Empire of Blood [Box Set]

by Robert S. Wilson

  * * *

  Hank jumped up from the hard dusty ground, gasping for air and choking on his own tears. When he’d seen the Queen before, he’d been under her spell and now he needed to know more than anything just what it would take to keep this terrible thing from happening. As soon as he could breathe again, he ran as fast as he could out of the room and stepped clumsily over stalagmites and rocks until he found himself in the firelight of the main open cavern.

  Several vampires that Hank didn’t recognize crowded around the Queen as Hank made his way closer. There were humans in the cave too. They spoke of some coming attack from the Empire. But right now, Hank didn’t care at all about the Empire, he only wanted to stop the monstrous thing he now knew beyond a doubt he was going to do to his only son. Pushing his way through the crowd, the many eyes of the group started to turn to him including the Queen's. She looked at him without even a hint of curiosity. No doubt, she’d been expecting him. Their eyes locked and she spoke.

  “The time will come for your concerns later, my child. Right now we must—“

  Hank shoved the remaining few vampires out of his way and took one long step up close to her and before he could say the words screaming to come out of his mouth, arms of monstrous strength grabbed him from behind. Hank only responded by letting his muscles relax and gritting his teeth.

  “Now, as I was saying, young one. You will wait your turn to discuss the matter of your concerns with me privately. Right now more important issues are at hand. Ishan, you may release him, he will obey me or he will die—and your mother doesn’t need you to do her bidding without request.”

  The grip on Hank loosened and he stepped away from the crowd without looking at any of them. However, a faint whisper in a language Hank didn’t recognize slid into his right ear and sent chills throughout his body. Because whatever had been said in that ancient tongue was pure guttural hatred made speech.

  * * *

  After a couple of days and nights staying underneath The Blue Mermaid, the reality of just how close they were to the coming frontlines of war was hitting Toby like a brick wall as he lay in bed. It was the closest thing he could imagine to living in some kind of bunker. Even being as far underground as they were, the slightest provocation called for complete quiet and every single person that passed by from time to time seemed to be on alert if not completely on their last nerve as well.

  Dustin helped to keep him calm. He now had two stake guns armed and ready and was always trying to keep Toby in high spirits with his good humor. It wasn't easy to let go of the stress but Dustin could dislodge that hard sense of anxiety often enough to take the edge off. They had been given a small enclosed room with bunk beds much like the one they stayed at in the last Foederati facility.

  It wasn't the most comfortable situation but Toby kept himself focused on the anticipation of being with his father again. Jonathan had come by their room the night before to tell them about the meeting. Toby couldn't help but envy Jonathan for being able to go where his father was. But more and more with every conversation Toby listened in on between Dustin and Jonathan or any of the other Foederati, it was becoming obvious that they were just on the brink of battle, possibly full on war erupting right here in New Orleans. Maybe even the whole country. The Foederati were apparently standing by all over the country.

  Did they even have a chance against the "Avengers" and the Empire? Toby tried to imagine life without the Empire. He was surprised to find the thought jolted his stomach with fear. He'd never lived without the Empire. He couldn't help but fear what could possibly take its place. But in that fear there was some hope too. A dim hope, but one he could hold on to.

  Toby was tracing lines in the brick wall as he lay in bed when the first screams came. They weren't screams of pain or horror, but almost a warlike screeching. And in the next instant everything changed right before his eyes. One moment he was lying in bed lost in his own thoughts and the next Foederati were scattering around, warning everyone to take cover in their rooms and telling Dustin and Toby particularly not to come out for anything.

  Shortly after that, the screams of pain and slaughter brought Dustin to full attention. Toby recognized several of the voices to be some of the people he had met since arriving. Each one of them with their own life of hopes and dreams and now they were suffering and they were supposed to stay in this room and do nothing. It was more than he could bear.

