by J. C. Diem
Chapter Thirty-One
After two agonizingly long weeks of remaining in our designated space without food or the ability to take a shower, our wait came to an end. The rumble of an approaching engine alerted us that something was finally happening. We gathered at the barrier as an armoured truck rolled into the hangar. Recognizing it to be similar to the truck that had ferried us to the airport in Canada, I figured it was here to transport us to a new location.
Standing on our side of the red line, we were clustered together like frightened children. Gregor and Kokoro stood arm in arm with Ishida standing in front of them and their hands resting on his shoulders. They would never have the chance to form a family unit now. Fate had another plan in mind for them.
One of the soldiers gestured for us to climb inside the truck. All twenty-nine men remained silent as we slowly moved to obey. “Where are they taking us now?” Geordie wondered out loud. He stepped over the forbidden line in trepidation that was shared by us all.
“Not far, I suspect,” Gregor said glumly. Kokoro bowed her head and it looked like she was about to cry. She had read the minds of our captors and knew what they had planned for us. From her reaction, it wasn’t going to be the same deal that had been made with the Comtesse. We wouldn’t be allowed to live in a mansion if we agreed to drink animal blood to survive. We had something far worse to face. I flinched when the armoured door slammed shut when the last vampire climbed inside. It sounded a little bit too much like a portent of doom.
Gregor was correct and our ride was fairly short. That meant we were still on the airport grounds. I wonder which country they decided to dump us in? After a few moments of hesitation, my subconscious answered my unspoken thought. I don’t think a plane is waiting for us this time. It sounded both nervous and resigned and I wished it would let me in on its insight. If a plane isn’t waiting for us, then what is? My inner voice refused to answer me and remained stubbornly silent.
My question was answered when I climbed out of the armoured truck. I went still at the sight of our new mode of transportation. Tilting my head back, I took in the length of the shiny white vessel. They can’t be serious! Whirling in fury, I was faced with over a hundred men wielding the deadly prototypes that now seemed to be standard issue for the soldiers.
“The master plan your President and his minions have come up with is to send us into space?” My voice went high on the last word. I couldn’t sufficiently express my incredulity or my anger.
Sanderson pushed his way through his men to confront my wrath. He almost took a step back when my glowing eyes landed on him but he managed to control his fear. It was emanating from both him and his men in invisible waves. “You and your people have no place on this earth,” he stated as if he actually believed his own words. “According to your legends, you were created by an entity that came from somewhere up there,” he pointed up at the stars. “So we’re going to send you back where you belong.”
“There is no use fighting it. This is our destiny, Natalie,” Gregor said heavily.
“Fate has spoken,” Kokoro agreed. “This is meant to be.” Both were resigned to our total rejection by the entire population of the planet we had all been born and raised on.
Luc and Igor took me by the upper arms and turned me towards the ship. Igor’s teeth were gritted and his expression was stoical. He wrapped an arm around Geordie’s shoulder and pulled him in close. Aventius moved to Luc’s other side and linked arms with him. One by one, my people clasped hands or linked arms in solidarity. We all had to face this but at least we wouldn’t have to face it alone.
“If they start singing ‘Kumbaya’, I swear I’ll start shooting,” a smartass soldier muttered. A meaty smack sounded as a hand connected with the back of his head. Geordie sniggered but quickly broke into quiet dry sobs.
With a ring of soldiers surrounding us, we allowed ourselves to be herded to the lift that would carry us up to the ship. It stopped halfway up the rocket and disgorged us onto a narrow walkway. The ship didn’t look like the vessels I was used to seeing on TV. It was far bigger than the shuttles I usually saw on the news or documentaries. I guessed it would have to be to carry so many passengers.
A hatch was waiting for us and was already open in unwelcome invitation. I had to both step over the edge and duck to enter. It seemed fitting that I should enter first since I had gotten us all into this mess simply by existing. If I hadn’t been turned by Silvius, vampirekind would have been free to roam the planet at will. Now we were all that was left and Earth no longer wanted us.
Silver walls enclosed us as everyone boarded. We had plenty of room to stand but lying down might be a problem. Tilting my head back, I saw that the ship narrowed the higher it went. I realized the ship would be horizontal once it cleared Earth’s orbit and we would have all the room we needed then.
Sanderson stayed well back and addressed me as one of his men poised to shut the hatch. “It will take an hour or two before the ship will be launched. Sit tight and enjoy the ride.”
“Sanderson,” I said before he could turn away. “If you’re thinking about blowing us up or sending us directly into the sun, remember what I told you. I can’t be killed and I swear I’ll come back for you.” Somehow, someway, I would make it back to Earth and he and his superiors would die slowly and hideously. I caught and held his eyes but refrained from hypnotizing him. I didn’t need to, fear would be enough of a motivator to make sure he didn’t betray me a second time. Giving me a reluctant nod of acknowledgement, the colonel moved out of sight and the hatch clanged shut.
