The Blood Line (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Somewhere in Mu

The future: date unknown

T
he future was not what Sam had expected. He had heard Weewalk and Hadan talk with some fondness for this place. Sam hated it. His friends had been speaking of ideals and this place, Mu, was far from ideal. Fear of the Riven came off the people like a bad smell.

Sam had walked for two days after leaving the smouldering ruins of the last village and the garoul which may or may not have been there. If the new place he had found had a name Sam had not heard it. The town was larger than the ruins he had left, yet still small and rural with not much more than a few score muddy roads leading to weather-beaten wooden houses. At the centre of the town lay a crossroads with a tavern, a shop and two official looking buildings in each part of the intersection. There was not much else other than houses and patches of land where thin vegetables were grown and skinny livestock grazed.

The people wore plain, simple clothing. They walked with their heads bowed, hurrying through the current drizzle which had made everything grey, misty and muddy. Sam had picked up in snippets of conversation that one of the Riven had passed through a few days before his own arrival. The village still had not recovered itself. Taxes had been taken; the funerals of those who had resisted were due to take place the next day. It seemed that he was following the Riven on their murderous trip through the countryside.

Sam had managed to find a little work at one of the small farms on the outskirts of the village the day before. Calling it a farm was somewhat lofty for what was little more than a large allotment with a few animals nosing around in the dirt. But he had done a day’s work for the kind woman who owned it in exchange for a night’s sleep in with the animals, a hot meal and a couple of coins to spend.

Sam pushed open the door to the tavern and took up a seat on one of the wooden benches closest to the open fire. He didn’t buy a drink but the innkeeper, although giving him a frown, didn’t say anything. The place was pretty quiet anyway and Sam guessed that he was happy enough that the place should look a little busier. Clearly not many felt like drinking with friends ahead of the impending burials. Sam crossed his arms across the table top and rested his forehead on them, closing his eyes.

He couldn’t say for sure how long he stayed like that. He eventually dozed off. He had been so tired since arriving in the future. During his time in Mu his brain had just felt fuzzy and he hadn’t been able to think clearly. His sleep, when he did get any, had been troubled. He had spent many nights sleeping in the open and fear of what strange animal or person might come across him had not allowed him to relax.

Suddenly, the door to the tavern crashed open making him start. The innkeeper looked up sharply as a man hurried over to him, breathing heavily.

‘Rogue,’ the man who had entered panted. ‘Rogue. Out to the west.’

Sam’s ears pricked up. He had heard of the mysterious rogues. They were talked about in hushed whispers by the locals. Sam had worked out that they were people with presence who had not joined the Riven, a dangerous position to take. The rogues were very few and far between. From what Sam had heard some were good and travelled from place to place using presence to heal those who could overcome their fear of the magic, most rogues were indifferent to others and simply kept to themselves rarely coming into the towns and villages and some rogues were worse even than the Riven, mad and volatile. It was like Oz with both wicked witches and good ones out at the far reaches of the compass.

‘Right,’ shouted the innkeeper. ‘You heard him. Everyone out. We’re closing.’

The other patrons were quick to comply. They hurried out the door anxious to be off home to families and keen to bar themselves in. The man who had brought the news followed them out. Sam lingered for a moment and then hurried after him out into the evening air.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, laying a hand on the man’s arm. ‘What kind of rogue was he? Good or bad.’

‘There’s only one kind of rogue, lad,’ said the man. ‘Dangerous.’

With that he hurried off leaving Sam standing alone in the middle of the muddy street. A few people hurried past but the crossroads was already nearly deserted. The recent visit from the deadly Riven tax collector was clearly still fresh in the minds of the townsfolk. Making a decision Sam turned towards where the sun had just set and the sky was at its lightest. He hurried out of town and into the grassy plains beyond. The rain had stopped and the skies were clearing.

