“And what if I said you’re full of shit?” Dustin said. They both laughed.
“I wish that was the case, man. But there’s too much at risk here to do anything more than wish. And I need you to keep this between us. I don’t understand what’s going to happen to make me want to do such a thing but already so many things I never expected to happen have and I’m not the same person I was before. I’m not even really human anymore. So, I can’t be sure what I’m capable of. And having seen what I’ve seen, I have no choice but to expect the worst.”
Dustin sighed and chugged the rest of his drink, slammed it down on the table. “All right. I’ll keep an eye out and make sure you don’t do anything… crazy. But the Foederati’s asked me to help out on the arms side of things and I intend to do that as well, so it might be wise for you to find a backup just in case.”
Hank nodded. “That’s more than fair. And really, Dustin, I owe you my life for everything you’ve—“
“Oh, shut the fuck up, man. You don’t owe me shit.” They both grinned at each other and then embraced in a long firm hug.
* * *
All throughout her life, it had taken a lot to make Jackie really feel any fear. In school, none of the kids or even the teachers ever managed to intimidate her. The first real time she had ever been afraid was the night she got herself and her sister stranded in Necropolis. Karen. She hadn’t thought of her little sister in some time. She wondered what her family was doing right at that moment as she looked up at the sky. For the longest time the clouds just hung in the air, moving so slowly as to almost not be noticeable. But they were moving and they were huge. Jackie was shaken from her nostalgia as moonlight parted what she had thought to be clouds and unmasked them for what they really were. Thousands upon thousands of ancestor vampires hung on the air floating at the ready.
She followed them down to the ground where directly below a line of hundreds of Imperial Army trucks made its way downhill toward them. For the first time in a long time, Jackie was afraid. Very afraid. What had she done? There wasn’t any backing out now, she knew that. It was almost too much, like that night so long ago when she lost her humanity and all ties with her family forever. What would she lose this time? What would be the ultimate consequence for her actions? Watching the army that was arriving before her, she was sure she would find out soon enough.
* * *
All around the hive, Ishan could feel the tension as Foederati, human, and ancestor vampires prepared for the inevitable. And through it all, the Queen sat on her throne, a jewel in the midst of all the chaos. He made his own preparations, keeping in mind the various plans and backup plans that were in place in order to protect the Queen and take out as many Imperial vampires as they possibly could. Ishan had been in many wars throughout the years as both a participant and a spectator, but never had so much seemed at stake.
I sense your worry, child. There is no reason to let such things master your emotions. Go and see the lower chambers and see for yourself if we have reason to fear.
Ishan knelt before the Queen and kissed her fingers. “I shall at once.” He smiled and then left her there as he traveled along a narrow cave corridor beyond the main cavern. Several more twists and turns both horizontal and vertical, Ishan found himself at the entrance to the lower levels. It had been several centuries since he’d set foot here. He’d long ago decided that if he stayed too long, watching the sheer number of his children would cause him so much pain as to never leave.
But when he was inside and got a clear view of the entire open pit, he nearly fell in at the shock of the site before him. What at first appeared to be only darkness spread out and moved organically in various places. Ishan’s eyes zoomed in and showed him exactly what it was he should have seen all along. Ancestors. Millions upon millions of them hanging from the cave walls and floating on the air in between. Ishan’s heart lurched from his chest with the pure love that stretched out for all those millions of creatures. Pride intermingled with that love as Ishan watched over his children. And with that, his worry vanished completely.
* * *
Charlie Duncan and several of his closest friends were gathered at a local pub the night the book hit the streets. It wasn’t long before the whole country went up in a roar. One of the bar maids ran up and turned up the volume on the large flatscreen TV hanging against the wall behind the bar.
“The Empire has put out an all points bulletin for the people of America to stay away from a privately distributed book called The Rise of Caesar. The Emperor himself has gone on record to announce that the book is full of misinformation and lies. Hal Bedford has the scoop. Hal, what do you make of this?”
Charlie winked at his buddies and gave a cheerful laugh as they clinked the necks of their beer bottles together. The Empire had made the exact mistake Charlie had hoped they would. They banned the book and made a spectacle of it. Before long everyone would see the damn thing. And you could lie, you could smear the truth, and tell a story all you wanted to, but that book would tell its own story for anyone with eyes and a reasonable bit of common sense.
Chapter 35
The First Strike
“Yes, Lord Caesar. I have 10 factions ready to move in now. The rest will stay behind in the event that our little informant has fed us false information. In which case she’ll be right by my side and well taken care of.” Marcus winked at Jackie from behind his cell phone.
She just looked at him from across the room with the same defiant expression she always wore.
“Consider it done, sir.” Marcus put the phone away and in the same flash of movement grabbed hold of Jackie’s hair and held her just in inch off the ground so that her reaction was to try to stand on her toes.
Jackie held in the painful moan that was fighting to escape her.
“I don’t think you realize just how serious this is. If you’re lying or hiding something from me, I will drain you of every last drop of precious blood before you can even think of getting away from me. So, if there’s going to be any surprises coming up you need to tell me about, you had better get it out of the way now.” Marcus looked her in the eyes as she stared back, teeth clenched, determined not to make a sound. Then slowly she relaxed her jaw and spoke.
