Pagan (MPRD Book 1) Read online

  Pagan

  BY ANDREW CHAPMAN

  Pagan

  By Andrew Chapman

  This is a work of fiction.

  All characters and events are the products of the author’s imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2009 by Andrew Chapman. All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, except for selected passages for the purpose of critical reviews, without the written permission of the author.

  Cover photograph ©2009 by Andrew Chapman. All rights reserved.

  First edition published October 2009

  Kindle version published November 2009

  ISBN 1449537871

  EAN-13 9781449537876

  myspace.com/andrewpchapman

  facebook.com/chapman.andrew

  JAC.143

  To my wife, who is,

  my life, my love, my everything,

  and she knew it first.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A work like this doesn’t spring into existence fully formed. It requires many months of hard work. Some of that hard work is even done by the author, believe it or not. To everyone else, my deepest appreciation:

  To Judith, my long-suffering and ever-delightful wife, who proofread the text as it was being written, pointed out where I had made mistakes, kept me from descending too far into incomprehensible slang, and offered advice on that most difficult of the author’s challenges: writing about the opposite sex.

  To my brother, Peter, who answered procedural and technical questions about the British military.

  To all of my friends at work, who offered encouragement, support and helpful advice.

  To Wilma and everyone at EnragedBibliophiles for all the help, advice and critique.

  To Justin and Mary, who read the early draft of the book and yelled at me to finish it.

  To all my friends on Facebook, who put up with a myriad of often cryptic status updates as the book stuttered and stumbled along.

  To Intelligent Peripheral Devices Inc. for making the AlphaSmart Pro on which most of this novel was written

  And finally to Loki, who kept me from getting too full of myself by constantly reminding me that writing a novel is in no way more important than fulfilling my primary functions on this Earth, namely the feeding, care and entertainment of my feline Lord and Master.

  Lexington, KY

  2009

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  With the exception of those items described as being fabricated by the Ministry, all weapons and equipment in this novel are real. Any errors in describing their capabilities are entirely my own fault.

  The Ministry safe houses are the product of my imagination, though they are loosely based upon several pubs from my wild and untamed youth.

  This book is written with the utmost respect for the men and women who serve in the military. It takes a special person to willingly place themselves between their nation’s people and their nation’s enemies, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that their sacrifice is neither made in vain, nor begrudged by selfishness, nor cheapened by politics.

  Pagan

  Anchorman: We now go live to Bucharest, where Chris Thomason has news on these startling events. Chris?

  Reporter: Thank you, Peter. British troops acting as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force were patrolling several miles outside of the city of Braşov when they came under attack by what appear to be vampires. Reports—

  Anchorman: I’m sorry, Chris? Did you say ‘vampires’?

  -BBC NEWS, BLACK TUESDAY.

  PROLOGUE

  FIVE YEARS AGO…

  Bill and I were members of a four-man patrol. We were both fairly new; proud of the tan berets we definitely weren’t wearing. When I joined the military I went through the world’s toughest training course to earn a green beret and become a Royal Marine. Bill had joined a year later but we changed units at the same time. We removed our green berets with the globe and laurel badge and put on a different colored headgear with a different badge.

  I know law and order is teetering in England but there are still a few things I can’t talk about. Officially my patrol was from the army. Bill and I were from the Royal Marines, Smoko was an Aussie from their 2nd Commando Company, and Johnny was from the Royal Gurkha Rifles, ten years older and half a foot shorter than the rest of us, but meaner than hell. Army? They must have doctored the records.

  If you don’t understand what I’m trying not to say, try grabbing the nearest Englishman—I hear hundreds of thousands have fled to other countries—and asking them who the guys in the tan berets are. They’ll probably know.

  We were on a mission in Hungary, six months after that little fizzle of a war ended, looking for someone—who it was and why we were looking I can’t say—when we found the vampires. There were three of them and they were draining a young girl. The oldest, a strikingly beautiful woman whose name I never did get, turned and let out a hiss when we approached. My patrol stopped, rooted to the spot. I looked around, puzzled. What the hell was going on? Bill seemed to be fighting it, but the other two were as still as statues. The woman flowed to her feet like she had no muscles to inconvenience her, and the full weight of her stare fell on me. She said something in Hungarian that I didn’t understand and then she came at me.

  I had a Heckler & Koch G3 and it should have torn her in half on full auto. Instead of dying she stumbled to a halt and looked down at the holes in her torso. The holes were sluggishly leaking blood, which slowed and stopped before my eyes. Suddenly I was terrified, the same terror my ancestors must have felt when coming face to face with a saber-toothed tiger. She looked back up at me and screamed in rage. I guess I’d ruined her favorite dress or something.

  My G3 had one of those nifty new H&K grenade launchers slung under the barrel and her mouth was a nice open target. Before I’d even completed the thought I’d given her something to chew on. Apparently it didn’t agree with her. The expression on her face in the instant before her head detonated will probably keep me warm on cold nights for years to come.

