CRIMSON CITY
Fleur stood in the hall before two enormous carved mahogany doors leading to the war room, absently running the toe of her boot across the supple Oriental carpet beneath her feet. She’d waited outside for a while, now, turning away and walking to the window whenever someone passed by, embarrassed about her purpose here.
She looked up again, as she’d been compelled to do over and over for the last twenty minutes, gazing at the top of the doors. Carved into the wide portion of the top piece of doorframe was the Latin translation of the same English engraved into a brass plaque by the doors down on street level where the dogs and more likely, the humans passed by: Come not here if you do not belong.
The phrase seemed to mock her. To remind her that she didn’t fit in to the vampire world quite in the way that she used to. Fleur sighed once more over the idea of fitting in. Fitting back in. Her anxiety was such that she’d changed her outfit three times already, from a gown back into training gear and then into something that bridged the two styles in an attempt to achieve just the right look for her purpose.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and thought about her purpose. Her purpose was to convince Christian and Ryan to give her a chance to exorcise the demons from her past. Her purpose was to make her peers want to forget about what she’d done and to make them believe that the wildness she’d exhibited that fateful night was something that could be controlled.
She hadn’t seen Hayden since the night she’d made him a vampire. She remembered practically every detail, every word. She remembered lying in his arms, their bodies entwined on the bed. He’d told her he loved her more than anything. He’d told her he couldn’t live without her. He’d told her that he’d kill himself if she didn’t take him from the human race and make him vampire, if she didn’t make them of the same kind. He wanted to marry her; he wanted to live forever.
She’d believed him, though she’d been warned time and again to protect herself from those very words. From the words that the humans would say to make you forget the one thing you were supposed to remember: Vampires must not make humans into vampires. It was against code. But she’d lost her self-control in the heat of Hayden’s words and the lust between them. She’d sunk her fangs deep into his neck. And then she’d lost everything.
Fleur squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on the idea that all she could do now was to work on reclaiming what she’d lost. And the first step was to walk into that room and show that she was putting the past behind her and that she was capable of taking on the kind of role in the vampire world she’d been meant for.
The insistent tick of the nearby antique grandfather clock measured time, driving home that the meeting should have been over by now and they would be adjourning late. This wasn’t the first time she’d come to the war room. But the humiliation her half-brothers had doled out to her last time was enough to inspire her to be quite sure that she had solid arguments to her advantage this time.
She knew they would patronize her, try to dissuade her from her "silly" ideas, to find contentment in the riches being a Dumont vampire could provide and forget her notions of responsibility.
But Fleur had tried that. It simply wasn’t in her nature. If nothing else, she wanted to restore her good name and wipe away the shame that followed her on whispers in corridors, behinds fans and between puffs of cigar. She had something to prove, and prove it she would.
Under her breath, she practiced once more. "Christian...Ryan...I respect the work you’ve done, but I want... Fleur "stopped and frowned. She sounded too weak, too uncertain...too whiny. She tried again: "I should be more involved in security matters." That was better, anyway. One more time. "I should—"
The door opened and the members of the inner circle filed out, giving her odd, surprised glances. Some even looked away, refusing to make eye contact.
Chin up, shoulders back, Fleur slipped into the room as the last participant filed out. Christian and Ryan still stood by the conference table, leaning over to sign documents. Identical twins, they were nearly indistinguishable with the same black hair and pale features. Those who knew them knew that Ryan was flashier, louder, more the life of the party. Christian was the introvert and it reflected all the way from his dress to his demeanor.
She waited quietly, knowing they could sense a presence in the room. Ryan finally looked up, his expression faltering a little as he saw who it was. "Hello, Fleur." Christian obviously noticed the odd tone and looked up as well, rewarding her with the same lack of enthusiasm. "Hello, Fleur," he echoed.
"Hello. I was hoping to have a word with you both." She could have sworn Christian actually cringed. It was the same old thing. She knew they didn’t think much of her. She also knew that they feared her a little bit and referred to her in private circles as "the wildcard" for more than one reason. A little fear was good; she just had to be careful about how and when she exploited it.
And it wasn’t as if she was trying to take anything from anyone. A power grab would only be destructive for the entire vampire world. Fleur just wanted the opportunity to participate, to serve...and of course, to clear her name.
"Well, go ahead," Ryan said, still hunched over with his pen in mid-air.
Fleur wanted to roll her eyes. This wasn’t the sort of thing one discussed in between autographs. But if this was as much audience as they would offer, she’d have to take it. She stepped further into the room and approached the opposite end of the conference table. "I wanted to first thank you for being so understanding over the last several years..." She’d barely managed to start her speech, when already she’d lost their attention.
Lips parted in surprise, eyes looking past her toward the windows along the back wall behind her, the two men froze. Fleur felt the chill of fresh, cold air and noted the way the brothers’ hair rippled just slightly in a curious breeze. Slowly, oh so slowly, she turned and looked over her shoulder.
