He didn’t like to think about his family. He had an email address for his aunt, and he’d kept in touch with her every so often since his parents’ funeral, but they weren’t close. He had been close to his parents—they’d funded his education and supported his application to the police force. It was only after they’d died that he’d found out they’d done it by mortgaging the family home to the max—a home he’d lost to the debt collectors when a fledgling policeman couldn’t cover the bill.
A lot of his father’s sins had been forgiven when David had discovered the sacrifices his parents had made to get him through college. He was still glad that Max White couldn’t see what his son had become.
“I’m sorry,” Angela told him, and something in her voice told him that his thoughts had shown on his face. He realized he was seeing her aura unintentionally, and colors swirled through it he hadn’t seen before. Grief and sadness he recognized, but he wasn’t sure about the others.
“What about you?” he asked, to break the train of thought as he shook away his Sight. “Any family?”
Angela laughed, and the darkness that had settled on David as he thought of his parents faded at the sound.
“I’m half-Quebecois, half-Italian,” she responded. “I’m related to half of Montreal, and they insist on keeping in touch. They all think I push papers around for the RCMP in Toronto,” Angela added softly, and the thought of the secrecy they both kept around their real work shadowed the room again.
“How do you keep it all secret?” David asked. It was a question he hadn’t yet dared to ask of his ONSET team members, but here, in this small hospital room with this attractive blonde woman, it was easier to ask.
“A lot more easily than the Ministry thinks,” she told him. “The secret about keeping the supernatural secret is that it’s easier the less you try—no one believes it. They don’t want to believe it. Those who know, know, and those who don’t know, don’t want to.”
David thought about it for a long moment. Would he have believed someone if they’d told him about ONSET or the Royal Canadian Mounted Paranormal Police before he’d encountered vampires? Or would he have dismissed it as a joke or a prank?
He knew the answer, now he thought about it, and for the first time in a while, the long running deception behind the supernatural agencies of the world made sense. The supernatural wasn’t secret because shadowy government organizations like his employers kept it that way—those organizations worked in secret because no one would believe they existed.
“I never thought about it that way,” he admitted to the woman with her hand on his, and she smiled at him. With a jolt, he realized that asking about family was also a good way to discover if someone was married.
With a gentle movement of her unoccupied fingers, Angela raised the bed to a roughly sitting position, carefully adjusting her arms as he did. She was now a lot closer to David, and she leaned toward him without words.
The kiss was completely unexpected, but at the same time, he knew it was coming. It lingered for a long moment, soft and uninterruptible. When they broke, he found himself looking deep into Angela’s eyes and knew that he wasn’t the only one whose heart had found a spark of companionship and—yes—attraction under the threat of vampires.
“Normally, I’d be even more appreciative of you saving my life,” she said softly, “but given that I can’t even undress right now, and we’re in the middle of a military base, I think that’s off the agenda for the moment.”
“I may accept a rain check,” David heard himself say without any intervening center of intelligence between the origin of the words and his mouth. Angela’s smile suggested it wasn’t as much of a faux pas as he’d thought.
“Good,” she told him, and kissed him again. When they came up for air, her hand gestured at the sink and counter next to the bed. “There’s a pen and paper there,” she instructed. “Write this down.” She gave him a phone number, and he obeyed her instructions.
“Call me, eh? You great Yankee goof,” Angela told him with a bright smile.
“I just may, Miss Canuck,” David responded, her smile dragging one out of his suddenly lightened heart. “I think I just may at that.”
#
Majestic thought she’d managed to refine her paranoias by this point. After weeks, she’d managed to break down a set of criteria against which she measured news reports, to see if they were worth looking into.
She knew she was a very logical person, not prone to exaggerations or flights of fancy, so the number of reports left under her criteria scared her. A dozen reports in the two months since the fight in the warehouse. Hundreds when she started running her criteria back in time.
It was almost as if a massive undercover operation was going on to control and contain something…weird. She kept coming back to her theory about the supernatural. If it was real—if those punks in the warehouse had really been vampires, and that cop…a hero out of a Greek myth or something—then it made the pieces fit together.
But if she was right, who would believe her? A massive effort must have been made to keep this undercover, and trying to break that cover could be dangerous. The hacker had brushed way too close to a couple of conspiracies in the past, and only her ironclad levels of anonymity had saved her from being a specific target. Majestic knew she was on dangerous ground.
But there was something about that cop. She’d dug into his record. Parents killed in car crash. Unmarried. No close family. Nonetheless, well known in his community. One of the good ones, the cops people went to for help instinctively when they had problems.
But Majestic had years of experience reading between the lines. White was a good one, yes, but ironbound in his ethics, too. There were hints in the mentions of him that he was too stiff for a small town, where a minor crime by a popular person could be hushed up.
He didn’t seem the type to buy into this sort of conspiracy, yet given how thoroughly the man seemed to have disappeared, that was almost certainly what had happened.