Darkness came quickly but a half moon gave Sam enough light as he stalked carefully through the long wet grass over the rolling countryside. This was, he knew, a dangerous time to be out. The beasts which inhabited the night would be awake and hungry. He had learnt that those without presence did not last long out here in the dark, not unless they were well armed and able to keep a pack of wild animals or big strange things all at arms-length. Even with presence it was not easy and Sam had once been badly frightened by a pack of feral dog-like creatures with large heads and long teeth and blueish-grey skin instead of fur. A look in his grandfather’s diary later on had seemed to identify them as something known in his own world as chupacabre. If Sam hadn’t been able to use his presence that night he was sure that they would have overwhelmed him. He’d been badly shaken by that. At least tonight the moon was not full. The wolfish garoul were at their worst then.

No, the night was a time when only magicians dared roam freely. It worked to the advantage of the Riven, effectively sealing off any villages more than a day’s walk away. Unable to survive a journey through the night the people remained isolated and unable to band together.

Sam crept forward through the long grass, ears pricked for the slightest unnatural sound. A gentle wind pushed the grass backwards and forwards in waves, so that Sam felt like he was walking through a strange sea, the sound of which shushed him with every gust.

It was full night when he saw the first distant flicker of light. He looked up, the sky was clear, the moon and stars were visible. This was no storm. He moved even more carefully then, ready to drop into the long grass at a moment. More flashes came from the other side of a small hill and as he neared the crest Sam thought he heard a distant voice. Nearing the top he edged forward carefully, moving onto his stomach to wriggle forward in the grass.

Before long he was able to peer over the top of the hill, finally getting his first view of the source of the flashes. A figure stood on a low rise, still quite distant to Sam. The person seemed to be facing away from Sam and seemed to be hunched over and was, Sam noted with a stab of fear, wearing dark robes the same as those worn by the Riven. As Sam watched the figure straightened and Sam heard him faintly call out strange words in a language he did not recognise as he thrust one out-stretched arm towards the sky. A great flash erupted from his fingers illuminating the figure briefly, but not revealing much more detail. The strange words continued and became more like a chant, or a spell. Sam shivered as the far-off voice rose and fell. Every now and then the chant rose to a shout, the figure stretched out an arm and the lights came again. Lightning danced on his hands.

Sam watched for a while as white fire flickered in the sky before him and he tried to decide what to do. He had not been able to find any help in Mu. Ordinary people couldn’t help him. Anyone with presence who wasn’t part of the Riven either kept their powers hidden or became a rogue. Eventually, Sam decided to try to get closer and, plucking up his courage, he began to crawl carefully through the long grass over the top of the hill and down the other side. He did not make a sound and kept an eye on the distant rogue.  He had made very little progress when he suddenly realised that the far-off shouting had stopped. Sam stopped too, holding his breath, hidden in the long grass. Very carefully, he raised his head above the tops of the whispering stalks. The rogue was standing motionless in the same place as before staring directly at Sam. Sam thought he saw an eye flash briefly in the dark night. Sam quickly dropped his head back down, heart hammering in his chest. The distant figure had looked directly at him. Hardly daring to breathe Sam again raised his head, trying to peer through the grass as much as possible. The rogue had vanished.

Now terrified, Sam couldn’t decide what to do. Did he remain hidden or did he back away? Not for the first time he asked himself why he had come here. Was the rogue moving towards him now, coming for him in long strides to deal with the foolish youth who had spied on him? Sam decided the best thing to do was to get up and move away, he had been seen after all, he was sure of it.

Cautiously, he stood up. The grassy plains were deserted and he could see no sign of the mysterious figure. Frightened, Sam backed away to the top of the hill and moved backwards over the other side. When he couldn’t see over the crest any longer he turned and ran, sure that he would feel a blast of magic at his back at any moment.

Eventually he made it back to the village. Every door and window was barred. The residents must have seen the strange lights out in the hills and had shut themselves in. Sam spent yet another night out in the open, under cold stars, regretting giving up the warm hay he could have slept in and sure that at any moment a cloaked figure holding lightning in his hands would come upon him bringing magic and death.

