Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 08

"She is magnificent," Marcus whispered from behind his creator.

"And she's just getting started," Nessa replied. She was begrudgingly admitting to herself that maybe Marcus was right and she should not have come. Some floating and a few skirmishes had already left her feeling drained, causing her to rely more and more on Marcus. Not that she really minded. She liked watching him work. "Marcus, that one, towards the back . . . that's the Hanged Man," she murmured, a deep rage filling her tanks a for a bit.

"The one who killed Ipos?" Marcus pulled his sword out from its back sheath. Despite almost two thousand years having passed, Marcus was a traditionalist. He liked to kill the important people up close and personal. "Say the word, my eternal love."

Nessa dug her claws into Marcus's shoulders and growled. "I want my pound of flesh."

"And you shall have it."

Marcus sprang into action, and he had not lost a step. Those who knew him could almost see the Roman warrior stepping forward in the shining armor and plumed helmet that he had worn so long ago. He had been born and forged in the wars of arguably the greatest empire on earth, and he had not forgotten. Oh no, his muscles and his blood remembered.

Some of the leaders of the Minor Arcana had arrived with their few ragged troops, as most of the rest were already dead or had fled. The King of Swords was stabbed through the midsection as Marcus approached, who then spun, pulled his sword out, elbowed the man in the back of the head, then stepped forward and stabbed someone else. No wasted motion, and everything landed.

Things were pure chaos now, as the werewolf hybrids had encountered an enemy more deadly than itself. It had numbers and fire support, but the vampires had speed, strength, hi-tech, and a perimeter. It was never pretty to watch a team begin to break when such action led to a grisly death, but that's what began to happen. Theo crept off into the darkness to hunt the human Nightwalker backups in their perches, while Nessa's demons began beating the bushes. Every now and then, they would hear a scream as Anabella unleashed banshee fury on someone, then beat them over the head with her shilelagh (and Jenna had learned never to mention to the banshee that the shilelagh was an Irish invention . . . it made her testy).

The vampires engaged their werewolf counterparts, giving Jenna a chance to catch her bearings. Her eyes were drawn up. "Where are you?" she muttered.

"Looking for the Fool?" Nessa asked, standing behind her.

"Yes, I . . . you feel off," Jenna said, turning to her sire. "You're tired. Weary."

The redhead nodded. "Yeah, a bit. We need to finish this."

"You should go. We can --"

Nessa cut her off with a raised eyebrow. "I don't run." Nessa raised the shotgun she was carrying and blasted a round into the Page of Cup's breastplate. The plate held, but the wolf was knocked back twenty feet.

"I know. Doesn't mean I won't tell you to," Jenna replied. She looked up. "I need to find him. To end this."

"Don't go --" Nessa watched her youngest jump up, grab a diagonal girder, and shimmy off into the darkness. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," she whispered. "Take care."

Jenna made her way up into the spiderweb of plas-steel girders, dust, and shadows that clung to the ceiling of the warehouse. Her eyes took on that soft, white glow that had captivated her sire, and she gazed out into the world above the world, looking for him. Finding him.

The Fool had a machine gun in his right hand, and he was leaning over with his other claws gripping a beam, and he was unloading shells with uncommon ferocity. The Fool that the Empress had known would never waste ammo that way. He was mostly hitting the tops of construction equipment, but she saw at least one vampire's armor penetrated, and Anabella was trying hard to keep out of his view.

Then their eyes met, and the Fool righted himself on the beam. Next, he shook his head. Finally, he did something that truly surprised Jenna. He ran. It took her a full second to realize what had happened before pursuing. Running? The Fool?

Across the girders, up an access ladder, and through a hatch in the roof, she followed him. 'What is it about roofs?' she thought as she followed his trail around rusted cooling units and other structures. Up ahead, the Fool sat perched on the edge of some piping, watching her.

"I thought we might take this somewhere more private," he said as she jumped nimbly up onto a metal crate. "Oh Empress, you should have simply surrendered."

"Surrender? The field is lost to you," she replied.

"The day, perhaps, but not the field. You brought in powerful reinforcements. Vampires?"

Jenna nodded, glancing around. He would have some more tricks, she was sure of it. "My family."

"I know of your family," the Fool replied, growling from behind sharp canine teeth. "They died in fear and pain, did they not?"

