Blood Hunt

by Christopher Buecheler

  She wished that she could see Rhes and Sarah one last time, to apologize for the way she’d treated them, but that couldn’t happen. She would have to hope that they understood and didn’t hate her for it. When this was over, when she was a vampire again, then she would go to see them and make things right. Until then, it would be best if she remained focused on the European council and the things she might be able to say to them that would sway their decision.

  Thinking of this, and of her impending return to vampire life, Two stood at the door waiting for Naomi. When the vampire girl was ready, she led the way, and as had been the case for some weeks now, Two followed.

  Interlude

  “What is your name?”

  She hears the voice, but does not open her eyes. There is a hint of smoke in the air. Incense. It has been burned here within the past two days. This detail is unimportant, but she notices it anyway. She notices everything.

  If she had a name once, she no longer remembers it, and so she gives the answer that she knows the owner of the voice wishes to hear.

  “I have no name.”

  The air in the room is cool against her skin but not cold. She has knelt here in this room before, naked, eyes closed, for hours at a time in conditions of every type. Sometimes the ceiling is opened and rain pours in on her. Sometimes the vents at the base of the wall blow freezing air in around her. Sometimes the room is heated to such levels that the floor singes her knees and the small pads of her toes. She has endured all of this without complaint.

  “Why are you here?” the voice asks her, and this she remembers.

  “I am here to learn.”

  She doesn’t flinch when the needle enters her skin where her neck meets her shoulder, nor at the sudden burning as the liquid is injected. The sensation spreads out, becomes less acute, runs hot through her entire body. Colors swirl behind her eyelids. Her nipples grow tight and hard for a moment, the digits of her hands and feet going numb. There is a taste like heated copper at the back of her mouth. This is the only absolute during her daily visits to this room: the questions and the needle.

  This is not something she must endure. She knows this because she has been told, and slowly she is coming to understand. This is something she must accept. This is something she must embrace.

  “Who are your enemies?”

  She takes a breath, and the air flows cool inside her burning body. “The enemies of my master are my enemies.”

  Her heart is pounding now, her breathing ragged. The injection makes the edges of her mind fuzzy, makes it difficult to think but easier to sense. She feels a bead of sweat roll down her forehead, pausing at her eyebrow and falling to land on her thigh. It is difficult to concentrate on anything else, but still the voice persists.

  “Who is your master?”

  Her hands move as if on their own, fingers interlocking to form a symbol, the gesture already ingrained within her. It is the symbol of all that they are. She can no longer remember how to form words but knows she must answer. When she speaks, it is as if someone else is controlling her lips and tongue.

  “The Emperor of the Sun is my master,” she says. “The Emperor brings light to scour the world of darkness. The Emperor brings power to his children and death to his enemies. With the sword in his right hand, the Emperor cleaves through the darkness. With the staff in his left hand, he sweeps away those who stand before him. All those who would oppose him are vanquished. All those that give him their allegiance are rewarded. Those who do his work will bask forever in his light.”

  “Will you swear to serve your Emperor and do his work?”

  “I am his to command, always and forever. I am the right hand of the Emperor. I am the blade with which he will strike down his enemies.”

  “Name these enemies.”

  Even the drug is not enough to dull the ache in her soul, though she cannot remember the reason for this pain. It throbs within her like a decaying tooth, and she knows that only blood and death will satisfy it.

  “Vampires,” her mouth says, and she knows that it is the truth. “Those who walk by night and drink the blood of the Emperor’s children. Those who would destroy us all. Vampires are my Emperor’s enemies, and there can be no rest while any still live.”

  There is a pause, and when the voice comes again, it is pleased.

  “Good. Meditate on this.”

  “As you command.”

  She leans back on the balls of her feet and lets the drug take over at last, a red haze settling behind her eyelids. The red reminds her of blood, and blood reminds her of vengeance. Somewhere, in the furthest and dimmest recesses of her mind, there is a brief flash of memory. Blood on the floor … not red, but black in the early morning light. Her jaw tightens, and then the vision is gone.

