by Sam Hall
Bennett. A soldier climbed up for a fiery vantage point on the tank and then took aim at my golden boy. “NO!” I screamed, “Lyra, get me there.”
But you’re… I moved like lightning, speeding past the many thrashing bodies, eyes trained on the bullet as it left the muzzle of the rifle in slow motion. I’m almost in time, or right on time, depending on how you see it. The bullet passed through my failing flames as I threw myself in front of Ben, slamming into my chest and then everything goes black.
“Hunh!” I woke with a start, sucking breath into my chest. I blinked and looked around and saw I’ve been laid out on a stretcher, a drip in my arm and blood all over me.
“Fuck, Lethe!” Bennett appeared by my side, smothering me in his scent of lime and smoke, holding me hard enough to hurt.
“Ben,” I croaked, pawing at his back helplessly. My heart’s booming, now much, much slower.
“You’ve got to lie down. You were drained almost to death with that stunt,” he said and bared his fangs, sinking them into his wrist and then forced the wound against my mouth. I drew the blood in thankfully, the sound of my heart lessened and shifting to its normal pace. “You.. you look bad, Lethe.”
“What?” I forced out, pausing from feeding. He gestured to the fingers wrapped around his arm and I can see it now, they’re skeletal. I looked like Marley on his worst junkie days.
“I don’t know what you did, but you can’t ever do that again. We nearly lost you twice. Take more blood, please.”
“You…need…”
“I need you to be better, for Gavin too…” He looked away, blinking back tears.
“Gavin?”
“Drink, I’m not telling you shit until you have some more blood in you.”
Lyra, tell me how Gavin is, I said mentally. My words just echoed around in my head, not recognised or responded to by anyone. Lyra? It became apparent as I sucked down my lover’s blood that I’m all alone, an albino in the Palace infirmary. I try to get to my feet but Bennett pushed me down, forcing me to rest. The fact he can keep me in my place so easily sends a shiver up my spine.
“You need blood?” a guy with a cart full of bags said as he wheels past.
“Yep, here,” Bennett says, catching it as its tossed over. “It doesn’t taste as good but you can get it into you quicker. Just sink your teeth in and neck it,” he said and passed me the squishy plastic bag. I smelled something harsh and chemical but forced myself to do as he said, my fangs snapping out despite not feeling hungry or sexy at all. Perhaps survival is a prompt as well. It’s disgusting, it feels like it’s clotting in great clumps as it slid down my throat. I wanted to gag and spit it all up. Instead, I drank it faster, letting the bag fall to the floor with a splat.
Lethe? my name is a whisper within my mind, so faint I wonder if I am imagining it.
Lyra? What the fuck, where…?
No. Weaken you. Getting. It’s like I can hear Lyra’s voice from a great distance and the wind’s blowing half of what she says away. I flopped back onto the stretcher, my muscles shaking uncontrollably when I try to support my own weight.
“I’ll be right back,” Bennett said, patting my hand. “Just going to see how Gav is going.”
I lie there, tears collecting in the corners of my eyes. I seem to be in a room full of other injured people, stretchers are lined up on either side of it. I ran into that fight being able to call down the power of the gods and now? I take one shuddering breath after another. So many people are hurt, Gavin, this is all my fault. Blood bags drop onto my chest in a pile, one after the other. I pick up one, it feels bloody cold. I look at the label, ‘Lord Grenfell’ it says and an execution date. Fuck, it’s the Revolution blood. My fangs snapped out and I start sucking down one, then another, then another.
I end up sitting up, gasping breath in, emptied bags like dead leaves under my feet. I flex my fingers and see that the flesh has plumped out there and I can move them easily. I get to my feet but feel a rush of dizziness, having to swing my arms out to regain my balance. You fool, Lyra snarled inside my head. You nearly burned out entirely, and for what? To play at soldiers?
You told me to test the troops.
Yes, by standing back and directing them like any good general. You used so much today, saving children, propping up streetlights and fighting mindless soldiers. You would’ve been much more effective standing back and using your gifts where they were needed. You could’ve turned all of the soldier’s pumps to dust, that would’ve slowed them considerably.
You didn’t say anything at the time, I said, taking an experimental step.
You were too caught up in battle fever to hear me. Now, I assume you want the dark-haired one?
Gavin? Yes, and I’m going to need more of that blood.
Lyra grumbled at this, arguing it should be saved for more important purposes, but I remained resolute. When I entered into the room he was being held in, I was struck by the cloying scent of blood. I was drowning in it; it was forming a massive pool under the operating table. “He’s riddled with bullets, too many for the symbiote to cope with and he’s lost too much blood to generate more. I’ve stitched what I could,” the woman said to Bennett.
“No, no,” I said, walking over to him. I punctured the first bag I grabbed and then poured a thin stream into his open mouth. It pooled there, then he spluttered, spraying everyone.
“He hasn’t got the resources to take the blood. We’ve already tried. Time to say your goodbyes,” she said.
