by Derek Gunn
Carter smiled as he watched Wentworth’s men crumble as their barracks were destroyed one by one. In the distance he could hear the dull thump of explosions as the other strike forces took out their targets and crippled communications, possible retreat and re-enforcement routes and took control of the humans that were held here for the small contingent of vampires.
They had their orders regarding any vampires they might find and those orders had been very clear. On no account were the vampire lords to be harmed or even disturbed in any way. Their food, however, was fair game and Carter wished that he had been leading that attack. Intelligence put the number of humans at two hundred, quite a lot, he thought, to support ten vampires. But, by all accounts, Wentworth had more than enough resources to spare that number to keep his clan happy. Von Kruger, however, had very limited resources where blood was concerned and he would be well pleased with the influx of fresh food. The guard delivering two hundred humans would likely receive a large reward.
The cacophony of battle rose around him as the last of the enemy guards fought back as best they could but they were hopelessly outgunned and it did not take long for the remaining guards to surrender. He was well pleased, although it did nag at him that Wentworth’s men had not expected them. Surely they would have had patrols in place to warn of such an attack, especially after their own recent raid. Maybe the raiding party was part of an elite squad and the regular guards had not been informed. That must have been it; he decided and stepped down from the safety of his armored car to accept the enemy’s surrender. This war might work out all right after all.
Harris pressed himself against the corner of a building and waited till the armored car rumbled past. He held a grenade in his hand with the pin out but the clip still clasped firmly in place. The guards traveled with reckless confidence. Those few defenders who had tried to form a resistance had been viciously dealt with by a bombardment from the three tanks that poured their fire into the buildings they had occupied. Nothing remained now but rubble and a few shell-shocked survivors who stumbled from the wreckage. The armored car was now headed for the pen in the town square where the humans were kept.
Unlike his own previous prison, these humans were kept in a large fenced area that took up most of what had obviously been the town square. They lived in tents and were crammed together, leaving the rest of the town empty and unused. Harris felt his anger boil over at such cruelty. The human cattle could not go anywhere with the serum suppressing their will so this enforced deprivation was purely for the guards benefit so they did not have to police a wider area.
One of the attacking guards stood up through the car’s turret now that the defense had been broken and smiled as he surveyed the humans in the cage before him. Once the car rolled past, Harris threw the grenade into the open turret. The guard did not realise what had fallen down the hatch until the screams of the men below him reached his ears, and by then it was too late. There was a loud thump as the grenade exploded and the car continued on until it veered off to the left, hit a building and came to a stop. The guard who had stood in the turret fell forward to the ground, leaving his legs behind him in the car.
Harris heard the deep crack of Warkowski’s and Dee’s rifles as they picked off any guards that roamed about the town. The tanks had moved off towards another stronghold of enemy resistance and he could hear the chatter of machine guns and the explosions as the battle continued. The humans were a low priority for the thralls right now and that suited Harris.
He whistled and Rodgers appeared to his left with Ortega following close behind. The men raced towards the gate and fired a quick burst into the lock. Harris pulled the gates open and looked around for Sherman. Seconds ticked by and there was no sign. In the distance the boom of the tanks had stopped and only the occasional burst of machine gun fire split the air. The fighting was winding down. They had to move or the attacking forces would discover them.
Suddenly a large dun-colored truck appeared around the corner. For a second Harris saw the green of a thrall uniform at the wheel and he looked around for somewhere to hide. Then he recognized Sherman at the wheel, wearing a thrall uniform, and he felt relief flood through him. The truck wasn’t large enough for all of the captive humans—they would only be able to take about thirty or so, and that would be stretching it. There just wasn’t time to get sufficient transport organized with the way things had gone. The situation had deteriorated far more rapidly than they had planned for and they were reacting ‘on the fly’ as it was. In any case, they would have no hope of getting all two hundred captives back to their camp even if they had enough trucks. They had to think practically, no matter how mercenary it appeared to be.
He turned to the others. “Remember what we discussed.” He kept his face calm but what they were about to do still ate at him. “Take the youngest and the fittest, the rest we have to leave.” The others merely nodded. They had argued about this over the last day while they had watched the preparations for the attack. They had no right to play God. How could they decide who would survive and who wouldn’t? Just because someone was older did not mean they could not contribute to the community.
Harris had found himself making more and more of these types of decisions lately and his soul felt heavy with the responsibility. He knew that it made more sense to take those who could contribute most to the community but age and fitness were not always a guarantee of the best contribution. He knew this but there was no better way he could think of at this time and he had argued until the others had agreed. But, as he passed through the faces of those blank-faced men and women, he cried openly as he separated those who would come with them from those they had to leave.
Some day, he promised each face silently. Some day I will come back and free you all. But he knew as he looked at the remaining wretches that it was unlikely that they would be able to return here in time to save those that were left.
“There are only ten of them and they’re asleep,” Rodgers pleaded as the truck raced through the back streets. “They won’t even have set traps.”
