Chapter 133: The Hive

The room chosen for the negotiations is an office on the second floor. It has been cleared save for a long table with three seats on each side. Couches adorn the corner for a handful of spectators.

To my surprise, I have been asked to attend by Sephare as an observer. Our side is represented by Constantine, Sephare herself, and Islaev. The Natalis lord acts as Jarek's second and his representative since the old monster is still captive. By pushing for this, Sephare effectively made a show of solidarity for a minor faction while disabling a third, possibly discordant voice. The major lords will attend as observers. Although she had to align with them on bottom line and objectives, the control of the negotiation is essentially hers.

The expansion faction is represented by Martha of the Lancaster, the pint-sized archmage, Bertrand, the grudge-bearing monumental twit, and Orpheus, the yet-to-be-insulted. I stare at the last man for a very simple reason.

He is very, very handsome.

Orpheus is the model I would use to paint an angel. Come to think of it, I may just do that. He would be falling, wings afire, impotent rage and grief plain on his delicate features. Hmm. And he would be naked, of course.

I return my attention to the matter at hand. The Expansion faction wears luxurious but slightly ill-fitting clothes on account of being caught in armor. If the deal breaks down, they will be allowed to reequip and return to the jail where they will be given a chance to fight their way out.

It is a doomed prospect. They know it.

During the battle, Constantine realized that he could not stop Orpheus from freeing Bertrand. The angelic lord had imbibed a significant amount of fae essence, allowing him to brute force his way through any barrier. Constantine simply allowed him to waste essence on a vain attack and locked down the entire prison afterward. The Expansion faction leaders realized that the risk of being caught on our territory at dawn was too much, and proposed a truce. Now, it is up to Sephare to turn this truce into a favorable treaty, and quickly, because the omen has come to pass.

We have lost contact with remote villages.

My warning proved useful and our agents have been instructed to keep an eye out for rumors of mass disappearance. Similarly, the lords take the situation extremely seriously. The problem is that we are stretched extremely thin for now. Between the mortal war paralyzing a great many assets, and the vampire war mobilizing our fighters, we can barely spare a squad or two. The knights have already started to move, but we have received no news from them. Nor can we rely on them to solve everything by themselves.

When the 'talks' begin, I am left extremely disappointed. There is no grandstanding, no eloquent declamations. In fact, the six barely talk at all. One side proposes and the other demands something in return. If they disagree, they search for acceptable alternatives, otherwise they move on for now. I can tell that Sephare is being very aggressive while Bertrand is, for once, measured and accommodating. Not that he has much of a choice.

The discussion lasts long into the night despite the total lack of emotion displayed. There are long periods of silence during which no one moves, no one speaks, and not one aura flickers. Both sides communicate by gestures they hide from their counterparts. I find the whole thing extremely tedious.

Islaev only intervenes when it comes to the Natalis land. They are to be returned in their entirety in exchange for safe passage. Bertrand categorically refuses to leave the American Continent. The two sides finally agree on a line ranging east west from Monterrey all the way to La Paz in the Pacific Ocean as a border. It helps that the French force, under Mask impulse, still has to conquer most of the country including Mexico city.

Back and forth the arguments go, using money and other treasures to grease the gears of diplomacy. I regret joining long before the discussion is over. I hate it, every aspect of it. We have won, and still we must make concessions to guarantee a long-lasting peace. I wish we could just all CRUSH THEM.

But I am too weak, and only have myself to blame for my lack of power. Even my presence is already a favor rather than a necessity.

Dawn approaches when the final document is signed. The Expansion Faction is allowed to spread its influence in Mexico, while we retain control of the rest. If we had created permanent holds there before the war, we could have leveraged their existence. Once more, our main problem is only made more manifest by this treaty. There are too few of us. We do not even have the numbers to satisfactorily control the Mexican capital. We cannot spread indefinitely either since a lone vampire remains vulnerable to a determined assault.

"You focus too much on the negative," Sephare informs me as we move to our personal quarters, "the Accords now have an existence in the eyes of our world. Before, it was merely a figurehead, an agora used to solve grievances peacefully. Now, we are a government recognized by all, a new player. The loss of the Mexican south is meaningless because we never controlled it. Our opponents are merely filling a vacuum. Rather than clinging on something we cannot control anyway, we obtain several significant political and diplomatic prizes."

