Prey (3 page)

Barry's eyes popped open to the sounds of Pete and Repeat growling low in their throats. The clock radio read 5:10. Barry lay in his bed, every sense working overtime.

“Be quiet,” he whispered to the hybrids.

They hushed immediately.

Barry slipped silently out of bed and pulled on jeans and moccasins. “Stay,” he told the hybrids, buttoning up a dark shirt.

The day had been unusually hot, and the night was muggy, so the air conditioning was on. Despite the house being closed up, something had alerted the animals.

Barry silently walked the house, pausing to glance out of windows. He could spot nothing out of the ordinary. He opened the back door, which he never locked while he was home. It swung noiselessly on well-oiled hinges.

Barry stepped out into the warm night, staying close to the outside wall of the stone house. He sniffed the air and smiled as the odor of sweat came to him. Two distinctive smells. Males. So there were two men on his property, inside the chain link fence. He waited. The next move was theirs.

Then the two men made a very bad vocal mistake.

“If those big-assed dogs come out,” one whispered, the words very audible to Barry. The man was just around the corner of the house. “I'll shoot both of them.”

“Damn right,” the second man whispered.

At that, Barry's darkness-shrouded smile was not pleasant.

Barry picked up a small piece of kindling that was stacked in a wooden box on the porch and tossed it out into the backyard. It landed with a thud.

Barry heard the sounds of both men bellying down on the ground beside the house. He picked up a more substantial piece of wood and waited.

“That wasn't nothing. Look, let's do it. You take the back door,” the whisper reached Barry. “I'll take the front. Remember, we've got to take him alive.”

Barry smiled at that.

“Right.”

He heard the faint sounds of one man moving away; then the second man came into view, standing by the edge of the back porch. Barry counted to five, then whacked the man on the head with the piece of wood. The man sighed softly and collapsed to the ground. Barry left the porch and circled around to the front of the house, staying close to the exterior wall. The other man was on the porch. Barry dropped down and crawled around the porch, coming up behind him. Silently, he stood up and stepped onto the porch, moving up to within inches of the man standing in front of the screen, his left hand outstretched.

“Looking for me?” Barry spoke in a normal tone.

The man jumped in shock and whirled around, a pistol in his hand. Barry gave him a short and very brutal right fist to the jaw, then a left to the belly, then came up with an uppercut that dropped the intruder to the porch.

Using the man's belt, Barry quickly trussed him up, then did the same to the man in the back of the house. Then he took a leisurely stroll down the road to a neighbor's house to call the sheriffs department.

If this continues, I'm going to have to get a phone, Barry thought.

* * *

“Ah, Vlad,” the man using the name of John Ravenna whispered. He was wide awake, lying on the bed in his New York City hotel room. “How long has it been since we last confronted one another?”

The answer was just over fifty years, during World War II, in occupied France. John Ravenna had been working for the Nazi Gestapo. Barry, going by the name of William Shipman, had been TDY'd over to the American OSS and was operating behind the lines in France, working with the French Resistance. It was just a few weeks after D-Day, and John Ravenna had captured a female member of the resistance and was doing what he loved best, inflicting torture upon a woman in a vain effort to make her talk.

Lying in his bed in the darkened hotel room, John Ravenna scowled at the memory of what had happened next . . . just as the woman was screaming in hideous pain.

The front door to the small house burst open. Ravenna whirled around, dropping the electrified wires he was using on the woman's naked body.

“Well, now, cousin,” John said, a cruel smile playing on his lips. “What an unpleasant surprise.”

“I'm not your cousin, Ravenna,” Barry told him.

“Related in kind, then.”

“Unfortunately, that is true.”

“You always pick the wrong side, Vlad.”

“A matter of opinion, John.”

“I suppose you've burst in to save the fair maiden?”

“Something like that.” Barry cut his eyes to the woman. She was not dead, but not far from that long sleep. She had been tortured for hours.

“You're too late, Vlad.”

“A little matter of a German patrol that had to be dealt with.”

“So what happens now?”

“It would be rather pointless for us to fight, would it not, John?”

“That would be fun, of course, but yes, it would be pointless.”

“Then, goodbye, John Ravenna.”

“Auf wiedersehen,
Vlad Radu.”

The two men stood staring at each other. John Ravenna was several centuries older than Vlad, and he had not ceased his aging until about age forty. He was dark-complexioned, with black hair, graying at the temples when the aging stopped. His eyes were black, usually holding a contemptuous light. He was handsome, in a cruel sort of way.

While the immortals could not kill each other, they could inflict great injury, and immortals felt pain just like anyone else. But the healing process was very swift. They could, however, use their minds to exert control over each other, and since John Ravenna was several centuries older than Vlad, he could project the greater control. Which he was now attempting to do.

“It won't work, John,” Vlad told him, just as the woman tied to the table gasped and struggled to move her head, her pain-filled eyes searching Vlad's face. “You have never been able to overpower me with your mind.”

“Perhaps it's because you are such a simpleton.”

“You wish.”

The woman on the table began moaning in pain. John Ravenna took a pistol from a belt holster, looked at Vlad for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and unemotionally shot her in the head, stilling her cries. He holstered the pistol and smiled at Vlad. “I was hoping you would try to interfere, Vlad. It would be interesting to see how you tolerate a gunshot wound.”

“She was perhaps an hour away from death. Why let her linger in pain? You did her a service.”

“Naturally, you would look at it that way.”

“This war is about won, John. The Nazi empire is just about over. A year at the most. What are your plans?”

“You think I would tell you?” He laughed. As Vlad recalled from years back, the laughter still sounded evil. “Oh, I'll get by, Vlad.”

“I'm sure you will.”

