“Four or five combatants. Three to four in support.”
“And the Thompson woman? Is she with them?”
“I don’t know. She was isolated the last I saw of her.”
“Is there anything else?” Tremaine asked.
“No. When will Chiho be released?”
“You’re to go to her of your own free will,” Tremaine told her. “Any attempt at duplicity on your part will end her life. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“You will go of your own free will?” Tremaine asked again, as Osric had instructed him to do. “The decision must be yours. You are not under any compulsion to go other than it is your will.”
“It’s my will,” Claudia said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Tremaine gave her the address Osric had decided on, a few blocks from the Schwimmer mansion. He advised her to remain at the meeting place until he arrived, after nightfall. After Claudia repeated the address he had given her, Tremaine disconnected and dialed another number.
They’re getting closer to discovering where we are. And on the heels of that thought: The Master was foolish to toy with them like this.
“Hello,” a man answered tersely.
“They’re coming for you,” Tremaine said.
A pause. “When?”
“I have no idea, but I would treat it as if they were only minutes away. Get the masters out, and whomever else you can, and return to the mansion.” Tremaine paused for a moment. “Leave some men behind with weapons. They might not expect that.”
18
The converted Ford van that served as the urban area TOC was parked in a lot four blocks from the casket factory. As the engine cooled in a series of ticks and pings, the TOC crew lolled about behind their communication consoles. Jerry Licht, seated in the front passenger seat, had a pair of binoculars trained on the Schwimmer casket factory. The complex sat behind a high chain link fence topped with razor wire. It appeared to be deserted; only a few lights gleamed in the swelling gloom as the storm rolled overhead. Licht reported this to Acheson’s team, still a good fifteen minutes out. Thirty-mile-an-hour winds buffeted the four-wheel-drive van, rocking it on its heavy-duty suspension. Sitting in the vehicle’s windowless rear, Robert Ellenshaw felt slightly seasick. He knew it was only going to get worse.
And when the rain started coming down in a sudden wind-driven sheet, it did get worse—much worse. Licht and Fenster swore and rolled up the van’s open front windows. They weren’t quick enough to prevent getting a fair soaking.
“Well, this sucks,” Fenster mumbled.
Licht shrugged and wiped off the binoculars with a paper towel. “You can always jump out and take a shower. I’ve got a bar of Irish Spring in my kit.”
“We need to get closer,” Ellenshaw said, ignoring Licht’s forced levity.
“No offense, but we’re not the guys who get close to these things.”
Ellenshaw pulled himself out of his seat and crab-walked toward the clamshell doors on the van’s right side. “Yes, but we’re still not one hundred percent certain this is our target. We need to vet it and ensure it’s worth our time. So far, we haven’t done that.”
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” said Cosmatos. He was a swarthy man with a ruddy complexion and dark hair cut short into a flattop. He reached out and grabbed Ellenshaw’s wrist when Ellenshaw reached for the door handle.
“Doing what needs to be done.” Ellenshaw tore his hand out of Cosmatos’s grasp and pushed open the door. He stepped out into the wet, windy remains of the day and slammed the door shut behind him. He tucked his MP-5 beneath his jacket, but it made little difference; in a matter of seconds, he was almost completely soaking wet.
“Get back in here!” Licht shouted as he opened the van’s passenger door.
“I’m not going to attract any attention to myself,” Ellenshaw said, “but I am going to move in a little closer and try to verify that what we’re looking for is actually here. It’s only common sense—we don’t have the resources to mess around. You might want to use those fancy encrypted radios and find out if the Air Force has retasked that radar satellite. We need that data.”
“They’ll tell us when the sat’s ready, not the other way around!”
“Call Fiedler direct, tell him I’m the one who wants to know. Now stop making a scene. There’s no one on the streets, and the two of us yelling back and forth is going to look damned odd.” With that, Ellenshaw sprinted toward the street and mounted the opposing sidewalk. By sticking close to the brick-face office building across the street, he was able to shield himself from the wind and rain somewhat. Keeping to a crouch, he hurried down the sidewalk, advancing toward the factory. It was a two-story affair, not imposing by manufacturing standards, but it had what seemed to be a million windows. Ellenshaw could have been under observation by a hundred people and not known it. But as the leading edge of the storm swept past overhead, the bands of heavy rainfall and wind would help mask his presence.
