Eldritch Ops

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Oh, can I!?” Lucy said, clapping her hands. “I’ve always wanted to examine a real V.N. leader’s blade!”

  I tossed it to her, hilt first, only for her to miss it with her gloved hands. The blade landed in the snow at her feet.

  Lucy looked down at the blade. “Fudge.”

  “Derek, I think we should talk about Christopher,” Shannon said, crossing her arms. “I think your feelings may be compromised on this.”

  “Later,” I said, not really interested in getting into a debate on it.

  “Derek—”

  “Later, please.”

  Shannon looked unhappy but nodded.

  Lucy picked up the sword between her hands and started examining the blade. Her eyes widened as if she realized she were holding plutonium. “Um, Derek, I think you should return this to the Vampire Nation. Like now.”

  “Excuse me?’ I asked, doing a double take. “Why would I do that?”

  Lucy looked at me frantic. “Otherwise, I think you’re going to start a war.”

  Chapter Four

  I turned to Lucy, stunned by her statement. “Would you mind repeating that?”

  Lucy took a deep breath, lifting the cutlass. “I think this is the Bloodsword. The Bloodsword.”

  “Aside from the sword having a generic yet badass name, does that mean something?” Shannon pointed a gloved finger at the blade.

  “The Bloodsword is the symbol of office for the Vampire Nation’s military commander.” I stared at the blade. “It’s one of the most powerful enhancers in the world and said to be indestructible. Lucy, are you sure it’s not a replica?”

  “I’d need to run some tests, but it bears all the outside markers. I can also feel the magic woven into this thing,” Lucy said, waving it around a bit. “I think this is the real McCoy.”

  “There’s no way the Warlord of the Vampire Nation would part with it,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t felt anything from the weapon.

  “Who?” Shannon said, surprising me with her ignorance.

  “Dracula,” I said. “I thought you destroyed him once.”

  Dracula, as a vampire Old One, was almost impossible to kill. When most agents found out the Vampire Nation’s most prominent member Dracula, they tended to react with laughter rather than horror. The truth was, though, Bram Stoker’s book had been published by him to build his legend and manipulate the public’s perception of vampires. It had mostly created a legion of amateur vampire hunters who got themselves killed as well as hundreds of glory-seeking undead eager to get their story translated to books or film. Dracula, himself, was supposedly a very different figure from the creepy aristocrat depicted in the book and had tried several times to kill Stoker for it. The Red Room had protected him, though, because it irritated the hell out of our primary foes.

  “I ripped his head off in my succubus form. Not exactly a situation useful for chatting,” Shannon said. “I haven’t really immersed myself in vampire lore.”

  “Ooo, a chance for exposition,” Lucy said, clapping her hands. “Derek, do you want to handle this?”

  “Certainly,” I said, amusing myself. I was still mad at her, but I couldn’t help teasing her over this. “After the whole Turk slaughter and first death thing, Dracula turned pirate. That was when the Vampire Nation was formed by an alliance of the Council of Ancients with all the local voivodes. Strangely, the treaty was signed in Nassau.”

  The sea was a surprisingly good environment for the undead, food issues aside. Contrary to popular perception, vampires weren’t very social creatures. They tended to freak out normal people and draw unnecessary attention with their inability to control their feeding. Plenty of ships believed to be shipwrecked or lost in storms were, in fact, depopulated by the undead. Nowadays, they simply made people disappear who wouldn’t be missed. And there were a lot in the modern world.

  “I’m not surprised you don’t know,” Lucy said, looking excited at a chance to explain. She started twirling around the sword for emphasis. “Only a few House leaders know the true history of the Vampire Nation. A lot of our current information was acquired by Derek during his murder-hobo spree.”

  “Murder-hobo?” I asked.

  Lucy grimaced. “You were kind of in a bad place for a few months. They should have pulled you off that assignment and got you counselling immediately.”

