Blood Type: An Anthology of Vampire SF on the Cutting Edge

by Watts, Peter

  My name was Costel Gogoasa then.

  I remembered watching the cutters slice across the sky, black needles barbed with scythe wings and edged in crimson. The sound they made as they sliced through the atmosphere reminded me of a blade elegantly parting flesh. It was glorious.

  We marched from our landers before the backwash had settled, each of us in step with the other, drilled to perfection. We were armed with newly minted weapons, the metal bright and unmarked. I had heard rumours about them of course, and my finger itched against the trigger guard. I wanted to turn it on one of my brothers just to see the effects. Loyalty, brotherhood and rigid discipline stayed my finger.

  Oh what a sight we were. Rows of shining black body suits with plates of red covering our vitals. Storm coats of darkness given form cloaked us; each one writhed and snapped as we walked. Masks covered our faces, goggles red as vitae and mouth pieces molded into snarling gargoyle muzzles.

  At our head marched Narcisa Ruicu.

  She was a beauty of the old world. Where our suits were black with red plate, hers was crimson upon crimson, the plates molded to show off everything. Narcisa moved like a mercury serpent, each gesture, every step flawless. I had seen her slaves cry at the merest sight of her. If I lived as long as she had, perhaps I too would gain a measure of that grace and beauty. She was, after all, the blood font that we all came from among our clan. She was our queen, and our mother.

  As we reached the center of the dead city there stood a massive dais of black stone. Narcisa approached it. This was where the meeting of the clans would take place.

  Floating spectres guarded its perimeter; great cloaked floating things twice as tall as a man. As she neared, the closest one raised its hood-shrouded head towards her, a hiss echoing from the infinite darkness within.

  “Narcisa…” it turned its cowl as if looking at her from another angle. No one truly knew what they were; they existed on Earth and had somehow followed us to the stars when we fled.

  “Let me pass.” Narcisa’s voice was feminine steel.

  There was a sound from among the figures that sounded like spikes dragged on concrete. It took me a while to realize it was laughter.

  “The others are not here.” It motioned back to the troops behind her. “Wait with your children until the others arrive.”

  Narcisa’s hands went to her hips, her black nails striking against the pale flesh of her fingers. She looked as if she might argue with them, perhaps even fight them. But I had seen them in action before, and though a match for one, maybe two, even our queen could not hold off all present. One thing we had learned from immortality; once you had it, you were very careful about throwing it away carelessly. Instead, Narcisa turned away. With a motion, her slaves brought forth a floating throne which she reclined onto. A slave poured her blood—real human blood—from which she sipped. I could smell it, even above the cloying stink of death. It wasn’t the synthetic crap they had been feeding us rank and file troopers. Slaves were worth a lot of money and their blood even more so. I think more than one tongue licked along pointed fangs behind their masks at that moment.

  A crack of thunder crawled across the landscape capturing our attention. Rolling clouds of ash and dust parted in the distance as a spear of light shattered the darkness of the world. Thankfully we wore goggles, though more than one of us turned our eyes away from the glare. I knew without looking that there would be a disk of white steel hovering at the apex of that light.

  Narcisa watched the beam without any protection from its harsh rays, a testament to her age. But just when I thought I couldn’t handle any more, it vanished. A bright after-image stung my eyes and I felt blood pool at the corners and blinked the crimson away.

  Shortly after that, the first figure came through the ruins and around us to breach the clearing. Against the blackness of ruin they were specks of radiance.

  Their leader was Atra-Hasis. We knew him well, for he was Lord of the Watchers. He was tall, easily close to seven feet. Hair so blond it was almost white fell around his shoulders in heavy dreadlocks. He was pale, paler than anyone I had ever seen among our people. Around his shoulders hung a thick cloak of feathers, goose white speckled with black raven.