Cocking his head to the side, Geordie listened intently as soldiers bustled about outside the door. A hissing noise burst to life and he frowned in puzzlement. “What are they doing out there?”
“They are making very sure that we can’t escape,” Igor replied dourly. “They are welding the hatch shut and sealing us in.”
“What do they think we’re going to do? Bust open the hatch when we’re in outer space and somehow make our way back to Earth?” one of the Europeans muttered.
Geordie looked at his mentor to see if that was possible. Igor shook his head doubtfully and his protégé’s shoulders sagged. That was exactly what I had told Sanderson I would do but I had to agree with Igor. The likelihood of that scenario happening was very slim.
Close to three hours later rather than one or two, the ship began to rumble beneath our feet. We’d all had plenty of time to examine our metal tomb. A hatch high above had also been welded shut. We had no access to the controls to try to change our course and we had no way to see where we were heading.
When the ship finally took off, we were pressed helplessly to the floor by the G forces. I found myself sandwiched between Luc and Geordie. The kid was beneath me and Luc was on the top. Unfortunately, I was facing the teen. Out of habit, Geordie tried to grind his pelvis into mine. Despite our predicament, I found myself laughing and his eyes crinkled in amusement in return.
At last the pressure lifted and we began to float. It felt weird to be utterly weightless. Proving just how childish he still was despite being over two hundred years old, Geordie pretended to swim through the air. “This isn’t so bad, chérie.” His grin held genuine amusement but Gregor’s was strained.
Igor floated in mid-air with his arms crossed, wearing a grumpy expression. His apprentice pointed at him and started giggling then shrieked and tried to swim away when the Russian reached out to slap him.
Even I had to admit it was kind of fun hanging suspended in the air. Luc grabbed my hand and pulled me in close. Tangling our legs together, he glanced down at our bodies. “I wonder if it would be possible to have sex while weightless,” he mused.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said dryly. Not when we were surrounded by our kin and everyone was watching us.
“Don’t let us stop you,” Cristov said cheekily. “We’ll turn our backs.” He tried to follow up on his promise and clawed helplessly at the air. Bumping into Aventius, he e
arned a warning frown from the ex-councillor.
Eventually, the novelty wore off for all of us, even for Geordie. Igor had positioned himself at the hatch to the control room early on during our journey. He studied it carefully, tapping on it with a knuckle and the wall around it as well. He re-joined us when he was done, quickly getting the hang of propelling himself through the air far quicker than I was able to. He shook his head regretfully. “The walls are too thick for us to break through and the welding appears to be flawless.”
Geordie looked at me hopefully. “You can make your bits and pieces fall off whenever you want to, right?”
“Yep, but I don’t know how that’s going to help us this time.”
“Can’t you make really tiny bits of yourself fall off?” He saw my confusion and elaborated. “When you were just ashes in the box, your particles managed to find a way out. Maybe they’ll be able to find a way through the hatch.”
Gregor looked thoughtful at the possibility. “Even if Natalie could do such a thing, I doubt she would be able to turn us around and take us back home. If she did manage to, the soldiers would simply blow us out of the air before we could land.”
Dejected, Geordie’s expression fell. “What is going to happen to us? Are we just going to float around in space forever?”
“We will run out of fuel soon,” Igor said, dropping our morale even further. “When that happens, we will begin to drift and the temperature will also begin to drop. Within days we will probably freeze. Of course, we could be hit by a meteor, be drawn into a planet’s atmosphere and be burned up on entry or even be sucked into a black hole.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, Igor,” I said dryly.
“Will we really freeze?” his young apprentice asked.
“Most likely,” Igor responded.
“Won’t we die if we become frozen?” The teen trembled at the idea of floating around like a popsicle and I shared his fear.
“I didn’t,” one of Ishida’s warriors said. We did our best to turn to face him. I braced myself with a hand on Luc’s shoulder so I wouldn’t blunder into anyone else.
Gregor turned his shrewd gaze on the warrior. “I presume you are referring to an experiment the scientists performed on you?”
Nodding, the warrior reached out a hand to the chilly wall to anchor himself. “They locked me in a freezer and left me there. When all of the heat was leeched out of my body, I lost consciousness. We were all amazed when I became conscious after they thawed me out. According to their tests, there were no discernable side effects.”
“Even if our bodies freeze, without sustenance we will eventually starve to death,” Ishida said. He already looked halfway there, thanks to the experiment that had been performed on him.
“How long will that take?” I asked.
Gregor fielded this one. “That depends on several factors.”
“Such as?” I prodded when it didn’t look like he was going to elaborate.
“Being frozen will most likely slow the process down but much depends on our age, our innate abilities and our will to survive.”
We were all silent for a few moments and then Geordie spoke. “So, I’m screwed then. I will be the first to go.” His bottom lip quivered and Igor put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m younger than you,” I reminded him. “Compared to you I’m still an infant.”
“That may be so, but you are Mortis,” Kokoro reminded me, as if I needed it. “You do not need to feed as often as a normal vampire. I doubt you will be affected as badly as the rest of us shall be.”
