Dominant Species (3 page)

The Queen sighed and Karick could almost sense her disappointment
.

‘I’m sure Lord Rodan only came to me because he was concerned that the current troubles, not to mention the dissatisfaction within the Council itself, draw us
perilously close to a vampire War,’ she glided silently closer to him, ‘you will maintain order, Overlord Karick as I would consider anything less, a total failure of your command,’ she stared straight into his eyes, her voice soft, but carrying an icy edge ‘and you know I do not accept failure, Overlord Karick…. of any kind.’

‘My Lady
,’ Karick heard himself say as the Queen drifted silently away, with Rodan following like some long haired lapdog quickly behind.

The two watchmen that sat in the shadows raised their shotguns in unison as the lone figure of Jake appeared out of the mist from nowhere, they watched in silence, their weapons aimed at him as they tracked him trudging towards the church. As he closed, and they recognised him, they lowered their weapons and dissolved back into the darkness with not a word spoken. Jake could taste the dust that always hung in the air and seemed to give an illusion of an early morning mist, as it sat over the derelict churchyard. Deep in thought, he ignored the broken walls, automatically moving around the shattered and lopsided gravestones that littered the ground all around him as he made his way to the church entrance.

He
stepped over the threshold and into the silence of the abandoned church. He hesitated as he caught sight of a weak shaft of light that slashed across the otherwise dark church from a glassless window high above. Almost embarrassed he crossed himself quickly, before picking his way through the rubble and fallen pews with extreme care, trying not to disturb anything, or leave a trace.

At the other end
of the church he reached another doorway, hidden behind the Altar. As he climbed the steps up toward the altar two more figures appeared, one male one female, both with shotguns raised. Without a word they waved him through the doorway. Inside the vestibule Jake stopped in front of a small wooden door with intricate fretwork and turned the iron handle. The door swung open with an oiled ease and he looked down at the near vertical steps that descended towards the crypt below. Carefully, Jake descended into the darkness. At the bottom of the steps he paused. He could hear raised voices coming from somewhere inside the crypt, muffled by the thick wood of the crypt’s door.

Taking a breath he knocked twice
, paused then knocked three times more. There was a short delay before he heard the sound of two very large bolts sliding back. Jake pushed at the heavy door, knowing much of its weight had been added by the solid steel plates screwed to its back. On the other side of the door he found himself suddenly staring down the barrel of yet another shotgun, which was quickly lowered by the watchman who, saying nothing heaved the door shut behind him before melting back into the shadows. Jake stood with his back against the cold wall of the crypt, whilst he let his eyes time to fully adjust to the darkness.

From within the shadowy edges of the crypt,
darker even than the stairway outside, Jake watched the four men crouched around the tomb.  They continued to argue loudly, seemingly oblivious to his entrance. He stood in the shadows for a long minute, before stepping forward into the dim light cast by the two gas lamps that sucked at the stale air from the corner. Nathan and Trent looked across, Nathan spared a small smile and Jake received a brief nod from Trent. Even Lano grunted a welcome. In fact everyone acknowledged him except for Max who resolutely refused to even glance up. Jake couldn’t help but smile to himself as he walked forward with Max determined to avoid any eye contact at all, as if to do so might render him blind.

In
the makeshift school, Megan checked the thick curtains were pulled tight before she lit the kerosene lamp. The hungry wick fizzled as it gasped for life. Lifting the lamp, Megan turned to face her class. Twenty five children, thin, scared and worn looked back at her and she smiled.

             
‘Morning children.’

             
‘Good morning Miss Sandler,’  they chorused in unison.

             
Megan placed the lamp down on the table in front of an old black board she’d taken from one of the other rooms. It stood proudly propped against the wall.

‘Today’s lesson is Math,’ she smiled again at the bleak faces, ‘we’re going to look at fractions.’

Turning to face the blackboard she began to mark up the first test, the chalk tapping and scratching across the board’s surface.

In
the crypt, Jake now sat straddling a chair as he listened to Lano.

