End of the Line

by N. D. Roberts

  “They weren’t the only ones fighting.” Helena turned her head to meet Mary-Anne’s eyes. “I suspect they had Kurtherian aid. Possibly even machines that were intelligences in their own right. I believe there are sentient beings who had been trapped or were hiding across Earth, beings who are waiting for someone with enough of an understanding of the Kurtherian race and the threat they posed to find them and help revive them to functional use.”

  Helena drifted for a long moment before continuing, “I believe it because it’s true.”

  She registered the look of suspicion on Mary-Anne’s face. “Mary-Anne?”

  Mary-Anne remained quiet, her expression shifting from suspicion to fear.

  “You there?” Helena asked.

  Mary-Anne returned to herself. “Sorry, I’m not used to people calling me by my real name.”

  Helena wondered where Mary-Anne had come from and what her experience was that the mention of Kurtherians roused such a strong reaction in her. “You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you?”

  “But what has that got to do with the Madness?” Mary-Anne’s tone became strident. “What has that got to do with the boy? What has the Queen Bitch and her history got to do with anything?”

  “It’s got everything to do with it.” Helena fought for control as the Madness surged inside her. “Forget the story I spun earlier. I know you know better than to believe the Queen’s technology could be subverted by something so primitive as an EMP. Don’t you understand? It’s because of the Kurtherian nanocytes that all this has happened. Without them, the world would be ticking by right now. Humans would be holding hands in a world where no Mad roamed the land looking to eat people’s faces.”

  Mary-Anne scoffed in disbelief. “I doubt it. Someone pushed the red button to start WWDE. Somehow the world would have fallen to shit one way or another. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about humans, it’s that they don’t like to look after the things they can’t fix.”

  Helena had to convince her, otherwise her plans to use Mary-Anne’s predicament to get Ezekiel to go back to Sarah Jennifer would come to nothing. “I’ve spent over seven decades looking for a cure. Reading everything I could find. I even stumbled across entries from diaries and journals written by Frank Kurns.”

  That got Mary-Anne’s attention. “The Frank Kurns?”

  “The very one,” Helena told her. “A member of TQB himself, and the one rumored to have inducted Bethany Anne into the UnknownWorld all those years ago. I studied everything I could about the history, everything I could about the nanocytes. Anything I could find that might suggest the answer. I traipsed across the country. I made friends, and I lost them. I killed, and I healed, and you know what all of that added up to at the end of the day?”

  Mary-Anne shook her head.

  “Squat!” Helena growled in frustration. “Nothing more than a formula for a concoction that can slow the damn thing down. A formula that two vampires lying in this very room are now taking in the hope that they may be spared a few more precious days to fix this mess.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mary-Anne countered in confusion. “If all of that was wasted time, why are you telling me all this?”

  Helena squirmed to turn on the bench so she could face Mary-Anne. “Because the boy knows one of the beings, a sentient entity trapped inside a machine who may have all the answers we’ve been looking for.”

  Mary-Anne gasped. “How? What is it?”

  Even now, Helena found it hard to betray Ezekiel’s confidence. However, her love for him and the fear that he would fall back into the dark place he’d been in when they’d found one another won out. She gave Mary-Anne a modified version of the truth. “She calls herself Lilith. She speaks as though she’s met Bethany Anne, and seems to know all there is to know about the nanocytes.”

  Mary-Anne pulled at her restraints. “Well, let’s get going, then. Let’s go to her. Do you know where she is?”

  Helena lay back, to Mary-Anne’s surprise. “Ah. There’s the rub.”

  Mary-Anne stopped struggling. “What? You can’t be telling me you don’t know where she is? You realize we’re both dying? Let’s go find her before it’s too late!”

  Helena sighed. It was too late for her if only everyone else would accept it. “I can’t. But you all can.”

  Mary-Anne resumed her attempt to free herself, to no avail. “What are you talking about?”

