“Of all of this so-called Predatory Society; both the Elders AND the Shifters – it is clear that only one thing can be relied upon: Each side respects strength. If you have the strength, and the ruthlessness enough to take it – then you deserve it.”
The Helsing Talks (BANNED)
There was one thing that Lubok had been right about: Brooklyn was in a state of turmoil. The streets of the city were still reeling from the martial law that the late Archon Jeremiah had seemingly imposed on them all after the attack in the mortal markets. The armored personnel carriers that brought with them the combat-armored white-suited servitors had been stationed at every major intersection throughout Brooklyn, and at key installations.
The Blood Banks had been under emergency orders to collect more rations than usual, and mortals were beginning to suffer. More and more were being admitted to the mortal clinics for exhaustion, anaemia, and fatigue.
However, that had all been before the fall of Manhattan. The district of Brooklyn had watched their neighbor district fall, and had seen the fires start up throughout the city. Luckily, most of the districts were fairly autonomous when it came to power and infrastructure, but there was still a city power grid, and city-wide communications.
The effect of Manhattan falling off the network had knock-on effects for Brooklyn. All non-emergency lighting was cancelled, most of all of the mortal-only establishments (daytime restaurants, medical clinics, shops) had been forced to have their power cut off.
But then had also come the security procedures. A curfew was ordered, and enforced by automated drones. No mortal was allowed to cross over the bridge to seek to aid (or loot) Manhattan. Any mortal seen on the streets was targeted on sight; first with dum-dum rounds, and then with the actual live ammunition that the heavier drones carried.
The Archon Jeremiah had also been right in one respect: that to ally oneself with the technology of the future was the only way forward for the Elders. As much as he attempted to take upon himself more and more ridiculous affectations of a Renaissance he never knew, all to fit in with the Elder society, he had also been staunchly in support of the drone warfare and surveillance technologies offered to his power-greedy hands. The city was under watch twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and it was kept quiet with the enforcement of humming, menacing shadows in the sky.
In the command and control center, in the heart of the late Archon’s sanctuary, all kinds of alarm bells and reports were pinging.
The team of servitors was attempting to keep an eye on the spreading chaos that they had helped spawn through the city, several maps of suggested sighting of their own Shifter-Lych mutants blinking red and green, showing an expanding circle that moved northward from Manhattan and into the Bronx. Between themselves, the more clear-headed technicians wondered if they would ever track down all of the beasts.
They saw, also, that fires had seemingly erupted throughout the city apart from Brooklyn, as teams of looters, mortal vigilantes, and even Ferals attempted to do what the Archons themselves were doing: taking control, and punishing their own enemies.
It looked to be the doom of not just Manhattan, but of New York City itself.
However, there was another crisis that was concerning the servitors at the moment.
“Where is he? Where is he?” one of them was shouting, standing and waving a clipboard at the screen above.
They had a thermal and digital map of the inside of the sanctuary of the Archon Bethania, with their own men appearing like little blobs of red light, flashing weakly. All of those who had gone on the combat mission to Manhattan had worn a small tracking device as a part of their armor that was linked to their signs of movement, internal body pressures, temperature.
Quite a lot of them had blinked out, leaving only a small gaggle of Brooklyn Elders.
And the one that had been linked to the command center’s sensors – the really important one – had also disappeared.
“Maybe it’s faulty!” one servitor announced.
“Has been damaged in the fighting!” still another said, his voice panicked.
“Someone, for shit’s sake get a spy-drone in there!” another shouted.
The tracker that was linked to the Archon Jeremiah was out, and no one was voicing the fear that they all felt – that the Archon himself had been killed.
“What the hell do we do...?” a chief engineer said, breaking down into tears. He was one of the few who could still actually cry like a mortal.
Their whole life had been the product of the predatory society. Their whole existence dedicated to the Archon Jeremiah. They all hated him passionately, of course, had wished this to happen a thousand times over, but none of them had ever imagined that it would actually happen.
“What in the ever-loving night happens? How do they even elect a new Archon?” another was saying. “I mean, what do they do – is it a vote? Do they just choose someone?”
All of the top Elders from Brooklyn were over there, however, currently having their guts pulled out of them or doing similar to the senior Elders from around the city.
“What happens next, ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice from the doorway, and a haggard-looking Matthias stood there. His dark skin had gone a queasy colour, and his eyes were dull and almost lifeless as he leaned on a cane for support. His injuries had been terrible, and the merciless doctors had only just managed to patch him back up when the alarms had gone off throughout the base.
