The Fifth Clan

by Ryan T. Nelson

  * * * * * *

  "You know, I have really got to stop waking up like this around you Gabriel. A girl might start to get the wrong idea." I opened my eyes slowly, immediately aware that I was no longer attached to Rachel.

  "What time is it?" My voice was a hoarse rasp and I swallowed hard, tongue feeling thick in my dry mouth. On the seat next to me was a plastic grocery bag. It hadn't been there before so I assumed that either Ghost or Grim had left it for when we woke.

  "Just past four o'clock," Rachel said, answering my question. I grunted and handed her a bottle of water and a package of beef jerky. Not much, but better than nothing right at the moment. If I had my time right Rachel and I had been under for anywhere between six to thirty hours. If it was the latter, which I was guessing to be more likely, than it was the morning of March 7th, and we had missed the entire first day of the Council meeting.

  We would need to get inside today and ironically, despite my reticence to do so, it would be easier now that Rachel was no longer human.

  "We need to get into the Council meeting today," I told her as we drank and ate. I explained what Vera had told me while they were being attacked at the hotel and outlined my new plan to get us inside. It was such a simple idea that I had completely overlooked it before. The downside to hiding for so long without constantly training my powers was I had tendency to forget about the more specialized skills that I possessed when they could have made a lot of situations much easier for me if I had just remembered to utilize them properly.

  Rachel was fairly quiet as she ate. I could feel hunger pangs tugging at me. I needed blood to replenish what I had lost in creating her but I knew she would be feeling on top of the world right now. Strong, healthy and bursting with energy. So her sitting so quietly was making me nervous.

  "I can't read your emotions so easily anymore," I admitted finally. "You've got to tell me how you're feeling now or I won't know."

  "How's that?"

  "I'm only part Vasith. Vampiric and Lychen minds don't operate the same way that human minds do. Yours no longer operates as it did so unless I focus very hard I can't read your thoughts or emotions very easily. Humans are simple, they broadcast their thoughts and feelings all the time whether they want to or not. I can't help but pick up some things."

  "So you won't be intuitively picking up on what I'm thinking anymore?"

  "Not unless you broadcast it."

  She grinned at me.

  "Pleased to keep me out of your head?"

  "A little."

  "Can you tell me how you're feeling?" I hate not knowing things. I really, really hated it with the fiery burning heat of a thousand suns. More than I could possibly explain, I didn't like that feeling.

  She sat silently save for the sound of us chewing on beef jerky, watching me intently with a smug grin on her face. I started to fidget slightly as the silence stretched into its third minute. By the fourth I was ready to explode and just when I went to open my mouth to cut into the silence she started laughing.

  "It's driving you up the wall isn't it? Not being able to tell what's in my head is driving you completely and utterly insane."

  "Just a touch."

  "Good." I arched an eyebrow at her and she shrugged. "Hey, it was driving me crazy how you kept peeking into my head, only fair that keeping you out drives you just as much around the bend."

  "You're not driving me around the bend."

  "I think you were already around the bend Gabriel."

  "I can neither confirm nor deny such an accusation," I said as haughtily as I could manage. She giggled quietly for a moment before settling back down on the gurney again.

  "How am I supposed to feel right now?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, I don't know. I mean... I'm a vampire now, aren't I?"

  I nodded.

  "Shouldn't I feel different? Shouldn't the world look different or sound or smell different?"

  "It will. You're still within the first hour of waking so things haven't entirely kicked in yet. Your brain is starting to operate on a level beyond what it ever has before, like I mentioned. After the first hour you'll slowly start to get some of the enhanced senses. My best guess, cause there's no way to prove this theory, is that the virus does this to prevent a fledgling from becoming overwhelmed."

  "Fledgling?"

  "A newborn Vampire."

  "And why would it matter if the fledgling is overwhelmed or not?"

