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.
Kneeling down beside the vampire, whose long black hair stretched out along his chest to his waist and whose body was so much shorter than Terrance had expected, he raised the stake and took a deep breath. Now that the moment was here, doubt filled every pore in his skin, every cell in his brain. Not a doubt of conviction, no. A doubt of whether the stake would work. Whether he was strong enough to send it piercing through the creature's chestplate. The air left Terrence's lungs and he resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't know until he tried. He tensed his muscles and gripped the stake with all of his strength and, just as he was about to bring it down with the fury and righteous vengeance of his lord and savior Joseph Caesar, the vampire's eyes opened. Complete and utter liquid blackness swallowed the whites of those eyes. And before he could even scream, the creature grabbed his wrists with both hands and shoved the stake into Terrence's own stomach. In that rapid-fire blink-of-an-eye moment, the universe came suctioning out of the center of Terrence as every ounce of blood inside him instantly drained into the device.
***
With an almost implosion of blood and life force, the man gave one great convulsion and fell dead, face slapping audibly onto Ishan's chest. The ancient vampire lay there for what seemed like eons unsure if he could move even though he had already more than demonstrated that he could with how quickly he had protected himself. Eventually, however, the disgusting smell of the dead man overpowered Ishan's sense of shock at having finally awoken from Bellona's memories and he pushed the body aside and let it fall to the cave floor. He rose to a sitting position. Though it had been almost too easy to reach out and grab the man moments before, every simple movement of muscle now felt like the grinding of unoiled gears long neglected and covered with rust. But all the pain was forgotten in an instant as Ishan's eyes found the body of the Queen lying in deep sleep and covered in sweat, her womb reaching out from her abdomen to engulf the entire world.
Ishan stumbled to get to his feet, nearly falling over on his face for the first time in more centuries than he'd like to remember. In fact, he wasn't completely sure now. The memories from his own life were now terribly intertwined with Bellona's and what had once been a steady foundation to stand upon now seemed to have disappeared out from under him like stepping further into unknown waters. When he was standing upright, though unsteadily at best, he let his gaze wash over his beloved. She was so beautiful lying there, her body gleaming in the faint light that no human eyes could see. So beautiful and yet so frail. And for one split second a slithering lustful thought arose in Ishan's mind and he nearly tried to rip it from his own brain in reply. So vulnerable. I could kill her right here and right now and no one would know. The words were not his and Ishan wasn't sure which revelation scared him more, the realization of their origin or the very deadly purpose they contained. Before he could dwell on the terror of what he now knew, her eyes opened and found him and everything else, the fear, Bellona's memories, the realization of what still lurked inside him, all fell away like the delicate petals of some soft exotic flower and he reached out and embraced his Queen and their mouths found each other and locked in longing and passion and an urgency that could only come from what would have been remorse had Ishan not awoken from the deep dark bowels of that hellish landscape within the enemy queen.
***
Inside the small weathered structure within what had once been the Six Flags park of New Orleans, Tadashi knelt down before the tiny glass vial lying on the floor and plucked it up in his hand, put it to his nose. A deep intake of air told him many things. He'd known it would be blood. Old blood even. But what was most surprising was how well it had been preserved. His mouth watered with the freshness of its scent. Tipping his head back, he lifted the vial upside down and let the remaining drops fall to his tongue. Images flashed and then warped and tore into more and more visions and then scenes erupted one into another like the changing of channels on a television set. Only this was like being in the story. Inside the television. Tadashi recognized Roger Tresney from the Emperor's debriefing photos. Tresney stood in front of a mirror, his posture dull and hanging. In the next moment images strangely microscopic seemed to dissolve away Tresney's head and before long the chaos simmered down into something somewhat more coherent and Tresney's voice, before spliced and jumbled into nonsense, became recognizable speech. "...blood you've ingested contains..."
The memory slowed to a stop, shifted.
"...inserted a single viral genome sequence that, along with the one I included in Diana's blood..."
Another jolt of static exploded and then Tresney was back. "...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..." Roger's body seemed to fast forward, his mouth moving cartoonishly fast, but no sound coming out and then it went back to normal. "...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, and even the Emperor's own blood. Exploit this weakness and you can destroy any of us.”
His head exploded into movement again then slowed down and froze still. Then with a screaming wind it blasted back into real time. “Once contaminated from you, the infected blood you now carry inside you will be far enough into the process that it will spread through him like wildfire and shortly thereafter he will die... and..." The static returned and expanded, engulfing Tadashi in its wake. It spun about him and wrapped itself around his every atom until, with a sudden reversed digestive pressure, Tadashi awoke dry heaving over the smashed shards of the empty vial lying on the floor. After a formless expanse of time lying there and recollecting what he had just experienced, Tadashi rose up to his feet and pulled out his cell phone. The Emperor would find him most honorable now. On this day, he had certainly been blessed.
