losing dave

Losing Dave

`

"Penelope please." a voice said in Latin.

"This is her."

"Hold for Alec please."

Great I thought to myself, "Alec is calling." I said to Anne.

Anne looked over at me from her lounge chair; we were lying by the pool here at our hotel. Anne was wearing her signature white bikini and large framed sunglasses. I smiled at her, she was so beautiful.

Anne had talked me into a bright red string bikini; I shook my head at the thought. I felt like I was walking around naked. Though I enjoyed the feeling of freedom that my new bathing suit gave me, it was uncomfortable to wear.

Anne had told me, people looking was the price for being good looking, I didn’t care. I didn’t think I would ever be okay with it. Anne said I looked hot in it, and because we were in Hawaii, I had to wear it. Whatever, she liked me in it so I would wear it for her.

"Penelope, this is Alec. Please tell me you’re not home."

"I’m not."

"Are you in Paris?"

"No, I’m in Hawaii with Anne, why?"

"That’s too bad. I had hoped you were up to something. There’s been another massacre."

"Really?"

I switched back to English, "There’s been another massacre Anne."

"Where?" she asked.

"Paris." I switched back to Latin,

"What happened?"

"Eighty three people were found dead at one of the Paris chapter Brotherhood halls."

"Wow."

I looked at Anne, "Eighty three dead in a Brotherhood hall in Paris."

"Holy crap." she said.

"Was it our friends in Romania?"

"No. They knew nothing about it. But word around the campfire is that three of the dead were board members. Also, this I know for sure, the Brotherhood

emissary is missing."

"Arthur maybe?"

I asked.

"Possibly."

"You know for sure it wasn’t vampires?"

"The only vampire clan that’s strong enough to try something like this is Romanians, and they were quite clear they didn’t do it. And if you didn’t do it, it had to be a renegade faction of the Brotherhood. With the emissary missing, I’m willing to bet Arthur’s found some friends."

"But why would Arthur want the emissary?"

I asked.

"Information would be my guess."

"Do you think he knows of Anne and my treaty with the Brotherhood?"

"If he knew nothing of it before, I’m sure he does now."

"What kind of information could he get from the emissary?"

"Everything the Brotherhood has planned."

"I don’t see what that would have to do with me."

"Well if he gets proof that the Brotherhood leadership has made a deal with you, he could use that to gather more ronin to his side."

"So we could end up dealing with more than just Arthur."

"Yes. Be careful Penelope. If anything comes up please keep me informed. There are certain arrangements between our world and the Brotherhood that could be seriously damaged if Arthur becomes anymore powerful."

"Yes Alec, keep me up to date if you find anything else out."

"I will. Until the next time we speak."

"Yes."

I hung up my cell and placed it on the table between me and Anne.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Looks like Arthur is going to have some help."

"Great."

"Don’t worry about babe, we’re here, they’re in Europe and you’re beautiful.

Anne chuckled, "You want to swim in the ocean this evening?"

I smiled leaning my head back, "Sure."

"What a way to start a vacation." Anne said leaning back.

Later that evening, Anne and I played in the ocean together. Our hotel room had

an exit that went right out onto the beach, so we didn’t have to go far to get there.

There were a bunch of people there swimming and playing, so two women swimming together didn’t draw too much attention. There were plenty of good looking women dressed like us all over the place.

I loved watching the fish swim around us. Anne was amazed at how long she could stay under without needing a breath. She swam around me under the water and would jump up and grab me. I was too afraid to move too quickly in my new bathing suit, I was afraid it would come off. I so wished I had packed my one piece.

Anne swam up and wrapped her arms around my neck from behind and rested her head against mine, "What’s a matter?"

"Oh I was thinking I wished I had my other bathing suit." I said really thinking about Paris.

"Don’t be such a prude."

I smiled, "Remember, I came from a different time than you."

"Watch this."

Anne let go of me and dove into the water. After a moment Anne head surfaced, she wore a sly smile and her face. She threw something at me and dove back into the water. It took me about all of a second to realize what it was she threw at me, her top.

