Blood War (The Bloodeaters Trilogy Book 1)

by Rees, Kevin

  Eddie had to go back to the hospital and protect Kat, from what he wasn’t sure. It was hours before his shift, but he piled his food and uniform into his rucksack, deliberately ignoring the socks already prepared with their precious cargo. He needed to be sober and clear. Ten minutes later, Eddie left his flat feeling like someone about to walk purposefully into a nightmare. He recalled the same feeling that morning before the ambush on the beach. His body had been primed for battle; all his senses honed. As Eddie walked towards the hospital, he felt ready for whatever was drawing him back to the man he left on the beach.

  6

  It was the sixth phone to suffer the same fate as its predecessors when Karl slammed the handset down with enough force to shatter the cradle. He was trying hard to keep his emotions under control when talking with that self-important First Blood who revelled in his authority over him. Karl detested his own dishonesty by restraining his feelings in an effort to remain polite and use proper channels whenever he wanted to deploy his people. He was constantly reassuring their hosts it wasn’t his intention to force control away from them. There was already enough paranoia in the relationship. It wasn’t enough of a convincer that he was here to protect them from being slaughtered; they had to analyse every movement, searching for that hidden agenda they knew was there.

  Karl sat back in his chair and sighed loudly. He hated London. It was a sick city populated by apathetic people. Perhaps that was the reason Father chose this place to begin the slaughter, as nobody seemed to care for each other, and the people seemed immune to death’s horrors. He reached over the shattered phone and flicked a switch on a small box on his desk. ‘Maya… Lars. My office, now!’

  He leaned back in his chair, gazing at the ceiling. The phone conversation with Sixsmith was bothering him and it wasn’t simply the way the man managed to anger him, it was his ambivalence towards Karl’s tactical assessment and request.

  Maya’s two knocks were first, followed a few seconds later by Lars’s usual exuberant entrance into the office. They both stood silently in front of Karl.

  ‘I’ve sought authorisation from our friend Sixsmith.’ Karl was unable to keep his sarcasm in check. ‘I informed him of the significant contact Maya picked up. However, he was less than enthusiastic about my intention to send out all the personnel under my command to search for Father.’ He held up his hand, as Maya was about to interrupt. ‘However, he did agree to a reconnaissance providing I sent only two people.’

  ‘May I speak, sir?’ Maya said, pausing for her father’s permission. ‘We have the general direction and we can sweep an area quickly. Sixsmith has no real idea of what we are capable of.’

  ‘Go on,’ Karl prompted. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘I volunteer myself, and Lars, of course.’

  Lars nodded his agreement.

  ‘We can cover a lot of ground quickly and undetected.’

  Karl looked up at Lars. ‘Do you think you can cover the area that quickly? Even if we suspect Father is in a specific quadrant? He may be moving.’

  ‘I will still detect him if he’s near,’ Lars replied, with an assuredness Karl knew the man could match.

  ‘Then I’ll wait for your report,’ Karl said.

  Maya and Lars stiffened to attention before leaving the room to prepare.

  Perhaps Sixsmith was playing some game in not allowing him to saturate the streets. His men and women would be undetectable amongst the First Bloods as they had been for millennia. So why would he be this reluctant for their help?

  The best vantage point was easy to find in the increasing choice of rundown areas that were under some type of new development. Parts of the capital resembled the bombsites of years ago. Lars and Maya chose a particular site that should have been turned into very exclusive flats for the wealthy until the main backers pulled out as austerity bit hard. Now the area was a waste ground, perfect for what Maya and Lars were planning. They crept unseen to a perimeter fence and forced their way through a rusty, corrugated sheet of metal. The ground was muddy and littered with broken concrete and building debris. They both crouched and took a moment to make sure they were alone. Satisfied, they used the darkness to cloak their movement through the rubble. They reached their target building and began to scale the side of a small multi-storey car park. The climb was made easier as tough, orange netting was encasing the outer walls like neon spider web. On the ground, iron pegs had been mechanically rammed through the netting to seal it completely from squatters using it as a bed and bathroom, or for shooting up drugs.

