Crusader (MPRD Book 2)

by Andrew Chapman

The vamp was a young man—or had been when he was turned—maybe eighteen or nineteen, with blue-black hair and dark eyes.

  “Wanna tell me what you thought you were doing?” I asked. “See, this is my territory. I’ve pissed all over this place.”

  “Fuck you, copper,” he gasped. “I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing.”

  “No, that’s true,” I conceded.

  The vamp was recently turned. His accent and attitude was pure chav; loud, obnoxious and self-important. I wouldn’t have looked twice at this guy if he’d been yelling obscenities from the stands at a football match. There was a certain way of handling these types when they were human. I was betting it wouldn’t be much different for the vampire version.

  I raised my foot and stomped down on his ruined hip, grinding the shattered bones. He screamed, the veins in his neck standing out like hosepipes.

  “But,” I went on in the same friendly tone of voice, “I was hoping you’d chose to talk to me.”

  Something grabbed my attention as the vamp whipped his head from side to side and I moved my foot, using the toe of my boot to turn his chin. Beneath his ear was a small black tattoo, about an inch across.

  “Now, what is that?” I asked.

  “Go fuck yourself, narc,” he spat.

  It looked like a Nordic dragon, wingless, curled into a circle, with its tail wrapped around its own neck. It also looked disturbingly familiar.

  Knuckles’ Land Rover pulled up behind me and her team climbed out.

  “Billy?” I called.

  “Yo!”

  I grinned at the response. Billy was irrepressibly cheerful.

  “You got your camera?”

  “Right here, bossman.”

  He appeared at my elbow, pulling a digital camera from his pocket.

  “Get me some pictures,” I said.

  I was quietly pleased when Billy didn’t even ask what I wanted him to photograph.

  “What’s the tattoo mean?” I asked as Billy started snapping.

  “I ain’t fuckin’ telling the filth nothin’,” said the vamp through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, wrong answer,” I replied, placing the sole of my boot against his cheek and leaning my weight forward.

  “You’re gonna die, copper,” he grunted as I pressed down.

  “I came to terms with that a long time ago,” I replied.

  “No, you’re gonna die soon. He’s comin’.”

  “Is he?” I said with heavy sarcasm. “Well, when he gets here we’ll be sure to say hi to him for you.”

  “Stupid human. You think you know. You don’t know.”

  “No, that’s right. I don’t know,” I said, taking the weight off of his face. “Now, what is it I don’t know?”

  “You’re already dead, you just don’t know it,” he said, giving me a bloody, fang-filled grin.

  Suddenly he twisted, his hand coming up with a small pistol. I reflexively squeezed the trigger. Two shots rang out and the vampire slumped backwards, dead.

  “Dammit,” I said with weary resignation.

  “Uh, Jack,” said Marie from behind me. “You better check this out.

  I turned and walked back to the wrecked Escort.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, we have two more vamps in the car, and her.”

  Marie shone her flashlight into the interior, illuminating a figure sat in the back seat. It was a young woman, dressed like she’d been going out for a night clubbing. My heart hit my boots.

  “Human?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Victim?”

  “Not that I can tell. She has bite marks on both arms and her neck. Not all of them are fresh. No restraint marks, no defensive wounds.”

  “Corpsebait, then.”

  Marie reached up and gently turned the dead girl’s head to one side, exposing her ear.

  “And check this out.”

  Under her ear was the same tattoo that the vamp had been wearing.

  “What about the others?” I asked.

  “Already checked. They both have the same tattoo.”

  “So, three vamps, one human, all with the same mark. What does that suggest? And pretty boy back there must have known there was no way he could get the drop with that little spud gun of his, so what’s the deal?”

