It takes a lot of willpower not to do anything stupid. I could probably take McTavish out but that would achieve nothing. I also know that as pleasant as it would be to strike my own Father, that would be meaningless too. Instead, I take a deep breath and try to gather my thoughts together.
“Son,” my father calls out in a quiet voice, “I can probably imagine what you are feeling right now but please, let me-”
I turn on my heels, enraged in an instant. Just as swiftly, the rage dissipates, turning into a controlled anger. I look over my Father, taking it all in, mentally comparing him now to the mental image of him ten years ago.
Back in the day, Father was muscular, with short military-cut brown hair and a perpetual lopsided grin on his weathered face. I remember him sleeping badly, insomnia keeping his grey eyes with constant circles under them. Now, he was a shadow of his former self.
I couldn’t remember how old my Father was, but he still looked too old now — grey patchy beard and long greasy hair, pallid face with sunken cheeks and eyes deeply recessed into the skull. He is still tall but as thin as a pole now, as if he had no decent meal in the last ten years. Maybe that was true.
Somehow, this pathetic picture made me hate him for leaving us even more.
“Let you what? Explain yourself, I hope? Explain how you could just leave your ill wife and small children, to become a vampire’s little toy? Is that what you wanted to say?” I bombard my father with questions, trying to keep my voice level, moving closer to him. McTavish and Rushmore both quickly step between us.
“Scout Brooks, what part of “we have no time” you did not understand? You can squabble with your father all you like after we do the deed.
“The deed being?” I ask through clenched teeth. I really want to punch something.
“This bomb needs to be delivered to the City’s power plant. You will be doing the delivering, young man,” a croaky voice calls out from behind me. I didn’t notice how she entered.
I turn around to look at the speaker. A small, stocky woman dressed in a doctor’s white coat and plain clothes — white blouse and brown trousers, with shoes barely holding together by duct tape. She was olive-skinned and grey-haired, with stern brown eyes behind round glasses and a wrinkled, bony face.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
She shrugs and scoffs.
“I’m not telling you, not with that attitude.”
Rushmore sighs loudly and then says, his low voice rumbling across the room, his tone irritated:
“This is Doctor Varna, our chief scientist, the person responsible for the bomb behind you. She can elaborate if she deems so. As for you,” General approaches me and stares me down, so close I can smell his whisky breath, “For now, I am ordering you to behave yourself, Scout Brooks. You’re a grown-ass man and a soldier, your daddy issues do not take precedence over the survival of the human race. Am I being clear?”
I grind my teeth in frustration, mostly because Rushmore is right. I’m acting like a child and whatever this is, it’s more important. I take a long breath, exhale slowly. General is patiently waiting for my reply. I look at Rushmore and say:
“Sir, yes, sir. I will behave.”
“Good.” He turns and steps away, gesturing us to follow him. Varna and I approach the rest of the group, standing in the center of the room, in a half-circle around the bomb. I make a point of not looking in my father’s general direction.
“Since we are all civil and calm now, let me get straight to the point, “Rushmore declares, observing us, “This bomb needs to be delivered to the City’s power plant. We blow it up, it overloads the power grid, provided Captain Brooks and Doctor Varna disable the plant’s safeguards and grind the reactors to a halt, and Mother Dark does the rest. Vampires will be decimated, the survivors will be executed once we take back the city. Let’s discuss the details. Any questions at this point?”
I scoff.
“Yeah, if we can take over the power plant, why not just turn it off or overload the reactors?”
Varna looks at me as if I’m mentally impaired.
“Because,” she says in a teacher’s voice, “If we turn it off, they can just turn it back on. If we take it, we’ll have to hold it and we realistically cannot hold a complex this big against an army of supernatural killers. Overloading the reactors would turn the City into a wasteland and this is, well, suboptimal. The only way is to scuttle the whole thing.”
“So what, our plan is just to blow up everything? Asset denial?”
“Ah, you finally get it,” Varna smiles condescendingly. It enrages me again. I reply with as much venom in my voice as I can manage:
“You make it sound so simple, Doctor. I hope you people have an actual plan, one that doesn’t rely too heavily on Captain Brooks here, he’s prone to changing sides and-
“Ash,” Eliza calls off, her voice stifled, “Shut the fuck up. Father never turned, it was a facade, an undercover mission. You can say thanks to Iron General here - it was all his idea.” She shifts her gaze to Rushmore. If only looks could kill.
“Eliza is correct, son,” Father speaks, his tone almost painful, “I never wanted any of this, but someone had to do it.”
I have a hard time processing what I heard. I open my mouth, then close it. Then try again, still unable to find words. Everyone stares at me. I sigh.
“Okay,” I say, deflated, “I suppose that explains a lot. We can discuss it all later, though. General — explain away.”
