Paradigms Lost (12 page)

“Nope,” I said honestly. “I don’t know exactly where we are, and I’m sure you’ve got lots more where these guys come from.”

“Great. Y’know, I grabbed another guy once, few years ago, thought he was a frickin’ action hero. Busted up a few of my guys, tried to get out, ended up shot. Nice to see not everyone’s that stupid.”

Privately, I wondered. Verne was an honorable guy; he’d probably see it as his obligation to get me out of this, but it would really suck if a bastard like Carmichael got access to his drugs again.

But no point in worrying now. Using the bathroom sounded good, and now that my stomach was settling, so did food. I figured I’d just try to be a good Boy Scout and be prepared.

CHAPTER 15

Enter Freely and of Your Own Will

“Ten o’clock,” Carmichael said. “Jeez, will you look at that stuff come down!”

Even as worried as I was, I had to admit it was an impressive storm. Gusts of gale-force winds battered the house, blue-white lightning shattered the night, torrents of rain came down so heavily that they obscured our sight of the front gate, even with all the lights of the estate on. An occasional rattling spatter indicated that there was some hail as well.

“Man, did the weatherman ever screw up this one. Forecast said clear and calm all night. Boy, that put the crimp in some party plans, I can tell you.” Carmichael picked up the phone and dialed. “Yo, Morgan, put Verne on the line.” He listened and his brows came together. “What do you mean, ‘not available at the moment’? Listen, you just tell him he’s got two goddamn hours . . . Yeah, well, he damn well better be ‘planning to discuss it with me momentarily.’” He slammed the phone down. “I dunno, bud, maybe Domingo doesn’t give a crap about you.”

I glanced outside.
Could it be . . . ?
“I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you.”

He looked out speculatively. “He couldn’t be
that
dumb, could he?” I heard him mutter. Then he pushed a button on his desk—looked like one of several, probably security—and said, “Hey, Jay, look, I know it’s a dog’s night out, but pass the word to the boys—Domingo and his gang might try something on us tonight. Yeah, yeah, I know, they’d be morons to try, especially in this crap, but people do dumb things sometimes.”

He leaned back. “If he does try, I’ll make sure he gets to see you shot, you do know that, right?”

I looked back at him. A faint hope was rising, along with the shriek of the suddenly redoubled wind. “Yeah, I guess you will.”

The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Carmichael, Jimmy and Double-T don’t answer.”

His relaxed demeanor vanished. “What? Which post were they on?”

“Number one—the private road entrance.”

“The line down?”

“No, sir, it’s ringing; they just aren’t answering.”

He glared at me, then flicked his gaze to the window, as did I. So we were both watching when it happened.

The huge gates were barely visible, distorted shapes through the wind-lashed storm; but even with that, there was no way to miss it when the twin iron barriers suddenly blew inward, torn from their hinges by some immense force.

“What the hell—” Carmichael stared.

Slowly, emerging from the howling maelstrom, a single figure became visible. Dressed in black, some kind of cloak or cape streaming from its shoulders, it walked forward through the storm, seemingly untouched by the tempest. I felt a chill of awe start down my spine, gooseflesh sprang out across my arms.

Battling their way through the gale, six men half-ran, half-staggered up to defensive positions. Stroboscopic flashes of light, accompanied by faint rattling noises, showed they were trying to cut the intruder down with a hail of bullets. Even in this storm, there was no way that six men with fully automatic weaponry could possibly miss their target, especially when it continued walking towards them, unhurried, making no attempt to dodge or shield itself, and keeping a measured pace towards the mansion’s front doors.

The figure twitched as gunfire hit, slowed its pace for a moment, and staggered backwards as all six concentrated their fire in a hail of bullets that could have stopped a bull elephant in its tracks. But the figure didn’t go down. I heard an incredulous curse from Carmichael.

The figure raised one arm, and the three men on that side were suddenly slapped aside, sent spinning through the air as though hit by a runaway train. The other arm lifted, the other three men flew away like rag dolls. The intruder came forward, into the light at the stairway that led up to the front door, and now there was no mistaking it.

Verne Domingo had come calling.

