Family Secrets (The Nocturnia Chronicles Book 2)

by Thomas F Monteleone

  A trail of dark green blood and ichor marked Salarjung’s last steps as he shambled across the courtyard in an attempt to recover from his failed attack. He looked almost pitiful. Collapsing to his knees, he began to crawl, bellowing in pain from the effort, but refusing to stop, to surrender. As Falzon reached his great bulk, stretched out on the stones like a beached leviathan, he did not hesitate and quickly placed the edge of his short sword up under the flaring edge of Salarjung’s helmet.

  A savage plunge of the double-edged deep into the base of his enemy’s skull finished it. The great body shuddered once, its legs and feet drumming out a brief beat, then went still.

  Done

  The primitive, unthinking rage that had flooded through him began to ebb and slowly leak away. For an instant, his vision clouded, then returned to its usual clarity. His ragged breaths settled without feeling as if each were passing over a field of razors. He walked away from the corpse and the blood and dropped his weapons. The clatter of steel upon the stone fractured the hush. Falzon had been wrapped within the silence of the killing moment, and only now did the mundane sounds of his surroundings to return to him.

  But something was wrong.

  As he looked up to the balconies where his audience had gathered, his vision clouded over once again. And his breath came in short bursts.

  “Falzon! Falzon!”

  He could hear his mother’s voice calling to him, but her words seemed muffled, as if passing through a thick tapestry.

  He raised his hand to wave at the family, but the effort was almost too much – his arm grew heavier with every inch he tried to lift it. Striding forward, he felt his legs locking up, his feet refusing to separate from the paving stones.

  An icy touch of fear tapped his forehead.

  Something was very wrong.

  “Falzon!” A voice very far away. He held out his arms in the sunlight, twisting and examining them as well as the fine thin mesh of his armor. And that was when he saw it…

  There, on the outside edge of his sword-arm, was the tiniest of nicks, a subtle separation of the metallic threads where the blade had grazed him – just enough to have penetrated the lightweight armor. Looking more closely, fighting the hazy Veil falling over his eyesight, he thought he could see his flesh beneath the opening.

  A thread-line of dark green. His blood. His flesh violated and now invaded by whatever had coated the spear-point.

  The next step toward the balcony was his last, and as he felt himself falling forward, he tried to cry out that he’d been poisoned. But he never heard the sound of his own voice before a terrible darkness took him.

  19

  After she and her brother helped clean up the dinner dishes, Emma retired to her bed in the upstairs loft. The long day had exhausted her, and the idea of putting it behind her with a good night of sleep beckoned her. As she slipped under the covers, she could hear the dull drone of Cal and Ryan talking in the adjacent room, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  It didn’t matter. She’d had enough talking for one night. Orin and Irina had filled her head with so much information, she’d need a few days to let it all sink in. Turning off the lamp, Emma let her body sag into the mattress and waited for the fatigue to fade away. But as tired as she felt, her mind danced a merry jig of whirling thoughts and concerns. All that talk of that crazy scientist and the Silent Ones trying to destroy both worlds weighed heavily on her, and she knew sleep would not be coming easy.

  When she combined all that with what she’d seen at the sheeple protest earlier in the day, Emma knew she wouldn’t be falling off to dreamland any time soon.

  She crossed the landing and tapped on the door to her brother’s room.

  “Yeah?” Ryan’s half-whispered.

  “It’s me. Can I come in?”

  The door opened as the two boys looked at her with concern. Ryan gestured for her to enter and sit on the edge of his bed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t sleep.”

  “Why not?” said Cal.

  “At first I was thinking maybe all that stuff the Jantz’s were telling us… but I think it’s really those poor people we saw today.”

  Cal shook his head slowly. “Hey, you’ve got to understand something right off – they’re not really ‘people’ like us. They are just dumb animals that happen to look like people. They’re called sheeple, remember?”

  She glared at him. “That’s disgusting. And maybe you wouldn’t be talking like that if you’d ever spent any time in… our world.”

  Cal put his hands up in surrender. “I only wish that I could, Emma… I only wish I could.”

  She looked into Cal’s eyes for an instant, but long enough to know she’d hurt him with that remark. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that going to that protest didn’t make me feel like we were really doing anything to help the sheeple.”

  “Hey, Sis, I know what you mean, but I’m not sure there’s anything we can do for them. We can’t make them any smarter, and you saw what happens when you try to ‘set them free’… they don’t have any concept of what that even means.”

  Emma balled up her fists in frustration. “What kind of a monster is that guy, Bluthkalt? How could he breed humans to be like that?”

  “The lycans needed a food source,” said Cal. “He was just filling a need.”

  “I just keeping thinking if we knew more about them, maybe we could do something that would really help them.”

  Ryan looked down at his fingernails as if they’d suddenly became very interesting. Emma knew he didn’t want to look her in the eye. “Em… please tell me you’re not getting one of your ‘feelings’ about this.”

  She wasn’t going to open herself to his mocking. But he’d asked a good question. Was this growing obsession related to her “intuitions?” She felt sorry for the sheeple, sure, but why couldn’t she stop thinking about them? Something was drawing her to them. Like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

  “No…no peeks into the future. Honest. But… well, it’s hard to explain, but I have a feeling like I might have a feeling… does that make sense?”

