The Children of the Sun (58 page)

“I am Tori Perrault,” she said, and her voice grew stronger with each word. “I am only Tori Perrault, and nothing more, and you do not own me, and you never have. I will not be your
thing
anymore!”

* * *

There was a dead man at their feet, his rifle lying next to him, and another not far away. Vanessa recognized the latter as Manuel, the man who had driven her and Charles home from the airport after the attack on the cathedral. She took a step forward to inspect his body and instead found her attention entirely captured by the events on view deeper into the room.

“I thought he’d be taller,” Carrie Brennan said, and Vanessa heard herself give an incredulous laugh. She felt unable to move, paralyzed by what little she could see through her swollen eyes.

The Emperor of the Sun was standing before the four people who had so easily bested her team, and from her vantage point he was doing nothing particularly extraordinary, but the group seemed fascinated by him, standing open mouthed and staring as he finished his speech. Only the male vampire’s face registered anything less than rapt attention.

“I am the Emperor of the Sun,” their leader said, “and you shall do as I command, as have all who have ever come before me.”

“I thought they were evacuating him,” Carrie said.

“Guess he sent them away,” Vanessa replied. She alone knew what the Emperor was, and the power over others that he could wield. If he had commanded the colonel to leave without him, then she had no doubt the colonel had obeyed.

The male vampire was moving, passing quickly over to Captain Perrault and speaking near her ear, and when the Emperor roared for him to stop, Vanessa caught a flash of what it was that the other group was experiencing; the Emperor seemed to double in size and flare white, and his words came from all around and deep within her.

Then it was gone, his efforts once again focused on the four people who had his attention, but something had changed. The blank look had gone from Captain Perrault’s face, and she was shaking. Struggling. The vampire man said something else and the Emperor again shouted at him, but it seemed too late. Now Captain Perrault was speaking, and Vanessa understood that soon there would be—

“Oh, no!” Carrie shouted beside her, and Vanessa gasped as she saw Captain Perrault – blurry and indistinct to her vision but unquestionably the same woman who had once pledged her life to the Emperor – leap forward and attack him. For a moment Vanessa felt a surge of sudden, wild joy that she could not hope to contain, and she was glad that Carrie was too focused on what was happening to notice the broad grin that had come to her face.

Captain Tori Perrault, former vampire and unwitting, unwilling convert of the Children of the Sun, swung both of her blades down at mind-boggling speed, and for the merest fraction of an instant it seemed that the Emperor was doomed. Then he reached forth with his massive, taloned hands and caught one blade with each. He pivoted, using Tori’s momentum against her, and threw her the entire length of the room. She hit the marble wall with her back, punching a deep depression into it and shattering the stone. Vanessa felt the joy drain from her as quickly as it had come, replaced with shock and an aching sense of disappointment.

I wanted her to win
, she thought to herself, and realized it was true.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me
?

The Emperor threw his weird, clawed hands wide and opened his impossible mouth, howling at his adversaries. No human jaw could have extended so far, nor would one be lined with daggers the way the Emperor’s was. The man made a hideous, inhuman screeching noise and launched himself at the three people in front of him. Vanessa found herself suddenly very glad that they were hiding behind pillars in a darkened alcove, thus far unnoticed by the others. Beside her, Carrie gasped in surprise.

“What the hell?” she asked, her voice shocked and breathless. “Captain … what is … what did—”

“The real Emperor of the Sun,” Vanessa said. “You’re seeing him for the first time, just like me, without all of his tricks and glamour, all of his magic. This is what Charles saw when he looked at the Emperor, and what I was supposed to see, but it was never meant for you. It was never meant for anybody but the Left Hand, and it never has been.”

She turned and looked at Carrie, who was staring at her in abject confusion.

“You wanted to know what Charles told me? This is it. He filled me in on all of the Emperor’s dirty secrets and then gave me a job. His mission for me – the job that every Left Hand has had since the beginning – was to wait until we’d wiped all of the rest of them out, and then kill the very last one. I was supposed to put a fucking knife in the Emperor’s chest. Not sure I’m going to get the chance, now, but that’s OK … I don’t think I want it anymore.”

Carrie opened her mouth to say something, burst into tears instead, and fell to her knees, covering her face. Vanessa gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, Sergeant. You weren’t supposed to know. You weren’t supposed to find out until the end that the man we’ve spent our whole lives serving is just another fucking vampire.”

The Emperor had engaged with the rest of the group, fighting hand to hand and doing an admirable job of it. He was not as tall as the male vampire, but the combination of his incredible speed and his deadly hands was proving advantageous. He was dealing with the male, and with Thomas. The female vampire was trying to fight as well, but she was clearly hurt and her movements were depressingly slow.

I could take her out easily
, Vanessa thought, and wondered why she felt no inclination to try. She was dizzy and weak from the wounds she had sustained, yes, but shouldn’t she still feel some sort of urgency? These people – these
bats
– were trying to kill her Emperor, then man she had sworn to give her life to protect. Why was it, then, that she felt nothing? Nothing at all?

She watched her brother swing his weapon at the Emperor, only to be knocked onto the floor. Surely this, at least, should have made her feel something, but at the moment Vanessa seemed incapable of anything but vague, numb curiosity. She had no idea who was going to win this battle, and she wasn’t sure she cared. In ten minutes, the first of the charges was going to go off, causing a chain reaction that would obliterate anything and everything below ground. There was no way, now, to move through this chamber and out into the escape hatch beyond.

Carrie was still sobbing. Vanessa stood watching the battle. Her entire face hurt, and she wanted nothing more than to knock back a gram of ibuprofen with a belt of whiskey and go lie down. Maybe death would feel something like that.

