Broken Ice (Immortal Operative Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  My ears tell me Jake’s probably reading. His breathing is calm and regular, but not to the point he sounds asleep. The faint cheep, cheep, cheep of a watch alarm goes off. That’s his four-hour timer. I sit up and slip out of bed a moment before he walks in carrying War and Peace.

  “Ouch. Little light reading or did you need to knock someone out?”

  He shrugs. “Never did finish it. Been meaning to.”

  “Does anyone?”

  “Did you?”

  “Never even tried. Classics aren’t my thing. Too stuffy.”

  Jake laughs. “Weren’t you alive when he wrote this?”

  “What year?”

  He gives me an ‘uhh, I have no idea’ stare for a second or two before peeking at the front pages. “1869.”

  “Nope. I didn’t happen until ’93.”

  “Says here the English translation was done in 1899.”

  I cross my arms. “How many infants do you know of who have read Tolstoy?”

  “Infant? That’s six years.”

  “A human would’ve been six. Vampires… equivalent to a one-year-old. Still. Way too tiny to appreciate a philosophical treatise on Tsarist society.”

  He strips naked and climbs into bed. “And so it begins.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Our little dance.”

  “In the interest of time, perhaps sleep would be best.”

  He props himself up on his elbows. “You know it’s never a good idea to get romantically involved with a CIA agent.”

  “Says who? Plenty of agents have families.”

  “Ehh… I meant two active agents to get involved with each other. Usually, it’s a civilian and an agent.”

  “Usually, it’s two humans.” Am I seriously considering more than a one-night-stand with a human? Well, to be fair, making love to him didn’t feel any different than being with Julian. Wait, no. It felt a lot different. Mechanically, it had been the same, but the emotional energy went way beyond, and I don’t think that has anything to do with his being a human. It’s just him being him. Argh. I can’t think about this now.

  “Fair point.” He chuckles.

  “Go to sleep, Jake.” I smile and poke him in the brain.

  He flops flat on his back.

  I tuck him in, then take my borrowed shirt off before hurrying into my now-dry bodysuit plus the clean pair of jeans and top from my backpack. Socks are quieter than sneakers, so I skip the shoes for the moment and proceed to prowl the house on night watch. That lasts about twenty minutes before boredom sends me to the bookcase. I grab Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and settle down on the sofa in the main room to kill a few hours.

  Chapter Ten

  Night Angels

  The utter silence of the German countryside at night ends with the tentative chirping of birds right around sunrise.

  I keep reading, deciding to let Jake sleep a bit more. No sense leaving too early or the club won’t be open when we get there. The lack of anyone messing with us during the night reassures me. I shouldn’t convince myself we’re in the clear simply because the Dominion hasn’t come after us at this house. It’s possible they don’t want us knowing they’re aware of this place. Of course, they don’t exactly have access to spy satellites… yet. At least, we don’t think they do. They aren’t affiliated with a particular world government, being they consider themselves above humans.

  It also doesn’t prove they haven’t created a network of mind-controlled helpers installed in various places that would give them access to technology and resources on par with the CIA. One of my first official jobs for the Agency had been going around the building hunting for double agents or plants. Outwardly, the bosses were giving ‘the new girl’ a tour. They didn’t bother telling anyone I was a vampire yet. Surprisingly, I only found three compromised people. One worked for Israel, one the Russians, and the other hadn’t been targeted, but had stolen information he hoped to sell to anyone willing to pay for it.

  Mind reading had no legal precedent. It was probably unethical, but so was selling out your country. My word wouldn’t have been useful from a legal standpoint, so I compelled all three of them to share the details of their illicit dealings with their bosses. On the upside, no one in the CIA had been under the control of the Dominion.

