by Casey Wyatt
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can’t fly the ship. I’m not a pilot.”
The presence in my mind receded. But not far. It was still there humming in the background. I stood up and peered around the room. A large, flat panel appeared before me. The runes changed position, forming a border around the screen. In response, the cuff bracelet flashed green symbols.
There is no time. The Veil is upon us. The control room is silent. For your convenience I have made the system available to you.
Great. “What part of, I have no idea what’re you’re talking about, do you not understand?”
The Veil is upon us. State your destination.
A view of open space appeared on the giant screen. Tiny pinpoints of light glittered. So you could see stars. In the center, the black smudge grew, blocking out the stars’ light.
Muffled alarms rang out in the hallway.
Where. Do. You. Want. To. Go? said the voice, mimicking the same aggravated tone I had used previously.
It sassed me! Talking to me like a teenager full of disdain. If it had eyeballs, it would probably be rolling them.
Did I ask with the proper amount of attitude? I’m learning from you through this encounter.
Shit. Better mind my manners. “Mars please.”
As you wish. A course has been set for the Veil. What is shit?
“Forget I said that. Am I the only one you can communicate with?”
You wear Enkile’s Cuff. If it pleases you, I can speak with others.
“Yes. I know exactly who I want you to talk to.”
~ * * * ~
As if our situation weren’t bad enough, Trent, in his newborn vampire glory, had attacked and wounded the entire human crew. Ian had been forced to turn all of them. I didn’t know how he stood upright. He was a better sire then me. I could barely look at Trent. I wanted to slap him silly every time I thought about him. Either that or rip his dick off. I might do both. Day wasn’t over yet.
“It’s better for them,” Ian said, easing into the mess hall chair across from me.
Again, I swear he could read my mind. “Why?”
“They’d never survive the Martian climate long term. The first gamma ray burst and they would’ve died a lingering death from cancer.”
I shrugged. “Good point. But can we feed them?”
“With proper planning, we’ll manage. I have rogues who’ll be willing to donate.”
I couldn’t help wonder at what price. I shook the negative thought away. I tried to apply the power of positive thinking. The result, underwhelming.
One of the vampire newbies joined us at the table, a tray of my favorite juice pouches in hand. I think he was the navigator. Or one of the mission specialists.
“For you, Ms. Cordial. I hear these are your favorite.” He blasted a gap toothed smile at me. A little dimple was on his left cheek. He was so young. Up until the Captain Trent fiasco, the human crew stayed away from us. Captain Trent excluded. The crew didn’t know we were vampires because Prior had told them we were off limits.
“What’s your name?” I speared a straw through the nearest pouch and took a small sip. A faint metallic tang hit my tongue. Maybe the supply was tainted.
“Mission Specialist, Mitch Marron.” He took a large gulp of the pouch. Poor kid. His hunger would be strong for a while.
“Nice to meet you. Welcome to club dead.” I didn’t waste energy asking him if he was surprised. The new vampires wore the same glassy-eyed, slack-jawed look of shock. An is this shit really happening look. I knew it well. I think I wore it for six months after I was turned.
“I sure didn’t realize this is what I would be signing on for when I was hired,” Mitch said between swallows.
“Surely, not,” Ian seemed mesmerized by the boy’s rapid juice consumption. “How did you become part of this venture?”
“Funny. I remember answering an ad on the internet. Good timing too after I lost my job at NASA.” Mitch burped. “Excuse me. After, it’s hard to recall. I know I’m getting paid a boat load more than before. And my family will be taken care of if anything happens to me.”
Couldn’t remember, my ass. A vamp had messed with his memories. And poor Mitch never made the connection something bad happened to him and he’d never see his family again.
A lesson I knew well. I took a healthy gulp from the juice. I wish I hadn’t. It tasted worse than before.
“Whew. It sure is hot in here. Isn’t it?” Mitch wiped blood tinged sweat from his brow.
I shot a look Ian’s way. Vampires don’t normally sweat. Or turn gray.