Jenna's skin felt clammy and her heart gave an involuntarily beat. "Is that your plan then? To anger me with thoughts of my old life?"

"I have no control over your thoughts, Empress. I'm not sure that I ever did. Had I realized how . . . damaged, you were, I might have culled you from the herd earlier."

"You are inconsistent in your thoughts. First, I am the only one worthy to become your mate, and now? Now you call me damaged? It's almost ironic, seeing as I am more whole now than I ever was when I worked for you." Her hand drifted towards the base of her spine and the guass pistol hiding there.

"I wouldn't recommend that," the Fool said, holding up a detonator in his right hand. "See, I figured you would surround the base, so I've rigged explosives in a wide perimeter. Touch that gun, and all of the other traitor Nightwalkers and the rest of the monsters that you've thrown your lot in with will die."

Jenna froze. She should have known better. The Fool had plans on top of plans on top of plans. "To what end? You blow them up, I kill you. You gain nothing from it unless you are planning on running." She cocked her head. "And I never figured you for a coward."

The Fool's hand clenched. "No, I am not a coward. I simply adjust strategy."

"Adjust? You threatened my son, my friends, and anyone else who disagrees with your obscene crusade, and you call that adjustment? Do you even know what you're fighting for anymore?"

"I am fighting for my nation, and to create the greatest black ops unit that the world has ever seen. Think about what we've learned. Thing about what we ARE! If we get our scientists to analyze both viruses . . . the one that affects you and me, think of what they could create!"

He would never stop. Jenna knew that, but what to do? She wouldn't let him take the buildings down. She wouldn't let him escape.

The Fool saw the gears clicking in the Empress's head. He grabbed a pair of stasis cuffs from off of his belt and tossed them to her. "Take off you comms, drop your weapons, and put those on. Once we're safely on our way to DoD headquarters, I disarm the explosives."

Jenna was not an idiot. Every fiber in her being reminded her of her training. Once the kidnapper has you where he or she wants you, you're pretty much lost. He would not abide by the promise he had just made. He would have no reason to.

*Jenna,* came William's voice, *Don't do this! I've been watching the whole time, and I let Caitlin know. They're evacuating the area. Just keep him distracted.*

'A chance,' she thought. "Okay," she said, making sure that her comms unit was still on when she put it down. "Taking off comms, and putting weapons down," she said, keeping her eyes straight on her enemy. She needed to buy time, so she would go along with this charade. She wanted to look around for the remote sensor that her son was piloting, but she didn't want to give its position away. Her son had been looking out for her, which made her all kinds of proud.

"Hurry," the Fool said, watching as weapon after weapon hit the rooftop. The woman had come armed to the teeth. It actually aroused him somewhat. She said he could not turn her, but perhaps he could still . . . enjoy . . . her.

By the time the last grenade had been placed on the ground, the Fool had become somewhat impatient. He did not believe that the Empress was going to make this so easy, not after all the problems she had caused. What was her angle? He did not have much chance to figure it out, as the Hanged Man erupted through a door onto the roof.

"We must . . . hurry," the hybrid Nighwalker growled. "The defenses have fallen."

"I am aware of this," the Fool said.

"So the end game remains the same?" the Hanged Man asked, looking hungrily at Jenna.

"We were fighting back on our heels. No more. We take her, we start over somewhere else. In the end, we win."

"Well, I don't know how long that vampire will be distracted. He's dangerous."

The Fool glanced away from his prey to look at his second in command. "YOU think he's dangerous?"

"Sir, I've never seen anyone fight like WATCH OUT!"

A small distraction was all she had needed, and so Jenna moved the moment she could. Using all the speed that her own hybrid nature allowed, she had closed the distance between them in less than a blink, and her hand closed so tightly on the Fool's that she heard a bone snap.

"Impressive," he said, then swung his other fist at her head.

Jenna dodged, then brought her knee up to the Fool's groin, which he blocked with his own leg. He tried to wrest the detonator away from the Empress, but her grip was like cold iron. He swung his arm, but she didn't let go, allowing herself to be slammed into an enormous pipe rather than give him control of the device. Of course, she was still conscious, so she rolled backward and hurled him in an arc over her head and smashed him into the roof with a loud thud. He did not let go either.

