Coalition of the Damned - 03 (5 page)

With a start, Robert let her loose and almost spilled her on the front sidewalk of their home. “I’m sorry, baby,” he told her. “I’m so sorry. I forgot…”

“Holy cow, you got strong,” she gasped, staring up at him.

“Yeah.” He smiled at her sheepishly. He glanced about the neighborhood and then carried her into the house quickly. He kicked the door shut with his foot and took her to the bedroom, where he quickly turned on the stereo and cranked it up a little too loud for her tastes.

“Whoa, a little quick there, cowboy.” She eyed him suspiciously. “We are still technically divorced, you know.” She gave him that devilish look again.

Robert sat her on the bed and shut the door, then closed the blinds and shut the drapes. Barbara watched him suspiciously then stood and put her hands on her hips, more than just a bit annoyed. “Bob, what the hell are you doing?”

“Is Bobby still at school?” he asked.

“Until three, yes. I have to pick him up in four hours.” She was quickly becoming aggravated.

“Good.” He turned to her, his eyes desperate. “That’s just enough time.”

She hiked her brows at him again. “Maybe for you, cav
eman, but I’d like a little foreplay, if you don’t mind.” She turned her back on him and pulled the covers back on the bed. “Is it too much to ask for flowers, maybe take me to dinner? Hell, I’d settle for something other than a ‘hello’ kiss…”

Robert spun her around, pulling her from her mutterings. “Not this!” he whispered. She opened her mouth to give him a double barrel of what-for when he put his finger to his mouth to silence her. “We need to talk!”

Before Barbara exploded on him, she stopped and realized this behavior was SO unlike him. His eyes indicated that he was scared and Robert Mueller
never
got scared. She sat down on the bed and he pulled her close to him and began his tale. He told her everything. For the first time in Robert’s professional life, he broke every rule and as his story came out, so did the emotions. Tears flowed freely, but he didn’t let it show in his voice. She had to turn her ear to his mouth in order to hear him over the stereo and she didn’t have the opportunity to see his tears until his story was done.

At the end of Robert’s outpouring, she had questions and he answered them as best he could. He waited for her to scream at him, to yell, to ball her fists and strike him, to hate him. He could have taken that. He would have preferred that. But she didn’t. Instead, she did something far, far worse. She cried with him. She laid her head against his chest and they held each other while each took turns mourning the loss of something that they had both looked forward to exploring again.

Somehow in the emotional turmoil that had been the formal end of their marriage, they ended up in the floor, their bedspread pulled over them. Barbara called her mother and asked her to pick Bobby up from school and she arranged to pick him up a little later that evening. She told her mom that Robert was back in town and that they wanted to surprise Bobby; which was true, but neither of them was ready to face their son at the moment.

Robert explained that one of the team members had been abducted, and if they could steal away with an operator, then they could also come after a family member. Barbara practically shook with fear at the idea. Bob slipped out to his Jeep and came back with a small duffel bag. In a side pocket he had stashed a stack of magazines with silver bullets. “I took these from work. I would have gotten a gun for you, too, but they keep a pretty close eye on those.” He handed her the magazines.

Barbara looked at him as if he were stupid. “What am I supposed to do with these, Bob? Throw them at a vampire if they show up?” she whispered.

He smiled at her and dug to the bottom of the duffel bag. He pulled out a small, flat black plastic case. It had a large FN e
mbossed on the top. “Lucky for us, they happen to sell the same pistol to civilians. I picked one up as soon as I hit town.” He opened the case and proceeded to show her how to break down the weapon and he cleaned the factory goo from the inside of it. “I’m going to take you to the farm and show you how to use this. I got you some practice ammo just for that so we can save the silver for when it counts. This thing is a lot easier to use then that 9MM you’re used to.”

She checked out the weapon and smiled at him. “I like this. It’s light and just feels good in my hands.”

“Wait ‘til you shoot her.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. “Why do guys always call guns a ‘she’?”

He grinned, knowing he was about to step in it. “Because they’re fun to play with, guys get off on squeezing them, some will go off half-cocked, they always have a loud retort, and if you’re not careful, they’ll kick you good and hard.”

She punched him in the arm and he laughed at her, pulling her into his embrace. “Hey, you asked, remember?!”

*****

Viktor left the Geneve-Cointrin International Airport and grabbed the first available taxi for downtown Geneva. He had an appointment to keep and another flight to catch. He kept glan
cing at his watch and asking the driver to increase his speed. The taxi driver would drive a little faster, weaving about in traffic as best he could, but slowed down again at regular intervals, aggravating Viktor and causing him to check his watch and utter curses under his breath. When he finally pulled to their destination, Viktor jumped out of the taxi and handed the man a crisp hundred Euro note and told him to wait for his return. The taxi driver’s displeasure with the fare suddenly faded as he took the note and placed the taxi in Park.

