“When the Servitor has served the term of a normal mortal human life in the service of his Elder, he may be chosen to be raised up for that full transformation. The Servitor has to have full loyalty to the predatory society, must have ultimate faith and devotion to their Archon, and an appetite for blood...”
The Litany of the Elders: The Role of the Servitor
The servitor Matthias had swapped his usual white uniform for the drab greys and blacks of the Elite Tactical Unit: all themselves servitors, bonded by blood to an Elder, all in the employ of the Archon Jeremiah.
He felt vaguely ridiculous in this get-up, although he had received full military training as he had progressed through the ranks to the top job in Brooklyn’s predatory society (for a mortal, anyway). He was fully expecting to be asked to become an Elder himself in just a few months...
Or I had, before all of this business with the new drug sweeping the streets, he thought to himself. Or if it wasn’t for the current obsession that Archon Jeremiah had with synthesizing the Shifter-Lych virus.
Servitor Matthias was, he recognised, well past the time that any other servitor in his position would have been invited to join the ranks of the Elders of the predatory society. It was only because of the fact that he worked for what many considered to be the worst, most arrogant, most selfish Archon in the entire city of New York, that he wasn’t.
It’s not that Archon Jeremiah hates me, per se. Matthias rolled his carbon-graphite shoulder pads one more time, feeling their weight and movement. More that he hates every mortal.
The irony that all Elders were once mortals was not entirely lost on the Servitor, but it was a fallacy that his leader did not seem to be able to penetrate so easily. Matthias rather thought that if the Archon Jeremiah could get away with never making another Elder in his life (and thus adding to the many others that he had to respect and pay attention to), then never would be too soon for him.
And what was stopping him from doing that? Matthias wondered privately to himself. The Archon could feasibly live forever – or at least the next five hundred years before even he was too much of a husk to move. He might never make another Elder, Matthias realized. He might never allow me to become an Elder!
The thought of his entire life rushing past as he watched his master never grow any older started to enrage the servitor. He knew that he should be humble, that he should accept his good fortune. As a servitor – a mortal who was allowed to drink the blood of the Elders themselves – he could well live for another hundred years without any ill effects.
It was just galling that everything that he had worked for, sacrificed, and had to do would have absolutely no impact at the end of the day.
Even though the servitor was not allowed to acknowledge it, he was angry. He shuffled in his boots as he waited at the head of the line, shuffling down the passageway to their destination.
Fzzp! There was a slight buzz from the device that he held in one hand, next to the automatic rifle, and he consulted it miserably. The RFID tracker had come on line again. Somewhere, many hundreds of metres above, there was a low-flying drone-satellite with enough microwave, radio, and x-ray technology packed on board to be able to pierce through the layers of concrete and detect the signal of the device that the Archon Bethania of Manhattan had her new charge implanted with.
Elder Tay, Matthias thought sadly. Matthias hadn’t exactly liked her. No one liked the Elders at all, but she had been a young vampire, and had spent a lot of her time either being courted by Archon Jeremiah or following him around, star-struck in his power and grace. Matthias had wanted to tell her when she was first turned not to get too attached to the young Archon of Brooklyn. He had a habit of ‘making’ pretty girls and Blood Dolls his personal harem of Elders (whilst ignoring life-long, long-suffering servitors such as Matthias).
But the Elder Tay would never have listened to a lowly mortal anyway. It had been sad to see her become a Feral, but Matthias hadn’t been particularly surprised. The Archon Jeremiah had a vindictive streak a mile wide.
No, what had surprised everyone in Brooklyn, however, was the urgent conference message from the Archon Bethania of Manhattan, saying that she had just sent one of Jeremiah’s so- called ‘pet projects’ down to flush out the Ferals down there, and dig up any truth to the rumor that a new anti-Lych drug was on the market; some kind of street drug that affected any vampire feeding off of a mortal intoxicated with it.
