Blood Conspiracy (Brooklyn Shadows Book 2)

by Brock Deskins

  “It is a we problem as my decision greatly affects us both, Mr. Fuckyurself, or should I say Mr. Malone?” Zaim smiles at my surprise and his own cleverness. “Our technology and capabilities extend beyond stealth camels. It was not difficult to run a facial pattern analysis and discover your identity. You are not what one would consider low profile. Nor was it difficult to ascertain the identity of Lawrence Poole. A simple criminal background check using his fingerprints was sufficient. Ms. Savard, on the other hand, is quite the enigma.”

  “She’s a bitch too.”

  “Perhaps. I’m not here to judge character, only intent. Given Mr. Poole’s criminal history and your even more notorious reputation, I am inclined to believe you are not spies, but I am convinced the American government sent you. That begs the question as to why. Why does your government care about these creatures, particularly when they are in a country they dislike and killing mostly people they despise?”

  I shrug. “They want the movie rights?”

  “Obviously they sent them here, and having captured you gives my country some powerful bargaining chips. Sending drones to kill suspected terrorists is one thing, but inserting soldiers inside the borders of a sovereign nation to kill its citizens could have an enormous backlash for anyone seeking reelection.”

  “Good luck finding anyone who knows about this or us.”

  “Do you expect me to believe your government is ignorant of this entire debacle?”

  “Do you think you have a monopoly on terrorists? Ever hear of the Boston Tea Party or the taming of the west? We practically invented terrorism. The only difference is we’re actually embarrassed by it and try to stamp it out whenever it rears its ugly head instead of embracing it as part of our cultural identity.”

  “You westerners know nothing of our culture!”

  “I know a guy spent half an hour using my face as a speed bag.”

  “Tell me who sent these ghuls here and who hired you to kill them, unless you would prefer our other method of extracting information.”

  “You can’t extract your head from your own ass much less anything we know. If you want to solve this problem, let us go.”

  Zaim stands, his face flushed. “We shall see. You have thus far only seen the first level of interrogation we employ. There are six in total, each one exponentially more horrific than the previous. No one has ever lasted beyond level four, and he died shortly after.”

  I stop Zaim before he steps through the door. “I lied, Zaim. There aren’t two monsters left in your country, there are five. You walk out that door and your problems become ‘exponentially more horrible.’”

  “Malone, shut your mouth,” Lesile hisses.

  “No. I’m tired of playing games, and I want to go home so I can kill the sonofabitch behind this colossal fuck up!”

  Zaim turns back around and pierces me with his gaze. “Who are you, Leonard Malone?”

  “I’m either the best solution you have to fix your problem, or the motherfucker who is ten seconds from going nuclear all over you and everyone else topping my shit list right now.”

  Zaim grips the pistol holstered at his side until his knuckles turn white. I’m ready to snap my bonds and his neck before he clears leather. Lesile looks calm but I know better. I can tell by the subtle rustling of Meat’s bisht that he’s already shifting.

  Someone knocks on the door, opens it a crack, and motions for Zaim to step out of the room. He returns a few minutes later looking pale and even more drawn than before.

  “All right, I’ll release you, but you will kill these things and get out of my country.” He flips a business card onto the table. “You will inform me when it is done, and I expect proof.”

  “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  Zaim appears to ignore my question but changes his mind. “The ghuls struck our headquarters building moments ago. I no longer have a superior to report to, so the decision is now mine alone.” He sighs. “They have never been so brazen, and we did not expect them to attack us after they fled. I think they wanted to make a point for you killing one of their comrades. These creatures must die no matter the cost, and if that means unleashing infidels onto the street then so be it.”

  “This is the smartest move you’ve made yet. We can’t leave the bodies, and you need to destroy the one you have. There are things people are better off not knowing.”

  Zaim nods. “I wish to Allah I did not know.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m glad Zaim finally figured out that letting us go was a no lose situation. Either the two ghuls kill us or we kill them. Either way, he is better off than he was before we got here. He had already lost dozens of men trying to take the rogues down in three different towns across the country, and he was more interested in killing them than publicizing a scandal against the American government for engaging in international terrorism.