  Killing the vampiress seemed to break the spell. The crackle of weapons fire filled the forest, overlaid with the harsher knocking sound of Smoko’s belt-fed LSW. The two other vamps weren’t as resilient. We took them apart. Vamps can heal wounds fast, but hit one with fifty or sixty shots in a few seconds and it’s the death of a thousand cuts. I reloaded my G3 twice before the last corpse stopped twitching.

  It took us almost two weeks to fight our way back home and that was when we found out that this was going on all over the world. In Eastern Europe the vamps just emerged and resumed their place at the top of the food chain. Some countries went back into the dark ages overnight. In Western Europe the vampires were more discreet. Some even presented themselves as culture experts, with genuine experiences from the Renaissance or La Revolución. In England they tried to march in and take over. They found that neither Her Majesty nor Her Majesty’s Prime Minister would back down. The military were sent in, the populace was armed, and open season was declared.

  It’s been like that ever since. In the north there are four or five cities that the vamps control—Manchester, Sunderland, Newcastle, Leeds—but the south is pretty safe. In Scotland the vamps found out what Hadrian and many English kings had learned to their cost—you don’t fuck with the Scots. Even a vampire needs a strong constitution if they’re not to soil themselves when confronted by six feet of kilt wearing, red-haired, blue-painted, axe wielding, frothing insanity. There are vampire hunters up there with necklaces made out of vampire fangs who drink scotch out of fanged skulls.

  We didn’t know any
of that at the time. All we knew was that we’d just come face-to-face with something from out of legend. The whole world was coming to grips with the same shock.

  Ministry Of Paranormal Research and Defence.

  Report on vampiric propaganda activities.

  Classified: Eyes Only.

  Committee chairman:

  [deleted]

  Committee members:

  [deleted], [deleted], [deleted], [deleted], [deleted], [deleted], [deleted].

  It is the conclusion of this committee that, in the years running up to the events of the day now known as ‘Black Tuesday’, the various vampiric groups were involved in a propaganda war of staggering proportions.

  In almost all areas of popular entertainment, the vampires—or, more often, those working on their behalf—were producing products designed purely for the purpose of changing the attitudes and sympathies of the general populace.

  This report will focus on several selected examples but it needs to be remembered that these are simply that: selected examples.

  In general, any novel, movie or television series produced over the last five to ten years, which depicts vampires in a positive light, is most likely the product of the vampiric propaganda machine. The vampires produced many works of fiction that depict vampires as tortured victims of their own condition, as angst-ridden, misunderstood or tragic figures, as romantic, desirable or possessed of superhuman sexual skills, as lonely Romeoic characters searching for that one special human to spend eternity with, and as simple heroes. Almost all of these have entered popular culture and done untold damage to the collective consciousness.

  This was, and remains, particularly noticeable in the USA. In the twelve months immediately preceding ‘Black Tuesday’ television in the USA reached near saturation point, with each network vying to air the next big thing in vampiric drama shows. Most of the vampiric romance novels were primarily aimed at the US market, as were most of the vampiric movies.

  It’s estimated that the various vampiric groups spent in excess of £500million within the USA, producing and promoting vampire propaganda for domestic consumption. However, it’s important to note that, over the same time period, those movies and novels that are known to be sourced from the vampiric groups grossed well over £1billion.

  The effect of this massive propaganda gap cannot be overstated. The public, by and large, is against us. It is the recommendation of this committee that the Ministry, with all due haste, immediately commence attempts to redress the balance.

  CHAPTER

  1

  There was a bite to the air, a late-autumn announcement of the winter months to come. The wind crept up and made you wish you’d worn a jacket. I’ve always liked this kind of day. The sun was shining and the air was clear, the crisp breeze was invigorating and life felt good. It was nice to dwell on the positives, seeing as my hands were wet with blood and I was busily beheading a corpse.

  No, I’m not a murderer, mass or otherwise. I’m a vampire hunter and the dead body had been my prey. He’d led me a merry chase across some really scenic areas of rural England but I’d caught up with him when he started looking for a place to hole up out of the sun.

  I straightened up and wiped off my knife before sheathing it. It was a Gurkha kukri, a heavy, leaf-shaped blade with a distinctive bend that makes it ideal for chopping. The vampire was dead for sure. A 7.62mm silver-tipped round in the base of the spine followed up by decapitation will kill all but the most powerful vampires. This one had been as green as a mile-wide stretch of the National Forest and had gone easy. One thing—two things—left to do.

  I grabbed his severed head by the hair and carefully placed it between his knees. I don’t, as a rule, desecrate the corpses of my prey, but this one was for effect. Glavidia, the self-styled ‘Queen du Noir’, had turned this young man because he had caught her attention and she had wanted to play with him. I wanted her to understand that I didn’t approve of this and when I don’t approve of things you get more than a strongly worded letter. The Pagan burial ritual would send a message she couldn’t ignore. The British press already referred to me as ‘The Pagan Vampire Hunter’—because ‘Pagan’ is my codename, I’m actually an Atheist—and the hint was clear. This was my handiwork.