After a moment her face resurfaced, "Anne! What are you doing?!" I said shocked.

I looked around to see how close anyone was to us. I couldn’t believe she took her top off and was swimming around.

"Put this back on before someone sees you!" I said hold it out to her.

"Nope. You might want to hide that thing unless you want someone to see me." she said playfully and dove back under the water.

I looked around to see if anyone was looking, "Anne!" I snapped quietly at the water, "Anne, quit screwing around!" I said looking for her.

Anne came up and laughed, "You’re worried about me being topless under the water and you’re standing there looking like that?" she said laughing.

At first I had no idea what she was talking about, and she could see that, "Your

face goof."

I reached up and felt my face, great. I was getting so worried that some would see Anne I hadn’t even noticed that my face had gone vamp. Anne laughed and breast stroked over to me. She put her arms around me and placed her forehead against mine.

I could feel her face change, "Are we playing a new game now?" she asked kissing me.

I was grateful it was twilight out and there was no one close to us. The surf crashed into us, feeling Anne’s body banging into mine I felt the worry of Arthur and Paris disappear.

"We shouldn’t be in plain sight like this." I said heavily

"Maybe we should go inside." Anne said biting my neck

I chuckled, "Here put this back on." I said trying to give Anne’s top back to her.

Anne took the top and pushed away from me, "Party pooper."

I laughed.

"Can you teach me Latin?" Anne asked putting her top back on.

"Yes, it’s not hard to learn."

"Really? I thought it would be."

"You’ll find that learning things is quite a bit easier now."

"That’s good, maybe I won’t hate math so much."

I let my face slide back to human, "So we’re going back to school in the fall?"

"Sure, I would like to anyways."

"Too bad we didn’t drop our classes." I said.

Anne closed her eyes and looked up at the sky; I could tell she hadn’t thought about us dropping out.

"Great. What are we going to do?"

"I don’t know, who cares. They’ll let us back in; either that or we’ll go somewhere else. But I wouldn’t recommend anything until after we deal with Arthur."

"Do you think they’ll blame us for that?"

"Doubt it. There’s no way we would have been able to sneak into Europe and sneak back out without the Brotherhood knowing it. The European Brotherhood

is full of trackers."

"That’s good." Anne looked around a bit, "Let’s go have sex, I’m bored."

I shook my head and smiled, "Oh Anne."

*

I stood in the kitchen of the safe house looking out the window. Dawn was coming; I loved this time of the morning. Morning was mankind’s time, it belong to us. New hopes and dreams always came with the rising of the sun.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" I said turning.

"Are you okay?" Ryan asked.

"Yes, why?"

"It’s nothing Sir; it took me a second to get your attention."

"I’m sorry, my mind was elsewhere."

"My apologies Sir, shall I come back?"

I smiled to myself, "No Ryan, you’re fine. You know, if I had twenty soldiers like you Ryan, I could end this nonsense."

"Thank you Sir, but I doubt it."

"What do you need son?"

"They’ve been beating that man for a good hour now, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the point of it. I trust that you have your reasons for it, but I was wondering if you could explain them."

"Would that make it a little easier to stomach?"

"Yes Sir."

"Mostly it’s to put the emissary in his proper place. He has a great deal of arrogance, to get the information that I need, he needs to be humbled. He needs to know that we’re in charge, and the Brotherhood isn’t going to come save him. Here soon, the real pain will start."

I could see the thought of torture wasn’t something that sat well with Ryan. I

didn’t think less of him for it, he was young and war was new to him.

"Your presence won’t be necessary during that part." I said.

"Thank you Sir."

I turned and looked back out the window. Ryan had told me what had happened when he caught the emissary; the men protecting him crashed through the door and killed his partner immediately. Ryan had stood his ground against five men. He had killed them all and managed to chase down the emissary to bring him back alive. Five against one, something to be proud of.

I walked over to the table and grabbed an orange out of a bowl of fruit. I walked back over to the window and tossed the peals into the sink. Today would be interesting, I thought walking over to the basement stairs. I pulled open the door and went down eating my orange.