Rushmore nods and continues. We spend the next hour discussing the plan and hammering out the details. As Rushmore said, I’m a tactician, I’m good with making decisions in the thick of things. Strategising, long plans - not my forte. I sleepwalk through all of it, absorbing the information while not contributing in the slightest, still reeling from… from everything, really.
I spent so many years hating my father for leaving us only to find out he was spying for Rushmore all this time, helping to enact a multi-year, many-step scheme to “save us all”. My brother almost died fighting a monster, one we have defeated nevertheless. Salazar suddenly appeared in my life after seven years, only to be a part of Rushmore’s scheme. It’s a lot of life-altering events in a single day.
“Son, can we talk now?” Father distracts me from my gloom and doom, “Privately, with only you and Eliza.”
“And John,” I add automatically. Father gives me a curious look and nods.
“Sure, son, we can take John too. I don’t have a place of my own here, but I’m sure Doctor Varna won’t mind if we invade her laboratory for a bit.” Father beckons Eliza and John and starts moving, with the three of us following him to an adjacent room. Nobody speaks first and the silence lingers for what feels like eternity. Then Eliza snaps.
Without a word, she darts to Father and hugs him, burying her face in his shoulder. I can see tears welling up in Father's eyes as he squeezes her. Well damn.
“I can’t,” I clear my throat, swallowing the lump that’s stuck there, “I can’t say I forgive you, but at least I understand now.”
Father looks at me and nods.
“That’s all I could hope for, son. Thank you.”
I nod too and turn away. I had said everything I wanted, and we have a mission to prepare. It’s not like I would hug and cry on his shoulder anyway.
Eliza spent the day with Father and John, reminiscing and catching up. Doctor Varna triple-checked the bomb and with the help of Sergeant McTavish and his Guards, fixed it on a truck that would help them deliver it to the plant. That is the second step of the plan - the bomb delivery.
The first one is to deliver us there first, with Father and Varna being our main assets — one to lead us through the defenses and the other to disable all inhibitions in the reactors themselves, then trigger the bomb.
Father will lead one group of Rushmore’s Guards to take over the control room, with me, Eliza, John, and Salazar for assistance. Sergeant McTavish and his group will bring both the bomb and Doctor Varna once we clear the road. All very easy in theory. In practice — remains to be seen.
During the graveyard shift, we will attack at 2 am sharp to minimize the casualties since Rushmore said “We might need the engineers in the future”. Can’t argue with that. Father also said the plant would be guarded by a contingent of Tunnel Rats and their vampire overlords. Good - I’m itching for a fight.
This is a suicide mission. We had a full day to prepare, to eat, to say our prayers, and to accept our fate. Yet it doesn’t change the fact — a suicide mission is still a suicide mission.
As a wise man once said, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.
“Ash, behind you!” Eliza yells and I turn on my heels just in time to block a machete with the Hunter’s sword. The attacking Tunnel Rat grabs my wrist and tries to wrestle the sword out of my hand, our blades still locked in a struggle. The guy is bigger than me, packed into a heavy armor and white uniform of the elite Rat unit, metal plates and bandoliers all over him, with the helmet being stylized like a crusader’s helm with a gold-tinted line of visor glaring menacingly at me.
Eliza shoots a spike straight through the visor, penetrating just enough to ruin the Rat’s eye. He screams. I take my cue and palm strike the spike, driving it deeper into the bastard’s skull. When the Rat collapses on the floor, I let out a sigh and lean on the railing behind me, almost falling over. It is a mess right from the get-go.
We rushed out of one of the maintenance tunnels under the first of the machine halls, taking a few hostages and catching the Tunnel Rats unawares in the next one. Except the element of surprise didn’t last. Unlike the Rats we usually see in the tunnels, the soldiers in the plant were well-equipped and well-trained, with automatic weapons that mowed down our initial assault, killing six of the guards that Rushmore sent. Even with the bulletproof vests and helmets on us, the Rats had more firepower than we did. We started shooting back and advancing, coming to blows as soon as the Rats ran out of bullets and could no longer reload.
Now, I look around and see more bodies in the Guard uniform than in the Rats' armor. The machine hall was huge, with gigantic batteries and consoles all over it, a railing on one side protecting people from falling down into the reactor hall below. An alarm sounded off when we attacked but Father managed to turn it off, returning the normal lighting and hopefully cutting it off fast enough for the City to not catch it.
I see John, already under Tenebretin, holding the second Hunter’s sword with its blade covered in blood. Rushmore provided us with the cleanest, military-grade Tenebretin he could find. Now John is breathing heavily and I notice a grazing wound on his shoulder, closing right before my eyes. Eliza forced him to put on a bulletproof vest which was almost comically small for John’s massive torso.
