The Fixer: A Lawson Vampire Novel 1 (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  Something still wasn’t right. If Zero was correct, why was Cosgrove baiting me like this? Why hadn’t he simply ambushed me and killed me outright?

  The answer hit me at the exact same time my body took over and jerked me across the room by eight feet. I heard/saw/felt the presence behind me and responded.

  Another vampire.

  He was moving fast on me, already mounting a second attack by the time I had realized what was happening. Cosgrove had played the diversion. The obvious diversion. He’d focused me on Talya and I’d almost allowed myself to be sucked in. While I was dealing with him, the assassin had been getting in position.

  Jesus, I’d almost bought it.

  He swarmed over me, tossed me off my feet, and we landed in the recessed shadows, grunted and spilled into chairs. He tried to get his knee into my groin, but I checked it.

  His hands concerned me. He was holding a pistol just like mine in his left, desperately trying to get a bead on my heart.

  Just like mine? Christ, this guy was another Fixer!

  Time was on my side. If I could keep him checked long enough for the club’s security to come charging us, I’d be okay long enough to get us on equal terms again. I brought my right elbow into his solar plexus hard and heard him grunt audibly.

  His right hand was still gripping the pistol, though. I needed to get control of it before he could shoot me.

  He brought his head down sharply at mine and I moved just enough to take a grazing blow by my left eye. Damn, that hurt. My vision blurred from tears and in that second he managed to get the barrel of the gun closer to my shoulder.

  Too close.

  I used another elbow to stun him and smother his right arm, hugging it into my body, muffling his chance of using the pistol.

  His knee came up again, this time targeting my stomach. I couldn’t cover it and he landed a hard strike that made me feel like I was going to lose control of my bowels and bladder. He’d struck a vital point. My head swam in pain and my arms felt weak.

  He rammed another knee strike into me. This was not good. If I took another one, I wouldn’t be able to hold onto his arm and he’d get the shot off that he needed.

  The bouncers showed up then, just in time, yanking him off of me, but then the traitor shot one of them.

  Someone yelled "Gun!" and they scattered, leaving me dazed on the floor while the Fixer righted himself on his feet and then took aim at me. I watched as the pistol leveled off, giving him the bead he needed.

  Another second and I wouldn’t even matter anymore.

  The shot, when it came, wasn’t from his gun. It came from behind him. But the effect was instantaneous. The Fixer’s chest blossomed bright red, cascading crimson down his shirt and his arms dropped, taking the gun off of my heart.

  He dropped to the floor.

  I scrambled over to him, grabbing him by the collar. "Who are you?" I got no response and shook him again. "Answer me!" No use. I took the gun off of him and checked him over. Dead. I looked up in time to see Zero charging through the fleeing crowds.

  "He dead?"

  I nodded. "He used a goddamned Fixer, Zero. Who is he?"

  Zero peered close. "Not a Fixer. A Control. Xavier. Runs New Hampshire."

  "Not anymore he doesn’t."

  Zero helped me to my feet. "Lucky for you I was nearby. He almost had you, Lawson. Where’s Cosgrove?"

  I turned. "Dance floor with-"

  But I knew even as I turned. The dance floor was deserted. And even as I heard the first sirens over the relentless music, even as Zero pulled me along to the rear exit of the club, I realized Cosgrove had Talya.

  And all the cards.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Zero rushed us out of the club and on to the side street losing us in a crowd of panicked clubgoers. We bolted down the side street finally pausing to catch our breath by the next intersection. Blue lights bounced off the buildings from the Cambridge cop cars rushing to the scene. In the distance even more sirens echoed through the night.

  "Close," said Zero. "Too damned close."

  "That’s one I owe you, buddy."

  He grinned in spite of our situation. "Yeah, I’ll add it to your tab. At least we got one of the bastards."

  "But Cosgrove-" I stopped. Paused.

  Zero frowned. "I know, Lawson. He’s got your girl. And as much as I can’t condone it, I understand. We’ll get her back. Even if you two never have the relationship you want…we’ll get her back."

