Mia stared into my eyes; I returned her gaze, studying the violet flecks in her startling gray eyes until I started to feel uncomfortable. “What is the new threat?” she asked.
I felt a bit ridiculous saying it—I had nothing to go on but instinct, coincidence, and my dreams, but I was a Dreamwalker. If I didn’t take dreams seriously, who else would? I kept my eyes locked on Mia’s and, as seriously as I could, said, “Vampires.”
Mia snorted. Not a cute little girly snort either. A big, deep-chested oink of a snort, and then she coughed to cover laughter. A minute later, she mastered herself. “Mr. Adler. My father, with the help of Edward Sloane, killed the last master vampire in the UK nearly forty years ago. I don’t know the details, but Sloane went too far, and my father blacklisted him and warned me not to trust him. But they took care of the bloodsuckers.”
The information threw me for a moment, but I bulled forward. “Then it should be easy to agree to. I help with your thing, you reinstate our deal, and you help me with the vampires. If they exist,” I said.
Mia put her mask of composure back on. “Mr. Adler, if they do exist, then they are exactly what I’ve pledged my entire life to defeating. If you can bring me proof, then I will provide you with assistance whether you make a deal with me or not, but if you don’t help me, neither one of us will be in a position to do anything within the next couple of weeks.”
I extended my hand to Mia. She looked at me for a moment, nodded, and shook, her palm cool, and her long, red nails brushed against my wrist. Another deal was done. The hint of a smile touched the bow of her lips, and she leaned back. “Now, let me tell you what I need you to do…”
◆◆◆
It was two thirty in the afternoon when I walked into the briefing room. My Outlook calendar read, “Project Boleyn,” and I had to suppress a groan. Mia’s sense of humor certainly wasn’t her sixth sense. What greeted me was Vir, Senior Agent Paula Smith, and Mia, showing no signs that she’d filled me in on this assignment and my special role in it, in her office only a couple of hours earlier.
I took a seat next to Vir, who held up a hand for a fist bump. I obliged and gave the wiry man a nod before raising my eyebrows and turning toward Mia, who was standing in front of an interactive display. On my other side, Paula gave Vir and I a look like we were a couple of drunks juggling dynamite, and she scooted over to put an empty seat between us.
“You’ll notice that this briefing is being attended by fewer than the usual number of personnel. I’m sure that you’ll be able to understand the reason for this, but until the organization has time to rearrange our assets, I’ll just have to find activities commensurate with the forces available to me,” Mia said, her crisp, refined English causing me to sit up straighter and pay attention. “Luckily for us, there is a mission on the docket that is well within the capability envelope of the remaining personnel.” She turned to the board and punched a button on her laptop. Paula scowled behind Mia’s back. I’d seen Paula trying to brown-nose with Sloane earlier in the day, but I don’t think he’d been impressed that she’d gotten her entire team butchered, and she’d ended up here—with the freaks that she so despised. The screen flickered to life, and I wrinkled my forehead in mock-confusion at the picture of an overweight, pale-skinned man, clad in doublet and pantaloons, who was eating an enormous turkey leg.
“Henry VIII?” asked Paula.
“Yes, Ms. Smith. The objective of this particular mission is the recapture of the entity known as Henry VIII, by the Grace of God, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and Supreme Head of the Church of England.”
“Oooh, I know this one from history class…ummm…hasn’t he been dead for, like, five hundred years?” Vir asked, raising his hand slightly.
“His mortal body may have perished. However, dear King Henry was not an entirely mundane individual. Upon King Henry’s death, his spirit was seen haunting several locations. The Sons of the time looked into these reports as a matter of course. Much to their surprise, some vestige of the former monarch did indeed persist in such a way that he was able to interact with our reality.”
“Interact? Like a ghost?” I asked.
“Do I look like Harold Ramis?” Mia said, pointedly looking down her perfectly straight nose at me. “If this were only a ‘ghost,’ then we would never have wasted our time. No, according to our archives, Henry’s remnant has the ability to interact with parallel realities. The specifics are unclear, but the Sons rated him a two out of ten on the supernatural threat scale. That puts him somewhere between Jack the Ripper and a wendigo.”
