ONSET: Blood of the Innocent

by Glynn Stewart

  “A lot of somebodies,” David agreed. “Get yourself linked in with Wilbur, Lange and Dallas,” he ordered. “I’ll be on the ground; I won’t have the high level. It’ll be up to you and McCreery where the strikes need to go once the call is in, understand?”

  “Yes, Commander. I’ll have a conference channel set up before you land.”

  “I hope we won’t need it,” he said quietly, “but worst-case scenario, Control…Lange and Dallas have enough bunker-busters loaded to collapse the whole damn complex in on itself.

  “If we’re forced to fall back and I’m down, I want them to bring the whole damn Mountain down. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leitz paused.

  “Good luck, Commander.”

  AS THEY CAME around Mount Scott, David caught himself holding his breath and studying the threat detector system over McCreery’s shoulder. Given what Familias Romanov had pulled together to defend their convoy of fledglings, it was entirely possible that the Mountain had significant concealed anti-air defenses—defenses that could very easily ruin his people’s day.

  “I am negative on ground radar, I repeat, we are negative on ground radar,” the lead helicopter reported. “We are in clean.”

  “At least as far as tech goes, anyway,” McCreery muttered to David. “As I recall, the Arbiter knew exactly where we were even with Hellet veiling us.”

  “He did,” he confirmed. “I doubt we’re truly going to sneak up on him. I just want him focused right on the front door.”

  “How are we doing that?” the pilot asked.

  “The most obvious way possible. Drop our stealth, Agent McCreery, and then land us right outside the bunker doors. Let’s…see what happens.”

  The flotilla of helicopters split apart, five headed to each of the target silos while the last helicopter, ONSET Thirteen, suddenly became much more visible and charged right down the center.

  This was the moment where one asshole with a Stinger missile could destroy whatever chance of a peaceful resolution there was, and David stopped himself from holding his breath again.

  Nothing happened, and McCreery dropped the Pendragon into a carefully maintained but empty parking lot directly in front of the bunker access tunnel.

  “It’s on you now, sir,” she told him. “I’m linked in with Leitz and the fire support. Go get ’em!”

  Grabbing his carbine, David stepped back into the main passenger compartment, where Stone and Hellet were waiting for him, exchanging a nod with Lord Riley as he entered.

  “Are we good?”

  Stone slammed one of his custom-made hundred-round drum magazines into his M60 with an audible thunk and a grin visible even through his tinted faceplate.

  “Oh, hells yes, sir,” he replied, his voice even higher than usual with excitement.

  “Young and I are ready,” Riley replied cheerfully.

  “I’m ready,” Hellet said more sedately. “This place…feels very strange, sir.”

  David had been focused on the flight and the plan, but now that Hellet pointed it out, he Saw it. There was a strange aura seeping up into the helicopter from the ground. It was nothing like the aura of death and decay he was used to associating with vampires.

  It was…calming, soothing. And he could also tell he was only catching the very fringes of the spell that was being woven somewhere under his feet.

  “Well, now we know at least part of how they keep the fledglings under control,” he told her. “You’ve got the explosives?”

  Hellet patted a satchel at her side, presumably filled with the multiple kilograms of magically enhanced C4 that would act as their doorknocker if the Keepers declined to cooperate.

  “Let’s move.”

  DAVID LED the way out of the helicopter and across the concrete outside, studying the area around him with both his mundane gaze and his Sight.

  The soothing aura had sunk into the stones and concrete around them, an aftereffect of a long-sustained magic. He could hear birds in the distance, and a gentle breeze swept across the compound, rustling the branches of the trees surrounding it.

  It didn’t feel at all like what he’d been expecting, and he shook himself, jerking his head for his two Agents to follow him as he set off toward the big security doors.

  There’d been no attempt to pretend the bunker hadn’t been reopened, he noted. That was probably reasonable, as it wouldn’t be obvious to an overhead flight and the bunker was at the heart of the old SAC compound, surrounded by forests, mountains, and park for twenty kilometers in every direction.

  The vampires would have known someone was coming long before they reached this door. The massive steel doors looked like the bunker had never been decommissioned, an impressive feat, given that the original doors had been stripped out and the entrance blocked with concrete.

  “They don’t seem to be expecting guests,” Stone pointed out. “They blocked up the old security gatehouse.” He pointed at a chunk of the concrete wall that had once held a window and door, a side access for people on foot.

  “Cameras on the top,” David replied, gesturing toward them. “They know we’re here. Let’s go say hi.”

  He paused, considering.

  “Lord Riley, Second Young.” He turned to the Elfin. “I’d like you to hang back and keep an eye on things. If there’s any surprises…well, feel free to come save our asses, but a second string to our bow sounds healthy.”

  He wasn’t quite sure what to expect as they approached the big steel doors. The cameras were clearly active, moving slowly in the midmorning light. Whoever was watching through them would have seen the helicopter landing and the approach of the three Agents in black body armor.

  The soothing air to the whole place struggled against David’s sure knowledge that violence was going to tear this place apart shortly.

