Renegade (Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence)

by Chapman, Andrew

“You don't think there's going to be trouble, do you?”

  “Naw,” I said. “But if this wanker is coming here for anything less than life or death I want to be ready to kneecap the bastard.”

  I stood and stared at her.

  “You getting up?”

  “I am up, Jack,” she said sweetly. “I'm just moving so fast you think I'm still in bed.”

  “Oh, is that right?”

  “Yes it is. It's a quantum relativistic thing.”

  I grabbed the covers and threw them off of her.

  “Funny, looks like you're still there.”

  She posed on the bed, displaying herself to me. Then she lifted her legs, pointing her toes at the ceiling, before spreading them until her calves were almost touching the covers. It always amazed me how flexible she was.

  “Just so you make sure to hurry back,” she whispered, trailing her fingers over herself.

  “Never worry about that, puppy,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  She flipped herself upright and kissed me quickly.

  “Hurry back, stud.”

  “Get dressed.”

  I gave her a pat on the bottom. My room key was in my jacket and I needed to cover the gun so I grabbed it on the way out.

  The corridor was deserted and silent. I shrugged my jacket on and punched the elevator button. Damn the fucking Ministry and their stupid timing.

  CHAPTER

  11

  He left the room as I was rooting around for my combat suit. Might as well be ready in case this was some sort of emergency. I pulled the stretchy garment on and zipped it up, shrugging my shoulders to settle the armored plates into a comfortable position.

  I looked around the room. Hell, where was my gun? Jack would kill me if I'd lost it. I suddenly remembered, I'd taken off the holster and dropped it on the chair. The gun was the lovely nickel and gold pistol he had given me as a gift on our first real date. Just remembering that night gave me a warm glow, followed by a rush of bitterness. The Ministry had interrupted that night too.

  Well that's not fair. Marcus Demios, pretender to the throne vacated by the death of Glavidia had actually been the reason we'd been recalled. Demios was dead now, killed by my man, so he could rot and we were alive.

  I like that kind of revenge.

  I checked the weapon, making sure it was loaded and a round was in the chamber. 'Check and test. Check and test,' was Jack's mantra. Always check, always test.

  I dropped the gun and holster on the bed. I suppose I could start packing.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I leaned against the back wall of the elevator, thinking black thoughts at the ministry man. If this wasn't important someone was about to get into more trouble than he could possibly handle.

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid smoothly open. The lobby was practically empty. There was a brightly-smiling woman behind the front desk talking to an elderly lady, and a married couple just coming in the front doors. I stepped out and looked around, my instincts clamoring for attention.

  CHAPTER

  13

  I tossed a suitcase on the bed and started to load it with the clothes we'd worn today. Even if we weren't leaving we might as well get them off of the floor.

  I flushed, feeling a warm thrill trickle through my body when I picked up the little g-string he had been wearing. Lingerie for men is difficult to find and mostly looked ridiculous. This, though, had looked so hot on him. I packed it away in the case. I had to get him back into that thing.

  I was turning towards the bedside table when I heard a quiet click from behind me. A faint breeze ruffled my hair, bringing with it a scent that raised my hackles.

  CHAPTER

  14

  “Hi,” I said to the woman behind the desk as soon she was finished dealing with her customer. “Is James around?”

  She plastered a fake smile on her plum red lips.

  “I'm sorry sir, James isn't working today.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  The scent was immediately recognizable. Vampire.

  I spun around, changing into my wolf form with a growl of challenge. There were two black-clad vamps in the room already, with two more behind them. They were wearing military-style clothing with body armor and they were all armed with strange guns.

  Thought ceases. I leap, jaws wide, claws outstretched. The first vampire, the closest, goes down with a single swipe, his throat torn out. The second gets punched in the stomach, shattering the Kevlar plate in his body armor. The heel of my paw slams into his chin, breaking his neck. I spin, lashing out again, tearing the face of the third down to the bone. Two more vamps are climbing onto the balcony. I grab the fourth, pulling him close, my jaws closing on his neck with a crunch as blood runs down my chest.

  “Fucking hell!” yells one vamp. “Shoot the bitch!”

  His strange gun spits at me, wide, the shot whistling over my shoulder.

  CHAPTER

  16

  “I'm sorry?” I said. “James just called up to my room. He said there was someone waiting for me down in the lobby. Room 401.”

  The receptionist shook her head, the fake smile staying in place.

  “I'm afraid not, sir. In fact,” she said, tapping a few keys on a computer, “the call to your room five minutes ago was from an outside line.”

  She looked up from the computer to turn that fake smile on me again but I wasn't there. I was halfway across the lobby at a full run.

  One of the elevators was opening, a businessman coming out. I dodged him and dived inside.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  I hammered the button for the fourth floor.

  “Hold the lift please!”

  I turned to see the young couple hurrying towards the open doors.

  I drew my pistol and bared my teeth.

  “Wait for the next one,” I growled as the door closed on their startled faces.