Father is standing away, talking with the squad leader of the remaining Guards. I glimpse a fire in his eyes that was gone the day before and when he notices me staring, he gives me the same lopsided grin I remembered. I smile back. It was odd to see Father in his element, being a commander after not seeing him at all for so many years. Odd but nice, in a way.
Salazar sits on the floor, his back to the wall, at the other end of the hall. His sledgehammer is bloodied and he emits shuddering breaths as if drowning. Probably a broken rib. I think he caught a bullet to the front plate.
Eliza is methodically reloading her spikethrower, loading new spikes from the pouch on her belt. She ignores everyone else, focused on pumping the weapons pneumatic. Yet I can see her hands shaking. I approach my sister and give her a one-handed hug over the shoulders.
“Thanks for the save, sis,” I say and grin at her. “One down, a fuckton more to go.” She shakes her head and pouts, hand still fidgeting with the weapon.
“I’m not sure we’ll get out of this, Ash,” she says in a quiet voice. “I think we are going to die here.”
I drop the grin and step away.
“Look at me,” I say and Eliza raises her gaze. “I won’t let you die here, understand? We are saving the world but the world means jack shit to me without you and John in it. I can’t save everybody but I sure as hell can save my family. I swear by Mother Dark’s loving embrace that I’ll get you out of here.”
When I say it out loud, the light all over the machine hall flickers for just a moment. Ominous. Eliza beams at me but then lowers her eyes.
“Idiot. A pompous, self-confident idiot,” she mutters through the smile.
“Guilty as charged,” I reply.
We take the next few minutes to recuperate. I cut a scrap of uniform from one of the Rats and use it as a rag, scrupulously cleaning the Hunter’s sword from blood. It’s calming rather than serving any practical purpose — the metal is almost pristine as if the blade slowly absorbs all the blood into itself. Eliza is tending to the wounded on our side while John and Sal are checking on the hostages and Guards we left in the previous hall. Father climbs onto one of the reactors and declares loudly:
“Everyone, listen up! I just heard from Sergeant McTavish via radio. His group and Doctor Varna are driving here with the bomb as we speak, it would be another ten or fifteen minutes for them to get there. We need to take over the control room by that time, to open the gates for them. Once we are in the control room, do not shoot blindly. I cannot stress this enough. If you damage the equipment and something goes off before we evacuate, we are screwed.” There were murmurs of acknowledgment all over the room. Father looks around and continues:
“Any questions? No? Then let’s go, chop-chop! Cursed be the Light that betrayed us!”
All as one, we shout back:
“Blessed be the Dark that embraced us!”
We keep fighting through the plant. Even with the guns we picked up, it still takes us about half an hour of prolonged skirmishes to get through the rest of the plant to the control room. Within this time, we don’t see a single vampire. Which is concerning for many reasons. Rats - sure, we had to fight through and kill what seems like a thousand of them, wearing our group down to just ten people out of fifty.
When we enter the control room, I finally realize why. I almost collapse on my knees at the sight in front of us. There are bodies lying in a row, stacked near a small staircase leading to the platform with lots of control consoles. Doctor Varna, Sergeant McTavish, and his Guards — twelve bodies with deep stab wounds around where their heart should be. No blood — they were exsanguinated completely.
Near the console itself, there is a tall woman in full knight armor, her long grey hair with some blood in it. Her face is beautiful, sculpted, her eyes are amber with vertical pupils. She looks sad, with lines of grief on her face and a heavy gaze.
The helmet doesn’t cover her face and allows the hair to flow freely, protecting only the head and leaving the vampire’s face bare. It has a strange form too, with wings to the sides of the helm, akin to Viking helmets. The armor is somewhat similar to Hunter’s —. elaborate plant design on the plates, lean and blindingly white with specks of blood here and there. No wings or halos, just light coming from lamps on her chestpiece and shoulder pauldrons.
The vampire holds a spear, with the same ornate plant design and white metal as her armor. The weapon is as long as she is tall, which is a “fuckton of feet” in length. It also has a small light line in the center of the spear’s blade.
When she speaks, it seems like I hear pity in her voice:
“Stop where you are, humans. It’s over. You fought well but you have lost. Your plan is thwarted, and your allies are dead. Give up or die too.”
“Valkyrie,” Father whispers. I turn around to ask but I don’t get to — Father barks orders:
“Shoot everything you got at her but don’t hit the console, check your shots! Fire!”
It devolves into a pandemonium in an instant. Gunfire roars from several guns across the room, deafening me. The Valkyrie darts forward, protecting her face with the crook of her left arm, ignoring the bullets clinging of her armor. It takes the vamp just a second, a few powerful strides forward to reach us. Salazar and the Guards whose names I don’t even know are the first to fall — three swift thrusts of the spear, almost invisible to my eyes and three men just topple. Sal is writhing on the floor, blood gushing from the wound on his left forearm — he was fast enough to cover himself up. The other two men are dead before they even hit the floor.
