by Shadow Soft
“What do you do? Patrolling?”
“Yeah. Basically. Some in the watch tower, keeping an eye out for SCHNUET probes. Some just strolling the streets.”
“Maybe I’ll find you again then,” I said, scraping up the last of my scrambled eggs.
“Sure.”
Jason left with a friendly wave, and I hurried to finish up my meal. When Twinkle checked by to clear away Jason’s things I smiled at her. If any of them were going to attack me, I didn’t think it was going to be her. “How long have you been in Symbiosia?” I asked before she turned away.
Twinkle looked faintly surprised I had asked. “Nine months,” she said, smiling. “It’s nice. You’ll like it here. Ask Jason and he’ll take you up to the watch tower sometime.” She winked. “It’s fun. It’s all camouflaged in the top of a massive pine tree.”
“Maybe I will sometime. Thanks for breakfast.”
“My pleasure, young sir.”
When I got back to the Nightfall cabin lights were on in the windows. They’re finally up and about, I guessed. I wondered if they’d have breakfast all ready on the table for me, not knowing I had just eaten at the diner. Although I wouldn’t mind a second breakfast. For the past several weeks our rations had been limited, and though my stomach felt full my appetite was undiminished.
I tried the front door, but it was still locked. Luckily I had the key in my pocket. It took several moments to fumble it into the latch with my numb fingers—Note: always wear gloves when you go out—but I finally got it and turned. The lock clicked and I swung the door inward. Shivering, I stepped into the entryway and shut it behind me. Warmth from the fireplace that blazed in the living room melted over my skin. The one nice thing about cold weather, I speculated, struggling out of my boots, is that when you come inside it always feels so toasty.
Leaving my snow-dusted coat over my boots by the door I crept into the living room, peering into all the shadows. No one was in there except Grandmother Rose, asleep in the easy chair where I had left her. I put the key back in its place on the mantle and stretched out my hands to the fire. Oh, that feels good.
Turning to let it warm my back, I peered up the darkened tunnel of the staircase. Lights were on upstairs, and I could hear shuffles of movement from the ceiling above me. Let’s see . . . . that would be the cousins’ room. There was a thump from another corner of the ceiling, and I chuckled quietly. And that would be Blake getting out of bed. The thump was followed by an audible groan. Yep, definitely. Blake was not a morning person.
I guess they were even more tired than me, I thought, and sympathy flared in my chest. They really did care for me, didn’t they? Despite lying to me . . . . They had gone to all this effort to see me safely to Symbiosia. For a moment I felt guilty for treating them as coldly as I had the past weeks, for being distant and cynical. Only for a moment. Then I remembered the feeling in my chest—hard and incredulous—at seeing Vales in the moonlight, her dentures on the ground beside her. Her hand going to her mouth . . . . The disbelief I had felt in that moment would never leave me. The sickness as realization welled up––that I’d been lied to, duped.
Beside the fire, my hands clenched and a frown dimpled my brow. Whatever the Nightfalls got from me, they deserved. If it was love and distrust mixed, they deserved it.
Grandmother Rose shifted on the other side of the room, and I glanced her way. My glance snagged on something on her face. In the light of a rust-shaded lamp, a trickle of something dark ran from one of her temples and down her cheek before curling under her chin, spreading through the wrinkles of her aged skin.
I went very still. I felt no fear, hardly even any surprise. I just felt clarity. Clarity and cold, sharp curiosity. Moving softly, I crossed the room toward her. Beside her chair I stopped. I bent closer, letting the light from the lamp gleam across the trickle of darkness running down her face.
It was blood.
Someone had hit her on the temple. Moving mostly out of instinct, I checked her breath and her pulse. She was fine. Just unconscious. But who––? The alarm that flared instinctively through me said vampires. But I knew that didn’t compute. Grandmother Rose was a vampire. Why would one attack her?
The next thought to pierce the cold clarity of my mind was harder, more merciless. With it flickered visions of white-washed walls and steel exam tables.
SCHNUET.
