Wyverns Never Die, Chapter 3
Honeymoon from Hell #3
Sorry I’ve been out of it a while. I’ve just been getting over a cold. Mostly it just means I’m dragging like I haven’t gotten any sleep.
However, Wyverns Never Die, Honeymoon from Hell #3, comes out on February 5th, so I have do SOMETHING that looks like promotion.
So, free chapter.
Chapter 3:
Countdown to Doomsday
Rory leaned back in his train car, studying his companion. “You’ve been quiet, lad,” Rory told Galadren. “Not that I mind, but I’m wondering what could be wrong. If there is something. You’re hard to read sometimes.”
Galadren was known as Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin. His hair was naturally blond, and it had grown long, down to the tips of his shoulder blades. Most people who saw him always noted that his hair was simply immaculate all the time. He was slender and graceful, never disarrayed. He was a glowingly handsome sort, with a perfectly circular face, and deep blue eyes so distracting that most people never even noticed that the tips of his ears were slightly pointed. What everyone else noted about him was he always wore interesting clothing: generally white shimmering clothes, as if the Renaissance festival was designed by someone on hallucinogens.
Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin happened to be about 5’9”, with enough sleek muscle to make jaguars back away slowly. His daily routine consisted of eating his own homemade Muesli, with enough healthy food to make most health food-freaks run the other way. He did everything short of personally picking fruits and harvesting oats—though he thought the Quaker Oats man was one of the oddest looking Elves he’d ever seen, and he wouldn’t even discuss the Keeblers (he had long ago figured that they were actually wood sprites, and someone was just too lazy to make that distinction).
He opened his eyes to look at the vampire. Rory had been an amiable companion … for the most part. He was a young vampire, a little over a century old. He looked older, though, wrinkled with smile lines. The hair was unnaturally red, for reasons Galadren couldn’t begin to imagine.
Galadren knew that he himself was mentally deformed. His memory was vague on points, with large gaps in between. Incidents were conflated that shouldn’t be.
But this was something he wished he could forget. He was uncertain he could tell even Rory what happened.
Galadren unfolded his legs from underneath him. “I believe some of the weapons used against us have origins in … older artifacts.”
Rory took a drag on his cigarette. “Unsurprising. Magic never has a sell-by date. Never seen or heard of any magic without it being part of something older. Never dated them, though.” He shrugged. “Then again, before I ran with this crowd, I never needed to.”
Galadren allowed himself a small smile. “Understood.”
He breathed smoke out the window of their train car. “Aye. No need for forensic sorcery when I’m trying to avoid nonsense like this. It’s why I was in San Francisco for years. No magic or vampire melodrama.”
Galadren blinked, then frowned, thinking back. “I can understand this. Who wishes to be entangled in disputes from ages ago?”
Rory nodded. “Exactly. So, what’s your concern?”
Galadren sighed deeply. “The weapons may incorporate aspects of elven magic. I am concerned it means one of us is involved.”
Rory took a long drag on the cigarette. He held it for a beat longer than natural, and slowly let it out.
Galadren’s smile flickered. “You think me mad, my concerns invalid.”
Rory pushed the last of the smoke out the window. “What I’ve seen? Ya may be crazy, but ye don’t have to be wrong. Ye may have noticed, but we’re all a little mad here. Again, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” He took a quick puff, then pointed at Galadren. “How bad could this be, do ya reckon?”
Galadren shrugged. “If it is found magic? We would face something as bad as San Francisco, perhaps a little worse. But if one of us is involved… it can be even worse. Far worse.”
Rory nodded slowly, mostly to himself. He held onto the cigarette, looking off to one side. “How bad?”
Galadren tried to think of something Rory could understand. “Did you hear of these World Wars?”
Rory smiled. “I was there for both. After a fashion.”
“Imagine a World War fought with these weapons.”
Rory grimaced. “Ugh.”
“Now imagine it is led by Sauron and the adversaries are all goblins, orcs, and trolls. The mechanized armored vehicles will be the size of buildings, and fire projectiles bigger than a person.”
“Ugh,” Rory said again. “That would be bad.”
Galadren nodded slightly. “Yes. Quite.”
* * * *
Marco and Amanda were cuddling. While that usually led to more amorous pursuits, this time, Marco relaxed enough to fall asleep. Amanda had a mixed opinion on that. On the one hand, what Marco lacked in experience, he made up for with stamina, enthusiasm, and an absurd attention to detail to how she reacted. No matter how much Marco enjoyed being with her, he put in an obvious extra effort to make certain she enjoyed it at least as much, if not more.