  "Dustin, give me one of those stake guns. Can't we do something?" As if to further accent Toby's words, a deep bellowing sloshy scream erupted close to their door and a puddle of blood began to ooze into the room from underneath. Dustin grabbed Toby and stuffed him into the corner where he couldn't really see much. What he could see was Dustin waiting with both stake guns raised between Toby and the door with his back against the wall.

  The next second the door seemed to explode and the room filled with black flowing shapes. Dustin screamed and fired several stakes into the black mass of movement. At least one of them hit its mark and one form fell to the ground screeching in fury.

  Sharp claws snapped around Toby's ankle and pulled so hard he nearly felt his leg pull from its socket. His body started to slide away as Dustin turned around. Dustin shot off a single stake into the creature whose terrible grip was now excruciatingly getting tighter.

  Toby screamed and before Dustin could stop it, another black form, this one's yellow eyes visible beneath its dark cloth-like exterior, grabbed hold of one of Dustin's stake rifles and crushed it to pieces. Dustin turned to aim the other gun when the ground began to shake violently, breaking loose large chunks of brick from the walls and sending them in various crashes along the floor.

  The next instant the vampire was on Dustin. The man fell to the ground with a thud and the vampire followed, its teeth firmly pressed deep into the flesh of Dustin's neck. Toby ran up to the creature and kicked it as hard as he could but it only continued to suck at Dustin's neck, paying no notice to the boy's attempts to stop it.

  Just then a bloody and bruised Jonathan rushed into the room took one look at Toby, the heap of vampire and Dustin on the floor and then blasted a stake into the creature's back, sending it somersaulting over Dustin's motionless body.

  Toby dropped to Dustin's side. "Dustin, can you hear me? Dustin, please?"

  Jonathan was watching outside the door and kneeling just behind the wall, glancing back at the two of them from time to time. Toby, unsure how to check for a pulse, cupped his hand over Dustin's mouth and felt a slow steady warm breath. Toby nearly gasped with relief. "He's alive!"

  "Good. Maybe. Listen, kid, we may have to leave him behind. I don't think the two of us can lift him and he doesn't look like he's going to be getting up very soon. And my first priority is to make sure you live."

  "I will not leave him," Toby said glaring up at Jonathan.

  Jonathan sighed in response, and began looking over Dustin with calculating eyes. "Tell you what, kid. Help me roll him over and up into a sitting position and maybe we can get him conscious enough to get the hell out of here."

  Toby smiled as he moved into position to push Dustin over. The two of them shoved at Dustin's hip and shoulder. Eventually they managed to knock him on his side and from there he went to lying on his back with very little effort on Toby and Jonathan's part. The next moment he gasped and coughed up a big spurt of blood. Jonathan and Toby pushed at his back so he could sit up.

  After coughing up much more blood and black fluid, Dustin went to his hands and knees spitting long black and crimson lines of drool from his mouth and gasping in between. Jonathan turned to Toby.

  "Stay right here. I'll be back. I need to check the status out there real quick. If we're clear to go, we'll need to move quick. So try and help Dustin get up on his feet, okay?"

  Toby nodded. "Hurry."

  "I will."

  Then he was gone and Toby was pulling Dustin up with all the strength he had and some he didn't until Dustin was up and sitting on what was left of th
e bottom bunk of the bed. His skin was so white it contrasted starkly with the black hair of his beard and on his head. He looked like a man who had just came in from an ice water swim. And that's when Toby noticed the gash in his neck. The flesh was mangled from where the vampire's mouth had been pulled away from its target with great force due to the stake gun.

  If Dustin didn't get help soon, he would surely get an infection from hell, as far as Toby could tell. After several long gasps and a strange sort of belch, Dustin looked up at Toby with a vacant look in his eyes.

  "Dustin? You still with me, man?"

