“He’s an Irishman,” the man told the mercs in a flat accent, his head distorting in the memory as I watched it. “Name is Breandan Duffy. Should be a soft target. Sweep him up and we’ll have another for you to hit by the time you get back. I want London ops wrapped up by this time tomorrow so we can start heading north to deal with a few strays before we clean out that cloister in Scotland.” His eyes flashed. “There’s work to do between now and then, so get done with this one quick.”
“Question, sir,” came the voice of one of the men outside McClaren’s field of vision. “What type is this one? Should we expect much resistance?”
“Our telepath says he’s a luck-changer,” the man at the front of the room said, his dark eyes never moving off the man he was speaking to. “That jibes with the intel we got on him from an interrogation. Swarm him, hit him fast, you’ll not have any problems. He’s unpredictable in his habits, though, as he’s some sort of petty thief, so waiting for him to come out of his flat at a certain time is out. His offensive capabilities are minimal, and the telepath puts his disposition as more of a risk of flight than fight. He’s on the seventeenth floor so you should have him trapped.” He shook his head, his dark hair flopping about his face. “Minimal resistance risk. Take him down, report back. We’ll have three more down by sunset and the day after tomorrow we can get up to York.”
Another question came from behind McClaren. “This can’t be all of their kind in London. I thought there were more of them.”
The man at the front of the room smiled. “There are. And we’ll be back, with some help. We’ve got some resources in country that have already wiped out one cloister. They’re on their way to do the job to a couple in Ireland before they meet us back here after we finish in Scotland. We’ve got a lot of work yet in London, but we’ll need more than just guns to do it.”
I sensed the mood shift in the room, as though someone else was about to ask a question, but McClaren stood up and sketched out a rough salute to the man in the front of the room. So McClaren was the squad leader. “Yes sir, Mr. Weissman. We’ll get this Duffy stitched up and be back in a couple hours.”
Weissman smiled coldly, his thin face not capable of much warmth or sincerity. “I have no doubt.”
The world faded around me and I came back to a screaming in my head, a searing at my fingertips, and I pulled them off McClaren’s face with great reluctance as he slumped to the ground, unconscious. I looked down at him and shook my head. “Quit whining. Any other succubus on the planet would have eaten your soul just now just for the cheap thrills, and frankly, knowing them, that would have been worse for you than you can imagine.” I turned to look back at Breandan, and I realized that I’d only been in the memory for a second or two, even though it had shown me minutes worth of time in Mr. McClaren’s life. “They were here for you.”
“Well, yeah,” Duffy said, unsurprised. “They did break down the door to my flat, after all.” He frowned. “Wait, did you think they were here for you?”
I watched him, in near disbelief. “There are people after you, trying to kill you?”
His face etched surprise. “There are people trying to kill you, too?”
I gave him a look of pure annoyance. “You could have mentioned that people were trying to kill you before you let me sleep in your apartment!”
He gave me a wide, unexpressive shrug. “And when were you planning to mention that someone was gunning for you?”
I scowled. “After I slept.”
“Look,” Duffy said with a slight grin, “clearly, we’re both in some sort of peril here. It could have been either one of us that caused this spot of bother to descend on my flat—”
“No,” I said, looking back down at the unconscious McClaren, “they didn’t know I’d be here.”
“Yet I’m quite thankful that you were,” Duffy said, “as if you hadn’t been, I’d be dead.” He seemed to think about it for a moment before his face turned serious. “I guess having you catch me pickpocket you was a lucky thing for me after all?”
I stared back at him and pursed my lips. “Don’t get all sappy on me now. I get the sense that this sweep team is only one piece of what this organization has available in the U.K.” I reached down and ripped McClaren’s belt off, then stepped back into the bedroom to start gathering magazines from the other fallen mercenaries.
“You ‘get the feeling’?” Duffy looked back at me with alarm. “I’m not too up on what succubuses are capable of—”