Hunter's Kiss

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Considering what this stuff would do to either of those lineages, I don’t see why they do it.’

  ‘Humans cook meth.’

  ‘Yeah. Point taken. I just kind of thought vampires might have a longer view of things.’

  ‘Vampires are just as dumb as humans until they’ve got enough experience to gain some sense. Just like humans. The difference is that the vampire might be around long enough to use it. Another vehicle. Two.’

  There were, in fact, five in quick succession. All of them sedans which disgorged a full load of occupants, and the people all marched inside. Dione turned, settling herself with her back to the window, and bit at her lip. Mike wondered whether the habit resulted in punctures very often.

  ‘Okay, we have at least twenty suspects on the premises, almost certainly all vampires. I think it’s time we performed an illegal search.’

  ‘Okay, but you might want to wait a second. The shutter’s opening.’

  The shutter was opening, and the van driver was emerging from under it to unlock the back of his van. A moment later, there were people carrying boxes out of the building to stack in the van. Not huge numbers of them, and not large boxes, but then supplies were being limited so they would not be moving much at a time.

  ‘I’m going to call that “probable cause,”’ Dione said.

  ‘Weak, but I’ll buy it.’

  ‘So will my judge when we go for a warrant. We’ll move once the van has left.’

  Ten minutes later, Dione was crouched beside a door at the back of the building, working lock picks. The lock clicked after less than thirty seconds.

  ‘You’ve picked up a few talents over the years, haven’t you?’ Mike said.

  ‘Many of them nefarious,’ Dione replied and then held her finger to her lips. She pushed the door open a crack, listened, then opened it further to give a quick look inside. Then she slipped through the door, Mike following behind her and pushing the door to, but not letting it lock.

  The space inside was not exactly encouraging. There were a couple of low-wattage bulbs hanging from the ceiling of a large, open space, which held little aside from a few crates. A couple of those were fairly large, but they were open and empty. Packing material from them was strewn beside them. Dione moved quickly across to those crates to give cover, though there seemed to be no one about to see them.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Mike whispered as Dione snapped pictures of the shipping bills stuck to the side of the crates.

  ‘They didn’t leave, so they must be still here. We’ll–’ She stopped and signalled for silence again, but Mike had also heard footsteps.

  Peering around the crate, they saw a man emerge from an internal door and walk across to the front door. He opened it but did not go out, and a few seconds later, the reason became clear.

  ‘Mister Behr,’ the man said to someone and Dione stiffened. ‘We’ve shipped out last night’s surplus product.’

  A tall, blonde man entered the building. From across the room, it was difficult to see details, but Mike thought he looked like someone used to command and violence. Hard features, thick muscles, and he held himself upright, sort of military in bearing. Dione ducked out of sight, pulling Mike with her.

  ‘Good,’ Behr said. ‘Production is running at expected efficiency?’ He had a thick, Germanic accent to go with the Aryan looks. Mike began to get a bad feeling.

  ‘One of the fermenters is down, but we’re working on it and it won’t affect timescales.’

  ‘Fix it,’ Behr snapped. From the sound, he was moving across the room. ‘The sooner we can stockpile the required amount, the sooner I can be out of this abysmal excuse for a country.’

  There was a ‘Yes, sir,’ but it echoed a little in a small space and there was the sound of a door closing: the men had gone back through that internal door. Mike expected Dione to head that way, but instead she made straight for the back door, made sure the lock would engage when it closed, and moved outside. She did not speak until they were marching in the direction of the car.

  ‘That was Gunther Behr,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He’s one of the senior members of Societas Draconistarum, a dominus. If he’s here, then Societas are running this deal and it’s more serious than we thought.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said, ‘so… SWAT and a lot of violence?’

  ‘This just stepped outside the ranks of the Agreement. Or it just stepped into the area where the Agreement says “take care of it yourselves, vampires.”’

  Mike frowned. ‘Are you saying… I’m off the case?’

