The Hammer Commission Read online

  "Damn that's loud!" Judith said stretching as she rolled on her back yawning.

  "You always sleep naked with strange men?" Mark growled.

  "Men, no. Big warm furry kitty cats? Why not? They don’t heat this place at night. It was freezing in here." She grinned at him then, "Besides, you already told me you're a devoted husband with no interest in straying."

  “Don’t try tempting me or I just might add you to the harem,” he grumbled.

  Judith shrugged, "If we weren't partners I might be worried."

  Mark nodded, that was also a very good point.

  "Let me order some food, then we can clean up and see about finding you some clothing."

  When room service came, which was the wife of the man who owned the place, she freaked when she spotted the rather large cougar lying on the floor; there really wasn’t any place to hide in such a small room. It was only Judith flashing her Interpol ID and telling a very strange tale about how Interpol was experimenting with big cats in place of drug dogs because they could climb though the luggage on planes, and through the rafters of warehouses so much easier that stopped her from immediately running off and calling the police.

  A second demonstration of just how well 'trained' he was to voice commands seemed to sell her on the idea.

  Mark of course glared at her the whole time, and wanted to strangle her all over again when she started to laugh hysterically after the woman had left the room.

  At least she had the sense to bury her own head in a pillow as she laughed and saved Mark the trouble.

  He had to admit though that Judith was a very convincing liar and had probably missed her calling as a used car salesman. He suspected she could have even put Jake to shame in the whole tall tales category.

  “Any idea where we are?” He asked Judith when she stopped laughing.

  “Outside some town called ‘Schwabach’. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to find a car dealer this late, and I don’t know if we even have the cash left to buy a decent one.”

  He looked at the clock, it was after seven. “Well find out where the nearest train station is, we might be able to catch one heading to a main station and switch there.”

  “How will that help us?” Judith asked looking a little confused.

  Mark tried to smirk; it wasn’t easy as a cougar. “Unlike back home, here there are trains going everywhere. So pick up the phone and ask the concierge.”

  Judith did just that, and after chatting with the desk clerk she hung up the phone.

  “The train station is on the next block over, and the next train, the one we need to leave on, is in thirty minutes.”

  “We better get going then.”

  “May I remind you that you’re still a cat and we have no clothes for you?”

  Mark swore and sat down on his haunches to think about that a moment. This put his head at her waist and an idea quickly formed.

  “Take your belt off, cut it down and put it around my neck to make a convincing collar. Hang my badge off of it, and snag that curtain line over there to make a ‘leash’. We’ll just have to go with the story you told that lady and bluff.”

  Judith looked like she wanted to strangle him for a change. “You can’t be serious!”

  Mark shrugged and flicked his tail. “Time’s a wasting.”

  “This would be easier if you were a wolf,” Judith said gritting her teeth as they left the ticket counter. Her Interpol ID had checked out, so the officers who were called over bought the story, even if they did look skeptical.

  Mark’s ‘alerting’ however on a kid with a backpack full of heroin quickly got them out of Judith’s hair.

  “Trust me; wolves do not look anything like a dog.”

  “We’re just lucky that kid came by...”

  Mark tried not to laugh; he wasn’t a big believer in luck.

  Especially not as at the next station four police officers got on the train and asked if Judith would be so kind as to use her animal to sweep for drugs?

  The end result of that little exercise was six arrests, twenty three citations, and the compliments of the German Railroad system, which gave Judith a free railway pass through to Spain, with first class accommodations when they switched carriages further on.

  They got tapped several more times on the trip to do searches, though once they entered Spain they were left alone.

  “I feel sorry for whoever has to explain this one!” Judith said smiling as they finally got off the train Barcelona. It was early morning; they’d been on the train almost forty hours.

  “That would be you,” Mark laughed, “It’s your name on all those reports.”

  Judith swore in a very unladylike manner at that point.

  “Oh don’t worry; they’re used to weird stuff from us. Now go buy me some clothes!”

  Twenty minutes later then went back inside the stores, only now Mark had some clothes on, to buy something that looked a little more presentable.

  “Your taste in men’s clothing is questionable,” Mark said as they went to find a bus to Manresa.

  “I thought it looked rather nice on you.”

  “I didn’t even know they still made zoot suits,” Mark said shaking his head.

  “You just have no style,” Judith teased.

  “Oh I have style; I just don’t have the style of a teenager. At least the tie is nice.”

  “So are you sure we can catch a bus there?”

  “Yup, the Abby at Manresa is a major tourist attraction for any Catholics and many other members of Christian faiths. We can just shuffle in with the rest of the tourists.”

  “Well I for one will be happy to sleep in a real bed tonight. They do have real beds right? This isn’t some sort of ‘give up worldly goods’ place, is it?”

  Mark snickered, “Far from it. The place is a like a four star hotel. A lot of lay people work there, so they didn’t skimp on the features.”

  “Well that’s good; I’m definitely not the monastery type.”

