Death Devours

by J. C. Diem

  Words trembled behind his tightly pressed lips but the child king refused to let them out until he’d regained control. “When this business is finished, Mortis, so are we. While I am ruler, our nations will never again be on speaking terms.”

  “Just give me a second to call home and tell all the other Australian vampires about your decision. Oh, wait, I’m the only one,” I said with heavy sarcasm, reminding him I wasn’t European. “Since I am the only one, I think I can live with your choice.” Turning on my heel, I headed back to the truck. Wisely, the humans had stayed out of our tiff. Sanderson quirked an eyebrow at me and I waved him to get the show on the road. Vehicles had been leaving at a steady pace and nearly half were already on their way to the last town that had been attacked.

  Luc joined me in the back of the truck but no one else was game to. A human took the wheel of our vehicle so I assumed our friends had found alternate transportation.

  Sliding his arm over my shoulder, Luc hugged me to his side as our truck rumbled to life and lurched into motion. “You have my gratitude for saving Igor’s life.”

  Swiping a hand beneath my un-runny nose, I struggled not to subside into tearless sobs and failed. Due to my intervention, I’d saved Igor’s life but I had also effectively destroyed relations between the Japanese and European nations forever.

  “Do you know how m-m-many zombies we killed together?” I wailed when my will not to cry broke completely.

  “No. How many?” Luc asked to humour me.

  “T-t-thousands!” Sobbing some more, I struggled to articulate my sorrow. “I thought Ishida cared about me. I thought we were friends.” Dry sobs overwhelmed me and cut off my ability to speak for a few moments. “I mean n-n-nothing to him at all!”

  “I know, Nat.” Patting my back soothingly, Luc did his best to comfort me. One part of me was disgusted at my behaviour. You’re acting like a schoolgirl who has just been dumped for the first time, my subconscious observed snidely. At least I’ve had boyfriends, I thought back nastily. What have you ever had? Then I realized how completely absurd my mental conversation was.

  “I just want this to be over,” I said mournfully when my sobs subsided.

  Luc squeezed my shoulder. “Everything will work out in the end.” His smile was reassuring but I had trouble believing it. No matter how this ended, Ishida and I would never be friends again. The two vampire nations would go back to killing each other on sight and the time I spent on the Japanese island might as well have never happened.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Our convoy stopped briefly an hour before dawn so my people could feed from the soldiers who were unlucky enough to be chosen to be our meals. Luc sent me an enquiring look and I just shook my head, pretending I wasn’t hungry. Are you going to stay in the truck with Luc and sulk for the entire journey? My subconscious sounded amused as it asked the question. That’s the plan, I responded snidely, daring it to make an issue of my decision.

  As always, my plan didn’t turn out as I hoped. As the convoy rumbled to life again, the door of the truck was thrown open and several bags were tossed inside. Geordie was the first to leap inside. He sent me a stricken look then busied himself claiming a spot in the far corner.

  Gregor was the next to enter. He nodded amiably then picked up his bag. It was worn and battered and no doubt contained at least a couple of his favourite natty tweed suits.

  Igor came straight to me when he entered. Dropping to his knee, he held his hand out. Put on the spot, I grasped his hand. Instead of shaking it, he simply held it. “I owe you my life,” he said gravely in barely understandable English.

  “You’re my friend, Igor. I wasn’t about to let anyone kill you just for slapping a snotty little brat up the back of the head.”

  Geordie snivelled then clapped his hands over his face and subsided into tearless sobs. Igor squeezed my hand then released me. “Geordie feels responsible for your fight with the Emperor,” he said gruffly.

  “So he should,” Nicholas said as he leaped lightly into the back of the truck. “If not for his childish antics, our nations would not currently once more be on the verge of war.”

  Luc joined us and closed the door, shutting off the light. “Geordie cannot be blamed for our nations being on the verge of war. They have been so for many thousands of years.”

  Nicholas had an answer ready. “My…Natalie had won the Japanese scum over to her side. We could finally have had peace.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for company at all let alone to have to deal with everyone’s problems. Luc nudged me with his foot and pointed to Geordie. Huddled in the corner, the teen looked utterly heartbroken and even younger than usual.

  When Luc drew his foot back to deliver a not so subtle kick to my side, I fended him off and stood. I knew I was being selfish and childish but it would have been nice to wallow in my misery for just a bit longer.

  Dropping down beside Geordie, I wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He tried to cringe away but was trapped against the truck wall and had nowhere to go. “This is all my fault, chérie,” he said in a small, broken voice.

  “No one blames you, Geordie,” I told him and pulled him to my side.

  “I do,” Nicholas said with a sneer in our direction. He quailed under the looks Luc, Gregor and Igor gave him.

  Peeking at me from between his fingers, the teenager seemed hopeful. “You are not angry with me?”

  “No. I’m angry with myself.” If anyone was to blame for this fiasco, it was me.

  Nicholas flicked a glance at Luc then me. “If you two were able to control your flesh hunger then this collapse between relations might have been delayed.”

