Age of Extinction (300 Years of Sin Book 2)

by Cristina M. Sburlea

  “Do whatever you have to do! I need this! I will not be subdued by anyone and if this is what I have to do, then so be it!”

  “Good, then we can proceed.” said Cristian while taking a bottle and a surgical knife. “I need a part of your muscle and I need you to drink this, it is going to hurt if you don’t.”

  Constantine’s hair was electrified at the memories he had. But now a new feeling took over him. It was almost time to feed again and he desired to hunt. He spent a century without running after they prey he needed to consume in order to feel full. Cristian went back to his work in the basement of the church, while the werewolf went out to stalk his food.

  The city was very quiet; it was past two o’clock at night. Very few souls were still awake and the monster was searching for prey. Giggles were heard coming from the other side of the street. The beast was hiding in darkness, but, under a streetlight a young couple was whispering their last words before parting. The man embraced the woman and kissed her forehead. He then took two steps back and, suddenly, claws grabbed him by the torso pulling him fast into the shadow. The woman got scarred, she screamed and ran while the man was being bitten and severed. In a matter of seconds, only a few bones and a head were left on the street. But the monster was not finished. He ran after the woman and, right before she could open the metal door to her house, the same claws captured, squeezed, and pushed her to a wall. The beast moved closer to her, he sniffed her perfume and looked her in the eyes. Fear’s smell was stronger than perfume and it was enticing for the werewolf. He then pushed his claws inside of her chest ripping the heart out and eating it whole. He did not care to eat the rest. That was enough for the night. His stomach was finally full and in need of digestion.

  When morning came the body of the woman and the head of the man were found on the streets and now it became apparent to the police that they were dealing with a serial criminal.

  “Werewolf, the werewolf is back!” screamed a man. It was the same man who said it when he saw the boy of the first victim. But nobody seemed to believe him. Even so, people were now more scared than ever and they were wondering when and who the next victim would be.

  Cristian used to care for the lives of innocents, but that was long ago, before 1735, to be more exact.

  The process of conversion was not working well and Constantine grew more impatient as his skin was filled with wrinkles.

  “I keep growing old and I am hungrier than ever.” said Constantine.

  “There’s plenty of food, eat!” said Cristian.

  “It is not your food that I want!” added Constantine, while pushing the plates off the table. “I am sick of all this. The food seems disgusting. I need some air. I will go outside of this bloody basement.”

  “You can’t go far! You do not have enough energy to move around freely. I have just finished my last experiment on you.”

  “I will just take a short walk. I need the air. I need to think.” he said and then walked out of the basement and out of the church. He took the road behind and tried to walk. It was difficult, but it was not painful, however his stomach growled. “Damn you stomach. What do you want?” And then he noticed two men speaking at the end of the street. He walked towards them instinctively, but then stopped right next to them.

  The men, aristocrats, were not pleased with him being there. “What do you want?” asked one of them, but Constantine did not answer, he froze. “Go away you bum!” said the other “Leave us gentleman to our business”. But he did not go and, instead, he put his right hand on one of the two.

  “Go away!” said the man while pushing him aside. Constantine fell and the two men walked away. He got up and just then realized he had a small knife in his other hand. He took it from the table when he left, but he did not even notice it. Constantine swiftly closed in on the two, from behind, and stuck his knife into the neck of one. While the other turned around, Constantine pulled the knife and pierced his neck also. The men fell as their clothes were flooded with blood flowing out from their arteries. He then bit them again and again. He ate. No one else was there. He ate and left the bodies. And behind him was Cristian. He witnessed the whole event, the fall, the knife, the killing, and the feeding. He wanted to stop the murder, but Constantine moved faster than any man would, even in his old age.

  When his stomach was full, Constantine stopped and turned around. He saw the doctor standing. Cristian came close to him and touched his face with his right hand. “Your skin!” he said.

  “What is it?” asked the duke.

  “Your skin is young again!” answered the man. “It is beginning to work! The process is beginning to work!” he said as he looked at the duke’s fingers filled with long, thick nails.

  “Wolf nails!”

  “Quick, we must go back to the lab! I need one of the nails to study it. And I need to see what exactly was that worked from the experiment.”

  The two rushed inside as Constantine’s body kept reversing the aging process. By the time Cristian took a knife to cut one of the nails, the duke looked thirty five again. “Remarkable!” they both thought.

  Constantine let out a short shrike as the nail was being pulled away, not really from the pain, but from the idea that a part of him was being displaced. “You were behind me the whole time. Why didn’t you try to stop me? Weren’t you the one who had something against hurting the innocent?”

  “Those two were anything but innocent. They were a pair of corrupted officials, nothing more. I still hold a grudge against anyone who hurts those who do not deserve it.”

  “What do you think about me?” asked the duke. “You’ve never let me tell you my life’s story.”

  “I do not need to hear it as it might change my minds. I know what I need: you saved me and you are doing this of your own free will.”

