One month before the WWDE…
Gilbert Kirkus had never been the strongest, but usually was the brightest. Addicted to knowledge, his face was always in a book. Along with being gifted, he studied hard. Columbia for his undergrad and MIT for his PhD. He had no equal in his class.
Everyone had been bigger and stronger than Kirkus, but he refused to be intimidated by size.
Kirkus had become one of the top engineers with a defense contractor. His ambition started to outweigh his thirst for knowledge. He didn’t understand why he hadn’t been vaulted into the CEO’s corner office. Kirkus learned what it was like to hate.
One evening, the company met with a group of strange people who had a different air about them. The leadership of Kirkus’s firm seemed to be afraid of this group. Kirkus had simply been curious. He was invited as the senior engineer, despite his newfound abrasiveness, because the group had some interesting proposals and a short timeline for implementation.
The group, headed by Mister Smith, would only meet at night. Kirkus didn’t believe that was the pasty-looking man’s real name, but he had the appropriate clearance, which meant that he’d been vetted.
Kirkus didn’t care about any of that. He was fascinated by their claims of working with certain technologies, like nanites that worked within the bloodstream and anti-gravity for propulsion. Kirkus was taken by both.
Mr. Smith’s small entourage showed some of the math and discussed just enough of the engineering to convince Kirkus. No one else understood. The contractor’s leadership considered the information to be theoretical and were dismissive. They remained fearful. Kirkus could see it in their eyes. They only wanted the group to go away.
Not Kirkus. He believed, and he was smitten.
When the meeting wrapped up at midnight, the group invited Kirkus to join them at a downtown club. Although he’d never been interested in Washington D.C.’s nightlife, he didn’t want to miss an opportunity to question them further about the math and science.
He almost forgot his ambitions when these new challenges appeared.
That night, he learned Mr. Smith’s true nature. That night, he learned the most important lesson of his life—that he could never go back.
***
Kirkus woke in a strange bed, in a strange room.
The change.
The nanocytes coursing through his body. He could feel what they were doing to him.
Or was it only in his mind?
Kirkus gripped the edge of the bed as his mind and his body wrestled for control.
Jekyll and Hyde. Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Visions raced through his mind on a river of pain.
The hunger. His stomach twisted in knots. It wanted what it wanted, nothing that he’d ever tasted before but had to have.
He tore from the room, singularly focused on one thing. No one was there.
Kirkus was all alone. But there were sounds, noises from outside.
He yanked the door open to a fading sunset. The brightness of the setting sun slammed into him like a shockwave.
He was thrown back and landed heavily. Kirkus crawled to a dark corner, out of the light and away from the pain as he nursed the burns on his tender skin. He passed out.
When he woke up, it was the middle of night, dark outside. Hands were fumbling through his clothes. The man jumped back when he saw the glowing red eyes.
“Whoa, buddy, sorry. We thought you was homeless just like us. You know how it is. Nothing personal, friend. We’ll leave you be,” the other man said as he finished going through Kirkus’s pockets.
Kirkus grabbed the man by the throat in a crushing grip. He stood and lifted the stranger until his feet dangled above the ground. The first man tried to run. Kirkus kicked his feet. The man stumbled and fell. Kirkus held him down with his foot.
The hunger, it pulled him in. He knew what to do without ever having done it before.
His body knew.
Kirkus’s canines extended, hollowed, and he bit deeply into the man’s neck, finding the carotid.
Nourishment. So much more than eating.
Kirkus threw the shriveled corpse to the side as his body reveled in the strength surging through his veins. There was more he could eat, but not yet. His mind came back to him, seeking to regain control.
“Not yet, my friend, but I have plans for you,” Kirkus told the terrified man squirming underfoot.
Kirkus picked him up, punched him a few times to settle him, and carried the man upstairs where he locked him inside the room in which Kirkus had earlier found himself.
He had found a new him. The pain had unleashed something incredible.