  “Well,” said Knuckles, “it seems like whatever it was … he was ready to die to stop us finding out.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  The interior of the White Swan was quiet. The regulars had long since gone home and only the two vampire hunter teams—mine and Knuckles’—remained inside. My team was light a few members. John and Anna had taken some of their accrued leave and gone to visit his parents. John’s dad had suffered a mild heart attack and was resting in hospital. Interestingly, John’s parents were a lot more accepting of having a daughter-in-law who was a vampire than Anna’s own parents were. Still, it was good to know they had somewhere to call home.

  The table in front of us was littered with the remains of a surprisingly good meal and several empty glasses. The sun was just beginning to rise, the first rays peeking through the grimy windows to illuminate the dingy interior of the safe house.

  “Anyone figured out what that tattoo is yet?” asked Cally.

  “Nope, but it is familiar,” replied Billy. “I’ve seen it before. What I don’t understand is how a vamp gets a tattoo anyway. Won’t it just heal away?”

  “Not necessarily,” I replied with a shrug. “If it was important enough the vamp could get it re-applied every few months I suppose.”

  I was gazing at the picture Billy had snapped of the vamp’s neck when the door opened and a group of locals came in.

  “Breakfast shift’s here,” said Rock Ape quietly.

  The White Swan was a shithole of epic proportions. It was a mystery how it had managed to pass health and safety for all these years. When the Ministry asked to take it over as a safe house the owner had been only too happy to agree. Despite the shabby furniture, grungy carpet and walls that looked to have last seen the application of fresh paint or wallpaper sometime around the reign of Queen Victoria, the Swan did have one thing going for it: some of the best food around. And it came in portions large enough to make it difficult to get out of the chair when you were done. The owner had heard of nouvelle cuisine and wanted no part of it. The local farmers ate here on a basis so regular it was almost religious, and the farmers did not like the Ministry.

  A few months ago the government had started getting involved in the farm business, taking over and running them using labor from the prisons. Sure, some bleeding hearts whined about chain gangs and slavery, but they whined with full stomachs, which was the point. The few farmers and their help that had stayed on after Black Tuesday resented the government and, seeing as we hunters were the most visible part of that government, they hated us, too.

  Most of these big and, I’m sure, otherwise pleasant men got up so early in the morning that last night was technically still going on and worked in their fields ‘till sunrise before heading to the Swan for breakfast. The last thing they wanted was to walk into their favorite watering hole and find a group of the very people they hated lounging around inside.

  There were some black looks and muttered comments as the men went to prop up the bar. This was fairly normal. Both groups usually made a show of ignoring the other and the peace was kept.

  We were just finishing up and getting ready to go to bed when the door opened a second time and a weary-looking group trudged in. It was Hydra and her team.

  We quickly made room for them and I sent Rock Ape and Pogo to the bar for drinks. It was no accident that I’d picked those two. Pogo looked like evil personified, from his shaven scalp to the nasty scar that ran down the side of his face, and Rock Ape was as big as a house. Nobody with an ounce of sense would start anything on either of them.

  “Jack, got a message for you,” said Hydra once everyone was seated.

  “Oh De
bbie,” I said, “and here was me thinking you came all this way because you missed me.”

  She tried to give me a withering look but the blush that was coloring her cheeks undercut it. Hydra and I had been friends for a while and I felt safe flirting with her because she had absolutely no interest in me.

  “Could you be serious for a moment?” she asked, exasperated.

  “To what end?” I asked innocently.

  “Well, you might find out what the message is,” said Billy.

  “Minister wants to see you,” said Hydra. “Apparently there’s a shitstorm about to …”

  She was no longer looking at me; her eyes were locked on something over my shoulder.

  “Too late,” she said, pointing. “Take a look at that.”

  I turned, momentarily confused, until I saw the wall-mounted television set. I gave a groan of frustration. It was tuned to the vampire-owned 24-hour news channel. A lot of hunters liked to watch the channel purely for the laugh factor, but there was nothing humorous about it now. The image on the screen was of the hunt I’d just led. Someone had been filming the whole thing.

