The second dark ages box.., p.13
The Second Dark Ages Boxed Set, page 13
part #1 of The Second Dark Ages Series
Michael picked up each bag, checking the weight. “Because we’re leaving in the next hour or so, and that oil lamp downstairs is going to have an unfortunate accident.”
“You’re going to burn the place down?” She looked up at him.
Michael’s eyes bore into hers. “There are some places where evil has occurred, that need to be sanitized. This is one of them.”
She nodded her understanding.
Two hours later, Lamont spoke to his partner as they watched the warehouse go up in flames. “Now we know why he said tomorrow,” he commented as he ran a hand through his hair.
His partner shrugged and turned to him. “You upset we didn’t try to take him?”
Lamont shook his head. “Hell no.”
“Seven days?” Michael asked, and Jacqueline confirmed.
There were seven days before the next dirigible would arrive that would take them over to Chicago, and then on to New York.
“Okay, let’s get the tickets we need and get out of town.”
“Great,” she muttered under her breath as she turned to go back to the small office that sold the dirigible tickets. “More training.”
They had traveled half a day to the north-northwest, skirting a couple of old, dilapidated, small towns and finally found enough wilderness that Michael was satisfied they would probably be left alone.
Michael first put her through stamina and limberness checks. Her Were nanocytes, as Michael explained, helped her regenerative powers, but if she was in better physical condition, they wouldn’t have to do as much work. Her time while she was blind hadn’t helped her stay in shape.
Michael would often run with her, and it annoyed her that he never sweated. That hairless top of his, she thought, should at least perspire.
Shouldn’t it?
She decided she was more annoyed that she didn’t understand why he didn’t sweat than she was that he was in much better condition than her. Although she was pretty sure she caught him breathing a little hard the third time she collapsed in a nice area of grassy ground, grabbing a cramping stomach in pain.
He would always wait patiently, scanning the surroundings. Finally, she got the hint and started to do likewise as they continued their exercise.
“Where is the blue grosbeak?” Michael asked her on their third day as they jogged along.
“The what?” Jacqueline panted back, looking around.
“The blue bird with the orange in its feathers,” he replied.
“Hell if I know?” By this time, she was looking all over the place as she ran, including up in the air for the damned bird.
“We’ve passed three of them. Stop!” he ordered.
Jacqueline slowed then stopped running, but she did walk in a small circle for her muscles. Michael nodded off to the side. “See that tree, the tall one on the left? Yes, now look up two-thirds to the top and then to the left, there is a blue bird with orange on its wings.”
Jacqueline, following his directions, caught sight of the bird. “It’s pretty.”
“Yes, it is. Now, when we’re running, I will tell you every time you miss one. You will get one three-mile circuit to learn. Then, each time you miss one, you’ll drop and give me twenty pushups.”
Jacqueline was in sheer pain the next morning, even with her enhanced healing. She had been doing pushups all damned day.
Now, her muscles were stiff, and she was trying to limber up, making an attempt to get her body back into a semblance of looseness before the wonderful day of pain ahead of her.
That afternoon, after her second lap without missing one of the birds, Michael added two more types.
The bastard, she thought.
The next day, Michael would start hiding from her. If she didn’t call out where he was by pointing, he would attack her, and it hurt like hell. Her previous hand-to-hand skills were sufficient against humans and some Weres. Now she knew some muscles she hadn’t realized existed could be used during fights. And frankly, wished she had never found out.
Finally, he started randomly attacking her with slaps when she was near him, testing her reaction speed.
Finally, she broke.
He slapped at her, which she blocked, but turned her motion around to a kick and followed it up with two more punches, which he deflected.
He taunted her, pushed her and cajoled her as she honed her focus. Just once, she thought, just once she wanted to land a punch on that goddamned perfect face of his.
Just… once.
He called a halt as she finally worked her way out of her anger into a state of burning muscles. She pointed at his shirt collar. “I DID IT!” she screamed, tossing her hands in the air and prancing around in a circle. “I did it, I FINALLY did it!”
“I AM THE CHAMPION!” she screamed.
She stopped jogging and put her hands on her knees, her head hanging down. “Oh GOD… I think I’m going to puke.” She started spitting on the ground, trying to get the excess saliva out of her mouth.
Michael was checking his collar. “Sweat?” he asked, finally able to see what she had been pointing to.
“Yeah,” she answered, nauseated. “I might die in two minutes, but I’ll be happy when I die…” She stood up and put her hands on her back, arching backward to stretch it. “In pain, but happy.”
Michael shook his head, sometimes he wished he could figure out what motivated a person sooner.
He would have stopped using the Etheric to cool his body down if he had known.
Another day of training and he gave her half a day off before they packed and headed back. They spent the night not that far out of town, arriving the next morning.
She had told him life would be easier if he would leave the coat behind and he explained, in no uncertain terms, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” he said. “I made a promise to a woman that I would be back. This coat offers a level of protection her closest friends made especially for me, hoping that someday I might be able to use it. I’m not going to wish I hadn’t.”
