A subtle agency omnibus, p.61
A Subtle Agency Omnibus, page 61
part #1 of The Metaframe War Series
Adolf reflected on his new abilities. A new base of operations to create a foundation for a new Reich, superior to the third Reich, an amalgam of the irresistible alloys of the Aryan race and yes, it must be said - vampires. I will rule forever. None can resist my power; I am a true Übermensch.
Suddenly the first car pulled to a halt, and Adolf’s mind returned to the present with a jolt. There was a roadblock, four of the Waffen SS exited the front Mercedes, more men came out into the street from the car at the rear. One of the men at the front shouted commands, the men started firing their 9mm submachine guns. In moments, the guns at the front fell silent, their harsh voices replaced with swishing sounds and wet thuds.
Adolf struggled to see what was happening from within the confines of his armored saloon. The men at the back of the column started firing wildly into the air. He thrilled to the rising panic of men beset by terror as something leaped over his Mercedes.
A terror that would never touch him again. I am the new god of death - all will worship me and die!
“There is a problem,” Dieter declared, grasping his sword and blurring away. The car door spinning into the street, torn from its hinges as he exited the vehicle.
Adolf followed him, flushed with his new powers and supremely confident that whatever the challenge, victory would be his. He blurred out of the saloon and onto the street. Dieter stood twenty yards away. The Waffen SS men lay about on the ancient cobblestones - all dismembered, all dead - their blood pooling in the gutters.
Opposite Dieter stood a tall, young woman of exquisite beauty. She was clad in loose black clothing, carrying a long gleaming sword with both hands like one of the occult assassins that Himmler had been so fond of. She flicked her head, her long dark hair flowing across her shoulders. Glancing past Dieter, she stared directly into his eyes and something passed between them - a recognition of inevitable destiny.
A shiver of dread raced up his spine, his confidence evaporated as his guts curdled and suddenly cramped. Without thinking, he took a step back, raising his hands as if to ward off an impending attack.
Turning slightly toward Dieter, a slight smile curled her sensual lips as she chastised him in sardonic tones, “You have been a very naughty boy.”
“He is under my protection. You have no authority here!” Dieter declared.
She laughed coldly. “There are standing orders from Crane himself, you know what must happen now.”
“I know no such thing, witch!” Dieter thundered, blurring forward.
They clashed in a shower of sparks. Even with his new abilities, Adolf could not follow how quickly they fought as their flashing blades rang out through the night. He took another step back, a dreadful foreboding freezing his heart.
Suddenly, Dieter’s sword shattered into half-melted shards. The dark-haired woman’s sword passing through it to cleave off his right arm above the elbow. She blurred again, taking off his legs above the knees. Dieter flopped to the ground in a jumble of separated limbs and spraying blood.
The woman immediately turned to him. Their eyes locking on each other for the briefest of moments before she leaped over Dieter’s writhing torso toward him.
Adolf didn’t wait for her to land. Turning, he fled down the street. Becoming a dark blur in the shadows. Hurtling toward the docks and the sanctuary of the waiting submarine.
If I can only get inside, I can get away from her. She cannot follow me into the open sea.
The buildings whipped by. Adolf strained to hear the sounds of pursuit, but there were no noises discernible as his pursuer. There was the drip of dank water in nearby gutters, the scuttling of rats lurking in the sewers, the murmurs of frightened townsfolk accustomed to staying inside if there was trouble on the street.
He lamented silently. Why am I alone? Why is there no one left to die for me?
He darted into an alleyway and came to a halt. Pressing himself up against a wall, looking, listening - his heart beating rapidly - even for a vampire. His head swiveling left and right. Where is she? Where is the witch?
There was no sound of pursuing footfalls. There was only a slight whistling. A shadowed hint of a breeze. A glint of reflected moonlight from somewhere above him, and then her sword, an ancient Japanese katana made by a 17th-century genius slicing through his neck.