This vampire moves much faster than the Hunter. I barely get to jump, avoiding a wide sweep that hits the legs of another two Guards, dropping them on the floor, head over heels. Father pushes Eliza away just in time, saving her from a backhand strike that connects with his face instead, the Valkyrie’s gauntlet smashing Father’s head into the wall. He slides down the wall, unconscious.
The Valkyrie stops and turns to me, tears running down her cheeks. It distracts me and I don’t react in time as her spear slices my vest, scratching the metal plate and pushing me away from the group. Yet the weapon doesn’t penetrate, stopped by John, who grabs the butt end of the polearm just in time. The Valkyrie pauses, distracted.
My turn — I deflect the weapon sideways with my sword and slide the blade the length of the polearm, ending in an upward slash to the vamp’s face. She recoils just in time to dodge and kicks me instead, sending me sprawling on the floor.
My vision blacks out for a moment, as the hot poker of pain pierces my ribs. I struggle to inhale properly, letting out shuddering breaths instead. When I can see and breathe again, John is standing on one knee, blood trickling from the hand he holds on the wound on his chest. The Valkyrie though calmly, almost casually stabs the two guards that try to stand up. They gurgle and die where they lay. Eliza is the only one standing.
“Hey, bloodsucker!” I struggle to my feet and call out to the vamp, trying to divert her attention from my sister. When I’m standing, the Valkyrie is drilling me with her eyes, her face still somber. Eliza takes this moment of distraction to shoot a spike at the vamp, only for the Valkyrie to catch it and send it back with force. The spike hits Eliza in the shoulder and she screams. I act without thinking, more on an impulse of rage than anything — I dash forward and fall on my knees, sliding right under Valkyrie’s counterattack and cutting her in the thigh. Surprisingly, it not only connects but goes through the armor, stumbling the vamp. Black blood starts running down her leg.
“Ash,” John’s low voice startles me. He speaks slowly, struggling to form words: “Give me other vials and get Eliza out of here.” I turn to him, shocked.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You will overdose!”
He shakes his head slowly, still holding the wound on his chest. I notice him swaying slightly, trying to keep balance.
“Now, Ash! Take Eliza and get out,” John growls. I reluctantly pass him the rest of Tenebretin. It feels wrong as if I’m signing his death sentence myself. The Valkyrie waits, staring at us unblinking with her amber eyes and leaning on her spear. I can tell her wound has healed by the way she stands. Suddenly, she speaks:
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“I have a question to ask of you, human. These two swords — how did you acquire them?”
I only grin in response. John replies instead of me:
“We killed the Hunter. You’re next.” He jams both vials into the sockets on his mask and inhales deeply. When the vials are ejected, John roars so loud I have to cover my ears and the control room's windows tremble.
The Valkyrie’s face changes, from somber to angry, in an instant. She screams and lunges forward with the spear aimed at the wound in John’s chest.
He stops it inches from the wound, grabbing the spear. The vampire stumbles as if she hit a wall. Slowly, with effort, John wrestles the spear away and points it upward. The Valkyrie struggles to keep the weapon in her hands, her face contorted with anger and physical strain. I use the moment to swing at her and the vampire lets go of the spear, springing a good ten feet away. I step away from my brother too, keeping my distance.
John seems barely human at this point. Tenebretin changes him right before my eyes — with a crunching sound, bone spikes rip out from his head, piercing the mask and forming something resembling a crown. Similar bone protrusions come out of his knuckles and knees. John gained another hundred pounds of muscle, the straps of the vest ripping under his bulk, the vest falling on the floor. Each of his heavy breaths sounds like a barely contained growl.
John drops the sword and grabs the spear with both hands, bending the metal and snapping it in two, like a twig. I can hear the Valkyrie say, her voice low:
“What have you done, fools? He will kill us all.”
In the time it takes me to blink, John reaches the vampire and tackles her through the window, falling into the machine hall. I look at this, dumbfounded.
“Ash!” Eliza calls and I snap out of it. I run up to her and help her stand up. She winces, her face pale.
“How are you feeling, sis?” I ask, my voice hoarse. She shakes her head and replies:
“The wound is not that deep but my left shoulder won’t be mobile for now. I need you to-”
A thunderous crash from the machine hall interrupts her, as the battle between John and Valkyrie takes momentum.
“Nevermind,” Eliza suddenly says, “Just help me open my first aid kit and get me to Salazar. Then take Father and find the bomb.”
“What? I can’t just leave you here to bleed out and-”
“Ash!” she yells and grabs my face, turning it so she stares right into my eyes. I have never seen her so intense.
