Rising From Ashes: Empire of Blood Book Three (A Dystopian Vampire Novel)

by Robert S. Wilson

  Chapter 54

  The Head of this Terrible Serpent

  Everything was explosion now. Light stretched out into more light and they weaved into each other in a dance that produced still more light. The colors were swirling together until they finally held still and Hank could see where he was standing. A city surrounded him.

  And even though he couldn't make out enough to recognize what city it was he knew that he had been here before.

  Green fire spread around Hank and rose up like a tall ocean wave ready to blast apart some lonely drifting ship lost at sea. But instead of washing him away in its destructive heat, it parted at the bottom and a small figure stepped out from the opening walking toward him unfettered by the burning, the melting, and still-moving blast spreading like a slow storm through the city.

  When Toby's eyes locked with Hank's, everything else fell away in shattering pieces until nothing was left but father and son.

  The light was like gold in this place. Everything was washed in its yellow glow.

  The boy looked up at Hank, his familiar eyes full of tears and longing.

  "Dad!” Toby smiled, tears sliding down his face. “I'm so sorry I left you behind."

  Hank's heart melted at the sight of his son unsullied by the evil the Emperor had filled him with. "You have nothing to be sorry about, Toby. I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you away."

  Toby ran forward, wrapping his arms around Hank.

  "I was all alone in there."

  "I know." Hank shook with the emotion of it all. He could feel Toby’s body in his arms. It was really there.

  "But it's okay now. I'm better now. I'm where I belong."

  Deep in Hank's mind, a voice told him it wasn't real. The whole thing was just synapses in his brain firing their final salute as his body crept through shock toward certain death. He pushed the voice back into the darkest recesses of his being and let the glow of the place envelop him in its glory. "It's so good to see you, Toby. To be here with you now. I don't ever want to leave."

  Toby pulled away slowly. "No..."

  Hank rose up to his feet and reached out for the boy, but Toby stepped further away. "No, you can't. It's just a dream."

  "If this is a dream, it's a dream worth dying for." He tried again to embrace his little boy but Toby turned away. "You have to go now. I wish you could stay, but you have to go now."

  “But Toby—"

  "No, Dad. Diana needs you now. Go."

  The words struck Hank like a hammer between the eyes. Whether he was a dream or a spirit or something Hank could never imagine or understand, the boy was right. He had to go.

  Just as soon as the realization soaked through him, Hank watched as everything around him began to crumble. Toby turned back and gazed into his eyes one last time before even he fell away in pieces into the great empty void.

  ***

  Hank's eyes fluttered open, irises alight in crimson. Toby's body lay on the floor, one arm still clutching Hank's leg. Restraints held firm to his left arm and both legs and the feeling of exposed bone from his forehead had gone away completely. He touched the place with his right hand. It wasn't a perfect healing but the skin had lumped over itself and managed to close its own wound.

  By now the Emperor could have sent an entire fleet of vampires after the monster's only other remaining descendent. Shame gripped and flooded through Hank. He hadn't known about her when he planted that seed into the Emperor's mind. He didn't know there really was any other way. Any other descendent. The visions had tricked even the Queen. And now his unborn daughter wasn't safe.

  Diana...

  The thought of the Emperor taking the only thing he had left ripped at Hank's soul and tore away any last sense of inhibitions or fear within him. He pulled and pulled and managed to bend his left arm cuff so that he could free his other hand. Then, both hands able to work together, he started on the two thick metal ankle restraints.

  As he pulled and pulled, his fingers slipped and two of them broke, but in return the right ankle cuff was loose now. Only a little more. He gripped the cuff again with his fingers, broken, in mid-healing, and all. He screamed out as the metal slowly but steadily gave way.

  When only the left leg restraint remained, he didn't bother to grab or tug it with his hands. He got up and with everything he had he ran. Both the metal and his ankle snapped at once, but he kept moving forward.

  In mid run, the ankle began to heal and he could feel it pressing against his nerves, tearing at his flesh and reconnecting tissues all at the same time. It would likely set completely wrong but he couldn't worry about that now. It was time to do what he had come here to do. It was time to cut off the head of this terrible serpent.

  ***

  The Emperor's scent led him running up stairwells, climbing the railings beside them in an effort to catch up to the monster even faster. Floor after floor after floor, the trail grew stronger. Then suddenly, it was gone.

  Hank dropped down to the previous floor, barely missing the opening between stairways and what looked like a nearly endless deadly fall. Catching his balance, he sought out where the trail resumed with his nose and senses. For a long moment he found nothing. He let his mind reach out for some place forward in time but no visions seemed to exist which he could latch onto.

  Feeling blindly in the dark, he spun around trying desperately to find some clue to where the Emperor went. More doors than space between them stretched out in both directions of the hallway. Panic was setting in and he knew he had to calm down if he were going to find the bastard.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The visions wouldn't come still but his other senses could reach out better this way. Sounds from all directions made themselves heard that before he wasn't able to notice. And just like that the thing he should have been looking for all along grabbed hold of him. The Emperor's scent was still there, he'd merely lost his sense of direction. He turned then and ran where the trail pulled him.

