Cogs in Time Anthology (The Steamworks Series Book 1)

by Catherine Stovall

  “Luca!” Astrid’s voice broke through the silence of the night. Her screams carried down the hall of the family manor, her voice hoarse with the strain.

  Miranda ran to her sister’s side and jostled her awake. Astrid sat up gasping for breath. Her eyes brimmed with tears at the mysterious plight of the baby girl and the helplessness she felt. Holding her knees to her chest, Astrid wept silently as Miranda crawled in the bed with her.

  “Why are you having such dreams?” asked Miranda gently. “Is it the vampire venom?”

  “You must never tell father,” whispered Astrid between sobs. “But Luca made me drink some of his blood. It was bitter…and thick, and blue. But it was the only antidote for the venom of the attack.”

  “I will never speak of it, of course,” reassured Miranda. “But what does his blood have to do with the dreams?”

  “Luca is a prophetic vampire. I think his blood has given me visions, a power that runs through the helix of his DNA.”

  “Really?” asked Miranda with excitement. “What do you see? Will I be married soon? Will I be rich?”

  “I see nothing like that at all,” answered Astrid in a clipped tone. “I see a baby girl. All alone and in danger.”

  ***

  The Office of The Society sat under a fog of nervous anticipation. Three of the High Table members stood against the wall, their arms outstretched to the side and their faces raised to the ceiling, performing a ritual. The doors to the room had been locked and latched from the inside. From the outside, the doors were also barred, no one but the Society’s highest officers were allowed to witness the event. Four other members in the room sat at the thick wooden table, the most senior and revered members of the clans.

  The three vampires against the wall held their eyes tightly shut. The room was darkened and the curtains were drawn. An old crone vampire tied blindfolds around the eyes of the prophetics. Zeppelins hovered along the outside perimeter of the Society’s walls, patrolling for the rogue vampire, so the crone closed the thick glass of the windows to drown out the sound of the midnight drill.

  Each of the three vampires began to hum in a low, monotone groan. Within each of their minds, they saw the same images—those of Draegan as he was born to Constance. They each felt her hysteria build with each push as she delivered him to life. They saw Luca in the shadows of the room, unmoving as he looked upon his new brother. Time fast-forwarded in a spiral spin. The prophetics shifted to another level of time. They saw Draegan attending school and learning his first lessons. Next time shift, they observed his adolescence and his odd personality growing darker and more disturbed.

  His mutation, a blend of superior strength and mental telepathy, crossed the laws of natural selection and behavior. Draegan became cruel. The prophetics saw Draegan overpower a weaker vampire in the classroom with mental force, squeezing the mind of the weaker with his more powerful brainwaves. Next, they saw him demanding sexual favors from a woman as she left the Society’s Blood Donation Center. Draegan manipulated her thoughts into acquiescence, then covered her with his cloak and mounted her. His mouth gently nibbled her neck, as she lay paralyzed underneath him.

  The vampires gasped in unison as they saw Draegan performing skillful lobotomies on women he had seduced and overpowered. His long finger reached behind the socket of their right eye. They watched in silence, seeing Draegan insert a long curved brass needle with bristles on the end, gently brushing away the frontal lobe’s short-term memory.

  “Is that all?” asked Mordecai. “We’ve seen enough debased behavior.”

  “But we’ve not yet seen what we are searching for,” answered the oldest prophetic. “We must continue.”

  The vampires hummed in deeper tones, harmonizing with each other. The sound echoed ominously in the room as another level of time shifted. The present. We are now in the present. Each vision played against the wall behind them. Each of the killings, in bold color, splashed against the wall as if from a film projector. As the vampires of The High Table witnessed each atrocity, a montage of blood lust flashed before them.

  The women lay half-dressed. Draegan had ripped away their corsets and overcoats, shredding the fabric from their bodies. The Society witnessed the puncture wounds. Two wounds, both clean and directed to the jugular, draining the women of life. The more the women struggled, the more frenzied Draegan became. His crimes stirred each of the vampire’s natural desires. Several Society officials began to hyperventilate, growl, and clawing at the air.