Chapter 9
The hair along the back of my neck prickled, lifting my skin into goosebumps. I straightened beside Grandmother Rose’s chair and my eyes roved upward, over the ceiling. Suddenly every patter of sound from above carried a weight of piercing malice. My mind replayed everything I had heard since coming into the cabin: the shifting, the thump, the groan.
Blake getting out of bed? No. It’s them. It’s SCHNUET. They’d come for me, and they’d hurt my friends instead.
Anger flushed through me. It was stronger, more acrimonious than I had expected, considering the coldness of my feelings toward the Nightfalls of late. But in that moment I didn’t care that they had lied to me. I didn’t care that they were vampires, or that they had been using my blood without me knowing. All I cared about was that they were the only family I had. The only family I had ever had. My birth parents had disowned me to the scientific community, who had raised me as a test subject. I had never been loved before the Nightfalls. I had never been protected or cherished.
Forget the lies. Forget the betrayal in my chest when I looked at Vales’ dentures lying on the ground. I hated being lied to, but I hated SCHNUET more. I hated SCHNUET with a fierce, manic passion. They had warped my young childhood into something heinous and ruthless. They were the monsters. Not Twinkle, or any of the others. They might have fangs and glowing eyes, but the scientists of SCHNUET were the true monsters.
Propelled by a frothing hatred, I bolted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. At the landing I began to swing left, toward the cousins’ room, then reversed direction and sprinted down the hallway to the right. Vales’ room. I had to make sure she was ok.
The hallway was dim, but I saw two doors that stood open and one that was closed. Shapes cluttered the doorways. Dark shapes of men wearing gray. Strangers. SCHNUET. I screamed. It was a sharp, broken-glass sound in the back of my mouth that filled my head with yellow lightning. It wasn’t a scream of fear—I was too angry to be afraid—but rather a scream of emotion. It was the sight of SCHNUET in the doorway of Vales’ room, silver, oddly-shaped guns in their hands.
At my scream the men in the hallway jerked toward me, guns lifting. I took advantage of their momentary discomfiture to shoulder my way through three of them and stumble into Vales’ room. She was on the bed, curled into a ball. She was sobbing and shaking.
My anger roared higher. They had hurt her. How? I didn’t see any blood, didn’t see any bruises. A fine silver powder sprinkled the bedspread and the back of her nightgown. I hesitated, not sure what to do—help her, or turn and fight the men behind me—and that was when I woke up to the chaos going on around me.
The men were yelling. “That’s him! That’s him! Take him!”
In the room with the shut door a woman was blabbering in high-pitched hysteria––Valerie. A man was shouting. Victor. Sounds of wild, desperate combat were crashing through the other open door—Blake. A shout of pain, a grunt, a thump.
Blake came swinging out into the hallway, eyes ablaze. “What on earth are you doing in here Valxy?” he gasped. “Run!” He threw a punch at one of the SCHNUET hunters, but another man caught his arm from behind and twisted it about. Blake spun about with a snarl. In the uncertain light of the hallway his fangs gleamed lethally. For a moment everything was a blur, then one of the SCHNUET hunters collapsed with a groan and Blake whirled on the other, who lifted his gun and pointed it at Blake’s face.
I shouted a warning and Blake ducked to the side, but the hunter pulled the trigger. Silver dust rained across the hallway. Blake scrabbled away, howling and trying to dash it from his skin.
So it was the silver dust that hurt them.
“Take him! Take him!”
And then they were coming for me. Only a split-second had passed. I turned first toward the shut door, my breath catching against the panic in my throat. Valerie and Victor were in trouble. But it was me the hunters wanted. If I ran they would chase me. They would leave my family alone.
It was a combination of protectiveness and feral self-preservation that drove me out Vales’ window. My shoulder smashed through the glass and I tumbled out, separated from the sharp edges by the curtains that collapsed around me. Quite naturally I was on the second story, and there wasn’t anything so generous as a gable or piece of room beneath me. It hit the snow twenty feet below and scrambled to my feet, already running. If there hadn’t been snow I probably would have broken either one arm or both, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Five seconds and I’d have healed.
