Darkest Before The Dawn Read online

  He grabbed Jacqueline’s arm. “Hey, where’d they go?”

  Jacqueline scanned the area quickly, then sniffed the air. She shook her head. “Ninjas,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Frankfurt, Germany

  The short frumpy Englishman was shadowed by a woman and another man. All wore coats in the middling-cold weather.

  The sun was high in the sky.

  Thomas, in the lead, walked around the corner, his eyes darting to all the possible hiding places along the dark brick street. There were slight shadows under doors and in alleyways where tall buildings stood close together, blocking out the sun.

  There were plenty of people around to provide the feeling of safety, but Thomas had not lived as long as he had by assuming enough people meant enough eyes on their surroundings.

  Some things that went bump in the night could go bump in the day. And furry or not, they were enhanced beyond a human.

  “Third building on the north side,” Thomas said as the three of them made their way slowly down the street, walking at the same speed as others on the sidewalk.

  “Look,” Samantha said softly. Her job was to pay attention to the south side of the street ahead of them. Thomas and Jack both grunted.

  “How could we be so lucky?” Jack asked. His eyes flitted back to his area of responsibility when he recognized the one from the picture.

  “Dammit,” Thomas hissed in annoyance, “he can walk in the sun. Fucker must be stronger than we thought.”

  “I don’t know,” Samantha replied as he walked across the street with a female beside him. “He doesn’t walk like he is weak.”

  “And the female with him doesn’t look subjugated,” Thomas murmured. “Well, we have a challenge wrapped up in a riddle.” He nodded to his left. “Let’s hold there and discuss next steps.”

  —

  “How are we getting in?” Sabine asked as the two of them crossed the street under a couple flying cars that floated above them. They walked up to the three-story stone building, which had definitely been built before the fall of civilization.

  “I believe in knocking,” Michael replied. Sabine’s eyes looked at him in confusion.

  Michael climbed the five steps to the landing and stepped to the door. It had a four-foot covered porch. “Knock,” Michael said as his leg lashed out and slammed into the door near the door handle. The whole door erupted off the hinges and was flung inside of the residence.

  Michael stepped in and moved far enough inside to allow Sabine to come in behind him. “Knock,” he finished.

  “Keep your guns handy,” Michael told her. “We are probably going to encounter more goons.” He looked around. “I see he likes to have multiple homes.”

  Sabine unsnapped her pistols’ holsters and slightly lifted each pistol, making sure they would be easy to yank. “Is that why Akio is behind us?”

  “Yes,” Michael called from another room in the residence. “Oh, and cops.”

  Sabine rolled her eyes. “Great, now I have to fight the men in uniform, too.”

  “No.” Michael’s voice was right next to her, causing Sabine to jump.

  “Dammit!”

  “Situational awareness,” Michael told her as he swung past and went up some stairs that were five feet on the other side of her. “I suggest finding a place to hunker down for a firefight.”

  “Ok.” Sabine looked around the attractive first level of the residence. The floors were made of marble, and the furniture looked like it was centuries old. “What did he do, rob museums?”

  “PROBABLY!” Michael yelled from somewhere on the second floor.

  Sabine moved into the large living room area and looked around. “Well,” she started pushing a large couch, working her way from one side to the other to get it to move, “it’s not like this will need to stay pretty, I suspect.”

  —

  “The woman?” Jack asked.

  Thomas considered the question, then shook his head. “We have enough trouble. If we are all in agreement that she is there of her own free will, then she will be collateral damage.”

  “I think so,” Jack answered. “My intuition says she is on the same side as our mark.”

  Both men looked at Samantha. “Hell, even with no hair that man is flat-out gorgeous. She could be along for the ride.” She slapped Jack when he snickered. “Do you always have to go there?”

  “Do you always have to say something that makes me go there?” Jack asked, eyebrow raised.

  “He’s right,” Thomas added. “You always set up the easy ones.”

  “Whatever, you two. The girl goes whether she knows what he is or is just there to clean the pipes.” She stared at Jack, who looked back at her, confused.

  “What?” he asked.

  “No comment?”

  “No comment,” Jack replied. “That was on purpose. You don’t have to snicker at the obvious ones.”

  “Men!” Samantha huffed and looked toward the large home down the street.

  Thomas glanced down at his watch. “Let’s call everyone to get ready.” He noticed that Jack had a question on his face. “First group to snag the new guy gets an extra share.”

  “Well, why the fuck are we yacking here about sexual innuendos then?” Samantha asked.

  Thomas punched the last button to call in the rest of his group. “Sam, there is always time for sexual innuendos.”

  “It’s how you know you’re alive,” Jack added.

  Sam decided that shooting her two partners would be premature. At least, at this particular moment, it was.

  —

  Akio noticed the three talking in the front doorway of a building three doors down. His eyes continued to roam the street as he stayed in what little shadow he could find on the top of the building one down from the residence Michael and Sabine had gone inside.

  “To run down there and read their minds, or stay here…” Akio’s eyes found another group of two walking down the street from the opposite direction.

  Michael? Akio sent.

  Yes.

  We seem to be attracting a large number of people with long coats.

