Feral Empires: Fanning Flames

by Stephen L. Hadley

  Liam fidgeted and said nothing. In light of his silence, it was Andrew who spoke up.

  “I suppose that makes sense,” he said. “Though if the Mayor had his own Hunters, he wouldn’t have to rely on the Militia for support, either. But I’m sure such a thing never even occurred to him.”

  “Tobias didn’t give two—” Jenn snapped before she could help herself. She grimaced, then shook herself as if to brush aside Andrew’s comment. “Anyway, that was just the first step. He was also working on a way to mass-produce enhancements. That’s why the men at the gate took such an interest in me. He was close, too. In another six months, half of New Lewville could have been like us. The Occs wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  “Or the Militia,” Andrew suggested quietly. “Or the Free States. He could have carved out his own little empire with just a few words.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Jenn,” Liam interrupted. “You said the Mayor was different from the Occs.”

  She looked at him, clearly taken aback. “Of course he was!”

  “Do you remember when the Occs gave you yours? How much it hurt?”

  Now it was Jenn’s turn to fidget. Her hands clutched at the vines around her thighs, wringing them as the memory of that pain flashed clearly across her face.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “But it was better than being powerless. Or dead. And the Mayor didn’t experiment on children, only volunteers.”

  Liam wanted to lash out, but something held him back. Perhaps it was being in such a place once again, or perhaps it was his desire to keep from alienating Jenn once more. Whatever the reason, something steadied him long enough to choose his words with precision.

  “That’s good,” he said. “The Mayor didn’t torture children. But that doesn’t help us now. Even if we could figure out how to use the serums, there’s no time to distribute them. The Occs are here. I doubt Wuyong is the only one in the city. So, was the Mayor working on anything that can help us now?”

  Jenn stared at him for a minute, then gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t—”

  A sudden crash and pounding of footsteps on the stairs behind them made the four of them jump in unison. Without needing to speak a word, they moved as one, deeper into the laboratory and into cover behind several of the steel tables. Once in place, they waited in tense silence as the echoing footsteps grew louder.

  “There’s more than one,” Liam whispered, glancing about. He clutched his useless rifle, wishing he’d thought to check Wuyong’s discarded one to compare ammunition.

  Luckily, he wasn’t alone. Andrew peeked over the rim of his table, staring down the sights of his weapon, while Jenn and Kathryn each prepared to strike in their own fashion.

  The footsteps slowed as they neared the landing, growing more precise and less frantic. Then they stopped altogether.

  “Hello?” called a young, surprisingly tremulous voice. “Is anyone there?”

  The footsteps resumed, only to halt abruptly yet again.

  “Wait,” growled a familiar, yet unmistakably inhuman voice. “I can smell them. I’ll go first.”

  Liam braced himself for the coming violence, but he needn’t have bothered. Andrew stood, leaving his rifle resting on the table, and knocked twice on the tabletop beside it.

  “Damien?” he called out. “Is that you?”

  The Hunter moved quickly, barreling through the open doorway into the laboratory. His eyes were narrowed and his jaw distended with the effects of his transformation, but it was not anger that colored his features. At the sight of Andrew, his features began to revert.

  But even before the regression was complete, the Hunter had bounded over two sets of chairs and buried his face against the militiaman’s chest. He growled violently, shoulders heaving.

  Liam wanted to rush to his aid, certain that the Hunter had finally snapped. But a small, willowy figure appeared in the doorway, drawing his gaze and capturing his attention.

  The woman was thin as a rail, almost painfully so, and her ribs stuck out prominently against the bodice of the soot-stained gown she wore. Her hair, too, was cut unevenly and blackened in places as though she’d walked through a fire on her way down the stairs.

  Those were not the features that stood out most prominently in Liam’s eyes, however. That detail was the tears that streaked her cheeks.

  Tearing his gaze away from the woman, Liam looked back to Damien. The Hunter’s face remained firmly against Andrew’s chest. But now, Liam could identify the shaking growls for what they truly were—something he’d never even thought possible from a Hunter.

