"And do they watch us, the Church, I mean?"
"I'd be shocked if they didn't. I'd also guess that at least one person on the forums is in Rome and wearing a white collar."
#
"You'll love this one," Luc said.
Gerhard sat in a cushioned seat before a large screen. The private theater was more akin to a university lecture hall than a mansion. While the four rows of seating were certainly nicer than those he'd used at school, larger, more luxurious with leather and the ability to recline, the small folding desktops felt strangely academic. Maybe more like first class seating on an airline, though Gerhard had only seen such things as he'd shuffled past toward coach.
Luc sat beside him on the front row, scrolling through images on a small tablet. He'd offered a reprieve from the day's practice since Gerhard's muscles felt as though they'd been replaced with wood. The morning's run was humiliating, his legs functioning at a fraction of what they had they day before. So instead of kick training, Luc had been showing him videos of hunts. Green night vision footage, between two and three screens at once, the audio composed of recorded radio chatter.
"This was my first hunt," Luc said. "You can hear me trying not to piss myself."
Gerhard smiled at the idea of such a man being afraid of anything.
The screen flickered and went black. A map opened on one side, a cluster of red dots tracking up a blue road. "Vetrni?" he asked, reading the name of the closest town.
"Bohemia," Luc said. "Paper mill makes the whole town smell like shit after a night of drinking."
The GPS dots turned off the main road, eventually stopping near a cluster of buildings.
"Check. Testing. Check," said the first voice. The label 'Nick' appeared as he spoke.
"Read ya loud'n clear," came a new voice, this one labeled 'Tom,' another name Gerhard didn't recognize. "Ya got me?"
"Read you," Nick said. "Luc? No, you turn it on like this."
"Testing?" Luc's voice rumbled.
The theater door opened, spilling light. An elderly man stepped inside, wearing a dark suit with no tie and a simple broadsword hanging from his waist.
"Master Schmidt." Luc fumbled with the remote, pausing the video and bringing up the lights. He stood. "You're back."
The old man nodded. "It's a pleasure to be home, Luc. Is everything well?"
"It is."
"Very good. I wanted to meet our guest." He smiled at Gerhard and extended a hand. He wore the same green-gemmed ring on his little finger as Alex Turgen. "I am Max Schmidt, protector of Lukrasus," he said in clear, though accented, German.
Gerhard rose to his feet and accepted it. "Gerhard Entz. It is a pleasure to meet you," he said, happy to be speaking the mother tongue. "Austrian?"
"I am. I apologize I was not here when you arrived. I trust your stay has been comfortable?"
"Yes. It is a beautiful home you have. Luc was showing me some videos."
Max smiled. "Very good. Master Turgen explained you were not entirely certain about joining us here."
Gerhard swallowed, forcing a smile. "This is all…a little overwhelming so far."
"He tells me that you don't believe in monsters," Max said with a knowing amusement.
Gerhard smiled again, lips closed. He'd hoped to have made it a full day without this discussion.
"There's no shame in that." He absently gestured to the screen. "Have you seen them on there?"
"Luc showed me a werewolf." It hadn't looked unlike the movie monsters he'd seen his entire life, though with less green.
"Good." Max ran a thumb and forefinger along his narrow moustache and looked at Umatri resting in his scabbard beside Gerhard's seat. "Umatri hasn't moved for you yet, has he?"
"No." He wasn't at all convinced the blade could do as they'd claimed, dreams or not. The idea was just too ridiculous.
"He's shy. Ibenus is, too. Khirzoor can be explained as party trick. But Lukrasus…" he patted his own sword, "she likes to show off. Would you like to see?"
"All right."
Max removed his shoes. Not exactly what Gerhard has expected. Schmidt stepped back and drew the sword with a dramatic flourish. "Each of us here has many duties." Max turned in slow spin, as if performing a waltz. "Do you know mine?"
Gerhard shook his head. "No."
