The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  As for Arthur Slayne, he was denied access to the Panopticon and she could keep him on ice indefinitely. He could wait in a vampire proof cell guarded by her pet Red Empire fist team. Once she had enough spare time, she could convert him into a vampire.

  A skilled, cunning, and absolutely obedient vampire with Ramp ability and a speed talent. He would make an excellent asset at her side for the coming conflict. When the time came, Arthur Slayne would join his son William at her side. Chloe steepled her fingers in front of her face, her eyes distant. Perhaps she would even acquire Anton Slayne. A controlled ramp berserker vampire would be an awesome weapon.

  And she would need weapons - as many as she could get once Crane was out of the way.

  Chloe smiled quietly. Crane and Slayne had been defeated and she’d seized the initiative once again. Prompt action was called for before unforeseen events turned the tables once again. She would not waste this opportunity. Her eyes filled with steely determination.

  Her time of ascension was approaching.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “In modern terms, think of it as a hostile corporate takeover. I mean, why have thousands of different companies divvying up the various functions of the economy, duplicating systems like ‘human resources,’ ‘purchasing,’ and ‘finance,’ over and over again. The waste is nauseating. It’s so much more efficient to have a single entity that does everything, does it well and does it simply. So, I decided to get rid of all the other gods.” - Set, God of Chaos, Trickery, and Disorder

  * * *

  Nevada, Opposite Arthur Slayne’s Private Airport, The Roadhouse, September 11th, 21:20

  The ambulance lights strobed red and blue patterns across the parking lot.

  Justin Blake lay on an ambulance trolley. Two paramedics worked the trolley into the back of the ambulance. They’d injected him with painkillers and were rushing him to the UMC Trauma Center.

  Li held Justin’s left hand. She didn’t want to let go. Could she trust the people who would be looking after him?

  Chiara was providing a rundown of Justin’s injuries to an increasingly shocked senior paramedic. He was an older man with a gray mustache. He looked at Justin with wide eyes and remarked, “I haven’t seen anything like this since the third Iraq war.” He looked back at Chiara and offered, “You’ve done a good job stabilizing him.”

  Chiara nodded, “Thanks, I did my best.”

  The senior paramedic flicked a glance at the burning airport. “And nothing to do with that mess over there?”

  Chiara shook her head. “No. A motorcycle accident. He fell off and hit a concrete wall.”

  The paramedics dark-brown eyes narrowed and he made a note on a touchscreen tablet with a stylus. He remarked in a level voice. “Well, he’s lucky to be alive.” He paused for a moment. “Frankly, with those injuries he should be dead. He must be one tough hombre.”

  Yes, Li thought. He was lucky to be alive.

  Justin looked at her and croaked in a hoarse voice, “Li.”

  Chiara’s conversation with the senior medic blended into the background noise. Li clambered into the back of the ambulance. A single determined look was sufficient to stay the two paramedics, although one offered, “The sooner we get away the better for your friend.”

  Li glanced back at Chiara and the senior paramedic, and stated, “You’re not leaving yet. I just need a minute.”

  The talkative medic nodded and continued his work of setting up monitoring of Justin’s vital signs.

  “Li,” Justin said. “Come closer.”

  Li leaned in, placing her ear next to Justin’s mouth. He whispered, pausing briefly between each sentence, “Don’t worry. I have a helper on staff at the UMC. She’ll fudge the records. I’ll be out in a couple of days. I’m going back to New Zealand. I’ll get my family involved. It’s time the warriors left the islands. We’ll be ready when you need us. I’ll swing past Australia and see who we can recruit. Don’t worry about contacting me. I’ll find you when I’m ready. Now … one more thing. You are the last loremaster. Crane will have picked up the loremaster implants and laptops in Minneapolis, and it’s only a matter of time before he cracks the technology and uses it against you.”

  Li nodded, “I’ll watch out for Crane, and for you.”

  “Now go back to your team. They need you more than I do.”

  Li leaned in and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Be safe, my big brother. I can’t lose you too.”

