The Lycan Rebirth (The Flux Age Book 3) (13 page)

“Come with me, Jack,” Yasmin said as she climbed the stairs to the mezzanine level. “I need you by my side.”

Gustav was already waiting for them. Jack spotted Florence sitting in a shadowy alcove, just staring at the wall. He lifted her gently by the arm and pulled her over to the spot where Yasmin would deliver her address.

A chime resonated throughout the facility. Yasmin checked her watch. “Tomas, scrupulously on time, as usual.”

The hall quickly filled with all the creatures that had traveled to New York to do battle. There was barely room to move as spiders rubbed shoulders with succubi. Almost all the naturebound chose to attend the meeting in their human forms. Their spirit creatures tended to be wild and this was no place for chaos.

Yasmin stepped forward and silence filled the hall.

“To see you all down there, together, fills me with hope,” Yasmin began. “There has been too much death for my liking. The Flux Age, whatever that might be, should be a time of self-discovery. To me, it’s about enlightenment, not destruction.”

Yasmin’s words were greeted with ripples of agreement.

“Our strategy is simple,” Yasmin continued. “We will protect this city at all costs. This is our home. Millions will die if we do not step forward and strike blows of our own. We are united. We do not accept a world full of violence. We are the Flux Fellowship.”

Yasmin gave a curt nod and a huge banner unfurled itself at the back of the hall. It depicted a gold ring on a royal blue background. Simple yet empowering. Jack was filled with pride as he lost himself in the powerful new symbol.

Someone started a chant in the crowd and it caught on like wildfire.

“Fellowship! Fellowship! Fellowship!”

Jack decided it was too hot in the great hall but with a shock he realized there were tears streaming down his face. Not that it mattered, as it was harder to spot those whose faces were dry.

The rest of Yasmin’s address related to matters of logistics and planning. The police commissioner had his troopers in place in Manhattan and Yasmin had positioned lookouts all over the city. There were increasing sightings of ghouls in the subway network, which indicated that attack was imminent.

Jack had one more thing to do before he prepared himself for battle. He tapped Florence on the shoulder and asked her to follow him into the bowels of the chapter house. He made his way into the silent cercarium, where a priceless cargo lay waiting. Florence spotted the box and her eyes widened. She gave Jack a look that told him she wanted to believe. He nodded solemnly.

Both dipped their hands into the dark tissue, savoring the feel of the life-giving substance. Smiling at each other, they went to work on the central pillar, smothering the rough, naked stone with dark tissue. The last remnants of the Lycan Society worked together, side by side, blood to blood. Jack infused all his passion into the transfer of material, hoping with all his heart that it began flourishing once more. It might take years, decades even, but one day the cercarium would function once more. One day it would serve the Flux Fellowship just as it had the Lycan Society.

Before long the box was empty. Jack and Florence stood back and admired their handiwork. The pillar was half shrouded in dark tissue. The chamber now had something of the old smell. Florence was the first to leave, and Jack lingered a moment to imagine what the place would look like in the years to come. Sometimes the best things took time. One thing was for certain - if an enemy ever stepped beyond the threshold of the cercarium, it would be over Jack’s dead body.

9

New York City, USA

Yasmin ripped apart the padlock and paid no attention to the alarm. There was little chance security would come to investigate a breach tonight.

She felt a twinge of guilt at having to break into Julian Banes’s office building, but the tower afforded a superb 360 view of Manhattan. It was the perfect place to watch the battle unfold.

Yasmin and her dark army had the task of providing support where it was needed. Jack and Nate led the naturebound army to the north in Harlem. Florence and Gustav led the arachne army in the south near Soho. Yasmin’s dark forces, made powerful by the night, would swoop from high above when the right moment came.

She and Tomas rode a bullet elevator right to the top. Florence had provided her with the private code to Julian’s penthouse suite. She passed through external security without an issue and allowed her various minions to make themselves comfortable. All up there were some seventy night creatures of varying origin. The Odessa siblings offered to keep them all in check whilst Yasmin and Tomas ventured out to the rail to survey a city under attack.

As always, Manhattan was beautiful by night, a sea of glittering lights. The steady drone of car horns and police sirens betrayed the fact that the streets were in chaos. Despite the cacophony, it was difficult to tell if a major attack had been launched yet.

If Yasmin’s theory was right, the Berlin Club wouldn’t be able to resist attacking the chapter house a second time. After all, Yasmin had made her base there and she’d made certain that a certain rumor flew through the streets. By now Herr X was bound to know that the Fellowship still had some dark tissue and planned to use it. If she knew Herr X at all, the bait would be impossible to resist. There was little chance of the Berlin Club allowing another entity to use the precious substance.

Or so the theory went. If the Berlin Club took the bait, they would go all out to attack the chapter house.
That
was where the Fellowship could dictate where the battle took place. Which was why they had chosen to defend a few key choke points. Places they had a chance in hell of coping with swarming ghoul hordes. Florence was in charge of Canal Street Station to the south. Jack was in charge of 135th Street Station to the north. Of course, there was a key subway station that granted access to the tunnels to the largely undefended chapter house - Lincoln Center Station. It was this building that Yasmin and her people needed to keep an eye on. Even though the ghouls were swarming the city’s lower tunnels, Jack and Florence had confirmed that entry into the chapter house was possible through one of these three stations. There was also the ocean tunnel, but the Fellowship had detonated a charge behind the red door, sealing off that particular entry with rubble. The trap had been set and hopefully the Berlin Club believed they could just steamroll their way over Fellowship forces. The only question now was whether they would concentrate their forces on one subway station or attack all three at once.

Yasmin felt her body tensing for battle as she scanned the distant lights. She had been diligently exploring the full range of her powers and was anxious to unleash them on the unsuspecting ghouls.

