“What if Rufus wanted to set your family free?” Jack asked. “Could your father then challenge the pack master?”
“It would break the covenant,” she whispered. “Neither my father nor Rufus would allow the disgrace of breaking the blood covenant.”
“Where is your father now?”
“He is doing business for Rufus on the mainland, but he will return soon. The moon will force him to return.”
“All of you lock yourself in the dungeon?”
“It’s not really a dungeon,” she said. “It’s really more of a basement. But this is a castle and dungeon sounds more appropriate considering its use every month.”
“Still, it doesn’t sound very fun.”
“The entire experience isn’t much fun.”
Jack pondered a moment then asked her, “How many wolves are here on the island?”
“Twelve. Most are my family, including aunts, uncles, cousins…but there are a few who were already here as a security detail. They’re true security.”
“And all of you lock yourself in the basement for that one night?”
“Yes. It’s the one night that Rufus is truly vulnerable.”
“But it’s at night, so, he’s not really vulnerable, right? I mean, he really only needs the security during the daylight hours.” Nadia nodded. “How many vampires does Rufus have here with him?”
Nadia gave Jack a puzzling stare. “Are you milking me for information? Assessing the strengths of the castle, soldier?” she said playfully.
Jack laughed. “No. Not really. I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me. I was just wondering…”
“There are a little over two dozen vampires here, but most are women.”
“Oh, that’s right. More women to increase the chances of having kids…”
Nadia laughed again. “Perhaps if Rufus were a natural born vampire. He was created, just as you were. “But he was sort of… ‘adopted’ into a natural born family. He is considered an heir, but he’ll never truly be accepted as a natural born. Nor will he ever bear fruit.”
“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “I remember now him telling me how he got made.” Jack pointed at his head. “Not the brightest bulb and all that.”
“Rufus will forever be in a young man’s body, with a young man’s appetites. He prefers to surround himself with female lovers,” she said. “But enough speak of other people’s lovers. Come. Let us get you fed and get your strength up.”
“Get my strength up?”
“You did intend to mate with me, yes?” she said with a sly smile. “You will need your strength.”
*****
The squads were in the common room listening to the cleanup crews give their spiel. For all intents and purpose, the initial training for the new members was complete, but there were still a few procedural processes that they needed to be aware of. For the veterans of the group, this was old news. Apollo and Spanky sat and drew doodles on their notepads. Donnie did his best to stay awake, but was failing miserably. Drool was threatening to escape the corner of his mouth. Hammer sat ramrod straight, eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. Dom and Popo debated that he slept with his eyes open. Finally, Dom reached over and waved a hand in front of his face and when he failed to respond, they both snickered and debated ways to screw with him. Meanwhile, the cleanup crews droned on with their procedures and the new members gave them the courtesy of trying to appear to listen, albeit with glazed looks on their faces.
After approximately thirty minutes of their monotonous droning, Tracy muttered to Lamb, “Do we really have to listen to this crap?” Lamb shrugged and yawned. Before the yawn was completed, both found themselves falling to the floor in a tumble, their chairs having been pulled from under them.
Hank Michaels stood behind them, holding the legs to their chairs in his hands, his face twisted in disgust. He dropped the chairs and walked to the front of the room.
“What the fuck is your problem, man?” Gus asked, getting up from the floor.
“No shit, dude. Uncool, brother…” Lamb began.
“I’ve watched you newbies blow off just about everything that didn’t involve shooting or blowing something up,” Hank said through gritted teeth.
“Padre…” Apollo began.
“Don’t!” Hank warned. “This needs to be said.” Hank turned toward the cleanup crews with a wave of his hand. “These guys do ten times the work we ever do and never get one single ‘thank you’ or an iota of recognition. They are the ones who truly keep the people safe once we eliminate the threat. But you wouldn’t know that because you haven’t heard a word they’ve said, would you? Do any of you even have a clue what they actually do?” he asked.
The new squad members all looked at each other and gave shrugs or shook their heads. A few muttered to the negative.
“They’ve been addressing you for the past half hour trying to give you the details of their job in order to drill home the importance of how you do your job in order to keep people safe, and you’re all falling asleep or worse, totally ignoring them.” Hank stared them down. “You should all be ashamed of yourself.”
Hank turned and stalked away muttering to himself. Sanchez could have sworn she heard him say something about ‘romper room’ and ‘fucking toddlers’. “What’s got up his ass?” she asked.
Apollo leaned in toward her and the others, “I’ll fill you in later. For now, let’s let these guys finish up.”
The cleanup crew guys milled about for a few moments, unsure how to carry on. One glanced at his watch and then at the crowd of operators. “Umm, we’re about out of time. I, uh…well. Here it is in a nutshell. You guys are the rock stars, okay? You get to go out and blow shit up, right? You go in the field and kill the bad guys, okay? Well, we’re the poor bastards who have to go in behind you in the bio-suits and clean up after you.” He nudged one of the fellows next to him who held up one of the bulky suits with the re-breather attached. “These things are hot, heavy, bulky and just generally a pain in the ass to work in, especially in hot weather. But we do the stuff that has to be done.” Another cleanup crew held up some of the tools of the trade, shovels, industrial drum liners and with his foot pushed a wheeled vacuum in front of them. “When you guys splatter a monster, we have to make sure there are no biologicals left behind.”
