Blood Legacy Origin of Species (20 page)

The man with the pale blue eyes led the scouting team to the edge of the city. It was not their primary target, but it was in the path of their army and of strategic importance. Its importance was emphasized by the fact that the Tribune was assigned to lead the reconnaissance; normally such tasks were far below his rank and abilities.

The men were terrified of the Tribune. Tall and broad-shouldered, his temper was as legendary as his battlefield heroics. He was fearless and expected all around him to be the same. He had no patience for coddling and rumor was he had joined the military as little more than a child. He was unbelievably strong and skilled with a sword, but most of all he was ruthless, giving absolutely no quarter. Those who ranked above him knew not to send him into a battle and expect survivors.

The man’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. Other than a few fires burning, there were no signs of life he would expect from a city this size. It was obviously a trap, the women and children already moved to safety and the men waiting in ambush. It was what he would have done to protect a city such as this, had he known an attack was imminent. It brought a flush of anger to his cheeks to realize he must have a traitor in his ranks. He would deal with that later.

He motioned for his party to follow his lead and moved quietly along the wall to the drawbridge that was open before them. This was more evidence that this was a trap. Who would leave the primary entrance to the city open wide before them, unprotected? The man stood at the corner edge, then carefully peered around into the entry courtyard. He froze.

It was not the bodies strewn about the courtyard, nor the smell of burning flesh which a slight breeze brought to his nostrils. It was not the rats or the flies or the dogs or the ravens feeding on the corpses. It was not the blood that splattered the walls in uneven patterns that bespoke violent contact. He had seen all of these things in twenty-five years of battle, and they did not faze him.

Rather it was the figure crouching down on its haunches in the middle of the courtyard, the creature unrecognizable as male or female but undeniably human, the figure with the yellowed eyes that darted furtively about as it munched on the entrails of the corpse it had just disemboweled.

The man jerked back. “We must leave.”

The men were startled. This was not what they had been ordered to do, but they would not disobey the Tribune.

“I said move!” the Tribune shouted, and the men responded with alacrity, nearly fleeing back to their camp.

The argument in the tent was quite loud and could be heard throughout the campsite. The Legate was castigating the Tribune for failing to obey orders, and the Tribune was uncharacteristically on the defensive.

“This is an act of utter cowardice!” the Legate screamed, “and if not for your exemplary performance to this point, you would be facing death for dereliction of duty, if not treason.”

“You do not understand what is in that city,” the Tribune said, “you do not know what will happen when we take it.”

“We have seen the plague before,” the Legate said, shoving some scrolls from the table onto the ground, “it rears its head like a snake every decade. We may lose a few to sickness, but we will not lose this war because you fear a few corpses.”

The Tribune nearly lost control, desperately wanting to put his fingers about the Legate’s throat and squeeze the life out of him.

“I have left thousands of corpses in my wake,” the Tribune said through gritted teeth, “and I fear no sickness. But this is not the plague and you cannot defeat what is in that city.”

The Legate’s pudgy jaw firmed. Although not as skilled on the battlefield as his Tribune, in his own way he was just as ruthless.

“You will take the city tomorrow, or you will be crucified by noon. It is your choice.”

The blue-eyed man led his forces into the city. He anticipated little resistance and was not surprised when they met no opposition. He marched through the courtyard, keeping his eyes forward and his pace steady. It was his men that slowed, their jaws dropping at what awaited them. For seasoned troops they showed a remarkable lack of discipline as some slowed to a stop, stunned, mouths agape.

The dead lie about in contorted forms, their limbs and expressions twisted in pain. The bodies were all deformed, many with additional arms or legs or even occasionally a complete second head. There were tumors and protrusions, eyeballs on the sides and backs of heads and torsos. One woman had an entire second face, eyes, nose, and a mouth just below her three breasts, the expression on the second face one of uncompromising horror and agony. One man sat on the ground, slumped over, gazing downward with lifeless eyes at four complete sets of bulbous genitalia. The children were perhaps the worse, with additional appendages that did not even resemble anything human, more like tentacles or claws.

These men had seen deformity before. Birth defects were not uncommon, with cleft palates and extra fingers or toes frequently seen. But those infants rarely survived and were often drowned or smothered. Few lived to adulthood with such mutations.

The blue-eyed man came upon a woman who, other than the fact that she was bent over in pain, looked fairly normal. When she stood upright, however, the right half of her face appeared melted, the skin flowing downward in a disgusting river of fluids. The man drew his sword and without hesitation beheaded her.

“Anything you find that still lives, destroy it,” he ordered without emotion.

It took a few hours, but eventually the Legate brought his triumphant procession into the city. The procession was triumphant for all of five seconds before they, too, were overcome with revulsion at the sight that greeted them. The blue-eyed man did not come out to meet them. He had set up camp at the far end of the city, just outside the walls. He had already lit enormous fires to combat the smell. He knew the Legate would come to him.

He did not have long to wait. The Legate shoved aside the flap of his tent and entered ashen-faced.

“This is not the plague.”

The Tribune took a long drink from his goblet of wine, his fourth this early in the day. He had been quite explicit on that fact and did not feel the need to reiterate it or engage in any after-the-fact recriminations. It was too late.

“What comes next will be worse,” he said.

It was only a matter of hours before the men themselves began to feel the effects. There was coughing, then sputum, then black fingernails, skin began to flake and flesh began to fall off, then madness.