Someone...something had breached the tower in complete silence. Someone knew where to find the war room. And that someone was just standing there surveying the scene against the backdrop of an open window.
If he’d just been a human, all three of them would have been laughing. But he wasn’t just a human. He was more.
"It’s Ryan. I’m still in the war room. We have a serious security breach. Human...I think. Get forces to man the perimeter of the building, get forces for the floor and outside the room. But nobody comes in here," Ryan ordered into the intercom.
Turning all the way around to face him, Fleur braced herself for the possibility that whatever he was doing here, whatever he had planned, he could maim and hurt even if he couldn’t kill.
Flew watched this superhuman’s gaze shift in response to the sound of fingernails against wood. The brothers must be going for the holsters affixed under the table.
Backed up against the near end of the table, she was close enough to have a good look at the intruder, at the metal components that seemed to run in metal strips and piping and plates around his neck then radiated down underneath his clothing.
He didn’t even appear to be armed at first glance. But that was because he was, himself, the weapon. His forearms shone with an overlay of polished titanium, bordered by bolts and probably hooked up underneath to wireless circuitry. The part of him that was mortal flesh looked real, but almost too handsome to be that of a real man.
He raised his left arm, and as Fleur took a closer look, she realized with horror that his arm had been converted into a weapon. A weapon that held a cartridge filled with the unmistakable purple-pink glow of ultraviolet fluid.
Fleur’s mouth went dry. She had no knowledge of the humans or anyone else successfully--or purposely--developing UV weapons, much less using them in the field. "He’s got UV."
"Fleur, don’t move," Ryan muttered.
"He’s got UV weapons," she said, louder now.
"Don’t move!"
A gun discharged behind her and the bullet came whizzing over her right shoulder. It bounced merrily off the intruder’s chest armor, and rolled across the wood flooring. The acrid smell of gunpowder floated by, dispersed by the breeze coming in through the open window.
"They’ve created a mech," she said. "He’s a mech."
"Shut up, Fleur!" It was Christian this time, uncharacteristically flustered. They were scared by what they saw. And they had reason to be. Fleur had heard rumors that the humans were developing something...superhuman. Some sort of man with mechanical components who could be manipulated like the worst kind of weapon. They called them mechs, and everyone had become convinced they were nothing more than a rumor meant to create fear and questions in the vampire and the werewolf worlds.
She stood there with the hard edge of the table digging into her back, as Christian and Ryan unleashed a hailstorm of bullets around her. Watching them bounce harmlessly off the intruder and roll across the floor like a spilled bag of marbles, Fleur recognized that she was looking at proof that the mechs existed. And she was also looking at proof that the humans had not only gone ahead and effectively "bottled" a weapon that could kill vampires, but they were willing to use it.
During the first battle between the species in
Crimson City in which her own mother had died, their methodologies had been reactive, disorganized, crude. Everyone had worked hard to broker the truce they were all currently enjoying. But this...this suggested the possibility that the humans wanted to break the truce and launch a proactive assault on the vampire world. This suggested a level of warfare sophistication the humans had not been known to possess.
Weapons spent, now, the room went completely silent, the thin curls of wafting smoke making Fleur tear up. Caught in the middle, she wasn’t quite sure how to react. If he wanted to engage in hand-to-hand combat she had some moves at the ready. If he wanted to execute her, she had no moves at all. But with her back to the brothers, she couldn’t get a read on what they wanted. And as it turned out, it wasn’t going to matter what they wanted.
The mech cocked his head almost as if he’d been humoring them all, waiting for the ammunition to run so those pesky bullets would leave him alone.
"Fleur, I want you to get down on the floor and crawl to the door," Ryan said.
"I can help," Fleur whispered. "I can help you."
"You’ll only hurt," Christian said.
It stung, but Fleur recognized this wasn’t the time to argue with authority. She slowly knelt on the floor giving the rest of the parties a clear shot at each other.
Pretending to inch her way toward the door for escape, she trained her sights set on a wall cabinet she hoped still contained some decent explosives.
Retreating from the conference table to a work desk at the far end of the room, Christian screamed commands into the intercom, while Ryan reloaded his gun and continued blasting away at the mech. In the reflection of the cabinet’s glass, Fleur could see that he’d quickly run out of bullets. The panicked vampire tossed the weapon at the mech where it smashed harmlessly at his feet.
As she snaked one hand up and worked on the cabinet lock, Fleur could hear chaos in the halls just beyond the wall.
Her hand shook and her sweaty fingers slipped on the locking mechanism. Behind her, Ryan was begging for mercy, pleading for his life.
The mech didn’t answer. Maybe it hadn’t even heard. To no avail, Fleur jiggled the lock, now, not really caring how loud she was and kept one eye on the glass reflection.
