The Price of Life

by T. M. Nienaber

  “Now gentlemen, please, let’s try to relax.” Alexander spoke up from the corner where he stood observing the scene. He looked amused.

  “Stay out of it, Alex,” Kristopher barked.

  Even though Alexander had left with the rest of them, no one treated him as a true part of the administration. No one trusted him, and most people referred to him as Lucian’s boy behind his back. Alexander was tired of it, and he now saw his chance to become an invaluable part of the team. “Lucian might be able to bring you to life, but his powers are dark, immoral, and ill gotten.”

  “Where are you going with this, boy?”

  “Wouldn’t you and the rest of our beloved citizens like to know their second chance is coming from someone whose power is righteous and good?”

  “And where do you expect us to find someone like that?”

  “Why, look no further!” Alexander bowed.

  “What are you getting at, Alex?” Kristopher started to grin.

  “Well, I started my training with Lucian but felt so corrupted by his power’s source. I decided to devote my time to learning how to do the same things in a different way. I have come by my new skills through ways of light, and they are to be used only to heal and protect.”

  “That’s total bullshit!” Kristopher applauded. “It’s perfect.”

  “I know.” Alexander smirked. No matter what else happened, Kristopher couldn’t get rid of him now.

  “I don’t understand. Are you saying you can do what Lucian does? Keep us from getting assassinated, keep our families safe?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why make another deal with another devil?” The older Cabinet member shook his head. “Maybe we deserve to die for what we’ve done.”

  “If that’s the way you feel, by all means, please go and feed yourself to the zombies. We won’t try to stop you.” Kristopher always tried to be obliging, especially with his coworkers. “But what Alex is saying is that he won’t be the devil. He’s our saving angel.”

  Alexander smiled. “I can do what Lucian does in a way that’s easier to stomach. We’ll call ourselves the Fellowship of the Righteous, and use everything Lucian did against him. I’ll look like an ordinary citizen, no fancy robes or already established cults. The people will love me. Everyone who had been worried about what Lucian can do will now flock to Kristopher, because we’re finally offering them a choice that won’t taint their souls. Lucian won’t stand a chance.” Alexander felt no remorse about throwing his former mentor into the fire. Lucian could defend himself, and he wasn’t suited for being in the public eye. Alexander knew how to make a show of it.

  “Oh, Alexander, it’s perfect! Everything we could have hoped for and more.”

  “I’m still not sure about this.” The remaining Cabinet members looked at each other, unsure of how to react. “We thought Lucian was our salvation and look at what’s happened to him.”

  “This is different,” Kristopher’s voice was silky smooth. “Alexander has been with us from the start.”

  “I guess.”

  “Really now, you’re either with us or against us.”

  “And you don’t want to be against us. I doubt Lucian will consider protecting you to be a high priority.” Alexander smirked.

  “Fine.” The two Cabinet members shook their heads in resignation and wished they’d gotten out sooner.

  “Glad to have you on board!” Kristopher made a show of shaking hands. “Alex, go get ready. I think it’s time we introduce you to the world.”

  Kristopher made sure the TV interruption was not a press conference. As much faith as he had in Alexander he did not want to make the mistake of backing the boy’s claims with his political station. Alexander looked excellent, he was clean-shaven, in a suit, and presented an overall more normal image than Lucian ever had, even without the robes. Alexander smiled as the cameras started to roll.

  “Citizens, those of you who have been terrorized by the patrols, eaten by Lucian’s undead, or lost loved ones to the cult when you thought you’d be saving them from death. I am here to tell you that there is another way! I once worked with Lucian, I learned his ways and I know all about where his power comes from. I was able to get away. I learned that there is a higher power out there, a power that can still bring the dead to life and perform miracles, but who does everything for good. That is the power I will be drawing from. I ask all of you to turn away from Lucian, tempting as his promises may be, and come back to reality. People shouldn’t live more than one life. We’ve seen what happens in most cases, people we care about turned into mindless creatures in a devastating army which Lucian has turned against us. We all make mistakes, but now is the chance to rectify them. Come to me and I will make sure the taint of his cult is washed off you. Everything I do will be for the good of the people, not the good of a false religion. We will call ourselves the Fellowship of the Righteous, and we will stand against Lucian. We will defeat his cult! We will prove we can survive without him!”

  31. Lucian

  “This isn’t going to be good, Lucian. That boy can ruin us.”

  “Now, Belle, when have you ever been one to think short term?” Lucian knew the announcement condemning his cult should have stirred more emotion in him, but it didn’t. He knew Alexander, the boy was talented, dedicated, and had serious potential, but he was still a novice. It wouldn’t take long before Alexander realized he couldn’t do everything on his own, and he lacked the knowledge necessary to teach anyone else. He’d fizzle out soon enough.

  “I don’t think it’s as simple as you think. Alexander had many friends among our younger ranks. He doesn’t need to train anyone if he can poach our acolytes.”

  “Belle, are you listening to yourself?” Lucian chuckled. “Something else is going to have to happen to get our real members to leave and they can’t touch us.”

