by Darcy Lennox
As soon as the bullet pierced his skin, the beast began to slow down and eventually it stopped. Its limbs gave way and its body sprawled out on the floor with its head by its side. Black blood oozed out from the cuts like a river on the run, I stepped back careful not to get my boots dirty, they were expensive leather after all.
Akilis, the hybrid and I stood up to look at it while the alarm rang, and the blue flashing lights highlighted the blood-stained walls of the room. I looked to Akilis who seemed just as distraught by what we had witnessed, and then he looked over at the hybrid who looked at the both of us in a hurricane of curiosity and terror. I knew what he was thinking and I agreed. She had to die, I could not risk letting the Daggertooths release her into the world – who knows what she was capable of. I pointed the handgun at her face, and she hissed aggressively.
One shot, two. She howled in a manner that was much too similar to the creeper and fell to the ground. Dead.
Chapter Nine
Akilis bashed the exit door of the laboratory to open which led us into a dark corridor and then into another door. Behind that door were two vampire guards who seemed confused by our sudden appearance and shocked by the ear-achingly loud alarm that followed us through. With no time to waste, Akilis shot one and I twisted the head off the other.
‘Over there!’ Akilis pointed to one of three doors. ‘I’ve seen it before!’
He booted the door off its hinges, Deathclaw hung on the wall behind several vampires who looked more prepared than their friends on the floor behind us did.
‘Let’s dance,’ Akilis hissed.
Using my strength, I jumped over them swiftly and grabbed Deathclaw from the wall before my feet hit the floor. I swung it in a circular motion in the air, the familiar weight of the sword felt good in my hand – it felt like home. There were seven of them and two of us, but Akilis and I knew they were no match. In what became a blur of bullets and the blinding shine of Deathclaw tearing through flesh, their bodies dropped to the ground like birds on an electrical fence. The stench of blood consumed the room and my throat burned with hunger.
‘Let’s go, now!’ I said as the sound of stampeding footsteps and charging came from behind us.
I pulled the door handle slowly… there was nobody beyond. Akilis and I stepped through and shut the door firmly behind us. The room, which was not really a room but more of a glass corridor, highlighted the few moments before the crack of dawn would erupt through the sky. I could see the radiant pink aura of sunlight about to burst through clouds.
‘Looks like we will not have time for that explosion after all,’ I said. ‘We need to get out now, or face the music behind us.’
‘How?!’ Akilis looked from left to right for an escape route, completely missing it before his eyes.
‘Here!’ I said and thrust Deathclaw through the glass which was followed by a kick so that the entire wall came down in a waterfall off shredded pieces.
There was thumping and banging on the door, no time to waste – we jumped through the glass and made a run across the long stretch of field. The sun was beginning to rise and I could smell the earliest hints of burning skin. There was a loud screech behind us, when I looked back I saw two panthers gaining in on us – if they caught up, I knew Akilis would be dead.
‘Go!’ I shouted. ‘I will find you!’
Knowing there was no other way, Akilis ran as the sun rays chased him into the surrounding forest. I came to an abrupt halt and as the panthers used the strength of their magnificent feet to jump from the ground and into the air elegantly, Deathclaw sliced their bodies in half before they had time to react. Without looking back, I followed Akilis’s scent into the forest until I saw him whimper into the soil. His back was slashed of ripped skin melted with older burnt skin and shredded clothes that caught fire in the sun. He was digging at the ground with hands, I ran to his side and dug my own claws faster until the hole was big enough for him.
‘Get in!’ I hissed and covered him up before the sun rays could seep through the gaps of the forest trees and burn him alive.
Once I was sure he was safe, I fell on my back and took a great deep breath of air as I recalled everything I had witnessed in the last four hours. It would be these four hours that would change the course of my life forever, I knew nothing could be the same ever again.
Getting up, I dusted myself off the dirt and made for a run – Akilis would find me soon enough.
Chapter Ten
The soil was warm, and I could feel it cool as the night set in. Although I did not necessarily need to sleep under the ground like vampires, I found it always sped up the healing process for my wounds. Now that I was fully awake, I did not want to rise from the ground and face what was to come.
A smile worked itself across my lips as I recalled a memory from a better time in my life. I imagined a pair of hands slide their way around my waist until I felt his chest smooth against my back. Softly, he pushed me towards the bed and began to caress my shoulder while gently biting the base of my neck. It was the 70s and we had just come back from a night of slaying. The air was humid, the night was young, and we were drunk off the sensation of hunting.
I swung my arm over the back of his neck and pulled his head closer to my own. He took this as confirmation and aggressively turned me over so that I was facing him, he picked me up by the thighs and slammed me into the bed so that his core gently rubbed against mine. I tightened my thighs around his torso and pushed him back so that I was on top. Locking my hands around both of his wrists, I felt the animal within him clawing to get out.
I let go of his wrists and gently, he trailed his fingers along my spine and tightened his grip around my upper thighs, it hurt but never one to give in I refused to make a sound. I tugged at his hair aggressively exposing his neck, my heart pumped in line with his vein. I hissed and stabbed my fangs into his neck like a wild animal and let the blood dribble into my mouth fruitfully. It tasted… beautiful, like syrup and vanilla, it drove my system into oblivion as greed tore at my heart strings.
