Sacred Lineage

Still no smut in this chapter, but a little gratuitous violence never hurt anyone...did it?

**~~**

The sun was bright over Washington D. C. The woman at the computer terminal leaned back into the sunlight. She was not paying attention to the sunlight, but rather to the recipients of the ten emails she had sent out. The CIA frequently did business on the internal servers, and this one was a secure server. The ten recipients of this email were actually suspects, she believed that at least one of them was a spy for Vatican City. Double agents were nothing new to the CIA, and indeed, many of them were known about and allowed to operate. The problem with this particular double agent was that the agent was interfering with her Grandson.

Selene Tourville was now a consultant. For close to the last fifty years she had worked for the CIA. For the last twenty years she’d had the title of ‘consultant’ officially. Unofficially, what she actually did was rat out double agents and take measures either to keep them hidden or get them out of the CIA. Occasionally, she would perform her own ‘removals’, and a couple of the ‘removals’ had found their way into CIA lore. There was no official record, of course, of the things that she had done, but rumors abounded. She smiled to herself as she sent out the codes to the ten men that she considered most likely to betray her grandson.

The code itself was old, the letters were from an old language called Theban. It was no longer an ‘alive’ language, but there were fonts that she had found on the internet that would support them. The encryption code, however, was one of her own devising. In addition to that, the code also contained a Trojan that would allow her to find the person whose email this was sent, if anyone’s, and also would allow her to continue to monitor their mail. It would also allow her to send email to their inbox.

She hit the ‘send’ button ten separate times, and began the long process of waiting. When Marcus was a child, there were people that didn’t understand her patience. He was an active boy, but a good boy, so she ignored a lot of the little things that most people got a little too bent out of shape over. Mostly, he was a good kid, he got into very little trouble. Her only real problem with him had been that he looked too much like her son, and sometimes she’d see the wrong person standing there.

Now, though, he’d done his time in the Marine Corps, and when she’d seen his name on the list of prospects, she’d given a great recommendation to the supervisor of what was soon to become the premiere anti-freak, anti-supernatural unit in the United States. Before this, most of them had been Militia, but now there were several small squadrons of fighters working for the CIA whose only job was to hunt down dangers to the human population and eliminate them.

Sighing, she pushed back away from the desk and went out to lunch. It would be a while before she got any kind of return on her bait, she knew these things took time. Perhaps she’d go to the zoo and buy some nectar for the kids for the lorakeets. They seemed to enjoy it, and since Marcus hadn’t gotten her a grandchild yet, perhaps the parents of the children at the zoo wouldn’t mind too much.
**~~** Two Weeks Later**~~**

He looked at his computer screen in glee. The man had actually come through! That aggravating CIA man was in London now, and he was theirs! He’d regret the day he’d been born! Father Alexander Anderson was absolutely sure that he had what it took to make that man rue his birth, his parents birth, and possibly his grandparents birth.

One phone call ruined it all for him.

“Hello?”

“Father Anderson, this is Father Enrico Maxwell.”

Oh, great. What did Maxwell have for him now? Perhaps another dreary mission to Albania? Eastern Europe always depressed him. The people were…without hope. Occasionally he’d find a likely lad and bring him back, but that was even few and far between. The constant warring of governments was continuing what the Communists had begun. The people were tired, depressed, without hope…he tried to help them, but it was difficult to help them when they were so opposed to taking any help at all.

“What ken I do for ye Father?”

“Father Anderson, you are not under any circumstances to go after Mr. Marcus Tourville. Do you understand me?”

Anderson sighed heavily. He knew he should have expected this, but couldn’t a man avenge his own? Apparently not. Things had changed a bit since the Spanish Inquisition, it seemed. Some for the better, true, but some things could have stayed the same, at least one would think.

“I understand ye.” Was his response. “I was hoping that ye’d let me finish ‘im off this time.” The Priest knew better than to question his boss too much, but the threat of life and death didn’t bother him too badly. He was rather difficult to kill.

“Be in the mission room in an hour. I need time to get Sisters Heinkel and Yumiko in there.”

“You’re going to entrust him to women?” Anderson was furious! He thought that Maxwell had more respect for him than that! To give the assignment to women instead of the man who had been injured, instead of the man that would have been killed…murdered even…if he’d been a lesser man!

“Father Anderson.” The tone of Enrico Maxwell’s voice instantly calmed Anderson, it was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown on him. “You will meet me in an hour in the mission room. I will hear no more about your desires or your rights to this man. Do you understand me?”

Anderson’s blood ran cold. “Yes, Sir.”

No more questions. There was a reason that Maxwell wanted it that way, and there was a reason that he was going to get it that way. Anderson knew better than to question that tone of voice, and no real harm had been done to anything but his pride.

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall.” He quoted under his breath as he put his cassock on over his clothing. No reason to look like anything other than what he was, a Priest in the service of God.