"They will attack us again."

"Yes, in fifty years, when we have consolidated our position and they have something to lose besides reputation. Let us find what the disappearances are about while we are in peace instead of having to endure years of costly skirmishes. The Expansion Faction is not the only opportunistic predator we have to fear."

"I suppose."

The agreement leaves a bitter taste on my tongue. We placed the entire Expansion Faction in checkmate. We should be sending them home by boat with a spike up the nether regions and they should thank us for letting them live. Instead, we have to tolerate their despicable presence on our southern doorstep out of fear that the war might escalate and we start going after each other's mortals. The moment I become a lady, I am gathering an army and leading it to throw every last one of those pricks into the Atlantic, with their heads in separate garbage bins.

I really hope that the vampire knights can help me with that. Jimena said that she would make some inquiries. I merely have to wait.

June 18th 1862. Two weeks later.

Four riders thunder down the path south as the moon rises over Virginia's valleys and hills. Through forest and field we trot. Yes, trot. The thunder comes from Jarek's humongous nightmare.

I stare at the imposing back of our fearless leader. A custom-made Union uniform, that of first lieutenant of the cavalry, strains over his massive shoulders. I notice that they are quite tense. Behind us, two mortals ride at a respectable distance also in Union uniforms. I wear a pale blue light traveling dress with a soft cotton cloak plus hood, so that I can hide my features.

And gloves.

And guns, but I always have a gun somewhere.

"The forward base is just ahead," Sheridan whispers, "I sincerely hope that our documents will be enough."

I cannot comprehend how he could spend so much time with me and still approach such situations with anxiety. I could wave the music sheet of a raunchy song under the nose of a group of sentries and convince them that it is a presidential decree. And that I am, in fact, the Princess of Wales. Here to visit my lover. I believe that some stubborn remnant of obedience prevents him from ever being at ease during a deception. By the Watcher, how is he such a straight arrow? We have engaged in piracy. Goodness me. Some people never grow up.

The last member of our expedition is Cedric Birmingham, shield mage extraordinaire and representative of the White Cabal in this endeavor. His presence does not help with Jarek's mood.

We slow down as sentries hail us down, and wait as Jarek convinces the thin mustachioed man in an open vest and kepi to let us through. The poor sergeant takes one look at Jarek's face and decides to look elsewhere, mostly at the folded paper he was sullenly given. A helpful private comes bearing a lantern. The shy light allows them to take in the full appearance of their visitor.

Once more, they decide it preferable to avert their eyes. They find me.

"A woman?" the sergeant asks.

"Private."

Jarek's voice is low, rumbling, and usually warm, but now it holds an undercurrent of threat that they cannot miss. Silence ensues.

"You can read, yes?" the living earthquake continues.

A nod.

"What is the word at the very top of the sheet I just gave you?"

"Err. 'Confidential', sir. Ahem. Right. No more questions. You may pass."

We move on. The sentries guard a road between two forested hills, and we continue through to an open plain entirely covered by a camp as massive as a proper city.

I have to stop for a moment to imprint that image in my mind. Rows upon rows of white tents lined up in tight ranks. Most of the cooking is done for the night, but the smell of stew remains strong in the air, as well as that of sweat and human refuse. The camp is well-ordered and the soldiers serene, as if the bloodshed to come could not affect them. Many are young, I notice, and have this green air that I associate with recruits. To think that ten years ago, the army had fifteen thousand men. Now, hundreds of thousands serve under their respective flags, an entire generation rushed to the slaughter under officers as clueless as themselves. They watch us pass with curiosity.

The camp lives.

I hear violins in the distance, and on an open field, soldiers play a strange game with bats and bases and a thrown ball.

I think that my fellow Illinois soldiers might be somewhere around here.

It takes us several minutes to reach the other end of the massive encampment, during which we are observed but not hailed. The uniform of an officer certainly helps, but not as much as Jarek's annoyed sneer.

Then we are across, and through the risky land separating the Union force from Lee's army of Northern Virginia. Nothing has changed in the landscape, but the tension is now palpable. We tread contested land.

"Ariane, could you not also wear a uniform to avoid questions?" Cedric asks innocently enough.