  They had once been angels to early man. No one knew who created them or where they came from. They had lived among the mountains, near the cradle of civilization, until modern man forced them to flee. Eyes the colour of a virgin sky scanned over our troops before finally coming to rest on Narcisa. Behind the angel came his warriors, each in white, cloaks of feathers close to their bodies. Only the Lord carried anything resembling a weapon, a crystal white staff clutched in one flawless hand.

  “Narcisa.”

  “Atra-Hasis, it’s good to see you again.”

  “Lies.”

  Narcisa chuckled, raising an elegant finger to her lips. “How right you are. The last time was-”

  “Salem.”

  “You were so late, as always.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed further as he came to a halt. His troops strung out behind him and I smiled behind my mask; we out-numbered them five to one.

  Atra-Hasis was either very confident in his men, or they had some form of weapon we hadn’t seen yet. Either way, I was more confident in our new hardware and our numbers. Each of us were hand-picked from Narcisa’s top troops. These pristine chickens would fall before our might if it came down to it.

  The Watchers stood as still as we did, the ash falling from the sky leaving a slight film on the white of their uniforms. All except their leader, who somehow remained as radiant as the moment he stepped into the clearing.

  “Where are the others?”

  Narcisa set her goblet down and dabbed at her lips with a crimson cloth. “Late, as usual. No doubt scanning us as we speak to see what kind of threat we are before landing.”

  “I am no threat to any of you.”

  My leader smiled. I knew her well enough. She didn’t believe the leader of the Watchers. The Watchers contained the highest number of elders in the five clans. That alone showed their skill and talent for survival where others had long ago burned to ash. We still had numbers and weapons however.

  “Come on, Atra, we were lovers once…I know you better than this.”

  The Watcher’s eyes tightened a fraction. The news shocked me and I heard the shuffle of steps as more than one set of boots shifted. The great Narcisa had bedded with Atra-Hasis? My heart burned with a jealousy that I had no right to feel. The leather of my gloves crinkled as my grip tightened on my weapon.

  Bestial forms erupted to the right of our clan. They crawled from the shadows of buildings, from beneath the streets, from the very darkness itself. They were the monsters of a child’s nightmare. Wolves mixed with bats and reptiles, they rose even taller than the Watcher Lord. Muscles like iron cables flexed with their movements as they stalked forward. Mouths hung open, jagged fangs like broken glass gleaming from their stinking depths. They hissed to each other, snapped and growled like animals as they stalked forward.

  Oh yes, our wayward cousins, the Hunters.

  Their leader was a king among monsters. Had he stood straight he would have easily been almost double Atra-Hasis’s height. But he crawled forward on a bent spine, more like the beast he resembled than the once noble creature he had been.

  Condorcanqui, the Destroyer, the Hell Spawn, the Dragon Born. Where Atra-Hasis and his people had been angels to early man, Condorcanqui had become their devil. Each of his brood was different, no two identical, yet all were killers. They came to a halt in a ragged line, snapping at both clans, tiny crimson eyes glaring at us from overhanging brows.

  They had come from every culture of mankind, though Condorcanqui had come from the Aztec empire. He had been a god then; we were often mistaken as gods in the old days. However when his people were killed, it was his rage and anger that had turned him into what he was now.

  How they had managed to get to the heavens was a mystery. Perhaps they built the
ir own ships, which would show they were smarter than they seemed. Perhaps they hid aboard our ships, which in itself was also terrifying. As neither the Watcher Lord nor my queen had sensed them in the shadows the latter seemed more plausible. A shiver passed down my spine at the thought.

  The Destroyer straightened as best he could, his shadow stretching across the ground in crimson light.

  “Brother,” he growled. Atra-Hasis’s eyes traveled head to foot and back again before nodding to Condorcanqui.

  “Sister,” the monster purred at Narcisa, his forked tongue snaking over his lips. The Queen of the First averted her gaze, but only for a moment. However that brief moment brought a rumble of falling boulders from the creature’s chest.

  “Demon, I am surprised you are here. I didn’t think you were one for politics.” Atra-Hassis inspected his gloved fingertip as he spoke, the insult hanging in the air. The Destroyer smiled, the rumble of his laughter echoing around them off the ruins.

