FALCON: Resistance (KBS Next Generation Book 1)

by Victoria Danann

  “Crow?” She took in his native American features.

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s really Crowsfeet, but nobody calls me that. My grandfather saw bird prints in the wet sand outside the house where I was born and insisted I should be named Crowsfeet. He had no idea that was a term that white people use for wrinkles they don’t want.”

  “Why don’t you change your name? To something like, Crowflies? Like ‘as the crow flies’.”

  He chuckled. “I like it. Where were you the day I was born? Wish you’d named me instead.”

  “Well, everybody around here has alternames. You can call yourself whatever you want. The first day I was here I told somebody they could call me Gretchen the Great.” She grinned.

  He laughed.

  Her phone buzzed again. “Hello?”

  “Are you lost?”

  “You know I’m not lost because you can see me.” She winked at Crow. “Coming right now.”

  Indeed Wakey did have a red car. It was a tomato-red Ferrari.

  He came around to open the door for her, but she made no move to get in.

  “Oh. My. God.” she said.

  “You like it?”

  “Well…” He gestured for her to get in, then closed the door after her. When he slid into the driver’s seat, he started talking like there hadn’t been a pause. “I read somewhere that, of all the sports cars, Ferraris impress women the most. Must be something about the streamlined shape.”

  “Must be,” she said. “Most women are not into speed.”

  “Okay. I see that when it comes to innuendos you’re king. So I surrender.”

  “I think that’s for the best.”

  He chuckled. “You know, you look stunning tonight. So I have to ask again, have you changed your mind about being interested in me? ‘Cause I’ll throw my partner out of a whister for a chance at you.”

  “Stop,” she drawled.

  “Ah. What was that?”

  “What?”

  “I heard a little South slip in there. Where you from, sugar?”

  She laughed. “Caught me. Mobile. Alabama. I pretty much lost all hint of accent after I’d been in California for a while.”

  “But not all.”

  “Guess not.” They pulled into the line of cars leaving the base. “You see the way these servicemen look at this car?”

  He smiled and slanted his eyes at her. “How do they look at this car?”

  “Like they’re thinking about killing you for it.”

  Wakey snickered. “They have no idea what I do to earn stuff like this.”

  “No. They can’t imagine. I’ve known about vampire for years and it still seems unreal.” Gretchen felt the air go heavy and decided it was time for a change of subject. “How about you? Where are you from?”

  He rolled down the window and showed his ID to the guard, who then waved them through.

  As Wakey was rolling the window back up he answered her question. “Indiana farm boy.”

  “You still have family there?”

  “Oh yeah. Good old salt of the earth folks.”

  “That must be where you get it.”

  “Where I get what?”

  “Being a good guy.”

  Wakey snorted. “What makes you think I’m a good guy?”

  “Well, you’re paying your sister’s college tuition and, since I transferred the funds, I know it’s not state school tuition. It’s high dollar education.” He shrugged. “Then there’s what you’re doing right here. Trying to sort things out on your friend’s behalf. So far as I can see you wouldn’t get anything out of that except seeing him happy.” Wakey looked out the driver side window. “There’s no point in denying it. I’ve got you pegged. Nice. Guy.”

  “Okay! Will you stop that? I have a reputation as a gritty bad ass vampire hunter to protect.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  It had turned dark when they were leaving the base and Gretchen felt momentary regret about that. She had to agree with Wakey that it was nice to get away from Jefferson Unit for a few hours. Even the darkness interrupted by artificial lights of every size, shape, and purpose was agreeable scenery.

  She’d been staring out the window in silence for a time.

  “Is this the first time you’ve been off base?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Does it show?”

  “You mean because you’re acting like somebody just released from prison?”

  She laughed. “Yes. Because of that.”

  “You wanna go fast?” he asked in a devilish tone.

  “No! I’m scared of fast.”

  “What will you give me to not go fast?”

  “I’ll promise to worship your car.”

  “On your knees?”

