by P. T. Hylton
The Savage War
The Vampire World Saga Book 5
PT Hylton
Jonathan Benecke
Copyright © 2019 P.T. Hylton & Jonathan Benecke
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
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Contents
What Came Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Authors’ Note
What Came Before
ALEX GODDARD is the captain of the Ground Mission Team, an elite task force that supplies the ship New Haven with resources recovered from the vampire-infested Earth’s surface.
New Haven recently partnered with Agartha, the other remaining human city, in an effort to clear an island of the Feral vampires in order to allow humans to permanently resettle the Earth. A group of intelligent vampires led by FIREFLY are working to carry out the plan concocted by JADEN, the ancient vampire warrior who protects Agartha.
Alex and her team soon begin to suspect Jaden isn’t being entirely honest with the humans from New Haven. She and her team uncover the existence of a vampire virus created near the end of the infestation, and they also uncover video proof that Jaden killed the team that developed the virus in order to suppress it. However, the work continued in secret, and BRIAN MCELROY believes they may be able to recreate the virus if they gather the research from the various hidden bunkers where scientists worked on the project.
When the New Haven City Council sides with Jaden, Alex and the GMT go rogue, heading to Puerto Rico to investigate. Their search has a high cost: PATRICK is killed by Ferals, leaving his brother ED despondent. Eventually, they find the research Brian needs to complete the virus, and he goes to work in a hidden bunker underneath a hospital. Jaden and his vampires find them, and the two sides face off in a no-holds-barred battle in which Jaden turns OWL into a vampire.
Brian completes the virus, but Alex realizes there is no way she’s getting out of the battle alive. Jaden will kill them and destroy the virus. With only seconds left before Jaden brings his sword down on her neck, Alex releases the virus.
1
The mist from the canister hit Alex’s eyes, stinging them, bringing tears. She fought the urge to blink. Jaden would bring his sword down on her neck at any moment, and she intended to look him in the eyes as he ended her life. Through the expanding haze, she could see his face, frozen in an expression of shock, anger, and perhaps even a bit of fear.
The mist spread, clouding her vision, as Jaden drew back his sword for the killing blow. She could no longer see his face clearly, but she did see his sword, its deadly tip pointed at her neck. It hung frozen in the air for a long moment. Alex had a split second to wonder why he wasn’t attacking, and then he let out a wet, choking sound and collapsed to his knees. He made another choking noise and fell onto his side.
Alex took a hesitant step forward, trying not to cough as the virus-laden air entered her lungs. Jaden began to spasm, and he jerked twice with full body convulsions. Then, his body began to quiver with a new type of movement. These weren’t like the seizures. He lay still, but something inside of him squirmed. Alex could see the bones and muscles moving and shifting as Jaden lay there, his eyes wide with pain. It was as if his insides were moving and the outside was just along for the ride.
She staggered backward a step and took a look around the morgue. The signs of the battle were everywhere. Scraps of silver. Bullet casings. Blood, both human and vampire.
To her left, Owl lay on the ground, going through the same strange, twisting, shifting convulsions as Jaden. Alex stretched out her hand, wanting to touch her friend, wishing there was something she could do to help. It broke her heart to know that what was happening to Owl was her fault. It had been the right call—the only call she could make—but it still tore at her to see the virus have such a powerful and immediate effect.
“Alex,” Brian said, snapping her out of her shock. “We need to go. We have to get this back to New Haven now.” He held up the other canister, the one Alex hadn’t opened.
She looked to her right and saw Helen wriggling on the ground, her mouth stretched wide as she attempted to scream, but only a small, weak sound emerged. She raised a shaking hand into the air, but it fell limply to the floor after only a moment. Just beyond Helen, Daniel lay on his back, unmoving, staring up at the ceiling through eyes ringed with blood.
Alex crouched down, her eyes fixed on Jaden’s still-convulsing form, and grabbed her sword off the ground. Pain shot through her calf, and she remembered the shrapnel still lodged there. “Ed, CB, can you move?”
Ed slowly stood up from behind the desk where he’d been crouched. His right arm hung at his side, the hand at an odd angle to the forearm. He held his pistol awkwardly in his left hand. He looked around the room, and his face grew pale. Pools of blood around the vampires sizzled and smoked on the silver floor, and pieces of shrapnel littered the room.
“I can move,” he said.
CB put one hand on the desk and pushed himself up. His right arm bled from the stab wound he’d taken during the fight, and there was a large gash in his left cheek. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Brian gasped at the sight of CB and Ed. Then his eyes settled on Owl laying on her side, spikes of silver sticking out all over her back. With a sickening feeling in her stomach, Alex realized Owl was no longer moving. None of the vampires were.