Seizures racked Mitch clear out of his chair. Ian raced over to him.
I followed. Thick white foam frothed from Mitch’s mouth. His teeth chattered, clicking loudly. A slick, gray sheen oozed from his pores.
“What’s happening to him?” The room’s temperature shot up. “It is hot in here.”
Ian twisted back around, “Bollocks! Silver poisoning!”
Double images of Ian reached toward me as my vision blurred. The long forgotten feeling of a fever swept over me. A moment later his incisors pierced my neck.
“Hold tight. I’ll get the poison out of you.” Wet liquid splattered on the floor. Ian’s hair tickled my noise. Fresh mint mingled with acrid odors of tainted blood. For a while, I stopped hearing, seeing, thinking.
“Cherry. Wake up, luv.” Ian’s gentle voice roused me from a sluggish stupor. Anger beat at me. Ian’s anger.
Cold metal seeped into my back. When I opened my eyes, the harsh overhead lights stung my sensitive eyes. A crick twisted my neck when I raised my head. Jay had arrived at some point. He dropped my juice pouch in a sealable bag.
“Poison?” The cylinders in my brain weren’t firing yet. “Mitch?”
“He’ll recover. His newness saved him.” Ian massaged the pain out of my neck with strong capable fingers. “Ingested silver is fatal to older vampires.”
“The real question. Was the pouch meant for you or Cherry?” Jay asked.
“We have a limited pool of suspects. These newlings are mine.” Ian cracked his knuckles. His new vampires flinched at the sight. The fierce blue light in his eyes scalded them. “One by one, you will confess your crimes. You will go first.”
The singled out vampire nodded and listed, in graphic detail, everything in his life he’d ever done wrong.
After an hour, my head reeled with too much information. I didn’t really need to know Mission Specialist Greer liked to lick peanut butter off toes. Again with the toes. And I sure as hell could have lived a long, happy life without knowing the mission scientist had been caught stalking his brother’s girlfriend. With rope and a hunting knife.
“What a bunch of degenerates,” Jay observed.
“No kidding.” A horrid thought crossed my mind. I interrupted Ian’s interrogation of the ship’s navigation specialist. “You. Did Prior personally hire you too?”
He froze like a deer in headlights.
“Answer her, Carlos,” Ian said.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
After hearing similar stories from each of them I turned to Ian, “I’ve heard enough. Where’s Prior?”
Twenty minutes later, I had Prior cornered outside of his room. Jay stood next to me, glaring.
“What the hell were you thinking when you hired these douche bags?” I jabbed a finger into his chest. Funny to think, at one time, the twerp intimidated me.
“I had. . .no. . . ch-choice.” Prior shrunk further back into the wall. “I had limited funds. They were the best I could do. They had the requisite skills. And years of astronaut training.”
“And no morality whatsoever,” Jay added. “Did it ever occur to you that on a mission like this, personalities mattered? We have to live together for a long time.”
An awful thought struck home. “They’re considered disposable. Right, Prior?”
“Of course,” he sniffed, “they’re humans.”
Prior’s head slammed into the wall.
Jay and I had moved as one.
“Did we both hit him at the same time?” Jay asked.
I shrugged and lifted the creep up by his jumpsuit, jamming the zipper into his chubby neck. “I suggest you think long and hard about what’s wrong with your attitude. No one on this mission is disposable.”
Jay glared at Prior. “Except, maybe you!”
We left Prior nursing his throat and his self-esteem. I doubt anything I said would have a positive impact. Points for me. I probably gained another enemy. Prior was still a male and I had bruised his ego.
“Don’t worry about him right now, Cherry.” Jay flipped up his laptop screen. We had decided to re-group in his room. “As per usual, we have bigger issues.”
“Worse than someone trying to poison me?” I loved those juice pouches too, I thought sourly. “Do you think it was Prior?”
“No.” Jay waved off the concern, “He was genuinely surprised. I can tell. Must be a gift from my new sire.”