Before Amanda could make up her mind, the phone rang.
Amanda’s phone rang with a neutral, general ring tone, the theme to Swan Lake. It was assigned to no one special, so it could have been almost anyone calling from a number she didn’t have in her contact list.
Amanda turned to mist, slipping out from between Marco’s arms and solidifying on the floor. She picked up the phone within the first six notes. The number did not come up on her caller ID as spam. Amanda thought over the area code for a moment before she realized it was for Nevada. It wasn’t a Las Vegas area code, but it was familiar.
To her knowledge, there was only one thing in that area code. It was a United States Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range, administered by Edwards AFB. The facility was officially called Homey Airport or Groom Lake.
Most people knew of it as Area 51.
Amanda only knew one person there. She answered her phone as she slipped into the bathroom. “Kevin?”
The voice that replied was gruff and gravelly, almost bear-like. It fit, because Kevin was the first name of a Panda in a lab coat. He never mentioned his last name, only insisted on being called either Kevin or Doctor Panda. “What have you two been doing up there in the real world? Do you know how many new weapons I’ve gotten in the last two weeks? Half of them look like a cross between Wizards and Warriors and Flash Gordon!”
Amanda smiled, amused. “Yes, you have only a tiny fraction of what you would have had, if Marco and I had not run into the men using and selling them.”
Kevin growled. “Someone is selling this garbage!” he roared. “Like I need this! I had a nice, quiet research lab until you two got married. Since then, I’ve drowned in lasers that run on cremation diamonds from Chicago, and I’m ankle deep in this San Francisco crap.”
“Could be worse,” Amanda said dryly. “You could have literal crap from San Francisco.” More seriously, she added, “If it weren’t for us, it would be a hundred guns from Chicago. You’d be buried in weapons from San Francisco, by the container full. Come to think of it, where did you get these weapons? I thought we got them all.”
“A container ship,” Kevin answered, just as dry. “Someone sank it in San Francisco Bay.”
Amanda cleared her throat. That was during Marco’s temper tantrum. “That would be Marco’s doing. Did you dredge the bay?”
The Panda grunted. “Pretty much. Even one of these things would rain Hell upon the city. I’d hate to see what happens if any of these were reverse-engineered. Who’s doing this? What idiot thought it a good idea?”
“No idea,” Amanda answered. “It started with terrorists and gangs. It is possibly a prelude to selling them to nations and armies. That is our best guess.”
Kevin growled to himself. “Do you know how long and how hard I’ve worked to keep our government, any government, from getting these devices? One man could level a World Trade Center! Whole city blocks! Whole cities! Once these things are out in the open, it’ll be a race to destroy my collections before some idiot in Congress says ‘The bad guys have them! We need them too!’ I am not going to live long enough to oversee a supernatural arms race.”
“People are on it,” Amanda told him, amused by his irritation. “The army. The Vatican. The Mafia, the Yakuza, the NYPD, and the New York City Vampires Association.”
“Idiots, most of them,” Kevin rumbled. “I know you two. I trust you two as far as I can throw you, which is more than I trust anyone else. If you find this fool, let me know. I’ll help you kill him myself.”
Amanda rolled her eyes at the thought of a panda in a lab coat at the next stop. “At least if we have a problem in Atlanta, you’ll fit right in with the rest of the cosplayers.”
“Ha. Ha,” Kevin answered. “One thing. You’re going to have a bit of a problem. Maybe not today, but down the line.”
Amanda blinked. “Why?”
Kevin harrumphed and muttered to himself a little before he said, “You’ll have some problems from China.”
Amanda blinked. Did we not do this already? “Aside from the Triads?”
“I mean the PRC’s MSS.”
Amanda winced. She’d never had to run many operations against the People’s Republic of China or their Ministry of State Security. The PRC didn’t use a lot of supernatural experiments. When she was active in the intelligence community, they had never been a priority. When the Berlin Wall fell, she had been fired from the CIA as part of the “peace dividend.” After that, the White House started working with the PRC, giving them rocket technology, and enabling them to have nuclear missiles.
I wonder if the timing was deliberate, or just fortunate for those who received the payoffs?
Amanda bit her lip, thinking over the problem, before she asked, “What does the Ministry or China want?”