  Dione stopped and looked blankly at him for a second. ‘Oh! No, of course not. You’re my partner. Whether or not this is to do with NYPD, you’re my partner. No, you’ll be in on it. We just need to get some help from a… less official source.’

  ~~~

  It took around three hours to set up, with Mike watching the building while Dione went off to organise things, but at nine p.m., Mike’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out and flicked his thumb over it to answer.

  ‘Is Behr still in there?’ Dione’s voice asked immediately.

  ‘I haven’t seen him leave.’

  ‘Okay. There’s a van parked two blocks east. Meet us there.’

  ‘Us?’ Mike asked, but the connection was already dead.

  The van was black, pretty new, and looked expensive. It had a pretty long wheelbase, and the look of something which had been armoured. Mike was about to knock on the back when the door opened and Dione waved him in. Her coat was gone and she was wearing her leather jumpsuit. Her sword was pushed through a sash around her waist.

  Mike climbed in to find a small war party equipping themselves. At the back, he spotted Leo and Bar strapping on vests. ‘What gives?’ Mike asked.

  ‘I called in the troops,’ Dione replied, handing him his vest. ‘Get kitted up. We’re moving in as soon as everyone’s ready.’

  ‘Good evening, Detective,’ Leo called down from the far end.

  ‘Uh, hi,’ Mike replied. He had to pause in strapping his vest on as Dione leaned in close.

  ‘You stick with Leo and Bar,’ the Hunter said.

  ‘I don’t think I need protecting,’ Mike replied.

  ‘You’re helping Bar to keep Leo in one piece. Yes, it’ll be safer for you, but your job in there is protecting the leader of the New York Concilium because he’s too pig-headed to stay out of this.’

  ‘I…’ The thought occurred as the hint of anger which had flared in him died that Leo was one of Dione’s few friends and she was trusting him with that, not just the head of the Concilium. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That’ll be good enough.’ She held out a shotgun.

  ‘Thanks. Are we really going to need twelve people for this? Twelve people with this kind of firepower.’

  ‘I’d have preferred more. Never attack a force with superior numbers unless you really have to.’

  ‘I take it we really have to then?’

  Dione nodded. ‘I think they’re releasing the stuff in dribbles to build a client base, and hype, before they release it by the gallon. Vampires will be going mad and dying all over the city.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Societas want vampires out in the open,’ Leo said as he approached. ‘They believe we should be the rightful rulers of the world, and we can’t be that while we hide in plain sight. Under normal circumstances, we hush up their attempts at exposure, but something on this scale…’

  ‘So we stop it now,’ Dione said, ‘and we sanitise the place before calling in NYPD Vice.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said, ‘let’s do this.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dione said. ‘One last thing. Gentlemen, this is a drug lab known to produce a substance fatal to vampires and dangerous to humans. We have no idea what we’re dealing with once we go through the door. Everyone wears gas masks. If you see anything burst or spill, stay the fuck away. Are we clear?’

  There were no
ds and a few affirmative statements. Mike saw people picking up gas masks from their seats, and turned to find Dione presenting him with one. ‘You make sure you take care in there too,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be fine. Watch your back, because if you get yourself killed, Leanne may never let me flirt with her again.’

  ‘Oh, ha. She probably would.’

  They deployed to the rear door of the building, the main body of the force holding back at the gate until Dione had done her magic on the lock. Then she checked the upstairs room was still empty and waved everyone forward. They moved quickly inside, checked the floor was entirely clear, and then moved in on the door they had seen Behr’s greeter come out of.

  Mike settled his mask a little and tried to get over the fact that he felt vaguely claustrophobic in the thing. He checked the load on his shotgun and his pistol. He knew adrenaline was stoking his nervousness, and he was nervous, but he had a job to do. He checked where Bar was, because it was easier than locating Leo, and then he moved in beside them.

