Dawn Awakening

John Mark sucked in a breath and wiggled his fingers. All he had to do was get one arm free from the chains and he'd be able to work the remainder of the links loose from his torso. The skin on his bicep shredded from the friction of steel against flesh. Almost there. He gritted through the pain of sheered flesh. The blood slicked the metal links, making it easier to work his way loose. Finally, the limb slid free of the chains and the band constricting his upper body loosened enough for him to slide his other arm out of the links. He had never loved Robbie more than he did at this moment. Her bravery and her determination to see this through, not knowing for certain if her plan would work, but having enough faith in him to try.

Robbie caught sight of John Mark's free hand. She stepped back, away from him, leading DuPage, following after her, sniffing and panting like a dog. She moaned in faux anticipation to cover the metal against metal sounds as John Mark worked his way out of the chains. Desperate for something bigger to distract them from his escape, she lowered her body down to the ground and motioned the trio closer. "I've never done a ménage before. You'll be gentle with me, won't you?"

She loosened the tie on her sweats and worked them down her hips, urging DuPage on as he hungrily made his way down to the ground. John Mark was almost free. Working fervently on the chains around his ankles. She hoped, John Mark would give her the pleasure of killing at least one of these three. Robbie had it already planned out. Exactly which part she was going to cut off first.

DuPage fell on top of her with a heavy thud, forcing her thighs apart with his knee. Gripping and fondling, sweating and panting, tearing through her sweats with his disgusting fingernails. Robbie turned her head away from the foul stench of his breath on her cheeks and faked a moan of eagerness to mask her repulsion. She needed to buy John Mark more time.

"Yes," she cried through clenched teeth. The guards were still a problem. They had nothing to do but watch and palm their crotches as they waited for their turn. They wouldn't get a turn unless she actually went through with it. DuPage for the moment was amused. But, there was no way she was going to lay here and let him rape her without a fight. And fighting him would only stimulate him further. In a last ditch act of desperation, she bit her wrist and suppressed a scream of terror building in her throat as the guards and DuPage descended on the wound.

John Mark was now almost free. He had two arms and one leg unbound and was fervently working to free the other. Robbie wasn't going to be able to keep it together much longer. She was pale and sweating, panting in her efforts to keep DuPage and the guards occupied. He had to hurry.

DuPage was lost in the girl. Let the guards watch and hand fuck themselves until he was done with her. He'd had an audience before. And it didn't matter much to him. And as for the girl, the dead told no secrets. If she didn't survive his particular brand of loving, the guards could have her corpse. It would stay warm long enough for them to get their jollies. Kore would be furious with him when she found out. But, the pleasures offered by this vixen would be worth any measure of wrath. She needed him too badly to kill him. And he liked pain anyway he could get it.

Robbie slid her hand down along DuPage's bicep, hoping she faked a passionate stroke of his arm well enough to work the blade free from his grip. Too distracted by her body, he'd failed to keep hold of his weapon in favor of his cock. She ground her hips against his pelvis, feeling the hard press of his arousal against her panties. This had to work. The guards were suitably occupied, worrying the wound at her wrist, reopening it wider and wider every time her body tried to knit it closed. She was losing blood, quickly. Her fingers worked along the hilt of the blade, clenching it in her grasp. She couldn't stand another second of this. Without thinking, she executed her next move, planting the dagger deep into the base of DuPage's skull.

John Mark sprang to his feet. Robbie had kept it together long enough for him to work free of the chains. Silently, he crept toward the guards, biting back the rage threatening to consume him at the sight of them sucking at her wrist and DuPage rutting between her thighs. He had to keep his head. She'd done it for him and now it was his turn to do it for her.

The guards weren't quick enough. John Mark dropped the first one easily enough, splitting his skull with a fallen limb from a tree. Properly weaponed thanks to dead guard number one, he went to work on guard number two. Kore didn't take very good care of her men. The poor bastard didn't know how to fight and in preference to trying, he bolted into the woods. John Mark couldn't give chase though. He had to help Robbie and DuPage wouldn't go down without a fight.

