Anna von Wessen (2 page)

II:

New York City, 2012

T
he hunting party organised at midnight, and set out into the black streets. To ward off the assault of cold and driving rain, its members drew their dark hoods over their heads, and went on together looking hardly different from what other thugs and ruffians roamed beside them.

The group of four kept near to one another, as they moved on down the sidewalk. None spoke, or even so much as shifted their eyes from the path ahead of them. Once, one of them took his cellular telephone from his pocket, and answered a call. When he had done, he replaced the telephone; and though he continued looking straight ahead, and did not even so much as open his mouth to speak, the other three of his band heard very well what he meant them to. Almost as a single entity they compressed their lips, and gave curt nods, though they did not change their stoic countenances.

The words of the message were but six.
Small pack at Adams Street warehouse.

The one who had received the call, whose name was Valo, turned quickly when he came to Adams Street, and led his companions on into the shadows of the narrow way. The one who had walked beside him, named Ari, was close on his heels. Next came Greyson. The last – as you will probably guess – was Anna von Wessen.

The group became more closely knit as it approached a door at the side of a large warehouse, whose East-hand wall was exposed to Adams Street. Valo put his shoulder to the door, and lowered his head to listen, while Anna superseded Ari and went to stand next to him. Though these were Valo’s own explicit orders, Ari’s lip curled visibly as Anna passed her. Greyson noted the expression, and hissed.

But neither Anna nor Valo were paying them any mind. They stood very near to one another before the door, and were conversing in low whispers, feeling all of a sudden too frantic to control the stream of their thoughts. Finally they turned to the others, and told them what they meant to do – but only after they had decided their plans independently.

“You mean to go in
now?”
asked Greyson. “With only the four of us?”

“What more do we need?” Valo asked with a grin.

“Anna –”

“No, Greyson. We will go.”

At Anna’s pronouncement, Greyson was silent.

Valo put his face near to the crack between the door and the jamb, to better smell what lay inside. “There are at least twelve,” he said. “Probably more.”

Greyson groaned.

“Circle the perimeter,” Valo continued, “as soon as we enter. Attack from the outside.”

With that, he disappeared. The door to the warehouse stood as before: dirty, dented and motionless. But Valo was gone.

The others shifted after him. Once inside the place, Ari flew behind Valo on the left-hand, while Anna and Greyson kept to the opposite wall. Their nostrils were filled immediately with the stench of wet, stinking fur; and they tracked this odour to the heart of the building, where there was situated a wide, isolated storage room, closed on two sides with low walls.

Here there burnt a bright fire in a rubbish bin, round which were planted nearly a score of what appeared to be men and women. But they were clad in little more than rags, and the smell which clung to their filthy skins was no less than fetid. The four Lumaria fell into the shadows on all sides of them. Seconds later, however, the men and women began to raise their heads, and sniff the air. Low growls escaped their throats; and in a moment more, they had transformed into twenty horrid beasts.

From each of the four corners of this large room, a Lumarian sprang into action. They moved as a breath of wind, all round the circle of wolves; and by the time they fell back from the swarm of swiping claws and gnashing teeth, more than half of their targets lay dead upon the floor.

“Lumaria!” cried what seemed to be the leader of the pack, in what came as a horrible rough voice from his wolfen throat. “Show yourselves!”

Never one to refuse a challenge, Valo stepped instantly from his own dark corner, and into the flickering light of the fire.

“Ah!” said the pack-leader. “It is Valo, mighty son of Ephram!”

His comrades began to snicker, but directly afterwards fell silent, at the deadly look which Valo gave them.

“You think it funny?” he asked. “Well, I suppose it
is
rather funny – the lot of you dying, round a stinking fire in a rubbish can. Let us laugh, too!”

Soft chuckles drifted out from the other three corners. The wolves looked all about them; but before their heads had time to make a single rotation, they all lay with their brothers and sisters upon the stone floor, their glassy eyes wide open, and their tongues lolling out.

~

Valo led his party home, after this. They shifted across the city, and into a great manor

which stood in a wide avenue of a quiet, affluent neighbourhood. This manor, cloaked in shadow on all sides, and set a considerable way back from the curb, was the house of Ephram.

The manor’s front lawn was vast, and sported an appearance of comfortable neglect. The dead winter grass was inlaid with a long half-circle drive of dirty white cobblestones, either end of which emptied out into the street. Also it opened up on the right side, and curved in a U round the back of the house (the purpose of this U, to be explained shortly). Past the boundary of the lawn there was a tiled courtyard, with unruly gardens filled with dark, twisting things at either hand. In the centre of the courtyard there was a large fountain, with a statue of what appeared to be a horned demon standing on its base, and trickling water from the tips of each of its ten clawed fingers.

A narrow walk wended away from the courtyard, and led up to a steep stone stoop, on either side of which sat a giant marble raven’s head. The front of the house was dark, and shadowed even in daylight, when the windows were little more than shimmering eyes in a black face.

Valo’s party arrived directly in the entrance hall, where there stood a servant awaiting them. Terrified-looking, and with shorn hair and a pale face, he hovered a little back from them, clearly hoping that they would not speak to him. Valo hissed at him; and the fellow staggered backwards in fear. He accepted a heavy blow from Valo, then, right
atop his head, but showed not so much as a scowl. Rather, he stepped immediately forward again, and remained thus till he was ordered to flee.

The four members of the hunting party divided at the foot of the great fair staircase, and went their separate ways. Valo went to speak with his father in his study; Ari took herself off who-knew-where, with the customary sour expression upon her face, which was engendered by Valo’s kissing Anna goodnight; and Anna and Greyson went up to the weapons room.