I winced. “I’m sorry this happened to you.” I had so much to atone for already. Jay losing the last bit of his mortality, well, sucked.
“Don’t be. I feel great. I’m a practical person. I would never have survived long term on Mars. Besides, you catching Trent was a good thing.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Funny, I don’t see how.”
“Now we know you have lot more enemies than Thalia.” He smiled and motioned to the computer. “I uploaded this footage today.”
One of the useful things I had learned during my all night cram sessions was it took about twenty minutes for us to receive communications from Earth. Jay had already tapped into the Vampire News Network’s daily broadcasts. He had been providing transcripts to Prior and Ian each day. Apparently I had been receiving them too, except I hadn’t bothered to read them.
A perky newscaster, from Evening, the vampire version of a morning show, appeared on the screen. “We’re standing outside the burned out shell of the infamous Cherry Cordial’s love den.”
Love den? Side by side pictures of Ian and me appeared on the screen. Mine was the club’s publicity photo, hair coiffed in a hideous 80’s do and copious amounts of make-up. Ian’s was a . . . painting? By the looks of the short hair, high collar and stuffy attitude, it was from around the Napoleonic Wars.
“It’s here Cherry and her lover Ian McDevitt masterminded their most heinous act, the cowardly murder of our beloved Queen Victoria. They used this location to finance the purchase of handheld rocket powered grenades, most likely purchased from Middle East terrorists.”
“Wow. I didn’t know I was so devious,” I said, my stomach in knots.
Ms. Perky continued, “Joining me today is self-professed Cherry Cordial expert and until this monstrous betrayal, her number one fan. . .”
I groaned, “Oh no.”
Jay nodded his head, “Oh yes.”
“…Morton J. Vandemere III.”
That night’s events rushed back to me. I sat heavily on Jay’s bed, hugging the pillow to my stomach. “In the alley. The masturbating freak saw Ian wink at me from across the street. The son of a bitch. That’s how they tied me to Ian.”
But why? None of it made any sense. They could have had Ian as their scapegoat without dragging me into the mess. Unless… the bracelet? Was that what Thalia really wanted?
The door slid open. Ian entered the room, all frown and sour attitude.
“Did you see this crap already?” I tossed the pillow aside.
“A right load of bullshit.” Ian eyed Jay. Without a word, Jay nodded and left us alone in his room.
“I’ve lost him, haven’t I?” The final tie to my human past had been snipped. While Jay had been my thrall, our connection went deeper than friendship. In the day’s excitement, I hadn’t immediately noticed the blood bond’s absence.
“I am truly sorry. But the alternative…” he left the obvious answer hanging between us.
“I know. I’d rather have Jay here with me.”
Ian took Jay’s vacated chair and closed the laptop lid, cutting off the rest of the fabricated news report. “There’s nothing to be done about events back at home.”
“Any luck with juice pouch?”
“No. None of the new vampires was behind your poisoning.”
Which left Ian, Jay or Prior. “Shit.”
“Yes.” Ian gave me a long hard stare. “I would never poison someone.”
“Or blow them up with a rocket?”
“Those are acts of cowardice.” He was suddenly on the bed next to me. His nose so close, I could smell mint on his breath. “When I kill someone, I look them in the eye first.”
I should have been scared. Any right minded person would have been. I blinked. The intensity of his blue gaze ignited my senses. Tiny shocks rode up my spine. I reached over to touch his face. With a rapid blur of motion, he was out the door. The only sign he’d been there, a slowly inflating dent on the mattress.
CHAPTER NINE
Jay banged on my door. “Cherry! It’s time.”
Twenty hours had passed since I’d provided the ship with our destination and someone tried to kill me. “I’m ready.” I brandished the cuff.
“How long have these characters been appearing?” Jay angled my arm around to examine the runes.
“Let’s go. We don’t have a lot of time.” I raced down the hallway toward the bridge. The cuff pulsed, counting down the time until we reached the Veil.
I couldn’t read ancient runes or whatever language the countdown was in. Not that I was one hundred percent sure the cuff was counting down, but I had to warn Ian before the ship did who knows what.