  Gee, it didn’t take him long to switch the blame. “If you’d been fed the blood of four imps, you might have trouble controlling your hungers as well, Nicholas,” I pointed out. “Oh, no you wouldn’t because you’d be dead. Pretty much every shitty thing that has happened to me would have killed any other vampire on the planet.” My voice was rising and I couldn’t seem to stop it. “Who the hell are you to lecture me about controlling myself when you have no idea of the crap that I’ve been through?”

  Ducking his head to break eye contact, Nicholas slumped his shoulders. “Forgive me, Natalie. I was merely jealous of your relationship with Lucentio. It is obvious that you care for each of your friends deeply.” He snuck a glance at my face to judge my reaction before dropping his eyes again. “I have been friendless for two thousand years and crave the ability to trust others.”

  “Maybe if you stopped acting like such a douchebag, people might actually want to be your friend,” Geordie said nastily. The hand he slipped around my waist was curled into a tight fist.

  “Perhaps you are right, Geordie,” the muscled vamp said almost humbly. Luc narrowed his eyes in automatic distrust and I found myself emulating him. Nicholas had rubbed everyone up the wrong way from the moment he’d become part of our group. Gaining our trust was going to require a substantial shift in his personality, possibly even a brain transplant.

  Ignoring Nicholas, Geordie turned to me. “Do you think you can repair your friendship with Ishida?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t think it was possible but I wasn’t about to shatter his hopes and send him spiralling into a depression again. “I’ll worry about that after we take down the Second and his five remaining brothers.” Not to mention the horde of fledglings they had no doubt created that would be rising over the next few nights.

  When dawn struck a few minutes later, Geordie became limp and heavy at my side. I lay him down gently then moved back to my usual spot. Everyone had opted to die for the day so I was truly alone for at least a few hours. I was in a brooding mood so sat beside Luc’s prone form instead of lying down beside him.

  What if Gregor’s hunch about our fate is correct? Once we put down the latest uprising, would another one simply pop up somewhere else? It seemed counterproductive for fate to allow thousands or possibly millions of fledglings to be created i
f it truly planned on eradicating us. Then again, our numbers were slowly being whittled down with each confrontation we had with the fledgling minions. By the time we defeated the Second, would there only be a handful of us left? Could whatever it was that was pulling our strings really be that ruthless?

  Settling onto my side next to Luc at last, I closed my eyes, dreading to fall asleep and see what my dreams would bring me this time.

  Lying amongst the freshly drained bodies that would soon rise to become my servants, I felt the sun burning high overhead. We had spent too long in cleaning out the last town and hadn’t managed to get very far before daylight had driven us underground.

  Somewhere out there, death was chasing me. I could almost feel her prying at my mind, attempting to steal my very thoughts. I almost wished that she could so that she could see what I had planned for her.

  One night not far from now we would meet face to face. When we did, she would be at my mercy and she would pay for killing so many of my fledglings. She wouldn’t die slowly. I had plans for Mortis, plans that would make her scream if she knew about them.

  Grimacing at the mental pictures the Second had conjured up, I didn’t even come close to screaming. Sitting up, I attempted to wipe away the images of me being mauled by the still wizened old mummy. I’d seen far too many horror movies to be terrorized by his fantasies.

  Igor was the first to wake when the sun went down moments later. As usual these days, he’d slept with a knife in his hand. He tucked it into the waistband of his brown woollen pants. Moments later, Gregor woke. Flicking dark blonde hair back from his face, he smiled at me and nodded at Igor. Nicholas roused next, followed shortly by Luc. Geordie remained dead to the world for another few minutes.

  “How is it that you wake so early when you are still so young, my Liege?” Nicholas asked.

  “Because I sleep instead of falling dead when the sun comes up.” My friends were used to how weird I was but Nicholas was still struggling with it.

  “How is this possible?” Staring at me curiously, Nicholas reached for a bag that someone had given him and pulled out a change of clothes. I averted my eyes while he stripped off down to his undies. Luc smiled wryly, aware that his over muscled rival was still doing his best to attract my attention.

  Gregor answered the question for me, which I appreciated since I had no idea how to answer it. “No one can fathom the mysteries of Mortis. Even the Prophets were given only snatches of information about her, enough to give us hope and little more than that.”

  “You are familiar with the prophecies that were written about Mortis?” Switching his attention to Gregor, Nicholas pulled a green t-shirt down over his wide chest. The camouflage pants fit his butt tightly and barely contained his thighs. One of Colonel Sanderson’s larger troopers must have donated the clothing to him.

  Inclining his head, Gregor searched his pack for a clean jacket. “I have copies of all the Romanian Prophet’s ramblings.”

  “I have heard only rumours about the fate that is waiting for us,” Nicholas said as he sat across from me. I drew my legs back as he stretched his out towards me. “One part that I remember stated that most of us would die once Mortis rose. If that is the case then how are there so many fledglings being made now?”