  All that remains is her hate.

  Part III

  Chapter 15

  Disquieting News

  “They’re tired of waiting. If the council isn’t going to take action on this, then the Burilgi are going to take matters into their own hands.”

  Jakob rested his fingers against his brow. Vampires did not get headaches (or at least he never had), but it seemed to him that one was brewing nonetheless.

  He was tired. This came as something of a surprise to Jakob, who was quite capable of spending an entire evening in athletic competition without reaching the point of exhaustion. This fatigue was mental. Abraham had kept the council running during his many long years at its head, but Malik was proving incapable of doing the same. As a result, Jakob had become more and more involved in the past months, trying to help maintain order amidst an increasing swell of grudges, petty vendettas, and legitimate concerns.

  Naomi would have been better at it than he was. Much better, most likely, and though there were older members of the council, Jakob would gladly have supported her in an attempt to seize control. The problem was that Naomi had been out of the country for more than a year.

  Just now he was sitting with Malik in a private room at the back of the council’s cathedral, meeting with Lewis, one of the two Burilgi representatives. The bi-weekly council meeting was still two hours away, but Lewis had requested an early, private session.

  Now he was waiting for an answer to his ultimatum, and Jakob didn’t have one. Malik looked shocked by Lewis’s statement and, Jakob had to admit, more than a little frightened. Jakob pitied the man. Malik had spent all of his time on the council serving under Abraham, who had ruled with an iron fist. Many complaints could be made about Abraham’s time as leader, and Jakob had made more than a few of his own, but outbursts like Lewis’s never would have happened before; the young Burilgi would never even have considered it. Threatening Abraham in even the most minor of ways would have led only to a swift and inexorable death.

  “Lewis,” Jakob said. “I don’t know what it is you want me to tell you …”

  “You could start by telling me that you’re going to do something. Anything. My people are being abducted. There’s no point in denying it anymore.”

  Jakob, who had seen the reports himself, nodded.

  “This is the beginning of the war,” Lewis said. “Don’t ask me to sit here and debate with you while the Children are out there kidnapping vampires.”

  “You don’t know for sure that it’s the Children …”

  Lewis made an exasperated noise and rolled his eyes, but otherwise refused to respond to that. He sat, staring at Jakob, not speaking. At last, Jakob continued.

  “The latest reports are confused. We’re not sure what to make of them.”

  “Quit fucking playing dumb with me!” Lewis snarled. “I’m not an idiot. I know what you all think of me. You’re the nobles, I’m the commoner. That’s never going to change, so whatever, I’ll be a fucking commoner and tell things like they are instead of hiding behind formality and façade. That work for you, Jake?”

  “By all means,” Jakob said, trying and mostly succeeding to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Enlighten us.”
>
  “Something has mobilized the Children,” Lewis continued. “Some spark has lit a fire under their asses, and they’re rolling through Burilgi like a thresher in a field. Twenty-five missing so far, and twelve of those happened just in the last week. There was a series of coordinated strikes across three different time zones within fifteen minutes of each other. There was one witness …”

  “I had not heard about this,” Jakob said, tilting his head.

  “Why am I not surprised? I left the report with Malik. Maybe he can explain why he didn’t get around to telling you.”

  Malik coughed. “Yes, the witness … a little boy who should never have been turned in the first place.”

  “I’m not making excuses for his sire,” Lewis said. “I can’t control every Burilgi, particularly not neurotic pedophiles who insist on making slaves out of children. If it’s any consolation, the sire is one of the missing.”

  “I take no consolation in what may be happening to your people,” Malik said. “Just don’t ask me to take the ramblings of an abused child seriously.”

  “Malik,” Jakob said, his voice pitched low and respectful, “I would like to hear what Lewis has to say. Please let him continue.”

