The Vampire-Alien Chronicles (30 page)

Agent Irving, Human and unable to be affected by the Palag Elder's presence, but suddenly acutely aware of our situation, the frozen looks on our faces and seeing in our minds the reasons for those looks, turned and ran to the table sitting in the left-hand corner of the foyer to catch up two of the riot helmet Field Generation units they had provided anew for us, turned and tossed one to each of us.
"Put them on!" Irving said even as he picked up a third for himself.

I turned mine on and slipped it over my head.
I admit to a moment of panic when I first felt the Palag but it was already passing before I put the helmet over my mind. It had been more surprise than any crippling fugue, as it could be for Juveniles in the presence of their Elders. They were Elder to me but there had been something else there as well, something that vanished before I could put my finger on it now that the riot helmet was in place. Some unwitting telepathic understanding occurring between myself and the Palag Elders, but that was now gone.

Sonafi threw hers on with a relief that was evident to see in the expression she wore on her face, and which cleared up as the unit slipped into place and I was looking at her through the clear faceplate.
It was with evident relief that she spoke the obvious; "I think we have succeeded in making them mad!"

"You think!" I said with a grin, the lust for battle suddenly coursing through my veins.
When there were no other options left but armed conflict, all doubts and reservations fall to the wayside. I greeted the prospect of that battle with eager ferocity and terrifying resolve. As Irving put his own helmet in place Sonafi and I drew cold steel and armed ourselves. I have never familiarized myself with combustion weapons because I find them cumbersome and inefficient, though I had to admit that the Federal Agents had used their assault rifles to great effectiveness in our recent defense and the trap laid at Brid's home. I could hear the massive firepower being brought to bear above, automatic weapons fire, the
carrumph
of grenade launchers and, though not audible, felt the silenced weapons fire that was a large part of the battle being waged above.

There was a hell of death and mayhem occurring above us, but I did not believ
e that it was going to go in the Human defender’s favor. I could no longer sense it, with the helmet in place, but I knew what the Human agents were facing. I knew also that there was very little time to waste.

"Stay here!"
I told Irving. "You will only be in the way." I sped away before his falling face had a chance to complete its change of expression. Out the door, down the corridor and into the ascending staircase. There I paused a moment, after I had opened the door, while Sonafi caught up. I saw the briefest look of surprise on her face as she went by me and up the staircase; letting my rage overwhelm me I had moved at my fullest potential, and had appeared a blur even to her hyper-accelerated senses. I followed her up the staircase, moving at Sonafi's slower pace, for once really noticing the disparity of ability that separated us.

That taste of fear had electrified me.
I let my rage rise within me, not so much as to consume me, which would have doomed me, for to be consumed by rage was to lose the ability to think clearly; I only let enough of it rise to augment my strength speed and awareness, to become like a wild animal fighting for its life. I was, would be, that wild animal fighting for my life. Fighting for Sonafi and Brid and all else who mattered to me in this my existence.

We ran up the stair through the hundreds of agents pouring upward around us towards the sounds of battle above.
In my long life there has been little to compare with the sound of the modern battlefield. Humans have refined to a fine art the process of killing one another, but their weapons gave them no edge this day.

Interspersed within the sound of gunfire were the screams of the injured and dying.
I have been a witness to many battles through the ages and I could never get used to the psychic agony that accompanied massive death and agony. If I had not been wearing the Field Generation unit I knew the sensory experience would have been intense. The Palag were killing the Federal Agents as quickly as they could rush to their own dooms.

We reached the end of the staircase and went through the last doorway and directly into the maelstrom of the battle.
It was every bit as bad as I had expected it to be. I blocked the doorway and then shut it in the faces of the men still trying to push their way through. I ripped the handle from the door and threw it to the floor. The Humans were only in the way, but they had halted the Palag long enough to give us time to react.

There was no defensive line within the corridor, just chaos.
Bodies lay heaped everywhere, but nowhere was there the telltale rapid decomposition that would indicate that either a Vampire or Palag had fallen. We were the first Vampires to reach the battle, apparently. A quick scan of the long corridor made clear to me that we faced only five Palag.

The agents could have no organized defense when the Palag could move amongst them at speeds that effectively made them invisible to their Human victims.
It was butchery pure and simple, with the agents watching their fellows fall to pieces around them by invisible means, and shooting like madmen at the ghosts doing it, only to cut down even more of their own comrades in the process. More agents had died from friendly fire than had been by the bloodied blades of the Palag Elders.

Only one of the five was truly old
. So ancient it was beyond my ability to reckon. I do not know how I knew this, with my helmet in place, but I did. So did Sonafi. She chose this one, out of the five, and went directly towards it, her throwing stars whirling out from her towards first the eldest Elder Palag, and then the others, sending all of them scrambling to get out of the deadly path of Sonafi's whirling blades. I scrambled quickly to follow her.

Sent all but the eldest
Elder scrambling. That being hardly seemed to notice the six stars that Sonafi sent its way. He twisted around to allow them to pass harmlessly, moving sinuously out of the way like flowing water and all the while maintaining eye contact with me. We stared at one another while Sonafi continued to plunge on ahead. She released another stream of the deadly stars as she moved, and finally the old Master was forced to give ground.

He ran up the wall to his left, across the ceiling, down the opposite wall and straight for Sonafi.
She was now two steps ahead of me and ten steps from the old Master. I gained her side as they came together, as the slashing blades of the Palag danced around my wife and would've killed her if I had not added my own to her defense. Sonafi was immediately overwhelmed as she tried desperately to fend off the Master's blurring attacks, saving herself only by falling back before his attack while my blades halted his forward momentum. He crashed into my defense like a freight train and between the two of us we held him, barely.