***
Kirkus only saw Mr. Smith one more time, on the night before the WWDE. As a fellow Vampire, Kirkus was one of the newcomers, subordinate to Mr. Smith, who had shared his nanocytes and allowed Kirkus to change, become one of the elite.
One of the Forsaken, as others called them.
“What do you think of our ride?” Mr. Smith asked from within the small hangar on the outskirts of a rural Virginia town.
“Not very aerodynamic,” were the first words out of Kirkus’s mouth.
“Stop thinking like a Neanderthal,” Mr. Smith had cautioned. “What if air resistance was eliminated by creating a bubble around the ship, by accelerating by way of anti-gravity device using standard Newtonian physics?”
“It’s not theory?” Kirkus asked. Mr. Smith backhanded Kirkus across the face.
“I thought you were supposed to be smart. We don’t have time for me to paint a picture for you. Accept what you see and we can continue.” The Vampire looked down at him. Kirkus was appropriately chastened, while at the same time invigorated. He was being intellectually challenged. His body had become something incredible.
And his mind. He found that he heard wisps from other people’s minds. He erected walls to stop the bombardment of nonsense. He didn’t want to be bothered by their limited understanding of the universe. Mr. Smith was a telepath, a rarity in the Unknown World, of which Kirkus had only recently been made a member.
“Exactly,” Mr. Smith said aloud. “We can’t be bothered by the trivial. Rise above it all, my son. Know that we are higher on the food chain. Normal humans are beneath us. Now and for all time, they will be beneath us. They are beasts of burden, tools, and food. Nothing more.”
Kirkus nodded his agreement. He could see the wisdom in it all. The pain was gone. He’d survived his rite of passage, while reducing the homeless population of D.C.
They were food. Nothing more.
“The Sacred Clan Weretigers brought us this gift, a pod that they claim they stole from Bethany Anne’s people.” Mr. Smith made a face, “We believe it is technology from New Schwabenland, but either way, it is more advanced than anything with regular propulsion.”
When the world collapsed, Kirkus was still in the remote town studying the pod, as they called it. He’d been assigned a watcher from the Sacred Clan itself, a beautiful Chinese woman named Yanmei.
Vampires, Weretigers, and technology so advanced that only science fiction had dreamed of it.
Kirkus found that he didn’t care if humanity survived or not. He waited a couple weeks, dining regularly on looters who stopped by the hangar. It was convenient that food came to him, almost like room service. He laughed as he gained strength.
Yanmei started training him how to fight. He’d never had to before and figured that he would be able to overcome any enemy, simply because of the power within.
The Weretiger told him that a time would come when that wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to fight and fight well.
She remained distant. He expected they’d become lovers. He learned quickly that that wouldn’t be the case, and would never be the case. She kicked his ass so hard, it made him question who was higher on the food chain. She liked it that way, but he improved quickly until he could stand his own against her.
In no time, he discovered that he was faster and stronger.
&nbs
p; Vampires.
The top of the food chain.
CHAPTER ONE
WWDE + 50 years
The room was darkened. It was meant to be, as most prisons were. Kirkus had gone to great lengths to prepare this room for this very purpose.
Great lengths and great sacrifice, but the Forsaken’s trophy was there, hanging in the chains. Kirkus was both triumphant and furious.
Terry Henry Walton winced in pain and gasped for air. His nanocytes fought to keep up with the damage done to his body, but they were losing the battle.
The chains cut into his wrists; blood dripped slowly down his arms. One shoulder was dislocated. He’d hung there too long, feet barely touching the ground, unable to support himself when he passed out.
The Forsaken looked at his prisoner, pleased that the feeding marks still shown waxy red, but that didn’t outweigh his anger. He was furious that Terry’s nanocytes had killed one of his minions.
The bite that killed.
Kirkus considered himself a genius for not attempting the first feeding on the enhanced Terry Henry Walton. That he made a minion do it.