  Liam, and the rest of the room, looked on silently as Damien sobbed.

  ***

  Liam meandered through the room, eyeing the assorted scientific instruments and glancing inside the occasional cabinet as he strove to calm his racing heartbeat. As he walked, however, his attention was focused wholly on the interactions taking place near the stairs.

  Andrew continued to comfort the weeping Hunter, seemingly unperturbed by the surreal experience. Jenn, on the other hand, had gone to the woman’s side. Though she appeared several years Jenn’s senior, there was something oddly sheltered about both her mannerisms and speech. She maintained her composure just long enough to reach Jenn’s arms, then sagged and began to sob in much the same way as Damien.

  It was several long, uncomfortable minutes before either of them recovered sufficiently to speak.

  Amid sniffles and shaky breaths, the woman introduced herself as Olivia. That announcement earned no reactions, but the next one certainly did.

  “Mayor Del Reyes is our father,” she said.

  Liam turned, frowning, but Jenn beat him to the question.

  “Our?” she echoed.

  Liam stared at the woman a moment, then at Damien. There was no family resemblance he could make out, though given the man’s twisted features, perhaps he should not have expected to find any. In any case, Damien did not contradict his sister. He leaned against a table, one hand on Andrew’s shoulder for support and the other covering his tear-streaked face.

  “That’s right,” Olivia said. She glanced at Liam and Andrew, then turned back to Jenn and continued speaking in a quiet voice. “Father said that his enemies would try and… that we should come here if anything happened. That we would be safe.”

  “Why?” Liam demanded. He advanced toward her without thinking, driven by some instinctive impulse. “Why did he think you’d be safe here?”

  Olivia recoiled as if seeing him for the first time and it was only Jenn’s embrace that kept her from fleeing. Her eyes darted to Damien as if expecting him to intervene. And, to be fair, the Hunter did take an obligatory half-step forward. But there was no vitriol in his gaze, merely a resigned sort of exhaustion.

  “Answer me,” Liam said.

  “Liam,” Jenn interrupted. “Don’t press her. She just lost her—”

  “We don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “I need to know what’s going on. If that bastard had something planned, then—”

  A growl reverberated throughout the room, but it was not Damien who was the source of it. Olivia shook herself free of Jenn’s arms as her refinement melted away into almost comical rage. Slender arms tensing on either side of her dangerously thin body, she growled again and stalked forward with the smoothness of a viper.

  Liam, for his part, didn’t bother to adopt a defensive posture. Olivia was even more fragile-looking than Kathryn and however angry he’d made her, he doubted she could even make him wince before his healing countered the damage.

  He hadn’t planned on the flames.

  Hissing, Olivia unclenched her fists. As the bony fingers spread, her skin crackled audibly and the first wisps of blue fire erupted between her fingers. They spread quickly from there, spiraling up her arms to her shoulders and lingering there like slender, whistling spines. Even from a dozen feet away, Liam could feel the heat and the sweat it brou
ght to his brow.

  “Livi!” Damien barked, making both of them jump.

  Only now did the Hunter step forward, wearing the same weary expression. He shrugged, grimacing as he stepped into range of the oppressive heat.

  “Don’t,” he said. “We need them.”

  “The hell we do,” Olivia spat. Tearing her eyes away from her brother, she glared at Liam. “You heard what he said about Father.”

  “I did. Liam’s not the enemy. He didn’t do this. The Occs did.”

  For a moment, Olivia appeared ready to lash out, regardless. Then she cried out, more in anguish than rage, and swung a fist through the air at some nonexistent foe. As her fist reached its furthest point, the flames hovering around her arms coursed along her outstretched arm and splashed ineffectively against a wall nearly a dozen paces away. Then, with the sound of roaring wind, they extinguished themselves in a sudden cloud of smoke.

