The Bottom Rung

by Sam Hall

  His heart did something so odd it took him a moment to remember what it was: his pulse picked up. He got to his feet and placed a hand on the screen, tracing the outline of the glowing girl projected therewith his finger, as he’d done on many an ancient frieze or mural, much to his conservators’ hastily concealed disgust.

  Finally, once his eyes had begun to ache from staring at the bright illumination, he returned to his seat and pressed down on the intercom button. “All members of the Deos team to Conference Room A immediately. God Protocol 5 is now activated, I repeat, God Protocol 5 is now activated.”

  20

  Lethe

  Temple of Kai and Lyra

  Ground Zero

  The Quarter

  This is yours safe place? Lyra said as I landed outside of Nathaniel’s temple.

  I hadn't been thinking of anywhere in particular, I said

  It was the first thought that flashed into your mind. I told you feeding Gavin was a bad idea. A vampire's power is in their veins and you hold great power, power that anyone can access if they can overpower you. You need to keep yourself fed if you don't want to end up in a cage, acting as Rohan’s personal feeder. A couple of bags of blood appeared in my hands. Feed now, feed regularly. You need to get your stores up.

  I obeyed as we walked down the steps. This place, I forgot it existed. It was one of the sites where my mysteries were performed. Dear Kai, she said as I stopped at the simple cave painting on the wall. Brother, lover, jailor. I could hear the sneer in her voice clearly.

  He’s not going to pop up, is he? Or his avatar? I don't have to watch out for some guy who’s gonna try and lock me up?

  She chuckled at this, No, Kai never took avatars. He was always the weaker twin, relying on draining me to gain power. He’s probably piously lurking somewhere or has moved on from this world altogether.

  Is that what happened? The gods aren't hanging around in the heavens, watching us? They just went away?

  No, they’re around. They tend to pull strings behind the scenes now.

  So Reunion, it’s never going to work, is it?

  Unlikely, I can hardly see Axidite or Graellan returning because some albinos did a pretty dance at the base of the Ladder.

  Man, they used to beat the shit out of us after every failed attempt, you know.

  Humans are little more than animals. We raised the anomalous from them, made them into something more and this is how they treat our gifts? We need to get you inside; you need to eat.

  I ended up sitting on the platform Nathaniel and I had fucked on, food spread out over the surface. My priestesses used to lie in the hollow, she said as I munched. They would have lines of men and women who would service her from sunup to sundown in my name. Sometimes I occupied her body, let myself feel my supplicants’ offerings to me. Quite delightful, though more died when I possessed them.

  You let her get fucked to death? I said. Nice.

  It was her sacred duty. Oh, never mind, you’re not the observant type. You wouldn’t understand.

  Opting to get fucked to death? Nope, no belief systems gonna make that work for me. I like you and everything, but that shit’s crazy, so if you have something like that in mind...

  You make the calls, remember, she said. I can make it happen if you want it, not vice versa.

  Nathaniel walked into the room just as I took a big bite from a chicken leg. He took in me and the food and said, “Rohan’s been scouring the Quarter for you.”

  “I know. You gonna turn me in?”

  He shook his head. “The man was always unstable, but this obsession with you is pushing him over the edge. It's not right. So how did you survive the tracer?”

  I expected Lyra to warn me to stay quiet but she was curiously silent. I bared my teeth, my fangs beginning to protrude.

  “One of the McIntyre boys turned you? Never heard of an albino being successfully infected, but you lot are unpredictable. Well, I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Me too, and what happened before.”

  “The fight?”

  “No, when the boys found me at the shops. I never got to say sorry or thank you.”

  He moved in closer, smiling as he looked down at me, “You thanking me for fucking you? Because it was its own reward, you know.”

  I hadn't really thought of Nathaniel after the Ladder, which was weird. I loved the boys but sex with Nathaniel was on a whole other level. I felt a throb between my legs as a flash flood of memories came back. I could smell him as he stood there, his woody smoky musk. I remember what it felt like, to be drowning in the scent of him as his body thrust into mine, caged in by the muscles of his arms. My fangs snapped down, his eyes jerking to my mouth.

  “You need to feed?” he asked in a low voice. I needed something, always when I was around him. He was attractive enough, the long fall of his dirty blonde hair somehow offset by his big hard body. My eyes dropped down as he moved closer, so I had to sense his presence rather than watch for it. I could feel his body, radiating warmth against my skin. “Drink,” he said, reaching out and drawing my head into the crook of his neck. I felt him shift against me as I licked the skin, his rigid length pressing against the legs dangling off the side of the platform.

  “It's going to start again, the skin hunger, isn't it?” I whispered against his skin.

  “You need to feed,” he said in a low rumble. “You look gaunt.”

  “But if we start...”

  “Just take what you need,” he said, pushing his throbbing vein against my mouth. I scraped my fangs against his skin, listening to the hiss of excitement from him as I did so. “Please,” he said.

  I struck, slamming my fangs into his flesh without a care, the sounds of his incoherent moans egging me on, having me dig my claws into his shoulders, wrapping my legs around his waist to stop him from pulling away. I needn't have bothered, he took the both of us from the platform, a satisfied moan resonating through his chest as my body was forced to cling to his. “Can’t take too much,” I said, drawing away.

