Eldritch Ops

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Vampires move at three times a normal human’s speed on average and are about as strong. Blood slaves tend to be as strong as an Olympian but aren’t superhuman. Thankfully, I’ve got the red, white, and blue pills for my team.”

  “You’re juicing?” I asked, surprised.

  The White Room was always experimenting with combining magic and medicine. There were plenty of ancient potions left over from Viking, Han Dynasty, and Roman times to give soldiers a boost in battle. The White Room thought these could be mass produced and improved on with SCIENCE, but the results were unpredictable. Everyone reacted differently when magic was involved, and it remained a case of “let the user beware.”

  “Some of my crew aren’t human, but for the ones who are, I don’t want them getting caught with their pants down by the monsters. I recommended to the Committee all strike teams should be on the pills. The occasional freakout and collateral is less of a problem than the casualties we suffer every year.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And people wonder why you’re not a registered agent anymore.”

  “Because my dad is on the Committee so they couldn’t kill me, but I’m not willing to drink the Kool-Aid and say they have our best interests at heart.”

  I chuckled. “It’s good to see you, Alec.”

  Alec sucked on his electronic cigarette before responding. “It’s good to see you, too. So, we steal a transport for them to evacuate in and dump them somewhere where they can get picked up by the Red Room?”

  “Yes, and that’s classified.”

  “Sure it is.” My brother snorted. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  What happened next was everything became like television static. I saw the next few hours in scattered images, like an old VHS tape that had been damaged and played anyway.

  It was weird, but I could see past the veil of reality during this horrific moment. There, I saw Evan’s true visage, that of a woman with long crimson tresses whose face was obscured by a horrific head injury. But it looked so familiar to me I could almost whisper her name into the air.

  What followed were a series of mind-twisting images as I struggled to remember an event I’d repressed. Years later, I couldn’t recall what happened in the warehouse the night Christopher was taken away by the vampires and half of Alec’s team were killed. It had been a trap, of course, a trail of breadcrumbs left by the Vampire Nation to lure Red Room agents to their doom. All the Network members had already been turned into draugr, unintelligent zombies who feasted on the flesh of the living, while almost thirty vampires awaited us.

  The images that remained were a collection of stills, frozen in time. I tried to sort them into a coherent narrative, but it was difficult—almost impossible.

  Alec throwing a phosphorous grenade at a group of draugr.

  Shannon turning into a bat-winged creature with horns and claws, tearing through the vampires.

  A dozen vampire corpses, their heads and hearts shot once each, surrounding me in a circle. I held Christopher’s gun in one hand and my own in another, having achieved a Zen-like state of battle.

  Christopher disappearing into the shadows as an obscuromancer pulled him into the darkness.

  The Raptors leaving me behind on my own request as the roof collapsed in the flames.

  An Elder vampire screaming as I tore his limbs off and drank his blood to give me the strength to crawl my way through the fire and collapse at the foot of the ambulance people.

  Dracula, dressed in plain clothes, looking down at me and letting me survive. I daresay he’d been impressed with my capacity for horror and will to survive.

  The horrific vengeance I’d taken on the vampires of New York City thereafter.

  I felt ill.

  I found myself in a reproduction of my apartment in Boston, a luxurious penthouse I’d once shared with my wife. It had a widescreen television set, a white-cushioned couch, and a fabulous view of the harbor with more causal wealth on display than I could remember having since. In the right corner of the room was a painting worth over a million and a half dollars, which Cassandra had gotten me for our first wedding anniversary. I remembered it because I hated it but couldn’t sell it without hurting her.

  The world shifted for a second, and I saw a brief flash of red and gore with images of Cassandra being shot by Shannon, the destruction of an island in the South Pacific, and a blood ritual between a robed woman and a one-eyed man with a staff. When the false apartment returned to “normal,” I saw Evan lying on the couch.

  Naked.

