by C. Gockel
David had proposed an idea that he had dismissed before now, but having seen this operation he was beginning to wonder. David had suggested the entire thing was a campaign designed to get the media and public opinion on side. A preposterous idea at first glance, but if AML could manufacture uncontrolled vampires at will and release them en masse, the carnage and resulting panic could easily do most of their work for them. The federal government couldn’t possibly overlook something like that. It would deploy troops onto the streets, and that might begin the long feared purge. It would make the European purge of the 1940s look like a mere riot, rather than the decade long war it later became. There were many more non-humans living in the Republic today than there had been in all of Europe back then. They wouldn’t take being forced into extermination camps lying down. Not this time.
Paranoia. Stephen glanced uneasily at those seemingly innocent vampires sleeping the sleep of the righteous. There had to be another explanation. A safer, saner, explanation. An explanation that was still in AML’s interests, but one which would not result in the end of the world as he knew it.
He sneered at his own thoughts; since when had he become an optimist? He frowned and realised he’d become one the night he’d met Marie Stirling at the club. He hoped she was all right. It was all he could do right now. He would have prayed for her if he’d had any confidence that he would be heard, but praying would do him no good. He was vampire, one of the cursed undead and damned by all the gods and goddesses. Religious consensus was a rare thing, but the damning of his kind was universal amongst them.
Time dragged slowly by.
Andrew made use of the uncomfortable looking bed in his cage to rest. Stephen had encouraged him to sleep stressing the need to be ready when the time came. Andrew had been doubtful, but he had eventually agreed. There really was nothing else to do. While his only ally slept, he paced his cage thinking about Marie. AML were ruthless. They had never been shy about collateral damage and wouldn’t care that Marie was pure human. If they thought torturing her would gain them what they wanted, they wouldn’t hesitate.
He tried to contact Edward again, but nothing had changed. He tried Danyelle next, and then Charles. Nothing. He had exhausted his options already. Charles and Danyelle were his only children; they were the only Edmonton vampires he had a strong connection to. He had taken Lee and Elizabeth into his House only recently and hadn’t bothered to blood oath them. It had made sense at the time. He had wanted to be sure that they would fit in at the club first. Now he regretted the decision. Not that the oath would have helped him now. If he couldn’t reach his own servant, which was a very strong and intimate bond, he certainly wouldn’t be able to connect with strangers, oathed to his House or not. Danyelle and Charles had never given the gift to anyone, and didn’t plan to as far as he knew. He regretted that now, but he was no Alexander. He wouldn’t risk attracting OSI’s attention by empire building.
They dragged Michael down the stone steps and into the room around midnight. He was a pitiful sight. His eyes were blazing red with his hunger and madness. His fangs were out and he looked skeletally thin in clothes that hung off him looking two sizes too big for him. The guards dragged him snarling and raging toward his cage. Michael howled at the sight of it, struggling even harder to get free, but he didn’t have the strength. His captors were vampire, and they had a firm hold upon him. The other three guards were human and were well armed. They kept back, and watched everything warily. They obviously didn’t trust their vampire allies.
Stephen stared at the scene unable to believe any of his kind would lower themselves to work with AML. It disgusted him at the same time as it confused him. He couldn’t think of any reason for AML to ally themselves with non-humans; they would sooner die. That was something he would be more than happy to help them with given the chance.
Michael howled in despair when the guards threw him into a cage and locked the gate. He crashed into the bars over and over, not caring that they were electrified. He bounced around the cage, slamming into the bars as if unaware of them. In his madness, he probably didn’t even notice the pain.
“Better toss him a bone I guess,” vampire guard number one said.
The other guard grunted and unlocked the gate to the chatty human’s cage. The man was asleep, but woke quickly enough when the guard began dragging him out. He shouted and pleaded, kicked and struggled, but to no avail.
Andrew woke at the noise. “I’ll stake you all for this!” he shouted. “I swear to the Goddess, you’re all dead men!”