Tomas was pensive as he looked through a pair of high powered binoculars.

“So many people down there,” he commented. “Seems the mayor wasn’t able to evacuate Manhattan.”

“People always stay until the last minute,” Yasmin said. “It’s human nature.”

A woman’s scream drifted up from the street, but that in isolation wasn’t enough to suggest anything sinister. It seemed the ghouls were still running underground. There had been several sightings but no reports of an attack as yet. Yasmin suspected the ghoul armies were moving into a pre-arranged position and would make a coordinated attack. Herr X was no fool and would leave nothing to chance.

The minutes dripped by like molasses from a spoon. A pall of anxiety hung over the city streets and threatened at any moment to become panic.

A dull boom echoed down Broadway and a plume of flame lit up the night sky.

“Gas main,” Tomas said. “They’re trying to shut the city down.”

“Won’t matter to us,” Yasmin said confidently. She didn’t want to sound arrogant, but couldn’t wait to enter the fray and give the ghouls a taste of their own medicine.
They
weren’t the only night creatures doing battle tonight.

A fresh wail of sirens greeted the distant explosion. A wave of panic rolled across the city, carried to Yasmin’s high position by the northerly breeze.

“They’re coming,” Tomas said. Yasmin followed where his binoculars were trained. Straight down Broadway there was a a frenzied commotion, like the the turbulence in front of a wave. Civilians were clearly running for their lives. Further to the north, partially obscured by a building, an indistinct greyness spread across the street like sludge.

“Ghouls, moving very quickly,” Yasmin concluded, glancing inside the penthouse where the Odessa siblings waited for her signal.

Panicked shouts could clearly be heard now as citizens rushed down side streets to avoid to rampaging ghouls. Yasmin could see the massed ranks of state troopers in front of the Lincoln Center Station. The police commissioner had authorized the allocation of M16 assault rifles on loan from the army. The navy blue uniforms were hard to pick out in the gloom of night, but Yasmin could tell they were holding their positions well. A ghoul war cry had risen up between the skyscrapers. It was designed to arouse fear and despair in the enemy. Yasmin had briefed the police commissioner on what to expect and evidently that information had been relayed to the troopers.

Broadway was mostly clear of civilians now. The ghouls approached like a thick flood, clearly intending to strike the trooper line with brutal force. Yasmin watched nervously as the percussive retort of two hundred assault rifles rang out over Manhattan. The enemy front line sagged a bit as ghoulish flesh was ripped apart. Several of the fallen writhed on the ground, engulfed in flames. Yasmin breathed a sigh of relief. Her advice to the commissioner had been to use incendiary rounds as fire was the only way to truly kill a ghoul. Such ammunition was hideously expensive but it really was their only chance of avoiding a massacre.

As it turned out, incendiary rounds weren’t going to be enough.

<135th Street Station under attack,> came Jack’s voice in Yasmin’s ear. The leaders of the Fellowship had decided to communicate via radio, agreeing to provide battle reportage only.

Florence piped in.

“Three out of three then,” Yasmin said calmly. “I’ll be needed here, then I’ll work toward whoever needs me most.”

Jack said.

Florence promised. Yasmin grimaced. The enemy were attacking all subway stations at once, which meant that Yasmin’s shock troops could only engage one enemy attack unless Yasmin spread her forces. She decided to take care of the central station first and pray that Jack and Yasmin could hold out long enough for her to arrive.

“Let’s drop,” she called loudly, dropping over the side of the building and scrambling over the smooth glass windows. She’d already tested this ability on the tower at Frica. The first time had been a hair-raising experience but it seemed Yasmin actually had the ability to stick like a limpet to smooth vertical surfaces. She built speed as she crabbed down the Brandis building, focusing solely on the ghouls attacking the station entrance.

The state trooper line had fallen back and were now standing at the top of the steps cascading from the front entrance. Yasmin hustled as as fast as she could as she watched the ghoul front line reach the troopers. The carnage was difficult to watch. Boosted by the night, the ghouls were strong enough to toss the human bodies around like autumn leaves. Yasmin saw several navy blue bodies sailing into the street where they fell awkwardly. The ghouls seemed to penetrate the police ranks like a warm knife through butter, leaving nothing but dead bodies in their wake.

Yasmin hit the ground and bolted toward the station entrance. Several succubi hissed and shrieked over her shoulder. She was relieved to see Tomas close behind, sprinting almost as fast. He dropped to one knee and hurled a glowing lantern at the rearmost succubus. The seductive apparition caught flame immediately and called her sisters in. The succubi indulged in a vaguely bizarre group hug and when they separated all were ablaze.

Yasmin maintained her approach, racing up the station steps. Tomas stayed behind as he wasn’t able to resist extreme temperatures like his queen could. Again, all this had been tested at Tomas’s request back at the castle. The scientific approach was about to pay off handsomely.

The succubi dived fearlessly into the rampaging ghouls, scattering them on impact. The sheer power of their collective shriek was enough even to make their queen’s skin crawl. The succubi disappeared from Yasmin’s view as she raced up the last set of steps to the station entrance. The open plaza at the top had been doused with fuel earlier in the night. As Yasmin reached the top, a searing wall of flame erupted on all sides. Their work done, the flaming succubi rose into the air. There were two less than before, and Yasmin feared the worst. A crackling, roasting sound rose along with the flames as a hundred ghouls were consumed. Their cries of agony were off-putting, but Yasmin forced herself through the inferno so she could stand on the other side. She felt her skin tightening against the extreme heat but she was otherwise unharmed as she reached the cooler air of the inner station plaza. A small force of twenty or so troopers had been pushed back here and had formed a line at the turnstiles. They seemed to recognize Yasmin and held their fire. The vampire queen made a mental note to thank the police commissioner for being so diligent in his preparation.