by Unknown
I beamed at the compliment.
“I’ve enjoyed learning it,” I told her honestly. “It’s also useful for throwing other vampires onto the back foot, letting them know whatever they say I can understand.”
We stayed silent for a while, not really saying much, not really needing to. In that moment we were just happy to enjoy each other’s presence, relaxing in the security and love we offered each other. I rested my hand on her midriff, idly tracing random patterns around her tank top with my index finger. I was a little nervous, which she must have picked up on again because I felt her calming caress in my mind again. She closed her eyes and nuzzled into my side, seemingly content to fall asleep where we were.
“I know you’re nervous about being with me tonight,” she told me, and I shuddered at the implication, “but I want you to know you don’t need to be. It’s been a very, very long time for me, Deimos. It might as well be my first time. But we deserve to be with each other after what we’ve dealt with-”
“I thought we agreed no work?”
“Hush, I’m making a point. Where was I? Right. We deserve it after what we’ve dealt with recently. So please my love, don’t be afraid. You never need to be afraid with me.”
“I’m always afraid, Corvi.”
She looked at me quizzically, and I clarified.
“Every day I’m terrified of losing you. I understand, now more than ever, what Lev told me when she once said these sort of relationships are hard. It’s hard on both sides, for different reasons and for the same ones. This life of yo- of ours is full of people who want us dead, and I’m terrified that one day, I’ll have to face waking up without you.”
She put an arm around me, using me as a lever to pull herself up until she was sitting in my lap, and she put both arms around me.
“You will never have to face that day, my beloved,” she said softly, kissing my forehead. “I would defy Death himself to stay at your side. ‘Your life as my life,’ remember? None shall separate us, no matter how they try.”
She kissed me, softly at first but growing more passionate again. Finally she broke away for a moment, and looked at me with renewed hunger.
“My word, I’m suddenly rather tired,” she said, and I gave her what I hoped was a serious look.
“There’s no-one else around to put a show on for, Sythan’en.”
“No reason to hold back then, is there?” Before I could reply to that she was already on her feet and dragging me to bed.
For once, I wasn’t complaining.
I can’t adequately put in to words what it’s like, making love to someone you have a psychic connection with. It’s so strange, being able to feel the passion and the love the other person feels for you , alongside what you feel for them. Those feelings end up joining, flowing down the link both ways, and then...
Think of it this way. This is the best analogy I can think of. You know the effect you get when you hold two mirrors up, facing each other, and each image seems to stretch away into infinity? It’s like that, only every time the ‘images’ reflect with the psychic bond they actually increase in intensity. Now multiply that concept by the highest number you can think of, and you will still have only the barest idea of what I mean.
It’s...a whole different world. I wish more people could experience it, because it joins you in ways that defy words.
CHAPTER 10
The crow, the owl and the terror
After what has to have been the single best night of my life, many things remained the same. I trained a lot - physical training with Omega Company, alongside the more esoteric elements of Sentinel training. I ate. I slept. I chatted to people around me.
My relationship with Corvi did not. Our link was stronger, and our love for each other had grown by a quantity I couldn’t hope to put into actual numbers. On occasion we would pass each other in the corridors, and we didn’t need to make eye contact or even look at each other to know the other was blushing. We would share thoughts, images, feelings, little things, from wherever we were in the base. It became distracting when she copied her sly act the day I told her and Lev to get their acts together, by planting certain concepts or images in my head that made it difficult to concentrate.
Funnily enough, that actually helped in my training, because it gave me a distraction to work past.
It didn’t always work. Twice Lev almost broke my arm because I got distracted during sparring.
I should probably mention here, that sparring for Sentinels was slightly different than the sparring other soldiers did. For us it started out slow, getting the techniques down, using dull blades and proper safety equipment. Once the techniques were learned, however, it escalated quickly, to full contact sparring, live blades and no body armour. The idea was simple - your enemies won’t go easy on you, so why should your trainers? As my father once preached, pain actually is the best teacher - when you do something and get hurt, you damn well make sure that thing doesn’t happen again.
The other big change was that Corvi and I went public with our relationship. By that, I don’t mean we broadcast it over the base PA system, we just stopped trying to hide it. If we were in the mess hall at the same time, she would sit with me, show me some affection...the first thing I knew of this ‘public declaration’ was one such incident actually. We were eating together - or rather, I was eating, she was partaking of her usual ‘drink’ (which had been taken from me the day after we slept together, and kept chilled) - and I had finished my meal first. Since I was due for more training, I couldn’t stick around and talk, so I said goodbye, sent her my love through the psychic link and started moving away. As I passed her, she grabbed my arm, pulled me down to her level and kissed me, a short, rough kiss that spoke of a desire for another night together.
I guess we aren’t hiding it any more then, I had said to her through the link, and I could sense her grin in the response.