Viktor went to the front of the curio shop and the bell rang above the door as he entered. He glanced around the shop, loo
king for the curator. He found him, sitting behind the counter, an espresso in his withered hand, his round spectacles at the end of his nose and a copy of the
Tribune de Geneve
spread out before him. “Ah, Viktor, I was beginning to worry about you.”

“Alfonse, I would have called, but the plane would not a
llow cell phone use,” Viktor replied. He approached the man and carefully embraced the aged man, a slight kiss to each cheek. The old man looked much worse than last Viktor had seen him, the wrinkles in his face more pronounced, the hair a duller shade of white, his eyes less of a gleam. Viktor knew that his years were catching up to him.

“I swear, Viktor, I don’t know how you do it.” Alfonse held him at arm’s length and eyed him head to toe. “You look exactly as you did back in the war.”

“You are too kind, my friend,” Viktor lied. He was sure that Alfonse suspected his supernatural secret, but he never dared ask. “I hate to rush you, but do you have it?”

The old man patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Never have I let you down, have I?” He motioned Viktor to the back of the shop where he kept his safes. “This was a bit of a rush job, you know, but I think you will be pleased with the quality.” He opened the larger of his safes and pulled out a small lock box. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate how difficult it is to replicate such things from drawings, no?”

“I understand, my friend, and I do appreciate the rush.” Viktor opened the lock box and with a jewelers loupe he inspected each piece. “These are exquisite.”

“But, of course.” The old man laughed. “You expected less? Viktor, you know me better than that.”

“Alfonse, I’m at a loss. You had merely a few days’ time and to work only from drawings…I am truly impressed.” Viktor was at a loss for words at the quality and craftsmanship that he was holding in his hands. “You have truly outdone yourself.”

“Anything for a friend,” Alfonse stated proudly. Viktor stood erect and closed the lock box. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an envelope.

He pressed it tightly into Alfonse’s hand. “Our agreed upon amount.”  

Alfonse felt the thickness of the envelope in his hand. “U
nless I am losing my mind, there is a considerable amount
more
in here.” He eyed Viktor cautiously. “Unless you have begun paying an old man in single Euros?”

“No, my friend.” Viktor smiled sadly at him. He caressed his cheek and felt his own eyes begin to mist. “I fear that I may never see you again. I wanted to ensure that your remaining years were comfortable. That is all.”

Alfonse nodded. “I do not know what you are up to these days, but I do hope you will be careful, Viktor. You and I have been friends for far too long for you to be taking wild chances.” Alfonse pulled his glasses down and looked at him over the rims. “And just because you
look
the same as you did during the war, does not mean that you are the same young man. It is a young man’s world out there. We are old men and we need to leave the dangerous things to the younger men.”

Viktor nodded, “I plan to, Alfonse. I just fear that I may not be able to travel much more and…”

“Do not try to kid me, Viktor,” he said emphatically. “We’ve been through too much together. Just promise me that whatever you have planned, you will be careful.”

Viktor stared at the old man before him and nodded. “I will. I give you my word.”

The two embraced one last time and Viktor headed back out into the brisk air and his waiting taxi. He knew as soon as he closed the door and heard the familiar chime of the bell above the door that he would never see Alfonse again. One way or the other, their history together had just come to an end.

4

Rufus and Dr. Peters worked in the near darkness of Evan’s laboratory. Evan had given Thorn a walk-through and had shown all of the different projects that he had completed and the ones that he was in the middle of. Then he showed Thorn the ones that had him stymied. His biggest project was the one he had hoped would bring the upcoming war to a quick end…but he kept hitting dead ends. His idea was to design a weapon that only targeted natural born vampires. But the enzyme that the weapon was based on was too unstable and tended to also target living creatures as well. Evan had hoped to perfect the weapon prior to the battle’s start and once deployed, it could devastate a huge portion of the Sicarii’s forces, but with the setbacks and dead ends he kept hitting, the project was about to be shelved.

“This enzyme that you base your weapon on, it is only found in natural born vampires,
oui
?” Thorn asked Evan as he read through his notes.

“Well, yes and no.” Dr. Peters set down the slides he had been working with and pulled another notebook from his shelf. “If you look here,” Evan flipped to a page in the other book, “the same enzyme is also present in natural born werewolves. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how.”

Thorn looked up at him with a wry smile. “For the life of you? This is funny,
non
?” he chuckled.

Evan gave Thorn an odd look of misunderstanding until he realized the joke that Rufus had made. “Ah. Yes. I get it now.” Evan flustered. “Sorry, it’s just a phrase that…”

“
Non
, non it is quite alright. I tend to poke fun at such things simply because I, too, say such things and…” Thorn glanced away embarrassed, “I wish it were still true.”