Unfortunately, my plan of escape wasn’t so brilliant as I had first imagined. While I was busy with momentary giddiness at the thought of the SCHNUET hunters having to clamber all the way down the stairs and out the front door to begin chasing me—they wouldn’t want to risk injury jumping out the window like I had—a man garbed in gray stepped out of the tree in front of me and slammed the but of his gun into my head.
I flickered into unconsciousness. It was only momentary, as about three seconds later the bruise on my skull had healed completely and some primal urge inside me pulled me back to wakefulness. I woke in the snow, laying on my back, with three men stooped over me. They were talking, but I didn’t care what they said. My eyes flashed open and I screamed, startling them.
Then I leapt to my feet and ran. One of them grabbed my wrist but I twisted painfully away. Something snapped. Broken. Five steps later and my wrist writhed itself back into place. I tripped my way through a drift, throwing a glance over one shoulder. They were all in pursuit. Mere feet behind me. Faster than me, probably.
More SCHNUET hunters emerged out of the trees to my right, and I veered left. Have to get them away from the cabin. Have to make them leave the Nightfalls alone. Grunting, I skidded around the corner of the cabin and leapt over the front steps. Another hunter lunged out of the door, grabbing for my sweatshirt, but I shrugged it off and left it futilely in his hand.
Then I was in the street, running. My feet flew over the snow, my arms pumping by my sides. Away from the cabin. Away from the Nightfalls. SCHNUET hunters raced after me, shouting. More emerged from the buildings in front of me. Shouts and screams pierced the snowy morning air.
“Get him!” a man with a red stripe on his shoulder yelled, pointing at me.
That’s what they’re trying to do, I thought, and shoved him into the snow as I sped by. Symbiosians stepped out of doorways, heads spinning this way and that as they tried to size up the situation. Men in gray running and shouting. Fanning out around me. Guns in their hands.
A lanky man in a dark trench coat seemed to be the first to understand what was happening, and he pointed across the way to a plump black woman with an apron around her waist. “Louise, take care of him! The rest of you with me!” He sprang of the step of his shop directly into the path of one of the oncoming SCHNUET hunters. The hunter raised his gun, but the lanky man felled him with an uppercut to the jaw. A second hunter intercepted him, and the two went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Around me chaos unfolded. Symbiosians came pouring out of the buildings edging the town’s central square—more than I had seen altogether in one place since I had arrived. Dozens of them emerged, some with guns who looked like they knew how to use them, others brandishing brooms and kitchen knives.
They were defending me. I staggered at the thought of it. A whole town defending me. Putting their lives at risk to save mine. It was a glorious, alien feeling.
“Psst! X blood! This way!”
I whirled, eyes wide. It was the plump black woman with the apron. I slid around the corner of her building with wide eyes. “You have a plan?”
She snorted. “What do you think I am—a cook? Of course I have a plan!” She grabbed my hand and hauled me down a flight of snow-covered steps.
A basement? I peered back up at the sky, uncertain. I didn’t want to be trapped below ground. If anything was going to happen, I wanted a clear route of escape. “Maybe––” I began.
Louise gave me the most frightening no-nonsense look I have ever seen. “Boy,” she said, “I ain’t gonna stand out here bein’ shot at while you decide whether to trust me or not. I’m Director of Security Precautions here at Symbiosia, which makes me the number-one expert when it comes to smuggling certain valuable persons to safety without them bein’ abducted by SCHNUET hunters. Understand?”
I nodded, biting my tongue. Not a cook indeed. Louise unlocked the door at the bottom of the steps and shoved me through.
Inside it was dark. I raised my hands in front of my eyes, instinctively protecting my face, but Louise slammed the door behind us and flicked on a light switch. It was, in fact, a basement. I was relieved to not see any gray-garbed men carrying guns and shouting.
There was nothing on the floor and nothing against the walls; it was an empty cement room with a trap door in the very center of the floor. “That’s not very subtle,” I said.
“Stands out like fireworks on midsummer’s night,” Louise grinned. I spotted the telltale wires at the back of her gums. She was a vampire. “They’ll run right to it.” She lifted a gun from a holster hanging on the wall and slipped it into an apron pocket, then conjured another from her ample bodice. “Take this. You might want it.”
