by Adam Thielen
“Hmmm,” he pondered. “I think I like you, Angela. Though I will most likely kill you.”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed.
“But I will reward you for waking me, even if you aren’t around to witness it. Give me blood,” he demanded.
“All we have is coming through tubes, and it doesn’t look like there are any humans around,” explained Koch.
“Must be a source…” Gressen slowly stood up. His body looked skeletal, though slightly less so than before. Koch backed away from the pod. Phillip and the other two scientists sat against the wall.
The vampire mage turned and followed the tubes as they led up to the ceiling then disappeared within a conduit. He continued tracing it along the ceiling to a wall then down under the plated floor. Gressen stalked toward his destination slowly, I.V. needles pulling out of his skin. He knelt down by the floor plate and closed his eyes. The plate ripped upwards, exposing a large metal tank. He held his palm outward, and the top of the tank ruptured open. The metal curled outward creating a large opening. Gressen crawled over to it and bent over, lowering himself head first into the tank until his body fell forward head first into the crimson fluid. The shriveled calves and feet stuck out of the top.
“Oh Jesus,” cried Phillip.
A large boom filled the room as the hatch at the top of the lift blew inward. The lift platform was rocked off of its railing and fell down the shaft into the chamber. It crumpled at the bottom, kicking up a cloud made of dust that had survived on the floor undetected for decades. Then the sound of metal bouncing along the tile floor and three more explosions in quick succession. Concussion grenades blinded, deafened, and disoriented all the in the room. One had detonated right at Koch’s feet. Three masked men rappelled down, then three more.
Phillip had tucked his head between his legs, with his hands over his ears. Koch had collapsed after the grenades detonated. She used her hands to sit up and scoot her back against the side wall of one of the console podiums. She tried to reach inside her inside jacket pocket for her vaper but couldn’t grip it, her fingers shaking from the shock of the blasts.
Four of the men spread out, finding someone to point their rifles at. The fifth had no gun but stood in a stance as if ready to grapple bare-handed; his fingers spread apart with palms directed in Koch’s direction. Koch suspected he was a mage but could only be sure that he was no vampire.
Angela craned her head around toward the blood tank: Gressen’s legs were no longer showing. The sixth man crouched in front of her and removed his mask.
“Frank,” said Koch, followed by a cough. Blood trickled from her nose. “So good to see you again.”
“Jesus, that flash bang fucked you up,” he replied. Frank stood and looked around the now hazy chamber. “So this is where you’ve been hiding.” He started walking from pod to pod. It was quiet in the room now, only the sound of Phillip or one of the staff crying could be heard. Frank stopped at Brell and gestured with his hand, “Come on Angela, this is pretty sick shit.”
“For over a thousand years we kept the world safe, small-minded fool,” she snarled.
“No, Angela,” he argued. “Just because of a few bad apples, you fucked the whole bunch.” He moved to Karach’s pod. “Wait, are these guys dead already?”
“We are all dead, you little shit,” she smirked.
“You sure are,” he quipped. “By the way, the new vampire leader wants you to know that Scarlett Makida will guide the flock to their rightful place in the world.”
Koch sat silent, seemingly unmoved for several moments. Then she looked up at the unarmed man. “Hey jazz hands, would you be a dear and get my vaper out of my pocket?” she moved her eyes downward toward her breast. The man looked up at Frank, who nodded.
He reached down and fumbled through her pocket, finally pulled the small stick out. Koch opened her mouth. The man placed it on her bottom lip. Koch closed her mouth and smiled. The LED on the end glowed convincingly like an ember, and tufts of vapor escaped her nose and mouth as she puffed. “Thank you, dear.”
Koch took the stick in her fingers and rested it in her lap. “Frank, that woman has no flock. She’s a solipsist. There has never been anything important to her but Makida. Of all the ways I could have failed, her survival is easily the worst.”
“Oh, so you do have a history,” he grinned. “She’s an incredible woman.” Frank started pacing again, toward the third pod.
