Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  He hadn’t actually asked for a net, but it was a good idea. He’d told her that he didn’t know what these vampires were truly capable of and it sounded like she’d taken him seriously. She was very good at her job. Creepy or not, she was good.

  “Excellent idea. Thank you. I’ll be glad to put them into your hands for the time being. Even so, I must caution you. The violence of this particular—I don’t know what to call them exactly, maybe sub-species—is pretty astonishing. Even the eggs move around.”

  Delilah stumbled and had to catch herself on the stone wall. Her hand left a smear of gray grit on her habit when she pressed it to her chest again. “What? I don’t understand.”

  Shifting the heavy tank to his other hand, Girard gripped her shoulder. He tended to think of them as creepy, but the pool Minders were also very sheltered. They never left the compound. Ever. It was against the laws of their kind. It was too easy for a vampire in their condition to show what they were, the pressure of an egg ready to be implanted a hard one to resist.

  In short, the Minders tended to be a horny lot and simply couldn’t be let out to mingle with the wider world.

  They kept to themselves and tended to work long hours to maintain their charges. It was a relatively thankless job. Girard simply took them for granted, but now that the capture had been completed, he was handing off a burden unlike any other and acting like it was no big deal. Yet, it was a big deal.

  “Delilah, I’m so sorry about this. I should have brought you in on the planning sessions so this wouldn’t be such a shock, or at least called ahead.” Lifting the tank a little, he said, “These vampires aren’t like us. They all had eggs and all of them had more than one egg. When their ovipositors detached, the eggs sort of slithered across toward the lowest part of the room. When I say I don’t know what these vampires are capable of, I’m being serious. I don’t. And that goes for their eggs too. We can’t treat them like our eggs. We can’t assume they’ll hatch merrily in the water and carry on. We simply don’t know.”

  The minder eyed the tanks warily, perhaps only now realizing that she had volunteered for something she might not be ready for. Squaring her shoulders, she looked back at Girard and said, “Then I’ll find out what they can do for you. I’ll monitor them closely.”

  “And don’t get in the pool with them. Just don’t.”

  She nodded and resumed walking along the passageway. Stopping at the place where the electric lights ended, she reached onto a shelf and removed a flashlight, then handed back more to the others. Their lights bobbed along the rock and the entire atmosphere turned eerie very quickly. This must have been what it was like long ago, back when vampires were even more hidden and restricted than now. Girard didn’t remember it like this. The punishment pool he’d been in was in France and he’d never actually seen it since he was out of his body when he went into it.

  The sound of dripping water intensified as they turned down a side passage. The room with the pool was roughly hewn and damp, the smell of the marsh water making Girard want to yawn. He knew the minders went through years of exposure training in order to overcome their natural inclination to rest in this environment. The concentration in the pools wasn’t enough to make a vampire leave a body—if Girard wanted, he could swim in it quite safely—but it was enough to make them very tired even in a human body. Naked vampires were tranquilized even further.

  Lila let out a huge yawn behind him and Marcus smacked her arm lightly. “Don’t do that. It’s catching.”

  “Put the tanks there, if you would,” Delilah said, pointing toward a clear spot on the stone floor. She propped up the flashlight so it illuminated that area, then surprised Girard by whipping off her habit in one quick swoop. He wanted to avert his eyes, but couldn’t do it. Under the habit, she was wearing pink yoga pants and a t-shirt emblazoned with a heavy metal band that had been popular a few decades ago.

  Somehow, his image of the Minders didn’t include any of that.

  Delilah saw them gaping at her and laughed quietly. “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

  Rubbing her hands together, she took a few deep breaths and closed her eyes. When she crouched and clicked the latch on the first tank, she was calm. Before she could flip back the lid, Doran said, “Be careful. Remember.”

  She only smiled a little and flipped a little screen over the tank even as she opened it. She really was prepared. Leaning over the tank, she examined the contents as much as possible in the light available. Suddenly, she frowned and slammed the lid back down, standing up and moving away almost in one move.

