After I had bolted the door again and relocated my new friends to the spare bedroom, so that we had some privacy, I returned to the living room. My guest was on the couch, pressing on his wound, blood blooming across the towel. At least he was keeping pressure on it. He reached for the remnants of my whiskey, but hesitated,
“You wouldn’t have anything weaker, would you?”
Whiskey would be awfully strong for an incubus. It was a funny quirk of ubarae biology, they reacted much more strongly to most drugs than humans did. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t still like a drink, time to time, but they tended to stick to beers and wine, not the hard stuff. What was left in that bottle, little though it was, would easily be enough to give him alcohol poisoning.
“Sorry,” I shook my head. “I have water.”
He looked at the blood seeping through the towel, shrugged and unscrewed the cap. He took a dainty little sip, grimaced, and put it back down. I grabbed some over the counter painkillers from the cupboard and tossed them to him.
“This should help, at least a little bit.”
He gratefully accepted and downed a couple of pills with another tiny sip of whiskey, then he put pressure back on the wound again.
“Thanks. I’ve never been shot before.”
“Welcome to the club, then. How bad is it?”
“It is bleeding a lot.”
He seemed to be in shock: pale, trembling, deadened affect.
“Let me take a look.”
This time, he didn’t protest. Apparently, my display in the hall had convinced him that I was at least half competent. Or maybe he was just afraid of me now. Either way. I looked at the wound. It actually wasn’t that bad, a clean shot that had skimmed the fatty part of the thigh. Just a graze, really. It was bleeding as much as you’d expect, but probably hadn’t done too much real damage. If he’d been able to run here on it, it would probably be fine, assuming he didn’t lose too much blood.
“Just keep pressure on it. It doesn’t look that serious.”
“Well, it hurts like hell.”
“It is a gunshot wound. Of course it hurts.”
He didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, but he was starting to look a little grey. Hopefully that was the adrenaline crash and not the blood loss. Keeping him alert and talking would be best.
“OK, I need you tell me the rest. Everything you were going to tell Cooper. And who would have killed him for it.”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Maybe you could start by telling me who you are?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he blushed slightly, which was a good sign on the blood loss front. “Simon Vale. Nice to meet you.”
“Alright Simon, nice to meet you. Now, tell me what is going on.”
“I…” he hesitated. “I’m not sure I should.”
“Look, if I am going to be risking my life to keep you breathing, I would kind of like to know that I am doing it for a good reason.”
Simon exhaled slowly,
“That’s fair. Alright. But first I need to know that you are what you say you are.”
“I have no idea what you mean by that.”
“You are a Partial, right?”
“Yes…”
“Mind if I check for myself?”
I raised an eyebrow,
“Are you asking for permission to try and seduce me, incubus?”
“I didn’t have to ask, you know. Please, it is important. You’ll understand once I explain.”
“Fine, have fun.”
She watched his eyes change, flickering to the pale opal color that you usually only see when they are actively feeding. He wasn’t fooling around. I felt a familiar push against my mind, an itch in the back of my skull. I scratched it absently, even though it never did any good. He seemed to take note of that.
“Nice eyes.”
“You think?” he raised an eyebrow. “I know some people find them disconcerting, kind of makes me look like a shark.”
“I’ve always found them kind of interesting,” I shrugged. “I wish I knew how it worked, the feeding.”
“I just do it, I don’t study it,” he shrugged, blinking his eyes back to normal. “You do seem to be Immune.”
“I told you. Frankly, you aren’t the first incubus I’ve met. I think I would know by now.”
“Yes, you probably would,” he mused.
“Now, you want to fill me in?”
The incubus chewed his lip,
“This is going to be hard to believe,” he frowned deeply. “But the short version is that there is a group, I guess you could call them terrorists, they have been planning an attack on the Organization. I tried to warn Cooper, but they got to us first. He’s dead. They want me dead too. We have to get away from here. They’ll send more after me.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I raised an eyebrow. He seemed sincere enough, but what he was suggesting was crazy. We had intelligence agents in place to monitor these things.
“I am going to need more detail than that. What is this group?”
“They call themselves the Domini. They believe that ubarae should master the humans, not cooperate with them.”
“They wouldn’t be the only ones who feel that way,” I shrugged.
It wasn’t exactly a rare point of view. Since the time the Pact was signed, there had always been dissenters and fringe groups, on both sides, that thought cooperation was a sign of weakness. The ubarae version held some resentment that the ‘prey’ species held so much power. Early on, it was largely kept in check by fear of what humans would do if they knew there were really monsters out there in the dark. Humans had a fairly well documented talent for violence, by then. Which, incidentally, was the human flavor of dissent: kill them all before they turn on us, that type of thing, fully scorched earth. Generally, careful intelligence work by both the Council and the Organization neutralized any threats before they fully materialized. So, the dissenters griped, but nothing ever came of it.
“But the Domini have a plan. And the will to execute it.”
“What is this plan?”
“They want to eliminate all the people who know of their existence. With that done, we… ubarae, would be free to act as we pleased again, from the shadows, with no restrictions. Like the time before the Pact.”
“Everyone who knows of their existence?” I was feeling a little dense at the moment. “That would mean the entire Organization.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maybe, but they have been planning it for a long time. They believe they can succeed.”
“I’m sorry, so you are saying that they are actually going to do this? When?”
“They are already doing it. Have been for nearly a decade.”
“A decade?” suddenly, I was feeling stone-cold sober. Cold terror traced a path down my spine. I studied his face to see if he was serious. He certainly looked it.
“What have they been doing for a decade?”
“Laying the groundwork. Surely you have noticed the change in the Organization over last ten years?”