  Such influence is less of a worry these days, since the eggheads came up with an electronic device that offers a degree of protection against vampiric control. Apparently, our mental commands trigger a particular region in the brain. The device can detect activity there, and when it does, it transmits a painful shock to the person using it. It’s usually enough to interrupt the command before it can set in as well as give a rather obvious signal to the person that a vampire just tried to do something to their brain. The things are damn expensive and hard to make, so only the top bosses have them.

  Jake emerges from the bedroom a few minutes after six, already dressed and looking like he wants to go straight out the door. It’s not like we have any food in the place, so breakfast on the road it is.

  “Morning,” he croaks.

  “Ouch. You need coffee.”

  He ambles over to the sink. “Yeah. I haven’t slept that hard in… ever.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ve never woken up this groggy before. Is that a side effect of you knocking me out?”

  “No. It’s probably a side effect of you sleeping longer than you’re used to.” I close the book and get up to put it back on the shelf. Maybe I’ll be back someday to finish it.

  Three cups of joe and two bathroom breaks later, we hop in the Audi and get going.

  I spend the first few minutes of the drive filling Jake in on the plan to meet Ernst Friedrich at this nightclub. At least he laughs when I mention the place is called Nachtengeln. We stop at a little place for food two-ish hours into the trip. I stick to coffee and a donut for now, while Jake inhales a plate of pancakes.

  For most of the ride, he explains his process of attempting to access the data on the fob. It involved manually sticking thinner-than-human-hair filaments to the contacts. He found some documentation online about 512-bit data architecture and scaled it up to what a theoretical 1024-bit interface might look like. Much of the technical stuff sails right over my head, but I follow along enough to understand that the data pathways (wires) followed a pattern of exponential complexity from the technology in USB devices. That he was able to tag certain wires and read a portion of the contents made him think the device originated from a future-Earth.

  Time travel? Nah. That almost makes the concept of space vampires seem plausible.

  ***

  We arrive in Berlin at 7:08 p.m. and head to the Schöneberg area.

  Since Jake had taken over driving at around the midway point of the trip, I whip out the cell phone and use the navigation app to locate the night club. Jake drives to within two blocks of the place, parks on the side of the street, and we wipe down the interior for prints. Two-parking-space-guy should get his car back without any damage, unless something happens to it after we walk away.

  I pull my backpack up over one shoulder and head in the direction of the club with Jake in step beside me. Two cops stand at the first cross street, watching pedestrians. Like everyone else here, they don’t pay us much attention. I stare at one long enough to give him the inclination that there’s a stolen red Audi parked down the street he should check out. The jackass who it belongs to shouldn’t have taken up two parking spaces, but that’s no reason he should lose the car. I can be a bitch, but I’m not a total bitch.

  “What’s up with the cops?” whispers Jake.

  “Sending them to collect the Audi. That Beemer already had the shit shot out of it, so making sure this one gets back to its owner is my attempt to balance out my karma.”

  “Egads. You did not just say that.”

  I laugh.

  It’s still a touch early for the night club to really kick in, but it appears to be open… and already
has a line waiting to get past the beefy door guys.

  “Oh, holy shit. I guess it’s true what they say about Europe being twenty years behind America from a style standpoint.”

  Jake glances at me. “What?”

  “I haven’t seen this many pairs of Cavariccis in one place since the Eighties. And is that INXS pumping out of its sound system?”

  He laughs. “I’ll pretend I know what you said.”

  “Oh, you’re so young.”

  “You can literally say that to everyone you meet.”

  “Okay, now you’re just being mean.”

  I walk past the line and approach the door guy. A brief moment of eye contact later, he thinks we work here and lets us in. Some people at the head of the line start bitching, but Heinrich—the bouncer—barks at them that we’re employees.

  “Slick,” mutters Jake.

  “Well… we technically aren’t here to have fun.”

  My earlier expectation that vampires run this place has to be wrong. Upon seeing all the black and silver décor, along with statue angels in goth outfits everywhere, I’m certain the owners are humans who have no idea what we’re really like. Since when do vampires get wings? That would be damn cool. Did I miss a meeting somewhere?