“C’mon,” I begged, smearing the blood around his lips, waiting, begging him mentally to flick out his tongue and lick it.
What do I have to do? I said to Lyra.
You heard the woman, he’s a lost cause.
No, never, not Gavin.
You’ve given him blood from one of the strongest vampires that lived, aside from myself. What else can be done?
Who was the strongest? I asked but I got no reply. I looked down at my wrist, at the throbbing blue vein there.
No, do not give him your blood. I mean it, Lethe. This will change things in ways you don’t want. You need to be in an unassailable position to start sharing that. You are too vulnerable.
What will it do? I asked, bringing my wrist to my mouth. She wouldn’t tell me, so I found out myself. A slow drip, one drop, two, three fell into his mouth, no different to the other blood I’d tried to give him. The woman had turned to someone else now. She didn’t see it, the shrinking of the wounds on his poor body like drying puddles of water, the steady flush that returned to his body and then the snap of his eyes as they opened.
“Lethe, Ben.” Gavin blinked, like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Fucking hell, brother,” Bennett said, grabbing him in a harsh embrace, then pulling away to see if he was OK. Both of them burst out laughing, then held the other hard. I could see in Bennett’s eyes the awareness of what he was facing just moments ago.
“What did you do?”
“Yes,” Rohan said from the doorway, “what did you do?”
“A few drops of your blood heals a man on the brink of death?” Rohan said, wrapping his hands around my wrist. “Then you have work to do.”
“Wait, I have blood from the Revolution that will help everyone!” I said, trying to jerk free but apparently my body wasn’t quite up to speed yet.
“I’ll have that too,” he said. “If you are who you say you are, you’re honour bound to help your people and if you’re some kind of pretender,” he stopped and stared at me with golden eyes, “then I’ll drain you to the last drop.”
Get me out of here, now! I shriek at Lyra.
To where?
Anywhere! Somewhere safe.
19
Hesse
Hesse Corp conference room
Hesse Corp building
Meridian City
A massive screen covered the wall of the briefing room and on it played the footage retrieved from the bodies of the soldiers slain by the vampires. Hesse
sat at the head of the table, watching the video, rolling a pen between his fingers. The assembled tech and military experts watched the pen rather than the clips, pushing up, up, up until the pen was held at the end of the man’s fingertips, then down, down until it disappeared into his palm. When the pen stopped and Hesse turned around in his executive chair, it took a moment for the rest of the team to drag their attention back to the man himself.
And perhaps for good reason. It was often put about Hesse Towers that the calmer their CEO’s face was, the more trouble they were in. When his famous temper was unleashed quickly: a chair was kicked, a fist put through a wall, a minion held up against it by their neck until they became an alarming shade of purple, it seemed to be like an electrical storm, powerful, disturbing, but over in minutes. There was no way a moment of this magnitude, when the fucking vampires managed to fight back and win against the super soldier units, was not going to provoke him into a volcanic rage. Some of the people sitting around the table wondered if this spectacular display of game face was designed to unsettle them.
“How many soldiers were deactivated?” Hesse said, flipping a few of the pages of the report in front of him before letting it fall closed again.
“Approximately 80% have been taken offline. Their bodies have been returned to their families and given—” Hesse shook his head and the man fell silent.
“12% are still functional with minor repairs, the remaining 8 will need serious surgery. They’ve been placed in stasis, awaiting your approval.”
“I’ll assess them in due time but you’re burying the lead, people,” Hesse stated and when he smiled, that same Bachelor of the Year gleaming grin that had a million straight women and gay men imagining themselves at his feet, ready for a night of indescribable debauchery, the room flinched. “The vampires, those inbred, dissolute, disorganised idiots who wouldn’t have been fit to serve as footmen in the old regime, they, they managed to take out the vast majority of our carefully bred, trained, augmented soldiers. Where did the bazooka come from?”
“Well, the report from the black-market taskforce—”
“Don’t read me a report. Where’s their department head?”
“Ah—”
“Have them in here within fifteen minutes or I’ll be sending their loved ones their body along with a funeral wreath,” he snapped, finger stabbing at the table. “Now!”
As everyone scrambled for their phones, Hesse spun around to look back at the screen. He smiled as the air filled with a cacophony of voices, his eyes searching the footage for the clues his multitude of apparently highly skilled staff couldn’t find. It was a tough job; he did appreciate. Body cams showed chaotic POV shots of the battle which was unusual in itself. The fact the vampires thought to fight at all was problematic. Rohan, petty little despot that he was, knew he maintained his position by Hesse’s good graces. The vampire was usually too busy wading through a moving feast of pussy, cock and drugs to care about this kind of thing.
Did he instigate the theft of the blood? Hesse wondered, but he dismissed the idea as soon as it came to him. Rohan’s GPS tracking showed he’d not moved from his sector. Hesse paused the video for a moment, squinting as he peered at the top right-hand corner.