“Someday, cousin, you and I will fight. You know it's coming. As pointless as it is.”

“Perhaps.”

John Ravenna turned without another word and walked out the back door of the cottage.

That was the last time Vlad Dumitru Radu and John Ravenna had met.

But all that was about to change.

Soon.

* * *

“And you have never seen either of these men before, Barry?” Sheriff Salter asked, after taking a sip of coffee from a paper cup.

“No. Never.”

A deputy walked up. “We found their car, Sheriff. It's a rental out of Memphis.”

“Their DLs?” Salter asked.

“Fakes. But very good ones. They crossed state lines to commit a kidnapping. Does that bring the FBI into it?”

“I suppose,” the sheriff replied. “If we want them.”

“What kidnapping?” one of the men called from the rear seat of a deputy's car. He was sitting with his hands handcuffed behind his back. “I told you, we got lost and wanted to ask if we could use the phone here. This guy attacked us. I pulled a gun in self-defense.”

The sheriff looked at Barry in the silver-gray of early dawn. “We probably won't be able to make any attempted kidnapping charges stick. Your word against theirs. About the best we can do is trespassing, carrying concealed weapons without a permit, and operating a motor vehicle with a fake driver's license.”

“I'm gonna sue that guy for assault with a deadly weapon!” the man with a knot on his head shouted from the back of an emergency services vehicle.

“You're sure those two have been advised of their rights?” Don asked a deputy.

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Get them out of here.” Don waited until the car carrying the two men had pulled away, then turned to Barry. “What's going on here, Barry?”

“I don't know, Sheriff. And that is the truth. I have no idea who those two men are. I heard them say they would shoot my dogs. That's when I got angry.” Barry did not mention that he also heard them say they had to take him alive, and he was reasonably certain the two men in custody wouldn't bring it up.

One of the newly arrived deputies looked nervously around him. He had heard all about the two big hybrids living within the confines of the fence. “Where are those dogs of yours, Mr. Cantrell?”

Barry smiled. “In the house. If you'll keep your hands away from your guns, I'll release them and introduce you. They are not vicious animals. I would have a fenced-in area if they were poodles. I don't believe in letting animals run unsupervised.” For their safety, he silently added.

“Stand still and keep your hands away from your side arms,” Sheriff Salter told the two remaining deputies. “You need to let the . . . ah, dogs, get to know you.” Then he added, “I have a hunch this won't be the only visit we make out here.”

* * *

“The president cannot be allowed to run for a second term,” Gene Dawson opened the breakfast meeting in the back room of a Washington restaurant. The room was used frequently for highly secret and clandestine meetings. It was electronically “swept” before each meeting and was as secure as man could make it. “The sooner we start making plans to get him out of office, the better. I wish to hell he'd drop dead tonight.”

“Wishful thinking,” a United States senator spoke up. “But that would be nice. However, the Speaker is the man causing the trouble. If we could get him out of the way, it would rip the guts out of the opposition and put them into a panic.”

“I personally think a terrorist attack is the way to go,” a United States representative said. “We know the Republicans are planning a strategy meeting in a couple of months. Over in West Virginia. Get rid of the whole damn bunch. We could blame it on Libya or Syria or the Palestinians and be rid of those right-wing bastards once and for all.”

“Oh, get real, Paul!” Senator Holden quickly spoke up. “Good Jesus Christ. I don't want to hear any more talk about such nonsense. Murder? Impeachment? You're all crazy!”

“If we don't do something and do it damn quickly, our party is going to be a thing of the past,” Paul Patrick came right back. “And I for one am prepared to do anything,
anything,
to prevent that from happening.”

“Murder, Paul?” another senator whispered.
“Murder?”

“I agree with Paul,” a woman spoke. “We've got to disarm the right-wing nuts in this country. We've got to disarm
everybody.
We're in a war for our party's very survival, and for the welfare of every good, decent American citizen. And in a war, anything goes.”

“You would go that far, Madalaine?”

“Yes. I think the time has come for drastic steps.”

“I wouldn't even know where to begin,” Gene Dawson said in a subdued tone.

The woman smiled. “I do. I've already contacted a man.”

* * *

Robert Roche hurled his coffee cup across the room and cursed at the news just delivered him. He turned to face the man. “Gone? Gone where?”

“He's here in the United States . . . somewhere. Our sources in the State Department say he entered the country just a few days ago. He may still be here in the city.”

“Someone, some group, hired him?”

“From all indications, yes.”

“Find out who hired him and why.”

“I will do my best, sir.”

The billionaire fixed the man with a cold stare. “Do better than that, Ray. Or hunt for another job.”

After Ray had gone, Robert poured a fresh cup of coffee and sat down behind his desk. Slowly, he calmed himself and began thinking rationally. He knew from years of quiet investigation—which had cost him several million dollars—that John Ravenna hated the man who was born Vlad Radu. John Ravenna was the pure personification of evil; Vlad Radu was just the opposite.

If John Ravenna was in the States, he had been hired to kill someone, or do something equally nefarious, for the man had been a killer for hire for nearly a thousand years. He had been killing for kings and queens and potentates and generals for all his adult life.

But who hired him, and why?

Robert felt sure that Ravenna would never take a contract on Vlad, for that would be pointless. No, something very big was about to go down here in America. Something earth-shaking in magnitude.

But Robert was certain of one thing: whatever it was, the man now living under the name of Barry Cantrell was somehow involved. He might not know it yet, but he had a part to play in this little drama.

Just how big a part Robert did not know.

Yet.

But he would.

And when Barry showed his hand, Robert's men would grab him.

Robert Roche chuckled, then laughed aloud. “The game is almost over, Vlad. And as usual, I win!”