The tech stepped forward and used his hands to emphasize his point. “Imagine vampire blood left behind where a child might accidentally be exposed? Or you splatter a zombie and the body fluids get into somebody’s well? Depending on the type of zombie, an entire family, or even a group of families could be exposed, spreading the disease exponentially.” Slowly the new squad members began to pay attention. “That’s why you train to take the head shot with the zombie infestation. Yes…it is the only way to truly stop one, but you could also throw one into a wood chipper. It’s just a whole lot messier. And the chance of spreading the disease increases a thousand fold. A field mouse gets hold of a tiny piece of tissue and voila! New infection, and a short time later, we start all over…just with a new vector.”
The tech looked at his watch again. His time was up. He sighed. Somehow he felt he failed to drive the point home. “The point is, boys and girls, don’t make a mess if you don’t have to. Don’t use a canon to swat the mosquito, okay? The less mess you make means the easier our job is and the less time we have to be exposed to the rest of the world who always asks, ‘why are there spacemen washing the Johnson’s house out?’ It’s a thankless job, but it has to be done.” With that he stepped back and simply said, “Thank you for your time.” The cleanup crews began re-crating their gear for mobilization.
The squad members were about to break up when Sanchez cornered Apollo. “Nice speech there, but what gives with Michaels? What was his little outburst about? I mean, the guy hardly says two words the whole time we train with him, then BAM! He goes off on us for nothing.” The other new members had gathered around her. They, too, were curious what his problem was.
“He used to be this total operator with the Jarheads. Volunteered for all these suicide missions, but always came back. He was the best of the best. Used to train operators, too. They said that you could drop his ass in the Antarctic in his skivvies with nothing but a compass and a pocket knife and two weeks later you’d find out he overthrew the dictator of some backwater shithole third world country, and he’d be sitting on the beach drinking a mojito. If you looked in the dictionary under the word ‘badass’ his picture was right next to it.”
“Okay, we gotcha. He was the real deal,” Jacobs said, waving his hand on for Apollo to continue. “So what happened to him?”
“That’s just it, bro. Nobody knows. One day he’s volunteering to jump in the muck, he’s trained himself to be one of the world’s foremost knife and sword fighters, he’s like a one-man army…then he just comes back from a mission and tells his CO that he’s done. He can’t do it anymore. He wants to ‘conscientious objector’ out.”
“What?!” Tracy exclaimed. “Nobody goes from badass to pussy in a heartbeat.”
“Nobody said he was a pussy.” Apollo shot Gus a stern look. “Something happened. I dunno what. Maybe one too many innocents on his last mission? Too much collateral damage? Who the fuck knows? But that’s what I’m told.
“Anyway, his CO didn’t know what to do with him. He still had about sixteen months left on his last hitch, so they did the only thing they knew to do with him. They assigned him to the God Squad. He worked with a Catholic priest and a Lutheran minister for the last of his hitch and…I dunno, I guess it stuck, ‘cuz when he got out, he left and never looked back.
“Word was, he put on a robe, slapped on some sandals and a cross and went to some little border town in like Arizona or New Mexico or some shit and found an abandoned church. He just moved in and started rebuilding it with what little money he had. The locals started coming to his church, and word is he started an orphanage. Anyway, here’s where shit gets real.
“One night about four years ago, a pack of baby vamps hit this small town of his and they slaughter everybody. The Padre didn’t know that they even existed, but he knew that this gang was killing his people and he went nuts. Said that ‘God spoke to him.’ Told him to ‘Protect my flock.’ And Hank went off on the vamps. He had no weapons, but he pulled a wooden cross from the graveyard and went Mickey Mantle on them. One survivor actually said that the Padre there literally ripped the arm off of one of the vamps and beat him to death with it!”
“Oh my fucking God…” someone muttered.
“Then he hears the orphans screaming and he knew some of them got past him and got into his church,” Apollo said, his face solemn. “There were three of them. And they feasted on those kids before Hank could get back in to stop them. It damn near killed him losing those kids.”
“No doubt,” Mueller said, thinking of his own son back home.
“Anyway, the worst part was, one of the dead vamps fell into the town well,” Apollo said, his eyes searching the others and seeing the horror spread across their faces. “By the time the squad and the cleanup crew got there, it was too late. Hank and seven other people were all that survived from the entire town. Nearly a hundred and thirty people all gone from start to finish.”
“No wonder he snapped during the presentation,” Marshall said softly. “He lived through a nightmare.”
