ONSET: Blood of the Innocent

by Glynn Stewart

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll make sure the people we’re sending to grab your gear know to cash it in for you,” she told him. “You’re not leaving the Campus for a while, David.”

  “Understood, ma’am. But…you need to know what we found.”

  “Take the stick to Charles,” she told him. “I take it there’s a key takeaway, though?”

  “The Arbiter runs the facility where the Familias keep all of their fledglings until they regain control,” David said softly. “It’s the ultimate leverage on the vampires—if we ever want to force them to talk terms, it’s the weapon for it.

  “And if we keep going as we’re going, taking their next generation out of the equation would make genocide easier, wouldn’t it?”

  Warner winced.

  “For a man who hates to read, you sometimes use words like a knife, Commander,” she pointed out. “I’ll pass on at least the high level to Ardent. You talk to Charles, but…”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Your board convenes in two days,” she told him. “We were about to recall you anyway.”

  INSTEAD OF HEADING straight to Charles’s underground lair, David instead went to the Campus hospital to check in on Mason. The guards and nurses let him through quickly. Despite his current technical suspension, no one on Campus seemed to be acting like he wasn’t still fully on duty.

  It was probably a good sign.

  Mason was sitting up on her bed, reading on her phone. She laid it aside and smiled as he came in. It was a professional smile, exactly the same as she would have given him before…but her eyes said everything that they weren’t allowed to say there.

  “You don’t look particularly beat-up for a young lady they rushed to the hospital, Commander,” he told her.

  “Scratches, cuts and burns are serious for most people, Commander,” Mason replied. “Not very serious, but enough to need someone to clean them out and bandage them.” She shrugged. “They’re mostly keeping me in overnight for observation in case I got vampire blood or demon ichor in the injuries.”

  “You’re vaccinated against the vampire virus, right?” David asked.

  “Of course, and they gave me a booster,” she confirmed. “But…observation anyway, with the antivenom on hand. The ichor’s the bigger concern, but we have treatments for that, too.”

  David shook his head. There were many advantages to being a high-class regenerator, not least a high likelihood of near-immortality, but the ability to completely ignore most minor injuries and the potential for infection was definitely handy.

  “We’re turning the data from the Oracle over to Charles,” he told her. “I don’t even know how much data on the Arbiter’s life they shoved on that stick, but I suspect we’ll find some interesting tidbits.”

  “More interesting than the location of the Mountain?”

  “More interesting?” he shook his head. “Potentially. Probably not more useful, but potentially more interesting.”

  “That man lived through practically every major historical event we know of,” Mason said. “Probably wasn’t there for them all, but just think of what his memories would mean to any historian worth their salt.”

  “Hopefully, we won’t have to kill him, and we can lock him in a room with one,” David replied. “An interview with that vampire would be worth an unimaginable amount, and not just in money.”

  “From what you said, it sounds like he wants peace somehow.”

  David shook his head.

  “He might,” he agreed, “but the rest of the Familias doesn’t, which leaves us with very few options.”

  CHARLES WAS WAITING for David when he finally entered the dragon’s lair, the big lizard pacing back and forth impatiently like a child waiting for a new toy.

  “Ye have something for me, Ai’m told?” he asked gruffly. “Something that Warner made sound fascinating.”

  David produced the USB stick, only for it to be snatched out of fingers by massive, if surprisingly delicate, claws, and slotted into a machine.

  Menus and file structures popped up on the massive array of screens Charles used as a monitor, and the dragon hummed to himself as he studied the data, then coughed hard.

  “Who gave this to ye?” he demanded.

  “An intelligence broker, basically,” David said slowly. “Why?”

  “It was encrypted. Hard. But Ai didn’t even notice because it decrypted as soon as it recognized my computer,” the dragon told him. “Not just an Omicron computer, David. Mine. Specifically.”

  “Shit.”

  “So, who gave this to you?”

  “The Tahoe Oracle,” David explained. “Loring put us in touch; we paid ten million dollars for that stick.”

  “The name is known to me,” Charles admitted. “Not quite an urban legend; their Internet presence is quiet but known in our community. I thought they were much as ye described: an information broker. But this”—he waved at the data stick—“this is something else.”

  “Given the price and the reputation, I was guessing dragon,” the ONSET Commander admitted. “But then…every time we interacted with them, it was via constructs. But these were like no constructs I’d ever seen. They were recurring, had memories, personalities…everything linked back to the Oracle so far as I could tell, but they were still more…complete than I’m used to constructs being.”

  “Aye. That’s not dragon magic,” Charles confirmed. “Yer not wrong that Ai have powers Ai’ve not shown ONSET, but that’s not among them.”

  The dragon sounded thoughtful.

  “What the hell did I meet with, Charles?” David asked.

  “Something Ai did nae think was left in the world,” the dragon told him, his tone awestruck. “Unless Ai miss my guess, ye met Lake Tahoe.”

  “I don’t follow,” David admitted.

  “‘Dragon’ isn’t a bad comparison,” Charles explained. “But in the Chinese sense—a great elemental spirit, one of the Pure. There aren’t supposed to be any left on this side of the Seal, and a being like you describe trapped by the Seal would have been destroyed or corrupted by the Masters Beyond.”