“She’s from an era that should be buried and forgotten about, and you are a tool,” Koch said flatly. “I can’t blame you though, she has that effect on men… weak men.”
“Such- ,” Frank reached Gressen’s pod. “Hey why the fuck is this one empty?”
“I pity you, Frank,” said a voice from the direction of the blood tank. The men looked around, unable to find the speaker.
Frank saw the open tank, then saw a shadow emerge from the wall behind it. The shadow lifted slowly, revealing a man. The man was aged, but still looked younger than Koch, with skin as gray as Makida’s. He was no longer a shrunken sickly figure. The other invaders saw him and pointed their weapons. The bare handed man readjusted his stance.
“You have barely a taste of our power running through your veins. You’re a runt, really. Your mind is broken, you are confused,” consoled Gressen.
“Angela…” Frank said loudly, his voice wavering with sudden dread. “What. Have. You. Done?”
“Still think that whore will run the world now?” she sneered.
“KILL IT-,“ Frank screamed right before his skull imploded, blood shooting out of his eye sockets, ears, nose, and mouth.
The men sprung into action, taking aim and firing, but Gressen became a blur, moving instantly several feet from man to man, slitting their throats open with quick slashes of his long nails. The bare handed soldier waved his arms around, but instead of freezing the vampire mage in place as was intended, it instead only made the polonium harness he still wore glow slightly.
The mage cast again. This time flames shot out from his hands, catching Gressen as he jumped from one invader to the next. Gressen jumped backward, badly burned. He cast a spell of his own, trying to place a shield on himself, but only made the harness glow brighter. Gressen laughed and ducked behind a steel storage cabinet as the last two men with guns continued to fire.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Good.” The vampire mage felt a rumbling. He looked up to see the ceiling above him start to come down and darted out of the way just in time. Gressen darted from cover to cover until the men were firing in the wrong spot, then darted at the mage. The mage had cast a protective shell around himself, and when Gressen came into contact with it, it stopped his hand in mid-swipe. At the same time, electricity arced from the harness to Gressen’s hand then to the mage’s body, frying him.
Gressen looked down at the harness and laughed again. “I cannot decide if I like wearing this thing or not!” he exclaimed. The vampire mage darted to each of the remaining men, easily dispatching them. The room was calm again. He returned to the mage and placed his mouth on his neck, inhaling his blood; the body shriveling slightly.
He walked back to Koch, still sitting. “That felt good,” he said with satisfaction.
Gressen knelt in front of her. “Makida is right about one thing,” he told her. “Our place is not beside humans, but above them. Still, there’s something noble about you and about this order. I understand what you were doing. But eventually this was all going to crumble.”
“Perhaps, but the better world isn’t always the destined one,” proposed Koch.
“Agree to disagree.” Gressen placed his hand on her forehead. Koch’s eyes fluttered, then closed. Her body went limp as her muscles relaxed completely. The chairwoman was dead.
* * *
“Wake up!” sounded a voice in the dark.
“Taq, wake up! Shit.”
Taq felt a rumbling take hold of his body. He pried his eyes open, and the darkness dissipated, revealing Matthias leaning over
him, shaking him roughly.
“Kate,” said Taq.
“Finally,” Mathias breathed. “I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up.”
“Kate,” repeated Taq.
“Still out. The machine is making weird noises. Is it Drew? Is this thing Drew?” Mathias pointed at the servo arms.
Taq turned to Kate’s slab and sat up. To his relief, she did not look ghoulish. He ignored Matthias and stood next to her. He placed her hand in his, leaned down and whispered to her. “Come on Kate. I know you are in there. Come back.”
Matthias poked around the room, going from display to display. “Drew, where are you?” He opened a com channel to Koch. No answer. He opened a com channel to Tamra. No answer. “What the hell?”
“We should get out of here, Taq.”
“I can’t leave her like this.”
“I’ll carry her,” volunteered Matthias.
“No,” objected Taq. “The neural interface is still engaged, I don’t want to touch anything.”
