AURORA
DEREK
The Monday after Akane's birthday, at about seven thirty at night, they were in History again. The cane was droning on about some ancient war or another. Derek was usually interested in that kind of thing, and it was a testament to the professor's soporific voice that he could make even that seem boring.
Then the screaming started.
Well, that wasn't quite right. Ever since last week, when the burners attacked, the screaming hadn't stopped. The 'sarians had so many in captivity, it was a constant drone in the back of their minds. All the Paladins were having trouble sleeping.
But this was something new. A new source of screaming, to the east. Far east, if Derek was any judge. The base where they were holding the burners was south-west.
Derek nudged Adam with his elbow. He nodded and started packing up his things. Akane was already doing the same, of course. Derek noted she wasn't wearing Flynn's earrings anymore. She seemed to have shied away from him in the past few days, and he couldn't figure out why.
The professor sighed. “Running away again, Mister Huntsman?”
Derek winced. He may not have been the best of students, but he could usually manage to at least stay through the entire class. “Yes sir. It's an emergency. You see—”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Don't care. Go.”
Derek nodded in thanks and sped off, leaving Lizzy looking confused. Silver and gold... at least she wasn't that smart. Otherwise she would have figured it out in a heartbeat, and insisted on going with them.
They met up with Ling, Laura, and the retinue outside, and sped off in their van. Derek gave directions. Akane insisted on clinging to Derek like a limpet the whole way, claiming that Jarasax's driving kept throwing her around the cabin. He was going a bit fast, but Derek still thought she was overreacting.
As expected, the screaming was coming from South-East Central, so it was a bit of a drive. What he didn't expect was their final destination.
Adam frowned, looking out the window. “What are those big awnings stretched between the buildings?”
“Sun canopies,” Laura said evenly. Derek was cursing internally. “So that the vampires can handle the daylight.” She pointed to a signpost bearing two symbols, the vampire bat on top, and another, more stylized symbol below. “This is Nosferatu territory.”
Every culture had its own subcultures, of course. Some more than others. The kemos, for example, were pretty much nothing but subcultures, and those had subcultures of their own. Vampires were a bit more generalized. Pretty much anyone with the nighteyes was considered a vampire, and the subcultures barely got along.
The Nosferatu were vampires who embraced the physically monstrous aspects of the package. They had a lot in common with ghouls. In fact, many of them even had the Cannibalism buff.
But more importantly, most of them also had large, dangerous fangs that they liked to use early and often. Normally, these weren't any more dangerous than the claws they also had. But Laura and Derek had discussed this at length. It was quite possible that if a Nosferatu—or any vampire, to a lesser extent—became a screamer, they would retain the compulsion to bite people, spreading the infection as quickly as the biters. Add in the fact that they were almost always enhanced in other ways, and the team had a serious problem on their hands.
By the time they reached their destination, the attack had already been underway for about an hour. It was nearly pitch-black, so it was difficult to see anything, but Derek could sense shapes moving beyond the wall the 'sarians had set up. More disconcertingly, many of these shapes appeared to be in the air.
The redoubt, of course, was well-lit, though Derek did see a large number of men and women with goggles to protect themselves from the harsh light. He was sure the benefit of keeping away the screamers—who were likely almost exclusively vampires—was worth the trouble.
To his surprise, the one in charge was a full-fledged general, albeit one with only a single star on his shoulder. He was an old baseline, maybe about fifty, and he saluted Derek crisply as they got out of the van. Derek wasn't sure if he was actually his superior or not. He was probably just being respectful.
“Honored Paladins,” he said. Derek finally managed to pry Akane off his arm. What was with her today? “I'm happy you were able to make it on such short notice.”
“Let's start simple,” Derek said. “How many screamers are we dealing with?”
“There were only about a dozen when we first noticed them,” he said, handing Derek a pair of light amplification goggles so he could see for himself. “They're been multiplying, as I'm sure you can guess, but we haven't had a chance to do a proper headcount. On the plus side, we haven't seen any of those singers.”
