The II AM Trilogy Collection

by Christopher Buecheler

  “Get your hands off of him!” Vanessa Harper screamed, striking out at the vague and blurred figure above her. She had no idea where she was or what she had been doing, no idea why she had cried these words out, and yet it seemed important she give voice to her concerns. She tried to lunge forward and felt strong hands holding her shoulders, keeping her down on the ground.

  “Ness, stop. It’s me,” a voice said, and for a moment more she had no idea what those noises meant. Then, slowly, her brain pieced them together into a coherent whole. It was the voice; she recognized it, and that helped her focus. It helped her think.

  “Carrie?” she asked, blinking, trying to will away the blurriness that was plaguing her vision. For the moment, it wasn’t working.

  “Yeah, it’s Carrie. Can you … God, what did they do to your face? Stop struggling. Lie back.”

  “I have to help him. She’s going to …”

  “Whoever you’re trying to help, you’re way too late. Ness, lie down!”

  Vanessa did as she was instructed. She brought her hands up to her eyes, wanting to rub them, but the flesh around them cried out against this action, sending bolts of pain racing through her body.

  “Jesus, don’t touch – Captain, you have to listen to me.”

  Carrie had adopted a military tone, and Vanessa found herself reacting to it. She took her hands away from her aching eyes and said, “Give me … I don’t know, give me a status report, Sergeant. What the fuck is going on?”

  “Well, you’re lying in a hallway with a bunch of dead people and you’ve got two black eyes. I’ll be amazed if you can see anything right now. Also, I’m pretty sure your nose is broken. I knew I’d find you here. I tried to get to you earlier, but there was so much fighting … I couldn’t get away until after they swarmed the Command Center. There’s not much time now.”

  “Not much time until what?”

  “Until the charges go off. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes. Ness … Captain, what happened?”

  Vanessa searched her mind, trying to remember. After a moment, she sat bolt upright, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in her head and the twist of nausea in her gut.

  “Shit, the Emperor! They’re going after the Emperor. We have to … oh, God …”

  “Are you OK?” Carrie asked.

  Vanessa didn’t have time to answer, shoving herself away from Carrie, twisting, holding herself up on the palms of her hands like a beached mermaid as she vomited on the cold, stone floor.

  “Guess not,” Carrie said when it was done, and Vanessa gave a shaky, coughing laugh.

  “I think I swallowed a lot of blood,” she said, turning away from the mess on the floor and rubbing the back of her arm across lips that felt parched and broken, split in a hundred places.

  “Uh … you think?” Carrie asked.

  “Probably a concussion, too. Second time I’ve been knocked out cold today.”

  “Who was it? Bats?”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said. She was beginning to feel better now. Cleansed. “Bats and Captain Perrault and my traitor brother, just headed in for a little chat with the Emperor.”

  “Captain Perrault?! God damn it … I knew we couldn’t trust her! We have to get in there.”

  “You going to take all four of them on yourself, Carrie?” Vanessa asked.

  “I was hoping you’d help,” Carrie said, and Vanessa gave her a grim smile.

  “You think I got this way from casual conversation?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “No, but we’re going in there anyway,” Vanessa said. “We don’t have a choice. I don’t think we have any chance of stopping Captain Perrault, but there’s nowhere else to go. Main exit’s cut off. Command Center’s cut off. The only way out is whatever exit the Emperor’s got.”

  “Do you think he’s in danger?” Carrie asked, and Vanessa shook her head.

  “Colonel Davis already came through. He said they were going to evacuate the Emperor.”

  Carrie nodded. “Good. You’re still in command, Captain. What’s the order?”

  Vanessa tried to think through her throbbing head. “Give me a minute. I need … I need a minute.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Carrie said, rolling back on her haunches and leaning against the wall.

  “I can’t believe they left me alive,” Vanessa muttered to herself. Her vision was slowly coming back now. Her eyes were adapting to the new field of vision her slit eyelids allowed them.

