Wolves and hyenas would not bother a large group like the Legion, but single travelers were fair game, even if warded. Wards had little effect on animals, although they would protect him from detection by the Ferals and the wild tribes. It was safer to sleep off the ground and to deploy wards when possible.
Bral pulled the four black crystal cubes from his pack. Each was carved with a sigil. The extensive conditioning Bral underwent in the Academy induced a specific state of mind in him as he focused on each sigil, enabling him to activate each ward component in turn. He placed one of the ward stones to the north and focused on the sigil, and a faint midnight-blue glow at the center of the ward stone indicated that it had been activated. He then activated the southern ward stone, followed by east and then west. Once all the wards stones were activated, a set of faint silver lines connecting the blocks and outlining his camp flashed into existence and then faded from view. Gooseflesh prickled his arms and legs as the ambient temperature dropped slightly.
The energized wards would draw small amounts of heat from the surrounding environment to power a Compulsion that discouraged intelligent beings from noticing him. There were many different types of ward but Bral’s was pretty standard for a lone traveler. The wards would not prevent someone from finding him if he made a lot of noise or drew attention to himself in some overt manner, but if he was quiet he would remain undisturbed.
Wards set, Bral rolled himself in his blanket to counteract the chill coming off the ward stones and drifted off to sleep.
It was dark when Bral woke. The sky was a moonless velvet cloak studded with diamond dust.
He heard a faint noise and then another.
He silently rolled over toward the edge of the boulder, making sure to not break the warding, and peered into the night.
Thousands of shadows were moving along the road. They were fairly quiet; however, it was impossible for such a large group to travel in complete silence. Each stumble and scuff of a foot against the ground produced a counterpoint to the gentle surf like the sound of thousands of furs and leathers rubbing against skin as they walked.
He quickly checked his wards; they were intact. If he just stayed put, they would not notice him and pass by.
Unfortunately, letting them pass was not an option. This unknown force appeared to be following the Ninety-First and, based on their stealthy nighttime travel, it was unlikely that they were friendly. Bral had no choice in the matter. He knew what Hael would do in this situation, so Bral could do no less.
He needed to scout the mysterious troop, then he needed to bring whatever intelligence he could glean to Hael, and he needed to do it while the information was of some use to Hael.
He left the relative safety of his warded camp and eased over the lip of the boulder away from the road, taking only his bronze short sword with him.
Moving slowly, painfully slowly, it had taken Bral an hour to ease into his position in a tree by the side of the road. He could now confirm that the shadowy figures that had woken him were Feral. He could also see that his was no normal tribe, not by a long shot. It was bigger than any Feral gathering he had ever heard of. This was a Feral army. He estimated that there must have been fifteen thousand of them, and about half of the group was made up of males of fighting age, aged eleven to fifty.
This high proportion of fighting males supported his theory that this was an army, not a tribe. According to his studies, a quarter of a tribe was usually considered combat capable, not half. In addition, it looked like most of the males were also armed with wooden cudgels and stone hammers. These typical Feral weapons were much cruder than the bronze swords and spears used by the Legions, but the Ferals’ great strength of arm and mind made these crude weapons deadly in battle when deployed in force.
Bral slowly started to ease his way back to the ground so he could make his escape when a branch he stepped on gave way and sent him crashing to the ground. He landed awkwardly on his left arm and heard a snap like the sound of a breaking branch. The subsequent wave of agony told him that his partially healed arm had been broken again.
He blocked the pain and scrambled to his feet as a thousand queries pinged off his mental shield. The queries intensified. He focused to reinforce his shields. They held for now.
The Feral would now know that they had been observed by one of the Guest. He would need to keep moving or they would get a fix on him and Compel him to stop. His mental shield would not be able to withstand the onslaught of thousands of angry Feral minds. Grasping his left arm with his right, he stumbled into the night.
The sound of the Feral raiding party searching the undergrowth was receding.
Bral had found an overgrown strand of trees, a small forest, really, and had pushed his way into a thorny bush. His pursuers had searched for a half hour but, as they really could not be certain if he was hiding or if he was still making his way to the Legion, they had been forced to continue up the road on their search.
Once they were out of sight and hearing, Bral rose and pushed his way out of the concealing bush, the thorns leaving tears in his clothing and bloody scratches on his exposed skin. He would circle around them and strike directly to the Legion. They had the disadvantage of needing to search every grove of trees, every clump of boulders and every gully until they picked up his trail. As long as he did not rejoin the road too soon, he would be able to build up an insurmountable lead. He would reach the Legion first, as long as he could keep running.
Tears of relief flowed down Bral’s face as he crested a hill and saw the Legion’s encampment spread out ahead. The troopers’ tents were laid out in orderly concentric circles, with the command tents in the center. Hael’s tent would be in the largest of the command tents. There were ten other officer’s tents. The officers lived in relative comfort with five officers to each tent.