  “Well… no. I like the knees of these jeans the way they are. How about if I worship the car from afar?”

  “You made a rhyme. You’re an auto poet.”

  “I’m not, but you’re an autocrat wannabe.”

  “Aw. Good one. Maybe you can persuade me over dinner to not go fast on the way back. We’re here.”

  They pulled into the parking lot of the Barberry Coast Steak and Grill. The parking lot was well lit and the building was inviting, constructed of vertical weathered logs with crossed faux tiki torches burning outside.

  When she got out of the car she said, “Tiki torches and Barberry Coast. Hmmm.”

  “Come on. Yours is not to reason why.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The atmosphere on the inside was much more upscale than she’d expected. Pristine linen tablecloths, sparkling wine glasses, dim lighting perfected, and white lilies set her on alert.

  “Are you sure I’m dressed okay for this?” she whispered.

  “Perfect,” he said as he held two fingers up for the hostess. He stepped up to her lectern. “Hey. How are you?” The hostess was suddenly taking a sincere interest in helping Wakenmann with whatever he needed. Her fake eyelashes batted slowly over a smile that was only for him, as if she could wish the other woman away by pretending he’d come alone. If Wakey noticed the spectacle taking place, he didn’t let on. “You have a table by the back window? Something quiet?”

  The girl smiled like she’d won the lottery. “Of course, sir. My pleasure.” Wakey’s smile turned genuine when Gretchen turned away and made a slight gagging noise.

  The hostess handed two menus off to a waiter who indicated that Gretchen and Wakey should follow. She smiled at Wakey’s gentlemanly gesture indicating she should go before him.

  The waiter led them to a table in the back flanked by windows that overlooked a small manmade lake with lighted fountains.

  After they were seated, they received menus, ice water, and a wine menu. Wakey ordered wine without looking at the menu.

  As soon as they were alone, Gretchen said, “This is nice. I wasn’t expecting something so…”

  “Sophisticated?” Wakey said while smearing butter on warm dark bread.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey. Soccer moms gotta eat, too.”

  Grethen cocked her head. “Huh. I didn’t realize that. I guess I thought they just sit in the basement for a while plugged in.”

  Wakey laughed around the bread. “You’re kinda judgey.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not really. Just kidding. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll be a soccer mom.” Wakey shook his head. “No? Well, if I am, I hope I can eat at a place like this real often. Two nights tuna out of the can. One night at Barberry Coast.”

  “You know, the more I get to know you, the more I’m sure you’d get along with my partner.”

  “Nobody can ever predict whether two other people will get along.”

  “Ah, but you’re wrong. I’m a man of many talents, currently expanding into matchmaking.”

  She chuffed. “Good luck.”

  “Okay, well let’s…” The waiter arrived and looked at Wakey with expectation. “You know what you want?” he asked Gretchen. She shook her head. “Giv
e us two and a half minutes.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Two and a half minutes?” she said. “You may be the most unusual person I’ve ever met.”

  Wakey’s jaw went slack. “I think that’s the best compliment I’ve ever heard.”

  “You thought that was a compliment?”

  He smiled. “What do you want? Snake or tail?”

  “Ew. Now I don’t want anything.”

  “Don’t be a pussy. Choose or I’ll go all misogynistic on your ass and order for you.”

  “Okay. Okay.” She started perusing. When the waiter returned, she was ready for him. “Field greens with balsamic. Pine nut crusted sea bass and au gratin potatoes instead of garlic mash.”

  Wakey ordered steak. When the waiter left he said, “Oops. If I’d known you were going for the seafood, I’d have ordered white instead of red.” He lifted his wine glass.

  Her eyes lit with amusement remembering the dinner they’d shared with Falcon and he knew that was what she was thinking about.

  “So what’s the big secret? It doesn’t really matter what it is. The evening is a win for me even if you don’t really have anything mentionworthy. Nice place. Good food, I’m betting. Okay company…”

  “Ouch. No woman has ever accused me of being ‘okay’ company before.”