  CHAPTER

  17

  The vamp pumps his weapon and fires again. This one barely misses my ear. I step forward, yanking the gun away and raking his shoulder with my claws.

  The other vamp fires and I feel a sting on my arm. I look down. There is a dart sticking in my muscle. I snarl and brush it out.

  I whirl, taking a step forward and a wave of nausea crashes over me. I stumble, falling to my knees. I roar in rage, struggling to get back to my feet.

  “Hit it again!”

  “Don't. That'll kill it.”

  These are new voices, more vamps on the balcony. The vamp that shot me strides forward and crashes his weapon into the back of my head. I collapse, seeing stars.

  “Fucking bitch!” yells the vamp with the ruined arm.

  I roll over, using the last of my strength, and grab the vamp's ankle. Before anyone can react I slam my paw into his knee, bending the leg the wrong way and shattering his kneecap.

  The vamp screams, falling on top of me, knocking the wind out of my lungs. The drug from the dart is in my system, pulling me down into blackness.

  My last thought is for my man. My Jack. Vamps are here to kill my man and I failed to stop them.

  CHAPTER

  18

  As the lift climbed I checked my weapon again before flicking the safety catch off.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Someone had wanted me out of the room, and I had been too sleepy to notice the origin of the call. No excuse. No fucking excuse.

  The elevator dinged and I was through the doors before they were halfway open. The corridor was still quiet, only now it seemed an unnatural quiet. I cautiously made my way down the corridor and listened at the door of my room.

  Nothing. Dead silence.

  I used the stupid plastic card key and shoved the door open, following the business end of my gun inside.

  My room was empty, exactly as I had left it. The connecting door was cracked open an inch, throwing a narrow strip of light across the carpet. I pushed the door open and stepped into my worst nightmare.


  Furniture was overturned, curtains were torn, and blood was splattered over the walls and carpet. Marie was nowhere to be seen.

  But there was the vamp. He was wearing a sober business suit with a subdued red tie. His thinning blonde hair was combed straight back from a patrician face that I hated on sight. He was seated in one of the room's armchairs, his legs primly crossed, looking infuriatingly calm and smug.

  “Where's my mate?” I snarled.

  “She is safe, Pagan,” the vamp replied. “Though it killed several of my agents to bring her down.”

  I moved away from the door, putting my back to the wall, keeping the pistol trained on the vamp's chest.

  “Where is she?”

  “She is safe,” he repeated. “And she will remain that way as long as you cooperate with us. Now, the first thing—”

  “Oh, fuck you,” I growled and then I shot him.

  I leaped the broken chair and ran out onto the balcony. There was blood out here, too. I saw the normal sights of late-night London. There was a van pulling around the corner at the end of the road. I had no way of knowing if Marie was inside, but I did have a way of finding out.

  The vamp was slumped in the chair, a ragged hole in his chest. Not a fatal wound for a vampire. Well, not immediately fatal.

  I backhanded the vamp across the face as hard as I could. His eyes fluttered open and he drew in a startled breath. I grabbed him by the lapels, yanking him to his feet.

  “You and me are gonna have a nice, long chat, sonny Jim,” I growled.

  The room was, not to put too fine a point on it, a torture chamber. It was located deep under an otherwise unremarkable farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

  The walls and floor were covered in close-fitting white tiles, discolored here and there with odd brownish stains, especially around the drain in the center of the floor. There was a hosepipe coiled neatly on one wall next to a row of pegs that held long rubber aprons, also stained.

  The far wall held a set of shelves, on which were rows of rusty implements. If one were forced to describe these instruments, one would have to include their ability to inflict incredible pain. There were hammers, pinchers, spikes, knives, saws, clubs, pliers and other grisly objects. There was a blowtorch. Sitting on the floor on a pair of trolleys was an oxy-acetylene torch and a small, sturdy-looking electrical generator.

  In the middle of the floor was a solid metal chair, facing the rack. Any occupant of the chair would not—could not—have any doubt what lay in store for them.

  It was a brutal, terrifying room, a place where humanity was removed, where pain was inflicted, where minds were broken along with bones, where secrets were torn from the bloodied lips of people who thought they were strong.

  But it was all fake. It was a carefully constructed façade. It was far easier, not to mention less messy, to simply strap the victim into the chair and leave them alone to contemplate their fate. In similar rooms to either side, startlingly realistic screams could be played on a sound system. In this room they were just this side of inaudible. Just loud enough to scare the piss out of the occupant. Hence the drain.

  Twenty-seven people had graced the chair in the history of this room. Sixteen had broken down without anyone laying a finger on them. One more had suffered a massive heart attack and had, instead, given up his secrets in a hospital, begging not to be taken back to that room.

  The room had been used to extract information from Russian spies during the cold war, and from terrorists caught in more recent years.

  It was maintained by the Ministry of Defence and provided useful training in psychological interrogation techniques. Technically it violated several international laws, but only technically. Nobody was physically tortured in here. It was a masterpiece of theater, but now someone was playing for real.