  The long silver corridor reached forward and curved off beyond Hank's powerful vision. The trail led on though, so he followed. He closed his eyes and let his sense of smell build a three-dimensional layout before him of where he was going.

  The mental image of it was like some inverted infrared map. Colors more than solid details, but more than enough to get him where he was going. So long as the trail continued.

  As he followed the curve of the corridor around, the scent grew more prominent to his left and then without warning, once more, disappeared, and this time, having expected it, he turned and immediately blasted his body into the door that marked its departure.

  The door crushed inward, but the thick steel of it kept Hank from breaking through. Curbing his dizziness, he sent himself backward for another attempt. He charged shoulder first into the crumpled metal door and managed to push it further inward.

  Still latched securely to the wall and still not breached anywhere else, he turned and threw his other shoulder into it. A deep grinding squeal whined from the latch and an opening bent inward six to seven inches. Hank reached his hand into the opening, feeling around for some way to open the door from the inside.

  ***

  An alarm sounded from the first chamber door, grabbing Joseph's complete attention. In the camera he saw Hank Evans fighting to get in the door. Fear and fury erupted through his entire body. "So, you truly mean to carry out your plans, do you?"

  He looked at the time sequence on his screen.

  22:57

  22:56

  22:55

  Grabbing the keyboard, he typed furiously, locking the control sequence with the system's highest security encryption. There would be no way to stop it. Turning, the Emperor ran to the far end of the room and opened a hidden panel in the wall.

  Dialing in the ten digit entry key, he hit enter and closed the panel and turned in time to walk through the hidden doorway. He was trapped here now. The only other way out was through the doors Hank Evans would soon bu
rst through.

  There were four of them in total, one of which Joseph's ungrateful descendent had already managed to gain entry through. The hidden door closed in front of Joseph, it's slick black interior reflecting his face before him. He had never seen those features so terrified.

  Hatred engulfed him then. Fear was for the weak. And he hadn't spent millennia after millennia watching, learning, and then dominating this world to be made afraid by some simple man with no real aspirations of power.

  Joseph let his anger replace any petty trace of worry. He would destroy the man just as he had destroyed so many before. And when it was over he would crush every man, woman, and child, every vampire, fledgling or ancient who got in his way. Bellona's face resolved in his mind's eye.

  He would crush them all in a glorious war worthy of his mother's name.

  Chapter 55

  The Bomb that Ended the War

  Fire and debris blasted up into the sky in random succession as Dustin and his men pulled up. The place was in the middle of a small industrial park on the east side of town. What was visible of the buildings was covered in graffiti from well before the Empire in faded blues, reds, and whites against what had once been gray concrete walls.

  The trucks rolled up to the edge of the property and came to a stop almost simultaneously. Dustin called over through the radio. "I want the vampires to go first. If there's anyone in here, they have a hell of a better chance of finding them than the rest of us do."

  He hung up the radio and waited. A few minutes later ten vampires slipped out of the various trucks and quickly disappeared into the darkness. Dustin waited, watching the building and its surroundings for any sign of life. Nothing stuck out for a long time. The fires raged on in the otherwise silent night.

  Dustin pulled out the radio again and clicked the talk button. "All right, they've been in there a good few minutes now and I'm not hearing anything. I want you all on alert and ready to go in there in a moment's notice. I don't have a very good feeling about this." Each group commander called back their confirmation and then the truck was quiet again.

  Something sparked in the fire and then a burst of flames erupted. Everything else stood still along with time as Dustin watched and waited for the inevitable. A piece of the nearest building's wall crumbled down some under the fire as a gust of sparks lifted into the sky.

  The vampires slammed into the hood of Dustin's truck before he could even process what was happening. The first one pinned the other down to the truck, trying to find a clear shot at the creature's throat, bright yellow and orange flames and black smoke rising up from its back.

  Dustin recognized the vampire pinned against the hood as Tommy Derringer. The kid-vampire was fighting with all he had to keep the taller, stronger bastard with short spiked black hair and gray eyes away from his throat, but it was all too obvious to Dustin, he was struggling in vain.

  The next second the creature ripped out Tommy's throat and its face dove into the blood-splattered remains. Dustin's hand had just grabbed the gear shift, but the damn things moved so fast, there wasn't anything he could have done.

  And just as quickly as Tommy's last stand, the whole place became one big explosion of shit hitting fan after fan after fan. Gunfire erupted from behind the trucks and in the next instance, Dustin and about two thirds of his men were out on the street returning fire and running for cover.

  Occasionally, another couple of vampires would come flying out of the fire, fighting to overpower each other. He and his men regrouped behind a handful of parked cars and waited for the enemy fire to break up. Dustin was glad he'd had the sense to bring some vampires with him. "Jenson, when it's clear, you take your men over to the other side of this fire and see what you can find."

