ONSET: To Serve and Protect

by Glynn Stewart

  It was a forty-eight-photo album and held twenty-one pictures. Each was accompanied by a neatly written name, date and location.

  The last photo showed a man with a massive purple bruise along the side of a face still in death. The neatly written details beneath, the ink still slightly wet under the plastic cover, were Damien Riesling’s name and today’s date.

  For a long moment, David just stared at the album, feeling sick inside. He knew some murderers kept trophies, but none of his previous investigations in Charlesville had brought up anything like this. Swallowing, he activated his radio.

  “Folks, I think Riesling’s dead,” he said grimly. “I just found Carderone’s trophy album.”

  “He’s definitely dead,” Kate responded, her voice twisting with emotion. “I just found his body.”

  “Fuck” was Michael’s only comment.

  #

  Two hours later, a detachment from OSPI had arrived to take charge of the two bodies and the evidence. By then, Michael and Akono had carefully bagged Riesling’s body and moved him into the still-taped-off lobby to lie alongside his killer.

  David leaned against the front exit, studiously ignoring the black body bags and fighting with the sense of satisfaction that was starting to leak through his discomfort about the fight. Kate sat on one of the benches, watching the OSPI officers as Michael handed them the photo album with careful gloved hands.

  “You found this?” Inspector Braun, the OSPI man in charge said incredulously as the rail-thin man slowly looked through the photo album.

  “In a hidden compartment in his desk,” David replied, touched by a sense of satisfaction that had nothing to do with the fight.

  “We knew about twelve of these, son,” the man said quietly. “The other eight are either still in their local PDs or were never even identified as homicides. Second Sight shouldn’t have led you to this,” Braun complained.

  “I was the lead investigator in a small town,” David told him. “Since I only had two other detectives reporting to me in the entire town, we cross-trained for everything from crime scene forensics to homicides and criminal psychology. No degrees,” he finished dryly, “just lots of courses.”

  He focused intentionally on his pride in completing those courses, and his satisfaction at finding the evidence they needed. These were safe things to focus on. The sick feeling of Carderone’s death—and the even more disturbing touch of satisfaction he was now feeling about it—where much less safe.

  “This will help us close up a lot of dry ends,” the Inspector told him, watching his own forensics team sweep into the church. “And rumor has it you’re the man who took down Carderone, too?”

  “That he is,” Michael rumbled, stepping up behind the Inspector. “He saved my head from a run-in with a silver candlestick in the process, too. He’s ONSET and not leaving,” he added, with a mock glare at the Inspector. “Stop having ideas.”

  Braun chuckled softly. “Much as we’d like another investigator on the team,” he told Michael and David, “sometimes it helps to have those same skills in the people who deal with the very sharp ends.” He paused, looking at the front of the album again, this time at the black metal sun on it. “Do you know anything about this symbol?”

  Both ONSET agents shook their heads, but David also looked at the sun again for a long moment.

  “It looks wrong,” he said softly. He couldn’t find a better word to describe the effects of the Sight on the symbol. “To Second Sight, that is,” he clarified. “But beyond that, no idea.”

  “Damn,” Braun replied, then nodded to the two ONSET men. “If there’s anything to it, we’ll figure it out. In any case, your part of this is done,” he told them. “We’ll finish the forensics and the cleanup. Riesling will have a memorial service in a few days down in New Orleans, if you can attend.”

  “We’ll see,” Michael told him. “We should be just finishing up our tour of duty at Louisiana Command at that point, so we should be able to stop by.”

  “We’d appreciate it, Commander,” the Inspector told him. “Revenge isn’t our business, but justice is, and sometimes it helps to see the men who brought justice to those who hurt our own.”

  #

  The remainder of ONSET Nine’s stay in Louisiana command passed without incident. David finished the two shelves of histories, diving into the records of the Vampire Familias, the nationwide group called the Elfin, and a half-dozen other major and minor supernatural groups scattered across the country.

  Mostly, he did it to fill in the details of the very broad-strokes history Koburn had given him in training. Partially, he did it to help the memory of Carderone’s eyes fade. And lastly, he did it because Kate proved very knowledgeable about the secret histories and was willing to answer questions.

  He was thankful for her help and also for her company. She was witty and intelligent and had understood that he needed to focus on anything other than Carderone. David was glad Kate had been around, and he found his awareness of her attractiveness fading as she proved to be a very good friend.

  Time passed, as it did, and the last day, as they prepared to leave, Michael drew David aside.

  “I just got a confirmation from OSPI,” the Commander told him. “Riesling’s memorial service is tomorrow morning. I’ve arranged for you and me to detour on our trip back to the Campus for active reserve to stop by. Unless you’d rather just go back to base,” he added.

  “No,” David replied after a moment’s thought. While his bullets had avenged Riesling’s murder, they couldn’t bring the man back. They owed the man something. “I think we owe him that much.”

  “Good,” Michael said. “The rest of the team catches a Pendragon in a few hours, but we need to leave pretty soon if we’re getting to New Orleans by nightfall. Go collect your things and change into civvies.”