Chapter 20
Omens Calling
“Okay, if we’re gonna do this, now’s the time. He’s out like a light.” Simon’s head peeked into the cavern opening. In the days since Ishan had awoken, Simon had been glued to the ancient vampire's side, unwilling to move, but now that things had calmed and Ishan was recovering from the long sleep he had been trapped within, Simon had almost completely shifted gears. It were as if now that Ishan were awake, the weighted anchor that Hank sensed had been holding him in the drowning waters of the Queen's cavern was lifted, and the young but powerful vampire was free.
Hank turned and locked eyes with Theodore. “You ready?”
Beneath wrinkled brows and a messy crown of gray hair, Theodore’s eyes were tired, worn. He nodded and the two men got to their feet.
Inside the large open cavern where the ancients hung, sleeping, from the cave ceiling by day, the empty darkness seemed to expand forever. Jonny Cross lay still and silent, arms and legs folded into his body, a grown fetus robbed of its womb. Hank and Simon stood next to the vulnerable body, waiting
and watching as Theodore slowly sunk down onto his knees and closed his eyes. Aged, withered hands rose from his lap and he placed them on Jonny’s shoulder. A long moment of awkward silence reached out for the edges of the cave and Hank took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind of impatient thoughts.
Theodore’s hands began to slide along Jonny’s back, slow at first, then exponentially quickening. Within seconds, the old man’s hands were moving with a rapid urgency. Hank’s breath caught in his throat as he watched. He hadn’t before seen this process in action, though it had once been employed on his own body.
Theodore’s groping, searching hands seemed to be draining of the desperation they had shown previously and just as quickly as they started, they fell limp at the man’s sides. Eyes still closed, Theodore began to chant something. The words were like gibberish to Hank but a pattern could easily be recognized. The rhythm of the man’s words grew with the rising volume of his voice and quite unexpectedly the room began to fill with a dim yellow glow much like the glow Hank had witnessed coming off of Simon and Ishan’s hands when they were healing. Only this time it wasn’t clear exactly where the light was coming from. It seemed to be somewhere hidden almost. Like a bright flashlight beam obscured by cradling human hands.
It wasn’t long before Simon put his own hands on Jonny Cross’s body. Hank was just about to ask him what he was doing when it became obvious as Simon turned the body over and the light that had at first been so dim was now nearly blinding Hank as it blasted out from Jonny’s chest. Then with a swiftness only known to the undead, Simon pulled out a long thick syringe and stabbed it into the heart of that light. Within seconds the room was pitch black again. But even in the dark Hank could see Jonny’s body lurching and shaking and trying to pull away from the vise-like hold of Simon’s inhuman grasp.
A moment later, Simon lifted the device back up from Jonny’s body, blood dripping from the wound and just as quickly gently placed it to the ground and put his hands over the torn flesh and bone of the man’s ribcage. That familiar glow spread out between Simon’s hands and the man’s body and the wound began to shrink as the opening of it filled with bone and blood and skin. Cross’s body jerked up into a sitting position and, mouth open wide, blood shot out from the back of his throat in one big blast that splattered against his legs.
Jonny coughed up some more blood for a moment and then, breathing heavily, he leaned back, holding himself in upright with his hands. In a hoarse, dry voice, he tried to speak but only partial syllables would come.
“Welcome back to the land of the living. Simon here just took out the implant the Emperor put in you.”
Jonny seemed to be hyperventilating all of a sudden. His partial syllables became a handful of broken words jumbled into one another. “Can’t… Julie… Joseph…She…” Then he was up scrambling to get away, but trapped by both Simon and Hank’s hands grabbing hold of him.
“It’s okay, Jonny, it’s okay.” Hank’s voice had taken on a calm comforting tone.
“She’s dead, don’t you get it?” Jonny’s scream echoed off of oblivion as Hank took a solitary moment to collect himself.
“Julie is not dead. Not yet.”
Hank’s gaze slipped over to the tiny metal blood-soaked ball that had been in Jonny’s chest. “You see this thing?” He picked up the implant and held it in his hand, sliding it around, the thick red goo coming off on his fingers. “All we have to do is put it right back in. Simon here put the device into something akin to a standby mode. The Emperor will get nothing but a sleep signal from it. Now, we’re going to put it back in you. But first, we need to talk about how we’re going to save your sister. Okay?”
***
Ishan stood like a granite statue watching over the huddled vulnerable form of the Queen as she lay sleeping. What faint moonlight managed its way into the room, so dim, no human's eyes could have seen it, glinted off several streaming lines of sweat along her back and shoulders. It pained Ishan to see her this way. She had told him more times than he could count since he’d awoken that it was necessary, but even the future of the vampire races was hard to compare to how much he loved her. Hours passed without so much as a single fluttering of breath from the ancient vampire. As he watched her and his thoughts grew further and further complex, he found himself fading into a trance-like state. It was almost as if the room around him were disappearing, fading away into nothing and only he remained, once again, sealed in a tomb of darkness within himself.