The blue-eyed man stayed in his tent, drinking. On occasion, a wild-eyed soldier would stumble in and he would decapitate him, the torso falling into the growing pile of bodies in the doorway and the head rolling randomly into one of the corners. The man would examine each body with mild morbid curiosity, noting each mutation and marveling at the abominations that god could create. He did gain a minor bit of satisfaction when the Legate stumbled in sporting a set of breasts even more pronounced than that which nature had blessed him with. The man cut him down without a second thought. He lifted his flask from the table, deeply saddened that it was now empty. He determined in his semi-drunken state that his need for wine far outweighed his need for survival, and he exited his tent, sword in hand.

Most of the men ignored him or were already dead. A few fought with one another in bizarre, contorted contests or simply writhed about on the ground. Those few who were bold enough or perhaps insane enough to challenge him were swiftly dispatched. He again marveled at how rapidly the gods had abandoned their cause, punishing them with the most painful and ignominious of deaths. He wondered why he was not yet affected and thought perhaps the gods had reserved some special fate for him.

The man staggered slightly, but it was a fortuitous stagger as it brought him eye level with a flagon of ale. He picked up the vessel, deeply disappointed to find it empty. He tossed it aside and it clattered loudly in the spreading silence. He stood, struggling to regain his balance and focus on the three figures in front of him.

The man sobered abruptly, his gaze focusing with sudden acuity on what was before him. But he was having difficulty believing his eyes.

There was a woman and two men standing before him amongst the bodies and the destruction. Two men and a woman dressed in strange garb that he did not have the words to describe. Two men and a woman that he had seen in the exact same circumstances a quarter of a century before. Two men and a woman that had not changed in appearance at all as he had grown from a child to a man.

“What is this?” the woman asked, examining the remarkable specimen before her. She was surprised that anyone was left standing in the carnage they had unleashed. Over the years they had changed tactics. With their few successes it was evident that this species was either tolerant or not, and there was nothing in-between. Because of that, they had accelerated their search by accelerating the death toll, knowing they would not inadvertently kill anything promising.

The man did not understand the strange language. It was unlike any language he had ever heard, with gaps and pauses where sounds were missing. He wondered if he was just unable to hear them in his current inebriated state.

Abruptly, the woman was before him although he had not seen her move, and he again attributed this to his drinking. Although he was extremely tall, she was slightly taller, and he realized she was the tallest woman he had ever seen. She was also quite beautiful, but somehow not quite right in a coldly reptilian way.

The woman examined him at length. He exhibited no physical defect, natural or induced. He was quite handsome and nearly the same age as the target, perhaps slightly younger. If he was indeed resistant and capable of being transformed, he would be perfect.

“Take him into custody,” the woman ordered, “if this works we might be finished.”

The man sat in the cage for days, then weeks, then months. He was fed and kept comfortable, even offered “companionship” in the form of terrified women who within hours succumbed to the disease that had taken his family as a child then his army as an adult. He kept his distance from them, as he did everyone who was placed in the cage with him.

Oddly, his best companion ended up being the one he initially most abhorred. One man, clearly infected, was thrown into his cage. The man had various tumors and growths about his body, a misshapen head, and a third ear on his forehead, slightly off-center that made eye-to-eye conversation with him extremely distracting. But the man was fully lucid, not driven to mental defect or insanity as all the others. The man was learned and well-traveled, and his conversation was a welcome respite from the Tribune’s isolation. And after a while, even the ear was no longer a distraction, or even noticeable at all. The blue-eyed man was actually saddened when the deformed one was taken from him, and as a result hardened himself, determined he would not soften so again.

The woman came to him daily. There seemed to be considerable conversation about him that grew more enthusiastic as he bore the various pin-pricks, examinations, and other maltreatments. The woman’s interest in him grew pronounced and he was not surprised when she finally took him to her bed. He was very surprised, however, when she did not engage in any sexual activity in which he was familiar, but rather fastened onto his neck like an animal and began to take all the blood from his body. He was more surprised when she sliced her own neck and forced his lips to her vein. Very little blood passed into his system and what did burned like acid. Even so, it was a most extraordinary experience, right up until everything went black.

Ryan gazed up at the ceiling once more, still entwined with the father of her son. She wondered if Aeron was aware of any of this, even on a subliminal level. She herself had sensed her human mother’s tragic memories simply because Elena’s blood coursed through Ryan’s veins, and even Victor’s Sharing could not replace or ultimately repress those events. She wondered if Aeron, too, sensed his tragic origins and blamed Victor, or even her. It would explain his abiding hatred for her father and his attempts to destroy her, even if he himself was unaware of the motivation.

Ryan sighed, careful not to awaken her lover. Or, perhaps it was just the inherent killer in all of them that put them at each other’s throats.

When Ryan awoke again, she was alone but she could hear the laughter of her son in the living room. She rose, combed her hair out her eyes, and went to see what he was doing.

Drake sat on Aeron’s lap before the chess board. Jason sat across from them, a perplexed look on his face. He very hesitantly moved his knight, and Ryan smiled.

“I can tell that Ryan taught you play,” Aeron said, “traditional tactics would assess that a ridiculous move.”

Jason leaned back, pleased. He was still greatly intimidated by Aeron, but Aeron was Drake’s father, and despite the considerable difference in their ages, Drake was his best friend.

Drake now pondered the board. He first moved his hand to his castle, an obvious and aggressive choice. He removed the hand, however, and instead moved a pawn in what appeared to be an almost random choice.

Aeron analyzed the board, as did Jason. “Sneaky,” Jason said at last.