by Craig Zerf
They all had one thing in common. They worshipped Nathan Tremblay. They considered him to be the answer to all that they considered right and correct. Vampires should rule. Humanity were little less than cattle or, at best, servants for their pleasure.
The Nosferatu should rule the night and, via familiars and proxies, the days as well. The Potestatum must be found and given to Nathan so that he could lead through moonlight and sunlight.
He was the way, the truth and the darkness.
They had decided that tonight they would be making a statement. A mass ‘culling’ as it were.
On the edge of a small coastal village near St. Ives a music festival, Don’t Wake the Dolphins, was held every year, attracting a couple of a thousand people.
A variety of music, vegetarian food stalls, recreational drugs, alcohol and, new this year - death at the hands of a blood-sucking monster.
There were seventeen vamps, and they planned to hit the festival at eleven o’clock that night after the main act had been on stage for some twenty minutes. That way they would have a target rich environment. There was no going back. The world would know that vampires existed and the Elders would have to change their archaic ways of thinking and they would be forced into the new world order.
At ten o’clock a group of six of the younger vamps gathered in the ruined, late Saxon village church situated some half a mile from the festival. The rest would join them soon. Above them an ancient gargoyle by the name of Igneous Serpentine awoke from his near slumber and contacted Coldstone.
In turn Coldstone called out to Emily.
Ten minutes later, Emily, Sylvian, Troy, Muller and Latobias stood outside the Eurocopter.
‘Is this it?’ Asked Troy.
Emily shook her head. ‘We’re waiting for Tag. Unfortunately both William and Bastian are in London. But Coldstone says that there are only six vamps and none of them seem to be Elders. So it shouldn’t be a problem.’
As she finished speaking, Tag appeared. He was dressed in full battle gear and was carrying a General Electric minigun complete with two thousand rounds of ammunition, an electric drive motor for the barrels and two large car batteries to power the set up. Approximately four hundred pounds of equipment. He carried the minigun in one hand like it weighed no more than an assault rifle.
Sylvian shook his head. ‘No ways, Tag. You can’t bring that. Hell, where did you get it?’
‘It’s William’s,’ answered the big man. ‘It’s my new choice of weapon. Cool, hey?’
Again the Frenchman shook his head. ‘Too much chance of collateral damage,’ he said. ‘Not safe. You simply cannot go into urban situations with that quantity of firepower. I mean, that thing can level whole buildings.’
Tag’s face fell. ‘Ah, come on,’ he argued. ‘I’ll be careful. Anyway, I’ve only got two thousand rounds so I won’t be leveling any buildings, only blood suckers.’
‘Oh let him bring it,’ said Em. ‘We’re running out of time.’
Tag grinned and they piled into the helicopter. Latobias punched the coordinates into the satellite system and took off, the twin engines howling out into the night.
Ten minutes later a trip that should have taken almost an hour was complete and Latobias touched the helicopter down about a thousand yards from the church. Emily’s team of five deplaned, leaving the wind god at the controls. They headed towards the church moving at a fast run.
Three hundred yards from the front entrance, Coldstone’s voice echoed in Em’s head.
‘We have a problem,’ he noted dryly. ‘The six vampires have turned into seventeen. The extras must have arrived mere minutes before you, Serpentine ventures that there are a few Elders. Two of them seem different. Very powerful. I suggest that you abort the mission. You are drastically outnumbered by superior forces.’
‘I’ll check with the team,’ pulsed Em. She held her hand up. ‘Guys,’ she said. ‘Situation’s changed. Looks like there are now seventeen blood suckers. At least two Elders, maybe more. Might even be those Bloodwraith things that we’ve encountered before. What do you reckon? We proceed or not?’
‘I recommend we get some backup,’ said Muller. ‘Those are long odds, even for us.’
‘Ultimately, it’s your show, Emily,’ said Sylvian. ‘You are the guardian and the Daywalker, but I too suggest prudence.’
Em looked at Troy. ‘Not sure when we’ll get the chance to get so many together,’ said the Wolfman. ‘I reckon that we can take them if we go in hard and fast. It’s your call.’
