by James Somers
DESCENDANT
By
James Somers
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3© James Somers
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Read by British Narrator: Duncan White
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(Serpent Kings, Wraith Dancer, Shadow Walker)
Hunger
Tom stood upon the Cliffs of Woe, peering down into the depths of the precipice where, far below, churning water rushed out of the rock. The river ran beneath the earth, converging with hot springs that brought its normally freezing temperatures up considerably. Steamy vapor issued from the rock as the waters exited, creating a cloud that hid everything below from that which was above. Tom saw only a pillow of white, promising almost certain death.
No one that he knew had ever been foolish enough to leap from the Cliffs of Woe, and certainly no one had ever lived to tell it. If he jumped, the rocks waited to receive him. Possibly, he might actually hit the water. But at this height, it would make little difference. If he managed to survive the impact with the water, there was still the raging current to contend with. Certainly, he would be pummeled ceaselessly against the stones by its merciless rush from the cliff face. None of these options were preferable.
Still, he considered it. His pursuers were wearing him down. It was difficult to know how long he had been running. Time did not pass in the Fae realms like it did in the mortal world. And Greystone’s unending twilight-to-darkness-back-to-twilight cycle made the possibility of knowing all the more daunting. Tom’s best guess would have been months—hiding, running, hiding some more.
His mission had originally been to come in disguise to the Lord of the Vampires, Tiberius, in order to plea for his daughter’s rescue back in London. However, something terrible had happened after his passage through the Greystone portal at Stonehenge. The portal no longer functioned, and Greystone was not like other Fae realms.
A powerful magic had been employed during the Clan Wars, hundreds of years earlier, that had rendered this place impervious to attack by outsiders. Creating a portal in and out of Greystone was nearly impossible now. Only the established portal, carefully guarded by the vampires, had been in use. And only the most gifted Descendants possessed the power to enter or leave otherwise. Tom was not so gifted.
However, following the discovery of the portal’s closure, the realm of vampires had turned into a land of desperation. Food supplies were plentiful in the mortal world, but not so here. Only the vampires and a few giants dwelt in this frozen land. With the portal closed, their primary food supply was cut off.
It seemed like an obvious weakness, but no one had ever had the power to exploit it before. Tom could only wonder who had done so now, or why. Surely, Black had not destroyed the portal. After all, the Breed were his allies. Still, what if he had meant to keep Tiberius away from his daughter? An awful realization, but a possibility.
While Tom’s ruse had lasted for a time, gradually his ability to maintain his disguise had worn down his strength. He had been forced to let go of some of the subtler elements of his disguise as Letan the vampire envoy. His scent had been particularly draining to maintain. Once it had fallen, these hungry vampires had caught the scent of blood on him again.
Despite his appearance, he had been attacked by a particularly thirsty specimen named Demetrius while they patrolled Greystone in search of some remnant of the ancient portals that had long ago fallen to wartime conflicts. Demetrius had been a highly skilled warrior of the Breed, but his bloodlust had made him feral.
“Why do I smell the blood of elves on you, Letan?” he had asked. “It drives me mad with thirst. Have you fed upon one while the rest of us starve?”
He had grabbed Tom in an iron grip, “The savor is all over you, Letan! I must have blood!”
Tom had screamed as Demetrius lunged at him, ready to commit what he thought was cannibalism. Such had been his madness. He hadn’t cared to attack his own kind.
A blast of air from Tom exploded between them, sending him flying in one direction and Demetrius another. “You’re an elf!” Demetrius screamed as he scrabbled back to his feet.
Tom realized his disguise was completely gone now. He stood with fiery curls barely covering his elf’s ears. What could he do? This vampire had lost all reason—not that reason would have stopped him from killing an elf.
Demetrius shot after him like a blur, his eyes wide and ravenous. His pale irises told how long it had been since this vampire had drank from a mortal. He would do anything now to sate that thirst.
Tom vanished through a portal, reappearing yards away. It was almost too much for him in his weakened state. The distance was not far enough. Demetrius simply adjusted his trajectory and kept coming.
He waited only a moment, trying to gather his energies, then transformed into a silverback gorilla. Tom’s meaty fist hammered Demetrius down into the ground. He didn’t waste time wondering whether the blow had killed the vampire. Instead, he kept up the pounding before Demetrius had a chance to get up. By the time Tom had worn himself out, the vampire no longer moved.
He stood there for a moment, huffing as his form returned to normal. Tom examined Demetrius. To be sure, this crazed vampire was as dead as they come. But he had no time or way to hide what he had done.