  It took less than a minute for Lars to haul his body over an awkward lip that stood between him and the roof. The Swede wasn’t even breathing hard when he walked over to Maya, who was staring at the ocean of lights surrounding them in all directions. The illumination seemed to flicker and undulate like stars orbiting closely together. It served, Maya supposed, to pacify those who were still afraid of the dark, or driven by stories of nightmare horrors that fed during the nocturnal hours. There was nothing imagined that could harm them, only the real evil that did live in the blackest of places. Maya wished she could tell them that, as she watched the masses of people moving in perfectly choreographed lines, oblivious to what was about to happen to their small self-absorbed lives if they couldn’t stop Father.

  ‘I’m ready.’ Lars spoke softly, breaking her thoughts.

  Maya took a step back.

  Lars moved past her and carefully placed his feet as close as he could to the edge of the roof. He found the rhythm of the air circling his body before he felt balanced enough to close his eyes. Lars began to breathe deeply, each breath becoming shallower until the rise and fall of his chest was almost undetectable. His arms rose slowly above his head. He was on the path that led him into a deep state of meditation.

  Lars had mastered the ability to project his mental energy into a single point of focus allowing him to observe past events with a high degree of accuracy. The few First Bloods capable of the same referred to it as remote viewing, which, given his abilities, meant they were a simple carnival sideshow. It was, no doubt, a latent talent some humans possessed from crossbreeding several generations in the past. Pure gene Third Blood children from the age of six were taught the art of Ananack Xen to where they could match the skills of the finest First Blood remote viewer. Although Lars wasn’t pure gene, he had enough genetic composition to give him the ability to sense his way around past events.

  Lars entered Ananack Xen. His projected consciousness floated down from the roof and stood amongst the people moving with their own singular purpose. He could see the path he needed to take as the marker appeared to him as a thin line of green, sliding like a worm between the First Bloods. He began to track it along the street, walking unseen through the people around him. Lars doubted they would pay him much attention even if he were visible as most toyed with their phones, or walked with their head down as if fighting a hurricane. Even so, Lars felt it was distasteful to his sense of order to be surrounded by them, even if he were just a shadow.

  He kept his eyes fixed on the green line, which twisted around every corner as if trying to throw him off its track. Lars turned into a street and walked through two men who were fighting. A knife skimmed past his face and found the other man’s chest. Lars didn’t stop or hesitate; nothing could distract him from his mission.

  The green line banked sharply left and across a busy road. He saw it disappear down a narrow passageway between a bank and an army recruiting office. The lights of both buildings were off, leaving the alley gaping like an all-consuming black maw. It didn’t stop Lars walking straight down its throat.

  Within a few paces, he heard a faint sucking noise coming from the end of the alley that instantly transported him back to the forest of his childhood. He saw himself hiding, as Bloodeaters attacked the camp his grandfather had set up for him and his sister. He cowered in the bowels of a hollowed out tree, hearing his sister’s scream rise then die. But it wasn’t just the screams, it w
as the sound of their bodies being ripped apart; bones cracking with a snap so loud it echoed around the trees like a rifle shot. The same sickening sound of ritual feeding was coming from the alley as it had done in the forest when the beasts sucked and chewed the blood and flesh from his dead grandfather and sister. The sound would never leave him, a reminder what it felt like to be a ten-year-old boy protected by darkness and a few inches of decaying wood from those animals. The feeding had triggered something different inside the man on the roof of the car park. Lars’s body was in a state of rage. He wanted to tear the depraved creatures apart. Frustratingly, nothing he did in Ananack Xen could affect anything as this event had already passed. He was just an onlooker observing the scene in an infinitesimally small piece of spent time.

