"Listen to me, Hillary. I'm going to do whatever I can to keep us safe, but we have to stop him," Dorothy whispered to the new teen recruit.
"I know. I'm getting better at the protection shield spell you taught me. We won't have a repeat of last time."
They crouched behind bushes trying to blend into the forest bisected by the small road that would lead to the highway.
"You did great in Cuba, girl. That spell really saved our asses. Missing the target was my fault. We'll have to up our game this time if we want to stop Khrushchev for good."
"Dr. Hodgkin, listen."
They tried not to move a muscle. From kilometers away, the roar of the 1962 Black Volga GAZ bleated through the dead silence. Dr. Dorothy Hodgkin didn't expect this to be her life in her fifties. She thought by now, she'd be the dean of the British branch of the order. Now she has another kid to train. An American to boot. At least this one has a sense of herself and more determination than the rest of them.
"They're getting close. Maybe two or three kilometers off." Dorothy unclipped the guns on her hips. They weren't firearms exactly. She designed them herself combining the power of a handgun with the output for hypodermic darts. These weren't tranquilizers that put wildlife to sleep. They were specially equipped cartridges filled with antigen-V negative blood serum. RhV positive mammals were the only ones who could be turned into the bloodsucking creatures usually known by legends as vampires but took many names.
Hillary took a perfume bottle out of her bag. It wasn't Chanel's famous No.5. Ms. Chanel, another member of OPS, worked with Lillian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi of South Africa. Mma Ngoyi discovered that what the northerners were lacking in their werewolf repelling potions was Duvernoia aconitiflora available in her country. Straight Aconitum napellus or Aconitum carmichaelii was not enough. It only bought someone a few seconds in close range of a werewolf. Mma Ngoyi's discovery was potent enough that the lycanthropes reverted back to their human form for as long as a week.
"Khrushchev sounds like the most powerful upyr on the planet. Is there any photographic evidence of him having a werewolf with him?"
"Sergei hasn't confirmed anything, but it's best to douse yourself with Mma Ngoyi's potion just to be on the safe side."
Dorothy snapped the last injectable vial into place in the customized magazine clip for her guns. Hillary spray herself then her mentor.
"Can we really trust him?" Hillary had never met him before. In Cuba, only Dorothy went on the rendezvous.
"Sergei?"
"Yeah. How can we be sure he's interested in defecting from his father's regime?"
"We were assigned the mission from the Order. We have to have faith in their intel."
Dorothy didn't have a tremendous amount of admiration for the Order anymore. She used to be the most loyal servant, dedicated to the magick of science. In her public life, she was revered. When the Ordre de Protection des Sorcières (or Protective Order of Witches aka OPS) doubted her testimony that a vampire had infiltrated Britain's Parliament, they continued to refuse her promotion which would get her out of field work. She harbored the bitter resentment ever since. Each time a new recruit passed final challenges, she would get another one and promised it was the last one. Now she's out in the Russian wilderness with a rookie who barely knows how to hold together a protection shield and neither of them speak the language.
"Hey, kid, what else are you packing in that bag?"
"The standard starter kit: a silver cross, aconitum cherry bombs, and a stake made of hawthorn from my home town. Just a few more odds and ends I picked up before I met you in Florida."
"I used up most of supplies in Cuba." Dorothy failed to take Castro's life or to cure him. It was harder for her when they were in human form. She and the rookie put up a good fight though and the sorcery they produced helped save America. "And just so you know, hawthorn is better for wands than stakes unless you're up against a rather newborn vampire."
"Sorry, Doc."
The new blood serum hadn't been in practice long. Hillary practically worshiped Dr. Hodgkin and Mma Ngoyi before their latest discoveries in cures for vampirism and lycanthropy. There was a chance that the RhV serum could kill Chairman Khrushchev rather than cure him. She was torn. The world would be better without him and Castro. Hillary felt guilty for feeling the relief she had when her own protection shield misdirected her mentor's shot with the injectable since she couldn't be sure of the effect.
Their blown covers were enough to scare Castro, but he was still free to inflict his evil will at a later time. Khrushchev would be extra cautious. That's why Sergei warned his secret operatives that it was likely a slave werewolf might be by their side that day. The lycans were White Guard slaves to the phalanx of vampire Communists called the Red Upyr. Their lives of the White Guard were long, at least two hundred years. Most of them were killed at war so no one was quite sure if they were immortal or not.
"They'll be able to detect us long before we see them. Time to get those shields cast. We're going to add glamours this time. If they do see us, we'll look like a couple of roe deer until we cast another spell."
