“How badly was I injured?” he finally asked.
“I didn’t get here until well afterwards,” O’Brien responded. “You still looked like a charred corpse at that point. There’s a reason it took you a day to recover.”
“A day,” David repeated. “That’s…four days gone, then. Do we have any answers I don’t know about?”
“Doubt it. What did you find here?”
“Adams was tied up, gagged and cabled to his chair, then surrounded by C-4 with both a timer and a tripwire that detonated it when someone went to rescue him.”
He saw the werewolf wince.
“Shitty way to die,” O’Brien observed. “You know it’s coming and you can’t do anything.”
“He didn’t make it?” David asked. It was probably redundant, but…
“David, you didn’t die instantly, so you lived because you’re a Class One regenerator,” the other man said quietly. “Anyone else would have died of your injuries before help made it to them. Adams was closer to the blast. We pulled him out in pieces.”
“He was the last link I had.”
“Last link anyone had,” O’Brien admitted. “Warner thinks we ran into someone’s carefully planned contingency operations. They had Talon Security set up as the fall guy, then acted ruthlessly to cut off any chance of us building a link further.”
“We know it was the vampires,” David replied. “Probably here, too.”
“Probably. Officially, Talon Security is going to take the fall,” the werewolf told him. “We’re saying they were paid by ‘parties unknown from the Middle East’ to carry out an act of domestic terrorism. We can tell the Conclave the Familias organized it, let them draw their own conclusions of whether or not that’s enough.”
“I don’t know,” David admitted. “I got the impression they wanted names and heads.”
“We know who participated in the attack now,” O’Brien noted. “Seventeen survived. We’ve started proceedings to have them arrested and extradited, but they’re scattered all over Africa and South America. It will take time.”
“Time we don’t have.”
“Time we don’t have,” the older man admitted. “We’ve got nothing else, though.”
“I need to talk to Riley and Langley,” David told him, looking around the tent. “I don’t suppose I have clothes?”
“Here,” O’Brien handed him a garment bag. “Suit, shirt, armor vest, sidearm. Isn’t the first suit I’ve bought you; isn’t the first gun ONSET has issued you. Given the kind of shit you and I are going to live through, probably won’t be the last of either.”
“Where’s Memoria?”
“The table. C-4 didn’t even scratch it.” O’Brien pointed.
“There are seven souls of brave men and women in that sword,” David reminded him. “If mere C-4 would destroy the sword and free them, believe me, I’d have destroyed it by now.”
He dressed quickly, strapping the shoulder holster and its caseless Omicron Silver automatic pistol under the black jacket. Prepared and armed, he inhaled heavily and looked at his old boss.
“So, who’s in charge?”
“Unless you want me to be, you are,” O’Brien told him. “I’m here to backstop you when you’re unconscious and double the number of ONSET agents on the ground.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be any use, but if we find anything, more firepower won’t hurt.”
#
The room David had woken up in was in the infirmary tucked away in the subbasements of the OSPI office in Seattle. He was intercepted on his way out by a white-coated Japanese woman he wasn’t familiar with.
“Commander White, I still need to at least check you out before you go storming off to get shot at again,” the doctor said sharply. “You should be dead.”
“And I’m not,” he said grimly. He was mostly comfortable now with his nature, but he still had twinges as he considered what his father would have said about having a freak who couldn’t even die right for a son. “I’m fine.”
“Probably,” she agreed. “But that’s my job to establish, not yours and not Commander O’Brien’s. I’m Dr. Aya Takenaka, and I know you have work to do, but please. Give me ten minutes.”
“Never argue with the doctor,” O’Brien told him. “I’ll see if I can set up a conference call with our Elfin friends. Meet me in the conference rooms once Aya here lets you go.”
David sighed and nodded, turning his best smile on the tall Asian woman.
“All right, Doctor. What do you need?”
“A lot, but let’s start with checking over your wounds,” she said crisply.
#
In the end, it was over half an hour before David managed to make it back upstairs, once again utterly starving and missing several vials’ worth of his blood. He found O’Brien sitting in one of the conference rooms, reading something on his phone.
“There you are. Did we get ahold of the Elfin?” he demanded.
“Got both of their Seconds,” O’Brien replied. Before either of them could say anything else, he produced the box of chocolate protein bars and slid it across the table toward a grateful David. “They should both be calling in five; you’ve time to eat again.”
“Is this normal?” David asked between bites of protein bar.
“Oh, yes,” the other man replied. “You don’t need as much food after being, say, shot or stabbed, but half of your body just rebuilt itself from nothing. If we had more time, I’d suggest raiding a few different restaurants—because if you actually ate your fill at one, you’d traumatize the staff. Though I suppose take-out would raise fewer questions,” he considered aloud.
Given how hungry David felt, despite having eaten roughly half a box of protein bars since waking up, he could see O’Brien’s point. Most restaurants would get concerned if he chowed his way though four or five meals without slowing. Being stared at like a freak didn’t appeal.
“I’ll live with it,” he admitted. “It’s certainly better than the alternative.”