It took Derek a moment to parse what he was seeing through the goggles. Nosferatu—not screamers—were attacking each other.
“General,” he said slowly, not lowering the goggles. “Why exactly were you in the area?”
“Clan war.”
Derek cursed and handed the device back to him.
“The Guruhi and Nictuku have been building to this for months,” he continued. “Minor slights that we haven't had time to investigate, and nobody called Necessarius for retribution. When the screamers started up...” He shrugged. “We haven't had the presence to keep them afraid. Last night, they finally went all out. Been fighting for hours.”
“And then the screamers appeared.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He sighed deeply, shaking his head. “And it barely even slowed them down.”
These idiots were literally waging a civil war in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
Derek presumed the Guruhi and the Nictuku were just more subcultures. Vampires called those “bloodlines”—each culture had their own name for them—but he didn't know much about them. All he knew was that they were Nosferatu, and they were fighting.
“What powers are the screamers displaying?” Laura asked, getting straight to the point. She was right. The civil war was irrelevant. They'd deal with them eventually, but the zombies had to take precedence.
“Shapeshifting,” the general said. “Into bats.”
Derek blinked. “You're joking.”
He snorted. “I wish. They can't seem to hold the form for longer than a few seconds, but that's enough to slip past our barricade.”
“Wonderful,” Derek said. “Any good news?”
The general shrugged. “Our angels are on their way. Don't know the ETA, though.”
Laura nodded. “How many?”
He just grinned. “All of them.”
Well, at least there was some good news. “Laura, stay here. Use the retinue as you see fit. Adam, keep an eye on the general. Last thing we need is him getting turned. Ling, Akane, we're going in.” Derek clambered over the barricade, not even bothering to see if his orders were being obeyed. Not everyone was used to listening to him yet, but Laura was persuasive, and she would have organized the defenders whether he told her to or not. Sometimes looking like a leader was just that simple.
He landed on the empty street directly in front of the redoubt and stood, careful. There weren't very many screamers nearby, which was probably why the Necessarians had lasted so long. Instead, they were focusing on the stupid vampires, fighting blessedly far from the 'sarian lines.
On second thought, the screamers could wait. If they could bring the vampires in line, everything else would be easier. Derek waited until he heard Akane and Ling land behind him, then swallowed his apprehension and headed forward.
He ran quickly but quietly, avoiding the rubble and debris that would cause too much noise. The floodlights from the wall only illuminated for about a hundred paces or so, and all the fighting took place beyond that.
Once they were out of the lighted area, they moved more cautiously. They stayed alert for ambushes and kept their ears open, but they were still at a major disadvantage. Their eyes were adjusting to the dark quickly, but they would never be a real match for a vampire in this environment. The screamers might be easy to spot, but the Nosferatu wouldn't announce their presence so blatantly.
It shouldn't have been surprising, then, that they were the ones who were ambushed.
Derek heard two jump at him from behind, but he didn't have time to deal with them. Another was in front, just barely discernible in the darkness as a hulking shape, built like a gorilla. He came at Derek, fangs bared.
Derek was scared. More accurately, he was terrified. That was pretty much the entire point of the Nosferatu. They looked like nightmares to demoralize their opponents, make them sloppy. But fighting always scared him. A lot of things did, honestly, but fighting was the worst. Everything happened so fast, and the stakes were all for keeps. Every time a fight started, he was terrified it would be his last. Terrified at what would happen to his friends, and terrified that he would never be able to tell Lizzy how he felt. Every time a fight started, his brain froze.
Once, his body froze too. That was his first fight. He heard a commotion in the girls' bathroom when he was eleven and rushed in to find three girls threatening a fourth with a baseball bat. He hadn't been able to act until they used the bat to break the girl's knee.
Ever since then, although his brain might be frozen, his body was not.
Derek sidestepped the attack and tripped up his opponent, but he recovered quickly, slashing with his claws. Derek dodged those and caught his wrist as he overswung. Then he pulled him down, bringing up his knee at the same time to meet him in the face. This stunned him long enough for Derek to get his arm around his neck and twist it, snapping it with a loud crack.
