“He’s right Isi,” Nanook said. “I can take Mortterra down all by myself, but I’d be happy to bring either one of these two with me, if you want. No need for anyone else, and certainly no need to create anyone else.
“You misunderstand me, gentlemen,” Isi said. “There already is someone else. There are now four of you in this world.”
Afon’s eyes widened, and Isi patted his hand reassuringly. Nanook and Jian were stunned into silence.
Jealousy got the best of Afon, and he was the first to speak. “I don’t understand Isi, you made another one of us? When? And how did you bring him along without us knowing?”
Afon’s assumption that the unknown Immortal was male was not sexism. Only men were allowed to be test subjects in Project Immortality. The risks of injecting a woman were too great and unknown and, with the human race on the brink of extinction, the lives of women were too valuable to risk.
“Unbelievable,” Isi said, “you don’t remember? I didn’t create another Immortal, you did, all of you. Does London, England ring a bell to anyone?”
Afon smiled, “Harland.”
“I almost forgot about the old chap,” Nanook said. “He gave me quite the welcome to England. I thought that we just drained him, though, Isi? What makes you think that he’s one of us now, instead of just a normal mortal man, with a bit less blood?”
“You were all so intent on not killing him, at the time, that I didn’t think I should tell you what happens to your prey if you don’t kill them,” Isi said. “Didn’t you ever wonder why we fed you from bags of donated blood, at Thule? It would’ve been just as easy to let you lightly snack on me, or any of my assistants in the lab. The nanobots inside of you are all programmed to reproduce, to keep themselves at an optimal level inside of their human host, so when one of them escapes into a new host, it replicates itself until its preprogrammed numbers are reached.”
“Making the new host just as immortal as all of us,” Nanook said. “But how do they escape into a new host?”
“When you feed, your canine teeth are acting like a syringe,” Isi said. “Just a microscopic bit of you needs to go into the person you are feeding on, just one single nanobot needs to make its way into the bloodstream of your victim, and another Immortal is born.”
“Dr. Nizienko, even if we are able to find Harland Fergusson in London, I highly doubt that he would be so welcoming to us now, as he once was,” Jian said. “As far as he is concerned, we are his attempted murderers; a group of foreigners who took advantage of his generosity, and then ruthlessly assaulted him at the first chance. No such man, with even an ounce of self-preservation in his blood, would agree to meet with us, much less to help us. We question the loyalty of people from our own time, but think that a man from the past, a man that we tried to kill, can be our willing ally? Dr. Nizienko, with all due respect, I must disagree.”
“That is your right, Jian,” Isi said, “though I am a bit taken aback by your sudden willingness to question my orders.”
“Dr. Nizienko, I am not questioning you, I …”
“I understand, Jian, but you disagree, and Afon disagrees with our main purpose here in Detroit, though he knows enough not to say so. Men will believe what they will believe, but may I remind you all that orders are orders.”
Isi paused. “But orders tend to be followed more successfully, when they are agreed with. So … Jian, you will stay here to protect me, in case another batch of Mortterra’s thugs show up. And Afon …” Isi squeezed his hand, “you will travel to London with Nanook, and search out our long lost friend, Harland Fergusson. You will convince him to journey back here with you; tell him as much as you need. Then, once he is here, we will all discuss together how to take out Ignis Mortterra.”
“You seem uncannily confident that Harland will agree to help us,” Afon said. “I agree with Jian, I think it is far more likely that he will try to kill us. He won’t succeed, of course, two-against-one, original generation against a knockoff clone, and all the rest, but whatever happens, our past victim coming to our rescue is quite low on the list of possibilities. So, what makes you so confident, Isi?”
“Imagine, all of you, if you were in your current immortal condition, and didn’t know how you had gotten that way, or the extent of your powers. Wouldn’t you want to know, desperately, what had happened to you … wouldn’t you want to know what you had become?”
Afon smiled, and put Isi’s hand to his lips, “So smart, my love.” He turned to Nanook and said, “Put on your Sunday best, tomorrow morning we’re London bound.”
Nanook chuckled, “Alright then, but when we see Harland, I’m leaving the explaining entirely up to you. No worries though, I’ll come to your rescue once he starts kicking your ass.”
Still laughing, Nanook stood up and tapped Jian on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s give the lovebirds some time alone.”
Nanook turned to Isi and Afon, curled on the couch together, and pointed at the corpses that still littered the parlor. “Don’t worry about the mess in here,” he said, “Jian and I will take care of it. You two should go and get some rest and … whatever … before Afon and I hit the road in the morning.”
Isi smiled. “Thank you, K’eyush.”
She took Afon’s hand and walked from the room with him.
As they headed up the stairs, Isi’s fingers began lightly moving over the tender skin on the palm of Afon’s hand. The rhythmic motion of her fingertips rekindled the cauldron of emotions that had been bubbling inside of him, since right before Mortterra’s thugs had shown up.
He wanted Isi, but he wanted her with a fierceness that was unknown to their relationship. He wanted to drive Henry Ford from her mind, he wanted to own Isi’s body and leave part of himself on every square inch of her, he wanted to mark his territory and claim what was his, before he left tomorrow … and left Isi to another man.