The old man casually moved toward the wall. "I change the light bulbs." With that Max stepped onto the wood-paneled wall and twirled again, continuing his dance along it as if nothing had happened.
Gerhard's eyes widened. He took an unconscious step back, nearly colliding with Luc who was grinning.
"When we moved here…" Max swayed side to side, working closer to the ceiling. "They said we don't need a ladder, we have Max." He stepped onto the ceiling in one fluid motion. "So that is my job." He stopped, the sword flat before him and gave a small bow. "I can only do this in older buildings, mind you. One false step and I have to fix a hole." He walked across the ceiling effortlessly and stopped, his face nearly level with Gerhard's, though inverted.
Gerhard only looked at him, unsure what to say.
Max held his stare. He lifted the corner of his jacket and let it go. The fabric fell back in place, completely defying gravity.
"How?" Gerhard shook his head. "How are you doing that?"
"How do you think?" He looked down—up—at his feet. "No wires. Have you ever watched someone hang upside down? Their face turns purple. Is mine?"
"No."
"No. If you need your eyes to believe, then look. If you need to touch me, touch me. I am real. I am real and spitting in the face of physics. Isaac Newton spins in his grave as I stand here. What do you say to that?"
"I…I don't know."
"Say you believe and I'll show you how I get down."
#
"The building is the key," Allan said, clicking through street view images of Paris. They'd scoured the forums for three hours as Sam constructed some impressive proof to debunk the footage's validity. Victoria had pieced together screenshots of the location they could use to figure out where the men had been when the screamers had shown up. It wasn't much. But it was at least a start.
"Broken windows, probably abandoned. Every one of them so far has nested in abandoned buildings. Can't tell the style, but looks to be an alley entrance so it might not face a larger street. Four floors. Bars on the bottom windows. Alley is paved in brick, not asphalt."
"You've just described half the city," Sam said.
"Then we just ruled out the other half. Check realtor sites, see if maybe it's on one for rent or sale."
The library's door locks clicked and the door pushed open.
"Master Schmidt."
"Allan." He nodded to Sam. "Samantha."
"How was London?" Allan rose and Victoria followed his lead.
"The competition was fine, but uneventful." He turned to Victoria, rising from her seat. "The same cannot be said about you, it appears." He offered her a slender hand. "I am Max Schmidt."
"Victoria Martin," she said, accepting it.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Martin." He turned to the side, offering full view of the sword at his hip. "This is Lukrasus, my charge."
She smiled a sort of hello at the broadsword.
"Victoria was a dancer, once," Allan said.
Schmidt's blue eyes lit. "Were you now?" Still offering the weapon toward her, his fingertips drew an inch of steel from the scabbard.
"Me?" She chuckled and shook her head. "That was a long time ago."
"It's never too late to pick it up again," he said, the faintest sadness to his voice. Schmidt lowered the sword, ceasing the display.
Allan tightened his teeth, pitifully attempting to mask his own disappointment. Lukrasus needed a new protector and Victoria fit the bill. Give it time, he reminded himself.
"I just returned from a dance competition," Schmidt said.
"Were you competing?"
He snorted. "No. No those days are far behind me. Now I just go to observe and scout the participants. Lukrasus," he said at the puzzled expression, "She only selects dancers, you see."
"Ah. I'm sorry it was uneventful."
He gave a rueful smile. "Lukrasus will choose when she's ready." At seventy-five, Master Schmidt was the oldest active knight in fifty years. Twelve years ago he'd retired, taking the mantle of Master, and passing the sword to his squire, Jean. Allan had been there when Jean caught a cultist's rifle round during an ambush. He'd died saving them. The bond to a weapon is forever, and with no other protector, Schmidt had no other choice but to carry her again.
"We think we found a mantismere in Paris," Allan said, changing the subject.
"Really?"
"Video hit the web this morning. We're just trying to narrow down where exactly."
"How long do you estimate?" Schmidt asked.
Allan frowned. "Soon, we hope."
"By soon, you mean now," Sam said with a self-satisfied grin.