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “Oh, man…I hate to admit it, but yes, it does. But only because it’s you.”

  “Did you have any kind of plan?” said Cal.

  That kind of took her by surprise. “Uh, no… not really. But it kind of bugs me that nobody seems to know what really goes on at the sheeple farms, do they? I mean, they know the sheeple are raised there like cattle, but what is being done to them? How are they treated? Are they as dumb as we’re told… or maybe they’re actually smarter than everyone is led to believe?”

  Ryan shrugged. “That might just be you and your wishful thinking.”

  Emma leaned back at the headboard, crossed her arms. “I think we should try to sneak into that farm… see what’s really going on.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” said Cal.

  “…and crazy,” said Ryan.

  She ignored them. “Do you think Mr. Jantz would help us?”

  “He’s too busy around here on his own farm… plus he doesn’t strike me as the ‘sneak-in’ type of guy.” Ryan grinned at his own humor.

  “What about Dillon?”

  “We could ask him,” said Cal. “He said he’d be calling in to check on us.”

  Emma knew something about Dillon the others did not, and she knew he was more than capable of handling anything dangerous that might arise. She also knew he liked her and would probably be willing to do just about anything to please her.

  OMG…did she really just think that? She smiled in spite of herself.

  Ryan regarded her with a raised eyebrow. “What’re you smiling about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet…”

  She yawned, trying to show how uninterested she was in continuing his line of question. “Thanks for keeping me up. I think I’m sleepy now.”

  “Does that mean
you’re leaving?” said Ryan. “Finally?”

  “Good night, boys.” She said the last word pointedly, reminding them they were younger than her.

  Exiting the small room, she crossed the landing to her own space. Light from a moon waxing toward full poured through the flimsy curtains, and it made her think of all the nights she used to lie in bed back in Kansas. When she was a little girl, she would stare at the pale light on her windowsill and whisper Good-night, moon!

  But now, she was thinking about how all that light meant a full moon approached – bringing with it unknown terrors.

  20

  Guard duty…

  Ergel didn’t mind staying up and keeping an eye on the courtyard and the plurrie’s lab. He did mind getting paired with Benny, possibly the most stupefied nossie he’d ever met.

  He and Benny was making their rounds of the courtyard, headin’ toward the lab, when the plurrie scientist named Koertig stepped out the door. Workin’ late, he was. Ergel waited until he’d moved far enough away before nudging the nossie.

  “I tells, ya, Benny – that be one scarifyin’ plurrie! Even if’n he does sport a beautiful troll head.”

  Benny guffawed. “Beautiful, ha!”

  Ergel shook his gnarled head. “I can’ts imagify what it be like to be one of them plurries, can you?”

  Benny rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Imagify?”

  Ergel looked over at his guard duty partner and winced. Was Ergel the only smart one in this whole compound?

  “Meanin’ there’s somethin’ unsettlatin’ about folks what’s slappied together with spare parts!”

  Benny looked at him with a dim expression and then his eyebrows raised a bit. “Oh, that… yeah. I see what ya mean. Must be kinda strange, all right.”

  “More than strange, says I.” Ergel stood and held out one of his stubby but muscular arms. “Would you wants to be walkin’ about without your own arm? I don’t know ’bouts youse, but every time I gets near one of them plurries, I starts wondrin’…”

  “Huh?”

  “…as to exactly who or where their different pieces came from.”

  “Ya know, I never figured on it like that – but I think you might be onto somethin’.”

  As they stopped outside the lab, Benny scratched the top of his head, causing a shock of his oily black hair to remain sticking straight up. Ergel liked the look – as if Benny could presenticate himself any more stupified…

  Ergel was about to speak when the hint of a sound tickled the edges of his huge, cup-like ears.

  “Hey, you hear that?”

  “Huh?” Benny swiveled his head slowly toward him. “What?”

  “Thoughts I detectified a noise. A soft click – like somebody’s throwin’ a switch or a lock!”

  “Nope, didn’t hear nothin’…nothin’ at all.”

  “Shut up! You bloodsucker! Listen!”

  There followed one more click! And then Ergel thought he heard the slightest squeal of what could be a hinge in need of some oil… or no, perhaps the start-up whine of a motor. One-a them electrificated ones. He needed to hear more to be certain. He turreted his head around the entire courtyard, his ears like saucers. Even though they’d slipped deep into the night, the courtyard and the buildings seemed to glisten with a frosted glow of full-on moonlight. Ergel squinted into the contrasting shadows but could see nothing.

  “Sorry, but I don’t hear a thing,” Benny continued. “You and them big troll ears! They say you guys can hear a butterfly in the next county.”

  Wheeling on the nossie, Ergel moved within inches of his pale, thin face. “If’n you don’t be quiet, Ergel is gonna punchify you precious fangs right outta yer skullington!”

  Benny held up his hands in mock surrender as he backed away and silently mouthed the word, “Okay…”

  “Somebody’s sneakifyin’ around in the lab!”

  Benny dared to speak: “You can tell?”

