The Bottom Rung

by Sam Hall

  That why you were so quiet?

  I assumed you’d want some privacy. A lot of privacy. You were down there for quite some time.

  Why, how long has it been? I said.

  Three days.

  Fuck! Really? Well, at least I’ve built up my strength again.

  Yes, and well done for not allowing him to feed from you. That’s quite a feat considering how intimate you got. I’m serious, Lethe, those two, if they found out what we have… It could be fatal, Lyra said.

  What? I looked back at the stairs. How?

  Sasha comes from a line that usually provided my avatars. She was brought up to believe she could be the next. To find it was someone else, someone she showed no respect for. Well, let’s just say I’m not confident that she wouldn’t try to kill you, to see if she could claim her birthright.

  Shit, OK, but I don’t think Nathaniel would be a part of that, do you?

  No, but the two of them are obviously close. He may betray the information without meaning too.

  I shrugged, Sure, it’s not like we talk all that much anyway. I gasped, my body providing me with a very physical reminder of what we’d been doing, twitching with pleasure.

  So where are we off to today? she said.

  I figure we go to Miriam’s. I don’t want to be anywhere near vamp territory until I’ve worked out how to manage Rohan, I said.

  I’ve told you; you just need to build a power base there and knock the little upstart off his throne. First, you should…

  And replace him with who? I’m sure as shit not taking the throne. I fucking hate vamps.

  You are a vamp now.

  Still fucking hate them.

  Your ‘boys’ are vampires.

  Whatever. Miriam’s camp, let’s go.

  I was sitting on the top of one of the ruined buildings that looked down on the wolves’ camp, aghast at what I saw. Over on the left, I could see the vampire forces massing at the border, everyone well-armed and ready to do battle. It was faint but I could just hear the little ticking of the blood pumps the fuckers had obviously decided to appropriate from the blooded soldiers. I scoured the line, looking for Ben or Gavin. They had to have given up the storeroom of revolutionary blood I’d built under their house. “No fucking loyalty,” I said.

  Or very loyal, depending on how you look at it. Rohan would rain veritable hell upon their heads if they’d been caught hoarding it. They’re probably in enough trouble for not turning you over to them, Lyra said.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” My head whipped around to see three werewolves appear on the rooftop, pulling themselves over the side of the building. They’d obviously scaled the thing from the outside rather than come up the booby-trapped inside. I straightened up, wiping my hands on my jeans.

  “Well, now, she looks like one of those colourless whores,” a wolf said.

  “But she’s got that snake smell the vamps have,” another said. His nostrils flared as if to make his point.

  “But it’s hard to tell, right?” the last one said. “Is it her scent or just the stink of vamp cum between her legs?”

  “What the fuck?” I snapped. “I’ve been into your camp more times than I can count. You’re Ferris and you’re Henry, Nicca’s son.”

  “And you’re the little white courier who has no loyalty to any of the factions. Branching out into spying for the vamps now, are we? Or is this just a freelance gig you set for yourself, figuring you’d sell the information to the highest bidder?” the nameless wolf said.

  “Let’s get her to Miriam, let her sort this out,” Ferris said.

  Can you get me to Miriam? I asked Lyra.

  Just outside the camp do? There’s something stopping me from moving you inside it.

  “I’ll meet you down there, fellas,” I said with a grin and then winked out of view.

  I was still smiling when I appeared at the camp gates, but that died out when I found myself looking down the barrel of more rifles than I could count. “State your business,” Dawn said through gritted teeth, “or prepare to have your head blown off.”

  “Whoa, white flag people,” I said, waving my hand. It was the only white thing I had on me right now. “Can I talk to Miriam?”

  That took a while to sort out. Wolves were running in and out of the camp, weapons and armour being carried out to the front where they prepared to meet the vamp hordes. “The vamps, they’re wearing blood pumps, like the soldiers!” one wolf said between pants, having run flat out to Dawn’s side.

