Dagger

  “Thanks.”

  He stepped aside, allowing me to pass.

  I continued down the dim corridor, illuminated from below by shafts of white light embedded in the tiles. Subdued rays of ceiling light reflected off row upon row of black steel cubicles on either side. Shadowy figures darted to and fro like wraiths, inputting data into computers, talking on headsets in dozens of languages, analyzing charts, conferring with each other. Here in the bowels of Montefuego, DUST personnel toiled on the most classified projects known to human kind, et al.

  The corridor dead-ended in front of two huge, thick doors, the type you’d expect to find at Fort Knox. I pressed a hand to a template on the adjacent wall. A tiny blade pricked my palm and extracted a blood sample. I felt a warm tingle as the wound was cauterized, leaving the skin unblemished. I removed my hand.

  My erectile dysfunction bud provided more encouragement:

  Ritual Verification Commencing

  A hologram of a Hoodoo priestess appeared, just above the briefing room doors. I’d nicknamed her Mama Mayhem. She was only eight inches tall, decked out in a red headdress and robes, and boy, could she chant. She waved the tools of her trade at me, a dead chicken and a bottle of booze, blowing puffs of stale tobacco smoke from her cigar, all the while dancing and howling. The ceremony ended a few seconds later with her falling prostrate, having some type of seizure, and vanishing.

  Ritual Complete.

  I was officially cleansed. Hallelujah!

  The double doors slid apart.

  The interior of the briefing chamber made the sparse décor outside seem cluttered by comparison. Aside from a large, black marble table at its center, surrounded by four black leather chairs, the room was barren, but for three seated occupants.

  I slid into the fourth chair as gracefully as possible. I didn’t think plopping into it and kicking my sneakered feet up on the table would be a good idea. “Sorry to keep you waiting, guys,” I flashed my teeth. “Got tied up in class. First days can be killer.”

  “Glad you could join us, Dagger,” Aristede said from across the table, his melodic southern drawl cutting a thin slice through the gloom and doom atmosphere.

  Aristede was a handsome biracial guy, with smooth caramel skin, a strapping bod, vibrant green eyes, and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He looked to be in his early twenties, but being a bio-engineered half-ghoul, officially known as Ghul, slowed his aging process. He had the best of both worlds: The ability to function as your average human studster, and ghulish strength and reflexes at dusk. The only nocturnal drawbacks were the insatiable craving for dead flesh thing, aversion to daylight and holy objects, and taking the form of the person most recently snacked upon, which came in handy when Aristede went deep undercover. Kinda creepy, I know. But Aristede was a cool ghul. And since Connor’s demise, there was no one else I’d rather be stuck in the trenches with in a life and death situation.

  I gave him the thumbs up. “Howdy partner.”

  “Our baby’s a senior,” came the bubbly voice of the figure to my left.

  I turned and winked at her. “Hey, Fel.”

  She was all long blond curls and full-figured voluptuousness, barely contained in a black business suit and horn-rimmed glasses. The senior tech geek in our outfit, Felanie Demeanor. Ms. Demeanor, if you were nasty. The last of a line of Leprechauns who’d been stripped of most of her powers, Felanie’d devoted her life to the study of the technological applications of the occult, hence all the neat little gadgets she came up with.

  “I’d like to start by congratulating Dagger on the success of his mission in Paris,” came a female voice to my right. Her tone was both quiet and commanding, her English accent lending an air of regal authority to our impressionable American ears.

  The three of us turned to face our fearless leader, cloaked in shadow.

  Sirina Price. She was brilliant and dangerous, two important characteristics required to be an Operations Director for DUST.

  I nodded at the silhouette. “Thanks, Price. You could say I was more than motivated to take Reinaldo down.”

  Price rose from the shadows. She was in her early fifties, with short, bobbed, scarlet hair framing a pale, smooth face. Her hazel eyes focused on each one of us in turn, assessing, calculating. Thin lips curved into the semblance of a smile. “You did more than take Reinaldo down. You may just have handed us the key to unraveling a world-wide conspiracy of catastrophic proportions.”

  My ears perked up. “What exactly did you find on the chip?”

