by M C Ashley
Thankfully, I hadn’t screwed up anything in the process of making the circle, and I had managed to make it to the section of I-37 that Nathan-Prime had placed in my mind. Even though it would have been shorter to come to Vice City from a strictly northern direction, The Horde was obviously using the old Interstate system to get there. Having traveled this way many times myself had proved to be a boon when it came to knowing my way in and out of Corpus Christi.
I watched them from the top of Calallen Baptist Church, one of the pre-made teleportation sites activated by Gray Forum members years ago. Although the circle had faded, it still made it easier to jump to than if I had tried to attempt to enter a random location. The church itself was remarkably preserved for something that should have toppled over half a century ago, not that I was complaining, as it provided a perfect vantage point for a notoriously flat side of Texas. Had I been equipped with a sniper rifle, I might have been able to get a better picture of the caravan itself, but I had to rely on my enhanced eyesight instead.
The caravan consisted of eleven Horde members, all of whom were marked by the signature appearance of their particular brand of vampire: atrophied skin that looked as if it could fall off at any moment. Despite being called vampires, The Horde would most likely be better qualified under the title of their close supernatural cousins: ghouls. Horde members are noted for their hunger for flesh, which they consume to replenish the skin they lose when they go without feeding. I don’t pretend to grasp how it works—it seems like a biological impossibility.
The best hypothesis was that the original members of The Horde were a group of Israelites during the Siege of Samaria that had come to the wicked king Joram to complain about their lack of food. They had resorted to cannibalism by killing their firstborn children. The prophet Elisha had caught wind of this and cursed them for their sins, causing them to degenerate into something less than human, which craved flesh, but could never be satisfied. However, a prophet of Baal (in some version of the myth, Baal himself was involved) had discovered this, and instead of having them die out in one generation as Elisha had intended, he granted them the ability to “procreate” by infecting others with their malady. Eventually the original members had fled to parts of Asia and Africa, away from the Holy Land, so they could stay out of sight of those who knew their origins and feast whenever they pleased.
The eleven Horde members circled around the caravan, methodically scanning the world around them, ready to attack anything foolish enough to get in their way. Despite their continual atrophied skin’s appearance, Horde vampires were nothing short of paradoxical in their fighting ability. A single member could easily tear into a brigade of mundane soldiers without a problem, but they would be hindered by their lack of speed, as they were bulky. Because beneath their withered skin they had a toughened, almost chitinous under layer that shielded them from brute force. Sometimes all a Horde member had to do was stand still while its prey wasted time trying to beat it down, and then simply grab its prey to hit it while it was too tired to fight back.
Fire would work best to get rid of them, but then again, there were few things in the Christened life that couldn’t be cleansed by fire. However, it would take too much energy, due to my relative inexperience, and the fact that I was recovering from Zea’s blows. Light and dark invocation were okay, with light having a slight edge, but it would take a long, drawn out fight to get rid of all eleven of them, which was why I had a plan.
The plan consisted of something I made up in five seconds. In my surveying of the bridge the Horde were on, I had discovered one of the concrete supports was in poor condition, and one well-placed telekinetic invocation could cause it to collapse. For once my penchant for wanton destruction would work in my favor, seeing as Nathan was at the back leg of the caravan and unlikely to get hurt.
Even though Nathan-Prime said they were the same person, there were clearly differences between the two besides age. The Nathan in front of me looked about ten years old and was completely dwarfed by even the smallest Horde member. He was scrawny and looked as if he’d never been fed a good meal. His cheekbones were sharp and his hair was cut short, most likely during his incarceration to dehumanize him.
Around him were about twenty other prisoners, ranging from old men about to keel over from the stress to a baby girl clinging tightly to an old man. None of them moved quickly, the fatigue of a long journey having worn them down. I wondered if the Sanguine Collective would be happy about the state of these sacrifices for the Feast. Would they prefer healthier victims or did it matter how close they were to death if they were about to die anyways? How many more would have to die to satisfy the Slindens? Could I save them too? Where would they go? Could I bring them into the Silver Fortress and convince Zea and Mara to let them stay? Did they even deserve to stay there?
I shrugged off those thoughts and focused on Nathan. His hands were bound to a rope that a Horde member was holding, but some part of that didn’t make sense to me. I saw the rope sway back and forth in the air, but to the trained eye it was out of balance with the way gravity should work.
An illusion? But who made it? Are these prisoners being tricked into thinking their hands are tied up? That would take powerful evocation. But the Horde doesn’t like evocation. They kill Christened and evokers. Odd. Seems like things had changed.
“Well, enough talk,” I said, focusing my energy on the weak pillar. “Rudis vis!”
An unseen telekinetic force smashed into the pillar, right as the front of the caravan moved over it. Startled by the sudden attack, the Horde near the pillars tried to keep their balance, but the sudden impact caused the bridge to fall apart and they crashed into the ground. Five of them died when the concrete burst through their armored under layers, leaving six left for me to fight. Providentially, none of the prisoners were near the destruction. The other vampires corralled the prisoners together to assess the situation. Figuring I hadn’t made enough of an introduction, I stood up and shouted, “Ageg!”
