Manhunter Revelations (14 page)

"How long has our government known?"

"Roughly around four years after the
Antarctica Plague was eradicated” stated Serona

With the reduced population after the plague,
we felt The Xantu might see this as an opportunity to come out of
hiding and try to take control. It became readily apparent that the
surviving governments must be informed of The Xantu threat, and
hopefully have them join the battle to stop them. Amazingly they
weren't as surprised as we thought they would be. The horrors that
was released during the plague had made even monsters believable to
earth's surviving governments"

"So are all of the monster's in earth's
legends real?"

"No. Some are hysteria spread out of fear and
mis-conceptions. Others are mis-directions we introduced to help
confuse the issue. The main ones however are real"

"Okay, lets stop at this point. Let me recap
the info you have revealed here. Your people are descendants of
furry elves. Monsters are real created by the Atlantu who for
descriptive purposes are descendants of goblins or trolls. Your
people has tasked themselves with the job of destroying whats left
of The Xantu. The world's governments know of them and have
supplied troops to help in the hunt. So I can only surmise that I
was attacked by you because of what, that you thought I was a
monster of some type. Why?"

After my statement they all remained quiet,
and Serona looked over to the older woman.

"Mr. Hutchins, my name is Tessia. Serona
actions, although offensive to you were prudent under the
circumstances. As has been explained, we have been in a constant
battle to hunt down and kill The Xantu and it's monsters. The Vampu
are one of the most dangerous of these monsters, and in battle are
very fast. Throughout our history in battling them, we have not
encountered any other creatures, monsters or human who can match
the Vampu in speed. That is until today"

For a few seconds I mulled over what this
woman Tessia had just said, before it hit me.

"Me, you are referring to me about being
fast. I have always been fast, and I have encountered other humans
almost as fast as I. Yet based on what you have told me I am
nowhere near fast enough for you to think I am a vampire, not to
mention I sure as hell don't look like one"

"Conrad, while we were talking, somehow you
perceived that there was a threat at my back wall. A threat that my
Muraiin senses did not detect. When the beast busted into my house,
you drew your weapon, started shooting, while scooping me up and
moving toward the window, burst through it, which is glassite and
very tough to break, put me down and continued shooting the
creature. All at an alarmingly fast speed. I am a Muraii Sakquain.
The Muraiin are the only people capable of seeing a Vampu move at
great speed. It is how we are able to fight them in battle. You
were moving at a speed comparable to that of a Vampu. That alarmed
me as well as the rest of the Ladies as we did not at the time know
what you were. We did not know if you were some new type of
creature from The Xantu sent to blend in and kill us from within.
That is why you were attacked and rendered unconscious. We had to
know what you were. Fortunately because of my association with your
uncle I knew of Tessia and your past history, and called her here
to determine if your father's dark side had manifested itself"

"Whoa, my father's dark side? What are you
talking about?"

"During my time working with your uncle, I
learned from him about a man your mother had met, and fell in love
with. For some reason, the man disturbed your uncle, but he
couldn't explain why. In any event the man treated your mother very
nicely, and eventually she became pregnant with you. After that for
no reason your mother or uncle could fathom, your father
dissappeared without a trace. A few months after that, on one of
the assignments your uncle and I was working on, your uncle was
injured. I brought him home to recuperate, and met your mother. It
was then that I felt the presence that greatly alarmed me. I felt
the presence of someone I had never felt before. Yet I also felt
the presence of The Xantu who had to be nearby. Alarmed, I summoned
my Ladies and we searched the area intensely, but found nothing.
Tessia here was summoned because The Xantu do not appear for no
reason, and we felt that somehow your uncle and mother had been
targeted, probably because of your uncle's help in tracking them
down"

At this point the older woman Tessia took
over.

"When I arrived, I was hit with a presence I
have only heard about but never felt myself in person. That
presence was your mother. You see your mother is a Umata. Every
couple of thousand years or so a human is born of such clean and
good spirit, that they are very special. Your mother had been
somewhat aware of the work your uncle was doing, so when I
explained to both of them about her nature, although somewhat
surprised, they understood. What none of us knew at that time was
why The Xantu had been around, and why they had not attacked or
killed either of them. It was your mother to her horror who figured
out that the man she was seeing must have been sent from The Xantu,
and that the baby she was carrying was his. Unfortunately she was
too far into her pregnancy to abort your birth, but we were going
to try. To our amazement, she stated quite strongly that she was
not going to abort your birth. Somehow she felt that you were not
some monster she was carrying. It became apparent that the full
history of whom and what The Xantu were be revealed to her. So we
did. We explained about The Xantu and what they were. Your uncle
out of his love for his sister wanted you aborted at any costs, but
relented when your mother insisted you were okay. There was quite a
bit of concern on our part about this. Our mandate states we can
harm no innocent lives, unless there is no doubt that doing so
would save lives. So a deal was struck between your mother, uncle
and us. That deal was that upon your birth and every year after
that I would visit and scan your inner nature to see if there was
any darkness to your nature that could pose a threat to your family
or to the public. If I found any traces of such darkness in you,
well you know what the outcome would have been. It was during that
first scan after your birth that all of us became really alarmed
and afraid. You see during our war with the Atlantu, two of our
emissaries imprinted the essences of The Xantu council unto
themselves so that imprinting could be passed to the other Mages so
that they all could identify any member of the council. These two
mages also knew that the imprinting of the council essences would
also kill them, but doing so was that important. Over the centuries
all Muraiins as part of their training is given these imprinting,
although to a vastly lesser degree. It would be just enough to help
identify a member of the council if encountered. The reason we were
so alarmed and afraid was that the essence of your father was not
someone sent by The Xantu. Your father was none other then Dorekus
himself, the leader of The Xantu.

