Author: Darcy Lennox
Date: 2018-03-14 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: My name is something that people do not speak of lightly, afraid that saying it out loud would make them a target. I have seen the way people cringe into their skin in my presence, the way they recoil when I stand too close or how they instantly avert my gaze frightened to look at my eyes. The humans have likened me to something of a legend, simple minds caught up in their fables. But those who have witnessed the reaping are too afraid to speak… because they are petrified of admitting the truth. They call me the Reaper and they say that death and I are lovers – or so I’ve heard.
Rights: All rights reserved (#2202587068771988)

Reaper

Volume One:

The Creeper Dance

By Darcy Lennox

This is a First Edition published March 2018.

Copyright © Darcy Lennox, 2018.

The right of Darcy Lennox to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, designs and Patent Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the original source and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

www.darcylennox.com

Welcome.

If you are reading this, then Darcy has given you permission to explore my world. But not so fast… I don’t like cowards, and I certainly don’t like humans who will not fully immerse themselves in a story that reeks of blood. So, are you a coward?

No?

Good answer. But there is time to break you yet.

Proceed if you dare…

Prologue

It was a warm and foggy morning on the day that the fighting stopped. Dust swept the ashes of the dead in a deranged hurricane of blood and soil leaving a path of lost footprints in its wake. They dropped their guns and we dropped our hands. The fog cleared to reveal monstrous clouds ready to explode. First, lightening struck and lit up our faces where friends and foes could look each other in the eye for the first time – it was a warning. And then came the torrential downpour of rain that flooded our hate with longing, a longing for peace. Except it did not stop, it rained for an entire month. Some said the Gods were punishing us, but others believed it was a gift to cleanse every damned soul of their darkness and offer a second beginning to a new world.

But that was three decades ago, when the human world collided with the supernatural world. It was a turning point for the history books and the humans called it The Third World War, for obvious reasons but the rest of us preferred to call it for what it truly was the, Battle of Dust, because that is what we fought for, dust.

I will never forget the bodies, lifeless on the ground. And the blood, oh all that blood. The thought alone made my throat dry like I could hear its hollowness through my breath, if I swallowed it burned. But the truth was, nobody expected there to be a war, least of all us. We had remained hidden for so long that when the time did come for change we charged without thinking of the consequences too blinded by our rage. It was the Kingdom of Ilythia that attacked first, and then the other kingdoms followed suit, one after the other, star after star. The humans had never seen anything like us before but they were quick to react like all territorial animals do. They resisted, the humans had guns and bullets and other weapons of mass destruction – devices that electrocuted us, tore the skin off our bones, melted our limbs to the ground and other unspeakable things that will forever remain locked within the dark corridors of my mind. It was our fault of course, we were unprepared – how could the humans ever compete with us? We were wrong. So quick to underestimate their intelligence that we did not see it coming. Least of all when they located our kingdoms, took the war to our homes and slaughtered our innocents.

But enough was enough. We fought back even worse, creatures of the day and the night stood side by side for the first time in centuries. Species from all kingdoms joined forces, foes became friends and adversaries became brothers and sisters bound together against our common enemy, them. We stormed their cities, and their imperious governing bodies, and their wicked souls. We set raging hawks of fire to their schools and hospitals. Galloping tidal waves kissed the cement of their dirty streets. Great gushes of wild and fantastic energies surged by Stallites descended into bloodshed. I can still hear their cries, begging and pleading for their lives, but it quickly faded by the imploding black fire that clouded their skies. How dare they challenge us? We were superior, nature created us that way.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, what should have been a single fight became a dangerous dance of ballerinas releasing bombs off at every spin. And yet, what had changed since the year of 2022? Nothing and everything.

Just like all things do, the war came to an end. But that did not bring back the lives that had been lost, on both sides. Our homes had been destroyed and the only kingdom that remained was Ilythia. Like a relic, it now floats in the sky as a reminder of the war – a piece of history, lost but never forgotten. People chose to live on land fearing that human rebel groups would bomb them again, and they were not wrong. Who would have thought that these human countries were safer than our stars?

Everything moved quickly. They, as well as us, knew that for us all to co-exist amongst each other then there would need to be strict regulations for the good of everyone. Thus, The Needles were established which consisted of a collection of beings from all corners of the earth only to interfere if the early sparks of tension became more than just that, sparks. Beneath them, each side formed their own governing bodies. The Cenomage and Delaboro officials from the Kingdom of Ilythia assembled as one for the first time in history, they called themselves the Stallah Society after the God of Light. Respectively, the humans formed The Organisation and they were fair, as fair as it got when sharing something that did not belong to us, their home. To begin with, there was friction – and hate, I remember so much hate and xenophobia from both sides that it brought people that would never have teamed up in the past together for the first time. But there was also understanding, and compassion and… dare I say it, love. But love was not enough to keep the world safe. The construction of our own governing body broke down a few years later. The human world gave the creatures of the night a new perspective on life. So many having been secluded to the darkness of the Kingdom of Ahkul – my kingdom – metropolitan cities like London were fast becoming hot spots for monsters. The climate was just about right with enough hours for daylight rest and a whole night to play with… as well as its colossal human population it was only fitting that such species settled comfortably in the Big Smoke.

But this changed the dynamics drastically for the Stallites. The Stallah officials were overthrown by a vampire clan known as the Daggertooth, appropriately named by their leader Zagan due to his distinctive fangs. Many members were murdered, others went into hiding never to be seen again. It sent ripples of fear across the supernatural species. What happens now? What will we do? How will we keep the peace? They croaked, everybody fucking croaked. But nothing happened, these vampires were clever – whatever it is that they wanted it was clear that they were playing it slow and abiding by the rules with the humans. As for The Organisation – they did not care so long as their species were safe from our kind and war remained a thing of the past. That was over a decade ago, perhaps nearly two. But the nights became colder, and the streets became darker. Both humans and the Stallites alike felt the chills run up their spines when the suns protective rays dwindled as winter leaned in. They hid if they heard the sharp flapping of a Bloodbyrds wings in the distance, and they ran for their lives if they saw its monstrous horns ascend towards them.

Yes, the human world and the supernatural world were able to co-exist, but for how long? Could we really live in a world in which we could integrate with the human folk in our true form? A world that has only just begun to look at us as the bridge to a greater calling of unexplainable mysteries due to our advanced genetic makeup? A world in which – ah, who am I kidding? This world was fucked up before we came out from the shadows! Humans and Stallites are just as corrupt as each other, and we are starting to realise that now more than ever.

But there was also good to come from our collision. Stallite biology very closely resembled human biology, which came as no surprise to us but to them – they thought we were of an extra-terrestrial species beyond this sphere. Super advanced humans, vampires, lycans, nymphs, winged creatures that roamed the skies and all were no longer just mythological stories told to children. We were real. But the humans were clever, they had to be. They took scientific advantage of our extraordinary abilities and used it to progress their medical, research and technological industries to propel them decades into a future that they would not have seen for centuries. The evolution of White Spiders – androids that were used to police our streets – was the first human-Stallite invention to instigate a great technological movement across the world. Then came transport, driverless cars and underground highways were installed to navigate overpopulated cities and air space was made available to creatures who acted as people carriers. Houses were destroyed to make room for tower block apartments, the Stallah Society asked that such buildings be made habitable for species both of their world and ours to compensate the air pollution that would inevitably increase. Life for the humans had changed drastically, some would argue that it improved whereas others hated the extensive progression. For a short while, it worked but the harmony was only temporary. By then it was too late, we had all been exposed to too much and by the turn of the third decade crime increased, poverty became a lifestyle and the lines between good and evil – human and Stallite – were blurred.

Up until a few months ago… there were rumours, the vampires were up to something and just as I had suspected – they had been biding their time waiting for the perfect moment to attack. People liked to talk, most of the time it was bullshit stirred on by one moron to the next. So, I kept my head low and teeth hidden and when nothing happened, I hissed. These vampires were not afraid of humans, that was for sure, but there was one thing that I knew they were frightened of, me.

My name is something that people do not speak of lightly, afraid that saying it out loud would make them a target. I have seen the way people cringe into their skin in my presence, the way they recoil when I stand too close or how they instantly avert my gaze frightened to look at my eyes. The humans have likened me to something of a legend, simple minds caught up in their fables. But those who have witnessed the reaping are too afraid to speak… because they are petrified of admitting the truth. They call me the Reaper and they say that death and I are lovers – or so I’ve heard.

Chapter One

Before the war, the humans would wait on Spring with open arms ready to pull them out of February’s clutches. Flowers bloomed, greenery returned and creatures both big and small would wake up from their winter spree. But that had not happened in nearly twelve years. Instead, Spring was like an extended version of a milder winter without the snow, and the hailstones, and waves of wind so powerful it could pluck your body off the ground if you did not have the strength to keep yourself down. But tonight, there was a warmth in the air that signalled that Spring was on the horizon which meant that the days would get longer – of course it would never be like the Spring of the past. However, tonight’s optimism was so sweet I could smell the sugar.

I sliced my katana through the thick air blocking the nights sky and let the whooshing sound vibrate and divide the particles as they echoed off into the distance. Using my left hand this time, I sliced it through the air again allowing the vibrations at the tip of the curve to settle into my skin. Strong due to the nature of its weald but as light as a pen allowing me to use it with one or both hands for a better grip. I called her Deathclaw, she was gifted to me many years ago and I have never gone anywhere without her since.

The warmth in the air very suddenly turned to ice and my ears crackled irritably like that of a chewing gum wrapper. Vampires, they must be near. I crouched down to the edge of the rooftop and used my eyes to scan the surroundings on the ground. Unlike vampires, and other creatures of the night, my abilities excelled the boundaries of the extraordinary. I’m stronger, faster, sharper than any Stallite in the world. The dhamujki blood that runs through my veins is what makes this possible, there is no other being like me alive which is why the secrecy of my identity is so important.

A whelp caught my attention just below my feet. There – my victim of the night with his hands around an elderly man’s neck. Within a second, I jumped from the seventeen-storey rooftop and landed just behind the bloodsucker with only the wind that followed me down to make him aware of my presence. As if I had just interrupted a conference call, the small thing turned around in a huff.

‘What the f –’ he choked, and as he peered up to meet my eyes he gawped. ‘R – R – Reaper?’

At a sturdy five foot eleven, most of my victims were intimidated by my height. Not because they were smaller, or weaker for that matter, but because they did not expect me to be so, frightening. I smirked, it was always the same expression slewed over their pathetic faces. One of shock, fear and then a look I never quite seemed to understand – by the time I had sliced their heads off their bodies it was too late to understand.

I thrust my hand in his hair and pulled him off the ground effortlessly, he squirmed under my clutch knowing what would happen next. With my free hand, I pulled Deathclaw from my shoulders smoothly. He pleaded, and I ignored him as I slowly slid the sharp edge across his throat where I could hear the tearing of his skin like it was a violin cord snapping. When the blood began to splatter, I opened my mouth where it sent my pulse alight. The warm liquid trickled down my throat, pumping life back into my veins and colour into my deathly pale skin. When his body fell to the floor, limp with his head still in my hands, I let it fall from my clutch so that it landed and lulled next to his arms. The elderly man, who had witnessed the entire show cowered against the wall and held his arms up in fear.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to d –’

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ I pressed my body before his and caught his eyes where I could trap them with my own, his entire life storey beamed through the tunnel of his iris. ‘You are to go home, have a cold drink of water and sleep. Clear this memory from your mind, you were never here, and this never happened. You do not know who I am, and you never will because I do not exist. Now be gone!’ I hissed.

He swayed as he looked at me in bewilderment which then turned into horror as his emotions settled into the trance I had him under. In a second, he scurried from the crime scene and did not dare look back.

Out of habit, I picked the lifeless body from the ground and threw it into the dumpster on my left. Next, I threw his head into the dumpster too, lit up a cigarette and sighed. Vampires were naturally flammable, which is why they hated fire and the sun so much, with a small flick I threw the lighter into the dumpster and walked away as I heard his skin sizzle and hiss from the flames. White Spiders would be here soon enough to investigate, I smirked knowing they would find nothing. Vampires burn to ashes faster than paper.

His name was Cornelius Walek and he was wanted for the murder of Mary Brown who was his landlady. He had drugged her and then tortured her until eventually sucking the blood dry from her body in her very own living room. The news described him as a loner who kept himself to himself and always paid his rent on time. What they failed to mention was his violent history of psychotic outbursts that they would of course know very little about. But I did, because he had been one of my victims before war broke out and today, he was finally dead.

The humans still had much to learn from my world, especially that of vampires. Unlike the traditional tale of the Reaper I do not collect the dead, I hunt down the bad guys and eat them.