  David nodded and headed back to the tiny quarters he’d had there. A quick shower and change later, he joined Michael in the front entrance. A concealed web harness hung under his denim jacket to hold his gun and mageblade, and he slung an overnight bag over his shoulder as he nodded to the werewolf.

  “I’m good to go.”

  #

  The idea of a several-hour-long road trip in a government car with Michael left David somewhat nervous, but he’d agreed to the trip and settled into the car quietly. They hit the highway, headed south in silence. David wasn’t up to asking questions, and Michael apparently didn’t feel like talking.

  The old blue Lincoln had been on the road for about twenty minutes before either of the pair of Agents said anything.

  “So, I saw you read through that shelf of textbooks,” Michael commented into the stretching silence.

  “I didn’t know to bring anything to do,” David admitted, barely avoiding a sigh of relief that his boss had found something “safe” to talk about, “so it was what I could do that was productive.”

  “Fair enough,” the Commander replied. “It helps a little bit, as I need to give you a bit of a rundown. We are going to an OSPI funeral. OSPI tends to get attached to specific areas and will get quite well known with the supernaturals in a region. Even with only one in twenty thousand of the general population being supernatural, that’s still a lot in somewhere the size of New Orleans.

  “This means that the local supernatural communities will be at Riesling’s funeral,” Michael explained, “so you need to know who you’re dealing with.”

  “Who am I dealing with?” David asked, intentionally repeating the question back. The textbooks had made clear that the New Orleans voodoo community did have members with real magic, and some of the ones without magic made deals with real spirits. He wondered who else would be at the memorial.

  “Firstly, you’ll be dealing with OSPI people,” Michael told him. “They’re basically cops, so you should be okay. A good mix of mundanes and supernaturals, OSPI tends to run about twelve mundanes to a supernatural.

  “Secondly, there are the local voodoo prêtre,”
the werewolf continued. “They’re mostly Mages, with a few Empowered thrown in. Scary dudes, but generally on our side—hugely community-focused gentlemen.”

  “Do their communities know about them?” David asked. It wasn’t something the book had been very clear on.

  “There are a lot of prêtre,” Michael replied. “Their communities think they’re all magical, and certainly they can all practice low magic. Full Mages among groups like that are probably one in several hundred—which is still a lot more than the general population.”

  “So, our cops and the voodoo boys,” David observed, ticking them off on his fingers. “And be extremely polite to the prêtre.”

  “Being extremely polite to everybody there is not a bad idea,” Michael told him. “The third group will be Elfin, and Elfin are scary.”

  “Elves or Elfin?” David asked. His reading suggested there was a difference, but he wasn’t fully clear on it. The Elfin were a nationwide organization that very definitely straddled the gray line of supernatural legalities. Elves were apparently a type of supernatural, and, despite the name, there didn’t seem to be much connection between the two.

  “Elfin,” Michael confirmed. “Elves can be spooky and dreamy—Akono’s one, if you missed it—but are mainly defined by the ability to create glamors—a kind of illusions. Elfin are members of the Elfin organization with all its semi-criminal aspects. Watch for the leaf brooches,” he finished. “And be extra nice to them. They play by unspoken rules we’ve agreed to, and we don’t want to unnecessarily piss any of them off.”

  “Unspoken rules?”

  “They try to keep anything they think we might object to under wraps,” Michael replied. “But they shut down anything we do object to without hassle. The legality in so many supernatural affairs is so gray that Omicron quite often can’t arrest them when we think they’re crossing lines, so the ‘unspoken rules’ save us a lot of problems.”

  “So, it’s a criminal syndicate with a good PR department?” David asked. His sense of police justice growled at the thought of criminals getting away due to lawyers and legalities. That had never been a part of his job he’d liked.

  “Not always, but sometimes,” Michael replied. “And don’t forget the Tolkien obsession among their founders. When dealing with Elfin, never forget the Tolkien obsession.”

  #

  Majestic was finding herself with a new appreciation for the worldview of conspiracy theorists, she realized. Skimming through news sites, looking for information on other topics, every so often she hit something that looked like it could be related to the whole mess with David White.

  So far as she could tell, the police officer had just upped and disappeared shortly after he’d come back, and only a handful of blips on his personal email—all through that impossibly secured proxy server—suggested that the man still existed.

  But that video from the warehouse still bugged her. It was just wrong. It suggested stuff she didn’t think could possibly be real, but she’d watched it as it was recorded. She couldn’t disbelieve it, which meant it had to be real.

  So, now she watched for news that resembled it. There was a mess down in Louisiana. A Catholic priest had been killed by an FBI tactical team investigating the murder of a Federal agent.

  One of the local journalists had managed to sneak past the security cordon and grab a picture of the inside of the church before being caught and hustled out. Unable to get it published due to the crackdown on information about the case, they’d dumped it online and Majestic had seen it.

  The wreckage made of the inside of the church rang bells with her. It looked like the leftovers of the warehouse at the end of her video clip.

  Other news had rung similar bells. Similar stories, where normal-appearing incidents had subtle but major security crackdowns around them, were all over the place now that she was looking for them.

