Sean Pryce did not want to be that one more loss that sent her spiraling down. He rolled a cigarette as she vanished into the market and let her go. It was for the best.
They'd been riding for hours by the time the Zundapp finally began to overheat, but they made it. Pryce yanked off his grime-covered goggles and eased the motorcycle to the edge of woods, laying it down in the tallest grass he could find. "We'll leave it here, just in case," he said. "But with any luck, we won't need it again."
Amelie shrugged and nodded, still not speaking to him. He hadn't heard her voice since that morning. Even when she'd been seated behind him on the motorcycle, clutching him around the stomach, she'd sat as far back from him as possible. It was now a little game between them, where he spoke to her and she found ways to respond to him without speaking in return.
Pryce pointed into the woods and said, "There. That must be the building."
Amelie leaned down to look at the plain white building less than one hundred meters away and frowned. The building had no windows and only one door, surrounded by a dirty gravel parking lot. It looked like an enormous warehouse, complete with a large bay door at the far side of the building that stretched from corner to corner and rose nearly as high as the roof itself. Amelie shook her head and said, "That cannot be right. There should be guards."
"There it is," Pryce said, giving her a sly smile.
"There is what?"
"That pretty voice of yours. I was starting to forget what it sounded like."
"Stop being a buffoon," she said, but there was a slight playfulness in her voice. She enjoyed the idea of him missing her voice.
"The guards are all inside," he said. "The Nazis don't want anyone knowing what they're doing in there, not even the locals. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight."
"So what is the plan?"
"I'll go in, grab your brother, and you wait out here. Did you bring clothes for him?"
Amelie patted the bag strapped to the side of the motorcycle and said, "Right in here."
"Good. Now, when we come out, there is likely to be an entire squadron of SS chasing behind us, so make sure you have a car ready to go. Since there's only one door in the place, we'll use that to our advantage."
"How?" she said.
"I can get your brother out through a solid wall. Those bastards will have to all file out through that one exit. When that door opens, start shooting. Kill anyone that tries to come out and hopefully their bodies will block the doorway long enough for us to get a good headstart."
"Kill…anyone?" Amelie whispered.
He looked at her, "You can shoot a gun, can't you? Le General doesn't have you just killing men with poisoned lipstick, I hope."
"Pity you didn't get a chance to find out," she said.
Pryce smiled slightly and said, "You know, when all this is over, I was thinking Hans and Lena Vogel deserve to go on a nice quiet weekend away. What do you think Lena would say?"
Amelie swept her hair behind her ear and said, "If they both survive this, I think she would enjoy that."
"Good," he said, as he started to unbutton his shirt and remove his pants.
"What are you doing?" Amelie said nervously. "I hope you don't think that…not right here in the woods next to the Nazis!"
Pryce laughed as he folded his shirt and passed it to her. "I'm taking off my clothes now so you'll have them. They're coming off anyway, right?"
"I suppose they are," she said, watching as he stripped down. His body was chiseled and fine-tuned like a swimmer's, as if his entire body were streamlined to be a weapon. There was no fat, but also no bulky muscle to get in his way. Whatever strange energy the agent carried inside of him that gave him such incredible powers, it had given him a body that would be admired by the Ancient Greeks.
Pryce stood before her, naked, and said, "Don't lose my things now."
She told him that she wouldn't, and he turned and sprinted into the woods, running as fast as he could toward the parking lot. He vanished at the last tree, only to reappear ten feet ahead, then disappeared again. She watched him travel like that, blinking in and out of existence, until he was standing alongside the building's bay door.
Pryce looked back in her direction, trying to catch his breath. He'd covered a large amount of space in a short period of time and teleported more rapidly than he was used to. He felt something dripping out of his nose and looked down, seeing bright red splashes of blood on the gravel. It was freezing as he leaned against the cold metal slats of the bay door and the cold wind made him shiver slightly. He pressed his ear to the building and listened, unable to hear anything. For all he knew, he was about to materialize in front of a dozen scientists and armed SS troops. He swiped his hand across his nose and said, "To hell with it."
