Midnight Reign

by Chris Marie Green

  “Maybe that explains everything,” she said, backing away. “You’re one of those guys who gets off on my relation to Eva, right? Were you closing your eyes when you were kissing me? Did it shut out my less-attractive face?”

  “No, I—”

  Pressure built in her temples. “Was putting me in a dress like hers going to make it easier to get it up, Matt?”

  “Dawn—”

  “Why did you bring this thing out just when we were getting somewhere?”

  He heaved out a pent-up breath, gaze to the ground, shaking his head. He obviously had no other explanation.

  Disillusionment had never hit her so hard. Not even when she’d found out that Frank was a monster hunter. Matt’s betrayal was personal.

  “That’s your answer,” she said, backing the rest of the way toward his door. “Nothing. Because I’ve already explained it all, haven’t I? When you said you’d become interested in me before even meeting me, it was because of Eva. You, out of all people.”

  She wanted to throw up. This wasn’t happening. Just after she’d built up some hope….

  “I want you for you, Dawn. This”—face wracked with regret, he held up the dress—“was wrong. You’re so adventurous, so into games, I thought you’d laugh or…”

  He stopped there, but it didn’t matter. She was already out the door, the night surrounding her with its unknown enemies.

  Yet, when the scent of jasmine floated over her, almost like a calming embrace, Dawn knew that at least one Friend was around.

  TWELVE

  BELOW, ACT TWO

  ALMOST done,” Sorin said to the Guard bound to a steel table in its cell.

  They were in the bowels of the Underground, where the granite-hollowed dormitories of the Guards festered in deep, clinging cold. The lower-level vampires had already been fed with Groupie blood, which had either been voluntarily given or even left over from the meals of the Elite citizens.

  In the cell opposite Sorin, a Guard pressed against the iron bars, his pale, hideous face framed. “More…more food, Master, more, more…”

  The others took up this one’s chanting. “Food, food, food—”

  Over the patter of gnarled voices, one Guard yelled out in supplication. “Groupie blood!”

  Sorin did not even deign to glance up as he continued preparing the Guard on the table for duty. A new centurion, made for defense and perhaps, these days, offense.

  “Enough,” he said to the other shouting creatures.

  Not a one continued. It was the way of the Underground: Guards existed to obey. They were meant to be relatively weak-minded and weak-blooded, without power, save for what Sorin had bestowed upon them.

  Efficiently, he kept on with the task at hand, tightening one last leather strap around the thick torso of his newest acquisition. Then, before continuing, Sorin paused to assess his creation thus far.

  Bald, clawed, outfitted with iron teeth and black clothing to blend with the night. The new Guard still closed his eyes to this fresh world he would awaken to, as soon as Sorin performed one last trick of transformation.

  As with all the Guards, this one had disappeared through the crevices of life Above. He had been noticed nearly a month ago during spy work and brought to Sorin’s attention. This large-bodied specimen, a drunk with no family and no real friends, had been deemed strong and fit for Guard duty. Therefore, he had been quietly captured near the time of Robby Pennybaker’s security breach, just before the resulting Underground seclusion. Sorin had only recently been able to turn his attention to transforming this subject, bringing it into the ranks of Underground Guard duty. A duty that might, someday, include having to obey even the most suicidal of orders if it indeed came to war.

  Brushing a hand over his creation’s brow, Sorin thought what a waste that would be. It took great energy to bring every Guard to life, just as much as it had all those years ago when he had been a young man, cast out of his family home because of talents no one could explain. Talents such as controlling small animals, bending them to his will, shaping them into creatures who, at some point, became what Sorin wished them to be.

  But Benedikte, the Master, had appreciated his abilities. He had loved him for what others deemed wicked and unnatural. And, ultimately, Sorin had put his so-called witchery to good use. For defense of his true home.

  His hearing picked up the corridor footfalls of a Groupie—always light on their toes, they were. Soon, the exquisite creature appeared, holding a silver bowl sloshing with the blood she intended to donate for a Guard’s meal. A sacrifice was required of a Groupie nightly.

