by Arthur Slade
Amber Fang 3
Revenge
Arthur Slade
Dava Enterprises
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Amber Fang 3: Revenge
Copyright © 2018 by Arthur Slade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Blood in the Sand
2. The Unvarnished Truth
3. Mysterious Headgear
4. The Land of the Swedish Cook
5. Ugly Shoes, Ugly Customers
6. A Termination
7. Cry Baby Cry
8. Bowling a Strike
9. The Gravity of the Situation
10. Visiting Elysium
11. Contact Made
12. Wonderful World of
13. A Peculiar Sniffing
14. Itching the Grütschalp
15. A Looney Tunes Moment
16. Name in Vain
17. A Wrinkle in the Plan
18. The Only Way In
19. What the Hell We Did
20. A Door Opens, A Door Closes
21. The Guessing Game
22. Quite the Number
23. The Bull Elephant
24. An Offer of Ice Cream
25. A Table Set for Six
26. May I Sing?
27. Out of the Flying Pan
28. A Heroic Figure
29. A Pitch in Time
30. You Chose Her
31. Nevermore
32. A Lady and a Vampire
33. The Details
34. That Unbound Feeling
35. The Old and the New
About the Author
Also by Arthur Slade
Arthur Slade’s Somewhat Secret Reader’s Club
1
Blood in the Sand
My first goal was to not spill any blood in the sand.
Placencia is a small fishing village in Belize with an odd mix of tired, quaint buildings and fancy new tourist digs made of faux palm trees and glass. The beach is not much more than a strip, yet it’s beautiful, and there’s a lovely view of the Caribbean Sea. The tourists were generally happy, the locals had genuine smiles, and the weather was calm.
It was a shame I was hunting a murderer here.
A shame but totally necessary. A girl has got to eat.
The sand on the beach squished pleasurably between my toes. The palm trees waved pleasantly above me. The air was stinking hot, but I’d taken the precaution of slathering a 45 SPF suntan lotion from my feet to my forehead. The sun won’t kill me, but vampires burn easily—well, the white ones do. I wore a black one-piece swimsuit and a lovely straw hat.
The man I was going to eat had just lowered his chiselled and tattooed body onto a red towel. Those tattoos would be used to identify his corpse later. He was Grigoriy Belyakov and, as you could guess by his name, he was Russian. Not ballet-loving Russian. But more the Kalashnikov-firing, vodka-loving type. Someone has to be the stereotype.
He was also a high-level employee of ZARC industries and the key to where my mother had been taken. There were at least twenty people—from journalists to envoys to bystanders—who had been killed by this hit man. And he obviously was experiencing no regrets for those murders. In fact, he’d just finished several regret-free sangrias before heading to the beach.
He was exactly the type of man my mother, Nigella Fang, would approve of—for eating, that is. She had taught me only to have ethical meals. It was how vampires should behave. Apparently, she and I were in the minority as far as vampires were concerned. The rest of my relatives will eat any human they can sink their teeth into. They are so gauche.
I’d followed Grigoriy from his cabin and had been keeping my eye on him over the last twenty-four hours. As far as I could tell, he was alone here, which suggested he was truly on holiday. He adjusted his sunglasses and, lo and behold, pulled out a book to read. I squinted, but couldn’t tell what the title was.
So he wasn’t completely horrible. The fact he was a reader meant I’d be extra careful to not mess up the feeding part of this venture. That’s my deal with murderers who have enough taste to be bookworms—no messy death!
Not that I was a naturally messy eater. Sometimes mess happens.
I chose a shady spot several feet away, spread out my own towel, sat down, and watched him closely. I even separated this heartbeat from all the sun-slowed heartbeats of the sunbathers around him. The breeze carried his scent my way, bringing a pleasant cologne.
I watched.
And I watched.
The crashing waves and the heat were sleep inducing, and I hadn’t been sleeping well since I’d seen my mom at a ZARC compound in Canada three months ago. I thought I’d rescued her by grabbing a huge egg, but inside it, waiting like a scorpion, was my father.
It was kind of like finding a dog turd inside a Christmas present.
Dad was still in that egg at a military base in Montana. Dermot had rejigged the dials and revamped the life-sustaining systems and we were pretty sure my father would continue to live. I wanted Dad to stay on ice. Permanently, if necessary.
Dermot had been helping me track down Mom, but his resources have shrunk like Cinderella’s pumpkins at midnight. He was basically all that was left of the once-powerful League. That League was a group of do-gooders who wanted to rid the world of enemy agents. But they were mostly wiped out by several ZARC hit teams.
Dermot was watching me watch the murderer. By that I mean Dermot was observing the scene with a drone that hovered at a very great height above this beach. I could just hear its rotors. No one else should be able to.
Our big break came three weeks ago when I received a text that said: From one book lover to another. A gift. The image of Grigoriy was texted to me along with a PDF of his hit man background and a copy of his travel plans.
Is that you Agnes? I texted back. There was no reply.
There was also no way to trace the origin of the text. The number said: 000000000. There was no conceivable way for anyone to have my secret phone number other than Dermot. Yet, the text had still arrived. Nothing Dermot did—and he went all geeky on it—could find the source.
I was certain the text had come from the Returns—the ninja librarians who rescued me from my sister’s clutches. Even thinking that such a thing as ninja librarians existed still sounded ludicrous. But I’d seen their glinting dart guns and deadly-accurate crossbows. Their official name was the Preservational Librarians Guild, and their goal was to preserve human knowledge and civilization. But they also had a policy of not interfering with the day-to-day world.
But I was pretty certain the text had come from the one ninja librarian who’d disobeyed their orders of non-interference to give me information about Mom’s location. Agnes. I could still see her dark, friendly face. I’d only said a few words to her.
But she knew me intimately. She was a Fanger—apparently there is a faction of librarians who follow my exploits using metadata and information sweeps and…well, who knows how. But they call themselves Fangers.
I still blush when I think of that. I have fans!
Fanger fans!
I was certain the reasons behind the text would come clear once I’d eaten Grigoriy.
Two blissful hours passed. I read. Snoozed with one eye
open. The drone hovered.
My current read was Life of Pi, which seemed perfect for the beach—it was easy to fall into a novel about a boy trapped on a boat with a tiger when you hear the waves only a few feet away. My only complaint was there wasn’t enough bloodletting in the book. I did find myself identifying with the tiger far too closely.
I must have snoozed with both eyes closed. Because when I opened them again, Pi was in the sand and Grigoriy was gone.
But it was a beach and he’d left tracks, so I followed them. Oddly enough he’d walked right beside me—dangerously close—but that could have been because the beach was so crowded and he’d been forced to take that path.
He had wandered over to one of the open bamboo huts set up with ping-pong tables, foosball, and other games for the tourists. The one he’d chosen had a pool table, and I heard the crack crack of balls smashing into each other, then spotted him leaned over the table sizing up his next shot. He seemed to be almost angry at the balls.
Death would soothe that anger.
I scanned the surrounding area to be sure no one was watching or nearby. Four posts held the roof above the table, and the walls were only hip-high—the rest was open air. The walls would block any action once I had him on the ground. And I didn’t need much more than two minutes to feed.
He was facing away from me, so I snuck up the stairs without making a creak and slipped up behind him. He began to turn, perhaps had sensed my presence, but I clamped my hand on his shoulder and flipped him onto his back so hard it drove the air out of his lungs and the balls on the table popped up and down. I landed on him, with both knees on each side of his chest.
He snarled something in Russian and reached out with his meaty arms to choke me, but was surprised when I grabbed them and easily pushed them back down. I licked my lips and noted that there was an octopus arm tattooed around his neck. The rest of the octopus was on his back.
“We’ll be conversing in English,” I said. “Get it?”
He narrowed his thick eyebrows and replied, “Yes. I speak English.”
“Good. You work for ZARC right?”
“ZARC? Vhat is this ZARC?” He smiled as he said this.
“Don’t play games. You’re only half as clever as you think. You have information I need and you’ll give it to me. Now.”
“Vhat information do you be needing?”
“There is a woman in your care, Nigella Fang. Do you know her?”
His smile widened. “Ov course, she’s big bride.”
“Bride?”
“Pride, is dat da word?”
“Pride?” Jesus, we were doing an Abbott and Costello routine.
“Prize,” he said finally. “Big prize. I don’t like your English words.”
“Well, you won’t like this. I want you to tell me exactly where she’s located. I need to find her.”
“Dey know you are looking for her. You will not find her. You will die.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. I pushed my right knee even harder into his chest. “Anyway, you’re here to help.” He tried to get up and I slammed him down. “I don’t want to be testy about it, but I will break things. Things that are part of you.”
“I’ve had everyting broken,” he said.
Oh, that would make it harder to threaten him. And I don’t know that I could truly torture someone by snapping fingers or pulling off extremities. But as far as a comeback, all I came up with was, “You’ve never been questioned by a vampire. I’ll go all medieval on your ass.”
He chuckled. I was starting to hate this man. He just wasn’t taking me seriously enough.
Then…footsteps.
I snapped my head to the side, expecting to find an accomplice with an AK-47. Dermot was watching from a drone, but he was at least three minutes away if he ran fast.
Our visitor was a white woman in an orange bikini. “Oh, sorry,” she said.
I slipped my hand over Grigoriy’s mouth so he couldn’t talk. He bit me, but I didn’t pull my hand away.
“I haven’t seen him for months,” I said, adding a conspiratorial wink. “I just couldn’t help myself. He looks good enough to eat.” She grinned, gave me the thumbs up, and backed away.
We were alone again.
I yanked my hand away from his mouth. He’d actually drawn blood. “Don’t bite me! I’ll bite you.”