Pryce took a deep breath and the world around him shimmered and dissolved. He felt himself disintegrate into thousands of particles that moved through the building's bay door and quickly reconfigured into his body once more. He saw a man wearing a white lab coat standing directly in front of him, inspecting a massive tank. Pryce immediately ducked under the tank's frame and dropped to the ground, pressing his bare skin as flat as he could to the dirty floor and crawling until he was hidden beneath the massive tread. The scientist's shoes squeaked on the floor as he walked around to the place Pryce had been standing, stopped, and turned to go the other way.
The tank was large enough that Pryce was able to use its length to see the rest of the facility. He spied several sonderkommandos patrolling a catwalk built high above the floor, each of them armed with rifles. They had a clear vantage point of everything the scientists doing and a clear shot in the event they saw something they did not like.
The catwalks met at a large platform overlooking the far end of the warehouse. There were several Nazi brown-shirts milling around the platform, looking down at the men working below. The lower level was crawling with scientists. Men in lab coats hovered over various workstations, assembling devices or lifting glass tubes to inspect the deadly, glowing serums within.
I have been in a place like this once before.
The entire building stunk of burnt metal and a noxious chemical odor that made Pryce's eyes water. He blinked and searched for Louis Brevot among the others, but trying to pick out one skinny scientist wearing a lab coat and glasses among a dozen others was no easy task.
A man came walking up to the edge of the platform and raised both his hands in the air, his voice bringing everyone else inside the facility to a stop. "Your attention, gentlemen, please," he called out.
Pryce worked his way down the tread until he could get a clear view of the speaker and was amazed at what he saw. An elderly British man, dressed in a long black robe that was trimmed with elaborate gold leaf around the sleeves and neck. There was a golden triangle embroidered on the front of the robe that had beams of light shooting out of it.
You must be the Anti-Christ.
Aleister Crowley looked more like a soft-bodied pensioner than any Great Beast, Pryce thought. He watched Crowley's hands spread out dramatically like he might, at any moment, shoot lightning from them, and say, "Please, will all of you step away from your stations and go to either side of the building. Press yourselves against the far walls if you will."
Crowley waited for the researchers to do as instructed, then he turned with a great sweep of his robe and said, "Now, do us the kindness of bringing our guest forward!"
Two stormtroopers carried a chair toward the front of the platform past Crowley. There was a man strapped down to the chair, bound at the wrists and ankles to the chair's frame. Louis Brevot's eyes bulged in terror as he struggled against the bonds, his mouth gagged by a dirty cloth that only served to muffle his pleas to be let go.
Aleister Crowley smiled at Brevot and clasped his hands together, as excited as a child on Christmas morning. He looked down at the warehouse and called out, "Do you see your friend, Agent Omega? Don't be shy, my boy. I know you are with us." He waite
d for a response, his smile growing thin the longer he waited and he finally said, "Very well. I see that you are a man of resolve and require a more substantial incentive. Bring out the girl."
Obersturmbannfuhrer Victor Kramer dragged a cursing and kicking Amelie Brevot across the metal platform. Her shoes dragged on the surface as she struggled against him.
You son of a bitch. I'm going to enjoy tearing you apart.
Victor Kramer held up a pistol and said, "I have your little French whore, Omega. If you do not show yourself within five seconds, she dies."
The pistol was no ordinary gun. It had been disguised to look like the German Mauser but there was a long cylindrical tube above the gun barrel, like something the scientists were using to mix their serums, but it was turned sideways and connected to the gun's frame by wires. Before Pryce could get a better look at it, Kramer pressed the barrel against the side of Amelie's head and said, "You want to get a better look at the inside of this woman's head? Very well."
Kramer cocked the hammer back and Amelie cried out, "Sean! Help us!"
Pryce appeared at the center of the warehouse floor running at full speed, passing a row of terrified scientists, then vanished again.