  Sorin paid her the honor of turning away from his new Guard. “Galatea.” He had given her fellow Groupies who manned the control panel instructions to allow her in without a fuss.

  She saluted him, bowing until her dark, wild hair rolled over one shoulder, blocking her face. Today she wore it in tight curls, beads shimmering through strategic locks. A sheer purple robe revealed a petite figure accessorized with merely a network of fine silver chains. One of them, Sorin could not help noticing, slipped through the cleft of her sex, no doubt rubbing her with each movement.

  His blood thrashed at the notion of slowly sliding it back and forth until she moaned. Her throat would hum as he bit into an engorged vein.

  She stood upright again, hair falling away from high cheekbones and slanted, silver-tinged eyes. A pang of parental loss—one of the only deep emotions he had ever felt as a vampire—stole over him. Long ago, he had taken two vampire daughters. Before they had left this Underground to return to the Old World and eventually go missing without another word, they, too, had produced preternatural children. Consequently, the Groupies of today were his own daughters’ progeny.

  Unfortunately, generation to generation, the blood weakened through exchange, leaving each succeeding child less powerful. Their talents paled in comparison to Sorin’s, leaving them exposed to elements such as religious symbols. Even their Awareness was a mere shadow—a feeling as opposed to words spoken mind to mind. It was nonexistent from a distance.

  This helplessness was the reason Groupies were the pets of the Underground: lovely, useful decorations who existed on blood and pleasure alone.

  “You’re working too hard, Master,” Galatea said with a sparkle in her eyes. “Don’t you have any time for play?”

  “Play.” He laughed. “It has been nothing but that for your kind since the lockdown.”

  “Maybe we haven’t done any spy work lately, but I hear that might change with the threat of that Jessica Reese murder.”

  “You hear too much. They say, ‘loose lips sink ships,’ yes?”

  That would also apply to what only he and the Master had heard tonight via spy work: Limpet and Associates’ recent efforts at cornering Milton Crockett, plus Lee Tomlinson’s family and lover, had proved futile, thank the day. It seemed that Limpet’s little psychic had not obtained valid readings from any of them. However, Sorin still knew trouble was ahead. As a realist, he fully expected it, taking the precaution of directing spies to keep watch over the growing list of Limpet interview subjects.

  “I will play after I am done here,” he said to Galatea while restraining a surge of ravenous need for her. Too much labor to complete. And perhaps the Master would be calling him to conference about further strategy.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be waiting.” Galatea grinned at him, so rash and young, a product of over three decades ago, when she had chosen to be turned.

  Behind her, the Guard who had started the most recent round of chanting for food began sniffing at the blood she carried. Its nostrils flared, its eyes blaring red.

  “Groupie blood,” it growled.

  Galatea assessed the creature, unafraid. Her kind had aided in giving birth to the Guards, lending their bite to the process. Thus, the Guards had powers equal to the Groupies, though the latter had the gift of free will whereas Sorin was the keeper of the lower vampires in every way.

  Sorin cocked an
eyebrow. “Galatea, please, splash the creature’s mouth with your blood.”

  Surprised, she nevertheless did so, flicking drops from her fingers onto the Guard’s lips.

  The low-ranked vampire feverishly licked every fleck of moisture, grunting. “More, more, more…”

  Sorin concentrated on its eyes. They flared with flame, excitement, the pupils expanding and blocking all color, the black center consuming the red. In that fathomless space, Sorin believed he could detect a foreign blankness…. A hole filled with something he could almost comprehend yet…could not.

  Something just beyond his reach. Something he might have even known in another lifetime?

  Before Sorin could grasp the meaning of what he was witnessing, the Guard’s eyes contracted to red again, returning to the color of eternity.

  “More, more, more,” the Guard said, shaking its cell bars.

