by Derek Gunn
Perfume had been created by a vampire to hide the scent of death that clung to them all. The famed powdered wigs and pale complexions of the aristocracy had been another necessity until vampires had discovered that gorging on blood brought a much needed flush to their features. These new vampires, however, were little more than beasts. They had no concept of honour. They had no history, living their pathetically short lives and losing themselves to their baser instincts.
As vampires, they were no different to what they had been as humans. They were base animals who allowed their greed to dictate how they should act. He hated them all. This war with the humans had been a mistake. They could have let the humans destroy themselves slowly and then taken what they needed to survive. To become a vampire lord was something to aspire to, not something that should be thrust upon the unworthy.
He glared at the younger vampires on the council. Many of them wore the rags they had been wearing when they had been turned. Others wore lurid t-shirts or baggy shirts tucked into jeans or track suit trousers that were far too big for them. None of them even washed, and dried blood caked their mouths and their clothes. They were like spoilt children given a gift that they were unworthy of. Already many were losing clumps of their hair as the flesh dried out and could no longer support their hair follicles.
They would all be bald soon, as the first vampires had been back in the dawn of time. They too had been little more than animals, scraping for survival as the earth was wracked by its birthing pains. They were an ancient race, and one which had pulled itself from violence and self-destruction to what had been a proud and worthy people. They had been there before man had spread his seed across the world like a cancer, destroying everything they touched. These vampires were unworthy to hold dominion over the earth.
He would not allow it. He would see an end to their dominion somehow.
“We will respond to Von Kruger’s actions when I am ready,” he said finally. “Besides, I would like to see what happens next without our involvement. Our brothers and sisters have become fat and complacent in their little kingdoms. It will be interesting to see how they manage on their own. I …”
“My Lord,” Kavanagh interrupted from the opposite end of the table and Von Richelieu reluctantly nodded toward him. Kavanagh was a new vampire, but one of such inner strength that he had managed to force his way onto the council by sheer confidence and brute force of will. He had been a man who, although he was built like a mountain, was surprisingly shrewd. In Von Richelieu’s experience, men of his size could get what they wanted by using their size to intimidate others and rarely utilised other, less physical, means to achieve their ends. Not so with Kavanagh. Many of those who had underestimated him now lay dead in his wake.
Curtis Kavanagh had built up quite a following since he had become a vampire. In reality, the very fact that he had become a vampire at all and had not languished for years as a thrall was impressive in itself. Left to his own devices, Kavanagh could very well threaten Von Richelieu’s own position, and he had been forced to take steps to counter any such move.
Kavanagh was one of the many whom Von Richelieu made sure were still feeding on those humans who were still taking the serum. Another few weeks and the vampire would be a harmless idiot, choking on his own drool. The image of the vampire’s future death made Von Richelieu smile, and Kavanagh, and those around him, misinterpreted this as encouragement to speak, so he continued.
“It seems quite an unnecessary risk to allow such behaviour, my Lord,” Kavanagh chose his words carefully as he danced around the point he wanted to make. Von Richelieu was happy to let him try and score his points in front of the others. Soon Kavanagh would be lashing uncontrollably out at those closest to him as he, and they, lost their minds and soiled themselves in their madness.
“I mean, we…you,” he amended with a smile, “have worked so hard to bring us to this current status quo that I wonder if it is wise to let it deteriorate like this. We could be looking at another time of anarchy.”
Yes indeed there will be anarchy and on a scale you could not imagine, Von Richelieu thought and paused as the others around the table braced for the violent reaction they assumed would follow such a remark. Kavanagh had been goading him like this for weeks now, hoping that they would come to blows and he would be justified in striking back. As a vampire of only just over a year he could not challenge an ancient like Von Richelieu, but he could defend himself if attacked. Von Richelieu was not entirely certain he would win such an encounter, so he had judiciously avoided any reaction that might leave him unable to back down without losing face.
“Yes,” he allowed with an expansive sweep of his arm, “that is how one of your limited experience would see it.” He paused as he let that barb sink in and saw Kavanagh’s mouth twitch in annoyance. He waited another moment before continuing. “But you really must learn to see the larger picture now that you are immortal, young one.” At least for the next few weeks anyway.
He allowed a relaxed smile to cross his face and held Kavanagh’s gaze for a long moment. The use of the words ‘young one’ had hit Kavanagh just as he had wanted them to, and he could see the anger boiling within the younger man. If he lost control, then the others would be forced to restrain him and he would be staked at dawn for having challenged his master without due cause or, more importantly, the right to do so. Von Richelieu watched the younger vampire struggle to suppress his temper, something that was becoming increasingly difficult now that the infected blood was eroding his control. Von Richelieu almost pitied the vampire for a moment, but only for a moment.