  “The Committee wanted to make a statement. I made one.” It was amazing that war hadn’t happened, but the Vampire Nation had disavowed the actions of Elizabeth Bathory and her entire bloodline. The destruction of the New York City crew had also been one of the biggest non-war victories the House had achieved until shutting down the Emerald Eye last year. My part in both was one of the few reasons anyone in the Committee paid any attention to my suggestions. That and all the blackmail material I’d managed to assemble in addition to the Wazir’s old files.

  Shannon looked between us, pointing. “Okay, give me the Cliff Notes version of vampire history. I have a feeling I’m going to need to know this.”

  Lucy grinned. “Can I do the rest of the explanation, Derek? Pleeeeease.”

  “Knock yourself out, Mrs. Wizard.”

  Lucy looked ecstatic. “Up until the Information Sharing Act of six months ago, a lot of divisions kept their files separate, so individual agents had varying degrees of knowledge regarding the supernatural in the House. They believed vampires were a form of hungry ghost like the jiang Shi or draugr. Flesh-hungry zombies just better preserved and not on a liquid diet. In fact, vampires aren’t even undead.”

  “They aren’t?” I asked, surprised. “I’m pretty sure they’re dead. At least they don’t bleed when you chop off their limbs.”

  “Ewwww,” Lucy said, grimacing.

  “Ha! I’m not the only one here with stuff to learn,” Shannon said, letting out a short laugh.

  Lucy recovered herself. “They have a deathly countenance, but that’s different from being undead. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to sire children or make others of their kind. Well, at least without significant scientific alterations like Cassandra made to the draugr. Vampires are the mystical descendants of the Libyan queen Lamia, who was cursed by Hera to crave the blood of her children.”

  I frowned, regretting opening this can of worms. “Cut to the chase, Lucy.”

  “I’m getting there.” Lucy shook her hands in frustration. “Well, the Lamia were a solitary species for the most part, but Dracula changed this when he moved vampires from their traditional Greek paganism to a form of Satanism. Even so, vampires didn’t have any real culture or government until Dracula created their first real society based on the republican ideals of the Nassau Pirates. Every vampire had rights even if it was all controlled by an oligarchy of the oldest and strongest. Like the pirates did there.”

  “Republican . . . pirates,” Shannon said, as if the two words were contradictory.

  Lucy continued, ignoring my desire for a swift explanation. “The majority of pirates during their heyday in the Caribbean were just out-of-work sailors after Queen Anne’s War. People like Blackbeard didn’t kill all that many people. They relied, instead, on their reputation to intimidate people into submitting. Besides, they were mostly robbing people who profited from the slave trade. Vampire pirates? They were the exception. They cut a bloody swath across the ocean and left nightmares in their wake.”

  “The more you know,” Shannon said, looking more confused than enlightened. “Why the Caribbean?”

  “Dracula was fleeing the House,” Lucy explained. “They’d gotten sick of the chaos he’d sown in Eastern Europe and chased him to England and beyond by the end of the sixteenth century. He murdered a slave trader named Jack Standington and assumed his identity. Later, he’d go by the alias ‘Red Jack.’ The House reported killing him sixteen times both before and after this event. It’s believed Tiamat-Abaddon’s pact with Dracula granted him true immortality.”

  Tiamat-Abaddon was the name of the monster that supposedly ruled hell. App
arently, Lucifer had been overthrown by his daughter with an unknown mother. Tiamat-Abaddon was the inspiration for monsters like Judaism’s Lilith and the Gaia who birthed the giants in Greek Mythology. She was the Mother of All Monsters and the person who created most of the supernatural races thousands of years ago.

  “Most Old Ones are only killable only by other vampires,” Lucy said. “Holy magic can get around that and pure sorcery but it’s very hard to kill a centuries-old vampire permanently. Dracula is even harder to kill than most. His demon-worshiping followers have been known to resurrect him with necromancy.”

  “Nothing is immortal,” I said. “Not even him.”

  “The Bloodsword was Jack’s blade.” Lucy handed me back the cutlass. “Which means, in addition to being a famous pirate sword, it’s also the symbol of Dracula’s authority. According to legend, it was given to him by Tiamat-Abaddon as a symbol of their bargain.”

