The weight of it all kept him lying there for hours. But when the sun was finally starting to send its vague light into the Hive in the form of particles that hung in the air in front of Simon like specks of faraway flying fairies bouncing around in search of something to enchant, the weight had lifted and Simon stood up. With a sense of desperation, he went to her and wrapped himself around her, holding her close. In his mind her voice whispered words and conjured images to soothe his shuddering body as he wept.
“She’ll come back. And I’ll be okay. My body will fade back into the shadow from whence it came. And my babies will grow to carry on what was me in this life. Sleep, child. Suffer no more… for a time.”
And sleep came and cradled Simon for the first time in days.
***
It had been hours since Jackie finished telling Frank the short and limited version of how she ended up with fangs and on the road sitting shotgun beside him in his old Lincoln. There had been nothing but flatlands for miles with the occasional half-dilapidated gas station or silo along the highway. The worst though had been Memphis. The war had stretched its ugly arms and risen up in the heart of the city and it had taken a lot of screeching tires, swerving, and ducking their heads—not that Jackie couldn’t survive a bullet to the head or two—to get out of there in one piece.
Frank’s hands had only stopped shaking less than an hour prior. In the past six months he had only traveled in areas that had been deemed safe by the Imperial Highway Administration. But in deciding to take on Jackie’s request to get her across the country, the ways void of violent bloodshed were few and far between. And their number was shrinking every day.
But now things were calm and Jackie couldn’t remember the last time she was so hungry. She had drastically underestimated how much synthetic blood she would need for such a trip and had already depleted the small bottle she had brought with her before even happening upon Frank. The obvious beast woke within her mind, but she’d grown to enjoy Frank’s company too much and besides… he had been nothing but completely and utterly kind to her since they met. Even after realizing what she was. But she knew his all too human emotions would take over when he truly realized what she was—when she had no choice but to eat. A time she knew to be long overdue.
“So, ah, maybe we should stop so you can get some rest.”
Frank laughed. “Missy, I’m all wide eyes and fresh firing cylinders. If you need to rest—”
“No. I was just thinking you might need to… and…” She let her words hang in the air a moment.
“Ohhh… I get it.” His voice was jovial, but within seconds his shoulders slumped with realization and the air in the Lincoln thickened between them. “I suppose you don’t have a choice, do ya?” He looked over at her and she shook her head, letting the all too real remorse within her come out in her movement.
He sighed. “So, I drop you off, you bag some poor schmuck or schmuckette and when you’re finished you come back and I suppose it’s best I pretend I don’t know what just happened—or that I didn’t just have a part in ending someone’s godforsaken pitiful little life?”
Jackie held her breath in an all too human manner out of habit. She’d expected it. And who could argue with him. He was right. But she had to live. She’d accepted that. Could he? It had been simple for her. Now, with the tables turned on someone still human, it was anything but. And that left only the inevitable. If he couldn’t let her out to feed, what choice would that leave her but to either stop him herself and take care of her needs without his acceptance, only to come back to an empty highway save for a blistered set of Lincoln tire tracks on the pavement. Or…
He took in a deep breath as he let off the gas, easing the car over to the side of the road. With a tear running down his cheek, he nodded. “Go do what you gotta do. I’ll wait here.” He turned to look at her as she reached for the door handle. “But when you come back it’s your turn to drive. I’m gonna guess I’ll probably need some time to… adjust.” She nodded with a grim smile. And in a blast of movement and cold air, she was flitting through the empty flatland, wind screeching in her ears, following the elderly woman’s scent that had hit her nose the moment they had driven within a few miles of her fragile body.
***
About three or four hours of driving south on I-65 Hank pulled onto the upward ramp for the I-20 West/I-59 South exit in Burmingham, Alabama. He still had another three or four hours to go by his approximation. It had taken some quick research to figure out where Tresney had been talking about. But not much. Before the Empire, when Hurricane Katrina had blasted its way through the New Orleans levees, one of its many casualties was the Six Flags Theme Park which in its glory days stood tall right off of Michoud Boulevard. It was still there now, but years of decay on top of the damage from being flooded with tons of water from Katrina had turned it into a deranged wasteland. Hank had seen some of the pictures online before leaving.
The drive southwest heading toward Mississippi was a long and mostly featureless one. Most of the way was a two lane highway with nothing but green flatlands and occasional trees along the side of the road. And virtually no cities or towns. It had been an hour since Hank had even seen another car on the road. That was good though. Tresney had warned Hank in his secret-decoder-ring message to watch out for anyone following him. The less cars Hank saw along the way, the less he had to worry. When he neared the state line, large quantities of trees began to pop up alongside the road until eventually they steadily blocked out the sunlight from Hank’s left side. Traffic was also beginning to pick up to a small degree.