“And that’s why you have the dream team of Vir Sharma, Julian Adler, and umm…Ms. Smith ready to swoop in and neutralize it. I like your style, Mia!” Vir said, hopping up and putting an arm around my shoulder and that of Paula, who tried to lean away from him.
“Indeed,” Mia said, pausing to indicate her disapproval before continuing. “Given Henry’s apparently ethereal nature, we believe that you, Vir, should be able to employ astral projection to trap him safely. Julian will be there for his versatility, and Senior Agent Paula Smith will be there to run mundane security.” I wondered how I’d be able to do the task Mia and I had discussed earlier without Paula noticing.
I might have missed a few sentences, and when I zoned back in, Mia was wrapping up. “You are to report by 1400 hours to the target’s location. Unless there are any questions, I’ll be going,” she finished, turning immediately to the door.
Long, elegant legs carried Mia almost across the room before I had a chance to speak, a thought occurring to me. “Ummm…that threat scale. Where would a vampire go on it?”
Mia pursed her lips and took a deep breath before replying, “For a master vampire, a seven. For a regular vampire, a three,” she stated, putting one hand on the doorknob before tossing her chestnut hair over her shoulder and looking me in the eye to add, “At least that was what they rated before, as you know, my father wiped the last of the bloodsuckers off of the island forty years ago. Please quit wasting my time, Mr. Adler. There’s work to be done.”
Yeah there was work to be done, but I didn’t know how in the hell we were going to pull this off.
Chapter 10
1600–1800, Thursday, June 16, 2016
The air was heavy, and sweat ran down my back as I walked to St. Paul’s station. I crossed Paternoster Square and paused to look at the soaring dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’d seen it dozens of times, but Wren’s masterpiece never failed to lift my thoughts out of the moment and into contemplation of things greater than myself.
Of course, there were plenty of things greater than myself on my mind, so many that I hardly knew where to start. I had just been assigned to hunt down another one of the Escapees. Or should I say, another eighth of Escapees? As in, supposedly I was going to hunt down Henry VIII. I didn’t even want to think about explaining that one to Dana. If I ever went back to a normal life, how would I represent this on my resume? Experience working at C-level and above? At least if I carried out my part of Mia’s secret plan, that would put me a little bit closer to enlisting the Sons’ (vague and unspecified) help to get Olivia back.
Speaking of the Sons, Mia had warned me off of Edward Sloane, but my dreams told me that he was involved in both killing vampires and finding the mysterious artifact. On top of that, the office had been buzzing all afternoon with people telling stories of the creatures that he’d supposedly slain. He’d vaporized vampires, gutted ghouls, and slaughtered shoggoths. He was the closest thing to a rock star that I’d seen so far in the supernatural community.
Until I could find some way to speak to Sloane, I had to hope that Dana had found out something more about the strange wax disk from my dream. With a lot of luck, she’d be able to explain what Sloane and my mom wanted it for.
I couldn’t forget the vampires. If I was seeing the future, then there’d be a huge outbreak of the bloodsuckers to deal with. Somehow. And it seemed like there was something w
rong with the baby in Dana’s belly. Fuck my life. At least I’d be back with Dana soon, so that we could have a bite to eat. I was going to need some rest this evening. Tomorrow was going to see me going after Henry in the afternoon, and then I’d have to head to a scheduled night training exercise. I’d considered asking for the exercise to be postponed, but I was getting time and a half, and I crossed my fingers that Sloane wouldn’t show up—if he wasn’t around, maybe I could still get some info out of Mia.
Capturing Henry was going to be the easy part—figuring out how to put the secret task Mia had assigned me into motion without Paula or Vir catching on was going to be the hard part. And she still hadn’t explained how it was going to help her take care of the Chapter Master’s anti-attuned stance.
I considered all of that during the nearly half an hour it took to get back to West Ealing station. The house that Dana and I were renting was only a two-minute walk from the station. I mention this because apparently even a two-minute walk was long enough for me to get ambushed.