  “So, Christopher stole the vampire crown jewels?” Shannon asked.

  “So it seems,” I said, staring at the blade now in my hands. “In between Dracula’s resurrections, whoever holds the Bloodsword is ruler of the Vampire Nation. By presenting this weapon to me, he’s given me an immense amount of leverage to play with.”

  Lucy stared, reminding me I hadn’t told her. “Wait, Christopher is alive? Christopher Hang? As a vampire? Awesome!”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  Lucy cringed. “Or not? Maybe? Sort of?”

  “Derek, I don’t mean to rain on your paradise, but combined with Ruthford’s location, this is starting to seem a little too good to be true. This is sounding less and less like a deal than full-blown treason on his behalf.” Shannon stuck her hands in her pocket, obviously more concerned than she was letting on.

  “If you’ve got something to say, you should probably say it.”

  “This seems like a trap.”

  “You think they turned Christopher into a vampire, brainwashed him, and sent him back to me with a sob story about his wife plus the Bloodsword, in order to make me trust him. All the while actually planning to turn me against the House by concocting a crazy story about how there’s a conspiracy within it against vampires.”

  Shannon blinked. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “If it’s a plan, it’s an extremely good one.”

  “I actually think it’s kind of obvious,” Lucy said, surprising me. “Basic spycraft 101 is to play on relationships you’ve developed and present yourself as the good guy. I mean, sure, money is the reason a lot of people turned on the West during the Cold War, but you also want to—”

  I glared at Lucy.

  “Right, shutting up now.”

  “That’s assuming he’s Christopher at all,” Shannon said.

  I blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Derek, you know as well as anyone that there’s plenty of shapeshifters out there. People who could adopt Christopher’s form and voice, and then play on your emotions.”

  “He’s a vampire.”

  “Vampire shape-shifting to that level is a very rare talent but not an unknown one,” Lucy said.

  I frowned. “That is a definite possibility.”

  “Even if he is Christopher, the fact is he’s an enemy agent now,” Shannon said. “The Vampire Nation traffics in slaves, arms, and drugs across six continents. Whoever he was before, he’s no longer one of our people, and the very fact that he’s working for them means he’s a traitor. You can’t do any favors for him, let alone investigate the House.”

  “Ashley Morgan,” I said, staring at her.

  “What?”

  I’d been in love with three women in my life: Ashley Morgan, my ex-wife Cassandra, and Shannon. Ashley had been my first partner and a woman who was everything Shannon was in some ways—noble and courageous—while also things she wasn’t, like determined to stop the injustices of the House. The official story was I’d killed her after she’d tried to betray the House. It was an event that had permanently vilified me in the eyes of my fellow agents as well as endeared me to the soulless bastards in charge of the House.

  The truth was, she was still alive.

  Free from the House.

  Christopher had helped.

  “If Christopher wanted to ruin me or destroy me, then he has a way of doing so,” I said, frowning.

  “Fuck,” Shannon said, looking away. “How bad is it?”

  “Pretty bad,” Lucy said, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “You know?” Shannon asked.

  “I know all of Derek’s secrets.”

  “Don’t mention that to other people, or you may end up water-boarded by some of my rivals in the Committee.”

  “Hehe, yeah,” Lucy said, not realizing I was serious.

  “There’s more,” I said, looking out onto the snowy mountains. “I need to know just how much the Committee is doing behind my back. I’ve been trying to solidify my place there for the better part of a year, but I’m out of my depth and they know it. They’re using me as the friendly liberal face of the House to deal with all the various Eso-Nations, but I’m locked out of the loop for a lot of shit. If I don’t know what the hell is going on, I’m going to become nothing more than a puppet they use and discard.”

  “So, you what—want to investigate Protocol Zero to get some more blackmail material on them?” Shannon asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. “The thought had occurred to me. Also, if Christopher is sincere, then I might be able to leverage his wife’s return to turn him. I can get him to betray the Vampire Nation; then I can use that as blackmail material on him. Having a member of the Council of Ancients in my pocket could be the key to forcing the Committee to take me seriously.”