“No,” Harris said emphatically. “We’ve talked about this. There must be no evidence that anyone but the thralls were here. And they would never kill a vampire.”
“But they’re so close,” Rodgers insisted.
“I know but we have to play this right or everything will have been for nothing. When Wentworth hears of this he’ll send his troops in force and we’ll get the war we need to hide our own siphoning of resources. We have to be patient.”
The truck burst out past the town limits and raced out towards the darkening horizon. It was still early morning but an angry weather front was closing in from the North and already the dark clouds roiled across the sun like oil across water and threw long shadows out before them. The air grew noticeably cooler and the men shivered as the adrenaline oozed out of their muscles. They were careful to use one of the routes that the thralls had used to approach the town so their tracks would not be seen. After a few minutes snow began to fall and soon the truck was swallowed up in the approaching storm.
Chapter 9
The room was vast, that was the first thing Ralf Falconi noticed. A spear of light blazed from behind him and spilled into the room but it seemed to lose its luster as soon as it hit the gloom. The feeling of space came more from a sense of emptiness than from anything he could actually see. There was an echo as his boots clicked on tiles that seemed to reverberate far more than one would expect in a normal room. He could see the outline of sharp angles in the dark that he assumed were pieces of furniture but the light was too dim to be sure and the obstacles seemed to wrap themselves deeper into the shadows as he opened the door further.
There was a coldness in the room that defied the waning heat of the early evening outside. The cold seemed to cling to the room and suck at his very core as he entered further into the darkness. There was a smell as well, a faint odor that left him feeling nauseous, though it seemed to drift in and out of range. The
room reeked of perfume but that wasn’t what made his stomach lurch. It was something else, something that hid behind the stronger odor but was far more powerful. It seemed to tease him, letting him catch a faint hint only to dissipate abruptly and hide behind the heavy smell of perfume that saturated the room. He couldn’t quite place it but it smelt like a mixture of spoilt fruit and mould. It was as if something had decayed, become putrescent, but had not actually decomposed. It was, he supposed, the smell of living death. His hands shook as he closed the door and he stood for a moment shaking more from fear than from the biting cold before he summoned the courage to announce his presence.
“My Lord,” he croaked finding his throat dry and brittle. He coughed and then repeated his greeting. His words seemed to swirl around him, bounce against the walls and come back to mock him as he stood and shook in the dark. He should not be here, he kept telling himself. He was too junior an officer to speak directly with their cabal master but he also knew that his superiors were well aware of the likely reaction to the news he carried. Wentworth was not known for his good humor at the best of times. By all accounts he had been a bitter and petty man when he had been alive and death had not done anything to improve his disposition. In fact, all it had done was provide him with the power to act on impulses he had never had the courage to entertain before.
Falconi fully expected never to leave this room, but it had been made clear to him that the alternative could be far worse. As he stood in the room he imagined terrors in the dark around him and he was no longer sure that he had made the right decision. Someone had to tell Wentworth of the attack and he cursed his luck that he had been the one that had brought the news from the border.
“I assume you have a good reason for disturbing me,” the words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. He had never met, or even seen, Wentworth before, but his voice was not what he had expected. It was high-pitched, almost whining, more like a petulant child than a terrifying vampire. It had a nasal tone that reminded Falconi of his cousin who always seemed to have a cold, and he allowed himself to believe that their vampire master was not as bad as…
He suddenly felt a vice grip his throat and he was lifted off the ground. The hand that gripped him was far colder than the room and the chill seemed to burn into his throat. He tried to breathe but the grip was firm and his lungs began to burn, a deep pain that felt like a hand had reached into his chest and squeezed. His eyes bulged and his head throbbed but he still could not see anything. It was like the hand that gripped him was part of the darkness itself.
Just as suddenly as it had grabbed him the hand released him and he fell to the ground where he frantically tried to suck air into his starved chest but the sudden coldness of the air hitting his raw throat made him retch. The darkness seemed to loom around him and he felt consciousness slip from him for a moment.
He wasn’t sure whether he had blacked out or not but he found himself on his back and then the same voice snapped again.
“Lights.”
A sudden flare of light burst in the corner, though again its glare seemed to have trouble penetrating the darkness. Falconi looked around and could see a deeper darkness looming over him. There was a heavy musk in the air that reminded him of body lotion but it was spoilt by the same smell of decay he had noticed earlier. He was in awe of the figure above him. Was Wentworth able to command light? Falconi’s eyes snapped over to the feeble light and he could see the pale outline of a bed, not a coffin as he had expected, and he saw something move under the covers.
He caught his breath as he imagined horrors borne in darkness swirling beneath the covers but, as his eyes grew more accustomed, he could make out a figure on the bed. It appeared almost white in the glow of the light, almost ethereal, and he slowly made out a tussle of long hair and delicate shoulders. It was a woman, he realized suddenly.