  Ergel moved close to the double doors before of them and placed his ear against the rough wood exterior. Instantly the sounds of the building magnified in his head, mainly a series of low-register vibrations. He’d been right. Not a door openin’… but one of the machines inside coming to life.

  Ergel held up his hand to silence the nossie. What did this mean? Did the plurrie leave something runnin’? No, Ergel woulda been hearin’ it before now. Had he left that fixator Teddy inside? They was workin’ together. But no, Ergel had seen Teddy enter the dorm across the courtyard.

  “Should we tell Falzon?” said Benny.

  “Even if he was here – which he ain’t – what would we tells that monster? That we’s too stupid to know if there’s anything skulkinatin’ around the lab? He’d bite your narrow little pin-head clean off!”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that…”

  “Ergel is cogitatin’ that we’s has to go inside and–”

  Before he could finish, the windows on the second floor of the building flared with a great burst of blue-green light and the air buzzed with the sound of an electrical storm. Ergel felt it as much as saw and heard it. He and Benny was captured for an instant in a strobe-like blast of otherworldly energy.

  “Aww,” said Benny as he staggered back away from the building. He rubbed his eyes as if to clear them. “What was that? Ya see it?”

  “Ergel’s got eyes, don’t he? Course I seen it. Somethin’ explodated!” He moved to the double doors, his keys already in hand. “Let’s go!”

  Benny looked up at the now darkened windows. “You think there’s a fire? Don’t see no smoke or nothin’.”

  “Don’t matter. Up we go.”

  Keying the lock, Ergel yanked open the door and bolted inside. The interior air seemed to be a little thicker, fuller, as if something had entered the building from the inside rather than out. Ergel figured that sounded weird, but that was the thought that came to him. The soft whine of lab equipment was less than echoed memory now. Whatever had been thrumming shut down with that burst of light at the windows.

  Standing stock-still for a moment, Ergel listened to any sound of movement and thought he might have caught a single footfall.

  He slammed back the emergency lights that cast a pale glow into the hallways and stairwells, motioned to Benny who stood a few paces behind him.

  “Youse get down these halls and eye-check every door, every room. See if there’s anyone slinkin’ behind any of ’em.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m goin’ upstairs to check out that flash.”

  “Okay…be careful.”

  “If’n there’s somebody tresspasseratin’ up theres, they be needin’ to be careful of Ergel.”

  And with that, he took the stairs up in bounding leaps two and three risers at a time. He didn’t care if he was making any noise – in fact he hoped his ruckus would scare the intruder into doing something stupid. His only problem was he didn’t know his way around the lab building and he knew Falzon had dropped a pile of treasure into the place. If he went a-crashin’ and a-thrashin’ through the rooms where all the gadgets be, Ergel’s brains might end up stuck to the bottom of the rakshasa’s big ugly foot.

  With that image firm in his head, Ergel moved slowly and carefully from room to room. In each place, he paused to listen, to sniff the air, to see if he could detect the presence of anything or anyone there before him. Ergel pushed through the doors to office spaces, storage closets, and finally the professor’s laboratory where he felt close and cramped amidst the tables and benches and racks and shelves. Every available space lay jammed and crammed with pieces of other things. To Ergel it felt like the biggest junkyard squeezed down into the smallest space.

  And while he wastified a good piece of the night searching the spaces and finding nothing, a strange thing happened. The less proof he found of no intruder, the more Ergel believed the opposite. Something or someone had caused the machines to run and someone had somehow snuck away.

  But what was he to do about
it? With no proofs of nothin’, it might be better to keep his wide mouth clamped shut. No sense gettin’ these Uberall soldiers crazy for nothin’. And besides, only the professor with the troll head would ever know if any of his junkpile had been messicated with.

  Ergel moved to the first floor where Benny sat slumped on the bottom step, half-dozing.

  “Up with ya, nossie! Back outsides with us!”

  Benny rubbed his flat eyes. “Find nothin’?”

  “Nopes…and we’s gonna keep it that way. You don’t say nothins’ about this or I rip your tongue out and sticks in your ear.”

  Part 3

  Trolls and Lycans

  21

  Manfred Koertig knew something was wrong the instant he entered the control room and saw the readouts.

  Someone had used the breach generator during the night. And looking at the energy output graph, he could tell exactly when: two hours after midnight.

  He heard a noise and peered through the observation window at the breach chamber below. His new assistant, Teddy, had just entered. Teddy was an anomaly: A young lycan who had grown up on an isolated farm in the middle of the country with no access to culture and current events, yet preternaturally bright with a talent for fixing things. As mechanically brilliant as he was culturally dense about the world he lived in. What an engineer he would make with the proper learning.

  Manfred pressed the speaker button and spoke into the microphone.

  “Teddy?”

  The lycan jumped at the sound of his name. “I didn’t see you, sir.”

  “Come up here. I wish to speak to you.”

  “Sure.”

  When he arrived, Manfred led him to the graph and pointed to the spike. “Do you know what that means?”

  Teddy squinted at it. “Looks like a power spike.”

  “Yes. A usage spike. The breach generator was activated at two A.M. this morning. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  His eyes widened. “Me? No. Why would you think–?”