  They had never shown this sort of fervor for blood until fairly recently; the Guards normally ate to survive. Had they become addicted? Or what if the Guards had developed a taste for Groupie sustenance in particular? Perhaps he needed to synthesize generic blood devoid of anything Groupie. The last scenario the Underground needed to endure was one in which the Guards craved the citizens.

  “More, more…”

  The others joined in, rattling their bars until the ground trembled. “More, more, more…”

  “Stop.” Sorin’s tone was harsh. A chill traced the edges of his body, and he resented the disturbance.

  One of the Guards down the hall did not heed the command. “Home,” he wailed, his voice as thin as a single wolf’s cry in the distance.

  Sorin would have to adjust these Guards, inspect them and repair their shortcomings. It was an ongoing process. Live and learn, as the Master might say.

  “Can they break out?” Galatea asked, inching away from the cell’s bars, clutching the bowl of blood to her chest.

  Sorin inspected her, thinking he was close to feeling the same discomfort. Close, yes, but the vampiric years had worn off most emotion like rough wind smoothing the edges off rock.

  “No,” he said. “They would not survive the attempt.”

  She sighed, knowing he was right. “Yes, Master, you’d terminate the Guards before they would even get to the main area.”

  True. Even though he wasn’t the real Master, Sorin alone controlled the Guards—they were subject to every whim of his sorcerer’s talents. Additionally, he maintained their strength at a Groupie’s level to ensure their inferiority—another precaution. Their strength was sufficient to kill a human, if need be, but not enough to overcome Sorin or the Master himself.

  Galatea set down the bowl of cold blood. “Master, may I…?”

  “Yes, you may leave.”

  She wasted no time in doing so, leaving a trail of slight fear behind. It wet Sorin’s mouth, whet his hunger.

  But then his gaze turned toward the Guard across the hall. The creature slunk back into the darkness of its home, its red eyes becoming the only pinpoints of light.

  Home, the one Guard had said.

  A terrible thought occurred to Sorin. The black of the Guard’s eyes, the mysterious and gaping space, the dull familiarity of it…

  Humanity? he thought.

  He mused over that. Yet…no. It could not be.

  For the Guards, humanity had died with the first bite. It was unthinkable to leave them with memories, imaginations, reasons to return Above. They were the only members of the Underground taken against their will because no one would ever know or care that these particular individuals were gone. Sorin had infused them with the same thing he had used on his cat and other small animals during human life: thoughts of what he wished them to be.

  He turned back to his new Guard. Due to the restlessness of the others, there would be no free wandering time for the group tonight. Usually, they were granted movement through the Underground tunnels, beneath the city, yet away from the vampire living area.

  No more, Sorin thought. Not until the Guards were retuned.

  He tested the straps on his new creation, again admiring his handiwork: years of study had allowed him to dally in physical manipulation as well as mental.

  “You’ll be a Dr. Frankenstein,” the Master had once told Sorin over fifty years ago, shortly after he had triumphed over his fears and given in to Sorin’s great wish to begin a second Underground.

  Sorin had smiled at that. “My powers are much stronger than they ever were in human form, so our Guards will be our saving grace, protecting our lesser vampires during the first minutes of an attack while alerting the more powerful to prepare. We will never be caught unawares again, Master.”

  Now, keeping his promise, he held out a hand, then flattened his palm over the new Guard’s face. He closed his eyes and performed the final step in creation: a mind wipe.

  It was unlike the one the Master had subjected Milton Crockett to. Where the humans generally lost all details related to personal vampiric activity, Guards traveled the opposite road: they would forfeit everything human, absorbing Sorin’s commands. In essence, they were “programmed” as the new age would say. Programmed to serve and to be vampire soldiers, willing to die for the higher ranks, brainwashed never to attack unless provoked.

  He traveled inward, investing the new Guard, initiating him. His whispered demands threaded together, tangling into patterns for the creature’s brain to follow.

  Ultimately, Sorin removed his touch and stepped back. “Awaken.”

  When the Guard opened his red eyes, the older vampire saw only complete surrender, mindless obedience.

  The perfect defender.

