“What’s up, Drew?” Julia asked.
The analyst jumped back to his feet and shoved the pages at her. “Read this,” he directed. “The first two paragraphs, that’s all you’ll need.”
Julia did as he asked, her expression growing animated.
“Holy shit,” she muttered.
Acheson walked around his desk as Ellenshaw and Kerr closed on her. Julia shoved one sheet of paper at Acheson. “Just read the headline,” she told him.
Acheson took the page. The headline read LOCAL COFFIN MAKER SELLS BUSINESS; AREA WORKERS LAID OFF
“They have a coffin factory,” Julia said, her voice brimming with excitement. She passed the rest of the papers to Acheson. “That’s why there haven’t been many bodies turning up—they’ve been hiding them in a coffin factory!”
16
“Army’s gone,” Jerry Licht reported. “They have orders to bug out before the storm rolls in.” He nodded toward the flat screen television hanging from the wall nearby. It was tuned to KNBC, and the weather was on constantly. Los Angeles was headed for a beating, and hadn’t much time to prepare.
Acheson bowed his head. What remained of the team had gathered in the conference room after Claudia was transferred to one of the vacant offices under the care of a nurse. She was still loopy from the drugs Kerr had administered, but she wasn’t a danger to the team or herself at this point. And they needed the conference room.
Fiedler’s voice came from the overhead speakers. “I can’t prevail on their commanding officer to leave the Black Hawk in place, Mark. If he feels the storm puts his aircrew or helicopter at risk, I can’t talk him out of it. I even went to the commanding general at Army Special Operations Command, and he said the same thing. It’s the Night Stalkers’ call.”
“And the FAA’s grounded all other air traffic, other than medical and law enforcement,” Acheson said. “We need to get to El Segundo as quickly as possible, director. With the traffic, there’s no way we can get there before the storm hits.”
“I’ve asked the LAPD and the National Guard if they can assist,” Fiedler advised him. “I’ve even asked the fire department. There are simply no aviation assets available. I’m still trying, but…” Fiedler’s voice trailed away, leaving only the hiss of the open line connecting the conference room to his office in Virginia.
Acheson straightened up. “Then we’ll do it the old fashioned way. We’ll go to the manufacturing site, and if we can verify it’s being used to warehouse vamps, we’ll torch the place.”
“We’ll have the area under satellite surveillance soon,” Fiedler said. “The Air Force is retasking a satellite that has radar imaging capability. I’m told it can see through the clouds without any problems.”
“That’ll help, director. Thanks.”
“Is there anything else from your end?”
“Nothing,” Acheson said.
“Very well.” Fiedler paused for a moment, then added, “I wish there was more I could do from here. I’ll keep working it, but this storm has tied my hands. I’ve got everyone from LAPD to FEMA asking questions about us and what we do, and the White House is getting antsy about that. As such, it’s been ‘suggested’ we keep as low a profile as possible.”
“None of that’s gonna keep us alive for very long,” Cecil said under his breath. He sat at the far end of the table with his feet up, and he had the misfortune to be sitting next to one of the conference room’s teleconference microphones.
“I understand your sentiment, Mr. Hayes,” Fiedler said, as unflappable as always. “All I can do is wish you the best of luck.”
Cecil scowled and began to reply, but Acheson waved him to silence.
“Director, we need to get going. I’ll update you from the road.”
“Understood, Mark. Godspeed.” The connection went dead.
Acheson looked at the assemblage. They were all there, or at least those who were left: from the containment team, Cecil Hayes, Julia McGuiness, and Nacho Delgado; from the TOC team, Jerry Licht, Andy Cosmatos, Will Fenster, and Danielle Kirkpatrick. And, of course, Robert Ellenshaw. Not much of a fighting force.
“You heard the man, folks. The city’s battening down for the hurricane, and when that hits, the possibility of us getting any outside help goes to zero. We’ve got to be at the top of our game if we’re going to get through this, so we’re going to have to work twice as hard. Questions?”