  “I know,” I said, “that’s what I was here to tell you. The vamps fought the blooded soldiers sent in from the other side and have both pumps and a stash of blood from the Revolution.”

  “You serious? That’ll make them ten times as strong,” Dawn’s face went white. “This will be a massacre.”

  “Take me to Miriam,” I said and this time she nodded.

  “Dawn, are the fighters arranged on the border? We may be able to call in some from Sharee’s clan but…”

  “The vamps have pumps and blood from before the Revolution on them,” Dawn said flatly.

  Miriam’s eyes widened, seeming for the first time to take me, then her daughter in. Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed as she stared at me. “What have you done?”

  “I climbed the Ladder, came back different. Look, it's my fault the soldiers came and it's my fault the vamps had the blood. I stored it under the McIntyre’s house, thinking it would be safe,” I said.

  I wouldn’t have confessed to all of that, Lyra said. You position yourself as their enemy.

  “The McIntyres? They are Rohan’s right hands. What did you think they would do with such a gift? But how did all of this happen?”

  “Mum, I’m not sure we have time for stories right now. The vamps are going to attack at any minute.”

  “I’m going to go to the front, see if I can put a stop to this, but I’ll be right back,” I said.

  “And how will you…?” I didn’t wait for Miriam to finish her sentence, winking in and out, appearing away from where the two groups were massed, hunkering down in an old door frame.

  So, what do I do? Build a barricade?

  You could bring some of the buildings down, Lyra said, though I’m not sure how well rubble will do to keep them out. Everyone here seems very adept at traversing it.

  What are vampires weak against?

  Fire for one.

  So, a wall of flame? Could we do that?

  If you want a spontaneous wall of flame with no fuel or means to keep it running, it would take a massive amount of energy to sustain. You wouldn’t be able to move from here; it would consume your existence.

  What about a wall like the Wall?

  You got any ancient witches you’d like to bleed to make that? That’s one bad, bad piece of work.

  Fuck! I can’t let Miriam’s wolves get massacred by that fuckhead, Rohan! There’s kids growing up in that camp.

  And you know what he’ll do with them.

  I looked up as the werewolves began to mass at the border. Guns were shouldered, they were falling into lines as shouted by their leaders. This is gonna be a fucking massacre, I said, looking over at the vampires with their ticking black boxes pinned to their sides. Hang on, I said, what if we turned all the pumps to ash?

  It’ll take some of the spring out of their step, but they’ve probably been consuming the other blood since you went missing.

  Right, let’s do that for starters. I shifted slightly in my hiding spot and could tell when it was done by the angry cries from the vamp camp. Now for a more permanent solution.

  There was something that was repelling me, Lyra said. Look into that, it might be our solution.

  We winked back to the camp, this time I managed to get to Miriam without being stopped. People were too busy making final preparations for the battle, the big gate that was almost never pulled shut being moved into place to lock down the village. “Miriam!” I said as I burst into the big meeting roo
m.

  “Dawn has just made her way to the front line. She thought that was where you’d gone.”

  “It was. I took out the pumps on the vamps, which might slow them a bit. They’ve still got the blood though.”

  “And how is it they came to be in possession of pre-Revolutionary blood?” she asked with a frown. “That was all locked up in vaults on the other side of the Wall.”

  “Was,” I said, dropping my eyes to the floor. I didn’t want her green ones boring into mine as I made my confession. “I got it out, trying to destabilise Hesse’s power base.”

  “And you brought it here? To the vampires? What did you think was going to happen?” I could hear the unearthly snarl rising in her voice. “You arm one faction and not another? And you’re surprised by the end result?”

  “I wasn’t bloody thinking, I guess,” I said. “I assumed everyone would be like me, grateful for the power boost and wanting to pull together to bring the fucking Wall down for good. Hesse, the humans, they’re our enemies, not each other.”

  “And yet who is the monster at our doors? Each other. You have created a power imbalance that we might not survive. I need to call the council together.” She moved to the door and shouted for someone.

