Christian nodded. “Good. So time to raise the roof, really kick off this party, and then break into that room.”
Without hesitation, Christian strode into the lounge and fired a volley of shots at the ceiling. The noise was deafening and all eyes turned to him, although he didn’t get the reaction he thought he’d get.
He expected the room to fall into chaos, for the people to duck and hide and scream, but instead, he was met with silence as they all stared at him through the eyeholes in their leather masks.
“Interesting,” Christian commented before raising his voice and barking his commands. “Everyone remain still and calm. We are with the government, and we do not wish to harm you. Make no sudden movements, and everything will be over soon.”
Again that heavy silence. Christian looked perturbed.
Led by Feng Mian, he wove through the crowd and entered the second room. Feng Mian warned him about the bouncers, but when they reached the door, neither of them was in sight.
The civilians were unsettling, watching them with unblinking eyes as they approached the door and pressed an ear to the wood. There was no keypad, no lock, no security. By all appearances, the door may as well have just been the entrance to a utility closet.
Christian leaned toward Feng Mian. “You know what to do.”
Feng Mian raised his shields and led the other specters inside. They had two more in their company since the agents who had died had joined them.
The moment they entered the room, gunshots exploded in their ears. Muzzle flashes erupted like mini fireworks as bullet after bullet was fired at the specters. Feng Mian’s shield flashed as the bullets ricocheted off and many scattered across the floor. A few of the shots bounced back to their senders and injured those aiming their weapons.
Feng Mian strained to hold up his defenses as he peered through narrowed eyes at the number of gunmen in the room. By his count there were six, but there could easily have been more beyond the flashes of light.
“Shoot them,” Feng Mian cried out to the others who had been so taken aback by the volley that they had frozen.
Tina and Maisy snapped into action and shot blindly around them. One by one the men and women fell, until they were at last left in silence.
The afterburn of the muzzle flashes painted their vision. Feng Mian tried to blink it away but could only see stars for a few moments. When finally he was able to see into the room, his eyes locked onto a fat man with greasy skin and a rotund stomach.
The Dragon.
The Dragon looked to be in a dire state. He held an oxygen mask to his mouth and took heavy breaths. Feng Mian recognized the woman in the red kimono kneeling beside him.
“Well met.” The Dragon chuckled, the sound more like a car engine backfiring. “Always nice to see you again.”
The other specters looked at Feng Mian. He paid no attention.
The Dragon spluttered into the mask. Flecks of blood painted the inside of the clear apparatus. “You may as well send in your cronies. This looks like the end of my line, after all.”
Bruno told Maisy to fetch Christian and the others. When they entered the doorway, their weapons were raised, poised for any eventuality.
Christian stepped ahead of the group and aimed his gun at the Dragon. “I see we found you at last. The Dragon, I assume?”
The Dragon nodded, the movement slow and labored. “Your organization has been causing quite a stir among my men. I thought that we’d be meeting eventually, though I was almost certain that I’d be dead before I had the privilege.”
“Men like you don’t die,” Christian growled. “Even if you did, your legacy would live on. I’m sure a smart man like you will have measures in place to continue your tyranny across the city.”
“Tyranny?” The Dragon smirked. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
Christian shook his head. “Human trafficking. Spectral and mortal abduction. Your currency is in people, and that is something that we cannot allow to continue. You may think that you’re invincible as long as you spread your reach far and wide, but I can say with certainty that this is the end of the line.”
The Dragon nodded, his eyebrows knitting together. He removed the mask and placed it on his sweating chest. “In ancient China, warlords would place the heads of their enemies on pikes and display them on the walls of the city. The severed heads would send a message to all who dared rise up against them that punishment would be severe, and retribution swift. The heads would be left to rot as a warning to all.”
“Sounds like a grand idea,” Christian agreed. “Where would you like your head to be placed?”
The Dragon placed his mask back to his mouth and took several deep breaths. Their patience was being tested.