Chapter Two

I needed air. That was the problem with London, there was never enough air so when I opened my balcony door, it only made a slight difference to the air inside my small apartment. I slapped the back of my jeans pocket in search of my lighter and put a cigarette in my mouth. The sound startled a little bird that was hidden between the leaves of a giant shrub, it squawked and then flew away madly. The balcony was skirted with bamboo sticks where the outer edge was built like a small garden with a mixture of fountains and overrun greenery that was automatically watered by infiltrated sprinklers twice a day. This was rich luxury, a commodity I was able to experience thanks to my abilities. As soon as the warm tar tickled my lungs my heart stopped beating so fast and the hunger dissolved, for the moment. I had very quickly learned that cigarettes where a convenient way of taming the daily pangs of hunger within – it was not always this easy to come by tobacco in the eighteenth century. Sex worked a hell of a lot better. Alcohol was good, but I have since stopped abusing alcohol because it resulted in one too many regrettable nights of chaotic bloodshed that I have little recollection over. Fucking blood, the thought of blood made my mouth water and my core ache this time. I took another pull of the cigarette to supress the urge quickly, I did not want that kind of shit tonight.

But there was something about tonight that made me feel uneasy, unlike last night where the air was gentle, and the kill was simple. Maybe it was the way that the wind howled in the distance, of course that could easily be the howl of a lycan nearby, but I would be able to tell instantly if it were. A pellabor – a gentle giant creature that resembled a floating sting-ray with skin that shone a pale blue under the moon light flew across my balcony slowly. The leather harness on its back was empty, the untied seat buckles clunked against the wooden floor and I wondered if it had gone rogue. I clutched onto the stone railing above the bamboo stick and trailed its tail as it flew into the dark abyss of tower blocks and city lights where it swayed elegantly between each building as if it were drunk. A smirk played across my lips, even animals needed to let off some steam every so often.

And then my smirk stiffened. I was being watched, I could feel their eyes in the distance, always close but never close enough for me to catch them. It started a few months ago when rumours of the vampires surfaced. People talked, and I did not like what I was hearing but rumours were just that, rumours. However, the correlation was too close, I had my suspicions. I did attempt to catch the culprit once; however, they were gone before I could get too close which lead me to believe that they were not there to kill me – they were observing, learning. Whoever it was, remained silent of my identity or so I hoped. Agitated, I stubbed the cigarette out on the balcony railing and peered out into the darkness. I did not like being watched, and yet whoever this shadow was – they had made no effort to provoke me, or at the very least introduce themselves… unless, no – it cannot be, but what if it is? No, I shook the thought out of my head and locked it within a steel cage.

I recalled a time when there could have been true peace with us and the humans and not this civilised agreement of tolerance. This was just before the vampire’s coup of the Stallah officials, we were beginning to make progress – real progress. They were in the midst of selecting an official date for The Festival of a Second Awakening. It was set to represent a unification of us and them as the humans began to accept that the world was not as simple as they had imagined. But the Daggertooth had other ideas, and so The Organisation have kept their distance since only communicating on matters that involve the entire world. Their uninviting nature to the humans evoked a negative reputation further dividing our species from one another. This has been their intention from the beginning but why? Divide and conquer is a strategy used only by those who want to spread fear, for what? Not that it matters all too much to me, my dhamujki ethnicity means I belong to no species as I am the only one of my kind.

Feeling the chill pick up, I paced back indoors and abruptly stopped when I caught myself in the mirror. It was much worse than I imagined. Straight black hair fell around my face and engulfed me into the shadows of the dimly lit room. With only a few hours of sleep this week, I looked like death herself – tonight would be my last reaping and then I would force myself into the soil to rest. Having spent so much time preoccupied with other matters such as planning, hunting and tracking that I was losing count of the days. Without a moment to hesitate I flung my jacket around myself and secured Deathclaw onto my back, she was my shield and I was her navigator.

Ts. Ts. Ts. Beep! A small metal box rattled and then a large projection of white noise appeared over the sleek coffee table. It was simply called a newsbox – a Stallite device introduced to the human world to make the delivery of news more effective due to the highly saturated advertising content on global television stations. The hologram of white noise cleared to depict two lifeless pale blue eyes to signify that The Needles were going live. A thin and gaunt looking man as ordinary as can be appeared on the screen, I recognised him as Commander Seven and instantly deflected his message as background noise. I had more important matters to attend to this evening.

Instead, I went straight for the kitchen counter and picked up the newspaper I had been reading earlier where several pieces of information I had attached with a paperclip fell out from its fold. The front page of the newspaper was taken up by a man’s face. His name was Terrance Gambon, a vampire, who had been cited in London two days prior. He was wanted for the murder of a seven-year-old girl last week in Queens Park. Feeding from children is a serious offence that is punishable by the stake, the Organisation made sure that such regulations where set in stone and the Daggertooth were quick to agree anxious not to upset the humans.

But the rules never mentioned anything about me… I see it as a way of righting a wrong. If the system cannot carry it out accordingly then I will.

Chapter Three

Tonight, the streets were filled with blood, the veins under my luminous skin turned black and pulsed at the smell of it. It did not take me long to reach Queens Park. All tower blocks were installed with a floor beneath the ground which served as a connection to the accelorway, an underground motorway. When the elevator doors split open under my tower block, flashes of lights rocketed across the glass screen on the other side of the room. Cars, hundreds of them travelling faster than human eyes could follow. An entire system of tiered tunnels replicated from the design of the Concillium hall, the architect was Ilythian of course. They called it The Heart because everything was connected this way, I could get to Sydney in just three hours if I wanted to. I pointed to my destination on a large interactive map that appeared on the screen. A second later, a sleek black car appeared and when the glass screen evaporated the sound of hundreds of storming cars within the tunnel echoed as my hair blew wildly from the velocity. As soon as I got into the car, the sound drowned out. There was no need to drive, everything was electronic and when I buckled myself in we joined the bustling explosion of cars on the accelorway. Exactly three minutes and twenty seconds later, just as the monitor had predicted, my car pulled up to a side path away from the blur of tunnels until I was standing on the other side of another glass screen door secured by three white walls.

‘Queens Park,’ an electronic voice said from the speaker and the ground shook as the ceiling opened.

I tugged at the lapels of my duster jacket and secured my sunglasses over my eyes when I was fully out from under the ground, the floor was sucked in as soon as I stepped off and the ceiling became pavement once more. I could not help but notice a sign that read: Lycan Doormen Wanted hanging outside the window of a busy bar. The humans and the lycans got on well with one another, more so than the vampires for obvious reasons.

And then all too quickly, my joints locked. A strong whiff of vampire electrocuted the nerves inside my nostrils. It must be him. I tracked him down four days ago where I saw him lurking by the same bar, looking for his next victim no doubt and made a note of imprinting his scent. I rushed into a dark alleyway and with a small push I hopped from the sides of each wall like a ping pong ball silently until I was on top of the roof of the bar. The music indoors thumped so hard the buckles of my boots vibrated to every beat. And then the doors were thrown open where two bodies clunked to the ground in a heap like bin bags filled with rocks.

‘And don’t come back!’ the lycan security guard barked. ‘You’re barred!’

Drunken fools. Gambone and his companion stumbled to their feet where they kicked the door in frustration. I peered over the edge of the roof where I could see them from a bird’s eye view, I liked seeing my victim from this angle – it made the kill easier, faster. But tonight, he will have wish that he had never touched the child, I would make sure of that.

I watched them closely, following their every step just behind effortlessly jumping from brick roof to roof until they disappeared behind a wall that was shadowed with a metal roof. They must have heard me coming, not that I was trying to be quiet – he would be dead in a few short moments anyway.

I bounced once more from the roof where the wind followed me down and snuck along the road next to the sheltered alleyway on the opposite end until I was resting my cheek on the brick of the wall. I heard him shifting on his feet, waiting. This time I smirked and carefully pulled Deathclaw from under my jacket. I held my breath and silently charged using the handle to hit his companion square in the face until he was unconscious – I would decide his fate afterwards. Gambone, having noticed the commotion flew directly on top of me, put his hands around my neck and hissed threateningly the way all vampires do.

I swung the handle at his face and punched him with it, but it caused little affect. Once more, I made to hit him, but he grabbed my wrist and slammed it to the ground, losing my grip of the dagger. He was stronger than his skeletal figure depicted.

‘I don’t think so,’ he hissed with his fangs on full display. ‘Had I known I would be getting a visit from the famous Reaper I would have dressed for the occasion!’

Arrogance fierce in his eyes, he would soon learn what a mistake he made. Softly, I fluttered my eyes until I had him in my trance. When his grip loosened, I kicked him off with my knees where his face met the pavement. Surprised by my strength, and how he had come to meet the ground with his face so suddenly, I seized the opportunity to slam my boot into his stomach. He choked and spat, heaving like a weasel gasping for air.

‘You bitch!’ he shrieked.

‘Not quite,’ I said and kicked him again, but this time a little harder.

He barked and coughed out a chunk of blood that made my core ache wildly. I needed to end him now or else I would go berserk from the smell. Using my foot for direction, I pinned him down to the floor with his hands under my boots.

‘Her name was Daniella Stephens, and you killed her,’ I spat as my eyes grew wilder by the second.

Gambone began to shake, but it was coming from within his stomach instead of his shoulders. He was laughing, louder and louder like a ringing in my ear. I looked at him with pure hatred, no remorse in his eyes, just hunger. That was the problem with fucking vampires, hunger always won over rational, they could not be trusted.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he choked mid cackle.

These bloodsuckers always played the same old game, never wanted to admit they killed unless caught in the act.

‘You are sick,’ I said and yanked his arm into the air where I could snap it in two. He screamed out in pain as he watched it hang loose above him. I needed more, more. While grabbing his other arm, he began to fidget like a baby chick before slaughter.

‘No, please!’ he cried.

Too late, like a twig I snapped his other arm in half and positioned Deathclaw over his heart. He wailed louder than the last time, the noise was excruciating – what was it with vampires when faced with the prospect of death? Where they not tired of living the same life every single day? I smashed the bottom of my boot into his nose to shut him up. He hissed when the back of his skull cracked into the ground and bounced up again. Numb by the pain, he lay idle on the floor, no longer laughing.

‘Go on, do it,’ he whispered, just barely.

He was trying to provoke me, and it worked. Death by my katana was too good for him. Instead, I hovered down to the ground by his face and yanked his head back to expose his neck, I felt his muscles tighten underneath me.

‘The rumours were – were – t – true?’ he said shocked by the revelation of my fangs. ‘You’re a vampire? Hunt – hunting other vampires?!’

‘I am so much more,’ I growled and dug my sharp fangs into his skin.

He squirmed underneath my legs, I had to clamp his mouth shut with my hand to stop him from making too much noise.

The blood trickled down my neck like wine, that is what it always felt like with these fucking vampires, not that I minded, I got drunk off the sensation. My senses went berserk with the intake of blood spilling into my system. I could feel the colour sharpen my eyes the more I drank, I never quite got enough of vampire blood – it was intoxicating – an addiction that could never be cured.

What felt like hours, was moments when his body started to give way from the loss of blood until his limbs went entirely limp. He was nearly dead, so I loosened my hand around his mouth and put it behind his neck for a better grip to suck every remnant of blood from his body.

But then, the wind picked up behind me – an unwanted eye witness. A hand pulled me back by the waist and threw me to the wall. I hissed out of habit and got on all fours territorially. Now I was fucking angry, and my dinner was getting cold.

The figure before me pulled out a gun from under his coat and pointed it directly to my head. If I moved, I knew he would shoot, his finger positioned at the ready to pull like a natural reflex.

‘Reaper,’ he said in a heavy voice which did well to match his sturdy frame. ‘Don’t fucking move.’

I retracted my fangs and swayed away slowly, he knew who I was? Now, I was intrigued. ‘What do you want?’

‘You,’ he said and came out from the shadows to reveal an angular face crafted from prominent bones and dark eyes which seemed to have no end. I had seen that face before, Akilis.

I stayed put as our eyes spoke to each other. Familiarity and anxiety mixed in a cocktail of sudden movements, too slow and the game was over. I pushed the gun away from my face and pounced on him so that his back hit the floor. He, however, made no effort to fight back and instead continued to look at me curiously while I pinned him down effortlessly.

‘You’re alive?’ he said as if he were confirming the question to himself more so than asking. He learned forward for a better look, he knew what my eyes were capable of and yet he was not afraid, it was a test.

‘What do you want?’ I thumped his chest with my hand to get him back to attention.

He did not take kindly to this and grabbed my wrists to pull me towards him. I fought back as hard as I could but it was impossible, Akilis was not just any vampire after all.

‘What do you want from me?’ I said, slowly, as I did well to look at every twitch of his face and blink of his eye. It had been years since I had last seen him.

In a split second, something changed by the way that he held is eyes – no longer as eager, just blank. He let go of my wrists and simply watched me get up as he lay still. We looked at each other for a fleeting moment, and when I realised he was letting me go with the intention of finding me again, I ran as fast as I could. I knew he would take care of their bodies, but how long would it be until he found mine?

For the first time in a long time, I was unprepared for the future. I had my suspicions of course, had he been the eyes within the shadows watching my every move? Perhaps, but something told me it was not him.

Chapter Four

I woke up in a pool of my own sweat questioning if last night really happened. I ran to the mirror in the bathroom and there, I saw two yellow orbs staring back at me for confirmation. Of course it fucking happened! I could still feel his rotten blood pumping through my body, his blood. And still I felt uneasy… Akilis.