  Hiding weapons?

  Give me another ten seconds, and two will be in my range.

  I’ll warn Sabine and check the back.

  Hai.

  —

  Michael sped down the steps. Sabine caught his movement out of the corner of her eye.

  “Look sharp,” he told her. “We have an early warning from above.”

  “Goons?” Sabine asked from behind her little fort.

  “Not sure. Only know they aren’t expected to be cops,” he answered as he went to the back of the house. “Be right back.”

  The door opened a little crack and he disappeared.

  —

  Thomas got a response from each of his four team members. Nodding, he punched in the code. “Ok, everyone is set. Let’s drink our juice and bag and tag us a vampire.” He reached inside his coat and pulled out a vial. Like the others, he uncorked it and tipped it back to allow the contents to spill into his mouth.

  “Gah!” Thomas corked the vial and slid it back inside his jacket. “I hate that stuff.”

  Jack grunted an affirmative and Samantha didn’t say anything as she finished her vial and slid it into a pouch around her waist.

  “Love seeing the new colors,” Samantha’s eyes were moving from one tree to another. “It’s a shame I can’t live on this stuff.”

  “Well, technically…” Jack began but then went quiet, when Thomas gave the signal that the operation was starting.

  Thomas had seven green “Go” symbols from his team. He stepped out of the doorway and started down toward the building.

  —

  Ok, definitely hostile. Akio’s lips pressed together. They are looking to bind you and kill Sabine.

  How many?

  Seven, Akio provided.

  I’ve got two here. Seems long coats are not very popul
ar in the early fall in Frankfurt. Makes them stand out.

  I’ve got these two. Akio turned and raced across the roof toward where the outside fire escape went down to the street. In seconds he was halfway down the fire escape, his eyes barely catching the shadows as three humans passed his alleyway.

  SABINE! He yelled through his mind. Shoot whoever enters!

  Moments later, as his feet hit the concrete from his two-story drop, he heard the beginning of a firefight coming from the building next to him.

  —

  SABINE! Sabine heard Akio’s mind voice. Shoot whoever enters!

  Sabine dropped into the zone, the place where she was more than normal, more than who she had been before.

  She aimed her first pistol at the door and squeezed.

  —

  Jack raced ahead of Thomas. While he wasn’t normally a lead-from-the-front sort of person, if he was the one to do the most damage and allow them to grab the vampire, he would earn a second share. From what they had talked about, just one share was probably going to set them up for life.

  All he knew was two of something that would set him for life was going to make his future sweet.

  —

  Thomas was excited; the vampire blood was a damned drug to all of them. Hard to come down when you felt such power in your veins, throbbing and allowing you to effortlessly accomplish feats no human could.

  Over the years, he and others had put down a handful of mercenaries who had become blood junkies. They would do anything for the blood, including stealing it.

  Occasionally they could save those types of people. It was the ones who bagged a vampire and were forcing it to change them that they killed with extreme prejudice. Their people didn’t need new vampires who knew all the tricks and would be out to get rid of the competition when they built up their strength.

  So far they’d had only one instance of all-out war in England. A mercenary by the name of Johann Williams had successfully faked his death, figured out a way to be turned, and started picking off blood-baggers in an effort to reduce the number of those hunting him.

  Thomas remembered it was Jack who took Johann down. He had half-decapitated the man with a shotgun blast. Johann’s head was lolling to the side and he wasn’t as observant as he could have been.

  No big surprise there, when you are trying to hold your head on and allow it to heal. Unfortunately for Johann, Jack was still powered up and swung around behind Johann, shooting his heart out through his back.

  They burned his body. No one wanted that tough sonofabitch coming back.

  They saw that the door had been kicked off its hinges as they raced up the stairs.

  Jack would go through the door first and head left, while Thomas would go right and Tina would go forward if possible.

  Thomas was almost to the door when Jack’s body, blood spraying from a damned hole the size of Thomas’ fist, was tossed violently into him, clipping him and throwing him back.

  What the hell had gotten through Jack’s body armor?

  Tina jumped over the two of them. Once committed, you trusted the plan. Besides, her inertia was going to carry her in some even if she tried to slam on the brakes, so to speak.

  As Thomas rebounded off the side of the front entryway, he heard Tina’s guns fire and then stop.

  “Tina?” he called. He had two more coming from above, and two from the back. He needed to support his team.

  He flipped the semi-auto fire switch off and was pressing the trigger as he turned the corner. He was laying down enough pain to keep anyone with sense hiding behind some protection or give those without sense the option to stop his bullets with their heads.

  He made it around the corner into a large room full of living room furniture and saw Tina—her head was gone. Something had hit her so hard her skull had exploded.

  His speed was still jacked up and he sprayed the little fort of protection with the last of his ammo. With his off hand he grabbed a magazine and readied to switch them out.

  When he was reloaded, he would walk up on the protective little fort and finish whoever was on the other side.

  —

  Sabine watched with little emotion as the first person she shot with her Jean Dukes special was blown back. His body armor took some of the kinetic energy and transferred it to throw him back out of the doorway, following his guts that were leading the way.

