Vampire Uprising

Chapter Twenty-Two

Manns Harbor, North Carolina

“One of the others is coming,” Randolph announced.

Liam stood with the other Full Blood in a wooded area less than two miles east of a small coastal town. It was a cool, windy night. They’d covered a lot of ground at a vigorous pace but none of the shapeshifters were any worse for wear. Full Bloods were accustomed to traversing their vast territories. Half Breeds were only content when they were moving, and Kawosa had been eager to stretch his legs after being huddled in Lancroft’s basement for too many years. Pointing his scarred nose toward the Atlantic, Liam drew a breath and said, “Kawosa told me about our approaching guest. You think it’ll be our friend from Australia?”

“My money’s on Sandoval. He’s more the kind who would respond to the news you’ve been so good at spreading.”

“You flatter me.”

“No flattery intended. Your attack on Kansas City was meant to draw attention, and that’s what you did. If it’s not Sandoval, it could be any of the others. Not that there are many to choose from.” Randolph crossed his arms over a solid chest covered in a jacket that had been hanging just inside the back door of a house in town. Breaking into the house had been a lot easier than convincing Liam to leave its owner sleeping, but he’d somehow accomplished both jobs. A wind brushed through the trees with barely enough strength to shake the leaves in it.

“Do you smell the young one?” Liam asked.

Nodding to a trio of figures at the edge of a nearby clearing, Randolph replied, “No, but they do. Look how restless they are.”

“Even with the old trickster reining them in, those wretches still look ready to break loose. They really are a piece of work.”

The other three were just far enough away for Randolph to see the shapes of their bodies, but not the expressions on their faces. Two of them were Half Breeds, but hardly looked the part anymore. They’d evolved to survive in a world left behind by Lancroft’s pestilence and had changed once more thanks to Liam’s attentions. In Randolph’s opinion, trying to infect the marrow of another shapeshifter was akin to sneezing on someone who already had a cold. The damage had been done. Liam had a knack for changing a shapeshifter even more, which made him something more than just company.

“You’re thinking this was a mistake, aren’t you?” Liam asked.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you always start to think along those lines once things really start to get good. Do you doubt those wretches can get the job done?”

“They were once human,” Randolph stated. “Now they’re a little bit of three species. If they can’t do the job, nobody can. What of your Mongrel friends? We haven’t heard from them in a while.”

When Liam spoke, he seemed to be both savoring and choking on his own words. “They’re pariahs among their own kind, but there are plenty among them that have higher aspirations than living in the dirt and hiding beneath the humans’ sewers. I haven’t asked them to do anything that isn’t within their best interests.”

Randolph’s eyes shifted within their sockets. “We both set the task in front of them.”

Where Randolph was careful, Liam positioned himself so there would be no mistaking his intent. “You try giving them an order without me approving it and see what happens. Are you so proud that you can’t admit you need my help even this long after you’ve already begged for it?”

“I didn’t beg,” Randolph replied as his teeth reflexively melted into points.

Grinning with satisfaction, Liam said, “At least it’s nice to know you still appreciate me.”

“The wretches swarmed into a city. The humans have enough pictures of you on their computers to make you a celebrity. The Skinners are pooling resources that would have been lost if Jonah Lancroft hadn’t been forced to play his hand, and now we’re awaiting the arrival of a Full Blood who’s probably looking to add to all of the confusion gripping this section of the world. How could I not appreciate your contributions to the state of things?”

“This had to happen. You know that, right?”

Randolph’s only answer was a growl masked beneath a steam-laden exhalation.

“Change is good all ‘round,” Liam said in a more relaxed voice that dripped with his cockney brogue. “Our mistake was letting the Skinners get too comfortable, especially in this neck of the woods. Even the Travelers have had too much time to collect themselves and figure new ways to put a hurt on the likes of us. As for the other Full Blood coming here, perhaps that can work to our advantage.” Lowering his voice as well as his head, he said, “The Amriany are expecting to find me or my new pack, and I won’t disappoint. It’s doubtful this generation has even met you. That is, unless you’ve made a trip across the pond within the last few decades?”