  “I hope they’re still in there,” Carrie said.

  “Why the hell would you hope that?” Vanessa asked her, and Carrie glanced up and smiled with her scarred lips.

  “Because I’ve got three incendiary grenades on my belt,” she said. “I’ve been saving them for the right time and I’m pretty sure this qualifies. I’m going to light those motherfuckers up.”

  Vanessa grabbed a nearby pillar and attempted to stand up. Her legs didn’t want to cooperate, but she dug down into herself and found within the core of steel that had always powered her through these situations. There had been times during her training – and not just the physical parts – where death by exhaustion had seemed a real possibility. She had felt like this, then, and she knew how to deal with it now. She knew how to think through it or, when the pain and sickness was too great even for that, how to act on instinct and let her body guide her through.

  “You want help, Ness?” Carrie asked, standing up as well.

  “No,” Vanessa growled. She gripped the pillar with both arms and forced her way up with her legs, and in a moment more she was standing, unsteady and not yet ready to let go of her support but on her feet nonetheless. She felt a private thrill of victory run through her, but reality soon pushed that feeling away.

  I’m in no shape for this, she thought, and knew that it was true. There was no choice; they could either flee through the Emperor’s chambers or die in the coming explosions.

  “You ready to move?” she asked her soldier.

  Carrie nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and she pulled open the doors to the Emperor’s inner chambers.

  Chapter 28

  The Emperor of the Sun

  “My name is Ngembe,” the Emperor told them. “I do not know if I am one of your kind, Two Majors, or merely something similar. You call me a vampire and yes, it is true, I drink the blood of others to live. But I am not like you and I never was.”

  He stood before them, this man who was not a man, wearing crimson robes gilded with golden thread. At his sides hung massive hands with long, tapered fingers, spindly like an old man’s but tipped each with a thick, curved nail that looked like an animal’s claw. Despite this, he did not appear threatening; if anything, he seemed pleased to have visitors.

  “Theroen,” Two murmured. “Help me sit up.”

  Her lover turned to her, took her hands, and pulled gently. Two winced at the pain in her side, still bad but now manageable, and struggled into a sitting position. Beside her, Tori was still kneeling, staring at the Emperor and slowly shaking her head. Two couldn’t see Thomas, but knew that he hadn’t moved since the Emperor had emerged into the light.

  Once she was no longer lying on her back, Two looked up at the Emperor and asked, “How long have you been whatever you are?”

  The Emperor focused his gaze on her and smiled again, and this time there could be no doubt about it: his jaw was lined with sharp spikes that only loosely resembled human teeth. Whatever else he might claim, there was little doubt about one thing: the man’s mouth had been designed for the express purpose of carving through skin and flesh.

  “I cannot recall how I came to be the way I am,” the Emperor told her. “I do not know whether I was born like this or made like this, and I cannot tell you how long I have walked this earth. My memories of my earliest days are lost like ships that sail into swirling mists, never to return. Did I have a mother? A father? A family? I cannot recall.”

  The Emperor tented his fingers for a moment, the heavy nails cl
icking against each other, and then continued.

  “What I can tell you is that when my memories start, this land was still pure, and free, and wild. I had lived two dozen lifetimes, at least, before the rise of the Olmec, the first of the great kingdoms of my land. When I brought about the downfall of those great people and first came to understand what I was, and the plague I held within me, the civilizations of those you call the Mayans and the Incans were still many centuries away. The coming of the murderer Pizarro and the first of your kind did not happen until I was ancient even by the standards of your people.”

  “This is impossible,” Tori said, her voice sick. She had made no effort to move and seemed unable to do anything more than stare at the Emperor.

  “No, it is perfect,” he told her. “What better way to escape the wrath of those who sought to exterminate my offspring and burn the vine all the way to its root? What better way than to become the very man that led them? I kept them alive when Pizarro and his people would have destroyed them. I led them through the jungles, through the swamps, through the deserts and the plains. I brought them here and rebuilt them, and now, after nearly five hundred years, my revenge at last is at hand.”

