Spanky watched Sullivan as he stared out the window, searching for the black form in the night. “It wasn’t us.”
Jacobs rested his arms on his carbine and gave him a cautious look. “The ninja looking dude that was hauling ass across the roof?”
Spanky nodded. “Except it wasn’t a dude. It was Little John’s sister.”
“No way. Dude…” Lamb shook his head. “Of all the places.” He paused and nodded toward John. “Wait. If she’s killing vamps, do you still want to hunt her down and…well. You know?”
Spalding shrugged. “We have no idea what her purpose was here. She could be removing competition from her territory. She could be doing the dirty deeds of her master. She could be…anything.”
Jacobs nodded. “The way she was dressed, I’d think assassin.”
“It doesn’t matter.” John pulled his head back in from the window. “She’s gone. I guess I’ll never know.”
“Dude, you don’t even know if she was turned. She could still be human.”
John shook his head. “She still looks eighteen. I have no doubts what she is.” The disappointment painted across his features was impossible to miss. “Still, I wish I could have just asked her why?”
Donovan’s voice crackled across their earpieces. “Do you want me to keep tracking her?”
*****
“Sun’s setting, Chief.” Jimmy plopped down in the sand next to him and handed him a beer. “You got your stuff ready to go?”
Jack nodded solemnly. “This isn’t going to be easy.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “I know it’s only been a few months, but this place had become home.”
Robert finished coordinating with the wolves that were staying behind and then approached the pair. “Those who are staying are going to try to rebuild this mess.”
Jack took a long pull from the long neck and planted it into the sand. “What about Barbara and Bobby? Are you going to leave them here or bring them with you?”
Robert rubbed at the back of his neck and stared off across the ocean. “Honestly, Jack, she wants me to stay.” He noticed that Jack didn’t seem surprised. “I’m thinking…well…maybe I should stay here. You know, just in case Thorn returns.”
Jack chuckled to himself and nodded. “That sounds like a hell of a plan to me, Bob.” He pulled himself to his feet and stuck his hand out, grasping Robert’s. “I understand completely. Trust me.”
Robert turned sad eyes to his boss. “Do you really? Because I’ll be honest, Jack. I’m feeling like I’m leaving you hanging out to dry.”
“No, buddy, you brought your family out here so you could be a wolf and if Barbara got infected…well, the two of you could do your own thing. I get it.” Jack motioned to the island with a sweep of his hand. “This place is perfect. You’re surrounded by other wolves, nobody to try to hunt you. A safe place for Bobby when folks shift. You need to stay here.”
Robert glanced over his shoulder and saw Barbara pull Bobby closer to her, her eyes glued to the three men on the beach. “You sure? I mean…if you really need me, I can always…”
“Bob, stay here. You’re family comes first.” Jack pulled the man into an embrace and slapped his back. “You made a great second. Now go be a great husband.”
“If you end up needing me, call,” Robert made him promise.
“If I need you, trust me, I have your cell.” He pushed him toward Barbara. “Now go. And tell Barbara not to worry.”
“Thanks, buddy.” Bob gave him a wink as he turned.
Jimmy took a long pull from his beer. “You two should rent a room.”
“You’re going to look real funny walking around with my foot shoved up your ass.” Jack sat back down next to him. “When’s our ride supposed to be here?”
Jimmy shrugged. “After dark. Apparently there’s a mission so the duty officer was vague.” Jimmy stretched out in the sand and happened to see a gargoyle spread his wings in the darkness. “Fuck me.”
Jack spun his head around and saw the giant creature step from the roof and glide to the ground. “Impressive, aren’t they?”
“Hell yeah.” Jimmy sat up and turned to better see the three mythical monsters. “I wouldn’t mind having one on my team.”
Jack snorted. “They’re coming back with us, so that may not be out of the question.”
“Be still my beating heart,” Jimmy laughed. “I wonder what a gargoyle acts like after a few beers?”
“Let’s not find out.” Jack leaned over and poured his into the sand. “I watched Grim pick up a crashed helicopter and throw it into the ocean. With that kind of strength, a drunken gargoyle is not something I’d want to have to deal with.”
Jimmy looked at his own beer and quickly poured it out as well. “Have you decided where to start searching for Thorn?”
Jack nodded. “I was his Second. I have access to all of his papers. That includes all of his properties.” He hooked his chin back over his shoulder. “I packed them all. He owns a lot of different places but it shouldn’t take too long to search them.”
Jimmy sat and stared at the waves crashing on the shore. “What about the teams, Jack? You plan to come back for good or what?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know, TD. I figure I’ll talk with Mitchell and see what he thinks. I figure, at worst, I can give him the intel I have and he’ll say ‘thanks, now beat it’. If that happens, I guess I can search for Thorn on my own.”
“You know he won’t do that. You were his number one operator.” TD stood and offered Jack a hand up. “You just might want to tell him if your return is temporary.”
Jack exhaled hard and stared toward the water. “I honestly don’t know if he’ll have me back, Jim.”
“Why? You’re a Tier One operator, Jack.”