The emissary Ben was tied to a chair with a gag over his mouth. He was badly beaten. One eye was completely swollen shut. Both of his lips were busted open and were still bleeding. He was stripped to his T-shirt and underwear; both were covered in his blood. When I came down into the basement, he lifted his head and looked at me with his good eye. I ripped the gag from his mouth and looked hard into his face.

"You’ll pay for this outrage." he said weakly.

"I’m sure I will." I said with a smile, "But not today."

"What do you want?" Ben asked.

"Besides your pain? Nothing much, just a little info."

"I’m not telling you anything."

I smiled at his bravado, "You’ve taken a good beating, but I hate to tell you, we’re just starting. And you’re wrong; you’ll tell me anything I want to know. Because here soon I’ll have something you’ll want, and you’ll give me anything to get it."

"What’s that?" he asked smugly.

"Death."

It was like the truth dawned on him. I could see the switch turn on in his mind, this was going to get worse, a lot worse.

"Christopher, the small barbeque grill you have upstairs."

"Yes?"

"Go get it and bring it down here, fire it up."

"Okay."

"You mean yes Sir." I snapped.

"What?" he asked a little put back.

"We are not brothers anymore. You do what I say, or I’ll put you in that chair." I said pointing at Ben.

Christopher hesitated; a smile went across my face. I really hoped he wanted to dispute his new position in life. I knew he was held in high regard at one time within the Brotherhood, but those days were over. If he wanted it back, he could go back to the Brotherhood.

"Yes Sir." he said backing down.

As I watched him go I felt sad, "Too bad." I said with a touch of melancholy, I would really like to kill that one I thought to myself.

*

"What are we doing today?" Anne asked.

I didn’t want to come back to the real world. As we laid there in our bed, my thoughts were on last night. Anne and I were laying together still in our bed. The sun had been up for a few hours; we hadn’t done anything but be lazy.

"I don’t know, what would you like to do?" I asked.

"Horseback riding maybe?"

"That sounds good; it’s been a hundred years since I’ve been on a horse."

"Literally." Anne joked.

Anne and I leaned in and touched our heads together and laughed. Coming here was a good idea, with everything that was happening we needed the break from the real world.

*

I washed the blood off my hands in the kitchen sink at the safe house. It had been a predictive day, and a very different night.

"Sir, what are your orders?" Ryan asked.

"Make whatever arrangements that will be necessary to get everyone to Washington State."

"Yes Sir."

Ryan had been greatly disturbed by the last couple of days. I had to give it to the Emissary, I had no idea he would have been able to take the abuse he did. Normally it took about a day to truly break a man; it took three with the Emissary. At first I thought it was going to be easy, it didn’t take much to make him pass out.

But after a time, I noticed that it really broke the rhythm of the torture process. Every time he passed out, it seemed we would have to start from scratch. And the time he spent out, it became harder and harder to wake him back up.

I started with questions I already knew the answers to. I burned him, half drowned him, stuck ice picks into his genitals and nothing seemed to break him. I eventually had to put his nuts in a vice just to get him to start lying to me. But I knew then we were making progress.

After three days of the worst torture since the Romans Empire, he finally broke. All of the ronin brothers stopped watching after about day two. Even by the end, I had lost my stomach for it. And like I forecasted, when I promised him a quick death if he would just answer my question for an hour, he broke.

I put an ice pick through his brain stem in the end; he didn’t even seem to noticed. We took his destroyed body and hung it on a tree as a message to the Brotherhood to stay out of my way.

We now knew all of the information that Ryan had given us was correct. We knew that Sebastian had paid the Romanian Clan to assassinate the King Toad. Also, the dealings between the Brotherhood and the Romanian were becoming closer. The Romanians were planning to send an assassin to assist the creature

Penelope in killing me.

The thought made me smile, he called himself The Edge. Why I have no idea. Over the thirty years I’ve hunted vampires, The Edge and I had fought probably a dozen times. I would look forward to seeing him again.