Needing fresh air, I made my way to the balcony and welcomed the morning sun in all its glory. Unlike vampires, I was able to walk out into the sun and feel the beams stroke my skin without it burning my flesh. But the moment was short lived because once it dawned on me that I would need to move, and fast, memories from my past caught up with the race of last night. Although the sun may keep him at bay for the time being, come nightfall I know he would be looking for me. He found me last night and he will find me again.

I always travelled light, with just a backpack to my name – it had everything I ever needed in there and a pair of sunglasses to shield my eyes. I never understood why people got so possessive over things, they are just objects and then you die, and they become somebody else’s objects if they have not already been recycled. The longer you live the less you care of such things. Besides, materialism was a weakness. I learned that very quickly from the humans and the thought of being weak made me nauseous.

With a heavy pull, the door slammed shut behind me and I left Islington, North London. Just like last night, I used the accelorway on the underground floor only to arrive in Stratford, East London, six minutes later. I sought out a smaller apartment just near the new shopping centre they were renovating at a much larger scale, enough to feed the ever-increasing obesity. But also close enough to a densely populated area should I need to disappear into the crowd.

A few children, no more than maybe eleven or twelve in tattered clothes and ripped shoes were playing with a ball near the entrance of my new apartment. The smallest of the lot snatched a poster off the wall curiously. The colours of black, white and red were bold and striking, in fact it was the only poster on the wall with colour which was rare. The poster read in white:

THE MIKANYK IS AT WORK

Underneath the title were a pair of splattered black eyes that faded into the red background. The boy pocked holes through the eyes with his fingers and held it up to his face to scare his friends. Their laughter was infectious, even I could not help but smirk at the spectacle.

‘What is that?’ I said intrigued.

The boys stopped in their tracks and arched their heads back to meet the reflection of my sunglasses. They were stunned by the sudden interaction and I felt myself take a step back involuntarily. The second I moved my hand they ran as far as the wind could take them and the poster made a full circle in the air only to land in my palm where the boy once stood. Taking the poster with both of my hands, I tugged at the corners to flatten the crinkles out. What I saw made the bottom of my stomach hollow and my shoulders tighten up all too quickly. The eyes on the poster were whole with no signs of tear. I looked around my feet and, on the wall, cautiously to make sure this was the poster I had seen in the boy’s hand only a moment earlier. There was no other poster like it, it would be easy to pick out due to the colours and yet the only colour that was visible was on the paper in between my hands. In a hurry, I scrunched up the poster and threw it in the portable grazer stationed near the side of the street where I watched it shred the poster to pieces. I turned my back and marched into the building, but before I could truly walk away, I turned around once more and stopped to take a second look. Cool silence.

The landlord did not question me when I took off my glasses, too caught up in my control to question my authority or voice his suspicions.

‘Top floor, room seven is free – best room in the block,’ he said in psychedelic awe.

‘Thank you,’ I said, it is always nice to be polite within a city of demons, especially when I was the darkest demon of them all.

He grunted and handed me the keys to my new apartment. I was on the twenty-second floor of the shabby tower block. I liked being high. Fortunately, the landlord mentioned that there was nobody else on my floor due to major pipework to be carried out the next two following weeks. I did not like being around civilians and East London was filled to the brim with them because it was hit the hardest during the Battle of Dust, so the construction of new tower blocks came easier than the rest of the city. It was a global movement which proved beneficial for humans too – appropriate living conditions were billed as a necessity by The Organisation due to the differing variety of species in our new world. Which meant all windows had metal shutters, fridges were stocked with artificial blood, all silver was removed and replaced with stainless steel – the list was endless. But it did matter anymore, it was every creature for themselves.

As was per habit, I unpacked my bag and set Deathclaw along with the rest of my life out on the bed. My hand subconsciously stroked the back of my neck and that is when I decided that if I did not get any rest now, I might not do so for the next few days. Almost as if the thought of being tired alone suddenly made my eyelids heavy and not before long, I was out.

*

When I woke up a few hours later, it was already nightfall. The dark sent alarm bells ringing in my head. Scanning the flat for a wall clock, I noticed I had been asleep for nearly ten hours. Ten hours? I never needed more than three hours of sleep let alone ten. I must have been more exhausted than I initially thought. Despite the aching of my arms and thighs, it was my shoulders that hurt the most.

Out of basic instinct, my hand scrambled for Deathclaw. A small breeze tickled my shoulder, pulling my attention towards the balcony window which was slightly open. My senses went into fierce overdrive, he must be here. How could he have found me so soon? The sun went down only an hour ago, if that – the sky was still in the midst of crawling out of its rainbow.

Slowly, I crept away from the bed and concealed myself amongst the shadows of a wall that had minimal moon lighting. And that is when his scent engulfed the open air around my mouth and nose, he was close, he was –

Out of nowhere, a hand locked itself around my neck and pulled me up to the wall where my back hit his chest. I winced but refused to make any sound. And then his body came out from behind the wall where he had been hiding. Unable to secure my grip, Deathclaw slipped from my hands and I grappled at his own hand aggressively where I could feel the muscles around my neck burn as I strained for air.

‘I don’t like playing games,’ he said straight into my eyes, and then let go.

I fell to the ground by his feet and exclaimed, taking in as much fresh air as I possibly could. Seeing the reflective shine of the blade from the moon light through the window, I edged closer while trying to stabilise my breathing. Sensing what I was about to do, he hissed and as I jumped the both of us landed on the bed in a heap. He grabbed my wrist and within seconds he had pinned me down with his thighs securely locked around my waist.

‘I’m not trying to kill you,’ he barked and lowered his head to gaze directly into my eyes, he was challenging me again.

‘Then what do you want from me?!’

‘Just – be – still – for –’

I clenched my teeth down and headbutted the side of his head. He cried out in pain and cradled his forehead with his arms. Using the moment to escape, I pushed him off where he toppled to the side of the bed. I grabbed Deathclaw and rolled over to find him wincing.

‘It’s you isn’t it, you’re the one that’s been watching me?’

He turned around to face me, blood now spilling from his forehead and smeared all over his hands, the smell was almost too much to bare. ‘What?!’ he barked.

‘Why are you here?’

Getting up off the floor and dusting the dirt from his coat, he pumped his chest out like a gorilla. ‘I was looking out for you.’

‘I do not need looking out for.’

‘I thought you were dead up until last month,’ he said in his husky Bostonian accent, something he must have picked up on in the last couple of decades there.

He sighed and crossed his arms like he always did when he was trying to keep his cool. He was waiting for me to drop my sword, but I was not so quick to trust him.

‘Come on, you know I’m not going to hurt you because I know you’ll have killed me before I could even get close enough to do so,’ he teased and his defensive stance evaporated. Something was wrong, he eased off too quickly. However, he was right but there was one thing he had failed to mention, he too had grown in strength and durability, clearly.

I dropped Deathclaw to my side and turned the light on. Although tall in the dark, Akilis seemed even bigger in the light. Still the same charming face with the same sturdy frame, he was one of few people I had to look up to – he and I have history both good and bad but for the moment I could not decide which side of history he was coming from.

‘What brings you to London?’ I said so simply it was almost amusing.

‘If I said… you, would that be a terrible thing?’

‘Maybe,’ I said a little too slowly.

I felt him scrutinise me carefully, the slow linger of his eyes on mine felt like my skin was burning. Eventually he looked away and I caught myself exhale.

‘I’m sure you’ve heard people talk, even some of the humans can tell that the Daggertooth have something brewing in their coffins,’ he said and made himself comfortable on the bed.

‘I have heard,’ I scrambled my clothes and documents off the bed and pushed them into my bag away from his prying eyes.

‘Then I assume you’ll know that some of the old Stallah Society members have been cooking up a pot of their own…’

I suspected, but my leads were never more than whispers. A single whisper with no information, or direction was pointless.

‘You didn’t know about that did you?’ he said while carefully observing my reaction.

‘What do the Stallah Society want?’

Akilis placed his hands behind his head to rest, he was getting a little too comfortable and it was making me anxious. ‘Exactly what the vampires have now, power – authority – respect. But most importantly control, I imagine.’

‘Where do I come into this?’ I said and cocked my brow to the side suspiciously.

‘You’re a threat,’ he said confirming what I already knew. ‘People talk of the Reaper like an enigma, not fully understanding who or what it means. It seems like you’ve been making a new name for yourself here, people are not sure whether to applaud you or fear you. I didn’t know it was you until I heard someone mention something about your eyes, there is nobody else like you out there of course so I knew it could only be you… the Daggertooth want you dead,’ he said with such stillness in his eyes that for a moment there I thought I saw them hurt, if that was even possible.

‘Is that supposed to frighten me?’

‘No. But that’s why I’m here, when I heard word that you were alive I was relieved but when I discovered what they planned to do – I got here as fast as I could,’ his expression shifted from one of surprise to anger. ‘You could have informed me of your existence.’

‘I thought it would be better this way, those associated with… I have seen too many people get hurt, I did not want that for you too.’

‘I’m not just anybody, am I?’

It’s true, he was not. But that did not change anything for me, I liked being on my own – it had been like this since I could remember. Besides, he would only slow me down, they always fucking did.

‘I like things the way they are.’

‘Things, are changing,’ he whispered and then his eyes began to sway up and around deliriously. ‘Why do – I – feel so – dizzy…’ his face fell onto the mattress like a magnet, and not so slowly mine fell besides his as our eyes helplessly held each other for those last few seconds that we were stuck within the statues of our bodies.

Chapter Five

Stop – no – why? I cannot see. It hurts. Why. Why. Stop. Let me go! I fought but nobody answered in an oblivious whirlpool of black and red, and something else I could not quite see. A figure? Standing over me, breathing. I tried to call out for him, but my throat burned – there was something restricting my neck. Get this off me, now. Why can you not hear me?! I clawed, and my hands were thumped down on ice cold stone. I hissed as the blur became sharper and my body was heating up, and my heart pumped faster and faster and –

‘Calm,’ Akilis said with strained lips.

‘What have you done!’ I hissed and the vampire within me bared my fangs, I chocked back when I got too close to the metal bar around my neck.

‘Trust me,’ he whispered on the stone slab next to mine where he was tied down with silver that singed his wrists and neck.

I eased back, there was a shuffling by the door to my left and voices – several voices that got louder and louder until the door flew open to reveal Zagan with an entourage of viciously sleek vampires behind him. The Daggertooth.

‘Ah, you’re awake,’ he said and stormed towards the stone slab I was shackled to. ‘Good,’ he peered over the curves of my body where a slight satisfactory smirk played on his lips.

‘What is this?!’ I hissed, trying to get his attention… all it would take was one look and then I would have him.

He smirked playfully, avoiding my gaze. ‘Let’s keep things civil, shall we?’ he cleared a tuft of dust from the shoulder of his black suit jacket that accentuated his height, only an inch or so shorter than Akilis I guessed. But underneath the jacket, he wore a blood red tie that emphasised his pale complexion. We could have been siblings were it not for his scrawny face and sunken cheeks.

‘What do you want?’ I spat and bulged my eyes, when I turned around to look at his entourage they all exclaimed in fright and cowered behind their hands afraid to meet my stare. Fucking vampires.

‘We know what you are capable of,’ Zagan crossed his arms and looked at the wall adamant not to meet my eyes.

There were only two people alive that knew of my true abilities and one of them was chained down in this room. I threw visual daggers at Akilis who now very conveniently seemed to be more interested in the ceiling.

‘Reaper!’ Zagan spat.

A sharp hiss escaped my lips and I pulled at the shackles around my wrist, the vampires in the room flinched.

‘Knowledge is power – you know?’ Zagan slicked his hair back from his face. ‘I assume you have heard the rumours?’

He knew the answer to that already.

‘For the sake of not misunderstanding one another, let me start from the beginning,’ he slowly made his way to the end of my feet so that his back was facing my eyes, vampires and their dramatic suspense. ‘A lot has changed in the last ten years and yet, not enough. Having been cast aside to the darkness by the Kingdom of Ahkul for so long the human world came as a welcome surprise to my species – we had to the take opportunity whilst we still had it. We are no longer the rodents of society but a species in which we are feared, and most importantly respected by the humans. Of course, it has come at a cost but one that shall be greatly rewarded in due course.

‘As you’ll know, we are forbidden from turning humans… unless they request it which takes a mountain of paperwork on my behalf and months of preparation for the humans. And, well… you know how impatient we can get? Anyway, although our population is greater than any other night creature… if we are not careful, we could very easily lose that status. Which is where you come in.

‘It is illegal for a vampire to kill another vampire; all crimes are dealt with in court – that’s something we have agreed upon with the Organisation and is punishable by the stake. But you – you seem to fall somewhere between the lines.’

He already knew too much. I would need to kill everybody in this building, and my first target was Akilis. I clenched my teeth shut and flared my nostrils, now I was really fucking angry.

‘Judging by your lack of response I will assume that what I have been told is correct. This dhamujki origin that you come from… my researchers tell me there were more of you a very long time ago, centuries ago in fact? Which I suppose explains your peculiar accent, somewhere from Eastern Europe perhaps? Not that it matters much, your people were killed. Stronger than lycans and faster than vampires, but more importantly… you were Gods of the night and serpents of the day. Competition was fierce and food was scarce so my ancestors did what any desperate species would do – they hunted you down and murdered your people until there was only one left. You.’