He glanced up and seemed to see us even though the sheeting rain and flashing lightning should have made that impossible. The winds curled down, tore one of the trees up by the roots, and the massive bole smashed into the picture window, showering us both with fragments of glass.

I felt Carmichael’s immense arm wrap around me and a gun press into my temple. Verne came into view, walking slowly up the tree that now formed a ramp to our room. He stopped just outside of the window. “Put the gun down, Carmichael,” he said, softly.

“You . . . whatever the hell you’re doing, you just cut it out, or you can scrape up Wood’s brains with a spatula!” Carmichael shouted.

I wondered why the heck Verne wasn’t doing something more. Then it clicked for me. “Come on inside, Verne,” I said. “We were just talking about you.”

With my invitation, I saw a deadly cold smile cross his face, one that showed sharper, whiter teeth than I’d seen before. “Why, thank you, Jason. I do believe I shall.”

The two thugs charged Verne; with a single backhanded blow, he sent them tumbling across the floor, fetching up unconscious against the back wall.

Carmichael’s hand spasmed on the gun.

Nothing happened. I felt, rather than saw, him straining to pull a trigger that had become as immovable as a mountain. Verne continued towards me. “Put my friend down now, Carmichael,” he said, in that same dangerously soft tone.

Carmichael, completely unnerved, tried to break my neck. But he found that his arms wouldn’t cooperate. I squirmed, managed to extricate myself from his frozen grip, and backed away.

Now Verne allowed Carmichael to move. Deprived of me as a hostage, the huge man grabbed up the solid mahogany chair and swung it with all his might.

Made of wood, the chair was one of the few weapons he could’ve chosen that might have been able to hurt Verne. But to make it work, he had to hit the ancient vampire, and Verne was quite aware of what he was doing.

One of the aristocratic hands came up, caught the chair and stopped it as easily as if it had been a pillow swung by a child. The other hand whipped out and grasped Carmichael by the neck, lifting him from the ground with negligible effort.

“You utter fool. Were you not warned to leave me and mine alone? I would have ignored you, Carmichael. I would have allowed you to live out your squalid little life without interference, if only you had the sense to let go. Now what shall I do? If I release you, doubtless you shall try something even more foolish, will you not?”

Purple in the face, Carmichael struggled with that grip, finding it as solid as though cast in iron. He shook his head desperately.

“Oh? And should I trust you? The world would be better off with you dead. Certainly for daring to strike in such a cowardly fashion I should have you killed.”

“No, Verne.”

He looked at me. “You would have me spare him?”

“Killing him will force the cops to investigate. You haven’t killed anyone yet, have you?”

He shook his head. “No. Battered, unconscious, and so on, but none of his people are dead, as of now.”

“Then leave it. I think he’s got the point. It’s not like he’d be believed if he told this one, and he can’t afford the cops to come in anyway; even if they tied something to you, they’d also get stuff on him.”

Verne gave an elaborate shrug, done as smoothly as though he was not actually holding three hundred pounds of drug lord in one hand. “As you will, then. I, also, prefer not to kill, even such scum as this.” He let Carmichael drop. “But remember this well, Carmichael. I never wish to hear your name again. I do not ever want to know you
exist
again. If you, or anyone in your control or working for you in any way, interferes with my life or that of my friends again, I shall kill you . . . in such a manner that you will wish that you had killed yourself first. Believe me. I shall not warn you again. This is your final chance.”

Carmichael was ashen. “I gotcha. I won’t. You won’t ever hear from me again, Domingo, I promise.”

“Good.” Verne turned to me. “My apologies, Jason. It never occurred to me that you might be in danger. Let me get you home.”

Outside, the storm was already fading away, as though it had never been.

CHAPTER 16

The Only Thing He has to Fear . . .

“How did you find me?”

Verne and I were comfortably seated in his study. He smiled slightly. “I have always known roughly where Carmichael lived, just as he knows where I live. Once I arrived in the general area, it was simple to sense your presence and follow it.”

“Thanks.”

“No need to thank me, Jason. It was my fault entirely that you were involved. I should have realized that once he found my household impenetrable, he would look for anyone outside who was connected to me.”