Robbie struggled against DuPage's bulk as he throttled her with his meaty hands. The dagger hung out of the back of his head. Blood poured down his shoulders from the wound and fell into her eyes in a hazy wash of red. She had to hang on, just a little while longer. John Mark was free. As soon as he dealt with horny, rapist bastards one and two, he'd deal with DuPage. He'd save her. She just had to give him more time. Keep herself alive until he could do it.

Her failed attempt at killing DuPage had only served to piss him off. Maybe, he didn't have a brain to damage or maybe, his skull was just so thick that the blade couldn't penetrate deep enough. Her vision faded in and out of focus and it was getting harder and harder to stay awake. He cursed her and roared in agony, pummeling the back of her head against the hard ground over and over. His grip on her throat was weakening though and he didn't slam her head quite so hard. John Mark was right. Nobody lived forever. At this point, it was just a contest to see which of the two of them, DuPage or her, would die first.

Robbie was loosing consciousness, fading into the dark as the weigh pinning her down was suddenly lifted, falling in a heavy thud to the side of her. She sucked in deep pulls of air and tried to focus. DuPage's head lolled free from his body. His gray, dead, cold, and lifeless eyes stared up at her. The ground was soaked red with his blood, staining the dry wisps of foliage deep crimson. Coughing and gasping, she rolled onto her hands and knees and curled into a ball. With her moment of bravery spent, she sobbed uncontrollably.

Gore dripped from the tip of John Mark's blade into a puddle on the ground. Robbie sobbed, rocking and hugging her body back and forth in the dirt, muddied by the blood and soil mix of DuPage's blood. For the moment, he was in warrior mode. She was breathing, that was the most important thing. Later, when this was over, he'd help her pick up the pieces, comfort her and hold her in his arms. For now, there was business to tend to.

A vampire wasn't considered dead until he was good and dead. And the only way to make sure of that was to take his head. John Mark sliced through the beefy neck of the guard and suppressed the urge to kick the severed head like a soccer ball. Even an enemy deserved a decent funeral. He felt so alive, danger and rage honing his senses to a razor's edge. This was what he was born to do.

The work done, he turned his attention to Robbie. He needed to get her to the brothers where she'd be safe and he could continue to do his job. But, she was too fragile to move for the moment. The rogues could be back in bigger numbers and with better fighters any second.

Nearly naked, Robbie shivered in his arms, sobbing inconsolably. Not like he knew what to say if he could. She'd been abused in the worst possible ways. Violated. And although DuPage hadn't physically raped her, he might as well have. She'd lost a part of herself, perhaps the most important piece of who she was. The innocent part of her that wanted...no needed to believe in the goodness intrinsic to all human beings, was gone forever. She'd never look at a random passerby in quite the same way. She'd sacrificed that to keep him safe. John Mark loosed his grip on Robbie long enough to pull his t-shirt over his head and drape it across her shoulders. "Shhh, I've got you."

Her tears flowed down onto his bare chest. He held her and let her cry it out. Gently, he ran his hands along her body, checking for injuries. Sighing in relief, he found only minor wounds that were quickly healing. "You're a vampire now. You are almost healed. Everything is going to be ok."

The scent of John Mark enveloping her and the soft cotton of his t-shirt, long enough to strike her mid thigh and cover her nudity made her feel less vulnerable and more human. She took in mouthfuls of air and worked to regain her composure. Later, when this was over, she could fall apart. Until then, John Mark and the brothers were counting on her to keep her head on straight.

She was no longer human. She needed to remember that. Her wounds were healing and her ribs felt good as new. Her body was whole and repaired by whatever mystical force ran through her veins. Her mind, the fear, her weakness and defenselessness, and her helplessness, the vulnerability she felt would take longer. "I'm ok." Robbie reassured John Mark. She drew courage from his strength and found a renewed sense of self in the determined set of his jaw. "We need to get out of here. Try to find the others."

The scent of death snaked through the woods, carried on undercurrents of thick, choking, black smoke. The lodge! The rogue bastards were way ahead of them, burning down the lodge. Smoking out the brothers and drawing them into the fight. He clasped Robbie's hand and headed away from the smoke. With the August dryness and the leaves crisp and brittle underfoot, they were standing in the middle of a giant tinderbox and the whole damned woods might go up like a Roman candle. "We have to hurry."