Off to the side were large, enclosed wagons that transported the Nightfeeders. They mostly slept in the wagons during the day and ranged ahead of the Legion during the night. Although they could function during the day if required, they were more vulnerable to being overloaded when used in direct sunlight.
There was no Trolla or Ogra irregulars attached to the Legion. They would have just slowed the Legion further. If required, they could be detached and dispatched from a Heavy Infantry or Engineering Legion in the field. In the worst case scenario and neither class of irregular was available and nearby when needed, Hael would ask his troopers for volunteers for alteration.
Bral shouted for help and broadcast distress as he freewheeled down the hill, his legs barely keeping up with his body. A couple of sentries trotted over to meet him.
“By the Emperor’s golden scrotum, who are you? What happened to you?” the sentry said.
Bral looked like death ever so slightly warmed up. Dark circles surrounded his eyes, his clothes were tattered, scrapes and scratches covered his face and arms, one of which dangled uselessly at his side. He actually felt worse than he looked; the pain from his broken arm was seeping through the mental block he had put in place the night before.
Bral caught his breath and said, “I am Ga Bral, brother to your commander, there is a Feral army on your trail. I must see my brother now.”
The sentry who had spoken looked at his comrade, sending a private communication. “Follow me,” he said to Bral.
It seemed to Bral that every trooper had emerged from their tent at the sound of the disturbance and was watching them approach the command tent. Bral’s dramatic appearance and broadcast of distress had piqued the interest of the entire Legion. A month in the field with no action made the troopers hunger for any diversion, even if it meant the potential of battle.
Even in his exhausted state and knowing that battle with a foe with a huge advantage in numbers was imminent, Bral felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He had made it, he would be part of Hael’s Legion and he had brought critical intelligence to his brother. Hael would be proud of him.
He had a clear view of the comman
d tent as the flap opened and familiar figure emerged. A wave of nausea hit him like a punch in the gut. He felt the burn of bile at the back of his throat. The smile died, stillborn on his face.
The sentry spoke, “Ah, here is your brother now.”
“Ah Bral, you are finally here. Took your time, didn’t you, you lazy little shit? I heard they chucked you out of the Academy. You’re an embarrassment and you look a bloody disgrace. Straighten yourself up, man, and then present yourself to report,” said Lucan. Lucan turned and reentered the Command tent.
Bral bent over and heaved the sparse contents of his stomach onto his sandals.
Chapter 10
Edinburgh, Scotland, 2015
Another deafening boom shook the building as the half-foot-thick steel slab that served as his front door was struck again. Finn could only imagine the amount of force required to make that particular door ring like a bell. Leader must have been pissed, pissed in the American context rather than the British, meaning she must have been really angry, not drunk.
Steel shutters slithering down to cover the windows indicated that his security measures were working as designed. The room was now dimly lit by the florescent lights attached to the bottom of his kitchen cabinets.
Finn took out his phone and pulled up the security feed. The glow from the phone lit his face from below.
He looked at Bex, and she looked terrified. He imagined that he looked the same, except uglier. Even terrified she was beautiful.
“Listen, Bex. There is no way she will get through that door, but she’ll soon realize that the door is probably stronger than the rest of the building. She will start looking for another way in.” As he was saying this the assault on the door stopped.
Finn turned to show his phone to Bex. It was displaying a feed from a camera from outside the door. She rose and stood behind his chair, so they could both watch the feed. On the phone’s screen she could see Leader standing in front of Finn’s door going quietly ape shit. Well, she was quiet on the phone, as the feed did not have audio, but Bex could imagine that if there was audio they would be learning a whole new vocabulary of curse words. Leader was standing in front of the door jumping up and down. It would have been funny if they had not known that Leader would slowly rip off their limbs if she got inside.
Suddenly, they saw Leader go still and then tilt her head, looking at the edge of the vault door. Bex thought she saw the impression of a smile before Leader hauled off and punched her fist through the wall to the left of the door.
The lights flickered and buzzed in the kitchen and Bex looked again at the feed on Finn’s phone. Leader was jerking around with her hand still in the wall. Bex looked at Finn, confused.
“It looks like she has just found the high voltage mesh in the walls. Interesting. I would have thought that much current would have knocked her out.” Bex narrowed her eyes at that comment. The florescent bulbs steadied and grew quiet. He looked up at Bex. “She managed to get her hand out. She’ll not be trying that again.” He looked back at the phone and frowned. “It looks like she’s leaving.”
“Leaving? She won’t leave until she evens the score and you’re up on points. She has a plan.”
“Maybe she’s ready to try the steel shutters on the windows. I don’t think she’ll have much luck with them; they’re electrified as well.”
Finn swiped his finger across his phone’s screen, scrolling through the camera feeds. Bex leaned in over his shoulder to get a better look at the small screen. Leader was now on the street outside the building looking down and walking back and forth over the cobbles, as if she was looking for something. Her right arm was blackened from fingertip to elbow from her encounter with the electric mesh. Bex knew Leader would already be healing and she knew that she would also be in great pain. Just because they could heal from most injuries didn’t mean that getting electrocuted didn’t hurt. It hurt like the bugger, as her dad used to say.