Now that the immediate threat was gone, Derek found he couldn't move. He couldn't move forward—not with those monsters out there—but he couldn't go back. So he froze.
Then a scream split the night.
Not the toneless cry of a screamer, nor the keening banshee wail a lot of Nosferatu had. It was a simple, human scream of fear. The Nosferatu were active in this area, but there were still innocents, baseline and otherwise, who were in danger.
And they needed help.
Derek glanced over at the girls, who had also dispatched their foes. Ling was panting with effort and a bit pale, but seemed otherwise fine, and Akane didn't seem any the worse for wear. He nodded, muscling aside his fear, and they headed out again.
It was only a few minutes until they found the real fighting, by following the screams as usual. It was just a small cluster, milling around over the corpses of a few Nosferatu.
The first thing that happened was one of the outlying zombies zipped up and bit Derek hard on the shoulder. Akane stabbed him quickly, but his jaw locked in death, and it took a minute to get him off. Thankfully, none of the other screamers seemed to notice them, and they were able to sneak up and eliminate the half-dozen or so easily.
Even with Derek's decision to shift their focus to the Nosferatu, their main objective was to determine if there were any singers present. If there were, they needed to kill them so that the others could move in. If they were very lucky, that would result in the screamers being cured, but he wasn't optimistic on that front.
The problem was that since they couldn't hear the singers like they could the screamers, they pretty much had to just wander around until they found something that looked interesting. He was more used to missions where you knew where the goal was going in. Doing it this way was just plain embarrassing.
The next battleground they stumbled upon favored them. One of the canopies overhead had come loose a bit, allowing the light of the full moon to fall upon the square. The enemy would still be able to see better than them—their eyes worked fine in moonlight, though Derek didn't really understand how that worked—but at least they'd be able to see what they were doing.
The Nosferatu disdained ranged weapons, probably because of how much money they spent on their bodies. There didn't seem to be any screamers in this fight, just monstrous men and women tearing into each other with claws and fangs.
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Derek and the others jumped in before they knew what hit them.
Derek punched one of a fighting pair square in the chin and he went down like a sack of bricks. The woman he had been losing to whipped her tail at him. It was probably poisoned, and he didn't have very many anti-toxin buffs. So, he snatched it out of the air, grabbing it a few inches from the barbs on the end like he would a snake. She shrieked in rage as he yanked on it hard. Tails were still new and weak. She was probably rightly worried that it would come off if he pulled too hard.
She tried to claw at him, but he flicked her hard in the forehead, distracting her. “All I want is your Noble,” he said calmly, masking his fear with long practice. When your enemies could literally smell fear, cowards had to be really good at burying it. This one didn't seem to have an enhanced nose though, so she didn't notice either way.
She glared at him in hatred. “Broodlord Halifax will not work with baseline scum like you,” she spat. Literally. He didn't think it was intentional, it was just the natural result of having too many fangs.
Derek threw her aside, into a concrete pillar, and she fell to the ground in a heap. He didn't know which bloodline this Halifax led, and he didn't particularly care. He just needed to find him and stop him as fast as possible.
Akane was already racking up an impressive body count, but Ling seemed to be having trouble. Two had jumped her at once, and athlete or not, she didn't have combat training. Screamers were stupid, but vampires knew how to fight.
Derek interposed a glowing azure shield between her and one of her opponents, saving her from his claws. She nodded thanks and went for the other one. The first came after him, angry he had stolen his prey.
He dodged the first swipe of the vampire's claws, but he expected that, and managed to stab Derek in the gut with his other hand. That wasn't what the claws were designed for, so they didn't go in deep enough to hit anything vital, but it still hurt. Derek had to yank his arm out quickly but carefully to make sure he didn't take a large chunk of his stomach with it.
He tried to attack with the other arm again, but Derek grabbed him by the wrist and pulled forward on both arms, knocking him off balance. Before he could regain it, Derek struck him in the back of the knee, driving him to the ground. He stomped on his wrist with my boot, and it snapped with an audible crunch, undercut by his scream of pain.
