by S. L. Dunn
“Excuse me, if I can please have everyone’s attention for one moment.” A blaring voice rose over the crowd, magnified through the Lutvak ballroom’s speaker system. Kristen lifted her head and looked to the podium. One of the hotel workers stood at the pedestal on the main stage. “Once again, may I please have everyone’s attention? This will only take a moment.”
The man cleared his throat and loosened his necktie as the room reluctantly grew silent.
“It has come to our attention that the Department for Homeland Security has issued a national security alert.” Immediately, whispers and hushed voices extended through the room. The hotel worker spoke over the rabble. “At this point no specific city or form of public transit or anything like that has been threatened. The president has issued assurances that the alert is strictly precautionary, and not cause for panic or alarm. To those of you visiting from foreign countries, we want to stress upon you that this is not an altogether uncommon occurrence here in the United States. Again I must emphasize that there is no cause for panic. We at the Marriot Marquis will do our best to keep you updated on any developments issued by the media.” He smiled professionally and held an arm to the nearby tables. “The lectures will begin momentarily. Until then, the buffet tables are still well stocked if anyone desires a snack. Thank you for your attention, and I hope everyone enjoys the presentations.”
The momentary concern of the room evaporated as quickly as it had arisen. A knot turned in Kristen’s stomach, and an unsettling sensation ran up her spine. General Redford did not seem like the type of man who was easily shaken, and his face had looked severely disturbed by whatever was said on the other end of that phone conversation. At the same moment the government had issued a national security alert. It could not have been a coincidence.
Something was happening.
Kristen’s first thought unwillingly went straight to terrorism. Unwelcome imagery of explosions, airplanes, and skyscrapers formed in the depths of her mind. She felt a strong desire to be tucked away in the middle of suburbia and far from the masses of a city. Instead, she was in Times Square, the epicenter of New York City and the entire western world.
Chapter Twenty
Vengelis
Madison was, in a word, devastating.
The young woman that stepped onto the stage to the deafening music could not have been real. Vengelis stared up at a rendition of feminine Royalty: flawless looks and a commanding grace. Her movements were masterful. In a place filled with wretched and corpulent excuses for men and women, Vengelis found himself looking upon perfection. Through the flashing lights, Madison’s dark hair flowed past her slender shoulders in waves, her green eyes emotionless with focus. A black leather top and bottom scarcely contained her implausible shapeliness. Every individual aspect of her was so arresting that he found it difficult to admire any specific attribute by itself, and all together it was nearly overwhelming.
Vengelis could not pull his gaze away from this extraordinary woman; she was a Sejero daughter personified, the epitome of elegance. A part of him was sickened that a woman so transcendent could be objectified by this rabble of depraved men. Yet that seemed to be the case, as it became clear at once that Vengelis was not alone in his sentiments toward Madison. The majority of men had risen from their tables and crowded against the stage. They were howling and screeching at Madison, leaning onto the floor of the stage and reaching up longingly at her as she moved past them.
The song progressed, guitar riffs and choruses echoing across the walls. Fistfuls of dollar bills were thrown at her feet from all sides. The leaning grabs of drunkards’ yearning hands came closer to the young woman as she moved, but Madison nimbly avoided the groping with obvious athleticism. Vengelis watched the scene unfold with growing fascination, though part of him was mortified that she was going to strip for these undeserving scrubs.
After a minute or so, the shouts and cheers of the rabble audibly transitioned from excitement to frustration. The audience was growing angry. Even the man in charge of the music beside the stage seemed irritated, holding his hands in the air in exasperation. Vengelis did not understand it at first, but then it dawned on him. Madison was not going to strip for them.
Vengelis smirked as this realization moved through the mob by the stage.
The atmosphere of the club began to transform dramatically as the drunken audience realized this woman had no intentions of bearing all. Whistles and howls turned to shouts and jeers. One of the fat men in the front row reached out to take back the dollar bills he had thrown in front of her on the stage. But Madison was too quick for him, and pulled the bills away from his reach. He stood up, furious, and screamed at her through the deafening music and flashing lights.