  She was angry when she turned on Girard. “What is the meaning of this? These are infants!”

  He held out his hands to diffuse her anger. “No, they’re only a little smaller than us, shaped a little differently. I assure you, they can’t be infants. They were inside adults working a complicated lab and using weapons. Some of them were even using explosives. An infant can’t do any of that.”

  And that was true. Infant vampires existed in one of only two possible states. They were either born into a human infant and no different than any other baby in that respect, or they were wild-born in the water and would never have a reasoning mind. Since these were in adults, they could—by definition—absolutely not be infants.

  Delilah shook her head and pulled off her kerchief, tossing it onto the bench near the wall where her habit lay crumpled. “No, you can’t be right. Have you ever,” she paused and glanced at those behind her, carefully avoiding Lila’s eyes,” tended a wild-born vampire?”

  Now also avoiding Lila’s gaze, Girard answered. “No.”

  Despite the others trying to leave her out of it, Lila answered, “I have. My sister. She didn’t join with the baby properly, so she was born without a body.”

  Her expression was sympathetic. “I know, I’m sorry, but what I’m asking is if you’ve ever been a Minder or borne a wild one yourselves.”

  There were head shakes all around at that.

  “There is a communication between infants and their mothers. It’s no different than the way a human—or vampire, for that matter—with a baby will lactate when she hears a certain type of cry from her baby. For us, it doesn’t last long. A few months, maybe a year. It’s not a cry, but an odor of sorts—”

  Doran interrupted her with, “You mean like a chemical reaction.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. Only someone in our state can sense it.”

  Girard looked at the tank, then back at Delilah, that strange tickle of an idea from before blossoming into life. The details were filling in and he hoped with all his might that his idea was wrong. He checked the number on the tank. Each had been numbered with a piece of duct tape and a sharpie so that they could match up each vampire captured with the human that needed identification. That tank was marked ‘#1’ and that meant it was the one Girard had captured. He had put a vampire and two eggs into that tank.

  “You’re sure. Could it be coming from the eggs?”

  While she shook her head in the negative, she also looked less certain. Girard turned to the others and asked, “Which of you had the one without eggs?”

  Borona answered rather sheepishly. “Uh, that would be me. I got one with eggs—the squished one. I also, uh, stepped on the eggs of one of the others.” Delilah stared at him in horror and he shrugged. “They were almost to the drain in that room. I had to stop them. It’s tank number four.”

  Girard would need to explain to Delilah that they weren’t actually monsters some other time, but right now he wanted some answers. “Can you test it with that tank?”

  She was way ahead of him, apparently, because she pulled a plastic baggie out of her crumpled habit and extracted a cloth. A strong citrus smell wafted out and he wrinkled his nose. She pressed it to her face and said, “This is what we use when it gets too much. It clears all the smells.”

  Yet another thing he’d learned today. Girard was, quite frankly, tired of learning new things at this point.

&n
bsp; Whipping the screen up and opening the tank quickly, Delilah leaned over the tank and breathed. It took no more than a second or two for her to rear back, her hand going to her throat and her cheeks bulging out. She turned her back and pressed the cloth to her face again. Even in the strange light of the flashlights, Girard could see her face had gone red.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, already reaching for his gun if the vampire needed a bit more rosemary and marsh water shot at it.

  She waved a hand behind her and held up a finger for them to wait. When she turned around, she was still red, but whatever reaction she’d had was clearly passing away. “It’s starving and it’s definitely a baby. The feeding instinct…”

  Girard nodded, understanding. Not all vampires fed their young in the wild, but some did. A starving baby might have caused Delilah to start gorging up gunk from her vampire parts. Gross.

  Doran closed the tank again, cutting off any more of that smell. “Can you do this? I mean, can you tend them?”