“I haven’t.”

“There you are, then. I set ‘em up. You knock ‘em down. We almost took over a continent that way, remember?”

Randolph did remember. His crystalline eyes narrowed as all those screams echoed through his mind. Before he tried to silence them, another sound caught his attention. Liam heard it as well because he angled his head to point his eye in that direction.

Lyssa darted between the trees, running close to the ground with effortless grace that seemed like a dance compared to a werewolf’s powerful gait. She veered to the north, circled around the spot where the other three figures were gathered, and then approached the Full Bloods to come to a stop in front of Liam. She wasn’t even breathing heavily when she said, “We’ve spoken to packs in Florida and Louisiana. There are members from both who will join you so long as you change them the way you did with me and Max.”

“How far can we trust them?”

“For what you have in mind, all the way.”

Liam glanced over to Randolph and got a response that would have gone completely unnoticed by anyone who didn’t know exactly what to look for. Looking back to the Mongrel, he asked, “Where’s Max?”

“Trying to find a pack of wanderers not far from here. With you two so close, they’re probably trying to get to safer ground, so he wants to catch up with them before they’re entrenched.”

“Tell me,” Randolph said. “Can you pick up the scent of anything apart from the ones who are within your sight at the moment?”

“Like who?” Lyssa asked.

“Just tell me what you can find.”

She humored him by taking an exaggerated sniff, but quickly snapped her nose toward the east and sniffed some more. Her breaths became almost frantic as she pulled in short gulps of air that were drawn all the way down to the back of her throat and let out through her mouth. When she looked back to Randolph, she said, “There are more Full Bloods coming. The scent is too far east to be over dry land, so it must be on a ship or … I don’t know but they are coming.”

Although Randolph was content to study her carefully, Liam wasn’t so passive. “How long did you know about this? When did you pick up on the scent?”

“I’ve smelled nothing but Full Bloods for days!” she said while taking a step back. “Your scents are everywhere, mixed with everything and spread across the country, thanks to all the running you’ve been doing. Why do you think the Mongrel packs have scattered?” Three shapes huddled in the nearby darkness; Kawosa and two Half Breeds. She started to look back at them, but quickly averted her eyes. “And then there’s him. Him being in the open air makes everything different. He’s one of us, but not. One of you, but not. He’s everything and nothing. How could you not know that?”

“I know who Kawosa is,” Randolph said. “I know what he is.”

“He is Ktseena,” she hissed. “If you knew that, you should have known to leave him wherever he’s been trapped all these years. I don’t know how Lancroft managed to put him in a cage, but Max thinks …”

When she became too frightened to continue, Liam bent down to one knee and leaned forward. “Go on. Tell me what Max thinks.”

“Max thinks he may not have been captured at all. Ktseena could very well have allowed Lancroft to think he’d been captured just so he could gain the Skinner’s confidence.”

“Why would he do that?” Randolph asked.

“If even a handful of the legends about him are true, there’s no way for us to make sense of what he does or why. I’ve only been told a few of the stories, but they all say Ktseena would help no one but himself.”

“There are legends about me,” Randolph pointed out. “There are legends about Liam. There are legends about your kind as well as the wretches. The only difference between legends and frightened rumor is the amount of time that’s passed since the tale was first told.”

“So you don’t believe the legends about him?”

“I believe what I can put together with my own senses,” Randolph said. Leveling a firm glare upon the Mongrel, he added, “You do not need to deal with Kawosa. If you do the jobs you’ve been given, you will get the rewards you’ve been promised.”

“And what if you cannot control him?”

“Then the situation is well out of your hands, Mongrel. Best to enjoy the scraps we throw you and live to spread more of your precious legends another day.”

Liam stood up in the baggy clothes he’d stolen and told her, “Now that the Skinners have found Lancroft’s weapons and the Amriany have come to these shores, we’re going to need more to stand behind us. Kawosa agrees.”

“He’s the first of the deceivers,” Lyssa replied. “Every word from his mouth has an equal chance of being the truth or a lie.”