Two blocks from the factory, at the perimeter of one of its parking lots, Ellenshaw crouched behind a blue mailbox. He removed an observation scope from an inner pocket. The lens caps flipped up, forming little weather guards that were next to useless in the wind-driven rain. He peered through the scope and panned across the dark windows. Through the few he could see into, there was nothing to be seen other than ceiling tiles, the lights, and a potted plant or two.
“Ellenshaw, this is Two-Six, over.” He could barely hear Acheson’s voice through the radio headset’s earpiece. With his left hand, he reached down to the radio unit on his belt and pressed the TRANSMIT button.
“Go ahead, Two-Six.”
“This is Two-Six. I understand you’ve moved closer to the AO. What do you see? Over.”
So Acheson isn’t going to tear me a new asshole. Ellenshaw continued scanning the factory complex through the scope. A brief flash of movement near a darkened ground-level doorway caught his attention. He zeroed in on it.
“Stand by, Two-Six.”
At first, he could make out nothing. Although the scope had night vision capability, the ambient light was still too high for that function to be useful. Ellenshaw leaned his left shoulder against the wet mailbox. The doorway was recessed into the building a good eight to ten feet. Whatever had caught his attention was concealed by deep shadow. What was it?
Unbidden, Ellenshaw recalled what had happened in the Arizona desert, when the waning sunlight there was much more powerful than what the clouds permitted now. It was unsettling, knowing that he might be staring down at a master-class vampire. Maybe Osric himself. What would happen to him if he were to meet the eyes of a master vamp through a magnification device like the one he held against his right eye? Would the vamp be able to exert its will over him, or would the distance mute the effect?
Two Doberman pinschers emerged from the gloom, their pointed snouts held high as they tested the air. Their lips pulled back in twin snarls, exposing impressive sets of teeth. Another dog—a crazy-looking wire-haired terrier—joined them. The three dogs sampled the stormy air.
“Two-Six, we’ve got dogs here. Two Dobermans and what looks like a terrier. They’re exhibiting signs of derangement consistent with infestation sites, over.”
“Roger that. You’ve found enough to keep us on this target. Pull back, over.”
“Understood—Two-Six, stand by!” Ellenshaw had been ready to put the scope away and head back for the van when the dogs parted. A tall man with long, greasy-looking dark hair and a matching beard stepped out into the stormy day. He looked foul-tempered, but his eyes were sharp and probing. He examined the parking lot for a long moment. Ellenshaw wondered if he was a vamp, but then he saw the pistol at the man’s hip. Vampires had no use for guns, marking the man as a human servant to one of the master vamps.
“Ellenshaw, come in,” Acheson insisted, his voice small and tinny in his ear.
“Two-Six, I have more activity at t
he factory. Looks like a human servant—correction, three servants now, two men and one woman, all armed, have just joined the dogs, over.”
“Can they see you? Over.”
Ellenshaw thought about it. He was several hundred feet away and crouching behind a mailbox in heavy rainfall. If he stood up, they could likely see him. If he stayed put, it was anyone’s guess.
“I believe I’m all right for now, Two-Six,” he said. “Okay, the two men have gone back inside. The woman is moving down the parking lot, away from my position. One of the Dobermans is following her. She’s getting into a delivery truck… looks like one of those Volvo box trucks. Two-Six, you copy so far? Over.”
“Two-Six copies. Keep doing what you’re doing, over.”
“Roger, stand by.” Ellenshaw watched as the woman climbed into the cab of the delivery truck. She started it up, switched on the headlights, and pulled it around toward the street. She backed the truck up to a loading dock. Just before the truck blocked his view, Ellenshaw saw the loading dock door rise. The bearded man in leather stood in the center of the dark maw, and barely visible in the tepid light behind him was a dark coffin with metal handles.