The door that the Hanged Man had come through earlier burst open again, and Marcus came flying out, a sword in one hand and blood streaming from a cut in his forehead. He looked angry.

"We still have a score to settle, you and I," the Roman warrior growled, hurling himself at the Hanged Man with deadly purpose.

The combat on the rooftop became chaotic, with the Hanged Man attempting to stave off Marcus while Jenna and the Fool fought for control of the detonator. Jenna had to make sure the device did not go off, putting her at a distinct disadvantage. She fought with her free elbow and her knees, laying on blows faster than the Fool could block them, but the wolf could take a lot of damage and his blows came down heavier than his adversary's.

Marcus's fight with the Hanged Man, however, was all over the place, and there was nothing at hand that could not be counted as a weapon. Marcus kicked the Hanged Man back twenty feet, but the wolf just landed on all four paws and then bounced off two walls as he closed the gap and attempted to remove Marcus's head. Marcus failed to oblige, ducking and then landing a serious uppercut on the wolf's jaw. The wolf took it in stride, bringing an elbow down on Marcus's head.

"Your new friend is formidable," the Fool said, trying to gouge Jenna's eyes out.

"He's a Roman soldier. From actual Rome. He's had a lot of practice." She went for an elbow break, but the old commander was far too crafty for that, spinning until he had Jenna in an arm lock. Jenna stepped toward him and elbowed him twice in the face, then spun out of the hold. He kicked her in the knee as she moved, and she was sure something was close to breaking. Still, she couldn't let go. Her free hand grabbed the Fool by the throat and rammed the back of his head into a wall, trying vainly to choke off his oxygen supply as well. He went for a forearm to the inside of her elbow to break the distance, then tried to forearm her in the face. She ducked her head back and then bit him. Hard.

When the Fool yanked his arm free, he took one of Jenna's fangs with him, causing blood to pour out her mouth. Still, it was almost worth it for her to watch her former boss shaking his arm wildly as if trying to get rid of cooties. She used the temporary distraction to put her elbow into his throat. Most of it was blocked by his armor, but some force got through, and she knew that he had to be having problems breathing by now.

Marcus was trying very hard to ram his short sword through the Hanged Man's eye socket, but the wolf was being strangely non-cooperative. He was responding quite savagely. He had even ripped his mask away, showing a somewhat mutated and all-together vicious looking wolf face. The two titanic warriors seemed so evenly matched, except that Marcus was not tiring, and the Hanged Man had been in conflict all night.

"Give up," Jenna said through bloody lips. "The order to evacuate the surrounding area has already been given. The rest of Jenna's . . . OOF! . . . people will be here soon," she added despite a hard blow to the stomach.

"A real soldier never surrenders," he snarled. "I'm surprised you were so willing to do so."

"I wasn't surrendering," she told him as coldly as she could. "I was adapting."

He snarled and raised his hand to try and hit her again, and then . . . then something strange happened. A small, floating, metallic disk ran into the Fool's face at lackluster speed. It did manage to hit him in the eye. It had somehow entered the fray silently and, while doing no damage, certainly took the Fool by surprise.

'It's a remote sensor,' Jenna thought. It was her son. As the Fool almost casually destroyed the sensor, Jenna knew that she needed to take advantage. The only thing at hand was a rusted piece of sheet metal. She tore off a chunk and, making sure to hit an angle perpendicular to the arm, shoved it down as hard as she could.

The Fool let out a howl that would have frightened villagers across the land back in the day. The Empress had just taken off his hand at the wrist, leaving her in sole possession of the detonator. She summersaulted away, putting space between the two of them. The Fool, already mostly mad, started forward until he saw a couple of red dots sweep across the ground and come to rest on his chest and between his eyes. He looked up to the roof of the stairwell.

"Death," he gasped. "High Priestess." It was simply an acknowledgement.

The two renegade Nightwalkers stared down their former commander, their weapons loaded with silver and trained on him if he so much as twitched.

"Like the lady said," Death said solidly, glancing at Jenna, "It's over."

To his credit, the Hanged Man was loyal to the last. Seeing his commanding officer in trouble, he broke away from Marcus and interjected himself between the Fool and the commandos. Not that Marcus much cared, as he tackled the Hanged Man from behind, locking the wolf's arm behind him and grinding his face into the roof.