Madison laughed in his direction and began to move to the other end of the stage. The man lunged up and grabbed her leg. He pulled violently at her ankle. The crowd cheered and applauded. Madison looked down at the man and waved a finger at him, telling him no.
The crowd booed her, cheered the man on.
As she turned to get away from him, the fat man reached up and tried to pull at her boots. The grab almost knocked her over, but Madison did not fall. Instead, she rounded on him with a look of absolute ferocity. She raised her knee and buried a stomp straight into the fat man’s face. The heel of her boot pierced his cheek, and a number of his molars scattered onto the stage.
Vengelis sipped his water as the crowd erupted into fury around the lone young woman. Madison urgently turned from the man at the speakers and then to the smug bouncers by the entrance, but they only shrugged at her through the bedlam.
The fat man was with a group of friends, and a half-dozen men were now standing and shouting at Madison. They were spitting and slurring any curse that came to mind. One of them clumsily crawled up onto the stage in between her and the back exit. When she turned to run off the stage only to see him, he leered through booze-soaked eyes, his beard dripping with beer. Without the slightest hesitation, Madison walked up to him through the flashing lights and slugged him square in the face. He fell to the stage as though he had been punched by a prizefighter.
Vengelis’s eyes widened with astonishment. Her grit was admirable.
Madison then tried to step over the man she had punched and exit out past the back of the stage, but he grabbed her. She tried to deliver a heel at him, but he held her long legs together at the knees. The group of men all began clambering onto the stage. Madison looked with confusion toward the bouncers, who averted their eyes and walked out to the front entrance, pulling packs of cigarettes from their pockets and leaving her to deal with her own mess.
The men surrounded Madison, and two of them took hold of her arms. Another lunged at her, but Madison swung out with a freed foot and caught him in the crotch. The men shouted and swore. She screamed and spat at them—matching their insults with ones of her own. All of the shouting was nearly impossible to hear over the music. The man that she had heeled in the face was back on his feet now. He swayed, blood trickling down his chin. He pulled his arm back and hit her savagely. Madison’s head recoiled back, and when it came forward again she spit in his face.
Vengelis placed his glass down on the bar.
The fat man moved his face inches from Madison’s, laughing at her through the hole in his cheek and pulling out a thin knife that glinted in the flashing lights. Madison screamed in rage, her arms held behind her, as the man began to slash at the leather straps of her top. Madison thrashed dreadfully, her eyes filled with fury and fear.
“Hey!” Vengelis called, unexpectedly filled with a genuine fury. His voice carried over the music. Heads turned as he leapt through the flashing lights and onto the crowding stage.
“Get lost ki—” The fat man with the knife turned just in time to catch a fist to the face. There was a sickening crack as his head rocked backward from the blow and his spine snapped like a board of plywood. The man’s body launched backward, crashing into a mirror and collapsing into a heap amo
ng lights and speakers.
The group of drunkards all fell back in fleeting shock, but held their ground when they realized their overwhelming numbers. Madison had fallen to the side. She stared up at Vengelis in disbelief from the black stage floor.
The sound of the punch had been chilling, even over the deafening music.
“Walk away,” Vengelis said. His eyes flashed around the group of men, his voice commanding. In that passing moment he looked the part of an emperor as he stood his ground against the pitiful drunkards. One of the men stepped forward in the flashing lights, lifting his jean jacket and showing a handgun tucked into his belt.
“You really want to get involved with this?” he shouted at Vengelis.
Without hesitation Vengelis reached out and grabbed the gun from the man’s waist before the fool could even flinch. Vengelis turned the pistol in his hand and cracked the butt of the gun against the bridge of the man’s nose. The man fell to the stage at once, his face mangled.
