped up in the fallout when he gets discovered.”

  “You think he will?”

  “It’s more likely than not. Anyone who comes across him downstairs will speak Geralach to him and wonder why he’s using English. That’s almost certainly to get reported. Once that happens, the armory will go into lockdown until they can resolve it all. No one will be permitted to leave.”

  “Shit,” I said. “We got out just in time.”

  Belladonna smiled. “I appreciate you trusting me back there. I could tell you were dying to know what was going on, but refrained from asking.”

  “Well, I kinda couldn’t.”

  “It’s just good we got out when we could. I don’t know what that was all about, and I’m sure I don’t want to.”

  “You think it was related to us?”

  Belladonna finally brought us back out onto the highway. “I don’t know. What I do know is there was a guy in the armory claiming to be a security guard when he didn’t appear to be one. Not one molecule.”

  I sighed. “I forgot how mentally taxing it is being under that Cloak.” I leaned back into the seat. “I could use a nap and maybe a hit of juice.”

  “What if it’s one of your people?” asked Belladonna.

  “A vampire? What-operating as a rogue and infiltrating a lycan armory?” I shook my head. “Man, that would be about the stupidest thing one of my kind could ever do.”

  “Next to infiltrating a lycan armory using a stolen vampire relic.”

  I chuckled. “Well, yeah, clearly that takes second place. At least I had something of a plan. Plus, a lot of insider help.”

  “What matters now is that we’ve got the Corantu. Once Arthur returns, we’ll hopefully be able to narrow the target location down when they call us later tonight.” Belladonna gripped the steering wheel tighter. “And once I get Maxine back, I’ll be able to dispense some of my own justice to those who took her.”

  22

  By the time we got back to Belladonna’s house, Arthur was already there, sitting on the steps with a gaggle of cats circling around him, meowing, and looking for affection. I’d never known Arthur to be particularly fond of cat
s, but then again, I’d never known that he was in love with a lycan either. I realized there was an awful lot I didn’t know about him. Sure, I’d known about his most famous case involving Jack the Ripper, but by and large, he was something of an enigma. I wondered how much Belladonna knew about him.

  But judging by the smile on her face when she saw him with her cats, I didn’t think she was going to be too forthcoming with any information. And I supposed that was perfectly fine. Lovers, after all, ought to be able to trust each other.

  “How’d you make out?” he asked as we exited the truck.

  Belladonna still wore a big grin on her face. “How do you think we did? We’re back in one piece, after all.”

  Arthur cracked a grin, too. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

  “If you did, I’d rip you apart with my bare hands.”

  “Promise?”

  “All right,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss without this turning into some sort of erotic episode.” I shook my head. “You two are worse than teenagers on Spring Break.”

  Arthur pointed a finger at me. “If that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black. Since when did you turn into a prude, mate?”

  “Since I haven’t seen any action in next to forever.”

  “It’s been that long?”

  “It feels like that long,” I said. “And frankly I’m jealous you two are able to get together. I wish I was able to right now.”

  Belladonna laid a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll tone it down, I promise.”

  “Forget it, I’ll be fine. But we’ve got to plan this out right now and you should fill Arthur in on what went down at the armory.”

  Arthur stood. “What happened?”

  “Inside,” said Belladonna. “I don’t want anyone overhearing us outside.”

  Arthur glanced around. “We’re on a cliff overlooking the ocean with acres of forest around us. Who’s going to hear what we say?”