  Lars walked on without any need for caution in the darkness. His rapid movement made the scene quiver like sun-dappled water kissed by a light breeze. He was now within a few feet of the sucking noise. It was still dark, but Lars could easily make out moving shapes overlapping each other. He saw two women and three men tearing apart white flesh and sucking the blood greedily from the fresh kill. A partially decapitated head, cut almost clean through, hung down between the shoulder blades of the victim, attached only by a few un-severed muscles. The dead man’s green beret still sat on his head in a final act of defiance to his killers. Lars watched unmoved as one of the women used her razor sharp nails to slice through the skin as easily as stripping candyfloss off a stick. He had witnessed the effectiveness of those talons in flaying a body clean of its flesh. When he was sure they were gone, he climbed out of the hollow log. All he found of his grandfather and sister were a few chewed bones scattered amongst the leaf litter and pinecones. He was still searching the undergrowth when a tracker platoon from Karl’s division found him and took him back with them.

  This was the Brood, only Father wasn’t sitting at the head of the feast. Lars searched for him, but the charismatic leader was not with his children, and definitely not part of this time stream. Lars inhaled slowly through his nose, searching for any remnant of a different scent marker. He detected a faint trace still sticking to the air. Father couldn’t be far away. Lars was about to move further down the alley when one of the men stood up and blocked his path. He stood a head above Lars and carried a look as if sensing he was there. The Bloodeater held some of the dead man’s flesh in his hand, which he casually raised to his mouth without taking his eyes off Lars. He bit down on the long, bloody slice, cutting straight through it as easily as a shark would eat a steak. Lars watched with a grim fascination. They were at their most dangerous when feeding. He knew it was impossible for the beast to harm him, yet it was still unnerving to be faced with a Bloodeater taking meat from a kill.

  Shrill, high-pitched laughter turned the Bloodeaters interest back to the others. Lars looked over to where one of the women was raising a lump of bloody flesh above her head as if giving it more reverence than the rest. The Brood chattered excitedly and began slapping their thighs as she lowered it slowly — almost seductively — to her mouth. Lars moved nearer to witness the ritual. The woman swayed to some internal rhythm as she licked and sucked on the meat. Lars suddenly recoiled in disgust, realising what she had in her hand was the dead man’s genitals. Slowly and deliberately she began to nibble on the shrunken flesh, taking small bits of skin before biting clean through the penis and devouring it inch by inch while the others howled and slapped themselves. Lars had heard stories of this ritual being performed by the female who sat at Father’s side. He wished now he could have been spared the experience.

  The scene began to dissolve around him quickly as the fading images flickered for a moment before going out. The Ananack Xen state was exhausted and Lars could feel the pull no matter how hard he fought to remain. Maya moved forward to be close enough to watch over him as he was coming out of the state. Lars stepped back from the edge and lay down. He began to regulate his breathing, slowly bringing it back into its normal rhythm. Maya watched the subtle changes that told her his body was nearly ready.

  It was another minute before Lars opened his eyes and smiled weakly. He sat up slowly and accepted her hand to get onto his feet.

  ‘The Brood fed not more than an hour ago down there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I saw them tear a man apart and do terrible things.’

  ‘Lars, you need to give me a report I can send back to my father.’ Maya still had his hand in hers and squeezed it gently. She knew how tough the state change into the time stream was, even with Lars’s strength. He looked spent. Still, they had orders from Karl. If Father had found a new hunting ground then the body count was going to rise quickly. ‘Lars, I need to inform headquarters. Give me your estimate of Father’s position.’

  Lars stared at her blankly until a sharp slap on his cheek removed any doubt she wanted a response.

  ‘Skit, Maya!’ he rubbed his cheek and glared. ‘I detected a very faint scent that seemed stronger to the northwest of the alley. It was stronger than any of the Brood members, and I caught them sniffing the air and looking in that direction as if they were also scenting Father.’

  Maya stood on tiptoe and kissed the reddening cheek, leaving the Swede blushing while she reported the information back to her father. Lars watched as she leant over the edge of the building, speaking quickly into the radio and giving Karl directions to send one of Sixsmith’s specialist team to clean up the remains of the soldier — if there was much left to clean up, Lars thought. He had seen the power of the Brood in a blood-frenzy and knew they had been attracted to the scent Father was laying down.