“It makes you stand out, Michael,” she pointed out.
He turned to look Jacqueline in the eyes. “Like my lack of hair doesn’t?”
Chapter Fifteen
On the Dirigible Onslaught, En Route from Denver to Chicago via Des Moines
Paul Mullins prided himself on excellent table manners. It was something his family, the Mullins from Chicago, had kept as part of their heritage from before the Apocalypse. That attention to detail, his mother told him, was what helped them create the Pods of today.
He had come out to Des Moines on business, tracking down some raw materials and jumped at the chance to go back on the Airship Onslaught.
It wasn’t strictly a passenger ship. It was designed for transportation of materials, but it had some berths and nice amenities on it as well. That suited him fine. His family made their money from commerce, and he enjoyed the commercial flights as much as, or sometimes more than, the pure passenger ships with all of their exquisite finery.
“Your beverage, sir?” A polite finger tapped him on the shoulder. Commercial or not, they still offered the level of service he expected.
Paul looked up to see the waiter had a small carafe of orange juice and a morning paper. The country had been able to manage to create paper, of a sort, and now printed the basics every morning.
He had additional information delivered to him from his family’s empire, such as it was.
As one of the biggest employers in the Chicago-Great Lakes City-State, Mullins Transportation, he had access to information not shared among the general populace. As one of the richest families in the City-State, he had information on the best of everything.
The best locations to procure old technology, and who to speak with to get it working again.
The best types of foods and foodstuff to produce and the methods to grow year round, putting food on his family’s table.
And, the best medicine available, whether legal or not.
Often, the masters of commerce held much of the power, while those that ran for office helped grease the progress of civilization and helped keep it all on track. Generally speaking, those in commerce needed a populace to purchase and use their products. Further, continued businesses growth required an educated populace. Therefore, those in power worked to support the country’s infrastructure towards the goal of creating future customers, and civilization was growing...
So were the ways to live beyond a normal lifespan.
Paul Mullins set the local newspaper aside and reached into his bag to pull out the updates his people had filed.
Taking a sip of his orange juice, Paul read the first article about the weather and the expectations of how long the heat was going to affect the region around Des Moines. His R&D group had discussed moving the solar electricity producing infrastructure they had found in old Merriam, Kansas to a Des Moines farm that still had working water pumps. It looked to be a two-year project, maybe half a year if Paul would supply the transportation. Then the local government would have another large swath of land under cultivation within twenty-four months.
More food meant their population would grow.
Paul considered the farm investment and what monopolies he should negotiate with the local government for risking his capital and resources to help them.
Government, some people never understood, had always been at its core a business, and whether it was able to provide services or not usually determined how effective it was.
Want safety? Need a local police force? Use the power of government to create a monopoly and call it something generic that the locals believed belonged to the city. Like, for example, the Des Moines Police Department.
This company could be incorporated in the Chicago City-State. In order to generate income to run itself, the local government would lease the rights to issue tickets and use deadly force with significant protections against legal retribution.
Monopolies, if run efficiently, could be very profitable.
The second report caused him to set his orange juice down. It was a discussion of recent violence in Denver. About ninety-seven people had been killed in town, and another fifty, they believed, killed west of the town in a small, unincorporated location.
By one man, the stories said. Or, a couple of others suggested he had the help of a woman.
Paul reached out and grabbed a piece of toast, but he didn’t realize he was eating it dry as he continued reading the report. Kraven, the local mayor, had been brutally hunted down and killed by the assailant, as well as at least sixty more of Kraven’s support staff throughout his building.
Paul could read between the lines. His support staff would have been muscle at a minimum, fighters more likely.
“How the hell,” Paul said under his breath.
Then he read a piece that caused chills to go up and down his spine. In the list of the dead, he found Hank, Izzy and Calvin’s names. What the hell had they been doing that had allowed one, maybe two people to kill them? They should have easily been able to handle one man, even a vampire.
It was their damned profession, after all. Not to mention they had his investment money and the blood.
He continued reading and then swallowed hard as he realized they had a vampire and his extraction machine with them. The blood drained out of Paul’s face, and he lost his desire to eat.
That was when there was another tap on his shoulder, except this time it wasn’t the waiter.
Europe
It was just after ten at night and Donovan smiled in the darkness. He had over a dozen dirigibles loading supplies.
When the Duke decided he wanted to invade a major City-State like New York, he wasn’t going to do it with half measures.
“Make sure you seed fear, Donovan,” the Duke commanded.
“Don’t worry, Father.” Donovan replied, looking at the large airships. “With hundreds of Nosferatu and over forty vampires, how can we fail to subjugate the human cattle?”
“I would say pride goes before the fall.” The Duke smirked in the firelight. “But we both know that it isn’t pride when you speak the truth.”
The two men had shared a laugh and a bottle of wine before the Duke left, heading for Frankfurt.