‘Will this happen a lot?’ he winced. ‘The biting I mean – it’s painful.’
I laughed maliciously and continued to bite and lick until my mouth was overrun with blood.
‘Answer me!’ he hissed.
I licked the rest of the blood clean from his neck and towered over his body on my knees. He placed his hands on top of my thighs, clearly tired from losing blood. Fucking vampires. I smirked.
‘Dhamujk prefer to feed from vampires, human blood is no good to us and lycan blood does not taste as good,’ I said as I wiped my mouth of his sweet sugar. ‘Nymph’s blood is,’ I paused to think for a word that could best describe it. ‘Like whiskey, delicious to begin with but after the fourth glass – you will have wished that you had stopped at just three. Ahkulite blood is sour but Ilythian blood hits the spot just right, I think the air up their makes Ilythians cleaner.’
He suddenly dragged me down from under him and thrust his hips up so that our cores rubbed against each other. He was hungry for more; his eyes grew large with anticipation. ‘If you’re going to enjoy it,’ he clenched his jaw. ‘Then so am I.’
Akilis ripped my dress from my body, unable to control myself any longer I delved into my inner goddess euphoria. We spent that night thrusting, and tugging, and fucking like deranged dragonflies in a war of passion and need. But all wars must come to an end eventually, and once both of us had fuelled our bodies with enough energy we crashed so hard our bodies gave way instantly. Unable to keep my eyes open, I fell asleep with the soft scratches of Akilis’s fingers on my back.
But that was a long time ago. The smile on my lips dwindled. Kicking myself out from the memory I dug through the earth and found myself in the pitch black of the night.
The snapping of a twig caught my attention sending my senses into overdrive. I shot up from the ground and on high alert of everything around me. The wind nestled the trees in the distance, a bird tweaked somewhere above and then �
� snap! There it was again, a foot on the ground, to my left… the scent was familiar... he was getting closer – I could smell him – it was –
‘Shit!’ I winced as a large body hurled from the trees behind me and crunched my body to the ground.
‘Don’t move,’ the familiar voice said and locked my wrists behind my back while thrusting my face into the ground.
‘Akilis!’ I hissed as he twisted my wrist further into a dangerous loop. ‘Stop.’
‘Sorry,’ he said playfully and let me go. ‘It’s been a while since I…’
When I turned around, Akilis towered over me. The burn marks had gone, he was back to his usual chiselled self. Had it not been for his singed clothing, nobody would have been able to tell that he had nearly been burned alive hours earlier.
‘It’s a good thing your scent is distinctive, otherwise I would have struggled to find you.’
‘Why? Did you think I would run and leave you?’ I smirked.
Our eyes held each other’s for a moment, the words rang in my ears and we both knew that I had considered doing so, and yet here I still am. When he could not bear to keep the connection any longer he dropped his gaze first.
‘Thank you – for what you did back there, you saved my life,’ he said so quietly I had to strain to hear him.
‘Next time you come up with a plan, tell me first. Especially one that involves bombs and vampires.’
He looked at his feet like a lost deer in the woods, clearly embarrassed. ‘When I heard that you were alive… I did not want to just come back. After the way we left things, I wanted to show you that I could – that you – … damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were alive?’
‘It was for your own safety, you know what people think of...’
‘And you know I didn’t care!’ he spat but very quickly collected himself. ‘I’m sorry I – you’re right, it was dangerous – stupid even to think that we could make it work.’
Somehow, hearing it confirmed from him was worse than telling myself for years. I was not expecting it to affect me and yet, the simple fact that it did proved that perhaps I had cared for him a little more than that of a companion.
‘Things clearly look like they’re about to change drastically now – Zagan doesn’t want war, he wants a universal rebellion! That thing in there, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,’ he said.
‘The blood – my blood did that,’ I said while thinking back to how fast the crimson red had spread across its body.
‘But, there was something strange about the way it looked at you… did you see it?’
‘See what?’ I said curiously.
‘It looked like it was frightened to look at you – had no problem beating the shit out of me however.’
I tried to recall its eyes, so black and devilish, and then I wondered – why did it take so long to decide between me and Akilis? Was it frightened? Or distraught by the sudden decision it was forced to make… unless, it was trying to pick up on my scent? Whatever it was trying to do, I hope I would never have to see it again.
‘The important question is, what the hell do we do now?’ Akilis scratched the top of his head in thought like an innocent child, sometimes I forgot he was centuries younger than me – sometimes I forgot he was a vampire.
‘We have to warn The Needles – they will know what to do,’ I said.
‘Is that really such a clever idea? What will they think coming from a dhamujk and a vampire?’
‘They can think what they want – what we saw last night could bring phenomenal chaos to a world that has already endured enough. Can you imagine an army of those things? You saw how uncontrollable it was. Worse yet, the hybrid experiment was a success – they are probably mass injecting vampires as we speak! Think of the power they will have, you saw how quickly she turned and show strong she was.’