‘Okay, so what about our other problems, security, for one? I know we’ve always consi
dered smaller settlements safer and easier to hide, but with food supplies running low we’ve started to see an increase in attacks from some of the newer and more hostile communities, not to mention gangs from the fringes. We almost lost a month’s supply of water after last week’s attack.

‘
So what do you suggest?’ asked Nathan.

‘
Well, what about trying to join forces with some of the other more supportive groups?’

‘We’ve tried that before
…,’ growled Max ‘…and it didn’t work.’

‘
That doesn’t mean it couldn’t work if we tried it again.’ It was Jake that spoke this time, leaving Max to just snort.

‘Make’s sense,’ growled Trent. ‘We should talk with Eddy. His group has always been
the most open to the idea of working with us. We’ve even shared food supplies in the past, maybe they’ll see the sense in creating a larger community, if they can see the benefits in better security.’

‘Okay,’ said Nathan
cautiously, ‘I’ll set up a meet. Although I still think we need to be careful to ensure the communities don’t grow too large in size. If they do, it will be more difficult to hide, and ensuring sufficient food will become an even bigger issue, even if we pool resources initially, speaking of which I’ve been checking our stocks.’

Nathan’s eyes scanned the other faces, as he
spoke he tried not to show the tension and concern he felt inside. ‘To be honest things are looking pretty bleak. Even with the food production we’ve been trying to introduce and the stockpile we started following the war, we’re beginning to run dangerously low on food again. I reckon we’ve got enough for another six, maybe eight months, tops.’

‘
What the hell are we going to do after that?’ asked Lano quietly.

‘We’ve got rain water collection as well as bottled supplies from the stockpile, but
its grain that we’re running low on. I think we need to cut the rations.’

‘That will only delay the inevitable,’ broke in Trent, stating the obvious.
‘After that we’ll need to either be in a position to produce enough food to be truly self-sufficient, or get supplies from somewhere else.’

‘
You’re suggesting another raid on the city?’ asked Lano.

‘See, this is what I don’t understand,’ cut in Max. ‘You’d be prepared to do that, prepared to…’ he waved his arms in the air ‘...provoke their wrath by stealing their supplies.’

Lano looked down again, as Max continued his outburst with Nathan trying once again to diffuse his anger.

‘Max, we’re going to need food. People depend on us to feed them. So, as long as we’re careful and not too greedy, the vampires
should let us be. It’s simply not worth their effort to...’

‘
…Well I think we should start looking after ourselves.’

‘Don’t you mean yourself? Jake
muttered, coolly.

Max glared at Jake; the look on his face
full of hate. But before he could say anything more Nathan intervened, raising his voice and almost shouting.

‘That’
s enough, both of you. We’ll reconvene a full meeting tomorrow, where we can begin to plan how we’re going to deal with the shortage of food and how best to replenish our supplies. For now I’ll send a runner to confirm the meet with Eddy, we’ll make it at the usual place, day after tomorrow, who knows, maybe he’ll have some better ideas. ’

‘Still
doesn’t feel like an existence to me,’ muttered Max, under his breath but loud enough to be clearly heard by all around the stone coffin.

‘Well, as I’ve said before,
’ retorted Jake, ‘if we really want to make a change to our lives we need to change our relationship with the Vampires. We know we can’t fight them, so perhaps we should find a way to work with them; you know try to broker some form of truce.’

There was a short silence, where not only could a pin be heard to drop but probably the rise in the speed of Max’s heart rate as his face reddened. The explosion that followed
still took all, but Jake, by surprise.

‘How
the Hell can you even think of that, after what they did? You really are crazy. You make me sick to my core!’

The silence returned, hanging in the air like a bad smell. Jake smiled, the muscles in Max’s neck tensed, his temples throbbed. Nathan looked at the two men and a great sadness filled his heart as he wondered where
all the hatred had come from. He remembered them as young boys, how Max had looked up to Jake and he wondered when it had all gone wrong. Then, in an attempt to break the tension, he spoke quietly. ‘Let’s leave it there. We’ll reconvene tomorrow; perhaps we can look at other solutions then.’

