The Obscurati (12 page)

W
HEN
I walked into our bedroom, he had four humans on the bed. He had a stack of condoms, so I knew he was fucking one after the other. Only Oberon would have an assembly line of butts to fuck. That’s my husband.

“Just the four, dear?” I asked.

“I finished with one,” Oberon laughed. “He already left.”

The humans started to scramble, but I told them not to worry about it. I think one didn’t know Oberon and I have an open relationship, and I am not the jealous type. Tonight I was really hoping that Oberon had another load for me.

What was I thinking? This was Oberon.

I could feel anger fighting with my happiness to see Oberon. Anger? Vampire territorial tendencies? That isn’t like me, but not being with Oberon had left a hole in me, a ragged wound in my emotions. Good: at least I wouldn’t have to compete with anybody for Oberon’s attention. I needed to be with this vampire. It was more than wanting to be with him; it was a raw and intense need that I felt in every pore of my body. Nothing other than his embrace could heal the wound on my soul.

The humans scattered as I took off my leather. I was in bed with Oberon on me in a matter of seconds; shirtless, but I didn’t bother taking off my pants. It wasn’t sex I needed: it was proximity and cuddling. I needed to be inside the range of Oberon’s aura. I hungered for his touch, a hunger that was somehow stronger than my thirst for human blood. Some lousy vampire I turned out to be: being with Oberon was more important than drinking human blood. If we had a union or club, they’d toss me out as an embarrassment.

Oberon tried to move to get my pants off, but I held him tight. He understood somehow that I really needed the passion of his heart, not the juice from his scrotum. This was love: pure, simple, white-hot. I gave my heart to him that night, and he felt it. Oberon put his arms around my waist and back and pulled me tight. We held each other, and I didn’t even get a hard-on. He was falling in love with me all over again. He had missed me as much as I missed him.

Sex is just sex, but love is a whole other level. I knew that Oberon was mine in a way that couldn’t be matched or equaled. He could have all the sex he wanted, but I was the one he loved.

Home. Feels good. Feels really, really good.

I was holding him, smiling and crying as we both died for the day.

Chapter 8

W
ITHIN
a week, I got a large box delivered by courier. It was either a giraffe or….

My new shoot-’em-up had arrived. Somebody with a really big bank account had been shopping. We’re talking about one rifle that costs €8,000 to €11,000 (about $10,000 to $15,000 US, approximately). My very own Heckler and Koch PSG1A1 rifle with a twelve-power Schmidt and Bender sight. I was about ready to pee down my leg.

There was also a book about calculating variations for wind and altitude. There was a sniper’s calculator, which took the curvature of the earth into consideration.

I was swooning until I remembered there was only one reason to have this kind of weapon. The Obscurati had to take out rogue vampires, and I was to be a sniper.

Could I even do that? I stuffed everything back into the box and headed to the basement, where I started reading the books. I read all about the bipod attachment and how they went to a great deal of trouble to improve the ergonomics over previous models.

It was tool of death, and the company was worried about ergonomics.

The rifle is German, invented after that massacre during the German Olympics. The German response units didn’t have the right firepower to handle the terrorists who had kidnapped and eventually killed several Olympians from Israel. They never wanted to be in that situation again, so the GSG-9 put the word out that they were willing to pay good money for a rifle that could do a surgical strike at a huge distance.

Ergonomics indeed.

The PSG uses standard NATO ammunition, but I wasn’t sure if Oberon’s cache of silver bullets included that size.

“Of course it does, dear,” Oberon said as he walked down the hallway toward his machine shop. “You get a new toy?”

“‘Toy’. You are so queer sometimes.”

“What’s the range?”

“Eight hundred meters.”

“
Verdammt
,” he said with a giggle, and he walked up and began to massage the back of my neck. Ever since I had gone to Bern, Oberon had become cuddlier. He still liked to fuck as often as he could, but he made sure that those urges didn’t get in the way of us being touchy-feely as a couple. Oberon had grown when he learned that I had needs separate from his, and he made sure he was there for me. Beats me what I ever did to deserve to love this man. Wow. I mean friggin’ wow. A tear tried to poke its way out of my eye, but I held it back.

This was my project, but Oberon wanted to be with me every step of the way. Nobody ever asked him what he thought about being part of a sniper team. He was just there, and he was excited to be part of the experiment.

“Do we even have a place I can go to practice?”

“I’m sure. Put it in that duffel bag, and I’ll grab a couple of boxes of regular ammo.”

“No need to waste silver on a practice range.”

“Exactly,” Oberon said as he skipped down the hallway. His long black hair danced along with each bounce. If he didn’t stop, we’d be up in bed instead of out shooting beer bottles. He was really into this project, and he seemed completely happy about it.

“I’ll ask one of the groundskeepers where we can go for some long-range practice,” I said as I grabbed the duffel bag and headed outside. A groundskeeper was still up, sharpening a saw. He suggested a place about four kilometers (about two miles) from the house. He said I would have about a thousand meters of unobstructed view, and there shouldn’t be anyone behind the trees for another thousand meters. Just in case he was wrong, I made a mental note not to miss.

We found the clearing without any trouble. It was almost a full moon, so that helped.