The bow formed in my hands and I zeroed in on the vampire furthest away from me. Knowing my aim was true, I let the light-crafted arrow fly, hitting the vampire in its skull. I grimaced when I found it was still alive since I’d failed to penetrate its chitinous interior and cursed the fact that I had allowed my want for theatrics to supersede my duty.
Shaking my head, I jumped off the church’s roof and onto the ground. Ageg retracted into a smaller form of itself on my right arm. The vampires had noticed me by now and one of them was ordering the others to fire at me.
That’s odd, I thought, jumping from broken parts of the bridge to ascend to the top. The Horde doesn’t use weapons. Must be a bluff.
I jumped to the unbroken section of the bridge and was greeted by six vampires pointing semiautomatic rifles at me.
“Wrong floor,” I said, jumping off the bridge as they opened fire.
Idiot! I berated myself. Just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean it can’t happen now! “Must be a bluff.” Do you even listen to yourself sometimes?
I sensed one of the vampires aiming at my head, so I dodged to my right, as the bullet flew past me, the sound hurting my sensitive attuned ears. I wanted to shut it off, but I knew that if I did, I would lose part of my ability to detect their approach. I could make myself fast with my powers, but even I couldn’t outrun a bullet if I couldn’t detect it from a far enough range first. Making a telekinetic shield was out of the question. I had given up on practicing the technique some time ago. The kinetic force generated by objects colliding into the shield always caused my brain too much mental stress and I could end up rendering myself comatose if I kept getting hit.
“So screw defense,” I said, finding a tree to climb, as bullets impacted around me.
I focused on Ageg and it returned to its proper size. I fired off an arrow at the closest gun and caused it to fly out of its owner’s hands. Caught by surprise, he reached in the air for it, accidentally hitting his companion in the face, ca
using her to drop her gun. However, I had left myself open to attack. I raced toward them, hoping to confuse them, but they reacted quickly. A bullet entered my right shoulder and I fell to the ground in pain. Other bullets missed me thanks to my fall, but I knew I couldn’t stay down there for long. I forced myself to stand. My body screamed at me to stop, but I knew that doing so would be certain death. I held my hand in front of me and focused on an invocation.
“Mico excan!” I shouted out, blinding at them with a flash of pure white light.
My shoulder twinged with pain, but I moved forward. Bullet wounds were always serious matters, even though I was already healing it. If I waited too long or expended too much energy the wound could get infected and I might not be able to get back to safety to get Zea to heal me in time. Too many foolhardy Forum members had gotten themselves killed by thinking bullet wounds were glorified paper cuts and I had no intention to make myself another statistic, so I needed to end this quickly.
I jumped up, using my good arm to lift myself over the bridge’s railing, managing to discover that the flash bomb had prevented the vampires from aiming at me. All of them had dropped their weapons in the confusion. I surveyed them quickly, seeing a female vampire with an impeccable and odds-defying perm of all things heading toward me. Near her was a rat-faced vampire that was also shrugging off the blast.
I fired an arrow at her, but missed when she sensed its approach and dodged by diving to the ground. Rat-Face used the brief respite to lunge at me and I placed Ageg between us as a makeshift shield, preventing him from slashing my throat open. Perm managed to recover quickly from my attack to regain her footing and she immediately returned to the fight. I cringed, knowing I couldn’t possibly block her attack while Rat-Face was still holding on to Ageg. However, just as she went to lunge at me, something caused her to focus her attack to my right, smashing into Rat-Face as she disemboweled her companion viciously, never once acting like she was attacking an ally.
I watched in horror, wondering what could have caused that to happen, as I saw Nathan squatting behind a wagon wheel, his right hand touching his temple.
Mental manipulation? I asked myself. That’s far too advanced for a kid his age.
Perm never knew what hit her. Very few Sentinels or Psionics were skilled (or were allowed to be skilled) in mental manipulation, especially when it came to humans. But the Laws said nothing about doing it to our inhuman enemies. Suddenly Nathan’s gravity-defying rope made more sense to me as well as Perm’s decision to go crazy. More than likely Nathan had caused Perm to see an illusion by replacing my current position with Rat-Face’s, making him “me” in her eyes.
Using the brief respite, I fired an arrow at Perm, hitting her cleanly through her head, killing her instantly. I looked at Nathan and nodded in thanks, as the other Horde members appeared, having recovered from the flash bomb.
My vision faded for a moment. My bullet wound continued making my body burn with the fury of a thousand suns. I snapped out of my brief discomfort in time to avoid a vampire reaching for my leg. I pulled the leg up and kicked him into the pavement, using my other leg to jump backward to evade the others. Nathan was heading toward me, hopelessly thinking he could help me in a physical fight. I rushed to his side and picked him up, sprinting to the other prisoners. I deposited him next to the man holding the baby.
“Stay here,” I said, sprinting back to the fight.