No one had anything. Acheson looked at the TOC commander, Jerry Licht. “Jerry, you have the overwatch and rally points programmed into your GPS systems?”
Licht nodded.
“Then get going. Best of luck.”
Licht nodded again and led his team out of the conference room. All of them were armed, with weapons as well as the knowledge of what had happened to their predecessors the last time the team had engaged Osric. No one was taking any chances, but Acheson thought the entire TOC team looked a little scared. Good. Fear would help keep them alive.
“Robert, go with them.” Acheson nodded toward the door the TOC team had just disappeared through.
Ellenshaw frowned. “Mark, you need every gun you can get!”
“Go with the TOC team, please.”
“Mark—”
Acheson looked at Ellenshaw with dull, exhausted eyes. “For God’s sakes, Robert, this isn’t personal. If we get taken out, someone else is going to have to pick up the pieces. The TOC team doesn’t have that experience. If our tickets get punched, you’ll be the only game in town.”
Ellenshaw checked his protest. He nodded his assent and walked to the door, then paused at the threshold. Great emotion played across his face.
“Best of luck to you all,” he whispered, then he stepped out of the room.
“How touching,” Cecil said.
“Let’s saddle up,” Acheson told them. “It’s going to take us hours to get to El Segundo.”
17
The evacuation traffic was murderous. All lanes of the I-10 East and I-5 North were clogged; the 405, the worst highway in Los Angeles even on a good day, was loaded up in both directions. Sig alerts ruled the day, especially since the advancing system had made air and sea travel difficult. Soon, the rail system would have to be shut down. There would be no way for passenger or cargo trains to operate in 100 mile per hour winds.
It was the people who intended to wait out the storm who posed the greatest threat. They stayed to the surface roads and shunned the interstates, speeding this way and that to get last minute supplies. They were the most frantic: running through traffic lights, double-and triple-parking along the streets, physically fighting for access to supermarkets. This group was the biggest problem for Acheson and his two teams, who had no choice but to stick to the surface roads because the I-10 was reserved for outgoing traffic. Cecil’s hulking Excursion led the way; Acheson followed in his black Crown Vic. Both vehicles straddled the yellow line and forced opposing traffic to yield. When it didn’t, Cecil shouldered the traffic aside with the huge SUV’s reinforced bumpers. Any arguments that might have ensued were silenced when the team members flashed their automatic weapons. In fact, Nacho had to use his MP-5 once when the gang-bangers driving a Camaro tried to give pursuit. Eight rounds into the Camaro’s grille, and the driver and his passengers bailed out and ran.
“Very low profile,” Acheson said as he drove. One of Nacho’s dogs panted in his ear.
“Whatever works.” Nacho admonished the three dogs in the back seat to sit. The chocolate Labrador leaned forward again, panting into Acheson’s ear. Nacho pulled on the dog’s harness and chided him. The dog whined, then hunkered down on the floor behind the front seats.
“They’re spooked,” Nacho said. “I’ve never seen them like this. They’re shaking all over.”
“Must be my driving,” Acheson said.
Nacho shook his head. The western horizon was darkening now as thick clouds rolled in. He safed the MP-5 and leaned back in the seat.
“Don’t be so self-centered
, man. Your driving ain’t nothin’ to write home about, but it’s definitely second fiddle to what we got comin’ up.”
Acheson glanced up as a cloud crossed over the sun and obscured its light for a few moments before passing on. He wondered if this would be the last time he would ever see it, feel its warmth, drink in its vitality.
He put aside his dread and concentrated on punching through the thick traffic ahead. Beside him, Nacho talked soothingly to the dogs in the back seat.
***
—down by the water—
—casket factory—
—El Segundo—
—never really been there—
—All of them?—
Disjointed snippets of conversation penetrated the hazy fog surrounding Claudia as she rolled in and out of consciousness. They made no sense to her. At the moment, nothing did. The pall that continued to alternately lift and then descend left her disoriented. Gradually, the effects of the drug Kerr had administered faded. She came to realize she had been listening to a whispered conversation between two of Kerr’s nurses.
