In other words, it was too late to turn back; the pull of something inside this odd ravaged mess of a theme park was too strong. Hank let it guide him and stepped through the shoulder-high half-open black gates and into the parking lot.
***
The walls of the desert cave of Bellona's hive began to crack around Ishan. At first it was just a small hairline growing slowly in the distance, only the sound of it barely registering to him. Before long it reached out like forks of lightning in slow motion, stretching in branches that begat branches that begat still more branches. And before he could take in what was happening, the cracks grew exponentially into an explosion of tan particles and shattered pieces of what made up the reality in that place, leaving only darkness in its wake. And in that cold emptiness, Ishan was finally aware once more of himself. It was subtle at first, the sense of self easing back into his mind, but when it had fully re-emerged, its presence was surreal and overpowering for a time unknown. But it was only consciousness, there was no physical form. And then in the far distance of vast nothingness, a single pinpoint of light grew out of the ether and one distant screaming word echoed from the same direction, "ISHAN!"
"Simon?"
But there was no answer. And in the slip of a glimpse, the light blinked out and the darkness prevailed. "SIMON?" His voice only ricocheted back to him in the void. His being drew a face in the darkness he knew to be Simon's and it was filled with so much detail that for a second he thought his friend was really there. But its frozen representation only gave itself away as a mental construct Ishan's mind had created for some reason. More images began to fill the darkness in its place: The Queen's beautiful sensual lips appeared as they called his name, the flick of her tongue behind those sharp white fangs tinged with his blood as she brought them down to graze against his white milky skin. Hair black as night framing her slender perfect face, two deep burgundy irises fixating on his in tearing boiling passion. And then her face transformed into another.
Rachel stared back at him from a similar position, on her knees, lustfully teasing him in a time so far away from then. A deep sadness expanded through his being at the memory of her so alive and so very eager to please. Then as did the other two, her face transitioned into another. And then another. And another. Until every face he had ever seen flitted and morphed like a hand of cards flipping between fingers and thumb in quick shuffling procession.
And then they were gone. Just like that. And all that remained was the emptiness and the sadness that threatened to swallow up what was left of his very being.
Ishan waited there in that oblivion for what felt like eons—and he truly knew what eons felt like—the darkness and its mystery his only source of company until slowly, one by one, the tan particles popped into existence before him and came together bit by bit rebuilding the memories and the nightmares of the ancient queen vampire, Bellona, the Goddess of War.
Chapter 15
Dark Spirits
When the satellite imagery revealed Hank’s location, the Emperor’s brow shrunk inward with worry. The old theme park. It hadn’t taken much to figure out what Hank was after when he realized what city he was heading toward and that he wasn’t going to that hole-in-the-ground whore-of-a-queen vampire’s hive. Tresney had something to do with this. Joseph was sure. The man had hidden something out from under him.
On his view screen, Joseph watched through Jonny Cross’s incompetent eyes from just outside of the Six Flags parking lot as Hank stepped foot inside. Whatever was there, Joseph had decided to let Hank lead them to it. Then if Cross could manage not to fowl up what Joseph told him to do, then maybe he could end this little revolution once and for all. With Hank far away from the Foederati army and his position likely unknown, the Emperor could inject just enough misinformation to lead them all to believe that Hank Evans had abandoned his cause and betrayed them.
Cross’s heavy breathing was breaking Joseph’s concentration. “Be quiet, Mr. Cross, surely you can breathe more silently.” Jonny did as he was told. In the distance ahead, through tall weeds and grass, Hank Evans was wandering about the parking lot near a long pink building that led into the actual theme park. “When he’s past that building and out of sight, you move like I said. Remember, step in patterns in order to blend in with the nearby sounds of the city. This man has more accurate hearing than you could even imagine and I’ll not have you getting his attention and ruining this important chance. Understand, Mr. Cross?” The view moved up and down as Cross nodded.