Ellenshaw reported all of this. “If that satellite is available, it should be used to track this truck. They’re using it to move some of the vamps. We’ve found them, but it looks like they’re getting ready to bug out!”
“Roger that. Break—TOC, Two-Six. Give me an update on that satellite retask, over.” Ellenshaw kept the loading dock under observation. He couldn’t see much, but every now and then the truck moved on its suspension. He presumed it was being loaded.
It must be the masters they’re moving out. If they’ve been aggressive during their feedings, there could be hundreds of lower-caste vamps in there. No way they can evacuate all of them…
Licht’s voice came over the headset. “Two-Six, TOC. Satellite is still being moved around by the Air Force. It won’t be able to provide coverage for another six minutes.”
“TOC, Two-Six. Roger that. Break—Ellenshaw, return to the TOC and advise once you’re there, over.”
“Two-Six, we can’t abandon the AO!”
“Ellenshaw, do it now!” There was no mistaking that the discussion was over. Ellenshaw clenched his teeth. Refusing to comply was out of the question. He memorized the truck’s license plate number and sprinted through the rain-swept gloom to the waiting van. It felt good to move away from the warehouse. After all, dusk was not very far away.
***
Sharon had emerged from under the sedative’s gauzy veil an hour ago, but she remained on the hospital bed in the tank, eyes closed. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want Kerr’s staff to know that she had shrugged off the drug’s effects. She knew she had recovered much earlier than expected. And she knew why: the RMA virus was cleaning up her system, tweaking things here and there, readying her body for the transition from living to Undead. A thrill of fear ran through her, a hopeless kind of dread akin to what someone might feel upon being notified she had terminal cancer. Not that a lasting death was what lay in store for her. The reality she faced was one in which her soul would never rest until it had been hunted down and killed.
Mark promised he’d kill me before it happened.
But she knew that Acheson wasn’t on the premises. While still under the influence of the drugs they had been pumping into her, Acheson had entered the quarantine area. As if in a dream, she had felt him take one of her hands in his and brush his lips against her forehead.
I love you, Sharon. Just not enough to be there when you needed me, he had said. But we’re going to get them. And then he had left, leaving her with the single medical staffer who kept a nervous watch over her.
Sharon wondered now if she would ever see him again… through eyes that were still living, that is. She knew that despite what he had told her, what he had promised her, he could never kill her while she was still human. The only way to keep from Turning was if she killed herself and prayed the team would do whatever was necessary to ensure the deed was done: stake her through the heart, cut off her head, and incinerate body and head separately.
In the back of her mind, an unexpected fear surfaced: What if they don’t kill me, but keep me for research purposes? Would they do that to me?
It was an unsettling notion. Though she felt Andrew Kerr’s personal convictions would deter him from resorting to such a thing, what about the Group’s masters in Washington? The people who did the real field work were just tools Erskine Fiedler pushed around wherever they were needed. Kerr and his researchers were the same. Bureaucrats like Fiedler oftentimes took a more expedient view when it came to problem resolution.
Even more threatening than all of this was the malevolent energy Sharon sensed. She felt something brewing on the horizon, something that marshaled great power, power that promised nothing but destruction. At first, she had confused it with Osric, but with her faculties back under her control, she knew the ancient vampire was just a small piece of the mosaic. He might be smug enough to consider himself the architect of what was coming, but vanity had always been his weakness—Sharon could see that clearly now. Despite the wisdom accumulated over an existence that spanned several lifetimes, Osric was petty and arrogant, largely no different in death than he had been in life. He and his clan were responsible for many things, all of them dreadful, but what would soon be born in Los Angeles was hardly his doing alone. Osric was a pawn, a mere slave to sinister masters.
Sharon was powerless to do anything about this. It would be up to Acheson and the others to unravel the plan Osric had put in motion and defuse it before it reached critical mass. She could offer them no assistance; she just didn’t have the time. The Turning was near. The Turning was unstoppable.