Claudia opened her eyes and found she was lying on a cot in a small office. The nurses stood just outside the doorway, talking softly. Now that she was awake, Claudia was chagrined to discover that she could no longer really hear the conversation. It didn’t matter; she reached out with her empathic fingers and immediately felt the nurses’ distress. They were nervous. Claudia tried to push herself to her elbows, but a sudden squall of dizziness forced her back. She settled for raising her hands to her face.
“She’s awake,” one of the nurses observed. Claudia heard them step inside the office, and one bent over her.
“Claudia? How do you feel?”
Claudia tried to recall the woman’s name. Karen? Catherine? She was a young, fresh-faced UC graduate who had worked at the Plant for several months, but Claudia couldn’t remember her name. She rubbed her eyes.
“Like shit.”
The nurse listened to her heart through her stethoscope, and took her blood pressure. She was quick and efficient, but Claudia read the worry that pulsed from her as if it were linked to her own heartbeat.
“You’ll be feeling better in no time,” she told Claudia. “Your body’s already metabolized most of the sedative, so you should be a hundred percent soon.”
Claudia grunted and looked around the small office. Her cot had been set beside the desk, and the two pieces of furniture took up nearly the entire room. There were no windows save those that overlooked the hallway, and the lights had been turned off. Claudia presumed the semi-darkness was intended to smooth the transition from drugged state to sober. All it did was increase her sense of dread. Is it nighttime already?
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Just a little after four,” the other nurse said. She was a short, hippy Hispanic woman with a face that was not aging well. Claudia recalled her name as Miranda.
“Where am I?”
“In an office in the Plant,” Miranda said. “Doctor Kerr wanted to put you someplace where you could recover peacefully. You’ll need to lie here and let your system process the drug a little longer, but you’ll be fine. No sudden moves or anything, okay?”
“Okay,” Claudia agreed. Not that she was ready for sitting up, much less anything that might be defined as “sudden.”
The younger nurse finished up. Velcro snapped and crackled as she removed the blood pressure cuff from Claudia’s arm. She smiled at Claudia brightly.
“We need to go now,” she said cheerily. “You just lie back and relax. Doctor Kerr will see you in a few minutes, all right?”
Claudia nodded. The nurse smiled at her again and rose to her feet. She had been crouching beside the cot next to the desk, and the tiny space available had precluded the rather larger Miranda from getting any closer than the doorway.
“Then you rest now,” the younger nurse said. She joined Miranda in the hallway, and the older woman closed the door behind her with a loud metallic click. Claudia knew she’d been locked in.
El Segundo.
Slowly, lethargically, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Her knees bumped against the side of the cheap desk, and the room swam around her. For a perilous instant, she feared she would spray the entire office with vertigo-induced vomit. But her stomach settled as soon as she regained her balance. Claudia rubbed her face and squeezed her eyes shut.
Damn, this sucks.
It took a few minutes for her to feel strong enough to pull herself off the cot and into the office chair. On her first attempt, she almost wound up hitting the floor ass-first. On the second, she managed to make it into the chair without too much trouble. She reached for the telephone and pressed 9 and was rewarded with an outside line.
A small part of her marveled at the oversight. Her teammates must have been running ragged to allow her access to the outside world when she was in custody. That she was able to get dial tone was amazing.
An even smaller part of her consciousness wondered why she was engaged in such activity. Claudia thought upon that for a moment, examining her actions in a harsh, critical light. Who was she going to call?
And then a mental breaker tripped, and Claudia couldn’t dial the numbers fast enough.