"I could not be prevailed upon to don male garments," I lie haughtily. My retort shuts him up.

"She is too... shapely... to pass for a man," Sheridan whispers to his neighbor a little bit later.

"Sheridaaaaaaan, I will cut off your cigar supply!" I threaten without turning.

In the distance, an owl kills something small and furry.

"Should we not change into confederate garb?" Cedric finally asks as we do not slow down.

"No need," Jarek growls, "we will use stealth. Observe."

A few miles off, I taste the waiting auras of a few mortals and smell their nervousness on the air. Jarek must have done so as well. We slow down, but do not stop.

A single old man in a confederate officer uniform stands proudly across our path on a bay mount. He tips his chin back as we approach, lush white beard on display.

I love watching reactions to Jarek when he does not soften the blow of his presence with Charm. The gaze of the moon gives even mortals a good visibility, and the one facing us bears a torch as well. There will be no hiding it this time.

It starts with a glare, because we wear hostile uniforms, then a frown as his mind registers that his depth perception might be playing tricks on him, then to a stunned look when Jarek comes close enough and he realizes the sheer absurdity of the Natalis lord's measurements. Above his nightmare, he towers over his lessers by at least half again their size. A colossus. A monster.

Then Jarek stops by his side and the physicality of his presence awakens the most primitive, ancestral part of the person's brain. Jarek has no use for hidden threats or sheathed fangs. He is not a creature of the ballroom, like most of us. His nature is plain to see, and the officer realizes it now.

Jarek looms.

He is quite proficient at looming.

As the distance between the two men shortens, the human leans back and the vampire simply exists around and above his counterpart, seemingly covering the dry stature of the underfed fighter in a massive, muscular embrace. Jarek's voice resounds once more, as ineluctable and gravelly as a landslide.

"You and your fifteen friends hidden on the side of the road have two choices. You can choose to have seen us. Or you can choose to let us go. I swear to you that we are not here to harm your interests. I also swear that, should you fight, I will kill every last one of you and wear your innards as garlands across my chest. So. What will it be?"

I will give the officer credit. He manages to remain upright. It takes him a few seconds to formulate a response but when he does, his voice is almost clear.

A respectable attempt.

"Well, that is a rather unchivalrous offer," he says.

In answer, Jarek pulls back and grabs for the weapon hanging from his thin saddle: a giant battle axe. He waves the titanic implement before his interlocutor's sweaty brow.

"I don't know about chivalrous, but I can do medieval."

Oh please.

"I think we can let him go sir, I think he's telling the truth. Oh, and they have a lady with them," a voice bleats from the side as the officer attempts to keep control of his mount, who caught a whiff of something predatory.

The pale man grabs on that excuse like a drowning man to a buoy.

"Well. If they are escorting a lady. Clearly. I can let them through. Yes. You are clear to go. Let it not be known that the rigors of war would find our gentlemanly honor wanting."

We ride forth unimpeded.

"So. Vampire stealth. Huh," Cedric comments.

When Jarek was freed, he returned to his land and found it methodically looted, up to the grain he needed to seed his fields. Most of it was recovered as part of the peace settlement, but the sting on his pride has not let out. It shows in the way he handles the current affairs. His people have requested him to leave so that they could focus on repairs while he brooded his annoyance away.

I do not mind Jarek's presence, or his short temper. The ancient Natalis has not crossed the line yet between curtness and indiscriminate violence, at least not with our allies. He was the most vocal in support of the continuation of war. The invasion of his home still blazes in his heart with righteous fury, but he has remained faithful to our organization. For this, I will tolerate his small hissy fit. He is a sweetheart.

At least according to vampire standards.

Also, we fought side by side in battle and he sacrificed himself to allow me to escape, so I would unleash all the guns in Illinois if he only asked. No need to tell him, or he might be tempted.

The mood is more subdued as the night goes on and we follow a complex set of directions to our target. On one occasion, we stop to ask our way to a pair of southern soldiers leaning lazily under a lantern. They very politely inform us that, yes, we are on the right track. They even wish us a prompt journey.

"I told you that this was the right direction," I hiss.

"It cost us nothing to confirm it," Jarek retorts.

We arrive on the outskirts of Dodgetown a little bit after midnight. Dodgetown was unimaginatively named after its founder, like many other hamlets across the country. It barely qualifies as a town to begin with.