  “Fine,” she spat, voice thick with emotion, then glanced at Liam. “We kill the Occs first.”

  Liam let out a breath he didn’t remember holding. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was pointless. Olivia had already turned, stalking toward the stairs, and her brother followed in her wake. In their absence, the room fell deathly silent.

  “I thought you said the Mayor didn’t experiment on children,” Liam said at last.

  He turned to Jenn and found her grimacing, holding her arms tight across her chest. She met his gaze and held it, briefly, before turning back to look at the now deserted staircase.

  “Only his own,” she said, softly. “That’s how serious he was about defeating the Occs.”

  “Let’s hope it was worth it.”

  She didn’t answer him further, nor did anyone else. In fact, it was not until the a distant, grating rumble sounded that any of them moved. And even then, it was mostly to look up in concern when the noise did not fade, but instead grew louder and more oppressive. Soon, the very walls began to shudder.

  Andrew was the first to come to his senses. Shouldering his rifle, he glanced around at the three of them.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” he demanded. “Come on!”

  Spurred by his words, they ascended quickly. Kathryn hurried forward to take Liam’s hand, effortlessly keeping pace with him as he vaulted multiple stairs, despite her small frame. Hand-in-hand, they did not even spare a glance at multitude of corpses littering the throne room as they hurried toward the courtyard.

  Once outside, they found that neither Olivia nor Damien had advanced much further beyond the doors. Their eyes were fixated skyward and the girl’s narrow fingers intertwined amid her brother’s much larger ones. The reason for this, too, was immediately obvious.

  “Ah, fuck,” Andrew muttered.

  Liam couldn’t help but agree.

  Chapter Twenty

  The vessel was incomprehensibly vast, easily more than a hundred meters long, if not more. And yet, despite its immensity, it seemed to float upon the air, buoyed by an armor-shelled balloon that made Liam feel as though he was staring up at a manmade mountain. On either side of the ponderous airship’s frame, great engines roared and emitted billowing clouds of black smoke that gave the impression of an approaching storm.

  And, most terrifyingly of all, a row of immense guns protruded from the box-like structure at its base. These pointed downward, swiveling slowly toward the city. Then, as if sensing Liam’s gaze, the foremost pair of them fired, flashing brightly and booming in a manner more akin to thunder than gunfire. A split-second later, an answering explosion sounded, much closer, and accompanied by an eruption of stone, dirt, and flame.

  “So much for the walls,” Andrew said, too awed to make his words match the horror and defeat written across his face.

  “What is that thing?” Liam demanded, turning. “How is it flying like that?”

  “Couldn’t say,” Andrew said, sounding distracted. He did not even bother turning to look at Liam. “I knew the Occs had drones and the like. But I never… I’ve never even heard of something like this.”

  “How do we stop it?” Jenn interrupted.

  There was a moment’s pause before Andrew answered her.

  “We don’t,” he said. “We run, head north, and hope that Cincy’s guns are big enough to stop that thing.”

  “There has to be something we can do,” she insisted.

  At last, Andrew turned and Liam’s heart skipped a beat at the helpless rage evident in his bared teeth and furrowed brow.

  “Look at that thing!” he growled. “What the hell could we possibly do? It took out the walls with one shot! None of our guns can pierce that armor! We can’t board it! And even if we could, there are hundreds or thousands of Occs that will be swarming the city in minutes!”

  Falling silent, Andrew spun and clutched his head for a moment. When he finally turned around, his anger had subsided and he looked not at the airship, but rather at Liam and Jenn.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you want to help. But there’s nothing we can do.”

  Liam’s shoulders slumped. Try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the approaching vessel. Its massive guns fired again, sending up another plume of debris as it systematically began the work of dismantling New Lewville’s walls.

  The idea of fleeing was unthinkable. He’d be leaving Scott behind, and even they managed to escape the city in time, break past the Occs that had no doubt encircled it, and race to safety… what then? That thing would still be there, pursuing them, and spreading the Occs’ influence further.