  Fuck! I said to Lyra. What do I do?

  For the second time, all there was was the great silent emptiness of my own head. Something in here blocks her. I looked around the room but it was packed full of objects and stones, skulls and feathers, headdresses and baskets. When Miriam returned, I said, “Something here stops Lyra from talking to me. What is it?”

  “Lyra?” one of the older men said as he entered. “You hear the voice of the vampire goddess?” His eyes whipped around to Miriam, “You let the avatar of the vampires in here?”

  “I didn’t bloody know she was when she came in,” Miriam said. “Last thing I knew she was a courier who was a free agent.”

  “Yes,” one of the women said, “one who refused a place here. We cannot trust this one! Who knows what she feeds back to her king?”

  “First of all, he’s not my king. If I could think of someone to put in his place that wouldn’t become a despotic dickhead, I would off him in a second.”

  “Don’t assign a leader. Merely depose him and let the Horde fight it out,” another man said with an evil smile.

  “And what will happen while they do? You’ll just go about your business?” I shot back. The smiles around the table told me all I needed to know. “I don’t need to weaken any one faction; I need to strengthen all of them so we can bring down the Wall! Imagine getting free of the Quarter. Would you stay around to fight the vamps? Or would you head to your ancestral lands?”

  “To run in the Great Forest,” one woman said, her hand pressing against her chest. If I was right, the glitter in her eyes was tears forming.

  “To swim in the waterfalls of Rokewood.”

  “To return to the sacred caves of Eildon.”

  “Yep, I get it,” I said, “it would be awesome. So, what do we need to do to make that happen? There’s something in the village that repels vampires.”

  The silence was now deafening, the Elders’ faces closed off and blanked, but I hadn’t gotten where I was today without some observation skills. Whites, we were relegated to the role of pet, or pot plant when we weren’t wanted, too little of a threat to mind. It sucked, but it meant we spent a hell of a lot of the time watching others, picking up micro-expressions.

  If you couldn’t, you didn’t last long. You had to know when that fist was going to come down on you, so as to duck out before the beating started. I waited them out, knowing all the while that the fight on the border had to already have started. Slowly I began to see the pattern. They couldn’t seem to help it, the tiny glances at the alpha’s necklace. I turned and looked down at the large white stone held in a bezel made of gold. “Is it that?” I said. No one answered. “Look, you tell me what it is, maybe I can get more of it. Hell, maybe we can use it to make a fence to keep the vamps out.”

  “Come with me,” Miriam said, grabbing my arm.

  “Miriam!” one of the men shouted and she turned on her heel with a glare.

  “Alpha,” she replied through gritted teeth. The man sat back down reluctantly and then she dragged me from the room.

  We wound our way through the camp, until we came to a small shack with no windows, guarded by several heavily armed werewolves. She nodded to them and they moved away, slower than they should- I assume, their eyes trained on me. “Come in,” she said when I hung by the doorway. There wasn’t much else to see, in the centre was a rough podium and on it a massive chunk of semi-opaque white stone. As I stared, a silvery green iridescence played over the surface. “Moonstone,” she said, answering the questioning look on my face. “It’s always been the source of our power, the key to keeping the Horde back, to keep the dark witches from cutting us down and carving us up for spells. Each werewolf pack has its own at their base, to keep the vamps from taking us completely. Come through here,” she said, walking around the stone to the door beyond it.

  When I opened it I was shocked to see a small mine shaft leading deep down into the ground. “There’s more below, I can feel it, but we haven’t managed to find it yet. Part of our disputes with the other packs is the vein that’s below here. They can feel it too and want to take this land for themselves. We’ve held them off so far but…”

  “Lyra’s been able to retrieve things for me before this, but I think she’s going to need a buffer between her and the moonstone to get it to the surface. Is there anything I can wrap it in to stop it from cancelling out her powers?”

  “You want me to give you the secret weakness of our powers? The Elders will have me drawn and quartered for that,” she said with a frown.

