ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy

by Glynn Stewart

  They’d kept the civilians alive—but he’d lost Pell, Narita, and forty-seven Anti-Paranormals. The only vampires they were sure they’d killed were the four who’d attacked him upstairs—sweeps of the surrounding area hadn’t turned up any more bodies.

  The vampires had taken their wounded and dead with them. Even with silver rounds, the odds were that none of them had died on the scene—and that meant they would live. Vampires were hardy creatures, difficult to kill at the best of times.

  David’s first introduction to the supernatural had been a vampire in his small town who’d eaten the staff of a convenience store—and taken the full magazine from a Desert Eagle hand cannon before going down.

  “Why am I not surprised to find you in the middle of this?” a voice said, and he looked up to see the tall figure of Seattle Police Lieutenant Terri Church. “Agent White, wasn’t it? Or…I thought I hear someone call you Commander?”

  He sighed.

  “Either works,” he told her. “Both are correct in their own context.”

  “What the hell is going on, White?” she asked. “This is Seattle. This kind of shit doesn’t happen—let alone twice in one week!”

  “Replace ‘Seattle’ with ‘the United States’ and you get how we’re feeling,” he replied. “It’s been a long night and a longer week, Lieutenant. How can I help you?”

  “Appears to be other way around, tonight,” Church told him. “We’re running the evac as fast as we can—my safety guy took one look at the state of the core and basically condemned the entire building on the spot. Those explosives did a lot of damage.”

  “That’s…about what I figured,” David admitted. “We still need to interview half of those people, too. And keep them safe.”

  “Just being around you seems to paint a target on everybody,” the cop said. “How much danger am I in just being on the same block as you?”

  “Not…zero,” David told her. “This whole mess is getting uglier by the day.”

  She nodded.

  “There’s always some rumors going around,” she said slowly. “About stuff going on behind the scenes. Federal operations that aren’t what they tell me or even regular cops. Always stories, told over coffee, at the water cooler. Nothing anyone wants to admit to believing, if you get me.”

  “I was a regular cop not that long ago,” David replied. “I get you.”

  “Well, I’m hearing more of them lately,” she said. “A lot more. Like it’s been a bad month for the guys who deal with that sort of shadowy bullshit. Would I be barking up a wrong tree there, Commander?”

  “No.” He sighed. “You’d be closer than anyone would like to be, Lieutenant. And you may not like what you find up that tree.”

  “Who do you work for, White?”

  “I’m a United States Federal Agent,” he told her. “That covers a lot of people. ATF. FBI. Secret Service. Others.”

  “And you’d be one of those ‘others,’ huh? ‘Others’ who end up fighting pitched gun battles in my city?”

  “That’s not generally the preference, no.”

  She was silent for a moment, looking over the sodden scene around them.

  “I’m guessing this was still related to the mess at the conference center?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “You’re gonna get the bastards?”

  “That’s the job,” David told her with another sigh. “And we do the damn job, don’t we, Lieutenant?”

  “That we do,” she confirmed. “We’ll get your detainees taken care of, Commander White,” she told him fiercely. “We’re all on the same side, after all.”

  “That we are,” he echoed back to her.

  Chapter 22

  Michael O’Brien woke with a start to the sound of his phone ringing. Since the smartphone was set to ignore all but a select number of callers overnight, that meant it had to be an emergency.

  “O’Brien,” he said gruffly as he grabbed the tiny chunk of plastic and silicon.

  “It’s Warner,” ONSET’s second-in-command greeted him. “Seattle’s gone to shit again. Pell is dead—so’s Narita and a third of his damned company.”

  “What about David?” the werewolf demanded.

  “Alive and in control of the situation, somehow,” Warner said. “The Familias hit them with a full assault force led by at least one Elder. She’s dead, but it looks like the fangs are deep in this damn mess.”

  “I’ve had nicer wake-up calls,” Michael said slowly, stretching to test his muscles. The last of the silver seemed to be working its way out of his blood, but he would still be happy to never be hit with a silver-injector round ever again.

  “Should I be packing my bags and heading for Seattle?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Warner replied. “I need you to touch base with Charles and see if we got anything useful out of Talon’s systems on remote.”

  “Don’t we have access?”

  “The vampires blew the servers to hell and the backups are in South Africa,” his boss snapped. “We’re not getting official or even unofficial access to them anytime soon, though we probably will eventually.”

  “That’s…a mess,” Michael admitted. “I’ll talk to Charles. What about Seattle?”

  “It’s White’s file and he’s had one hell of a night. He hasn’t called for backup yet, and it looks like things are quiet on the ground. I’ll drag a detailed update out of him in the morning, but I’m hoping we’ll have something for him as well.”

  “We’ll see what we can find. I’ll wake Morgen up and we’ll go talk to the dragon.”

  #

  The skinny techno-mage took some waking up, but once he was awake, he followed Michael into the underground warrens of the ONSET Campus without too many complaints. By Morgen Dilsner’s standards, anyway.

  “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?” he whined. “It’s not like whatever data we pulled off is going anywhere. We can run through it at a decent hour, not, what is this? Two in the morning?”

