“The life of a Feral vampire cannot be considered a proper life at all; they are to us as rabid dogs are to wolfhounds. They are not properly alive—and yet their condition ensures that—nor can they properly die. What is an Elder without his brood? What is a vampire outside of the Predatory Society?”
The Litany of the Elders On Ferals
Rain, the feel of it soft and cleansing as it falls on her upturned face. Even though the girl is soaked through to the skin, she is not cold. Instead, Tay feels refreshed. Clean. Pure.
There is light in her eyes, flashing across her vision, dappling her face in the glare of the sun, and then the shadow of the passing clouds. The girl always liked the summer thunder storms that boiled out of the mountains, quick and refreshingly cool. They always arrived after a few days of terribly oppressive heat and burning sunshine. The height of summer; they were like a benediction.
The girl didn’t mind about getting soaked through – she knew her parents would probably be mad at her, but she was young and in love with being alive. Her whole future was ahead of her, and nothing could ever change.
The shadows over her eyes deepened, and Tay felt a shiver of cold air over her. Maybe the storm was getting heavier. She dared herself to open her eyes.
Darkness. Above her, there was only darkness – as if the whole summer had been taken away in an instant.
She felt cold and looked down from the darkness overhead to find her path back home, and that was when she saw it. She was wet, but it hadn’t been raining water on her.
It had been raining blood. The girl screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
**
“Tay! Wake up, it’s okay!” She was being shaken awake by none other than Rat-Mother Zhang herself of the underground community of Ferals, calling themselves the Collective.
Zhang, with her electric-red-dyed hair looking like a wig, but separated into a bob and a few braids around her ears, her eyes wide and dark from all of her time spent living underground, her skin as pale as the moon. She wore the utilitarian rags of the renegade outcast vampires of the Collective: A mixture of surplus military gear and biker’s leathers. She had seemed to almost take their newest addition under her wing for the past twenty-four hours since Tay Maslov had arrived in the sewers.
Maybe it is because she suspects me of being a spy, Tay thought grumpily as she sat up, looking down at the cup of blood that she had recently been dreaming.
The dark kindred, the vampires, didn’t dream as other mortals did. When they went into their daylight torpors, then it was dark and dreamless, as if they had been dunked under deep waters. Their only opportunity to dream was the strange feeding-memories that they encouraged when drinking blood. Some vampires recollected their time as a mortal, others dreamed of their deepest desires, wants, needs. For Tay, it had always been a dream of her childhood – before she had become one of the immortal undead.
Why was I freaking out? She rubbed her eyes, looking suspiciously at the cup of blood that Zhang had recently given her. Why did that bother me? I live on blood now. I am, after all, a vampire.
Zhang, the Feral, the leader of the Collective, and a kindred who would be put to death on sight if she ever went above ground to the city of New York above, was looking at her oddly.
“What were you dreaming?” she asked, and her voice wouldn’t brook any refusal.
“Ah, it’s just something...” Tay tried to blink through her confusion. “I was drowning. Drowning in blood.”
“Hmm.” Zhang didn’t say anything, just nodded, and made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat.
I hope that she doesn’t suspect, the young woman found herself thinking. Tay had only been in the secret hideout of the Collective for less than a day, and she had less than a few hours left to get back to Manhattan, to the Archon Bethania, vampire ruler of Manhattan.
Zhang was looking at their newest feral with her steady gaze, not letting anything go.
I hope that she doesn’t suspect that I am a traitor to her cause, Tay found herself thinking.
The Collective down here lived a life of organised desperation. Their giant disused water-pump room was the epicentre of their territory in the city below. From it there branched different repurposed tunnels and rooms, once used by the city maintenance crews and now taken over by the Ferals for their stores, ammunition dumps, and makeshift homes. As vampires, they didn’t need to sleep much, and so only required stacked crates, beds, or even re-used coffins for beds. With no natural sunlight down here either, they were under no pressure to hide from the burn of the sun.
Instead, they were a hive of activity. Teams left every few hours to scout and forage through the city’s dark underbelly, sometimes returning with clothes, stolen goods, or even stolen blood packs.
They have quite the sophisticated operation down here, Tay found herself admiring it. It was so different from the world of Blood Banks, Archons, of who was in favor or who was being shunned above. The world of the vampire kindred was often a puzzling and a dazzlingly confusing one – which very few kindred could navigate without falling prey to the bad opinions of another vampire sooner or later.
