Vampires Don't Sparkle: Deathless Book 3 (35 page)

“The armor is tainted,” Osiris explained, accepting a silk handkerchief from Mark, which he used to clean grime and dragon ichor from his face. “It’s demonic. In essence, it makes Jordan a slave to the will of the person who created the demonic taint. In this case, that’s my brother Set. Normally that taint takes months to seep in, sometimes years. Set managed to do it in just a few days.”

“So, Jordan’s been compromised. Can they force him to work against us?” Mark asked, grabbing a bulkhead as the plane began to move.

“I’d say so, Director,” Liz said, disengaging from Blair and approaching the man. “He fired a bunch of missiles into the middle of our gathering, and might have tried to do more if Isis hadn’t used him like a frisbee.”

“Ms. Gregg,” the Director said, giving her a smile that revealed a pair of elongated incisors. Just like the ones Osiris had. “I’m pleased to see you’re still alive.”

“Likewise,” Liz said, accepting his handshake. “Well, living-ish. It looks like you’ve become deathless.”

“Something like that,” the man said. Blair finally knew who he was now. “Though I’m not a deathless, as I understand it.”

“No, you’re not,” Osiris interrupted. He smiled at them, face finally clean. “Mark is a vampire, Ms. Gregg. One of my progeny.”

Trevor and Ra had been whispering in a far corner, but she turned to look at Osiris as he spoke.
 

“What’s the difference?” Liz asked.

“Osiris couldn’t stomach what we’d become,” Ra said, walking a few feet toward them. The plane began to shake as the engines roared outside. They gained momentum quickly, and Blair was forced to grab the bulkhead. “He altered the virus so he would appear more human, and his children have the same lineage. They hide what they are. Deathless revel in it.”

“We can argue the aesthetics of our respective bloodlines later,” Osiris said, turning back to the Director. “How did you know where we were?”

“You asked me to follow Ra’s progress,” the Director said, shrugging. “It wasn’t hard to figure out this was where you’d go, so I kept an eye on things. When creatures began emerging from the Ark in England I thought it prudent to move material here in case this was where Set planned to hit. Looks like I was right.”

“Your decision may have saved us all,” Osiris replied, nodding in apparent thanks. “Set will be after us soon. He’ll likely gloat over his victory for at least a small time, but we’ll need to prepare for the next attack.”

“Next attack?” Blair asked, finally joining the conversation. “How will he know where we’re going?”

“Because he has spies everywhere,” the Director said, picking a piece of lint from the arm of his suit. “If he knows where Mohn is headquartered in London, then that’s where he’ll strike.”

“Then why don’t we just go somewhere else? Somewhere he doesn’t know?” Blair asked. It seemed foolish to walk into a trap you knew about.

“Because Set knows we have no choice,” Isis said, heaving a great sigh. “We know his scheme now, which is nothing less than the destruction of the Nexus.”

Blair was silent for a long moment, considering. “So you think Set will use the First Ark to get back into the Nexus, since his previous plan to cut off its power source didn’t work. I’ve restored a conduit to it, and for him to destroy the Nexus he has to sever the conduit. That about right?”

The plane engines screamed, then the front wheels left the runway. There was a moment of weightlessness, then they were airborne.

“Precisely,” Osiris said, giving a tight nod. “Had it not been for your actions, the Nexus would already be destroyed. I don’t know why its destruction is so important to Set, but the reason doesn’t matter, really. The Nexus is critical to our eventual defense against the Builders. Without it, we lose the Ark network, and they’ll be able to pick us off easily.”

“I keep hearing the Builders brought up,” Liz said, folding her arms as her gaze roamed the elder gods. “I get that they made the Arks. I get that they’re a threat for some reason. How do they relate to Set, though? We have too many damned enemies, and I’m not even sure which is which anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Trevor said, crossing to join Liz. Ra shot him a look as he moved, expression unreadable. Interesting. Blair wondered if there was something more going on there. “What does matter is our immediate actions. Maybe these Builders are a threat, but they’re a distant one as I understand it. The immediate problem is Set. We know what he wants. He knows we know. It sounds like he’ll bring everything he has to stop us.”

“That he will,” Osiris said. He looked deeply troubled. “We don’t have the resources to resist him, either. You saw what he brought to bear back there. He’ll bring a stronger force to London, one we can’t stop. If he catches us we’ll be wiped out, and there will be no one left to oppose him.”

