Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “We’ve spotted them,” Marcus told her. “McLaren must have called them in after the raid was done, so they don’t get their noses out of joint about jurisdiction. Still nothing coming out of the house except CIA personnel.”

  “It will be any moment now,” Rick said, his accent sounding richer across the network. “No one has gone back inside in a few minutes. They are clearing the house.”

  “Ready, Ilaria?” Kate asked softly, from her window. She held binoculars up to her eyes.

  “Silence, everyone,” Nial warned. “No communication unless absolutely necessary from now on. You all know the rendezvous.”

  Ilaria was relieved he had told them to quieten. She had never had company while taking a shot, except when she had still been human, during the war. She could remember those times now, although they were human memories and were faded and there were times she could not remember.

  Having people nearby, people who knew what she was and supported her anyway – it generated feelings of warmth and belonging. But she needed to concentrate to take the shot. This was going to be a technically difficult shot. There were a lot of lights down there. A lot of people moving, trying to draw her eye.

  She let the barrel inch to the left, tracking in her scope across the lawn of the house. She couldn’t see the porch. A large tree blocked her view. But there was a clear space there, between the porch she couldn’t see and the front edge of the lawn where enforcement officials of all description were standing and waiting for the captive to emerge from the house.

  “Someone warn me when he is on the porch,” she said. “I’ll take it from there.

  “I will,” Rick volunteered. “I know what he looks like.”

  Silence. Ilaria could hear her heart beating loudly in her ears. This was the moment when everything slid away from her, just before she had to pick up the pressure on the trigger. She forgot every care or worry, forgot to think of her target as human, as a victim, as a person with people who loved them. She let all that drop away.

  She took up pressure on the trigger, drew in her breath, deeply, and began to whisper: “Menes Heru, Asshnunna, Zane Shelley, Larsa, Rosalyn Black, The Hanged Man, Raphael Harker, Salomon the Barbarian, Nicolos de Cremona—”

  “He is on the porch,” Rick’s voice whispered in her ear. “About to take the step off. There’s a civilian just in front of him, but the CIA officer is on his left. You’ll have a clear line of sight once the civilian is past your scope.”

  She smiled. Rick had laid it out for her. All she had to do was let Heru walk into her crosshairs....

  She saw movement. The civilian. She let him slide past the hot spot, her attention already on the figure in white just behind him. Shining dome head. Long flowing robes.

  “Menes Heru...” she whispered and pulled the trigger.

  It was a true shot. She felt it in her bones. It was the most perfect shot, the surest shot, she had ever taken. Only habit kept her eye glued to the scope to double check.

  Heru sensed something. Perhaps he was still connected to her in some distant way. Something warned him and he threw out his hand and made a “come here” motion with the fingers.

  The civilian in front of him jerked backwards, just as the bullet reached Heru. The bullet slammed into the civilian’s chest, for Ilaria had aimed for the heart. The impact jerked him off his feet. Ilaria recognized him in that split second. It was one of the League vampires. The one called Matlock. He had been a vicious man.

  Before he could crumple to the lawn, Matlock exploded. Ilaria jerked her gaze away from the scope and looked out the window without the magnification, as a bright, neon red fireball expanded, where Matlock had been standing.

  There were screams and sounds of panic as the enforcement officials all cringed back from the flames, which dropped to the ground and continued to burn.

  “He was warned! He bloody well knew!” That was the vampire that some called Garrett, some called Calum and yet others called Micheil.

  The habits of survival reasserted themselves. Ilaria rolled off the table, bringing the Timberwolf with her, slinging it over her shoulder. Kate and Winter were already moving fast toward the door. Ilaria had no trouble catching up with them. Kate held the door open, and they streamed out of the apartment. Both of them stripped off the gloves they were wearing and stuffed them into their pockets. Ilaria did not have prints. Not anymore. Danich had burned them away with acid one hateful day, not long after the second world war had ended, and the science of criminology had surged ahead thanks to cold war improvements in identification.

