“She’s quite tall for a woman. She’s young, maybe nineteen or twenty at most, with dark hair cut short in a Bob. Beautiful blue eyes, sounds posh, looks like a supermodel, and yes, she had a man with her, tall, solid, blond, named Marcus Drake.”

  Gang pursed his lips, giving a soft whistle. “Anton, you’re still with us - which is a miracle.” He stroked his chin. “Li, maybe something stronger tonight, pass over the shot glasses.” He reached beneath the bench and retrieved an ancient bottle. “Sake, family reserve.”

  He poured out a stiff drink for each of them. Stoppering the bottle, he put it back beneath the bench. They sipped their Sake, and it burned with a smooth fire down Anton’s throat.

  “I will contact your grandfather,” Gang explained. “He must be told what has happened. As for the Order, it is enough for tonight that you know that we have been fighting vampires for the last five thousand years. You are with friends now.”

  Anton put his hand out and Gang took it, clasping his arm. Anton offered, “Thanks, Gang,” he looked over at Li, “and Li. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Li arched a quizzical eyebrow and smiled. Gang shook his head slightly and observed sagely, “There is only one reason why you didn’t die with your mother. It serves the vampire’s purpose that you live.”

  “She said things to me,” Anton offered in a low murmur.

  “Beware of what the Armitage has told you,” Gang warned. “Every word serves her agenda, not yours. Now off for a shower. I don’t often agree with my daughter - but in this instance, she is absolutely correct. You do resemble a scruffy, stray dog. Li, show him the bathroom and the guest room.”

  Li indicated an open doorway with a flick of her head and directed, “Follow me.”

  They left the kitchen and Gang called after them, “Tomorrow I will teach you how to wash dishes. We’re a kitchenhand short, and you can help out while you’re here. I have special techniques that I will share with you. You will be the best dishwasher in all of Chinatown.”

  For the first time in days, Anton smiled. Li led him to the building next to the restaurant. It was the Wu family home.

  Twenty minutes later, Anton had showered and was falling asleep in a comfortable bed.

  Chapter Three

  Terrorism link to Friday night murder

  By Stephanie Hurd | Mercury Correspondent APRIL 29,

  The murder of a woman in Jamaica Plain has been linked to terrorism with the case being handed from the Boston Police Department to the FBI.

  Police had been notified of the murder and attended the house where the body of the woman was found in the early hours of Saturday Morning. An arrest warrant for a suspect was issued but was later rescinded after the FBI took over the case.

  The FBI from the Manhattan Joint Terrorism Task Force Annex has jurisdiction for this case, said Boston police spokesman, Harold Jacobs in a phone interview Saturday.

  The FBI Special Agent in Charge, Jim Alexander, declined to comment on the case, stating that policy dictated that active operations against terrorist cells were not a subject for media discussion.

  - Boston Mercury Newspaper article on the Internet.

  * * *

  Boston, May 5th, 23:00

  Anton finished washing the last of the dishes, hanging up his scrapers, brushes and dish washing cloths.

  The job was done; he looked up at the clock, it was eleven pm. Flicking off the kitchen lights, he left the restaurant, and made his way to Li and Gang’s home. Entering the ground floor, he heard the sharp crack of wood on wood coming from the backyard, and went to investigate what was happening there.

  A square wooden deck about ten yards on a side dominated the backyard, it was covered with a peaked roof, supported by four thick pillars at the corners, providing an open-air training environment. In the middle of the deck, Li and Gang sparred with pairs of wooden sticks. Anton watched in growing amazement at the remarkable display of skill and control as Li and Gang trained with each other. After three minutes, they paused, stepped back and bowed to each other.

  “I see that we have an audience for our Arnis training,” Gang observed.

  “Would you like to join us?” Li asked, looking at Anton with an open challenge in her eyes.

  “It’s time to begin your training. You are hunted by vampires, the Order of Thoth is your natural home,” Gang declared.

  “How do I begin?” Anton asked, spreading his hands wide.

  “You have already started with that question,” Gang noted. “But before we start with ‘how’ we must answer ‘why.’ Why do you want to learn what we have to teach?”

  “To defend myself, to avenge my mother’s death, to rescue my father,” Anton declared with quiet intensity.

  “The first part of your answer makes sense, the rest not so much,” Gang observed. He paused, frowned, and explained in serious tones, “Your father is beyond saving. He will have been turned, being buried in silver is a punishment for vampires. As for your mother, do you really want vengeance to be the center of your life?”

  “Chloe Armitage needs to be destroyed.”

  Gang nodded once and then observed sagely, “The man who walks in the shadow of vengeance is a different man from the man who walks in the light of justice.”

  Anton was momentarily nonplussed. What Gang had just said sounded like fortune cookie wisdom, and he asked, “… Is there a difference?”

  “I see that for you there is no difference.” Gang hesitated for a brief moment, his eyes tightened and he observed sagely, “But you are also young, inexperienced and foolish.”

  “Thanks,” Anton replied, sarcastically.

  A second later he was face down on the woven mats embedded in the floor, his arm twisted up behind his back. Li had dropped him; just as quickly she was gone. Anton rose to his feet, rubbing and rolling his shoulder.