He was impressed despite his misgivings about the young vampire. For such a youth he had remarkable control over his emotions, especially when the serum was eroding his grip as each day went by. Von Richelieu could see the blood dripping onto the floor under Kavanagh’s hands where the young vampire was digging into his palms to distract his anger and he decided to try once again to see if he could nudge him over the edge.
“It is just as well you fledglings have calmer heads to guide you, sometimes I feel that you need help finding your own prey in the pens outside.” Von Richelieu knew he was risking alienating more than just those who he directed the insult toward, but this was such a perfect opportunity to push Kavanagh that it was worth the risk. Besides, he would prefer to remove this threat now rather than have to wait another few weeks or months with his constant questioning. Anything could happen in that time and Kavanagh was far too dangerous. “Your comments have been noted, but you can leave Von Kruger to me. I am well aware of the situation and have the matter in hand.”
With that, Von Richelieu turned away from the council in dismissal. He smiled as he heard a number of them gasp at his arrogance. He wished he could look back and see Kavanagh’s face. His insult was almost as clear as a physical slap, and he expected to hear a challenge any second. But he waited and waited, and when he eventually forced himself to turn back and look he could see that Kavanagh had left the room silently, without so much as a grunt of anger. That vampire is truly far too dangerous to leave to chance, he thought as he allowed his gaze to sweep those that were left.
Although each might be like a God to humans and could strike fear among their own thrall armies, they were merely sheep in his presence and he dismissed them with a snort of derision. There was some small victory in Kavanagh’s retreat but he would have preferred a challenge. It would have been so much better to get it over with. He began to wonder if he should risk letting the serum take its toll on the vampire after all. Kavanagh could do so much damage in such a short time and Von Richelieu had no idea how debilitating the serum would be or how quickly its effects would become obvious. He might have to arrange something a little more imminent after all.
Kavanagh was furious. Not just at Von Richelieu but more so at himself. He should have been able to stay and stare down Von Richelieu’s taunts, but he had felt the anger begin to take over and he had had to flee. He paled as he thought about wh
at he had done. He had never run from any man in his life and it cut him deeply that he had done so now, especially now that he had become the world’s most powerful predator. But, as in most things, there was always someone further up the chain than you and there was no way that he could win in a straight fight against Von Richelieu.
It wasn’t the physical combat he feared, though. As a newborn he had few rights among the vampires. Theirs was a hierarchical structure where seniority and respect came from longevity and not from deeds. Their society, over the last few centuries, was based on secrecy and stagnation where humans were merely food and were rarely allowed into their exalted ranks.
The war with humanity had necessitated many changes to their carefully crafted rules. The fact that they had been forced to increase the number of vampires so quickly had led to many problems. Their rules and their society were not capable of handling such an increase in their numbers. There were problems worldwide, he had heard, though with no formal communications available, it was difficult to gauge exactly what was happening elsewhere.
Their society was crumbling from within. New, technologically savvy vampires were straining against the archaic systems and laws of those who ruled. There were still too many powers that the new vampires could not master so any direct conflict with the master vampires was still too risky. The rules protected them as well.
Any newborn vampire attacking a master vampire would be immediately restrained by all other vampires, whoever they supported, and staked to the ground to be left for the dawn. This death was feared among all the clans, regardless of age. Death would be agonising and slow as every cell would break down individually, causing intense and continuous agony until death finally claimed them. He had many ideas about what he would change if he could, but Von Richelieu was too canny. He would have to beat him with his intellect.
Kavanagh felt a shiver run through him as he thought back to the meeting. He had never lost control like that before. Ever since he had become a vampire he had accepted the urges and hungers that came with it, but this was something far different. He had lost control in there. In fact, the only way he had been able to stop himself from flying across the table and ripping Von Richelieu’s throat apart had been by tearing into the flesh of his own palms with his nails to distract himself from the anger which had boiled up from nowhere.
He had never known such raw emotion before. Even now he was still tempted to go back and rip Von Richelieu’s head off, regardless of the consequences. What was happening to him? Even when he had become a vampire and the thirst had hit him for the first time he had never lost control like that. He had looked like a pouting adolescent in that meeting and, while he might only be a young vampire, he should be able to control himself far better than that.
He continued to consider this as he strode out into the night. It was strange not to feel the blood thump through his veins as it had in life and it still took some getting used to. Blood still flowed, of course, but it did not pump like it had in life. It was more like a meandering stream that coursed through his veins, and it was disconcerting, to say the least.
The vampire body might be incredibly powerful but it could not produce the blood their bodies still needed to survive. It was the act of feeding, with the constant introduction of fresh blood, that forced the blood already in their systems to travel further through their bodies and keep their muscles and their flesh oxygenated. Without fresh blood to keep their blood flowing they would die.
As he walked he continued to think on his uncharacteristic reaction, and he realised that there had been more spontaneous fighting among the vampires of late and this was unusual. Vampires were not “hot-blooded” to use a human term and did not rule by emotion. They did not feel anger like humans did, did not feel desire or passion.