  Helena took her time answering. “Lilith lies across the sea. Across the Atlantic, in Europe. We’ve had no means to fly to her,” not strictly true, “nor am I sure I would even have lasted the journey.” That part was no lie. She felt her end growing closer with every minute that passed. “You have to promise me you’ll find her. Take Ezekiel, and swear you’ll keep him safe. You have to go on your way without me. I saw your dirigible. A marvelous piece of technology, and something I thought I might never see again. You can fly there, right? Fly to Lilith and find the answers we need.”

  It was Mary-Anne’s turn to be silent.

  “How do you know this Lilith even exists?” Mary-Anne eventually asked. “If she’s thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, how can you possibly know?”

  Helena smiled, relief and hope blossoming despite her knowledge that this was the end for her. “Because she speaks directly to the boy.”

  Exhaustion stole over her and she lapsed into sleep, leaving Mary-Anne to process everything she’d learned.

  Helena awoke to the smell of Mad blood. She started, then realized the smell was coming from Caitlin, who had returned with Ezekiel.

  Ezekiel came over and released both vampires, starting with Helena. “There was an incursion, and I didn’t have a hex up.”

  Helena pulled herself to a sitting position, rubbing her chafed wrists. “I take it you dealt with it.”

  “Actually, Caitlin did,” Ezekiel told her.

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Royland exclaimed.

  Ezekiel was grateful for the distraction. He didn’t want to tell Helena that he’d almost destroyed the whole forest. “Helena, this is Royland and Cammie.”

  Helena’s eyes widened with surprise. “It’s my honor to meet you both. Your part in the battle of New York hasn’t been forgotten. Not by me, at any rate.”

  That won Cammie over. She smiled at Helena, waving off the praise. “Aw, it was nothing. Gotta take care of our own, right?”

  “Speaking of,” Kain cut in as he exited the bedroom. “How are we for dinner? Did anyone hunt?”

  “Is your stomach the only thing you care about?” Caitlin called from the bathroom. She emerged, her hair wrapped in a towel. “There will be time to eat when we’ve talked through what we’re going to do next. Our ship is damaged. How do you suggest we continue the search for the cure without our ride?”

  Mary-Anne looked at Ezekiel. “Magic Boy has the answers to where the cure can be found, apparently.”

  Ezekiel reddened under the scrutiny when everyone turned to look at him.

  “Truth time, Ezekiel,” Helena murmured.

  Ezekiel sighed. “Okay. I’m not a century old. I’m thirty-three. I come from a town called New Romanov in Siberia, where Lilith lives. I was brought up by Sarah Jennifer Walton after my parents died, and she is the one spearheading the resolution to the Madness.”

  “Walton?” Royland blurted.

  “As in, the Alpha?” Cammie was awed.

  Ezekiel nodded.

  “Why would you hide that from us?” Cammie asked. “Wait, we were looking for you! Everyone was!”

  Ezekiel’s blush deepened, his embarrassment driving his magic dangerously close to the surface. “I’m not talking about my relationship with Sarah Jennifer.”

  Helena cut in, “Pack politics isn’t the question here. The only thing that matters is how you’re going to get to New Romanov before it’s too late for Mary-Anne.”

  Kain snorted. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You’re suggesting that the six of us—”

  Caitlin
coughed and nodded at Jaxon. The dog turned intelligent eyes on the Were, his stare accusatory.

  Kain rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Kitty-Cat. Can’t forget the dog, now. That the seven of us fix up the flying ship which we crash-landed into the trees thanks to a superstorm. Then we blindly set out on a mission thousands of miles across the ocean, where there’s literally zero places to land safely if anything goes wrong, and search for a place none of us have ever visited. All to go and find some kind of machine which may or may not hold the answers to fixing the Madness once and for all.” He looked around the room. “Does that about cover it?”

  Kain’s mouth dropped open when he was met with a round of determined nods.

  Cammie and Royland offered him zero support.

  Kain threw up his hands. “Okay, I’m not saying I’m not eager to help put an end to all of this shit—particularly with Ma pushed even closer to the brink of batshit crazy herself—”

  Mary-Anne glared icy daggers at him. “Thanks for that.”