“Where's Halifax?” Derek demanded.
“I don't know!” he cried. “I'm with the Guruhi!”
Derek sighed. Their stupid wars. “Then tell me where your Noble is.”
Shaking, he pointed deeper into the square, at the side most of the Nosferatu seemed to be clustered.
Derek resisted the urge to sigh again. Wonderful.
He backhanded the vampire, knocking him down, before turning to Akane. “I'll be back. Keep an eye on Ling.”
She nodded, and Derek headed forward alone against a horde of monsters.
He mostly dodged around the clusters of fighting Nosferatu. He could take any of them one-on-one easy, but they wouldn't fight him that way, and with his gut still bleeding, he didn't want to take any chances. Even with a quick application of healing salve, one good hit could rip everything apart again.
But it soon became apparent that he wouldn't have a choice. The vampires were knotted too thickly at his destination for him to just ignore them. Many were engaged in combat, but not all of them. He knocked a few more heads in, threw a couple more people aside, asked a few more questions, and eventually managed to clear a path to where Halifax and Cinder were fighting.
Cinder was the Guruhi Noble, a large man with a short shock of white hair and blood-stained shark teeth. Other than that and the nighteyes of course, he was surprisingly normal, especially for a Nosferatu. He didn't even have claws. He was fighting with a pair of wicked short swords, curved with a dozen different kinks and edges, allowing them to inflict maximum pain with each strike. He had a few shallow wounds in his pale skin, but overall seemed to be enjoying the fight more than he should.
His opponent, the Nictuku Noble Halifax, was nearly his exact opposite. He was completely covered in a dark black carapace, including infinitely more delicate armor over his joints. It would offer as much protection as possible while still allowing free range of movement. He still had hair, which surprised Derek. It was midnight black and cut short to match Cinder's.
His jaw was a monstrous weapon of destruction, bigger than the biters they had encountered... nine days ago? Silver and gold, had it only been that long? Regardless, while the biters were clearly just enlarged human jaws, Halifax seemed to have built a wood chipper out of teeth and chitin and fused it to his face. Dozens of razor-sharp fangs and small tendrils covered in barbs lined the inner edges, ensuring that each bite did the most damage possible.
His claws, likewise, were massively oversized, scaled more for a gorilla than a man. And it would have been a big gorilla. The claws themselves were six inches long. The fingers they were attached to were a similar length, and seemed ridiculously thin and spindly in comparison. But Derek knew that was just an illusion. They would be as strong as steel.
The two terrifying vampire Nobles didn't notice his presence, which he supposed was understandable. But if he didn't do something quickly, their minions would overwhelm him, if with nothing but numbers. And the girls couldn't fight forever either. He nearly froze again, both with indecision and fear, until he remembered that every moment spent fighting here, more innocents died elsewhere. He refused to let that happen.
Well, when in doubt, the simplest answer was best.
He conjured a shield between the two, blocking a claw swipe aimed at Cinder. Both men flinched back from the gently glowing blue force field. He doubted it actively hurt their eyes, but vampires got used to assuming any light was going to hurt them.
“Honored Nobles,” Derek said without preamble or sarcasm. “We are in the middle of a screamer attack. You need to put your feud on hold for the moment.”
Cinder stared at him. “Who the hell are you?” he had a rustic British accent, but Derek didn't know enough to be more specific. Not that it particularly mattered.
“I am Derek Huntsman,” he said. “Leader of the Paladins. Follow me, and we can reinforce the Necessarian redoubt.”
A long, low screeching noise came from the direction of Halifax. It took Derek a moment to realize he was talking.
Cinder snorted. “Not if mine does it first.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me, Honored Nobles, but I'm going to need an interpreter for Noble Halifax.”
One of the Nosferatu Derek had thrown aside earlier stepped up a little shakily, giving a small bow as she did. “Sorry for interfering, sir, but Noble Halifax said his brood is about to destroy the redoubt. Sir.”