  Felanie pushed her haphazard curls away from her face. “A lot of the files on the microchip were corrupted. Reinaldo Matias probably had some type of failsafe in place, in case it should fall into the wrong hands.”

  Aristede grinned. “I bet he didn’t count on you getting a crack at it.”

  Someone had definitely acquired a taste for Lucky Charms.

  Felanie turned beet red. “Using a reconstruction program I created, combined with a restoration incantation, I was able to initiate the decryption process, and so far, uncovered this.” She touched a button embedded in the console in front of her.

  Individual view screens slid silently up in front of each of us. A data stream appeared and a mass of hieroglyphics scrolled by.

  I leaned forward. “What are we looking at, Fel?”

  “Matias’ chip contains a code key, which I’ve been able to partially restore. Once I’m able to finalize the data retrieval, the complete code key will be capable of deciphering the markings on an ancient artifact that scientists have been trying to decode since the sixteenth century, without the slightest of breakthroughs,” she paused for dramatic effect, “until now.”

  Felanie pressed another key and a ten-foot by four-foot sandstone rock descended from the psychic simulator, hovering right before our eyes. The simulator used psychic energy from three powerful mediums patched into our network via modems implanted into their cerebral cortexes. This energy was converted to computer images, providing a three dimensional view of the object as it actually appeared, right down to the last available detail.

  I reached out to touch the smooth stone face, running my fingers across the carvings on its surface. It even felt real.

  Price cleared her throat. “The artifact in question is the famed Dighton Rock. From the little we know about this stone, it contains etchings as old as 1049 A.D. But most of the writing is indecipherable.”

  “Isn’t it housed in Massachusetts, somewhere?” Aristede inquired. Remind me never to play Trivial Pursuit with him.

  “It was. Until last week,” answered Price. “It was stolen from its storage facility at the Dighton Rock Museum by the Dark Reich.”

  The Dark Reich. I rubbed my arms against the chill. The Reich was a modern day offshoot of its notorious predecessor, the Third Reich. They were also full-blooded ghuls.

  Price continued. “As most of you know, The Dark Reich has emerged as a formidable player in the occult espionage game. They have been involved in an increasing number of sorcerist attacks all over the globe; demonic bombings in the Middle East, mass congressional curses in Parliament, political possessions in the United States’ senate, to name a few.”

  “So what exactly is the Dark Reich’s interest in this rock?” I asked.

  Price turned to me. “Our undercover operatives at the CIA and the NSA intercepted various transmissions via Echelon over the past few months. In these communiqués, the DR make reference to the Age of the Sixth being at hand, a time when the Five Root Races will be supplanted by the Sixth, which will emerge like a virus to reign over the world. The Reich believes Dighton Rock is a map, revealing the location of this key component to their plans.” She touched a few keys on her console.

  A simulated book appeared next to the boulder, thick and weatherworn, its pages yellowed and musty.

  I squinted, trying to make out the title. “Not exactly leisure reading, I take it?”

  Then the symbol on the cover caught my eye.

&
nbsp; The three triangles containing the demon and the dragon.

  The last time I’d seen it this close was on the inside of Reinaldo’s naked thigh. I averted my eyes. Best not to dwell.

  “What you are looking at is Il Evanidus, The Vanishing.” Price announced. “The Reich believes it contains an ancient schematic for a technology capable of targeting specific individuals for spontaneous eradication based on their souls and DNA profiles, leaving no trace of their existence on this plane. Think of spontaneous combustion. Once these individuals have been ‘recycled,’ they will become part of the hive race, the Sixth, and return to dominate the planet, under the control of the Dark Reich.”

  In her more-hyper-than-usual state, Felanie cut Price off, something no one ever did. “The Dark Reich is in possession of the only known elixir that will allow Il Evanidus’ pages to be read. But without the code key contained on Reinaldo’s chip, they have no way of reading the inscriptions on Dighton Rock and discovering the book’s location. Even our own psychics can’t pinpoint its whereabouts.”

  “So the book’s a manual to a weapon of mass destruction that can make your enemies disappear and return as drones, without any collateral damage?” I thought of the billions of unsuspecting lives, including Cassie’s and Marco’s, and felt the bile rising.