The technicians and engineers all looked towards Matthias, their faces a mixture of hope, fear and blind faith. He was the oldest servitor here. He had been the Archon Jeremiah’s personal project. He would either command them to stay at their posts, or at least guide them into what was the right thing to do.
He coughed, a hand pressing a blood-stained handkerchief to his lips as he tried again. “What happens next is that all of the Archons of the city come together to argue and fight out who of Jeremiah’s brood is strong enough to become the next Archon. The Elder who has shown the most skill, and sucked up the most to the city gets the job.”
There were gasps around the command center. No one ever spoke of the Elders like that. Not if they valued their head and their shoulders being in the same vicinity as one another.
“I have never seen it, of course, but I have read the old accounts. It is usually a desperate struggle, as each Archon attempts to put their own sympathizer in power. But that is not what is going to happen here.” He coughed again.
“It’s not?” the servitors asked in various ways.
“No. Because all of the Archons left are attempting to kill each other. There won’t be enough of a predatory society left to hold council meetings and debates. Whoever wins out in that sanctuary over there will come here and attempt to kill us all. So, what we are going to do is very simple.” Matthias’s pale lips cracked into a slow smile. “We are going to flee.”
There was a moment of silence from the stunned servitors. No one would ever expect such a thing to come out of such a person’s mouth.
“But – but...” one said, in awe of Matthias all the more. “Our position, as servitors.”
“Our chance to become Elders...” another agreed.
“All a lie, as I think anyone looking at me should have realized by now,” Matthias growled, turning to walk awkwardly out of the room. He paused at the door. “For what it’s worth, I intend to do my bit for my real kin: the mortals. As for the rest of you, I suggest you get as far away from the city as you can, and never return.”
He turned and left, and the command and control servitors behind him could hear the careful clicking of his cane as he strode quickly down the hallway.
“Well, I don’t know about you lot... But I’d rather put my trust in a man like that, than any Leech anyway!” one of the servitors announced, throwing his headset and clipboard down and storming out of the room. Behind him, others followed his example, and the rest fled, finding routes to spill out into the city before the end of it all came.
**
Tay had considered attempting to find the tunnel that connected Manhattan to Brooklyn, the one that went under the river and that the late Archon Jeremiah himself must have used to sneak in, but instead she had gone for the more direct approach.
She knew where Lubok would take Kaiden – she was an Elder of Brooklyn after all, and knew just where the atmospheric engines and the control antenna was.
Jeremiah’s sanctuary; his command and control center. She smiled grimly, putting her head down and revving the throttle.
As Manhattan was in ruins, she had spotted the black superbike down in the basement garage of Bethania’s theater, and had known that it would get her there faster than the Shifters – if they were planning to storm the bridge or cross the river by boat.
With a throaty roar, she shot through the streets of Manhattan, weaving through the barricades and the debris of the mayhem until she could see the dark bridge looming ahead of her. Several times she had seen shapes moving on the streets or down the alleyways, had even heard gunfire. But she hadn’t stopped.
The district on the other side of the bridge looked like an oasis in the night as she sped as fast as she safely could towards it. There were far more lights on in Brooklyn than smoke-darkened Manhattan. It occurred to her that it looked like she was driving towards a paradise compared to the hell around her currently.
Driving into the future, she mused, reaching the bridge with its military checkpoint separating the two districts halfway.
She gunned the bike forward, heedless of the searchlights and alarms that rose to greet her return.
**
The Shifters had come prepared, Kaiden saw. They had brought their own power boats, which they used to take the now-restored Kaiden quickly across the river that separated Manhattan from Brooklyn. Kaiden felt light-headed, giddy from the dreaming that the Shifters had forced upon him. He remembered flying, somehow, and a forest.
And blood. Lots and lots of blood.
The abomination had come a long way since the rooftop, and the blood that he had been given had started to knit together his torn ligaments and ruined muscles. Most of his wounds had sealed over, but had not healed completely and still ached. He knew that he was not at top fighting strength, but that he was stronger than he had been for days.
There was the sound of gunfire ahead of them, up on the bridge where the searchlights were swinging crazily around to attempt to catch sight of something or someone.
More Feral or Elder politics, Kaiden thought, keeping his thoughts to himself as he considered what he had to do next. His hands traced over the harness that Lubok had given him – a climbing harness that would barely fit around his wings when he changed, upon which were strapped packets of explosives.