  She was sure that the answers were behind that godawful security program on that black server, but even her skill had so far failed to get through it.

  Chapter 13

  It was late evening by the time the government car and the pair of ONSET agents made it to the Sheraton Hotel deep in New Orleans. Shifting out of the still-busy traffic on the road next to the streetcar line and into the drop-off zone, Michael pulled the car to stop.

  “You go in and get the keys for our rooms,” the senior agent told David. “I’ll take the car around and meet you in the lobby.”

  “All right,” David agreed, and grabbing his overnight bag from the backseat, got out of the car. The drive had failed to live up to his fearful expectation of awkwardness, but it had still been hours locked into a medium-sized car. The Empowered policeman was a big man, and he hurt.

  The blue government car rolled away and around a corner toward an underground parking lot as David stepped through the pillared entrance onto the plush carpet of the lobby.

  The lobby was mostly empty except for a handful of people on the purple chairs in the sitting area near the Starbucks on the left-hand side, and a pair of clerks behind the long polished wooden reception desk along the right-hand side of the room. Potted palm trees split the reception desk in two, and separated the sitting area from the coffee bar and the restaurant beyond. The carpet was soft under David’s feet and the lighting from the overhead half-dome lights comforting as David approached the desk.

  “Checking in on two reservations,” David said to the clerk. “Under O’Brien and White; should have been called in this morning.” O’Brien had told him just before arriving that the Campus would have made the reservations for them. David was hardly used to other people arranging things for him, but he had to admit that ONSET was efficient.

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk confirmed. “All set up when your man called in this morning. We have two king rooms on the seventh floor. I’ll need you to sign the paperwork for the account billing.”

  David nodded and took the papers from the young man. He skimmed down the sheets and was amused to notice that “FBI Division O” was paying for his room. Everything seemed in order, and he signed the bottom of the form.

  “If you can sign this form as well, please, sir?” the clerk continued, passing him a second form with Purolator stamped across the top. “We have packages waiting for you and Mr. O’Brien in your rooms.”

  David felt a twinge of paranoia but signed for the papers anyway as Michael came up behind him and accepted his own set of papers from the clerk.

  “Thank you for staying at the Sheraton New Orleans, gentlemen,” the clerk said passing them the room card-keys across the desk. “You have rooms 721 and 723, on the seventh floor. The elevators are at the back of the lobby.” The youth pointed. “Have a good night.”

  With a quiet thank-you to the clerk, David and Michael crossed the lobby to the elevators. They waited a moment for an elevator, and then stepped in. As the wood-paneled doors closed and the pair leaned against the mirrored walls, David turned to Michael.

  “They said we have packages waiting in our room,” he said softly.

  “I know,” Michael replied, and David relaxed a bit. “I had dress clothes sent down from the Campus for us.”

  “I didn’t have any dress clothes on Campus,” David objected. For that matter, other than a dress police uniform in a closet in his house in Charlesville, he didn’t have much in the way of formal clothes anywhere.

  “They had your measurements,” Michael said with a shrug. “Regard it as an early birthday present.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the younger agent replied as he realized what his boss was saying. Even though his thirty-second birthday was almost nine months away, he kept silent and accepted the gift.

  #

  Parting ways with Michael at the entrance to the hotel room, David stepped into the plush brown and beige room. Closing the door behind him, he padded across to the window, dropping his overnight bag onto the leather chair as he opened the blinds, looking out at the glimpse of river.

  Turning back from the
window to look around the room, he noted the single door leading to an oversized bathroom, the comfortable leather chair and the massive king sized bed. He had not been expecting this kind of comfort on a government budget.

  Looking more closely at the dark bedclothes, David spotted the suit bag with the Purolator sticker on the bed. He regarded the bag warily for a long moment, wondering just what sort of suit his superior was likely to have purchased. Finally, he opened the bag and looked inside.

  The suit the bag contained was black and conservatively cut. No pinstripes, dust or even misplaced creases marred the smooth fabric as he glanced over it. A white shirt, silk by the feel, was hung inside the jacket, and a dark silver tie was slung around the hangar.

  A crinkle of plastic alerted him to more, and he opened the buttons on the shirt to reveal a package with the block letters of Omicron equipment labels. Apparently, the Campus had decided to include a “Vest, Ballistic Mesh, Aetherically Enhanced, Version Three” with the suit. Wrapped around the vest package were the black leather straps of concealed holsters for David’s mageblade and gun.

  David regarded the set of clothes for a long moment and then moved it over to the hangers in the closet. Whether or not it fit, he would find out in the morning, but he sincerely doubted there would be any problems with that.

  It had been a long drive, and the ONSET agent was tired. With the suit cleared off the bed, he barely managed to remove his jacket and the holster under it before collapsing onto the large, far too comfortable bed.

  #

  The image in the room’s elegantly framed full-length mirror the next morning was a perfect match for generations of stereotypes of FBI officers. Most of those officers, however, wouldn’t have been wearing enchanted body armor under the suit and balancing the shoulder holster that couldn’t quite conceal an M1911 with a hidden magic knife.