"Sir, what do you know about this fighter the Romanian Clan is sending? You said you knew him?"

"The Edge as he calls himself is relatively young for a vampire. He only like seventy or eighty years old. The most reckless vampire I’ve ever heard of. Good fighter though. Pretty predictable in his utter carelessness. He’ll fight anyone, anywhere at any time. He cares nothing of odds against him. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s a vampire, I think I would really like the guy."

"Is he powerful?"

"He’s not capable of flight, so that should tell you something, but I’ve never been able to kill him either."

"You’ve fought him before?"

I turned and smiled at Ryan, "Yes. On more than one occasion."

"I can see you respect him." Ryan said.

I chuckled, "I respect his love of mayhem. How he’s survived this long is beyond me. The Romanians hated him for a long time; I guess they got tired of trying to kill him and put him to work."

"He sounds interesting."

"He is. I’m sure if you stay in this line of work for any length of time, you’ll get a chance to meet him."

"Yes Sir."

"Why don’t you arrange us all transportation to America, it’ll take your mind off the last couple of days."

"Yes Sir." Ryan went to find his laptop to order tickets for us.

Over the last few days more ronin Brotherhood members had found and joined us. Their addition put our numbers at forty one. I felt confident that with the numbers we now had we would be able to kill the creature and her lover in Washington.

*

"This is Pip."

"Hey Pip, this is Maverick. Your order’s ready."

"My what?"

"Your order that you put in?"

"Oh yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve been in Hawaii that last week or so. But it’s ready?"

"Sure is. I got to tell you, this has been some of my finest work."

"Good, Anne will be glad to know her armor’s done. But it came out good?"

"Oh yeah. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What’s the deal with the slits in the back?"

I laughed at Maverick’s question, "One of these days I’ll have to show you the complete costume."

"Deal. When can I expect you?"

"We’re flying in tomorrow afternoon, since I’m going to be in Seattle, do you mind tomorrow?" I asked.

"No, tomorrow will be fine."

"Okay Maverick, I’ll call you when I’m on my way."

"Cool, see you tomorrow."

I hung up the phone and leaned back on the bed. I wasn’t ready to go back to Washington; I knew we were going back to whatever craziness we left. But on the bright side, Anne’s armor was finished.

"What was that?" Anne asked.

"Maverick, he’s the guy that’s making your armor. He finished it and wanted to let me know that I could pick it up."

"I take it we’re picking it up when we get home tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I hate the idea of driving in Seattle, but it will save us the trip. Plus if anything happens, you’ll have it."

"So you’re expecting Arthur to come sooner than later?"

"I have no reason to believe otherwise. Arthur has never seemed like the

procrastinating type."

"Do you think we’ll win?"

"I ain’t planning on either of us dying, so yes."

"Well I’m glad to hear that."

*

"Brother Arthur, what are you doing here?"

"Hello Doc, I bet you didn’t think you would see me again."

I enjoyed seeing the doctor that sewed up my fingers squirm. Undoubtedly he had heard of my position with the Brotherhood and clearly didn’t like me showing up on his doorstep in the middle of the night.

"You have something we need." I said

"I do?"

"You do."

"And that is?" he asked clearly showing fear.

"A basement."

"Why do you need my basement?"

I whistled at the three windowless cargo vans that we had rented. The doors opened and the men poured out, two of them carried a bundle tied up in a blanket.

"We need a place to work for a few hours." I explained.

"Brother Arthur, you

do know that I cannot help you?"

"Yes, but you will none the less." I said walking pass him into the house.

All of the men followed without question, "Take him down into the basement. Make sure he stays gagged." I said to the men carried the bundle.

"What’s that?" the Doc asked.

"Not what, but who. And never you mind that."

"Sir." Ryan said trying to get my attention.

"Yes?" I said turning.

"We found this." he said handing me the pistol that I had lost, "I figured you would like it back."

I smiled, "Thank you." I said opening the cylinder checking if it was loaded, seeing it was I snapped it shut.