“So we bring the battle to him then,” Ra growled, stalking over to stand next to Trevor. That made Blair smile.
 

“Sekhmet is right,” Isis said, straightening. “We have to stop Set. We cannot run, or he wins by proxy. He destroys the Nexus unopposed.”

There was a long moment of silence as everyone seemed to weigh their options.

“Let’s blow up the First Ark,” Blair found himself saying, even as the idea crystalized in his mind. Everyone eyed him in shock, so he continued. “If we assault The First Ark, Set will have no choice but to stop us. Once he’s in the Ark we find a way to overload the reactor. Someone, or several someones, keep Set busy until it goes critical. The Ark detonates, killing Set along with it.”

“There is a serious flaw with that plan,” Isis said, eyes boring into Blair. “The Arks are linked to the Earth’s magnetosphere. They use it to evenly distribute sunstorms during the height of the sun’s fury. It’s all that keeps the surface of our world from being burnt to a crisp. If you destroy one of the Arks, you risk destabilizing that network.”

‘What would that mean, exactly?” Blair asked.

“A pole shift,” Trevor said, stroking his goatee. “That would be some nasty business. It could cause the continents to shift, meaning we’d see some of the worst earthquakes and volcanoes since the Late Cambrian.”

“Does anyone have a better plan?” Liz broke in. She reached down and took Blair’s hand, giving it a supportive squeeze.

Silence, until Osiris finally spoke. “Blair’s plan is workable. Set has to die, that much is clear. None of us have the power to kill him, and even if we did he still has an army of demons to deal with. That army will be centered in or under The First Ark. Blow up the Ark, and you wipe out that army.”

Chapter 63- Well and Truly Fucked

“I bet you have a really small penis,” Jordan said. He kept his tone light, matter of fact. It had the desired effect.

Set, the pompous ass wipe he was standing next to, turned toward Jordan. His expression was unreadable behind the dark, demonic helm. But Jordan liked to think he’d scored a point.

A choking sound came from the freakish hag standing next to Set, and her all-black eyes blinked furiously as she stared at Set. She looked as if she wanted to run. Jordan guessed Set probably had some serious spousal abuse issues to effect that kind of reaction in his wife.

Irakesh and Steve cowered in the corner. Jordan, Wepwawet, Set, and his haggish wife Nephthys stood near the control rod of the slipsail Blair had used to escape Ra. The room was spacious, but it suddenly felt cramped.

“Can you give me a single reason why I shouldn’t incinerate you where you stand, whelp?” Set rumbled, taking a threatening step toward Jordan.

“Because you’re a megalomaniac with a serious Napoleon complex. If you kill me, you’ll have to find another dog to whip—you know, since that’s the only way you can actually get hard.”

“He’s right, you know,” Wepwawet said, surprising Jordan. It was the first time the wolf-headed god had spoken since he’d donned the armor. “You do have a small penis. Osiris spoke of it often, usually with a great deal of pity.”

Set roared, grabbing Wepwawet and slamming his armored body to the deck. He rounded on Jordan, armor clinking as he trembled visibly. “I am not so foolish as you think. Death is a release, your only escape. I will make you suffer for a thousand lifetimes, each worse than the last. Your insolence will earn you nothing but pain. I’ll make you kill your family. I’ll make you—”

“Blah, blah, fucking blah,” Jordan interrupted, grinning.

A buzzing began in the back of Jordan’s mind, like a thousand cicada on a hot summer night. The buzzing intensified, growing louder until he could hear nothing else.

Every fiber of his being screamed that he should run, and his bowels emptied themselves. Jordan finally collapsed into a fetal position, drawing his armored legs against his chest as he prayed for the terror to abate.

“I can make the terror permanent,” Set said, eminently smug. Just like that, the fear vanished. “I can make you lust for corpses, or fill you with hatred until you will beg me to kill your closest companions. Tell me, whelp, do you have any further insults you wish to offer me?”

 
“No, sir.”

“Excellent. You can learn, then,” Set said, leaning down next to Jordan. “See that you remember your place. If you speak again, for any reason, I will offer you a kind of torment far worse than anything you can possibly imagine. Do you understand?”