“Maybe you should have, but so should I. Heck, you hadn’t
had
anyone ‘outside’ connected to you for so long that I’m not surprised you sorta forgot.”

“For far too long, but I thank you for your understanding.”

“You think he’ll keep his hands off from now on?”

Verne gave that cold smile again. “Oh, yes, I assure you. I was not concerned with the niceties of civilized behavior at that point, Jason. I made sure that he was, shall we say, thinking very clearly. He knows precisely what will happen to him if he ever crosses me again. And as you pointed out, the authorities won’t believe him even if he tells his story, nor would it do him much good if they did.”

“So how did your interview with Sky go?”

“Excellently well,” he replied, offering me a refill on the champagne, which I declined. “Your casual evaluation was, as far as it went, accurate. Mr. Hashima is a true artist, a dedicated one, and highly talented in several ways. I will have no qualms about supporting him fully. He is naturally a bit cautious—I do seem to him to be a bit too good to be true—but I am sure that we shall get past this minor difficulty.”

I sipped, appreciating the unique taste that a real champagne offers. “And the antiquities?”

Verne grinned, a warm smile that lit the room. “As usual, you and Morgan are right. I shall be donating, or selling, many of the items in question to people who will both appreciate them and be willing to place them on proper display. Some discreet inquiries have already elicited several interested responses, and I expect several archaeologists to visit in a few weeks in order to authenticate, insofar as is possible, the artifacts and prepare a preliminary assessment. I have already decided to send Akhenaten, at least, directly to Egypt. Let the Sun Pharaoh return to his home.” He raised his own red-glinting glass in salute. “My thanks, Jason, again. You have indeed found something that I shall enjoy doing, something which will contribute to the world as well. And you have given me your friendship, which I value perhaps even more.”

I managed, I think, to keep from blushing, something I tend to do when praised extravagantly. “It was my pleasure, really. Well, aside from being kidnapped, but that wasn’t completely in your control. I just hope Carmichael has bad dreams about you whenever he goes to sleep.”

“I assure you, your hope will be more than adequately fulfilled, Jason,” Verne said, with the expression of someone with a small secret.

“Why?”

“As I implied, I was quite capable of hearing his thoughts when I extorted certain promises from him, and discovered one quite serendipitous fact.” He paused for me to urge him to finish, and then said, “Many people are afraid of various things, real and otherwise.

“It turns out that Mr. Carmichael’s greatest and most secret fear . . . is vampires.”

I laughed out loud. “Well, I’ll drink to that!”

CHAPTER 17

Laughing Assassin

I really don’t like this one.

I’d done plenty of work for the police, and other people. I may not have been very old, but I’d already done everything from enhance photos and research prior art on patents to, well, finding out that vampires are real. Sometimes you get feelings about things, and right now, I had a very strong, very bad feeling about the job I was doing for Xavier Ross.

Not that I felt there was anything wrong with
doing
the job; I didn’t think there was anything shady about the kid himself. But I was finding way too many questions for a case that had been closed by police.
Way
too many. Oh, a lot of them were circumstantial, but the fact was that most good cops pay attention to stuff like that, and this case had been closed up so quick and neat . . .

The door chimed as someone came through, and I looked up from my monitor.
Damn
.
Well, I knew he was coming soon.
“Hello, Mr. Ross. Please, sit down.”

Xavier looked hopeful. “Did you . . .”

“I found some things, yes.” I picked up a file and handed it to him.

“For a fairly well-known figure, your brother was good at losing people. He turned out to be pretty hard to track. The bill for this is not going to be cheap.”

He was already glancing through the file. “I know. Will seven thousand dollars cut it?”

That’s about what I’d charge the cops, but . . . he’s serious.
“I’d find that acceptable, perhaps overgenerous, but Mr. Ross, you
are
a minor. I’m starting to get very
very
uncomfortable with this. I find it extremely hard to believe that your mother would approve of your spending ten thousand dollars on an investigation that may not even
go
anywhere.”

“Look,” he said, “can we discuss that afterward? I’d really like to hear what you found.”