Tag patted his minigun. ‘Bet you’re all glad that I brought Missus Jones along now.’
‘Missus Jones?’ Questioned Troy.
‘Yep,’ grinned the big man. ‘You know…me and missus Jones, we got a thing going on, we both know it’s wrong, but it’s much too strong, to let it go now.’
Sylvian shook his head. ‘Merde. Fine let’s do it, just watch where you point that thing,’ he said to Tag. ‘It’s a recipe for massive collateral damage.’
‘Me and the missus will be mighty careful,’ assured Tag. ‘Just if I shout Get Down then you all hit the floor.’
‘Right then,’ concluded Emily. ‘Nothing fancy, we go in via the front of the building and kill anyone inside. Let’s do it.’
Em took the lead, bursting into a run that covered the last three hundred yards in under four seconds. At that pace she would have run the one hundred meters in approximately one and a half seconds flat. Sylvian and Troy, merging into Wolfman mode as he ran, were mere seconds behind her. Bringing up the rear were Tag and Muller who, although fast, traveled at mere human speeds and would arrive at the church some thirty seconds after Emily.
The massive front doors to the church were closed but they were totally dilapidated and Emily went through them like they weren’t even there. Deathwalker the axe appeared in her right hand as she scanned the room.
The vamps were gathered in a circle around two of their number. The two vamps in the center of the circle wore deep maroon leathers and black cloaks. Their hair was white-blonde and hung past their shoulders. They both exuded an undeniable sense of power and confidence.
They also reacted instantly, breaking through the circle and launching themselves at Em. They were fast. Extremely fast.
But she was the Daywalker. And the power of the Potestatum crackled through her like bolts of electricity. Her axe spun and cleaved, nicking and cutting the Bloodwraiths but not quite striking close enough to deliver an incapacitating blow. The Bloodwraiths, in turn, split their attack, never standing together but launching themselves from two different directions at once. Darting in, slicing at Em and then backing off to repeat their attack from a different angle. They were well trained and fought with cool clam professionalism.
All around her Emily could sense the other vamps attacking Sylvian and Troy.
The Wolfman relied on his strength to keep the horde of blood suckers at bay. Picking up the one by his foot, Troy literally used him as a living cudgel to beat back the others, smashing them onto the stone walls and crushing them to the flagstone floor. Blood began to run like the very church itself was bleeding.
Sylvian, leapt and danced and turned. His rapier like a lance of light, so swift it was. Cutting, parrying and stabbing. Dismembered heads and limbs flew.
But there were many. Too many. And they were but three.
With a flick of her wrist, Emily reversed one of her strokes in midflight and the axe blade clove into the one Bloodwraiths, hammering through ribs and spine and spilling out its internal organs like so much offal. Em followed up with a forward thrust that took its head off; at the same time she was ducking and rolling to ready her position for taking on the next one.
Then they heard the shout. At the top of his voice.
‘Get Down!’
Troy, Sylvian and Em simply dropped like puppets with the strings cut.
And the air above them turned to fire as Tag and Missus Jones filled the church with silver jacketed slugs.
The big man was carrying two thousand rounds of ammunition. The General Electric minigun fires at a rate of six thousand rounds a minute.
Exactly twenty seconds later the only sounds left were the plinking of the superheated barrels of the machine gun, the odd piece of masonry falling to the floor and, unbelievably, the mewling and whining of the few vampires that had actually managed to live through the veritable firestorm that Tag had unleashed on them.
The big man spat on one of the wounded vamps. ‘Should have brought more ammo,’ he said.
Em walked over to the nearest wounded vampire, stood over him and then, her face devoid of expression, slowly pushed the twin points of her axe into his chest. The blood sucker screeched in agony but she didn’t stop. Nor did she speed up. It took a full half a minute to sever his spine and kill him.
Then she walked over to the next one and calmly sliced off his one arm before leaning her axe on his throat and cutting into his neck in small, treacle slow increments.
Sylvian strode over to her and grabbed her arm. ‘What are you doing?’
