Authors: Scott G. Mariani
Olympia scanned the crowd; on the big screen her face had darkened a shade. ‘And you are—?’
‘Alex Bishop, VIA Special Agent, London.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Olympia said knowingly after a brief exchange of glances with Lerouge. ‘And your question, my dear?’
‘Given your confidence that the current crisis can be resolved within the next six months anyway, I wondered what the reasoning was behind the tightening of controls on registered members? The Federation’s enemies aren’t registered. Isn’t that the whole point?’
In the front row, Rumble’s shoulders seemed to sag a little. Garrett twisted round in his seat to sneer at Alex, and then whispered something behind a cupped hand in his boss’s ear.
Olympia flinched a little. ‘We feel that under the present circumst—’
‘Ma’am? Excuse me, I hadn’t finished. And are we to take it that the new tax on Vambloc and Solazal will be lifted once production returns to normal?’
The crowd seemed to hold its breath while Olympia Angelopolis paused for a long moment. Her eyebrow twitched. ‘These are highly pertinent points,’ she finally said in a measured tone, ‘which will be fully discussed at a later time. Thank you for your questions. Now, moving on…’
Alex slumped back down in her seat and smiled to herself as the talking resumed. The Supremos skirted around the issue of the remaining new measures and went on to discuss their plans for major organisational improvements within FRC admin departments. All typical politico talk, Alex thought, designed to distract and cajole when all they wanted was to tighten their grip on everyone.
Time passed, and Alex eventually tuned out and turned to thinking about what the Ruling Council had in store for her later. There was going to be some kind of private disciplinary hearing, for sure. What might come of it? No VIA operative had ever been terminated for neglect of duty, but they could easily revoke her Special Agent status. She’d do her best to fight her corner. Whether Harry Rumble would stand up for her remained to be seen.
Sidelights automatically lit up in the aisles as the conference droned on and the window of sky in the glass dome above the conference hall grew steadily darker. Every so often from her vantage point at the height of the auditorium, Alex spotted a delegate shoot a furtive glance her way and whisper to the vampire sitting next to them. She ignored them. She’d become more interested in watching Xavier Garrett in the front row.
For some time now, he’d been looking more and more restless, shifting constantly in his seat, looking at his watch frequently and looking over at the exits. He was acting the way a human would if they urgently needed to go to the bathroom. Something was plainly eating him.
On stage, the Supremos moved with funereal pace from one point of the agenda to the next. Alex hardly heard a word of it. With each passing minute, she was becoming more focused on Garrett. He was virtually jumping up and down in his seat, bursting with impatience about something.
Then, as Olympia and Lerouge paused between items and the audience broke into applause, Alex noticed a commotion down at the auditorium entrance. A messenger had slipped into the hall looking agitated, and was talking to the security guards. As the audience went on applauding, the security guys began talking on their radios.
Something was happening. As Alex watched, the messenger was allowed through to speak to Olympia and Lerouge. A lot of frowning and discussion, and then, to a general mutter of surprise, all seven Supremos suddenly left the stage and filed out of the room under security escort. An announcer came on stage and announced that the conference was being temporarily suspended; the talks would resume in just a few moments, and would everyone please remain seated while the ushers came round with refreshments?
As the announcer hooked up his mike, Garrett suddenly jumped out of his seat, hurried past the front row without a glance at Rumble, who was deep in conversation with another VIA chief, and slipped away through a side exit.
‘Acting a little strangely, Xavier,’ Alex murmured to herself. She had to know more.
‘Hey. Where do you think you’re going?’ Verspoor said as she stood up.
‘To catch the new Baxter Burnett movie,’ she told him innocently. ‘It’s playing at the UGC multiplex in town. Can’t miss it.’
‘You sit back down right now,’ Bates ordered, pointing at her seat.
‘Sorry, guys,’ Alex said with a smile, and punched them both simultaneously in the head. The blows would have killed humans. Verspoor and Bates flopped unconscious in their seats. ‘You were pretty boring company anyway,’ she muttered. Nobody in the rows ahead of her had noticed anything. She hurried out between the seats, trotted down the sloping aisle and made it to the side exit unseen.
Just in time to see Xavier Garrett disappearing around a bend in the plush corridor. He was talking on a mobile, glancing at his watch again, hunched over with a secretive air.