He had heard that Wentworth liked to retain the trappings of the old world. Vampires could not perform any sexual acts, unlike the thralls who experienced far more pleasure than when they had been merely mortal. The flesh of the vampire was dead and so any pleasure that the flesh had been capable of before was now denied them, though the reputed pleasure of fresh blood far outweighed this loss.
Wentworth, however, still liked to surround himself with female companions and expensive lotions and perfumes. Falconi had seen some of the females he had cast aside. The women did not last long as his companion and their pale and wretched husks were only fit to be shot when he tired of them.
“Well?” the voice came again and Falconi felt the fear pluck at him as he pulled himself to his feet.
“Sir,” he paused for a moment as the smell of corruption assaulted him when he drew near the figure. “There was an attack at the border.” He paused, bracing himself for a reaction. He had imagined being struck, torn apart or at the very least witnessing a demented rage, but the darkness remained silent around him. He could not see Wentworth but the smell was strongest just in front of him so he directed his attention there.
“And?” The voice seemed to float in the air from nowhere in particular.
“And,” he began and faltered. He did not know quite how to describe what had happened. He had not expected such a calm acceptance of his news and had not prepared himself to deliver a coherent report. Somehow this serene reaction was far more frightening.
“Sir,” he continued though his body shook uncontrollably, “we were attacked just after dawn by Von Kruger’s men. They had tanks and armored cars and at least two hundred men.” Falconi began to embellish his report as he began to see that there might be a way to survive this meeting after all.
“Which probably means there were around fifty of them but you want it to appear that you were vastly outnumbered,” Wentworth chuckled and Falconi decided that to argue would be pointless. There had been more than fifty but less that the two hundred he had reported. However, he decided that it would be unwise to contradict the vampire.
“You are sure it was Von Kruger’s men?”
Falconi nodded and then spoke as well in case his motion could not be seen. “Yes, sir. No question about it. They wore Von Kruger’s colors and the tanks sported the decals that we know he uses. We’ve watched them parade in front of us for months, flaunting their fuel and equipment.”
“Indeed,” Wentworth agreed. “I assume that my high council is outside the door, too afraid to bring the news themselves.”
Falconi did not know how to reply. Would it be disloyal to agree or should he come up with an excuse for his superiors that would ingratiate him to them? The decision was taken from him as the door was suddenly wrenched open behind him. He hadn’t heard any movement and had felt no displacement in the air around him, but somehow Wentworth had moved past him and crossed the distance to the door in the blink of an eye. The sudden flood of light from outside blinded Falconi but he caught the brief impression of two figures outside the door before Wentworth pushed past them and called for Falconi to follow.
“Come, Captain we have work to do.”
Falconi walked to the door on legs that shook with the relief of a reprieved man. He was still blinking as he reached the door so he did not notice anything about his superiors until he actually reached the door and stepped in their blood. His superiors had been attacked so quickly that they were still standing when he reached them. His immediate superior was on his left and the man had only just realized that his stomach had been ripped open. The cut had been so swift that it had taken a moment for the blood to appear or even for the nerves to send the pain to his brain. The man’s face grew suddenly pale and then grey almost instantly as his blood poured from the wound in a torrent. The other man still stood but his head leaned at a severe angle. Falconi watched in shock as the man’s head fell forward and dropped to the ground. The body remained standing for a moment longer and blood jetted towards the ceiling in high arcs before the body folded to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut.
He followed i
n a daze.
Falconi watched Wentworth as he planned his reprisal and began to understand why the vampire was in charge. He had been a small man in life, with a slightly portly frame. His face was pinched and his plump cheeks gave him an innocent, almost chipmunk-like appearance. He was instantly forgettable in appearance but he had a keen mind and, from what Falconi had heard from those who had known him before the vampires had come, he had been an excellent speaker. It certainly had not been his looks that had landed him the position of mayor.
Although he sounded petulant, Falconi began to see that the vampire was not in the least bit huffy. Wentworth was, however, ruthless. In his previous life there had been laws and conventions within which he had to work to get what he wanted. Not now though. In his current position he was able to demand anything and get it. And he jealously guarded what was his. Falconi had been aware, in his position as local commander, that an attack was always a possibility, though no one really thought it would ever happen.
Except, it seemed, for Wentworth.
The vampire had a plan already in place for just such an eventuality. One aide had made the mistake of asking why they did not contact the Council and let them handle it and the withering look that Wentworth had sent him had been enough for the aide to soil himself on the spot.
Falconi stood back and watched his master at work. He was really quite incredible, despite his diminutive stature. The man exuded power and confidence. His eyes seemed to shine with an inner glare as he issued orders. Wentworth did not shout, somehow Falconi had assumed that the vampire would over compensate for his size, but his orders were quiet and confident and no one dared ask for them to be repeated.
The plan was also a good one and Falconi began to feel sorry for Von Kruger’s men. They may have more supplies and fuel but Wentworth’s plan was genius. He began to like his new direct superior. He was still terrified, of course, but somehow it was comforting to have the vampire on their side. The poor sods on the other side of the border wouldn’t know what hit them.