by Fox Lancet
When Nefarion passed the first structure, he paused. The ground beneath him had become a flat, smooth stone and there were many large and alien objects littering the area around him. Trees and foliage were seen standing beyond the many broken structures.
He scanned the area slowly, searching and listening for any signs of movement. Something small scurried out of a hole and Nefarion’s eyes snapped in its direction. A fuzzy creature disappeared behind some rubble. There were many solitary flames dancing in contained areas dispersed among a long, wide path of black stone. He was about to continue when he heard gravel being disturbed and froze instead.
A small figure came around a corner into the shadows not far in front of him. Once it caught sight of him, it paused. Nefarion’s muscles were tense as he waited for an attack. It approached him cautiously, brushing long waves of tangled hair from delicate features and stopped more than an arm’s-length away.
“More of you?” The creature was small and pretty, hair the color of the grass he had recently trampled through. Female, he ascertained, her presence hardly impalpable. His senses seemed able to ascribe some foreign objects with purpose or definition. However, many things remained a mystery. He stared down at the fragile being. Waves of innocence and inexperience of life emanated from her.
“You have seen more of my like?” Again, the use of his voice perturbed him, the words not what he was accustomed to, but understanding them as he had hers. They poured from his mouth easily.
The girl nodded solemnly.
“None of them have been as big as you and the first two were pretty big.” She barely made eye-contact, but did not seem to be focusing on anything nearby or tangible otherwise. “Those two talked to me. The newer ones didn’t. They just wanted to kill the white-haired ones and anyone who happened to be here too.”
Nefarion let her ramble, studying her from his menacing height.
“But white hair or black hair, they were all so beautiful.” At the final thought, she looked up at Nefarion with pleading features as if he could explain the confusion.
He ignored the comment. “Yes, they are brimming with bloodlust, always.” His mouth curled up in the beginning of a smile.
She frowned deeply and water filled her eyes. Nefarion was looking forward at the evidence of destruction, though he knew not what the new world looked like when in order.
“Is this the end of the world?” She gripped her hands together and pressed them to her chest. Nefarion’s black eyes dropped back to her, fascinated. The curl of his mouth stretched into a handsome, yet ominous grin, and a red glow peeked through the center of his black marble eyes.
He felt a sudden urge to move forward, like something far away was calling for him. He pulled his attention from the young female and moved past her. His pace was quick and after passing several more structures he came to a vast opening in the trees and hills. The view was remarkable. Even more so was the ghostly visage floating above the littered plains. It had the vague shape of a Succubus and glowed red. It was far away.
“She is there.” The figure was already fading. Nefarion growled, but assessed the distant area, memorizing it, determined to get close. He was confident he would be able to feel her over a large distance. The figure disappeared.
He twisted around. The female was still standing there quietly, her back to him.
“You,” he barked. She looked at him over her shoulder. “Take me there.” He pointed toward the glittering valley below. The darker the sky became, the brighter the area shined, like the starry sky had fallen to the ground.
7
Bloodthirsty Allies
Jacob waited with little patience. Balanced strategically on the gate of one of the decomposing stalls, he swung one of his long-limbed legs heavily, often letting it oscillate without assistance. He had been gazing at the tightly packed dirt floor but now moved his eyes steadily up to look at Elijah’s back. The other Seraph was propped rigidly against the door-less gap at the head of the vacant stable. His form was surrounded by the brightness of midday, the grayness of the sky doing little to obscure the sun’s brilliance; rather it seemed a conductor for the element, making the world burn with light. It stole the detail from Elijah’s clothes and hair, making him just another black shape branching off the feeble wooden structure.
He shifted as though Jacob’s gaze had moved him. Jacob let his eyes roam away, grazing them across the rotting innards of the antiqued animal dwelling, so old the smells of feed or manure no longer lingered and instead reeked of the fresh pine smothering its shell. His hand slid across the wood where he sat and he hissed, his attention snapping to meet the hand he had jerked away from the sudden prick to his palm.