  “Neither am I. Ah, there’s the tour bus stop, right where I remembered. Let’s go get some tickets.”

  “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Judith said after he paid for the tickets and sat down.

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “I thought silver burned werecreatures?”

  Mark nodded, “It burns the turned ones, like me. The pure bloods, it doesn’t faze them a bit.”

  “Well then how come you were able to wear the cross?”

  “It’s not silver. Looks like steel to be honest.”

  “No, it’s not silver, but the chain is.”

  “You know how you have the gift of tongues?”

  Judith nodded, “Yes.”

  “Well I got immunity to silver. Which is pretty important when you consider how many silver objects, crosses, and other holy symbols there are.”

  “I can see how that would be important.”

  “Part of why I don’t wear any silver, or even own anything made from it. Gifts can be withdrawn if God or one of his angels feels you need to be punished. Also even though it no longer harms me, it still feels a little strange when I touch it. So I just steer clear of it as much as possible.”

  Judith nodded again, “See, that wasn’t that bad.”

  Mark looked at her curious.

  “Getting information out of you is like trying to interrogate a tweaker on where he hides his drugs.”

  Mark shrugged, “Old habits.”

  “So where did you grow up? That accent is definitely not west coast.”

  “New York, just outside the city.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “My dad died when I was a kid, killed in an accident and didn’t leave us much. Just my mom, my older sister, my younger brother, and me. My sister is gorgeous; she’s a high fashion model and got married to a very rich soap opera TV star when she was twenty. She was on her own before she even graduated high school. My younger brother is a genius; MIT offe
red him a full ride when he was a sophomore in high school.

  “Me? I had nothing going for me, and once I got out of high school food stamps and welfare really wasn’t going to take care of me anymore. So I joined the Army. The whole thing over in Afghanistan was expected to wind down in a year or two, I figured by the time I got out of basic it would be over and I could spend some time saving money and go to college on the GI Bill when I got out.”

  “How long were you in?”

  “Almost two years. I was in about a year when I got sent to Afghanistan, fresh out of training. Until I ran into that vamp things were going pretty good. Then suddenly three months in the hospital, the last two were more for ‘mental observation’.” Mark shrugged, “then I got med’ed out and that was that.”

  “They thought you were crazy?”

  “Hell even I thought I was crazy. I rattled around for a while, the nightmares wouldn’t let me sleep much, and I couldn’t believe a lot of what I had seen had really happened. Eventually I just decided to become a hermit and withdraw from life. I’d gotten wounded by the vampire and it wasn’t healing. Vamp wounds can be pretty nasty, they don’t heal by themselves and they slowly drain your life away, as well as your will to live and it was doing a number on me.

  “That’s why I love my girls so much. Without them I would have died; a rather nasty death too most likely. Might have even come back as some sort of ghoul. No, they saved me and I owe them everything.”

  “Of course their being rather attractive has nothing to do with it,” Judith said smirking slightly.

  “Fringe benefit,” Mark said with a smile. “But I was in a seriously bad way.”

  “So do you talk to them at all? Your brother or sister?”

  “Not really, my sister still spends most of her time either modeling, or traveling, course she’s older now and her husband has moved up to regular TV shows. So if I see them once a year it’s a lot. My brother got married and moved out onto Long Island after he graduated MIT; has a bunch of kids and owns a bio-technology company. He bought my Mom a small house nearby so she can visit.

  “I see them about once a year.”

  “Your mom doesn’t know about your wives, does she?”

  “No,” he sighed.

  “The kids?”

  He could feel his face blushing.

  “Your Mom has grandchildren she doesn’t know about?” Judith almost yelled it at him. “I should smack you upside the head for that one!”

  “I don’t know how she’d react, I mean four women, seventeen kids...”

  “You have seventeen children? Damn.”

  “Well normally child mortality is high in were societies. So we have a lot of kids.”

  “After this is over I am calling your wives up and we are all going to drag you to see your Mom and fess up.” Judith said.

  “You would too, wouldn’t you?” Mark said surprised.

  “No ‘would’ about it. This is going to happen. Bet your Mom thinks there’s something wrong with you.”

  “Yeah, after this she’ll know there’s something wrong with me!” Mark grumped.

  “No, she’ll just see that you’re an over achiever, that’s all!” Judith said grinning, and then laughed.

  “And you wondered why I keep my life a secret.”

  “What about Father Gregory?”

  Mark smiled, “Now that’s someone I don’t mind talking about. Father Gregory was really quite the man. I really miss him, and his counsel. He was very educated, smartest man I have ever met, smarter than my brother even which is saying something. He was a Jesuit, and he got involved with the Commission as a very young priest. The Commission used to be made up mainly of Priests back when he joined, which was during the war. Problem was most of the Priests weren’t good fighters, and while they had a lot more power than regular people like us, they often didn’t last long enough in a fight to be able to bring it to bear.

