Renegade (Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence)

by Chapman, Andrew

  The boot went back again, this time aimed at my head, and I tensed, prepared to lose some teeth at least.

  “Enough!”

  This was a new voice.

  “Pick him up and get out.”

  I could see, blurry through the pain, a pair of shiny shoes and the bottom of a pair of sharply-pressed dark gray trousers. As the two goons hauled me none-too-gently to upright I could see that these items of clothing belonged to a young-looking vamp with slicked-back brown hair and a sharp nose.

  After the muscle left the room he sat down in a chair in front of me.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked, concern on his face.

  Ah, having been softened up by Punchy and Talky it was time for Nicey to have a crack at me. Still, I had to play along. I nodded, not saying a word.

  “Well, allow me to apologize for the overzealous attitude of my companions,” he said. “My name is Michael Tunbridge. I'll see about getting you some medical attention.”

  I couldn't place the accent, but it was soft and he sounded to be well educated.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “I need some.”

  He sat back to look me over.

  “So, you're with KnightStar?” he said finally.

  I nodded.

  “Good, we'll arrange to have you moved to a KnightStar facility. I'm sorry you were caught up in this tragic mess.”

  I tried my best to look like I believed both the apology and the line about the transfer.

  “It seems like you were just an innocent bystander.”

  Again, I tried to look like I believed that he believed that and was pathetically grateful for his conclusion.

  “So, which office are you out of?”

  Fuck. The name of our home office had been printed on the credentials we had been given. I had committed the details to memory but now my mind was a blank. I tried to buy some time by pretending I had misunderstood the question.

  “I don't know the number but the main switchboard would be able to provide it.”

  The vampire sat forward and smiled slowly. I was playing a game and he knew it. He was playing along and I knew it. I tried to clear the fog from my brain and remember the details. I had used an old mnemonic trick to remember the details but I couldn't for the life of me remember which one.

  “That's good, but I wanted to know which office you were based out of. I can look up the number myself.”

  He was trying to catch me in a lie. If I was a genuine KnightStar employee there is no way I'd forget my home office. I started from base principles. Office. I knew I had linked the word office with... pen... yeah, offices have pens. Pen led me to pentagon. The Pentagon. Probably the most famous military building in the world. And it was in Washington DC. My office is the office in DC.

  I opened my mouth to give the answer when I had a random flashback. It was of Siren, our Hunter from Texas. I remembered her correcting me on this point. Contrary to popular belief the Pentagon isn't in DC. It may be part of the Federal government but it isn't in DC. It's across the river in Arlington, Virginia. That was what I had linked the mnemonic to.

  “Virginia,” I said. “I'm based out of the regional office in Arlington, Virginia.”

  “And who was the vampire who was with your group?”

  “Just a client.”

  He sat there, looking at me in a way that was supposed to be friendly. I stuck with that and played along.

  “We were assigned to her in Virginia. I didn't even know her name. She was just a client.”

  The vampire's look remained friendly.

  “As you say, just a client. Well, I'll call the Virginia office and make the arrangements to have you transferred to a hospital and then back to your office. I understand KnightStar has an excellent health benefits package.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

  He stood up and looked thoughtful.,

  “Or,” he said after a second. “You can stop lying and start telling me the truth.”

  Ah, there it was. So interrogation went from physical to friendly and now he was trying psychology on me. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, sounding desperate. “I have told you the truth.”

  He sat back down.

  “Jack Bertrand Henderson,” he said. “Second son of Bertrand and Margaret Henderson. After an undistinguished school career, during which time you not only failed to go to college but also failed to get any significant qualifications in your British GCSE system, you joined the Royal Marines. Served a tour in Iraq during the early days of the US led invasion and a tour in the Falkland Islands as part of the permanent garrison there. Then you dropped off of the radar for a while. Either you led a life so boring it didn't warrant mentioning on any official report or, and my sources say this is the more likely, you joined one of the United Kingdom Special Forces units and your record is officially redacted.”

