Blood Hunt (28 page)

Naomi would have been better at it than he was. Much better, most likely, and though there were older members of the council, Jakob would gladly have supported her in an attempt to seize control. The problem was that Naomi had been out of the country for more than a year.

Just now he was sitting with Malik in a private room at the back of the council’s cathedral, meeting with Lewis, one of the two Burilgi representatives. The bi-weekly council meeting was still two hours away, but Lewis had requested an early, private session.

Now he was waiting for an answer to his ultimatum, and Jakob didn’t have one. Malik looked shocked by Lewis’s statement and, Jakob had to admit, more than a little frightened. Jakob pitied the man. Malik had spent all of his time on the council serving under Abraham, who had ruled with an iron fist. Many complaints could be made about Abraham’s time as leader, and Jakob had made more than a few of his own, but outbursts like Lewis’s never would have happened before; the young Burilgi would never even have considered it. Threatening Abraham in even the most minor of ways would have led only to a swift and inexorable death.

“Lewis,” Jakob said. “I don’t know what it is you want me to tell you …”

“You could start by telling me that you’re going to do something.
Anything.
My people are being abducted. There’s no point in denying it anymore.”

Jakob, who had seen the reports himself, nodded.

“This is the beginning of the war,” Lewis said. “Don’t ask me to sit here and debate with you while the Children are out there kidnapping vampires.”

“You don’t know for sure that it’s the Children …”

Lewis made an exasperated noise and rolled his eyes, but otherwise refused to respond to that. He sat, staring at Jakob, not speaking. At last, Jakob continued.

“The latest reports are confused. We’re not sure what to make of them.”

“Quit fucking playing dumb with me!” Lewis snarled. “I’m not an idiot. I know what you all think of me. You’re the nobles, I’m the commoner. That’s never going to change, so whatever, I’ll be a fucking commoner and tell things like they are instead of hiding behind formality and façade. That work for you,
Jake?
”

“By all means,” Jakob said, trying and mostly succeeding to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Enlighten us.”

“Something has mobilized the Children,” Lewis continued. “Some spark has lit a fire under their asses, and they’re rolling through Burilgi like a thresher in a field. Twenty-five missing so far, and twelve of those happened just in the last week. There was a series of coordinated strikes across three different time zones within fifteen minutes of each other. There was one witness …”

“I had not heard about this,” Jakob said, tilting his head.

“Why am I not surprised? I left the report with Malik. Maybe he can explain why he didn’t get around to telling you.”

Malik coughed. “Yes, the witness … a little boy who should never have been turned in the first place.”

“I’m not making excuses for his sire,” Lewis said. “I can’t control every Burilgi, particularly not neurotic pedophiles who insist on making slaves out of children. If it’s any consolation, the sire is one of the missing.”

“I take no consolation in what may be happening to your people,” Malik said. “Just don’t ask me to take the ramblings of an abused child seriously.”

“Malik,” Jakob said, his voice pitched low and respectful, “I would like to hear what Lewis has to say. Please let him continue.”

Malik glanced at Jakob with disapproval, but nodded silently.

“The kid was half-delirious when we found him,” Lewis said. “He’d been hiding behind the furnace in the basement for
three days
, starving but too scared to leave. He said that a group of at least five humans had broken into the house and used silver and garlic to round up the people who lived there. Said that one of them was a female, blonde hair, who ‘moved like a vampire’ as she rounded them up. That sound familiar to anyone?”

There was silence now in the office as even Jakob found himself at a loss for words. The conclusion was obvious and, in a way, beautiful in both its simplicity and its irony.

“Right,” Lewis continued. “I thought so. It’s the daughter. The one you pretended not to know anything about when the
Eresh-Chen
came through here last year. You guys left a dangerous weapon lying around, lost track of it, and now it’s being used against us. The Children have her, and they’re using her to murder my people.”

“You have no proof of that,” Malik said, but his voice was wavering, and he refused to meet Lewis’s gaze.

“Oh, for God’s sake, think about it!” Lewis shouted. “What else would they be doing with their prisoners? Storing them up to trade in for a better model of vampire? They are training for war!”