Making firsts out of my hands, I thumped them down on the stone aggressively and hissed. Zagan’s head twitched just the slightest, was he frightened now? He better be.

‘So, it’s true then? But tell me, why is it that only you were able to survive? Ah! But, we all know the answer to that, now don’t we? You, unlike your dhamujki relations, possessed an ability so powerful that even your own people were frightened of you. A slight mutation in the genes when you were born possibly? An abomination that could have potentially distorted the balance between bad and evil in a world where there was already enough darkness? Well… I suppose there is only one way to find out!’

‘What?’ I suddenly said as an idea had very quickly begun to form itself inside my head. Did he? Was he thinking that… no, I do not believe it.

‘Ah! That got your attention! You see, Reaper, we can’t have creatures like you – incredibly powerful creatures – causing havoc in my streets, killing my people… you know, I don’t remember what the sun looks like it’s been so long.’

‘What do you want from me?’ Now, I was getting impatient.

‘Isn’t it already obvious? We want to make more of you. Imagine a world in which vampires can roam under the sun? Imagine a world in which –’

‘No.’

‘No?’ his voice no longer filled with optimism. ‘Well it’s a good thing we don’t need your approval, Reaper.’

Chapter Six

I stirred awake at the sound of Akilis’s voice in my head. But it was not in my head, because I woke up to his eyes in direct line with mine and his hand stroking the hair away from my face. I hissed violently and he yanked his hand back to safety in an instant.

‘Infernia’s dagger pierce my soul! Calm down!’ Akilis spat. ‘Will you keep it down? They might hear you and knock you out again!’

‘What game are you playing, vampire!’

He sighed, and straightened himself out on the slab where his free arm was healing from the silver and the shackles around his wrist lay idle on the floor. But the nightmare was real, shackles on my own wrists and ankle, and a metal bar secured over my neck.

‘I’m going to look at you ok? All that I ask is that you not put me in one of your trances, just let me explain – ok?’

What did I have to lose at this point? It did not matter what he said, as soon as I was out of these chains – he would be first to kiss Deathclaw by his neck.

‘If you are sure,’ I teased.

‘Please,’ he said, agitated.

‘Very well,’ I said eventually, purely out of curiosity.

Slowly, he raised his head and focused his attention onto my neck, which crawled up to my lips and then stopped by my nose. He hesitated for a second and then finally rested his eyes on mine where I did my best to glare at him fiercely so he could at the very least feel the sting of my anger.

‘It’s not what you think,’ he said while forcing himself to hold the connection. ‘I’m not on Zagan’s side but I had to make him believe I was so that I could get you in here. Come on, I know you! Had I told you of my plan beforehand you’d have put me in my grave, I had to make you and him believe. And before you ask, yes of course I suspected he would try to kill me, but I came prepared.’

‘Why?’

‘He only told you half of the story, they don’t just want to make more like you – they want to make them better, stronger, sharper, faster. He wants to build an army of dhamujki infused vampires – a new breed of super vampires as he put it. I needed to get close to him to know what he was after.’

‘What for? You heard him, the vampires are the largest night creatures of us Stallites? They dominate most populated cities – not even the Stallah Society could stop them – what more could they possibly want?’

‘The humans, of course – world domination, what every power-hungry idiot without a crown wants!’

He had a point, both the humans and Stallites alike had known that danger was very close to dawn. Vampires were naturally territorial in nature, I just did not expect to be involved in this kind of danger.

‘Humans dominate land, we’ve known Zagan was up to something the moment he took the reins from the Stallah Society – this is it!’

‘And what did you have in mind here?’ I tugged at my shackles.

A devilish smirk masked the seriousness off his face.

‘Work from the inside out, just like old times… I have a plan in mind, and it involves an explosion – interested?’

‘So long as I get to kill a few vampires along the way.’

Chapter Seven

I did not trust him. He knew that of course, but what choice did I have? Akilis released himself of the shackles by his feet effortlessly. He was different from other vampires… despite the stinging of the silver on his skin where his wrists dribbled with blood, he was always good to handle the pain almost as if he was not able to feel none. In fact, sometimes I wondered if he truly could feel pain at all. But that was a dark corner I did not want to explore any time soon. Prepared as he always was, Akilis placed himself on the stone slab appropriately so that the shackles would not move. He had planted bombs in the four most vulnerable corners of the Daggertooth headquarters. All we had to do was get to the them. However, the nurse barged into the room with a bag of blood in hand before we could discuss anything further. It was synthetic, I could smell the sour chemicals before she opened the bag. A building full of vampires and the most they could offer me was synthetic blood?

‘We need to keep you well fed…’ she said while nervously trying to keep her eyes off mine. If she had a heart, I would have heard it beating from out of her chest as loud as a drum. But I did not need her heart when I could hear her finger trembling instead.

‘Fucking vampires,’ I hissed.

She squirmed and cowered behind a chair in fright. ‘Please, I’m just here to feed you,’ she cried.

‘Pathetic. I don’t want to be fed, vampire!’

Without a second to spare, she flew out of the room and before the door slammed shut Akilis ran to clutch the handle before it could trap us in.

‘That was much easier than I anticipated,’ Akilis said anxiously.

‘What are you waiting for?’ I tugged at the shackles.

‘Something doesn’t feel right…’

‘Then you should probably stop wondering and cut me loose?’ I snapped.

Bickering like 1972 was just yesterday while risking our lives and for what? Well, this time it was humans – and the world. Vampires and lycans were allergic to silver but I however was not. Together, we yanked, and I pulled the shackles around my wrist and ankle’s until they snapped loose.

‘You’d think that your dhamujki genes would at least make silver as lethal to you as it is to us, just another reason as to why you’re so valuable,’ Akilis said curiously while untangling the shackles from my limbs.

‘Yeah, well there are some pros,’ I said and used my strength to yank the bar off from its hinges across my neck. The stone to which it was attached began to crumble and then bend until I had pulled it free off my neck. Freedom smelled sweet.

In a flash, I locked my fingers around Akilis’s throat and smashed his head into the stone slab as if it were soaked in water and he was drowning. ‘You deceived me!’ I spat and felt my eyes burn with rage, the amber fuelling a bright yellow that replicated a shade of the sun.

‘I – didn’t –’ he chocked under my lock. ‘Stop –’

‘No, you did not think,’ I lowered my face before his and saw from the reflection of his eyes the demonic blaze of anger that plastered itself inside my eyes. For a moment, I considered trancing him, but I knew that I could not risk that now.

When I let him go, Akilis gasped for air and took gulps of it by the second. The sound of his struggling satisfied the demon at the bottom of my stomach and I stood up to stretch.

‘Holy shit!’ Akilis spat.

I crossed my arms and gave him a look that suggested I was not in the mood to talk. I needed to kill, and I needed Deathclaw to do so quickly. ‘My katana, where is it?’ I said while flinging the duster over my shoulders and releasing my long dark hair from within its hold.

‘I don’t know – here take this,’ he held out a handgun.

‘I don’t like guns, I am faster than bullets and prefer to feel my blade cut through flesh…’

‘Well, unless you want to use your hands…’

‘I will,’ I said and clenched my knuckles in preparation.

‘I forget how stubborn you are.’

‘How were you able to sneak guns into this place anyway?’

‘I have my ways just as you have yours,’ he smirked.

Ignoring him, I punched the stone slab with my fist causing to crack in two. No doubt the sound would attract some attention, but I wanted to be heard. I wanted them to know that the Reaper was angry, and she was out for blood, their blood.

The corridor was blindly bright due to the fluorescent lighting, my eyes took a second to adjust. I had always imagined the Daggertooth headquarters to be somewhat darker, dirtier even. However, it reminded me of the infirmary from the Kingdom of Ahkul where everything was white and spotless and that smell, which was heavily masked by vampire scent but was clawing to be seen amongst their hideous ashes – bleach?

‘Where are we?’ I whispered as Akilis followed me out into the eerily quiet corridor.

‘The basement, or in other words – their experiment isle – quick, I have seen them go through that door before, that’s where their lab must be,’ he nudged his head to the right and as we turned the corner, it led the way to another corridor in which the fluorescent light at the end flickered off without a sound.

I felt Akilis tense behind me as we crawled closer towards the last door. Something was wrong, there would have been guards or at least footsteps nearing in on us by now? Akilis had the same expression plastered across his face. As I put my hand on the door handle slowly, I saw a stroke of fear flash before his eyes.

‘Blow the laboratory up, kill as many vampires as we can – and then get the hell out of here!’ Akilis reminded me.

‘Yes.’

Going in full force I thrust the door open in a powerful push. I heard Akilis flinch and hold his breath as he pointed his gun at the door defensively.

But there was nothing there. The light above our head flickered on to highlight the shadows of the empty room. When I stepped in, I saw that on the other side of the room there was a giant mirror. I watched Akilis walk in behind me, in which he pointed his gun at all four corners of the room while scouting for targets.

‘I don’t understand, I saw them go into this room – this was the room they were talking about I’m sure of –’

BANG! The door slammed shut behind us. Akilis and I jumped from the unexpected sound. I pulled at the handle, but it started to… move. Like melting steel, the handle dissolved into the doors surface as did the door into the wall.

‘What the… where did it…’ I whispered into the wall as I felt around the smooth texture in search of a bump or a hole.

‘Ah! Good, I see you’ve found it,’ Zagan’s voice echoed across the room.

‘What is this? What’s going on?’ Akilis hissed.

A devious cackle pierced the silent atmosphere, the sound made my ears fizzle as if there was a fly stuck behind my ear drum and I could hear its miniscule wings flutter faster than my heart would allow.

‘We’ve been one step ahead of you the entire time, all we had to do was attract your attention with crooked vampires, Reaper. You just couldn’t resist, could you? Oh! But the bonus came with you Akilis, offering to take her in for us, did you not think we had you followed? Did you think us stupid? Reaper… we’ve been watching you for months, learning how you move… what ignites the need for you to reap? Your purpose in this world… oh it was so easy it’s almost a shame that it’s over now.’

Fuck. I thought back to the murders of Terrence Gambone – how could I have been so stupid? The reflection in the mirror depicted a picture I had very rarely seen, was it anger? Or surprise that I had been played so very well.

‘We knew it was the only way to get you in here, you’re a threat Reaper and instead of working against us – help us, we could make this world ours. The humans have been destroying their world for centuries, they have no idea of its potential. But us – we – do!’

‘Never!’ I barked.

That same cackle vibrated through my eardrums again, the excruciating sound matched the expression on my face in the mirror.

‘It’s too late,’ he exclaimed, and the echo of his voice was suddenly all I could hear.

Akilis and I stared blankly at our reflection, neither of us really looking until something strange happened to the mirror. The reflective surface rippled and stretched into a window. On the other side was a room – a laboratory even – filled with vampires in hospital attire and what appeared to be two bodies on two separate stone slabs shackled with chains, much like myself moments earlier.

‘They must have taken some of my blood when I was unconscious,’ I said.

‘Makes sense, you were out cold for a good few hours,’ Akilis replied.

I looked at Akilis like he was a fucking idiot, Akilis returned the look in a gesture that suggested he agreed.

The surgeon, whose body was concealed within a white suit opened the mouth of the male body.

‘He’s human?’ Akilis remarked.

‘The female must be vampire,’ I said just as another surgeon with the same suit began to prod into her mouth where two sharp fangs were visible under the light. Her wrists and legs were painted in red circles due to the silver pressing into her skin.

‘It’s not just vampires they want to turn, it’s humans too?’ Akilis said more as a question to himself than to me.

Several nurses began to fiddle with the female’s body where shackles were carefully placed around her ankles, wrists and neck and heavy clothes to protect her skin from the silver. The surgeon lightly tapped her on the forehead and she began to stir awake.

‘She is alive?’ I exclaimed and immediately placed my hands on the window for closer inspection.

The surgeon made signs with his fingers and the female nodded at each. Next, a wooden stick was positioned between her teeth, I saw the female clench her fists in approval. The second surgeon came back with a syringe generously filled with black liquid, my blood. Slowly, he placed the syringe by her neck and pierced her skin with the needle. I saw her wince as the blood decreased from the syringe and under her flesh. When it was gone, both surgeons and the nurses took a step back from her body while Akilis and I inched closer with our faces stuck to the window like amazed spectators of a circus audience.

Her body twitched and withered to begin with, but the twitching increased into heaving and screaming that grew wilder by the second. Some of the nurses flinched back, clearly frightened for their lives. The wooden stick between her teeth snapped as she pulled at the shackles aggressively, tearing the skin around the metal. A shriek escaped her lips, but that same shriek turned into a roar so shrill and evil the surgeons and nurses in the laboratory cowered to the ground to protectively cover their ears. The demon within her had taken control as her skin pumped with black veins, my blood burning through her system, clawing at her soul. One of the shackles snapped loose from her wrist, now they were in trouble. With her free hand, the vampire tugged at the other shackle but she was beginning to slow down. The heaving ceased and just as fast as she had reacted, she lay lifeless on the slab of stone. When they felt safe, the nurses and the surgeons arose from their cowering nests and looked over her body curiously where the surgeon felt her neck for a pulse.

