The Lycan Society (The Flux Age Book 1) (21 page)

As the black sky became infected with pink the next morning, Tomas felt himself weaken. Shivering from the extreme cold all of a sudden, he dug a shallow hole behind one of the broken walls and lay in it wretchedly. In his day fever he imagined he heard several men chanting in a foul language strangely familiar to him.

After a shallow, dream-filled sleep he woke to blessed darkness and peered over his protective wall. To his amazement a score of local men, Maramurians in traditional leather, were trudging down the slope after a hard day’s work. On a superficial level they were unknown to Tomas, but he felt a curious affinity with them nonetheless.

It seemed news traveled fast round these parts. A tall stranger had purchased the ancient ruin on the top of Mount Brasev. The locals obviously saw this development as a positive thing. A lord coming back to his people? Tomas laughed at the ludicrous notion -
he
wasn’t who they were waiting for. Perhaps they sensed … her. Anything was possible in this new Flux Age.

In any case, most of the hall’s western wall was now complete. Those Maramurians had worked hard and long. Tomas liked the idea of progress even when he was sleeping. Perhaps the hall would be complete by the new moon after all?

Tomas and his band of Maramurians worked feverishly for the next seven days and nights. Tomas barely said a word to them - they regarded him with sober respect and knew what they had to do. Tomas grew in strength and mental fortitude, thinking often about his lost family but diverted by the intensely physical work.

By the seventh night the hall’s four walls were almost complete. The Maramurians had started bringing long ladders with which they could begin setting cross beams for the roof. Many of them were lumberjacks and had access to the hard, straight timber of the lower forests. Though they were dirt poor, they found ways to drag the wood up the mountain on sheets of tarpaulin. Their devotion to the task was ferocious.

With the construction well in hand, Tomas turned his mind to learning. There was still so much to know. He didn’t know where to begin.

One thing he’d learned was to rely on instinct. As a scientist it went against his nature to do so, but his gut feeling had not let him down so far. And so it was instinct that drew him back down the mountain and through several valleys like dark pits. He traveled by night, huddling in shallow gullies by day.

Eventually he came to Bicaz, a small mountain village even more rustic than Piatra Neamt. The largest building was a ramshackle drinking house for all the local peasants. Tomas drifted in as night fell, finding a dark corner in which to sip locally brewed beer.

He watched the locals drink, sing, yell and brawl for several hours. These were similar to the men who helped him by day. Many of them spent time behind a cloth partition, returning with lazy grins. Tomas guessed what was on offer in those back rooms, and sensed his answer lay there in the murk.

He made his way down a dark corridor and was accosted by an old, hideously ugly woman. Her first reaction when she saw his face was to shrink back. In a vague attempt at Romanian, Tomas asked the matron whether anything unusual had happened lately. It was the only line of enquiry he could think of.

Frightened of Tomas, the woman unleashed a string of words in a local dialect, holding up three of her fingers to enforce the point. Tomas looked at her blankly, unable to piece her story together. A burly Maramurian sauntered from one of the side rooms, zipping his pants.

“She’s telling you the story of the possessed whores,” he said in passable English. “Three of her best women went feral, started scaring the men. Olna here banished them from these rooms two nights ago.”

Tomas’ heart quickened - this was the lead he’d been searching for. “Where can I find them?” he asked urgently.

“Edge of town,” came the half-drunk reply. “If you’re unlucky.”

With a sordid laugh the man wandered off. Tomas backtracked through the seedy building and out into the windswept night. He gathered his thin cloak around him as he headed south through the village. The only sound was the howl of the wind in between the low buildings. Tomas spotted a hut perched on the edge of a bluff at the southern edge of the village. That was it.

Approaching the door with caution, he rapped on it twice. At first there was no answer, but a light, musical laugh told him all he needed to know. He kicked the door open with a heavy boot. One mocking laugh became three in unison.

Three barely-dressed, startlingly attractive young women lay entangled on a low cot. As far as Tomas could tell they weren’t engaged in anything sexual - they seemed to be huddled together out of habit more than anything else.

The peculiar thing about these women was the shimmering halo that surrounded their sumptuous bodies. They had an other-worldly presence that might have seemed threatening to anyone other than Tomas, who found them both beautiful and charming.

He considered them for a moment while they laughed at him with beguiling eyes. Two had jet black hair whilst the third was a striking blond.

Tomas felt a yearning in the pit of his stomach, but knew better than to succumb to these alluring women. They needed to be shown who was boss. Their identity revealed itself to Tomas - they were
succubi
, an ancient race of spirit beasts from the previous Flux Age.

Tomas had only read a little on these creatures, but he knew they traditionally served
vampyra
and made excellent servants. Like
sirens
, they tempted the weak-minded into their lairs and lulled their victims into the sleep of a thousand years while feasting on blood.