CHAPTER FIVE

Pennsylvania, USA

Sometime around the end of the 20
th
Century

A
llende had learnt so much down here in the darkness. His power had turned him into the perfect thief and his greatest prize, of all the things which he had stolen, was knowledge. How many years was it since he had first managed to gain access to the classified files contained at Site R? He had lost track but he had read them all. How no-one had noticed that he was accessing secret files he couldn’t say. But it clearly wasn’t like the movies when someone always got some sort of alert that a secret document had been opened. He had read them all without trouble down in the depths of the Raven Rock Complex.

Knowledge was power and Allende had found that his brain, powered by presence, could hold it all. His memory had improved exponentially and he was sure that, by now, he had absorbed more information than anyone had ever done before. But there was one set of FBI files which he kept coming back to again and again. The documents held by the X File Unit. A set of files detailing cases which had been determined unsolvable by the FBI and given minimal priority. The files mainly dealt with suspected paranormal activity and unexplained phenomena. Unexplained phenomena like enhanced telekinetic abilities.

Called X-Files for no other reason than that some clerk had wanted to file them away in an alphabetically ordered drawer where she had space and where they would not get in her way, the first file had been set up by J Edgar Hoover himself in 1945, not long after Allende had first used the throne. The case was about a series of murders in and around Montana. Each victim had been almost literally torn to pieces and partially eaten, as if by some wild animal. The wounds had been consistent with that of a large wolf. But many of the victims had been found in their homes with no sign of a forced entry, almost as if they had allowed the killer to enter. In 1946 police cornered the animal attacker inside a cabin in Glacier National Park and had shot it, but when they went inside to retrieve the body they had found only the corpse of a man. Allende now knew that werewolves, or something very like them, were real.

Allende had read all the files. Next came the stories of the Moth Men and from there it just went on and on. Suspected contact with extra-terrestrials, sightings of Bigfoot and other strange beasts, the Hessdalen lights, rolling rocks in the desert, crystals which held strange power, unexplained disappearances, the Bermuda Triangle and the Black Knight satellite which orbited the Earth but was not made by man.

If Allende had not been capable of such a strange power himself, the power he now called his
presence
, he might have dismissed all of these files as far-fetched and as the attention seeking stories of weak-minded men. But his brain, his hot, hot brain, so hot it felt like it burned inside his skull, could see the links between these strange events and the doorways, the lines, which he knew to be fact. And he had begun to create a plan.

He had access to such a wealth of information it was staggering. Aside from the X-Files the other things which Allende had found fascinating were the details of secret Government projects. He had read all about the Philadelphia Experiment and the chain of events which had led up to him, Bub, finding a man fused to the side of the USS Eldridge in Virginia in 1943. But the files which had really got him thinking contained details about US genetic, biological and mind-control experiments. He had read about cloning and the development of new kinds of men and animals, fusing DNA, electroshock therapy on children and above all Project MKUltra, a terribly brilliant programme to manipulate human brain functions so that people could be controlled and have their personalities altered. The Director of the CIA, the US Central intelligence Agency, had ordered all the files to be destroyed in 1973, but Allende had got to them before that. He had taken copious notes carefully transcribing them into something like a grimoire, a book of magic. Eventually, his presence enhanced brain had helped him to remember all the detail and he had not needed the book. He now knew all about altering the brain and how to breed humans and animals to enhance certain abilities and characteristics in the same way that farmers bred pigs to give the best meat. The files detailed work that had been conducted in the Soviet Union, North Korea and, of course, by Nazi Germany. The US itself had conducted dozens of biochemical experiments on men. Successive presidents had had to apologise for them. Gerald Ford, the 38
th
President, had ordered the review into the CIA mind-control programme Project MKUltra. But by then most of the documents had already been deleted and existed only in Allende’s brain.

The brain was such a mysterious thing and it fascinated Allende. What parts of it could be awakened and developed through adding new stimuli? Could others have their presence unlocked in the same way that the experiment and the chair had unlocked his own? What aspects of the strange material in the X-Files could be added to the principles set out in Project MKUltra? If he could find others with latent presence could they become powerful? And would mind control allow him to make them follow him as their master, their lord, their King? Could he rule, here, from the Raven Rock Complex?