  "How? We have no idea where he’s hiding out."

  Zero sighed. "It’s time we went on the offensive, Lawson."

  "How?"

  "Could be time to pay your buddy McKinley a visit."

  "Where, at home?"

  "Yes."

  "What if they’re expecting us?"

  Zero shrugged. "We’re pretty much out of alternatives. If Cosgrove’s pieced together the ceremony ritual and has everything he needs, time is scarce. We have to find out where he’s holing up. And unless you’ve got another idea…"

  I didn’t and Zero knew that. Neither of us was crazy about possibly walking into an ambush.

  "We don’t have a choice, Lawson."

  I shrugged. Sometimes you had to play the hand you were dealt. And since I wasn’t palming any aces, the choice seemed clear. "Let’s go."

  We took my car back into Boston. McKinley’s office sat in the Back Bay in a brownstone on Marlborough Street. The rest of the neighborhood, tucked away for the night in their million dollar homes, looked like a carbon copy of McKinley’s office. Stately brownstones each sinking a few inches every year into the soggy landfill that had been used to build up this section of the city so many years ago. Not that it ever seemed to stop young professionals from desiring one of the prized homes.

  I parked the Jetta behind a silver Lexus, the chosen car of rich people who can’t drive, and killed the lights, scanning the area. After two minutes, Zero and I wandered across the street toward McKinley’s office.

  The wrought iron fence screeched, penetrating the night like an angry crow in the woods. Zero just kept moving toward the door, and I followed. The best thing to do was get inside as fast as possible and not worry about people peeking out. If you acted like you had something to hide, they’d pick up on it. Act like you owned the place and no one would care.

  Besides, I felt sure that McKinley had burned the midnight oil at this place a few times. Enough for his neighbors to conclude that it wasn’t too unusual for people to be coming and going at strange hours.

  Zero paused in front of the door and frowned.

  I came up behind him. "What’s the problem?"

  He pointed inside the vestibule. "Alarm."

  Shit. You know, there were times when I definitely wished that vampires had all the cool superhero abilities everyone always made us out to have. Sure would have come in handy here tonight. Hell, I could have transformed into a gaseous state and simply drifted through the keyhole.

  Instead, two very real vampires were being held up by a hundred dollar security system.

  Fortunately for me, Zero had an uncanny talent for disarming these things. It was one of his many specialties, one that he was always trying to impress on me, but I hadn’t ever picked it up like he had. I came from the school of "just break the damned door down and get in and out fast" rather than the subtle school of burglary Zero had mastered.

  He focused on the sensor just inside the door and I knew he would figure out its pattern. It might have been computerized and supposedly random, but Zero’s mind could figure it out and then use it to disarm the system. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. But while he did that, I busied myself with watching the street for signs that we’d aroused suspicions.

  After five minutes of standing in the concealing darkness, Zero tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to the open door. Like I said, the guy was amazing.

  He shut the door behind us and we moved inside. Lucky for us we didn’t need flashlights, since we had
better night vision than humans. More rods in our eyes, like cats. It came in handy.

  Vampires developed their extraordinary night vision way back in our early years as a race. We had to hunt at night and take our prey by surprise if possible. That necessitated the ability to see in the dark, move quietly, and seem almost invisible. Legends sprang up about us having supernatural abilities. And while our regenerative capacity was indeed tremendous, the other skills simply evolved due to the needs of our race.

  The office was three rooms and a study. It seemed more laid out like a small apartment and I wondered if perhaps McKinley hadn’t been using this as a romp pad for some of his nocturnal prowling with the mistresses he always liked to keep.

  We entered the red-carpeted foyer and wandered into the study. Bookcases lined the walls filled with the kinds of self-substantiating tomes most supposedly enlightened people like to keep and point out to visitors as signs that they were really cultured. McKinley had crap on the Roman Empire, Norse mythology, and a wide assortment of self-help books. And since I knew for a fact that McKinley didn’t have a damned clue about who Nero was, or whether Thor was anything more than an old comic book, I figured the self-help books must have been another part of his ruse. Maybe it helped him get laid. Maybe he played the part of a caring psychologist to all those lonely ladies.