  She ran ahead of the two human women, climbing down the stairs to the back door of the apartment block, and checked that their way was clear and waited for the other two. It was possible the officials would not pursue her as quickly as usual for the fireball would have them confused.

  She could see the low slung sports car sitting next to the curb in the dark, by the collection of battered trash cans. Roman was behind the wheel, waiting for them. The engine was running.

  “Can anyone see Heru?” Nial demanded in her ear.

  “No!”

  “He’s gone.”

  “He got away during the panic.” That was Marcus. “Fuck, shit, damn and alley cats!”

  “Everyone, communications off. All back to rendezvous. Now!”

  The noise from the street below had tripled. Alarm was thick in the voices lifting above the sounds of sirens. People shouting.

  Ilaria pulled her ear bud out and put it in her jeans pocket. The borrowed jeans were too big and too long – she had folded the bottoms, but kept having to pull up the waistband.

  Winter and Kate clattered down the last flight of stairs and pushed up against the door next to her.

  “There he is,” Kate murmured. She looked to either side.

  “It’s clear,” Ilaria assured her and pushed the door open. Roman saw the movement and threw open the passenger door of the car. She took off, moving as fast as she could, and threw herself into the back seat of the car, and pulled up her legs to make room for Winter.

  The two women were moving fast, for humans. They sprinted for the car, and Winter slid into the back seat head first.. Roman threw the seat back and Kate dropped into the front passenger seat and slammed the door.

  “He got away,” Kate said breathlessly.

  “Later,” Roman said firmly. “Let me drive this thing.” He took off with a spray of blue metal, and yanked the car into a hard right turn, heading down an alley, out onto the street the next block over.

  Ilaria stayed hunched in her corner, cradling the Timberwolf. After the first electric concern about being pursued faded away, she unpacked the scope and the shell box, disarming the weapon.

  She felt flat, empty and sad. She had missed. She had never missed before, not when she meant to hit her target. Why had she missed Heru? Why could it not have been someone less critical? Someone she had no feelings about, who did not make her angry just thinking about him.

  Winter pressed her hand over Ilaria’s. “It’s alright. We’ll fix this,” she said softly.

  “How?” Ilaria asked. “They said Heru was mad enough to use the Blood Stone, before. What will he do now?”

  But Winter didn’t reply.

  * * * * *

  The curved roof of the building Nial led them into looked like an old air craft hangar to Marcus, but there was a reception area inside the front doors. The room was bland and modern and comfortable.

  Nial moved straight over to one of the inner doors and punched in a code on the digital key plate. The door unlocked with a solid clunk of metal and Nial thrust it open and walked inside.

  “Home sweet home,” Patrick murmured as he stepped through.

  Marcus followed curiously and Rick caught at his shoulder. “Can you see well enough?” he asked.

  “Enough to see shadows in front of me,” Marcus told him. “There’s a light somewhere ahead. Security light, I assume.”

  There were walls ahea
d of them, that didn’t reach the roof. Nial was walking around them. Everyone followed him silently through the narrow, irregular corridor. The shape of the corridor told Marcus the walls were actually tall piles of…things. “Where are we?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

  “Kate’s film studio,” Sebastian replied softly. “There’s an independent film company doing a Shakespeare movie right now but filming is done for the night.”

  The corridor opened up into a huge, open area and the light grew better. Marcus could see an olde worlde table sitting on a dais, with plates of food and metal cups. There were big movie cameras pointing at another set, which was a bedroom, complete with four-poster bed and a window that looked out onto the piles of scenery stacked next to it. The bedroom had three walls.

  Just on the other side of it was what looked like a stone bench sitting in a fake garden.

  Nial ignored all of it. He stopped behind the cameras and turned to face them. “Roman should be here in a few minutes. Garrett and Dominic will be last. I also invited the Pro Libertatus. Thoughts, anyone?”

  Rick rested his hand on the back support of a director’s chair. “This was probably enough to push Heru over the edge, Nathanial. It is unfortunate we did not kill him. He won’t provide us with another chance, now.”