“I’m not going to shoot any––”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Louise waddled to the far wall and began moving her fingers across its system of hairline cracks. “Just oblige me and carry it anyway.” Something happened that my eyes didn’t catch, and a section of wall fell inward. It was small—certainly not large enough for Louise to crawl through—and the same plain cement gray as the rest of the wall.
The trap door is a fake, I realized with a grin. Nice. I stuffed Louise’s gun into my pants pocket and clambered into the square opening. I was on my hands and knees facing forward into darkness before it hit me. “You’re not coming?” I turned to frown at Louise.
She shook her head and chuckled. “Lord save me, boy, do I look like I could go crawlin’ on all fours through three miles of unnerground tunnels?”
She didn’t, but I insisted anyway. “I can’t go without you, Louise. I don’t know my way. What if I get lost? Or what if they catch up to me and no one’s there to save me? Besides, if you stay here they’ll hurt you!”
Louise gave me an admonishing scowl. “Now don’t be daft,” she said, “I’d only slow you down. Tunnel twists about for three miles before dumping you out in a ravine. Follow the ravine southward until it dead-ends. There’s a cave covered by ivy. Go in, all the way to the back. There’s supplies there, enough to last you a couple weeks if you ration. Hopefully by then one of Symbiosia’s scouts will have fou––”
The basement door thumped twice, hard. Dust rained down around its edges. I knew I had to go. “Thank you!” I said with quiet earnestness, gripping Louise’s hand.
She waved me inside. “Go on now, boy. No need to hang around for the fun.” As she swung the hidden piece of wall shut the basement door shook three more times. There came the sound of metal bending.
And then I was sealed in darkness. I held my breath. I knew I should go, but I was anxious to hear what happened. Ear pressed up against the inside of the wall, I listened. There was a bang. Men’s voices, shouting. Threatening. Then Louise: “What do you think I am—some sorta smugglin’ con? Look at the apron, idiots—I’m a cook!”
And then gunshots.
I turned and scrambled away.
The tunnel burrowed away into darkness. It was dry for the most part, which was nice, but it was also very cramped. Not so cramped that I had trouble moving—with the sounds of gunfire behind me and sweat pour
ing down my face, I didn’t have any trouble at all clambering along at a decent rate—not so cramped that I had trouble moving, but cramped enough that an ache began to develop in my shoulders and back after only a few minutes. I couldn’t stand, and even squatting and shuffling along proved not worth the extra time it took. So hands and knees it was.
Occasionally light filtered down into the tunnel through a street grate or drainage vent above, and I caught sounds of the fight transpiring above. Gunshots volleyed back and forth through the streets of Symbiosia. I heard shouts and screams of pain that sent frissons of panic lancing through my chest. People were dying out there. I could almost feel it in the hollowness of my gut. They were dying for me.
Faster, faster! Boots scuffed across the grate above me and I scrabbled past. Was it one of SCHNUET? I glanced upward and saw gray. Cursed. Crawled faster, until the wash of light from the grate was buried behind fold after fold of darkness.
Faster! I had to reach the end of the tunnel and escape. SCHNUET would have their hunters ranging out through the forest once they couldn’t find me in Symbiosia. They would find the hidden door in the basement wall and come after me. I had to be gone long before, I had to––
But wait! I jerked to a stop, panting and spluttering. Vales! What about her? The picture flashed through my head, of her curled on the bed sobbing. Covered in silver dust. They had hurt her. The anger flared again, hard in my chest.
But I checked myself. What could I do? I was their quarry. If I showed myself, even for a dozen seconds, every SCHNUET hunter in the Swiss Alps would be upon me in a heartbeat. I couldn’t fight them all off. And once I was their prisoner, the Nightfalls and everyone in Symbiosia would be doubly at their mercy.
I can’t do it, I thought, clenching my hands in the darkness. I can’t protect them. A muscle in my jaw writhed. I hated feeling helpless. Helplessness had been the consuming emotion of my early childhood, and it was anathema to every cell in my body. It was a horrible, wicked thing.
