Stiletto (51 page)

Odette held her gun carefully. After breakfast, in the library, Sir Henry had presented her, Marcel, and Ernst each with a long, hard leather case with brass corners. Inside, nestled in red felt, were two shotguns. Made of rich, warm wood and gleaming steel, they were works of art. Intricately scrolled initials had been engraved onto the back metal bit, the name for which Odette didn’t know. It looked like a weapon for royalty.

“Anderson Wheeler,” Sir Henry had said. “Shop in Mayfair. I had them made for you as a welcoming gift. The stock and forend are Turkish walnut, and your initials have been incorporated into the engraving. Lovely things, aren’t they?” Odette touched one of the guns hesitantly. The polished wood was flawlessly smooth under her fingertips. She’d never had anything to do with guns, but these were, quite possibly, the most beautiful gift she’d ever received. They were even nicer than the eyes she’d gotten for her twenty-first birthday or the spleen that Pim had made for her for Valentine’s Day.

“A custom pair of side-by-side twelve-bores for the gents,” Sir Henry had said. “And then I thought a pair of twenty-bores for the lady.” He’d gone on, talking about the guns and pointing out the accessories in the case: cleaning rods, snap caps, an oil bottle, and turnscrews.

Now she was standing on the grass with one of her twenty-bore guns in her hands. She was wearing safety glasses and earmuffs, trying to remember everything the gamekeeper, Pawn Farley, had told her.

“Ready?” asked Farley. She nodded tightly. “Pull!” And the target went flying.

Odette tensed and went into the same sort of trance that she entered while doing microsurgery. Her eyes sharpened and the world jumped into razor clarity. She tracked the disc easily, and the muscles in her arms and shoulders activated. Her gun snapped up, almost automatically, and she squeezed the trigger, felt the gun punch back. The clay pigeon shattered, and everyone applauded.

“Well done!” said Sir Henry. “Very good for a first-timer.”

“I may have cheated a bit, Sir Henry,” she confessed, and she pointed to her eyes. “These are augmented.” He laughed.

“Not to worry,” he said. “We’ve been known to deviate a bit from the standard ourselves. Farley, would you show her?” The gamekeeper nodded.

“Pull!”

The clay disc cut through the air, and the gamekeeper stepped forward. Odette saw him tense his shoulders, and then there was a crackling sound in the air. As they watched, a gray cloud coalesced swiftly around the pigeon. The target grew denser and darker until there was a rough brick of dull iron tumbling through the air. It landed with a muffled
thunk,
lodging itself in the turf.

“My God,” said Marcel.

“Of course, we don’t do that sort of thing during the pheasant season,” said Sir Henry.

“It upsets the gundogs,” muttered Farley.

“Very impressive,” said Ernst. “May I try? Without the gun?” He handed his shotgun to the startled waiting loader. “As high and as far as you can, please.” The man at the thrower nodded and made some adjustments. “Pull.”

The disc took off, and so did Ernst. His feet tore up the grass as he blurred across the field. The thud of his shoes against the ground was like a drumbeat. He launched himself meters high into the air, pivoted, and kicked the disc into fragments. As they watched, he twisted on the descent and landed, crouching, in the grass, not even puffing.

There was silence, and a hum of tension hung about the party for a moment. It wasn’t clear if a challenge had been made or answered. Then everyone who wasn’t Odette started laughing. She rolled her eyes and carefully took her finger off the second trigger of the gun.

*

“This is it,” said Sander in a tone of deepest satisfaction. Bart looked around suspiciously. They had stopped at a T-junction. In front of them, across the road, was Hyde Park, again. Behind them was the maze of streets and houses that Sander had led them through for hours.

“This is what?”

“The house they’re in; it’s three back on the left. I didn’t want to stop in front of it in case they were watching.”

“You’re certain?” said Laurita.

“Do
you
want to go sniff the doorstep?” Sander asked tartly. “Yes, I’m certain. Our boy went in there about an hour ago and hasn’t come out. Or at least, he hasn’t come out the front door. There are four others inside, matching the samples we were given.”