  “So they started looking for the more rough and tumble type like me or Jake. In the past when they needed muscle, they just went and borrowed it from some nearby noble or King. But things shifted politically during the war and suddenly the Church found itself with a lot less leverage. I know they’re hoping to faze people like us out, some of us do skirt the line of acceptable behavior fairly often.”

  “Are you one of those people?”

  Mark shook his head, “My worse sins are my cursing and a tendency to drink too much. Yeah, being what I am and having multiple wives or concubines is probably a sin too, but a lot of folks in the bible were allowed to do it and they were okay.

  “But we were talking about Father Gregory; he found me in Oregon, the Commission heard about the vamp and its den, it was a pretty big affair being as he had quite a few followers and well, they were all dead now. Someone higher up figured out what went on and asked around the groups who usually deal with those things to find out who was responsible. Of course none of those groups were.”

  “There are other groups who do this?”

  Mark nodded, “None have been around as long as ours, but a couple of other organized religions and several of the larger governments have them. Anyway, the report about the request I’d made for a couple of gallons of holy water and some blessed silver bullets came to his attention and he flew out to talk to the Priest I had gotten it from. Tracked me down a few weeks later and we had some long and interesting conversations.

  “He made a big difference in my life, and helped with a lot of the guilt I was still feeling over the way my life had turned out. He also thought that someone of my abilities would be a boon to the organization and he recruited me into it. You see we told everyone that my gift was my healing ability; Father Gregory said that in a round about way it was true. That helped a lot with explaining certain things. Of course because of that Jake and I got sent on a lot of the more dangerous missions, but it was probably better that way because a lot of people wouldn’t have survived what I did.

  “He also mediated a lot of my arguments with Father Flores and taught me to keep my temper around him. I don’t know why I don’t like Flores, or why he doesn’t like me, but Father Gregory definitely kept me from getting tossed several times, as well as stopping me from pounding Father Flores until there was nothing left than a greasy spot on the ground.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “He had a real bad stroke, and when it looked like he was finally getting better, he had another one. It bothers me that there’s nothing really that can be done for it, but he’s in his 90’s now and well, it would be better to just let him pass at this point. The doctors are pretty sure he’ll never recover.”

  “Looks like our bus is here,” Judith said pointing. “How long is the ride?”

  “About an hour. It’s actually a very nice ride, lovely scenery.”

  They settled in then and Mark let Judith have the window seat and thought back to when he had first met Father Gregory...

  % % % % %

  Mark swore as he felt water across his face and looked up to see who had just squirted him with it; he stopped when he saw it was an older looking man and not one of his kids playing a trick on him.

  “What are you doing?” he said wiping his face off.

  “Checking you out, what does it look like?”

  “Do you always spray water in people’s faces?” Mark said angrily.

  “Here catch!”

  Mark grabbed some beads that the old man had thrown at him next then stared at them a moment, “That is no way to treat a set of rosary beads! What is your problem old man?”

  “One last test, then we can talk.”

  “Yeah well you can talk to my back, I don’t do crazy,” he said setting the Rosary beads down and getting up to leave.

  At that point the old guy pulled out a rather old looking cross and said a bunch of stuff in Latin. Mark dropped a few bills on the table to pay for his coffee and went to round up the kids and get out of there before anything strange happened.


  He didn’t care much for strange anymore.

  Two weeks later as he was leaving Church after Sunday Mass the Priest he had gotten the holy water from and which he had asked to bless all those bullets stopped him at the door.

  “Mark, if I could have a minute of your time?”

  “Sure Father Henry, what’s up?”

  “There have been a few, ummm, inquiries as to why you needed all that holy water and those bullets you asked me to bless last month.”

  Mark sighed and dropped his head, “I didn’t do anything wrong or evil with it Father, and I asked you not to tell anyone.”

  “No, you used it to kill a vampire, didn’t you?”

  Mark looked up and groaned. It was the crazy old guy from the coffee shop across the street two weeks ago.

  “Allow me to introduce Father Gregory; he flew all the way from Spain to meet you.”

  “You’re a priest?” Mark said looking surprised, and a little suspicious. “What was with all the crazy stuff at the coffee shop?”

  “Wanted to be sure you weren’t a monster my Son.”

  Mark bristled at that, he was a monster these days. “I’m not evil.”

  “Well I know that now, but I didn’t know that then. I had to check.”

  “Let me guess, Holy water, blessed rosary beads, and an attempt to turn me or something?”

  Father Gregory nodded. “Most monsters are territorial; they won’t allow another one in their area. Killing a vampire is a pretty serious undertaking. Few people know they exist, fewer people know how to kill one.”

  Mark shrugged, “Overwhelming firepower works really really well. Learned that the first time.”

  Father Gregory’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve done this before?”

  “When I was in the army in Afghanistan. Damn thing killed my whole squad, I was the only survivor. That time was luck. When I found out about this one, well I wasn’t going to let it go.”

  “Excuse us Father Henry,” Father Gregory took Mark’s arm and led him aside, “let’s go someplace where we can talk some more.”

  “Let me just tell my kids to wait a bit. Or is this going to take a while?”