  “So how do I get it then? She’s going to be able to sense it but winks out when she gets too close to it.”

  “You can promise you’ll bring moonstone to the pack? Enough to hold off the wolves?”

  “Not yet I can’t. I have to go outside the camp and see if I can get her back to have a look.”

  “Do that.”

  So what do you reckon? I said, sitting on the grass. I kept my eyes on what was going on around me, didn’t want to get caught up in the conflict if the troops made it back this far.

  I can see it. It repulses me. There’s a massive underground cave filled with the stuff. Here, see for yourself. A projection of the cave formed in the air between Miriam, her guards and me. Gasps burst from all of the wolves standing there. “That’s the Ranusian caves,” one of them said.

  “Those fucking bastard leeches built this shit hole right over the top of our most sacred of sites!” one man said, his finger tightening on the trigger of his rifle.

  “They may not have known,” Miriam said with a placating hand out.

  “Bullshit, they would’ve known exactly what it was! Before the humans rose up, they were planning a push out into our lands, to try and enslave us as well,” one of the women said.

  Which means there must be an entrance to the mine somewhere, I said to Lyra. Can you sense it?

  I can if that’s what you wish, but I wonder if that’s the best approach to take.

  Why’s that? I’m not leaving them weak in the face of the Horde.

  No, but you could forge a new entryway here, in their camp, in exchange for the secret to negating moonstone.

  I’m not going to use it against them, especially not for Rohan.

  You don’t need to. She’ll put some kind of binding on you to stop that anyway.

  So, what’s the point.

  Knowledge is power, no matter how restricted your use of it. Make the request and I’ll give them access to the caves. I’ll need it anyway, to get down that last few hundred metres.

  “I can get you into the caves, Miriam, but we need to talk, your Elders as well.”

  “You going to listen to this little white slut? She’ll be on her knees in front of Rohan within the hour,�
�� one of the men growled.

  “We need the caves. I don’t care how we get it,” another man said, eyeing me.

  “This decision is not yours to make!” Miriam said with a snap, her voice seeming to hang in the air, her authority an oppressive weight for me and I wasn’t a wolf. I could only imagine how it felt to them. Instantly all five guards dropped to their knees, eyes on the ground, heads bent submissively. “Good, now get to your feet, you can’t protect me from there.”

  “You can’t be serious, Alpha!”

  “How do we know this girl tells the truth? She plays all sides to survive here.”

  “As do we all at times,” Miriam said. “I have seen her magic, seen the caves.”

  “The Ranusians were always just a myth, like the one that Graellen will rise again and take us from this place,” a woman said with a wave. “If you hand this girl this information, she’ll use it to protect her position, not improve ours.”

  The Elders were obviously not on board with sharing the information. I bounced lightly on the soles of my feet, imagining what hell was being wrought at the border as they argued. How many were hurt, injured?

  “I’ll bind myself to the pack,” I said. That got them all shutting up. “Can a non-wolf do that, I mean? Is there any way you can tie me to you, to ensure I don’t use that information for my own gain?”

  Miriam’s eyes snapped to the rest of the Elders; her lips pursed as she tapped her finger on them. “We could perform the bonding ritual.”

  “Yep, sounds good, let’s do that,” I said, wanting someone, anyone, to make the decision that could bring the conflict outside to an end. People were dying as these guys hummed and hawed.

  “You can select her mate candidates,” Miriam said. “Pick who you think will advocate for our interests in her company.”

  My eyes went wide. “A mate? Werewolves don’t fuck anything but other wolves. He’ll think this is some kind of creepy pedo marriage.”

  “Male candidates only, apparently,” Miriam said to the Elders, then turned to me. “We respect power and as an albino, a mating would never have been possible, but if you have the power to tunnel down to the caves, you will have demonstrated the requisite power to be taken seriously as an adult of breeding age. The candidates will be aware of this before stepping forward.”