  “Do not think me some animal,” he lowered himself back to a more predatory stance. “Think of me as your nightmare made real. The council meets; I will not be left out.”

  “Atra, don’t harass our brother. He barely has it together as it is,” Narcisa turned her gaze to the Watcher. “The last thing I would want to do is have to put his kin down like the rabid dogs they are.”

  Misshapen throats roared their anger and a few of the Hunters surged forward before their lord’s own roar browbeat them back into line. Those that didn’t move fast enough received gashes from his massive claws.

  “Very clever, sister,” the monster wagged a talon at my queen. “I will not break the armistice first. But do not tempt my children. Their patience isn’t as strong as mine.”

  It was then that the elegant landers passed over us. I noticed that our own cutters stayed away. It bothered me that others had brought air support as well but it was expected. Air superiority would be important should hostilities break out.

  They landed just out of sight, their down-wash crushing buildings and ruins to rubble. We all watched despite the ash that washed over us, coating our masks and the white of the Watchers.

  There was silence as the ash swirled and settled. Then the gurgle of filters and breathing apparatuses announced the arrival of the next clan. I couldn’t help but shift to try and see the newcomers.

  The Sirens had arrived.

  Unlike all of us, even the Destroyer’s kin, the Sirens weren’t human. They never had been. Instead they had somehow spawned from a race of water dwellers thought to be myth to mankind. We hadn’t even known about them until our kind had started to invade their watery domains. Then they fought back and we learned caution.

  They were completely alien to us.

  But so, so beautiful.

  My first glimpse of the Sirens at the dais was one of their outriders. She was small, even for a woman. Her limbs were thin, her fingers too long, her movements too smooth even out of water. My queen was a majestic being, but compared to the Sirens she was a clumsy, bumbling creature. The outrider wore a bubble helmet, water flowing around her head, strands of hair as fine as seaweed forming a halo about her face.

  Large oval eyes in an ovular skull, black as pitch, regarded us. Unblinking, they traced our line before moving on, spines along her back quivered creating a rattling. It must have been a signal because more of her kind came forward.

  I noticed at this point that even the Destroyer and his people were silent as the rest of us. The court of the sea came amongst a crowd of gold, blues and greens. Their warriors were brutal things, their bodies altered by unknown science kept hidden from us. They were equal in size to the Destroyer’s monsters, though their bodies seemed to grow weapons from their very skin and bones. Giant grab pincers, hard shells, barbs and stingers festooned them as if they themselves were the monsters of the deep.

  But it was the women that drew our gazes despite my brain telling me to open fire. They were unaltered, for only their men were put under the knife and needle. The females were the species’ pride and remained pure.

  They were all armed with long barrelled rifles, various icons and fetishes hanging from their ends. They advanced in their weird way, like poured water over rock, until they took up their position near us. The other lords regarded the Sirens with guarded looks. Suddenly they shifted as if by a command only they heard.

  She was here.

  If she had a name, we couldn’t pronounce it with air-processing vocal cords. More alien than her children, she came across the ground as if her feet never touched it. Long fins spread out from her like the headdress of a lion fish. Barbed fins extended along the outside of her forearms and calves. I had no doubt they contained some kind of toxin that even our immortal bodies would struggle to process if the stories were to be believed.

  Eyes like luminous black pearl regarded us from a face almost featureless except for a tiny mouth and the barest hint of a nose slit. Her mouth moved and I saw millions of tiny, crystalline teeth behind the slit of her lips. It was like looking into the face of a primordial hunter.

  We were all nervous then. The Sirens had only been encountered in their ships in small numbers. Any contact that met face to face ended in bloodshed that was distinctly one sided. Once I had talked to a member of the Watchers on a way-station, our clans on treaty at that point. We had both glutted ourselves on synthetic blood laced with the real deal and were feeling friendly.