“All you got to do is to get up there, and deposit these,” Lubok had explained to him, motioning to the fact that the transformed Kaiden had wings. “I’ve got the transmitter here, which, once you howl, I will send the signal for these to go off.”
“We’ll get one clear shot at this. While we’re down below, dealing with the servitors and the Elders, you can get up above and blow them all to the other side of their blessed night!”
“Blow up the antenna, and stop the engines forever,” Kaiden agreed, still looking nervously at the explosives on the belt. They all appeared to be in little secured packets, with wires running from one to the other.
“Yes!” Lubok laughed, clapping him on the shoulder as if his most recent treachery had now been forgotten, and they were comrades once again. “Without you, we’ll have to fight our way through all of Brooklyn to achieve this, right up through the sanctuary itself – but you can fly up there! You can save the city!”
Kaiden detected a slightly strained note to Lubok’s voice. He had tried to argue. “I might be able to break the antenna on my own. I did it before, at the theater.”
“Yes, and you might not be able to. There might be a hundred more of those mutants waiting for you. We might all die,” Lubok said exasperatedly. “No. This is the way. Quickly, and with the least amount of danger. You fly up, you throw these down, you signal to us, and I pull the trigger!”
Kaiden frowned. He didn’t like the plan. He much preferred the idea of assaulting the sanctuary together, battling through, seeing if they could get to the antenna with their strength, guts, and brains.
But I might not be able to do this on my own. This might be my only chance to save the city. Kaiden sighed heavily as the sound of gunfire slid slowly away behind them, and the dark shadows of a jetty started to rise ahead of them. The old, scarred wood was still black, and smelled of scorching, as this part of the waterfront was a part of the mortal markets which Jeremiah had firebombed so recently.
Silently, the human-seeming Shifters jumped onto the creaking wood, securing the boats, and started to fan out into the wreckage, intent on their revenge.
“Come, Kaiden. We’ll get closer to the sanctuary, so that we can see you in the air as well as help you on the ground,” Lubok said, urging his fellow to follow him as he ran through the wreckage, intent on his revenge.
What else am I going to do? Kaiden thought, feeling a little more trapped than he had before.
**
The Shifters overwhelmed the first armored personnel carrier as if they were a deadly tide, and it just a stone on the beach. The servitors around and inside were jittery, hearing reports of violence on the streets and at the bridge, and then, recently, not hearing anything at all from their command center. They had been arguing over what to do – whether they should go out on patrol, or reinforce the bridge between them and Manhattan, or –the prevailing opinion – return to their base.
The first wave of Shifters, huge, shaggy wolf-men, landed on the carrier with a roar, ripping the hatch from its hinges as another picked up one of the soldiers and hurled him against the opposite wall of the square.
The fighting was intense, bloody, and fierce as the servitors sought to defend themselves, but only a few managed to fire at their attackers. Not one Shifter was hurt.
Like the storm wave receding, the Shifters ran on – their new forms much faster than any mortal marathon runner, heading for the metal chain-link fence that separated the sanctuary compound from the rest of Brooklyn.
Up above them, a dark shape flapped its gigantic leathery wings and swooped through the skies. Kaiden, the abomination, saw his target up ahead, and he gritted his teeth as he rolled himself into a deathly dive straight towards it.
**
“Kaiden!” Tay saw the shape shoot across the sky above her. She had managed to get through the Manhattan bridge – but only just, as the servitor guards had been terrified and willing to pull every trigger they could to stop the roaring bike-woman that had vaulted their barricades. The bike had taken several critical hits, but she had managed to force it to limp through Brooklyn until it got here.
The Archon’s sanctuary, northern Brooklyn. Tay had been here many times, and she knew better than most the secret ways in and out of the imposing compound. One of the many benefits of being an Elder, she thought, in imitation of what Kaiden had used to say about his own particular condition.
She was pulling herself up the squat tower that was the home for the sensitive drone-equipment and atmospheric engine-controllers, hauling herself up like a spider, moving as quickly as she dared. It would only be a short matter of time before she was at the top, and, already, she could see Kaiden nearing the antenna, his wings rippling in the dark, and something glittering on his body... Like a vest of some kind.
Tay struggled, her claws making finger holes where they couldn’t find them, wedging herself against steel pipes full of thrumming cables to move quicker. She had to get to Kaiden, somehow. She had to make all of this right, and stop Lubok.
There was a burst of something above her, and she swivelled her head to see that Kaiden was unable to land. Two drones, their rounded helicopter-like blades allowing them to maneuvre almost as quickly as Kaiden could through the air, were swerving and weaving around the winged beast, firing at him with some small ammunition.