"What’s the plan?" Ryan asked.

"We’re going to leave a message for our friends to let them know we’re back in town."

"Great." Ryan said without enthusiasm.

"Cheer up my friend; this will be the last time we have to do this." Ryan smiled a humorless smile and followed me down into the basement.

A time later, the Doc came down to join us, "Sir, my I have a word."

"Yes." I said looking back at the Doc.

"Do you mind explaining to me why you have felt the need to beat this man for the last two hours?"

"I don’t need to explain myself to you."

"I let you into my house, let you torture this man. I haven’t informed the Brotherhood, nor called the police. I think you owe me an explanation."

"Would you like to call the Brotherhood or the cops?" I asked looking at the man.

"No, I’ve trusted you have your reasons turning your back on the Brotherhood. I haven’t questioned that. But I think I deserve somewhat of an explanation."

I smirked at the thought. What did I owe the Brotherhood? I didn’t need to keep their secrets.

"The Brotherhood has a secret purpose as you know. This thing," I said pointing at the vampire that was tied to the chair, "is our purpose."

"I don’t understand." the Doc said.

"Let me see if I can show…What are you doing?" I said to one of the men."

The of the men had plugged in a drill and looked as if he was going to start drilling for oil in the vampire’s head.

"If you turn his brain to mush, do you think we’ll get anything out of him over the next few hours?" I asked.

"My apologies sir, I wasn’t thinking."

"I’ll give you points for creativity, but sometimes less is more you jack-a*s." I said shaking my head, "What was I saying again?" I asked the Doc.

"You were explaining the purpose of the Brotherhood." he said.

"Oh yeah, that’s right. That there," I said pointing at the vampire, "Is not a man."

"I don’t understand."

"A man, like you and I? He’s not, he’s a monster. The purpose of the Brotherhood is to kill creatures like him."

"I find that hard to believe. All I see is you torturing a man to death. If he had committed some crime, call the police. There is no excuse to do this to another person."

"That’s just it," I snapped, "He’s not a person! And doing this won’t kill him!"

"You’re talking nonsense. If you continue this

torture, and this is torture. You will kill him." he pleaded.

"You’re wrong; he’ll just have a headache. In a week, he’ll be fine."

"I’m a doctor, you will kill him."

I smiled, "Move away from him." I said to the men that were beating the vampire.

I pulled my pistol out of my belt and pointed it at the vampire, "Watch this."

"No!" the doc shouted as I fired.

The bullet hit him in the chest and knocked him over backwards in the chair.

"Sit him back up." I said, "Look at him!"

The creature sat gasping for air with his eyes wide open. He coughed and choked on his blood, but he wasn’t going to die.

"Is he dead?" I asked. "I shot him in the heart as you can see, he isn’t dead." I said shooting him a second time.

"Hey!" someone complained because they were standing too close when I fired a second time.

"Look!" I said pulling the Doc over to vampire who was again knocked over from being shot.

"Is he dead? Look at that, he’s still alive."

I shot him a third time, "Is he dead yet?" to the Doc’s amazement the vampire

didn’t look like he was going to die anytime soon. I fired the remaining three shots into him and placed my pistol back in my belt.

"Sit him up." I said.

They sat the vampire back up. He couldn’t breathe from the six gunshots to the chest. It was clear to the doctor he wasn’t going to die, but he did pass out. The doctor quickly checked the creature to see if he had died.

"How is this possible?" he asked after a moment.

"Let me guess, his heart’s still beating?" I asked.

"Someone’s going to call the cops." Christopher said under his breath, I shot him a glare to silence him.

"I don’t understand."

"I told you, it isn’t human. He won’t die from what we’re doing to him. The only way for me to kill him is to chop his head off, or burn him. Here in a bit, he’ll come around."

"If he’s not human, what is he?" the Doc asked.

"It’s not human, that’s all you need to understand." Ryan said, "Why don’t you go back upstairs Doc and let us work. We all know this is ugly. None of us enjoy what it is we are doing here, but sometimes it becomes necessary. So please, go back upstairs and not make this any harder than it needs to be."