  “Turn that up, someone?” said Hydra.

  “…earlier this morning,” said a female voice on the television. “The four youths, three of them hemovores, had simply become lost and, while attempting to get safely home, were the target of a brutal and violent attack. So-called ‘vampire hunters’ from the Ministry of Paranormal Research and Defence opened fire without warning, destroying their car and killing three of the occupants. The fourth was executed as he tried to escape.”

  The shot changed to a fuzzy image of me shooting the vampire. The camerawork was shaky and obviously shot through a zoom lens, but it was clear enough to see the shooting. The fact that the vamp had pulled a gun on me was expertly edited out. The screen cut to a blonde woman, pretty in a cold sort of way, standing next to the burned-out remains of a completely different car from the one the vamps had been in.

  “At this time it’s believed that the murderer is this man,” said the reporter over one of the Ministry’s publicity shots—actually an actor who bore a pretty close resemblance to me. “The man known only by the codename ‘Pagan’ is responsible for the deaths of numerous hemovores and is touted by the Ministry as their top hunter.”

  The scene switched to the studio where a well-groomed and avuncular anchorman had plastered a concerned look over his face.

  “Thank you, Janine,” he said. “Is there any information about the identity of the victims in this latest attack?”

  “Nothing official, Shawn, but unconfirmed reports suggest that one of the victims was Anthony Dawson, son of the late Terry Dawson. Dawson, as you may recall, was the Member of Parliament for Salford who was killed by anti-hemovore elements after he appealed for calm following the troubles five years ago. Anthony Dawson is best known for his tireless work promoting and fighting for hemovore rights and his attempts to end the war in England.”

  A picture of a clean-cut vampire in a business suit, smiling pleasantly at the camera, replaced the reporter’s image on the screen.

  “Ah bullshit!” said Billy bitterly. “That prick wasn’t even in the car!”

  “I know,” Cally said absently. “And they know it too. They’ll air a correction in a few hours but who’ll notice? Even if people do catch the correction they’ll still be left with the impression that the vamps were innocent young kids working for peace and equality and rainbows and cuddly kittens who were gunned down by indiscriminate killers.”

  I slumped down in my chair, deep in thought.

  “So what’s the big fuckin’ deal?” said Rock Ape. “So the news is spinning a story to make the leeches look good? What’s so important about that?”

  “I have no idea,” said Hydra. “All they told me was that this was big and the Minister wanted to see you.”

  “They say when?” I asked.

  “You know how it is with the suits,” said Hydra. “ASAP if not sooner.”

  “Okay,” I said, standing up. “Let’s get on the road.”

  I was grateful I’d skipped on any alcohol tonight. A Ministry badge is good for a lot of things but it ain’t a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Marie stood up next to me and we grabbed our bags. We hadn’t even had time to unpack. Fortunate, as it turned out.

  “Your team staying in the area?” I asked Hydra.

  She nodded without saying anything.

  We exchanged goodbyes with the hunters and made our way to the door. As we did so one of the farmers muttered something that set off a round of stifled laughter. I didn’t hear what it was but Marie stiffened beside me.

  “What?” I said quietly. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go.”

  I cast a final wary glare at the locals and thought better of pressing the issue. I wouldn’t be endearing myself to anyone by starting a fight in here.

  We stepped out into the morning sunshine and paused to look around. We hunt at night and the warmth of the sun was a rare treat. Spring was sliding into summer and the weather was warm and pleasant, the air fragrant and peaceful. I took a deep breath of the clean morning air and let it out in a satisfied sigh. We got into the Land Rover and slowly pulled away.

  Beside me in the passenger seat, Marie was sitting silently.

  “Okay, love,” I said finally. “Why so moody?”

  “I’m not being moody,” she replied. “I’m thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Wondering how people know I’m a werewolf. Does it show?”

  “Well, it might be the ‘Howl if you go furry’ t-shirt you’re wearing. Just a guess.”