  “You’re welcome. But can we stop and think about this for a minute?” Kain’s eyes flashed yellow, his voice dropping to a growl. “This is suicide. You know that to get to Europe would take days? Maybe even weeks? We traveled a couple of nights and got smacked by lightning. What are we going to do if we crash into the ocean? I can’t swim, and I doubt Jaxon will be happy acting as a life raft for everyone, do you?”

  Caitlin interjected, “Kain…”

  He ignored the warning, getting up to pace off the concern driving his energy. “What’s going to happen when we get there? We’re just magically going to find this robot and ask it to click its mechanical fingers and fix everything? How do we even know that it exists?”

  “Not a robot,” Ezekiel murmured.

  No one heard him.

  “Kain,” Mary-Anne tried.

  Panic colored Kain’s voice, and his energy changed as his wolf rose in response to his fear. “And don’t you think that if—and I’m talking the extremely unlikely case that this thing actually exists, because how the hell do we really know it’s real?—if, if, if, if, IF this thing exists, don’t you think it’ll be protected? Don’t you think that forces across the pond are already aware of it then they’ll already be protecting it? Maybe this machine is the reason for all of this in the first place. Did—”

  Caitlin planted herself in his path, her hands on her hips. “Kain!”

  He turned, his bared teeth beginning to elongate. “What!”

  The dog whined.

  “Shut. Up. And. Listen.” Caitlin stared him down, her fiery gaze daring him to argue. Seeing she’d snapped him out of it, she turned to Ezekiel. “Zeke, it’s over to you, buddy.”

  Ezekiel nodded. “Lilith isn’t a robot. She is a Kurtherian, an alien from the species that has visited Earth on a number of occasions. The Kurtherians fall into two groups. There are the Five, who are genetically incapable of violence of any kind, and the Seven, who are hellbent on enslaving any species they see as inferior—which basically means any species but their own—and using them to force their religion on the universe.

  “When I was a boy, I only knew Lilith as ‘the Oracle,’ an entity whose motivation was protecting the people in my hometown. When I was fourteen, my parents were killed by a Mad. I was adopted by Sarah Jennifer, and I met Lilith…in person for the first time. She taught me about magic and the true history of the world. The UnknownWorld. The Madness is not a virus, not like we would think of one, anyway.”

  Everyone in the room was silent as he continued.

  “When the Matriarch left Earth the last time, she placed a satellite network in high orbit and blanketed the planet in nanocytes meant to push humanity into the next stage of evolution—magic. Her people also placed climate control technology all around the planet. A man by the name of Arthur Drake messed with the Queen’s technology, causing the Madness and plunging the northern hemisphere into eternal winter.”

  Ezekiel sighed. He didn’t want to tear the scab off his wounds. “The Defense Force reversed the winter. They’ve been all over the world, containing the worst outbreaks of Madness. I left. I needed to do more. I needed to do things my own way, not the military way. I argued with Sarah Jennifer about her intention for the Defense Force to leave Earth. I have to admit that what I did was wrong.” He looked at Helena. “But if I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have met you. I can’t regret that.”

  Helena took his hand. “I wouldn’t have had things any other way. You are my family.”

  “What does any of this have to do with Lilith?” Caitlin asked.

  Ezekiel sighed again, deeper this time. “The Defense Force has two branches. One is made up of the pack, the other is made up of magic users. I was the first person born with magic, but there are thousands of others who have learned the ability. Their leader Esme worked for TQB back before WWDE. She’s the one who has worked with Lilith to decode the Madness, and it’s her we need to ask to help Mary-Anne.”

  Helena spoke into the stunned silence. “Imagine how I felt discovering yet another hidden layer to the UnknownWorld.”

  Caitlin fixed Ezekiel with her shrewd gaze. “You can communicate with Lilith? How?”

  “When I quiet my mind, I can connect to her,” Ezekiel told her. “She has begged me to come to her for weeks now. She tells me there is great danger and that time is short.”

  Royland had questions. “Why didn’t you go, then? Why didn’t you heed her call yourself?”