  I had to admit though, that seeing "Your Past Lives and You" on the book shelf of a vampire made me grin. McKinley was always good for a laugh, even if it was at his expense.

  Zero focused on the roll top desk in the corner of the room, an old mahogany number that had more than a few dents in the wood. There was a seventeen inch computer monitor on it and he switched it on. The pale blue luminescence of the screen filled the room, sending several shadows scurrying to the corners in search of more ebon realms.

  The windows came up on the screen. Figures that McKinley used a PC. I preferred Macintosh computers myself. But then again, I’d always been something of an anti-establishment kind of guy.

  Zero clicked his way through the files with appalling rapidity. He found a personal file and opened it. There were a lot of graphics files, most in the form of JPEGs and GIFs, meaning McKinley liked to surf the Internet and download pictures. I was guessing they weren’t business-related.

  Zero looked at me. "Shall we?"

  I nodded. He clicked one of them.

  Jesus.

  McKinley was apparently into a lot more than I’d ever given him credit for.

  "This might just help explain how Cosgrove got to him," said Zero.

  "Blackmail?"

  "Yeah, maybe that. And of course, the promise of a lot more of this kind of sick deranged crap if they were successful."

  The picture on the screen said it all. McKinley was a pedophile. I’m not about to describe the garbage filling the screen simply because I categorize pedophiles under the same category I reserve for terrorists and that is ‘absolute scum.’ If I had my way and I wasn’t in the role I’d been given, I’d probably be out hunting these sick fucks down and exterminating them just on basis of belief alone. You might think it extreme, but both terrorist and child molesters prey on innocence.

  I don’t dig that.

  Period. End of statement.

  Zero clicked the picture away and we kept searching files.

  It was buried under a subfile titled "research." God knows what McKinley was researching aside from a cheaper way to get to Bangkok so he could fulfill his sick thrills.

  Zero opened the file. Text splashed across the screen. A lot of it. Lists of names and locations. I looked at Zero.

  "Any of these make any sense to you?"

  He nodded. "See there," he pointed. "Xavier’s name. Location. And this is interesting." He paused.

  "What?"

  He drew a finger down the front of the screen. "Look at this. it looks like a numbered account."

  I looked at Zero. "Money?"

  He shook his head. "No, that doesn’t make any sense at all."

  Of course it didn’t. Vampires don’t really care all that much about money. All of us could have as much or as little as we wanted by virtue of our contacts within the government. Most of us chose to live comfortably. We knew the more flamboyant you were, the greater risk of exposure. Besides we never really wanted for anything material.

  So what was the deal with the numbered accounts? "If they’re not transferring money into those accounts, then maybe it’s not a bank account."

  Zero looked up. "What then?"

  I shook my head. "I don’t know. Could be anything really."

  "No," said Zero. "It really can’t be anything per se. It’s got to be something. And we need to find out exactly what it is."

  "We also need to find Cosgrove before he kills Talya."

  Zero nodded. "You’re right. This’ll have to wait." He slid a new diskette into the drive and copied the files. "We can examine these later."

  "You think it’s in another file maybe?"

  "We can look but the question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not McKinley would keep Cosgrove’s location on his computer."

  "He’s got everything else here. Hell, the stuff wasn’t even encrypted."

  Zero smiled. "Not that that’s anything unusual."

  He was right of course. Once we’d bypassed the alarm system and broken into the apartment, it had been smooth sailing. It was typical of so many people who thought that security ended with some flimsy alarm system. Bring along a talented pro like Zero and myself and that gets shot to shit awfully quick. And McKinley had left his Pandora’s Box wide open.

  That’s when we heard the noise from somewhere around us.