Chapter 45

Kore grew impatient as she waited at the impromptu command post for DuPage and his men to return. How hard could it be to kill two relatively new vampires? She winced in disgust, remembering the girl. Puny, weak, and frail, just barely through the change and certainly no challenge for DuPage. What in the hell was taking so long? Rather than risk the manpower to hunt for her missing men, she pressed more bodies to the front. Already, her rogues had proven more useful than she would have thought. The Sons had no choice but to fight with their compound burning to ash around them.

Her brother so strong and powerful, almost old enough to be called an ancient, robbed of his long life because of the wanting of this human.... thing. Family line? Not likely, her brother was mistaken. That thing was no blood relation to a great man like her brother.

The Sons cut her brother's life short because of his idiocy. Now, she would cut theirs short, much shorter than his had been. The Sons could be dealt with easily enough. Very few of them had seen any real battle time. And the Great Father was nowhere to be found. Could he be sacrificing his children like lambs to the wolves? Or was he just that disinterested in them.

The territory was ripe for the taking. A stronghold in the center of the United States gave her a decided tactical advantage. From here she could branch out and take more and more of the land for herself. Of course, food sources would have to be rationed. And new vampire recruits heavily regulated. Otherwise they would deplete their resources. Keeping their existence a secret from the sheep they intended to slaughter was the highest priority. Someday, that would change. The vampire population was relatively small when compared to the human surplus. Simple arithmetic could spell their demise. Until she had her feet firmly planted and her numbers high enough, she had to lay low. A band of paranoid humans were more dangerous than the most feral rogue and twice as deadly.

She reviewed the key targets on her map and grinned. With the main compound blown to bits and the Sons engaged, it wouldn't be long now before a victor emerged from the ashes. Kore grinned with satisfaction. She felt certain of a victory; her men outnumbered The Sons three to one. And some of her brother's creations were quite resourceful, if not lethal. Others were simply cannon fodder to be dispatched. Tonight she would be seen as a liberator to some and to the rest, an angel of death.

******

John Mark pulled Robbie along behind him. She was doing her best to keep up. Clad in only tennis shoes and his t-shirt every thorn and branch dug into her bare skin. The moon was still high over the tree line, shining down on them, oblivious and uncaring about the goings on so far below. She wished she were up there instead of down here, choking on the acrid stink of burned wood and charred flesh.

This had to be one of the longest nights of her life. Topped only by the night her parents were killed in the accident. The walk to the lodge, the flames reaching high to illuminate the starlit sky in a dancing pattern of orange shadows, the longest she'd ever walked. Longer than the walk down that sterile white corridor to the morgue to identify her parent's lifeless bodies.

John Mark and she reached the lodge to find it smoldering in ashes. Flaming skeletal remains of charred buildings burned around them. The stench of burning flesh hung heavily in the air. Robbie coughed and heaved, covering her mouth and nose as they wandered though the husks of buildings. The bodies that they encountered, scattered here and there, thrown out by the blast or dropped where they stood by the intense heat, were nothing more than mounds of charred blackened debris, completely unrecognizable.

John Mark cursed and fell to his knees overwrought with grief. The casualties from the blast had been few. But, it didn't matter to him. One dead was too many. Fury raged through him, hardening his heart and charring it black as the wooden skeletons around him. The rogues didn't stop with killing only vampires. Several of the smoking piles of flesh were human remains. There was no point to search the grounds any further. The fighting had moved out to the west, toward the bluffs. There wasn't anyone alive here. And the dead weren't going anywhere. Getting Robbie to safety trumped the battle. He only hoped, unlike his warning about the attack, he could get her there before it was too late.

Robbie pulled against John Mark's grip on her hand. He was leading her away from the burning ruins. "But...but...we can't go yet. We might find someone. A survivor." She dropped to her knees overcome by sorrow. The losses she faced were too great. She thought of her parents and of all the families who had lost loved ones in the attack, too many people, too much loss, no reason to fight death any longer. "Why would someone do this?" she asked between sobs.