Like the
vampyra
, they were night creatures, only even more so. During daylight hours they lost their powers and practically ceased to exist. For this reason they were really only effective within their home ranges. In old times
vampyra
often used
succubi
as sentries to watch over their castles while they were away.

Tomas smiled internally, glad to have made his identification. The
succubi
looked at him expectantly, recognizing his latent power. Who had divined these women? Was there a diviner in this village? He resolved to ask the
succubi
, but not before he had them securely settled in his hall. Grinning, he lay down with them, making it clear they were not to touch him.

Work continued on the ruin. The Maramurian builders worked tirelessly by day while Tomas slumbered in his shallow, coffin-like depression. The three
succubi
were permitted to roam at night, three ghostly figures wandering the ruins. By day they sheltered with Tomas.

If the sun shone they were reduced to nothing more than specks of pale light. They didn’t have much to say to Tomas, but their new roles were clearly understood. The natural order of the Flux was an instinctive, inevitable wave. The women understood the ruin was to be their new home, and that Tomas would soon be welcoming someone even more powerful than he.

Weeks of hard labor saw the completion of the great hall. Tomas’s heart swelled with pride as he took a long moment to savor his new home. Not wanting to disappoint their new lord, the Maramurians had done an extremely solid job. Tomas thanked them by ordering crates of food and drink from Bicaz.

The Maramurians wanted to stay, saying their job was not finished. Tomas nodded, pointing to the silvery moon rising above the hall’s silhouette. A belfry tower used to sit just
there
. The Maramurians began work on the tower the very next morning. There was no shortage of stone, and the peasants’ knowledge of carpentry and masonry was second to none.

The
succubi
seemed to grow excited as the tower neared completion, making all kinds of suggestive comments to Tomas in a foul tongue he didn’t quite understand.

As the winter deepened, and snow flurries visited the mountain semi-permanently, Tomas wondered as to the tower’s original use. The answer
felt
close at hand but tantalizingly out of reach. One cold, miserable morning, as he stood watching the Maramurians slide home the last roof tile on the imposing tower, he realized the structure wasn’t designed for the views, but to be
viewed
.

It was a
signal
tower.

With a rush of adrenalin he remembered reading about the
call of the
vampyra
- of lonely beacons in the night, drawing blood to blood. Flushed with elation, he immediately dispatched one of the departing Maramurians to source a supply of long-burning phosphorus. It was time.

Eyes aflame with devotion, Tomas set his special phosphorus brazier alight. Positioned on a wooden platform at the apex of the tower, it would be seen for miles around. Better still, it would be
felt
. The Maramurians had left the top level of the tower clear. Only the stone corners supported the sloping, tiled roof.

Tomas was crouched low on the platform, hunting knife in his right hand. The phosphorus erupted in pink flame, high and strong. Exposure might have flayed the skin of a normal human, but Tomas held himself over the flames as if born from them. He ran the knife across both wrists, watching his thick blood pour into the flames. The color changed from vivid pink to burgundy wine. Tomas basked in the glow of his unholy flame for several minutes before climbing down the outside of the tower. He found he could slither up and down walls like a lizard.

He joined his chittering
succubi
on the ground. All looked up at their crackling beacon with an almost holy reverence. Tomas didn’t think he’d ever felt such intense pride.

On the second night of undying fire she came.

At first Tomas heard the tinkle of a bell. Then, through the heavy snowdrift, a team of huskies appeared. They were pulling a simple wooden sled. Gustavo had followed his instructions to the letter.

Tomas’s heart skipped a beat when he saw
her
sitting upright on the back of the sled. He could barely breathe as it slowed to a halt. Even the
succubi
hung back at a respectful distance.

The female figure stepped delicately off the sled and threw her velvet hood back. Tomas’s eyes widened. The girl’s beauty had deepened and matured. There was definition and grace in those petite features.

Those eyes, those golden eyes, they were much more luminous than before. And the teeth. Sharp incisors like the most glorious of
vampyra
. The girl called Yasmin Silver gazed up at the glowing brazier, admiring the faithful beacon that had enticed her across ocean and continent.

She looked directly at Tomas and his heart, mind and body all melted at once.

“You made the call,” she breathed, approaching him without appearing to move at all. “Now for your reward.”

Tomas could barely contain himself as Yasmin - her Queen - offered her pale forearm.

Tomas lost himself in the intricacies of those dark veins, lowering his mouth before he realized what he was doing. Satiating a vicious thirst he never realized he had until this moment, Tomas closed his eyes and finally let his spirit beast take full control.

The blood, the blood. His life. His Queen.

The only light at the end of his tunnel.

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AEGIS COLONY:

The Sands of Osiris (Book 1)

http://www.amazon.com/Sands-Osiris-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B00SRGECZS

The Jungles of Verdano

http://www.amazon.com/The-Jungles-Verdano-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B0158SLBEC

The Ice of Solitude

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ice-Solitude-Aegis-Colony-ebook/dp/B0179O73ZO

THE FLUX AGE: