The Legacy Series (Book 1): Legacy [Sanguis]

by Ray, Timothy A.

  “I believe that’s a mistake, Mr. Crawford,” the woman replied.

  He looked straight at the mirror and firmed up his stance. “You heard what I said, now get the fuck out.”

  There was a knock on the window that cut off the detective’s retort. She gave it a passive glance, then looked straight into his eyes. She knew something was hinky. She didn’t know what but given enough time he had no doubt she’d figure it out. She also knew he had more to do with it than simply standing by watching, the bullet that he’d fired would prove that much. All they needed was time, and he couldn’t help worrying that time was something they didn’t have a lot of. People were out there dying and the only people that could stop it were being held in chains.

  Yet, what could he say or do to change of that? The asshole on the phone, he’d known the cops were coming, had probably sent them himself. They were exactly where that maniac wanted them to be. Who knew? Maybe he’d walk in and finally introduce himself?

  Crazier things had happened.

  As if called upon, the door opened and a tall man sporting a black vest, pants, and matching cowboy hat stepped inside, his gun holstered on his hip and very visible. “Pampering this asshole is getting us nowhere. We need answers now. The Feds are on the way and they’ll be taking custody once they get here. Then we’ll never find out what the fuck is going on. I’m not going to just stand by and let these maniacs slip through our fingers while their handiwork stinks up my morgue.”

  “He’s asked for his lawyer,” the woman returned with a smirk, then her brow furrowed as the door shut and the man’s gun came out of his holster. “Jason, what are you doing? You’re not allowed to bring a weapon in here. Protocol prohibits it.” Even though she sounded like she was scolding him, it sounded scripted, part of the scene; she didn’t seem upset by his bringing a weapon into the interrogation room at all.

  Looks like Danny Reagon has arrived and intent on getting his man.

  The man walked swiftly to his side of the table, grabbed the base of his neck and slammed his face into the table, his wrists screaming in protest as his body was shoved forward. He felt cold steel on the bare skin of his neck and knew that the muzzle had been pressed almost directly over his cerebellum. He’d be dead before he heard the gunshot, he’d never even know it happened.

  This asshole is serious.

  “I’m done with the lies. I want the truth, maggot,” the man snarled, pressing the gun against his neck even harder. “What were you and your friends doing out on that old plantation? Are you terrorist? Is that why you’ve killed five members of the Secret Service? Is there some greater plot against our Governor? Where are your compatriots, the ones that ran before we got there? She’s been lying to you, telling you of a long life getting sodomized by some racist dirtbag in prison, you’re going to die. We have the death penalty here in Texas, and I’ll make sure you go right to the front of the line if you don’t start telling me what the hell is going on, you psychopath!”

  He laughed. He tried to fight it off, to force it back down, but it erupted in a hysterical fit that nearly made him piss his pants. Yeah, there was an angry asshole holding a gun against the base of his skull. Yeah, he was scared shitless. But maggot? Really? It was so Dirty Harry that his sides began to hurt laughing so hard.

  The gun pressed so hard he started to see lights flicker across his vision, which was a bit better than the sight of the gunk on the table top he was getting a closer look at. “You find something funny, asshole?” the cowboy growled.

  “Good cop, bad cop,” he muttered with a grin, then eyed the woman across from him. She was feigning surprise and the look on her face only made him laugh harder. “If there was any chance you’d pull the trigger, your by the book partner over there wouldn’t be sitting there pretending to be shocked, she’d be moving to stop you.”

  “Oh, is that what you think?” the man hollered, and for a moment he nearly shit his pants at the thought of being wrong, but then the tension relaxed a bit and he was pulled back into a sitting position so hard his neck twinged.

  That was going to hurt later.

  “You get what you need?” the female cop asked, turning to the window.

  Two more knocks responded.