But in that moment of distraction, he had grabbed my shoulder and, in a wrestling move, he shifted me to the side, slammed me down, and was somehow on top of my back, forcing my face into the sandy floor.
I twisted my head because it’s always important to see your opponent. Grigoriy was grinning and perfectly at ease. He reached quickly into his hair and came out with a long filament that glittered slightly. It had two little knobs on either end.
What the hell?
Its purpose became clear when he pulled it around my neck and began to twist.
A garrotte. He’d somehow tied it into his short hair. Nice trick that, I thought as I began to choke.
2
The Unvarnished Truth
I panicked and snapped my head back, but he was pressing me down with his knee and pulling hard, managing to cut off the blood supply. He’d cut off my neck if he yanked hard enough.
I realized Dermot would be seeing none of this struggle because the roof would block his view. This had been a stupid place to launch my attack.
I tried to elbow Grigoriy and missed, then attempted to throw him off like a bucking bronc, but every movement just tightened the thin, seemingly unbreakable noose around my throat.
Seemingly unbreakable, that was the key. With a sudden flash of inspiration, I reached up but didn’t grab the garrotte because it would only cut my finger. Instead I drew my nails across it.
They are sharp as swords, but the wire didn’t snap. I tried again, my thoughts going black. Nothing happened.
The third time, I caught the wire perfectly and it snapped. Grigoriy fell back. I sucked in a deep breath and my thoughts returned.
And with them, action.
Grigoriy had launched himself at me, hands out. I took both his arms, slammed him to the floor again, and then pinned him down. And I went for the neck.
“Drink my blood, no answers for you,” he said.
“We’ll see about that,” I said. My throat was raw. “People talk more when they’re closer to death.”
“I von’t talk. Never. Ever.”
He tried to use some sort of rolling move he’d likely learned in the KGB, but I’m fast, and I found his gloriously big carotid vein with my teeth and his blood burst into my mouth. I could taste the sangrias! The paralytic agent delivered by my teeth immediately did its work to make him sleepy and his struggles stopped. His body and his blood had been warmed by the sun, and something about being under the shade of palm trees made it taste better. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re feeding: everything slows down, including his heart and my own, which beat in slower and slower syncopation with his.
But I didn’t want to kill Grigoriy. Not yet. I needed to, of course—he was my monthly feed. Feeling drowsy, I slowly pulled away. Looked. Two perfect holes. Not a drop of blood spilled. Damn, I was good. And he was a reader, after all.
“Grigoriy Belyakov, wake up,” I said.
We were in somewhat new territory. I usually fed without an interrogation, but Dermot had done a few quick tests on the paralytic agent I injected into my meals and discovered there was a similar compound in it to truth serum.
So we’d cooked up a theory that people would be easier to interrogate once I’d sucked out a good portion of their blood.
“Grigoriy Belyakov, you will tell me the truth,” I said, doing my best Svengali impression. “Awake and tell me the truth.”
His eyes slowly opened. A dim bulb of awareness appeared in them.
“Truth?”
Maybe this would work. “Yes, where is my mother, Nigella Fang?”
“She’s dead
,” he said, very slowly.
My heart stopped beating. My chest grew tight. “Dead?”
“Dead weight,” he said. Then he was silent, as if he was done explaining everything.
“What do you mean?”
“No eggs. No eggs.” He now slurred out a wet, slobbery chuckle. “Dead weight. Dead experiment.”
At first I thought he was hallucinating, but then it became clear what he meant. “She’s not fertile, you mean.”
He nodded aggravatingly slowly. Mom being infertile was not good news. Anthony Zarc had intended to weaponize her reproductive system for his biological military weapons. But if she was of no use to him, that meant he could dispose of her at any moment.
“She’s cheese,” Grigoriy added. “Cheese. Cheese.”
He was going bonkers. At least it was in English. Then my brain clicked again, remembering what cheese is for.
“She’s the cheese in a mousetrap. To draw me to ZARC.”
Grigoriy nodded slowly. “Smart mousie,” he said. And he sounded slightly more awake now. Could the paralytic agent be wearing off already?
“Where is she? You will tell me.”
He nodded. “In occupation room on experimental level.”
“I assumed she was in a cell, but where is it, which continent?” I almost shouted this.
“Da red one.”
“The red one? What country I mean?”
“Da big cheese one.”
“France? Italy?” Who the hell made cheese? And why did I have to play a guessing game? He was a smart bastard and obviously getting his faculties back.
“I can vink on my own now,” he said, grinning. “Ha. I vink. I vink.”
It was becoming clear that there wasn’t any way to get the goods out of him. Perhaps he had been trained in some sort of anti-truth technique. “I’ll eat you now,” I said. And I darted down to finish my feed.
But just as my teeth touched his neck, he whispered, “I feel regret. English word. Regret.“
“You what?”