  “I can, if you put them in the pools here. There’s enough water to dilute the calls and I’ll keep it clean. If necessary, I’ll wear a blocking mask with this stuff on it. It works.” She pointed to the spot where she wanted the eggs to go, then where each of the vampires should go. While the rest of the group shuffled off, she came close to Girard and searched his eyes before asking, “You swear you didn’t know they were infants?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t even know how that’s possible. It shouldn’t be.”

  “Well, it’s possible because they’re here and I’m telling you, these vampires can’t be any more than a few months old. I don’t care where you found them, they’re babies.”

  “Babies who had developing eggs in them? We’re not fertile till we’re twenty, thirty…heck, I was almost fifty years old.”

  Marcus was obviously listening from the other end of the room, because he laughed and said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me, baby Guardian? I was fertile when I was sixteen!”

  That made both Delilah and Girard eyeball him. That was an incredibly young age.

  “You’re exaggerating,” Lila accused. She seemed to be having trouble getting the vampire out of her tank.

  Marcus bristled. “Am not! Well, okay, my human body was fertile at sixteen. Vampire body not till a little later.” He pointed at Girard and added, “But I wasn’t fifty.”

  Girard rolled his eyes, but noticed that Delilah was looking at Marcus with an entirely different expression. Oh great, and now we have this too, he thought.

  27

  What do you mean, a favor? Is something happening? Is she okay?” Girard asked Josette in a whisper. He kept his hand cupped around the phone so that no one else would hear, but it was largely useless. No phone conversation was truly private with vampires around. Lila proved it by humming a tune and turning the page on the report she was reading with more noise than strictly necessary.

  “Calm down, Guardian. Kira is actually doing a lot better since your visit. She’s more energetic than she’s been in months and smiling more. I think it did her good to see new people, the kind that actually wanted to hear about her past and weren’t all sad and weepy. She’s been more active in recent days too. It’s not that kind of favor. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, only to relay that she’d like to talk to you about a favor. Since you’re coming anyway, that is.”

  Girard frowned. “I don’t like it. I mean, I’d do anything for her—which surprises me as much as it probably does you—but not knowing what she wants is a little strange. What if it’s—”

  “She wouldn’t ask a favor like that. Never. She’s not mean and she would never ask for anything that would leave you feeling guilty. It’s a good thing. Plus, I’m starting to hope she might be changing her mind about not taking a new body. She hasn’t said anything, but there’s definitely something there.”

  “You think so? Really?”

  “I do, but of course, I don’t know. And the favor doesn’t have anything to do with that either, so don’t ask.”

  He sighed, knowing he wouldn’t get anything more out of Josette. She was as loyal a friend to Yadikira as Lila was to him. “Fine, but tell me again about the pool. I need to know precisely what you found. And why didn’t either of you mention that you had one there.” He didn’t add that if he’d shared a little more of what was going on regarding Thalia, then they would have known to tell him that. He could beat himself up for that decision later.

  “I’m not sure why it would be your business that Kira has a pool, but it doesn’t matter now. When I got here to help Kira, I had this notion that I should make sure her emergency pool was still usable, just in case. I mean, you saw her yourself. You know how fragile she is—”

  “Yes, I’ve got that. What about the pool?”

  “It’s in an outbuilding just inside the woods. It’s an underground spring that feeds into a small pool. They built it for emergencies when the house was built, but it’s been closed for decades. I opened it up and checked it, the water chemistry and so on, and then cleaned it out since it was full of sediment. I’ve been checking it periodically since then, maybe once every month or two. I just went down there today and there are slimy bits all over the bottom. They look like what happens after an egg hatches, but there is way too much material for it to be an egg. It’s halfway dissolved, so there’s not much I can tell. But, since Thalia was here…”

  “No, I understand. I asked you to report anything out of the ordinary and that certainly meets the criteria.”

  “Do you think she laid an egg?” asked Josette, sounding a little horrified at the thought.

  “Well, if you didn’t and Yadikira didn’t, then it’s got to be her. Unless you’ve got rogue vampires running around up there, that is.”

