The Phoenix Chronicles_Alone in the Light

by M. K. Williams

  “Are you okay, Sam? I know you can do this!”

  He was dimly aware of her words but did not respond; his thoughts were entirely focused on finding the young woman. Then it happened; he could hear her heartbeat, it was fast and erratic. He now had a focal point to meditate on. Moments later he could see the white blouse she was wearing, she was becoming clearer and more vivid in his mind; he could now see her face and the wound on her neck. Suddenly a large thud vibrated in his mind and her face appeared clearer. The pain he felt was immense as his right hand released its grip from his leg and wiped his dripping nose. Slightly opening his eyes, his gaze fell upon his hand; it was covered in blood. His nose was bleeding and the more he concerned himself with that, the faster the image of the girl became clouded by fog.

  “I can see her,” he said.

  Rachel had a look of complete astonishment on her face. She had never seen Sam like this before; she had never seen him bleed.

  “Okay, where is she?” Rachel uttered in a tone that suggested she feared for Sam’s health.

  Sam focused, and with all the energy he had left, he fixed on the girl’s image, and the sound of her heart beating. The fog again began to clear and the woman was back in focus. He slowly began to extend the image, not only looking at her but also at her surroundings. She lay against an iron railing that was painted black but in places had turned brown and flaky with rust. Beneath her feet was grass and, behind her, tall trees that were sparsely spread out from one another. The pain and pounding returned, but he was so close. The image expanded until he saw something else, a street sign. His concentration was instantly broken as he leapt to his feet. Recoiling in shock, Rachel stared as Sam darted off back the way they had come. Pulling herself to her feet, she quickly followed. For a man who seemed exhausted, his feet moved swiftly and Rachel found it hard to keep up. It wasn’t long before they entered one of London’s many parks.

  Sam paused and whispered, “She’s here. And we’re not alone!”

  Rachel’s concern for Sam’s well-being increased to sheer panic and fear for both their lives.

  “Move!” she ordered.

  The pair ran off, looking around the park. It didn’t take long until Rachel’s eyes fell upon the girl. The wound on her neck was small but blood poured from it profusely.

  “Here, over here,” Rachel shouted and Sam quickly turned to see what was in her gaze. A woman who appeared to be in her early thirties lay with her back against the railings. Her blood-covered hand rested on her shoulder, having given up on its vain attempt to stop the bleeding from the neck wound. Her body appeared lifeless, spread out in full view. Moving closer to the woman, Sam and Rachel lowered their bodies. Sam quickly took off his jacket and placed it hard against her neck. Rachel moved to the woman’s ear and spoke clearly and loudly.

  “Hello, are you awake? We’re here to help you. My name’s Rachel; what’s yours?”

  Sam’s attention drifted off, he hadn’t heard or seen anything, but rather he could feel something.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. We have to go now!” Sam’s words emulated the angst he felt inside. Rachel, not wasting another second, quieted her mind and began to use her gift. Focusing on all three of them and the entrance to Headquarters, she attempted to make a switch in space. Within a few seconds of Rachel’s eyes closing the three of them had vanished in a flash of bright light, resembling a small, silent explosion, each ray of light appearing as a tiny marble of energy scattering off into the night.

  …

  Undiscovered in the corner of the darkness, Canola stood staring at the spot where the vampire’s victim had been and where the two vermin belonging to the Order of Light had been moments before. I should have killed them and taken the girl, he thought.

  He was eager for a fight; it was his job, a low-ranking assassin in a grand sect of mercenaries. He loved the fight, he existed to kill. His early life had been spent growing up in the poorest and darkest parts of Moscow. His upbringing harsh, he often remembered the hardships his parents bore, struggling to put food on the table and to keep the fire burning. Those days were far behind him. Now his family had a large home where the fireplace was always lit and the feeling of hunger was a distant memory. His life had changed on his fifteenth birthday when he realised he was what both the Council and the Order referred to as ‘gifted’; he soon found himself caught up with the Council, and the killings had begun. But this night wasn’t the night for his hands to be covered in blood. He had strict orders to monitor the girl and to only take her in if she turned. The most important command he was given was not to get caught, not to get involved in a fight with agents from the Order of Light. It was time to leave; he needed to report to his client; a powerful man whose instructions were to be followed to the letter. To disobey would mean certain death.

  …

  One mile away another hired hand took aim with his rifle. Tom didn’t have any ordinary ammunition; he knew his gun was loaded with the very thing, the only thing he currently needed to eliminate his prey. Down the sight he could see two targets, both very tempting but only one would be his victim, only one would die from his shot. The girl in his sights he had seen before, she was athletic and strong. Something about her made him tingle inside, a gentle burning sensation.

  He took great pleasure in watching them fight. He already knew what the outcome would be, but to change the victor wasn’t the reason he was being paid; that wasn’t the reason he was there.