  "Because right after creating a new Child, the Sire, me in this case, is considerably weakened by the act. Right now you are stronger and faster than I am and the reasoning is biological, as far as I can tell. Survival is a powerful force. The fledgling wakes without the disorienting enhanced sight, smell, and hearing that you will experience later because until I regain my strength it is the Childs job to protect their Sire in the event of an attack.

  "Give it about eight hours and you'll absolutely notice the enhanced senses." I picked up an empty metal canister and tossed it to her. Her hand shot out and snatched it out of the air, crushing the thin metal like a piece of tissue paper in her grip. She stared wide eyed at her own hand several moments and I chuckled quietly at the loudly broadcasted sensation of shock that I could feel coming from her. It was so strong that I didn't even have to strain my Vasith talents.

  "What the fuck?"

  "Told you. Your strength should be rather amazing to see right about now. It takes roughly six hours for the blood to equalize and your strength to start coming back down to a more even keel."

  "How long until I can start using the other talents from the four clans? What about the fifth power? Do we even know if I have the same power as you? If I don't what does that mean? Would I start a Sixth Clan? What abou-." She stopped talking when my hand covered her mouth and she glared at me angrily.

  "Rachel, I understand that you are extremely excited and worked up at the moment but if I'm going to answer any of those questions you need to stop talking and take a breath long enough for me to get a word in edgewise." I stood, hating the weak feeling in my legs but knowing it was just a temporary situation, and took my hand from her mouth, holding it out to her instead. "Come on. Let's head outside and test what you can do."

  The look on her face then nearly wiped away all of my worries at creating another like myself. The joy and excitement she so obviously felt burst through in the form of a broad smile and glittering eyes as she took my hand and leaped to her feet. She leaped a little too high, actually, and cracked her head on the roof of the van. I laughed when she landed in a heap next to me and she glared at me, ruefully rubbing the crown of her head and looked up at the sizable dent she had left in the ceiling.

  "That's going to take a lot of getting used to isn't it?"

  "Just a little bit, yeah," I said, still laughing and grabbed her hand again. "Come on, lemme show you how I got used to things." I threw open the rear doors and stepped out into the crisp pre-dawn air. My watch told me 5 o'clock was approaching and that was perfect. We had enough time for me to teach her some of the basics before approaching the council.

  Last thing we want to do was talk to the old fools with a completely out of control Fledgling in attendance. It would not go far toward smoothing things over with the brotherhood. We were at the edge of a wood. Which one I couldn't tell you. It's had so many names over the centuries and the Vampires and Wolves call it something different than what is listed on any human map so suffice it to say it was out in the butt-crack of nowhere, Scotland, and leave it at that.

  The wood was to our right as we exited the ambulance and off to our left was nothing but the long rolling grass and hills that is so indicative of the Scottish moors and in the distance, roughly twelve miles away, a small speck, which would resolve itself into the great Brotherhood Hall. I led her about forty feet out onto the moor and turned her to face me.

  "Alright, do exactly as I say until you've got a better understanding of your strength levels, ok?"

  She threw m
e a salute and a saucy grin. "Hai, Sensei."

  "Yeah, yeah, I'll get you for that later you realize."

  "You realize it won't be quite as easy as it was before."

  "Shut up," I said though I was smiling. "I'm instructing right now." She fell silent but the smile never left her face as she waited for me to tell her what to do. "Stand straight." She did. "Arms out a bit for balance." Arms came out. "Now jump."

  Her knees bent before she hesitated and looked at me quizzically. "Huh?"

  "No questions, just jump, straight up. Small jump, don't try to go too high yet."

  She hesitated for a second longer, knees still bent slightly before she shrugged and jumped lightly. She shrieked in surprise when instead of a small hop, as she had been expecting, she shot up ten feet into the air. Her arms and legs flailed wildly and I could tell she would never stick the landing but the ground was relatively soft out here and hey, ten feet was nothing to a vampire of her strength.

  She landed hard and rolled a dozen feet in the damp grass before she slid to a stop on her back, staring up at the slowly lightening sky and gasping for breath as if she'd just run the mother of all marathons.