  The vamp from the hotel was strapped securely into the chair. I entered the room using the door behind the chair. More psychology. The chair's occupant couldn't see who was in the room.

  “This is fake, human,” said the vampire confidently. “You didn't think I'd be fooled by the paint, did you? No blood has been spilled in this room.”

  I made a mental note. If we ever wanted to use this room for vampires we'd need to slosh a few buckets of blood around for the scent.

  I walked calmly around the chair. I was stripped to the waist, a silver-tipped knuckle-duster on my right hand. I was, I knew, being recorded by eight different high definition cameras.

  “You expect me to be afraid of you, human?” said the vamp.

  I think we both knew the answer to that one. I could smell the fear coming off of him.

  I placed my SIG and my commando knife on the racks with the other implements, and then thoughtfully picked up a hammer and chisel, inspecting them before putting them down again.

  “I won't tell you a thing, do you hear me, human? Nothing!”

  “That's okay,” I said quietly. “There's nothing I want to ask you.”

  “Then what is the purpose of this charade, human?”

  I spun on my heel, took three quick strides and punched the vampire in the mouth as hard as I could, putting every ounce of rage and pain into the blow. The vamp's head rocked back in a spray of blood and I heard a tooth hit the floor and bounce off of the wall.

  “The purpose,” I snarled, “is for you to die as messy and painful a death as I can manage to inflict upon you.”

  The vampire looked at me with wild eyes, blood soaking his chin.

  I pointed to the cameras in the corners of the room.

  “This little session is being recorded and broadcast live over the Internet. I will keep you alive and in pain as an object lesson to your friends. If my mate is released, unharmed, I'll let them live. If she is harmed in any way, when I find them—and I will find them, I will not rest, I will hunt them down and drag them here—when I find them your death will seem nice and easy in comparison. Any vampire that helps them will join them in their death. I will tear the world apart to find them and anyone they know.”

  I reached past the vampire and opened a spigot on a bottle of IV blood hung on the back of the chair. The life-giving liquid trickled down the transparent tube and into the vamp's veins.

  “You are not going to die quickly,” I said as I walked back to the rack of tools.

  I came back with the hammer and chisel. The vamp's wrists were securely shackled to the arms of the chair, and his hands had been heavily taped down. Only his fingers were sticking out.

  “What are you going to do?” the vampire whined, recovered enough to speak.

  I placed the tip of the chisel against the second knuckle of the index finger on his right hand.

  “Hurt you,” I said.

  I raised the hammer and brought it down as hard as I could.

  The vamp screamed as the chisel bit through skin and bone, sending the tip of his finger flying across the room.

  I moved the now bloody tool to the ring finger.

  “Get comfortable, this may take a while.”

  I brought the hammer down again.

  I wiped my hands on a dirty towel, trying to get the blood off as best as possible. The cellphone on the desk was brand new, unregistered and, allegedly, untraceable. I dialed a number.

  “Boss?”

  “John?”

  “Yes, boss. Everything ready?”

  “It will be if this program works.”

  “Do I even want to know why you needed that particular program sent to that particular email account?”

  “No, no you don't, John. I'm sorry I had to involve you in this at all.”

  I stared at the pair of monitors on the desk. They each showed four different angles of what had once been a fairly high-ranking vampire. The leech had, in the end, started babbling, trying to buy me off with anything he could make up. I hadn't stopped and now I felt sick and empty.

  “Okay, boss. You ready?”

  “Yeah. Tell me what to do.”

  “Go to the computer that
you installed the program on.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bring up the program and hit 'execute'.”

  “Okay.”

  “After whatever time you specify the computer will start broadcasting whatever you wanted put out there. It will also upload it to about three hundred file-sharing sites and post it on over a hundred blogs, and to each of the email addresses you specified. Whatever you're sending will loop until someone shuts down that computer.”

  “Good.”

  “Wait, I'm not done. This is the new program Hacker and I were working on. The first stop is to fifty buried terminals around the country, which will copy the broadcast and pass it on. Even if someone gets to that computer, wherever you are, they won't be able to stop it completely. Besides, it'll be out by then and you know what the Internet's like.”

  “I'm counting on it.”

  “Okay. I'm assuming I didn't talk to you tonight?”

  “It's best that way.”

  “Did something happen, Jack?”

  “Yes. You'll know all about it in a few hours.”

  “Can we help?”

  “You already have, more than I feel comfortable asking.”

  “Not a problem, boss. One for all and fuck the rest, huh?”

  I fought with my emotions, trying to find the right thing to say.

  “Goodbye, John,” I finally managed.

  I disconnected the call and put the phone in my pocket. I may not have committed an actual crime—vamps have no legal standing in the UK—but what I was about to do would burn many bridges with the Ministry.

  I set the countdown to one hour and clicked 'execute'.

  Back at our house in Carterton, I was showered, shaved, and dressed for war. I was also falling apart. I was slumped, sitting on the—our—bed, my hands shaking, tears rolling down my face. What were they doing to her? Was she okay?