Page 57 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

‘Okay, now we can go,’ I said. We still had Eben and a couple of the other MIB to deal with, but that was doable.

We raced up the stairs and burst out the door at the top – which I closed as firmly as I could so Shadow wouldn’t do anything else strange in full view of the entire academy. To my surprise, most of the staff and recruits were still milling around the main entrance. The fire seemed like a lifetime ago, but we hadn’t been gone more than half an hour. Apparently, the event required a debriefing and copious amounts of doughnuts and hot cocoa; it was the academy’s solution to everything, and it was hard to argue with.

I scanned the crowd. Danny, Harry and George were surrounded by other recruits, which had probably prevented them being injected and dragged down to the basement. A wave of relief weakened my knees and I stumbled. That was when I saw Eben and Sergeant Marks walking towards the cafeteria.

No one was down there. Was Sergeant Marks with Eben, or was Eben going to inject him and send him to the submarine? My money was on the latter. ‘Connor, I’m going after Eben. Can you keep an eye on them?’ I pointed to Harry, George and Danny.

‘Yeah. Go.’ I loved that he didn’t doubt I could handle Eben.

It didn’t take me long to catch up with him and Marks. There were just the three of us and the noise from out front had faded to a low murmur; no one would hear us.

‘Let him go, Eben,’ I said, my voice low and threatening.

Marks looked at me strangely. ‘What’s up, Barrington? I came to talk privately to Eben – I’ll be back out in a minute if you need something.’

‘No. Eben is an MIB plant. He has a syringe to inject you with then he’s going to take you to a submarine and transport you to a black-ops site for experimentation.’ It sounded a little far-fetched when I said it out loud. ‘Trust me,’ I added.

Eben gave an awkward laugh. ‘Don’t be weird, Barrington. I have a question about class.’ He was trying to act as though I were batty, but even so Sergeant Marks backed away from him.

‘He’s already attacked Danny – Danny confirmed it,’ I persisted.

Sergeant Marks froze. I could see the wheels turning in his brain and I saw the moment he accepted that I was telling the truth. The problem was that Eben saw it too and he leapt forward, the syringe in his hand aimed at Marks’ neck.

The sergeant had been looking at me but he caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. Luckily he was a supernat and he wasfast. He caught Eben’s arm in a hard grip before the syringe touched him. I heard Eben’s wrist snap and he screamed in agony.

After I plucked the syringe from his nerveless hand, Sergeant Marks threw him against the wall. Eben slid down, unconscious. I held out a hand to prevent Marks doing something he’d regret. ‘That’s probably enough. I’ve got it from here, Sarge.’

I took another set of flex cuffs from my back pocket and secured Eben’s arms. Even though he was unconscious, he whimpered when I pulled his broken wrist behind him. I almost felt sorry for him before I remembered that he’d been lying to us for weeks, had kidnapped one of my friends and was planning to take us to be experimented on. Asshole.

I turned to Marks. ‘We have to find a couple of Thorsen’s allies because they’re after Danny, George and Harry. The rest are tied up downstairs.’

‘The rest?’

‘Yes. The poltergeist pointed them out.’ I took a deep breath; this next revelation would be a shocker to the sergeant. ‘Lieutenant Fischer was involved.’

Marks shook his head vehemently. ‘No, I don’t believe it.’

‘He, Thorsen and Miller are secured downstairs in the basement plant room. Margi and Sidnee were drugged and they’re down there, too, sleeping it off.’

The sergeant scrubbed his hands over his face and muttered something I didn’t pick up; from his expression I guessed they were some choice swear words. I blew out a breath; we weren’t done yet. ‘I need your help.’

Marks straightened. ‘What do you need?’

‘To come up with a good reason why we’re about to arrest all of these people. I figured that the attempted kidnapping is a start.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, that should be enough to switch it to federal charges and take the locals out of it after they do the arrest. But the MIB are tricky – they’ll either get these bastards off or make sure they never talk again.’

I hadn’t thought of that possibility but it made sense: they were utterly ruthless. ‘We’ll need to prove the attempted kidnapping happened, right?’

‘Yeah, we need evidence and witness statements. When the feds take over, we need to have our ducks in a row. We need to keep it strictly to kidnapping.’

‘Maybe money? Ransom demands?’

‘Maybe.’

I frowned. ‘The MIB think ahead. These men will already have a line to toe if they get caught.’

‘We’ll get around it.’ Marks ran his hand through his short hair and shook his head in disbelief. ‘I thought Fischer was a proponent of supernat officers. But we have two jobs to do – first, save our people, and second, turn these scum over to the Sitka police. Let’s do it.’

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