by Jon F. Merz
Lady of the Dead
A Lawson Vampire Mission
Jon F. Merz
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Also by Jon F. Merz
1
Michoacan, Mexico
I was lying out in the frigid temperatures on Cerro Las Canoas, the highest mountain peak in Michoacan, Mexico, my cheek slowly freezing into the buttstock of the VSS Vintorez suppressed sniper rifle while I gazed through the area in front of me with the 1PN51 night scope. The Vintorez and the sights were important: they were Russian - typically used by Spetsnaz Alpha Teams. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill equipment and certainly not the sort of rifle you’d find a rival cartel using to take out the opposition.
So why was I using it? And more importantly, why was I lying out in the field when I should have been home drinking a fresh Bombay Sapphire and tonic (with three limes please) and possibly getting all sweaty with Talya?
Well, Talya was away for one thing. A quick job had come up over in the Middle East, which was sucky since we’d only just gotten back from Syria. But I think it had something to do with protecting kids, and that is one of Talya’s few weak points. When she heard about the job, which she never discussed with me for operational security reasons, she hopped the next flight and was gone without so much as a kiss good-bye.
All right, that last part was a lie. We had pre-op sex and it was pretty fantastic.
Second, almost as soon as she cleared the gate at the airport, my phone had rung and my favorite Control in the whole wide world of vampires, Niles, happened to be on the other end.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Mourning the loss of sex for the foreseeable future,” I said with a final glance at Talya’s incredible backside. She could back squat more than most men and, my god, it looked good on her.
“Perfect, so you won’t want to turn down an assignment then,” said Niles. “Can you swing by the office in an hour?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “I suppose.”
I was there in forty minutes due to construction delays and shitty traffic. Niles led me into his office and I grabbed a chair while he sat behind his desk. The sun shone in through the windows out on Beacon Street and gave a nice autumnal tint to the world around us.
“What do you know Mexican drug cartels?”
I shook my head. “Enough to know that I don’t ever want to screw around with them. Those are some dangerous people.”
Niles nodded. “With good reason. Homicide rates in Mexico are at their highest. Drug cartels have been warring and trying to turf grabs ever since El Chapo was recaptured. The government has been trying to flush the cartels, but it’s pretty much a losing battle. Bodies are routinely dumped along the roadside. Decapitations are common.”
“And yet idiots still choose to spend Spring Break there.” I shook my head. “Anyway, what’s all that go to do with us? What do we care if the drug cartels are warring?”
Niles frowned. “Because one of those cartels happens to be run by one of our kind.”
I paused. “I’m having flashbacks to the Syndicate. Tell me this is nothing like that.”
“Okay,” said Niles. “It’s nothing like that. It’s worse.”
“Spectacular. How come we’re only hearing about this now? I thought the Ferrets were supposed to be so good at vacuuming up intel and getting us actionable stuff before it spirals out of control and we end up playing clean-up again.”
“Even the Ferrets didn’t see this one coming. Plus, getting any grade A VAMPINT on the area-”
“Did you just say ‘VAMPINT’?”
Niles shrugged. “Humans have HUMINT, we have VAMPINT.”
I held up my hand. “No, I get it, I get it. It’s just...well, it doesn’t sound good. Just use HUMINT so I know that we’re talking about stuff we get from people on the ground.”
“Whatever, Lawson. Needless to say, we don’t have any. We have a few small communities down there, but by and large, they’re isolated and people leave them alone. Which is just the way they like it.”
“Something tells me that changed recently.”
Niles nodded. “Within the last two weeks. Apparently, one of the villages had a visitor. Or I should say, visitors. They took all the men and shot them.”
“Human bullets?” I asked but I already knew the answer. If they’d been human bullets, our people would have just laughed it off. Human bullets can’t kill us.
“No. Fixer rounds.”
“Side note: we need to safeguard our ammunition suppliers better.”
Niles shook his head. “It’s not like it’s some super secret manufacturing process. Anyone with the right amount of know-how and money can make Fixer rounds.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose. So who massacred the men?”
“A new cartel. Calls itself La Familia Catrina. They’re based in Michoacan, which until a few years back was ruled by another cartel known for its brutality and religious zealotry. But the Federales put a stop to them so there’s been a vacuum for some time. Maybe not as long as we thought, however, since La Familia Catrina is well-armed and has a good amount of members.”
“Who runs it?”
Niles shook his head. “We don’t know. All we’ve managed to scoop up are rumors. Strange ones at that.”
“Such as?”
“Some say it’s ruled by a woman. La Calavera Catrina.”
I frowned. “I’m shaky on my Mexican history, but isn’t that the name of a famous zinc etching?”
Niles nodded. “I’m impressed you got that far. Basically the Grand Dame of Death. I had to look it up. But yes, Jose Guadalupe Posada did the piece sometime around the turn of the 20th century. Maybe 1910 or so.”