  “But why do they follow you?” Two asked. “The colonels, they must—”

  The Emperor’s laughter cut her off, starting as a chuckle but rumbling louder and louder, a broad, baritone laugh full of malice and glee. At last he spoke.

  “They see what I want them to see, as have all that have stood in my presence for many long centuries. I reveal my true self only to the one who sits at my left hand and does for me that work which I cannot do for myself.”

  “Charles,” Tori said. “Charles knew what you are … and that means Vanessa …”

  “Oh, how it pains her,” the Emperor said, and he grinned again. “Just as it pained Charles in his early days after he was named successor to Oscar. Eventually, though, she will make peace with it. They always do. She will convince herself that she will be the one to finally see through the grand scheme hatched by the very first of my Left Hands and passed on from one to the other for all these centuries.”

  “What scheme?” Two asked, and the Emperor raised his eyebrows.

  “The plan to murder me, of course. How else do you think they manage to live with themselves? The plan has always been the same … eliminate all the vampires of the world until, at last, I stand again on the steps of that palace where first I assumed my crown, in the city of Choquequirao, in the peaks of the Andes. At that time my Left Hand is to turn to me, and pull from his vestments a dagger of steel, and plunge it deep into my black heart.”

  He was looking off to the left, now, his eyes far away, a small smile on his wrinkled face, as if looking forward to this day.

  “So did Vanessa swear to Charles she would do,” he said. “So did Charles swear to Oscar, and Oscar to Alexander, and so on down the line. Maita – the man who bore witness as I murdered his Emperor and took that man’s place on the throne, and who swore to keep my secret and to serve me as long as he lived – was the first to formulate this plan, and ever since it has been passed down.”

  Theroen spoke for the first time since the Emperor had shown himself. “You do not seem particularly disturbed by this fact.”

  The Emperor glanced over at him. “I am not afraid of their betrayal. When the attempt is finally made, I will turn the dagger upon he who wields it, and those others that follow me and have never seen me for what I truly am will celebrate his death at my hands. Then at last after all these years will come the time I have planned, when I begin again to populate this world with my children.”

  He gave Two and Theroen a look that was almost pitying. “Your kind will be eliminated. We will strike you first from this land and then from all of the others. Wherever you try to hide, we will root you out and destroy you.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Two said, “but we’re doing a pretty good job of screwing up that plan.”

  The Emperor made a scoffing sound. “Do what you want here. It doesn’t matter. I shall survive, as I have survived for all these ages of man. The humans are insignificant cattle, easily replaced. I have what I need right in this room. See how she kneels before me? My Right Hand. My sword, with which I shall smite my enemies.”

  “I’m done with you,” Tori said. “I was done with you the minute I found out you killed my parents.”

  “I did no such thing,” the Emperor told her, and now it seemed that his entire body was giving off a faint, white glow. “How can you even suggest such a thing? How can you use these ugly, simplistic words? I did not ‘kill’ your parents … I ate them. I ate their very souls as they poured from their bodies in thick, red torrents. I consumed them and brought them into me, and through them I have tamed you and made you mine.”

  Tori rose to her feet, slow and unsteady, holding her hands out before her as if to shield herself from some immense light that shined down upon her. Even as she did so, even before she spoke, Two heard in her own mind the whispers. How long had they been there, eating at the very edges of her consciousness, insinuating themselves into her thoughts? She didn’t know, but she feared it was already too late to stop them. The whispers were becoming voices, and she thought that soon they would become much more.

  “Get out of my head,” Tori said, and her words came out slow and clumsy, as if her tongue had grown thick and cumbersome in her mouth. The Emperor grinned his savage grin, his mouth full of needles, but did nothing more to acknowledge her command. The voices, now a chorus, did not stop.

  Two could feel now the need to stand before this man who seemed to be slowly disappearing into a vast field of pulsing white light. She found herself climbing to her feet, unmindful of the pain in her abdomen, and was vaguely aware that Theroen and Thomas were doing the same.