The only thing Sharon longed for now was revenge, and vengeance for what had been done to her family. And the only way that could be satisfied was if she confronted Osric himself and snuffed him from existence.
It was as simple as that.
The medic attending to her took her vitals. She knew the attendant was female from the perfume she wore and the lightness of her touch, but Sharon didn’t move. The less responsive she was to external stimuli, the longer they would think she was still incapacitated, and therefore not a threat. She dared not even open her eyes into tiny slits to visually reconnoiter the room for fear of being observed. There were cameras in the room, but the fact that a living person was in the quarantine area with her meant that it wasn’t locked down.
And she had watched as the medics entered and left the ward over the previous days. They had made a major mistake: they hadn’t changed the combination on the locking systems. It was the same one that had been in used for some time. Clearly, they had never anticipated Sharon might actually Turn, so they had been treating her as a patient, not as a subject.
Fabric whispered over skin as the medic returned to her seat. Paper rustled as pages of a magazine were listlessly turned. A chair creaked, and Sharon had the mental image of the medic leaning back and stretching out, getting ready for another boring fifteen minutes before it was time to take the next round of vitals.
Sharon opened her eyes, squinting against the bright fluorescent lights overhead. She looked to her left and saw Allison Stewart, Kerr’s lead physician, sitting in a vinyl chair thumbing through a copy of People magazine. To her credit, Allison wasn’t completely oblivious. She sensed the change in her patient’s condition, and she looked up from her magazine as Sharon rolled off the bed.
“Sharon!” she said, shocked. “How… how are you feeling?”
Sharon ripped off the cardiograph pads attached to her chest beneath her T-shirt. She kept her eyes on Allison as she tore away the adhesive-mounted pads with quick, economical motions. Peeling them away would have hurt less, but Sharon luxuriated in one of the last vestiges of her waning humanity: the ability to feel pain.
“I’m fine,” Sharon said. “Don’t get up and don’t press the call button. If yo
u do, I’ll break your collarbones.”
Allison gawked at her for an instant, watching as Sharon attacked the IV line that was taped to her right arm. She then cut her eyes over to the wall-mounted call switch, only two feet from her.
“Don’t,” Sharon warned as she ripped the IV needle free.
Allison hesitated, then lunged for the button. Sharon seized her wrist and bent Allison’s hand down with enough strength to make her cry out.
“Sharon…! You’re hurting me!”
“Sorry,” Sharon said before backhanding her across the face. Allison flew back into her chair and bounced out of it, collapsing to the floor.
Sharon was at the door in a flash. She entered the code, and the airlock cycled open. Looking through the Plexiglas walls, she saw the camera monitoring station was in a cube directly across from the outer airlock door. She could see a young male technician talking with Yi-Ting, the lead researcher and facility administrator. As the inner airlock door locked shut behind her, Sharon entered the code into the outer door keypad just as Yi-Ting looked over and saw her. Her eyes grew wide behind her narrow spectacles, and her mouth formed a small O as she sucked in a startled breath. Sensing that something was wrong, the male technician shot a look over his shoulder, read the situation for what it was, and frantically began pounding away at his keyboard.
The outer airlock door cycled before he could activate the emergency locks, and Sharon tugged it open with all her might. She heard the magnets fire in a rapid series of clicks, but the door was too far away to be captured by the growing magnetic field. Sharon leaped out of the tank and into the Plant itself.
The male technician leaped to his feet and faced Sharon. He was a solid sort, built like a USC linebacker, but his eyes were furtive and anxious as he looked from Yi-Ting to Sharon and back again. He reached for the phone on his desk.
A red fire extinguisher was mounted to a nearby support pillar. Sharon ripped it from its retainer clip, and hurled it at the man without a second thought. He cried out as the red cylinder stuck him in the shoulder with impressive force. The impact hurled him into Yi-Ting, and both of them collapsed to the floor in a heap. Sharon pinned the man on top of Yi-Ting. She went through his pockets and found his car keys.
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