Evan sat quietly with Thorn for a time and shared a moment of regret. A camaraderie between two beings who both wished their fates had been different. Finally, Thorn looked up and broke the silence. “Perhaps there is something to this enzyme,
oui
? Something that binds all supernatural beings together?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking when I stumbled upon it,” Evan explained, almost excitedly. He pulled two more not
ebooks and flipped through them. “If you’ll look here, I found the same enzyme in the blood workups on trolls. And here, I found it in some of the woodland Lesser Elves. But…here, see? Nothing in the Greater Elves. And here, there’s nothing in ogres or gargoyles.”

Thorn read through Evan’s notes and considered his fin
dings. “Do you know if the Lesser Elves were all natural born?”

Evan turned a puzzled look toward Rufus. “I don’t unde
rstand. All elves would have to be natural born, wouldn’t they? I mean, an elf isn’t going to bite a human and transmit a virus…”

“
Non
, you misunderstand me.” Rufus was shaking his head. He searched for the right words in English. “In lore and history, many elves and humans have…inter-bred,
oui
? They have…hybrid children. Some would still have the characteristics of the Elven peoples, and would be required to be raised as elves.”

Evan sat down slowly, digesting this bit of news. “I wasn’t aware of this.”

“
Oui
, it has happened many times. And if the human genes are passed on to their offspring, it could disrupt this enzyme,
non
?”

Evan considered this idea and nodded his head. “I suppose it could. But it still leaves me with the problem of separating the enzyme base so that it only affects vampires and not the elves. Or to affect only the werewolf and not the vampire. Or to only affect an elf and not…”

“Why?” Thorn asked.

Evan was shocked at Thorn’s question. How could he ask why? Their goal at the moment was only to stop this rogue va
mpire from trying to force all of the world’s vampires into his army and burning the world to the ground. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Why are you worried about speciation of the enzyme? We are trying to stop the Vampire Armageddon,
non
? You should be worried about making the weapon work,” Thorn stated coldly.

“What? No. No, no, no, you don’t understand.” Evan felt the need to explain, surely Thorn was simply misguided. “If we weaponize this enzyme, then
all
creatures that carry this enzyme, including a handful of humans, will be killed.”

“
Oui
,” Thorn said, his face stony. “Acceptable losses.”

“Acceptable…what are you saying?” Evan asked, stepping away from Thorn. “Kill everything that isn’t human to save
one
race of intelligent beings on this planet?”

Thorn shook his head. “You do not understand, Doctor.” Rufus stated quietly. “If the colonel’s plan fails and Viktor fails to retrieve the artifacts from the Vatican…we have
nothing
else to fall back on. We will be defenseless against the single most powerful vampire in the world. A vampire who may well be able to conscript me and my entire army out from under me. A vampire who will be able to command his people from around the world by calling to their very blood.” Thorn stood and stared into Evan’s eyes with a steely glare. “Even
you
, Doctor. Whether you like it, or not.”

Evan swallowed and sat down hard in his chair. He found that his hands were trembling and his mouth had gone dry. “I-I don’t care. I won’t be a party to this kind of warfare. It’s akin to genocide.”

“Doctor. Do you have
any idea
the kind of power I am talking about?”

“N-no, I don’t,” Evan stammered out.

Thorn unleashed his own power in a pulse that flowed out of him like a crashing wave that knocked Evan out of his chair and to his knees. Even though Dr. Peters was not a member of Rufus’
familia
, he felt the overwhelming urge to call him ‘master’ and bow to him. Evan instantly knew just how old and powerful Thorn was, and the increase in the number of his people had only made him stronger.

“Please…stop.” Evan whimpered from the floor.

Rufus knelt to the floor and picked Evan up and placed him back in his chair while the effects wore off. “I apologize to you, Doctor. This is just a taste, a mere fraction of the power that the Sicarii has. While my years are measured in centuries, his years are measured in millennia. He is the father of
all
vampiri and his power is unequaled. Unless we can find a way to stop him, mankind will forever be lost.”

Evan nodded. He understood now exactly what Thorn was trying to prove and it worked. But in his dead heart, he still could not bring himself to be a part of the genocide of countless other races. He sat in his chair, his limbs feeling as if he had been electrocuted, his hands still shaking and his mouth as dry as cotton. His head was still feeling loopy and he tried to focus on his workbench to keep the room from spinning out of control. His gaze fell to one of his earlier notebooks and he couldn’t take his eyes from it. He didn’t know why but his hands reached for it automatically. He clutched it for dear life.

“What is this, Doctor?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s important,” he gasped. “Give me a minute to gather myself.” When his eyes began to focus again, he thumbed through his notebook and his hands stopped on one of his earlier prototype weapons. “Maybe it was this?” he said to nobody in particular.

“What is this?” Rufus asked.