“We need to finish the mission. Father should know how to activate the bomb. Sal and I will be alright. You need to do what it takes.” She lets go of my face and groans, taking a few wobbling steps in Salazar’s direction. I support her as we approach.
Father is still out cold, blood trickling from under his helmet, but I’ll get back to him in a minute.
Sal is sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, and desperately trying to tighten a tourniquet on his wounded arm with his teeth and his free hand. I carefully help sit Eliza near him and get her first aid kit out, opening it. My sister starts helping the old man as he smiles awkwardly.
“I guess you and I are out of commission, little moon,” he says softly. Eliza doesn’t reply, her face grim. Together, they manage to tighten the tourniquet and she starts working on his wound. The spear punctured Sal’s forearm through and through and he lost a lot of blood.
“Sal,” I say and he raises his head, making an effort to focus on me. “John is fighting the vamp. Everyone else is dead. Someone has to detonate the bomb and I suppose me and Father are the only people left to do that. Can I rely on you to protect Eliza while we’re gone?”
Eliza shoots me an angry glance but doesn’t comment. I know what she’s thinking anyway. “I don’t need protecting” or something like that.
Salazar sighs heavily and speaks:
“Ashton, I would rather die before I let anything happen to her or you. Of course, I will protect her. Do what needs to be done.”
I nod and crouch to place the Hunter’s sword near him. Sal nods too and slaps me on the shoulder weakly.
“Here, take it,” Eliza says and hands me a small ampoule without looking. “It’s ammonia, snap it and whiff it near Father’s nose. Should wake him up.” When I take the ampoule, she quickly looks at me and says: “Be careful. Don’t die.” I grin.
“I’ll manage.”
It takes a few minutes for Father to get his bearings. I sit him upright and take off his helmet, while the old man protests. The gash on his forehead doesn’t look serious but I want to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.
“How many fingers I’m holding up?” I ask, showing him three fingers.
Father looks at me with a surprised face and says:
“Three. Son, I’m alright, the helmet took most of the impact.” He leans on the wall with one hand and stands up, somewhat wobbly.
“Seriously, I’ll be okay. What is happening anyway?”
“The Guards are dead, Eliza and Sal are wounded and John is fighting the Valkyrie,” I say, and another loud crash can be heard from the machine hall as if to punctuate my words.
“I see. It doesn’t sound like we’re winning,” Father replies and I nod, grimly. “Well then, Ashton, I suppose the two of us will have to save the world ourselves.” He grins at me.
Taken aback by his reaction, I don’t know what to say. Father walks over to Doctor Varna’s corpse and whispers something. Then, unceremoniously starts rummaging through her pockets.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask and stare at him incredulously.
“The detonator,” he replies not looking at me. “It should be somewhere in her pock- aha!” He straightens up and shows me a compact device, with a small screen, buttons and tumbler switches, dangling it on a cord. I suddenly feel much better. I say:
“What are we waiting for? Blow up this sucker and let’s get out of here.” Father shakes his head. He thumbs a few buttons and the screen lights up, showing a grid with two twinkling dots on it.
“Not so fast, son. The bomb needs to be manually activated, provided the safeguards are off, and only then can it be detonated remotely. Yes, I know it’s stupid but it’s safer that way. This thingamabob shows the current location and status of the bomb. Here, look — the bomb is inactive and is parked outside of this building.”
“Okay, so let’s go and activate it then, shall we?” I say and Father nods.
“Give me a few minutes to fiddle with the safeguards of the reactors — I’m no Doctor Varna but I think I can manage.”
Once he’s done, we tentatively say goodbye to Eliza and Sal, who now helps Eliza pull out a spike from her shoulder. I take the Hunter’s sword that John dropped and Salazar hands me his flare gun. Then we enter the hallway opposite the console. The sound of battle between John and the Valkyrie reaches us even here, as we make it down the long hallways and out to the street, following the radar to the bomb’s location. It turns out to be a parking lot, with the bomb still strapped to the flatbed truck that McTavish’s group used. It’s dark outside already but the parking area is lit with lamps and emergency lights.
We approach the truck and for a second, I let myself a glimmer of hope that everything will work out. Idiot.
“Well-well, what do we have here?” a modulated electrical voice calls out from behind. I turn on my heels, sword at the ready. At that same moment, a gunshot roars through the parking lot and I fall on my back before I can even process what happened. The bullet hits me square in the plate, where the Valkyrie scratched it. It held but I’m not sure it will save me again.
I struggle to breathe as I hear a dry chuckle, in the same mechanized voice. My assailant approaches and I see him from my position on my back — another of the elite Rats, in the same armor and with the gold-tinted helmet. Father is standing near me, his hands above his head. I grit my teeth. We don’t have time for this.