‘She is d –’ I gasped.

Her arm pumped up into the air and she hissed sharply. The nurses drew back instantly, one of which had leeched herself onto the window forcing Akilis and I to slide apart for a better look. The vampire’s hiss fizzled out but when she opened her eyes, mine grew large.

‘They’re – like yours!’ Akilis exclaimed.

The vampire, who was clearly in a state of delirium from the shock that her body endured began to claw at the bar on her neck with little thought. There were no burn marks, no scars, and no sizzling of the skin as her vampire skin felt silver for what would be the first time in years, perhaps decades.

‘It worked…’ Akilis gasped. ‘They’re going to be unstoppable,’ he said, and a shadow cast itself across his face as the reality began to settle in.

‘The human,’ I hissed and pointed at the window. ‘They are going to inject him.’

Just like they had done with the female vampire, they carried out the same procedure with the human. He, however, was not so co-operative. He began to fidget when they woke him up, and squirmed when he saw the syringe but when my blood was pumped into his system his body responded differently. Unlike the vampire, he struggled to breathe – the blood vessels in his eyes popped and burned his eyes black. He howled as he took in his last breaths, choking and coughing until he was dead. My blood – it killed him, it was poisonous to humans.

The surgeons and nurses tried to revive his body, but with no luck they were beginning to tire down until… his toe suddenly twitched. We all held our breaths, waiting, waiting, waiting, but nothing happened. And then – the skin of his chest darkened to a sickly pink – a bruised orange – until it was as dark as it could ever be, blood red. The black veins from underneath his skin pulsed, and the blood red colour from his chest began to spread until it engulfed his entire body in the same crimson shade. The hair from his arms, face and head withered, the surgeon by his head plucked a lone strand from his chest where he witnessed it dissolve before his very eyes.

‘This doesn’t feel right…’ Akilis warned.

There was a quietness that made my blood run cold. My heart thump. And my teeth electric. The man’s hand shot up and out of its shackles and grabbed the surgeon’s wrist. I watched as the surgeon winced from the strength of his grip, and then the beast let out a shriek so crude it matched that of a Bloodbyrd. The nurses, who were terrified flew back from the body. One of which was quick to release the female vampire who was just now beginning to understand what was happening.

The creature – it was no longer fair to call it human – yanked the surgeon’s wrist down and grappled his head with his other arm that he had pulled free from the shackles. He turned to face the terrified nurses, tantalising them with his evil black eyes, and then crushed the surgeons head between his own hands as if it were a succulent tangerine. He opened his mouth and let the blood trickle down his throat, where the bar around his neck still restricted him.

‘What is that, thing,’ I heard Akilis say somewhere in the background, not quite sure where as the edges around my vision sparked and darkened. I was falling.

Chapter Eight

I heard Akilis calling out for me first, why was he so far away? His voice was muffled like it had been stuffed with tissue at the entrance of his throat. But it was my hands that startled me the most, I felt the smooth floor under my grip. How did I – what happened?

‘Quickly!’ he shouted. ‘We need to go, now!’

What? What was he saying?

I felt his hands grab the sides of my face, and then his face appeared before mine as if it were a mountain with eyes and a nose to match.

‘Get up! We need to go!’

I pushed him aside, as a flaming flash caught my attention behind him amongst the alarming blue emergency lights that spilled into the room. The beast, now free from its shackles had taken hold of the nurse by her neck, it hissed and bit her in the forehead while squeezing her neck. She squirmed under its grip, irritated by her flailing hands he suddenly pulled them off her body as if they were dry branches from a tree. The dangerous ease at which it moved shocked the hearing back into my skull.

Jumping to my feet, I pushed Akilis further aside and saw the trail of bloodied bodies in the laboratory. The female vampire who had successfully survived the transfusion only moments earlier was struggling to break free of the last shackle attached around her ankle.

‘We need to kill it!’ I spat. ‘If we do not do it tonight – it might be worse than what we imagine of the vampires!’

‘How?’ Akilis said.

‘The guns, give me one – shoot at the window, now!’

Akilis hurled his handgun at me, I caught it and we both shot at the glass window with little success.

‘Fire in the same spot, there in the middle where the small cracks are – the glass is weak!’ I said.

BANG. BANG. BANG. The glass began to crumble, Akilis booted down the window aggressively where the glass shattered to the ground. The beast and the female vampire distracted by our sudden presence stopped in their tracks. It dropped the nurse’s lifeless body to the ground, blood and saliva slurped across its mouth like that of a rabid dog. The eyes, wholly black made it difficult to guess who he was looking at as I tried to get a connection in the hopes of trancing the damned thing to a calm. But that is not what it was doing – the thing – it – was trying to smell me, it hesitated in my direction and then in a motion too fast for human eyes, it flung its head in Akilis’s direction and squealed like a wild pig. Unlike me, it could detect Akilis in seconds and flew across the room at him in full speed. Akilis fired at the beast, but it kept moving – albeit a little slower.

I wrenched the shackle off the hybrid’s ankle from the stone slab. For a moment, as the shackle came loose, she sized me up but a mutual understanding conferred between us – our battle would have to wait for another time. The alarm rang louder within the laboratory, no wonder the beast was going berserk, I could barely hear myself think.

‘A little help?!’ Akilis spat as he swung for the beast’s head with his gun.

I steadied my own gun between my hands and aimed, but the damned thing was moving too fast and the bullet hit the wall by Akilis’s head instead.

‘Shit!’ I snapped.

The hybrid crouched down to her hands and feet, she was about to pounce on it and then she looked at me – it was a distraction. Akilis kicked the beast in the stomach where it flew back into the wall. The hybrid used the open space to claw at its face in which the wild thing shrieked loudly. The sound alone could make anybody cower into their skin, including me. Akilis locked its fidgeting legs to the ground, whilst the hybrid twisted its arms behind its head. Like a slab of meat on a stick, the blood red beast squirmed under their restraints.

‘Shoot it!’ Akilis hissed.

I held the gun up to its face and clenched my teeth, when I let go of the trigger the bullet sunk a hole straight through the bone between his eyes. Its hairless head fell to the ground with a screechy thump like a pebble in a pond. Akilis and the hybrid held their breaths, too afraid to let go… and they were right. Its limbs twisted and turned, the damn thing was still alive!

‘In the heart, that’s where it’s energy must come from!’ Akilis barked.

I fired at his heart twice, this must kill him or else we are all fucked.

As soon as the bullet pierced his skin, the beast began to slow down and eventually it stopped. Its limbs gave way and its body sprawled out on the floor with its head by its side. Black blood oozed out from the cuts like a river on the run, I stepped back careful not to get my boots dirty, they were expensive leather after all.

Akilis, the hybrid and I stood up to look at it while the alarm rang, and the blue flashing lights highlighted the blood-stained walls of the room. I looked to Akilis who seemed just as distraught by what we had witnessed, and then he looked over at the hybrid who looked at the both of us in a hurricane of curiosity and terror. I knew what he was thinking and I agreed. She had to die, I could not risk letting the Daggertooths release her into the world – who knows what she was capable of. I pointed the handgun at her face, and she hissed aggressively.

One shot, two. She howled in a manner that was much too similar to the creeper and fell to the ground. Dead.

Chapter Nine

Akilis bashed the exit door of the laboratory to open which led us into a dark corridor and then into another door. Behind that door were two vampire guards who seemed confused by our sudden appearance and shocked by the ear-achingly loud alarm that followed us through. With no time to waste, Akilis shot one and I twisted the head off the other.

‘Over there!’ Akilis pointed to one of three doors. ‘I’ve seen it before!’

He booted the door off its hinges, Deathclaw hung on the wall behind several vampires who looked more prepared than their friends on the floor behind us did.

‘Let’s dance,’ Akilis hissed.

Using my strength, I jumped over them swiftly and grabbed Deathclaw from the wall before my feet hit the floor. I swung it in a circular motion in the air, the familiar weight of the sword felt good in my hand – it felt like home. There were seven of them and two of us, but Akilis and I knew they were no match. In what became a blur of bullets and the blinding shine of Deathclaw tearing through flesh, their bodies dropped to the ground like birds on an electrical fence. The stench of blood consumed the room and my throat burned with hunger.

‘Let’s go, now!’ I said as the sound of stampeding footsteps and charging came from behind us.

I pulled the door handle slowly… there was nobody beyond. Akilis and I stepped through and shut the door firmly behind us. The room, which was not really a room but more of a glass corridor, highlighted the few moments before the crack of dawn would erupt through the sky. I could see the radiant pink aura of sunlight about to burst through clouds.

‘Looks like we will not have time for that explosion after all,’ I said. ‘We need to get out now, or face the music behind us.’

‘How?!’ Akilis looked from left to right for an escape route, completely missing it before his eyes.

‘Here!’ I said and thrust Deathclaw through the glass which was followed by a kick so that the entire wall came down in a waterfall off shredded pieces.

There was thumping and banging on the door, no time to waste – we jumped through the glass and made a run across the long stretch of field. The sun was beginning to rise and I could smell the earliest hints of burning skin. There was a loud screech behind us, when I looked back I saw two panthers gaining in on us – if they caught up, I knew Akilis would be dead.

‘Go!’ I shouted. ‘I will find you!’

Knowing there was no other way, Akilis ran as the sun rays chased him into the surrounding forest. I came to an abrupt halt and as the panthers used the strength of their magnificent feet to jump from the ground and into the air elegantly, Deathclaw sliced their bodies in half before they had time to react. Without looking back, I followed Akilis’s scent into the forest until I saw him whimper into the soil. His back was slashed of ripped skin melted with older burnt skin and shredded clothes that caught fire in the sun. He was digging at the ground with hands, I ran to his side and dug my own claws faster until the hole was big enough for him.

‘Get in!’ I hissed and covered him up before the sun rays could seep through the gaps of the forest trees and burn him alive.

Once I was sure he was safe, I fell on my back and took a great deep breath of air as I recalled everything I had witnessed in the last four hours. It would be these four hours that would change the course of my life forever, I knew nothing could be the same ever again.

Getting up, I dusted myself off the dirt and made for a run – Akilis would find me soon enough.

Chapter Ten

The soil was warm, and I could feel it cool as the night set in. Although I did not necessarily need to sleep under the ground like vampires, I found it always sped up the healing process for my wounds. Now that I was fully awake, I did not want to rise from the ground and face what was to come.

A smile worked itself across my lips as I recalled a memory from a better time in my life. I imagined a pair of hands slide their way around my waist until I felt his chest smooth against my back. Softly, he pushed me towards the bed and began to caress my shoulder while gently biting the base of my neck. It was the 70s and we had just come back from a night of slaying. The air was humid, the night was young, and we were drunk off the sensation of hunting.

I swung my arm over the back of his neck and pulled his head closer to my own. He took this as confirmation and aggressively turned me over so that I was facing him, he picked me up by the thighs and slammed me into the bed so that his core gently rubbed against mine. I tightened my thighs around his torso and pushed him back so that I was on top. Locking my hands around both of his wrists, I felt the animal within him clawing to get out.

I let go of his wrists and gently, he trailed his fingers along my spine and tightened his grip around my upper thighs, it hurt but never one to give in I refused to make a sound. I tugged at his hair aggressively exposing his neck, my heart pumped in line with his vein. I hissed and stabbed my fangs into his neck like a wild animal and let the blood dribble into my mouth fruitfully. It tasted… beautiful, like syrup and vanilla, it drove my system into oblivion as greed tore at my heart strings.

‘Will this happen a lot?’ he winced. ‘The biting I mean – it’s painful.’

I laughed maliciously and continued to bite and lick until my mouth was overrun with blood.

‘Answer me!’ he hissed.

I licked the rest of the blood clean from his neck and towered over his body on my knees. He placed his hands on top of my thighs, clearly tired from losing blood. Fucking vampires. I smirked.

‘Dhamujk prefer to feed from vampires, human blood is no good to us and lycan blood does not taste as good,’ I said as I wiped my mouth of his sweet sugar. ‘Nymph’s blood is,’ I paused to think for a word that could best describe it. ‘Like whiskey, delicious to begin with but after the fourth glass – you will have wished that you had stopped at just three. Ahkulite blood is sour but Ilythian blood hits the spot just right, I think the air up their makes Ilythians cleaner.’

He suddenly dragged me down from under him and thrust his hips up so that our cores rubbed against each other. He was hungry for more; his eyes grew large with anticipation. ‘If you’re going to enjoy it,’ he clenched his jaw. ‘Then so am I.’

Akilis ripped my dress from my body, unable to control myself any longer I delved into my inner goddess euphoria. We spent that night thrusting, and tugging, and fucking like deranged dragonflies in a war of passion and need. But all wars must come to an end eventually, and once both of us had fuelled our bodies with enough energy we crashed so hard our bodies gave way instantly. Unable to keep my eyes open, I fell asleep with the soft scratches of Akilis’s fingers on my back.