The sliver was quite large and its length had not completely embedded itself, allowing him to pinch it out in one piece. In his peripheral vision he saw Elijah moving toward him. He lifted his unscathed hand in a gesture to halt. The other Seraph ceased in his movements and hesitated only a moment before turning and reclaiming his post.
Wretched human creations. Each new day spent in this world made him like it even less than the day before. Who created equine stables of wood? Humans. At home they were fashioned of smooth stone and soft rosette grasses. But nor did Seraphs leave unused structures standing. They were torn down and their parts reused or returned to Trissana.
Humans did not have a relationship with their world, their planet Earth. In fact, quite the opposite; they abused their planet like it was an object at their disposal, they took from it and they intoxicated it. Perhaps it was better that the Demons come here. They would raze the steel and glass beasts that humans planted into the face of Earth. Demons would level their great cities and thrust them into a humble, if not desperate, state of being. Punishment for the disregard they showed a providing planet.
Jacob had already learned in his short time here that he liked humans very little, but knew without a doubt that Kaleb would want them spared if at all possible. Primarily for their stupidity. He would regard them as helpless, which Jacob agreed with on some level. They were helpless in their naivety. The Demons would be a brutal wake-up call, as the human saying went.
“Jacob,” Elijah interrupted his musing and he looked in his direction. Elijah had taken a few steps into the stable and two forms had taken shape behind him in the haggard entrance. One of them, though he could not see them, he knew was Lucas, one of the few surviving Seraphs from the illicit gate-crossing. He could feel the Seraph’s presence. The other being he could feel, but he did not recognize the aura, only that it was dark and humming with blue, the color Seraphs regarded as life force. It was a Vampire.
“This is Rowdy.” Lucas pulled them from the piercing white back drop so Jacob could see the creature. He was pale like a human-guised Seraph, but his hair was a glossy black, falling in soft waves around his face and past his shoulders. His eyes were dark, though the shadows of their surroundings had that effect on everyone standing within it.
“You are Jacob?” The Vampire stepped in Jacob’s direction and away from Lucas.
Jacob dropped gently from his post, stealth a habit built into his core. He walked toward the Vampire fearlessly, stopping only when the Vampire took a step back.
“I am Jacob,” he finally said, outstretching a hand like a human greeting another.
Rowdy considered the gesture before accepting the Seraph’s hand. “Rowdy, the Elders’ eyes and ears of the American Midwest.” His grip was strong and the shake slow and thoughtful.
Jacob broke the connection with a snap, dropping his hand back to his side. Now that he was closer he could see the Vampire’s dark eyes. They were not black, but a deep blue-black with shocks of silver. Rowdy smiled, his canines sharp but not elongated. Lucas had told Jacob that when they fed, those sharpened teeth slid from the gums to about an inch and their eyes became a frosty blue.
“Yes, Lucas has told me of you and of Vampires in general.” Jacob walked back to his original position and leaned nonchalantly against a
wooden support, which creaked in agony. He scowled at the sound, glaring down at the dirt floor. His attention turned back to Rowdy. “Have you spoken with your superiors?”
It was Rowdy’s turn to scowl. “They are not my superiors; they are Elders, advisors.” His smooth and flawless features crinkled at the corner of his eyes and between his eyebrows, shading his eyes and giving the illusion of a true monster. Jacob checked his instinct to react and held strong to his cavalier position.
“Forgive the slight, I am still learning. So did you, and if so, what do they say of the situation?” He waved his hand dismissively, his apology insincere.
Rowdy growled and stretched his jaw, his fangs extending and his eyes brightening among the blackness of his glower. “You are quite disrespectful.”
His sudden attack was sloppy and predictable. The attack of the additional Vampires had been anticipated, though their calculating movements had not. Jacob had Rowdy down in the first second, moving quickly to the next opponent. Three Vampires came at him at once. He barely slid an arm from one of their holds while he evaded the two others by jumping and twisting through the air, catching one’s head between his ankles and jerking. When his feet landed back on the floor, he turned and drove his fist into the first one’s spine, grabbing his head to pull it in the opposite direction and displacing vertebrae. The two Vampires collapsed in succession. The third came again, with two more coming up behind him.