"Vampirs, now!" Kramer shouted.
One of the brown-shirts threw a breaker switch behind the platform and the lights inside the facility snapped off, leaving them in total darkness until someone said, "There!"
The barrels of a dozen SS rifles flashed, filling the room with gunfire as Sean Pryce sprinted across the catwalk, pitching the nearest sonderkommando out of his way and sending the man toppling over the railing toward the bottom floor.
The Nazis stared through the infrared lenses mounted to their rifles, searching for Pryce, but he was gone again. They shouted in confusion at one another, trying to find him. Another scream from the far end of the warehouse made all of their guns erupt, but when they looked through the lenses, all they saw was the bullet-ridden body of one of their own, blasted to pieces by their own Vampirs.
"He's using the darkness to his advantage! Stop shooting your own people!" Aleister Crowley bellowed.
"Find him! Find him!" Victor Kramer shouted.
There was a scream from the lower level as Pryce ran past another group of scientists and bullets immediately followed, ricocheting off of the concrete floor. The stray rounds blasted apart various research stations containing years of work and hit several of the scientists as well.
Except for the whimpering of the wounded scientists, everything fell eerily still and silent inside the warehouse. The sonderkommandos scanned the building, looking for any signs of movement, peering through their scopes of the tops of their smoking barrels.
"Where is he?" Kramer said. "Did he flee? That coward!"
"He is still here," Aleister Crowley said, knowingly. Crowley closed his eyes and thrust his hands back into the air, moaning, "By the sacred Rites of Eleusis and the Queen of Infinite Space, I command you to appear before me now, cursed creature! I, the Great Beast! Appear, I say! Appear, appear!"
Sean Pryce stepped forward out of nothingness, standing an inch away from Crowley and said, "I just want you to know, I was coming here anyway. You had nothing to do with it."
From the corner of his eye, Pryce saw Amelie Brevot shove Obersturmbannfuhrer Kramer out of her way and rip the strange gun from his hand.
Good girl.
But instead of turning the gun on Kramer, Amelie snarled at Pryce and raised the gun and fired. A blue-tipped dart came spiraling through the air at him, but by the time it arrived, Pryce was already gone.
Amelie clutched the gun in her hands, looking left and right. She suddenly turned and fired into the darkness. The dart sailed toward an empty place on the wall along the catwalk, but just as it was about to bounce uselessly against the surface, Pryce appeared. The dart struck him in the chest, a direct hit. Pryce angrily ripped the dart out and vanished again.
Amelie turned and turned, searching for any sign of him. Finally, she spun and shot twice at the group of sonderkommandos clustered behind her on the platform. They cursed and dove for cover to escape, but it was too late. Pryce had already appeared in the way and caught both darts in his bare chest.
Pryce staggered forward, blood leaking from his nose like a sieve, grasping for the darts sticking out of him. He stumbled toward Amelie, trying to grab her gun away, but missed and fell to one knee.
Amelie Brevot cocked the gun and stuck it against Pryce's forehead, pausing only to look back at Victor Kramer for permission.
Kramer smiled cruelly and said, "Do it."
She squeezed the trigger and the gun barked, driving a dart into the center of Pryce's forehead. He collapsed on the platform and Victor Kramer let out a cry of triumph. Kramer swept Amelie up in his arms and kissed her on the mouth over and over. Victory was his.
Pryce struggled to open his eyes. He had no idea how long he'd been out, but his body was numb and his head was buzzing. When he opened his mouth to speak, nothing but long streams of metallic-tasting spittle dribbled out. He was strapped to a chair, the same as Louis Brevot, bound at the arms and legs, sitting on the platform overlooking the warehouse floor.
Obersturmbannfuhrer Kramer stood in front of him, snapping his fingers, trying to wake him up. Kramer waved what looked like a glass slide at Pryce, trying to get him to focus on it. "I am glad to see you are awake, Herr Omega. We were not sure about the dosage level and some suspected you would not survive." Kramer looked down at the slide and said, "You have most unique blood. The Third Reich will benefit greatly from your contribution to our research."