We decided to come after a report was intercepted that the town had been evacuated. This information was recovered by one of our agents and immediately dismissed as minor by the local authorities. I find the lack of seriousness of the scouts frankly unacceptable. Indeed, the truth becomes manifest as soon as we arrive.

The forested path opens into a humble valley nestled between several low hills, with a small river snaking its way between patches of statuesque stalks loaded with berries. Flowers in rainbow shades adorn squares of ripening wheat, the golden treasure a boon to the surrounding soldiers. Or at least they would be, if there was anyone left to harvest them. The serenity here is a lie. It wields the color of nature like a torn skin to pass for tranquility, when in truth, it is the silence of the grave. The stench of death and old blood saturates the air, as well as another one, bitter and defiled, that sets my teeth on edge.

"By the Eye. No..."

"Jarek?"

"No. I may be mistaken. Let us continue, but be vigilant."

Then to the mortals.

"If I tell you to run, you gallop away. Is that clear?"

The two know better than to object.

We ride on and it soon becomes obvious that whoever reported on an 'evacuation' was either blind or a complete idiot. We pass a one-story farmstead with its door kept open. Farming implements and a stove can be seen from the road, as well as the remnants of smashed ceramics. No one in their right mind would have left their houses unlocked and messy, not unless they left in a second.

I do not believe that they managed it.

We dismount and walk in. I cross the threshold without difficulty, confirming my hypothesis.

Its previous occupants have died to the last child.

"Claw marks. Here," Sheridan says.

I turn and see rips in the door frame.

"Too small to be a werewolf, too strong to be a human," Cedric notes. He is right. A transformed werewolf would have ripped off the entire beam. The remnants of aura are wrong as well. Werewolves are cursed, but they do not feel as... tainted as that.

Jarek stands silent before a spot of blood. There is surprisingly little of it on the ground considering how heavy the smell hangs in the air. The precious liquid is pinkish and... wrong. Deeply wrong. It STINKS.

"By the Watcher, what is that thing?"

"Disaster. Absolute disaster. I thought the vilebloods extinct since the fourteenth century. How could they still be alive, here? This makes no sense. Unless... Those insane cockroaches unleashed them as vengeance? But no. They are too greedy to be this stupid."

"Jarek, I find your behavior concerning."

"My behavior is the least concerning thing tonight. You do not know. You cannot know. We believed that we had rid the world of this evil forever. Our opponents, our opposites. The locusts to our lion. The blood-starved hive. The vilebloods. I must see it with my own eyes. Come on, we must find tracks. There is nothing left in this village."

I follow him outside without understanding. The two mortals come along as well although they are subdued before his darkening spirits. We mount and circle around the ghost town, inspect its empty arterial roads and gutted houses. We find nothing. Or rather, we find too much. Too many scrambled tracks.

"They could be anywhere, whatever they are. We need to make a bigger circle," Cedric says.

"No, wait," I reply.

Something tugs at my soul once more. It calls to me like back in Boston when the tide of death overran the map.

"That way."

Cedric frowns.

"Are you—"

"We go. Now!" Jarek roars. The urgency has spread to all of us now, and we trot at a good pace through what amounts to little more than a forest track. The land is dark, our allies blind, but we do not stop and neither do they. We soon burst into a deserted clearing around a lone stone. Nothing seems out of place save for the diseased appearance of some of the vegetation, yet I can feel a deep unease, a discordance of sorts.

"The fabric is so thin here. Something has disturbed this world," Cedric comments, now fully aware of the wrongness. Even Sheridan frowns.

"We must press on," Jarek says. And we do.

I smell it first. More blood in the air.

"We must hurry," I mutter.

"No!" Jarek interrupts, "No, we cannot risk the mortals laming their horses. Not now. They will have to run hard soon. Let them keep their strength, we are too late anyway."

And we are. We arrive at the edge of the next hamlet to find devastation. In the previous village, the slaughter was cold. Here, it is fresh and leaking. A single house has caught on fire, possibly due to a fallen lantern. The blaze rises high into the sky and hides the heaven under a cloak of soot and embers. Only the red light remains, and it shines over savaged bodies drowning in their own blood. Men. Women. Children. They lie where they have fallen in torn heaps, still clutching gaping wounds with rigid fingers. A cattle of some sort must have been caught in the open, or so I assume. Only a single bell and frayed pieces of hide bear witness to the feast that occured. The air is thick with terror.