  Lars guessed the impending attack was going to test Sixsmith more than ever before to come up with something credible to tell the public. For a long time his kind were able to suppress any suspicion of their existence, but the modern world was not as naïve as previous generations. The people were becoming more suspicious of strange events, or government statements, which held little truth or evidence, or worse, conspiracy driven. Each new Bloodeater attack was harder to explain away as the work of terrorists or unstable individuals with their own political agendas.

  ‘My father is recalling us with a personal message to you of well done. He’s right — your instinct took you to the Brood, and it’s given us a chance to prepare and setup,’ Maya said.

  Lars remained silent but acknowledged her compliment. The image of the woman holding the victim’s genitals in her hand was disturbing him. He remembered her face, harsh, even bestial in the frenzy of feeding, yet out of that state she may be called beautiful. One thing he was sure of: somewhere in the battle they would cross each other’s path again. When they did, Lars prayed the woman had fed well before their encounter.

  7

  Eddie had stayed crouched behind a yellow clinical waste bin near the porters’ entrance for what felt like an hour, even though his watch told him it was only half of that. His knees were aching, and the smell from the bin was disgusting, leading him to wonder what the hell they put in them. When his opportunity came to enter the hospital unseen, he staggered on numb legs before moving into the corridor and up the stairs to Somerset Ward. He had to stop halfway as cramp threatened to make him yell out. As Eddie rocked gently on the ball of his foot to stretch his muscles, he recognised how much the last couple of hours had taken out of him. He was still angry over Sixsmith’s cold attitude, and kept hearing the man’s clipped voice say “decapitated” in a disinterested tone, which trivialised the way they found poor Kathy. Eddie didn’t want to think about her last few moments and the fear she must have felt. There was no good way to die, especially as a victim, but at least he hoped it had been quick and maybe painless. Christ! What did he know? His priority was Kat. He pictured her lying helpless and alone in her sterile room. The image was enough motivation. The knotted muscles were ignored as he took the stairs’ two at a time.

  Eddie was breathing heavily as he stood behind the door leading onto the ward. He shot a quick glance through the narrow, meshed window centred
in the wood. Good — there was no one on the desk. He had a chance to get to Kat’s room without any of the staff seeing him, especially Ros. The expression on her face this morning was a mixture of love and hate wrapped up in her personal neurosis. He couldn’t deny feeling some guilt whenever he saw her. Things he could have said or done at the outset. Ros was looking for the perfect man and Eddie — with his flaws — shouldn’t have given her any hope she had found it in him. This isn’t the time for the couch, Eddie. Get on with what you’re here to do, he reproached himself. He was here to take care of Kat and not rake up his failings.

  The ward was unusually quiet. Quiet enough to take the chance. He slowly opened the door and walked hurriedly towards Kat’s room. As he did, he felt a sudden sense of feeling out of place. It was ominously like fear, of what, he didn’t know. But something wasn’t right. It was eerily silent for such a busy ward. There should have been ambient noise above the telephones and computers — voices, something, but not this heavy silence. Cautiously, Eddie checked the nearest cubicle, which should have had four patients in each bed, but he found it empty He drew back the heavy curtains of the opposite cubicle; that too was empty. The sheets on all the beds were pulled back, or lay crumpled on the floor. Underneath the beds, someone had piled all the pillows and blankets. He noticed a few were spotted with dark stains. He pulled back the curtain of another cubicle. A chair had been placed on the mattress with its feet pointing towards the ceiling, while on another a water jug had fallen from a locker, spilling onto the floor.

  Something wasn’t right? Perhaps there had been a viral outbreak and they shut the ward? Eddie tried to rationalise what was in front of his eyes. He knew it was already happening with three ward closures due to the winter vomiting bug. But this was no ordinary closure. What had gone on here was quick and deliberate. There would have been no need to throw the bedding around. The scene was wrong. He backed slowly out into the corridor.