At first he had missed that. He had always thought that being a vampire would be one long orgy of sex and violence. Anne Rice really got that part wrong, he thought with a wry smile. It was hard to perform sexually when your blood did not travel with the same wild abandon as a human’s. However, the feeling of warm, fresh blood singing through your deflated veins more than made up for the loss of such high emotion. He had originally put these random acts of violence down to prolonged inaction but he was beginning to wonder. It was as if something had changed.
By their nature, vampires were violent and lived by their instincts. For centuries the older vampires had had to learn to curb these urges, but the newer vampires had not had that luxury and there had always been tension between the two groups, just nothing like it had been of late. Recently he had witnessed two vampires tear each other apart and, while they separated before one of them had killed the other, there was no doubt in Kavanagh’s mind that they would have killed each other if they had not been left alone. And, if the recent reports about Von Kruger were to be believed, it was plain that something had changed. But what?
Von Richelieu did not seem worried and that in itself made Kavanagh even more suspicious. He had always come down heavily on such behaviour. It was if he wanted…
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud commotion in one of the pens and he found himself heading over to see what was going on. He felt nothing for his former race as he approached the huge pens. The squalor they lived in and their pitiful fate did not move him at all. They had had their chance to join the ranks of vampires or thralls and had chosen to become food, so they deserved what happened to them.
He had embraced the vampires from the first he had heard of them. Of course he had been in prison at the time and had little to give up when they had stormed into the prison and offered the inmates the chance to join them. That was when the vampires were still taking anyone to boost their numbers. That soon changed, though, and many of those who had joined from the dregs of humanity had since been weaned out, either through attrition during the war or afterwards when the older vampires had decided that not all of those chosen were worthy of the gift of immortality. Nothing had been proved of course, but he had enough contacts to have heard of Von Richelieu’s Death Squads.
Of course, all that was in the past now that things had settled down, wasn’t it?
He could see a number of the humans moving about in the pen before him. Von Richelieu had corralled all the humans a number of months ago for no apparent reason. Before that the humans had wandered the city relatively freely, the serum replacing the need for walls. But then he had ordered these huge pens to be erected and all humans gathered up and placed inside them. He had given no reason but Kavanagh had had no interest either way so had not questioned it.
Now, though, he could see that some of the humans were clearly agitated. The guards were trying to get them to remain quiet but their usual zombie-like apathy was replaced by what seemed to be anger and despair. It seemed to be spreading through the whole pen and the general buzz of moaning was becoming quite loud in comparison to what he was used to. He looked over at another pen in the distance and his sharper eyesight had no difficulty in making out the figures in that pen. They seemed controlled and quiet.
Strange, he thought. The serum was administered at the same time to all humans so there should not have been such strange behaviour in one batch and not another. It was possible that the serum was at fault, of course. Maybe a bad batch had got through somehow. He would have to investigate.
He did not like inconsistencies.
Captain William Carter winced as he pulled himself up into the armoured car’s turret. His shoulder still pained him, especially in the mornings when the air was still chilled like it was this morning. He had tried everything to get rid of the pain, and he had beaten more than one doctor senseless when they had insisted that the wound had healed perfectly and that there was no reason for the continuous pain.
He popped another handful of pills into his palm and closed his eyes as he waited for the painkillers to do their job. There were fewer and fewer supplies of these painkillers left and they did not work quite as well on his new physiology as th
ey had when he was human, but they did take the edge off the pain. Production had stopped quite some time before the war during the power crisis and there had been so many wounded during the war that medical supplies had become very rare indeed. His men were under orders to search every town in the two states but this effort had yielded few results up till now.
As soon as he closed his eyes the scenes of that fateful day played in his head and he saw his men die over and over, their bodies staggering and pirouetting as the bullets from his gun pumped into them. He felt no remorse in killing his men but the images, strangely, would not leave him, and the pain in his shoulder would not go either. In a brief flash of insight he wondered if the two were related. Could guilt manifest itself like this? He forced his eyes open and the images disappeared immediately, at least until later that night. The pain in his shoulder began to ease as the painkillers began to take effect.
He forced his mind to more urgent matters. It promised to be a busy day. His advance scouts had discovered tracks of a small patrol heading toward the neighbouring state where Nero ruled. His men had reported no sightings of thralls along that border but, of course, that meant little these days. States did not trade or converse with each other at any level, so this, in itself, was not unusual. However, he had a thought as his patrol had relayed their findings, and the more he considered it the more he was convinced he was right.
It was possible that the rebel humans were operating from within Nero’s territory. They had searched so extensively in their own states that it had occurred to him that the humans could have their base in another state where they did not cause any trouble and slipped across the border for their raids. This would leave them relatively free to operate as they had done and would explain why his patrols, and those of Von Kruger, had failed to discover any trace of their hiding place.