The bastard Rat is not alone — behind him, there are two similar soldiers — one bald and helmetless, the other with his helmet cracked and half of the visor not working.
“The masters will be pleased,” the bald one says, his voice gruff.
The one that shot me, a commander, replies:
“You two — go back to the control room, deal with the wounded. The cameras show there are only two of them left. I’ll hold the old man and the kid.” The other two salute and walk away in the direction of the control room.
I shift my position carefully and he reacts immediately — another bullet hits the ground inches from my face, showering me with dirt. The commander says:
“Don’t try anything, kid. I really don’t want to kill you, believe me or not.”
“Can’t say the same,” I manage to push out. The dull ache in my chest slowly gets worse as adrenaline dies down. I have to do something.
“Why do you work for the vampires?” Father suddenly asks. “They hate you, they treat us all as inferior species, and yet you seem to be committed to their rule. An obedient attack dog.”
“Listen, old man, I-” the guard starts. Father raises a palm and stops him, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the bastard still has a gun.
“I’ve spent ten years working undercover, being treated like cattle by the worst of the worst of the vampirekind. All for this one decisive moment. I won’t let a human stop me.” Father starts approaching the man, ignoring the gun pointed directly at his face. Yet, the Rat doesn’t shoot.
“Join us. You’re a human like us, as different as your situation may be, you are still one of us and not them.” Father says, offering him a hand to shake. The Rat just stares, unmoving, then turns his gun backward and strikes Father in the face. Father falls on his backside, blood streaming from his nose. The Rat chuckles and aims at the old man again.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me. What did you even expect? That I would just change sides because you gave me a half-assed speech?”
Father spits blood and smiles weakly, his teeth bloodied.
“Not really. It was just a distraction.”
“What?”
The guard turns and looks at me just in time, making aiming simpler — I shoot the flare straight into his face, hitting the visor. He wails like an animal, mindlessly swinging his gun around and shooting, blinded. By a miraculous chance, not a single bullet hits me.
I grab my sword and swing, catching his hand with the hook of the blade, forcing him to drop the rifle. Then, I slash open the guard’s throat and use the hook to pull his leg from under him. The man collapses and writhes on the ground for a few moments, choking.
When he finally stops moving, I let out a sigh of relief.
“Good job, son,” Father calls out, his voice strained. I turn around and see him sitting on the flatbed near the bomb, pressing his hand to his stomach.
No. No, no, no, no, fuck!
I run forward and catch Father as he starts falling over. I carefully lie him down on the flatbed of the truck. He’s still lucid and I can see his face contorting from pain.
“Let me see,” I say and he raises a hand for a moment. It’s bad — a gut wound, blood pumping out of the hole with each breath he takes. With the contents of his intestines poisoning his blood flow with each passing second, Father won’t make it.
“Son,” he starts and takes a shuddering breath in, “Leave me. Someone… has to arm it. I’ll stay.”
“No, I’ll get Eliza and-
He pulls on my left forearm, forcing me to look him in the eyes to punctuate his statement.
“Ashton. I’ll stay,” he repeats with intensity, letting go of my shoulder. He takes out the detonator and presses a button. The screen lights up red. At the periphery of my vision, I notice a similar screen with buttons light up on the bomb itself.
“Son, I’m dead either way,” Father struggles to hold his voice level. “Help me up and get out of here.”
I can’t stop myself — I hug him, hard. Father winces from pain but then clumsily hugs me back with one hand. He takes a deep breath and manages to push out:
“I’m sorry, son. For everything. Tell Eliza that I love her, I love you both. I can hold out for another five minutes or so before I pass out. In five minutes from now, I’ll blow this thing up.”
Father tenses and tries to sit up straight. I grab and sit him closer to the bomb, leaning on it. I help him activate the bomb, listening to his instructions, and set up a timer on my watch. Five minutes.
“I’m sorry too, Dad. I wish we had more time. Goodbye.”
I turn around and pick the assault rifle from the Rat’s body, reloading it with a spare mag from a pouch on the corpse's vest. Without looking back at my Father, I dash back to the complex, the sword clutched in my right hand and the Rat’s rifle in the left. I know that if I stop for just a moment, I’ll try to go back to him. I know as well as he that the wound was fatal.
So why do I feel like I could do more? Could have saved him, covered him with my body, or struck faster, anything. Each step is a conscious decision to let my Father die. Each step fills me with rage, against myself, against vampires, against the world at large. Fortunately, there are perfect victims to my rage at arm’s reach.
The two remaining Rats are trying to crowbar open the door to the control room when they notice me running through the hallway. Without dropping the pace, I raise the rifle and pull the trigger, emptying the clip in a volley of random fire. At this distance, in a narrow space, most of the bullets hit the target without aiming. One of the targets, that is, since the bald guy took his friend as a human shield.
