“Yes, so?” Nadia replied. “I think she likes you, Jack. You showed real heroism when you stood your ground against her Halfling form.”
“So?”
“My mother also likes your sense of humor.”
“But the kiss…” Jack pleaded.
“Was just a kiss.”
“Well, it felt like more.”
“Only because you find her attractive, Jack,” Nadia stated.
“What? I do not. I love you!” Jack tried to defend himself.
“There is no harm in finding my mother attractive, Jack. She is a very attractive woman. I take after her in many ways. In fact, many have said that I get my form from her.” She ran her hands down her sides as if to indicate so. “Besides, my love, Mother is mated. You and I are mated. There is no harm.” She smiled.
Jack was befuddled. “No harm? She practically ran her tongue down my throat.” Nadia gave him a smirk. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a friendly kiss.”
“Jack, you were holding her by the breasts only a short time ago. Was it a caress?” Nadia smiled at him.
“It was in self-defense!” Jack yelled. Nadia laughed.
“You read too much into small things, Jack.” Then to aggravate him more she added, “Wait until she really gives you a kiss. You may well forget all about you and I being mated. My mother can be quite persuasive when she wants to be.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him and Jack paled. “I am teasing you, Jack!” she said, slapping at his chest. “Now relax and finish dressing! Rufus is waiting for you!”
Jack pushed his foot the rest of the way into his tactical boots and began lacing them. He pulled his BDU pants down over the tops of the boots and cinched them over the lace knots. Nadia handed him his vest and he began checking his pouches and satchels. All of his gear was still inside.
He thought surely that Rufus would have disarmed him…she handed him his duty belt with holster. His pistol was still in the holster. He pulled it and checked the magazine. It was still loaded. He slammed the magazine home and checked the chamber.
“Be careful in there, Jack. Those are silver bullets. The representatives will all be allergic to silver,” she said, still adjusting his uniform for hm.
Jack simply nodded and replaced the weapon in its holster. He patted his BDU pants pockets where his P90 magazines would have been. Empty. He looked around and Nadia had her back to him. She turned and presented the basket. At the bottom sat his P90 carbine and the spare magazines. He took the P90 and attached it to the short sling on his vest, then stored the magazines in the mag pouch that was sewn into the side of his pants. He did a quick check of everything. Nadia handed him his sunglasses. He glanced outside and shook his head.
“Take them. They won’t be able to see where you are looking,” she said. Jack slipped them on. His eyes quickly adjusted to the extra tint. She then placed the boonie cap on his head with a satisfying tug. “There. You look absolutely terrifying,” she said with a giggle.
“Yeah, that laugh really sells it, sweetheart.” He leaned down and kissed her again.
“Come, I’ll show you where mother wants you.”
“Ooh, mother wants me,” he teased.
She punched him in the arm. “Be careful or I’ll let her have you, mister.” He smiled down at her as she led him down to the great room where Rufus had convened the meeting. She found her mother listening to the representatives argue on the other side of the door.
Her mother held a finger up to her lips as they approached. Nadia held Jack back in the shadows and they waited. Natashia listened intently as Rufus spoke with the attendees.
“We have been too idle for too long and I know that many of you wish to combine your peoples and take the war to the humans. From what we have gathered, the Lamia Humanus have already done so and are laying the bread crumbs to make it look as if it were we who attacked their hunters.” A murmur rose from the group and Rufus allowed them to make their assumptions. “However, we had infiltrators in the Humanus group closest to us. It took us a long time, and unfortunately, it cost us the lives of too many wolves to accomplish this, but eventually, we were able to infiltrate their ranks.”
Rufus stepped away from his seat and slowly walked around the table, “During their attack of the American hunters, one of my wolves was able to capture a live hunter.” Gasps and more murmurs came from the assemblage. Rufus raised his hand to silence them and garner their attention once more. “He was badly injured during the attack, but we provided him with aid and succor.”
“Why?!” an attendee yelled. “The hunters would have gladly removed your head from your shoulders given the chance!”
“Or staked you in the sand and let the sun do their dirty work!” another yelled.
Jack started to enter, but Natashia held him back with her hand. She shook her head. “Not yet…wait for Rufus.” She whispered.
Rufus held his hands up again, “Please. Please. Hear me,” he said. The attendees calmed slowly and he continued. “The man was injured and needed our help.” He said softly. “And he needed to be informed of the truth.”
“The truth does not matter to a hunter!” a voice called out.
“Ah, but it does!” Rufus answered. “When the hunters are in fact, wolves themselves!”
The room exploded with arguments and exclamations and disagreements and vampires hissing in disbelief. Rufus allowed a moment for the noise to die down then continued. “They are, in fact, werewolves, however, they do not know it.” He turned to the doorway and motioned. Natashia waved at Jack who snapped to attention and marched into the room. He heard the vampires roar to life and for a moment, his desire to open fire was almost overwhelming, but he continued on and followed Natashia’s instructions. He marched to the front of the room and stood at attention.