  “Maybe not the elders and maybe not here, but what about the other chapters? He could attack us where we’re weakest and force us to make a move.”

  “Kristopher has his hands full with a lot of other problems. He won’t have the time to make a lasting attack against us.”

  “You’re looking at this from the perspective of someone who’s been alive for centuries, not a normal human. He won’t be concerned with hurting you forever, he’ll just want revenge. Kristopher and Alexander will hunt for you with everything they have just because they want to see bad things happen to you now.”

  “Belle, don’t be such a fret. We have everything we need to not only stay above water, but to stay in control.”

  “You need to take this threat more seriously,” Belle pleaded, but Lucian waved her off.

  “I have a plan, going into effect right now, which will put a stop to everything Kristopher had planned. He might claim to be the Fellowship of the Righteous, but we have power he can’t imagine.”

  “And is this a plan you want to share with the rest of us?”

  “No.” Lucian gave a sly grin. “But you’ll see it soon enough. I think we’re going to have our first independent press conference. They’ll be looking for our response to Alexander’s attack. And we’ll give them a response.”

  “Lucian, what are you going to do?” Belle looked worried.

  “See for yourself.” Lucian stood up and walked upstairs. He had a massive army surrounding his house, and just as the cameras started showing up the army started to move. Lucian had given specific orders no one who was part of the media would be hurt. The way the undead troops moved around them was more graceful than anything Kristopher’s military could manage, or anything Alexander had been able to do with the troops he stole before leaving Lucian. It let the world see, whatever else Lucian was, he was the superior.

  The troops target was Kristopher’s office building. Lucian didn’t want them to break in, just make a point. Kristopher had the country’s finest military men and women guarding his base and Lucian’s zombies started cutting through them like nothing. It was a massacre. Not one living s
oldier was left alive and yet not one reporter or cameraman was so much as scratched. Lucian even had his troops protect them from stray attacks by Kristopher’s soldiers.

  Alexander’s undead troops were harder to fight. They were under heavy automated protection and Alexander didn’t send them out to fight. Lucian tried to get rid of them, but lost several of his own creatures. The fight wasn’t worth it yet. Lucian wouldn’t be able to catch his protégé off guard, but when it came to an actual fight Lucian was confident who would win. In spite of that setback, Lucian’s ‘press conference’ was a major success. No matter how much talk Kristopher could spit out Lucian still had him beat in action. If people wanted to survive, they’d have to get behind his cult. There were still those who would fall for Kristopher’s speeches but Alexander couldn’t support them on his own. Lucian had an international network and limitless power. It would take more than an army of righteous nut jobs to topple that kind of empire.

  “See, Belle.” Lucian grinned. “They can’t beat that.”

  “Don’t let your guard down, Lucian. They aren’t just going to give up because you can kill things.”

  32. Miriel and William

  William wouldn’t tell her exactly how many men they had to kill, or how many “founders” there were, and it was getting tedious. This was only her fifth hit since the vampire had been started up again, but William had done several on his own. Miriel was starting to think he was using her to kill off men he didn’t like instead of just the ones out to get them. The more personal connections the targets had to William the more likely it would be that someone would catch on.

  Miriel didn’t like William’s technique. There was something creepy about it, even for an assassin who had seen as much about the stranger sides of life as Miriel. She had her routine down, using the sedative to knock her victims unconscious and then treat them like blood donors. William had decided to keep the blood frozen in his office. They couldn’t use if for anything and their freezer storage wasn’t up to modern medical quality, but William didn’t want to waste it…just in case.

  This night was stranger than the others, the first bag was less than half full and Miriel was getting sick at the sight of it, not to mention the smell permeating throughout the room. Just watching the blood flow through the tube and into the bag was making her nauseous and dizzy. If she sat she felt sick, if she stood up she started to black out. Miriel wasn’t strong enough to make it out of the house on her own feeling the way she did. She did manage to make it to her victim’s bathroom, as much as they tried to keep things in the character of the time they had held onto modern indoor plumbing. She lay on the cold tile floor for about thirty minutes. Outside in the bedroom, the collection bag broke and the blood starting pooling on the floor. Miriel finally blacked out.

  “Elle!” William whispered harshly into the air, leaving footprints in the pooled blood he somehow hadn’t noticed yet.

  Miriel lifted her head and looked around, pushing herself into a seated position. She noticed her hands were shaking and she was covered in a cold sweat. And that smell. She could smell the blood as vividly as if she’d had her face in it, and nothing had ever disgusted her more. The longer she thought about it the more things started to fall into place.

  She felt herself pale and her stomach churn. “No!” she yelled a little louder than she had meant to.

  “Elle!” William rushed over to where she was now forcing herself to stand, propped up against a wall and shaking her head in disbelief.

  “What the hell is going on here, Elle! Talk about unprofessional, this place is a mess. Have you even bothered to check on things out there! It’ll take days to clean this place. My god, Elle, what are you doing!”

  Miriel held up a hand and William crossed his arms and looked upset, but did stop his ranting long enough to give her a chance to explain. He assumed her excuse would be a halfhearted attempt to cover up a sudden attack of laziness.