He shoots too, using his dying friend’s shoulder as a gun mount, forcing me to drop on the floor and slide on my ass to him. There are barely fifteen feet between us, the momentum and the slippery floor propelling me just enough to reach the duo.
Standing up, I swing the empty gun upward as a club and hit the Rat’s rifle’s barrel. The strike is strong enough to break both our weapons away from our hands. The bald guy counterattacks by pushing his friend at me, stumbling me just enough for him to whip out a handgun from the holster on the Rat’s thigh.
He shoots me twice point-blank, bullets passing through my left midsection with a hot sensation. Enraged more than hurt, I scream and put every last ounce of my rage and willpower into an overhead swing, bisecting his head. The Rat topples like a cut-down tree, the sword stuck in his cranium as I let it go.
I almost fall too, propping myself up against the door with my right arm. The wounds are through and through, so I’m losing blood fast. I know I don’t have much time before the adrenalin dies down and I feel my injuries in full.
“Eliza! Salazar!” I yell and bang at the door, desperately trying to just stay upright. With a mechanical screech, the door begins to open. I step in and practically fall into Salazar’s arms. He catches me and drags me inside, leaving the door open. Sal helps me reach Eliza. When my sister sees me, she yelps and her eyes go wide.
“What happened?” Eliza asks. I just shake my head in response. She stands up from her place near the window and rushes to me. Together with the old man, they half-sit me on the control panel.
With one working and one hurt arm, she starts tending to my wounds. I lock my eyes with Salazar and say:
“Fath- Dad stayed near the bomb. He’s not going to make it. He gave us five minutes,” I peek at my watch. “Two minutes and forty-two seconds now. We need to pack up and get back into the tunnels.”
“You’re kidding, right? We can’t leave him or John here.” Eliza says, not looking away from my bloodied left side. “Besides, the three of us are too hurt to go through the tunnels. We won’t make it anyway.”
I shake my head and reply:
“We have no choice, Eliza. We have no transport and walking on the street level is worse than the tunnels.” I suddenly realize I can’t hear fighting in the machine hall anymore. I swallow a lump in my throat.
“Where is John?”
“It’s over. He’s dead. They both are.”
Salazar’s voice is emotionless, his gaze hard. He spits on the floor.
“He and this vampire bitch fought each other to death. Mutually assured destruction.”
Eliza suddenly glances up at him, a grimace of anger on her face. I wince as the medical stapler bites deep into my skin, closing one of the entry wounds.
“You don’t know that, Salazar. We’ll have to go down and look.”
Salazar scoffs and looks at me for support. I stay silent.
“Well, it’s not like we have another way out of here, right? Only through the machine hall and to-”
“The clock is ticking,” I interrupt, my voice strained by pain. “Pack up and let’s get outta here.”
Eliza starts gathering her first-aid kit while Sal and I grab what little we have left when she suddenly gasps. We both turn around and see Eliza holding a small airtight capsule. Tenebretin.
“Where did you get that?” I ask, wincing from the pain. She shrugs and replies:
“It was in my kit, I think I put it there as a backup and forgot about it.”
Sal rolls his eyes and says:
“How convenient. It would be great if you remembered earlier.”
Eliza scoffs and approaches us, the capsule held in front of the old man’s face.
“Your sarcasm isn’t appropriate, Uncle Salazar. We’ll have to use this,” she says with conviction. “This is our best chance of getting out of here in one piece. We should use it.”
“Having two bullet wounds in my body, I’m inclined to agree,” I reply with a nod and a weak grin.
Salazar groans.
“Fine, do whatever you think is necessary. I’m not using it.”
By the time Eliza fills two syringes, there is barely a minute left on the timer. Anticipating the worst, I grind my teeth as she injects the Tenebretin into my left arm. I have never used this thing before and I am genuinely scared I'll die. The world goes completely, blindingly dark.
The sensation is strange as if I plunged into deep water. My body suddenly gets light and buoyant. Every ache and strain in every muscle disappears. I grunt as the staples that were holding my wounds closed get pushed out, and my wounds heal and turn into scars in a few seconds.
Then I feel it. A gentle peck on my forehead, as if someone kissed me. A feeling of warmth on my cheeks, as if someone lovingly caresses my face. A woman's voice at the back of my head, silky and calming. She says just two sentences:
"My strong, brave child. It's not over yet."
The darkness dissipates just as suddenly and I find myself still standing in the middle of the control room. I touch my right cheek and feel tears. One glance at Eliza and I see her crying as well.
My sister looks at me and nods. Her eyes are pitch black. I know mine look the same without any mirror. I don't even realize the point at which I grab the Hunter’s sword.