“Lewis, are you sure of this?” Jakob asked.

“Her parents are dead. She’s been missing for months. All the trackers you sent came up empty-handed. Now, all of a sudden, there’s some blonde chick, super-fast and super-strong, out there rounding up Burilgi. Put the fucking pieces together.”

Jakob had already done so, had done it as soon as Lewis had recounted the child witness’s story, and come to the same conclusion. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t act without the permission of the council.

“What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

“Wipe them out. Do it now, and do it completely. We’ve known about this cult for decades … maybe centuries. We’ve allowed them to persist because they didn’t seem to pose any real threat. Now they have a weapon, and she’s leading their troops. These are just preliminary strikes, to gauge our reaction and thin the herd a bit. They expect you to sit on your ass and do nothing, because who gives a shit about a few Burilgi?”

“Unless someone on this council is a spy, and I doubt that very much, they have no idea how we might be reacting,” Malik said.

“It doesn’t matter. All they know is what they can see, and so far I’m sure they’ve been thrilled. They took
twelve people
and we’re doing nothing. I can’t even get you guys to take me seriously.”

“The council must debate,” Malik said. “This is how things are done.”

“We should’ve called an emergency meeting last week,” Jakob muttered, half to himself. Malik glared at him.

“Thank you,” Lewis said. “Finally.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Jakob said. “I support the council completely and will abide by whatever decision it makes. I may not agree with every conclusion, but I’ve lived for over four hundred years under our laws, and they’ve served me well.”

“I understand that,” Lewis said. “But things have changed. This isn’t the old days.”

“No doubt you’d prefer to have Abraham back?” Malik asked, his voice laced with disgust.

“At least then something might get
done
around here,” Lewis shot back.

“Gentlemen,” Jakob said, cutting off whatever retort Malik had been preparing. “Let’s not resort to sniping at each other. What is different from the ‘old days,’ Lewis?”

“In the old days, for one thing, Richard would be here talking with me. You might have noticed that he’s not around.”

“I must admit some curiosity in that matter,” Jakob said.

“He’s with Aros.”

Malik made a snarling noise and said, “I don’t ever want to hear that name spoken in this building again.”

Lewis gave him an angry grin. “Yeah … ignore it and it’ll go away, right, Malik? It doesn’t work like that. You can’t hide the past by not talking about it. God knows you’ve been trying, but all that’s doing is allowing him to grow stronger every year.”

“Aros has done nothing in direct violation of any major laws,” Jakob said. “He’s done nothing to challenge us, and Abraham seemed … surprisingly reticent to simply wipe him and his followers out.”

Lewis shrugged. “Maybe they had an arrangement. It doesn’t matter. Do you know how many Burilgi have gone over to his side now? His people dwarf your numbers. I know we’re not as strong as the Ay’Araf, or even Ashayt, but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You don’t know what he’s doing.”

Jakob leaned over the desk, looking carefully at Lewis. “What do you know?”

“Not much. Not everything, anyway … he doesn’t share much with Richard and me. He knows that we’re still council members. The reason Richard’s with him right now is to try and calm him down, to keep him from using his army to attack the Children.”

“You exaggerate,” Malik said. “I’m certain he has many Burilgi supporters, but really, Lewis … I would think a veteran of World War II would know not to throw around the term ‘army’ so lightly.”

Lewis turned toward Malik, a grim smile on his face. “You’re right. I’m a military man, and I know my terms. He doesn’t have an army, not by human standards. What he has is something between a battalion and a brigade. Do you know what that means, Malik? It means that if he wants to, Aros can point more than a two thousand Burilgi at whatever enemy he chooses. If he decides to go after the Children, how exactly are you going to stop him?”

Jakob felt his eyes widening, and tried to keep from looking too obviously shocked. “Two thousand?”

“At an absolute minimum. How many of you are there, Jakob? If you combine all of the Ay’Araf, Ashayt, and Eresh in this country, what number do you get?”

“Not two thousand,” Jakob replied.

“No. There’s what … twenty Eresh, a hundred Ashayt, and maybe five hundred Ay’Araf?”