Em looked up, a dreamlike expression on her face. ‘They’re evil,’ she said, as if explaining to a child. ‘We must punish them. They must be made to suffer.’ She looked at Muller. ‘Do you have any more of that “Holy Water” on you?’
The knight nodded.
‘Well, there are two left alive. Sprinkle a bit on them. Let’s see how long they take to die.’
There was an uncomfortable silence in the church as the men stared dumfounded at Emily.
Then the sound of three quick shots rang out.
Emily snapped out of her reverie to see Tag standing over the dead bodies of the last vamps, a smoking Desert Eagle in his hand. All three had been dispatched with head shots, ending their misery.
The big man shook his head. ‘I don’t know where you were going, girly,’ he said. ‘And God knows I ain’t no fan of the blood suckers, but there’s a limit. I’ll torture them for information but not for fun. That’s wicked, man. And it don’t be right.’
Emily shrugged. ‘Whatever. Let’s clear this mess up and get home. I vote we bury them behind the old graveyard.’
She walked out of the church, dragging two of the bodies with her and, after glancing puzzledly at each other, the men followed suit.
Chapter 9
‘She’s fast,’ said Sylvian.
‘You’re all fast,’ retorted Merlin.
The Bloodborn shook his head. ‘Not like her. She moves at over a hundred yards a second. Her reaction times seem to be close to instantaneous. And her strength. She smashed through a two ton oak church door like it was paper. Okay, it had seen better days but I couldn’t have done it.’
‘We knew that the Potestatum would enhance her. And we accepted that. She is pure of heart and mind. A truly good person.’
Sylvian took a deep breath. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss,’ he said as he went on to tell the magician about Emily torturing the wounded blood suckers.
After he had finished Merlin took a while to load his pipe and set it to flame. He puffed away for a while, staring into space. ‘Right. I’m going to have a chat to the Prof. Then I’ll need to speak to Emily. This is not good. As of this moment she could quiet possibly be the most powerful living creature on this planet. We can’t afford to have her going dark on us. Who knows where that might lead?’
***
‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Emily,’ stated Merlin. ‘Fact is that we’re all a little worried about you at the moment. Nothing that serious, simply wondering if you feel out of sorts. On edge. Different in some way. After all, you have experienced some rather dramatic changes.’
Emily laughed sardonically. ‘No shit? I lost my foster parents, found out that one of my friends had willingly become a vampire, then he killed me and turned me into a blood sucking monster, then I killed like about a hundred people because they were slave traders and finally I sort of absorbed the Corona Potestatum and now I am The Daywalker. Note, please, not A Daywalker but The Daywalker. So, do I feel on edge? Somehow a little stressed? Well what the hell do you think?’
Merlin nodded in understanding. The Prof however walked right up to the teenage girl and stared openly at her, his head tilted to one side.
‘What?’ Demanded Emily.
‘Merely observing your autonomic responses, my dear,’ he said. ‘Skin tone, heart rate, breathing. Stress levels. You see,’ continued the Prof. ‘Merlin said that he wasn’t going to beat about the bush and then he proceeded to do exactly that. Strange.’
‘What do you mean?’ Asked Em.
‘I mean, what he really wanted to ask was, why did you torture the wounded vampires in the church? Was it for pleasure? Information? Some misguided sense of honor? Quite frankly it worries us. We were wondering if you were starting to lose your mind.’
‘No, don’t hold back, Prof,’ quipped Em. ‘Say what you mean.’
The Prof, who simply did not understand sarcasm, looked puzzled. ‘I thought that I just did,’ he said.
Emily shook her head. ‘Look, I don’t know what came over me,’ she said. ‘Call it battle fatigue. Stress. Whatever. It won’t happen again so relax.’
‘Okay,’ conceded Merlin. ‘But any problems please come straight to me. No man is an island and so on. I’m here to help.’
Emily leaned over and kissed Merlin on the cheek. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll remember that.’
The two ancient men watched Emily leave the room. Finally the magician spoke.
‘What do you think?’ He asked the Prof.
‘I think,’ answered the Prof. ‘That we have a big problem.’