A few hours later and he was speeding his way through Louisiana toward New Orleans in heavy traffic. The trees popping up next to the highway were occasionally of the Palm variety. Then came the seemingly endless inclining bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. The water was beautiful from above, but Hank wasn’t there to sightsee. He waded through trucks and cars speeding in and along the lanes, trying to edge his way ahead. If someone was following him at this point, there was no way he would know. He wished he’d taken a little time to find a more obscure route. But that ship had sailed.
***
Jonny had been driving south for hours feeling like a worm on a string being pulled along the water. All the while the Emperor’s throaty voice had droned on at every little detail of the trip, treating Jonny like an incompetent child. He didn’t much care about the way the bastard treated him compared to his fear of how his sister was being treated. Or what would happen to her if he didn’t do what the Emperor told him or made some kind of simple mistake.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he passed the exit the Emperor told him Hank had taken. His instinct had been to follow the same route, but the Emperor had nearly screamed at him to go the way he was told, that going the same way would only lead to failure. Jonny wasn’t sure which was more infuriating. The brashness or being kept in the dark and treated like a child. Maybe it was the combination.
“Mr. Cross, why are you letting your speed lag? Would a little motivation in the form of a familiar voice screaming in your ears spark some reasonable determination for you?”
Jonny cringed, swallowing the sweat that had dripped into his mouth and onto his tongue. He steadily pressed his foot down on the pedal and made sure his visual perspective was such that the Emperor would see the rising needle of the speedometer.
“Good, Mr. Cross, very good. Keep your speed at an average of 85 miles per hour and I’ll make sure no Imperial patrol officers give you any trouble. I don’t much care at this point who or what you have to drive through to get to New Orleans before Mr. Evans does.”
“New Orleans? Is that where we’re heading?”
There was no answer. A spark of fear crept into Jonny’s heart causing it to jolt above the already high average it had been through this whole trip.
“Mr. Cross, your heart rate has spiked, is there something on your mind you would like to share?”
“Sorry, sir. When yo
u didn’t answer I was just worried you might…”
“No, Mr. Cross, I won’t do anything to your precious sister without you knowing in full graphic detail first. You can count on that. Now, do the both of you a favor and calm yourself, understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Jonny thought about what he must look like talking to someone who wasn’t there without a Bluetooth earpiece in his ear in a speeding jalopy burning rubber down the highway. He laughed, letting the thought calm his otherwise stilted nerves.
“Good, Mr. Cross. Keep thinking whatever it is you’re thinking and things will be just fine.”
Jonny laughed internally. Fine? Right. Everything would be fine when his hands were covered in the blood of an innocent man and his sister was free to go home. Or would it be that simple?
***
Hank had been easing his way along Michoud Boulevard a good few minutes now looking for the entrance to the old abandoned theme park. He was just about to give up when the sun glinted on an old weathered sign on the right with a bunch of white flags poking up between SIX and FLAGS printed across the majority of the sign. Underneath, it read BUS & RV ENTRANCE ONLY. Below that, marquee-like replaceable letters spelled CLOSED.
Hank swerved the small Pontiac into the entrance, and the car behind him slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting him. A loud barking man with his middle finger raised high outside the driver side window for Hank to see and his hand pressed against the horn in a long monotone ringing crept by and then sped away. Hank sat there, half angled and parked at the start of the long entrance. Up ahead a wide desolate area that probably once resembled an enormous parking lot stretched out from the bottleneck end of the entrance.
Hank pulled the car up until he came to the long gray cinder block that crossed both the entrance and exit to the parking lot. Behind it a black fence and a small tan security gazebo stood waiting for ghosts to enter a once thriving land of carnies, parents, and laughing children. He killed the engine and stepped out from the Pontiac, looking back to make sure there were no cars stopping to see what he was doing. The thought of going back and finding somewhere to hide the car occurred to him then, but the will to find whatever Tresney had hidden here—particularly what he hoped Tresney had hidden here—was too much to allow himself to backtrack even a small amount now.
In other words, it was too late to turn back; the pull of something inside this odd ravaged mess of a theme park was too strong. Hank let it guide him and stepped through the shoulder-high half-open black gates and into the parking lot.
***
The walls of the desert cave of Bellona's hive began to crack around Ishan. At first it was just a small hairline growing slowly in the distance, only the sound of it barely registering to him. Before long it reached out like forks of lightning in slow motion, stretching in branches that begat branches that begat still more branches. And before he could take in what was happening, the cracks grew exponentially into an explosion of tan particles and shattered pieces of what made up the reality in that place, leaving only darkness in its wake. And in that cold emptiness, Ishan was finally aware once more of himself. It was subtle at first, the sense of self easing back into his mind, but when it had fully re-emerged, its presence was surreal and overpowering for a time unknown. But it was only consciousness, there was no physical form. And then in the far distance of vast nothingness, a single pinpoint of light grew out of the ether and one distant screaming word echoed from the same direction, "ISHAN!"
"Simon?"