  Zero clicked off the screen, flooding the room back into darkness. We stayed absolutely still, listening. Our eyes adjusted back to their night vision ability in only thirty seconds.

  We heard it again.

  Rhythmic.

  And mumbled voices.

  Zero motioned me to follow him and we moved closer to the bookshelves. We made no noise as we crept closer. The volume of noise grew.

  Zero leaned close to my ear. "Must be a secret room."

  I nodded.

  Zero ran his hands over the shelves, found nothing and then began scanning the book spines. It took him thirty seconds. He pointed it out to me. A pictorial guide to Roman bath houses. Figured.

  I drew my pistol as Zero stood off to the side and prepared to pull the spine back. He looked at me.

  I nodded.

  He pulled.

  That section of the book case slid away revealing a twelve by twelve room with maroon walls. In the middle of the room was a bed.

  And on the bed lay a rail thin boy who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen.

  And laying on the boy was McKinley, apparently defying several laws of gravity by not crushing the poor kid trapped beneath him.

  He grunted.

  Funny, though, how he stopped when he saw me standing there holding a gun on him and Zero leaning against the doorway.

  "Shit."

  "Seems to me you already found some, McKinley," said Zero. "Get off of him."

  McKinley frowned. "Your timing, as always, Zero, is impeccable."

  I shook my head. "What-are we interrupting you?"

  "Just a bit."

  He drew on a smoking jacket and gestured to the boy. "Get dressed. Go home."

  Zero frowned. "You’re a real sick bastard, McKinley."

  "Being gay isn’t sick, Zero."

  "No, it’s not. But being a pedophile is."

  McKinley shook his head. "He’s eighteen."

  "Maybe he is. I doubt it, though," I said. "Besides, we just saw enough of your Internet downloads to know most of them weren’t legal. I’m willing to bet if we search Sonny there, we won’t find a registered voter card in his wallet."

  McKinley sighed. "What is it that I can do for you two, exactly?"

  Zero guided him out into the study and sat him down in one of the chairs. The boy
exited without looking at us. Probably a pro. Boston’s prostitution rings had migrated off the streets and into more discrete escort services nowadays. McKinley probably had the number on speed dial.

  "What you can do for us," said Zero, "is tell us exactly where Cosgrove is."

  "What makes you think I know that?"

  "We don’t have time for this, I’m afraid." Zero looked at me. "Shoot him."

  I pulled the hammer back on my pistol and leveled it on McKinley.

  McKinley’s eyes bulged. "You wouldn’t."

  Zero smiled. "Five seconds and you’ll find out."

  "This is crazy."

  "One."

  McKinley looked at me. "Lawson, I saved your life-"

  "Two."

  "I could have killed you."

  "Three."

  "I told him not to involve you."

  "Four."

  I squinted through one eye for effect.

  McKinley squirmed. "All right!"

  I eased the hammer down. "Tell him."

  "That won’t be necessary."

  Zero looked at me and I looked at him because neither of us had spoken. At once we whirled around.

  Cosgrove stood in the doorway. He held a pistol identical to mine. A Fixer gun. Designed to kill vampires. And right now it was aimed at Zero and me.

  "Thank you so very much for disabling McKinley’s alarm system, Zero. And you were kind enough to leave it off so I could enter unannounced." He looked at me. "Put your gun down slowly, Lawson. I really don’t want to have to shoot you just yet."

  I slid the pistol on to the small table next to me.

  Cosgrove smiled at McKinley. "I told you to expect them."

  "I thought you said you and Xavier could handle him."

  "Apparently Xavier failed," said Cosgrove. "And while we were trying to deal with Lawson, you felt perfectly content to indulge in a tryst, is that it?"

  McKinley said nothing.

  "Charming little fellow you found yourself, McKinley." Cosgrove smiled. "Such a shame I had to break his neck."

  McKinley blanched. "You didn’t."

  "I’d bloody well do the same to you if it weren’t for the fact that you’re needed you stupid fool. Get dressed. We’re all going for a ride."