  He had told me about a boarding party of Destroyers that had tried to capture a Siren ship. They had clamped their blunt warship to the vessel and burned their way into their holds. Not having to breath held a certain advantage when it came to having to fight underwater.

  Apparently even the Destroyer himself would not reportedly talk about what had happened to his people when they met the repelling teams. All the Watcher knew was that the boarding ship was blown free moments later, and space filled with the shredded corpses of the boarding party.

  That story came back to me as I watched the Sirens next to us. They were both repellent and beautiful. Some of them regarded us with apparent disinterest, though when my gaze met one of their woman’s black eyes, I felt something in me tug towards her. An alien song pulled at my mind, teasing it with long fingers and whispered promises. She would take me to her watery home, wrap her limbs around me, give me a love bite, tear me apart.

  I realized I was grinning even as the image of her tearing a chunk of flesh from my wrist swam through my mind. Wrenching my eyes away from hers as she smirked with a lipless mouth, I felt her attention move elsewhere.

  I kept my eyes off them from then on.

  And they remained there, utterly silent except for the sounds of their breathing aids.

  By the First, it was creepy. Even the Destroyer’s kin were snarling to each other, their ears turned towards the silent host.

  Five clans.

  One more had yet to appear.

  I looked around, hoping my superior officer wouldn’t notice.

  That was when the final clan made their appearance.

  They came like lanterns born by grave diggers through the mist. Bobbing lights, slowly moving through the ruins as they advanced on us. My goggles flickered through various enhancements and even with my vampiric sight I couldn’t see who bore the light poles until they were almost upon us.

  Then the thick ash parted as if it was a curtain, and there they were.

  It was a neat trick, lost after the appearance of the Sirens, but still neat.

  A single fox sat in the last section, tail swaying slowly behind her. I was under no delusions that she was simply a fox. Lights continued to bob around her, though if they were distant, or right beside her, I couldn’t gauge. The vulpine cocked its head to the side as if curious. Large ears perked as it looked at each of the lords, one by one, even the Siren’s queen.

  And then, like a hand brushed across a drawing made of sand, she was no more and in her place stood a beautiful Asian woman. The glowing balls had also
vanished, smeared across the ash to be replaced with various men, women and foxes.

  Aneko Tsukamoto.

  As I said it in my mind, the words left Atra-Hassis’s lips before he spit onto the dead earth as if it soiled his tongue to speak her name.

  Her head turned to light her gaze on him, molten gold almond eyes blinking slowly. She was dressed in a clash of styles that caused the eye to wander over her as if lost in a dream turned nightmare.

  The kin of the fox queen were dressed in a variety of outfits that spoke of ancient Japan as well as modern space faring fashion. Each was unique, and each bore a weapon of some design, current or ancient, on open display like the rest of us. Raiders, pirates, mercenaries, they had the most contact with humans since we had fled. I couldn’t blame them however; their tastes ran differently than ours. They didn’t drink blood.

  They drank lust.

  I almost felt sorry for them.

  “Tsukamoto.” My queen was the first to greet her, her voice shattering the eerie silence that descended when the Sirens had appeared. Now it seemed impossibly loud, a shard of glass shattering against stone.

  “Ruicu.” The woman nodded her head to my queen. “Your last gift was most enjoyable, my people found the puzzle box to be…enlightening. There were such sights to see, such experiences to explore.”

  “I’m glad I could break the dreariness of eternity, if only for a moment, Tsukamoto. Your return gift was also enjoyable, and well worth the loss of the box.”

  There was a pause and I couldn’t help but notice that the lord of the Watchers glanced at the queen of the Sirens. It lingered a bit too long for my taste and I hoped my queen had noticed.

  “So the humans…” Aneko stepped forward, the wraiths moving away from the pedestal to vanish into the ash. The woman paid them no heed. Instead she mounted the steps with small, dainty steps. Her people stayed back, though I saw that their hands had moved closer to their weapons, however slight it had been.

  “That is why we are here, isn’t it?” She stood at the top now, brushing some of the ash from her clothing.