He pushed his finger down on the intercom speaker on his control panel. “Get me the head of Data and their best image enhancers immediately.” His order would be heard all over the building, something that few CEOs would do. Making a problem everyone’s often led to the assumption that someone else was dealing with it. Not at Hesse Corp. He wasn’t especially excited about the idea of flashy executions, but he’d tossed some recalcitrant staff members off the top of the building so that everyone working on the twenty-stories could see them fall past their floor to ceiling windows. Video of the executions was shown at subsequent staff meetings, in-person to anyone who missed them. At Hesse Corp, his problems were everyone’s problems, or they ended up dead.
He turned around when he heard the doors to the meeting room slam open, flushed faced employees rushing towards the table, eyes wild, then watched them struggle to regain professional decorum.
“Tell me about the bazooka and this,” he said, pointing to the glowing ball on the screen.
All three people went to speak at the same time. He just smiled behind his steepled fingers as a series of harried side-eyes managed to establish a pecking order.
“The bazooka appears to have come through the Cardinian black market,” one man said, flicking through his notes. “We, of course, have allowed this to continue under your orders,” Hesse’s smile grew wider at that attempt to deflect blame. The man’s eyes went wide and he clutched at his tie, loosening it slightly. “Ah...all imports in and out of the Quarter have been logged and approved by the relevant delegate. Our policy of arming the anomalous, to maintain the aggression between the different breeds to keep numbers down and—”
“Yes, yes, I’m well aware of my own policy. Continue.”
“Well, as the item in question was of no threat to the Wall structure and could possibly have a devastating effect on the wolves, we allowed it to pass through.”
“Hmm...” Hesse tapped his lip. “Fair enough, I’ll let that slide.” He heard the audible sighs of relief but made no comment. “Our need to enter the Quarter is a recent thing and the potential positives of the vampires and wolves annihilating each other, does outweigh the threat this poses to our people. However, changes need to be made.
We appear to be entering a period of greater unrest in the Quarter,” murmuring started around the room, “something we are acquainted with here at Hesse Corp. Speak to your parents or rather, grandparents. We’ve been here before, we’ll be here again, so for now, all major weapons coming through the Cardinian line are to be scrutinised. No chemical weapons, no biological, as per usual, but also nothing more than semi-automatic rifles. Projectiles, no more than your basic grenades. Anything else is to be personally vetted by me. Any questions?”
The man shook his head. “I’ll put an immediate halt to all items coming through and have the revised policy on your desk within the hour. Once approved, I’ll instruct all staff on the new protocols.”
“Excellent, but I want at least some of the imports leaked to the media. Sell it as evidence of the Border Control department’s rigorous checks, they’re the last line of defence between the rapid anomalous, and the devious Cardinians who want to see the downfall of human civilisation etc. etc. Pick someone worthy to be the lead investigator, someone photogenic. That scientist who accepted the award for genetic research, could only be described as unpalatable at best. They need to be good representatives of the company.”
“Of course. I’ll get the PR department on it immediately.”
“Good man, dismissed. Now, this glowing ball…”
“Yes, sir. I’ve brought the enhanced images we’ve been able to pull so far. If I may?” The woman got to her feet and walked over to Hesse, handing him the flash drive. He plugged it into his console and then opened the files contained.
Everyone’s eyes were trained on the blurry shots of the ball of golden light. Something moved within it, Hesse could tell by the placement of the shadows. What is this? he thought. A new mutation? It looked like an albino, but why would any self-respecting white get involved in a fight for the vampires?
The woman was blithering something about the image retrieval process. It was all made harder by the lack of the cameras in the vampire sector apparently, something he was well aware of now, and Rohan had paid handsomely for that privilege, but that was no more. Drones would be installing nano-cameras throughout the vampire territory before night fell. He needed footage anyway of their excesses.
Nothing affronted the human population like the sight of vampires disporting themselves- with no concern for morality, sexual mores or the fragility of their white bed partners. He hadn’t triggered that ancestral memory of the vampire's treatment of humans as sexualised cattle for a while, and was probably well overdue
. He flicked through the images, ignoring how this truncated the woman’s commentary until she got the hint and shut up. Then he found it.
It was impossible to miss in the many blurred shots, the rapid intake of collective breath heralding that they were in the presence of something special. “Everyone out,” he said and for once, he didn’t hear the instant scrape of chairs. It came when he shot a look over his shoulders, and he waited until the door finally closed and silence settled over the room. It was only then that he allowed himself to turn and really examine what was in front of him. His finger twitched over the button for the intercom. He didn’t know who to summon, what to ask for, but the fact this image had not come to his immediate attention, meant he would spend some time working out exactly who had missed it and heads would roll, literally.
She stood within the brawling vampires, glowing as bright as the sun. Her skin was the purest of white, so pale it seemed it absorbed all colours reflected on her. She was naked, his eyes caressed the swells of her breasts, the curve of her hip as his mind raced with the implications. Sasha would need to be redirected towards something that would occupy her feeble mind, his Religious Dissemination team would need to activate their Reunion scripts pronto.