  “But I might be just like those two.”

  “We all have our faults. If you have yours, the time will come for you to pay for them. But, for now, I know all I need in order to work on you.”

  Duke Constantine Burke was not a man without faults at all. He founded an Order which took advantage of its influence, commanded the creation of dracos, killed, and betrayed many times only to achieve his goals. But he was kind to Cristian when he was young, he was his savior, so it was an advantage to keep his deeds to himself, at least until he got what he wanted from the doctor. Jonathan hunted his every dream and all the experiments the medic conducted, were nothing in comparison to what the draco did to him. But that was not the only reason he wanted to become a werewolf. Behind the anger, behind the ruthlessness, there was disappointment and the sweet smell of cherry blossom reminded him of it.

  A few days later, riots spread across the city. People were angry in the streets and they created raucous. Many of them broke windows and even tried to burn down administrative buildings. In response, the military arrived and they quelled the riots in blood. There were mountains of bodies in the town square. Cristian ran to his home in the midst of the riots. He searched the house frantically only to realize that his now pregnant wife was not inside.

  “Oh no! Where is she? Ana, where are you? Ana, Ana!” he screamed but no one answered. He got outside of the building and looked throughout the city. When it got dark, soldiers were culling the bodies from the streets and putting them in the square for people to see what will happen to them if they riot again. Officials ordered this to set an example. Cristian was still looking for his wife until he saw to soldiers toss a body on the pile. The pale pink dress and the black hair used to look lovely on the woman’s skin, but now she was covered in blood from gunshots. Ana was dead. When he saw this, the man went to the pile, but the soldiers did not let him get close.

  “Go away or you will be killed!” said one of the men.

  “That is my wife, please, I beg of you, let me get her!”

  “You did not hear me? Leave or I will kill you!” screamed the soldier.

  Cristian left, angered, desperate. For the past week he tried
to keep Constantine in the basement of the church even though he wanted to feed on human flesh. He tried to keep him from killing again as it was not something he enjoyed.

  “Constantine!” he screamed as he was heading toward the basement. “Constantine!”

  “I’ve heard you the first time. There’s no need to scream.” replied the duke as he turned around hearing the door open.

  Like a raging bull, Cristian then said “You want to feed, you want the flesh of humans, then go, go and kill the bastards!”

  “Calm down man, what is going on?”

  “Kiiiiiiill them I say!” screamed the man. Then the two got out of the church and Cristian pointed him in the direction of the piles of bodies and told him to slaughter the soldiers near them. Constantine felt a rush like never before. He moved faster, he reacted better, and all his senses heightened once he tasted human flesh again. He killed thirteen soldiers and when he was done, he ran to hide as soldiers were now on his trails.

  For two days and nights, Constantine hid in the forest. His fear shrunk to almost nothing, his claws were strong and his muscles were outgrown. The rush of the kills made him feel invincible. Even so, he thought it would be better to spend another day there. But his muscles and claws were beginning to turn human so he could no longer stay there. During the night, he got the chance to sneak back into the Black Church’s basement where Cristian was grieving, but his anger was now focused onto his work.

  “My body was stronger, but that faded in a matter of moments.”

  “The process is not complete. At least now we know we are on the right track.” said Cristian.

  “Years ago, when I arrived, you told me that killing is not the way to go about it.” added Constantine.

  “Do you know what the worst enemy of humanity is?” asked the doctor.

  “I have a feeling you will enlighten me.” answered the duke.

  “Humanity itself! They are weak, they cannot control themselves, they kill and torture aimlessly. They are not made to rule themselves. What I am trying to do here, through you, is to create a new species, a more evolved one. In a wolf pack everyone knows its place, everyone does what is needed. Humans need to also know their place, to understand their inferiority and bow to those that are far better. Maybe that will be the only way to stop them from themselves.”

  “You have indeed come far. You finally understood my point of view.”

  As years passed the doctor kept trying to refine his experiments. For the next seventy years, Constantine did not go out of his basement so as to not be recognized by those in the city. Cristian assumed twelve new names and faces. But in 1805, the beast was too hungry to stay hidden. He went out of the basement on three nights, and every time, he killed in the most gruesome of ways, the last time, being spotted by army men. Again, he had to hide in the mountains, but this time he could stay there for a week. His muscles grew even more than the first time, his claws were even longer and stronger, and there was something else: his teeth turned into fangs and the mouth was elongated. When, suddenly, Constantine turned back into his regular human form, he sneaked back into the basement of the church. The monster came out again in 1850, but no one suspected it was him who killed a child. The next time he came out, the unexpected happened: a picture was taken of him. A photographer was preparing to take the picture of a family sitting in front of a camp fire. At the same moment the camera flashed, the beast was running somewhere in the background. The picture never came to be known as Cristian, who was then living under the name of Stephan, snatched it from the house of the photographer, but it made him think about the possibility of his work being discovered.