  “No, take more,” he said, pushing my head back. “I have what you need.” We moved, from the altar room to where his bedroll was. He lay me down on the mattress, my fangs coming free with a pop. “You want this?” he asked, ripping his shirt up over his head.

  “Always.”

  It was messy, desperate sex. Clothes were pushed aside, only pulled off if irretrievably in the way. His mouth closed over my already tight nipple, my back arching as he sucked it hard, my groin instinctively pushing against his. “I just want in you,” he said, then circled the other aching tip with his tongue.

  “Do it,” I gasped. “I feel like I can come just from that.”

  “Come then. I’ll make sure you’ve got another,” his lips drew my breasts in for a few quick pulses, then let it pull free, “and another in you.”

  “I want this in me,” I said, clawing blindly at his jeans.

  “Lethe.”

  “You’ve never had a problem rising to the occasion several times in a day,” I said. “Foreplay later, fucking now.”

  “Get your jeans off,” he said, flicking his button open. We scrambled to remove the offending items, him laying me back, hands on the tops of my thighs, forcing me wide. He looked down at my cunt, making me wriggle in frustration.

  “Now, Nathaniel,” I begged as his fingers stroked my folds.

  “Had to make sure you were ready,” he said, then pushed his fingers into me. “You’re dripping.” I was about to complain about the delay, but he collected my wrists in one hand, stretching them above my head and then worked himself slowly in.

  “Ohhhhh...” I groaned as I felt my body spread wide to accommodate him. A shiver went down my spine as he slowly pushed past my most sensitive of spots. I was panting by the time he was buried inside me.

  “You feel so good,” he said, collapsing down on top of me, propping his shoulders up on his elbows. “Why do you feel so damn good?”

  “I don't...ah!”
All words were lost as he began to move, my head thrown back as I was lost in the sensation.

  “Not gonna last,” he said, regret saturating his tone.

  “Don't need to,” I said, wrapping my legs around his hips and digging in my heels. This just opened me up further, which should’ve had me wincing as he slammed into my cervix, but instead, I was meeting him stroke for stroke. “Oh gods,” I whimpered as I felt him swell inside me.

  Orgasm was like a burst of sunlight behind my eyes when it hit. My body went limp as uncontrollable waves of pleasure tore through me. Most days I needed to feel strong and competent to feel relaxed, but right now I felt like a limpet on a rock, clinging helplessly as the great ocean surged around me. He wasn’t far behind me, ramming himself in for the last stroke, then bursting hot and wet inside me.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked much later as we lay entangled on the bed.

  “Buggered if I know. I’m half afraid to interrogate it, in case I destroy it somehow.”

  “Is it always like this? For you?” I said, rolling over to look at him.

  “I’ve been alive for a very long time,” he said, moving to cover my body with his, his mouth against my neck. “And I can safely say it’s not been like this for as far back as I can remember.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Uh huh,” he murmured into my skin as he ran kisses along my spine.

  “Seriously,” I said, though my tone completely made a mockery of my words. It came out as part purr, part moan. “I need to go and save the world and shit. Overthrow the Cremorni government…”

  “Mm hmm. Rohan will be looking for me too.”

  “Bring down the Wall.” He reached down and dragged my hips up so I was on my hands and knees before him. I could feel the cool air against the wetness of my cunt, leaving me open and exposed.

  “Nathaniel, I’ve got…uh!” He speared his tongue inside me, wriggling, his fingers moving to circle my clit. I found my back beginning to arch, spreading myself further open, pushing back against that delicious pressure. All thoughts of anything else dropped away as he swapped places, fingers curling, my clit enveloped by the hot, wet warmth of his mouth.

  21

  Hesse

  Hesse Corp boardroom

  Hesse Corp building

  Meridian City

  “How the bloody hell did the newspapers get wind of the bloodbath with the vampires?”

  Hesse tossed the offending papers onto the table, letting them splay across the surface in a flurry of paper. His PR team and his military development representatives took seats and began reaching for them.

  “I don’t need you to read the fucking things,” he snapped. “If you haven’t read every single one of these bloody articles- where our failures have been documented in great detail in the evening papers- then get the fuck out of my boardroom and find yourself another job. MacKellan, how did this get out?”

  “Security’s been through all of the databases of the news outlets and the information didn’t come from this office. We have no leaks,” one man said.

  “There bloody wouldn’t want to be.”

  “This is a Cardinian leak,” an older woman said. “They’ve obviously got their own sources within the Quarter. One of their propaganda officers made sure it was circulated to all of their news outlets but have found a receptive audience in the Guardian. The editor in chief, a one Harlow Greenway, made the call to publish.”

  “What’s the word on Mr Greenway,” Hesse said.

  Another man leant forward. “From our investigation: he’s a graduate of the University, a master's in journalism. Made his name as a war reporter, published some award-winning articles on the Cardinian front. Climbed his way up the ladder and here we are.”

  “Points of weakness?”