“As much as I’d like to bash your fucking skull in right now, I hate them even more. They made me what I am and they left me alone to deal with it. So, to answer your question, no, I am not hiding anything from you,” she said and clenched her mouth shut again.
Marcus grinned and then dropped her. Jackie landed on her back with a loud thud and glared back at him.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Consider it a warning and a little nudge to shape up your attitude. Be ready to leave in the next ten minutes. As I said you will be right by my side when we arrive at the hive if I don’t kill you before we even get there.” Marcus’s grin widened into a sneer.
Jackie fought to keep her cool even though she wanted nothing more than to jump up and scratch out the bastard’s eyes. Instead she looked away and got back to her feet. By the time she turned back around Marcus was gone, leaving only the echo of his laughter in his wake.
She thought of Simon then and wondered if he truly deserved what she was doing. There would be no way to know now. She sighed, near to tears. Instead she let her emotions harden and become the anger she’d grown so often accustomed to shielding herself with. By the time her tears where completely gone, Marcus was back and grabbing her by the hair again. He dragged her out the door of the small office room without a care in the world. She kicked at the concrete sidewalk and stairs to try and get back on her feet but it was all she could do to keep up with him. The last orange rays of the evening sun were just over the horizon and scores of howling cries like nothing Jackie had ever heard were calling up into the early night.
Before long the cries were so loud she couldn’t block the sound out by plugging her ears. Thousands and thousands of ancestor vampires were floating above t
hem waiting and watching Marcus as if they were the rabbits and he held one giant fucking carrot. He let out a loud screech up to them as he climbed into a small armored Jeep and pulled Jackie in behind him. The next second the engine was revving and then the Jeep pulled forward with a jolt and sped away.
Jackie was practically heaped into the backseat floorboard. The truck rattled and shook as it drove faster and faster, swerving here and there. She could see the many following vampires in the moonlight above. They looked like a massive spreading and transforming blackness taking over the night sky. The swerving became more frequent making Jackie dizzy. It just seemed to get exponential until finally the Jeep came to an abrupt halt.
Marcus grabbed her up by her hair again and pulled her from the truck, dragging her as he made his way toward the clearing at the edge of the forest. Dozens of waves of flying vampires began to swoosh down ahead of them toward the forest then disappeared into flashes some of them soundlessly while others made large splashes. Then there was a solitary long screech from over to the east.
“Good, they’ve found the cave. It looks like I might not have to kill you after all,” Marcus said and laughed an almost resentful laugh. Then he took in a deep breath and let out a long returning screech and every vampire in the sky came together in a huge ribbon of darkness and shot down to where the original screech had come from. Jackie took a step away from Marcus as he stood waiting. There was a slight rumble from beneath the ground for a moment. Then silence again.
A single bird called out in some mocking tone capturing Marcus’s attention. Then the ground all around them and all the forest exploded into chunks of dirt, roots, tree limbs, and bushes and even the body parts of vampires. Fire erupted from the ground to the east like a doorway to hell had just been blown open.
“You bitch,” Marcus screamed in an almost girlish pitch. He rustled forward in the dirt trying to grab Jackie, but she’d already had a running start. He leapt forward and grabbed hold of her ankle, digging his claws into the flesh and tearing the posterior tibial artery. Then with strength Jackie had never imagined him capable of he pulled her still running ankle to his mouth and began to take in her blood and within seconds she was near to passing out. She fell to the ground and tried kicking at his head with her other foot.
The blasted chunks of dirt and mangled trees all around her began to blur as she felt her life draining away. It was a whim that she’d even tried to run, she had known all along that what she had signed up for, what the Queen and Ishan had asked her to do, was nothing more and nothing less than a suicide mission. So, she had succeeded and now it was time for her reward. No more life. No more bullshit. No more—as the blur started to darken the last thing she saw nearly woke her from her growing slumber, but at this point she was too far gone to regain consciousness. But she was sure even now as the darkness took her that she had seen Simon blood-soaked and tearing out Marcus’s throat with his fangs. But that couldn’t be. Simon didn’t even know. And the darkness was much too warm and comforting to think about that now anyway. It was time to sleep. To sleep and never wake. Goodnight, you cruel stupid, fucked up world. I won’t miss you.
* * *
Simon tossed Marcus’s body aside, drained of blood. Images flooded Simon’s brain of Rome throughout centuries and a mother queen much like their own who was worshipped as a god and then there was Joseph Caesar at the center of it all. In that single draining he learned more about the Emperor than he could have ever imagined existed. Unlike before, he was strong now and the images and life of Marcus Amilius couldn’t weigh him down as it cast its shadow on his memory. It was all over in a short moment and Simon was carrying Jackie over his shoulder. It had only taken a touch to realize she would live. One of the many side effects of the gift he had gained from drinking so much of Ishan’s blood. Not only could he give life but he could measure it accurately.