His strength had waned for some time, and he knew he couldn’t take the chance of assuming Letan’s image any longer. What if he was found out while in the midst of many vampires? He could never hope to escape then. And, like Demetrius, the Breed were only going to grow more feral as their thirst continued. With the humans free from the spelled dolls, they had no backup for blood. They had all vanished from the place where they had been held in Greystone months ago.
Tom had decided to run and hope for the best. His pursuers had taken less time than he had thought to discover the truth and come after him. He had been forced to kill several vampires already since Demetrius. Fortunately, as an elf, he was also deadly with mortal weapons of war, like the bow and sword. He had conjured both and had managed to escape several close calls. However, the groups coming after him had grown significantly in numbers. He could no longer simply stand and fight, or hope to ambush them.
The stealthy tactics of the Breed had been abandoned in their frenzy for blood. Tom could hear them coming from a mile away with his elf’s ears. Unfortunately, they could also smell him from that far. He had to move, and there was nowhere else to go but down. The Cliffs of Woe stretched away to either side for miles. No time to seek another way.
Had he still retained the strength, a simple transformation into a fish or bird might have helped him. But his energies were spent. His grumbling stomach and the cold upon his skin reminded him of the insatiable thirst that now drove the Br
eed to kill him. He was starving just as much as they were now, having had only a small rabbit, caught days ago, to sustain him.
Tom backed away from the precipice, hoping to gain as much momentum as he could. He listened one last time for his pursuers. They were just beyond the trees behind him. They might have even spotted him. He ran for the edge of the cliff and leaped away into the air as far as he could. Gravity took hold of him, pulling him down through the misty white cloud toward whatever fate awaited him below.
Alexander
Charlotte stalked along a building ledge overlooking an alley where criminals were wont to come and hang out following their thieveries and other malicious acts. There was a pub nearby, as well as a brothel operating within a rundown tenement. These villains had everything they required close at hand.
Two men had recently committed an armed robbery nearly a mile away in a dark alley within a better neighborhood than this one. The elder gentleman, who was their victim, had been beaten severely in the process. Charlotte had followed them back to this alley, even as constables responding to the alarm of other pedestrians found their trail gone cold.
She felt the hunger burning within her, a thirst that could only be quenched by blood. Charlotte had gone nearly two weeks without claiming a kill. She could bear it no longer. And these two were ripe for the picking.
Charlotte still prided herself on only culling criminals from the great sea of humanity available to her. She meant no harm to those mortals who did no harm to others. Still, the hunger drove her to feed, and she already knew that she would give in to it if necessary.
These two men were armed, one with a revolver, the other with knives. Charlotte had spotted the weapons during the robbery, though they had not killed their victim. She had no fear of harm. No mortal had ever been fast enough to manage even a scratch.
She heard them speaking, their voices relieved that they had eluded capture by the police. They were still breathing hard from all the running they had been doing. Charlotte could hear their rapid heartbeats drumming in her preternatural ears. It was time.
Charlotte leaped away from the ledge, surrendering to gravity’s pull, plunging toward the men quickly and quietly. She was so focused upon her prey that she did not notice the other predators nearby. As she prepared to snatch the first man, a strong arm grabbed him lightning quick and hurled him into the opposite wall.
Charlotte recoiled from the intruder, realizing who it was when he pummeled the second man to the ground with one blow. “Alexander?”
“Greetings, Charlotte,” Alexander said.
He stood nearly a foot taller than she did, looking down upon her with a mixture of amusement and disdain. His muscular frame pressed noticeably against the simple black clothing that he wore. Alexander was a warrior among the Breed and had been one of her brother’s generals during their time under Black’s thumb. But she had not thought that any of her people were still left in London.
She thought to flee, but her first twitch caused Alexander’s arm to snap down upon her own like a vice. “Don’t go just yet,” he said menacingly.
Charlotte now noticed a dozen other vampires in the alley with them, as well as some on the rooftops above. There was no way she could escape. Alexander was revered among her people. She had seen him fight many times and greatly admired his cunning and skill. In many ways, he made a much better leader than her own brother had.
“What do want?” she asked. Alexander’s grip was like iron.
“I want to know where your brother is,” he said. “I want to know where the angel, Black, has gone and I want to know why we cannot go home to Greystone.”
Charlotte trembled in his grasp. He didn’t understand what had happened to her brother, that he had rescued her and perished. Where had they been all this time?
Alexander pulled her closer to him. “And I want to know what you had to do with it.”
A quarter hour later, Alexander and his Breed warriors had escorted Charlotte to a rundown old tenement across the city. They had all taken to the sky, with the full moon watching them like a monstrous eye. Charlotte stayed in their formation in her raven form, following Alexander’s large eagle. Even in his animal form, he was a predator.