  Dustin simply stared back in response as if he didn't know what to say or how to say it. All the while it was mostly quiet outside of the room and Toby wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Nonetheless the lack of sudden movements gave him some relief from the stiff tension that was causing his every muscle to twitch. Just as quickly as he'd disappeared, Jonathan came rushing back into the room followed by a woman in a white T-shirt and tight jeans with auburn hair pulled up into a ponytail. Toby felt a rush of guilt as he found himself unexpectedly checking out her body as she kneeled in front of Dustin who sat, mouth gaping and confused.

  She shined a pen light in both of his eyes and tried speaking to him with the same result Toby had. Toby nearly laughed at the thought that if a beautiful woman couldn't get Dustin’s attention maybe this really was serious. But as funny as that was it was painfully and frighteningly true. But not as frightening as what happened next.

  The woman pulled out another tool Toby couldn't quite make out from a belt at her hip. Then with the flip of a switch and a deep swoosh, a directed blue flame shot out from the tip of the blowtorch and she began to burn the flesh of Dustin's neck wound and the sound and smell of it sent Toby vomiting in the corner of the room.

  In the middle of nearly choking on his own vomit, Toby couldn't unhear the squealing torturous screams that came from Dustin as they did whatever it was they were doing to his wound. Jonathan was trying to talk over the sounds Dustin was making.

  "It's okay, Dustin. We have to do this to keep infection from spreading. Please hold still. Jolie's almost done." The blowtorch went out and all that was left was the sad weeping moans of a child coming from Dustin as he pushed at the two adversaries trying to wrap something around his neck. Toby called out for him and Dustin became distracted just long enough for Jonathan to grab hold of him and let Jolie finish dressing the wound with a thick tan gauze.

  Watching Dustin in this condition sent a ripple of fear through Toby that nearly sent him to his knees. Dustin was a strong man, one Toby had looked up to as far back as he could remember. It's a staggering thing to see as a child when your role model is crushed down to their weakest parts and unable to fend for themselves. The cold splash of tears against his arm made Toby jump. He watched as Dustin slowly rocked back and forth, eyes scrunched shut and mouth bubbled up like a baby's first cry.

  Chapter 33

  Echoes of War

  Hank watched from the other side of the huge cavern as the vampires and the Foederati finished planning. He knew he should be paying attention, that he should be doing his part to help, but none of it mattered to him as long as Toby's life was in danger. From time to time, Ishan would send his red glaring eyes in Hank's direction. And it was all Hank could do to sustain that gaze. He didn't have the strength to anyway. And what did it matter if he did.

  When they were spreading out and saying their goodbyes, Hank waited patiently in the same spot he'd been watching them from. Many of the Foederati had given him solemn looks and one of them had even nodded at him. They knew him. At least they thought they did. Hank thought of the message he'd gotten loud and clear from them on the way to the airport. The old man.

  It took a while, but when they were finally gone, Hank made his way to the Queen's quarters. And when he was just outside of the entrance, he heard the familiar sounds of sex. He would have been surprised that his other senses hadn’t caught it first, but lately the more his eyes and ears had healed, the more that other vision had faded away. His sense of manners tried to hold him back, but his overwhelming worry for his child won out. Without a word or a knock he stepped into the room.

  Ishan and the Queen rolled on the ground, her legs straddling him and their faces wet with each other's blood. As they rolled and grunted, the Queen opened her eyes and looked straight at Hank with no sense of embarrassment or anger. In fact she gazed at him with an inviting passion. It was all Hank could do to hold back the animal within him to which she was calling.

  He thought of Toby and his resolve returned.

  "I need to know how to stop what's going to happen." His voice echoed off the cave walls and Ishan immediately stopped, finally noticing Hank was in the room. The next second his naked body was shooting at Hank in a pale screaming blur. But before Hank could even make a defensive stance, Ishan's body stopped in mid air as if it had hit a brick wall and he fell to the ground in a heap.

  "It is time you learned to share, my love. It is time you understood the significance of the Penitent's place among us."

  Ishan stood crouching, eyes burning holes into Hank.