If only, Stephen thought. Given the chance, he would hold them down for him, but he doubted they would get the opportunity. The screaming human looked pleadingly at him, desperate for aid.
Stephen shrugged at him. There was nothing he could do.
The guards opened the gate, shoved Michael’s dinner inside and slammed it shut. He moved in a blur of speed. The screaming abruptly stopped with him latched upon the human’s throat. The struggling continued for a space, but it was over quickly. Michael was literally starving; he drained the man in less than two minutes, not wasting a drop. He came back to himself then, but it was too late. He began to cry. He dropped to his knees cradling the dead man and rocked him like a child.
The human guards laughed, shoving at each other like schoolboys. One of them held out a hand, and the other slapped a twenty into it. The vampire muscle did not laugh. They watched Michael in silence.
“Why are you doing this?” Stephen asked them. “How can you ally with them?” The guards ignored him. “You have no honour.”
That got a reaction, but not a constructive one. They glared at him in silence. When Michael stopped his carrying on, they opened the cage and dragged the body out for disposal. Michael didn’t try to escape; the humans had spread out to cover him with their weapons in case he tried, but he didn’t notice. He remained kneeling in the middle of the cage, rocking to some internal rhythm.
“Another one to plant,” one of the humans said in disgust, lifting the corpse onto his shoulder. “Maybe we should just drop him in an alley somewhere. I hate all this bloody digging.”
“You have your orders.”
“Taking orders from a damned vamp,” the human muttered as he started up the steps. “It ain’t right.”
The rest of the guards followed him up.
“Michael!” Stephen called when they were alone, but his old friend didn’t respond. “Michael!” he barked the word, louder and more demanding.
“Stephen?” Michael said looking vaguely around his cage. “Are you real?”
“It’s me. I’m real.”
“He got you too?”
Stephen frowned. “AML raided the house I was visiting.”
Michael climbed to his feet and approached the bars of his cage. He studied Andrew for a moment, and then dismissed him. “They’re working together,” he said finally.
“Who?” Andrew said.
“This is Andrew; he was captured with me, and there was a woman with us. A human. Marie is her name. Have you seen her?”
“No, I have not seen her,” Michael said and inclined his head politely to Andrew.
“Who is our enemy, Michael? I’ve seen things here that I do not understand. Newborns with no maker bonds, vampires working alongside AML thugs. Name him to me.”
“He calls himself Arcadian—”
Stephen inhaled sharply.
“No, Stephen, he isn’t old enough for it to be true. It’s an affectation, but I think he believes it. His people pretend, or maybe they believe it’s true.”
“What is happening? He’s forcing you to make new vampires. Why is AML helping him? It doesn’t make sense.”
“He’s insane, but it does make sense. An awful evil sense. He tried to recruit me, but when I said no he took my child.”
“John O’Neal.”
“How did you know?”
“AML raided your house, but we caught them there and killed them. I’m afraid they killed a l
ot of your guests. O’Neal is dead too.”
Michael nodded grimly. “They took John. I loved him well, but I would not submit to Arcadian’s madness, not even for him.”
Stephen winced. “Do we have to call him that?”
“I have no other name for him.”
“Can we get to the part where AML work for vampires?” Andrew interjected.
Michael nodded. “They think Arcadian is working for them. They’re funding his research, but they don’t realise his true aim. They think they will discover a cure for vampirism and a way to inoculate the human population. Basically, AML want a way to make us extinct.”
“Sounds like them,” Andrew said. “Is it possible?”
“I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter anyway because he isn’t researching a cure. He’s designing a weapon, an airborne virus that mimics the gift. He says the human monopoly on population is the reason we have no rights. His idea is to create an airborne plague to turn as many humans as possible all at once. Once we are no longer a minority in the world, governments will have no choice but to recognise us as equals. Besides, most of them will be vampire too by then.”
“That might actually work,” Stephen murmured in surprise and Andrew shot him a look. He shrugged. “It might.”