  Mordecai ran to the windows and pulled open the curtains. “Enough,” he said to break the spell of the visions. His vampires were stirred at the sight of female anatomy, human blood, and the hunt of the prey. “Remember your vow.”

  The old crone brought red wine to subdue the lust of the vampires. As they drank, they focused on the goal. As a group, they would try to force their way into Draegan’s mind.

  ***

  Draegan woke up in the still dark room. His head throbbed from the after effects of his brother’s tranquilizing ray gun. He tried to move his hands and legs, but they were motionless. However, he grinned with satisfaction, he remained free and untouched by the long arm of the Society.

  Draegan pulled his torso upright, angrily trying to move his right leg, while the pain on the side of his neck and head grew stronger and moved deeper into the crevices of his brain. He knew his sight was being used to track his location by the Society as soon as his eyes glanced around the room, darting to all four corners against his volition. Draegan willed his eyes shut, in an effort to postpone his trackers and to buy some time until he was mobile. Yet the pain…the pain bore deeper and deeper.

  “Draegan, you’d be wise to give yourself up.” The voice in his head surprised him. He knew better than to listen, because it was not the words of his own conscience or of a higher sentient being, but actually the words of Mordecai, urging him to submit.

  “No. Absolutely not. Never!” Draegan shouted into the empty dark room.

  “You have no way out,” bluffed Mordecai. “You cannot outwit the High Table’s Prophetics.”

  “My powers are stronger than your weak little Table. You know that! You had me designed! Besides, you may find me,” laughed Draegan. “But I won’t surrender.”

  “You’ll be killed,” warned Mordecai. “Killed on sight.”

  “You’d never kill me. You need me.”

  “Yes, you are needed.” Mordecai decided to feed Draegan’s ego into submission. “And for that reason, I ask you to return to us safely and without incident.”

  The pain in Draegan’s head had sunk so deep, he felt his skull would shatter at any moment and that his bones would shear back from his brain to rain in shards across the room. He refused to give in to the paralysis. He closed his eyes and emitted a low snarling hum, visualizing and willing his legs to move.

  The muscles in his calves and thighs quivered as they obeyed the will of his dark mind. Unsteadily, Draegan rose from the floor of the tiny dark room that had been his haven, on unsteady legs like a newborn colt’s. He stumbled from the dark room into the light of day. He wavered, unable to walk straight, as his legs had not yet regained their strength and balance. As he grasped the stair rail to the platform of the train station, he began to glide. Closing his eyes, he willed his body to levitate, his robes waving like a flag of defiance.

  As he decided to shed his robes, to deny the assigned wardrobe of the Society, a strange, bitter scent surrounded him in a hazy fog. A pungent odor of fresh garlic mixed with peat entered his nostrils. Draegan flinched, partly in disgust, partly in pain and fear; he knew what the odor meant. Capsules! Mordecai is sending the capsules because he is too weak to catch me!

  Each capsule was a small marble sized projectile that consisted of behavior enhancing or behavior modifying substrates. The capsules were transported telepathically and would restructure the recipient vampire’s manner of thought and action. Neural activity was adjusted as the brain absorbed the pod’s content. />
  Draegan had witnessed the powerful effects of the capsules when he was a young vampire. As a small boy, filled with the energy and curiosity of any human child, he’d been galloping through the Society’s halls, playing hide and seek. It was then, in one of the side rooms, he stumbled into one of the first medical trials of the capsules.

  A tall and long vampire, his hair swept back from his high forehead, sat strapped in a chair in the middle of the room. He appeared unkempt and desperate. He was rough, unlike the general population of vampires who kept themselves meticulously groomed. Draegan knew at first sight, that he was no ordinary vampire—that there was something very unusual and maybe extraordinary about him. Draegan felt his first desire to defy power as he admired the vampire’s resolve in the face of the High Table’s Inquisition.