  He had just positioned himself when Dione went through the door. Beyond it was a flight of concrete steps leading down. Dione moved quickly and quietly to the bottom where the staircase opened out into a broad basement full of equipment which looked far too high-tech for the environment. There were tanks with machines of some sort attached, computers in racks… Not exactly a backroom meth lab.

  There were also vampires, maybe twenty-five of them, who were slowly noticing that they had company. Dione looked at them and smiled, not that they could see it behind her mask. Someone let out a shout and Dione moved, swinging her shotgun up and firing in one movement, and the man who had opened his mouth exploded. And the room descended into chaos.

  One of the tanks exploded, showering vampires with something which looked like a cross between oatmeal and white, soupy oil. There were a couple of screams, almost drowned out by the firing.

  Mike found himself advancing across the room with Leo beside him. Bar was on Leo’s other side, a huge wall of armoured, composed violence. The big man fired only when necessary, conserving his ammo for defence and letting his boss take the lead in shooting down their enemies. Mike followed suit, taking shots only when someone seemed a threat.

  Dione was not limiting herself. Once the six rounds from her shotgun were used up, she drew her sword and began cutting men down when they came close. At the end of the room, there were partitions which had been set up to shield an office area and, with no sign of Behr in the main factory area, she was hunting for him there. She turned, drove her blade through a man’s throat, and then ripped the edge out sideways as he gaped at her. Before he could lift the machine pistol he was holding, she whipped around and sliced his head off at the neck.

  And then there was silence aside from the hum of machinery. Dione looked around and found no one standing aside from her own troops. She turned to the partitions and pulled off her mask. ‘Behr! Come out, you feige bastard!’

  Behr stepped out from behind the partition, a smile on his face and his hands raised, though the right one was fisted. ‘Fräulein Dione,’ he said. ‘You seem to have made a mess. It will take some time for my men to clean up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that right now, Behr. I’m surprised at you. I thought a dominus would put up more of a fight. I think we’ll see how staking you out under a sunlamp loosens your tongue. Probably won’t work, but it’ll be fun.’

  ‘I am afraid I will have to decline. I will see you in Hell.’ He moved, bringing his fist to his mouth.

  ‘He’s got Apollo!’ Mike yelled, the sound muffled by his mask, just as the partition was pushed over and four things sprang from behind it. One of them sprang immediately at the closest of Leo’s men, knocking him flat and then sinking their teeth into his throat.

  ‘Everyone back!’ Dione yelled out. ‘Retreat to the door.’ She took one step back and raised her sword, focusing herself, letting the blood flow through her. The world around her seemed to slow to a crawl and the two mutant vampires running at her turned to something from a cartoon suddenly finding themselves running through treacle.

  Dione’s blade swung out and through the first of her attackers’ throats. She was turning and swinging again before the next had taken another step, ripping open the man’s windpipe and shredding arteries, a second stroke severing his neck completely. She heard Mike’s shotgun open up, heard the explosions, and felt dust from the ceiling hit her cheeks from a stray round. He had fired three, she had counted them, and she had heard two of the rounds explode in flesh. That was one down, and that left Behr and the one who had taken down one of Leo’s men, the one who was now rushing at Dione. He never made it, his head leaving his body as soon as he was in range.

  Dione turned, saw the fist coming at her face and shifted her head aside, bringing her sword up as she did so. Behr’s arm was sliced off at the elbow in a spray of blood and he did not seem to care. He was coming around to make a grab for her again when she turned and swung. He was close, too close, and the blade did not cut deep enough, but his blood sprayed from the neck wound. His left arm swung, striking Dione’s cheek, and she ignored it, stepping back and slashing his chest open before turning and slicing cleanly through his neck.

  She paused, taking in her surroundings. Mike, Leo, and the others had barely made it to the door. Their fallen comrade was still breathing, though his throat looked like it had been savaged by a bear. Dione twirled her sword, flicking blood from the blade, and then sheathed it in one, fluid motion before starting for the stairs herself.