  “Ready the explosives,” he told Hellet as they approached the door. “Looks like we’re going to need to knock.”

  “Wait, look!” she replied, waving to the door.

  It had begun to open, the two big doors slowing swinging outward. They moved enough to open a space that would fit one person, then stopped.

  There was no light inside, just pitch blackness. A man-sized gap leading into the abyss.

  David swallowed.

  “Well, it seems a shame to waste the invitation, doesn’t it? Riley, keep an ear to the radio; we’ll call for help if things go south.

  “Stone, Hellet…let’s go.”

  STEPPING BETWEEN THE MASSIVE, foot-thick steel doors into the darkness inside the bunker gave David pause. With his every action being recorded by cameras in both his helmet and his subordinates, however, he forced down the atavistic caveman afraid of the dark and pushed through.

  “I’ve got no lights,” he murmured into his microphone. His own vision could pick out some details, but even he had problems seeing when there was no light at all. “Nothing at all. Even the vampires can’t see much in this shit.”

  He glanced around, comparing what he could see to the map running on his HUD.

  “Looks like they dug out the concrete plug but otherwise left the structure the same,” he concluded. “Stone, Hellet, switch to thermal and follow me.”

  “Should I give us light?” the Mage asked.

  “Not yet,” David told her. “Let them play their games…but as I give the word, light this place like up like the Fourth of July.”

  “Wilco.”

  The entrance tunnel was wide enough for two eighteen-wheelers to pass abreast with comfortable room to spare and a good two hundred feet long. The three ONSET Agents made their way down it in silence that grew more uncomfortable with each step.

  “Somebody opened the door,” Stone finally said, breaking it. “They know we’re here. I feel like I’m trapped in a fucking kill box.”

  “Hellet?” David asked.

  “Shielding us,” she confirmed. “Unless they drop the entire mountain on us, I think we’re good from at least the fi
rst surprise.”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” he advised. “Keep moving.”

  As they reached the other end of the tunnel, they ran into a matching set of massive steel doors. It wasn’t clear from their intelligence if the inner doors had been removed, but the Keepers seemed to have replaced them either way.

  David was about to order Hellet to break out the explosives, then decided to wait and see what happened.

  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when the doors began to swing open, a dim light—bright enough to eyes adjusted to pitch blackness but still soft and gentle—spilling out to frame a small woman with long blond hair wearing a plain white robe.

  As she stepped out into the tunnel, orbs of the same gentle, warm light came with her, hovering around the vampiric Mage as she faced David and his people from barely ten feet away.

  David left his weapons at the ready, knowing that Stone would have the Keeper covered.

  “We are here—”

  “We know why you’re here,” she told him. “You are Commander David White of the Office of the National Supernatural Enforcement Teams and you are here under the authority of Standing Order Twenty-one of the United States Supernatural Law Enforcement Offices.”

  David said nothing, leaving the silence to grow.

  “Since you haven’t tried to shoot me yet, I suppose you are at least willing to talk,” she finally continued. “Come with me, Commander White. The Arbiter is waiting for you.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes. We’ve been waiting for someone like you for quite some time now.”

  That was going to sound great on the recordings later.

  “Like me?” he asked carefully.

  “Someone willing to listen,” the Mage, who was almost certainly older than the late teens she looked. “Someone willing to give a peace a chance.”

  24

  The white-robed vampire led David and his people deeper into the Mountain. Just past the second set of big doors was an underground loading dock, with space for ten eighteen-wheelers. A single big truck sat at one end of the space, clearly visible to David despite the dim lighting.

  Their guide kept a trio of floating balls of light drifting around them, making it easier to see where they were going. The dim lighting was fine for David—and he suspected it was fine for the vampires—but it might have been a problem for Stone or Hellet.

  That the lighting was clearly targeted for vampire senses was telling, in its own way. This wasn’t a place that they expected to have mundane humans or Thralls or guests. This was purely a place for the vampires themselves.

  There were half a dozen other white-robed vampires in the loading area, making no attempt to conceal themselves but also not visibly armed. They didn’t look like a defensive contingent, but David saw no other reason for anyone to be in the dock.

  Once they exited the docks, his entire image of the Mountain took a shattering body blow. Their guide led them through a set of double doors decorated with a mural of an old cathedral and into the main spaces of the underground complex.

  He’d been half-expecting it to look like the ONSET bunkers he’d been in: utilitarian blank concrete and steel. He had not been expecting dim lighting, quiet music and soft carpet. The concrete walls had been carefully painted, the flooring installed with delicate competence, and speakers added to pipe through relaxing music.

  David lost half a step in sheer surprise—and the wry smile the woman leading them gave him the impression she’d anticipated his reaction.

  “This is not a place mortal eyes were meant to see,” she warned him. “Your presence risks the calm we work to achieve to help the teknon find themselves once more. For them, the smell of human blood is a…trigger. They easily lose what little control they have.”

  “I see no reason for us to approach the…teknon, you called them?” David said.