At that moment, something happened in the Fool's eyes. It was as if the fire that had been burning there was extinguished in an instant. He knew . . . it had taken so long and so many lives, but he knew. The Fool was done.

"It was a good dream," he muttered, as much to himself as anyone else.

"It was not worth the price," Jenna replied anyway, picked one of her pistols up where she had discarded it.

About that time, Nessa, Anabella, Shinmatsu, and the demons arrived. Cresil and Kobal looked down at the captured Hanged Man with pure hate. Nessa just looked tired. She saw that her oldest and youngest children were bleeding, wounded in her name. She had depleted her energy reserves in the fight, and she would need blood soon. So would the rest of her children but, in that stubborn way of vampires, they would insist that Nessa eat first.

"Do you surrender?" she asked, just badly wanting this to be over.

The Hanged Man was like a rabid animal, but Marcus was able to keep him pinned. The Fool just stood there, bleeding.

Jenna handed the Fool's other hand, complete with detonator, to Shinmatsu, then turned back to the source of all her recent troubles. What was strange was that she did not truly feel victorious. "Sir?" she asked, stepping toward the Fool with her weapon raised.

The Fool looked at her, almost through her, then closed his eyes and nodded. He knew she was not going to give him the opportunity to live. She knew he would not accept it. Too much had happened. Too much water under too small of a bridge. She pulled the trigger and shot the Fool two times in the head, sending him to the ground in a bloody heap.

The Hanged Man let out a mournful howl. Marcus looked up at his sire, his lover, and his friend. In response, Nessa stuck out her fist, extended her thumb, then rotated her hand until the thumb was facing downward. Marcus nodded, grabbed his sword off the ground, and drove it through the back of the Hanged Man's head.

Silence. Crisp, dark, all-encompassing silence. The distant sirens, the sounds of the city, the clamor of the mop-up going on down below, all of it seemed to just fade away.

"Sometimes," Nessa said, looking at the carnage on the warehouse rooftop, "I hate my job."

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Later that night . . .

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It had been a scramble, but Avery had managed to get enough donors to replenish the blood for all the battle-weary vampires. Accommodations had been arranged for the dozens of new refugees and captives until Nessa was able to get a new alpha were for the hybrid wolves, or before she could get around to mind-wiping the human commandos who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had saved as many as they could, but Nessa's crematories were still working overtime to get rid of the evidence.

Ghede and Lawrence had already begun laying the groundwork for their coverup. The Fool's computer banks would show medical data chronicling a number of unexpected mutations resulting from the bioengineering, and the bodies that were found would show all sorts of anomalies, thanks to Ghede's spell. The Fool and the Hanged Man would never be found.

The Nightwalkers that had survived had agreed to work for Nessa, and the ancient vampire had already put out feelers for a new alpha werewolf to come and oversee the area's pack, including the hybrids and all of the special attention that they would require. The World was the highest ranking Nightwalker hybrid that had survived and been captured, and he had agreed to help calm his brethren in exchange for Marcus's promise not to eviscerate him.

Marcus's wound had already healed, as had Jenna's, though her missing fang would take a few days. Luckily, she could feed with just one. Instantly upon her return, William and Caitlin had started fawning over her, almost competing for the right to nurse her back to health. Death and Avery were overseeing the clean up, so the vampires, plus Jenna's "entourage," gathered in Nessa's quarters.

"Are you going to be okay?" William asked again.

Jenna mumbled something through the ice pack. Her glowing white eyes had dimmed and there was a touch of blood at the corners of her eyes as if she were trying to cry. "I think so. Nessa said the fang will grow back in the next few days."

Caitlin wiped the tears away. "You had to do it. We had to do it. We saved who we could, and that's because of you."

William looked confused. "Wait, are you upset because you killed that Fool guy? Why?"

Jenna smiled wanly and put her hand on her son's shoulder. "I . . . I think it's a military thing."

Marcus walked over and sat down. "Sorry, I could not help but eavesdrop. Seriously, vampire hearing," he added with a grin. He looked at William. "When you are part of a unit as insulated as the military can be, there is a kind of brotherhood. Much like real family, you don't always like your brothers, but there is always a sense that they will be there when you need them. To end such a relationship, however justified, is like --"