  “I’m pregnant.” She shook her head again and smiled sickly to herself. The one thing she had hoped to avoid above everything else. She’d killed hundreds of people, talked her way out of countless charges, been a personal demon to thousands, but none of that had prepared her to put those words together and confirm that, for once, she was creating a life.

  William stared with his mouth open for a full minute before he pushed her further into the bathroom and closed the door, not wanting the corpse to eavesdrop. “Elle, um.” He awkwardly touched her arm. “We’ll find a way to get you outside for a few days. I have some friends outside. If I can get in touch with them they’ll take care of you and then bring you right back.”

  Miriel took a step away from him, being touched by William always made her feel uncomfortable. “Why would I need to go outside. You are an actual doctor aren’t you? That’s what you keep telling everyone. I would assume that means you know how to deliver a child when it’s necessary.”

  “Well yes, and I think Madame is a registered midwife, but I can’t.” He paused to think of the right words. “We aren’t really set up to go the other way.” Another pause. “You know, to take care of our problem.” He looked at Miriel expectantly, waiting for any kind of affirmation she understood.

  It was now Miriel’s turn to stare in shock for a few minutes. Her mind was thinking through scenarios as quickly as it could. If this had happened outside the walls, in a world free of Kristopher and Lucian’s tyranny, she would have done exactly what he suggested without a second thought. She hated William, and it was nice to know she had the chance to do something he had no control over. If this would make him suffer that was enough of a reason to follow through with it. That would mean becoming a mother and raising a child in a world most people were dying to get out of.

  Finally, Miriel gave a resigned smile, put a hand on William’s face to make sure he met her eyes, and said the only thing that made sense to her. “William, if I can’t kill something myself, then it’s earned the right to stay alive.”

  William nodded because he wasn’t sure what else he could do.

  Miriel walked to the door and turned back to William before he opened it. “You can get rid of this mess,” she nodded to the mess in the bedroom with a hint of menace in her voice. “And I’ll go home to figure out how to live with mine.”

  William nodded again, grateful for Miriel to leave and to have something that would keep him busy and away from her. When he had first walked in, the botched murder seemed like a disaster of the worst kind. Now it was a blessed distraction.

  Miriel walked outside and stood in the cold night air for a while. She’d never had to worry about how to keep someone alive before. The whole idea seemed remote and foreign. She wondered if she should raise the little human to be good or train it to be like her. This was not the ideal place to bring a child, but she wasn’t the ideal mother either. Maybe the two would work together somehow.

  “Well, baby.” Miriel put a hand on her stomach. “I guess we have to go somewhere.” She started walking forward, then paused, putting her hand over her stomach again. “And baby, my name is Miriel. Your mother’s name is Miriel. No matter what anyone else says.” She smiled, feeling the closest thing to contentment she had in a long time, and started walking. She wouldn’t be Elle anymore. Whatever else she did, she was Miriel once again. Her child might never have a real home, or a real family, or a real place to belong, but it would know its mother’s name.

  Miriel went to the gatehouse to watch the news. Now she had a reason to care about what went on outside. She would eventually have to leave and take her child there. Out there and away from William. Away from William who didn’t understand why it wasn’t fair to hook a person up to a machine, sit back, and watch them die. She couldn’t have a child taught that that was all right. Whatever she decided to teach it, her child would know the right way to fight.

  33. Three Years Into the War (Lucian)

  “What do you have for me?” Lucian was leaning back in his chair, feet on the table in fron
t of him, staring at the ceiling. In the three years since Lucian and Kristopher had started their personal war things had gotten bad. Every dead body Lucian or his men found was reanimated and sent to fight in the undead army, meaning the flow of troops was unstoppable. All of his men were branded on the arm so they could be resurrected properly if found on the streets, a painful but necessary process. Kristopher retaliated by sending out parties to burn all the corpses they could find, undead or not. The more efficient Kristopher’s torching parties became, the more severely they crippled Lucian’s forces. The two sides were now trying to enlist the help of the compounds and gated societies they had been so quick to disown. Neither side was having much success and both knew the only way the war would really end was if one of the immortals found a way to kill the other, but neither Lucian nor Kristopher was taking any chances, killing more than their share of people every day to keep themselves safe.

  “We’ve found a promising compound not too far from here. It’s a little too close to Kristopher’s territory, but he hasn’t touched it yet.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Lucian’s eyes went dark and the man took a few steps back towards the door. No one wanted to be around Lucian when he was angry.

  “Nothing I could see. I went there myself and aside from the place being run by some real crazies, it looked all right. Everyone running these compounds is a little nuts, that shouldn’t be enough to keep us away.”

  “Why do you say they’re crazy?”

  “Well.” The man looked unsure if he should respond or not, Lucian had stopped talking, but didn’t look like he expected much of an answer.

  “Yes?” Now Lucian was starting to look angry again.

  “Well.” Now the man was nervously fumbling over the words. “There have been some rumors. People go there to escape the war, and, well, their survival rate isn’t high. Not all those deaths can be natural. The place doesn’t look that deadly from what I’ve seen. And, there was one other thing.” The man’s voice trailed off.