Riber Haus was eerily deserted as Rayne made her way upwards, her aura sense alert for any signs of life. Obviously the word had gotten out to the GGG staff that it wasn't time to come out and play. Of course, it might just be that Riber only had a handful of lackeys, good mindless minions not being in such generous supply as they had been before the war, but more likely they were being held back for some kind of Plan B. Usually Plan B involved an ambush, probably to catch Rayne in a crossfire from heavy weapons. Still, there was nothing to do but press on.
The first floor of the manor looked like such a house was supposed to look. While the basements had seen extensive renovation, probably during or immediately preceding wartime, the ground floor of Riber Haus had ordinary parlors, sitting rooms, a dining room, extensive kitchens, a library--nothing out of the ordinary at all, in fact, and all of it deserted. She proceeded to the second floor: villains seemed to like either the deepest hole or the highest tower to hang out at.
And there we have it.
The large room probably had originally been two or three rooms and someone had knocked down walls; the only thing Rayne could imagine needing so much space in a manor house was a ballroom or chapel and those would have been downstairs. The men had mentioned "experiment chambers" as being on a higher floor and these certainly fit the bill. A kind of apparatus like a mutant ceiling fan hung from the roof, great glass orbs on the end of five arms rotating slowly around a central spoke. Blue and yellow sparks flashed within the orbs, and coils of wire snaked across the ceiling from the unit's central pole, then down the walls to seven-foot-tall glass capsules mounted in metal frames along the walls, while a bank of controls at the far end of the room seemed to control the whole thing.
Remembering an earlier mission against the GGG in Argentina, Rayne decided that "mad scientist" had to be one of the qualities the so-called "master race" had been breeding for. There was just no other way to explain how many of the damned things she kept running into.
She wondered if this place was Mittel's, too, or if he'd strictly been into werewolves and it was Hessler, Riber, or somebody not on her target list that was in charge. Then the questions got shoved aside and it was time to get back to business: there was somebody in one of the capsules. Dianne!
The blonde woman brightened as soon as she saw Rayne. She said something, but the glass was apparently soundproof. Rayne looked for a way to open the capsule but couldn't find it; the trick must have been hidden in the frame. She flipped a blade out and gestured to Dianne to get back and cover her face, and when the Brimstone agent had, Rayne shattered the glass with one slice. Dianne clambered out of the capsule, glass fragments glittering like rhinestones in her shirt and slacks.
"Not to be ungrateful for the rescue, but you're not the world's most patient person, are you?"
Rayne shrugged.
"We all have our problems."
Dianne brushed glass off herself using her sleeves.
"It was Mittel who brought me here," she said. "Apparently he's been experimenting on himself. I'm fascinated by how he's managed to let common werewolves retain some of their brainpower; the Society would be interested in getting their hands on his notes."
"Well, he won't be needing them, so maybe you can raid his files on the way out."
"He's dead?"
Rayne nodded.
"I was looking for you and found him instead."
"Bad luck for him."
"Very bad." Rayne grinned toothily. "Also bad for Klaus."
"The dhampir?"
"That's the one. He showed up after I'd dealt with Mittel and saved me the trouble of hunting him down."
"You know, I don't get along with my brother, but we don't run around trying to kill one another. What's the deal there?"
"Other than the fact that our father was a psychopathic madman who raped and murdered our respective mothers and my siblings seem to think that was a good thing? For some reason the rest of my family all think that Kagan was the perfect bloodsucking role model and they all want to be just like him. So I'll figure I'll make sure they get what they want: he's dead, and they'll be too. Which is as much personal angst as you're getting from me."
Dianne made a face.
"Good. We don't have near enough time for girl talk. Besides, we've got two more Nazis to deal with, plus someone that Mittel referred to as 'the Commander,' unless he means Riber or Hessler."
"I couldn't guess, but I'm betting against Hessler. He was too far down the GGG ladder to have moved up to the top dog."
"That was ten years ago. Things change."
"Not that much. Not for Mittel, who was an SS colonel, to be taking orders from him. Nor Klaus--dhampir don't take orders from humans without a damned good reason. Now, Riber's a different story. This is his home, after all, which has to mean something, and since he wasn't part of the official apparatus he could be anything from the evil genius behind all this to a rich flunky whose only contribution is cash."
"It sounds like something we ought to check into."
Rayne shrugged.
"Why not? I don't have anything special planned for the rest of the evening."
"Good. I don't suppose you have a spare gun? I feel a little naked without mine, creeping around in a house full of Nazis and werewolves and whatnot without one."
"Try this." She handed Dianne the Bergstein, which she'd picked up on her way out of the lab.
"Oh, yeah, this'll be just fine," Dianne said, competently handling the weapon. She popped the clip and noted the remaining ammunition. "About half empty, though."
"Yeah, well, the guy who used to own it kept wanting to try it out on me. I managed to convince him to stop, but he wasted a bunch of ammo."
Dianne nodded, then replaced the clip and chambered a round.
"Men can be so discourteous that way. I think sometimes chivalry died in the war." She cradled the gun in a two-handed firing position, not having the vampiric strength needed to keep it on target one-handed. "Shall we go?"
