Empire of Blood [Box Set]

by Robert S. Wilson

  Simon looked in his eyes. "See? Isn't that better? Just tell me where else it hurts and I'll—"

  "M-m-my wrist, my left wrist!" It hurt so bad to breathe.

  Simon laid his hand over Jonny's wrist and in a similar glowing magical moment, his arm was like new, bending and stretching and turning.

  "Is there anywhere else?"

  Jonny nodded and pointed to his ribs. When Simon pulled his hand away and Jonny's ribs were healed, Jonny sat up immediately to try and get some better understanding of where he was. He certainly wasn't in a building of any kind. Between the ground beneath him and the tan rock and dust and debris that made up everything around him, he could tell. Behind Simon another figure stood facing away from them. Jonny leaned forward to get up and Simon put his hand on Jonny's shoulder to stop him. There was an unexpected amount of strength in that grip. He knew he shouldn't be surprised. After all, the man wasn't human.

  "Why..."

  Before Simon could answer the inky shapes above began to shudder and thousands of small pairs of glowing red irises lit the darkness with an odd blood-like glow. Vampires! Jonny had never seen a natural vampire before. But it didn't take a degree in biology to know what he was looking at now. "Is this... is this a..."

  "Hive?" Simon was grinning. "Well, you're smarter than I would have figured..."

  Jonny was hyperventilating now. "Why did you...? Won't they come down and..."

  Simon got down on one knee. "Ah, ah, ah, easy. Just get some rest. As long as you stay put and don't get yourself into trouble, they'll stay up there. I wish I could make that sound less scary, but it is what it is. You didn't end up here on account of good behavior." Simon stood there looking at him for one last moment and then moved like a blur and was gone. It was then that Jonny noticed that the glowing eyes had returned to their original closed position leaving the place in that grainy darkness. The man still standing there seemed as still as a statue but was now barely visible. Jonny sat there for a long moment watching the phantom lightshow taking over his vision as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He lay down and closed his eyes, trying not to think about the thousands of blood sucking creatures hanging just hundreds of feet above him from—what?—a cave ceiling? Probably. He thought about Julie and suddenly wanted the creatures to rain down on him in a one course feast of Jonny Cross. He sucked in a breath near to weeping when the voice came.

  "Mr. Cross, please compose yourself. You're not dead yet. And neither is your sister. I was worried too, but it seems you've gone and gotten yourself at the heart of our little problem here. For now, rest, Mr. Cross, and I'll give you instructions soon."

  Jonny's sob caught in his throat. Relief filled his being to know that Julie was okay but it was a burdened bitter relief that comes with knowing the thing you want so badly comes with great consequence. He took a deep breath and rolled onto his side and let the growing dreariness take him into sleep.

  ***

  Hank woke gasping at the thick warm air. The pressure of his chest trying to rise and his lungs taking in the weight of it was like dragging a corpse uphill. Nothing but darkness surrounded him for the longest time until finally his eyes adjusted to reveal the dark tan cave walls of the Hive. Even still beyond the darkness and the crumbling caverns and stalactites, Toby's face hung brightly before Hank everywhere he turned his head. The frozen cascade of the boy's tears stretched down along his face and called out to Hank and mocked him—mocked that he would never ever feel them or wipe them away. The vision glistened then with his own tears falling and splashing down on his arms and legs. Hank curled back into himself and lay there sobbing for some time, longing for the vision to be real, but knowing there was no possible way it could be.

  And through the tears it all fell back into place, the things he'd seen before the vision had so unexpectedly arrived like a crashing rhino through a suburban living room. And with it came the diminishing countdown.

  186:36:48:22

  186:36:48:21

  186:36:48:20

  186:36:48:19

  186:36:48:20

  Shit! Already, he had lost thirteen and a half hours since the timer started. A sharp pressure took hold of his heart as he imagined himself dying without having found the Emperor. Resolve spread through every cell of his body and he stood up and stretched toward the ceiling of the cave. He couldn't let that happen—he wouldn't. He thought of the genetic sequence winding its way through his blood stream and wondered then how he would go about getting the same deadly venom into Joseph Caesar's veins. However he did it, it would have to be irreversible. If somehow that terrible creature found a way to protect or save himself, there would be no hope. It was a long shot at best, but Hank tried to reassure himself that, if Roger had set this plan in motion, he had to have foreseen it succeeding.