  “Mordecai,” the rough vampire’s voice was smooth and deep. “You know what you are doing is wrong. It’s unnatural.” His voice flowed like a mountain spring, coming from a conviction of what was right and what was wrong, that was rooted at the deepest part of the vampire’s psyche.

  “It is not I who am doing wrong, Leander,” Mordecai responded. “It is you who has violated the code. It’s you who has violated natural law.”

  Draegan was quite familiar with Mordecai’s tone and voice. That voice had soothed him in times of childish distress and laughed with him in discovery and excitement. To hear Mordecai’s voice steeped in rage made him shiver as he hid. Draegan had sunk deeper in the shadows, eavesdropping.

  “The law is not natural,” argued Leander.

  “To fall in love with a woman? A human woman!” Mordecai shouted. His thick voice carried through the empty hallway. “You have no control. You should never have followed your base emotions into the space of life forbidden to a vampire. Your actions are wrong and punishable.”

  The vampire sitting before the High Table darkened visibly with controlled anger. “All I did was seek happiness and peace. I hurt no one. I did not break the Vow of Peace.”

  “Yes, you did,” contradicted Mordecai. “No vampire may enter into the bond that unites him or her with another for life, commonly known as the bond of marriage, particularly with a human woman.”

  The defendant vampire laughed. “There is no reason for a life of celibacy. Even if it is a vow we take, we are all guilty of violating it. I merely enhanced my human relations.”

  “You not only entered this bond,” shouted Mordecai, “you entered into a vow of marriage. Vows that you cannot, as a vampire, possibly keep.”

  “I don’t see why I cannot keep my vow to her.”

  “Leander! You cannot live in her human house! If it were not for the Society’s timely interference, you would have proceeded to procreate or set up a family. Where would that lead? You cannot live amongst the humans. Your place is here, with the Society.”

  Leander laughed at Mordecai’s words. His laughter shook the room and snatched any fiber of sympathy from the other vampires’ hearts. Rage filled Mordecai as he stared at the non-repentant vampire in front of him. Anger flowed like a hot liquid through his body. Draegan could see the red fury in his face and neck spread to his shaking hands and feet.

  “Set up a family?” Leander continued to laugh. “If that is how you refer to sexual intercourse, then I’ll be pleased to tell you we’ve already set up a family, many times, before your rats invaded our home!”

  “Enough!” shouted Mordecai.

  “No, I am not through. We procreate now with the breeders. They are human women. And why? Because you destroyed our own females.”

  Draegan saw the fire behind Mordecai’s eyes flicker. Mordecai glanced at one of the vampire guards by the door behind Leander. As he looked away from the rebellious gaze of Leander, a strange transformation occurred. An unseen force lifted Leander’s arms, which had hung loose off the sides of the chair. Leander’s arms were forcibly compressed, as if by a massive change in air pressure, against the oak arms of the chair.

  Draegan curled into a fetal position, terrified to move. Something tore through the skin of the defiant vampire. Leander stared at his arms, aghast as small root like structures crawled from his flesh. Leander screamed as he saw that they were his own veins tearing through his skin. He strained against the ties and tried to run, but he could not budge. Urine ran down his legs as his own veins wrapped around his limbs, further tying him in place. His skin peeled back from the bone as a strange smell filled the room.

  “Free me, you sadist!” Leander’s shrieks turned to pleas to be let loose. Blue sticky blood oozed to the floor, coagulating in a gelatinous soup around his feet.

  Draegan felt a knot of fear clutch his throat as well as a strange and stirring desire to participate. He had never known Mordecai or any vampire to resort to such violence and he was entranced by the power of those in control. The pain they controlled stirred his imagination. I want this power…this power to control… this power to punish the weak…

  Draegan had smelled the garlic mixed with peat as the capsule invaded Leander’s olfactory system, the same smell chasing Draegan at the train station. Within moments of the capsule activating, Leander became still, as if hypnotized. Images from his thoughts flew through the air as if projected in a movie theatre.

  Stills of Leander with his human wife, laughing and embracing, covered the walls. Hand in hand, images of their love filled the room. Mordecai’s eyes scanned through Leander’s history, visually projected in the room. Each image was a critical memory or event, but they would soon be forgotten. The stills of his past would cease to exist for him, for as each image was pulled from his mind, it would never return.