  The only Pure David knew of were…

  “A demon?”

  “Nae,” Charles shook his head. “Though Ai know why ye went there. Yer body, David, is flesh and blood. Magic weaves through ye, but it does not sustain ye. Ye are Mantled.

  “Mae body is stone and metal, made flesh by the magic within me. Ai am what ye termed Awakened.

  “The Pure…have no bodies as ye understand them. They are magic, spirit. Before the Seal, there were many types, some who forged bodies of ichor like the demons you know, who others claimed godhood.

  “Some were not so much as bound to places, a mountain, a water system as they were places. The greatest of these were mighty creatures indeed, but their essence could not be trapped by the Seal like the other Pure,” Charles finished sadly. “The genius loci, the spirits of stone and water, torn from their homes, simply died—or were perverted into demons serving the Masters Beyond.”

  “And you’re saying what I met was one of those?” David asked.

  “It fits,” the dragon told him. “Such beings would act through intermediaries that were alive in a sense but were only ever extensions of the Pure itself. The Oracle could have concealed itself in its lake, somehow, and slept through the ages of the Seal.”

  He shivered.

  “If a sleeping Pure has awoken, the Seal is weaker than I feared,” he confessed. “But its power would allow it to see the past and present with great fidelity, and it could use projections like those you met to enter that information into computers rapidly.”

  “Why would a being like that need money?” David asked.

  “If the stone and water that sustain it are damaged or poisoned, it hurts it,” Charles said quietly. “It will use that money to buy properties and buildings, construct water purifiers, shut down mines… Its priorities are not ours, but this one, at least, seems to val
ue lives other than its own.”

  The dragon shivered.

  “Be glad it seeks money and a peaceful solution, David White, for if that spirit were to turn its power against the humans on the stone it lives in, there would be no victory for mortal men, regardless of their power.”

  18

  “This board of inquiry is convened under the Articles of Supernatural Law Enforcement Code of Conduct on May 15, 2017, to discuss the actions of Commander David White in Operation Golden Twilight,” Commander Alexis Stall reeled off.

  The tall brunette were-puma who commanded ONSET Four looked almost bored. Flanking her were three men, none of whom David knew well.

  Commander Albert Frost led ONSET One. One of the oldest Mages in Omicron’s service, his hair had gone white early to match his name, but he still sat upright and radiated both physical and magical energy.

  Commander Orel Sokol, the leader of ONSET Six, was almost the complete opposite of Frost. Where the Mage was tall, Sokol was short. Where the Mage was graceful, Sokol was built with all of the grace and delicacy of a raging bull. Empowered like David, Sokol was almost completely invulnerable to harm and incredibly strong even by superhuman standards. If the man could fly, he’d have belonged in a superhero costume.

  The last member of the four-person panel was Commander Loris Falco of ONSET Seventeen. David knew nothing about the hawk-nosed, dark-eyed man with the florid cheeks and the ready smile, not even what type of supernatural the man was.

  “During the raid on the Golden Twilight Casino in Reno,” Stall continued, “it was discovered that the Familias Romanov had sent four heavy transport trucks away the prior night under heavy guard. The decision was made by Commander White and Commander Mason that the trucks needed to be pursued to see what the Romanovs felt was worth that protection.

  “Upon tracking down the trucks, Commander White engaged and destroyed the defenders, including several stolen Nevada National Guard antiaircraft units,” she noted. “He secured the trucks with the competence and courage we would expect from an officer of Commander White’s record.

  “He then discovered that the trucks contained a number of vampire fledglings, restrained for transport. Major Warner confirmed that the situation called for the fulfillment of Standing Order Twenty-one and ordered the euthanization of the vampires in question for the protection of the surrounding area.”

  The small board room on the fifth floor of Building One was silent. There was no one in the room except David and the four members of the board. No prosecutor. No defender. The board had access to all of the records of that night, including the video footage of his entire conversation with the Arbiter.

  “Before carrying out said orders, however,” Stall continued, “Commander White was met by an Elder Vampire that wished to negotiate for the fledglings’ release, offering—as I understand—that he would somehow guarantee that they would never harm anyone.”

  Stall’s tone wasn’t promising.

  “Despite having no authority to negotiate with vampires under Standing Order Twenty-one, and facing active, specific orders to euthanize the vampires in question, Commander White chose to allow this Arbiter to leave the area with the four trucks that so much effort had been spent to acquire.

  “While Commander White did suggest an attempt to track the vehicles, they were switched out with other truck cabs, and we have no idea where the forty vampires that we had the capacity to eliminate have gone.”

  David met Commander Stall’s gaze levelly.

  “There will be an opportunity for you to explain your thoughts later, Commander, but does that fundamentally sum up the events as you remember them?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he confirmed calmly. “That does accurately represent the sequence of events.”

  “Very well,” Stall noted. “The purpose of this board, gentlemen, is to establish whether, in the opinion of his peers, Commander White’s actions were, firstly, inside the limits of the authority granted to an ONSET Commander; and, secondly, were justified regardless of his authority to take them.