“So the leader of the cartel is a zinc etching?”
Niles frowned. “Well obviously no. But from what we can tell, that is the moniker she goes by. Presumably because that image is so intertwined with the Mexican Day of the Dead and she’s using it to help exaggerate her identity as the Lady of the Dead. You know, establish a sense of dread around her.”
“Psychological warfare,” I said. “Cute.”
“Not so much cute,” replied Niles. “The last person to go up against the cartel was disemboweled after having been castrated and fed his own genitalia. Then he was staked to a sign outside of Michoacana. This is not a nice woman.”
“And let me guess: I’m heading south of the border.”
Niles grinned. “Don’t you like Mexican food?”
“Love it. It’s the disembowelment, castrations, decapitations, and crucifixions I can do without.”
“Yeah well, so don’t get caught.” Niles flipped a folder across his desk to me. Inside were a series of map pinpointing the scant intel they had on the cartel, its safe houses, and one or two key figures.
I looked up. “There’s no picture of the woman.”
“We don’t have one.”
I sighed. “Seriously dude? You’re sending me out there with almost zilch in the way of information.”
“Council wants the sanction served as soon as possible. We can’t afford to have a cartel linked to our people
. And the killings need to stop.”
I held up my hand. “Hey, I’ll take the woman out and deconstruct the cartel, but I can’t stop all the killings. To do that, you’d need a whole lot more Fixers than just me.”
“Just stop the killings the cartel is responsible for. Terminate the woman and anyone else who is involved and then get your ass out of there.”
“I have any support on the ground when I touch down?”
“Guy named Juarez. He’s not a Fixer, though.”
“Okay.”
“He’s a Loyalist.”
I frowned. Humans who helped vampires weren’t always the best people to have around. Some of them were awesome, but I’d been involved with enough sketchy ones to doubt the reasons why we employed them in the first place. “How do I know this guy won’t sell me out to the cartel to save his neck?”
“Because he knows the price for treason is absolute,” said Niles.
“I’ve heard that story before,” I said. “He’ll have weapons?”
Niles nodded. “We want this made to look like some sort of outside job.”
“Why?”
“Because if it seems like it’s coming from the Council, there could be reprisals against more of our people down there.”
“Well who the hell else would take them out but us?”
“The Russians.”
I blinked once and then twice. “Say that again slowly.”
Niles chuckled. “There is a rumor going around that a Russian vampire syndicate is trying to muscle in on Mexican cartel turf and we want it to look like they’re the ones responsible.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
I shook my head. “And where the hell did that rumor come from?”
“We started it. Based on some intel chatter we’ve heard coming over from Moscow from our locals. One of Putin’s people is one of us and he’s passing some interesting things our way. They’re certainly not a full-blown issue yet, but they’ve taken over some serious turf from the Russian mafia and they’re starting to go international.”
“Meaning they might show up on my radar soon?”
Niles shrugged. “For now, they’re a convenient scapegoat. If we play our cards right, the Mexican cartels might even handle your dirty work for you.”
“Gee, that’s nice.” i sighed. “All right, I can make it work. What time do I leave?”
Niles glanced at the clock on the wall. “Four hours.”
2
That was two days ago.
I’d landed in Mexico City and was met at the airport by Juarez. We drove to a safehouse in the city and from there, I’d gotten refreshed and properly outfitted for the task at hand. Juarez was a slightly stocky balding human of about forty-five.
He reminded me of a clown.
Everything was a joke. He was always trying to be funny. Sometimes he was. Mostly he was just annoying. I’d seen his type before: short, balding, with a paunch. He’d never really been a good looking guy so he had to up his game by being funny. When Juarez introduced his wife Silvia at the safehouse - something that immediately made me want to wring his neck - I had to do a double-take.
Not that she was gorgeous, but she was decent enough that it immediately made you wonder how they’d gotten together in the first place. Juarez told another joke and Silvia looked pained. She gave the impression that she was worried that everyone would think her husband was a buffoon. And he was. But apparently at one time, that had been enough for her to ditch her dreams of marrying up and instead she settled for the class clown.
Oh well, not my problem. I have standards. And Talya exceeds all of them.
As I do hers.
Juarez wanted to help so I asked him about the cartel. He nodded his head enthusiastically. “Very, very bad people amigo. You do not want to mess with them.”
I stared at him. “I don’t really have a choice. It’s my job to take care of this situation.”
I could feel Silvia’s eyes on me. I was probably the first real man she’d seen in forever and about ten million light years away from whatever Juarez was like. But I didn’t even entertain it. I could tell Silvia was a basic bitch. She was used to a certain way of life. Juarez supplied that so she’d compromised her dreams so she could be comfortable. There was no passion anywhere in her eyes. She probably spent the majority of her time complaining even though she had nothing real to complain about. I’d run into enough of them back in the US, but women like Silvia were everywhere.