*

Anne’s armor looked amazing. Everything was the same as mine except for the back and breast plate. They were painted gold and had beautiful horses engraved in them. Maverick was an interesting guy; he had gotten plans for a forge off of the internet and went from a guy that messed around with a homemade forge and a hammer, to being one of the most respected armor makers in Washington.

Maverick had his own shop he had made in his garage. He tinkered in it like some mad scientists from a comic book. Not only did he make armor, he made

weapons. But they didn’t have the quality that the armor had. For the most part he sold his stuff to renaissance fair weirdos. But in his add on-line, he boasted his stuff could take a chop with an axe and not cut through it, something that he proved before I bought my breastplate.

The body suit wasn’t something he made. That, he had to have order, but he was a whiz at making perfect measurements for it. Not to my surprise, everything fit perfectly on Anne.

She also got a helmet that he had sitting in his shop. It was painted the same as the metal pieces of Anne’s armor. He had used the helmet as a test piece to get the color right. The helmet was plain; it had cheek covers and a piece that covered the nose. It fit Anne perfectly, though I hated to see her cover her face.

After Anne changed back into her regular clothes, we paid and headed back to Oak Harbor. It was late evening by the time we got back and I was exhausted.

"I’m so glad we’re home." Anne said as we pulled up to the house.

"Yeah, I’m whooped." I replied.

"I wonder what craziness we’ve missed, not that I care."

"I don’t know." I said getting out of the Anne’s Escalade.

Anne went around back of the truck and got her armor out. She slung the bag over her shoulder and looked at the luggage for a second.

"Screw it, we’ll get it tomorrow." she said as she shut the hatch.

I waited for her to catch up to me before we headed up to the front door. I unlocked and opened it and killed the alarm. As Anne turned on the lights she screamed.

There hanging from the middle of the living room ceiling fan was a headless body. The fan was turned on low so the body swung around lazily. There was huge pool of blood under it and a ring of it flung around the living room.

"Turn off the fan babe." I said quietly.

Anne shut it off and I walked over to the headless corpse. I couldn’t feel anyone’s presence, but I knew without a doubt who had done this.

"Be right back." I said running up stairs.

I headed to my bedroom to make sure my weapons were still there. Upon entering my bedroom, I discovered who the body belong too. There lying on my

pillow was Dave’s head. I ignored it for the moment and looked to make sure my sword was still there.

I sighed in relief when I saw it lying undisturbed in its place. I grabbed it and went into my closet to retrieve my knife and tomahawk. As I returned back downstairs, Anne stood looking at the body with her hand over her mouth.

"Who would do such a thing?" Anne asked.

"Arthur." I replied flatly.

"Who is it?"

"It’s Dave." I said sadly.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"The rest of him is upstairs."

"Oh no, how could anyone do this to him? He’s such a sweetheart?"

"I don’t know Anne."

"And they call us monsters. We would never do something like this."

"I know baby. Let’s get him down." I said and headed out to the garage to get a ladder.

When I got back, Anne was sitting on one of the couches crying.

"Don’t cry yet. Let’s get Dave taken care of first."

"Okay." Anne said wiping her tears.

"You’re going to have to cut him down." I said placing the ladder next to him.

Anne nodded and I handed her my knife. She climbed the ladder and waited for me to catch Dave when he fell.

"Okay, ready."

Anne cut the rope and he fell into my arms. I laid him gently on the ground and looked at my friend; he had been tortured horribly. I could see gunshot wounds in his naked chest. He was covered in nasty looking cuts and burns. His right hand had been cut open from between the knuckles to the wrist. Poor Dave, he had never hurt a soul. And now he was butchered for the simple fact he was friends with me.

"Arthur is going to pay for this." Anne said angrily.

"Yes." I said not knowing what else to say.

"What are we going to do with him?" Anne asked.

Sighed first before I could answer, "Clean him the best we can and bury him in the yard I guess. I don’t know what else there is we can do. It’s not like we can call the police."