‘Go,’ he was saying into the phone. ‘Go!’ He was flushed, quivering with excitement.
‘Hey, Garrett,’ Alex called after him, running to catch up. ‘What’re you so worked up about?’
Garrett turned to stare at her. He flipped his phone shut. ‘You’re not supposed to be out here.’
‘Who was that on the phone?’ Alex asked him. She could hear a noise in the distance. A steady, rapid-fire
thump-thump-thump.
Building fast, doubling in volume every second.
‘Nobody,’ Garrett said.
‘You were calling someone.’
The sound was rising like a violent storm coming up out of nowhere, getting ready to tear apart everything in its path. It was the unmistakable rapid beat and turbine roar of helicopter rotors, hovering over the building. The windows began to rattle in their frames.
‘I was calling my wife,’ Garrett whined.
Alex shoved him. ‘Bullshit.’
‘Don’t you touch me.’
The noise was getting even louder.
‘It was you who tipped Stone off about Venice, wasn’t it, Xavier? Nobody knew except me and Harry. Listening at the door’s a very nasty habit. And it’s my guess you’re the one who told them Rudi was my informant.’
He backed off a step. ‘You’re way out of line, Agent Bishop.’
‘What’s Stone paying you?’ She had to shout to be heard over the noise.
‘More than
you
can imagine,’ Garrett yelled. He stumbled away from her, pulling a 9mm Beretta from his jacket. Aimed the heavy automatic in her face. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over for you now.’
Alex stared into the pistol’s muzzle. Just four inches down that little black hole was the nose of the copper-jacketed bullet, hollowed out and filled with the Nosferol that she now was sure Xavier Garrett had helped the Trads steal from the Terzi plant. One flick of his finger, and the bullet would cross the space between them in a tiny fraction of a second and bury itself in her brain. That would only be the start of her troubles.
A trained agent would have shot her without a flicker of expression. Alex knew that, because she was one of them, and had trained many of them herself. Xavier Garrett was not one of those. From the white of his knuckles on the grip of the Beretta and the crazed look in his eyes, she could tell he’d never pointed a pistol at anyone in his life before. And someone who’d never fired a shot always flinched first.
He flinched.
She moved.
The gun boomed in his hand and hot gases burned past Alex’s face as the bullet screamed by her ear. Before Garrett could even think about getting off another shot, she’d swiped the weapon from his hand. He stumbled away from her, his face full of terror.
Alex aimed the Beretta at him, debating whether or not just to gun him down. She glanced at the ceiling. Everything was shaking from the tremendous noise of the helicopter.
‘What’s happening?’ she yelled at Garrett.
Then, suddenly, from the corridor leading to the conference hall, came the deafening blast of automatic gunfire and the sound of screams.
‘It’s over!’ Garrett brayed at her in triumph.
Or he would have done, if Alex had let him complete the sentence. He still had a syllable left to go when the 9mm Nosferol round made a third eye in his forehead.
No need to hang around to see the result. She turned and sprinted towards the conference room. Burst through the exit door she’d come from. And saw the lights of the helicopter gunship hovering over the glass dome. The glass was shattered. Twin 30mm cannons slung beneath the aircraft’s nose were raking and strafing the inside of the conference room, churning up everything in sight. Vampires were cowering, running, stumbling, falling, being blown into meat, convulsing and shrieking in their final agonies. Grotesquely mutilated corpses and burst-open body parts littered the remains of the auditorium like the floor of a slaughterhouse. The sharp acid stink of Nosferol in the air made Alex recoil.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she ducked between the shattered seats and punched the Beretta upwards, firing at the chopper, again and again, the pistol bucking in her hands. Her bullets pinged harmlessly off its armour. Then the floor was erupting into pieces as a snaking line of gunfire raced towards her almost faster than she could move out of the way. She dived for cover and planking and bits of chair were blasted into pieces that rained down on her.
‘Alex!’ The scream came from just yards away. Harry Rumble’s voice. He was crawling on his hands and knees under the shattered remnants of a catering table. She made a dash towards him, slid to her knees on the broken glass and sprawled under the table next to him. Its flimsy surface offered as much protection from heavy machine-gun fire as a sheet of baking paper. But the chopper had acquired a new target and was distracted as a couple of vampires who had bolted for the main exit were sliced in half and their dark blood sprayed upwards in an arc. The machine guns pummelled their bodies into jelly where they lay.