Even as her thoughts went to the police officer whose timing had dragged Majestic’s curiosity into this mess, another report pinged her filters: an incident in Montreal. Local police claimed a successful drug bust, but the media had dug up reports of dozens of wounded and a massive gun battle. Security was tight on information—far tighter than it should have been. Like it was in so many of these cases.
Majestic looked away from the articles her feed was bringing up, and glanced at another window on her screen. This one showed a graphical representation of data flowing in and out of the black server she’d last seen White ping his email from, and that she’d repeatedly failed to hack. The computer she’d used for the attempts had eventually had its hard drive so fragged by multiple nuke programs, she’d had to scrap it for parts.
Her gaze drifted back to the window with the profile of David White on it. It might be time to fall back on a more…old-fashioned method of hacking.
Chapter 23
Michael O’Brien strode through the small Washington DC secondary airport in a foul mood. The sight and sound and smell of the bustling crowd around him barely registered on his consciousness as he made his way toward the terminal housing the private and chartered planes.
A government Learjet waited for him there, ready to whisk him back up to Montreal, where the writ he’d just been given by the Committee of Thirteen should be enough to break his people free of the Canadian’s Ministry of the Paranormal.
He’d thought, when he’d originally headed back to the States, that a simple request from Director Morrison of the International Supernatural Affairs office should have been enough to break his people free. To give the aging Director credit, Michael knew the man had spent an entire day on the phone to one person or another, trying his damnedest. In the end, all the man had been able to do was get Michael an introduction to Senator Lyle Quatrell, senior Senator of the Committee of Thirteen.
Thankfully, the Committee had a lot more influence to bring
to bear than the ISA Director, and from the sounds of it, the Ministry of the Paranormal was going to see reason. Finally, Michael had been back in the US for three days, and his people had been locked in a Canadian Forces Base for all that time.
With a sigh, Michael slipped through a door away from the bustling crowd of the public terminal. The quiet of the private terminals corridors hit him like a wave of cool air, and he finally allowed himself to take in his surroundings.
Where the public terminal was the usual utilitarian tiles and drywall, the private terminal was much nicer. A red carpet, still thick despite the many feet that must have trod over it, covered the floor, and dark brown wallpaper blended into wood paneling on the walls.
Not that the security was any less tight, Michael reflected as he was waved to a security scanner that was identical to the one in the public terminal. The werewolf wasn’t carrying any weapons—he didn’t expect to need them and was quite capable of defending himself without them—so it was a very quick check.
“Your plane is waiting at gate three,” the calm guard in a brown-and-red uniform informed Michael after glancing over his travel papers. “From my understanding, there are a handful of other passengers, but they are already in the building.”
The ONSET Commander nodded his thanks and set off down the plushly carpeted corridors. From what Senator Quatrell had said, they were holding a diplomatic flight for him, so he wasn’t surprised to be the last one there.
“Brigadier O’Brien,” a voice said quietly beside him.
Michael quickly concealed his shock and turned to face the speaker. His denial of that identity faded on his lips as he recognized the black cassock and the neck pin of the silver spear.
“I no longer hold that rank,” he said finally, before taking a stab at the identity of his ambusher, “Monsignor Rodriguez.”
“Indeed?” the Papal Investigator replied calmly with a slight bow. “I thought you were merely retired from command of the Anti-Paranormals. I can see how commanding an ONSET Strike team might qualify as a…quiet retirement from being in command of all supernatural high threat response in America.”
Michael quickly glanced up and down the corridor, but the two supernaturals were alone. “Even here, it is unwise to speak of these things,” he said softly. “What do you want?”
“Like your Agent White,” Rodriguez said quietly, “my senses are Empowered. We are quite alone. If you will spare me a few minutes of your time, however, I have arranged a more private location.”
Michael glanced at his watch and realized the plane had already been held over an hour for him. He looked at the slight figure of the Pope’s man and wondered just what was worth this amount of effort.
“All right,” he agreed.
Rodriguez waved for Michael to follow him and swept off down the corridor, Michael trailing him bemusedly. Barely ten steps down the corridor, however, the priest paused and brushed aside a curtain to reveal an alcove tucked into the wall. Another man in a simple black cassock with the silver spear of the Ordo Longinus stood in the alcove.
At the sight of Rodriguez, the guard opened the door hidden in the alcove and gestured them through. The door closed behind them with a click, and Michael and Rodriguez were alone again.
The room concealed behind the curtain was a small conference room, perhaps large enough for a meeting of ten men. Its decorations were identical to the outside, and the wooden table matched the paneling exactly.
“The management here maintains a few small private meeting rooms like this one for travelers who don’t have time to detour for their meeting,” Rodriguez explained to Michael. “I arranged for one to be free for us while my taxi to this airport was being ‘unavoidably delayed.’”
“Delayed, huh?” Michael asked dryly. “What’s going on here Monsignor?”
“Understand one thing, first, Commander O’Brien,” the priest replied, using the correct title now and not the one Michael had given up years ago. “I am not here. We did not meet. I am under strict orders from the Cardinals not to discuss my investigation here. Do you understand?”
Bemused again by the cloak-and-dagger, Michael nodded as he took a seat. “I understand. Say your piece…or don’t, as the case may be,” the werewolf finished with a small smile.