Jarek stops Cedric as he dismounts.

"No. Stay on your horse, ready your weapons, and whatever you do, do not get hit. I know what we will find, but I need to swear seeing it with my own eyes when the Council of Wardens asks me. Stay close."

"Will you finally tell us what those vilebloods are?" I hiss.

"You will see for yourself. Keep them off your Nightmare."

I grumble. All those ominous declarations tire me. We are the APEX. and those... whatever they are, their stench upsets me.

We cross an orchard and reach the main road, well-lit by the flames.

"We leave that way on my command," Jarek orders.

The street is thick with bodies. Twenty paces before us, a woman gasps her last breaths, bloody hands clutching the ruin of her abdomen. She sees us and gurgles a few inintelligible words through the haze of pain.

"I'm going," Cedric says.

"You are not. You will sit on your saddle and watch," Jarek says.

"But..."

"And when you are done, you will report what you saw to your precious White Cabal."

The shield mage returns his gaze to the dying villager. It does not take a doctor to realize that she is beyond help. She convulses a few more times, then her back arches despite her wounds, and she falls back.

And keeps moving.

It starts as a tremor, then her muscles cramp and creak with such shattering intensity that her bones break. Her spilled blood inexplicably runs back to her vein. Ridges appear on her skull as hair falls in clumps, and ivory shards erupt from her bleeding fingertips. All around her, other bodies join in the macabre transformation. The corpses are turning to monsters at a speed that I would never have believed possible if I had not been here in person. Everything I know about magic and transformation, all that I have studied, even my own experience and Dalton's murderer's fate at the hand of the Key of Beriah, all agree that what I see is an impossibility. Such speed cannot be achieved in our native realm. And yet, with one last sickening crack, the thing that used to be a woman stands up on spindly, spiked limbs. Two dark orbs land squarely on us. There are no iris, no pupils. On the inky void of what this creature represents.

I understand it now.

The all-devouring hunger.

We are shepherds of this world, in a way. We live and die around humans. The wise among us invest and build, but not that thing. They — no — it, too, is a stranger, but one that lacks ego. It exists to consume and move on. It is vile and defiled and it does NOT BELONG.

The thing shrieks. It calls with a high-pitched trill that finds answers around us.

All around us.

"About face. Cedric, take point. Don't stop for anything! Go. Go!"

The mortal's horses do not need to be asked twice. They neigh and gallop as fast as they can. The shrill calls spur on a mad dash. Pale, shambling shapes surge from the nearby bushes. Some are the size of buffalos!

"What the fuck?" Sheridan says.

I share in his opinion.

The jaws of the ambush close around us, but we are not some harmless farmers.

"Shield!"

Cedric forms a transparent wedge that throws aside the first opponents as they rush him. Meanwhile, Sheridan and I unload into the creatures assaulting our flanks. I watch, mesmerized, as one of the creatures still crawls forward in a demented gait with half of its chest missing.

"Ari, he—"

Rose slashes above and across a creature's chest on Sheridan's side, sending two mangled pieces careening on the ground.

I can barely absorb the essence I gain. All I taste is the shadow of a fading entity that thrashes and bites in its death throes, the remnant of something great. The creature I killed is but a tiny part of a distant whole.

"Take it," I tell Sheridan, handing him my revolver. I shall wield spells and blades from now on.

Behind us, Jarek covers our retreat. Some of the larger specimens can catch up to the humans' tired horses, and he keeps them off our backs.

"Flay."

More creatures die. Some, we leave behind as they trail vestigial organs from mortal wounds in their eagerness to kill us. I successfully manage to cover Sheridan while he reloads. As for Cedric, he holds the shield stably for the few minutes it takes us to plow through the entrapment.

The forest slows our pursuers down.

Eventually, they give up.

We only slow down after we have returned to the first empty hamlet. The extent of the devastation and lost life becomes more obvious as I start counting houses and assess how many lives were lost, then turned.

"I think that now is a good time for explanation," I inform Jarek. Politely.