  The complex they hit is owned by a businessman suspected of funding Al-Qaeda although he is not an actual member himself. It seems that our guys are somewhat still on mission. If it were up to me, I’d leave them alone to do their work and screw the collateral damage. Of course, the problem there is that it is only a matter of time before Zaim and his unit figure out how to kill them, or worse, capture them, and then lids get blown off of all kinds of shit.

  I chuckle at the fact that if any of the enclaves had known about these three spec ops vampires running amok, they would have voluntarily taken care of them and eliminated the need for Homeland Security’s heavy-handed tactics. Now we have to deal with the rogue vampires and a super-covert branch of the government. The fact I’m always caught in the middle of these clusterfucks removes any doubt as to the reality of karma.

  It’s less than four hours before sunrise, so we decide to return to the hotel. We’re all exhausted, beat to shit, and in need of some rest and time to formulate a smarter plan of attack.

  I stretch out on the couch. “What’s the plan, boss?”

  “Zaim said they tend to lie low for a few days after an attack, especially after they engage with local forces,” Lesile answers.

  “Well, they blew that pattern all to hell tonight.”

  “Our presence obviously altered the equation. They may not know much about vampires or our society, but they surely know we are hunting them now and pose a greater threat than the local military.”

  Meat asks, “So, what, we wait a few days for them to regain their courage and hope to ambush them when they return?”

  “Getting locked down in a firefight in the middle of the town is not an advantage for our side. We need to find out where they are hiding during the day and take them by surprise.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

  The problem with a good idea is that you’re rarely the first one to think of it. Twin RPG rounds slam into the ocean side of our hotel room, obliterating the balcony and the majority of the wall. The couch back saves me from much of the stonework blasted into the room. Lesile is on her way to the shower and narrowly avoids the worst of it. Meat takes it full on in the face, and he flies back until he reaches the far wall.

  Automatic weapons chatter away, and bullets stitch holes into the ceiling. I low crawl my way out from beneath the couch and across the floor. Peeking around what remains of the wall, I can barely make out the suppressed muzzle flashes on the beach. I take aim and let loose with my own barrage. My initial shots strike my target. Both vamps take off at a run with my rounds chasing after them, spitting up tiny geysers of sand the whole way.

  Lesile manages to crawl to the other side of the gaping hole in our hotel room and squeezes off a few shots before the rogues disappear into the city. Meat groans and I motion to Lesile to tend to him while I keep watch.

  “How is he?”

  “Beat up but alive.”

  Meat sits up. “I have never had my ass kicked so many times in one day. Malone, this is the last fucking time I do anything with you. You’re like a giant, ass-kicking magnet.”

  �
�Complain later. We need to go after them while the trail is still warm.”

  “Warm?” Meat asks.

  “Fresh, smartass.”

  “Give me a minute to get my shit together.”

  “Hurry up before they decide to come back and push it in again.”

  Rearmed, we jump through the breach in the wall and hit the beach. Meat sticks his elongated snout in the air and sniffs around. “They definitely came in from the north and retreated in the same direction.”

  “They could be twenty miles from here by now, but I doubt it,” I say. “They’ll have set up a base of operation probably within half an hour to an hour away. Even if they bug out thanks to our involvement, they’ll probably stop to refuel if they took some damage.”

  Lesile asks, “But will they return to their hideout now that they know we’re after them? If it were me, I would keep running and set up in another town.”

  “You have to understand the mentality of a vampire gone rogue.” I think about the way my mind worked back then and what I would have done. “We’re invaders and a threat, threats they need to destroy. They probably know our encounter was not coincidence, and they’ll want to fight us on their territory.”

  “These guys are batshit crazy, right? They jumped us here, but they also attacked the army’s headquarters. They’re pretty much running on instinct, aren’t they?” Meat asks.