‘So do I,’ agreed Merlin. ‘So do I.’
Chapter 10
He was known to all as Mister Stopes. Any other forms of address were out of bounds. This included honorifics such as, Sir, Boss or Esquire. If people used any of these other forms of address, Mister Stopes thought that they were taking the piss. As a result, Mister Stopes considered them to be disrespectful.
And nobody in their right mind would wish to be disrespectful to Mister Stopes.
Five foot five inches of thick-set muscle, a face like a bulldog and more pent up rage than an active volcano were all testament that Mister Stopes had come up the hard way. He had been born in the sitting room of a dilapidated Victorian terrace house in the Elephant & Castle, London, in the late seventies to a single mum. Five sisters. No brothers. His father had left when he was but two days old. His dear mum had taken on three jobs just to keep them fed. The world goes on about the English welfare state but the fact of the matter was that it was easy to fall outside of the net. Together the family earned just enough to disqualify them from state handouts but not quite enough to have any quality of life.
Mister Stopes’ mum died when he was seven. In true East End tradition this made him the head of the house.
And from that day on he was known to all as Mister Stopes. Admittedly, for the first few years he was Young Mister Stopes. But after he killed his first man at the tender age of eleven the “Young” moniker was dropped and the meteoric criminal career of Mister Stopes began.
He still lived in the Elephant & Castle. No need to move, he always told everyone. If the area was good enough for me mum then it’s good enough for me. Of course he didn’t live in an old terrace house. No. Mister Stopes lived in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Tate Modern Gallery. Five bedrooms, massive living rooms and its own private elevator.
It also had a special room. A room where Mister Stopes conducted a fair amount of his business. He called it his study.
Others referred to it as The Bunker or sometimes The Cold Room.
The Bunker was currently in use. Mister Stopes was conducting a business meeting.
‘Now listen, Harry,’ he said. His voice reasonable. His tone almost caring. ‘All I’m saying is, you give me six thousand Pounds Sterling every week. In return you get to control all the businesses South of Gordon ro
ad. Now that seems to be fair and reasonable deal. Don’t you agree?’
Harry nodded frantically and, at the same time, mumbled what was probably a fervent expression of agreement.
Mister Stopes turned to a human gorilla in a cheap suit standing next to Harry. ‘Do me a favor, Ben,’ asked Mister Stopes. ‘I believe that Harry wants to say something. Why don’t you take the duct tape off his mouth in order to help facilitate our discourse?’
‘Sure fing, Mister Stopes,’ grunted Ben as he yanked the length of duct tape from Harry’s mouth. Harry immediately started talking.
‘I’m sorry about the late payment, sir,’ he blurted. ‘I gave you most of it. It wasn’t my fault.’
Mister Stopes stepped forward, his face red with anger. ‘Who’s your sir?’ He snapped. ‘Do I look like a bleedin’ sir? I’m an honest working man, Harry. You won’t find no airs and graces with Mister Stopes. No, Harry.’ The gangster cocked his right arm back. ‘Now brace yourself, Harry,’ he advised. ‘This is going to sting a bit.’ Mister Stopes’ fist snapped forward and smashed into Harry’s nose. The sound of the bone breaking was plainly audible. Like a boot stepping on gravel. The chair that Harry was tied to rocked back but stayed upright.
‘Right, Harry. No more excuses. This is the way it works, you lean on the punters and they pay you. Anyone steps out of line and you and your boys sort them out, break a few arms, maybe the odd fire. You know the business. Now, and this is the important part, you take a percentage of the money that you collect and you give it to me. And you owe me one thousand two hundred of her majesties Pounds. I’m going to let you go now, Harry boy. Now, I’m not an unreasonable man, It’s almost nighttime so I won’t insist on full payment in the morning. But tomorrow, evening you will be back here with my money plus another two grand in interest. Do you understand?’
Harry nodded. He knew better than to argue.
Mister Stopes patted Harry on the head. ‘Good boy. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Mister Stopes turned and walked from the room. As he reached the door he called out to his gorilla. ‘Ben.’