Tay took the opportunity to haul herself over the top of the ledge, finding herself on the summit, amid a strange landscape of aerials, antennae, dishes, and pipes. Things swivelled and turned, and guiding lights beeped as the computers below sought to co-ordinate the attack on the flying abomination.
BANG! BANG! BANG! Tay spread her stance and fired up at the drones, desperately trying to not hit Kaiden.
FABOOM! She caught one of them on its rotary blades, and, in a sudden incandescence of flame, it spiralled out of the sky to land amid the snarling, fighting forms of the werewolves below, who were attempting to gain access to the compound itself, past the machine-gun turrets and waves of still-loyal servitors.
“Kaiden!” Tay screamed.
“Tay!” the beast answered, before suddenly falling in the sky as a bullet from the remaining drone tore through one of his wings.
The abomination swivelled, turning in mid-air, obviously having trouble flying. With a desperate lunge, he seized the body of the remaining drone, and plummeted towards the roof.
“NO!” Tay screamed, expecting the dull, jagged thump of a body, but, instead, moments before he hit, he managed to disentangle himself from the device and leap to one side, and the guard-drone smashed into the roof of satellite dishes in a plume of flame.
“Thank goodness.” Tay was running over the roof, hearing underneath her the shouts and snarls of Lubok’s Shifters growing louder. “Kaiden!” she screamed.
“Tay!” He was hanging onto a small array of antennas, before jumping down and seizing her in his arms. Their bodies crushed together for a moment, and Tay smelled once more that animal, forest-smell about him, before the discomfort of his strange-looking vest hurt her slight form.
“Kaiden? What’s this?” She held him at arm’s length, her eyes widening as she registered what each of the packets must have been. “Sweet night, the drones could have set these off!” she swore.
“I know.” Kaiden was grinning embarrassedly. “But at least I had you to help me out.”
“You will always have me,” Tay said without thinking. If I could still blush, I’m sure that I would be... she thought.
Kaiden explained the plan, but, with every hasty word, Tay’s frown deepened.
“No. This doesn’t sound right. There’s no way that he would just let you fly away from this.” She was thinking. They looked at the vest, seeing that it did indeed have its own small radio transmitter. “And you were just supposed to howl, and he would set it off remotely?” she asked.
Kaiden nodded, frowning. “I know. That is precisely what I was thinking – that he’ll just blow me up and be done with me.”
Tay looked alarmed. “Then we haven’t got any time. He’ll have seen you land, and he’ll be reaching for the trigger even now. We have to get this thing off of you!” She tugged at the vest as carefully as she dared, but still urgently enough to rip its flimsy material.
“Where’s the antenna? Where?” Tay was asking, the heavy weight of the vest held in her hands between them.
“There! That’s what it is.” Kaiden pointed a few meters away.
Tay hurled the vest, just as Kaiden grabbed her by the waist and leapt from the roof of the sanctuary, opening his wounded wings to act like a parachute to catch the air and slow their descent.
Tay had a sensation of spinning, weightlessness, and falling, seeing the ground of the compound, full of fighting Shifters and machine-gun-wielding Lychs swim up to meet them...
FABABOOM! The explosion that tore the top of the building apart was strong enough to suddenly blow them off course, hurling them against the ground and rolling them over, head over heels.
**
With ringing in her ears, Tay opened her eyes to find herself in a nightmarish sort of landscape. Bits of fire were dotted around the compound, and, elsewhere, out in Brooklyn, there were other small explosions from where drones had fallen from the sky, their guidance systems suddenly cut. There were screams of humans, servitors who were fleeing their posts, and the howls of Shifters as they sought to transform back into their human form to escape the carnage.
The bomb had been massive, but it must have also hit some vital power component of the sanctuary itself, as half of the building was in ruins, and showering sparks. Tay stood up, feeling weak and bruised, looking around to see Kaiden lying on the ground, one of his wings had been curled protectively over her.
He held onto me, even as he fell...
Tay reached down to touch his face, fearing that it might be the cold sleep of the dead.
“Ruargh!” There was a growl, and something hit her over the head. A heavy blow, with something like a piece of wood, she hit the cement floor and rolled, her vision doubling, tripling, as the sight of Lubok swam into view.
“You! Leech! You ruined everything!” He was frothing at the mouth, roaring at her as he raised the lump of wood he was using as a club. He looked every bit the troll, his wolfish face snarling, full of teeth. “We were going to destroy it all. The sanctuary, the Elders, this abomination!” Lubok spat. “But you had to interfere. You had to stick your fangs in. Well, you know what we do to Leeches?” He raised the wood higher.