  “You’re intimately familiar with two AM in my experience,” Michael pointed out.

  “With staying awake until, yes,” the geek agreed. “Waking up at this time is just wrong.”

  “It’s one in Seattle. In a few hours, David is going to have to try and deal with the day after the goddamn mess the Familias just dropped on him,” Michael pointed out. “If we can give him anything extra to help with that, I think we owe him it, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, fair enough,” Dilsner groused as they reached the dragon’s sanctum. “Charles, how’s the wings?”

  “Withering from lack of use,” the dragon replied grumpily as the two Agents made their way into the comfortably decorated cavern. “The tea is on,” he continued. “Please pour for yerself.”

  “Are you all right?” Michael asked, concerned. The dragon was normally less…abrupt.

  “Aye,” Charles growled. “Just not sleeping well lately, so being awoken makes mae grumpy.”

  “Not sleeping well…since?”

  “Since Ekhmez weakened the Seal, yes,” the dragon confirmed. “Feeling stronger than Ai have in years. And more cooped up,” he hissed. “So no, Ai am not sleeping well. And Ai am grumpy. Ai apologize.”

  “It’s been a shitty month for everybody,” Dilsner said.

  “You know this better than any of us, Charles,” Michael said thoughtfully. “This weakening of the Seal from Ekhmez…will it pass? Or has he permanently made it easier for magic to seep through?”

  “Hard to say,” Charles admitted. “Ai think it’s…both. It will get stronger. The demons especially will only find it easier for a while. But…more magic will seep through now. More Mantles will awaken. Some of the Sleepers like my kin and the trolls will awaken. Some of the Pure other than demons may walk the world again.”

  “More dragons and beings of pure magic doesn’t strike me as good news,” Dilsner pointed out. “No offense, Charles, but I wouldn’t expect another powerful supernatural to be quite
so…accommodating.”

  “Some will,” Michael replied. “Charles was not forced into his agreement. We didn’t have the power then.”

  “Others will not,” Charles told them grimly. “Ye are correct to fear the weakening of the Seal, Agent Dilsner. Little that awakens with the return of magic will love Man—and many beings that would once have been Man’s allies have been driven mad by their imprisonment.”

  “But it will get stronger again?”

  “For a time. And then Solomon’s Seal will continue its slow and eternal degradation toward failure,” the dragon said calmly. “All your kind have ever done is bought time.”

  “And on that depressing thought, did you get your claws on anything from Talon Security?” Michael asked.

  “Not much,” Charles admitted. “The APs cut power to the servers—effective for preventing them from being wiped, but also effective at preventing me from accessing them. Their systems were well defended as well.”

  “You have literally magic hacking programs,” the werewolf pointed out.

  “And that is why Ai have anything,” Charles replied. “But much of their data was concealed behind firewalls forged by those with similar skills to Morgen here. The Familias sold them security, though Ai don’t know if they knew that.”

  “Everywhere this case turns, we run into more vampires,” Michael said. “They’re almost never this active. What’s going on?”

  “Ai do not know. But you did kill their leader.”

  “David killed their leader.” Michael paused. “Which has not happened before,” he admitted. “Marcus Dresden has led the Vampire Familias for as long as we’ve been aware of its existence. We may have underestimated the consequences of that.”

  “Ai wish Ai could be more helpful,” Charles said finally, shaking his massive head. “Ai can tell you which Hollywood celebrities Talon is guarding, but anything with regards to the attack on the Conclave was behind magic security we had not penetrated when the system was disabled.

  “Since Alston would have physical access in the morning, Ai did not think it urgent to have the systems restored so we could drain them,” the dragon admitted. “Ai failed you.”

  “I don’t know about failed,” Michael admitted. “I have the sinking feeling we’ve run headlong into someone else’s contingency plan—someone who knows exactly how we operate.”

  “The Familias conflict with Omicron. They know us well,” Charles pointed out.

  “Not that well,” Michael replied. “There was an inside hand at the Conclave—and some of the Elfin are ex-Omicron. Riley, for example. He knows exactly how we operate.”

  “He’s on our side, isn’t he?” Dilsner asked. “I thought you liked Riley.”

  “I do. But he didn’t leave us on great terms, and his history with us since has been…mixed.” The werewolf shrugged and sighed. “But let’s be honest: a good fifth of the Lords and their Seconds worked for OSPI or another Omicron branch at some point. The Elfin in general know our methods.”

  “Isn’t this whole mess about us trying to find who attacked them?”

  “Yes. But remember: not all of them want this deal, and at least some would be happy to watch Omicron burn.

  “If nothing else, if the supernatural became common knowledge in a way that people believed, the Elfin’s Mages and healers would stand to make a fortune.”

  Chapter 23

  Dawn in the aftermath of the storm was a weak thing, faint light cutting through the remaining mist and highlighting the damp concrete and sodden grass. The clouds and mist smothered much of it, but it was still dawn and the downtown towers slowly began to light up as the sun crept over the horizon.