Along the way, she had spotted several opportunities where she might have been able to slip away from them. However, Charlotte found herself intrigued by Alexander’s arrival. She had been nearly a year without contact with others of her kind.
Her father was still trapped with her people in Greystone, no doubt going mad as they starved for blood. Brody had been little help to her in trying to find a way to establish a portal. Even if he now possessed the ability, he would not risk the possibility of Greystone’s vampires rampaging the city.
As for her own opinion, Charlotte found herself caring less and less about the mortals. Why should she go on fighting for them? They had never shown the least gratitude toward any of her kind. Oliver had gotten himself consigned to Tartarus on their behalf. Had the mortals known his sacrifice, Charlotte knew they would not care. She was interested to find out what Alexander might say to all of these things.
When they were all inside the tenement, Alexander lit a single lantern that hung from one of the rafters. “You recognize this place, Charlotte?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “This is where my brother used to house the mortal boys that worked for him while Black was still around. What happened to the children?”
“They were delicious,” Alexander said.
An awkward silence hung in the room for a moment.
“That disturbs you, Charlotte?”
To her surprise, she answered, “No, should it?”
“I thought you were fighting for the mortals with Oliver James,” he said.
“He was destroyed along with Black,” she replied.
Alexander grinned. “I wasn’t aware that an angel could be destroyed.”
“Wherever they are now, neither of them will be coming back,” she said. “What’s the difference?”
“And your brother?”
“Black killed him when he rescued me, along with the rest of our kind who fought with him,” she said. “The angel also destroyed the portal to our home.”
The other vampires were seated around the large room—some in the rafters, others on the beds where the boys had once slept. They listened silently to the exchange.
Alexander scrutinized her for a moment. “You seem concerned for that fact,” he said.
“Our people are starving in Greystone,” she said urgently. “My father is one of them, our king.”
“Our?”
“Ours,” Charlotte confirmed. “I have experienced nothing but betrayal fighting for the mortals. We’ve sacrificed for them, but they will never stop hating us. Nothing we did ever mattered to them. Even the one who might have a hope of restoring the portal refuses to try.”
“Who refuses to try?” Alexander asked.
Charlotte paused momentarily. Should she reveal the boy to Alexander? What would he do? She had some idea—a guess at least.
“Brody West,” she answered. “He inherited all that Oliver had. He has abilities like Oliver, also. They came from the same Fallen One.”
“I see,” Alexander said.
“I’ve tried to reason with him, but he fears what might happen if Greystone were opened, now that so much time has passed while our people starve on the other side.”
Alexander stared toward the lantern light, saying nothing.
“What can we do?” she asked.
Alexander grinned, turning to her. “Persuade this Brody West, of course.”
Remembering
The lecture on economics I was listening to at Oxford had lasted most of the morning. Admittedly, I was completely bored. Had I been a normal student, I would have had little recourse. However, I was not normal—not in the least. The past year of my life had made that fact abundantly evident.
I decided it was time to leave for the morning. After
all, I had learned more of the Empire’s economic problems and strategies during my tutoring at Tidus than I would in this aged lecture hall. I stood, leaving a duplicate image of myself in my seat. To anyone around, nothing had happened. Brody West, the young ward of the late Oliver James and heir to his vast fortune, was still sitting in the lecture hall. Every now and then, my image yawned and took a few notes.
Meanwhile, I had already departed, passing through a portal of my own making. I arrived instantaneously back in London, at Highgate, approximately sixty miles away in northern London. I exited through the massive stone hearth of my library, passing through the orange flames without so much as a singe. I walked through the large room with its vaulted ceilings to the huge picture window at the back of the house. I stood before the glass, looking out over the green expanse of Hampstead Heath, contemplating my situation.
Almost a year had passed since that fateful night battling against Mr. Black at Westminster. He had been consigned to Tartarus, the prison of fallen angels, but at the cost of Oliver James. I missed Oliver terribly.
In a matter of a few days, I had learned many things I never expected. My father, having been murdered upon our arrival in London, was actually not my father at all. Instead, I had learned that I was descended from a wicked fallen angel named Southresh who was consigned to Tartarus. Consequently, I possessed great power as one of the Descendants of the Fallen—power I was still learning how to use.
Also as a result, was my relationship to Oliver James. Though he was also descended from Southresh, we had different mothers who had both been tricked by the angel into believing that they were with their husbands when, in fact, he had assumed their forms in order to seduce the daughters of men. Consequently, Oliver and I were brothers. Out of all the terrible truths I had been forced to accept about my heritage, learning that I had a brother in Oliver was the one bright spot. But he was lost to me, having bound himself to Black in order to consign him to Tartarus and save the unknowing citizens of London from the angel’s horrific plans.