As Max headed for the door he pushed past Jake, bumping into him
deliberately. When he reached the door he turned and hissed at the others over his shoulder.

‘I know what you all think, but you know what? We’re going to have to do it one day. We’re going to have to face them…’ he looked pointedly from one to the other ‘...fight them.’ Then he fixed his stare on Jake, ‘…and that includes you, Bro
,’ having made his point he turned and stormed out of the crypt, and up the stairs.

A great heaviness clung to Jake as he watched his brother disappearing from view. A part of him was angry, angry at
Max and angry at his own behaviour for deliberately provoking him; the other part of him simply felt an immense loss. Like Nathan, he also wondered where it had all gone wrong and not for the first time wondered if he had lost his younger brother forever. It was Trent’s rough voice that brought him back to the present.

‘
Always spoiling for a fight that brother of yours…’ whispered Trent right next to him. He sighed and looked at Jake as a father might look at his son ‘…trouble is, this time he might just have a point.’

Inside an ornate but faded room, a pastiche of some former time, a door flew open followed by a snarling Rodan. He discarded his long, black, leather coat on the arm of an expensive but faded sofa.

Suddenly the hackles on the back of his neck
rose as he sensed someone behind him. He span, his teeth bared, jaw lengthening, as a silky voice caressed across the room.

‘So
, how did it go?’

Relaxing, he smiled. His eyes narrowed as he watched the slender shape of a female vampire as she stepped out of the shadows. His eyes followed the contours of her body, clearly revealed by the skin-tight
, black leather outfit she was wearing. His eyes moved down to her shapely legs, then slowly back up, over every curve of her striking body, to her face, where they lingered on her lips; lips that were covered in blood-red lipstick. The lips pursed as she moved toward him, every curve flowing into the next. She smiled as their eyes met. A long manicured nail, tipped with a colour that perfectly matched her lips, glided slowly up Rodan’s chest.

‘Well?’ She whispered.

Rodan smiled, his extended canines showing, and he pulled her to him. She looked coyly into his eyes, raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’ she repeated.

‘Yes
, Keermit; very well indeed!’

Jake slouched on a pile of rubble, silently staring out over the East river and into the blankness of the night. Through the gloom in the distance he could make out a hundred glimmering lights. His thoughts absently drifted back through time, through a jumbled array of sounds and images
; images that suddenly exploded into a million fragments as a familiar gravelly voice brought him crashing back to reality.

‘It’s not right is it?’ Trent said absently
, from somewhere behind him.

Jake’s head jerked round, his
brow creased. ‘What?’

‘Us here; them there, everything they have, that we don’t. It’s not fair, is it?’

Jake stared back into the distance, the faint lights dancing across his retinas. ‘It’s not what they have that bothers me, it’s what they take.’

Trent
stared at Jake’s back, considered his response for a second before replying carefully.

‘But they don’t always get
what they want, do they?’

Jake’s reply was
so distant he could hardly be heard, ‘Not always, no.’

Trent nodded to himself. He cocked his head to one side, his eyes focusing on the side of Jake’s face
he could see.

‘And the dreams?’ he asked cautiously.

He saw Jake stiffen, almost imperceptibly; perhaps he noticed that Jake’s jaw clenched just that little bit tighter, just for a moment. He knew he’d touched a raw nerve and decided to change tack, before he lost Jake’s engagement completely.

‘You know s
on; your idea of negotiating a truce is brave thinking. It might even be the only logical solution, the only way to survive in the long term. People understand the logic, the fact that they need us to survive. But could we ever be their equal, I mean truly their equal?’

Jake hung his head a little lower and stared intently at the grey dust that covered his boots as if he’d only just noticed how dirty they were.

‘I don’t know. Max doesn’t think so,’ he half mumbled.

Behind him, unseen by Jake, Trent smiled, despite himself.