“We can’t just wait here,” argued Matthias. “Why is she connected to that thing?”
Taq explained what happened to Kate, then recalled his final trip to the old west. He told Matthias what the AI had told him, including that Matthias himself had killed a vampire mage. “Drew believes there were three, and that we’ve killed two.”
“If they are in a dream world, then what, they are sleeping?” asked Matthias.
“Drew said that an order within your vampire council had likely imprisoned them,” Taq replied. “They only realized later what was happening to mages who were being turned and concocted the fiend mythology.”
“Koch,” realized Matthias. “That’s why she kept bothering me.”
A display on the wall flickered to life. Taq and Matthias looked at each other, then back at the display. It streamed live news coverage of the emergency corporate summit in Fresno. Cavalcades were just arriving at the convention center.
“Drew?” asked Taq. “Is this you? Please, you’ve got to help Kate.”
Matthias looked at Taq, realized he wasn’t about to leave with him, and it stirred thoughts of his wife. He left the room and returned with two chairs. He sat in front of the display, watching the procession. “I guess we wait then.”
* * *
At Tamra’s feet lay a door that said in big red letters “Council Science Only”. Tamra knew she had found the corridor to the lift to the hidden facility. “Someone beat us here,” she figured.
Lights along the corridor’s ceiling flickered, damaged from the fighting. The walls were plain white with no pictures, artwork, or signs. The wardens stalked toward the lift. They passed the bodies of several Noxcorp guards. At the end of the corridor was a large double door, rounded along the top. Meant to slide open, it had been blown inwards. Tamra estimated it to be about ten centimeters thick.
Without warning, a man jumped through the doorway and into the corridor with Tamra, now standing ten meters away. He was wearing the clothes of one of the invaders, minus mask and rifle.
Tamra pointed her rifle. “Hold it.”
“Hold what?” he asked with outstretched arms. “More usurpers? No, you two are something else.”
“And what are you?” asked Wu.
“I am a leader,” he replied, slowly walking toward the wardens.
“You’re one of the vampire mages,” accused Tamra.
“I suppose that’s accurate. The last unfortunately. You may call me Gressen.”
Tamra subtly switched firing mode to shotgun and swiveled the barrel to short wide angle. Wu raised his pistols.
“I see,” said Gressen. “I suppose there’s going to be a lot of this before the night is over.”
He brought his hands up, each palm pointing at a warden, then closed his fingers into a fist. Their polonium lit up. Gressen cocked his head slightly to the side. “Interesting.”
Wu fired at Gressen, but the right wall in front of him exploded, knocking him off balance and kicking a thick layer of dust into the air. Gressen hurtled through the dust, claws extended, arm ready to strike. Tamra was ready; she fired her shotgun just before the claws found their mark on Wu’s neck, hurling him into the hole he had just made.
Gressen took flight down the hall on the other side of the wall. The wardens followed. The vampire mage had left a thin trail of blood through a mail room and then the lobby. As Wu ran into the lobby, Gressen lunged at him. Charles ducked to the side, the claws digging into his right shoulder. He took two shots with his left gun as his right gun fell to the ground. The shots pushed Gressen back, who then darted left and right. Wu held up his right hand. Gressen lunged again, but Wu’s polonium arced to him. Gressen flailed, shaking off the effect.
Tamra entered the room and took aim at the vampire mage, but he again dashed behind cover, then out the door.
“Are you alright?” asked Tamra, looking at Wu’s shoulder.
“I’ll manage, but we need some backup before this gets out of hand.”
“I tagged him,” she revealed. “Go back to the lift. The door looked magnetically shielded and probably has working coms. Tell dispatch to send help and airdrop me a com so I can track him and coordinate a plan. I’m going after him.”
Wu nodded, wincing in pain. “Take this,” he said, handing her a silver shrapnel grenade.