  Several bright sapphire-blue flashes lit the entire alley below. The female yielded great power, but it wasn’t the first competent Phoenix he had seen in action. He had seen many battles through his life, and during the latter part of his twenties he had seen twice as many as during the first. Tom didn’t class himself as a bounty hunter or an assassin. He enjoyed being defined as a well-trained, slightly expensive but always delivering, artist of pain and slaughter. That was his pitch to his clients and that’s generally what he practised. He never found himself out of work. He was good at what he did, and he enjoyed the rewards that came with his risky lifestyle. Always being in such high demand because of his deadly talents, he was well known to the Order of Light. He had always been on their radar, yet always just out of their reach. He loved antagonising the Order, flaunting his ‘art’ so close to them and then recoiling away before a Phoenix could pounce. He had only ever fought one Phoenix before and the battle didn’t go quite as he had expected. He often duelled with other agents of the Order, the gifted as they were known. But ever since the day he duelled with Yi-Mao, he tried hard to always steer clear of direct confrontation with a Phoenix – that was until tonight.

  …

  “Yes, okay, yes.”

  The vampire’s words were disappointing to Zhing. She enjoyed a good fight and her initial instinct told her that this vampire would put up more of a challenge. The chase and the fight, though quick, were intense for the young woman. She had fought many battles and she was trained to focus her senses during combat, listening intently to the voice from within, the voice of her Phoenix.

  As her pulse began to slow, she could feel a strange, niggling burning sensation. It wasn’t painful and she had felt it many times before. Responding to this intuition she knew that something wasn’t right; she reverted to her training, closed her eyes, concentrated her mind and searched her soul for the voice of Athena.

  Instantly reacting to gentle words within her mind, she turned her body suddenly, stretched out her arms, palms open wide and from them a sapphire light began to form a circle-like shield in front of her. In that same split second, she heard the phut of a silenced gun being fired and a bizarre whistling sound, which was interrupted by a thud. Then there was a moment of eerie silence.

  The silence was broken by a yelp of pain from the vampire. Turning her head, Zhing could see a small black metallic projectile lodged deep in the vampire’s chest. Immediately she stepped in front of him to ensure her field covered them both.

  “You oka
y?” Zhing said as she knelt in front of him, still using the shimmering blue shield as cover. Reaching over, she pulled the dart from his chest. As it came away, broken glass fell from it.

  Panting hard as if he was trying to breathe, the vampire’s forehead began to glow red.

  “What was that? I’m hot, it’s like I’m on fire,” he gasped.

  On hearing this, Zhing knew that the dart had injected him with some kind of poison, but what, and how deadly was it? She had no idea.

  “Don’t panic! I’ll take you back to Headquarters, they’ve got all known mystical poisons on record, and their antidotes, I’m certain Jon will…”

  Before she could finish her sentence the vampire began to shake uncontrollably. Red foam started to pour from his mouth and his pale skin began to come away from the muscle. Withdrawing in sheer shock, Zhing clenched her fist, bringing her sapphire shield down. Her eyes widened; she had seen many vampires die before but this seemed, even by their standards, barbaric.

  The vampire began to roll on the floor, screaming out in pain, his red fleshy muscle turned to sludge as a steam-like mist emanated from deep within his bones. His cries began to slowly quieten; what had been his liquefying body began to congeal into a pool of fleshy pulp. Even his bones began to melt as if they were on fire and the organs that lay caged within them began to turn to a foaming liquid.

  Zhing stood up with a start looking with disgust at the foul remains of the vampire. Even in her aberrant memories she couldn’t recall anything as gruesome as what she had just witnessed. A range of differing emotions began to whirl around her mind. Her shock, like the vampire, melted away; she was left feeling confused, weary, but most of all, angry. She had failed in her mission to bring the vampire in for questioning. Who could have been so cowardly, so meticulous, to use a poisoned dart to stop her? She knew the answer to her question before she had even thought it. Turning her head in the direction from which the mysterious shot had been fired, she thought of the one person who was more than capable, someone who would’ve actually relished the task.

  Zhing whispered, “It was Tom… It was Kronos!”

  …

  - Chapter Two -

  The Chosen Life

  It was the early hours of the morning and the medical team in the Andromeda-Aceso centre had not yet gone to bed; they had been up all night fighting their own battle. The centre looked like an ordinary hospital ward, apart from a few exceptions. The room was comprised of one long row of beds on either side with a wide central walkway. At one end of the ward there were three elevators, each with solid oak doors and what appeared to be gold fittings. At the other end of the room there was a narrow office and an awkwardly shaped storeroom. The medical centre was lit by bright, artificial light, glaring from a long row of fluorescent lights that stretched along the middle of the ceiling; it was the only way to illuminate such a long windowless space.

  The office and storeroom were empty of people; those present were standing near a bed at the other end of the room close to the elevators. Three medical staff administered care to a young woman who lay lifeless on the bed. On the opposite side, atop a clean empty bed and facing the trio and the patient, a young woman was sitting upright; her eyes glared through her glasses and were fixed on the commotion.

  “Right, are the straps secure, have you checked the IV drip again? Make sure it’s the right concentration, don’t overdose her!” shouted Dr. Susan Gambon, whose words were orders rather than questions. Susan was fifty-two with a dark Mediterranean complexion and a strong South African accent which always gave a harshness to her words. “All right, where are those X-rays?” She barked her commands to the younger members of staff who darted around her trying to fulfil her demands.