  I gave it one more shot but I knew when I was beaten.

  “No, you're making a mistake,” I whined. “That's not me. Please.”

  “Then you returned to the land of the living. You resurfaced and took a position with the Ministry of Paranormal Research and Defence as a vampire hunter under the codename Pagan.

  “You are currently the leader when it comes to confirmed vampire kills. Eighty-six in a little over four and a half years, not including that incident in the city of Sheffield when you led a group of hunters against a large army of Indominati.

  “Currently in a relationship with a female werewolf by the name of Marie Hennessey who was kidnapped recently and brought to the USA. You, against the wishes of your government, set off on your own personal crusade to retrieve her. How very Hollywood of you.

  “The vampire who accompanied you is Anna Clarke. Turned three years ago by a vampire who was subsequently killed by her husband, John Clarke. He did us a favor there, incidentally. That particular vampire was a contemptible fool and the world is better off without him.

  “Also with you were Samir Hasaan, who goes under the name of Bolt, and a werewolf by the name of Cameron who recently joined your team after escaping from the service of Marcus Demios, one of the three vampires who used to rule the North of England. A vampire you, incidentally, killed in Sheffield.

  “Did I miss anything?”

  The guy had some of the picture. Not all but enough to blow my story away. No point in playing the game now. Sure, he'd missed Jason, Steph and Loki but he knew enough. I stared at his shiny shoes as I tried to figure out how to handle this.

  “Such a pity,” he said sadly. “I've always wanted to meet a genuine Huntsman. It's a shame that the first one is such a disappointment. I'd heard about you being full of fight and fire and defiance and blood. But now I know it was just stories. Just legends. You are ghost stories vampires tell to frighten the timid. Killing you is almost going to be merciful.”

  “Let me guess,” I said eventually. “You're going to kill me and dump my body in DeClerc's house for the police to find. A British soldier leads an unprovoked attack on an American vampire. Lots of sympathetic press, lots of pressure on the government to do something?”

  “And what makes you say that, Pagan?” he asked.

  I raised my head and looked him in the eye. I was done playing the interrogation game. It was getting me nowhere. The guy knew me.

  “Because that's the way you fuckers always do business. You have fingers in about every level of every government and yet you're the poor, persecuted, downtrodden masses.”

  The vampire stared at me for a long time. I cursed myself for breaking character and ignoring my training. I shouldn't have said anything. I should have kept my head down and just let the guy rant. Fuck.

  I hoped that my response had come from a place of resignation – the realization that there was no point in playing the game any longer – rather than a visceral reaction to the insults. Frankly I didn't give a shit what this vampire thought of me.

  “It works, doesn't it?” he
said finally. “As the old saying goes 'No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public'.”

  I remained silent.

  “You want to know why I became a vampire?”

  “I really couldn't care less.” I said with a weary sigh.

  “I was a bottom of the pile, menial worker. I did everything I was told. I went to school, got good grades, went to college, got a degree and for what? A succession of crappy jobs working for crappy pay for crappy companies. By the time I was thirty I had been laid off of four jobs that went to Pakistan or Mexico. Jobs shipped abroad just so the board of directors could see a bigger share dividend. And even when I was working it was just the way business was done.

  “Do you know I actually had a job once where the management made a point of telling us that we could be replaced? That we had no special skills that the company needed? I was raised to believe that if you worked hard and put in the effort, you would be rewarded, you could become rich. The American Dream, they said. The American Dream is dead. Dead and gone. So one night I was approached by an old frat brother. He'd been turned and he was offering the same for me. I didn't even hesitate.”

  Well, I thought, bully for you.

  “The American public have been sold a lie. Work hard, work long hours, do your job, and work yourself to death. And the weirdest thing is that half of the country would take up arms to defend this crap. America is the only civilized county without some sort of universal healthcare and instead of being ashamed of that, they would have a civil war to protect it! This is humanity, Pagan. This is what you're fighting to protect. These shambling idiots, so obsessed by their microscopic, insignificant lives. That's what you die for? Why? Do they love you? Do they lionize you? Or do they wonder if vampires should have human rights? We're monsters!”