  I shake my head. “Think of it like your shifting. The more you shift, the more the animal in you surfaces. You’re mean and savage, but you never completely lose your humanity and ability for coherent thought. It’s the same for a rogue. Yeah, they’re amped up like a crack addict, but they can still think. They know we’re coming, and they’ll be ready for us.”

  Meat finds some traces of blood near where I must have winged one. Because we don’t have beating hearts to put our internal system under pressure, the blood trail does not lead far, but Meat doesn’t need blood to follow their scent. Thankfully, the trail is fresh enough that he doesn’t have to do a full shift to follow it thus requiring him to get buck naked. We sprint across town, stealth be damned. If the ghuls preying on the populace kept people in their beds, all the gunfire should have them huddling beneath them now.

  A little over half a kilometer from our not so epic battle, we find a small community just past a grove of scrubby trees. Meat pauses just on the outskirts and waves his nose in the air as he inhales deeply.

  “I think our friends stopped here for a midnight snack.”

  “Then they probably didn’t stay.”

  We circle the small village until we reach the north end. Meat begins pacing back and forth and in expanding circles, sniffing at the air, ground, and occasional shrub.

  “You trying to get the scent, or are you looking for a place to shit?”

  He extends an elongated, hairy, clawed middle finger at me. “Found it. They’re still heading mostly north but veering slightly west.”

  We’ve got maybe three hours of darkness left, so we kick it up to a jog and follow Meat’s nose like kids in a Fruit Loops commercial. The trail takes us into a wadi running north. We skirt to the west of another small village maybe four kilometers from Shuqrah. Meat takes a minute to sniff out the cluster of homes, but he detects no sign of anyone succumbing to a violent death.

  “We’re probably getting close to their lair if they passed this close to these people without picking any off,” I tell the group.

  “Maybe they’re full.”

  I shake my head. “Rogues don’t get full. They’ll kill for the thrill of killing if they can’t consume any more.”

  “Such an exotic species you are.”

  “Like none of your kind ever got rabies and went on killing sprees. You’re all just a bunch of fluffy, lovable lap dogs.”

  “You haven’t been cleaning up our mess for the past year!”

  “I seem to recall springing you from the pound. It’s not like you got picked up by the dogcatcher for an expired tag.”

  “At least we’re not waving our existence in front of the public like a pervert’s cock at a school bus!”

  “You sound as though you speak from personal experience.”

  “Will you two shut up?” Lesile snarls. “In case you have forgotten, our quarry has rather good hearing, and your childish bickering is carrying halfway to Egypt!”

  I point an accusing finger at Meat. “He started it.”

  Meat gives me an unexpected shove, and I take a tumble down a small ravine and find myself tangled in a mass of thorny brush.

  “Real mature.”

  I extricate myself from the brambles and jog to catch back up. Our trail continues to lead us north across some of the ugliest goddam land I’ve ever seen. With our modern modes of transportation, it confounds me as to why anyone would live here. The idea of barely eking out a living just to survive to the ripe old age of fifty is bizarre to me.

  Meat stops and inhales deeply. “There’s a strong scent of blood a couple hundred yards ahead.”

  We take a more cautious approach until I spot a bloody, wadded up garment tucked beneath a shrub. With a nod, Meat confirms this being the source of what he smelled and creeps closer. He reaches out to pick up the discarded shirt, but I grab his hand and shake my head. I kneel down and begin blowing away the sand from around the shirt.

  “If you really feel the need to blow something…”

  I flip him off then point triumphantly at my discovery. A strand of monofilament runs from beneath the shirt into the brush. I carefully use my sharpened fingernails and clip the thread. I follow the direction of the line deeper into the brush and find the real prize: a claymore mine set to shred anyone touching the shirt and alerting our prey to our arrival.

  “Something tells me they knew we would be following them,” Lesile says.

  “We weren’t exactly covert on our first meeting, and they didn’t press their attack on the second. They may not know much about our society, but I know they marked us for what we are the moment we fought. Meat’s probably the only mystery to them right now.” I chuckle, “Mystery Meat.”

