Page 19 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
"All right," Roman snapped. "There are exceptions, but you can’t become lycan. Some humans like to dabble in magic, especially entry-level magic, but they’re not very good at it. Don’t try it." He cocked his head. "You took the job because you needed real purpose in your life. There’s none greater than this." He rubbed his wrist as if the curse burned him in punishment for some reason. Sometimes if they thought negatively toward their handler or the monarch, it did that. "Why are we meeting here? In the open?"
Thomas worked his jaw back and forth a few times. "It’s a hell of a lot less creepy here than that mausoleum a quarter mile underground they call your headquarters. I discovered I can get access to almost anywhere in London. Interesting how working directly for the Crown gets me things I couldn’t have ever imagined."
"The creepiness of that place is their way of communicating how much they hate us," Roman said.
Thomas crossed his arms. "That place reeks like someone dumped a shit ton of flowery air freshener down the toilet to mask a sewer leak."
Shane liked this guy.
Flynn and Ky snort laughed.
"The toilet’s been out of order for at least a decade since a pipe broke. Only flushes on Sundays." Roman’s lips might’ve twitched upward. "Your predecessor rarely had anything down there fixed."
"It’s disgusting. Don’t even get me started on the mold issue or the cockroaches."
Roman said, "Redesign it. Fumigate it. Upgrade it. Do whatever the hell you want with it. You’ve got millions in the budget that the guy who ran it before you chose to siphon into his salary instead of investing into upkeep or remodeling. I suggest upgrading the security. Just don’t touch the depository. That’s the room with the weapons. That space is off limits to everyone other than us. Don’t touch anything on the shelves. There are things in there we've collected that we can’t figure out how to destroy, and if they get back into the world, well, it’d be bad."
"As in population decimating bad." Ky used his knife to clean his fingernails.
His brothers had already moved the most dangerous relics to a separate facility, somewhere the Crown had no clue existed. What remained in the depository were trinkets. Still dangerous, but Ky had exaggerated about the ones they’d left behind.
"Get yourself a better computer system," Flynn suggested. "One made in this decade."
"This paper stuff is ridiculously old school." Thomas pulled a few file folders out of his bag and avoided eye contact, as if not looking would diminish their effect on him. Kudos to the guy for trying to keep it together when most men would’ve tucked tail and run. "I got the King’s take on you guys. I got the outgoing guy’s take when he threw these folders at me. Both said something about fighting paranormal terrorists. How about you tell me exactly what you do from your perspective? And how I’m supposed to be of any use to you?" He added on a murmur, "Not like there’s training for this shit."
No one spoke.
Thomas glanced around. "Someone speak."
Roman said, "You find places in the world where you suspect something nonhuman is wreaking havoc. It could be anything—ghost, witch, ghoul, necromancer, or a power-hungry warlock. You find the problem. Then you send us to investigate. If it needs killing, we do it. We don’t do human bullshit. No wars. No espionage or dealing with bad humans. That’s for MI6. We’re not assassins who track down humans unless those humans are using nonhuman creatures or magic in some way. We only deal with those who threaten humans, maybe the world. Right now, there are a few pressing problems on the agenda. Why don’t you tell me what nonsense is in those files your predecessor put together to sidetrack us from the important stuff."
Thomas opened the one on top. "What the hell does this? Looks like a scene from a B-grade horror flick."
Shane squinted to make out the image of body parts spread out and blood coating linoleum flooring. Things that did that were annoying. Not necessarily difficult to eliminate. They left a stench that got stuck in the nostrils for days.
When no one said anything, Flynn unplugged his lollypop and said, "That'd be a necromancer."
"A what?" Thomas wiped sweat off his forehead and glanced at the papers again. "I’m not sure any of this is real. That you’re not bullshitting me. How does this work now that we suspect this is a problem?"
Flynn held out his hand. "Just give me the file. We’ll deal with it. Necromancers are level one. It’d kill you in a heartbeat, but not us. Local danger. Not a world threat, but we’ll resolve it since it’s causing waves, or we can outsource it to someone else that can deal with it."
Like the Alliance that Shane headed.
"The second file…" Thomas opened it and read a bit before shaking his head. "There’s stuff missing from this one. I can’t make sense of it. Something about lycan detention facilities?"
"We’re working on that one," Roman said. "That’s important. It’s level five. Dangerous to the world. The short version is someone has spent years putting lycans and other paranormal creatures into prison facilities to torture, brainwash, and implant mental triggers. They give them military training to be soldiers that they can then sell to the highest bidder as personal and programmable security. Imagine governments with us semi-controlled and programmed to be assassins at their beck and call. Us doing human business."
"Wasn’t there a comic book character or two that had mental programming?"
Roman nodded.
"That’s, well, it’s top-level scary shite." Thomas’s hands shook. "That’s what Gerard, the previous guy who dealt with you, got wrapped up in?"
"Yes," Roman said, "We’re still figuring out the network and its purpose. They also stole a dangerous relic out of the depository that we’re going to have to contain called the Curmsun disc. Thomas, I need you to authorize us to find Gerard, your predecessor, and grill him for information. We need to know everything he wouldn’t tell us when he was protected by the Crown. He denied involvement right before he tried to kill us with a missile." Roman shifted into his scary face. "How about you don’t ever try to kill us like that? If you want us dead or out of your life, free us from the curse. We will happily disappear. Sending missiles after us won’t work. Simply pisses us off."
"Really pisses us off," Ky muttered. "Hurts like hell."
Thomas swallowed hard. "Got it. No killing you with missiles."