Derek growled out an epithet unsuitable for children. He pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial. “Laura, what's your status?”
“We're under attack by Nosferatu,” she said calmly. If he couldn't hear all the shouting and gunfire in the background, he would have thought she was lying. “They got the lights. You should probably fall back.” She hung up.
Derek shook his head. That girl.
He turned back to the Nobles, who at least hadn't resumed trying to kill each other yet. The rest of the square was likewise quiet, as word had passed along that he was negotiating with the leaders.
“We're heading to the redoubt,” Derek said. His tone left no doubt that he was talking about everyone present. “You will order your men to stand down, and we will fight off the screamers together.”
Halifax laughed and screeched something.
“He said 'You can't make us do anything,'” the translator said helpfully.
Derek didn't bother trying to convince the monster. It would inevitably devolve into a fight, and while he could probably beat him in his condition, it would take far too long. They needed to fall back now.
So that's what he did. He didn't say a word, he just turned around and headed back at nothing faster than a walk, Akane and Ling quickly falling into step behind him. The translator hesitated for a moment, but soon followed as well.
Warriors didn't think quite the same as normal people. Honor meant some insults were found complimentary, and complements found insulting. The tiniest things could offend a warrior, and even smaller things could make him yours for life.
Turning your back on a warrior was an insult. It was saying “You're not worth my time. I have better things to do.”
Derek was out of the square by the time the two Nobles finally gathered their wits. He heard Halifax screech something, and Cinder ordering his men to kill the Paladins. But more importantly, he heard the Nosferatu under their command following him. Not chasing him. Following him, at the same slow pace he was taking.
Walking wasn't the best of ideas, but he knew the way back, and without having to worry about ambushes, they could take a shorter path. All in all, a trip that took twenty minutes out took less than five back.
Once they reached the redoubt, Derek picked up the pace. The lights were indeed smashed, and the barricade torn aside. Vampires were everywhere, attacking everything in sight. The vampires weren't the problem. The screamers were.
In the close quarters of the temporary fortress, they infected faster than he could keep track. He couldn't see them transforming like the general had claimed, but he knew better than to dismiss his words as idle fantasy.
After taking a breath to steel himself, Derek ordered the Nosferatu to act as support, while he led Akane and Ling directly into the screaming mob.
Screamers weren't smart, so they were easier to fight than the vampires. Simple tricks worked on them every time, and they never learned. Akane's sword killed quickly, and Ling wasn't skilled enough with her concrete gloves to keep her targets alive, but Derek tried to simply knock the zombies unconscious as much as possible. A cure could still be in the future.
Eventually, they managed to find Adam and the retinue, on the far side of the redoubt, next to the van. The general and a thin man in uniform were keeping the mob at bay with their pistols. The noise was scaring the crowd of zombies more than the bullets were actually damaging them. Alex was like a beacon, beams of light springing from their hands and blinding anything that got too close.
“Where's Laura?” Derek asked as he jogged out of the fire zone. Adam just jerked his head over at the front of the van. There were two people there, wrestling on the ground. With a start, Derek realized it was Laura and a screamer. She was trying to keep its thrashing under control, but was having little luck.
Of course. She was the only one immune, so she had to do it, despite her lack of interest in anything physical. But why didn't they just kill it? It would be easier all around. Especially since the screamer was a fel. The cat kemos were master escape artists, able to—
Derek blinked.
A fel? In Nosferatu territory?
And where was Kat?
“Oh no,” he whispered.
The fel screamer Laura was wrestling with was indeed Kat. It was the strangest thing—her mouth was open, and Derek could hear her screaming in his mind, though it was difficult to pick out in the midst of all the others. But no sound escaped her furry lips. She really was mute.
His mouth went into a firm line. He looked back the way we had come. Good, Halifax and Cinder were there. They had followed grudgingly, but they had followed. He noted their location, then turned to Alex.
“Daybreak,” he ordered.