John Mark knelt beside Robbie, clasping her hand in his. "Vampires fight over territory and hunting rights. When we killed Kore's brother she had excuse she was looking for to attack." He lifted her chin with his index finger, forcing her face up and her eyes to meet his. "I need you to be strong for me. We have to keep moving. I wont lose you too." He pulled her to her feet and led her away from the lodge and the battle, to the east, deep into the foothills.

They traveled in silence. Robbie had lost track of how far they had gone when suddenly John Mark stopped. Brushing away a thick cover of ivy, with his hands, he motioned for her to follow him inside the dark pit burrowed deep into the earth. "C'mon," he said after pausing to shuffle the tendrils of ivy over the opening obscuring it from plain view.

"Where are we?" Robbie asked. She grabbed his hand tightly as he led her down a series of black winding corridors. They were in some kind of an underground tunnel system. The rock was damp and slick beneath her feet. The air was stale the deeper they traveled into the mines.

"Underground mine shaft." John Mark replied. His tone was flat and businesslike, very matter of fact. Emotions had nothing to do with the task that awaited him. And as far as he was concerned, the sooner he joined the fight, the better. He was asking a lot of Robbie to trust him enough to do exactly what he asked, to stay behind and let him do his job. This narrow shaft led to a larger system of tunnels and a wide chamber deep underground. Anyone who survived the explosion and wasn't involved in the fight would be there. Holed up and waiting.

"I want you to continue down this passageway. Just follow it and you'll meet up with the others. Robbie, I need to know you're safe," John Mark said.

"You're leaving me?" Robbie asked in shock. How was that for a partnership? He was sending her to hide like a rabbit in a hole while he went out to take on the bad guys. What did he expect her to do while she waited for him to return? If he returned at all. The thought that he might not, that he could be killed had tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

"Robbie, I have to go. My brothers need me," John Mark pled. For a minute, the warrior in him was forgotten and the boy who was so in love with the girl emerged from under the thick cloud of his warrior's indifference. "Promise me you'll stay put. That, no matter what happens, you won't put yourself in danger."

Robbie nodded, but didn't utter a word. As long as she didn't speak a promise, it didn't count. When it came to the possibility of losing John Mark, all bets were off. If he wanted that kind of obedience, he should have gotten a dog. She stood on her tiptoes and leaned into him, memorizing every hard plane of the man wrapped in her arms. "Don't forget, I need you too. Promise me you'll be safe. No heroics. Please."

John Mark held Robbie close, the softness of her body pressed against his was a feeling he would never forget. He didn't promise her a thing. When it came to the battle, how could he when he didn't even know what he and the brothers were up against. He tipped his chin and kissed her harder than he ever had before. "Love you," he whispered against her lips. "Be brave for me, Robbie. Be brave."

Robbie balanced her weight on her heels and reluctantly unwound her arms from John Mark's neck. His kiss, filled with worry and love, burned on her lips. "Love you too." She took a few shuffling steps into the darkness of the tunnels, walking backwards as he moved forward. The last thing she saw before the blackness separated them was his hand brought up to his lips, throwing her one last kiss. And then, he was gone and she was alone.

Chapter 46

The Great Father didn't like this one bit. His brother, the Prophet, had foreseen the outcome and it was good, but, not without its losses. This was to be one of the Son's defining moments. The event that would turn this brood of men into true warriors and in it prove them worthy of the tile of a Son. They were tough, sure. He'd trained them to be so. They had heart, of course, or he wouldn't have chosen them. But, they'd never been in battle. Scuffs with one or two rogues, yes, battle, a full out onslaught of death and destruction, never. All that would change tonight. And his brother had ordered him away. To fret over his men the way a mother hen worried over her chicks when the foxes crept into the hen house in the dark of the night. "Brother, I need to be with my men. I'm their leader. Their father."

The Prophet, as he preferred to be called, leaned back against the rough bark of a nearby tree and sighed into the darkness. His human name had no meaning for him now. The life he'd left behind to join his brother, was just a dim memory. "No you don't. Let them do what you trained them to do. Your men need this chance. You've, my brother, seen your share of battles. Now, its their turn to fight."