The mech took a step forward and looked at Christian standing bolt straight. There was a weighty silence and then the mech raised its left hand and gracefully curled its fingers. She saw him wince as the bullet released from the mechanism fused to his forearm and actually felt an incongruous moment of calm just watching the gorgeous violet comet spiral through the air.
Christian screamed as the bullet struck him in the chest. It was a sound of pain unlike anything Fleur had heard before. Blood bloomed quickly over his white dress shirt and he crumpled to the ground, still screaming at the top of his lungs. His body twitched and leaped for a moment, and then he went completely silent, completely still
Ryan stared at his brother in a kind of catatonic state, making no effort to run, to fight, to do anything but accept his fate.
"Run," Fleur whispered hoarsely. She got to her feet and turned to the door, but Ryan didn’t move. "Ryan! You’ve got to run!"
He couldn’t move. She was nearly to him before the next bullet struck him. His blood spattered across her face and they fell together. Like Christian, he screamed in pain and terror as the UV penetrated his body. Fleur cradled his head, holding his face in her hands. "It’s okay, Ryan. You’re not alone." But her helpless words of comfort were lost; he died almost instantly in her arms, his pulse extinguished like a flame.
Fleur couldn’t quite breathe. Gasping and choking on her fear, she looked up at the mech. With his arm still suspended in mid-air he surveyed the room as if he were cataloguing the contents and looking for anybody else. Apparently satisfied there was just one person left, he cocked his head and studied Fleur.
She swallowed nervously as he reached down toward his leg holster. He swept his forearm down and arched it back up in one graceful movement, snapping a new attachment on to the metal rig of his arm. Fleur’s heart pounded. So this was what it was like to be at the mercy of a species you didn’t fully understand.
Ryan’s head still in her lap, drops of blood tickling her skin as they slid down her face, Fleur stared straight into the mech’s intense aquamarine eyes and waited.
Maybe she was seeing what she wanted to see, but in those eyes she was certain she saw a flicker of something alive, something more than just a programmed machine. But when she blinked and looked once more, there was just a dull gaze in a dead presence.
The mech raised his arm in a slow and calculated manner and shot her.
Fleur screamed in surprise and pain and realized he’d shot her with a conventional bullet. She wasn’t going to die if they got some blood back into her fast enough. Through the pain and the pounding and the roaring in her brain, she could have sworn the mech lowered his weapon and said, "Play dead."
"What?"
But the mech had taken a step backward, the same shuttered look on his face. She clutched her arm to her chest and let the red blood seep through her fingers, then collapsed in a heap with her eyes closed.
She heard a series of clicks and hums...then one last sound. That of a boot on the windowsill, perhaps...and then silence. She was counting to ten when the door burst open.
The room was suddenly in chaos, medics rushing in, the other Warriors of the defense force. All at once, as if everyone simultaneously realized what she meant to them now, it seemed like a million hands came at her, lifting and fussing and protecting and defending..."I’m fine," she whispered, opening her eyes. She sat up so the medics could properly wrap her wound before taking her to the blood banks upstairs.
But when Fleur looked over and saw them cover Christian and Ryan with cloths embroidered with the Dumont crest, she leaped to her feet. The blood banks would have to wait. As if the same thought had occurred to them all at the same time, everyone’s face turned to her, one after the next.
Don’t lose it. Do not lose it, Fleur. "It didn’t get me. I’m fine. It ran out of UV and shot me with a regular bullet." She shoved their help away and stood up, self-conscious to the extreme. The smell of the blood was making everyone incredibly edgy and she was no exception.
"The humans did this," someone blurted out. "Where are the cousins?"
The Protectors were already in the room. Marius came forward and whispered into her ear. "This is your moment. But nobody is going to give it to you. You’ll have to take it."
Fleur glanced over at other two. "Take it, Fleur," Warrick said. Ian nodded. "Take the power."
She opened her mouth to answer, but they stepped away.
Arguments were already flaring about next steps, with several members of the other families already discussing the transference of power and options for next steps. As the medics attended to the bodies on the floor, the Protectors stood in stony silence watching her. Fleur felt in danger of being swallowed up, in danger of just disappearing.
"Wait!" Fleur drew the hair back from her face with blood-streaked hands. "It appears that the unthinkable has happened..." God, how ridiculous this must sound coming out of her mouth. She cleared her throat. "This is what I want done: You. Advance security measures on all of +1 to the highest level. You. Get into the streets and the skies and collect whatever intelligence you can while that thing is still out there. The rest of you follow standard procedures and meet me back in this room in one hour."
They stared at her like stone statues. Fleur pointed at the bodies on the floor. "Do you need more convincing than this? Go!"
The room emptied out, leaving the smell of iron still swirling in the air behind them. When the medics finally wheeled out the desiccating remains of her half-brothers from the room, Fleur was left completely alone.