“Owl!” Brian shouted, and he raced toward her.
Alex grabbed him before he could get to the corpse. “Don’t touch her. She was turned. The blood is poison.” Her voice came out strained, thick with emotion.
Brian looked at her, and she could tell that he was about to lose it. He’d never seen violence, not on this scale, and his mind was not ready.
“Look at me, Brian.” She waited until he looked into her eyes. “You’re right. We need to get back to New Haven. There’s nothing else we can do here. Let’s move out.”
The team grabbed their weapons off the floor and left the carnage behind. Alex took one last look at Owl’s unmoving corpse, then led the way down the hall and up the stairs. She moved at a good pace, ignoring the pain that came with each step. She looked down and considered removing the piece of metal that stuck two inches out of her calf, but it wasn’t bleeding much, and that might change if she did.
As they approached the hallway where they�
��d left Chuck, Alex called out. “Chuck, you still with us?”
“I’m here Alex. How are we doing?”
Alex glanced at the men with her. They were broken and battered. “We’ve been better, but it’s done. Time to get out of here.”
Chuck stepped out of the small, sun-protected room, holding his rifle. His arm was wrapped in a blood-soaked shirt. He looked pale, but he seemed to be moving okay. “What do you mean, it’s done?”
“We’ll talk about it on the ship.”
He looked at them, his eyes taking in his damaged teammates, then he turned back to Alex. “Where’s Owl?
“I said, we’ll talk about it on the ship. Let’s move out.”
The four remaining members of the GMT and Brian left the building. On the way through the lobby, they saw Jaden’s ship, its nose protruding through the wall. Jaden had played his last hand to try and stop this virus from getting out. He had risked it all, and he’d lost.
After they’d boarded the away ship, Brian tended to Chuck and Ed’s wounds and began to explain what had happened, while CB and Alex headed for the cockpit.
“What are the odds that New Haven is in range right now?” Alex asked.
“Only one way to find out.” CB slid into the pilot’s seat and powered up the ship. Alex felt a twinge of sadness at seeing someone else in Owl’s chair, but she pushed the feelings away. There was no time for that now. CB turned on the coms unit and picked up the radio “New Haven, this is the GMT. Do you copy?”
There were a few moments of silence, then a voice responded. “This is New Haven control.” The voice sounded confused and shaky. “How are you alive? Are you still human?”
“We’re human, but we’re not in the mood for conversation. Send your coordinates and we’ll head home.”
CB signed off and got the ship in the air. Though the lift-off was smooth enough, the way the ship moved felt wrong to Alex. CB was a competent pilot, but he wasn’t Owl. It was as if the ship had had a few drinks. Everything felt clumsy. Part of it might have been that he wasn’t using his right arm. The bleeding had stopped, but the injury still needed to be taken care of soon.
The cockpit was silent for a few minutes. Then Alex spoke in a hoarse voice. “What happens now, CB?”
CB looked over at her. She saw both sadness and pride in his eyes. She wished she knew what he was thinking. They’d lost two team members in one day. They’d killed the leader of Agartha. Had it been worth it? She supposed they wouldn’t know the answer to that question until they were able to determine the true effectiveness of the virus. And even if it did everything that Brian claimed it would, they’d paid a very steep price indeed.
“Now, we focus on one thing at a time,” CB answered. “First, we go back home. We figure out the rest from there.”
Alex stared out of the windshield blankly for a moment and then said, “Roger that. I’m going to check on the boys. You get us home.”
She shuffled to the back of the ship and found it silent. Chuck’s arm was wrapped nicely, and Brian had cut the sleeve off Ed’s shirt and was inspecting his broken arm. Brian stared at it dumbly, not sure what to do.
“Leave it, Brian,” Alex said. “We’ll be back at New Haven in an hour. They will be able to fix that arm much better in medical.”
Chuck looked up at Alex, his face drawn with concern. “So, did it work? Did we win?”
Alex couldn’t meet his eyes. “I think we have a solution for the Ferals. But we didn’t win. I can’t call anything with a price this high a win.”
Chuck looked down, his eyes filling with tears. “Owl saved my life today. What happened to her?”
Alex steadied herself. As much as she didn’t want to do this, her team needed her. “She died during the fight. Jaden turned her. She was under his control when I released the virus.”
Chuck looked at Brian “You completed the virus?”