Jordan almost said yes, but realized the trap that had just been laid. He nodded, rising slowly to his feet.

“What of you, Wepwawet? Any further insults you wish to offer?” Set asked, shifting his attention to the wolf-headed god. Wepwawet rose slowly to his feet, shaking his head. “Wonderful. Ready yourselves for battle. In the morning, we invade the sanctum of your vaunted Osiris. Together we will kill him, his wife, and that awful bitch Ra.”

Chapter 64- The Builders

Set waved a hand, erecting a shadow sanctuary around himself and the control obelisk. Neither light nor sound could penetrate it from without, though he could still see the rest of the ship. It afforded him the privacy he needed for the task he was about to undertake. It was unpleasant at the best of times, but circumstances would make it far worse than usual.

He took a deep breath. He was wrestling with an unfamiliar emotion, one he was far more used to causing than experiencing. Fear. In his hundreds of centuries he’d almost never run across a being that could give him pause, especially the last hundred. With Osiris withering outside the Arks, and the rest of Set’s contemporaries asleep, he’d had little to fear.

He’d subjugated the underworld, killed any god who resisted, and pressed the remainder into service. He had spies and vassals all over the world; his demonic taint spread far and wide. He’d touched dozens of powerful beings, and each now bore a shard of his existence, in much the same way he still bore a shard of Ka’s.

Yet all his power, all his control, had left him ill-equipped to deal with the progeny of the Builders. In them, he glimpsed the Builders themselves. Their power was vast and incomprehensible. It had created the Arks, shaped entire species, and ultimately carried them from this world to one somewhere at the fringes of space.

All the vast power they’d discovered in the First Ark was merely the leavings of the Builders. Who knew what abilities they’d discovered in the millions of years since they’d departed? Their progeny were terrifyingly advanced, which was why Set was experiencing such a base emotion.

He withdrew a small golden triangle as thick as a finger. It had seven gems arranged across the surface, and as he concentrated they began to glow. A moment later, a tiny translucent figure appeared. It looked much like Ka, its head too large, and eyes too black. Yet where Ka’s skin was green, this being had a pallid grey. He still found it alien, despite having adopted the same disturbing visage himself.

“Greetings, exalted one,” he said, bowing his head. The need to do so galled him, yet there was little choice in it. If he served the Builders, there was a place for him. If he did not, then he’d be annihilated alongside all other sentient life.
 

The creature’s mouth didn’t move, yet it emitted an odd chittering. Set hadn’t been able to learn their language, but images appeared in his mind. They showed the Nexus, crushed by the ocean. They showed vast numbers of humans morphing into grey men through the use of the chrysalis the progeny had provided.

Set glanced at the corner of the slipsail where the device sat, a coffin-shaped block of stone just larger than a man. The idea that it could change a being into a grey man was in itself terrifying. It was by experimenting with it, and with the heart of the First Ark, that he’d effected such changes on himself.

“Soon, master,” Set said, bowing his head again. “The Nexus is being supported by a single Ark. Tomorrow I will kill its lord, and kill all the elder gods who would oppose us. Once they are dead I can remove the conduit, and the Nexus will collapse.”

More chittering. More images. Mostly emotion, or what passed for it in the mind of the grey men. They were deeply dispassionate, yet they could feel anger. As this one did now.

“Colonization can begin soon,” Set said, aware that he was almost pleading. It wasn’t dignified, but it
was
smart. “Once the Nexus is destroyed, I will begin linking the vessels Vulcan has created to the First Ark. My slaves will convert night and day. Then we can begin conquering other Arks to speed the process.”

The chittering sounded almost mollified, then the image broke into fragments and disappeared. Set shuddered. He’d met the grey men in person only once, but that had been enough to cow him. Their ships were incredible—smaller versions of the great Arks. Smaller versions that could fly through the vast emptiness of space. Their power was considerable.

Yet that wasn’t truly what terrified him. It was the knowledge that the few hundred grey men were merely forerunners. Countless others would come, and when they arrived the war would begin in earnest.

Chapter 65- Holding Action

Trevor shifted his weight from foot to foot. The anticipation was killing him. They’d arrived in London two hours ago, and had hastily erected defenses throughout the facility. Trevor, Liz, and Blair had been assigned to guard something called Object 3—a teleporter, from the brief explanation The Director had provided.