Typical, I thought bitterly. As if I need something else to set me apart from everyone. I noted that Gregor had neatly avoided answering the anxious teen’s question.
Hours passed and no one felt the normal urge to die for the day. As we headed away from the sun, the rules didn’t seem to apply to us now. How long could we survive out here in the cold without food or sleep? Even if we were simply reduced to being corpses for the day, it was still a form of rest. If there had been any possibility of having a moment of privacy on the ship, I would have asked Gregor the question that was on my mind. Just how long will it be before our unnatural lives start being snuffed out one by one?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Without windows, watches or any other way to tell the passing of time, I quickly lost track of how long we had been drifting. Our fuel had run out several hours into our journey and we’d been floating aimlessly ever since. If I had to guess, I’d say it had been several days since we had been ejected from our home world. So far, we hadn’t run into anything, crash landed on another planet or been sucked into a black hole.
It was useless to complain of hunger or the cold but everyone did. I felt the hunger for blood but it was a distant annoyance rather than a pressing need. The subzero temperature was far harder to bear. Even brushing up against the hull resulted in patches of skin being stripped off.
Huddled together, my friends and allies could offer each other no warmth and little comfort. Ice covered the hull and would soon coat all of us. My bones ached and my muscles were rigid. It was becoming harder to blink. Soon, my eyes would freeze and blinking would no longer be an option.
Ishida’s condition had rapidly worsened until he looked even older than the prophet that Luc and I had once consulted in Romania. The prophet had starved himself for a couple of hundred years, probably because a vision had told him to. The lack of food had reduced him into something that looked like a mummy and smelled like a cinnamon stick. No one here smelled like cinnamon yet but they eventually would.
Geordie’s young face had aged but he hadn’t yet become wizened and grey haired. I felt a deep chill when I saw specks of ice in his hair. He’d lost his energy a couple of days ago and spent most of his time curled up in a foetal position. Igor watched over him but his black eyes were bleak. It was common knowledge that the teen would be the first to die. But he wouldn’t be the last. Everywhere I turned, I saw desolation and hopelessness.
If the ooze that sluggishly ran through my veins could have sustained them, I would have gladly offered it to everyone. Maybe I should anyway. A quick, if hideously painful death had to be better than this long drawn out one.
Luc, floating beside me as always, offered me a faint smile. His lips were blue from the cold, as was everyone’s. I tried to smile in return but my lips were too stiff to move. Guilt coated me like an invisible shroud. I had failed him. I had failed everyone. I was supposed to save them and instead I’d managed to have us all thrown off the planet and sent into space to slowly freeze and then starve to death.
I’d begun to take refuge in oblivion more and more often as my kin faded around me. Most drifted in the middle of the ship like deadwood on a tide, gently bumping into each other. At times, I could almost convince myself that their motion was intentional and that they weren’t really sliding into oblivion but I was just deluding myself.
One by one, my kin slipped into comas as the ice slowly spread through our group. Luc was the last to succumb to the freeze. Sheer force of will kept his eyes open. They stared into mine without blinking and eventually I realized he wasn’t looking at me anymore. My one true love had turned into a vampire ice cube.
It took great effort to force my limbs to move but I managed to brush my hand across Luc’s face in a silent farewell. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to drift off to sleep.
I wasn’t sure how long I slept for but when I tried to open my eyes again they refused to move. I was beyond the ability to feel cold now and felt nothing at all. With shock, I realized I had frozen solid just like the others.
There was no movement around me from my kin. I couldn’t sense or feel anyone near me. Kokoro’s final vision had come true, death and darkness had descended. It had been foreseen that I would save a remnant of our kind but instead I had managed to doom us all.
Fear wrapped its cold and clammy hands around me. I pictured myself floating all alone in the white ship that would be my tomb. I wo
uld drift through space forever as I grew more and more insane. Mental peals of mad laughter echoed inside my head.
On the verge of utter madness, I sensed a faint spark of life beside me. Straining to my limits, I felt my kin floating in the void all around me. They weren’t dead yet but they soon would be if I didn’t do something to get us out of this quandary.
From the moment that Silvius had kidnapped me, I had been set on a path that would lead us all to this disaster. Fate had decided that we weren’t worthy and it had done its best to finish off our species.
Screw fate, I thought more with desperation than defiance. I will find a way to save us. None of us is going to die on this ship. My silent vow would have been more comforting if I’d had even the faintest clue of how to follow through on it.
Note from the Author:
If you are like me, your time is valuable and I am very glad you enjoyed this novel enough to read it through to the end. As you no doubt know, reviews are an excellent tool to help new readers find my work and decide if the book is for them. I would very much appreciate it if you would take a brief moment to click on the link below and leave a review:
Death Betrays
Also by J.C. Diem in the Mortis Series:
Death Beckons
Death Embraces
Death Deceives
Death Devours
Due for release in February 2014: Death Banishes