Oberon had brought a bag of beer bottles and soda cans, so I had plenty of targets. I put them on the ground in a line about twenty meters from the back of the clearing. We both took up positions about four hundred meters from the doomed bottles.

Using a sniper rifle like this is along the lines of a science project. You don’t just meet the bad guy at high noon and draw your pistol. There are bipods to set, sights to adjust. The idea of being a sniper is that it all happens without being seen. It doesn’t have to be really fast most of the time. Once you drop the target, the retreat can be as fast as necessary. The setup is what takes time. It does for me.

I mean, I had never used anything like the PSG. When I was in the Navy, they specifically told me to stay away from pistols and rifles. I was warned not to go anywhere near the big guns on the battleships. But look at me now. I was about to assassinate soda cans in the middle of a German night at four hundred meters, and that distance was just because I wanted to feel the rifle.

“Come on, Annie Oakley,” Oberon mocked.

“That’s Master Oakley to you.”

“Whatever. You’re burning nighttime.”

It must have taken me fifteen minutes to get everything set up, but when I was ready, the rifle and I made music together. I took down three ominous-looking beer bottles that were threatening the clearing. The PSG is smooth. I was expecting more of a kick, but the engineers had done a lot of ergonomic work. I had to triple-check my aim between shots, but it wasn’t like a whole new shot each time.

Three bottles down. They would never be able to menace the clearing again. Thank you very much.

I picked up the rifle and duffel bag. Oberon jumped up. We floated back to about the upper limits of the PSG.

When I settled back into a firing position, I was surprised at how small the remaining targets were. I could barely see the tops of the remaining bottles, and the soda cans were below the grass level. What I saw were some tiny little spots. I knew the bottles were there because I had put them in place myself.

Should I try a shot standing up?

No, I was going to do this. I could adjust the shot. If I knew where the top of the bottle was, I could estimate where the main part would be.

I adjusted the sight. Even with a twelve-power lens, the bottles were little dots.
Next time, I will plan for a bigger target or put the bottles up on something.
Pride wouldn’t let me just go down and move the bottles. Nope, snipers can’t get up and ask their targets to put themselves in a more convenient location.

I relaxed. Vampires don’t breathe, so that wasn’t an issue. I can’t imagine how the inner workings of a human body could ever get this rifle targeted. The beat of a human sniper’s heart could move the bullet by several centimeters.

I stilled. No movement whatsoever. Vampires are all good at being still.

When I had a bottle’s top in my sight, I slowly squeezed the trigger. And I wish I could tell you what I hit. All I know is that the bottle survived my attack. It stood erect, staring at me with a sinister grin. Maybe I didn’t even see a bottle. It was only a spec that I thought was the mouth of the bottle, but maybe it was a mushroom or blossom.

Fucking bottle. I didn’t even know how to adjust.

“You were high,” Oberon said. He had brought binoculars.

“I don’t even know it’s a bottle.”

“Watch,” Oberon said. “See the area?”

“Yeah.”

Oberon used some sort of telescope to make a little red dot appear on the top of the bottle. This was the most awesome piece of technology I’d seen since the transistor.

“Thanks,” I said. “It is where I was aiming.”

“You were high,” he said as he moved the little red dot further up range.

“How high?” I asked.

“About three centimeters.”

“Thanks.”

I probably should have adjusted the sight or run numbers through the sniper calculator, but I just winged it. You should never wing it when you are using a weapon that costs more than some cars, but this is me.

My second attempt put an abrupt stop to that intimidating bottle. It literally exploded, along with about a meter of grass in front of it. I had adjusted the shot too much. Ripping through the grass moved the bullet just high enough to slaughter the beer bottle into a zillion shards. Point for me (and the grass).

“Wow,” Oberon said. “You murdered that bottle.”

“I did it to protect you.”

“My husband, the sniper, has a new toy.”

“You… I mean… grrr. I get no respect around here. You want to try it?”

“Nope,” Oberon said. “I like my current duties.”

“What’s that?”

He thought about it for a minute. “Thinking up new and terrible ways to kill bad vampires.”

“Yup,” I said.

“Putting little dots of red light onto bottles and cans that have been sentenced to death.”

“Yup,” I said.

“And fucking the best sniper in Europe.”

“Europe?”

He lifted the rifle and set it down on top of its duffel bag.

Before I could move, he was on me. We made love in the clearing.

It was just us and the moon and the swath of destruction I had created with my new….

“Toy,” Oberon said. “My man and his toy. You are so cute.”

“Ugggggh.”

Chapter 9

I
GOT
really good with the sniper rifle over the next few weeks. By the next full moon, I was able to annihilate a soda can at eight hundred meters. The world would now be safe from those marauding hunks of aluminum.

Oberon and I started to work out a kind of shorthand. He would give me initial settings for the telescopic sight, and they got more and more accurate as he learned the hardware.

We always cleaned up the mess. Everyone recycled at Menz’s mansion, and snipers were not excused from that duty. Menz would know whom to blame if somebody found chunks of glass and soda cans out in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s your birthday next week,” Oberon said.

“Is it? I lost track after so many years.”

“What do you want for your birthday this year?”