Leader’s breath fogged in the air as she stopped, and frost radiated out from where she stood, coating the cobbled street in a sparkling white. She got down on her hands and knees and punched down with her black fist. An explosion of dust and debris rose around her. Finn looked up at her to see if she had felt the same slight tremor through the ground. She nodded slightly, her face grim.
Leader was ripping out cobbles in great scooping movements with her hands, expanding the crater she had created. She stopped digging and reached into the ground and pulled up a large cable. She braced her feet on either side of the hole and heaved.
The cable started to pop out of the ground. Cobbles launched into the air as the cable came out of the ground, like an earthen arrow pointing at his home. She wrapped the cable around her hand and pulled again. The cable broke and she tumbled backwards a few yards as the tension released.
Finn and Bex could see a flash on the screen as the power cable to the house was severed. The kitchen went dark and the screen indicated that the video feed was down.
“The backup generator will kick in any second now,” Finn was saying when a psychic scream made Bex clap her hands to her ears. Covering her ears didn’t help, but it was an instinctive reaction. The lights went back on and the scream cut off. She looked at Finn and he also had his hands over his ears.
He shouldn’t have done that. The scream, while excruciating to her and to other Quickened beings, should not, could not, have impinged on the consciousness of Finn —of one of the Prey — other than as a shiver down his spine.
She did not have time to think what this meant. All she knew was that her sister, her despised sister, Charlie, needed her help and she had no choice but to respond. The ties of the coven were strong.
She stood and ran past him, deeper into his home.
Finn had made a mistake, several mistakes. He could have blamed it on his exhaustion but he had stopped making excuses years ago. He had let his control slip at exactly the wrong time. He should never have shown any indication that he could hear Charlie’s scream. He should have turned on the backup power as soon as Leader’s attack had started. He hadn’t expected her to go after the power so quickly. No use on dwelling on mistakes. He just needed to fix everything and fast.
Then he would need to abandon his home.
Leader would get in eventually, probably sooner rather than later. Even if he managed to destroy her, which was doubtful, the disturbance she was causing would mean that he would never be safe in this refuge again. He would not be surprised if the police and the media showed up sometime soon. His home would never be private again.
He needed to get to the lab to start the sterilization sequence before Bex found Charlie. It was purely mechanical, as he had not felt comfortable with a remote solution that could be triggered by mistake. His stomach clenched with nausea at the thought of Bex finding Charlie. If Bex got to Charlie before he did, he would never convince her that he was not some twisted sicko.
He hobbled into his pantry and opened the hidden door that led to a stairway that ended in the subbasement and his private labs. He had no doubt that Bex would be able to figure out a way down. He just needed to get there before her. If he could and if he could sterilize the lab, he would have a greater chance of winning her back.
Leader could not remember ever being this angry. Her age and condition usually insulated her from strong emotion. It took a truly spectacular fuck-up to piss her off this badly. She had rarely felt the need to destroy one of her children; however, this time she could not imagine a set of circumstances that would allow Baby to survive.
Her antics had finally attracted the attention of the two idiots who were supposed to be watching the place for her. Donald and Lew had never seen her this way, and she could feel the uncertainty and fear radiating from them as they burst through the door of the building across the road. And, even more concerning, she could also detect a small undercurrent of rebellion blooming in their black, shriveled souls. If she did not crush Baby, her hold on the entire coven may start to slip. If
the rot set in too deeply she would need to cut it out and start over with a new coven. It would be a terrible waste; it had taken her hundreds of years to recruit and train them. But, she had done it many times before and would do it again if she needed to.
Her concentration was broken by a psychic scream.
Interesting. This game was deeper than she had guessed. Her missing child was in there as well.
St. Andrews, Scotland, 1994
Angela Davies wasn’t supposed to be working. She was supposed to be at home sleeping off a monster hangover. She had been out late the night before enjoying herself and had only managed to stumble to her bed at about five in the morning. She had been waking up with hangovers a lot lately, ever since she found out “the Twat” had been cheating on her. Unfortunately, going out a lot also cost a packet, so she was in no position to turn down any shifts at the hospital. When the phone rang at seven that morning and she was offered an extra shift, she took it.
It would probably be a quiet shift anyway, as most of the students had left for the summer. When they returned, the stomach pumping season would begin anew. Her personal record was pumping twenty-one stomachs one festive Raisin Sunday. When the students were away they really only saw the occasional beating of a postgrad or two by the townies. She would not even expect that much on a Sunday morning. So she agreed to go in and dragged herself out of bed.
The pain was bad today.
The doctors said he was getting better. He did not really think of it that way, because better was still pretty copulating awful when looking at yourself in the mirror made you nauseous. He did agree that the so-called good days were starting to outnumber the bad ones. Today was a bad one.
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