But down here, it is all different, Tay realized. The vampires – natural predators – we are all working together down here. Helping each other. Perhaps not thriving, but supporting even...
Tay felt oddly disloyal about what she was about to do next.
But I have to if I am ever to regain my own status as a non-feral. If I am ever to have my life back. The thought rose unbidden in Tay’s mind as she sat companionably beside Zhang and looked out at the Collective’s comings and goings. What if she were to decide to stay? Abandon the upside world? Just live down here with the other renegades and outcasts?
No. Although it was appealing, Tay also knew that she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just for her sake, it was also for the sake of the other vampires, servitors, and mortals that she knew over in her home suburb of Brooklyn. If she left them to the clutches of the maddened Archon Jeremiah... who knows what would happen?
And if Kaiden was right about the Shifters and Lubok, Tay mused, and bit her lip, then maybe none of us will ever be safe again.
She had made her decision. Tay turned to Zhang and smiled. “You know what, Zhang? I think I’ve decided I’ll stay,” she lied.
The Rat-Mother smiled, nodding. “Good. I thought that you might, and we could do with someone tough, like you.” The leader of the Collective was currently sorting out her pockets, full of their useful assorted knives, ammo-clips, ropes, whistles, and bits and bobs, discarding what was unnecessary.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Rat-Mother...” Tay continued, “I’d like to know my way around. Where’s where, what’s what. Where do you get all of this blood from, for instance – and do you need a hand with the patrols?” she asked with a nonchalant smile, one that belied her real reasoning.
Zhang just looked at her suspiciously, before nodding slowly. “Okay. You can come with me.” The scarlet-haired woman pushed herself up from the table and led her new charge through the warren of the encampment and into the tunnels beyond.
**
The Elder led Tay through the main room, and the younger vampire noticed how she always shared a word or a nod with those she passed. It’s like she’s an Archon. Tay found herself watching the one they called ‘Rat-Mother’ carefully. She was liked and respected, as much as any of the Archons on the ground above (more, probably).
And she wasn’t feared, Tay thought. Maybe I should tell her who sent me. Maybe she would understand...
But then Tay also saw the way that the Ferals talked about the vampire society up there, the Archons and their Servitors. She even heard one of them using the derogatory Shifter term for them.
“Leeches,” the vampire with the long, dirty pale hair said.
“Really?” Tay found herself asking her. “Aren’t we all?”
The pale-haired Feral laughed. “I’ve never leeched off of anything in my un-life!” she cackled. “And I reckon that the Shifters are half right, y’know. Those Elders up there just sit in their holes, nursing their vendettas and lording it over everyone like they are the height of all existence or evolution or whatever...” the vampire cackled. “When you’ve spent some time down here, snatching rats and begging on the streets for a scrap or two, you soon come to see that being an Elder is nothing special, my dear.” This one’s eye teeth were dirty and cracked. “Those ones up there are the leeches. They leech off of the other vampires and the mortals, and us.”
“Agreed,” another said behind her, and another.
“Come on, let’s not get them riled up,” Rat-Mother said under her breath, showing Tay to where a flap of curtain obscured another tunnel. “That way. You see a lot of them have some very strong views about the Archon system.”
On the other side of the curtain there was a semi-circular archway made of old tilework, leading into a dank tunnel with a string of bulbs hung up along the walls. The Rat-Mother nodded that this was the way that they had to go.
“But, I don’t understand...” Tay pushed. “If these Ferals down here – we Ferals, I mean – if we were suddenly allowed to wander upside with no more hunting or persecution... wouldn’t we end up hunting and farming the mortals just as the Elders do topside anyway?”
Their feet splashed in the dark of the tunnel as Zhang kept up a swift pace. “There are different camps,” the unofficial Archon replied. “Some want to institute their own system, like the Archons, but fairer perhaps. All Ferals immediately pardoned, that kind of thing. Others...” Zhang shrugged. “They want a different system. They think that if we returned to a primordial state: us hunting the mortals and the Shifters hunting us, then it would all be for the better. Cleaner, more honest somehow.”
“It’s be bloody and brutal, that’s what.” Tay found herself cursing out loud. “Everyone hunting each other in the middle of the streets!”
“Isn’t it brutal already?” Zhang returned. “Shifter incursions, Ferals being executed, mortals carted off to be drained dry at Blood Banks? You can’t blame the Elders down here for it wanting to be different.”
“Hmm.” Tay nodded. She has a point. It would be more...honest, at least.