‘This conference is over,’ Alex said. She grabbed Rumble’s wrist, dragged him out from under the table. Together they dashed for the side exit. The chopper turned its nose towards them like a predator. The walls exploded into plaster dust and wood chips as they dived through the door and out into the corridor. ‘Run!’ she yelled in his ear, still gripping his wrist. She led him at a sprint the way she’d followed Garrett.
Rumble let out a cry as he saw the body. ‘Xavier?’
‘He sold us out to Stone, Harry. Who do you think is doing this? Now keep moving. There’s got to be a way out of here.’ She checked her pistol. One round left. She’d always enjoyed challenging odds.
They raced through the hotel, running blind. A door led into an empty kitchen, and she led Harry between the rows of steel worktops to an exit at the far end. Another narrow passage, another fire door that crunched off its hinges as she kicked it open. The luxury lobby of the Grand Châteauneuf was now just yards away. She could see the dark sky through the entrance doors, and the flash of the gunship’s lights on the trees.
Alex smashed the last door open.
‘We’re going to make it!’ Rumble gasped.
‘Not quite,’ said a voice.
Alex turned to shoot, but a blow out of nowhere knocked her hard off her feet and sent the Beretta tumbling from her hand. She looked up as a group of vampires in black tactical clothing swarmed into the lobby around them. They were armed with short, curved sabres. Two grabbed Harry Rumble and forced him to his knees.
‘Nice try,’ said the heavily-built male vampire who’d knocked the gun away from Alex. He walked casually over and picked up the fallen weapon, ejected the last round and tossed the gun away in disgust. ‘We’ve no use for these things any more. It’s back to the proper old ways from now on.’
The thud of chopper blades above the building was fading. The gunship had done its work and was now flying away. Through the glass doors of the lobby, its long bulky fuselage lit up by the floodlights illuminating the hotel grounds, a Chinook transport helicopter sat on the front lawn, its twin props rotating at idle speed.
Alex slowly picked herself up. There was little use fighting. She counted a dozen, maybe fifteen, vampires circling her and Rumble. Behind them, the seven Supremos had been rounded up and cuffed together. There were blades pressed against their throats from all sides. Olympia Angelopolis was whimpering in terror.
Not all the prisoners were Federation top brass. Four other vampires were dragged into the lobby and thrown to the floor. Rough hands searched them. Alex watched as her last remaining Solazal tablets were confiscated and tossed into a Ziploc pouch.
‘Do ‘em all here?’ said one of the attack squad to his leader, pointing at Alex, Rumble and the other non-VIP prisoners.
‘Good a place as any,’ the leader replied casually.
The Supremos were kept at a distance as, one by one, the rest of the captives were made to kneel. Vampires in black held on to their arms while the biggest of the squad gripped his sabre, brought the blade back and then whooshed it sideways with a hum of air and a ripping squelch as it sliced through the victim’s neck. One by one, all four of the other struggling prisoners were decapitated while Alex and Rumble watched. Their headless bodies were dumped in a pile, and the heads kicked like footballs into a corner.
‘Bastards,’ Rumble muttered.
‘You all had it coming a long time ago, you Federation fuckers,’ the leader said.
The executioner walked over to them, grinning. His dripping sabre left a trail of blood spots across the lobby carpet as he approached. He pointed a black-gloved finger at Alex.
‘Eeny.’
Then at Rumble. ‘Meeny.’
At Alex. ‘Miny.’
Back to Rumble. ‘Mo.’
‘Fuck this, we’ll be here all day,’ said the leader. ‘Stop messing around and do the bitch first.’
‘Fine, fine.’ Strong hands seized Alex’s arms and held her powerless. The executioner took a good grip on the slippery hilt of his sabre. ‘Sorry, sweetie. Nothing personal.’
She spat in his eye.
‘Nice. That makes it easier.’ He drew back the blade.
Alex closed her eyes and prepared herself. She thought about William. And about Joel Solomon. Maybe he was right. Maybe she deserved what was about to happen to her.