  Justin looked at her with eyes filled with warmth, pain and sadness, and whispered, “Look after yourself, little sister.”

  Li took a big breath and let it out.

  The talkative medic looked up in surprise and declared, “His pulse is thirty beats a minute. Blood oxygen is reading one hundred and twenty percent. How does that work?”

  The second medic cast a quizzical glance at the monitoring device and suggested, “There must be a fault.”

  Li looked from one paramedic to the other and back again. “Apart from the injuries. He’s kinda off the scale healthy. Just ignore anything strange and give him what he needs.”

  Both medics nodded, clearly wondering what they had gotten themselves into.

  Justin squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. She took one final look at his battered face and turned away. A moment later she was standing on the parking lot gravel and the senior medic was closing the ambulance’s rear doors. The senior medic joined the driver in the cabin and the ambulance took off, lights strobing and siren wailing.

  Jay put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Let’s find a quiet table in the roadhouse. We still need a way out of here and quickly.” He turned away toward the rear entrance into the roadhouse.

  Li watched the ambulance turn past the end of the roadhouse. Once the ambulance had disappeared from view, she turned and followed the rest of the Mirovar force team into the roadhouse.

  * * *

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  The civilian emergency services from Las Vegas were converging on the airport. Anton looked around at the remnants of the Order of Thoth. They sat at a secluded table near the back of the roadhouse restaurant. They looked like what they were - soldiers fresh from battle. Jay would occasionally roll his left shoulder to ease the stiffness of it being dislocated. Peter was a mass of bandages over multiple shrapnel wounds. Chiara’s left hand and right bicep carried bandaged bullet wounds. Li was largely untouched by combat, but she was battling something within. She was changing before his eyes, becoming distant, and distrustful. Given what he’d found out about himself today - he couldn’t blame her. As for himself, Chiara hadn’t bothered with sutures for the cut across his throat. She’d steri-stripped the wound closed and declared it would be healed by morning. He found it difficult to concentrate on the present moment, his mind constantly going over the battle with Crane and Armitage, and the strange disappearance of his grandfather.

  Where the hell was Arthur? One moment he was there, and the next he’d vanished. It was a mystery without any sort of clue as to what had happened to his grandfather.

  They’d ditched their guns at the airport, and recovered their motorcycles near the warehouse ruins. They’d managed to get all their bikes and Justin back to the gas station/roadhouse opposite the entrance to the airport. They had called an ambulance service at his request. Their entrance into the roadhouse with their katanas strapped over shoulders or scabbarded at hips, had drawn surprised looks and wary stares but no comment.

  Peter had placed an order. Several trays had been delivered by curious but respectful waiting staff. The table was quickly covered with heaps of bar-b-que chicken, dishes brimming with dipping sauces, slabs of bread and butter, and jugs of cold beer. Peter had stated that fighting always made him hungry and had set to with a will. Jay had asked him what was different after fighting, and Peter had just grinned at him around a pair of drumsticks.

  Anton picked up a jug of cold beer and filled a tall glass. He wanted to break the ice with Li,
but wasn’t sure where to start. He took a long pull on his beer and then said, “Li.”

  She looked up from a chicken wing and replied in level tones, “Yes?”

  “I haven’t thanked you yet.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving my life.”

  Li looked perplexed for a moment, put her chicken wing down, and asked, “When was that?”

  Anton paused, nonplussed. This wasn’t going the way he expected. How could she not know? “Ahh… you warned me about the shadowstar attack when I was berserk. Your voice actually canceled out my berserk ramp.”

  Li shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh c’mon, Li. You shouted ‘above you’ twice.” Anton stared hard at her. “It was your voice. I’m certain of it.”

  Li arched an eyebrow. “It wasn’t me.” She paused for a moment and put both her hands flat on the table edge. “I guarantee it. No, Anton, something else happened. What? I don’t know. After all, I’m not inside your head.”

  Anton sat back, a sick feeling welling up in his stomach as reality shuddered briefly around him. She couldn’t be stooping to gas lighting him? He couldn’t imagine Li doing that to him. Reality continued to shift, suddenly lurching and twisting away.