  Who the hell was back there watching? He thought the knocks had come from this angry asshole and his Glock. The presence of another observer only made the reality of this rogue violent cop even less scary. “I haven’t given you anything, nor will I,” he spat, wishing he could raise a hand and massage his neck; it was really starting to hurt. “Lawyer.”

  “You can uncuff him now,” a voice said over a small speaker in the corner of the room, sounding a bit like Naomi’s, and near the point of laughter.

  “Who’s the puta now? See if I don’t stick anything up your culo,” he growled, looking at his reflection and imagining that shitty grin of hers. “Fuck you.”

  “Maybe I should leave him cuffed for a bit, let him calm down,” the woman observed, getting to her feet. “Don’t need him trying anything stupid that will draw even more attention your way.”

  The intercom clicked, “as Jason so eloquently pointed out, the Feds are on the way. We need to be gone before they get here.”

  Benji entered the room in a fresh suit, all signs that he had recently ripped the throat out of an armored assassin obliterated, his calm exterior intact. “Officially, I would like to request that you release my client, as you have the statements and documents you require, and no charges have been filed.”

  The cowboy laughed, “going to try and mind whammy me? No need for that. I was only doing as your boss requested.”

  “Naomi told you to put a gun to my head?” he asked, as the female cop undid his cuffs. As soon as they were free, he immediately began massaging them and pulled himself to his feet. “Maybe I have a statement left to make after all.”

  The man’s eyes twinkled, but his face hardened, “that wouldn’t be wise.” He then turned to the awaiting accountant, who was passively meeting the man’s glance with practiced patience. “I’ve spoken to the London office. They’ve asked me to assist you in any way I can and asked me to pass along that two other teams are en route, they should be here in the next nine hours.”

  “In nine hours, this might all be over,” Benji remarked, raising his hand and beckoning him over. “Let’s get out of here. I appreciate your efforts on our behalf Sheriff, but we really must be going.”

  He spoke to the London office? They had the sheriff in their pocket?

  The cowboy smirked at his confused look. “I used to be one of you. I apologize if I was overly rough, I had to make sure you could be trusted. The only way to do that is to scare the shit out of you. You did well, better than I did my first time. Your comrade is right, though. Time to go.”

  Angrily, he shouldered his way past and made for the door. “If this is how you treat your friends, I would hate to see what you do to your enemies.” His eyes met Benji’s when he said it and the other man winced. Good, at least someone had a conscience.

  Chapter 12

  I

  Standing on the sidewalk before the Sheriff’s Department, he continued to rub his wrist as he watched Naomi load their gear in the back of the Humvee. Renny and Ezio assisted her as Benji hovered near the front end, eyes on the parking lot, eyes unfocused and dazed. He didn’t know where Speedy or the girls were, but at this point, he wasn’t sure that he cared. Maybe it was time to leave the freak show behind and go home.

  “You can’t do that. He probably has people watching your place. They’ll snatch you long before you even get out of the car,” Benji told him off-handedly, obviously reading his thoughts.

  Mind your own fucking business, he snapped back. “If you really wanted to test whether you could trust me to keep quiet, maybe you should have had him slap me around a bit, go at it a bit longer. Who knows what I might have said with a broken jaw and a concussion to boot.”

  Naomi shot him a dark glance and Ezio huffed.
Renny was the only one that seemed pained by what happened and the anger he held towards him slowly slipped.

  Again, it was Benji that spoke, “there was no need. I was there the whole time. I could read that you wouldn’t talk, no matter what he did to you. You were dug in and going to stick it out to the end. Why waste the time going any further?”

  “You could have gotten that without the violent display,” he growled back.

  “No, they couldn’t,” the Sheriff told him, exiting the double doors to his rear and walking their way. “Fear changes a person. Only when you see how they react to it can you make any kind of real assessment.” The man then turned to Naomi. “You sure you don’t want Detective Cooper’s help? She’s a damn fine officer and good at what she does. She knows the score.”

  Naomi had finished loading the Humvee and the other two had already risen as she turned and rubbed her palms together. “Got enough rookies to look after already.”