  “We have to be more careful now. If a picture is taken of you while you are out hunting, things can get very complicated. We can’t get into trouble, not now when we are so close to accomplishing our goal.” said Cristian.

  “You always say we are close. You’ve said that fifty years ago and a hundred years ago and so on. I still can’t fully turn into a wolf and even the abilities I get are lost quickly. If it wasn’t for that damned draco I would be a werewolf by now. I swear that, when I get my hands on him, I will make him scream for all that I have lost.” yelled Constantine, angered.

  “We both lost the things we loved, but we cannot lose our patience or our reason. You need to stay hidden. From now on, I’ll bring what you need to feed on.”

  Constantine only needed to be brought human flesh twice in the next century. But this Christmas changed everything.

  Chapter 2

  Paris and Tokyo

  In Paris, Rene was sleeping next to Mark. Her mother was French and her father was Moroccan and she wanted to visit the two places where her parents lived before they met and had their two daughters. While Rene learned French as a baby and then in school, she never had the chance to practice it so she was thrilled to finally speak the language. And now, over a year after the whole business with the Order of Constantine went down, she felt more at ease than ever. Mark woke up with no thirst for blood. He only felt it once in a while after he came out of the Order’s cellar. He went to pour a glass of tea and then returned to bed, but when he arrived, Rene was not sleeping as peaceful as she did before he got up. She tossed and turned in her bed. Her sweet dream turned into a nightmare: Christmas fire, children playing around it, tall Christmas trees decorated with the most beautiful of lights, snow covering the ground, and loud laughter turned into red, screams of fear, and tears. She then noticed a monster lurking in the shadows and got up startled.

  “It’s alright, you’ve had a nightmare, it’s alright, the Order is gone.” said Mark.

  “It’s not the Order that I’ve dreamed of.” she replied. “It’s something else, but I don’t know exactly what.”

  “It’s just a dream, love.”

  “Yes, you must be right!” she added.

  On the other side of the planet, Jonathan and Ava were in Tokyo, visiting Aiko and Masaru. The two were both turned into dracos on the same day by Hisao, one of the first Japanese members of the Order of Constantine. The two were used to accomplish the goals of Hisao, but, when their master discovered that they were in love and tried to separate them, they managed to escape from under the control of the white oak ash. They were the only two dracos in the world that escaped control without the intervention of someone else. For this, Aiko and Masaru became legends among their kind. The two were highly agile, smart, and resourceful creatures. They spent over a hundred years away from their home. Then the two came back for a few days, but, when they realized members of the Order were now there in higher numbers, they decided it was time to leave again. However, when Jonathan contacted them with a proposal to take down some of the Constantines living in Tokyo, they gladly returned. Right after the four witches completed their spell, Aiko and Masaru returned to Tokyo. There, they went after the Constantines who continued their corrupted acts even after their memory loss. The couple took great pleasure in plotting their downfall.

  “Hisao’s descendants followed in his footsteps.” said Aiko. “They used thousands of people and turned them into dracos. Most of them died when they attacked China and Russia.”

  “I personally severed the head of Hiaso’s great grandchild in 1905.” said Masaru.

  “And I, that of his granddaughter.” added Aiko. “We tried to help the dracos we found, but most of them were too weak to survive and the rest were already dead on the battle fields. The two that lived after we helped them, left on their own paths.”

  “How many dracos have you found in this past year?” asked Jonathan.

  “We found eighty: five in Japanese dungeons, two in South Korea, one in North Korea, but we killed him as he tried to kill us, fifteen in Chinese basements, and the rest were found in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.”

  “These are a lot more than we previously thought existed.” added Jonathan.

  “And these are only those who lived as captives. There are many more that were used above ground by Consta
ntines. We met twenty of them.” said Masaru. “So there must me a lot more of which we know nothing about.”

  “At first we thought only a few dozens were alive now.” said Ava. “But we got news of seventy more living in European research facilities and working for the advancement of the Order, thirty five in Africa, and eighty five living in the Americas.” We also received word of forty eight being free. So one can only speculate of how many actually are alive now.” said Ava.

  “In 1807 I only knew of the existence of twenty others.” added Jonathan. “But that was before Raj’s arrival in London. Then as time went by, the dracos I came in contact with were newly turned, but, because of the extensive use of white oak ash, they were too weak to live.”

  “It seems we only scratched the surface. The Order had a wider web than we could have imagined. Even now, as many of them are being investigated in criminal cases, more lies come to light, and most of which are being tried now, we did not even knew of their involvement with the Order.” said Masaru. “I estimate that there are at least one thousand members of the Order alive today and at least the same number of dracos.”

  “Witches, we know for sure, are twenty five. Rene located them all.” said Ava.

  “Constantine was mad. After he created me, he turned three thousand others into dracos and used them in his armies in the colonies. And all of them, with a few exceptions, died. He committed mass murder. And those that have survived bear the scars of such times.”

  “And now that the Order is no more, over a year later, we still have to clean its dirty laundry.” added Masaru.