The sun was beginning to fall in the horizon as Cross’s soft steps across the parking lot worked out patterns matching the inner mechanical workings of an old train engine. The trick, Joseph had told him, was to match the volume as it would be from miles away so as to not set off any sense of nearness. Joseph was largely counting on Hank’s strong occupation with what he was doing and that seemed to be paying off so far. If Evans had been smart enough to stay fully alert, he would have already broken Cross’s neck by now and Joseph would be watching the last fading images of pavement nearing the transparent plastic of the view screen. Maybe, just maybe, Cross wasn’t completely useless and would manage to pull this off.
The emperor’s cold pale hand gripped hold of a small metal statue of his likeness sitting on his desk. When his hand came away it was warped into the shape of his squeezing hand complete with palm marks and finger prints. Joseph swiveled in his chair back and forth a moment and then hit the intercom.
“Yes, your holiness?”
“Send in my evening dinner. One of the larger ones. I’ll need my strength.”
“Yes, your holiness. Your will be done.”
Moments later a shuddering dark shape fell into the room from a hole in the ceiling about four feet in diameter. Joseph was on the creature within seconds, biting into its flesh and sucking from the sweet lifeblood within. The natural vampire convulsed with the almost instantaneous loss of blood and only then as its ability was drained from it did it petulantly attempt to fight back. Then it went completely light, a dead thing no longer of any use and the Emperor stepped away from the thing nearly tripping over its body as he fell into a nearby reclining chair. He wiped his face with his sleeve smearing the blood that was dripping all along his mouth and then took a deep breath. As the power and strength flooded out through his limbs and his mind, he gripped the arms of the chair and screamed out in fury, his voice nearly shaking the other furniture and even the very walls of the room.
***
By the third time he stepped out of rhythm as the sun blinked out of existence, it was clear to Jonny that Hank was far too involved in what he was doing to be paying attention. Whatever extra-powerful hearing the man had seemed to require at least a reasonable amount of his attention. Jonny watched through night vision goggles from behind a large plastic head with the face of a boy wearing a large straw hat over his night-vision-green hair. Everything was green through the damn things. Hank seemed to be following his sense of smell more than anything. Perhaps he could only focus on one super sense at a time. He stood at a crossing of sidewalks behind the pink building, staring ahead at a small ticket booth.
Within a blink of Jonny's eyes, the man was gone and Jonny found himself scrambling out from his hiding place desperately searching beyond the ticket booth as the Emperor's angry scratchy voice scraped at the inside of his ears. The slam of a door nearly detonated Jonny's heart but as he caught his breath he realized he had a good idea where the sound had come from.
He ran forward as quietly as he could, but it didn't seem to matter. He knew all too well if Hank had heard him, he'd be dead already or badly injured at the very least. Up ahead, a large roller coaster track rose up from behind a small building and disjointedly surrounded the foreseeable area onward. The small gray door was closed, but Jonny would have put all chips in that Hank was in there getting closer to whatever it was the Emperor didn't want him to find.
As Jonny walked closer to the small building, the wind blew and pushed
against the frail form of the coaster track in a nerve-wracking display of structural insecurity. Jonny crept up to the small window next to the door and wiped away a little circle in the dust and peered inside, softly pressing the plastic tips of the night vision goggles against the pane of glass. Hank was on his knees holding a vial in his hands and examining it carefully. The contents were liquid and deeply scarlet.
The Emperor's breath seemed to suck in in an odd way and behind gritted teeth his voice whispered, "When he drinks he'll be unable to defend himself. That's when you make your move, Mr. Cross, do you understand?"
Jonny nodded, watching for the moment of truth to come. Both he and Hank seemed to take a deep breath at exactly the same time and then Hank put his head back as he gulped down the thick red syrup from the vial.
"Now, Mr. Cross, now!"