The Forsaken had yet to ask Terry any questions. He didn’t need to. At the moment, Terry passed out and the instant when he returned to consciousness, he was vulnerable and Kirkus exploited that. Even with the anguish of being in chains, Terry maintained enough mental discipline to hold back most of the Vampire’s probes.
Once Kirkus was inside Terry’s incredible mind, he explored much that the human thought about, his enhancements at Bethany Anne’s hand, his exploits with the FDG, and his work with Akio.
Especially his work with Akio.
Kirkus had seen TH’s moral compass, and it made his Forsaken hair stand on end. Kirkus had never met an individual like Terry Henry Walton. A pure soul, some would call him. A person who knew Forsaken and didn’t hate them. He considered them people who deserved a chance to prove themselves.
He saw the colonel joking with the one called Joseph. A Forsaken and the human, having a laugh. Kirkus made a fist and drove it into TH’s ribs. The colonel grunted as his head lolled on his sweaty chest.
Terry’s tongue felt like a dry rag stuffed in his mouth. The air didn’t come quickly enough, and he stopped fighting it, letting himself slip into the darkness.
And Kirkus dove back in at that moment of weakness.
North Chicago
Char’s eyes locked on Timmons’s, the purple flaring. Without warning, her fist lashed out, shattering his eye socket and sending him sprawling. She growled, more animal than human.
“If you fucking limp dicks had done your job, Terry wouldn’t have been captured. HOW IN THE FUCK DID YOU LET THAT HAPPEN?” she screamed, spittle flying from her mouth. The pack had failed her, had failed the entire community.
She viciously kicked a withering body.
“Look at this shit! He fought this fucking army by himself,” she snarled. Eight Forsaken lay dead, shredded by whip and knife. TH had not gone easily. No whining, no running. He had fought, toe-to-toe, but in the end, there had been too many. She studied the marks on the ground. At least four of them had carried Terry into their ship.
“We heard it take off, but we didn’t hear it land. How?” she wondered, but none of the pack knew.
“Cory?” Char asked her daughter.
Cordelia had grown into a near twin of her mother over the past twenty-five years.
Time had been kind to them both. The only difference between them was in their eyes and the faint scar that trailed to the edge of Char’s mouth from the fight with her former mate decades earlier.
Cory’s twenty-six-year-old body was lean and hard. She carried herself confidently and spoke intelligently. Her blue eyes sparkled, just like her father’s. Her hair was almost like her mother’s. She had the silver streak down the side, except Cory’s hair was black. Her mark of the Werewolf was her furry wolf ears.
She considered that her cross to bear, especially since she wasn’t a Werewolf.
It wasn’t a very heavy cross, though, and she wore her hair long, to keep her ears covered as much as possible.
“It is Dad’s blood, but not a terrible amount. He was unconscious when they carried him away. For whatever reason, I know in my heart and soul that he is still alive. We must move quickly, overwhelm them as they overwhelmed him. Is Akio on his way?” Cory asked.
“Soon. He told us yesterday that he would have to deal with a small Forsaken infestation in China. It cannot have been a coincidence. I don’t care why, except in how that will help us know where he is. Then we go get him as soon as possible. All of us.” Her last statement was aimed at the pack--Timmons, Ted, Adams, Merritt, Shonna, and Sue. She also included the Weretiger Aaron and the Werebear Gene in her piercing gaze.
No one disputed her. She was the alpha, and her mate had been taken.
The sun was just starting to rise. The ship that had carried Terry away should not have existed. It had been almost fifty years since the fall, the World’s Worst Day Ever, and industry was starting to make a comeback, but not enough to build airplanes.
“Maybe it was a pod or some alien craft. Have they returned to Earth? Has Bethany Anne lost the battle and we’re being invaded?” Char wondered, looking helplessly at the tracks on the ground and where the aircraft’s landing struts had crushed the grass.
“No,” Timmons ventured. Terry Henry Walton left all the evidence behind that they needed. “It was a Forsaken who has been rebuilding, just like we’re doing here, but he’s flown under our radar. Now we know he’s there, and we’ll make him pay.”