"You found it?" Victoria and Allan both asked, Allan's voice echoing a syllable behind hers.
"Looks that way. While you were prattling it up, I was working."
"Where?" Allan peered over her shoulder at an image of a plain building nestled on a small street. The barred windows appeared the same, though it was shot in the daylight.
"Old flats in the Thirteenth District." Sam scrolled down the screen past several pictures of empty and decayed rooms, ceilings sagging and walls punched with holes and scrawled with graffiti. "Found it on an urban explorers page. People breakin' in for a little adventure. Couple shots of the interior. Look to be a year old, so should work fine."
"Good. Bloody good work."
Sam shrugged. "I know."
Allan turned back to Schmidt. The taut corners of the old man lips were turned up in that subtle proud grin that had taken him years to recognize. "I'll tell Master Turgen we found it."
Sam cleared her throat.
"That Sam found it," he corrected.
#
"The former Arms Masters," Chaya said, setting a shallow plastic tray in front of Gerhard, "thought that each knight should carry a sidearm they prefer. Good sentiment, but that led to everyone carrying different weapons that couldn't exchange magazines or ammunition." She set a tray in front of Victoria. "Assigning everyone the same weapon alleviates that problem."
Victoria glanced over at Gerhard's and Sam's matching HK pistols, formidable with fat barrels and molded plastic grips. Then she looked down at the little Walther beside two small magazines, a tray of bullets, a plastic holster, and a black metal tube. "Don't I get one?"
"No," Chaya said. "Since Allan insists on pretending to be James Bond, you get the same weapon he does. That way you can swap mags if need be."
"Don't worry," Allan whispered. He stood beside her at the table, his own unholstered Walther resting before him. "You'll love it."
She looked back at the gun, hiding her frown. Allan was more clueless about women than she'd thought if he couldn't recognize an obvious power play.
"Since we run suppressed more often than not," Chaya continued, still pacing behind them, "you'll be practicing both with and without it. That little bit of weight on the end will really throw off your aim if you don't practice. Suppressed doesn't mean silenced. They're still loud. Not that wet fart noise movies tell you about."
Sam snorted a chuckle.
"But," Gerhard said, fingering the edge of the tray without reaching inside, "guns can't harm demons. Why should we devote this much to them?"
"Because demons might be the tip of the threat pyramid, but they're hardly the only thing," Chaya said. "Familiars are more common. Wounding a demon with a bullet of the correct materiel might help slow it down. Worst case, kill the body but live to hunt another day."
Gerhard nodded unsurely and reached a tentative finger inside the tray
"First things first, load five rounds in each magazine, but don't touch your weapons."
Victoria loaded the tiny practice magazines, fighting the spring to get the last one in each. Chaya and Allan assured her that they'd break in soon enough. Once loaded, and coached on how to hold it, interrupted with a dozen safety reminders, Chaya let them shoot.
The range resembled more of a concrete ballroom beneath the mansion. Round columns along the wall supported a vaulted ceiling, painted with a faded blue sky and dingy clouds stained with years of smoke and neglect. Five targets hung from a grid-work of metal tracks, suspended eight feet below the ceilings, running the full length of the room. Chaya set them for three meters.
"Not bad," Allan said after Victoria had emptied her second mag. Two of the shots had missed the man-shaped silhouette entirely.
Victoria glanced at the others' targets as she pulled off her huge earmuffs. Sam's grouping resulted in a single jagged hole in the paper man's chest, big enough for two fingers to slip through. Even Gerhard, who had never fired a gun until today, had all his shots in the space of a dinner plate. His lips drawn in a flat line he studied it critically, obviously unhappy. There was something different about him. Colder, more serious than he'd been before. Allan's target was somewhere in between, as if he'd tried his hardest to make a three-inch ring around the center without actually touching it. "It's bloody awful."