Why should we? I’m tired of acting like I should be ashamed to love you.
It just went from there. It was hot news around the base for maybe a week, until someone somewhere heard the possibility that Lev actually had a steady girlfriend. That then started a bet on who the poor unfortunate woman was, but so far Lev had apparently managed to keep the whole thing quiet.
I personally didn’t believe it had actually happened, purely because I just found it so hard to envisage Lev managing to go steady with anyone, but after that rumour went around Corvi and I were old news.
Eventually Lev got called away again, since she was a senior Sentinel and exceptionally skilled at her craft. The rest of my training was carried out by Kalin, the man I’d met at Geoffrey’s interrogation, and the two of us got along famously. It was also good practice sparring against someone new, whose fighting style and moves I was unfamiliar with. By that time, however, my skill had increased to the point where I only needed a few minutes of a bout to gauge his style and adapt accordingly. Where Lev was a surprise MMA pro, Kalin was a brawler, his attacks much more based around punches than a fluid mixture of everything. After a few brief clashes it became an easy task - relatively speaking - to gauge where his attacks were going and use his strength against him. It wasn’t always a flawless plan, since Kalin was still a vampire and had the superior speed and strength that went with it, but I still managed to win more matches than I lost, and with fewer injuries.
Eventually came my final tests. First, what we called an ECS match - Escalating Challenge Sparring. It started off with me, weaponless, against two other guys with knives. As we fought, other combatants would enter the sparring room, with varying types of weapons and equipment and in random numbers. Because several of the opposition were Omega Company, we couldn’t use the live blades, but by then I was so used to them
I acted like everything was going to kill me anyway.
The aim was simply to survive - to be the last man standing after all combatants had entered.
It trained me to fight against superior numbers, built up my kinaesthetic senses - my understanding of where everyone else was in relation to me - and despite nearly taking several fatal blows over the course of the match, I managed to hold my own.
But that was the first test. The second came immediately after I had passed the first, when I was drugged and taken outside the base, past the fields and into the forest beyond.
Once I came around, they gave me a pair of binoculars, a pistol and a knife hilt - to represent an actual knife - and told me to infiltrate the base.
Which would have been easy. Except they then told me that this exercise was being run in conjunction with Omega Company, and they were treating it as a High Alert situation. Double guard rotations, more sweeps and a broader patrol radius meant that I was going to have my work cut out.
After being implanted with a GPS tracker - for use of the Ops room only, and it would remain in for the rest of my service - they left me to my own devices.
First, I hid in the forest and slept for the rest of the day. I observed the guard patrols at night, hunted some food, and slept again.
By the second night, I was able to gauge the times of certain patrols and change-overs, so by the third night I was ready to move.
I crept forwards through the tallest grass I’d been able to find, keeping myself flat to the ground as I moved. The cover wouldn’t last long, so I’d had to move as fast as possible. As a patrol neared I went utterly still, until they’d gone past me at which point I pushed myself up and fired one shot into both men.
They were paint-head blanks, so it looked like a kill without the permanent side effects of death.
As soon as I’d done that I dropped the pistol and scrambled up the fence, having estimated that the distance between patrols at that point would give me a one-minute window to move.
Ignoring the stinging cuts I got from the razorwire at the top of the fence, I hauled myself over the top and into the base grounds. I took cover between a few storage containers, waiting until the patrols nearby moved away before advancing further along the perimeter. This would move me away from the possible shreds of clothing in the fence, adding precious seconds to their search times.
I made a break for the Gatehouse, getting up on the roof of it quietly enough to avoid detection. Creeping along the roof, I paused to throw my knife over onto the tarmac. A couple of seconds after that, I ran across the roof and dropped off the edge, twisting in mid-air to grab the roof lip and swing in through the door feet first. The attack worked perfectly, knocking the duty guard to the floor and leaving me poised for a knock-out strike.
“Hey Deimos,” the guard said resignedly, since punches were allowed in this exercise.
“Hey Stevens,” I told the familiar face, before punching him hard.
I collected my knife handle again, glad that my distraction had drawn the guards off the gate as well - something I knew they would get disciplined for later - and moved around the perimeter further until I found what I was after.
There was an entrance at the side of the base, not very frequently used but still guarded. Again, two men stood guard by it, and by this point stealth was a vague memory, so I broke towards it. I threw the knife hilt at the soldier who started to raise their radio first, the minute it made contact marking them as dead. The other soldier - actually a woman, whose name I’d never known, and who was a tough, scrappy little bitch - I slammed into before she fired off a shot, kicking her in the knee and bouncing her head off the door.
Gently.
I booted the door open and made my way inside, ending the exercise and earning myself an officially-recognised position among The Order’s elite.
From here on in, I was a fully fledged Sentinel.
