Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel

by Brennan, M. L.

  It was hard to look away from Julie. Saskia and Nicholas looked just a little off, but nothing that would’ve looked particularly unnatural on the streets of a city like L.A., or Las Vegas, which was where they were from. But Julie stood out—she lacked the familiar level of baby chub that I’d always seen before on toddlers, and was a miniature version of the adults, built like Iggy Pop. Like her parents she had only clothing fit for an afternoon in Nevada, but they’d tried to compensate by swathing her in an adult-size hoodie that covered her from neck to knees, the kind sold at highway rest stops—this one had been bought in Illinois, judging by what was written across the front. But I could see her face and her lower legs—her skin was pale, so pale that it was translucent enough to see the blue and purple tracings of the major arteries in her legs and throat. Her lips were the color of old chalk dust. Her hair was pale, and not just the white-blond of some small children before it turns to brown, but pale like the fur on a polar bear, ranging from pure white to a dull cream. And her eyes had just barely enough pigment to be charitably called gray—it was uncomfortable to look at, which was probably why her parents were both wearing colored contacts.

  She was the one I was focusing on, but I could’ve looked at any of the others. Six other children sat around us, from a fourteen-year-old boy down to a two-year-old who was so tightly swaddled in a blanket from one of the upstairs beds that if I hadn’t been told, I wouldn’t have been able to guess gender. He was held by his father, the third of the adults, though Miro was clearly unable to do anything more at the moment than hold the baby and rock back and forth—though whether that was meant for his son’s benefit or his own, I had no idea. The children all had the same pale looks, the traits that the adults apparently covered up later with spray tan, hair dye, and makeup.

  And according to what they were telling us, these three adults and seven children were possibly all that was left of a community that had been over fifty members strong.

  “It started a month ago,” Saskia said slowly, focusing on the children rather than us. “Las Vegas is pretty quiet, supernaturally speaking. Usually it’s just been us and the humans, with a few roamers coming through every now and again, but we just minded our own business and kept our heads down and almost nothing ever happened. Then, overnight, there were a dozen skinwalkers walking the floor of almost every casino. Most of us ran as soon as we saw them, figured that they were just in for a convention or something, and that if we would all just take a few days off of work and lie low, then everything would be fine.”

  “But they started hunting you,” I said grimly. I’d had a run-in with a skinwalker before—they were strong, predatory, and vicious, and Suze and I had both had our asses handed to us in a one-on-two fight. Frankly the fact that we’d made it through and even managed to kill it in the end had been more out of luck than skill. Skinwalkers were viciously dangerous, enough to make even adult vampires tread cautiously. A skinwalker had once killed one of Chivalry’s previous wives and worn her skin to taunt him—that it had managed to survive for several months was a testament to just how tough and deadly they were.

  “Not at first,” said Nicholas, his voice choked. He coughed, then continued. “First they put out feelers, left messages. They said that they’d lost their home in Miami, and they needed to find a new place to live. They said”—his mouth twisted horribly—“they said that they wanted to share the city with us. That if we could help them settle in, that they would protect us.”

  “We’re not strong like the vampires or like shifters,” Saskia said, her eyes sad and dull. “That’s why we ended up where we did, where no one else wanted to live, and where there were enough humans coming and going that we weren’t afraid of being discovered. But we’re vulnerable. So when the skinwalkers said that . . . we wanted to believe them.”

  “When did it change?” Loren asked.

  “Last week. By then they knew how many of us there were, where we lived, how much money we had . . . they started with the elders. The ones who lived alone. The first night, that’s who they killed. Then they left the bodies at the back doors of the ones who would be next.”

  There was a long silence while I tried to figure out what I could possibly say.

  “They wanted us scared.” Miro’s voice was rusty and strained. He didn’t look at anyone while he talked, just rocked his son faster. “They wanted us running, so that they could chase us. When my wife—” He stopped, swallowed, then pushed on. “I was carrying Kirby, and she was behind us. When the skinwalker caught her, he said that we were their housewarming present.”

  “You’re the group that had the children,” Suzume said. Her expression was completely neutral, but her eyes were alert, and I could see the wheels cranking in her head. “The group with the weakest and slowest, but you were the ones who made it to safety.”

  “The rest said that they would give us two days.” Saskia wasn’t even whispering. The children in the room were unnaturally quiet and still—for a moment I wondered why they’d been allowed to stay, but then I realized how pointless that feeling was. They’d already seen people die around them. It was no use pretending they didn’t know. “They would stay in Vegas for two more days, to keep the skinwalkers occupied, so that we would have a head start. Then, if anyone is left”—she choked, and corrected herself—“everyone who is left, will follow.”

  Beside me, Loren made a small sound, softly enough that if my hearing hadn’t made some significant steps up during the last few months of my transition to being a full vampire, I might’ve missed it. It was a sad, despairing sound.

  This group had no power, nothing strong to offer. It was quite possible that these three adults were the only ones left alive.

  “You’re not really here because you wanted to emigrate.” Suze’s voice was like Joe Friday’s—nothing but the facts, ma’am. “You’re refugees, and you’re looking for asylum.”