  I folded his hands on his chest and placed the empty cartridge case between his fingers. The empty shell is of a type rare enough to qualify as my trademark. Few people use the 7.62x51mm ammunition any more, especially those that carry the crown mark that shows they were made in England, not to mention a tiny ‘Ag’ that said the round was silver-tipped. Fewer still fire it from an L1A1 FAL since the British Army gave them up. The FAL may be outdated but I loved the brutish, black weapon. It could put a bullet through a brick wall, take a door off of its hinges, and had a kick like a Shire horse on crack. When you hit someone with it they go down fast and stay down. I’ve actually exploded a vampire’s head at five hundred yards with one shot.

  Gruesome, huh? Well get used to it. Since the vampires came out of the crypt, life ain’t neat. They pretty much run half of England like it’s their own personal playground. I hear that there are some places on the continent and over the Atlantic where the vamps are under control, where they almost live like regular people, but here they rule. Places like Africa and Australia are almost free of them and, believe it or not, in parts of the USA they even have rights. You can’t even kill one without—I spat reflexively at the thought—reasonable cause. For some reason the wild ones liked Europe, and Eastern Europe is a no-go zone.

  I picked up my FAL, cradling the bulky rifle under one arm as I looked down at the body.

  “Rest in peace, Bill,” I whispered.

  Yeah, the vamp had been Bill in another life. Just one more reason why Glavidia was inching closer to the day I put the world out of her misery.

  I began walking down the hillside. It was just touching noon and it would take me a few hours to get back to the pickup point.

  It is still held—amongst polite society—that it’s not the done thing for a gentleman to introduce himself, but there’s nobody else around to do it for me so please forgive the lack of decorum. My name is Jack Henderson. I’m in my early thirties but I look both older and younger. When I hunt my face becomes serious and I look older than my years but when I laugh I look and feel like a kid again. I’m six feet tall with the kind of body that tends to get described as ‘well-built’. I have short, brown hair that is utterly nondescript, and eyes that one ex-girlfriend described as ‘the color of the sea on a stormy day.’ I just say blue-green and leave it at that. My eyes aren’t my best feature.

  I’m wearing my usual hunting outfit, olive green military issue trousers and a military issue DPM camouflage jacket. Under the jacket is a Kevlar vest. Vamps don’t tend to use guns but there are always those humans who will, willingly or otherwise, work for the bloodsuckers. Under the vest is an olive green t-shirt with the legend “MPRD—They Suck, We Blow” printed in faded dark blue ink.

  The MPRD is the Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defence, the agency I work for, and the shirt had been a gift from Anna. Anna is one of my closest friends and she’s been with us almost from the beginning.

  Over the jacket is army-issue PLCE webbing. I’m carrying the FAL and my Kukri hangs from the webbing belt on my left hip, the handle reversed for a quick right-handed draw. My backup weapons are strapped to either thigh. On my right sits my H&K MP7 loaded with silver-tipped rounds. On my left is a Fairburn-Sykes 2nd Pattern fighting knife with a custom-made silver-alloy blade. Next to the knife is a holstered SIG Sauer P226 in 9mm.

  Yes, I realize that means I have more guns than I have hands to fire them, but the SIG is light, even with an extended twenty round magazine, and it’s nice to have. One more piece of boom-making goodness is the US-made M-203 grenade launcher under my FAL’s forestock. I was so impressed at having some extra punch with my old G3 that I never leave home without the ability to explode stuff. Sometimes we depend on it.


  We? We are Anna, John, Marie, myself and, until recently, Bill. My little troop of vampire hunters.

  I climbed over a low, stone wall and walked along a road that was barely a dirt track. I needed to go see Helen, Bill’s wife. Helen had made me promise that if Bill were turned I’d be the one to kill him. She had taken my hand in a grip of steel and looked at me with terrified eyes.

  “Kill him, Jack,” she’d said with scary intensity. “If he gets turned into a vampire, you hunt him down and you kill him, you promise me?”

  Bill had tried to laugh it off, like a big joke. He wasn’t going to be turned; none of us believed it could happen.

  “No, I want a promise,” Helen’s face had produced that expression I knew all too well, the expression she’d had when she’d decided to marry Bill. It said: the world will be thus, and don’t you dare argue with me.

  “If he ever gets turned, you kill him,” she spelled it out. “It has to be you. Make sure not to let anyone else. You do it, you kill him. Promise.”

  I promised. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t necessary. When we joined the MPRD from the military almost everyone made the same agreement: if we ever got turned, we wanted one of our people to do the killing and we wanted it done quickly.

  I’d fulfilled my promise to her, for what it’s worth.

  I walked for most of the afternoon, growing more and more impressed at just how far I’d chased Bill.

  That’s something people rarely get to learn about vamps. They aren’t that much faster than we are. Sure, vamps seem to move in a blur of speed or, for the most powerful ones, move from one spot to the other without being seen, but that’s all in your head. A vampire that moves from one side of the room to right in front of you without you even seeing them take a step has just played a mind game with you. They prevent you from seeing it, make you believe that they really moved that fast. It’s not true. I was able to track Bill and keep up with him all night. He never managed to get more than a few minutes ahead of me.