Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout (Book 3) (12 page)

He raged as he thrust his arms
viciously through the chilled air. His swift victory over
Wentworth’s forces, though, had left him with quite a dilemma. Two
dilemmas, actually. His position as head of the vampires in both
the states formerly known as Michigan and Indiana was uncontested
at this point, but his position in the greater theatre was very
tenuous indeed. He had not heard from the Council, and that worried
him, though he would not let anyone suspect it. He was very worried
that their response, and he was certain there would be a response,
could take it all away from him. While he had been fighting
Wentworth, and then during the campaign afterwards, he had paid
little mind to what the Council might do. In fact, he had not
thought of anything at all except the thrill of battle. His mind
had simply shut down and a mad battle-lust had taken over.

The lust had lasted for as long
as it took to subdue Wentworth’s territory, and only then had his
mind seemed to fight back to a dominant position and let him,
finally, consider his actions. While, in one way, it had been
glorious to finally shake off the old ways and cut loose against
opponents who were worthy of the effort, he was still chilled by
the fact that he had lost control to such an extent.

He wasn’t quite sure what had
possessed him but he had been unable to stop himself once the smell
of fresh blood had hit him. It had only been his savagery that had
allowed him to win against the other vampires as he had not planned
any strategy, had not been able to think strategically in order to
plan anything. He had simply devoured his enemies through sheer
force. That would not work against the council, however, and when
they responded he worried that the battle-lust would again strip
him of his keen intelligence and leave him at their mercy.

Now that the battle-lust had
finally drained away and his rational mind had finally begun to
resurface his actions over the last few weeks shocked him. He
expected a summons from the Council at any moment. After all, they
could hardly let his actions go without censure. He had killed
another vampire, many hundreds in fact. If they did nothing the
message would go out to all the other states that open warfare was
again permitted and anarchy would reign once again. While one part
of him yearned for such reckless anarchy, he knew that only death
and destruction lay down that path. He understood this on a
rational level but found to his surprise that he was not as
concerned as he thought he should be. He had broken an ancient law
that defined them as a race, and all he could do was yearn for the
freedom of doing it again.

Once he had come out of the
battle-haze he had immediately set his mind to work in protecting
what his orgy of violence had wrought. He had deployed his
remaining forces around his borders as best he could to proclaim
his strength to any other Lords who might see the transition of
control as an opportunity for expanding their own territories. He
would have to suppress any such actions viciously if he was to give
the right impression. And that included how he must respond to the
Council. But the threat from outside his territory was only one
element of the problems that now faced him.

He had found, to his shock, that
his remaining vampire army was far smaller than he had expected.
The carnage had taken a terrible toll as each side had lost
themselves to a crazed battle-lust. Hundreds of vampires on both
sides had perished over the last few weeks and the number still
shocked him. He had tried to instigate a program of finishing the
conversion of some of his thralls to full vampire lords to
replenish his forces, but he had found, to his amazement, that the
thralls had not been idle while he had carved his way through his
enemies. They too had consolidated their position, and they had a
far larger force than he had.

The thralls had taken their
opportunity well while he was engaged in suppressing Wentworth’s
forces and had now gathered their forces under one banner. He had
underestimated them and they had grown in strength and in
confidence over the last few weeks to the point that they had even
demanded an audience with him. Negotiate - with a thrall! He was
still incredulous as he remembered how the envoys had come into his
camp, full of their own importance. He had, of course, killed the
three ambassadors, but he knew that he would have to meet with the
thralls at some stage or risk tying up his forces on internal
squabbling. And their new leader, Carter, obviously knew this. The
thralls were essential to the survival of all vampires, but they
were no longer as malleable as they once had been.

As powerful as he was, he could
not protect himself during daylight. This fact had become painfully
obvious during the Human War when the vampires had been forced to
increase the number of thralls allowed to exist by a huge margin or
risk defeat by the humans. Since then, of course, it had been
easier to keep the thralls around and let them police the food for
them and take care of the housekeeping that the vampires now
considered beneath them. But, in this, he could now see, the
vampires had made a mistake. Instead of securing their futures,
they had handed the keys to their very survival to others.

It had been accepted, of course,
that thralls were completely subservient to their vampire masters
and that they could never rebel against their masters, but
something had changed. The thralls had somehow overcome their
conditioning.

A thrall had never before
disobeyed a vampire that he knew of, but this Carter had not just
disobeyed - he had committed the unthinkable and killed vampires.
If he went to war with the thralls within his territory then the
forces gathered on his borders would move against him as well, and
he could not hope to win a battle on two fronts. In fact, he was
not entirely sure that he could survive a war with either side on
their own at this point.

The thralls also controlled the
human population that was the vampires’ food supply so he would
have to grant them some autonomy; the devil was in the details
though. He could, of course, attack the thralls whenever they
wanted food, but they would then retaliate during the hours of
daylight and this would only leave both sides vulnerable to attack
from other quarters.

Carter had already shown he was
a force to be taken seriously by retaliating for the killing of his
ambassadors by killing three of his vampires while they slept. This
could rapidly spiral out of control if he did not respond
appropriately. On top of all of these problems, he also had a band
of very dangerous humans hiding out somewhere inside his new
kingdom, and they, potentially, could be the biggest threat of
all.