Bart nodded. He leaned against a tree and surveyed the road they had just come down. It was lined with tall white houses merging into one another. Behind railings, steps led down to basement entrances. In such houses, neighbors were separated by the thinness of a wall. Sounds might carry through. It was not the ideal place to stage an assault.

“We’ll wait until dark,” he decided. “I’ll alert Marie. We will need the others.”

*

More helicopters flew to Hill Hall throughout the day, carrying other members of the Court of the Checquy. Bishop Attariwala. Chevaliers Whibley and Eckhart. Rook Kelleher. Finally, an hour after sunset, a helicopter roared overhead without landing. A few minutes later, out of the darkness, Bishop Alrich came walking up the drive dressed in a dark suit. Odette watched him through the window of the sitting room. His hair burned in the lights from the house, and she shivered.

“I suppose we should go down,” she remarked to Clements, who was sitting on the couch and looking petrified. The Pawn was actually sweating at the thought of a formal sit-down dinner with the Court.
This from the woman whose file says she once went bare-knuckle against a neo-druid who was twice her size and armed with titanium sickles,
thought Odette incredulously. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you,” some unexpected sympathy prompted her to say. Clements shot her a grateful look and then appeared surprised. “Your dress looks great,” Odette added. In fact, the dress looked only all right, but the Pawn needed all the encouragement she could get.

*

The call had gone out.

The Chimerae scattered around London had heard Marie’s voice reverberating gently in the bones of their ears. Some had been staking out the various Checquy facilities. Some had positioned themselves as guards at locations that the Broederschap had judged to be high-profile targets. It was a sign of their desperation that three trackers were riding the Tube randomly in the hope that they might stumble upon a trace of their quarry’s scent. Upon hearing Marie’s message, they had all left their posts and headed quickly to their hotel, where a large (but not really large enough) room was serving as their base of operations.

Laurita and Sander had remained behind to stake out the front and rear of the house in case the Antagonists decided to go for a wander. Bart had explained the situation to the gathered troops. Sentries were deployed to relieve Laurita and Sander, and replacements would arrive every forty-five minutes. By great good fortune, there was a B and B just down the road from the Antagonists’ house, and a Chimera named Fawn had taken a room there that had a view of the street. She was now curled up on the windowsill pretending to read magazines and scanning the Antagonists’ front door. The Chimera soldier with the most charm and some specialized musk glands had gone around to the local council office and emerged with both the floor plans of the house and a date with the somewhat startled but delighted head planning officer.

With Marie looking through his eyes and making the occasional suggestion through his mouth, Bart, along with two other Chimerae, had composed a plan of attack.

“Well, this will not be quiet or clean,” said Amanda, one of the three strategists. She leaned over the building schematics, committing them to memory. “So we must ensure that it’s fast. If we’re quick enough, we’ll be out of there before the neighbors can even call the police.”

Bart eyed the blueprints thoughtfully. It was an old building, very narrow, with five stories. He marked the exits.
Front door, back door, basement door,
he thought.
Of course, we do not know their capabilities. For all we know, they could simply vault out of a top-story window and go trotting away down the street.

“Two of our people are equipped with thermal vision,” said Franz, the other strategist. “We will identify where in the building they are sleeping, if they
do
sleep. If they hear us coming, they will try to either fight or flee, which might slow us down a bit. We must give them as little warning as possible.”

“The advantage,” said Amanda, “is that this house shares walls on either side of it. We need to cover only the front and the back.”

“Marie, do you want them captured or killed?” Bart asked the air. He heard a heavy sigh come back through his own mouth. It was a little disconcerting, acting as a speakerphone.

“I’ll need to consult with the graaf,” she said, and a perfect re-creation of her voice came from Bart’s lips. “I’ll be recommending execution. I don’t think we can take any chances.” Was it his imagination, or did he hear a trace of regret in her voice? He shrugged. “But it will be up to him. If the order is to kill them, be sure to bring back their bodies. If you have time, I’d like all their possessions, but the priority is their corpses.”