He’d finished two more of the protein bars before the triangular voice conference phone in the center of the room started ringing.
His mouth was still full, so O’Brien leaned forward and hit accept.
“This is O’Brien. White’s with me,” the older Commander said calmly.
“This is Langley,” the Elfin Lord told them in his neatly precise voice. “Riley should be on in a moment.”
“I’m here,” Riley replied. “Just finished sorting out the details for the new Conclave. They’ll officially run through Morrison’s office, but David will find everything he needs in his email in a few minutes.”
“I appreciate that, Lord Riley,” David told him. “After this much time, I wanted to touch base and see if any of us had information the others could use to try to track down your attackers.
“You’ve heard the news out of Seattle,” he continued. “We found the mercenary company that actually carried out the attack. They did it for money—a lot of money. There was at least one vampire thrall involved, but a Familias strike team took out the records before we could try and trace it further—and the thrall as well.”
“You’re saying you have nothing?” Langley demanded.
“He’s saying they found the men who pulled the triggers and that they know the Familias funded the op,” Riley interrupted. “That’s not nothing, Dominic.”
“Our fellows are expecting Omicron to prove the value of this alliance,” Langley pointed out. “And they are furious. The Conclave has never been directly attacked before.”
“Your own people betrayed you,” David replied. “What did you find out on that, Lord Riley?”
“Nothing helpful,” Riley said flatly. “Our traitors were four aides, none of them Seconds, none of them in the service of the same Lord, even though they arrived with Kenner’s people. One was a thrall, two had major gambling debts, and we’re not quite sure what dragged the fourth into this mess, though I think we need to doub
le-check for evidence of him being a thrall.”
“The Familias appears to have been the source of the attack,” David told them. “I’d find that enough of a reason to consider why they’d want to stop me signing on with Omicron, myself.”
“As would I,” Langley agreed with a sigh. “But with the First Lord dead, there is much confusion over who guides, who leads. The entire Conclave is on edge. Manderley hadn’t taken a position on this deal, but he was good at calming nerves—and since he hadn’t stated a position, everyone is claiming he supported them.”
“My Lords, frankly, I’m not convinced your Conclave is looking for reasonable action here,” David pointed out. “We fought in your defense. We found the people who attacked; we even know who funded them. What more do the Lords want? Us to show up with a sack of heads?”
“They’re not being reasonable,” Riley replied. “You’ve done all we could ask, Commander. Bring your answers to the Conclave; we’ll swing what minds and votes we can. Neither Langley nor I is without influence, and the Elfin need this deal.”
“If you don’t fight with us, Lord Riley, are you truly prepared to watch America burn around you?” David asked softly.
“That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it,” Langley said sharply. “We’ll find an answer, Commander. I promise you.
“For now, we’ll pull on our contacts and prepare the Conclave. We’ll see you in Portland in three days.”
A click announced Langley signing off, and Riley sighed.
“He’s right,” the Lord General of the Elfin said quietly. “There are things I can do without authorization from the Conclave, but if they vote against this deal, it ties my hands. If I can dig up anything on our traitors, I’ll let you know.”
“We’ll let you know if we find anything, too,” David promised. “We’re out of leads at this point, though. We’ll eventually get access to Talon Security’s backups, but…not soon and I don’t know if those files will give us anything useful.”
“I’m about dry myself,” Riley admitted. “I hope what we have is enough. I’ll see you in Portland, Commander White.”
#
“Portland, huh?” O’Brien said a few moments after the phone cut off.
David shrugged, pulling up his phone and checking his email.
“Yeah, they’ve rented a hotel in the outskirts,” he concluded. “Riley says they’ll be formally requesting my presence to update them on our search for their attackers, but unless we absolutely insist, they’ll be running security.”
He grabbed another protein bar and considered lunch as he took a bite. Despite O’Brien’s warning, he hadn’t really believed just how hungry he was turning out to be.
“We’re not going to have more than we just told Riley and Langley,” he said finally. “Are we?”
“Unless you’ve got something tucked in your pocket I don’t know about, no,” the other Commander agreed. “The Familias covered their tracks well.”
“Bastards,” David replied. “Left a lot of dead bodies doing it, too. Good men and women.” He snorted. “And Adams. Would rather the man had lived, but I’m not going to pretend the evidence I’ve seen suggests he was a good man.”
O’Brien chuckled bitterly.
“Being a thrall would have finished that off,” he said. “Being a heroin-addicted mercenary in Afghanistan wouldn’t have been a good place to start, but being mind-controlled by a bloodsucking monster sure as hell wouldn’t help.”
“I think I’m going to go find at least two restaurants with steak,” David told O’Brien, rising to his feet and picking up his phone.
Before he could put it in his pocket, however, his phone started ringing—flashing up a number on the screen with no name attached.
The phone was linked into ONSET’s personnel databases and should show him the name and ID photo of every member of ONSET, OSPI or any of the US Government’s other supernatural organizations. The only people outside those groups who had the number had been programmed in.