An amateur and incalculably inferior punch was swung at the back of Vengelis’s head. As the mere muscles in the man’s shoulder flexed into action, Vengelis turned and brought his right fist upward into the attacker’s gut. The man reeled upward, smacking into the ceiling and then falling to the floor. Debris fell from the pulverized ceiling tiles, filling the stage with a dust that changed color in the flashing strobes.
The club began to empty in a frenzy, everyone evacuating out through the entryway to the front of the building. Something horrible, something unnatural, was loose in the midst of the flashing lights and music.
As they ran away, Vengelis turned his attention to Madison. She was on all fours on the stage, thrown down in midst of the mayhem, holding together the top of her outfit. She stared up at Vengelis uncertainly, unsure if she should join the flight out of the room. They looked at each other, each equally unsure how to act. With a nod to her as if his actions had been nothing but a respectful favor, Vengelis turned and made to hop off the stage and leave the club through the entrance hallway.
“Wait,” Madison called as she stumbled to stand. The music had died out, and the disarrayed room was now quiet. “The bouncers will have called the cops by now. Don’t go out the front. They’ll arrest you for starting that fight. Trust me.”
Vengelis looked back to her for a moment, but turned once more to walk off the stage.
“Well, enjoy the handcuffs, I guess,” Madison said with a puzzled frown and staggered through the door in the rear of the stage.
The door swung shut behind her, leaving Vengelis alone and wondering if he had made a mistake in his brashness. He was beginning to realize that manipulating people would prove to be a more challenging task than commanding them. Crumbled bits of ceiling tiles fell here and there in the stillness. Shattered and overturned liquor bottles behind the bar trickled their heady contents into puddles. Vengelis knew he had to follow her: he had found his guide. He needed an interpreter to take him to the scientists at the convention. With a sigh he hastened after her through the back door and into the dressing room.
Madison was alone by a cracked vanity mirror, throwing belongings into a bag. She had changed into civilized clothing, but jeans and a tee shirt did little to detract from her allure.
“I uh . . .” Vengelis said, and she spun around to face him.
Madison relaxed when she saw that it was him, though she regarded him with a wary glare. “Still here?”
“I . . . need. . . your help,” Vengelis said, unsure whether his tone should be coaxing or demanding.
Madison narrowed her eyes. “I suppose I owe you one. But it’ll depend on what you mean by help.”
“Do you know where the Marrio—”
“Shut up for a second,” Madison said, holding up a finger and turning her head.
The sound of shouts rose from back in the club.
“Yep.” Madison nodded and slipped on a pair of shoes. “That’ll be the cops. Come on, let’s go.”
Vengelis stood his ground, but when she took him by the arm he allowed her to lead him through a back hallway stacked with old rusty kegs. Madison pushed past a creaking steel door and they were engulfed by gusty autumn air and midday sunlight. They hurried past a dumpster and a tremendous pile of stagnant trash bags in the alleyway.
“So what’s your story?” Madison said, looking even more stunning now that the sunlight shone on her face. Her eyes were emerald green, luminous against her dark skin. “Who are you?”
“It’s Madison, right?” Vengelis said, halting their walking.
“Yes.”
Vengelis suddenly felt a surprising degree of angst. He found himself not wanting to involve her. Beyond that, the mortification that would claim the faces of his departed family and high councillors if they knew he asked for the aid of a woman such as this was beyond words. Eve would likely slap him in the face.
“I have to go. Good luck,” he said flatly and began to walk away from her.
“Hey!” Madison looked affronted, as if this was the first time in her life a man had walked away from her. She stormed after him. “Why did you risk your life for me?”
“I risked nothing,” Vengelis said, still walking away from her. Though he knew it was a lie. He had risked too much, for a gain of nothing.
“At least tell me who you are. Call it a courtesy to ease my mind. I don’t like being indebted to someone I don’t know.”
“You’re not indebted to me. Forget about it.”
As Vengelis turned out of the alley, he saw two police officers standing watch over the rear of the building. He recognized their uniforms; they were similar to the ones worn by the two men on the mountain far to the north. One of the officers held a hand up as Vengelis approached and eyed his armor uncertainly. “The building’s been locked down. Crime scene—no one can leave until we sort it out.”