Adolf felt his head topple from his shoulders. It bounced painfully off the cobblestones of the laneway before rolling into a filthy gutter. He was still conscious, a ring of agony engulfing his throat, an even two inches below his jaw line.
Something was smeared over half his face. Stinging his eye, squishing into his nose, seeping into his mouth which soundlessly opened and closed like a beached fish. Its horrid taste was magnified by the superb acuity of his vampire senses. It was unmistakable for a man who loved German Shepherds more than he loved people. His mouth brayed silent words, Dog shit! I have dog shit in my mouth! And its been ill! Mein Gott! What has it been eating?! It’s in my eye!
The experience of life began fraying around the edges. A finely leathered boot tilted his face up slightly. He saw the woman peering at him as a scientist might stare at an obscure butterfly pinned to a corkboard. She wrinkled her nose in physical disgust, her beautiful blue eyes narrowing as hidden emotions bloomed behind them.
“I loathe wannabees,” she declared fervently.
Suddenly, she stepped away. He rolled back into the wet dog shit; which again seeped into his mouth and pushed up into his nose.
She called out, her voice betraying her exasperation, “Dieter! Stop trying to escape - or do I have to take your remaining limb as well?”
The darkness closed in. His senses left him one by one, sight, hearing, touch. The last two lingered for a long moment, smell and taste. The most ancient senses and the last to go as his vampire vitality ebbed away.
Adolf’s mind echoed a single pungent word repeatedly as it finally collapsed into oblivion, shit, shit, shit –
Interlude Three
The Armitage Manor, England, July 5th, 1856, 22:25
A single shaft of moonlight cut through the summer air. It glimmered through an open bedroom window, caressing the curves and angles of two lovers entwined on white sheets. One was an exquisitely beautiful young woman; the other was something that was ancient before she was born.
He stilled, his skin becoming hot to touch. He was ramping. Chloe followed his lead, dropping into silence and accelerating her mind. Time slowed. Exquisite bliss bloomed throughout her being. The silence deepened, her joy intensified, and surface reality evaporated away.
He was a fiery, golden light, shuddering in rhythmic waves and she became the same. All sense of corporeal reality disappearing completely, like the night giving way to the dawn.
There was only golden light, a steady drumbeat of time, glorious bliss and union.
Then hot kisses on her throat. A sudden gasp of air into oxygen-starved lungs. Her fingers plunged into his long dark hair, bringing his head up. Their mouths met for a long, lingering kiss.
She moved slightly, turning and resting her head on his shoulder, holding him gently.
“Oh my God!” she whispered. “What just happened?”
He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, kissing her quickly on the lips. He slipped out of bed, and before she could react, he was on the balcony. A moment later he was gone.
“Cornelius?” she whispered.
There was only the promise of two nights hence. She was filled with impatience. What was Crane waiting for?
Armitage Manor, England, July 7th, 1856, 23:34
Crane’s vampire attack had weakened Chloe past the point of being able to take action. She was powerless to resist.
Chloe had first met Crane three weeks before. It was a warm summer night, she was practicing with her weapons in the moonlight, pistol, longsword, and rapier. Crane emerged from the shadows and offered himself as a training partner. Intrigued, Chloe accepted, and they fenced throughout the night. He was clearly a champion of the blade, and a seasoned Ramp master. Time flew, and before long the first glimmerings of dawn appeared in the east. Crane frowned and begged her leave to depart. She allowed it, on the promise that he return the following night.
Crane was true to his word, returning the next night and every night after that until two nights past.
At first, she believed he was a Ramp master, an unknown member of the Order of Thoth, but quickly, she understood precisely who and what he was - one of the most powerful vampires alive. By rights, she should have followed her allegiances to the Order and fought him to the death.