Fear was evident in his eyes, I could tell Akilis was weighing out the possible conclusions to this dark and twisted tale. It was inevitable that something terrible was going to happen, but how long did we have until this horror would spread? More importantly, how many more lives will be lost – were the millions dead from the last war not enough?
‘I have a friend,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Not really a friend – let’s call him an acquaintance… that I have known for a few years. When the Stallah Society were pushed out of London, many of them emigrated to New York… there was word of a secret rebellion, but it was never anything more than hushed whispers of fanatics that wanted to revive our kingdoms – stories from the mad and the desperate.’
‘What has this got to do with anything?’ I said failing to see the connection.
‘Every revolutionary idea begins as the hushed whispers of fanatics desperate for change. I don’t like people, Stallite or human I keep myself to myself in New York. But this kid, he’s bright and quick on his feet, thinks fast you know? I met him back in 39’ – must have been in his early twenties. I caught him rewiring a White Spider to shoot at several cars of members who were part of The Organisation. Nobody got hurt, but you may have heard it on the news a few years back when it happened. Anyway, I stopped him before he could disappear, he specialises in teleportation energy and I nearly broke my neck chasing him down because he was so fast. We became… business associates soon after that. We had a good thing going for a while, this kid was sharp both in strength and mind.
‘But he disappeared last year, up until a few months ago… out of pure coincidence, I saw him in Times Square – I don’t even remember where I was so shocked to see him there. So, naturally I followed him, I wanted to know where the hell this guy had gone and why. And that was when I saw it, old members of the Stallah Society in the lobby of a huge skyscraper in the dead of night. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had to blink to stay focused. But that simple blink – that millisecond of shutting my eyes and opening them again – he, as well as them, where all gone. But I knew he’d seen me, I’d spent enough time with him to pick up on certain characteristics, just like I have yours.
‘And I wasn’t wrong. The following night, I returned to our old workplace – a warehouse somewhere dark in the city – and he was waiting for me there, just as I predicted. He wanted to apologise for his absence, as he put it. But most importantly, he was warning me. The Daggertooth will not be around for long and he knew how much I loathed those motherfuckers. I knew he knew that I knew what he was talking about, he must have been their transporter or something – I don’t know, I didn’t care because the fact was, something big was about to happen. Around that same time, I heard rumours of the Reaper. So, I figured, hell, if shit is truly about to go down then I know where I’d rather be.
‘So, you infiltrated the Daggertooth clan, played along to their game – you wanted to know what they were up to and how it involved me, it was perfect. Why would vampires ever suspect another vampire?’ I said.
‘Except, I was being played the whole time,’ Akilis sighed.
‘Stick to what you’re good at, explosions,’ I smirked. ‘Speaking of, where did you put yours?’
‘Under Zagan’s desk,’ he took a small remote out of his jacket pocket. ‘I tried it when I woke up from the ground, they must have dismantled it.’
‘So, where does that leave us now?’
‘We need to warn them, what we saw yesterday is going to change the world forever if it is released and the Stallah Society is how we do it.’
‘And what makes you so sure they will do anything about it?’
‘Most of them are former Ilythians, it’s basically instilled in their blood to abide by the morale code of Good, Light, Righteousness – you know? All that shit most people have no time for.’
He had a point, Ilythians were notorious for their candour.
A hiss in the distance sent my senses on fire. I put a finger to my lip and stayed exactly still knowing that the smallest of movements would attract their attention. I slowed down my breathing to ease the pounding
of my heart – whatever this thing was, it would smell me before it heard me. The hiss sounded again, it was closer this time – it was moving, two – no four – at time… it was – a cat. Akilis, who had directed his gun at the small feline sighed in relief. I should have known it was just a cat – my senses were overriding with anxiety, both of us where too on edge. Clearly, last night had scared us more than we liked to admit.
‘It’s just a cat – a fucking cat,’ Akilis kicked the ground and the cat scurried away in fright.
‘We need to move.’
Within seconds, I was running through the forest with Akilis just behind. Vampires were fast, much faster than human beings and lycans but dhamujki were faster, in fact I had never known anything faster than myself in this world.
We came to a single traffic light in the middle of a cross road with no buildings, trees or cover in sight but the back end of the forest we had come from. The traffic light paused at the red.
‘Where are we?’ Akilis asked.
‘Surrey – if we keep up the pace, we should be in my flat in ten minutes and –’
‘Woah, we can’t go back there! They’ll have people waiting for you there.’
‘And,’ I continued. ‘I need my backpack – it has got everything I need in there.’
‘No,’ his voice lowered. ‘We cannot go back there, we have to move forward now. Didn’t you hear Zagan? He’s been watching you for months – even before I started watching you!’
He was right and the only way out, was onwards. ‘We need to leave the country then. If we cut through East London we can take the accelorway to New York in half the time.’
‘Yeah, I figured as much but – but there are other ways of getting to places quicker than the accelorway can take us.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, confused.
‘Follow me.’
Chapter Eleven
London Liverpool Street was spectacular in the evening, people whizzed past one another – some on their way home from work, others to the bar, vampires to the south, lycans to the north, bourgeois to the west and poverty to the east, or whatever else people chose to occupy their self-consumed evenings with.