“That’s exactly my point. There is nowhere to place my head. You may kill me in cold blood, but I have been living beyond death for decades. My condition should have killed me twenty years ago, yet here I am. You’re right to think I’ve got aces up my sleeve, for my legacy will go on. There’s nowhere you can parade my corpse to prevent the spread of my dominion. It’s too late. As usual, you are too late.”
A burst of coughs exploded from the Dragon, and a glob of blood flew from his lips. The blood stained his pale face, and he laid his head back as if he were in tremendous pain.
“Do we help him?” an agent asked.
Christian ignored him.
After a few painful moments, the Dragon leaned across to the woman and gave a nod. She gracefully raised herself from her kneeling position and crossed to Christian. She presented him with a black box that he opened to reveal a golden brooch. The brooch was in the shape of a dragon eating its own tail, curled around in a perfect circle.
“What is this supposed to mean?” Christian asked.
The Dragon wheezed and choked, finally managing to speak as a dribble of blood fell onto his stomach. “The Dragon is eternal, Agent. Chop off one head and three more grow back.”
Bruno threw his hands in the air. “That’s a hydra!”
Christian weighed the brooch in his hand. It was heavy, definitely not a fake. Something like this would cost a small fortune.
The woman bowed and returned to her position as the Dragon fell into his most dire fit of coughs yet. He doubled over, face pained as he spat and spluttered until finally, he collapsed and his head hit the floor. He flopped to the side and lay still.
A silence fell over the room.
Christian stared levelly at the body before inspecting the brooch once more. “That saves us a job. A job well done and a free piece of jewelry. Guess this’ll fetch a pretty price in the pawnshop.”
Feng Mian muttered, “You can’t sell it.”
“Relax, I’m just joking. HQ will be pleased with what we’ve accomplished here today, gents. Let’s scout the room, pick up any last detail we might be able to pluck from this clusterfuck of an orgy, and roll out before the zombies decide to attack us.”
The agents divided and searched the room. Their mission had been to bring in the Dragon, alive, and on that front, they had failed. However, if they could find the links to close down all of the Dragon’s operations in that room, then they’d be able to call this a job well done.
Feng Mian didn’t join in the search, instead opting to approach the woman. He knelt in front of her and studied the delicate features of her face.
Her eyes locked onto his. Feng Mian flinched. She could see him.
She spoke in perfect Mandarin, which only Feng Mian was able to interpret, her lips barely moving, her voice hardly audible. “You saved me.”
Feng Mian glanced around the room, but the others were too preoccupied to notice. “You were a slave?”
The woman gave a slight nod. Again, barely perceptible to the naked eye. “The Dragon has his hostages. There is no escape until the Dragon dies. Thank you.”
Feng Mian was confused. He asked the woman why she had ignored him on the stairwell. He wondered where she had been heading to.
“I
was seeking succor. I grew weary of this work and found a moment to escape. When I heard the gunfire, I ran back. I didn’t know what else to do.” Her eyes shimmered. “Thank you, kind stranger.”
“Feng Mian.”
“Jiao.”
Christian called out when they discovered a room out back with a computer set up and linked to a server. Nearby, one of the other agents declared his discovery of a stack of weapons, paper documents, and drugs.
Feng Mian offered Jiao a hand. “Come. You are safe now. We will keep you away from harm.”
Jiao gave the faintest trace of a smile. “Safety is not an option. You and your men must hurry. More danger will come.”
Feng Mian marveled at her porcelain skin. There was an innocence etched into every inch of her. His heart fluttered, and if he had been capable of it, his cheeks would have bloomed with red.
Feng Mian relayed Jiao’s message, and they sped up their search. When the Dragon’s spectral spirit stirred from his bloated corpse, the agents were ready and bound him in cuffs. All the while, the civilians in the other rooms remained motionless.
Chapter Thirteen
Richmond, Virginia, USA
The doorbell rang for the twentieth time that morning.