The empty night spread on forever in all directions and even the ground beneath Ishan's feet was no more. His body floated freely along an ever expanding vastness of time and space in between stars and galaxies and the very atoms themselves. The warmth of friction began to grow as his body moved faster and faster through the void. And as speed increased to nearly dizzying levels even to such an incredibly agile creature as he, Ishan was unable to stop himself through physical means or pure will. It was as if the very flesh and bone he had worn for millennia had been shed and the bare electrical impulses of his mind were all that was left floating out in the ether blasting toward a deep oblivion buried within an all encompassing oblivion.
Somehow, then, whatever charged atoms that made up Ishan's sense of sight were able to turn around. To see. A single pinpoint of light so vague and so dim and so very far away dotted the very middle of nothing. And somehow he knew... That light. That single pinpoint of illumination was billions and billions of light years away and across and he would never get back to it. He would die out here, a floating chemical reaction, in the cold expanse in between superclusters of galaxies connecting like snow flakes weaved together by complicated strands of DNA. That one point of light, he knew, was one solid mammoth object floating around forever in its own unending complexity and mass. And he could not be saved...
In a split second, the vast, the dark, the light, everything, blinked away and a different kind of darkness surrounded Ishan. A familiar scent overpowered his senses and the grazing of soft flesh against his fangs nearly smothered him with its ecstasy, but before they could sink into that cold familiar flesh, Ishan's hands pushed his body away. The Queen lay there just as silent as before, just as oblivious. Looking down at those same hands that had only barely stopped him from piercing deep down into what he knew was the true life force of her, Ishan's pale dirty fingers shook in a way they hadn't previously in centuries. What had happened while his mind had been so far away? Where had he gone... And what...?
He could hear echoes in the back of his mind. A distant sharp feline laughter.
Bellona...
And then, silence.
Ishan squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, letting them break the skin sending a slow moving ooze of blood out from his palms and a few individual drops—one, two, three—careening for the rocky cavern floor. Each one splashed against the ground like shattering glass and in a flash of movement, the Queen sat upright, awake, aware, eyes poised with concern and knowledge, hand gently pressed against the top of her round glistening belly. Their eyes locked and Ishan felt the fear spreading within the Queen at that moment and dropped to his knees, tears of blood sliding down his face as he embraced the lower half of her body and rested the side of his head against her skin.
After a long stretching moment, her fingers probed between the strands of his hair softly in soothing movements in between hesitations long accented by the trembling of her hands.
And Ishan wept.
***
Dreary graininess and soundless ambience melted into something resembling coherence and Jonny realized he was back among the living and the conscious. Without even thinking about it, his hand went to his chest. His fingers found their way under his shirt and slid up to where the wound should have been still, but only fresh skin smoothed out beneath his touch. His eyes adjusted to the weak firelight spreading little by little from some place off in the distance of the much smaller cavern he was now confined to. His heart kicked up a beat when he realized he still
hadn't heard the Emperor's crusted penetrating voice inside his head. He took a deep breath and held it for a moment before letting it wither away from his lungs out into the musky air of the cave. It didn't work. She's dead. He killed her. Any minute now he's going to kill me too. OhGodohGodohGodohJesus, please don't let it be...
“Mr. Cross, your heart rate is concerning, please take a few more deep breaths and calm yourself. You have much yet to do—important things—and you won't survive to accomplish them if you keep up like this. Do you hear me? Scratch your left palm if you do.”
Jonny did as the Emperor told him on both accounts. Taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his lips, he let his eyes wander to his hands.
“Good. For now, rest. Keep working to calm yourself. I need you focused and ready. When the time is right, I will return with your instructions. Goodbye, Mr. Cross."
Silence spread out in place of the Emperor's voice, filling Jonny's head with its emptiness. His body was shaking softly, but he was starting to regain control. He lay back and let his eyes stare up into nothing replaying Hank's words in his mind. Just keep things moving along as if nothing has changed. When the time is right, you’ll know. And no matter what, remember... I won't let him hurt her.
Jonny let those last words seep into him. He wanted so badly to believe they were true. To believe the confidence that had born them wasn't in vain. But he knew all too well how strong the Emperor was. How vast and immovable the Empire was. And though he did not truly know in physical measures of distance, he knew intangibly and deeply just how far away his little sister was. He would have to wait. Maybe... just maybe Hank could accomplish what he claimed... or...? If not... Jonny could always relay the wrong details or even tell the Emperor the truth. Lay bare the plans that had been made between Hank and Simon and by some extension, weak as it might have been, himself.
Empire of Blood: A Dystopian Vampire Trilogy (Bundle, Boxset) (Plus Two Empire of Blood Short Stories) Page 65