Okay right about now I was sitting there
looking and feeling astounded.

"To our knowledge Dorekus is the only Xantu
to have never created any creatures or minions after itself. As to
why after all these millennia, with a history of never creating any
other creatures, he would procreate a baby with a human female
really scared all of us. His appearance as a handsome human male
was also alarming. So great was this fear that the Muraii Elders
ordered the death of you and your mother. Yet during that first
scan, I also found that your inner nature or spirit was clean, pure
and unbelievably strong. The presence of your father was there, but
very dormant. Your mother was still adamant that you were not a
threat to humanity or any other beings. As a Umata, her belief and
word is unquestioned by us Seers. As The Seer of The Muraii, I was
able to overrule The Elders decision. Somehow I felt that you must
be allowed to live, although under the previous arrangement, that I
scan your spirit every year, preferably on your birthdays. That my
decision caused a great deal of consternation among The Elders and
the Muraii is an understatement, but my decisions are unquestioned.
So over the years I would arrive and scan your spirit, and on each
occasion I would find your spirit getting stronger, but still clean
and pure. It became apparent to me that your spirit was too strong
for whatever Dorekus was trying to do or create. Whatever it was he
put in you had been thoroughly dominated and locked away by your
spirit. Because of this I declared your spirit fully clear and
clean on your nineteen birthday"

"How. I don't remember ever seeing you
before. I definitely don't remember you ever doing any scans on
me”

"I always arrived when you were sleeping. It
was a small matter to keep you sleeping while I scanned your
spirit"

Shocked and stunned by what I had just heard,
I looked at Serona and asked,

"You knew my uncle well. Why didn't he or my
mother ever tell me this. It seemed they went out of their way most
times to keep from telling me the truth"

"Even though we did our best to show your
mother she was at no fault, and would not have been able to stop
him from taking her anyway, your mother was extremely ashamed that
she had willingly given herself to a creature of such evil. She was
very determined to prevent you from finding out about her shame at
any cost. It was only later that your uncle was able to convince
her that you needed to be told. In fact it was your uncle's
intentions to bring you into the fight against The Xantu, a
decision your mother was against at first, but that she later began
to understand why it would be necessary for you to do so. Your
uncle wanted you fully prepared first before joining the battle,
hence all of the training he subjected you to. It was his plan to
reveal all to you when he felt you had been taught all he could
teach you in preparation for the upcoming battle. The last time I
talked to him before he went on his last assignment, he told me
upon his return, he was going to tell you everything. Only his last
case must have been more than he was prepared for as he never
returned. I only wished he had confided in me what his case was. I
would have gone with him on it gladly. Unfortunately he didn't. Our
first thoughts were that The Xantu had found him, but our
investigations showed us he had found a lead to your father and was
following it up alone. Why he would choose to do that made no sense
to us. Your mother told us that without your uncle to back you up,
she did not want you to join the fight against The Xantu. We
honored her decision. We contacted her prior to contacting you for
your help on this case to let her know we needed your help, and
would like her blessing to ask for your help. Somehow she was
expecting our call and stated it was alright to do so. She also
asked us to have you contact her after you were finished. My
thoughts is she is going to reveal the truth to you finally. So you
see our need was to have you track down the beast, and we would
then kill it. Your unexpected speed scared us because we did not
know if your dark side had finally manifested itself. Tessia here
tells us that is not the case. That you have found some way to draw
on your father's dark side and enhance your own physical
abilities"

Now all of them were just looking at me. They
knew I had just been told a lot of what I would consider
incredible, and figured I needed time to assimilate the
information. Frankly, I still considered all of this somewhat too
incredible to fully believe, yet I could not fully discount it all
either.