  Well, almost naked. She was wearing a ruby necklace which lay between her breasts in a rather transparent attempt to draw attention to them. While noticing the almost supernaturally attractive woman, it wasn’t enough to distract me from the horrible images I’d just been exposed to, or how obvious her identity was.

  “Hello, Mary,” I said, keeping my eyes on her face. “Done poking around in my memories?”

  “Oh, Derek, I haven’t even begun.” Bloody Mary purred. “You cut open a vampire’s throat to drink his blood in order to survive. You were able to tap into ancient warrior magic to slay dozens of beings far stronger than you. Indeed, you saved your brother and partner’s life.”

  “My partner died,” I said, my voice cold and unfeeling. “As for the rest, I don’t remember it very well. I was happy just having scattered images.”

  “No one remembers it very well when they awaken to their power. You thought it was facing the Wazir, but it was far earlier. Yet you tried to suppress your insights and strengths. Why?” Bloody Mary asked.

  “Because my power came during a traumatic and horrifying mission?” I snarked.

  Bloody Mary chuckled. “Perhaps. Yet that environment is where you thrive. If you had been born to different parents in different circumstances, you might have been a detective or a soldier or perhaps an investigator for the FBI who specialized in serial killers. Something that would take you to the darkness.”

  “First, never suggest I’d work for the FBI again. I hate those people. Worst infiltration of my life. Second, I don’t want you creeping around in my head ever again. There’s a difference between exorcising you from my body and destroying you outright.”

  “Tsk-tsk,” Bloody Mary said, looking at me. “What a pity. I can feel there’s a part of you that hungers for bloodshed . . . and me. One can feed the other.”

  “I love Shannon,” I said.

  “So? I like her. Her lust for murder and sex is almost as great as my own.” Bloody Mary sounded bored.

  I could feel tendrils of darkness creeping in my mind, trying to force me to abandon myself to darker impulses. To take Bloody Mary in my arms and have the same sort of rough, intense, passion-driven sex I’d just had with Shannon. Closing my eyes, I drew on those intense feelings and snapped my fingers. There was a scream as I banished Mary to the dark recesses of my soul, leaving my consciousness my own for the next few hours.

  Then I woke up.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I woke up with a monstrous headache. The air smelled acidic and my lungs burned. Above my head, the smoke alarm was beeping. My eyes stung, and I had to blink them several times in order to see straight. Great. The house was on fire.

  Unconcerned save in the most general sense, I slipped into my boxer shorts and walked to the kitchen. It had been demolished. The refrigerator looked like someone had thrown a giant rock into it, spilling all its contents onto the floor, and the countertop was crushed. The cabinets had been seared as if hit by a flamethrower, charred black but not burning, the heat having been too hot to start a fire.

  No, the smoke came from somewhere else.

  Carefully stepping through the kitchen, I saw the living room was demolished as well, and a Middle Eastern man’s upper torso lay face down in the middle of a shattered coffee table. His lower body was missing and there was a faint aroma of sulfur and brimstone to the air, the smoke that triggered the alarm from here. There were burn marks across the couch and carpet.


  Shannon was cleaning up the broken glass from the coffee table with a broom and a dustpan, wearing a pair of green camouflage pants with a green camo top. It was obviously something she’d just thrown on. Either that or she had some very strange taste in battle attire, possible given her skin was harder than Kevlar.

  Shaking my head, I said, “Should I even ask?”

  “Do you like false reassurance?” Shannon asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then no, everything’s fine,” Shannon said.

  I rubbed my eyes before sighing. “What happened?”

  “Dracula sent a djinn after us,” Shannon said.

  Djinn, the inspiration for genies, were the Arabic peninsula’s equivalent of fairies. A collection of pre-Islamic gods and spirits, their power ranged from the omnipotent to no stronger than human wizards. They were a race born from smoke and fire who could transform into both at will. Like the rakshasas, they were one of the few supernatural races to have formed an empire as strong as the Red Room.

