The Children of the Sun (12 page)

Janus was looking at her with his eyebrows raised, startled and not exactly frightened but definitely concerned. He nodded. “Crystal, Lieutenant.”

“Good. She’s coming on board, so zip it up. I don’t want to hear from you for the rest of the flight. Read a magazine. Sleep. Drink your shitty beer and watch porn on your laptop … I don’t give a fuck. Just shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Vanessa turned back to the window, struggling to regain control. She was shaking.
Shaking!
All from a stupid, harmless comment by Janus, a man she had known for almost a decade. A man she had laughed with, drank with, flirted with (and thought about fucking more than once, in the way a person will idly entertain an impossible event, like hitting the lottery). Janus had been the first to request transfer to her unit. He knew her, respected her, wanted to work with her. It was just a dumb joke. Why the hell had she let him get under her skin?

I hate this
, she thought.

There was no choice. Nothing she could do. The Emperor had given orders and Charles had affirmed them. There was nothing at all Vanessa could do except what she was told. She had sworn it, and on the day she had spoken those words, she had meant them with all of her heart.

It was the first and only time she had ever met the Emperor of the Sun, and she could still remember every moment perfectly except what the man had actually looked like. He existed in her memory surrounded by a sort of glowing haze that obscured all but a basic silhouette. Had the haze been real? Had they drugged her? Some of their training involved such measures. She couldn’t remember.

It didn’t matter; he was her Emperor. Her God. The man she had sworn to serve until her life ended. Now he wanted her to work with Captain Perrault, so that was what she was going to do.

Slowly, Vanessa brought herself under control. They had a job to do, and it was perhaps the most important of any that the Children had attempted in her lifetime. With one blow, they could break apart the vampires of America like a pane of glass. A million tiny pieces scattered suddenly into chaos. They had only to kill the girl. That was what Charles had told her, and she believed him.

Thinking of the glory to come, Vanessa pulled herself from the state Janus had put her in. When Captain Perrault climbed the stairs and stepped into the jet, looking around with that familiar detached, unimpressed expression, Vanessa smiled at her.

“Welcome aboard,” she said.

* * *

The flight progressed without incident. Janus, following his orders to the letter, drank Budweiser and unashamedly watched pornography on his laptop for the duration. Paulo passed his time reading his Bible. The Captain meditated, spending most of the flight on her knees, arms held out before her, breathing deeply.

Vanessa was envious of her ability to leave the world behind. She had never taken to medi
t
ation; the preparatory sessions before her baptism as a member of the Children had been agonizingly dull. She had passed the time trying to think of ways to kill vampires. During her training, she had cataloged nearly a thousand, some plausible, some absurd. She had since only been personally responsible for the deaths of four vampires, and was looking forward to starting her campaign in earnest.

The two pilots up front, Jason Burke and Andrew Connors, hadn’t said a word over the jet’s PA system since advising the passengers to prepare for takeoff. There was no need; the flight had been smooth and none of the passengers cared about the scenery below.

Just before takeoff, they had been joined by the engineer, a Korean man named Soon Park who rarely spoke and proceeded to spend the entire flight poring over spreadsheets with a furious intensity that Vanessa found bewildering. The final member of their squad, Carrie Brennan, had stepped onto the jet wearing a ridiculous flight attendant outfit and an expression that said she would murder the first person who mentioned it. Janus had glanced at her, visibly restrained himself from commenting, and gone back to his porn.

Vanessa liked Carrie. They were about the same age and had come up through the ranks together, though Carrie was only a Sergeant and would probably never go further. She wasn’t as physically gifted as Vanessa, but she was intelligent and determined, and she hated vampires with a passion that burned so brightly it seemed sometimes extreme even to the other members of the Children. Vanessa didn’t know the exact details of the incident that had brought Carrie to the Emperor, only that it had left the girl with a glass eye, several facial scars, and a permanent speech impediment – she pronounced her TH’s with an F sound. The rumor was that Carrie had a forked tongue, but Vanessa had never been able to confirm this as the woman rarely spoke above a murmur.

They touched down just before eleven o’clock at night and taxied to a small hangar owned by the Children, supposedly operating as an independent travel company for executives. From there they boarded two black SUVs, four of the squad members in each. By midnight they had arrived at their living quarters.

“Nice digs,” Janus commented as they pulled in, and Paulo made a low, impressed whistling noise. The place was a postmodern behemoth, three stories tall with a three-car garage. Vanessa guessed the size at something north of five thousand square feet.

“I heard a whole mess of vampires used to nest here,” Burke said, staring out the window at the mansion. “Bunch of Burilgi. We cleaned ‘em out and when the house went into default, we grabbed it for a song.”

“Beautiful,” Janus replied. Burke turned, nodded, and grinned. The two had known each other since coming to the Children as boys and had never been in separate units. Janus was a fast-talking, fast-moving, wisecracking pain in the ass who liked to shoot first and, rather than ask questions later, just keep shooting. Burke, a talented sniper, was careful and methodical, rarely joking about anything. Still, they seemed to complement each other, and were probably the closest friends in the entire unit.

They left the vehicles and entered through the building’s front door. Although Captain Perrault ran the squad during combat, Vanessa served as its day-to-day logistics director. To that end, she had been given a floor plan ahead of time, and she quickly ticked off the sleeping arrangements.

“It’s a five-bedroom. Captain, you’re upstairs to the left, all the way down. Janus, Jason, you’re next to her. Carrie and I will take the next room. Then Park, Oliveira, and Connors can work out the other two.”