  The type of warrior Sorin wished he and the Master had possessed when their original Underground had been decimated over eighty years ago.

  THIRTEEN

  BERKLEY SQUARE, LONDON, 1923

  GONE, Benedikte thought, huddling against the wall of an upstairs bedroom. It is…gone.

  Night peered through the abandoned house’s filmy window, moonless and anesthetic. A rat’s footsteps scratched over the dusty wooden floor, reminding the vampire of how he had escaped, too.

  Alone now. He was alone and, somewhere below the foundation of this old building, his Underground was in ruins.

  Something like a scream welled up in Benedikte’s chest, but it couldn’t push its way out. The vampire couldn’t even move, couldn’t even function, because almost everything he had loved was gone now, scattered to ashes.

  Images played before his burning eyes, as if his memories were being filtered from a projector onto a screen. As if he were reliving one of the grainy black-and-white silent movies he studied and adored. Scenes of exuberant decadence, revealing how Benedikte had come to enjoy the world anew with Sorin, how he had taken resurrected pleasure from sharing a vampire’s wondrous abilities with another. Sequences, centuries’ worth, showing the fortunes they had charmed out of unsuspecting victims, blood kisses they had enchanted out of ladies in ball gowns and peasant clothing alike, crazed orgies of feeding and satiation.

  Then…ah. Then came London.

  More flickering pictures: tunnels and spaces they had discovered belowground, shafts that had been deserted by humans during construction for the Tube. The vampires had improved this rough matter into a palatial home, intent on obeying the recent command Benedikte had received from his own maker.

  Create a community, the ultimate master had beseeched from afar. Create and breed so I might rule a future kingdom.

  Even though Benedikte had never been raised or trained to do anything but follow commands, he had taken up responsibility and leadership. He had given birth to children, sisters and brothers to Sorin, who still had not loaned his bite to any living creature himself. Unable to forget how his human family had abandoned him, the younger vampire feared being left behind by anyone but his constant companion. For him, the pain of desertion wouldn’t go away.

  Benedikte, or the Master as he’d been called in his Underground, trembled.
At this point, his analysis of the attack had gone beyond shock and was becoming physical, taking him over. His vampire gaze rested on the opposite wall, where a crucifix loomed, as if to chase away the evil from this house, which was said to be haunted.

  At least, that’s what popular gossip maintained. And Benedikte had often used these sorts of rumors, newspapers, and patterns of human speech and interaction to educate himself about fashions and trends whenever he came Above. But his newly kindled interest hadn’t only become a personal pleasure—it had been vital to his home’s survival.

  As if challenging the crucifix to punish him, Benedikte stared at it.

  Nothing. Nothing at all anymore.

  No guilt at what he’d become. No cries for redemption from deep within his soul. It used to be that spiritual mementos affected him profoundly, but that had been long ago, before he realized faith was only an invisible cloak that warded off the fears of reality. Or maybe he had just seen too much in his debauched life to care anymore.

  But, oddly, he did care. Too much. Terribly.

  Out of desperation, he folded his hands in front of his chest, raising his head to the crucifix.

  Help me. Help me to get my paradise back?

  But the object merely rested in silver silence, clouding in his vision.

  In a fit of profane dejection, Benedikte pushed out with his mind, swiping the item from the wall. It clattered against the floor, the persecuted figure on the cross staring at the ceiling with resigned serenity.

  Benedikte contained himself, holding back an unexpected yell that could have shaken the ground. Where to turn now? Where to go after losing…?

  Clumsily, he reached inside his coat pocket, searching for the one item he always kept near—the only vial he’d managed to save while all the rest had perished in the attack.

  He grasped the slim tube, fumbling to get it open, to hold it to his lips and drink.

  Immediately, the rush of Sorin’s captive soul lit through Benedikte, coloring every vein, animating him. He felt the glorious wonder of appreciating a sunset on the wealthy estate where Sorin had grown up, felt the admiration from a small audience who had been wildly entertained by the talent of snatching fire from air….