“No,” Michael disagreed. “It won’t. He says he wants equality but it’s a lie. The weapon will kill a third of all humans alive today, and turn a third while keeping the remaining third alive as cattle to feed the new population of vampires. It’s madness, and evil, but worse than that, it won’t work. I’ve seen the abominations he’s made with my polluted blood. They aren’t sane, and they have no bond to their maker with which to control them. Their maker is a virus in a petri dish.”
A world populated by insane vampires? “We need to stop this.”
“Stop it, hell,” Andrew said. “We need to kill this whack job and everyone involved. Imagine this thing falling into a terrorist’s hands.”
“I wouldn’t trust our own government with this,” Stephen agreed grimly. “No one must have this!”
Michael agreed, looking grim. “The researchers must die, and their work must be destroyed.”
“We have to get word of this to Gavin, but how?”
One of the shifters in a nearby cage had been listening to them. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of his cage watching. “There’s no escape. Only the dead leave this place.”
Andrew regarded the shifter with sudden speculation.
“Don’t even think about it!” the shifter snapped.
“He’s immune in any case,” Stephen said, guessing at Andrew’s sudden interest in the stranger.
“Yeah, what he said.” The shifter got to his feet and made a point of turning his back to them before sitting down again.
“Miss Stirling?” Andrew said. “Damn them, what did they do to her?”
“She’s been bitten,” Stephen said in a hard voice. “One of them has fed from her, hopefully nothing worse than that. She’ll recover if they didn’t take too much. Can you see the bite? Is it sealed?”
“I can’t see properly. Miss Stirling? Marie! Look this way... over here!”
“Andrew?” she said dreamily. “You’re here too?”
“You’re back in the basement with us. Can you remember what happened?”
She raised a hand to her sore neck. It felt as if she had the worse hickey in the history of hickeys. She winced as she explored it. “He bit me!”
“Who did?” Andrew and Stephen said together.
“Terry, that bastard!”
The anger cleared her thoughts and memory crashed over her. Oh Goddess, he’d raped her. She felt icky all over as she remembered responding to him. Oh Lady, she wanted a shower so bad right now. She would use bleach if it would rid her of this feeling. She was sticky down there, between her legs, and she felt bile rising. She forced it down. She would not be sick. She was stronger than this. Terry hadn’t been able to get it up, thank the Lady. He had used his mouth and hands on her. Terrible as that memory was now, she was thankful. Her humiliation could always be worse.
Magical manipulation used to rape was a capital offence. All she had to do was survive and accuse him, and Terry would die. Executed. No trial, just a stake, and a quick beheading after that. She took a careful breath turning the pleasant thought over in her mind. She had always thought the law a barbaric thing when applied to non-humans. Where was justice in execution without trial? But for Terry, it would be justice.
“Marie, please talk to us... don’t think about what he did,” Andrew begged, sounding desperate and close to tears. “You’ll be all right. Stephen says you won’t be addicted if he leaves you alone from now on.”
Addicted! She hadn’t thought of that, but she remembered clearly, too clearly, how good it had felt. It would be easy to crave that feeling again. The thrill seekers who frequented Stephen’s club had fallen into that trap. She wouldn’t allow herself to become one of them no matter how good it felt.
“I’m fine,” she said, forcing herself to believe it. Inside she was wailing like a little girl, but she wouldn’t let the men see her lose it. She had to be strong for them. “Arcadian—that’s the one in charge here—plans to let me go. He wants me to stop dad’s investigation into Wilson.”
“It’s too late for that,” Andrew said.
“I know, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“What went wrong? Why are you locked up again?”
“He told Terry to put me back down here while he meets with Newman.”
“The leader of AML, that Newman?”
She nodded.
“It must be important for him to come out of hiding and risk capture. I wonder if it’s about Wilson too.”
“Could be,” Marie agreed. “They’re both supporting Arcadian for some reason.”
She broke off as the subject of the conversation came down the steps. His friend, Cadmon, followed him looking grim faced. The others she’d met upstairs didn’t make an appearance and she was glad, but she couldn’t help wondering about them. She didn’t want to think about Terry, but she would prefer to know where he was, rather than worry about him showing up.