  Hank sighed long and heavy, his body shaking with the weight of it. Somehow, he found no comfort in whatever Roger Tresney might have foreseen. Because no matter what happened, one thing was certain from now on. Hank was going to die. There was no arguing or hoping or wishing it away. Those numbers kept on depleting right there in front of him and when they ran out, there was nothing that could be done.

  Chapter 18

  Demons Circling

  The thick musty stench of death floated just below Alexandria's nostrils as she sat there on her knees in the back yard of the home she'd grown up in. Dry dirt caked her arms up to her elbows and loose strands of hair hung down in tandem from a large tangled bun at the top of her head. Her eyes were red from having cried for two days straight. But now they were nearly as dry as the dirt on her arms. Before her, beneath piles of sticks and branches, lay her father's body in the shallow grave she had dug out with her own bare hands.

  Somewhere in the abyss of the house, a shovel hid and eluded her, but as time had ticked away, it soon became obvious she wasn't in any state of mind to be able to find it and Dad's body wasn't going to get up and take care of itself. Just the thought of that had torn through her like a jackhammer, but nothing could change that now. There was no one on her side and nowhere she could run. No adult to take care of the hard things that adults had always taken care of in her life. Now she was the adult and the world had landed on her back in the blink of an eye and the blast of a rifle.

  The walls she had glued together in her own emotional well were threatening to crack again and she snapped out of the long trance she had fallen into. She would have to cover him over now. Her hands slid at her sides in fresh dirt, accumulating the stuff in her forearms, wishing it was fire she could sweep up into balls and send hurling toward the soldiers who were now standing at the corner of the street watching her and whispering to each other. Her hands gripped deep into the dirt and her fingernails found her palm and started to pierce into the flesh slowly, biting and tearing and focusing her hatred. She gritted her teeth with the pain and the imaginary black poison in her chest waiting to spew out and destroy them.

  As the dirt fell through the dry branches and over his pale decaying face—a face she couldn't help remember smiling and crying and laughing and yelling and screaming and now it just stared at nothing without emotion or recognition or anything that would give it even the slightest resemblance of being alive—the well cracked open and her tears flooded down again mixing with the dry dirt on her face and becoming an odd sort of mud. Her arms moved of their own accord, flinging dirt down over that face and working restlessly to cover it and make it go away. And yet she didn't want her last time seeing him to end so quickly and so horribly but the choice was no longer hers as her arms shoved forward large piles of dirt and within a few minutes she lay there nearly out of breath over the grave now fully covered. And all she wanted to do was lie there with him forever and never get up.

  Rudy's soft and terrified voice crept up over the chirping of insects and the faraway droning of traffic. "Alex?"

  The need to sob caught in her throat then and with a great and forced effort she swallowed it, its fire burning her esophagus all the way
down. She sat up, pretending the fire engulfing her stomach wasn't there and in a comforting and steady voice she replied, "Yeah, Rudy, what is it? You okay, buddy?"

  Her little brother stood, dirty face and bare feet sticking out of the cracked back porch screen door. "Jeremy said it was Daddy's fault the Emper sojers killed him—that he's gon' go to hell and burn because he didn't believe in the Emper and..." His face screwed up with tears and wailing, and the burning in Alexandria's heart stoked with a boiling anguish and hatred.

  "Come on, come here, Rudy." Rudy ran out to her, the porch door slamming behind him. When he landed sobbing into Alexandria's arms she hugged him tightly and caressed the top of his head cooing and whispering to him. "Jeremy doesn't know any better, Rudy. He's wrong. The Emperor's not any god that Daddy should have believed in. And it wasn't Daddy's fault those bad men shot him, it's the Emperor's. And if there's a hell, you know just as well as I do, our Daddy doesn't belong there."