But there was no answer. And in the slip of a glimpse, the light blinked out and the darkness prevailed. "SIMON?" His voice only ricocheted back to him in the void. His being drew a face in the darkness he knew to be Simon's and it was filled with so much detail that for a second he thought his friend was really there. But its frozen representation only gave itself away as a mental construct Ishan's mind had created for some reason. More images began to fill the darkness in its place: The Queen's beautiful sensual lips appeared as they called his name, the flick of her tongue behind those sharp white fangs tinged with his blood as she brought them down to graze against his white milky skin. Hair black as night framing her slender perfect face, two deep burgundy irises fixating on his in tearing boiling passion. And then her face transformed into another.
Rachel stared back at him from a similar position, on her knees, lustfully teasing him in a time so far away from then. A deep sadness expanded through his being at the memory of her so alive and so very eager to please. Then as did the other two, her face transitioned into another. And then another. And another. Until every face he had ever seen flitted and morphed like a hand of cards flipping between fingers and thumb in quick shuffling procession.
And then they were gone. Just like that. And all that remained was the emptiness and the sadness that threatened to swallow up what was left of his very being.
Ishan waited there in that oblivion for what felt like eons—and he truly knew what eons felt like—the darkness and its mystery his only source of company until slowly, one by one, the tan particles popped into existence before him and came together bit by bit rebuilding the memories and the nightmares of the ancient queen vampire, Bellona, the Goddess of War.
Chapter 15
Dark Spirits
When the satellite imagery revealed Hank’s location, the Emperor’s brow shrunk inward with worry. The old theme park. It hadn’t taken much to figure out what Hank was after when he realized what city he was heading toward and that he wasn’t going to that hole-in-the-ground whore-of-a-queen vampire’s hive. Tresney had something to do with this. Joseph was sure. The man had hidden something out from under him.
On his view screen, Joseph watched through Jonny Cross’s incompetent eyes from just outside of the Six Flags parking lot as Hank stepped foot inside. Whatever was there, Joseph had decided to let Hank lead them to it. Then if Cross could manage not to fowl up what Joseph told him to do, then maybe he could end this little revolution once and for all. With Hank far away from the Foederati army and his position likely unknown, the Emperor could inject just enough misinformation to lead them all to believe that Hank Evans had abandoned his cause and betrayed them.
Cross’s heavy breathing was breaking Joseph’s concentration. “Be quiet, Mr. Cross, surely you can breathe more silently.” Jonny did as he was told. In the distance ahead, through tall weeds and grass, Hank Evans was wandering about the parking lot near a long pink building that led into the actual theme park. “When he’s past that building and out of sight, you move like I said. Remember, step in patterns in order to blend in with the nearby sounds of the city. This man has more accurate hearing than you could even imagine and I’ll not have you getting his attention and ruining this important chance. Understand, Mr. Cross?” The view moved up and down as Cross nodded.
The sun was beginning to fall in the horizon as Cross’s soft steps across the parking lot worked out patterns matching the inner mechanical workings of an old train engine. The trick, Joseph had told him, was to match the volume as it would be from miles away so as to not set off any sense of nearness. Joseph was largely counting on Hank’s strong occupation with what he was doing and that seemed to be paying off so far. If Evans had been smart enough to stay fully alert, he would have already broken Cross’s neck by now and Joseph would be watching the last fading images of pavement nearing the transparent plastic of the view screen. Maybe, just maybe, Cross wasn’t completely useless and would manage to pull this off.
The emperor’s cold pale hand gripped hold of a small metal statue of his likeness sitting on his desk. When his hand came away it was warped into the shape of his squeezing hand complete with palm marks and finger prints. Joseph swiveled in his chair back and forth a moment and then hit the intercom.
“Yes, your holiness?”
“Send in my evening dinner. One of the larger ones. I’ll need my strength.”
“Yes, your holiness. Your will be done.”
Moments later a shuddering dark sh
ape fell into the room from a hole in the ceiling about four feet in diameter. Joseph was on the creature within seconds, biting into its flesh and sucking from the sweet lifeblood within. The natural vampire convulsed with the almost instantaneous loss of blood and only then as its ability was drained from it did it petulantly attempt to fight back. Then it went completely light, a dead thing no longer of any use and the Emperor stepped away from the thing nearly tripping over its body as he fell into a nearby reclining chair. He wiped his face with his sleeve smearing the blood that was dripping all along his mouth and then took a deep breath. As the power and strength flooded out through his limbs and his mind, he gripped the arms of the chair and screamed out in fury, his voice nearly shaking the other furniture and even the very walls of the room.
***
By the third time he stepped out of rhythm as the sun blinked out of existence, it was clear to Jonny that Hank was far too involved in what he was doing to be paying attention. Whatever extra-powerful hearing the man had seemed to require at least a reasonable amount of his attention. Jonny watched through night vision goggles from behind a large plastic head with the face of a boy wearing a large straw hat over his night-vision-green hair. Everything was green through the damn things. Hank seemed to be following his sense of smell more than anything. Perhaps he could only focus on one super sense at a time. He stood at a crossing of sidewalks behind the pink building, staring ahead at a small ticket booth.
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