Another mission accomplished. You get back on the road toward Camp Scheffler. You remind yourself that Prince Lettow owes you another grand.
Next
Security is tight around Camp Scheffler. You're followed once you turn off the main road, first by the Texas Highway Patrol, then by some kind of patriot/militia group in a Chevy Tahoe flying Gadsden and Blue Lives Matter flags. They only peel off when you reach the outer periphery of the camp: high fences topped with razor wire, guarded by men in face masks and goggles. The face masks look like respirators, and they're all painted the same way, like a great cat's mandibles.
Though everyone seems to have respirators and at least one cat-skull logo, weapons and other equipment are heterogeneous and irregular. From their mannerisms, you detect a mix of competent ex-military, police/security personnel, and untrained fringe militia types.
The gate guard looks from your government ID to your very much nongovernment Mitsubishi, shrugs, and waves you around to the parking lot.
Next
Throughout history, certain kinds of prisons have served as neutral meeting spaces and feeding ground for the Kindred. Insane asylums, concentration camps, and gulags have drawn vampires with the promise of easy blood and relative security. Olivecrona, shadow director of Camp Scheffler and your sire, has hidden this place from regular inspection and allowed it to fester and grow ripe.
You roll past open-air holding pens where prisoners sit wrapped in reflective plastic blankets, watching your Mitsubishi with dull and hopeless eyes. Guards patrol with rifles or dogs.
As you finish your circuit and park, you watch some kind of shift change among the prisoners. They're being put to work in long, low Quonset huts. The wind carries the stink of unwashed and unhealthy bodies—and this is autumn.
The moment you step out of the car, one of Elin's flunkies is there.
"Do you have the USB?" they ask.
You remember Nilay.
When Olivecrona sent her retainers to destroy you all those years ago, you and a now-dead friend, Radu, tore them to pieces. You're amazed any of them survived, though Nilay hardly looks good—ragged scars mar one side of their face. Is that from when you hit them with a bottle, or when Radu cut them up with his hunting knife?
When Nilay recognizes you, they reach for their sidearm, then force their hand away.
"Krarr," they say. "You look terrible. Give me the USB. Olivecrona wants it right now."
Listen," the flunkie says, "I've dealt with a lot of couriers and—"
"You listen," you snap. "I've already dealt with you once. Do you want me to do it again? Tell Olivecrona I'm here and I have what she wants."
The two of you bicker back and forth for twenty minutes, but you have your orders, and finally Nilay backs down and stalks off. But by then several of the masked guards are watching you. That can't be good.
You've felt eyes crawling all over you the second you left Tucson. It's time to deliver this USB. You have a fake ID, so you just sidle up to the nearest guard who looks ex-military, not like some militia dipshit, and ask him where Olivecrona can be found.
He's perfectly polite. He apologizes for Nilay's brusqueness, then gives you instructions to head to the red prefab facility. Following his directions, you find yourself in front of a Santa-red hut guarded by a man and a woman dressed like Nilay.
"No entry," the woman says.
"I'm making a delivery from Tucson," you say, holding up the USB.
"Olivecrona is busy," the woman says.
"A delivery," you repeat. "From Tucson." How explicit should you be?
"Krarr, is that you?" That's Elin, from inside. "Go away! Come back tomorrow night! Just stay here for now and come back tomorrow night!"
The woman on guard shrugs uncomfortably.
Fine, you can come back, whatever. You head back to your Mitsubishi…
Someone stuck a boot on it.
Well, fuck. It looks like you're staying.
Next