“People have gone through what you wrecked in San Francisco.” On the other end of the phone, clattering came through loud and clear. Kevin muttered, “I am literally wading through guns here.” He cleared his throat. “There are signs that Li was already part way through convincing the PRC that his guns were good to go. He had sold some to the … I have this written down … the Moro Islamic Liberation Front? MILF? Who thought that was a good idea?”
Amanda just smiled and said nothing.
Kevin cleared his throat. “Anyway, a bunch of Chinese commandos have raided MILF and took their guns. Now they want more.”
Amanda winced. Wonderful, Amanda thought sarcastically. Just what we needed. The nightmare scenario. A supernatural arms race. I have been through this once already. “What exactly did MSS want or need from Li? Or the Triads?”
“Weapons? Super soldiers? Who knows? At the moment, they’re passing it off as fringe science. It’s all ‘technology.’ Bah! Freaking Commie bastards. Wouldn’t know Hell if it bit them on the ass. They’re too busy making Hell on Earth and calling it Paradise.” Kevin growled. “Believe it or not, the ChiComs have an entire division dedicated to this crap, Division 4.”
Amanda frowned, thinking. In Chinese numerology—and the culture was filled with it—four meant death. She didn’t remember the reason, but it didn’t take much dot-connecting why it had the name. “The Death Division?”
Kevin chuckled. “More or less. It’s being led by this young punk named Lim Tong. He’s flexible. We’re not certain how he thinks this works, but he knows it does. That’s all he needs in order to pull strings.”
Amanda sighed. She made a note of the name. “Charming. What fresh Hell is this anyway? China messing with things they don’t understand. What is this Lim Tong’s background?”
“Raised by the state to be one of their knee-breakers. He didn’t have a childhood, he had a training regimen. He’s a Party man, through and through. It’s all we know about him.”
Amanda frowned. “This is not good.”
“Listen, kid, nothing good comes out of China. Not even Chinese food. Even that was made in America.”
Amanda nodded. “Why would they be our concern? You never explained.”
Kevin sighed. “Because it shouldn’t take them long to figure out who put their supplier out of business.”
* * * *
After Marco woke up and started dressing, Amanda told him about her conversation with Kevin. Marco hesitated at strapping knives to his calves, then changed his mind. He glanced at the mirror and blinked, still thrown by his current physique. As he understood it, eight-pack abs were not something in nature, but required a lot of modern training regimens by professional body builders. But nope, that was him now. If he was only part of the way to transitioning into a full elf… or eldar, or whatever the term was… what would he look like if he became something immortal-ish?
Damn. Things are strange in my life, he thought.
Marco settled on black pants, long-sleeve white shirt, and his Original SWAT boots.
When Amanda finished, Marco frowned. “So we have a Chinese fanatic who specializes in developing weapons systems who may want to kill us sooner or later. I guess we should just put him out of his misery if he gets too close.” He sighed. “I like killing people as much as the next guy. But we have far too high a body count for a honeymoon.”
Amanda blinked. “Is there a set limit of dead bodies for a honeymoon?”
Marco shrugged. “I figure it should be capped at about two a week. I don’t think I can track all the bodies we’ve dropped so far.”
There was a knock at the door. “Room service!” came a cheery voice.
Marco tucked in his shirt and fixed his belt. When he was obviously dressed, Amanda called, “Come in!”
The waiter opened the door. He had a wide smile, and tried for pleasant. The muscles in his eyes didn’t reflect the smile, but Marco sympathized. The waiter was working an evening shift, and their car was at the rear of the train. He had to drag that cart down the length of the train, so faking a smile was standard.
Marco blinked and shook his head to clear it. He had to stop over-analyzing everyone. If only he could. He needed a brain that would turn off for that.
Marco watched the waiter lay out their food from his serving tray. The man was precise in his movements, quick and efficient. The man was clean cut with short cropped hair. The waiter’s jacket was red with a white shirt and black bow tie. The pants were black and matched…
And matched his combat boots? Huh. Don’t be paranoid. He looks east Asian, but that means nothing. This isn’t a Doctor Fu Manchu film where every Asian is automatically a villain.
“Nice boots,” Marco said casually. “Are they comfortable?”
Amanda’s eyes flicked to his footwear and tensed.
The waiter blinked, but hesitated for only a split second. “Yes, sir.”
Marco nodded. “Me too. Though I have a different brand.” He leaned over and grabbed the coffee cup from the table. He sniffed it, then offered it to Amanda. “What think ye?”
Amanda leaned over and sniffed. “I think cyanide is a poor coffee flavor.”