  “Look after my ass,” he snarked. “Besa mi culo, perra.”

  The Sheriff laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “This one’s a keeper. If you stop being such a hardass, and you might get more out of him.”

  Naomi cocked her head and her smirk slipped, “I’ll run my team the way I see fit. You’re not my teacher anymore. You decided to retire to the country and run for office, leave the hard stuff to the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, like anything I ever taught really stuck,” the man returned. “Maybe you should think of retiring as well. I saw the heat those hybrids were packing, things aren’t as simple as they used to be. When I was young, vamps were easier to track, as any drained body discarded in an alleyway alerted you to their presence. These days? Sick fucks do that shit while jerking off and dreaming of their mother. No, I’m done with that. I’m still hunting monsters, only now, they rarely hunt me in return. You have anything you want me to tell the home office?”

  “If I have anything to pass on, I’ll do it myself,” Naomi replied, then her face softened. “Thanks for getting us out of there, I know you’ll get hell for it.” She had taken a step up onto the sidewalk, the other two members of their crew having already disappeared around the side and out of sight.

  The Sheriff stuck out his hand, “for what? You were protecting yourself from armed trespassers. That’s all I know, and all the evidence will show as well.”

  She took it, “appreciate that.” Then her eyes flickered towards him. “Get in the Humvee, time to go.”

  As if it were business as usual.

  He hesitated. He knew that this was the last chance he had to walk away, that doing so would be easier now in the presence of law enforcement than later on in some house in the middle of the swamp, but part of him felt that the time for that had long passed. Like before he ever followed Benji downstairs looking for his wife.

  Without another word, he walked to the rear passenger door on the Humvee and got in, taking a seat next to Renny, Ezio’s face grinning at him from the front seat. He saw the man’s wolf face in the back of his mind super-imposed over that grin and he had to fight the shiver that wanted to snake up his back.

  Ezio nodded, “takes something, seeing that and not wetting yourself. She’s right, you do have the spark.”

  “I don’t care who is right about what,” he shot back, then looked out the passenger door at the parking lot beyond. There were rows of squad cars and unmarked vehicles, but very little in the way of movement. A fence ringed the parking lot and cars occasionally passed on the road adjacent, but there was no sign of civilization otherwise. “We’re not in the city.”

  “Jurisdiction for our plantation lies with the county,” Renny informed him. “We’re still out in the sticks and have a ways to go before we get back into town.”

  “That where we’re going?” he asked, not really caring. His back and wrists hurt and his neck was throbbing.

  Renny shrugged, “I have no clue. That’s up to her.”

  The woman in question opened the driver’s door and hopped in, Benji still nowhere to be seen. “Benji is hanging back, wants to see if he can pick up anything off the Feds, find out why they are interested in us.”

  “Not like we haven’t had run ins with them in the past,” Ezio responded.

  “It’s a little different when you’ve gunned down five law enforcement officers,” Renny returned.

  “Three,” Naomi corrected, turning the engine over. “Jason disposed of the two that Benji and Ezio here took out. Too many questions would be raised over their cause of deaths and would look nothing like the innocent self-defense of one’s home. We’re lucky those assholes were off book and didn’t have a legit reason to be on our property. Still, a cop is a cop.”

  The Humvee pulled forward and headed for the front gate just as a line of SUV’s appeared on the western road heading in their direction.

  “Looks like we’re a bit late,” Ezio told them needlessly.

  Naomi remained calm as she approached the gate and waved at the sheriff manning the automated fence. It slowly started to roll aside, nowhere near fast enough for his taste, the first of the SUV’s coming to a stop across the road, their blinker on. A semi blew past seconds later and Naomi moved the Humvee forward, coming to a stop at the edge of the road as the vehicles full of men in black suits crossed the road and entered the parking lot to their rear.