Jack nodded. “Once upon a time. But you have to know something.” Jack turned and faced him, his eyes solemn. “I stopped taking the bane months ago. I’m a shifter now.”
*****
“Here’s a change of clothes.” Paul tossed the clothing to Rufus and fell into the chair again. He did his best to appear bored as he picked at his nails.
“Do you have a plan for once I’m finished healing?” Rufus asked as he pulled his burnt and blood covered clothing from his body.
Paul shot him a glance and laughed. “Me? I thought you were the brains of this outfit.”
Rufus paused as he was pulling his shirt on. “You were the one with the foresight to drag me to safety. You knew to trust Marco. You knew that human blood would get me back on my feet. Why would I not trust your judgment now?”
Paul sat up and stared at his brother. “Now? After all of these centuries? Now I’m responsible enough to trust?”
Rufus sighed and sat back on the makeshift bed. “Mon ami, you were always loved. Trusted? Non, but loved, oui.”
“Just not enough to trust. I see,” Paul snorted and reclined in the old squeaky office chair again.
“It wasn’t from a lack of affection. It was because you acted untrustworthy.” Rufus pulled the charred remains of his pants from his body, old chunks of burnt flesh still clinging to them. “At this point, I’m not even sure where is safe to go.”
“Ah, see? There ya go. You put all your eggs in one basket and you handed it to that Boy Scout, Thompson. Now that he’s turned on you, you have nothing that he doesn’t know about.” Paul waved him off. “Your first mistake was in trusting him.”
Rufus hung his head and nodded. “Oui. You are right. I should not have trusted him so completely.” He lifted his head and turned to Paul. “So now I am at your mercies.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “Don’t sound so melodramatic. It isn’t that bad.” He rolled the chair closer to Rufus’ bed and leaned back again, propping his feet up on the mattress. “You have holdings all across the Americas, yes?” Rufus nodded. “Then we pick one and use it for a short while, then move to another. As long as we keep moving, the odds of him stumbling upon us are slim.”
Rufus n
odded. “What about the underground facility in Nevada? The one where we staged the battle against the Sicarii?”
Paul shook his head. “No place where the authorities might stumble upon us. Too risky. No, we should use properties you own and simply bounce from place to place.” Paul’s mind kept racing as he thought. “We can call in reinforcements to act as security if we need to. We just need to figure out where a reliable source is.”
“The wolves, of course.”
“The wolves, of course,” Paul mocked. “Thompson is a wolf. Do not think for one moment that he wouldn’t go to them first and report his concerns. You know how the wolves are about pride and honor and all of that spew. If they think for a moment that you did anything to break their pact?”
“Oui.” Rufus knew exactly what the end result would be.
“So we have to avoid the wolves and the human hunters. And we need security that we can trust.”
“Vampires.”
“Correct. Vampires.” Paul kicked away from the mattress. “And since you still have control of my people, we have plenty of them to call.”
Rufus leveled dead eyes at his brother. “Make the call.”
*****
“So what’s the cure, Mark? What do I need to get? Garlic? Holy water? A flea collar?” Tracy sounded desperate as she gripped his hand.
Mark closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, his jaw bulging from the pain. “There is no ‘cure’. Trust me on that.” He opened his eyes and met her worried gaze. “Except a silver bullet.”
“No, I don’t accept that,” she whispered, her hand squeezing his harder. “There has to be something.”
He turned slightly away from her and stared at the ceiling tiles of the room. “You know, when I first came back and Jack told me that they were infected with the wolf virus, I really thought I wanted their strength and speed too.” His voice cracked and he sucked in a sharp breath. “But then I saw what Matt when through. I saw what Mueller went through. The risk to your family is too great. You can’t control the shift or what the beast does when you transition.” He shook his head slightly. “When it was just you and me, I thought, ‘what the heck’. We could be wolves. Never grow old. Never be weak. Shift once a month, that’s a hell of a tradeoff.”
Tracy lowered her face and pressed her forehead to his hand. “I can’t believe you ever considered something like that.”
“I thought about it. But now with grandkids and…who wants to live forever, right?” He gave her a tired smile.
“Not if your entire family dies around you.”
“And I wouldn’t wish this curse on any of them.” He coughed slightly then winced in pain. “Remind me not to do that again.”
“What about a transfusion?” Her face was suddenly hopeful, but his eyes quashed that hope.
“I’m already eaten up with it.” He lifted her hand to his face and she could feel the heat radiating from him. “It’s the reason my body is burning up.”
“What do we do?” She feared the answer he was going to give her.
“I already told you. I have a mineral deficiency. I need a high velocity dose of silver.”
“That’s not funny.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder.
“I wasn’t joking.” He reached for her hand and pulled it closer to his mouth. Kissing her knuckles her closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to memorize the scent of her. “I want you to do it.”
“You can’t ask me to do something like that.”
“You threatened to smother me in my sleep when we first married. Surely you can press a barrel to my head and squeeze a trigger.”
“Please don’t joke, dammit.” The tears poured freely and she tried to pull away from him. He gripped her hand tighter and refused to let her go.
