Black Dog Short Stories II by Rachel Neumeier

Author:Rachel Neumeier [Neumeier, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Anara Publishing
Published: 2016-10-24T06:00:00+00:00

The Federal Reserve Bank was a massive building, all limestone or granite or whatever, white stone of some kind. It looked a whole lot like it was all just one huge vault plunked down in the middle of downtown—it had windows, sure, but they were barred. It wasn’t actually an ugly building, though. It looked strong. Not damn easy to break into. Or out of, right now, because just at the moment it was surrounded by all the cops in the entire universe. Roadblocks, too, which Thaddeus ignored. That drew attention, but the special forces were right over there, in black body armor marked with no symbols except the American Eagle badge.

Those guys didn’t need more than that. Everyone knew who they were. Formed during the latter part of the war, after so many vampires had been killed that their mind-clouding miasma had faded and ordinary people had figured out that all their nightmares were real, the special forces were specifically meant to deal with the monsters. Ethan could feel the silver in their weapons all the way across the street.

Most of the special forces units had been folded back into the regular military since the war had ended. But Colonel Herrod’s unit was clearly up to snuff. Which was fine. Because right at the tail end of the war, with Dimilioc’s victory looking more and more Pyrrhic every day, Grayson had quite deliberately formed an alliance with Herrod. He’d fed the colonel the information the special forces needed to get at the vampires that were out of Dimilioc’s reach. That alliance was tense, everybody knew human and black dog priorities might not turn out to align very well, but it was still in force. Not to mention that after that mess last year, Dimilioc owed Colonel Herrod. Worse, Ethan owed him, specifically and personally.

This situation might be Herrod calling in that marker because he was just that desperate. Or it might be the colonel testing the alliance, seeing what he could get from Grayson.

Or it might be a trap.

If it was a trap, Grayson’s order notwithstanding, they had already walked into it.

Herrod himself was right there, though. He’d appeared almost before the nearest cop could order Thaddeus to Turn your car around right now, sir, can’t you see we have the street blocked off? But no problem, there was Colonel Herrod, waving the cop away with curt impatience and then waiting with equal impatience, arms crossed, for the Dimilioc black wolves to get out of their car. That was a good sign. He wasn’t wearing body armor. He was wearing a suit, a sharp brown number that certainly hadn’t come off the rack, with a cream-colored shirt that perfectly complemented both the suit and his walnut-dark skin. Despite its elegance, the suit didn’t make Herrod look like any kind of harmless bureaucrat. Nothing could have made the colonel look harmless. But the suit was probably also a good sign.

Herrod was not a big man, but he was the sort of man who seemed intimidatingly acute, even on a first glance.

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