  Hank didn't care about his significance, Ishan's grudge, or anything else that didn't help him save his son.

  "What can I do to save him?"

  "Young one, you should know by now that knowledge is the best weapon against the future. You've already saved my children in the desert, what makes you think you can do nothing to stop what you see now?"

  "Because what I see is me doing the killing. And I don't understand why."

  The Queen let out a long sigh. Ishan stood between them still, not quite as tense as he was before, but on alert still to some degree.

  "I can't give you all the answers, young one. But what I can tell you is that you will have the opportunity to save your son. Nothing in the future is set. Remember this and you will be victorious always."

  "But how do I stop—"

  "No more questions, child. The time will come for you to choose and you will make your own fate. Now... if you will not join us then you must leave us." Ishan glanced back at her then glared back at Hank. Hank had no intention of joining them. He returned Ishan's gaze with the most solemn expression he could manage given the situation but it seemed to do no good. So, with that, he turned and left the room.

  * * *

  The elevator below the Blue Mermaid came to a jarring halt. Marcus waited patiently for the rusty old doors to screech their way open. They parted to reveal a red sea of a whole new kind spread out all over the floors and the wall of this place. Bodies, partial and complete, lay disheveled in heaps scattered across the whole of the place. As soon as the air hit him, Marcus caught a familiar scent. It was the one he was looking for. But it wasn't. The blood he had tasted before wasn't completely human. This scent had the same flavor but was purely human. Whoever's blood it was, they were closely related to the bare-footed man.

  And the bare-footed man was closely related to... Marcus knew, he mustn't let his thoughts betray him. Bellona could read him here just as well as she could anywhere else. So he closed his thoughts as he continued to search the place for those who might still be alive and able to talk. Willingness wouldn't matter; he knew how to coerce well enough.

  He decided to let the strange scent lead him. It dragged him along the main hall until another hallway took hold and brought him to a small room that had been used as living quarters. Someone must have died in this room, though he knew it couldn't have been the one he was particularly interested in because that one's smell was faint. But the sheer amount of blood from one person that caked the floor and the walls couldn't have left them with enough to survive.

  Yet no body had been left behind.

  And at least one human being had escaped this room alive, more likely two. Marcus was even beginning to doubt his original summation and wonder if perhaps the man whose blood was nearly suffocating his senses hadn't made it out alive somehow as well. There wa
s no way to be entirely sure. He turned on his heel and left the room heading back toward the main hall. That was when he caught a whiff of overpowering fear and turned to see the Imperial soldier waiting to address him.

  "What is it?"

  "Sir, we've found a survivor. You said to let you know—"

  "I know what I have said, there's no need to repeat it to me, bring me to him at once."

  "It's not a he, sir. Her name is Megan Rustle. We believe she's the wife of one of the local leaders here."

  Marcus merely glared at the officer who took the cue instantly and began leading the way. They came to a small opening in a corner between the main hall and yet another hall that Marcus hadn't yet investigated. In the corner, lying like a pile of old clothes, a young woman with bleached blonde curly hair and gray roots was taking deep breaths over and over again as though she were breathing in pure gravel. Her legs were obviously broken and there was a large gash where her shoulder met her neck pooling with fresh blood.

  Marcus knelt down in front of her and examined her face. As he looked her over, her eyes began to wander over to his. She had a look of curiosity mixed with pleading.

  "Where is the place they call 'the hive'?"

  Her eyes went out of focus for a long moment then locked onto his again as her mouth formed a small yet attractively strong smile.

  Marcus laughed. "I see. Well, let's see just how quiet you are once I've started to persuade you." He reached down and grabbed ahold of her knee just above where the leg was obviously broken and pushed down slowly. Her voice started to rise from a moan to a scream the further he pressed. "Again—and mind you I can do this all night—where is the place they call 'the hive'?" He let go of her leg then and watched as she squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed, begging for the pain to stop in some monosylabic nonsense Marcus couldn't quite understand.