Everyone watched Arcadian warily, including Cadmon. Stephen was studying his enemy intently. Marie didn’t know enough about what he could and couldn’t do, but she would bet he had a way to evaluate his nemesis. Andrew looked worried, as did the other prisoners. Everyone was scared and watched warily as the vampires paused in the open space between the cages ringing the room. Arcadian surveyed each prisoner thoughtfully, perhaps judging how they would taste. Who knew? She certainly didn’t know what went on in a mad vampire’s head.
“Miss Stirling,” Arcadian said, acknowledging her. Cadmon switched the power off to her cage and opened its gate. “Please, step out if you will?”
She couldn’t stop trembling. She stood and left the cage.
“Where are you taking her?” Andrew said. “She can’t donate blood again so soon! Look at how pale she is, damn you!”
“Andrew don’t cause trouble. I’ll be all right,” she said shakily, with visions of what Terry had done to her flashing into her mind. Oh Lady, please be with me! Her prayer didn’t reduce her fears. She couldn’t go through that again. She couldn’t! “Don’t get yourself killed.”
“You should listen to her, young human,” Arcadian said coldly. “She probably just saved your life. Come my dear. We have things to discuss. There have been developments.”
“De-developments?” she stuttered. “Are you taking me home now? Can I go home now, pl-please?”
“Hush. We shall discuss it upstairs.”
Andrew spun away from the bars when the basement door closed and the locks clicked. He prowled his cage, his thoughts racing. She hadn’t said anything, but he knew. He knew what Terry had done. That sick fuck had raped her! He just knew. She said he’d bitten her, and that was true, but there was more. He knew there was. He’d known her for years,
since she was a kid, and he knew when she was holding back. The look in her eyes had been... desolate? Yes, desolate and sickened. He had seen it clearly.
Marie was still a young woman, but she wasn’t an innocent. She’d had sexual encounters with boyfriends over the years. He knew about all of them. She would never reveal something like that of course, but her father had been very protective. Overly protective in fact. He’d been ordered to investigate every one of her boyfriends and partners over the years and take steps where necessary. Her last boyfriend had needed such steps as it turned out. The fool had been what Marie’s father would have called a player or gold digger. What he really had been was a foolish boy, trying his luck at entering a world of privilege by manipulating a vulnerable girl’s affections.
Well I fixed him. Problem solved never to return.
He couldn’t fix the current problem so easily. Threats and money were out. He had no resources. The crack team he’d built for the Stirlings over the years was gone. His entire team was dead and no one knew where he was being held. He had no doubt that the police were investigating, but they would be looking at the usual suspects like AML. The Anti-Monster League was involved, but not in a way that could possibly lead to rescue. This place, wherever it was, belonged to Arcadian—a vampire. Nothing could be more opposite to an AML member than a powerful vampire. There was no possibility that the police would be looking at the monster community for a suspect.
He spun back and stalked across his cage. Stephen was sitting on his bed hugging himself. Andrew stopped to study him. The vamp didn’t look good. His cheeks were sunken and his hair had lost its shine. Stephen looked worse every time he stopped to look. Whatever it was that animated vampires was retreating from the surface, like a human body at risk of hypothermia sacrificing its fingers and toes to keep its internal organs warm, Stephen’s body was abandoning superficial things like his appearance. His dwindling reserves were focusing now on survival. He was starting to look like the corpse he was.
He didn’t know much about the reasons why vampires were different from other kinds of undead. Oh, he knew generalities; things that might impact his job like their strengths and weaknesses, but he didn’t know why zombies were mindless for example, or why ghouls had animal like cunning and intelligence. Of all the undead, why were vampires the most like real people? The evidence before his eyes gave credence to the common belief that vampires were just corpses animated by magic. He didn’t doubt it seeing Stephen’s deteriorating condition. He hadn’t seriously thought about it before, but then he’d never associated with one before this.