The Palag Master's surprise was genuine as, possibly for the first time in its life, another living creature thwarted it, even if it took two.
In the momentary lull which occurred while it appraised us, out of the corner of my eye I saw Sonafi's blades disappear and her hands reappear holding more stars. Two in each hand. Instant flicks of her wrists sent them hurtling towards the Palag in front of us. Then was it that I saw exactly what it was that we faced.

No more than five feet separated us from the Palag Master when Sonafi's hands came out of her loose
-fitted clothing holding the stars. She released them with a blurring speed that even I could not follow, but all four stars, sent out in a horizontal line pattern that should not have given the Palag the leeway to escape, passed through only empty air where the creature had been. It moved with a speed that was both shocking and horrifying all at once, because I had never seen anything move so quickly, or so surely, in my entire life.

It was under no pressure from Sonafi's attack and even seemed to linger a moment mockingly before it did move.
Yet it was gone long before Sonafi's stars passed through the empty air where it had been. It went up the wall to its right this time and, with momentum gluing it to both wall and ceiling, ran right above us, attacking me with its twin swords as it did so. Only the delay in the time it took it to run up the wall gave me an inkling of the attack that was coming and my swords somehow rose to parry his attack.

On our initial charge down the corridor Sonafi had scattered the other four Palag and now with all five Palag on the other side of us I grabbed Sonafi and bodily threw her behind me.
In the sudden hush that ensued as the last of the Humans died on the swords of the four lesser Palag, we stood and took stock of our situation.

We were well out of our league, but we have faced seemingly overwhelming odds in the past and have lived to tell the tale, and if I could not destroy this Palag, he would destroy us all; all Vampires and all Humans.
It was for my entire species and that of the Humans as well that I would now fight. I was the last line of defense and well I knew it. Everything rested on my ability to best this monster, yet I did not know how I was going to do it.

Its movements were blurs to me.
From somewhere it had learned the art of swordplay and its skill was certainly that of the Master. It carried two blades, one that was obviously of Human manufacture and the other distinctly Palag, a fine ribbon of carbon with markings running down its length in a language I immediately recognized as otherworldly. I have been alive since before the conception of a written Human language and I am familiar, to a certain high degree, with all of them. This I immediately recognized as other than Human.

The other was a blade of such exquisite workmanship that at first I could not believe what I was seeing.
Then I could not deny it.  It was a Cumosachi Katana, one of Hamaterara Cumosachi's earlier works, but exquisite to a fine degree. I could not begin to imagine how the Palag had come by it, only of its authenticity. It was a Cumosachi Katana all right. I guessed then at the Palag’s other side. A side of them we had never before seen, a side of them that could value individual artistry. Something that made them more than just flesh and blood machines, pre-programmed to carry out their hive-like automata functions. They had individuality!

Of all the Palag I have witnessed only this Master had been allowed to carry such a Human artifact.
Almost as if to do so was to give face value to a species they were effectively annihilating. There was no doubt in my mind now that here was the highest of the Palag. The Eldest of the Elders. He is the one to whom I must bring annihilation.

He almost killed me then.
He came at me so quickly that I could not even register his movement. Only the millions of repetitions of sword movements that I had driven into muscle memory through my daily practice now allowed me to move, to react
before
I thought,
before
I had the time to think, and bring my swords up to parry those lightning fast attacks.

Showers of sparks flew as we danced around one another and our blades met a dozen times in the first millisecond's span.
The Palag was perfectly at ease as he attacked me and I felt his nearness like a physical thing; despite the Field Generation riot helmet I wore which should have blocked all such telepathic communion, his conscious presence, if not his thoughts, were getting through. It was an immense, overwhelming weight which attempted, of its own right, to weigh upon my self-confidence, leach my resolve, bear me down by dint of his overshadowing superiority alone! The barest smile cracked the corner of his slit-like mouth as he pressed me, but with the truth shining from those fathomless black teardrop eyes it was more a sneer of contempt than any true Human empathy with my perceived dilemma. I did not think that this creature was any longer capable of humor, or any emotion besides rage. It had been consumed by its pre-programmed genetics to hate everything and anything that was not a continuation of its long lost progenitors' purpose. At that moment I actually felt sorry for him. Not so sorry that I would not kill him, but aware of the irony, the utter waste of such a long lived life, spent in hating everything around it, including the Juveniles of his own species.

A crash down the hall from where we had entered sounded the approach of our Vampire brethren as they ripped their way through the steel door like it was no more than aluminum foil and came pouring into the corridor to join the fight.
  They were none too soon. The four other Palag had turned to aid their Master and we would surely have been finished if those Palag did not now have to turn back to meet these Vampires. It was Samon Du Bon and Drye Ahmed leading the attack, I saw with amazement, having no idea where they had come from nor caring, either. Just that they were here was enough. They took one look at the situation and led the charge down the hall to meet the Palag. With an audible snarl, and the sneer which had been curling the Palag Master's lip now vanished like the morning fog under the hot rays of the rising Sun. He turned on me once again and I had no further time for thought.

Sonafi sidestepped me and slipped past as I tried to crowd her behind me while meeting the Master's attack.
As my own blades countered the blurring attack Sonafi assaulted the Master, thrusting with her long knives and he had momentarily to give his time to defending himself from her attack. I used that moment to make a false attack, feinting with cane-sword and then the true thrust with my Cumosachi.