  "Holy fucking crap nuggets on a stick."

  I arched an eyebrow at her again. I know I do that a lot, deal with it. "Crap nuggets?"

  "Yes, crap nuggets." She sat up and failed in an attempt to glare at me. It's difficult to glare when you're grinning like a fool. "Why didn't you tell me that was going to happen?"

  "I told you not to jump high didn't I?" I helped her up and took a step back. "Watch me." I bent my knees and leaped, shooting twenty five feet into the air, nearly straight up. I kept my arms out slightly for balance and my knees tucked up and as I came down I bent my knees to absorb the shock that I hardly felt. My boots had landed precisely back in the prints I had left in the grass from my launch point.

  "And that," I told her. "Is with my own strength severely lessened by what I gave to you. You should be able to do twice that if you really tried but you still haven't perfected the landing yet."

  She giggled suddenly, hopping five feet into the air over and over. "This is amazing," she crowed. "Oh my god, Gabriel, how do you just get used to this kind of thing? Isn't it just amazing to you what you can do?"

  I shrugged. "I'm over three centuries old Rachel. I hardly even notice it anymore. Eventually it'll become more common place to you too but," I paused and watched her giddy expression and wished for a moment I still had that sense of joy and awe in my own abilities. "Never lose that, Rachel. It'll keep you sane to think of how much fun it is to be what you are now." I didn't mean to be a kill joy. Really I didn't. You have to understand how hard it was for me to see my first Child after I had spent so long insisting that I would never create a Child of my own. Did that make me a hypocrite or a martyr? I had broken my vow to myself, but I did it to save a life.

  Rachel saved me from musing for too long by smacking me across the back of the head. With her strength still unsure however the end result was that I was sent into an uncontrolled somersault across the moor. My head rang like she had struck a giant gong and I was pretty sure she would have killed me if I had been human. As it was I was extremely disoriented for a minute as she dropped to her knees next to me, apologizing profusely.

  "Oh my God, are you ok? I didn't mean to hit you that hard." I held up my hand and she fell silent.

  "Remind me, to never piss you off in the future ok? You're going to be dangerous once I teach you to fight a bit."

  "Dammit, Gabe. You scared the shit out of me.

  "Hey considering you almost took my head off I think I'm allowed a joke or two." She subsided and sank back on her heels, wiping the tears from her face with both hands. I sat up and double checked that everything was healing the way it was supposed to before I stood and helped her to her feet again.

  "Look we've got two hours to kill before we can even start to approach the Hall. Tradition dictates that we wait until after the treaty was originally signed to arrive. That was at around eight in the morning. If we wait till seven to start walking we should get there by 9 or so. That's a decent time to arrive."

  "Why's that?" she sniffled.

  "We should always be fashionably late." I grinned and clapped my hands. "So come on. Jump again. Try a little higher this time and don't forget to keep your knees in. You want to land on your feet..."

  25

  "This is a stupid plan, Gabe."

  "It is not it's a brilliant plan."

  "It's about as brilliant as lighting up a smoke on the Hindenburg."

  "So a warm happy fun time sitting in front of the fire?" Ok even I knew that was a weird stretch and the look she shot me told me exactly what she thought of my joke. "Ok that was bad. But seriously. We don't have a lot of choices and we might want to stop talking verbally sometime soon. We're going to be getting close enough for them to hear us anytime now."

  "They're still a mile away, their hearing is that good?"

  "So will yours be in about three hours." I could slowly feel my strength returning but I would still need to feed again before I was really at a hundred percent. "Look we don't have a choice but to approach the Hall on foot. That's the way things go." I switched to telepathic communication."But this is a perfect plan. I use my Kargoni abilities to approach in disguise. That way they don't realize it's me until after I'm already inside."