Donovan and the rest of the crew had the airships loaded and were safely in the blacked out holds before the sun cracked the sky in the east.
On the Dirigible Onslaught
Paul Mullins looked up from his breakfast to see a grinning woman staring down at him. “God, you startled me, Kerri,” he said as his hand went to his heart. “You know this old ticker could give up any moment.”
He pointed to the chair on the other side of his table. “Join me?”
“Of course, you old scoundrel,” she agreed, smiling.
He stood to get her chair and admire her figure, but she went around the table to pull out her chair herself. “I’ll get it. I never know if I’ll get a bill from your company sometime where pulling out chair is a line-item.”
They shared a laugh.
She pulled her chair up as Paul sat back down. He caught the waiter’s attention and called him over. “I’d like some more toast, and whatever the lady here would like.”
Kerri nodded to the man. “My figure needs to stay as nice as it is, to keep young men like Mr. Morris here trying to get my chair. I’ll just take a glass of apple juice and some oatmeal, thank you.” The waiter dipped his head and left them alone.
She turned to him. “You don’t look a day older than when I met you twenty-two years ago, Paul, so don’t pat your heart like it’s about to fail you now.”
He shrugged. “Good genes, Kerri.”
“Yes, well, you Mullins mostly have good genes. Even your great-grandfather seemed pretty young when he passed away ten years ago.”
Paul smiled but said nothing. The rumors about his family in Chicago were many. Some were created by his family to offset those that were closer to the truth than they cared to admit. They had, in fact, found the elixir of youth.
You just had to be willing to drink the blood of demons to do it. The heavy hitters in the blood trade were based on the East Coast. Paul figured he could make a nice profit and worked to hire away an experienced team and start his own business. Then, he invested a damned pretty penny for the machine to pull the blood out safely from the little demon shits.
Now, his team and most likely, his machine were gone. A serious financial and business setback.
“Are you going to make me carry this whole conversation?” she asked as the waiter came back, laying the oatmeal in front of her with milk and honey, and a glass of apple juice beside it. She nodded, and the waiter left.
“No, just allowing you to get the words out so when it comes time to eating, you don’t have problems deciding whether to talk or swallow.” He smiled.
“Darling,” she drawled. “I always know when to swallow, and when to… talk.” She winked at him and took a bite of her oatmeal.
Dammit, she was up two to one, now.
“I, uh, if you say so,” he agreed and took a bite of the old toast. “Did you get on the ship back in Des Moines?” he asked, realizing she might have some more information for him.
“No,” she put some honey on her oatmeal. “I was in Denver and let me tell you, it was a very unsettling experience.”
“Oh?” he said and then reached out to accept the toast from the waiter. “Thank you.” He put the toast on his table, using his own honey to flavor it.
She looked at him in confusion. “Yes, you don’t know?”
He shook his head and took a bite of his toast. Those that spoke first, lost.
“Someone or someones laid waste to the scoundrel that was the local government there. Totally went through his people, shooting them all and then went to the top. Killed a bunch of men up top, then chased Kraven down the fire escape. And killed him at the bottom.”
“What time of the day was this?” Paul asked.
She stopped her spoon halfway to her mouth. “Mid-afternoon?”
Paul’s brow furrowed, that couldn’t be a vampire. So, who the hell could it be?
She swallowed and used her spoon to point at him. “He went to some sort of religious group that stayed together a few miles from Kraven’s. He went and killed the leader and some people over there, too.” She twirled her empty spoon in the air for a moment, “People are still trying to figure it out.”
“Sounds dangerous, glad I rarely go to Denver,” Paul commented.
Nodding, she added some milk to what was left of her oatmeal. “Yes, they had a large warehouse fire north of Kraven’s, too. Went up in smoke.” She made a motion with her hand. “Poof!”
Paul bit down to keep from cursing. Mother wouldn’t have approved of cursing at all. Paul couldn’t be sure, but he suspected there went his machine.
“Anyway,” Kerri finished, “the rumor is...” she leaned forward and looked around the dining room before bringing her eyes to rest on Jacob’s. “He’s called the Dark Messiah.”
Paul’s eyebrow raised up, a small smile on his face. “That’s not ominous or anything.”
She shrugged and spooned the last of her oatmeal, the spoon scraping the bottom with a noise that irritated Paul’s teeth before popping it in her mouth. “Don’t know who he would be a Dark Messiah for,” she said. “It’s not like we both don’t know Kraven was a selfish puffed up bastard who was trying to make a little Kraven Kingdom out of Denver.”
Paul pursed his lips. “He was known for trying to push up Denver’s level of importance, that’s true.” He took another bite of his toast.
The mirth in Kerri’s eyes, surprisingly, was guileless. “You know, if I didn’t know for a fact that you were born in Chicago, I’d swear your humor was from England, very dry.”
He chuckled. “They have to have dry humor, to offset how much it rains over there.”
“Yes, and it rains money around the Mullins, so dry humor for you, as well,” she nodded, thinking the saying apt.