The fact that they had survived
free this long attested to their abilities, but his main fear
centred on those bullets they had used. He shuddered as he
remembered how his forces had been torn to pieces by mere bullets.
How had they done it?
And how did they continue to remain
hidden from his forces?
He had twenty vampires on search detail
even now and all of them kept coming back empty-handed. In
desperation he had even risked forays into neighbouring states in
case the humans were hidden past his borders. He had ensured that
these forays did not stretch too far into the other Lords’
territories and that they were of small enough numbers so as not to
be misinterpreted as an act of war.

In most cases, his patrols had
been chased back quickly by large numbers of vampire patrols almost
as soon as they had crossed the border. This heightened awareness
on the part of his neighbouring states would make it almost
impossible for the humans to constantly cross the border as they
still continued to do, so he had almost discounted that theory.

However, there was one area that
did not meet these high standards of security. One of his vampires
had come back from Nero’s territory and reported surprisingly lax,
almost non-existent, security. The vampire had not seen any other
vampires in his brief foray and Von Kruger had ordered him to
return, but this time to venture further into the territory to see
what might be causing this.

The vampire had not, as yet,
returned. This, of course, could be because that bastard Nero
merely tore him apart and left him to burn in the dawn. It would be
just like Nero to do such a thing. If anyone had been likely to go
against the council and kill another vampire he would have betted
on it being Nero. It still surprised him that it was he who had
embraced his anger with such relish and not Nero.

It was unlikely, though, that
any humans could exist in Nero’s territory that were not caged and
helpless. Nero was a particularly singular vampire who would
happily kill an ally as quickly as an enemy, so he might have to
consider other options.

These humans perplexed him,
though. It just wasn’t possible to hide from a vampire’s senses. A
thought struck him. They must be underground. Far underground, he
thought, for his forces had found many survivors after the war who
had tried to hide in cellars shielded by concrete. They had found
them all. No, these humans had to be hidden in a very well shielded
complex, and any such complex would have been registered with the
government before he and his kind had swept them away.

He grinned. He did not have the
knowledge to run the searches necessary, but he did have a number
of vampires who were young enough to have this knowledge. He would
set them the task of compiling a list, and then he would meet with
this thrall captain and offer to share this information. If his
information was correct then Carter would jump at the chance to
wipe out these troublesome humans as well. With any luck, both
sides would weaken the other sufficiently enough for him to sweep
in and crush them both. He smiled as his rage began to subside.

Maybe it wasn’t all bad, after
all.

Chapter 8

Von Richelieu regarded the aid
in front of him with a cool gaze and then struck while the vampire
was in mid sentence. The sudden violence had so taken the whole
room by surprise that many of those present did not realise what
had happened until the vampire fell to the floor. Even for a
vampire, the killing stroke had been blindingly quick. He turned
his head and swept the faces in front of him in silence, noting
their different reactions.

Many of the vampires fidgeted in
their seats. He could tell that the sudden, pungent scent of blood
was having a far greater effect on those vampires that still fed
from the pool of humans still taking the serum while his closest
aids, those who fed from the pool who were now clean, sat calmly
and regarded their leader with interest. The humans certainly had
something there. The tainted blood was definitely increasing the
baser instincts of those vampires still using it. Steele had been
right, after all. However, whether it would actually kill them or
not had yet to be proven.

He brought his fingers to his
mouth slowly and licked the blood from them. Vampire blood was very
intoxicating. It was a strange mix of fresh, rich human blood
tinged with decay from the vampire. There were rules which forbade
the drinking of another vampire’s blood and he deliberately
flaunted them now as he relished the taste. It was one of those
ancient rules which had been brought in many centuries ago to
ensure that vampires did not destroy each other.

There were many myths that told
of how the blood of another vampire would strip a vampire of their
powers and their strength, that it would drive a vampire insane. It
was all rubbish of course. He was one of the few who actually
remembered back to when vampires had fought regularly with each
other, preferring the heady mix of another vampire’s tainted blood
to the banal taste of that which coursed through the humans.

Vampires had not always been as
cultured and aristocratic as they were to become. Once, they had
been like creatures of the wild, individual and all-powerful among
other beasts. They lived to feed and survived purely by instinct.
They lived solitary lives and defended their territories viciously.
Long before humans came to populate the earth, vampires ruled
during the hours of darkness, though they remained too competitive
to work together and remained prisoners of their own base hungers,
unable to rise above their animalistic existence.

Until, that was, the coming of
the first true vampire. Von Richelieu shook himself from his
ruminations. That was a story he would ponder another day. It had
taken many centuries but, by the time humans were beginning to
spread across the world as little more than smart monkeys, the
vampires were still in the throes of suppressing their base natures
and developing their intelligence and their social structures. They
kept their numbers small, their strong territorial instinct forcing
them to keep their numbers manageable. Those who survived longest
began to take charge and they became known as Elders.

The Elders had seen what the
future might hold if they failed to adapt to the changing world.
The humans had short lives but they adapted far more quickly to
their environment. They had an uncanny knack of moulding their
surroundings to work for them and they seemed to have a voracious
appetite for war. The vampires were all powerful in the darkness
but were far too vulnerable in the light, and so the Elders adapted
too. They folded the shadows around themselves and pulled back from
the world of man. Any tales of their existence were targeted and
they worked hard through their agents to deride these as mere
stories and, in time, their existence became myth. The Elders also
turned their attention to their own troubled ranks and created
legends for the vampires themselves to ensure that their own
fledgling social structures would survive.