But that was a long time ago. The smile on my lips dwindled. Kicking myself out from the memory I dug through the earth and found myself in the pitch black of the night.

The snapping of a twig caught my attention sending my senses into overdrive. I shot up from the ground and on high alert of everything around me. The wind nestled the trees in the distance, a bird tweaked somewhere above and then – snap! There it was again, a foot on the ground, to my left… the scent was familiar... he was getting closer – I could smell him – it was –

‘Shit!’ I winced as a large body hurled from the trees behind me and crunched my body to the ground.

‘Don’t move,’ the familiar voice said and locked my wrists behind my back while thrusting my face into the ground.

‘Akilis!’ I hissed as he twisted my wrist further into a dangerous loop. ‘Stop.’

‘Sorry,’ he said playfully and let me go. ‘It’s been a while since I…’

When I turned around, Akilis towered over me. The burn marks had gone, he was back to his usual chiselled self. Had it not been for his singed clothing, nobody would have been able to tell that he had nearly been burned alive hours earlier.

‘It’s a good thing your scent is distinctive, otherwise I would have struggled to find you.’

‘Why? Did you think I would run and leave you?’ I smirked.

Our eyes held each other’s for a moment, the words rang in my ears and we both knew that I had considered doing so, and yet here I still am. When he could not bear to keep the connection any longer he dropped his gaze first.

‘Thank you – for what you did back there, you saved my life,’ he said so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

‘Next time you come up with a plan, tell me first. Especially one that involves bombs and vampires.’

He looked at his feet like a lost deer in the woods, clearly embarrassed. ‘When I heard that you were alive… I did not want to just come back. After the way we left things, I wanted to show you that I could – that you – … damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were alive?’

‘It was for your own safety, you know what people think of...’

‘And you know I didn’t care!’ he spat but very quickly collected himself. ‘I’m sorry I – you’re right, it was dangerous – stupid even to think that we could make it work.’

Somehow, hearing it confirmed from him was worse than telling myself for years. I was not expecting it to affect me and yet, the simple fact that it did proved that perhaps I had cared for him a little more than that of a companion.

‘Things clearly look like they’re about to change drastically now – Zagan doesn’t want war, he wants a universal rebellion! That thing in there, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,’ he said.

‘The blood – my blood did that,’ I said while thinking back to how fast the crimson red had spread across its body.

‘But, there was something strange about the way it looked at you… did you see it?’

‘See what?’ I said curiously.

‘It looked like it was frightened to look at you – had no problem beating the shit out of me however.’

I tried to recall its eyes, so black and devilish, and then I wondered – why did it take so long to decide between me and Akilis? Was it frightened? Or distraught by the sudden decision it was forced to make… unless, it was trying to pick up on my scent? Whatever it was trying to do, I hope I would never have to see it again.

‘The important question is, what the hell do we do now?’ Akilis scratched the top of his head in thought like an innocent child, sometimes I forgot he was centuries younger than me – sometimes I forgot he was a vampire.

‘We have to warn The Needles – they will know what to do,’ I said.

‘Is that really such a clever idea? What will they think coming from a dhamujk and a vampire?’

‘They can think what they want – what we saw last night could bring phenomenal chaos to a world that has already endured enough. Can you imagine an army of those things? You saw how uncontrollable it was. Worse yet, the hybrid experiment was a success – they are probably mass injecting vampires as we speak! Think of the power they will have, you saw how quickly she turned and show strong she was.’

Fear was evident in his eyes, I could tell Akilis was weighing out the possible conclusions to this dark and twisted tale. It was inevitable that something terrible was going to happen, but how long did we have until this horror would spread? More importantly, how many more lives will be lost – were the millions dead from the last war not enough?

‘I have a friend,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Not really a friend – let’s call him an acquaintance… that I have known for a few years. When the Stallah Society were pushed out of London, many of them emigrated to New York… there was word of a secret rebellion, but it was never anything more than hushed whispers of fanatics that wanted to revive our kingdoms – stories from the mad and the desperate.’

‘What has this got to do with anything?’ I said failing to see the connection.

‘Every revolutionary idea begins as the hushed whispers of fanatics desperate for change. I don’t like people, Stallite or human I keep myself to myself in New York. But this kid, he’s bright and quick on his feet, thinks fast you know? I met him back in 39’ – must have been in his early twenties. I caught him rewiring a White Spider to shoot at several cars of members who were part of The Organisation. Nobody got hurt, but you may have heard it on the news a few years back when it happened. Anyway, I stopped him before he could disappear, he specialises in teleportation energy and I nearly broke my neck chasing him down because he was so fast. We became… business associates soon after that. We had a good thing going for a while, this kid was sharp both in strength and mind.

‘But he disappeared last year, up until a few months ago… out of pure coincidence, I saw him in Times Square – I don’t even remember where I was so shocked to see him there. So, naturally I followed him, I wanted to know where the hell this guy had gone and why. And that was when I saw it, old members of the Stallah Society in the lobby of a huge skyscraper in the dead of night. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had to blink to stay focused. But that simple blink – that millisecond of shutting my eyes and opening them again – he, as well as them, where all gone. But I knew he’d seen me, I’d spent enough time with him to pick up on certain characteristics, just like I have yours.

‘And I wasn’t wrong. The following night, I returned to our old workplace – a warehouse somewhere dark in the city – and he was waiting for me there, just as I predicted. He wanted to apologise for his absence, as he put it. But most importantly, he was warning me. The Daggertooth will not be around for long and he knew how much I loathed those motherfuckers. I knew he knew that I knew what he was talking about, he must have been their transporter or something – I don’t know, I didn’t care because the fact was, something big was about to happen. Around that same time, I heard rumours of the Reaper. So, I figured, hell, if shit is truly about to go down then I know where I’d rather be.

‘So, you infiltrated the Daggertooth clan, played along to their game – you wanted to know what they were up to and how it involved me, it was perfect. Why would vampires ever suspect another vampire?’ I said.

‘Except, I was being played the whole time,’ Akilis sighed.

‘Stick to what you’re good at, explosions,’ I smirked. ‘Speaking of, where did you put yours?’

‘Under Zagan’s desk,’ he took a small remote out of his jacket pocket. ‘I tried it when I woke up from the ground, they must have dismantled it.’

‘So, where does that leave us now?’

‘We need to warn them, what we saw yesterday is going to change the world forever if it is released and the Stallah Society is how we do it.’

‘And what makes you so sure they will do anything about it?’

‘Most of them are former Ilythians, it’s basically instilled in their blood to abide by the morale code of Good, Light, Righteousness – you know? All that shit most people have no time for.’

He had a point, Ilythians were notorious for their candour.

A hiss in the distance sent my senses on fire. I put a finger to my lip and stayed exactly still knowing that the smallest of movements would attract their attention. I slowed down my breathing to ease the pounding of my heart – whatever this thing was, it would smell me before it heard me. The hiss sounded again, it was closer this time – it was moving, two – no four – at time… it was – a cat. Akilis, who had directed his gun at the small feline sighed in relief. I should have known it was just a cat – my senses were overriding with anxiety, both of us where too on edge. Clearly, last night had scared us more than we liked to admit.

‘It’s just a cat – a fucking cat,’ Akilis kicked the ground and the cat scurried away in fright.

‘We need to move.’

Within seconds, I was running through the forest with Akilis just behind. Vampires were fast, much faster than human beings and lycans but dhamujki were faster, in fact I had never known anything faster than myself in this world.

We came to a single traffic light in the middle of a cross road with no buildings, trees or cover in sight but the back end of the forest we had come from. The traffic light paused at the red.

‘Where are we?’ Akilis asked.

‘Surrey – if we keep up the pace, we should be in my flat in ten minutes and –’

‘Woah, we can’t go back there! They’ll have people waiting for you there.’

‘And,’ I continued. ‘I need my backpack – it has got everything I need in there.’

‘No,’ his voice lowered. ‘We cannot go back there, we have to move forward now. Didn’t you hear Zagan? He’s been watching you for months – even before I started watching you!’

He was right and the only way out, was onwards. ‘We need to leave the country then. If we cut through East London we can take the accelorway to New York in half the time.’

‘Yeah, I figured as much but – but there are other ways of getting to places quicker than the accelorway can take us.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, confused.

‘Follow me.’

Chapter Eleven

London Liverpool Street was spectacular in the evening, people whizzed past one another – some on their way home from work, others to the bar, vampires to the south, lycans to the north, bourgeois to the west and poverty to the east, or whatever else people chose to occupy their self-consumed evenings with.

Akilis had learned a thing or two in New York and Boston, but most impressively, he had learned how to network – people liked to talk to him, he was that kind of guy. In a dark corner of the Hammersmith and Circle line Eastbound platform, White Spiders hung rigidly by the stairs staring passengers down as they exited the super bullet trains. With faces to resembles that of humans, the synthetic flesh ended just by their collarbones where they were built with reflective mirror material. Some say the material was chosen to entice people to look at them.

We waited for the train to disperse of its passengers and let new ones flood the carriages. When the protective tube shields that had been placed by the Organisation due to one too many Stallite creatures jumping before trains out of curiosity finally closed, the train shot off in its new and improved super speed. Akilis and I hid from the White Spiders on the platform and then climbed the stairs so that we were on the above ground level platforms where the giant exit was visible amongst a mass of people entering and leaving all at once.

‘The exit is a portal; most people don’t know that but those who do will know how to leave through it. People don’t pay attention to the small details in their day to day lives. It’s our way out,’ Akilis said.

‘How?’

‘I can’t tell you that – for now, you’ll just need to trust me,’ he held out his hand.

I took it and restrained the need to crush his bones to smithereens. As we joined the crowd of people exiting I held my breath and followed his step, one minute we were walking side by side people and creatures and the next, we were not.

On the other side of the portal was a tunnel of nothingness, there were no walls and no floors, it was a mirage of black matter like we were floating in a transparent bubble. A golden door, emerged from the darkness, it was slightly slanted to the left – or maybe we were slanted to the left, I could not tell. There was a shifting of several keys until the door was pushed open by a hand that was followed by a man who looked only a little younger than Akilis’s human age of thirty-two.

‘Wasn’t expecting you back so soon,’ he said to Akilis in an accent that sounded very much like that of a native Londoner.

‘Me neither,’ Akilis said, stiffly.

The man, who seemed just as tall and just as wide as Akilis was sporting a heavy jacket and chiselled features that could very well compete with Akilis’ own. He swung the door out wide open for us to step through. I let go of Akilis’s hand instantly.

‘Go on,’ he nudged at the both of us.

Akilis gave me a cautious look, it was a warning for me not to do anything stupid and then, he stepped through the door where the darkness engulfed his body whole.

‘It’s harmless,’ the young man said with a slight smile – he was responding to the confused look on my face. There was a different scent about him, it was strange, and it made me feel uneasy.

Ignoring him, I thrust myself through the darkness which felt more like mist and heard the door lock behind me. When the mist cleared, it was not any brighter – perhaps it was an illusion.

‘We’re underground,’ Akilis said.

‘I gathered,’ I said as my body automatically measured the air pressure and dust particles in the atmosphere. They were different, still dirty, but different – we were no longer in London that was for sure. New York had a cheesy tang to it.

‘Troye,’ Akilis suddenly turned to the man. ‘We have news of the Daggertooth clan in London, and you’ll want to hear it.’

When I turned to look at Troye once more, he was nothing like the young boy Akilis had explained. In fact, he was not a boy at all, he was a man.

Troye, spread his hands out across the air where a black hole increased in a size big enough for the both of them, and me. And then it started to make sense – he was Ilythian of course, which explains the strong stench of fresh cut grass and stardust about his aura, but there was an element of something else. Sand? No. Roots? No. It tasted like, metal – no, glass? Yes. And something else, I just could not put my finger on it.

The Kingdom of Ilythia was the first of the stars to be born, because of this and the convenient geographical location it was created in, it became the headquarters of all things great and important for all the kingdoms. Naturally, each kingdom had their very own governing system of course, but the Kingdom of Ilythia was the biggest and most populated of our kingdoms so it was inevitable that most officials were stationed there.

History is strange that way, although Stallites such as Troye are quick to call their kingdoms home, this land – earth – was once their home too centuries ago. They descend from the same breed of homo-sapiens species as that of humans, but there was a mutation in the genes sometime around 4 BC – a date that is familiar to humans as the birth of Jesus Christ, but for us it means something else entirely different. As the world developed, small gatherings of groups and families grew into human civilisations of towns and God-fearing cities standing on the pillars of slaves, but something changed along the course of nature. Some humans developed abilities that were welcomed with great enthusiasm at a time of exceptional supernatural interest, some were capable of controlling the seas with a simple push of their minds, some could create magnificent sources of explosive energy from the tips of their fingers and more. They called them, the Zi’tikai, people believed to have been celestial beings blessed with gifts from the Gods. But with distorted balance, equilibrium would come in the form of other mutations and some were not as great as that of the Zi’tikai.