Alex nearly jumped out of their boots, the night vision goggles on their face bouncing. “But won't that incapacitate our own?”
“No time. Daybreak, NOW.”
He ripped off the goggles, stepped into the empty area between us and the screaming mob, and...
Day broke.
It was like dawn rising, not ten feet away. The angel's skin shone like every light on Earth at once, and everything within a hundred feet cast deep, dark shadows away from them. Derek was completely blinded, even though he had his eyes closed, but he was expecting it. Most of the Necessarians had protective goggles, so they weren't hurt that badly.
The Nosferatu and the screamers were not so lucky.
People thought that nighteyes just gave you an annoying light sensitivity to go with the super-enhanced nightvision. That was a vast understatement. Bright light didn't just blind vampires, it was physically painful for them. Someone once told Derek that it was like punching a vampire in the brain through the eyes. Seeing the result, he didn't think it was hyperbole.
Nearly every single screamer fell to the ground, dazed as if they had been kicked in the head. Many of the Nosferatu actually fell unconscious, screaming in pain.
Halifax and Cinder stayed standing, as Derek expected, but they snarled and screeched in fury. He could only barely make out shapes, but he remembered their positions, and marched over to them. Then he kicked Halifax's legs out from under him and pinned him to the ground. His stomach throbbed and he was getting dizzy from blood loss, but he ignored it. He could last a few more minutes.
“Your stupid fighting cost me a comrade, you honorless bloodsoaked bastard.” Derek had liked Kat. He hadn't known her very well, but she was smart and capable. “You are going to help me round up these screamers, and if you are very lucky I won't shoot you in the face when this is over.”
He turned to Cinder and grabbed his shoulder, used that to make sure he was facing the right direction, then kneed him in the balls. He doubled over in pain and started to throw up. The combined effect was just too much for him.
“That goes for you too.” He headed back.
He shaded his eyes as he approached Alex. He still couldn't see, but hopefully that would prevent permanent damage. He didn't have time to get his eyes fixed these days. “How much longer can you keep this up?”
“A minute. Probably less.” That was the reason Derek hadn't just told them to do this from the start. Simple beams of light and subtle glowing were easy, but a full daybreak couldn't be done very often. “And the screamers are starting to recover.”
What most people forgot about dayeyes was that they worked perfectly in the light. Even this kind of light. Apparently a popular pastime among angels was to just stare directly at the sun. They said it was very pretty when it wasn't blinding. To Alex, this looked like normal daylight with fewer shadows. They could easily keep an eye on the screamers' condition.
Derek had expected the screamers to recover, but the light would be a massive advantage while it lasted. Once it faded, the battle would depend largely on who re-adjusted to the dark first, Necessarius or the screamers.
Derek was betting on the screamers.
“Laura, how's Kat?”
“Gone,” she said. “She managed to get free before the daybreak hit.”
Derek cursed. “Silver and gold. Akane, find her, alive if at all possible. Everyone else, we don't have time to be nice. Start killing any conscious screamers you find.” It wrenched at him to stoop to such a level, but it was their only choice. Kill a few to save the rest.
He heard Adam's incredulous voice. “What, blind?”
“That won't be necessary,” a new voice said. Derek turned to see a man, standing in the shadow of the van.
No, not a man. A tall angel, of undetermined gender. So almost certainly a full daybreaker. He couldn't tell what Name they were from—their tattoos were hard to read in the strange light of Alex's dawn.
“My name is Adele Lucifer. Miss Medina called us, informed us of the situation.”
Well, that was Laura for you. Wait... “Us?”
“Yes.” They gestured behind them, and Derek was barely able to make out a fleet of vans bearing the Necessarius red-on-black band disgorging an army of doctors and orderlies, led by a few dozen angels. He had never seen so many in one place before, let alone wearing 'sarian colors.
“Your Gabriel can stop now,” the Lucifer said, as another angel started a daybreak. “We can handle it from here. Just bring us unconscious screamers, and we can do the rest.”
“Oh good,” Derek whispered, and collapsed.
It had been an interesting hour.