Pryce's head flopped sideways, giving him a better look at the people around him. What he saw made him sick. Amelie Brevot was now dressed in a snug-fitting German uniform decorated with swastika patches. Any trace of beauty and vulnerability on her face was etched out, now scarred by a wicked sneer.
He muttered something unintelligible at her, but the venom in his words was clear.
Amelie laughed and walked toward him, her tall black leather high-heeled boots clicking on the metal platform. She bent forward and pinched his cheek, giving him a long look at the way her breasts pushed together under the exposed collar of her Nazi uniform shirt. She was just another pleasure-girl now, even if she'd used some sort of devilry to hit him with the darts from whatever that gun was, he thought drowsily.
That means, I don't have to worry about keeping you alive.
"Poor, poor Omega," Amelie said. "All this time, thinking you were the only special person in the whole world with any extra abilities. Did you really think a man such as Herr Hitler would not go to any effort to find another super human? It was you and that old fool Donovan's arrogance that brought you to this point. And once you are disposed of, I shall visit him personally to drive my point home."
Louis Brevot was looking at his sister in horror, still bound to his chair and struggling against his restraints.
Victor Kramer walked over to him snatched the gag out of Louis' mouth. "You have something to add?"
"Amelie! Have you lost your mind?" Louis cried. "I have been begging you to help me escape from these bastards and instead you joined them? What have they done to you?"
Amelie ran at her brother and backhanded him across the face. "You have no right to speak to me, whimpering dog! Do not call me sister, for your sister died the day she tried to convince you and all the other cowards that Hitler was coming! I foresaw Nazis parading through the streets of Paris, but you and all the other Vichy mongrels ignored my warnings. You handed our country over like it was dirty laundry. How ironic that it was der Fuhrer who appreciated my abilities and re-christened me Deomai, the Destroyer."
Pryce spat to clear his mouth and also to show his disdain for the people around him. His eyes turned to Aleister Crowley. "You must be the one they call the Great Beast."
Crowley stood up straight, a proud man in his magnificent and gaudy costume. "I am," he said.
"That's a nice robe. Do th
ey make them for men as well?"
Crowley laughed at the insult and said, "I do not think you want to make me your enemy, Mr. Pryce. You are of great interest to me and it may only be my intervention that allows you to survive this ordeal." Crowley reached for Pryce's face and clasped it by the chin, despite Pryce squirming to get away. "You will make a lovely little plaything once these fellows are through with you."
Pryce wrenched his face away from Crowley and said, "Plaything?"
"Indeed."
Pryce turned and looked at Victor Kramer, "If it's all the same to you, I think I'd rather stay here and be experimented on."
Kramer wagged his finger at Pryce and said, "Do not be so flippant, Herr Omega. You will not enjoy our research methods, I assure you."
"Oh," Pryce said, sighing. "Well, then I guess it's fortunate for me that none of you will be alive much longer."
Kramer slapped Pryce across the face, leaving a red hand print from his glove. "Do not think for one second I will tolerate your smarmy American insolence. The American scientists studied you for years, ja? But it only took der Fuhrer's scientists less than two days to unravel your secrets." Kramer held up one of the blue-tipped darts that Amelie had hit him with. "Your powers, as I am sure you know by now, are completely neutralized. I know you have been trying to use them, but you are hopelessly at my mercy."
Pryce's jaw quivered and he suddenly slumped in his chair, letting his head hang low. "How…how did you do this?"
The Obersturmbannfuhrer laughed loudly, "Do you see? See how this American superhero has been brought low by the superior science of the Third Reich? See how he now begs for mercy, but he will find none. That much is certain. You will find none!"
Pryce looked up at Kramer and said, "Actually, I don't recall begging."
Agent Omega: You Only Live Forever Page 6