  But, what other choice did they have?

  “No!” came a sudden, urgent cry from the woman at his side.

  Kathryn pulled free of his hand, dancing forward out of reach. She gestured frantically at the airship, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Can help!” she blurted. “Can stop! Fast! Fast, fast, fast!”

  And with that, she took off at a sprint, leaving them all behind in a mad dash into the city, and toward the looming vessel.

  “Kathryn, wait!” Liam bellowed. “Stop!”

  His words were of no use. Kathryn halted only briefly, continuing her impatient dance and gesturing for him to follow, then resuming her sprint.

  Liam’s heart began to race, pounding in a sudden onslaught of panic. He could save those he cared about so long as they were close, but if they were scattered around the city….

  He took off after her, covering a dozen meters before he realized he was alone. Glancing back, he felt the pit of his stomach drop away.

  Jenn and Andrew had not moved from their spots near the palace, to say nothing of Olivia and Damien. The former pair stared at him, motionless, while the others continued to stare up at the approaching doom like emotionless statues.

  “Please!” Liam cried. “Jenn, please. There’s no time.”

  For a few seconds, Jenn did not move. It felt like an eternity to Liam in his adrenaline-flooded state, but then, so did the heartbeat’s span it took her vines to carry her swiftly to his side.

  He turned to continue running, only to trip as one of Jenn’s vines snagged his ankle and toppled him. His elbow struck the stone walkway, cracking audibly and eliciting a wince as he waited for it to heal. Even before it had, he climbed awkwardly to his feet and faced Jenn.

  Her eyes were hard, her expression cold and unyielding.

  “I told you,” she said, quietly. Then, when her words were partly drowned out by another rumble of manmade thunder, she spoke louder. “I told you, Liam. Remember what I said the very moment we pulled Kathryn out of that truck? She’s dangerous. She’s going to get us killed.”

  “You’re wrong!” he snapped. Several of Jenn’s vines had begun to encircle him, as if to prevent him from running again, and he shoved them roughly away. “She’s saved my life before. And yours. I’m not abandoning her.”

  “You’re choosing her over me?” Jenn asked.

&nb
sp; “That’s not—I’m choosing us, Jenn!” he cried. “You, me, her, Scott… all of us!”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “It does!”

  Pulling her close, Liam embraced her desperately, his brow resting against her. They abided there for the space of a single breath, Jenn’s calm and measured and his a panting, passionate gasp.

  “It does,” he said again. “Please, Jenn. Trust me.”

  She shoved him away, not with her arms, but with a half-dozen vines that sprouted from the corners of her armor. Replacing them with a flick of her hand, she stared at him, grieved.

  And then, miraculously, she smiled.

  “Go,” she said. “I’ll follow with the others.”

  Stumbling backward, Liam returned her smile.

  “I owe you one,” he said.

  Jenn rose, lifted aloft by a multitude of vines that bulged and thickened until their tips were nearly as thick as decades-old tree limbs.

  “You owe me more than that,” she said. “Go!”

  He went.

  ***

  Liam feared that Kathryn would have left him behind during the moments it had taken him to convince Jenn. His worries proved unnecessary, however. No sooner had he emerged from the narrow alley connecting the Mayor’s palace from the rest of the city than he spotted Kathryn waiting for him. She stood in the middle of the street, oblivious to the chaos around her. Hundreds of terrified civilians raced about, most heading in the opposite direction, away from the airship and battle that was no doubt taking place near the devastated walls. Most of the unarmed masses crowded near the edges of the street, as though taking shelter under the narrow awnings would somehow spare them from the attention of the invaders.

  No sooner had Liam met Kathryn’s eyes, however, than she turned and resumed her flight into the city. At first, he feared losing her in the frenzy, but as they passed the brothel in which they’d sheltered and turned onto a familiar path, he realized the direction they were heading. Rather than slow, that realization only made him run faster.