  Price nodded. “You can see via this time-lapse sim that the power of Il Evanidus will spread exponentially across every major continent around the globe.”

  A world map appeared on our view screens, with smaller screen caps of highly-populated cities surrounding it, including New York, Delhi, São Paolo, Moscow, Mexico City, Tokyo, and London. A dark shadow spread across the screen like a swarm of locusts and covered each region, continent by continent. As each land mass was engulfed, the accompanying images of crowded cities changed to barren ghost towns, all evidence of life wiped out, leaving pristine desolation.

  Price bowed her head. “Civilization as we know it will be irrevocably altered.”

  If anyone else had said this, I’d process it as being just a tad melodramatic. But this was Price. If anything, she was exercising restraint.

  I exhaled. There was no way in hell I was going to let the Reich enact their endgame. “So basically, the chip I recovered from Reinaldo contains a code. The code deciphers this rock. The rock reveals a map. The map leads to an evil Armageddon-like book, capable of initiating the most bizarre and devastating act of terrorism in history.”

  “That’s pretty much the Cliff Notes’ version,” Felanie replied.

  “What’s the op?” I asked.

  Price handed folders to the three of us. The covers were made of aged parchment, but with a modern thumb-scan locking mechanism. I pressed mine and it read my print, releasing the lock and allowing me to peruse the file’s contents.

  Data sprang from the pages like a holographic pop-up book. The first thing that caught my eye was a three-dimensional image of Reinaldo, who smirked and licked his lips. Even his hologram oozed sex. I quickly turned the page.

  “According to Matias’s notes recovered from a file on the chip,” Price explained, “he has a scheduled meet tonight with this individual.” The image on the next page was that of a well-built man, with long, blond hair and a scar running down the side of his face. His lips parted, revealing a set of glistening, razored teeth. Full-on Ghul. “The head of the Italian DR cell, Heinrich Von Bueller. The purpose of their meeting is simple. Matias will relinquish the code key that deciphers Dighton Rock in exchange for one hundred million dollars from Von Bueller.” Her eyes wandered to each of ours. “We intend to keep that appointment.”

  Our view screens revealed a three-dimensional Italian coastline as Price continued her narrative. “The location of the meeting is a monastery off the Amalfi Coast, which has been converted into an elite nightclub, Angelo Scuro, serving as a front for Reich activity. Felanie has hacked into the club’s security network and forged keycard invitations that will allow you to enter.” She turned to me. “Dagger, you’ll go in posing as Matias. Aristede will act as your ghul bodyguard and concubine.”

  I had to play Reinaldo? Great. Reinaldo’d had no trouble playing me. Poetic. At least Aristede would be at my side. I could think of worse things than masquerading as his lover. It might actually be fun. I winked at him. “Ooh, baby. Remember, no teeth.”

  He blew me a kiss.

  “Wait a minute,” Aristede said. “Won’t the Reich realize that Dagger isn’t really Reinaldo?”

  “That was all considered,” Felanie replied. “Based on my interpretation of the chip’s intel, it seems Reinaldo and Von Bueller have never met face to face.” Aristede’s emerald eyes sparkled at her. “I’m sure your ‘interpretation’ is accurate.”

  Felanie licked her lips, blushing.

  I suppressed a smile. Seriously, these two needed to get a room. “I suppose you have some op-tech goodies for us to play with, Fel?”

  Felanie waved a hand and a black case materialized. She opened it and pulled out the first item, an ornate golden ring with a glowing blue stone. “Just before the meet, you’ll trigger this tiny button above the stone. It emits an undetectable amount of a hallucinatory mist that should fool the Reich’s verification spell into believing Dagger’s a morpher, like Reinaldo was.”

  Aristede winked at her. “I love it when she uses, ‘should.’”

  Felanie batted her eyes and looked away. “You may even be able to perform a metamorphosis or two, Dagger, but be careful. There’s a limited amount of magic in this thing and you have only thirty minutes before it wears off.”

  I studied the gaudy ring. I guess Tacky was the new Cool. “Got it.”