  Cammie threw a hand back, slapping him on the stomach. “Because he had no means to cross the ocean. He’s just one boy, and she’s just one woman.”

  Helena had to argue that. “Excuse me, I’m a vampire.”

  “You won’t be for long,” Kain muttered. He shrugged at the look Mary-Anne gave him. “What? I’m just saying. If we’re really considering this absolute fuckfest of a mission, then shouldn’t we all be really honest about what’s going on here? She’s going to go into full Mad-mode in the next few days.” He pointed at Mary-Anne. “She’s a few weeks behind on the timescale, but with the unpredictability of the damned thing, she could turn at any moment, as we’ve seen.” He moved his hand to point at Ezekiel. “And this boy thinks he can hear voices from halfway across the world. How do we know that he’s not going Mad?”

  Ezekiel had heard enough. He focused on his breathing, controlling the well of magic he’d been holding in.

  Kain eyed him with concern. “Um, what’s the kid doing?”

  Assured he wouldn’t accidentally burn the house down, Ezekiel released the magic, shaping it to match the image in his mind. His eyes glowed red as he manifested a fireball.

  Helena gasped, realizing he didn’t have the control he was aiming for.

  Ezekiel was aware. Fire was the easiest magic to manifest but also the easiest to lose control of. He launched the fireball at the window. It shattered the glass before scorching the grass outside where it landed, lighting up the night.

  Kain darted to the broken window and peered out at the guttering ball of flames. He whirled, his eyes wide as he stared at Ezekiel. “Magic? It’s real?”

  Helena interjected, “It’s not magic.”

  “Not true,” Ezekiel countered. “Esme always told me that once a technology is sufficiently advanced, it appears to be magic.” The glow from his eyes faded. “I’m paraphrasing. What I mean is, if everyone believes it’s magic, who’s to say any different?”

  “Yes, well.” Helena’s face made her feelings clear. She had gone around and around this debate with Ezekiel over the years, and while they had never fallen out over it, she’d always sided firmly with Sarah Jennifer’s opinion. “You know whose side of that argument I agree with. There’s no such thing as magic. What you’ve just witnessed is the full potential of the Kurtherian nanocytes, an unlocked version of the very same technology that lives within me, and you, and you, and you. Even the dog may have them, for all we know.”

  Ezekiel couldn’t argue that.

  Helena
’s expression was fiercely protective. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but what we do know is that the boy possesses a gift none of us understands or knows the limits of.”

  Ezekiel frowned. “Esme understood.”

  Helena chose to ignore him and turned her attention back to Kain. “If you’re telling me that in a room filled with Weres, vampires, and humans in a world where the Madness exists that you can’t believe another form of this technology could also exist, then I ask you to leave my premises. These doubts are not conducive to progress. However, if you wish to save your friend any time soon, then you best get your big-boy believing pants on and prepare for a fucking voyage because there’s no other way this damn thing will end. Of that, I am sure.”

  Kain was clearly unused to being told what to do. However, even a vampire at the end of her life—and especially a vampire who could go Mad at any moment—was a dangerous person to aggravate. The energy Helena put out subdued his instinct to dominate.

  He very wisely closed his mouth.

  His silence wasn’t enough.

  Chapter Eleven

  Helena’s gaze was locked on the Were, her chest rising and falling as the drive to feed took over. Her eyes began to shine dull red.

  She clasped her head with a hand, trying to push away the desire to kill.

  Ezekiel saw the change come over her. “Helena. Is it happening?”

  “Take me to the table,” she murmured.

  Kain got out of Helena’s line of sight, moving to stand by Royland and Cammie, who were both unnerved by the sudden change in the vampire’s demeanor.

  Cammie whispered to Caitlin, “Is she okay?”

  Caitlin nodded. “She will be. It’s just an episode.”

  “Help me out here, Kain,” Ezekiel asked.

  Kain didn’t hesitate. He took one of Helena’s arms, and the two of them guided the vampire to the other room, where the twin benches were.

  Helena’s fight began almost as soon as they started strapping her down.

  Her grunts turned to growls and screams as they left her to wait out the episode.