And all they did was make me that much happier that I had Talya.
Silvia wouldn’t be able to handle me anyway. I was too much everything for her. She might be good for a fuck, but that was about it. And that was only if I was desperate. Judging by the lines on her face, Silvia had been hitting the botox a little hard and was starting to look like an old weathered catcher’s mitt even though she was probably only in her early forties. Give her another five years of the whining, complaining, and a resting bitch face and she’d probably pass for eighty.
No thanks.
I’d asked Juarez about finding the leader of La Familia Catrina and he got a worried look on his face - as if I’d just asked him to have sex with a rabid epileptic crocodile. And I knew what was coming next.
“I don’t know, amigo. She is reputed to be one terrible woman. And I don’t know if I can do anything to help you find her.”
As a Loyalist, I knew Juarez was getting a hefty stipend to help out my kind. I also knew that Silvia probably enjoyed having that money around. The $200 jeans she was wearing pretty much confirmed it.
“Okay, no problem. I’ll call the Council up and tell them to rescind your status and all the perks that go along with it.”
Silvia might have been a bitch, but she wasn’ stupid - especially when it came to safeguarding her way of life. Losing the money they got from the Council would mean she might actually have to get a job. And she looked allergic to anything that resembled work. I caught her flashing Juarez a look that might have passed for Medusa. Juarez promptly turned into stone and then broke long enough to reassure me that he’d help.
“But it is risky, my friend. One wrong move and we will all be killed in the most horrific of ways.”
“Death is my business,” I said. “When it comes for me at last, I won’t run from it. It’s the price we all pay at one time or another.”
“Yes, but I have heard she has ways of delaying the sweet release of death. Horrible, horrible ways.” Juarez tried to change the expression of abject terror on his face into one of coolness. “I mean, I am fine with greeting death. But I worry for the safety of my wife.”
At least they didn’t have any kids running around. That might have complicated things. But if the two of them ended up as collateral damage, I was kind of okay with it. I’d been in their presence for only an hour or so and I was already exhausted by them.
“I need you to find out who I can talk to about narcotics in this area of Mexico. Specifically La Familia Catrina contacts. You’re a local; you speak the language better than me; and you can get in places I’ll be seen as an outsider. Do your job properly and get me the information I need and I’ll see to it that you get a nice bonus for your help.”
I didn’t even need to look at Siliva to know she was foaming at the mouth in anticipation of more $200 pairs of jeans or whatever passed as a status symbol for silly bitches these days. Juarez’s eyes shot from me to her and then back again, and he was already nodding.
“It will take some time, but I will see what I can do.”
I sat down on the couch. “Well, make it quick. I have a job to do and then I need to get the hell out of here.”
Juarez left. Silvia stayed. I opened up the bag of weaponry that Juarez had managed to get his hands on with the help of the Council shipping things down here from our armory. The Vintorez was in great shape, but I appreciated how the armorer had given it a nice weathered look, as if it had been used in combat before. A couple of
well-placed dings and scratches that didn’t affect its performance, but would give it an aura of usage were welcomed. If the Council wanted this hit looking like the Russians had done it, who was I to complain? It gave me an out anyway - the last thing I needed was some crazy Mexican drug cartel coming after me. I had enough enemies still out there looking for payback.
Silvia fiddled with her iPhone for a few minutes and then came over to where I had field-stripped the weapons. She watched me without saying anything. Finally she sighed.
“I’m bored.”
I glanced up at her. “So get a drink. The safehouse has a liquor cabinet.”
She wandered over to the bar and then stepped back. “Lawson?”
I checked the suppressor over. “What?”
“Do you see anything you want?”
I looked up and she was standing there in front of the bar with her arms spread and a devilish look in her eye. It was a tired look, as if it had been years since she’d used it to full effect, and it might have worked like a charm for her once.
Once.
“I’m busy,” I said and went back to checking the magazines. The last thing I wanted on an op was a stoppage. I was trained to go to my secondary if it happened and I could clear it very quickly, but even still, I checked the springs and then unloaded and reloaded the mags until I was satisfied.
Silvia meanwhile helped herself to a can of Bud Light. She drank it quickly and then went back for another.
“You don’t drink Mexican beer?”
She shrugged. “I just love the taste of this.”
I felt like telling her she was drinking the fermented equivalent of yak piss, but decided not to. I wondered how long it was going to take Juarez to get me the information I needed so I get on with the op.
And get away from Silvia.
I won’t lie; she was cute. And I could have certainly made her life a helluva lot more exciting than anything she’d experienced before. Plus, human chicks are kind of a weakness for me.
She sauntered over, resting the can on the counter and then plopping her chin into her palm while she watched me. “When’s your birthday?”