  “Jesus, Derek.” Shannon shook her head.

  “You were worried about me being played,” I said, sighing. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to try and reform the House. Even if it means betraying my friends.”

  Shannon stared at me, then walked past.

  “What?” I asked, watching her leave. “I thought she was upset with me for letting Christopher get to me,” I added, turning to Lucy.

  “She was,” Lucy said. “Now she’s upset at you for something else.”

  I sighed. “Show me more about the Bloodsword. If this is the real McCoy, it can be another tool for leveraging the Vampirates.” I was unsure why Christopher had given me such an important relic. It made sense if he was trying to turn me, but something about that didn’t feel right. I recalled he used to pass messages in plain sight by using artifacts and items that were important for other reasons. It gave me an idea.

  “All right.” Lucy pointed to a series of runes engraved on the side. “Take a look at this. The enchantments woven into its blade are based on a mixture of sanguimancy and ki-based enhancers. An obvious answer is there’s knowledge stored in the weapon mystically, possibly a message, so—”

  “So, feed it blood. Gotcha.” I cut the tip of my thumb with the blade and let my blood drip on the blade. It mixed with the blood already on the blade and caused it to shimmer.

  “—we should analyze it in a lab under controlled conditions,” Lucy said, staring at me in horror. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  “I made a judgment call,” I said, watching the blood on the blade disappear into the steel of the weapon.

  “When your judgment is impaired!”

  “Dial it down. I’m sure whatever happens will—” I didn’t get to finish my statement because I was knocked on my ass. I started shaking and foaming at the mouth, and my soul left my body.

  Whoops.

  Chapter Five

  My entire body felt like it was on fire, and for a moment, I thought I was going to die. Much to my surprise, I found myself on the deck of a late-seventeenth-century galleon surrounded by a fog-covered ocean of blood. Storm clouds filled the sky and lightning struck the waves every few seconds.

  The vessel’s s
ails were tattered and ragged with holes every few feet, the result of cannon fire and storm damage. I knew, instantly, I was subject to a messenger spell. It was a way for wizards to communicate that was long on theatrics and light on practicality. On the plus side, though, it was untraceable.

  Turning around, I saw there was no crew, only the singular figure of my ex-partner standing behind me. Christopher was dressed in a business suit like the one he’d worn when we were both senior agents of the Red Room, but the Bloodsword was strapped to his side with a belt and scabbard.

  Christopher glanced over the side of the ship before turning back to me. “I hope you don’t mind the surroundings. The screensavers for the Bloodsword’s mind-to-mind messages range from the psychotically disturbing to the just plain silly.”

  “I think I would have preferred silly. Is this actually you or a recording?”

  “A little bit of both,” Christopher said, giving a brief shrug. “What we need to talk about can’t be shared with anyone else.”

  “Which is why you’re using the vampire Excalibur to do a video conference.”

  “I went to a lot of trouble to acquire the Bloodsword for you. Dracula’s minions won’t kill you as long as you wield that weapon,” Christopher said, looking surprisingly calm despite our surroundings. “I learned that from marrying one of the Warlord’s daughters.”

  I tried to hide my distaste for his revelation. Not only was Christopher a member of the Vampire Nation, but he was intimately tied to Dracula’s bloodline.

  “Congratulations,” I said sarcastically. “I notice I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

  “Your invitation was lost in the mail. Feel free to send a late gift.”

  I tried not to smile. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “A long time ago she was known as Annabelle Jones.”

  “The Pirate Queen?” I asked.

  Annabelle Jones had been one of Red Jack’s female accomplices, right up there with Elizabeth Cambridge, a.k.a Black Beth. The three of them slaughtered slave ships and merchantmen until the British Navy (with the assistance of the Caribbean Red Room) captured their ship during the day. They’d spared themselves execution by claiming pregnancy before Dracula broke them out and transformed them.