  She made a little indecisive sound, then said, “I don’t think we do. I haven’t been looking for such a thing. Do we even have rogue vampires anymore? Aside from the problem you’re having with Thalia, of course.”

  If he were to spill the beans right now, it wouldn’t do anything to help Josette or Yadikira remain calm. It might even be too much for Yadikira to take. Girard was spared answering by Borona pushing into the break room. “Boss, I’ve got it up on the screen. We’re ready.”

  He held up a hand to let him know he’d be right in then said, “Tell her yes. I’ll do whatever it is she wants, no questions. I’ll be up there by late this afternoon with a security crew. Right now, I’ve got to go though.”

  “Any leads?” she asked, voice tight.

  “Let’s hope so. I’ll see you later,” he answered, then broke the call.

  Lila gave him the eye while they walked toward the technical room, but Girard ignored it. He’d let Lila question him as much as she wanted later, even press him for details, but not now. They’d lost Thalia, but now Girard had a sinking feeling he knew where she went when she wasn’t cooking up germs in her lab. Losing her had been a risk when they conducted the assault on the lab in that warehouse. If they didn’t catch her there, then she could easily disappear. She could change bodies, go to another lab, do whatever else she wanted and they would be left trying to play catch up.

  Risk or no, they couldn’t leave that lab in operation. Now, they had to find her before she could begin again.

  Marcus and Doran were there already, with Borona trying his level best to keep Marcus from dropping potato chip crumbs all over his equipment. Marcus was trying equally hard to elbow him away without pausing in his relentless chewing. All that eating was definitely working though. Even in the few days since the assault, Marcus had gone up a clothes size and his frame was full and muscular. Even his hair was growing fast, though right now he’d somehow gotten crumbs in it on one side.

  “Show me what you’ve got,” Girard said, bumping Marcus back with his chair as he sat down in front of the screen.

  “Rude shit, isn’t he?” Marcus mumbled to Doran.

  Doran eyed the potato chip bag and raised an eyebrow. Marcus
got the hint and tossed the bag on the work bench behind them. “Point taken.”

  “This is the audio I isolated from the newscast. I took out all the noise. Since you’re the only one that spoke with her, you’re going to have to tell me if it’s her.” Borona hit the button on the computer and the room filled with the unmistakable sound of Thalia’s voice…but also not her voice.

  “Mommy! Daddy! I don’t know what to do. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to live! She said I would live forever. Come get me and—” The scratchy recording as it was heard on the news—the call clearly made while someone was huddling over a phone and trying to be quiet—had been transformed. Her voice was as crisp and clear as that day when he met Thalia. All the scratching and rubbing noises had been cleaned up, leaving only her.

  Girard fell back against the chair, the leather letting out a whoosh of air he could totally sympathize with. “It’s her, but also not her. That’s the same voice she used when she had those weird outbursts. She said almost the same thing about living forever then too.”

  Silence fell over the room as each considered the incredible complications this would bring. Girard had finally felt confident enough to share his thoughts with the team, including the Council. At first, they’d been loath to accept the possibility that Christina—the human girl—was still alive inside the body Thalia had taken. The only exception was Marcus, who had merely nodded as if what Girard suggested was obvious.

  They had to believe him now.

  Doran was the first to speak. “So you agree with the parents then? You think that’s their daughter?”

  Girard had seen the newscast, just like everyone else. The mother and father had tearfully shared the message, one that had been abruptly cut off, both utterly convinced it was their daughter’s voice. The police chief had been sympathetic when newscasters trailed him, shoving microphones in his face and demanding a response, but his answer had been equally clear. The call was a prank, a cruel one, the kind of sick phone call that seemed to come anytime there was a tragedy like this. He called it the second wave of predators, the fire that took the children being the first predator. Other parents had received prank email messages, phone calls, even letters. It was something that happened in the world today, but sadly, this particular prank had fooled even the girl’s parents.