  Malik glanced at Jakob with disapproval, but nodded silently.

  “The kid was half-delirious when we found him,” Lewis said. “He’d been hiding behind the furnace in the basement for three days, starving but too scared to leave. He said that a group of at least five humans had broken into the house and used silver and garlic to round up the people who lived there. Said that one of them was a female, blonde hair, who ‘moved like a vampire’ as she rounded them up. That sound familiar to anyone?”

  There was silence now in the office as even Jakob found himself at a loss for words. The conclusion was obvious and, in a way, beautiful in both its simplicity and its irony.

  “Right,” Lewis continued. “I thought so. It’s the daughter. The one you pretended not to know anything about when the Eresh-Chen came through here last year. You guys left a dangerous weapon lying around, lost track of it, and now it’s being used against us. The Children have her, and they’re using her to murder my people.”

  “You have no proof of that,” Malik said, but his voice was wavering, and he refused to meet Lewis’s gaze.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, think about it!” Lewis shouted. “What else would they be doing with their prisoners? Storing them up to trade in for a better model of vampire? They are training for war!”

  “Lewis, are you sure of this?” Jakob asked.

  “Her parents are dead. She’s been missing for months. All the trackers you sent came up empty-handed. Now, all of a sudden, there’s some blonde chick, super-fast and super-strong, out there rounding up Burilgi. Put the fucking pieces together.”

  Jakob had already done so, had done it as soon as Lewis had recounted the child witness’s story, and come to the same conclusion. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t act without the permission of the council.

  “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

  “Wipe them out. Do it now, and do it completely. We’ve known about this cult for decades … maybe centuries. We’ve allowed them to persist because they didn’t seem to pose any real threat. Now they have a weapon, and she’s leading their troops. These are just preliminary strikes, to gauge our reaction and thin the herd a bit. They expect you to sit on your ass and do nothing, because who gives a shit about a few Burilgi?”

  “Unless someone on this council is a spy, and I doubt that very much, they have no idea how we might be reacting,” Malik said.

  “It doesn’t matter. All they know is what they can see, and so far I’m sure they’ve been thrilled. They took twelve people and we’re doing nothing. I can’t even get you guys to take me seriously.”

  “The council must debate,” Malik said. “This is how things are done.”

  “We should’ve called an emergency meeting last week,” Jakob muttered, half to himself. Malik glared at him.

  “Thank you,” Lewis said. “Finally.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Jakob said. “I support the council completely and will abide by whatever decision it makes. I may not agree with every conclusion, but I’ve lived for over four hundred years under our laws, and they’ve served me well.”

  “I understand that,” Lewis said. “But things have changed. This isn’t the old days.”

  “No doubt you’d prefer to have Abraham back?” Malik asked, his voice laced with disgust.

  “At least then something might get done around here,” Lewis shot back.

  “Gentlemen,” Jakob said, cutting off whatever retort Malik had been preparing. “Let’s not resort to sniping at each other. What is different from the ‘old days,’ Lewis?”

  “In the old days, for one thing, Richard would be here talking with me. You might have noticed that he’s not around.”

  “I must admit some curiosity in that matter,” Jakob said.

  “He’s with Aros.”

  Malik made a snarling noise and said, “I don’t ever want to hear that name spoken in this building again.”

  Lewis gave him an angry grin. “Yeah … ignore it and it’ll go away, right, Malik? It doesn’t work like that. You can’t hide the past by not talking about it. God knows you’ve been trying, but all that’s doing is allowing him to grow stronger every year.”

  “Aros has done nothing in direct violation of any major laws,” Jakob said. “He’s done nothing to challenge us, and Abraham seemed … surprisingly reticent to simply wipe him and his followers out.”

  Lewis shrugged. “Maybe they had an arrangement. It doesn’t matter. Do you know how many Burilgi have gone over to his side now? His people dwarf your numbers. I know we’re not as strong as the Ay’Araf, or even Ashayt, but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You don’t know what he’s doing.”