"Can we mask our scent too?"
She impressed Dorothy with the suggestion. Hillary was turning out to be a prodigy in the Craft. The doctor hadn't mentored anyone who took to it so quickly in many years. The tradition was to tutor a new recruit for four years or longer if necessary. It all depended on how well they did on their challenges.
"Doc?"
"What is it now, Page Rodham?"
Dorothy rubbed her palms together rapidly until they burned and a barely perceptible pink aura glowed. She held her flat opened hands in front of the top of her head. As she moved them down towards the ground, she became less opaque and a translucent doe appeared to be merged with her. To anyone else's eyes, she looked like a solid, living doe.
"I was just wondering... What happens if the cure kills him?" Hillary copied the glamour spell of her teacher. Her doe avatar was still spotted and perfectly conveyed a being that wasn't interested in harm should the enemy see her.
"The world will be even safer." There was a numbness to Dorothy's words. Their job was to eliminate evil. That meant tracking and curing only certain types of vampires like the Red Upyr. They were supposed to free any enslaved peoples whether they were monsters or not. The goal was to cure them if they were deemed dangerous as of the Dominion Act of 1945. Even demons were able to pass into the realm as long as they followed the rules. But sometimes, killing was inevitable. Treatments didn't always react the way the Cryptozoology Division expected. Self defense or the defense of others was the most frequently cited exemption.
"But won't there be another one to take his place? Will it really be safer?"
"It's hard to say. He certainly has followers. People get elected or appointed. The best comfort I can offer you right now is that OPS drastically reduced the numbers of Red Upyr. It's unlikely we'll get all of them. And don't forget, evil comes in many forms."
They could hear the notorious Volga getting closer. About half a kilometer away. Khrushchev, Sergei, a driver of unknown genetics, and a werewolf slave would be near them in seconds.
Dorothy's doe moved closer to the edge of the road. The black car was in sight. The driver appeared to be human, classification: Humain sans magie (HSM). Sergei was in the front passenger seat.
"Here we go." Dorothy was steady and calm knowing the mask of the deer hid her until she was ready to blast a spell at the car's engine.
"I hope he's not a double-double agent." Hillary's words escaped her lips unconsciously.
"Trust the enemy of your enemy once in a while."
"Sun Tzu."
"Paraphrased, but yes. Good girl."
The driver didn't notice them because nature camouflaged them so well. All he could see was a strange wavering of the air coming at the car like a targeted heat wave bolt. From the back seat the werewolf growled. The engine stopped.
Hillary didn't know Russian, but she had a good idea what the yelling coming from inside the car meant. Finally, the vehicle rolled to a stop.
Having cast a spell, Dorothy's glamour was broken. She took cover behind a bush until she was ready. Hillary's fawn trotted closer to the back end of the Volga when three of the doors flew open. Khrushchev stood looking directly at her. His werewolf slave exited behind him and stood in an attack stance waiting for a command. The driver just watched assuming maybe the fawn would serve as lunch once the "large wolf pet" killed it for them.
Sergei had the same blood type as his father with the RhV factor positive; but he didn't carry the specific gene to make him a Red Upyr. He was more like his mother Nina, still upyr and able to walk in the daylight like all Russians of their kind; but they distinctly lacked the primal urges and certain powers of the Reds.
Khrushchev smelled the air and ignored the little spotted doe. Hillary waited there afraid to move.
"Come out," he bellowed in his best English.
Dorothy pulled the pointed her guns and stood tall.
"I'm right here." Dorothy left the sanctuary of the woods and took three steps onto the rugged roadway. The scarf around her neck blew gently with the breeze but stayed in place making her neck harder to access. Her long coat was covered in embroidered sigils so intertwined they looked like intricate knotted patterns. In reality they were meant to ward off dangers like vampire claws and teeth.
More growls came from the lycan. Hillary was so close to it. She could be bitten in half by those jaws in a matter of a few bites. She backed up slowly keeping her disguise.
Time was up.
Khrushchev removed his sunglasses revealing that his eyes were red. He had begun his transformation. He tore off his coat. His musculature popped getting tighter under his clothes. His fingers grew into a monstrous size with sharp claws ready to tear into witch flesh. His smile exuded evil as fangs dropped down. Blood pooled around the boney daggers from his gums receding.
Dorothy focused on the sights. The werewolf moved to block his master from her.