We wait in silence for the Natalis lord to speak. He looks worried for the first time since I have met him. Even the inevitability of his capture did not provoke such a strong reaction. Eventually, his gaze lowers to the three of us in turn.

"Children, all of you. Ah, but it matters not. I was a child as well. Where should I start? Ah yes. Half a millennium ago, a third of the world's human population died in the span of five years."

I stand, flabbergasted.

"What?"

But Jarek only scoffs.

"Children indeed. This event was well-recorded. We call it the Black Death, the mother of all plagues. It was not caused by the vilebloods, but it lured them in. The suffering and agony of a hundred million humans brought the hive to our realm."

"They are one among many. Shadows," I whisper.

Jarek nods.

"Indeed. We fought the hive for over thirty years. Thirty long years of attrition and carnage. Thirty years cowering by day with our mortals in impregnable fortresses of stones, watching them die of disease. Thirty years of red nights and ceaseless slaughter. Poland was our battlefield, and we only found out about the hive because we lost the Dvor lords dwelling there. You see, the problem is not just their savagery, or the way they reproduce. The problem is their intellect."

What?

"Intellect? But those things—"

"—were cunning enough to ambush us, to wait until we were close enough before rushing in from all sides. A lone vileblood presents little danger to a vampire, but a hundred lays traps, a thousand plan battles, and ten times that number plan a war. To this day, I am not quite sure why they tried to extinguish us instead of moving on to the tender heart of Europe. Perhaps it was aggression, or perhaps it was part of some eldritch scheme that we cannot comprehend. The few of us who tasted their essence figured out their true nature. As Ariane put it, they are shadows. Imprints of something alien and unfathomable. The more vessels there are, the more the mind can bleed into the torrent of flesh that heralds its coming."

"So, we need to prevent them from reaching a tipping point," Sheridan observes.

"And there lies the problem. They will be cunning enough to avoid armies and large towns until they are ready. By that time, it will be too late. The chaos of war only helps them in this task. No one will bat an eye at losing communication with the frontier, especially along the border. I will warn the council. You, Ariane, will go to Washington."

"You want me to warn Sephare?" I ask with a raised brow. I can contact her from here just fine.

"No. Not her. The humans."

We all recoil in shock at this... preposterous proposal. Talk with the human authorities? What madness is this?

"We have no choice. I will ask for the council's approval, but you must go there."

I close my eyes in annoyance, smoothe my long skirt and reclaim my revolver from a confused Sheridan.

"What are you doing?" Jarek asks, surprised.

"If I don't want to Charm the entire Congress, I shall need solid proof. I will be right back."

Ten minutes later.

Do not kill that thing, Ariane, do not kill that thing, Ariane, do not kill that thing or you will have to fetch another one.

Jarek watches me as I drag a smaller drone behind me. It stopped screeching after I damaged its throat a bit. I hold it by the neck so that it fails to attack me. Apparently, the creature's suicidal tendencies do not extend to snapping its own joints. Good to know.

"Ariane. What, in the name of the Eye, are you doing?"

"Yes, err, far from me to criticize or anything..." Cedric adds.

"I already told you louts," I reply with undisguised annoyance, "if I want to convince anyone that a wave of horrible magical locusts is descending upon us without being thrown in the loony bin, I will need irrefutable proof. Even a dead thing could arguably be the work of a gifted taxidermist. This claim becomes more difficult to sustain when said thing is desperately trying to claw your face off. Jarek, would you kindly, kindly help me bind it? Much obliged."

We easily find ropes in a nearby warehouse. The main problem is that we will not be able to carry the drone around on a leash.

"I need to build a cage. A container of sorts..." I say.

We look around and find no such a thing. Unsurprisingly, since the average Virginian mudhole rarely keeps bears around for entertainment purposes. I do find nails and solid planks. I decide to put my advanced engineering skills to build a crate. There is a joke in here somewhere.

Cedric stares at me as I dry-fit planks together to form a solid base. We are going to need something sturdy.

"Should you not be standing guard?" I finally snap at the man looking over my shoulder.

"Sorry, it's just... It's not everyday that I see a vampire Master doing manual labor."

"If you could waggle a hammer as easily as that tongue of yours, we could have avoided that situation entirely!"

"Jeeesus, woman. Alright, I'm going!"

The alliance against the end of the world is off to a great start.