Jonny got to his feet, legs shaking and reached for the green knob on the green door and twisted it, pushing his way inside the small building. The door creaked loudly in a hundred echoes from inside, but Hank lay on the floor now, eyes rolled up in the back of his head and breathing in long dragging breaths. "What's wrong with him? What did he do?"
"Do not concern yourself with that, Mr. Cross. It is time to do what you came for."
Jonny stepped over to Hank's body lying mostly still on the floor other than the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed in, out, in.
"Remember what I told you, Mr. Cross, put the handcuffs on first and then slide the knife from side to side across his throat and keep your eyes glued to him so I can make sure he fully bleeds out. It is the only way to be sure."
Jonny pulled the pair of handcuffs from his pocket and knelt down to put them on Hank's hands. They slid around his wrists easily enough, though Jonny hesitated for quite a long moment at first, damn near sure the moment he came near, Hank's eyes would open and his hand would lock around Jonny's throat and crush his windpipe in a matter of seconds. Once Hank's hands were handcuffed in front of his body, eyes still glazing upward into his skull, Jonny slid the large curved and brown bone-handle knife from the small sheathe behind the chest pocket of his jacket.
He stood there for one long everlasting moment, holding the knife in his hand, still not even sure he could lift it, let alone bring it down to cut open another man's throat. And yet this was not just any man either. He could very well be the one man who could end the war. The one man who could bring back some sense of reason and freedom to an entire nation.
"Mr. Cross, what are you waiting for. He might wake up any minute. Slit his throat and be done with it!"
Jonny raised the knife, his hand and arm shaking violently and he moved it in position over Hank's bare vulnerable neck. He closed his eyes to pray to Mother Mary and the next second he felt a crack in the back of his wrist and a deep sharp pain in his neck before everything went completely dark.
***
Rosadelma stood, half kneeling behind Jonny's body, her arm squeezing just hard enough to break off his supply of oxygen and fighting the overwhelming urge within to twist the bastard's head clean off of his body. When she was confident he was unconscious and no longer a threat to Hank, she reached around and picked him up like a baby and tossed him over to the floor against the far wall. His body slammed into the ground and she realized after the fact she probably should have been more careful, but she smiled nonetheless knowing that, counting his wrist, she'd probably only broken three or four of his bones. She hadn't killed him at least.
She gazed down at Hank then, watching his chest rise and fall and his eyes reach for the back of his brain, oblivious to the world—and the people in it—around him. She wondered what it was that was going on in his trance-like state. She'd heard a lot of stories about him. About his abilities. It was still hard to believe he was human at all. She decided to let him finish out whatever it was he was doing without bothering him. In the meantime, she went over and picked up Jonny's body and in a flash of reflected moonlight off the copper doorknob and a gush of wind blasting off the blurring motion of her legs, Rosadelma put him in the trunk of the old boat of a car he had stolen.
"Not very comfortable, is it, fucker?" She slammed the trunk lid down. It had been a bumpy ride south for her in that very trunk but it would be a much bumpier ride for Jonny when they took him to the hive. She checked to make sure the lock was secure and then walked at a human pace back toward the small building where Hank was dreaming for dollars or whatever it was he was doing.
***
Joseph's hand crumbled the malformed shape of the tiny version of himself sitting on his desk when the pale slender hand shot forward and broke Jonny's wrist and the entire signal went dead in almost no time at all. The structure around him was swelling as was the ground that surrounded it in his subterranean safe house. Miles above, he could feel the sky growing bleak and black and the clouds puffing up into great big dark spirits stretching over the land ready to cry out with a million eyes of pelting rain and drench the ground until it was flooding.
Wrinkled pasty hand trembling over the kill switch, Joseph let his mind carry out each possible outcome through to completion as he hesitated. If he killed the man and Hank still lived, he might never get this chance again. If he let Jonny live and they killed him anyway for spying at the very least, it would have been a terrible exercise in wastefulness. He let his hand rest its weight on the switch, feeling the cold red plastic in his palm. Sweat slowly crept down his forehead for the first time in a long time as he tried to decide what he should do.