  The vampire broke up into a shrill giggle.

  “We live on human blood, The only way we can survive is to feed on humans and the humans are out there protecting our right to do that. It's like the cows rising up and taking over the slaughterhouse and sending out the next shipment on time! It's almost unbelievable.

  “Why are you fighting us, hunter? They don't want you to fight. We don't want you to fight. I'm sure you'd rather not be fighting.

  “Seriously, it's like they gave us the keys to the candy store. And the babes? Flash a fang in some bars around here and the panties just fall off!

  “They even have a reality TV show where hot babes are competing to be a vampire's next meal. Highest rated show in America. Guy actually samples their blood on TV before deciding who to eliminate and millions of Americans are turning in to watch. Guys jacking off to porn featuring vampires feeding from the people they're fucking. People who say we're monsters are being picketed and protested and boycotted. And we don't have to arrange anything, the humans do it themselves.

  “We just had a Senator here in Tennessee voted out because he opposed vampire rights legislation. We didn't even have to contribute to his opponent's campaign. Humans did it all! It's outstanding, hunter, it's inevitable.

  “We're gonna win and there's nothing you can do about it.”

  I was watching him as he ranted. There was a clear madness in his eyes and the way he spoke, He may even truly believe what he was saying. It may even be true for all I cared. The world is as the world is. I'm not in this game to save people from themselves. I'm in it to save people from vampires. He was right about one thing. Letting the vampires get a legitimate toehold in the government was like giving a fat kid the keys to a sweet shop.

  “I'm not going to offer you the chance to join us because I know you'd just refuse, but you ever feel like the only sane person in the asylum? Ever look at the people in the the asylum? Ever look at the world and wonder just what drug everyone else is sniffing? Why would you try to save a world that isn't worth saving? That doesn't even want to be saved? That doesn't even acknowledge that it needs saving?

  “Do you know why the vampires came out? Really?”

  Now I was slightly interested. I wanted to know why, and I wanted to know from a vampire. I'd heard the Vatican’s conclusion but somehow it didn't sit right.

  “You scared the pee out of the vampires with that whole nuclear war thing. The Cuban missile crisis scared us out of their minds. See, if you blew each other up you'd kill us, too. So we stepped in there, took a hand, according to my sire. We put pressure on governments, made threats, influenced key people. Perestroika and Glasnost? That was us. And we did it. We pulled you idiots back from the brink, back from total annihilation. And the Soviet Union collapsed. Remember that? The Berlin Wall came down. Countries had free elections. Bill Clinton even managed to get the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland talking. The Israelis and Palestinians started to make progress. And the environment! Kyoto! We were so close. There was actual peace and progress in the world. All to stop you monkeys from killing everything on the planet.

  “And then what? 9/11. Iraq. Afghanistan. North Korea. It took the human race less than two years to undo all of our work. The hardliners were rattling their swords in the Kremlin again. The crazy lunatic fringe are taking over the US government again. Talks broke down. The environment could go hang because hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis are caused by abortion and homosexuality. Humans are crazy. Sometimes it seems like they deserve to die.

  “So the decision was taken: We'd come out and see if we could straighten you out. It worked, after a fashion. Crime is down, for one thing.

  “And the crazies are gone. Not much point in arguing about what you thought the founding fathers meant to say when we can produce vampires who were actually there. And then there's you. The British. Why you gotta louse everything up?”

  I laughed bitterly.

  “You really expect me to believe that you're motivated by nothing more than a desire to save the planet?”

  “No!” Tunbridge yelled, leaping to his feet. “That's not what I said, moron. Listen – listen! We can't let humanity mess up the planet because it messes us up too. Humans may look at blistering summers and say that everyone likes sunshine so global warming isn't so bad even if it's true but we know different. We can remember what the Earth was like centuries ago. We are living memories.