The Archon Jeremiah had, of course, been totally incensed that Tay could be ‘working for the enemy’, as he saw it. The Archon promised to kill her, to rip out her lungs, to tear up her heart, to feed her to the Shifters himself.
Matthias wondered whether it was secretly worse that Tay had not quietly skulked away as the outcast that Jeremiah had wanted her to become, or that she was apparently thriving under a rival Archon’s power.
If being used as a spy counts as thriving, that is, the Servitor thought. In the end, however, Jeremiah had no other option but to agree to Bethania’s demands. He would share joint responsibility for the strike force that would attack the Feral base (on Bethania’s district territory, he was certain to add). Together they would get to the bottom of this mess, and return to their districts as part of a glorious, save-the-city effort.
Matthias rolled his eyes. In actual fact, it did not take a genius to realize that all that was happening was that Archon Bethania was getting Archon Jeremiah to clean up her Feral problem for her. But the Archon Jeremiah either had other plans in motion, or was too enraged to notice the manipulation.
Maybe I should offer my services to Archon Bethania, Matthias wondered as the tracker in front of him blipped once more. Tay was just ahead, a few hundred metres maybe, but so was a den of Ferals.
Matthias nodded, and all hell broke loose.
**
The Elite Contact Tactical Unit burst into the main pumping room like stinging hornets. Matthias was the first, charging through the tunnel opening to roll on the floor, standing up to deliver a full blast of automatic bullets into a young vampire with a skull tattooed on his face.
His body writhed, jiggled obscenely, erupting in blood and gristle before falling backwards. Matthias took aim at the next, and fired again.
The screams that went up around the room were only matched by the snarls as vampires suddenly gave themselves over to the viral transformation always waiting in their blood. Matthias knew that they had to kill as many as possible in as short a time as possible, because a full den of vampires – even Ferals, would be a very hard thing to beat by mere Servitors.
But the Tactical Unit consisted of all military professionals, trained by the best, and good at what they did. Usually they were up against mortals, it had to be said – but at least half had probably seen action fighting Shifter incursions. They moved like beetles – scurrying low, stopping, firing; quick, jerky movements as they turned, fired again, and scurried some more.
Matthias didn’t have time to really register what was going on, or to get a good look at his surroundings, but he kept on firing and moving, moving and firing.
The room that they were in was almost an amphitheatre, but its many additions by the community was making it slow-going for the attack team. They had the element of surprise – but there were too many obstacles to hide behind and crawl under; the Ferals were beginning to move deeper into the room.
“Head for the tunnels! Block the exits!” Matthias was roaring, aiming his weapon at the tunnel opening that one Feral had just recently leapt into. There was a startled screech, a scream, and then silence.
The Tactical Unit started moving through the Collective territory, the whole room echoing with the sounds of thunder and torment. They were starting to experience resistance, and Matthias saw one beggar-like vampire rise up from his rags, easily seven feet tall and brandishing a sword.
The servitor watched in horror as the dishevelled Feral cleanly took off the heads of two servitor-soldiers in one sweep, before three more unloaded a clip into him.
“Grenades!” Matthias called, and started to direct his charges to move over to phase two of the operation. He threw his first into the tunnel he had just shot into, before crouching and covering his ears as a loud roar and dust blew out of it again. With any luck, they would also cause some of the tunnels to collapse, killing any that were getting away and trapping those that hadn’t. Matthias moved to the next tunnel, a smooth overhand throw delivering the next deadly payload.
Elsewhere around the Collective encampment, those Tactical Unit servitors who were not directly engaged with Ferals at the time started to repeat the procedure. They threw handfuls of the deadly devices into the tunnels that they passed, causing the ground to shake and the air to fill with dust and smoke.
I was assured by Bethania that the ceiling wouldn’t fall on our heads – but... Matthias thought as he worked his way around the room, shooting indiscriminately into any pile of rags or collection of boxes that he could. Most of them concealed the most-decrepit Ferals, seeking to hide from the servitor’s fury.
And then Matthias heard a sound that he had definitely not been expecting to hear down here.
It was a roar.