In truth, Afon had always wondered if he too was just a temporary installation in Isi’s life, a station stop on a longer journey that she must make all alone. For him, she was the end of all journeys, the answer to every question he had ever asked.
At the top of the stairs, he let go of all restraint and took Isi’s face in his hands. He held her, the tips of his fingers pressed into her cheekbones, and he tilted her head back forcefully. Then, ever so gently, he touched his lips to hers. He did not kiss her, he did not move. They stood, face-to-face, lips meeting with only the faintest whisper of a touch, and the electricity generated by their proximity began to take visible shape … a shimmering white light in the small space between them.
Isi tried to get closer, and pressed herself into Afon with a hungry urgency. He pulled away, and told her to open her eyes.
A light emanated from deep within Isi, poured out of her, and wrapped itself around Afon.
Isi blinked in shock, “What the …”
The light snapped back, recoiled inside of her, and disappeared.
“Don’t question it Isi,” Afon said.
She bent herself back into him, closed her eyes, and rubbed her lips down the side of his neck. One hand nimbly addressed the buttons of the shirt that stood in her way, then her mouth moved down to his collarbone, skimmed over the sharp softness, and took in the taste of him.
As she moved her hand down Afon’s smooth chest, Isi felt electricity sparking off of her fingertips. She cracked one eye open.
The light was pouring out of her again, evanescent; it bubbled with electricity and popped with static, every time something inside of her sprang open with desire.
She didn’t want to lose this exquisite feeling, this light, that disappeared when questioned, so Isi nuzzled her face deeper into Afon, breathed him in, and allowed the power of this moment to exist, unchallenged.
FIFTEEN
September 1888
London, England
The sun was blinding, bouncing off of the water of the Thames directly into Afon and Nanook’s eyes. It was a rare sunny day in London, though it was al
ready clouded by great plumes of smoke from the coal that was burned to power the city’s new electric grid.
Nanook’s gaze followed one of the enormous billows of black smoke on its journey skyward, and he watched as it momentarily obscured the sun.
“It has already begun.”
In every molecule of smoke, Nanook could see the future storms. Standing so close to the Thames, his mind could envision the waters rising, taking whole countries in their wake … killing families … his family … his country.
“We can’t stop this, it’s too late,” Nanook said.
Afon reached his arm up to wrap around Nanook’s shoulders.
“Brother, if we stop the gas-powered car, we’ll stop half of the destruction. This?” He gestured at the beginnings of what would come to be known as smog, on the London skyline, “This, nature can take care of on her own.”
Nanook shook his head and his jaw clenched, as he stared into the distance, and watched the beginning of the end of the world.
“Nanook, listen, if we succeed,” Afon said, “I’m not sure how this whole time continuum thing works, but you might be making it so that you’ll grow up in a world where horses have not gone extinct. Have you thought of that? You could ride them as a boy, and …” Afon trailed off when he realized the implications of what he had suggested. His friend’s whole family had died in the apocalypse of 2100. If the past was changed …
Nanook turned to Afon, “My god, they could live? Anaanaq … Ataataq … my mother … my father … they could live?”
Afon shut his eyes and took a deep breath, “Perhaps. We will ask Isi when we return to Detroit, but no false hope brother. Our road is a long one, and victory is far from sure. For now, let’s go and find our new soldier to enlist in the Earth’s cause, okay?”
Nanook nodded. “Where do you think we should start our search? Harland was certainly fond of his drink when we met, so a pub-crawl might be a good way to begin.”
Afon laughed, “And a drink might be a good idea for you as well, my man. Alright, I think the place that Harland took us to is just a few blocks from here.”
Afon and Nanook walked up the cobblestone street, looking every inch the picture of two proper English gentlemen.
A newspaper boy was hawking his wares on the corner of the street. “Only a farthing! Ripper strikes again! Read all about it! Bloody rampage continues! Jack the Ripper strikes again!”
Afon and Nanook exchanged a knowing, and horrified, look. Afon approached the boy, and handed him two farthings. Taking a pause in their search for Harland, they found the nearest pub and retreated with their copies of the paper, to a booth in the far corner of the room.
Afon’s face was planted one inch from the paper as he read, “The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing abdominal organ seemed overwhelming,” Afon said, reading out loud to Nanook. “If the object were robbery, the injuries to the viscera were meaningless, for death had previously resulted from the loss of blood at the neck.”
“It’s him,” Nanook said. “Except for the weird thing about a missing organ, that sounds exactly like a report of a body that one of us has fed on. The missing organ could just be Harland’s way of trying to cover his tracks … making it look like a wild animal attack.”
“Exactly, Nanook, it is him,” Afon said. “But he’s not quite one of us, and he’s not trying to cover his tracks. No one believes that wild animals are roaming the streets of London. The newspapers are quite clear that this is the murderous rampage of a man.”
“Then what is he up to?” Nanook said.
“He has no idea what he’s up to, why should we?” Afon said. “It’s quite obvious that our friend Harland has gone stark, raving mad.”
Nanook nodded, “Just like some of the other Immortals that Mortterra showed off as prime examples of why we should all be executed.”