The priest did not return the smile; he turned away from Michael and crossed his hands behind his back. For a moment, he remained silent, and then he turned back to the ONSET man, who felt himself being measured by the other man’s Sight.
“As I’m sure you were briefed after my interview with David White,” Rodriguez told him finally, “I left OSPI HQ determined to investigate how Carderone went undiscovered amongst the Church. I now know why.”
Michael sat wordlessly and gestured for the priest to continue after the silence stretched on for a moment.
“Bluntly, Commander, we failed our flock—and you,” the Papal Investigator said quietly. “It was the Order’s job to catch Carderone before he went mad. We failed. Not because the Order didn’t find him but because members of it covered up his actions from the rest of the Order. They even, I discovered, attempted to cover it up from the police.”
The ONSET Commander now sat up much straighter, his attention focused on the Catholic Priest. This was news. This was bad news.
“My investigations revealed that the Ordo Longinus in America was rotten to the core,” Rodriguez continued. “Many of the priests had fallen in with a group calling itself Black Sun, as did Carderone and others outside the Order.
“This group encouraged them to believe themselves as chosen by God, placed above mortal men to punish their transgressions. This,” the black-clad man said softly, “is exactly the arrogance the Ordo Longinus exists to try and prevent.
“The rot had spread far and high,” he explained quickly, “and we in Rome missed it. No longer!”
“How bad?” Michael asked.
Rodriguez shook himself. “I ordered one hundred and twenty-two priests, mostly Ordo Longinus but including fifteen non-Order supernatural priests, interned for return to Rome.” He checked his watch. “Their plane left fifteen minutes ago. Among them,” he said grimly, “was Prelate Ambrose. He betrayed the Church, the Order, and God Himself. He will be punished.”
“From the sounds of it,” Michael said carefully, “the Cardinals seem to regard this as an internal Catholic affair. Why tell me?” He was stunned at Rodriguez’s numbers, for all his apparent calm. There were barely three hundred priests in the Ordo Longinus in America. The Pope’s Inquisitor had just arrested a third of them.
Rodriguez reached inside his cassock and withdrew a metallic gray object, about three inches across by five inches long. Michael recognized it as a portable hard drive just before the priest slid it across the table to them.
“This ‘Black Sun’ came to the Catholic Church in America, not from it,” Rodriguez explained slowly as Michael took the hard drive. “Prelate Ambrose clearly was dealing with its true leaders, however, but his files of those dealings were locked under a high-power encryption key on his computer. Copies of those files are already on their way to Rome, but I suspect the American government has even better cryptologists than the Vatican.
“Any information stored on those disks is likely a greater threat to the US than to Rome, which means I cannot in good conscience leave Omicron in the dark,” the priest told him finally. “I must do as God guides me, and this is what I feel must be done. Take the hard drive. Find the answers you must find.”
“Thank you,” Michael told the other man sincerely as he pocketed the drive. “For your honesty and your help.”
“It is my duty, not merely my job,” Rodriguez replied. “Now, we both have planes to catch. We may meet again, but only time and the Lord will reveal that.”
With that, Rodriguez swept out of the room, the door swinging shut with a thud behind him. Michael considered the portable hard drive for a long moment, and then pulled his cell phone out.
“This is
Commander Michael O’Brien,” he said into the phone calmly as it connected him to the OSPI station in Washington. “I need an Omicron-Charlie clearance courier to deliver a package to ONSET HQ.” He looked at his watch, considered how delayed his flight already was, and added, “Soon.”
Chapter 24
David and the other members of ONSET Nine had settled in for a long wait by the fourth day they’d been ensconced on the Canadian Forces Base. Evening found them playing cards on the flimsy wooden table in the common area of the wing of rooms they’d been given. They’d drawn the uncomfortable plastic chairs around the table and settled it in the fading light from the single window.
David glanced at his hole card as he regarded the others. He had a six up and a six in the hole. “Hit me,” he told Ix, then groaned as the demon dealt him a king. He flipped the hole card over, showing the others he’d busted.
Kate, sitting to David’s left, gestured for Ix to pass her a card. She took an eight to go with her four and then held. She’d been somewhat more aloof than usual to David over the last few days, but he chalked it up to stress and strain.
Akono took an Ace to go with his open five. “Hit me again,” he said dreamily, then flipped his hole card—an eight—when he received a jack. The elf had been bothered the least by the four days locked up in a hospital wing, but David had realized that elves really didn’t live entirely in the normal world.
Neither, apparently, did the Canadian Ministry of the Paranormal. While the individual nurses and guards around them had treated the ONSET team with respect, their orders were also ironbound—the ONSET team was not leaving. David honestly didn’t know how Michael had managed to leave, as by the second day, they’d been restricted to this wing of rooms.
He hadn’t had a chance to see Angela again, even when news had come to them that the remaining wounded were being shifted to a Ministry hospital near Toronto. She’d sent David farewells through a friendly nurse, but returning them through the same young man was all he could do.
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 21