Jakob, who thought those numbers might actually be optimistic, said nothing. Malik did the same.

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “We know
you
can kill Burilgi, Jakob. I don’t blame you for that … those assholes had it coming. But that was three of them. Can you kill ten at a time? Twenty? What about Sasha?”

“Are you threatening us?” Malik asked in a voice that was trying to sound unimpressed.

“I’m explaining that you should feel threatened. If you don’t do something about the Children of the Sun, Aros is going to bring his army down on them. If you try to stop him, he’ll bring them down on
you
. For all I know, he’s planning on doing that anyway, at some point.”

“Why did you not tell us of this sooner?” Malik asked.

“You didn’t ask.”

“Lewis …” Jakob began, and the Burilgi vampire whirled on him.

“I’m not a spy, Jakob, for either side! I’m not going to report to my ‘superiors’ every time Aros takes a piss, and I’m not going to sit here and be interrogated by you, or Malik, or anyone else about it.”

Jakob held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Lewis, please stay calm.”

“When the Children send Abraham’s daughter for Sasha, and Naomi, and Stephen, will you stay calm? When she takes them off somewhere to be murdered, will you just sit back and relax?”

“I …” Jakob paused, unsure of how to respond, and found himself wishing not for the first time that Naomi would return from the errand that had taken her and Stephen to Europe.

“You won’t be calm, but it’ll be too late. I’m asking again, and this is really the last time … if you value the status quo, then you need to do something. Richard and I can’t hold Aros back for much longer. Quite frankly, every time another Burilgi disappears, we’re that much less inclined to even try. I don’t care who you have to convince, just do it quickly. Get your shit together and do something about this. Please.”

With that, he gave them each a curt nod, turned, and walked out of the office.

* * *

Jakob was pacing up and down the Cathedral’s central aisle, his feet making no sound on the heavy carpet of red and gold, pondering the meeting with Lewis and subsequent discussion with Malik. It was obvious that Malik did not really want the responsibility of sitting at the council’s head, but it was equally obvious that he had no intention of giving up the prestige that came with the position.

The American council of vampires had grown arrogant and apathetic. They hated the Burilgi, for the most part, and Jakob suspected that most would secretly be pleased to hear about these abductions. The idea of raising a large group to go fight the Children of the Sun seemed improbable. The thought of obtaining enough support to take on Aros’s growing ranks directly seemed completely absurd. Jakob supposed he could rally some of the Ay’Araf to the cause, if for no other reason than the promise of a fight, but would it be enough?

If the Children had really recruited Abraham’s youngest daughter and were training her to be a killing machine, as Lewis claimed, then they were all in great danger. Malik was barely a competent leader in times of peace. In a time of war – Jakob shuddered to think about it. Malik was likely to bury his head in the sand and insist nothing was wrong until it was far too late.

What could be done? Jakob paced and thought, but no solution came to him. After a time the thud of the building’s heavy front doors closing broke his reverie. He glanced up and saw Richard, the other Burilgi council member, rounding the corner. The look on the man’s face said that whatever news he carried, it was something far from good.

Wonderful,
Jakob thought.
There must have been more abductions.

“Jakob! Hey, Jakob … you’ve got to listen to me.” Richard rushed up and stopped in front of him, visibly agitated.

“Certainly. Calm down, Richard, and tell me what’s causing you such distress.”

“There’s not a lot of time. Look, you’ve gotta go. Now.”

“Go where? To see the site of the abductions myself?”

Richard looked shocked. “Have more people been taken?”

Jakob paused, eyes narrowing. “I assumed that was your news. Apparently, I was wrong. What troubles you, Richard?”

“It’s Aros. He … I … did Lewis explain where I was this evening?”

“Yes. Has Aros mobilized his fighters?”

“No. I mean, not yet. He’s going after someone though. Two people. You know them. He … I wasn’t supposed to hear this, and normally Lewis and I have a ‘no spying’ policy …”

“I’d heard,” Jakob muttered.

“This time, though, it’s too big. I can’t protect him on this. He wants the girl. Two. He wants her.”

“He’s going to have a hard time even locating her, let alone taking her from Naomi and Stephen,” Jakob said.