  Meat ignores my quip. “The wind is still at our backs. I suggest we circle around. If they placed this thing here, they can’t be very far ahead.”

  We turn to the east and circle to the north side of a tiny village barely visible against the dark skyline. Meat constantly checks the air, but the only scents are goat, camel, and stale human. If his nose is right, no one has lived in the village for several weeks. Let me amend that. No living person has occupied the village in weeks. I hate it when people call vampires undead, because that’s not really true, but it’s not an inappropriate analogy for this situation.

  We creep toward the smattering of mud-daub dwellings, sticking to the shadows and keeping the mild breeze at our faces. Meat nods, signaling that our guys are indeed here, or were recently. Two hundred yards out from the nearest building, his suspicions are confirmed.

  Let me tell you what pisses me off about Hollywood depictions of military matters. First and foremost is the uniform. Respect it. You can download a copy of AR 670-1 in seconds. Read it, learn it, live it. Second is the RPG. Every, and I mean every, single movie showing an RPG being fired fucks it all up. They are not some swishing, swooping, bottle rocket lazily streaking through the air so slowly a person can shoot it down, jump out of the way, or juke their helicopter to the side and avoid it. They may not move as fast as a bullet, but to the human eye there isn’t much difference. At two hundred yards, it takes maybe a second from the time our SEAL buddy squeezes the trigger until I feel the white-hot shrapnel tearing into my hairy, white ass.

  We spot movement ahead and dive for cover. That half-second warning probably saved all our asses…mostly. Mine is on fire with searing bits of steel and copper shrapnel lodged in it.

  A hail of bullets follows the blast. I fetch up against a boulder and shake off the rocket’s massive concussion. Lesile and Meat are low crawling to a shallow ravine. The smell of my
burning flesh assails my sensitive nostrils, but I block it and the corresponding pain out of my mind.

  “I’ll lay down some cover fire while you two rush them.”

  Meat calls out from the ditch he’s lying in. “How about you two rush them and I lay down cover fire? I’m not quite as bullet tolerant as you two are!”

  “I always wondered what kind of dog you were. I never took you for a pussinese. Fine, are you ready?”

  “Go for it!”

  I jump out from behind my rock, and Lesile sprints from the ditch while Meat lays down suppressive fire. Submachine guns are a poor weapon at this range, but our strength allows for near-recoilless firing and vastly improved accuracy. Lesile and I shoot on the run, zigzagging, diving, rolling, and sprinting across two hundred yards of rough terrain mostly bereft of cover or concealment. At least three rounds gouge new crevices or bore holes into my body. I see Lesile twitch and know she’s been hit at least once during our mad dash.

  We dive behind a low stone wall that may have once surrounded the tiny village but now lays in broken lengths, its bricks having crumbled to gravel over the years or been salvaged to make new dwellings. I peek over the wall and start laying down fire so Meat can bound forward. I hear the chatter of Lesile’s weapon perhaps fifty yards to my right. Meat slides behind a section of broken wall a little closer to Lesile than me.

  Bullets have ceased pounding into the bricks, blanketing the tiny settlement in silence. The rogues have certainly shifted their position knowing that to stay static is to invite death. Knowing the same holds true for both teams, I motion for Meat to provide overwatch while Lesile and I skirt around the flanks.

  My instincts and training prove true when I spot a grenade arcing toward me the moment I dart from cover. Meat pops off several short bursts into the darkened shadows of a building from where the grenade originated. It lands damn near on the spot I had been lying and blows my little wall all to hell. I feel the concussion from the blast wash over my back like a helping hand pushing me forward to speed my charge.

  I put my back to the corner of a building and listen for our targets. The only thing I hear is my own heavy breathing, which I immediately clamp off and silently curse myself for being a moron. I haven’t needed to breathe for the better part of a century, but every once in a while certain situations will kick on my automatic responses and make me feel like an idiot.