Edward Sloane, wearing a button-up plaid shirt, dark-brown trousers, and a red bow tie, looking like a university professor, was waiting for me at the top of the steps to the station. “Mr. Adler, you will walk with me into the cafe? We will sit down and have a pleasant conversation. You will tell me all that you know about the object I am seeking. You will tell me about the vampires that you’ve seen. If I believe that you are being forthright with me, then, on my honor as a gentleman, I will leave you in peace. If not, then your life could become very unpleasant. Is this clear?”
I felt my chest tighten. I’d wanted a chance to speak to Sloane alone, and here he was. Visions of holding my little girl again flitted across my mind. Tucking her into her little pink bed at night. Pushing her in a swing on a sunny afternoon. I gave a mental head shake, focusing on Sloane, and forced myself to remember Mia’s warning, how quickly he’d dispatched the Protean, and how he’d used me in his dream. I decided to see if I could throw him off balance to start our negotiation. I don’t think he was aware that this was going to be a negotiation, but that was his problem.
Smiling like a used car salesman behind on his rent, I strode forward. “Eddie! I was hoping to see you. I have a lot of questions,” I said, pumping his hand vigorously. “I’ve heard that you’re the man when it comes to hunting vampires, so anything I can do to help…” I said as I disengaged and crossed to the cafe on the corner of the street. I glanced back and saw that Sloane’s eyebrows were riding high on the dome of his forehead. Maybe other people were more startled by his threats?
After ordering some teas, Sloane picked up the conversation again. “I am indeed a monster hunter, and I was hired by the Chapter Master to help hunt down the Escapees so that no others have to die due to your mistakes. There are a great many people who blame you for a great many serious crimes. I agree with them, and our intention was to take you into long-term custody. However, I have now informed the Chapter Master that there may have been extenuating circumstances, beyond those of which he is already aware, that led to the thirty-two deaths with which you are attributed. Please make sure your information is worth that consideration.” He prodded my leg with something sharp under the table, making me flinch. To be clear, I flinched from the sharp implement, but inside I was mentally recoiling from his words. From a dozen police that I’d gotten killed by zombies (that I’d created), to a room full of partygoers that had spontaneously combusted, and not forgetting a half-dozen nurses and hospital orderlies that I’d accidentally used as human shields, I’d made mistakes that had punched more tickets than an usher at a Star Wars opening. I tried to ignore those mistakes most of the time. I told myself that none of it had been on purpose, that I’d saved many more people, and that I’d been forced into those situations, but if I believed that, then why did I feel like throwing up?
I took a deep breath and concisely explained my dream. I told him about the confrontation between him and the vampires, how he had used me as bait, how the streets had run red with blood, and about the ominous newspaper headlines that warned of my ultimate failure. The only time that he reacted was when I mentioned that vampire had been called Cooper, which caused his eyes to narrow and his jaw to clench. Once again—not a poker player.
After I was done, I reclined and took a drink of my Pepsi. Sloane leaned forward in response and shook his head, his leonine mane of hair emphasizing the motion. “And what of the artifact, boy?” he asked. I had yelled to him at the council estate, implying that I knew about the mysterious item, instinctively drawing a link between Sloane in my dream and the imprecation from my mother to track down the artifact. My instincts obviously hadn’t been wrong, but I hesitated. That was my trump card.
“What about the vampires? Will you try to stop them?” I replied, trying to steer the conversation.
“In the unlikely event that there are any active bloodsuckers in London, then I will take care of them. But do not try to distract me. I will know where the artifact is, Mr. Adler,” he said, a hungry glint entering his blue eyes.
He didn’t know about the vampires? I wasn’t sure what to think of that, so I leaned back, trying to put space between us while I thought about my answer. “Why do you want it?” I asked.
Sloane shook his head slightly. “There is a threat, a sleeping threat, that I would use the artifact to destroy. If you help me get this item, you’ll be helping all of mankind. Now, last chance, Mr. Adler. Tell me what I want to know.”