  “Well, it might have been a bit of an understatement.”

  “Yeah? Like how much of an understatement?”

  “Sir Wakenmann,” she leaned forward and barely whispered the ‘Sir’, “you couldn’t possibly need your ego stroked.”

  She closed her eyes in a wince the second she’d said it because she knew what was coming next.

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact it’s not my ego that needs stroking. But if you have a spare stroke or two…”

  “Enough! You’ve reclaimed your crown. Now get on with it. Why am I here?”

  Wakey turned serious, which was unusual enough to make Gretchen pay attention. “You’re here because I’m about to betray my partner, because I think it’s for his own good. Please don’t make me wrong about that.”

  “If you’re asking if I can keep a secret, you already know the answer. People who can’t keep secrets don’t get to work for Black Swan. That said, I don’t know that I want to be the cause of you violating a confidence.”

  “It’s not really a confidence. If you’d been here at the time, you’d know all about it, too. In some ways Jefferson Unit is like a small town. Everybody knows everybody. But we knights have a special spotlight reserved just for us. We don’t make a move that’s unobserved. And people love to talk.”

  She nodded. “I can see that. You’re kind of like celebrities. Bigger than life for sure.”

  He smirked and opened his mouth, but before he said anything their salads were delivered. Wakey dived into his. “Hmmm. This is good food.”

  “I concur,” she said. “Of course, everything they make at J.U. is great, too.”

  “Can’t argue that. What was the food like at Presidio?”

  “Same, but just like here, most of the time I end up getting a sandwich or soup from the Hub and eating at my desk. Hoping to get a real assistant soon.” She took a bite and chewed while keeping her eyes on Wakey. “You stalling?”

  He shook his head. “So you know Farnsworth was the Director for a long time.” She nodded. “I’m talking long time and the workload was such that she could handle it alone. But about five years ago she got an assistant who transferred in from the Paris office. We didn’t know it at the time, but Farnsworth was getting married to the Sovereign and planning to retire. Part of the plan was to groom the assistant to take over.

  “So this French woman, who was about seven years older than we were, just knocked Kris on his ass. In a figurative way. It was like love at first sight or some magical shit.”

  Wakey could see she was already enthralled with the story. “Don’t forget to save room for dessert and coffee. They make this thing…”

  “Come on. I don’t want to talk about dessert. ‘Love at first sight’ and…”

  He smiled on the inside at the proof that she was hooked. If she was that interested in the story, chances were that she was still interested in Falcon.

  “Here’s the weird thing. Well, one of the weird things. She looked a lot like you. Same coloring. Like Hawking is always saying, ‘Life is strange’. You’re a lot more beautiful,” he rushed to add. His eyes dropped to her chest, “and a whole lot more curvalicious.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are we at the fat thing again?”

  Wakey’s mouth fell open. “No, Gretchen. Nobody thinks you’re fat. Especially not Kris. He told me why he went there, but I’ll get to that later in the story. There’s nothing wrong with curves. Real men don’t want women who are like boys without the penis. Viva la difference.

  “Okay. So we’re getting off track here. Point is, that Kris thought he was in love with this woman. She was polite, but clearly not interested. That didn’t stop Kris though. It’s like he thought that if he put in enough time and effort, she’d change her mind. For years he took her flowers every week and asked her out. She always thanked him and said the flowers were pretty, but she wasn’t ever going to be the right girl for him.”

  Wakey shook his head and looked away for a minute like he was reliving a conversation. “He was deaf, dumb, and blind when it came to her. I was constantly telling him to give it up and move on, but Kris can be the poster boy for stubborn.”

  As they talked, the waiter took salad plates away and brought entrees.

  Gretchen took in a whiff of the delectable aromas wafting around the table. “I don’t know whether to start with how good it smells or how good it looks, but I’ll tell you this. My experience with food is that when it looks and smells this incredible, the taste isn’t going to be disappointing.”