  Gang offered with a commiserating smile, “Never mind Anton, I was even more arrogant than you are at your age. You will find out that humility is an essential virtue or you will not survive.”

  Anton took a deep breath and conceded, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Gang advised, “If you approach Chloe Armitage with anger in your heart, she will gut you like a fish.”

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t see how humility is going to help me fight vampires and defeat her.”

  “Humility will allow you to master what you need to learn, and to be fully present when the moment comes to use what you have mastered.”

  Anton frowned and promised, “… Okay, I will try.”

  Gang snorted. “Try!” he laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

  Anton frowned again and asked, “Are you always going to be laughing at me?”

  “Well … yes,” Gang replied with a smile. “I’m sure that your training will be very amusing.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Very serious.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “No - the more serious something is, the more we need to laugh at it.”

  “… Okay.” Anton agreed hesitantly.

  Gang sighed. “Now before we proceed, there are things you must know and agree to, or else you must walk away from here and never come back.”

  Anton nodded slowly. “Okay, sure.”

  “The Order of Thoth is a harsh mistress, and I mean harsh. I’m not talking about ‘Wishy Washy 101’ at the local University. There are some hard and fast rules that you must understand and agree to. Is that clear?”

  Anton nodded again.

  “Then let us begin with rule number one. Once you join, there is no going back. The Order is for the rest of your life. Once you commit to the Order, the only way to leave is via the grave. Is that clear? Do you understand and accept this rule?”

  Anton was willing to do anything to deal with the vampires and responded without hesitation, “Yes. I understand.”

  “Rule number two. As a member of the Order you will keep the Order secret, and you will keep the Order’s secrets. Is that clear? Do you understand and accept this rule?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Rule number three. As a member of the Order you will obey the orders of your superiors without hesitation? Is that clear? Do you understand and accept this rule?”

  Total obedience, or he had to walk away with nothing and Armitage would get away with everything she’d done to his family. Whatever was necessary, he’d do it. He affirmed, “Yes, I understand.”

  “Do you agree to and accept all three rules?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Okay then,” Gang directed. “Anton, please take off your shirt.”

  “Huh?” Anton grunted.

  “Rule number three Anton,” Gang reminded him, arching an eyebrow and tilting his head.

  “Okay, sure,” Anton replied. He took off his shirt, dropping it to the floor.

  Li stared at Anton for a long appraising moment and slowly smiled.

  Gang put a consoling hand on Anton’s shoulder, and explained with quiet emphasis, “I must warn you, what I’m about to do, I’ve never done before, but your grandfather taught me how to do it.”

  What was he going to do? Hit him hard in the face? Some sort of initiation test? Whatever it was, it was sure to be painful, but undoubtedly necessary. Anton put his questions away, braced himself, and declared forthrightly, “I’m ready. Go for it.”

  Gang shaped the fore and middle fingers of his right hand into a stiff knife. He stared intently at Anton for a brief moment and then his hand blurred over Anton’s torso in a tightly controlled sequence, striking him deeply a dozen times in less than a second.

  Each strike sent a shockwave through Anton’s body. Anton felt silvery light flaring at the base of his spine and racing up his body. The light burned with an intense cold fire fountaining through the top of his skull. His eyes rolled up in his head and he fell to the floor unconscious.

  Anton woke up, a living flame ripping through every fiber of his being. A silvery-white flame was consuming him from the inside out. He desperately wanted to scream, but only a high-pitched screech got past his clenched jaws. A white wall of agony swept through his skull, threatening to blow his head apart.

  An eternity of trembling and shaking came and went, and then he lay still. Panting for breath; gentle hands rested firmly on his shoulder and hip, and someone rolled him into the recovery position.

  Suffering beyond anything he’d ever experienced before overtook his body in waves. Great floods of agony washed through him, all but taking his sanity away. Time disappeared and there was only the dark ocean of anguish in which he was drowning. All light vanished as eternal night descended and overwhelmed his mind.

  There was a gap in which nothing existed, not even himself.

  A frail spark reignited and the dark gave ground to the light.

  Utterly alone and surrounded by darkness; he sobbed once with abject terror, but no one heard.

  A rift cracked open between the past and the future - two opposite worlds beckoned with equally seductive powers. Oblivion or Life. Now was the time to give up, to let go, to receded into the welcoming darkness. However, one need prevailed against the dark, I care, I can never give up.

  Forced to choose, he drew his next breath and the darkness retreated. The spark grew with the returning of the light. The ocean of pain ebbed away, slowly replaced by intense pins and needles as his body and mind returned to a calmer state.

  Oh my God … oh my God. Anton opened his eyes. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, and was immediately wracked with a fit of harsh coughing.

  Li put her hand softly on his shoulder and observed, “That’s your lungs learning to really breathe for the first time.”

  Anton couldn’t speak for a long moment, then regained enough control to gasp through chattering teeth, “What … was … that? What did you … do to me?”

  “I just switched you on,” Gang replied with a chuckle. He slapped Anton on the shoulder. “That’s the first time I’ve seen that work.”