“Yes, I think so,” Brian said. “There’s still a lot of testing to do, but according to the simulations, it should work and spread. We need to test it on the Ferals, and we need to make a lot more of it.”
“But you used it on Jaden and his team. It killed them.”
“Yes, but they were exposed to a very high concentration, at the source. I don’t want to get overly excited yet. We need to be sure that it will spread and that it will be just as lethal in smaller doses.”
Alex sat down in an empty seat next to Ed. “How’s the arm?”
“Hurts. I’ll live.” He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Captain, we all knew the price we might pay. Patrick knew it. Owl knew it. They’d be damn proud if they could see what we accomplished. I think we just saved the human race.”
“I hope you’re right.” Her eyes settled on the canister sitting on one of the seats. “Brian, can you make more of it on New Haven?”
Brian thought a moment before answering. “We can make more. With this sample, we can make as much as we want. I’ll make it, and you can drop it on every major landmass on Earth. It’s airborne and should spread quickly.”
Alex looked out the window. The island already looked like a small stone in the ocean. “You’re right, Ed. This is what we all signed up for. What we just did will change the world.”
As the away ship approached New Haven, control told them that they were cleared to land. CB eased the ship into the hangar and set them down gently. Then he stepped into the main cabin and gave the team a weak smile. “Get ready for all hell to break loose.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than a voice came through the radio. “GMT, please exit the ship slowly. Leave your weapons on board.”
Ed scowled. “Shouldn’t we be getting a hero’s welcome? We are bringing back the best hope we have ever had to live on the surface, not to mention what we sacrificed to get it.”
“We also disobeyed a direct order from the Council, stole the away ship, and killed the leader of our only ally,” CB said. “I imagine they’re going to have some questions for us.”
“It sounds bad when you say it like that,” Ed admitted.
The five of them set their weapons down and made their way to the cargo door. They looked like hell, covered in blood and dirt. The cargo door opened, revealing fifty badges in full assault gear. Their weapons were trained on the GMT. A voice yelled out “Get on the ground with your hands behind your heads!”
Alex looked at her team and sighed. “Here we go.”
Together, they stepped off the ship.
2
Alex felt a chill as the air from the ceiling vent blew down on her bare arms. She would have rubbed some warmth into them if her hands hadn’t been cuffed. There wasn’t much she could do, other than watch the goosebumps on her skin as the lengthy wait continued.
It was difficult to know exactly how long she’d been sitting in that interrogation room, waiting for someone, anyone, to enter. There was no clock. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. Just a steel table and two steel chairs, all bolted to the floor. A set of harsh yellow lights. And that damn vent blowing down on her.
A conservative estimate put her waiting time at two hours. Long enough for General Craig and the City Council to have interrogated what remained of her team, but not long enough for them to arrive at any decisions as to the GMT’s fate. She closed her eyes, wondering if it was possible to sleep in her uncomfortable position. Even if it had been, there was still too much adrenaline coursing through her body. So, she just waited, her eyes fixed on the room’s sole door.
It finally opened, and General Craig marched in, his face set in an unreadable expression. He was alone, and he carefully shut the door before sitting down at the table across from her.
“Hell of a mess you and CB have gotten us into,” he said after a moment.
“How’s my team?” Alex asked.
Craig sighed and rubbed his eyes. “The doctors are finishing up with Chuck as we speak. They were able to patch up Ed and CB already.”
“Good,” Alex said. She paused a mo
ment. “I take it you’ve interrogated the others?”
Craig nodded. “Saving the best for last.” He cracked a thin smile that only lasted a moment before fading. “I briefed the Council on what the others told me.”
“And?”
“Emotions are running high. Ambassador McCready refuses to believe Jaden’s dead. The others are cautiously excited. They want to launch more tests of the virus.”
Alex looked at him for a long moment. “And how about you?”
Craig met her gaze. “I don’t know, Alex. A big part of me wishes you could have left well enough alone. We were on the path to Resettlement. Wasn’t that good enough?”
“No,” she said flatly. “Not when Jaden was working so hard to hide the truth. Not when there was a better way.”
Anger flashed in Craig’s eyes. “If Jaden really is dead, we’re looking at war with Agartha here. Do you realize how serious this situation is?”
Alex’s arms tensed, instinctively pulling against the metal bracelets securing her wrists to the table. “I lost two friends today. I had to make a split-second decision on whether to release the virus before Jaden removed my head from my body. I fully expected to die after making that decision. So yes, General, I do understand the seriousness of the situation.”
Craig nodded slowly. “I guess you do.” He paused, his face darkening. “Is it real? Can this virus really kill them all?”