“The words he speaks to humans aren’t worth the air they float on,” Liam pointed out. “He is also the first shapeshifter and owes nothing to humans. Don’t lose sight of that.”

Lyssa cringed, but her question was important enough for her to push through her trepidation. “And why would he treat Full Bloods any differently?”

“Because,” Liam said proudly and without a twitch, “we’re his favorites.”

She’d been around him long enough to know that was all she was going to get. When Kawosa barked at the Half Breeds and stood up on his hind legs, she hopped back and then scampered away.

“I should keep an eye on her,” Liam said. “Make certain that she or the other one don’t get any big ideas in those pointed little heads of theirs.”

“Fine. Off with you, then. I want a word with the old one.”

Liam jogged after the Mongrel, allowed his upper body to fall forward and shifted into his four-legged form before his front paws hit the dirt. After that, a few powerful leaps carried him out of sight.

Striding to the spot where Kawosa had been, Randolph almost lost sight of the solitary figure several times. The figure clad in tattered rags didn’t fade away so much as blend in with everything around him. When the wind bent the trees, Kawosa swayed in the same rhythm. When light from the sky or the nearby town shifted to make the shadows lurch, he matched those movements as well. For one such as Randolph, it was unsettling to watch. “You truly do enjoy your work, don’t you?” he asked.

“The Half Breeds have been set loose as you asked,” Kawosa replied.

“Were they changed?”

“They are living sculptures already. I was able to make them into something that would be close enough to suit your purposes.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Kawosa. I’m surprised.”

“So far, our purposes seem to be more or less the same. And the ones I don’t share, I find … interesting.” Gazing in the direction the Half Breeds had bolted, Kawosa added, “They’re up to your task and they’ll remain loyal.”

“Are you certain of that? The wretches aren’t exactly the sort to be reasoned with.”

“I didn’t reason with them. They act on instinct.” Shifting his mouth into something that could have been a grin or a snarl, he added, “So I rewrote their instincts.”

“Will it last?”

“No, but it will hold long enough for them to complete their hunt. Your friend is plotting against you, you know.”

“Liam’s plots aren’t complex. Something strikes his fancy and he runs after it.”

“I suppose you know him better than I do.”

“He’s just someone who knows me well enough to keep me from killing him,” Randolph mused.

“And you know him well enough to make him useful. It doesn’t bother you that he thinks so little of you?”

Randolph studied the being in front of him. Not quite a man and not quite an animal, Kawosa seemed to be obscured by clouds that weren’t even there. His eyes shifted from the color of a clear sky to one reflected in unfathomably deep waters. His face had narrowed and his posture became stooped. Whether that was to hide his true size or coddle some sort of ailment was anyone’s guess.

Shifting his eyes once again to acquire a multifaceted quality and a color that was only slightly grayer than Randolph’s, Kawosa said, “There is another reason you’re so intent on finding this other Full Blood that is making its way here.”

“If you truly are the one who created shapeshifters, then you know about the deficiencies we have in picking up some very particular scents. We can pinpoint a specific human from hundreds of miles away but we cannot find those that will become most vital to us. We can barely smell our own kind unless we’ve acquired their scent from its source. Is that your doing, Trickster?”

Kawosa smirked. “That would be a nice little way to make things difficult, wouldn’t it? The almighty Full Bloods have to live with a fault.” Bringing his tone down from the taunting edge it had acquired, he shook his head. “I’m not that crafty. Leave it to the higher powers to come up with torments that cut so deep. To be honest, I’ve always seen your few flaws as a boon to your kind.”

“How so?”

“If every Full Blood had absolute power and could so easily find one another, what would prevent you from tearing through entire continents chasing each other around?” Using his hands and twitching fingers to illustrate his point, he continued, “All of your brothers and sisters, scampering over the globe, knocking down what the humans have taken so long to build. The ones like you would be forced into a life of defense and war, while the ones like Liam would be given the opportunity to consolidate his gifts into something far worse. Whether you agree or not, that is the way of things.”