  “I am the Emperor of the Sun,” the man before them said, and the force of his personality seemed to wash over them like a great tide. No longer was he a man, but now instead something like a god, the merest hint of a figure surrounded by an ocean of beautiful white light. “I am the Emperor of the Sun, and you shall do as I command, as have all who have ever come before me.”

  Two could feel tears burning hot tracks down her cheeks, could feel her nipples pressing hard against the fabric of her shirt, could feel her entire body trembling with anticipation at whatever might come next. That it might be her own death no longer seemed to matter; she knew only that it would be something glorious. It would be a thing of beauty that would change the world forever. In her head, the voices sang.

  That was when Theroen Anders, her lover and the last of the vampire Ovras, turned and stepped in front of her, passing through her field of vision and leaning not to her ear, but to Tori’s. Lost though she was in the aura of power that surrounded the Emperor, and deafened by the chorus of screams, Two was still able to hear as Theroen began to speak.

  “You are Tori Perrault, daughter of Mona and Frank, from Lima, Ohio. You were born human, made a vampire by Abraham Schorr, and saved from your curse by Two Majors. You were deceived by agents of the Emperor of the Sun and brought to him to be reshaped into a weapon, and a powerful weapon you have become, but you are still Tori Perrault. You are still you, and you do not belong to this man. He killed your parents, and you do not owe him anything.”

  “Get away from her!” the Emperor commanded, and his voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Theroen turned and looked at the white fire that blazed forth from the spot where once the man had stood, and he smiled a grim smile and turned back to Tori.

  “Listen to how he fears you,” Theroen said to her, and Tori took a ragged, gasping breath.

  “I can’t,” she said, her voice strained as if she struggled against a weight so great it threatened to crush her.

  “You can,” Theroen said. “The voices are only voices. The light is only light. For all his tricks, he is still only a vampire and you … you were made to kill vampires.”

  �
��Be silent!” the Emperor roared, but even in her semiswoon Two could hear fear in his voice, and within the light she saw his figure again as he took a step forward.

  Tori clenched her fists and closed her eyes, shaking, rocking on her feet. For a moment all things held still, and the chorus of voices rose to such a crescendo that it seemed Two’s head would split. Then Tori opened her eyes, and looked up into the blazing white star that had once been the Emperor of the Sun, and to Two’s amazement, she smiled.

  “I am Tori Perrault,” she said, and her voice grew stronger with each word. “I am only Tori Perrault, and nothing more, and you do not own me, and you never have. I will not be your thing anymore!”

  * * *

  There was a dead man at their feet, his rifle lying next to him, and another not far away. Vanessa recognized the latter as Manuel, the man who had driven her and Charles home from the airport after the attack on the cathedral. She took a step forward to inspect his body and instead found her attention entirely captured by the events on view deeper into the room.

  “I thought he’d be taller,” Carrie Brennan said, and Vanessa heard herself give an incredulous laugh. She felt unable to move, paralyzed by what little she could see through her swollen eyes.

  The Emperor of the Sun was standing before the four people who had so easily bested her team, and from her vantage point he was doing nothing particularly extraordinary, but the group seemed fascinated by him, standing open mouthed and staring as he finished his speech. Only the male vampire’s face registered anything less than rapt attention.

  “I am the Emperor of the Sun,” their leader said, “and you shall do as I command, as have all who have ever come before me.”

  “I thought they were evacuating him,” Carrie said.

  “Guess he sent them away,” Vanessa replied. She alone knew what the Emperor was, and the power over others that he could wield. If he had commanded the colonel to leave without him, then she had no doubt the colonel had obeyed.

  The male vampire was moving, passing quickly over to Captain Perrault and speaking near her ear, and when the Emperor roared for him to stop, Vanessa caught a flash of what it was that the other group was experiencing; the Emperor seemed to double in size and flare white, and his words came from all around and deep within her.