“A weapon I designed years ago, but never finished. I couldn’t find a power source for it that was portable enough for a man to carry. The thing was too heavy,” he said half-heartedly as he scanned over the diagrams again. “But that was a while back…things have changed a lot since then. I mean, just look at computers. They fit in your pocket now. I could almost cut this thing down by half in size. It wouldn’t need to fit on a vehicle anymore.”

“You are not making sense, Doctor.”

Evan looked up from his notes. “Hmm? Oh. Um, well. This weapon here,” he pointed into his notebook, “is a focused pulse microwave particle destabilizer. I designed this years ago, and the only way it would work was to mount it to a vehicle. It was simply too large to be carried. And the power source…oh my, the power source was simply too large as well. The military wasn’t interested because of the size…I couldn’t make it rifle sized. Even when the operators here became augmented, this thing was too big and too heavy to be carried, even with a bac
kpack for the power source.” He turned back to his notebook. “But…with modern electronics, and with modern lithium ion batteries…if I had enough of them…I mean, the batteries would probably still have to be in a backpack, but the weapon itself could be made so much smaller that…” He looked up at Thorn and smiled. “You said that the only thing that will kill this guy is the sun?”

“
Oui
. I believe that is true.”

“This thing?” Evan said, stabbing his finger at his notebook, “Is basically a miniature sun gone supernova in an area the size of a basketball.” Evan was smiling now. “You want a Plan C?
This
is a Plan C.”

*****

Natashia and Nadia made their connecting flight and landed in Paris via the Concorde and Air France. Natashia wasted no time in renting them a car and heading south toward Avallon. Nadia still wasn’t sure exactly how this meeting was to go, and Natashia had kept mum about Maxwell and his part in all of this. All she knew was that he was Viktor’s father and he was the first step in their quest.

Natashia complained that the only car available to rent was a Citroen when she truly wanted a BMW or Mercedes. Nadia didn’t care what the car was as long as it got them there in one piece and didn’t break down along the way. Natashia hiked a skeptical brow at her daughter and told her not to count her chickens before they hatched. She had never had good luck with the Citroens and she doubted she would now.

As her mother navigated their way through narrow roads and toward the broader highways, Nadia reflected back to just how little she truly knew of her mother and father’s pasts. Apparently her mother knew her way around France, how to drive in and around the narrow streets, and where to find her grandfather, yet, nobody had ever spoken of such things in Nadia’s presence. She leaned her head against the window and took in the scenery of France and absently rubbed at her tummy and thought of the life that grew within her now. She hoped that her child would never sit across from her and wonder what sort of life her mother had lived and not have the heart to ask.

Natashia drove south and worked her way to the outskirts of Avallon, slowing only to look for road signs and familiar buil
dings. “Amazing how little things change in a century,” she mumbled more to herself than to Nadia.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same?” Nadia asked.

Natashia shot her a puzzled look. “Not quite, my dear, but close.”

“What are we looking for?”

“The Vickers house.”

“Maxwell is a priest?” Nadia asked, somewhat shocked.

Natashia snorted. “Not hardly,” she replied, still studying the signs and shop buildings. “At one time he played with the idea of being something of a holy man, but now…I don’t really know what you might call him.” She turned the car down an alleyway, still studying the landmarks. “He has more money than sense and he bought an old church. It looked more like a castle than a church if you ask me, but, the dreary thing came with a Vicker’s cottage. He restored it and has been living in it ever since.”

She pulled the car onto a cobblestone road and the car felt as though it was going to shake apart. Natashia gripped the steering wheel and Nadia tried not to smile as her mother sneered and threatened the French made piece of scrap metal to stay together or she’d melt it down into a Peugeot. Nadia giggled at that and her mother tried not to laugh at her own remark. Finally, she pulled the car to a stop and shut off the engine. Nadia stepped out of the car and caught her breath as she stared at the old church. Her mother was right, it did look more like a castle than a church, with its tall spires and grandiose doorways.

“This way, darling,” Natashia called as she walked across to the cottage beside the outer wall of the church.

Nadia hurried to catch up with her and met her at the door just as Natashia beat on the front door with the ball of her fist. “Maxwell! Open the door! I’ve traveled too far in a piece of shit Citroen on this damned cobblestone and I have to pee!” Natashia yelled. Nadia shook her head and stifled a grin at her mother’s brazenness.

The door flew open and Nadia saw her grandfather for the first time, standing in an artist’s smock, paint smeared all over him. He was easily as tall and broad shouldered as her father with the same wide chin and solid brow. He had the same mischievous glimmer in his eye, and same nose, but rather than dark brown hair, his was reddish brown in color with a peppering of grey. His hands were large and calloused and he wore open toed sandals as he stood in the door, his mouth opened in shock at the two women standing there to see him.

Natashia pushed her way through without being invited, “I’m about to wet myself. Which way to the toilet?” she asked as she threw her bag on the nearest couch.