Rufus nodded a thanks to Jack then turned to the crowd. He waved them down then continued once more. “As you’ll notice, the American hunter did not enter with guns blazing. He did not toss in a phosphorus grenade and let us all burn in the sun’s light. He did not make any effort to attack.” Rufus paused to allow his words to sink in. He stood in front of his chair and placed his palms on the table and leaned in to his attendees and spoke softly. “He now knows what he is. He now knows the truth. He now knows of the war between ourselves and the Lamia Humanus and above all other things…he has agreed to assist us in taking the truth of our plight to his people.” Rufus allowed his words to reach his people, but some would have none of it.
“His people will never suffer a single vampire to live!” she shouted. “We’re all monsters to them!”
“If we are all just monsters, then why would they purposely inject their own warriors with the very same virus of the wolf?” Rufus asked.
“Only a means to an end!” another shouted. “There is no way that they can compete otherwise!”
“Untrue,” Rufus countered. “Our kind have been hunted for centuries by these mere humans, and many have come close to making us nearly extinct.” Rufus stood to his full height. “Non. If they truly believed that all of us were merely monsters, they would never have created their warriors with the very same curse that created the werewolf.”
“It is too risky, Thorn! Once they know where we are, they will surely—”
“They will never know where you are. They will only know where I am. Of that, you have my word,” he said. “And I will tell them all that I know of the Lamia Humanus. If we are to direct them to the true enemy, then we must try.”
“Why would this human help us?” another asked.
Rufus turned to Jack and nodded. Jack assumed a formal ‘at ease’ position. “To answer your question, sir,” Jack began, “Rufus already explained, I’m not human. I’m wolf. I just didn’t know it until they tested my blood.”
“But why would you help us?” he asked again.
“For one, I owe Rufus for saving my life,” Jack said. “Two, he is allowing my mate to come or go with me, as we see fit. And thirdly…” Jack looke
d at Rufus and smiled, “he’s my friend. And that’s what friends do for each other.”
Jack turned back to the group of vampires and gave them a good hard stare. He began a slow walk toward the table. “I don’t blame you for not exactly trusting me. And to be honest, I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you. But I trust Rufus. If he trusts you enough to allow you into his home, then I’ll just have to accept that. But the fact of the matter is, I gave Rufus my word that I would do my absolute best to convince my people of the war within the vampire families. How the Lamia Beastia have sworn off feeding on humans and only feed on livestock. How the Lamia Humanus have gone about redirecting the Monster Squad into attacking you and setting you up to be their fall-guys.” Jack stopped when he reached Rufus’ side. “I can’t promise that I can make a difference, but I swore on my life that I would give it everything I had. And my life means a lot more than it used to now, because it’s tied to my mate as well.
“If you insist on going through with your attack on the squads, I can guarantee you two things, a lot of your people will die in the attack, and a lot of innocent human lives will die in the attack, but you will never reach the Monster Squad. They are buried under ground so deep, you couldn’t reach them with a nuclear bomb. All they’d have to do is wait ‘til sunrise then come out guns blazing. Those who didn’t run with the sunrise and tried to find a dark place to hide would be sniffed out and staked or…well, it wouldn’t be pretty.
“The point is…this plan of his? It’s the easiest and least bloody way to save the most lives. You can either get on board or you can get out of the way. But an all-out assault? It’s suicide. I can guarantee that.”
Most of the vampires were silent during Jack’s impromptu speech, and very few said anything now. One, very large and very old looking vampire at the end of the table stood and Jack almost went for his weapon. “It would seem, Monsieur Thorn, that you have chosen your emissary well.” He turned and walked away from the table. Jack looked at Rufus and then stepped back out the way he came.
Natashia greeted him in the hallway again. “I hope I didn’t overstep,” Jack said.
“I think you performed splendidly,” she said.
Nadia hugged him and led him back toward their room
Rufus milled about to answer questions and discuss secondary options, and the whole time, he hoped and he prayed that Mr. Thompson was up to the task at hand. Without him, the civil war would soon be over and the Lamia Beastia would be forever extinct. The Lamia Humanus would execute their plan to use humans as livestock and rule the world. Rufus sighed and then continued the terrible task at hand…politics.
*****
Franklin searched like a madman. Of all of his memories, he could not recall any of Mitchell and his group of idiots actually finding his USB drive. They discovered a virus in their computers, but they didn’t actually search his person. He dug through his carry-on luggage. Finally, he found the suit pants he had worn that day. Please be there, please be there, please be there…Aha!! Franklin’s hand felt the familiar shape of the USB drive and slowly withdrew his shining jewel from his trouser pocket.
“You’re going to go down in a ball of flame, Mitchell. You and that half-blood bitch you have working for you,” Franklin growled.
He marched to his closet and got dressed. His head still ached, but nothing at all like it had before he crawled into the tub. He glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was barely 10:30AM. If he hurried, he could get it in the afternoon express back to the hacker. Franklin quickly dressed and found a small manila envelope to slip the USB into. He slipped the envelope into his breast pocket, and after taking two more headache formula and swallowing the rest of the cold coffee, he left to overnight the package.
