Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1)

by Griffiths, Brent J.

  A miasma of smoke hung above the table, a result of the various items the group was smoking. One of the boys was smoking a pipe. The three girls were smoking French cigarettes, the ones with the colored cigarette papers, two pink and one purple. The faint odor of mint suggested that the remaining boy was smoking menthols.

  An observer would have thought it slightly odd the way that they looked back and forth at each other. It was uncanny how they would all turn as one towards one of their number then would turn to look at another as if following a conversation that only they were aware of. They looked mostly to a blond girl with pale blue, almost colorless eyes smoking the purple cigarette. However, there was no observer. You would expect that such an attractive, yet odd, group would draw the occasional glance, but they didn’t.

  The door of the pub opened and the crowd parted like the Red Sea for a slim girl with copper hair. She walked up to the table and sat in the empty chair.

  The girl with the purple cigarette flipped her blond hair out of her eyes and leaned forward slightly. The newcomer flinched, the others smiled slightly.

  Charlie knew Leader would be annoyed; she hated waiting. You would have thought her many, many years of life would have given her patience as well as cunning. No such luck. Although Leader looked to be somewhere between the age of eighteen and thirty, inside she was a grumpy old witch, steeped in ancient evil.

  As Charlie sat, Leader’s thought hit her between the eyes like a cattle bolt. Leader’s thought was broadcast so the others could hear.

  Leader: Where the fuck have you been, bitch?

  Leader must have been really annoyed to chastise her in front of the others. Charlie sensed their amusement as they anticipated her humiliation. Even Baby, the newest member of their group, seemed amused. Baby usually tried to avoid the attentions of the others, especially the boys. She would grow more confident with age; they all did. Charlie could only just remember what it was like when she was Baby long, long ago.

  Charlie fidgeted. Her hands traced the wards scratched onto the surface of the table. To Charlie’s eyes they appeared to glow a cool electric blue. They felt cold to her touch, further indication that they were active. The wards were camouflaged by various other scratches and graffiti covering the tabletop. Only one of the Quickened or partially Quickened, like Leader and the rest of the coven, would be able to notice the pattern. Leader had scratched the wards into the table months ago, when they decided to make the pub a regular meeting place. The first of their coven to arrive for each meeting was responsible for activating the wards, guaranteeing them privacy.

  Charlie broadcast her thoughts back to the entire group.

  Charlie: Apologies, Leader, I am sorry I am late.

  Leader: When I call, you come. Open to me.

  Charlie instantly laid her mind bare to Leader. She knew better than to show the slightest hesitation when Leader was peeved, a lesson learned many decades ago. It could have been centuries ago, the years tended to run together.

  Over the years she had learned other things too, such as a way to hide important things from Leader. Things like John, or whatever his name was. She jealously guarded that little tidbit of information. He was too good to share.

  Leader rummaged through her thoughts and memories like a bag lady at a skip. Leader did not find much of interest, except for the rather uncharitable thought Charlie had about Leader as she entered the pub. Leader briefly switched to the private mode with Charlie, cutting the others from the communication.

  Leader –> Charlie: A grumpy witch, hmm? Show me respect even in your private thoughts, or you will regret it.

  She switched back to broadcast mode and continued.

  Leader: If you are late again I’ll cut your fucking nose off and stuff it up your arse. Got it?

  Charlie: Yes, Leader.

  Charlie lowered her eyes, the picture of contrition. One of the boys, the slim one, also blond, snorted. They all looked at him, radiating shock at his lack of control. He radiated back humor with a touch of sheepishness and broadcast back to them.

  Donald: Sorry. But, come on, that’s funny. Cutting off her nose and putting it in her arse. You know an arse smells, right? And her nose would be there.

  They all looked away from him, uncomfortably, as they often did.

  Charlie reached for the cigarette box on the table and selected one with a green cigarette paper. She was vain and knew it would bring out the color of her eyes. She lit it with a Zippo that was lying beside the cigarette carton. She then pulled a crystal from her tiny purse and placed it on the table.

  Leader: You can put away your Soul Catcher; we are not here to share tonight. Children, I need you all to be discreet for a little while. No culling until I tell you otherwise.

  Donald and Charlie both interrupted.

  Charlie: But the Festival starts next week.

  Donald: Please, Leader, no. Festival is the perfect time to feed. There will be a million strangers in town.

  Leader mentally tweaked the pain centers of their brains. They both twitched and stopped sending their thoughts. Leader did not acknowledge the interruption.

  Leader: I have heard from some of my sources that there have been a couple of disappearances.

  The other boy ran a hand through his lush brown hair.

  Lewis: Why should that concern us? We make people disappear all the time.

  The girl beside Leader also leaned forward. The boys looked into her brown eyes, studiously avoiding looking into the ample cleavage she presented to them.

  Little Eve: Oh boys, how can you be so dense? Not herd disappearances, Hunter disappearances.

  Little Eve somehow managed to project a Gallic twist to her thought. Charlotte and the others did not know how she did it. They were not using actual words to communicate, so how could she think with a French accent? Oh well, they all hoarded their little secrets and tricks from each other.