  “No wife or kids. Immediate family dead, he was a late-life baby, one of those early results of the extended fertility trials. Has a mortgage we could foreclose on but—”

  “But he’d just see that as a plot against him and agitate further. No, we need to discredit him. If he’s got no one to come home to, who’s he fucking?”

  “In the last few years, has had several girlfriends. There was a long-term male partner, soldier. One of the reasons Greenway took the frontline gig. The death of that partner in the Raga Offensive definitely changed the tone of his pieces, but they were within the parameters we identified as sufficient to create the illusion of a free press.”

  “OK, we need to concoct something. Jonathon, get Miller and Wilson on the line and organise a meeting before the end of the day. Cook, we need a dead kid plant, some evidence of sexual trauma is good, extensive trauma is better. There’s plenty of corpses left in the Crèche from that bash we had with the munition’s manufacturers. Send one of those bodies over, construct a crime scene and then get Sex Crimes onto it. Where am I tonight?”

  His PA tapped her tablet and said, “Premiere of the new Angelica Rothchild film. You’re her escort.”

  “Excellent, we’ll break the news in front of the celebarati and take this idiot down. Make sure the other editors who re-published this crap, are visited and have the process explained to them. They are a free press, as long as they abide by our rules.”

  22

  Lethe

  Temple of Kai and Lyra

  Ground Zero

  The Quarter

  We fucked a few more times. This is weird, I mused, in the dark grey of very early morning. I looked down at the very fine sprawl of Nathaniel’s body and wondered what the hell I was doing. We’d only stopped to sleep a few hours ago because we just couldn’t raise the energy to pleasure each other another time. He’s like a drug, I thought with some trepidation and a whole lot of desire. I shook my head and slipped out from under the covers, him murmuring as I moved. I whispered some sort of excuse to placate him and he nodded, curling back under the blankets to sleep.

  “Oh, hello.” I’d walked out into the foyer area of the temple to leave by the stairs and found the Crown Princess standing there with a phalanx of guys in dark suits by her side. “I’m looking for Nathaniel?”

  “He’s asleep, through there,” I said, gesturing to the room with the door on it.

  “And he lets you just roam the place, does he?” she said, a small frown forming. “I guess there’s not much else you could do around here, is there, and you’d need to be on hand, being this far out into the Quarter.”

  “Sorry?” I said. I looked over my shoulder. Was this Nathaniel’s wife or girlfriend or something?

  “Well, you’d need to be close to see to Nathaniel’s...needs, wouldn’t you?”

  Ah, it all made sense now. She saw my skin and hair and figured me for a blood bag, one who might be messing with the centuries-old temple she had an obvious interest in.

  “Sasha, what are you doing here?” We both turned to see a sleepy Nathaniel fill the doorway. I watched as her face transformed from stiffly polite to rapturous in a few seconds. Her eyes widened and shone, her lips dropping open slightly. Her chest heaved as she took his half-dressed form in, her eyelashes fluttering so fast, it was a wonder she could see at all.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, it just took quite some wrangling to get the government to allow me back into the Quarter.” She flicked a glance my way. “If you need some time to refresh yourself, we can return in an hour if that works?”

  “I’m fine, I was just up late last night. So, what brings you here?”

  “I had to see the frieze again,” she said, her eyes flicking up to the ceiling, which brought a whole other set of memories back for me. “I’m sure if we can fine-tune the ritual…” Now she turned to look me over much more closely. “It’s an absolute necessity that it is practised from now until Reunion. I’ve stressed this to the Prime Minister and Hesse over and over, but they just keep assuring me ‘all will be well’. Would there be any way to gather the albinos in one place each week? I have to make sure it’s done properly.”
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br />   “Are you serious?” I said, taking in the well-tailored suit for the first time. She obviously wasn’t stupid, but she also had no idea how things were run in here. “The Crèche will take care of the kids, but everyone else? Some work, some live on their own, but most are with the Horde and good luck getting them to do anything. Outreach is the only time we’re ever all together.”

  “Damn,” she said, gnawing at a neatly manicured thumbnail. “Hesse is fighting me tooth and nail on extending the outreach time to include some practice sessions.”

  “Lady, with all due respect, you’re crazy. You’ve got a whole bunch of people who are nursing a state-mandated addiction and you want to extend the time between getting their drugs and taking their drugs to learn a dance? Not gonna happen.”

  I didn’t mean for the words to be so harsh, but I saw I had been, immediately. She tried to put on a good front, looking upwards, blinking madly at the ceiling to try and stop the tears, but she hadn’t grown up in the Quarter, having that beaten out of her. One perfect tear ran down her face, then another.

  “Sasha,” Nathaniel said, taking a step towards her. That was all she needed. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing in earnest against his chest, not seeming to notice his hands hovering around her, as if not sure where to place them. He didn’t look down at her, he looked over her head at me. I cocked an eyebrow and then shrugged, turning on my heel, having to force myself through the line of bodyguards to get out.

  It wasn’t until I was standing outside in the cool morning air that I heard from Lyra.

  Well, that was awkward.

  Yep, I guess she’s really into ancient art.

  She’s into something alright. It’s very, very important that you never let the two of them know about me.