  And no, they’re not flooding the air with Eighties pop. I think it’s Peter Murphy… so, Eighties Goth. The crowd inside is surprisingly thick for the somewhat early hour. At a quick glance around, I do spot three other vampires, though I suspect them all to be night walkers. The back left corner of the room is walled off by black curtains. A pair of angel statues wearing leather harnesses and collars by the entrance suggest going in there is going to require coming up with a safe word.

  Hard pass.

  I maneuver through the crowd to the bar and squeeze between a guy going for an ‘undead Alice Cooper’ look and Vanilla Ice’s little brother. The bartender’s about seven foot even, rail thin, with a somewhat-oversized bald head. His leather trench coat makes him look like a mutant who wandered in from a radioactive wasteland, but he’s probably named ‘Bill’ and is really sweet to his six cats.

  “Where can I find Ernst?” I half yell over the music.

  “Which Ernst? There’s a few in here.” The guy I assume as Bill flashes a stupid grin.

  “The manager. Have an interview,” I yell.

  “Oh, that Ernst.” Bill nods and gestures to his left. “Over there past the tables. Hall in the back.”

  A hand squeezes my ass. “Hey, babe. Why don’t you ditch that loser and let me buy you a drink?”

  Jake fights hard to stop himself from laughing.

  I whirl on the guy with too much mousse in his blonde hair. “Tempting, but, nah. However, I will take you up on that offer of a drink.”

  Mousse smiles. “You heard the lady”

  Bill rolls his eyes. “What’ll it be?”

  “Oh, just a sip of vanilla.” I grab Mousse’s arm and extend my fangs.

  “Hey, we don’t allow that sorta thing in here.” Bill shakes his huge head.

  “This guy grabbed my ass. Would you prefer I use his head to make a face-sized hole in your wall?”

  “Clever,” says Jake.

  “Oh shut up. I can barely hear myself think in here.”

  The bartender holds up his hands. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t kill him. And this might reflect negatively on your job interview.”

  I grin and pull Mousse’s wrist close to my mouth, but the reek of booze in his blood is strong enough to smell through skin. “On second thought… You should cut this guy off. He’s close to alcohol poisoning.”

  As Bill proceeds to yell at the guy for lying about coming in the door half in the bag, I head toward hall in the back. Jake, still chuckling to himself, follows.

  More black curtains cover the walls beyond the seating area. A few couples stand around here, making out or sharing pills. The gap in the curtains leads to a short hallway with black walls and ceiling, dark red carpeting. We walk past the couples sucking face and past two bathrooms then a storage closet. A left turn at the corner brings us to a corridor that looks as long as the entire building with doors along both sides. The third one on the left has ‘Manager’ on it, so I let myself in.

  Posters of various Goth bands cover the small office around an old file cabinet and a giant stereo system flanked by hundreds of CDs. Two little chairs face a beat-up hospital green steel desk behind which sits a man in his early forties with short salt-and-pepper hair in a brush cut. He’s a little old for the leather vest over a blue T-shirt look, but whatever. The only thing that would make the scene in front of me more Eighties is if he had a mirror on his desk full of cocaine.

  “What the heck are you doing back here?” He leans his weight forward, as if about to stand and intimidate me.

  “Looking for Ernst. We have an interview scheduled.”

  He pauses, hostility fading to confusion. “I’m not interviewing anyone for… oh… are you that friend of a friend?”

  “Yep.”

  “Aha.” Ernst stands, grabs an envelope from a drawer, and walks around the desk, all smiles. “Very good. Yes. This way.”

  Jake and I part to let him go by, then follow him down the hall.

  Ernst hands me the envelope. “Tickets, passports.”

  I peek inside to verify the contents, and it looks good.

  “Your associate is lucky I have such good friends who work so fast.” Ernst ambles down the corridor, stopping five doors later on the right. “This is a safe exit. Tunnels from the old subway will get you close to the airport.”