I had, of course. It would have been hard not to. That was around the time the number of Partials being identified had started to decline, to the point that there had now been no new recruits at all for over a year. But that couldn’t have anything to do with terrorists, unless…
“Wait. Are you saying we’ve already been infiltrated?”
“Yes. And not just you. They have people in the Council and close to the civilian government. They have compromised every group that could potentially stop them. That is why I had to be sure that you were really a Partial. The only people they really couldn’t touch were the Partials. Which was why the key part of the plan was making sure that the ubarae that worked in the Organization, those that did the testing, hiring and training, were secretly Domini.”
“To make sure that any new Partial candidates were rejected. To reduce the threat.”
“Exactly. They did it gradually, to avoid drawing suspicion, but in the end, it left you like… this.”
“Stretched too thin. Vulnerable.”
I felt my mouth go dry. At first this had sounded like a far-fetched conspiracy theory, but it was starting to feel frighteningly plausible. It made sense. It explained things. Could we really have missed all of this building up right under our noses?
“That still wouldn’t be enough. There would still be plenty of Immune to stop them. They may not be as effective in the field, but they certainly wouldn’t allow a takeover.”
“Are you sure?” Simon muttered. “As I said, the ubarae working in the Organization are all Domini. Surely you know the risks there. To the Immune.”
“Oh my God,” my jaw dropped an inch.
“Exactly. For the last decade, they have been Bonding with the Immune. Winning them over. It is impossible to tell how many are on their side already.”
Shit. There was more than one reason that Partials were tasked with most of the contact with the ubarae. The most important, of course, was the Partials ability to identify them at a glance. But another was Bonding. After all, infatuation and lust were not the only ways that ubarae could influence humans. Those were certainly their most powerful, the most immediate, but humans could obviously form strong bonds with no basis in romance or sex. Ubarae could use this to form relationships with humans that were as strong and as intimate as lifelong friends, family, or partners. If done correctly, the trust and love were absolute, almost unbreakable. The reason that it was rarely used was that it was difficult to achieve. Their usual seduction was basically instantaneous, that heady love at first sight that people longed for, and almost impossible to resist. Bonding had to be slow and subtle. It could take, months, even years, for some people. And much like any close friendship, if you felt like your friend was manipulating or using you, it turned you right off. That was why it was only a risk to Immune and not Partials. At least not trained Partials. Once you knew what you were looking for, Partials could feel it when an ubarae tried to push an emotion on them. It was a little different for everyone, for me, it felt like an itch just above my neck, right at the back of my head. They couldn’t take us unaware, so Bonding didn’t work, unless we let it. But the Immune couldn’t feel it, and that made them vulnerable, in the long term. It was why they weren’t supposed to spend too much time fraternizing with the ubarae staff. In times past, this separation was strictly enforced, with no discussion or communication outside of essential work matters. But after decades with no incidents, the paranoia had eased, and the restrictions had grown lax. If Simon was telling the truth, this opening had been exploited in the worst possible way.
“They have been carefully cultivating the resentment between the Partials and the Immune, turning them against you. So that when they need to eliminate you as the last remaining threat, the Immune would agree, even assist.”
“And the greater stress on the Partials made them more resentful of the Immune, which in turn made it easier to turn them against us.”
Simon nodded. I could feel icy fingers close around my stomach. This didn’t sound like a lie. I wanted it to be a lie, but I believed him. And if it was true, it was bad. Really, really bad.
“Yes. With the Organization full of sleepers, and understaffed to the point of ineffectiveness, it will fall as easily as a card house in a windstorm. And when it does, there will be no one left to stop the Domini from taking over. There will be no one who even knows that there is someone to stop. It’s a good plan. A perfect plan.”
“How do they plan to finish it? To take out the remaining Partials?”
Simon took a slow breath,
“They will lure your Agents out with false tips on suspects. From their people in the Council. Then they will kill them. Your agents work alone. They will be easy prey.”
“How many?”
“All of them.”
“In this enclave?”
“In the world. If one enclave went dark it might tip off the others, they have coordinated this across the globe.”
“That’s insane. They can’t really expect to succeed.”
“They do. They have been preparing for a long time.”
“When are they planning to do this?”
“It could be any time, now. Everything is in place. It is just a matter of Omega deciding to pull the trigger.”
“Omega? Seriously?”
“The leader of the Domini. The leaders all use code names, for security,” he explained. “He is the one who set all of this in motion.”
A thought was manifesting itself in my mind and I didn’t like it.
“I imagine secrecy is a pretty big part of this plan. They need the element of surprise.”
“Oh yes, that is crucial. If word got out, the Organization could scatter. It would be a mess for them to clean up. They want to remove all traces of their existence with one fell swoop.”
I was putting things together, now.
“When did you set up your meeting with Cooper?”
“I don’t know, um, yesterday morning, I guess.”
Yesterday morning. This ‘Omega’ must have known that he could lose his edge. If he was smart, he would have put a plan in place. If Cooper and Simon had been killed, then there was no reason to worry, but if they weren’t…
“They are going to do this now,” I swallowed hard.
“What? How do you know that?”
“They got wind of your conversation with Cooper, but they don’t know what you told him. They are at risk of losing their crucial surprise; if your Omega is clever, he will pull the trigger now. You forced his hand.”
“I didn’t think…”
“Didn’t you?” I had just one last thing to confirm. “You are obviously Domini? Was Cooper your first target? Am I next? Is this whole thing just you bragging, before you finish me?”
Simon inhaled sharply,
“I… it isn’t like that. I can explain.”
“You’d better make it good, incubus.”