He turned and ran back toward the lift doors and slid down by a rope still attached at the top of the shaft. Reaching the bottom, he turned and gasped at the carnage of the room. Blood had splattered against walls in small amounts while the floor was coated with a thin layer. Looking at the pods he shook his head.
Charles crouched before the chairwoman’s body and shook her by the shoulders. He felt for a pulse, sighed, then fished her com out. “Locked, of course.” He tried the emergency connect. It would normally route to the local Noxcorp emergency services, but it timed out, failing to reach a live switchboard. Wu pried open Koch’s right eyelid and pushed her thumb against the com. After a few tries it unlocked. He connected to the MESS council emergency line. Every council member was brought in as they answered.
Parsk spoke first. “Charles! Are you alright? Where’s Tamra?”
“She’s gone after the vampire mage.”
“Oh god,” a voice said quietly. “What?” asked another incredulously.
“They were keeping them here, just where she said, and somehow one of them got out after another party attacked and took over the campus,” recounted Wu. “I need drones in the air. Drop a com to her and lock in on the tracking dart most recently removed from the armory. Coordinate with the university; we must set up a perimeter.”
“On it,” stated a third voice.
“Do you know anything about this other party?” asked Parsk.
“Also vampires,” Wu replied. “They have some sort of floating vessel. It camouflaged itself well with cloud cover. It left when we arrived, heading west.”
“Wu, do whatever is necessary to eliminate this threat. We are sending everything we’ve got,” assured Parsk.
“Understood.” Wu acknowledged.
* * *
Tamra could hear gunfire from soldiers waiting outside. As she followed the sound, it turned into a mixture of screams and shots, then just screams, then silence. The warden met no resistance exiting the building.
She lost Gressen after he had fled the campus, disappearing into a large unkept park. The trees had grown thick, limiting her line of sight. Tamra tried her ethersight, but it wouldn’t respond, likely damaged by the EMP. The vampire mage’s blood still trailed on the ground. Her silver shot had wounded him for longer than she expected.
The wind kicked up behind her. Tamra turned and saw a mini-drone descend. Its mother drone continued in the direction of the blood trail, flashing a locator light as it flew and lasing the ground below. The laser created a line only broken by tree cover for Tamra to trace. She opened the mini-drone’s compartment and pulled out a com, an assault rifle magazine, and a
pack of wound seal gel.
Tamra connected to Mage Enforcement and let them know she was on his trail. Wu told her he would catch up. However, Tamra was moving at a fast clip in order to keep up with the aerial drone. Eventually, she knew, Gressen would figure out how he was being tracked. Allowing him to escape was not an option.
She connected to Matthias. “I don’t suppose you are in K.C. and want to drop in?”
“Sorry, Tamra. What’s going on?”
“One of the vampire mages has been awakened. I’m pursuing it now. I’m in over my head here,” she admitted.
“Then get out of there! Just let it go, Tamra,” he urged.
“This may be the only chance. He just woke up, he’s confused, and I wounded him with silver. If he gets away now-,” she reasoned.
“Someone else will get him.”
“A lot of people will die first,” she stressed. “There’s something else. Noxcorp was attacked.”
“What? By who?”
“Not sure. But they were vampires. They killed everyone at the corporate HQ,” answered Tamra.
“Koch?” he asked.
“Koch too,” she confirmed.
“Jesus. Any idea why?”
“Not sure, but they blew the doors to the facility where Koch kept the vampire mages hidden, and those doors were very thick,” she stated.
Frank’s new faction, thought Matthias.
Tamra continued. “Have you heard from Taq or Kate?”
“I was sent to find them and destroy the machine. I suppose that’s pointless now. Taq is here with me. They killed the fiend, but Kate hasn’t woken.”
“So it worked,” she replied. She recalled the ghastly figure that appeared before her and Wu. “Wu says there were two other vampire mages in pods, and they are both dead.”
After a short pause, “I may have an idea, going to connect to Taq.”
“Tamra,” he greeted.
“Matthias told me about Kate. I’m sorry.” She proceeded to catch him up on her chase.