They all arrived at about the same time, all of them dressed ecclesiastically in the dress that had been provided for them by the Church. It was interesting for Anderson to look at Heinkel and Yumiko and see the downcast eyes that belonged to nuns. Interesting to realize that they’d be happy to gut, shoot, or otherwise destroy anything un-living, yet still they had the capability to follow what the Bible said about submission. They both wore the plain bands of silver on their left ring fingers showing that they were married to the Church. The Priest didn’t wear his anymore. He was sure that Maxwell wore something much more ornate than silver for his, although he’d never looked. Truth be told, he didn’t really care.

Maxwell waited for them to settle before announcing his little gem.

“Marcus Tourville has been found in London.”

The pronouncement was taken much more calmly than Maxwell had expected it to be taken. The nuns watched Anderson interestedly under lowered lashes, and Anderson, other than turning bright red, didn’t show any reaction at all.

“Sister Heinkel, Sister Yumiko, it is you who will hunt down and eliminate this threat.”

They continued to look politely interested, although Yumiko shifted a bit in her seat. So, there was something more to this after all. Maxwell smiled grimly to himself. He didn’t care what use they put the man to before he died, he just wanted the human that could give Anderson a run for his money put down. Even Alucard hadn’t sliced Anderson open and let his guts fall out, even if he had managed to blow both his arms off and shoot him in the head. Of course, eliminating Alucard was going to be much more difficult than eliminating one puny human.

“Are you sure that your information is accurate?” asked Heinkel in her businesslike voice.

“Yes, it was sent by my informant in the Company.” The Company meant the CIA. There were names for intelligence operations all over the world, but only one was important right now. Two, if you counted MI9, but they didn’t even know that they had problems at this point.
“All right,” said Yumiko. “When do we leave?”

“Thirty days.” Said Maxwell. “I don’t want my informant compromised. If he is, I will receive another message from him, informing me that things have changed. Otherwise, we will proceed as planned.”

“Excellent.” Yumiko all but purred. “We’ll have time to collect some things before we go and get him.”

Heinkel looked at her compatriot with interest, perhaps she had an idea what Yumiko was up to? But it didn’t matter, so long as the target was eliminated.

“We’ll let you know when it’s time.” Maxwell finally said, sure that he was missing something important, but unsure of what it could possibly be. “Dismissed.”

They all rose and left, in step even. Maxwell wondered if they had been practicing that, it was certainly not something they had been doing for long, had they?

**~~** Washington, D. C. **~~**

Opening her internal email, she noticed the alert. Selene Tourville smiled a smile that would have frozen blood. She had her target, and in addition to that, she also had an inside line to Enrico Maxwell’s personal email.

Opening up a specific program, Selene erased the records of a certain employee. His fingerprints, retinal scan, and voice print were gone as if they never existed. Under his name, she placed the fingerprints of a National Guardsman in Tennessee, the distinctive voice print of a former Governator of California, and the retinal scan of Charles Manson. Still smiling, Selene Tourville went home for the day. If anyone noticed the quality of her expression, they were intelligent enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.

When she got home, she baked three dozen cookies for her grandson. She also baked a dozen for the courier, who would, of course, have to be disposed of if he ate any of her grandson’s cookies. The last “incident” over Granny Tourville’s cookies had been enough to cause a strong “suggestion” that Granny Tourville send the cookies via courier through the embassy from that time forward. Unable to see what the fuss was, Selene agreed. For some reason, the CIA didn’t think cookie thievery was a life-or-death situation. Selene didn’t understand why.

She packed the cookies separately, and included a note with Marcus’ cookies.

“My very dear Grandson.

I regret to inform you that your cat got out this evening. I tried to catch it, but these old legs don’t move as fast as they used to. The cat was hit at the intersection of 13th and V Street, by the old Catholic Church. I’ve given her a decent burial in the backyard.

All of my love, and I’m very sorry.

Gramma.”

She went out to the toolshed then, and picked an old spade, and dug a hole big and deep enough for a cat in her backyard, then put all the dirt back. She didn’t think that anyone would really dig up a dead cat, the grave should be good enough. Over the top of the grave, she put a garden stone depicting a faery cat. That should be good enough for almost anyone, at least it should be good for anyone less suspicious than she, and she was one of the most suspicious people that she knew.

She wasn’t in the lobby the next morning when the man whose information she had erased came in the door. The girl at the desk pulled out her pistol, as usual, he fingerprinted, voiceprinted, and did the retinal scan as she held the gun on him, just like she did every morning. When the light on her screen turned red, she tapped the trigger twice, just as she had in training.

The last expression on his face was shock as his brains decorated the wall and he crumpled to the floor.

When the coded call came over the intercom for a cleanup crew, an elderly lady upstairs patted her violet bun. She’d been unable to keep him from telling the Vatican about her grandson, but she’d certainly managed to keep him from doing any more damage.

Catholics. She thought with scorn. Two thousand years, and they still haven’t learned.