  “We watched while humans hunted species to extinction and we didn't care. We watched wars and who gives a dang? There'll always be more humans sooner or later. But then humans gained the ability to kill themselves – all of themselves. And if they kill themselves, they kill us. This ain't no tree-hugging hippy crap, this is self-preservation. Nothing more, nothing less.

  “Unlike humans we don't have to worry about what kind of world we're leaving for our children. We have to think about the world we're leaving for us. We don't really care about money. Money is just a way of keeping score. We really deal in power. Influence. Control. And we play the long game, over decades, centuries. So it's cheaper to dump your toxic crap into the environment? Who cares? I want air to breathe and water to drink for the rest of a long, long life. So it's convenient for humans to drive around in gas guzzling SUVs to take the kids to school? They're not going to be here to reap what they're planting.”

  Oh wow. Save the planet with fangs. It was making me sick. I think this character's mistake had been the leap from nuclear annihilation to crusading eco-vamps. Sure, I could see the cold war tensions scaring the crap out of vampires, but global warming? Sounds like a political sound-bite to me. Good for PR, not so good as the truth.

  I'd subsided into silence, still furious at myself for allowing the vamp to goad me.

  “Nothing to say?” he asked. “Ah well, I suppose I get to kill you now.”

  I snorted air in through my nose, causing a fresh flow of blood down my face.

  “Something funny?” he asked.

  I spat at him. Not an ordinary gesture of defiance but a mouthful of my blood. He flinched backwards as the spray hit his face, then screamed, blundering to his feet and clutching at his eyes.

&nb
sp; I was going to be killed anyway. So why not?

  CHAPTER

  45

  “Well there's almost nobody left at DeClerc's house, “ said Loki after he and Steph had returned.

  I wasn't sure about Loki, but Steph I trusted implicitly. She had a lot of the same vibe as Jack. She had an aura of competence about her, a wary posture which suggested that if the room were to shake she'd be the only one to stay on her feet.

  “There's a coupla guys in blue uniforms,” Loki went on. “They look like the guys that were there before but they're not. We saw 'em talking to a coupla cops, casual like. No drama. Seems like the attack never 'appened.”

  “And Jack?” I asked.

  “No sign that we saw,” he answered. “'But we did drop by and talk with the local PD. They confirmed. Reports of gunfire out that way, logged as 'not suspicious' because somebody very kindly called them 'bout an 'our before to tell the police they would be target shootin'. No fire reports logged. But one interesting thing. Somebody reported seeing an injured man in KnightStar fatigues being 'elped into a large 4x4. The officer who took the report called the mansion an' was told it was a minor slip an' fall an' the man was taken for treatment.”

  “Did they say where?” asked John.

  “Nope, but I figure these guys din't come from nowhere,” said Loki. “You ever 'ear of these Redtooth guys?” he asked Aiden.

  “Not as such,” he said. “Redtooth is a political ideology, rather than a group, as far as we understand it. The nearest guy who is their main voice is George Stubbs. Real nasty piece of work if you ask me. Political lobbyist for vampire interests. No way he's personally involved in this but his boy might be.”

  Both deputies looked uncomfortable and shared a glance.

  “This goes no further you understand” said Natasha. “We're supposed to do things like this. The government would probably call it racial profiling, but Tyler's had us keeping tabs on the local vamps. And Stubbs recruited a new guy recently like eight or ten years back. Guy by the name of Michael Tunbridge. Guy really came out of nowhere. Best as we can trace back he was some nothing with nothing and suddenly he's a big player in vampire circles. He's really a socialite. He hosts politicians, celebrities and businessmen who want to hang out with vampires, but it's probably a front. What he seems to be doing is securing votes and campaign funds. The guy schmoozes and presses the flesh. Probably laying latent subconscious commands for people making them do things when they go back to Nashville or DC.”