"It's not bad for your first time." He put a hand on her shoulder, then quickly withdrew it. He'd been acting odd all day and once again Victoria regretted taking his hand the night before. At least, she thought she took it, though she didn't exactly recall doing it. But his reaction and sudden change since only confirmed her suspicion that she had made him uncomfortable.
"I've shot before. Remember?"
"Was that your first time?" He started reloading his empty magazines. "Shooting at the screamers?"
"Yeah. And I shot better than this."
"Then that's good. Fear makes you focused. For most people it's the other way around."
"Terrible," Chaya said from behind her. "You should stick with shotguns."
Sam's jaw noticeably tightened, two days of repaired rapport crumbling at the unfortunate reminder that Victoria had introduced herself with a 12 gauge to the side of her head.
"It's my second time to ever shoot," Victoria replied as civilly as possible.
"With that underpowered thing, I expect you to take out eyes at ten meters. I can't trust you with a sidearm until you can do that."
"Then give her one of the bigger guns," Allan said.
"No."
"No? Are you honestly refusing to equip my student?"
Chaya's mouth drew into a poisoned smile. "I'm equipping her with the exact weapon as her mentor. Masters Turgen and Schmidt both agreed that I should be Arms Master. You might outrank me, but not on this range. My decision is for unity among hunters. You chose not to adopt the sidearm that I selected."
A tense silence fell over the range.
"All right, then." Allan shrugged. "I'd like to upgrade to the new standard sidearm."
Chaya's mouth opened. "Yes. Of course." She took Victoria's gun and tray. "Just give me a few minutes."
"You don't need to do this," Victoria whispered once Chaya had hurried off to a pair of giant safes in the far corner.
"Of course I do. My job is to make sure you're outfitted with the best possible gear. If you prefer her gun, then that's what we'll use. I never shoot mine, anyway."
Chaya returned with a pair of larger pistols and accoutrements. The magazines were bigger, a lot bigger, and so were the bullets. The flat-sided suppressors were easily twice as long as the Walther's had been.
They loaded their magazines as Chaya continued working with Gerhard, moving the target back to five meters. Once they were ready, Chaya walked them both through the safety and handling lecture again, a distinct air of satisfaction to her voice this time.
Holding it tight, Victoria lifted the gun, and sighted it in on the orange d
ot in the paper man's chest. Bracing for the hard kick, she squeezed the trigger.
The kick didn't happen, at least not as much as she's expected. In fact, it hurt less than the smaller gun had. She's missed the damn dot, but the hole was right up against it like they were best friends posing for a picture.
"You like it?" Chaya asked with the same tone a waiter might use when offering the first taste of some fine and expensive wine.
"Definitely."
"Good. Allan, were you aiming for the head?"
The hole in Allan's target was perfectly centered where its nose should be.
"Not at all."
Chaya shook her head and they continued their practice. The steady cracks of shots filled the range as they all fired, riddling their targets with holes. Chaya moved up and down the line, offering pointers, correcting stances, and doling praise and criticism in measured amounts. Victoria's hits were at least all within the man's silhouette, even when the targets were rolled back to twenty meters. The groupings were still less than Gerhard's, who'd taken to shooting with a technical fervor that Victoria hadn't expected. He'd seemed so blasé about everything but his beloved keris since they'd arrived. There was definitely something different about him. His absolute focus on the perfect grip, stance, and follow up only reiterated it.
"So what do you think?" Allan asked as they reloaded their magazines. "You prefer it?"
"Very much so."
"Then it's settled." He sighed. "I'm going to miss my little gun. Always wanted to wear it with a tux."
She looked at him through the corner of her eye, brow arched. "You wear tuxes often?"
Allan shook his head. "No. Though I always thought it'd be kinda fun to go on a hunt in one."
The image of Allan, standing at the end of that filthy Manchester hallway, sword in hand and wearing a black tuxedo with shiny lapels and shoes, flashed in her mind. She gave a throaty laugh. "I'd like to see that. Seriously, though, if you prefer your gun, don't change it on account of me."
Ibenus (Valducan series) Page 11