  “Whoa, hang on a sec,” says Jake. “We’re walking through an old subway system?”

  “What’s a few miles walk?” I ask. “Aren’t you former military?”

  Ernst keeps smiling. “There is a scooter.”

  “Well, in that case…” Jake heads through the side door.

  I smile and step in after him.

  The room is small, square, and empty. No doors, windows, or stairways… and the walls in here have metal plates. Shit. This is a cell, not an escape route. Ernst starts to seal us in, but I spin with a side kick to the door that launches him across the corridor. Jake’s only starting to react to that by the time I pounce on Ernst and slam him into the wall by two fistfuls of his cheesy leather vest. I’d lift him off his feet, but I’m only average height and this guy’s too tall.

  He grabs my wrists, trying to pull my grip away, but goes slack when I plunge mentally into his brain. As soon as I think about wanting to know why he’s trying to lock us in a cell, the response forms in his surface thoughts. The Dominion’s gotten to him… back in March. Probing deeper tells me that one of them—I get an image of a tall, oval-faced man with short pink hair and a black trench coat—randomly came by here expecting this place to be a vampire hangout, and discovered Ernst’s dirty little secret of being on the CIA’s payroll. He implanted a command that forced Ernst to advise the Dominion of anything the Agency asked of him.

  Naturally, when Andrew contacted him to facilitate our exit, Ernst warned them.

  Grr. I erase that programming.

  “What’s going on?” Jake exits the cell with his gun trained on the club manager. “Mina?”

  “Dominion got to him already. Months ago.”

  Ernst’s eyes flutter. “Aww, shit. I had the voodoo on me, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.” I frown. “It’s gone now.”

  “Bad guys are already on the way here.” He points down the hallway.

  “How long until they’re here?” I ask.

  Ernst rubs his face. “About ten.”

  “Minutes?” asks Jake.

  “Seconds.”

  I look at Jake. “Shit.”

  He takes off running down the corridor. I follow. Commotion from the club end of the hallway tells me they’re already here. Jake hits a fire door, setting off an alarm but giving us a way out into an alley. We haul ass, headed left. Two men in dark clothes burst out the door and give chase
. They gain on us with relative ease since Jake is stuck moving at human speed. Surprisingly, neither pull guns.

  Sensing he has no hope of outrunning them, Jake skids to a stop and spins around in a fighting stance. The shorter guy with brown hair charges at me with a knife while his buddy—rocking a blond mullet—leaps at Jake. I catch the man’s arm before his blade ruins my shirt, shoving it aside and smashing his elbow with my forearm. He squeals in pain, trying to grab at me with his left hand.

  A loud, metallic boom comes from behind me.

  I glance back at Jake’s feet sticking up from a dumpster where mullet-boy threw him. The moan echoing from the metal box sounds more annoyed and disoriented than hurt. With a snarl, I swing my guy around by the arm and hurl him face first into the brick wall of the night club. A splat of blood sprays out from where his face makes contact.

  Mullet boy hisses at me, baring his fangs.

  “Is that supposed to be impressive?” I ask, making my amber eyes glow while pulling my wakizashi free. I’m still not sure what the function of bioluminescent eyes is, since it doesn’t help me see in the dark. Probably some form of deimatic display or a vestigial component of an ability we no longer possess or need. Still, it’s kind of impressive. And scary as hell, I’m told.

  Okay, maybe that’s why.

  Mullet stops short, staring at me. But this guy isn’t as frightened of Origin vampires as the one from the parking garage. He hesitates only a second or two before running at me, his arms high with a two-handed grip on a knife almost as long as my sword. With a night walker’s strength behind it, it’s equally capable of taking a head off. The guy’s probably expecting me to cross blades with him or dive to the side. He’s clearly not expecting me to boot him square in the nuts, as proven by his abrupt chicken-squawk.