  When Rudy finally calmed down, she brought him inside the house and had a long talk with Jeremy and when they were done, the three of them came outside and Alexandria took the metal can in her hands, lifted it awkwardly over the bare patch of dirt that covered her father's lifeless body, and began to splash the dry ground with wet oily gasoline. When the bulge of dirt was covered in channels of flowing yellowish red liquid, she set the can aside and started throwing the leaves and grass she had collected over the spot and the two boys began to do the same. Within a few minutes it was covered entirely. She took out the small book of matches she had found in a kitchen drawer and pulled one out. Then she kissed her palm and blew a kiss down at the makeshift grave as new tears ran streaming down both sides of her face. And before she had a chance to stop herself she'd lit the match and dropped it.

  The whole thing went up in a whoosh and a bright flash lighting the dying dusk evening with glowing waves of yellow and orange. Flames danced in Alexandria's moist eyes as she watched the soldiers through the tongues of fire reaching up at random for the sky in crackling cries of spitting spark and thick burning heat. And in the rising smoke of the crude makeshift pyre, Alexandria and her brothers said goodbye to Jamie Ridgemont, the best father they could have ever asked for.

  ***

  The boys were long asleep upstairs as Alexandria stepped into the bedroom. It had been a week since that cold Sunday morning, but she was just now starting to go through her father's things and was beginning to truly realize what it would take to make sure that she and the boys were fed. She'd been through all of his chest of drawers and so far hadn't found anything useful or interesting. Just familiar clothes that stung the eyes and heart with every glimpse. The angry voice of a man on Dad's voicemail had said that if he didn't pay rent before the end of the week, there would be no choice but for the man with the angry voice to come out to the place personally and start throwing out the family's things on the street and eventually them too in order to make enough room for someone who would pay. Alexandria tried to ignore these threats and to focus on figuring out where her father might have hidden some money or something she could sell.

  Without realizing it, she stood staring out the window between the thin dusty shades at the tall armed Imperial soldiers across the street. And before she could stop herself she was digging out a mostly empty notebook of her father's. As she watched the soldiers across the street, she focused on any discernible details about them and as these observations took hold, her hand began to scribble out words and sentences and eventually paragraphs. After about half an hour or so, she looked down at the messily scribbled notebook to reread what she had written so far. She couldn't remember writing out so much detail. But there it was staring back up at her in letters and punctuation rounded up together in a weaving of information. When she was done reading and the shiver coursing through her flesh had mostly resided, she closed the notebook up and held it tightly against her chest. Worry was trying to creep in between her and her need for revenge against these horrible mindless religious fucks. She'd known people who were religious all her life. Most of them who were close to her family were far more reasonable. Friends and helpers eager to protect her and her father regardless of the heavy cost of doing so. But now those people were all gone. They had all moved on to other places and left Alex and her father and brothers in a desolate suburban hell, complete with its very own demons circling above the city on the backs of their black long-haired steeds.

  Alex put away the notebook in her father's top drawer and closed it. Then she let her gaze go back to the soldiers outside. She couldn't do anything to hurt them while her bothers were anywhere nearby. She would have to find a safe place for them to go to. Somewhere they would be taken care of and protected.

  If, she thought, such a place truly exists...

  Chapter 19

  Time Bidden

  "I can usually sense if someone has less than pleasant intentions. This doesn't add up. It just doesn't seem right..." Hank chewed on this thumbnail as he paced around in Simon's cavern.

  "Well, that's what happened. If I hadn't stopped his punk ass, you'd be dead right now." Rosadelma sat against the cavern floor, staring down through the stalagmites that lined up between her long splayed out legs. Simon stood in the center of the dark cavern, his arms at his sides and his face staring at nothing, his attention elsewhere.

  A Foederati soldier stepped inside the cavern entrance and leaned into Hank's shoulder and whispered, "General Whindsor is here now."

  Hank nodded. "Absolutely. Send him in."

  A moment later, Bill Whindsor walked into the cavern and gave Hank's hand a good strong shake and then to almost both of their surprise, the two men embraced. "It's good to see you, sir." Bill shifted uncomfortably.

  "What is it, Bill?"