  Nial nodded. “He seemed to hear it coming.” He gave a small shrug. “The powers of the unspoken ones are unknown, but there is a reason they’ve survived as long as they have.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out and glanced at the screen. “The Libertatus are here. Sebastian, would you show them in?”

  Sebastian slipped away into the dark.

  “How did you get hold of them?” Rick asked.

  “Lowenstein’s assistant. I started there.”

  “Richard Lowenstein’s assistant is a vampire?” Marcus asked, astonished.

  “So was Lowenstein,” Rick assured him. “Most of the Libertatus are power-holders in the human world. That’s primarily why they didn’t want to declare themselves vampires in a hurry. They like the power.”

  “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” Patrick muttered, turning to look back at the narrow corridor that Sebastian had disappeared into.

  Movement whispered out of the darkness. Then Sebastian appeared. Behind him were two men and a woman dressed in the uniform of a US Army Colonel.

  Nial straightened up, watching them walk toward him.

  “Nathanial Aquila,” the woman intoned. “That was just about the most stupid move I have ever seen you make.”

  “Eurasia,” Nial intoned. “He had to be stopped. Your people would have missed, too. He knew the bullet was coming.”

  “We wouldn’t have tried to shoot him in the first place,” the woman snapped back. “We would have neutralized him in a secure location.”

  “There are no secure locations,” Rick replied. “No one can hold Heru. He’s an Ancient One. His powers are unmatched by anything you can bring to bear. He had to be killed.”

  There was more movement from the corridor. Kate appeared, with Ilaria, Roman and Winter behind her. Garrett, Dominic and Sasha followed.

  Ilaria was carrying the sniper rifle over her shoulder, but she moved around the outside of the forming group, and close to Marcus. She picked up his hand.

  “Any problems?” Nial asked Roman, who shook his head.

  There were fifteen people ranged in a very loose circle. Everyone was looking at Nial. “We’re all here,” Nial said. He looked at the Libertatus man in a suit. The man had grey hair but a young face. He had been listening with close attention, a hand in his pocket. “Bartholomew, thank you for coming.”

  Patrick Sauvage moved closer to Marcus, on the other side from where Ilaria stood. “Isn’t that….?”

  “The Secretary for State?” Marcus breathed back. “Yeah, it is. But I know him as Douglas Grifford.”

  “Does he have the stone, Nial?” Bartholomew asked.

  “Yes, he has it,” Roman said, stepping up next to Nial.

  “Will he use it?” Eurasia demanded.

  “He’s just lost everything, including his anonymity, here in the States,” Rick said. “He’ll leave the country. Then he’ll weigh up his options and conclude they’re too slim for his liking.” He grimaced. “We have to find him before he reaches the stone.”

  “It’s not here?” the third of the Libertatus group asked, sounding surprised. He looked like a younger man and wore a conservative, slim fitting suit, just like Bartholomew.

  “Rick. Roman,” Nial said. “Where is the stone and where do you think Heru will go next?”

  Rick looked at the ground in front of him, thinking hard. “He might go back to his mountain, to shore up his defenses, but….” He frowned.

  “I’ll take rough guesses right now,” Nial assured him.

  “I keep thinking of Turkey,” Rick said. “That country keeps turning up in connection with many things of interest to us. Heru arrived here from Turkey. Danich Wulfson’s narish died there. Kate found the Blood Stone there, two years ago.”

  “That’s where it is,” Roman interrupted. “Heru took it back to Turkey.”

  “Why would he do that?” Bartholomew asked.

  “Why go to the effort of hauling a very large and conspicuous stone out of the country?” Eurasia added.

  “The stone came from there,” Roman said. “He took it back there, just in case.”

  “Roman, you’ll need to explain more,” Nial advised.

  Roman lifted his hands up. “It’s all hearsay. Rumors. Stories handed down verbally. It took me years to dig up information about the Stone, and I still don’t know what is myth and what is fact. But there was a story—I dismissed it as pure story, but now I’m wondering…. Anyway. It said that nestled between the two peaks of Mt. Ararat, there is an amphitheater, and in the middle of the theatre, there is a table or cradle. That’s the place where the stone must rest in order to be opened.”