  She lifted the next item, a flash drive. “We’ve created our own code key based on Reinaldo’s original. You’ll deliver this fake to the Reich, which will send them on a wild goose chase, where they’ll find a bogus volume of Il Evanidus, and an armed security detail waiting for them.”

  The adrenaline was already pulsing through me. “I don’t suppose the Reich’s going to hand out free samples of the elixir for us to take with us?”

  “Which is why,” Felanie reached into her bag of tricks, “you’ll be wearing these.” She opened a smaller case filled with ten circular coverings, “Biometric scanners. They’re completely transparent and fit over each of your fingertips.” She demonstrated, placing one of the clear pieces over a finger, where it blended in perfectly. “You’ll have to find a way to get Von Bueller to at least let you touch the elixir’s container. The microwave pulse emitted by the analyzers will scan the chemical composition of the elixir and transmit it here, allowing us to reproduce it in our labs without them having a clue.”

  So far so good. “And if by some fluke we’re compromised?”

  Felanie’s eyes lit up. “That’s where these’ll come in handy,” she announced, pulling the final item free of its case. It was a pack of long, thin European cigarettes. She brought one to her lips. “How ‘bout a light, stud?” she asked Aristede in a throaty Mae West.

  I couldn’t help chuckle this time. “Are we supposed to smoke those after the ghuls screw us?”

  She held up the cigarette. “Since the Reich will scan you for conventional weapons, these cigarettes have been altered to produce a chemical reaction when lit, i.e. create a solar-flare, which should incapacitate our nocturnal friends, given their aversion to all things sunny. Of course, Aristede’s human DNA will protect him.” She smiled at him. “You just light”—she mimicked igniting the cigarette—“and toss.” She flung it into the corner of the room.

  Price looked at her coolly.

  Felanie squirmed in her chair. “Oh, don’t worry, Ms. Price. It wasn’t lit.” She turned to Aristede and me. “I accidentally tried the toss thing at home. You have to be careful how much of the smoke you inhale. Those solar flashes can cause quite the rush. It reminds me of my first year in college when—”

  “Thank you, Felanie,” Price snapped her folder closed. “You have your assignments. “Your mi
ssion is three-fold: First, provide the Dark Reich with a decoy of the code key that will lead them to a forged Il Evanidus and a trap. Second, obtain a sample of the elixir, which will allow us to read the authentic Il Evanidus once Felanie completes her restoration of the chip’s data and we decipher the book’s location from Dighton Rock’s markings. And third, ascertain the whereabouts of the Rock itself, so it cannot be used in the ritual that will herald the Age of the Sixth.”

  “I assume some of that hundred mil Von Bueller’s paying out will make its way to charitable organizations?” I asked matter-of-factly. There was no reason the intended victims of this atrocity shouldn’t benefit from this illicit transaction. And bitch slappin’ Evil with a fistful of irony was one of the things that kept me slogging through this sordid mire.

  Price’s gaze bore down on me. “But of course, Dagger.” She stood. “Report back here at fifteen hundred hours to receive your Op-Tech and departure clearance.”

  The meeting was definitely over.

  I gathered up the file, mumbling my goodbyes to Aristede and Felanie.

  “Dagger, please stay for a moment,” Price said.

  Aristede and Felanie exchanged quizzical looks with me, before filing out the door together.

  I followed Price’s lead and sat back down.

  “You are probably wondering why I tasked you for this assignment, so soon after your ordeal in Paris,” she said.

  My eyes met hers. “I just assumed you felt my relationship with Reinaldo would give me an advantage in assuming his identity.”

  “I’m sure that it does, but—”

  “Look, if you’re concerned that I’m not up to the challenge, please don’t sweat it. The Reich has to be stopped. I can do this. I need to do this.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not your feelings for Matias that trouble me. This assignment is closer to home than you realize.”

  I broke out into goose flesh. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a reference in Matias’ notes which I didn’t share in the meeting. A list of individuals who may have been guinea pigs for the Reich’s early experiments on the power of Il Evanidus.” She touched my shoulder. “One of them was Phillipe Beaumont.”