  The night sky arched overhead, filled with a wealth of bright stars. Anton’s left eye had regenerated and he saw with deep Ramp level clarity, but time wasn’t slowed - he wasn’t ramped. Chloe Armitage sat on a throne constructed of bones atop a hill of bleached skulls. Her right leg crossed over her left, her hands resting on armrests made of femurs. She wore a dark, sleeveless, diaphanous silk gown. Her raven hair was bound by a delicate golden crown, and fell in lush waves over her pale shoulders. Her face was the one she wore on the fateful night they met at his parent’s front doorstep. Stunning, alluring, knowing, with vivid blue eyes and full red lips. She regarded him with calm serenity, as if everything in the universe was in its proper place and proceeding in accordance with her wishes.

  To her left and right stood his father and grandfather, dressed in black armor emblazoned with a Red Dragon standard. They looked at him with proud eyes, their fangs hanging over their bottom lips.

  Chloe commanded, her voice resplendent with serene invitation, “Rise Anton, rise for me.”

  Anton discovered he’d been kneeling on one knee. He rose, his black armor bearing the Red Dragon standard on his chest moving smoothly with him. He lifted the Blue Dragon in proud salute to his noble queen. A queen he could never disobey.

  His fangs rested over his bottom lip.

  The roadhouse snapped back into reality and Anton gasped with horror. Everyone at the table stared at him. Jay had his hands on the handle of the White Dragon, his face frozen in a grim mask. Peter looked spooked. Li was puzzled and Chiara was openly devastated. Anton spread his hands wide and asked, “What the fuck just happened?”

  Peter, his eyes wide, offered, “You went still, your right eyelid fluttered like you were dreaming, except you’d ramped. I could feel the heat washing off you. Then you said, ‘Rise Anton, rise for me.’ And the thing is … your voice. It wasn’t your voice. It couldn’t possibly be your voice - it was a woman’s voice.”

  Li stabbed a taut finger at Anton. “You just had a vision, what did you see?”

  Anton looked at her for a second. It seemed that today was a day for revelations. “It was Chloe Armitage in full vampire queen mode. On a throne of bones on a hill of skulls.” Everyone stared at him, except Li, who studied him, listening carefully. “I know this sounds strange … it gets weirder. My dad and my grandfather were there as well, and, get this, they were vampire soldiers wearing armor with a Red Dragon standard on their chests.”

  “No,” Chiara declared, almost choking on the words.

  Anton looked at her and said, “Yeah, and it gets worse. I was a vampire too, dressed in the same armor. She was inducting me into her service.”

  “How did you feel about that?” Li asked.

  “I’m horrified.”

  “No,” Li said with a shake of her head. “I mean, how did you feel in the vision.”

  Anton glanced down at his hands for a moment. How could he ever feel what he’d felt in the vision. He lifted his eyes back to Li’s face and stated, “I was proud.”

  Li tilted her head, and said, “We never talked about the vision you had in England. The one where you identified the Shadowstone van with Peter in it. We should have talked about that. Juliette wanted to discuss it with you but -” her voice trailed off into silence and she frowned for a moment, “she didn’t get a chance to.”

  Peter stated, “You had a vision about me and never told me about it?”

  Anton looked at him and offered, “Sorry, Pete, I should have mentioned it. I kinda thought I might be going mad or something, and then other things kept happening. I know, I should’ve mentioned it before now.”

  Li continued. “It’s how we found you Peter. I don’t believe we would have rescued you without it.”

  “Oh,” Peter said, looking at Anton with a puzzled expression on his face. He glanced back at Li and asked, “So, it was helpful. What the hell is really going on here?”

  Li frowned for a moment. “You’re right Peter, it was helpful.” She looked at Anton and asked, “Give us a rundown of all your visions.”

  Anton took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay, the first one was in a homeless shelter the night my mother was murdered. Armitage again, dressed in next to nothing and wearing a crown. The second was on the Boston docks, for just a moment. Again, it was her, beckoning to me. Then I had a weird, super-vivid dream on the way to the Maine safe house of the world being farmed by leeches -”

  Peter offered, “Yeah, I remember when you woke up from that. You were pretty frightened by what you saw.”