  Leaning down, I turned over the dead body and checked the face of the dead man. Much to my surprise, I recognized him from the thousands of POI (Person of Interest) photographs I’d been required to memorize. It was Ali al-Fariq, the Living Smoke Which Kills. He was one of the many djinn imprisoned by angels in inanimate objects for crimes against humanity. Unlike the genie of the lamp, he didn’t grant wishes (which wasn’t what he did in Arabian Nights anyway). Ali murdered people his ring desired dead.

  Dracula had acquired the Living Smoke Which Kills after killing a Turkish General who bargained it for his life (and was cheated) when the vampire was still Vlad III of Wallachia. The Vampire King had used it less than a dozen times across history, killing Committee members, heroes, and rivals with its power. The fact that he’d chosen to use it against us showed he was getting desperate. It also proved he’d not only survived the plane’s destruction but also was awake and active.

  “You know this guy?” Shannon asked, looking down.

  “It’s Dracula’s favorite hatchet man.”

  “Score one for Team Living, then.”

  “If you want to look at it that way,” I said. “We need to leave.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Shannon said, surprising me. “It came through my dreams. I was able to force it to manifest. If Dracula’s goons were capable of following it, they would have been here an hour ago.”

  “It’s been dead for over an hour?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, you slept like you were dead. I thought you were under a curse.”

  “I was, after a fashion.” I stopped in mid-sentence. This next bit of conversation was going to be awkward.

  “Derek …”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. There was no way around this and it was better to just fess up while I still could. “Bloody Mary tried to seduce me last night.”

  Shannon looked between us. “Excuse me? When? Did she sneak in while I was asleep? Because I’m usually not a light sleeper. Especially for sex.”

  “In my dreams.”

  “Uh-huh,” Shannon said. “So, did you get . . . seduced?”

  “No,” I said, sighing. “I pushed her away.”

  “Why?”

  I wondered if she was playing with me. “Most girlfriends wouldn’t be asking that. They’d either be upset with me because no one likes to think about their partner cheating, even if they turn down the opportunity, or happy I told you about it. You seem curious.”

  Shannon put her hands on her hips. “Derek, we’ve both slept with other people since we started our relationship.”

  “Yes, for business.”

  “I’m going to question that. I’ve seen some of the girls you’ve hooked up with for business. You’re telling me you wouldn’t sleep with Ashley if you ever saw her again?”

  “This conversation is going in a very strange direction.”

  “I just want to know where we stand. Last year you wanted to start a relationship knowing I was a succubus and our jobs wouldn’t allow us to have a traditional heteronormative single-partner relationship.”

  I realized what she was asking. “You want to know where we stand.”

  “Do I?” Shannon said. “Maybe I was just trying to say I don’t care if you boff the demon.”

  “Boff?” I asked.

  “Shut up, it’s a real word.”

  “I don’t believe you don’t care,” I said, getting up and walking toward her. “I think you care a great deal.”

  “What I feel and what I don’t doesn’t matter much, does it? The same for you. Derek, if you have a demon in your head that wants to bang you and it’ll keep you alive against Dracula, I’m all for you taking her against the metaphysical table. Anything that prevents you from getting yourself killed out there.”

  “I love you, Shannon. I don’t want to be with anyone else.”

  Shannon snorted.

  “Okay, now this is getting insulting.”

  Shannon looked over her shoulder. “I’m not trying to insult you. It’s just we’ve both been forced to listen to the other person have sex over the past year. We’ve had to use every resource at our disposal to try and bring peace. That’s not going to change. Plus, you’ve got a bunch of girlfriends in your past. I’ve got a bunch of lovers, too. They’re going to come up. Love like they talk about in movies just isn’t in the cards.”

  I tried to figure out a good response. I came up blank. “You know, Hollywood has a lot to answer for. Movies never depict romantic conversations going this way. They’ve never depicted a realistic marriage or long-term relationship.”

  “Are we getting married?” Shannon asked, looking panicked.