"All right. Up, I presume?"
Another nod.
"That sounds about right."
"I don't suppose you have any idea what they intended to do here?" Rayne wondered.
"No, none."
"It must be something big, if it had Brimstone's Munich chapter so spooked--and that they took the time to kill them. Seems to me a little casual renovations would suit this place nicely."
Rayne was thorough in her "renovations"; she left the experiment a room a near-complete wreck when she and Dianne exited. At the least, she hoped the equipment damage would be a setback so if the worst happened it would take them a prohibitive amount of time to restart things. Not that she had any intention of leaving the Nazis in any shape to continue anything, but bad luck did happen.
They went down the hall and up a flight of curving stairs that followed the inside wall of a kind of turret. She'd just stepped out onto the landing when the crimson auras of several lives gave them away. Rayne seized Dianne's shirtfront and hauled them both back into the stairwell, just as two doors crashed open. Gunfire roared out, the staccato beats of automatic weapons firing mixing with the duller sounds of slugs tearing into woodwork.
"Looks like they finally got around to Plan B."
"What?"
"Never mind," Rayne muttered. A well-angled shot tore splinters from the doorjamb about three inches from her face. She retreated back a quarter-turn on the stairs, while Dianne triggered a burst through the door to keep the attackers honest. The window there was wide enough to fit through, but when Rayne looked out she wasn't greeted by the sight of a handy escape route. A kind of walkway with a wooden railing stretched from the tower above across the length of the house to another tower on the opposite side, and four more goons were coming from that direction. What was worse, two were carrying something between them: a fucking light machine gun on a tripod mount. If they got that into play in these restricted quarters then it was all over regardless of how much vampiric speed Rayne used.
"Ah, shit! This is going to suck."
"What?"
"Just keep your head down and stay out of the hall until I give the word."
"Okay, but--"
There wasn't any time to explain. Rayne slashed out, not only shattering the glass but tearing the windows themselves out of the frame. She sprang to the sill, measuring the distance in her mind's eye, and jumped, muscles straining as she plunged through the night air, stretching for every inch of distance. Her fingertips just brushed the railing, missing, but then Rayne barely caught the edge of the walkway itself.
She couldn't just hang around, though; the men on the bridge were already shouting, no doubt bringing their guns to bear. Rayne swung herself forward until she could bring her feet up to the underside of the walkway, then kicked off, swinging back around and up through two hundred and seventy degrees. Bullets sprayed around her, but Rayne moved faster than the men could react. Her back hit the railing, and she pivoted up and over, landing on her feet on the walkway five feet in front of the little group. The two unencumbered by the machine gun swung their SMP 34s up, firing, but Rayne was already in motion, flicking her harpoon out at the one on the right while launching a jumping kick at the leftmost one. Her boots thudded home on the goon's face even as she snapped the harpoon like a whip and both Nazis went over opposite sides of the rail. They hit the sharply slanted slate roof below and went skidding down to plunge towards the cliff, their screams fading out as they fell.
The remaining men dropped the machine gun and grabbed for their own SMGs, but Rayne's blades chopped out, tearing easily through unprotected bodies and leaving only two corpses behind. Rayne picked up the machine gun and wrenched away the tripod. She ran down the bridge towards the tower she'd just jumped from and kicked open the door. A half-dozen thugs were there, apparently trying to decide who was going to rush the stairs first.
"Hi, boys. Hope you don't mind that I borrowed this." Rayne patted the Mg-08's barrel, then slammed down the trigger while the men stood in horror. They didn't stare for long, since Rayne burned through the forty-eight-round belt in seconds.
"All right, Dianne; you can come on up."
The blonde woman did, peering out somewhat gingerly. She shuddered at the carnage Rayne had wrought, half a dozen bodies strewn in the corridor that bisected the tower, blood from multiple wounds sprayed everywhere.
"God! I think I'm going to be sick."
"Just think; that's what they wanted to happen to us." Rayne waved the exhausted machine gun, then set it down. Without bullets a gun was just a fancy club and her blades worked a hell of a lot better.
"Point taken. Still, I don't know how you deal with it, year after year."
Rayne shrugged. She didn't know, either. Maybe it was because she was half-vampire, the undead brain chemistry altering her attitude towards violence and death. What she did know was that she didn't want to stand around dissecting her psyche in the middle of a kill zone. She scooped up one SMP 34 that didn't have too many bloodstains on it, turned away from Dianne, and went back out onto the bridge.
"Geez, hold up," Dianne muttered, almost mincing between the bodies and the bloodstains. "Touchy, isn't she?"
"You don't know the half of it," Rayne shot back.
"Damn vampire hearing."
No further ambush was waiting on the far side of the walkway. The tower hall was a mirror of the one they'd just come from, only there was only one door opposite the stairs instead of two. Rayne kicked it open, quickly covering the figures inside with her gun. Shock, though, kept her from pulling the trigger, not on Konrad Hessler and not on the man standing behind the huge mahogany desk, the man who was undeniably the "Commander" Dianne had mentioned.
"Damn!" Rayne exclaimed. "It's not everyday I get to kill someone twice, Jurgen Wulf."