***
With a grunt, Tremaine emptied himself into Hoa and collapsed, his thick, hairy frame half-covering her slender figure. He gasped for breath, awash with sweat despite the cool breeze that whistled through the bedroom window. The light outside was tepid, and through the open window he saw the billowing grayness of the approaching storm. The Pacific shoreline was being whipped into froth. Hoa’s apartment was only a few blocks from the Redondo Beach State Park, and nothing but a few palm trees blocked his view of the troubled waters.
Hoa pushed against him. Tremaine realized that she was practically suffocating beneath his weight, and he rolled off her with a guffaw.
“Sorry, darling,” he said, kissing her face.
She pouted her full lips in irritation. “You should be more careful, baby,” she said. Her voice was a pleasing feminine soprano, not the stereotypical forced falsetto one might have expected. She took her transformation seriously, and she worked hard at ensuring an outward appearance that could deceive anyone.
His hand reached between her legs and stroked the flaccid flesh there. Well, at least until they got a glimpse of this…
Hoa smiled tartly and pushed his hand away. “No more,” she said. “You exhaust me today, baby.”
Tremaine checked the clock on the bedstand. “Just as well, darling. Go shower and fix yourself, all right?”
Hoa pouted again and brushed one artfully manicured hand through her long black hair. “You don’t think I beautiful already, baby?”
Tremaine patted her hand. “Of course, darling. But my employer… well, he’s European, you know.” He winked at her, and she giggled, covering her mouth with one hand.
“Okay, baby. I try and hurry.”
Tremaine smiled, tickled by her idiosyncratic English, and kissed her again. “Off you go, then.” He watched after her as she sauntered toward the ensuite bathroom, hips swaying. He settled back against the pillows. Outside, the wind picked up, and the curtains fluffed and billowed. He rolled off the bed and closed the windows, noting the streets below were deserted. It was an odd sight. Even in the wee hours of the morning, the beaches of Southern California were people magnets, for the shoreline called to them with a queer type of siren’s song they could not resist. But today, the street and the beach beyond were as devoid of life as the surface of the Moon. Tremaine watched the heavy, gunmetal-gray clouds that had formed in a thick layer overhead. They roiled and seethed with energy and discontent, like some huge, irate viper, ready to strike at the first opportunity. He knew the closing storm was an instrument of his Master’s power, an elemental extension of himself. Still, it made him nervous. Could even his Master control something as powerful and random as a hurricane?
The thought that it
was something else other than his Master in control was keen on his mind. After the ritual he had witnessed, Tremaine had come to the conclusion that his Master was allied with forces far stronger than himself. What slice of their dark kingdom they had offered for his services remained unknown, but Tremaine knew his Master’s appetites, and reasoned it was to be a sizeable exchange.
But still… uneasiness stalked about inside Tremaine’s breast like a hungry jungle cat. What if this changed things? What if Osric had no intention of rewarding Tremaine with the gift he had worked so hard to earn?
Nonsense! He had served the Master faithfully for over half his life. A mere pittance to a vampire as old as Osric, but still a formidable amount, given the efficiency with which he had gone through his previous human supplicants. Tremaine had known many of them, and those that hadn’t met their ends executing the Master’s will had all been disposed of.
The first droplets of wind-blown rain struck the window. He considered those who had come before him and where they had wound up—in the cold earth, their heads separated from their bodies, preventing them from living as the Undead.
That fate will not be mine, he told himself.
His cell phone chirped, breaking his worried reverie. The phone lay on the small bureau against a nearby wall. He picked it up and looked at the display.
The caller ID read UNKNOWN.
From the bathroom, he heard Hoa open the shower stall and close the door behind her. The shower started. Tremaine brought the phone to his ear and pressed the green ACCEPT button.
“Yes.”
“They’re going to a casket factory in El Segundo,” a woman said. Her voice danced along the fine line between restraint and shrieking madness.
“This is Claudia Nero?”
“Yes.”
“When did they leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many of them are there?”
There was a pause, and Tremaine pictured the Nero woman struggling with herself. But there was no way she could overrule the compulsion planted in her. Mere humans were helpless when under the direction of a master vampire.
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