Carolyn opened the door and waved at a mailman who could neither see nor hear her, leaving him with a concerned look as he stared up at the dilapidated manor. “Jennie! Package for you!”
Jennie rushed down the stairs, two at a time. “Hey! Thanks for that.” She signed for the package, taking note of the pale color of the mailman’s face. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Automatic door. We’re gutting the house and turning it into a twenty-second-century techno-palace.”
“Right,” the postman managed, still freaked out by the door opening by itself. “Okay. Techno-palace.”
He was halfway down the overgrown path when he turned back and called, “It’s the twenty-first century, though.”
Jennie rolled her eyes and shut the door. Faintly she heard the cackling of the poltergeist brothers as they hurled trash at the mailman and chased him off the premises.
Should’ve chosen a rottweiler, instead. Dogs make much better guards than poltergeists. Poor, poor mailman.
The manor was coming along nicely. A full two days since they had cleared out the darkness that had possessed the house, and already it was beginning to look like a whole new building.
Priority number one had been to clear the dust and stink from decades of neglect out of each room. Windows had been opened, except for a few stubborn exceptions whose handles had rusted shut, and the curtains had been pulled wide open. Sunlight shone proudly through the glass and bathed the manor in a golden light as motes of dust were disturbed and sent into wild tornadoes that soon filtered out of the windows and back into the Richmond air.
The conduits made use of themselves by removing any furniture that was beyond repair and needed to be destroyed. Lupe and Tanya busied themselves with coming up with ideas for the layout of the manor and deciding which rooms would do what, and the specters set about mapping out all of the hidden rooms within its walls.
Jennie, meanwhile, spent her time shopping online and ordering everything that she would need to establish the first and most important room out of the brand-new King’s Court HQ. The package that had just been delivered would be the final piece in the whole equation to make the room operational, and as she unwrapped the cardboard box and placed the golden bell on top of the walnut bar, she smiled and nodded with approval. “There. We are open for business.”
Baxter laughed, appearing in the archway behind her. “Certainly got your priorities straight, haven’t you?”
The makeshift bar was set into the corner of the reception room, just off the main entranceway. Earlier that day, Jennie had driven into town and bought the waist-high refrigerators and put them in place, ready for when electricity would be installed in the house.
The bar she had found in an upstairs room, and she had dusted off its surface and applied a careful layer of varnish to bring the wood back to life. She’d also found a number of matching cupboards nearby that she placed along the back wall to store her full collection of spirits, juices, and equipment when she got around to ordering them in.
Jennie smirked. “There’s no party without cocktails. Just think, Bax, when this is all finished, we’re finally going to have a place we can all call home.” She placed her hands on her hips and examined the room, taking a deep breath. “I can’t remember the last place that felt like home to me.”
Baxter hopped onto one of the cupboards and swung his legs. “What about your place in London? The one beneath the theatre? Weren’t you there for decades?”
Jennie shook her head. “No. I mean, yes, but I was hardly ever there. That place was nice, a retreat from the erratic pace the life I lived, but it never felt like home. Every day was some kind of journey or adventure, so it became more like a bunker to sleep and rest and recover. I tried to make it a home, but I never realized what was truly missing.”
Baxter smiled. “Friends?”
“Family,” Jennie corrected. She met Baxter’s eyes and her cheeks reddened. “Still, now that the bar is set, and the house is almost clear of all its junk, it’s really starting to feel like something, isn’t it?”
Baxter hopped off the counter and joined Jennie in the middle of the room. It was easily forty-foot wide and fifty-foot long. The bar looked almost lost in the corner, but he knew that once they added some fresh couches and items of furniture, the room would soon fill out.
“Yeah, it is.” Baxter glanced up at the glass chandelier with its holders containing ancient half-melted candles. They hadn’t quite gotten around to looking at the ceiling fixtures. “When is the electricity getting installed?”