We break into a run simultaneously, forcing Salazar to follow in our steps. I hear the old man shouting something at us but I don't understand the words. It doesn't matter now.
The EMP goes off the same instant we reach the machine hall, Salazar far behind my sister and me. With a cacophony of sounds, every electric appliance in the building short-circuits, every lightbulb bursts, every machine grinds to a halt. I can imagine something similar happening in the rest of the City as well.
Strangely, I don’t really care about the City anymore. I don't dwell on it because Mother showed us something more important, a chance to get our personal vengeance. With my eyesight no longer needing light, I can see everything perfectly.
John’s body is lying like a broken puppet near one of the ruined machines. I should be losing my head from anger but I’m not. Just a cold feeling of righteous fury, completely under my control.
The Valkyrie is standing in a circle of lit flares, swaying from side to side slowly. Her now helmetless face is ruined, beaten to a pulp with only her right eye still open. The left side is a bloody mess of crushed teeth and exposed bone. Still, her anger and pain are readable even in this condition.
The vampire's left arm is gone completely, torn out of its socket by John, a gruesome wound squirting black blood now and then as if her body desperately tries to heal but can't quite master the resources. Yet she still stands.
That's what Mother wants us to rectify. Eliza shoots all three spikes, one after another, just as I dart forward and follow them. The vampire reacts by covering herself with the remaining arm. The spikes bounce off the armor but that wasn't the real attack — the moment I reach the Valkyrie, I swing downward. She doesn't dodge, instead swatting the blade away with the back of her palm, knocking me off balance. The Valkyrie's ragged breath and the putrid smell of her blood hit my nose and that exhilarates me. I growl at her and she growls back.
I backstep as the vampire leans away and launches a haymaker so fast it audibly cuts the air. I don't dodge, instead catching the fist into my left palm. My bones break from the force of the strike, only to heal the next instant, so fast I don't even register the pain.
A sudden feeling of joy overtakes me, so intense I can't help but smile. "Finish it, my sweet child," Mother's voice whispers in my ears. I smile wider.
Valkyrie tries to pry her arm away but I’m bigger and stronger now. I swing sideways and the Hunter's blade bites through the armor, deep into the vampire's midsection. She wails, so loud my ears start to bleed but it doesn't hurt.
I let go of the vampire's limp arm and grab the sword with both hands. The Valkyrie lunges for my throat in a desperate move but Eliza doesn't let her — my sister grabs the long silver hair and pulls it sharply, forcing the Valkyrie's head away. I lean on and use every ounce of my strength to push the sword.
Despite the armor, the blade goes clean through muscle, bone, and metal, bisecting the Valkyrie. The torso falls into the flare circle, blood and viscera flowing as the lower half stands upwards for a second and then collapses on the floor. Somehow, the vampire still breathes, gasping with short, strained breaths. I drop the sword.
I notice horrified Sal at the periphery of my vision, half-turn and smile at him. He doesn't see it, with no goggles and no light, but rather feels it at some primitive, primal level. The old man recoils, then turns sharply and runs away screaming in the direction of the maintenance tunnels.
Eliza methodically steps on each flare, putting them out one by one, and then we both step away. Tendrils of Mother's retribution erupt from the floor, wrapping the Valkyrie's torso and raising her into the air. She shrieks as the tendrils cover her mouth and the shriek stops abruptly. A maw, with teeth of Mother's righteous anger, opens under the bleeding torso and swallows her whole as the tendrils pull the vampire down. Then all is well and quiet.
"You did good, my children, my champions. Your brother, your father, your mother, everyone is proud of you," Mother's voice reaches my ruptured eardrums from the darkness around us. "I am proud of you. Oh, what war, what rage you will bring in My name to this traitorous spawn. Listen, listen how they scream and beg for their new Father to save their blighted lives!"
I focus and hear them, coming from the City as if I'm personally standing in each room. Every last one of them, vampires one and all, bellowing simultaneously and pleading for Mother’s mercy as teeth and tendrils rip them apart and take back the flesh that is rightfully Hers.
“Reign of Light is over, children. Now I shall rule over this world and you will help me,” Mother’s voice drowns out the screeches of vampires.
A thought crosses my mind — what is happening? Shouldn’t the drug’s effect be over by now? Why are we still under the influence? After all, we each took only half a dose and... I turn and see Eliza loading her spikethrower. She sees me staring and smiles, genuinely happy. I shake my head and grin back. Mother’s love is eternal, why should it be over? What foolishness.
“Go forth, my champions. Make your Mother proud.”
I exchange glances with Eliza. Without a word, we both take a knee and bow our heads. As one, we say:
“Cursed be the Light that betrayed us. Blessed be our Mother that embraced us.”