  Jenson nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "Brothers, I want your boys to cover Jenson's men when they go." Brothers nodded. "Miller, you cover my boys at the same time while we head over to that building over there." He pointed at a building just beyond the enemy fire. "I want to give these fuckers a taste of their own medicine. You guys ready?" The men shouted yes in near unison. A moment later the gunfire slowed and Dustin looked at his men.

  "All right! Go!"

  ***

  When there were only a handful of remaining vampires not on fire or fleeing away, Jackie swooped down to the parking lot in front of the Luxor Hotel. She fought back the lump in her throat when she found Rosadelma's body and continued on. Where are you, Simon?

  The door was shattered, which she was sure was his handiwork, but that didn't mean he was still alive. She ran through, knocking loose glass out of the way with her shoulders as she came through. Inside, she almost doubled over at the site she found. She had been in this place once before, back when she and Karen got lost in the city just before her life turned upside down but the place had changed just a tad bit since then.

  What had been a big open casino filled with tables and stiff bodies under a reasonably high ceiling was now one huge expanse of open space going out and up as far as her eyes could see. And then there was the huge missile in the middle of it all.

  As she ran onward, she scanned the area for any sign of Simon but couldn't find anything at first glance. She let her body rise slowly to get a better view and within seconds she found him. Standing with a small gash out of the side of his left arm, in the center of a pile of vampire bodies, Simon smiled up at her and winked. Jackie sighed with relief to see that he was only slightly injured and then floated down to stand with him.

  "We're gonna have to get moving like now. I overheard one of these assholes talking on a radio about a launch timer going. Sounds like this thing's already been scheduled for delivery."

  Jackie nodded. The room was nearly spinning around her at the realization of what they were truly up against. "All right, let's go then. Any idea where though?"

  "My guess is the launch was started remotely, so we're probably going to have the best bet going to the missile itself and seeing what we're looking at. I know this isn't exactly something you were looking to hear, but I don't know a damn thing about this kind of equipment. I doubt the Emperor's made an easy way to turn it off. I don't think we're gonna be able to stop this thing."

  Jackie gave him a blank hopeless expression in reply and then the two of them went running for the silo.

  ***

  Driving the big metal box truck through the former city of sin was like riding in a derby race in the middle of the apocalypse. To say the ride was bumpy would be a huge understatement. Frank gripped the steering wheel as tightly as he could but it kept trying to slip to the right or the left whenever a new huge bump sent him nearly head first into the ceiling of the thing.

  But up ahead he could see exactly what he was looking for. Lit up like Christmas in hell, the Luxor might as well have been gift wrapped with a nice flashy red bow tied to the top of it. Now that he was almost there, Frank had no clue what to do next. Unable to come up with anything better, he did the first thing that came to mind and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. He was bound to get there a hell of a lot faster that way at least.

  The truck sped forward with the push of his foot and the Luxor pyramid grew over and swallowed him as the vehicle bounced up over a curb and through the small patch of grass before the main doorway.

  The mostly solid wall in front of Frank made him rethink his original plan and he shoved both feet down on the brake to try and prevent a full on collision. The tires screamed like sirens and the truck jutted upward as it skidded toward the hotel, slowing some, but not quite as much as Frank had hoped for.

  It crashed into the wall and the world came out from under Frank and rolled him around like a baker's pastry before coming to a dizzy halt. Frank lay there, hanging half from his seat belt but somehow unbroken for the time being.

  Though the world around him had stopped physically spinning, it hadn't stopped metaphorically spinning and it was taking him a lot to keep from vomiting all over himself. When he caught his breat
h he unlatched the seat belt and let his body fall into the seat, now morphed into more of a standing cushion upward from its original position.

  He slid down to his feet and tried to reach for the driver side door handle but it was behind the newly positioned seat. "Come on, I don't have time for this shit."

  He slammed into the seat with his shoulder to try and push it out of the way but it wouldn't budge. The frame beneath must have been bent, he decided as he turned to go for the passenger side door.

  ***

  Jackie and Simon stopped as soon as the crash obliterated all other sound around them in one quick burst. They turned to see an old brown delivery truck half in and half out of the entrance of the Luxor. Simon called out then, "Frank?"

  Jackie could barely make him out, but then she didn't have quite the powerful vision that Simon did. They ran toward the truck and immediately, Simon grabbed hold of the passenger side door and ripped it off its hinges nearly taking Frank with it. He stood there trying to balance where the door had just been.

  "Uh... hey."

  Jackie opened her mouth to speak but Frank interrupted her.

  "Nuh, uh, missy, you listen here. You don't have a right to tell me when and where I can and can't help. I wanted to be here to do what I could to stop this thing and you don't get to just lock me away to try and keep me safe." A tear was running down his face.

  Jackie stared at him, unable to speak.

  "Besides. If you hadn't left me there I could have told you..." He looked up at the missile then. “Nobody knows this thing like I do. I may have won the Imperial lottery, but you guys just won the proverbial fucking karma jackpot.”

  Jackie and Simon stared up at him, completely dumbfounded.