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Afon said. “The few Immortals that were guilty of murder, were all ones that had supposedly escaped from Thule Airbase, and they were all newly injected. If they were deliberately denied blood, and if they were kept deliberately ignorant of the injections that they had received, then, just like our boy Harland, they would probably go completely insane. Murder would be their only way to get blood, and with no knowledge of their powers, no way to restrain themselves, the murders would be particularly gruesome.”
“You think that Mortterra set those men up?” Nanook said. “Why? He was tied to Project Immortality in the public eye. Why would he want it to fail?”
“Ignis Mortterra only agreed to support Project Immortality, in exchange for Isi developing the Infinmachine for him,” Afon said. “Every scientist in the AmEur Alliance was approached to build a time machine, and every single one of them claimed that it was impossible. They had all figured out the simple physics, but they also all knew that the amount of power necessary to bring a large number of people into the past, was unavailable. Any time machine that they built would serve such a small number of people, that it was clearly nothing more than a one-man getaway car for Mortterra. No scientist would touch the project, but Isi … Isi cut a deal. In exchange for building the Infinmachine for Mortterra, she secured funding for Project Immortality. As her work with the nanobots moved ahead successfully, her work with the Infinmachine encountered glitch after glitch, and delay after delay.”
“She was sabotaging it,” Nanook said.
“That she was, my brother,” Afon said. “And Mortterra could tell what she was up to. He couldn’t attack her directly, or he’d lose the chance to save his own life by fleeing the wreckage of this world and running away to the past, but he needed to keep Isi on a very short leash.”
Nanook made a noise of disgust, “So, every time she acted up, he executed one of us, right? Ninety-seven men …”
“Most of them innocent volunteers, sheep to the slaughter,” Afon said. “The few so-called murderers were set up by Mortterra, and used as an excuse to cull the rest of the herd.”
“I can’t wait to kill that fucking bastard,” Nanook said.
“You’ll get your chance soon enough,” Afon said. “Right now, we’ve got a mess of our own to clean up.”
“Yes, we must find Harland,” Nanook said. “Do you think we should go check out that other pub that he liked?”
“We can check there if you like, but I think, according to this,” Afon said, tapping the London Times article with his finger, “our best bet might be to walk around the Whitechapel area tonight, and see if we can’t run into him on his hunting grounds.”
“Ugh, I’d rather check the pub first, if it’s all the same to you. My stomach has had enough blood and gore for a lifetime, just in the past few days,” Nanook said.
“We can check, but he won’t be there,” Afon said. “He’s an animal now, he feeds at night.”
SIXTEEN
Afon and Nanook had been not so casually strolling the streets of the Whitechapel area of London, for the better part of an hour. They’d spent most of their time dodging the propositions of prostitutes – any one of whom could be Harland’s next victim. Jack the Ripper was making his name by attacking ladies of the night, and if Afon and Nanook waited long enough, they were sure he would appear.
It was close on two am, and the streets, so full an hour ago, had quickly become deserted. The only sounds were the barking of a dog, a few blocks over, and the occasional shuffle of drunken feet as they slouched home from the nearest pub.
The dog …
Nanook and Afon exchanged a look and, wordlessly, headed toward the loud, incessant barking. Up ahead, under a streetlamp, a dark, black, windowless carriage was parked. A single, high-pitched, human scream reached Afon and Nanook’s ears, before it was quickly silenced.
Coming closer, they saw Harland Fergusson crouched over the bloody body of a woman. His face was covered in blood, and fresh drops fell from the canine teeth in his open mouth.
“Harland!”
A pure animal grow
l came from Harland. The corners of his mouth pulled back, and the streetlamp illuminated his magnificent teeth, a display against the voice from the dark that he had heard as a threat.
“Harland! No! Drop it!” Nanook said. Falling back instinctively on the time in his youth that he had spent training dogs to hunt, Nanook’s voice held a commanding tone that Harland instantly responded to.
He stayed in a crouch over the body of the woman he had just killed, guarding his prey, but Harland looked up and met the eyes of the man calling to him from the darkened street.
“The Indian! Mr. K’eyush, if I remember correctly?” Harland said.
Afon stepped out of the shadows.
“Ah, and Count Solovyov as well,” Harland said. “And where is the Countess?”
He wiped the blood from his lips, stood, and attempted a normal human smile.
“No time for that, we’ll explain later,” Afon said. “Right now, we must get out of here, before the police arrive.”
“The constables and the Yard have been quite on their toes lately,” Harland said, with a smirk.
“Look, focus man,” Afon said. “Have your driver take us back to your house, and we’ll talk all of this over there.”
“There is no driver, just me, and I have been staying with a friend lately,” Harland said. “You know, I’ve not been able to hold down a job since I met you fellows. I’m awake all hours of the night, and I sleep away all of the day … and I get these strange feelings now, these cravings. Every time I feel that way, I discover myself doing something like this. Discover is the wrong word, actually, it’s not like I’m unconscious and sleepwalking into murder. I know very well what I’m doing, I just can’t stop myself.”
Immortal Earth (Vampires For Earth Book 1) Page 8