Timmons rubbed his crushed eye socket as his nanocytes knitted the bone together, rebuilding his face. The pain was mostly gone. He didn’t want another beating. He only wanted what was best for the pack, and that was to recover the alpha’s mate.
“What do we tell the people?” Aaron asked softly.
Char looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She hadn’t thought that far ahead.
***
Time had not been kind to Billy Spires, but he was blessed in different ways. Marcie had grown up to be a lovely blond woman, short like her parents.
Billy and Felicity would have never guessed, on that first day when Terry Henry Walton walked into their lives, that their families would become inextricably linked and they would become lifelong friends.
Kaeden had grown up to be a hearty young man. Everyone was surprised that neither he nor Kimber joined the Force de Guerre. The FDG had its place, and although Kae and Kim often trained with them, they didn’t deploy.
Their pasts made them appreciate family life so much that it physically pained them to be apart. When Marcie turned sixteen, Kae was in his early twenties. She blossomed, and he was smitten. They’d been friends forever, but she had always been a child.
Until she wasn’t. All of a sudden, she became a woman, and Kaeden turned awkward. As soon as they started dating, he returned to being himself and they became inseparable. They waited before having children, but that was inevitable too, further cementing the family bond between Terry and Billy.
Billy leaned heavily on his cane. Marcie fussed over her toddler while Kaeden carried the baby. Felicity still looked young and vibrant. Like Char, she appeared to be a sister to her daughter, not her mother.
And she definitely did not look like a grandmother.
“Had I known that you received the gift of nanocytes, I wouldn’t have changed anything,” Billy said, his rough voice barely more than a croak. His hard life had caught up with him as he approached sixty-five years of age.
“I honestly never knew,” Felicity drawled. “One day not long after the fall, I was hiding in the ruins. Someone came and I ran. I fell and was badly injured. When I woke up, I was different. Healed but different.”
She shook her head as she thought back to that time. Afterward, she felt stronger and healed quickly whenever she was injured. That was when she headed for the hills, deciding to stay out of sight until she cou
ld find someone with enough power to make her comfortable.
She found New Boulder and Billy Spires. “When Terry showed up, I sensed that he had something similar to what I had, but so much greater. You know, Billy, I never wanted to be different like that. I wanted to be young and beautiful, but that was a stupid teenager’s dream.”
Felicity hugged her husband, holding him to keep from pushing the frail man down.
“This is the part that makes me question how worthwhile it was. I’m going to lose you, Billy, and here I am, forced to live on without you. Marcie doesn’t have the nanocytes, and neither do their kids. My greatest fear is that I’m going to outlive them all.” Her blue eyes started to glisten. She blinked because she didn’t want to cry. “Be careful what you ask for, because you may get it.”
A tear trailed down Felicity’s beautiful cheek. Her hair was styled, and she wore makeup like she always did. That was her persona, perpetually beautiful. She had always been the mayor’s wife, it seemed, but no longer.
She was simply called the mayor now.
Without Billy, time was losing its luster. She thought about stepping down and moving on, but that wasn’t what she wanted either. She liked being able to manage the town, take care of the people. Felicity wasn’t going to get her greatest desire. She only wanted to grow old.
She laughed out loud.
“My, how times change, don’t they, Billy dear?” she quipped, not expecting a response. He looked at her and smiled.
“I’ll sit here and watch you play with the kids,” he told her. They’d installed a bench outside the mayor’s building a long time back. It was Billy and Felicity’s favorite place. They watched the entire community pass through Mayor’s Park at one point or another. It hosted all the best social gatherings of North Chicago.
Felicity patted Billy’s arm and hurried down the steps into the park to join Kaeden and Marcie. For yet another in a seemingly infinite number of times, she walked on the grass of Mayor’s Park.
This was their home and grass was their reward for moving from New Boulder to North Chicago. Terry Henry and Charumati had made that happen, saved the people, saved the town.
Nomad Omnibus 02: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (A Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Omnibus) Page 58