This large chamber was located on the second floor, at the end of the East-hand corridor. Anna and Greyson passed through its double doors, and went to the long row of shelves and brackets which hung upon the wall, where they began to store their weapons.

Each of them took a short sword from the scabbards on their hips, cleaned the night’s blood from its blade, and hung it in its proper place. Then there came a variety of smaller weapons, extracted from every pocket of their long overcoats, which they arranged neatly on the shelves. Anna kept only one weapon on her person, which was truly her own; and this was a long, cruel, jagged-edged dagger, which she wore always at the front of her belt.

“When is the next feast?” Greyson asked. “Tuesday or Wednesday?”

“Wednesday,” Anna answered.

“Too bad,” Greyson said with a frown. “I’m already hungry.”

Before March of the previous year, there had come to the house every two weeks a small truck and trailer. The trailer was refrigerated, and bore the words “McGee and Sons Butchers” on its side. Two men – always the same – would pull round the drive to the rear of the manor, and proceed to unload a very large quantity of meat, each package being half as large as one of the men themselves, wrapped in wax paper, and tied tightly with twine.

There were thirty members of the Lumaria living in the manor, and each of them had been accustomed to consuming at least ten pounds of flesh on a bimonthly basis. Since the Narken had begun their killing spree, however (there is more to be said about that presently), and security in all the boroughs became much more vigilant, it was deemed a risk to have the truck come so often. Therefore it arrived only once a month (and never on the same day), so as not to arouse suspicion. 

You might ask, even if the manor’s residents were to be caught red-handed, per se – what would it matter to them? Could they not simply kill those who knew them to be guilty, or flee altogether? Well, you might ask. And we shall tell you, that it was exactly by not doing such things as these, that their race as a whole managed for so many centuries to be thought nonexistent – or at worst, a dark tale for a long winter’s night. It was not the humans’ fault, after all, if they did not know that nothing belonged to them. It was not their fault if they did not know that they were only unwelcome,
non-paying tenants in the houses of stronger creatures. Was it?

Ephram had issued the decree for diminished feeding nearly a year ago. Now his family went hungry for long weeks, were neither as swift nor as strong as usual, and needed sleep much more often than was their wont. They hunted nearly every night, sometimes for strays and sometimes for packs, in hopes of cleansing the city – but the wolves multiplied like rabbits. There had been these past several years a great deal of debate within the Night Council, as to whether or not the Endai should be consulted on
the matter. So far Lumarian pride had held out; but ever-changing circumstances made the outcome of the situation a curious thing to ponder.

The Endai were once grave enemies of the Lumaria, so much did they despise that people’s feeding habits. Nowadays the two races did not war with one another; for a treaty had been signed in 1823 which forbade either side from attacking a member of the other (or, at least, members of either side who belonged to the Lumarian and Endalin Councils), so long as a single and particular stipulation was respected. The Lumaria, you see, were not permitted to fetch their meals from the public body, but needed find ways to obtain meat that was recently dead. Admittedly they had difficulty with this proviso. It was not so very easy, you may imagine, to find nearly two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of flesh per year, per Lumarian, which was already dead. It was well-nigh impossible, we should say – and the Lumaria were quick to find ways to circumvent the Endai’s clause for peace. Only Ephram knew where “McGee and Sons” obtained their deliveries; and no one questioned him about it.

So, although the treaty ended war between the peoples, it created neither respect nor an alliance. Never was one side referred to, in association with the other, as a “partner” or a “comrade” – but rather they were only uneasy collaborators.             

After they had finished with their weapons, Greyson looked to Anna, and asked, “Fancy a game?” Anna nodded, and they went together back into the corridor. They passed several doors, and then turned to enter a sizable recreation room. They made straight for the corner, where there stood a large billiard table. While Anna racked, Greyson chalked the cues, and turned on the television. 

They were both distracted from their little tasks, when the news anchorman announced more murders – six persons killed, this time – in Brooklyn. The anchorman told his audience that the killings appeared, at first, as strange animal attacks, with the victims ripped from waist to gullet. He had had to say the same thing many times that year – and then had had to make note, that it was a surety these murders were
not
the work of an animal, on account of the markings carved into the victims’ foreheads. Always the same marking, always in the same place. No one had any idea what this mark might be, except perhaps the symbol of a crazed killer.

But the Lumaria knew better. It was not the logo of a madman – but rather the new emblem of the Narken. They had created it for themselves, in mockery of the Endalin crest. It was simply a rude shield, with the letter “N” inscribed in its centre.

About eight years ago, there was a battle in Louisiana, which was fought between two factions of the Endai. One of these factions had developed a desire to gain strength, and greater resistance to human weaponry; and so through years of study, and countless experiments, had finally discovered a process which enabled them to assume a physical form which was closely akin to that of the Narken. This faction called itself the
Voranu.
A war ensued between the Voranu and the Endai; and although the Endai conquered, they did not manage to kill all of their opponents. The Voranan survivors fled North, to the hideaways of their Narkul brothers, while the Endai went to join a larger branch of their society in London. Now, there were no Endai left in the States – and the Narken were slowly spreading themselves across the country. Though many of their kind lived still on other continents, it seemed their intention to make America their centre of command. Most of the Lumaria were fleeing in their wake, and had travelled by now to Europe. It was only Ephram’s house, and one other family farther South, which remained resident.

The Lumaria and the Endai had very little contact; and neither knew anything concerning the other’s plans for the Narken. It seemed that the Endai had simply wanted to forget them for a while, and had put an entire ocean between themselves and the greater mass, to regroup. Their regrouping, however, was beginning to look very much like abandonment.