  Part Five: You’re a Vampire Now, Suck It Up

  New York, NY, 23rd January 2015.

  Mike had suggested the fire. Mary and Winthrop had arrived to supervise the removal of every bit of evidence linking the drug lab to vampires, and Societas Draconistarum in particular, and Leo’s people had done a remarkably efficient job of turning from gangsters into forensics technicians. As far as Mike could tell, most of Leo’s hand-picked team were old enough to at least have been born when Leo was running booze during Prohibition, and with age came a degree of flexibility it seemed.

  By one in the morning, the place had been ‘sanitised,’ as Dione put it, and they had been trying to figure out the best way to bring in the regular cops. Mike had seen a lot of alcohol in storage and had suggested a fire. There would be an explosion. Some of the bodies with damage from shotgun shells could be left in the mess to burn and, since he and Dione were on record as having the building under surveillance, they could call in a fire as soon as it showed.

  The following morning, the newspapers were full of the story of a Bronx drug lab exploding and killing four people. The now infamous ‘Apollo’ was mentioned with riders about how this would, hopefully, see an end to trade in the dangerous chemical. Detectives Williams and Hunter were mentioned as having tracked down the lab, but Mike knew little about his return to notoriety because he slept through until after midday: he had got to bed at five a.m.

  By the time Mike had got into SCU, Mary was already working her way through the confiscated computer systems while Dione went through paper documents. Mike had joined in while Winthrop continued his work on the Apollo virus itself. By Friday, they were ready to get together and organise a preliminary report for the Concilium, and the adjusted one which would go to the Commissioner, and they gathered to go over what they knew.

  ‘The lab’s computers were something of a disappointment,’ Mary admitted. ‘They set a virus loose on them which did a fairly good job of deleting everything. I’ve recovered fragments, mostly useless stuff, but enough to confirm the link to Societas. I had significantly more luck with the personal equipment we confiscated from the vampires involved.’

  ‘Didn’t have time to blank those?’ Mike suggested.

  ‘Precisely. Behr’s laptop was pretty clean. Nothing much on it to suggest he was anything other than a German businessman.’

  ‘He’s been around since the thirties,’ Dione said, ‘primarily because
, while he was an arrogant asshole, he was careful.’

  ‘His subordinates were less so. Bragging over email to friends about how they were going to change the world. The plan was definitely to flood New York with Apollo and watch the carnage. With people using the stuff to spike drinks, we might have found it difficult to trust any supplicants. There would have been more vampires going mad.’

  ‘How are we coming on that front, Winthrop?’ Dione asked.

  ‘Quite well,’ the old man replied. ‘I have a simple antigen test which can be deployed fairly quickly. A drop of blood on a card, the colour changes if there is Apollo present. I’ve spoken to Leo about getting it manufactured. It’ll be rolled out to the various pascua soon.’ He appeared to consider the statement and looked at Mike. ‘Pascua are the “brothels” where supplicants can be found, like the Candle. It’s Latin for “pasture.”’

  ‘And becoming a little antiquated,’ Dione added, ‘since it tends to suggest humans are cattle, but no one’s come up with a better name.’

  ‘Doll house,’ Mary said sourly. ‘Because it’s where you find blood dolls.’

  ‘I said better name.’

  ‘Point taken. There is one thing which worries me in the emails. A couple of the people mentioned “friends in high places,” suggesting that nothing could go wrong because they were protected.’

  ‘No indication of how high, or who?’

  ‘I suspect that if there actually was someone, not just a fiction to keep the troops happy, then Behr was the only one who knew who it was.’

  Dione frowned. ‘Okay, keep that out of the report.’ She glanced around. ‘If there’s a senior vampire involved in this, it’s my business.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Winthrop said before Mike could say anything, ‘but something is bothering me about what I’m finding too. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Societas created Apollo.’

  ‘That was almost a given,’ Dione agreed. ‘Vampires typically don’t have the creativity to come up with something like this. That applies doubly to Societas.’