  Jakob leaned over the desk, looking carefully at Lewis. “What do you know?”

  “Not much. Not everything, anyway … he doesn’t share much with Richard and me. He knows that we’re still council members. The reason Richard’s with him right now is to try and calm him down, to keep him from using his army to attack the Children.”

  “You exaggerate,” Malik said. “I’m certain he has many Burilgi supporters, but really, Lewis … I would think a veteran of World War II would know not to throw around the term ‘army’ so lightly.”

  Lewis turned toward Malik, a grim smile on his face. “You’re right. I’m a military man, and I know my terms. He doesn’t have an army, not by human standards. What he has is something between a battalion and a brigade. Do you know what that means, Malik? It means that if he wants to, Aros can point more than a two thousand Burilgi at whatever enemy he chooses. If he decides to go after the Children, how exactly are you going to stop him?”

  Jakob felt his eyes widening, and tried to keep from looking too obviously shocked. “Two thousand?”

  “At an absolute minimum. How many of you are there, Jakob? If you combine all of the Ay’Araf, Ashayt, and Eresh in this country, what number do you get?”

  “Not two thousand,” Jakob replied.

  “No. There’s what … twenty Eresh, a hundred Ashayt, and maybe five hundred Ay’Araf?”

  Jakob, who thought those numbers might actually be optimistic, said nothing. Malik did the same.

  “Yeah,” Lewis said. “We know you can kill Burilgi, Jakob. I don’t blame you for that … those assholes had it coming. But that was three of them. Can you kill ten at a time? Twenty? What about Sasha?”

  “Are you threatening us?” Malik asked in a voice that was trying to sound unimpressed.

  “I’m explaining that you should feel threatened. If you don’t do something about the Children of the Sun, Aros is going to bring his army down on them. If you try to stop him, he’ll bring them down on you. For all I know, he’s planning on doing that anyway, at some point.”

  “Why did you not tell us of this sooner?” Malik
asked.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Lewis …” Jakob began, and the Burilgi vampire whirled on him.

  “I’m not a spy, Jakob, for either side! I’m not going to report to my ‘superiors’ every time Aros takes a piss, and I’m not going to sit here and be interrogated by you, or Malik, or anyone else about it.”

  Jakob held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Lewis, please stay calm.”

  “When the Children send Abraham’s daughter for Sasha, and Naomi, and Stephen, will you stay calm? When she takes them off somewhere to be murdered, will you just sit back and relax?”

  “I …” Jakob paused, unsure of how to respond, and found himself wishing not for the first time that Naomi would return from the errand that had taken her and Stephen to Europe.

  “You won’t be calm, but it’ll be too late. I’m asking again, and this is really the last time … if you value the status quo, then you need to do something. Richard and I can’t hold Aros back for much longer. Quite frankly, every time another Burilgi disappears, we’re that much less inclined to even try. I don’t care who you have to convince, just do it quickly. Get your shit together and do something about this. Please.”

  With that, he gave them each a curt nod, turned, and walked out of the office.

  * * *

  Jakob was pacing up and down the Cathedral’s central aisle, his feet making no sound on the heavy carpet of red and gold, pondering the meeting with Lewis and subsequent discussion with Malik. It was obvious that Malik did not really want the responsibility of sitting at the council’s head, but it was equally obvious that he had no intention of giving up the prestige that came with the position.

  The American council of vampires had grown arrogant and apathetic. They hated the Burilgi, for the most part, and Jakob suspected that most would secretly be pleased to hear about these abductions. The idea of raising a large group to go fight the Children of the Sun seemed improbable. The thought of obtaining enough support to take on Aros’s growing ranks directly seemed completely absurd. Jakob supposed he could rally some of the Ay’Araf to the cause, if for no other reason than the promise of a fight, but would it be enough?