*
More helicopters flew to Hill Hall throughout the day, carrying other members of the Court of the Checquy. Bishop Attariwala. Chevaliers Whibley and Eckhart. Rook Kelleher. Finally, an hour after sunset, a helicopter roared overhead without landing. A few minutes later, out of the darkness, Bishop Alrich came walking up the drive dressed in a dark suit. Odette watched him through the window of the sitting room. His hair burned in the lights from the house, and she shivered.
“I suppose we should go down,” she remarked to Clements, who was sitting on the couch and looking petrified. The Pawn was actually sweating at the thought of a formal sit-down dinner with the Court. This from the woman whose file says she once went bare-knuckle against a neo-druid who was twice her size and armed with titanium sickles, thought Odette incredulously. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you,” some unexpected sympathy prompted her to say. Clements shot her a grateful look and then appeared surprised. “Your dress looks great,” Odette added. In fact, the dress looked only all right, but the Pawn needed all the encouragement she could get.
*
The call had gone out.
The Chimerae scattered around London had heard Marie’s voice reverberating gently in the bones of their ears. Some had been staking out the various Checquy facilities. Some had positioned themselves as guards at locations that the Broederschap had judged to be high-profile targets. It was a sign of their desperation that three trackers were riding the Tube randomly in the hope that they might stumble upon a trace of their quarry’s scent. Upon hearing Marie’s message, they had all left their posts and headed quickly to their hotel, where a large (but not really large enough) room was serving as their base of operations.
Laurita and Sander had remained behind to stake out the front and rear of the house in case the Antagonists decided to go for a wander. Bart had explained the situation to the gathered troops. Sentries were deployed to relieve Laurita and Sander, and replacements would arrive every forty-five minutes. By great good fortune, there was a B and B just down the road from the Antagonists’ house, and a Chimera named Fawn had taken a room there that had a view of the street. She was now curled up on the windowsill pretending to read magazines and scanning the Antagonists’ front door. The Chimera soldier with the most charm and some specialized musk glands had gone around to the local council office and emerged with both the floor plans of the house and a date with the somewhat startled but delighted head planning officer.
With Marie looking through his eyes and making the occasional suggestion through his mouth, Bart, along with two other Chimerae, had composed a plan of attack.
“Well, this will not be quiet or clean,” said Amanda, one of the three strategists. She leaned over the building schematics, committing them to memory. “So we must ensure that it’s fast. If we’re quick enough, we’ll be out of there before the neighbors can even call the police.”
Bart eyed the blueprints thoughtfully. It was an old building, very narrow, with five stories. He marked the exits. Front door, back door, basement door, he thought. Of course, we do not know their capabilities. For all we know, they could simply vault out of a top-story window and go trotting away down the street.
“Two of our people are equipped with thermal vision,” said Franz, the other strategist. “We will identify where in the building they are sleeping, if they do sleep. If they hear us coming, they will try to either fight or flee, which might slow us down a bit. We must give them as little warning as possible.”
“The advantage,” said Amanda, “is that this house shares walls on either side of it. We need to cover only the front and the back.”
“Marie, do you want them captured or killed?” Bart asked the air. He heard a heavy sigh come back through his own mouth. It was a little disconcerting, acting as a speakerphone.
“I’ll need to consult with the graaf,” she said, and a perfect re-creation of her voice came from Bart’s lips. “I’ll be recommending execution. I don’t think we can take any chances.” Was it his imagination, or did he hear a trace of regret in her voice? He shrugged. “But it will be up to him. If the order is to kill them, be sure to bring back their bodies. If you have time, I’d like all their possessions, but the priority is their corpses.”
The plan that they formulated called for exquisite coordination. Two snipers would cover the front of the building and two would cover the rear, in case any of the Antagonists elected to try to escape through a window. With eyes that contained both raptor and feline genes, the Chimerae would be able to pick out any movement, even in the dark.
A team of four would scale the building and station themselves on the roof. Two teams of four would position themselves at the front and back doors, and a team of two would enter via the basement. At a signal given by Bart, they would all tear through the place. With the speed the Chimerae could muster up, Bart knew it would sound like a barrage of thunderbolts blasting through the house. To say nothing of the gunfire. He almost pitied the neighbors who were going to be jolted out of their sleep. Every room would be checked. Any Antagonist was to be killed on sight.
It had been a very good plan, and Bart had been quite looking forward to seeing it play out, except that at 4:30 p.m., four Antagonists, two males and two females, had walked out of their front door, nearly giving the posted sentries heart attacks. There was no sign of the unnatural white skin the Chimerae had been warned about. They looked like normal people; they were dressed in normal clothes and had normal faces. They appeared to be in their early twenties, and while the four of them, two black boys, an Asian girl, and a white girl, did garner second glances from a few passersby, it was only because they were all beautiful.
They carried no weapons, but they did have a picnic basket with them, which was the subject of much frenzied debate and speculation among the Chimerae. The consensus was that it contained some sort of weapon of mass distraction, but then the Antagonists spread a blanket on the grass in Hyde Park, opened said basket (prompting some flinching on the part of the Chimera observers), and proceeded to extract an early dinner of cold chicken and various kinds of salad.
“Well, that’s fine,” said Amanda. “They’ll have their little picnic in the park, and then they’ll go back to their house, and the plan can still go ahead.” Bart said nothing.