But her loyalty to the Order had died along with all hope for the Order’s eventual victory. Confirmed as a full member of the Order of Thoth at sixteen, the youngest confirmation on record. She’d taken little more than a year to come to the conclusion the Order would lose the war. The Red Empire was larger and more ruthless, and the vampires had the unbeatable strategic advantage of rapid recruitment. It took years to grow and develop new Ramp masters. A vampire could be created in minutes. No matter how many vampires were killed by the individual heroics of the Order, vampire numbers could always swell faster than the Ramp masters could kill them.
Chloe couldn’t see her life spent to an empty purpose, to someone else’s broken dream. She set her sights on becoming a vampire and using her gifts to master the vampire world. To rule vampires and men - for she would never be ruled by another. Only one question remained, when would her transformation occur?
The appearance of Crane had answered that question, but then he’d delayed, and delayed again. He was waiting for something, something he needed before he could proceed to the next step; the arrival of Jean Philippe Allemande.
Chloe lay dying of blood loss on a divan in her library.
Crane stood over her, his generals a respectful distance beyond him. He pulled a glass vial filled with a dark red fluid from his vest pocket. He uncorked it, upending it over the twin bite wounds on her throat. The ‘blood,’ crawled over her skin. Running in tiny rivers, the animated fluid seeking the holes in her neck. In moments, the blood had vanished, dark lines tracking beneath her skin in its wake as it flooded through her diminished bloodstream.
“What is this? What have you given her?” the blond general asked, his face rigid with suspicion.
Crane held up his hand in abrupt dismissal.
The chamber flickered around her. Shadows stretching across her vision before being washed away with searing white light. Shrill screams and gasping silence competed with each other while every bone in her body splintered and renewed itself. Fire surged along every nerve, muscle fibers tore and then knitted anew. Time fled and eternity reigned a world of suffering. A rapid trembling rippled over her limbs. Her eyelids fluttered. She sighed once. The transformation was complete.
Chloe opened her eyes to a wondrous world of superb clarity, every sense perfectly attuned to the world around her. Someone was speaking in a strange language, each word cutting her mind like a razor.
“Who’s speaking,” she whispered. “I didn’t -”
Allemande’s face leered above her, his voice a dreadful whisper as he pronounced the final words of the binding curse. Faint rainbows flickered, the light of the room faded, shadows blooming before her eyes. A veil wrapped itself around her mind, extinguishing any ability to directly harm the man who stood beside the Haitian sorcerer, staring at her with obsessive interest.
Crane had been hunting her for some time - this was not a whim, but the result of a carefully laid plan. It galled her to realize she’d been duped, she’d been promised so much more, but had instead been delivered into slavery.
Pure rage flooded her; she conceived her attack in a moment - Allemande’s curse be damned. Her nostrils flared, a vast lust for violence throwing down her mind. She stared at Crane, her eyes flashing with hatred, but before she could move another need overwhelmed everything else.
Cowering in the corner of her library, his hands and feet bound, his mouth gagged, crouched a brigand. Recently captured and brought to her manor. A man who would not be missed, certainly not missed by anyone who could do anything about it.
Chloe rose from the divan, rushing over to where the brigand cringed, his face white with terror. She grabbed his lank hair with one hand, drew his head back, exposing his throat. She arched back, her nostrils flaring with the scent of prey. Her mouth gaped open, brand-new fangs flashing in the lantern light. Filled with an overwhelming, hideous need, she crunched forward, sinking her fangs into his neck. His hot blood flooded into her mouth. She swallowed desperately, instinctively smacking his chest to keep the heart flow coming until he was drained of the last drop.
She found herself on the floor, the brigand’s body limp and pale beneath her. She bounded to her feet, the others in the room staring at her with interest. A new power was coursing through her being. She screamed in exultation. Opposite her stood Crane and his minions. Her gaze flicked over them. There was Allemande, the voodoo priest, a smug smile on his face. She silently promised herself, you will pay for your curse, this I swear. There was also a powerfully built African, a slimly built east Asian, an athletic Persian, and a tall, strong northern European. All were Crane’s generals, and all were cursed as she’d been.