There had been a ceremony the following morning, albeit a small one. We didn’t have medals or badges of office or anything like that; our skill was our badge, our funding was our medal.
However, since Corvi was the base commander, she led the ceremony - and she had arranged for something special.
After the official declaration of my new position and authority, she beckoned Kalin forwards, who carried a long, ebony wood case with all the reverence of a treasured artifact.
“Levaertes and I had this commissioned for you,” she informed me with a smile. “Partly as a belated birthday present, and partly to celebrate your completion of your training.”
She opened the catches on the case, and motioned for me to stand closer.
From inside the blood-red velvet lining she lifted a sword, still sheathed in a custom carbon fibre composite scabbard. Around the top of the scabbard was a blood-red ribbon, as much for ostentation as for tying to my belt or waist. The hilt of the weapon was wrapped in black waxed leather, the pommel a small ruby clasped in a silver claw.
I gripped the centre of the scabbard with my left hand and the hilt with my right, and drew the blade free.
The room was well-lit, but the blade barely shone at all. It was pure black, the metal itself having been dyed during a chemical process The Order often used with its own forged blades. Corvi told me that it was a steel blade coated with tungsten carbide, making it almost unbreakable.
At twenty inches long it wasn’t the traditional length of a sword, but that made it more versatile. It was a broad, single edged blade, with a slight upwards curve near the point.
The most interesting thing about it though was the red vampiric glyphs, etched into the blade just above the crosspiece.
They were glyphs for Black Terror, a reference to my own name - the name Deimos meant Terror, being one of the sons of the Greek god of war.
And now, I had a blade of my own that bore the name. It was possibly the best gift I’d ever had.
I decided to show my appreciation by kissing Corvi in view of most of the base.
That’s how we go public, my love, I told her as the rest of those present applauded.
With my training complete, I was finally entitled to rest. Some of our staff were looking into suitable places for me to settle and ply my trade, but until then I still had some time to spend at the base.
Which was good, because the base had Corvi.
With no demands on me for the first time in several weeks, I was finally allowed to stay with her again, and it was like our first night together all over again.
I’m not going into details, okay. You don’t want to read it and I don’t want to write it, I’m not that kind of guy.
The following day became very interesting very quickly.
First, Lev had returned in the night, and when she saw me she gave me a friendly hug.
“I knew you could do it, D! I heard you beat Kalin’s time on the ECS, too!” That was news to me, and I smiled again. I seemed to have been doing that a lot lately.
Then she noticed the blade that rode at my hip - as a fully-fledged sentinel, it was my right to bear a blade at all times, and there was no way I was letting that weapon out of my sight. When Lev caught sight of the red pommel her face brightened.
“You got the sword too! I wish I could have been there to see you draw it for the first time! Did you like it?”
She was so excited to hear my feelings about the sword, I couldn’t keep her in suspense.
“No, Lev. I fucking love it.” She grinned, and I’m sure she did a small hopping dance. “It’s a beautiful blade, perfect balance and the grip is really comfortable, both fore- and back-handed. It’s a dream weapon, thank you.”
“It wasn’t all me, it was a joint thing between me and Corvi. We bot
h came up with design elements that you’d love, then came up with a design that comprised all of it.”
I loved hearing about how my two favourite people finally worked together, and the knowledge made the gift even more special.
She eventually dismissed herself, telling me she needed to go and file some reports, and I had to go and get fitted for what was known simply as a Combat Suit. It comprised a two-piece set of leather gear, like biker leathers but not as bulky, over which was attached several segments armour plates made from carbon fibre composite. It was a great material, being the same stuff used in the rotor blades of the Lynx helicopter. Forming it into armour was a ridiculously difficult process, but The Order made it work. They had a lot of money to throw at projects like that.
After I had been fitted though, I got a mental message from Corvi.
Come and visit me when you get chance, my love, she told me. There is someone I want you to meet.
I had no idea who there could possibly be that she wanted me to meet who I hadn’t met already, but nonetheless I went to see her as soon as I had the chance.
She opened the door before I had even knocked. That was a first. Then she hugged me in the doorway, which was mildly unusual but nothing I could comment on. But her thoughts...
Her thoughts were a jumble, scattered in a way I’d never known her to be. Something had thrown her.
“Come in, Sythan’en.”
She seemed oddly...off-balance. Shaken, almost. As I stepped inside, I immediately learned why.
There was another person in the room. Another woman, with the same raven-dark hair and silvery eyes as Corvi, but her hair was only shoulder length and tied back in a loose ponytail. The facial features too were similar, but on this woman they were sharper, more severe. As she sat on the chaise-longe - in what I had become used to as my spot, I noted with slight distaste - she leaned back, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of brandy held with the stem between her two middle fingers, looking for all the world like a queen slumming it with her subjects and hating every minute.