“A book. I saw the artifact mentioned in a book in the Sons’ library. I was looking for information about vampires in their archives, and it was mentioned there,” I said.
“Liar,” Sloane correctly deduced. But instead of looking upset, he got a contemplative look on his face. “Threats won’t work with you, will they? Very well. Tell me about the item, and I’ll do everything I can to help get your child back. I know your mother has her. I know about your deal with Mia. I’m a better ally. I have the Chapter Master’s ear. I can get those operations moved well up the priority list,” he continued, as ice water ran down my spine. Which deal did he know about? Presumably not the one where Mia gave me classified information—otherwise, I doubted that I’d be free to walk around.
“How do I know that you’ll keep your word? I’ve been burned before. A lot.”
“I am a gentleman, a man of my word. But how about this as a token of good faith? If you tell me where you learned about the thing that I’m seeking, then I’ll stay away from your training sessions with Ms. Noel tomorrow. That way, you can watch my actions and decide whether or not you should trust me. I’ll give you three days to work it out. Then, you can decide whether or not we’ll work together. Fair, ja?”
Seriously. How much did he know? Three days. Maybe I could find the damned thing, use it, and pass it on to Sloane before that time was up? Working for the Sons, it wasn’t like Edward wouldn’t know about my abilities, so what could it hurt to tell him? Heck—maybe Mia was wrong, maybe working with Sloane was the right thing to do. I shook my head—I’d seen Sloane dealing with vampires in my dream, and surely he had to be key to stopping whatever was going to happen.
“It was in a dream,” I said.
Sloane nodded, accepting the answer. “I thought that you didn’t have your own dreams?”
“I don’t think that this was a normal dream. I saw the disk at the same time as the vampires. I’m pretty sure they’re connected.”
Sloane paused to ponder that for a moment, massaging his temples and closing his piercing, dark-blue eyes. After a few moments, Sloane opened his eyes and smiled a wolfish grin, displaying gleaming white teeth. “I see. Yes. That could make sense. All right, I may see you in the office tomorrow. Have a good evening, Mr. Adler, and remember—three days.” The monster hunter rose and strolled out of the cafe. He didn’t pay. I thought it was crime that didn’t pay, but apparently it was also monster hunters.
I stuck around for a minute to get my bearings. That had actually gone quite we
ll. Edward Sloane had come to me, and I’d gotten the beginnings of a deal done. I now had to make a decision whether or not to help him—not that I knew a whole lot more than I’d let on—within three days, but that gave me some time to think. More importantly, it gave Dana some time to think.
I only had a couple hundred yards to get home, but just as I stepped out of the cafe and turned the corner, out of sight of the patrons, a man in a hoodie, sunglasses, gloves, and dark jeans appeared in front of me. He was maybe an inch shorter than my six foot two, but a bit broader across the chest. A couple locks of blond hair trailed out of his hoodie, but besides that I couldn’t make out any features. After half a second I tagged him as the same figure that had dealt with the Choker at Shepherd’s Bush Green. Shit.
“Stay away from Edward Sloane,” the hooded man growled. I couldn’t see his face, but his accent was from somewhere inside the M25, probably north of the river and west of Liverpool Street. I’d seen him rip a dangerous woman to shreds in an instant. I glanced around, trying to see if there were any witnesses around. My eyes went wide as they locked on to a figure turning the corner, and I gave a mental Hell, yeah.
“This guy giving you a problem, Jules?” A giant of a man, nearly seven feet and middle aged but still fit, strolled out of the afternoon shadows. He had a poppy in the lapel of his white linen suit and wore Italian leather loafers that clashed with the wickedly sharp hook that replaced his right hand. Closing the gap to the stranger in a couple of pavement-eating strides, Jack Redderton jabbed the hook into the small of the other man’s back. “Take off the hood,” Jack ordered, placing his dinner plate–sized left hand on the other man’s shoulder. My heart leapt. Usually the cavalry didn’t arrive until after I’d had the stuffing beaten out of me.
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