  I slid forward on the seat, not wanting to give either of the women beside me the chance to catch my eye, and I focused on the group in front of me. “Suzume is right. So tell me what you need, and what you can offer my family.”

  I’d been hoping that they were also carrying all the liquid financial assets of their group—I knew that I’d be making a tough pitch to my family, and I’d been hoping for something to grease the wheels. But unfortunately this group was flat broke. They’d had the cash that they had on them, but had been afraid to use any credit cards in case the skinwalkers knew how to track those purchases. Early in their trip they’d tried to get cash out of ATMs, only to discover that their accounts had been emptied, undoubtedly thanks to the skinwalkers, who’d had ample access to their homes and financial records. None of them had owned a car big enough to transport everyone, so they’d dumped their cars and stolen a church youth group van, swapping its plates as often as they could to try to muddy the trail. The adults had driven straight in shifts, a few times even pressing the fourteen-year-old into service when they were on back roads, stopping only when they needed to put gas in the car. Everything they’d eaten had come from highway rest stations, and they hadn’t even dared to spend the money it would’ve taken to get seasonally appropriate clothing for everyone, just a few pairs of hoodies and sweatpants that they could trade off between the people who had to go outside the car to fill the gas or hit a restroom.

  “You need safety—that’s clear to anyone looking at you,” Suze interrupted. There wasn’t anything cruel in her voice, just coldly practical. “But he has to go back to his family and know what to ask for. What kinds of jobs do you do? Where do you need to live? We know you have some need to hunt people—you’re going to need to be more specific, though.” Even as I winced at her words, I knew that she was right. If it had been up to me, I would’ve let them in and settled them deep in the territory where the skinwalkers wouldn’t dare go, but it wasn’t. Even if they’d been a strong, wealthy group with lots to offer, I couldn’t have s
aid yes. I was getting information, finding preliminary common ground, and then I’d be going back to my mother to get the real decision. I could call myself the negotiator, but I had no authority to make deals on. The last time I’d been given that authority, I put a werebear into power that my family would’ve preferred to see dead—my mother had made it very clear that she wasn’t risking a repeat of that.

  Suze’s questions seemed to calm Saskia down, though, maybe because it gave her something to focus on besides the terror of the skinwalkers’ attacks and their frantic race to the Scott border. “We would need a city that has a large transitory population, lots of people who are going to come, then leave again quickly.”

  “Like Las Vegas,” I noted. “Atlantic City is outside our borders, and so is New York City, but we do have the Connecticut casinos like Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Are these the kinds of places that would suit you?” Beside me, Loren had slid a pad of paper out of her satchel and was taking careful notes.

  Saskia nodded vigorously. “I was a card dealer—I’m not good enough for the big-time high-roller tables, but I had steady work at smaller casinos. Nicholas worked at a car-rental agency at the airport, and Miro was a hotel concierge.”

  I nodded. Those weren’t highly paying jobs but were at least the kind that transferred easily—and with my mother’s interest in politics, I was sure that she had one or two people in her Rolodex who could arrange to make sure that open positions could be found. I braced myself, and made my voice get a bit harder. The next part was important. “Now tell me how you feed, and why you need a transitory population.”

  There was an awkward pause, like the moment at the doctor’s office when it’s explained that you need to drop your pants for the rest of the exam. It’s not unexpected, but it is awkward. Saskia and Nicholas glanced at each other, one of those looks that longtime couples have where they almost seem to telepathically exchange information, and it was Saskia who extended her arm, then turned it over to expose the soft underside.

  For a second nothing happened; then I saw a little ripple at her wrist, and something very thin, decidedly sharp, and almost completely colorless extruded itself outward. I had no desire to lean forward, so I was glad that my vision was good. At first it was just a little prong extending an inch from her wrist, but then it lengthened until it stretched up to the middle of her palm, a long, delicate appendage, gleaming slightly with moisture, but drying quickly. And once it was dry, I almost couldn’t see it against the skin of her hand because of its translucency.

  “It’s a feeding prong.” Saskia moved her hand slightly, showing how the prong could move on its own. “It’s as painless as a tick bite when it goes in, but there’s a small venom that goes with it that works within a breath. The venom doesn’t cause damage; it just makes the human blank out for about two minutes. If I insert my prong when I’m shaking someone’s hand, then they’ll just stand there, and I can pretend that I’m talking to them while I feed. If I’m sitting next to someone at a bar and they’re wearing short sleeves, I can brush against them and feed. It can be on an elevator, in a lobby—anyplace where it wouldn’t seem odd to see two people standing or sitting beside each other for two minutes while one person talks and the other looks completely uninterested.”

  “And what are you feeding on?” I knew what my family fed on—blood. But my sister had shown me what feeding on a human looked like, and it sure didn’t take two minutes. “And since you’re talking about quick, chance encounters, I assume that you aren’t taking repeat feedings.”

  “We’re feeding on . . .” Saskia looked at Nicholas, who shrugged a little. She gave an apologetic smile. “I’ve never described it to an outsider before. It’s not a liquid as far as we know. We call what we take daya hipup. The closest translation to that is ‘vitality.’ One feeding will leave someone exhausted, but no more than you’d expect after a wild weekend in Vegas. But we need it, and without it we’ll sicken and die. And we could take multiple feedings from one person, but . . .” She paused. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “I’m sorry, but you need to be specific,” I said.