Their tunnel opened out into a wider space, still dingy, with only a few lights hanging. A persistent electric hum filled the air, as did a large selection of medical-grade refrigeration units.
“And here’s where we keep most of the blood.” Zhang gestured proudly, stepping into the underground room.
“I still don’t understand where you get all of this from,” Tay said, looking up at the large units, each a walk-in unit capable of holding several hundred units of blood.
“We have some friends topside who look out for us,” Zhang said. “Not everybody upside agrees with how the Archons run things.”
“I can see – these look straight from the Blood Banks!” Tay said, and she didn’t have to feign amazement.
But time is running out, Tay thought. If I don’t get the information I need and get back to Archon Bethania, then I’ll be outcast forever...
“Well, you’re not going to be surprised then...” Zhang said, walking to the nearest refrigerator to open it, revealing rack upon rack of blood bags, each in their special plasticized containers. Mortals were ordered to ‘pay’ with blood donations every month, and could even decide to pay things like rent, bad loans, or favors with donations of the special stuff.
We seem to be getting on well enough, so... Tay took a breath and asked her question as Zhang handed her a blood bag.
“Tell me, Rat-Mother, when I was still in Brooklyn, there were some tales of...” Tay sought for the words. “Elders who took to dreaming and it went wrong...”
“What do you mean?” Zhang looked at her askance.
Tay swallowed nervously. “Drugged blood. The Archons gave warnings that we were to stay away from hunting random mortals because there was a new drug on the scene that could incapacitate an Elder.” The girl winced as she remembered the weakness, stiffness, and complete helplessness that she had experienced when she herself had been targeted by the drug-carrying Blood Dolls.
“But Elders don’t take on the drugs from their victims,” Zhang said, to which Tay nodded. It was the accepted truth – which was also what made this new drug so very terrifying for the Elder vampire community.
“This one is different. I was told that it’s some new drug that the Blood Dolls and Blood Brothers are taking – and that it doesn’t affect them so much, but in the vampires that feed off of them, it causes terrible pain.”
I won’t tell them the part that Kaiden told me, about how it was a drug engineered by Lubok, the leader of the Shifters, to try to weaken the Elders’ grip on the cities, Tay thought.
Zhang held her gaze for a while before speaking. “Well... I’m glad that you asked.” She tore the top from her own blood bag marked with a symbol of the Blood Banks, a large red stamp declaring it to be nearing its use-by date, along with the specific logo of the Bank from which it was taken. There was something about the logo that pulled at Tay’s memory, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Tay took a swig from her own bag, instantly tasting the warm, nourishing food, feeling the rush of endorphins that always accompanied it...
“I thought you said that you were from Manhattan,” Zhang said, her voice getting fainter as Tay tried to fight the overwhelming surge of the dream that was about to take over.
Tay felt her eyes closing heavily, flashes of light behind her eyes. “Uh, that’s right. I only travelled to Brooklyn a few times... I’ve got friends there...”
It was getting harder for Tay to talk. Sometimes feeding was like that, depending on how malnourished the body of the Elder was. The dream that hit could be powerful and all-encompassing, or it could be light and transitory; a mere taste at the back of the mouth. Tay gasped, and was surprised at the force of feelings that threatened to take the conscious moment away from her. She had fed just a little while ago, and usually the subconscious didn’t react so quickly as this when the body was full.
“I see.” Zhang was already turning away from her, putting her own bag of blood down as she moved to another tunnel on the other side of the room. She appeared to be waving her hand, signalling to someone-
“I have also heard a few things about this drugged blood,” Zhang was saying.
“Oh?” Tay had to hold onto the wall for support. The feeling of euphoria was quickly turning in her stomach, becoming unease and discomfort. She had felt this feeling before. She looked down to her own blood bag that she had so recently fed from. It was different from the one that the Rat-Mother had. It had a different logo.
What was so familiar about the Rat-Mother’s blood bag? The logo from the Blood Bank?
“I’ve heard that it is a way to fight back against the Archons,” Zhang said, just as Tay remembered. The logo from the blood bag that Zhang had been feeding from was the same as on the blood packs that Kaiden had got her. Wherever he was getting his illicit blood, she was too.
It can’t be a coincidence. Who feeds Shifters and Ferals? Tay’s thoughts were starting to spin out of control. Her vision started to darken before her very eyes.
“She’s in here.” Tay heard the Rat-Mother announce to someone, just as dark shapes started to emerge from the tunnel. Large, hulking shapes that smelled of sweat, dirt, and forest.
Shifters.