Jacob noted distantly that both Lucas and Elijah were still on their feet and fighting. Just as his third victory had crumbled, the last of their partners was already grabbing hold of his neck. Jacob drew up to his full height, flexing all of his muscles and willing his power forward. His eyes burned to life, white light blinding the assailing Vampire, causing him to relinquish his grasp. The others behind him were equally impaired and in the ensuing seconds, all three were subdued. Jacob turned to aid his accomplices to find that they were each in single combat, no standing Vampires left aside from them. It all ended a moment later.
Before the Vampires’ bodies repaired and they all regained consciousness, the three Seraphs had them bound up in stiff barbed wire that Elijah and Lucas had discovered in surplus on the back side of the decaying stable. An average human could not have manipulated the hardened metal, whereas a Seraph had little trouble at all.
There were sixteen all together, including Rowdy. Jacob was not completely certain as to the goal of their attack, though he had assumed it would occur. The Vampires were testing them, testing the new and unfamiliar. Lucky for them they had not been Demons or the Vampires would all be dead now. Jacob knew they needed these creatures’ alliance for future days. He had to prove that Seraphs could be trusted and should be preferred over the next choice.
Jacob had already enlisted several Vampires, convincing them as soon as he had crossed paths with a handful of them when the Seraphs had first entered the city, Demons still close at hand. It did not take long once the Vampires witnessed the ferocity and damage a Demon could inflict. They had upturned vehicles, damaged steel structures, and eradicated humans with a swift carelessness that the Vampires gaping. Already he had gotten numerous calls with locations of where the Demons had been seen and not of the ones who had been pursuing them, but of Hunter and Syler’s whereabouts. The only Demons he currently cared to find.
Now he was having to concern himself with the Vampire chain of command. Inevitable and untimely. They still had at least four Demons after them. At the moment he had the remaining Seraphs who had crossed with him distracting them elsewhere.
“Will they wake soon?” Jacob demanded, looking to Lucas. His estimation of Demons could very well be incorrect and if there were more, he had sent his three comrades in grossly outnumbered. He had quietly hoped this engagement went quick and peacefully, but he had also known better. Lucas shrugged.
“I believe it depends on what injury put them out.” The Seraph circled around the batch of arrested Vampires. None stirred.
Jacob watched Lucas as he ambled about them. He and his Seraphs looked like humans now: their eyes smaller, lips wider, jaws stronger. The telling sign was their fair skin and hair. Albino, the term humans may have considered. Perhaps walking corpses to others. Like Demons, the eyes they had possessed on Trissana followed them to Earth. For humans, Seraph eyes looked like the eyes of human cadavers: white with irises and pupils a faded bluish purple. And like Demon eyes could still flash into their stinging red, Seraphs could still summon the glowing white of their own, as Jacob had demonstrated during the upheaval a moment before.
Seraphs, in this form, were taller than the average human and boasted more muscle mass than their bodies of Trissana. They were still relatively lank, their limbs long and slender. On Trissana they were renowned for their speed and it still translated, faster even. They were stronger as well, though where Demons were stronger on Trissana, they were still vastly stronger than Seraphs even on this plane.
A groaning Vampire brought him from his contemplations.
“Ah, I but cracked this one’s skull against the floor. He must have only sustained a concussion,” Lucas announced and tugged his faded jeans up at the thighs to give his knees slack under the material as he crouched before the waking Vampire. Its head lolled and Jacob stooped beside Lucas. He continued as they waited for the creature to become fully aware, “I believe any spinal cord injuries will take the longest to mend. This will include broken necks and damaged spines.”
Jacob grimaced, knowing he had snapped three of his six opponents’ necks, Rowdy’s being one of them, and damaged another’s spine.