  Susan insisted on a high level of respect from her staff; she had managed the medical centre for eighteen years now and in that time she had witnessed many supernatural illnesses.

  “The IV is good, X-rays are in your office and the straps are secure,” said a youthful man dressed in a white overall that was unbuttoned, revealing his grey suit beneath.

  “Good, thank you. Okay. We need to take another blood sample and run another ‘Hormone-V2 type’ test.”

  She looked at the two assistants who glanced at each other for an instant then quickly carried out her order. Looking over to the opposite side of the room, she noticed that Rachel was still on the end of a bed. For Susan, the last five hours had flashed by so quickly. It seemed like five minutes ago that she had gotten the emergency call, alerting her that two agents of the Order were on their way in with a vampire victim. She and her team had collected their emergency equipment and run up to meet them at the entrance to the building where they had quickly strapped the young casualty to a trolley and rushed her down to the ward.

  “Where’s Sam?” enquired Susan as she moved and sat beside Rachel.

  “Oh, he went to bed about twenty minutes ago,” Rachel replied, sheepishly.

  Rachel turned her head and looked at the clock that rested above the elevator doors. “Wow, I mean – two hours ago.”

  “I didn’t hear him leave. Time has a funny way of running away from you down here, in the darkest depths of headquarters,” said Susan.

  “How’s she doing? Is she stable?” As Rachel spoke her eyes looked back towards the woman strapped to the bed by her arms, feet and waist.

  “To be honest, I’m not really too sure. We’ve managed to stop the bleeding which is good, but the venom from the vampire’s canines has transmitted the infection through her lymphatic system faster than expected. She is on a drip of what we call ‘Dianna’s cocktail’, it’s an intravenous solution of synthetic compounds mimicking the old mixture of garlic extracts, silver molecules and limestone that the apothecaries of old used to administer orally; of course my concoction is a bit more effective, it stops the spread of the infection.” Susan spoke coldly and clinically as she often did, always providing more information than was ever sought.

  “How bad is the infection?” asked Rachel. She didn’t know much about the transformation process of a vampire but she asked the question in the hope of a dumbed-down answer.

  “I’ve the X-rays now, they should show the extent of the infection; we need to check if it’s spread to the organs, which I’m guessing it already has.”

  “You guess?” Rachel uttered. “Will the X-rays show you for sure?”

  “They’re not actually X-rays in the conventional sense, we just call them that round here. I think they’ll confirm what I suspect though. You see, her skin is pale and green, which indicates that her liver and kidney processes have slowed. The virus attacks all organs in the body, causing them to shut down so it can complete the metamorphosis of its host. If you want, you can come with me, we can look at the images together,” replied Susan.

  The pair walked the seventy-metre-long ward to Susan’s office. Unlocking the door and walking through, Susan took off her jacket and placed it onto her chair. Following her in, Rachel took a long look around. “It’s bigger than I expected.”

  “Well, it’s not just my office, it’s for all the medical staff, but I do use it as my own personal study,” Susan replied.

  Susan had an element of self-importance when she spoke. Picking up a large white folder from the top of a pile of paperwork, she opened it and emptied three prints into her hand. Walking over to the light fixture on the wall, she placed them onto the screen and switched it on.

  “Oh,” Susan gasped after just a few seconds of analysing the images.

  “What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, panicked.

  Susan pointed to the first image, which from the outline of the bones, showed it to be the woman’s pelvis. Susan explained:

  “It appears that the infection has already destroyed her uterus and constructed the vampyr minor organ from her ovaries. This is deeply worrying; I’m going to do a CT scan to confirm it,” she stepped back from the screen, her hand over her mouth.

  “Vampyr minor?” Rachel’s inex
perience with vampire anatomy was ever apparent in her tone and expression.

  “There are two distinct stages of pre-vampire metamorphosis; one is the creation of the vampyr minor. This organ is made from the patient’s reproductive organs, and produces the hormones for the second stage, which is the construction of the vampyr major organ from the heart. The vampyr major is responsible for producing enzymes that directly convert haemoglobin into a kind of energy source. It also regulates all the endocrine systems of the vampire,” Susan explained not once showing any emotion in her voice or on her face.

  “Has this vampyr major organ formed yet?” asked Rachel.

  “No, not yet, but it’s not long after the minor forms that the major is constructed, days, sometimes hours.” Shaking her head, Susan looked like she was at a loss for a solution to the situation.

  “What about Jonathon, maybe he can help her?” Rachel perked up; she thought she had the answer.

  “No, unfortunately the infection has spread too fast and has consumed too much of her, there’s nothing Jonathon can do at the moment. Hopefully the ‘Dianna cocktail’ will stop the spread, slow the progression and, fingers crossed, bring down vampyric-infection rate,” Susan said as she glared at another print.

  “Hopefully?” Rachel exclaimed, disheartened by Susan’s pessimism.

  “Don’t panic! I’ve seen victims in a similar state recover from a vampire bite in the past; she’s got a fifty–fifty chance of recovering. It’s just a waiting game now.” As the doctor spoke she placed a consoling hand on Rachel’s shoulder.