  She frowned and her brow furrowed in concentration as she attempted to respond to me in kind, something she still had a great deal of trouble with. Switching mental gears was not nearly as simple as it seemed, and telepathic powers were usually the most difficult to train. Hers seemed unusually strong for a fledgling even if she barely knew how to use them.

  "Didn't you say that a Vasith was kept on guard at the entrance to verify anyone approaching was who they said they were?"

  "So?"

  "Won't that be a problem when you get there and they can tell you aren't Grim?"She glanced at me walking at her side in the hulking form of the Old Wolf."You don't even smell like a wolf."

  "And how would you know what a wolf smells like?" I couldn't help it, I arched an eyebrow at her again. I really needed to break myself of that habit, it was getting on my nerves.

  "My nose kicked in two hours ago Gabriel. I could smell Ghost and Grim all over the front of the ambulance and you don't smell anything like a werewolf. How are you going to explain that when we get close enough to the Vayun for them to get a whiff of you?"I growled inaudibly to anyone but her.

  "I hate when there’s a flaw in my plans."

  She laughed mentally, quiet the trick but I could feel the amusement in her thoughts."Gabriel in a hundred years you're leaving all the planning to me. So far all of your plans have had some major flaws."

  I declined to answer, choosing instead to sulk in silence while I rearranged my features to something common and non-wolf like. Which was not as simple as it sounded. Werewolves didn't have identifying characteristics typically. The only way we could tell a wolf apart from a Vampire or a human was by smell. My hair darkened and got considerably shorter, withdrawing into my scalp until it was a military style crew cut. My nose grew a bump as if it had been broken in the past and my eyes grew slightly wider apart and darkened to a deep blue.

  My height stayed the same but by the time I was done I looked completely different and not like any specific individual. I guess that made more sense too to appear as someone random as opposed to someone people would know.

  We kept silent, verbally and mentally as we crossed the last mile to the Hall. The great stone edifice rose up out of the moor. Straight, boxy and with little ornamentation or decoration. Vampires and werewolves back then hadn't been as interested in appearances. Most things were built for functionality and who cared if it was comfortable or pretty.

  Bah. They learned eventually to take a greater pride in the things they built but during war times and the early peace I guess they had far more important things to worry about. The
first of the Vayun was behind us and we were approaching the second. I could see the rest of the clan spread out around the Hall but none of them seemed to take much interest in us. Disguise was working reasonably well so far at least. They were looking for Gabriel Winters, not the disguise I had created so they let us proceed unmolested.

  The entire worlds population of vampires wasn't much more than a half a million. Our numbers were kept small intentionally even though we could easily swell into the millions. The problem was making sure to turn Children that would keep the secret of our existence first of all. And secondly to ensure they didn't try to build an army of their own and wrest control from the heads in charge. As with any race, the people in power tended to want to say in power. Even with our small numbers however it was highly unlikely to know each and every vampire on site so my unknown appearance continued to raise no red flags until we reached the massive wooden doors leading into the Hall.

  Standing at the entrance was a single Vasith. He would easily be able to discern my true identity, as Rachel warned me and I needed to stop him from sounding any alarm. As we reached within ten feet of him I suddenly dropped my disguise, letting my features rearrange themselves to where they were supposed to be and with my hair still growing out to its original waist length I leaped.

  Even in my weakened state I was still considerably stronger than any basic Vasith on a physical confrontation. The poor man barely had time to register that I was in the air before I was on top of him. My right knee drove into his chest and carried us both to the ground with a muffled thump as Rachel squeaked in surprise behind me and I drove my hand down, crushing his windpipe.

  I stood, leaving him gurgling on the ground as he struggled to breathe.

  "Gabriel!" Rachel cried.

  "Oh he'll be fine. He'll pass out from lack of oxygen but he'll heal before he could ever actually die and start breathing again. No worries. Come on, let's get inside before the Vayun behind us get here." Indeed a half dozen of the nearest of the Wind Clan were quickly approaching. My attack on the Vasith and Rachel's cry being more than sufficient to warn them that something was very much amiss.