  “Yeah, I was. Then there was nothing until England, and then another gap to earlier tonight in the maze.”

  “You had two today?” Li asked.

  Anton nodded.

  “What was the first one about?”

  “Same gig as the rest. Armitage as queen, but this time she was monstrous, transformed into something from a horror movie. She was surrounded by insane demonic looking vampires but she had control of them, and she wanted me for herself. It was how I knew she was in the maze with us. It was how I knew to look for her.”

  Li nodded and stated, “Then there was that moment when Jon Thunder-Axe summoned his Metaframe sorcery, and it smashed you but didn’t affect anyone else. And another thing that stands out is that your first vision happened before you were initiated by my father to the Ramp. So, none of this is related to the Ramp but the Metaframe is the key. Back before the conclave in Minneapolis, Jon pretty much stated the Metaframe is some sort of divine prison. And Arthur told me in the main server room that the gods can appear in visions and dreams.” She shook her head with realization. “This all fits together now. The gods are in the Metaframe. They are like trapped ghosts. They can only communicate through visions and dreams.”

  A shiver crawled up Anton’s back.

  Li looked hard at Anton. “Lucky for you, someone’s watching out for you. Everything you’ve seen has been a warning.”

  Jay agreed, looking at Anton with wary eyes, “One of the gods doesn’t want Armitage to win and they don’t want you in her service.”

  “Your berserker talent has been revealed,” Li noted, “you’re a weapon that must not fall into Crane or Armitage’s hands.”

  “I’m good with that,” Anton declared. “The last thing I want to do is serve Armitage.”

  He couldn’t imagine a worse fate than becoming a vampire slave.

  * * *

  A single tear tracked its way down Chiara’s left cheek. She brushed another tear away from her right cheek.

  She swallowed silently, trying to clear her throat. She was choking on what had to be said. The need had been building since the night on the cliff-edge overlooking the town o
f Whitby. The night Juliette and Yvette had died at the hand of Chloe Armitage. A hand guided to their hearts by her words. The guilt had overwhelmed her. She had sought the release of suicide, attempting to throw herself over the cliff and onto the rocks below. Let the icy waters of the North Sea take her body into oblivion.

  Anton had pulled her back from the edge. He’d saved her life and thrown her a lifeline of shared purpose, but he’d been unable to save her soul. The wounds ran deep - she’d been trained from before she could remember to live a lie. The need to replace the lie with a real life had crystallized in the nemesis tower when she’d owned her true heritage.

  She was not Chiara Romano; she was no longer al Ghurab. She had to be her true self or become nothing.

  Jay looked along the table at her, frowned warily and asked, “Chiara, are you okay?”

  She wiped the last tear away and subdued her emotions. Battle-trained reflexes could not be stilled as easily; she assessed the space around her in an instant. The end of the table to her right was empty - Francis would have sat there if he’d been alive. Li sat opposite her. Anton was to her left and Peter sat opposite him. Jay sat on Peter’s right, and Anton’s left at the other end of the table. Everyone had placed their swords at their feet.

  Chiara let go the idea of escape, there was no running from the truth. There was only life and death, honor and shame, and truth and lies. She would wake to the dawn tomorrow true to herself or she would be dead. There were no other options worthy of a princess of the Red Empire. She pushed her chair back, stood up, and glanced around the team. She pulled her remaining silver-laced dagger from a holster on her left calf and walked behind Anton to stand before Jay.

  She put the razor-sharp killing blade on the table, with the handle next to Jay’s right hand.

  Jay looked at the blade gleaming brightly beneath the lights and then frowned at Chiara. “What’s that for?”

  “You might need it.”

  Jay froze, a haunted look ghosting across his face. He must’ve guessed what she was about to say. He just needed to hear it before acting. She had wronged him terribly. If he needed to kill her, she would not resist. Better death, than a life of being nothing.