  Nicholas leaned forward, resting a hand on Saskia’s leg. Between them, Julie looked up, as eerily attentive as the rest of the silent children. “The problem is with what we leave behind.” He was clearly uncomfortable to be talking about this, but he took a deep breath and continued. “We leave contagion, and sickness. One feeding from us and the human will develop a urinary tract infection within a day or two. A second feeding, or even worse, a third, and the human will end up with something that looks indistinguishable from syphilis, and will act the same way.”

  “You spread VD,” Suze said, almost musingly. “They’ll have to update the posters at the bus stops and subway stations.”

  Nicholas’s mouth pressed into an angry line while Saskia immediately said, “We’re very careful. We feed on people when they’re leaving the casino or the city, not on their way in.”

  “But is there any way for you to tell which human you or any other succubus has fed on before?” Loren was supremely calm as she asked the question, her pen never stopping its path across the page as she took shorthand of the conversation. I wondered exactly how many of these conversations she’d heard over the years, and how many times she’d listened as humans were described as the entrées to meals. She’d inherited this job from her father—how had he explained to her what his job was, and what kind of family business he’d hoped that she’d step into?

  The couple glanced at each other again, and I knew the answer even before Saskia reluctantly said it. “No. No way. But our numbers are small, and only one partner in a pair hunts at a time. There’s no way to mark a human in a way that would stick out to another succubus without the human wondering what is going on, so we’ve mostly relied on the law of averages. In a city like Las Vegas, the odds of a human encountering two succubi on the same last day of their visit was low. The odds of them being fed on by another succubus on a later trip were even lower.”

  “Pair?” I asked. “Like a marriage?”

  “It’s not a bad parallel, but not complete either.” Saskia looked down at the toddler snuggled between her and Nicholas. “Two succubi become a pair when they’ve decided to have a child, and the pair stays together until the child is ready to hunt on its own, because the parents are both needed to feed it.” She hesitated. “We feed our children with a secondary prong that’s under our tongues, but it’s not a particularly . . . elegant process.”

  “I can pass on the demonstration,” I assured them. “When can children hunt for themselves?”

  “Around sixteen, but usually we continue to supplement them for a little while afterward. They’re fully independent at twenty.”

  They were syphilis-spreading albatrosses. I couldn’t figure out whether this was sweet or creepy, but I did remember to shoot Suze a quick look that warned her not to say a word. She gave me a hurt look, clearly indicating that my impulse had been right, and she’d had a particularly choice remark waiting. “The kids don’t blend in very well. Even in New England, which as you can see from Fort is known for producing pasty, your children would stick out as pale.” That was as close as Suze came to being diplomatic.

  “We always homeschooled, at least while they’re young,” Nicholas explained. “Even if our babies didn’t visually stick out, we needed to keep them home anyway. Prong control isn’t reliable for several years, and it’s not like we could just provide bagged lunches for what the kids need. Around high school we sent them to public school—for socialization if nothing else.”

  “So you normally have a two-to-one ratio of feeders and eaters—and now you have three adults and seven children.” I said the numbers slowly. “Exactly how well has that been working out?”

  “We understood the rules,” Nicholas said quickly, almost falling over himself to assure me. The expression on his face, though, clearly said that
the honest answer would’ve been not well. “We haven’t hunted on the Scott property, and we won’t without permission. Saskia, Miro, and I will take turns making small runs into Pennsylvania to hunt enough to sustain the children.”

  “And in Pennsylvania?”

  “It’s not even close to ideal,” Saskia acknowledged. “We don’t know if anyone followed us, but we’d be fools to push our luck. Hunts will have to be fast, and we’ll have to feed heavier than we’d like to. We’re in a rural area, without a lot of people or movement. We’ll try to find truck stops or highway diners, places where people are just passing through, but it will be harder to initiate casual contact—” Her voice had been steadily rising as she spoke, stress and worry bleeding through. Beside her, Julie wiggled and crawled into her father’s lap. The movement startled Saskia, and I could see her strain to pull herself back, to soften her voice. She was begging, and it hurt to see it. “We’re grateful that the Scotts were willing to hear our case,” she said, even as her hands tightened hard on the edge of the sofa. Beside her, Nicholas rubbed their daughter’s back soothingly. “It’s hard to even say what a relief it is to be able to put the children to bed and tell them that they’re safe in this house.”

  I knew she wanted to say the words, and that she wouldn’t let herself. It was Loren who said them, leaning forward slightly. “But you need to plan for the long term,” she said. “You need jobs, hunting rights, a place to settle and rebuild. You need an answer.”

  “Yes,” Saskia whispered. Looking down, I could see that the children, who had seemed so still, had been slowly shifting and creeping, and now they were pressed as closely against where the adults were sitting as possible. Those pale faces were sneaking glances at me—me, the person who had the right to just tell them all to leave the house, leave the state, and live or die somewhere where I didn’t have to see it or be responsible for it.