The Emperor was busy fending off both vampires, and Thomas, and now also Captain Perrault. He had nearly been taken unawares by her return; she had recovered from her flight across the room and rejoined the fight with a ferocious attack, but the Emperor had spun at the last moment and parried her swords with his hands.

His skin must be hard as a rock
, she thought.  Then she turned to look at Carrie, raising her eyebrows. Even this simple gesture made her whole face cry out in pain. Carrie had gotten herself under control and was looking up at Vanessa. The scars on her face, damp with tears, glistened in the dim light. Vanessa crouched down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“How you doing, Sergeant?” she asked, and Carrie managed a laugh.

“I just found out that everything I’ve ever believed in was a lie,” she said. “I’m great, Captain, how about you?”

“I don’t even know how to feel,” Vanessa admitted. “The only part of me that’s not numb is my fucking face.”

“We’re going to die in here,” Carrie said, glancing at her watch. “It’s over.”

“Yeah, that seems to be the case.”

“Fine. I give up.” Vanessa could see mute despair in the woman’s good eye. Carrie had accepted their coming death, and for her own part, Vanessa couldn’t seem to muster the energy necessary to do anything but join her.

Then Carrie spoke again, and though the words themselves were simple, they seemed to press deep into Vanessa, reviving her like a needle full of adrenaline driven through the breastplate and into the heart.

“At least when the place goes, it’ll burn
him
up with us,” she said, gesturing toward the Emperor, still locked in combat.

The words brought an image to Vanessa’s mind, and that image took her breath away. Before her she saw the Emperor, enrobed in flames and burning, burning like a great bonfire, consumed by fire and destroyed. It filled her with an impossible, indescribable joy, and here, at last, she understood her apathy, understood why she could not bring herself to act in defense of her Emperor. It had begun in the medical bay with Charles, and it had grown within her each night as she had lain on her bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to make sense of it all. In that time she had come to realize two things, though she had not been able to admit them to herself until this very moment, when the image Carrie’s words had provided catalyzed her feelings and made them clear. She understood, now, at last.

She no longer cared about the bats. Something had sheared away the old hate and pain and left her indifferent. They could live or die. It didn’t matter.

She hated the Emperor of the Sun, hated him for his lies and his deceit and his murder. She hated that his own soldiers had to be locked away from him for their own protection because he otherwise would take one from time to time, bite the man’s head off, and drain his blood. She hated that the very heart of their entire organization was such a corrupt, blackened, evil thing.

Most of all she hated that she had spent so much of her life, given so much of herself, and let so many others die for this man who wasn’t a man.

Vanessa glanced at her watch and then over at Carrie, who was still staring at the Emperor, watching as he held off the entire group of attackers.

“Sergeant,” she said. “Get up.”

* * *

The entire left half of her body felt like it was on fire, and Two was certain that the bullet wound in her abdomen had begun leaking blood again at some point during the battle, but it didn’t seem that there was any option but to keep fighting. The Emperor of the Sun was currently engaged with all four of them at once, and more than simply holding his own, Two thought he might slowly be winning. Tori and Theroen were still fighting well, but Thomas was visibly beginning to flag, and Two was hardly operating at peak efficiency herself.

Whatever doubts she might have had about the Emperor’s claim of being thousands of years old, they had long since been erased; the man was unspeakably strong, gifted with speed that made Theroen and Tori look half a step slow, and possessed of skin capable of shrugging off the few attacks they had managed to land. He had taken three or four glancing hits from the weapons they were all wielding, and he was suffering from little more than minor lacerations. She was reminded of Abraham – how even after weakening him with the heroin, it had still taken all of her strength to cleave his head from his body.

The thought of the drug brought an idea to her mind, and as Two swung desperately again at the Emperor, only to miss him and nearly shatter her blade against the stone floor, she called to her friend.

“Tori, try your darts!”

She didn’t know whether the throwing darts would be able to pierce the man’s skin or not, but it seemed worth the attempt. Tori appeared to agree, as she immediately slapped twice against her chest with that same amazing speed she had shown when fighting Jakob, flinging two darts through the air. The Emperor, only a few feet away, managed to bat one of them down, but the other caught in his shoulder and stuck there. He made another of his inhuman snarls and tore it from his flesh.

Theroen took advantage of the distraction, swinging his blade at the man’s head, and the Emperor was forced to raise his left arm, taking the full force of a blow for the first time in the fight. Blood sprayed and Two felt a rush of satisfaction, but the Emperor spun, swung his right fist, and connected solidly with Theroen’s chest, throwing him into the air. Theroen flew backward and rolled head over heels, losing his grip on his sword and colliding with Tori. Two cried out his name, turning to run toward him, but saw that he was already disentangling himself and struggling back to his feet.

“I think the dart may not be working,” he called, pausing a moment to reach out a hand and help Tori up. Then he bent down, picking up his sword and preparing to return to the fight.

“Do you really think I would arm my people with anything that could harm me?” The Emperor roared. “Idiots. I told you I am not like you.
Entente quoque pix
!”

Thomas had worked his way behind the Emperor and now came running toward the man, aiming to stab him in the back. The part of Two that had been trained by Jakob frowned at this strategy, but the rest of her – the part that was rapidly succumbing to exhaustion and blood loss – celebrated the possibility that the fight might be ended.

The Emperor heard the footsteps and Two watched in despair as her hopes were dashed. He spun, grabbing Thomas by the midsection and lifting him high into the air, his claws punching through Thomas’s skin in several spots. Bright red rings of blood formed instantly around the wounds and Thomas screamed, dropping his sword and struggling in the Emperor’s powerful grip. The Emperor opened his massive, frog-like mouth, preparing to lower Thomas down and take a gigantic bite out of the man’s side. Two did the only thing she could, charging forward with her sword held out in front of her.