The driver spoke, clearly not believing his own eyes. Khrushchev reached out with his left arm and grabbed the human by the throat. He was dead before Dorothy had a clear shot of the monster.
Sergei had to maintain his cover that he was loyal to his father. He began his upyr transformation as well and postured as if to threaten Dorothy.
"Anton, ataka!" Khrushchev yelled to his slave.
The werewolf did as commanded and pounded towards Dorothy. She didn't have the talismans for lycans. Shooting him with her limited supply of vampire antidote wouldn't do any good. Well, it still might kill him, but they never tested it before.
In a heartbeat, Hillary yelled out, "Stop!" She swooped her left arm around in front of her body removing the glamour enchantment. She quickly pulled something out of her pockets.
Simultaneously she tossed the aconitum cherry bombs to Dorothy while Dorothy threw the guns to her. Faster than major league baseball pitchers, Dorothy caught both glass orbs and hurled them at Anton. They exploded on his chest, direct hits a millisecond before he crashed on top of her fumbling to the ground.
Khrushchev crouched and sprang up ten feet in the air about to land on Hillary. Her palms were sweaty around the stocks but as steady and true as the best marksman. She fired at him in midair. Two shots. The injectables hung from his torso. Their contents drained into his blood stream. He landed on her. She struggled to free herself waiting for the serum to work. She felt his thin lips by her ear. His teeth started to scrape at her throat.
Dorothy shoved the incapacitated lycan off of her. The rocks on the ground dug into her knees. She retrieved the ash wood stake from her boot. She drew her arm back and as she was about to throw it at the Red, his transformation back to a human being started.
He yelled out. Hillary used all her strength to push him off and she scooted back to be by Dorothy. She saw the feet of the driver's corpse near the back tire of the Volga on the far side. Only a short distance away, the lycan Anton crawled until his naked human body lay still, stunned by the poison.
"You did great, kid." Dorothy put her hand on Hillary's shoulder.
It was Hillary's first successful defense against a vampire and a werewolf. She let Dorothy help her to her feet then they walked to Khrushchev's body.
He wasn't dead. His eyes had changed back to their rightful coloring. He kept one hand on his chest as his heart and lungs worked harder than if he ran a marathon. Gurgles escaped his trachea, but the pain was past the point of being able to scream. As he became more human, his neural system put him out of some of the misery and made him lose consciousness.
"It seems these worked like a charm. I wish the effect had been more expedient though." Dorothy bent down and plucked the injectables from his body. She pulled out two plastic caps to cover the needle ends and put them inside her coat pocket.
"He was so close to biting me."
"But he didn't!" Dorothy smiled and gave Hillary a good slap on the back.
Sergei transformed back to his human form. In order to keep his cover, he had to suffer a little.
"Sorry to do this to you, comrade, but I gotta knock you out so when your father comes to, it'll look like we beat you too."
Sergei laughed and told her he knew the plan. It was painful when Dorothy drove the stake partially through his chest, stopping just before his heart. She left it in there while he bled until he passed out. Once he was unconscious, she pulled the stake out, wiped it with a handkerchief and hid it back in her boot. He would slowly heal.
"What do we do about the driver?"
"We could let Khrushchev deal with it when he wakes up. Or we could drag him into the woods. It'll look like he left the car to take a pee and was attacked by an animal."
"Do we leave the lycan?"
"He's been a slave to the highest power in Soviet Russia. We know he exists for certain now so when we get back to OPS, we'll request the Judiciary Committee seek a proper diplomatic request to have him freed. Khrushchev won't be able to control him anymore anyway so it should be pretty easy."
Hillary was so exhausted. She didn't have enough strength to take the shortcut by transporting through dimensions and popping back up at the airport. The adrenaline was only enough for her walk.
"We could steal the Volga, I suppose." Dorothy squinted at the infamous vehicle known throughout Europe simply as The Black Volga.
A devilish smile grew across Hillary's face. Then her eyes opened wider and let her mentor know mischief was far preferable to monster slaying.
"I hope grand theft auto in enemy territory never comes back to bite me in the ass. I have aspirations, you know."
"Get in. I'll drive and you can tell me all about them."
The Black Volga handled like a dream, surprising the senior science witch helming it. They had roughly seventy kilometers to drive to reach the nearest airport.
"So you're not interested in being a Craft Enforcer? Not even a little bit?" The doctor asked.
"Oh I am, but I'd rather take the judicial track of study for legal tribunals instead of tracking and arrests. I don't mind putting in my four years though. I think there's a lot I need to know."
"Hillary, you have no idea."