“It was supposed to be this morning,” Jennie replied. “But the McFarlene brothers chased the contractors away.”
Baxter cocked an eyebrow. “The McFarlene brothers?”
“The poltergeists,” Jennie clarified. At Baxter’s confused glance, she added, “Yeah, they’re an interesting bunch. I managed to pull some more info from them earlier. Want to know their first names?”
Baxter half-shrugged. “Sure. Seeing as they live here.”
“Don, Jerry, and Graham.” Jennie glanced out of the window when one of the brothers whizzed by. “They were supposed to be keeping away nosy onlookers, but instead they scared the crap out of our installation guy. I called the company, and they’re sending someone out this afternoon. Hopefully this one’ll have more balls than the last wimp.”
It turned out that she did. When the installation lady came around in the mid-afternoon, she paused at the end of the pathway and looked up at the building. After a deep, steadying breath, she walked up the path, doing her best to ignore the legends and tales she had heard about the manor as she knocked on the door and awaited the answer.
Jennie opened the door with a reassuring grin, just as one of the brothers appeared over the woman’s shoulder. He held the broken legs of chairs in each hand and froze under Jennie’s stare. The woman turned over her shoulder but saw nothing there, little realizing how close she had been to her first experience of a haunting.
Jennie liked the woman. She was receptive to Jennie’s requests, no matter how odd they seemed. What Jennie was asking for would require a large chunk of additional power to be directed from the city’s power grid, but that was okay since she had the cash to pay for it.
At one point, the woman joked about needing additional power generators. When Jennie told her how much she was willing to invest, she almost choked. By the time she left, Jennie was feeling optimistic. A promise had been made that her requests would be granted, and power provided within the next forty-eight hours.
Jennie closed the door and turned to Baxter. “Just in time. The internet guys are coming in two days. No power equals no wi-fi.”
Baxter laughed.
Carolyn had joined them in the hallway, a notepad in her han
d.
“Two days?” Carolyn gave Jennie an incredulous look. “Whenever I wanted wi-fi installed, it was always a three-week process.”
Jennie nodded her head sagely. “Money talks. Add enough zeroes and the world bows to you. How goes the planning?”
They grouped in the reception lounge. Jennie cast a longing glance at the bar, then took a seat on the moth-bitten couches they had dragged into the room temporarily until the new furniture was delivered.
Carolyn showed them her ideas, having added impressively detailed drawings to her notepad. With the help of Sandra, they had passed through every wall and mapped every single room in the house, including thirteen secret places.
By the time Carolyn had shown her all she had done, Jennie knew she had chosen the right woman for the job. The upper two floors had been converted into a residential complex. Most were individual rooms. However, in a pinch, up to fourteen people could comfortably share one of the manor’s luxuriously large bedrooms.
The third floor was to be made into a base of operations, with rooms assigned for computer rooms, offices, training facilities, and a laboratory for Hendrick.
“Speaking of, where is the old guy?” Baxter asked.
Jennie nearly snorted as she remembered Hendrick’s wrinkled face, deep in slumber. “He’s hibernating. Turns out, all the action of clearing out the house exhausted his frail body. He tucked himself up in the master bedroom almost immediately after our group meeting, and he’s been sleeping there ever since.”
Carolyn raised her eyebrows. “Someone might want to check that he’s not dead.”
Jennie shook her head. “Not that old mole. I don’t think that guy will ever die. Something in his constitution keeps him going. What’s this room here?”
An eager look came over Carolyn’s face as she listed the rooms on the first floor, that included the reception room they were sitting in, as well as a rec room that doubled as a private theater for the manor.
Jennie’s eyes grew glossy behind her glasses. That was just one of the reasons she wore the dark lenses: to hide the emotion that might betray her in a fight. She removed them and cleaned the lenses, glancing at Carolyn with a strange expression.
Agents, Agreements and Aggravations: In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service™ Book Three Page 11