  “There is none,” she admitted. “But we are extremely careful about even who enters this facility. No human has set foot in the Mountain since we first brought the teknon here. It should be fine, but I worry.”

  She acted more like a nurse than the bloodthirsty monster he was used to vampires being.

  “Come,” she instructed. “I am to bring you to the Arbiter as swiftly as possible, before your friends above us decide you have been missing for too long.”

  David checked his radio connection. So far, so good, but he wasn’t sure if he’d lose it as he went deeper—at which point, the Keeper’s concern would be very real. If he went dark for long enough, Mason and Sokol would come in looking for him.

  “Let’s not let it get to that, shall we?” he agreed.

  She nodded and continued down the hallway, taking several turns that he carefully made sure his augmented-reality systems were recording. So far, everything they’d seen had the same bones as the old SAC bunker; the vampires had just redecorated.

  “Here,” she told them, stopping at a door that didn’t look particularly different from any others. “He is waiting for you.”

  “Thank you,” David replied. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I didn’t give it, Commander White,” she replied calmly, then opened the door for him to enter.

  He nodded his understanding of her deflection and then led his people into the lair of the Arbiter.

  THE ARBITER WAS no less creepy on repeated exposure. He sat behind a massive oak desk, leaning forward with his hands clasped together on the table as David and his team entered. Three chairs were in front of the desk, on an absolutely gorgeous geometric rug the ONSET Commander hesitated to guess either the age or value of.

  Except for the rug, the desk and the chairs, the room was empty. Its size, given that at this point they were under several hundred feet of mountain, was grandeur enough—and the Arbiter clearly knew that.

  “Anaxis,” David greeted the vampire with a bow of his head.

  The creature chuckled and gestured the ONSET people to the chairs.

  “I am impressed that you know that name,” he admitted, “but it has been over two thousand years since Anaxis of Athens died and almost as long since I used that name. I’m more impressed you found this place, though I must admit I suspected it was inevitable.”

  “What should I call you, then?” David asked. “Bishop Adrian François? Adam Waters?”

  The Arbiter chuckled again.

  “Please, Commander, call me the Arbiter. It is the only name I have used in almost two hundred years. Besides”—he smiled—“if it wasn’t for the Revolution, it would have been Cardinal François. We were having inevitable problems arranging my trip to Rome, and then, well, my country exploded.”

  He made a throwaway gesture with one hand, then clasped them back together.

  “I suspected it was coming, but my attempts to ingratiate myself with the elements that fomented revolution were undermined by the rest of the Church. Such were the times, Commander. Times such as those—and times such as today—are chaotic tides. You cannot guide them, only choose if you will sail upon them or be swept away.”

  “You know why I’m here,” David told him. “I am ordered to intern this facility and take all members of the so-called Keepers prisoner.”

  “I have told you my oaths,” the Arbiter replied. “You know I will fight you if the teknon are threatened…and I will not if you will guarantee their safety. These are my fetters, the oaths I chose long ago.

  “I do not regret them, Commander White, only that the collision of our duties may require me to destroy you.”

  In David’s experience in reading auras, no one ever told the entire truth with entire sincerity all of the time. Except…in both of his conversations with the Arbiter, that was what the man had done.

  Two thousand years of self-examination, he supposed, allowed you to know yourself far better than most people’s four score and ten.

  “My orders with regards to the fledglings from the Committee are quite specific,” David told the old vampire. “If, in my judgment, they are
safely contained, they are to be left as is. I think the incident with the trucks struck a chord in my superiors.”

  The Arbiter was silent and David saw the relief flood through the ancient being’s aura…followed by trepidation?

  “Then, I have one single additional condition on the surrender of the Mountain and all of its inhabitants,” he said. “If you take control of this place, you must defend it. If you will refrain from harming the teknon and I know the Familias will not harm the teknon, then my Keepers can have no part in the battle to come.”

  “The battle to come?” David asked carefully.

  “Every Familias has agents in my ranks,” the Arbiter said calmly. “By now, they all know you are here. Come nightfall, they will move. They will hold back nothing, Commander, for this facility represents their future, and they are aware of its lack of defenses.

  “So long as Omicron holds this facility, I offer a truce: if Standing Order Twenty-one is lifted, every vampire that leaves this place will be Truce-bound, sworn to harm no human and observe the laws of the United States.

  “That is the Truce I propose, that I will bind all future vampires on this continent to,” he concluded.

  “And yet they must feed,” David said carefully. “We would be forced to destroy any of them that broke the truce.”

  “There is no human blood in the Mountain, Commander,” the vampire pointed out. “I own and operate a number of cattle ranches and pig farms across the United States and Canada, as well as several slaughterhouses.

  “It took me fifty years to find a way to transport animal blood to provide all that we need, but I have done it,” he concluded. “At one point, we had to throw live animals in with the teknon. It worked, but it delayed the maturation process. Now, we can feed them aetherically stabilized blood, containing added vitamins and minerals and the magically captured life force of the original beast.”

  That was something new. Something David hadn’t even realized was possible.