  “Mt. Ararat,” Kate said thoughtfully. “The place where Noah’s Arc came to a rest. That’s an interesting parallel.”

  “Another way to look at it,” Bartholomew said, “is as the location where humans re-emerged after world devastation, thousands of years ago.”

  “That was where the stone was made?” Marcus asked.

  Roman lifted his shoulders. “Perhaps. It would certainly explain how the Noah’s Arc story came into being, wouldn’t it? A devastating war between species, humans annihilated by the millions, all topped off by the coming of the Serene Ones en masse, and the extreme weather that the making of the Stone created. Impressionable and scared humans might spin a story around how the world as they knew it had ended.”

  “Mt. Ararat is, of course, in Turkey,” Rick pointed out.

  “We have to get there before him,” Nial decided.

  Bartholomew glanced at his watch. “He has a two hour start and he’ll use a private jet.”

  “Commercial flights would be faster,” Sebastian pointed out.

  Eurasia smiled. “There is a military jet refueling and prepping, right now, at Los Angeles Airforce Base, in El Segundo. It can get us there in thirteen hours, give or take.”

  Nial hesitated and Marcus knew why. Up until now, this had been his operation, his project, involving people he knew and trusted. To accept the military transport, he would be giving up a lot of that control.

  Winter touched Nial’s shoulder. “It’s the only way we can get Ilaria and her rifle into Turkey unnoticed and in a hurry,” she murmured.

  “I think Ilaria’s rifle will be useless against the power of the stone,” he said.

  “Not if we find Heru before he unleashes the stone,” Rick reminded him. “He has to retrieve it from wherever he left it in Turkey, then transport it to Mt. Ararat, assuming he knows where the amphitheater is, and that’s not a given.”

  “We don’t know where it is, either,” Roman pointed out.

  “In the middle, between two peaks. How hard can it be to find it?” Rick asked, sounding re
asonable.

  “I can have a satellite retooled to look in the area,” Eurasia said. “If it’s there and it is bigger than a yard across, we’ll pinpoint the location to within six inches.”

  Nial let out a slow breath. “Very well. Turkey, in thirteen hours. The gods help us all.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Bryon gazed at up the highest peak of Mt. Ararat in awe. He’d thought the mountain was a fairy story, and had been astonished when Heru had pointed to the map of Turkey and tapped the location.

  His astonishment had worn off after a day of travel. Heru would only travel when he could arrive after it was fully dark, and the blinds on all the windows in the cabin had been kept closed at all times. The pilots of the small jet hadn’t been bothered by the restriction. Bryon wondered if the pilots were vampire, too. They accepted everything Heru told them with a degree of respect that only someone who knew who Heru really was would bother to show.

  The jet didn’t have a long cruising range, not like the big commercial jumbos, so the journey to Turkey had been a taxing one, with stops every few hours. Bryon had tried to make the time pass more quickly by sleeping whenever he could. There was no food and no in-flight entertainment.

  After what felt like a century, or at least a few weeks, they had arrived in a town called Doğubeyazıt. Bryon didn’t know how to pronounce the name. It was two in the morning, local time, but two four-wheel drive vehicles, with big tires and darkened windows, sat on the tarmac waiting. A woman was standing next to the one at the front.

  The interpreter kicked at Bryon’s knee where he sat staring out the windows at the dun colored buildings that made up Doğubeyazıt. It was the first time Bryon had been outside the United States and the very different buildings were fascinating.

  Bryon shifted his leg quickly, avoiding the freak’s shoe.

  The interpreter grinned at him. “Come.”

  Heru’s little interpreter had escaped out the back door of the house just as the CIA or FBI or Secret Service, or whoever it was, had bashed in the front door of Bryon’s house, screaming out Heru’s name. Bryon had been at the bar up the street, indulging in a quick beer and a few minutes of peace before heading back to the house that had once been his home. As soon as he had seen his house featured on the TV screen over the bar, he had faded outside and into the back alleys. That was where Heru and the interpreter had found him, forty-five minutes later.