“Where?” It was all Julius could manage, his voice strangled in his throat.

Killian shook off the two men who were supporting him, and came over to Julius. In a quiet voice he said. “You all right?”

Julius nodded, suddenly impatient with everything but struggling to keep his cool. “Where?” he repeated.

Killian nodded. “In the astral, Street signs are impossible to read, but there was no mistaking the geography. He’s in some kind of research compound in Hell’s Kitchen, which puts him about two hours from here, counting checkpoints and the like. I couldn’t get too close. The place is guarded like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Everything from alarms to paranormals. The background count there is nothing short of explosive. I got a headache just scanning the place. It’s going to take everything you got to bust him out.”

Julius nodded again, and felt the strength flow back into his body. Now that he had a concrete objective, an actual enemy to face, he was on track. It was the waiting that had almost killed him.

He nodded. “I want you to get together with Biggs. He’s in charge of the decker. Narrow his range of search for him, and get me as much info as you can on this place, everything from tactical to shipping requirements. I want to know what kind of deliveries they get, how much food they eat, and what they use to wipe their hoops. Everything. And I want it an hour ago.”

Even through Killian’s smile. Julius could see the exhaustion. Julius put a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “Good work. After you’ve talked to Biggs, get yourself some rest.”

Julius turned to the men all around him in the warehouse. “All right, everybody! Listen up!”

The raucous noise calmed quickly, until the only sound filling the room was the dull whine of the portable generators.

“We got a locale, and within the hour, we should have more tech info. If this place pans out the way I think it will, we’ll hit them tonight, under cover of dark. I want all vehicles running silent by noon. We’ll take them quick and quiet, and hit them so hard and fast they won’t even know we’re there until they’re already dead.”

Silence was the only reply. These men had been hand-picked by Julius, and they were all professionals who knew the risks. But they were also the most loyal men Julius knew. There wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t lay down his life for this job, because each one knew that if the tables were turned, the same effort would be made to rescue him.

Julius gazed around at his men once again, and wondered how many of them wouldn’t be coming back. If the place was fortified the way Killian said, this whole thing might end up being a blood bath. Still, these were competent warriors with skill and experience, If anybody could pull this off, it was them.

“All right that’s it. Back to work.”

With that, the warehouse exploded back into activity.

14

In his younger days, Martin de Vries was known as an exceptional mage who became an initiate of Ordo Maximus while completing his hermetic studies at Oxford. Then he dropped out and began to finance his own researches into magical threats. His contemporaries found him paranoid, antisocial and obsessive, but de Vries was convinced a secret society of vampires was planning to take over the whole world for their own insane purposes. Despite the ridicule he met at every turn, he undertook a series of one-man vampire hunts in Europe between 2040 and 2051. Then he completely vanished from sight for some eighteen months.

– 

Posted to Shadowland BBS by Doktor Freeman and the Deatheore Kid, 22 March 2055

Just inside the perimeter of Hell’s Kitchen, with the dim pool of the only working street light showing dry, gray dust swirling over her feet, Sinunu Sol stood to one side of the stepvan, painting her albino flesh with a multicolored camo stick. With each angry stroke of the stick across the flesh of her face, she had to up-end the stick and look into the small mirror on the stick’s bottom. The scars on her face tended to cause the camo to bunch up and leave tracks that might give her heat signature away to anyone peeking into the thermal spectrum.

“Damn it,” she said.

Out of the back of the van, Truxa Fin poked her head around the corner. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a tight French braid showing off her delicately pointed ears. Truxa was dressed similarly to Sinunu, swirling desert blacks that seemed to shift into shades of gray with each movement and down around her neck rested a face-covering balaclava hood with built-in air filter and tacticom gear. Truxa was small for an elf, one of the things Sinunu liked about her. Somehow, Truxa made the androgynous battle wear seem feminine, almost sexy. “Sin, baby, what’s wrong?”

Sinunu looked up, and couldn’t help but smile. It was like that every time she saw Truxa. A calm, giddy feeling Sinunu had no control over. “Nothing. Just a little bent about having to babysit the bimbo. She shouldn’t even be coming along.”

Truxa smiled and leaned down, kissing Sinunu firmly on the lips, letting her soft tongue slide gently into the bigger woman’s mouth. After a second, Truxa pulled back. “We all know how you feel, baby, but Sandman is almost in, and you need to be quiet, ‘kay?”

Suddenly, Sinunu felt something stir deep in her gut, something black and ugly. More ugly than any of her teachers at the White Oak Foundation would ever have been able to put there. It was an instinct that was undeniable. With an almost vicious gesture, Sinunu grabbed Truxa by the shoulder and lifted her easily. Pulling her close, Sinunu kissed her, hard. She poured everything she felt into that kiss, everything she had never really been able to put into words about how much she loved Truxa.

After a second, Truxa melted into her embrace, and returned the kiss with just as much passion. When Sinunu finally broke away, Truxa said, “Damn, girl. What was that for?”

Sinunu just shrugged, setting Truxa back on her feet. “I won’t be covering your six tonight, and I guess it’s got me worried. You watch your back.” Which was the truth, but not nearly close to how desperate Sinunu was beginning to feel. Something was going to go wrong, and somebody was going to get hurt, she knew it, just as surely as she knew her own name.

Truxa reached up with a long, delicate hand, and gently stroked some of Sinunu’s camo back into place. “You just worry about yourself, baby. You’re the one with all the extra baggage tonight.”

Sinunu nodded. “I just hope the recon information is steady. There’s no way I’m going to let that biff frag us.”

Truxa smiled. “Chill, baby. The recon’s tight. You know Flak wouldn’t let us walk in without it.”

From inside the stepvan. they heard Sandman’s whisper coming over the small speaker mounted on the inside wall of the van. “I’m in,” he said. “Damn, this guy’s good.”

Truxa and Sinunu turned in the direction of the back doors, but came up short as the tall, stooped figure of Martin de Vries seemed to materialize in front of them. There was a grave expression on his face. “It looks like we have luck on our side tonight.”

Sinunu felt her face tighten. Maybe it was because for the first time in her life, she had to deal with someone who actually frightened her. Or maybe it was the fact that with his pale skin and lifeless eyes, Martin de Vries looked like her. Like an albino. It made her think that maybe they had more in common than she liked to consider. Still, she fought against her feelings. He was a Johnson, like so many others before him, and he was paying them ridiculously well for what seemed like a straightforward, if very dangerous, assignment.

“Yeah, lucky us.” Sinunu started to step around him, but de Vries put up a hand.