"I am not going to lie to any of you. I find
all of what you have just told me a little bit too much to fully
believe. I do however acknowledge the possibility that it all may
be true, as I have seen and fought a monster today. I will fulfill
the contract because I cannot let the monster I saw today continue
to kill and rape. Know this however, witches or whatever, I would
not advise anyone to attack me again"

"Sakquain. The Ladies are Sakquain as I am A
Seer. We are not witches. We don't conjure or cast spells. Our
powers come from the energy of the earth, and you have our word
that none of us will attack you again. As The Seer, this I so
decree"

When Tessia finished that statement, Serona
and Sessa all bowed at the waist to her. I assume this was some
official acknowledgement by them to her decree.

"Sessa will be your liaison to us and will
supply you with any information or supplies you may need. Serona
and I must return to Muraii to meet with The Elders"

Tessia approached me, took my arm and guided
me to the side. The others quietly moved away to allow us to talk
in private.

"Son, I have watched and followed your life
since you were an infant. I am convinced your destiny is greater
than either of us can imagine. Find this beast, and do it quickly.
I can feel the danger is getting greater daily, and I am not just
referring to the danger that is here"

With that she touched my forehead, turned and
proceeded to leave the house with Serona and Hennings behind her.
Sessa approached me and said,

"Well Tracker, where do we begin?"

Chapter Five: Initial Research

First I spent some time learning some more
about Sessa and her people's incredible abilities. They were right
about their power appearing to be magical. Basically most of their
abilities had to do with nature and how they could get plants and
flowers to grow in amazing ways. They had an affinity with animals,
which was spooky to say the least. Most amazingly though was their
ability to draw upon the hidden energies of the earth that modern
science was to the most part not even aware of, to produce those
amazing power beams from their hands. They could control them from
a level of just gently moving something small, to knocking someone
out, to blasting apart a small hill. Secondly I had a very busy
night reading. Near the center of town, not far from the convention
hall where the woman of the village now slept at night, was where
Major Hennings had set up his Command Post and crew quarters. I was
given a small hut near there, which was essentially a large room
with a cooking area off to the left when you entered the hut, with
the bedroom area off to the right. Between them, was the bathroom
facilities. This was clearly made to accommodate one to two people,
but no more. There was an ornate, but simply beautiful king size
bed, which was build into the wall and floor of the hut. The hut
was small but simply beautiful. Both inside and out. There were
beautiful full bay windows to either side of the door, which
allowed the outside sunlight in during the day, but prevented
anyone from seeing inside. As the sun went down the windows would
darken again preventing anyone outside the hut from seeing inside.
This allowed the occupants complete privacy both during the day and
night with no need for a curtain or shade outside of a personal
decorative choice. It had a simple but beautiful kitchen and
bathroom fixtures, which was all built together in such a manner
that you felt you were in a fairy tale hut. Sessa and the sheriff
had provided me with a data-comm with all the reports of the
attacks on the woman of the village, where the victims were when
attacked, what they were or may have been doing at the time of the
attack and the times of day when each attack occurred which was
significant. It also told me about the women in general. Who they
were personally, what line of work they were in , etc. With what I
had been told today, I re-read all the reports again to see if I
could make a connection. It seems all the attacks took place late
at night, between the hours of two to five am. This fact was
noticed by Major Hennings and his men, yet no matter what
precautions were taken, the beast still found a way pass the
perimeter defenses. As a last resort, between ten pm to midnight
each night, all the women were now escorted to the main central
pavilion building located in the center of village for the night.
This large building was a large hexagonal shaped building used for
town meetings and celebratory purposes so it had a lot of space
inside. Every other wall of the pavilion could be retracted leaving
a three-walled building for outdoor events. The building was
surrounded by a contingent of Major Hennings men both inside and
out who patrolled the perimeter and inside of the building all
night. So far this plan has proven effective as no attacks had
taken place for almost two weeks now, although there had been
sighting by some of the patrols. I went through all the reports
looking for any common factors to link the women who were attacked,
but there were none outside of the fact they were all women. What I
did notice however was that the beast seemed to know which house
had women in them, and when they were alone. All the follow-up
reports from the attacks seem to indicate that each woman was alone
either because they lived alone to begin with, or their spouse or
family members was away for some reason or another and they were
left alone. I then read the forensics reports from Major Hennings
on the creature's DNA analysis which showed the creature may have
been fully human at one time, but through some type of mutation
process the science lab haven't yet been able to identify, has
caused the former human male to mutate into what he is now. The
fact he could not be tracked by any of the technology Hennings and
his men had available has convinced the Muraii that the creature
was not natural and had some unique way of avoiding detection they
haven’t been able to figure out yet. Major Hennings science and
tech guys however believed some type bio-cloaking mechanism
inherent in the creature was being used to hide itself. As no other
viable reason could be put forward, both theories was accepted for
the time being. The Muraii Ladies were trying and find out if the
earth energies was being used to hide the creature and if so how to
counter it. There was no other useful information in the
reports.