  “There are specific particulars of charges that we are all familiar with, but fundamentally, they boil down to those two points.

  “I suggest we begin by reviewing the camera footage of Commander White’s conversation with this vampire.”

  IT WAS strange watching the conversation as recorded by his own helmet camera. David remembered the whole scene vividly, but the slightly different angle of the camera mounted on the AR wargear was disconcertingly different.

  The whole scene only lasted a few minutes, despite David’s feeling like he’d spoken with the Arbiter for ages. The recording continued as the white-robed Keepers got into the trucks, including the one Mage levitating a truck into a driveable position.

  Then Stall shut down the recording, turning her gaze back to David.

  “So, Commander White. You took it upon yourself to release forty vampires to this individual based on nothing more than his promise. Why did you think this was justified?”

  “Commander Stall, I am a Seer,” David reminded her. “That is part of my record and my file. I can, as it has been poetically phrased to me, ‘see into men’s souls.’ The Arbiter may change his mind, may be forced into a different action, but at the moment he made that offer to me, he meant every word of it.”

  Stall turned to Frost.

  “Commander Frost, correct me if I’m wrong, but is it not possible for a Mage to conceal their emotions and truthfulness from another aura reader?” she asked him.

  “It is,” Frost confirmed. “However, if one has encountered that before, it is relatively obvious when we are shielding our emotions. At this moment, for example, Commander White is shielding his emotions from my own Sight and I am doing the same in turn. Can you tell, Commander?”

  “No,” David admitted. “Though in this case, that is because the table you are all sitting behind is enchanted to shield all of your auras from my own Sight. I can tell under normal circumstances, and the Arbiter was not doing so.”

  “Is it not possible that the Arbiter, who so far as we can tell may well be the oldest vampire alive, would be capable of shielding his emotions so you could not tell?” Stall demanded.

  “It is entirely possible,” David told her. “But if we assume that the Arbiter possesses powers we are not aware of the existence of, then fighting him would have been even more unwise than I thought it was at the time.”

  Stall looked taken aback as Frost smirked and nodded.

  “Commander White is correct,” the old team leader said. “Part of the consideration of his actions has to be that the Arbiter is a complete unknown. We have not, to our knowledge, encountered any vampire more than five centuries old. Nor has any other supernatural agency we exchange data with. The Arbiter represented a level of threat that could not be easily judged—and he certainly seemed quite confident in his ability to defeat ONSET Thirteen.”

  “Should we allow our decisions as Commanders to be shaped by fear of our enemies?” Stall snapped.

  “May I interject?” David asked.

  “Certainly,” Frost told him before Stall could refuse.

  “The Arbiter at that moment in time did not appear to wish to be our enemy,” he told them. “He had an objective: the retrieval of the fledglings. His objective did not require him to fight us, and he sought a peaceful solution first.

  “You ask if we, as Commanders, should shape our decisions by fear of our enemies. I say we should not…but we should consider the power of potential enemies before making them such.”

  That seemed to strike a nerve and he pressed forward.

  “I would also request that, to understand the sequence of events more fully, that the video of the interior of the truck be played,” he said.

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Stall replied.

  “I do,” Frost objected. “Sokol, Falco?”

  The other two men nodded.

  “Let’s play it, Alexis. We’ve all se
en it,” the old Commander told her. “I know what Commander White wants us to see.”

  Stall fiddled with the projector for several moments, and then the video played.

  David physically winced at the sight. He’d remembered it, but his own memories were overlaid with his Sight. In many ways, that had been worse, seeing the hunger and desperation of the fledglings, but it had also helped obscure some of the visual horror of their situation.

  Each of them was chained to the side of the side of the truck, clad in the ragged and torn remnants of whatever clothes they’d been wearing when they’d been turned. They’d probably been somewhat clean when they’d been loaded into the truck, but at that point, they’d been in it for over twenty-four hours. The walls and floor were smeared with filth, despite the clear evidence that someone had tried to clean the truck up around the vampires. Smears of dried blood marked the lips of the fledglings, left over from a feeding that David was relatively certain now had been animal blood.

  They were pathetic. Even as they struggled against their chains to try to reach and eat him, they were pathetic. Helpless. Vulnerable. Lost.

  “Let’s not hide behind euphemisms and self-deception,” David told the other four Commanders. “‘Euthanizing’ these fledglings would have required me to walk into that trailer again and shoot each of them in the head.

  “We are police officers, first and foremost. What kind of police are we if we can find it in ourselves to murder chained-up people who had no choice in what they had become?

  “What kind of police are we if we hide behind ‘standing orders’ to commit cold-blooded murder?”

  ONCE AGAIN, the boardroom was silent. Then Stall leaned forward, studying David…no, studying David’s neck.

  “Your record shows you were bitten by a vampire,” she noted. “A fledgling, in fact. I’m surprised by your sympathy for them.”

  “One of a group of semi-delinquent teens in my town Mantled as a vampire,” David explained slowly, realizing at least part of Stall’s objection in this whole affair. She, too, had been bitten. Even among Omicron’s personnel, it wasn’t a particularly common thing. “That teen bit and fed on his friends, killing half and turning the other half into vampires like himself.