  She pulled a bite of sea bass away with her fork, took a bite, and closed her eyes. “Hmmm. Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum.”

  Wakey chuckled. “Well said. You should be a food critic for the New York Times.”

  “Honestly? If I read a review of a restaurant that was four words long. Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. I’d go there.”

  Wakey studied her while chewing. “You have a point.”

  “So. What happened? With the former D.O.”

  “This is where the story sort of crosses into psychosis. You know how rare it is for women to be infected?”

  Gretchen’s brow knitted like she was trying to figure out what he was talking about. All of a sudden her eyes widened. “You don’t mean…”

  “Yeah. I do. She was infected with the vampire virus. What’s worse? Guess who found her crouching over prey in an alley?”

  “Oh gods no.”

  He was nodding. “You can’t make something like this up. It just so happened that Monq had asked for new specimens for the labs. You know he keeps some on tap down there.”

  “I did know about the research subjects.”

  “So they captured her and brought her back to J.U. She had the dubious honor of being the first female vampire to ever be caught and brought in alive.” Wakey looked at Gretchen’s au gratin potatoes with envy. “Can I try those?”

  She looked down at her plate. “Sure. I don’t have foibles about sharing food. Dive in.”

  He reached across the table, got a forkful, and kept it balanced until he could get it into his mouth. “Ah!” he said. “Damn, that’s good. I’m getting those next time I’m here.”

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  “No. When I’m not at J.U., I’m in Manhattan, but it’s nice to have a local place to take a friend for a quiet dinner. Plus, I need to start the car once in a while.”

  Gretchen held up her wine glass. “Here’s to Ferraris that run smoothly and local au gratin potatoes.”

  Wakey chuckled, clinked her glass and said, “To potatoes!”

  When they set their glasses down, she said, “You’re at the part of the story where you’re about to tel
l me what happened after the capture.”

  He took in a big breath. “Oh, yes. Well, Kris lost his mind. He sat down on the cement floor outside her cage and wouldn’t leave, because he was afraid they would put her down when he wasn’t watching. He was determined that she wasn’t going to be killed even though she wasn’t, um, herself anymore. While he sat outside her cell watching over her, she crouched inside looking at him like he was a juicy burger fixed just the way she liked it.”

  Gretchen sat back in her chair and blew out a big breath. “Poor Falcon.”

  “You want me to go on?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t stop now and you know it.”

  He gave her a ghost of a smile, but couldn’t manage much more. It would probably be ‘too soon’ to relive those events for the rest of his life. “We ended up getting a hospital bed from the Infirmary and rolling it into the hallway so that he could sleep outside that damn cell. He wouldn’t even leave to go pee or take a shower unless I took his place and swore on my mother’s heart that I wouldn’t let them kill her while he was gone.”

  When dinner dishes were taken away, Gretchen’s very expressive face remained a mixture of horror and sympathy.

  “I’m having coffee,” he said. “You want coffee?” She nodded absently. He looked at the waiter. “Bring us one of those dessert sampler things and two spoons.”

  “Very good, sir.” The waiter smiled as he tabulated the bill including wine, coffee and dessert. He was expecting a nice tip. He’d been in wait service long enough to recognize a generous tipper when he saw one and he had Wakenmann pegged as a guy who wasn’t stingy.

  Somebody appeared magically with cups, a small pitcher of real cream, an assortment of sweeteners including raw sugar, and a gleaming pot of coffee.

  They sat silently while Gretchen concocted a sweet creamy liquid dessert that might have been plain old boring black coffee in the hands of a lesser mortal. Wakey watched with amusement and wished, for the hundredth time, that Falcon hadn’t seen her first. He had a theory that women with a sweet tooth were good in bed. So far he’d never personally seen the theory disproved.

  A rectangular platter was set between them in the middle of the table with five scrumptious desserts containing enough sugar to use up the average person’s allowance for a year.