  Pushing himself up off the floor, Anton groaned and asserted ruefully, “Switched me on? I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck … twice.”

  Gang shrugged his shoulders, and then nodded once. “But now you can Ramp.”

  Anton shook his head. His nose had started bleeding and he smeared the blood away with his forearm, and he asked, “What’s the Ramp?”

  Li gave him a hand towel, Anton pressed it to his nose, and turned back toward Gang.

  Gang explained, “The Ramp is an epigenetic phenomenon. The outcome of a set of techniques that bind muscles and rewire nerves. There are very real physiological changes that enable us to reach our full potential as a human being. Those changes enable us to match the speed and capabilities of vampires. They allow us to enter combat with vampires and win.”

  “You could have warned me,” Anton said ruefully.

  “If I had told you how much it would hurt - would you have chosen differently?”

  Anton shook his head. “No.”

  “Good answer. By the way, not everyone survives that process, most die.”

  “Most die? I’m not surprised. I thought I was definitely going to die. It was a big risk, was there no other way?”

  “There is no way that you can stay in the Order as a fighter without the Ramp. I trusted in the fact that you are a Slayne. You have over two hundred generations behind you of continuous membership in the Order. If anyone was going to survive the process, it would be you.”

  Anton flicked his gaze from Gang to Li and back, and asked, “So the both of you have been through that?”

  Gang stated with a broad grin, “No, of course not. We both started training at three years of age, and the transformations that you just went through were accomplished over fifteen years of dedicated work.”

  Anton winced as Gang slapped him on the back and observed, “You got off easy, you got the condensed version.”

  Anton smiled wryly, then grimaced as he stiffly took a step forward.

  “You can’t train an adult body for the Ramp,” Li explained. “It’s no longer adaptable, what my father did was the only way.”

  Anton’s blood nose had stopped. He rubbed his forehead, and picked up his shirt. He was utterly drained and exhausted, and had the beginnings of a whopper of a headache, but he was exhilarated as well, as if he’d just won a championship game. He asked, “So, what happens now?”

  “All I have done is open the door,” Gang instructed. “You still have to walk through it. The development of skill and control is still in front of you. Please believe me when I tell you that there is much for you to learn, but for now, drink plenty of water and get some sleep.”

  “Thanks, sounds like excellent advice,” Anton replied, walking gingerly to his room. Everything hurt like hell, there seemed to be no end to the way that his body could hurt.

  He managed to down a couple of tall glasses of water in the bathroom before flopping into his bed and falling immediately asleep.

  * * *

  Chloe Armitage and Haras Mosule stood on top of a rampart at the Tower of David citadel in Jerusalem.

  The evening light show had finished and the revelers had all left. Except for two unfortunate souls whose bodies were in the back of a Shadowstone van being driven by Peter Dench to a designated disposal facility. The other praetorian, Washington Jones, stood a dozen yards away on another part of the citadel wall. All four vampires wore barely visible in-ear communication headsets that provided secure communications via encrypted satellite links to any location in the world.

  “We’re wasting our time,” Haras complained loudly, staring out over the old city of Jerusalem. “We have been here nearly a week without a hint of Red Empire activity. We need a new strategy.”

  Chloe arched an eyebrow.

  “First we need good intelligence,” Haras asserted. “We need to find the secret citadel of Shabbah al Ahmar. It was moved in 1850, two days after I was converted, and before Crane could launch an attack on it. The Red Ghost of that time had acted quickly when his chief lieutenant was taken alive by vampires. Back then, the citadel was in Istanbul, the city that I grew up in as a child. It’s a distinct possibility the Red Empire have moved back there and now they simply run operatives through Jerusalem to lay a false trail. It’s a task for Shadowstone and the Panopticon to find the Red Empire’s men and track them back to their lair. Then we can come in and eliminate the Red Empire’s main force.”

  Chloe tilted her head and observed wryly, “You talk of war when our mission is one of stealth.”

  “You’ve never shirked a battle before.”

  Chloe’s lips twitched with a slight smile and she asserted, “Of course not, but open war with the Red Empire is not our mission.”

  “We don’t have enough information to execute our mission as it stands,” Haras objected.

  “Crane must believe the Red Empire is here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t’ve sent us. We’re too valuable for him to waste our time here.”

  Haras gripped the top of the rampart and stared out at the city. “But we’re wasting our time here.”

  Chloe offered, “The Red Empire must be here somewhere - we need a new method of searching.”

  “I will take Jones. If you catch up with Dench, we can split this city into two halves. I will take the west side -.”

  Chloe seized upon his offer like a trap snapping shut. “And I’ll take the east side.”

  A flash of light lit up the edge of the city, a plume of flame rising into the night sky. They both reacted to the flash at the same time, turning as one to look at what was happening. Jones appeared next to Haras. Another pair of flashes followed hot on the heels of the first. The plume of flame thickened into a tower of smoke six miles away in the direction of the disposal facility.

  Chloe activated her ear piece on broadcast and ordered, “Dench, report in … Dench?”

  The only sound on the line was static.

  “He’s gone, Ma’am,” Jones stated in shocked finality.

 

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