  Leader: Correct, Eve, the boys are dense. Let me be one hundred percent clear. Hold off on feeding for a few weeks until we can find out what it going on.

  Baby: WHAT COULD IT BE? WHAT COULD TAKE ONE OF US DOWN?

  Charlie managed to suppress a flinch when Baby spoke. Some of the more sensitive of the Herd in the pub shivered a little and looked around uncomfortably, subconsciously feeling the presence of a predator in the room.

  Baby may have been young, but she was strong, very strong. They had all spent years trying to beat some control into her but she was also stubborn. Of course they were all stubborn. You needed to be stubborn to survive the transition from Herd to Hunter. But there was stubborn and there was fucking stubborn. Baby was the latter.

  Leader sent a brief pulse of pain through Baby, chastising her. Baby took it without complaint or acknowledgement. Tough little bitch.

  Leader: That is what I need to find out. It could be a new coven in town or a couple of rogues. It is even a possibility that some of the Herd have become aware of us and want to uncover our secrets. Given, that is rare, but it is not unheard of. If any of the Herd threatens our existence they will bring dark days down upon their heads.

  They all paused to draw deep on their nicotine delivery systems.

  Eventually Charlie broke their reverie.

  Charlie: Does this prohibition just apply to new culls? What about culls underway?

  Leader: Everything stops, old, new, underway, everything. This includes your new paramour, Charlie. We keep our heads down. Let me know if you see or hear anything.

  Charlie felt a chill. She had hidden John from leader, she was sure she had.

  Charlie: New paramour?

  Leader just looked at her.

  Charlie: OK, I have a new paramour. But Leader, he has been most difficult to crack. I have been grooming him for weeks through chance encounters. He is going to meet me tonight. I just need a couple more days.

  Leader: No.

  Charlie pouted and veiled her thoughts from the others. She was sure that she had hidden John from Leader’s
mind ream. She must have guessed from Charlie’s objections. And Charlie had just confirmed it. Stupid. She was going to have to be more careful. There was no way that she was going to let John slip the noose.

  Leader: I mean it, Charlie. If you disobey me in this, you will wish for something as minor as having a nose suppository.

  Donald snorted again. The others ignored him, again.

  Charlie was waiting in the pub for “John.”

  It was Thursday night and the pub was half empty, a testament to how truly atrocious the weather was. The chances were good that he would turn up.

  She had been careful. She had popped into a few other pubs before reaching her destination to see if she was being followed. Her mind was locked up tight — her colleagues should not be able to detect her, even if they were right outside. Well, except for Baby, maybe. Or possibly Leader; none of them really knew how strong Leader was or what tricks she had up her ancient sleeve.

  Most customers entered the pub with heads bowed and shoulders hunched — because of the rain — so no one noticed anything odd when he first came through the door. He started to draw glances when he did not straighten up and he did not immediately take off his coat in the hot, damp interior of the pub. He looked around self-consciously.

  She was at a table farthest from the door. She had chosen a location from which she could watch him as he made his slow and painful way across the pub. The other patrons watched him over the rims of their glasses or in the large mirror that covered the wall behind the bar.

  Eventually he got to her table. He was sweating in his slicker. She said, “Hiya,” brightly.

  “I can’t stay long.”

  She pouted, “You only just got here.” She crossed her legs and the short black mini skirt she was wearing rode a little higher up her milky thigh.

  “Let’s just have a drink and see, OK?”

  “Sure, can you get me a vodka and Diet Coke?”

  “Umm, sure. Is there table service?”

  “No, you need to go to the bar.”

  “Alright, I’ll be right back.” He turned tortuously away and hobbled over to the bar.

  He came back with her drink in his right hand and a pint of Guinness for himself in his left, the rubber coating on the mechanical hand ensuring the glass did not slip. He placed the drinks on the table and lowered himself onto the backless stool, topped with red velveteen upholstery. He hid his left hand under the table and placed his good right hand on the table beside his pint.

  She downed her drink and said, “Another round?”

  He looked at his untouched pint, placed it on the table and said, “I think I will sit this one out.”

  “Suit yourself, same again for me.”

  He looked at her for a second then slowly climbed to his feet and made his way to the bar.

  “Hey you, mutie. You trying to get that lassie drunk?”

  He was on his fifth trip to the bar. He looked over at a bloke with a moustache and receding hairline standing at the bar with a few of his pals said, “Wha?”

  “I said,” he said slowly and loudly, looking around the pub to make sure he was the center of attention. “Hey you, mutie. Are you fucking well trying to get that young lassie drunk?” He smirked. “You should be, if you want her to be able to look at your face without pukin’.”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Stache said. He turned to one of his friends, who was clean shaven and had a large beer belly, and said in falsetto, “I don’t want any trouble, he says.” Stache turned back to him and said, “Well trouble found you, pal.”

  He backed away to the table and heard Belly say, “You tell him. It’s disgustin’. Him taking advantage of that wee lassie.” He leered over at Charlie. Charlie looked over demurely and batted her eyelashes.