  “We can bring the helicopters in now,” the young-seeming Lieutenant who’d inherited command of AP Company Six said quietly. “Start moving the dead and wounded back to Campus.”

  “I’ll have Warner deploy another company to relieve you ASAP,” David told him. He glanced at the single bus standing by the curb, a few exhausted-looking people being loaded onto it. “That’s the last bus?”

  “It is. Most of my people have relocated to the holding site. That relief cannot arrive soon enough, sir.

  “Narita was a good man,” David said sadly.

  “They all were.”

  “And that’s why several hundred civilians are still alive,” David reminded the officer—and himself. “I need to report. You have things under control?”

  “Yeah. Not much left to guard except a building that’s going to need to be demolished.”

  “Once the last of the civilians are in motion, move your CP to the holding site,” David ordered. “My team and I have another objective.”

  “Understood.”

  The young man was clearly tired—too tired to question just what David was planning on doing with his pilot dead and the rest of his team exhausted. He probably also realized he didn’t need to know.

  Leaving the Anti-Paranormals to their work, David stretched and found a corner out of the way of the slowing chaos. With the sun rising, there was no risk of further vampire attacks, and it was time for him to check in with more than his quick-and-dirty midnight report.

  “It’s White,” he told the bodyguard he reached when he dialed Warner’s number. “Is the Major available?”

  “She’s waiting on your report. I’ll connect you.”

  There was a moment of silence as the line transferred, then Warner came on the line.

  “White. How are you doing?”

  “Been better,” David admitted. “Pell’s dead, so is Captain Narita. AP Company Six has been shattered. We’ll need another company moved in to take over security for the site we’ve moved Talon Security’s people to.”

  “I’m not sure we have another Anti-Paranormal Company free, Commander,” she told him. “I’ll see what we can scrape up. Did you at learn something? Anything?”

  “I can prove Talon Security launched the attack on the conference center,” David replied. “Their US Director has agreed to testify to that. One of their junior execs appears to have been a vampire thrall and organized it all.

  “We didn’t catch him in our sweep, but I have his home address,” he continued. With a Familias kill team on the prowl, he hadn’t been willing to send Inspectors to check on the man. “Now that our detainees are safe, I intend to hit his house and either arrest him or find where he’s gone. Unless Charles got something from the system before the fangs blew it up, Karl Adams is our last link to this whole mess.”

  “Charles was expecting to have Alston’s people on site with hard access this morning,” Warner admitted. “Their security resisted penetration and he only has fragments of data. Backups are in South Africa—we’re already in contact and requesting a court order there to access them.”

  “We can already hang a major act of terrorism on Talon Security,” David told her. “I’d hope their parent is going to play ball.”

  “We’ll see,” his boss said grimly. “They may, but they’re going to play for time first to make sure none of their necks will be on the block.”

  “Then I need to move on Adams.”

  “Your people need to rest.”

  “We can rest once Adams is in cuffs,” David told her. “I have Alexander van der Watt’s sworn testimony that Adams is responsible for this: that’s every ounce of probable cause I need.”

  Warner was quiet for several seconds.

  “You’re on the scene,” she said finally. “We’ll back you all the way.”

  #

  Stone and Hellet were sitting by the main entrance, the big man checking over his machine gun while the Mage was leaning back against the wall with her eyes closed. The gunner nudged Hellet as David approached, rising to his feet as the older woman stretched and yawned.

  “You’re not looking like we’re going home,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “What’s up?”

  “We still have an outstanding fish from Talon,” David told them. “Didn’t have time to f
ill you in before, but it looks like one of their ops managers is a thrall—and he wasn’t here. We’ve got the home address; we’re going to go pick him up.”

  “And if he’s not there?” Hellet asked.

  “We rip his house apart for evidence and see if we can find where he went,” David replied. “We know he’s a thrall; that changes the rules of the game. We have full sanction.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” the Mage sighed, hauling herself to her feet. “We got wheels?”

  “Chief Inspector.” David flagged down de Bergen as she emerged from the building. “We need to move on Adams. Can we borrow a car?”

  “Armored?” she asked.

  “If you’ve got it.”

  She pulled a set of black keys with a number stencilled on them out of her jacket.

  “Unit Seven; one of my people pulled it out of the parking garage to the east side,” she told them. “Black SUV, armor’s rated to stop tank rounds.”

  “That might be overkill, but thank you.”

  “I don’t have the people to bring Adams in,” she admitted. “Not and deal with everything else you’ve dropped on me.”

  “I owe you a drink when this is over,” David told her.

  “Tell Warner she owes me about forty new staff,” de Bergen replied. “I need Inspectors, supernaturals, and support troops more than I need a beer.”

  “Join the club,” David said with an only partially forced chuckle. “It comes with badges.”

  “Let me guess; they say ‘Omicron’ on them?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good luck, Commander,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  #

  Even for the armored vehicles that the various Omicron offices assigned their staff, the SUV de Bergen had given David keys for was a sluggish behemoth. It easily swallowed the three ONSET agents and their weaponry with ease, but David had to press the accelerator almost to the floor for the armored vehicle to even move.