  Draegan watched Mordecai as he selected memories to destroy. He walked along the projections, popping any image involving the human woman with his talon-like fingernail, as if it were a bubble in the air. The dust of the projections fell like glitter to the floor.

  “We must change all images of his past that led him to this woman,” charged Mordecai. “A crucial act, if we are to control the future.”

  After Mordecai destroyed Leander’s memories of his human wife, he emitted another low hum. The veins that had wrapped around Leander’s limbs retreated to their natural state, his skin unfolded back to place, and the ties that bound Leander to the chair unraveled.

  The vampires hummed as Leander remained still. A small suction device, a brass tube on wheels, with a clock timer, rolled into the room to sweep up the discarded memories, like offal that had fallen to the floor. As the hum of the vampire’s changed melodic keys, Leander stirred.

  “Mordecai, my friend,” said Leander as he instantly opened his eyes. “What are we doing in this private library?”

  Draegan was shocked at Leander’s change of demeanor. Every molecule of his being that had rebelled against Mordecai lay in submission. He appeared and behaved as a loyal member of the Society.

  “What happened to my robes?” Leander continued, as he was dressed as a human man, in a black suit with a white buttoned down coat. A paisley vest completed his ensemble.

  “You had mentioned a holiday…” Mordecai suggested gently.

  “A holiday?” Leander laughed. “I don’t need a holiday. No one takes a holiday from the Society.”

  “Ah, Leander,” Mordecai continued, a strange look played in his eyes. “A lady named Nicola came to the Society this morning. Do you know her?”

  A thick cloak of anticipation covered the room as they waited for Leander’s response.

  “Nicola? I don’t believe I know anyone by that name. Did she ask for me?” asked Leander.

  Mordecai maintained a straight face, but Draegan saw a hint of a smile and victory dancing in his eyes. Nicola had been Leander’s human wife. The Society had successfully erased her from his life. They had won. The capsules were a success.

  “No, she did not,” answered Mordecai. “She was wandering about like a mental patient. Typical human woman.” Mordecai sounded calm and compassionate, a strange juxtaposition to moments ago.
“Unstable and clinging.”

  Draegan stood enraptured. He knew vampires were powerful, but he was just beginning to understand how powerful. Most of all, he understood how much he wanted to possess this highest level of power and control.

  ***

  Draegan picked up speed and hovered over the train station, moving in excess of twenty-five miles per hour, hoping to evade the capsules that had been sent after him. Visions of Leander’s transformation filled his mind as he made his way from one platform of the dark and soot-ridden station to another. Not another entity was in sight. The station looked as empty as a graveyard. The train tracks stood in vacated lines, waiting for new souls. The moon shone through the iron gates as the escalators suddenly sprung to life, cutting through the silence.

  Take your leave! I will not give in to you! His defiance cloaked him with bravado in the deathly silence. Behind him, heard the gentle buzz of the capsule as it flew invisibly towards him.

  “Give in,” he heard the voice inside his head resonate. “Accept surrender.”

  Draegan picked up speed, trying to outrun the voices as they chased him. “Go away. I have seen you use the capsules,” he hissed into the wind. “I will overpower the Society! I am stronger!”

  “You have seen nothing,” replied the voices of the High Table.

  “Go away!” Draegan yelled to the sky. “I know what you did to Leander. I will not suffer the same loss.”

  “Leander? Nothing happened to Leander,” spoke the voice.

  “Lies! I saw!”

  “Merely figment of a childish dream…”

  “No. I saw it all. I smelled the capsule, I saw his memories, and I watched you erase them into the aether with a flick of your finger. Gone, all gone.”

  Draegan felt the wind rush through his clothes and hair. Self-doubt began to overtake him. It is the Society, taking over my mind. Ignore the doubts. You know the truth. But was it a dream? Could it have happened as I slept? No! I was awake and I smelled the capsule. Hold on to the truth!