  He backed away from the bar, knowing further discussion would just escalate things.

  He got to the table and said, “Charlie, we got to go.”

  She stretched like a cat in the sun, “Why? I was just starting to have fun and you haven’t finished your pint.”

  “We’ve got to go. There are some sphincters at the bar who have taken a strong dislike to me,” he said softly.

  “What, that bald cunt with the ridiculous moustache and that fat cunt beside him at the bar?” she said loudly and then laughed. She had a beautiful laugh; whenever he heard it he needed to remind himself that her beautiful façade hid the soul of a twisted beast.

  Stache and Belly looked over with narrowed eyes and hard jaws.

  “We have to go. Now,” he said again softly but more forcefully.

  She stood up unsteadily and put her arm around him. Although she appeared to be leaning on him she did not actually put much weight on him. He suspected she was trying to appear to be much drunker than she actually was.

  She continued to speak loudly, “Don’t you worry, they were only playing. Weren’t you, boys?” She laughed gaily.

  She winked at Stache and Belly as they walked slowly past, reveling in their glowers.

  As they stepped out into the rain, she shouted back into the pub. “Did you want him for yourself, you fucking queers?” She laughed again.

  He looked back into the pub and could see Stache and Belly downing their pints and pulling on their coats.

  “Feces,” he said.

  Her little cripple was doing a strange hopping hobble that she supposed was his method of running and pulling her along behind him. They reached a nearby alley and ducked around the corner.

  She giggled.

  He shot her a glare from his one good eye and motioned her to be silent. She decided to indulge him and kept quiet.

  The swirling mixture of fear, embarrassment and anger that he was unconsciously transmitting were a heady tonic to her. She activated her Soul Catcher to capture some of the excess emotional energy he was giving off. She would savor it later.

  He peeked around the corner and then she felt his wave of relief; their pursuers from the bar must have decided they preferred the warm interior of the pub to a cold, wet chase.

  He turned back to her and abruptly the emotional energy he was emitting cut off — he had remarkable control, this cripple. She was starting to suspect there was much more to him than he let on.

  He pulled his hand from his pocket and she heard a snapping sound followed by twin pinpricks on her stomach. She looked down and saw two wires running from her belly to the index and middle finger of his left hand. The tips of those fingers had levered open to allow the wires to shoot out and lodge in her stomach.

  She laughed, not even bothering to pull the wires out. “A Taser? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You have no idea what you are dealing with, little man.”

  “This is no ordinary Taser,” he said, his voice low.

  She felt every muscle in her body lock as the current flowed through her. Blackness descended and wiped away her consciousness before she was able to feel surprise at being taken by one of the Herd.

  St. Andrews, Scotland, 1994

  The Bute building was mainly dedicated to the Biology department, but a few rooms were set aside for the fledgling Parapsychology department. The Psychology department was housed in a completely separate building next to the Bute. When the Parapsychology Department had been founded, the Psychology Department had lobbied hard and successfully to have the Parapsychology Department housed in any building other than the Psychology building, not wanting to risk confusion and have its own fairly recent credibility linked to the disreputable new science of Parapsychology.

  The computer lab in the Bute building was a rectangular room with a two-foot wide counter protruding from the wall. Putty-colored PCs were crammed onto the encircling counter, with just enough space between them to avoid overheating. There were no classes, as it was Saturday morning, so the lab was packed with longhairs — as Jonni Brown called them — playing Doom against each other. Finn did not recognize any of them from the Psych, Parapsych or Biology departme
nts; they were most likely overflow from the IT and Maths computer labs.

  Finn had snagged one of the last available computers.

  He accessed the drive Proctor had made available to him and was pleased to see that there was a massive amount of data he could play with. After an hour of analysis he started to feel a little depressed as he started to realize the scope of the undertaking he had signed up for. His mild to moderate hangover from the prior night’s revelries was not helping much either.

  He could not remember how many pubs he and Rebecca had hit on the pub crawl. He vaguely remembered being chased out of the Cross Keys by some townies after Rebecca dared him to order a cocktail at the bar. A snowball? Yes, he thought it was a snowball. Somewhere along the way they had mitotically split into two separate drunken people rather than the original three-legged drunken hybrid, through the loss of the scarf that bound their legs. He remembered losing track of all the other pub crawl participants and ending up, unsurprisingly, in the Student Union.

  Every pub crawl he had ever been on — well, both of them — ended up at the Student Union. It — as well as the Late Night Bakery and the All Night Garage — was one of the post-midnight lodestones for the student population in the town, as well as any townies that could sneak in. As it was Friday night, the Union provided the one club fix — other than the occasional beach party — that the dance-deprived students of the old University town craved, the Megabop Disco. The name was rather embarrassing, but the drinks were cheap and it was full of young people lost in abandon. It could have been called the Shithole and it would still be packed thanks to it being a late night hedonistic monopoly. The other pubs in town shut down at eleven thirty.

  He remembered not dancing, thankfully, and he remembered talking and talking. But most of all he remembered the laughter that he and Bex shared.