  She glanced down and laughed sheepishly.

  “I’ve always hated this shirt,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Hey! I gave you that shirt. I thought it was funny.”

  “Well, I’m glad you amuse yourself.”

  “You can always take it off, you know,” I said slyly.

  “Yeah, you’d like that,” she said with a smile.

  “Absolutely,” I replied.

  “Maybe later, stud.”

  “So what brought that on?” I asked. “Wondering how people know you’re a werewolf?”

  “Promise me you won’t turn around,” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Why?” I asked sharply. “What happened?”

  “Promise me,” she repeated.

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “That bloke, in the pub.”

  “What about him?”

  “He said ‘looks like he’s taking the doggy for a walk’.”

  I stomped on the brakes and pulled the Land Rover onto the side of the road.

  “He said what?” I snarled through clenched teeth.

  “Jack, you promised.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” I said. “Bollocks. And I didn’t have my fingers crossed or anything?”

  “You can't fight the entire world, sweetheart,” she said.

  I put the Land Rover in gear and pulled back out onto the road towards London.

  “I don't want to fight the entire world,” I said. “Just the bits that piss me off.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  There’s an impressive, sprawling building just south of the river Thames in London. Rumor has it that it used to be the palatial residence of a 14th Century Lord who used to throw some very lavish—and perverted—parties there. History is silent on this notion, but in its turbulent lifetime it has housed spies, saboteurs, intelligence, counter-intelligence, and at least two government departments so secret that their existence is unlikely to ever be declassified. During WWI Winston Churchill allegedly chaired meetings of the Admiralty here, and when he was Prime Minister in WWII he chose the building as the home of the Department of Propaganda. But whatever it had been, it now housed one of the world’s most advanced training and intelligence facilities. It belonged to the Ministry of Paranormal Research and Defence.

  I normally liked to come in via the tun
nel that led under the river, but today I’d pointed the Land Rover across Tower Bridge. I was taking the long way around. I was driving what I thought of as the ‘official’ Land Rover. It was a standard ‘Snatch’ Land Rover in olive green, but with the vampire hunters’ badge emblazoned on each door and a set of blue police lights on the front and back bumpers. People tended to get out of our way. In a country where, until recently, even the police weren’t armed, the sight of the open-topped Land Rover’s pintle-mounted machine gun was enough to raise eyebrows.

  I always liked coming back to HQ; to the home of the Ministry I’d helped shape. Back in the beginning I’d been the Ministry’s one and only vampire hunter, quickly followed by my old friend and comrade, Bill. I was Pagan and Bill became Titan. The codenames were chosen randomly from an approved list, as evidenced by the fact that the third hunter had been named ‘Turpin’, after the famous highwayman. Turpin had also been the first name on the plaque outside the Minster’s office that commemorated hunters who had fallen in the line of duty.

  Recently I had added sixteen names to that plaque. First there was Bill ‘Titan’ Etheridge. Then fifteen friends who had fallen at the vampires’ attack on Sheffield, not least of which was another old and trusted friend, Neil ‘Norse’ Campbell.

  Now we were back at the Ministry again.

  Walking into the Ministry via the front entrance was like taking a trip back in time. Everything was dark, old wood, from the floors to the furniture, and the whole place was gently scented with the same wax polish that my mother used to use. Below ground everything was steel and tile, but up here, where the public face of the Ministry lived, everything was terribly impressive, terribly restrained, and terribly British. A Union Flag hung outside and a modest portrait of Her Majesty graced the wall behind the receptionist. I unconsciously stood a little straighter beneath that stern yet benevolent gaze. The receptionist’s smile was, in contrast, warm and friendly.

  “Good morning sir,” she said. “The Minister sends his apologies, he’s running a little late. He invites you to join the rest of your team in his office and he’ll be along shortly.”

  “Thank you ma’am,” I replied, pleased to hear that Anna and John had made it back in time.