  “Would you—” I started to ask.

  “Don’t.” Shannon pointed at my chest. “Don’t ask me that. Don’t even think it. Backpedal like Godzilla is coming after us and we can’t turn around.”

  “What an odd metaphor,” I said.

  Shannon slumped her shoulders, defeated. “Derek, have I told you about my past?”

  “Yes, though you’ve lied about it constantly.”

  “Only about my appearance, where I was from, and the fact that I was a supernatural sex monster.”

  “You’re not a monster.”

  “I am,” Shannon said, giving a sad smile. “I was raised by my mother until I hit puberty. I was always special. People, especially men, paid an inordinate amount of attention to me. My mother was able to protect me from anything . . . untoward . . . happening, but it wasn’t much of a danger anyway. Even if they were attracted to me, most men aren’t rapists waiting to pounce.”

  “I’ll inform the media.”

  Shannon glared at me. “When I was twelve, my father came back for me. As far as my mother knew, he was just some guy she’d shacked up with for a feverish week of booze and sex. He was an incubus, though, and I was a succubus coming into my power. Do you know what happened?”

  I did. I’d read her file just as she’d read mine. “I have a suspicion. I know this isn’t a comfortable topic for you.”

  Shannon snorted. “Comfortable isn’t the right word for it, no. He showed me how to kill. When you’re young, moral frameworks like religion or law are ephemeral things compared to sex and pleasure. At that age, my hormones and the rush from feeding made me think my father’s words were right. How could there be anything wrong with killing and rape when they felt so good?”

  “While not one to cast stones, perhaps this isn’t the best conversation to be had after my confession of eternal love,” I said.

  Shannon stared at me, her eyes full of long-repressed sadness. “It’s the perfect time to have this conversation. I did unforgivable things, Derek, and I did them for years.”

  “You were a child,” I said. “Titus is responsible for all that you did. Not you.”

  I’d done research on Shannon’s father, one of the last pure-blooded lilin left on Earth. According to rumor, Titus was the son of Tiamat-Abaddon an
d Lucifer himself, though I suspected that was hyperbole. All the Red Room could say for certain was he’d shown up in the sixteenth century and had been fathering lilin ever since. It was his modus apparandi to corrupt them to Satanism (and not the Anton Lavey kind) before unleashing them on the rest of the world’s peoples for shit and giggles.

  Shannon looked down at the floor. “That’s not his real name, you know. It’s just the one he chose to go by. God, what a pretentious fuck.”

  “You killed him, though,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Shannon didn’t sound sure.

  “Maybe?” That was a surprise to me. Shannon had never indicated in any of our conversations her father might still be around.

  “My father was a master of lies. When he finally asked me to do too much, when the weight of all my sins started registering, I turned on him and broke his neck before leaving him in a burning church to die. The fact is, there’s no telling what I remember happening actually happened. He had the power to manipulate my mind.”

  “But incubi can only manipulate the minds of those they—oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Shannon said.

  “Then you . . .” I trailed off.

  “Do you want to go there?” Shannon asked.

  I did not. “Not in the slightest. In fact, I’d like to drive a screwdriver in my head and pour bleach down the hole to burn away the image. I’d also like to find him, dead or alive, and put him in a wood chipper. Alive, if possible.”

  “Thank you. That’s kind of sweet,” Shannon said.

  “Well, I am odd, and sometimes I’ve been known to be sweet,” I said, paraphrasing Bill from Kill Bill.

  Shannon snorted. “Says the guy who swears by video games he watches on the internet.”

  “It’s a new medium for art,” I said. “It’s going to be huge eventually. We need to get in on the ground floor of this.”

  Shannon rolled her eyes. “Derek!”

  I raised my hands in surrender. “Sorry for digressing. So, what you’re saying is you don’t think you deserve to be loved.”

  “I’m saying I have issues, and maybe you should look elsewhere if you want the white picket fence,” Shannon said.