Our history tells us that it started with the Dark Wolf somewhere in what is now known as North America. It is said that a sacred tribe of people hidden amongst their native woodlands and away from outer society could turn themselves into wolves. The Dark Wolf was a notable tribesman of his people and due to his pure goodness and love the Gods gave him a gift. He was first to shift, but when wolf tried to become man again it did not work. And so, in a fit of rage he lost control and murdered his people in cold blood. When he eventually saw through the red, the Dark Wolf howled for days. It is believed that it was his howl that woke them up from the dead and allowed his fellow tribesman to shift into wolves, thus a new breed of humans were born, shifters or what we now call, lycans. But they were not the only creepy crawlers of the night, and soon the humans learned of such danger fearing that this was the consequence of the Zi’tikai people because, with all good must come bad. But the story of the Dark Wolf was only one of many as terrible things were happening all over the world – nature wanted it that way.

The ancient Zi’tikai breed of what we know as the Stallites of today were shunned from their world and forced to create stars of their own. Shifters and other creatures of the night and day followed them there, terrified for their lives on land with the humans. And yet, as they settled into their kingdoms the nature of their ancestry was forgotten within the archaic stories of a secret species eager to leave their old lives behind and begin afresh in a world that accepted them for who they were. Just like the humans did with their new modern world of borders and countries, for power and greed.

When the mist from Troye’s hands withered, he folded his arms and stood up tall like he was a tree that was growing at a superfast rate right before my very eyes.

‘We know you do,’ he said.

‘You do?’ Akilis said in outright surprise, hell even I was surprised.

‘Of course, we’ve been watching you – the both of you,’ he said and his eyes fixed on me specifically.

Shit. Is there anybody that had not been watching me? I clenched my fists and flared my nostrils, my fangs were on the verge of release. The innocent expression on Troye’s face merged into a smirk. Clearly, he wanted a reaction out of me, but not today.

‘Come on,’ he said seriously with a level of confidence that was almost intimidating. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

When he disappeared through his portal, I took a hold of Akilis’ wrist to which he halted like an obedient dog. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’ I gritted my teeth.

‘No – I didn’t know – now I’m beginning to think this was much bigger than either of us anticipated, I’ve been played as much as you,’ he said suspiciously.

I let go of his hand and followed suit, the portal automatically decreased and dissolved in the air when I was out of the other end. We were now above ground; the air was cleaner, and I could see New York’s infamous street lights through the large bay window. We were several hundred meters above ground in fact, which was evident by the flying pellabores. I stepped closer to the window and looked down at the people on the ground, so small like insects. After the war, sky scrapers were built incredibly tall due to the population that on some days like today, it would skirt the surface of the clouds.

‘Welcome,’ a voice boomed.

I quickly turned on the spot to several strange faces in a room too small to accommodate them all. Akilis, who seemed just as stunned as I was stepped back in line with me. ‘What the hell…’ he said to Troye.

Troye smirked and took his position besides a man, who could easily wreak havoc on every head in the room if he wished. He was sat in a chair that only emphasised his colossal build, I recognised his face instantly. The Great Kendrix Balthazar. A warrior of the Xanyth Guardianship, he was one of the most famous Ilythians in our world and a master of mental energy. It was Kendrix that saved us from extinction after the Battle of Dust. Considered a deity amongst men, he was not a force to be reckoned with. Parents now told their children tales of his legend, each story bigger and greater than the last. Despite the years, he still looked sturdy for his age, he must be in his sixties now – I was not sure, being immortal meant I never had to keep up with other people’s birth years, fortunately.

I felt Akilis tense next to me. They looked at us, as we looked at them. They were folk from all four kingdoms, Ilythians, Ahkulites, Zjarrians and Tokenites together as one for the first time in what I imagined must have been years, maybe decades. Soil, ice, fire and sand gathered in one room, each scent just as distinctive as the other.

‘I do not bow to any man,’ I said making sure to sweep my eyes over their glaring holes as they individually averted my gaze when their turn came.

Some of the strange faces hissed in my direction as they pulled their heads to the ground. Clearly, they were aware of some of my abilities.

‘She is nearly two millennia old, she has earned her place in this world,’ Kendrix voice rumbled softly like that of thunder after the lightening.

I heard them gasp and whisper between themselves, even amongst the other kingdoms I was something of a myth, still.

‘In fact,’ he paused as his voice picked up. ‘She was there when our stars were born, am I right?’ he looked directly at me, unlike humans, lycans and vampires – creatures from the stars were not as easily swayed by my trancing abilities, but that did not mean it was not possible either.

‘Yes,’ I said finally and the tight packed crowd of beings in this single room broke out into a buzzle of whispers.

‘I believe you have information for us,’ Kendrix said and the whispers came to an automatic stop, tension lingered in the atmosphere – I could hear their hearts beating faster like that of a song in which the tempo increases so quickly that you cannot pick up the single beats anymore.

‘The Daggertooth clan want to take over the world,’ Akilis stood up to his full height. ‘They’ve been planning on doing so for years – carefully waiting for their time, abiding by human laws so that suspicion remained at the minimum.’

‘He is right, it only became evident to us last night that they are building an army. But not just any army, a hybrid army,’ I said.

‘What do you mean by hybrid?’ Troye asked.

‘My blood, my dhamujki blood – last night we witnessed them inject a vampire and a human with my blood to merge the vampire genes with my own. My dhamujki genes make me an ancient breed of half vampire and half lycan, I excel both species in all senses and abilities – they thought that a transfusion of my blood and vampire blood would unify to create other dhamujki hybrids like myself.’

‘And? Did it work?’ one of the Stallites said, anticipation evident by the glaring of his eyes and the gawping of his mouth. When he saw me give him the attention he so desperately yearned at the request of his question, he looked down at his feet quickly.

‘Yes,’ I said which was followed with startling gasps.

‘Both human and vampire?’ Kendrix said quietly while pondering the outcome in his mind, I could tell by the way that he furrowed his brows and looked to the ground anxiously. The years of war had been unkind to him.

‘Yes and no.’

‘No?’ Troye said.

‘From what we saw, the vampire hybrid was a success,’ Akilis said. ‘Her eyes were the same as hers after the transfusion. There is no doubt that they are probably turning vampires into hybrids as we speak. But as for the human…’

‘It did not work – my blood and human blood – it should never be,’ I gritted my teeth as an image of the beast played in my mind.

‘Why? What did you see?’ Troye asked curiously.

‘That thing – whatever it was – because it clearly was not human nor vampire, it was evil – just pure evil,’ Akilis spat. ‘I have never seen anything like it.’

A sharp murmur erupted from the crowd, shock – fear – anger plastered across their faces.

‘It seems,’ Kendrix broke the chatter. ‘That we have work to do.’

‘Yes,’ Troye gave a slight nod. ‘I’ll inform the others.’

‘Others?’ I said.

‘Did you think it was just us?’ Troye smirked.

Yes, I did, and yet again, I was surprised to find that I was wrong. And then I began to wonder what else I did not know.

Chapter Twelve

Akilis and I were each given a room to rest in for the night. I soon found out that the building was not any old tower block, the stench of creatures from all four stars was poisonous in the corridors. Kendrix had spent the last decade keeping his people safe in buildings such as this. Every single room was taken up by creatures of the day and night, apart from vampires of course. This building was the primary headquarters for former Stallah Society members to congregate, it was protected by a magnetic field that could repel White Spiders and other man-made machines. But more impressively, it released hallucinogenic gases susceptible to non-Stallite beings if they steered to close. They called it Star Tower, but not all Stallites knew of its existence, because not all Stallites were on our side.

My mind flickered back to Kendrix, clearly, he must have done his own research – well enough to know how old I was at least. The mention of our stars triggered an on-going memory chain of events in which the open space before me suddenly became a film theatre as vaults of dramatic lights pierced the sky, the ice, the sand and the soil. People, terrified of the unknown, looked to the stars in awe – waiting… wondering whether this strange phenomenon was that of a miracle or a disaster. A sizzling sound erupted in my ears and a chill went up my spine, I dragged myself out of such memories and put a steel door in front of the memory box locked around the chains inside my mind. Each kingdom became a country, not exactly like the humans however with their theoretical borders and separate ruling system – their countries are like that of prisons used to frighten people into doing what they wanted. As the centuries went by, people felt as one with their kingdoms so it was only fitting that their identities became part of their kingdom’s origin. Take the Ilythians for example, the simple acknowledgement of their good nature earlier made me realise just how much character each kingdom had. The Ahkulite people – my people – were regularly referred to as shadows, due to the climate and the amalgamation of diverse species in which vampires, lycans and all had become creatures of the night by natural progression.

Thump! The loud sound of flesh slapping metal dissolved the accelerated thought process in my mind and when I tried to get back on track, I was too lost to stir the wheel. Tired. Yes, I was tired.

The loud thump sounded again, it was Akilis – I could smell the familiar scent of mint and rugged, day old salty sweat behind the door. As I opened the door in my haze, I had not realised how hungry I was until I was dragging him inside my room and pushing him onto the bed with fangs on full display. He locked his hand around my neck before I could get to the base of this collarbone where my hands were clawing at his jacket. I froze at the unexpected movement, unable to speak nor breathe.

‘If you wanted to feed, you should have just asked,’ he said.

He released my neck and I dug my fangs into his skin like a starving animal that had not been fed in weeks. Grappling at his neck and hair, I sucked out as much blood as I could until I felt his hands on my shoulders pulling me away from his neck. His blood so sweet I would not have known the difference if it were red sugar in my mouth. He was unlike any other vampire I had tasted but Akilis was not like most of course, he was different.

‘I need enough for myself to live,’ he said while rubbing the bloody patch on his neck with the sleeve of his jacket gently.

I leaned into the space on the bed next to him and watched him do this simple task. He was concentrating far more than needs be to clean his neck and it was somewhat amusing to watch.

‘What?’ he suddenly said.

‘Nothing,’ I said and quickly wiped the smirk off my face.

‘I forgot how,’ he paused trying to think of the appropriate word. ‘How… messy things get around you.’

I could tell he meant that both physically and mentally, but messy was not the word I would use to describe our… companionship.

He smirked playfully, not the kind of smirk that teased – the kind of smirk that wanted to make you laugh.

‘What?’ I said, alert of his sudden attention.

‘You’re worried.’

‘Are you not?’

He eased into the surface of the bed, pondering how best to respond. ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘But… I didn’t think we would ever be here – doing this either,’ he said with his eyes locked onto the ceiling and away from mine.

‘Because you thought I was dead?’ I said knowing he was not being completely honest.

He did not answer, but I scrutinised the prompt edges of his profile and imagined what he was thinking. When my mind fell blank, I realised I was just as lost as he was.

‘You know, I could just force you to tell me?’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t do that,’ he said so seriously I almost flinched at his abrupt eye contact. He was challenging me, to do so right here, I would be a fool to compete and a loser if I did not.

‘Do not temp me kid,’ I clenched my teeth.

‘You’re only just nine hundred years older than me,’ he smirked.

‘More. I’m am three times your age,’ I responded.

He moved quickly, pining my wrists to the bed and my body between his thighs – it was difficult not to react. ‘And twice as strong as any other vampire,’ he said.

Then a newsbox at the end of the bed fizzled to what sounded like white noise as a hologram appeared across the blank wall before us. London was burning.

Chapter Thirteen

When something so shocking its almost unbelievable happens, it can take a while for the body to recognise that the receptors in the brain are not responding. What I saw through the newsbox was something that I would never forget, the image played on my mind repeatedly until I had manipulated it so much that my brain nearly played it off as just that of a nightmare. Had I not seen the expression on Akilis’s face when I turned to look at him, I may not have believed it myself.

The hologram expanded across the room in the form of a woman, she was a news anchor, judging by the familiar landscape background of clean London. She looked high on adrenaline with eyes as big as a tennis balls, glaring into her screen like she had just seen a ghost. Clearing her throat, she started:

“This is a global disruption from the Organisation – I repeat this is a global disruption from the Organisation here live in London. In the early hours of the morning there was an outbreak of what we think is a deadly virus that is highly contagious to human beings. From what we have seen, the Stallites are immune to the virus however it has proved lethal to human blood. We are not sure how it started but what we do know is that once humans are exposed to the virus, they change at a rate faster than can be explained.

The virus, it seems, has only been active in London – from what we can tell. Which is why officials have decided to quarantine London off from the rest of the United Kingdom, and the world. Due to the wild nature of those affected by the virus we have asked residents to remain in their homes, lock the doors and windows, find safe houses, keep off the streets and large open spaces where there is little cover, share supplies, tape cardboard to your arms and legs, carry sharp weapons for defensive precautions and if you do see one of those things then, run.

We are attempting to keep the electricity on for as long as possible. The accelorway has been shut off and blocked meaning all transport in and out of London is now prohibited. Do not attempt to go down there yourselves, gas has been released as a preventative measure that could put your lives in danger if you get trapped underground. Air cruisers have been diverted, teleported or flown away from London as we do not know the danger that it could cause to such creatures. Stallites and humans who wish to teleport into London – don’t, it is suicide. We strongly advise you against this. If you are unable to reach family members and friends, call the number at the bottom of this screen. Ration food and water, after tonight we will no longer be able to help those trapped in London. The Organisation has made it clear that they will be investigating this further, so far there has been no word from the Daggertooth Clan. The Needles will meet tonight where a verdict will be met on how to proceed.