As soon as he was on the road, he called the hacker and told him the package would be en route. Be prepared for it. Use the email address he finds on it and the data on there and make it public ASAP. Send it to every news agency, every internet blog, every tabloid, anybody who might possibly take it ‘to the people’ as quickly as possible. The hacker laughed and assured him, for what he was paid, he’d hack the president’s email and send it to him if he wanted.
“Just get it to the press. The president will get wind of it soon enough.” He smiled.
Franklin ran into the nearest express shipping office, scribbled the PO Box address on it, kissed the manila envelope good bye and paid for overnighting it. Then went out and headed for a coffee shop for one of those gourmet coffees all of the interns are so wild about.
This was going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones.
23
After much soul searching, Laura decided that it must be her that was changing. Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for this line of work anymore. She had talked herself around in circles and kept coming back to the same conclusions…she just didn’t agree with her boss’ tactics. It had happened at the company and she left, and now it was happening here…except she really didn’t want to leave the Monster Squad.
She went back to her office and reflected on her time with the team. She knew that they provided a necessary service and had saved a lot of lives over the years. For the most part, people didn’t know about the monsters, and those who had seen things, dismissed what they had seen to an overactive imagination. In reality, people didn’t want to know what was out there. It distorted their perception on reality. And recently, Laura’s own perception on reality was being distorted. She had been asked to do things that went totally against what she thought was right.
She stood and went out to Evan’s lab. He was busy working on something small, using a magnifying glass to see the miniscule object under an intense light. She tapped on the table as she approached to get his attention.
“I heard you walking across the common area toward my lab space, Laura. What can I do to help you?” he asked without looking away from his project.
“Evan, I’d really like to speak with you, if I could.”
“Of course, Laura. What would you like to speak about?” He reached to his side and picked up a small soldering iron and touched it momentarily to the object and smiled, his attention still on the tiny object.
“Evan, this is important. May I have your attention, please?” she insisted.
He laid the object to the side and turned off the intense light behind the magnifier and pushed it aside and turned to her, his smile unwavering. “My attention is entirely yours, Ms. Youngblood.”
Now that she had his attention, she wasn’t exactly sure where to start. She decided to jump right in and hope to iron out wrinkles later. “Evan, I know you’ve been out of it for a while…”
“I was imprisoned, Laura. Let’s not mince words,” he said.
“Er, yes. You were imprisoned for three years. So, you weren’t exactly privy to Colonel Mitchell’s behavior during that time.” She paced in the small space of his lab area. “But from the time before and what you remember of the colonel and from the time since you’ve been back…does his behavior seem…” she searched for the correct word, “off to you in any way?”
“Define ‘off’, Laura. I’m not sure that I know where you’re going with this.”
Laura sighed. “Does he seem to be acting less like himself?”
Evan swiveled his chair side to side for a moment as he thought about her question. Suddenly he looked up at her and said, “No.” Then turned and picked up the tiny object again. “Are there any more questions you’d like to ask me?”
“Evan, come on!” she pleaded. “This is me! Talk to me.”
He spun back to her and practically glared at her. “You come to me and ask if your boss seems ‘off’? You never so much as came to visit me while I sat in that silver-plated cell and rotted for nearly three years,” he said through gritted teeth. “Three years! And now that I am out, you’ve barely spoken to me, but you’re concerned about Matt. Fine. Let’s just talk about him. I’m sure the two of you got real cozy while I was locked up, e
h?”
She stepped back, shock registering as she realized that Evan was not only jealous, but hurt. Here she was, waiting for him to come to her to express interest in resuming their budding relationship, and he was wondering…God only knew what he was wondering, all the while he was working away and gong about his business as if nothing was wrong. “Evan, I don’t…I didn’t know,” she stammered.
“Didn’t know? Didn’t know what? That I was alone? Or that I was starving in the darkness?” he seethed. “Didn’t know that my heart was breaking for you every moment of the day?”
“Yes, of course…I mean, NO!” she stammered. “I had no idea that you ever thought that Matt and I had something going on. That idea is ludicrous!”
“Is it now?” he barked. “Then why the sudden interest in how he’s acting?”
“It’s complicated. I guess I can’t expect you to understand, you—”
“I’m what?” he growled. “Just a vampire?” His words dripped with venom.
She suddenly turned angry. “No. That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.” Now it was her turn to get angry. She stepped toward him, hands planted firmly on hips. “I was going to say that you’ve been gone too long to notice the subtle changes in his behavior.” She took another step toward him, this time with a finger pointed in his face, “I was going to say, that if I’d had any clue that you still cared about me, I would have been man enough to make the first move the moment you got out and tried to rekindle what we had!” She took another step, jabbing the finger more pointedly. “I was going to say that had I known you were going to just throw yourself into being Matt’s butt-buddy and shadow puppet, I wouldn’t have risked my career and possibly prison time slipping you blood and then busting you out!” Now she stood directly in front of him and he was leaned back against his workbench, her finger directly in front of his face. “I was going to say, that had you been around, that maybe you would have noticed his behavior changing and could help me identify it so that I could know if it was him or me!” Then she stepped back and made an effort to calm herself. When she looked back up, there were tears threatening her eyes. “Because, if it’s me, then I can’t do this job anymore. And I really don’t want to leave, but I will if I have to.”
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