“I have to. If I let it sink in…I’ll lose it.” He reached up to her face and stroked her cheek. “But this has to be done.”
“Surely somebody else can do it.” She stood in the small room and stared at the IV bag. “Maybe they could put something in your IV. You could just fall asleep and never wake up.”
“I’m not a dog.” He smirked. “Well, yet. But even then, it has to be silver. A bullet is quickest and painless. Anything else would hurt like hell.”
Tracy hung her head and shrugged. “How am I supposed to find a silver bullet? I’m not the Lone Ranger.”
“In our closet. Top shelf.” He coughed lightly and gripped his chest again. “There’s a .38 revolver. Jay Wolf made me some special rounds for it. Just in case.”
“Jay Wolf? Are you kidding me?”
He shook his head. “Swear to God. That’s the man’s name. He makes our ammo for us.”
She shook her head defiantly. “Matt drove me here…”
“So have him drive you back. Tell him…anything. Just get it.”
She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. “Fine, I’ll get it. But I’m not using it.” She turned and reached for the door. She paused in the doorway and turned back to stare at him. “Whatever happened to, ‘for better or for worse’?”
“It was for better or for worse, not for better or for cursed.”
*****
As the large overhead door closed behind the stolen buses, Apollo stood to the side and watched as the men inside disembarked. Each man stepped off the transport and looked around the previously abandoned warehouse with a scowl of disapproval on their collective faces.
The driver stepped to the side of the bus and opened the covers to the storage bins holding their gear. “Grab your shit and get it stowed.”
Each man dug through the piles and retrieved his personal belongings then worked his way to the bunk areas. “I don’t think they approve of the accommodations,” Apollo commented to Sheridan. “Maybe next time we can put them up at the Ritz.”
“They’ll get over it. They’ve stayed in worse places.” Sheridan watched the men and tried to assess them as Apollo did. “What’s your take?”
“Hard to tell just by looking at them. Some look mean enough to have potential. The real proof will be in whether they can fight.”
“According to Mr. Simmons, these are the best of the best.” Sheridan hobbled back to the office and left the door open for Apollo.
After he walked into the office, he shut the door and watched Sheridan ease into a chair. “The last group he sent was supposed to be able to fight, too. They didn’t do too good.”
“True enough. But look at who they’re going after.” He flipped through the drawings that Apollo had given them. “Maybe we should have used gas?”
“Where would you have gotten it?” Apollo hopped up onto the counter and continued to watch the men through the dirty window. “First thing in the morning, I’ll put them through their paces. We can figure out where they stand as warriors.” He turned and addressed Sheridan directly. “You need to get us weapons. And a lot more ammo ASAP.”
“Yeah. About that.” Sheridan ran a hand across his face. “We cleaned out your man’s supply of silver when we absconded with his ammunition. I doubt they’ve had a chance to resupply him.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, and unfortunately, the wolf that was loading the ammunition for us was killed in the assault on Tinker.”
“Fucking great.” Apollo hated loading cartridges. It was make work and boring as hell. “We’ll find out if any of the new guys know how to cast bullets and get them started then.”
“We have a pretty good supply still, but if you are expecting the squads to track us and hit us here, we’ll definitely need more.”
“Oh, we’ll need more than just bullets. I want RPGs, claymores, frags, smoke grenades, you name it.”
Sheridan’s eyes lit up. “Well then. Make me a shopping list.”
Apollo reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Already done.” He tossed it to Sheridan and leaned back, staring out the window again.
“You don’t want much, do you?” Sheridan’s voice drippe
d with sarcasm. “I’m not an armory, you know.”
“No, but you know the money man. Somebody needs to make it happen. You know who we’re about to go up against.”
Sheridan read through the list again and nodded in agreement. “Very well. First thing in the morning, I’ll start contacting my people on the black market.”
*****
Mick sat quietly in his room, his ears straining to listen to anything going on outside his door. Convinced that he was alone, he pulled his travel bag out from under his bunk and unzipped it. He rifled through the leather bag and pulled out his shave kit. He set the contents next to the sink in his room then stepped beside the door once more. He listened intently for another moment then went back to the sink. He reached for the canned shave cream and unscrewed the bottom of the can. He pulled a small black electronic device from the bottom of the can and pressed a button along the bottom. Two LED lights lit up and he waited to see if the device could broadcast through the thick concrete walls of the underground facility. The red light remained lit and the green light flickered, and then went out.
Cursing to himself, Mick held the device in the air and walked around the edges of his room, holding the device both high and low, praying for a signal. Nothing.
He debated on risking getting caught with it and knew he had no other options. He pressed a series of buttons and then began tapping out his message in Morse code. As he finished, he pressed another series of buttons which stored the message for burst transmissions as soon as signal could be had.
Mick shoved the device into his shirt pocket and headed for the door. He paused then quickly turned back and screwed the bottom back onto the shave cream can. Just in case somebody comes looking for me.
Mick stepped out into the hallway and found it empty. He turned and headed toward the exit. He was certain that there would be a flurry of people in the massive central part of the facility. The same central area that he would have to walk through to get outside. He prayed that if he walked with purpose, nobody would challenge him.
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