  "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we just got word before I came out here. Cross's men in Carlisle were undercover Imperial soldiers. They were caught attempting to set up a bomb inside the town hall near the makeshift new recruit quarters..."

  Bill's words were a heavy blow inside Hank's chest. He closed his eyes trying to make sense of why he hadn't seen this coming. Goddamn these visions and their—

  "The Imperials immediately opened fire on both the Foederati soldiers who discovered them and some nearby recruits. Twenty-two are dead and another dozen or so were injured."

  Hank's body stiffened. "What have you found on Cross?"

  "Sir, we couldn't find anything to indicate that Cross was working for the Emperor. Quite the opposite. He's become pretty notorious among the underground Catholic movement. But about a month ago he just up and disappeared. It's as if he was snatched up out of the sky from nowhere."

  "Okay, check and see if any of his friends or family members disappeared as well. I think maybe I have an idea why I didn't get any telltale signs. Oh and Bill..."

  "Yeah?"

  "All things aside, it really is great to see you too. I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

  ***

  After months of biding his time and pretending with every word, every utterance, every action, Terrence was finally in the right place at what seemed the right time. It hadn't been hard to lie his way into the Foederati. The bastards were so desperate for soldiers, they took just about anyone who volunteered who could pick up a gun and shoot it in one general direction without blowing themselves away. Standing in ranks with a dozen or so other soldiers in the murky underground cave, he'd been watching the different vampires in the place trying to discern who was important and who was not. For the most part he was beginning to get an idea of which was which now. A thin blond guy seemed to be at the center of activity from both the vampires and their connection with the Foederati. Had he still been human, the man would have clocked in right about a decade younger than Terrence. Following Blondie's lead, he was able to get a glimpse inside of one of the caves where a creature like none he had ever seen before lay glistening and half naked and shivering, belly bulged to what looked like an impossibly l
arge roundness. And next to her was the one that caught Terrence's attention above all the rest.

  At first he didn't recognize the creature as human or vampire. But after a time, watching as the blond man came in and, from time to time, removed the white shawl from the man's nearly equally pale body below it, almost seeming to pray over the creature for a time, Terrence realized that not only was this man a vampire, but he was important somehow. Very important. So he watched carefully and he waited. And after a time, his opportunity came. The blond man Terrence now knew to be Simon was busy in another cavern with the Commander and several others and Terrence found himself one half of a pair of men assigned to watch over the Queen's chambers.

  Chuck wasn't a bad guy. Terrence had grown to find his odd sense of humor almost sort of endearing, but none of that mattered. These people, all these people, alive or undead, were abominations. Devils casting nets over the many souls of the weak and the blind. And Terrence was going to do his part to try and stop them. Something big. Standing there, shaking hand clutching his rifle, Chuck at his side, Terrence was struggling to find some way to get inside without having to kill the man he had grown to somehow care about. But time was short and his patience was shrinking. He needed to get in there and finish what he had come to do. So he waited for the right moment. And when it came, rifle left to hang from its strap, he reached out with both hands and grabbed Chuck's head from behind and twisted until all the weight came out from under the man and he fell dead at Terrence's feet.

  Without wasting a moment to let what he had done seep into his heart, Terrence slipped inside the cavern slowly, quietly. The Queen lay in a deep sleep, arms clutching her heavily swollen belly. Beside her the white shroud-covered body waited. Terrence shifted down to his knees, slid his rifle around him so that it hung from his back, and pulled out the long black stake he had made especially for this moment. He'd always had a knack for building things. And when he saw how the Foederati stakes sucked the blood away from the Imperial vampires, he was fascinated and compelled to understand just how it was that they worked. So when he was off duty one night, he took his own apart. He was mesmerized by how beautiful the contraption was, how elegant. But he was even more surprised by how flawed it was. And so he had set out to build his own, knowing that when the time came to use it, he would need a stake that would work faster. A stake that would drain the blood so fast the source of its gorge wouldn't have a chance to fight back. Wouldn't have a second to even know what was happening to them before all life disappeared in one quick drop through a hole of unending darkness.