Crane and his servants. She despised them all. Crane had tricked her, the binding felt like a hot net around her soul. She locked gazes with Crane, his eyes narrowing slightly - waiting for her response.
She drew upon her Order training, now enhanced with extraordinary vampire strength. Sweeping an ancestral sword from the wall, she whirled toward Crane. His generals, immediately drew weapons, reflexively blurring forward to defend their master. She evaded them, faster than the eye could see. Her thrust carved through open space toward Crane’s heart. Lightning crackled, rainbow flecked shadows danced through the room; the air shuddered, blowing her backward against the wall. The sword, livid with flame, fell from her nerveless fingers and crashed to the floor.
She staggered back to her feet.
Crane’s voice cut through the silence in the room, “Such perfect ferocity.”
“What have you done?” the blond general asked. “What was that blood? I’ve never smelled its like.”
Crane blurred forward, grasping Chloe’s shoulders possessively. He stared hard into her eyes and declared, “You will enforce my laws, even unto my generals. I have given you the strength to carry out my edicts.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
A hot vow sprang from the depths of her soul. Never, never, never will I serve you. I will have my freedom, and you will regret this night before you die.
She paused for a moment, her mind spinning - she would have to deceive Crane, now and until the curse had been broken, and her liberty restored. She stood tall, stepped back from his grip and relaxed; a slight smile caressing her lips. Bowing respectfully, she affirmed, “My Lord, I will serve you.”
Crane smiled triumphantly.
Rising from her bow, she glanced up at him, her face calm.
Beware my fury - for I will never rest until I am free to live my own purpose and not yours.
Chapter Seventeen
Customer Name: R.I.S.C Enterprises Pty Ltd
Job: Transport
Priority: Urgent
Security: Secured/Armed
Pick Up Address: Hanger [REDACTED], Logan International Airport, Boston
Destination Address: [REDACTED], Chicago, IL
Pick Up Time: 09:00, Wednesday 23rd August
Description of Goods: 16x palletized crates of machine parts.
Mass: Not more than 20,000 lbs. (est. 18,000 lbs.)
Insurance Value: $40M
Vehicle Type: Semi-Trailer
Container Type: Large
Quoted Price: $79,900.00
Customer Contact: James Halifax.
Customer Contact details: [REDACTED]
- Quote metadata for contracted secured transport of ‘machine parts,’ from Boston to Chicago
* * *
South of White Hill, Maine, August 21st, 21:20
The engines of the two SUVs idled quietly.
Anton Slayne lugged a strong box filled with FN P90 submachine guns and magazines with a mix of high-performance armor piercing and silver ammunition into the back of the rear SUV. Every fifth bullet was silver, a general-purpose magazine load for when you could not be sure what you might be facing.
Peter threw a dark brown, leather battle vest on top of the box. The vest was loaded with his favorite weapons, a pair of razor-sharp battle-axes and four tri-bladed throwing axes.
Anton closed the tailgate, and they walked around the big vehicle to join the other members of the Mirovar force team.
Francis Mirovar stood on the doorstep of the log cabin. Gripping Justin Blake’s arm, he asked, “Can I convince you to come with us? You could make a real difference to our chances.”
Justin frowned, shaking his head. “Not this time my friend. I have to see to my team and organize the next Order conclave.”
“When will it be?”
“Two,” Justin shrugged his heavy shoulders, “perhaps two and a half weeks. You’ll all be back by then.” He leaned in close to Francis and instructed with a wry grin, “Make sure you bring Ramin Kain back in one piece, I would like to see him squirm during an impeachment.”
Francis nodded; his eyes flat. The rescue of Kain was driven by necessity, not for concern for the man himself.
Anton halted a couple of feet back from the two force leaders. Li Wu appeared at his shoulder. She carried the Blue and Green Dragon swords and thumped him hard on the side with the Blue Dragon as she thrust it into his hands. She stared at him for a moment, before flicking her head back at the log cabin. The message was clear - were you going to leave this behind?