The footage I am about to show you is incredibly distressing, but I implore you watch it as it could help you better identify those who have been exposed to the virus. For those of you around the world who are watching this today, if you have seen anything like this before then I urge you to report it this instant. This world has already been through enough and we need to work together to save it.”

As soon as her face faded out, blurry video footage of Trafalgar Square and the newly crafted sculptures of the angelic Xanyth creatures to replace Britain’s lions appeared on the screen. But this was not the Trafalgar Square I knew. The background was engulfed in grey smoke which clouded half of the screen, in the foreground there were chunks of rubble from the sculptures shredded to pieces on the floor and blood smeared across the infamous fountain in the centre which too was flooded in a pool of blood. The video, silent, zoomed in on a figure in the distance behind one of the beheaded sculptures. As it got too close, the video blurred, the cameraperson zoomed out and then in again just enough that the video quality was adequate. There, that thing I had seen in the lab earlier, deadly red with two black holes for eyes suddenly jumped from the sculpture and landed on all fours. It buried its slickly smooth head to the floor, like it was trying to catch a current of a scent – the camera jolted to the ground and then the sky until it landed on a man who was crouched behind the sculpted wings of a Xanyth. As instinct took hold of his senses – a feeling I was all too familiar with – the black beast hurled his head back and shrieked to the sky almost like it was calling. Without a second to spare it ran towards the terrified man faster than my eyes could follow and dragged him to the ground where he thumped his fists on his skull and then finally – it released its fangs and hissed before it dug them into the man’s cheek as he cried out in terrific pain.

The camera wobbled as the beast released the man and the ghastly thing ran away faster than the camera could follow. When the camera flew back to the same place, the man was now gone. The person holding the camera was frightened, judging by the constant swiping of left to right with the shaking camera and then – it stopped moving. Slowly, the cameraperson turned around catching sight of the destruction and smoky buildings against London’s background. The tension in my muscles seized as the camera came to a final turn only to find there was nothing there. And just as quickly as I sighed in relief, a pair of devilishly black eyes and fangs twice the size of mine engulfed the screen whole with its red complexion – and then the camera went out.

Akilis and I held our breathes as we waited for the video to depart and return to the news presenter that had been on the screen earlier. But instead, a caption appeared stating there was a signal failure and the hologram dissolved.

We sat in silence for a moment and let the images play with our imaginations of all the possible explanations. But that was short lived when an aggressive knock on the door boomed us back into consciousness. When we did not answer, Troye smashed the door off its hinges only to find us looking at him the way he was looking at us. We were all just as fucked as each other.

Chapter Fourteen

Kendrix called a meeting up to his penthouse at the top of the sky scraper as soon as the footage came to an end. Although there were less people in the room this time, it was clear that only the most important members had been called – two of which were Akilis and I for obvious reasons. The atmosphere was filled with an unsettling wave of anger, most of which seemed to be directed at me.

‘It seems that you have not been honest with your claims,’ Kendrix said.

‘We have told you nothing but the truth. That thing – we killed it, I put two bullets into its chest with this very gun,’ I said and Akilis tugged his jacket to the side to show them the gun tucked into his jeans. ‘They must have injected more humans or something – I do not know, we barely got out of there alive.’

Kendrix, as well as the other faces in the room were sceptical of course, we were after all just shadows – why would they believe us?

‘We are aware you have very little reason to trust us, but do you forget who I am?’ I said confidently because this would be the only card I had to play. ‘They call me the Reaper because I hunt down those who no longer belong in this sphere… and eat them. If I wanted to start a war – I would not need vampires to do so. Yes, I need blood to survive, just like vampires but as you may know not all vampires are bad. Now listen to me very carefully – if we are not quick to act on this so-called virus then the world we know today will be gone tomorrow. I know what you are thinking – why should you help?’ I looked at them and they eyed me up, when there was silence I took it as a sign for me to continue. ‘If we do not, innocent people will die and worse yet, if the virus spreads – and it will spread – then soon enough you will be in danger too.’

‘What makes you so sure the virus will spread?’ Troye said.

‘Do the math, London is a thriving hub of all species with a capacity of nearly twenty million people – the chances of them killing off the virus are unlikely because it will spread faster than they have time to kill each infected individual. I predict that within five days London will be crawling with those things, and when they cannot find any fresh blood within – they will want to go out where they will have the entire country to feast on. You know how quickly bacteria spreads? Well imagine a city with twenty million bacteria the size of person?’

Shocked by the reality of the situation, the atmosphere cooled into an icy chill. Even Kendrix, who always remained calm and collected, had dropped to a slouch in his chair.

‘And how would you proceed with this… situation?’ Troye said.

‘First, I would go alone. I am faster, stronger and a better fighter than everyone in this room –’

‘I will go with you,’ Akilis interrupted.

‘No. You saw how quickly it moved, you felt it’s strength in the lab – three of us against one of them.’

‘I will not let you go alone!’ Akilis hissed.

‘What exactly do you plan on doing once you’re there?’ Kendrix said.

‘What I do best, hunt. The only way for us to know how to stop this is to start at the beginning. Zagan created this, so he must know how to stop it.’

‘I will confer with the others tonight, I suggest you take the remainder of the night to catch up on your sleep – it seems like you will need it,’ Kendrix said.

The room cleared in a blur, and Akilis was hot on my heels. When we were inside my room again, he exploded. ‘You can’t go!’ he barked. ‘They’ll kill you.’

‘They will not kill me, they will not touch me,’ I said as I recalled what he had said earlier hoping he was right because it would be my only weapon against them.

‘How can you be so sure? The lab experiment breed might be different from the others.’

‘I know I am right about this, I know,’ I gritted my teeth. ‘Now, I am tired, and we can have this discussion tomorrow.’

Akilis lingered for a moment, he wanted to say something and I knew he was trying to reconstruct it in his head so that it sounded better aloud. ‘Then, I will stay with you tonight.’

I did not have the mental energy to fight him on that, so I let him lay on the bed beside me. A little while after I turned on my side away from him where I felt his eyes burn the clothes off my back. I phased him out of my mind and closed my eyes to breathe. And then my world bled red and the sound of a single bell chimed once.

Chapter Fifteen

I awoke with my back flat on the bed, just like all vampires do. Cautious not to make a sound, I even slowed my breathing for a moment to inspect the arm securely locked around my waist. When I looked over to Akilis, he was sound asleep, a slight snore erupted in the back of his throat – small enough that it could put you to sleep like a lullaby.

The room was pitch black due to the metal shutters that automatically locked itself up at the press of a button, Akilis must have shut them. It was a new world necessity to install metal shutters into buildings to allow creatures of the night to escape the sunlight.

Carefully, I slid Akilis’s arm across my body and near his other arm which was resting very closely next to my thigh. He jolted in his sleep, my heart froze, and I waited to see if he would wake. A moment went by and nothing happened. Relieved, I climbed out of the bed using all fours – just like a cat would around water. Fortunately, I fell asleep in my clothes and did not need to worry about what I would do next. I had dreamt of London in all of its smoky haze and as soon as I had opened my eyes I decided right there and then that I would need to leave today. I pressed the button by the window and let it roll down smoothly so that just the top tier let in the scorching morning sun.

New Yorkers no longer buzzled the street below and not a cruiser in sight, clearly frightened of what they had seen last night – too afraid to leave their homes. I saw it all in its ghostly glory and ate up the fear the way humans had breakfast after starving the night. But then I wondered, how long would it take for me to roll out the metal shutter and escape out of the window. I sized up the long drop for safe measure, and although it was incredibly high it was not something I had not jumped before.

I looked back to Akilis where his chest rose and fell. I wondered if he would hate me, or worse, come after me? No – stop that. Enough is enough. I swung Deathclaw gently around my back and locked it into place.

My hand automatically reached for the latch on the window, I tugged lightly at first and when it did not budge I pulled harder. Of course, being thirty-seven floors up, they do not make windows so easy to open, but that did not stop me from doing what I was about to do.

I dragged the metal shutter down and formed a fist with my hand, tightening my thumb by the side of my knuckles I pounded into the glass with full force. The sound of glass shattering pierced the eerie silence of the room as a flock of birds squawked and flew around a tower opposite this one. Here we go.

A sharp hissing sound followed by an aggressive cry of anger came from behind me. I turned around to find Akilis crouching in the furthest corner of the room with his hands in front his eyes protectively.

‘What are you doing!’ he spat with his exquisitely pointed fangs on full display.

‘What I was always going to do,’ I said and cleared the glass away from the shattered window to make a bigger clearing.

‘Stop! Please! Don’t do this,’ he begged and leapt from the corner of the room to behind the chair next to my legs and sharply avoided the smallest drops of sunlight. He had a few scorched scars around his arms, the smell of his blood crawled up my nose, stronger than anything I had ever smelled before.

‘I need to do this before its –’

He latched his hand around my wrist and let the sun scorch his skin again while dragging me away from the window. I resisted, and so did he. But I could not stand the smell of burning skin any longer, so I pulled myself free and bit my tongue to supress the hunger.

‘You can’t do this,’ he took my face in between his hands, one of which had been tarnished by the sun. ‘Please, it’s dangerous – its suicide!’

There was something about his expression when he spoke, like I had missed something so evidently obvious. Maybe it was the way his eyes sunk with fear at the thought of me leaving him, or maybe it was the consequences he would have to face at the expense of my departure.

I gently took his hands from my face, shoved him into the window and pulled the shutter off its hinges so that the room was lit up in a blaze of light. His body sizzled and stung as he screamed out in pain. I had to betray him, it was the only way. This would be my moment. I put a foot on the window sill of shattered glass and without looking back, I jumped.

I felt the cool breeze of the morning air tickle my skin as I fell from the sky like a tunnel was dragging me down alongside the building. But then, a mist like cloud appeared from underneath me and as I descended further towards it, it was too late for me to get away. I sank straight through it and landed on pavement steadily on all fours. When I looked up, I saw the familiar underground pipes and smelled a familiar…. Troye.

‘Didn’t think I’d let you go alone did you?’ he smirked as I rested Deathclaw on the apple of his throat.

‘How?’ I hissed.

He chuckled and pushed Deathclaw aside knowing I would not hurt him. Then, he crossed his arms and set his feet apart to stand at his full height. I scrutinised the curves of his face and every individual line that gave him such character. He had medium set wrinkles by his eyes and cheeks by the way that his facial muscles moved when he smiled forming slight dimples. In a few years’ time they would be deep set wrinkles with plenty of laughter and charm set into them, no doubt.

‘I’ve been watching you, keeping a track of your routine – how you kill, what you kill, when you kill and why you kill. Kendrix thought it was important to keep an eye on you considering you did so much for our people during the Battle of Dust.’

‘How do you know about –’

‘I am Stallite, not human. We are indebted to you because without you there would have been more bloodshed than necessary. I told Kendrix I would go with you, should we get into serious trouble in London I can teleport us back to New York. And don’t say it’s dangerous, I know it’s dangerous but you’re better off having a portal by your side than not, trust me.’

But I was never going to say it was dangerous, because it was the perfect idea. Troye’s ability made him valuable and clearly, he had very quickly come to master this type of mental and physical energy – especially if he was trusted by Kendrix. Which made me wonder…

‘It was you was it not? Always close but never close enough for me to see you,’ I recalled standing on my balcony window peering out into the distance with my sharp sight but never picking up on anything.

‘What do you mean?’ he said distantly and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘I know we share one thing in common,’ he offered me one as he lit one up for himself.

‘When you said you have been watching me?’ I denied the cigarette.

‘Mostly through my portals, I’m never in London long enough to miss it. You have regular spots that you go to, the way you crawl and bend your shoulders – it’s easy to pick out your silhouette on rooftops. And then after you feed, you flee the scene never to return. I am assuming you’ve fed from Akilis judging by the fire in your eyes?’

His sudden interest in my feeding and Akilis made it very apparent to me that he was much more observant than I gave him credit for, but also that maybe he was a little too observant.

‘Yes. And, cool it – I do not drink from Stallites – you taste of ivy, I can smell it.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he exhaled smoke from his nose and created a new portal with his hands simultaneously.

I watched the dark mist grow large before the both of us, he looked at me for final confirmation and in unison we stepped through the darkness and came into London’s late afternoon. When the portal mist cleared, we found ourselves standing on top of Marble Arch which was surrounded by a sea of soulless naked red bodies. When their heads began to twitch in our direction one after the other, an animalistic shriek rumbled deep from the pits of their stomachs and they went berserk stampeding towards the arch.

Troye’s cigarette fell from his mouth in angst. ‘Shit!’ his voice echoed amongst the howls.

‘The time for the Creeper Dance has come.’

Want more?

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Author

Darcy Lennox spent her childhood in London, so it must come as no surprise that this journey begins in London. She later graduated from university in 2015 and then returned to London shortly thereafter where she also currently resides. She wasted no time upon her return and used every creative moment she had writing stories to life.

Table of Contents

- Prologue
- Chapter One
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Want more?