When I had asked the ship what to expect when traveling through the Veil, she said was, Hold onto something. I must concentrate. And she shooed me away. The bitch.
“Cherry, why are we running?” Jay zoomed up behind me, a big smile plastered on his face. Since I had commanded the ship to allow Jay access he’d been wearing a shit-eating grin. He still hadn’t “met” her yet, but he would. If we survived the Veil.
“We have to warn Ian and the crew. They need to prepare.”
Jay stopped, “Why not use the intercom system?”
Of course, I had no idea there was one or how to use it. “Did the ship tell you how?”
“Cherry, you’re such a kidder.” Jay walked over to the wall and touched a square panel next to the door. It flared to life at his touch. Why didn’t I know this?
“Ian?”
“What’s up?”
I walked away, leaving Jay to his conversation. I was a total loser. Close to two weeks on the ship and I never noticed the communication panels. Ship and I would have to chat.
Jay caught up with me a few minutes later. “Let’s go watch on the observation deck.”
I bit back my surprised response and acted like I knew about the observation deck. “Sure, sounds great.” We arrived in time to join Prior. He gave me a tight smile. Expression hinting I shouldn’t turn my back to him anytime soon.
As soon as we were seated, lap and shoulder restraints strapped us firmly into our seats.
“This ship is so cool,” Jay said like a giddy school girl.
“Sure it is.” If you like sentient machines. The room was similar to a theater on Earth, with one exception. There was a giant view screen instead of a stage. Or maybe it was an actual window.
The wall brightened and an image of space appeared, along with a bunch of flashing runes and other unrecognizable symbols, possibly numbers. The familiar black smudge dominated most of the view. It was still as dark and foreboding as before.
My hackles rose. I didn’t like the idea of entering dark places, let alone a massive unknown galactic phenomena.
Jay and Prior were enraptured by the screen. Apparently, I was the only one with any common sense.
The cuff stopped pulsing. I gripped the armrests. Faint vibrations rattled my seat. The shaking grew more pronounced the closer we drew to the Veil.
Swirls of
color appeared in the Veil’s center. Dim at first, then more vibrant. I couldn’t look away. My gaze locked onto the kaleidoscope.
Reality shifted.
Colors had taste, taste had sound, sound had feeling. The sensation wrapped around my mind, dragging me along for a ride I didn’t want to be on.
It was like a bad drug trip. Humanoid faces floated by. Some mournful, others happy. A few outright mad. One face turned and captured my mind. It’s thoughts a petal soft caress.
Brunii.
Espirtii
Decaii
I don’t understand, I thought. The words pushed into my mind, burrowing deep, touching my soul.
The symphony in my head lasted minutes and days, each happening at the same time. My stomach dropped to the floor before settling in my throat. Another hard wrench. A loud scream (probably mine) pierced the cacophony.
Then it was over.
The view screen displayed a large red planet. Scarred by a long, dark canyon, Mars was so . . . barren.
I hated it already.
The seat restraints retreated, leaving us free to move. Not happening. Not until my jelly filled legs hardened back up.
“Jay, how’s it going?” I flopped my weary head in his direction.
“Fine,” he said, followed by a hard, thick swallow.
“Incredible!” Prior bounded out of his seat with the glee of a first grader about to get new crayons. “I must get to the bridge. Amazing…”
His wormy voice trailed off as he left the lounge.
“Let’s not do that again for a while,” I chewed the edge of my lip, making a quick decision. “Did you see anything in there?”
“It was a total mind fuck.” Jay shook his head, “what didn’t I see?”
I listened closely to his experience. None of it came close to resembling what I saw and heard. I gave him the run-down, including the strange words.
“Never heard of them. I can do some research for you.”
“If we have time. I could have imagined the whole thing. I don’t want you wasting effort on it right now.”
I leveraged my sluggish body out of the seat. A few trial steps later convinced me I could walk without falling on my face. Before leaving, I took a last look at the view screen.