Vengelis opened his mouth with the intention of giving the man a singular verbal warning, but Madison was too quick.
“Officer!” Madison grabbed Vengelis’s arm and leaned against it as though she had an injury. “Some sicko just groped me in the dressing room. Ugh, he was so creepy! I barely got away from him. He’s still in there—with the other girls. He said he has a gun.”
“Uh, okay. Okay. We will take it from here, miss,” the police officer stuttered. Both of the uniformed men gawked at her gorgeousness.
“Well, hurry then!”
Holding their gazes sidelong at her, they ran into the building by the side entrance, shouting into their radios and clutching their holsters with heavy steps.
Madison pulled her weight off Vengelis at once.
“Well, I would say it was nice meeting you, but I guess we didn’t really meet,” she said. “So, uh, thanks, I guess. I’ll see you around, hotshot.”
Madison gave him a bewildered expression and turned without another word, taking off down the street. Vengelis watched her walk away without the slightest lingering hesitation in her step. He tried to decipher what he was thinking. She was a human, a pitiful shadow of his own people. Though he had to admit that, provided with Royal attire, she could easily have passed for a daughter of even the most prestigious of Royal lines. Madison did not let that rabble of men get the better of her for the slightest instant. Vengelis’s face unconsciously broke into a smirk as he considered the look of burning intensity that had taken hold of her as she fought them off. Even now as she walked away, Madison had a dignified kind of swagger. Vengelis sighed with uncertainty, knowing she was soon going to be caught up in the obliteration that was about to claim her world. His very own hand could unknowingly kill her.
“Wait,” he called out.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Lord General and Royal Guard
The two stoic Imperial First Class soldiers soundlessly traversed the skies over an expansive countryside. They were making their way steadily westward. A pair of massive birds of prey, Hoff held position a few body lengths ahead of Darien. They moved high over broad stretch
es of forest and narrow lakes nestled between humble hills. Here and there a highway or gathering of shingled rooftops would gleam up at them.
They were unwelcome strangers in a land blind to their malevolent presence, and they had no minds for leisurely sightseeing as they embraced the wooded country below. On the contrary, the lush carpet of vibrant foliage that fell away beneath them only stirred up feelings of anger and resentment. If the two soldiers possessed a greater ability to express their tangled emotions, they would have identified their shared sentiments as envy. Envy of the lands the people below called home. In their terse exchanges, Hoff and Darien agreed that an untested and unproven race did not deserve such a flourishing sanctuary.
The pale blue skies of the coastal east gradually gave way to cold blustering clouds that brooded tumultuously around them as they moved west. A cold drizzle touched their armor and the skin of their arms as they examined the lands. After some time soaring through the cold rain, Hoff held up his hand and came to a stop. The Lord General floated still in the dark sky, and Darien came to a stop at his side. The ground beneath them had noticeably shifted topographically; the hills had smoothed into level flatlands, and the broad gray mass of an immense lake extended across the vista to the north and commanded the horizon. The gigantic lake’s dreary surface was that of an ocean, flecked with white caps and shadowy menacing swells. A number of rather unimpressive towns were scattered across the bank, and the infinitesimal movement of cars could be seen on the wet highways. Here and there a few buildings reached into the sky from the most prominent hub, perhaps a city. Aside from the several tall steel structures, the coast was cluttered with low rises and parking lots between stands of woods.
“What do you think?” Darien asked as he looked at the sodden roads and rooftops.
Hoff wiped cold precipitation from his brow. “I’m looking down at this world and these people and seeing nothing. I see a civilization that can barely hold back the wilderness that presses in around it. I see people that don’t deserve even a shadow of our likeness. This mission is not going to get us anywhere. There’s nothing of help to us here. Why Vengelis wants us to hold back at all is lost on me. It’s shameful, staying out of sight of these people in this reverent manner. We’re hiding from sheep.”