Her people were used to the barracks at their central location, where each room was fitted with military bunk beds and slept at least six. These accommodations were, by comparison, luxurious. No one complained, and Vanessa continued.

“There’s a pool out back and a media room on the bottom floor. Also billiards and some pinball machines. I think there’s a wet bar too, but I’m declaring that shit off limits until we’re back here celebrating a job well done. You got that, Andrew?”

“Sure, Lieutenant,” Connors said. Vanessa knew he carried a flask with him, but she wasn’t worried about that. The man had never shown up drunk for a mission, so what he did in his spare time didn’t concern her.

“That’s all I’ve got. Briefing is tomorrow at 16:00, over there in the dining room. Until then you’ve got free run of the house and plenty of time to get some sleep. I don’t think I need to remind anyone that is probably the most important mission the Children have
ever
undertaken, and they chose us for it.”

“We’ll be ready, Lieutenant,” Paulo told her. The others murmured in assent. Vanessa glanced over them, nodded, and dismissed them. With the exception of the Captain, they headed toward their rooms to stow their gear.

“A moment of your time, Vanessa?” Captain Perrault asked, and Vanessa raised an eyebrow but set her duffel bag back on the floor and turned to face her CO.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“This woman tomorrow … she belongs to me. I want you to make it very clear to the others, when you brief them, that there will be no shooting unless I give the order.”

“Certainly,” Vanessa said. She had expected this; the Captain’s bloodlust was notorious, and Vanessa knew the Children sometimes brought her captured vampires to exterminate after they had given up any intelligence they possessed.

“She may not be alone,” the Captain said. “If there are others, you’re welcome to them, but I don’t want a shot so much as fired in her direction while I’m still drawing breath, even if it looks like I’m losing. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Captain. You could … would you like to address the squad directly at the briefing?”

Captain Perrault shook her head and gave a sardonic smile. “I have the strange belief that they’ll take your words to heart more readily than mine.”

Vanessa, who of course knew that the Captain was right, refrained from response. After a moment, the Captain’s smiled widened, and she nodded.

“Good. I would like to see you an hour before the briefing to go over the layout of the apartment and discuss tactics. Other than that, I would prefer not to be disturbed.”

“Of course, ma’am. I’ll make sure the others know to let you be.”

Privately, Vanessa doubted this would be a problem. None of the others wanted anything to do with the half-vampire creature under whose command they had been placed.

“Very good. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”

“Ma’am,” Vanessa said. Picking up her duffel bag, she made her way toward her room.

Chapter 7
The Unfortunate Fate of Amun Sa

When Ashayt woke with a gasp and a start to find herself lying in a thatch of reeds, the lower half of her body submerged in tepid, murky water, she could not remember how she had come to be in the place, or what had happened to her after falling asleep in the fisherman’s hut. Groaning, she pulled herself to a sitting position, fingers digging into the thick, stinking mud, and set about removing the leeches that clung to her legs and feet.

They’re drinking my blood,
she thought to herself, and a shudder tore through her body, twisting and knotting her muscles as if she had come down with a fever. She coughed once, gagged, moaned. Her entire body hurt, and the sun pressed down upon her like a heated weight.

That hateful sun was far too high in the sky. Morning had long passed and she thought – though it was hard to think with her head pulsing so – that the time was now closer to dusk than to noon. Her foster parents would be either fearful or furious, or both. She needed to get home. Ashayt pushed her own questions about what had brought her to lie unconscious in the swamp to the back of her mind and focused instead on summoning the strength she needed to stand up.

Her first effort was a dismal failure and resulted only in her crashing back into the bog, releasing another wave of noxious air that reeked with the scent of decay. Again her body heaved, trying to vomit, but there was nothing inside of her and after a time it gave up. Ashayt lay on her side in the muck, gasping for breath, exhausted by even the simple attempt to get to her feet. Around her, the chorus of chirruping frogs and buzzing insects seemed to be laughing at her plight.

Her next attempt was more of a success in that she did not immediately topple over upon standing up, but neither could she seem to summon the energy to move. She stood instead with her back bent, hands on her thighs, breathing the deep gasps of someone who has performed a feat of incredible physical exertion. At least up here, away from the mud, the air was clearer and stank less. It was a small change, but it seemed to help. Ashayt thought that soon, she might even be able to take a step or two.

Time passed. Ashayt was unsure how long it was that she stood there, gasping, willing her strength to return, but she thought that the sun’s progress in the sky marked it as at least a quarter of an hour. Finally she felt prepared to move, and with a deep breath she took her first aching step forward. Her entire body seemed to complain about this course of action, and she thought the pain and weakness she was feeling very similar to a fever that had taken her a few years before, and from which she had been very lucky to return at all. She knew she would soon collapse again, and thought that if she did so among these reeds, where few ever ventured, she would likely die in this place.

She made a creeping sort of progress, angling her way out of the bog, and at last came to its edge. Here there was a dirt road, the side of it lined with a stone wall to prevent people and carts from falling into the very swamp from which she had just emerged. Ashayt leaned against this wall for a time, breathing deeply, ignoring passersby as they stared at this disheveled, muddy girl with the dark skin and darker tattoos. Right now she was more concerned with summoning the strength to get home than she was with the effect of her appearance on those coming in and out of the city.

At last she thought she had the strength to continue, and Ashayt began her slow, shuffling walk along the wall, using her left hand against it for support as she went. Without the wall she would not have made it very far at all, and even with it, a journey that should have taken no more than twenty minutes took her more than an hour and a half. No one stopped to offer any help. No one had ever stopped to offer her help, not once in her life – except for Amun Sa, and he was not there. Ashayt pressed on regardless, as she had so many times before.