I heard Nathan protesting behind me, but he made no move to join me again, this time restrained by the others. I sensed another presence scanning my mind, but it didn’t feel like Nathan, because it was nothing like Nathan-Prime’s mental probing. I looked at the Horde members racing toward me and deduced it was none of them.
I met the first vampire with a punch to the face, my hand burning in agony when I connected with its chitinous under layer. The second vampire knocked me over and tried to bite my left ear off. I elbowed him hard to get away. The third approached me, but something stopped him in his tracks as the others stopped as well. They looked over to the horizon and muttered something in some vaguely Asian tongue. Tired from the fight, I barely registered their sudden change in tactics.
A flash of black and purple light that pillared into the sky about two hundred yards away from us made my blood freeze and my limbs go numb.
I expanded my consciousness, trying to locate the source of the power, and as soon as my mind reached it, I could feel a black void penetrate my mind. I screamed out in pain as the vampires did as well, something causing us to be unable to fight back. But then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the void vanished, leaving behind my throbbing mind, which detected the presence of seven new figures near where the purple blast had come from. I shivered knowing what they were: members of the Sanguine Collective.
This is hopeless, I thought, forcing the closest vampire off of me, as I stood up, almost falling as my vision faded. What the hell was I thinking agreeing to this?
The Sanguine Collective vampires raced toward us, having detected me and threw themselves into a frenzy as they tried to reach me. I understood their newfound resolve. Sentinels were a tasty meal after all, and now that they had no doubt been informed of my true nature, I would have bet anything their masters had put a bounty on me.
I held my hands in front of myself, daring the Horde vampires to attack me before their supernatural cousins could join the fight. All while trying to figure out a way out of there. If it had just been the remaining Horde vampires, I could have won this fight. But fresh foes with a different power set turned this battle against me. I couldn’t win.
Then I can help, a voice said, remarkably different than Nathan-Prime’s.
I looked down at my hand, where the voice seemed to originate from and saw that the bony dragon ring was glowing with a purplish tint around it.
Use me, the voice said. Make up for what I have done to save yourself.
Who are you? I asked. How did you get on my finger?
Later. Fight now. Survive. Answers later.
I can’t trust something I don’t understand. You feel wrong.
You are right to fear. But now reason must conquer fear. Use me. Allow my power to help you. You cannot win this fight without me.
I stared down at the ring, feeling the power of the voice that had spoken, as I tried to reason against what it had said. When the first vampire reached me, I had already made my decision, and could feel a swirling vortex of blackness enter my body from my ring finger, and the vampire stopped in midair, his eyes full of confusion. Not knowing what I should do, but knowing the ring was enabling me to fight back, I waved my hand at the vampire. A wave of black lightning erupted from my fingers, and struck the vampire, making him explode.
Then the black energy reached for another vampire, grasping it with arms of dark electricity. The powerful black tendrils ratcheted around the vampire’s joints, slicing off its legs and arms. Power rushed through me. My vision returned and I saw everything with a heightened sense of awareness. At the same time, I saw black swirls undulating back and forth in my peripherals. My bullet wound didn’t hurt anymore, but it was replaced by a cold chill that coursed through my body. I shivered as I held my hand up to send a bolt of black energy into the next Horde vampire, causing it to howl in pain as its body ruptured in spasms of purplish light. His bones protruded as his skin receded inward, eventually exposing his innards as well.
I swayed back and forth. I heard Nathan shout at me to stop, but I couldn’t respond. A murky coldness rippled throughout my nerves, making me spasm. In my mind I had fallen into an icy void. I tried to fight back, but my mind was too focused on staying alive, so I continued to be a conduit for the ring’s powers.
The vampires, noticing my sudden change in attack, doubled back for a moment to gauge my strategy. I gripped my chest with my other hand, as I continued to spasm. Nathan approached me and touched the hand that the ring was on, and was knocked back by an explosive force.
I am sorry, the voice said. M
y powers are too much for you right now. Resist! Be better than I was and give it up for now!
Gathering my energy and focus, I reached for the ring and tried to pry it from my fingers, to no avail. Someone had bound it to my fingers.
At the same time, a surviving vampire forced me down to the ground, taking advantage of my inability to fight back.
Then, as he reached to claw my face off, I watched as a powerful gust of wind picked him up and sent him soaring into the sky until he was nothing but a blip in the distance. I craned my head backward, still trying to resist the ring as I noticed a man a little younger than myself standing beside Nathan. He stood a little higher than me, had dark gray eyes that seemed as unnatural as my red eye, and hair as black as obsidian. He wore a flowing cloak of rich crimson silk and had no discernable weapons on his person. He looked at me with a gaze that implied pity, but very little of it.
Pushing all of myself into resisting the ring, I gathered my thoughts and imagined that I was forcing it off of my hand. In my mind, I managed to rip it from my fingers, even though it remained on my physical body. I could feel the ring’s powers fade, my will finally sapping its ability to control me. However, I couldn’t bring myself to stand up. My muscles were unresponsive, as my mind grew hazy.
“Heard there was some fun to be had here,” the man said, as I could feel the smirk grow on his lips. “Figured I’d offer my assistance. Gaoithe tapa!”