“You’re fond of humans?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“One of them locked you in a box belowground. If they haven’t figured out you’re missing already, more of them will undoubtedly come to try and put you right back into that box or another that’s even worse. Now,” Randolph added as he stared out in the direction that Liam had gone, “the humans that didn’t even know about us until so recently will kill us the first chance they get.”

Kawosa faced in that direction as well. “Humans are a source of endless amusement. Throughout the generations, I have found them to be both devious and gullible. Optimistic, yet hardened. Musical and grating. Even when they know better than to trust, they still want to see what they could be missing if they strayed. No matter how much there is to fear, they never hesitate to walk away from the path.”

“Yes,” Randolph sighed. “Liam enjoys that aspect of them very much as well.”

“You spend a lot of time concerning yourself with him.”

“I know. That’s why I want to leave this territory of mine.”

“Leave? And go where?”

“Whoever is answering Liam’s call to arms can have my territory, and I will stake a claim in theirs.”

“Simple swap,” Kawosa mused.

“Nothing simple about it and you know that.”

“I also know that some very interesting times are coming. This has always been a land of strife and confusion. In recent years,” Kawosa added enthusiastically, “doubly so. The Half Breeds are growing. The humans are regressing. Up is down. Fire is water. Even the Nymar have broken out of the stale shell they’ve inhabited for far too long.”

Randolph watched the other being with a mix of caution and reverence. Even as some of Kawosa’s words degraded into babble, he wasn’t about to make the mistake of completely discounting their source. “You can sense a change within the leeches?”

Clamping his lips in a gnarled grimace, Kawosa lifted his chin and re-formed his face into something with nostrils that stretched back like a pair of offset, toothless mouths. “Ohhh yes. They evolve like anything else, but their spore is internal and slow to adjust. They can only taste through their host’s mouth and see through clouded eyes. I don’t know if it was the Skinners or the Amriany, but one of the groups figured this out, and Lancroft was one of the first to capture one of the evolved Nymar before they had a chance to spread their gift.

“The leeches haven’t had as much reason to change as the Half Breeds, so they become lazy. If there’s one thing I can spot, one thing I can smell, one thing I can feel, it’s laziness inside someone’s heart. Laziness makes the humans so easy to manipulate. Their legends are full of whining about being deceived by the likes of me, when all they needed to do was not give in to the temptations being offered.”

“You sound like Liam.”

“And what’s so bad about that?”

“He’s insane.”

After considering that a moment, Kawosa replied, “We all have our quirks. If you’ve been able to deal with him thus far, why do you need my help with any other Full Bloods? I would think you’d be grateful to acquire another’s scent.”

“Whoever is coming so far to respond to Liam’s call will not be the sort that is willing to hand over anything to anyone. If not for our kind’s deficiency, I could have found the rest of us during all my years of searching. Instead, I must piece a picture together by looking at the voids instead of the solids. Once I have acquired their scent, I ask you to convince the new arrivals that it is best for them to stay here.”

“Surely they will ask where you have gone. No doubt they won’t have any trouble figuring it out. What should I say to that?”

“Say what you like,” Randolph told him. “Just grease the wheels for this to happen. This is what I ask in return for breaking you out of Lancroft’s prison.”

“Haven’t I been helpful enough to repay that debt?”

“We haven’t asked you to do anything you wouldn’t have freely done on your own. That is no way to repay a debt. What I ask of you is also well within the scope of your normal affairs, but it is important enough to me for it to carry more weight.”

Kawosa nodded slowly. “I think I can arrange something. But don’t tell me that is your only request. What of the matter you mentioned before? Was that a genuine concern or has it been replaced by your newfound wanderlust?”

“That matter stands, but now is not the time to discuss it any further. Once I have settled in my new territory, if you still feel inclined to grant me that favor, I am sure you can find me. Are you certain those wretches can pick up the scent we’re after?” Randolph asked.

“Oh yes. They just need some time. As far as they’re concerned, the single task I have given them is the only one there is. What happens when they find the one you’re looking for?”

“Perhaps I’ll have a companion when I take my journey.” Randolph sighed, then the muscles in his brow tensed just enough for an internal darkness to make itself known upon his features. “Or perhaps one more death will be added to all of the others that are to come.”