"Yeah. Poor Dave." Anne said starting to cry, "Why did this have to happen?"

"I don’t know babe."

In fact, I did know. It was because we were what we were. This was the world that we lived in. There were those in the world that had dedicated their lives to destroying us, Arthur was one those. But the only consolation of this was, in a game like this, revenge was necessary and expected.

That bothered me; Arthur was in control of the game at the moment. He wanted us to enact revenge, which was his hope. That gave him the upper hand at the moment.

Anne and I washed Dave’s body and head as best we could, placed his head in a pillow case and rolled him up in a blanket. I dug a hole in the yard and we placed his body in it. After we cleaned the living room as best we could, we put everything in the hole with Dave and filled it in.

"What are we going to do?" Anne asked.

"Nothing for the moment."

"Why? I want Arthur dead!" she snapped.

"So do I, but listen. Arthur wants us mad and out of control. He’s hoping that we make a mistake by going off half cocked blinded by rage. Speed, strength and technique Anne, remember?"

"I don’t know what in the hell that has to do with this."

"You’re relying on strength in this. Right now we need technique and speed."

"That’s a lousy analogy." Anne said, but I could tell I was getting though to her.

"Remember, we don’t know anything about Arthur’s strength right now. We’ll get our revenge Anne, but we need to be patient. I need to call Alec and have him get in touch with the Brotherhood. After what happened in Paris, I’m sure they’ll want to know where to find him."

"I don’t want the Brotherhood to deal with him."

"Neither do I, but we need help. We need information, anything to help us guess what we should do. Victory isn’t something that happens by accident Anne; it’s

done with good planning."

Anne and I went up to my office and I called Alec.

"Alec please."

I said in Latin.

"One moment."

After a moment Alec answered,

"This is Alec."

"Alec, this is Penelope."

"Ah Penelope, I was wondering when you would call."

"Why."

I said shortly.

"We got news on the emissary. He was found crucified to a tree in a Paris park a week ago.

"Nice. Alec I need you to get in touch with the Brotherhood. Arthur is back here in Oak Harbor. He killed a friend of mine and left him headless hanging from my ceiling fan in my living room."

"Was he a vampire?"

"Yes."

"That’s too bad, if he was human, you could have informed the authorities. Give him some human heat for a change.

"Yes that’s too bad; I need to talk the Brotherhood Alec. He was in my home again, they let a lose canon get lose and I want him dead. He’s the Brotherhood’s man, I want them to help me track him down and kill him. I want him dead Alec, do you hear me? I want him dead!"

I said getting angry.

Anne looked at me with concern and asked me what was wrong with her eyes.

"Nothing." I said in English to her.

"I understand you’re upset, I’ve already talked to the Brotherhood. After Paris, they’re ready to get involved. They’re just looking for someplace to meet up with you."

"Wonderful."

I said with sarcasm.

"Also, and try not to get mad over this, it could help, possibly."

"What?"

"I talked to the Romanians."

Alec paused; I knew he wasn’t too happy about telling me whatever he needed too.

"

What?"

"They’re sending The Edge to you."

"The hell they are Alec, I don’t want him here."

"I told them that, they told me to tell you that you’ll need the help."

"I don’t need that kind of help Alec."

"I know, I told them that."

"The Edge can’t be controlled."

"You don’t need to control him, just turn him lose."

"You tell the Romanians that if he acts the fool out here I will kill him."

Alec laughed,

"I think that’s what they’re hoping for."

"When will he get here?"

"I don’t know. They sent him, but that doesn’t mean he’ll come. You know how sidetracked he can get."

I rubbed my face, how much worse could this get,

"I’ll figure out someplace to meet with the Brotherhood and I’ll call you back. Have them ready Alec, I don’t want to have to wait around for them."

"I will, please do not waste time in meeting them. They’re not even sure how large Arthur’s party is, if you have anything new, call me immediately."

"I will."

"Good-bye Penelope."

I looked at Anne for a moment, "How could things get any worse."