Even after such a bloodthirsty killing, Simon still found himself angry with Ishan for hiding the Queen’s plan from him. Yet somehow he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with the Queen herself. He fought to dissolve his anger as he ran as fast as he could through the woods without dropping Jackie. Simon thought about the things he had seen through Marcus’s eyes. They had long suspected that the Emperor wasn’t human, and Hank and George Nelson’s information had certainly corroborated this, but Simon hadn’t expected to learn just how inhuman this creature was.
Sure he was like Hank, drinking the blood of the ancestors, but by now he had drank so much of the blood that he was something entirely different. Something more animal and cunning and yet he ruled an entire nation from behind a mask of purity. But purity wasn’t even the hardest thing for Simon to grasp. How did this madman hide such an enormous history of bloodlust from so many people? How did he hide this ever hungry creature inside him?
But this wasn’t all Simon had learned from the draining. He also learned key strategies the enemy had in place. Would they know to revise them now? Only time would tell. But at least for the time being, Simon could lead his people one step ahead of them.
* * *
Bellona was lying in bed in the underground bunker Caesar had built for her, just relaxing and thinking of the war ahead. She had never been blessed with the gift of foresight. There was nothing she wanted more than that very skill right now. She worried much for her children. Especially... No. She knew she musn't think about him. He would outlast them all. Since the days that Rome broke down the walls of Israel, he had been strong. Ruthless.
No, her most beloved son would be fine.
She turned over then and lay thinking of all the many centuries past. The rise and fall of Rome. The Anglo Saxons became the Brits while the Greeks stayed the Greeks and all the people grew ever more intelligent and skeptical of the predators that lurked behind their every shadow. Not that these things mattered much to Bellona. She had never truly known the hunt. She had no need. All she ever had to do was send out that part of herself that spoke to other beings, be they human or vampire. Or both. The same part of her inner self that had brought about many a war. She laughed. It was strange to be right at the center of another war and yet this one was the strangest of them all because for once she had no direct responsibility for its cause.
No hatred poured out to the masses of nearby peoples. No driving brother against brother, sister against sister. Father against son and mother against daughter. Neighbor against neighbor. Enemy further against enemy. It was all too easy. So much so that she had often wondered this past few weeks if she had influenced these events somehow and simply didn't realize it. But she knew better than that. The power was all too satisfying when wielded. She would have felt that rush within her.
That undying bloodlust of power made her want to interfere even now. Maybe she would, just a little—
She saw his reflection then—Marcus—his eyes going still, his blood pouring out and intermingling with the murky brown water of the swamp, turning it to an almost black and cloudy crimson reflecting the moonlight. Suddenly her greatest fear wasn't so far away. She let out a scream that ricocheted off walls and shook the ground and in the next moment she was floating above the city, wind screeching all around her.
She could feel her eyes filling up with a blackened bloodlust not born of hunger, but fury. The hatred was pouring out from her now completely unchecked and involuntary. Her heart jumped with pleasure as it filled up the nearest bodies on the ground below with overwhelming rage. A primal scream rose up in her chest and erupted from her mouth like a banshee's cry, spreading its devastating waves of sound out ahead in a deadly tsunami.
The face of the one who had killed Marcus was now burned into her vision. Soon she would find him. Soon she would make him regret waking the vengeance of Bellona, the goddess of war.
* * *
Tommy stepped out of his truck sporting a greasy old John Deere ball cap, a red flannel shirt, and thick blue jeans. He walked up and knocked on the front door of his brother's trailer. Off-white chunks of pai
nt shook from the weathered rotting wood scattering on his shirt sleeve as he pounded on Daryn's dilapidated porch door. Daryn hollered something unintelligible from inside then a moment later, he opened the main front door over dramatically half dressed and red in the face.
"What?"
"Daryn, man, you've got to see this shit."
"Tommy Ray, what have I told you about showing up out of nowhere without calling first?"
"I know, man. Just listen, I couldn't call about this. When you see it, you'll totally understand. Come on, open the fucking door already." Daryn's right hand trembled as it rested fingers spread against the screen of the door.
"You been drinkin' again, man?" Daryn asked.
"Fuck no, man, just let me in already, will ya?"
Daryn sighed, unlatched the white-painted hook barely holding the screen door in place and pushed it forward. It nearly fell from its hinges as he held it open to let Tommy inside. Tommy rushed past Daryn and went straight for the TV and turned it on.
"What the hell is all this about, Tommy Ray?"
"Just watch." Tommy leaned forward and turned up the volume as crowds of people were shown on the screen rioting and setting an Imperial church on fire. Daryn froze.
"What the hell?"
"There's riots startin' all over the country, man. All because of this." Tommy reached into his jacket and pulled out the book and handed it to his brother. "Look at it, man. The fuckin' bastard lied to us. He lied to us all. It's no wonder people are burning down the churches."
Daryn stared down his brother. Tommy could feel the anger and confusion building in his brother. He’d known the only way he would take him serious was if he showed him the riots. Daryn plopped down on the couch and began to rip through the pages, looking each over slowly and then turning to the next. Tommy sat next to him quietly and watched as his brother pored over each page. Eventually his expression changed from one of fury to one of bewilderment. Then one of fear and finally again one of anger.
Empire of Blood (Book 2): Fading In Darkness Page 21