“When the squads arrived and the cleanup crews were trying to do their thing, Hank shows up and tells the squad leader that he’s coming back with us. The squad leader tells Hank politely to go back to his church and do whatever it is that preachers do and Hank laid him out on his ass.” Apollo smiled, rubbing his chin. “Even with all of the training, augmentation and strength enhancements, he not only held his own, but got the upper hand. When the squad leader got his feet back under him and tried to retaliate, Hank disarmed him, took his knife and put him back on his ass. Then he told him, ‘if you people hunt these monsters, then I’m coming with you.’ The other squad members were about to put him down, but the squad leader ordered them to stand down. He saw the pain in his eyes…how broken he was from the attack. So we had a chat with the colonel. They pulled his service jacket from back in the day and Hank got a ride back with us. The rest is history.”
“That must have been some squad leader,” Lamb said. “I think if it had been me, I would have painted the wall with his brains.”
“Yeah, well, when the weather changes, my jaw still hurts,” Apollo said, cracking a toothy smile. “But I don’t regret it one bit. The man is a walking Cuisinart with a blade. Give him his machete and his katana in a fight and he’s more deadly than any three people with carbines.” The others shot him shocked glances. “I once watched him slice open a vampire from nutsack to forehead with one motion. That shit is impressive.”
“Super warrior or not, I have a newfound respect for the man,” Ing said.
18
Franklin walked the halls toward his office, feeling the eyes of his peers on him. Somehow, he felt, they knew his dirty little secret, but they couldn’t. Nobody knew but himself and the redhead at the hotel, and she kept calling him Stewart. Thankfully, she…he…it? What should he call her? Regardless, she didn’t recognize him, or know his name. His secret was safe.
Sex scandals were not uncommon on the Hill, but a homosexual sex scandal for a heterosexual senator from the Bible-belt would ruin him both politically and financially. He slipped past the front and into his office, ignoring his secretary. She tried to catch up with him, but he wanted nothing to do with her. He shut the door on her and locked it as she continued to attempt to talk to him through the door. He’d deal with her later. He could feel himself trying to panic and he needed to calm himself.
It was barely 9AM, but he desperately needed a drink. His hands shook as he poured the Jack into the crystal. When he reached for the Coke, memories of the Ritz Carlton room and the redhead flooded back to him. Flashes of her splayed across his bed, her auburn hair spilled across the pillow, her round hip slipping from the sheets, the flash of breast just showing in the crack of light through the curtains. He felt a growing twinge of excitement in his loin and he practically dropped the soda at his own surprise at himself. He shouldn’t feel want for a person like that. She wasn’t a she for shit’s sake! She had a cock! Not just a cock, but a huge, swinging cock that dwarfed his own. That just wasn’t right…on so many levels. It was bad enough that such a seductive and gorgeous creature should even have a penis, but even more wrong that she should have one so large!
Franklin forced himself to calm his hands and pour the soda into his glass. He gulped the drink down and made another. He went to his desk and sat down hard. Resting his head in his hands, he couldn’t shake the image of the redhead. What she had done to him…that he could remember…and how much he enjoyed it. He kept seeing her eyes, the curve of her jaw, the lines of her face. The shape of her ass haunted him, taunting his memories. She was so…fucking perfect…except for that damned dick! He reached for his drink and slammed it back hard.
He reclined in his chair and swiveled back and forth. Maybe with enough whiskey I could convince myself it was just a huge clit? He joked with himself and chuckled, then shook his head to clear it. What the hell was he thinking?! Why was he allowing himself to be so enamored with this…person?
His intercom buzzed. Franklin jumped at the noise then sighed to himself. He wouldn’t be able to put off his secretary forever. “What is it, Ellen?”
“The jeweler called, sir. Your Rolex is repaired and ready,” she replied.
Franklin glanced at his wri
st. The Patek Phillipe was still strapped to it. His Rolex hadn’t been on his dresser so he put the Patek back on this morning. He knew it was ‘wrong’ but…he couldn’t put his finger on ‘why’. “Which jeweler was it?”
“Sir?”
“Which jeweler called, Ellen? I don’t know where my fucking watch is!” he yelled at the box.
“Huguley’s, sir. In Annapolis.” Ellen sounded as if she were about to cry. Surely she thought her boss was losing his mind.
“Thank you, Ellen.”
Franklin looked up the number and called the repair shop. After a brief conversation, he discovered that he had the crystal repaired and the watch cleaned and serviced. They had to ‘remind’ the good senator that the crystal must have taken a pretty good blow to be cracked that badly. When Franklin hung up, his head was throbbing. Why did he have no memory of his watch going to the jeweler? He had even paid extra for them to expedite the repairs. He felt wrong without the Rolex on his wrist, and he couldn’t remember any part of it. He stood from his desk and felt lightheaded. Surely it was the whiskey at such an early hour and on an empty stomach. He looked around the office, but everything seemed in its place. Perhaps it occurred at home? But when he finally looked completely behind him, he saw it. The family photo was broken. The last family photo taken before his wife announced she was diagnosed with cancer…Damien was so little…and the glass was broken.
But how?
His head was killing him, but Franklin had to have answers. The watch. Maybe having it back would stir a memory? He left his briefcase and his overcoat. Taking only his suit jacket, he stepped outside into the outer office. “Ellen, I’m going to pick up my watch. I’ll be back later.”
“Your schedule is still cleared until tomorrow, sir, so you should be okay,” she said.
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