  A moment later a female came around through the door, having jumped the body Sabine had shot. The mercenary turned in her direction and shot from her hip. Sabine barely registered that the wall close behind her was showering her with pieces of plaster.

  The lady’s head disappeared in gore when Sabine’s bullet hit her.

  That was when all hell broke loose. Sabine’s eyes were large as she dropped behind her furniture protection when the BRRRAAAAAPPP of an automatic started showering her area with bullets.

  Pumped up on adrenalin, Sabine believed she could count the bullets as they slammed into her fort. Twice she twisted as bullets found their way through the furniture, whizzing by her head and slamming into the wall behind her.

  For the first time since her run from the werewolves, she was starting to feel fear.

  Aim and shoot, Akio’s voice told her. Trust.

  Sabine allowed the calm to combat the fear and twisted her hand toward the door. She neither considered nor cared that there was furniture between her and her adversary.

  She merely pulled the trigger.

  Once, twice, three times she pulled the trigger.

  Moments later, the only noise she heard was the clatter of a gun on the stone outside.

  Then Michael’s voice cut through the loud beating of her heart. “Well done, warrior. Well done indeed.”

  —

  “I’m telling you,” Stephen hissed as he pulled his weight up the fire escape one building over from their target, “I’m going whoring with the first part of the money, then I’m going to invest the rest.”

  Gerry shook his head, stepping over the rusted rung. “Careful,” he hissed back.

  “Got ya,” was the reply.

  “The only thing you invest your pay in,” Gerry stopped talking and peeked over the top of the ledge to check out the roof before turning back to finish his comment, “is a higher class of whore!”

  Stephen shrugged. “They have mouths to feed too. It’s not like they aren’t in business. Tell me your wife doesn’t treat you better in bed when you come home with the bacon!”

  Stephen made sure he skipped the rung Gerry had warned him about. “That’s right, got nothing to say…” Stephen grabbed the ladder and reached for Gerry, who was falling backward. “The hell?” he yelled in surprise.

  That was when he saw that Gerry would not be speaking anymore. Stephen’s hand jerked back as the headless body fell past him. The left boot slammed into his head, but his vampiric strength was enough to hold on as the body flipped past him to careen downward, slamming into the concrete below.

  Stephen looked up to see an Asian man staring down at him.

  The man’s eyes were glowing red.

  —

  Jerry nodded when Frank touched his back. Both men stepped around the trash-strewn area and slid through a break in the fence between the street they had come down and the back alley of the building they were going to enter.

  Jerry preferred working with Frank. The man was a professional and damned good. There wasn’t any bluster, he rarely talked, and he didn’t get excited and chatter in the middle of an operation like Stephen and Gerry.

  Those two, he figured, were probably talking like two girls who just went clothes shopping.

  Or out for makeup. Ever since one of the companies in East London had found a cache of makeup ingredients in a warehouse that had gone unmolested for so damned long it bordered on fantastical, Jerry had been consigned to listening to the women in his circle speaking about Cherry Red or Sublime Rose or goddamned Passion Pink.

  It was enough to make a man
take jobs killing vampires as a way to create a win-win opportunity. He either bagged the vampire and won or the vampire killed him, and that wasn’t a bad second-place finish if going back to listen to more makeup talk was his third choice.

  Jerry felt cold wash through him and stopped in his tracks, looking to the front and his left. Frank had the back and the right. He put up a fist to stop Frank as he glanced around, trying to figure out what had tripped his senses.

  He couldn’t see anything.

  He turned his head enough so that his mouth was angled a little more toward his back and whispered. “Not sure what tripped me. You see anything?”

  The voice that answered chilled Jerry’s blood.

  It wasn’t Frank’s.

  —

  Michael swept out of the house as Myst and worked his way over to where the two mercenaries were making their way through an opening in the fence to take the house from the back.

  All in all, it would have been a rather sound plan if you were going for a typical vampire.

  However, he wasn’t typical, and frankly, he could tell what their plans were and that they had the vampire blood running through their veins.

  Michael floated down behind the two men and swept the one in the back into the Myst, his body disappearing.

  Michael sped to a building behind the Duke’s house and dropped the mercenary from the Myst. The man hadn’t made any effort to speak when Michael slapped his rifle out of his hands, but as the gun clattered toward the street, the mercenary reached for a pistol.

  “I think not,” Michael told him and palmed his own pistol. Michael was almost immediately back into Myst form, speeding down from the top of the three-story building as the dead mercenary’s body collapsed on the rooftop.

  Michael solidified behind the first mercenary, who was holding up a hand to tell his now non-existent partner to stop.

  Michael smiled.

  He was waiting for the man to do something when the first merc turned his head slightly and hissed, “Not sure what tripped me. You see anything?”

  Michael answered, “I saw your partner a moment ago when a round from my pistol exploded his head like an overripe melon.”

  Michael swept his hand out; an incredibly small line of Etheric was riding on the edge, providing him with a marvelously sharp cutting edge. The scream of pain from when Michael’s hand took off Jerry’s arm at the wrist was cut short when Michael palmed his left pistol and shot him between the eyes.