‘Heck son Max wouldn’t agree with you if you said it was always a bit dark outside.’ His smile retreated into a frown as, with no response from Jake, he was left still staring at Jake’s back. Desperate to break through, he tried another change of tack.

‘Jak
e, why don’t you go on the meet, they could do with your help you know?’

Seemingly ignoring him, Jake picked up a small grey pebble and tossed it absently into the darkness.
He listened as it tick, ticked across the hard ground.

‘I’m sure my brother can handle it
.’

Behind him
a flash of frustration showed on Trent’s face. He looked at Jake, wanted to grab hold of him, shake him and tell him to grow up. Instead he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them and spoke again Jake could feel the exasperation in his voice.

‘Son, he might need you just a little bit more than you think; more then he’d like to
think himself, for that matter… always has… always will. Trent sighed giving up, his voice growing softer again. ‘Just give it some thought, okay?’

For a second longer Trent
just stood there, staring at Jake’s still immobile back, before he turned and limped away. Jake listened to the sound of Trent’s receding footsteps as they faded into the night, before he settled back into his uncomfortable seat. Silence slowly washed over him and his eyes closed, trying to hold back the single tear that trickled down his face against his will.

Suddenly, in the distance, somewhere between China Town and Little Italy, an unearthly cry went up and Jake was catapulted back twenty years -

- Standing together, two small defenceless figures, trapped in the ally beside the Amato theatre
. The young Jake hears his brother’s scream echo in his ears. Before them the Vampire looms, pure evil. Its empty eyes stare into Jake’s, its teeth bared as it prepares to attack. The younger boys’ eyes are squeezed tight shut as he waits for the inevitable end. Jake stands protectively in front of him. A gesture he knows is futile, but despite that, despite the fear that sinks into his every bone, deep into his core and despite legs like jelly desperately wanting nothing more than to buckle, he stands proudly, facing the demon; and somehow manages to stand tall.

Softly, Jake begins to whisper the
Lord’s Prayer. His voice cracks and breaks a little due to the fact that his mouth is bone dry.

‘Our... our Father who art in Heaven…’

The creature cocks his head to one side and a lopsided smile of pure insanity crosses its face. Then, without warning, it leaps. Jake tenses, his breath held tight like a vice contracting around his chest as he sees the thing coming at him through the air, almost in slow motion. Although he wants to, he can’t tear his gaze away from those mad, cold, piercing eyes.

Jake jerks back in anticipation of the impact. But it
is an impact that doesn’t happen. Instead, with the creature still in mid-air, its hit hard from the side by two figures that arrive out of nowhere. Suddenly all around men spill out of the darkness, shouting and screaming. They pour on top of the vampire, knives, swords, guns and stakes; an assortment of weapons in hand.

It fights like a caged animal, its strength immense. Jake watches as men are torn apart, thrown aside like rag dolls. But
, even despite the horror, more and more men charge out of the shadows, like termites swarming over a corpse, until there is a cry, an inhuman cry, one not of this earth. It is a cry that pierces the dark sky before silence once again falls. The beast lays slain.

A young Jake stares in terror as out of the mist a man slowly approaches. The limp he tries to disguise lends him an unusual gait, and as he closes the young Jake stares up at him, up at his saviour. It’s Trent, two decades younger. He stands in front of Jake and
Max, his eyes burning brightly and slowly holds out his hand. He smiles as Jake reaches up to take it -

- In the abandoned graveyard Jake’s eyes snapped open. He glanced round, wiping absently at the beads of sweat half frozen to his face. Trying to calm himself, his breath coming in short bursts, he could still feel the strong hand of friendship, offered to him that night by Trent, and instinctively he looked down at his palm as if there should still be some physical mark present.

Jake
considered what Trent had done and how he had helped him. He was the man who he had come to love as a father, the man who had saved his life as well as that of his brother all those years before. Then he thought of his real father and an immense feeling of guilt rushed through his body making him feel dizzy. He pushed the thoughts far away, deep down into the recesses of his mind. Tears stung at his eyes, but he refused to cry, instead he focused on his breathing and then, feeling calmer, he slowly stood.