The plan that they formulated called for exquisite coordination. Two snipers would cover the front of the building and two would cover the rear, in case any of the Antagonists elected to try to escape through a window. With eyes that contained both raptor and feline genes, the Chimerae would be able to pick out any movement, even in the dark.

A team of four would scale the building and station themselves on the roof. Two teams of four would position themselves at the front and back doors, and a team of two would enter via the basement. At a signal given by Bart, they would all tear through the place. With the speed the Chimerae could muster up, Bart knew it would sound like a barrage of thunderbolts blasting through the house.
To say nothing of the gunfire.
He almost pitied the neighbors who were going to be jolted out of their sleep. Every room would be checked. Any Antagonist was to be killed on sight.

It had been a very good plan, and Bart had been quite looking forward to seeing it play out, except that at 4:30 p.m., four Antagonists, two males and two females, had walked out of their front door, nearly giving the posted sentries heart attacks. There was no sign of the unnatural white skin the Chimerae had been warned about. They looked like normal people; they were dressed in normal clothes and had normal faces. They appeared to be in their early twenties, and while the four of them, two black boys, an Asian girl, and a white girl,
did
garner second glances from a few passersby, it was only because they were all beautiful.

They carried no weapons, but they did have a picnic basket with them, which was the subject of much frenzied debate and speculation among the Chimerae. The consensus was that it contained some sort of weapon of mass distraction, but then the Antagonists spread a blanket on the grass in Hyde Park, opened said basket (prompting some flinching on the part of the Chimera observers), and proceeded to extract an early dinner of cold chicken and various kinds of salad.

“Well, that’s fine,” said Amanda. “They’ll have their little picnic in the park, and then they’ll go back to their house, and the plan can still go ahead.” Bart said nothing.

Two Chimerae remained stationed by the house, and fresh soldiers were dispatched to the park to maintain a watch on the party of Antagonists, who seemed to be in no hurry to move on, even after they had finished their food and packed the plates back in the basket. Grafter soldiers jogged by the party in running suits and strolled by in business clothes. A pram was hastily procured and a shawl draped over it so that two Chimerae could sit on a nearby bench, absently rocking a pillow masquerading as a baby. Serious thought was given to acquiring a dog to blend in with the many dog walkers, but no one could agree on what would be done with it afterward. The two youngest Chimerae, who happened to absolutely loathe each other, consented, under duress, to lie down in the grass near the Antagonists and make out for a while. With the heavy foot traffic in the park, there was simply nothing to do but wait. The Chimerae could not so much as shout at one of the Antagonists without drawing the attention of witnesses.

“Patience,” said Franz after hours had passed and they received a report that the Antagonists had not only failed to move from their spot but had opened a bottle of champagne. They remained lounging on their blanket, chatting easily. There was much laughter. From what the Chimera observers could pick up and relay back to the hotel room, they did not appear to be talking about anything of relevance. No mention of the Broederschap, the Checquy, or any planned attacks. A good deal of the conversation appeared to revolve around a British reality-television show and who was the biggest bitch on it.

“You’re
sure
these are the Antagonists?” Amanda asked doubtfully.

“Sander and two other trackers confirmed it,” said Bart.

“Do we want to try entering the house in their absence?” asked Franz. Bart hesitated. It was tempting, but the possibility of raising an alarm was too great. If the Chimerae followed the plan, it wouldn’t matter if an alarm was raised. They would still be able to surround the Antagonists and kill them.

Night fell. The other visitors to the park started to depart but the Antagonists made no move to leave; they continued to lounge on the blanket. A park official bustled up to them and pointed out that the park was now closing. One of the females stood up to talk to him, putting her hand on his shoulder and leaning close. He nodded several times and wandered away. The Antagonists toasted one another and settled back down.

To the outrage of the observing Chimerae, the park official then bustled up to
them
and advised them that the park was now closing. Rather than raise a fuss and thus possibly draw attention, the soldiers meekly withdrew.

Of course, they didn’t entirely withdraw, because they were elite warriors on a mission of vital importance who would not be thwarted by a minor functionary, and so the two of them with the best eyesight hid in some nearby shrubbery.