He let go of his breath and pulled his hand away from the kill device. He had no other choice. He could send in vampires, but they wouldn’t likely arrive before Hank awoke and fled. Besides, Joseph was blind to the goings on there and for all he could know the quick and graceful woman who had overpowered Jonny Cross had taken Hank's still-envisioning body and made a run for it already.
Joseph let the dust crumble out from around his fingers as he squeezed the statue harder.
***
Deep in the dark trenches of an otherworldly vision, Hank watched another set of memories play out before him like a living movie all around him. They were put together care of Roger Tresney, only this time they weren't taken from Diana's mind, but from Tresney's himself. At first there was a jumble of hazy memories from the war. Tresney's voice quickly filled the background though as he explained what he was doing. "It was so much easier getting someone else's thoughts good and clear, but my head doesn't seem to want to focus so much." The mix of confusing visions cleared away like smoke leaving only a tall stout man with black hair and green eyes staring at himself in front of a long thin mirror clinging onto a bedroom wall.
"Hi, Hank. It's me, Roger... Listen, I know of about thirteen different scenarios right now that would have brought you here, so, I can't say as I really understand what you've been through to make it this far, but I want you to know that I'm glad you did. Regardless of how you got here, you are here and what happens next is far more important." He cleared his throat and sat down on the bed behind him.
"The blood you've ingested contains more than just this message. I inserted a single viral genetic sequence that, along with the one I included in Diana's blood, which you should have already drank, will join together and infect your entire DNA. You see, Hank, I studied the effects of the vampire blood on myself for years. Only the Queen and I knew about my gift and my connection to the Emperor. And what I learned I kept to myself—I never knew just how much I could trust her, she's so very manipulating and her foresight is stronger than she's willing to admit.
"Anyway, I learned there was a weakness in my blood after drinking from the ancients. A weak point in the way the effects of that blood mutated my own—yours as well, even the Emperor's. Exploit this weakness and you can destroy any of us.
"You see, this is why I couldn't destroy him myself. I had to test the sequence on someone. Someone whose blood would react the same way. And that someone was me. As I record this memory I now have less than tw
enty-four hours to live. Even still, if I were to survive, my body will be so weak as to be too vulnerable against my enemies now. Besides, I've seen the last moments of my life a thousand times." The next second Hank was choking. A distorted image of a familiar face floated above a blurry layer of transparency. Tears brought the whole scene above Tresney’s body in and out of focus as Lotinger stared down through translucent emptiness, eyes alight with passion. Then, just as quickly, the images and the choking disappeared and Roger's bulky seated frame and rugged face returned. He smiled.
"I would have loved to have seen the look on that bastard’s face if he could have known it wasn’t anything he was doing that was actually killing me.” Tresney laughed then his face became solemn. “I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Hank. But now the sequence is in you... It was the only way. You now have less than two hundred hours to find Joseph Caesar and infect him with your blood.
"That's a little over eight days. Once you've contaminated The Emperor, the genetically altered blood you carry inside you will have advanced into the process enough to spread through that bastard like wildfire and shortly thereafter, he will die...
"And so will you."
Tresney sat there for a long time staring back at himself not speaking, waiting. Letting the inevitable sink in. "In a sense, I just murdered you, and I would understand if you wanted to strangle me now, not that you can since by now I'm most definitely dead." Hank would have expected to feel relief but that was the last thing that flooded through him. First it was shock. Then a sense of melancholy. Then he found himself thinking of Toby and before long he was sure that regardless of how lonely he was now in this world, he still wanted a chance to build some kind of future. But first the Emperor's reign had to end. And if that meant that so did he, Hank would gladly die to take the bastard down. He felt the vision trembling around him and he wondered if perhaps there might be another way just yet.
Empire of Blood: A Dystopian Vampire Trilogy (Bundle, Boxset) (Plus Two Empire of Blood Short Stories) Page 62