No one should have his cell phone number that the phone wouldn’t recognize.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Commander David White, you don’t know me—but I know who you are,” a softly accented male voice told him. “Feel free to trace this phone call. The barista at the Starbucks looks desperately in need of entertainment—I suggest sending young, single, male officers.”
David glanced at Michael, who had his own phone out and was rapidly typing in a text. The other man flashed a thumbs-up—they were indeed tracing the call.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is irrelevant,” the voice said calmly. “What matters is that I now lead the Familias Dresden.”
Despite his best efforts, David sucked in a shocked breath. He was apparently speaking to the most powerful vampire in the United States of America.
“I’m not sure why you’re calling me,” he said slowly, hoping to buy time for the trace to go through.
“Despite what you currently think, Commander, I am not your enemy today,” the vampire told him. “Indeed, we may share an enemy. A common cause.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” David told him. “I hardly share a cause with a murdering bloodsucker who won’t even give me his name.”
“My name is Caleb Aurelius Dresden,” the voice told him sharply. “You killed my grandfather. We need to talk. In person. I’ll text you an address. Come alone.”
#
David and O’Brien waited in the SUV in full combat gear while Dilsner went into the coffee shop, following the trace on the phone call.
The Starbucks was on the east side of a covered mall, an older one with no skylights or other sources of natural light, which mostly explained how the vampire had managed to be about during the day.
“A human probably drove him here and away,” O’Brien muttered. “Just… taunting us.”
“The address is a private club downtown,” David pointed out. “Food is probably better than the burger joints I’m going to raid once this is done.”
“But the time is after nightfall,” the older man replied. “The meet looks like what I’d expect. The phone call, though. That was just showing off.”
A moment later, Dilsner emerged from the mall. He got into the back of the SUV and then dropped a silver phone in between the two Commanders with an aggravated grunt.
“Was cleaned of prints and left on the table at the coffee shop,” the techno-mage said grouchily. “Traced it. The phone kiosk five steps from the Starbucks said a middle-aged man in a suit, with an accent, paid cash for it this morning.”
Dilsner trained an accusing finger on the phone.
“That is a brand-new iPhone,” he explained. “The model has been out for four days. Time card included, a thousand freaking dollars. For one phone call. Man really wanted to talk to you, David.”
“And is showing off,” O’Brien repeated. “I’ve looked him up. Caleb Aurelius was something like sixth in the line of succession, but everyone ahead of him got killed over the last two years in conflicts with ONSET—capped off by David cutting Marcus Dresden himself up in Montreal.
“He’s an Elder, sired sometime around the American Revolution, but we don’t know much about him beyond that.”
“And that he’s now in charge of the Familias Dresden, and presumably inherited Marcus Dresden’s control of the overall Familias,” David said. “And somehow got the direct phone number of the ONSET Commander actively hunting this whole Conclave bullshit.”
“He’s showing off and he wants to make us nervous,” O’Brien concluded. “He wants you to think he knows everything. He certainly knows more than he should, but that doesn’t mean he’s omniscient.”
“No one’s omniscient,” David replied. “But we know the Familias was behind the attack on the Conclave, so it seems likely that that’s what he wants to talk about. I don’t trust it.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“But I think I need to meet
him.”
“Of course. You realize I’m going to steal the rest of your team for a perimeter?” O’Brien asked.
“I would be pleased as punch if your team and mine were running security,” David replied. “I can probably take Caleb in a straight fight, but I’d rather have backup.”
Chapter 26
The suit O’Brien had bought David was exactly the type of suit he tended to buy himself: black, simple, reasonably priced. The right size but not tailored. He would never have called it “ill-fitting,” but from the look the man in the perfectly tailored suit inside the club’s door leveled on him, that worthy would not have been so generous.
“This is a private club, sir,” he said in a French accent that David didn’t need his aura Sight to know was faked. “Do you have an invitation?”
“I’m meeting someone here,” David replied, putting every ounce of “I am a Federal Agent” arrogance he could muster into his voice and gaze. “David White.”
“Ah.” The maître d’ said primly, checking something on a tablet hidden from view behind his dark wood lectern. “Yes, you’re on the list of guests for tonight,” he finally admitted.
He didn’t do anything visible, but a young woman in a short black cocktail dress materialized out of the door behind him.
“Tiffany, please see this gentleman to the Arkansas Room,” the maître d’ instructed. “Please follow Tiffany, sir; she will get you to your host,” he told David in turn.
Tiffany curtsied, exposing David to a rather distracting amount of bare skin, then smiled brightly at him as she led the way back through the door she’d emerged from.
The club wasn’t quite as sumptuously luxurious as David had been expecting. It looked like it had started life as an Earls or similar mid-tier chain and been subdivided into individual rooms. While the front door and maître d’ podium had been stained oak, the interior walls were simple drywall painted a dark brown.
On the other hand, he could hear the white-noise generators from the moment they walked through the main door, and, despite some of the rooms presumably being occupied, even his Empowered hearing couldn’t pick up any evidence that he and the young brunette weren’t alone in the club.
ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy Page 17