“The quickest revives will be skull fractures and distress of the brain. They can come back from blood loss immediately if supplied with more. Decapitation is a death sentence as is a ruptured heart.” Lucas paused when he noticed Jacob and Elijah staring at him incredulously.
“Where did you find time to gather this information?” Elijah was the one to inquire.
Lucas frowned thoughtfully. “Observations when they came between us and the Demons. Also, we had a short reprieve a day ago. I spent it on a computer researching Vampire lore and comparing it to human injury. Most of what I just mentioned is theory.” His gaze continued to comb over their collection of Vampires, watching to see which looked to be rousing and what their sustained injury had been.
“I broke this one’s neck.” He pointed to one in the center who was still deathly limp. “And this one’s spine I snapped.” He pointed to the Vampire next to the first; he was in a similarly limp state. Lucas looked around a moment before locating another on the far side of the cluster. “And that one I stabbed in the artery of his inner thigh with a wooden shard where a human would bleed out and die in seconds. I do not believe he will wake until we feed him. Nor am I certain how long it takes for their kind to starve.”
“A decade for most.” The Vampire who had first been stirring was now fully conscious and offered the answer groggily. “Even then it would take hundreds of liters of blood before they were fully functional again, that is why many avoid hibernation because it is merely a form of starvation.”
All three Seraphs had moved to the front of this Vampire, listening like children. He offered no more.
“Why did you and your cohorts attack us? We only wished to impart information about our enemy,” Jacob spoke gently in attempt to show he was not upset with the ambush.
The Vampire lifted his chin defiantly, black hair falling away from his narrow face. “I will say no more until Rowdy wakes. He’s the one in charge of these kinds of politics, I don’t want to interfere with any orders that the Elders may have passed to him.”
Jacob frowned; he stood and turned around with a jerk, hiding his impatience from the Vampire. Rowdy’s broken neck would keep him out longer, delaying them further from stabilizing the situation with the Vampires.
He walked out of the barn’s tattered mouth into the gray daylight. Elijah followed him silently, hanging back closer to the door in case Lucas calle
d out.
“We need to expedite this situation. I am starting to believe I sent Lamen, Adam, and Ezekiel to their deaths. I want us to go assist them as soon as possible, but if we leave the Vampires now, I feel we will have missed the opportunity to civilize things between us.”
“Let me go find them. I will see how they fare and assist them if necessary while you and Lucas quell any argument with the Vampires,” Elijah suggested. Jacob nodded in response without turning to look at the other Seraph. He listened to the sound of Elijah leaving swiftly, like a sudden gust of wind. When he turned back to the entrance, there was no trace of him.
It was not much longer before Rowdy and all the others with spinal injuries woke. The majority of them were rather dejected, whereas Rowdy was furious. He spat curses for several minutes before Jacob and some of the other Vampires were able to get him into a more rational state. The Vampire Lucas had stabbed in the thigh was the only one left unconscious, one of the reasons Rowdy had been so unforgiving at first.
“Now will you please tell me what your Elders told you,” Jacob asked nicely, not wanting to rouse the Vampire all over again.
“I will not until you release our bonds,” Rowdy snarled, still agitated.
“I cannot do that. If your Elders commanded our deaths then I assume that is all you will attempt if I were to free you.” Jacob watched the Vampire’s features carefully for any twitching or unease.
Rowdy worked his jaw pensively. When he did not respond after a moment, Jacob went on to present a counter offer to persuade him, “I will retrieve blood for your last cohort if you promise to impart the information. Once we have come to a peaceful agreement, I will release all of you.” Rowdy gauged him, midnight eyes flickering over Jacob’s face.
After a minute or two he agreed. Jacob sent Lucas out to fetch a human for the bled-out Vampire. He was not gone for more than ten minutes, but it had now been nearly an hour since Elijah left. Once Rowdy’s final soldier came to, he deigned to divulge the Elders’ orders.