  His adrenaline was thundering once more as he tried not to look at the faces passing by. It was like trying not to look at a car wreck. His neck hurt even worse and he hadn’t even moved it.

  The Humvee pulled forward and began moving in the direction the SUV’s had traveled from. “Guess we got out of there just in time,” Naomi said, applying more pressure to the gas pedal and surging forward. “We should probably get off this highway as soon as possible. Once they realize we’re gone, someone’s going to remember us leaving.”

  “Well, our home base is burnt. How’s the backup?” Ezio asked, turning their way once more.

  “When I checked in with Ayana they said there was no indication that the location had been compromised. Has a clean up crew been dispatched to the plantation house?” Renny inquired, looking in Naomi’s direction.

  “I was told that Jason got on scene before any of his junior deputies could enter the house and he called in the crew himself while we were being transported to the station,” Naomi returned. “Good thing he came into work early otherwise we’d have more of a mess to clean up than we do now. Seems like the good Governor of Texas is running for President and those were members of his Secret Service detachment that we took out earlier. We’re facing a lot of exposure over this shit, so we need to go to ground and stay off the grid for a bit.”

  “And Scalps?” Renny asked softly.

  “Dead. She probably finished him off before stepping out to greet Benji,” she answered. “Wish I could have killed that bitch twice.”

  Renny was shaking his head, “makes no sense why he returned. He had to know they’d be following him, that he was leading them straight to us.”

  “According to a preliminary examination, his body was almost completely drained of blood. He had just enough to survive, the virus did the rest,” she told them.

  “Is he going to rise?” he asked, interjecting himself into the conversation for the first time. “Seems like we’ve got our hands full already without adding that to the mix.”

  Naomi’s eyes found him in the rear-view mirror and her brow furrowed, “no, Jason took care of it.”

  He nodded. Just as they would take care of him should he fail to survive. “Secret Service, huh? They didn’t seem like federal agents to me. More like hired mercenaries on performance enhancers. And doesn’t that imply that the Governor is in on this?” He didn’t get an immediate response, but the looks exchanged between Ezio and Naomi was enough of an answer. “Great. Well, we’re fucked. He’d be hard enough to get to on a regular day, but now that he’s seeking election? That man in the mask, that couldn’t be him, right?”

 
; “Vampires do tend to get involved with politics,” Renny supplied after a moment of silence. “They can use their telepathic abilities to influence the outcomes they desire, make agreements no sane person would make outside of their presence.”

  “That mean that Trump is a vamp?” he asked sarcastically with a grin.

  No one answered.

  “No fucking way,” he stammered, shaking his head.

  “No one knows for sure,” Naomi told him, cutting off Renny’s next reply. “It’s only been tossed about because of how fanatical his supporters are, how blind they are to reason. The man can lie like a motherfucker and people eat his bullshit up. It’s a good case for it, but we got no hard proof before he won the election and it’s virtually impossible now that he’s in the White House.”

  “That’s some fucked up shit,” he muttered.

  “Explains a lot though, right?” Renny asked with a twinkle in his eyes. “The last time they aimed this high was during the sixties.”

  “JFK wasn’t a—?” he began.

  Renny laughed. “No, his successor was. After the purge in Cuba, Johnson knew that Kennedy was going to be ordering teams to sweep through the States to flush them out. He couldn’t have that. You know, he was from Texas too, that can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Sure it can. I don’t think the geography matters other than there is a lot of empty land here to hide dead bodies,” Naomi replied back. “Plus, it’d be harder to become well-known in a state like Idaho or New Mexico, not as many voters to influence. We’re here.”

  “We’re where? The other safehouse?” he asked, looking out the window and seeing that they had pulled up at a bar with a parking lot full of motorcycles. They wouldn’t be hanging out here, would they?

  Naomi threw it into park and looked at him in the mirror once more. “No, I need a drink.”

  “Is it really the best time for that?” he asked, but Ezio and Naomi had already exited the vehicle, the slam of the front doors answer enough.