“We CRUSH THEM!!” he roared, bringing the wood down in a dizzying arc.
Tay was too hurt to move. She tried to snarl, but couldn’t...
The blow, however, never came.
“Urk?” Lubok let out a strange noise, his face contorting in confusion. He still stood with his lump of wood above his head, but he wasn’t bringing it down onto Tay’s head. Instead, his arms were sagging as he looked down, his eyes rolling at what was protruding from his chest.
Kaiden stood behind him. He had risen as fast as the lightning, and punched a hole through the Alpha leader’s chest, seizing and crushing his heart in one gigantic blow.
“You will never bring your war and your hatred onto anyone else ever again!” Kaiden hissed, moving his arm to allow the Shifter to slide from it, to lie in a crumpled heap on the ground, his eyes unseeing.
Kaiden’s arm was red to the elbow, and dripping blood.
“Gruarr.” The murmuring sound of throaty voices around them made them turn around to see the semi-circle of Shifters stalking forward, out of the firelight; first one, half shot and burned from the fighting, then another, and another, until a small army of twenty or so remaining Shifters confronted them.
“Kaiden?” Tay said breathlessly. She was swimming in and out of consciousness, and her head felt terrible.
“Master Tabitha, may I be of assistance?” a new voice said from behind them, and Tay could barely see the forms of a white-suited older man, leaning on a cane walking forward. Next to him there were others, many others, with guns and swords – and not just servitors, but mortals as well.
“Matthias?” Tay breathed.
“We came when we heard the fighting, although we’d only just left, Master,” Matthias croaked.
“I-I’m no Master, Matthias...” Tay closed her eyes, her voice as soft as a whisper.
“Matthias?” This time, from Kaiden. “Get her out of here.” He never took his eyes off of the Shifters. “Run as far and fast as you can.”
“I-uh, I’m too old for running, sir,” Matthias said sadly, bending down to start to tend to Tay’s wounds.
The growling from the Shifters grew louder as they stepped closer, now only a few meters away. Kaiden stared them down, defiantly. Behind him, the ranks of mortals and servitors nervously raised their stolen and improvised weapons...
Then the first Shifter knelt down.
Then the one behind him, and the next, the next, and the next.
“What...?” Kaiden was confused.
“You,” the first Shifter growled heavily. “You killed Lubok. Fair fight. Free fight. He was Alpha. You are the Alpha now.”
“Sweet earth!” Kaiden found himself saying. “Of course! Lubok was the alpha male of his pack, and led all of the packs around here.”
“And alpha males win their position by beating their predecessors, just as any ruler in a predatory society does,” Matthias was saying steadily, looking between Kaiden and Tay.
Kaiden took the hint, looking at Tay’s unconscious form on the ground. “What – you don’t mean?”
“Indeed I do, sir – or should that be Sire?” Matthias coughed weakly as he smiled crookedly up at Kaiden. “We were rousing the mortals when the news came through. Bethania has won Manhattan, killing Archon Koshimada, and so she has claimed the Bronx. We were also told what happened to the Archon Jeremiah – staked through the heart by Elder Tabitha Maslov here, the very old, and very traditional way that an Elder assumes the title and realms of their predecessor.”
“Tay is Archon of Brooklyn now?” Kaiden still couldn’t believe it.
“Tabitha is Archon of Brooklyn, yes.” Matthias nodded. “And she will have a job on her hands – because I expect that Archon Bethania will want to come this way next, but she will have to clean up and sort out her new territories first.”
“At which time, we will be ready,” Tay said, her eyes open and clear from the ground. “We will all be ready.” She looked to Kaiden, the Shifters, and the servitors and mortals behind. “Brooklyn will be a haven for all of the species and races of the city. No more hunting. No more Blood Banks.” She coughed, but her voice carried clearly. “No more running from the oppressors. We will prepare, and will retake the city, in the name of us all.”
There was a cheer from the ground, voices comprised of howling wolves, mortals, and servitors, and far up above them, the dark clouds that had obscured the skies for a generation started to break, allowing the first star to shine bright, fierce, and strong, down on the dark city.
*THE END*
HERE ENDS BOOK 2: THE COST OF BLOOD.
MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW TAY & KAIDEN’S DARK ADVENTURES IN BOOK 3:
THE PRICE OF DEATH.
Coming January 2016