  His thoughts echoed the ones I’d had before I’d fallen asleep. Geordie woke, rubbing his eyes like a cranky kid as Gregor put his own theory forward. “Whatever it is that sends the Prophet’s their visions only allows them to see so far into the future. I am unsure why these current developments weren’t prophesized.”

  I wasn’t the only one who was disconcerted that the smartest person out of all of us had no idea what was going on. Gregor cut his gaze to my face for a moment then quickly looked away. He’s lying, I realized. He has a theory but he’s scared to voice it. No doubt it would be more along the lines of the powers that be trying to wipe us out to make up for an earlier mistake.

  The radio I’d clipped to my belt next to a set of throwing knives crackled. “Natalie, are you awake?” Sanderson asked.

  Unclipping the radio, I responded. “I’m awake.”

  “I’ve just heard that another large town is currently under attack.”

  Concern painted each of my companion’s faces. “How far away is it from the last town that was attacked?”

  “About an hour’s drive.”

  “Then they have found transportation,” I said with a hollow feeling in my stomach.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I dreamt my way inside the Second’s head again. He was worried they hadn’t made it far enough away from the last town before being driven underground by the sun.”

  Ignoring the fact that I had a telepathic link to the leader of the fledgling army, Sanderson jumped straight to the main concern. “Should we head to the next town or stop at the first to eradicate any hidden caches of fledglings?”

  “Both,” Gregor suggested. “We should split our forces up so some can concentrate on wiping out the caches and the rest can go on ahead.”

  Sanderson wasn’t happy about weakening his troops but he’d already come to the same conclusion when I repeated Gregor’s suggestion. “I’ll arrange for two thirds of our soldiers to meet us at the second town,” the Colonel said. “Do you have a preference of which teams to leave behind?”

  “Leave Teams One, Seven and Eight behind.” They were the teams run by Ishida, my weapons instructor and the final remaining Japanese team leader. The final team leader had been wiped out along with the rest of his team.

  “Copy that,” Sanderson said crisply. “Our remaining forces will continue straight through to the next town then. It will take us another seven hours to reach it.”

  “Emperor Ishida will not like being relegated to a clean-up crew,” Gregor guessed shrewdly.

  “Ask me if I care,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand.

  “Do you care?” was Geordie’s sly response.

  “Nope.”

  Seeing through my charade, the teen looked sad. “You are just trying to distance yourself from him so he doesn’t hurt your feelings again.”

  Nicholas was baffled by the insight. “Why would my…Natalie care what the Emperor of a rival nation thinks of her?”

  Geordie studied Nicholas to see if he was being serious. Just last night he’d told us that he didn’t have any friends. He must have had some when he’d been alive but maybe he simply couldn’t remember what it felt like to lose them. Igor shook his head to warn the teenager not to bother trying to explain it. It would probably just lead to another argument.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Seven hours later, we reached the latest town to be raided. It was even larger than the last, with nearly ten thousand people inhabiting it.

  When I first jumped down from the back of the truck, I thought we were in the wrong place. No hysterical survivors were gathered on the street corners. There were no blood splatters or any other tell-tale signs of vampire attacks. I didn’t spot any child sized corpses minus their hearts crumpled in the streets. Most telling, there didn’t appear to have been a mass exodus from the town.

  Curious heads were poked out the windows at the noise the soldiers made and were hastily withdrawn again when they saw the armed men. A police car pulled over and several officers disembarked.

  General Merwe and Colonel Sanderson stepped forward to question them. “Tell us exactly what you saw,” Merwe said to a badly shaken cop.

  “At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me,” the man said in his native language. A translator converted his words into English as the man continued. “I saw half naked men and women entering a building as I drove past. I thought they must be going to a strange party so paid them little attention. But as I patrolled, I saw more and more of these people and realized what they must be.”

  “How many buildings have been hit?” Sanderson queried.

  “We do not know as yet,” a man who had to be the police chief re
sponded. “We have searched over a dozen so far. All of the children were killed and their hearts were removed. The adults are missing.”

  I was amazed that the fledglings had kept their attacks quiet enough that the townsfolk hadn’t erupted into a panic. It seemed that the survivors didn’t even know that they were survivors. Most had no idea that their town had been targeted yet.

  It had been a blitz attack that had been well orchestrated and carried out silently. The Second had proven just how clever he was. They’d moved on hours ago and could have hit one or even two more nearby towns without anyone knowing yet. Come morning, word would begin to spread that the vamps had struck again.

  “They could be anywhere by now,” Colonel Sanderson muttered.

  Everyone who was aware of my abilities turned to me. Without needing to be asked, I closed my eyes and sent out my senses. Almost directly beneath our feet, I detected a large number of fledglings. Almost completely drained of their blood, they would remain unconscious until they rose in three nights.

  Sending out my senses further, I encountered another large group of my kind to the west. A third group was moving rapidly away to the north. I had little doubt that the vamps that had been left behind were yet another way to distract us. Without their maker to direct them, they would rise and feed blindly, unless we took care of them.